Bodies and Souls …

This past Monday our church team leaders met to discuss how to regather our people after two months of disembodied streaming and Zooming. The meeting in sum revealed that spectrum of postures and positions that every church is finding right now—some want to reopen, others prefer to wait for more certainty. Old news by now. (We’re going to meet this coming Sunday, so you know. We’re also going to unite through this and be fine.)

But what interested me most in the meeting proved to be one quick exchange—a crease in that rambling discussion, a kairos moment in my thinking that entered like the whir of a hummingbird, hovered for a moment, then vanished on invisible wings, taking my thoughts with it.

“Why do the elders want to regather now?” one of our team leaders wanted to know. An obvious but excellent question.

My instinctive answer, an instant later: “Because we NEED to” … I’ll stand by that answer. But just like I finish every preached message in the car on the way home, I’d like to complete it.

Our Present Worldview Crisis

Just as Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings described himself as “butter spread over too much bread,” we all feel instinctively that something is wrong in the world, and we’re all somehow wrong in it. There’s a moral and spiritual haze in our dispositions—a certain cast covering our every action. At different times and places none of us has been certain whether or not we’re within or outside the law of the land. Even when legality is defined, the spirit of the law defies simple explanation. What does social distancing say about how we value people? Do we love others by running toward them or hiding from them? Does meeting as a church family mean we’re careless, or that we care about our community? What is the relative value of safety verses, say, courage? And, above all, what does love look like?

We’re not helped by looking to public figures. Dr. Fauci, head of the Center for Disease Control and a household name by now, strikes me as a nice man I’d like to have for my own doctor. He describes himself as  “… a scientist [who] gives advice according to the best scientific evidence  .”  Our Wisconsin governor, before being overruled by the court, said, regarding models and case tracking,  “… we follow science” . Christian leaders in the blogosphere have largely and deferentially followed civil authorities, citing Scripture like 1 Timothy 2.1-2 and 1 Peter 2.13-14.

Fine and well. God has made a world that can be studied, and Christians should love science. God has put government in place to protect, and Christians should honor civil authorities. But what does defining the crisis and our proper response to it in purely material terms say about the human person? If I am no more than a physical, material being quantified by empirical evidence, then I am no more than a potential virus-carrier. I owe you the debt of keeping my potentially diseased self away from you, so you can enjoy what scant years you have left  in your own virus-free body—until we get a vaccine, or maybe forever.

Do you see what I mean by a worldview crisis? The virus is serious and bad, but it’s our truncated response that strikes most profoundly at the heart of what we believe ourselves to be as human persons.

So, what’s the right answer? What are we, exactly?

We are bodies and souls!

This answer is nothing new. It’s as old as Adam, really. But notice what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that we are bodies OR souls, or that we’re bodies WITH souls, or that we’re souls that happen to have a body in tow. I’m not saying that either the body or the soul is more important than the other. Or that we have a body now and will get a soul later.

None of that. I’m saying that we each have a body and and a soul NOW. And that this self-understanding is crucial to our understanding of who we are as human persons. It’s in keeping the two together that we live. It’s in seeing the two separated that we die. It’s in this understanding of who we are as humans that we grasp what a big deal resurrection is—Jesus’ first, then ours eventually. And it’s in seizing the significance of our being bodies and souls that we understand why we need to meet as a church family.

We’re in a global crisis. We get the trickle-down effect locally. In our Northwoods community, crime is on the rise. A grown man I met with last week broke down mid-conversation and simply wept. Even as I write this a total stranger drove in from Highway 13 just to find “someone to talk to.” People are starting to do crazy things. All this provides “scientific,” if you want it, evidence that we are doing enormous damage to peoples’ souls, because we are treating them as bodies only … But, what do we do about it?

For starters, we meet together as a church family. Meeting itself is our manifesto to God’s design in creating us as His image-bearers. In doing so we celebrate God’s wisdom in creation, … then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. It’s not just an imago Christi (“image of Christ”) thing (as though that weren’t everything). It’s an imago Dei (“image of God”) thing. No human being is excluded from the need for ministry to her soul. The great thinkers (I call them “great souls”) of our civilization knew this—the Tolkiens, the Lewises, the Chestertons. It’s the narrow thinkers—the Freuds, the Marxes, and the Nietzches—who followed their dialectical reasoning to destruction in the last century.

Now, when we regather Sunday we don’t meet flippantly or defiantly. When we come together we’ll recognize our bodies with common-sensical practices. This is no time for the holy kiss (1 Thess 5.26). We’ll be careful and respectful. But, we’ll also recognize that “soul ministry” is every bit as “essential” as searching for a vaccine.

And that’s because people are bodies and souls …

Let me know what you think about the idea. I hang out at [email protected]. I’d like to chat more about what this response means for the robust care of human persons in their entirely.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Productive Faith: James 1.1-4

This week begins a new season in the life of our church in the great Northwoods of Wisconsin. We’re one week away from the beginning of the process that will lead to regathering.

For reasons that everybody can imagine by now, that’s a big deal. And it’s because of the immensity of the project that I’m super happy we’re beginning a summer study in the Book of James.

James is about faith producing spiritual fruit. In the keynote verses that we’ll look at tomorrow (1.1-4), we’ll see that TESTING of our faith can result in either fruit or failure. A consistent pattern of ENDURANCE results in MATURITY that leads to JOY in trials. The whole book is about individual case studies of what that spiritual fruit leading to maturity and joy looks like.

James is just the place for us to be for our present test at Woodland Community Church!

Right along with our study, we’ll be doing what I call the James Projekt. Below is a sample of what that project will look like. We’ll see a great many of you on the stream tomorrow.

Have a blessed week in the Lord!

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Conspiracy Theories … “My Rights!” … and Civil Disobedience

This promises to be a big week for us in Wisconsin. Sheltered-in-place now for over seven weeks, and with no clear plans to reopen, people are restless. My family and I are restless!

Sometime this week (perhaps even before I hit “publish”) our Wisconsin Supreme Court will weigh in. But, depending on their decision, the situation might grow more tense. All of this is why—staring each Sunday morning into that little black camera with the green light—I’ve started to give little teaser messages about biblical principles to help us in our situation.

Now, these aren’t scholarly diatribes crafted from having read lots of books. (My routine hasn’t gotten easier with the crisis, so I’m plenty busy just keeping up.). They are, rather, quick statements of biblical truth. Let me know at [email protected], if you agree, disagree, or want to talk more. Here’s three quick thoughts. I referenced the first yesterday.

Conspiracy Theories

I don’t spend much time on Facebook, but I get on enough to see what people really think. And last week was the week for conspiracy theories! I didn’t see it among my own Facebook friends, but my favorite theory is that the Corona-crisis is caused by the millimeter wave spectrum related to 5G technology. (If true, just about everybody is a virus carrier, I guess.).

All of this is distracting, but not new. My wife pointed out to me last week that there were many conspiracies circulated around Jesus’ resurrection. That’s what the men on Emmaus Road were discussing, after all. And yet, none of these theories proved true. And all paled in comparison to the truth—that Jesus is alive!

So let’s be careful with the theories. Let’s keep our minds on the truth of the gospel, and eagerly anticipate what God is doing in us personally, in our families, in our church family, and in His church around the world. At the cross and tomb, Jesus cracked the great conspiracy of Satan against God. Let’s not forget it.

“My Rights!”

The present climate has us forgoing basic rights for an (un)specified period of time in the face of a global threat. What about these rights?

Not meaning to get outside my wheelhouse here, but my understanding is that our “rights” originate from our obligations to God. If God requires something of me, I have a right to respond to God. This basic premise forms the foundation of our law code. Take God out of this equation, and you have nothing left but the will to power. And the 20th century demonstrated in manifold cases what that looks like.

So, I have a right to worship … to work … to care for my family … to speak the truth of the gospel, among other responses to God. These rights are being violated, right? Well, not so fast …

Within His created order God has also created government. Civil government, which Scripture begins to reveal in Genesis 9.5-6, has the basic responsibility of preserving life. The New Testament goes on to describe this basic responsibility of civil governors in Romans 13 and 1 Timothy 1.1-4. These governors might or might not know God in a saving way, but they’ll be held accountable to God for carrying out their basic responsibility.

I’ll not share where I stand personally and politically in our present Wisconsin crisis. It doesn’t matter, for our present purpose. I do believe that our shelter-in-place order has the basic intention of preserving life. This is why I and the elders at Woodland are working so hard to honor our government and stay within the “letter of the law”. This is why we’re not leading our church back before the order is lawfully lifted. In Zooming with other pastors across Wisconsin, I’m not aware of a single pastor who is pressing to regather before lawfully permitted.

Both the church and the state are ordained by God. In our present situation, we’re living in the space occupied by both. That’s what’s so hard about our predicament. So, how long do we comply? What would change our practice at Woodland?

Civil Disobedience

Last week the blogosphere was abuzz with talk of civil disobedience. I read some and listened to a podcast put out by the guys at 9Marks. I appreciated a statement by theologian Bobby Jamieson, “Civil disobedience is warranted when civil government forbids what God commands or commands what God forbids.” He went on to discuss examples of both cases from the book of Daniel. And I’d add the example of Peter and John from Acts 4:20, “Whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge, for we cannot but speak of what we have seen and heard.”

We in our Wisconsin churches need to defer to government as long as possible. We aren’t being told not to worship. We are being told we can’t drink coffee and mingle in our church welcome area. The former is a right; the latter is a preference. Worship and fellowship can be carried out with some creativity, and that’s what we’re working on as we look at some kind of regathering in the month of June.

Finally, let’s not stray from asking ourselves what love looks like in each stage of our crisis. To date, love has looked liked social-distancing. There might come a time when love looks more like courage—running toward hurting people rather than caring for them from a distance.

But, that’s a topic for another day. Do let me know what you think. And have a blessed day …!

 

 

 

God’s Plan in Jesus’ Resurrection: Luke 24.36-49

I love the last chapter of the Gospel of Luke, chapter 24. It’s like a great movie, a masterful symphony, a finely crafted novel. It depicts its original participants traveling through all the stages of despondency, disbelief, wonder and euphoria.

The chapter is really about God’s plan. How does God accomplish His plan? … How does God restore people to His purpose? … How does God put people back in the place He’s designed them for?

We join Jesus in the latter half of the chapter, 24.36-49. The two men from the Emmaus Road have rejoined the disciples, and Jesus appears. The passage deals with the reality of the resurrection and the results of Jesus having been raised.

Reality of Jesus’ Resurrection (:36-43). Peace to you! Jesus begins. And He means it, but the disciples are dismayed. To their fallen minds Jesus has blurred the distinction between the living and the dead. But Jesus isn’t either fallen pre-resurrection flesh or a disembodied spirit. He’s resurrected, and He offers them proofs.

See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have. I’m body and soul, undivided, Jesus is showing them. Resurrection is a new category for the disciples. Jesus’ body isn’t a different body. There’s continuity between this life and the next. And Jesus shows this by the scars in His hands and feet.

And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?” And then He ate. Jesus is really asking them to measure Him against the material substance of the fish they hand Him. Believe that fish is real? He’s saying. Well, watch me eat it. Either the fish isn’t real, or you’re all seeing things together, or I’m resurrected and real.

Something has happened, and it changes everything. That’s what the resurrection is all about.

Results of Jesus’ Resurrection (:44-49). These amazing verses are about God’s plan and what the resurrection has to do with that plan … everything, in fact!

      1. Scripture is fulfilled (:44). The word used here means “something anticipated in God’s plan that has come to pass”. This includes everything pointing to Jesus in the “Law” (first five books of the Bible), “prophets” (including all the books we’d consider “histories”, like 1 and 2 Kings), and Psalms (the “writings” or wisdom books). The Old Testament. It all points to Jesus.
      2. The minds of Jesus’ followers are opened (:45). Jesus did this while in the Scriptures with His followers.
      3. God’s plan is made clear (:47-48). Jesus was to suffer … to be raised … and to be preached. This would be a message of repentance and forgiveness (Acts 2.38). And Jesus would be preached to the nations (Is 49.6; Acts 13.47).
      4. Finally, God’s Spirit will be sent to help (:48-49). The disciples’ job won’t be to serve as organizers, but as witnesses. Tell people what you’ve seen me do, Jesus is saying. Notice, we’ve just gotten a preview to the Book of Acts.

So, how does God accomplish His plan?

The way God accomplishes His plan is through the resurrection of Jesus. 

We today are much like those in this passage. For starters, we’re in quarantine. (Maybe not important, but it’s a curious point.) We’re despondent because our plans haven’t worked out. And, we need to recognize that something has happened … the resurrection of Jesus!

And that great work of God changes everything. Now we have a place in God’s plan. We’re witnesses to what Jesus has done. And, if you’ve trusted Jesus by faith, you have the Spirit of God who helps us.

First Corinthians 15.20-28 is Paul’s recasting of Luke 24. He begins in verses 20-22: But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead …

So, if you’ve trusted in Jesus, keep trusting in Jesus. A million years from now we won’t be talking about the Coronavirus, but we will be talking about Jesus’ work of redemption punctuated by His resurrection.

And, if you’ve not trusted Jesus, do it. Receive that message of repentance and forgiveness. Enter God’s plan that is all held together by the fact that Jesus is alive!

Really finally, if you have interest in what we’re talking about here, why don’t you join us tomorrow at 9:00 on the Woodland livestream? We’ll look at this passage more in depth, and with a thought to where we are in our present situation as a nation and a people.

Have a great week in the Lord! …

Resurrection Life: Luke 24.13-35

While the turning seasons and longer days do much to lighten the mood, we have a long way to go before we emerge from our Coronavirus crisis. And, as I talk with different ones of you, I feel your strain from social isolation, your struggle for purpose in life, and your stress from financial burdens.

All this makes for a great time to return to our study of Luke where—after our Easter Sunday study in 24.1-12—Jesus is alive! Even so, in our gospel account, nobody has seen Jesus. Luke is crafting a cliffhanger, and by verse 12 of chapter 24, we’re left to wonder what difference resurrection makes, how Jesus will reveal Himself, and even how Jesus’ new life will affect our present purpose and place with God some millennia later.

Luke 24.13-35 finds two men walking to an unimportant village named Emmaus. On the surface the passage is about a walk, a conversation, a meal, and a community. But it’s about far more than that. We’re about to rediscover our present purpose and place with God. We’re about to trace the different stages in which we become acquainted with resurrection life.

Jesus unrecognized (:13-16). The passage opens with two men walking the three and a-half miles to Emmaus (the distance taken as a round number). They’re in intense discussion about Jesus. Suddenly, Jesus joins them. Only they don’t recognize Him. There’s something about resurrection life that we in our fallen state can’t grasp without help. (So Mary in John 20, the disciples in John 21). Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable (1 Cor 15.50).

Even so, none of us starts out recognizing Jesus. We have our notions of Jesus, don’t we? He’s an historical or religious figure, an idea, or a real person whom others have used to manipulate or shame us. But He’s anything but the risen Savior … when we start out.

Jesus revealed in Scripture (:17-27). Next follows the conversation. Jesus, unrecognized in His resurrection state, draws the men out. He wants to know what they’re discussing. At first they “stood still, looking sad”. They’re crestfallen, disappointed in their purpose, disillusioned about God’s plan and their proper place with Him.

Then one of the men, Cleopas by name, wants to know how his new companion couldn’t know about Jesus. Jesus draws the men out further. And Cleopas unloads with his account of recent events. In this description we see  Jesus described as a great leader on par (it was hoped) with Moses. Jesus was thought to be a prophet “mighty in word and deed”. It was hoped He would redeem Israel. But Jesus was killed, and now confounds everyone in the disappearance of His body, as reported by otherwise trustworthy women known to the two men.

And it’s in Jesus’ response to the men in verses 15-17 that we learn what the men (and us, if we’re honest) are missing. There’s suffering before glory. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these things and enter into his glory? (:26). And then Jesus starts from the beginning of what we’d call the Old Testament, and he interprets the entire Bible, showing the men how all of it pointed to Him, and can’t be made sense of without His work on the cross.

Like the two men, many of us grow in our understanding of Jesus but then somehow miss the cross. This won’t work. We’ll be disappointed in Jesus. We’ll blame Him for not being the Savior we’d expected. So it was with the men. And—crazy thing, even after hearing this first preaching of the gospel from Jesus Himself—they still haven’t recognized Jesus!

Jesus recognized in relationship (:28-32). Now the men invite Jesus home to lodge. They share a meal. And it’s in the act of being served by Jesus that they’re no longer “kept from” recognizing Jesus. They suddenly know Him in His resurrection body, just before Jesus vanishes. And their eyes were opened, and they recognized him (:31a). The same language of “opening” is used twice more in the passage (verses 32 and 45) to describe Jesus revealing Himself to others in the Scriptures.

What do we gather from this about seeing Jesus? About resurrection life? The lesson is complex and profound. We know we can’t recognize Jesus without help. And, apparently, the bare facts of the gospel as recorded in Scripture don’t change us. There’s a work of God that needs to take place for our eyes to be “opened”. For the men, this work took place face-to-face with Jesus. But Jesus had talked about the Spirit’s future work (Jn 14.26, among other places). And Paul would later describe how God’s Spirit would interpret the Scriptures for us: Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given to us by God … (1 Cor 2.12a).

To really “recognize” Jesus we need the calling of God through His Spirit. This will take place entirely by God’s grace as we hear the gospel through God’s Word. And, when we respond by faith, we understand spiritual things—who Jesus is, the importance of the cross, our purpose in life, our place with God, and God’s purpose in the suffering of Jesus, as well as God’s purpose in our suffering.

Jesus revered by others (:33-35). It might seem at this point that the passage is over. But the men return to Jerusalem, and they join others who are celebrating the risen Lord. And, before they can tell their own story, they learn that Peter has seen Jesus too! God has provided a community for the men. They’ll share their experience of the risen Lord. They’ll proclaim the gospel together. They’ll study Scripture together. And they’ll be transformed by the Spirit and share resurrection life together. Even more, they now have a renewed purpose as they understand God’s plan for them. And they’ll share suffering with one another before entering into glory, even as Jesus did.

In the same way, we receive a new community when we trust Jesus. We’ll share resurrection life with others. This new life starts spiritually when we trust in Jesus and will be completed when we’re with Him at His return. As we go we’ll remember that Jesus is finished with His suffering, but we aren’t quite finished with ours. We’ll have opportunity to contend for the faith along with our new community, even as Paul did: Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church (Col 1.24).

So, here we are in our final month of the “sheltered in place” directive. I would venture that we struggle because we don’t really understand the place of suffering in resurrection life. Like the men on the road, we need to “recognize” Jesus and understand the place of suffering in relation to glory. With this comes a new appreciation for God’s purpose in our own suffering. Rather than view our present crisis as something to be gotten through, we need to see the Coronavirus as something God is using to prepare His church for Jesus. Cross first, then glory. Spiritual life with Jesus now, glory at Jesus’ return.

When we meet Jesus in the Scriptures and receive the promised help of the Spirit we have our eyes opened in this way. We recognize Jesus in all His past suffering and present glory. And, in our present situation, we see—along with Jesus’ companions in Luke 24— that resurrection life restores our purpose and place in Jesus. 

How’s that for some encouragement as you shelter in place a little while longer?

Now, have a great week in the Lord, and we’ll “be seen by you” tomorrow.