Posts

Posted on

His Story–and Ours

The story takes place during the last week of Jesus’s earthly ministry, as he was on his way to the cross. There are versions of it in all the gospels; this one is from Mark 14:

While he was in Bethany, reclining at the table in the home of a man known as Simon the Leper, a woman came in with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, made of pure nard. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on his head.

Some of those present were saying indignantly to one another, “Why this waste of perfume? It could have been sold for more than a year’s wages and the money given to the poor.” And they rebuked her harshly.

“Leave her alone,” said Jesus. “Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, and you can help them any time you want. But you will not always have me. She did what she could. She poured perfume on my body beforehand to prepare for my burial. I tell you the truth: wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.”

Yeshua = God: Study of Mary of Bethany

In Luke, a “woman who was a sinner” approaches Jesus with the rare perfume; some scholars associate her with Mary Magdalene. John identifies her as Mary of Bethany, the sister of Lazarus, so that could be who Mark is talking about. But he doesn’t name her, and maybe that’s for a reason.

She could be any woman, smitten with the goodness and holiness and beauty of this man who is like no other man. She does what she can, bringing her most precious possession to pour out on him. We don’t know why. He says she’s preparing his body for burial, but she probably didn’t intend that . . .

Or did she? He’s been telling his 12 disciples what’s going to happen, and they don’t get it. They’ve been very dense about accepting it. Maybe the women, who are also disciples, have a little more perception?

Anyway, whatever its motivation, the act has its own merit. It’s about Jesus, but listen to what he says: It’s about her, too. Her broken jar is precious to him. What others see as wasteful, he sees as beautiful.

The woman has no name, but she has a story, and both her name and her story are known by him. Both her name and her story are united with his. He invited, she responded.

And so he invites all of us nameless women: “Join your story to my story.” It’s the only story that will stand the test of time—in fact, it’s timeless, because it will not end in death. It will be told eternally, because he will tell it.

If you believe him, he’s telling your story now. If you trust him, it’s going to be beautiful.

Don’t be afraid.

Posted on

Bread of Life

It’s really an astounding thing to say. “I am the bread of life” is the first of seven pivotal “I am” statements in the gospel of John, all of which identify the Son of Man with God himself. By this point in John’s gospel (chapter 6) the Jewish leaders clearly understand what Jesus is saying (John 5:18)—and of course, if any other man were saying it, he would be subject to execution under Jewish law.

“I am the bread of life” goes one step further: it disturbs not only Jesus’ enemies but also his friends.

The immediate context is feeding 5000 in the wilderness, an echo of what his Father did for the children of Israel during their 40 years of wandering. John’s gospel, incidentally, is the only account that includes that Sunday-school staple, the little boy with his little lunch of 5 loaves and 2 fish. (He must have had a most conscientious mother.)

Wouldn’t it be great if Jesus could establish Israel as the bread capital of the world?

After this amazing event, the great crowds who have taken to following Jesus intend to follow him right to the throne of a restored kingdom—they’ll even force him onto that throne, if necessary. He escapes into the hills, walks on water to the other side of the sea of Galilee, and meets some of his most persistent followers at Capernaum. They’re frustrated; can’t he see that they have big plans for him? “You are seeking me because I gave you what you wanted”—i.e, a big meal. No doubt they believe he can duplicate that sign at any time. Wouldn’t it be great if he could establish Israel as the bread capital of the world, and make the Imperial powers come crawling to them for favors?

He has another plan:

I am the living bread that comes down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Got that? Unlike manna coming down from heaven to sustain mortal life, he himself is the living bread that will sustain eternal life. And it gets weirder:

. . . unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.

“This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” That’s how many of his disciples respond, not his enemies. They find the teaching so hard they can’t stick around for more. The radical content might have driven us away, too—it’s lost the original shock for those of us who are accustomed to nibbling matzo crackers and sipping grape juice during communion services.

In the pagan culture that surrounded Israel, the gods were not accustomed to being devoured—it was usually the other way around. Literally, in earlier times, when petitioners fed their children to Moloch and Baal. In the more sophisticated Greek and Roman culture child sacrifice didn’t happen, unless it was on the outskirts of the empire. But gods demanded and devoured lesser offerings.

Israel’s God demanded offerings not to consume, but to propitiate: “Without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins.” It’s such a dramatic contrast even some of the Jews missed it and imagined that Yahweh was somehow satisfied with the meat. Even though he laughed away the thought: “If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and everything in it is mine. Do I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?” (Psalm 50:12-13)

Rather than devour us with his demands, he gives himself for us to devour

Being satisfied in himself, he is never hungry. But since his people, and all people everywhere, are born hungry, he’s a giver. Summer and winter, springtime and harvest, he gives and gives.

And once on earth, he continues to give, multiplying loaves and fishes, reversing maladies, eventually offering up his own body and blood. Rather than devour us with his demands, he gives himself for us to devour: true food, and true drink.

True, because there is no other source. “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of everlasting life.” And not just the words, but the very body.

Posted on

Fear vs. Fear

Fear is a verb and a noun, and in both forms it’s usually negative. Fear can be useful when it prevents us from stupid actions, but even then it doesn’t feel good, or build character, or add value. It just keeps us alive to fear another day.

Fear (the noun) is the default response to trying something new (They’re gonna laugh at me), or standing up against injustice (They’re gonna turn on me) or just crossing the yard to meet the neighbors (They’re not gonna like me). In more extreme cases,  it can prod us into battle or cliff diving if we fear the scorn of our buddies even more than the risk to our persons.

Fear guards our fragile self-image like a sentry marching back and forth with a shouldered rifle, starting at every sound. The treasure it’s protecting is Me—precious little Me, with the persona I’ve pieced together over the years that can be so casually ripped open by one mean word.

That kind of fear I can do without.

This kind of fear draws us toward, not away.

There’s another kind of fear. It guards nothing. It’s deliberate and cultivated. It breaks down gates and strides through the world arm-in-arm with a self-image no longer fragile, because it fears (verb) the one thing worth fearing.

The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Pr. 1:7), deliverance (Ps. 34:4), blessing (Ps. 115:19), fulfillment (Ps. 145:19), honor (Pro. 22:4), provision (Ps. 111:5) goodness (Ps. 31:19)—and much, much more. We have the Lord’s own word on that. Then why is it so hard to fear the Lord?

It might have been easier for earlier generations raised on hellfire sermons, but even that was often the wrong kind of fear (if it didn’t progress to the right kind): trembling, shame-filled, run-and-hide fear like Adam who called out form the bush: “We heard you coming, and we were afraid.” The paired image of God used to run to him. Now they run away, as humans have done ever since.

Godly fear causes us to run toward him once again. It’s an emotion literally out of this world, though C. S. Lewis found something like it in a scene from Wind and the Willows, where Mole and Rat encounter the demigod Pan. [Mole]  found breath to whisper, shaking, ‘Are you afraid?’  ‘Afraid?’ murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.  ‘Afraid? Of Him? O, never, never.  And yet – and yet – O Mole, I am afraid.’”

“Unutterable love,” of something wholly outside ourselves yet wholly intimate, is fear like nothing else. It—that is, He—could kill us with a glance—but he won’t. He could unmake us with a word, but his desire is to remake us. Everything that ever made a human heart sing, be it a literal song or a magnificent landscape or the road-hugging sweep of a perfectly-tuned racecar, leads back to him who made the human heart. Whatever pulls us out of ourselves, even for a moment, is meant to find fulfillment in him.  

If you fear God rightly, the saying goes, you need fear nothing else. “Fear not,” or the equivalent, is said to occur in the Bible 365 times—one for every day of the year. If I’ve lost myself in him, I don’t need a sentry. Little Me has found perfect protection.

But if I don’t fear him rightly, or at all, well: It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God (Heb. 10:31). In the end it comes down to two choices: Shelter in his love, or face his wrath.

Posted on

Naaman the Syrian

This is such a well-worn Sunday-school staple we easily overlook its relevance for grownups. And that may be the point: a little girl suggests a solution, a great man’s diseased skin becomes as clear as a child’s. Unless we become as little children we can’t be cleaned. We can’t come into the kingdom whose gates the Syrian captain almost passed by.

To begin with, it’s a little gem of storytelling: like Ruth, an almost ahistorical tale set between historical records of faithless kings and ruthless usurpers. It has the outlines of a folk tale: neither of the kings of Israel or Syria are named, and Naaman is not mentioned elsewhere in the Old Testament. Gehazi, a nobody, emerges as a kind of trickster character who gets his comeuppance. None of this means that the story is untrue, but that (again, like Ruth) it has redemptive echoes fulfilled in the New Testament.

The setup is the “mighty man of valor,” a successful and respected commander who is nevertheless brought low by a shameful disease. A humble servant girl, captured in a raid against Israel, suggests Elisha the prophet, well known for his miraculous powers. It’s worth a try, and Naaman’s king, who values him greatly, loads him up with gifts for the prophet and the prophet’s sovereign. In their world, you pay for what you get: the greater the goods, the greater the recompense.

A bit of comic relief when the king of Israel, Naaman’s first stop, misunderstands the request. “Am I God? I can’t cure this man—it’s a trap!” Elisha, hearing of this melodramatic display, probably rolls his eyes before setting the King straight.

So Naaman, with all his pomp and pathetic skin, stands outside the prophet’s house expecting . . . what? A personal audience at least, given his station. And probably an elaborate healing ritual with chants and offerings and ceremonial smoke and mirrors, all of which might even work. Instead, he gets a curt message by Elisha’s servant Gehazi.

The medium and the message seem not only demeaning but carless, as if the prophet had just tossed out his first though. No wonder Naaman is insulted and upset. His fuming seems perfectly natural: I came all this way with all this gold, and this is my answer? I should have just stayed home and taken a bath.

His servants intervene. We might infer here that Naaman was a just man as well as a great commander, as his servants seem genuinely concerned for him. “My father” might have been a common form of address from servant to master, but it implies a warmth that “Sir” or “My Lord” do not. Anyway, they make an interesting argument.

Most translations put it this way: “If the prophet had told you to do something great, would you not have done it?” That is, “You were prepared for a grand task; would it hurt to perform a simple one?”

The ESV, alone of the major translations, reads like this: “It is a great word that the prophet has spoken to you; will you not do it? Has he actually said to you, ‘Wash and be clean’?”

I can’t say which translation is more correct, but I like the ESV’s because the focus is not on the procedure, but the reward. Not on what Naaman does, but what God will do. “Master Naaman, didn’t you hear what he promised you? ‘Wash and be clean’? That’s a great thing—just do it, already!”

So he does. He “goes down,” or humbles himself to wade into the dirty water, dips himself to the number of completeness, and comes out as a little child—clean.

Now his gold is a gift of gratitude, not payment, but Elisha (meeting him face to face this time) won’t take it. Cleansing is free. Redemption is literally priceless. Gehazi doesn’t see that—all he sees is carnal opportunity. What he does seems harmless, and even clever; he’s just taking the opportunity to skim a little off the top. But his crime is similar to that of Simon Magus in Acts 8:29: seeking to turn God’s grace to his own advantage.

Elisha rebukes him: “Did not my heart go when the man turned from his chariot to meet you? Was it a time to accept money and garments?” There may be a time for remuneration, when a worker is worthy of his hire, but this isn’t it. Grace can’t be hired, because no one has the means to pay for it.

Except Jesus. He mentioned Naaman the Syrian (Luke 4:27) as an example of his Father’s sovereign grace: lavish, unexpected, and absolutely free. It’s a gift only he could purchase, only he could give. And it’s a great thing. Will you not unfold your stubborn arms, uncurl your clenched fist, and receive it?

Posted on

So, How Did It Go?

Not too bad!

That’s corn, pole beans, and corn on the left, sunflowers on the right, basil and melons in the foreground.

Big fails were tomatoes, 1/3 of which succumbed to blight (I’m never getting that variety again). The Romas and Lemon Boys did all right, and I was able to get about 14 pints’ worth of spaghetti sauce out of them, but they got pretty sad-looking by August. They’re beginning to green up again, but we’ll see if there’s enough season left for them to produce.

I got my strawberries too late (I’m never ordering from Burgess again); out of twenty plants, only three survived. They’re now spawning baby plants, so maybe I can get a row out of them for next season. All the blackberry plants died (same company–boo!). But the asparagus looks okay. Except for basil, the herbs were hit-and-miss: some parsley, chives, and cilantro, no dill or oregano. I was really looking forward to the fresh dill, too. All that stuff needs to be planted nearer the house, anyway.

Moderate success with the corn. The first row was probably planted too soon during a very rainy spring, and always looked puny. The second row went in three weeks later and did much better, though not many of the ears filled out well. Still, I got about 2 dozen substantial enough to eat, and good eating, too.

The pole beans (Blue Lake) came in with a rush: 4 lbs. in 3 days, amounting to 7 pints canned. There’s more okra than I do what to do with, which is usually the case, as I understand. But the big success: melons! I wasn’t too hopeful, as I’ve never had much success with them–never really tried, honestly. I set aside one raised bed for cantaloupe and stuck a few watermelon seeds in a vacant space. Somebody gave them to me, so why not?

The cantaloupe did great! I got at least two dozen, including this beauty:

Not all of them were uniformly sweet, but most were at least passable. It was a joy to watch them turn yellow and sunny and tumble happily off the vine.

And much to my surprise, six little watermelons made their appearance. I cut two of them too soon, while the flesh was still white–watermelons are notoriously coy about letting you know when they’re ready. But then, there was this little guy:

Sweet, crisp, delicious

Overall, the successes more than balanced out the failures. We got too much rain at the beginning, but mostly adequate rainfall thereafter. I only had to water for two weeks or so. Lots of work: my one hour in the morning often stretched to 90 minutes, and my back is still sore. Definitely put more money in than I got out, but that’s not the point. Nobody I know, besides farmers, plants a garden to save money on food. There are other rewards, which I tried to express in my spring post. My views still stand, but I’ve learned a few things:

What I’ve Learned:

  • Corn has to be fertilized throughout the season. I knew that, but it just got away from me.
  • Tomatoes need a lot of prep and careful watching. But they can be worth it.
  • Don’t mess with bush beans after June. The beetles always get ’em in July. Plant pole beans early in June and by the time the bushes are done the poles are getting their mojo.
  • I worried about critters (the furry kind, not the six-legged kind) getting into the melons and corn, but several websites recommended blood meal as a possible deterrent, and it seemed to work.
  • Another thing that probably worked: I got a free packet of “vine peach” seed and poked them into an open space. Because why not? Vine peach is a small lemon-colored melon, about the size of a mango, and they don’t taste like much. One of those okay-if-you-re-starving kind of plants. The vines took up lots of room and I was ready to pull them up when I read that some gardeners use them as a decoy plant to distract four-legged foragers from the melons you want to harvest. And so far, it seems to work! I’ve found several hollowed-out vine peaches while my cantaloupe and watermelon are left alone to do their own thing.
  • Plant the okra all at once, not staggered, and one row is plenty.
  • But I might try this next year: two rows of okra with bush beans in between. In mid-July, pull up the bush beans. In mid-August, plant lettuce where the beans were. The okra might provide enough shade for the lettuce to get a start, and when it gets too cool for okra, the lettuce will be happy to keep growing.
  • Try to keep ahead of the bugs, instead of cleaning up after them. I say that every year.

The work isn’t done. I need to tighten up the fence and bring in some topsoil to fill in the low spots and haul a scoop or two of horse manure to season over the winter and maybe turn the mulch over . . . but you notice the references to “next year”? Next year could be a total bust–you never know. Gardening is not something you can predict, but neither can you lay back and coast.

Posted on

Mighty Doorkeepers

The opening chapters of I Chronicles are not the most engaging text. Chronicles includes more genealogy than the famously tongue-stumbling chapters of Genesis 5 and 10. A lot more. Nine chapters’ worth. That doesn’t mean that the genealogies fall outside the “useful for teaching, correcting, and training in righteousness” purpose of the Scriptures, only that sometimes you have to look harder for the usefulness.

In my latest reading, here’s what I found. Speaking of the Levites, divided by their houses and clans, the Chronicler writes, “. . . besides their kinsmen, heads of their fathers’ houses, 1,760, mighty men for the work of the service of the house of God” (I Chron. 9:13).

Elsewhere in the historical records of Israel, “Mighty men” refers exclusively to warriors. This one killed 300 men, that one led a squad through the water tunnels to take Jerusalem, the other one killed a Cushite giant 12 feet tall. And here’s a great trivia question: “Who was the brother of Lahmi, whom Elhanan the Son of Jair struck down in the Philistine Wars of King David?” Answer: Goliath. (I Chron. 20:5. I won a Bible trivia game—against a very competitive pastor—with that one.)

But the mighty men of the tribe of Levi had one purpose, and that was to serve first the tabernacle, later the temple. What do almost 2000 men do every day to maintain the place, and hence the worship, of the Lord? Some guarded the gates on rotation. Some had charge of the utensils used for (we have to guess) butchering, carving, and sacrificing. Though the text doesn’t mention it, there must have been a lot of blood to clean up, and offal and waste to cart away, and bones to burn outside the camp. This could have been one of Mike Rowe’s dirtiest jobs in history. The thing about dirty jobs is, they are necessary. Someone has to do them, even in the holiest places.

As Chapter 9 ends, there’s this: “Others, of the sons of the priests, prepared the mixing of the spices, and Mattithiah, one of the Levites, the firstborn of Shallum the Korahite, was entrusted with making the flat cakes” (9:30-31). Every day, a new batch of bread to place before the Lord on the Table of Presence.

Who doesn’t want to be “mighty”? Whatever we’re good at, whatever our rank or position, we want to stand out. Here is an example of men who didn’t stand out, except in a little-read portion of scripture where the writer bothered to name them. They were gate-keepers, floor-scrubbers, tile-sweepers, brass-polishers, bread-bakers, trash-haulers. What distinguished them was where they did it: in the house of God.

And where is the house of God today? In us, and among us, and with us. Dirt-diggers, diaper-changers, floor-sweepers, meal-planners, wage-earners. We’re told that work matters, and it should matter especially to a Christian. We’re told to work heartily as unto the Lord, and whatever our hands find to do, do it with all our might. But we’re not often told that our names are being recorded in the ranks of the mighty.

It must be true, though; in the service of the Lord, every act is mighty.

Posted on

Come into the Garden

I’ve had an on-again-off-again relationship with gardening: on in April, off in August. I suspect this is common; everybody gets excited about a clean patch of black, soft soil, and ecstatic when the first bean plants poke their brave little necks into the sunlight. For the first few weeks I run out to see how much has sprouted, how much has blossomed, how much has—oh joy!—matured into edibility.

A Work in Progress – From Now until October

Each plant has its own personality. I don’t like peas that much, but plant them anyway because I love how they twine their little tendrils around the wires, like a baby instinctively closing a fist around a finger. And the way pole beans blindly seek something to climb on—you can see them feeling the air, reaching, joyfully wrapping (or collapsing if you don’t get around to putting up that fence. Cornstalks don’t need no support from you—they provide their own, thank you very much.

Then comes July.

The soft ground is baked to slate gray, leaves are drooping and changing color, and bugs are gleefully sharing the produce. Squash bugs don’t even share—they destroy. The first time I saw a full-size tomato worm I almost screamed. (The first hint of tomato worms is that the top branches of the plant are stripped. Color that was on the plant is now inside the worm, which why you can’t see them until—suddenly!—you can.)

Summertime is travel time, too, so the weeds took advantage of my absence to come out and play. By the time I get back, they’ve established themselves as master. It’s too much to keep up with! The garden seems to reflect my discouragement in every drying leaf and misshapen bean: we give up. Just put us out of our misery.

But I’m not giving up. This year will be different. Two main reasons, which I hope will provide the formula for a successful garden:

 p/p + m2 = S (i.e., success)

 P is for preparation divided by pickup. In all the years we’ve lived here, we haven’t owned a truck. Who needed a truck, with a trusty station wagon and a rusty trailer? The station wagon is long gone and the trailer is a pain to hook up and haul around. So this year, this pickup:

Not a beauty, but she runs!

Which makes hauling manure and compost a snap. (Unloading it is not so snappy, but getting it someplace to unload was the real challenge, now solved.)

M is for maintenance x maintenance. Once we’re all planted, one hour/day should keep the weeds down and the produce up. Maybe some extra watering at sundown, if needed. Bugs are a given, but if I ride herd on them maybe they won’t ride herd on me. No travel plans either, so no big gaps in the maintenance continuum.

Wishful thinking? Well, we’ll see.

If the main point was food for the table, no cost/benefit analysis would stand for it in these days of plenty. Gardening is about exercising dominion over creation, as humans were created to do. I suspect that’s why it strikes a chord in so many hearts—at least the hearts of those who don’t have to do it.  (Subsistence farmers may just as often have their hearts broken.) It’s a skill and an art and takes a bit of time and experience to learn. I hope I’ve put in enough time and experience by now because I don’t have much left of either.

This summer, I hope to walk into the garden in the cool of the morning, with a touch of the same wonder felt by the first gardeners.  Their experience went awry, giving us thorns and weeds and earning our bread by the sweat of our brow. But a new day was on the way:

On the third day the friends of Christ coming at daybreak to the place found the grave empty and the stone rolled away. In varying ways they realized the new wonder; but even they hardly realized that the world had died in the night. What they were looking at was the first day of a new creation, with a new heaven and a new earth; and in a semblance of the gardener God walked again in the garden, in the cool not of the evening but of the dawn.

G.K. Chesterton

Gardening is an act of faith. There’s always another dawn, another spring, another Easter—until there isn’t. When all those things cease, we’ve reached our goal and can happily lay down our trowels and rakes. Unless there’s gardening in heaven, too. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Posted on

The Meaning of Meanings

Infrastructure

/ ˈɪn frəˌstrʌk tʃər /

The Biden Infrastructure bill is getting a lot of criticism for what it isn’t—an infrastructure bill. That is, it’s only tangentially about infrastructure. Anywhere from 5-20% of the roughly $2 trillion goes to roads, bridges, and utilities—what we generally consider infrastructure. And not just us, but the dictionary too: “The basic facilities, services, and installations needed for the functioning of a community or society, such as transportation and communications systems.” Concrete, asphalt, steel, and wire, and the maintenance thereof—that’s what most people consider to be infrastructure. Or do they?

The Biden administration is thinking more creatively. I’m not going to argue on the virtues or venalities of the bill or why Congress should allocate $2 tril for it; I’m more interested in the terminology. To road-and-bridge maintenance, the administration adds

  • “Care infrastructure”: money for elder and child care
  • “Educational infrastructure”: money for building new schools
  • “Human infrastructure”: money for job-training and union organizing,
  • “Research infrastructure”: money for universities and think tanks (to come up with conclusions the government likes, says my cynical side)
  • “Environmental infrastructure”: money for incentivizing electric cars and phasing out gasoline engines

We can argue about each item on the list—and there are a lot of items—and whether government bureaucracy is the best way to facilitate them, but (being a language person), I’m most interested in the way the administration is finding so many applications of the world “infrastructure.” They’ve stretched it to embrace anything the administration wants to do, thereby making it practically meaningless. This shapeless blob of a word now covers broad consensus (roads and the power grid should be adequately maintained) as well as ideological fringes.

Such terminology is perilous, in that it

  1. Blurs distinctions and definitions. This is a feature, not a bug, of postmodernism, which pretty much denies objective meaning. As an academic theory po-mo only harms students; as a governing philosophy it harms everybody.
  2. Tends to make humans into a commodity: buying units to purchase desired products, workers to be trained, young minds to be conditioned, old people to be sidelined. American citizens become part of American “infrastructure.” And what does that mean?

“Infrastructure,” then, isn’t about asphalt and wire; it’s about forcing American society into a model favored by one end of the political spectrum. If everything is infrastructure, everything is subject to restructuring.

Posted on

Is He Worth It?

“Any one of you who does not renounce all he has cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:33

But wait—don’t we say the gift of grace is free? Why does he say here that it costs all we have? (And the parable of the Pearl of Great Price says the same thing allegorically.) But in the passage before that, he tells a story about a great feast that the invited guests refuse to attend, so the host throws open the doors and invites all the riffraff from the streets.

So it’s free, or it costs. Which one?

Both—it’s free. And it costs.

The Interstate highway system is (mostly) free, but there’s a cost to driving on it: auto maintenance, gas, taxes. Food banks are free but there’s a cost to stocking and maintaining them. Oxygen is free, but there’s a cost to breathing it, as every breath puts your body to work and the body eventually wears out.

Not perfect analogies, but there’s a cost to everything, and it’s not the same as the price. Sometimes the two can be wildly disparate, as when a one-dollar lottery ticket nets $50,000. Or when a $50 investment nets nothing. We can’t pay a price for grace because it is literally price-less. But the cost is steep: all you have.

I can’t pay. But I can “renounce.”

Not just my possessions (some of which I work hard for), but my assumptions, my pretentions, my affections, my time. And it’s not a once-and-done deal, either: cost is something that must be continually reassessed. From my side, not his. He has already priced in my weakness and wavering, but I can be poleaxed between desires. I have to keep asking, Is he worth this sacrifice? These funds? This time? This life?

In Daniel Nayeri’s memoir, Everything Sad Is Untrue, the author tells how his mother, a Sufi Muslim in the top ranks of Iranian society, converted to Christianity and, as a result, had to flee for her life with her two children in tow. When asked why she gave up so much for a religious belief, her reply was simple: “Because it’s true.” Almighty God had sent his own son to die so that she might live forever with him–why wouldn’t she sacrifice all she had for that?

Is he worth it? He is.

Posted on

And It Was . . . Done

According to all that the Lord had commanded Moses, so the people of Israel had done all the work. And Moses saw all the work, and behold, they had done it; as the Lord commanded, so they had done it. Ex. 39:42-43

Reading those words, do you hear an echo?

And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good . . .

And Moses saw . . .

From the beginning of Genesis to the end of Exodus encloses a lot of history—much more than any other Bible time-period. From prehistory all the way up to the birth of a nation, the LORD is building a grand plot. From the promised seed, through the flood, Father Abraham, the 12 patriarchs who grew into a multitude now gathered on a desert plain, the question is, Will they take Yahweh to be their lawfully wedded husband?

He covenants with them, he feeds and shepherds them, he instructs and promises to live with them. And then they fall into a terrible act of apostasy that should have ended it all. The people go back on their word just days after swearing to it. Even while Moses is on the mountain receiving instruction on how to consecrate Aaron as chief priest, Aaron is down on the plain hammering out a golden calf.

Doesn’t God know what’s going on, even while giving detailed instructions about how to build his dwelling place? Of course he does. But he waits, allowing the measure of sin to fill up on. And then he storms upon the scene, threatening to destroy his people. Moses intervenes for him, using every persuasive argument that comes to mind, until the Lord “changes his mind.” I won’t go with you/ I will go with you/ I will destroy them/ I won’t destroy them.

(This back-and-forth echoes a long-ago conversation with Abraham, who bargains with the Lord until he gets the acceptable number of righteous men needed to preserve Sodom down to ten. It’s not enough, of course; not even ten righteous men can be found in Sodom, and nephew Lot’s righteousness-status is rather iffy. But that doesn’t mean God is merely humoring Abraham in this conversation. He’s God; he knows the outcome. But he is also an active participant in the story, along with Abraham. The play is written, but that makes it no less compelling or real. God “changes his mind” according to what he’s already determined.)

Anyway. After this great trauma, with a people properly repentant and eager to make amends, the tabernacle work goes forward. Sixteen times in chapters 39 and 40 comes the phrase, “as the Lord commanded Moses.” As though there is to be no doubt that they’ve learned a lesson—for now—and “All that the Lord commands, we will do.” At the end, they’ve constructed a dwelling place that follows the blueprint to the letter.

But is it “good”? At the end of Creation, God saw all that he had made and pronounced it good. At the conclusion of tabernacle construction, Moses surveys the work and declares it “done.”

Is it good? No, but it’s done, according to God’s command. One more step toward redemption is accomplished. After the golden calf disaster and the recriminations and accusations and consequences dealt, God will still dwell with his people. Because he’s committed. What could have been the finale instead becomes a major plot point in the continuing drama.

But do you hear another echo?

It is finished.

It was good at the beginning. It was done as a temporary expedient, and kept on being “done” through a first temple, a second temple, and a third temple; through major dissolutions and reformations, countless animal sacrifices and rivers of blood.

Now it’s finished: the plot wraps up.

But it also continues, in present tense. We live in the dénouement, or “falling action,” of the great story that came to a climax when the main character walked out the grave . He had solved the unresolved tension between man and God—that is finished. The uneasy debt is paid.  But each generation experiences that “finishing” for itself as the drama plays out again over millions of individual lives. And he’s just as involved and active as he ever was, only through his Holy Spirit at work in every reborn soul.

For there’s no more back-and-forth, no more bargaining. For each one of us, it is finished: in present tense, until we reach the final page.