Sunday, December 31, 2017

New Year's Day as a Holy Day


New Year’s as a Holy Day

            In writing this piece I want first of all to convey that I do not write this to be argumentative. We live in a diverse world, and our world within the Christian faith is full of diversity. I don’t imagine myself to be perfect, nor do I expect anyone else to be perfect. Christians like families live in houses they can call home. Our houses usually have flaws, but we are happy for everyone who has shelter over their head and a place to call home. I look at the Christian life in a similar way. I have Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, and Charismatic friends. I have found among such a variety of friends many people who love Christ whether we agree or not in all the details. I will not try to argue you out of your homes, but I hope to encourage each of you in some way to love and value Christ all the more.

            I have found what seems likely to be my earthly home within Anglicanism. You may have a different home but you might be able to understand why Anglicanism became my home. Before I became a Christian, the poetry of John Donne stunned me. He wrote a poem telling death not to be proud. He informed death that death itself would die. I thought, as I read Donne’s poem that he was likely crazy. I also quietly thought that maybe he knew something I didn’t know. I was fascinated by his poems on repentance, his meditation on the bell that tolls softly. I think Donne prepared the way for my feeling the growing need for a Savior, a mediator, a guide to bring me to God. Later after I became a Christian one of the first books to inspire passion in me as a Christ follower was J.I. Packer’s Knowing God. Later in a mid-life crisis, where I began to realize my Christian life was not human enough. I found a part of the answer in C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves. All these writers were Anglicans. I guess that is part of why the time came when I felt at home in the Anglican expression of the Christian faith. Wherever you have found your home in the faith, I imagine there is a story of how God drew you to that place. Whether our homes here on earth change in the future or not, we know our Redeemer lives and he is building a dwelling place that will be the home we have always been seeking.

            In my church, we follow the Church calendar that has been around from the times of the early Church. For some of you the calendar must seem like an innovation to be avoided. For others, you might wonder how Christians would live out the faith without the seasons you have known since you were young or became a Christian where the Christian calendar was a given. I hope for each of you how I see a connection between Christmas and New Year’s Day will make sense and be encouraging to you in keeping the faith.

            I don’t know many people who would be dogmatic concerning whether or not Jesus was born on December 25. We probably celebrate Christ’s birth in the end of December because He is considered by Christians as the Light of the World, and as early Christians moved from the Jewish religious calendar to a Christian one, the Jewish Festival of Lights (Chanukah) seemed the good time to celebrate Christ’s entrance into the world as the Light of the World. Since Christ was crucified during the Passover, His death and resurrection are recognized near the time of the Passover in the Christian calendar, and as the Holy Spirit was given to the Church on the Jewish day of Pentecost, that is when the Christian calendar celebrates that event.

            In the traditional Christian calendar, Christmas is a twelve day season and not just a one day celebration. That was how the medieval song “the twelve days of Christmas” came into being. If you follow the logic of the church calendar, New Year’s Day is celebrated on the eighth day of Christmas. The eighth day of a Jewish boy’s life is the day of a special event for him, even if he is not old enough to understand what it means. On the eighth day his mother presents him to the Priest or Rabbi for circumcision. The event joins together his being given his covenant name, such as Jesus because he would save his people from their sin; and he is circumcised, and he is officially made a member of God’s covenant that He made with the Patriarchs and Israel.

            Have you ever thought about the implications of Jesus being circumcised on the eighth day? God had made promises to patriarchs to establish his covenant with Israel. He had made promises to Abraham and his seed. He had made promises to Isaac and his seed, to Jacob and his seed, and to David and his seed. In Christian explanation of the promised seed, the promise that bound together all the promises to the patriarchs was that that each of them involved God’s promise to both the patriarch and his seed. St. Paul pointed out the singularity of the seed promised in the covenant. In a Christian understanding all the promises of God’s covenant involved the expected seed. The promise given to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and David waited for the coming of the seed for final fulfillment.

            The seed was also promised to at least two women. The promise was offered in relationship to Eve when the promise was given that the seed of the woman would have his heel bruised and the Serpent would have his head crushed. The promise seems to have been recited in substance as Mary agreed to bear the child to be conceived in her. So this promised seed was a promise made to both Patriarchs and Matriarchs.

            `Something special happened on the eighth day of Christ’s life. As Christ was circumcised he was officially named Jesus for he would save his people from their sin. In the purpose of God, Jesus became one with his people in the covenant God made with Israel. He was God become flesh. He was God taking his place among men to ratify the ancient covenant no man had been able to fulfill. But He was also man faithfully keeping the covenant for his fellow brothers and sisters in the covenant. St. Paul makes what seems at first to be a surprising statement. He says that since by man came death, so by man also came the resurrection. (I Corinthians 15:21) In Paul’s perspective it was essential that Jesus in his humanity would face death and overcome it as a human being. The Apostle Paul always upholds Christ’s Deity, but our salvation is also the crowning achievement of Christ’s humanity. He joined us in the weakness of our humanity, yet without sin, and being found in appearance as a man submitted himself faithfully to his humanity to the point of death. Then the beauty of what had taken place could be fulfilled. Death could not hold him for he was without sin. He had become the Lamb of God by virtue of his union with us and when death grasped him on the cross it could not hold him under its power. He rose from the dead as a member of the covenant acting for those believing in the covenant.

            There are two things about God’s plan for our redemption that never cease to amaze me.

            First when God created man in His image, it would seem likely that God was already committed to fill that image with His own presence, that our image after being broken might be redeemed and restored.

            Secondly when God made his promise of His covenant with patriarchs and matriarchs, He was seemingly committed to Jesus becoming the one true seed who would be the one through whom all the promises of God would be ratified.

            On the eighth day of Jesus life, He was circumcised, named, and enrolled into the covenant that God had made with Patriarchs and Matriarchs. On this eighth day the old began to be fulfilled and the new began to be revealed. It was the basis for celebrating a very Happy New Year.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

Advent's Prepositions Part I


Advent’s Prepositions

Part One


Shutterstock photo

 

            The season of Advent focuses on the Christian’s relationship to the first and second of Christ’s coming to earth. We look back and remember how as men and women who had fallen under the power of sin we waited for a promised redeemer, who among other things would be the son of a woman, who would crush the Serpent’s head. During Advent we think back on how after the many promises of the Redeemer and Messiah, Jesus was born in Bethlehem with angels announcing his birth saying “Fear not … I bring you good tidings of great joy … For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ Jesus the Lord.” (St. Luke 2:10-11) Advent has a second focus as well. We continue to struggle with sin and the world remains deeply impacted by it. The Christian has been given reason to hope. Christ will complete the work He began in us. (Philippians 1:6). (St. John describes how when we see Jesus again we shall see him and be like Him and everyone who has this hope purifies himself as Jesus is pure. (I John 3:1-3)

            While thinking about how as Christians we are reminded that we are people waiting, it occurred to me that thinking about our waiting using different prepositions brought out different elements of what it means to wait. Hopefully these thoughts will encourage and strengthen you.

            1. We wait for Christ.

            When I think about waiting for Christ, my thinking often revolves around how we are bound to the times in which we live. We wait as people caught up in a time when the struggle with sin is real, is tiring, and takes its toll upon us. We struggle with relationships, our politics become contentious, our abilities to do what we would like to do seem so often to fall short, or if we succeed in accomplishing our goals we often have goals that one day we will look at and think, “is this what I thought was important?” We wait for Christ, for a time when the dysfunctionality of the world in which we live will have been completely cured. The Gospel of Jesus Christ gives to us such a hope. Have you ever thought about how Jesus often used the element of touch to heal the lepers, the blind, the deaf, and the lame in the miracles of the Gospel? In the Book of Revelation we are offered a glimpse of the great day when we once more see Christ with our eyes. We will stand before him weeping. I picture a scene where we one last time feel the horribleness of our sins. But then standing before us will be the Great High Priest, our Redeemer. He will wipe away our tears and the former things will be no more. Every absolution or forgiveness of sins will seem to have been pointing to this day when the work of redemption which Christ began in us will be perfected in us. That dear believer is a hope given to us as we wait for Christ.

            2. We wait on Christ.

            In addition to waiting for Christ, we are also called to serve Christ actively in the present time and place which we occupy in life. We wait on Christ and not only for Christ. When we come to understand who Christ is as well as what he has done for us, our respect and love for him should lead us to worship Him and to actively serve Him. In the New Testament the disciples referred to Jesus by titles of teacher, Rabbi, and Master. This doesn’t need to diminish Christ’s intimacy as He calls us friends and beloved. His kind mercies toward us further energize our determination to serve Him. Whatever our station, vocation, and place in life we have an opportunity to fill our time and space with service towards. We have the privilege of waiting on Him, and of being as his servant an extension of His redemptive presence in life. Whatever we do in word or deed, let it be our goal to do all in His Name. A statement I saw quoted from the Talmud in reference to our Biblical duties perhaps well sums up how we Christians are to wait on Jesus while we wait for him to one day complete what he has long ago begun.


            We wait for Christ. We wait on Christ. O’ what a privilege it is for us to participate in the work of redemption which He has begun and which He will complete.

            In our next blog on waiting, we will consider how we are to wait in Christ and with Christ and those who are in Christ.