Intervention? Or loving care?

For the pantheist, God and the world are basically the same thing: the world is, if you like, God’s self-expression. For the Deist, the world may indeed have been made by God (or the gods), but there is now no contact between divine and human. The Deist God wouldn’t dream of “intervening” within the created order; to do so would be untidy, a kind of category mistake. But for the ancient Israelite and the early Christian, the creation of the world Was the free outpouring of God’s powerful love.The one true God made a world that was other than himself, because that is what love delights to do. And, having made such a world, he has remained in a close, dynamic, and intimate relationship with it, without in any way being contained within it or having it contained within himself.To speak of God’s action in the world, of heaven’s action (if you like) on earth—and Christians speak of this every time they say the Lord’s Prayer—is to speak not of an awkward metaphysical blun-der, nor of a “miracle” in the sense of a random invasion of earth by alien (“supernatural”?) forces, but to speak of the loving Creator acting within the creation which has never lacked the signs of his presence. It is to speak, in fact, of such actions as might be expected to leave echoes. Echoes of a voice.—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 65–66

Death is gain

1082 C. M.
Death gain to the faithful.

WHY should our tears in sorrow flow
   When God recalls his own,
   And bids them leave a world of wo,
   For an immortal crown?

2 Is not e’en death a gain to those
   Whose life to God was given?
   Gladly to earth their eyes they close,
   To open them in heaven.

3 Their toils are past, their work is done,
   And they are fully blest;
   They fought the fight, the vict’ry won,
   And enter’d into rest.

4 Then let our sorrows cease to flow;
   God has recall’d his own;
   But let our hearts, in ever wo,
   Still say,—Thy will be done.
                         Conder’s Collection
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
According to Hymnary.org, the author is William Hiley Bathurst, with whom I am not familiar.

According to Hymnary.org again, Conder's Collection is named from a Josiah Conder.
</idle musing>

Made for each other, but…

We are made for each other. Yet making relationships work, let alone making them flourish, is often remarkably difficult. That is the same paradox that we uncovered in the previous two chapters. We all know that justice matters, yet it slips through our fingers. We mostly know that there is such a thing as spirituality, and that it’s important, yet it’s hard to refute the charge that it’s all wishful thinking. In the same way, we all know that we belong in communities, that we were made to be social creatures. Yet there are many times when we are tempted to slam the door and stomp off into the night by ourselves, simultaneously making the statement that we don’t belong anymore and that we want someone to take pity on us, to come to the rescue and comfort us. We all know we belong in relationships, but we can’t quite work out how to get them right.The voice we hear echoing in our heads and our hearts keeps reminding us of both parts of this paradox, and it’s worth pondering why.—N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 30

What timorous worms we mortals are!

1070 L. M.
Christ’s presence makes death easy.

WHY should we start, and fear to die?
   What tim’rous worms we mortals are!
   Death is the gate to endless joy,
   And yet we dread to enter there.

2 The pains, the groans, the dying strife,
   Fright our approaching souls away;
   And we shrink back again to life,
   Fond of our prison and our clay.

3 O would my Lord his servant meet,
   My soul would stretch her wings in haste,
   Fly fearless through death’s iron gate,
   Nor feel the terrors as she pass’d;

4 Jesus can make a dying bed
   Feel soft as downy pillows are,
   While on his breast I lean my head,
   And breathe my life out sweetly there.
                         Isaac Watts
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Amos on Worship

M. Daniel Carroll R. has an article on Amos and worship at Christianity Today. You definitely should read it! (HT: Jim Eisenbraun)

To whet your appetite, here's a couple of snippets (but, really, you should read the whole thing!):

Amos leaves no doubt that separating worship and social justice is distasteful to God. Other passages in this prophetic book confirm that truth and reveal the more central issue.

Ironically, in chapter 4, the people are told to go to those same sanctuaries, Bethel and Gilgal … but to sin (4:4)! The prophet mocks their piety, their rituals of thanksgiving and celebration.

Then comes the dagger: “for this is what you love to do” (4:5). Their worship activity ultimately was only about them. They felt good about what they were doing, praising the goodness of the Lord. They did not realize that, in God’s eyes, their worship was sin.

and

Theirs also was a faith compromised by national ideology. The people were convinced that God was on their side and would bring Israel victory against its enemies (5:18–20).

What a foolish miscalculation. The Day of the Lord, the prophet says, would not be the light of triumph; it would be the darkness of judgment from which they could not run or hide.

and

The Lord will not tolerate the worship of a false Yahweh, worship that ignores injustice and sociopolitical compromise and shouts praises in the midst of so much suffering. Worship, social concerns, and political realities are inescapably woven together.

More importantly, what is at stake in worship is the very person of God. The Lord is involved in every dimension of human existence, and the picture of God presented in worship must reflect this. It must present God as he truly is. Worship must bring prayer, confession, lament, and praise to this God and shape a people to reflect this God.

and

The God of Amos (our God) does not accept worship that fails to engage the challenging realities of life and the sins of society. We need to grasp that the demand for justice is central to the very person of God. The God of mercy and righteousness is the one we worship!

Really, you need to read the whole thing!

A central element of faith

It is important to see, and to say, that those who follow Jesus are committed, as he taught us to pray, to God’s will being done “on earth as it is in heaven.” And that means that God’s passion for justice must become ours, too. When Christians use their belief in Jesus as a way of escaping from that demand and challenge, they are abandoning a central element in their own faith. That way danger lies.N. T. Wright, Simply Christian: Why Christianity Makes Sense, 13

memento mori

1069 C. M.
A voice from the grave.

HARK! from the tombs a doleful sound,
   My ears, attend the cry :—
   Ye living men, come view the ground
   Where you must shortly lie.

2 Princes, this clay must be your bed,
   In spite of all your towers;
   The tall, the wise, the reverend head,
   Shall lie as low as ours.

3 Great God! is this our certain doom,
   And are we still secure?
   Still walking downward to the tomb,
   And yet prepared no more?

4 Grant us the power of quick’ning grace,
   To fit our souls to fly ;
   Then, when we drop this dying flesh,
   We’ll rise above the sky.
                         Isaac Watts
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

New book!

I get to edit a lot of really interesting books, but rarely do I request a copy for my personal library. I think over the last ten years, I've requested less than a dozen, probably less than ten. So, you know I'm impressed by a book when I want a copy for my personal library.

Yesterday, a year after I finished editing it, I received my copy of Israel's Scriptures in Early Christian Writings: The Use of the Old Testament in the New, edited by Matthias Henze and David Lincicum. This book is about a thousand pages of fantastic essays. I can't recommend it highly enough—and it's a handsome volume, too.

As my seminary theology professor used to say, "You owe it to yourself to read this."

It hinges on the resurrection

But further: since Paul first expressed it, the Christian Church knows that everything depends on belief in the Resurrection. “If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” A Jesus who had not risen, who had remained in the grave, could not be the Christ. The Resurrection is the necessary vindication of His Messiahship. It is true that the disciples believed in Him as Messiah before His Resurrection; this comes out very clearly in Peter’s Confession at Caesarea Philippi. But this faith did not survive the terrible shock of Calvary. Without the fact of Easter the world would scarcely have heard either of a Church, or of Jesus Himself. It was the encounter with the Risen Lord which rescued the disciples from their perplexity and hopelessness, restored their broken faith, and more than this, filled them with jubilant certainty of victory, which was, and remained, the vital element in the Primitive Church, and gave the first Christians the power to be in the full difficult sense of the word “martyrs” for the truth of Christ.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 366

<idle musing>
Indeed. Well, that's the final excerpt from vol. 2. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. I'm definitely going to read his third volume, but not right away. Hopefully I'll get around to it in the next year. Meanwhile, the next book in N. T. Wright, Simply Christian, his version of an apologetic for Christianity. After that, I'm not sure yet…
</idle musing>

Tozer for Tuesday

So count on it [trials/troubles]. When something like this is mentioned, some people worry that it will discourage young people from becoming a Christian. If you tell them that if they become Christian and the world will be against them, you will discourage them. Truth never stopped God’s work, and to tell the truth, never prevented anybody from being a Christian. It is a terrible deception presenting only a half-Christianity to a young person; and then when the pressure comes and the spitballs begin to fly in his direction, he loses heart and quits, and we call him a backslider. No, he is not a backslider; he is someone that never knew what he had hold of or what had hold of him. Tell them the truth from the beginning.—A.W. Tozer, Living as a Christian, 135

Oh God, our help in ages past

1059 C. M.
Man frail — God eternal.

O GOD, our help in ages past,
   Our hope for years to come,
   Our shelter from the stormy blast,
   And our eternal home:—

2 Under the shadow of thy throne
   Still may we dwell secure;
   Sufficient is thine arm alone,
   And our defence is sure.

3 Before the hills in order stood,
   Or earth received her frame,
   From everlasting thou art God,
   To endless years the same.

4 A thousand ages, in thy sight,
   Are like an evening gone;
   Short as the watch that ends the night,
   Before the rising sun.

5 Time, like an ever-rolling stream,
   Bears all its sons away;
   They fly, forgotten, as a dream
   Dies at the opening day.

6 The busy tribes of flesh and blood,
   With all their cares and fears,
   Are carried downward by the flood,
   And lost in foll’wing years.

7 O God, our help in ages past,
   Our hope for years to come;
   Be thou our guide while life shall last,
   And our perpetual home!
                         Isaac Watts
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
This one's a good bit more optimistic than the last one, isn't it? They say that Watts was subject to bouts of depression. I would say he wrote the last one during a bought of depression and this one on one of his better days.
</idle musing>

The doctrine of the two natures

With the doctrine that Jesus is the God-Man, theological thought returns from the sphere “beyond history” to the Historical. We only spoke of the Eternal Son, the Logos, and of the Incarnation, because Jesus is the historical man, the God-Man. We only see Him as a figure in history aright when we see Him as the God-Man, when we see Him as the One who is the Eternal Son become Man, true God, of one substance with the Father. But also we only see him aright as He really is when, while insisting that He is “True God”, we do not forget the other point—which, indeed, from the historical point of view comes first—that at the same time He is “True Man". This is what the doctrine of the Two Natures is trying to express, and which was expressed, in lapidary simplicity, for the first time, by the Confessio Augustana: “Vere Deus, vere homo.”—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 355

We're traveling to the grave

1055 C. M.
Frailty of life.

THEE we adore, eternal Name!
   And humbly own to thee
   How feeble is our mortal frame-
   What dying worms are we!

2 Our wasting lives grow shorter still,
   As days and months increase;
   And every beating pulse we tell,
   Leaves but the number less.

3 The year rolls round, and steals away
   The breath that first it gave:
   Whate’er we do, where’er we be,
   We ’re travelling to the grave.

4 Dangers stand thick through all the ground,
   To push us to the tomb;
   And fierce diseases wait around,
   To hurry mortals home.

5 Infinite joy, or endless wo,
   Attends on every breath;
   And yet how unconcern’d we go,
   Upon the brink of death!

6 Waken, O Lord, our drowsy sense
   To walk this dang’rous road;
   And if our souls are hurried hence,
   May they be found with God!
                         Isaac Watts
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
Gotta love the realism of his outlook: "Whate’er we do, where’er we be, / We ’re travelling to the grave" and "fierce diseases wait around, / To hurry mortals home." Whatever else, Watts was a realist.
</idle musing>

The bridegroom cometh!

1050 3d P. M. 4 6s & 2 8s.
The Bridegroom cometh.

YE virgin souls, arise;
   With all the dead, awake;
   Unto salvation wise,
   Oil in your vessels take:
   Upstarting at the midnight cry—
   Behold the heavenly Bridegroom nigh!

2 He comes, he comes, to call
   The nations to his bar,
   And take to glory all
   Who meet for glory are:
   Made ready for your full reward;
   Go forth with joy to meet your Lord.

3 Go, meet him in the sky,
   Your everlasting Friend;
   Your Head to glorify,
   With all his saints ascend:
   Ye pure in heart, obtain the grace
   To see, without a veil, his face.

4 The everlasting doors
   Shall soon the saints receive,
   With seraphs, thrones, and powers,
   In glorious joy to live;
   Far from a world of grief and sin,
   With God eternally shut in.

5 Then let us wait to hear
   The trumpet’s welcome sound:
   To see our Lord appear,
   May we be watching found:
   And when thou dost the heavens bow,
   Be found—as, Lord, thou find’st us now.
                         Charles Wesley
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

Another Vigil hymn

1048 1st P. M. 6 lines 8s.
A living sacrifice unto the Lord.

WISDOM ascribe, and might, and praise,
   To God, who lengthens out our days;
   Who spares us yet another year,
   And makes us see his goodness here:
   O may we all the time redeem,
   And henceforth live and die to him!

2 How often, when his arm was bared.
   Hath he our sinful Israel spared;
   Let me alone,—his mercy cried,
   And turn’d the vengeful bolt aside;
   Indulged another kind reprieve,
   And strangely suffer’d us to live.

3 Merciful God, how shall we raise
   Our hearts to pay thee all thy praise?
   Our hearts shall beat for thee alone;
   Our lives shall make thy goodness known;
   Our souls and bodies shall be thine,
   A living sacrifice divine.
                         Charles Wesley
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
I'm in the midst of editing a commentary on 1 & 2 Chronicles right now, so the second verse immediately called to mind the scene at the end of 1 Chronicles where the angel of the Lord has his sword suspended over Jerusalem, about to strike, when the Lord "Indulged another kind reprieve," "And turn'd the vengeful bolt aside."
</idle musing>

The mystery of the incarnation

None of them says anything about “how” the Incarnation took place: they simply witness to the fact of the Incarnation.

This might serve as a hint to the theologian not to want to know too much about “how” these things can be, and to abandon all subtle considerations and distinctions. It will be sufficient for us to say that the order of knowledge—that in the historical Revealer, we know the Eternal Son of God—corresponds to an order of being, which goes in the opposite direction: that the Eternal Son became man, that He who is from everlasting entered into human history, that it is precisely this entrance into history which constitutes the basis of His threefold work. All that goes further than this is useless speculation.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 351–52

A vigil hymn

1047 1st P. M. 6 lines 8s.
A solemn vigil.

HOW many pass the guilty night
   In revelling and frantic mirth!
   The creature is their sole delight—
   Their happiness the things of earth:
   For us suffice the season past:
   We choose the better part at last.

2 We will not close our wakeful eyes,
   We will not let our eyelids sleep,
   But humbly lift them to the skies,
   And all a solemn vigil keep;
   So many nights on sin bestow’d,
   Can we not watch one hour for God?

3 We can, O Jesus, for thy sake,
   Devote our every hour to thee;
   Speak but the word, our souls shall wake,
   And sing with cheerful melody:
   Thy praise shall our glad tongues employ,
   And every heart shall dance for joy.

4 Blest object of our faith and love,
   We listen for thy welcome voice;
   Our persons and our works approve,
   And bid us in thy strength rejoice;
   Now let us hear the mighty cry,
   And shout to find the Bridegroom nigh.

5 Shout in the midst of us, O King
   Of saints, and let our joys abound;
   Let us rejoice, give thanks, and sing,
   And triumph in redemption found:
   We ask in faith for every soul;
   O let our glorious joy be full!

6 O may we all triumphant rise;
   With joy upon our heads return;
   And far above these nether skies,
   By thee on eagles’ wings upborne,
   Through all you radiant circles move,
   And gain the highest heaven of love.
                         Charles Wesley
                         Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
There used to be a tradition in the Methodist/Wesleyan movement to hold a midnight vigil on New Year's Eve. I know some churches still do it. I've attended some of them over the years. This is one of the hymns that was written for a vigil service.
</idle musing>

Immanuel!

No prophet ever said that he had “come”; he says that the Word of God has “come” to him; by this he means the divine transcendence, which is from “above”, the sphere which lies beyond all human possibilities, the divine world, God Himself. The fact that “God comes” is one of the fundamental facts of the Biblical revelation. This revelation deals always and everywhere with God’s coming to man, and is in harmony with the idea of the “coming” Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God, the Rule of God, is not at first “present”, because men are living in separation from God, in sin. The coming of the Kingdom of God is the coming of the self-revelation and sovereignty of God, and of the redemption of man. Therefore the Promise proclaimed by the Prophets culminates in the announcement of the Messiah, in whom alone God’s saving presence culminates as the dwelling of God with His people: “I will be your God and you shall be My people”— “I am with you”, “Emmanuel”.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 350–51

A mariner's prayer

1044 S. M.
Praise for protecting mercy.

WHEN o’er the deep we rode,
   By winds and storms assail’d;
   We call’d upon the ocean’s God,
   Whose mercy never fail’d.

2 The tempest heard his voice,
   The winds obey’d his will;
   The elements withheld their noise,
   And all the floods were still.

3 With joy we hail’d the shore,
   And safe the vessel moor’d;
   With grateful hearts, that happy hour,
   We praised the ocean’s Lord.

4 Thus, while o’er seas we roam,
   Thy goodness, Lord, we see;
   Though distant from our native home,—
   We are not far from thee.

5 And when this life is past,
   And we are call’d to die,
   O may we see thy face at last
   In realms beyond the sky.

6 Then, as we join the bands
   Beyond the swelling wave,
   We’ll praise thee with uplifted hands
   And sing thy power to save.
                         Anonymous
                        Methodist Episcopal hymnal (1870 edition)

<idle musing>
Interestingly, this hymnal has a whole section of hymns for sailors. I'd never seen anything like that before…
</idle musing>

A true Christology

If Jesus be really Reconciler and Lord, then He is God. Faith knows that this is what He is. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself.” And this divine existence, this truly revealing, truly reconciling, and truly ruling force, is not an impersonal Word, given by God, a power inspired by God, but it is the Person of Jesus Himself. This is the very heart of the truth of Jesus as the Christ, that in Him God really meets us, and that this meeting with God is itself based upon the personal being of Jesus, and is one with Him. Jesus is the One in whom God meets us personally—not impersonally.—Emil Brunner, The Christian Doctrine of Creation and Redemption, 348–49