Taking Up the Cross… by Putting Down the Chocolate?

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. – Mark 8:34-35

In surveying friends and family, and myself over the years, I tallied a list of things we tend to give up for lent.  It was mostly commodities and creature comforts:  chocolate, cigarettes, coke, coffee, cursing, chips, computers, credit cards. Sometimes we’ve tried to set regimented goals and disciplinary practices: fast on Friday, pray more often or through a book, go to church every Sunday, work out and get healthy.

I wonder what would happen if we dumped all our denied-things at the feet of Jesus. What would he say about how we’re trying to please Him.   Because I’m fairly certain delivering 40 days worth of extra soda, 40 hours not wasted on Facebook, to His feet and saying I did it for you, Jesus wouldn’t get the response I’m hoping for.  Would he respond like the Jesus Mark records right after this?

Mark 8:37: “What can they give in return for their life?”

Would I feel comfortable handing Jesus a chocolate bar as a thank you, as my attempt at reciprocity for the cross?  Sorry for letting you die, but here’s the Klondike bar you really wanted from me?  Could I face Jesus like that?  It’s offensive, and I don’t think I’m comfortable realizing how offensive it is.

These verses are so overwhelming, I want to feel good that at least I’m doing something. At least, I tell myself, I am trying. When the offensive image, of me offering Jesus some junk food as a thank you for giving up His life, is staring me in the face, I get honest. Really, I’m not doing these for Jesus, I would never be so offensive towards Jesus, I’m giving these things up to practice discipline, to get healthy, to find a better life balance.  I’m doing these things for me.

I’m not really sure that makes it better. On the one hand, I’m not being flippant towards Jesus. I’m just taking his good moral example of giving up whatever he may have wanted so that he could take on my burden by also giving something up, for a while anyway.  It makes me a better person, doesn’t it?

Clearly I haven’t figured out what Jesus meant by “deny yourself.”  I don’t have enough stuff to give Him to make the trade equal.  I could give him my life, but quite honestly, I like my life, and I’ve got a healthy fear of ending up in a bad situation if I’m not in charge.  Christian History points to a lot of people who have lost their jobs, their financial security, their lives. I have student loans to pay back. I have a degree to finish. And honestly, my life is not the same as His, I’m a lot messier. I couldn’t save myself, much less all of humanity.

I am fully dependent on grace to save me.  I can’t make enough sacrifices. Saying that, Jesus had a lot to say about how to live.  The relief in that grace can’t be understated. Only from that starting point can I approach “denying myself” with new eyes. I am free from trying to make the past okay. I can start anew.

Denying myself means what Jesus did: not making my life all about me. Paul makes the sentiment clearer than I ever could in Galatians 5:13-14:

13For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. 14For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

It’s a start.

The Kingdom of God and Institutitions

The post yesterday, about the Kingdom of God, ended on a note that mentioned that I don’t believe the Kingdom of God is found in the Institutional church. This, (heavily influenced by Moltmann) is kind of a continuation of that thought, and the converse: that being members of the Kingdom doesn’t mean we ignore institutions.

This does not mean we are not to engage with institutions at all.   Jesus practiced civil disobedience towards the Sabbath laws of the time, gathering grain and healing as he followed the Will of his Father.  Jesus acted against institutional power when he ran the money changers out of the temple. A whole economy operated out of the temple, which could be thought of as a “modest shopping mall.” (Kraybill, The Upside Down Kingdom, p. 57)  The temple was the center of commerce, religion and government.  Jerusalem was New York, Rome and Washington D.C. at one place for the Israelites.  But the people exchanged money and sold the necessary sacrifices at airport-level prices, making a profit off of God.  When Jesus chased them out, he shut down the temple, the economy of Jerusalem for a moment. This was the equivalent of throwing everyone on wall street out for the day.

Said another way, we see that Jesus called us to live together in community, the function of us as gathered people provides its own power and leverage in any system. God did not call us to live alone as believers, knowing that every belief has social implications. Anyone living in a family knows that a job loss does not simply affect the breadwinner, but the entire family.  Rarely do personal consequences apply only to one person.

So again, how do we “go out”?  How do we stop responding to the world, not claiming the responsibility of stewardship as God gave us? We will never fix these evils forever.  We have a lot to lose and little to gain or make right for God.  Our best intentions may even go wrong and cause harm, as we have seen come out of early missions and the destruction of culture, or when we offer food-aid to countries that makes it unprofitable for people to grow their own grain. We can start with the Lord’s prayer.  We can start with scripture.  Scripture tells us to take care of the earth.  Scripture tells us to love our neighbors. Scripture tells us to feed the hungry.  Scripture tells us to forgive the people who owe us money. Consider forgiving money you lent a recognition that it was never yours in the first place, simply God’s to take care of. Everything God has given you is a tool to use for his Kingdom. Job understood this. If God removes those tools, whether it be house or car or health or life itself on this world, we still praise him as Lord.

Everything has been a gift. Praise God.

Musings on my ideas about the Kingdom of God

I’m not sure where this is going, if anywhere at all, but it’s a little something that I’ve been working out with God over the past semester thanks to Dr. Roger Olson’s Kingdom of God class. These are just… unfinished journal thoughts that have ended up in the “possible sermon idea” binder, or the “possibly need to learn to read scripture better and get a better theology” binder, so take them for that. Thank y’all for listening as always.

The Beginning is Near: The Kingdom of God

Like our salvation, the Kingdom of God will not be dependent on our efforts. We cannot save ourselves, and nothing we do will affect the timing of God’s return.  But also like our salvation, we must respond to it.   Paul writes to the Philippians, “Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.” (Philippians 2:12-13) God has a use for us in this world.  We are not to focus inwardly or upwardly towards “the mansion in the sky” at the expense of our neighbor.

Where does this allow us to rest?  Jesus tells us, “For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ( Matthew 11:30) Consistently working “to be perfect”, knowing the result is outside of your control sounds far more demoralizing than it does peaceful.   The trick is in knowing that we delude ourselves when we pretend that our will is what is done. “Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?” Jesus asks. (Matthew 6:27) The ends, how things work out, is always out of our control.  But when we stop worrying, when we stop fighting the Will of God and prayerfully petition God in a model consistent with Philippians 4:6, we find none of it matters.  God has found us, God is our Father, we do not adopt him.  Augustine writes in City of God that we are regenerated as Children of God.(book 15) God cares more about spending the next steps of the journey with you than he needs you to do anything. We get to constantly start anew each day, each hour and each moment with God.

This world is not our world, it is still Gods.  Jesus is not our hotel housekeeper, and we cannot treat the world like a hotel room we can trash and leave, knowing it will be clean for the next inhabitants.  Scripture tells us to be careful stewards of what God entrusts us with. This involves the earth, as it suffered in the fall. The Kingdom means we are servants in God’s palace  “here on Earth”.

While the members of this church may all be God’s servants, that does not mean God’s palace is the institutional church.  No human institution is the Kingdom, whether it be congregation, government or business. We have already established that we cannot build the Kingdom or “force God’s hand” in bringing the Kingdom about.  Being careful stewards though, does not mean controlling other people.  Just as Jesus resisted becoming the political messiah many expected him to be, so must we.  As God gives us the choice to follow His Will, we must give that dignity to others.  He has decided it is His Will not to force every knee to bow in this world.

A 17th century introduction to Baptist Ecclesiology (hint: Baptism was important)

This is another excerpt from my paper, THE DEVELOPMENT OF BAPTISM BY BAPTISTS IN SEVENTEENTH CENTURY ENGLAND, for my Texts and Traditions 2 class at Truett Seminary this semester. The first one, what Baptism means for the church today can be found here.
This is more of the history about what Baptism meant.

AN OVERVIEW

The Baptist identity that developed out of the English Congregationalist Churches during the Puritan and Separatist movements against the Church of England in the 16th and 17th centuries.[1] For the Baptists of the 17th century, baptism was primarily a matter of ecclesiology.  Like the Puritan groups that saw the established church as corrupt and the separatist groups that saw the need to leave altogether, Baptists were concerned with creating a pure church. For them, believer’s baptism was the communal identifier that they belonged to the true church.

In 1609, John Smyth and Thomas Helwys were members of the first church covenant based on believer’s baptism.  Smyth believed that, “The Saynts as Kings rule the visible Church.”[2]   Smyth’s congregation and the early General Baptists “came to erect a new church by baptism” as the only valid basis for church covenant.[3]  This emphasis on the pure church and General Baptist closed membership extended so far that despite the similarities between different Baptists, those transferring membership had to be rebaptized, “Because You were baptized into the wrong Faith, and so into another Gospel.”[4]

The Particular Baptists, formed out of the Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey church during the 1630s also reasoned for a believer’s baptism.   While both John Dupper, 1630, and Sam Eaton, 1633, may have practiced believer’s baptism, the first definitive Particular Baptist Church evidence supports is of John Spilsbury’s congregation in 1638.  According to H. Leon McBeth, these Particular Baptists had different motives.  Being strict separationists already, they denied the validity of any sacraments administered by the Church of England. They all had to be baptized a first, legitimate time. [5]  The multiple exoduses that pushed the Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey church into the Particular Baptist identity included people such as Samuel Eaton, John Murton, and Mark Luker.   The Kiffin manuscript of church minutes, named after later Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey pastor William Kiffin, in 1640 described the moment the Jacob-Lathrop-Jessey Church came to the conclusion of believer’s baptism and baptism by immersion at the same time. Baptism, they claimed in the document church minutes, “Ought to be by dipping ye Body into ye Water, resembling Burial & riseing again. 2 Col 2.12. Rom: 6.4.”[6]  Though Richard Blunt baptized the pastor, Henry Jessey, the church continued to be of mixed membership at times.

By 1660 the General Baptists had come to the same conclusion in the General Baptist Confession of London.   A 1651 General Baptist confession noted the form of baptism understood in scripture “was to go into the water, and be baptized.”[7]  The first clear affirmation of General Baptists using immersion was the Standard Confession of 1660.   For the 17th century, language concerning baptism as a sacrament or an ordinance was interchangeable for Baptists, and that creeds usually adopted one word out of consistency.[8]  It was in fact the General Baptists that used sacramental language to describe baptism and the Lord’s Supper.

 

[1] For the sake of space, I’m adopting Winthrop S. Hudson’s views on the origin of the Baptists. I could be entirely wrong, but this is also a practically useful decision because the modern Baptist church is more heavily influenced by Particular Baptists- also see David Bebbington, Baptists Through The Centuries : A History Of A Global People (Waco Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2010), 30–31.

[2] John Smyth, “The Differences of the Churches of the Seperation (1608),” in The Works of John Smyth (ed. William T Whitley; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1915), 1:273, 274; in Bebbington, Baptists through the centuries, 33.

[3] John Robinson, William Allen, and John Waddington, The works of John Robinson: pastor of the pilgrim fathers (J. Snow, 1851), sec. 3:168; in Bebbington, Baptists through the centuries, 34.

[4] Luke Howard, A looking-glass for Baptists being a short narrative of their root and rice [i.e. rise] in Kent wherein the erronious spirit of Richard Hobbs (pastor of the Baptists in Dover, with some others ([London: s.n.], 1672), 5.

[5] This is not mentioned as a reason in Bebbington’s book, whether out of omission or disagreement I don’t know.

[6] Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage (Nashville: Broadman Press, 1987), 45.

[7] W.L. Lumpkin, Baptist Confessions of Faith (Judson Press, 1959), 182.

[8] Curtis Freeman, “‘To Feed Upon by Faith’: Nourishment from the Lord’s Table”, n.d., 200–206; Anthony Cross and Philip E. Thompson, eds., Baptist Sacramentalism (Carlisle  Cumbria ;;Waynesboro  Ga.: Paternoster Press, 2003); in Brian Brewer, “‘Signs of the Covenant’: The Development of Sacramental Thought in Baptist Circles,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 36, no. 5 (Winter 2010): 410.

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