Sunday, April 25, 2010

Choppy Seas

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more." Revelation 21:1

So I have been thinking quite a bit on this verse, when pondering the continuity between the earth now and how it will be transformed in being made new. In Romans 1:21-22, we see that at Christ's second coming, all of creation will be set free from its bondage! Not destroyed, but set free from its bondage. Likewise, we see in Revelation 21:1 that the first earth will be transformed into the new earth. Evil and pain will be abolished from the earth we live on as it is transformed; made new.

So what about this statement regarding the sea? Thinking back on the stories of Jonah, God parting the sea for the Israelites, and creation, where God's new order emerged from the dark primal sea, we begin to understand what the sea represented for the Jewish people. "The sea came to symbolize...the dark power of evil, threatening to destroy God's good creation, God's people, God's purposes. In books like Daniel, the sea is where the monsters come from" (N. T. Wright, Mark for Everyone, p. 52). Consequently, just as we see Jesus' power of the agents of chaos in His calming of the storm (Mark 4:35-41), we see that God's visible defeat of chaos and evil will occur at the second coming of Christ. Balancing the idea of the "already and the not yet" we see that Christ has already defeated the forces of evil at the cross, but the final, visible nature of this defeat will be inaugurated in his second coming.

But the main reason I wrote what I have is as an introduction to the next passage. Psalm 107 is a community thanksgiving that accompanies the offering of sacrifices for the Israelites. The thanksgiving has many parts, but in verses 23-30, we find the people extolling the Lord from rescuing them from the dangers of the sea. These verses triumphantly proclaim the power of God over the raging sea, but with Scriptures such as those already outlined, they also attest to God's power over the forces of evil; the forces of chaos.

"Some went down to the sea in ships,
doing business on the great waters;
they saw the deeds of the LORD,
his wondrous works in the deep.
For he commanded and raised the stormy wind,
which lifted up the waves of the sea.
They mounted up to heaven;
they went down to the depths;
their courage melted away in their evil plight;
they reeled and staggered like drunken men
and were at their wits' end.
They they cried to the LORD in their trouble,
and he delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still,
and the waves of the sea were hushed.
They they were glad that the waters were quiet,
and he brought them to their desired haven."
-Psalm 107:23-30 (ESV)

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Christian Character & A Kingdom View


I've been reading Tom Wright's latest, After You Believe and it's fantastic. He unpacks why virtue (properly defined) matters and why, after you believe, Christian character is of utmost importance. Here he talks about ways to view the New Testament:

"Christians, particularly in the Western world, have for a long time been divided between 'epistles people' and 'gospels people.' The 'epistles people' have thought of Christianity primarily in terms of Jesus's death and resurrection 'saving us from our sins.' The 'gospels people' have thought primarily in terms of following Jesus in feeding the hungry, helping the poor, and so on. The 'epistles people' have often found it difficult to give a clear account of what was going on in Jesus's kingdom-announcement and his call to his followers to be 'perfect.' The 'gospel people'--or perhaps we should say the 'beginning-of-the-gospels people' since the line of thought they embrace usually screens out the last few chapters--have often found it difficult to explain why the Jesus who was doing these remarkable things had to die, and die so soon...The either/or split does no justice, in fact, to either the epistles or the gospels. Still less does it do justice to Jesus himself. For him, the kingdom which he inaugurated could be firmly established only through his death and resurrection. Or, to put it the other way around, the main purpose of his death and resurrection was to establish the kingdom he had already begun to inaugurate." (pg. 110-111)

N. T. Wright unpacks this a little...and then (and this is gold):

"Once again, part of the problem is that for many centuries Christians have assumed that virtually the only point in Jesus's death was "to save us from our sins," understood in a variety of more or less helpful ways. But for the gospels themselves, that rescue of individuals (which of course remains a central element) is designed to serve a larger purpose: God's purpose, the purpose of God's kingdom. And in God's kingdom human beings are rescued, are delivered from their sin, in order to take their place (as Jesus already called the disciples to take theirs) not only as receivers of God's forgiveness and new life, but also as agents of it. In other words: rulers and priests." (pg. 112).