Why We Labor

“Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.” – 1 Corinthians 15:58

Paul has just gone to considerable detail discussing the resurrection of Jesus—and this is his concluding statement. Not, “sit back and relax because God’s got a great future in store for you,” but “labor on, knowing that now your labor has even more meaning than it did before.”

In his book Surprised by Hope, N. T. Wright expounds on this connection. He writes, “You are not oiling the wheels of a machine that's about to roll over a cliff. You are not restoring a great painting that's shortly going to be thrown on the fire. You are not planting roses in a garden that's about to be dug up for a building site. You are… accomplishing something that will become in due course part of God's new world… what we do in Christ and by the Spirit in the present is not wasted. It will last all the way into God’s news world. In fact, it will be enhanced there… The work we do in the present, then, gains its full significance from the eventual design in which it is meant to belong.”

How will this translation happen? Will the trees we plant, the injustices we right, the art we create be present in the new world in a way they would not have if we hadn’t begun it all here? I don’t know. But I do think most of us tend to think of heaven as far less embodied than it actually will be: the point of resurrection is not that we will shed ourselves and this world, but that we and our world will rise, remade. Sown in dishonor; raised in glory; sown in weakness, raised in power (15:43). That is why Jesus’ resurrection is everything. It goes both ways: on one hand, we work looking forward, knowing that what we do is not lost and will in fact be brought into greater fullness in eternity. On the other hand, we work as new-creation people called to bring our vision of eternity into the present, to bring the restoration, redemption, and beauty of God’s kingdom into our world now as much as we can.

This time has changed the nature of our labors: we’re wrangling with more digital platforms; we’re doing more cooking and cleaning around the house. It has changed the value of our work, separating out what is deemed “essential” or not. But the resurrection changes how we see and do all our labors. It tells us why “inessential” things like beauty and creativity are necessary. It changes how and why we wipe a counter or try to get our kids to understand a math problem. None of it is pointless; none of it is lost. Abound in your work, Paul says. Persevere. Don’t give up. Your labor is not in vain.

Swimming In The Gospel

“Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you.” – 1 Corinthians 15:1-2

J. D. Greear points out that most of us think of the gospel as merely the entry rite into Christianity, the diving board from which we jump into the pool of Christian living, where we then swim off to enjoy the changes in life that go along with being a believer. “But the gospel is not only the diving board,” he writes. “It is the pool itself. Even after the big splash dies down and you’re floating freely there in this new experience, the next lunge you take that carries you farther away from the diving area doesn’t move you beyond the gospel but deeper into the gospel. You’re swimming in it. It’s all around you. The purest waters that flow from the spring of life are found by plunging deeper into the gospel well… the gospel is not only the way we begin; the gospel is the way we grow. It’s not just where we start; it’s where we are going. All the Christian values and virtues we hope to develop don’t happen on the other side of the gospel but rather right there in the middle of it.”

Paul has gotten nearly to the end of his letter, but he goes back to the gospel. Look at the tenses in this verse: Paul would remind us (present tense) of the gospel he preached (past tense), which we received (past tense), in which we stand (present tense) and by which we are being saved (ongoing present tense), if we hold fast to it (present tense) as it was preached (past tense). The past tenses frame, highlight and emphasize the present tenses.

What does it mean to swim in the gospel, to hold fast to it every day? The first thing Paul goes on to do is spell out the gospel. He preaches it again: that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried and raised on the third day. Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “the problem with most believers is that we should be not listening to ourselves but preaching to ourselves.” We need to preach the gospel to ourselves because our memories are short. We forget that we need rescue, that we have received it, that we have forgiveness and freedom and power not through ourselves but only through Jesus. Paul also goes on to lay out a list of eyewitnesses who saw Jesus after he rose: the gospel really happened. People saw it. We need to do whatever it takes to hold that reality, and our knowledge and experience of that reality, before our eyes every day. To record gospel sightings. To share about it with others. To say like Paul, “But by the grace of God I am what I am” (15:10). May we move every day deeper into the truth of the gospel in our lives. 

Temptation

“Therefore let anyone who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall. No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” – 1 Corinthians 10:12-13

These two verses have an interesting interplay. On the one hand, we have an amazing promise, but on the other, an inescapable warning. Look at the past, Paul writes. The Israelites, who had the very cloud of God’s presence, who walked through the sea, who ate food and drank water from God’s very hand—they yet were idolatrous, sexually immoral, put God to the test, and grumbled. You must never think that you can’t fall.

Take heed, he says. What does this mean? In the Greek, the word used is blepo, which means literally “to see.” There are over a dozen words for “seeing” in Greek—a common one is horao, and Vine’s dictionary compares and contrasts the two in this way: “Horao and blepo both denote the physical act: horao, in general, blepo, the single look; horao gives prominence to the discerning mind, blepo to the particular mood or point. When the physical side recedes, horao denotes perception in general... Blepo, on the other hand, when its physical side recedes, gets a purely outward sense, look (open, incline) towards [as of a situation] (Schmidt, Grimm-Thayer).”

Blepo is not seeing in a generalized way marked by deep inward understanding. It is seeing in a singularly intent, pointed, outwardly-oriented manner. It is not the vision of meandering meditation, but of a relentless and practical vigilance. I imagine Paul saying here, “look sharp about you!” As Eugene Peterson rewrites these verses, “These are all warning markers—danger!—in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel—they at the beginning, we at the end—and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else.”

We do carry the responsibility of jettisoning hubris and over-confidence, of being watchful and not careless in what we do. But temptation will surely come, and ultimately our vigilance is walked out in step with the promise that we can endure it when it does. There’s a part of me, or maybe it’s our culture, that says that I can’t hold out. That I will end up giving in. But that is simply not true. God promises that there will always be a way of escape, not to free myself from temptation necessarily but to find from Him the ability to endure it. Enduring temptation without giving in is painful; the author of Hebrews calls it suffering. But in this way we identify with and find encouragement from Christ, “for because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18).

Love and Knowledge

“If anyone imagines that he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” – 1 Corinthians 8:2

My residency director was fond of speaking of the four stages of learning. The first is “unconscious incompetence”: you don’t know what you don’t know. The second is “conscious incompetence”: you know what you don’t know. The third is “conscious competence”: you know what you know. The fourth is “unconscious competence”: you don’t know what you know.

He liked to talk about this as it applies to learning cataract surgery, the bread-and-butter of ophthalmic procedures. You start off perhaps having seen one of these surgeries before, but without any real idea of all that is involved. Then you practice on a pig eye and begin to grasp what it takes to maneuver in a small, fluidic space, with hands and feet doing different things all at once. Then you operate on real people and get to a point where you feel like you know what you’re doing. Eventually you do it all without having to think over every tiny movement or step. He would draw these stages as a cycle, with the last leading back to the first, either as you break down what you know to teach others, or as you grow further in skill or knowledge. 

In this passage, Paul describes the tension between two of these stages: the people who know what they know, that idols aren’t real and thus eating food offered to idols is fine, and the people who don’t know what they don’t know, who from their past still view idols as real in some way and thus avoid such food. Interestingly, Paul doesn’t correct the folks in the first stage of learning here. He doesn’t begin lecturing on idols. He speaks to the group in that third stage. Be very careful, he says, when you know what you know. Because as soon as you think you know something, you really don’t know it at all.

For one thing, the fact that these stages of learning exist means that, even if you know what you know, there are probably a lot more things you don’t even know that you don’t know. But Paul’s bigger point is that love trumps knowledge. In that third stage, we can get stuck in our knowledge and forget this important fact. As we say to the kids often, “sometimes it’s more important to be kind than to be right.” Paul puts it so well when he says, “knowledge puffs up, but love builds up” (8:1)—to swell is to appear large and significant while remaining insubstantial in substance, while to build up is to achieve true and solid growth that will last. While “knowledge” leads to judgment and pride that ultimately destroys ourselves and others (8:11), love is what leads to life. Love is, ironically, what leads to the ability to be truly known and to truly know: “But if anyone loves God, he is known by God” (8:3). True knowledge starts with love, with loving God, and we must never forget this, wherever we are in our journeys of learning.

The Theology of Sex

“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body… he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him. Flee from sexual immorality.” – 1 Corinthians 6:13, 17-18

It is nearly impossible not to internalize some views of sex from the world around us. In our culture, sex is consumeristic: it is about self-gratification, feeling good physically or emotionally, or being used as a tool to get what we want. In our culture, sex is solely physical; it is an appetite to be met, and can be divorced from the mental, emotional, spiritual and relational. Pornography has made it even more about performance and objectification. Lastly, sex in our culture is idolatrous; it is portrayed as the ultimate source of fulfillment in and of itself.

But the Bible tells an altogether different story. God invented sex, as a good thing without shame. Have you thought much about why? Paul says that our body is meant for the Lord. Sex is a signpost that points us to God. J. I. Packer writes, “A signpost only helps those who will head the way it directs, and if you insisted on camping for life beside a lovely signpost, you would be daft; you would never get anywhere.” Sex points to the triune nature of a God who exists in a state of mutual, self-giving love and joy, a kind of constant union of which sex perhaps gives us a glimpse. It points to the wholeness of union we will have with God one day in eternity (Ephesians 5:32). And it points to the gospel itself, by acting out the creation of new life through the giving of self within a covenant. 

Rather than consumerism, sex is literally and symbolically about relationship, with God and with our spouse. Rather than being merely physical, sex is portrayed as a union of all levels of our being. Rather than implying that sex is essential for happiness, the Bible tells us about people like Paul (1 Corinthians 7:7) and Jesus who never had sex, and that there won’t be sex in heaven (Luke 20:35). Ultimately, sex is not all about us: there is something mysterious and wonderful here, something in the roots of our longings and the way our bodies are made that testifies to God himself. Don’t you know, Paul says, that your body is meant for God, that you are one with him, that the Holy Spirit lives inside you, that you are not your own? We aren’t to flee sexual immorality because of a low or fearful view of sex, but because of a high view of it, because we don’t want to do anything that would obscure what it is truly meant for. 

Spring

“So neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.” – 1 Corinthians 3:7

The arrival of spring has seemed more poignant this year than ever: a reminder that there is a whole world of flora and fauna out there unaffected by recent events. And with nowhere to go but the local outdoors, we have all been present a bit more, I think, to the nature right around us. Our kids have become familiar by now with their favorite fuzzy leaves in the neighborhood, we notice bees and hummingbirds around our orange tree, and appreciate how the golden poppies unfurl so cheerfully every morning.

I have no doubt that part of the lesson during this time is exactly what Paul talks about here. We tend to think we run our lives. That we make things happen. That everything can be optimized to achieve desired outcomes. And while there does need to be a planter and a waterer, which one of us can understand the mystery of a root breaking open the seed? Or the movement from bud to flower to fruit? Do we ultimately make any of these things happen? Can we hurry any of it along? Can we create the life we want to see? Ultimately, no. Paul’s language is unequivocal: we are not anything. It is only God that gives the growth. And slowly, watching the world come to life around us, we are being taught to let go of our hold on our lives. We are being compelled to loosen our grip just a bit from our efforts to control and achieve and produce. “You are God’s field,” Paul says (3:9). It is God who gives the growth.

Waiting For The Dawn

“… as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end… God is faithful.” – 1 Corinthians 1:7-9

Many have remarked that living in this pandemic has made lent particularly meaningful as we’ve been forced to give so much up, but I think this year Holy Saturday encapsulates how I feel. There is great mystery in the fact that God did not raise Christ directly from the cross. There was a day in between. The day Jesus stayed dead. As the Westminster Larger Catechism states in its answer to question 50, “Christ’s humiliation after his death consisted in his being buried, and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death till the third day.” As a reading for Holy Saturday inThe Liturgy of the Hours goes, “Something strange is happening on earth today—a great silence, and stillness.”

Holy Saturday was a Sabbath: a day Jesus’ followers grappled with confusion and grief while pinioned into inaction, unable to do anything but sit in inconsolable despair. Holy Saturday is a day of epic disappointment, of the bursting of grand hopes. We are held there in that despair, all our illusions and indulgences emptied. That is how the harder moments of this time have felt: held in place, unable to do anything to retrieve what is lost, unable to speed anything up, contending with monotony and grief and the strange still silence of the world. 

What happens when you are there in that place? We learn to hear words like the ones Paul writes here in 1 Corinthians: God is faithful. And so, we can wait, and even be present to the wait. In a way, Holy Saturday is symbolic of this pandemic which is symbolic of the entirety of my life: living in brokenness while waiting for the resurrection that will surely come. I am waiting for something. God sustains me in the waiting. And I have hope in what I wait for.

This is the first Easter I’ve had since reading N.T. Wright’s Surprised by Hope, which I highly recommend. “What are we waiting for?” Wright asks in the preface. “And what are we going to do about it in the meantime? Most Christians don’t know what the ultimate Christian hope really is… the classic Christian answer to the question of death and beyond is not so much disbelieved as simply not known.” He describes in chapter 12 how salvation is not about the death of the body and the escape of the soul, not about “going to heaven when we die”—salvation is “being raised to life in God’s new heaven and new earth.” The present bodily life is not valueless because God will raise it to new life. What we do in the present will last into God’s future.

As Simone Weil wrote, “Waiting patiently in expectation is the foundation of the spiritual life.” Our Holy Saturday is different from that first terrible one, because we know so much more about what we’re waiting for. All the same, part of the work that Jesus did somehow was in staying dead for this day in between, and as his followers there is meaning to us being in that space as well. There is value that will last. May God sustain us to the end.

Jesus The Gardener

“Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, who are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?’ Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.’” – John 20:15

The first person who sees Jesus in his resurrected body supposes him to be the gardener. I have always loved the flavor of ordinariness this brings: Mary was in a garden. It was early. She wasn’t expecting anything. Who else would it be that time of morning? There was nothing particularly glamorous about how Jesus looked, perhaps, either then or ever before. And I find myself loving him for all that: that he is the kind of person one would assume gets his fingers into the dirt. That he looks like someone who labors, who would be up when most people aren’t. That he meets us in the most ordinary ways in our day and even in our suffering.

And, of course, what Mary assumes is profound. A few days before his crucifixion, Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). He went on to die, and “in the place where he was crucified there was a garden… and they laid Jesus there” (John 20:41-42). He then came alive as the firstfruits of the resurrection (1 Corinthians 15) to become the gardener, cultivating and making the way for new life.

In a way, the whole Bible is an epic garden story. As Sinclair Ferguson puts it, “Adam was to ‘garden’ the whole earth for the glory of His Father. But he failed. Created to make the dust fruitful, he himself became part of the dust. The Garden of Eden became the wilderness of this world.” The one who was called to keep the garden instead brought the curse of thorns. But as the second Adam, the second gardener, Jesus restores us to life both now and ultimately in the new creation: for when John sees the new earth coming down from heaven, it looks like a garden, with the tree of life in its center (Revelation 22).

And so, it turns out, Mary was not that far off. In the throes of her grief, reaching out through her tears, she uttered words that were truer than she realized. There, alive, walking through the garden that early morning, was the true Gardener, the fulfiller of every hoped-in promise, every longing for life. “Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress; instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle” (Isaiah 55). He is the tender to whom we turn, and then the one who sends us out in turn to garden the world.

Beware Gifts Without Fruit

“And the Spirit of the Lord rushed upon him, and he went down to Ashkelon and struck down thirty men of the town and took their spoil and gave the garments to those who had told the riddle. In hot anger he went back to his father’s house.” – Judges 15:13

Michael Wilcock writes about Judges 8: “Gideon… has become, even on the testimony of his enemies, a man of majesty (8:18) and strength (8:21). But there is something less than admirable at the heart of him, for all the development of his great abilities. Beware the gifts of the Spirit without the fruit of the Spirit!”

Gideon became a great leader, but his heart was filled with pride, fear and anger. We see this in increasing degrees with subsequent judges, most of all with Samson, who though he had the gift of physical strength, had a heart filled with an anger and impulsiveness. The gifts of the Spirit are things like helping, giving, teaching, administration (1 Corinthians 12-14 and elsewhere). The fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (Galatians 5). The gifts are about doing; the fruit are more about being.

We are generally much better at doing than being. We make being into doing. At school, our kids are taught how to be kind like they are taught math and reading—but while socio-emotional learning is important, these things cannot be fundamentally generated or willed into being. They come only as a result of our abiding in God: as David preached yesterday, loving in times of difficulty comes when we stay connected to God. As we grow in our gifts, we must grow in our fruit; as we expand our external ministry or service, we must attend even more deeply to our inner life. Gifts without fruit—exhortation without kindness, discernment without patience, hospitality without joy, anything without love—is something to be wary of. That at least is one of the lessons these judges leave us.

What We Consume

“I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.” – Psalm 101:2-3

Being healthy in what we read or watch in our spare time is challenging for many reasons. It’s easy to follow cultural cues and norms. It’s easy not to be accountable for it. It’s easy after a hard day to feel entitled to whatever provides momentary pleasure or escape. Because so much of what we consume is impure, not in a moral sense (though that may be true too), but in the sense of having degrees of good and bad mixed in together, it’s easy to be led along by the good bits and be careless of the bad bits. It’s easy to be blind to how thoroughly we are affected by what we consume, in our fantasies, moods, mindsets. It’s easy to ignore the evolving nature of it all, the fact that our very appetites are changed, our prohibitions numbed, along the way. 

The word for “worthless” here is Hebrew beliya’al, which is a combination of two words. Beliy means “consumption, wearing out.” This is a movement that is not cataclysmic, but erosive, gradual, insidious. Ya’al means “to ascend on high, to rise above” or “to excel, profit, benefit.” 

We see that the focus here is not on sin at all. The focus is on ya’al and what consumes it. This is not a list of rules but a love song: “I will sing of steadfast love… to you, I Lord, I will make music.” The precedence here is not legalism but longing: “oh, when will you come to me?” The psalmist has purposely put his mind to what is blameless; he attends to every step (“I will walk”); he desires transparent integrity in the most private spheres of life (“integrity of heart within my house”). The focus here is not moral code—it’s not where the line of sin is, and getting as close to that line as possible without crossing it—the focus here is longing and love that leads to a desire for integrity and blamelessness, that leads to a vow to avoid anything that would not be of benefit towards that. It is Paul saying, all things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything. I am meant for the Lord, and He is meant for me (1 Corinthians 6).

This is a particular area of struggle for me: maybe because of cravings for story, or an unusually vivid imagination and memory, I have found that I need to be more careful than most about what I read or watch, and the learning of that was a long and painful process, with some regrets along the way. It wasn’t until I changed that I realized the depth of this truth that what I set before my eyes is everything. It both reveals and transforms who I am, how I think, what I desire. Jesus put it best: “The eye is the lamp of the body. So if the eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light, but if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23). May I walk with integrity of heart within my house. May I not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.

Left-Handed Salvation

“The Lord raised up for them a deliverer, Ehud, the song of Gera, the Benjamite, a left-handed man.” – Judges 3:15

After Othniel, none of the judges named in this book seem like who you’d expect to be a leader. Deborah is a woman, Gideon the least in a house of the weakest clan, and Ehud is left-handed. At that time, the right hand was a symbol of power and ability: God swears by his right hand, has pleasures at his right hand, and the Chosen One sits at his right hand (Isaiah 62:8-9; Psalm 16:11, 110:1). In Hebrew, Judges 3:15 literally says Ehud was “unable to use his right hand,” leading some scholars to speculate that he had some kind of paralysis or disability. No one would expect a left-handed man to be dangerous. They would assume that if he could not wield a weapon with his right hand, he couldn’t wield one at all—and that is why he was admitted to the king’s presence both publicly and privately. No one thought he could be a threat; he was completely beneath their notice.

Paul tells us in the first chapter of 1 Corinthians that God does not choose the worldly-wise or powerful. He does not choose those of privileged birth. God chooses the foolish, the weak, the low and despised. Why is this? 

The temptation for the Israelites at that time was not outright rejection of God so much as adding him to a pantheon of gods. The prevailing polytheistic culture objected not to the existence of God, but to his absolute sovereignty. When it came to various Canaanite gods, you generally did something to please a certain god so that they would give you something in response. But God is making it clear that he does not work as idols do. He chooses the unexpected, and works through them in strikingly different but undeniably powerful ways, to show that he is not a vending machine or formula. He is not one of many. He cannot be manipulated. And what he wants is not merely our tribute but our hearts, our total surrender to him alone. 

David Jackman writes: “Let us remember that Israel’s flirtation with other gods came from their over-domestication of the living Lord. It was because they thought they had God sewn up, in their pockets… [His] unbreakable promises led them to presume upon his mercy to the point of indulgence… they thought they had trained God. That is always the essence of idolatry… [Then] God teaches his rebellious people their total dependence on omnipotence by breaking out of their predictable boxes to use methods and men that no one could have imagined."

Jesus came like the left-handed Ehud: “he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him… we esteemed him not” (Isaiah 53:2-3). He was beneath our notice. And through him God shows us that salvation comes left-handed. Not in the way we would think or the world would laud, but in a way that shows us he is a God like no other.

Moses And The Rock

“Because you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy in the eyes of the people of Israel, therefore you shall not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” – Numbers 20:12

I am probably not alone in always having been somewhat bothered by God preventing Moses from entering the promised land. What does Moses do wrong here? He addressed the people instead of addressing the rock. He made himself both judge (“you rebels”) and deliverer (“shall we...”). His phrasing is one of grumbling and complaint. He struck the rock rather than speaking to it, directly disobeying the word of God. He struck the rock twice, even (sign of anger? lack of faith that striking even once would be enough?). Overall, his tone is one of anger and contempt. Don Carson writes, “His response is not only the striking of the rock, it is the answer of a man who under pressure has become bitter and pretentious.”

What God rebukes Moses for is unbelief: “you did not believe in me, to uphold me as holy.” God desired to extend mercy through lack of retribution for the people’s complaints, grace through providing water. The rock itself points to Christ: “For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:4). Carson writes, “It is hard to resist the conclusion that the reason God had insisted the rock be struck in Exodus 17:1–7, and forbids it here, is that he perceives a wonderful opportunity to make a symbol-laden point: the ultimate Rock, from whom life-giving streams flow, is struck once, and no more.” Moses did get water, but did it with a heart of rebellion and unbelief against God’s mercy and grace, pointing away from Christ.

The other time there was judgment for not upholding God’s holiness was when Aaron’s sons offered unauthorized fire in Leviticus 10:3, an act for which they were killed. Commentators have observed that God shows Moses a severe mercy, in sparing his life despite preventing him from entering the promised land. And in the end, he does see it from a mountaintop (Deuteronomy 32:49).

It is hard to be a leader who faces unfair criticism. It is difficult to be a caregiver who absorbs persistent complaint and buffers emotional instability (I think of mothers here and Moses saying he pretty much feels like one in Numbers 11:12). There is always the temptation to lash out in angry outbursts, to view or label others with criticism or contempt, to let our frustration seep out in ways that prevent us from upholding God’s holiness, from believing in the grace he asks us to extend. I am guilty of these things, but I have hope too. Some of my gravest mistakes are God’s severe mercies to me, laying bare the condition of my heart, giving me the capacity for greater compassion towards others. And I have Jesus, the living water. The water did come from the rock, and in the end, God did show himself holy through it. God works despite, or precisely through, my mistakes, and that is at times the most encouraging thing of all.

Firstfruits

“When you come into the land that I give you and reap its harvest, you shall bring the sheaf of the firstfruits of your harvest to the priest, and he shall wave the sheaf before the Lord.” – Leviticus 23:10-11

Have you ever experienced the start of something that filled you with great anticipation and hope for what was to come? I think of the first time I saw Ellie on a sonogram. The opening prelude to an orchestral piece in a concert hall. Appetizers in a multi-course meal at a good restaurant. The first time I held Dave’s hand. I think the moment when the Israelites held a handful of the first of their barley harvest was a moment like that. They were holding the answer to God’s promises: they had arrived in the promised land after years of wandering and battle. They had planted their own crops. But this first of the harvest was also a promise that more was to come. 

We talk about Jesus as the lamb that died on the Passover, or how the Holy Spirit came on Pentecost, but we don’t as often discuss what it means that Jesus rose on the day of Firstfruits. This was the day when they took that first handful of the harvest and gave it to God in an act of thanksgiving and trust. The point of the firstfruits is that there will be many more. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15, “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep… For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.” Jesus rose, and because he did, we will too. His resurrection was a firstfruits of what is to come: this is the great hope that we have.

N. T. Wright expounds on this in his book Surprised By Hope. “Many Christians,” he writes, “don’t know what the ultimate Christian hope really is… The classic Christian answer to the question of death and beyond is not so much disbelieved as simply not known.” What are we waiting for? What are we going to do about it in the meantime? The answers to those questions lie in the realization that salvation is not about “going to heaven when we die”; it is not the death of the body and the escape of the soul. Salvation is being raised to life in God’s new heaven and new earth. “Heaven, in the Bible, is not a future destiny but the other, hidden, dimension of our ordinary life—God’s dimension,” Wright explains. “God made heaven and earth; and at the last he will remake both and join them together forever.” 

Jesus’ bodily resurrection is a promise of not only our own resurrection, our own new bodies, but the recreation of the world. The things we do in our life now are not just to make it more bearable until we leave it—they are a part of building for God’s kingdom. They are not valueless because God will raise it to new life. Jesus’ resurrection is my hope for everything: for myself, for my work, for the world I live in. It is the reason I believe that nothing I do is in vain. That day, when the Israelites reaped their first harvest, when they felt hope and anticipation grip their hearts and fill their hands: that was the day Jesus rose.

Feasts Of The Lord: A Primer

“Speak to the people of Israel and say to them, These are the appointed feasts of the Lord that you shall proclaim as holy convocations; they are my appointed feasts.” – Leviticus 23:2

The feasts in Leviticus 23 are a fascinating map of the past and the future. There are 7 feasts (Sabbath, Passover/Unleavened Bread, Firstfruits, Weeks, Trumpets, Atonement, Booths); one of them occurs every 7 days (Sabbath); two of them last for 7 days, beginning on the 15th day or after the completion of 2 cycles of 7 days (Unleavened Bread, Booths). Seven, the number of perfection and wholeness; God’s whole, created plan over time. The word “appointed” is the same Hebrew word translated “seasons” in Genesis 1:14: “And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years.”

Of the six annual feasts, the first three occur in the spring. The first two occur over a span of 8 days. On day 1, the Passover Feast is celebrated. This looks back to the tenth plague, and looks ahead to the crucifixion of Jesus, which occurred on this day (“Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed,” 1 Corinthians 5:7). On day 2, the Feast of Unleavened Bread occurs and lasts until day 8. This looks back to the hurried exodus from Egypt, and looks ahead to Christ in the tomb. The leaven points to the old self, the sin, that he cleanses us from: “Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened” (1 Corinthians 5:7). 

On day 3, the Feast of Firstfruits takes place. At that time, the barley crop would be planted and harvested first, then the wheat crop. The Feast of Firstfruits occurred at the time of the barley harvest, marking the beginning of the harvesting season; the Israelites ate no grain until an offering was made of the barley harvest. This looks ahead to Jesus rising from the dead, which he did on the day of Firstfruits. “But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Corinthians 15:20).

Fifty days after the Feast of Firstfruits, the Feast of Weeks occurred. The term “weeks” refers to the period of time between the barley harvest and the wheat harvest. It was also called the Pentecost (literally “fiftieth”) or the Feast of Harvests (Exodus 23:16). This celebrated the end of the harvest season, included a wheat sacrifice, and featured 2 loaves baked with yeast. There is some speculation that this was the day the law was given at Mt. Sinai (Exodus 19:1). The Holy Spirit was given to believers on this day (Acts 2:1).

After a summer hiatus, the last three feasts were celebrated in the fall. The Feast of Trumpets is modern-day Rosh Hashanah, and many have speculated that it looks forward to some element of Christ’s return (Matthew 24, Joel 2, 1 Thessalonians 4). The Day of Atonement is modern-day Yom Kippur, which some speculate looks forward to future judgment. The Feast of Booths looked back to wanderings in the wilderness and some speculate that it points to the future reign of believers, the new Jerusalem, or some aspect of the joy that follows judgment.

I imagine how it would feel if all of life stopped, regularly, every week and on the same days every year, so that congregations and families could gather around altars and tables, telling through sacrifices and foods and forts stories of God from the past. In this chapter, God is saying, I want you to stop and tell those stories. I want you to understand how Jesus fulfills all of it, down to the very day. I want you to live in the hope of the feasts and harvests and fulfillments to come in the future, because they will come. They will.

The Shape Of The Eucharist

“Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, ‘Take, eat; this is my body.’” – Matthew 26:26

Four verbs that occur in this verse—took (lambano), bless (eulogeo), broke (klao), gave (didomi)—appear in the same sequence in the feeding of four thousand and five thousand (Mark 6:41, 14:22-24 and parallels), in the supper at Emmaus in Luke (Luke 24:30-31), and in how Paul describes taking communion (1 Cor 11:23-26; final verb not stated but clearly implied). Dom Gregory Dix is perhaps most known for exploring the implications of this in a piece he wrote in 1941 called “The Shape of the Liturgy”—I haven’t read it, but I like that phrase. These words trace out for us the essential movements of the eucharistic meal.

Take: Jesus takes what we offer, which in these passages is always something material, but represents what is personal as well. He does not find fault with what we bring: He receives us as we are. He does not force or coerce, but he extends an invitation.

Bless: “Eucharist” literally means thanksgiving. Jesus thanks God for what we have offered. Don’t we often neglect to do this? We rush from the taking to the doing. But Jesus pauses to bless, and when we follow him, we are present to what we have before us in a posture of thanksgiving.

Break: Jesus changes what we bring. Eugene Peterson writes, “At the Table we are not permitted to be self-enclosed. We are not permitted to be self-sufficient. The breaking of our pride and self-approval is not a bad thing; it opens us to new life, to saving action. We come crusted over, hardened into ourselves. We soon discover that God is working deep within us, beneath our surface lies and poses, to bring new life.”

Give: communion is a back and forth. Jesus takes what we give; then we receive what he gives. And he always gives back more lavishly than we gave.

The mysterious and beautiful thing about these words are that they apply to Jesus himself. He is both the priest who takes what we offer in sacrifice and blesses it, and the sacrifice itself, who was broken so that we can be given salvation. And we follow him by offering ourselves as living sacrifices, losing our lives so that we can receive and spread true life. All of it is done in the context of community, around the table together, in communion, back and forth, this rhythm of the supper, this shape of the eucharist and of the Christian life itself.