The Best Revenge

"Give me... your tired masses,
er...ah revenge"

      Whatever happened to love your enemies? I guess that scripture is of little use to me and should be cut out of my Hole(ly) Bible. May be also "vengence is mine, I will repay, said the Lord" (Rom. 12:18-20 ). Move over God we'll get the job done. As one of my Ethics students said, "Well, we are not a Christian nation." Well said. Score one for the American team. Let's dance in the streets.
      I can remember how disgusted I was when I saw the people of the Arab nations dancing in the streets and shooting off their AK47s after 9/11.  I wanted to puke. They certainly thought they were doing God a favor, the right thing, the nationally approved retaliation for all that America has done, real or perceived. But right is with America and God is with us, and, well, they (Osama) had it coming. All this sentiment is defensible for national merit and security. After all we did rejoice when Hitler died, killed by his own hand. Judas too. When I reach that point in the Bible where he kills himself, I close the book and go shoot off my Ak47 and do a little jig. I have a sign above my kitchen table, "no Judas eats here only those with clean hands and a pure heart."
      Is the sermon on the mount unlivable? Is being alive the last great victory over your enemy? The last one standing. I am asking Christians. I asked my Ethics class of 11 and 12th graders if they believed Matthew 5:45-48? Only two believed that killing was wrong. One of the two felt that loving your enemies and praying for them somehow excluded shooting them. Novel. What about being assaulted? It is covered in Matthew also. I had them picture Stephen being stoned (Acts 7). In America Stephen would be cheered if he died throwing the stones back and "taking with him" as many as possible. Our kids grow up on "Gears of War", "Soldiers of Fortune", "Postal", " Mortal Combat" ect.... What do we expect?  If we were honest we would cut out most of Matthew 5,6 and 7 as we have no intention of trying to fulfill these scriptures. But who can live out these scriptures anyway?
       As odd a lifestyle as the Amish live, in this one area they shine, they try to live the Sermon on the Mount.  They are conscientious objectors and much more.  I remember a few years ago when a gunman named Charles Roberts, not an Amish member, went into an Amish school house and murdered several Amish girls and wounded other children. Within a day the Amish parents of the victims came out and forgave the man. Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. They visited Roberts' widow, set up a charitable fund for his family and went to his funeral. They didn't talk about "Justice" at least not the kind we are used to hearing about. Their just way was to forgive and love.
       I am not saying that we are to become Amish, but I may be saying that we should not act like the rest of America who loves revenge and civil justice. This whole story of Americas' Jehad against Bin Laden has caused me to rethink my elation over the killing of OBL.
      There is a good scene in "An American President" with Michael Douglas as Andrew Shepherd. He is deciding whether to bomb Libya.   Let's listen in.

President Andrew Shepherd: What I did tonight was not about political gain. 
Leon Kodak: Yes sir. But it can be, sir. What you did tonight was very presidential. 
President Andrew Shepherd: Leon, somewhere in Libya right now, a janitor's working the night shift at Libyan Intelligence headquarters. He's going about doing his job... because he has no idea, in about an hour he's going to die in a massive explosion. He's just going about his job, because he has no idea that about an hour ago I gave an order to have him killed. You've just seen me do the least presidential thing I do."
     We shouldn't get all enamored with killing, its not the highlight of being a Christian or even being human.

Easter Mood

      Easter is a wonderful time of the year with crowded churches, well larger crowds than usual, pretty hats (comparable only to Kate & William's wedding:), dressings, great music, I mean Bing singing "Easter Bonnet" and messages on the resurrection of Christ. The only trouble is that it is a bit confusing (dyed Easter eggs and chocolate bunnies?). What are we celebrating? Some old anniversary of Christ's removal form the grave? Or that we too are going to be resurrected "oh beautiful someday"? The truth is that Jesus' conversation with Martha is probably the one we should be thinking about on this glorious Sunday (John 11:20-27). When it comes to speaking about the resurrection, like Martha and most of us, the translators have had a hard time nailing down what Jesus was saying. Most of us tend to put the resurrection off in the future, like Martha or in the past like the women of Hebrews 11 who received back their dead. But isn't resurrection life available now? May be we should look closer at the language that talks about the Resurrection.
      The koine Greek, the language of the New Testament, has several different moods, like you and I :-).  The indicative mood is the resounding favorite and dominates the verbal landscape of the NT. But there are others such as the infinitive mood,  the imperative mood and the one I want to talk about, the subjunctive mood.
     The subjunctive mood has two aspects to it. It is used when the author wants to talk about the realm of possibility and when the time is undetermined. It can be used in conditional sentences, for instance; a writer may say, "If you go to the store, get me some milk." We see that there is a possibility that this person may or may not go to the store. At least one person is hoping they will go as they are running out of milk, "got milk"? This possibility is shown in the way the verb tense is made. Not to get too technical, but the Greek verbs have different suffixes and prefixes that can show; the person(s), active or passive voice, mood, and time.

      Usually a verb will express the time of its action which is called "tense" in the past, present, or future tenses. This occurs in the indicative mood. The past indicative mood is often denoted by the "aorist" tense of the verb which is usually a definite past action. However in the subjunctive mood time is not the important thing.  In the subjunctive mood the aorist is undefined time.  That means the aorist subjunctive may take place in the past, present or future,  it really is determined by context. A great example is in Mark 12:25. In Mark's narrative Jesus is being questioned by the unbelieving Sadducees about the resurrection. Jesus' replies to their trickery by saying, "For when they rise form the dead, they neither marry or are given in marriage..."(NASB). The KJV has "For when they shall rise from the dead...." Why did the KJV pick the future tense? Because the aorist subjunctive can be past, present or future depending on the perception of the translator. 
      The subjunctive mood is hard to translate. The word anastosin (Mark 12:25) is in the "aorist subjunctive" mood which leaves it open for translation. Translators who get the subjunctive mood still have trouble nailing it down. Another scripture about the resurrection that is a good example is found in Romans 6:4. "Therefore we have been buried with Him by baptism into death, in order that, as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life" (NASB).
       In Romans 6:4  we can see this confusion in different translations. The NIV says, "we too may live a new life." The KJV translates it, " we should also walk....", and the NASB writes, we too might walk in ...."  These are attempts to define the undefined.  The question is "When is this resurrection available for us to walk in newness of life with God?" To answer this question and try to translate these texts it may do well for us to see how Christ felt about it. Let us return again to Martha.
      Martha had basically the same problem we have. You remember the story. Jesus came to raise Lazarus from the grave (John 11). Martha rebukes him for being late. Not offended, Christ responds to Martha with a question. "Do you believe in the resurrection?"  "Of course", She responds, "the resurrection will come in the future, at the last trumpet." But Martha's problem is now. Lazarus is dead now!  And I guess that is all our problems. The great "already, but not yet" theological dilemma. We, like Martha, know there will be a resurrection. Jesus knows we know that. He also knows that He IS the resurrection. Not past, not future, but present. He responds to Martha in the great YHWHian response to Moses, ego eimi, "I am the resurrection!" The proof that we don't know this reveals it self in our translations. The aorist subjunctive, in these scriptures,  should be translated in the present with its possibilities in tack. 

Road to Emmaus

       Remember Mark 12:25?  If we apply what Jesus was trying to tell Martha, we should translate that aorist subjunctive as the present tense, may rise and the Romans 6:4 passage as we may walk in newness of  (resurrection) life.  Christianity is for the present. It is not an Easter remembrance of bonnets, lace and a chance to wear white, but a present realization that the resurrection is for the living. It brings reality to baptism and it is the newness of life that we are to walk in daily. Religion's proponents will put it off till the end thereby not bowing to the responsibility of walking in the Good News today. The subjunctive allows or permits this interpretation. Ultimately, the undefined aorist subjunctive leaves it up to us to define it as something in the past, like a good Easter parade, or in the future like some joyful funeral eulogy, or should we man up and say truthfully "Lord I believe, help my unbelief" and walk in Christ's resurrection today?
        
For a great Easter Morning Sermon listen to The First Fruits Resurrection, by Gary Hargrave.  

Country Strong

    The movie Country Strong with Gwyneth Paltrow and Garrett Hadlund illustrates the old Biblical principle, "you can not serve two masters". The South has had its share of being a master and serving masters. Nashville being the country counter part of tinsel town, seat of one of the dueling lords, has seen its slaves come and go. As much as it wants to remain family it dishes out the poison of fame and glory gone bad as well as any of Binsfield's Princes of Hell.  Its latest story of a star being driven to her death down highway 31 sings the too familiar song of the price paid for "choosing poorly". The story is less about the strength of country than its weakness. Of course this echoes the warning of the Book that taught the South how to sing and gave to it the Christian audience for launching nearly all of its singers before most have taken the wrong road cruising in the blue caddy down the highway of honky-tonks, bars and the Opry.
    The warning so blatantly broadcasted by Christ the true country singer is found in Matthew 6:24. "No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon" (KJV). I love this rendition of the ancient wisdom, handed down from the Syrians, because Christ breaks out the reason you can not serve two masters, "he will hold to one and despise the other...." 

 Evelyn Morgan

     What defines "despising"? John Stevens in his teaching on Prophecy, quoted Paul who tells us  "do not  despise prophecy". How does one despise prophecy, by not doing it. How does one despise God? Ignoring Him, not "doing" what he asks. It is very simple. A slave is present for the biding of his master. To say you are a servant (less repugnant than slave) of Christ and not do his bidding is to despise Christ. "You can not serve God and mammon." 
      What is country strong? In the end, a classic "like a statue on his pinto" Hutton  (Hadlund) sits in his rusting pickup truck. He reads a parting letter left by the overdosed hand of Kelly Canter (Paltrow), she says " If you want my advice, if you have a chance to choose between love and fame, choose love". Sad but true. The same song second verse, we are told again, and again modeled out by lives many live and die, "you can not serve God and mammon." In these days of the god of mammon showing us his weakness its best we not despise our Lord and Master and learn to do his biding. The swan song of Passover is obedience, let us sing it loud and clear and not have that whine of country music! 
     I tip my hat to Hank Williams Jr. who summed it up so nicely for his family (and that is "Country Music's" royal family) namely his daddy when he sang about this Family Tradition and the choices that are made. 

Verbs to Nouns or vice versa

      A noun is often turned into a verb or vice versa. Many times with similar structure. This is particularly true in English since we rely on the placing of the word in a sentence for its contextual clues and not necessarily on its inflection. When one catches fish he may be called a fisherman. The fisherman may say "I fish for a living."  We have become very adept at this in modern times. Twitter, twittering, twittered, or twatted? No its twittered. I twittered yesterday and I will twitter today. I am following you on twitter. Can a bird like Tweedy twitter on twitter or do birds twitter? I thought they were the first to do so.

Applying the Blood

     The same morphing of words from nouns to verbs also takes place in Greek. The word lithos meaning stone can become lithos + ballw (to cast) and you get the stoning of Stephen (Acts 7:59). The stoners' activity is related to what they do and who they are. So Greek carries on the same way other languages do because language is an out growth of life. What we are doing we want to express to others and they want to talk about us, so they connect the activity to the person, "the stoner dude". Hopefully you are getting the idea.
     The word Passover in English, pesach in Hebrew, and pascha in Greek, has had the same etymology. Originally it was used as a verb in which case the Hebrew would be pasach meaning the death angel passed over (vb) the Children of Israel. The verb, the doing, became the noun the institution. The angel "passing over" became the institution, Passover. Now we write "Passover" with capital letters and explain the noun by using it as a verb. "Passover is the celebration of when the death angel passed over the COI." Originally it was the other way around. The verb created the noun. A little different perspective if you get what I am saying. Here finally is the point.

    I was looking at the Greek word pascha as I was reading about the Passover. Remembering for Christians the Passover is about the Lamb's suffering, being slain for our salvation. The word for suffering in Greek is, you might guess this if I haven't confused you completely, pascho. The word for Passover in Greek comes from the Septuagint's translation of the Hebrew. I am not sure how they got this word, but since the words are so similar, it may be that the suffering of the lamb in preparation of the feast was tied in originally with the COI. The death of the lamb and its blood may be more central to the Hebrew story and pasach became the noun Pesach, the result of the suffering lamb. The same may be said of  the etymology of the word in the  Greek for Passover. It may not be a transliteration as some assume. I think the Seventy -odd, that wrote the Septuagint were looking for the right verb as well as the nuance for the feast. Whether that is the case or not, God certainly worked this word in the Greek Pascha, to carry the connotation of Suffering. Jesus said "With desire I have desired to eat this Passover before I suffer"(Luke 22:155).  The connection is undeniable. The lamb slain since the foundation of the world is our suffering servant Jesus Christ. His greatest suffering pascho came during the Pascha. At this time of year our remembrance of His suffering will allow the angel of death to Passover us.
   A parting shot: The "last supper" may have been the preparation of the lamb dinner not the seder.

Sinfonia Sirenum

        Since we are in the Passover/Easter season, we sung the song, "The Strife is Over",  in our church on Sunday and it gave me a moment or two of  "pause".  Hearing this old song brought back a memory of another Sunday from my youth. I was sitting in the den of my family's country home with my dad who was finally letting down after a morning and a half of preaching and ministering. We had just finished a large Sunday dinner (outside the South this would be called lunch) and it was taking its toll on dad.  I had been talking with him about his war years and he was reminiscing about General George Patton's funeral. He was falling asleep on the couch in the warm sunlight of that sleepy summer afternoon as he told me this story.

Wife, Beatrice Patton
(my father pictured immediately
over Beatrice's left shoulder)

         Dad was a Chaplain during WWII. He got several field promotions and by the end of the war became the head chaplain in the European Theater. He had formed a choral group that traveled throughout Europe singing for the soldiers. At the end of the War General Patton died in Germany. Mrs. Beatrice Patton called my dad and asked him if his "chapeleers" would sing at her husband's funeral in Heidelberg. The only song that 'Old Blood and Guts' requested was  "The Strive Is Over... the battle done". Dad, like most of the people in our church last Sunday, did not know the song. He and his choir learned it in the back of a troop carrier as they drove the autobahn to the funeral. He said that his group sang great and the funeral was amazing, brass was everywhere. Heidelberg's Christ Church had a huge pipe organ and the song "The Strife is Over" was made for it. Dad said it was majestic.
      Good story, huh, but I wonder about that song. To this day it bothers me. How much of the battle is really over, even when you die?  May be it's the battle that is over but not the war. My Bible tells me there is still spiritual warfare going on. It took an archangel 21 days to break through to Daniel fasting and praying in Babylon. Sounds like tough resistance to me. Patton had to battle nearly as long to break through to liberate Bastogne (he may have been a god but he was no Archangel). And the war was not over when he arrived at the gates of the city,  at head of the 4th Armored. Neither was it over when he arrived at door of heaven, probably to his delight, he was a warrior.

"Hang In Tough, Bastogne 1944"
by John Shaw 

       We are warriors as Christians. We win our battles. And we want to go to heaven and rest but a restful heaven seems odd to me at times. Is Christ resting in heaven? Are the saints resting with Him? Christ ever lives (and never sleeps) to make intercession for the saints. If He is doing that and some saints under the altar are crying out , "How long, O Lord, holy and true, will you not judge and avenge (from dike - to return harm for harm) our blood on them that dwell on the earth (Rev. 6:10)?" Avenge? That sounds like a war cry to me.  If all that is happening then what the hell are people doing taking R and R by the pearlie gates?  Granted the battle is suppose to be over for us who pass to the other side, but the war still rages and creation is waiting for the manifestations of the sons of God. Hurrah! (that's suppose to be the sound the Marines make?). John Stevens put it this way in his sermon "Earnest Expectation":


"God’s people are in an end-time spiritual battle against the satanic spirits that are warring to prevent the revealing of the sons of God. The very first breakthrough into the revealing of the sons of God will be like pushing over the first domino. After that a whole string of events and breakthroughs will start happening. The whole Kingdom will come forth. We do not realize the importance of the focus that the Lord wants us to have in spiritual warfare. As we aim at a target, focusing on it, the Lord will bless us.... Once the Lord truly reveals this to us, we will never stop interceding and pressing the battle because we will see what we are in", p.113. 

Josiah and the Passover Reading

      So I guess Passover/Easter is awesome with the Victory over death but the enforcement of it is left to the sons, and that is still in play. The sons must be obedient to what the Lord asks, just as Christ was during His great Passover experience. This could be like the Passover of Josiah in Kings (2Kings 23:23-24) where he battles against the evil forces of his day and the people pledged themselves to the covenant of the Lord.  Deliverance even for Israel from Egypt on that first Passover was not without much battle. In battle you always assign someone to pick up the Flag if the carrier is shot. So it is for the sons to raise the standard (mental flash to Iwo Jima), because there is definitely no "Peace in the Valley".  I feel more like one of those grunts freezing in Bastogne waiting for deliverance. They call my Dad's generation the "greatest" generation and it was awesome. But I think the Greatest Generation is going to be the generation that shows up as the "Sons of God" and liberates this tired old earth, then I"ll  "live and sing to thee" with faith "The Strife Is Over".

Outcasts of the Synagogue

        In the 16th chapter of John Jesus gives us the purpose for the metaphor of the vine and the branch found in the preceding chapter 15.  Jesus tells His disciples, in 16:1, me skandalisthete, "do not be offended".  It is the source of the word "scandal" in English. Don't be scandalized. He goes on to tell them that  they will be cast out of their synagogues and those who kill them will, get this, "think they are doing God a service". It is clearer in the Greek. "They think they are bringing to God a offering of service"! How twisted. It reminds me of that old story by Bret Harte called "The Outcasts of Poker Flat". In it is a great line that connects me to this type of activity. The proper people of Poker Flat were casting some "improper" citizens out of their town. Harte said it this way;
      "It (PF) was experiencing a spasm of virtuous reaction, quite as
        lawless and ungovernable as any of the acts that had provoked it.
                                           A secret committee had determined to rid the town of all improper persons."
        Americans love the outcasts, the underdogs, the outsiders. We are drawn to the persecuted and those that "rage against the machine." We are the "huddled masses", pilgrims from "distant shores" that the woman, the New Colossus, standing light in hand rising Lazarus like, the" Mother of Exiles",  besides the golden door, beacons us to "breathe free".   So Harte's story fills our breasts with righteous indignation as we see our outcast heroes and heroines walk to their death and away from the "storied pomp". 
        But Jesus did not want His disciples to have this romantic "I've been rejected", "I am an outsider", "I am a rebel, a pilgrim, persecuted for God" attitude, the "homeless tempest tossed" "yearning to be free". He knew freedom did not belong to a demographic or a topographic.  He knew freedom belonged to the truth. "You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free (8:32)." So He turned His story another way. 
         His instructions were that when the disciples were casted out they were to have a different attitude. They weren't to go huddle in some lonely canyon and die or look for some "teeming shore". Their attitude came from the desire to abide with the Father's love. As the vine abides in the branch so they should abide in God's love for people.  Our father does not exclude people, he includes, even when His son is rejected and killed "outside the gate". Nothing could do greater harm than for the disciples to become conditioned to being rejected. Fear of rejection wounds the spirit. And when our spirits are wounded the first thing we do is wall off to keep from being hurt again. Christ was warning his disciples not to do this. Putting a wall up stops the flow of love. Christ put his finger on the source of the problem when He said "they will think they are doing service to God", and in a strange way the offended party blames God for the offense, first and then others. The vine is separated from the Branch and it dies. Feeling offended is one of the greatest deterents to our Father's love.
           In a sermon from  his book "This Week, Volume X" entitled The Fear of Rejection, John Stevens said it this way;
                                       "There is perhaps no greater drawback to the Body-of-Christ 
                                         ministry than the fear of rejection. When that fear becomes a
                                         conviction to us, we think that no one really cares about us. 
                                         The fear of rejection is Adamic in human nature. God does 
                                         not deal with rejection; He deals with inclusion".
        If the disciples could keep from being offended by abiding in His love, then they could be free. Christ wanted the disciples to be free from the fear of rejection from others but also from within their own group. Again Stevens said:
                                             "With this removal of fear will come a great deal of freedom.
                                              No longer will anyone say in his heart, “I must do what
                                              those in authority tell me to do, because if I don’t,
                                             I will be excluded;  I will be put out there in the outer circle someplace.        
                                             More and more we will realize that there is neither
                                             an outer circle nor an inner circle.
                                             We are all one, and that oneness will become more evident."
         It is interesting that after chapter 16 Christ's launched into his prayer to the Father for the oneness of His disciples. He prayed for their oneness with the  Father, Christ and among themselves. Just as important  he prayed for you and me (17:20). Our oneness is the key to world evangelism (17:21).  
         In our day not offending is big. People have to be Politically Correct, PC, or there is trouble because the "love of many has waxed cold". We are not victims as Christians.  We should not offend but we should never be offended. He prayed for us not to be rapture out to some safe haven (heaven) but that we should be send into the world to towns like "Poker's Flat" (17:15). The real path to the true freedom, safe harboring, abiding with our Father,  lay in the words of Christ, me skandalisthete. 


Taken from the sermon "Healing the Wounded Spirit".

Fire or Ice

Some say the world will end in fire,  
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice, 
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

      With compliments to Robert Frost, the debate over how the world will end continues. All in all it seems that we are also seeing fairly convincing arguments watching reality on television. Looking at the way the earth is pitching and rolling and the capacity for man to self destruct and take the planet with him, leaves us to "ponder a new what the Almighty can do."
     I was talking with my brother who lives on a farm in eastern Arkansas near the Mississippi River. During our conversation Steve mentioned that the waters of the mighty Miss were near the top of the nearby levi. I offered a cautionary remark about his safety,  but he laughed. He said at least I am not living with mud slides, fire, rain, tsunamis, earthquake and oh yes, where radiation can get to me. In fact, he smugly said, "All things considered I feel rather save here in Arkansas as compared with you in California."  He has a point.
     After I hung up I began to wonder just how should I think about the recent events of 2011.  Some verses from Paul's letter to the Romans came to mind along with a recent word from our pastor, Gary Hargrave, "From Hopelessness Into Hope". If we are going to read the paper or watch videos on Youtube concerning, the earthquake, tsunami, nuclear melt down, freezing snow, jet streams filled with fall out, radioactive food, and future predictions of the same, and let us not forget that the middle east is streaming news of wars and threats of war, then we need to make sure we are not wrongly influenced by it all. Otherwise, with all of this happening we might join Robert Frost in consideration of the best way to go out.

Gas Masks

     However, if we look to some other influences we might see a different picture. In Romans the eighth chapter Paul tells us that the whole earth is in travail like a woman wanting to give birth (see also, Matt. 24 & John 16). This travail is not for the destruction of the earth or of man, as it might look.  Her joy comes and the pain is forgotten because she has given birth to a man. The answer for the earth is the birthing of God's sons. The travail of the earth is actually helping to create the answer for these problems by "groaning" for our redemption (Romans 8:18-25).
     Our hope and all creation's hope is in the redemption of the sons of God. This is not just to make heaven a more heavenly place, if that is possible, but to make the earth a more heavenly place. The war is over the manifestation of God's sons, the band of brothers and sisters of Christ.
     So when all this is happening around us, the radio, the television, the computer, even friends on FB, when they start trying to fill us with fear and foreboding, we do not let them influence us. Our influence is from what the word of God is telling us. "God is for us who (or what) can be against us"(Romans 8)? When we hear or see these things happening, Christ said in Luke 21:28, "look up"(even if we have to put on masks to block the radiation as we are looking up)"your redemption is coming near."