Imagination’s spent on many pretty things,
All swaddled in sweet sense like songs the sirens sing;
But if you turn your eye from all that dazzles you,
A richer world of wonder will rise up into view.
For wonder can’t be bought by travels, tales, or time:
For all that glitters is not gold, nor sings that is sublime.
But if you see with eyes that pierce through shallow sights,
All life becomes a fairy tale, and darkness becomes light.
The Directory for the Public Worship of God, published by the Westminster divines in an attempt to unify the worship of the English and Scottish Protestant church, has a fascinating chapter on the subject of public prayer. In an offered example of a corporate public prayer, we find an exhaustive confession of sin containing these words:
“And next, by reason of actual sins, [we confess] our own sins, the sins of magistrates, of ministers, and of the whole nation, unto which we are many ways accessory.”[1]
In this prayer, I am struck by the burden of confession carried by the congregation. This prayer does not abide the idea that when we confess our sin, we are merely admitting personal failing. Obviously, confession is not less than this, but it is most certainly more. For the divines, appropriate confession is not merely about our personal sins, but those of the magistrates and the entire nation. It is an admission of guilt based upon “accessory”, the idea that the sin is not merely perpetuated by individual responsibility, but also by corporate accessory.
The idea of confessing sins on behalf of our corporate, civil, and national context is a rather unpalatable idea to our individualistic Western values. It runs against the grain of our every inclination; we balk at confessing our own sins, let alone the sins of the culture. This idea has gained some recent popularity through the advocates of racial reconciliation with their writings on systemic, institutionalized racism. However, setting aside the tangled issue of race relations, I wonder if it is appropriate to broaden the scope of our confessions in worship. Perhaps we ought to take seriously the lesson contained in the Westminster divines offered example.
We are masters of deflection, and so we chafe under the idea of confession. When we were children caught with our hands in cookie jars, we learned the important skill of crafting the excuse. Evading guilt is as natural to us as breathing. Unfortunately, thanks to our skill in this arena, there are no shortages of prepackaged scapegoats, ready to take the blame for our sins.
Kevin Spacey’s recent fall from grace is an interesting case study in evading guilt. Amidst the scandals currently rocking Hollywood, Spacey’s sin hit the national spotlight. Facing the accusations of his victim, he admitted his guilt, but attempted to mollify the situation by taking the opportunity to come out of the closet as gay. It was a telling attempt to harness the emotional power of gay pride and arrest his plummet into disgrace.
This is an effective rhetorical trick, and one widely used in our time. Basically, one can make any action or policy understandable by lending it enough emotionally-laden context to stir public sympathy. The left does this when they repeatedly conjure the most pitiful hypothetical scenarios of victimized women in order to justify abortion policies. The right wing does this in glossing over the shameful public sins of Donald Trump, diverting attention away from his indiscretions and upon the excesses of the liberal agenda. These are exercises in deflection, in avoiding the import of the moral questions at stake.
Whenever a political or social ill reaches the national spotlight, we retreat to predictable excuses and evasions. We all have someone to blame for the great American dumpster fire. It’s the Right. The Left. Men. Women. Hollywood. The alt-right. Antifa. Black Lives Matter. Everyone has a reason the system is broken, and nobody’s reason is themselves.
Here’s the question I really want to raise in writing this. I realize it is a hopeful question, even naïve, but I am going to raise it.
What if we stopped? What if we stopped shifting blame to every political and social institution and evil we could think of? What if we stopped blaming Democrats for bad economic policy? What if we stopped blaming Republicans for misogyny? What if we stopped blaming Hollywood for relaxed moral codes?
What if, instead, we stood before God on Sundays and prayed this prayer of confession: “[We confess] our own sins, the sins of magistrates, of ministers, and of the whole nation, unto which we are many ways accessory.” What if, instead of deflection and blame, we sackcloth-and-ashed the whole situation, and grieved before God for the ways we have been accessory to evil? What kind of impact would this have upon our times?
After all, if guilt is bound up in accessory, who among us is not guilty?
[1] Westminster Assembly. (1851). The Westminster Confession of Faith: Edinburgh Edition (p. 482). Philadelphia: William S. Young.
The Sabbath is one of the recurrent themes you will find on this blog, for it is one of the recurrent themes we continue to explore in our own lives. (A few weeks ago, Nathaniel wrote a wonderful post on the Sabbath. The post that here follows is a mere footnote to a much better one, so if you haven’t read his, your time would be better spent reading it than this). Many more posts will come from each of us delving into different facets of the Sabbath and what this means for us today. But as this current Sabbath is coming to a close, I wanted to take a moment to discuss what it might mean for the Sabbath to define our workweek, not just our Sundays. What does it mean to be not merely a Sabbath-keeping people but a Sabbath People?
We are living in the land between: a time of celebration and anticipation, of work still to be done and of rest in the work already accomplished through Christ. As we wade through the waters of the already/not-yet reality of the Church Age, we must now decide how we will Sabbath. For many, their lifestyle determines how they Sabbath, but I propose a radical reversal: let Sabbath determine our lifestyle. For is not our whole life bound up in the Sabbath rest accomplished and promised in the work of Christ? Are we not Sabbath people in a Sabbath age? Do we not daily enjoy the benefits of resting in Christ’s work on our behalf? If this is so, then we are truly a “Sabbath People.” And as Sabbath People, we must learn to live Sabbath lifestyles.
Whole books have been written on how to do the Sabbath, so I don’t presume to be able to cover the entire application of the Sabbath in only a few paragraphs. But I do want to propose a vision for what a Sabbath lifestyle might look like Monday through Saturday, as well as two ways we can particularly celebrate the Sabbath on Sundays.
The first thing to realize is that Jesus as Sabbath-fulfillment does not mean the Sabbath does not apply to us as believers. It actually means the application is bigger and broader! In Christ, the Old Covenant is fulfilled and expanded. What was one day extends to all the days, just as the Spirit abides in all believers and the law is written on our all of our hearts. It is a fuller realization—not an undoing—of the Old Covenant. What was in the Old Covenant becomes deeper and more meaningful in the new. The ceremonial law wasn’t abolished—it is fulfilled. So, Jesus is our Sabbath rest, which applies to all the days in some way. I propose two ways the Sabbath can apply to your everyday life: relationships as Sabbath rest and work as Sabbath rest.
In our fallen state, relationships can be some of the most painful and messy parts of our lives. And while nothing can be done in this life to fully mitigate the damage of sin, a theology of Sabbath calls us to consider how the work and rest of God might define how we do relationships. Often, our relationships can become coercive, merely functioning as a self-serving way to gain approval, advancement, pleasure, or a host of other things we think we need and can gain through relationship. But the heart of the Sabbath speaks to the need to look to no one but our Creator and Redeemer to meet our needs. It speaks of a resting in the approval of the Father, a contentment in the work of Christ, a delight in the Trinity, and an overall goodwill that leaves us with an abundance of blessings we need not work for by selfish, coercive relationships. People then become those we can serve and bless rather than take from. For indeed, service and blessing are the heart of the Sabbath, as seen in Christ’s Sabbath works during his three year ministry.
In the same way, we often set high expectations for those around us and find it difficult to forgive when others have not met our standard. And yet the Sabbath tells us that the standard has been met and our sins have been forgiven: we are called to rest in a relationship already won, not work for a relationship needed to be earned. So we are called to pattern our relationships after God’s relationship with us and remove the burden of expectations and resentment so often intrinsic to our friendships and family relationships. To be a Sabbath People means to have restful relationships where there are no expectations and where people are enjoyed as they are, just as God enjoys us as we are, secured in the work of Another on our behalf.
Work, too, can be done in the pattern of the Sabbath. It is obvious that our Western culture has made an idol of productivity. Like the slavery in Egypt, our culture is one of anxious productivity in which our whole identities are defined by what we can produce and offer. And yet, even in the Old Covenant, God declared that work must only be done within the context of a cycle of rest: one day in seven and one year in seven (Lev. 25:4). As Israel entered into the fruitful land of Canaan, it would become a temptation to be lost in prosperity and productivity, and forget that everything comes from the hand of the Creator: “prosperity breed amnesia,” says Brueggemann. Sabbath was made to remind Israel that their benefits come not from their labor but from the Lord, which cuts through both anxiety and pride. Hence, the Psalmist can say: “Do not eat the bread of anxious toil,” for unless the Lord builds the house, it is built in vain (Ps. 127:1-2). The God of Sabbath gives to his beloved rest (Ps 127:3), for they rest in God, not in the work of their hands. So as we work, we work in the rest that all has been accomplished and that our Creator is the one who sustains us. We work not in anxiety or pride, but in humble gratitude for the work done and in anticipation of the final completed work to come.
Once our work is done for the week, God has granted a special day set aside for “ceasing” from our labors. Because most books on the Sabbath focus on the need to cease work, worship with believers, and perform acts of mercy, I want to focus on two other ways to Sabbath on Sunday. Clearly, the Sabbath should be spent worshipping in celebration of the work of Christ; in the same way, it should be spent resting from normal labor as a sacramental participation in the accomplished work of Christ in his resurrection. Sadly, if we only see Sundays as a day to “go to church” and not make money, we have missed the larger practice of Sabbath-keeping. I propose that the Sabbath should also be spent in embracing and feasting as an outgrowth of Sabbath relationships and Sabbath work.
Often when we think of the communal aspect of Sunday, we think of corporate worship—and well we should. Yet this is not where our Sabbath relationships should end. In anticipation of the glorious future community of the Kingdom of God, we embrace each other through our hospitality and mutual enjoyment. Often Monday through Saturday provides a deep tension between work and relationship, and many times family and friendships suffer because our work consumes our time and our minds. And so, as a boon, God has given us the Sabbath as a way to relieve this tension and provide a day set aside to embrace family and friends in love through joyful hospitality. In this we act out our Heavenly Father’s own hospitality, welcoming us into his eternal abode and making us a permanent part of his own family.
What better way to practice relationship and hospitality and celebrate the completion of our work than through feasting? Sabbath since the creation of the world has been a time of celebration. After looking upon his accomplished work, God rested and enjoyed what he had made. He savored the work accomplished and He savored it with Adam (have you ever realized that the day after he was made, Adam celebrated the first Sabbath with his creator?). And so how much more should our Sabbaths, filled with the marvelous truths of Christ’s redemptive work accomplished and applied, be a time of celebration and enjoyment of the Jesus’ work accomplished on our behalf? Not only this, it is also an “eschatological party” anticipating the final feast of the Lamb in the New Heavens and New Earth, a new creation celebration with our Creator (Rev. 19). Our Sabbaths should be filled with feasting on food and drink with good Christian friends as an anticipatory and celebratory gathering—a foretaste of Canaan. It should make our Sabbaths so good that we should be sorrowful when the day ends and long for the coming Sabbath in seven days, for in this longing for the temporal Sabbath, we instill a deeper longing for the Sabbath yet to come for which we all should yearn, yet all too quickly forget during our busy weeks. And so with embracing and feasting, we participate in the act of “remembering” the Sabbath day and keeping it holy (Ex. 20:8).
Through the way we live our daily lives and celebrate our weekly Sabbath, we must do this very thing: remember and anticipate. The One who has created in us a new heart and redeemed us from the slavery of sin and the law calls us to remember his redemptive work and anticipate the final consummation of his redemptive story at the end of the age. Let us learn to be ever more a Sabbath People as we anticipate the beautiful words at the end of time: “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your rest.”
“Although I see that there is, in my body and in my soul, only perdition, that my body is only a collapsing building, a rotting carcass, so to speak, that all the vigour in it is dissolved, that I may drop off at any minute; although I see in my soul so many adversities and needs that I could be discouraged a hundred thousand times, yet because I have the witness that our Lord Jesus Christ gives himself to me as food and drink, that is, for achievement and life, I am content.” –John Calvin
On this, the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation, many of us sit weary, guilty, and discouraged. Can we not help but chuckle at the fact that because of the great Reformers we now have full access to the Bible and Gospel-preaching and far less institutional church corruption, but we’re still struggling. And we’re still so far from Eden. In our word-centric Protestant culture, we’ve become so inundated with words that they’ve lost some of their power: those words don’t satisfy that hunger, those promises ring hollow, those truths enter our heads but never make it to our hearts. Eugene Peterson tells us to “eat this book,” but it tastes bitter from the mouth all the way to the stomach. Of course, the Reformers didn’t think that the spoken and written word was the only way God communicates the Gospel to us. For them, the sacraments were an important means of feasting on Christ and his benefits, of strengthening our wavering faith, of getting those truths from our heads to our hearts.
So on this day that we’re celebrating the triumph of sola scriptura, I find comfort also in the Gospel communicated in the sacraments, something Luther and Calvin and others fought so hard to reclaim. Of course, the sacraments are a mysterious thing and I don’t plan on unraveling mysteries that Luther and Calvin couldn’t solve. But maybe even a simple apprehension of one facet of the Lord’s Supper will feed us enough to get us through the night.
When discussing the meaning of the Lord’s Supper, most people stick with the Gospel accounts and the letters of Paul. But if we do that, we’re missing many of the polyvalent themes of the Eucharist. Some of the significance of the sacrament of the New Covenant can’t be easily discerned in a simple reading of the New Testament. Through exploring some of the sacraments in the Old Testament, we can start to get a glimpse at how incredibly complex and meaningful the Lord’s Supper is and hopefully be fed far richer food because of it.
Traditionally, when we think of the Old Testament link to the Lord’s Supper, we think of Passover. And that’s true, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, most of us content ourselves with stopping there and ignoring the other Old Testament sacraments that provide for us a much fuller understanding of the significance of the Sacrament. While there are many Old Testament sacraments that nuance the significance of the Lord’s Supper, I want to explore the purpose of the Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden (which the Reformers considered to be the sacrament of God’s relationship with Adam and the Covenant of Works) and marvel at the beautiful feast Christ has laid out in his own body, our Tree of Life.
Right after God put man in the Garden of Eden, He lavished him with gifts and blessed him, saying, “take and eat of anything in the Garden”–except the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil of course. We tend to focus on the last part, the rule of abstinence, yet as we zoom in on the what is forbidden, we miss the beauty of that first phrase: God had given Adam the fruit of every tree in the Garden as a gift of His free grace. Everything was beautiful to the eyes and good for food. And in this we see that eating, partaking of God’s gifts, was a central feature of God’s relationship with man. God gave food and man ate and gave thanks, and in this there was sweet fellowship.
Among all the wonderful trees in the Garden, the Tree of Life stood in the center as the sacrament of this perfect relationship. It was a daily reminder, representation, and conduit of the life that God gave Adam daily. Calvin says, “As often as human beings tasted the fruit of that tree, they would recall the source of their life and acknowledge that they lived not by their own power but by the kindness of God alone, and that life is not an ‘intrinsic good’ [. . .] but proceeds from God.” It represented in physical form the spiritual reality that all life came from the Lord of Life who had made Adam and who enjoyed daily fellowship with him in the Garden. Adam’s life was inextricably tied to his close fellowship with God, and as he ate of the Tree of Life, he drew life from God. In this festive relationship Adam walked with God, knew God, and was satisfied. As Schmeman says, “The Bible begins [. . .] with man as a hungry being, with the man who is that which he eats.”
We see that when the Serpent entered, he didn’t command anything new. Instead, he redirected its focus. He told Adam and Eve to “take and eat” of another tree that was pleasant to the eyes and good for food–the tree of self-satisfaction, of self-knowledge, of independence. But in partaking of what was forbidden, the man and woman were separated from that life-giving relationship represented and carried out in the Tree of Life. They ceased to find their hunger assuaged in God, and relied on created things—and ultimately on their own hands—to gain the life that could only be found in God. Again, Schmeman notes, “the sin is that he ceased to be hungry for Him and for Him alone, ceased to see his whole life depending on the whole world as a sacrament of communion with God.” No longer hungry for God, Adam and Eve were excommunicated from the Garden and separated from the Tree of Life so they might recognize the separation caused by their rebellion. They were starved in order that they might become hungry again.
But thanks be to God that He didn’t leave us separated from Himself forever. Christ, as the Second Adam, has become for us the fulfillment of the Tree of Life. By returning to the tree of death, he took the Edenic curse upon himself, feeling the hunger of godforsakenness and thirsting for the living waters of the Father. Christ gave Himself to restore fellowship with us, becoming a sacrament—the sign and the thing signified, the hope of eternal life and eternal life itself. And as we partake in His death, we are given new life and renewed fellowship with God.
And so in the Lord’s Supper we find those sweet words of fellowship again, as Christ says to us “take and eat” of my body and blood given for you. As we take and eat of the Sacrament and find nourishment in Christ, we remember that the Church has life in God and communion with Him once again, that we can only find true spiritual life and nourishment of our souls if we take and eat of Him (Jn. 6:56). Like the Tree of Life, it is a reminder that we find life in Christ, that we possess nothing in ourselves, that He is our fullness, that we find our nourishment in Him alone. He is our bread and our wine, and God has said that we “may surely eat of it” (Gen. 2:16). And so as we take and eat of the bread and the wine, we are reminded that daily we must come to the throne of grace to find life and fellowship mediated through Christ, our Tree of Life. And in eating, we are satisfied and strengthened once again.
de ambigua 