Easter Meditation

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb; and she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had been lying, one at the head and the other at the feet. They said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping?" She said to them, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." When she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, "Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you looking for?" 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." Jesus said to her, "Mary!" She turned and said to him in Hebrew, "Rabbouni!" (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, "Do not hold on to me, because I have not yet ascended to the Father. But go to my brothers and say to them, 'I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.'" Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, "I have seen the Lord"; and she told them that he had said these things to her.

John 20:11-18

Every year I always feel Easter comes and goes in the blink of an eye. Christmas is always a big deal, of course. Since I've been a student pretty much my whole life, I'm used to the rhythm of school calendars, which always find it convenient to have a nice long break build around Christmas time. But judging from the pace of life these days, universities couldn't care less about Christianity's most important holiday.

That's okay, of course. I find it pretty silly to get on a soapbox about the increasing secularization of our culture or whatever. I only bring it up because as a matter of empirical fact the pace of our lives tends to be out of joint with the theological heart of Christianity. Easter really is the day for Christians.

And not just the day. Why would the Monday after Easter be just another Monday? Certainly the Monday after the first Easter could not have been a normal day. Luke records that Jesus met with the apostles for forty days after his resurrection. What must those forty days have been like?

Being raised Protestant, I've really only ever observed Church Calendar Lite, so unlike Catholics and Orthodox I'm only vaguely aware that the forty days after Easter have always been a special season for the Church. But I'm pretty sure I know why the forty days after Easter should be a special season. This marks the forty days during which everything changed.

As I understand it, the Christian faith is faith in Easter, that is, faith in what happened early in the morning on the first day of the week almost 2,000 years ago.

Oh, I know other stuff is important, too. The story of the resurrection has plenty of back story, and plenty of story that follows it. But for me, it's the story of Jesus rising from the dead that makes Christianity live. If Jesus lives, then Christianity lives. If Jesus is dead, then Christianity is dead.

I find that in religious discussions, too much emphasis tends to get placed on the other details. Not that other details aren't meaningful. But are you really going to find your life in an exact statement of theological truth?

"But Jameson," you'll ask me,"aren't you a mathematician? Don't you know that without getting the details right, you don't have truth?" Nonsense. Every mathematician knows that when you're looking for a new result, you have to ignore some details at the beginning to get to the core of what you're trying to solve. My advisor is always explaining to me how "morally" this or that result should be plausible. Of course the details matter; you can't write a paper without them. But if you don't get to the core of the truth first, you won't even know where to start.

I adore this resurrection narrative in John. Every time I get to the end of John and read the words of Jesus, "Mary!" I admit that tears come to my eyes. What a beautiful way John frames his whole gospel! Just as in the first chapter, Jesus asks the first disciples, "What are you looking for?" so now Jesus asks Mary, "Whom are you looking for?" Just as Andrew tells Simon, "We have found the Messiah," so Mary makes the inverse statement, "They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him." Just as the disciples call him "Rabbi" (and there John also notes the translation, Teacher), so Mary calls him "Rabbouni." And just as Jesus says to those first disciples, "Come and see," he says to Mary, "Mary!" and she does see. Thus, finally, the resurrection is the fulfillment of Jesus' words to Nathanael, "You will see greater things than these."

So you see the whole gospel is really about seeing. It is not first about knowing, though Jesus speaks often about knowing the Father. Yet before one can know, one must see. Christianity is an empirical religion. It is not about philosophical first principles. It is not about presuppositions and logic and systematic proofs of God's existence. It's about seeing.

And yet, "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." We have many reasons for believing in the resurrection (I recommend reading N. T. Wright on this issue; here's a nice video to start with). Yet there is inevitably a sense of risk, a sense that this really just might not be true. Jesus was gracious enough to appear to Thomas, but I certainly have not seen him in the body.

The resurrection is both the easiest and the hardest thing for me to put my faith in. The easiest because I know it is good news, the hardest because I know how disappointing it is when faith in good news fails. If only I could just see. I really don't think people give Thomas enough credit. "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." Why should he? I tell you, it's the oddest thing to me when modern people assume early Christians had no sense of scientific evidence.

"Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe." I do not take these words as a rejection of our empirical faculties, since Jesus did just at that moment show Thomas exactly what he had demanded as evidence. Rather, I take it that these words are meant as comfort to the rest of us, who have to take it on faith that this really happened. Sometimes it just seems downright cruel. We have to take it on the strength of a few disciples from Galilee that Jesus actually physically rose from the dead? And not even on that, but rather on the record of their testimony passed down for hundreds and hundreds of years. I should hope Jesus has compassion on us if our faith falters.

Yet believing in this resurrection is the greatest thing that we can do. Whatever else we believe, if we believe in the resurrection of Jesus, we have something quite remarkable. For the rest of the world operates under its sovereign ruler, Death. It may not at first appear so, but that's exactly what it is. We inspire ourselves with words like, "Imagine all the people living for today," but it is no more than a sedative to help us face the inevitability of everything we know being swallowed up in Death. All of our art, science, literature, and technology; all of our good deeds to one another, our loving relationships, our hopes and our dreams; all of the best meals we eat, the beautiful places we see, the stars we marvel at, the music we listen to, the creatures we wonder at, the mountains we climb, the oceans we explore, and all of our homes we build--all of these things will be swallowed up in Death.

It is no different if you want to talk about reincarnation, or souls floating off to heaven, or becoming immortal through the memory of others; no, in all of these things Death has the final word. Rarely do people choose to bow down and serve Death, yet most people have no choice but to go on in dim resignation to the fact that Death alone is god. Any attempt they make to find meaning in this world is nothing but a pathetic whimper which Death allows because he knows he will eventually be satisfied. Death's desire is to consume, and it does not appear that there is anything that can resist his will.

But we have the resurrection of Jesus. Our God is the God of Life. That is the point. That is the heart of it all. If you do not believe in resurrection, then what do you have? A tiny blip in a vast, empty universe. Oh, how people will comfort themselves by saying they are strong enough to accept this! There is no strength in accepting Death as god. If Death is god, then you accept him while I reject him, and he will laugh at us both. For in the end, he will consume us both. The king and the pawn end up in the same box. No one is stronger for knowing the difference.

As for me, I believe in the God of Life. I believe in the God who gives us all things: all of our art, science, literature, and technology; all of our good deeds to one another, our loving relationships, our hopes and our dreams; all of the best meals we eat, the beautiful places we see, the stars we marvel at, the music we listen to, the creatures we wonder at, the mountains we climb, the oceans we explore, and all of our homes we build--and I believe all of these things are meant to live on into a new world, where there will be no more death.

Death has been swallowed up in victory. That is the heart of it all. There is reason to believe that Death is not god. There is reason to explore this beautiful world, and to care for one another, and to love life and enjoy every minute of it. Death cannot claim it. Life is real, life is beautiful, and life will not go away. Our God is the God of Life.

And that's why the season of Easter really matters. We have a job to do. Life is too precious not to be celebrated. Seize the day? No, seize life! It is not the scarcity of life that makes it precious; it is the thing itself. We don't live in the moment on the principle that the moment is all we have; rather we live in the moment because our God will always be with us in the moment. Eternity will be manifest to us moment by moment, and each moment will be better than the one before it. There is no limit. We hopelessly stifle our imaginations because do not believe this.

So why are we going about business as usual? The world must be conquered with the message of Life. We have not even begun to show what it means that Jesus has conquered Death. Until we free our hearts from a tacit acceptance of Death, until we have enough faith to believe that Eternal Life is really possible, we will never begin to do the things we are capable of. We will never get to see life for what it really is.

My intention this season of Easter is to truly see. I have to keep my eyes open. It is easy to pretend that you see simply because you want so badly to see. It is also easy to stop looking because you are tired of not finding. But if there truly is life that conquers death, then it is worth looking for, every moment of every day. And I think we do see it every day, even if often we pass it by because we're not ready to see it. I pray that God will help us to see, so that we might believe in Life, and in the One who gives Life.

Reading Paul

For he will repay according to each one's deeds: to those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life; while for those who are self-seeking and who obey not the truth but wickedness, there will be wrath and fury.

Romans 2:6-8

During the adult education hour at our church, I've been going to a class on Romans. We Protestants love Romans, don't we? To us it almost seems to summarize the gospel more sublimely and succinctly than, well, um, the gospels. (shrug)

Anyway, the structure of the class has been to hit a series of hot-button issues dealt with in Romans, rather than to outline the overall argument. The teachers have been very up front that this is what they're doing, so I can't blame them for it. It is good to educate Christians about modern controversies about the Bible. At the very least, when people hear all the fuss about N. T. Wright and the "New Perspective on Paul" they'll know a little bit about what's going on.

I have to give the teachers credit for stating explicitly that we're not to judge anyone with regards to the controversy on Paul's view of justification in Romans. There's an awful lot of mudslinging that goes on over seemingly obscure theological issues, but since many people take those issues to be the core of the gospel, they're quick to pass judgment on new ideas.

What do I mean by "obscure theological issues"? It might sound offensive to many Christians, but that's really what these are: obscure. Face it. You don't know what Romans says in Greek, do you? If you do, then great, but let's all admit from the start that a) Paul is hard to understand and b) if God's salvation is based on understanding theological fine print, we're all screwed.

So what are these issues that are obscure yet central to what many Christians believe is the gospel? Quite simply: God's righteousness, our guilt, and justification by faith apart from the law.

These are big theological concepts, so thankfully we've broken them down so that even little children can understand. We're all sinners, but God is so merciful to us that he sent his only Son to die on our behalf, so that if we believe in him he will forgive our sins, and we can go to heaven. Justified by faith: just as if I'd never sinned. Easy, right?

Except that it isn't so easy. Evangelicals insist so adamantly that our salvation is not by works that they virtually screen out passages like Romans 2 (see the quote above) where Paul explicitly states that there will be a final judgment according to works. What happened to faith alone?

I asked one of the teachers at the end of our class today about this, and he actually thought that Romans 2 worked in his favor, against the New Perspective guys, including Wright.

His reasoning is as follows. The thing that the New Perspective does with Paul is that it makes justification by faith not so much about how we are saved (soteriology), but about who constitutes the church (ecclesiology). There is massive evidence for this shift in Romans, including the fact that every single time Paul brings up justification by faith, it's in the context of talking about the Jew/Gentile distinction that is now abolished in Christ.

The problem, my teacher says, is that Romans 2 makes it clear that when Paul talks about works, he is also talking about the moral law, not just the particularly Jewish law. So when Paul says that justification is by faith apart from works, he means those works, too.

Wait a minute. So, he's basically interpreting Romans 3 in such a way as to nullify what was just said in Romans 2, and to do that he actually uses Romans 2? That's like using Paul to refute Paul. Something is amiss.

In fact, the vast majority of evangelical churches interpret Romans 2 the way they want to. They call it "reading in context," but it's not reading in Paul's context--just the context of post-Reformation theology. They explain it like this: in Romans 2, Paul is showing us that God has the right to demand of us perfect righteousness. But then in Romans 3, he shows us that none of us are righteous, and that there's no hope except in God's mercy. So then he finishes Romans 3 by telling us how we are justified by faith apart from works, because there's no way we could be saved by our works.

The only problem is that's basically interpreting Romans 2:6-8 out of existence. It's not reading it "in context," it's just a failure to take it seriously. In absolutely no part of Romans does Paul ever indicate that he's not utterly serious when he says, "To those who by patiently doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, he will give eternal life."

So is this "works salvation?" Well, one huge complicating factor is that Paul often seems to view salvation as a different thing from judgment at the end time. Having taken my teacher's advice and read Romans straight through (about three times since this class start three weeks ago) I noticed that often Paul talks about being "saved" while referring merely to conversion. It seems to indicate being rescued from the present corrupt generation and being brought into God's people, "grafted into the root," as it were.

But then other times, as in Romans 13:11, Paul refers to "salvation" as being the end time, perhaps the return of Jesus. And in that context, he says quite explicitly that we need to "lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armor of light."

Paul would seem to be saying that the first kind of salvation is absolutely not based on works, but entirely by faith (cf. Romans 10:9-10). But as for anticipating the hope in which we were saved (8:24) Paul exhorts us to "put to death the deeds of the body," "for if you live according to the flesh, you will die." (8:13) And this seems entirely consistent with what he said back in Romans 2, that people will be judged according to works.

But is it by our own effort that we're saved? Paul doesn't really seem to be saying, "Just put in the effort and you'll be saved." He says, "If by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live." Without the Spirit, for Paul, nothing is possible. With the Spirit, everything is possible. So in the end, it's still all by grace--not by your own works, but by the work of the Spirit.

What is Paul's primary message in all of Romans? Well, starting in Ch. 1 he talks a lot about faith; then especially in Ch. 8 he talks about hope; but he ends the letter by talking about "the greatest of these": love. Echoing the words of Jesus, Paul answers for us the question of how we ultimately please God: "The commandments... are summed up in this word, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'" (13:9)

Kind of funny how 1 Cor. 13 is the "love chapter," and then it turns out, so is Romans 13!

And that really does, I think, summarize Paul's biggest point ever: it's all about love. In Romans 2, when he's talking about judgment, he starts with, don't judge others! And in Ch. 12-15, he talks about serving one another, overcoming evil with good, and not violating someone else's conscience, and all the other ways in which we show love.

In the end, I don't understand Romans any better than the next guy in my Sunday school class. But I do know that Protestants will often go to great lengths to twist passages in Romans that don't suit their preconceived notions of what "the context" of Romans is. And that seems wrong to me, mostly because I think it causes us to miss Paul's greatest point ever, which is that it's all about love!

So if anyone asks me what the gospel is all about, I will say it's all about love. And I think that's easy enough for a child to understand.

Reason and Power

For the kingdom of God depends not on talk but on power. --1 Corinthians 4:20

So often I have read the words of Jesus in John's gospel and thought, "This guy doesn't make any sense." In fact, the most shocking conversion stories to me are the ones in which a Christian claims to have come to believe because of John.

Just what were they smoking?

Just go right to John 3, one of the most beloved passages in the whole New Testament.

Nicodemus... came to Jesus by night and said to him, "Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God." Jesus answered him, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above." Nicodemus said to him, "How can anyone be born after having grown old? ..." Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit."

Far from clarifying what he just said, Jesus just makes it stronger: you must be born from above. And frankly, the way he said it in the first place just came out of nowhere. What's Nicodemus to think?

Or turn over to John 6, and read

"I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you."

Once again, what are the Jews to think? Instead of clarifying, he just makes what he just said even more offensive.

In my humble opinion, the worst thing you can ever do with these passages is explain them, justify them, make them your own. I confess I get a little irritable with a person who does this, whether it's a Catholic explaining why this means transubstantiation is real or a Protestant explaining why a "born-again" experience is the only way to salvation.

Something always bothers me about John, to such an extent that I feel you have to be asleep not to be bothered by it. But it's John more than anything else that has caused me to think lately about what I call the tragedy of reason.

"Justify your answer." These words are the hallmark of reason. Justification: you have to have it to pass your final exam in mathematics, or to win the approval of your thesis committee, or to win the respect of your peers who wonder why you believe what you believe.

"Justify your answer." It might as well be "justify yourself." Reason is defense. It is a substitute for power--or a means of obtaining it.

Our entire legal system is based on a complex web of reason and logic. Why? Because reason shifts the balance of power. The weak can defend themselves against the strong by a forceful use of language. If I can prove that I have been wronged, then I can topple even the richest and most powerful corporation. Power makes an empire, but reason makes a civilization.

Just think of it: what can possibly be scarier than someone who never has to justify what he does? Someone for whom reason is an obsolete tool?

When someone utterly fails to give reasons that satisfy the rest of us, we call that person crazy. Their words don't connect logically; we fail to see an order to their behavior. Crazy people who have little power we simply medicate. Crazy people who are dangerous, we lock up. Crazy people who have power--well, we usually try to kill them.

Is this not how Jesus was received? "Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?" (8:48) "Do you refuse to speak to me? Do you not know that I have power to release you, and power to crucify you?" (19:10)

Why doesn't Jesus defend himself in any logical way? Why not write out a theological treatise that makes it all clear? Why not invite the whole world to see plainly and rationally that He is God incarnate?

"Even if I testify on my own behalf, my testimony is valid because I know where I have come from and where I am going... You judge by human standards; I judge no one" (8:14-15) For Jesus, reason is obsolete. He need not justify Himself. He knows where He is from.

John's gospel is about power, not reason. It is about empire, not civilization. Civilization works with finite resources as efficiently as it can. Jesus has limitless resources, for He speaks new things into existence.

Human empires have no power but the power of destruction; but God's empire has the power of creation. That is why God Incarnate is bold enough to drink the cup of His own destruction down to the bottom, for He has power to lay down His life and take it up again. (10:18)

Jesus does not ask that we simply admire this power in Him. He asks that we follow Him. "Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life." (12:25) He came not only to demonstrate power, but to empower others. Those who can drink deep the cup of their own destruction with confidence--they must truly be invincible.

And yet what is the chief commandment of this man who is mad with power? "Love one another." This is the mystery of the Christian faith.

If reason is obsolete, what, then? Will we ever understand? How can we know God if He does not explain Himself? No question can better summarize the tragedy of reason.

We humans love reason because we have broken this world apart. We love reason because we hate each other. We demand explanation! What are you doing? What do you mean? How do you know that? It is a systemic hatred, not necessarily felt by all who participate in it. It is simply the human condition.

Reason is good; creation is better. For now humans use reason to justify the way we use limited resources. John urges us to enjoy God's limitless abundance without shame.

My application of all this: creativity is more fundamental than reason. Power is seen not in destruction, nor even in reason, but in creation. Reason is an act of defense; creativity is an act of love. Life is not a zero-sum game, for life can be found in eternal abundance.

Oh, that my life were already being lived this way.