Sydney Inner West 03/12/2023
Advent week 1
Reference: Romans 8: 1-8
Theme song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-QHbpYjuIg
Come all you
unfaithful. It’s so different, isn’t it? So unexpected. I want to read to you
the way the song came about, in the words of the writer, Lisa Clow:
I was struggling. It had been a long year and a half. Finances
were stressful, I miscarried twins, and on top of it I was battling a deep
relational bitterness. My church was having their annual service where they kick off the
Christmas season with carols and special songs and I, was not singing. I told
them that I wouldn’t be able to sing, but what they didn’t know is that I was
too overcome with shame to stand on stage before my church.
That
Sunday morning, I stood at my seat as they began to sing “O Come All Ye
Faithful” and the first line of the song just clobbered me. It hit me like a
giant wave of guilt.
O come all you faithful, joyful and triumphant!
I
remember hearing those words and thinking, “I have been so unfaithful. My joy
has dwindled, and I am a triumphant…failure.” And I didn’t sing the rest of the
service
At
that time, when Lisa was ashamed, sad, bitter and grieving she felt like a
failure, she may have felt like the descriptions in The Message translation Romans
8, that she was living under a low lying black cloud, fated to the tyranny of
sin and death, part of the disordered mess of struggling humanity.
But
we see from the words of the song that this is not the end of the story and we
come to the point where the sacrifice of the Lamb Of God brings us to a place
of healing:
O come, guilty and
hiding ones
There is no need to run
Christ is born for you
He's the Lamb who
was given
Slain for our pardon
His promise is peace
For those who believe
Now, I’m supposed
to be thinking about the shepherds today and I’ve been stuck on the song writer
but the shepherds are coming because I just mentioned the lamb!
And God went to a
lot of trouble to make sure the shepherds knew who they were visiting when they
went to see the baby in the manger.
These shepherds
were not ordinary shepherds, they were the priestly shepherds who were
responsible for the safety and suitability and ritual cleanliness of the lambs which
were sacrificed in the temple and we know this because in ancient Israel, the
only sheep which were allowed to be any where near municipal boundaries were
the sacrificial flock, all the others had to live in the wilderness. These
shepherds and their sheep were in the fields, in walking distance of Bethlehem.
So they were cared
for by these shepherds who were priests and knew the scriptures backwards and because
they had to make sure the lambs met all the ritual requirements, the shepherds were
responsible for the salvation of the whole community.
When a ewe was
ready to lamb, the shepherds took her to a safe place because they couldn’t
just have these lambs born in a field and vulnerable to the elements and
getting hurt and things like that. And we know where the shepherds took these
ewes, they took them to the “Tower of the Flock” where it was safe and clean
and protected. And when the lambs were born they were wrapped up in cloths to
make sure they didn’t wobble around on their cute little newborn legs and fall
and get hurt. And they were kept still until they were calm and could be
allowed to walk around.
Show picture
There is a tower on
the site still today but it’s a very tall and well made tower so I think this
one is closer to the tower that was standing at the time. It’s interesting that
when we think of the shepherds watching over their flocks we just think they
were watching but watching over really suggests that they were on top of a
tower like this.
The shepherds knew
the prophecy because it was so intimately linked to their work and to their
location, they understood the symbolism of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes,
they were the people who ensured and verified the purity of the lambs, they
knew where to look.
And if you had
something to reveal, something that wouldn’t be recognised or understood or
respected by everyone, you’d want to be careful to choose the right people to
reveal it to, the right people to then take the news to the world. The shepherds
were the right people to understand what they saw, the right people to explain
to the world, the right people to verify that Jesus was the Lamb of God.
And so, we come
back to the lamb of God, the lamb who achieves the purity we never can, the
lamb who makes us clean and free, who is perfect and makes us perfect if we are
in him. And we can be confident that we no longer need to be feeling
unfaithful, dirty, ashamed. God showed us without question that Jesus is the
only sacrificial lamb we will ever need:
7 comments:
I felt the need to look up what the SA believes about atonement: "We believe that the Lord Jesus Christ has by His suffering and death made an atonement for the whole world so that whosoever will may be saved." The church I grew up in also believes that God (omnipotent though he is and despite the fact that he commands us to forgive freely) can only forgive the guilty if the innocent dies. The killing of innocent animals had to be repeated and was therefore inadequate to gain his once-and-always forgiveness, so God the Father sent God the Son to die in an ancient and savage land so that God the Father could forever-after forgive any sin but the undefined sin of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is the one sin for which Christ's blood is inadequate to atone.
When I was twelve, I cursed God to his face because I was endlessly struggling to no avail to believe in him. In my oath, I pointed out that even his Son's faith failed him on the cross, so how dare he leave me in misery by threatening to send me to hell if I didn't truly believe but giving me no faith with which I could truly believe. I immediately concluded that I had blasphemed against the Holy Spirit, and terror pervaded my life into my upper teens. I did everything I could to believe in God, but the only God I ever came close to believing in was the one I feared, the God who can only forgive the guilty if the innocent dies, the God of whom I was so afraid as a child that I hid under the bed after listening to hellfire sermons. When I concluded that such a God was worse than Satan (my conclusion being what many consider blasphemy against the Holy Spirit), I stopped believing in God. I then surveyed other versions of God, but finding them also inadequate, I became an atheist.
There are interpretations of Christ's death that don't involve a blood sacrifice (https://www.sdmorrison.org/7-theories-of-the-atonement-summarized/). I studied these through theology courses in a Methodist college in a desperate attempt to regain my faith, but all seemed inadequate because, after all, if God wanted us to behave in certain ways, why did he so stack the deck against us that not a single person who ever lived has succeeded in behaving in those ways; and if he wants us to please him freely, how can it be that the creator of galaxies feels so inadequate that he needs to have his ego bolstered by the worship of a failed and fleeting species on a miniscule planet in the far reaches of the Milky Way; and why is it that he unjustly allows trillions of innocent beings in that solar system--the sacrificial lambs of old, the children of Gaza, etc.--to wallow in agony? If Satan is to blame, why doesn't God--being omnipotent--destroy Satan? Finally, if God regards the death of the innocent as a basis for forgiveness--and, as I was taught, sends to hell those who die before asking forgiveness for their latest sin--how can it be said that God is just? If, as you believe, God exists, then we are no more and no less than what he made us to be, and it is he who stands in need of our forgiveness. My beliefs about the nature of the God of the Bible being more or less true to what most churches teach, I sincerely wonder if the people in those churches love him as they claim, or if they're simply afraid that they will be cast into hell if they don't.
Snow,
You asked better questions than I have and you asked them a lot earlier.
My own theology is changing and it is moving away from the teaching of my denomination and probably most others.
I don't believe in the "eternal punishment of the wicked" if the everyday person is "the wicked" and I don't know where I would draw the boundary condemning someone.
The death of Jesus doesn't make a lot of sense to me, if God is loving and omnipotent, he didn't need a sacrifice except I suppose as a symbolic end to animal sacrifice.
I don't have answers to any of the issues within doctrine and theology but I know that the teaching of Christianity is the framework I have used to develop as a person and increase my love for others.
Answering all the questions is still something i am interested in but so far it hasn't made me consider changing course
"Answering all the questions is still something i am interested in but so far it hasn't made me consider changing courses."
I wouldn't want you to change courses. I write to you as I do because we share an attachment to Christianity. Yours is largely positive and mine is largely negative (because of the horrendous harm Christianity has done throughout history; and to me personally; and, at present, to American society in the form of racism, homophobia, anti-abortionism, Trumpism, anti-environmentalism, intolerance of other religions, and so forth). Yet I know that there are those who have done good because of their Christian beliefs (Dorothy Day, Albert Schweitzer, Reinhold Niebuhr, Desmond Tutu, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Martin Luther King Jr, to name a few). I believe that you are probably a better person because you're a Christian, and it would sadden me greatly if you thought I was trying to win you over to atheism or even if something I said had that effect.
I would like to offer a parallel so that you might better understand my motives. If, let's say, a black person (in your country, a better parallel might be an aborigine) felt hated by the white majority. It would be a powerful influence for good if such a person could share his feelings with a member of that discriminatory majority without the person he shared them with turning his or her back on him. By virtue of the fact that I live in America, I am a member of a hated minority, and you have given me the gift of acceptance. So it is that whenever I'm tempted to lump all Christians into the same negative category, I think of you.
Then there's the fact that I'm interested in the subject of Christian belief because, despite my early devoutness and despite the fact that I have known hundreds--perhaps thousands--of Christians (from fundamentalists to extreme liberals), I lost my ability to understand how it is that people believe before I entered my teens (although I spent over a decade struggling to regain my early faith). However, to my enormous sorrow, I was quickly forced to understand that believers hated me and felt threatened by me and also that, as a group, believers were less educated and more credulous than nonbelievers. Yet, because I've also known many thoughtful and educated believers, I can't simply dismiss belief as the product of ignorance.
Do I hope that by understanding belief, I too might believe? I don't know. On the one hand, I envy you the social and psychological comfort your religion brings, but on the other, I have come too far to imagine that anything anyone might say could persuade me to accept your religion or any religion that requires the acceptance of unsubstantiated propositions. To your credit, you haven't tried to persuade me to believe as you do (only to turn your back on me when I was unable), and by the same token, I haven't tried to persuade you to believe as I do, and I'll certainly never turn my back on you (or think one iota less of you) because of your beliefs. My motives in responding to your posts are simply to present my point of view intelligently; to offer thoughts that you, as a believer, might not have considered; and to carefully reflect upon your responses. These and these alone are my motives. You are my friend, and I love you as you are.
Now, I have two questions for you. (1) Are you open with your fellow Salvation Army members about your divergence from Salvation Army dogma, and if so, how do they react? (2) I think you would agree that you have become increasingly liberal in your beliefs. Do you think that your acceptance of me has been made easier due to your growing liberalism? I ask because it would appear that liberal Christians--due to their relative lack of dogmatism--would be more open toward people like myself than conservative Christians. Yet this hasn't been my experience, and so I'm curious about your take on it.
Hi Snow,
" because I've also known many thoughtful and educated believers, I can't simply dismiss belief as the product of ignorance."
I've had this conversation with a Jewish friend of mine; where we ask how it is that people can't at least consider our views, given that we are generally not silly people. Thank you for taking me seriously.
As to whether I am honest about my divergence from the usual doctrine, I am up front about it if anyone shows any interest. Many times people have raised some question to which I have answered with something resembling "If God is love, then acting with love is Godly and that answers a huge number of questions"
People usually wander off at that point. Recently somebody openly told me that they don't want the teaching they received in the 50s to be updated or contradicted. Another told me when I was wearing a rainbow badge that LGBTQ rights have gone too far.
My acceptance of you comes from being respected and accepted. While you are respectful and kind, which I believe you will always be, we'll be friends. I have no issues with anyone who doesn't believe as I do, I know it sounds like a fairytale.
I do have issues when there is disrespect and have been known to speak quite bluntly to atheists who are disrespectful. One suggested that all hymn books should be burnt and I said hymn books are meaningful to people of faith and they do no harm, he wouldn't suggest the burning of the great majority of other books.
"I've had this conversation with a Jewish friend of mine; where we ask how it is that people can't at least consider our views, given that we are generally not silly people."
By "consider our views," do you mean that you want people with whom you share your beliefs to be open to conversion, or simply that you would like for them to consider your views with an open heart? ...I suspect the latter, but if the former were true, there wouldn't be just one proposition that you would need to convince me of but scores of propositions, and while I like to think of myself as someone who is open to changing his mind, I came to believe as I do after years of serious consideration, so my conclusions are hardly tentative. I assume that the same is true of you.
For years, I debated with Anne, my older sister who is a liberal Christian. As I understood her, Anne needed me to think as she does, the effect being that our dialogue was emotionally laden and she interpreted my challenges as attacks. She was right in that my attempts to understand liberal religion felt like biting into air in that there was no there, there. I found this so crazy making that I might have pressed her harder than was polite. You, on the other hand, accept certain understandable propositions as true, so whether I agree with those propositions or not, I know where you stand. Anne could fill a long letter with her beliefs and when I finished reading it, I wouldn't know anymore about what she believed than I did when I started. After decades of such exchanges, she now appears to have given up on me because over the last year, she has stopped writing except for a sentence or two here and there.
If I think someone's beliefs are irrational and harmful, I might respect them as people, but I can't help but hold their beliefs in disdain, and to the extent that they identify with those beliefs, they will, as Anne did, take my disdain as an attack. As you know, I grew up in a nutty church. For instance, evolution was considered a liberal conspiracy to destroy the faith of young people, and women were described as weaker than men, less worshipful than men, and as being in league with Satan to bring about the downfall of men. Yet, there were no fewer women in my childhood church than in other churches I've attended; they were kind to me as a boy; and I still believe that most of them were people of exemplary virtue. How is it then that they worship a sexist deity who falls far short of their own standards of morality? I still respect those long ago women, but I shake my head when I consider the gulf between who they were and who they thought God was.
"If God is love, then acting with love is Godly and that answers a huge number of questions"
The problem of theodicy simmered in my mind for years before one day hitting me out of the blue like a two by four between the eyes, i.e. how do you reconcile a deity whom the Bible describes as perfect in love with the same deity whom the Bible describes as cruel, vindictive, and responsible for evil ("I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things." --Isaiah 45:7)?
This blog sure is going places--just look at the many intelligent comments!
Now...from what I know of you, I doubt that you were insulted, yet without intended to, I expressed myself in a way that bothers me, I want to explain why, out of the many churches I visited, I never attended a Salvation Army service. The main reason was that there were none near where I grew up, but it was also true that my image of the SA went no further than uniforms, bells, black kettles, helping the destitute, and the poem by Vachel Lindsay. While I enjoyed seeing the first three (in movies mostly), I would have been embarrassed to wear a uniform or ask for donations, and I never took an much interest in helping strangers (even today, my charitable endeavors are directed toward nonhumans). Indeed, one reason that I came to feel increasingly uncomfortable within Christianity was that its core values (as presented in the NT) have a lot to do with being generous, visiting the sick, and helping the poor, and that these values are not my values. However, from what little I know of the SA, they are Salvation Army values, and this puts the SA at the forefront of what Christianity was meant to be.
I've written too much to fit in one frame...
My own image of a relationship with the divine mostly meant such "props" as chants, liturgies, big statues of saints in churches and small statues of saints on dashboards, things like colorful rosaries and glossy prayer cards that I could carry in my pockets and hold in my hand, and illustrated Bibles with extensive concordances (my church dismissed all but the last item as paganistic). This meant that, in my view, spirituality and philanthropy were unrelated. This was hardly the message of Christ, so even as I was losing my belief in the God of the Bible, I was seriously looking for a God to whom I could relate. However, about the time that I started to seriously doubt my religion, I started taking an active part in church by leading in prayer, assisting at the weekly communion table, leading the singing, and preaching. It was generally expected that I would become a preacher (an elderly black preacher that my Dad knew said he could see God's hand upon me, and that I was destined to do great things "in the name of the Lord"), and I liked the image of that, but even had I remained with the church, I lacked the people skills and the public speaking skills that would have made me even a halfway good preacher.
As I entered my teens, I became aware that those around me were at peace with their religion in a way that I couldn't approach, and I took this to mean that God had given them insights that he had denied me. I later realized that they knew less than I did, but simply weren't bothered by their ignorance because they lacked the ability to ask questions, probing or otherwise. You do ask questions, and this causes me to care about you but also to worry about you because of my experience with one question leading to another with few of them ever being answered. Of course, your questioning might remain confined to issues within your faith as opposed to the reasonableness of your faith. While it might seem as though I'm attempting to tear down your faith, I have no goal aside from the enjoyment of corresponding about religion with someone who isn't easily offended and about whom I care enough that I am trying not to offend. It was the strangest thing in my life to find myself rejected by the people in my childhood church who, it appears, interpreted my questions as evidence of vanity, arrogance, and argumentativeness. Instead of believing like a little child while praying to God to increase my faith, my demand for proof made me, in their eyes, an adversary of God, the kind of person from whom Christians were advised to walk away while shaking the dust from their feet.
In America, there's a respected organization called Pew Research (Pew being the surname of its founder) that gauges the knowledge and beliefs of Americans about various things. In one survey, Pew determined that atheists and agnostics (followed closely by Jews and Mormons) know more about religion than other groups (https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2010/09/28/u-s-religious-knowledge-survey-who-knows-what-about-religion/). Clearly, nonbelievers as a group don't (as many believers imagine) offhandedly reject beliefs based upon ignorance, but instead reject them based upon a period of study and reflection, whereas large numbers of believers are less interested in knowing about their religion as they are in attending church for reasons unrelated to knowledge.
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