The Invasion of Life into a Dying World

I recently took a course at Biblical Theological Seminary called "Reading the Old Testament Missionally." As an assignment, our professor, David Lamb, asked us to write a sermon based on an OT Scripture and directed to a group that is marginalized. I took this assignment as an opportunity to work through some things going on in my life. The following is the sermon that I wrote.


Ecclesiastes 8:14-9:4

14 There is a vanity that takes place on earth, that there are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous. I said that this also is vanity. 15 And I commend joy, for man has no good thing under the sun but to eat and drink and be joyful, for this will go with him in his toil through the days of his life that God has given him under the sun.

16 When I applied my heart to know wisdom, and to see the business that is done on earth, how neither day nor night do one's eyes see sleep, 17 then I saw all the work of God, that man cannot find out the work that is done under the sun. However much man may toil in seeking, he will not find it out. Even though a wise man claims to know, he cannot find it out

9:1 But all this I laid to heart, examining it all, how the righteous and the wise and their deeds are in the hand of God. Whether it is love or hate, man does not know; both are before him. 2 It is the same for all, since the same event happens to the righteous and the wicked, to the good and the evil, to the clean and the unclean, to him who sacrifices and him who does not sacrifice. As the good one is, so is the sinner, and he who swears is as he who shuns an oath. 3 This is an evil in all that is done under the sun, that the same event happens to all. Also, the hearts of the children of man are full of evil, and madness is in their hearts while they live, and after that they go to the dead.4 But he who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion.

The Invasion of Life into a Dying World

Ecclesiastes is an odd, confusing, and very troubling book. Upon reading it, one is tempted to ask, “Why on Earth is this in the Bible?!” Its tone is very pessimistic, with its litany of “vanities.” It reads more like the writing of a modern existentialist philosopher than a religious text. I would like to suggest that it is precisely its quality of robust investigation of human experience and thoughtful questioning that makes Ecclesiastes such a vital contribution to God’s Word. The author of Ecclesiastes subverts conventional wisdom and challenges us to face the vanity of life and its pursuits. The word translated as “vanity” evokes the image of breath, something fleeting, and ephemeral or even futile or absurd. Despite his insistence on the vanity of this life, the author of Ecclesiastes also repeatedly enjoins us to enjoy the good things of life while we can.

This summer I was reminded—rather dramatically—of both the goodness and joy of life and also its fragility. In July I experienced the joy of being joined in marriage to my wife April and the blessings of beginning a life together. Pronouncing my vow to love and cherish April until we are parted by death was particularly sobering to me that day, because as joyful and exuberant as our wedding was, the shadow of death also loomed ominously in my heart. My oldest brother Tom, who was to be one of my groomsmen, could not attend because he was lying in a hospital bed ravished by AIDS. It was only a little more than a month before the wedding that our family learned Tom had AIDS, and it was only about a month after the wedding that we stood around his bedside holding his hand, praying, and reading him scripture as the flickering flame of his life was finally extinguished. Although my brother was much older than me, we were very close, and I loved him dearly. I had experienced death before, but never face to face, never someone so close to me and so young. The result was not only grief, but a powerful reminder of mortality and the urgency of knowing God and his son Jesus Christ.

Christopher Wright in his book The Mission of God, describes AIDS as a paradigm of evil. He writes, “death awaits every human being since the Fall, but HIV/AIDS brings the sentence forward into the midst of life and destroys life’s blessing, abundance and fulfillment—the very things that God created us for”(Wright, 435.) Encountering AIDS close up, was like looking into the face of sin and its horrible curse. In saying that, however, I want to make a qualification. We can not, and should not, make a direct correlation between a person’s sinful behavior and the misfortune that befalls them. Our text directly challenges that notion. It says, “There are righteous people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the wicked, and there are wicked people to whom it happens according to the deeds of the righteous” (Ecclesiastes 8:14b.) People who carry HIV/AIDS are often stigmatized as degenerate, unclean, or cursed. This is sadly the case even among Christians. The truth is that many people contract the virus through no fault of their own. It is true that the Bible teaches us that a sinful life has dire consequences, but I believe these texts are cautionary rather than prescribing our attitudes toward those who are afflicted. They teach us the folly of sin but they do not teach us to blame or condemn, nor do they guarantee that godly people’s lives will always be free from suffering. The question of why the godly suffer is one for the ages and not within the scope of this lesson, but we should take note of our text’s admonition, human beings cannot completely fathom the works of God. When faced with suffering like the kind caused by AIDS, our task is not to blame or simply to ponder why, but to be present to those who suffer with compassion.

In The Great Litany found in The Book of Common Prayer, among the many supplications is the plea, “from dying suddenly and unprepared, Good Lord, deliver us.” If you ask most people how they would like to die, my guess is that most people will tell you that they want to go peacefully in their sleep. The prospect of facing our death and coming to terms with it terrifies us. We would much rather avoid the hard work by dying suddenly in our sleep, but it is precisely this kind of avoidance that our tradition teaches us to pray to be delivered from. I don’t know how my brother contracted HIV, and even he was unaware of his infection until it was too late. I feel pretty certain that, had he known earlier that he was carrying a deadly virus, he would have lived his life much differently. Our text reminds us that the same event happens to everyone who comes into the world, whether we are righteous or wicked, Christian or non-Christian – all of us die. All our accomplishments, all our possessions, all our enjoyment of life’s blessings, come to an end with death. Death is a great leveler. Anything we seek to stand on in this life will be taken away. We should keep this before our mind always. What am I ultimately living for? Am I investing myself in things eternal or in things that are passing away? AIDS, the invasion of death into the midst of life, forces us to ask these big questions. There are those that the text says have hearts full of evil and madness and waste their life (9:3b), let that not be you.

I spoke at my brother’s funeral about how the love we share as a family points us beyond itself to God. The love we share here and now is a foretaste of the greater love that we will know in the consummation of God’s kingdom. Now we know in part what later we will know in fullness (1 Corinthians 13:12b.) All of us who live in the shadow of death, especially those who carry deadly viruses like HIV, should take joy in those moments of delight in which we catch a glimpse of eternity. Our text says that those moments will go with us through the toil and the vanity of this life (8:15b.)

There is an interesting tension in our text and indeed in the whole book of Ecclesiastes. Life is described as vanity, full of confusion, injustice, and toil, yet it is an evil when it is taken away. There is a longing in the heart of the author for life in all its goodness, yet no matter how hard he grasps it continually slips through his fingers. Life is experienced as a desirable, but elusive thing, while death is as real and unmovable as a great stone. What the author longs to know is greater and more enduring life, a life that isn’t futile and failing. Life, even if it is merely a shadow, is preferable to death. The Author writes, “He who is joined with all the living has hope, for a living dog is better than a dead lion” (9:4.) Going back to our earlier description, AIDS is the invasion of death into life, making even life like death, and finally taking life itself away. A person who is dying from AIDS is made to be completely emaciated; they are rendered immobile, and often cannot even speak. The ties that join them to all the living are severed one by one. We must not sentimentalize death. Death is a horrible thing. Despite much pious rhetoric that proclaims death to be a friend and a mere transition, the Bible insists to the contrary. Death is the enemy, a negation of life and all that God created us for. I do not say that as a counsel of despair. I believe we have hope in the face of death that I wish to share with you.

Jesus Christ came to conquer death and to bring a more abundant life. Christ is the antidote for vanity. If AIDS is the invasion of death into life, than Christ is the invasion of life into a dying world. In his book The Divine Conspiracy Dallas Willard gives a wonderful paraphrase of John 3:16, “God’s care for humanity was so great that he sent his unique Son among us, so that those who count on him might not lead a futile and failing existence, but have the undying life of God Himself” (Willard, 1.) If you are suffering from disease, even AIDS, Jesus can give you life even in the midst of your affliction. He is near to you in a way that no one else could ever be. When Tom was dying I was able to hold his hand, I was able to encourage him and tell him that I loved him, and I was able to pray with him, but it was Christ who suffered with him. It was Christ who bore his sins and even his sickness on the hard wood of the cross. It was Christ who with him was considered cursed and afflicted by God. It was Christ who shared in his sorrows and it was Christ who was able to give him hope and a life that is stronger than dying. Christ defeated death. Those of us in Christ share in his death, which is in fact the death of death. All who are in Christ also share in the power of his resurrection beginning now but being consummated in the last day when our corruption is swallowed up in incorruption.

The last day will see an end to life’s vanity, and of sickness and death. The Bible has a word for the restoration, wholeness, peace and well being that we will know in that day. The word is shalom. People who are afflicted with the AIDS virus know the vanity of this present age. They know what it means to experience the unraveling of God’s good creation and the waxing of life, because they carry it in their own bodies. In fact, we all do, but victims of AIDS and other diseases make that dissolution particularly present to us. May they also carry the restoration—God’s shalom-- within them. May they receive the eternal life that Christ offers us in the midst of this futile and failing existence, and may we see the hope of the gospel played out in them. Dying well is a missional action. It was a great consolation for me to know that Tom faced death knowing Christ and his victory. His life was not lived in vain.

Thoughts on a missional congregation

In describing a missional vision for a congregation the natural place to start seems to be to talk about what it means to be missional.Being missional is a way of transcending some of the limitations inherent in both conservative and liberal Christianity within Modernity. Conservatives too often make the gospel all about ensuring a person ends up in Heaven when they die and Liberals too often subsume the gospel under the direction of culture and “progress.” Both are deeply compromised visions for the Church. Being missional is a way beyond the compromises of both conservative and liberal Christianity. A missional congregation of course recognizes the individual’s need for salvation and restoration, but locates that salvation in the wider restoration of the world.Likewise the missional congregation recognizes the Church’s calling to be a force for justice and good in the world, but locates
that action in participation in "the Mission of God," or God’s reconciling the whole world to Himself in Jesus Christ. A missional congregation rejects an escapist conception of salvation that takes us out of the world, and instead calls upon the Church to be agents of restoration in the world. As the Church, we are blessed, called out, not as an end in itself but in order to proclaim and embody the reality of God’s Kingdom “on Earth as it is in Heaven.” In this way a missional congregation is one that lives in hope of a new Heaven and a new Earth.

In order to change the focus of our congregations towards a more missional perspective,we should have worship and liturgy that shapes us for mission.The aim of worship cannot be an emotional catharsis, an attempt to meet felt needs,or even a means of distributing information, rather our worship should be formational.A missional congregation should be one that values the importance of the sacraments, not merely as meritorious acts or medicines for immortality, but as the means through which God shapes us into a people who embody His mission and purposes.Worship should be “Immersive.” David Fitch writes in the Great Giveaway,

Immersive worship leads the worshiper into participating in God’s already preexisting reality through language, ritual,and symbol as revealed in history through Scripture. By so doing, immersive worship births true experience of God that can only come at the behest of God as an ex post facto development when we have been faithful in our worship…we cannot assume a truthful experience without first being shaped by God in worship.

Again,our worship and liturgy should make its emphasis the Mission of God.It cannot
be an end in itself but must prepare the church for mission. It should immerse us in the drama of redemptive history and God’s action to redeem the world.It must be a way of connecting us to the body of Christ stretched through time and space.Along with focusing on spiritual formation through worship, a missional congregation should also teach and embrace the classical spiritual disciplines.Again, like the sacraments, the disciplines should not be seen as meritorious acts, but rather as a means of formation into the people Christ calls us to be. This is key to being Christ’s church in the world. We must become more than "believers". We must become disciples and apprentices of Jesus, living in the manner he showed us. As Dallas Willard Writes in Renovation of the Heart,

Individuals and local congregations of disciples must discover and effectively implement whatever is required to bring about the inner transformations of those who have really become apprentices of Jesus and who really do gather in immersion in the Trinitarian presence. In doing so they will have put in place the principles and absolutes of the New Testament churches, and they will certainly see the corresponding effects. (pg. 250)

Willard goes on to give two very simple instructions for how this might be done. “First, openly expect the apprentices to learn to do the various things that Jesus taught to do….Second, announce that you teach people to do the things that Jesus said to do.” A missional congregation should be more than a social club or a lodge, it should be a training ground for Kingdom living and an outpost for holiness and social action. Among the spiritual disciplines are service and hospitality. Both of these disciplines should characterize a missional congregation’s engagement with its surrounding community. A Christian community should be a place where people feel accepted and welcomed. It should also be a people that give themselves in service to others.

A missional congregation should also be prophetic. It should understand its task to be to challenge to dominant systems and ideologies in the world and confront them with the gospel. A missional congregation should proclaim the message of God’s Kingdom and the Lordship of Jesus Christ in word and deed. The task of the church is not to produce people after the expectations and dictates of the world. Its task is not to make good citizens or to morally legitimate the powers that be. A missional
congregation is a deeply subversive community in the sense that it challenges prevailing wisdom. A missional congregation’s task is to proclaim the gospel in all its offensiveness and so called foolishness. If need be its task is to willingly,and openly suffer for that witness.

A missional congregation is a church for a post-Christian or pagan society. In this sense it is very much like the New Testament Church. A missional congregation is post-colonial, it does not see its self in the service of Christendom. It does not assimilate people to Western European values. Instead the missional congregation seeks to faithfully incarnate the gospel in whatever cultural context it finds itself
in. A missional congregation is therefore always engaged with culture and always listening. In engaging with culture, it does not however seek to accommodate itself to whatever values are dominant in that culture. Instead,while inhabiting a culture, it seeks to redeem that culture by confronting it with the Eternal Word.

There is much more that can be said about the qualities and characteristics of a missional congregation, but the most important fact about such a community is that it is one that is always seeking to discern what God is doing in its particular context. A missional congregation has no agenda of its own but is always seeking to join God in what God is doing in the world. A missional congregation believes that God is reconciling all things to Himself through Christ; therefore, it seeks to be Christ’s body in the world.

The following are some brief, but illuminating and extremely helpful, comments from Dr Timothy Keller on the characteristics of a missional Church.

Secret, Profane & Sugarcane

Secret, Profane & Sugarcane is one more reminder why Elvis Costello is one of my favorite musical artists. I have been listening to this record over and over again during the last few weeks. Costello is not only prolific but versatile. In the last several years, he has put out a number of albums of startling variety from, North, an intimate collection of Jazz ballads, to the soulful The River in Reverse, his collaboration with New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint, to Momofuku, a no nonsense rock album released just last year. Although he works in a diverse number of genres, Elvis always brings his unique sensibility to each. On Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, he returns to a genre he has worked with many times in the past: country music.

The record is far from straight country though. Much of the material on the album comes from an Opera (yes, that’s right, an opera!) Elvis has been composing about Hans Christian Anderson called The Secret Songs. I don’t know if the opera will ever be completed, but the selections here are quite tantalizing. “Red Cotton” is a stunning song about the slave trade, while another selection from the opera, “She Handed me a Mirror,” is a bittersweet song about unrequited love right out of the life of Hans Christian Anderson. When Anderson asked the woman he loved, Jenny Lind, why she didn’t love him back, she simply handed him a mirror.

Ouch.

The album is actually an odd potpourri of material. Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to make of this record at first, but it has grown on me a great deal. Some songs are reinterpretations of older material, such as “Hidden Shame” and “Complicated Shadows,” while others are original songs. One highlight is the beautiful “I Felt the Chill,” a song Elvis wrote with country legend Loretta Lyn.

There is a quality and a sound in this miscellany that evokes what Greil Marcus called “The Old Weird America.” Marcus used this phrase when discussing the world of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes and Harry Smith’s Anthology of American Folk Music. Costello even included a bonus track of a song called “What Lewis Did Last” on the vinyl version of the album from a performance he did at a tribute concert to Harry Smith’s collection. The song is a sequel to “Ommie Wise,” an old murder ballad included in the Smith Anthology. Costello also performed an amazing version of “The Butcher Boy” at the same concert. I’m confused as to why that wasn’t included as bonus as well. Here a video for "Ommie Wise", "What Lewis Did Last," and "The Butcher Boy":

Elvis Costello

More CMT Music

More CMT Music Videos

Elvis Costello

More CMT Music

More CMT Music Videos

Another bonus track from the vinyl version is a wonderful cover of the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale.” I told you it was an odd collection of songs! Here is a video of Elvis performing "Femme Fatle" live on his show Spectacle:

The uniting force of the album is its sound, which is old-timey Americana, performed adeptly by top notch musicians. This is the specialty of producer T Bone Burnett. It is the collaboration between Burnett and Costello that really makes this album great. T Bone Burnett can do no wrong in my book. In the last couple of years, T Bone has had a hand in many of my favorite records, notably Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Allison Krauss, Life Death Love and Freedom by John Mellencamp, Say Anything by Sam Phillips, One Kind Favor by B.B King, and Burnett’s own Tooth of Crime. This isn’t the first collaboration between Costello and Burnett either. In 1986, they worked together on The King of America. For a brief time, the two even formed a duo called The Coward Brothers. One disappointing thing about the new album is that The Coward Brothers do not return for a new duet, even if Burnett does sing background vocals throughout record.

Witness T Bone:

I highly recommend Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. Newsweek recently featured a video of Elvis, solo acoustic, performing the title track. Here it is:

I’ve also heard that Elvis Costello is going on tour with the band from the album. Along with the material from Secret, Profane & Sugarcane, the band will also be performing songs from throughout Costello’s repertoire, including unreleased material! If they come to the Philly area, I will most certainly be buying tickets. Anyone down?

I Dreamed I Saw Saint Augustine

Once there was a very revered teacher and philosopher named Siddhattha Gotama. This man had such great charisma, and his teachings were so astonishing to those who heard them, that his followers referred to him as “The Enlightened One” or the “Buddha.” I cannot claim to completely grasp the Buddha’s message, but I at least feel comfortable saying that –and this is a very elementary description—a major doctrine of his is that the root of all suffering is desire. The reason desire results in suffering, according to the Buddha, is due to the fact that it reinforces an illusion of separateness. We, under the illusion that we are an individual self, distinct from everything else, suffer from a sense of disconnectedness and dissatisfaction or “dukkha.”

However, the Buddha's assessment of the human situation rests on some very different presuppositions than the Christian assessment. In the Christian worldview, separateness or individuality is not an illusion to be escaped but part of the created character of the world to be celebrated. Likewise, (although alienation indeed is the cause of much suffering) it is not separateness itself that is source of suffering but rather a rupture or brokenness in our relationship to God, each other, and the world around us. Indeed, separateness is as much a condition of love as alienation! The fact of our individuality and distinctness makes relationship possible and thus love (a fact that mirrors the trinitarian nature of the Creator— but to elaborate would be a serious tangent!). Desire is perfectly natural and good because human beings were created to be incomplete on their own, which is the reason that, “It is not good for man to be alone.”

All of which brings us to our friend Saint Augustine. According to Augustine, the problem is our disordered love or “cupidity.” All created things are good because they were created by an infinitely good God, but we love them improperly, some too much and others too little. Most of all we have the tendency to love ultimately what is less than ultimate. C.S Lewis calls this “the sweet poison of a false infinite.” It is the substitution of created things for God, or what the Bible calls idolatry. Human beings were created with a desire for God, a desire so great that nothing in this world can satisfy it, but forgetting God we seek to fill this void up with the good things we find in creation. Created things are too weak, partial, and fleeting to ever satisfy us ultimately. The path to virtue and the happy, fulfilled life, according to Augustine,

…requires one to be capable of an objective and impartial evaluation of things; to love things, that is to say, in the right order so that you do not love what is not to be loved, or fail to love what is to be loved, or have a greater love for what should be loved less, or an equal love for things that should be loved less or more, or a lesser or greater love for things that should be loved equally.

In other words, we should love things appropriate to their value and in their proper place. Our lives are teaming with such disordered love and “false infinites.” In future posts, I intend to explore some common idols. Stay tuned!

Resent me to the bone.

Welcome to my very first blog entry! If you are serious Bob Dylan fan, you have probably noticed that the title of my blog is a reference to a fairly obscure Dylan song. “Property of Jesus” is a track off of Dylan’s much underrated album Shot of Love. The song is catchy little rocker, certainly not among Dyaln's greatest songs, but I have always felt a certain fondness for it. The song is written and sung with Dylan's characteristic sneer and defiance. At one point Dylan quips contemptuously, "You can laugh at salvation, you can play Olympic games." One can only imagine the decadence that "Olympic games" evoke for Dylan!

Someone made a video of the song, which includes footage from Bob's meeting with John Paul II, and posted it here on YouTube.

This blog will reflect my own interest in art, music, literature, culture, and especially faith and theology. If you have ever been stuck sitting next to me at a bar, that probably won’t be much of a shock to you! Hopefully, I will be updating fairly regularly. If you are reading and enjoying this blog, please let me know. I can use the encouragement!