God and Man at Table are Sat Down

The Christmas story tends to make me think about things that I am content to not even consider during most of the year.  As I once again struggled to comprehend the word incarnation, my thoughts turned back to our whole conception of God, how we come to know of Him, and ultimately how we come to know Him.  And the scripture very matter of factly declares that in the face of Jesus we behold the face of God.  Actually it says something more like He is the very image of the unseen God, something I am sure would delight the Greek church fathers, but I prefer to personalize it a little more. Not that this helps me any further in my understanding, but somehow it is reassuring at a deeper level.  So here are two random thoughts that somehow were generated as part of this ongoing consideration.

First, the church has always referred to the humbling (actually humiliation) of Christ, what Paul refers to as emptying Himself of His glory and descending to the lowest part of creation, and the exaltation of Christ, being glorified and exalted at the right hand of the Father.  And it occurred to me that while many people are humbled (or humiliated) by circumstances, or behavior, or poor choices, or life reversals, Jesus voluntarily gave Himself into humility, and only one who is totally self-assured, who has no doubts about who He is or what God requires of Him in the moment, can do that so completely.  And here's the mystery, that humiliation was not to bring Christ low, but to allow Him to fill all in all, leaving nothing untouched and everything charged with potential, awaiting only that day when He delivers up the Kingdom to His Father.

Second, as Christians we bemoan the fact that the world makes gods in their own image and likeness rather than the other way around.  Paul again says that they exchange the glory of the living God for a false form. But I wonder if sometimes we (i.e. the church) also do not do the same thing.  Oh, I am aware that theology claims to draw its conception of God solely from what is revealed in the scripture, and all of the creeds and confessions and catechisms can tack on a proof text or two to back up their statements, but sometimes I wonder if we still do not push the limits of what is revealed and rely too much instead on underlying philosophical suppositions that we have inherited somewhere along the way and don't even realize as being there.

For instance, we state that God is perfect, but to me that seems more of our idea rather than His.  It is something we expect our God to be and we only speak of Him in superlatives such as immortal, omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, and so on.  But that is the problem with theology, it is still something we do because of our bent to classify and dissect and integrate again.  But it always comes back to the point that God must be thus and such because, in our minds, He could not be God unless He was that way.  I came to this point indirectly as I moved from Christmas to the question as to why I exist.  A perfect being is all sufficient, He has no needs and therefore angels and man and creation as a whole are unnecessary, and yet here we are.  And I know theologians have asked the same question because they have written volumes to explain it and it always seems to come down to some form of we exist because God desires to display His glory.  And it was just at that point that I said to myself, is this not a form of pride?  Now as humans, we consider pride a sin, it is self seeking.  But that is exactly what God displaying His glory does, it lifts Him up, exalts Him, demands our attention and worship.  It is pride, but perfect pride, if there be such a thing.  And when I get to thinking things like that I conclude that I don't, and probably most other people don't know God as surely as we think we know Him.  And I'm fine with that.  It just took Christmas to remind me once again of something that St. Augustine once said.  It goes more or less like this, my words about You are so much less than my thoughts about You, but You are ever so much more than my thoughts.

The Onset of Lent

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and with it comes the message of our mortality, our separation from God, our inability to keep our end of the deal day in and day out. I was actually thinking about that on Sunday as I asked myself, "Are we called to be perfect?" Now I convinced myself that this word does indeed appear in the New Testament more than once, and the verses it is found in seem to require us to become perfect or complete. But by what measure? Most churches specifically make lists...how to eat, how to dress, how to worship, how to raise your children, what types of jobs are good, what types of music to listen to or books to read, and so on. And we are more or less perfect as we more or less conform to this master list. Other churches adopt a more biblical view but one that is almost as hard to attain to, we are to come up to the measure of the fullness that is found in Christ. But while he was the son of man, he was also the Son of God and I think that gave him a distinct advantage over me. The whole debate over whether Jesus could have sinned since He had a full human nature is one that goes over the top. And there is also the tendency to then reduce the measure of our lives into just another list, this time what Jesus did, what Jesus said, what Jesus commended, what Jesus avoided. And once again we find ourselves making checks next to an impossible list of requirements.

But it never seemed like Jesus struggled against sin. Oh, he had his moments of temptation, and even what appeared to be anguish over the path that lay ahead. But the majority of His life seems more to be about doing what it is that the Father set before him, and not agonizing over this or that circumstance or possible temptation, what the church used to call the "near occasion of sin." And that gave me the "theme" for my Lenten devotions this year. I am not going to struggle against my own sinfulness, I always fall short of my expectations and certainly of "perfection". But what I am going to do is struggle to hear God more clearly, to see where He is present and what He is doing, and to try to do that one thing that He sets before me in each day. It starts with that bold statement of Isaiah, "Here I am, send me" as God was looking for someone to go on His behalf. I think that if I can half succeed in turning my attention to what God would have me do in the moment, that any struggle against sin will enjoy progress as well. Blessings upon your Lenten pilgrimage.