Several of you asked for the article in full to which I referred this morning from David Foster Wallace.

Here you are, from the Wall Street Journal of Sept 19 of this year.

A member of our church (and our neighbor here in the Cliff!) passed the article  along to me.  In addition to Wallace’s winsome prose, his insight into the human condition is remarkable.  He seemed to understand so much, and yet seemed to disallow the possibility that the very means by which we are liberated from the idolatries to which we are so prone does not exist in us naturally.

the flood of commentary on the state of the American economy in recent weeks can lead one to believe thatwe’re talking about another Enron-kind-of-complicated matter here. The folks at Between Two Worlds have done us the favor of pointing us to a brief on this labyrinthine issue.

To understand the financial matters afoot is not merely a matter for economists or pundits. What’s happening in the highest echelons of commerce and government is an issue worth the consideration of Christians, too. There are cautionary tales here for us about the human heart, and how corporate (not in the sense of business, but in the sense of collective) sin is a force to be reckoned with–a reckoning that may extend beyond acknowledgment and into legislation.

All of which inevitably provokes the comment, “you can’t legislate morality,” to which I put forth a quote from one notable (also sent my way through the awfully thorough folks at BTW)

Now the other myth that gets around is the idea that legislation cannot really solve the problem and that it has no great role to play in this period of social change because you’ve got to change the heart and you can’t change the heart through legislation. You can’t legislate morals. The job must be done through education and religion. Well, there’s half-truth involved here. Certainly, if the problem is to be solved then in the final sense, hearts must be changed. Religion and education must play a great role in changing the heart. But we must go on to say that while it may be true that morality cannot be legislated, behavior can be regulated. It may be true that the law cannot change the heart but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also. So there is a need for executive orders. There is a need for judicial decrees. There is a need for civil rights legislation on the local scale within states and on the national scale from the federal government.

Vern Poythress:

A capable cell phone today has more computing power than the computer that took the Apollo astronauts to the moon. It gives instant access not only to your friends’ voices but to all the information on the internet. Are you keeping up or falling behind in the race for the latest electronic fashions?
Science and technology get a lot of attention because of the new gadgets they spin out. I love science, because it displays God’s wisdom (Proverbs 8:22-31). I love technology, because it shows what great gifts God has given to us, and what great human capacity God has given us to exercise dominion (Genesis 1:28-30). But I see hopes placed in science and technology that they cannot fulfill. Science, it is said, will solve the problems of world hunger. It will bring world peace. And more and better technology will solve the problems introduced by lesser technology.

Well, sometimes; and in some ways. Maybe science will find an efficient way to harness nuclear fusion to produce clean power—or maybe not. But we can be awash in technology and still be hate-filled or lonely. You can have 200 friends on Facebook and have no one who really knows you, no one who loves you.

Sometimes science only increases the problem. If, instead of seeing the wisdom of God in it, you listen to the propaganda of scientism, it will solemnly assure you that you inhabit a faceless, lonely, materialistic universe that is heading only toward ultimate death. And the gadgets of technology become Band-Aids to cover spiritual wounds and empty hearts. One more electronic game or one more DVD movie or one more pop song holds back the slide into boredom and depression. We search for one entertainment after another to keep back the dread of facing the hollow inside

should you ever marry?  isn’t it too much of a minefield?  haven’t we seen enough relational and familial carnage to look at marriage with deep suspicion?

Mike Bullmore has a few things to say on the matter. It’s one sermon in a series found here.

the most expensive expression of forgiveness continues to put and end to a devastating cycle of violence and retribution.  Where does one gather the resources to be able to forgive without simply denying the pain of what’s been lost?  Read here.

Cynthia Nielsen is leading a summer study on St. Augustine’s Confessions on tuesday nights.  Cynthia brings, to put it mildly, a depth of insight into our forbear in the faith.  Click here if you’d like more information on the study.

a few of you may remember Seth and Kristen (nee Seckinger) Kolb.  They live in Colombia, where Seth works for the State Department; and they have a son, Jackson, who is 9 months old.  This week they learned Jackson has what may very well be a malignant tumor above his knee.

They are being med-e-vac’d back to Houston for urgent treatment.  

Whether you know them or not, I’m sure they’d be appreciative of your prayers for them and little Jackson.

Holy Week Meditation, Maundy Thursday, 2008

Isaiah 53:7-9

Is. 53:7    He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth. 8 By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people? 9 And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

It’s been said that the Scriptures reveal something far more arresting than mere propositions and principles.  They put forth a drama-a drama of redemption.

From the moment Adam and Eve fall into disfavor and alienation in Genesis 3, the Lord’s plot unfolds: how He will return things to their proper and glorious state through the work of one who bruise the head of the one who deceived man.

In Genesis 12, the Lord introduces how his plan will unfold through a people, through a nation of men and women called by Him, not because of any particular quality or ambition in them, but solely on the basis of His grace and favor.  And through that nation, the entire world will come to know and enjoy the goodness of God.

In Isaiah’s prophecy, though, we find the protagonists, as it were, out of the picture.  For their intransigence and wantonness, they have been abandoned by the God who formed and nurtured them, who delivered and commissioned them.  They have forsaken their God and His heart, and the Lord has fiercely disciplined them by allowing foreign nations to pillage and plunder them, to remove them from their Promised Land.

And as we follow this drama, we wonder, what of the original promise to restore what was lost, and what of the plan to bring about the restoration to the entire world through this one, insignificant agrarian people?

Waiting in the wings, though, is the Lord’s champion, but one in a form His people did not expect.  And through Isaiah, the LORD tells the story of this champion in four songs.

In chapter 42 the LORD commissions and anoints one who would issue justice among all people.

In chapter 49, the champion speaks of Himself as one prepared and sent to bring light not only to the people of God but to all the nations of the world.  He will encounter rejection, but He will see the LORD’s favor and deliverance as the champion proclaims liberty and stands between the LORD and His people as a mediator of reconciliation.

In chapter 50, the plot thickens for God’s man as He submits himself to the mistreatment of men whom He calls to repentance.  He exhibits fearlessness as He expresses confidence in the fall of His accusers and the vindication of His LORD.

And finally here in chapters 52 and 53-the fourth of four songs, four acts of the unfolding of God’s restoration-we find the plot approaching a glorious resolution, but not before it encounters a devastating development. And all the while we concede that the timing of all that Isaiah reveals remains a mystery.  When and how they shall become reality eludes us.

Yet these words of mystery from Isaiah find their clarity in Jesus, the Christ, the ideal servant, the lowly one who would be king, the champion.

And in verses 7-9 of chapter 53, Isaiah’s words of mystery anticipate two things: what this servant would endure, and how this servant would respond.

What does this servant endure?

Oppression and affliction would be His lot, verse 7 says.  What He was due would not be extended to Him; quite the contrary, He would receive precisely what He did not deserve.

That oppression, like a cancer, would grow so unremittingly that a miscarriage of justice would emerge, and the servant would be stripped of all that was His by right.  Verse 8 says, by oppression and judgment he would be taken away.

Surely the experience of Jesus before His accusers displays the reality of what Isaiah spoke of in mystery.

But the cathartic crisis has only begun.

Adding insult to injury, this champion would essentially be dismissed by those among Him.  Verse 8 continues, “and as for his generation, who considered that he would be cut off out from the land of the living.”  Another translation puts it perhaps a bit more succinctly, “as for his generation, who cared?”  This anointed and commissioned one, this oppressed and afflicted one-he would be relegated to a place of no reputation.

Does not John’s gospel, near its beginning and end, speak of this dismissiveness.  “He came unto His own, but His own did not receive Him.” And at his crucifixion, did not all his disciples abandon Him, with one betraying Him and another openly and repeatedly denouncing Him?

Again though, what he would endure had not reached its apex.

He would be oppressed. He would be dismissed.  But He would also be humiliated.  Verse 8 ends with the fact that this servant would be “stricken for the transgressions of his people.”  The weight he would have to carry in his suffering would be not merely for people who could not bear that weight themselves, but for people whose sin had, in effect, caused that very weight to be laid upon Him.  His service was not for people who loved Him but for those who hated Him.  He would have to endure this not for grateful people but for patently ungrateful people.  As Paul will later explain of Jesus in Romans 5:

7 For one will scarcely die for a righteous person-though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die- 8 but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

 It is one thing to endure much for those who love you; quite another to endure that for the good of those who despise you.

The weight perhaps could not have been heavier until we see that though it was their sin that constituted the weight, it was the act of His LORD to place the weight upon Him.  He had no obligation to bear it, and the LORD certainly had no obligation to unburden his sinful people of it.  But lay it upon His servant, He did.  He was stricken for their transgressions, but the strike ultimately came from the hand of the One who sent Him.  Stricken for transgression means the wrath of God is in play and at hand.  And it was that wrath that fell upon Him.

All this the champion endured, and for such we might have sufficient reason to esteem Him, but such esteem is only heightened in how he responded to what he endured.

How does the servant respond?

He responds with silence, but in His silence he speaks volumes.  In fact He spoke so sparingly that onlookers were mystified.  But defensive words He did not need, for words would not serve His purpose then.  For in His silence he proclaimed that He would not withstand the will of His Lord.  In His silence he would not deny the need of those for whom he suffered.  In His silence, he would not dispute the efficacy of His sacrifice.  Words went unspoken, because what he endured was necessary, and nothing-not even words-need delay it.

He responds also without recrimination.  Though verse 8 speaks of being led like a lamb to the slaughter, and verse 9 speaks of enduring much for those who had no regard for Him, Jesus utters no parting shot, no vindictive epithet.  He speaks only of what help He could call down from heaven to rescue Him, but chooses not to.  He refers only to what shall one day be true when he comes on the clouds of heaven with power.  No petty recriminations drip from his battered lips.

And not only does He withhold recrimination, He refuses to withhold grace from those who dismiss, abandon, revile, or crucify Him.  He allows Himself to be stricken, verse 8 says.  In bearing the blow for those to whom it was due, He extends the grace that keeps them from having to bear it themselves.  For on the Cross, what does He say, “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.”

But its His last response to what He endured that is most penetrating.  He awaits the vindication of His Lord.  Verse 9 is rendered in two ways, but has the same essential message in either version.  Some have seen the servant disgraced in death, buried with the wicked and with the rich man in his death, the rich man being one of His oppressors.  Others have seen a reversal of fortune for the servant: though he was destined to be buried with the common criminals, instead he was given the burial among those of high standing.  In either case, the message is the same: though innocent in word and in deed, he would not be vindicated until after His death.

All this is what Isaiah enshrouds in mysterious words as to what the servant of God will endure and how he will respond in order to complete the drama God’s been writing.

What does the champion reveal to us in His darkest moment, before the resolution comes?  What may we take from what He endured and how He responded even before the glory came out from behind the tragedy?  Two things I believe.

In this unresolved moment we see most clearly the trustworthiness of God.  What can account for this servant’s response to all that He endured but that the One who commissioned Him was worthy of trust, even if that trust cost both him and His LORD so dearly?  The servant, our Lord Jesus, was surrounded by unparalleled darkness-the darkness of men’s sin and the God’s wrath.  Still He trusted Him.

Where do you find power to trust when you are surrounded by disappointment and death, confusion and chaos?  You look to the one who walked into and through that deepest darkness and still trusted the LORD who sent Him there.

Whatever circumstances beset you, whatever darkness you find yourself in, the message of the servant is that you have reason to entrust yourself to the One who is unseen and whose reasons for bringing you to this moment are as yet undisclosed.  When can God be trusted?  Only after He brings resolution? This passage says He may be trusted in the middle of an unresolved season or moment.  One may rest in His will and work even before either yields the greater rest we seek.

In this unresolved moment we see the trustworthiness of the LORD, but in it, we also see most clearly the steadfast love of God.

Why proclaim justice, why endure suffering, why take the assaults of the very people you mean to redeem, if not for love?  Only love of the most persevering kind can explain it-love for the glory of God and the lives of others.

Where do you find the power to love those who despise you, power that helps you to bear up under the constant assaults of the world and its people, power that helps you to see through their hatred to the image of God beneath their sin, and so rise above as one free of the constraints of having to be loved by men in order to love them?  Where do you find that love?  You look to the one who didn’t merely die for those who loved him, but for those who hated him.  You look to the one who was denounced by men so those men would not be denounced by God.  You look to the One who was abandoned by man, and as it were, by God, Himself, to that those very men would not be abandoned by God.

In the words of the author of Hebrews, you fix your eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.

Here, in these mere 3 verses, the drama of redemption before the resolution.  Before rest, and peace, and glory.  Trust and love are found here.  In whatever drama you may find yourself, trust in the Lord and love for the Lord may be found there.

I close with the words of a folk-singer who perhaps summarized these few verses best.

. . .if someone wrote a play just to glorify

What’s stronger than hate, would they not arrange the stage

To look as if the hero came too late he’s almost in defeat

It’s looking like the Evil side will win, so on the Edge

Of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins

It is…

Chorus:

Love who makes the mortar

And it’s love who stacked these stones

And it’s love who made the stage here

Although it looks like we’re alone

In this scene set in shadows

Like the night is here to stay

There is evil cast around us

But it’s love that wrote the play…

For in this darkness love can show the way

Valentine’s Day is Thursday and provides a forum, interestingly, for two very different kinds of expressions: the amorous and the angst-ridden.

So Despair.com (whose CEO claims membership in our Body) has dutifully provided a little platform for whichever kind of expression you’d prefer to share in response to the approach of Valentine’s Day.

Here’s one of the angst-ridden kind:

The contest is on: go to the link above and create your succinct expression, right-click the picture to save it, and then forward it to us. We’ll publish some of the cleverest, with the most clever receiving some sort of fitting prize. (you can submit entries of the amorous or the angst-ridden–in a three-heart, or just the one-heart display; we’ll award a prize in each category)

Submit as many entries as you’d like. Contest ends Thursday at 5pm. A distinguished panel of judges (your servant-leadership team) will adjudicate.

Let your succinctness–amorous or angst-ridden–fly!

Death, it’s been said, is our last enemy. Though it befalls all men, it ought not ever been regarded as a purely natural event. We do not ever, as a professor I had once said, “make friends” with death. We may come to terms with it, acknowledge its reality and inevitability, learn to adjust to its demands–but never are we to smile at death, to welcome it as a benign, fortuitous thing, except in terms of what follows that death. The relief from suffering that death culminates in is a grace, but death, per se, is no cordial bedfellow. Why else would Jesus have been not merely sorrowful at Lazarus’ death, but, as the text says, indignant at its continued reality?

Now that my family and I have faced death most poignantly of late, we’ve had times of reflection foisted upon us. And so we’ve surmised that death is also, as it were, an alarm. It wakes us from the incoherence we’ve been lulled into by the world, or our own sense of self-importance. In that sense death is, ironically, a salutary thing. It forces us to rediscover what really is worth committing to, what really has value.

John Piper has been kind to summarize the words of one Clyde Kilby, a professor of English Lit at Wheaton back in the 1970’s. With all the profundity and succinctness of Jonathan Edwards’ resolutions, Kilby offers some helpful–or better, necessary–disciplines for life that would keep us from falling into the incoherence that the encounter with death sometimes must rouse us from.

so, as for fresh starts to the new year, consider these.

1. At least once every day I shall look steadily up at the sky and remember that I, a consciousness with a conscience, am on a planet traveling in space with wonderfully mysterious things above and about me.

2. Instead of the accustomed idea of a mindless and endless evolutionary change to which we can neither add nor subtract, I shall suppose the universe guided by an Intelligence which, as Aristotle said of Greek drama, requires a beginning, a middle, and an end. I think this will save me from the cynicism expressed by Bertrand Russell before his death when he said: “There is darkness without, and when I die there will be darkness within. There is no splendor, no vastness anywhere, only triviality for a moment, and then nothing.”

3. I shall not fall into the falsehood that this day, or any day, is merely another ambiguous and plodding twenty-four hours, but rather a unique event, filled, if I so wish, with worthy potentialities. I shall not be fool enough to suppose that trouble and pain are wholly evil parentheses in my existence, but just as likely ladders to be climbed toward moral and spiritual manhood.

4. I shall not turn my life into a thin, straight line which prefers abstractions to reality. I shall know what I am doing when I abstract, which of course I shall often have to do.

5. I shall not demean my own uniqueness by envy of others. I shall stop boring into myself to discover what psychological or social categories I might belong to. Mostly I shall simply forget about myself and do my work.

6. I shall open my eyes and ears. Once every day I shall simply stare at a tree, a flower, a cloud, or a person. I shall not then be concerned at all to ask what they are but simply be glad that they are. I shall joyfully allow them the mystery of what Lewis calls their “divine, magical, terrifying and ecstatic” existence.

7. I shall sometimes look back at the freshness of vision I had in childhood and try, at least for a little while, to be, in the words of Lewis Carroll, the “child of the pure unclouded brow, and dreaming eyes of wonder.”

8. I shall follow Darwin’s advice and turn frequently to imaginative things such as good literature and good music, preferably, as Lewis suggests, an old book and timeless music.

9. I shall not allow the devilish onrush of this century to usurp all my energies but will instead, as Charles Williams suggested, “fulfill the moment as the moment.” I shall try to live well just now because the only time that exists is now.

10. Even if I turn out to be wrong, I shall bet my life on the assumption that this world is not idiotic, neither run by an absentee landlord, but that today, this very day, some stroke is being added to the cosmic canvas that in due course I shall understand with joy as a stroke made by the architect who calls himself Alpha and Omega

The LORD has strident words for Israel (the Northern Kingdom) through Hosea, but, at least in 1:7, the words for Judah (the Southern Kingdom) were conciliatory: mercy would still come Judah’s way in the way of deliverance from external forces. But the promise of deliverance would be, the LORD says, through unconventional means. Not by military prowess would Judah escape the imperialistic aspirations of Assyria.

It may be trying too hard to make a principle of a slight phrase, but I think there’s something to learning to trust God through unconventional means of accomplishing His purposes. There’s something to resting in a subtler sovereignty–to resting in something beyond my control. But there’s also knowing that He may very well employ means more familiar to us to bring Him glory and us good. What I tried to say yesterday, among other things, was that wisdom entails a respect for both His conventional and unconventional manner of doing His will.

One pastor fleshes out this principle of, yes, employing conventional means of doing as the Lord commands, but not trusting in those means. The first time I heard the distinction I concluded he was making a distinction that’s impossible to abide by in real life. But perhaps there is a way to use conventional means while not trusting in them. Can you think of domains–or even experiences–in which you see this distinction borne out? Do share!

if you’re looking for reasons why to make time for preparing and participating in the Lord’s Table, here’s my take on how the observance of Advent almost requires it.

Do you remember ever reading the play by Samuel Beckett entitled Waiting for Godot? It’s the story of two hapless nobodies waiting for one who ends up never coming. The play ends where it begins, on a broad plain by a dead tree, and the scene never changes. And at play’s end, we are left not in admiration of these two poor sops’ patience, but in pity of their willingness to wait for what seems will never come.

 

Advent is an extended celebration of the coming of Jesus, but it’s also an exercise in waiting, in waiting with expectation for things not yet seen but clearly spoken of. It’s a time of focusing our attention on realities still at a distance but with implications for how we live in our present circumstances.

 

Ex. 3:1 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4 When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

Luke 20:27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

Luke 20:34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” 39 Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

 

Before the Lord calls Moses into the service of delivering Israel from bondage, He reveals Himself in a startling sight of a bush aflame but not consumed.

 

Moses turns aside—that is, he pauses and gives all his attention—to this sight. And there the Lord reveals that Moses is in the presence of what is holy and what is therefore due the utmost respect and deference. But the Lord also reveals that He is the God of Moses’ fathers and the fathers of all the nation: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob.

 

The Lord discloses Himself to Moses to persuade Him of His steadfast, covenant faithfulness, but also to prepare him for service. It will be one of many disclosures meant to strengthen Moses as he waits for God to fulfill His promises.

 

Jesus brings attention to this moment towards the end of His own earthly ministry. In so doing He brings attention to a reality meant to cause us to wait for God in a certain way.

 

The Sadducees were the Jewish ruling class, and in an attempt to discredit Jesus by trying to catch him in what seems like a theological contradiction, they pose to Him a question about the Law of Moses, marriage, and the belief in resurrection.

 

If the Law of Moses required the brothers of a dead husband to marry their dead brother’s widow; and if that poor widow saw husband after husband meet with an untimely death; and if the Law stipulates that marriage is to be between one man and one woman—then how can there be a resurrection since all the men who would’ve once been married to that woman would now be alive? Wouldn’t resurrection inevitably create an infraction of God’s Law since now there would be multiple husbands for one wife?

 

Jesus clears up the confusion the Sadducees were trying to create. But in answering their question He makes a larger point that challenges their unspoken assumption.

 

There’s no need to concern themselves with marriage in the resurrection age. We won’t be marrying in that age.

 

But more importantly resurrection is indeed something in which to believe and therefore something in which to find hope. It’s a reality spoken of even by Moses, the one whom the Sadducees just affirmed as an authority.

 

If God reveals Himself to Moses as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, then they are not merely names of those who once believed and now no longer of any significance to God. They actually continue with respect to Him. They are not merely examples of faith—albeit poor examples at times. They are those to whom promises were made by God—promises that have yet to be fulfilled. So the relationship to them and God isn’t through. As Jesus says, all live to Him. They’re not departed from God as the dead are departed from us. They are not out of reach or out of view of God like they are to those who walk the earth.

 

As surely as the trees now barren of leaves outside this chapel—by all appearance without life—shall bud and bloom in due time, so those who depart and wither away like those leaves shall, Jesus promises, bud and bloom in due time.

 

And such a promise is made to those found in Him when He comes—both those awake and asleep.

 

If that’s a promise to us, a promise validated by Jesus’ own resurrection, then we have reason to wait for it with expectation. And we wait with expectation by listening to His instructions for this life.

 

This is what it means to observe Advent: to turn our attention to His coming to earth, but also to the fact that He will return, and to what shall happen when He does. And to allow that trust in what shall happen to shape what we do now.

 

For If we wait with expectation, we restrain ourselves from trying to get in advance in our own strength what the Lord promises to provide in His time in His strength. You need not fear what you do not have because He knows what you need.

 

If we wait with expectation we view our struggles with courage and consolation with the understanding that deliverance is in motion. He may not suspend our suffering, but we need not conclude that He has forgotten us.

 

If we wait with expectation we celebrate even the smallest blessings of God realizing they are but tastes of a far more lavish bestowal of goodness.

 

But brothers and sisters, what He asks of us is too hard for us without help. To wait in those ways is too much for our frail and flawed souls. We are as hapless as the two souls in Beckett’s play. And God knows that. That’s why He gave us this table.

 

This Table, these elements, is where His glory is displayed. It’s where God’s power to bring life from death is recalled. It’s where the strength to wait for such things enduringly and peacefully is replenished.

For the journey to Christmas we need this meal.

 

For the journey to the realities which Advent turns our attention to, we need this meal.

 

I do not know how this slight meal can be real spiritual nourishment any more than I know how God can bring a man’s lifeless body back from death, or how He can set a bush aflame without it being consumed. But His word says that that bush burned brightly but did not perish; and that those who believe in Christ shall never die; and that this bread, His flesh, is real food, and this cup, His blood, is real drink.

 

So turn aside. As Moses needed to be persuaded that day of the glory of God, and as he needed to be persuaded again and again during his sojourn, so, too, do we need to turn aside and be persuaded yet again of His glory, and of how what lives united to that glory shall never see a final death.

 

So turn aside and receive this meal, for the strength we need to wait with expectation of the unimaginable things spoken of.

Now that you may have tried your hand (your heart really) at Lectio Divina, it might lead you to consider this:

We tend to think of Saturdays and Sundays as air-tight compartments in the sense that they don’t have much relationship to one another. Saturday is Saturday’s business. Sunday is Sunday’s. But what if part of what it means to “do” Sunday properly entails a certain way of “doing” Saturday?

Here’s a quote from one of the Puritans, George Swinnock. He has something to say about preparing yourself as the sun sets on a Saturday for what is to come when it rises again Sunday. His words are so foreign to our sensibilities, I think. I was reluctant even to mention his confession as a Puritan since our contemporary filters tend to relegate whatever emanates from that community to something….intriguing but certainly not binding. Anyway, if you will, labor to set aside your initial impression of the seemingly obsolete notion for which Swinnock argues. Then consider that what he says may be more relevant to your need, and your Saturdays, than you imagined.

Prepare to meet they God, O Christian! betake thyself to thy chamber on this Saturday night, confess and bewail thine unfaithfulness under the ordinances of God; shame and condemn thyself for thy sins, entreat God to prepare thy heart for, and assist it in, thy religious performances; spend some time in consideration of the infinite majesty, holiness, jealousy, and goodness, of that God, with whom thou art to have to do in sacred duties; ponder the weight and importance of his holy ordinances …; meditate on the shortness of the time thous hast to enjoy Sabbaths in; and continue musing … till the fire burneth; thou canst not think the good thou mayest gain by such forethoughts, how pleasant and profitable a Lord’s day would be to thee after such preparation. The oven of thine heart thus baked in, as it were, overnight, would be easily heated the next morning; the fire so well raked up when thou wentest to bed, would be the sooner kindled when thou shouldst rise. If thou wouldst thus leave thy heart with God on the Saturday night, thou shouldst find it with him in the Lord’s Day morning.

Pornography: ubiquitous, an inordinately lucrative industry, it’s very definition debated in the highest corridors of public discourse, and a devastation to innumerable relationships and careers.

This is an imagined story of what is probably an all too real experience, repeated more often that we’d care to know.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about Richard.  He garnered neither many complaints nor many compliments.  He, like many his age, had parents who loved him, but they had their own marital problems-sometimes so severe their caustic words sprayed at each other like acid.  Richard and his siblings, while still children, had always felt paralyzed whenever their parents fought, desperate for them to stop the angry shouting but never knowing how to intervene.  As teenagers they resigned themselves to living in their parents line of fire and quietly retreating whenever tempers flared.

Richard had always worn the shy hat around girls, increasingly interested in the opposite sex but never quite knowing how to take the first step to meet some girl who struck his fancy.

From his earliest days his guy friends would find the occasional girly picture ripped from some “naughty” magazine lying near some dumpster.  Outwardly they giggled at the strange pictures of women but inwardly they marveled.  They supposed these must be the things men and women do that kids their age weren’t allowed to watch in rated-R movies or on late-night television.  At the time, Richard didn’t think much about what he’d seen but did realize that such material did clear up some growing questions in his mind about boys and girls.  Plus, it awakened certain feelings in him that he enjoyed.

Growing up, Richard was by no means a loner.  His collection of friends stretched across grades and across that uncodified caste system of jocks, skaters, beauties, and geeks.  But when it came to relating to girls, Richard’s awkwardness was palpable.

When adolescence had set in with all its hormonal fury, neither of Richard’s parents had taken the time to prepare him for the kinds of changes he was undergoing.  Nor had they mentioned how those “icky” girls would slowly become something intriguing, perhaps even attractive. At some point that Richard could not pin down in his own mind, girls had changed from a thing to be avoided, taunted, or outdone to something to be noticed, admired, even approached-though the latter felt almost out of the question since females seemed so different and therefore so foreign.

About half way through high school his parents’ marital problems intensified.  It seemed the fights got louder, the fallout period lasted longer, and the distance between them grew wider.  While some kids in similar circumstances might turn to alcohol or some other substance to escape the pain of living in a war zone, Richard had seen too many drunk-driving accidents and heard too many stories about drug overdoses.  Whatever their ability to take the edge off, drugs or alcohol, he thought, were both too difficult to conceal and too dangerous to get entangled with.  But he did remember something else that made the troubling complexities of his world fade away for a time-a substance that left neither odor on the breath nor visible mark on the body.  Inspired by mere curiosity months earlier, a friend of his had ordered some pornography off the Internet, first, just to see if he could get away with it, and second, to find out what all the excitement was about.  The intrigue was fueled by a number of abiding questions: What could be so interesting that every other website had some link to an “adult site?”  Why did so much of the banter in the locker room after gym-class coalesce around the physical dimensions of various girls?  Why did most parents seem to be holding out on their kids in discussing sex when so much of their media intake was rife with sexual themes?

So when Richard finally borrowed “the tape” from his friend, a whole new world opened up for him.  Never had he seen the kinds of things portrayed on that tape.  Never had anyone told him of the kinds of emotions seeing that material would evoke in him.  Other things had mesmerized him as a child-mostly the things he’d seen displayed in toy store windows at Christmas.  But this material took his breath away and helped him forget the difficulties at home for a time-and all seemingly without the consequences associated with alcohol or drugs.  Sure, he would have to conceal his interest, but getting caught with it seemed to be the only possible harm-a variable for which he could easily control.

Whatever inhibitions he might have had about obtaining his own tape or magazine slackened over time.  After weeks of cherishing his friend’s tape, Richard took the plunge to buy his own material.  His intrigue had germinated into interest and now blossomed into a pursuit.  What he saw provided him with something he wanted, but of a kind that required nothing of him: a kind of knowledge about the opposite sex and about his own mysterious longings for closeness.  Although his parents had, by their silence, refused to address those issues, both curiosities had emerged over time and lingered there, refusing to depart.  The shortcomings he felt at relating to girls seemed to pale in importance now that he could-at his own discretion-invite himself into a world full of delicious sights in which he was asked to give nothing in return.  To him it seemed this was free excitement.  In truth there was a cost to his pursuit.  Aside from the financial investment-an expenditure that grew proportionally to his growing affinity for such material-a careful observer might have noticed how he was becoming more isolated as his attention to this fascinating world ramped up.  With that uptick in time spent came a necessary increase in the energy exerted to conceal his hidden exploration.  As that exploration became a habit for him, unconsciously was his exposure to pornography shaping the way he viewed a number of things: the nature of sex, his view of what was beautiful, and what formed the basis of real closeness with a female.  So many teachable moments his parents could have capitalized upon had come and gone-moments they thought would come again and at some “better” time.  How many images or notions of sexuality had passed before their collective eyes as they watched television as a family that could’ve served as the first step into a discussion of sexuality-images and notions left unaddressed but which were nonetheless contributing to Richard’s secret habit?

His avid interest in pornography never led him toward the overtly destructive world of exploitation or violence.  How someone like Ted Bundy connected the dots between exposure to pornography and sexual assault or even murder, Richard couldn’t fathom.  His appreciation for pornography was never so consuming that he entertained breaking the law to feed his habit, but that appreciation was never far from him-even after he broke the impasse of his own awkwardness with girls by trying out the dating scene through trial and error.  When finally he overcame his apprehension of spending extended time with girls, he found their world to be more complicated than he’d bargained for and not nearly as exciting as the solitary one he’d known before and would return to whenever stresses grew.

Then, in his mid-20’s, Lacy entered his life and turned it upside down.  She won his heart only after a few weeks of dates.  The idea of marriage for the first time entered his head and wasn’t quickly ushered out.  She had made a lasting impression: gorgeous, articulate, adventurous-even a bit feisty.  His enamoring gave way to imagining life forever with her as a spouse.  And during those heady days of courtship and honeymoon, all interest in the alluring world of pornography ceased.  He thought he’d found beauty and closeness that would attenuate the appeal for more salacious images.  Yet when the novelty of new marriage wore off and the reality of day-to-day living set in-warts and all-Richard’s mind returned to an earlier way of thinking.  Intimacy came easily between them early in the marriage but as their combined wills collided in the rough and tumble of marriage, obtaining that same intimacy required more effort.  Before his married days, pornography had provided Richard an avenue, if you will, toward sexual gratification.  It was an avenue that (to continue the metaphor) didn’t require traversing through the meandering side-streets of honest communication, or patient listening, or genuine empathy, or trust.  No, it was a mere b-line to pornography to find what now took increasing effort to enjoy with his wife.  Hesitantly at first but with increasing temerity as time went on, Richard renewed his exposure to pornography.  Concealing the exposure took more effort than it ever had, now that he lived in such close quarters with another.

A panoply of thoughts swirled inside him concerning his reawakened preference for this on-demand gratification:  “Looking at other women-what real harm could it do?”  “We both enjoy art; this is just another art-form.”  “Lacy just doesn’t understand my need for sexual intimacy; what’s wrong with finding it in a way that involves no one else?  I get what I need without asking her to give what she isn’t willing to give at that moment.”  In the Parliament of his own mind, the voices justifying his pornographic escapade narrowly edged out those voices warning him of its potential consequences.  To placate the latter, he vowed to keep the interest concealed since, he thought, she’d never understand even the best argument for his behavior.  His vow, however, could not guarantee his intent.  Cleaning out the clutter from the cabinet beneath their bathroom sink, Lacy made a discovery that sucked the breath out of her.  Interspersed randomly among his stacks of Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian, and Newsweek, were his cherished issues of “intimate art.”  With tears welling up and a face red with rage, she walked downstairs with surprising calm to confront him, clinching a single issue filled with photos of these uninvited bedroom guests.  As he sat in the living room eating a sandwich and watching a football game, she approached him, and slammed the evidence of his secret recreational activity upon his plate.  Saying nothing, her face said everything.  Whatever “peace” he’d conjured earlier within himself earlier about his activity suddenly evaporated.  Whatever certitude he’d had about the appropriateness of his behavior vanished.  He could take her gaze for only the slightest of moments before his embarrassment drove his eyes violently downward.  What had once seemed to be a merely frivolous activity of marginal cost now appeared, by the look in her eyes, incalculably expensive.  In that same moment, another revelation began to take shape for him.  At first, dimly, but then with increasing clarity could he see the series of ostensibly insignificant choices and circumstances in his past whose aggregate effect now shone upon him in searing brightness. . . .

Annie Dillard describes how Eskimos would catch wolves by slathering their hunting knives in seal blubber, allowing the thin coat of fat to freeze, and then burying the knife’s hilt in the snow with the blade pointing upward.  Soon, a wolf would catch the scent of the blubber and proceed to lick the blade until his tongue, savoring the fat but numbed by the icy coating, began to bleed from an unwitting, self-inflicted wound.  The more the wolf licked, the more the blood flowed, the more savory his feast became-until, of course, the wolf bled to death, the victim of his own ignorant, and ultimately destructive appetite. What the wolf thought he was enjoying was, in the end, killing him, and all by his own efforts.

The same scenario still plays out today, far from the icy climes of Eskimo territory, among men whose appetites prove self-destructive.

PRL–9/2003

They are now Mr. and Mrs. Brian Black (and, at their request, I presented them as Mr. and Mrs. Married-Filing-Jointly in a nod to their common profession of corporate tax), and they married last weekend.  They picked the text. I tried to link its implications to marriage.  The English Puritan, John Owen, said that no sermon (or wedding homily, for that matter) is fit for others until it has been preached to the preacher, himself.  I’m reading it again for my sake this morning.

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, and self control, against such things there is no law.  24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh in its passions and desires. 25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. 26  Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another.

If you happened to be at the base of Mt Rainier or somewhere in the Himalayas, and you saw a man preparing to climb to the summit of either, outfitted only with a single rope and a granola bar, you might think for a moment that this man was brave and tenacious.

But it’s more likely that the outcome of his attempt to climb with only those items will reveal he was neither brave nor tenacious, but merely foolish.  The climb before him would be magnificent and worthy of the ascent, but it’s treacherousness would require a kind of preparedness he did not account for.

You’re stepping into something this day that is both magnificent and treacherous. Marriage is an institution ordained by God, full of significance that represents the kind of love God has for His people.

But because it brings two flawed humans together in a world so fraught with flaws, it is as treacherous an existence as it is magnificent.  You need to be properly outfitted.

Paul has in these few verses three things I want you to take with you into marriage: three ideas, three non-negotiable truths that outfit you for marriage.

He makes no mention of marriage here, but in speaking of what constitutes a true and good life, he naturally outlines what will make a true and good marriage.  What I say to you this evening then applies to everyone in this room—single, married, newlywed, happily or unhappily-married.

Marriage is an earthly work sustained by a heavenly power.

In this first verse, Paul lines out almost comprehensively what constitutes true virtue

He lists these nine character traits that all go together, and which are those attributes of God He means for we, His creation, to share in—to give off, to reflect.

And who would argue that if you want to be married and stay married, this is a pretty good list of what to aspire to.

When you’re trying to walk out the door for some evening together and her pace leads you to believe she’s living in a different time-zone, you’re going to need patience. When he seems about as sharp as a bowling-pin when it comes to some of your sensitivities, you’re going to need gentleness. When stress, sickness, uncertainties, and children all begin to steal away your energy—and maybe even your hope—you’ll need perspective that allows joy to buoy your outlook. When each of you discover patterns and temperaments in one another that make you want to scream, you’ll need self-control. When the familiarity that comes with years of hearing the same jokes, enduring the same mistakes, talking through the same neuroses tempts you to think that the grass is greener somewhere else, you’ll need faithfulness.

The marriages that don’t crater, and the marriages that don’t drift into just a dull co-existence abide by these virtues.

The problem is: for all the need of these virtues, I wish I could tell you that they just emerge naturally—that given enough time you’ll just want to be loving, joyful, self-controlled.  You know and I know that they don’t just appear. If anything, married life can actually provoke the very vices opposed to these virtues.

That’s why you and I need to continually remind ourselves of where such virtue originates.  Paul makes it very clear that all that comprises a good, true, and virtuous life is a product of something outside you, yet at work within you.  That something or someone is the Spirit of God.  Kindness, goodness, patience—these and the rest are said to be the fruit of the Spirit.  They are born of and sustained by a gift from God—a gift that is a part of Himself, His presence.

All the communication strategies, the conflict-resolution techniques, are to no purpose unless there is something acting within you that originates from something beyond your own will and perspective.  That requires the Spirit of God.

There’s a huge difference between people who hear a list of virtues and then seek to comply with them, and people who feel deeply the goodness and truth of those virtues and seek to live by them.  The presence of the Spirit of God in us is what helps us to know not only what God calls from those who are His children but helps us to feel the value of those virtues that serve life and marriage—to know their beauty, their sturdiness, their nobility.  You cannot do consistently and authentically what you do not love to do.  It’s the Spirit of God in us that helps us to come to love what we ought to love—the virtues that sustain life and marriage.

There will be days when your love for these virtues wanes—when you lose sight of why they must be upheld.  It’s the Spirit of God in us that, so to speak, helps us repeatedly fall back in love with that which is loving and peaceful and patient. That’s why I can say that marriage is a very this-worldly act sustained by an other-worldly power.  Or to put it another way, a marriage lives on earth but feeds on heaven. TR: That only makes sense in light of the fact that One had to come from heaven in order to bring the will of heaven to earth.

Marriage finds its hope for survival and thriving in its belonging to Jesus

The Gospel Jesus brought was not merely a message of forgiveness it was a promise of power to live the life we could not do without His help.

The reason Paul can call forth the virtues from those who read his letter is because He knows what has become of those who have come to trust Jesus—that is, those who, in his words, belong to Jesus.

Something has happened to them, a kind of death has occurred.  He says they have crucified their flesh in its passion and desires.  Their flesh is that natural bent to make themselves the center of their universe; that unrelenting inclination to try to gain acceptance, approval, and significance on their own terms and in their own strength; that preference for doing things their own way which has only led them to anxieties, compulsions, arrogance, or despair.

Most struggles in a marriage come down to one or both spouses trying to make much of themselves or clawing to get something they only think they need to be whole or loved. 

But those who have trusted Jesus have had their flesh crucified; in other words, their previous orientation to life has begun to be exposed for the fraud that it is and the deception it creates. When you come to trust Jesus for your identity, for your forgiveness, for your stability, your former way of life gets exposed.  Your flesh becomes like a character on Jack Bauer’s 24 whom you thought you could trust and then suddenly you discover they’ve been deceiving you, not just for several hours, but your whole life.

So, for example: All that devotion to work you thought was just diligence, or the commitment to appearance, or prestige, or influence, or wealth—you begin to see all that as really just your fearful attempt to make yourself look good in yours or someone else’s eyes. But in Jesus, you’re already accepted. His acceptance doesn’t mean you become a slouch, but would it not change everything to know you didn’t have to prove anything to be respected?  Jesus does that in us.

So the marriage that belongs to Jesus has hope of survival and thriving because by trusting Jesus, you’re given not only insight but power to put to death whatever would seek to destroy a perfectly good marriage.

But that leads me to my last point, Paul is not so naïve as to think that simply by having come to trust Jesus that you can just get happy and chase all your cares away, that there’s this once-for-all death blow laid upon your flesh and the world’s influence.

Marriage requires an unceasing appeal to God for what defines you foremost.

When Paul warns of conceit and provocation and envy, he knows that even Christians are susceptible to listening to the lies of the world and the residual influence of their own flesh.

So Paul says if we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. That is, if it’s the Spirit of God who first convinced us of our utter bankruptcy and of Jesus’ sufficiency to meet our deepest needs, then it’s only by an ongoing remembrance of who we are and whose we are that we can protect ourselves and our marriages from the fears that lead to the sin of self-concern. You and she will have to keep coming back to this truth that what defines you is not the children you bear, or the salary you pull down, or the house you inhabit, or the friends you keep, but the Cross in whose shadow you live.

It’s the Cross of Christ that reminds us how desperate we were for help and how doomed we were to a life alienated from God, one another, and our own selves.

It’s the Cross of Christ that reminds us how cherished we are by the creator of the universe that He had to sacrifice His own Son for us to have any hope of reconciliation

The rough and tumble of marriage, the sheer routine of 24/7/365, the unceasing requirement to set aside your own plans for the sake of another—all that has the amazing ability to afflict you with a spiritual amnesia.  You forget your susceptibility to sin; you forget your acceptance to God by faith in His Son.

So your primary task as a married person and your primary responsibility to your spouse is to make a regular appeal to God to remind you of what defines you foremost.

Conclusion: Marriage is magnificent and glorious because it displays the kind of love God has for His children.  And its treacherousness while real and substantial shall never make the path across this life in marriage impassable because He who made marriage also supplies the strength by His Spirit to be married in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Marriage lives on earth and feeds on heaven.  It’s hope lies in belonging to Jesus.  And it’s thriving requires a unrelenting appeal to God to remind you of what defines you foremost.  For those who take those truths with them, when the day comes when one of you says goodbye to the other in death, the sorrowfulness of the parting will be tempered, I believe, by the knowledge that the work God did through the one who stays behind will now be completed in the one who enters His presence.

this from a little ditty on Galatians 5:16-26 a couple years ago

Say “desires of the flesh” in mixed company and you’re likely to get what? Smirks, chuckles, and people moving quietly away from you. Why? Because it seems an outdated phrase, or that those desires are, instead of reviled, now championed, exalted. What am I getting at? These desires are what many people would reason: “those are good things; they’re what make life worth living. Any proscription of them is just an outdated attempt at keeping people in line; or they’re overreactions to otherwise harmless expressions of pathos.”

But Paul puts these out here. And we’d be wise to consider what they’re really expressions of. Most people would see them for the most part as essentially harmless. But Paul means not only to clarify what is in opposition to the life guided and led by the Spirit, but to expose what those kind of expressions reveal about those who engage in them. For every single one of them—every single of these fleshly desires—is a good desire gone bad. A perfectly natural and holy desire twisted into something destructive, and in the end, pleasure-killing rather than pleasure-finding. They are desires divorced from their intended ends.

Consider fornication: Sexual intercourse is a wondrous gift of God; it allows two people to engage in a kind of intimacy that nothing else can replicate. It is an expression of self-giving that no word or gift can communicate, and in that expression much is received.

But fornication seeks to take that goodness and divorce it from the context in which it might be protected, enriched, and perpetuated. It places sex outside the protection of trust, because no commitment of steadfast love and concern accompanies its expression. So it is intimacy with risk, which compromises the intimacy in that the giving access to one’s most intimate parts is not met with a promise to honor that gift with enduring respect, admiration, and protection. Outside the marital commitment—a commitment buttressed by the fact that it is a vow made to something outside one’s own will (God)—that kind of trust cannot exist because it relies solely on the integrity of the other. That integrity, grounded in nothing other than his or her own will, is flimsy when you consider how easily it falters; our souls are susceptible to weakness, conflictedness, self-interest. Unless something outside our own wills governs our choices and commitments, the amount of trust one can place in another’s promise of commitment is limited to their own ability to maintain that integrity.

Remember the Narcoleptic Argentinian in Moulin Rouge: “where there is no trust, there can be no love.” Within fornication, passion and ecstasy can certainly reign, but trust cannot; that trust can be feigned by the one promising commitment and it can be assumed (or imagined) by the one hoping to seek that commitment from another. But it cannot persist. It cannot live without something else sturdier to validate it, to support it.

So fornication is a good desire gone bad. And the life apart from the Spirit will see no reason not to engage in it, which is itself a pitiable thing: like watching a child think he can nourish himself with a plastic apple; he can chew it and lick it, but he cannot eat it; it will do him no good.

Those who belong to Christ—who trust in Him and His work on their behalf, who have been obtained through His blood—have now begun to see what the flesh desires for the bankruptcy and deception that it is. Through the Spirit’s help, what the flesh desires no longer has the allure it once did; that’s the first work of the Spirit: to unmask the flesh’s true identity. With the allure now failing, the Spirit gives us power to resist its wiles—to find courage and insight to refuse its promises and, instead, to take hold of its opposite, to value it more and therein practice it as a function of one’s own desire rather than mere blithe compliance with some stricture. Surely we’ve not yet had our taste for what the flesh serves up fully replaced for what the Spirit offers; but the process has begun, and the death sentence for the flesh has been issued. Only time separates this moment from its eventual execution.

in honor of our little getaway this weekend on His Will and Our Work, we pay homage to that hapless office of men and women who all dream for something. . .more.

Do you feel like the church has elevated marriage over singleness? Insinuating, if not articulating, that life begins when you betroth yourself to another?

Or has the meteoric rise of divorce–even within the allegedly marriage-fortifying context of the church–sullied an earlier, more positive, view of marriage? Does the incidence of divorce and the precarious state of marriage insinuate that life might, in a sense, end when you say “I do”?

I’d like to wrap up our discussion of Tripp’s book on change and counsel by having you help us create a realistic-as-possible profile of someone in the church whose desire to be married has caused them to be so preoccupied with finding a mate, that one of two moods has emerged: either so despondent at the slight prospects of a marriage in the near-term, or so reckless in their pursuit of a mate. Specifically, I’d like you to envision how someone with either outlook would manifest that outlook in their day to day living.

Tripp outlines, with a sturdy foundation in 2 Peter 1, four simple principles in the “do” part of change and counseling another toward change. Anything I’ve tried to relate from his book has screamed for some real-world examples of how his principles would apply in a given setting. This week, I’d like to take the hypothetical profile you create and then have you employ what Tripp has to say about helping someone–someone who’s preoccupation with marriage has led them to make choices at cross-purposes with what it means to be a child of God. Those kinds of choices incongruent with our identity, I think you will agree, are often so subtle we don’t even notice.

This won’t be some veiled criticism against those who desire to be married. Nor will it be subtle devaluation of marriage. It will be a valiant, perhaps even quixotic, attempt to teach us how to counsel someone with a relevant struggle with an appeal to our identity, our responsibility (and its limits), and loving accountability.

And if you have some reading time available prior to Sunday, you might download this very interesting essay on a biblical theology of singleness and marriage composed by Barry Danylak, a Ph.D candidate at Cambridge University. It’s provoked a number of responses and reviews. Here’s one, and here’s another.