Keith’s Blog

RTG (10) Rebellion & Redemption - part 2

(FYI this entry is part of an going discussion entitled ‘Rediscovering the Gospel’ so you might want to read some of the previous entries before starting here.)

The second of the four ‘R’s!

As we continue our journey into what the Gospel is, we have reached the point where the message of Jesus confirms for us one of the things we all know anyway and declares to us something we all need to know whether we wish to or not.

What we all know is that there is something seriously and painfully wrong with our world. People have such capacity for wonder and kindness and good and yet, all around us, we see the evidence not only of man’s inhumanity to man but of our inhumanity to children, our inhumanity to nature, our inhumanity to ourselves. For all our undoubted potential, something has clearly gone wrong, something is obviously not right within us and within our world.

What we all need to know, according to Jesus, is that the primary cause of that ‘something’ is our broken relationship with God. Reading through the Bible, and later listening to Jesus’ teaching in the New Testament, what we discover so clearly is that at our very beginning as a race, human beings did indeed live in the kind of world and kind of intimacy for which God created us. But we ruined it. Despite all that God had done, despite the obvious demonstrations of his love, the free and unrestricted access to his presence, our ancestors foolishly decided to rebel against God. Tempted and yielding to temptation, the first man and the first women decided they wanted to be the Gods of their lives and so they rejected God’s offer of intimacy, refused to acknowledge him as Lord and acted in utter denial of his kingly rule and reign. As a result, both they and the whole of our world were irreparably corrupted and cut off from the very one they were made to know. (You can read all about it in Genesis 1-3)

If we are to understand the Gospel, we have to understand that this is a rebellion every one of us has repeated. (See, for example, Isaiah 59:1-2 or Romans 3:23) If our broken relationship with God is our fundamental problem, then sin is its fundamental cause – and not our petty ‘sins’ that we commit day in and day out either. Through Adam and Eve’s rebellion all of us have become infected with the same problem and with the same result. And if we are ever to deal with our brokenness; to heal this rift with God; to ever again know what it is to walk in true fellowship with Him or with one another – this disastrous corruption has to be dealt with; the endless cycle of hostility between us and our creator has to be ended; our utter captivity to our condition of sin, as well as our own individual ‘sins’, has to be broken. We need to be redeemed – and the good news of the Gospel is that that is exactly what took place two thousand years ago on that hill of execution just outside the gates of Jerusalem!

Trapped forever in the rightful consequences of our race’s rebellion, and powerless to do anything about it ourselves, it turns out that the only hope for us was for God himself to set us free. Facing eternal condemnation through nothing other than the simple application of God’s inescapable and perfect justice, it turns out our only hope for rescue was for God himself to carry the sentence, for God himself to bear the price of our sin. This is why the Cross is the sign of our faith.
The Cross is our emblem because on that cross so many years ago, Jesus – God’s Son, God with us, God for us – has done precisely that. In the words of Isaiah foretold long before Jesus ever came: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” (Isa 53:5)

The second ‘R’ of the Gospel, and the real joy of both Christmas and Easter, is therefore this: Jesus, our perfect, sinless, unblemished representative has taken upon himself the full consequence of all our rebellion. Jesus has lived the sinless life that none of us could ever have achieved and he has died the atoning death that none of us could ever have provided. He himself was the only sacrifice that would be sufficient to pay for our sin and he himself has joyfully chosen to become that sacrifice – to REDEEM us one and all!

Horrifying and sickening as the scenes from that first Easter are – it was then; it was through those events; it was in the midst of that cruelty, that darkness, those cries of utter anguish that the world God had created found the Redeemer and the redemption it so desperately needed.

RTG (10) Rebellion & Redemption - part 1

(FYI this entry is part of an going discussion entitled ‘Rediscovering the Gospel’ so you might want to read some of the previous entries before starting here.)

What’s the Story with the Cross?

When I was growing up, and even when I first encountered real Christianity as a teenager, I found the Christian image of the Cross to be terribly confusing and incongruent. No matter how I tried, I just couldn’t get my head around why such a brutal device of torture and death could possibly be the one chosen to represent the message of Christianity. As a teenager, my neighbourhood had become a violent place and on several occasions I got to encounter the wreckage that ‘the troubles’ liked to leave in its midst. I witnessed people being shot; saw the bloody aftermath of riots, explosions, punishment beatings and their causalities. Like those around me, I threw stone stones at the army and got bloodied and hurt in angry scraps and fights. I still carry the scars of some those encounters today. I had a pretty reasonable grasp of the difference between what signified hatred and what signified love and I knew that crucifying someone was no act of affection!

And yet, there on the stained glass windows of churches and on the cover of the school bibles was this strange and mystifying symbol – the execution tool of the Romans and arguably the most barbaric method of killing ever used – claiming to represent the eternal love of God. Why on earth was that the sign of Christianity?

I vividly remember revisiting the very same question in 2004, when I was invited to a special preview of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ in Liffey Valley. I had read very little about the movie in advance of the showing and so was totally unprepared for the sickening and unrelenting portrayal of violence that the movie seemed to spew at me for the whole duration of the experience. Watching it afterwards on small screen I was relieved to discover there is indeed something remotely like a plot going on in the midst of the violence but watching it for the first time, right in front of the ‘Big Fella’ screen, in full colour, with surround sound blasting my ears, it was almost traumatising. Looking back, I think this was partially because it brought back some of my less happy memories from Derry in the 1970’s and recalled some of the gore scenes in my own life that I would not wish to replay very often. Afterwards, although the whole point of the preview was for us to give the researchers some feedback and useful comments at the end, I left the cinema without saying a single word, dazed and feeling a bit numb. I think it took a whole day for me to recover from the shock I felt at the movie’s impact. I remember the same questions coming at me once again. Why was it that Jesus’ life had to end with such brutal and horrendous violence? How could people had treated him with such unending and insatiable malice? And why would God have allowed it, wanted it? Why would a tool of murder used at the end of such a plot be the sign of Christianity?

All that was different this time was that I knew the answers to these questions and was able to marvel at the wonder of them.

So what is the story with the Cross and why is it part of the ‘good news’ of Jesus?

... to next time.

RTG (9) Relationship & Restoration

(FYI this entry is part of an going discussion entitled ‘Rediscovering the Gospel’ (RTG) so you might want to read some of the previous entries before starting here.)

The first of the four ‘R’s

If the Gospel of Jesus begins with the life-altering news that we are not here by accident, then it continues with the equally defining news that the primary reason for our existence is relationship.

Whilst the doctrine of the Trinity is undoubtedly challenging and complex (mind you, I still think it’s a whole lot easier to get your head around than string theory!!), what is abundantly clear from the Old and New Testaments is that the God who has revealed himself in creation, in the scriptures and supremely through Jesus Christ is a God who lives in perfect community.

John of Damascus, a seventh century Greek theologian, captured something of what this means by using the word perichoresis which literally means “circle dance.” Choros in ancient Greek referred to round dances performed at banquets and festive occasions. (These dances often included singing, hence the origins of the English word chorus.) The prefix peri (Greek for round about or all around) emphasises the circularity of this holy dance envisioned by John. (Thanks to George Claddis for the above!)

God’s existence, John of Damascus suggests, can be well illustrated in the imagery of this flowing, circular movement of dance; by the intimacy, equality, unity and yet distinction it represents – and all of this in the embracing context of unfailing love.

It is indeed a wonderful image but it becomes even more wonderful when we realise that what God has, in effect, decided to do in creation is to widen His circle. From Genesis to Revelation, but especially in the ministry and teaching of Jesus, it is clear that the God of creation who has created this world, and who has created us, has done so entirely that we might come to know Him and likewise enter into this glorious, liberating, embracing communion that he has enjoyed within Himself for all eternity.

For so many of us, religion, including Christian religion, is about worshipping a far off and fearsome God in whose presence we are not, and never can be, worthy to stand; our religion is one of appeasement. And we are mistaken.

However we interpret the narratives of Genesis, what they indisputably reveal is that from the very beginning God’s desire in breathing His Spirit into Humankind has been that we, too, might experience this perichoresis – this divine, intimate, embracing community both with Him and, through Him, with one another. This is what we see as Adam and Eve walk with God in the Garden hand in hand, without shame and in perfect harmony. Above all else, this is what was was lost through their (and our own subsequent) rejection of God’s reign and rule.

Yet, even after this tragic failure on our part, even long after what theologians call “the fall”, when we read passages such as Jer 31:31-34 and reflect upon them, we see that God had promised that one day he would act so that this intimacy could be restored. And now, as we gaze with wonder at those events of two thousand years ago in Palestine, and when we encounter Jesus’ teaching for ourselves in passages such as Luke 15 we see so wonderfully that that time has finally come. Though we have long and often rejected Him, though we have repeatedly denied him his place in our lives and world, God has now reached out to us and longs still for us to know Him, to feel His embrace, to experience His forgiveness, to receive His love. In Christ, God has widened His circle once more and has declared Himself to be with us. All that is now needed from us is the decision to be with Him.

This, again, is why the message of Jesus is such Gospel, is such good news. We were made for relationship and through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection all that was lost in that first rebellion, all that has been lost for us through our own, can now be dealt with and restored. Now we can know God; now we can truly know one another once more.

RTG (8) - Creation and its Creator

(FYI this entry is part of an going discussion entitled ‘Rediscovering the Gospel’ (RTG) so you might want to read some of the previous entries before starting here.)

For me, the masterpiece of Jesus’ message begins with the simple, yet utterly profound declaration that you and I are not alive today on this revolving planet by accident. We are here because this incredible creation in which we find ourselves has been carefully and deliberately willed into existence by an even more incredible Creator. As the very first verse in the Bible puts it, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Genesis 1:1) Plato and the Gnostics are wrong.

And not only is the world here because God wants it to be; you and I are as well! Genesis 1:26-27 tells us that having overseen the formation of the rest of our planet and its occupants, God then said: “Let us make human beings in our image, in our likeness… So God created human beings in his own image; male and female he created them.” There is so much for us to learn from these verses – and Jesus clearly affirmed their content in his own teaching (eg Matthew 19:4-6) – but, for now, it is sufficient for us to realise that the Gospel thus begins with God himself and the fact that we ‘are’ because we are, in fact, His.

Many of us are fascinated by the ‘how?’ of creation, and past and ongoing studies in such fields as geology, cosmology, palaeontology and genetics provide us with an abundance of awe inspiring learnings and insights. The manner in which our world appears to have been formed and how it has developed and evolved over the millennia is absolutely mind-blowing – and we still understand only a tiny little piece of the overall picture.

But beyond the ‘How?’ lies in each of our hearts the instinctive yearning to understand the ‘Why?’ and in the message of Jesus that second question is conclusively and majestically answered.

The joyous beginning of that answer is that you and I exist because there is a God out there who has created our world and who has created us; even more than this, we exist because this God made this incredible world just so that we could be made; we are not here by accident; we are not here by illusion; we are here because of Him.

The Gospel begins with the good news about Creation and its Creator.

RTG (7): the Gospel as it used to be

The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican is widely recognised as one of the great triumphs in human artistic endeavour. Painted from 1508 to 1512, Michelangelo’s striking portrayal of the creation, fall and destruction of humankind by the flood has evoked enormous praise for its interpretative and creative genius. As one commentator puts it, “rarely has anyone so beautifully depicted the human form. Never has the scope of the divine and human drama been so powerfully portrayed.”

How sad then, that Michelangelo masterpiece began to degrade almost immediately. No sooner had his scaffolding bridge, on which he had stood and lain to paint, been removed than the combination of smoke and grime, ever present in the chapel, began to attack the hue, lightness and colour of his work. Such was the damage inflicted by these unrecognised art terrorists that within a century of its completion, no-one even remembered what Michelangelo’s original frescoes had really looked like.

In subsequent centuries, well-intentioned restorers tried to deal with the problem by covering over the work with a type of varnish in a short-lived attempt to revitalize the original colours but that only served as an adhesive for yet more smoke and dirt. The painter Biagio Biagetti wrote in 1936, “We see the colours of the Sistine ceiling as if through smoked glass.”

However, In 1981, while cleaning other priceless frescoes within the chapel, Fabrizio Mancinelli, director of restoration work, performed a critical experiment on the smoked glass masterpiece. At the top of the scaffolding being used to clean the other frescoes, Mancinelli was able to reach Michelangelo’s lunette of Mathan and Eleazer, ancesters of Christ and using a special solution called AB-57 cleaned a minute portion of the famous painting.

The results were excellent and the decision was taken to clean the entire lunette – but only one square inch at a time! After all, this was the work of Michelangelo. Art experts from the Vatican and all around Italy were invited to view the results and, based on their conclusions, plans for the most ambitious restoration project in art history were set in place. They would restore the entire ceiling of the Sistine Chapel!

A six-yard-wide bridge was built for the project and attached in the same holes used for Michelangelo’s bridge and the restoration advanced slowly and carefully, inch by precious inch. Various different approaches were needed throughout the process. For example, on portions were Michelangelo had painted on dry plaster, a different technique and solution was needed to those places where he’d painted on wet plaster.

The task was completed on December 31st 1989. It had taken twice as long to clean the ceiling as the artist had needed to paint the original. But the result was breathtaking. Beneath the centuries of smoke and grime, and beneath the flawed attempts to protect what was under the surface, lay vibrant detail and wonderful colour never before realised by students of the great master painter.

Michelangelo had been known as a master of form—his frescoes had been said to resemble sculpture rather than painting, but following the restoration work now completed, suddenly he was revealed as a master also of colour—with azure, malachite green, rose and lavender of such nuance that experts could only gaze in amazement.

Not surprisingly, there was quite a bit of controversy over the restoration. Many critics said no restoration was necessary. Some protested that the process had actually destroyed the work. But most agreed on two things: for the first time in nearly five hundred years, people were viewing this masterpiece the way it was originally intended; and secondly, before the restoration no-one could have imagined just how wonderful Michelangelo’s original creation had actually been.

Without wanting to be overly dramatic (I am a Presbyterian after all!!), it is my firm conviction that the reason we need to be working through and understanding the sort of issues we have been looking at in our little blog series thus far – such as legalism, individualism, Platonism etc – is that for most of us our view of the gospel has undergone a similar degrading to that of Michelangelo’s work on that chapel ceiling.

For hundreds of years now, perceived and unperceived theological and cultural terrorists have been at work in our midst undermining, discolouring and degrading the glorious wonder of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And such has been the enduring effectiveness of this attack that few of us in the church today even remember what the hue, light and colour of that original masterpiece actually was. If this is so for us then it is doubly so for those outside of the church. Despite what is taken for granted in so much of modern secular and sacred literature, the vast majority of church and non-church going men and women in our country have not actually cooled in devotion or rejected Christianity at all. They have simply never comprehended it and thus have never had the chance to decide what their response will be.

One of the things that excites me most about following Jesus, is that every time we peel off another layer of what his message has been coated in over the years, what we discover underneath is not a diminished nor reduced Gospel but rather the opposite. The more we understand the truth about what Jesus taught and accomplished, the more we see the wonder of his life, death, resurrection and ascension. The more we see that wonder, the more captivated and amazed we become. (It is for this reason that in the end, like the role of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings, the seeming opposition to our faith from people like Darwin, Nietzsche, Bultmann, and Dawkins et al may well prove to have been gift as well as burden. But we’ll leave that for another day!)

So now that some of these ‘yeasts’ have been named and thus exposed, lets begin to look together at what this ‘Good News’ actually is.

Until next time..