Dr. Ben Witherington: The Love Commandment in the NT-Pt.1

In this post I would like to explore two of the horizontal love commandments– ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ and ‘love one another as I have loved you’ (the ‘I’ in question being Jesus). Let’s start with the observation that love is commanded. It’s not optional. It follows as well from this that the sort of love we are talking about in this post, while it certainly may involve feelings is not basically grounded or based in feelings one has for others. Feelings are notably unresponsive to attempts to command them. The sort of love Jesus has in mind then is commandable as well as commendable. It has to do with a decision of the will, resulting in loving actions.

Read it all.

Holly Finn: Online Pornography’s Effects, and a New Way to Fight Them

Looks like there’s some hope for this highly addictive disease. See what you think.

Repetitive viewing of pornography resets neural pathways, creating the need for a type and level of stimulation not satiable in real life. The user is thrilled, then doomed. But the evolutionary plasticity of our mind makes this damage reversible. In “The Brain That Changes Itself,” psychiatrist Norman Doidge writes about patients who overused porn and were able to quit, cold turkey, and change their brains back. They just had to stop watching it. Completely.

From the Archives: Keeping Your Focus on the Here and Now

Sermon delivered on Ascension Sunday, June, 2011, for the future St. Augustine’s Anglican Church.

Lectionary texts: Acts 1.6-14; Psalm 68.1-10, 32-35; 1 Peter 4.12-14, 5.6-11; John 17.1-11.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This morning is the Sunday after the Ascension, which we celebrated on Thursday. A bit of background may help. Earlier in Acts 1, Luke reports that the risen Jesus appeared to his disciples for forty days from the time of his Resurrection and then was taken up into heaven as described in today’s NT lesson from Acts. Thursday marked the fortieth day from Easter and thus we celebrated it as Ascension Day since Easter is a movable feast.

To modern ears, the story of Jesus’ Ascension can sound a bit strange. What is going on here? Is Luke trying to tell us that Jesus has become some kind of cosmic spaceman who has basically checked out on us and gone away to be with his distant Father and God who is not particularly interested in us, or is there something else going on? As you might guess, there is indeed something else going on in Luke’s Ascension story and today I want to look briefly at what it might possibly mean for us today.

We humans have an unfortunate tendency to want to know the future, especially the end times, and can often obsess about it to the point where it distracts us from paying attention to the here and now. Harold Camping’s failed prediction that the Parousia would occur on May 21st is a notable example of this sad fixation over the eschaton, a fancy word that refers to the end of the world (undeterred, Camping has now revised his calculations and predicts October 21st to be the real date). We also see this unfortunate tendency illustrated in today’s lesson from Acts. Jesus’ disciples are apparently getting the sense that something else big is going to happen, that he is about to be taken from them, and they want to know about what the future holds in store for them and their beloved Israel. But Jesus will have none of it. He reminds them that the time and date for the eschaton is not for them (or us) to know.

That is precisely the point of the angels’ question to the disciples. “Why are looking heavenward when there is work for you to do here on earth right now?” While the angels do not say the latter explicitly, it is quite clear from the context that this is their intention. Before he ascended Jesus told his disciples that they are to be his witnesses to the ends of the earth. In Matthew’s account of the Ascension (28.16-20), which omits the actual ascension narrative, Jesus tells his disciples that he has been given all authority in heaven and on earth, and that the disciples are to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

It is clear, therefore, that Jesus does not want his followers to be engaged in some kind of introspective and otherworldly navel-gazing. No, there is quite a lot to do right here and now and we who claim to follow Jesus had better be ready to roll up our sleeves and get busy because it will be both immensely satisfying and terribly hard work. As today’s Epistle and Gospel lessons make clear, we will meet massive opposition in our work, both from the systems of this world and from the powers and principalities themselves, of whom Satan is the ringleader, and we dare not take that lightly.

When we understand that there is work for Christians to do right here and now in God’s broken and hurting world, we are ready to look at why the Ascension is important for us today. When Luke tells us that Jesus was lifted up in a cloud and taken to heaven, he is simply using language to tell us that Jesus has gone into God’s dimension or space, which is separate from our human or earthly dimension or space. Clouds in Scripture always indicate God’s Presence and we think immediately of God leading his people through the wilderness by a pillar of cloud and the cloud that enveloped Jesus and his disciples on the mount of Transfiguration.

What Luke and the other NT writers are therefore trying to tell us is that the Ascension points us to a bigger truth. Jesus had to ascend to the Father so that he could assume his rightful place as ruler of the universe because God’s space is the control room for our space. That’s what the NT writers mean when they say that Jesus has sat down at the right hand of the Father. They do not mean that Jesus has left us to our own devices by going away to hang out with some distant and uninvolved God. Rather, the NT writers are telling us that Jesus is now in charge and he’s actively and intimately involved with us. He’s assumed his rightful place and he has sent his Spirit to help us do the work he calls us to do.

When Jesus returns in great power and glory to establish God’s New Creation, the new heavens and earth, God’s dimension and our dimension will be fused into one and all things will be transformed into New Creation. Our mortal bodies will be raised and transformed, never again to die or be afflicted with all the nasties that can beset our mortal bodies, and we will get to live directly in God’s presence forever in the new heavens and the new earth. This is our Easter hope and this is what the Resurrection and Ascension point to.

In the interim between now and then, what the NT calls the “end times” or “the last days,” we have work to do here on earth. Because we know that God loves his creation and intends to fully redeem it (and us), we are called to help Jesus in his work of New Creation. We do that by denying ourselves, taking up our cross each day, and obeying Jesus’ call to us, both as individuals and collectively as his body, the Church. We cannot do that on our own, however, and that’s why we need the Spirit’s power and Presence living in us. Neither can we be agents of God’s New Creation if Jesus really isn’t in control of all things or has checked out on us. That’s why the Ascension is so important because it reminds us that Jesus, while currently out of our dimension and out of our sight, really is in control and really is providing us with much needed help, both through his prayers for us and in the person of his Spirit.

So why is there still so much sin and brokenness in this world if Jesus really is the sovereign ruler of the universe? Because God has not yet finished the task of redemption, a task that only he can complete. Until that time, God in Christ has chosen to exert his sovereign rule during these last times through his people. He is sending us out to be his advance guard, so to speak, and because we are mortal and finite our work will necessarily be painfully slow and incomplete.

We see this illustrated plainly in today’s lesson from Acts and in the ending of Matthew’s Gospel. Those who follow Christ are to baptize new believers and then teach them, with the Spirit’s help, to obey their Lord. This is not unlike how yeast works in dough. The more disciples of Christ there are, disciples who truly love the Lord and are obedient to his commands, the more he can bring his healing touch to bear on his hurting and broken world.

If we think about this for a minute, we cannot help but have our breath taken away. God intends to use his human creatures to be the agents of his healing and redemption. What an awesome responsibility and opportunity for us! Talk about the potential to find real meaning and purpose in your life. This surely is it! None of us can say why God has chosen to restore his broken creation in this way but all of us can be thankful that God thinks enough of his human creatures to give us the opportunity to be his agents of New Creation until he returns again in great power and glory to finish the work he started.

And as our Lord reminds us in today’s lesson, we do not have to do this work alone. He promises to be with us always–even to the end of the age–in and through his Spirit. It is by his Spirit that we become his Kingdom workers. This is not of our own doing because left to our own devices we are part of the problem rather than becoming part of the solution. But when we are empowered by the Spirit, the sky’s the limit in what we can do for our Lord. We can also be assured that he will help us overcome anything the powers and principalities can throw at us and to empower us to be his Kingdom workers, to bring his healing love, mercy, and grace to a broken and hurting world that desperately needs it.

This is the promise of the Ascension. This is worthy of our time, our reflection, and more importantly, our obedience with the help of the Spirit. Are you ready for this kind of action? You simply cannot be an armchair quarterback if you are. The very God of this universe has work for you to do and he loves and respects you enough to give you the opportunity to do your part in his redemptive plan for this tired and broken old world. What a grand opportunity!

What is it that Jesus is calling you to do? If you don’t know, take your cue from the disciples in today’s lesson and start praying about it, both privately and in the fellowship of other believers. Whatever it is Jesus is calling you to do, when you understand that he is calling you to be his Kingdom worker, and when say yes to God’s gracious invitation to you in Jesus, you will discover that you are really have and are living the Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

Don’t Be Afraid: Taking Jesus’ Command to Us Seriously

Sermon delivered on Sunday, Easter 6C, May 5, 2013, at St. Augustine’s Anglican Church, Columbus, OH.

Lectionary texts: Acts 16.6-15; Psalm 67.1-7; Revelation 21.10, 22-22.5; John 14.23-29.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

In today’s gospel lesson Jesus tells his fearful disciples to let not their hearts be troubled and be not afraid (did you know that this is the most common command in all the Bible?). At first blush we are tempted to wonder if Jesus is out of his mind because there is plenty in our world that troubles our hearts and makes us afraid. A quick look at our intercessory list with its awful litany of illness, hurt, and heartache, not to mention our own struggles that each of us face, is enough to confirm this. John also implicitly confirms this reality in our gospel lesson today because we realize that if Jesus’ disciples were not afraid, Jesus would not have felt the need to reassure them. Not only that, but surely Paul and his companions’ hearts were troubled when the Holy Spirit kept preventing them from going to various places to preach the gospel. They had to be wondering what that was all about. And so this is what I want us to look at briefly this morning. How can we take to heart Jesus’ command to us to let not our hearts be troubled and not be afraid in a world that often seems bent on making us feel just that way?

The key to appropriating Jesus command to fear not is to remember there is both a present and future dimension behind it and both are based on the fact that God raised Jesus from the dead and installed him as Lord and ruler of all creation. We note that Jesus’ disciples were afraid, in part, because they didn’t know what was going to happen to Jesus or themselves and they were afraid that whatever happened they would be left all alone to deal with it. There are not too many things that make us more afraid than the fear of the unknown and the fear that we must deal with life’s adversities and tragedies alone with no one to help or support us. If we are honest with ourselves, we will admit that we fear the unknown because we are not confident that God really is in control of things and we are afraid of dealing with life’s adversities alone because deep down we know we really don’t have the ability or resources to cope adequately with things that are beyond our control, which is most things in life. We really have control over precious little in our lives.

But here we note that Jesus does not tell his fearful disciples to not be afraid until after he has promised them that he and the Father will come to them and make their home with them.  Earlier in the chapter, Jesus told his disciples that he was going to the Father to prepare a room for them in the Father’s house so that they could have a place in God (John 14.1-3). Here Jesus is telling them (and us) that he is going to make it possible for God to have a place in us right now. There is no waiting necessary. This will be possible, of course, when the disciples receive the Holy Spirit—the Advocate, Counselor, Teacher, Intercessor, Guide, Comforter, and Strengthener, an all-around helper and companion. Only then will Jesus’ followers be able to receive his peace, a peace that is far more encompassing than just an absence of conflict. It is a peace that involves our total health and well-being, a peace that nothing in this world can overcome. All this reminds us that Jesus is addressing two of the biggest sources of our fear—our fear of being left alone and our fear of the unknown. When we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, God is essentially telling us that we do not have to deal with our trials and tribulations all alone. God is with us in the Spirit. This reality is what is behind almost all of Paul’s teaching about the nature of the Church and the people God calls us to be. Without the Spirit, we really are alone and can never hope to be the truly human beings God calls us to be.

All this requires faith on our part, of course, because we cannot see or touch the Spirit who lives in us. And because the Spirit is so gentle and loving, it is often hard for us to detect his presence in us. This is why we have to look for the fruit of the Spirit to manifest itself in our behavior, which requires that we know what the fruit of the Spirit is in the first place—love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control (cf. Galatians 5.22-25). As we look for the Spirit’s presence in our lives, it is important that we don’t see his presence as some kind of static thing that never changes. The Spirit interacts with us as we struggle to put to death our sinful nature with his help and the Spirit’s presence will gradually become more evident throughout our lives, albeit unevenly at times. But the point is, regardless of how often the fruit of the Spirit manifests itself, it is evidence of the Spirit’s presence with us and this reminds us that Jesus is good to his word to make it possible for God to be with us even in Jesus’ ostensible physical absence.

And because we are being changed by the Spirit into the very likeness of Jesus as evidenced by the fruit of his Spirit, and because we live in the “already-not yet,” the period of time between the inauguration of God’s promised new creation and its consummation when our Lord returns, we are bound to experience suffering in this world because as Jesus reminded his disciples, the world fundamentally hates him and so it will hate us as his followers. As we are transformed into Jesus’ likeness more and more by the Spirit, we will find ourselves to be increasingly out of place, like a fish out of water, and that is why Jesus tells us to rejoice at our sufferings for his sake (Matthew 5.10-12). We will be the oddballs who advocate for forgiveness and mercy instead of revenge and hatred. We will be the “unenlightened” folks who insist on biblical sexual ethics. We will be the pesky folks who advocate tirelessly for the least and the lost in our society, who will love all comers because all human beings bear the image of God, damaged as that image may be. And because we are this way (and much more), the world will hate us because we do not march to its beat or bow to its gods. But when that happens, we do not fear because it is further evidence that we have God’s Spirit in us to help us be the people he calls us to be.

We see a practical application of this dynamic of living in the power of the Spirit in today’s NT lesson. Put yourself in Paul’s shoes for a minute and think how you would feel without the benefit of 20-20 hindsight. Jesus has called you to preach the gospel but in this case you discover he is blocking your every move. What’s that all about? Surely our hearts would be troubled over this. But Luke is careful to tell us that it is the Holy Spirit himself who blocks Paul’s path so that Paul is forced to wait. This, of course, is where the rubber meets the road because most of us don’t like waiting for things to happen, especially when we firmly believe we have been called to a given line of work or mission as Paul surely did. And so it is not unreasonable for us to believe that the “Big Stall” taxed Paul’s patience and faith (two fruits of the Spirit, BTW). But part of what Luke wants us to see is that despite God’s running of his universe, God spent plenty of time and effort to direct Paul, Silas, Timothy, and Luke to where God needed them to go—to Philippi, where they found hearts waiting to be exposed to the word of God. To be certain, there was a good deal of uncertainty in all this, but Luke reminds us that things happened as God willed them and in God’s good sense of timing. No detail in our lives is too small for God to attend to and all this serves to remind us that we do not live as people of God alone or on our own power. Uncertainty and frustration will come, in part, because we are finite and live in a fallen world. But our story from Acts today reminds us that God is actively involved in our lives down to the smallest detail and we have every reason to trust God’s good timing.

Not only that, this story also reminds us that God is firmly in control of his world, even when it is not readily apparent to us. But as John the Evangelist reminds us in our epistle lesson, there will come a day when there will be no doubt that God is firmly in control and we must pay close attention here because this has great relevance to how firm is the foundation on which our hope is built. This is the future dimension that helps us take seriously Jesus’ command to us to not be afraid and let not our hearts be troubled because John’s description of the New Jerusalem reminds us that God, not evil, sin, and death, will emerge victorious. What we see in John’s vision is no less than the restoration of Eden before the Fall—heaven on earth!

The Spirit reminds John and us that in the new creation there is no more Temple because God and the Lamb live directly in the presence of his people. When the new creation comes in full, there will be no more ambiguity or doubt or frustration because we will see the face of God directly, an astonishing claim considering that elsewhere in Scripture we are consistently told that no one can look on the face of God and live (see, e.g., Exodus 33.20). But in the New Jerusalem that will not be the case because no trace of evil will be found and the curse will be lifted, having been purged by the blood of the Lamb, so that God will interact with his people as he did before the Fall. It is the ultimate manifestation of the Aaronic blessing found in our psalm today. Those of us who will live there get to do so not because of our own merit but because we are Jesus’ people who have had our sins covered by his precious blood shed for us. This is what John is talking about when he tells us that the inhabitants of the New Jerusalem have Jesus’ name on their foreheads. This cannot help but make us want to fall on our knees and offer our profound thanks to God for his his great mercy and tender love for his people. The hope of the New Jerusalem also reminds us that we as the Church are called to live our lives in ways that anticipate this hope as a prophetic witness to the world.

That evil no longer exists in the new creation is also seen in the fact that John tells us the city’s gates no longer need to be kept shut at night to keep the bad guys out and that the tree of life and its waters are for the healing of the nations. This reminds us that the new creation is not some localized or small-scale project. It is the very renewal of God’s good but fallen creation to its pristine state and there we will get to live our lives as God’s redeemed people who are rescued fully from evil, sin, and death. This is our hope and destiny and we will be perfectly equipped to live as citizens in the new creation precisely because we are learning how to do that right now in the power of the Spirit. Here then is the complete package needed for us to take seriously Jesus’ command to us to be not afraid or let our hearts be troubled. We need not fear the present because we are equipped by Jesus’ death and resurrection to have God be with us in the power of the Spirit. And we need not fear the future because the new creation that Jesus launched at his resurrection reminds us that our future is secured and life is our destiny, not evil and death.

I close with an additional brief story of how the Spirit manifests his presence in our lives in very practical ways to further encourage you. Recently I witnessed intercessory prayer for a friend of mine. One of the things the intercessors prayed for was that my friend might be protected from the enemy’s arrows, something that really resonated with my friend at the time. Later that week, my friend found himself in a hostile environment where he was being attacked from several quarters. So much for the effectiveness of the intercessors’ prayer, eh? Not so fast my friends. We live in a fallen world and the arrows are bound to come our way. To think otherwise is frankly naive on our part. But my friend reported that despite the attacks, he felt a great peace and remained unruffled by it all. The point is that while the arrows came, my friend was protected by the power of the Spirit and enjoyed the peace of Christ that he promised his disciples. Priceless.

So what can we do with this during the coming week? Three things come quickly to mind. First, ask the Spirit to help you recognize his presence in your life right now and to help you remember examples like I just shared with you. Second, commit Jesus’ promise to his disciples to memory. If you memorize a passage each week and work to recall them on a regular basis, you will be shocked at how much Scripture you retain. Don’t memorize Scripture for the sake of memorizing it. Memorize it to help you navigate through the stormy times of your life by recalling God’s promises to you in Jesus. You won’t be disappointed. Last, reread today’s story from Acts and muse on it. The Apostles were humans just like we are and experienced a lot of the same trials we have to deal with. Let this story remind you how active and intimately involved in your life and the life of the world God really is, especially when you hear voices shouting loudly that God isn’t real or isn’t really present in his world or cares about it or us. The best antidote to fear is to marshal the resources God gives us and the Big Three are Scripture, prayer, and the eucharistic sacraments. Don’t delude yourself into thinking you are big enough or capable enough to deal with the storms of life and the dark powers behind them by yourself. Rather, trust and rely on the resources God gives you in the Spirit. If you do, you will surely be reminded that you have Good News, now and for all eternity.

In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Alleluia! Christ is risen! He is risen indeed! Alleluia!

Science Project Lands ‘Exemplary’ Student in Jail

From Fox News.

Really? Really??? Common, please meet sense. Please. At the very least, whatever happened to the notion of the punishment fitting the crime? Sheesh. Read the whole bizarre thing.

kierawilmotThe 16-year-old was in a yard outside the school working on the experiment for an upcoming science project, according to the Bartow Police Dept. The project was not part of an official class assignment.

Wilmot told police she thought the concoction would result in a little smoke. Instead, according to the police report, the tiny bottle exploded.

Bartow High School Principal Ron Pritchard told television station WTSP that Wilmot had an exemplary record and she is known around campus as a good student.

“She’s is a good kid,” the principal said. “she has never been in trouble before. Ever.”

According to the police report, obtained by Fox News, Wilmot told police she was in no way trying to hurt anyone or create a disruption of school.

The principal agreed and said she simply made a bad decision.

“Honestly, I don’t think she meant to ever hurt anyone,” he told the television station. “She wanted to see what would happen when the chemicals mixed and was shocked by what it did. Her mother is shocked, too.”

The principal said the young lady was completely up front and honest about what happened.

“She didn’t run or try to hide the truth,” he said.

Nevertheless, the school district called the police, had her arrested and expelled her from school.

Book Review: Bad Sex That “Just Happens”

From Christianity Today online. See what you think.

As the subtitle of The End of Sex makes clear, Freitas thinks that hookup culture is destructive. “Hookup culture promotes bad sex, boring sex, drunken sex you don’t remember, sex you could care less about, sex where desire is absent, sex that you have ‘just because everyone else is, too,’ or that ‘just happens.'”. Her assumed audience is concerned adults—faculty and administrative staff at colleges and universities, as well as parents. The book ends with an appendix of practical steps for combating hookup culture. The appendix has three sections: “Things Parents Can Do,” “Things Administrators and Staff Members Can Do” and “Things Faculty Members Can Do.”

What Freitas finds most disturbing about hookup culture is that most of those who participate do so less than willingly. The students that she interviewed almost always saw their hookups as imposed by social expectations or as random acts—”It just happened” was a prevailing theme. In this context she has illuminating observations about the link between hookup sex and alcohol. Students “pre-drink” before going to parties because they want to be numb enough to do things that they would not do if sober. At some level they know that engaging with sexual behaviors of various sorts with strangers and casual acquaintances is demeaning. They brace themselves to do these things because they “know” that this is what “everybody” does at parties.

Oddly enough, however, Freitas is, in the end, unwilling to aspire to a world where no one hooks up. Rather, she wants to create an environment in which students see that “the hookup is just one option among many for navigating sexuality.” Freitas is so invested in the young adults’ right to choose that she does not want to take hookup sex off the menu. What she wants to do is add more healthy options to that menu: dating that involves getting acquainted without (or before) having sex; waiting to have sex until one is invested romantically in one’s partner; deciding to abstain from sex for an indeterminate period. Freitas succeeds in making hookup sex look bleak indeed, yet she seems to think that a reflective person might make a clear-eyed choice in favor of it, and if so that’s just fine (for them). The only menu option she dismisses is saving sex until marriage. This option, she says, “is extreme to the point that students cannot imagine living it, nor do they wish to.”

This Day in Maney Family History

I was ordained as an Anglican priest five years ago today at St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Fairlawn, OH by bishops Roger Ames and Frank Lyons. Bishop Lyons bopped me on the top of my head with a Bible (symbolizing my being under its authority) and it sounded like a hollow melon being tapped. Feel free to draw your own conclusions about that!

I remain astonished at God’s call to ministry and ever thankful for being part of the Anglican Church in North America, for our diocese and its leadership, for St. Augustine’s Anglican Church in Columbus, OH, and for our Leadership Team.