Homily 46: Now I See (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"I, even I, am the Lord, and besides Me there is no savior. I have declared and have saved, and I have shown, when there was no strange god among you; therefore you are my witnesses...that I am God." Is. 43:11-12

It is good to take stock of what God has done in your life, for His real activity in the midst of your real world is the very foundation of evangelism. We err when we think that evangelism is about delivering some prepared speech or memorized strategy that's composed of various verses, talking points, and arguments. Unless something is real to you, it will reek of insincerity (and if there is one thing our generation is acutely aware of, it is insincerity). No one believes the salesman who does not believe in his own product. That is why even the greasiest of them have to at least feign interest. If their heart is not in it, you will know. Likewise, no one believes the evangelism of someone to whom God is reducible to soundbites (or even feigned interest!). To be a "witness" for God and Christ does not mean taking the party-line out of some dutiful yet empty sense of loyalty. Rather, "that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you" (I John 1:3). The precedent is simple: it is all a matter of reality, not dull responsibility. You bear witness because you have tasted and seen (in some way) that the Lord is good.

That is why it is wise to take stock of God's goodness to you, all of His goodness, both in your life specifically and in believers' lives in general. Ask yourself: How has God manifested His goodness to you in the past week? month? year? (It is easier to find out than you think, for even small things make grand testimony: God is in the details.) What does His incarnation mean to you? What does His w/Word mean to you? The point is that God is in the business of proving Himself, and He never demands what He hasn't already earned. If He declares us to be His "witnesses," then obviously we have witnessed something. Furthermore, whether or not we have witnessed something speaks to the most important question of all: is this whole "God" thing real to you? Do you really believe in who He is? in what He has done? what He is doing? Or are you merely playing at religion? playing at spirituality? playing at mysticism? going to church and doing your duty and spouting the right phrases like a machine? I have news for you: God is not interested in machines but rather flesh and blood people that can bear witness to His actual goodness in space and time. He is looking for those who will be marked by His goodness and thus go tell His story because it has become their story. The Christian life is about God becoming more and more real to you everyday, for He builds His case in His children. Is your life a testament to the reality of God?

-Jon Vowell (c) 2013

Touched by the Gospel (The Ministers of God, Part 4)

"...in all things we commend ourselves as the ministers of God...through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report, though counted as deceivers and yet true, as unknown and yet well known, as dying and yet behold we live, as chastened and yet not killed, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing all things." II Cor. 6:4, 8-10

Paul established that we are the ministers of the gospel of reconciliation with God. He then asserted that we are to prove ourselves to be such ministers in the midst of any situation and by the might of God's goodness. Knowing that no situation can break us and that God's goodness strengthen us, Paul moves on to the final truth about being a minister of God: we prove ourselves to be His ministers through every circumstance. Whatever context befalls us, we are to plow through with all the magnificence of those called by God to proclaim His good news, and Paul lists three kinds of contexts: cultural, spiritual, and physical.

"...through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report, though counted as deceivers and yet true...." As the ministers of God, we are not bound to cultural drifts and tides. All the cultures of man (whether they be decadent or wise, secular or religious, barbaric or civilized) will find some reason to despise us and our God and His gospel. Every fashionable fad or thought will have occasion to rise up against us, claiming and saying all manner of ridiculous things against us. The worst thing we can do (as some have done) is to surrender to and compromise with our current cultural paradigm, to give in to the crushing pressure of the passing whims of the world. The best thing we can do, however, is to live in the light of the fact that our true honor and acceptance is found in Christ, and our true report belongs with God; and if the world calls us liars, it is because they belong to the father of lies (II Cor. 4:3-4).

"...as unknown and yet well known, as dying and yet behold we live, as chastened and yet not killed...." As the ministers of God, our prime reality lies with what is (for the time being) unseen and not with what is seen (II Cor. 4:18). You may not be known by the world at large in any significant sense, but you are known by God in every significant sense. He knows you and sees you. His piercing gaze of light and love cuts through all the muck and murk of the world and finds you right where you are currently standing or sitting or laying. He knows you not just factually but intimately, because He made you, and He has made His home with you (I Cor. 6:19; II Cor. 6:16; Rom. 3:20). And though His hand may seem heavy upon you sometimes, so that you die daily and seem to be constantly chastened, yet it is done out of love for your good, to bring you to glory unspeakable and full of joy (Rom. 8:29-30). The worst thing we can do (as some have done) is to grow weary with God's penetrating presence and His constant "meddling" and to desire a repose into spiritual stagnation, holding fast to whatever fleeting pleasures and peace that, if you wish to go deeper into the divine heart, you would have to give up. The best thing we can do, however, is to let goods and kindred go into the hands of God, and in every circumstance march through as one who is known of God.

"...as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing and yet possessing all things." Every truly serious-minded civilization has known that the world is built on sorrow. The Christian knows this as well, and yet we rejoice; not in ignorance of sorrow, but in the midst of sorrow. We rejoice because there is a God beyond all sorrow; and yet He is not untouched by our infirmities (Heb. 4:15), and He takes pity on we who are of the dust (Ps. 103:13-14). His goodness outshines all the horrors of evil. Beneath the deep tragedy of the world lies the deeper comedy of the Trinity, and we have been made privy to its inside jokes: even while poor and having nothing, we are rich and have everything, because we possess and are possessed by God. Silver and gold have we not, but we do have the Mighty Maker and His all-consuming redemptive goodness that is full of life and light like lightning caught in a coal cellar.

So you see, we go through every circumstance differently than others, for our reality has changed. The gospel is not pleasant thoughts and phrases to us; it is not mere terminology. Rather, it is our context, our existence, the very air that we breathe. Circumstances cannot touch us like they did before, for we know too much now. We know God and are known of God (Gal. 4:9a). We know Christ and are bound to Christ (Col. 3:3). We know the gospel and have seen its power in our own lives, and we will see its power in the lives of others. So help us God. Amen.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Live Out Loud (practical Christianity as explained by an orthodox rebel)

"Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your husbands.... Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with your wives with understanding, giving honor unto the wife as unto the weaker vessel.... Finally, be ye all of one mind, having compassion one for another. Love each other as brethren...."

I Pet. 3:1, 7, 8

So far, Peter has laid down and unpacked the precedent that we are those who are different and therefore we should be different. We should live differently in this world; not because we have to, but because it is who we are. The only question now is what exactly this different living looks like. Anticipating this, Peter gives three examples that help us flesh out what it means to live differently. (NOTE: The two uses of "Likewise" and the use of "Finally" show that these examples are all a part of the same flow of thought from chapter 2.)

The first example is the submission of wives to their husbands' role as familial head, a very unpopular notion in our egalitarian-to-a-fault and hyper-individualistic democracy. What is interesting, however, is that the same idea was unpopular to Peter's readers as well. Peter was writing to believers living in Rome, and there was no other place in the ancient world that epitomized the same over-bloated egalitarianism and individualism of modern America. Case in point: Rome was home to the cults of Artemis, Isis, and Dionysus, all of which encouraged a wild and raucous lifestyle for women (think "Girls Gone Wild," Ancient Rome edition). Thus, the believers that Peter was addressing lived in a culture that was absolutely saturated in sex and a desire to act-out in every immoral way imaginable. (Does that sound familiar?)

In order to counter this culture of degradation, in order to live differently, Peter commands the Christian women to "be in subjection" to their husbands. How, exactly? By their "chaste manner of living" coming from the fear of God, who is above all husbands (vs. 2). The idea is that the Christian wives let their husbands (who were most likely unbelievers in this case) know that they were different, that they feared God and God alone by living a chaste life, full of a "meek and quiet spirit" (vs. 4). Such a life would sharply contrast (and thus completely counter) the Godless culture surrounding them, and such a life would show that they were not like everyone else. They had been made different by God.

The second example is for husbands to understand and honor their wives. This is an interesting pair of admonitions for two reasons. First, to "honor" a wife was an outrageous idea at the time. It is well known that the ancient world (in spite of their sexual cults) viewed women as lesser beings than men (and even as the property of men sometimes) precisely because they were the "weaker sex". Peter, however, turns the whole thing on its head: you honor your wife because she is the "weaker vessel" (i.e., physically weaker). To the ancient Roman culture, that logic made no sense; but to those who are different, it makes perfect sense. This is where the "understanding" part comes in. Peter tells husbands to live with their wives "with understanding". This understanding was not just an understanding of their subjective personalities as human beings but also their objective reality as a believer, i.e., "being heirs together of the grace of life" (vs. 7). That was the "understanding" that they were to have, viz., although their wives are physically weaker, they are still the daughters of God and heirs of His salvation, and on that basis husbands were to honor them. That is how they lived differently.

The final example Peter gives is for all believers to love each other, a principle that he laid down before (2:17) and that was first stated by Christ when He explained to His disciples how the world would know that they were different (John 13:35). Their love for each other was not (and is never) based on mere sentiment or shallow toleration. Rather, it is a direct result of the love of Christ being shed abroad in our hearts by His death, burial, and resurrection (Rom. 5:5-8). In short, we love each other for the same reason that husbands are to honor (and by extension, love) their wives: in Christ, we have all been made new, we have all been made different. And in that common difference, we love each other as heirs of the same salvation.

Perhaps now we will better understand a rather famous (and perhaps misunderstood) verse: "Always be ready to give an answer to every man that asks you for a reason for the hope that is within you" (I Pet. 3:15). A favorite verse of apologists (who are not entirely wrong for commandeering it), Peter actually has in mind something less specialized and more practical. We are to be ready to give an answer to "every man that asks" us about the hope within us. The question is: Why would they even ask? The answer should be obvious by now: they ask because they see that we are different. Our lives so sharply contrast with their own that they cannot help but ask what makes this contrast so. Herein we see that Christian living is not just a matter of holiness; it is also a matter of evangelism. Or to put it another way, holiness is evangelism. Christian living is not rule-keeping but a declaration, the main way that we "show forth the praises" of God. How we live is meant to be both our worship and our witnessing. Our life is the loudest voice that we have, and as those who are different we would do well to let it live out loud.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Homily 36: The Other Coming (as preached by an orthodox rebel)

"...[we] wait for His Son from Heaven, whom He raised from the dead, even Jesus, who delivered us from the wrath to come." I Thess. 1:10

The Coming Christ

Christ will come again, and this is no mere delusion or escapism. Beyond the folds of time and the edges of creation, there is a glory prepared and preparing for us, a glory that will outstrip all of our imaginations and shatter all of our vanities.

We each are splintered shards of color, looking and longing for the prism from which we have been refracted and to which we can find the wholeness of light. It is light that is coming, light inaccessible made manifest in the man called called Christ that He might finish what He started millennia ago: to destroy the works of the devil, the outer darkness and its gnashing teeth, banished to the fringes beyond thought by the onset of living light, which it still cannot overcome or comprehend. In this hope, we find patience and endurance everlasting (vs. 3).

The Coming Wrath

There is, however, another coming than that of glory. Beyond the light glorious, there is the fire dreadful. Out past the limits of space and time burns the furnace of the white hot fury of God's wrath. Wrath against darkness. Wrath against sin. Wrath against death. Wrath against all that is fallen, whether worlds or stars or souls. It is no sudden or random wrath; it is deep-seated and long-brewing, for the earth is old with sin and death, and its stench is that of an open sore soured with much filth. There is a holy cauterization looming in the distance, gathering force and speed, until that day when the skies will crack with anger and burn as with the fires of dawn but now with a fire everspreading and unquenchable, whose satisfaction is not met until it receives the furthest farthing.

 

You who long for the glory of living light: do you give no thought to the wrath of ravenous light? A light that hates? Hates because it loves? Hates all dark because it loves all that is light? We who rejoice at the distant music of the spheres: do we not also hear the distant thunder of the hammers of God, forging the sword of His mouth, whereby the Maker will unmake all things? Do we not hear, and do we dare not have pity on those still undelivered, still lost in and doomed to die with the hated dark?

-Jon Vowell (c) 2012

Branded Butter Spread Too Thin (a book review by an orthodox rebel)

Book: Branded: Sharing Jesus with a Consumer Culture, by Tim Sinclair. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2011. 143 pgs. (including preface, intro, and all appendixes)

Introduction: The history of 20th to 21st century Christian evangelism can be viewed as oscillating between an exercise in futility and a three-ring circus. Exactly how a child of God and follower of Christ is to effectively engage today's culture and its people while neither succumbing to its wiles nor alienating the souls attempting to be sought has proven to be a messy and frustrating affair. In Branded: Sharing Jesus with a Consumer Culture, author and radio personality Tim Sinclair attempts to tackle this hairy issue, bringing with it his on-air sense of humor as well as his many years of marketing experience. As explained on the book's back cover, Tim hopes to address the main problem that besets contemporary evangelism as well as to motivate and inspire us to "share our faith in ways that are honest, authentic, and---most importantly---effective."

Summary: Tim starts by explaining that Branded is not meant to be a how-to guide since there is "no one-size-fits-all methodology" to "showing and sharing Jesus" (10). We each have to create our own plan, one unique to our own circumstances. Thus, Tim plans to use his book to set a "backdrop" (viz., defining the problem and stressing the need to deal with it) while letting the reader fill in the methodological blanks.

Tim's thesis is simple: Christianity today has an "-ing" problem. We're awfully good at saying, acting, and pretending that we're Christians, but we're very bad at doing, being, and living like we're Christians (11). To put it another way, we're very good at classifying ourselves but lousy at living out that classification as though it were real: we can talk the talk, but we fail to walk the walk. As a result, we come off as hypocritical, insincere, and unauthentic.

In order to "compensate" for this "deficit," we create an impenetrable illusion of authenticity by using things to "brand" our relationship to Jesus. By the use of Facebook, Twitter, blogs, t-shirts, bumper stickers, posting the right quotes, listening to the right radio stations, etc., we market Jesus to the world and (so we hope) create an image of authentic Christianity (11-12). Tim's response to this futile technological web-weaving sets the tone for the whole book: "Sharing Jesus with today's culture" has nothing to do with branding Jesus; rather, it "has everything to do with being personally branded by Christ" (12). If we want Christ taken seriously, then we need to start taking Him and our relationship to Him seriously.

Tim spends the whole of the book's thirteen chapters drilling down on this idea, first by explaining the main problem for 21st century evangelism: We live in a post-Christian world (13-15) where Christianity no longer has the "monopoly" over culture that it once had (28). Thus, we can no longer take our faith for granted, which has done nothing but give us a passionless Christianity (28) and a valueless Christ (33). In a post-Christian world were every viewpoint is consider equally valid, Christianity cannot afford such a state of affairs in its own house. It must once again passionately believe that Jesus matters.

Tim lays down several key principles that he (more or less) repeats throughout the book: in sharing Jesus, it is our methods that need to change, not our message (20-23); the Jesus we present must be based on the real thing, which only comes if we have had (and continue to have) actual contact with the real thing (37); and everybody has a different culture/perspective, and we must share Jesus in the language of "that person's reality" (43). In the end, Branded's overall point can be summed up in this way: sharing Jesus with others must be based on a diehard, sincere conviction that Jesus is truly "the best" choice out there (20), a conviction born out of our own relationship to Him (73). In doing so, our witnessing will be personal (71) and honest (84), producing a life based on Christ-like love (88), which is the true foundation for all evangelism: "Unless a person has actually seen Jesus in you and me, God's words aren't going to mean a lot" (92).

Review: I enjoyed this book and found most of what it said to be absolutely true. My only real problem with it is its thinness of content. Tim's decision to avoid presenting any strict or solid "methodology" was sincere in its good intentions but hurt the book overall. His call for a more "relational," "authentic," and "passionate" Christianity is a valid concern, but it becomes repetitious halfway through, and your interest isn't really piqued again until the last chapter where he outlines his list of "radical" ideas of how we can show ourselves to be branded by Christ (rather than simply branding Him). Here he offered concrete, practical advice that truly grabbed and engaged the mind, but it was only given one chapter. The book could have used more of this methodological approach and a lot less "backdropping". 

Branded is not bad by any stretch of the imagination. There are just so many wasted potentialities. His critique of our secular marketing approach to evangelism (especially in regard to Facebook and Twitter) is timely and needs to be restated, for our evangelism is in danger of drowning in a shallow, johnny-come-lately culture of our own making. In addition, Tim's approach to sharing Jesus is highly incarnational (as opposed to the deferential nature of market-driven evangelism), viz., evangelism must be about the incredible collision between the real Jesus and the specific cultural universe of  the individual being evangelized. Furthermore, Tim heavily stresses a meeting of head and heart when sharing Jesus, a principle perfectly stated in what is easily the money quote of the whole book: "That's the beauty of a relationship with Christ. It's designed to be a combination of head and heart. Of knowing and feeling. Of what the Bible says is true and what we experience to be true in our daily lives" (90). Such beautifully stated truths are littered all throughout the book, but they are given cursory glances at best. In truth, every one of them could have been made into their own book.

Recommendation: I would recommend this book as a starting point. Its truths are not new, nor are they incredibly fleshed out, but they are still necessary. Its "radical" ideas in the last chapter, as well as its "Discussion Questions" appendix, make it a good introductory text for a bible study on evangelism. Tim's tone and style is easy to understand, and the whole book could be read in one sitting and still be edifying. If you want meatier fare, however, I suggest that you look elsewhere.

-Jon Vowell (c) 2011