At His Word (John 4:50/Part 2)

I got it.  I got there and laid the weight of my heart at his feet. 

“Jesus, come to my house and cure my dying son”. 

His response was sort of expected.  Though he didn’t spit on me he also seemed to have denied my request.  But his denial was not as I anticipated.  I thought the denial would be of the kind you get when you ask a wall to dinner.  Your words bounce straight back and hit you in the face and then you eat alone.  But Jesus hadn’t ignored my existence or even my words.  He responded.  And even his response was unexpected.  Instead of calling me a fool or spitting the words “rich man” in my direction, he seemed to have spoken to me like I was the same as everyone in the crowd. 

“Unless you people see signs and wonders,” Jesus said, “you will never believe.”

Yes, he denied me, but he saw me, first of all, as equal to those around me.  Needless to say I was stunned.  As I said I’ve been spit on and insulted, but never called poor or faithless.  Jesus said this to me, to us, though I had never been led to believe there was an us.

            I could hardly gather my self.  All that was left standing from this peculiar push of Jesus was the cry of my heart for the life of my son.  And it was with a voice betraying more of this cry than I had hoped that I spoke. 

“Sir,” I replied, “come down before my child dies.” 

In a flash the atmosphere shifted from confusion and dismay to ferocity.  The tremor in my voice affected the crowd like a downed deer might affect a hungry lion.  But it was just a flash after all.  Every eye was fixed on Jesus even as he reprimanded them and these eyes had only begun to turn onto me when his countenance completely changed.  It was terribly ironic, that my own life seemed so seriously imperiled as I pleaded for the saving of my son, but it really felt as if it could leave me any second due to my affliction. 

The crowd, yet to fully shift their attention from Jesus, perceived the relaxing of the muscles, the softening of those ever-hardening lines and perhaps, even, the slightest shadow of a smile pass across that well of mystery that was the face of Jesus. 

“Go home,” said Jesus, “your son will live.”

Never has my life hung so literally on the words of another.  Never have I seen so clearly the eternity that exists in between moments of time.  Having (against all odds!) made it through eternity and hearing what he said I was brought to the crossroads upon which my son hung.  No Rabbi has ever thought so much in so little time as I did in those few seconds of silence.  “Go home,” he said to me.  Go home?  Was he yanking my yamaka?  Were those stories racing across Judaea and Galilee stories of Jesus telling people to leave?  No they weren’t!  He touched people with his hands, he spoke to them, he prayed over them, and they were changed, delivered, healed.  Was I asking something new or different or that he hadn’t heard?  Was I a type of person he had yet to come across?  That’s quite unlikely for someone like him whose been hanging around Jerusalem during the Passover and traveling the countryside.  So what was it?  Really, I have yet to know.  Perhaps it was my desperation, my vulnerability, or my request that provoked such an unusual response from Jesus.  But he had responded.  And I will never forget the look on his face when he did. 

Suddenly it became clear that there was no better thing to do in that moment than to take Jesus at his word.  Indeed, to this day I have yet to come across a word so worthy of my life, even the life of my son.

The ride home was agonizing.  Not fearfully agonizing.  No, my son would live.  That much was true.  But I could hardly wait to see him!  I had all but given up hope of ever seeing his life restored, and now it was.  And then I saw dust approaching from the distance.  As it grew closer I realized it was my servants.  As they grew closer I could see the urgency of their riding.  And then they met me, telling me of the recovery of my son.  Of course he was recovered.  That much was expected, but I hadn’t thought of the effect it would have on my entire household.  I asked them when the fever left him, they said yesterday at the seventh hour, the exact time Jesus had said it would.  I told them and my household the story of my encounter, much to the dismay of my servants, and my conviction became theirs.  This Jesus, the center of swirling mystery, who was coming to be known as the leader of the weak, the Rabbi to the poor, transcended all the stories and sayings.  He was the leader of the weak and poor but my experience told of a man doing more than gathering an army or winning the masses.  Jesus was starting his own movement directed not exclusively toward the poor, but toward anyone who would trust his word, his very person.  Jesus is the Chosen One of God, and as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.

At His Word (John 4:50/Part 1)

50“’Go home,’ said Jesus, ‘your son will live.’ The man believed what Jesus had said and went on his way home”.

            It was clear to me very early, even as a young boy; the eyes that burned into me as I rode past, and those that refused to even drift in my direction, were part of the same chastising strike.  Not that this insight, gained so early, had anything to do with a profundity of wisdom on my part, or any sort of instruction or warning from my father.  However consistently dark and mysterious, even bright and mysterious, this world is, she has truth to share that is unavoidable, even for the weak-minded.  Like gravity, or the need for food or the heat of the sun, knowledge of the hatred of entire villages of you and your horse and garments and the clinking of the gold in your purse, is inevitable.  For all people ignorance is bliss.  For a few people ignorance is impossible.

            The leper is cursed by God and so he is a leper.  The rich man is blessed by God and so he is rich.  Yet both are hated, one for being cursed and the other for being blessed.  It really is- almost –funny.  And so I laughed as I rode to the last place I could have chosen to spend the day, in Cana of Galilee, to beg a man who would either glare and spit like the others, or listen and acknowledge with the compassion of a 5’8’’ rock.  Dismal prospects indeed, my family was thoroughly convinced I’d lost my mind; my son was on his deathbed and the best solution I had come up with was to throw myself into the lion’s den.  Taking Daniel as my example I rode straight into Cana and immediately found the man I’d been hearing about.

            His name was Jesus.  He was the center of the endless commotion surrounding last Passover, the subject of stories spreading like wildfire throughout the countryside.  They say that when he looks at you he sees straight into your heart, sees who you were, who you are, who you will be.  They say that his prayers strike both the proud and the humble, offending one and embracing the latter.  That he provokes the wrath of the elite and the adoration of the weak.  That his touch, even his shadow, is enough to heal a man.  And yet, while I knew where I fit into the stories I’d heard (the meaning of the sideways glance of my own servants upon discovering my eavesdropping) I remained drawn to this man.  A peculiar mystery pervaded these stories, pervaded him, provoking my reminiscence on my most precious memories, like the first time I read the story of the burning bush, or smelled the holiness drifting out of the inner sanctuary of the Temple.  And I could see this same effect move like a breeze across the town squares and temples, producing the oddest mix of fury and compassion on the countenance of its subjects.  Sooner or later I knew I would need to see, hopefully hear, this man for myself.

            Of course everyone within a days journey of Cana heard quickly of Jesus’ return, hence the tension, the strain in the air of the entire town.  It’s difficult to say whether I would have felt compelled enough to make the journey, to press through the crowds, to sit with the lions, for the opportunity to see for myself, were my son not slowly and steadily approaching Abraham’s bosom.  But I had to.  I had to see, to ask, to beg if necessary.  I guess I did.  But not at first.  It was easy enough to find him and less easy to draw near enough to have a hearing.  I persevered despite the exceptional firmness of the social chastisement.  I thought I was ready for the hate but had not thought through the implications of someone like me trying to have a word with “their guy”.  Glares turned to shoves and spit struck my feet.  I’m not positive, but it seemed that my purse grew progressively lighter as I pressed through the crowd.  Divine encouragement? Unlikely.  I didn’t care.  The life of my child depended upon this conversation.

Paranormal Activity

What a phrase.  Thanks to the recent trilogy of movies bearing this title, its utterance alone seems to fill people with a mixture of fear and excitement.  Our minds are filled with images of shadows appearing on walls, people getting tossed here and there by invisible forces, and 145 lb. girls with the strength and temper of a steroid injected Goku-Frieza fusion.  But are these true-to-life depictions of paranormal activity?  In some cases, yes.. sort of. I will get to the “sort of” part later, but it is true that violent paranormal activity does in fact exist. 

The spiritual realm is real, demons are real, and they impact, affect, and at times possess people who are not temples of the Living God.  And this is the answer most Christians will give when asked why they won’t watch these movies, because that stuff actual happens, needs to be taken seriously and is not an appropriate source of entertainment.  But not everyone who thinks of themselves as Christian refuses to see them.  In fact, those Christians who are willing to see them must be in the majority if one is to account for the incredible success of the three movies.  Why do they still go?  Probably a combination of minimal worry about content in any of their sources of entertainment and they’ve developed a liking for the kind of thrill that these movies offer.  And so one would think that the question at hand, when it comes whether or not it is OK to watch movies like Paranormal Activity, centers around the importance of the content in our sources of entertainment.  But it seems like Christians, on both sides of the argument, have already bought into the falsities perpetuated by the paranormal trilogy (which is also bound up with all of these ghost-hunter shows). 

To cut to the chase, these movies are teaching America to fear the paranormal, meaning demons.  And here is problem #1.  Already they are outside the biblical witness (the standard which the Church is required to hold the world to) by equating  “paranormal activity” with “demonic”.  Dictionary.com defines paranormal as “of or pertaining to the claimed occurrence of an event or perception without scientific explanation, as psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, or other purportedly supernatural phenomena”.  Notice the immediate discrepancy between the definition provided by the Paranormal movies and Dictionary.com.  The former has nothing more to say than “demonic” while the latter says, basically, “things beyond the explanation of modern science”.  But is the demonic the only thing existing beyond the reaches of modern science?  And it’s at this point that Christian’s on both sounds of the argument should be bothered. 

Problem #2: these movies, for all their emphasis on paranormal activity, have nothing to say about the paranormal activity that people across the world encounter hundreds of times more frequently than anything witnessed to in these movies; the movement of the Holy Spirit, the living presence of Jesus, the joy of the Father, in our worshipping together as the Church, in time spent in silence seeking personal communion with our Creator, in our loving of our children, in our taking the posture of servant towards our friends, families, and enemies, in our helping the helpless, and even in the appreciation of a purple-red-orange-melting together sunset.  And while it’s the life of the former three that gives significance to the latter activities, it remains true that we worship, know, and are known by a God who is all-powerful, all knowing and everywhere.  (If the reader is like every other Christian in the world who struggles to grasp the nature of those attributes of God, here is an explanation that approaches those attributes from a different angle.)  The only Christian influence, by the movie’s standards, is a Catholic nanny that knows how to do spells.  Some would point out that her being Catholic means she’s not Christian.  I would point out that her spell-casting means she’s not even Catholic.  And that’s it.  The movies are silent outside of this single pseudo-Catholic influence. 

At this point some might say we shouldn’t take things so seriously, to stop dissecting for theological error movies that were created solely for entertainment purposes.  This brings us to problem #3: the country is being taught to fear things that really aren’t worth fearing, while the things worth fearing are truly left in the dark.  Millions and millions have flocked to theatres to see these films over the years (including myself).  The only explanation for this (besides the movies being skillfully put together) is that the subject matter actually scares people.  And at first glance it would seem that the fear driving people to these theatres is healthy; it’s based on stuff that is sort of real.  And so we come back to the “sort of” from the first paragraph.  Not only do these movies define “paranormal activity” as “demonic”, but also equate “demonic” with “people getting flung across rooms”.  This is what’s truly unhealthy about these films: they take something the majority of people are afraid of and then build movies around a fantastic caricature of it while the truer evils of demonic forces are completely neglected. 

Yes, demons can probably throw you across a room.  Yes, they could probably lift your entire kitchen up to the ceiling and then drop it with timing so precise as to maximize your reaction.  But if every time a demon pumped thoughts through your mind to distort the image of your friend with the goal of destroying your relationship with them you instead got your feet pulled out from under you and landed on your back, you would be profoundly better off.  If every time you were led in your thinking to see women as objects to be consumed an invisible Chuck Liddell instead punched you in the chest, you might still know how to treat women as persons created in the image of the Triune God.  If every time you were home alone your lamps started blinking and swaying, or you got picked up by your hair, or kept getting locked in closets, instead of being led to believe that the only way to relieve your boredom was to go on Facebook or watch TV or look at pornography, then you might have annoying lights, a sore scalp, or need to become a locksmith, but at least you would know the importance of being alone and silent at the feet of your Redeemer, or to pray for the many sorrows you see in the lives of those around you, not to mention the catastrophic evil that fills our news stations, or to appreciate the irreducible beauty of the turning leaves on the tree outside your window.  If instead of institutions that systematically exploit the weak and powerless we had a bunch of men in suits that got picked up in their sleep, we might have some freaked out men in suits but thousands of Americans might still have their homes, little girls would not be enslaved by sex trafficking gangs, and children in Africa would not be abducted and forced to armies. 

The subject, or the exploitation of the subject, of these movies, offends many Christians.  It’s the position of the Pious and Profane that even said Christians have already been tricked by the father of lies.  He would have our fears directed toward little girls who act like tigers, inexplicable shadows on walls, and rearrangement of furniture, all the while we are being trained to see women as pleasures to be had, to interpret that comment we heard the other day as intended to hurt, to think that the world will be better off, that we can end sex trafficking, the corruption of wall street, and perverse international economic imbalance if only we can get “our guy” in the oval office.  The irony is that (to borrow from Pastor Sean Kappauf) the thing the world needs most, which she aches and groans for (Rom. 8:19-22), IS paranormal activity in its truest, most biblical sense.  She needs the movement of the Holy Spirit, the living (and therefore judging) presence of Jesus the Christ, according to the eternal plan of the Father.  And until the true King returns on a cloud of fire, hurling lightning bolts at evil forces, dropping grenades of power on our demonic systems, it is the job of the holy and catholic Church to usher in the Kingdom by the power of the Spirit.  God’s plan for the world is wildly paranormal, and it’s about time His Body reclaimed that word in His name.

Before the Beginning

It all started in the beginning- or, actually, before the beginning.  It’s crazy to think and even more difficult to imagine how, that “the beginning” itself was created.  I guess, then, it never really started at all.  Or, actually, He never really started at all.  He was, and is, and will be.  Before the beginning He was- laughter, joy, love, and then… Creativity.  He was, they were, three yet one.  A God, three persons in perfect, harmonious community out of whom flowed, really inside of whom flowed, love that was creative.  It’s tempting from a finite perspective to speak of this creativity pouring out of the three, to forget the fact that there is no “outside” of these three.  They are.  There is no greater, or other, or more.  “All”, as big as we can grasp, as much we can grasp, has nowhere to be but in the Three.  They are Reality. 

The first act of creativity, then, was not “positive” or “external” of God.  His first act was not actually speaking.  It is true that God created, in the beginning, heaven and earth.  But He needed first to create the beginning or, better yet, space for the beginning in Himself.  Remember, they were not a god surrounded by emptiness, the way our minds unconsciously imagine Him when they read Genesis 1, an emptiness that they speak into.  If they were, and there was no-thing else, then their first act of creation was to make space, in themselves, in the midst of their perfect community, for “the beginning”, space to create in. 

Their first act of creation is inward.  It is retreat, drawing themselves back and therefore self-limitation, self-humiliation.  And so the first act of creation is mighty and great, and the degree to which we misunderstand the relationship between self-humiliation and greatness is the degree to which our definitions of each miss the mark or, in other words, are sinful (the word “sin” literally means “missing the mark”).  The Cross was great, in part, because it challenged, shattered, and reordered the world’s definition of power, i.e. might and greatness.  The display of power on the Cross stood in direct contrast to the way Rome displayed power; Rome displayed its power but hanging people on crosses, God displayed His power by hanging Himself on a cross.  And what we see when we look at God’s first act of creation, or his action before creation, is that the way the Cross defines power is rooted in eternity, in God’s first action before creation.  “Power” is measured not, first of all, by one’s ability to force but by one’s ability to surrender.  What’s more, God’s surrender is always, in a sense, forceful (and purposeful).  The powers and principalities of this world were forcefully defeated through God’s self-surrender on the Cross; the cosmos in all their grandeur are the result of God’s self-limitation in eternity. 

We see also, when we look back before the beginning, not only the type of Creator they are, but the type of creation they made.  We see what it is.  Not an arbitrary hobby or pastime of God’s.  Not His vain means of self-glorification.  That He is infinitely greater than it and not identical to it (as in the pantheism of Eastern religions) because it was indeed created.  That the creation is rooted and flows from love, the love that defines His eternal community.  It exists to glorify its Creator only within the boundaries of love, and its glorification of its Creator springs from love, not visa-versa. 

We see where it is.  Not in a formless void, or in darkness, but very literally in the circle of love that They are because, indeed, there is no other place to be.  Paul was very serious when he said, “in Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).  Even evil itself and the very depths of hell do not escape the boundaries of His love because, to beat a dead horse, there are no such things as boundaries to His love.  And it is in this sense that He is all-powerful, all knowing, and everywhere at all-times, because everything- all power, all knowledge, and all space- are contained within Himself.

This is the stage on which the story of the redemption of the universe plays out.  This is our God.

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39