500 Years of Martin Luther

Today many of my theologian and Christian friends are posting thoughts and quotes about Martin Luther since the Reformation officially began on this day, according to church historians, five hundred years ago when Luther posted his 95 theses to the door of the Wittenberg Castle.  Now I'm no Luther expert, but I have found some of his ideas really intriguing and I continue to wrestle with the implications of what he came to believe and teach.  

Two short quotes of Luther have proved to be a guiding light for me this year as I deal with the fallout from my divorce and the unending waves of grief I feel day after day:

1) "Be a sinner, and let your sins be strong ("sin boldly"), but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world."  

When I hear these words I am only able to "hear" them as a child of the Wesleyan-Holiness tradition.  Wesley, when he encountered the work of Luther, found it to be deeply disturbing and too mystical.  In fact, he found the idea so completely confusing as to arouse anger.  In 1781 Wesley described Luther's work as "shallow … muddy and confused … deeply tinctured with mysticism throughout, and hence often dangerously wrong."  How can a true Christian sin boldly, Wesley reasoned?  Doesn't such an idea lead into the darkness of anti-nomianism and anarchy?  I think Wesley never fully resolved some of these tensions in his own mind because, after all, his conversion experience took place while hearing Luther's reflections on St. Paul's Letter to the Romans.  What can possibly be more Protestant than that kind of a conversion!?!

Yet the good news behind what Luther is writing beckons to me too.  It's like a faint glimmer of hope that God is so profoundly big and good and in utter control of history that our own human free will almost seems to fade in importance.  Sure, we do bad things and we do them all the time and these harmful choices we make hurt others around us and even hurt ourselves.  Yet what if the mystics are correct when they insist that God is love and that love wins and that in some very mysterious way that we don't yet fully understand we will -- all of us, according to some! -- come to rest within the arms of a loving God who is far bigger than we can even think or imagine?  Such is the logic of grace.  It is the logic behind old hymns that I grew up singing in camp-meeting tabernacles with words like "Jesus paid it all / All to Him I owe / Sin had left a guilty stain / He washed it white as snow." In other words, salvation is a work of God and not something we ever earn.  As a dysfunctional Wesleyan, I find that very, very hard to believe for any serious length of time.  

The doubting Thomas in me cries out, "But how can God use addiction?" I've wrestled with this theologically for at least fifteen years:  can God really love an addict?  After all, I can hear Wesley saying, "a child of God does not sin."  And what is addiction if not utter slavery to sin and self? (Some would say it is a brain disorder, but I'm not completely sold on that idea yet).  So, anyway, that's why I am intrigued by Luther's doctrine of salvation by grace through faith alone, yet am not entirely sure if I can believe it.

2) The second quote from Luther that has been with me all year was posted by my friend Ken Brewer at Spring Arbor University:  “One becomes a theologian by living, by dying, and by being damned, not by understanding, reading, and speculation.”  

Of course, I find tremendous hope in this idea because it means that even a story as seemingly tragic as my own can be redeemed.  All of my life I have longed to be a theologian.  It has bordered at times on an obsessive-compulsive tendency, as the history of this blog demonstrates.  Try as I might, I have simply not been able to understand my recent divorce and my bouts with addiction.  In many moments my uncertainty has led me into profound despair of life itself and, as I have written elsewhere, throughout this year I have often asked myself the perennial human question: "To be or not to be?"  

Yet what an irony it would be if this path in life that I have taken (did I chose it or not?  I cannot decide) could be redeemed in such a way that through the suffering and damnation I am currently experiencing I might one day come to a better understanding of God.  God, after all, has always been my Ultimate Concern, even when I haven't always acted like it.  Indeed, I think this may have been the fundamental problem with my marriage:  I allowed Courtney to replace God in my life and, when she inevitably let me down as all humans must do, then I grew resentful and angry.  Even now I often feel the temptation to give in to bitterness, yet I know that to do so would be to walk a path toward destruction and death.  I hear St. Paul whispering in my ear, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."  I'm not always sure what that means, but I want to do my best to follow in that Way.

Christian thinkers and mystics since Pseudo-Dionysius have pointed to a three-fold spiritual path for believers: a trail that leads from purgation through illumination to unification.  Luther's statement above echoes this ancient teaching about purgation.  We must be refined in a furnace of pain for, otherwise, some of us would simply never learn and we would be condemned to a hell of our own making for eternity.  This is a deep mystery:  even Jesus Christ had to enter into death and damnation.  Regardless of whether or not one takes it literally, the church has also always taught that Jesus Christ descended into hell itself prior to his resurrection by the Father.  

At this point in my life that idea brings me deep existential comfort.  It isn't just a "head knowledge," but a "heart reality."  When I can do nothing at all except to pray Psalm 6 or Psalm 77, even in the midst of the agony and tears I cling to this insane Christian idea that God herself/himself is present with us in the pain.  Thus we are called, as my uncle once told me, not to "go around" the pain, but to go "through" it.  I don't really pretend to understand what that means, but it seems wise.  

--

God Almighty, thank you for the slightly insane, profane, racist bigot Martin Luther because if you can save a dude like that, you can probably save anyone.  That's the offensiveness of grace.  I believe, but help now my unbelief.  Amen.

Sunday Mornings

My Sanctuary

I had the very odd experience this morning of walking around my parents' neighborhood and bumping into "the damned."  You see, it's a Sunday morning and all of the "saved" are at church because this is considered to be a sacred time of the week among the faithful.  Now lest it sounds like I'm picking on the church, I want to be clear: we all need sacred spaces and sacred times.  It is part of what makes us human.  Without that which is "set apart," we collapse in upon ourselves.  This was Augustine's definition of sin, by the way:  the self curved in upon the self.  It's also the way that C. S. Lewis describes hell in The Great Divorce or Sir Edwin Abbott in Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.  But I digress...

But here's the odd thing about this morning's experience.  As I realized that I was "among the damned" on this Sunday morning, I had a memory come back to me of when I preached behind a pulpit in Indianapolis (in what now seems like another life) and declared with boldness: "The church does not have a monopoly on God!  We think that because we are here within these 'sacred' walls, we are the 'saved' and they are the 'damned,' but that is not so!  The church itself is a mixture of good and evil, just as the rest of the world is, just as our own individual selves are."  I suspect that I remembered it so well this morning (isn't memory such an odd thing?!?) because I really believed it when I proclaimed it from the pulpit.  I still believe it, yet I oddly perceive the truth of it a bit better now.

The Gospel of Jeff, Who Lives at Home

Jeff, Who Lives at Home struck a deep emotional chord within me when I first saw it in 2012 -- a very, very dark chapter of my life.  I remember my then wife asking me why it had moved me to such tears and I don't think I even knew how to answer her at that time.  I was so utterly alienated from my True Self (for what I mean by this term, see Richard Rohr) that I could not perceive the nature of her question -- a question fundamentally about me.  Yet now I have rewatched this film twice within the past six months and I think I know what my soul was crying about in 2012. I was encountering the gospel of Jesus in this new story/Story of Jeff.  (By the way, the 32 f-bombs in this rated R film -- and its treatment of homosexuality -- means that most "good Christians" wouldn't even watch this mythical story.  Their loss, I guess.)

*Spoilers ahead*

Jeff constantly points away from himself.

Jeff senses a purpose to his existence which is mysterious and beyond himself.  He loves the movie "Signs" because in the end it is the half-consumed cups of water that saves everyone.

Jeff seems to have a "sixth sense" for what is going on around him, an awareness of the holiness of all of life (birds in the air, phone calls, infomercials, traffic jams, random people); everything matters, Jeff thinks, if we can see with the eyes of faith.

Jeff sometimes doubts himself and, in those moments, he is most convinced that the story is absolutely NOT about himself (which it is!  haha! the joke is on Jeff!).  After all, how could the story be about him if he is just a thirty year old pothead living in his mom's basement!?  What could be more irrelevant than such a man?

Jeff, precisely because he alone considers his own life completely expendable, saves everyone in the end.  His mother reconnects with life and love; his brother does too and the ripple effects carry on infinitely.  Completely unaware of his own agency, Jeff has single-handedly saved us ALL with his courageous act of self-sacrificial love and utter abandonment to even death itself.

Jeff is baptized into death, enters the roaring waters we are drowning in, embraces the chaos, and quite literally dies.

And lastly, of course, Jeff is resurrected.  It could not end any other way since this is the Gospel.

Dorothy

Dorothy, when I first met you, you scared me. You were so rough, so ghetto, so very, very black. Your heavy African-American dialect was almost a foreign language to me. And the anger behind your eyes betrayed a deep hurt; a past I feared to even peek into (only much later did I learn about the father who would beat your senseless with an extension cord). When you got in my face and yelled at me after being in the inner city for only a week, I thought, "Well, Greg, you're not in Kansas anymore." You awakened me to a world of darkness and hatred and bitter animosity. I must say that your words were hurtful. The gruff, calloused tone you used with me made me feel belittled and childish and I wanted to retreat to suburbia where people are decent to each other. Sometimes you were downright out of control like when you stood up in church on a Sunday morning and berated your pastors for not visiting you often enough. We stood there -- shocked like deer in the headlights -- and took it. And licked our wounds later when the sanctuary emptied.

But then something or rather Someone did something to you. I don't know how. I confess I nearly stopped praying for you altogether. I had signed you off to darkness and thought God's grace too weak to permeate your thick hide.

I remember when you smiled at me for the first time -- those ivory teeth shining through your beautiful black face. Soon you began to joke with me and I learned to joke back. And when I dished it in return, you would rear your head back and roar with laughter. Somehow deep down a Healer was at work in you. I knew it wasn't me. But the walls were coming down.

Today, Dorothy, you're a new woman. Sure, you're still pretty rough around the edges and you still need to learn to keep your big mouth shut sometimes. But, darn it, you're fun to be around. Now when you gripe about how rotten your day has been I can see a twinkle in your eye and a smirk on your face. You've met Jesus and He's changed you. Now when you speak your rapid fire ghetto talk at me I can understand you better and I hear it loud and clear when you declare, "I love you, pastor." The first time you said it, it brought me to my knees in gratitude to God.

And then you called me last week. You were gushing. You sounded as giddy as a school girl on the first day of summer break. "Pastar, I just caint bu-lieve how GOOD God is to me! My grandbaby's gettin baptized and my whole family's gonna be there. We aint been togetha for twenty years! God's so GOOD. My grandbaby --she's sayin shes gonna start readin the bible and praying and going ta church and e'rythin. My own mama wanna come down from Chicaga's southside, but I tell her she caint do it since shes 72. Pastar, I aint never been so happy! God's done saved my whole family! I haven't been so thankful since before my son got shot in '87. I luv dis church and all the lovin people in it. And I love Jesus... He's so GOOD, so GOOD!"

Dorothy, pardon my saying so, but if God can save you, he can save anyone. And He's "done saved you." You keep telling me (with the force of a hurricane) every week that you want to become a full member of this church. Well, I'm going to make you one! Your not the alcoholic, swearing, demon-possessed, crack-mama you used to me. In fact, I think the technical term for what you're becoming is a "saint." And watching God do this in your life brings me to my knees and makes me weep with joy.

So tomorrow I'll baptize that granddaughter of yours and we'll sing and eat and celebrate the goodness of God! If this isn't the kingdom come down, I don't know what is.

What does it mean to be human?

I began reading an excellent new book by Joel B. Green (my former Asbury prof) entitled Body, Soul, and Human Life: The Nature of Humanity in the Bible. It occured to me as I read this that many of the theological and even political disputes I have with my fellow Christian brothers and sisters are rooted in a vastly different anthropology, or understanding of what it means to be human. Green points out the practical questions that are rooted in our how we define humanity:

- Given contemporary experimentation and innovation in the area of Artificial Intelligence, can we imagine anything about humans that our mechanical creations will be unable to duplicate?

- If, like sheep and pigs, humans can be cloned, will the resulting form be a "person"?

- On what basis might we attribute sacred worth to humans, so that we have what is necessary for discourse concerning morality and for ethical purposes?

- What view of the human person is capable of funding what we want to know about ourselves theologically -- about sin, for example, as well as moral responsibility, repentance, and growth in grace?

- Am I free to do what I want, or is my sense of decision-making a ruse?

- How should we understand "salvation"? Does salvation entail a denial of the world and embodied life, focusing instead on my "inner person" and on the life to come? How ought the church to be extending itself in mission? Mission to what? The spiritual or soulish needs of a person? Society-at-large? The cosmos?

- What happens when we die? What view of the human person is consistent with Christian belief in life-after-death? (Taken from pg. 20).

Obviously, these are HUGE questions and the answers to such questions are not agreed upon by all theologians. But there are two main schools of thought which will determine how we answer almost all of these.

The first is called the "dualist" mentality and this is certainly the most predominant view in popular evangelical theology. Dualism dates back to Plato who drew a sharp distinction between the body and the soul as two separate entities. Plato's legacy and influence lived on and strongly impacted early Christian thinkers like Tertullian, Augustine, and Justin Martyr. In modern circles it emerges in devotional literature that exhorts us to deny this world and focus solely on the next. I pick up on it strongly in Thomas A Kempis, Oswalt Chambers, John Piper, and so on. In fact, this dualism of body and soul so permeates our thinking that to question it is viewed by many as completely unorthodox and contrary to biblical anthropology.

The alternative to this view is called by many names, but more often referred to as "monism." In monism the body and soul distinction is a fiction. "We do not have a soul; we are a soul" as C. S. Lewis stated. Thus, the physical and spiritual aspects of our lives are intimately connected with one another. Monism generally values the here-and-now more than the then-and-there. I've come across holistic spirituality in the writings of Matthew Fox, C. S. Lewis, and even Rob Bell.

Above I highlighted one question because I think it is so critical to the many disputes I've had in person and online with fellow evangelicals about the nature of what God wants us to do here on earth. Does God want us to focus simply on "saving souls" or is it bigger than that? Is doing social justice among the poor an essential element of our mission or is it a distraction from what is really important (i.e. the work of the heart, the inner person)? What will heaven look like and are humans in any way responsible for the bringing of it? Is heaven far off or will it be here on earth? The answer to all of these questions will determine how we judge the importance of various Christian activities.

Furthermore, a question of human identity emerges. Most of my politically conservative friends assume a post-Enlightenment, modernist, western view of the self. Philosopher and theologian Robert Di Vito summarizes this view: Many understand the modern sense of the human in terms of "the location of dignity in self-sufficiency and self-containment, sharply defined personal boundaries, the highly developed idea of my 'inner person,' and the conviction that my full personhood rests on my exercise of autonomous and self-legislative action" (12). Wow! How often have I heard arguments from the right that swallows such a presupposition without even being aware of it!?

Di Vito offers an alternative he finds far more biblical: the person "1) is deeply embedded or engaged, in his or her social identity, 2) is comparatively decentered and undefined with respect to personal boundaries, 3) is relatively transparent, socialized, and embodied (in other words, is altogether lacking in a sense of 'inner depths'), and 4) is 'authentic' precisely in his or her heteronomy, in his or her obedience to another and dependence upon another." (Di Vito, "OT Anthropology," 221).

If this alternative anthropology truly is more biblical, then this has radical implications about the mission of the church, the goal of the nation-state, our ecclesiology, and our spirituality -- just to name a few.

I will post more on this later, but suffice it to say that we need to be better informed about the presuppositions we bring to the table as we debate theological and political matters. I embrace the monist position and, as a result, and holistic missiology. I am aware the my holistic missiology is unpopular and even offensive to those who have been raised in the church to believe that the soul and only the soul matters in light of eternity. Such people are well-meaning, but I believe ultimately misinformed about the nature of man as it is outlined for us in the scriptures. To name just a FEW implications of this anthropology: 1) it is ever bit as important to care for a person's physical needs as it is to care for his spiritual needs, 2) the mission of the church ought to involve the redemption of creation (i.e. "creation care") rather than treating it as though it's all going to burn soon, 3) among the various roles of the state is the obligation to care for the common good (even at the expense of the modernistic ideals of "autonomy and self-determination"), 4) "salvation" can no longer be viewed through purely individualistic and postmortem lenses; it must involve radical social change on the family, city, state, national, and global levels because the gospel is much, much bigger than "Jesus gets your butt into heaven."

Enough for now...

Trading Resentment for Gratitude

Which blade in a pair of scissors is more important? C. S. Lewis compares this question with one often posed in churches today: "Is salvation an act of faith or works?" He writes: "Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you."

How quickly I forget this simple, straightforward truth! Too often I find this cycle at work in my life:

1) I encounter divine goodness and desire to please God because I love Him and what He has done for me.

2) As an expression of this gratitude, I begin to do good works such as caring for the poor, spending time in prayer, visiting the hurting, etc.

3) Gradually I begin to focus on the works themselves and forget my original reason for doing them (i.e. the love of God).

4) I become unable to do enough good works and begin to feel guilty for my many failures.

5) I worry that I'm not doing enough to be loved by God.

6) I become resentful of a God who demands so much obedience from me.

I must confess that there have been days that I resented God's calling on my life. I start to think thoughts like, "Why did God have to call me to this difficult place and difficult job? Why couldn't he have called someone else? Why can't I just live a normal, comfortable life and why can't that be enough? This is unfair of you, God! Take back this calling!" Then something even worse happens. I start to resent other Christians who have not had the same calling and who do not make the same sacrifices that I make. I begin to look down on them, judge them, and think of them as inferior Christians. What a demonic thought!

But such thoughts creep into my mind because somewhere along the way, I start to think that my salvation is contingent upon my striving and effort. But I've got it all backwards. In my better moments, I don't do good deeds in order to be saved, but because I already am saved. In those moments, my worry, striving, and resentment are replaced with gratitude, joy, and adoration of God.

I must learn to accept the fact that God loves me. Period. End of story. And once I fully "get it," only then am I in a place to serve Him. Only then will I be able to look a fellow Christians who live differently than myself without a hint of judgment. Only then will I wake up in the morning and praise God for the wonderful privilege it is to serve Him in the inner city. Only when I realize that God would love me just as much if I were a parking lot attendant can I truly embrace my vocation of ministry.

Greg Coates is not an evangelical any more.

Tonight I went to a good ol' fashioned evangelical camp meeting. It's not quite the same as it once was when the holiness people would congregate in tents for a week and walk “the sawdust trial.” Today we've exchanged tents for miniature houses complete with cable TV and Wi-Fi, sawdust trails for carpet, four-part harmony for modern generic praise choruses played by a slick college band, and open-air worship for A/C. But one thing has not changed: the altar.

The preacher this evening spoke about the need to give all to God, stop living an ordinary life and start living an extraordinary one, and replacing our comfort zones with radical, dangerous obedience to Christ. Although the man spoke with a far too polished preacher voice, his message was decent and one that I agree with: stop your mundane existence and be a radical for God. In fact, I've become so convinced of the the necessity that a Christ-follower ought to leave comfort, that my family and I have rejected a middle-class neighborhood, a middle-class house, and a middle-class income in order to do just that.

But I was waiting for the preacher to put teeth on his sermon, to unpack for us a bit what it means to live an extraordinary life. And instead of him suggesting that we sell our possessions and give the money to the poor, or go to Africa and try to stop the violence in Darfur, or reject the upward mobility of American culture and embrace solidarity with the marginalized, or enter the world of the drug addict, or stand up against the military-industrial complex of our nation -- instead of saying anything like that he basically said, “So come to the altar tonight and give your heart to Jesus.”

But what does “giving your heart to Jesus” mean? You see, I am convinced that when conservative evangelicals speak of “giving yourself to God,” they are speaking of a very inward, personal, “spiritual,” change of attitude. They are talking about saying a few words between an individual human and God in heaven. In other words, they are offering a hyper-spiritualized message which might have implications for our inner thoughts, but certainly will not involve something like rejecting middle class American values and ways of life.

I don't mean to downplay the significance of inner spiritual experiences. I've had many and they make me who I am. But at what point do these inner experiences cross the line and enter in to how we really live. At what point does my spirituality start to impact my budget, or the car I drive, or the way I eat, or the people I choose to spend my time with?

It is this hyper-spiritualized gospel which has now led me to officially reject the name “evangelical.” Before this night, I had never shed that descriptor. But I am convinced that I am a different animal than the evangelical. When they use terms like “being born again” or “asking Jesus into your heart” or “making Jesus your personal Lord and Savior,” I think that they are almost always talking purely about an inner, mental/psychological, hyper-spiritualized shift in attitude. Well, I want more than that. I want a religion that reshapes societies, that redeems all of creation, that works tirelessly to bring justice into this world on a social and political level. I want a religion that goes beyond the inner heart of Greg Coates and instead offers an alternative way of living which is a foreshadowing of the Ultimate Reality to be revealed in the last day. Yes, I do want the inner transformation of my own heart, but only because I too am part of a creation needing to be redeemed, and not because the main plot of it all it to get me out of hell and into heaven.

I'm sick of associating with a group that claims to “surrender all” to Christ and yet lives almost completely and entirely like the culture around it. It seems to me that today the ONLY defining characteristics of most evangelicals are that they attend church once a week and are perhaps a bit more judgmental than the average person. I've had enough of being part of that group. I hereby renounce the name evangelical and prefer to instead be called a follower of The Way – something much more radical and exciting than the diluted, neutered message I've heard from evangelicals for so many years.

A Remarkable Life

This semester I have been able to sit at the feet of a truly remarkable woman, Meesaeng Lee Choi, a Korean Christian who now teaches the History of the Holiness Movement here at Asbury. Dr. Choi testifies to having experienced entire sanctification in August of 1981 while kneeling beside her bed one evening after several hours of prayer. Through the death of her father at a young age and a very painful childhood, Dr. Choi eventually came to Christianity in college and experienced the "baptism of the Holy Spirit" a few years later. To my knowledge, she is the one person I have come across who will look me in the eye and say, "I have been entirely sanctified."

This fascinates me. Why is it that an experience so central to the fabric of the historic American holiness movement of the 19th century is so rare? Why does this Korean woman alone testify to having had the experience of full salvation, inner cleansing, and Christian perfection? I must admit that the culture gap between Dr. Choi and myself is huge. Many things she says and testifies to do not fit well with my Western, modernistic framework. And yet, even from a Western scientific perspective, I must admit her testimony as evidence and weigh it carefully. Here are some of the more radical claims that she makes:

1) She claims to only sleep about 4-5 hours/night because she is so excited to spend time in prayer. This was not the case before her 1981 experience.

2) She has witnessed multiple miraculous healings and believes that the American church has forgotten the fact that divine physical healing was the primary method for spreading the gospel during the first three centuries of the church. She regularly participated in meetings in Korea on Friday nights which would last for 6-7 hours each -- a room filled with loud prayer and miraculous healings of those with even terminal diseases. She attributes the radical growth of the church in Korea to this fact.

3) She claims that most miraculous healings take place after 3-7 days of communal fasting.

4) When I asked her why the Korean church seems so vibrant and the American church seems so apathetic, she answered with one word: prayer. Korean Christians pray like mad (usually in large groups for 2-3 hours early each morning before breakfast).

5) Dr. Choi claims to be almost insanely happy. She admits that she is often troubled in her spirit and that she still suffers a great deal (from spiritual forces), but she radiates with a joy and vibrancy I have not seen before. For Dr. Choi, holiness and happiness are the same. And she is perfectly happy.

6) She likes to say that "death is the final healing." She does not fear death in the least.

Sitting at the feet of this woman for the past 12 weeks has challenged me in many ways. I have realized that my own view of Christianity is far too small. God is doing things in cultures that I barely even understand. My modernist, Western culture predisposes me to look askance at the supernatural. And yet I cannot deny the testimony of this woman any more than I can deny the testimonies of hundreds of thousands of Christians in Asia, Africa, and South America. In my search for Truth (aka God), I must listen to her voice.

Unexpected Salvation

Below is a sermon delivered to my preaching class on Tuesday, April 29, 2008.

Every family has its favorite video clips that they play over and over and over. My guess is that most of them are clips of little children doing silly things, but actually my family’s universal favorite is of my parents, taken just a couple of years ago. Courtney and I sat down to eat a nice meal in celebration of my father’s 49th birthday. We had traveled over to southern Indiana and met them halfway for an evening of enjoying dinner together. Then, camera in hand, we began to sing “Happy Birthday” to Dad. All was normal until we sang “happy birthday, dear grandpa.” It took just a second for it to sink in, but their responses were classic. Mom’s eyes about bugged out of her head and Dad reared his head so far back we thought he might fall right out of his chair. With my mom’s scream and my Dad’s utter shock, it has become one of those moments that we relive time and time again. Well, this morning our text tells us an account of a very pleasant and very unexpected surprise – one of those moments when God just breaks in and surprises you with how He works. I invite you to turn with me as I read from John 5:1-14.

John 5:1-15 Some time later, Jesus went up to Jerusalem for a feast of the Jews. 2 Now there is in Jerusalem near the Sheep Gate a pool, which in Aramaic is called Bethesda and which is surrounded by five covered colonnades. 3 Here a great number of disabled people used to lie-- the blind, the lame, the paralyzed. 4 5 One who was there had been an invalid for thirty-eight years. 6 When Jesus saw him lying there and learned that he had been in this condition for a long time, he asked him, "Do you want to get well?" 7 "Sir," the invalid replied, "I have no one to help me into the pool when the water is stirred. While I am trying to get in, someone else goes down ahead of me." 8 Then Jesus said to him, "Get up! Pick up your mat and walk." 9 At once the man was cured; he picked up his mat and walked. The day on which this took place was a Sabbath, 10 and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, "It is the Sabbath; the law forbids you to carry your mat." 11 But he replied, "The man who made me well said to me, 'Pick up your mat and walk.'" 12 So they asked him, "Who is this fellow who told you to pick it up and walk?" 13 The man who was healed had no idea who it was, for Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there. 14 Later Jesus found him at the temple and said to him, "See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you." 15 The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.

This is a salvation story and a rather mysterious one at that in that it doesn’t fit the normal pattern of salvation stories. I fear that we have the tendency in the church to sometimes remove all of the mystery out of salvation. After all, this is what we do here in seminary – we examine these eternal truths in books, take tests on them, memorize original languages, and create sciences like “soteriology” (the study of salvation). But, of course, if you think that you live in a world where the deepest mysteries of the universe such as salvation can be put under a microscope, dissected, and maybe even cloned, you are going to be gravely disappointed. I, for one, am thankful that the deepest mysteries of God remain hidden from the wise and learned and have been reveled to little children for God’s good pleasure. The invalid at the well may well have laid there for 38 years thinking about the moment of his healing – how it would happen, when it would happen, what it would be like once it happened. And, in fact, he had worked out a plan. It was a simple 3 step process: 1) sit by the well, 2) wait for the right moment, 3) get into the well. Nice and neat. Easy to understand. It reminds me a bit of our “4 Spiritual Laws” or our “Roman Road” or the “ABC’s of Salvation,” but that’s another sermon. Enter Jesus, the Savior of mankind, who approaches the man and asks him, “Do you want to be made well?” Notice that the man does not answer the question. Instead, he turns to his own agenda. “Well, you see, sir, I have the plan. It’s a good plan. I’ve been thinking about it for years. Now if you could just give me a hand...” Stupid, silly man. He thinks the pool is going to save him! He thinks Jesus is a means to an end – a person he can use for his own agenda! He has put all of his gambling chips on the wrong square! Now we might chide the invalid for missing the point – for putting his faith in a puddle of water instead of the Son of God – but notice that Jesus doesn’t do this. What does Jesus do? He simply speaks a word to the man and saves him. Forget the pool. The pool is not important. Yes, you’ve had your hopes set on the pool for 38 years, but I say to you: “Get up! Pick up your mat and walk!” Notice this: the man didn’t even have faith and he didn’t even call upon Jesus for salvation. But in an act of total, gracious, God-like giving, Jesus speaks the word of healing into this man’s life for which he’d been waiting for 38 years. Folks, we have our own agendas. We have our own particular ideas of what it means to be saved and how to get there. For crying out loud, us Wesley scholars divide the process into nice, neat stages and slap labels on them like “prevenient grace” and “justifying grace” and “sanctifying grace” and “glorifying grace.” But salvation cannot be reduced for a formula. Jesus has his own agenda and won’t be boxed in. We may have our eyes dead set on that pool over there, but thank God that Jesus has his own agenda.

Second, God’s healing comes at unexpected times. Notice also that the invalid had his own timing in mind. This pool, we are told by the Scriptures, was occasionally stirred up by an angel. When Jesus came to see him, the invalid essentially invited him to sit with him and wait for the right time. But Jesus operates on a different time. The invalid wanted control – his plan, as he saw it, was just right. But Jesus brings healing to the man on his own time (and, in fact, got in deep trouble for doing so since it happened to be the Sabbath day). Friends, we like to control the timing of our own salvation. In fact, we have a long history of preaching that you can come now and come as you are and be saved. I don’t want to preach against that tradition right now, but can I suggest that the timing of our own salvation is not in our hands, but in God’s. John Wesley once said, “A man may be saved if he will, but not when he will.” In the age of microwave popcorn and instant coffee, we have come to believe that we can have what we want when we want it. But God doesn’t work that way. The agenda is his and the timing is his.

Finally, God’s healing involves unexpected results. Notice here the results of the invalid’s healing. We have no record of rejoicing, parties, going out and telling all of your friends, perpetual happiness and joy. No. We, instead, have a very different picture. No sooner than he had picked up his mat, than the man meets the pharisees who start to grill him with questions. “You’re breaking the law! Don’t you know what day it is? Who did this to you?” and so on. (Sometimes these pharisees can be real jerks, huh? Not even a pat on the back or a “good to see you up on your feet.”) Not only this, but we even find Jesus offering a hard word: “See, you are well again. Stop sinning or something worse may happen to you.” I don’t know about you, but this story doesn’t fit my script very well. You see, my script is pretty simple: a messed up guy gets saved and goes away rejoicing as happy as can be and then dances off into heaven with not a care in the world. But this man’s script is different. No sooner is he healed than he has to face another form of opposition. He trades in his sickness for ridicule and persecution and stern warnings about newfound responsibility. Yes, salvation is much more complicated than we would like to think and it involves suffering, endurance, and opposition.

Allow me a brief example from my own life. About a year ago, I began to earnestly pray to God for patience. I am naturally a rather impatient and irritable person and earnestly desired God to change me. I had been praying this persistently for several weeks, when one night my infant daughter woke up at 3 am and started screaming her head off for no apparent reason. Unable to calm her after what seemed like hours on end, I cried out to God: “Please just make her stop!” And then it hit me. It was like God said to me, “Now, Greg, let me explain it to you ‘cause you’re not getting it. You ask me to make you a patient man, but then when I try to teach you patience you ask me to stop. Now which do you want? Do you really want to be patient or don’t you?” Friends, we have to think really hard about the question Jesus asked the invalid, “Do you want to be made well?” Because if we say “yes,” we can be sure of one thing: we are in for a wild ride. Our own agenda is going to have to take a back seat. Forget about the pool. God is in control now. He decides how we are saved, He decides when we are saved, and He promises us that our future will not be sugar coated.

We’ve now seen that when Jesus is involved, the unexpected happens. This mysterious figure approaches us in the midst of our suffering and confusion and asks us “Do you want to be made well?” His methods are unconventional, his timing is unpredictable, and we can expect that the journey of following him will have its surprises because he is the One in charge, not us.

And he still heals people. Allow me to transport you to an unexpected place where unexpected healing is happening. Over 5,000 miles south of Wilmore, Kentucky lies the capital city of Asuncion in Paraguay. A landlocked nation in the central part of South America, Paraguay is among the poorest countries in the Western hemisphere. In the slums of Asuncion, children wake up each day to rummage through piles of trash trying to find something to salvage or exchange for food. But God is present in these slums. Jesus passes through and unexpectedly says to these children, “Do you want to be made well?”

A gifted musician and conductor by the name of Luis Szaran has begun a ministry in these slums called “Sonidos de la Tierra [Sounds of the Earth]” in which he invites young children to come and learn how to play a musical instrument... completely free of charge. For hours on end, Luis who happens to be the conductor for the Paraguayan National Orchestra, spends his time conducting a ragtag group of kids in playing Beethoven and Mozart. Children who once had no purpose in life can now feel special and important with a violin or cello or flute in hand.

To most listeners, the music may sound like just music. But for the Christian, we know that it is much more... it is the symphony of God’s salvation being unexpectedly played in one of the least expected places on earth. Children with no purpose are now given a voice. Oscar, a boy of no more than 14 years old, has already begun to compose his own music. This is the salvation that Jesus is bringing into the world through unexpected means (even music!), at unexpected times, and with unexpected results.

“We worship you, O God, who makes us well.”

Stiff-necked

Deuteronomy 9:1-6 Hear, O Israel. You are now about to cross the Jordan to go in and dispossess nations greater and stronger than you, with large cities that have walls up to the sky. 2 The people are strong and tall-- Anakites! You know about them and have heard it said: "Who can stand up against the Anakites?" 3 But be assured today that the LORD your God is the one who goes across ahead of you like a devouring fire. He will destroy them; he will subdue them before you. And you will drive them out and annihilate them quickly, as the LORD has promised you. 4 After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, "The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness." No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you. 5 It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the LORD your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 6 Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.

God has chosen to use his people to combat evil in this world and, ultimately, evil will be defeated. Systems of oppression and injustice, demonic powers that enslave people to addictions, and the inner chaos and turmoil of broken relationship will one day be overcome by God's shalom. But in the meantime, the church must remember this one very important fact: God is doing this through his people not because they are so good, but because evil is so bad. It's as if God shakes his head and says, "Well, it's not much to work with, but it's all I've got." This keeps us from getting a big head. We are told explicitly three times in these short verses a very simple fact: you are really bad people. You are stubborn, stiff-necked, grumbling, idolatrous people. In a strange sort of way, I find comfort in this rebuke. It reminds me that I am a man of unclean lips who live among a people of unclean lips. I don't come down from my holy hill in all of my righteous glory and condescend to relate to poor, miserable sinners. No, I am among the poor, miserable sinners and God supernaturally works out his plan of salvation through this broken vessel. And so I can sing with the saints: "Salvation belongs to our God who sits upon the throne!"

Virtue in a Pill, Pt. 3

John Wesley drew a sharp distinction between what he called "sins" and "infirmities." I find this to be a rich theological resource which needs to be explored in light of my recent change in personality. Simply put, Wesley understood sin to be "a willful violation of a fully known law of God." Holiness includes, among other things, the complete elimination (some prefer the word "eradication") of sin from one's life. Infirmities, on the other hand, are those temperaments and dispositions within us that are imperfect and yet do not make us morally blameworthy for having them. For example, if I do not have the knowledge that my friend from Kenya considers it rude for me to pass him by without stopping to chat for a few minutes, and this is in fact exactly what I do, then I have made a mistake (as a result of an infirmity of knowledge), but not a sin. If, on the other hand, I was fully aware that this was his cultural expectation and decided to offend him anyway, this would be a sin. Infirmities can take the form of ignorance, physical disabilities, or anything in our behavior that is simply the result of us "being human."

(I must state parenthetically that I strongly disapprove of the tendency for many people to do a deliberate act of sin and then categorize it as though it were an infirmity. "After all, I'm only human." That statement is a sacrilege against the word "human.")

But my pill is challenging me to perhaps widen the scope/range/variety of infirmities. While not wanting to remove personal responsibility and replace it with a "victimization" theology, I must wonder how much of human behavior is influenced by factors outside of our own control. Since I was a little child, I was told that I was too serious and needed to learn to lighten up. I grew up with the understanding that this was a flaw in my character. A better Greg could laugh at himself more easily, see the humor in certain situations, etc. And somewhere along the line I became convinced that this was an issue of sin... my inability to smile or laugh in certain situations reflected a lack of character.

But the pill has changed me (at least for the last several days). I now find it almost natural or easy to laugh at myself and my mistakes. Little inconveniences like Lydah spilling her cereal all over the place have become more the subject of laughter than anger. Instead of feeling the heat build up under my collar, I find a sort of holy power to recognize how silly it would be to get upset about something so small and innocent. In this small way, the pill has made me more of what I have always wanted to be, but never could be before... a little more happy-go-lucky and carefree.

But the real question in my mind is this: Am I still the real Greg Coates that God made me? The Greg Coates I've always known is prone to irritability with others (a sin or an infirmity?), but the Lexapro Greg Coates ("the high Greg Coates") is a nicer guy... a bit more patient and kind and gentle and loving. In other words, the pill has given me a cheap shortcut to the fruit of the Spirit. Have I traded in my pneumatology for pharmacology? Have I turned to chemicals to accomplish what the Holy Spirit did not accomplish within me for years? Is this pill a gift from God or is it a cheap little demon that will make me its slave?

And is the old sour Greg really just a product of infirmity? Has my brain made me a victim all of my life? Perhaps I'm not morally culpable for always being inclined to act like a jerk. God could have just made me a nice guy at birth if he'd wanted to.

I'm asking myself the following theoretical question: If I could have a brain surgery that would make me exhibit all of the qualities of one who is entirely sanctified, would I do it? So far in my life, the answer has been "no." Why? Because I see it as a cheap cop-out for an essential process -- the hard work of training in virtue through the means of grace, discipline, and reliance upon God. Dallas Willard points out that a man who wanted nothing more than to be free from lust could gouge out his eyes and castrate himself in order to accomplish his mission, but God does not will for us to roll into heaven a "mutilated stump." He'd actually rather us battle our thorns in the flesh and grow in character as a result than to take the easy way.

And now it is just a question of degrees. What is different about me taking Lexapro from having the "sanctifying-brain-surgery"? The pill is just a small, daily brain surgery.

But strangely I'm not feeling very guilty about all of this. Very strange, in fact, since I've always felt guilty about everything. Must be the pill.

Two Ways of Knowledge

Every once in a blue moon, I read something that just makes my soul cry, "yes!" Here is the quote of the day from Thomas Aquinas:

"There are two ways of desiring knowledge. One way is to desire it as a perfection of oneself; and that is the way the philosophers desire it. The other is to desire it not [merely] as a perfection of oneself, but because through this knowledge the one we love becomes present to us; and that is the way saints desire it."

I desire to be a saint rather than a philosopher.

Virtue in a Pill, Pt. 2

The pill has not made me a saint, but it has helped. Last night I only slept for 4 hours enabling me to wake up at 5:30 and have morning devotions -- something I have not done in years. I was able to accomplish a lot with all of my time doing extra schoolwork and housework. Clearly, the pill is making me more like God.

It's so simple, actually. I should have just thought of it before. What the church needs to make saints is not the means of grace, the spiritual disciplines, the hard work of virtue, or even the Holy Spirit. What it needs is a really good brain surgeon. I am, of course, being facetious here in my observations, but the effects of this depression medication on me have indeed provoked a host of theological questions.

Are some people more naturally prone to virtue simply as a result of their chemical makeup?
If so (and it seems to me the answer is "yes"), then are some people who exhibit behaviors of irritability, anger, and impatience actually victims of their own brain rather than free moral agents acting rebelliously? (And is it fair of God to make some people naturally happy while making others naturally dour?) At least one implication seems quite clear to me: the recognition that people are naturally inclined to virtue by varying levels leads me to great hesitancy in ever judging another person. After all, the only difference between him and me might be the fact that I'm taking a pill and he is not.

As for me, I was a better person today. I smiled more, enjoyed the company of others more, and even savored the food that I ate more. I had hoped that such a change in my character would come from a supernatural act of God's Spirit being poured into my life, but I'm afraid it came at the hands of Lexapro instead.

Maybe I'm a sell out. Maybe I have just cheapened the painful process of sanctification and taken a shortcut. Maybe I will one day have this crutch I lean on removed from me and the real Greg will once again rear his ugly head.

Or, as a friend suggested to me tonight, maybe Lexapro is now my new sacrament -- a means of grace given to me by God for my undeserved benefit. I now partake of the body, the blood, and the pill. Together they are making me whole.

Suffering

The more I learn about the Christian life, the more I am convinced that at least some forms of suffering must be embraced as the will of God. In what ways do I suffer for the sake of God's kingdom? I live a quiet and easy life. And yet I do suffer in very small ways. I suffer in my heart for those who are in need, I suffer by simply waking up in the middle of the night to comfort my daughter when she won't sleep, and I suffer the denial of my desires when I want to plunge into materialism to medicate myself. These are mild forms of suffering, but nevertheless are substantial in my simple life.

I have been inspired once again by a quote from the diary of Phoebe Palmer (entered 1864):

“Live in the spirit of sacrifice. Let it be seen that you are willing to sacrifice that which costs you something in ease, reputation, and according as God hath prospered you in money, for the establishment of Christ’s kingdom on earth. Thus shall it be known by the testimony of your life and lips, that holiness is the power, or, in other words, the great lever by which a fallen redeemed world is to be raised from earth to heaven.”