(What is home and How we get There)
"He was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain... and we held him in low esteem. Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed“ (Isaiah 53:3a, 3c-5 NIV).
Reclaiming Love’s Root
We Protestants have done a great disservice by embracing Luther through Calvin’s eyes. The Lutheran idea that faith and works are a contrast, especially as framed in the Calvinist/Armenian debate several centuries back has enlarged the human dilemma by creating a chasm within the Communal Trinity of God and between God and us, us and ourselves.
We have allowed ourselves to be boxed into a no-win corner, placing God as the arbiter of salvation instead of salvations only source and reality. As arbiter or judge, God is on the opposite side of a chasm unable and unwilling to cross it; Deeply offended, emotionally wanting nothing to do with us in our current state. Only an appeal on our behalf by Jesus will turn God's heart from against us to for us; by filling God's righteous judgement with mercy toward us, his anger now directed to his Son. In spite of any sin we may commit, like sunglasses on a hot summer day, Jesus is the shades that allow God to see the fresh green meadow of our potential instead of the scourching desert full of snakes and sage that we have become.
The resulting celebration of this distorted grace leaves the church uncertain, lost not only to God, but to our own human bodies, soul, spirit. Like dead women and men walking we celebrate neither flesh, nor soul—only spirit, awaiting a future away from this planet when we finally become what God's shaded eyes tell him we are.
As a result we have absorbed the same spirit toward our fellow humans that we perceive God to have of us; demanding conversion to who/what we are in order to join us in escaping the moral, spiritual quagmire of our planet. It is, we tell ourselves, the necessary result of holiness; separation, preservation apart. 1 We invite others into a sin-management salvation fully aware that neither we nor they can achieve real change within, yet grateful to have missed the bullet of God's anger. Heaven is the blissful state upon which we set our gaze, ever grateful for a God committed to set a people apart; fellow 'future saints,' becoming.
Such a sad vision leaves God a bit schizophrenic and we, distanced from our own selves, our moral failures and potential greatness. Like the Trinity of God we poorly envision, we are left afraid of our fellow humans, lest we become like them.
Truth is, God The Father and Jesus operate from the same page; the good, kind, ethical, hopeful, peaceful heart of love. In The Eternal Son, from before time God has acted to bridge the real gap, which is us; in us living inside the twisted, broken spaces of our lives where we have turned gift and grace into a competition for glory, pleasure, power.
The Salvation I long for has ever been turning from that empty, inward, and non-relational chasm and into the very love that results from and is the Communion of the Trinity of God. It remains true that it is ultimately impossible to be healed, cleansed without a responsive change of world-view (faith) and in our works destructive of this Eternal Love. The radical difference is simply this. With John the Baptist I used to seek repentance in order to belong. Now, I'm listening to the Jesus way: "Terry, I AM is here. You are mine. You belong. So repent. Enter in.. 2
In our current American experience we have yet to admit that we are more lost than the Calvinist teachings suggest, precisely because salvation is nothing less than the affective and behavioral transformations that allow God's love full access.
Even more, we are incapable of such changes--accepting for the ever present Father-Son-Spirit who gives us the example, desire and ability to change our behaviors, attitudes, and so move with the Trinity in ever deepening patterns of this same love; in human making ways.
Love is not perfection
Love simply is, no matter the points of failure, even sin. Herein lies the essence. Love does not require sinlessness or unbroken lives, a positive testimony. Love does require integrity which is the stuff of faith (world- view) insisting on God's essential goodness and relatedness.
As if to underline "integrity's role," the Levitical Law offers atonement only for sins unintended. The instruction: “When anyone is unfaithful to the LORD by sinning unintentionally in regard to any of the LORD’s holy things, they are to bring to the LORD as a penalty a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value in silver, according to the sanctuary shekel. It is a guilt offering. They must make restitution for what they have failed to do in regard to the holy things, pay an additional penalty of a fifth of its value and give it all to the priest. The priest will make atonement for them with the ram as a guilt offering, and they will be forgiven.
“If anyone sins and does what is forbidden in any of the LORD’s commands, even though they do not know it, they are guilty and will be held responsible. They are to bring to the priest as a guilt offering a ram from the flock, one without defect and of the proper value. In this way the priest will make atonement for them for the wrong they have committed unintentionally, and they will be forgiven. It is a guilt offering; they have been guilty of wrongdoing against the LORD" (Leviticus 5: 15-19).
As a younger person I thought, 'how can any of us escape then, if only unintentional sin is forgiven?' As a Wesleyan I assumed sin defined as a knowing and willful violation of God's law was the beginning and end of the matter. Wynkoop 3 awakened me to Wesley's appreciation of Calvin's sensitivity to every attitude, affection or behavior that reflects the wounds and affections of the mind, soul and heart that fall short of God's glory (love), though not consciously chosen. He called it sin "improperly so-called."
Further, these human, familial, culturally, bio- chemically acquired gaps of love nevertheless needed Christ's atonement, freely given before creation--the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.
Wesley's point, as I understand it now, was to:
Keep conscious, willful sins front and center in order to retain "integrity" as the core meaning of the holiness, and;
Keep wholeness essential to human making, and;
Keep the purpose of salvation as the restoration of God's image in us, personally and socially (relationally) and communally. and;4
To affirm that holiness 'as integrity pursuing love' very much included the confessional spirit and acts 5 necessary to growing up into Christ in all things--every wounded, socially conditioned affection or addictive inclination that is less than love.
In us then holiness is integrity pursuing love. The beginning and end game is to recapture the Shalom or well-being for everyone, everywhere.
That is such a nuanced and hopeful vision that places grace (God's loving Presence) as the ultimate source of every good, whether one yet knows Christ or not. When understood within the Wesleyan ideal of Prevenient Grace 6 it literally means that, in terms of the wounds and brokenness that flow from being born human (sons and daughters of Adam) we are, in Christ, forgiven; the only issue being our response to increasing awareness of love, especially rooted in the communion of the Father-Eternal Son-Spirit. God is literally on our side.
What is not forgiven—though provisionally even these are—is sin consciously, personally chosen.
Now, it is very clear to me that like Wesley centuries later, Leviticus is making salvation relational and dependent upon God's affections of the Heart. Such a view makes every human person, act or attitude "sacred." We are image bearers. It need not be even mentioned that if we care not one twit for love or God or one another there is no offering that can be given that will have value. The reason is simple. God is not angry with us, needing a blood sacrifice to appease God's wrath, always locked and loaded. Quite the opposite, wherever love is God is; either relationally if we have awakened from our Adamic sleep or within an act of love itself. It is all grace.
That is why Isaiah is so beautifully gracious. God The Father ever acts within The Cosmic Christ to, in The Spirit, form Jesus of Nazareth.
Faith and works are not opposites. Works are a form of grace, if we allow, to help us become fully human; able to respond to real oppression and affliction in the dignity of One who cherishes "reverence" even when everyone around us is irreverent.
And so we ask again: What is home and How do we get There? Home is loving God first as no other and our neighbors as ourselves. Wherever we are, helping to restore our planet or in heaven preparing to come back with Jesus to do it then.. we are home, in our own skin and heart. And how? By integrity responding in a universe filled with Love.
A Prayer: In these next six months, Father of our Lord Jesus, please help me to trust you in all. Save me from myself, deep within I pray. Amen.
Consider: Terry declares that “Faith and works are not opposites. Works are a form of grace, if we allow, to help us become fully human.” Your Thoughts.
Blessings! Terry
Note: This blog is one of my writings in "Entirely Christs.. Not Yet", Part #3C Inter-active Response", "From Everywhere Home"
1 I increasingly wonder if some of the trans-sexual movement so in vogue, is a pro-longed adolescent search for identity; an inability to grow up human into the sexual-social- sacred beings we are. How can we as a people of God espouse a created order—acknowledging it as fragile, bio-chemical, even fluid in process, ever live into a Creational purpose that fills our flesh with purpose in love—if we ourselves have abandoned what it means to ‘be human’ and work it out, within the cultural contexts in which God has placed us?
2 For more see my blog "Belonging Precedes Faith".
3 Dr. Mildred Bangs-Wynkoop, author of “A Theology of Love”.
4 The theological premise of the Jewish and early Christian faith is that salvation is communal/personal—affecting communities and nations, indeed the whole world and looking for “The renewal of all things” just prior to or upon the return of Christ.
5 See my 1st Book, "Confessional Holiness: The Missing Piece of the Puzzle (broken, loved & under construction)"
6. The grace (God's Presence) that anticipates, leads us to and in our restoration
TEMPORARY FILE of "Entirely Christ's.. not Yet"
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