Lawrence Farley writes regarding Colossians 2:8-9:

Christ is not just one link in the Fullness of the Godhead’s series of emanations. All the Divine Fullness dwells in Him. And not only that, but the Divine Fullness dwells in Him bodily. It is not, as the Gnostics asserted, that the true Divine Nature would not deign to soil Itself with contact with the bodily; corruptible world. On the contrary, the Fullness of God has actually assumed a body, sharing our physical nature.

Meditating on this passage from Colossians and from Farley’s reflections, there are two things that confront me. First, is of course the importance of my human body. God himself was pleased to take on a body like ours and in that there is great impetus to care for my own body. This point of impetus is related to the second confrontation I experienced. Elsewhere Paul will write about offering our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom 12:1-2) and we find Jesus concerned in the Gospels not only with what our body does but also with what our minds (in connection with our bodies) think.

Insofar as we participate in Christ, we participate in one who has a body that is perfect. That is, he has a body that fulfills the purpose for which human bodies were created and the destination that human bodies in Christ are headed. In other words, Christ’s body then provides for us a cosmic goal and direction. And so when I sin in body or mind, in things done or in things left undone, I do with my body that which is immature, that which is in a direction other than the cosmic final direction that Christ has laid down for us and then raised for us on the other side of death.

Lord, in your mercy, forgive us the use of our bodies for those things that are unlike Jesus, so that we might abide in the fullness of the One person in whom the fullness of the Divine indeed dwells. Amen.

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¹ Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 171-2. Commenting on Colossians 2:8-9.

¹⁸And he is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent. ¹⁹For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, ²⁰and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:18-20)

“We see from this how great and cosmic is our salvation. Christ did not just die for men, to save our souls so that we could go to heaven. It is better and grander than that. Christ’s Blood has washed the whole world, restoring all to its original pristine beauty and freshness, making all things new (Rev 21:5). We men have our share in this salvation, since man is the microcosm of the world. But the fact remains that Christ’s death brought the whole cosmos back into life-giving unity with the Father — not just us!”

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Farley, Lawrence. The Prison Epistles, The Orthodox Bible Study Companion Series. (Ben Lomond, Calif.: Conciliar Press, 2003) , p. 160-1.

I was reading through a forum recently where Protestants of a variety of types were addressing the Church season called Lent. In dismissing Lent, there were phrases like, “the scriptures do not command it” and “ungodly superstition.” After all, one person smugly noted, Lent gave us Mardi Gras and that of course has to prove that Lent is wrong.

The scriptures don’t command that we go to church on Wednesdays, but Christians all over the world, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, and Protestant all go to church on days that are not Sunday. The scriptures do not command that we celebrate Easter or Christmas and yet those Christian holidays seem to be practiced ubiquitously. So what’s the problem with Lent?

Is it superstitious? Is it ungodly? If I might quote from A Handbook for Lent that St. John’s Episcopal Church, Dallas, Texas put out this year, I’d like to establish from the perspective of a group celebrating Lent, what the season is about:

Lent is a penitential season of the Christian Year, forty days in length, in which Christians focus on repentance and personal devotion in light of the coming celebration of Christ’s resurrection at Easter. The forty-day period alludes to many Scriptural events which are important in salvation history: the forty days of the flood; the forty-year Exodus of the Hebrews in the Sinai wilderness: Moses’ forty days on Mount Sinai when he received the Law; Jesus’ forty days of temptation in the desert, during which time the Father prepared him for his public ministry.

In this quote, I think we can see that the length of forty days has historical precedence and is purposed to connect the Church today with the Church of History that transcends the ages. Lent is a time of personal devotion and repentance in preparation for Easter. Is it personal devotion, repentance or Easter that is the problem? It is hard to believe that if truly considered that any of these three core components of Lent could be considered “ungodly superstition.”

Mardi Gras of course is the debauchery in New Orleans, Louisiana in which people impale themselves on as much sin as possible with the unbelievable assumption that then they would give up such sinful practices during the Lenten season. This actually has nothing to do with the Lenten fasting. During Lent one gives up good things (alcohol, meat, etc) with a view towards laying hold of the best thing, the reward God promises his people, Christ himself. There is never a time when Christians are permitted or encouraged to sin in order to worship God. To say that Mardi Gras demonstrates that Lent should not be practiced, is analogous to saying that because Christmas is a time when people gorge themselves in a feast of materialism that we should not celebrate the ancient Christian holy season of Advent. It is in this vein that we must conclude that Mardi Gras is a godless aberration of Shrove Tuesday (Fat Tuesday), is in no way a Christian practice, and has no bearing on whether one should celebrate Lent.

Lent is not something we of course observe as individuals, but as the Church. It is a season of preparation for Easter, when Christ Jesus rose from the dead, swallowing death and hell whole. For “if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19, ESV). Lord have mercy upon your Church that in this age her members might finally learn how to play charitably as you came and gave us charity that we never imagined. Amen.

There is a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies blow. [1]

If you’re like me when you read just those two lines of poetry you probably spent as much energy if not more trying to fight off ridiculous images of flowers growing out of the pores of a woman’s face as you did trying to imagine what Thomas Campion was actually describing in his poem, There Is A Garden in Her Face.

Dorothy Sayers, a colleague of C. S. Lewis, quotes Campion in making the point that the modern day person generally has great difficulty with poetry, figures and symbols. We don’t like them because they ask more of us than we have the faculties to appreciate. We tend to like the things that can be measured and then exhausted; yet, poets and prophets have given us figures and symbols that move us beyond ourselves - to something beyond the maximum.

This seems to be true in the way we approach church and worship, in the way we order our lives, in the way we think about happiness and fulfillment, and particularly in the way we think of and relate to Jesus, our Lord. Writing to those who misunderstood the figures in Dante’s Paradiso, his work on Heaven, Sayers writes:

… one of the results of having substituted a philosophy of becoming for a philosophy of being is that the very notion of an achieved happiness has become not merely inconceivable but actually repugnant to us. Timelessness, or eternity, like Heaven itself, passes man’s understanding.2]

What Sayers writes about Paridiso applies to our approach to Romans 12:1-2 with its figures and symbols. In lusting after the measurable and exhaustible we have begun to think of the Christian faith in such terms. We have reduced Christianity down to mere propositions and steps and functions. The consequence is that the way we think about God, Christ, his Cross and even ourselves has become frozen still, comatose, even demonstrating a spiritual rigormortis of sorts.

The Pattern of Eternal Irruption into Paul’s Life

Many of us come to the Apostle Paul’s writings and we resonate with the structure of his argumentation. But let us not forget that Paul wrote as an Apostle not because he studied hard enough or tried harder than anybody else, but because God in His mysterious providence was pleased to irrupt into the Apostle Paul’s life and change everything here and now with a view towards eternity.

We are given that paradigm at the beginning of his Epistle to the Romans where Paul reminds us that he is a servant of Jesus set apart for the gospel of God

… concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh ⁴ and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, (Rom 1:3-4, NRSV)

God had come to earth in the flesh of Jesus Christ, the God-Man. In his perfect human life, Jesus lifted his new humanity to a place so great that sinners clutching to our failed depravity cannot imagine or measure or exhaust it. He has lifted us back to a place of integration and fellowship with God in himself.

Jesus Christ, Paul reminds us, was declared with power to be the Son of God on account of his resurrection from the dead, which demonstrated his life before the grave as perfect.

But resurrections don’t happen all the time do they? Scripture teaches us that all but a few resurrections will happen at the end of time, when Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God, will judge the living and the dead.

Paul is telling us that something of the future has broken into the past and changed everything.

[1] Campion, Thomas. Campion’s Works. Percival Vivian, Ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909. 178. Quoted in Dorothy L. Sayers “Introduction” to Dante’s Paradiso, (London: Penguin Books, 2004), 28.
[2] Sayers, 28.

In John 21:1-14 there are three symbols that stand out to me: fish, water and fire. These each have to do with Peter personally. He is a fisherman, who is learning that he is utterly dependent upon God in his vocation, even and perhaps especially in the most mundane aspects of that vocation. It is in the midst of Peter’s vocation that Jesus’ had first called him. He had gotten into Simon Peter’s boat to address the crowds and then told him, “Put out into the deep and let down your nets for a catch.” (Luke 5:3-4) Simon had responded after receiving the catch, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8)

Jesus had come to them in the fourth watch of the night (Matt 14:25), having walked on water for three or four miles (John 6:19). They did not recognize him this time either, being terrified and thinking he was a ghost (Matt 14:26); however, Jesus calmed them saying, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” (Matt 14:27) Peter responds in faith and uncertainty to Jesus’ identity, “If it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” (Matt 14:28) However, when Peter turned his attention from Christ who called him to the wet wind howling about him, his faith faltered. He sank down into the depths of the sea. Yet even in faltering faith, he cried out, “Lord, save me.” (Matt 14:30). The one, who made the wind, lifted Peter out of the water, delivering him safely to the boat and the wind stopped.

“Lord, where are you going?” Peter once asked. (John 13:36) Essentially Peter responded to Jesus’ answer in John 13:36 saying he would even lay down his life for Jesus. “Would you?” Jesus responds. And we know that as Jesus predicted so it came to pass. Peter denied the Lord three times that very night. He did not deny Jesus before legions of soldiers or great giants of might. No Peter, the Great Rock, denied Jesus Christ before servants and slave girls around a charcoal fire (John 18:17-18).

Here in John 21:1-14 we find the Apostle John returning to these three symbols of Peter’s life: fish, water and fire. Jesus comes back to these moments of Peter’s life in a very different way. These are all places which mark out for us the death in Peter. They chart for us the destination of judgment that Peter has apart from Christ. Peter acknowledges this when he says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.” (Luke 5:8) But Jesus did not depart. He invaded Peter’s boat, vocation and life - not for the sake of merely invading - but to change him forever. Do you feel the edge of the Surgeon’s scalpel in the words Jesus casts upon the early morning waters of the Sea of Galilee? “Children, do you have any fish?” (John 21:5) “Do we have any fish!?” we can imagine they mimicked under their breath. Their fog horn like reply bemoaned back to the shore, “No.”

“Cast your net on the right side of the boat, and you will find some,” the voice echoed back from the shore.

“Oh we’ve heard that before,” Peter may have thought in a cynical moment. John’s heart shot right through any cynicism. “It’s the Lord!” This time, the catch would be counted. This time the fish were all large - 153 of them. This time the nets would not break. This time. But what was different.

Something clicked for Peter, still carrying the complex of burdens in the shadow of the Cross. He was not waiting for anything. He bolted for Jesus. If his burdens should drown him, surely Jesus could save him.

This time Peter did not start off walking on the water. This time he threw himself in it, and traversed about a 100 yards. When he arrived on the beach, Jesus was waiting for him and the rest of the disciples who were coming in the boat. Jesus had made a charcoal fire. Where Peter had denied Jesus around a charcoal fire, Jesus comes to reveal his resurrection glory to Peter around a charcoal fire. The word for charcoal fire is used only in John and only when Peter denies Christ and here when Jesus has built the same kind of fire to nourish and restore Peter.

Jesus is Lord over all. He demonstrated his rule over Peter’s vocation and called Peter to Himself though the most mundane - Peter just doing what he as a fisherman would do. The Lord manifests his kingship over our barriers and fears. This time Peter was not afraid of the water or the wind. He did not walk on the water, but that did not matter because whether or not he walked on the water or swam through it, he had Jesus as his singular focus. This man, Jesus, had not only treaded across the water to meet Peter, he had now trampled down death by his death.

Christ our God has most certainly proven his Lordship over the fire, charcoal and otherwise. The symbol of Peter’s denial was now reclaimed as that of acceptance, redemption and restoration. In the Old and New Testaments the Holiness of God was described to us as a consuming fire.

“For the Lord your God, is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” (Deuteronomy 4:24)

“Know therefore today that he who goes over before you as a consuming fire is the LORD your God.” (Deuteronomy 9:3)

“The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: “Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire? Who among us can dwell with everlasting burnings?” (Isaiah 33:14)

“Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29)

Jesus would charge the disciples to go to Jerusalem and wait for Him to send his Holy Spirit upon them in power. We find that when the Spirit of Holiness does come upon Peter and the disciples in Jerusalem, he manifests himself as “tongues of fire”. This most personal manifestation of God’s holiness does not consume these disciples but empowers them.

Jesus is raised from the dead. He ascended into heaven and sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. He will judge the quick and the dead. Those who have died to themselves, who have flung themselves to the waters that they might have of Christ even a glimpse more closely, these will be raised to life just as Jesus himself was. His death upon the Cross for our sins was vindicated. His being raised shows us who are His that our sins, our charcoal fires, have been remade and redeemed. The Father has forgiven us in the Son and now empowers us with the Spirit of Holiness. God, once our enemy, has now become our friend and the bodily historical resurrection is the billboard of all time that God will stop at nothing to glorify himself in loving a people for himself.

My wife and I are reading through a most contemplation evoking paper presently on the Eucharist that has sparked a great wonder and awe of God in me. Traditionally, we have thought of God as being of infinitely greater and altogether different kind of being from which we have our being analogously. Even so, one of my favorite theologians begins his volume on the Doctrine of God:

Mystery is the lifeblood of dogmatics. To be sure, the term “mystery” ( μυστηριον) in Scripture does not mean an abstract supernatural truth in the Roman Catholic sense. Yet Scripture is equally far removed from the idea that believers can grasp the revealed mysteries in a scientific sense. In truth, the knowledge that God has revealed of himself in nature and Scripture far surpasses human imagination and understanding. In that sense it is all mystery with which the science of dogmatics is concerned, for it does not deal with finite creatures, but from beginning to end looks past all creatures and focuses on the eternal and infinite One himself.¹

For newer generations to theology, the term ‘dogmatics’ simply means ‘systematic theology’. Systematic theology then serves its greatest purpose when it exposes its very limitation and inability to circumscribe God, compelling us to a greater sense of worship in the face of wonder and mystery.

God’s Givenness in Redemptive History

God’s people have believed for about 3,500 years that God was the one who gives himself to his people. He confined himself to a pillar of fire in the desert of Sinai to lead his people out of Egypt. The infinite God took up residence in a structure built by human hands(!), in order to demonstrate his givenness to us.

4But that same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, 5“Go and tell my servant David, ‘Thus says the Lord: Would you build me a house to dwell in? 6I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent for my dwelling. (2 Samuel 7:4-6, ESV)

The question here is ironic. David out of good intention wants God to “live” in a better place. God reminds him that he has chosen to limit himself to a tent. In asking the question, the Lord is drawing the reader towards his givenness and help us to see his utter humility, to limit himself in ways that we can perceive and with which we may relate.

So when the Lord takes on flesh and makes his dwelling among us (literally tabernacles among us in John 1:14, looking back to the tent in the above reference;), we find the apex of his givenness to us. He is not our God at a distance, but has taken on humanity that we might take on godliness.

Incarnation as Paradigm of Givenness

Therefore, the Incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth is one of the greatest if not the greatest mysteries in all of creation. The Incarnation is a double-sided confrontation. First, exposes us, who are poor beyond measure, leading us to mourn our poverty to be made meek that we hunger and thirst for righteousness that we ourselves do not have.

Second, in our poverty we find that God throwing aside the glory of heaven, limited himself to a human being, in time, in space, in life and death and in so doing redefines all things created. In other words, God the Son made himself poor to mourn with us, demonstrating truly meek submission to the Father, whose righteousness he hungered and thirsted after to no end.

The Incarnation as the apex of God’s givenness to us shows us with the greatest alacrity that he is not a God that is far off. Nor is he a God who merely wants to make our lives more comfortable. No, the God of heaven and earth is the God who is given, who has through out all history, both before and after the Fall of Humanity into sin sought to give himself in the deepest fellowship to us. This at once underscores the compassion of our God and his passion for his people, while at the same time exposes the insanity of rejecting the means by which he gives himself to us not just 2,009 years ago (being born c.a. 2 BC). No, God has pledged himself to his church as an eternal bridegroom to be given to us eternally, apart from time, always.

Givenness in the Meantime

We now live in the time between when this givenness is initiated and when it is consummated. We live in a time in which our eternal and incarnate bridegroom has gone to prepare a place for us in eternity, apart from time, always. We now wait as the betrothed.

He has not left us or abandoned us in this time in between. He has allowed himself to be revealed through human, created, finite language in the Bible, both preached and read. He indwells us with his Spirit, while the Son intercedes for us to the Father and helps us to pray acceptably (Romans 8). He gives himself to us in the baptism, promising to attend the baptism with his Spirit. He allows himself to be communicated in the Lord’s Table, the Eucharist, in which believers feed upon Christ, who is our life (John 1:4):

32Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. 33For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” 34They said to him, “Sir, give us this bread always.” 35Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. (John 6:32-35, ESV)

God’s Eternal Givenness

The written Word of God, both read but especially preached now, directs us to the moment (if we can employ such a temporally loaded term as ‘moment’) when we will be with the Word of God, Jesus Christ, the Son of God for eternity. It compels us towards our eschatological destiny in Christ, who we are taught will come again to give himself to us, and us to him, completely.

Prayer to the Lord is mediated now and quite imperfect on our part; nevertheless, we may come before the throne of grace boldly (though not arrogantly), on account of God’s givenness in Christ, who now as a human being (also fully God) intercedes for us to the Father. We look to the time when our prayers are unhindered perfect interpersonal connection with the Lord:

Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God.²

Where the Scriptures and prayer are verbal means by which God communicates to us himself; the sacraments of baptism and the Eucharist are visible ways. Jesus is not the bread, nor is he the wine, but he does communicate himself to us through the means of bread and wine. He does give himself to us in promising to bind himself to us in baptism and gives us his life in when we receive the bread and wine.

We live in the time between that is both unique and at the same time very consonant with all history before us. God of heaven and earth has sought to and accomplished the reconciliation of the world in Christ Jesus, the God-Man, who perpetually gives himself to us as a picture of the eternal and unhindered givenness of God we will experience in glory.

He prays, but He hears prayer. He weeps, but He causes tears to cease. He is bruised and wounded, but He heals every disease and every infirmity. He is lifted up and nailed to the Tree, but by the Tree of Life He restores us, yes, He saved even the robber crucified with Him. He dies, but He gives life, and by His death destroys death. He is buried, but He rises again…³

² Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Studies in the Sermon on the Mount, 2 vols. [ Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979], 2:45

³ Gregory of Nazianzus. The Fourth Theological Oration XX, NPNF Vol. VII, P. 309.