Couldn't Help Noticing

Post-Easter

In the throes of post-Easter lethargy—that feeling of limp exhaustion brought on by a four-day break that is just long enough to drain out some adrenalin but not long enough to provide any refreshment—I reflected on the rituals of Easter.

The Thursday afternoon traffic jams out of Sydney. The Good Friday service where we can't quite make up our minds whether to be sombre or glad. The Stawell Gift. The overpriced chocolate. The bland ‘Easter Messages’ from Christian leaders (the Jensen brothers both distinguishing themselves this year by being exceptions). The obligatory new documentary or book calling into question some aspect of the authenticity of the Gospels (this year it was the Lenten release of James Cameron's The Lost Tomb of Jesus).

And then of course there is the well-publicised sermon from a radical cleric (usually a bishop) denying some core aspect of Easter theology. This year it was Jeffrey John's turn. You may remember the name—he was the gay clergyman who looked like becoming bishop of Reading back in 2003, but in the end didn't.

In an Easter message for BBC Radio 4, Mr John showed that it's not only in the bedroom that he bats for the other side. Normally we leave it up to anti-Christians like Richard Dawkins to sneer at the message of the cross, with its angry God and atoning sacrifice, but who needs Dawkins when you've got Jeffrey John. Here's what he had to say:

But hang on—you may well say—what exactly does that mean—‘Jesus took our place’? Does it mean, then, that we are back with a punishing God after all, and that the Cross is somehow to be understood as God's ultimate punishment for sin?

That's certainly what I was told in my Calvinistic childhood. The explanation I was given went something like this. God was very angry with us for our sins, and because he is a just God, our sin had to be punished. But instead of punishing us he sent his Son, Jesus, as a substitute to suffer and die in our place. The blood of Jesus paid the price of our sins, and because of him God stopped being angry with us. In other words, Jesus took the rap, and we got forgiven, provided we said we believed in him.

Well, I don't know about you, but even at the age of ten I thought this explanation was pretty repulsive as well as nonsensical. What sort of God was this, getting so angry with the world and the people he created, and then, to calm himself down, demanding the blood of his own Son? And anyway, why should God forgive us through punishing somebody else? It was worse than illogical, it was insane. It made God sound like a psychopath. If any human being behaved like this we'd say they were a monster.

Well, I haven't changed my mind since. That explanation of the cross just doesn't work, though sadly it's one that's still all too often preached. It just doesn't make sense to talk about a nice Jesus down here, placating the wrath of a nasty, angry Father God in heaven. Christians believe Jesus is God incarnate. As he said, ‘Whoever sees me has seen the Father’. Jesus is what God is: he is the one who shows us God's nature. And the most basic truth about God's nature is that He is Love, not wrath and punishment.

Some Christians go through their lives without grasping this. I recently came across an interview given by an elderly priest who said it wasn't till he was nearly seventy that he was finally set free from his picture of an angry God

So, dear children, if you are still so immature as actually to believe this insane, psychopathic nonsense about Jesus dying to take the punishment for our sins, surely it's time you grew up. Mr John, after all, saw it clearly when he was but 10. It takes other poor souls until they are nearly 70.

Me, I think I'll stick with the Bible, and flee to the foot of that despised cross, where God put forth his son as a propitiation for our sins. I'll weep quiet tears of joy that God should be so weak and foolish as to use a cross to save me. And for my Easter ritual, I'll sing the old song once more:

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee;
Let the water and the blood
From Thy wounded side which flowed,
Be of sin the double cure;
Save from wrath and make me pure.

Charles Simeon and boring bloody Leviticus

People who mock the Bible as boring or outdated generally haven't read it. But when they do read it, they love to turn to Leviticus and quote the laws there as an example of how stellar your dullness and outdatedness must be if you take this word seriously. Such an attack usually also has Christians in the rifle sights. It doesn't often seem to occur to such people that an attack on Israel's Old Testament laws would more naturally be construed as anti-Semitic.

However, if we take seriously the notion that it's a mark of fools that they “despise wisdom and instruction” (Prov 1:7, 22), it is almost certain that we will gain a great blessing by paying close attention to the target of this foolish mockery. On this principle, we ought to test whether the Bible is boring by reading it. Most especially, even if at first sight the book of Leviticus seems to conform to the stereotype, we ought to give it a second glance to discover whether it's as bad as all those people who've never read it suggest.

One man who had huge reason to thank God for the book of Leviticus was Charles Simeon. He was the 18th and 19th century preacher who mentored many generations of students at Cambridge University and founded, among other things, the Church Missionary Society. He was not himself, however, a believer in the gospel in 1779, the year he arrived in Cambridge as an undergraduate.

Now, amongst the allegedly tedious bits of the book of Leviticus are the detailed descriptions of many animal sacrifices. Leviticus 16:20-22 describes that part of the Day of Atonement where the High Priest of Israel, Aaron, is to lay both his hands “on the head of the live goat”, and “confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel, and all their transgressions, all their sins.” The goat (called a “scapegoat” in the old Authorised Version of the Bible) is sent off into the wilderness, in a marvellous piece of symbolism. “The goat shall bear all their iniquities on itself to a remote area”, says God in verse 22.

In Leviticus, this is the most explicit linkage between the “laying on of hands” and the carrying away of human sin, but there are plenty of related sin-sacrifices right through this bloody book. They frequently involve a similar laying on of hands (bulls in Leviticus 1, 3 and 4, a lamb and another goat in Leviticus 3). It's a book that is drenched in blood. It reminds the reader that the priest was more like my friend Sam the butcher than someone in a collar who eats cucumber sandwiches at tea parties. In a crucial and revealing verse, God says that “the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls, for it is the blood that makes atonement by the life” (Lev 17:11).

Simeon, unbeliever that he was, was thoroughly churchified, and knew all about these sacrifices, and verses like Leviticus 17:11 that explained them. Here, then, is his own account of how he was converted. Notice the centrality of the knowledge he came across by reading the book of Leviticus:

In Passion Week [the week up to and including Easter], as I was reading Bishop Wilson on the Lord's Supper, I met with an expression to this effect—“That the Jews knew what they did, when they transferred their sin to the head of their offering.” The thought came into my mind, What, may I transfer all my guilt to another? Has God provided an Offering for me, that I may lay my sins on His head? Then, God willing, I will not bear them on my own soul one moment longer. Accordingly I sought to lay my sins upon the sacred head of Jesus; and on the Wednesday began to have a hope of mercy; on the Thursday that hope increased; on the Friday and Saturday it became more strong; and on the Sunday morning, Easter-day, April 4, I awoke early with those words upon my heart and lips, “Jesus Christ is risen to-day! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!” From that hour peace flowed in rich abundance into my soul; and at the Lord's Table in our Chapel I had the sweetest access to God through my blessed Saviour.” (H.C.G. Moule, Charles Simeon, London: InterVarsity, 1948, p. 25f.)

When we understand the book of Leviticus and its fulfilment in Christ, we have enough information to be set free from all our sin and guilt and shame. A less boring or outdated idea it is hard to imagine.

By the way, Moule's out-of-print biography of Charles Simeon is well worth hunting down. And, if you want to understand more about those bloody sacrifices, get your hands on Leon Morris's wonderful work, The Atonement: Its Meaning and Significance (Leicester: Inter-Varsity Press, 1983, now also sadly out of print). Leviticus, however, is not out of print. Have a go at reading Leviticus carefully, and discover that it is the exact opposite of boring.

Stop exercising

Is exercise a good parallel for the Christian life? I ask because I'm often told that it is, and sometimes people point me to 1 Corinthians 9 where Paul uses the discipline of exercise as a model. So it is pretty hard to deny that it's there in the Bible: self-control, self-discipline, regularity, and application of effort that come with dragging yourself out of bed and into the running shoes, the gym, or whatever.

This is all good and true, but every time we meet an analogy, we should discipline ourselves, like a tennis player attending to his technique, to ask ourselves where the limits of the analogy lie. Paul knew this, and observed, with regard to the analogy of exercise, that “physical training is of some value” (1 Tim 4:8). Where does the value of the analogy run out of puff?

The most obvious limitation of the analogy of physical exercise is that, as useful as it is in building strength and health, it ends in death and decay. I've known some fit people over the years, and some of them are dead. The rest of them will be dead shortly, measuring their lives against the yardstick of eternity. So let's not get carried away with promoting the exercise analogy because, unless our Lord returns first, the fittest person in the world will end up in a permanent hole in the ground.

Theologically speaking, there is a more profound flaw: in spiritual terms, we begin dead. I have been to and presided at a number of funerals, but once the person is dead, it needs to be said that they are beyond the reach of exercise.

This brings us to the missing dimension: exercise depends on self and self-discipline. The Christian life only depends upon the grace of God. In the paradox of the Christian life, the person who admits that they are beyond help and that they can't do anything to save themselves is the one who is the strongest Christian of all. This strength comes not from themselves but from the free gift of Christ working through his Holy Spirit.

Now we know this to be true, but we need to exercise (if you'll pardon the expression) great care so that we do not allow ourselves to slip back into the idea that our personal and regular effort could ever improve a relationship with God that, through Christ, is already perfect. We work because he loves us, not because we want him to love us.

Memory exercises

Recently I've been reading through the book of Deuteronomy. It's hard overlook the fact that the author is very keen on the Israelites being mentally apt. He uses the word ‘forget’ (and its variants) 12 times and the word ‘remember’ (and its variants) 13 times. Moses thought that remembering what God had done in the past, and not forgetting what God promised to do in the future, was very important.

Forgetting is a terrible thing. My 94-year-old grandmother suffers from Alzheimer's disease, and can rarely remember who I am and, worse, who she is. Grandma is no longer the ‘grandma’ that I and the rest of my family remember; because she has lost the ability to remember her past, she has lost her present identity.

This is what Moses warned the Israelites about. In forgetting their past, they forgot who they were in the present. They lost their identity as God's chosen rescued people. Worse still, they then went on to forget how to act as God's chosen people who had been called to live in faith and obedience.

This has been a timely reminder for me. Often I concentrate my daily war against sin on the more intentional and insidious sins of the flesh—the times when I do desire to disobey the Lord. But those moments are few. More often than not, I rebel against God not by intentionally shaking my first at him and vowing to go my own way; I rebel by not evening thinking about who he is and who I am in Christ. I forget to trust his words and his ways and so, by default, I end up living my own way. At times like these, my rebellion is rooted in the simple act of forgetting.

In concentrating so much on what some would call ‘major sins’, I forget to wage war against forgetting because it is so innocent and subtle. It is not the type of sin that people usually confess to. It is not the type of sin people ask their accountability partners to help them overcome. To most, it is unintentional. While it may cause others hurt (e.g. when a husband forgets his wedding anniversary), it isn't a sin that would obviously cause our downfall.

But according to Moses, it's a sin that results in great tragedy. Just look at the generation that forgot and thus was not allowed to enter the heaven-like Promised Land, perishing instead in the hellish wilderness. Moses kept returning to the idea of memory because there was quite a bit at stake.

Just as the Israelites were called upon over and over again to remember their grand rescue from Egypt, I am called upon over and over again to remember my grand rescue through the cross of Christ. I am called upon to remember my true identity as a child of God who lives for and rejoices in God's glory. And as I work on this simple act of remembering, I have a feeling those insidious sins will start to fall by the wayside.