Why you, preacher, should not commit adultery

I want to write to friends in Christian ministry – especially to the many men I know whose income comes from Christian people, whether simply from the offerings in an independent church, from denominational funds, or channelled through a mission or other parachurch agency. I want to write to you who are called to minister God’s word, preaching his gospel and shepherding his flock, and I want to urge you not to commit adultery. I know that at this very moment some of you are being tempted in this direction, and I fear that some of you will fall.

There are so many reasons I can think of for writing in this way, so many motives I could bring to your attention. But I want to focus on one, because it is the one that never occurred to me during my trajectory into sin. I have to confess that I was conscious of most of the others; I am aware that that is a pretty grim confession as it makes clear how wilful and high-handed my sin was. 

So, I am not writing to tell you not to commit adultery because of the offence to Jesus Christ that such sin would be. You are aware of the appalling blasphemy and peril of wilfully sinning against his precious blood that cleaned you up, but I am not writing about that. I’m not writing to urge you not to grieve the Holy Spirit by using your body – his temple – in a way which utterly rejects his presence. I’m not writing to remind you of the desperate spurning of the Father’s eternal love that such an action would represent. 

I’m not writing to press on you the awful impact of such unfaithfulness on your own local church, and perhaps on many other people who look up to you in wider circles. Of course, real converts to Jesus won’t simply fall away because you do: rather, they will see through you and your sin. But they will be desperately disappointed and hurt, and some may suffer real spiritual damage and set back over this. And there will be those who are as yet uncommitted who will make this THE excuse for their not coming to Jesus. Some will even cite your example as part of their own pathway to adultery. They will give account for that one day, to the extent that it is a shallow, fake excuse; you will, to the extent that it isn’t. And the young people in the church who you have known from little kids will be hurt the most. But I’m not writing to you about all that. 

I’m not writing to you about your own marriage and family. Of course, in the state you’re in right now, your wife’s love and commitment may not be meaning much to you. Believe me, one day you will see this phase of your life with less astigmatism. If you commit adultery you will be running headlong into catastrophic breakdown in your marriage. Before it is discovered or confessed, the secret act itself will already mean that nothing will ever be the same again with the woman to whom you made your vows; discovery will take you into as yet unimaginable fear, shame and misery as you face break-up and divorce, or a long, hard and frequently painful road to putting things right. Whether divorcing or “saving it", you are going to put the woman you promised to love and cherish through as great an emotional pain as you can possibly inflict. And your children, who have probably already put up with a lot due to your ministry, will put up with a whole lot more. From being pedestal-placed preacher’s kids they will become the pitied, and possibly suspect, failed-preacher’s kids. And, though they already knew you and your weaknesses and the issues in your marriage and behaviour like no leader or member of your church knew, they will in future see you in a whole new light and you will run the risk of losing them completely. But I’m not writing to you about that. 

I’m not writing to you about the risk to your own personal life, your mental and physical health, and your eternal salvation. It isn’t my aim to impress on you the appalling sense of free fall that can come over you when everything is in breakdown. I needn’t talk about the hours sitting in a practically empty room with a tube of Pringles and a bottle of whisky, when the distance between being a well-known, respected preacher and living as a drunk on the streets suddenly seems incredibly narrow. I am not talking about the slow, uncertain and insecure struggle to totally reinvent yourself, finding some kind of job in midlife, with the one skill set in which you feel moderately confident now utterly valueless and irrelevant. I am not warning you about the perils of actually surviving and making some money, when ex-pastors find themselves starting to live by precisely the materialistic, or promiscuous, or plain idolatrous lifestyle that they warned against for so long. I have friends who were great preachers and able theologians who are now living as practical atheists. I know of others who have ended up simply denying all they once stood for, slipping from orthodox Christian faith through liberalism to agnosticism or even some tailor-made mystical or pagan nonsense that will give them a philosophical excuse to carry on random sex. I could never manage that - I was always strictly orthodox in my sinning, so I know what it is to carry around in my head and conscience the truth I preached for 20 years, and yet live in total disobedience to it. I know the semi-madness of that incoherence, and I know the fear and dread that goes with it, but I’m not writing about that. 

Nor am I writing to you about the utter social emptiness that can hit you as your friends and colleagues drop you. As I have written before, there will be those who write, and those who don’t. To this day, there are those who ignore my messages, refuse my friend requests and generally give me the cold shoulder. I am not condoning their behaviour – though I know that I used to be pretty much as ungracious. In that context it is easy to give way to bitterness, and it is that bitterness that can make it easy to live, or excuse our living, in a state of worsening backsliding. It is a lethal whirlpool that can suck you down to hell, while all the time you self-justify by complaining about the injustice/heartlessness/hypocrisy of your erstwhile friends. It is horrible, but I am not writing to you about that.

No, I’m not writing to you about any of that. I’m writing to you about something else. I’m writing about the situation you may find yourself in if, by God’s amazing grace, you come out the other side of the grand canyon of sin into which adultery will throw you. 

I think many of us ministers who sinned sexually did so in a context of wider issues. Tiredness, disillusion, financial pressures, marital struggles, relationship tensions with church or mission colleagues – a general malaise in and with the ministry which combined with spiritual backsliding to leave us frankly uncaring about the consequences of sin. One Christian leader even suggested to me that adultery was a mode of “ministry suicide” – just about the only way definitively to escape a treadmill.

These “wider issues” are no excuse for sin, of course. But I mention them because they may be one reason why losing this job, this career, this calling, doesn’t carry much weight at present. And you may even want shot of it. And that is what I wanted to write about. 

Let’s suppose that, like I did, you do this evil thing. And let’s suppose that, by God’s shocking grace, you emerge the other side as a Christian. You may find yourself in a church in broadly the same circle that you have ministered in. You were known there. But you will never be what you were. Even the whole business of “going to church” will have to be relearned and reinvented. A lot of that humbling will do you nothing but good, but over time, as your spiritual life is re-formed, you will find yourself feeling again and again your inability to relate to what is happening around you. Your mind will be like a Formula One engine with no power train to connect it to the road. You will feel like an athlete who can never run. 

In my case, and every case is different, after the slow road (while still overtly not living as a Christian) via village Anglicans and then anonymous attendance at a distant FIEC church, I had a time back as a professing Christian in an independent Baptist church where I was well known. I then remarried and, by virtue of my new wife’s church involvement, now find myself in the Salvation Army. At the time we married I had very low expectations of what I could/should/would be able to do; my only desire was to love her faithfully and assist her in living out her calling. But I have been gradually coming alive. And the very circumstances into which God has placed me are reminders of past hopes, past preparation for ministry, a past sense of calling and purpose. Sarah’s unanticipated appointment to the Salvation Army training college in Camberwell not only took me back uncomfortably to wonderful days in South London 30 years earlier, but her role teaching the very disciplines in which I had worked in colleges and seminaries all over Brazil seemed like a particular pointed providence. The Salvation Army is at one and the same time a lovely gracious body which encourages and is open to new starts among those who have slipped very, very low. It is also a holiness/Arminian movement whose doctrines I respect, but which I cannot fully subscribe, and that might appear to place a natural limit on my usefulness within the organisation.

As I say, every case is different. Your trajectory after adultery will not be the same as mine. You cannot presume that there will be a way back to God in your story at all. (Even though, wherever you are right now, there is a way back to God, and you know it, don’t you?) But supposing you do come back, what then?

After the initial howling pain has shifted into the past, after your children have graciously put together some new level of relationship with you, after you have got comfortable in a Christian meeting again, after you have reinstated the long-lost rhythm of Bible reading and prayer and even read some theology again, you will wake up and remember. 

If you were ever really called to the ministry at all, you will remember what it is to preach the gospel. I don’t mean get up on your hind legs and give a talk in church. I mean that, whether it was one to one, in a small group or in a big congregation, you knew what it was to bring a word that came from the throne of heaven, portrayed the beauty and love of Christ crucified, and called for repentance Now. You knew what it was to feel yourself held at the intersection of the only three moments that matter – Christ’s past coming, his future judgement and the day that is called Today, and to be the herald given by God for these people in front of you.  You knew what it was to see, to sense, God at work, to know that this word now was making impact, that lives were being challenged, that grace was breaking in, that the silence and power were from the Holy Spirit of God, that you were a mere mouthpiece in what God was doing, and that he was doing what he loves to do. You knew that not everyone was called to do this, and that every calling was of great value to God, but you also knew that this was what you were made for and you had to do it and do it to the best of your ability. 

And you blew it. But then one day you are spiritually awake again. And, each morning, you are off to (in my case) sell granite worktops or take photographs. And, though you enjoy those jobs in a way, you know that you are not going to do the one thing you were really created for. You know you have put yourself into a permanent bypath.  And that sensation isn’t going to go away, or diminish with time, like the first screaming terror of adultery-discovered. This is going to go on and on, for the rest of your life. 

I was recently reasonably ill. Not very ill – I was quite clear that I wasn’t dying! – but ill enough to spend a night in hospital and have a fair battery of tests. It made me stop and think. Despite so much happiness in my new marriage, and much pleasure from so many good things in life – travel and food and music and books and film and mountains and photography – I lay there at one stage really thinking through whether I would actually prefer to be dying, simply because of this. When you have fully woken up to your original sense of calling, the weight of the disqualification that adultery brings seems utterly unbearable.

I am not saying I can’t bear it. By God’s grace I am pressing on. I try to explore any and every pathway to spiritual usefulness and fruitfulness, and I guess this blog is part of that. But nothing prepared me or warned me about the deep, inward angst of feeling that my life is now doomed to be a continuous, steady waste where nothing is actually what it could and should have been, and where I have thrown away the years of my maturity in ministry – the strategic years, the weighty years, years where with language and cultural knowledge under my belt in Brazil I could have been speaking into the spiritual chaos with some helpfulness.

That is what I am trying to write to you about. If you commit adultery, you can’t count on getting back a spiritual life at all. You may disappear without trace in the swamp of sin that your new “freedom” and exclusion from the church open up to you. But if the initial pain is got through and you do come back, don’t think that that will be the end. You will be forgiven, you will be back among Christian people, you will be useful. But regrets… boy, you’ll have a few.

If you are being tempted, my dear brother, THINK!

The Sally Army and Me - BBC One and on iPlayer

 

It was with some nervousness that we sat down to watch the first instalment of this six part documentary in which Paul O'Grady gets initiated as a volunteer with the Salvation Army in various facets of its work. I don't think we need have been nervous. Although I'm not a natural P O'G fan (to be honest, the radio goes off when he comes on) I thought his personableness came through well, and his own background, crossing paths as it has with the SA at various points, made him a perceptive as well as entertaining subject. 
 

On top of that we have Jo Moir, who more than holds her own next to the "big star." We all knew she made good television from watching BBC Alba's Bean a' Mhinisteir (Wife to the Minister) a couple of years ago, and she seems even better this time around. Confident, warm and natural, with a winsome clarity of communication that can laugh but stands no nonsense, Jo is a great gift and we should be thankful for her involvement in this series. 

 

I hope that the other five programmes take us further. Number one perhaps dealt with two of the best-known/practically caricatured elements of SA life - brass bands and the homeless. It will be interesting to see how it goes from here. And not just on the "actvities" level either, but in spiritual content. There appears to be a genuine interest in Paul O'Grady that somehow goes beyond mere professional or feigned curiosity.

 

As ever, the biggest howls of complaint come from within the Army. This time mostly from those who see the involvement of Paul O'Grady as in some way a slap in the face for people of LGBTQI orientation who would like to be more involved in the life of the movement. This saddens me. To the best of my knowledge, Paul O'Grady is not a Christian - he makes no claim to be. He is making a TV programme about being a volunteer. That situation is unique, and it is one that TSA has entered into knowingly - probably with some trepidation at the highest level (not just nervousness on our sofa!). That situation has precisely nothing to say to the daily life of the Army in its normal activities, where its commitment to Jesus Christ, to the truth of his gospel, and to established standards of Christian behaviour all come into play. 

 

The most disappointing part of the complaint this time around is the (utterly predictable) single issue prism through which all must be refracted and judged. No one is complaining that Paul O'Grady is not a Christian. Nobody is asking that he affirms the Doctrines of TSA. His non-commitment to Jesus is no issue at all. The only issue that carries weight is that (I understand) he is attracted to people of the same sex and this Isn't Fair.

 

The Salvation Army is a network of local Christian churches with a wider network of social welfare activities which are supported by government and public funding. At its heart it is a Christian body; you have to be a Christian, and a Christian of a particular type and doctrinal commitment to belong. Not all Christians are welcome, for a variety of reasons. It shares those aspects of its inclusivism and exclusivism with many other Christian bodies, of course. It has allowed an avowed agnostic to make a documentary series; I think this was not a mistake, though I may be proved wrong over the coming weeks! But the real issue is whether Jesus Christ and his gospel will be seen and heard. 

 

Please pipe down with the perpetual harping on about sex and let's see if the Spirit will work through this documentary! That's what I'm praying for. 

 

Catch up with the series on iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0764zh8

Easter Sunday - the day our hopes were dashed!

So, we did our worst. The greatest religious system the world has ever seen (ancient, venerable, coherent, and actually founded by the living God!) got together with the world's greatest military and legal empire to bring about his death. The greed of one betrayer met the bloodcurdling hate of the whipped-up crowd. Envy and hypocrisy, "righteous indignation" and outright cruelty: the very worst of human evils jostled for position in the motives that took him to the cross. 

Above all, or behind all, in that coming together of apparently unnatural allies, was the overarching motive of opposition to God and his Messiah. Not that they would have put it that way, but lusty old Herod, and oh-so-righteous Pharisees, and do-it-by-the-book Roman governors, and the most sadistic of legionnaires who were happy to get crucifixion duties, were all actually together in wanting rid of the rule of God.  Both religion and atheism do so much better without him, don't they?

Of course, that opposition to God's rule is a family trait. It goes right back to the fruit in the garden. We deny it by seeing it only in certain groups, by distancing our own clan, by finding the "odd alliances" surprising. "All Romanians are pickpockets." "All Nigerians are corrupt." "All Pikeys are thieves." "The Jew is the corruption of the world." The reality is that we are all more allied than we ever admit. Together we hate our Creator. 

So together we killed him. Good Friday is our great day of hope. The Fruit Project reached its climax at Calvary. All the varied evil motives that roil in the human heart came together, and we killed him. 

But now it is Sunday. And with the snap of a seal and the rumbling earth-shake of a heavy stone rolling, the universe hears the verdict on our Friday efforts. And though human ears are dull to the sound, the furthest reaches of the universe hear the roar of that word. Angels hear it and shout, "Glory!" Devils hear it and tremble. 

"No!" thunders from the throne of God. 

No! Death shall not hold him!

No! Military power and bureaucratic whitewash will not win!

No! Religion and man-made, man-approved, man-acceptable righteousness will fall!

No! Envy and hypocrisy and hatred and greed and lust and pride and lying and cruelty will not have the last word! 

No! Sin will not have the victory!

No! You will not thwart my will, resist my moral purpose, or prevent me placing my son on the seat of power and judgement as True Man and worthy King!

That roar of "No!" is the most thrilling moment in the history of the universe. It is the announcement of the end. Even though humankind has gone on to commit unspeakable evils, even in countries where that resurrection word has been heard for centuries, that "No!" echoes down to us as the declaration of victory. It is the preliminary word that comes from the Judgement Seat of the Last Day. It is the Man who was raised who will occupy that seat, and the No! against all that came together in his death will be heard again when he speaks. 

There will be justice! Envy and rape, greed and cruelty, gossip and tax dodging, dangerous driving and drug smuggling - all will be revealed and judged. Arms dealers and terrorists will be rebuked and stripped of all power. Nazi war criminals will be on trial, mingling with slavers and killers of every country and era. Jack the Ripper will be there along with the culprit of every other unsolved murder. Affairs will no longer be secret. Horrible harboured hatreds will be seen for what they are. Religion will be confined to the garbage heap. 

The failure to love our Creator with heart and soul and mind and strength will be exposed.  

And "No!" will be said for the last time over it all. 

That is Christian hope. Justice will be done. The evil will end. The terrorists will not win. Chaos will not have the last word. For Jesus will!

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The church has absolutely no right to speak of hope at Easter - to promise that fear or terrorism or government cruelty or death itself will be conquered - except in terms that challenge us to repentance and faith. Easter hope is not vague or fluffy. For, unless I turn from my sin and embrace this Christ, then this great No! is directed at me too.  The apparent, shallow, brief victory of Good Friday is my high point! Without repentance - capitulation to the reign of this Jesus - I am with the killers. Friday is our day of hope;  Sunday marks the end of hope, the crashing of our project, the despair that our sin  cannot and will not win. Jesus' resurrection says that, not only is God against our sin, but he is going to do something about it. 

This isn't very chocolate eggs or fluffy bunnies. But it is how the apostles preached the resurrection. And here we are, still hearing the message. 

And THAT is hope! Today's the day to turn from the rebellion, to turn from Christocide, to turn from sin, and ask God for forgiveness. 

Does he really accept people who have done so much wrong? Yes he does! There you have the significance of the fact that the first hearers of this message were actual physical Christ killers. Hope for them?! Hope for you and me!!

And here is the best part. The part so good that in all of eternity I'm never going to stop saying and singing how good this part is. Here it comes:

The same name, Jesus, the name of the Christ we killed, is the guarantee of forgiveness, because that death which was the "finest hour" of sin was also the finest hour of grace. While we were hating God, God was loving us. While we beat and bruised and killed his Son, thinking this was the culmination of doing-our-own-thing, God purposed that beating and bruising and dying to be the punishment point for all who trust in him.  

Easter hope! It is wonderful news for every persons who drops out of the rebellion and runs to the side of Jesus. 

Run there today! 

Kicking back on Good Friday

Today's the day. We get our chance. Someone once said that given half a chance we'd kill our creator - and today we're going to. 

All that perfection. All that love. All that holiness. Everything about everything that man says and does makes me feel like a little s***. And I'm sick of it. I want shot of him!

Just think - a couple of stiff beatings, a few nails - job done. I know it seems a bit barbaric, but think of the freedom! Imagine: with him gone... No hell below us! Above us only sky! Then we can get on with living for today. 

A whole world of possibility opens up for us going forward. This, friends, is where we've been heading ever since we got the Knowledge. We are now utterly free to choose EVERYTHING for ourselves. With no rule-maker and no judge, with the king dead, there is no one there to tell us what to do. Nothing is absolutely wrong anymore - just wrong when it offends. There is no "truth" out there, so make your own. 

From now on, we just have... from now on. This moment. Now. This. Love it. Live it. Breathe. Enjoy. Give yourself to it. No one is there who will ever judge anything you do! Free at last! We're free at last!

Mind you, if he ever comes back from this, we're stuffed. Don't give me that happy Easter crap. If after THIS God makes him alive, then what's he going to appoint him? And having killed him, what will he do to us? And all this freedom of ours... what will he have to say?

I hope death can hold him. Cos, if it can't, we're going to need a rethink. 

Genocide in the UK

I understand that Denmark expects to have eradicated Down Syndrome from births within its borders by 2030. Iceland is in a similar situation. This is through a programme of screening followed by abortion. As the non-invasive screening procedures become more and more efficient, this situation is likely to become the norm in other western countries too. 

It makes sense. Economically, the screening process pays for itself - each birth of a human being with Down Syndrome (or other detectable congenital problem) that is avoided makes a saving which more than pays for the screening of thousands of mothers and for the resultant terminations. Parents want babies who will be whole and healthy, able at school, able to do well in their careers, fit to take pride in, and perhaps to carry the family forward and be a support in old age. Governments want the same; not only are babies with chromosomal abnormalities a burden on health services at the beginning of their lives (and often throughout), but very few of them will ever be significant tax payers, let alone higher rate. In the world of the market, there is no case to answer: all sides benefit from being able to choose not to have abnormal babies. 

My own two children are perfect. They are immensely beautiful, stunningly intelligent, socially charming, brilliant in conversation. My daughter, after successfully working in publishing, has brought three equally amazing future tax payers into the world. My son is not yet a dad; he is a high earner, with a new job which gives him a role on an international stage when it comes to combatting some of the greatest evils facing the world today. I am proud of my two, and, to be honest, thankful that they are the way they are. Furthermore, and being brutally frank, I am not sure how I would have coped with them having major developmental issues, and I am grateful not to have faced that challenge. 

And yet... I have friends. I have friends who have children with various kinds of chromosomal and other congenital abnormalities. All through my life I have known such families. I think we probably all do - these things are common enough for us all to be aware of the issue. Some of the parents I have known have been exceptionally able, leading figures. Others would have regarded themselves as very ordinary people. All, without exception, have shown fierce love and protectiveness to all their children. And I have seen special joy and satisfaction and a tender radiance of love in the relationship with children where there is a genetic problem. This is especially in the case of Down Syndrome, but in others too. 

I was prompted to write because of two families. Both I know slightly rather than deeply. The daughter of one family has Down Syndrome, and I know they have passed through many periods of extreme health worries with her. She has recently left the family home and is living in her own place, though she does have her parents and others round to dinner sometimes. Her part-time hair salon job and her independence give incredible satisfaction to her mum and dad, which I suspect my own son will only deliver if he really does become prime minister. ;-)

The other family are Facebook friends through my work as a wedding photographer. I see their pictures of their own little girl frequently. She has very serious health problems - a different chromosomal issue than Down Syndrome, leading to significantly graver issues. She can't see, and I don't know what reactions she shows or will ever show to those around her. She is growing very, very slowly, and I understand that survival prospects beyond a year are not good. I guess she costs a lot in terms of NHS care. 

What is displayed before me every week in the pictures of that little girl is such love and tenderness, such concern and protection, such honouring of her status as one of the frailest human beings who has ever come into the light on our planet, that I cannot look without tears and thankfulness and prayers for the family. I am quite sure they have pain and heartache, and yet what I see most through them is love and joy. They challenge me daily and the contact with them makes a significant difference to the way I see life and people. 

Neither of these children - the baby and the young adult - would be here today if their parents had been screened effectively and had aborted them. Both have cost the tax payer a lot of money. Efficiency has not been well-served. And don't we want everything to be perfect? Why let the imperfect in? 

In a conversation about safety in the workplace this week, I heard of a man whose face was badly damaged in an industrial accident when a crane shackle snapped and the cable whipped him. His wife left him. Of course she did - for in our society of apparently attainable perfection, who needs to love that which is not perfect? 

Of course, this world is not perfect. My own children are not actually perfect, strange to say. Oh, they are healthy and bright and look alright, but those actually aren't the biggest things, are they? My relationship with them has gone through some depths of howling misery when in one way or another we have disappointed or hurt each other - especially my own behaviour which has caused appalling pain. Our love for each other has been challenged by each serious imperfection - and burns brighter as a result. For love isn't about perfection or achievement at all, is it? I don't actually love them because they are cute and smart - nor they, me, praise God! I am glad when they do well or have influence, but my joy in them is about just being together, talking, a hug, enjoying a gig or a car journey, not about being winners and prime ministers. Nothing they do can top them just being them. 

When the prenatal screening process is truly perfect, when the genocide really is 100%, when we never have to look again on a child with a chromosomal abnormality or congenital defect, who then will show us the extraordinarily beautiful love and tenderness of my friends to their little scrap of a daughter? Who then will model parental love to the imperfect, damaged, not-as-he-"ought"-to-be child? Who will move me to tears by seeing beauty and dignity where others see only damage and a drain on resources? Whose births will serve as perpetual reminders to our society that, for all our technology and medical brilliance, this world is not perfect, and that there are bigger issues than beauty and wealth creation, and that God sends some people into this world simply to be loved, not killed in the womb, and THAT is their contribution?



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The pictures above are not related directly to any of the families whose stories I touch on.  However, while looking for a few images marked as "labelled for reuse" I came across the above image of a mother and her baby. The family's story is here, and says more beautifully than I can what I have tried to say in this blog.

Amongst the "exceptionally able, leading figures" amongst parents I had in mind above is David Potter, who I have known for 40 years. He writes about his daughter Rachel here, and you can hear him speak a little about Prospects, the organisation he founded, here.

Wrestling Jacob

The story of “Wrestling Jacob” in Gen 32 is a staple of evangelical piety. Interpreted as being about prayer, and tied in with the account of the “importunate widow”, it has been the basis for much teaching about perseverance in intercession, and the need to wrestle with God until he blesses us. 

I don’t want to question all aspects of that kind of teaching, although I have some doubts about elements of it. But I am sure that it is not really the subject of this passage. The problem is that when we attach a bit of popular piety to a passage, we end up not hearing what the text is really saying, and fail to take the shock or strangeness of the passage seriously. We read it through the spectacles of popular piety, rather than wrestling (pun intended) with the text. 

Interaction with non-evangelical readings can be helpful here, as they often hit us harder with the force of the text than do smoothed-out Sunday School bowdlerisms. As an example, although I really dislike Rachel Held Evans’ conclusions regarding the “Sacrifice of Isaac” in Gen 22, I seriously love the way she wakes people up to the stark horror of what is going on. We daren’t lose the shock of the text!

Gen 22 is shocking, and so is 32. What we have here is not a friendly bout of tag, a tussle between macho chums, even a moment of Old Testament horseplay. It is an alarming, even terrifying attack on a man who is already at the end of his resources, alone and afraid. It is the stuff of horror movies, and we domesticate it at our peril. How is it possible to avoid that domestication, to avoid contorting and squeezing the text, and at the same time treat this passage, as with all the Old Testament, as a book about Jesus, as he himself saw it (Luke 24)? 

When looking at narrative, it is good to be alert to any markers in the text itself as to what the writer thinks is significant. Not every biblical narrator does this, and not in every account, but where such markers crop up we would be foolish to ignore them. In the account of “wrestling Jacob” we have several elements that scream that Israel ought to remember what happened. We have two name changes (place and man), and we have an ongoing food taboo which would remind every Jew of this account as he/she butchered a carcase or roasted a joint. These elements tell us that what happened here is formative. Immediately we are alert – and perhaps looking for something deeper than “our nation got its name because our ancestor once spent all night praying.”
  

 

This passage is about the fundamentals of Israel’s (and our) relationship with God. Jacob’s own name means “heel grabber” – he has been wrestling since birth. There is a play on his name, the verb to wrestle and the name of the stream here – Jacob is jacobbing by the Jabbok. He has always tried to fight for his rights – and more than his rights, at times. He wants to win by his wits, by his cunning, by his deceit. 

Now he finds himself in a fearful situation. Behind him is Laban, the uncle from whom he stole, and to whom he can never go back. Ahead of him is Esau, the brother he cheated, who terrifies him. He has split all his wealth into two so as to cut his losses if Esau swoops to attack, and he has tried to sweeten his twin with gifts as they draw closer together. 

With all his family, people and possessions on the Esau side of the stream, Jacob finds himself alone, scared and weak. And in the darkness he is attacked. All night long, he fights for his life, until suddenly, when he finds he “cannot win”, the man who attacked him makes absolutely clear with just a touch that he can disarm, disempower, destroy Jacob at will at any time, and could have done so all along. All of Jacob’s strength and cunning, all his trickery and self-reliance, are overturned and shown to be utterly valueless in this terrifying encounter. The self-made man becomes the met-his-match man. With a lurch in the pit of his stomach he learns that, if he has appeared to do well for a time, it is only because his appalling adversary has come down to his level. The mystery attacker has allowed him to win, as a dad allows his three year old to beat him in a race. There is no true parity of power here, no close call, no photofinish. The fighters seem well-matched, but fleetingly, and only because one has chosen to limit his power. Jacob thought there was a contest – but actually, there is no contest, and he perceives who the Enemy is that has attacked him in the night. 

The horror of the encounter is obvious, but the shock of the passage comes in the tail end of the fight with that touch. And the striking thing is that, in the light of what it reveals about Jacob’s attacker, the surprise is then NOT in the sudden touch of power but in the fact that Jacob appeared to be holding his own at all. THAT is the mystery here: Infinity has robed himself in Finity.

  
Jacob is beaten and he knows it, but still he hangs on. He has met someone far more frightening than Laban and Esau, and yet he is alive! He even appeared to have had the upper hand for a while. This Adversary has chosen to come in weakness! So Jacob, defeated and knowing it, holds on and asks for a blessing. And he is blessed. For that is why this Mighty One attacked him. God, the Mightier Wrestler, has come vulnerably, to overthrow Jacob’s cunning self-reliance once and for all, and so to bless him truly.

If I were filming this, I would close with a huge zoom, dawn shot. As the massive sun comes over the horizon, it silhouettes Jacob, Jacob limping away from the scene, a changed man. That limp will always be with him – and with his people via the culinary reminder built into the passage. But the limping man is no longer simply Jacob, the Cunning Wrestler. He is Israel, the Limper who met the Conquering God and was blessed.

Here is the heart of the story, and the reason why it is formative for Israel as a people and normative for their understanding of God and his gospel. It is about their forefather, the self-reliant schemer, reaching the end of himself. He reaches the end not because he has just run out of steam, but because he has been attacked and overthrown by God. (This is the real, authentic God – Jacob has other gods – he has stolen Laban’s… was that purely for monetary value or as yet another way of hedging his bets, a clever move in the wrestling ring of appeasing possible divinities? ) In this power encounter with the Living God, in his overpowered weakness, Jacob has at last found true blessing, a changed identity, even a new beginning.

This self-reliant schemer is not just anyone, nor is he an Everyman. He is a patriarch, a nation-founder. As with his father and grandfather, his experiences are Israel’s experiences. What happens to him, happens to all, and all are to learn from it and live by it.

The Old and New Testaments are different. There is a discontinuity between them. But there is also massive continuity – that is the understanding of the NT authors and of Jesus himself. And this formative story for OT Israel is still a normative account for us. For what happens to Jacob in Gen 32 is still the shape of the gospel. This account is not to teach us about one (albeit crucial) element of piety. It is about the fundamental nature of our relationship with God. We can’t safely encounter him with our cunning or our strength. We can’t come with our clever arguments and self-justification. And we certainly can’t come with a few idols in our baggage as back-up!

Who is the most frightening person in the universe? The one who will judge the living and the dead, that’s who! He is coming... but he has already come, and at our size, vulnerably, woundably, even killably. For in that meeting, we did kill him. But he rose! When we perceive who That Man is and what he will do, we see our defeat. Like those who killed him, convicted of the horror of Christicide at Pentecost, we cry out, “What shall we do?” “Hang on in there”, says Peter – “Believe on this same name, and you will be blessed, you will be forgiven!"

What is a Christian? Someone who, awed by the power, majesty, holiness and justice of God in Christ, admits defeat, discarding their “goodness”, their strength, their cunning, their self-reliance, and clinging to the Saviour in powerlessness and yet the assurance that he has come close to bless us. That is what Jacob had to learn – and the whole nation in him. This moment was formative – normative – for him. The Cunning Wrestler was renamed after his Conquering God. The only hope of Israel, and us, is consciousness of weakness and awe in his presence, and thus confidence in his power alone, and in his desire to bless and save. Are you clinging on to him in defeat?

      *    *     *    *    *    *    *    *     *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *   

Years ago when I began working on this story, I found some help from the commentaries, but it was only at the end of the process, when looking for hymns, that I realised how close Charles Wesley’s great hymn Wrestling Jacob is to the theme as I perceive it. Isaac Watts apparently said of this hymn “that sin­gle po­em is worth all the vers­es I have writ­ten.” It is a towering achievement as a religious poem, but best of all, I think it gets right to the heart of Genesis 32 as read in the light the New Testament.
 

FIRST PART.

Come, O thou Traveller unknown,
Whom still I hold, but cannot see;
My company before is gone,
And I am left alone with thee;
With thee all night I mean to stay,
And wrestle till the break of day.

I need not tell thee who I am;
My sin and misery declare;
Thyself hast called me by my name;
Look on thy hands, and read it there;
But who, I ask thee, who art thou?
Tell me thy name, and tell me now.

In vain thou strugglest to get free;
I never will unloose my hold:
Art thou the Man that died for me?
The secret of thy love unfold;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

Wilt thou not yet to me reveal
Thy new, unutterable name?
Tell me, I still beseech thee, tell;
To know it now resolved I am;
Wrestling, I will not let thee go
Till I thy name, thy nature know.

SECOND PART.

Yield to me now, for I am weak,
But confident in self-despair;
Speak to my heart, in blessings speak;
Be conquered by my instant prayer;
Speak, or thou never hence shalt move,
And tell me if thy name be Love.

'T is Love! 't is Love! Thou diedst for me;
I hear thy whisper in my heart;
The morning breaks, the shadows flee;
Pure, universal Love thou art;
To me, to all, thy bowels move;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

My prayer hath power with God; the grace
Unspeakable I now receive;
Through faith I see thee face to face;
I see thee face to face and live!
In vain I have not wept and strove;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

I know thee, Saviour, who thou art,
Jesus, the feeble sinner's friend;
Nor wilt thou with the night depart,
But stay and love me to the end;
Thy mercies never shall remove;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

The Sun of Righteousness on me
Hath risen, with healing in his wings;
Withered my nature's strength; from thee
My soul its life and succor brings;
My help is all laid up above;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Contented now upon my thigh
I halt till life's short journey end;
All helplessness, all weakness, I
On thee alone for strength depend;
Nor have I power from thee to move;
Thy nature and thy name is Love.

Lame as I am, I take the prey;
Hell, earth, and sin with ease o'ercome;
I leap for joy, pursue my way,
And, as a bounding hart, fly home;
Through all eternity to prove
Thy nature and thy name is Love. 

Charles Wesley

If Jesus is the answer, what's the question?

This article was, I suppose, my manifesto for many years. I preached Psalm 2 possibly more than any other text, and when I wandered away from God it was with this text ringing in my ears. It is huge, powerful, frightening, comforting, glorious and thrilling. It is also practically unknown. Now I'm back, I have gone back to it, and find it still resonates.

The phrase, 'Jesus is the answer' is a cliché of Christianity. In Brazil, there is even a denomination with this name. Unfortunately it has been noted by sharper-witted critics that the phrase can be defused with the retort, 'What's the question?' In the process they expose a shift and a sloppiness in the church.

If we could interview first century Christians and ask them to sing a song about Jesus, like as not it would have been Psalm 2, judging by the number of times the New Testament quotes it. Psalm 2 was fundamental to the apostles' thinking about Jesus, yet nowadays very few Christians would sing it or even understand how it relates to Jesus. Times have changed!
 

We don't know exactly when the Psalm was written. Was it a coronation Psalm? Was it written at a time of threat to national security? Whatever the original context, we know how the New Testament uses it, and that is the key I want to use to open the text.
 

The psalm is organised like a play in four scenes, with various speakers: the narrator (David); the rulers of the earth; the LORD in heaven, and his Son, the Messiah.

Scene 1 - verses 1-3     David Speaks
 

'Why do the nations rage

and the peoples plot in vain?...'
 

David has been looking at the world, reading his paper, watching the news. He sees the activity of the nations and their rulers, and describes it as raging and plotting. And he asks, "Why? Why is the world like this?"
 

Verse 2 tells us. The behaviour of the people of the world can be summed up as opposition to the Lord and his anointed, his Messiah.
 

In verse 3 we hear the rulers of the world describing the aim of their rebellion. They want to be rid of certain bonds and cords which, as the word 'their' tells us, come from the LORD and his Anointed. According to the world leaders, God has tied them up. It is complaining language: 'God's laws are tying us down and we want shot of them!'
 

David has found the thread linking thought, conversation and behaviour in all cultures. He has found the principle that moves and shakes the movers and shakers of our planet. From atheists shaking their fists at God, to the overturners of morality, to the sleek religious manipulators, the preachers of false religions, the self-congratulating hypocrites who claim Christian faith - All want to overthrow God and his Messiah. And, by nature, without a drastic change, all of them means all of us.
 

If we could distil all the words of all the top people, we would hear one sentence: 'Let's get rid of God and his Christ'. The psalm is saying: 'If the human race gets a chance, we will murder our Creator'.
 

And we know it is true, because when we got a chance, we did. The rebellion came to a head in Jesus' death. The early church saw Psalm 2.1-3 fulfilled in the unlikely alliance that brought about the crucifixion. The murder of Jesus was no ghastly aberration in our basically decent behaviour: it was the logical outworking of our attitude to God ever since the fall.
 

And so the curtains close on the first scene. When they reopen we are in heaven.

Scene 2 - verses 4-6     The Lord Speaks
 

'He who sits in the heavens laughs;

the Lord holds them in derision...'
 

And we ask - how is the LORD reacting? As the crowd storms the gates, trying to overturn his rule and dethrone his Messiah, how is he taking it? Is he hiding behind the sofa? Is he waving a white flag from the window? No - he is laughing at the rebellion.
 

He speaks. What does he say? 'I am sorry, but my choice of King for the world seems rather unpopular; perhaps we can discuss alternatives?' No. He says that business is as usual. 'My King has been enthroned already. He is reigning. This rebellion against me and my Christ has made no impact whatsoever - he shall reign.'
 

This absolute certainty clarifies the nature of God's laughter in verse 4. This verse might seem to be a problem: how can God laugh at sin? Is sin funny?
 

The psalm says: 'No. It isn't funny - but it is laughable'.
 

We have all seen a toddler throw a tantrum in public. He really loses it, fists flying, legs kicking - even attacking his dad. Dad simply picks up the child, puts him under his arm and walks out. And, without in any way condoning a sin, we... smile. Why? The toddler is so puny, his rebellion is laughable.
 

That is how sin is. The greatest efforts of the human race, the strongest politicians, the subtlest philosophers, the most popular 'celebrities' who shape a generation's lifestyle - all of this is a ludicrous attempt to overthrow God. The attempt is so doomed, it is hilarious. The rebellion is crazy - for the Son is reigning, and it is his voice that we hear in the third stanza.

Scene 3 ˘ verses 7-9     The Son Speaks
 

'I will tell of the decree:

the LORD said to me, "You are my Son..."'

The Son speaks - but what he says is to report what the Lord has said! This always reminds me of John 12:49, though I wouldnt press the echo as being a deliberate link.

This stanza is the richest in NT connections, and much could be said about it. But we can notice two simple points about the Son...
 

a) His absolute and universal rule, and his total destruction of the rebellion.
 

This psalm defines the word Christ. It is not Jesus' surname, but his job description. He is God's anointed King, who will rule all people, everywhere, forever. Specifically, he will crush the rebellion, judging every pretender to his throne with awesome power.
 

In other words, he is the most frightening person in the universe. This appalling revelation is not confined to Psalm 2. It connects with many other texts, not least the horror at the end of Revelation 6, where all kinds of people cry out to the mountains to fall and hide them from the face of God and from the wrath of the Lamb.
 

And here we see the great question that faces humanity. Where can we hide from the wrath of the Christ?. Greater than global issues of environment, war or famine, or personal issues of health, employment or housing, we all face the issue - the judgement of the Lord and his Messiah.
 

In other words, before we can say, 'Jesus is the answer', we need to say, 'Jesus is the question'. This is where the gospel begins - here is the clarity which has drained out of world evangelicalism over the last 150 years. Jesus is our great problem. All of us are rebels. There is a King appointed to smash our rebellion. His name is Jesus.
 

b) He will announce the putting down of the rebellion before he does it.
 

But we also need to notice the future verb here. The King who will put down the rebellion says that he will announce that fact. By God's own purpose, he tells us rebels in advance what he is going to do. By God's mercy, a warning is issued of impending doom, and it is the Rebel-Smasher himself who gives it.
 

What kind of enemy does that? The kind that sincerely desires the rebels to see their error for themselves, to down arms and make peace, recognising where the real authority lies, who the real King is, and living in joyful peace with him.
 

This is where gospel preaching begins. Before people can see that Jesus is the answer, they must see that he is the question. The will of the Lord and of his Christ is that people hear that question.

David now steps to the front of the stage to lay that question on his hearers...
 

Scene 4 - verses 10-12     David speaks
 

'Now therefore, O kings, be wise;

be warned, O rulers of the earth...'
 

David speaks to his own peer group - the world leaders - but, by extension, to all of us. He says to us all, 'Wise up! Think! What is the point? Why go on in your ludicrous, laughable rebellion?'
 

Specifically, David gives two commands:
 

* Serve the Lord. Obey God. Fear him. Be glad - seriously, tremblingly glad - that you have the chance to wise up, that he didn't smash us all aeons ago!
  

* Kiss the Son - a sign of respect and homage and recognition. Bow and say: 'You are the King, Lord Jesus, I owe you total allegiance and trust'. Anyone who has seen the Godfather movies will remember how kissing the hand is a sign of submission and of belonging - perhaps especially the chilling moment at the end of the first when Al Pacino kisses Brando's hand - in that case he had tried to get away from the crime family, but now he commits, he does obeisance, and he is accepted. The context is the moral opposite in Psalm 2, but the Mediterranean cultural reference, even with thousands of years intervening, is just the same.
 

Kiss the son means 'Get right with God; repent and trust in Jesus!' Stop rebelling and put things right - now!
 

And David gives two motives for wising up, giving up the rebellion and recognising the Son:
 

* If you don't, he will destroy you, and you do not know how close that destruction may be.
 

No one knows what a day will bring. If we are alive as rebels it is by Christ's mercy. The breath we use to say, 'There is no God, I'm going to live my way' is his gift.
 

And he can withdraw that gift. As recent celebrity deaths have warned us, no one can guarantee a very long life - accident and illness can take away the richest and most powerful. Every rebel life, every person who screams their hatred for God and his Christ, their atheism or immorality, every proud religious hypocrite who wants to be looked up to and admired for their decency, everyone who just gets on with life ignoring God altogether - every rebel hangs suspended over eternity, and it is Jesus who holds the rope. Be wise, or you will regret it forever.
 

* If you do, you will be happy and secure now, and for ever.
 

Where can I run, to escape the anger of the most dangerous person in the universe?
 

The last part of verse 12 tells us. The only place I can run to escape the wrath of the Jesus is... Jesus. Jesus is the question - and Jesus is the answer! There is complete shelter in the Lamb from the wrath of the Lamb. This is the authentic gospel.
 

It was my own son who pointed out that the greatest inadvertent commentary on Psalm 2 is Gimme Shelter, which happens to be my favourite Rolling Stones song.

Oh, a storm is threat'ning
My very life today
If I don't get some shelter
Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away

Love, sister, it's just a kiss away!

How does this work? How is Jesus both problem and solution?

How can you escape from a bush fire, which is leaping forward at you before a strong wind? You can't outrun it - how can you escape death? The only way is to light a fire and let the wind drive it ahead of you - the same wind that is driving death toward you - and stand in the burnt patch. When the fire comes, it will already have consumed the patch where you are, and you will be safe.
 

Jesus is coming like a fire, bringing death to rebels. But the fire that he brings has already fallen in one place in this world. On Jesus himself, at the cross.
 

Jesus is our burnt patch. He is our shelter. For he has already borne the fire of the Lord's anger against our rebellion. And if we stand on him, we are safe.
 

Stand on him. Now. And you will never ever regret it.