Lent-Challenged?

19 March 2024

Lent is always an interesting time for me. I’m a conscientious objector to the annual 40-day fasting-and-flagellation routine. When God crafted a religious calendar, He devoted exactly one day a year to that (Yom Kippur) — and all the other high holy days are big, mandatory parties. It can’t be that after the great victory on Golgotha, we now should be less interested in joy and forty times more devoted to self-affliction. One day is good — Good Friday seems a reasonable choice for those of us who don’t still celebrate Yom Kippur — but forty? No.

Also, frankly, the relationship between traditional Lenten practice and anything Jesus actually said or did is at best very diagonal. Two particular points here; first, Jesus did the 40-day fast once, when He was 30, and He didn’t just give up chocolate and swearing, either. Wanna be like Jesus? Celebrate your 30th with a 40-day fast. If you live to 60, maybe you can do it again. Second, Ash Wednesday directly and solemnly violates Jesus’ instructions on fasting in Matthew 6:16-18. So directly, in fact, that it’s kind of funny.

On the other hand, at a particular time in my life, God called me into a community that observed Lent. There’s no real value in being difficult and cross-grained about it, so I didn’t. Instead, I just skipped the Ash Wednesday service and took on a couple of positive projects (a stack of reading and a fairly sizable apologetics writing project). The projects were big enough that there was no way I’d get through them without giving up something. The goal was to find out in hindsight what I had given up, and then make a determination during Eastertide about whether to resume whatever it was.

That practice did three things for me: it got those projects done, it gave me an opportunity to reassess some of my less useful pastimes, and it gave me something to talk about when people asked — as they often did — “What are you giving up for Lent?” In other words, it allowed me to participate in my community and not be a grief and a trouble over something that wasn’t going to change in any case. The result was a number of great conversations about Lenten practice — mine and theirs — and how it was affecting our daily walk with God.

The communities I’m now part of align more closely with my convictions, and the question doesn’t arise as frequently. But for those of you who find yourself in similar situations, this is a practice I commend to you.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Two Objections

25 July 2023

The previous post addressed the continuing role of imprecatory psalms in the Christian’s life. I regularly hear two objections to this.

The first is “but where’s the specific New Testament command to pray these kinds of prayers specifically?” This one is really just a matter of basic reasoning. If you’re commanded to sing the psalms, then the different sorts of psalms are necessarily included. Demanding a specific verse for the imprecatory subset of the psalms is like saying “I see the verses where Paul prohibits stealing in general, but where’s the verse about boosting cars?” What’s wanted here is not another verse, but a course in elementary logic.

To my eye, that one is more an excuse than an argument. If the commands to sing the psalms and the New Testament examples of imprecations don’t convince someone, then more verses aren’t likely to do the job either.

The second, more substantive, objection is that praying such prayers would be vengeful, and God forbids vengeance in the New Testament: “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord. Therefore ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; If he is thirsty, give him a drink; For in so doing you will heap coals of fire on his head.'” (Rom. 12:17-20)

This is one of those cases where you have to pay close attention to what the passage actually says. Romans says you may not take vengeance for yourself, but pay attention to the rationale Paul gives. God doesn’t say “Vengeance is bad.” God says “Vengeance is Mine” — and then He says He’ll repay.

Now, when God says that He’ll do something, do we usually take that as grounds not to pray about that thing? Or as grounds to pray for it? He promises to meet our needs, and we pray: “Give us this day our daily bread.” He promises to take vengeance — is there a reason we shouldn’t ask Him to do what He said He would? Paul doesn’t seem to think so: “Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm; may the Lord repay him according to his deeds.”

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Break Their Teeth? Really?

18 July 2023

Regular readers here know I’m a big advocate of singing the Psalms. On the (unfortunately rare) occasions that believers seriously engage in that project, a question comes up pretty quickly: “What do I do with these psalms?”

It ain’t all “As the deer panteth for the water” in the Psalter. There are also prayers that God would break the arm of the wicked (Psalm 10) or their teeth (Psalm 58), pursue and persecute them (Psalm 35), drive them away and kill them (Psalm 68) and so on. What’s a Christian to do with these prayers?

Sing them, that’s what. Three times the New Testament says we should sing psalms (Ephesians 5:19, Colossians 3:16, and James 5:13). The phrase “psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs” is possibly open-ended enough to include more than just the 150 biblical psalms, but it’s certainly not talking about singing less than what God gave us.

As to how we pray them appropriately, it’s important to read them in context. It’s easy for us to read these psalms in terms of middle-class North America, which is pretty tame by comparison to the times and places these psalms were actually written. You may wonder “When would I ever pray that?” because you’ve never faced the kind of adversity that the psalmist was facing. David has Saul trying to kill him, and murdering every man, woman, and child in the city of priests along the way. It’s not so hard to see how these prayers are appropriate in actual life-and-death struggle with genuinely murderous enemies who are killing innocent people.

In less dire situations, the prayers should reflect the reality at hand. You don’t ask God to break the teeth of your barista because she messed up your latte order. Not even if she did it on purpose. “Let the rich glory in his humiliation, for as a flower of the field he passes away.” If that’s what adversity looks like for you, you’d better milk it for all the spiritual benefit you can.

You don’t pray “let his wife be a widow; let his children be vagabonds and beggars” because someone is running a little mean-girl scheme to get your funding reduced. Asking God to cause their designs to come to nothing and their trap to return on their own head might be more appropriate.

That said, there’s one more thing to remember: “With what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with what measure you measure, it will be measured back to you. That cashes out in two ways: first, the way you forgive other people in this life is how God’s gonna treat you in this life, so bear that in mind when you make your requests. When you ask God to permanently stop someone who’s killing innocent people, you’re effectively also asking Him to do the same to you if you’re ever killing innocent people. You can and should be fine with that, but if you’re not, don’t pray that prayer.

Second, remember that “in wrath remember mercy” is also a biblical prayer, and something we should take to heart. Jesus asked His Father to pardon His murderers. Stephen, following Jesus’ example, prayed a similar prayer, and God honored that prayer by taking the young man who ran the coat check at the murder and turning him into the most famous missionary and church planter in Christian history. Modern martyrs — the Stams, those killed by the Ayore and the Waorani, the persecuted Russian and Chinese saints who died in the gulags and camps — rightly continue the tradition.

Do those examples mean that imprecations should be a thing of the past in the New Testament? It’s a good question, but the answer is no. Imprecatory psalms are invoked in the New Testament. Jesus invokes an imprecatory psalm in John 15:5. The early church follows suit in Acts 4:25, as does Paul in Romans 11:9. Peter applies the threat of Psalm 110 immediately and directly to his audience, in order to provoke repentance in Acts 2:34. There are other examples, but those will suffice to demonstrate that at minimum, Christians should still be reading these psalms and putting them to use in prayer and preaching. Clearly, if you’re serious about following the examples set by Jesus and His early followers, you can’t just exclude the rougher psalms out of hand; they didn’t.

One could use these examples and others to construct a more nuanced argument about the way we use these psalms now. In making that argument, you’ll also have to account for the existence of fresh New Testament imprecations. 2 Timothy 4:14, 1 Corinthians 16:22, Galatians 1:8-9, and Matthew 23 come to mind offhand, and to cap the stack, Revelation 6:10, by saints who can’t possibly be sinning because they’re already dead. There’s a great conversation to be had about how to do this well, but that is a post for another day.

For today, the reason you shouldn’t be averse to imprecatory prayer is very simple: the Bible plainly isn’t. Evangelical culture is, and that aversion is driven by sentiment, not Scripture.

2 Comments | liturgy, New Fundamentals, Prayer, Social Reality of the Fall, Speaking as God Speaks, Worship | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Washed

9 March 2021

I had occasion to finally summarize my research and teaching on baptism over the past decade or so. Here it is.

1 Comment | Baptism, Kingdom Parish, liturgy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

On Rebaptism

8 September 2020

Zaccheus walks into the temple. Since Jesus visited his home a few weeks ago, he’s a changed man. He has restored everything that he cheated anyone of, like he promised–and that took a while–and word has spread far and wide of the tax collector who has repented. As he passes through the temple gate, whispers spread through the crowd like a wind through dry leaves. He stops inside the gate and looks up at the inner temple. It’s been so long since he was welcome here. So long since he came here to worship.

A wizened priest approaches him, suspicion etched deep in his wrinkled face. “What brings you here, tax collector?”

Not long ago, the man’s tone alone would have been enough to drive Zaccheus out of the temple. But he’s a different man now. Zaccheus bows his head. “I need to be circumcised again.”

Does that sound odd to you?

As circumcision was the rite of entry under the Old Covenant, baptism is the rite of entry in the New. Some folks have taken that to mean that we should baptize babies born into Christian families, but that’s only because they haven’t thought it all the way through. You circumcise an Old Covenant baby after he’s born into the Old Covenant, which was simple enough. Under the New Covenant, though, people are born twice. Which birth do we baptize them after? If baptism is the new circumcision, what is the new birth?

Well…the new birth. So once the person is born again, we baptize them. If the man wanders away, becomes a gambler and a drunkard, joins the Hell’s Angels, sells automatic weapons to third-world dictators, the whole works, and then comes back, does he need to be baptized again?

No. The original baptism counted, and it still counts. His many sins are an insult to his baptism, but they don’t undo it, anymore than cheating on your spouse undoes your wedding. You can’t commit adultery enough times to make your wedding didn’t happen. (You might induce your spouse to divorce you, but that’s a different thing.)

Now, if this man comes to me, repentant of his life and seeking to return to the Lord, will I receive him? Of course! If he wants to be rebaptized as a symbol of his repentance and return, will I refuse him? Of course not!

A couple whose marriage was dead and has come alive again may renew their wedding vows. I see nothing wrong with renewing the man’s baptism. But that is what we’re doing — renewing it.

2 Comments | Baptism, liturgy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

At a Friend’s House, On Thursday

22 March 2020

When I proposed giving up church for Lent, I had no idea that it would end up happening so literally, but here we are. In a world of virtual church services, the question of the Lord’s Table comes up. When we’re gathered around a laptop live-streaming a service in the living room, do we take communion, or don’t we?

In the Eastern and Roman communions, of course, the answer is an unequivocal “No!” The Table has to be administered by a priest, and that’s that. In Anglican praxis, the elements have to be consecrated by a priest, but can be delivered by someone else, which presents interesting logistical challenges.

But since that kind of priesthood doesn’t actually exist in the New Covenant anyway, I’m mostly interested in what everybody else should do. For many groups, it’s a tricky question. We’ve worked hard to preserve the specialness of the Table. We don’t want people to treat it casually. And so for many churches, the answer will be no. The Lord’s Table is for when we gather together, they will say; let’s wait until we can gather again.

I propose a different take. I think this is the litmus test for what we really believe constitutes the church. When we’re telling people that they will have to live-stream the service because we’re not allowed to gather in groups of more than 10, we have been very quick to tell them that the church building is just the building; the people are the church. We have been quick to say that we are just as much the church when we are assembled in praise in our respective living rooms. So my question is: do we really believe that, or don’t we? If we withhold communion, we don’t. We’re saying, “You’re the church…but not really.” We’re affirming the the whole property-owning, weekly production-manufacturing, corporate structure as the real church — and you gathered in your living room with a few friends and neighbors as something less than that.

If it’s a few believers gathered in the spare room of a private house, is it still the church? Yes! Should the church come to the Table? Well…duh. Is it okay that it’s not in a church building on a Sunday? Well…WWJD? He celebrated the Lord’s Table with a few friends in a private home, on a Thursday! Oh, the scandal!

So yes, we should do this. And also yes, we ought to train people not to take it lightly. This is serious business. We could do worse than simply follow Paul’s directions, thus:

Leader: On the night He was betrayed, Jesus took the bread after supper, and when He had given thanks, broke it, saying, “This is My body, broken for you. Do this in remembrance of Me. [prays] Lord God, thank you for the broken body of Your Son our Savior, who was  crucified for us. 

Leader breaks the bread, distributes it. All eat.

Leader: In the same way He took the cup after supper, saying “This is the new covenant in My blood. Do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” [prays] Father, thank You for the shed blood of Jesus Christ, who raises us into new life.

Leader distributes the cup (however you’re doing it)*, and all drink.

Leader: As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes.

*There are many details that this order of service does not address. Wine or grape juice? What if you can’t get either? What if you’re out of bread? Do you use a common cup? Do you pass hand to hand around the Table, or does everyone receive directly from the leader?

You know what? We can have many lively debates about what would be best. I’ve hosted some such debates right here (and here) on this blog. But the bottom line is that it is better to obey imperfectly than to disobey because we’re paralyzed by perfectionism.

We’ve all done this before; let’s approximate the communion service we’re familiar with as best we can with the materials we have available. We can fill out the details later; today, let’s just obey, confident that our Father, while perfect, is not a perfectionist. We are already fully accepted in Christ; let’s be confident of that acceptance and draw near to God by the means that He has ordained for us.

 

 

 

1 Comment | Ecclesiology, liturgy, Worship | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Just the Server, not the Chef

4 February 2020

When talking about the Lord’s Table, the first observation to make is that the command is “Take and eat,” not “Take and explain.” A life of obedient Table observance is necessary; the explanation, while theologically important, is really just something to argue about over a cold beer—very secondary by comparison.

The second observation is that it can’t possibly be wrong to simply observe the Table as we’re taught in the New Testament. When I serve someone the bread, I tell them “This is the body of Christ, broken for you.” I say this because Jesus said this. I do not explain further, because Jesus didn’t. It can’t be wrong to just do what Jesus did. (Or what Paul laid down, following Christ’s example.) Now, it’s possible that various alterations and elaborations are also ok (and note that Paul doesn’t quite do exactly what Jesus did either). But it can’t be wrong to just stick very closely to the biblical examples we’re given. (And as a practical matter when you’re celebrating the Table with people from multiple churches, sticking very closely to the biblical text avoids a lot of sticky difficulties.)

The third observation is that it’s possible to waaaaay overdo the search for an explanation. Aquinas tried to explain the realities of the Table in Aristotelian terms, which sounds a bit precious to modern ears. The contemporary equivalent would be someone setting out to explain the Table through a clever application of quantum mechanics. (“See, in the first three dimensions, it’s bread, but in the 17th dimension, it’s the body…”) Um, no. Let’s not.

So a minister is well within his rights to say what the New Testament says, stop there, and decline to comment further. In sensitive company, that’s often exactly what I do.

But since we’re all friends here, let’s crack a cold one and chat a little. I’d say we’re pretty well stuck with some kind of real presence. The alternative to believing in Christ’s real presence at the Table is believing in His real absence, and that won’t do. A Corinthian abusing the Table can’t be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord if the body and blood of the Lord are not present.

Of course the bread and wine remain bread and wine, symbols of Christ’s body and blood, but let us not forget that there is a class of symbols that accomplish what they signify. When I gave my wife a ring, in the presence of witnesses, with the words, “With this ring I thee wed…” — the ring is a symbol, all right. But it is a symbol that accomplishes what it signifies.

Likewise, in a way that I flatly decline to speculate about, I maintain that the bread and wine are symbols of the presence of Christ that accomplish what they signify. In them, Christ is truly present, and through eating and drinking, He is present in you. You are the body of Christ, because you are what you eat. You want to know how that works in detail? Way above my pay grade, man. I’m just the server, not the chef.

I’d recommend John Williamson Nevin’s work for further reading on this.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Lots of Little Fires

29 November 2019

Reading assignment: Numbers 10, Psalm 68, Ephesians 4. Then let’s discuss. I don’t have time right now to draw this out in detail, so I’m going to sketch some suggestive high points, and see where that takes us.

In Numbers 10, Moses’ liturgy for the movement of the camp tells Israel what it means that the pillar of cloud/fire is moving: Yahweh is invading the world, scattering His enemies before Him.

David begins Psalm 68 with that same liturgy. The psalm is an extended meditation on its meaning.

Ephesians 4:7-10 shows us how Jesus fulfills a portion of that meditation in His incarnation, resurrection, and ascension, rising to victory at the Father’s right hand, receiving as His due the spoils of victory, and distributing the gifts He’s received to His people. A Christian functioning in the gifts Christ gave is what the Tabernacle/pillar was: Yahweh invading the world. There is no longer one pillar of fire lighting the darkness: there are tongues of fire above every Spirit-baptized person’s head — and like Samson’s foxes running two by two through the Gentile fields, we set everything ablaze as we go.

The invasion continues….

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Neighborhood Sacramentology: When to Baptize?

28 June 2019

In the church we have the tendency to take certain truths about the sacraments and make applications in directions that we shouldn’t, but God has a much different view of the sacraments than we do. We’ve made the Lord’s Table something to be protected, lest some heathen get away with a wafer. No; it is the body of Jesus, and Jesus gave His body to and for the world. Of course it’s blasphemy, but it’s God’s blasphemy. Our job is to submit to what God is doing. 

Likewise, we recognize the importance of baptism, and therefore delay it in order to get all the logistical ducks in a row to make a big to-do. We want to do it in church on a Sunday morning. We want the person to invite all his unbelieving friends and relatives to the baptism so we don’t miss a recruiting opportunity. It somehow escapes our notice that there is no biblical example of delaying baptism for these reasons. A new convert is baptized in the first available body of water by whatever Christian is on hand to do it. 

3 Comments | Baptism, Ecclesiology, Kingdom Parish, liturgy | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Neighborhood Sacramentology: Fencing the Table?

25 June 2019

If it is the church’s responsibility to fence the Table, to keep people away from it who aren’t going to partake in a worthy manner, then  that implies a whole authority structure to make that happen. Only certain authorized people can serve communion, only at appointed places and times, and so on.  The Roman and Eastern churches certainly took that position, and speaking broadly, so did the fathers of the Reformation. The marks of a true church, our Reformed fathers said, were word, sacrament, and discipline, and part of the function of discipline was to fence the Table. It was therefore possible in a Reformation church for a member of the church to be encouraged to come to church, but suspended from the Table as a disciplinary measure. At a commonsense level, it’s not hard to see how they got there — it’s the ecclesiastical equivalent of sending a child to bed without his supper.

The New Testament knows nothing of such a practice. There are no appointed places and times. When did the NT church gather that was *not* church? They didn’t have a church building; it was all houses. They didn’t have Sunday mornings off from work. They gathered where and when they could, and when they gathered, the church was gathering. There are no authorized servers, no one appointed to fence the table. Is it ok to serve the Lord’s Table in a private residence to a bunch of your close friends on a Thursday night? Well, WWJD? That’s how the first one happened…. The church’s role is to celebrate early and often, and invite the world to come.

There is, of course, a warning that the one who partakes in an unworthy manner eats and drinks judgment to himself. (In the immediate context, the unworthy partaking is a matter of the rich shaming the poor.) But there is no suggestion that the elders should stop someone from partaking because he might be doing it unworthily. The only examination Paul commands is self-examination. Nobody else is responsible to do it for you, and God has not delegated that authority to anyone. 

An egregiously sinning, unrepentant believer may be expelled from the community entirely until he repents, but there’s no concept of allowing him to remain in the community without coming to the Table. If he is spiritually weak, then he needs strength; why would you withhold spiritual food from him?

The Table is pure grace. You want Jesus? Then come to the Table. Is it blasphemy for some spiritual tourist to come and partake of the body and blood of Christ as an act of curiosity, with no regard for what he’s really doing? Yes, of course.

But it’s not my blasphemy; it’s God’s. Jesus incarnated in the world and gave His body to and for the world; He gave His body to be abused and crucified by sinners. Some heathen getting away with a wafer is the very least of the blasphemy going on here; why would that be where we draw the line? You don’t have the right to fence the Lord’s Table because it’s not your table; it’s His.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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