Marked for Christ

BY TAYLOR JORGENSEN

Though the Book of Revelation can seem intimidating or scary, it is not as frightening as it is encouraging of our own accountability and dedication to God. It reveals to us that though we may look around the world and see it only at the surface, we are all a part of something deeper. There are rewards and consequences for our lives that we can miss without this kind of context. Revelation reminds us that the clock is ticking and that we should be engaging with our faith, preparing for the future. So, while many argue that the Bible is a book of the past, the Book of Revelation shows otherwise. If Revelation is the end, then we, living in the years after Jesus walked the earth and before the end of days, are in the midst of God’s plan. It has unfolded to bring us to where we are today and will continue to bring us to the moment when Christ returns.

Revelation also raises questions about Christian identity. The mark of a Christian is not as widely discussed or debated as the “mark of the beast” (Rev 19:20). It seems that the message of avoiding the mark of the beast overwhelms the other side of this coin: to actively seek to be marked for God.

To seek this kind of divine marking, we can still look to the Book of Revelation. In Revelation 6, the fifth seal is broken open and we are introduced to “the souls of those who had been slaughtered because of the witness they bore to the word of God” (Rev 6:9). These followers had been faithful to God on earth and now ask when He will “sit in judgment and avenge [their] blood on the inhabitants of the earth” (Rev 6:10). Instead of a specific answer, they each receive a white robe, and these souls are encouraged “to be patient a little while longer” (Rev 6:11). This white robe sets them apart. It is a gift they receive for their faithfulness and it effectively marks them as God’s own.

The white robe is symbolic in its very color. Looking back to chapter 3 of Revelation, we learn the relevance of those who wear white: “The victor will thus be dressed in white, and I will never erase his name from the book of life but will acknowledge his name in the presence of my Father and of his angels” (Rev 3:5). These robes mark the souls as God’s own, but the white color calls back to this earlier verse and intention. Additionally, white is traditionally a symbol of purity. The souls have been forgiven and are being fully welcomed into a relationship with God.

In chapter 7 of Revelation, an elder asks, “‘Who are these wearing white robes and where did they come from?’” (Rev 7:13). The white robes are a noticeable sign that cannot be overlooked. One has to wonder why they have been set apart and what makes them significant. He goes on to answer his own question: “These are the ones who have survived the time of great distress; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev 7:14). These are the same souls who are said to have “been slaughtered” for their testimony, but we learn something more about why they have these robes. It is not only a reward for their witness that God chooses to set them apart, but a representation of what Christ has done for them and for us. They are made clean and pure through Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross.

The souls under the altar have devoted their lives to serving God, and their faith is tied to the protection they receive during God’s judgment. The souls are introduced alongside their witness and martyrdom on earth, a time of great struggle. However, with these sacrifices come a right relationship with God. These souls experience His grace and protection in the great tribulation. In this way, we see that protection and faith are linked. A genuine faith sets believers apart for God’s use, which empowers devotion and offers divine protection for eternity. If our mark as Christians comes from our faithful devotion to God, then we must consider more deeply what this kind of devotion looks like in practice.

For those souls under the altar, their method of devotion is their witness and willingness to die for their faith in God. We are able, however, to get more specific. Deuteronomy 6:6-8 shares:

“Take to heart these words which I command you today. Keep repeating them to your children. Recite them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them on your arm as a sign and let them be as a pendant on your forehead” (Deut 6:6-8).

Not only do these verses give specific instructions, guidance to live a purposeful, dedicated life, but it also acknowledges the need for an outward sign of inward devotion to God.

For many Christians, this may seem counterintuitive, having been encouraged to live with humility in their faith, but these outward signs are a part of the Christian story. We are not supposed to be hidden, secretive believers, but clearly devoted people of God. This cannot be limited to what is within us. We must take the internal changes, our personal devotion to God, and live lives of faith, though we are not told to wear a particular robe or marker of our faith on earth. Ephesians 6 tells us to “Put on the armor of God so that you may be able to stand firm against the tactics of the devil” (Eph 6:11). Here again, we hear the message of devotion and protection. In devoting ourselves to Him, we are also finding protection, putting on the “armor of God.” This verse demonstrates that we are regularly encouraged to show markers of our faith, but in this practice, we need to be mindful of our intentions. We should not do anything out of a desire to “appear” as though we are serving God as followers of Christ, but to truly grow closer to Him. Putting on the spiritual “armor of God” is not visible to us, but this invisible mark should make visible differences in our lives. If we go through life shaped by our faith in God, we will be marked as His own.

In John 13, verse 35, Jesus tells His disciples, and this includes us, how to mark ourselves as Christians: “This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). This is what we are called to do, and in some ways it is a simple command. We can be the ones to give a friend a ride to their appointment, take notes for someone who could not make it to class, or take the time to freely tutor someone in a subject we know well. Sometimes we can devote our time, serving others at food pantries, shelters, and schools, or it could mean we donate money to our churches, communities, and others across the globe. Even in secular work, we can choose to dedicate all that we do to furthering the glory of God. Even this mental shift has the power to change how we behave and the benefits of what we produce. We can take on the mission to speak and act with kindness, thoughtfulness, patience, and humility.

This love encompasses compassion, generosity, and kindness, but this love for one another ultimately leads us to desire a lasting goodness, salvation, for one another. The souls under the altar were specifically “slaughtered because of the witness they bore to the word of God.” The souls’ witnessing is both the reason for their death and for their closeness to God. Their mission to witness is how they demonstrated their love for other human beings. Desiring their ultimate salvation and closeness to God, they sought to bring others into relationship with Jesus Christ.

While recognition of our fundamental mission to love may be daunting, we can ensure that we are always aiming to do even just a little better each day. If we are not confident in sharing our faith with others, it is wise to look to nurturing our own faith and relationship with God. When in doubt, make time to read the Bible and pray. 1 Thessalonians maintains a useful guide for us: “Rejoice always. Pray without ceasing. In all circumstances give thanks, for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thess 5:16-18). Prayer can happen anywhere at any time. If each day we remain prayerful and spend time with the Lord, we will grow closer in our relationship with God and more confident in sharing our faith.

The souls under the altar during their time on earth were marked for God, but all were martyred. This points to a greater truth: there is an inherent risk in being marked for God, living a life devoted to Jesus. We may be comfortable volunteering or being kind to others, but we can be nervous about sharing our faith — perhaps because the Gospel is a light, and in more ways than one. This light reveals truth and freedom, but also the sin and shame we all try to hide. This Gospel might be accepted readily by some and met with apathy, offense, or opposition by others. We can see all kinds of good reasons to be afraid, but when we look to God, we see an infinitely greater call to share our faith and Him with others. We are called to be disciples of Jesus, bravely facing the age in which we live, devoting ourselves to God, knowing that we are protected and loved. God wants us to bravely live our faith. If we can do this, make our best effort, all there is left to do is “be patient a little while longer” (Rev 6:11).

The Throne Room as a Place of Worship, Rule, and Government

BY ADAM NELSON

The Significance of Creation in Worship

“‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come!’” (Rev. 4:8). As a Christian, it is almost impossible to have never heard those words in succession, and everyone likely has at least a vague recollection of an idea of a God so powerful and almighty, He transcends our simple understanding of time that says all things are finite. One might question why so many people across all nations, regardless of the many differences that stand to separate us, continuously give praise to a higher being they have not personally witnessed. But in truth, we have all seen God every day of our lives — through the works of His hands. 

How can one not appreciate the extravagance of abstract, theoretical science and mathematics, or wonder longingly at the stars in the dimly lit night sky, or be amazed by the punctual revolution of the Earth around the Sun that gives us the light of day, or marvel at the endless expanse of water that is the oceans, or ponder how water sustains all life on Earth, and without it, life would be impossible? Through an endless array of miracles observed by the human eye each and every day, we must gain a deeper sense of awe that this world is someone’s masterpiece. Admittedly, we may not have had the fortune of seeing Jesus come down from Heaven to perform miracles as he walked the Earth, but we have irrefutably witnessed God’s immaculate creation, and that is reason enough alone to offer Him who sits on His Heavenly throne undying praise and worship. 

Within The Revelation of Jesus Christ given to John on the Isle of Patmos, the initial mesmerizing description of the Heavenly throne room and its four living creatures beyond human comprehension may distract from what this passage actually reveals to us. One on each side of the grandest throne, these creatures have an abundance of eyes and six wings, signifying God’s perfect wisdom and judgment and great haste in performing God’s will across the four corners of the Earth. They each take the individual resemblance of a lion, an ox, the face of man, and an eagle in flight. These creatures, in their unique attributes of power and strength, servitude and humility, intelligence and rationality, and swiftness — like all of Creation — praise their Creator. Taking that into account, we realize we are not so different from these extraterrestrial beings, or at least we were not intended to be by our Creator, for these four creatures constantly offer praises and worship the one on the center throne, proclaiming, “‘Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord God Almighty, who was and is and is to come’” (Rev. 4:8). 

In response to the four creatures, we see 24 elders on their thrones surrounding the throne of the Most High fall down before the Lord and cast their crowns before him, their symbols of authority, chanting, “‘Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things and by Your will they existed and were created’” (Rev. 4:11). The praise of these elders acknowledges God on the grounds that He alone brought all of creation into existence. This explicit display of never-ending, profound, and passionate Heavenly worship should be a stark call to action for all of us on Earth. Firstly, we should be reminded of the constant praise that only the Lord, our God deserves as Creator of Heaven and Earth. And with that praise, we must summon and maintain at all times the same sense of joy we find in worship when God exhibits His will in our lives. Each time we give thanks to Him for the act of creation alone, it cannot lose meaning and become disingenuous as though we are going through the motions of prayer. 

If a friend, neighbor, or family member performed a simple favor, one would be reasonably courteous and thank them; should we not approach things similarly when it comes to the maker of all Heaven and Earth just because the work He’s done is so fundamental to our existences we take it for granted? Has he not given us all things with the gift of His only son to bear the cross for all sin on our behalf? Yet, all He asks in return is that we give Him thanks and honor His will, and even that is often too difficult or too arduous for us to fulfill! 

How often do we turn to God only when things have gone wrong or when we want to ask something of Him? How rarely do we offer anything in return for His awesome and unending grace, love, and kindness? Of course there’s nothing we can offer Him that can equal or even compare to a fraction of the continuous and tremendous grace He has shown for us, but the least we can do as faithful witnesses to His deeds is to pray always. Now, I don’t necessarily mean that every waking moment of our lives needs to be spent in conversation with God, although that would be ideal. But we must seek a life which regularly reflects on God’s goodness — for He created all things good, and all good there is, He created. We must raise worship, devotion, glory, honor, and praise to Him and strive to reclaim and rediscover our love for Him each day. In all of this, we must return to (or find) the heart of worship. 

Even if we cannot find the words to express our thanks, He will once again come to our rescue and guide us. How ironic that even the most articulate words and beautiful things we can present at His feet actually come through Him! As the Hymn writer said, “All things are thine, no gifts have we, Lord of all gifts to offer thee; and hence with grateful hearts today, thine own before thy feet we lay.” Nevertheless, when we make a habit of worshiping our Lord and savior this way, we must not let repetition turn into monotony and thus lose the strong love and meaning behind our words of praise. So let this be a reminder to worship and pray fervently, “‘Worthy are You, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for You created all things, and by Your will they existed and were created’” (Rev. 4:11). Revelation may be a depiction of the end of all things, but it still undeniably has much to say about the beginning of all things and the necessity of devout worship for the act of creation alone. 

Submission to Authority: Rule and Government

In addition to its explicit reminder to worship, there is no mistaking that Chapter 4 of the Revelation to John also instructs on the motifs of rule and power. Jesus provides John a vision of ascending to the Heavens to bear witness to the heavenly purpose of government within the created order and to the direction and delegation of tasks to others through an authoritative command chain. In this case, John must spread word of what he has seen in Heaven to the seven churches, informing them to withstand the trials of this life and take action to address their shortcomings, for the end times are approaching soon. 

In this vision, after John ascends to Heaven to witness the Revelation of Jesus Christ, he immediately falls down on his face, the same reaction Ezekiel had when he was granted a very similar vision. The almighty power and glory of God is further symbolized through the flashes of lightning, rumblings, and peals of thunder. John and Ezekiel’s awe of God’s might is so potent they lose the ability to stand in His presence and instead assume the position of worship of the one seated on the throne. This delivers such a physical and tangible image of the power and majesty held by our God, so of course John and Ezekiel’s natural response is to fall to their knees and obey the commands of a ruler so wise.  

The themes of rule and government are even more developed in Ezekiel’s vision where four very similar living creatures follow wherever the Spirit orders them. These heavenly creatures accomplish God’s commands without even having to turn their bodies since they have the face of a lion, ox, man, and eagle on each side of their head. This shows how quickly and harmoniously heavenly beings embark to perform God’s will and busily traverse the four corners of the Earth conducting God’s work without hesitation.

Even the mesmerizing throne of this vision projects the rule and authority of God over the nations and their people, as the Lord’s throne is surrounded by the creatures and 24 elders while directing them. This imagery and positioning of God at the center of the Kingdom of Heaven displays the concept of governmental rule even further. 

Generally, the concept of despotism suggests a negative connotation of absolute power abused in a cruel or oppressive manner, but with this vision of our Heavenly Father, we know He retains the most high rule and judgment, yet treats His humble servants with love and grace. In the throne room in Heaven, submitting to the one true authority of the Father, there are 24 elders who have been redeemed by Christ and invited to jointly rule with Him. They are clothed in white and each given their own throne surrounding Him and a golden crown to rest above their heads, symbolizing their own fraction of authority delegated by their ruler. However, each time they give thanks to the Lord, they cast away their crowns and fall from their thrones, for they know God is wholly responsible for their rewards and possessions. This illustrates the power dynamic that these elders have some authority in Heaven, but they willingly submit to the most-high God. Furthermore, their white clothes symbolize that God has forgiven them and purified them of all their sins. It is hard to imagine such modesty and restraint from earthly rulers.  

Similarly, God shares His kingdom with all the inhabitants of the Earth who choose to follow the narrow path, for John tells us:

I saw the souls of those who had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word of God, and those who had not worshiped the beast or its image and had not received its mark on their foreheads or their hands. They came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years …. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is the one who shares in the first resurrection! Over such the second death has no power, but they will be priests of God and of Christ, and they will reign with Him for a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4-6) 

In addition, we know that God will then share His new Jerusalem, His new Heaven, and His new Earth with His followers too: “The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son” (Revelation 21:7). God proves the sole example of power and dominion not corrupting one’s judgement and kindness, for He is always faithful, provides wisdom and nourishment for our souls all the time, and generously offers his new eternal creation to those who refuse to give in to temptation and Earthly things while we patiently wait for His coming. Then, at last, we may dwell with our creator!

Conclusion

The themes of wholehearted worship and God’s absolute authority in Revelation Chapter 4 display clearly defined requirements of us as God’s children. The beauty and mystery of the Bible is that every passage contains information directly relevant to us. In this case, the Father commands us to submit to His authority and acknowledge His strength, rule, power, and authority as Creator and Governor of all things. We are to be His hands and feet like the winged creatures. We are to follow His orders to testify of His love and compassion. We are to give thanks that our King is not a tyrant but a humble, wise, and graceful leader in whom we can put our faith and trust. And we are to praise God for giving us this life and all creation, just as the 24 elders do in Heaven.

Big prayers, Small prayers

BY ISMERAI ORTIZ

In an increasingly self-reliant society, asking for something is not something a lot of people like to do. Mostly, we choose to figure things out for ourselves or to just suffer in silence. I have suffered a lot in college with this mentality, both in my academics and in my social life. Yet I find that this silence is present not just in the way I interact with my career, school, family, and other things, but also in the way I interact with God. 

So how do we interact with God? There are many ways, which include worship, reading the Word, silence, interacting with His creation, and many more. However, in this piece, I will focus on what Revelation 8 tells us about our prayers. In our prayers, we thank God, but we also ask for things - we ask for forgiveness, for guidance, for rest, for good grades and good jobs. When I was young, I would pray mainly to ask God for good grades or something of the sort. However, as I got older, I felt increasingly unsure and uncomfortable with asking things from God because it felt like I was demanding something from Him. And who was I to demand something from God?

Even more, while I understood that prayer was a sacred time with God, the importance of this time made me feel like my prayers should be eloquent and have a deep recognition of God’s power in prayer. For me, this recognition of God’s power had meant that there were things I should ask for in my prayers – the bigger and more important things – and things I should not. I felt the need to censor my prayers and not ask God for the little things because I thought they didn’t matter as much as other prayers. My prayers did not feel eloquent or worthy or wise enough to be offered up to such a powerful God. I had made a distinction between what I thought were worthy and unworthy prayers, for I did not recognize that God has the power to take imperfect prayers and make them perfect:

“3 And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, 4 and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel.” Revelation 8:3-4

In our study of Revelation, we considered the possibility that when our prayers are offered with incense on the golden altar before the throne, our prayers are made perfect with the smoke of incense as they rise to God. There are no prayers unworthy to be offered up to God. Even when my heart questions the importance of my prayers, I am reminded that “God is greater than our heart” (1 John 3:20). In the same way,  God’s power in the incense with which our prayers are mixed is greater than our small and imperfect prayers. My understanding of God’s power had previously moved me to not pray my seemingly small and ineloquent prayers, but this passage reminds me that there is no prayer too inadequate or small for the Lord. 

We have Jesus as our intermediary, and although it is awkward to pray for things that feel like they would be insignificant in the eyes of God, just know that your prayers, even if spoken ineloquently and appear small, are made perfect and complete by Jesus Christ, in whose name we pray so that our prayers can reach God in heaven.

Dear Heavenly Father,

I thank you for this message God, that tells me no prayer is unworthy to be brought to you, because you make them perfect. Thank you God, for listening to each and every one of my worries, joys, desires, and reflections. God, help me bring everything to you in prayer, from the smallest joy, to the biggest worry. I thank you for everything you do for us. 

In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

Weep No More

BY ESPOIR BYISHIMO

Revelation chapter 5 begins with the scene of the scroll in the throne room of heaven. John writes, “then I saw in the right hand of Him who was seated on the throne, a scroll written within and on the back, sealed with seven seals.” The scroll is locked tightly, not with one seal, but with seven seals. 

John is full of excitement when he sees this scroll. But first, the scroll has to be opened. He writes, “And I saw a mighty angel proclaiming with a loud voice, ‘WHO IS WORTHY TO OPEN THE SCROLL AND BREAK ITS SEALS?’” John hears this proclamation and awaits with great anticipation for anyone worthy to step forward and open the scroll.

 John's joy-filled anticipation doesn’t last long but is replaced with great despair. He writes, “And none was found in heaven or on Earth or under the earth was able to open the scroll or to look into it….I began to weep loudly because none was found worthy to open the scroll or to look into it.” We may ask, why is John weeping? What is it about the scroll that is so important to him? Why doesn’t he stand up and open it? 

The scroll contains mysteries about the past, present, and future. John doesn’t want to miss any of this. He longs to be among the blessed, whom “the secrets of the kingdom of heaven” are made known to (Matthew 13:11). 

 John’s weeping is reminiscent of Mary Magdalene’s mournful cry. When Mary was asked why she was crying in front of Jesus’ tomb, she said, “they have taken away my Lord.” For John, he couldn’t see the mystery of ages unless the scroll was opened. So, at the moment, it appears that Mary and John’s hopes for the future were dashed. 

But suddenly the condition for John and Mary changes: despair turns into great jubilance. An elder says to John, “weep no more; behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has conquered, so that he can open the scroll and its seven seals.” And to Mary’s amazement, Jesus appears to her alive. Mary joyfully runs to the disciples, calling, “I have seen the Lord.” The power and righteousness of Christ solely and definitively restores their hope and joy. And they weep no more. 

Like John and Mary, we wait with great joy for the day of the Lord. We will see the Lamb of God—and we will weep no more. 

“Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, New Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.’”  Revelation 21:1- 4

Conspiracy at a Christian Study Center

BY ROBERT GREGORY

The JAMS Conspiracy – Breathing Together

The Joseph and Alice McKeen Study Center at Bowdoin College (affectionately referred to as the JAMS by the students) was conceived as a place for Christian students to meet around square tables, elbow to elbow, reading scriptures aloud, singing songs in crowded rooms, praying prayers with hands locked in solidarity. Some students have reported that this is one place on campus where Christian students can breathe the same air together.  According to the Latin conspirare or to “breathe together,” we must say that the Study Center movement, of which the JAMS is a part, is therefore a conspiracy. Located on college campuses across the country Christian Study Centers are intimate venues – often houses like ours in Brunswick, Maine – where students learn to breathe together the words of God, in scripture, publications, readings, song and prayer.

This essay is inspired (this too from the Latin inspare or to “breathe upon)” by my wife of 45 years and a Community College course she is taking to continue her Maine teaching certification into her 43rd year.  One assignment led her to create a presentation on the environmental triggers for asthma and how to address the resulting breathing impairment.  With multiple asthmatic children, it is a topic she knows well. 

How are we breathing together in these campus Study Centers? This season of dealing with the Covid-19 respiratory pandemic is forcing us all to think about our breathing impairments.  I have learned from family members in the healthcare profession that securing airway management is the first responder’s top priority. Is there airway obstruction?

Life and Breath – Harmony with God

An interesting feature of the biblical languages is that sometimes words carry the same meaning in both the Hebrew language of the Old Testament and Greek language of the New Testament. Our studies at the JAMS last year focused on the prophet Jeremiah where we learned the Hebrew word for ungodliness (Jeremiah 23.15) carried the double meaning of obstructed worship and impaired moral virtue in line with the Greek word for ungodliness (e.g., Romans 1.18).  The Hebrew word for breath (ruach) – Genesis 3 similarly carries a double meaning for spirit, as does its Greek counterpart (pneuma).  The Spirit of the Lord who hovered over the waters in Genesis 1.2 is the one who gives breath to living things (Number 27.16) and by that breath, man became a living creature (Genesis 2.7).  Life is an inspiration and a conspiracy where God breathes on man and we in turn learn to live and breathe in harmony with God, both morally and in our worship.

Jesus Breathes his Last

When the Roman tyrants were considering a public execution that would reach maximum pain and suffering on the victim, as well as maximum value in deterrence, they implemented crucifixion as the means of death by asphyxiation.  Death came when the condemned was no longer able to lift himself on the cross foot rest (called a suppendaneuum) or a small seat (sedile) in the middle of the vertical post of the cross.  The Gospel writers inform us of the death of Jesus in such respiratory terms:  “And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.”  Mark 15.37

Jesus Breathes Again

Earlier in his ministry, Jesus was explaining to his disciples the way they might understand his life mission as a shepherd, as a door to the sheepfold, and one who would lay down his life (pointing to the cross) in order that he could take it back (pointing to his resurrection).  

14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. 18 No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father. (John 10, ESV)

John later records Jesus appearing to his disciples on the evening of the very day of his resurrection in a room, behind closed doors, reminiscent of the meetings we hold in the JAMS at Bowdoin College.  In that confined space Jesus bestows the blessing of peace and a commission that sends these disciples on their own mission.  John then records both what Jesus does (he breathes on the disciples) and the meaning he assigns to it (their reception of the Holy Spirit) with these words:

19On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews,  Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” 20When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.” (John 20, ESV)

The Apocalypse of John and Two Witnesses

The evidence is strong that the same John who wrote the gospel account of Jesus breathing on his disciples and commissioning them (“I am sending you”) to forgive sins and to gather disciples, some 60 years later received a vision while he was on a penal colony located on the Mediterranean island called Patmos.  That vision has been the subject of our study during the 2020-2021 academic year for the Bowdoin College students at the JAMS.  In the middle of that vision in Revelation chapter 11, we read of two witnesses.  They are not given names, since they are probably symbolic of the way God has often paired his servants whom he has authorized to declare the liberating message of his plan to set men free. Moses and Aaron, Elijah and Elisha, Joshua and Zerubbabel (priest and king mentioned by Zechariah), Paul and Silas, Paul and Barnabas, Paul and Timothy, Peter and John, are all examples of such pairings.  

These “Two Witnesses” were given special protections while they carried out their ministry, productive as two olive trees and enlightening as two lampstands. John writes :

If anyone would harm them, this is how he is doomed to be killed. 6 They have the power to shut the sky, that no rain may fall during the days of their prophesying, and they have power over the waters to turn them into blood and to strike the earth with every kind of plague, as often as they desire.  (Revelation 11.6, ESV)

John understands in this vision that these Two Witnesses were unstoppable … until they finished their assignment.  The Gospel conspiracy evokes another conspiracy in the Apocalypse of John. Combinations of political, economic, political, and cultural forces “breathe together” in their own conspiracy to make war on the Two Witnesses:

7 And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the bottomless pit will make war on them and conquer them and kill them, 8 and their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city that symbolically is called Sodom and Egypt, where their Lord was crucified. 9 For three and a half days some from the peoples and tribes and languages and nations will gaze at their dead bodies and refuse to let them be placed in a tomb, 10 and those who dwell on the earth will rejoice over them and make merry and exchange presents, because these two prophets had been a torment to those who dwell on the earth.  (Revelation 11.7-10, ESV)

Resurrection and the Breath of Life – Breathing Again

The vision that John received on the Island of Patmos is the one we have received at the JAMS in 2020-2021.  Death could not come until they had finished their testimony.  But it did come.  The heart of the conspiracy of which we are a part at the JAMS is the one that anchors our belief in the power of God, by the Holy Spirit, to raise Jesus from the dead after he breathed his last on the cross. The resurrection and the cross, we learned, do not stand in equilibrium.  Rather, the resurrection overpowers the death of the cross. 

The Apocalypse given to John was a Revelation of Jesus Christ. It was from Christ (Revelation 1.1) and about Him (Revelation 1.2).  The conspiracy of the Christian message is not that death robs men of life, but that God robs death of the last word. Just as he did with the first man Adam, God breathes life into the Two Witnesses:

11 But after the three and a half days a breath of life from God entered them, and they stood up on their feet, and great fear fell on those who saw them. 12 Then they heard a loud voice from heaven saying to them, “Come up here!” And they went up to heaven in a cloud, and their enemies watched them. 13 And at that hour there was a great earthquake, and a tenth of the city fell. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the rest were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven. (Revelation 11.11-13, ESV)

The Conspiracy – Breathing Together against Christ and the Saints 

In the vision given to John about the Two Witnesses we read about the conspiracy to make war on them. War is a group activity, and many must conspire and breath together to plan and implement its strategies and objectives.  So central to John’s message is that there was and will be a war on Christ, his offspring, and on the Saints that he repeats this four times after Chapter 11:

Revelation 12:17 Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.

Revelation 13:7 Also it was allowed to make war on the saints and to conquer them. And authority was given it over every tribe and people and language and nation,

Revelation 17:14 They will make war on the Lamb, and the Lamb will conquer them, for he is Lord of lords and King of kings, and those with him are called and chosen and faithful.”

Revelation 19:11 and 19 Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. . . And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army.

In my preparation to work with the students of Bowdoin College through the Joseph and Alice McKeen Study Center, I came upon one of those books that you add to the list of readings that force you to see something you have never seen before. The Bible occupies that place for me and for all Christians who are looking to a life guided by one who authored the beginning and has purposes that point to an end. At a lesser level, but important for my growth, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas Kuhn were books that fit that description before my conversion.  Personal Knowledge and The Tacit Dimension by Michael Polanyi, The Desire of Nations, Resurrection and the Moral Order and The Ways of Judgment by Oliver O’Donovan are on that list for my days as a disciple. The serendipitous discovery this summer was a 1958 treatise by a Dutch theologian Hendrikas Berkhof who authored Christ the Meaning of History.

Berkhof has helped me to see that the conspiracy against Christ and the saints does not arrive until the Christ of the Scripture has been proclaimed. There is a “double mystery” in the proclamation of the freedom which Christ won in the resurrection.  The missionary instruction which Christ gave to his disciples when he breathed on them included two responses,  not one.  The alternative response to faith, reception and obedience was that of counterforce, hostility, persecution, competitive doctrines of salvation and apostasy (p 99-104).  It is not until Christ has been preached that the counterforces are awakened and believers, like the Two Witnesses of Revelation 11 are called to share in the struggle and suffering that it brings. 

Berkhof taught me that it was apparently a core part of the confession of the early church that the Antichrist must of necessity come before the return of Christ. (2 Thessalonians 2.5) Paul reprimands the church in Thessalonica that this was ground he had already covered: Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things?  The context for that admonition is that he was reminding them, as Berkhof writes: “The antichrist, then, cannot originate in paganism, but only in a becoming Christian de-Christianized world.” (p 115)  In other words, it is only when, and in response to, the Two Witnesses (you and me) that the conspiracy of antichrist is awakened.  Again quoting from Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians:

3 Let no one deceive you in any way. For that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, 4 who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God. 5 Do you not remember that when I was still with you I told you these things? 6 And you know what is restraining him now so that he may be revealed in his time. 7 For the mystery of lawlessness is already at work. Only he who now restrains it will do so until he is out of the way. (2 Thessalonian 1.3-7, ESV)

That “mystery of lawlessness” is in fact the double mystery which includes the necessity that the Gospel be preached, and a second mystery that it will necessarily make war with those who bear witness to it.  If this confession was a core belief of the early church, , then we might do well during this season to receive the Covid-19 pandemic as a time to reconsider the breath God breathed into the first Adam, the cross on which Jesus breathed his last, the commissioning breath by which Jesus sent his disciples into all the world to preach the Gospel to every nation, tribe and people, and the hope of the promise that God will breathe new life into all of those who following the “Two Witnesses” and finish our testimony.

The Final Breath

One final word on this subject. I have wondered who will be the last person to breathe a human breath?  The question I ask is in the context of this “breathing together”  conspiracy against the Saints, the conspiracy that makes war against the Lamb, the conspiracy against the Two Witnesses, all of which will not and cannot prevail. I propose that the end of this conspiracy will come by the breath of Jesus.  That final breath brings to nothing that which is pure negativity (evil). That breath brings an end to all those who have as their king over them that angel whose name in Hebrew and Greek respectively are Abaddon and Apollyon which mean the Destroyer.  Revelation 9.11.   That end is the end of history, and it happens when there is no more delay, the seventh trumpet blows, and it comes with the end of evil.  The end of history will vindicate God’s creation and its original purposes.  The end of history will reveal that Christ accomplished all of that by the word of his testimony.  Perhaps the last breath by a human agent will be the breath of the God-Man who and will bring evil to naught by the breath of his mouth:  Again from Paul’s second letter to the Thessalonians:

 8 And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.  9 The coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, 10 and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing, because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. (2 Thessalonians 2.8-10, ESV)

Speaking for God in the "In-Between" Times

BY ED KEAZIRIAN

In reading the scriptures one is struck by the intensity and sense of urgency in the prophetic and apostolic messages. One reason for this is that the authors were often writing to address a crisis of one sort or another among the people of God. The prophets delivered God’s word to Israel whenever the nation was threatened, whether from the outside by the hostility of another nation or from the inside by disobedience, apostasy, or conflict among the people. Similarly, the apostles wrote to churches or individuals in the midst of conflict, threats of persecution, false teaching, or apostasy. So the stakes were always high.

In addition to that, authors were also conscious and concerned that time was short. Threats were imminent and serious, requiring an immediate and decisive response by the community. That was and is the nature of speaking for God in the “in-between” times—the time between the beginning and ending of a crisis.

Among the many voices in the trajectory from the prophets in Israel to the apostles in the early church, two stand out for their awareness of the times and their commitment to speak for God amid the turmoil of the “in-between” times. This article will discuss the two-age framework that represents the biblical conception of time, the major events that define an “in-between” time, and the parallels between Jeremiah and Paul as they both spoke for God in the “in-between” times. Finally, the article will conclude with principles that may be drawn from Jeremiah and Paul and applied to our lives, as we too are called and commissioned to speak for God in the “in-between” times.

This Age and the Age to Come

In the Jewish thought-world of the first century, all of time was viewed as comprising two ages: this age and the age to come. This two-age framework is mentioned routinely throughout the Bible, although not always in those terms. This conception of time appears in the Old Testament representing the thought-world of the Ancient Near East in general and of Israel in particular.

The Old Testament Perspective

Within that perspective this age meant this present world—the created universe (the heavens, the earth, and the seas and all they contain). It referred to the material world of time and space as they knew it, but it also embraced all the human systems of organization that belonged to this age: governments, nations, economic systems, as well as the injustice, exploitation, oppression, and conflicts that arose to characterize this age. The Psalms abound with laments, pleading with God for justice, peace, and deliverance from the suffering and conflict that threaten to overwhelm and destroy the people of God. In contrast to Israel’s understanding of this age, the age to come represented that time when God would decisively intervene to overthrow the present world order and establish an eternal kingdom characterized by righteousness, justice, and peace. In Israel’s religious and political history David was the typological Messianic king whose coming would mark the end of this age and inaugurate the age to come.

Who Speaks for God

The ones who spoke for God throughout Israel’s history were the prophets. As the derivation of the word itself suggests, a prophet is one who “speaks before.” This idea of speaking before has two nuances, both of which help to elucidate the prophet’s role. Speaking before might imply a locational idea, as in standing before God or standing before the people to speak. This visualization of the prophet, standing as it were, in front of the Lord, representing God to the people and delivering words from God to the people, portrays the primary role of the prophet. The prophet was selected and appointed by God to bring messages from God to the people of God.

The second nuance of speaking before implies a temporal idea. The prophets often spoke of events before—sometimes long before—they ever took place. This was—and perhaps still is—the more popular notion of a prophet, as one who foretells the future. Then as now, anyone who can lift the curtain on the future and accurately predict what will happen will inevitably occupy a position of power and influence within the community. This was especially true of prophets in Israel’s history putting them in the precarious political position of advising kings.

On the one hand, the prophet was bound to speak truthfully God’s word to the people. Typically, the word of God was a message of encouragement and comfort, reminding the people both of the faithfulness of their God and of their obligation to worship and serve their God exclusively. In bleak or threatening times, then, the prophet turned the minds and hearts of the people back to God for sustenance and hope in the midst of national crisis. This was the message that the kings wanted to hear, especially when faced with the prospects of war. Before going to war every king wanted the assurance of God’s favor and the promise of victory over the enemy.

On the other hand, however, perhaps more often than not, the prophet’s message was a word of rebuke and warning to the king and people alike for their failure to honor and worship their God. Instead of serving God exclusively as required by their covenant, Israel repeatedly rejected the one true God in favor of foreign gods that were really not gods at all. In response to Israel’s persistent apostacy—often depicted in prophetic metaphor as repeated infidelities of an adulterous wife, the prophet assumed the role of prosecuting attorney in God’s lawsuit against the nation. The prophet presented the indictment, listing incontrovertible evidence of repeated covenant violations, projected a guilty verdict, and then announced the impending judgment of God against the nation—typically in terms of military defeat, banishment from their homes, destruction of their land, and even the ultimate punishment of death.

This was definitely not the message that kings wanted to hear from their prophets. Therefore, except for the rare instance when a king heeded the prophet’s warning, led the people in repentance, and thus avoided the dire consequences of God’s judgment, prophets were viewed and treated accordingly as religious and political enemies of the king. Consequently, prophets typically suffered hardship and abuse of all kinds for their loyalty to God and faithful proclamation of God’s word. Their circumstances were only aggravated by the plethora of false prophets—flatterers of the king—who opted for the political expediency of telling the king precisely what he wanted to hear whether it was the truth or not.

Amid the difficult, often life-threatening, circumstances endured by the prophets, their comfort and hope lay in the realization that the authority and protection of God were bestowed upon them at their calling and commissioning by God. As the gravity and solemnity of this calling to speak for God dawned upon them, a sense of fear and inadequacy likewise arose within them. This common reaction, seen in Moses, Gideon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, at their prophetic call reflects God’s tendency to choose—humanly speaking—the least likely candidates to speak for God. The humility of the prophet speaking for God stood in dramatic contrast to the arrogance of the king intent upon defying God, thus making the sovereign power of God and the exclusive claims of God so much the more compelling.

The New Testament Perspective

Just as the Hebrew scriptures present a two-age conception of time reflecting the Jewish thought-world in which those scriptures were written, so too the Greek scriptures preserve, and even refine, the idea that all of time consists in this age and the age to come. In describing the birth, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, the New Testament identifies him as the promised Messianic king whose coming would signal the end of this age, the establishment of God’s eternal kingdom, and the inauguration of the age to come. Indeed the Greek title Christ and the Hebrew title Messiah mean essentially the same thing, both denoting “the anointed one” in their respective languages. However, these references to the Messiah, the turning of the ages, and the kingdom of God are not the formulation of the New Testament authors, but rather come from Jesus himself.

Throughout his ministry Jesus preached and taught in the prophetic tradition of ancient Israel. His scriptures were Israel’s scriptures, he quoted extensively from the Law and the Prophets, and he recognized the divine authority that stood behind them. After his resurrection Jesus discussed the events surrounding his death and resurrection with two disciples as the three of them walked together to Emmaus. “And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself” (Luke 24:27, ESV). As they listened to Jesus, those ancient prophecies came alive for them. Their “hearts burned within them” as they listened and realized that those ancient truths had been fulfilled in Jesus.

This continuity between Jesus and the ancient prophets was evident to other disciples as well, as they viewed him not only as a prophet himself speaking in Israel’s prophetic tradition, but as speaking and acting with an authority that other prophets lacked. Furthermore, they recognized that he was the fulfillment of ancient promises regarding their long-standing messianic expectations: a new prophet like Moses (Deut 18:15–18), God’s anointed king (Psalm 2), the son of David who would reign forever (2 Sam 7:12–13, 16), and the suffering servant whose death would atone for sin and make many righteous (Isa 53:4–12).

Who Speaks for God

This turning of the ages represented the culmination of God’s plan for human history and thus merited a new and definitive voice speaking for God. The author of Hebrews identifies that voice as Jesus himself. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world” (Heb 1:1–2, ESV).

Although this prophetic tradition may have reached its quintessence in Jesus, it did not end with Jesus. Before his crucifixion and again thereafter, Jesus commissioned his disciples to speak for him. They were to carry on his prophetic ministry of healing, announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God, and warning people about the final judgment awaiting those who reject God. He gave them his authority such that those who welcomed them welcomed him and those who rejected them rejected him. Jesus also endowed them with his Spirit—the Spirit of truth—to teach them, to remind them, and to guide them in all truth, revealing the things that Jesus had left unsaid and declaring to them the things that were yet to come. Thus the apostles were called and commissioned to speak for Christ, with the power of the Holy Spirit upon them, the presence of Christ with them, and the authority of God behind them. Like the ancient prophets these apostles of the new age were initially filled with doubt, uncertainty, apprehension and fear. It was not until the Holy Spirit filled them (Acts 2:1–4) that they began to speak with the boldness, power and persuasion that would turn the world upside down.

The In-Between Times

Some have likened the prophetic view of future events in scripture to the phenomenon that hikers encounter when looking at a series of mountains peaks extending from the near foreground toward the distant horizon. As the eyes scan from the nearer peaks to the more distant peaks, one’s depth perception decreases and so the eyes are less able to judge the distance between subsequent peaks the further away they are. While one can generally perceive the distance from one peak to the next in the foreground, the more distant peaks seem to be superimposed on each other so that it becomes impossible perceive any distance between them at all. This flattening of depth perception serves as a good illustration of how the turn of the ages is viewed from the perspective of the ancient prophets compared to that of the apostles.

Among the ancient prophets the most common expression denoting the culmination of God’s purposes for this age and the commencement of the age to come was “the day of the Lord.” It was also referred to as “that day,” or simply “the day.” Those three expressions at face value seem to imply a fairly abrupt transition from one age to the next, as though the change took place from one day to the next. However, from the perspective of the apostles, and of Jesus himself, the transition actually involved an overlapping of the ages as framed by the two comings of Christ.

The first coming featured the incarnation, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ. These events signified the inauguration of a new age (the age to come) and the arrival of the kingdom of God. The death and resurrection of Christ also represented God’s judgment against sin and death. Therefore, Christ’s first coming, while not signifying the end of this age, certainly marked the beginning of the end.

As his earthly ministry drew to a close, Jesus prepared to return to the presence of the Father. Before leaving, he promised to send a Helper, the Holy Spirit. Moreover, he also promised that he himself would return to the earth. That second coming, or Parousia (“appearing”), will feature the gathering of believers, the general resurrection, the final battle, the enthronement of Jesus Christ, and the final condemnation and eternal punishment of Satan, his angels, and all those whose names are not written in the Book of Life. With the appearance of the new heaven and the new earth (Rev 21:1–4), the first age (this age) will finally come to an end as the first heaven, first earth, and the seas will all have ceased to exist.

Therefore, what appeared to the ancient prophets—from their distant perspective—as one event, the day of the Lord, is actually an overlapping of the ages with many events occurring over a long period of time. Some of what the ancient prophets foretold as future events have already taken place. For example, Joel foresees an outpouring of the Holy Spirit related to the coming day of the Lord, an event that Joel believes is imminent (Joel 2:1–2, 11, 28–32). In his sermon at Pentecost when the Holy Spirit filled and empowered the apostles, Peter quoted Joel’s prophecy and proclaimed that it had been fulfilled that day. All of that occurred in conjunction with the first coming of Christ.

At the same time, the battles and cosmic calamities that Joel also associated with the day of the Lord (Joel 2:9–15) have not yet occurred. Similarly, the vision of the Ancient of Days and the enthronement of the one like a son of man (Dan 7:9–14) have yet to occur. Both of these would seem to be associated with the second coming of Christ and the end of this age. Therefore, the whole series of events that occur during the overlapping ages, as viewed from the vantage point of the apostles, were compressed into one event by the ancient prophets who saw them from too great a distance to discern the spacing between them.

This overlap of the ages, as framed by the two comings of Christ, defines the “in-between time,” that is, the time between the beginning of the age to come and the end of this age. New Testament authors also refer to this in-between time as the last days. Therefore, from the perspective of the New Testament, the Church is a feature of the last days.

A Closer Look at Jeremiah and Paul

Although they were separated in time by nearly seven centuries, Paul had a great affinity for Jeremiah and probably looked to him as a model for his own ministry. While it is to be expected that their stories would overlap at points because of their role and identity as prophets, the similarities are too numerous and precise simply to be coincidence.

The accounts of their call and commission are strikingly similar. Both were identified and set apart to be prophets while still in the womb. Although they were Jewish, both were appointed to preach to the Gentiles (literally, “the nations”). Both experienced a theophanic encounter at their calling. Jeremiah heard the voice of God and was touched by God on his lips, while Paul saw a bright light (a vision of the resurrected Christ) and also heard a voice. Both had a verbal conversation with God during the encounter and both expressed great reluctance and apprehension in response to their calling. Jeremiah resisted the call on the basis of his youth and his inability to speak (admittedly a major liability for one whose ministry consists of speaking for God to the people). Although Paul did not resist the calling and was willing to comply, the fact that he had been struck blind by the vision of Christ caused him to question what he should do.

As an aside it is important to note that Paul did not express directly to Christ any reluctance or apprehension about his calling. However, in each of the three reports of his encounter with the risen Christ (Acts 9:1–9; 22:1–11; 26:9–18), Paul did mention his former hostility toward the church and the violence he had inflicted upon it. Several times in his ministry Paul recalls that as something that should have disqualified him for service to Christ. However, each time he mentions it, the gravity of his sin becomes an occasion to showcase the grace of God. With each downward step in his status from least of the apostles (1 Cor 15:9) to the least of the saints (Eph 3:8) to the foremost of sinners (1 Tim 1:15), Paul magnifies the grace of God all the more. Although Paul did not raise his persecution of the church in his conversation with the risen Christ, that was nevertheless an issue. The Lord took the initiative in mentioning it to Paul and in doing so essentially dismissed it as a disqualifier. That was a grievous sin, but the grace of God was sufficient to forgive it.

This is an essential vignette in understanding that no prophet is worthy in his own right to speak for God. In the presence of God’s holiness and glory every prophet is aware of his wretched unworthiness and must be forgiven himself and made worthy by the one who calls and commissions the prophet to speak for God. Every prophet’s testimony must be that of Paul. “I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy . . . and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. (1 Tim 1:12–14).

The comparison of Jeremiah and Paul presents further clues of his influence on Paul. Both were sent to the Gentiles, but both also began by preaching to the Jews. Both considered the failure to honor and worship God as the beginning of their indictment against the people of God. Both recognized that the people were fulfilling rituals without changed hearts. Paul quotes Jeremiah four times in addressing idolatry, the need for circumcised hearts rather than bodies, the need for the new covenant, and the absolute, irresistible urge to proclaim the message that God wants the prophet to deliver.

Both Jeremiah and Paul suffered much hardship and abuse because of their calling and their unwillingness to compromise the message. Both have left accounts of the suffering they endured and both remained single because of the hardships associated with their respective callings as prophet and apostle.

Finally, both were called and commissioned to speak for God in the “in-between” time, but the nature of the “in-between” time differed. Historically Jeremiah was active in calling the people of God to repentance for 20 years before the threat against them from Babylon even became evident. He began preaching about 625 BC During that 20 years Babylon was slowly working its way north and west, forming alliances with the Chaldeans and Medes, retaking the territories that had been lost to Assyria, and finally defeating Egypt. By 603 BC Babylon effectively controlled all the territory encircling Jerusalem. The threat was evident and the final destruction of Jerusalem became inevitable.

Having been ignored for those 20 years by the kings and people of Judah, in 603 BC Jeremiah turned his attention to the Gentile nations surrounding Jerusalem and Judah. He called them to repentance as well for they were all under the judgment of God, even as Judah was for all its apostacy, and God was going to use Babylon as his servant to execute his judgment upon Judah and the nations. Jerusalem was finally destroyed by Babylon and the final group of exiles taken in 586 BC.

Thus the “in-between” time for Jeremiah was measured from the time when the judgment that had been foretold actually began, that is, when the armies of Babylon actually arrived at the gates of Jerusalem and began their siege. The “in-between” time ended when Jerusalem was finally destroyed. Those are clearly evident dates from history as Jeremiah was preaching to a nation as the nation’s fate hung in the balance.

For Paul the “in-between” time related not to the fate of a nation, but to the consummation of God’s plan for the whole creation. Paul begins his letter to the Romans with the statement, “the wrath of God is being revealed . . .” (Rom 1:18), but not against just one nation. Rather, it is being revealed against all the godlessness and wickedness of humanity. This revelation took place in Christ at his first coming. God’s wrath was revealed at the cross and for Paul that marked the beginning of his “in-between” time. In the last chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul makes this statement, “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Rom 16:20). The enemy to be destroyed here is not a foreign king or marauding empire. Rather it is the ruler of this world, the ruler of the demons, that is about to be destroyed. Here again, this is not the end of a nation, but rather the end of this age. This will occur at the final battle and is associated with the second coming of Christ. In contrast to the clear dating of Jeremiah’s “in-between” time, the end of Paul’s “in-between” time is known only to God.

Conclusion

In all of these parallels between Jeremiah and Paul we see a trajectory of the prophetic role across scripture. In the center of that trajectory is Jesus Christ, the quintessential prophet who not only speaks for God but is himself God. Several insights from this study ought to shape our understanding not only of the prophetic role in scripture, but our own place in that trajectory as well.

Just as Jesus commissioned his apostles to continue proclaiming the gospel to the nations, so too he gave that same commission to the whole church. That means that every believer stands in that trajectory from Moses through Jeremiah, Jesus, Paul, all the centuries of church history and into the 21st century. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.”

Aside from the death of Christ there is no greater demonstration of the love, mercy, grace, and compassion of God than the prophets in the “in-between” times. The God who is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to the knowledge of the truth, sends his prophets to call sinners to repentance even in the midst of the unfolding judgment. Even in the years while Babylon was sacking the Jerusalem, God’s prophets were pleading with the people to repent. The church has been commissioned to speak for God in the ultimate “in-between” time. We do not know how much longer this time will last, so we must make the most of the time that we have.

The call and commission to speak for God is not easy, and to be faithful in it could cost you everything. But in that hardship and suffering we are assured of God’s presence, his protection, and his provision. We take comfort in that and find our satisfaction in knowing that we have been faithful and obedient to his call and commission.

Between the Polar Bear and the Chapel — The Load Bearing Individual and a Creative Minority

BY ROBERT GREGORY

The Bowdoin Polar Bear and the Bowdoin College Chapel share the sentimental and the geographic center of the Bowdoin College campus. I think the Christian student lives somewhere between that Polar Bear and the Chapel; the Polar Bear representing the current cultural life of the College, and the Chapel representing commitments to the teachings and practices of the Christian faith which were the principle reasons for the founding of the College in 1794.

The foundation stone for this Gothic chapel building was set in 1844 during the tenure of Bowdoin College’s fourth President Leonard Woods. The building was completed and dedicated in 1855. The murals which line the interior walls depict Old and New Testament themes of biblical theology. Adam and Eve, Moses Giving the Law, David and Goliath, The Baptism of Christ, Peter Healing the Lame Man at the Beautiful Gate, and St. Paul Preaching on Mars Hill in Athens are among the larger than life pieces that remind the visitor that the chapel’s purpose was to provide a place for Christian worship on the campus of Bowdoin College.

The Polar Bear sculpture dates to 1937 when the graduating class of 1912 presented the granite bear as a gift to the College in memory of the April 6, 1909 successful expedition to the North Pole by Admiral Robert E. Peary (Bowdoin class of 1877). Standing guard at the rear doors of the Chapel, the Bowdoin Polar Bear is a strong and imposing mascot to the cultural values of the College, appearing on sweatshirts, knapsacks and baseball caps across the campus.

Enter the Prophet Jeremiah

The Bowdoin College students who have been studying the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah at the Joseph and Alice McKeen Study Center examined early in the semester God's call to this reluctant prophet to stand critically between the corrupted cultural and political rulers of Judah six centuries before the birth of Christ, and the priest, prophets and elders who failed to serve as the barriers to false religious teachings about Solomon's Temple and the corporate life of Judah as a worshiping people.

The prophet Jeremiah wrote oracles of prose and poetry to warn the political and religious leaders of Judah of the coming seventy-year exile to Babylon that awaited the priests, prophets and religious elite who controlled the temple precincts, as well as the family of the ruling monarchy who controlled secular spaces. Jeremiah's awareness of these cross pressures is evident in Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel depiction of Jeremiah as the brooding prophet.

This essay will examine how the burdens of Jeremiah are similar to the responsibilities of a Christian student on a secular college campus. The normative stance of the Old Testament prophet was simultaneously critical of religious officials and secular rulers. This sounds like “church and state” to the modern ear, and it should. That legal doctrine however, whatever it means to American constitutional law, has become mischievous to Christian college students learning the practices of a Christian life and worship on a deeply secular college campus. Old Testament prophets like Jeremiah spoke with one voice to the religious and secular leaders, to the priests and monarchs, to the Chapel and the Polar Bear.

I propose to combine the insights of former Oxford professor of moral philosophy Oliver O’Donovan regarding the loneliness of the individual who becomes “load bearing” when the structures of a collective memory erode, with the observations of Rabbi (and member of Parliament!) Jonathan Sacks, that 70 years of exile offered to the remnant of Judah the ideal conditions for the formation of a new “creative minority.”

The Secular and the Sacred

The priests did not say, ‘Where is the Lord?’ Those who handle the law did not know me; the shepherds transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit.“ Therefore I still contend with you, declares the Lord, and with your children's children I will contend. (Jeremiah 2. 8-9 ESV)

The prophet's denunciation of the secular monarchy and of the religious priests and prophets, brought together under a series of oracles the failures of those charged to govern both secular and sacred space. Christian theologians remind us that the alternative to the secular is not the sacred or spiritual, but the eternal. The saeculum refers to the passing age where institutions which have essential meaning for our time will be displaced and rendered either unnecessary or redundant when the Kingdom of God has fully come. The task of the monarch is important, but all Kings will surrender their thrones to the King of Kings when the time for secular rule has passed and their provisional authority is displaced.

Prophets, priests and kings, called to set boundaries and to correct wrong thinking about God and about the ordering of a common life, had themselves become culpable agents of evil within their respective jurisdiction. Priests failed to do priestly things, prophets failed to do prophet things, and the monarchs failed to do the princely things of just governance with their coercive powers of the sword. This decline in Judah was an inside job, and Jeremiah experienced the individual pressures of a lonely prophet carrying alone the burden to speak against collapsing institutions of religion and government:

the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests rule at their direction; my people love to have it so, but what will you do when the end comes? (Jeremiah 5.31 ESV)

The Lord provided Jeremiah with an intelligence report that even those closest to him would betray him:

5 “If you have raced with men on foot, and they have wearied you, how will you compete with horses? And if in a safe land you are so trusting, what will you do in the thicket of the Jordan? 6 For even your brothers and the house of your father, even they have dealt treacherously with you; they are in full cry after you; do not believe them, though they speak friendly words to you.” (Jeremiah 12:5-6 ESV)

As the venerated commentator Matthew Henry writes, "[t]hose who desert religion, commonly oppose it more than those who never knew it." The Chapel and the Polar Bear, like the priesthood and the monarchy, are geographic markers of this tension between the transcendent and the immanent, which for the present moment occupy common space in the architectural landscape of the College and in the awareness of the Bowdoin College Christian student that I belong here – but in a certain sense – only as an exile in a foreign land. (Psalm 137.4 ESV)

The Deconstruction of Religious Life – The Polar Bear and the Chapel

We learn from the Bowdoin College website that 150 years of Maine winters compromised the mortar that cemented together the granite stones of the Bowdoin Chapel. Between the spring of 2003 and the fall of 2004, the chapel was dismantled "stone by stone," with each stone numbered for reassembly using more modern architectural technologies. Those who are familiar with the words of Jesus about the destruction of the Second Temple walls "stone by stone" will recognize that Jesus was meditating on the prophecies from Jeremiah regarding the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in the 6th century BC.

6.1 Flee for safety, O people of Benjamin, from the midst of Jerusalem! Blow the trumpet in Tekoa, and raise a signal on Beth-haccherem, for disaster looms out of the north, and great destruction.2 The lovely and delicately bred I will destroy, the daughter of Zion. 3 Shepherds with their flocks shall come against her; they shall pitch their tents around her; they shall pasture, each in his place.4 “Prepare war against her; arise, and let us attack at noon! Woe to us, for the day declines, for the shadows of evening lengthen!5 Arise, and let us attack by night and destroy her palaces!” (Jeremiah 6 ESV)

13 And now, because you have done all these things, declares the Lord, and when I spoke to you persistently you did not listen, and when I called you, you did not answer, 14 therefore I will do to the house that is called by my name, and in which you trust, and to the place that I gave to you and to your fathers, as I did to Shiloh. 15 And I will cast you out of my sight, as I cast out all your kinsmen, all the offspring of Ephraim. (Jeremiah 7 ESV)

In the hours and days before his passion, trial, and execution by crucifixion, Jesus confronted his disciples with his own prophetic predictions of the coming destruction of the Second Temple that had been rebuilt in Jerusalem when the exiles returned to Jerusalem in 539. BC. Under the new leadership of priests and the prophets like Ezra and Nehemiah, returning exiles were instructed to restore the sacred and the public spaces in Jerusalem. As Jesus walked among that second temple, Matthew records:

24 Jesus left the temple and was going away, when his disciples came to point out to him the buildings of the temple. 2 But he answered them, “You see all these, do you not? Truly, I say to you, there will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down.” (Matthew 24 ESV)

The Gospel of John suggests that this predicted destruction of the Second Temple fulfilled in 70 AD stone by stone may have been a frequent subject of conversation between Jesus and his disciples. Shortly after Jesus called his disciples to follow him in the early days of ministry, John records how Jesus instructed the disciples that the catastrophic destruction of the Temple was a sign-act pointing to his own death and resurrection:

18 So the Jews said to him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” 19 Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” 20 The Jews then said, “It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days?” 21 But he was speaking about the temple of his body. 22 When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the Scripture and the word that Jesus had spoken. (John 2 ESV)

For the errant people of Judah in Jeremiah’s day, it would require an experience like the destruction of Jerusalem, its Temple, and 70 years of exile to cure them of their superstitious reliance on the presence of the Temple of Solomon at the sentimental center of Jerusalem. In his famous Temple Sermon recorded in Jeremiah 7, the prophet chided them,

do not trust these deceptive words - this is the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord." (Jeremiah7. 4 ESV)

Worship and the SJW (Social Justice Warrior)

The more deeply one reads into the history of the life of Israel, and the criticism by the Old Testament prophets about the departures from the covenant privilege offered to them, the more aware one becomes of a nexus between ethical, moral and social justice failures on the one hand, and religious apostasy and idolatry on the other. Prophesying a hundred years before Jeremiah about the fall of the northern tribes of Israel at the hands of Assyrian invaders, Micah answers the most important question that any person can answer. What does the Lord require? What is required in religious worship? What is required of the moral agent? Micah's answers both questions in a single oracle:

6 “With what shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before God on high? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings with calves a year old 7 Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? 8 He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God? (Micah 6)

On college campuses across America, chapel buildings were constructed in the 18th and 19th century in recognition of the religious mission of that college. College architects reserved the high points and central locations of the campus as spaces for worship. "Stones on stones" chapels were meant to be a visible reminder that there was no uncontested secular space in the life of the college that did not owe public obedience to the God who created those spaces. As in the days of Jeremiah, the chapel, like the Temple of Solomon, was a visible reminder that God would dwell with his people. I understand that message to be: I am here in this public space!

More than any other contemporary scholar of Christian ethics, Oliver O'Donovan grasps how the vocabulary of salvation in both the Old and New Testament has a political prehistory in the deterioration of the moral and social life of Israel. That is why Jeremiah brings in his Temple Sermon (Jeremiah 7) a unified critique against the erroneous thinking about the sacred space of a temple and about the decline of socio-political justice in the public spaces in Judah:

5 “For if you truly amend your ways and your deeds, if you truly execute justice one with another, 6 if you do not oppress the sojourner, the fatherless, or the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own harm, 7 then I will let you dwell in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your fathers forever. 8 “Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. 9 Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely,

make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, 10 and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’—only to go on doing all these abominations? 11 Has this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, I myself have seen it, declares the Lord. (Jeremiah 7)

Jesus reflected on this passage from Jeremiah’s Temple Sermon when he cleansed the Second Temple of money changers during the days before his crucifixion:

12 And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all who sold and bought in the temple, and he overturned the tables of the money-changers and the seats of those who sold pigeons. 13 He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers. “Matthew 21:12-13 (ESV)

Lessons about Life Between the Polar Bear and the Chapel

1. It is Contested Space: College chapels and statues of college mascots share common spaces on American colleges and universities. But that space is more contested than it was when this Polar Bear was constructed in 1937 at the north entrance to this Bowdoin Chapel dedicated as a house of Christian worship for students in 1855. The history of the chapel and its biblical artwork testifies to those sacred purposes. So too do the catalog of sermons preached by Bowdoin College's first president Joseph McKeen between 1802 and 1806. See Sober Consent of the Heart, The Bowdoin College Chapel Message of Fist President, Joseph McKeen DD Delivered 1802-1806, Robert B. Gregory, Editor (2011); Joseph McKeen and the Soul of Bowdoin College: An Analysis of the Chapel Sermons of Rev. Joseph McKeen, First President of Bowdoin College, as they relate to his call to serve the Common Good (2016)

Christian students standing between the Polar Bear and the Chapel are tempted to believe that the historic religious foundation for the College has nothing to do with contemporary views of ethics and social justice. First Amendment constitutional doctrines of separation have taught them this. But the Christian students face a second temptation which is greater. That is to privatize the Christian faith and leave to the Polar Bear alone the privilege of forming public values for the shared life on a college campus. As Stanley Hauerwas argues:

Christians in modernity thought their task was to make the Gospel intelligible to the world rather than to help the world understand why it could not be intelligible without the Gospel. Desiring to become part of the modernist project, preachers and theologians accepted the

presumption that Christianity is a set of beliefs, a worldview, designed to give meaning to our lives. In the name of being politically responsible in, to, and for liberal social orders, the politics of Christian discourse was relegated to the private realm. We accepted the politics of translation believing that neither we nor our non-Christian and half-Christian neighbors could be expected to submit to the discipline of Christian speech. Stanley Hauerwas, Preaching as Though we had Enemies, First Things Magazine, (1995)

2. Shepherds of the Secular are Not Free Agents: Prophets and priests were never to surrender to the monarchs and tyrants of public spaces an unchallenged vision of morality, justice and a properly ordered public square. While monarchs, and not prophets and priests, govern that public space, neither the Kings of Judah nor the despotic rulers of Assyria and Babylon could govern free from the claims of God. Even the despot of Babylon Nebuchadnezzar was a “servant of God .” (Jeremiah 27.6) It was the task of the prophet to sound in a single oracle the criticism of their religious leaders and secular rulers. The resurrected Jesus makes the stunning assertion in Matthew 28 that all authority on heaven and earth was given to him. He then dismissed his disciples to the task of evangelizing all the nations, simultaneously summoning them to religious belief and ethical obedience.

"...teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age."

There was a pattern in Jeremiah's day to the failure of the religious and secular leaders and that pattern is repeated in every generation. Jeremiah 2. 8 quoted earlier in this essay is the prototype of that double failure. The priests did not say, 'Where is the LORD?' Those who handle the law did not know me; the shepherds transgressed against me; the prophets prophesied by Baal and went after things that do not profit. Nothing is more harmful to the life of the Christian student between the Polar Bear and the Chapel than the insidious argument that principles of social justice and personal ethics can be underwritten in the shadow of the Polar Bear without the predicates of religious instruction once taught in the College Chapel.

3. The Load-Bearing Individual when Collective Identities Collapse: In his most important book, The Desire of Nations, rediscovering the roots of political theology (1996) Oliver O'Donovan reads in the prophet Jeremiah a trend from community to the individual in the history of Israel. "To be a human being at all" he writes, "is to participate in one or more collective identities. But there is no collective identity so overarching and all-encompassing that no human beings are left outside it.. . .. We do not meet it in any community, however great, of which we could assume the leadership. We meet it only in the face of Christ, who presents himself as our leader and commander." (Page 73)

O'Donovan's understanding of the teachings of Jeremiah are helping us at the Joseph and Alice McKeen Study Center learn that when these collective identities collapse, as they surely have in this first quarter of the 21st century, "individuals become, as it were, load-bearing so that at the exile the future of the nation has come to depend on individual faithfulness." (Page 73, emphasis added) This single insight more than anything I have read this semester helps me to understand the mission and the ministry of Jeremiah and its relevance to our day. This is how O'Donovan articulates the implications of this trend:

The community is the aboriginal fact from beginning to end, shaping the conscience of each of its members to greater or lesser effect. But when the mediating institutions of government collapse, then the memory and hope which single members faithfully conserve provide a span of continuity which can reach out toward the prospect of restructuring. The fractured community which fashioned the individual’s conscience is sustained within it and renewed out of it. And from having been preserved through single members' memory and hope, Jeremiah anticipates, it will be the stronger, for it will incorporate the direct knowledge of Yhwh's ways which each has won by his, or her, faithfulness * * * the conscience of the individual members of a community is a repository of the moral understanding which shaped it, and may serve to perpetuate it in a crisis of collapsing morale or institution. . ..The conscientious individual speaks with society's own forgotten voice. (Page 80, emphasis added)

4. Neither Translators nor Interpreters: This is the lesson that I hope that the student leaders participating at the Joseph and Alice McKeen Study Center have learned this semester. Life between the Polar Bear and the Chapel is the life of a student who has become more load-bearing precisely because of his faith commitments. The yoke of Jeremiah resting on the shoulders of Christian student leaders is not one of soft translation of the Christian gospel to a campus community. That community believes that the Christian must be lived entirely in a private realm, and that there are no claims that require submission by Christians and rulers of secular spaces alike. Life in the shadow of the Polar Bear cannot be intelligible without the Gospel at one time preached in the Bowdoin College Chapel, even and especially when the chapel occupied Massachusetts Hall which was the only building on campus when Bowdoin's first President Joseph McKeen and his wife Alice arrived in Brunswick from Beverley, Massachusetts with their five children in 1802.

5. Creative Minority Is there hope for a restructured community when the doors of a College Chapel are closed to Christian worship? Jeremiah 30 contains what Derek Kidner says is "one of the boldest but least known Messianic prophecies...a ruler who will be what no King had ever been allowed to be: their mediator and priest." Jeremiah, Kidner Classic Commentaries, (IVP, 1987):

Their prince shall be one of themselves; their ruler shall come out from their midst; I will make him draw near, and he shall approach me, for who would dare of himself to approach me? declares the LORD. (Jeremiah 30. 21) and

Jeremiah saw more clearly than any of the other Old Testament prophets the possibility of the restructuring of community on a New Covenant whose guarantor possessed in his person the functions that had been separated between rulers of secular space and the priests who mediated within the sacred spaces of the Temple.

Behold, the days are coming, declares the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. (Jeremiah 31. 31)

Jesus and his New Testament disciples recognized Jeremiah's New Covenant as fulfilled in the death, burial, resurrection, ascension, and exaltation of Jesus Christ. Jesus pointed to the communion cup as the “new covenant in my blood.” This church, under the rule of Christ, would become, to borrow a phrase from Rabbi Sacks, a new creative minority. The following extended excerpt from his insightful essay is worth our deepest reflection about the teachings of Jeremiah:

What if they saw religion time and again enlisted to give heavenly sanction to purely human hierarchies? What if they knew that truth and power have nothing to do with one another and that you do not need to rule the world to bring truth into the world? What if they had realized that once you seek to create a universal state you have already begun down a road from which there is no escape, a process that ends in disintegration and decline? What if they were convinced that in the long run, the real battle is spiritual, not political or military, and that in this battle influence matters more than power?

What if they believed they had heard God calling on them to be a creative minority that never sought to become a dominant minority, that never sought to become a universal state, nor even in the conventional sense a universal church? What if they believed that God is universal but that love—all love, even Gods love—is irreducibly particular? ….What if these insights led a figure like Jeremiah to reconceptualize the entire phenomenon of defeat and exile? The Israelites had betrayed their mission by becoming obsessed with politics at the cost of moral and spiritual integrity. So taught all the prophets from Moses to Malachi. Every time you try to be like your neighbors, they said, you will be defeated by your neighbors. Every time you worship power, you will be defeated by power. Every time you seek to dominate, you will be dominated. For you, says God, are my witnesses to the world that there is nothing sacred about power or holy about empires and imperialism. On Creative Minorities, 2013 Erasmus Lecture by Jonathan Sacks, January 2014. https://www.firstthings.com/article/2014/01/on-creative-minorities

Jeremiah thought that the period of exile would create a space for the anticipation of the coming of a single ruler who would rule all created space, simultaneously fulfilling the roles of the king, as they knew them mostly in their failures, and the role of priests, as they knew them as mostly failed mediators between man and God. A future King in the line of David would dare of himself to approach the God of creation as none of the Kings, prophets and priests of Israel or Judah ever could. (Jeremiah 30. 21)

The writer of Hebrews instructed the early church that the anticipation of Jeremiah was perfectly fulfilled in Jesus Christ who appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come (Hebrews 9.11) and as the mediator of this new covenant. (Hebrews 9.15) This is the Christ who rules between the Polar Bear and the Chapel. This is the Christ who will fulfill his Covenant to gather a people whose worship of the Creator and obedience to His will would be a single response that conforms all of our "oughts" and all of our "desires" as no human ruler or earthly priest ever could or should.

Outcasts & Exiles

BY JOHN THORPE

We attended a choral concert of twenty singers from a local choral society in the chapel of the Bowdoin campus this winter. They had selected a set of pieces for their performance that related to the theme of ‘Outcasts and Exiles.’ Each song was either a reflection of the theme or characterized the life of the composer who wrote the music. Heightened by the music, this made for a powerful exposition of this theme and demonstrated how this subject spans the centuries of experiences with pieces ranging from Hildegard of Bingen (d. 1179) to Paul Hindemith, exiled to the U.S. from Nazi Germany.

Readers of the Bible would not be surprised to note that eight of the twelve pieces performed were Biblical texts or based on Bible stories. God is no stranger to the subject of being exiled or outcast as shown first by his people, the Israelites who were oppressed, enslaved, and refugees and is also shown in the lives of the main characters of the Bible- Moses, Gideon, David, Elijah, Esther, Jeremiah and scores of others. But God not only notes the suffering of his servants being outcast and exiled, He himself knows this suffering in Jesus Christ. Jesus, who was a refugee from Herod in his first years, rejected by the religious authorities in his teaching years and finally executed by both religious and government leaders only for declaring his true identity as the Son of God, suffered as an exile and outcast. Well did Isaiah prophesy that the Messiah would be

Despised and rejected. A man of sorrows and acquainted with grief And as one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised.

Isaiah writes this description, not merely so that we will take pity on the one who suffers, but also to instruct us that this is the path toward redemption, that is, the very answer to suffering.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. He was pierced for our transgressions; He was wounded for our iniquities.

A man or woman who hears of the suffering of refugees in some distant country may have pity on them and even send money to alleviate the suffering, but the one who goes and lives alongside those who suffer and who, themselves, bear the pain, danger and social reviling of those who suffer, will be instruments of healing, redemption, and rescue, all propelled by love. This is not to minimize these initial expressions of pity, as indeed, the road begins there, but the redemption that takes place is proportional to a person’s willingness to be present alongside those who suffer. Who has not been inspired by stories of people who have emptied their own lives and aspirations for the good of others? Movies, books and stories shine with this theme.

The power of this message of sympathy coupled with action is not only an inspiring story but has become for us- the wisdom and power of God. God rules over creation and is also the One who bears suffering (despised and rejected) and through this suffering rescues the very people who have brought on his suffering. The reign of such a God is the final word on how the universe works. This declaration that God himself is the author and finisher of mercy, propels the world forward toward the kingdom of God in which, powered by his love, peace will ultimately reign.

Obedience is Our Love for Him

BY ISMERAI ORTIZ

Jeremiah obeyed God’s commands, and urged God’s people to also persevere in obedience. Throughout the Book of Jeremiah and the rest of the Bible, God never ceases to remind us that being His people meant obeying His word. But why was obeying God such an essential part of being His people?

Growing up, my faith depended on my parents, following the rules they expected me to follow. Likewise, my relationship with God consisted of knowing the commandments He gave us, and knowing we had to obey them. For me, this was what God consisted of: rules. Not obeying the rules meant consequences would follow, and my attention focused solely on the materialistic rather than the spiritual consequences  Because of this, I didn’t understand what it felt like to have a relationship with God; what it meant to feel God’s love and in return what it felt like to show my love for Him.

During my teenage years, I went through a period of spiritual drought. If I didn’t pray or go to church on Sundays, I felt little to no guilt, and when God’s discipline came, instead of fixing my ways, I ignored it and used it as an excuse to go further away from Him. Just as the people of Israel, I “did not respond to correction.” (Jeremiah 2:30 NIV).

It took me a long time to once again walk in God’s path. Throughout a large period of my spiritual journey, I often felt joy from worshiping God, but the guilt I felt from failing to obey God with full submission was crippling. It was a heavy burden, and I didn’t understand why obedience was so necessary. What was this obedience for?

God “gave them this command: Obey me, and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you, that it may go well with you.” (Jeremiah 7:23 NIV). Here God tells us that to be His people, we must obey Him, and in doing so, it “may go well with” us. As Christians, we choose to obey God’s word. Of course, we’re not in any way perfect, and we always fail, but we still try not to sin. The key part of this is that we are trying, and in doing so, we recognize that the consequence of not obeying God’s word is that we get separated from Him. Obedience helps us keep close to God.

Disobedience and God’s discipline is not a direct cause-and-effect relationship that occurs all the time. Throughout the Bible and in our own lives, we can see how the obedient might face challenges that might seem like punishments from God while the disobedient continue to prosper despite their evil deeds. The former is evident in the Book of Job, where Job, a righteous man, gets robbed of his possessions, stripped of his family, and even develops painful sores all around his body. Likewise, in the present time, we might see people choose disobedience for short term gain all around us, pursuing their own passions over God, yet they continue to prosper.

At the end of each of our lives, however, every single one of us is inevitably subject to God’s perfect judgement. At this time,  the righteous will be blessed, while the unrighteous will face their due justice. Thus, not every act of disobedience might be met with discipline in our present lives, but when we don’t live according to God’s word, we feel empty and might feel resentment towards many aspects of our life, including God. And sometimes (sometimes!) we do face God's discipline— but we should be thankful because this is God's display of love for us! 

Solomon gives us this instruction: “My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline, and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father the son he delights in.” (Proverbs 3:11-12 NIV). Why should we “not despise the Lord’s discipline”? Solomon tells us that God disciplines us because he loves us, like a parent that disciplines their child. Even in discipline, God’s love for us never changes, and although the pain we suffer from this can make us feel like He doesn’t love us, we need to recognize that discipline is necessary to having a right relationship with Him.

God tells us in Jeremiah:  “In vain I punished your people; they did not respond to correction. Your sword has devoured your prophets like a ravenous lion.”(Jeremiah 2:30 NIV). We see that there is a purpose to the punishment God gave to the people of Israel, he says “in vain” because the punishment did not turn His people back on the correct path. “They did not respond to correction.” In other words, He wants us to “respond to correction,” to recognize what we did wrong and to once again be close to Him.

 Apart from bringing us closer to God, our obedience to Him shows the love we have for Him. “If you love me, keep my commands.”(John 14:15 NIV). We are already saved from sin through Jesus, “so if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:36 NIV), therefore our obedience is meant to bring us closer to God, and also to free us from our sins.

At first, my understanding of God and obedience consisted of only knowledge, but when I finally felt the love for God in my obedience, I wanted to love God with all of my being. I wanted to have a conversation with Him through prayer, engage in His word for answers and comfort, and look to Him in times of happiness and in times of sadness. “ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.  Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” (Jeremiah 29:11-13 NIV). We must seek him “with all of our heart”, and in doing so, we leave no space for anything that is not Him.

De-Exile

BY JULIETTE MIN

It took me weeks to acknowledge that I was actually relieved when Bowdoin College went remote for the rest of Spring 2020. Receiving this news from the safety of my home mid Spring Break, I’m sure some would have thought this relief had come from fear of leaving a safe environment and contracting the disease. The shameful reality, however, was that my relief had less to do with the virus and more with the state of my own heart. It came from the immense need to slow down and take a moment to rest and reflect. It felt so selfish that I was ashamed to admit it, but months leading up to Spring Break, I had been exhausted and drained from fighting a fight I could not win. 

As I began to reflect on these feelings, I began to question my heart: “Why was I feeling this way?” Surely God was with me through it all at Bowdoin— I had no reason to feel like I was running on empty. Our Bible studies and Friday fellowships were increasing in number and so blessed by God’s provision. My professors were opening up new ideas and knowledge and I loved grabbing meals and spending time with my peers. I had made for myself a home at Bowdoin, and was so thankful for everything God had blessed me with. But why was I joyous to spend the rest of my semester at home? Why did it feel as though staying here for a little while longer was a blessing from God, allowing me a moment to be refreshed and renewed? Feeling as though I was gifted with time to savor precious moments with my parents and sisters, my heart was overfilled with thankfulness. 

But in the meantime, as a sophomore who was desperately running a race to secure my  summer internship for next year and planning for my year abroad at the highly coveted Oxford University, I quickly became riddled with vulnerability and fear as I felt the pain and frustration of uncertainty surrounding future plans. While at Bowdoin, I was told to network like my life depended on it, partake in summer research that would make my resume stand out, and be so prepared that when one plan falters I have two more backups to choose from and connections to leverage. When Bowdoin officially cancelled this year’s summer opportunities, next year's internships were dwindling in number, and I quickly started receiving rejections from the finance firms I had been applying to, I realized upon reassessment that I wasn’t even sure why I was so adamant about working in finance in the first place. I was blinded by ambition in pursuit of prestige, success, and honor that I felt wasn’t satisfying God’s purpose for me in this world. 

As things at home settled in, I took the period of self-isolation as a uniquely given opportunity to reflect. Participating in weekly studies from the study center on the Book of Jeremiah, I examined how God interacted with the  nation of Judah and searched for parallels in my life, my conduct, and where I had placed God.

In Jeremiah 7:8-10, we can see that the nation of Judah was not acting in a way that was pleasing to God. 

“Behold, you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder, commit adultery, swear falsely, make offerings to Baal, and go after other gods that you have not known, and then come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, ‘We are delivered!’— only to go on doing all these abominations?” (Jeremiah 7:8-10 ESV)

Through these verses, we learn that the people of Judah didn’t practice what they preached. Compromising holiness with selfishness and complacency, they believed that God would continue to bless their nation regardless of their heart and conduct. From individual choices to institutional failures, Judah lived according to their own desires and standards. False prophets of that time blithely proclaimed that Jerusalem was forever destined to be “the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD,” taking God’s love and grace for granted (Jeremiah 7:4 ESV), and King Jehoiakim of Judah even had the audacity to throw God’s words into the fire after he heard the prophetic words written by Baruch and Jeremiah. When I think of God, the creator of these people, I feel it is only natural that his response is displeasure: 

“For long ago I broke your yoke

And burst your bonds;

But you said, ‘I will not serve.’

Yes, on every high hill

And under every green tree

You bowed down like a whore.”

(Jeremiah 2:20 ESV)

From the beginning, God made for us to worship no other gods besides him. Judah’s rejection of following even the first of the Ten Commandments earned them their exile, where God took them to an unfamiliar land with new language and foreign culture, making them serve the king of Babylon for seventy years. This became the turning point in history when the people of Israel began to believe strictly in our monotheistic creator God. 

While in our present time we may not physically build statues and bow down to idols, false gods are evident throughout our modern institutions. Whether it be education, beauty, comfort, science, or even our own self-sufficiency, these idols we worship pervade our culture and our lives in such a way that we learn to become dependent on the wrong things. 

Strip it all away. When a pandemic takes politicians to overcrowded hospitals, leaves 401K’s and financial institutions in shambles, prevents us from sharing intimate moments with loved ones and friends, and replaces in-person classes with Zoom meetings, we begin to realize that everything screams uncertainty. But not God: 

At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” The words “once more” indicate the removing of what can be shaken—that is, created things—so that what cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.”' (Hebrews 12:28-29 ESV)

The institutions that we are holding onto will only lead to failure and disappointment. While it may have seemed to the nation of Judah pre-exile and to us pre-COVID-19 that to let go of the world was costly and too big a burden, our false gods can never provide what God can. God calls us to put our trust in him alone because he is the only one that is imperishable, perfectly beautiful, and powerful.

As I read the Book of Jeremiah, I felt God revealing to me idol after idol I had been worshiping in addition to God. I immediately felt ashamed, realizing that I was the modern day version of Judah. Applying to the biggest finance firms to become “successful” upon graduation, planning my study abroad at Oxford University for the added prestige, and striving to make the Bowdoin community my new home, I had mapped out my whole life for myself, pushing God into a tight corner of my heart to provide for me only when I felt the uncertainty of my plans. My dependence on God’s goodness exactly paralleled that of the false prophet’s assurances, crying that Jerusalem was to be, “the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD, the temple of the LORD” (Jeremiah 7:4 ESV) regardless of their faithfulness to God.

God is greater than my dependence on institutions like my future job and resume, friendship, family, financial security, and my own pride. Through the Book of Jeremiah, God taught me that there is no such thing as self-sufficiency and that the only time we are truly secure is when we put our hope in his faithfulness to us. When I recall the relief I felt when I heard Bowdoin College went remote, I realize thatI was exhausted trying to find lasting stability in things that are inherently unstable. And all the time, it wasn't that God wasn’t with me, but it was my thoughts, priorities, fears, and meditations that weren’t in line with his.

For me, COVID-19 isn't a period of exile. It is a period of de-exile where I have learned to accept the ever-constant invitation of God to draw closer to him, experience his loving forgiveness, receive his correction, and thank him for his promises. 

Just as God promised the nation of Judah during their exile: 

“For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. And I will be their God, and they shall be my people. And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” (Jeremiah 31:33-34 ESV)

“Behold, I will gather them from all the countries to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and in great indignation. I will bring them back to this place, and I will make them dwell in safety. And they shall be my people, and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way, that they may fear me forever, for their own good and the good of their children after them.” (Jeremiah 32:37-39 ESV)

I found God the Father waiting for me to realize his loving heart, experience incredible forgiveness, and believe in his never-ending faithfulness. I realized it didn’t matter if I made myself a “home” at Bowdoin or in LA, in the UK while studying abroad or in these powerless institutions. If I am far from God, I will always be in exile, never truly home, to the Father who loved me from the moment he created me and provides for my every need. Every time we get closer to understanding our relationship to God, we come one step closer to our final destination, to our Father who loves us deeply. Thus, I praise God for remaining faithful, meeting us where we are, and encouraging us to come home to him! 

Prayer

Thank you God for bringing our attention to the Book of Jeremiah in this year’s study. I can’t wrap my head around the irony that we studied about the justice you brought to the nation of Judah as social isolation and remote learning was brought upon Bowdoin immediately after. God your timing and your ways are unexplainable but I do not question the goodness of your heart. Thank you for granting us this unique opportunity to study your message to Judah before and during their exile to search for truth in our own lives.

God I admit that my idols will never amount to your faithfulness. Help me to let go of my pride and self-sufficiency and trust you with my plans, for I acknowledge that without you I am running a race to find a security that I cannot win.

You can be content with your faith until God pushes you a bit deeper and you realize all the ways in which you’ve been complacent. Thank you God for pushing me to deeply examine how I would react when all my plans turned to dust and my life was rendered out of my control. Let me never be content with my faith, and continue to test the state of my heart.

Thank you God for redefining the meaning of home in my life. Home is where I have you and because you faithfully never leave me, I will go into places unknown, unseen, and unexpected in hopes that I might come one step closer to you.

My one and only institution, Jesus Christ— prophet, priest, king. . . one and only God— I trust in who you are, what you are doing, and in the mystery of your ways.

Push me into the unknown, lead me into spaces unexpected, and move me to speak your name into spaces that need awakening. Whether it be Bowdoin College, or my home— whether it be Oxford University or Zoom University, I have faith that wherever you send me, you will be waiting for me there.

Prepare my mind for action, increase my faith, and share my part of your plan with me.

Thank you that your words will never pass away. You are the forever God.

Thank you for loving us always.

In Jesus Name,

Amen 

Maverick City Music “Promises” Lyrics

God of Abraham, God of covenant and of faithful promises

Time and time again You have proven You’ll do just what you said 

Though the storms may come and the winds may blow I’ll remain steadfast 

And let my heart learn when you speak a word it will come to pass

Great is your faithfulness to me

Great is your faithfulness to me

From the rising sun, to the setting same

I will praise your name

Great is your faithfulness to me 

God from age to age, though the earth may pass away, Your word remains the same

You’re history can prove there’s nothing You can’t do, You’re faithful and True

I put my faith in Jesus

My anchor to the ground 

My hope and firm foundation

He’ll never let me down

A Response to Loss

BY WILLIAM BUSCHING

What just happened?  Of course we all know the facts: a dangerous pandemic, record-setting unemployment numbers, life in America on pause.  But that’s the macro view – for each of us, the pandemic’s effects are felt differently.  As we continue to stay isolated and wait until we’re allowed to resume our lives, one word that likely encapsulates our individual experience is loss.

Now imagine you’re living in Jerusalem two and a half millennia ago, in 596 BC.  This time, it’s not a virus, but the powerful Babylonian army that has twice deported some of the more prominent people in your city.  Maybe you’re one of them.  And this happened despite the exhortations of some false prophets, who had proclaimed that the people would not be taken away and that disaster was not looming.  Sound familiar?  Here too, is a feeling of intense loss – of altered plans and altered livelihoods.  But this time, you’re not being sent home.  You’re off to a foreign land you’ve never seen before.  God’s chosen prophet, Jeremiah, says the impending exile is judgment for Jerusalem’s lack of faithfulness to God.

But that’s not the only disorienting thing.  Jeremiah also conveys God’s message to the Israelites as they make the journey to Babylon.  Here’s part of it, taken from Jeremiah 29:

Thus says the Lord of hosts…. Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce.  Take wives and have sons and daughters… multiply there, and do not decrease.  But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:6-7)

How surprising.  As God’s people are uprooted from the land he had promised them, bound for an alien culture, why might God command that they settle in and work for the welfare of their captors?  God had promised Abraham a land for his descendants, and now they were being forcibly removed from it.  But God also promised that in him, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. (Genesis 12:3)  In Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles, God exhorts his people to keep fulfilling this second promise, even as the first is seemingly placed on hold.  A few verses later, God promises that He will keep this first promise with equal fidelity, describing His plans to bring you [the people of Judah] back to the place from which I sent you into exile (Jeremiah 29:14).  But it won’t happen immediately.  It’s a radical faith that God asks of His people, that they wait for the good promised them and live faithfully in the interim.  As His people today, we are called to that same faith. 

God’s words, spoken through Jeremiah, map well onto the current COVID-19 crisis.  As Christians, we are called to seek the welfare of our nation by staying home and keeping good hygiene.  We build houses and plant gardens by supporting those around us.  We ought to pray fervently for the healing of the sick and the wisdom of our leaders.  But the word of the Lord is also relevant for our entire lives.  In a larger sense, the Christian walk through life is a journey through exile, as we wait to be brought to a heavenly city.  God’s exhortation to seek our city’s welfare, then, applies broadly to our sojourn on earth.  It’s worth using this pandemic, largely a time of isolation, as an opportunity to reflect on how Christians are called to engage the world.

So what does the welfare of our “city” – whether a country, town, or institution – look like?  We find examples throughout the Bible of faithful witnesses in a godless environment, including Daniel among the Babylonians and Esther among the Persians.  Both held positions of influence and answered to a pagan ruler – but they were not sinful for doing so.  Instead, they lived faithfully, building houses and planting gardens.  Daniel, for example, resolved that he would not defile himself with the king’s food as he received a Babylonian education (Daniel 1:8).  Both Daniel and Esther honored God in working for the good of the society they lived in, and as a consequence they did good for their own people, God’s people, as well.  This assurance is evident in God’s charge that in its [the city’s] welfare you will find your welfare (Jeremiah 29:7).  We also find encouragement in Joseph, who diligently shouldered responsibility during years of famine in Egypt.  Thanks to his prudence and devotion to God in trying circumstances, Egypt survived the famine – and God’s people, the Israelites, found a home in Goshen.  Even in the midst of exile, God protects His people and desires for them to bless those around them.

As a Christian, being faithfully and thoughtfully engaged in the welfare of our city does not come without its risks.  Included in God’s words to the exiles is a warning:

Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream. (Jeremiah 29:8)

As Christians, we must rely on God to guard us from deception.  Faithful discernment is a skill developed over time, through prayer and study of Scripture, and through total reliance on God and His word.  Take King Solomon, who upon inheriting the united kingdom of Israel felt woefully inadequate to the task, hard-pressed to discern what was right or necessary to govern.  Yet instead of relying on his own understanding, Solomon yielded to God and asked for wisdom:

And now, O Lord my God… I am but a little child. I do not know how to go out or come in…. Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?  (1 Kings 3:7, 9)

This request pleased the Lord, I Kings goes on to say, and He responded by granting Solomon his request.  If we faithfully ask God for wisdom as we work toward the welfare of our own cities, He promises to provide.  He knows the plans He has for us as we build houses and plant gardens. 

We also behold a remarkable promise from Jesus, given shortly before His death.   He promises a Helper, sent from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, who will bear witness about Jesus (John 15:26).  Indeed, the Holy Spirit is sent by God to dwell in every believer, encouraging and advising us as we fulfill God’s purposes for our lives.  The Holy Spirit helps us understand God’s capital-t Truth, as revealed through Scripture.  Jesus promises that the Holy Spirit will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment. (John 16:8)  As Christians, we must serve the Lord faithfully, seeking His wisdom and working where He has placed us in our call to seek welfare.

In pursuing this call, we are to build houses and plant gardens, working heartily, as for the Lord and not for men (Colossians 3:23).  And since the Lord looks at the heart, we must trust the Holy Spirit and work to guard our thoughts and attitudes as we love those in our city and work for their good.  It’s no easy task – surely the people of Judah felt it difficult to love those who had taken so much from them.  But the Lord has no pleasure in the death of the wicked, and instead desires for us to be His ambassadors in a godless and unfriendly climate (Ezekiel 33:11).  The Apostle Paul describes how we ought to model our hearts after Christ in the work we do on earth.  We are to avoid arrogance and hostility in engaging with those who do not know the Lord, loving them as our Heavenly Father does.  As we dwell in cities not our own, enduring loss and hardship as we do the work of One scorned by many, may still prayerfully seek our city’s welfare, modeling Jesus’ love and desire to engage with those in authority as well as with the people of the land.

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect….

Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer….

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight. Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all.  If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.  (Romans 12:2, 12, 14-18)

Too Young to Speak

BY JOSHUA LIN

Have you ever felt underprepared for a task? In my experience, the feeling is always an unwelcome one. In these moments, it can feel like the only certain thing about the task is your inadequacy to complete it. That is how Jeremiah felt when God came to speak to him, appointing him as prophet to all the people of Judah. And yet, Jeremiah faithfully went on to deliver many an important message, well-received or not. Let’s take a look at how Jeremiah was able to do so, despite his youth and inexperience at the time. 

The Lord Speaks to Jeremiah 

4 Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you [and approved of you as My chosen instrument], and before you were born I consecrated you [to Myself as My own]; I have appointed you as a prophet to the nations.”

God starts by proclaiming Jeremiah’s life in relation to him. Not only did God approve of Jeremiah before he was even formed in the womb, God, at that time, had already set Jeremiah aside to speak his words. Right after, we see the task before Jeremiah to serve as God’s appointed prophet to the people of Judah. Just four verses in, we see that it is God who speaks the first words. From this, we can extract a core idea present throughout the rest of the book. Though Jeremiah is a human and very much limited in ability, the everlasting and infinite God is the one who will be speaking through him.

But let’s see how Jeremiah responds:

6 Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am [only] a young man.”

Jeremiah candidly replies that “he does not know how to speak”. Jeremiah was probably around the age of a college student at this time. To him, speaking for God likely seemed an impossible task; maybe he thought an elderly, more “spiritually experienced” person would be a better fit.

But God isn’t satisfied with Jeremiah’s answer. He doesn’t shrug his shoulders and say “oh, maybe I’ll come back in a few years”, much less go off to find someone else to be his prophet. Rather, God reinforces the statements he made earlier (verse 5):

7 But the Lord said to me, “Do not say, ‘I am [only] a young man,’ Because everywhere I send you, you shall go, and whatever I command you, you shall speak.

8 “Do not be afraid of them [or their hostile faces], for I am with you [always] to protect you and deliver you,” says the Lord.

God dismisses Jeremiah’s assessment of his own youth, telling him how Jeremiah shall be speaking to the nations, and he assures Jeremiah that he will be with him to protect him (v.8). In these two verses, we glean something amazing about the nature of a relationship with God. Jeremiah sees himself as unqualified to speak for God, and he is. Nonetheless, the Lord assures him that words will be given for Jeremiah to speak; his ability to speak as a prophet is not rooted in his own ability, rather it is wholly rooted in God.

In these few verses, we see what the book of Jeremiah is and is not. It is not the self-made story of a guy training his whole life for the prophet life. It is the story of a thoughtful God speaking to his people through a chosen servant who, by any other means, would be unable to speak for God. It is good and important for all of us to reflect on what we rely on to do what we do. Who or what is it? What are its strengths and what are its limits? 

For me, this passage was a humbling reminder of what it means to rely on God. There are still tasks which I feel unprepared to tackle whether it is applying for internships or sharing my faith with others. But in light of Jeremiah’s conversation with God, I know that it’s not my personal qualities but God’s presence with me that matters the most in any endeavor. And, by the grace of God, we can find comfort in knowing that Jesus promises to be with us when we seek him (Matt 28:20).

So, like Jeremiah, how can I keep quiet of the joy I’ve found in having a relationship with God? How can I keep quiet about this fleeting world’s attractive but deceiving hopes that lead only to death? And in light of that, quiet of God’s still greater mercy and steadfast love to those who lean on him? It is my hope that we can all live every moment of every day for Jesus who provides a better and permanent life through his death and resurrection; I don’t believe there could be any greater reason to live. God’s goodness goes beyond understanding, and, for me, he is the only one worth speaking for.

Prayer for Speaking:

Dear Lord God,

Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.

Who am I to speak for you, Lord of All, Creator of the Universe?

Yet, you are changing my life and giving me a purpose to speak

Help me to humbly live for you each day and every day,

Speaking life-giving words to the people in my life -

Repenting for the times I’ll fail to rely on you.

May all the praise go to you

In Jesus name,

Amen

Christ the Sure and Steady Anchor (written by Matt Boswell & Matt Papa)

Christ the sure and steady anchor,

In the fury of the storm;

When the winds of doubt blow through me,

And my sails have all been torn.

In the suffering, in the sorrow,

When my sinking hopes are few;

I will hold fast to the anchor,

It will never be removed.

Listen to Him

BY ESPOIR BYISHIMO

Listen First 

The phrase “truth hurts” is used in our everyday conversations when a person says something that makes someone else uncomfortable; it is an excuse for saying something that is supposedly true but hurts the other person’s feelings. In fact, saying the truth may backfire, leading to hatred between the two parties. Once that happens, it is natural to think that minding your own business is the best thing to do. Especially for someone like me, taught as a young boy to never create “unnecessary enemies,” I often struggle with three voices: moving on, saying what the other person would like to hear, or saying what I ought to say. The story of Jeremiah demonstrates that in some instances, telling the truth might be the only option to bring happiness and freedom to the other person in the long run and/or eternally. 

Truth is rare. I googled the question, “What is the rarest thing in the world?” One answer was, “a good politician with a spine of integrity.” This response appeals to our feeling that politicians can be so corrupt in their daily dealings, despite being public figures whose acts often heavily affect the masses  one way or another. Like today, in Judah at Jeremiah’s time, people in high positions misused power: “the prophets prophesy [ied] lies, the priests rule[ed] by their own authority.”(Jeremiah 5:31). Strikingly, even religious leaders, often expected to hold high moral codes, were involved in  dirty deeds. However, it is clear that dishonesty was not only of those in higher positions. Rather, falsehood was a common denominator in the society; wrongdoing and dishonesty ruled in every part of the society—everyone lived in the same corrupt way. 

“Go up and down the streets of Jerusalem,

    look around and consider,

    search through her squares.

If you can find but one person

    who deals honestly and seeks the truth,

    I will forgive this city.” (Jeremiah 5: 1)

In this hostile setting, Jeremiah was tasked to speak the truth to the people of Judah.

“Go down to the palace of the king of Judah and proclaim this message there:  Hear the word of the Lord to you, king of Judah, you who sit on David’s throne—you, your officials and your people who come through these gates. This is what the Lord says: Do what is just and right.” (Jeremiah 22:1)

Imagine how difficult it must have been for Jeremiah,  a regular citizen, to correct the king. For me, it is even difficult to do so for just a friend or a classmate. We should ask why that was possible for Jeremiah. As we see in the verse above, one crucial thing is different:his message to the King was not his own but God’s. So, he was to speak what is unbiased or uninformed but only what is certain. That makes us wonder, whose authority and words we have when we speak to other people. Ours or Gods?  Once we can answer those two questions, we will feel empowered to speak the truth. 

Therefore thus says the Lord:

“If you return, I will restore you,

    and you shall stand before me.

If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless,

    you shall be as my mouth.

They shall turn to you,

    but you shall not turn to them. (Jeremiah 15: 19)

As the verse says, the work to speak what is precious starts from turning our hearts to God, listening carefully to what he has to say. Only then can we find words to speak and the power needed to proclaim those words. 

Prayer

Lord, let me fix my eyes on you. My mouth and life desires to be a vessel you speak through. I return to you today. Amen. 

The Potter and The Clay

BY TAYLOR JORGENSEN

Something I have thought a lot about during the time spent in quarantine is what I can do while I’m stuck here. Thinking that this was the right attitude, I started trying to figure out ways to entertain myself— what hobbies I could develop, books I could read, foods I could make, etc. It all left me feeling flat. In reconsidering Jeremiah, I found myself drawn to Jeremiah 18, The Potter and The Clay. I was struck by how much I felt that God’s messages to Jeremiah spoke to my frustrations. While I had been actively trying to figure out what would be the best path for me, instead of figuring out where God wants me to be, I was focusing on what I wanted. As we learn from Jeremiah, we are always better off paying attention to God’s intentions for us.

Right off the bat, the very first thing God does in this chapter is tell Jeremiah to wake up and go visit the potter: “Arise, and go down to the potter’s house, and there I will let you hear my words” (Jeremiah 18:2). God instantly directs Jeremiah to get up and follow orders. He wastes no time. Then, Jeremiah arrives at the potter’s house, where the potter “was working at his wheel” (Jeremiah 18:3). The potter was already at work, set to task, molding his clay. It begs the question: what truly important thing could I be doing right now? The potter knows his purpose— “And the vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to do” (Jeremiah 18:4). The potter is attentive to his work and trusting of his artistic insight. He sees when something has gone wrong and he skillfully reworks the spoiled clay into something better, according to his own expert judgement.

When God asks, “can I not do with you as this potter has done?” He is asking Jeremiah and His people to have faith in His ability to transform them and we are being asked the same: to consider God as this expert potter and ourselves as the clay (Jeremiah 18:6). In recognizing our position as clay we must also realize what qualities of clay—good and bad— are found in ourselves. We can be both malleable and hardened, improved and spoiled, vessels for good and vessels for evil. Our “final product” depends on the potter, our God, but also on our willingness to be molded. The basic clay found in the ground has one big difference from ourselves: it does not choose to harden itself against the potter. It may be left to harden, but its actions are always passive. We have been granted the ability to choose whether or not we are open to the hands of our potter, however, the potter remains the ultimate expert on what should happen to the clay. Clay cannot mold clay.

We can do whatever we feel will fulfill us, but “that is in vain! We will follow our own plans, and will every one act according to the stubbornness of his evil heart” (Jeremiah 18:12).The potter has the tools and the ability to shape us, but we make the assumption that we have all that we need. Think of what Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well: “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:13-14). All that we physically have will fade away, but it is the water that Christ gives to us that will lead us to eternal life. This is the water of our potter. When the Earthly potter adds regular water to hardened clay he is able to soften, shape, and form it into something better. Imagine what God can do with us and the water that grants eternal life.

That is what we need and it is what God provides for us, but our ability to recognize this need in ourselves is vital. Without realizing our own inability to shape and care for ourselves, we will harden as spoiled clay. It is easy to go down a path of thinking all about what I want to do or what would make me happy, but my ultimate happiness lies in my ability to put aside my own wants and frustrations, see all that God has given me, and allow Him to shape me into the person He wants me to become.

Justice On the American Campus: Gospel Reflections from the Prophet Micah

by Robert B. Gregory, Esq.

Rights or Right?

Beginning in the fall of the 2015, the Christian Fellowship at Bowdoin College took up the study of justice as pronounced by the prophet Micah, and we have been guided in part by the writings and teachings of the Christian theologian and ethicist Oliver O’Donovan, professor emeritus at the University of Edinburgh and a fellow of the British Academy, whose works will be referred to frequently in this essay.

The argument made here is that campus ministries must be encouraged to renew their faith that the gospel of Jesus Christ alone, both in its Old Testament pronouncements and promises and in its New Testament fulfillment, is the necessary and sufficient protest against injustice that would be proper for a Christian student. This protest includes the hope for some modest social achievements now in the common good, and for some possible correction to systemic injustice wherever it is found. Alone means that no secondary movement or formula for protest without a redemptive context needs to be added to the gospel to clarify, strengthen or improve on the protest it contains in itself and by its own nature. That redemptive context is one that is bracketed at the beginning by the creation and the order of the good which God pronounces upon it. It is bracketed at the end by a new creation with a new pronouncement based on the sacrifice of the Lamb. And in the middle, that context is characterized by dissatisfactions with justice where the arbitration of competing claims and demands of human life is marked mostly by failure. According to the Biblical narrative, this failure of justice awaits a more perfect justice in a future to which the believer in Jesus Christ is to orient himself or herself by hope, by faith and with love for the world which is God's communication of himself to mankind.

The emphasis in this essay is particularly on the starting points for reasoning about justice which we find in the character and attributes of God who is just – and from what he has created in the world which is good. We will look at the prophetic oracles of Micah as a kind of “model protest,” and identify his point of departure for a pronouncement against the political, juridical and economic power centers of the nation Israel. As campus ministers of the gospel, we are looking for the arguments for justice within the gospel. These arguments presuppose certain things about the world, about ourselves as actors within the world, and about our available future.  The presuppositions we hold to make those arguments are those formed from the way we understand the order of creation which God called “good,” and how practical reason might argue from those descriptions of the world as we find it, toward the ideals and prescriptions about the world as it ought to be, and what ought to be done by us as moral agents.  Christian ethics is rooted in Christian metaphysics. The entire body of work by Oliver O’Donovan helped us to think about the path of practical reasoning that he refers to as a journey from the is to the ought, from observation to obligation, from good of creation to the right of justice and the ethical life.[i]

In the course of my professional career I have had the privilege of representing asylum seekers in federal court. In every asylum case, the asylum seeker’s entitlement to the protection of US laws begins only where the laws of their own country were unavailing to protect them from torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as guaranteed by federal laws. These laws originate in the commitments made in international treaties grounded in Article 5 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948.  In other words, the starting point for legal reasoning for a refugee is the failure of justice to protect those ideals contained within the dignity-based documents of domestic and international law. These protections are evaluated judgments that rely on some notion of the right that failed in protecting the rights of persons in another country and rest on some international, shared conception of the good.

Writing in the Villanova Law Review in 2009, Nicholas Wolterstorff suggests that “[t]he biggest challenge facing anyone who wants to develop a theory of rights is to explain why it is that in certain cases one has a right to the good of being treated a certain way, whereas in other cases one has no such right-no such morally legitimate claim.”[ii] He notes that paradoxically, in the case of the U.N. Declaration of Human Rights, no attempt was made by the drafters to specify what it is about human beings that gives them the dignity upon which “rights” would be founded.  “The original authors discussed the basics of human dignity. Nonetheless, they found themselves disagreeing on the matter and decided to remain silent.”[iii]  As campus ministers, we should be neither unclear nor silent about our Biblical starting point in thinking about justice: man created very good in the image of God.

The case of the asylum seeker is of interest for another reason. Many asylum seekers are seeking protection precisely because of their own protest against injustice in their country of origin.  The Old Testament prophet Micah was also a protester against injustice. Jeremiah records that Micah, like Jeremiah himself, was at the risk of death in pronouncing a prophecy of judgment on Israel. But King Hezekiah spared Micah’s life because he feared the Lord and perceived a connection between how the king treated the protestor against injustice, and how the Lord himself might relent in bringing the disaster pronounced against Israel’s “systemic injustice.”[iv]  Hezekiah took the time to reason from the good (his own life, the life of Micah the protestor and the nation Israel) to the right (sparing his life, Micah’s life and the Nation of Israel) and saw the international implications of reasoning about justice that way.  These are the types of connections between individual ethics, social justice and global ills that we sought to highlight together this year.

My concern in this essay is whether campus ministers have an adequate grasp of the resources[v] available to us in the gospel for rational discourse about justice, and how we can train ourselves and our students to think better about practical reasoning in this contentious matter of public justice. I am not arguing here that propositions about justice can be derived from facts alone.  C.S. Lewis argues convincingly that “[f]rom propositions about fact alone no practical conclusion can ever be drawn” since we cannot “get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of a premise in the indicative mood.”[vi] Rather, I am arguing in line with O’Donovan and others that practical reason in matters of justice proceeds from the order of the nature of things, the order of creation, or from the “Tao” of C.S. Lewis essay, which Lewis calls “rationality itself.”  We were looking to find that rationality for reasoning about justice which the United Nations could not identify in forming the Declaration of Rights.[vii] Oliver O’Donovan describes this starting place as analogous to the discovery of a path, or an archeological relic, both objects in the world which are “not capable in themselves of forming conscious ends of their own… [but which] can still be bearers of ends.” The rights that might be developed in the course of such practical reason emerge from the right of the creation order and are thus derivative and not original. [viii]  

We should be committed to that creation order as the carrier of that rationality and the communicator of those achievable ends of justice. Any competing non-redemptive framework for justice which denies the priority of the good over the right is a rival to the Biblical justice as we are given to understand it.  We should also be aware of the practices of the church that already serve as the public protest against the false orders of the world that deny the accomplishments of reconciliation in Christ proven in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

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Justice Now

What do we want? Justice!

When do we want it? Now!

This familiar street chant presupposes at least four possibilities:

1.     That justice in some form can be conceived of and shared within a community.

2.     That justice is a pronouncement capable of making demands on other persons.

3.     That justice can be produced without the lapse of time.

4.     That justice is really a matter of personal desire and is otherwise disconnected from any other order.

It is the third and fourth presuppositions that are most troubling to this campus minister today. Time to carefully consider the world which each individual student inhabits, the time available to them, the uniqueness of each student (the coordinates of the world, self and time developed in several contexts by O’Donovan) was part of our study this year. 

George Parkin Grant warns that the concept of justice in modern liberalism until now has been able to live on the borrowed capital of a shared consensus about self-evident goodness of the order of creation which serves as its “moral cement.” Grant’s short treatise addresses the same “impoverishment of thought” about the theological foundations of justice we are lamenting here. Traditional notions of justice were grounded in the idea of goodness based on a fitness for purpose – justice is what we are fitted for.   “We come to know that through the practice of philosophy, which gives us knowledge of the nature of things, of what we are fitted for and what the consequences are for our actions in being so fitted.”[ix]  He writes further about the reasons for the decline of thought about matters of justice, that in the past,

"the principles of our political and legal institutions did not need to be justified in thought, because they were justified in life. . . . Anyone who wished to act outside these parameters had rightly to feel or assume shame . . . liberalism could simply be lived in without contemplation. . ..The story has been told many times of how most intellectuals in our societies scorned the fundamental beliefs of the public religion, and yet counted on the continuance of its moral affirmations to serve as the convenient public basis of justice. Clever people generally believed that the foundational principles of justice were chosen conveniences. . .. Nevertheless, they could not turn away from a noble content to that justice, because they were enfolded more than they knew in long memories and hopes. They were so unfolded even as they ridiculed the beliefs that kept those memories alive among the less articulate." [x]

Does the order of creation carry with it guidance about how we ought to live? How do we help the student living within the contemporary campus culture, which demands “justice now,” recover a trust in the reflective judgments that must be made in time in order to achieve the goals of justice? What is the answer to the question “what shall we do?” posed both to John the Baptist by Roman soldiers (Luke 3.14) and those who heard Peter’s first sermon in the book of Acts (Acts 2.37)?  These are the questions that occupied our study of Micah this semester as we considered the passion for justice on the American campus.

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Taking Passion for Justice Seriously as a Quest for the Limitless

We take this cultural passion for justice seriously, for even the passion that denies these necessities of time may reflect the impatient dissatisfactions of persons struggling with the limits of the created order and with the need for answers to the questions in the preceding paragraph. These dissatisfactions and their related anxieties about justice express that yearning for the limitless which is the very paradox described by the French Theologian Henri Blocher:

The individual man or woman will indeed never be satisfied on this side of that limit. We are made for the limitless God who is revealed in the Bible – but only in a communion which respects order and not confusion. So we finally arrive at the tragic paradox: fury against God’s order feeds on the desire for God. Once the knowledge of God is lost, the sense of God wanders among created things, and not finding him, seeks for his substitute in their dissolution. Once the knowledge of God is lost, mankind accuses finitude of causing his disorder, whereas that disorder is the fruit of disobedience. Once the communion is lost, mankind wants to replace it with confusion.[xi]

Perhaps Professor Blocher’s observations pointing to idolatry help us understand how a campus culture and community can be so passionate about justice (Hebrew: mishpat) and yet be so intolerant of the judgments (Hebrew: mishpat) necessary to its achievement. What is demanded “now” is unavailable on the terms that it is demanded: justice without judgment, justice without deliberation, rights of justice without the order of rightness from which they are derived, and the redemption of disordered systems of injustice from a non-redemptive context.

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Where do we go from here?

First, we must admit that non-redemptive protest movements are too freely borrowing the words that frame Biblical justice without accepting the Biblical narrative which gives to Israel and the nations who flow to her their identity and social structures, tied to the covenant commitments and grounded in the order of creation.  “An Outline for Evangelical Ethics” can be found in the story of the “Resurrection and Moral Order,” as we learned from the subtitle and the title respectively of Oliver O’Donovan’s seminal treatise. [xii]

Secondly, we must be cautious about creating without qualification partnerships in justice between Christian campus ministries and any form of protest that shares some points of intersection largely in the vocabulary borrowed to accomplish its goals, but which then denies the creation order that defines the good without which that that vocabulary of justice is unintelligible. This concern is the one Carl F. H. Henry raises in his classic work The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism in which he outlines “The Evangelical Formula of Protest.”[xiii]  Henry was speaking about partnerships in social justice and betterment which denied a “redemptive reference.” I mean that and more. I am speaking about partners in justice who deny the demands of the creation order about unborn life, the human family, the ends and purposes for human sexuality and the structures of civil government that belong to a proper consideration of the goods of creation. Henry may also have been pointing toward a just civilization grounded on this kind of creation order when he wrote:

In whatever sense the later Christian message did away with the law, it did not set aside any ultimate truths. Both in Old Tes­tament and New Testament thought there is but one sure foun­dation for a lasting civilization, and its cornerstone is a vital knowledge of the redemptive God. In both eras it is wrong to worship false gods, to murder, to commit adultery, and for a reason more ultimate than that the prophet Moses said so. These deeds were wrong before Moses, yes even before Adam; they have been wrong always, and will be wrong always, be­cause they are antagonistic to the character and will of the sov­ereign God of the universe. They are wrong for all creatures anywhere anytime. The universe is put together on moral lines; any attempt to build a civilization on other lines, whether before or after the coming of Jesus Christ into the world, foredooms itself. The ten commandments disclose the only secure foundation for a society without the seeds of dis­solution; all cultures, cut loose from these principles, have in them the vitiating leaven of decay. And no culture can hope to fulfill such high prerequisites, minus a relationship with that God, holy and redemptive, who is the precondition for their very disclosure to man.[xiv]

Thirdly, the creation-order limits of the moral agent acting within the moral field are the self, the world and time.[xv]  What can be accomplished by a particular college student, acting within the world, within each one’s available time, is unduly pressed within all of those horizons by the thought of “justice now.” O’Donovan expresses this concern about the idealists’ demands hoped for beyond these limits:

I may, of course, hope for things I cannot pursue. Deep changes in the world can and as Christians believe, will come about; the lion will lie down with the lamb. The horizon of hope makes possible our practical search for less far-reaching reconciliations. It is important to distinguish an object of hope from a practical ideal. Loose theologians’ talk about “bringing in the Kingdom of God” is a foolish effervescence, combining the highest possible tension of impatience with the vaguest possible sense of direction. There are, as we have seen, two types of question a moral doctrine may answer: what are the goods we may know within the world? And, what goods are appropriate to forming the right ends-of-action here and now? The kingdom of God is among the answers to the first of these questions. God has shown us his ultimate purpose in Jesus Christ, and will bring in the Kingdom of his Son. But what I have to discern is the concrete thing that is given to me to do in the light of that hope. And when somebody invites me to join in creating a new world free of misunderstanding and suspicion - just sign the petition here! - I know that he or she is bleary-eyed with moral hyperventilation.

“Not everything that should be done, should by us be done… .”[xvi]

Lastly, this is not a plea for indifference about matters of social justice or in any way to silence the protest that is the voice of the gospel. To the contrary, Micah was enjoined to cease from speaking about such matters, and by all means to stop preaching:

6 “Do not preach”—thus they preach—
    “one should not preach of such things;
    disgrace will not overtake us.”
7 Should this be said, O house of Jacob?
    Has the Lord grown impatient? Micah 2.6-7

As if on cue, events unfolded this fall at Yale University, Amherst College and University of Missouri while similar incidents occurred at Bowdoin College that engendered weeks of interest about cultural appropriation as an act of injustice, “micro-agressions” and violence.[xvii] Against these events, Christian students and others are told, “Do not preach” merely Christianity to protest injustice. But occasions like these afford Christian students the opportunity to consider limits of practical cooperation with these other justice movements and protests. This is not to say that protest is never the posture of the Christian community, for protest and criticism are the way the cross confronts the culture. The gospel neither commands indifference nor authorizes a challenge to structures of authority ordained to accomplish justice – as far as that can be achieved this side of ultimate justice. Again from O’Donovan:

. . .  there has to be an alternative way of engaging with public affairs which does something better than simply cooperate on the one hand and avert the eyes on the other. Criticism is the form of political engagement which emerges as normative within the apocalyptic perspective. Criticism has the advantage, as its proponents see it, of illuminating the course of history by the word of God, yet without pretending to master history or even exploit its supposed neutrality, but pointing to the mystery of the ultimate triumph of the divine word as the object of its hope.[xviii]

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The Gospel is the only adequate protest against injustice.

I owe this insight to an African pastor and friend, Agabus Lartey from Boston, Massachusetts who has preached to our Christian Fellowship at Bowdoin.  God alone holds the protest for injustice.  Pastor Lartey directed me to Isaiah 40.14 for that, a text he said he had meditated upon at length:

13 Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord,
    or what man shows him his counsel?
14 Whom did he consult,
    and who made him understand?
Who taught him the path of justice,
    and taught him knowledge,
    and showed him the way of understanding?

Pastor Lartey’s daughter Kristin was gunned down in urban violence at the age of 22. I received his permission and encouragement to share his story of anguish here. On August 12, 2012, Pastor Lartey learned that his daughter was killed in a parked car with three high school friends on Harlem Street in Dorchester. Pastor Lartey shared with me that ten years before this tragedy, God had prepared him for such a possibility.  Ministering in an area known for urban violence, he asked himself “What would I do if one of my own were to be killed in act of random violence?”  His answer, “I would seek revenge at my own hands.”  But when this day came, there was "no search for revenge." This is how it is reported in the Boston Globe:

Lartey, a deeply religious man who was born in Ghana, said he prays for police to make an arrest, but not out of bitterness or spite: God is good, he said. God has given him grace.

“For the safety of the people in the Boston community, I would want them to be arrested,” said Lartey. “When people feel they can do something with impunity, and they feel invisible, then they might be inclined to repeat that thing again.”

He prays, as well, for his daughter.

“God, help me see my daughter again,” he said, over and over, as he walks, and thinks about her, tears streaming down his face. When she was alive, he prayed for his daughter every morning, but he never asked God to protect her from the wicked. He did not think he needed to.

“Who is expecting their child to be killed like that?” he asked. . . .

“It is with me all the time,” he said. “I don’t have a switch to turn on and off.”

But the peace he has found in God is constant, too. He said he harbors no hatred for his daughter’s killer or killers.

“I love them, just as God loves them, although I hated what they did to my family,” he said. “If you could put that in bold letters: I love them.”[xix]

God admits of no innovators in the field of justice.  Those who speak about justice in words borrowed from divine counsel are late to the conversation. Justice is God’s topic. Who taught him the path of justice?  God’s discourse about justice and judgment and the community of faith who pronounce those words are mutually defining.  The words spoken in the prayers and preaching of the community define the community. At the same time, it is the community of the faithful that has been entrusted with these words: and what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses entrust to faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

This remnant minority community that identifies itself by the life, the crucifixion, the resurrection and the ascension of the risen Jesus, like Pastor Lartey, must be a reflective people. It must resist the temptation to eliminate the need for time to reflect, and to ignore the sense of place which locate us within the creation order God has called “good.”  These are the horizons of the world, the self and time referred to extensively in professor O’Donovan's writing. Biblical vocabulary for justice is, as he has suggested, a vocabulary which becomes the dominant language of the gospel of redemption in the New Testament. It carries with it a political “pre-history.” “Almost the whole vocabulary of salvation in the New Testament has a political pre-history of some kind” including the words salvation, justification, peace, faithfulness, faith, and the Kingdom of God. [xx] This pre-history includes Micah’s oracles of judgment, mixed with hope, by which he denounced the injustice of Israel 700 years before the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem.

Professor O’Donovan has pointed to the smallness of Israel in the midst of stronger more powerful neighbors (Assyria, Egypt, Babylon) that created within Israel, in its structures and practices of justice, a culture of awareness for those who were too small, weak and vulnerable to provide for and protect themselves.  Micah acknowledges that paradox in anticipating the future emergence of the Messiah out a town too small and insignificant to be located by the cartographers of his day:

2 But you, O Bethlehem Ephrathah,
    who are too little to be among the clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to be ruler in Israel,
whose coming forth is from of old,
    from ancient days.
3 Therefore he shall give them up until the time
    when she who is in labor has given birth;
then the rest of his brothers shall return
    to the people of Israel.
4 And he shall stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they shall dwell secure, for now he shall be great
    to the ends of the earth.
5 And he shall be their peace. Micah 5.2-5

The gospel anticipates a ruler in Israel.  He will note merely give the peace. He will not merely broker the peace. He will be their peace.  This ruler will make all other rulers unnecessary - eventually.  Reducing our expectations of our provisional and imperfectible structures of justice is in keeping with enlarging our expectations of what the Ruler from Bethlehem will bring when his greatness extends to the ends of the earth, when all of the nations will flow back to Israel for counsel, judgment and the justice that leads to peace.

1 It shall come to pass in the latter days
    that the mountain of the house of the Lord
shall be established as the highest of the mountains,
    and it shall be lifted up above the hills;
and peoples shall flow to it,
2     and many nations shall come, and say:
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
    to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
    and that we may walk in his paths.”
For out of Zion shall go forth the law,
    and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.
3 He shall judge between many peoples,
    and shall decide for strong nations far away;
and they shall beat their swords into plowshares,
    and their spears into pruning hooks;
nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
    neither shall they learn war anymore;
4 but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree,
    and no one shall make them afraid,
    for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken.
5 For all the peoples walk
    each in the name of its god,
but we will walk in the name of the Lord our God
    forever and ever. Micah 4.1-5

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[i] In the 1994 preface to Resurrection and Moral Order, An Outline of Evangelical Ethics, Oliver O’Donovan makes it clear that he is not arguing for the “self-evidence” of the creation order.  The order of creation is the starting point “because in Jesus’ resurrection God has given back the created world.”  p xv and xvii. He continues: “Yet when we think quite specifically about Christian action we have to single out the resurrection moment which vindicates the creation into which our actions can be ventured with intelligibility.”  It is in the resurrection God “has stood by the life he made.”  Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, An Outline of Evangelical Ethics, William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids Michigan (1994) p xvii.

[ii] Nicholas Wolterstorff, Can Human Rights Survive Secularization, Villanova Law Review Vol. 54, No. 3 (2009) p 412.

[iii] Ibid, p 413.

[iv]  Jeremiah 26.16 ff.

16 Then the officials and all the people said to the priests and the prophets, “This man does not deserve the sentence of death, for he has spoken to us in the name of the Lord our God.” 17 And certain of the elders of the land arose and spoke to all the assembled people, saying,

18 “Micah of Moresheth prophesied in the days of Hezekiah king of Judah, and said to all the people of Judah: ‘Thus says the Lord of hosts,

“‘Zion shall be plowed as a field;
    Jerusalem shall become a heap of ruins,
    and the mountain of the house a wooded height.’

19 Did Hezekiah king of Judah and all Judah put him to death? Did he not fear the Lord and entreat the favor of the Lord, and did not the Lord relent of the disaster that he had pronounced against them? But we are about to bring great disaster upon ourselves.”

[v] The word “resources” is used by William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination, Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism, in his insightful historical proposal of how the western concepts of “state” and “religion” emerge out of the settlement of the so-called Wars of Religion. Cavanaugh’s discussion of the liturgy of the church, in particular the Eucharist, as a “resource for resistance” (p 22 and 52) may be the most helpful way for us to think about the practices of the church that shape our beliefs. Practices like the Eucharist are the public witness of the “Church as Body of Christ” which “transgresses both the lines which separate public from private and the borders of nation-states, thus created spaces for a different kind of political practice, one which is incapable of being pressed into the service [of the State].” P 90. In the context of the argument made in this paper, the Eucharist has two significant implications: first, it is the public protest that refuses to silence the prophetic message of the church “Do not preach” of Micah 2.6, and second, it is the proclamation of the entire church catholic in each administration of that practice. “By the same liturgical action, not part but the whole Body of Christ is present in each Eucharistic assembly.”  This would be a fruitful avenue for further thought about the Christian student’s public protest against injustice. William T. Cavanaugh, Theopolitical Imagination, Discovering the Liturgy as a Political Act in an Age of Global Consumerism, T&T Clark, London, England (2002) p 114.

[vi] C. S. Lewis, Abolition of Man, Part 3, The Way p 2.

[vii] See, Oliver O’Donovan, The Language of Rights and Conceptual History, JRE:32.2:193-197 (2009). In his critical review of the work of Nicholas Wolterstorff he writes (quoting Wolterstorff) “either “rights” are ‘foundational to human community’ so that “justice is ultimately grounded on inherent rights,” or “right” is foundational, and rights derived from it.” [citations omitted], p 195.

[viii] Oliver O’Donovan, 2001 Natural Law Lecture: The Path, American Journal of Jurisprudence Vol. 56, Issue 1, p 2011.

[ix] George Parkin Grant, English-Speaking Justice, University of Note Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana (1974) pp 44-45.

[x] Ibid 66-67. Grant also writes: “The view of traditional philosophy and religion is that justice is the overriding order which we do not measure and define, but in terms of which we are measured and defined. The view of modern thought is that justice is a way which we choose in freedom, both individually and publicly once we have undertaken our fate into our own hands, and know that we are responsible for what happens.” p 74.

[xi] Henri Blocher, In the Beginning: The Opening Chapters of Genesis, InterVarsity Press, 1984, p 72-73.

[xii] Oliver O’Donovan, Resurrection and Moral Order, An Outline of Evangelical Ethics, William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids Michigan (1994).

[xiii] Carl F. H. Henry, The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism, William B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, Michigan (1947) especially chapter 7. 

[xiv] Ibid, at 31-32.

[xv] Oliver O’Donovan, Self, World and Time, Ethics and Theology Volume 1, Eerdmans, Grand Rapids Michigan, (2013).

[xvi] Oliver O’Donovan New College Lecture Series 2007 Morally Awake?, Lecture 3

[xvii] Bowdoin Orient Editorial, Cultural appropriation: why they're not 'just clothes' http://bowdoinorient.com/article/10602 (accessed January 2, 2016.)

[xviii] The Political Thought of the Book of Revelation, Oliver O’Donovan, Tyndale Bulletin 37 (1986) 61-84 at p 67.

[xix] Boston Globe, August 12, 2014 https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/08/11/two-years-later-questions-fears-remain-over-harlem-street-triple-murder/8LZZalokt2OU0GMZvFwd2J/story.html (accessed January 1, 2016)

[xx] Oliver O’Donovan, The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, Cambridge University Press, (1999) p 22-23.