from the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and Congregational and Ministry Studies at Calvin College

Posts Tagged ‘hope’

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Spirit at Work: The Transformer’s Aim

Tuesday, September 20th, 2011

In the last article we pointed out the Holy Spirit’s crucial work of “writing us into the story of salvation,” as Eugene Peterson puts it, and prompting us to trust Jesus’ promises and obey his commands. In this article we shall focus on the Spirit’s specific mission to make us saints—persons who aspire to live in, with, like and for Jesus.

Let’s start at the end—a very good place to start. The Spirit’s aim is to give people aim in life. He seeks to direct them along a path which shall enable them, at their life’s close, to have marked progress in learning Christ’s deeper ways, in growing to love him more and more. Jesus’ own goal in life, of course, was focused upon doing his Father’s will (cf Heb. 10.7) and thus bringing his Father delight. The Spirit aids Jesus’ followers to make that their aim, too—their laser-sharp aim.

Now, let’s go back to the beginning. Sin causes disarray in human lives. Satan jerks people around, and deviously conspires to make them go astray. (Cf Ezekiel 48.11; I Cor. 6.9) Persons without the Spirit are as undirected as a litter of young beagles on bungee cords. Within every sinful person’s heart, says Thomas Kelly, there exists a “whole committee of selves,” each jockeying for position and prominence. “Each self..…is a rank individualist, not cooperative, but shouting out his vote for himself when voting time comes. And even when a consensus is reached, the disgruntled minority agitates on the streets of the soul.”

So, when God’s Spirit sets out on his mission to transform a person, that soul is desperately wandering and lost.He feels unfulfilled and empty. Jesus’ followers must plead continually:

“O Lord, grant me heavenly wisdom that I may learn, above all things, to seek thee and to find thee, to relish thee and to love thee, and to order all things as they are according to thy purpose.” (Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ).

They must pray regularly, too, for the Spirit to guide them—to direct their heart’s deepest affections and allegiances aright, and to empower them to live as God intends. Continually they must make the Psalmist’s cry their own:

“Show me your ways, O Lord, teach me your paths.
Guide me in your truth, and teach me. (Psalm 25.4-5a)

Saints also implore the Spirit for the discipline necessary to help them maintain their life’s direction by careful intention. For:

“As our purpose is, so shall our progress be, and there is need for much discipline for him who wisheth to advance much.” (The Imitation of Christ)

Christ-imitating, Father-glorifying, Spirit-prompted discipline is practiced best in the company of fellow Christians assembled for worship. Why? Because two facts are incontrovertibly true:

First, no Christian ever walks optimally alone. She needs fellow pilgrims to help her stay on the right path, to encourage her along the way.
Second, In the sanctuary of God’s presence—that is, in corporate worship—the Spirit pours energy into human hearts for acts of obedience, acts of praise along the way.

In worship believers’ hearts get set on pilgrimage again; their lives and loves become reoriented toward giving the Triune God due adoration and thanks, appropriate praise and glory

During Sunday worship many Christians use their hands to make the sign of the cross upon themselves. With this gesture they are declaring again what the entire Trinity once said about them when they were baptized. They touch their heads for the Father, in whose mind they were first conceived and whose thought gave them birth. They touch their hearts for the Son, whose love for them led him to Calvary and whose heart instructs their own hearts. They touch their shoulders for the Spirit, who, as Greg Kendra says, “gives us strength,…carries us on his shoulders…and enables us to be God’s arms, working on earth.”

CS Lewis once said: “The church exists for nothing else but to draw [people] into Christ, to make them little Christs.” I would add: The Spirit aims to make them icons—visible expressions—of the Trinity.

What a way to go at living: to aim daily to live like Jesus did, and thus to bring delight to God.

Similarly, what a way to head toward dying: to look back with joy upon a life lived carefully in trust and obedience toward God.; and to look forward with hope to joining the company of saints triumphant whose chief aim—“in a nobler, sweeter song”—is to bring the Triune God ever richer praise, ever purer devotion.

Spirit at Work: Protector

Friday, August 5th, 2011

During the Pentecost season of the church year, Christians direct their attention to the important role that the person and work of the Holy Spirit plays in their own lives and in their life together as the church. Thus, in recent columns during this season we have been taking special note of the several dimensions of the Spirit’s work in the church. Each dimension reflects a unique aspect of what Christians are confessing each Sunday morning when they declare together the six words of the Apostles’ Creed, “I believe in the Holy Spirit.” In this week’s column we focus on the Spirit’s work of protecting the church until the day Jesus returns to take her home to live with him forever, safe and secure.

Let’s face it: This world is no friend to Jesus Christ. Nor is it any friendlier to Jesus’ followers. Satan unleashes his most violent furies, his deadliest attacks, against those whose aim is to live with, like, and for Jesus, their Savior and Lord.

Aware of the evil one’s power marshaled against them and also of their own weakness to withstand his malignant, diabolical attacks, Christians (must) plead to God continually for help to withstand their deadly enemy. Regularly they (must) cry out to God with such words as are found in the venerable Heidelberg Catechism, a sixteenth-century confession of faith:

By ourselves we are too weak
to hold our own even for a moment.

And our sworn enemies—
the devil, the world, and our own flesh—
never stop attacking us.

And so, Lord,
uphold us and make us strong
with the strength of your Holy Spirit,
so that we may not go down to defeat
in this spiritual struggle,
but may firmly resist our enemies
until we finally win the complete victory.

(Heidelberg Catechism, Q&A 127)

But Christians do not endure Satan’s attacks only as individual believers. The entire community of Christ, Jesus’ dearly loved bride, his church, also finds herself under relentless threat from a “world with devils filled” whose chief sworn purpose is to “undo” her. “Nowhere is the power of hell more strongly aimed than against the church where the aroma of Christian holiness fills the air,” to paraphrase St. Hereticus. Thus, the church, too, stands in urgent need of a strong shield to protect her, a fortress so sturdy and impregnable that only God can build and provide it.

Here the Spirit of the resurrected Jesus comes to the rescue. It is the Spirit who erects an armor and defense around believers and around the church. Thus, no matter how ferociously and relentlessly Satan keeps mounting assaults against Christians and the church, Jesus’ Spirit keeps them safe. The bride of Christ is secure from anything that can do her harm, from anyone bent on defiling her and tearing her away from him who cherishes her.

Knowing they are safe, Jesus’ followers can have steadiness of spirit. The words of St. Cyprian, third-century bishop of Carthage who was martyred for his faith, reflect the poise with which Christians of every age have been able to face heavy oppression:

This seems a cheerful world, Donatus, when I view it from this fair garden, under the shadow of these vines. But if I climbed some great mountain and looked out over the wide land, you know very well what I would see. Brigands on the highways, pirates on the seas; in the amphitheatres men murdered to please the applauding crowds; under all roofs misery and selfishness. It is really a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. Yet in the midst of it, I have found a quiet and holy people. They have discovered a joy, which is a thousand times better than any pleasure of this sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians … and I am one of them.

The source of this sturdy confidence, this quiet tranquility and hope? It is anchored in the confident trust Jesus’ community puts in his promise to them: “Be of good cheer, for I have overcome the world.”

Each Sunday when the Christian community gathers to worship God and to fellowship with one another, it hears that promise declared again. It listens anew to Jesus’ invitation to believe his promise. When believers reckon their lives—and their life together as a church—upon the trustworthiness of that promise, they discover that the fiercest, most hellish torments of the evil one are nothing. His rages cannot tear them from the Spirit’s strong embrace, nor banish them from their secure, Spirit-given sanctuary.

Having thus received weekly assurance from their Lord on Sunday morning, Jesus’ followers find hitherto undiscovered, untapped sources of strength to live boldly in the world. They discover anew, as they make their way through frequently confusing, often ominous and threatening happenings during the week, that he is holding them fast. They receive power to live out the bold words William Temple, then Archbishop of Canterbury, declared during the darkest days of World War II to his fellow believers:

When we worship God and serve him, Christ reigns;
When we know success or taste defeat, Christ reigns.
When we live, when we die, Christ reigns.
When history goes, and time shall be no more, Christ is king forever and ever.

And all of this because, until Jesus returns, his Spirit is serving as the church’s Protector, her Safety and her Strength.

Designed to the Inheritance of Jesus

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

Yogi Berra once commented, “I know the future. It’s just like the present, only longer.” Christians demur: They believe that the best—by far—is yet to come. God’s Word convinces them that the Lord’s favorite tense is future, that the entire human drama is moving toward a grand finale for believers, and that Jesus bids them not to miss it.

 When Christians gather for Sunday worship, boldly they repeat together the ancient confession: “I believe in the life everlasting.” They take fresh hope from St. Paul’s assuring words: “And so we shall be with the Lord forever” (1 Thess. 4:18). John Calvin considered “meditation upon the future life” so crucial to healthful Christian living  that he listed it as one of  three marks of the Christian life. And Lewis Smedes, twentieth-century heir of the Calvinist Reformation, never tired of proclaiming: “Keep hope alive, and hope will keep you alive.” 

 When Christians declare their hope for a tomorrow full of bright promise, they do so not because (their) life today has been uninterruptedly tranquil, Pollyanna-cheery. It’s not a matter of “Life’s good today; why wouldn’t it be better tomorrow?” Quite the contrary. As often as not, saints hear God’s call to reckon upon his promise and practice Christian hope when their present circumstances are anything but promising—when life’s winds have been blowing hard against the little boat of their souls. It is there and then that they hear their Savior calling them to place their trust firmly in him, and to have confidence that he shall guide their fragile craft safely to harbor. They discover that practicing such rugged hope renews them, refreshes their spirits, and supplies them with strength to endure present distress. 

 Seventeenth-century Anglican divine Jeremy Taylor, in Holy Living and Holy Dying, wrote: 

“Now suppose thyself in as great a sadness as ever did load thy spirit, wouldst thou not bear it cheerfully and nobly if thou wert sure that within a certain space some strange and excellent fortune would relieve thee, and enrich thee, and recompense thee, so as to overflow all thy hopes and thy desires…? Now then, when a sadness lies heavy upon thee, remember that thou art a Christian designed to the inheritance of Jesus; … consider how great is that joy, how infinite is that change, how unspeakable is the glory, how excellent is the recompense, for all the sufferings in the world…. Here thou art but a stranger travelling to thy country, where the glories of a kingdom are prepared for thee; it is therefore a huge folly to be much afflicted because thou has a less convenient inn to lodge in by the way.”

 But meditating on the future life does even more. It also quickens Christians’ longing for greater—and still greater—fellowship with their precious Savior. To be sure, they do enjoy the gift of new life in Christ now. But God’s Word assures them that present delight is but a foretaste—a small sip—of what is to come. Thus, when they set their hearts toward imagining the day when fellowship with their Lord will be sweeter and better by far, then Christians pray with increasing fervor: “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly” (cf. Phil. 1:20-24; Rev. 22). They declare—no, they sing out!—the grand expectation: 

In mansions of glory and endless delight, I’ll ever adore thee in heaven so bright;

I’ll sing with the glittering crown on my brow: if ever I loved thee, my Jesus, ‘tis now.

How better to enflame that longing, to quicken that desire for fuller fellowship, than by making meditation upon the future life a part of one’s regular practice? And where better to do so than in the company of the saints gathered on Sunday for worship? For it is there—“in the sanctuary,” among pilgrims who are enroute together—that saints practice the skill of lifting their minds and hearts above life’s present circumstances and training them on the best “which is yet to come.”

 I spent most of the summer of 1979 doing doctoral research in Geneva, Switzerland. Switzerland—it goes without saying—is impossibly beautiful, and Geneva is a dream destination for any Calvinist. But what began gloriously for me eventually turned into dull tedium and grinding dreariness. Separated from Marcia and our three small children, I was homesick. 

 My study leave having reached its merciful end, my heart skipped a beat for joy—and relief—as I boarded the aircraft. In Chicago I phoned home to arrange for Marcia to pick me up at the Grand Rapids airport. A few minutes into the conversation, she handed the phone to our four-year-old son, who had been begging to talk. His only question to me—a plea, really: “Daddy, when am I going to be where you are?”

 That longing question is the finest description I know of the Christian’s present desire for the life to come. Saints eagerly await that coming day of full fellowship with their Lord. They may not be clear about details of life in the world to come, but one thing is they do know: They will be where Jesus is. Knowing that makes all the difference for them. It keeps them going until the grand day appears.

Risen Indeed

Friday, February 11th, 2011

On the third day he arose again from the dead.”

Simple words often capture life’s most profound and important truths the best. How better, therefore, for Christians to make their most astonishing declaration about Jesus Christ than by this direct, unadorned, and so forthrightly clear confession?

Beyond the simplicity and directness of the claim, however, there lies a deep and awe-evoking profundity. For what is being confessed by these simple words is a truth so beyond human comprehending—beyond even imagining—that both those who affirm it and those who hear are summoned to pay careful attention and to ponder deeply.

What Eugen Rosenstock Huessy once said about “grace,” is also true about Jesus’ resurrection:

“If you place [Easter] where it belongs, at the center of [the Christian] life, as its inspiration,

then life must cease to be arbitrary or accidental, casual or boring.

Jesus is risen! We are risen with him! (cf Colossians 3.1) Given these twin truths, never ought we to see our lives as arbitrary. At the heart of the universe there stands a triumphant Savior, whose heart beats with love for us, his sisters and brothers for whom He died and rose again. How then, meditating such stupendous news, could we ever suppose that our lives are at the beck and call of a heavy-handed, tyrannical despot who does as he pleases with us?

Jesus is risen! We are risen with him! Our triumphant Savior now holds us in his sovereign embrace. How then could we ever suppose that life—our life—is accidental? Nothing—simply nothing—can happen to us inadvertently, by chance, or apart from his control. Master sculptor that he is, he promises to use our life’s circumstances as raw material to fashion us gradually to become like him.

Jesus is risen! We are risen with him! How unthinkable, then, to see our lives as casual. We are not an unstudied afterthought, an incidental fleck of Divine carelessness. Our life is purposeful, focused, full of everlasting significance. Our every deed matters; our every thought and action count—eternally.

Jesus is risen! We are risen with him! How could (our) life then be boring?. Fools we are, then—and sinful too—to let life slide into monotonous tedium, into dreary ho-humness? Aware that the Lord is alive, every day ought to be a rare adventure of life together with him. Daily he invites us to wake up to wonder. Daily he bids us to keep our eyes open to catch him surprising us at almost every turn.

The quotation above began with the simple, two-lettered conditional conjunction “If”: “If you place Easter….” The little word serves to summon us to order our lives well. “Jesus is risen, We are risen with him”—those twin facts are Gospel truths. But our awareness of those truths is not automatic. . Like Jesus’ earliest followers, we, too, often have trouble recognizing and remembering his resurrection presence and power among us and within us. Thus, in the little word “If” we hear the call to embed these truths within our minds and hearts, to center ourselves in them.

Given our tendency to not pay attention to what’s most important, we do well, at the beginning of every day, to repeat the confession to ourselves: “Jesus is risen; I am risen with him.” Doing so, we’ll be preparing our own heart to receive fresh supply of his “resurrection energy. ” By his Spirit our risen Lord will then make good on his promise to deliver his extraordinary power for us to face our life’s ordinary—and sometimes extraordinary—circumstances.

That’s the reason, too, why we Christians gather in community on Sunday morning. Together we raise our voices in acclaim: “The Lord is risen!” We want to do this, of course; for no truth is more glad to us, none more joyful to declare. But we need to do this, too. The very health and welfare of our entire life together directly depend on our reminding ourselves that our risen Lord is among us, and that we live and work together as his “risen-with-the-Lord” people. Affirming together the truth of Jesus’ risenness, we become reminded that we are called to live a new and resurrected life in him.

St. Paul declared to the Christian church at Corinth (and to us too): “But Christ has been raised from the dead.” His announcement issued in a challenge: “Therefore, my brothers and sisters, stand firm.”

Learning to stand happens when Christians congregate to worship. For there—in the sanctuary—they remember, they reaffirm, they celebrate, and they give thanks to God that Jesus is risen.

And that they, too, have been raised to new life with him.

Now let the heavens be joyful,
Let earth her song begin:
Let the round world keep triumph,
And all that is therein;
Invisible and visible,
Their notes let all things blend,
For Christ the Lord is risen
Our Joy that has no end.”
—John of Damascus, 679-749 AD

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