Not celebrating a 'living legacy'

Dear Mr Cameron, 

"This is the time when, as Christians, we remember the life, sacrifice and living legacy of Christ."

No, it is not. We celebrate as our only hope in life and death, the perfect life, atoning sacrifice, bodily resurrection and current intercession of Jesus Christ before the throne of our Father God. 

Please do not patronise us with talk of shared values. Pretending to share values does not even restore society, or reconcile families, never mind restore us to a reconciled relationship with the God of the universe. Jesus Christ did not die and rise again to share a vague feeling of peace to inspire us. While we are powerless to do peace, he came to be our peace, to make peace, and to preach that peace with the Father [Eph 2]. There is no eternal hope in a 'living legacy'. There is sure and certain hope for a broken, rebellious and dead world, in a Man who defeated death and rose as the first-fruits of a new creation, and will return to judge the living and the dead.  

The chronologically-challenged 'Cranmer' draws out an interesting comparison with Barack Obama's Easter speech here. Glen Scrivener treats us to something better:

Quote of the day: Sad becoming untrue

'Is everything sad going to become untrue?' - Sam Gamgee to Gandalf, Lord of the Rings (Tolkein). Justin Taylor gives just a few lines to ponder, over Between Two Worlds. [Worth reading & pondering.]

Which also goes some way to explain why I can never conjure up despondent sadness for Good Friday, because that first Easter Sunday not only was the great gong sounding the candance of God's plan; it actually made Friday good.

Dan Blanche summarised it this Easter, too:

To treat Easter as a myth is to see the passage from Good Friday to Easter Sunday as a sort of re-enactment. In my case, it meant trying to find the right emotional response for each day: remorse passing into grief passing into joy. I suppose acting as if my participation made it real.

Easter is history. It happened once and for all. So, this weekend I will be remembering and celebrating, not re-enacting. 

We always remember the cross from this side of the resurrection. Of course that doesn't stop us engaging with different emotions as we remember different events, but it all happens within the bracket of 'Christ is risen', and therefore is not really mourning...

As better messengers said, 'Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, when he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.'

After all, even the act of remembrance which Jesus instituted, was a forward-looking one: we proclaim his death until he comes again.

Anticipation

If we knew no frustration,

tied to decay in farce of autonomy

a universal word of condemnation

apple falling, stars collapsing

in on themselves

more than Newton knew

heart retracting, stony, cold

on downward course whose light is but the spark of friction;

If tongues joined in with burning orbs in chorus:

but our base noise has toned us deaf to tune,

we hide our eyes beneath blanket orange glow

shaded by our own reflection

and blind, pass buck to Orion's piercing beams.

So aberration, blot in soundscape

Man, of all things made like Word

stand vertically

silent;

If we stuck no fingers

in our ears, at Death

- children, pretending

that what they hide their eyes from, isn't there,

if could un-man ourselves, mere brutes

kill Psyche

in a fit of suicide

- homo sapiens (self-adjudged) - thus sine science

deny our soul's here now

that god may die hereafter: with effect;

Then it were no news

that God died there and then

that homo ruined edifice dei, might live again.

Then no good that stone forced back

spilt tuning power to stone in ground and sky and heart to sing.

Then no good news that first fruit risen

ascended, radiant breathing new dynamic

before whom all must fall.

Lest you burn, hide in the Sun.

- RG

Le lever du soleil

Francis Méan © 2006

Quote of the day: be afraid

'Sometimes people ask us if we're scared, living in the inner city,' say Shane Claiborne and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. 'We usually reply with something like, "We're more afraid of shopping malls." The Scriptures say we should not fear those things which can destroy the body, but we are to fear that which can destroy the soul (Matthew 10.28).'

Paul Tripp says: 'Jesus demands everything, not just so we would submit to his control, but to free us from the control of things that were never designed to control us.'
[...]
Someone mentioned on the phone to me recently the death from cancer of a prominent Christian leader in his fifties. She described it as a tragedy. But his death wasn't a tragedy. It was certainly a loss to his family, friends and the wider church. But it wasn't a tragedy. It was gain. Let me tell you what is a tragedy: Someone who gets a good education, secures a well-paid job, buys a house in a nice area, marries and has children, and ensures his children get a good education, so the cycle can begin again. Someone who treats Christ as a hobby or an insurance against hell. Someone who leaves behind and rusting car and children who've been trained to be self-indulgent. Someone with no gospel legacy. That's the tragedy.

[...]

• What did you do yesterday for your present comfort or security? What did you do yesterday for God's future?
• What did you do last week because you saw an advert or you saw something someone else had? What did you do last week because of your confidence in God's promises?
• What will you do tomorrow to store up treasure on earth? What will you do tomorrow to store up treasure in heaven?
• When did you last take a risk for God? What did you risk?
• Hebrews 11.25 says the pleasures of sin last only for a short time. Psalm 16.11 says that at God's right hand 'are eternal pleasures'. What gives you pleasure? Is that pleasure fleeting or forever?
• Death separates us from every source of happiness except Jesus. Can you say with Paul that 'to die is gain' (Philippians 1.21) because Jesus is your ultimate joy?
• What about big life decisions you've made? Your job? Your home? Your relationships? Did you make them on the basis of God's promises for the future?
• What about the decisions you're facing now? What would it mean to make them on the basis of God's promise for the future?

[Tim Chester, in The Ordinary Hero - living the cross and the resurrection.]

Rejoice in the Lord!

At the training weekend just run for new CU leaders in the Mighty Midlands, we finished by considering Philippians 3. Then, returning home, I caught BBC2's Trouble in Amish Paradise on iplayer. What an amazing example of Philippians 3 in person, currently!

Having read the Bible in their own language, they discovered Christ, and started trusting Him for salvation, rather than the rules and lifestyle of their religious community. Not that they say those things are bad: they now feel free to obey those rules (or not), and choose to live in that lifestyle, but not to trust in it for merit with God. When the community forces them to choose: community, family, lifestyle, support - or remaining true to what they've found, that salvation is by trusting Jesus, that obeying the church is not right when the church bans the Bible and bans meeting to study it or pray or sing in your own language - then these people chose to obey God rather than men. But they testify that Christ is a thousand times better. Whatever gain they had, they have counted as loss for the sake of Christ.

Indeed, they count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake they have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that they may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of their own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith — that they may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible they may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Not that they have attained that, but this documentary described how they press on to make it their own, because Christ Jesus has made them his own. They work at it - not having good knowledge of English, they study the Bible with a dictionary to hand, as they seek to understand! They don't despise those who haven't yet realised this: they have great love for others, seeking still to be Amish to the Amish, so as to win them for Christ, and to be non-Amish to others, to also win them for Christ. They are hoping in Christ despite hardship. Watch the video and rejoice, and pray for them.

Post-Christmas let-down?

I must admit, as a natural cynic, I'm rarely let down. Life is full of surprises of grace! But I must fight for hope, which does not disappoint. With church on Christmas day, Gareth Burke introduced the children to a wrapped present which looked awfully like a tin of Quality Street. Saying it looked like they'd all have chocolates, he unwrapped it and opened it... to find it was full of paper! But there was a present within, too... a pen. All were rather disappointed. But in contrast, we will never be disappointed with the present God gives us of Himself in Jesus!

We will never be disappointed post-Christmas, if we put our hope in Jesus, rather than in the Christmas wrapping. Now, it must be said that if we entertain or are taught false promises about Jesus, we may be disappointed in the real one - he grows up to be the Scandalon, the stone the builders reject. But he is the God-ordained Cornerstone, and whoever hopes in Him will never be put to shame. Never disappointed. Never let down. Jon Bloom posts more helpful thoughts on how to have a hopeful post-Christmas melancholy, over at desiringgod.org.

...as long as the beautiful gifts remain unopened around the tree and the events are still ahead of us, they can appear to be the hope we are waiting for. But when the tree is empty and events are past, we realize we are longing for a lasting hope. [Read more.]