Category Archives: Bible

Healing and Hiding

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This morning, I read a story that’s always intrigued me: the woman with the hemorrhage who came through the pressing crowds and touched Jesus’ robes. I’m using a harmony of the gospels these days, but the account in Mark 5 serves for a reference.

What I noticed today was the way that Jesus asked who had touched him. Surely he knew — ? This man who had known when he was dissed behind his back for being a Nazarene? This man who immediately after this episode indicates that he knows even before he sees Jairus’ daughter that she is “not dead but is asleep“? If we tried we could make a long list of incidents that show Jesus’ clairvoyance.

The commentary I have assumes that Jesus asked who touched him because he didn’t know. But I have a hard time believing that’s the case. There are times in the gospels when Jesus makes it clear that he is offering a demonstration for the benefit of those around him, not because he himself requires it. (Healing the paralytic, for instance, “so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.” Or raising Lazarus: “Father, I thank You that You have heard Me. And I knew that You always hear me; but because of the people standing around I said it…”)

I wonder if Jesus’ request of the crowd in this case — “Who touched my robe?” — was for the benefit of the woman herself. It’s because I’m (still) reading Hiding from Love that this occurs to me. Just yesterday I pondered these words, in the context of a discussion about denial:

Reality perception is primarily relational. That’s why Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father, but through Me” (John 14:6). He was showing us that truth is more than an amassing of facts; it is enclosed in a connection to Him.

We learn reality primarily from our attachments. Learning it from books and propositional statements is a secondary process that occurs after our fundamental relational abilities are established inside…

We learn reality from relationship, especially in the impressionable and formative years of childhood. Here we learn to affirm those parts of us that keep us in relationship, and to deny those parts that isolate us.

Could it be that Jesus was offering the woman, whose actions had been understandably furtive, an opportunity to come out of hiding and be healed within as well as without? She was considered perpetually unclean, and was healed in secret, but Jesus invited her to acknowledge it publicly. Coming forward took the healing beyond a medical intervention, into a connection with God. It also clarified that her superstitious belief in power emitted through Jesus’ clothing wasn’t what healed her; it was her faith that released his healing.

In The Irrational Season, Madeleine L’Engle wrote a poem about this woman. It too focuses on the personal dimensions of the story, imagining the relationship that was forged in that moment of healing:

When I pushed through the crowd,
jostled, bumped, elbowed by the curious
who wanted to see what everyone else
was so excited about,
all I could think of was my pain
and that perhaps if I could touch him,
this man who worked miracles,
cured diseases,
even those as foul as mine,
I might find relief.
I was tired from hurting,
exhausted, revolted by my body,
unfit for any man, and yet not let loose
from desire and need. I wanted to rest,
to sleep without pain or filthiness or torment.
I don’t really know why
I thought he could help me
when all the doctors
with all their knowledge
had left me still drained
and bereft of all that makes
a woman’s life worth living.
Well: I’d seen him with some children
and his laughter was quick and merry
and reminded me of when I was young and well,
though he looked tired; and he was as old as I am.
Then there was that leper,
but lepers have been cured before –

No, it wasn’t the leper,
or the man cured of palsy,
or any of the other stories of miracles,
or at any rate that was the least of it;
I had been promised miracles too often.
I saw him ahead of me in the crowd
and there was something in his glance
and in the way his hand rested briefly
on the matted head of a small boy
who was getting in everybody’s way,
and I knew that if only I could get to him,
not to bother him, you understand,
not to interrupt, or to ask him for anything,
not even his attention,
just to get to him and touch him…

I didn’t think he’d mind, and he needn’t even know.
I pushed through the crowd
and it seemed that they were deliberately
trying to keep me from him.
I stumbled and fell and someone stepped
on my hand and I cried out
and nobody heard. I crawled to my feet
and pushed on and at last I was close,
so close I could reach out
and touch with my fingers
the hem of his garment.

Have you ever been near
when lightning struck?
I was, once, when I was very small
and a summer storm came without warning
and lightning split the tree
under which I had been playing
and I was flung right across the courtyard.
That’s how it was.
Only this time I was not the child
but the tree
and the lightning filled me.
He asked, “Who touched me?”
and people dragged me away, roughly,
and the men around him were angry at me.

“Who touched me?” he asked.
I said, “I did, Lord.”
So that he might have the lightning back
which I had taken from him when I touched
his garment’s hem.
He looked at me and I knew then
that only he and I knew about the lightning.
He was tired and emptied
but he was not angry.
He looked at me
and the lightning returned to him again,
though not from me, and he smiled at me
and I knew that I was healed.
Then the crowd came between us
and he moved on, taking the lightning with him,
perhaps to strike again.

A larger and truer confession

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Someone forwarded Ben Stein’s CBS Sunday Morning “Confession” to me by email. Mr. Stein uses the following exchange as a springboard for discussing God’s alleged departure from America:

Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her ‘How could God let something like this happen?’ (regarding Hurricane Katrina).  Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response.  She said, ‘I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.  And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out.  How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?’

Mr. Stein is Jewish and does not purport to speak for Christians, but the comments of Anne Graham Lotz reflect a common sentiment among believers, one I’ve heard before. I have no problem with the idea that we reap what we sow, but I take issue with how that principle is interpreted here. I disagree with the notion that God used to confer special blessing on America, but he’s gone now. I think it reflects a misunderstanding that strips God of both faithfulness and transcendence.

Biblically, the only nation God ever explicitly chose was Israel. With the advent of Christ, he didn’t withdraw that blessing, but he did widen it to extend the invitation to all nations. Jesus’ last recorded words are,

19“Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit,

20teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28, emphasis added)

The idea that America is/was a “Christian nation” is true only in a limited sense. Its humanistic ideals are Christian; the Bible affirms the glory of humanity made in God’s image. The ideal that all are “created equal” was biblical when the founding documents were drawn up, and in every instance in which Americans have been challenged to rise up out of the hypocrisy of official oppression. But the idea that because of this we can appropriate a collective divine blessing implies that Christianity is a nationalistic proposition. It isn’t.

Jesus called for “disciples.” Throughout history, misguided rulers have assumed that he meant “nations.” But disciples are individuals. Disciples are not legislated or coerced, but choose freely to follow.  Disciples are, as Dallas Willard points out, apprentices learning to be like Jesus, to do what he said, to reflect his character. The impersonal cultural Christianity defined as a set of lifestyle choices is probably the worst thing that ever happened to this country’s understanding of the gospel.

If the conception of nationalistic Christianity is erroneous, then the suggestion that God would “calmly back out” is equally erroneous. But beyond the logical untenability of it, think about how false to the biblical picture of God this is. How can we believe that he, having made salvation available “once for all” out of his great love and mercy, would abandon us? “Lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age” is quite clear. He has dwelt here not in our institutions, but in individual human hearts. To suggest that he has departed is to claim that he has gone back on his promise to those who believe. It would be a betrayal of the worst proportions, one that would discredit one of the central tenets of God’s nature as he has always defined himself: faithfulness.

The Anne Graham Lotz comment above paints God as an aggrieved, merely polite, and ultimately powerless parent. It reduces the problem of evil in the world — a problem theologians and ordinary human beings have wrestled with for centuries — to a cause-effect equation similar to that suggested by those folks who argued that God was punishing America on 9/11.

I don’t pretend to have the problem of evil neatly solved. I do recognize, however, that it has something to do with the high stakes of the freedom God has built into his universe. (Even natural events like hurricanes, Paul implies in Romans 8, are related to human freedom; the falleness of creation began with the human fall.) A.W. Tozer offers a picture of a ship to illustrate the relationship of God’s sovereignty to human freedom:

An ocean liner leaves New York bound for Liverpool. Its destination has been determined by proper authorities. Nothing can change it. This is at least a faint picture of sovereignty.

On board the liner are scores of passengers. These are not in chains, neither are their activities determined for them by decree. They are completely free to move about as they will. They eat, sleep, play, lounge about on the deck, read, talk, altogether as they please; but all the while the great liner is carrying them steadily onward toward a predetermined port.

Both freedom and sovereignty are present here and they do not contradict each other. So it is, I believe, with man’s freedom and the sovereignty of God. The mighty liner of God’s sovereign design keeps its steady course over the sea of history. God moves undisturbed and unhindered toward the fulfillment of those eternal purposes which He purposed in Christ Jesus before the world began. We do not know all that is included in these purposes, but enough has been disclosed to furnish us with a broad outline of things to come and to give us good hope and firm assurance of future well-being.

Unlike the “saddened gentleman” of the excerpt above, who alters his purposes and withdraws his presence because he is displeased, the God of Tozer (and the Bible) is always present and always sovereign no matter what evil choices people may make. He is a much grander God, one who is surely grieved by evil, but who is as far superior to it as the sky is above the earth. We can choose to worship him, to be reconciled through the provision he has made, or we can defy him. Either choice has a consequence. But we cannot unseat him from his throne.

I second David Bentley Hart’s perspective on God’s attitude toward hurricanes and other evils:

For, after all, if it is from Christ that we are to learn how God relates himself to sin, suffering, evil, and death, it would seem that he provides us little evidence of anything other than a regal, relentless, and miraculous enmity: sin he forgives, suffering he heals, evil he casts out, and death he conquers. And absolutely nowhere does Christ act as if any of these things are part of the eternal work or purposes of God.

We need a larger and truer Confession, a creed that squeezes out the self-pity and pessimism of much that passes for Christianity today. And instead of lamenting and blaming, we need to pray without ceasing for our neighbors, our leaders, and each other.

What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? (Romans 8:31)

Reflections on the Psalms

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I have to be honest: the book of Psalms has never been a favorite of mine. It’s been praised so often by others that I’m quite willing to accept that the fault is in me. There are a few individual chapters that I love. In general, though, where others find the Psalms give voice to deeply-felt feelings and prayers, I am much more affected by some of the rousing stories of the Old Testament, the prayers in the Epistles, and the parables of Jesus.

I’m not sure why this is. But reading C.S. Lewis’s Reflections on the Psalms laid a gentle hand on some things in the these poems that have bothered me, even though I’ve never really addressed them myself: the cursings, the self-righteousness, the rapturous love for the law, the way the writers think of death as simply the end. In this book Lewis works out his own thoughts about these and other matters over which he stumbled initially. I can’t say that Lewis has illuminated my hitherto unknown reasons for having only a polite interest in the Psalms, but he does soften the guilt I feel over it. If someone so erudite has struggled too, then it must be neither unpardonable nor insoluble.

My reading of these essays was uneven; I wasn’t equally interested in all of them. (I’m sure this will be a useful reference that I’ll return to in future seasons, though.) My favorite essay by far is #11, “On Scripture.” It bothers me sometimes to hear what sounds like Bible-olatry in Christians. The implication is that it’s the only revelation we have, all questions are answered there, and that’s that.

I like Lewis’s way of seeing the Bible. He acknowledges that it includes many literary forms, writers with different levels of awareness of inspiration, interference in its canonization and editing, an evolving (and flawed) human consciousness filtering it all. He acknowledges that the human personality through which the Bible comes to us is “an untidy and leaky vehicle,” rather than one that can give us “ultimate truth in systematic form — something we could have tabulated and memorised and relied on like the multiplication table.” Instead of what we might have thought would be best, we have what God apparently thinks is best:

The total result is not ‘the Word of God’ in the sense that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the Word of God; and we (under grace, with attention to tradition and to interpreters wiser than ourselves, and with the use of such intelligence and learning as we may have) receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encyclical but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.

He goes on to make the point that it’s the very departures from our desired “perfect” vehicle that give the Bible a unique power. Because it’s not easy prey for our “systematising intellect,” it demands a response from the whole person.

I’d like to quote more, but that gives a taste. The rest of the essays are well worth reading. For those who criticize Lewis for approaching universalism, there’s ample ammunition here to accuse him again. At various points he expresses the hope that some of the ancients who anticipated Christ (Akhenaten, Plato) may be saved despite being outside Jewish or Christian tradition. I don’t read this as universalism, or in any way undermining the primacy of Christ claimed in the gospels. God is gracious, and I expect we will find surprises in Heaven like the vineyard workers in Jesus’s parable found. Overall in these essays there is a generosity, a sanity, and a willingness to face the uncertainties with both faith and reason that I found very nourishing.

About Ezekiel

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I’ve progressed into Ezekiel in my Bible-reading. These prophetic books frustrate any attempt by my analytical or “literary” mind to file them neatly away, but there are passages of great beauty and power. This morning I reached chapter 10, and found it very moving. It culminates with Ezekiel seeing the same complex and awesome vision of God as he did beside the Kebar River in chapter 1. But this time, God is departing from the temple; Ezekiel watches as the glory of God, made tangible and visible, collects, rises, and departs.

I’m reminded of a poem I wrote a few years ago. It’s called, “Everywhere:”

How do I love Thee?
Let me count the ways –

I love You at the gates of Eden
chilled by regret
looking in and longing for a walk with You in the cool of the day –

I love You with Jacob
wrestling with Your angel
knowing how silly I look and am, yet
trapped into this impossible struggle
by my yearning to hear from You
not Your henchmen –

I love You beneath the juniper with Elijah,
spent to the dregs with the disappointing effort of obedience
sleeping deeply as death
trusting You for care while my eyes and mouth are closed –

I love You with Mary
studying Your sleeping baby face for signs of God
strangely snatched out of my own life
strangely entangled in Your purposes
strangely compelled to protect the trusting weakness
of omnipotence in the flesh –

Now I want to love You beside the river with Ezekiel
numb with wonder
face scrubbed in dirt
Your holiness a smoking brand pressed against my shaking heart
holding me in perfect stillness
making even words of doom and sorrow spoken to people who will ignore me
irresistible –

I am looking for You everywhere.

Finishing Isaiah

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Isaiah is a difficult book for me. I love the story of King Hezekiah in the narrative chapters at the middle of the book. I love the passages where Isaiah’s vision soars and inflates into a magnificent vision of a redeemed earth. I’ve always loved the story of Isaiah’s calling. And I have a respect hard to express for this prophet who was true to his calling, a very quiet presence behind a very grand vision, who tradition says was martyred — is even perhaps the one “sawn in two” referred to in Hebrews.

But in general, reading prophecy isn’t my comfort zone. I despair of having an intuitive grasp on its symbolism, and I often feel I’m being tossed from wave to wave in a sea of different currents without having a clear sense of how it all fits together. That’s a long way of saying, a story it’s not. Instead, it’s a series of different oracles, some of them filled with doom, others filled with an over-the-top picture of glorious love and glorious reconciliation. When I closed my Bible this morning, I was glad I’d finished it, but I wasn’t sure what to do with it.

Looking through this resource and this one helped. I had a sense of its historical context as I was reading, thanks to the notes in my study Bible. But Ryken’s Literary Guide to the Bible helped me to understand its unity. William F. Gentrup writes in the chapter on Isaiah,

The uninitiated reader may encounter difficulties when first reading Isaiah. Prophetic books do not normally achieve a narrativelike coherence (though there are exceptions like Jonah). Because of its length, Isaiah, more than other prophetic books, will probably seem like a miscellaneous collection of doom-and-gloom judgments and ecstatic promises of blessing. There are several basic strategies readers can employ to avoid getting lost in the book…

“Ahh,” says half of me, “if only I’d read this essay before reading Isaiah!” But the other half knows that it wouldn’t have made much sense to me without this most recent visit to the book under my belt.

As a book geek, I enjoyed reading of Isaiah’s significance to Shelley and other writers of the Romantic movement, and seeing how the structure of thought compares to Shakespeare, and revisiting all the technical terms for Isaiah’s poetic artistry and literary craftsmanship.

But like many readers before me, I think what’s most meaningful to me about the book of Isaiah is its foretelling of Christ, and how many ways Isaiah finds to talk about him. A close second would be the future visions that are so beautiful and satisfying. I still struggle a bit with the back-and-forthness of God’s favor in the book; one minute he’s violently angry, the next minute he’s promising that his anger is over for good. This week celebrates the making of lasting peace in a specific moment in human history through Christ. So while my mind hasn’t sorted out all my questions yet, I put my faith in that one grand overture of divine love, and look forward to the day when things as they are change in the twinkling of an eye to things as they were created to be, under their rightful King.

Sarah

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This week I read the story of Abraham and Isaac and was confronted with its difficulty again. Sometimes poetry finds a dwelling place in the midst of a tangle, so I’ve looked around for an Abraham and Isaac poem.

I liked this poem from Abraham’s perspective, by Fr. Kilian McDonnell, though it violates the limits of the story by giving Abraham knowledge of Christ’s future sacrifice. This one by Wilfred Owen converts the story into a poem about war.

Madeleine L’Engle’s A Cry Like a Bell includes four poems about the story, one each from the perspectives of Abraham, Isaac, Sarah, and the ram caught in the bushes. I choose the one about Sarah to offer today. Sarah is such an important figure in some episodes, but she’s not included in this one. This poem imagines how she might have felt.

Sarah: before Mount Moriah

Like a small mouse
I am being played with.
Pushed around, sent from home,
passed off as a sister,
free to be the sport of others
(nobody asked me).
Nobody asked if I wanted
to leave home and all my friends
(the cat never asks the mouse).
Would my womb have filled
if we had stayed where we were
instead of following strange promises?
My maid, giving my husband a child for me,
then made mock of me.
So when the angel came
announcing — promising –
a child in my womb long dry
what could I do but laugh?
And then warmth came again, and fullness,
and my child was born,
my laughter, my joy.

…

Are you laughing at my pain
as I watch the child and his father
climb the mountain?
Am I no more than a mouse
to be played with?

I am a woman.
You — father-God –
have yet to learn
what it is to be a mother,

and so, perhaps, have I.
And if you give me back my laughter again,
then, together we can learn
and I will say — oh, I will sing! –
that you have regarded the lowliness
of your handmaiden.

The poem is no longer available online, but you can read it in its entirety in A Cry Like a Bell. Does it project a 20th-century mindset on Sarah? I’m not sure.

What I like:

  • cat and mouse motif
  • she tries to bargain with the Almighty — as many in these stories do
  • the last lines look forward to Mary (”handmaiden”) but without giving Sarah that knowledge
  • hope: she doesn’t despair
  • “and so, perhaps, have I” of the last stanza — both humble and profound.

Before the Throne

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Lately I’ve been struggling with discouragement as a mother. My girls are wonderful, such gifted and beautiful little girls. They (like my husband) challenge me to come out of myself and engage more than I ever would have done on my own.

But some days — like yesterday — I feel totally inadequate. These days are passing by, and I find it so natural to get discouraged and fail to enjoy them. Mainly it’s the repetitiveness; it makes me feel like I’m having no impact. I weary of saying the same things over and over: “Clean up your toys. Hurry up and finish your supper. Make your bed. No, do it right.” Sometimes I feel like I’ve taken up permanent residence in one of those nightmares where I’m screaming, but no sound is coming out. Am I really here — or just a shadow? Is anyone listening? Does what I do or say matter? Or is my life wasted effort?

Then, of course, I learn: yes, I’m heard. They feel my frustration. And that’s the impact I have. Oh goody.

A wise woman would probably say, “This is what motherhood is: training. Repetition is essential.” But I find myself impatient and irritable. It’s the easiest thing in the world to go from that to questions about my spiritual state. Has God really changed my heart? I recall a sermon illustration about how when you jostle a glass, what spills out is what’s inside. What’s inside me? Do I give any evidence of those fruits of the spirit — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control? Or am I just talk — just the endless yammering of my flesh?

It’s a pointless line of thought. Once you’re a mother, you’re in it for life. I can’t return the gift of motherhood and say the product didn’t fit. I need to find the resources to fight that state of mind and stay fully in the game instead of withdrawing into self-pity and condemnation. One such resource this week is a new cd by Chris Rice called “Peace Like a River.” It’s a collection of 10 hymns, retaining the traditional melodies and very simply performed with piano or guitar. I recommend it; I like every single song.

This hymn was unfamiliar to me, and I’ve been finding it encouraging to meditate on it, especially the second stanza. It’s called “Before the Throne of God Above”:

Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea.
A great High Priest whose Name is Love
Who ever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me thence depart.

When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of my guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.

Behold Him there the risen Lamb,
My perfect spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I am,
The King of Glory and of Grace,
One with Himself I cannot die.
My soul is purchased by His blood,
My life is hid with Christ on high,
With Christ my Savior and my God!

–Charitie Lee Smith Bancroft (1863)

Pretty amazing. There’s so much truth and theology packed into three short stanzas. How succinctly and naturally this poet weaves her way through it all.

I’m memorizing it as a roadmap to walk through mentally on days like yesterday — a roadmap through grace, a nourishing dish when I come up empty, a dash of cold water when I’m faint, a breath of cool air in the sauna of my natural mind.