Jared Longshore's Blog, page 10

Advent: Life Inside the Clock

Advent is a season of waiting, patience, and anticipation. It reminds us that, while God lives outside of the clock, we live very much inside it. The psalmist says that a thousand years in God’s sight is equal to only a short watch of the night. But you have to walk through the years at the going rate for humans, living in the present and waiting to see tomorrow when it finally shows up as today. Our temptation is to think of waiting as dead space and this is just how the man who lives by sight thinks of it. He waits to see and until He sees, He is dead, lazy, unproductive today in his feigned ambition for tomorrow.

But the life you now live, you live by faith, not by sight, just like our fathers who came before us. Many prophets longed to see the coming of our Lord and saw it not. But they lived, manning their stations by faith, levelling kingdoms and stopping the mouths of lions. All while they waited.

So it is now. Given the advent of our Lord, His reign is in our midst. And His earthly reign will extend far beyond our present lives. You have something in common with those prophets of old. There are many triumphs of Christ to come in this world that you will never see with the eyes in your head and in which you will not participate, at least in this body. Your children will see them and participate in them. Your grandchildren will play their part in their day.

But you are prohibited from taking up those conquests of our King in your arms like Simeon took Jesus up in his. But you are not at all prohibited from taking up the present conquests of our King. Those are within reach.

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The Normal Hero

The old fairy tale makes the hero a normal human boy; it is his adventures that are startling; they startle him because he is normal. But in the modern psychological novel the hero is abnormal; the center is not central.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

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The Perfect Meal

One of the perrenial temptations during Advent is the temptation to the wrong kind of perfection. Yes, Scripture does say “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” But it is easy for that pursuit to become one spurred on by the flesh rather than the Spirit. Fathers insist that every dollar be spent just right. Mothers fret about every member of the family minding their manners at the meals and looking like happy bedazeled elves on the Christmas card. Children nostalgically insist that this holiday have the magic of past years.

But Christ’s arrival was anything but that kind of perfection. Bethlehem had no vacancy. People murmured about the scandal of Mary’s pregnancy. Herod sharpened his sword. Pagans showed up not entirely clear about what was going on. And God sent the main invitations to blue-collar men who made their living protecting mindless and insecure animals.

Even when this perfect meal was instituted, there was Judas the traitor at table, the disciples who would soon desert the Lord, and Peter putting his foot in his mouth about a head-washing during a foot-washing.

If our Lord’s formal institution of this table had its imperfections, how much more your table? How much more your giving and receiving? 

Every week you hear that this bread is the body of Christ broken for you. And while He is not continually sacrificed. You must continually draw upon that sacrifice. The only perfect sacrifice is behind you. The only perfect gift is behind you. And the Spirit of God has fresh supplies of that gift for you and yours. You arrived at this table by that Spirit and you will grow into a perfect man by Him. So come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Mine Eyes Have Seen Thy Salvation

Our salvation was as true before Simeon could lay his eyes on it as it was after he did so. But it was not as visible. So it is with baptism. Our salvation was decreed before the foundation of the world. But God is pleased to show us His salvation through baptism. Whether He speaks to us through Word or Water, faith is the answer to His promise. And Christ is the gurantee. As we behold baptism, behold Christ and say with that man from Jerusalem, “Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”

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An Uncomfortable Advent

There is indeed something still and quiet about the advent of our Lord. We are familiar with the manger scene as we are of the little town of Bethlehem lying still, as the carol says. But the serenity of Christ’s advent is the serenity of a terrible army approaching the rebel city, rank upon rank. He came to level many strongholds, many kings, and many kingdoms.

But the advent of our Christ is not only uncomfortable for our enemies outside the walls of Christendom. It is uncomfortable for each of us. You want the Lord’s advent do you? Then prepare to be exposed. You want the Lord’s advent? Then lay yourself open before His coming. He comes to incinerate what remains of your flesh. He comes to pierce your soul, as He did Mary’s, His own mother. The sanctification of His drawing near is lovely as it is deadly. And that sanctification requires that you play no games with Him. If you hear His voice, harden not your hearts as in the day of temptation in the wilderness. If He has convicted you, confess. If He has corrected you, then amend your ways. He has more furniture to arrange in your soul. And He’s knocking at the door.

This season affords you abundant opportunity to discover the sin that remains in you. But those discoveries are no cause for self-loathing. There’s no sense in going to hide in a hole because others are more festive than the grumpy pickle staring back at you in the mirror. Even the holes will be brightened by His coming. Whatever is dark in you, His light is brighter still. Whatever is crooked, His coming is straighter still. Many will rise and fall at His coming. And see that you rise. But the only way to rise is to humble yourself and, however uncomfortable it is, say, “Come Lord Jesus.”

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The Polity of the Jews

I consider that no polity from the beginning of the world has been more wisely and perfectly constructed than the polity of the Jews.

Althusius, Politica, Preface to the Third Edition (1614)

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Wheat World

Bethlehem was a house of bread, this being depicted in the very Hebrew words used to make Bethlehem. Beth, meaning house and lehem meaning bread. At His first advent, Christ came to the house of bread as bread. He came as bread to turn rotten and soiled sinners into bread. For we who are many are one bread (1 Corinthians 10:17). Christ came to Bethlehem to turn the wasteland outside of it into a wheatfield. And this He has done. As it is hard to stay in the dark in light-world, so it is hard to go hungry in wheat-world.

Still, anxiety frets because its afraid it won’t get bread. Greed grabs because it wants more bread. Envy glances because it wants another’s bread. But all of these have this underlying principle in common: They believe they’re in a world of famine when they’re really in a world full of grain and leaven. Should these have eyes to see the bread of the new covenant springing up from the ground, then the anxious would find their fretting comical, the greedy would give, and the envious would take delight in the bread his brother has. How could they not in a world where five loaves feeds five thousand?

But when there’s this much wheat on the hills, you can expect our Lord to  say, “Lift up your eyes and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest” (John 4:35). In view of all of that food, Jesus said, “My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me, and to finish his work” (John 4:34). He called His disciples to reap with a word that is well-suited to us today: “One soweth, and another reapeth. I sent you to reap that whereupon ye bestowed no labour: other men laboured, and ye are entered into their labours” (John 4:37-38). Notice it is not that other men labored and the disciples could grow fat and sassy. No, they entered into the labors of those who went before them and both he that sowed and he that reaped rejoiced together in the eternal harvest. You do the same as you come in faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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Through This House of Worship

When God planted the first Garden Temple, He placed it not only in Eden but in the East of Eden. Water flowed through that garden to refresh the world. In this original advent of our Triune God, He claimed a particular plot of land in which our father Adam would commune with Him and from which Adam and his household would be fruitful and exercise dominion. This original house of worship in Eden’s Paradise was not an end in itself, but the essential conduit through which the power and glory of God would spread throughout all of Eden and to the ends of the earth.

In God’s kindness to Christ Church, He has granted us a plot of land and a house of worship. In His peculiar providence, our house of worship is planted in the east of Moscow with a road running to a from it called Dominion Way. Stranger still, water runs through this land where our Church Hall sits, water that begins atop Moscow Mountain and passes right by the west side of our own Garden Temple here before flowing into and through Moscow. The name of this water source just so happens to be Paradise Creek. I lie not. The choir there can look out of the western window behind them and see it.

As we dedicate this Church Hall today with great gratitude, remember that our worship here in this place is the means through which our God and Father will extend His kingdom throughout all of Moscow and over all the world. As we assemble at this earthly tabernacle, remember we ascend to the tabernacle made by no human hand, where the Last Adam sits between His first and second advent. And as we offer living and holy sacrifices here, remember they are fueled by the Holy Spirit who like Living Water has been poured out from the Heavenly Jerusalem into our hearts to give life to the world.

Let the heart of our anthem from this house of worship be: All of Christ, for all of life, for all of Moscow.

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Stingeth Like an Adder

He awaited the receipt of six of the juiciest from a cane of the type that bitteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder, as the fellow said.

P. G. Wodehouse, Jeeves in the Offing

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This Meal Is Not Hard to Find

God’s covenant with us is one in which He swears and oath that we are His people and He is our God. This is not true of those who are outside of His covenant walls. But you cannot see God’s covenant. His covenant cannot be weighed on a scale. For this reason, God has given us signs and seals of His covenant. He did not want His covenant sneaking around in the dark. He did not want His covenant to be a secret, unidentifiable to the public.

So while His covenant is spiritual and invisible in one sense, it is physical and displayed for all the world to see in another. As the rainbow was the sign of God’s covenant of grace in Noah’s day, stretched out for all the world to see, so this bread and wine are His sign for us in the new covenant. And here it is, displayed on the table. While all of your attempts to find the end of the rainbow have merely revealed its illusory character, this meal is not hard to find. And neither is our proclamation of the death of Christ found here at this table.

It follows that you must live as God’s spiritual and physical people. What Christ has done, you must proclaim. Darkness covered Jerusalem while He hung on the cross. But as the great reformation motto goes, Post Tenebrus Lux, after darkness light. There will be many who insist that you keep your light to yourselves. There will be many who insist that you shine only a spiritual light. But Jesus died in the flesh. He rose in the flesh. He ascended in the flesh. And you are His body, which now comes to partake of His body. Let your faith be the genuine kind of faith, the kind that work subdues kingdoms, obtains promises, and stops the mouths of lions. Come in that faith and welcome to Jesus Christ.

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