One of my favorite metaphors for Christian spirituality is the race. These verses reveal that we should run with gutsy, audacious, self-denial–and with trusting, child-like, dependence. We should move as fast as we can, while realizing that the fact that we can remain on our feet is entirely in the hands of Another.
1 Corinthians 9:23-24:
I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings. Do you not know that in a race all the runners run, but only one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it.
Psalm 37:23-24:
The steps of a man are established by the LORD,
when he delights in his way;
though he fall, he shall not be cast headlong,
for the LORD upholds his hand.
Repeatedly, my hands arch themselves over the keyboard while one knee props open Acts for Everyone. I pause momentarily, as if to fight the impulse that has overtaken me. Then, my fingers start slow-dancing over the keyboard. It’s as if I can’t help myself:
One of the great arts of Christian theology is to know how to tell the story: the story of the Old Testament, the story of Jesus as both the climax of the Old Testament and the foundation of all that was to come (not, in other words, a random collection of useful preaching material with some extraordinary and ’saving’ events tacked on the end), and the story of the church from the first days until now. - N.T. Wright, Acts for Everyone Part One
This comes from N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone Part One, but it reads like a paragraph out of a novel. A historically-true, gospel-centered, heart-thumping novel that reflects the kind of “education” a seminary grad can only pray for and aspire to.
Peter and John had a secret–a secret that enabled them to run rings round the book-learning of the authorities. They had been with Jesus. They had been with him night and day. They had seen and heard him pray. They knew how he read the scriptures, in his fresh, creative way, drawing out their inner message and finding his own vocation in the middle of it.
Now that he had died and had then been astonishingly raised, and had then been exalted into the heavenly realm, all Peter and John had to do to explain what they were about was to develop the lines of thought they had heard him use over and over again.
This didn’t just give them “boldness” in the sense of courage to stand up and say what they thought. Sometimes people can be bold even when they’re muddled. It gave them something more: a clarity, a sharp edge, a definite point at which to stand. And the authorities knew it.
Clean the slate, God, so we can start the day fresh!
Keep me from stupid sins,
From thinking I can take over your work;
Then I can start this day sun-washed,
scrubbed clean of the grime of sin.
I really enjoy the imagery in Eugene Peterson’s The Message paraphrase. But I have to admit, my favorite line in this passage from Psalm 19 is “Keep me from stupid sins.” Sometimes a blunt request has more power than the best metaphor.
My newest scheme is to read through Acts, which aside from being one of my favorite books of the Bible, is a great “church planting” book. I’m going to attempt to follow along in a couple commentaries as well: Ajith Fernando’s Acts and N.T. Wright’s Acts for Everyone (Parts 1 and 2). Here’s a great bit by N.T. Wright on the resurrection:
‘Heaven’ may well be our temporary home, after this present life; but the whole new world, united and transformed, is our eventual destination. Part of the point about Jesus’ resurrection is that it was the beginning of precisely that astonishing and world-shattering renewal. It wasn’t just that he happened to be alive again, as though by some quirk of previously unsuspected ‘nature,’ or by some extraordinary ‘miracle‘ in which God did the impossible just to show how powerful he was, death suddenly worked backwards in his particular case.
It was, rather, that because on the cross he had indeed dealt with the main force of evil, decay and death itself, the creative power of God, no longer thwarted as it had been by human rebellion, could at last burst forth and produce the beginning, the pilot project, of that joined-up heaven-and-earth reality which is God’s plan for the whole world.
Great point that the resurrection wasn’t merely a signature miracle. No, it’s our first and foremost example of what God does when “given” a free hand, unchecked by sin. The resurrection is what redemption looks like when the defenders have been left in the dust and there’s an open court in front of it (bear with me, it’s March). Eventually we’ll all experience this.
