New Sermon Series: Ruth

The most pressing question that any worldview or religion must answer is: what is the meaning of human suffering? The answer in the Bible is that suffering is ultimately for our joy in God. The Old Testament, in particular, gives us story after story of biblical figures who are brought low, weighed down by grief and affliction, and then how God redeems their sufferings and produces a harvest of joy and righteousness in their lives (Psalm 126:5).

The Book of Ruth is the story of two afflicted widows and how God redeems their sorrows. It's a remarkable book full of dramatic twists and turns, and ultimately, it's about the goodness and mercy of God. Over the next four weeks, Pastor Michael will do a short summer series on one of the most beautiful, hopeful books in the Bible.

Image: "Ruth in Boaz's Field" by Julius von Carolsfeld (1828)

Eternity in our hearts

"God has set eternity in the human heart" -- Ecclesiastes 3:11

Paradiso, Canto 34 by Gustave Dore (1868)

"Eternity" in Hebrew means "endlessness" or "beyond time." It means we sense a reality that exists outside of time and we long for it. Nature has no experience of eternity. All of our experiences are in-time, bound by the limits of this world. And yet, we long for something beyond the limits of this world. Love without parting. A final triumph over evil. The reconciliation of all things. The healing of all wounds.

If this world is all there is--then why do we long for things that do not and cannot exist? Ecclesiastes tells us we cannot escape our knowledge of God. It is imprinted in our hearts. And if we follow our deepest intuitions, they will lead to God. We can only be satisfied by Him.

The Trinity is the foundation of the gospel

In the Trinity, the Father loves and adores his Son (John 3:35). And the Son honors and obeys his Father (John 14:31). The Father sends forth his Son to the cross that the Son might be lifted up and glorified, because the Father loves the Son (John 17:24). The Son willingly and joyfully goes to the cross that the Father might be glorified, because the Son loves the Father (John 8:49). The Holy Spirit opens the hearts of men that they may believe in the Son and give him glory, because the Spirit loves the Son (John 16:14).

Russian icon of the Old Testament Trinity by Andrei Rublev (1425)

In the drama of salvation, each person of the Trinity serves and lifts up the other persons, because at the heart of God is servanthood.  For love seeks not its own, but the beloved.  Therefore, God is love (1 John 4:8).  This eternal love within the Trinity overflows to humanity in creation, and comes to a climax in the redeeming death of the Son on a Roman cross. There is no salvation without the Trinity. These are mysterious too wonderful to behold. We will look upon and marvel at this love for all eternity and never exhaust its depths.

I preached on this in a sermon, “Introduction to the Trinity.” You can listen to it here:

Bad Messiah

Recently, I watched Dune: Part Two. It was a visual feast and a masterpiece of film. I thoroughly enjoyed it. The Dune books were written by Frank Herbert, who is an atheist. And you can see it in the movies--there is a deep cynicism and hostility towards religion throughout the films. One of the main villains is the Bene Gesserit. They sound like the Jesuit order--this is not by accident. The Bene Gesserit is a shadowy, quasi-religious order of powerful women, who propagate a prophesy of a Messiah who would rise and liberate the Fremen from oppression. But as you watch the movies, you find out that the Bene Gesserit use this prophesy to manipulate and control the geo-politics of Dune. Not unreasonably, readers have seen the Dune novels as a rejection of the very idea of a Messiah. But I think Frank Herbert is expressing the deep heartache of a failed Messiah. There have been so many bad Messiahs in world history. There have been so many would-be Messiahs, who started out good, but ended up bad.

In the Dune novels, the Messiah-figure is Paul Atreides. Especially in Dune: Part One, he starts out as pure-hearted and noble, and you’re cheering him on as he fights against the evil Harkonnen. But as Paul rises to power, he becomes more and more twisted by vengeance and hatred. At first, he resists the temptation to use the unrestrained violence of religious zealotry, but eventually he gives in as circumstances become dire. So that by the yet-to-be-released third movie, which will be based on Frank Herbert’s second novel, Dune Messiah, Paul becomes a dark and evil ruler, who slaughters billions of people to maintain his power.

Jehu (bowing), as shown in the Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III, which is an important extra-biblical evidence for the biblical account.

When you read the biblical books of First and Second Kings, you have a series of heroic kings who start out well, full of promise and devotion to God, but eventually, they give into corruption, moral decay, and tyranny. This is the story of Solomon, Jeroboam, Joash, Hezekiah, and in particular, Jehu. Jehu is the only king in northern Israel who is explicitly anointed as king. He is literally a Messiah-figure--“Messiah” comes from the Hebrew word for “the anointed one.” At first, Jehu shows humility and pledges himself to obey God. But by the end of his reign, he becomes an idolator who ruthlessly crushes all rivals with indiscriminate violence.

What are all these stories telling us? King Jehu in the Bible, the Dune novels, Game of Thrones (Daenerys is a female-Messiah who turns evil in the end)--they all point to the universal human longing for a true and righteous Messiah, who will possess, both heroic strength to smash evil, and, at the same time, lowly weakness to rescue sinners. The claim of Christianity is that this paradoxical Messiah has come in the person of Jesus of Nazareth. He has come and will come again.

I recently preached on the life of King Jehu from 2 Kings 9-10. You can listen here:

Mini-book review: Get Married

Brad Wilcox, a sociologist at the University of Virginia, starts his book, Get Married, by documenting the dramatic decline in the US marriage rate. During the pandemic, for the first time in US history, there are more adults who are “single with no children” than “married with children.” This trend will only accelerate as young people are the most disaffected about marriage.

This will have a profound impact on society. Marriage is the foundational institution for well-being: marriage strongly correlates with higher income, with emotional well-being and happiness, and children growing up in an intact home are the least likely to be abused and the most likely to flourish.

Brad Wilcox includes several interesting statistics:

   • conservatives are more likely to get married than liberals

   • conservatives are significantly happier than liberals -- largely due to differing marriage rates

   • Asians are the most pro-marriage ethnic group in America; and not unrelated, they are also the wealthiest

   • sharing bank accounts and last names significantly lowers the odds of divorce

   • regular church attendance lowers the divorce rate by about half

And finally, I thought the most interesting statistic was the fact that divorce is contagious in social groups. According to a study done by the NIH, if your friend gets divorced, that more than doubles your odds of getting divorced. Even one degree removed, if a friend of your friend gets divorced, that increases your odds of divorce by 33%. In other words, divorce happens in social clusters. This makes sense. God is a social being, and human beings are created in his image. The data on marriage and happiness is another indicator that human beings were meant for deep relationships, the deepest of which is marriage.

Mini-book review: Dominion

I recently read Dominion by Tom Holland (not the Spider-Man actor but the historian). It's a history of Christianity by an agnostic/atheist. He makes a really interesting argument. He says all contemporary debates in the West are actually versions of Christianity battling each other for supremacy. Each side of any cultural fight (gay rights, women’s liberation, etc) is premised on the Christian values of universal human dignity and lifting up the weak, which would have been utterly unintelligible in the pre-Christian world. It's a really interesting argument. Holland basically says that even though Christianity seems like it's in decline in the West, it's actually so ascendant and victorious, that people can only think within Christian paradigms now. It made me strangely happy to read this book.

Postscript: Tom Holland has been attending Saint Bartholomew the Great, one of the oldest churches in London. He recently spoke about a spiritual experience with a cancer diagnosis and a desperate prayer for healing.

Sin separates; the church gathers together

The US Surgeon General, Vivek Murphy, has declared that loneliness is the greatest health crisis facing America today. There are a slew of new books raising the alarm about how deeply disconnected and isolated modern society is — The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, Generations by Jean Twenge, How to Know a Person by David Brooks. The CDC conducts large-scale studies of how people spend their time. Time spent with friends has plummeted in last decade, especially for young people.

The modern world is a deeply lonely place. This is the aftereffects of sin. Sin fosters conflict and separation. In CS Lewis’ haunting book, The Great Divorce, disagreements and arguments drive the inhabitants of hell further and further apart, until each person lives utterly alone, miles away from their nearest neighbor. This is the trajectory of modern culture. What then can be done?

In a world where sin separates, the church gathers together. Jesus’ final prayer in John 17 was that the church might be “one.” This is what human beings were created for — that we would no longer be many, but one. The only other place in the Bible where human beings are described as “becoming one” is Genesis 2:24, the seminal verse on marriage.

Just as husband and wife are to be “one flesh,” so also the church is to embody such love and depth of friendship that the members are one. And when the church holds together and avoids the ever-present temptation of conflict and break-up, we become a beautiful witness to the world. “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). This is the great mission of our lives — to keep the unity of the church. May God fill us with his Spirit and help us.

Washington DC Trip in June

I am really honored to be invited to speak at the Blackstone Legal Fellowship, which is a summer internship program for about 200 Christian students from law schools throughout the nation. The various speakers, including Rosaria Butterfield and Robert P. George, will address the challenges of maintaining a Christian witness in today's legal landscape. I will be the sole pastor and non-specialist speaker on the roster. My talk will be on a biblical theology of marriage, which is a topic I'm particularly passionate about. My talk will be on June 10.

My family will be joining me and we plan to make a vacation of it and visit the sites and monuments. I'm especially excited to stand on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and look out on the national mall. Please keep our trip in your prayers and please pray that my talk will strengthen and encourage these future leaders about the beautiful vision for marriage in the Christian Scriptures.

Heaven is a Feast

In last Sunday's sermon about the siege of Samaria, we looked at how the story concludes with a joyful feast after a long and terrible famine. This is the image of salvation given to us in the Bible. Jesus repeatedly evokes this image in his parables on the Kingdom of God.

The essential element of a feast is that it is communal. It's the people that makes the feast so joyful and festive. We all eat alone at times. But there's something special and wonderful in gathering together with good friends to share a meal. This is why we gather together as a church each Sunday. The Christian life is not a solitary endeavor, but a communal project. Which makes each Sunday a small taste of heaven.

Image: catered lunch from this past Sunday

Baptisms

This past Sunday, Steven and Emilia Cheung were baptized. It was a beautiful celebration of God's grace and goodness in their lives. The congregation pledged to assist Jen and Steven in their parental responsibilities to raise Emilia in the nurture and discipline of the Lord. This was a wonderful reminder that the church is a spiritual family, and that the children of the church grow up with many spiritual uncles and aunts watching over them. As Christians, we are not alone, but we belong to the family of God. This is a wonderful comfort and encouragement for our lives.