God's Knowledge

Near the end of the film Kate and Leopold, Kate (played by Meg Ryan) says to her coworkers at an advertising agency, "It's a great thing get what you want.  Unless what you thought you wanted wasn't really what you wanted because what you really wanted you couldn't imagine, or you didn't think it was possible.  But what if someone came along who knew exactly what you wanted without asking?  They just knew.  Like they could hear your heart beating or listen to your thoughts.  And what if they were sure of themselves and they didn't have to take a poll and they loved you?"

She's saying this about Leopold (played by Hugh Jackman).  She decides to leave this world and travel across time to be with him.  (You'll have to see the movie to see how it all works together.  It's really well done.)

My point is that this is a fine example of the ever-increasing presence of ancient spiritual themes in contemporary films.

Some argue that religions are attempts to control other human beings by presumably knowing what God wants of us.  Comply with the system or risk divine wrath.  While I think that there is more to religion than this, I'd like to turn the equation around.  What if Christian faith is about God knowing what we really want and providing it?  The New Testament reveals God as love.  It is of love's nature to give.  My wife knows that I love her best when I am actively serving her best interests and want her to be happy beyond measure.  I don't claim to be doing this as well as I could, but I do propose that this is how God interacts with every one of us.

It was said of Jesus "He knew what was in man." (John 2:25)  A little later a woman told her neighbors, "Come see a man who told me everything I ever did." (John 4:29)  I am imagining Jesus able to see into every person's heart and knowing their deepest desires and strongest yearnings -- the things we can hardly name to ourselves much less make known to others, even after years of marriage.  He is the one we are looking for in a best friend or soul mate.  He is the one who, on the day after our death, will look into our eyes and we will feel wonderful dream come true reality of the scripture's promise, "Then I will know fully, even as I am fully known."  (I Corinthians 13:12)

Whatever you think of The Shack . . .

. . .its portrayal of the Christian Trinitarian concept of God was gripping, thought provoking, and (for me) revealing. The book very smartly did not try to explain how the three are one and one are three. More importantly and effectively it portrayed the relationship among them and how each is important to us who exist as individuals in relationship.

The eighth chapter of Romans has been a key verse for Christian understanding and living since it was penned 20 and 1/2 centuries ago. Each Person of the Triune God gets time on the stage. Here's what I can affirm:

The Holy Spirit

• Controls our minds increasingly (8:6)


• Lives in us (8:9-10)


• Will give life to our mortal bodies (i.e. resurrection) (8:11)


• Is the way for us to put the misdeeds of the body (i.e. sins) to death (8:13)


• Testifies with our spirit that we are God's children (8:16)


• Is a first fruit of a fuller harvest God will produce in us (8:23)


• Helps us in prayer by interceeding for us (8:26-27)

Jesus Christ

• Is the reason we are free from the law of sin and death (8:2)


• Was a (one-time) offering for sin (8:3-4)


• Was the human expression of the Spirit (8:9)


• Is risen from the dead (8:11)


• Is a co-heir with us of all things (8:17)


• Is the One all Christians are destined to become like (8:29)


• Intercedes for His own at God's right hand (8:34)


• Loves us (8:35, 39)

God the Father

• Sent the Son to be a sin offering (8:3)


• Receives hostility from the sinful mind (8:7)


• Raised Jesus from the dead (8:11)


• The One the Spirit expresses (8:14)


• Has children (8:16-17)


• Subjected creation to frustration (8:20)


• Has a will (i.e. plan) for all (8:27)


• Works actively for good in all things for those who have commited to Him (8:28)


• Foreknew, calls, justifies, and glorifies His own (8:30)


• Is for us (8:31)


• Will give us all things (that are necessary) (8:32)


• Justifies sinners (8:33)


• Will not allow anything to seperate his people from his love (8:39)

I hope that you find fulfillment in knowing this One God who exists forever in triune relationship and who wants to share His life with as many of us as will have it.

Biblically Upset

My new class at Anderson School of Theology is focusing on the Hebrew prophets. You don't read too far through the prophets to learn that for every hint into the future they give, they deliver twenty challenges to the present order of their day. For instance, the prophets often spoke out against those who used their power unjustly. They often defended the poor and oppressed. When it came to hypocrisy by those who should have known and done better, they call a spade and spade.

With the way things are in America these days, a lot of people are upset and expressing it through blogs, letters to media, and protests in the streets. The latest thing to hit the fan is the row over how to respond to the ongoing crime of piracy of intelectual property. We don't need to turn up the level of venting over this and other issues and catastrophizing is always unhelpful. However, I am interested in becoming Biblically upset enough to bring about change about something.

I believe that becoming Biblically upset means to love what God loves and hate what God hates enough to get involved for good. A thourough knowledge of the Hebrew Bible and Christian Scripture can inform us about what matters to God. It can convince us that some need removing and other things need preserving or re-establishing. I wonder what is making you, my reader, Biblically upset these days? Could it be that the Spirit of God is raising up another prophet?

Just hours before he would be arrested and then crucified, Jesus celebrates the greatest Jewish feast holiday with his disciples. They enjoy a Passover meal together and then Jesus speaks to them as is recorded on John 13-16. At the end of chapter 16 Jesus says that he has told them all of this so that they "might have peace." Really! Let's review what he said to them that night.

1. One of you will betray me to my enemies (13:21)
2. Peter will deny that he knows me three times (13:38)
3. I am leaving you (13:36b)
4. Even after all this time, you still don't know who I am (14:9)
5. The Prince of this world is coming (14:30)
6. You are at risk of being cut off from the vine of God (15:6)
7. The world will hate you (15:18-16:2)
8. You are not able to hear all that I wish I could say (16:12)
9. Expect to weep and mourn while the world rejoices (16:20)

This doesn't sound very peace-inducing to me! I'd be scared and wondering what I had gotten myself into. If we have lived long enough, we grasp tht fact that inspite of all the money we spend, the votes we cast, and the miles we jog, we cannot guarantee that our circumstances will be those that promote happiness. When we look inside, the best we can do is hope that we will be "up for the challenge."

What did Jesus mean?
A. It might be that he was pracicing "full disclosure" with his followers. "Were it not so, I would have told you." (14:1b) "I have called you friends fo everything I have heard from my Father I have made known to you." (15:15) If bad times are coming, being forewarned can enable me to prepare and get my courage up. Yet this is far from being at peace.

B. Jesus qualifies his promise of peace with a prepositional phrase: "in me." Christ's followers inhabit two worlds at the same time. One is this world of physical, emotional, political, financial, and military threat and uncertainty. It is there that we have "trouble." (John 16:33) The other realm is "in Christ." All lasting peace is found in the latter.

Peace is experienced when
1. We are in a fellowship where we know we are loved (13:34-35)
2. We believe that our eternal place is secure (14:1-4)
3. We see our best days as lying ahead (14:12-14)
4. We feel the love of God for us (14:18-23)
5. We sense spiritual life of God flowing through us (15:7-9)
6. We see the honor in suffering as Christ did (15:20f)
7. We experience "all truth." (i.e. about everything) (16:2)
8. We understand suffering as birth pangs and not as the end (i.e. terminal) (16:20-22)
9. We accept that our best efforts fall short, but understand that our performance never was the deciding factor anyway. (16:31-33)

May peace be yours and mine this year!

Christmas Past

Today is the Christian holiday Epiphany. It commemorates the manifestation of Christ to the gentiles in the persons of the Magi. It is the "twelvth day of Christmas" and many people have waited until today to take down their Christmas decorations.

I wonder way some Santa movies move me so. I think it is not about being rewarded for being good. It's more about grace and being remembered and not being forgotten. In the New Testament Book of Revelation there is a church where the faithful ones receive a white stone with a name on it that no one knows except the one gives it and the who receives it. It is a moment that says everything to a believer who has held to Jesus through life. He or she will not miss being on God's list. The gift is fitting and unique, crafted just for that person.

For me, Santa is not a source for selfish dreams to come true. Rather, Santa is a symbol of the covenantal God who sees me when I'm sleeping and remembers me. To be remembered says, "You have belonged all along." I know my flaw and sins well (i.e. my naughtiness). The best Santa movies show him not only as a rewarder, but also as Redeemer.

(If you'd enjoy another reflection on Santa, check out my latest posting on my blog "Story Matters." It ran in the Greenfield Daily Reporter on December 17th.)

Chaplain Finds Pleasure in the Pulpit

Yesterday I preached during the weekly chapel service at Anderson University School of Theology. I have attended there since 2006 and am now a senior M.Div student with three (3) classes to go to graduation. Unfortunately I take just one (1) class a semester, so that means I won't graduate until spring of 2013.

I must say that these years of continued formal education have been just in time for me. The Anderson SOT students and professors have been amazing resources. I hope that I have been a similar blessing to them. It is more evidence to me that God is working in me (even at the age of 54) to will and do His good purpose.

I would be honored if you would listen to my chapel message by typing this address into your browser:

http://ausotchapel.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/russ-jarvis-mdiv-student-at-ausot-1-thessalonians-51-11/

Ten Years Since

Tomorrow will be a big day for me, so I post this on the eve of 9/11. Franklin Roosevelt said of another deadly day that it would "live in infamy." I wonder if anyone held a special remembrance on December 7, 1951? Maybe not because by then the US was involved in another conflict, this time in Korea. Over 50,000 Americans died in that war then ended in an armistice that has never turned into a peace treaty. As I look back over my 53 years, I find few years when the shadow or reality of war -- hot or cold -- hasn't been there.

It will soon be ten years that the US (and other nations) have been fighting in Afghanistan (and later, Iraq). Days after the planes hit our leaders were urging us to continue life as usual, "lest the terrorists win." I don't believe the terrorists have won, but life has never been the same since. None of us have been untouched by either the military, economic, or political consequences of 9/11.

Tomorrow I will teach a Sunday school class at my church on Matthew 24:1-14. Jesus announces to the disciples that a day would inevitably come when their society, symbolized by Herod's Temple in Jerusalem, would come tumbling down. In those days the love of most will grow cold through exposure to increasing and seemingly unrelenting "wickedness." This prophecy was immediately fulfilled in the Roman siege of Jerusalem in AD 70, but it has application to any age characterized by "wars and rumors of wars, famines and earthquakes." Sounds a lot like the last ten years to me.

What does Jesus counsel his people to do? Escape to a bunker? Take over the government? Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die?

No. He counsels two things of us:

1. Remain a people known for love. During the fall of Jerusalem and the later collapse of Rome itself, the Christians engaged in amazing works of self-sacrifice that helped preserve some manner of order as western culture fell back into barbarism.

2. Remain a people known for hope. Keep proclaiming the Gospel. In today's sectarian environment, this is crucial. This is not proselytizing. This is simply telling the story of human history from the perspective of the Jewish and Christian Scripture. The theologian Robber E. Webber died in 2007. His last book was titled "Who Gets to Narrate the World?" His answer? Whoever tells the better story. These days, Christianity is known more for shouting moral advice at the world rather than sharing good news. In bad times like ours, people need a reason to hope.

I'll finish tomorrow at a prayer meeting. I hope it will be a service that is careful to keep the "stars and stripes" lower than the cross. I hope it full of personal repentance, not political tantrums. I hope it is a moment when Spirit of God casts down our temples and warms our hearts to each other.