Andy Cornett | living in the new creation

endlessly captivated by the person and work of the resurrected Jesus

on the body

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I’m teaching tonight on 1 Corinthians 6:18-20 for our MS and HS students, and I thought I would share with you some powerful words that gripped me this morning:

Two points from this passage need to be emphasized in the contemporary church. First, in most Western cultures, where sexual mores have blatantly moved toward pagan standards, the doctrine of the sanctity of the body needs to be heard anew within the church. Sexual immorality is still sin, even though it has been justified under every conceivable rationalization. Those who take Scripture seriously are not prudes or legalists at this point; rather, they recognize that God has purchased us for higher things. Our bodies belong to God through the redemption of the cross; and they are destined for resurrection. Part of the reason why Christians flee sexual immorality is that their bodies are for the Lord, who is to be honored in the deeds of the body as well as in all other behaviour and attitudes.

Second, this passage needs to be heard again and again over against every encroachment of Hellenistic dualism that would negate the body in favor of the soul. God made us whole people; and in Christ he has redeemed us wholly. In the Christian view there is not dichotomy between the body and spirit that either indulges the body because it is irrelevant or punishes it so as to purify the spirit. This pagan view of physical existence finds its way into Christian theology in a number of subtle ways, including the penchant on the part of some to “save souls” while caring little for people’s material needs. The Christian creed, based on NT revelation, is not the immortality of the soul, but the resurrection of the body. That creed does not lead to crass materialism; rather, it affirms a holistic view of redemption that is predicated in part on the doctrine of creation – both the physical and spiritual orders are good because God created them – and in part on the doctrine of redemption, including the consummation – the whole fallen order, including the body, has been redeemed in Christ and awaits final redemption.

Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT), 266.

on pilgrimage

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I read this to my children the other night. I can’t recall what prompted it, but something sparked the memory of this poem.

On Pilgrimage (by Czeslaw Milosz)

May the smell of thyme and lavender accompany us on our journey
To a province that does not know how lucky it is
For it was, among all the hidden corners of the earth,
The only one chosen and visited.

We tended toward the Place but no signs led there.
Till it revealed itself in a pastoral valley
Between mountains that look older than memory,
By a narrow river humming at the grotto.

May the taste of wine and roast meat stay with us
As it did when we used to feast in the clearings,
Searching, not finding, gathering rumors,
Always comforted by the brightness of the day.

May the gentle mountains and the bells of the flocks
Remind us of everything we have lost,
For we have seen on our way and fallen in love
With the world that will pass in a twinkling.

Czeslaw Milosz
(The Collected Poems, 1931-1987, Echo Press: Hopewell NJ, 1988). 344

I remember reading this poem aloud in class with Dr. Roger Lundin during my senior year at Wheaton College. I loved it then and have loved it since. There is a strong tension in me created by the opposite pulls of “this world is not my home / I’m just a passin’ through” and “ooh heaven is a place on earth.” I love this world. I love its greens and blues, its magic and mystery, its riot of color and people and sights and smells. I love cold drinks of clear water and the texture and taste of food. I love the press of a hand or a hug and peals of laughter that sink into silent shaking. I love the gray green granite of the mountains and the silvery rush of streams, the hush of snowfalls and the deep silence of hidden glades.

At the same time I know this world is bent, broken, burdened. I know it is sick, sorrowful, suffering. I realize that I play a part in that as well, and much of it has to do with the “i” that seems so central to the words in this post. What’s the problem with the world? In no small part, me.

And while I endure on pilgrimage, so it endures a kind of suffering. But it is not lost. Nor am I. Thanks be to God, both this world and I can look forward to the glory that will One Day be revealed for somehow in his economy we are tied together. May it be that those roast meats and wines we enjoy here are foretastes of that “feast of rich food for all peoples,” that “banquet of aged wine and the best of meats” spread on the Mountain of the Lord. Dear God, let there be continuity with the “Place” of new heavens and the new earth – not just discontinuity. And if we have fallen in love with what we have seen on our way, be patient with us as a Father with a boy who loves his toy planes and one day will let him ride the skies.

on that e-word again

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Let me share a passage I read earlier this summer that really caught my attention:

‘Day of YHWH’, ‘Kingdom of God’, victory over evil and pagan rulers, rescue of Israel, end of exile, the coming of the Messiah, the new Exodus, and the return of YHWH himself; and, in and through all of this, the resurrection of the dead. This is the combination of themes which characterizes the first-century Jewish expectation of the future. And, as I noted earlier, this is to be God’s future in the sense that in this way God will come, so to speak, into his own. He will become king in a new way: ‘On that day,’ as the prophet puts it, ‘YHWH will be king of all the earth, he will be one and his name one,’ [Zech. 14:9] presumably in a way which somehow, strangely, is not yet true. How this was to happen, what it would mean in practice, remained for many of mystery, a puzzle. That this eschatology would come to pass was a fundamental first-century Jewish belief, the inescapable corollary of monotheism and election. That all this has now come to pass in Jesus the Messiah is a central plank in the theology of St. Paul …

Wright then moves through the Day of YHWH, parousia, judgment, and the renewal of all creation through the Messiah …

“Thus the picture is complete: Paul has reimagined every single aspect of first-century Jewish eschatology around Jesus the Messiah and his death and resurrection.”

– N. T. Wright, Paul: In Fresh Perspective. p.135, 145

How’s It Going To End?

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Jim Carrey as "Truman"

Did you ever see The Truman Show? The 1998 fictional film was about a phenomenally popular reality television show starring “Truman” (Jim Carrey). The catch is, Truman didn’t know it was a show – his whole life since birth (relationships, work, home) was minutely filmed in an artificial environment built to tell his story without his awareness. The viewers knew that sooner or later it had to come apart, and the question on their minds was this: How’s it Going to End?

In the last decade we saw a trend rise in recovering the importance of a Christian worldview. While nothing new, the challenge to think “Christianly” within a biblical framework helped people remember that thoughts and ideas are not neutral – they have a place within a larger story and help to move it along. A worldview itself functions like a set of lenses through which you see the world – and it’s made of cultural experience and social formation as much as any theology or adopted set of beliefs, ideas, or creeds.

I was fortunate enough to be taught to avoid the more “checklist-like” approaches (What does this worldview say about God? Jesus? About sin? Etc.) in favor of a deeper analysis that asked a series of fundamental questions:

  1. Who are we? What are we as human beings? Who are we really?
  2. Where are we? What is “this world” like? Where do we find ourselves?
  3. What’s the problem? What, if anything, has gone wrong in or with us or with this world?
  4. What’s the solution? What needs to happen? What are we being taught or encouraged to do? how do we change? grow? take action? move forward?

But now I think we need to add a fifth to this grid of questions for evaluating a worldview:

5. How’s it going to end? Or – where is this story going? Does it have a telos? Does it have an implicit or explicit goal? How’s it going to end?

Here’s my conviction – you cannot tell the Christian story of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ without making clear where the story is headed. Let me go further: if you can’t or don’t talk about where it is headed, you aren’t truly telling the Christian story. “Eschatology” – the theological study of the “last things,” the climax of history in the culmination of God’s story – isn’t that nifty category you tack on to your belief system or that thing you mention if you have time in a class or if someone gets courage to pop the question.

For Christians, what God has done in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ through his Spirit has broken into the middle of history from the end. This king of Israel, Jesus the Messiah, is also the world’s true Lord. The “now” we live in is always in light of the “not yet” that is to come, as we remember every time we pray that his kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. So everything from our ethics to our aesthetics, our service to our singing has to be seen not only in light of how things got started but also what God is bringing about in the New Creation. This is the anchor to our hope. This is Paul’ argument in 1 Corinthians 15 – that there is real victory over death and sin and all its power, victory proclaimed now even as we look forward to that Day when the end will come and all there is but one kingdom – the new heavens and the new earth. Note that the whole chapter is bracketed by a declaration of the gospel (v3-4) and ringing exhortation to give yourself fully to the work of the Lord in light of his victory (v58).

So let’s start asking the question – how’s it going to end? Because we believe that reality is headed somewhere, that God is moving his story forward to a glorious climax. That vision, a sure and certain hope, drives us back into the here and now with the courage and faith to get to work.

A story that can’t or won’t talk about where things are going isn’t a Christian story.

Daniel Kirk on Hope

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Daniel Kirk on Hope:

The story Paul tells is one in which there is a sure and certain line to be drawn between the cross of Christ and the eternal hope that lies ahead. “Hope” is Christological, and begun by participation “in him.” Paul’s own work intends to “present each person mature in Christ” (1:28).

The transformation that lies ahead is begun now. It begins with the cross, is reenacted in the community’s cruciform life together, plays out in acts of faithful obedience and love, and resolves with hope being realized in glory.

The trick, it seems, is to hold onto all these things simultaneously: to be of sure hope, possessing Christ, while not embracing a triumphalism that neglects the cross; to be confident that we are a reconciled people, while still recognizing our need for transformation; to see the cross of Christ saving us, but not to leave it behind as we seek out how to best love and serve the world in which we find ourselves. There is no hope without the cross, but there is no maturity or love without it, either.

Along with a book I just read and a series I’ve been teaching to high schoolers, that quote above has helped me realize why my basic way of evaluating worldviews is inadequate. More on that to come …