The Thing That Couldn't Be Done

He tackled the thing that couldn't be done;

With a will he went right to it.

He tackled the thing that couldn't be done;

And he couldn't do it.

Paul: “I don't understand myself. What I want to do, I can't do; but what I don't want to do, I do" (Romans 7:15).

Gallons of ink have been spilled over this verse to establish the provenance and period of Paul's life that prompted this confession. Was Paul thinking of his pre-conversion, or post-conversion days? 

My answer would be neither. Paul wasn’t thinking of a specific period in his life. He was establishing a principle that’s true every moment of our lives. (Note the present tenses: "I am...") Any time we try to implement a law (any law) we will fail."The flesh (self effort) profits nothing (John 6:63).

Benjamin Franklin famously worked out his own list of thirteen virtues that he deemed "necessary and desirable"—temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility—and determined to master them one at a time.

Franklin wrote, "My intention being to acquire the habitude of all these virtues, I judg'd it would be well not to distract my attention by attempting the whole at once, but to fix on one of them at a time; and, when I should be master of that, then to proceed to another, and so on, till I should have gone thro' the thirteen" (The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin). 

Franklin tackled the thing...and he couldn’t do it. He gave up mid-course.

When it comes to bettering our behavior, resolutions, vows, promises, declarations, disciplines, diets and exercises are useless. They don’t work very well, or for very long. Lasting goodness is the work of Another. It can only be achieved "through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 7:25).

We must then hand ourselves over to Jesus to mend or make us, and refuse to help him with the task. In time his goodness will flow into us. And out of us. Our part is to ask and keep asking. His part is to give.

"Lord Jesus, come yourself, and dwell with us...and overcome all that overwhelms us. Come into the midst of my evil, come close to my unfaithfulness. Share my sin, which I hate and which I cannot leave. Be my brother, Thou Holy God. Be my brother in the kingdom of evil and suffering and death… Come with me as I struggle with evil. And make me holy and pure, despite my sin and death” (Dietrich Bonhoeffer).

David Roper

4.29.19

The Mess We’re In 

"Gentlemen, what must I do to be saved?” (Acts 16:30).

A number of years ago Jolly John Landrith and I were traveling through Macedonia and came upon the ruins of the ancient city of Philippi. It was a bitter cold, rainy day and having found the ruins of the old Roman prison there, we sought refuge from the wind behind a rock wall, turned up the collars on our parkas and begin to sing "Great Is Thy Faithfulness" at the top of our lungs. (It was pretty awful, I must say.) A docent popped up, rushed into our “cell“ shouting, ”Hey guys, what must I do to be saved?" 

We, of course, were reenacting a scene from Luke's Acts of the Apostles in which Paul and Silas, having been flogged and thrown into this prison, were praying, singing hymns and praising God. 

There was a great earthquake that night that shook the jail to the ground—you could say the concert brought the house down—and the doors of the prison were flung open. The Roman jailer, tasked with guarding the prisoners and knowing that his life would be forfeited if they escaped, rushed into cell shouting, "Gentlemen, what must I do to be saved?" 

The verb, translated "saved" in the Graeco-Roman world simply meant "to be rescued," and could be applied to any number of situations. We could paraphrase the jailor’s request this way: “Gentlemen, what can I do to get out of the mess I’m in?”

Paul, taking advantage of the ambiguity, answered, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be delivered.”

Considering the corruption, pollution, exploitation that surrounds us; our messy marriages, bitter estrangements and the desperation and fear that drive the current spate of alcohol and opioid addiction. "What can we do to get out of the mess we're in," is the cry of every hear. 

Well, for starters, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ." That's the answer to that question, at every level whether we're engaged in matters of the state or our own well-being. That’s the starting point. Once we invite Jesus to be our salvation he’ll take it from there. 

N.T. Wright says, "Everything is contained within that (verse) — all the volumes of systematic and pastoral theology, all the worship and prayers and devotion and dogma, all the ethics and choices and personal dilemmas." 

In a big mess? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. Put yourself in his hands. You will be rescued in due time. Perhaps not in this life, but certainly in the next. You can count on it.

David Roper

4.23.19

Happiness is...

“In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive'" (Acts 20:35).

Let's see now. Is this saying in Matthew, Mark, Luke or John? One of Paul's epistles? One of the apocryphal, pseudepigraphic or gnostic Gospels?

No, this is one of the so-called “lost sayings” of Jesus, one of the "many other things that Jesus did (and said), which if they were written one by one..., even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written" (John 21:25). It was a truism embedded in the memories of those who followed Jesus.

The saying is a beatitude, in agreement with much of what Jesus said about the happiness that comes from giving oneself away. Acquisition never made anyone happy. The more we get the more we want and the end is a mad quest to get more, an obsession that is empirically verified in the lives of the rich and famous. 

I shared Jesus’ lost saying with the fair Caroline this morning and she gave it a novel twist. If it's more blessed to give than receive, our weakness can become an occasion for others to give and enter into joy. The Friends have always contended that God placed the old and the feeble among us that the strong may be blessed in their giving. 

I must admit that I find it easier to give than to receive. I’m an independent cuss. My father impressed upon me his credo that we should never ask others to do for us what we can do for ourselves. It's a good rule in so far as it keeps us from mooching off our friends, but it can make us proud and unwilling to receive. 

Aging has a way of dealing with our hubris however: As we become more helpless we have to depend on the strong and thus we give them a blessing.

David Roper

4.13.19

Virtue-signaling

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven" (Matthew 5:16).

Virtue-signaling is a newly coined phrase, referring to our efforts to show others how virtuous we are. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day were notorious for virtue-signaling: “They do all their works to be seen by men. They make their phylacteries broad and enlarge the borders of their garments.”

Virtue-signaling comes across as artifice and dissimulation, with undertones of self-righteousness. "Humblebrag," another neologism, aptly describes the effort. It reeks of self because it is the result of self-effort. 

Jesus said, "Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven."  Put another way, “Let God work in you so others will see that you are the product of his genius." 

And how do you do that? Through prayer. We must ask God every day to make us the person he wants us to be and give Him the time and the space to do it. It will take awhile, but it's worth the wait (Psalm 27:14).

David

Growing Eyes

I took a walk on Spaulding's Farm the other afternoon. I saw the setting sun lighting up the opposite side of a stately pine wood. Its golden rays straggled into the aisles of the wood as into some noble hall. I was impressed as if some ancient and altogether admirable and shining family had settled there in that part of the land called Concord, unknown to me,—to whom the sun was servant,—who had not gone into society in the village,—who had not been called on. I saw their park, their pleasure-ground, beyond through the wood, in Spaulding's cranberry-meadow. The pines furnished them with gables as they grew. Their house was not obvious to vision; their trees grew through it. I do not know whether I heard the sounds of a suppressed hilarity or not. They seemed to recline on the sunbeams. They have sons and daughters. They are quite well. The farmer's cart-path, which leads directly through their hall, does not in the least put them out,—as the muddy bottom of a pool is sometimes seen through the reflected skies. They never heard of Spaulding, and do not know that he is their neighbor,—notwithstanding I heard him whistle as he drove his team through the house. Nothing can equal the serenity of their lives. Their coat of arms is simply a lichen. I saw it painted on the pines and oaks. Their attics were in the tops of the trees. They are of no politics. There was no noise of labor. I did not perceive that they were weaving or spinning. Yet I did detect, when the wind lulled and hearing was done away, the finest imaginable sweet musical hum,—as of a distant hive in May, which perchance was the sound of their thinking. They had no idle thoughts, and no one without could see their work, for their industry was not as in knots and excrescences embayed… But I find it difficult to remember them. They fade irrevocably out of my mind even now while I speak and endeavor to recall them, and recollect myself. It is only after a long and serious effort to recollect my best thoughts that I become again aware of their cohabitancy. If it were not for such families as this, I think I should move out of Concord. 

This is an extract from an essay by Henry David Thoreau entitled “Walking,” in which he plays with the idea of “cohabitancy,” the counterintuitive notion that two realms of reality can exist in the same space at the same time. 

It’s a curious and compelling fact that studies in theoretical physics suggest that there may indeed be unobservable, parallel universes as real as our own existing all around us, intermingled with us as parallel realities. “We’ve established that space, time, matter and energy engage in a behavioral repertoire unlike anything any of us have directly witnessed. And now, penetrating analysis of these and other related discoveries are leading us to what may be the next upheaval in understanding: the possibility that our universe is not the only universe” (Brian Greene in the Introduction to The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos, p. 2). 

Greene goes on to state a more starling fact that studies in string theory indicate that our universe is directly influenced by events taking place in that alternate universe, the projection “of processes taking place on some distant surface that surrounds us” (The Hidden Reality, P. 8).

So…what if our world does share space with another unseen, parallel world? What if our universe is “directly influenced by events taking place in that alternate universe”? 

Bless my soul there is an unseen world all around us. Some call it “heaven.” 

We know very little about heaven, for little has been revealed. Perhaps that’s because there are no words to describe this world and no analogies for it in our experience. One thing does seem certain, however: heaven is not “up there” or “over yonder,” but all around us, another realm of reality, invisible but as real as ours! We could see it if we only had eyes to “see.” 

Read the story of Elisha and his disciple at Dothan (2 Kings 6). The disciple awakened in the morning, looked over the wall and discovered to his dismay that “an army with horses and chariots had surrounded the city.” He ran to alert Elisha and cried out in despair, “Oh, my lord, what shall we do?” “Don't be afraid,” Elisha replied. “There are more of us than there are of them.” (Or words to that effect.)

Then Elisha prayed, “Lord, open his eyes so he may see.” So the Lord opened the young man’s eyes and he “saw the hills full of horses and chariots of fire…” He saw the invisible legions of heaven gathered for his protection, against which Syria’s forces were powerless. He had not seen them, but they had been there all along. 

So…keep your eyes open; help is all around you, invisible to normal sight, but as close as they can be. “The chariots of God are tens of thousands and thousands upon thousands” (Psalm 68:17). There are more of us than there are of them!

David Roper

“Continue in My Love”

 

"Keep yourselves in the love of God..." Jude 21

 

On cold days our old dog used to find a sunny spot in the backyard and stretch out on the grass—keeping herself in the warmth of the sun. So we must keep ourselves in the love of God. 

 

This doesn’t mean that we must act in extraordinary ways to elicit God's love, because we're loved no matter what we do. Or fail to do. It means instead that we should bask in love’s radiance and warmth all day long. We should think about its extravagant dimensions: “experience its breadth, test its length, and plumb its depths!” (Ephesians 3:18,19 The Message)

 

God says, “I have loved you with everlasting love” (Jeremiah 31:3). He loved us before we were born, he loves us now, and he will love us after we die (Psalm 103:4). This is our denouement: to be loved and loved and loved—forever. “

 

St. John describes himself as "the disciple Jesus loved." Jesus loved the other disciples, of course (even Judas), but John marveled and reveled in the thought that Jesus loved him! It was his mantra.” I am the disciple Jesus loves!”

 

"As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you”; Jesus said. “Continue in my love” (John 15:9).Remind yourself each morning: “I am the disciple that Jesus loves!" Let his love flow into your heart. Thus, may you keep yourself in His love.

 

David Roper

4.3.19