Tag: Hebrews

Being Human — Chapter Ten — On mean(ing)s and end(ing)s

This is an adaptation of the tenth talk from a 2022 sermon series — you can listen to it as a podcast here, unfortunately, due to a technical error, there was no video for this week.

It’s not unhelpful to think of this series as a ‘book’ preached chapter by chapter. And, a note — there are lots of pull quotes from various sources in these posts that were presented as slides in the sermons, but not read out in the recordings.

We have put ourselves in various moments in time this series—imagining the past, and the future. This time round I want to take you all the way to the end.

How is the world going to end?

Now, of course, as Christians, we have an ending described for us in the book of Revelation. Jesus is coming; he will reward his people with life with him and the tree of life (Revelation 22:12–14). But I am wondering how much difference that ending makes in how we think about being human—and how you live.

What difference would it make to your life without that ending? If you believed every part of the Christian story to be true but there was nothing about the future—about what happens after death or at the end of the world—how would you live? If you knew God revealed himself and his character in the crucifixion, but we had no resurrection or return, would you live differently today?

You might be here this morning still not convinced about the whole Christian story. This might actually be where you are at. I am going to suggest this end makes all the difference—that it is the end of the world’s story and the human story as we know it—and this is meant to shape how we understand being human.

And just for a moment I am going to try to put us in the minds of people who do not buy that ending, using Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, where in book two there is a time travel service that will take you to the restaurant at the end of the universe, so you can sit and watch the world end with a ‘Gnab gib’ — the opposite of a big bang — and go back to your life knowing that all that comes after death and after history ends is the void; oblivion. The point of this book series is to offer a deliberate guidebook to a technological world without God. He creates a galaxy to show how if life in time and space is all there is, the hunt for meaning is meaningless. It is not “42;” it turns out that is the answer to the wrong question—and the whole point of the books is pointlessness. It is to stop people looking for meaning, so that we are not crushed when we find out there is none. There is this device, a Total Perspective Vortex in the books, that shows you as a tiny dot in an infinite universe, and it crushes anyone who thinks there should be a meaning in life or the world—anyone not totally self-centred. You are better off not looking.

The ideas of the end of the world and the purpose of our lives in it are deeply integrated.

When we see the world ending with the void—or life ending with death—and no God in the picture, we are left figuring out what our own life is for; how we should use it. I reckon most of our neighbours reckon we are facing the void, or just adopting the “she’ll be right, mate” idea that everything is going to pan out. And so life in the modern, disenchanted world ends up being the expressive individualism we have talked about, where you are responsible for making your own purpose, even if that comes from connecting yourself to some bigger agenda. Adams ends up being a prophet for this disenchanted world.

In theology land the way we talk about the end of the world is with the word eschatology—it is from the Greek word for last. And the way we talk about the purpose of human life—the ends, like in “the ends justify the means”—is the Greek word telos, which means something like living towards the fulfilment of a purpose. If you are a Presbyterian and I say “the chief end of man is…” you will say “to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” That “chief end”—that is a telos. It is the built-in purpose that guides our actions.

That guy Alisdair MacIntyre, who says we are story-telling animals who “need to know what story we are living in to know how we should live, as we saw last chapter “can only answer the question ‘what am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’”; he also reckons we have been left feeling like life is meaningless because we have lost a sense that our lives are headed towards a telos. This ‘end’ or purpose for our lives came from understanding our lives as living in a story that came from beyond ourselves, that was pointed somewhere beyond ourselves, but life facing the void, where we are left trying to make meaning and find a purpose from within ourselves—maybe, like the author of Ecclesiastes suggests—that sort of life is meaningless, if it just ends in death.

“When someone complains that his or her life is meaningless, he or she is often and perhaps characteristically complaining that the narrative of their life has become unintelligible to them, that it lacks any point, any movement towards a climax or a telos.”

— Alisdair MacIntyre, After Virtue

The Christian story suggests life is not meaningless, that it has a telos. We might be inclined just to look back to our origin story, to Eden, to figure out what we are made for—and we will do that—but we have also got to look to the end of the story to find our ends. So we are going to try to hold this tension—these furious opposites—and maybe see how the Bible holds it for us, because when we integrate our lives with God’s story, its beginning and its ending, we find our telos; we find life; we find what it means to be truly human.

Back in Genesis we saw how the image of God is not just a static thing in us (Genesis 1:26); it is not just a noun that describes us; it is a verb we are made to be; a vocation. It has a telos built in—to be truly human is to rule his world, representing his rule, his kingdom.

This idea is built from what images of gods were in the ancient world, and off the work of scholars like John Walton who suggest what it meant to be something in the ancient world was not just to have material qualities, it was to belong in a system, with a function; it was to have a telos.

“People in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system.”

— John Walton

But not only is the image of God not just a static thing in us, it is not a static thing only defined in Genesis; our understanding of what it means to bear God’s image, this function, develops with the story of the Bible. We do not just look back; we work out what it looks like as we see characters breaking it; it is frustrated as people sin—falling from this function—and are exiled from God’s presence. And we see it restored, and developed, as God creates a priestly people, Israel, to represent him in the world, and then kings who are meant to be representative rulers of his image-bearing people.

And so we come to Psalm 8—which we looked at lots in our Genesis series—where we are told it is a Psalm of David; where we are told humans have been crowned with glory and honour (Psalm 8:4–5). That God made us rulers over the work of his hands; there is a Genesis 1 reference happening here (Psalm 8:6).

Now, we have this tendency to democratise the Psalms, to jump to making this about us—there are just a couple of steps I think we need to take before we do that. We can also democratise it by looking back to Genesis, but we should be careful here too.

Now, I have quoted stacks of scholars this series, and they can feel distant and overwhelming. So today I am quoting a biblical scholar who is the opposite of distant. In this article by Doug Green, our Old Testament scholar in residence (well, not quite — note for readers, Doug is an elder in our church), Doug invites us to consider that with this Psalm of David, which could be a Psalm about David, we are meant to imagine David wearing a crown like the first readers would. So these words are not so much about all humans, but the dignity and worth and glory and honour of true humanity: humans living and ruling in a way that represents God, which is Israel’s role in the world, and David’s role in Israel as the true human.

“Psalm 8 is less interested in the dignity and worth of humanity in general, and more concerned with the dignity and worth, the glory and honour, of the true humanity, Israel, and the true human, David (and his descendants).”

— Doug Green, ‘Psalm 8: What is Israel’s King, That You Remember Him’

Doug reckons the Genesis creation story works to teach Israel what true humanity looks like; how to live as replacement Adams—humans—after Adam and Eve’s failure. Israel is a new humanity, but more than that Israel’s Davidic king is presented as an image-bearing ruler.

“But this story is a background for the real focus of the Old Testament: Israel’s role as the replacement for the First Humanity of Genesis 1, and David’s role as the replacement for the First Human (Adam) described in Genesis 2 and 3.”

— Doug Green

This king will either lead people to life with God, or death and exile. And this Psalm is about someone—it could be a son of Adam—crowned with glory and honour, which is, as Doug points out, royal language.

“The Davidic king was thought to be a second Adam, Adam reborn, as it were… True Man is crowned—can you hear the royal language?—with God’s glory and honour!”

— Doug Green

Doug reckons as we read this Psalm knowing David’s failures we are meant to read it eschatologically—wondering where in the future we will meet a true human, a divine image bearer. Someone who fulfils the purpose, the telos, humans are made for.

“But once I interpret this psalm in connection with Israel and especially Israel’s king, I am now bent in an eschatological direction. The stories of Israel and David are covenantal stories and therefore stories with a telos, or destiny.”

— Doug Green

Our idea of an image bearer gets developed in contrast with the failures of would-be image bearers as we keep waiting for a true human to turn up at the climax of history.

“The primary thrust of Psalm 8 is not creational and static (what all humans are in Adam) but re-creational and eschatological (what Israel and ‘David’ will become at the climax of history).”

— Doug Green

The writer of Hebrews reads it this way too; when they quote this Psalm (Hebrews 2:6, Psalm 8:4), they say, you know we do not see this everywhere, it is not the general pattern for human life. But we do see it in Jesus, the fulfilment of this Psalm; a true image-bearing human crowned with glory and honour, because he suffered death—that is the whole cross-shaped kingdom thing from last week.

“But we do see Jesus, who was made lower than the angels for a little while, now crowned with glory and honour because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.”

— Hebrews 2:9

He is the Son of David, the Son of Adam, the true human image bearer, who does not fall to the powers. And he brings many sons and daughters—many true humans—with him to our glorious telos; to being able to function as those who represent God (Hebrews 2:10). The telos, the purpose of humanity, is to reflect—to radiate—God’s glory. Hebrews calls Jesus the pioneer of our salvation, made perfect—these are significant words. The word here for pioneer could be translated author in your Bible; it is this word archegos—it means first, or model, or archetype. And this word perfect—it is the word teleiosai—it is the word for fulfilling your telos; being made complete according to your purpose. Jesus is the model telos-fulfilling human, the true human, through his suffering and his resurrection, through representing God’s glory.

Hebrews will come back to these same two words when it talks about how we should live; how we should run our race towards an end, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter (Hebrews 12:1), the model and telos-fulfiller, the true human, the new David, the new Adam, who because of the joy set before him—not because the cross revealed God’s character, but because of the glory to follow—endured the cross, and then sat down at the right hand of God, crowned and glorified.

These words come up a few more times in the New Testament. John uses these same words in our passage in Revelation, where Jesus does not just say he is the first and last and beginning and end (Revelation 22:13), but arche—the model—and the telos—the fulfilment (Revelation 22:14). And the last in verse 13 is actually eschatos; he is the fulfilment of the human—our telos—and the eschatological human who brings the new creation. He is the one the Scriptures have been waiting for since Adam.

We covered 1 Corinthians 15 earlier in the series—where Paul says the first man Adam was a living, breathing image of God, and Jesus is the last Adam, literally the eschatological Adam, who brings God’s Spirit (1 Corinthians 15:45). Those who are united to Adam, that old image, die, disintegrating into dust. But those who see the fulfilment of the image in Jesus, seeing his true humanity, those belong to him as the new David, the king—we will follow him into his glorified life, bearing his image (1 Corinthians 15:49). When we are united to Jesus, his story becomes ours—we live under his rule, waiting for our new life to be made whole; for the Spirit working to produce fruit in our mortal bodies to be matched with spiritual, immortal bodies, waiting for the defeat of the last enemy, literally the eschatological enemy: death (1 Corinthians 15:24–26). This will happen when Jesus returns to make all things new.

Living in this story—with this ending and telos—shifting from the old Adam to the new, is how we become truly human, images of God. It is how we share in his glory, which is what Paul is on about in Romans 8 (Romans 8:16–17). Our becoming truly human as we receive the Spirit and are re-created and liberated, in a way that gives our life meaning, even when we suffer.

The Spirit, Paul says, makes us heirs of God, his children, his image-bearing people who will share in the glory of Jesus. We become truly human as our telos becomes to become like Jesus, and our future is secured. And this gives meaning to our sufferings now, both as we take up our cross, following Jesus’s example (Romans 8:18–19). Suffering is not an end in itself; it is not our telos; our destiny. We might hear it said that “to be human is to suffer well,” to bear the weight of being. But to be truly human is to suffer with the hope of glory; that is our new destiny. Our suffering—whatever it is, whether it is the cost of curse, or what we experience as we follow our crucified king—is not our purpose or destiny. It is incomparably small compared to the glory that is ours as we become truly human through Jesus.

Our lives are shaped by a new image of the fulfilled human life where death leads to resurrection, and a new destiny that is not just for us, but for the world. Creation itself joins in the expectation of liberation from bondage to decay, as it is brought into the freedom and glory we are brought into (Romans 8:20–21). Just like creation itself is anticipating liberation, we live hoping for the redemption of our bodies. We live lives shaped by hope, knowing that God is working for our good, that he has called us according to his purpose—that is actually a different word to telos—that we have been chosen to be conformed to the image of his Son, to become truly human, so that Jesus might be the first of many brothers and sisters, bringing us to glory as we are conformed into his image (Romans 8:23–24, 28–29). This is the trajectory we are now on—as chosen and justified people with failures forgiven, one where we are re-created as true humans and glorified (Romans 8:30). So that Jesus’s present and future becomes ours, so in him we are more than conquerors, people who cannot be destroyed by death, or demons, or the present or future, or the powers that we have seen at work in the world. Nothing will be able to separate us from Jesus, from God’s love, from being truly human (Romans 8:37–39). Because, as Doug puts it:

“It is only as we are united to Christ and indwelt by his Spirit that we humans can claim to be bearers of the divine image, crowned with glory and honour.”

— Doug Green

Now—we are on the home stretch in this series. And here are our take-homes for today, and for the series. Being truly human means living lives integrated with God’s story. This story gives us, and the world, a telos—to be an image bearer is not simply to suffer, even as we take up our cross—it is to reflect God’s glory, to glorify God and enjoy him forever you might say. And we see this telos fulfilled in the end of our story. The Bible’s story about humanity, this story tells us who we were made to be, and what our destiny is, and invites us to be truly human. This ends, and this ending give us meaning, and the means we should employ as we become characters in God’s story.

We are not hitchhikers in the galaxy, facing oblivion at the restaurant at the end of the universe. In Jesus we are sealed, and seated at the banquet at the end of the universe, and it lasts forever. We are not insignificant, finite nothings, just made to suffer and die, but immortal and glorious and loved by God.

C.S. Lewis talks about this in his sermon The Weight of Glory. He reckons we are too quick to embrace self-denial and suffering as ends, as though that is our purpose, when we are actually made to follow Jesus into glory and to have our desires satisfied.

“The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.”

— Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Lewis says we need to live knowing we are not small and insignificant, but that we will outlast anything earthly. Nations, culture, art — those things that seem big and significant are tiny compared to our glorious future.

“Nations, cultures, arts, civilization—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit…”

— Lewis

This means it is actually other people — those with God’s Spirit — immortals — who are truly significant. We should see ourselves this way, as gloriously beloved by God, and it should change the way we see others. This capacity is in every human, and already at work in those gloriously united with Jesus.

He says that other than when we recognise Jesus in the sacrament — which is what’s happening, in his theological frame, during communion — other than the presence of Jesus in us, your neighbour is the holiest object in your life, holy in the same way as Jesus because Jesus, the glorifier and the glorified, the archetype and the telos, is hidden in them.

“Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If they are your Christian neighbour they are holy in almost the same way, for in them also Christ the glorifier and the glorified, Glory Himself, is truly hidden.”

Lewis, The Weight of Glory

But what difference does all this talk of glory make? I reckon we can be a little obsessed with still seeing ourselves as sinners — and we are — but not as those being re-created and liberated by the Spirit — which we are.

Killing our sin — what gets called mortification — is part of our transformation, but we could do more to remind ourselves that this is who we are in Jesus; holy and being made glorious and being transformed by God’s Spirit in us. We might see our new life not just as putting sin to death, but also cultivating new life, in what gets called vivification. You — if you belong to Jesus — are no longer a slave to the flesh; no longer the old Adam. You are the new Adam, and God’s Spirit is at work in you conforming you to the image of Jesus, revealing God’s glory in your life. That’s your telos, and where your story is going.

And this means our lives can be marked by hope — not just in the face of death, but hope about the future that we enact in our life now. We can see our longings — our desires — as parts of us pulling us towards our end goal.

Both C.S. Lewis and his friend Tolkien had this hope in ways that made their stories remarkably different to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That was disenchanted science fiction about purposeless life in a material universe that ends in the void, while Lewis and Tolkien wrote fantasy set in enchanted worlds, shot through with longing for glory. Tolkien talks about how our longings are a product of life exiled from Eden, and his stories are about finding the answer to these longings.

“Certainly there was an Eden on this very unhappy earth. We all long for it, and we are constantly glimpsing it: our whole nature… is still soaked with the sense of ‘exile’.”

— Tolkien

Lewis talks about passing beyond the natural world into the glorious splendour where we will eat from the tree of life — straight out of Revelation:

“We are summoned to pass through Nature, beyond her, into that splendour which she fitfully reflects. And in there, in beyond Nature, we shall eat of the tree of life.”

— Lewis

This is an image he evokes at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia, where the characters enter a new eternal story:

“All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.”

C.S Lewis, The Last Battle

As they go further up and further in into a garden paradise:

“Further up and further in… So all of them passed in through the golden gates, into the delicious smell that blew towards them out of that garden and into the cool mixture of sunlight and shadow under the trees…”

C.S Lewis, The Last Battle

Tolkien has Frodo and the Elves sailing to a land in the west featuring white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise. And in his brilliant short story Leaf by Niggle, he describes Niggle — a painter — finding life in the garden paradise of his painting coming to life, as he goes further and further upwards towards the mountains:

“He was going to… look at a wider sky, and walk ever further and further towards the Mountains, always uphill.”

— Tolkien, Leaf By Niggle

Both Tolkien and Lewis had more than an inkling. They understood how the end of our story should shape our desires, and their stories — like their lives — were attempts to evoke these desires in us, to pull us further up and further in. We would do well to soak our imagination in enchanted stories of hope, because this is our story.

And cultivating the hope of glory has to shape how we live as a hopeful witness to those following the old Adam towards a destiny of dust and death. Some people reckon thinking eschatologically runs the risk of having us so set on heaven we are no use on earth, but the theologian Stanley Hauerwas reckons how we see the end of the world — eschatology — is the basis for Jesus’ ethical teaching, as he calls us to our telos; our re-created purpose.

“…we mainline Protestants have charged eschatological thinking with being ‘other worldly,’ ‘escapist,’ ‘pie-in-the-sky-by-and-by’ thinking… the biblical evidence suggests that eschatology is the very basis for Jesus’ ethical teaching.”

— Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas says Christian ethics — how we live — is built on Jesus being the eschatological Adam, the new David, who launches God’s kingdom in the world now, and that the Sermon on the Mount describes the end of the world as it was — the world of Adam and Satan, that ends with his crucifixion and resurrection — and a new way of life, the ends we should live towards.

“There is no way to remove the eschatology of Christian ethics. We have learned that Jesus’ teaching was not first focused on his own status but on the proclamation of the inbreaking kingdom of God… In the Sermon [on the Mount] we see the end of history, an ending made most explicit and visible in the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus… The question, in regard to the end, is not so much when? but, what? To what end?”

— Stanley Hauerwas

Hauerwas reckons living in this story makes us resident aliens, as he calls us — an adventurous and hopeful colony, a community living in a society of unbelief. In his diagnosis our culture has not just lost a telos, but a sense of adventure, because we have turned in on ourselves as we have lost this big story.

“The church exists today as resident aliens, an adventurous colony in a society of unbelief… As a society of unbelief, Western culture is devoid of a sense of journey, of adventure, because it lacks belief in much more than the cultivation of an ever-shrinking horizon of self-preservation and self-expression…”

— Stanley Hauerwas

This community, embodying and telling this story, is where Christian ethics makes sense. The world tells us being truly human is about self-expression, because this is all it is, but our eschatological messianic community tells us that to be truly human involves self-denial with our eyes fixed on the eternal rule of King Jesus, and being united to him.

This community — the church — is where we tell each other the Gospel; truthing in love.

“The ethic of Jesus thus appears to be either utterly impractical or utterly burdensome unless it is set within its proper context — an eschatological, messianic community, which knows something the world does not and structures its life accordingly… A person becomes just by imitating just persons. One way of teaching good habits is by watching good people, learning the moves, imitating the way they relate to the world.”

— Stanley Hauerwas

This community is where we find examples to imitate as we learn what a life shaped by our ends, shaped by Jesus the true human, looks like. It is where we are formed in order to be sent into the world. It is where we run the race together as we learn to fix our eyes upon Jesus.

It is hard for us to set our eyes on Jesus in a literal sense, given that he is seated in heaven. We can do that in prayer, and in what Paul calls the eyes of our heart, but we can also fix our eyes upon Jesus in a way that teaches us to be human by looking at one another, finding examples who are living in this story to imitate.

Before they say this, the writer to the Hebrews has just told the church to keep meeting together, spurring one another on, before they say run the race by fixing our eyes upon Jesus.

Part of pursuing our telos is seeking to be those who follow the example of Jesus, and this might involve watching and observing and imitating those around us who already are. Those whose lives are marked by hope, those whose lives express the fruit of the Spirit, those who are living adventurous lives of self-denial because their hearts are set on heaven, and because they know that to be truly human, in Christ, is to have conquered the powers, and anything in creation that wants to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus.

Ends.

September 11, 2025 Add Comment

Origin Story — East of Eden (and the path back)

This is an amended (and extended) version of a sermon I preached at City South Presbyterian Church in 2022. If you’d prefer to listen to this (spotify link), or watch it on a video, you can do that. It runs for 38 minutes. I’m going to be honest, 90% of the reason I started posting these sermons is that I think the title of this post is pretty great.The original introduction to this sermon, which was preached the day after the Federal Election in 2022, I’ve adapted that slightly for this blog version

In Genesis 4 we meet two brothers; two brothers offering two paths in response to humanity losing access to the Garden of Eden. We see a branching of the family tree; a choice between two lines of seed, with two ‘parents’ shaping the tree and the fruit it produces.

Like a good origin story this is where we start to set up the tension that is going to drive the narrative, we’ll see threads that take us to the end of our chunk of Genesis, but that pay off at the conclusion of the story, so we’re going to take up a couple of these threads — first by really looking at where the human family we’ve got our lens zoomed in on find themselves, and then by following them through the story of the Bible all the way up to Jesus. We’re seeing the start of two feuding family lines; the beastly line, children of the Serpent, and the line that might produce an image bearer who’ll lead people back past the guardian cherubim, into the presence of God and to the Tree of Life (Genesis 3:24).

Genesis chapter four deals with a major change of scene that came about in the events of chapter three; this human family find themselves exiled; outside of the Garden — the eastern entrance to the garden has been sealed off by a cherubim wielding a sword (maybe imagine this as a gate).

This move east, away from Eden, is going to be a significant repeated thread that’ll take this family all the way to Babylon in chapter 11; it’s a device to pay attention to, and to have in our imagination that the gateway back to God’s presence, his heaven on earth space, sealed off by cherubim is reached by heading west. Gates on the east of places like this will repeat over and over again through the Bible’s story. We’re going to be on the look out, ultimately, for both God’s presence returning to a place like Eden, and a Son of Adam leading the way back into God’s presence, and the seeds for both these storylines start in this origin story.

The cherubim guarding the way — people being kept out of the Holy of Holies where God dwells on earth — is a big obstacle to be overcome through the unfolding narrative, so is the idea that people now are going to approach God with a gap that requires sacrifice, and that’s where we land in chapter four. Adam and Eve failed to act as one in chapter three, but now they become one, so that Eve, the mother of the living (Genesis 3:20), brings forth a son, Cain (Genesis 4:1). They’re being fruitful and multiplying — and the question framed by the narrative so far is, has she brought forth an image bearer, who will rule the wold representing God, and maybe lead people back towards the Garden, or a beast? They’re fruitful and multiply again, and along comes Abel (Genesis 4:2). Two Sons of Adam; sons of man; that’s what Adam’s name means.

Abel shows a mastery over the animals, keeping flocks, while Cain does what humans are made to do in the garden; the task required for the uninhabited and unpopulated land to become fruitful; he works the ground (Genesis 4:2). He’s an earth man working the earth. So far so good.

They both bring the fruits of their labours to God as a sacrifice. Abel brings the firstfruits — the good, fatty, portions of his first born animal, while Cain just brings “some” fruit of the ground; the narrative doesn’t suggest its anything particularly special.

We’re not told where Cain and Abel are taking their sacrifice; but at this point it seems this human family is dwelling outside of the garden, but still in Eden, by the gates with the cherubim. There’s some fun stuff we’ll get to below around the Tabernacle that means I reckon readers of the Torah, tracing the development of some imagery, would imagine Cain and Abel taking their sacrifices up to the dwelling place of God, the Garden, to the barrier, to the cherubim guarding the way to God’s presence, knowing they can’t get in, but maybe seeking to restore themselves to being God’s representative people through sacrifice.

But it doesn’t go so well.

If you read the rest of Genesis you’ll see a type-scene beginning here; a conflict playing out between brothers. Humans were made to represent God together, and it’s not just husband and wife turned against each other from the curse in Genesis 3, but siblings, as firstborn and secondborn compete to be the child of promise. This type-scene repetition includes Jacob and hairy-beastly man Esau; and maybe later stories from the same big story can shape the way we read the dynamic here as these two brothers compete to represent God as the serpent-crushing line by offering a sacrifice. Or maybe only one brother is competing: Cain. Maybe that explains why there’s a little bit of implied tension between them as God receives Abel’s sacrifice and rejects Cain’s (Genesis 4:4-5). We’re not told why God favours one gift and not the other here; the New Testament book of Hebrews gives us an interpretation that says Abel was acting by faith, and so produced a better offering (Hebrews 11:4).

When his offering is rejected, Cain, the ground-worker gets a test; will he be a son of dying-beastly Adam? A son of the serpent? Or Eden-gardening Adam? Will he repeat his parent’s failure in response to his disappointment. Will he know Good from evil? God says “Sin — is crouching at the door” — like a beast — wanting to devour him — like the serpent wanted to devour his parents (Genesis 4:7).

And before we find out where Abel, the younger son, might be able to lead his family after his sacrifices are accepted, Cain makes a sacrifice of Abel in a field (Genesis 4:8). Abel makes an animal sacrifice then Cain acts like an animal and sacrifices his brother. Where he’s meant to sow life, he sows death. Abel’s blood, his flesh, is given back to the ground; dust to dust.

This sacrifice shows sin has devoured him; he’s been swallowed up and become a bloody swallower of life; beastly; opposed to God’s plans for fruitfulness and multiplication. Now the land isn’t just desolate and empty, or a source of fruitful human life, it’s soaked in blood. Cain has become part of the seed of the serpent, its ‘striking’ offspring attacking the seed of his mother, Eve.

And just like in the garden, where God came to see his folks after their sin and asked “where are you?” now he asks “where is your brother?” (Genesis 4:9). Cain knows, but he pretends he doesn’t, he gets shifty — his dad owned up when God came looking, but Cain doesn’t. “Am I my brothers keeper?”

Well. Yes. He’s meant to be. Humans are meant to be one in their task of representing God; cultivating and guarding his presence in the world; defeating the crouching beast, and yet, he has become his brother’s killer; he is his brother’s keeper at this point; he knows exactly where he has hidden Abel, but he can’t hide what he’s done. God says his brother’s blood is crying out from the ground — telltale blood — calling out for justice (Genesis 4:10).

As a result, instead of Abel leading the family back towards the garden through his acceptable sacrifice, Cain’s unacceptable sacrifice means he’s sent further east; out of God’s presence, away from Eden, and the ground he once worked turns against him (Genesis 4:11-12, 16). Cain becomes a picture of the human condition in our exile from God. This serpent-like line is marked by violence, grasping, and vengeance. The ground has received Abel, but it will not receive Cain.

The garden was made as a place to rest with God and enjoy his hospitality; there’ll be no rest for Cain (Genesis 4:12, 14). People were blessed to be fruitful and multiply (Genesis 1:28), Cain is cursed (Genesis 4:11). He becomes a “restless wanderer” at war with the world — the ground is not going to yield fruit for him; he’s pushed out of God’s hospitality into an inhospitable world — further east (Genesis 4:16).

There’s more than a hint in this chapter that there might actually be other human families out there — outside of Eden, away from the Garden-temple, God’s dwelling place on the earth. Cain is scared people out there will kill him… He’s being driven from God’s presence, and he’ll be devoured. He’s got this picture of other people acting like animals. Violent killers who take vengeance. A world ‘out there’ that is red in tooth and claw.

At the moment with our camera zoomed in on Adam and Eve and their two boys there aren’t other people in the picture; we’ve been looking at this is the family tasked in the story with bearing God’s image in the Garden Temple and perhaps cultivating that life to spread it out into the world where the people Cain is scared of live. It’s a conundrum the narrative gives us, but doesn’t resolve — it just assumes killer people are going to be out there, outside the borders of God’s lands.

There are other ways to try to resolve that narrative conundrum, like they could be a bunch of siblings who’re about to go out into the world along with Cain, who might kill him, but they seem to be out there already, and I think it’s worth just sitting with the story the way it works, keeping the lens firmly on this family line we’re zoomed in on.

But here’s the point of the narrative — it’s not the people who are the real obstacle or threat to life, it’s being hidden from God’s presence (Genesis 4:14). Cain is sent out, exiled, with a mark from God protecting him. God promises that anybody who kills him will suffer vengeance (Genesis 4:15). We get this cycle of bloody violence, rather than people guarding and keeping with one another, ruling together, they’re murderous and celebrating their viciousness (Genesis 4:19-24). Cain goes out from God’s presence into this world. He’s exiled. He lives in the land of Nod, which is the Hebrew word for homelessness. He becomes homeless East of Eden (Genesis 4:16).

Cain finds a wife, out there away from his family, and he founds a city — a home away from home — a city in the land of homelessness away from God’s presence. If Eden, as a garden, was a walled enclosure marking out God’s presence and hospitality this city is an echo of Eden but without God’s presence (Genesis 4:17). In the midst of the story of a family tree we start getting some culture; some cultivation of creation; some fruitfulness and creativity; a weird origin story for instruments and farming tools and methods of farming livestock (Genesis 4:20-22). They’re taking the raw matter of creation and making stuff; they’re ruling. This city might look nice; the music might be good and the tools might help humans overcome the cursed ground, but there are makers of death in this family line. Cain might be avenged seven-fold; his descendant Lamech is a violent avenger who’ll kill a man just for wounding him (Genesis 4:23-24).

This is a beastly city; a city of violence and bloodshed and vengeance, in a land of ‘no-home’ — it’s the furthest thing you can get from the Garden in Eden; the home of life and generativity and God’s fruitful presence.

But the narrator takes us back to the land of Eden, outside the garden. Eve, the mother of the living, celebrates — God overcomes Cain’s beastly attempt to end the line of seed from Eve — he grants her a son, Seth, who has a son. We’re also told that at this point, people begin to call on the name of the Lord — while those out in Nod are shedding blood, there’s a little note of hope in this line (Genesis 4:25-26).

And we get a re-cap around the line of seed that the narrative is going to follow. Cain’s line is a dead-end that creates death, but this recap goes back to the beginning. God created mankind in the likeness of God, blessing them, male and female, and calling the earthling, Adam, then Adam’s son Seth is made in Adam’s own image and likeness — a chip off the old block. We’ve seen how an ‘image’ in the ancient world was an idol statue, or the king as an embodiment of the gods, part of being the image of or the likeness of someone, or of God, is also caught up in this idea of being a son or daughter (this idea gets picked up in Luke’s genealogy of Jesus, which calls Adam the “son of God.”) (Genesis 5:1-4).

A line of image bearing humans continues. God works despite human beastliness towards creating a serpent-crusher who will lead humanity back from the east, from restless wandering and a sense of homelessness into rest in a garden-like home.

These threads get picked up through the narrative of the Bible. People keep heading further east. People keep acting more like Cain — and the Serpent — than Adam’s purpose in the garden. We’re landing this series in Genesis 11, with another move east, to the Plain of Shinar, where humans build a tower called Babel (that’s Babylon), which, as it turns out, is also due East of Jerusalem. When the southern kingdom of Judah is exiled, like Cain, they’re sent eastwards again. The Genesis origin story is a story that helps exiled Israel understand their own predicament; they, too, have behaved like Adam and Eve, and Cain, like children of the Serpent.

Through this origin story God’s also going to call his people out of Babylon; starting with Abram, who comes from Ur of the Chaldeans — that’s Babylon — to begin a people of promise; a nation of priests; calling people back into his presence. In that nation of priests we get little Edens; little pictures of the paradise lost, not just the fruitful land around the garden, but the garden itself. We meet a bunch of people who look like they might lead people back to life with God; Abraham, Moses, The priests, David, Solomon and all their stories have echoes of this story.

Moses enters God’s presence, on the mountain and then builds a tabernacle, where there’s an atonement where blood from sacrifices would be taken up to two cherubim, who were sitting, guarding, the Ark as they guarded the garden. The Ark is the symbol of God’s heavenly throne, where he says he’d meet with his people “between the Cherubim” (Exodus 25:22). The ark was placed behind a curtain embroided with Cherubim (Exodus 26:1, 31) who are guarding the way, separating the Holy place, like Eden, where God’s people could dwell from the most Holy Place, God’s dwelling place — like the Garden. The curtain was a barrier like the gateway separating the garden from the rest of Eden.

The entry to the Tabernacle is on the eastern side of a courtyard (Exodus 27:13-19). To come towards God was to move from the east, back towards the curtain and the Cherubim; towards his dwelling place. Moses and his priestly family end up guarding the tabernacle; living to the east of this door; a bit like the Cherubim guards Eden; living at the doorway to God’s presence and caring for the Sanctuary. Anyone else who approaches the way to life; to God’s presence, was to be put to death (Numbers 3:38, note the word for “caring for” or “keeping” here in Numbers is the same word used in God’s instructions to Adam in Eden). Once a year, a priest — starting with Moses’s brother Aaron — would sacrifice animals (like Abel) to make atonement for sin — to bring God and his people together again. He couldn’t come past the Cherubim whenever he wanted; or he’d die — but this time it’s the presence of God in the cloud, above the ark and between the Cherubim, that’s the risk (Leviticus 16).

One day a year that priest would go behind the curtain; entering the Eden-like place, or specifically, the Garden-like space, where God is present, in order to sprinkle the blood of animals on the atonement cover, under the Cherubim. There are even two goats where ones blood is spilled and the other is exiled into the wilderness. There are echoes of the Cain and Abel story here, and throughout the story of the Old Testament. Sacrifices to God are offered where God dwells as an expression of a desire to be one with God again; to dwell with him in the Garden. For Cain and Abel these sacrifices are made in Eden, outside the Garden excluded from entrance, for Israel, it’s in the Tabernacle, then the Temple. In all these places the barrier remains.

And people in Israel keep acting so much like Cain that they get tossed to the east.

At one point in the story, and this’ll be significant below, Israel acts almost exactly like Cain, killing the people who are meant to lead them back to God in the temple. There’s this guy named Zechariah — who’s different to the Zechariah the book of the Bible is named after… they kill him in the Temple courts (2 Chronicles 24:20-21). Chronicles tells the sorry story of Israel becoming like Babylon, and so being sent east to Babylon; when that happens Babylon takes the whole Temple set up with them (2 Chronicles 36:15-21).

When Ezekiel the prophet talks about this moment he talks about God departing from Israel’s Temple with the cherubim; the presence leaves, heading to the east, first of the temple, then the city (Ezekiel 10:18-19), stopping on the mountain to the east of Jerusalem (Ezekiel 11:23), which is called the Mount of Olives. According to Ezekiel, Israel won’t come back to God, from the EAST, from exile in Babylon and back into God’s presence until God’s presence has first returned to Jerusalem. Ezekiel is brought, in a vision, to a gate facing east where he sees God’s glory returning to his Temple through an eastern gate (Ezekiel 43:1-4). Once that happens humans — first Israel, then the world, can be restored to garden-like life with God in a new Temple as the world becomes a picture of Eden restored; centred around a mountain temple facing East, where living water flows out to give life to the nations (Ezekiel 47, note Ezekiel 28 has earlier pictured Eden as a garden on a holy mountain in verses 13-14).

By the end of the Old Testament, via the prophets, we’re waiting for God’s presence to return to a Temple in Jerusalem; an Eden space, in order to dwell with people again and we’re waiting for someone like Abel, or a priest, to come and make a sacrifice God will accept; one who will get us past the Cherubim and re-open access to life in his presence; a human from the line of Serpent-Crushing seed who is not, like Cain, a beastly child of the snake. We’re waiting for someone who might bring us back into life with God; the paradise we lost.

And the New Testament picks up these threads ties them together in the person of Jesus. Luke tells us he’s from this line of seed; he’s the image bearing son of Adam, and Seth (Luke 3:23-38, especially 38). At the climax of the Gospel story Jesus heads towards Jerusalem. John’s called him God’s glory tabernacling in flesh and a walking Temple (John 1:14, 2:19-20). As he approaches Jerusalem, he approaches from the East; from the Mount of Olives (Matthew 21:1). He comes in to the city via the eastern gates and then enters the Temple court — moving from east to west towards the Holy of Holies, and he sets about cleaning up the sacrificial system, because people’s sacrifices — their sin offerings — have been corrupted by those running the temple (Matthew 21:12-13). He enters the Temple to proclaim judgment on the people running it, including the woes he pronounces on the Pharisees who ‘sit in Moses’ seat, who aren’t ‘keeping the Temple’ like Moses’ family, or leading people to God, they’re shutting the door of the kingdom of heaven on them (Matthew 23:13). He calls them a brood of Vipers — serpent children — who imitate Cain, throwing back to both the murder of Abel and of Zechariah the priest between “the altar and the sanctuary,” which is maybe how we should picture the location of both Zechariah’s death in the Temple, and Abel’s death at the gateway to Eden (Matthew 23:33- 23:35).

The blood of these innocent people is on the hands of Jerusalem’s leaders because they have become like Cain; like the Serpent; a violent and oppressive people whose city has become like Babylon.

Then he talks about himself as the Son of Man; the true son of Adam; who’s going to come like “lightning from the East” (Matthew 24:27) to give a place in God’s kingdom to those who are blessed by God; a kingdom prepared from the creation of the world (Matthew 24:30). He’s going to enter God’s presence and sit at his right hand (Matthew 26:64), but before he gets there there’ll be more blood on the hands of the humans who take up Cain’s line; the line of the Serpent. Jesus will become like Abel, and like Zechariah; as he’s put on trial the priests are joined by the people of the city baying for blood, and they crucify him.

But Jesus’ arrival in the city, and even his death, is a demonstration of God’s glorious presence returning to Jerusalem to judge the city and its Temple, making access to life with God possible through the sacrifice of a firstborn. So the Temple curtain tears (Matthew 27:50-51); the curtain embroided with Cherubim, separating humans from the Holy place and containing God’s nominal dwelling place on earth (he doesn’t return to dwell in the Holy of Holies in the rebuilt Temple in the Old Testament). This Temple in Jerusalem has been replaced with one that will make people holy, bringing actual atonement so we can come in to God’s presence again.

This is how the book of Hebrews picks up what happens in the death of Jesus picking up the threads that run from exile from the Garden, to Cain and Abel, through the Tabernacle and the curtain and the altar — it says we’ve been made holy through his sacrifice; restored to being the kind of people who can live in his presence (Hebrews 10:10-11) by this one human who can lead us back into the Garden. Jesus replaces the sacrifices that couldn’t take away our sins in the temple and he has entered heaven to sit with God, having made one sacrifice for sins (Hebrews 10:12). His entering this Most Holy Place; the place behind the curtain makes him — his body through his sacrifice — a new and living way; a way past the cherubim and into life with God. Through his sacrifice we can draw near to God because atonement has been made and we have been washed and purified (Hebrews 10:21-24). His blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” because while the tell-tale blood of Abel cried out for justice his sacrifices, even his death, did not bring humanity back into the Garden; Jesus, on the other hand, brings us into the city of the Living God, his heaven-on-earth dwelling place (Hebrews 12:22-23); the new Jerusalem the prophet Ezekiel saw as the end of Exile, and that John pictures for us in Revelation (Revelation 21-22). Jesus becomes the way maker; the mediator of a new covenant who brings us back to God; the media or way we use to come back to God, Jesus’ blood as the first born son sacrificed on our behalf is what Abel’s faithfulness anticipated. All those threads from the start of the Bible’s story are tied together in our origin story, the Gospel. This is the story that shapes our lives; the story of how we find ourselves back in the promised land; the garden.

We might pin our hope on all sorts of leaders to carry us back to the promised land; modern politicians promise lots and deliver little. This can be disappointing, but our politics is not exhausted in our vote; we practice politics in where we give our time, our money, our energy, to building the city — the ‘polis’ — we want to live in; whether it’s Babylon or the New Jerusalem — and we do this knowing that it’s actually Jesus who builds the city, we’re just ambassadors popping up little embassies in our households and the communities we start, or occupy. Our businesses. The kids we educate.

We have to choose our family — our story — not red or blue, but Jesus or the Serpent.

Our politicians won’t lead us back to a promised land; they’ll make plenty of promises, but the world offers cities built by Cain, by children of the Serpent; Babylons, and old Jerusalems when we humans turn to violence to solve our problems, or live seeking our own way to heaven-on-earth.

But if we plant ourselves in the story of Jesus; in his family tree, as children of God, people living as God’s Images in the world, knowing that we are now located in Eden; the new Jerusalem; raised and seated in the heavenlies with Jesus; this story will produce fruit in our lives.

It’ll change the way we think about politics and participate in the polis; our city. Our desire to not be violent people of vengeance, but people of peace, will shape the way we vote; certainly, but it’ll also shape the causes we support with our time and money.

We’ll see ‘politics’ as going way beyond voting for a blue team or red team — Scomo, or Albo — who just offer more of the same; scratch a western liberal democracy and you’ll find violence and greed and individualism lurking below the surface; the coils of the Serpent — even if there are Christians in the corridors of power; and we should be participating in our city, our politics — this story will shape the alternative city we build within our city; our communities, our households we participate in and the way we use our tables. We aren’t nomads living in exile in the land of nod; or exiled in Babylon; we’re citizens of heaven, or the New Eden, called to live as those who are home, not those who’re wandering.

December 15, 2023

The superhero pastor

I don’t often write about the day to day business of pastoring a church; I always feel like pastors writing about being pastors is a bit self-indulgent and often it boils down to a sort of ‘woe is me, my job is harder than you could imagine… if only you would do more, good Christian, you would keep me from burnout’… or my personal least-favourite, tips for how to ‘appreciate your pastor in pastor appreciation month’… blurgh…

I love my job and think it’s a privilege to be paid to tell people about Jesus and think about how our church should best shape itself in order to reach our friends, family, and neighbours. I do feel appreciated by lots of people. I’m thankful for my church family. And the answer for how to appreciate your pastor and make them feel better is probably just to turn up to church and love the people who are part of your church family with every bit of who you are — mess included…

But indulge me. Just this once (well. I can’t guarantee it’ll only be once).

Pastoring a church is actually a super hard job. One I’ve only been doing for a few years. I’m a total rookie, and most of the time I feel like I’m in over my head and that I’m making things up as I go, hoping not to hurt too many people… and unlike most rookies, I have an incredible team of people supporting me; a dad whose footsteps I’m following in, a boss who coaches and supports me, a mentor who mentors me, a team of fellow staff who shoulder all sorts of responsibilities, and a pretty great church community… even with the best human support structures in the world this job is hard, and it throws up curveball after curveball.

I’m in a little season of feeling sorry for myself and counting the cost of some of my mistakes; of decisions made, or not made, of structures adopted, but mostly just of spinning plates that have fallen from different sticks while my attention was on the balls I was juggling at the same time. Mostly it’s a season of counting the cost of simply being normal-human rather than super-human. Sometimes I wish I was a super-hero, or super-pastor. Like the ones you see on the Internet (or on TV if you watch that rubbish).

It’s easy to think that a church succeeds or fails on the shoulders of the pastor — that’s what we’re often told; it’s there in the literature in the Christian bookshops, and on Christian websites… pastors grow and shrink churches… and I suspect that for many people it’s easy to believe your own faith lives or dies on the shoulders of your pastor, because heaven forbid you need to take responsibility for your own growth, or changing how you live to be more like Jesus without someone telling you. Let me stress this is not all people.

I’m almost four years in and I’m reasonably sure my shoulders aren’t capable of bearing this load; the responsibility of growing (or shrinking) a church, or the responsibility of ‘growing’ a Christian using my own power. I’m also six years into parenting, and have three kids, and feel overwhelmed by that load… four years into dog ownership and feel like my shoulders aren’t capable of bearing that load… and just over ten years into marriage. There are a lot of loads for my shoulders to bear should I see my task in these terms. In a lifetime of being around church ministry stuff, I’ve also watched the load of pastoring metaphorically (though perhaps literally on a spiritual level, and a family level) tearing people apart, and I’m pretty determined for that not to be me, or my family.

A huge part of the battle not to be torn apart is the battle not to buy into the myth of the super-pastor.

You know the one, you probably see it on social media if you follow pastors whose official fan pages post clips of their most impassioned preaching (in their lycra-like tight preaching costume, with their slicked-back hair, telling stories about their kids)… it’s the story that the pastor has his stuff together as a family man and only ever loses it as his kids in order to have just the right story for his sermon.

It’s the story of the pastor who has been through the hero’s journey — who set out on an adventure, was broken, but has now returned, like Steve Jobs returned to Apple, to lead the solution to the church’s problems.

The myth of the super-pastor is not just the myth that the pastor’s own congregation needs the salvation that only this pastor can bring, but that the whole church needs this super-pastor. So the platform has to grow; the books have to be published, and screens have to be rolled out across the land. We’ve seen it all before. We’ll see it again. And as a pastor it’s tempting to believe it when things are going well — and to be crushed by it when they aren’t.

It certainly feels like the church needs a super-hero; not just our church (which has its own problems and is enough to leave me feeling inadequate and out of my depth). I sat at our local Westfield this afternoon with one of the guys from church, overwhelmed again by just how many people there are in our city and how many of them don’t know Jesus. People walking by our table living in their own little stories, pursuing their own goals, and identity, and ultimately worshipping something other than Jesus. I was struck, again, by our city’s need for a saviour. I was struck by just how poorly our churches are doing at reaching people.

I went to the Ashes test and the Rugby League World Cup semi-final here in Brisbane on Friday and was, cumulatively, surrounded by almost 60,000 people. The Presbyterian Church of Queensland, across the board, in Queensland, claims weekly attendance of around 7,600 people.

We’re not, by any stretch, the only show in town when it comes to preaching the Gospel in Queensland; but last year we buried more people than we baptised (175 to 152)… and our attendance grew by 289, but more than half of that growth was in a Korean Presbyterian church that ministers almost exclusively to Korean migrants, with minimal input from the denomination… apart from this (and without downplaying it) we grew by 1.7%, which is just a nudge above the rate of population growth in Queensland, which is significant because if our growth rate is smaller than the population growth rate we’re actually shrinking in real terms… and these attendance figures also double count people who attend two services on the one Sunday. We’re not talking about revival. We’re not making a ripple in the pond that is Westfield Garden City on a Sunday, or the crowd at the footy… we’re surrounded by people who need rescuing… even if they don’t know it.

It’s tempting to think we need super-pastors to do this work. People who’ll heroically overturn the status quo (that’s what heroes do), and lead a new revival (that’s what super-pastors do)… part of this temptation comes because it does seem that both these things would be great… I’m all for both of them… just not for the weight of both, or either, of them being put on the shoulders of pastors, rather than the church, or more importantly, its actual hero.

I’m not a super-pastor. But if I was… I’d be Spider-Man.

I’m a sucker for Spider-Man. I love his aesthetic; I love the puns; I love the super-hero mythos generally; and I love that at his best he limits himself to his neighbourhood. I love that he’s young, sometimes cocky, but that he finds redemption, often, in realising that he needs the help of others. The best bits of Spider-Man were captured in his recent introduction to the Marvel Cinematic Universe. In Homecoming, Marvel explored Spider-Man’s limits — especially through deliberate comparisons to Iron Man; a real super hero. It explored his desire to really count; to be someone significant, who saw his local patch as a stepping stone to the global stage, and local crime as small stuff compared to the world of the Avengers. Ultimately his Homecoming journey left him happy enough being your trademarked ‘friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man’; but not without him needing to prove himself, to prove that his shoulders could bear the weight his powers placed upon them (though ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ was implied in this expedition, not explicit). Homecoming was the story of Spider-Man truly learning his place.

There was one particular scene I loved. A vivid metaphor of the temptation to be a ‘super-pastor’… Spider-Man is on the Staten Island Ferry. He has a confrontation with the bad guy who is wielding alien weapons; and as Spider-Man seems to get the upper hand, his enemy, the Vulture, says something along the lines of ‘you have no idea what you’re playing at’, and the weapon Spider-Man has wrested from his hands goes out of control; splitting the ferry in two.

Now. For the purposes of this metaphor; imagine that the ferry is the church. A bunch of people who have been rescued from the water beneath by the boat, but then because of the rookie errors of their pastor, the church is rent in two. It starts to take on water. The people who thought they were safe, and that the pastor was looking after their journey, now face death by drowning. They’re probably worse off than they were before the pastor did anything to get them on board…

Spider-Man recognises that the church is falling apart, and because he is a super-hero, he believes it is his responsibility to save it. He, after all, has the power.

In the movie version, Spider-Man’s technologically-augmented suit calculates the path he needs to traverse through the rapidly falling apart ship, he flings himself, pirouetting like only Spidey can, between fixed points on the boat… and we get this iconic image of Spider-Man, the hero, saving the day. Holding the lives of the passengers in his hands… bearing the weight of the world on his shoulders. The sort of image a super-pastor might post of themselves on social media… probably while preaching… probably in the same cruciform pose (for the record, I hate photos of pastors preaching, but every time a photo is posted of me it looks like I’m preparing for take off).

This is the iconic image of the movie Homecoming. Spider-Man. Arms outstretched. Saving the world… or the ferry in the sort of cruciform pose you might expect from Australia’s St Andrews Cross Spider. Just for a moment it looks like Spider-Man manages to pull it all together.

It looks like Spider-Man has saved the day… and sometimes super-hero pastors can feel like this. Job done. Crisis averted. Lives saved… all on your shoulders…

There’s going to be a slight spoiler after this picture.

This looks like an iconic image; a picture of heroism, but it’s actually a picture of Spider-Man’s failure.

Just when it looks like Super-Pastor… I mean Spider-Man has pulled everything together the voice in his suit congratulates him on a great job… he’s been, it says, “98% successful”… it dawns on him that 98% is not successful enough just as the whole thing falls apart.

He has failed.

His shoulders were not broad enough; he was all responsibility not enough power, and now everything comes crashing down. And in the real life version of this, this is where the pastor has an identity crisis and either starts blaming people for getting in the way, or shouldering too much of the blame for failing… and both are deadly.

This, at least, was how I felt when watching this scene, and its resolution. I’ve been feeling like church is a ship that if not torn apart by alien lasers, at least has a lot of holes that always need to be plugged. It’s always taking on water. People are always at risk of drowning… and too often I, and they, expect Super-Pastor to save them. The thing is… if this ship went down I’m not sure that Spider-Man actually survives anyway; his fate is tied to the fate of the passengers.

So often in the last few years I’ve bought into one of two ‘super-pastor’ narratives, both when things are going well (and it’s easy to believe the hype), and when things are hard: one, that I’m the saviour our church needs; that my shoulders will hold our church together, carry it, plug the holes, and bind up the broken… most often, but not always, this one comes from a sort of internal monologue, but it’s even more unhelpful when it comes from other people.

The second narrative is that the boat falling apart is my fault; if only I’d preached richer, deeper, clearer, funnier sermons, or if only I’d made better decisions, if only I’d been less stressed out because of parenting toddlers, or less distracted by the countless other things that land on my lap, or that I give attention to… if only I’d been better at my job, then people wouldn’t feel like they’re drowning, wouldn’t be falling overboard, or would be growing in the sort of maturity that’d have them strapping on an Avengers uniform and running into the fray as super-heroes too. This one also comes from a certain internal monologue, but is also, I suspect, part of the subtext of many decisions (not all) to jump ship. We’re so geared, in our consumer culture where the cult of personality rules, to pick a church based on the pastor, or ‘the preaching’; and to build our assessment of whether a church is sinking or swimming based on how well the super-hero is delivering… or perhaps I’m so geared, as a pastor, to think in those terms… that any time it feels like something is falling apart it’s because I’ve only been 98% successful, or worse. Then we’re geared to think that it’s our job to be the hero, if not the pastor’s job, that somehow we need to make up what is lacking in ourselves, or tackle the vastness of the mission, by shouldering more of the world’s problems.

But I am not Spider-Man. I’m not a super-pastor. I have no desire to build a platform, or to carry the weight of the world (or just my church) on my shoulders. I’m also not a super-parent or super-husband; but part of what I’m learning good parenting looks like is letting my kids take responsibility for the things they can take responsibility for, but also letting them let go of what they aren’t (which is most things).

Because while I’m not the saviour (and am a naughty boy); there is another whose shoulders are big enough; one whose outstretched arms were not only 98% successful (and had they been, it would’ve doomed us all). And it’s not Iron Man… but the real cruciform saviour. He’s the one holding our church together; he’s the one I need to look at when I’m tempted to believe any super-pastor ideas (that I am one, or am failing to be one), whether from others or myself… and he’s the one I’m to point to. I love the way Hebrews talks about this both in the first chapter, and in chapter 10, in these words, first talking about ‘heroes’ — priests — those who stand between us and God — who aren’t even 98% successful… and then Jesus, the true super-pastor. The one who stood, but then sat down, enemies destroyed. Mission accomplished. Church building.

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins.But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since that time he waits for his enemies to be made his footstool. For by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy. — Hebrews 10:11-14

This doesn’t mean we don’t do anything; but it does free us to swing boldly. I don’t need to save any church, or any city. It is Jesus who saves; and that he chooses to use rookie preachers like me, and bumbling communities like ours is a miracle. And a good one. He does choose that which means we should act, freely, and heroically, just without the pressure or responsibility of real power.

My son Xavi loves Spider-Man. He dresses like him, pretends to be him, and has learned some lessons about how to use his muscles from Spider-Man’s example. It’s great when he imitates Spider-Man, but delusional when he starts to think that he is Spider-Man. And it’s like that with us…

Or as Captain Hebrews puts it, our hero secures us the ability to be free and confident, and part of this is knowing that we don’t have to save ourselves, or others, we’re just free to be fans who point people to the real deal through our love and good deeds, as we meet together to encourage each other to cling and imitate while we wait, not as heroes but as those who wait for our hero to return, knowing that he rules, and that he builds his church and draws people near.

Inasmuch as there is responsibility in churches for this encouragement, it’s a thing we own together, a load we share, but a load lightened by Jesus. There is no super-pastor in this picture of life together; there are people coming together to cling to the real hero… together… church is a ‘one another’ not a ‘one other’ deal (unless that one other is Jesus).

Therefore, brothers and sisters, since we have confidence to enter the Most Holy Place by the blood of Jesus,by a new and living way opened for us through the curtain, that is, his body, and since we have a great priest over the house of God,let us draw near to God with a sincere heart and with the full assurance that faith brings, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water.Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. — Hebrews 10:19-25

I’m not Spider-Man. I’m not Super-Pastor. I don’t need to be. I’m just me. And that’s enough. Anything more than that — whether my expectations or yours — would tear me apart.

November 27, 2017

Theological Smackdown: Nine things to love about church

Our WCF (Westminster Confession of Faith) study last night was on “The Church”. One of my personal bugbears is when young hippy “Christians” go on about how they love Jesus but hate “the church”. For a Christian “the church” is where it’s at.

Here are nine propositions on church – they are a mix of reflections on last night’s discussions and other bits and pieces.

We were asked how we’d answer the question “do you have to go to church to be a Christian” – it’s an old chestnut. I say yes. You don’t have to go to church to become a Christian – but once you are a Christian, or in order to continue “being” a Christian, you need to be part of the body of Christ. The 1 Corinthians 12 picture of Christian living involves serving others with your gifts. People throw up bizarre objections like “what if you’re a farmer living in the middle of nowhere?” – my answer is that the farmer should sell his farm and move. There are more important things in life than your farm, or your job.
Church is not so much about learning or teaching – it’s about encouraging one another (Hebrews 10:25) while “meeting together” and you can’t do this by yourself. You can’t do it over the internet. Internet churches are dumb ideas and listening to podcasts is the equivalent of reading a Christian book – not the equivalent of going to church.
Church is quite obviously not the building – but it is a word that has too many functions – it describes the universal body of believers, a local expression of the body of believers meeting in fellowship, and a building. It is not necessarily any group of Christians meeting together. A bible study is not “church” it is an activity that forms part of the broader community of church. The difference between a home group and a home church is intention and outlook.
People who say they don’t love “the church” are completely missing the point of each of the definitions of church – if you truly don’t love the family of believers, chances are you aren’t one.
There is a bit of a backlash happening against the “we hate the church” club – Kevin DeYoung wrote a book called Why We Love the Church – Between Two Worlds has some great insights from the book posted here.
It’s hard to draw a line where the “universal” church ends and apostasy begins – the Confession treads that line pretty carefully before calling the Pope the antichrist.
Part of the anti-church movement sees any “gathering” of Christians as the Church – but as Mark Driscoll pointed out in one of his talks during his time here (and paraphrased) a bunch of Christian guys hanging out at the pub calling themselves “the church” are more likely alcoholics.
The characteristics of a church gathering are prescribed nicely in 1 Corinthians 11 – 14 these include the proper approach to the sacraments (the Lord’s Supper – 11v17-33), use of gifts (12v4–31), attitude to one another (13v1-13), evangelistic (14v23-24), and the program should include teaching and singing for the purpose of encouragement/strengthening (14v26).
Some of the issues that people who “don’t like the church” have are related to failings of the church to live like the body of Christ – but to expect perfection from a body of sinners is odd.

September 9, 2009