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TableTalk is a growing archive of snippets and stories from the heart of our fellowship. The bother with blood… March 1, 2007
Posted by Lindquist in : Editorial , 2 comments
Every Wednesday morning we gather in our Minneapolis offices around a cup of coffee, a moment of prayer, and an encounter with the Word of God. For a few weeks, now, we have been reading Paul’s wonderful epistle to the church in Colossae.
This little epistle is a great introduction to the season of Lent, I have thought. It is filled with the excellent love of Jesus. It is filled, too, with images of his agony and death at Calvary. We learn, in fact, that his excellent love is based in his agony. He has won for his people peace — but only by way of his broken body and poured out blood.
“Through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things,” we read, “by making peace through the blood of his cross” (1:20). “You who were once estranged and hostile in mind…he has now reconciled in his fleshly body through death” (1:21). God “[erased] the record that stood against us…nailing it to the cross” (2:14). It turns out that there is nothing ethereal or otherworldly about the wonderful love of Jesus. It is earthy. It is fierce. It is powered by Calvary.
A few years ago, a theological conference was held here in Minneapolis. One presenter proclaimed that modern believers had grown up and beyond “all that ancient talk about cross and blood and such.” “Such unnecessary gore!” the presenter complained. Moderns had become more sensible in the years since the Apostle Paul. Moderns no longer need those ancient, visceral images.
Sensitive modern readers, it turns out, are bothered by the cross and the blood of Calvary. And yet, it is not blood itself that is the problem, I think. It is Jesus.
In Paul’s day, too, some readers objected to the bloody events of Lent and Holy Week. These were the “Gnostics.” Calvary’s cross, you see, connected them in an uncomfortably direct and intimate way to the Person of Jesus, with all of his unpredictable angularities. The Gnostics preferred to talk about the special teaching of Jesus, or the special spirit of Jesus, or the higher philosophy of Jesus, or simply his love. Theirs was a thoroughly flexible approach to religion — the Gnostics could make the “higher philosophy” of Jesus mean anything they wanted it to mean. The actual man from Galilee, however, was much less amenable to manipulation.
Modern Gnostics follow the same strategy. They may emphasize the special love or the higher philosophy of Jesus, like old-fashioned Gnostics used to do. They might teach “secrets” for health and wealth, or inner harmony with the great beyond, and so on. But the actual man from Galilee offends their sensibilities, somehow. What a problem he can become! There is the ugly cross, for one thing. And then — he might break into the Temple’s courtyard, just when you need it least, and turn the tables on the moneychangers. The man might call sinners friends and make associates of the destitute and poor. In one moment he might wash the feet of his followers — and in the next, call them to pick up their cross. “Inner harmony with the beyond” is easier by far.
This, of course, is exactly why St. Paul calls the Colossians, again and again, into encounter with the man who bled his life out at Calvary. This should be our tactic, too. The mission of God is about a broken body at Calvary. It is rooted in an actual man from Galilee who bled and died outside of Jerusalem in order to redeem the world. The point is absolutely basic — and the mission of God never gets beyond it. We are not called to preach philosophies. We are called to bring the world to Jesus.
