Archive for the ‘By Jonathan Stepp’ Category
Poor Wayfaring Strangers
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From the Hebrew text for Thanksgiving Day: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien.” ~ Deuteronomy 26:5
I hope you are at home for Thanksgiving this year – whatever and whomever home may be for you. It is a hard thing to be wayfaring, wandering, and on the road as a stranger in a strange land. Through the law of Moses, God constantly reminded Israel that they had been aliens until they found a home and that they ought to therefore welcome strangers, aliens, and foreigners into their midst.
I hope that, if you are at home for Thanksgiving this year, you have found a way to open your home, your table, and your life – however briefly – to someone with nowhere else to be. To do so is to live out the very substance of God’s own life: in Jesus, the home of the Triune God opened up and received all of us – strangers and aliens to the Divine – into himself.
I hope that in your home this Thanksgiving there is thanks given for the home that is and is yet to be. As the old spiritual says, “I’m just a poor wayfaring stranger / While traveling in this world of woe / Yet there’s no sickness, toil nor danger / In that bright land to which I go.”
May your Thanksgiving table this year be a foretaste of the Thanksgiving table of the world to come: a place where you are at home and others have found a home with you.
~ Jonathan Stepp
What If?
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Christian Living, Church, Gospel, Love, Ministry, Perichoresis, Relationships |
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What if God wanted to do something new – something that contradicted the Bible? God wouldn’t do that, you say? Peter might disagree with you. The Holy Spirit gave him a vision and told him to eat unclean food, and then showed him that uncircumcised Gentiles were therefore meant to be a part of the community of God. He had to admit that God was doing something new that contradicted what the Bible said. Every piece of sacred scripture that Peter had in his possession said that this was impossible.
It took a while for the church to come around, didn’t it? Even Peter appears to have wavered back and forth on the issue in the years that followed. That wild-eyed liberal, Paul, just wouldn’t let it go, though. He kept pushing Christianity to be more inclusive, more oriented to grace, and more acknowledging of the universal nature of Christ’s work.
So how do we know when it is God who is doing something new instead of us just going off the deep end?
- God’s new works are works that expand our perception of how broad, and wide, and deep the inclusive love of Christ really is.
- God’s new works may contradict rules, commands, and ethical restrictions in the Bible, but they are in harmony with the underlying principles of those rules: principles such as love, freedom, and inclusion.
- God’s new works start small, like mustard seeds, and slowly grow until almost everyone understands them. Some will see it right away and some will fight against it.
Here are some other examples of people who have been treated like unclean Gentiles by the community of God until the Holy Spirit intervened: slaves, immigrants, people of color, women, gay people, lesbians, and the transgender. For all these groups there was a time – and in some places there is still a time – when they were treated as unworthy of full participation in the community and the Bible was used to prove it so.
Thank God that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are free to do something new.
~ Jonathan Stepp
Why must Jesus be “true God from true God”?
The Son of God became human so that we could become full participants in the life of God.
Consider one of the more profound implications of this idea: it means that Jesus would have existed even if humanity never sinned. God’s purpose to make us full participants in the life of God was a plan that preceded our sin, and even our existence, and it was a plan that did not require human failure to bring it to fruition. Human failure meant that the Son’s incarnation would be an experience fraught with rejection, pain, and death, but it was not human failure that prompted the Son to take the radical action of becoming one of us. The Son’s entrance into our existence was motivated first and foremost by God’s desire to unite us to herself and make us participants in her life.
It was this concept of being joined to God by Jesus that motivated a spirituality among the 4th century defenders of the Nicene Creed that focused on Jesus being both fully God and fully human. Athanasius would say “Humanity would not have been deified if joined to a creature, or unless the Son were very God; nor had humanity been brought into the Father’s presence, unless He had been His natural and true Word who had put on the body. “[i] A created being could not join God and humanity together and make us participants in the life of God. Only God could join us to himself and make us participants in his life. Therefore, if Jesus is the one who makes humanity participants in God then Jesus must be God from God, light from light, true God from God, the begotten Son of the Father and not just another member of the creation.
~ Jonathan Stepp
[i] Against the Arians, Discourse 2, Chapter 21, paragraph 70
From an “S” to a “D”
Sometimes the simplest differences can make the most profound changes. Changing our statement of the gospel from an “s” to a “d” would be an example:
Instead of saying “Jesus Saves”
we might simply say
“Jesus Saved”
~ Jonathan Stepp
Announcement and Invitation
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Evangelism, Gospel, Perichoresis, Trinity |
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The good news about God is both an announcement and an invitation.
It is the announcement that all of humanity is included in God’s life. To be more specific, it is the announcement that the Father has adopted us as her children through Christ, in the Spirit.
The implication of this announcement is an invitation: an invitation to believe that this is true and to begin to live differently because we now see God, ourselves, our fellow human beings, and the whole creation differently.
When we share this good news with others, it is important to get the order right: first an announcement and then an invitation.
~ Jonathan Stepp
A Meditation for Trinity Sunday
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Gospel, Liturgy, Perichoresis, Trinity |
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Rublev’s Icon of the Trinity
Consider the following statements:
- There is no God but Allah
- God Bless You
- May the Force be with You
- Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit
Depending on one’s definition of “Allah” or “the Force” or “God,” each of these statements might be referring to the same divine being and simply using different words to do so. On the other hand, they could each be making radically different statements.
Gregory of Nazianzus is famous for saying “when I say God, I mean Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (Oration 38.8). Perhaps Gregory has a point, perhaps we need to be careful to be clear about what we mean when we say “God.”
If we are speaking of the God who is incarnate in the person of Jesus then we are speaking of the God who is Triune. To speak of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is to speak of the God who is loving relationship, the God who doesn’t just “do relationship” but is relationship. The God who doesn’t just love but is love. When we speak of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we are speaking of the God who is personal, connected, and relational, and we are therefore not speaking of God as merely an impersonal force at work in the world.
We see this in the story told by our liturgical year. It tells the story of the Father sending the Son to descend into our existence, take hold of us, and then ascend, taking us with him into the relational life of love he shares with the Father. As the Father’s children through the Son we now share in the life of the Spirit who proceeds from the Father, through the Son, and baptizes us with the Son into his relationship with the Father.
This is the significance of Trinity Sunday. It is fitting – having celebrated this story of our adoption over the course of the last six months – that we should now have a day dedicated to God’s life as Trinity. That Triune Life is not something we could have known if we had not known this story of the Son’s descending and ascending to take us into God’s life. But now that we have heard and believed the story, we have an idea of what it means to say “God.” When we say “God” we mean “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
~ Jonathan Stepp
This post originally appeared at the Scholar-Priest Initiative.
The Opening of the Triune Life
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Easter, Gospel, Perichoresis, Relationships, Trinity |
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What is it, exactly, that God has done in the cross and resurrection of Christ? One very beautiful way to understand salvation is to see that God has opened his own self to include humanity in his life. The cross and the resurrection are what the opening of the Triune Life looks like when expressed in time and space.
Reaching back to some of the most ancient theology of the Church (from the Second Century), Miroslav Volf paints an image of what has happened in the passion and resurrection which we are celebrating during this Easter season:
When the Trinity turns toward the world, the Son and the Spirit become, in Irenaeus’s beautiful image, the two arms of God by which humanity was made and taken into God’s embrace (see Against Heresies 5.6.1.). That same love that sustains nonself-enclosed identities in the Trinity seeks to make space “in God” for humanity. Humanity is, however, not just the other of God, but the beloved other who has become an enemy. When God sets out to embrace the enemy, the result is the cross. On the cross the dancing circle of self-giving and mutually indwelling divine persons opens up for the enemy; in the agony of the passion the movement stops for a brief moment and a fissure appears so that sinful humanity can join in. We, the others – we, the enemies – are embraced by the divine persons who love us with the same love with which they love each other and therefore make space for us within their own eternal embrace. ~ Exclusion and Embrace, Abingdon Press: 1996. pp. 128-129
In light of this amazing opening of God’s life to her enemies, we are stunned to realize that the one who says “love your enemies” has, herself, gone ahead of us in this task. God does not call us to love our enemies while she carries on hating hers. God invites us to believe in the possibility of a new world where we and those whom we hate can be reconciled. That’s why we call it the good news (gospel) of God.
~ Jonathan Stepp
The Tyranny of Sexual Ethics
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Christian Living, Gospel, Love, Perichoresis, Relationships |
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Our ethical behavior is very important, but it is not the most important aspect of our being. What is most important is that we trust that we have been embraced into the life of the God who is Father, Son, and Spirit. Our decisions about what is moral and immoral then flow from this central truth as a secondary result.
Christians who have put their trust in the God who embraces us through Jesus may sometimes disagree about ethical issues. There is no reason that such disagreements should necessarily lead to a break in communion between Christians since, after all, morality is secondary to the good news that God has included us in his life through Jesus.
Unfortunately, this has often not been the case in Christian history. In fact, schism has often resulted from disagreements over what to eat or not eat, what to drink or not drink, and the general rules of how to live a moral life. On such occasions Christians have allowed ethics to establish a tyrannical reign over Jesus and the gospel.
This tyranny is especially visible when it comes to sexual ethics. The results can be quite startling when viewed from a distance. Consider this example: some 19th century Christians in America disapproved of an unmarried woman having sex but turned a blind eye to masters raping their slaves. Which is the more damaging act of immorality?
In our own age there are many Christians who confidently affirm that Jesus is the central truth of our faith while at the same time allowing the tyranny of sexual ethics to determine whom they regard as a fellow Christian and what message they choose to present to the world about God. What is the gospel? Is it a message about sexual morality or is it a message about the Father who has embraced humanity through Jesus, in the Holy Spirit? Christians who can’t answer that question with clarity and confidence risk worshiping the tyrant of ethics and not the God of love.
I don’t think that homosexuality is a sin, which works out well for my life and ministry in the Episcopal Church, but I understand the perspective of Christians who disagree with me on this issue. I think they’re wrong and they think I’m wrong, but that doesn’t mean that I won’t share communion with them or that I think they aren’t Christians because they disagree with me. Why? Because my spiritual life is ruled by Jesus, not by the tyranny of sexual ethics.
And maybe, at the end of the day, this is the question that non-Christian are asking of the Church: what is really of first importance, Jesus or sex?
~ Jonathan Stepp
What’s Two Times Five?
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Gospel, Perichoresis, Trinity |
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We’ve all experienced that moment when a sunset, a mountain vista, or the crashing waves of the ocean evoke the sense of God’s presence. The natural world seems to speak to us of God’s care for us in unique ways. But how much can we learn about God from nature?
Early Christians, among them the theologians of the fourth century, were skeptical about how useful the natural world could be in revealing God. Their doubt arose from the fact that nature seems to primarily provide us with statements about the Divine that are negative and vague. From observing the creation we could conclude that God is immortal (that is, “not mortal”) and we could conclude that God is unchanging, or that God has no beginning – but all these statements are negatives, not positives. They tell us what God is not (e.g. “not changing”) but they don’t tell us what God is.
Observations from nature are also necessarily vague. We might conclude from observing the universe that God is powerful, perhaps even going so far as to say “all-powerful,” but what does that mean in the end? If we don’t know whether God is good, bad, or neutral, then we don’t know whether that power will be deployed against us or for us. We might be able to create various negative statements about God from observing the natural order but we cannot make positive statements: we cannot, with any degree of confidence, positively state that God is love or God is good or God is on our side. In fact, nature – with its disease and capricious cruelty – could lead to the ultimately negative conclusion: there is no God at all.
Gregory of Nazianzus pointed out that “he who is eagerly pursuing the nature of the Self-existent will not stop at saying what God is not, but must go on beyond what God is not, and say what God is.” Gregory offers the following analogy: to speak of God merely in terms of what he is not is like being asked “what is two times five?” and replying “it’s not one, or two, or three, or four, and so on” but never actually saying that the answer is “ten.” (The Second Theological Oration, Oration 28, paragraph 9.)
Athanasius of Alexandria concluded that “it is more pious and more accurate to signify God from the Son and call Him Father, than to name Him from His works only and call Him Unoriginate.” Athanasius stated quite simply that “we must take our knowledge of the Spirit from the Son.” (Against the Arians, Discourse I, chapter 9, paragraph 34 and Letters to Serapion on the Holy Spirit, Letter 3, paragraph 3.)
For these early Christians nature was not enough to tell them of the Father, Son, and Spirit, or enough to tell them of God’s abiding, faithful love for humanity. To truly know God as God is, they encourage us to look at the Son of the Father, Jesus Christ, through whom we receive the Holy Spirit. He is the image of the invisible God and in him we have a true and trustworthy revelation of the God who loves us without reservation.
~ Jonathan Stepp
Christ Will Come Again
Filed under: By Jonathan Stepp, Christian Living, Christmas, Gospel |
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Every New Year when I was a kid I would wonder to myself, “will this be the year that Jesus returns?” This was partly because I was surrounded by a lot of church-talk about the second coming when I was a kid and partly because I was just fascinated by the apocalypse. (In my years of working with children and teens I’ve noticed that a surprising number of them are interested in the end of the world. The movies they watch and the video games they play have something to do with that, I think.) So, here it is, the year of our Lord 2015. As a child I just assumed that Jesus would be back by now, or that we would at least have colonies on the moon and flying cars to keep us entertained while we’re waiting.
I don’t think much about Jesus’ second coming any more. Usually once a week is the norm – when we say the line in the Eucharistic Prayer “Christ will come again.” Some people do think about that great gettin’ up morning on a regular basis – and I’ve noticed something about those people. For many of them (not all) this world and this life have proven to be very difficult. If you are poor, or suffering persecution for your faith, or struggling with chronic illness, the day of our Lord’s appearing is something you long for. You look forward to a day of healing, of justice, and of resurrection.
Some time ago our Bishop here in Western North Carolina was speaking about the resurrection and he humorously commented on the way Episcopalians sometimes trail off to a bit of mumbling when we say “Christ will come again” – many of us seem to have some doubts. He then observed that it may be that many Episcopalians are doing quite well in this present life and therefore aren’t particularly interested in the life of the world to come. (Just a note: he did not say this attitude was a good thing.)
If this New Year finds you suffering, take heart: the day of the Lord is nearer now than when we first believed. If this New Year finds you overflowing with blessings, do not forget to join Jesus in his solidarity with the downtrodden, the outcast, and the persecuted. Do not forget to long for the day when he will make all things new and do not fail to say with boldness every Sunday, “Christ will come again.”
~ Jonathan Stepp