15 Adar 1, 5784 / 24 February 2024

James Thwaites makes a bold claim:

“Everyone born into the Western world, Christian or not, inherits the mindset or worldview we have been looking at. This mindset has been developing for thousands of years and, even in the scattered post modern era, pieces of past broken worlds will determine most of the way we think, act and feel.

(p24 The Church Beyond the Congregation (CBC)

The rivers of church history flowing down from ancient times leads to unpacking of the philosophical suitcase of our day according to Thwaites:

“The church has inherited a vision of the universe ( creation) that has been split in two by Plato, Aquinas and Descartes. The Catholic, the holiness and the Pentecostal streams for the most part pursue the upper storey, tending to move away from an emphasis on everyday life towards experiences of, or encounters with, the ‘spiritual realm.’ To gain access to the upper storey the Catholics hold to the sacraments and the priest, the holiness stream stresses moral purity as the key and the Pentecostals focus on worship and the anointing. The Reformed and fundamentalist streams are predominantly engaged in the lower storey where the rational dimension is pursued.” (p25)

With a split-level universe in place we have real difficulty knowing the nature of the spiritual and created realms apart from Greek thinking. We tend to fall into artificially divided camps: faith / reason; spiritual / material or upper / lower storey. However, what if we could reintegrate these into one created whole?

In chapter 3 he goes on to explore the key question of where the church is located. In the pages of the New Testament we read about the setting of the church being defined as the city and entire region. Yes, the first followers of Jesus met in buildings, predominantly their homes to worship and fellowship together, but all that life entailed was bound up in ‘the church’: family, friends, work and the market place. Then along came the Roman emperor Constantine in the 4th Century and changed it all. From being an outlaw, underground and persecuted movement the church suddenly became the flavour of the month. Christianity was legalised and elements of Roman state imperial religion integrated into the newly accepted movement.

One of the most significant changes was that the church became located in a building with all the imperial pomp of Roman court ceremonies. Whereas before church had encompassed the totality of the saints’ experiences through all of their life and the created order now church had a definite address.

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’  The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” [emphasis mine] (John 3: 5-8 ESV)   

This answer from Jesus was delivered in the very well know exchange with the religious teacher Nicodemus. The most often focused part of this is about Jesus’ challenge to Nicodemus to be born again. He was challenging one of the main gatekeepers of the religious life of the nation of Israel in his need to a complete renewed way of experiencing and knowing God. I find it very irritating how this once only described mention of being “born again” in scripture is used to conjure up a rather unbalanced, charismatic, weird type of Christian. Anyway I digress…..

Nicodemus as a custodian of Law, Temple and Sabbath would have been unaccustomed to hearing about the religious life as a sound. “Surely Jesus you must be mistaken!” Nicodemus may have been thinking. I know the Torah teachings back to front; I regularly attend the religious services and follow the Sabbath meticulously. In short he was a five star observant follower of God. However, Jesus was likening the spiritual life and following God to a sound.

To understand the sound God makes in the universe and which is to reverberate through us as his followers Thwaites points us to Romans chapter 8.

The cry of being sons and daughters of the Father

For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”  The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.       (Romans 8:14-16 NIV)

Recently, on a Monday morning I was texting to my family on the bus ride to work about how we are to receive the same kind of affirmation and experience of being dearly beloved by God, as when Jesus experienced that at his baptism (Matthew 3:16-17). 5 minutes later as I neared my workplace I passed this heart shaped piece of art work lying on the pavement:

We truly are loved! That day I let out a ‘cry’ of exuberance and excitement about my sonship!

The cry of creation

Strangely, Paul then describes a second cry emanating from creation itself! The creation which God fashioned and which he daily sustains is longing for the children of God to be revealed:

¹⁹ For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. ²⁰ For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope ²¹ that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. ²² We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time.

(Romans 8:19-22)

Strangely, it is the created order itself from which this second cry emanates. Where is this cry directed? The answer is towards the children of God, those who have put their faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ. The cry is creation yearning for these sons and daughters of the living God to be revealed. It is almost as if God has placed mechanisms in his creation to be activated when creation is rightly interacted with by God’s people. A good analogy would be in a film thriller where the explosive device lying dormant suddenly starts its countdown when the timer device is triggered. And what a device creation is! There is an expectation of liberation from oppression and decay into freedom and glory. Thwaites will go on in much more detail about the implications of this how it looks hebraically in later chapters.

The cry of the Father

26 In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. (V26)

The Father sends the Spirit after searching out the deep things of God to the sons and daughters embarking on their inheritance in creation. The Father knows the challenges faced by His children and yet provides an incredible guide who comes alongside helping us in our weaknesses. We are not alone!

© Stephen Paul Jacob