The Divine Paternity Test

I may as well admit right now that I have never liked lists. Seriously. For example, I despise waiting lists. Don’t you? Just standing there waiting for a pager to start blinking or vibrating when your table is finally ready at the Red-Outback-Thank God It’s-Olive-Cheesecake-Grill. You know what the problem is with waiting lists of any kind? When you’re waiting, Not-Yet always feels exactly like No! How is that for biblical eschatology?

Priority lists? I don’t like those, either. They make me anxious, a bit uncertain, insecure about where I stand. Every so often, when I feel the need to revisit the 19th century, I go visit my neighborhood post office. Your post office probably works better than the one I use, but every time I go there to try to pick up my mail, or hold my mail, or figure out who’s been eating my mail, I run into the same postal worker who makes it clear that my problem is not on her personal priority list. She’s always easy to spot. She has one of those funny cartoons at her work station that says, in effect, You obviously have mistaken me for somebody who cares! I think she was first appointed by President Eisenhower. When I think of priority lists, I think of her, and it just gives me the willies.

Watch lists, those are no fun, are they? We used to get dressed up to go to the airport to catch a plane, but that was before we had all of these no-fly, watch lists to worry about. And folks are worried. Now we have to pay attention to all sorts of dangerous things. Dirty bombs. Shoe bombs. Or is it just dirty shoes? I can never remember. All I know is that now you have to take off your shoes, and they won’t let you get on board carrying your Aunt Gertrude’s homemade raspberry jam. Aunt Gertrude doesn’t really look like a member of Al Qaeda, but under the right circumstances her jam could explode! You have to throw it out. Aunt Gertrude is on the watch list.

In my book, worst of all are the to-do lists. Those can be rough. They never seem to end, and every day there’s a new list. I took some preaching lessons from Fred Craddock years ago, and to this very day I remember how Dr. Craddock used to whine just a bit to make his point: They said that Jesus would solve all my problems, so I believed; but then they handed me this big bag of tasks, needs, responsibilities, and said, “Here, carry this for the rest of your journey.” Everybody knew exactly what he meant. Is there anyone here who does not have a Christian to-do list tucked somewhere in a shady corner of your heart, wondering to yourself when and if you’ll ever figure out what you’re supposed to do about all that stuff? To-do lists are rough.

I told you that I don’t like lists. Immediately, I start to sound like 60 Minutes with Andy Rooney. But I’m feeling some of that reading this text of ours. Paul sounds like he has a to-do list that he wants to give me, some stuff I need to look into before it’s too late, but there’s just a part of me deep down inside that wants to explain to Paul that my get-up-and-go already got-up-and-went! More things to do? More things for me to do? Now? If I’m not real careful, my voice will start to sound like it did in adolescence. But I’m too old to get stuck, bogged down in some sort of ecclesiastical puberty.

Actually, that is probably the right kind of imagery for this text. Paul seems to be talking about maturity, about growing up not down, about living a holy life rather than the old life that was no real kind of living at all. That was precisely the way that Paul began in our text: So I tell you this (doesn’t that remind you of a parent talking to a teenager?), and insist on it in the Lord (there’s just no getting around this guy, is there?), that you must no longer live as the Gentiles do, in the futility of their thinking (4:17). What is he saying? Let me give you the fruit of translation from the original Greek text, because I’ve been parsing Paul’s opening statement all week long: Paul is saying, and I quote, “Grow up!” What you’re doing just won’t cut it.

Well, since he put it that way, I suppose we should pay attention and read it again. It is a to-do list, a series of seven new imperatives in verses 25 through 32. Seven essential practices for healthy Soulcraft, things we can do to train ourselves in the holiness to which we are called. Actually, none of the things Paul puts on his list sound particularly fancy. There is nothing too exotic or sensational here, just completely ordinary stuff that is perfectly understandable. No falsehood, disciplined anger that avoids sin, no stealing, no unwholesome talk, no grieving the Holy Spirit, no bitterness and rage and brawling or malice, but always a demonstration of kindness and forgiveness toward others. All of it immediately obvious, none of it needing explanation or definition. In short, it all makes sense, because Paul has always shown an eye for small details. He just keeps talking about living worthily, walking the right way in the right direction for the right reasons, and these are the small steps necessary for the type of life he is envisioning. It’s small stuff.
But this small stuff still amounts to something, doesn’t it? All these ordinary deeds, don’t they add up, don’t they change us in important ways? I remember reading something written by a man remembering the church in which he grew up as a child:
I do not remember my father, his illness, his surgeries, his death. I was too little. But I do remember some of the ways the church reached out to us then with expressions of love. My mother always spoke of one of my Sunday School teachers with profound respect and gratitude: “He gave blood for Dad.” The pastor and his wife--who, as I think about it now, probably did not have two nickels to put together--took us on a trip to Chicago. One woman, who always dressed in red and sat two or three pews ahead of us, would reach her red-gloved hand into her red pocketbook as she was leaving the sanctuary, and hand my brother and me each a yellow-wrapped stick of gum. These and more were gifts of the heart. John Killinger calls them the little things that hold the world together. You know what he means, don’t you? The smallest of efforts at the most critical of times is enough to strengthen and sustain.1

So OK, Paul, I get it. These little things do matter intensely. They might even hold the world together, or at least that part of the world for which we are responsible, our community. Not lying, not sinning with our anger, not stealing, not speaking coarsely, not causing the Spirit to grieve and mourn, not raging against others but showing them the compassionate kindness of forgiveness just like Jesus, maybe it is not such a bad list after all. But honestly, Paul, I have to admit that I was just a bit underwhelmed with your list at first glance. It all seems so reasonable and customary, so routine and familiar. Frankly, I was thinking that we would be given just a bit more by way of an assignment, something more commensurate with our abilities. After all, ours is already a holiness church, so is it really necessary for us to reduce the holy life to a list of such predictable expectations? Is this all there is to holiness? Didn’t you expect something bigger and better?

Can you hear that tone of voice, the exasperation of someone feeling disappointed that their new assignment is too small, too unimaginative, too common to be of any consequence? When I was a grad student at Princeton Seminary, an acquaintance of mine overheard that tone one day during lunch in the refectory. What a perfect setting for that tone! A nearby huddle of students preparing for graduation was hunched poker-faced around a table, comparing varying possibilities for their forthcoming ministerial calls. One of the students was decrying his meager prospects, critical of a rural church that had invited him to serve as its pastor. His buddies seemed to agree, and one said something like, “You can do better than that, it’s beneath you, it’s not worth the time and trouble.” Now can you hear that tone? But just when the conversation could get no worse, somebody else spoke up. truthfully. redemptively. “All I know,” he said to his peers in a quiet voice, “is that the world is a better place today because Michelangelo never said, ‘I don’t do ceilings!’”

That acquaintance of mine said he couldn’t get that truth out of his mind. It kept burrowing deeper between his ears until he sat down and came up with his own list of truths worth remembering:

“The world is a better place because Noah never said, ‘I don’t do cruise ships with animals!’

The world is a better place because Abraham and Sarah never said, ‘We don’t do post-menopausal pregnancies!’

The world is a better place because Moses never said, ‘I don’t do extended desert tours with mixed multitudes!’

The world is a better place because David never said, ‘I don’t do Philistine giants and improvised slingshots!’

The world is a better place because the virgin Mary never said, ‘I don’t do unwed, teenage motherhood!’

The world is a better place because Peter never said, ‘I don’t do non-kosher dinners with Italians!’

The world is a better place because the Apostle Paul never said, ‘I don’t do church correspondence!’

The world is a better place because Jesus Christ never said, ‘I don’t do Roman crucifixions!’”2

Really now, is there anything in Paul’s list that is truly beneath us? I understand that these are just the basics, the fundamental steps, the core practices of the holy life, but maybe this is the only place we can start given what Paul is describing. In reading this text, it suddenly becomes clear what Paul is doing. Listen again to the deliberately evocative language he has chosen, the way he has located the Church back in the Garden on Day One of a New Creation story: You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (4:22-24).

There we are, right back where it all started. A tree, some forbidden fruit, and a very dangerous, talking snake. So how else could we start on the recovery of true holiness? If we are now living on Day One of God’s New Creation, of course we will have to begin with simple definitions. Our first try in the Garden proved humans are not very adept at sticking to even the most basic assignments. The simple truth is that we still don’t know very much about what it takes to be truly human. The way Paul says this is that we never succeeded in learning about our vocation as humans by simply having it all explained to us. Adam and Eve received plenty of explanation, but they still ended up on the wrong side of the very first gated community! No, says Paul, the way you learn what is required to be human, the way you learn what is truly possible for being human is to see and encounter Jesus: You however, did not come to know Christ that way. Surely you heard of him and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus (4:20-21). Notice that we’re not talking of the truth about Jesus, trying to explain what is expected and required. No, Paul is telling us that we are now talking of the truth in Jesus. Watching what Jesus does is the way we learn not only who He is, but who we are! It is all so completely personal, a life revealed to us day by day as we watch and respond to what Jesus is doing. We either participate with Him in His holy, resurrection work, or we resist Him to draw away in the trivial pursuit of some crazy notion of our own. We might as well say that we are learning an entirely new language, learning how to name everything accurately as God brings us one basic action after another to help us practice pronouncing them rightly: This is truth-telling, this is righteous anger, and this is honest labor and holy speech. We’re back in the Garden and Jesus is teaching us language He knows perfectly by heart. Listen as Stanley Hauerwas describes our training in a new, Gospel tongue:

Jesus offers himself as the author of a new kind of communication among people. He is not offering a blueprint for a new society which we may or may not choose to realize. He is offering himself as the Word who alone is capable of creating a community that offers a new way in which human beings can be free to live lives in which self-giving becomes an alternative . . . The name for that community . . . is “church.”3

Isn’t this why Paul has given us this exquisitely simple to-do list? We are being re-created. We are learning a new language. We are watching Jesus form the words, living as the Word, showing us what each syllable looks like as He performs every one of these New Creation actions. Truth speaking, righteous rather than unholy anger, working with honest hands rather than pilfering creation resources, pleasing rather than grieving the Spirit, moving beyond bitterness and fighting, extending the compassion of forgiveness. This is our new vocabulary, our new Father tongue, the only language appropriate to the New Creation in which we dwell. How could it be any other way? We must be holy. A brand new world requires a brand new you! To act any other way would be inappropriate, lacking creativity!

Let’s be honest about this New Creation language we are learning. Just because something is simple does not make it easy. None of these acts of love that Paul has been describing require much in the way of definition. They are open words, fully accessible to our comprehension. Lying, stealing, and all the rest, none of them are likely to strike us as hopelessly complex or sophisticated. Don’t be deceived by their simplicity. There is nothing easy about living the New Creation in a world still under old management.

United Methodist Bishop Will Willimon remembers watching a couple being interviewed on TV during the days following the horrors of September 11th:

They were standing on the street, before the wreckage of Ground Zero, obviously in great grief. Their beloved daughter had perished in the cataclysm. Through tears, they shared their grief with the reporter.

The reporter, stammering, said to them, “Well, I know that you will be able to go to your place of worship this weekend and there maybe you’ll find some consolation in your faith?”

And the grieving mother replied, “No, we won’t be going to our place of worship this weekend ‘cause we’re Christians, and we know what Jesus commands about forgiveness, and frankly, we’re just not yet ready for that. It’ll be some time before we’ll want to be with Jesus.”

And Bishop Willimon wrote, “Wow. There’s a couple who knows, really knows what Jesus looks like and what being His followers looks like.”4

Let’s give them credit. They understood the stakes; they were willing to acknowledge the full claims of this New Creation life rather than trying to reduce it down to a manageable size by redefining the terms or placing convenient borders around all of the Gospel imperatives. I think Paul, the one who had terrorized the early Church, would understand the depths in which those grieving parents were reflecting on their identity and vocation in this New Creation. They knew that they were supposed to be disciples of Jesus, the people of God who will act in visible, public ways to embody and remember the future shaped by Messiah’s resurrection. Isn’t this the same way Paul brought his to-do list to a close? Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you (4:32). Sure, we say, but really now, which do you prefer? Do you want Osama bin Laden to wind up dead, or is it OK with you if he just ends up converted?

Do you see the limitation of a list like this? Can you feel any growing sense of terror, wondering how to manage it all, calculating the odds that you will be able to master every imperative and accomplish every task? For all the benefits offered in a list like this, there are still some limitations. You already know those limits, because you have plenty of experience with other types of lists. For instance, purchasing everything on your grocery list does not in and of itself make your hunger pangs go away. You know what is required for that. You have to get what is on your grocery list inside you to do any real good. It must become part of you, interior to who you are. So doesn’t it make sense to think that in a similar sense all that is on our list has to become part of us, become internalized? Isn’t this exactly what Paul is saying? Be made new in the attitude of your minds . . . put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness (4:23-24).

That’s where it often breaks down, right? Somehow this Word we have been given remains external to us, not internal, not written on our hearts like the New Covenant the prophets foretold. Somehow we simply miss out; minds intrigued but never fully transformed, hearts that remain slightly warmed, but never set fully ablaze by the Spirit. Isn’t this the final prospect that frightens us, the dreaded thought that if it is just left up to us, we already know enough to anticipate that we will not be up to the task?

There is nothing particularly new about this fear. Let me give you the description of a very similar sentiment from a Quaker woman of Philadelphia named Hannah Whitall Smith, who lived and wrote of this concern about a century ago:

Shortly after I had come to know something of the fullness of Christ’s salvation, an occasion arose in my life when I realized that I should have need of a very large amount of patience. An individual, who was especially antagonistic to me, was coming to spend two weeks at our house. She had always in the past been very provoking and irritating, and I felt, as the day drew near for her arrival, that, if I was to behave to her in a really Christ-like way, I should need a far greater supply of patience than I usually possessed. . . . Therefore one night, after the rest of the family had retired, I shut myself up in my room, taking with me a plate of biscuits, which I had provided in case I should be hungry; and kneeling down by my bed, I prepared myself for an all-night conflict.

I confess I felt rather like a martyr. . . . But scarcely had my knees touched the floor when, like a flash, there came into my mind the declaration to which I have referred, “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption; that, according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” “Yes,” I exclaimed inwardly, “and of course patience as well!” And I arose at once from my knees, with an absolute conviction that I did not in the least need, as I had thought, to lay in a big stock of patience to use during my friend’s visit, but that I could simply, as the occasion arose, look to the Lord for a present supply for my present need. . . .

What had she learned? Listen to the conclusion Hannah Smith came to that evening:

What had come to me now was a discovery, and in no sense an attainment. I had not become a better woman than I was before, but I had found out that Christ was a better Savior than I had thought He was. I was not one bit more able to conquer my temptations than I had been in the past, but I had discovered that He was able and willing to conquer them for me. I had no more wisdom or righteousness of my own than I had ever had, but I had found out that He could really and actually be made unto me, as the Apostle declared He would be, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.5

Could it really be that simple? Can we really expect that the work of the Spirit can be done within us, here and now? That the Lord Jesus himself could become our sufficiency, acting on our behalf certainly, but also acting in us? Could it really be true that God would do the necessary work within us so that God can accomplish the required work through us? Before you answer, just listen to the brimming confidence of Paul’s final command, his insistence in inviting us to become fully immersed in the intimate business of God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit: Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (5:1-2).

Incredible! We end up just the way our text first began, and from that beginning to this end there is no divergence in purpose as Paul calls on us to live, to walk in a manner worthy and right for our identity as the beloved children of God by adoption. As Paul himself told us back in verse 24, we have been “created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.” It is our birthright, the vocation for which we have been redeemed. There is no more indelible mark of this family bloodline than to demonstrate the kind and compassionate forgiveness we have experienced in Christ, living a life of sacrificial love that brings pleasure to God the Father. Isn’t this a family business you would want to know firsthand, a rich inheritance of love you would gladly live on for the remainder of your days?

Several years ago we had the good fortune to become acquainted with Jack Hayford, and we came to know Pastor Jack as a generous brother while we served a neighboring community of faith. But of all the things I would know to say about this Christian colleague from the Foursquare tradition, the truth that first comes to my mind is something Jack once said about himself. “You may have already noticed that I have a very big nose,” I heard him tell his congregation, many of whom began to chuckle just a little bit under their breath. “Actually,” he said, “I don’t really like to think of my nose as being big; I simply prefer to think that the noses of other people tend to be rather underdeveloped. But here’s the thing I want you to know,” he continued, “when I first noticed that my nose seemed to be a bit bigger than all the rest, I just never had to work much at making it continue to grow. I never stood in front of my bathroom mirror, early in the morning, trying to will my nose to grow, straining and grunting, hoping that my obviously elegant nose would turn out to be even more handsome and noticeable. I just never had to work on my nose at all! It just developed the way you see it now. And do you know why, do you recognize why my nose came out the way it did? My nose is more developed than yours because my Father’s seed was in me!”

I know you’re already anticipating where I am going with this, but let me make it as plain and clear as I can. You and I have been created for holiness, just as Paul has testified. Forgiveness, the kind of compassion and kindness we have experienced in Jesus, is the indisputable proof of our royal bloodline. Our ability to will and extend that same kind of forgiveness to others is the divine paternity test, it demonstrates that we are members of this family of God, that we are capable of imitating God because we are “dearly beloved children” called to “live a life of love, just as Christ loved us.” But don’t think for a moment this is something you are expected to do on your own. Don’t believe for a second that to accomplish this task you must strain and groan and grimace and grunt until you manage to do the thing that Paul has asked you to do. That’s not how it’s done, and it is not required of you now. Holiness is forever and always God’s work within us!

I know not everyone will believe it at first, and it may be true that we will have to let Paul’s Good News sink in more than once until it becomes the kind of thing that gives us the courage and confidence we will need. I did think it was important for you to know, so that’s why I wanted to tell you this one simple truth: You were created for holiness! You are called to be a saint, to be a member of the Church, and an imitator of God. The Holy Spirit of God has actually sealed you for the day of redemption. Don’t you realize what this means? Your Father’s seed is in you!

Notes:

1. A version of this story was told by Mark E. Yurs of Salem United Church of Christ, Verona, Wisconsin. No further publication information is known at this time.

2. A version of this story was first told to me by Leonard Sweet. No further publication information is known at this time.

4. This story was told in the sermon, “How Will You Know If It’s Jesus?” by William H. Willimon, August 7, 2005. No further publication information is known at this time.

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