Author: gracenote1230

40   Q.   Why did Christ have to suffer death?

A.    Because God’s justice and truth require it: ^1
nothing else could pay for our sins
except the death of the Son of God.^2

^1 Gen. 2:17
^2 Heb. 2:9,15; Phil. 2:8

41   Q.   Why was he “buried”?

A.    His burial testifies
that he really died.^1

^1 Acts 13:29; Matt. 27:60;Luke 23:50[-53]; John 19:38[-42]

42   Q.   Since Christ has died for us,
               why do we still have to die?

A.    Our death does not pay the debt of our sins.
Rather, it puts an end to our sinning
and is our entrance into eternal life.^1

^1 John 5:24; Phil. 1:23; Rom. 7:24 [21-25]

43   Q.   What further benefit do we receive
                from Christ’s sacrifice and death on the cross?

A.    By Christ’s power
our old selves are crucified, put to death, and buried with him,^1
so that the evil desires of the flesh
may no longer rule us,^2
but that instead we may offer ourselves
as a sacrifice of gratitude to him.^3

^1 Rom. 6:6-8, 11-12;Col. 2[:11-12]
^2 Rom. 6:12
^3 Rom. 12:1

44   Q.   Why does the creed add,
                “He descended to hell”?

A.    To assure me during attacks of deepest dread and temptation
that Christ my Lord,
by suffering unspeakable anguish, pain, and terror of soul,
on the cross but also earlier,
has delivered me from hellish anguish and torment.^1

^1 Isa.53:10; Matt. 27:46

LORD’S DAY 16 (Q/A 40-44)
To Hell, In Hell, and Back”

The cartoon robot character, Buzz Lightyear, in the movie, The Toy Story, pretends to fly “to infinity and beyond.”

There’s no pretending when we are confronted with real pain and struggle – of the physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, congregational, organizational, communal, national – sometimes those  pains and struggles seem like “to infinity and beyond.”  The deep and pervasive effects of sin, violence, war, illness…even death itself, or even sojourning through the valleys of the shadows of death, have a quality to it that obscures light, life and joy.

Christian Wiman, in his recent pastoral-poetic-prophetic memoir and reflection, My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer, as he invites us to walk with him in and through the struggle of a living hell – a cancer that leaves him to prepare for a needed bone marrow transplant, which chemotherapy has rendered his body enervated, emaciated. His is a serious, thoughtful, no-holds barred wrestling with God, the bright abyss, where he and we are brought to the very precipice of faith, looking down and ahead and seeing nothing, wondering if there is anyone or anything ahead and below.

Wiman says this about Christianity:

I’m a Christian not because of the resurrection (I wrestle with this), and not
because I think Christianity contains more truth than other religions (I think
God reveals himself, or herself, in many forms, some not religious), and not
simply because it was the religion in which I was raised (this has been a
high barrier). I am a Christian because of that moment on the cross when
Jesus, drinking the very dregs of human bitterness, cries out, My God, my
God, why hast thou forsaken me?.  .  . I’m suggesting that Christ’s suffering
shatters the iron walls around human suffering, that Christ’s compassion
makes extreme human compassion—to the point of death, even—possible.
Human love can reach right into death, then, but not if it is merely human
love. (p.155, emphasis not mine)

His confession is similar to that of Simone Weil or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or even the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk (my favorite prophet, who I characterize as Job minus the three meddling friends), who find comfort and consolation in the God who knows us, who desires and who, in fact, to be in our life, to be in our places, to be in our hellish moments.

Q/A 40 through 44 are powerful assertions of what God does with our Good Fridays. God as Jesus Christ in the Holy Spirit doesn’t run away from our sin, doesn’t discard us, doesn’t flee from us, but comes toward us and becomes as one of us. Jesus Christ comes as one of us, and to have his existence with us as full and authentic, Jesus experiences our hell, becomes one with us in the hell of this world, feeling it, carrying it in his heart and soul, receiving the effects of it…and the ultimate consequence of it: death itself. The Son of God going to the depth and darkness of death itself, the Creed and the ancient ecumenical Church saw this as so critical to assert that Christ really, truly, fully died. “He descended into hell” re-iterates His death. He experienced death, the pain that accompanied it, and the anguish that embraced His heart and His soul.

Recall that this Catechism began in Q/A 1 to reassure us as followers of Jesus Christ that our comfort in life and in death, in body and in soul, is that we belong to our faithful Savior and Lord.  Q/A 40 through 44 drives home that point. In every single moment, in our waking and in our sleeping, in our living days and in our mini-deaths, and even when death knocks on the doorsteps of our homes, we are not alone.  In the deepest and darkest despair of the hellish moments and torments of our individual and corporate lives, the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, is not an abstraction; He is not a theory, an idea, a philosophy, or a stand-offish Sovereign.  Here we have hanging on Calvary’s cross is the Son of God – God in flesh and blood – who takes on hell, who lives in our hell, who knows it inside and out – but who in the end is not consumed by it, not vanquished by it, but who, as Fleming Rutledge says, looked at the “fangs of death” and rendered it powerless.  And because of Him, we are not left alone, and we are finally rescued from it all.

37   Q.   What do you understand
by the word “suffered”?

A.    That during his whole life on earth,
but especially at the end,
Christ sustained
in body and soul
the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race.^1

This he did in order that,
by his suffering as the only atoning sacrifice,^2
he might deliver us, body and soul,
from eternal condemnation,
and gain for us
God’s grace,
righteousness,
and eternal life.

^1 1 Pet. 2:24;3:18;Isa. 53:12
^2 1 John 2:2; 4:10;Rom. 3:25

38   Q.   Why did he suffer
“under Pontius Pilate” as judge?

A.    So that he,
though innocent,
might be condemned by an earthly judge,^1
and so free us from the severe judgment of God
that was to fall on us.^2

^1 Luke 23:14; John 19:4
^2 Ps. 69:5;Isa. 53; 2 Cor. 5:21;Gal. 3:13

39   Q.   Is it significant that he was “crucified”
instead of dying some other way?

A.    Yes.
By this I am convinced
that he shouldered the curse
which lay on me,^1
since death by crucifixion was cursed by God.^2

^1 Gal. 3[:10]
^2 Deut. 21:[23];Gal. 3:13

We were at a Little League baseball game the other day. One of our batters was up. He struck out and the kid announcer mistakenly asked over the loud speaker why the batter didn’t hit a perfectly good pitch, shaming the batter in the process and silencing his own parents who were equally surprised at that remark. The announcer’s father, who is a friend of ours and who was seated next to us, darted up to the announcer’s booth, where the opposing team’s coach beat him upstairs demanding that only one person was allowed in the announcer’s booth. The announcer’s twin brother wasn’t supposed to be there so he was dismissed from the booth, leaving the offending announcer up there to remain. The twin brother couldn’t understand why he was dismissed when it was his brother who made the offending remark.

Baseball, like so many sports, relies on taking a fall for the good of the team. Bunting a ball to be struck out at first base so that the man on second base can make it to third. Offensive linemen taking the deadly tackles and hits to prevent the football quarterback from being sacked.

God becoming human as Jesus Christ is not a sport, but what Christ does in becoming human is for the good of the “team,” i.e. the fallen creation which would prefer living free from God, rather than living freely in God.

Craig Barnes insightfully points to our crippling guilt that causes us to wander from place to place, school to school, career to career, seeking never to be anchored to any particular communities or commitments, but moving endlessly. Such movements are symptomatic of restless hearts – restless for home. And part of being restless is that we are alienated from others, alienated from ourselves, and alienated from God. To be free from God, or to seek to be free from God, we find that we are never really free. We are shackled to our own desires, to our own wants, giving in to our wandering lusts, given over to our own will and ways. We are cursed because we choose violence over peace, hate over love. We break the heart of God because we were not created to live in the way we do. Given the right conditions, the exhibitionist violence we read about in war-torn Syria or the terrorists that took hostages and killed several people in a Nairobi, Kenya shopping mall recently can erupt from the heart of a mild-mannered suburbanite. The Scriptures are right and true, “No one is righteous, no not one.”

God enters our human condition. We are cursed because we continually choose sin’s will and ways.  Let’s say the “W” word. Wrath. When we as human beings are hell-bent on breaking God’s heart, notwithstanding the occasional acts and thoughts of good, God is indignant. Angry. We see glimpses of this as parents who become heart-broken when their children make bad choices. It’s an anger that comes from love, because as parents we know that our children are capable with so much more.

Multiply the sin acts, sin choices, sin motives, sin thoughts of the heart – multiply it 1000 times, or even 8 billion times, 365 days a year. This is not merely the faraway murders of Latin American drug cartels, or the senseless kidnappings in the southern part of the Philippines, or the human trafficking that occurs in this country. This is every act, every thought, every will of every human being. James 2:10 reminds us that that breaking one part of the law means we break all the parts of the law, and are held accountable for all of it.

God enters that situation. God as our Creator knows what we were created to be.

What we see at the judgment seat of Pontius Pilate and at the scene of the crucifixion are the breaking of all Ten Commandments, again and again. In that snapshot moment, as the Son of God subjects himself to the earthly judge and jury of Pilate and all the human spectators who aid and abet the death of Jesus Christ, is what every human being does towards God, again and again. We subject God to ourselves, as we subject each other to each other, as we subject ourselves to ourselves. The crucifixion is a microcosm of what is repeated from the Garden of Eden to our time, on a small or large scale. We inflict our alienation to be further alienated from God’s own Son. Jesus received that judgment, to take up the whole of humanity’s alienation and curse.

This is no sports game, by any means. God doesn’t play around. Jesus Christ, God’s only natural son, is the beloved One of the Father. To take up humanity in Himself, and condemned to die on a tree and thereby cursed (Deuteronomy 21:23), Jesus Christ is “at one” (atone) with humanity and “at one” with God, being God’s natural Son.

Jesus Christ is truly and really in solidarity with us, and being God’s Son and God’s anointed Savior, is for us. With us. For us.

Jesus Christ is the intention of God.

The wrath of God, unlike human wrath and unlike human anger, is not reckless, is not meaningless.  The wrath of God is connected to the love of God. God’s love is directed to taking an alienated and broken world, to reconcile and heal it, to anchor it to the heart and life of God.

Even as all were and are against God, in Jesus Christ the chosen One, the One has become for us all.

27   Q.   What do you understand
               by the providence of God?

A.    The almighty and ever present power of God^1
by which God upholds, as with his hand,
heaven
and earth
and all creatures,
and so rules them^2 that
leaf and blade,
rain and drought,
fruitful and lean years,
food and drink,^3
health and sickness,^4
prosperity and poverty—^5
all things, in fact,
come to us
not by chance
but by his fatherly hand.

^1 Acts 17:25[-28]
^2 Heb. 1:3
^3 Jer. 5:24; Acts 14:17
^4 John 9:3
^5 Prov. 22:2

28   Q.   How does the knowledge
               of God’s creation and providence help us?

A.    We can be patient when things go against us,^1
thankful when things go well,^2
and for the future we can have
good confidence in our faithful God and Father^3
that nothing in creation will separate us from his love.^4
For all creatures are so completely in God’s hand
that without his will
they can neither move nor be moved.^5

^1 Rom. 5:3; James 1:3;Job 1:21
^2 Deut. 8:10; 1 Thess. 5:18
^3 Rom. 5:5-6
^4 Rom. 8:38-39
^5 Job 1:12; 2:6; Acts 17:28;Prov. 21:1

Lord’s Day 10 (Q/A 27-28)

“God at the Altar, Altering Us”

As I write this reflection, I am preparing to officiate my eighth wedding since being ordained as a pastor.  From the premarital counseling to the actual wedding day, each wedding recalls for me the glorious day that Grace and I came to the wedding altar 11 years ago, before 150 of our family and friends, and exchanged our vows. Each day since then is about becoming married, living out our promises in the daily joys and grind of working, parenting, traveling, making doctor’s appointments.  Our wedding ceremony included a celebration of the Eucharist and a call to the baptized community to remember their belongingness to the family of God, and the God who gave His Son Jesus Christ for us, whose active decision to be for us is embodied at the bread and the cup, as is with the Scriptural image of the wedding feast and Christ as the bridegroom and the Church as His bride.  In each and every ritual act that we observed, we wanted to share with the gathered assembly at our wedding and to anchor our married life to the triune God whose very presence and power at the wedding altar is what made the wedding a wedding, and whose very presence and power makes our marriage a marriage.

Q/A 27-28 describes God’s providence, which Eberhard Busch links to God’s predestination.  Recall that there is an important difference between  predestination and predeterminism. Reformed Christians believe in predestination, not predeterminism. Predestination means that God knows the end, our destiny; the triune God – Father, Son, Holy Spirit—is our beginning and our end – the Alpha and the Omega. The triune God is the source of our life – in Him we live, and move and have our being (Acts 17:28), and  our fate rests in Him, as is our life when our physical life here is finished. That’s predestination.  Predeterminism says that God determines every detail and minutiae, from the breakfast you will eat to the vacation you will take next year. Predeterminism negates the freedom given to human beings, rendering us as enfleshed robots whose actions and words are controlled.

Q/A 27-28 reminds me of language similar to altar language – at weddings, at baptisms, at the Lord’s Table; whether in “leaf and blade, rain and drought. . .health and sickness” God upholds and sustains. Whatever condition or circumstance we may encounter or experience, God’s “fatherly hand” abides and abounds. This is a daily, moment-by-moment, promise of God, whereby our lives, the world, is an altar – spaces and places where each and all are offered to God and where God encounters us.

Liturgical and homiletical scholar Heather Murray Elkins speaks about “altaring” (note the “a”) in order to “alter” (note the “e”).  God altars our minds, hearts, and souls in order to alter it. God altars the world in order to alter it.  In other words, the power, presence, and promise of the triune God abides and abounds a broken and hurting world, in order to transform  it. That’s what Q/A 28 goes at length to describe.  God’s providence (Latin “providential” meaning “care”) – God’s  persevering intentionality to see us all the way through—altars us so that our view of all circumstances and conditions are altered; our approach, our regard to those things are altered. The alteration expresses itself in patience, thankfulness, confidence.

That’s difficult, especially when we are confronted with the harshness and gravity of our human condition, the plight of illness, the stubbornness of irreconcilable differences, terminal illness.

That is precisely why we need to lean on the providential care of our loving heavenly Father. Because patience, thankfulness, confidence are not habits of the heart that we can muster up, create on our own, or take some pill to develop that disposition.  Matters of the heart are entirely from God.  Thankfully, that comes from  the God who is providential, through and through, whose vows to us altars us to alter us.

26   Q.   What do you believe when you say,
“I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth”?

A.   That the eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who out of nothing created heaven and earth
and everything in them,^1
who still upholds and rules them
by his eternal counsel and providence,^2
is my God and Father
because of Christ the Son.^3
I trust God so much that I do not doubt
he will provide
whatever I need
for body and soul,^4
and will turn to my good
whatever adversity he sends upon me
in this sad world.^5
God is able to do this because he is almighty God^6
and desires to do this because he is a faithful Father.^7

^1 Gen. 1;Ps. 33:6
^2 Ps. 104; Ps. 115:3; Matt. 10:29; Heb. 1:3,
^3 John 1:12; Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:5-7;Eph. 1:5
^4 Ps. 55:22; Matt. 6:25-26;Luke 12:22
^5 Rom. 8:28
^6 Rom. 10:12
^7 Matt. 6:32; 7:9

Your dad is not perfect. Neither was mine. Nor am I. Whether you had a deadbeat dad, or the most loving, supportive dad, he, like me, ain’t perfect. Not by any long shot. It took time, emotional and spiritual maturity, my being married with children, and the sheer act of the Holy Spirit to understand my own dad, to accept him for who he is, fully love and appreciate him in my life, and to ask his forgiveness a few years ago for the ways that I disrespected  him growing-up. When I stood as a candidate for General Assembly moderator, I shared with you and the whole Church my genuine desire and sense of call to pray and work for unity in the body, due in large part to the Continue reading “Lord’s Day 9 (Q/A 26): THE PRODIGAL FATHER”

24   Q.   How are these articles divided?

A.   Into three parts:
God the Father and our creation;
God the Son and our deliverance;
and God the Holy Spirit and our sanctification.

25   Q.   Since there is only one divine being,^1
why do you speak of three:
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit?

A.   Because that is how
God has revealed himself in his Word:^2
these three distinct persons
are one, true, eternal God.

^1 Deut. 6:4
^2 Isa. 61:1; Ps. 110:1; Matt. 3:16-17; Matt. 28:19; 1 John 5:7[-8]

Lord’s Day 8 (Q/A 24-25)

“1 Act, 3 Scenes”

Two lessons in marriage, parenting, and the dynamic of presence-absence.

Andrew (my youngest son): Mom, can you buy me the new Pokemon cards?

Grace (my wife): No, you already have a whole stack that you got on your birthday.

(Andrew leaves saddened. Goes to next room where I am working)

Andrew: My handsome, cool dad, how are you? Can you buy me the new Pokemon cards? Continue reading “Lord’s Day 8 (Q/A 24-25): 1 ACT, 3 SCENES”

20   Q.   Are all people then saved through Christ
just as they were lost through Adam?

A.    No.
Only those are saved
who through true faith
are grafted into Christ
and accept all his benefits.^1

^1 John 1:12; 3:36; Isa. 53:11, Ps. 2:11[-12]; Rom. 11:17, 19; Heb. 4:2; 10:39

21   Q.   What is true faith?

A.    True faith is
not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true
all that God has revealed to us in Scripture;^1
it is also a wholehearted trust,^2
which the Holy Spirit^3 creates in me by the gospel,^4
that God has freely granted
not only to others but to me also,
forgiveness of sins,
eternal righteousness,
and salvation.^5
These are gifts of sheer grace,
granted solely by Christ’s merit.^6

^1 Heb. 11:1, 3;James 2:19
^2 Rom. 4:16[-25]; James 1:6; Rom. 5:1;Rom. 10[:9-10]
^3 2 Cor. 4[:6, 13];Eph. 2[:8, 18];Matt. 16:17;John 3:[5-]13;Gal. 5:22; Phil. 1:29
^4 Rom. 1:16;10:17
^5 Heb. 2[:9-11]; Rom. 1[:16];Heb. 10:38;Hab. 2:4;Matt. 9:2;Eph. 2:7-9;Rom. 5:1
^6 Eph. 2[:8]; Rom. 3:24-25;Gal. 2:16

22   Q.   What then must a Christian believe?

A.    All that is promised us in the gospel,^1
a summary of which is taught us
in the articles of our universal
and undisputed Christian faith.

 Lord’s Day 7 (Q/A 20-23)

“Diagramming Sentences: The Gospel and Its Witness”

Continue reading “Lord’s Day 7 (Q/A 20-23): DIAGRAMMING SENTENCES: THE GOSPEL AND ITS WITNESS”

16   Q.   Why must the mediator be a true and righteous human?

A.    God’s justice demands
that human nature, which has sinned,
must pay for sin;^1
but a sinful human could never pay for others.^2

^1 Rom. 5:12, 15
^2 1 Pet. 3:18; Isa. 53:3-5,10-11

17   Q.   Why must the mediator also be true God?

A.    So that the mediator,
by the power of his divinity,
might bear the weight of God’s wrath in his humanity^1
and earn for us
and restore to us
righteousness and life.^2

^1 Isa. 53:8; Acts 2:24;1 Pet. 3:18
^2 John 3:16;1 John 1:2, 4:12; Acts 20:18 [28]; John 1[:4,12]

18   Q.   Then who is this mediator—
true God and at the same time
a true and righteous human?

A.    Our Lord Jesus Christ,^1
who was given to us
to completely deliver us
and make us right with God.^2

^1 Matt. 1:23; 1 Tim. 3:16;Luke 2:11
^2 1 Cor. 1:30

19   Q.   How do you come to know this?

A.    The holy gospel tells me.
God began to reveal the gospel already in Paradise;^
later God proclaimed it
by the holy patriarchsand prophets^2
and foreshadowed it
by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law;^3
and finally God fulfilled it
through his own beloved Son.^4

^1 Gen. 3:15
^2 Gen. 22:18; 49:10-11; Rom. 1:2;Heb. 1:1; Acts 3:22-24; 10:43
^3 John 5:46; Heb. 10:7 [1-10]
^4 Rom. 10:4;Gal. 4:4

Lord’s Day 6 (Q/A 16-19)
“God’s News: Always Good, Forever Personal, Eternally Effective”

A Saturday Night Live! Segment parodied headline news shows where an anchor sits at a desk as various news items flash on every part of the screen: a scrolling marquee at the bottom of TV screens with brief blurb items of world and national disasters, the Dow Jones and NASDAQ totals in the upper-right hand corner, the local time for each time zone imaginable on the lower-right hand corner, the current weather and the weather forecast for the next week in whatever available space there was, with the eyeball of the news anchor somewhere peeking through this inundation of news feeds and information.

Continue reading “Lord’s Day 6 (Q/A 16-19): GOD’S NEWS: ALWAYS GOOD, FOREVER PERSONAL, ETERNALLY EFFECTIVE”

12   Q.    According to God’s righteous judgment
               we deserve punishment
               both now and in eternity:
               how then can we escape this punishment
               and return to God’s favor?

A.   God requires that his justice be satisfied.^1
Therefore the claims of this justice
must be paid in full,
either by ourselves or by another.^2

^1 Exod. 20:5; 23:7
^2 Rom. 8:3-4

13   Q.    Can we make this payment ourselves?

A.    Certainly not.
Actually, we increase our debt every day.^1

^1 Job 9:3; 15:15; Matt. 6:12

14   Q.    Can another creature—any at all—
                pay this debt for us?

A.    No.
To begin with,
God will not punish any other creature
for what a human is guilty of.^1
Furthermore,
no mere creature can bear the weight
of God’s eternal wrath against sin
and deliver others from it.^2

^1 Heb. 2:14
^2 Ps. 130:3

15   Q.    What kind of mediator and deliverer
               should we look for then?

A.   One who is a true^1 and righteous human,^2
yet more powerful than all creatures,
that is, one who is also true God.^3

^1 1 Cor. 15:21
^2 Jer. 33:15; Isa. 53:9; Ps. 53; 2 Cor. 5:21
^3 Heb. 7:[15-]16; Isa. 7:14; Rom. 8:3;Jer. 23:6

Lord’s Day 5 (Q/A 12-15)

“Justice”

As a parent, watching children grow up and reflecting upon my own growing up years, I’ve become more aware of the delicate balance of parenting that requires gentle discipline, firm instruction with gracious freedom; both sets are needed for healthy upbringing.  I’ve seen examples of children who have grown up in environments of opposite extremes.  An extremely harsh, authoritative parent who casts correction and instruction without affirmation, acceptance and grace results in a fearful child who grows up ashamed, fearful, and, in time, rebellious – when freedom from the harsh parent is found.  The other extreme of an overly permissive parenting – where a child is constantly soothed, affirmed, allowed to be as free as the blowing wind. I’ve seen many children in our neighborhood where these kinds of children have no respect for their parents, grandparents, often shouting at their elders.  In both sets, a rebellious heart results. Continue reading “Lord’s Day 5 (Q/A 12-15): JUSTICE”