Clive Cowell makes his debut on Spreading Goodness by offering a reflection stirred by a posting by Peter Mead on January 4 (a second offering by Peter was posted on February 15).  Clive is a dear friend who presently serves as the Executive Director of the Bible Institute of Hawaii.  Read and enjoy!

My brother in Christ and fellow Englishman Peter Mead recently communicated on the Spreading Goodness that “Preaching is at the center of the life of the church.”  Dr. Mead would no doubt agree that teaching likewise has a central role.  Are they the same?  Are they different?  Are they to be marked by separate venues?  I have not come to a complete conclusion but I do have some pieces for our conversation today. 

Both preaching and teaching are clearly used as ways of conversation.  By conversation I am not thinking of an informal exchange, rather intimate acquaintance and relational life.  Christoph Schwöbel leads us to a wonderful invitation in his Introduction to Colin Gunton’s  Theology Through Preaching by (p2) which I trust will delight your hearts regarding the beauty of divine conversation:

Luther was so bold as to suggest that communication is not only the paradigm for the relationship between God and his creation, but even more so the mode of the trinitarian life of God.   There is, he [Luther] says, in the divine Trinity a pulpit: as God the Father is an eternal speaker, so the Son is spoken in eternity, and the Holy Spirit is an eternal listener.  God’s triune being is an eternal conversation (my emphasis), and since the Holy Spirit tells us what he hears, we are taken into this conversation. 

This is not merely talking but intimate relational life.

Schwöbel continues,

The creation of the world and the story of God’s interaction with his creation in Israel and in Jesus Christ is, therefore, about God creating other conversation-partners who are drawn into the conversation of the divine life, distinguished by their created existence but nevertheless enabled in Christ, the uncreated Word of God who became a human speaker and listener, to participate in this conversation.

What a wonderful invitation!  Where once we were kept at a distance from the smoking mountain (Ex. 20:18), now we have confident access (Rom. 52; Eph. 2:18, 3:12) and stand and rejoice in the presence of our Lord.

Dr. Mead rightly gave to us readers a wonderful conversation as to the preaching process, that is, a study of the Scripture (a conversation with God), the message formation (another conversation with God) while keeping stoked in the heart our God-captivated love (sustained by conversation) so that He can be communicated to others (another conversation).  If this is preaching in process, then it is likewise teaching in process.

Biblical dictionaries and encyclopedias often present the premise that preaching is mainly for converting people and teaching for growing them and this is one way of presenting the distinction between preaching and teaching.  However, understanding this distinction might lead us into the trap of emphasizing one method over another and causing unnecessary divergence.  In the parish, most preaching is very application oriented, with parishioners in view as the targets of the applications.  Is it possible to both preach and teach given the Biblical idea that conversion and growing are part of the lovingly divine conversation?  Yes!  In fact it has to, because on any given Sunday events will transpire such that both non-believers and believers are called by God into the conversation. 

Some people are called who have yet to be converted, others come who have already tasted that the Lord is good and are growing in Him.  As much as the preacher and teacher, who is sometimes both, comes to the table to be fed, such persons have the privilege of passing on the good news they have received to these others.  While it is true that most Sunday morning sermons are application oriented, surely a great emphasis should be given to warming the hearts such that the announcement of good news, the exposition of God’s word and the proclamation of Jesus Christ is the centerpiece to allow for teaching in matters of faith, morality and indeed application. 

Observation of church life shows that on many Sunday mornings some level of divergence has occurred.  In extreme cases, preaching has swamped teaching to the detriment of those growing in faith, and in others, teaching has overtaken preaching such that the invited non-believer is overwhelmed.  The problems are further compounded by the fact that such unbalanced conversations only take place on Sunday morning and in some cases are purely monological—there is no conversation.

Friends, God is calling us in an eternal conversation and as the Holy Spirit tells us what he hears eternally, we are indeed eternally taken into this conversation.  This is both profoundly intimate and relational and preaching and teaching take us into the conversation.   Do we deserve to eat at such a table?  From our view, certainly we don’t.  But God is abundantly loving and desires for us to truly fellowship with Him.  I trust that is a good reminder, in short, of our conversion. Our part of the conversion is to continually express our confession, repentance and acknowledgement that there is no other God beside Him.  He is the centerpiece!  Now let’s grow in faith, morality and application.

A conversation on conversion (and a reminder of conversion) sets up well teaching to wholesomely pursue matters of faith, morality and indeed application.  It will take faith to cast aside our current living to be in such a conversation.  You might well posit the question: aren’t there times when it is only preaching?  I will grant that an evangelist would say so!  So be it, but as we have opportunity let us eternally respond to weave both.  Preaching and teaching have a common thread and as Dr. Mead conversed with us, “God is a God who speaks through His Word.  He is a God who speaks because He loves”.

Need more?  Be warmed by the attitude expressed in Malachi!  In the OT the priest communicated with the people and the prophet tells us how both speaker and listener can engage, “For the lips of a priest should guard knowledge, and people should seek instruction from his mouth, for he is the messenger of the Lord of hosts.” (Malachi 2:7).

Preaching today is often one-to-many, with the danger that it can be anemically monological.  However, it can, as Mead suggests, be affective. We also know that divergence can set in, but a faithful response in presenting preaching and teaching is possible. 

As we preach and teach, wholeheartedly take up His invitation and engage yourself to seek, to crave, to yearn for God’s instruction and to settle for nothing less.

As we preach and teach, wholeheartedly invite and engage those whom God loves to seek, to crave, to yearn for God’s instruction and to settle for nothing less.

Seek it and yes, as you find it – guard it. 

Continue the conversation!

This is a revision of a post I first offered a few years ago for the Multnomah University website that maintains Alumni connections.

Years ago, long before today’s satellite GPS—global-positioning-systems—the standard way for navigating boats of any size through inland waterways was to combine a set of resources: the boat’s radar, its magnetic compass, a system of light signals and markers located either on buoys or on the shore, and a guide book.  As fishing boats traveled from Seattle up to Ketchikan, and then throughout the waterways west of Ketchikan, it was this last item—the navigational guide book—that tied everything together.

I know because in my college days I spent a summer on the small crew of the Northern Light II, a 60-foot fishing boat.  As I learned my duties one of the daunting roles at first was steering the boat whenever I stood watch.  For almost two months we traveled through the splendid but potentially treacherous island and inland waterways of British Columbia and southeast Alaska.  It offered a great analogy for life.

My orientation to navigating the boat began as we traveled north from Seattle through the inland passageways of British Columbia.  Hans, the skipper, had me watch him for most of a shift, then left me with the job long enough to eat his breakfast.  It was mid-morning and we were transiting a relatively narrow but straight channel.  The only hitch was a thick fog that had yet to lift.  Still, the job proved to be easy enough.  All I needed to do was keep my eye on the compass and check the radar scope every few minutes.  The auto-pilot—a steering system that maintained any course we set for it—kept us aimed in the proper direction. 

By proper I mean the course-heading that our trusty guidebook called for at that point in the voyage.  Often, when we reached a certain shoreline feature—say a distinctive peninsula or a small island as faithfully predicted by the guidebook—I would need to change our heading according to the new directions in the book.  A pair of buoys or shoreline markers, once they were aligned with each other, would cue me on the exact moment for taking over the steering from the auto-pilot.  The new compass heading was listed so I would then steer to that course, spinning the wheel until our actual direction matched the numbers on our ever-glowing compass.  I then reset the auto-pilot and from that point onward I was something of a tourist.  At least until the next redirection was called for.  And , to be accurate, not quite a tourist.  I also needed to watch the radar screen—especially at night—to be sure we were near the center of the channel, well away for the rocky shores on either side.  My confidence grew as our miles of travel grew.

That’s not to say there weren’t some exciting moments.  My first adventure came when I looked at the radar and saw what looked like a massive rock in the middle of the channel looming ahead.  It wasn’t listed in our book. 

“Hans,” I shouted, “I need you on the bridge!” 

He, too, was puzzled, but made sure we shifted our course to the starboard side of the ‘island’ which soon proved to be a massive cruise ship traveling in the opposite direction!

The greater adventure came as I began steering on night shifts through unknown regions.  It was here that the shore beacons were indispensable, along with the radar, the compass, and our trusty guide book.  The secret was to shift to the new heading provided by our book just as soon as two beacons were aligned with each other.  The book told me how long we should expect to stay on that heading before the next turn—with a new pair of aligned beacons there to assure us that we were still on course. 

What was frightening in all this is that our radar could not “see around the corners” of the inland channels we were transiting.  So when I checked the radar screen in the black night to be sure we were away from the shoreline it looked as if we were sailing directly into a rocky dead-end.  It was only by staying on course that I discovered, in due time, a new passage opening up in one direction or the other.  Our guide book was always accurate when it promised these bends ahead of time.

The application is obvious.  Life today has its own threatening ‘shorelines’ of financial, relational, and spiritual rocks that might put a serious hole in our lives if we aren’t steering a safe course—the course provided by Christ himself as the “author and finisher of faith.”  The analogy has its limits, of course, because Christ doesn’t tell us ahead of time where the various bends in life will show up, so at times it looks like we’re sailing into a cul-de-sac! 

Where the analogy does work is in following Christ’s heart.  We’re called to travel in the direction of love rather than anger, of integrity rather than dishonesty, of faithfulness in place of pragmatism, of peace instead of anxiety, until we reach a maturity that reflects Christ’s own character.  He offers all we need to steer through life successfully.  My practice on the Northern Light II was to scan the radar, the compass, the beacons, and the guidebook constantly.  Now, with the Bible replacing the Southeast Alaska Inland Waterways Transit Manual, the pattern remains the same: enjoying the adventures of faith as I stay fully alert!

Fifteen years ago last Tuesday the killings started.  In just 100 days almost a million people were killed.  Nearly two thousand years ago last Friday God’s Son was killed.  The conjunction of the two remembrances in one week was striking to me even though the events are distant from each other in time and scale.  For all their differences I see them as closely linked in important ways as I’ll explain below.

Today is Sunday, Easter.  On Friday, Good Friday, I attended an evening service at the  New Life Church.  I returned there for the Easter service this morning.  The church building was constructed last year so this is the first Easter weekend held on the campus. 

Less than a mile further up the road is one of the major killing fields in Kigali—at least it had been in 1994.  Thousands were marched up the hillside road, past our present church location, to a compound where they were then slaughtered.  This past Tuesday that location was the main setting for Rwanda’s mourning and reflection.  Thousands attended, President Kigame included, in a nationally televised service.  More poignantly there were many attending who are now orphans—remainders and reminders of whole families.  They are called the survivors.  Extended families—fifty or more in some cases—had been extinguished, most killed by machetes and all too often by ‘friends’ and neighbors.  Some were even betrayed by spouses if they had been born to the ‘wrong’ tribal group.  Mercy had gone missing.

Construction of the church was slowed last year when bones, bits of clothing and personal items were found just under the top layers of earth.  A part of the soil had been soaked with blood fifteen years earlier.

In Jerusalem the ground had also been soaked with blood at the foot of the cross.  The size of the stain was small but the grief of the surviving family member was just as real.  He ripped the one garment he had at hand from top to bottom. He watched as his beloved Son was killed by crucifixion at the hands of merciless soldiers.

On Friday we sang and prayed.  After the time of personal prayers we shared together in taking communion.  Never has the reading of Matthew 26:28 and 1 Corinthians 11:28 had as much impact on me as this Friday night.  All week we were recalling days of blood-letting—and now on Friday we shared a unique day of remembering an unspeakable death: “for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”

I’ve met a number of Rwandan survivors by now—and I realize there are at least two types.  Both of the groups I have in mind are somber as they remember who and what they’ve lost.  Grief is an emotion that can revisit us even years after a loss.  But one group still lives as the victims of the genocide.  The other group lives in light of Easter Sunday.

Victims—in the sense I’m using here—are those who share a set of common features.  There is, for one, an unexamined sense of moral entitlement that transmits the virus of evil to the next generation.  By that I mean that victims tend to elevate their status to a transcendent standing among peers because their pain is accepted as tragic and, therefore, as uniquely elevated.  With that it can be perpetually elevated as a status for life. Inexplicably the perpetual victim then feels free to damage others without feeling grief for what they’ve done.  So they become victimizers as well as victims—spilling out gratuitous gifts of pain and distrust on innocent bystanders, perhaps in order to have others feel how their own pain and insecurity feels.

A fraternal twin of moral entitlement is bitterness.  Bitterness continues to chain victims—often unwittingly—to their victimizers.  Victims live as reactors rather than as actors because their hatred towards the perpetrator sustains a captivating focus that blurs and subsumes every other vision for life.  Why?  Because the perpetrator remains at center stage in the victim’s emotional gaze.  He or she—or they—become inescapable companions for as long as bitterness holds sway.

Another dimension is stillborn hope.  The victim remains oriented to the past rather than to the future.  Pain is reviewed, tasted, tested, and renewed until every other emotion is dulled to silence apart from the deep ache of betrayed trust and the resulting tragedy of self-absorption and the associated addictions of self-medicating behaviors.

Finally, victims are deeply lonely because others around them are ill-equipped to sustain, vicariously, the consuming energy of hating another.  So friends and even family eventually abandon any true emotional bond with the victim—for the sake of their own health—and replace it with increasingly detached pity and sometimes with actual separation. 

The victim, then, is a person who was broken and who prefers to stay that way by adding new layers of victimhood.  So their tragedy multiplies as the first perpetrator continues to hurt, and hurt, and hurt again—even if he or she has long since departed.

Today—Easter—is the day that celebrates the end of victimization through the pooled blood of Jesus on Friday and the empty tomb on Sunday.  In this sequence of days Jesus was both the ultimate victim and the ultimate healer.  To know him is to find comfort and to be able to share comfort with others.

Let’s return to the Rwandan genocide.  With that tragedy we can also speak of the holocaust of World War II, of Bosnia, of Darfur, of the Garden of Eden.  In each case evil erupted and death followed.  In each of these the victim treats God as responsible which then locates God in the status of an ultimate perpetrator.  This closes God off as an option the victim can look to for relief.  Bitterness undermines faith.

What is so remarkable about how the entire Bible treats this subject—it’s called theodicy—is that it always rejects the victim’s charge that God has done what is evil or is in any way chargeable.  Yet, in a seeming paradox, the Bible also treats evil as something God rules over to his own good ends.  

An example of this comes in the story of Joseph’s life in Genesis 50 where his brothers who had betrayed him years earlier gathered to meet with him after their father Jacob died.  They were worried that he would now repay them.  Joseph at that stage had the power to execute them if he wished.  Yet he answered softly, “As for you, you meant it for evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”  His statement is remarkable.  He cited one event—the brothers’ betrayal—and two agencies: God’s intent for good and their human intent to sin. Human accountability was not dismissed—the brothers would still have to face God—but God owned the events themselves as something he meant for good.

The victim will quickly ask, “That’s nice but how can such a narrow event be equated with genocide!”  Good Friday and Easter are pivotal in offering a response—and these two days are the basis for confidence among all who live by faith rather than as victims.

The cross is another example of divine and human double agency.  Consider, for instance, how Jesus spoke to both sides of his looming crucifixion.  Of Judas, his betrayer, he said, “It would have been better for that man if he had not been born.”  But to Peter, who tried to rescue Jesus from capture by using his sword, Jesus intervened: “Put your sword back into its place.”  Only through the crucifixion could “the Scriptures be fulfilled”.  So, the Biblical application of a double moral agency was at work here: the Son of God was murdered in a terrible injustice and, in God’s eyes, this was the ultimate expression of evil; while at the same time the cross represents God’s ultimate mercy through Christ’s role as our atoning sacrifice.

The Gospel of John puts this together as a theme.  Evil is the product of rebellion which is unfolded in John 3.  God loves the world enough to send the Son on a mission of redemption; but the world loved—and still loves—darkness instead.  This was not a surprise to God—the freedom of heart that humanity has been given allows us to love the creation rather than the Creator; to love self and pleasure rather than God; and to love independence rather than dependence; to worship personal security rather than God.  And to blame God for our own evil.

What humanity didn’t expect and still doesn’t seem to grasp is what I call the slosh factor of sin.  The sins of individuals and societies stir together like a series of intersecting waves that form unexpected synergies of tsunami-like power.  World War I began with an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo that cascaded unexpectedly into a tragedy for dozens of nations.  Examples of this can still be found.  Today the use of recreational drugs by a host of individuals—each viewing their choices as too small to matter—threatens whole governments.  American loan policies—when set free from the boundaries of honesty—unleashed our current economic crisis.  God allows all of this to happen because he allows us freedom not to love him.  The parable of the prodigal son and the loving father’s open arms is God’s answer to theodicy.

So it was that the 1994 tragedy in Rwanda has been linked to policies by colonial rulers decades earlier that cascaded into murderous ethnic hatred.  One small feature—ethnic identification cards—became a virtual death certificate for any Tutsi Rwandans once the genocide began.  Small events and policies—there were many others—led to a tsunami of shed blood from April to July fifteen years ago.

Now, back to Easter.  God’s glory is that with his own freedom to love he gave the Son over to a mission of death.  The theme of theodicy was shared by Jesus in John 12:

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.  Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

The plan of the cross was to have Jesus reverse the slosh factor.  The analogy Jesus used was from agriculture: seeds for planting are needed to generate a multiplied harvest of seed for food.  The sacrificial actions of a few extend by multiplication to bring life to the many.  Yet the point of the seed being planted was that a sinless man would need to die: Jesus, by being “lifted up” in crucifixion, despite being sinless himself, would then “draw all people to myself.”  This was the basis for God’s glory—that God’s plan was to expend his Son’s life in order to extend his mercy to many.  Love is the antidote to evil. 

Rwanda’s tragedy is answered by the ultimate victim who was never willing to take on the identity of a victim.  Jesus came to the cross willingly.  It was his Father’s purpose to have the Son take on human nature so that humans could unite with both his death and his life.  By entering into a real union with Jesus through the Spirit’s new life from above, each believer is freed from the rule of evil.

Here’s the bottom line of this story: God is not the author of evil.   But he allows evil to be exposed for what it is and for what it does: it breeds death.  But in his Son’s death God has co-opted evil for good to all who join in Christ’s death and then live in his life.  In our Easter service today those survivors who were elevated as victims last Tuesday but who now have new life in Christ are not victims but victors—now sharing in Christ’s eternal life.  His shed blood trumps the shed blood of Rwanda by showing how love trumps evil, bitterness, and slavery.  God is not the author of evil but the author of salvation: “Christ is risen.”  He is risen indeed!  And so are we who now love him and share in his life.

The psalmist, David, began Psalm 138 with a resounding peal of praise: “I give you thanks, O LORD, with my whole heart!”  In the stanza immediately following he spoke of bowing down toward the Jerusalem center of worship—to the tent where the ark was located. 

But it wasn’t this temple that stirred his worship, rather it was the presence of God himself on earth.  And, more to the point of David’s prayer, it is what God represents—his character—that stirred him.  This is what David summarized as God’s “name”:

I bow down toward your holy temple

and give thanks to your name

For David God’s name meant much more than we have in mind with our own use of names.  We experience a gap of language, of culture, of time, as reflected by casual prayers in the name of Christ: “We ask all these things in Jesus name, amen.”

Instead names for us tend to be mere tags or calling cards, as when we need to be distinguished from others in a crowd: “Linda, can you come over here?”  A name is just a notification tool.

Yet a name can represent much more when it comes to be aligned with our spoken words.  In years past, and even today in some settings, a person might say quietly but firmly, “My word is my bond.”  By giving his or her word a speaker promises listeners that whatever was said is true and trustworthy.  Yet the speaker’s character—and not just the form of a spoken promise—is what certifies the statement. 

Character is especially critical in settings where lies are common.  So the question of credibility is measured both by how long a person’s integrity has been sustained and by the strength of that person’s devotion to others.  In politics this can be measured by the promises actually fulfilled by an elected candidate.  Or in a family by parents who always keep their word to their children even when it would be easy to do otherwise. 

We also recognize character by another practical measure: reputation.  Think of how a man might respond to a friend’s promise of a desperately needed loan.  The recipient of the promise will ask whether the promise is a real prospect or a bit of sympathy that won’t bear fruit.  His response—of either relief or quick dismissal—is a measure of his friend’s reputation.  The same is true in groups.  When a person’s name is mentioned as a prospect for a character-sensitive job those who know that person will quickly slot him or her in a moral pecking order based on all their prior contacts.

This sort of thing is found throughout the Bible.  Samuel, for instance, was a man who knew God personally:

And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him and let none of his words fall to the ground.  And all Israel from Dan to Beersheba knew that Samuel was established as a prophet of the LORD.  [1 Samuel 3:19-20]

Now let’s return to where we started—to God’s name.  In David’s psalm he shared at least a part of what he had in mind in what followed after the line we just noted above: “and give thanks to your name”

for your steadfast love and

your faithfulness

These qualities represent God’s character.  When God’s name is mentioned it represents a love that is utterly stable and certain.  And with that love is a faithful devotion to others—his love is other-centered and can be viewed with absolute confidence by those who rest in that love.

The basis for David’s thanksgiving is then rooted in God’s name and his word:

for you have exalted above all things

your name and your word.

This is both an odd statement and a remarkably important truth for all believers.  Odd in the sense that God’s character should be a given—his goodness an unquestioned axiom.  Important because it secures believers in the bedrock of God’s being as we negotiate the uncertainties of a broken world.  He means to be taken as trustworthy: our faith rests on this bedrock of his faithfulness.

Having said that we also recognize that in practice humanity pays little attention to both.  Every small and large attitude or act of independence from God is a denial of his word and a demeaning of his character.  Sin denies God’s goodness by acting as if a personal version of self-concerned goodness—of establishing “what’s good for me” or “us”—can legitimately exist outside God’s will.  Paul confronted this categorically in Romans 14:23, “whatever is not of faith is sin.”  Yet many Christians often live in persistent disobedience, treating God’s words and ways as optional—subject to their self-concerned view of goodness.

The problem has deep roots, beginning when God’s character and his word were challenged by the serpent in Genesis 3.  First he asked Eve, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” That absurdity was quickly corrected—only one tree had been forbidden—but the skepticism remained in play: God’s name—his character—had been questioned.  Nothing in Eve’s experience of God could have accounted for her giving credibility to such skepticism.  But she continued to listen.

Next the serpent moved beyond mere skepticism and dismissed God’s word.  God had warned Adam not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil “for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die.”  The serpent, however, dismissed this: “You will not surely die.”  And finally he promised an alternative source of wisdom and morality: “you can be like God, knowing good and evil.”

This was an incredible claim.  God had spoken firmly, clearly, and on the basis of his absolutely reliable name.  Yet the serpent challenged both.  What’s more shocking is that Eve, then Adam, took up the serpent’s stance.  Both ate the forbidden fruit.

We can only guess that the serpent’s status—as one who had already dismissed God’s name and word, yet was still alive—caught their attention.  From that point of view it was a matter of “no harm was done—he’s not dead!”  And, by extension, the only mystery was why God would have made his claim in the first place.  So Adam and his wife joined the serpent in dismissing God’s name and his word.

The same question lingers today.  Was God right when he told Adam “in the day that you eat” death would certainly follow?  For believers the question is absurd.  How could God ever tell a lie?  What in God’s character can ever be questioned?  Yet in actual practice his word is still treated as absurd: how many people today see themselves as dead?  Even among Christians I suspect most would view non-Christians as “sick” or “damaged” by sin—but not as dead.  In most circles Satan’s word has won the day.  But not in all circles.

Paul, for instance, treated God as true and his word as trustworthy even in the inaugural debate over death.  In Ephesians 2 he stood with God against Satan, Adam and Eve:

And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

Was Paul alone in this?  Absolutely not.  Jesus had led the way by treating the theologian Nicodemus as spiritually dead.  Nicodemus was still a son of Adam and the serpent by presuming that he and Jesus were operating on the same playing field.  That is, he came to Jesus without first being “born again” or “born from above”.  His life was simply physical—the life of his flesh—rather than the life in the Spirit that Adam despised in Eden.  So that which is born of the flesh is flesh but what is born of the Spirit is spirit.  One is transient, the other eternal.

Let’s consider next if this might be the reason that God is not present to us on earth today.  Let me suggest that we’re now offered the same circumstances that Adam had in Eden.  God is temporarily away and we have freedom to love or not to love—to believe God’s word and trust his character, or not to.  In his absence—absent only to view, not in reality—his name has been despised and his word is dismissed by the world at large.  Yet some of us are drawn to him as the Spirit witnesses to us that his word is true.  And that his name—his character—is trustworthy.  Unlike the world that remains dead towards God—at least to God as he reveals himself—some of us are increasingly delighted in what he says and who he is.  We believe him and trust him.  All to the chagrin of the serpent whose claims against God are proven to be rubbish as we taste and see that the LORD is good.  And that his word sets us free as we abide in it and in the love it represents to us.

So let’s return to the main point of Psalm 138.

for you have exalted above all things

your name and your word.

As we have been resurrected from death to life through our union with Christ, we now share in this ambition: to exalt Christ’s name and to abide in his word.  This is how we escape from skepticism and arrogance and turn, instead, to the joy of sitting at the feet of our Lord, trusting him.  We may be few, but our delight is without limits.  As we, too, exalt God’s name and his word we make his presence visible on earth and anticipate the day when our faith will be sight.