God told me to tell you ... a devotional thought

There's this fascinating exchange between Paul and his colleagues in Acts 21 that I reflect on every now and then in ministry, especially when I receive a "word from the Lord" delivered to me by a well-meaning brother or sister in Christ.

Now, I am not a cessationist, and I believe that the gifts of the Spirit are for today as much as they were in the Apostolic era, including the gift of prophecy.  Even so, I can't help but notice that in Acts 21, the disciples urge Paul not to go to Jerusalem, out of concern for his safety, and in 21:4 it specifically notes that these disciples were speaking "by the Spirit" in their efforts to dissuade him.

This is especially interesting because earlier, Paul  had said it quite plainly that it was the Holy Spirit who had told him to go to Jerusalem (20:22-23).  The tension increases in verse 21:11, when a prophet named Agabus does this prophetic object lesson, where he takes Paul's belt and binds his own hands and feet with it.  Speaking by the Holy Spirit, he says "this is what will happen to the owner of this belt when he gets to Jerusalem." When the disciples hear this they redouble their efforts to talk Paul out of his travel plans.

So what's going on here? Is the Spirit actually saying opposite things to different people? Are the disciples not hearing the Holy Spirit right on this one, or maybe Paul isn't? Or is the Holy Spirit simply firming up Paul's resolve to go, by telling him not to go through the mouths of other people?

It's hard to say, for sure, but whatever else they do, these verses should give us all serious pause the next time someone tells us, "God told me to tell you this..."  It may be true, but what we're to do with the message is another matter.

Meeting Mr. and Mrs. Prophesy (The Meaning of Marriage, Part III)

Sitting in the dentist’s chair while your teeth are being cleaned isn’t the best of places to start expounding on the meaning of marriage anyway, but even so, this one caught me a bit off guard.

It was a new dental clinic for me—we’d only recently moved to the community—so the dental hygienist and I were just getting to know one another.  Mostly, of course, I was getting to know her.  It was, after all, hard for me to do much of the talking, what with that spotlight in my eyes and my tongue pushed back by a dental mirror; but no matter, she was valiantly keeping up enough conversation for the both of us. 

“What did I do?”

Between rinses I explained I was a pastor.  This intrigued her, and she shared some of her perspectives on the church. 

“Did I do weddings?”  My tongue held back by the dental implements again, I did my best to indicate I did.

And before I knew it, my newly-acquainted dental hygienist was sharing the story of her first marriage that didn’t make it, and why it failed—not sharing any details unbecoming a professional, to be sure, but certainly more than I was expecting.  And then she described her new partner, and how different he was from her first.

Between rinses I said something or other about her “new husband ” before propping my mouth open again for inspection.

“Oh, we’re not married,” she said, peering in.  And then quietly, but more resolutely, she added, “I don’t need a piece of paper to prove I’m committed to this relationship.”

Like I say, the dentist’s chair isn’t the best place to start in on a theology of marriage; and she was scraping my teeth with steel at the time, so I didn’t feel much able to contradict her, even if I’d wanted to.  But if I could have spoken freely, I probably would have said something like:  “I agree with you that marriage is far more than just a piece of paper… it’s certainly more than that …  but still, it’s not less than that, is it?”

And then, if we were sitting over coffee, maybe, and we’d gotten to know one another better than you can, really, in a dentist chair, and she’d asked me: “Well then, theologically speaking, what is marriage?” (Because, after all, aren’t these the kind of questions everyone asks over coffee?)  I would have said: “Well, as a Christian, I believe that marriage is a kind of prophecy.”

This might catch both of us off guard—Christian marriage is a kind of prophecy—so I’d hasten to explain. In the Bible, when the prophets want to talk about God’s love for his people, his faithfulness to them and his determination to stick with them through thick or thin—with them as a people, mind you, not as individuals—one of the regular images they use is of a husband’s faithful love for his wife.   In Jeremiah it says it like this:  “Return to me, says the Lord, for I am married to you..”  In Isaiah it says it like this: “Your Maker is your husband, the Lord of Hosts is his name.”  And, of course, the whole entire book of Hosea is built around this picture.  The Lord is, spiritually speaking, betrothed to his people.

This prophetic tradition, of using marriage imagery to describe God’s love for his people, gets picked up and amplified in the New Testament, where one of the central images is the Great Wedding Feast at the End of the Age, when Jesus returns and is intimately united with his people.  Jesus uses it in his teaching, asking us to imagine the Kingdom of Heaven like a King who gives a wedding feast for his son.  Paul uses it, like when he tells the Corinthian Church that he has promised them to “one bridegroom” and will do all he can to present them to him, holy and pure.  And of course, the great, final crescendo of the Good Book uses it, when John of Patmos hears the angels in the Book of Revelation say:  “Let us rejoice and give him glory, for the Wedding of the Lamb has come, and his Bride has made herself ready!”

In the Scriptures then, the exclusive, permanent, faithful covenant bond between husband and wife is actually a sort of prophetic object lesson for that final day.  Prophetic, in that, whenever we glimpse a man and a woman sticking by each other for better or for worse, it points beyond itself, to God’s greater, higher, purer determination to stick by us for better or for worse.  And prophetic too, in that, as imperfect and human as the marriage covenant is, it is still, at its best, a reminder of the coming consummation of all things, when the faithful in Christ will take their place in the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb, and God’s covenant love will reign beautifully and fully in every heart.

         

In their daily, mundane, earthy growing together in covenant love, the married couple is actually, biblically, a prophetic couple, reminding us, even if incompletely, of what is (God’s covenant love) and what is yet to be (the consummation of all things in Christ).

I’m not really sure what my dental hygienist would have said to all that, if I’d managed to squeeze it out between rinsings, but more and more these days I think Christian husbands and wives would do well to regain the prophetic aspect of a godly marriage, and with it a conscious awareness that their life together can, at its best, bear witness to something true about God’s heart for us.  

If we did, I think we would not only find deeper, more profound meaning in our daily decisions to make it work when making it work takes all we’ve got, but more than that, we’d find ourselves with a prophetic word to speak to the broader culture.  Because this is about a different way of being as much as it is about a different perspective on marriage; it's about being "us" centred and focused on the "yet to come," in a world that is increasingly self-centred and focused on the instant gratification of the here and now.

The fifth calling of Samuel

The other day I was reading the story in 1 Samuel about God's calling of Samuel.  For those of you who, like me, grew up on the flannel-graph versions of this Sunday School gem, you'll remember that the Lord calls Samuel three times and each time Samuel mistakes him for Eli.  After the third time, Eli tells Samuel that if he hears the voice again, he should reply: "Speak Lord, your servant is listening."  He does, and the rest is Messianic history.

No wonder this mysterious episode has made it to so many a Sunday School coloring page.  It's vivid and compelling and charming; but as I say, I was re-reading it the other day and I realized that, though we often end the telling after the fourth call of Samuel (the "Speak Lord, your servant is listening" one), Samuel is actually called five times in the story, and the "fifth call" is essential to the boy's prophetic ministry.  Because when Samuel does recognize the Word of the Lord at last, it turns out to be a prophetic judgment against Eli and his house, one that will make "the ears of everyone who hears it tingle."  It's a message so heavy and heart-rending that Samuel, we're told, is afraid to tell the vision to Eli.

And then comes the fifth call:  the next morning Eli  himself "calls" to Samuel.  The narrative accentuates the irony here by using the same verb as before (karaw-- to call), and  by putting the same response into Samuel's mouth-- "Here I am."  Previously Samuel had mistaken God's voice for Eli's, but now, having responded to God's call, Samuel hears and recognizes Eli's call for what it is.  And what it is, in fact, is an invitation to share the terrifying word of the Lord with the very one against whom it has been uttered.  It's a call to do the very thing that young Samuel is loathe to do: to speak the prophetic Word to power.

So here's what I'm wondering as I meditate on this "fifth call" of Samuel.  If the "fifth call" is the call for ministers of the Word to share it faithfully with God's people, even when it may cause the ears of those who hear it to tingle (inasmuch as Samuel's "fifth call" was a call from Eli to share what God had spoken against him), if the "fifth call" is our invitation to speak the Word of God to "power" when we're most afraid to do so because we're most uncertain of the outcome and we have the most at stake-- if Samuel's story is in some way paradigmatic for the Ministry of the Word, then what would it take for us to speak a willing "Here I am" with Samuel when we receive this "fifth call" in our ministries?