Bully’s Blog

“When you drink wine [at Communion] you are volunteering for death; you are accepting martyrdom.”

– James Jordan, Worship Lectures 2009

Alexander Schmemann writes:

“O Lord our God, crown them with glory and honour!” says the priest after he has put the crowns on the heads of the bridal pair. This is, first the glory and honour of man as king of creation: “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue and have dominion…” (Gn. 1:25). Each family is indeed a kingdom, a little church, and therefore a sacrament of and a way to the Kingdom. Somewhere, even if it is only in a single room, every man at some point in his life has his own small kingdom. It may be hell, and a place of betrayal, or it may not. Behind each window there is a little world going on. How evident this becomes when one is riding on a train at night and passing innumerable lighted windows: behind each one of them the fullness of life is a “given possibility,” a promise, a vision. This is what the marriage crowns express: that here is the beginning of a small kingdom which can be something like the true Kingdom. The chance will be lost, perhaps even in one night; but at this moment it is still an open possibility. Continue reading

Martha Moore-Keish on Communion and Hope for Heaven

“Action adventure films like The Rapture and Left Behind get people talking about the end times. But the final scene from the 1984 film Places in the Heart offers a more biblically complete picture of what God intends for us in the new heaven and new earth.

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Or, Adam as bread; Christ as bread and wine.

“Now when He had spoken these things, while they watched, He was taken up, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.” –Acts 1:9

“Jesus went through everything He went through, His incarnation, His life, His death, His resurrection, in order to ascend as man to heaven in the cloud… The glory cloud is God’s mobile home, a chariot-throne in which He drives around and manifests His presence, glory, grace and judgment.

This cloud shows up a lot more often in Scripture than you would think. We all know that the cloud brought the people through the wilderness, but the cloud is all over the place in the Bible. Sometimes you only get a hint that it’s there by the sound that it makes, its voice, a sound like a rushing mighty wind.

The cloud was at the Creation, at the Red Sea crossing, at Mount Sinai, in the wilderness, in the Tabernacle and in the Temple. It is God’s throne room, His sanctuary. This is where Jesus Christ ascended. The ascension marks the climax of what the Word was made flesh for. God created man for the purpose of ascension and transfiguration.

When Paul talks about the natural body versus the spiritual body, he doesn’t mean physical versus non-physical. He is contrasting the physical body with which Adam was created with the ’supra-physical’ body which Christ now has…

Christ divested Himself of the glory of His divinity, in order to receive the glory that He had before, but now to receive it as Man, and to share it with us.”

“The first man Adam became a living being. The last Adam became a life giving spirit” –1 Corinthians 15:45

– David Chilton, Ascension and Kingdom, Basilean Lectures 1990. Available from www.wordmp3.com

And I looked, and behold, in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures, and in the midst of the elders, stood a Lamb as though it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent out into all the Land. (Revelation 5:6)

The Bible is the story of the historic battle between the serpent-king and the servant king. Both sit on bloody thrones. Herod slaughters the innocents, and is then slaughtered by God. The innocent Christ is slaughtered, then sends His followers into the world as seven Spirits (Lampstand/Pentecost), but also as lambs among wolves.

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Peter Leithart writes:

Reflections on a class discussion earlier today about place, our connection to the ground, and gnosticism.

1. Blood and soil are “powers” that can and have dominated human life, and caused lots of human misery.  
2. Jesus overcomes those powers.  We are identified by water and feast, not by blood or color or place.
3. YET (here’s where my thought is undeveloped): Jesus doesn’t just overcome and send the powers packing.  He pacifies and reconciles powers; He turns them to the purposes of His kingdom (Col 1-2).

The dilemma: How to express the reconciliation of blood and soil without falling back into the old creation, and without going fascist? How to express Jesus’ pacification of “blood” without letting it usurp the place of the water, and how to express Jesus’ pacification of “soil” without letting it usurp the place of the feast?

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“For I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure is at hand.” 2 Timothy 4:6

A recent bestseller mistakenly tells us to be “wild at heart”, which results in passive wimps looking into their dark, little, empty hearts to find selfish, authoritarian rednecks. What men really desire is other men to follow—godly elders who are modelling Christ.

Bread is energising Alpha food (morning); Wine is intoxicating Omega food (evening).1 Young men are bread, ready to be broken. Breaking brings wisdom and maturity. Old men are wisdom-wine, servant kings poured out for the next generation.

The answer to geeky Christianity is not more Alpha Males (or less of them in some circles), but more of the Omega variety: fathers.

At study tonight, someone mentioned attending a Keswick convention where a wise old sage who spoke to the thousands was later not dining with the elite, but behind the counter serving the lunches, apologising for the wait. Now, that’s an Omega male.

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1  I recommend James Jordan’s lecture series, One Life, Many Deaths at www.wordmp3.com

“The kingdom of God is like a banquet filled up with blind and lame losers. We must replicate that in our lives, loving the unlovely. And the kingdom of God is also like a banquet where the servants drag out a guy in blue jeans so that he could be handed over to the torturers. Huh. The Lord’s Table is a come-one, come-all event. The Lord’s Table is place of fierce discipline. Absolutise either one, and trouble ensues.”

www.dougwils.com

Boisterous with Wine

Bread and wine administered separate from a meal and in meagre doses portrays God as stingy. Besides this fact, the Biblical image of abundant wine as liquid fire is important for war. Peter Leithart, commenting on Zechariah 9:15, writes:

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Deconstituted Ingredients

“The second ‘zone’ we need to think about concerning gnostic tendencies is the sacraments. God’s affirmation of the material world is seen in the fact that He uses physical water to introduce people into His kingdom; and by the fact that we eat Christ’s flesh and drink His blood in the Lord’s supper. Many Christians, however, cannot embrace such physical ideas. Water baptism is thus reduced to a mere symbol instead of a powerful communication from God. And so are the bread and wine of the supper.

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