Month: April 2017

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life [Jn. 3:14-15].

For Friends, the historic event of the cross is only a part of the fulfillment of God’s plan; the actual atonement takes place within the human heart. Though the cross shows a fulfillment of the prophets and the Law, Friends claim that the fulfillment of the prophets’ words and actions is the experiential knowledge of Christ risen within, that the inward event is the resurrection to eternal life. In the opening quotation, Jesus refers to three consecutive dispensations, and in this essay I want to show the sequential and progressive relationship among them.

To help envision the incremental process leading to completion, we can imagine a jointed spyglass with three parts or tubes that collapse together. As the parts extend one-by-one, greater vision is gained. For the first part, Jesus draws from Israel’s history: Moses’s lifting up the brass serpent in the wilderness. Jesus then ties this event to the cross on Calvary: the lifting up of the Son of man. The final segment is inward and spiritual, rather than outward and historical. Whoever believes in this lifted up (resurrected) Son of man has eternal life and does not perish. Later in the Gospel of John, eternal life is defined as “know(ing) the only true God” (Jn. 17:3). Jesus’s end goal is to have others enter a particular awareness or “knowing,” an inward state.

Prefiguring the Cross

First, we’ll examine the event from Israel’s history. We turn to the people of Israel led by the prophet Moses through the wilderness:

And they journeyed from mount Hor by the way of the Red Sea, to compass the land of Edom: and the soul of the people was much discouraged because of the way. And the people spake against God, and against Moses, wherefore have ye brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no bread, neither is there any water; and our soul loatheth this light bread. And the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people; and much people of Israel died (Num. 21: 4-6).

Because the journey was hard, the Hebrews came to regret their reliance upon God who had brought them out of Egypt for what seemed to them no other reason than to die. They spoke against their Creator and thus alienated themselves from the source of life. The serpents bite; the people die. Seeing the consequences and confessing their error, they reaffirm their dependence and seek to re-establish their connection to God through their prophet. They ask for life, that the death-bringing serpents be taken away:

Therefore the people came to Moses and said, We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord, and against thee; pray unto the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us (Num. 21:7).

The serpents are left to plague them, though God does give an antidote to the poison, and they overcome death:

And the Lord said unto Moses, Make thee a fiery serpent, and set it upon a pole: and it shall come to pass that everyone that is bitten, when he looketh upon it shall live. And Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived (Num. 21:8-9).

This story is rich with information about the relationship between God and humanity; no wonder it sprang to Jesus’s mind! God would have the people in relationship with Him, even providing for their restoration after they have separated themselves from Him. The Hebrews recognize their error—their sin; they petition for help and then obey God’s command. The relationship is restored, and God can work with them once again. The event itself is mysterious. The restoration to life occurs when the people obey the command to look at the raised brass serpent. To cast their gaze, to behold the serpent of brass, is to overcome death. The people’s attention is refocused away from their mortal plight and toward that which God has provided. We can see some foreshadowing of what is to come—the Son of man lifted up.

The Cross on Calvary

Quaker understanding of the cross differs from that of other Christian ideas. However, in the year before the great opening that revealed Christ alive, present, and speaking to his condition,  George Fox described the significance of the crucifixion in this way:

At that time the sins of all mankind were upon him, and their iniquities and transgressions with which he was wounded, which he was to bear, and to be an offering for them as he was man, but died not as he was God; and so, in that he died for all men, and tasted death for every man, he was an offering for the sins of the whole world (Journal, 5).

John Curtis, a New Foundation Fellowship worker, noted in his study guide to Fox’s Journal that this description is very like the “well-expressed view which is held by many types of Christians.” With his opening in 1647, Fox’s understanding changed, leading him to differ from other Christians in holding that the essential sacrifice and atonement must occur within each human heart, a sacrifice prefigured on Calvary. Fox writes:

In the flesh without them [in history], he [Christ] is their example or figure, [while] “Christ in his people is the substance of all figures, types, and shadows, fulfilling them in them, and setting them free from them (Works, 3:592-3).

Jesus’s submission in Gethsemane  (“nevertheless not as I will, but as thou [wilt],” [Mt. 26:39]) must be our own, if the actual reconciliation or atonement is to follow.

It is separation from God that is the problem to be overcome and to which all solutions allude: the brass serpent, the cross on Calvary, and the inward submission to God. And each situation calls for a re-direction of intention. In the wilderness, the people are to cast their gaze upward toward the raised ensign of the brass serpent. People are likewise to cast their gaze to the historic cross, and further, to recognize that the Son of man has taken on their situation, has assumed humanity’s spiritual state. In both of these situations, there has been a shift in people’s awareness: In the first, people simply behold the uplifted ensign; while in the second, they not only behold the uplifted one but become beholden to the one who has acted on their behalf. Greater ties result, reaching into the inner man—to his sense of gratitude and obligation for the sacrifice that has been offered on his behalf.

The Cross, the Power of God

Friends have recognized that more than gratitude and obligation are required of humankind; it is eternal life to which we are called—that we may know the only true God (Jn. 17:3). This is the final and end purpose of the plan of which the first two developments have been described. How different is the account of the inward atonement from that of Fox’s earlier explanation of the outward cross on Calvary! And yet, in his description, Fox returns to the outward event as the corporeal model of his experience:

None know the atonement of Christ but by the light within…Mark! He saith, the light is that which gives the knowledge, and the light within doth not set up another atonement: but they that deny the light within set up another atonement than Christ. We should be made free from the law of sin and death while we are upon the earth. And here the blood of Jesus is witnessed, and the atonement, and the Father and the son; and this is all seen with the light within (Works, 3:121).

The seventeenth-century Puritans objected to this claim. The Quakers call the light within Christ the redeemer, and thereby, the Puritans said, the Quakers had set up an idol, which denied the things that God had already done for humanity. Quakers countered this attack with the assertion that they did not deny the person of Christ but vouched for the re-enacting of his historic work within the heart. Says Isaac Penington:

That charge of thine on us, that we deny the person of Christ, and make him nothing but a light or notion, a principle in the heart of man, is very unjust and untrue; for we own that appearance of him in his body of flesh, his sufferings and death, and his sitting at the Father’s right hand in glory: but then we affirm, that there is no true knowledge of him, or union with him, but in the seed or principle of his life in the heart, and that therein he appears, subdues sin, and reigns over it, in those that understand and submit to the teaching and government of his Spirit (Quaker Spirituality, 144).

But what if the inward experience does not occur? What if there is no comprehension of the cross as an inward condition, no owning it as a just paradigm for our limited and alienated state? Instead, what if the cross on Calvary is revered with a false confidence, which claims to stand in good stead in the here-and-now and in the hereafter? If the cross is viewed as a culminating historic event by which we are somehow mysteriously reconciled to God, it does become an idol.

If we return for a moment to the brass serpent and locate its whereabouts sometime later, well after it has served its intended purpose, we find it under the censure of the prophet Hezekiah. He saw that the brass serpent had become an idol for the Hebrew people, and so he destroyed it:

He removed the high places, and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made, for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it (2 Kings 18:4).

On the other hand, what if the cross is set aside as irrelevant and given no place within present-day Liberal Quaker faith and practice? Dismissing this reference point of the cross (and thereby denying the reality of the sin and alienation that it is meant to overcome) do we not humor ourselves into claiming that our best efforts and intentions are already divinely inspired? Remember the error–the profound human error–made by the Hebrews in the desert: we usurp God’s wisdom and authority and replace them with our own lesser capacities. Says Rufus Jones:

If any supposes that Friends have inclined to be “humanists” and to assume that man is so inherently good that he can lift himself by his own belt into a life of consummate truth and beauty, he has not yet caught the deeper note of Quaker faith (Quaker Spirituality, 278).

The “deeper note” to which Jones refers is the cross,“the power of God,” as Fox reminds us. By the power of God, which is known only through the inward cross, can we carry forward the hope and obligation enjoined upon us.

Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him. And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith (Lk. 17:1-5).

One of the more difficult facts of life is that “offences will come.” Being on the receiving end of an offense and mulling over the injustice suffered from another’s selfish or wicked act, one is likely to find that one’s equanimity and focus have been lost. This loss of orientation is recognized and conveyed in a more literal translation of the first verse of this passage:

It is impossible that there should come no causes to make man go astray (The New Testament, Lattimore).

This literal rendering foregrounds the danger to the soul that results from having undergone an offense: the wounded soul may “go astray.” Having suffered injury, the soul is tempted to covet and use power to restore its broken equanimity in what seems like just retribution. Brandishing power over others in order to restore sense of self perpetuates the offense. And this dynamic repeated indefinitely becomes a de facto principle undergirding human interaction, and results in a world of fear, anger, and misuse of power. “The whole world lieth in wickedness”(1 Jn. 5:19), thereby ensuring that, as Jesus said, “offenses will come.”

In this passage, Jesus walks his disciples through this problem and into the solution. He begins by addressing the issue of justice: the offender has trespassed a boundary; violated an understood agreement, spoken or not; and caused misery to another who is innocent. Though accountable, he himself seems not to have suffered at all. Not so, says Jesus; there is justice within, and the offender can expect great misery:

woe unto him, through whom [offenses] come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones (1, 2).

Being sunk into the darkness and chaos of the sea (with a millstone necklace!) with no  firm ground nor hope of life is the justice meted out to the offender’s soul. The victim’s sense that the miscreant should suffer for his misdeed as much or more than he himself has suffered is satisfied by Jesus’s pronouncement; in the soul, justice is served. Not only does this vivid image of punishment reassure the victim that an equal or greater suffering will come to the wrongdoer, but it also warns him to stand guard against the temptation to likewise become an offender and undergo such a punishment himself. Jesus would put a stop to the chain reaction of victim becoming offender.

Assuring the disciples that inward justice will always be in force, Jesus stills the impulse to take retribution, to pay back. As an alternative to this natural destructive impulse, he then sets out a rightly ordered procedure for handling offenses:

Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him (3 and 4).

The soul speaking truth to power disencumbers itself of the burden of injustice and puts it in the open. Should the offense have been unintended, the misunderstanding is brought to light and can be explained. If the wrongdoer recognizes that he’s overstepped the boundary, behaved unjustly, and in the future is willing to abide by agreed limits–signaled by his repentance–then forgiving is in order. Conversely, if there’s a refusal to recognize acceptable limits and no repentance forthcoming, the relationship is not to be restored.

These are all principles that can be practiced using the powers available to our nature: reason and conscience can get us this far. Beyond the restoration of relationship by truth-telling and re-affirming social boundaries, however, is a call to handle offenses in a way that requires more than human ability. Jesus calls us and the disciples to this new way: to reframe the event and see it differently; to see it through the perspective of faith, rather than perspective of our limited worldly nature. Doing so will enable us to see that we can lose nothing that can truly affect our well-being.

When the events of life are seen through the eye of faith, one cannot be deprived of anything necessary for one’s happiness. If one’s treasure is in heaven, can anyone break in and steal? No. It is only when there is a failure to see that one’s treasure is in heaven that one can be rattled or devitalized by worldly loss. Living in faith, no power or principalities,

nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:38-9).

Living in a world where offenses inevitably come, the disciples feel their well-being to be under threat. They also intuit that faith is the sole guarantee of their inward peace…if they just had enough of it. So sensibly, they ask of Jesus: “Increase our faith” (Lk. 17:5). Jesus responds:

If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you (6).

Implied in the apostles’ request for increased faith is the assumption they already have a certain degree of faith, and they just need more. Jesus corrects them: If they had even a tiny amount of faith (even as “a grain of mustard seed”) they could do a mighty act of power: they could command a tree to uproot itself and be “planted in the sea; and it should obey.” (Note the echoing imagery: the offender who sinks in the sea [2] and the tree, which, through faith, can thrive there [6].)  Man’s lack of faith entails a lack of power over nature: his own human nature. Without faith, Man has no power to avoid disorder and weakness, and he sinks into the chaos of external threats, the offences that are bound to come, and into the ocean of darkness.

Having faith, he can thrive even when planted in the chaos of the world that lies in wickedness, even as a sycamine tree could be planted in a hostile environment of the sea. Having faith, the hearing/obeying relationship with his Creator, Man is restored, strengthened, and empowered to withstand and rise above such assaults upon his soul. He is given the power of God to rule over his human nature and to thrive regardless of the circumstances.

Though the disciples think they already have faith and simply need more, Jesus knows faith to be something other than what the disciples understand by the word. Likewise, the seventeenth-century Friends carefully distinguished the difference between what was commonly thought to be faith and the meaning given to the word by Jesus. Penington asserts (emphasis his):

That the true faith (the faith of the gospel, the faith of the elect, the faith which saves the sinner from sin, and makes him more than a conqueror over sin and the powers of darkness) is a belief in the nature of God; which belief giveth entrance into, fixeth in and causeth an abiding in that nature….And nothing can believe in the nature, but what is one with the nature. So then faith is not a believing the history of the scripture…or a believing that Christ died for sinners in general, or for me in particular…but a uniting to the nature of God in Christ (Works, I: 239-40).

Faith is “a belief in the nature of God”…which causes “an abiding in that nature.” It is “a uniting to the nature of God in Christ” that is the true faith which keeps us in peace, empowered to withstand all the assaults that will come. In the final verses of this passage, Jesus instructs the disciples in the way to receive faith.

But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do (Lk. 17:5-10).

Jesus is telling his disciples to attend to the work that is set before them and not to get ahead of themselves. As is often the case, Jesus uses rhetoric to make his point. Notice the shift in point of view in this passage indicated by the use of different pronouns: first, Jesus puts the disciples in the position of master (“But which of you, having a servant”); second, the pronoun shifts from the second to the third person, and the master is referred as “he,” no longer as “you” (“Doth he thank that servant”); and third, Jesus moves to the first person pronoun “we,” thus putting the disciples in the position not of the master, nor the onlooker, but of the servant (“say, We are unprofitable servants”).  Jesus has gently moved the disciples to seeing themselves as servants rather than seeing themselves as masters, the latter being their natural inclination. Faith is the hearing/obeying relationship with our Creator, and we are not our own masters, though we have claimed to be so since the Fall.

We are to serve righteousness, whether instructed by the conscience or later by the law of faith to serve the Lord our Righteousness (Jer. 23:6); that is our duty. That duty will vary from person to person, but the rigorous standard of adhering to what is true and right does not vary from person to person. That standard is righteousness, and the soul must hunger and thirst after it, that it may be filled with faith. It is the sincerity of pursuit that is judged by Christ. We cannot obtain righteousness ourselves, any more than we can judge ourselves; we are subject to judgment. We, however, can and must do, like the servants in this parable, “all those things which are commanded” to us, laboring inoffensively and honestly that we may in faith come to cease from our own works.

For he that is entered into his rest, he also hath ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labour therefore to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. For the word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any twoedged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in his sight: but all things are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do (Heb. 4:10-13).