Volume 7.2 Fall / Winter 2009

The early Christian writers were well versed in the metaphors of scripture. They explored these metaphors within the context of the overarching narrative of scripture and employed a variety of strategies to achieve their goal of an integrative reading. A basic element of the interpretative process was to determine reliable meanings of important words used in various contexts and genres.

Basil of Caesarea takes the opportunity in his Commentary on Psalm 1 to explore life as a way. Basil states:

We read in the Book of Psalms: “Blessed is the one who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor follows in the way of sinners.” Life has been called a “way” because everything that has been created is on the way to its end. When people are on a sea voyage, they can sleep while they are being transported without any effort of their own to their port of call. The ship brings them closer to their goal without their even knowing it. So we can be transported nearer to the end of our life without our noticing it, as time flows by unceasingly. Time passes while you are asleep. While you are awake time passes although you may not notice. All of us have a race to run, towards our appointed end. So we are all “on the way.” This is how you should think of the “way.” You are a traveler in this life. Everything goes past you and is left behind. You notice a flower on the way, or some grass, or a stream, or something worth looking at. You enjoy it for a moment, and then pass on. Maybe you come on stones or rocks or crags or cliffs or fences, or perhaps you meet wild beasts or reptiles or thorn bushes or some other obstacles. You suffer briefly then escape. That is what life is like. Pleasures do not last but pain is not permanent either. The “way” does not belong to you nor is the present under your control. But as step succeeds step, enjoy each moment as it comes and then continue on your “way.”[1]

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[1] Thomas Spidlik, Drinking From the Hidden Fountain: A Patristic Breviary. Translated by Paul Drake. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Cistercian Publications, 1994, 38.

If you were to walk into my office, you would find hanging on the wall Sieger Köder’s picture of Jesus kneeling before Peter, washing his feet. Almost each day this piece of artwork invites me into a deeper engagement with the question Jesus asked his disciples after washing their feet. Do you remember it?

“Do you understand what I have done for you?”

God’s command, “Be holy as I am holy,” is inspiring. Imagine God looking at you and saying, “You can actually be holy as I am holy.” But it’s also unsettling. Do we really want to have the effect on other people that the vision of God had on Isaiah and even the seraphs?

In the year that King Uzziah died, I saw the Lord seated on a throne, high and exalted, and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphs, each with six wings. With two wings, they covered their faces, with two they covered their feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.” At the sound of their voices, the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke. “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”

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To follow Jesus implies that we enter into a way of life that is given character and shape and direction by the one who calls us. To follow Jesus means picking up rhythms and ways of doing things that are often unsaid but always derivative from Jesus formed by the influence of Jesus. To follow Jesus means that we cannot separate what Jesus is saying from what Jesus is doing and the Way he is doing it.

I have a recommendation for an enterprising Christian businessperson. Think of how the letters WWJD have been used. Why don’t you also sell bracelets, T-shirts, and bumper stickers with these letters: HWJDI? They stand for “How Would Jesus Do It?” It would be very helpful in reframing what it means to live the Jesus Way.

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Elijah is a stirring figure. His name, which means “Yahweh is my God,” says much about his character. Some of us, like Eugene Peterson, were influenced by Elijah from childhood and youth. Others discovered him later. Either way, he has something vital to give to us.

Elijah teaches us about the undivided heart. He is all about being God’s person, God’s servant, completely obedient to him. This single-minded character is the governing quality of Elijah’s life, and it should be ours as well.

In his book The Jesus Way, one thing that drives Peterson’s discussion of Elijah has to do with worship. Worship, it seems, is one of the ways we may lose focus in our service to God. Distracted by pomp and circumstances, we fall in with false expectations of worship. We think large congregations are more impressive than small ones. We think renowned preachers are more important than simple ones. We plan our worship to impress others and to impress God. Most of all, we fall into ways of manipulating God. We judge the worth of our worship by what we “get from God” rather than how we give ourselves to God. Yes, this is a problem today, but it was also a problem in Elijah’s time. We want to take God captive, to put him in service to our needs and wants, when in fact it should be the other way around. We should be completely surrendered to God, completely attentive to him. That is Elijah’s message. That is the Elijah way.

“You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable
seed, through the living and enduring word of God.”
1 Peter 1: 23, NRSV

“Anyone wishing to save humanity today must first of all save the word.”
Jacque Ellul

At the beginning of time the debar Yahweh, the Word of the Lord, brought the universe crashing into existence. God said, “Let there be light,” and the Big Bang occurred. This ever-living, ever-speaking, ever-creating Word of God is “quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thought and intents of the heart.” As Dallas Willard has put it, God is “our communicating Cosmos.”

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And holy obedience must walk in this world, not aloof and preoccupied,
but stained with sorrow travail .
Thomas R. Kelly

The Jesus Way conference was over, and I was relaxing with my wife at a riverside café in San Antonio. Being an introvert who had been awash with waves of people for three days, I just wanted a quiet place to dry out for a while before heading off to the airport.

But our tranquility was soon punctured by a mariachi band that began playing at a table nearby. We elevated the volume of our conversation, and I carefully avoided eye contact with the lead minstrel. The last thing I wanted at that moment was to be an audience of two for one of their loud songs.

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