“And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins.”
—Mark 2:22

Ahh. So that’s my problem. I always wondered why the promised new life never seemed to quite materialize for me. I’ve been trying to cram the Jesus stuff into my recycled Fred bag. Here I thought I was being religiously green and all the while I was simply recycling my carnal footprint. Go figure.

The hard part is that I really like my old bag. It’s familiar, meticulously crafted, functional, and very comfortable. Through constant use it has become flexible enough to hold just about anything. From humility to hypocrisy, purpose to plunder, sacrifice to sacrilege, faith to folly, duty to duplicity—you name it and it’s probably been in the bag. I like the old Fred bag. It works just fine.

Well, except for one thing: it leaks. Like, a lot. It’s as effective as a screen door on a submarine. No matter how carefully I pack the Jesus thing in there, no matter how gingerly I fit that new brew in between my standing inventory of social commitments and ego-centered mandates, my garden of lovingly tended secret sins and publicly pious postures, my spiritual sincerity and willful, reckless rebellion—no matter how gently I maneuver the new wine in there, it’s all in vain. The much ballyhooed new vintage splashes, a lame libation, unsampled and wholly ineffectual on the dirt. Every damn time.

Apparently, the new requires the new. It’s sort of like getting a new electronic tech device that comes with its own power cord. Ten to one the power cord from your old tech device won’t fit the new device. The new little connector is a different size or configuaration or both. Jesus gives me this new tech device, see, and I’m trying to use my old power cord to power it up but it doesn’t work. So I have this great new gadget with all kinds of features that just sits there doing nothing. It comes down to deciding which I like better, my old power cord or my new device. Apparently I can’t have my cake and iPad 2.

Jesus offers me this new spiritual wine (say, a perky Zinfandel) and I have this old wine skin bag (work with me on this). He keeps pouring but I keep leaking. Eventually you’d think he’d stop pouring, but he’s got a huge supply and isn’t trying to hoard it for himself; he really wants me to have it. So as long as I’m holding up my old bag he’s going to pour, probably because he’s waiting to see just how stupid I really am. So I demonstrate to him that I am indeed quite stupid. Eventually, the entire Trinity is gathered around and staring in disbelief (yes, God can do that if he wants) at my relentless stupidity and totally dorky loyalty to my old Fred bag. Every once in a while Jesus holds up a brand new bag to hint that I might want to shift strategies, but, for the most part, God is having a grand time watching the Fred farce. I should charge him admission. Probably should get myself a new bag one of these days.

Maybe next year.

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Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
Psalm 90:12

I have a living will; it goes like this: If I ever act my age, shoot me. I have a theory that it is possible to live too long, especially if the thrill of living is gone. I plan on living until I’m dead, thank you very much. That sounds kind of duh, but I have definitely met people who have passed away before they’ve passed away, if you know what I mean. That would totally suck.

On the other hand, some people think that living forever would be nifty. No stress, no deadlines, no rush. They would always have time for whatever, even if they never got around to it. I call that a recipe for boredom. We need a game clock to keep things interesting. There’s nothing like a two-minute warning to get you off your assets.

The Psalmist is definitely onto something here. He wants to hear the ticking of the shot clock. It’s not that he wants the game to end; but he doesn’t want to get caught with the ball in his hands when time runs out. Wisdom isn’t whether you make the shot or not; it’s whether or not you take it. If you shoot, there are no guarantees that you’re going to score, but if you don’t toss the ball up, you are most definitely guaranteed not to score.

Most people associate wisdom with conservatism. I don’t mean politics (there was little wisdom there when I last checked). I mean that wisdom gets associated with playing it safe. What a crock. When the clock is ticking, wisdom tells you to go for it, baby. You may lose your shorts big time, but you have to risk it.

Jesus tells the parable about three servants who are given investment money by their master. One guy gets five bucks, one gets three bucks, and one gets a single buck. The first two guys put the money to work—they take a calculated risk—and each doubles his money. The dweeb with one buck digs a hole and buries it, afraid to risk it. When the master gets back, he promotes the first two and reams the dweeb like nobody’s business. Moral of the story: Don’t be a dweeb.

Miss Frizzle, of the classic animated kids’ show The Magic School Bus, says it all: “Take chances, make mistakes, get messy!” Listen gang, when the clock is ticking—and it is ticking—the wisest thing is to go freaking insane. Forget waiting for the right chance. Forget playing it safe. I say, damn moderation. Damn balance. Damn the torpedoes, for crying out loud. You only get one shot at this. If you fail, then at least fail gloriously. Crash and burn for all the world to see. Let the cowards roast marshmallows over your wreckage. If you screw up—and there’s a very good chance that you will—then do yourself a favor and be the biggest freaking screw up the world has ever seen.

So jump, you idiot. (I’ll bring marshmallows just in case.)

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We believers all agree that God is great. We often think of him as holy or loving or wise or mighty. We speak of him as kind or gracious or forgiving. But very few people that I know ever refer to God as interesting.

I find God simply fascinating. By this I mean that there is something deeply intriguing to me about who and what God actually is. Like other believers, I too rejoice in God’s wondrous love for us and his marvelous salvation in his son. I am thankful for his attentive care, his gentle instruction, and his wondrous plan for all who believe. Over the past few years, however, I have become more and more captivated by the sheer nature of his being, by what makes God God.

My prayer life has been transformed. Now I spend far less time asking for things, even though we are invited to make our petitions known to him. Instead, I find myself bowing before him and simply pondering who and what this entity actually is. The Scriptures are filled with tantalizing nuggets about the divine nature that are deliriously out there. I find that this God I worship is infinitely beyond my understanding in every way, but I also find that he makes himself known to me in ways that I can’t figure out. It’s weird. It’s not that I comprehend him but that as I worship and pray I’m encountering the incomprehensible. I’m knowing the unknowable.

I’m curious about God, by what it’s like for him to be himself. I find delight in pondering the attributes which set God wholly apart from everything he has made, including us humans. And in this I am learning how to love the Lord with all my mind, to stretch the capacities of both reason and imagination to experience him. And perhaps the most amazing revelation of all, the Apostle Paul tells us that we have the mind of Christ, which means that we are invited to experience God’s own understanding of himself! Mind. Blown.

I love to meditate on God. I find my deepest satisfaction in bowing before the unfathomably great Holy One and just being astonished. I think he likes showing us how totally cool he is. As he spoke though the prophet Jeremiah: Call to Me and I will answer you, and I will tell you great and mighty things, which you do not know.

Oh yeah. Bring it on.

?   ?   ?

For the Lord God is a sun.
—Psalm 84:11

On Monday, August 21, 2017, all of North America will be treated to an eclipse of the sun. Anyone within the path of totality can see one of nature’s most awe-inspiring sights—a total solar eclipse. This path, where the moon will completely cover the sun, will stretch from Salem, Oregon to Charleston, South Carolina.

But as exciting as it will be to observe this impressive natural event, even more awesome will be the chance to experience a revelation about the greatest of eternal mysteries. The total eclipse of the sun will reveal to us what Christians believe to be the very nature of God himself.

One God

Generally we think of the sun as a single thing. It is the bright daytime object in the sky at the center of our solar system. Earth does not have two suns; it revolves around one, solitary star. There may be many stars out there, but for us there is and has always been only one sun. Now think of how God declares himself to Israel: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one (Deuteronomy 6:4). Through Isaiah God is more specific: I am the Lord, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God (Isaiah 45:5). And in the New Testament, the Apostle Paul reiterates what is the witness of the entire body of Scripture: There is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live (1 Corinthians 8:6). In the same way that there is but one single sun in our sky, there is only one true God over the universe.

The Son

The most exciting thing about the eclipse is that when the moon fully obscures the sun’s central disk, we will see something we can see at no other time. We will see the ring of fire known as the corona. A corona (Latin for crown) is an aura of plasma that surrounds the sun and other stars. The Sun’s corona extends millions of miles into space but is nearly impossible to see except during a total solar eclipse when it blazes into prominence. Now here’s the interesting thing: the corona is a distinct aspect of the sun. It is neither the vast body of the sun nor its surface but rather its flaming atmosphere. The spherical body of the sun and the corona are not the same thing. The corona is the incandescence of the body’s separate, energetic reactions. The corona exists not on its own but because of those reactions, and so it is reasonable to say that the source of the corona is “greater” or more fundamental than the corona itself. And yet the corona is every bit as much the sun as the body is. The sun’s corona has alway coexisted with the body; there has never been a time when the sun did not have a corona. More significant from our perspective is that the corona is the only thing we actually see of the sun. But when the moon covers the sun’s disk, we discover that it is also a distinct aspect of that very same sun which it essentially is.

All this can help us approach some of the most enigmatic verses of the Bible. At the very beginning of his gospel, John, in speaking of Jesus Christ as the divine Word, writes: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God (1:1). The verse’s conceptual paradox, that the Word is both with God and is God, seems now less of a paradox. So, too, we recognize the essential coherence of Jesus as he says both “The Father is greater than I” (John 14:28) and “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). Even more arresting is the claim found in Hebrews: The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being (Hebrews 1:3). And perhaps now we can entertain Paul’s logic-obliterating claim in Colossians: The Son is the image of the invisible God (1:15). What are we to make of all of this other than that Jesus is the living “corona” of God! Crown him with many crowns!

The Spirit

On August 21, something else will happen when the moon passes in front of the sun. Not only will it get preternaturally dark, folks will notice a brief but decided drop in temperature. That’s because the moon will block the sun’s radiant energy that we experience as heat. We don’t “see” the sun’s heat, but we feel it (or its absence). This heat proceeds forth from the sun and its corona—it’s the sun that we feel—but it is neither the body of the sun nor its corona, both of which are some 93 million miles distant. Yet that distant sun is literally present with us in the form of light and heat. Even our ability to see the corona is the result of the light that actually strikes our retinas here on earth, and the warmth we love and depend on is the local manifestation of the sun’s mighty power. If it weren’t for this manifest extension of the distant sun, we would not be able to perceive it at all. (We’d also be dead.) So the sun’s body and corona are made known to us by this vital emanation that is not the body or corona of the sun but is their visceral presence.

Think now of what Scripture tells us of the Spirit of God. Jesus tells his disciples, “When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father—the Spirit of truth who goes out from the Father—he will testify about me” (John 15:26). Note that the Spirit proceeds forth from the Father. Jesus presents the Spirit as distinct from his Father and himself, but he also equates the Spirit with his own presence, telling his disciples that both he and his Father “will come to them and make our home with them” (John 14:23). For the New Testament writers the Spirit of God is the very presence of the Father and Son. Paul makes this identification complete when he writes, Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom (2 Corinthians 3:17). The Spirit is the realized presence of the Father and Son whose emanation he is.

The Christian God

I have purposefully avoided the word Trinity in this discussion because I don’t like it at all. The word was invented by theologians who were trying to articulate the nature of God as it unfolds in the Bible. It simply means “three-one” and in itself is harmless enough, I suppose. The big issue with it is that it forces us to ask “Three what?” and herein lies the problem. Answering this question leads to all kinds of really esoteric and, if I may be so bold, stupid speculations. First of all, there is no “three-ness” to God at all. Both the Father and Son categorically affirm that God is one just like there is only one sun in our sky no matter what we say about it. And yet the Scriptures are head-bangingly clear that Jesus and the Spirit are also that one and the same God.

So just what will the eclipse reveal about the nature of God? I think Saint Augustine gets it right:

There is one God.
The Father is God.
The Son is God.
The Spirit is God.
The Father is not the Son.
The Son is not the Spirit.
The Spirit is not the Father.

So if you’re one of the privileged folks (like me) who will be along the path of totality, get yourself a pair of safety glasses and on August 21 look up. Experience first hand the revery of the Psalmist who 3000 years ago cried out in ecstasy:

The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
—Psalm 19:1

.   .   .

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.
—Ephesians 2:8

.   .   .

In Your presence is fullness of joy.
—Psalm 16:11

So there I am one random morning some twenty years ago. I’m serving Cheerios to my three little kids (the fourth not yet arrived) who are perched on our ratty old bar stools in their rumpled pajamas. It’s a morning no different than any other, a morning shaped by those casual, comforting rituals so familiar to families with small children. But on this morning, as I absently push the bowls across the counter, I am suddenly engulfed by a powerful and astonishing bliss. It materializes out of nowhere, a luminous cloud of pure joy that literally swallows me whole. I steady myself and with delirious amazement watch my kids innocently spoon cereal into their mouths. Every motion, every drip of milk, the very air itself is infused with incandescent ecstasy. Somehow the meaning and purpose of all creation have converged in this moment and space—to this kitchen on this morning. I am astounded. I am exalted. I am transfigured. And then the moment passes, the bright cloud dissipates, the kids finish their Cheerios, and the morning settles back into a peaceful, quiet ordinary.

I haven’t experienced anything exactly like it since. Oh, I’ve often experienced a quieter delight prompted by a lovely day or good company or even simple gratitude; still, there have been other moments when a rushing joy blossomed in me unexpected and unprompted, an insistent bliss that came out of nowhere for no particular reason, an unwarranted, untranslatable effervescence. As C. S. Lewis has noted, the profoundest, most numinous joy is nearly always surprising and often wholly inexplicable.

I remember my first trip to Moscow, Russia. One day I explored the renowned Metro, the lavish underground transit system. Though its original grandeur had faded, I could still sense the Soviet attempt to capture in its arches, tile work, and chandeliers a sense of Slavic glory. The effect, however, was a pervasive melancholy, a failed attempt, by engineering and artistry, to realize an apotheosis of the human spirit. That melancholy was also in the faces of the Muscovites on the trains. The passengers sat in silence, staring vacantly before them. There were no conversations, no exchange of glances, no smiles. That same evening I spoke at a small Christian church on the far west side of Moscow’s sprawling metropolis. We met in some rented hole that was cold and spare. But unlike the opulent underground I’d ridden earlier, this place was brilliant with laughter and shining faces. These people were hardscrabble Russians who’d weathered the brutal climate of a police state and the collapse of their proud empire. Like the rest of their countrymen they trudged every day through scarcity and uncertainty. And yet here they were, unreasonably gleaming like brightly polished silver.

Unreasonable joy is a consuming experience of sheer transcendence. It’s a super-reality that supplants its lesser sibling, a radical phase-shift from the sanctioned, steadfast continuity in which we live and die, to a charged hyper-actuality that subsumes and transfigures everything. Joy is a hit of pure, incandescent being aflame in its own ether, a bright enveloping cloud of utter unity where the finite and the infinite become one, where the self and the divine become each other.

I know, of course, that my grasping attempt to articulate all this is doomed to fail. An inspired Apostle Peter simply points to an inexpressible and glorious joy that is no less than a foretaste of the soul’s salvation. Its inexpressible nature is the very hallmark of a special people who, through faith, actually participate in the divine nature. As Jesus tells his disciples, “These things I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.” Quite simply, joy is what it’s like to be God.

And the astonishing thing is that it can indeed be found.

At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do.”
—Luke 10:21

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