I use fishing as the example. Stanley Hauerwas uses bricklaying. Others may select their favorite complex skill which must be learned, at least to some degree, as an apprentice, receiving both instruction and example from a master, someone proficient in the art to which one aspires. Cooking, parenting, car repair, accounting, and even video game play might all be good examples.
Following Alasdair McIntyre, Hauerwas wants the acquisition of some craft or skill to be an image of the acquisition of moral virtue. One learns how to be a good person by association with good people. But he and I also see it even more fundamentally as a picture of how we become Christians, that is, people who do not just profess faith in Jesus Christ but who live out that faith in visible and tangible ways.
The problem for us in this picture of Christianity as a skill acquired through association with a master is that we clearly understand our master to be Christ Himself. We learn much from observing “saints,” well-practiced godly men and women who manifest the Christ-life in their own persons and practices. However, as I preached on the two Sundays before Easter, Jesus is our ultimate and final example. It is He that we emulate when we aspire to truly live as we believe.
Yet here’s the thing: Jesus is pretty conspicuously absent right now. We have the example of the life He lived on earth two millennia ago and lots of His instruction recorded in the Gospels, but when it comes to seeing how a Christian brick is laid or a spiritual fly tied, He’s not present to show us in person.
That’s what gives some of the absurdity to the “What would Jesus do?” question. While we can be very confident that Jesus would not lie or cheat or that He would give food to a hungry person, many of our questions about practicing faith are not so easily answered. If we ask how Jesus would vote in the upcoming presidential election or whether He would choose to give government agencies the power to decrypt private cell phone communications, the only honest answer should be a resounding, “I’m not sure!”
In fact, it feels a bit like a situation some of us have experienced, when a supervisor or teacher or friend has provided a bit of instruction, even visible example, but then promptly walked away to leave us to figure out mostly for ourselves how to use the new software or solve the math problem or secure that diaper. She or he got us started, but the finish is up to us. It’s that feeling that the book of Revelation addresses. We’re not as alone as we might think and the completion of Christ’s work in our lives is not merely in our own hands.
This remaining presence and work of Jesus Christ to help us grow in His likeness is part of what I take Revelation 1:8 to mean when God says “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” and 1:17 to mean when Jesus (the Son of Man) says, “I am the first and the last.” We normally take that to be an assurance that what has been begun in Christ will be completed. The book of Revelation is about an end time when all that God has planned will be finished. But I think we might argue that this book is even more an assurance that Christ is superintending all the times in between, from start to finish.
Thus Jesus has something to say to the seven representative churches of Asia Minor. He hasn’t simply left them to figure things out on their own (their various failings demonstrate how disastrous that can be). And the text emphasizes the current ministry of the Holy Spirit (wonderfully represented in His multiplicity of power and manifestation in 1:4 by being called “the seven spirits who are before his throne”). John is “in the Spirit” in verse 10 as he’s given a message to the churches.
In other words, it’s not just the beginning and the end of our Christian experience which the Lord supervises. It’s everything in between. In verse 8, God is the one, “who is, who was and who is to come,” first of all the God of the present. Likewise in verse 19, John’s commission is to write first “what is,” and only then “what is to take place after this.”
As we look, therefore, for four Sundays at texts from Revelation, I hope we can see our Lord very much present as example and guide right now, and not merely as a teacher who’s left us on our own until He gets back. That kind of start-to-finish Savior is who Jesus is.
i love the challenge to the churches at the beginning of revelation, and i especially love the glorious description of the river of life in the city with no temple because the Lord and the Lamb are there and no need of the sun for the same reason at the end–it’s the long revenge fantasy in the middle of revelation that gives me trouble. i can understand the anger against all beastly empires, but rivers of blood for miles up to the belly of a big horse…? a retired general recently explained that Jesus will be returning carrying an automatic rifle. an updated winnowing fork i guess.