100 Days of Dante - Again!

  Baylor's Honor's College is doing 100 Days of Dante again. For those of us who missed it last year, here's another opportunity. Since I started late last year I had to play catch up, but it was worth it and I plan on taking the journey again beginning August 31. 

For the most part, the presenters are very good; there were a couple that weren't. Each presentation usually lasts from 7 - 12 minutes, some are a bit longer. The presenters come from various traditions, Protestant and Catholic, and from both North America and Europe.

This is unfamiliar territory for most of us, but that's the way we learn and are challenged. For sure, the Inferno ought to remind us that sin is real and not to be trifled with. As for Purgatory, the principles contained in it are well worth pondering; frankly, at this stage of my life I am convinced that we experience Purgatory one way or another. And by the way, just to clear things up - and even some of my Catholic friends don't know this - Purgatory isn't about getting a "second chance at salvation." Only those who know Christ already can enter Purgatory. I've experience a good bit of Purgatory in this life...what about you?

As for Paradise, I dearly love this section of the Divine Comedy - can you possibly improve on, "In His will is our peace"? This is a wonderful taste of God's glory and our eternal destiny.

Okay, that's my pitch for Dante!

Info is below - you may have to click on the Baylor link twice, once on this page and once on the next page.

Much everlasting love,

Bob

Dante Lovers, We are back! Maybe you made it all the way through Paradise, and want to make the journey again. Or maybe you got bogged down in Purgatory and want to start over. Either way, we are inviting you to participate once again in the world's largest reading group of Dante's Divine Comedy.   Starting August 31st, we are going to be sending emails with videos and questions every Monday/Wednesday/Friday, until Easter. If you want to join, head over to our newly redesigned website and sign up with your email for the reading plan that starts on August 31st. If you don't, you will not hear from us again until we have some new, cool project that we want to tell you about. That's right: you will only receive emails if you sign up again at 100DaysofDante.com. When you get there, you'll discover that you can also sign up for the "power user" plan, which gives you 100 emails in 100 consecutive days. Go for it! Whatever you decide, we would love it if you would forward this email to three friends from church, work, or school and help us form the world's largest Dante reading group (again). Until our paths cross again, then, thanks for your support of this project. Let's keep reading together. -The 100 Days team

A Kingdom of Priests (7)

 

 Intercession (2)

 

“And He saw that there was no man, and was astonished that there was no one to intercede…” Isaiah 59:16a.

 

“I searched for a man among them who would build up the wall and stand in the gap before Me for the land, so that I would not destroy it; but I found no one.” Ezekiel 22:30.

 

Intercession is at the core of the Royal Priesthood of Jesus Christ, for it flows from the Nature of God, and those in whom His Nature lives, in Jesus Christ, are intercessors by Nature. The Bible tells us that “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Love is self-giving, it is self-sacrificial; when intercession is necessary, love is intercessory.  God’s response to man’s sin was immediately intercessory – Genesis 3:15. Prospectively, in eternity, the Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world; hence before the Fall we see the intercessory Lamb.

 

Sadly, we are convinced we are turkeys and not eagles and the image of soaring in the heavens is alien to us, the idea of living in the Throne Room as we walk the earth is foreign to our thinking and way of life.

 

For those of us who recall the View Master, it is as if someone gave us a View Master device but then also gave us one-dimensional slides to put in the device – thwarting the very purpose of the View Master. If we didn’t know any better, we’d think that our experience of the View Master was normal and we’d not relate to what those people who had three dimensional slides were talking about when they described what they were seeing. This, my dear friends, is the difference between living in the glories of Romans 8 and living as if we were still slaves in Egypt. This is the difference between living in the Priesthood of Jesus Christ with it roots in the heavenly Throne Room, and living as earth dwellers.

 

In the Isaiah passage above, Yahweh is astonished that He can find no intercessor. In Ezekiel, Yahweh is looking for a man or woman to build up the wall and stand in the gap before Him, on behalf of the people of the land, and He can find no one.

 

Now let’s be clear, intercession has to do with both words and deeds; it encompasses intercessory prayer and intercessory living – in terms of intercessory living consider Colossians 1:24; Philippians 3:10; 1 John 3:16, and ponder 2 Corinthians 1:3 – 11, noting verses 6 – 7. In the Incarnation we see Jesus Christ living the Intercessory Life and praying intercessory prayer, such as John 17. Since the indwelling Christ is within us, since the Incarnation continues within us, our individual lives and our collective Body Life ought to display the Intercessory Life and ongoing intercessory prayer of Jesus Christ – for as the Head is, so is the Body.

 

One of the challenges in intercessory prayer and intercessory living is that of identification. We must first be citizens of heaven (Phil. 3:20) and live and intercede from a place of transcendence in Jesus Christ, otherwise our living and praying will be fractured by this world’s perspectives and agendas. Let me try to illustrate this.

 

I have seldom been in an actual prayer meeting, that is, I have seldom been in a gathering of Christians in which we actually pray, rather than talk to one another. Also, often when we do pray it isn’t that we pray and intercede for others, but rather that we pray for our own political and social and religious agendas to be adopted by others – that others will “see the light” and adopt ways of thinking that please us. In other words, rather than praying and interceding for others, it is as if we are praying against others.

 

We will talk about things that need changing, and people who need changing, and then we say a prayer or two in the confidence that God realizes that our agendas are the best agendas and that He must absolutely agree with our thinking. Surely God is a conservative, or a liberal, or a moderate, or a capitalist, or an American, or a Republican, or Democrat…the list goes on. Naturally, quite naturally, God has also adopted our doctrinal distinctives, our denomination, our special emphasis, our form of music…we seem to assume these things are so.

 

Ah, but to be an intercessor, to live an intercessory life, means that we belong to Jesus and His Kingdom; it means that we hear the Father’s Beloved Son and represent Him in our words and actions. This means that the Divine Life within us transcends the present evil age, it transcends the agendas of mankind, it recognizes no geopolitical borders, it realizes that no national flag or constitution embodies the Kingdom of God – and so the sons and daughters of God live as strangers and pilgrims on earth, and in a world-system that is in rebellion against the Father and Son (see Psalm 2 and Daniel 2). We are in the world but we are not of the world – and the “left” is as fallen as the “right” and the “right” is as fallen as the “left” and the seduction of one is as dangerous, if not more dangerous, as the overt opposition of the other.

 

And this means that “the Son of Man has no place to lay His head” is just as true today as it was when Jesus first spoke the words 2,000 years ago. The man or woman or people who will live an intercessory life and live a life of intercessory prayer will find no place of rest in this world – and yet will carry the burdens and sin of this world to the Throne Room, and from the Throne Room will carry the love and mercy and grace of God to the world – to the “right” and the “left” and all who are in between.

 

Can you hear the call of Jesus Christ to enter into His intercessory life? Can you hear the call of the Royal Priesthood to live a life of intercessory prayer?

 

O dear friends, the world does not need to be reconciled to this agenda or that agenda, it needs to be reconciled to God; 2 Corinthians 5:16 – 21.

 

 

 

 

 

A Kingdom of Priests (6)

 

Intercession

In discussing the glorious High Priesthood of our Lord Jesus, the writer of Hebrews says (7:23 – 25), “The [former] priests, on the one hand, existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing, but Jesus, on the other hand, because He continues forever, holds His priesthood permanently. Therefore He is able also to save completely those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

 

To intercede is to speak to one person on behalf of another person; but it is more than that, it also has to do with the nature of the speaking. It is the difference between making a casual request on behalf of someone and imploring on behalf of someone. Making a casual request, or making a request without investing ourselves in the request is one thing, but to invest ourselves deeply in the request and to make that request ongoing is another – the latter are characteristics of intercession. Intercession pursues an answer until it receives it – whether it be hours, days, months, or years.

 

Within intercession, there are I think, varying intensities, heights, and depths. Perhaps this is due to our human frailty, for we can only sustain certain intensities for so long – otherwise we will breakdown under the burden. We can intercede for our nation throughout our lives, and there may be periods of intensity in this intercession, but to carry intercessory intensity for our nation throughout our lives, without periods of rest, is likely more than we can bear. We can only live in Lamentations for certain seasons. 

 

Intercessory prayer is a burden, it is hard, for when we speak to God on behalf of man we carry man’s sin, frailty, evil, and destruction with us; we carry the needs and pain of others, we move beyond earthly gravitational forces and into the Throne Room to be with our Lord Jesus, our merciful and faithful High Priest.

 

Paul writes in Romans 8:26 – 27, “In the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to [the will] of God.”

 

If the Spirit intercedes for us with “groanings too deep for words,” we should not be surprised that, when we intercede for others, earthly language can fail us. As a royal priesthood, the priesthood of which Jesus is the Hight Priest, we are called to an intercessory koinonia in the Trinity, for we intercede as Jesus intercedes, we intercede as the Holy Spirit intercedes.

 

Years ago I was meditating about my prayer life, pondering it, evaluating it as best I could in the light of God’s Word; when the Father spoke to my heart and said in essence, “Why are you pondering your prayer life, when you should be thinking about living a life of prayer?”

 

In the same fashion, we are called beyond engaging in intercessory prayer to living intercessory lives; for to be sure, those saints who live intercessory lives will engage in intercessory prayer as a way of life in Jesus Christ.

 

The kingly and holy priesthood of the Church, the Body of Christ, is an intercessory priesthood for that is the Nature of our High Priest, His life on earth and beyond is an intercessory Life and that very Life lives in us, His brothers and sisters, His brethren.

 

May I suggest that our failure to understand the nature of things often leads to fragmented thinking and vision? Theologians and philosophers use the word “ontology” when referring to understanding the nature of things, and some of these folks deny there is such a thing as an actual “nature,” but that is for another time. Some natures we cannot fully understand, but we can glimpse them. We touch and glimpse the Trinity, we even share in the koinonia and Life and Nature of the Trinity – in some way and in some measure – but at the end of the day, even at the coming of the Great DAY, God is God and we ain’t God – God is ineffable and we are not.

 

We say the same thing of the Incarnation of Jesus Christ, we can touch Him, fully God and fully Man (1 John 1:1 – 4); and even as His Incarnation continues in His Body, even as His Church is indeed His fulness (Ephesians 1:22 – 23), such things remain beyond our total comprehension – such is the Divine Mystery of the fulness of our salvation. After all, if the peace of God surpasses our understanding (Philippians 4:7) and if our joy is inexpressible (1 Peter 1:8), then what can we possibly say when we come to contemplate the Nature, the Essence, of God?

 

The intercession and High Priesthood of Jesus Christ is rooted in the Incarnation. Consider Hebrews 2:17 – 18; 4:14 – 16; and 5:7 – 10. What do you see in these passages?

 

Once again, we see that Hebrews is the great Incarnation book of the New Testament, it gives us a theology, a way of thinking, of the Incarnation that helps us see Jesus, the New Covenant, and heavenly things…and our participation in them.

 

O dear friends, we are called to an intercessory Life in Jesus Christ and with one another. Our heavenly Father has placed the Nature of such a Life within us, in His Son Jesus Christ, our merciful and faithful High Priest.