My father liked to observe (not original to him, I’m sure) that the parable of the prodigal son had been preached on from every perspective but that of the fatted calf.  You’ve got the prodigal’s perspective, the father’s perspective, and the older son’s perspective, all of which offer different spiritual insights.

I think the same is true of the story of Brandt Jean forgiving and embracing Amber Guyger, the murderer of his brother.  Because Jean is a Christian (and how!), many brethren have been drawn to write about the grace he showed.  Indeed, I’ve agreed with and endorsed everything I’ve read from them.

However, I think there’s another perspective here, and that’s the perspective of the murderer herself.  If you are a worldly person, how do you feel about forgiveness on such an epic scale?

I think the question is easy to answer with respect to forgiveness’s opposite.  Let’s say Jean had gone up to Guyger and coldly informed her that he did want to see her rot in jail, and indeed, to see her rot in hell. 

I think most people, Amber included, would see that as a natural (Ephesians 2:3 overtones intended) reaction from an 18-year-old whose brother had been brutally gunned down.  Indeed, Titus 3:4 observes that being hateful and hating one another is the expected state of the sinner (side note:  is it any wonder that as Christian values decline in our nation, hatred seems to be on an inexorable increase?).

We understand that.  We get that, and I think that Guyger would have understood and gotten hatred and condemnation.  Perhaps, in light of her expressions of remorse, it further would have crushed her and added to her guilt.  Perhaps it would have made her defensive and hardened her heart against Jean and his family.  These things too are reactions that are natural to us.  We are prepared to see them and even to experience them.

On the other hand, if you are Amber Guyger, what in the world do you do with forgiveness?  Hatred makes sense.  Love does not.  It is not what you are prepared to receive.  Something that is not natural has occurred.  The ground under your feet that you thought was stable has suddenly shifted. 

That sense of mingled unease, awe, and fear is the sign that God has touched the world again.  It appears literally all the way through the gospels, following hard on the heels of many (most?) of the miracles that Jesus works.  He leaves people reeling, struggling to comprehend that the light of an ordinary day should have shone upon such a thing.  This is most evident in the terrifying stillness of the empty tomb.  His closest disciples flee the scene of His greatest miracle because a dead Jesus is easier to accept than a living one.

I believe that God touched the world again when Brandt Jean said, “I forgive you,” Every time a Christian does something that awes us, we see and feel the evidence of His handiwork.  Does this constitute proof in any rigorous, scientific sense?  No, but I think even the atheists in that courtroom that day know in their heart of hearts what they experienced. 

Do as you will with your life, Amber Guyger, but know this.  The kingdom of God has come near to you.

Several weeks ago, my brother and friend Dan DeGarmo wondered out loud online why any Christian would have a problem with the congregation clapping after a baptism that occurred during a regular time of assembly.  In response, several brethren took the time to explain to him why they, personally, had a problem with clapping after baptisms.  The conversation went (downhill?) from there.

For my part, clapping after baptisms strikes me as a classic de minimis issue.  No, clapping after baptisms does not appear in the New Testament, but neither do a number of other minor practices.  It is true that we have houses to eat and drink in, but just about all of our church buildings have water fountains in them too.  Such things don’t have significant impact on our obedience to Christ whether we do them or not.

So too with clapping after baptisms.  Most churches only infrequently have baptisms when the church is assembled (I wish it happened much more often!), and the clapping afterward simply isn’t a meaningful event in the spiritual life of the church.  It’s an expression of joy on the part of the congregation that isn’t quite so steeped in Restoration-Movement tradition. 

I myself don’t clap (being very steeped in Restoration-Movement tradition), but when I’m the one performing the baptism, I tend to hug the baptizee (Wet post-baptism hugs are the best!).  There are hugs in the New Testament (though not after a baptism, so far as I recall), but that’s not why I do it.  I don’t think deeply about it.  I do it because I’m happy. 

I don’t see a reason for the analysis to go farther than that.  People who want to take it farther than that probably also have thought deeply about the spiritual implications of water fountains.

 Having said that, I think that by far the bigger issue is how we Romans 14 our way through post-baptism applause.  Do brethren who aren’t OK with clapping get judgy in the direction of brethren who are?  Conversely, do brethren who clap shake their heads with contempt at those who oppose clapping?  We do have relevant Scripture on this point, and both of those attitudes are problematic.

Rather, both clappers and non-clappers alike should learn to bear with and love those who disagree with them.  Would you like to clap, but you know it bugs that old dude three rows up?  Maybe it would be better to abstain and content yourself with ultra-Scriptural hugs after services are over.  Are you anti-clapping, but you worship with a bunch of folks who applaud?  Maybe it would be better to focus on their joy (and the joy of the angels in heaven) rather than on your unhappiness with the form that joy takes.

 Surely, in an era so filled with divisiveness and strife, we don’t need to generate division and strife out of an issue like this!  In Christ Jesus neither clapping nor not clapping counts for anything, but only faith working through love.

In my years of talking to people who are in the midst of leaving the church/leaving the Lord, I’ve found that I hear one justification more than any other.  The departing Christian is leaving because of some failing on the part of the members of the congregation.  They are hypocritical.  They gossip.  They are unfriendly.  They care more about politics than Jesus.  They are unloving.

Admittedly, I’ve become more cynical about these claims than I was 15 years ago.  For instance, when somebody tells me, “I’m leaving because nobody reached out to me,” I typically understand them as meaning, “I’m leaving because nobody reached out to me except for those who did.”  Frequently, there are inconvenient facts that cast doubt on the narrative.

Let’s suppose, though, for the sake of argument, that these claims are true.  The disgruntled Christian has indeed seen brethren be hypocritical, gossipy, unfriendly, politically fixated, and unloving.  Certainly, brethren can be all these things.

However, even the most virulent church-hater is unlikely to claim that all Christians are all these things all the time.  Experientially, we know that the life of every disciple contains a mixture of good and bad behavior.  So too does every congregation.  The proportion varies from Christian to Christian and church to church, but both are always present.

When a Christian says, “I am going to overlook the good and focus on the bad,” that is fundamentally ungodly behavior.  I mean that quite literally.  In His relationship with us, God does exactly the opposite.  He is merciful to our iniquities.  He remembers our sins no more.

Indeed, this selective, gracious amnesia is the only thing that makes it possible for us to glorify Him.  He forgets our sins, but He remembers our good works.  Like the chisel of a sculptor, the grace of God removes everything from our lives that He does not desire, leaving only the image that He wishes us to bear.  When Christ looks at His ransomed, washed, forgiven church, He sees an assembly that is unspotted, unwrinkled, holy, and without blemish.  That is not because we are pure.  It is because we are continually renewed and purified.

In our dealings with one another, who are we to remember what God has chosen to forgive and forget?  Who are we to glue the chips of marble back onto the statue, to dump the filthy wash water back on the spotless wedding dress?  And yet, that’s exactly what every Christian who complains about the conduct of God’s redeemed people is doing.

I will not deny that dwelling on the bad behavior of brethren is seductive.  The devil makes it seductive.  He loves to get us brooding over all the wrongs, real and imagined, that we have suffered.  However, if we are committed to the higher calling of imitating Christ, that is precisely what we must not do. 

If you’re thinking about giving up on God’s people, let me appeal to you.  Don’t remember their sins.  Remember their good works.  Don’t remember the failed Christians.  Remember the amazing ones.

Remember all the people whom you have seen with your own eyes be devoted to the word, joyful in worship, humble before the King, generous to the poor, and hospitable to everyone.  Remember the brethren who did reach out rather than dwelling on the ones who didn’t. 

And if the same brother who opens his wallet to people off the street loves himself a good political rant on Facebook too, make the choice that God makes.  Overlook the sin committed in ignorance (unless you believe that you never sin ignorantly).  Celebrate the goodness.

In short, love, and continue to belong accordingly.  If ever there were a church that didn’t need grace to reveal its good works, none of us would have a right to belong to it.

Spoiler up front:  For this week’s reading and half of next week’s reading, I’m not going to do chapter summaries.  The readings in question come from Song of Solomon, and though some of the poetry of the book can be hard to understand, for the sake of our bulletin-reading children, I’d prefer to keep it that way! 

As the above implies, I’m firmly of the opinion that Song of Solomon is about marital intimacy.  However, as obvious as it seems to me, that’s not the only interpretation.  Indeed, theologians have been arguing for centuries that the text is an allegory of the relationship between Christ and the church.

Oddly, this view is adopted by many of our hymns.  The title phrase of “The Lily of the Valley” comes from Song of Solomon 2:1 (though in context, “the lily of the valley” is female).  The same is true for “Jesus, Rose of Sharon”.  Many hymns, chief among them “In Christ Alone,” cite “My beloved is mine, and I am his,” from 2:16.  “You are altogether lovely,” in “Here I Am to Worship” is taken from 4:7.  Few books of the Old Testament feature as prominently in our worship of Christ as Song of Solomon does!

However, the justification for such application is quite thin.  For one thing, Song of Solomon is among the books of the Hebrew Bible that are never cited nor even alluded to in the New Testament.  If Paul had said that Jesus was the lily of the valley, that would be one thing, but he didn’t.

Additionally, if the Song of Songs is intended as Christian allegory, it is an allegory that gets quite detailed in perplexing ways.  For instance, breasts are mentioned frequently throughout the book, appearing eight times in eight chapters.  No other book of the Bible is as concerned with breasts as Song of Solomon.  If it is about the relationship between husband and wife, that makes perfect sense.  However, if the wife of Song of Solomon is the church, I am at a loss to explain their significance.

From this, I think there are two lessons we should draw.  As always, we should be concerned with how the hymns that we sing influence our thinking.  If we adopt romantic, even sexual language from Song of Solomon and apply it to Christ, that’s likely to romanticize our view of Him in unbiblical ways.  I don’t think that we should remove these hymns from the repertoire (especially not “In Christ Alone”!), but we should be aware that they are using Biblical imagery in ways that the Holy Spirit did not intend.

Second, we should not shy away from the true meaning of the book.  It is meant to be a celebration of married sexuality, and married sexuality is something we should celebrate.  Even though the capacity for intimacy can be corrupted and misused, it is still a gift of God, and like all of God’s other gifts, it is good.  We should not allow Satan’s corruption of it to corrupt our understanding of it too.

In the adult class several weeks ago, we came to the first part of 1 Corinthians 11, which is famous for being one of the most difficult contexts in the entire New Testament.  Of course, this was not news to me.  I’d studied it and even preached on it before.  As a result, when Doug bravely began exploring the context and comments began trickling in, I started composing my own comments.

However, after I reached about the fifth paragraph of those comments in my head, I realized that I was about to preach a sermon disguised as a Bible-class comment.  Rather than holding forth, I suggested to Doug that it might be best if I simply preached a sermon on the subject.  He agreed that such a sermon would be useful, so I slotted it into the next available preaching slot, which for me happened to be today.  With this in mind, then, let’s return to this perilous context and see what we can learn about understanding the covering.

In this study, we first have to consider THE COMMANDMENT.  It appears in 1 Corinthians 11:4-6.  At first glance, this seems pretty straightforward.  Men aren’t supposed to pray or prophesy with their heads covered, but women are.  This text certainly mandates the covering for women in the Corinthian church and possibly for all women everywhere. 

However, it’s obvious from considering the congregation this morning that most women here do not put an artificial covering on their heads in worship.  Generally there are two arguments being made for this practice.  First, Paul says in v. 15 that a woman’s hair is given to her for a covering, so hair is enough.  Second, it’s clear from context that this is a commandment given to people in a particular culture, and because we don’t share the culture of the Corinthians, it doesn’t apply to us.

These are popular arguments, but there are problems with both of them.  First, consider v. 6.  There, Paul tells the Corinthian women that if they don’t adopt the covering, they might as well cut their hair short.  From this, we can conclude that in Corinth, long-haired women still were expected to wear an artificial covering.  Even today, long hair is not a reason to refuse to.

Second, we need to be very, very careful dismissing Biblical commandments on the basis of culture.  As Jason observed in class that day, culture is the key that opens every door.  Whatever you don’t like in the Bible—baptism, restrictions on divorce, the role of women in the church—you can dismiss on the basis of culture.  This is not to say that the cultural argument is a bad argument.  In fact, I think it’s correct.  However, we must not reject commandments because of cultural differences without a very good reason.

From here, let’s turn to examining PAUL’S ARGUMENTS in this context.  The first appears in 1 Corinthians 11:1-3, 7-10.  In these texts, Paul is arguing from creation.  Just as man was created for God, woman was created for man.  As a result, there is a spiritual hierarchy:  First God, then Christ, then husbands, then wives.  Paul’s concern is that without some symbol of authority on their heads, some reminder of this hierarchy, women will imitate the angels who did not honor God’s authority and become rebels too.

Of course, this leaves open the question of whether the covering is Paul’s conclusion or simply a cultural application of that conclusion.  As I’ve said, the first is the preferred interpretation.  However, notice how strong this argument is.  It is universal in scope.  If the covering is demanded by this argument, we should expect to see the covering in all places and times.  After all, the hierarchy that Paul lays out exists in all places and times.

The same thing is true of Paul’s second argument, the argument from nature.  Look at 1 Corinthians 11:13-15.  Logically, I think this is similar to the argument that Paul makes in Romans 1, where he describes same-sex intimacy as “unnatural”.  We can tell that it’s against nature by comparing the anatomy of men and women.  Clearly, nature intends men to be with women and women to be with men.  In the same way, Paul is arguing that differences in anatomy ought to be reflected in appearance.  Men shouldn’t adopt the hairstyles of women, nor women of men. 

This too is a universal, since-the-creation, argument.  If Paul is arguing specifically against long hair in men, we never should see men of God in the Bible with long hair.  If, on the other hand, we do see men of God elsewhere in Scripture with long hair, then that’s evidence that Paul is speaking to a cultural context and not laying down a universal principle.

Thankfully for us, there is a way to test whether the covering and hair length are universal requirements or culture-specific applications.  We can do that by considering THE WITNESS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.  If we see Old-Testament women covering themselves in worship, that shows that God intends the covering for everyone.  On the other hand, if we don’t see the covering in the Old Testament, that’s evidence that the covering is culture-specific.  The same thing holds true for long hair on men.  Long-haired Old-Testament men show that Paul is only binding short hair on the Corinthians.

So then, what do we see about the covering in the Old Testament?  Frankly, it’s kind of weird.  Old-Testament women did cover themselves, but they didn’t do it as a prelude to worship.  They did it as a prelude to intimacy.  Look at Genesis 38:13-15.  How does Tamar indicate her availability?  She covers herself. 

There is, by contrast, neither requirement to or example of Old-Testament women covering themselves to pray or prophesy.  These women did honor the hierarchy of God-husband-wife, but they didn’t show it with the covering.  We can conclude that the covering isn’t meant to be universal because it wasn’t universal in the Old Testament.

The same holds true for hair length.  Look at Judges 13:3-5.  Clearly, godly men in the Old Testament weren’t required to have short hair.  In fact, Samson was required to have long hair, and cutting his hair short got him in all sorts of trouble!  Hair length on men is a cultural issue too.

We have good reason, then, to confine both the covering and hair-length rules to the cultural context of first-century Corinth.  However, we still must honor the principles of 1 Corinthians 11.  Women still have to look and dress and act like women, not men.  Men still have to look and dress and act like men, not women.  Our cultural expression of these principles is different, but it still must exist.