A Public Service Announcement

By Maria Boccia, PhD
Professor of Pastoral Counseling and Psychology
Director of Graduate Programs in Counseling Charlotte campus

It happened again this week. A young couple called me for help. They love each other but are struggling because the wife has lost all interest in sex. They come to me for help with this area of their marriage. It has happened several times this past year. A young couple, faithful Christians, wait until marriage to have sex, and then (usually right on their honeymoon) there are problems.[1] They are confused and embarrassed. They don’t know who to turn to. They keep trying, but over time, the wife loses interest in sex, starts avoiding her husband’s touch, gets to where she actively dislikes sex and wishes they would never have sex again.

They arrive in my office ambivalent: hopeful and fearful, in despair and yet willing to try this as their last resort. He loves her, but he can’t go on like this. We talk about their relationship, how they met, how they fell in love, and how sad they are that they have gotten to this point in their marriage. Often, the final push to seek help comes because they want to have children. No intercourse, no children, unless they take extraordinary measures. At the end of the first session, I give them some papers to fill out and ask them each to make an appointment to talk with me individually about things. They agree. They are hopeful that I can help.

The wife comes to her appointment wary. She feels bad because she can’t meet her husband’s need for sex. She knows that God designed sex for pleasure between husband and wife, but she would rather just never do it again. Except that she feels guilty because he wants it. What can I do to help? We review the forms she’s completed. We get to those questions: Does it hurt. Yes. Where? How much? What kind of pain? Turns out, it has always hurt. She has avoided gynecological exams because they hurt. She can’t use tampons because they hurt. I wonder how she thought sex would be different. I tell her, something is physically wrong. Sex is not supposed to hurt. Let’s get you to a doctor who understands this and can help you.

She goes to the doctor I recommend. She is diagnosed with vulvodynia, vulvar vestibulitis, or vaginismus. The doctor starts a course of treatment. I work with the couple to help support the medical interventions and treat the psychological and relationship damage that has been done.

Then one day they come in, shyly smiling. They had pain-free intercourse! It’s a miracle! We celebrate. We work to repair the damage that the painful intercourse has done over the months, years, or longer. She becomes interested in finding pleasure in sex. Then my work turns to sexual enhancement, and I help them find each other. It is very satisfying work. It feels great to help this young Christian couple find God’s blessings in their sexual relationship.

Let me summarize: sex should not hurt. If intercourse is painful, if that’s a new problem or an old problem, if it’s just intercourse (or tampons and pelvic exams), it should not hurt. Not every gynecologist is prepared to deal with this. Sexual medicine is not in the curriculum of every medical school. If you or someone you love is struggling with painful intercourse, get help. It does not have to be this way. The sexual medicine practice I work with has information about this on its website (www.bestsexualadvice.com). You can also find a listing of doctors who specialize in sexual medicine on the website of the International Society for the Study of Women’s Sexual Health (http://www.isswsh.org/resources/provider.aspx). Don’t wait and don’t ignore it. When sex is good, it is a small part of satisfaction with one’s marriage. But when sex is bad, it is a huge part of dissatisfaction with one’s marriage. God intended sex for pleasure. It should not hurt.

What Jesus Learned

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

The book of Hebrews is not standard Christmastime reading. But I was struck by the Advent relevance of these verses from Hebrews 5:8-9: “Although he was the son, he learned obedience from what he suffered; and after he was made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all those who obey him.”

It is easy for us to become functional Docetists, who imagine that Jesus only seemed to become human – after all, he is who God is, so how could he get mixed up with us? We might somewhat grudgingly concede that his incarnation is necessary for him to be a sacrifice for sins (a point Hebrews is also at pains to make in a later chapter), but does it really make a difference in who he is?

The answer of Hebrews is a resounding Yes. This portion of the book focuses on Jesus’ role as high priest. In order to be a faithful high priest, the author reasons, Jesus has to be able to sympathize with the people. He cannot do this if he has not experienced the same things they have experienced. And so he states quite carefully that Jesus learned obedience. This does not mean, of course, that Jesus had to “learn to be obedient” in the way we do – by combatting our inveterate tendency to disobey. But it does mean that he needed to experience suffering and temptation first-hand to qualify as a high priest. How else could he genuinely relate to us as we struggle in this world day by day?

Verse 9 makes the same point in equally expressive language – Jesus’ sufferings “perfected” him. In a sense, Jesus was already perfect – but with respect to being qualified as our high priest, he needed those sufferings to complete him for the job.

It is difficult to know what is more marvelous here: the astounding theological truth that the incarnation is absolutely integral to Jesus’ role as high priest, or the unspeakably powerful comfort it is to know that Jesus really does understand what we are going through even in the darkest times. As we strive to maintain our faith-filled obedience in this world (remember, he is the source of salvation to those who obey him, v.9), it is a blessing to know that he himself has learned obedience through his sufferings, and thus can be trusted to help us stay faithful no matter what the circumstances might be. And because he saw his task through to the end – been “ perfected”-- he can help us as we struggle towards maturity in our lives [the same root lies behind Jesus’ “perfection” in v.9 and the call to Christian maturity in v.14].

The blessings of Christmas, then, certainly do not end in the manger, nor do they even end at the cross. What Jesus learned on earth is a source of continuing comfort, as we bring our troubles day by day to our sympathetic friend and priest.

The Manger Still Provides Food (for Thought)

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

We have just entered into the Advent season but since I am not likely to be posting again before Christmas I can’t resist taking this opportunity to post some thoughts on Luke 2:1-20. It is one of my favorite Christmas passages, one that some of you will be preaching on in the coming days.

I think it is important to pay close attention to the one item that appears in each of the three different scenes in the story – the baby lying in the manger – and how that image communicates something different in each of the scenes. The angel’s announcement about Christ is central, of course, including the fact that the angel attributes to Christ things that Roman propaganda had falsely attributed to Caesar Augustus (that he, rather than Augustus, is the true savior whose birth is good news for all).

It is important, I think, to notice the differences between the three scenes. Most Christmas cards blend together items from very different scenes so that we see Joseph and Mary bending over the manger with a bright star or some other indication of God’s glory shining all around. But the passage has no glory shining by the manger. In vv. 1-7 we find no mention of God or angels or glory or anything of the sort. Just a couple who have to make an onerous trip because of a decree given by the Roman emperor. It is in the second scene that we find angelic announcements and glory, but that takes place in the hills outside of town, and is not something experienced by Joseph and Mary by the manger but by shepherds who will tell the story to them in the third and final scene (vv. 16-20).

In some ways Joseph and Mary’s experience in Luke 2:1-20 is similar to much of our experience as we wait between the first and second advents of Christ. We have been told of Christ’s glory and of what God is doing in the world through him, and we have heard the rumors of angels, and we have heard what they have announced and promised about Christ, but we do not get to live our lives out in the presence of observable glory. We know God is at work and will bring the story of redemption to its completion, but much of our lives is lived in contexts where those realities are no more apparent to us than they would have been to Joseph and Mary as they wrapped up their newborn baby and placed him in that manger. But now that manger serves as one more sign from God to us that he is in fact the Messiah, Christ the Lord, whose birth is good news of great joy for all the people.

In verses 1-7 Joseph, Mary and Jesus seemed to be the least important people in all of Judea. Caesar and Quirinius seemed to be the people who mattered – the real movers and shakers of the world. But by the time we finish the passage we know (along with Joseph, Mary and the shepherds) that things are not as they seem, that although God was not manifestly present his angels were able to describe the opening scene down to its smallest and most unlikely detail(s), and that little “insignificant” baby in the manger is in fact the key to redemption and renewal of the world. The placing of a baby in a manger may have been an almost pitiful image in the first scene, but it is a wonderful sign of God’s redeeming presence and key to Christ’s identity in the second scene and then a confirmation to Joseph and Mary (as well as the shepherds) of God’s faithfulness to them and to his promises to send a savior when in the final scene the people from the second scene (the shepherds) share their experience with those from the first scene (Joseph and Mary). The birth of Christ and all that it means continues to amaze us, to be pondered in our hearts, and to lead us to praise and glorify God for all he has done in sending his Son to be our Savior and Lord (vv. 18-20).

The Great Reversal

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

What a strange, perplexing moment it was. It was that moment a few years ago, before both my parents passed away, when I realized that my brothers and I were taking on a parental role for our mom and dad. Wordsworth and Coleridge called the phenomenon “return to childhood.” Caught by the inevitable vulnerabilities of their own mortality, my parents needed the almost identical care and control that they gave us in the first years of our lives, all the way down to those uncomfortable moments when we had to take away their keys from driving, and help them with their basic bodily care and functions, and when we took over the management of the basic decisions in their living.

It doesn’t take much to find these dramatic changes everywhere we look. We find it in the natural world every day at dusk and dawn, when the moon takes over the mastery of the sky from the sun, and visa versa. Or, how about on a socio-political level: Parse what must have been some uncomfortable moments in the 18^th and early 19^th centuries when we, as Americans, and our native motherland, England, had to gradually adjust our thinking about our mutual roles in the world. Who is the world power now? The great reversals in life!

Several of us, I think, saw the beginnings of yet another “great reversal” a couple of weeks ago at Cape Town. I had the privilege, along with several others from Gordon-Conwell, to participate at the Lausanne Congress: About 5,000 individuals coming from 198 nations from the world, all in one great room; what an amazing experience! One of the conversations on the second day involved a panel of African Anglican bishops and the newly created Anglican archbishop of the United States. In great humility, Archbishop Duncan, from Pittsburgh, thanked the African Anglican bishops for taking the lead in formulating the new Anglican structures for the West. What an amazing thing to behold these past years, as Christians from the West have come under the authority and direction of the Majority World church.

My sense is that what has been happening in the Anglican church in the past ten or so years is at the forefront of what we will see throughout the global missions movement in the future. Unreached people group?: We are used to talking about nations and indigenous tribes in Africa and parts of Asia in these terms. But, what about Denmark and Germany and France and parts of the United States even as being identified as unreached peoples groups? Already we see the equilibrium of the global missions movement shifting as we find missionaries from the Church in China and Korea and parts of Africa at our very doorsteps, spreading the Gospel to us Westerners. Thanks be to God; the Great Reversal has begun!

Pain, and Glass, and Beauty

By Sean McDonough, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

It may seem strange to find beauty in an obituary, and stranger still when the subject of the obituary is virtually unknown. But there is much of it to be found in the Economist’s heartbreaking tribute to the stained glass artist Michael Lassen, who died in a fall from Durham Cathedral in September (http://www.economist.com/node/17199498?story_id=17199498). I will do little more here than note the most salient points, and implore you to read it in its entirety.

Lassen had been working on the Transfiguration of Christ in the south quire at the time of accident. The obituary describes his fall:

He was fitting a small panel at the bottom left-hand side, a pane of bruised blue glass that showed the broken and suffering about to be transformed by light, almost the last piece in the window, when he fell. He was not particularly high up, working at the ledge. But stone flags are unforgiving.

We see there a hint of the poignant match of the man, and the moment, and the message that was to come fully to light a few weeks later:

But when September 25th came, the day of dedication, he was remembered in a different way. The clue lay in George Herbert’s poem “The Windows” which was sung as an anthem at evensong. Man was “a brittle crazy glass”:
Yet in thy temple thou dost him afford This glorious and transcendent place To be a window, through thy grace.
As the congregation pressed through afterwards into the south quire aisle they found the windows still wreathed in incense, like the cloud of God that had enveloped Jesus on the mountain. Through it shone the glass. Its golds and blues were smoky in the evening light, but the central column blazed white, like the transfiguration of a man; and of all men, named or un-named, whose lives and skills are embedded in the stone and glass of great cathedrals.

A Glimpse into Jesus’ Hermeneutic

By Roy Ciampa, PhD
Associate Professor of New Testament

One of my growing passions over the past few years has been to address the scandal of the use of the Scriptures for the support or promotion of oppression, injustice and the abuse of power in the world. I have commented on this in several previous posts (see, e.g., this post on Fredrick Douglas and this post on confronting the Bible’s “double life”).

I was reminded of this theme again (as it seems I almost always am when reading Scripture!) when I was reading Mark 3 just the other day. It offers a sharp comparison between Jesus’ own hermeneutic and that of some of the scribes and Pharisees of his day:

Mark 3:1-6 (NRSV): ¹Again he entered the synagogue, and a man was there who had a withered hand. ² They watched him to see whether he would cure him on the sabbath, so that they might accuse him. ³ And he said to the man who had the withered hand, "Come forward." ⁴ Then he said to them, "Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?" But they were silent. ⁵ He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, "Stretch out your hand." He stretched it out, and his hand was restored. ⁶ The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him.

Those Pharisees wanted to use the Scriptures as grounds for marginalizing (or doing worse to) those who disagree with or differ from them. A cure on the Sabbath would be a good thing, since it would allow them to condemn Jesus. They were not concerned about the man with a withered hand. He may be useful to them. They are interpreting the Scriptures literally, woodenly and in a way that fits their ideological interests.

Why does Jesus ask about whether it is lawful to do good or harm to save life or kill on the Sabbath? Because he seems to be interpreting the Scriptures in light of the two great commandments – love of God and love of neighbor (which is a proper manifestation of true love for God).

Jesus’ anger relates to the hardness of heart and the fact that their interpretation of Scripture was not guided by the same love for people and fundamental commitment to their wellbeing that mark the God who revealed himself to his people through the Scriptures in the first place.

Upon seeing the remarkable way Jesus loves his neighbor and interprets the law of the Sabbath in a way that rejects the idea that it should be understood to prohibit doing good to others or saving others those (particular) Pharisees decide he must be destroyed.

For too long much of the Christian church (and perhaps my/our evangelical wing in particular) has been content to think that it was merely responsible for reading the scriptures and doing what they say, and the consequences or implications for others were beyond our responsibilities. So abused wives were told to stay home and simply do a better job of submitting to their husbands. And slavery was defended as being condoned by the Scriptures. And Jews in general (and of every generation) could be condemned based on what John the Baptist and Jesus had to say about some of the hostile Jews that they had encountered (despite my love of Martin Luther, it must be admitted that some of his statements about the Jews, in which some biblical statements are applied globally to all Jews as a people, are blood curdling and had a horribly regretful impact on some Christian attitudes towards Jews for many centuries).

We thought we were good at recognizing hard-heartedness in others, but were abysmally weak in recognizing our own hard-heartedness and that of our own leaders and peers. We are now at a stage of history when the rest of the world is fully aware of some of the areas in which the Christian church has failed to reflect true love of neighbor in its interpretation of Scripture, and of ways in which those who brought the message of the gospel, and translated the Scriptures, also communicated harmful cultural prejudices and ideological interests despite their good intensions.

Again, it is easiest to see how other people in other places and other times may have fallen short in this area. What I need, and perhaps we all need, is for God to help me/us see the extent to which I continue to be blind to the ways in which my own interpretations of Scripture are informed by my own interests or the interests of my own kind of people. What could tear at the hearts of Christian people who love the Bible more than knowing that the revelation intended to bring light and life to people’s lives is being or might be used in ways that do harm rather than good to others? May God give ever greater wisdom so that people’s use of and engagement with Scripture become ever more consistent with both the love of God and the truest love of our neighbors, for the sake of Christ, who was willing to give his own life so that others might find freedom, life and the righteousness and justice of His kingdom and reign. May we learn to interpret God’s word as Jesus did, with a concern to make sure it is only used to do people good, and never harm…

Falling in Love

By David Horn, ThD
Director, The Ockenga Institute

Let’s call her Martha Kavinski. She was my first secretary at the first church I served as pastor just out of seminary. When they invented New Englanders, they carved her in New Hampshire granite and pointed to her thereafter as the model for the rest of us. She was tough as nails, she was utterly undiplomatic, and most of all, she did not like me. She met me at the stairways leading up to my office at the church on my first day, and right then and there, I felt like a first grader on the first day of class looking up at raw authority.

It did not take me long to realize that Martha was not the only one not immediately enthralled with my presence. The congregation was peppered with individuals who had been at the church a long, long time, and they wanted to make it clear to me early on that life had gone on reasonably well before I arrived and probably would go on just as well after I departed.

My experience, I am sure, is not unusual to most of you in ministry. Although my first years were not a disaster, they were not easy. Who would have thought that moving the church library to a more public location so that it actually could be used by the children of the congregation would provoke three meetings and an act of the full board of the church?

In hindsight, perhaps the only thing that saved me was what many would consider a grave liability on my part. I entered into the world of this three hundred year old church without a clear set of ambitions for the congregation. Perhaps too naïve for a clear plan, I fell back on something far more basic: Gradually, unconsciously, seemingly against my will, I found that I began to fall in love with this congregation, Martha and all.

In working with students and young pastors these past years at the seminary, I have noticed a growing trend that hints at good news and bad news. Perhaps buoyed by a cottage industry of church resources, pastors are entering their ministries with a growing awareness of the envisioning process required for healthy congregational life. That’s the good news. The bad news is that often time these well-intended visions of what a congregation should become comes with airtight, tone-death agendas.

A look at these agenda-driven processes from the inside looking out bears reflection. As a person who is now facing his mid-fifties, I can more readily fit into the skin of the long-time parishioner who has committed years of labor and well-intended, if often misguided, leadership in a church. The parishioner’s kids may have been born and nurtured in the church; he or she may have helped to develop and taken ownership of a program that at one time clearly met the needs of the congregation; he or she may have spent countless Saturday mornings toiling over the church lawn.

What does that parishioner see and feel when a pastor enters into the life of a church with a satchel full of good ideas on how his or her church needs to change. Change the worship service. Eliminate the hymnal. Get rid of a timeworn program. Re-organize the committee structure of the church. No doubt many of these things might benefit the church greatly and might be essential for new growth, both spiritually and numerically. But, on the face of it, what do these things say to those who, apparently, are in need of change?

I am convinced that churches are less in need of pastors’ well-designed agendas than their love. Falling in love with a congregation is an amazing legacy to give to a church. The measure of that love, like marriage, involves loving churches exactly as they are, with all their imperfections, before seeking more of them.

Martha died at 75 and I count one of the high moments of my ministry at that church the eulogizing of her at her funeral. We became fast friends in Christ. In the end, she saw what I saw in the subsequent six years of our ministry together. That creaky old church grew ten fold. I am convinced it changed and grew in large measure because the congregation genuinely felt loved by its pastoral staff. It is amazing what love can do when love comes without strings attached.