We are all not of this world. We are all people who belong to another Kingdom. This is the welcome that EVERY person hears as they come through the doors of this sweet little church in Omonia Square. Eleni does not speak of these beautiful people from Syria, Afghanistan, and the Ukraine as “refugees.” They are friends: friends that need a safe place to rest, to learn English, to meet people who love and follow Jesus and are there because He has called us to care.
D is 11. Only months older than my Isaac (my 1st born son.) D is also a 1st born son, the only son to his mother, following by three sisters. Only one year ago, D lost his father to a bombing in Kabul. His mother (and her family) mostly walked from Afghanistan to Greece … taking a route that included walking through a treacherous mountain range into Pakistan and involved snow and horrid weather and then that boat ride: “I am the man of the family now. Many times I had to carry my sisters. I dropped M once and hurt her. I do not like the responsibility that is on me now.” This family is currently at one of the camps that is infested with lice, rats and is about to be shut down (they are building newer ones and they will have to move – praise God!) Would you pray for this sweet family? Pray that my boys will connect with D and just be friends to him. This past week there were a lot of kids from the US (there is another group of missionaries that have a lot of kids) and mine were distracted by other kids that weren’t much different than them. I watched D watch them. My heart ached watching what I felt was him aching to “fit in,” and be with those boys. By the end of the week, I made my boys (and the other American kids) include him and sit with him and ask him about his school and family and what he loved. I sat at the table of kids and asked him questions and related the answers to the crew of “missionary” kids and arm wrestled them into sharing life. THIS has been the hardest part of my time this week. I ache to see my kids SEE THESE KIDS. I ache to see them move from the “comfortable” of others LIKE them and move towards what I know feels hard for them. I know, because it feels hard for me too. Stella has thrived hanging out with the refugee kids. Playing. Singing. Dancing. Coloring. It has been so fun to watch her easily make friends, indifferent to the “otherness.” I spent the afternoon with a new Middle Eastern friend. We had an hour long English class scheduled and after the class we had some free time so we ate a Gyro together and he told me his story. For reasons of security, I am not writing his real name or including a picture. The story will be an example of the types of people that we are spending time with.
Abbas was a university student in Syria when the Arab spring washed over that nation. Many students were joining in the protests and he was swept along with the tide. His father had a good job in Syria and he had a bright future. When the government began to crack down on protesters and Abbas was identified his entire family were put in danger. As fighting broken out, he was hit with shrapnel from a bomb. Since then it has been hard for him to do stairs - and impossible to play soccer. The Syria government didn't play games with protesters. Abbas knew people who had their finger nails pulled out with pliers. Others didn't survive the interrogation. Abbas speaks good English, but he didn't know the word for torture. When he described his fears of being arrested he described what would happen to prisoners this way: "You will beg for the death, but you will not be able to find it." (In other words, the torture is so bad that you beg to die, but the torture will be prolonged.) From Syria he fled with his family into Lebanon and from Lebanon he returned to his native country of Palestine to be with his college girlfriend. They were married in Gaza but it was hard to find a job that paid the bills. When Abbas and a small group complained to the Hamas controlled government, the police responded with brutal repression. Abbas was beaten with a night stick and had his teeth kicked in. He was given refuge in Egypt and then journeyed to Turkey and later to Greece. He now has a daughter and hopes that his small family can relocate to a European country where he can find work. "I have been unable to find peace for five years," he told me today. "Every night I go to sleep and I cannot rest. My mind is turning over about the things that I need to do. I long for the day when I can find peace. I long to finish my degree (in Civil Engineering) and find a job. I just want to have a house where I can keep my things and come home to see my family after work." I asked Abbas what went wrong with the Arab spring. He reflected on it for a while, then summarized his comments by saying. "When the government began to shoot the protesters we asked the world for help. At first no one came. Then foreign fighters came and began to fight the government." (The resistance group was first called AL Nusra. After it split in two, the radical jihadist segment started to be called "ISIS" or "DAESH.") He concluded by saying, "We asked the world for help, and the wrong people came to help us." Pray for Abbas and his family. One of the boys that I tutored in English is a refugee from Afghanistan. He is only a few months older than my son Isaac. After his father was killed by a bomb recently he fled from Afghanistan with his extended family. In the words of his uncle, "The Taliban, they mess everything up."
Over lunch he told me about the trip. It was quite harrowing. The border from Afghanistan into Iran was closed, so they had to go into Pakistan first and then into Iran. At one point they had twelve people crammed into a small car. At another point in the journey they walked twelve hours in one day. From Iran they made their way into Turkey and from Turkey they hired a smuggler to ship them to Greece. The unscrupulous boat captain took a high price from each member of his cargo and then proceeded to load over seventy people into a boat that was only 9 meters long. It must have been riding low in the water. The waves rolled in quite high. As he told the story his eyes grew very wide. "The waves were two meters high!" They survived the passage and are hoping to start a better life in a more stable place. He speaks good English and has a winning smile. Like many children in Greece, the U.S. and the MIddle-East he loves watching sports on T.V. and he follows pop music. In many ways he is like many 12-year old's that I know in the states. We are starting our third full day in Athens. Life has been a whirlwind and it has been a little hard to sit down and write. We survived our trip across the Atlantic and things generally went pretty well. Our apartment has been a real blessing. It is located in a seemingly safe area which is fairly "touristy". That means that most of the shops have English speakers and we tend to not stand out as much as foreigners. It also means that there is a fairly visible police presence, which is a comfort for us. We are also very close to a subway stop and have only 3 stops (about a 10 min ride) to get to the church where we are serving. By contrast the location of the church is in a much rougher area and we would not likely feel as safe there after dark. We have been to the church each of the last two days and I am going again (by myself) to teach one-on-one language classes. We'll write more about the refugee ministry later, but for now I will just say that it is going quite well and has been very encouraging.
Let me tell you a little bit more about our apartment and neighborhood. We are about 2 blocks away from the Acropolis and have a great view of that historic section of the city from a rough top deck of our apartment building. (Above is a picture of me and Stella celebrating the Penguins victory.) On Monday night we did family devotions on the roof top and I read from Acts chapter 17 and Paul's address to the Areopagus. The Areopagus is a section of the larger Acropolis and it was a place for regular philosophical discussion in ancient Athens. The entire acropolis is a section of the ancient city which was located on top of a large rocky outcropping. It made for a great defensive position and was a fortified stronghold that the Athenians could retreat to in times of trouble. It was the home to the temple to Athena which was (as the name says) a very important goddess for the Ancient Athenians. Reading Paul's address to the Athenians while the Acropolis was in sight was a pretty powerful experience for me. I have been blessed to travel a fair amount in my life, but this is the first time that I know for sure that I was in the same location as a biblical character. I can say, for sure, that Paul walked these same streets. Perhaps sat on some of the same stones. It is one way that the biblical stories come to life. But there are other ways that stories are coming to life. Many groups of people that had previously existed for me as vague characters in the events of our modern world have also become more personal. We have spent the last two days eating lunch with refugees from Afghanistan, Palestine and Syria. We will need to write much more about that, but for now my simple observation is that it is always a powerful experience to meet - in person - the people that you had only read about. Suddenly the refugee crisis becomes more real and personal. Real people with stories and hopes and dream. Real experiences of suffering and loss. We are thankful to be hear and ask for your continued prayers to make Christ known in a hurting place. I am still plugging away reading and writing about William King. It is slow going, but the story is so good and relevant for our own time that someone needs to try write about it. Right now, no one else is lining up to do it.
I have also reading Sinclair Ferguson's new book, "The Whole Christ" over the last six weeks and found it to be helpful. The book discusses the age old challenge of legalism and antinomianism, but sets it in the context of a 18th c. Scottish Presbyterian debate. That may seem a little too technical or a little too historically distant for some of you, but trust me... it is relevant. You may or may not know the terms "legalism" and "antinomianism", but if you have been around Christianity for any significant amount of time you know the concepts. The term "legalism" has the obvious root "legal" and relates to a misuse of the law, or using the law to achieve salvation through our own religious efforts. By contrast, the term "antinomianism" has the root "nomos" which also means law and with the prefix "anti" it means against the law, or a rejection of the law of God in the Christian life. The stereotypes can help us get introduced to the problem. The legalist says, "If I want to be a good Christian, then I need to work harder to keep the rules. Then God will love me." The antinomian says, "Jesus died for my sins, it doesn't matter if I keep the rules." Now both of those stereotypes are a little off, but they do represent two trends in Christian thought. Sometime we approach the matter by thinking in terms of law and grace on a spectrum. That is, we think that a legalist has too much law or too much Old Testament... but the antinomian has too much grace and not enough law. If we approach it that way we tend to think that the antidote for one is a little more of the other. As if a legalist has just swung too far to one end of the spectrum and needs more grace to lighten up. In actual practice, people do often swing from one mistake to the other. That is a person who grows up in a legalistic church setting regularly swings the other way. They end up saying, "Now that I know grace, what is the point trying to be more spiritual. God just takes me as I am." But the goal of the Christian life is not merely to get a proper balance of grace and law and land right in the middle of the spectrum. Instead, the goal of the Christian life is to deepen our spiritual life by becoming more like Jesus. Here are two quick references: 2 Corinthians 3:18 Beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image. Romans 8:29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, Here is where Sinclair Ferguson's book comes in. Through the lens of this historical controversy, Ferguson puts his finger on the solution to this important problem. His premise is by no means new - in fact, it is probably the most obvious thing that one might say about Christianity. That is, the solution to our struggles with law and grace is not to focus on "law" or "grace" as abstract qualities. Rather, the goal is to focus on the way both law and grace are expressions of God's character. And since Jesus is the manifestation of God's character (Heb 1:3), we can say that our goal is to look at the way grace and law are expressed through Jesus Christ. Viewed through this lens, the problem with legalism is not that someone is too serious about rules. God's commands are good and meant to be a blessing. If only more Christians agonized over the commands that God has given to his people. After all Jesus said, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments" (John 14:15). Instead, the problem with legalism is that a legalist has separated the law of God from the person of God. As a result, the experience of law is no longer viewed as coming from the same loving father who has saved us and dealt graciously with us. Instead, the law becomes an enemy. (Now some of you may be thinking: "Doesn't Paul say that the law has a ministry of death." Ferguson deals with this is detail, and I won't rehearse all of the arguments there. His main point is that the context of this passage shows that Paul is referring to a misuse of the law. Or, the same sort of abstraction of law that Ferguson is warning against. Simply put - if all you have are a bunch of religious rules and you lose sight of God's gracious character, then your experience of the law will bring spiritual death to you. If that drives you to Christ, then it is a good kind of death. If you don't go to Jesus then it will not be.) On the other hand, the antinomian makes a similar mistake with both grace and law. They detach grace from the person of Christ. Grace is not a substance that floats around in the air. It is not something that we can store up. It is not something that we access outside of our relationship with Jesus. Grace is not an abstract quality. It is a quality that a person possesses. God is a personal being and he is gracious. He is gracious to us in Jesus. That doesn't mean that we can never use "grace" as a noun, but conceptually it must be linked to a person. Here is Ferguson's summary: "Practical antinomianism has many forms today. One of them is the secular gospel of self-acceptance masquerading as Christianity. 'Since God accepts me the way I am, I ought to not get straight-jacketed by the law of God - what God wants is that I be myself.' This has very concrete expressions in what are euphemistically described as "lifestyle choices": "This is how I am, God is gracious... and he accepts me as I am, and therefore I will remain as I am. "... But it is misleading to say that God accepts us the way we are. Rather he accepts us despite the way we are. He receives us only in Christ and for Christ's sake. Nor does he mean to leave us the way he found us, but to transform us into the likeness of his Son. "...There is only one genuine cure for legalism. It is the same medicine the gospel prescribes for antinomianism: understanding and tasting union with Jesus Christ himself." Here are a few very practical applications: 1.) This means that the goal of the Christian life is to draw closer to Jesus a truth found on nearly every page of the NT. 2.) It also means that relationships are a great way to learn about salvation. Real relationships impose demands on our life, and also provide opportunities to experience grace. This is why the church is so important - a truth found on nearly every page of the NT. 3.) It means that my ability to produce good spiritual fruit is directly related to cultivating a relationship of dependence upon Jesus. See - John 15. 4.) It means that even though I am growing in the grace of Jesus, I am still capable for falling into sin when I stop leaning on him. That is a truth that I know all too well. 5.) It means that our goal as a church is not to focus on either "grace" or "truth" in abstract ways. Doing that obscures the gospel. Instead, we must focus on both grace and truth as they are expressed in Christ. Salvation is relational from beginning to end. 6.) It means that a person doesn't get saved by simply saying a prayer or raising their hand. Saving faith is always personal - it connects us to Jesus. If you said a prayer of "accepting Jesus", but have no relationships with Jesus, then you really do not have saving faith. (see picture) |
AuthorMatt Koerber is the senior pastor at City Reformed Presbyterian church. This is his personal blog that he also asks guest writers to participate on. Archives
August 2018
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