…Frá Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.
Will ‘t please you sit and look at her? I said
“Frá Pandolf” by design, for never read
Strangers like you that pictured countenance,
The depth and passion of its earnest glance,
But to myself they turned (since none puts by
The curtain I have drawn for you, but I)…
-My Last Duchess, Robert Browning

My wife and I went on a mission trip to Guatemala last week. For us it was a fascinating journey into a different culture, complete with stories of people we met and places we saw, overshadowed by the protective hand of God as he guided us in the work he had for us to do. I have so many thoughts and ideas coming off that missional high that it is impossible to bring them all together at once. It will be necessary to process them slowly, over time, in the context of Scripture and church life – but I promise there will be a slideshow forthcoming. 🙂

Necessary was a word much on my mind as we jetted into Guatemala City, a sprawling patchwork of corrugated metal and jostling mopeds that is home to 4 million people. The things that are so central to the structure of my everyday life are not easily found there: room enough to move about (both in a personal and a territorial sense), opportunities to achieve comfort and amass means, ease of maintaining one’s uniqueness, even the security that comes from having a stable government and a productive economy. But the lack of these things did not stand them in a bad stead. Although I would say that distrust was their prevailing sentiment toward most authority and the unknown, it is also true that people there were far more content with their lot than Americans are, and probably by double-digit percentage points. The things that I unconsciously thought of as necessary to my life were not so to the Guatemalans, and even seemed to be a hindrance when I thought of how our culture could learn from theirs.

Necessity is an idea dependent on your destination. If as we believe, God is on his throne and his truth is absolute, then in each person’s life there is only one set of events which may by definition be seen as necessary, because anything else would not have been what God willed. But that leaves us with an indeterminate problem. What of the fate of the person? As Christians we also believe that eternity for each of us has one of two possible outcomes: life with God forever, or death without him forever. It then begins to matter very much what that necessary set of events is, and how its progression can be seen in our own little slice of existence. And it becomes easier to allow that the coarser pursuits of spatial freedom and ambition and originality and even personal wellbeing are not the aggregate out of which true success is to be formed. Fragile, more graceful forms such as atonement and a new nature and the mind of Christ and laying down one’s life begin to crystallize in my mind, distilled out of the springs of the Scriptures. These are the images of the world of faith, the words God gives us to bring our minds into submission to a reality so far beyond them that mere physical distance seems immaterial in comparison.

Yet these are only the redemptive elements of necessity. They are the holy assault God has mounted on the rebellion of man, unwilling that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance; but there are other realities that were no less part of the process. There are other passages in my story, dark and treacherous places in my past and in my present and (most grievously of all) in my future, inviting me in their philosophical impassability to accept them as part and parcel of my salvation. And I am not sure that I can categorically refuse.

I will not echo the foolishness of the Orthodox tradition in its speculative Felix peccatum Adae, a thought obviously borne out of a dearth of intellectual material that ought to have been supplied from the body and blood of Jesus Christ and his kingdom coming. I will not presume – or at least not intentionally – with the Romish tradition that one ought to do evil that good may come of it, a mistake obviously borne out of an undertaking that warred after the flesh and was not mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. But I cannot deny that God has used my sin mightily and specifically to accomplish what was most needed in my life: friendships hammered into truest steel on the forge of bitter conflict, the gossamer threads of humility (a quality so fragile it disappears whenever you try to see it in yourself) woven into the pattern of my life on the unforgiving warp and woof of failure, a love as strong as death that burns within me not in spite of but because of my sins of treachery and betrayal against those I am close to, a faith that is able to move out audaciously onto the waves of Galilee as though I had not stumbled in unbelief a hundred times for each step of trust. These are the broken stones God chose to use for the altar of my witness to his grace.

And those stones are broken still. In the Old Testament God forbade his people to use hewn stones to build an altar to him, for to use a tool on them was to profane them. Without trying to get too much allegorical mileage out of that statement, it is abundantly obvious to anyone who gets close to me that the structure of the worship I bring to God (indistinguishable as it is from the structure of the rest of my life) is fundamentally flawed. The good confession I offered today was mixed with contempt; the beautiful song I helped raise to the glory of God was interrupted by the unlovely strain of my foolish desires; the peace I passed to those I love was interspersed with the warfare of self-love and deceit; the bread and wine went over my lips not having been fully discerned as the body and blood of the Lord Christ I serve. These things are grievous.

And though grievous, yet I say these things are necessary for the testimony to which I was appointed before the foundation of the world. Do I not proclaim that I have a great Saviour? Then my sin must also be great. Was I not bought at a price? Then I once a bondsman stood. Is not Heaven the place where my tears will be wiped away? Then they will be dried with the hand that still bears the scars of what it cost to bring me there. It was too small a thing for Jesus to triumph over sin, but he must needs set up the cross that signified his shame and defeat as the very standard of his exultation over death. Nay, he must even endow his followers – we who either stood mocking him or fled his side in those final bitter hours – with the strength to take up our crosses too. And a world dead in its trespasses pauses for the briefest moment in its rush towards Hell and the pursuit of happiness to wonder at the scene, and it cannot but murmur with the centurion, Truly this man was the Son of God!

Little, so little does that world know of the power of Jesus. Not only was he the Son of God, but he leads captives in his train to share in his glory. Not only did he keep the Law, but he redeemed those who were under that Law so that we might receive adoption as sons. Not only was he faithful as a son in God’s house, but he is now preparing that house for us. It is incumbent on us to demonstrate the worthiness we have been given in him to partake in that glorious future, and this is what that worthiness will look like: simply that we are able with David to confess our transgressions to the Lord, and that God will forgive the iniquity of our sin. Not for us is the obligation to try to hide our brokenness, as though with the Duke we could set ourselves up as the gatekeepers of the pictured countenances in our past, choosing never to stoop. Brothers and sisters at Holy Cross, we have been delivered from participation in such a hopeless idolatry. Delight with me in the necessity of all God has called us to go through, knowing that he will work it for our good.

Author: Jeremy Vogan

My name is Jeremy Vogan. I live in Staunton, VA with my wife and four kids. I love to write, and seek to honestly explore the intellectual and emotional implications of following Jesus as a deeply broken person in a twisted, cruel world that is full of veiled beauty and meaning. Writing is part of how I faithfully look for Jesus Christ to someday make all things new. I'd enjoy hearing your feedback! JV