Touching the Unclean
My annual meeting with the district board of credentials is coming up very quickly, so I made sure to look at the list of possible questions the Tennessee District asked us to be prepared to answer. It should come as no surprise that two of the questions are: 1)What is entire sanctification? and 2)What does it mean to be a Nazarene? As I began to work through how I will answer these questions in front of the board, the various issues at play in my life at the moment led me to begin thinking: Is is possible that as Nazarenes we have a very limited understanding of entire sanctification? In other words, if we are honest about how we play out this doctrine would be more accurate to call our beloved doctrine "limited sanctification"? Here's what I mean:
Last year at my district credentials meeting I was asked what I thought the manual means when it says that as pastors we are to have a "christian ethic." My response, in short, was that I think we too often define this by what we don't do, rather than the things we actually do. Generic answer to be sure, but truthful none the less, particularly, I think, in the context of the Church of the Nazarene and entire sanctification. It has been my experience that by and large the general consensus understanding of entire sanctification, at least among most laity and many pastors, is that is about "me" and what "I" don't do, or sometimes do, in order to be set apart.
As I have been wrestling with just how to answer this year's credentials questions I have begun to wonder: If that is all sanctification is, then is it really entire? In other words, if sanctification is meant to be entire, then shouldn't it extend beyond ourselves?
If we were to do an honest examination of our doctrine, or at least its popular understanding, I think that we would be forced to recognize that our understanding of sanctification, or holiness, tends to be confined almost exclusively to the Levitical holiness code. For the people of Israel holiness was achieved by not touching diseased skin, keeping away from corpses, doing nothing on the Sabbath, and eating the right food. For the people called Nazarene our holiness very often falls along these same lines: no dancing, no movies, no drinking, and make sure you wear a tie on Sunday. It would seem, that we forget that the holiness practiced by Jesus was, to say the least, a bit different.
Fundamentally, to be holy in Israel meant to be spiritually clean, and any contact with anything unclean, whether that be an object or an action, made one unclean. Then Jesus comes along as the cleanest of the clean, the holiest of the holy, and turns this notion upside down. He seeks about the unclean things of the world (leapers, prostitutes, tax collectors, dead bodies), reaches out and does the unthinkable: he touches them. However, rather than becoming unclean himself, those things which his holiness comes in contact with in turn become clean themselves.
I think that this is an incredibly important idea that as a holiness people we tragically too often forget. We define ourselves by the via negativa and scream out in protest if something or someone or especially some way of doing the faith enters our doors. Is it possible, that it in the embracing of the unclean, even, or perhaps especially if, it reeks of the "pagan", it is made clean through the grace of God and reconciled back to its Creator and His purposes? Is it not fundamental to our beloved doctrine that in order for it to truly be "entire" it must extend beyond ourselves and out to the rest of creation? In other words, isn't God's sanctifying work meant to encompass EVERYTHING and EVERYONE? And if it does not, if we keep it to ourselves, then does this gift of sanctification not lose both its grace and it's holiness? Such a self centered understanding of sanctification surely cannot called either "entire" or "holy."
As a sanctified people don't we need recognize that in being "called unto holiness" we are called, like Jesus, to extend that holiness, that grace, to the unclean?
Last year at my district credentials meeting I was asked what I thought the manual means when it says that as pastors we are to have a "christian ethic." My response, in short, was that I think we too often define this by what we don't do, rather than the things we actually do. Generic answer to be sure, but truthful none the less, particularly, I think, in the context of the Church of the Nazarene and entire sanctification. It has been my experience that by and large the general consensus understanding of entire sanctification, at least among most laity and many pastors, is that is about "me" and what "I" don't do, or sometimes do, in order to be set apart.
As I have been wrestling with just how to answer this year's credentials questions I have begun to wonder: If that is all sanctification is, then is it really entire? In other words, if sanctification is meant to be entire, then shouldn't it extend beyond ourselves?
If we were to do an honest examination of our doctrine, or at least its popular understanding, I think that we would be forced to recognize that our understanding of sanctification, or holiness, tends to be confined almost exclusively to the Levitical holiness code. For the people of Israel holiness was achieved by not touching diseased skin, keeping away from corpses, doing nothing on the Sabbath, and eating the right food. For the people called Nazarene our holiness very often falls along these same lines: no dancing, no movies, no drinking, and make sure you wear a tie on Sunday. It would seem, that we forget that the holiness practiced by Jesus was, to say the least, a bit different.
Fundamentally, to be holy in Israel meant to be spiritually clean, and any contact with anything unclean, whether that be an object or an action, made one unclean. Then Jesus comes along as the cleanest of the clean, the holiest of the holy, and turns this notion upside down. He seeks about the unclean things of the world (leapers, prostitutes, tax collectors, dead bodies), reaches out and does the unthinkable: he touches them. However, rather than becoming unclean himself, those things which his holiness comes in contact with in turn become clean themselves.
I think that this is an incredibly important idea that as a holiness people we tragically too often forget. We define ourselves by the via negativa and scream out in protest if something or someone or especially some way of doing the faith enters our doors. Is it possible, that it in the embracing of the unclean, even, or perhaps especially if, it reeks of the "pagan", it is made clean through the grace of God and reconciled back to its Creator and His purposes? Is it not fundamental to our beloved doctrine that in order for it to truly be "entire" it must extend beyond ourselves and out to the rest of creation? In other words, isn't God's sanctifying work meant to encompass EVERYTHING and EVERYONE? And if it does not, if we keep it to ourselves, then does this gift of sanctification not lose both its grace and it's holiness? Such a self centered understanding of sanctification surely cannot called either "entire" or "holy."
As a sanctified people don't we need recognize that in being "called unto holiness" we are called, like Jesus, to extend that holiness, that grace, to the unclean?
posted by Zack | 2:23 PM
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