N is for New

Day 6
tricks done by old dogs, one of the persistent signals in present time that new creation is indeed afoot with the shadows reversing and Christ the Commander calling the shots. Bear in mind that the old proverb is on the money. You and I can't teach the old dog anything, not least because the old dog has long since sniffed out the folly of puppydom's eagerness to please the master. Old dogs have Ecclesiastes down pat. In this fading world all is vanity, and a chasing after wind.

Yet chasing is exactly what old dogs start doing in the days and years after Easter. At first they roil Jerusalem. Roiler-in-chief is one Peter who, with his brash tale of Jesus of Nazareth crucified and raised (Acts 2), does a very new trick indeed. Had he not lately denied knowing the man? Had he not then skedaddled for old haunts and habits as a Galilean fisherman (Jn. 21)? A day will come when this same Peter does a last new trick, upside down and crucified for love of his Lord. He will do it in Rome, at once center of the earth and its remotest end (if remoteness be measured by self-asserted distance from the authority of Christ.) Thus far has Peter chased--not after the wind, he'll say, but before it, God's breath having blown him along every step of the way.

Peter's counterpart, of course, is Saul-turned-Paul, an equal marvel. The two stand on the leading edge of Easter's new age, prototypes of a phenomenon that will recur incessantly as the centuries unfold. Augustine the wastrel does a trick called Doctor of the Church. Francis the fop does Friend of Beggars. John Newton, slave seller, does Amazingly Graced Abolitionist. In our own day Chuck "Hatchet Man" Colson does Prison Evangelist. That's four names plucked randomly from a hat packed with millions (more women's names than men's, I'll bet). Behind those millions stand vast millions more, their names long lost to all but God. Old dogs all and they all did tricks of light and love that jaded old dogs simply can't do and won't. They're doing them still. I've seen it. So have you.

N. T. Wright is the latest to push the argument--he does it oh so well--that you can't account for the passions of Paul and Peter were Jesus not risen indeed to spark them. I would argue the same for the Christ-centered deeds of today's saints. This much is beyond argument: those deeds well up from a driving conviction that Jesus owns the future, a prospect so enticing that it necessarily turns weary old dogs into eager zealous pups. Watch quietly, delightedly, as they do their saintly tricks, somehow accomplished amid the still deep shadows of their lingering sin. What you're seeing is Paul's fantastic assertion continually underscored in the tangible flesh and blood of real persons, real stuff: If anyone is in Christ--Yes!--new creation, and again, not merely new but brand spanking new, all over again (2 Cor. 5:17). The Word took flesh and died for the right to command this newness into being. And how is it still being, I ask, if that same Word, once crucified, is not alive and ruling the world to make it so?