The War of Words and Ebeneezer Scrooge

Weird quotes pop uninvited into my head at times, such as this one from Ebeneezer Scrooge, "Every idiot who goes about with Merry Christmas on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding and buried with a stake of holly through his heart."   And what prompted that thought in my mind was the ongoing call to action I am bombarded with on Christian radio to put Christ back into Christmas by boldly proclaiming and loudly trumpeting "Merry Christmas" instead of the anathematized "Happy Holidays".  This debate on the use of words occurs every year and I wonder how one can make the leap from "Happy Holidays" to an open war on Christianity that seeks to purge every reference to the good news out of our lives?  The fact already remains that at least in America we have allowed corporate greed and gross consumerism to squeeze out whatever good news Christmas once had and turn it into a completely secularized, end of the year marketing ploy on which the fate of the economy always seems to hang.  I'm not ready to follow Ebeneezer's course of action, but leave me out of the debate.  I'm much more content to say to secular marketers this other Scroogeism, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine;"  that is to say, if all you see in this Christmas is dollar signs then enjoy calling it whatever floats your boat or bolsters your bottom line, but when you ultimately find that it is still not enough, then stop by for a cup of cheer and let me tell you what I think the season is really about.

Nothing that the world does, or does not do, can detract from my own marking of Christmas, and it must be the reality of Christmas that resides in our hearts that bears witness to the grace of the season more than this annual war of words about what to call Christmas.  Don't we have other things to be about in this time then worrying whether this is only the first domino in a row of anti-Jesus actions?  The world ignored Jesus at His first coming, the bible seems to indicate that it will be woefully unaware when He returns to fulfill all things.  Why does it surprise us then when it seems that the world has other priorities, business for example, during this holy season?  But the fact remains that while the coming of Jesus often goes unnoticed, it was a real event in history, and it remains an annual reality in the lives of those who have been touched by it.  And as Forrest Gump said, "And that's all I have to say about that."

Life's Purpose and the Third Sunday of Advent

Gaudete Sunday, the pink candle, and the call to rejoice.  The Introit for the day is partly from Philippians, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice. Indeed, the Lord is near."  I have to confess that Kathy and I tarried a little in getting ready for Advent, and so our candle for this week is white, not pink (they were out of them at the store).  Oh well!.  Anyway, our church's candle is pink and we dutifully lit it this morning and something in what the pastor said got me asking this question, "Do I believe that each life has a divine purpose and plan?"  Said another way, do I believe that God creates us and our life for a specific purpose in His plan, and that He then ordains every detail of what evangelicals call "His perfect will" for us?  Things like who we will marry (evangelicals, especially young evangelicals, are always very concerned about that), where we will go to school, what we will do for an occupation, what our gifting and ministry is going to be in the kingdom, and so on.  Now I must admit I have seen the hand of God openly active in my family's life at times in the past.  But I also have to admit that it is not a routine, day-in and day-out occurrence.  Sometimes it's my hand more than his that rules the day.  And that got me to thinking of other alternative schemes that God may use for life than the whole perfect will route.  Perhaps He simply gives life to us and imbues it with full potential, and then allows us to choose, to live, to fail, to succeed, to journey...to work out our salvation with fear and trembling.  I am reading a book on this great debate about how the sovereignty of God interfaces with the concept of free will and choice, how predestination really plays out in our world and I confess it makes a compelling case for this model.

So ridiculous concepts pop into my head this morning including such notions that God has preordained my wardrobe for my entire life, what tie I will wear today and so on.  Ridiculous, I know, but somehow truth pushed to extreme always ends up in those corners or my understanding.  But more seriously I was forced to face other issues such as does God create babies that die prematurely, or men and women born into slavery or subjected to poverty or crippled by disease.  And it's at that point that the pat answers that used to serve me well seem to stick in my mouth and I have to say, I don't know.  I don't always understand  the way things work out in life and sometimes I don't always feel like "rejoicing", even when the candle is pink instead of purple.  But on this Third Sunday of Advent, my hope remains that the Lord indeed is near, because He is the only one that can bring sense out of the muddle that I continually find myself in.

The Unexpected Hand of God

Advent is a great time to float those impossible prayers out there.  The entire Christmas story is one big impossible expression of hope fulfilled, the proverbial victory snatched from the jaws of defeat, so why not pray big in a season like this?  As I grow older my prayers tend to be much more focused, give me an outlet for what you have gifted me to be.  A pastor without a church is not a pastor at all, and I wrestle with what God has made me to be without giving me an opportunity to express it.  Now this is not about pastoring, but it is about feeling the hand of God, and, more specifically, feeling the hand of God with no idea as to what it means.  But I had to record this thought before I lost it forever.

A little background.  There are always individuals in every church that are always on the fringes...you know the type.  They are the dancers, and exhuberant praisers, and faith confessors, and ardent prayers, and mountain-moving believers.  And while a lot of people may write them off as extreme, there is just something about them that makes me know that they have seen the face of God, and routinely find themselves in His presence, and so when they speak, I listen.

And that's where this account finally gels together.  The scene:  Second Sunday of Advent, pre-service praise music, finishing a cup of coffee in the back pew and trying to get my thoughts in a somewhat ready order.  Praise group is singing a song that I don't recognize, one of those generic songs naming all of the great qualities of Jesus and what He has done.  And as they sing this one particular line "through you the dead will raise", the hand of God, or more accurately the hand of our resident God-seeker, lands on my shoulder and more or less says "that is you."  So that's it.  I do not have a clue what it means, and I was frankly scared to ask for much of anything more in the way of explanation.  It is worth recording because it does not happen that often, but I have come to expect great things from this season.  This is one of those "thin" times, when the barrier between heaven and earth gets gauze-like thin and miracles still happen.

Another Reflection on the First Sunday of Advent

So we lit the first candle on the Advent wreath, and the little narrative that was read reminded us that this first candle was the candle of hope.  Now your little narrative may be different, but for the sake of continuing this reflection let's say that hope is as good as anything for the first candle to represent.  Now I am not as much a curmudgeon as some of my family may think I am, and I really do, deep inside of my inmost self, want to hold onto the things of God and have the fullness of deliverance that He alone gives.  But I asked myself first, "What is hope?", and second, "Did anything that we do this morning in the sanctuary really give us (me) hope?"  Or did we walk out of church on this First Sunday of Advent saying the words but completely missing out on the reality?

Searching for a meaning I turned to Webster's first and found that hope (a noun) is a desire accompanied by an expectation of something or a belief that something will come to pass.  But that seemed pretty shallow, not at all the message I heard at church.  Webster's tried to make me feel better (more hopeful???) by informing me that the word used to be synonymous for trust or reliance in something, but that we don't use the word that way any more.  No fooling!  That's the problem, we say we hope for something, but we feel all empty and futile in our declaration   That was not what I was really looking for, so I turned to Hebrews and found that hope was intended to be the anchor of my soul, firm and secure.  I read further that it proceeds from the promise of God, something that He has eternally decreed and in which He cannot lie.  And furthermore, this anchor is grounded in the very center of the sanctuary of God where Jesus stands and ministers on my behalf, forever.  And that, I determined, was the reality of the word hope that was supposed to be portrayed by that first frail candle.

No offense meant to the Advent wreath, but a behemoth of an iron anchor set firmly and providing secure mooring I can understand.  I have to admit, however, that on this First Sunday of Advent, my personal level of hope seems much more akin to the flickering, feeble light of that first candle, frail and easily snuffed.  It would be easy to despair and give up, to think that none of the things we do week after week really inspire a hope that is supposed to anchor our soul.  We walk out the door and we find ourselves without secure mooring, being beat to death by life itself.  I find myself wondering do any of us really have hope?  What evidence is there that is is real?   But then I notice that something still compels me to put one foot in front of the other, I still move (perhaps slowly and unsurely but move nonetheless) towards something elusive that still lies before me and beckons in some unknown way to my soul.  And that reassures me that hope must still be present and active inside of me, even when I am unaware of it.  And while I still want more certainty, that seems enough to take away on this First Sunday of Advent.

On the First Sunday of Advent

I wish that I could remain proverbially "fat, dumb, and happy" when it comes to things religious.  When I was young-ish, I could skate through most any church service without a care, only stumbling on things that were monumental in terms of heresy or apostasy or the like.  Now I find that I catch my feet on a thousand little things that I would hardly have noticed in my younger days.  I think that is caused by being much closer to my death than my birth.  When you are nearing the end of your timeline on earth you tend to take stock of all of the things you have picked up along the way because it becomes harder to carry them all, and you question things that you would have hardly noticed before because you are measuring them against eternity and trying to decide whether they have any lasting value for you after all.

On this First Sunday of Advent we heard about light, light coming into the world, light coming into the darkness.  And I wondered whether it was presumptuous of us, on this First Sunday of Advent, to once again mention the Us/Them distinction, as in, "We walk in the light", while "They (the elusive they) remain lost in darkness."  Okay, I know the scriptures, I can quote all of the ones popping into your head as your read these words that would seem to bolster this distinction.  But even if the world lies in the hands of the wicked one, can we really say that everything is darkness?  If so, where does innovation  invention, composition, or creativity come from?  From what source does courage, generosity, compassion, loyalty, or empathy spring? Did God really turn His back on the world and leave it to its own devices so that all it produced in His sight was the filthy rags of failure and despair during that interlude from Adam's sin to the coming of Jesus?  Or was there always a glimmer of eternity stuck away in the hearts of each and every person that was put there by the very hand of God, sometimes brighter, sometimes dimmer, never being completely extinguished, and ultimately finding its meaning in the coming of Jesus?  I only ask because I look at the world, then I look at the church, then I look at the world, then I look back at the church and it seems that the distinction is one of words only, and that both of us seem to be sharing a shade of gray more than either of the two extremes.  On this First Sunday of Advent I do find hope in the words of Isaiah 42 quoted also in the gospels, "A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out..."  If this is what the coming of Jesus offers to me then I am thankful that whatever light I do have will not be taken from me until the day that makes all things light be fulfilled in me.

Stained Glass Theology

We have this great stained glass window at the front of our church with a glittering bible ensconced at the very center point and the words "Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path" arrayed around it.  And while is is beautiful to look at and makes the best use of the prevailing sunlight, I wondered how the Bible became the central focal point of our Protestant worship?  Why has the written word of God displaced the living word of God, Jesus?

I think that if we were Jesus centered rather than word centered (and I know that there are some who would accuse me of splitting hairs), our churches would look different in practice.  Our prayers might have a real power to them as we prayed to and with Jesus, rather than praying theologically correct "in the name of Jesus."  I don't think we would spend much pulpit time expounding deep theological mysteries, or the relationship of law to grace, or correct doctrine.  I think we would spend most of our time in the gospels, telling again the marvelous story of Jesus and His love. And I think we would spend much more time contemplatively, listening at His feet as Mary did, rather than making much ado about nothing as Martha did.

I get the sense that this is the right thing to do.  It says in Hebrews that God spoke to us in many times and ways, but in these last days spoke by His Son.  Jesus said that if we have seen Him, we have seen the Father, and warned that we search the scriptures because we think that in them we have life, but it is the scriptures that bear witness to Him.  I already have significant heartburn about how evangelicals have taken the word of God and put it in the place of God Himself.  If that printed bible was so vital to the life of the church, I wonder how Christianity survived that first 1500 years when people did not have access to a printed bible, when even if they did many might not be able to read and understand the archaic languages.  I would tend to think that their faith was placed in a person, not a page, that right relationship was more important than right doctrine, and that made all the difference in their lives.

The Proverbial Tree without Fruit

For some reason or another I found myself reading that section of the gospels where Jesus seeks fruit on a fig tree, and when there is none, he curses it and the tree withers away.  It reminded me of the counterpoint made in the story where the owner of a fig tree comes seeking fruitfulness, and finding none, tells his gardener to cut it down because it is wasting space and is useless.  The gardener takes a slightly different tack and asks for one more year of special care to coax the tree to fruitfulness.  Now there are enough examples of dry and dead trees being burned up in the fire in the Scriptures and I am not going to be drawn into an argument about the fairness of these examples.  God is God, and I am not, and if He wants to wither fig trees even when they don't bear in the wrong season that is His business.

But I will apply the story as if I was the one seeking fruit.  What is my response to be when finding none?  Am I quick to condemn, to lay the ax to the root, to cast the tree on the pile to be burned?  Is fruitfulness or usefulness the measure I use to judge another's spirituality?  Is my spiritual discernment to be kingdom production oriented?  I wonder if we have not misread the intent of these gospel accounts and taken the wrong view of how God views the human soul.  Judging on fruitfulness does not seem to express the miracle of grace.  After all, if God saved us when we were separated sinners under condemnation, will He be so quick to cast us off if we fail to show forth the fruits of righteousness?  That's as far as I can take this train of thought.  On another note, check out some of the commentaries on this passage if you want to see a bunch of evangelicals doing contortions and back flips to defend the justice of God against His mercy.

Amen and Church Peer Pressure

I have fallen into a bad habit in church recently, I count Amens, and that includes requests for Amens.  But my real question is, "When did Amen become a question?"  For instance, it is not unusual to hear someone declare "God is good!", and then, when no response from the congregation is forthcoming, adds "Amen???"  You can almost hear those multiple question marks, the inflection of the voice, the prolonging of the final syllable, drawing it out until someone answers.  At that point someone in the congregation usually feels compelled to respond and that ends the issue until the next Amen gauntlet is thrown down.

From what I know of the etymology of the word, Amen means "so be it", and is sometimes translated as "truly".  In this form it is a declaration of assent, as if we were acknowledging something heard to be "the gospel truth" and bringing our own internal response in full agreement with the spoken word of truth.  We might say "Let it be done even as you have declared!", or "From your lips to God's ear."  But if something in a church services does not elicit a response, why do we have the habit of pushing the issue until we get a response?  It is nothing more than a Christian form of peer pressure and I refuse, curmudgeon that I am, to give in to it.

If you want a response from me, say something that reaches down into my soul and grips me there, something that puts eternity in my heart (as the book of Ecclesiastes says).  I am not made of stone, I will respond to such a declaration.  But don't force me by peer pressure or the power of the pulpit to make me say or do something that does not spontaneously move up from within me.  That only hardens me to stone and makes me resent the moment, not embrace it.

Spiritual Service of Worship

Some weeks back both my wife and I were independently struck with this question part way through our church service, “Why is worship always associated with singing?”  We asked this question because we go to a church that is overly fond of singing, to the point where singing appears to be the only way in which they can really feel that they have worshiped God properly.  You won’t hardly find a formal book-prayer, or a moment of silence, or a prolonged period of introspection anywhere.  What you will find is the usual evangelical formula of song progression that mixes exuberance with solemnity and tries to bring everyone into the presence of God.  I would think it should be the other way around.  Maybe we should first check if God is in the house, then behave accordingly.  Once again I think this attitude stems from the lack of comfort we have in just living our lives as followers of Christ.  We cannot conceive of holiness as anything other than something we do, and so our tithes are not just our freely-given support of the church but the building up of the Kingdom of God (just how much input does He rally have in our annual church or home budgets anyway?), our outreach is always done somewhere "out there" on the mission field, and our worship is always in church and when we sing.  But I read Romans 12 and it says “present yourselves a living and holy sacrifice (sounds church-like to me), acceptable to God (a good thing to do what He wants), which is your spiritual service of worship (there is that troublesome word).”  Somehow that does not sound so much like something we do only on Sunday in a gathering of people accompanied by musical instruments.  It sounds more like day in and day out being a good spouse, an active parent, a faithful employee, a just employer, a man or woman of your word…that Paul says is truly a spiritual service of worship.  Or to summarize the prophet Micah’s take on what an act of worship is that brings us into the presence of God (Micah 6:6-8), it is to always act justly in every situation; to deal with kindness and compassion in every circumstance, and to walk humbly before and with the God who has called us.

The Road Less Traveled

I used to be zealous for the Lord when I was first touched by His grace.  My deliverance, my healing, my salvation was new and fresh and I felt that everything else about my life was also new and fresh.  But as I have grown older the first blush has faded from that early bloom.  It’s not that my Christianity has tarnished or rusted and is now somehow a poor representation of what it once was, it’s just that I see my life lived as a follower of Christ in a different light that is somewhat molded by the reality around me.  The image of the ideal may no longer burn brightly inside of me, but the tempered reality of the foundation is still present, and I think that I am stronger because of it.  Somewhere along my spiritual journey the proverbial two roads diverged in the woods.  The first led into correct dogmatics and doctrine and it was very enticing to me for many years.  I struggled to get my doctrine just right and force my belief to match that doctrine, but I found that year by year it was hard to live by doctrine.  It tended to separate me from a lot of good things that filled my life, it put a hardened edge on me that always needed to be right and to make black and white pronouncements, and it turned out to be a cruel taskmaster that always demanded a lot of me but gave very little in return.  So I retraced my steps back to the other path and found that the more I walked down it, the less sure I was of anything.  Things I once considered sacrosanct were looked at in a different way, things I felt imperative to hold onto now weighed me down and had to be left at the roadside, convictions were examined and tested to see whether I would still stake my life on their tenets.  But somehow this road feels right and I am sure that ultimately it will lead me to the final destination I seek.  I don’t see as clearly as I used to think I once did when everything was new and fresh, and I find myself saying quite often “I see men as trees walking” and asking for a second touch from Jesus.  But that’s all right.  To go back to the poem about the two paths diverging, “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”

When Life is Less than Ideal

There seems to be some level of realization within each of us that the way things ought to be does not match the way that they really are.  And somehow we feel that our religion, our relationship with God, should make things different.  And when things turn out otherwise, contrary to our expectations of what ought to be, we find ourselves uncomfortable.  Rather than just accepting the reality we see, we feel that we need to somehow reconcile it to the ideal.  So when we are faced with disappointment, failure, or even outright evil, we don’t just squarely face up to the challenge, we try to redeem it by proclaiming that God can work through even this circumstance in our lives.  Well maybe that is or isn't so, but we further muddy the waters by trying to understand whether these things are from His hand or according to His will.  Maybe, at that point of disconnect, we can simply live, knowing that there is a taint everywhere in our world, that life is not fair, and all that is expected of us is to do the best with the hand we have been dealt.  I know that does not sound very spiritual, but it does sound very real to me, and I am getting very tired trying to spin every circumstance in my life into some spiritual growth opportunity.  Even if the hand of God is in it, there is no assurance that I am ready or willing to accept what it is that He is trying to accomplish.  But at least I can face it honestly.

I am not going to pretend that I understand everything or that I have an answer for every question by just opening up the pages of the Bible.  The reality of the situation is aptly expressed in Hebrews 2:8, “For in subjecting all things to Him (Jesus), He (God the Father) left nothing that is not subject to Him.  But now, we do not yet see all things subjected to Him.”  We live in the now, not the someday (or the sweet by and by).  The only thing that makes it bearable is the next verse and I paraphrase.  I may not see all things under the direct control of Jesus, but I see Jesus Himself, and that reminds me of all that God through Him has done on my behalf.

Call to Worship for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost

Where is the Christian life lived out?  That’s another way of asking where is the truth that we read in this book given application?  Where do all the ideas that we formulate concerning God, and our relationship with Him, and what He has done for us, and what He wants us to do for Him find their testing ground?

Well let me state the obvious.  It’s not here in this sanctuary on Sunday morning.  If you were faithful to attend church every Sunday morning for the entire year, you would spend less than 1% of your life sitting in these pews.  Even if you stayed for coffee hour and offered to clean up afterwards you would only be able to build it up to 1.5%.

Somehow that makes us feel uncomfortable.  You may have been a member of churches where people felt that their life did not have meaning unless it was within the context of doing something at church.  So churches add evening services, Wednesday night services, special bible studies, seminar series, weekend retreats.  They get so specialized that I used to joke that in some churches you could find a bible study or weekly gathering for single unemployed men with beards.

But the reality is that most of our life, the majority of our life is lived out in the workplace, in the marketplace, in schools of learning, in our homes and neighborhoods.  And those places are hard places sometimes full of darkness, brokenness, selfishness, and failure.  But they also happen to be where the majority of the people that the Father has created for good live, they are not here today because we don’t have room to contain them all if they showed up.  Jesus attended the synagogue when He was growing up, He went to the temple on those days recorded in the law, but most of his life was spent being obedient to His parents as part of a household, in working with His hands at a job, in recognizing authority within his home and community, in going to weddings and mourning at funerals because that is what it means to be human, to live in this tremendous world that God has made.

We’d like to stay here sometimes, because it seems safe to us, we are gathered together with like minded people, most of whom like us, we find encouragement here, maybe even some wisdom we can use...this motivates us, reminds us of our purpose, makes us feel like maybe we are worth something after all.  But if we spend too much of our time in these walls we become very much like one of those hot-house nursery grown flowers that really looks great, but try taking it and plopping it in the ground in your front yard, and after one or two crisp Vermont nights it is going to look pretty shabby.  That’s why you harden off flowers started inside when the snow is still on the ground, because they are designed mostly to be outside flowers, to be planted and thrive out there.  Exotics may look great, but they are the exception, not the rule, and so are we.

Furthermore, going to church is not the same as being the church.  It may be hard for us to break years of habit, but we do not need a building or committees or organs or sermons to do what God has called us to do.  Why is that so hard for us to understand?  The gospel message is not a hot house flower that has to be protected and cultivated inside warm safe places like this sanctuary.  It is robust, it is durable, it is the power of God for the deliverance of the world and the gates of hell itself cannot and will not prevail against it.  And believe it our not but your life, lived out there, not here on Sunday, is the way in which God chooses to make himself known to your family, your friends, your coworkers, even just the strangers you interact with each day.  I want to be the church, not just go to church.  I pray that we put this time to good use this morning since we are here anyway and let God show us the difference.

A Call to Worship from the 12th Sunday after Pentecost

Why am I here this week?  I thought that I finally figured it out last week, but now that I’m here this week I’m not so sure again.  I mean, I’ve seen glimpses through this week that God is still at work, but frankly my week has been hard and there is so little in the daily news that makes me confident that what I am doing here today means a hill of beans in the long run.  It’s easier to be a skeptic this morning than a believer.

Now I don’t know why that happens, but we are so quick to forget what it means to be a follower of Jesus and what we should be doing with our lives.  But fortunately that is something that is common to every person and so the Church throughout its history has tried to do things that help us on our journey.  One way is the yearly church calendar, and the second is the lectionary of scripture readings.  I preach out of a common set of readings that have been put together so that over a three year cycle pretty much everything that is in the bible has an opportunity to be read and studied.  That way we don’t get stuck in a rut or concentrate on things that we like to hear while ignoring things that are harder for us to deal with.  The second thing is the annual calendar in which we cycle through the great works of God on our behalf and then are given a chance to respond.  The year starts in Advent and we begin the story of our deliverance by remembering all that the Christmas season announces.  Then there is a short period of time when we concentrate on the work of Jesus Christ as He proclaims to us the coming of God’s Kingdom.  Then there is that intense time of Lent and Holy Week, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost.  By then the story of what God has done for us has been told with power.

But then there is a long period of time called Ordinary Times marked by the green altar cloths.  And we mark the Sundays in this period as the Sundays after Pentecost, after the sending of the Holy Spirit to us as the promise and power of God.  We do not concentrate so much on what God has done for us, or the recording of the story of His salvation…..this is our season, and the question put to us in this time is this….if God has done all of these things on your behalf, if He has given grace, forgiveness, deliverance, freedom from bondage, and the promise of eternal life...how are you going to live because of it?  Has it made a difference in your life?  What has God given to you to do with this new life He has freely given?

That’s part of why we gather on the Lord’s Day each Sunday.  To be reminded that we are not the people that we used to be.  We may still struggle each day we live, but the fact that God has acted on our behalf makes us different and gives us purpose, direction, and a job to do on His behalf.  We just need a little help to remember what those things are and find the encouragement together to move forward one more week in the name of Jesus.

This is the part of the year where God does not work for us, but God chooses to work through us.  To us is given that amazing task of doing God’s work in our homes, in our communities, in our workplaces.  Let’s open our hearts to hear what it is that He will give us to do this week.

A Call to Worship from the 11th Sunday after Pentecost

If you are part of my generation or older, you may have unconsciously dressed up this morning before coming to church.  That is one of the habits that we learned as part of our Christian journey.  But what else have we picked up along the way that affects how we should look and act when we enter this sanctuary every Sunday morning?  Each Sunday I ask myself  Why am I here?  What do I expect to find in this gathering?  What am I obligated to give as a participant in this assembly?

Just like putting on a good set of clothes to come to church, I can fall into the habit of putting on my good appearance of Russell Rohloff.  I can come into the presence of God and sit in the pews next to you pretending that my life is all put together just right.  I can sing songs expressing that ideal picture of God and my relationship with him, I can lift up my hands and smile, I can pray prayers that are all structured around the way I would hope things are and none of you would know that what is inside of me is any different from what is outside....but I would know, and so would the God I claim to worship.

I know that I can put on a nice set of clothes and a smiling face, but it does not fully cover the brokenness that is in my life, it does not make all of the hard times I faced this week trying to keep my head above water as my finances go south go away, or make me forget about facing one more disappointment from friends or family or coworkers.  A nice set of clothes can dress up but can’t hide the failures and doubts and fears that hide just under this tie.

So why are we here this morning?  Well, I hope each of us discovers the reason throughout this morning, but one thing I know is that there are two or more of us gathered here in the name of Jesus and He has promised to be here among and with us, and that whatever we may have brought into this sanctuary under our Sunday clothes, He has declared that He will be to us a merciful deliverer full of forgiveness and grace and love, and that He will never, ever let us fall from His hand.  And that is as good a reason as any to begin what we do this Sunday in His Name.

Love Songs to Jesus, a Confession

I want to confess that I find it difficult during Sunday worship or in special church settings to emotionally respond to songs that exhort me to "celebrate Jesus" or "love Jesus".  Heck, I have basic problems with the call to "worship and adore" Him.  It's not that I don't know the truth that is contained in those exhortations, or can't explain the great gulf between the supreme worthiness of God and sinners saved by grace.  I understand the theology and biblical teaching well enough to articulate it.  The problem lies with me and the fact that I don't really know Jesus, at least not like I know my wife, or my grandchildren, or my boss at work.  I know the truth and can pretend that He lives inside of me by the Holy Spirit but right now I react to my world about 90% physical and 10% spiritual.  The fact of the matter is I can't see Him, touch Him, sit across from Him or even talk to Him face to face, and no amount of bible quoting lifts me one foot higher towards His throne in heaven.  I don't mean to sound blasphemous, but it is difficult for me in the temperament I have to relate to Jesus in the way that is expected of a typical Christian believer.  Talking into the air or cutting the pages of scripture is not very much of a conversation for me.

I don't receive special revelations; when faced with a choice I weigh it as long as I dare to before choosing what seems right.  I rarely feel that I have been divinely nudged, I don't see every moment of every day as a divine appointment and rarely can I really say that something that happened was a "God-thing".  Being surrounded by people that do respond that way makes me feel out of step, on the fringe.  All that I really end up doing is seeking to faithfully do what the prophet said, I try to act justly towards all, to seek to move in mercy not judgement, and when it comes to spiritual stuff, to humbly do whatever it is that seems to lay in front of me.  Or as my wife is fond of quoting, all you have to do is "love God and love others".  Somehow I feel that there may be more substance in a life lived in this manner than some expressive emotionalism for an hour each Sunday.  We'll have to wait and see how that all sugars off in the long run.

Seasonal Givings Slump

We must be right in the middle of the seasonal charitable givings slump.  The not-for-profit NGO that I am treasurer for has seen a slump in giving, the ministry my wife works for has been touch and go on payroll for the last month, and the radio preachers on almost every program have been beating the bushes for support day after day.  I even hear it on Sundays at church buried in announcements and such.  We are a semi-numbers church.  We don't post weekly attendance, but we have been running the box score on what we need to take in week by week to meet budget (usually thousands of dollars) and what we do take in (usually hundreds of dollars).  The only objection I have to this annual hand-wringing time is the tendency, when a group or church or individual finds themselves in a financial crisis, to respond by stating or exhorting that we only need to trust God to provide.  I've heard that all my life, and frankly it is based on the assumption that what we are doing is what God wants us to do.  I have seen too many ministries where maybe God was drying up the storehouses of heaven to say that the purpose for your existence has been served and you are no longer needed.  But Christian ministries and churches are hard to kill off once they take root.  An appeal to the general Christian guilt factor or to history or to calling is most often enough to squeeze enough to squeak on by.

But it leaves the question hanging unanswered.  Are all the struggling churches, radio ministries, outreach programs, etc. really doing the work of the kingdom and therefore could be inclined to believe somehow that divine intervention will allow them to continue, or are they just afraid to face the fact that in the grand scheme of God's activities on earth they are not really needed.  Just for the record, I have never heard a ministry say "Well, giving is down, and we are taking that as a sign that our work is complete.  We are liquidating what we do have and reinvesting it in some other ministry that is growing."  Just because we do Christian things is no guarantee that they are God-called things.  That's why older churches in New England are more prone to turn into museums of past glory rather than a tabernacle of God's abiding presence.  They become centered on keeping the doors open and no longer impact their communities with the gospel.  The summer slump should be a time for inner reflection and honesty, not stepped up appeals and fundraising schemes.

Revival

Yesterday at church some of the praise songs and part of the sermon was devoted to the concept of revival and I found myself thinking of that quote from the famous philosopher, Inigo Montoya in the Princess Bride "You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means."  And I found that I could not really do a credible job of defining it.  It must have something to do with the Latin verb "to live" and the "re" implies somehow a revitalization, a restoration, a reinvigorating, perhaps a new birth?  But it is a biblical concept or something we have cobbled together along the way to deal with the reality of a holy God and our own seeming lack of spiritual maturity.  Why do we pray for it in our churches week after week?  What do we expect it to look like if and when it comes?  Is it something God expects us to do for ourselves or are we looking for an easy out of self discipline by waiting for God to step in and do it?  Again I concludes that it does not mean what we think it means. 

I can't find the word "revival" in my concordance, and there are probably less than 20 places where "revive" is used depending upon the translation.  And when I read those verses, mostly in the Psalms, I get the sense of God lifting a heaviness or a weariness, almost a feeling of hopelessness from the psalmist who finds himself overcome by life and all it brings his way.  And so he cries out to God for relief, for the ability to lie down believing that tomorrow could be different, and wake up knowing that even if it is not that the day will not be lived outside of the grace of God.  And somehow that is enough to put one foot in front of the other and continue the journey faithfully.  That prayer for revival seems to me to deal more with consistently living each day by the grace of God, being faithful where we are able, and being aware that the love of God still holds us even when we fall short.  It is not a flash-in-the-pan that brings emotional response and spiritual blessing and complete change over night.  I don't have a good conclusion for this discussion, I only know that I have become more acutely aware of the baggage I have inherited in my own spiritual journey and that somehow the church has made the whole Christian life a lot more complicated that I think it was originally meant to be. If true revival came as the evangelical church seems to define it you would expect to see a lasting effect, something transforming, a kingdom of God on earth moment, but things seem to go on pretty much the same way they have always gone on.  I think true revival only comes on that final day when all that is dead is made alive again and death is finally swallowed up forever in victory.

I See Men as Trees

I am facing cataract surgery in August and the whole process of aging (a more palatable form of describing the process of slowly dying or decaying) brings fresh perspectives into this interesting time of life.  Cataracts are probably different for each person who experiences them, but for me I see men as trees walking.  Everything is blurry all of the time, and nothing I do can improve the focus.  The light simply enters into my eyeball lenses where it is diffracted all to hell and never quite hits the back of the eyeball on target, or at least all of the light does not hit the same place at the same time.  I am starting to better appreciate my physics about not really seeing something but rather seeing the light reflected from that something.  In my case I lack the properly calibrated equipment to collect and focus that light, hence blurry has become my way of life.

Now as you age, you learn to live with things, things like joint pain, difficulty in sleeping, having to fight against gravity, loss of muscle tone, and more of all that.  I used to think that you could get use to most anything, that over time what is abnormal would become normalized, you just learn to live with it.  But constant blurriness is difficult to live with.  Oh, I've adapted to it, I can drive but not read highway signs until they are right in front of me, I can still read books and papers but may have to adjust the lighting, computer screens are now my nemesis with their own light source but somehow I get by typing...you get the picture.  But I don't like it, it's more than a nuisance, it affects everything that fills every day and gives me a headache by the end of the day.  I can't get used to it, never will.

And somehow I thought there might be a parable in all of this because as I have aged, my spiritual vision has likewise gotten blurry.  I thought it would sharpen with time, but I find that I no longer see those clear, crisp lines between black and white, I see a lot of grey.  My eagle-eyed vision that used to catch every jot and tittle and nuance now seems content to just try to take in the big picture and make some sense of that at least.  I know that some would use words like "lukewarm" or "left your first love" or "compromise" to describe my condition.  But I don't think that's a fair assessment.  What cataracts have done for me is make me appreciate the miracle of sight and become really fearful of what my condition might be if I ever lost it.  And I thought that was probably true for me spiritually as well.  I need another touch of Jesus' hand; seeing men as trees walking may be better than darkness all of the time, but for one that was used to seeing clearly it is a step down.  But here's the hard part to put into words.  I don't want to return to the way I used to see things around me, I want to see the light reflected from all of those things, to believe again that the world was created good, that man is redeemable and life has direction and purpose, that God has not abandoned us to futility, that the gospel is still good news, and that in the end of all things in His light we will see light (Psalm 36:9).

What Matters Most?

Last post for today as I finally get through the list of random thoughts and questions I constantly jot down in a little notebook in my pocket.  Today's question sounds a lot like others I have asked, but with its own particular twist.  "What matters most, that we believe, or that we love?"  You can see where this is going.  It cuts right to the heart of that lasting struggle between truth and mercy.  But why should such a struggle even occur in the Church of Jesus Christ?  Why does it seem like the latest trend within the churches in my geographic region is a return to legalism based on an absolute (meaning our version is right) truth and building walls where there ought to be none?  Suddenly their version of Christianity does not seems so much like good news as in "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me for He has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim that captives will be released, that the blind will see, that the oppressed will be set free."

Truth is a bludgeon, no one can stand before Moses when he starts swinging those tablets.  But Jesus came for freedom's sake and in Him mercy meets truth on an even plane, the righteous demands of a holy God embrace peace in a holy union.  That is good news, much better than the standard fare of hoop jumping or dogma collecting that is common in so many churches.  For the record, it matters most to me that I love even when it conflicts inside of me with what I believe is the truth in any matter.  I guess I'd rather give account before God that I loved too much instead of that I believed zealously.

An Observation on Evangelicalism and Republicanism

This is a random thought that has popped into my head as I watched a slick trailer in church for the National Day of Prayer (did you know it had a trailer complete with a rousing soundtrack, Mount Rushmore, the US constitution, quotes from the founding fathers, a fire-side family praying, and a movie like "save this date" type of ending), and then later listened to countless broadcasts about the NDP on Christian radio.  This is an observation only, I have no comment on it and no theological insight on it except to note it is sometimes hard to see where evangelicalism ends and political agenda begins.  I noticed that certain evangelicals have now filled out the "trinity" of national prayer causes.  To the survival and strengthening of the family, and the overthrow of abortion on demand, they have now added prayers for the upholding of our military forces.  It is at this point that I clamp down on my tongue, or more accurately force my fingers to stop typing.  Observation only, I don't know what I think about that trend yet.  How about you?

Lord, You Know that I Love You

Some Sundays ago in Eastertide we read the account in John's gospel about Jesus confronting Peter three times about whether Peter really loved Him or not.  I ask myself that same question a lot, in different ways and times, but all boiling down to the same question, "Do I really love Jesus in a way that leads to a life that is lived in accordance with what I believe He would have me do?" Or is my whole life just a religious facade that I have cobbled together over the years, borrowing a little from this denomination, incorporating a little from that church, and so on?  I honestly don't know.  Let me give you an example to illustrate.

Some of the most profound worship songs that I have ever heard -- you know those songs, the ones that tug your heart, bring tears to your eyes, and through the tears help you to see light like you have never seen it --, well those songs were written by habitual sinners, drunkards in my particular story.  People who knew the power of God in a way that many of us cannot relate to because they spent so much of their life making a mockery of everything they held sacred and yet, even at the lowest points, knowing that God loved them even then.  And while drinking does not tend to be my personal demon, I have others that I wrestle with, we all do; things that are secret, things that remain hidden, tendencies that cannot be indulged because of what follows.  And so when Jesus asks me if I love Him, how do I answer?  I can give Him the biblically correct answer, but when I start to speak all of my failure and wasted life gets replayed in my mind and the answer dies on my lips.  Imagine Peter wilting under this interrogation.  The man who three times betrayed Jesus only days before is now asked whether He loves this Jesus who stands before Him.  I've been there too, I think you have as well.   But the struggle of Peter to answer finally breaks through, and I lay hold of it as well and make it my own.  I don't know if I love You as I ought, my life certainly has not reflected the reality of that type of relationship; but You know that I love You, otherwise You would not be standing in front of me and asking me these questions.  You can look beyond my weakness, my constant and consistent failure, and my wishy-washiness where my own eyes always get stuck to see eternity set in my soul, and in Your eyes I see that You know that I love You.  When the Son sets you free, you are finally free indeed!

What's the Point?

I used to think that church on Sunday sometimes was uneventful at best.  The people are great, but the entire congregation is stuck in a confederation that is 50 or 60 years old and no longer fits their current demographics, and they have inherited a liturgy that is sacrosanct and not easy to change.  So there is a lot of up and downs in the pews, and 200 year old songs stuck here and there, and forms that can never be wavered from.  It makes one think "What would happen if the Holy Spirit really did show up as everyone prays and blew wherever He chose to do so?"  But there is the benefit of reflection, both inward and Godward, and I get my best questions in the pews, rarely answers, just many, many questions.  And I find that the closer I get to asking the right questions, the closer I feel I am getting to laying hold of who God is, who I am because of Him, and what my life is intended to amount to.

So last week's questions included this one.  What is a better starting point for trying to live the Christian life, absolute truth or sincere doubt?  Anything needs a foundation to build on and I have always been told that the truth of God's word was the very best foundation for my life.  And because it was my foundation I defended it to any length necessary, because if the foundation starts to get shaky, so does what is built on it.  But I found, as I have aged and journeyed, that when people exhort you to build your life on the solid rock of God's word they usually have an implied version of interpreting God's word that they are foisting wholesale on you.  And that is when good solid granite gets mixed in with cheap brick to fill in those inconvenient areas, and that leads to a foundation with gaps, weak spots, places where water tends to seep in.  So I ask the question again, what is a better starting point?  Should we cling to our version of absolute truth and defend it to the death, often against common sense or the witness of life itself?  Or should we have the decency and honesty to say, "I don't know" and come to God with the prayer of the honest man who said "Lord, I believe, but would you help my me where I cannot believe"?  My life has tended to follow the latter path.  By now I should have amassed a wondrous amount of wisdom but instead I have a notebook of questions that one by one I wrestle with.  Some I bring to resolution, others I set aside for a time.  The sad fact is that is is far easier to learn something right the first time then to have to unlearn something that habit and time have reinforced.  Renovations, rebuilding, correcting structural defects are always more expensive in terms of time, resources, and energy.  But I've stayed the course this far and I don't intend to abandon the journey.  Rather fixing my eyes on Jesus, I press forward.  He is the one that started what faith I have inside me and He is the only one that can bring it to any fulfillment.

The Older Brother

One of these past Sundays we were reading the story of the prodigal son.  This is a familiar story and the father's love for his returned son are the subject of countless sermons and that is as it should be.  And I have read many commentaries on this story and they sometimes turn into a diatribe against that familiar scapegoat, the Pharisees.  They were the ones zealous for the law, sometimes to such an extreme that they pit the strict keeping of the law against doing works of mercy, healing, compassion.  They seem renowned for the degree of separation from all that is not in keeping with what they perceive to be the will and purpose of God...the picture of the Pharisee drawing in his robes in the marketplace to avoid defilement by an inadvertent contact with sinful humanity is classic sermon fodder.  But then I thought that if scripture is universally true, transcending time and geography, then a retelling of the story today would sadly cast us, the formal, established, set-in-our-ways Church as the older brother.  We are always with our Father through the work of His son Jesus, and all that He has is ours, because He delights to give to us the kingdom.  But what the Father's love really done for us, what types of people are we?

We are decidedly uncomfortable when the world sets foot on our turf.  We jealously guard the sanctuary of God  lest any part of the world invade it, and when these "others" enter in, drawn by a remembrance of a father's love, we become stern gatekeepers; because like it or not, these newcomers are covered and clothed in the world and its ways.  How many hoops do we force them to negotiate before they pass muster and are accepted into the fellowship of believers, admitted to the Lord's table, granted church membership, or even just given genuine attention and compassion?

I think this occurs because our perspective of the Father is limited, it may even be dead wrong in many areas.  In our hymns we sing about God as immortal, invisible, the only wise God, beautiful, perfect, transcendent and a dozen other words.  But this is theology singing, and even though we sometimes seem overly fond of it, it skews our perspective of God, how He works, and how he views the prodigals of this world.  We are the ones that are ever with the Father as the story goes, and all that He has is ours because it is His delight to give His kingdom to us....but what happens in us when He also delights to give it to flagrant prodigals who have squandered the better part of their life in worldly living far separated from Him.  And that makes it difficult for us to rejoice with the Father when one of "them" stumbles home stinking of pig manure.  But in the end of the matter, it is the prodigals who are the ones who remember what the Father is really like and who have no reservation of coming back knowing that they deserve nothing and instead find that they receive everything.  It is us who have forgotten what grace is able to accomplish and we are the ones who cry out that it is unfair.  I think it is time we took a second look at the whole way that we have organized and run our churches and let the Father once more transform them into havens of forgiveness and grace.

The 300 Pound Pig

I have decided to characterize this time of my spiritual journey as the time of the 300 pound pig. Let me explain. My son and I used to slaughter farm animals for friends and neighbors some years back (those nice packages of pork chops or bacon just don't grow on trees you know). We knew our equipment limitations (scalding tub size, lifting equipment) and were content to kill and prepare 200 to 225 pound pigs. So when a neighbor called late in the season I queried him if the pigs were really the right size. He assured me that they were and off we went. When we pulled up, set up the equipment, got the water to heating we went inside the barn to look at the pigs. These were not your nice 200 to 225 pound piggies, these were 300+ pound porkers. I had my doubts and should have walked away but chose to proceed. I put the first one down and bled it. When it took both of us to drag it out of the barn I should have known we would have problems. When we hoisted it up and it bent my hay hook out straight like an awl I should have suspected it was worse than I thought. When we finally had it up and plopped in the tub and there was literally no room between it and the tub walls (imagine big, big fat person, naked, lying on back in small tub and you get the picture). At that point my son and I bent over the pig with scrapers in hand and he asked the very pointed but obviously belated question, "What do we do now?" Faced with no easy way out I said, "Start scraping", and we did. And we scraped and scraped, and pushed, and prodded, and ached, and swore, and vowed that we would never be suckered into doing this again (even though we knew we had a second monster pig waiting in the barn). But when you are faced with a 300 pound pig and have made the commitment to start, the only way to get through it is to throw yourself at it and keep at it for however long it takes to get through the job at hand. And that is why I feel that where I am spiritually is wresting with that 300 pound pig. I know that there is an end, even if it is not in sight yet, but the only way there is to keep at it.

Halfway through Lent

So it turns out I did have some random thoughts about halfway through Lent. On the fourth Sunday of Lent I dutifully recorded some ideas in my little pocket journal and then promptly forgot them. The first was that we tend to pray in categories. I glean that observation from years of listening to corporate prayers being read in church, or looking at printed prayer lists, or being on phone chains for prayer (now email chains). I don't have all the categories worked out, but I have some. There is the prayers of separation...we have an addiction or a problem or a sickness or a difficult relationship and we want to be free from it, separated once and all. Or it can have a positive spin as well....we sense our separation from something and we want it to be joined back to us. And so we pray or ask for prayer that it would happen. But I wonder if we are putting too much on God and not enough on ourselves or the individuals we are praying for. The writer of Hebrews said we had not yet got to the point of shedding blood in the struggle against sin, but as I have said in the past, many times we are not even willing to break a sweat. Maybe these types of prayer are more about personal choices and facing our own demons and realities. Another type of prayer related to this is the prayer of limitation. We become acutely aware that we cannot do all things well and therefore we pray that God would remove this limitation and make it possible. Maybe we are always short of cash, or overweight, or struggling with our job performance, or unsure in our marriage relationship, you get the idea. And if God would just make that limitation go away everything would be all right. But again those types of demons don't just go out by command or prayer alone, but with much fasting....effort, facing up to shortcomings and challenges, seeking opportunities, doing all that is within our power to prevail.

The second note I jotted down is a quote from Joel 3:14 (the pastor decided to preach through Joel in Lent for some reason). Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision! I know that is about end times and all, the days of judgement and such. But what decision are we setting before these multitudes to consider? To follow Jesus, to be born again, to become a church member or even more importantly a member of a committee, to contribute faithfully, to be in attendance on this or that day? I don't see any real good choices being set before us any more by the local congregations. We still seem more concerned about keeping the doors open another year and conducting our business as usual, and the ultimate questions that lead to the important decisions are never broached openly.

Half thoughts from a point halfway through Lent.

Guilty of Neglect

I am once again guilty of gross neglect. Can it really be that more than a month has passed before I wrote anything down about the journey I am on? I will beg your indulgence here and say that it was the fact that Easter Sunday came somewhere in all of that, and work is picking back up, and the demands of life as the snow disappears and yard work appears is greater. But deep inside I know that the real reason is that I did not have anything worth recording. And this is why. In all of my personal spiritual journey I have never felt so unsure of where the heck I am headed. After thirty some years all I have is questions and very few satisfying answers. How does one walk so long holding certain things to be self evident and true, and then suddenly, as if a veil was drawn back, see all of those things in a different light and from a different perspective? In the old days I would have simply been apostate, but what is the difference between an apostate and a seeker? I think they share a lot in common. I am not saying that the old answers are untrue, I am just saying that they don't really answer the questions I have fully and I really have not found a resting place yet where that satisfaction can be found. I guess that's how I know I have not yet crossed that apostate line, I think someone who is apostate asks the questions but finally stops caring about the answers and just leaves it all behind rejecting it wholesale. I need to do something to sort this out, but I am still not sure what that is. More on this later.

The Name of God

For some reason or another I found my mind wandering again on Sunday as it most often does as I lose hold of the flow of the service slogging on around me, and I was thinking about when Moses was called by God and he said, "Well who are you? The people are going to ask me and I need to tell them something." And God replied, one of the many places in Scripture where He reveals who He is by the naming of Himself. And I thought further, which of the names of God is the most complete. Now I don't think there is a good answer to that, but the one that seems to at least be the one that has all of the elements to it that we need to know is "LORD, God Almighty." The LORD, all capitals, is that covenant name of God that He revealed again and again to Moses, it is that name by which He is worshiped in those scenes in Revelation 4. It is He that makes great promises that only the covenant Lord could make. And because He is God, and there is no shadow of turning within Himself, He makes good on those promises because He cannot lie. His word goes forth and accomplishes what it was sent to do. And not in a half-hearted way, because He is God Almighty, able to accomplish anything that He conceives.

I think we try to roll all of these into one when we use the word sovereign. Usually when we define this word it has all of those nuances of power and authority and ability to act. But I think that the meaning is closer to that answer God gave to Moses when He said "I am that I am." One rabbinic writer translated this more closely as "I will be whatever the situation demands." Another Christian writer I looked at said that sovereign means "God is in control", not controlling, but in control. There is a difference in those two that sometimes is hard to see and live in. So another thing that I think I will do in Lent this year is ask God once again to tell me who He is, who is it that makes the ultimate claim on my life and eternity, who is it that wakens me each morning and gives me rest each evening, who is this God that I have sought all these years? I will let you know what He has to say if I hear Him speak to me.

The Onset of Lent

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and with it comes the message of our mortality, our separation from God, our inability to keep our end of the deal day in and day out. I was actually thinking about that on Sunday as I asked myself, "Are we called to be perfect?" Now I convinced myself that this word does indeed appear in the New Testament more than once, and the verses it is found in seem to require us to become perfect or complete. But by what measure? Most churches specifically make lists...how to eat, how to dress, how to worship, how to raise your children, what types of jobs are good, what types of music to listen to or books to read, and so on. And we are more or less perfect as we more or less conform to this master list. Other churches adopt a more biblical view but one that is almost as hard to attain to, we are to come up to the measure of the fullness that is found in Christ. But while he was the son of man, he was also the Son of God and I think that gave him a distinct advantage over me. The whole debate over whether Jesus could have sinned since He had a full human nature is one that goes over the top. And there is also the tendency to then reduce the measure of our lives into just another list, this time what Jesus did, what Jesus said, what Jesus commended, what Jesus avoided. And once again we find ourselves making checks next to an impossible list of requirements.

But it never seemed like Jesus struggled against sin. Oh, he had his moments of temptation, and even what appeared to be anguish over the path that lay ahead. But the majority of His life seems more to be about doing what it is that the Father set before him, and not agonizing over this or that circumstance or possible temptation, what the church used to call the "near occasion of sin." And that gave me the "theme" for my Lenten devotions this year. I am not going to struggle against my own sinfulness, I always fall short of my expectations and certainly of "perfection". But what I am going to do is struggle to hear God more clearly, to see where He is present and what He is doing, and to try to do that one thing that He sets before me in each day. It starts with that bold statement of Isaiah, "Here I am, send me" as God was looking for someone to go on His behalf. I think that if I can half succeed in turning my attention to what God would have me do in the moment, that any struggle against sin will enjoy progress as well. Blessings upon your Lenten pilgrimage.

Evangelical Practices, the Continuation

I am looking back over my notes and see scribbled evangelicalisms that I have picked up over the past week or so. None of them is a complete thought in my spiritual journey and maybe none of them ever will be. So I am putting them here in no particular order because they do have the underlying thread of being the way we evangelicals practice our spirituality.

For instance, when we pray we are always putting something into the hands of Jesus, or into God's ultimate purpose. But what happens if it does not work out the way we expect it or desire it to. What do we think then? Did we fail to put it into God's hands or was it only ever our own desire or plan and by saying the evangelical words over it we somehow attempt to add a divine seal of approval to it and thereby assure success? Here's another one, I heard someone pray that those hearing the prayer would be "led" to step up and lead in this or that ministry that was being prayed about. But this whole concept of not doing anything unless we are "led" more often than not is just an excuse we hide behind, and sometimes people are "led" to do things that have nothing of God in them or about them. Can't we just trust that the way God has put us together and the fact that we are in relationship to him in some way makes us aware of the way things are around us and moves us to respond appropriately? If that is being led, then I guess we are on the same page, but I get the distinct impression that what I just said about responding is not what evangelicals mean when they pray for a leading.

Last one for today. Why do pastors use peer pressure to "get an Amen" to what they say or pray? "Can I get an Amen?" at some point in a sermon seems almost to be the Christian equivalent of a laugh track. It is intended to remind us that something profound or true has just been said and we should respond to it in some way, much as canned laughter is intended to let us know when the joke occurs. The problem is that there are many things that I do not agree with, many things that I have no wish to express an affirmation to. Just because someone is in the pulpit does not make everything they say true, or right, or honorable, or divine. So please don't make me feel guilty about not responding to what you say. Saying Amen in church is right up there with role-playing or songs that require hand or body actions for me. They only alienate me from what is going on and more often than not are inappropriate and ill-placed.

Life and Purpose

I was reflecting the other day on whether everything in life has to have purpose and meaning. I can certainly go to the scriptures and run out all the scriptures that say all things work together for the good, that God has a future and a hope for my life, that Jesus came to give me life and that abundantly. But where I have the problem is hearing people describe every event in life as the sovereign hand of God acting to twist the world this way or that to make their life holy and complete. And I wonder whether the things that fill our day are really the hand of God at work, or only just the ins and outs of daily life breaking against us as we make our way. I can certainly see where one could receive a great deal of comfort and assurance into the hand-of-God-at-work view, but most of the confirmation of that tends to be reading meaning back into something that happened to us that had absolutely no meaning or the wrong meaning at the time it happened. I understand where all of these other views of God come from, the ones that liken him to a master clock maker that winds up his creation and lets it run, or the people that question God's sovereign action in everything and tend to see life as generally God's plot lines but without the detail all worked out.

I'm not sure where I weigh in completely on this question, I just know that I never quite feel at ease when someone expounds on how their husband's cancer, or their bankruptcy, or the death of their youngest child was just God at work bringing about a greater good or glory. It always has a hollow ring to it and somehow I don't think that is the way is should be. This musing isn't finished and there will be more to say on it.

Prayer before the Sermon II, A Word versus God's Word

I find myself become very aware of all of the evangelical sort of things that we do in a Sunday worship service and how the congregation is supposed to react, and what would happen if we just went about doing business with God without all of the fluff and trapping. This week there was a variation on the prayer before the sermon and it went sort of like this, 'May I decrease and you increase as I bring Your word to Your people." Now all of that sounds really good in an evangelical setting, we expect to hear something more or less like it each Sunday, but what the heck does it mean? Does it mean that sermon preparation really does not matter, or that the way a sermon is presented has nothing to do with the way it is received, or that sermon length is not relevant and one hour sermons are just like sitting on the mountain listening to Jesus preaching? Would we be disappointed if our pastor presented some keen insight into the scripture, howbeit his own insight, not the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What if he delivered a practical message with four steps that we could implement that he has spent years working out in his own life, would we consider that divine instruction in how to live? Why do we demand that every sermon be from the very mouth of God? It seems to me that Jesus was a much better example to us of who God is and what He wants for His creation then reading the bible front to back every year and searching out principles that we can write on index cards and magnet to our refrigerator. And it seems to me that seeing the message and example of Jesus lived out day in and day out in the people around us, pastor included, has much more power to move our own lives in the right direction than all of the evangelical practices. Things like this are nothing more than the Christianized version of political correctness. Let's stop making things out to be more than they really are. Go to work, do your homework, expound the scripture simply and persuasively, tell us about Jesus and the good news of God's love, admit that you may not know everything, give us something practical to do or think about and we will go home with something to draw on. But don't pretend that the sermon is an audience with God and that a prayer makes everything better. It hardly ever does.

My Coming to Grips with the Word of God

First let me say that I hold the written word of God in pretty high regard, but lately I have been struggling with all of the evangelical baggage that is currently associated with the Bible...concepts such as inerrant, verbally inspired, or complete (no further revelation necessary and containing all we need to live now and eternally). There is a plethora (I love that word) of radio personalities that make a living bringing us a word of encouragement, or teaching us great insights, or putting our lives back together all from this amazing book. But every time I hear someone say "God has promised..." and then they read a verse from the Bible I have to wonder, especially when it is Paul or Peter saying something under very particular circumstances to a very specific individual. And suddenly what was a record of God's miraculous work on behalf of the world throughout history becomes a promise that we can stand on. But was it ever meant to be that? Did Paul know he was being used as a scribe of the Holy Spirit to comment on church behavior or organization? To see what I mean, read Paul's letter to Philemon, or John's letter to Gaius (3rd John) and try to see these books as God-breathed encyclicals given for your edification, salvation, and growth in the circumstances you face today. These are obvious examples, but you can see the dilemma I am in.

I have always felt that the current evangelical church confuses the word of God with God Himself and makes no distinction between the two (because that is one of those written or unwritten premises upon which evangelical faith rests in this century). They worship the book rather than the Author. I don't feel like a heretic to say that they are not one and the same but that is the box that I am sometimes pushed towards in what I read and what I hear. I still read and reread the word of God, but I confess that I am less prone to hear "Thus sayeth the Lord God to you Russell..." and more apt to read because some things were written that I might believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and believing find life in His name. And because some things were written for my example that I could avoid the pitfalls that others have fallen into. I don't have all the answers but do know that I have no other good place to turn in my journey towards answers. That is good enough for me today.

Directional Prayer Focus

I am at that stage in my spiritual life where I notice almost everything that fills a normal experience of Christian worship or teaching, and wonder where the practice or content first originated, and, more importantly, whether it is worthy keeping just for the sake of nostalgia. For instance, I have noticed for weeks now that when the pastor says the prayer of thanksgiving over the morning's offering, he instinctively turns towards the front of the church with the congregation to his back or mostly back. This is to indicate, in part, his solidarity with the congregation as they approach God with their offerings, but why the front of the church? And does it matter that his solidarity with us is broken by multiple steps and a rail?

The real issue for me, however, is the front of the church with its central altar (it really looks like an old Roman Catholic altar to me, it definitely is not a table), central golden cross sans Jesus, and prominent pulpit bible placed on a stand. Add some backdrop of old organ pipes from an organ no longer present, some curtains and a couple of candle and you have the closest this old Protestant Church can come to the holy of holies. Now it may be argued that God inhabits His word, or that the empty cross is the sign of our deliverance or even that 99% of the people are already facing this direction so it is a good place to turn to "face" the presence of God for this important prayer. But the reality is that God does not sit in the front of the church, sacred furnishings are no resting place for His presence, and our particular church faces to the northeast so there is not even a good historical precedent for the direction of our prayer. My thought was, how odd it is that we look to the front of the church to find the presence of God, when according to all that I read, God resides within the hearts of His congregation by the power of the Holy Spirit. It is in the pews that we need to seek the face of God for there it is most visible, no longer a lofty idea, but a gritty incarnation of divine spirit abiding in flesh. And that is a change of perspective that I welcome.

Prayer before the Sermon - Evangelical Practice

In our church we have someone pray just before the reading of the scripture and just before the pastor brings the message. And it is pretty predictable in its formula, it has a salutation to God or Jesus, some sort of please open our minds and hearts to receive the word that you are going to put into Pastor (insert name here) message, and a closing that declares that we hope it does us some good. And then the pastor usually prays again at the start that God would make him a worthy vessel and speak his words through him. But I always find myself wondering if that is what really happens each Sunday. How can we know that the sermon is God's word for us today? We've been programmed to believe that, or at least hope for it, but why do we even need to say it or pray it at all? Why must everything be God's word, God's direction for this very minute? Why can't the sermon just be some insightful comments on the scriptures, or an application of a scriptural truth, or even just some wise opinion or statements that the pastor wants to share? Why do we demand that the very words of the sermon be the very words of God spoken from heaven through the pastor to us who are gathered on a Sunday? If the pastor has our best interest at heart, if he is a man of God seeking to be faithful to his calling, if he has been accurate in his reading of the scripture and diligent in his exposition of its content, isn't that beneficial as well? What I am saying is this. If God is present in our gathering, and each of us are responsible before him in whatever position or location we occupy in the congregation, isn't this enough to validate what we do, hear, or speak on any given Sunday?

I only say that because if the typical Sunday sermon is really the very word of God being spoken then I feel very guilty because it does not seem like there is often a whole lot of substance to God's message and I have been very remiss in being cut to the heart by the message. But I do hear truth, I do seek for application, I want to receive all that is offered. I just don't want to have to struggle with another unnecessary evangelical practice and dogma that we keep foisting on ourselves each Sunday. Every sermon is not another revelation from heaven, every pastor is not an Apostle Paul debating before his audience, some Sunday's I tend to be a little hard of hearing and slow of heart...but that does not make it unprofitable. It remains what it is, I just can't play the game of trying to make it more than it is.

Error and Renewal

So I am making my way through this trilogy written by Hans Kung, and since I came across the books in different places, I have read them in the wrong order. But this final volume, actually his first volume, is on Judaism. And today I read some of his thoughts on why the church failed the Jews during the rise of National Socialism. He was talking about the concept of infallibility and how, even when there is no formal infallible statement being made, such an infallible church has the greatest of difficulties in acknowledging errors. You've all done that stupid move that begins by pulling a loose thread in a woven fabric only to suddenly see a line develop, pull away and soon a hole exists in the fabric where there wasn't any earlier. An infallible church is afraid to admit error because things start coming unwoven and soon there are holes, holes that once were all neatly woven into the fabric of official pronouncement. I came from a church that could not admit error. To say that they were wrong about this made people wonder whether they were wrong about that, and you can see where such a tendency leads.

But I thought to myself why must it lead there, why does it not rather lead to a pulling out of something that was woven in mistakenly, a flaw in the fabric, a place where it will not long retain much strength or sustain any close scrutiny. Pull out that flaw and replace it with truth. This is not like putting a new patch on an old garment, it's like creating the garment new and whole from the start. The admission of error is always the door that leads to repentance, and repentance leads to renewal, and renewal is that which always carries us into the future with no baggage or regrets brought along.

New Years Blog Resolution

So I slacked off, what else is new? It's not that I did not have anything to write, it's just that I was busy, or playing online games, or facebooking, or a dozen other excuses. So resolved, this year I am going to blog more. Why? It's not that I have anything earth shattering to share, but I do have something to say, and why not say it here? You don't even need anyone to really read it, somehow the writing, the saying of the words, makes them more real. They go from being thoughts or ideas or musing to concrete opinion. But I think that some of my opinions must be shared by hundreds of other people. Maybe they will stumble across them in a Google search gone wrong and find that they were not alone in their opinion, that there are others like them. And even if no one ever finds what I write, somehow the action of writing solidifies my own thought in my brain, and that cannot be a bad thing after all. Maybe just having to put thought into letters, letters into words, words into sentences forces me to define, refine, cut through the crap, find the essence worth repeating. So let's see what the year brings, at least its a clean slate waiting to be written upon and today I made a start.