Next Door to Percy

Take Your Place Among Us

2011-12-25T01:44:00.001-05:00

Dear Baby Jesus

It’s starting to make more sense to me
why people go home
come home
for Christmas

Maybe it’s just right that your birthday
would be marked
by a feverish return to the familiar

Everywhere these few two days
unsuspecting pilgrims
making the holiday trek
on rails, on tires, on wings

All en route
back to the center of their lives
back home
Back to a place of hoped-for gravity
in a world
otherwise weightless

Many find it
and there is gladness

Some do not
and with the forthcoming flip of the calendar
the search goes on

Now whether these holiday hoards know it or not
(that’s a matter of some theological debate, you know)
all this traveling home this week
seems a fitting party
for your fleshly advent among us

From the start of your story
you were always at the center of things

You’ve continually made your bed among us
right here in our ranks

We call it
Nativity

I remember well my mother’s chalky-white nativity set
Its annual December appearance on the dark marble hutch
along the wallpapered side of the dining room

After the stuffing of Thanksgiving
After the last LSU game in November
out it came
from the dark nether regions of the attic
all 12 pieces

The whole blessed scene
probably a Green Stamp purchase
during some closeout season gone by

I remember
your tiny little hands and feet
formed in cheap Plaster of Paris

your manger
cast in a sweat-shop mold like 1000s of others

your familiar scene-mates
each one with MADE IN HONG KONG affixed to their bottoms

All of it
as if to say
Jesus
the Lord of All
even down at the Dollar Den

And although
(when my mother’s attention was elsewhere)
it was my great delight to rearrange
shepherds and sages
to put Joseph outside with the bleating sheep
camels on their wise men
and
oxen up where only angels should trod

I never dared moved you, baby Jesus.
It never felt right.

You always seemed to fit
in the center of things

The hub for their wheel
The sun in their middle
to fix their orbits

Even as an infant
there you were
on the mantle
already calling God’s chosen band to gather round

You
the smallest
most helpless
most needy of them all
most Plaster of Paris among them

Born a sacred irony
their Life and Love and Lord

So I say
Come again
grown up Jesus
Come and take your post
at the center of our lives

Rearrange the oft-handled
mishandled pieces
of our homes and hearts
Until each finds its proper place on the periphery
encircling your Easter life

Come again
O Jesus
Be that blessed homecoming
at the end of all our misguided, wayward treks

Show us that weight of glory
that ballasts our wispy, worried world

Teach us to live in the shelter of your sanctuary
until at last
when the fever of this life is over
we are home
raised up!
for good

For this is who you are
Nativity Jesus
our Plaster of Paris Prince
Founder of my Fragile Faith

You
so small and yet so hilariously glorious
You
the hub of our salvation
the core of our communion
the weight of our world

Come
take your place among us
Right here
where you most belong

At the center of our lives

Charge to a New Pastor

2011-08-10T01:03:00.000-04:00

On this, the day of your ordination to the pastoral office,
the Presbytery offers you this binary charge:

Firstly, remember these moments: the latticework of hands applied to your head, the nine rash and quixotic vows you have just made, and this wonderfully impossible summons to a particular, peculiar ministry among Jesus’ people. Remember this moment, because everything is different for you now. You are a Teaching Elder. And this new nomenclature calls for a fresh focus -- a myopia, even -- as, after today, you carve up your time and choose your tasks.

In the words of our new Form of Government, may you now be “committed [above all other tasks] to teaching the faith and equipping the saints for the work of ministry.” That may be new wording, but it honors a venerable Presbyterian tradition about how the pastor should spend her God-given time: Teaching the faith. Equipping the saints. In your pastorate, some will want you to become a generalist, to be many things to many people, to spread yourself out thinly and evenly, like some manner of ecclesiastical jelly—what one critic of mainline clerical ministry has called “a quivering mass of availability.”

But by your vows today, we pray you will instead preserve the best of your time and talent for these most crucial tasks: Teaching the faith. Equipping for ministry. Says Stanley Hauerwas: “Pastors would do well to examine their schedules and ruthlessly delete any activity that doesn't help people do that which they do in worship.” 1. Hear God 2. Respond to God.

Hear us well: Others can organize Pandamania. Others can surf OrientalTrading.com for hats and pencils. Many can redecorate the bulletin board, defrag the Sunday School computers, reattach eyes to the puppets, stock the goodie boxes for servicewomen.

It is not that you are now above these tasks, it is rather that you are now below them —- not in personhood, but in function. You are now the lowly steward of that undergirding word of God that God’s people urgently need —- that foundational news, that calls forth fresh faith, illicits new dreams, make saints out of sinners, raises the dead.

You are now to a First Church of Samuels, an Eli (without the age lines, of course). Whatever else you do, with and for your Samuels, mine the depths of scripture, eavesdrop for God’s word, keep an ear cocked for the shocking Easter news, and listen for the Spirit’s movement. Listen well, and speak well what you hear -— whether it takes 5 or 45 minutes, whether it wins you supporters or scoffers -— be the Eli we have now set you to be. Be a minister of the word for Jesus’ people in the world.

Know that you will have many hats put upon you, now that R-E-V precedes your name. Organizer, therapist, guru, motivational speaker, public relations officer, boiler superintendent, seasonal chaplain, replacement parent, replacement spouse, CEO, CFO, CIA (that’s a long story). Don’t dismiss these hats, or those who bring them, as if you cannot be bothered. Instead, stay connected to all who come and go with their real or felt needs. But we ask you to quietly, doggedly, protect that one fundamental work God is now giving you —- word and sacraments -- so that by these, your people will be built up and nourished as the people of God.

And so we charge you to remember your ordination to this peculiar post.

Never forget that everything is different for you now.

Secondly, I charge you to forget everything I just said.

Nothing changes today; not one thing that matters. You were yesterday, and will remain tomorrow, first and foremost, ontologically, a child of God and a simple student of Jesus. Nothing more. Nothing less. Never forget this. Show me a preacher who is no longer a mere Christian and I will show you a fire without heat or flame or light. Preachers like me crackle and pop and sputter, but in the end, God always uses mere believers, not unionized clerics, to light up the world.

We’ve ordained you, yes indeed, but that has no eternal effect on your status with God, and neither is it the reason you can now say you are “in the ministry.” You’ve been in the ministry most of your life—the ministry that matters, Jesus’ ministry—loving the Lord, loving neighbor. Baptism is the mark most holy; not ordination. Don’t ever forget this.

We suspect you won’t. The vision of church as including all of God’s people in service, what Romans calls “one body with many members,” that vision is floating around in your DNA. You saw it in your parents, you’ve taught it your kids, you’ve known it in the churches you have served, you believe it in your bones. Remarkable vision: “We who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.” No one is more important than another; only Christ is absolute.

But know that many will come wanting to make it about you; wanting, needing, you to be absolute. Some will tell you are indispensible. You are not. Some will insist you are needed in every meeting. You are not. Others will say you are the face of the church in the community (better yours than mine), but you are not. If they tell you, you are the boss, the leader, the head, the honcho, the alpha/omega … quietly remind them: that would be Jesus.

In the words of the poet Dawna Markova, “choose to risk your significance.” Work to keep yourself and the church you serve out of the absolute position. Work to keep God in it.
Lead worship in such a way that they leave saying, not “R. did a lovely job,” but “God be praised.” Preach in such a way that they respond, not to you “That was good sermon, R.,” but more to God: “Take my life and let it be …” Give counsel in such a manner that one says, not “I could not do this without you,” but “I know now how I can follow the Lord!”

And when others drive by on East B., instead of “Hey, isn’t that R.’s church?” let it be said, in large measure by the mere Christianity you practice within your ministry, “Hey, I think that’s Jesus’ church.”

Risk your significance, because the best thing we can say about you -- the best that can be said about any of us -- is that in life and in death, in our falling or in our rising, we belong to God.

Dear friend, now colleague, remember this truth:
Everything has changed. Nothing has changed.

You are a Teaching elder. You are a child of God.

Welcome.
Godspeed.

Resurrection Ripples

2011-06-21T15:38:00.000-04:00

In the broadest bend of the long, gravel driveway leading to my Louisiana home place sat a pond of modest size. Various wildlife called the little lagoon home, including a fox and a veritable Tabernacle Choir of evening frogs. For much of the year, the pond supported a layer of deep green algae, thick on the surface like a porridge. This covering made for still waters, so stagnant one could drive by and not even notice there was a body of water in the bend of the lane.

Except that there were rocks, lots of rocks. It was fortuitous for me that the nearby driveway was laid in generous gravel. Many a summer hour I spent as a lad tossing that gravel, piece by piece, into the middle of that pond. Some stones skipped, some sputtered, a few larger specimens landed with an impressive ker-plunk. Regardless of size, all my tosses produced ripples of some kind on the water—ever-widening circles of effect, moving from center to shore. Even those singing nightclub frogs, quiet in the hot afternoon, knew something was afoot as the rippled waves washed up on their domiciles. Ripples.

Late this summer in our Sunday preaching we will take up the New Testament book of Acts, or at least portions thereof. “Book” hardly does Acts justice; more like “wild ride.” If the gospels give us the canon’s master story—the news of Jesus’ living, dying, and rising—then the adventure that is Acts serves up “the rest of the story.” And what a postscript to Jesus it is: flames flickering, tongues appearing, wind blowing; ailments healed, speeches preached, prayers answered; outcasts welcomed, zealots enraged, servants condemned; Peter is convinced, Paul is converted, and Stephen is convicted.

We might say that Acts is one new wave of divine drama after another. Every chapter reveals one more resurrection ripple flowing out into the world from the epicenter of Jesus’ astonishing new Easter-life. “He is risen!” turns out to be massive ker-plumk in the world, sending out rings of redemption in every direction.

Good thing. We need those ripples washing up on our shore, season after season. Acts awakens us to the divine power available in Jesus’ name. Acts emboldens us for the sometimes-bumpy encounters between gospel and culture. Acts stokes our faith imagination, inviting us—demanding us!—to consider what new Holy-Spirit-wave God is asking us to ride out into God’s world.

Ker-plunk.

Follow, Follow, Follow

2011-05-08T06:30:00.002-04:00

The familiar (annoying?) tune of the Munchkins might as well be our church theme song, except that the path we trod as Christians is not the famed Yellow Brick Road. We walk the Jesus Way. We are, nevertheless, followers. We follow, follow, follow. (Sing with me now! Ug.)

“Followers.” There is little about this word that rings positive in the times in which we live. Do you want your kid to be a follower? Do you want to be known as a “follower?” The prevailing culture prizes autonomy, self-sufficiency, and “doing your own thing.” Everyone wants to be a superstar, “original.” Many of our cultural heroes not only stand apart, they stand alone. Who wants to mimic another?

And yet, we believers follow. As Jesus people, Jesus’ people, we do not blaze our own trail through this world. We seek to unmask the idolatry of incessant originality and instead give thanks for a “path of righteousness,” a way that leads to good standing with God (Psalm 1). And we do not walk alone. We walk behind one who has gone on up ahead of us, securing the destination and marking the way (Hebrews 2:17-18). It is encouraging to know that someone has been this way before.

In younger days, back before parenthood and grown-up responsibilities, I was a frequent backpacker. Especially in Boy Scout days, the packs we donned were of such a size that it made seeing the trail up ahead difficult. Although the landscape to the sides could bring visual relief, one usually spent the better part of a day’s walk staring at the waddling pack just ahead. And the boots. You learned to watch the boots of the guy in front of you. Up and down hills, across streams, around the mud: By paying attention to the boots a few steps in front of you, you could avoid a great deal of pitfalls along the way. Muddy socks, slippery moss, twisted ankles. It paid to be an attentive follower.

We are talking in church lately a good deal about DISCIPLESHIP. A disciple is essentially a student: a pupil of a teacher. Disciples follow someone. As it were, they study the feet of one who walks ahead of them and seek to mimic the moves and follow the same path. Discipleship means giving up on the idea that one can bushwhack a corridor through life however and wherever one sees fit. The mark of baptism says, “I am a follower of Jesus now. I am walking in his way, following his steps. I relinquish the idea that I must always be my own woman, my own man.”

In the regressive, selfish times in which we walk, this new posture is as counter-cultural an act as one could imagine: to give up our “God-given” right to walk alone, in our own way, and instead to give over our lives to one who leads, guides, and directs our path. Following smacks of foolishness. And yet, it is the way of salvation. Step by step, turn by turn, we study the feet of Jesus and mimic his moves. Therein we find ourselves, and our neighbor, and God—all in following another.

In the words of songwriter Chris Rice:

Father Love prepares a place,
and Brother Jesus leads the way.
Follow to the place where you belong.

Capacitation

2011-02-06T23:03:00.000-05:00

What a great word. Fun to say, too. Capacitation.

Not quite Carly Simon’s famous word, but close.

A version of the term I did not anticipate popped out at me unexpectedly last fall, a springy snake from one of those trickster can o’ nuts. In October, thirty of us gathered in our Social Hall with our Dominican Republic pals Pastor C. and his wife. We met for a panel discussion on ministry, hoping to learn from them home-grown insights about moving out into God’s world. Helping God’s people grow in ministry seemed naturally to take us down the path of growing leaders.

“The pastor cannot do it all himself,” C. reminded us, through our interpreter. “You have to grow leaders. You have to capacitate them.”

Capaci-what?

As the moderator of the panel time, I looked quizzically at our interpreter.

“What was that word!?”

She hastily retraced the Spanish in her mind. “That’s what he said,” somewhat bemused herself. “He’s saying capacitate them.” Pop! (the aforementioned snake from the can)

What a great word for growing ministry.

Two years ago in our church offices we were experiencing perennial problems staying connected to the Internet. The boys from Adelphia swooped in, crawled all over our building as in catacombs, and soon issued the diagnosis. Old wiring.

“We’re going to pull all new cable through the building. That should keep you connected, and increase capacity.” Indeed it has. Presbyterian bits and bytes sail along these days.

The person who trusts me will not only do what I’m doing but even greater things, because I, on my way to the Father, am giving you the same work to do that I’ve been doing. You can count on it. That’s Jesus, in John 14.

Turns out our Christ is in the capacitation business: growing God’s people—growing us!—to do greater works in the world for God. And growing congregations, too: to provide more capacity for others to share in God’s ministry. Jesus, the cable guy; rewiring the church.

I’ve spent the better part of 30 months in the catacombs of our shared spiritual house, working on what I now know to call capacitation. I wonder: How is God calling you to capacitate? In your family? your work? your world? In your self?

This month, four of us have the opportunity to capacitate the mission partnership we share with our Dominican sisters and brothers. During his visit in the fall, Pastor C. invited D.D., C.W., and me to come to the annual General Assembly meeting of his church—the Evangelical Church of the Dominican Republic.

Pastor C. was recently elected General Secretary of the entire church, and in that post he will watch over all 80+ ECDR congregations and chapels on the island, their pastors, and their mission. He tells us that by our coming he hopes to expand the blessings of our long-standing partnership by inviting other Dominican churches to consider stepping out into similar cross-cultural relationships.

His sense of call to this has awakened our own: Here in Shenango Presbytery, D.D. has encouraged Clen-More and New Wilmington churches to reach out to new congregations for sharing in the DR partnership. Already West Middlesex has responded by sending some members on our March trip. It it conceivable, in a season still on its way, that there may be multiple, parallel partnerships reciprocating between God’s people in western Penn and God’s people on the northern shores of the Dominican. Exciting stuff, and we see this as God calling us to do some rewiring. Capacitation.

What a great word. And so much fun to see.

Splash down

2011-01-20T00:59:00.001-05:00

Baptism of the Lord Sunday
Isaiah 42 / Matthew 3:13-17

As a callow follower of Jesus
I am so grateful for the gospel writers
and the early congregations of Christians
who first prompted then received their words

I am so grateful to have
with you
a front row seat
to the baptism of Jesus

I am so honored to be given a spot
on the banks of the diminutive Jordan River
standing with my feet
in the warm Palestinian mud
surrounded by the company of all the faithful
of every time and place

watching the river waters
waiting for the big moment

Down he goes
into the murky water
flat on his back into the unknown
(although he is in the good care of John)

John
whose very title
is confirmed in this moment
John the B
John the Baptist
not Southern, or American, or independent
John the Baptizer

John lowers our friend
down into the water

and we all watch
as the Jordan closes in above him
around him
over him

like the muddled waters before God creates
like the Red Sea closing in on obstinate Pharaoh
like sundown, on a Friday night at Golgotha

covered him completely, these waters
like a tomb
my tomb

Only, before long
(mercifully, his absence is only temporary)
here he comes again!
The mushrooming ripples on the surface
announce his arrival
back on the scene

Up from the water

By simple straightforward appearance
from the river’s edge:
one more faithful first-century Jew
washing
cleansing
marking

But by theological export
by the choirs of a million churches
by divine appointment

It may as well be a blue whale
surfacing from the deep

Blue whale:
the largest mammal ever to exist
108 feet, 180 metric tons

Our Lord:
slightly shorter
a little lighter
but arguably (blessedly)
the largest life ever to have lived

He surfaces from the deep like a leviathan
Only, not a monster — a friend
Still, the splash he makes is impressive
ripples of mercy running every which way

He’ll steadily and firmly set things right.
I’ve bathed him with my Spirit, my life.
He’ll set everything right among the nations.
Opening blind eyes
releasing prisoners from dungeons
emptying the dark prisons

I’m announcing the new salvation work.
Before he bursts on the scene, I’m telling you all about it.

This is God’s big splash!

And here we are
God’s funny people — "the holy catholic church"
like tourists on one of those hit-or-miss
whale-watching cruises
off the coast of Maine

$49.99 to get dressed up in a paper-thin poncho
and to stay mildly seasick for an hour
and to get stuck next to Mildred
from Montgomery, Alabama

Mildred: who while you wait to see the “big fish”
tells you all about her fascinating seven grandchildren
and her Schnoodle
Trixie

But there we are
all on the same side of the boat
leaning out to catch the view
cell phone cameras ready
tweets and texts, all set

Gawking tourists in search of God

When suddenly
the tin-can intercom behind you crackles to life

“Ladies and gentleman
This is your captain, John B.
Take a look now,
just to the east,
something is about to surface.
Get those cameras ready!”

Up.
Out!
SPLASH!

And from the railing of the ark
(Did I say ark? I meant boat)
there arises one of those collective ahs
like at the end of a really sweet fireworks show

But more than the spectacle of the splash down
the waves are what really catch our attention

This giant from God
coming up from the deep -- our deep, our death
with ripples that rock our boats-of-safety:

Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn,
for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek,
for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful,
for they will receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart,
for they will see God.

And then that ship’s intercom
crackles to life again:

"This is my Son,
the Beloved,
with whom I am well pleased."

Touch

2011-01-04T22:18:00.000-05:00

A funeral homily for a physician

Romans 8 / Mark 1:40-45

It would surely be the height of presumption, and theologically suspect, to conclude that any one particular profession is the most Christian of occupations.

On the face of it, the best candidate for a solidly Christian profession would be carpentry. By most historical reconstructions, Jesus was, among other things, a trained carpenter. And surely at the bottom of the list would be preachers, since our Lord was consistently hardest on and most critical of preachers and other professional religious types like me.

But a case can made, I think, that the practice of healing, the art of medicine, the curing of disease—these are terribly Christian sorts of things to be about. And this is particularly so when such practices are imbued with acts of personal sacrifice, with a living concern for another’s well-being, and with a thoroughgoing love of neighbor. Love of neighbor, let us remember, being Jesus’ second commandment for all like R. H. who would follow in his way—in Jesus’ practice of God’s medicine in the world.

At bottom, what makes the practice of medicine a Christian act is likely not competency, but compassion. (Although, one need not suggest these two are in conflict with one another.) But to be human with one’s patients is to care for them, as well as their bodies. It is to offer, not merely advice or prescription, but counsel, concern, care. This is—if I may say it this way—a very Jesus sort-of-thing to do.

On Friday, the family and I were talking about the good counsel Dr. H. was given early on in his practice by a mentor in the profession. Essentially it was this: When there are no medicines to prescribe for one’s patient, there is always the gift of human touch. This wisdom, so important to your father, put one of you in the family in mind of Spencer Free’s lovely verse:

’Tis the human touch in this world that counts,
The touch of your hand and mine,
Which means far more to the fainting heart
Than shelter and bread and wine.
For shelter is gone when the night is o’er,
And bread lasts only a day.
But the touch of the hand
And the sound of the voice
Sing on in the soul always.

Free’s gentle words and our conversation on Friday put me in mind of Mark, chapter 1. The afflicted leper: broken in body from a dreaded skin disease, cut off from his community because of contagion. He boldly prevails upon Jesus for healing. “If you choose, you can make me well.”

At this moment, we all take a deep breath to see how it is God’s servant-son Jesus will respond. Mercifully, the gospel writer is unambiguous: Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to the leper, “I do choose. Be made clean!”

Note well the compassion.
Note well the deliberate choice.
Note well the touch.

All those late-night phone calls.
The untold miles across Lawrence County.
More exchanges of compassion, counsel, care than can be numbered.

And even when calamities could not be cured through a prescription pad, at least your father was human—Christian, in that sense.

I wonder: Could it be that the work of a compassionate doctor is a faithful echo of God’s redemptive work in the world? Could it be a pointer to this Jesus, who choses care and compassion and practices healing and such good touch?

Of course, even healers themselves need healing sometimes.

Dr. H's time as a physician, R’s time in life, has now come to an end. For now, in this world, that seems to be the nature of things. But remember that we gather within these walls, in this building, long dedicated to announcing the good news of God. We gather here not just to remember a life well lived, or a profession well inhabited, but to remember a God’s promises, well-transacted. Nothing — neither life nor death — will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The physician is now the patient.

And he is in the good care of a good God,
who is moved with compassion,
who reaches out to touch lives,
who says to those he loves,

“I do choose: Be made well.”

It is so for R.H.
May it be so for each of us as well.

God’s “Glory”

2010-12-12T09:11:00.000-05:00

He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being. (Hebrews 1:3)

There were so many Roman Catholics in the South Louisiana of my upbringing that even as late as the 1980s, we never ate meat on Fridays at my public school. Half my friends were altar boys, who often were excused early from middle school classes to attend training with their priest. Given this context, on occasion as a boy I found myself in a Roman Catholic sanctuary. Somewhere along the line, even my mother—a cradle Presbyterian—fell into the habit of attending midnight mass on Christmas Eve at the Benedictine seminary that lay hidden in the woods north of our town.

More often than not, I went with her. To be honest, I’m not sure why. What was probably only 45 minutes of Roman liturgy felt to this kid like an eon of chatter, not to mention the funny smoke up and down the aisle and those kneelers that were hard on the knees. As Protestants, we could not share in the mass-meal, but my mom always said she loved the scripture readings and the traditional chanting-in-song that went with them. As for me, all I wanted to do was get back home—back to bed, so as to shorten the chronological distance between me and my latest Lego acquisition on Christmas morning. My mom would count the chants leading to the birth; I was counting the minutes leading to my exit.

Except for the ceiling.

There was (is) in the chapel there at St. Joseph’s Abbey the most marvelous ceiling. To my discredit, it was the only feature of the night that ever held my attention. Sweeping arches, running in what seemed like every direction, with every space filled with the most marvelous fresco paintings I have ever beheld. The ceiling was chock-a-block with characters. Biblical characters. Adam and Eve and Moses and Miriam. All the prophets, kings, apostles. Mother Mary (of course), but also father Joseph. They were all up there, vibrant like Kodachrome, with their quasi-human faces. And of course, front and center in fab fresco was Jesus. Massive and magisterial, taking up more real estate than most others combined, he loomed large before us—over us, really. I can remember studying his steely eyes and flowing robes for what seemed like hours.

Ironic: We were supposed to be paying attention to everything happening all around us, but I confess I spent most of the midnight hour looking up above us.

So it is sometimes with the birth of the Son of God.

The title itself is grandiose. The expectations, enormous. “The Son of God!” No wonder the fresco on his Facebook page was 10 times that of all the others. This guy is a big deal. God announces the sending of a Son, the Son (meaning: the way a King sends a Prince, as in Psalm 2), and instinctively we all look up—to see power, to see prestige, to see a picture of God’s presence which of course must be high and lofty.

This is perhaps the great comedy of Christmas: We are all looking up to heaven, for the big bang of his appearance, for the pomp and circumstance of those marvelous vaulted ceilings, for a boy whose resume’ matches the Messiah we sing. Instead, Son of God comes as a mere neighbor to sit down on the pew, just next to us. He comes as a 1st century Palestinian rabbi from the other side of the tracks, with little to his name and even less for a bed. Instead of bang, he slips in with a whisper. Hardly the stuff of larger-than-life frescos.

It is not that he doesn’t deserve the ceiling, or could not himself secure it. It is that he consistently chooses otherwise, as in Philippians 2. The Christ appears in this world, not in a grandiose display of power and might, but in the arms of a woman who never in her right mind imagined she herself would one day be enthroned on the ceilings of sanctuaries. Every year, the world looks up for a Hail Mary pass from God; Jesus turns out once again to be a lateral move down on our level.

This is God’s glory—a birthing center full of domestic animals? This is God’s awesome power—mercy for those who need it most? This is the potency of God’s wrath—a life laid down for those whose life needs lifting up? Christmas comedy: I’m looking up at the sky for a Cecil B. Demille production; meanwhile, the risen Jesus comes alongside me as a stranger asking, with a touch of irony, “Hey, what are you looking for up there? I’m down here: in the broken bread, in the call to service, in the face of your neighbor in the pew and the stranger on the curb, in the stables, in the trenches, on the crosses. I’m down here: the true reflection of God’s greatest glory.”

Thanks be to God for the drab ceiling and the long pews.

TRIBUTUM

2010-12-11T21:37:00.000-05:00

Saturday, September 18, 2004

Beloved Alma,

The invitation to speak a word in tribute about another’s life is an unqualified honor. To speak of your life thus far is certainly that. But given our friendship, this summons to speak of you is a sheer delight as well.

What’s a preacher to do in such a moment as this? How is one rightly to proceed? A tribute in the third person seems an option. “She was, she is, she will be …” Yet, in this mode, the words pass too easily over your ears, serving more as gift to those who gather with you on this day. This seems to me to miss the point of this hour, for this is your time to receive, as a living gift, some measure of how it is your words and your way have blessed the lives of those who love you – so many of whom are gathered here with you in this place.

“Tribute.” From the Latin, of course! TRIBUTUM: to grant, to allot, to bestow.

And so I am delighted to bestow these words to you, about you, all the while knowing that your hearing them will likely be a difficult pill for your otherwise self-effacing spirit to swallow. Indeed, your humility – that mild bit of embarrassment you evidence when in your presence someone draws attention to your many virtues – is one of graces we love about you, even if it tempts you now not to believe what you hear.

So listen you must, and listen well.

We are multivalent creatures, we who are created in God’s image. That is to say, our lives, if we are blessed, are thick with many layers. A tribute of any merit must furrow up these rich layers of a life. And with you, dear friend, this cultivation is an easy effort.

An initial glance at the vita of your life, Alma, and one finds in your personal and public résumé the touchstones of those deeper layers that define the woman you have become. This uppermost stratum is diverse and textured, and thoroughly noble. One notes your storied Virginia upbringing, an early heritage of Christian faith, stimulating collegiate study, training in the classics, public service to public education, a beloved marital bond, devoted motherhood (now on a grand scale), civic engagement with this fair town, volunteered time to those in need, and, of course, active membership and ordained office in this Presbyterian kirk. (You will note where my list culminates!)

There are other roles to note, other seasons that define, I am certain. But of these, I know. And for these, we all give thanks to God, because in some measure, every one in this room has connections to your story. In greater measure, everyone in this room has been made better having known you.

But even still, vitae are one-dimensional lists. We can all list the seasons of our lives; it does not mean that we have lived them well. But with you, Alma, deeper layers reveal deeper ways, for no one could ever accuse you of superficiality. Indeed, the underlying layer of any life is the one on which stand CORAM DEO, in the presence of God. And we Presbyterians are prone to believe that anything good that arises from our lives, any virtue evident to the world, is both a gift from God and a response to what God has done. “We love, because God first loved us.” If we sing, it is because God has song his song. If we pray, it is because God has spoken to us. If we compose, it is because God has written the poem of his works into our hearts. God acts; we respond.

And so, a pastor and friend cannot help but to note and name the myriad ways in which you, as a child of God in Christ, have responded to the graceful claim on your life.

For instance, I have always noted your devotion to your children: that durable, lasting bond that only a mother develops with her beloved offspring. So deeply have you rejoiced with them, wept with them, implanted faith in them, prayed for them. More than once have you offered them to the Lord: that most difficult of prayers, offered at the intersection of your desire to shelter them under your wings forever and your knowledge that you cannot save them, that you cannot be both Lord and mother. It is a mother’s prayer offered in a world “upside down.”

I also sense in you Alma, a deep love of place. When you speak of your life, one notes in your stories the rich details about the places in which you have responded to God. The hallowed halls of a collegiate library, where the beauty and the splendor of the Almighty and the creation began to come alive in your mind’s eye. The many classrooms of your profession, whose air was filled with chalky dust and words from languages long laid down, even while your mind and heart were filled with the names and lives and the welfare of your students. This little town, with its numerous meandering streets, each one mirroring a specific relationship you have woven with so many friends, colleagues, students, and neighbors. And certainly your lovely home, filled with the stuff of Alma: books and papers and letters … and piles … and memories: the raising of your children, the buttressing of your marriage, the welcoming of friends. And all the while, the working out of your salvation in word and in prayer. To transfer description: “A little house sitting and waiting, as if with a silent yearning.”

It seems to me that too many of us with faith in Christ have bought a Gnostic lie, believing ourselves sometimes too good for this world that God has gifted. We float on the surface of their lives, never really discovering that grace comes alive down deep in the thickness of life – in the odd, peculiar, specific places where we conduct our lives. “Let it be on earth, as it is in heaven,” we pray.

What I love about you Alma, is that you have taken God’s word into every nook and cranny of your earthy (rooted) life. Yours is not a subdivided spirit, nor are you more spiritual than God. And yet precisely because you are rooted in God’s creation, that God-shaped heart of yours – hardly ninety – awaits in eager expectation for the world yet to come. Living well, yet looking ahead. This is a witness to me.

Another layer in you that I love are all the unlikely juxtapositions, the contrasts of your person. Consider your innocent absentmindedness, set against your wise, luminous mind; your playful, even impish of sense of humor, set against a streak of sober righteousness that charts through your life like a burst of radiant sun, parting the fog and lighting our way behind you. And I love the fact that even after nine decades of life, you still wonder about things, you still chuckle when you hear a funny phrase, you still pray with childlike expectation – prayers carried on wise, old words. And you still dabble in innocent irreverence, while always making your nest in true doxology.

I also love that your Christianity cannot easily be pinned down, to one particular tradition or its perfunctory ways. Talk about juxtapositions: you are too passionate about the gospel of Jesus to be contained by stuffy, proper Presbyterians, yet you are too thoughtful, too full of faith, to roost with simplistic fundamentalists. You are too prayerful, too Spirit-filled for these tired old mainline traditions of ours, yet you are too grounded in the Word and its wisdom to be swept away by charismata alone. Alma, you are a consummate Christian, a virtuous daughter of faith, and you have been a model of devotion to this church, its members, and its several pastors, lo these many years.

And I have theory about you: that the frequently forgotten purse, the keys locked in the car, the water for tea too often left boiling on the stove … These are signs, not of decline, but that your thoughts regularly take up the great and glorious subjects, that your heart is absorbed with the grandeur of God, and that your life now has a nearly constant an upward gaze. So I say: Let the tea and the keys and purse be gone. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”

Which brings me to my last love about you, the final and best layer in which I have seen your regular response to God and his gracious Son. So many titles could name your life, so many roles: daughter, wife, mother; student, teacher, neighbor; disciple, elder, sister in Christ. But the one that has settled in me, that title that best describes you when I ponder your life, is poet. “Poet.”

POETA. Maker of verses. A creative artist with words. Says Webster, “a writer having great imaginative, expressive gifts, possessing a special sensitivity to language.” This is how I best imagine your life.

Now I know that you are not fond of this title, at least in reference to yourself. You think it too lofty, too immense, unfitting of one who “scribbled and imposed” her poetic verse. But you must learn to embrace it, Alma, before it is too late, for it is one of the manifold gifts that God has given you, specifically you, in order that you might bless the world for him. Poet. And let us be clear that a poet is not merely a rhymer of words. There is difference, after all, between Dr. Seuss and Gerard Manly Hopkins, and in that spectrum you take your providential place. Maybe in rhyme, but maybe not, a poet is one whose heart and mind are so awed to heaven that they cannot help but speak about its glories in the language of earth. Poets do not see their lives or the world in regimented sections or dangerous taxonomies. They do not settle for manufactured truth or easy, customary answers. They resist the opiate of busyness and constant pleasure, choosing instead to see with a vision through which few perceive: a view that God and his Word is indeed all in all – all over the world as Almighty, all over your life, Alma, as Lord.

As providence would have it, I recently stumbled upon a little verse of Walt Whitman, buried in a book written mostly for preachers. Whitman’s vision of the world is certainly different than mine and yours, yet his words came alive as I pondered this tribute for you. Says Walt:

After the seas are all cross’d, (as they seem already cross’d,)
After the great captains and engineers have accomplish’d their work,
After the noble inventors, after the scientists,
the chemist, the geologist, ethnologist,
Finally shall come the poet worthy that name,
The true son of God shall come singing his songs.

I note that, whatever his intentions, his “son of God” could easily be our dear Christ, our Lord. But I also note that his “singer,” his “poet,” could also be you, and me, and anyone who seeks to put the stuff off heaven into the words of earth.

For after all is said is done, after the facts and figures are all exhausted, after the cheap grace and prayer-less thought have run out … finally the poet comes, to speak about God and his grace, about faith, hope, and love.

And finally you come to us, as well, with your words and your ways:

You speak of your life, ruminating on the unstoppable providence of God, and “the tiny nudgings that come from time to time from beyond the stars.”

You speak of a grace, and of finding it in the most unlikely of places, like in “ice and water,” and in the kindness of one who delivers.

You speak to your children – words to them yet unborn, “tiny babes, in a world grown old.” You speak to their coming up and their playful years, and you speak to them in their going away.

You poke fun at us, too easily consumed with ourselves. You notice our all too funny ways. And in not thinking so highly of yourself, you have learned to take note of the frolicking, playful side of God’s gifted life: leaves crunching under foot, dogs burying their biscuits, chiggers in the blackberry patch. These too, make up the splendid creation.

And in your poetic way, you speak to God – particularly and often, I notice, about the world yet to come. Your writing make this clear: So ready are you, dear friend, for the great resurrection and the new day. How you long for that day in your words and in your heart. Perhaps your childlike hope is now disciplined and tuned by the loss of those you have so deeply embraced.

Only poets learn to speak out loud about that tensive space between the now and the not yet. But to turn your phrase, “Do not worry; far off places no longer matter. You are traveling now toward God.”

My dear friend,
with these words you come to us,
worthy of the poet name,
a true daughter of God,
singing his songs,
and speaking his words.

Beloved Alma, on behalf of all the Presbyterians of this flock, then and now, we give thanks to God for the wonder, joy, and beauty of your life lived so well before him. And we offer our fervent prayers (though not quite as well offered as by you) that there are still ample more days for you to listen to your storied life and to offer your words back to God. “Finally shall come the poet worthy that name.”

To God be all the glory; to you, all our love.

Godspeed and happy 90th birthday.

Three Gifts

2010-09-13T09:27:00.000-04:00

Written for the centennial celebration of Altavista Presbyterian Church

For as long as there has been a sanctuary to house the worship of the Altavista Presbyterian Church, her preachers have been afforded a weekly sight not normally noticed by the congregation: the distinctive three-cornered window high on the south wall of the building. Surely whoever drew up the plans for this little Tudor-style shelter for sinners knew something of Mr. Calvin’s good theology: a tri-cornered window to mark a Trinitarian faith. And when I consider my season in your congregation, I likewise recall a trinity of markers that reflect for me this kirk’s little light in the world.

I think first of furniture: sanctuary furniture—serious sanctuary furniture. Unlike many Christian worship spaces these days, wherein one could just as well play donkey basketball as much as dispense blessings, there is no mistaking what the Altavista sanctuary is all about: bath, book, and meal. For each of these three most-Christian of activities, the hand-me-down furniture is formidable. I remember the first time I gazed upon the elevated pulpit, wondering if for certain preachers oxygen masks would be made available—given the thinner atmosphere up there. The communion table: a giant surface fit for a generous feast, spruced up once or twice by the boys down at Lane. The font is no less impressive, a hefty perch for washing old sinners and marking new saints. Every now and then an anxious bride would ask me, “Um, could we, like, move these things out of here? They are kinda in the way.” Indeed they are, friend. I always blamed my solemn “no” on the sheer weight of each object, but I did not mean the kind known by Newton. More like Calvin’s. Nay, more like God’s.

But what good are hearty appointments without a people to worship around them? This brings to mind, secondly, the great weekly stampede known properly as the Passing of the Peace. What holy madness! I remember a rather shy visitor to worship, hoping in the back pew to lay low like a wallflower at Jr. High prom, later reporting to me her panic as half the congregation descended upon her with hands of shalom outstretched. “Get used to it,” I warned, with wry gratitude. “And next week, bring a crash helmet. It won’t let up.” Nor should it. Christianity is surely a personal faith, but it can never be a wholly private faith. If in fact the “Word became flesh and dwelt among us,” then it follows that his people would press the flesh too, as a regular act of practicing the sort of strange new community into which he calls us. Workplaces in hostility, families in tension, nations at war; there is at least one place on the planet where, in the name of Jesus, people practice a vigorous peace every seven days. Reticent visitors have been warned!

The third pane in my memory’s window: an anxious waiting room somewhere in the steel of Lynchburg General. Walter C. has fallen four stories. He is broken, battered, and beset with more hoses than one can imagine possible. His family is frightened, exhausted, camping out on hard chairs for a week. Yet over the course of days there is a veritable parade of Presbyterians moving through said waiting area. Struck by the number of these strangers, a bewildered sibling asks me, “Preacher, who are all these people?” Good question, sister. What I wanted to say was, “They are God’s people. They belong to Jesus, just like Walter. They are his sisters and brothers, and by coming here in his dying they mean to bear witness to the good resurrection soon to come, wherein all will be made well—including your brother, in every respect. For now, until then, their presence here is a sign that, in God’s good kingdom, even the town fool has a place at the table, even an eccentric nobody is a blessed somebody.” This is what I wanted say, but it was surely more theology than a grieving sister should have to work out on tired feet. Instead, I offered, “These are Walter’s friends. From his church.” She surveyed the room again, astonished. And although I can’t be certain, there seemed for just a moment, in the corner of her drained eye, a brand new vision of Jesus breaking forth—the same Jesus old Walter mumbled on about so much of the time.

Who are all these people? They are God’s people. And they show up, right on time.

Altavista Presbyterian Church … now a century old. Her sturdy furniture. Her crowded aisles. Her people, hanging around in hospital hallways, and in other hard places. Through these three panes shines for me the light of a mysterious and majestic three-fold God: Father of Strength, Son in the flesh, Spirit all around. One God, through and through.

Happy centennial, Presbyterians.

May God bless you in this new season now before you, bright with promise.

(When in doubt, do what B. Harvey would have you do.)

A Wedding Homily for Two Dendrologists

2010-09-04T15:05:00.003-04:00

Romans 12:9-18 contains wise instructions for all Christians,
and therefore it is no less pertinent for Christians who come together in marriage.

Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Live in harmony with one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.

No doubt you are familiar with the expression, "He/she can’t see the forest for the trees."

As I understand it, the saying is a reminder about the danger of getting lost in all the many details of life, thereby missing the bigger picture, the true meaning of, say, work, or relationships — perhaps especially, marriage. "He/she can’t see the forest for the trees."

Well, who I am to debunk a time-honored idiom? But I would nevertheless like to offer you and all spouses gathered here today something of a minority view. Forests are lovely to behold, when a sweeping view affords itself, but I would say that in marriage, on most days, there are only trees.

In our era, many persons thump their chests and tout loudly the lofty ideals of “traditional marriage” or “family values” or other such forests of grand importance. Sure, I am as interested in great ideals as the next pastor, but the more grounded truth is this: Great marriages — living, loving, lasting marriages — are started, not with a vision of grand forests full of tall ideals, but with the little saplings sown in everyday action.

The regular planting of honesty, encouragement, mutual support, truth-telling, fidelity, and the like ... These are what matter most in a marriage, because, over time, these saplings are what grow into the kind of thick, hearty forest canopy that not only provides safe shelter for your marriage, for each other, that canopy also becomes a home that blesses many others: children, family, friends—even enemies, if Jesus’ teaching is to be headed.

We all want to “fall in love,” and this is great, but for spouses—especially Christian spouses, already called to a ministry of actively loving each and every neighbor—the urgent question after today becomes How do we stay in love? How do we practice love in real-life encounters? How will love be transacted on a plain ole Tuesday morning in marriage, when the running conversation of domestic life calls for moments of honesty, respect, assertiveness, listening?

You chose for this day a reading from Romans 12, which for our purposes turns out to be a veritable greenhouse of such saplings:

let love be genuine
hate what is evil
hold fast to what is good
practice mutual affection
honor each other
live peaceably
etc.

These little shrubs, planted every day, are what grow into great forests for life.

And so don’t worry so much about a year from now, 5 or 10 years from now, about growing old together and living up to everyone’s tall but sometimes rootless ideals. Instead, as you travel through these woods together, I invite you simply to deal with the tree right in front of you: this conversation, that decision, each and every opportunity for "outdoing one another in showing honor."

So maybe here today, at your wedding, maybe we coin a new expression:

In marriage, at least, don’t miss each tree for the forest.

Let the living God manage the great forests
of the life you now inhabit together, the macro.

Instead, each morning, its is yours simply to ask in the micro,
What good seed of God’s shall I plant for my spouse today?

Godspeed.

Mourning and Blessing

2010-08-12T21:58:00.002-04:00

In the middle of August, our congregation lost a recent new friend: Dan Terry, father-in-law of our Pastoral Intern, Chris TerryNelson. A seasoned mission-worker in Afghanistan since the 1970s, Dan and his wife Seija endeared themselves to our congregation during a recent furlough in New Wilmington. Ten minutes talking to Dan--a gift many of us enjoyed last winter--and it became clear you were in the presence of someone great, precisely because of his humility, boyish charm, and the sparkle in his eye as he related tales from the country halfway around the world he had come to call home.

In an email correspondance, shortly before departing for Kabul and a funeral service, Chris wrote to his friends:

"I wanted to thank you for your prayers and your support for our family in this time, as many of you have written and called with overwhelming encouragement. God is protecting us in a very vulnerable time, and is providing safe passage. I want to ask that you pray not only for us, but for the men who gave in to violence. Dan was a man of peace, and the first thing he would encourage us to do is to pray for these men and their families. Dan and the team knew the risks of going into this remote area, but the night before he left we talked to him in Skype, and he told us that he had to go, with that typical boyish grin and determination that was so much like him. As you’ll read in the papers, the people in the Northeastern area of Nuristan are in deep need, and nobody is there to help them. It is fitting that Christians, with the hope and joy of Christ, should put their lives at risk in order to help those in need when no one else will, and Dan was a supreme witness to the faith in this respect. But he was also a consistent witness in his life as a family man, by living this way with Anneli and I as a father-figure as a husband to his wife Seija, who is currently working with Cure International in Kabul."

Although our time to know Dan here in New Wilmington was brief, let us give thanks for those who model a living Jesus-faith and conduct themselves with diligence, bravery, and compassion.

His father-in-law's death comes on the cusp of Chris' departure from us, his year-long pastoral internship completed. Chris has accepted a call to be only the second installed pastor of the Emmanuel Presbyterian Church just south of Nashville, Tn. The congregation is a new church development project of the Middle Tennessee presbytery, and includes around 100 active members. He will begin his service to them as a Teaching Elder sometime in September.

Based on what we have experienced in knowing Chris, and how we have watched him develop over these last dozen months, we are confident that God will bless the people of the Emmanuel congregation with a bright, warm, theologian-pastor. Chris has blessed this year with a great hunger for learning, a deep theological curiosity, a tender openness about his own life and faith, and his keen interest in seeing the church exit its own walls and be the people of God wherever they may be. What we have seen and heard in seeds and new buds, may the Presbyterians south of Nashville, current and future, come to know in full bloom.

We have thanks for Chris' learning and service among us, and pray Godspeed upon his dear family and his ordained ministry.

One Tale to Rule Them All

2010-08-08T14:42:00.001-04:00

In the life of any given family, every day generates new stories to tell. The refrigerator stops working, a postcard from Uncle George arrives from Budapest, your kid starts kindergarten. Every day, another anecdote.

Even so, not all tales are created equal. Some set the tone for others.

Recently, a person in my congregation was relating to me the narrative of how a house on the shoreline of Lake Chautauqua in New York state came into his family’s possession years ago. It is currently enjoyed by a fourth generation, with an eye toward a fifth. Buried there at the beginning of all that handing-down is quite a tale to tell—a story about a dream, a purchase, and a plan for construction. One could say that the decision of great-grandparents to develop a little spot by the lake has introduced countless new tales into the lives of his entire progeny. And you can bet that at least once a summer, someone pushes back from the dinner table and recounts for all the narrative of how this place came to be. One primal story has set the tone for countless others.

In a similar fashion, not all tales in scripture are created equal.

Books of quotations from the Bible—collections of singular verses lifted from their context and arranged by topic—have the unfortunate effect of flattening out the Biblical narrative, suggesting that every story is cut from the same cloth. True, one could (should) say that everything in scripture is important to us as the gathered faith community, but it is just as necessary to say that not everything in scripture is of the same importance. A few primal stories set the tone for all others.

In the Old Testament, for instance, there is one tale that rules them all: the Exodus. The second book of the Bible turns out to be first in importance, because it is the book of Exodus that narrates God’s first and fundamental act of redemption: liberating the Hebrew slaves from the hard hand of Egypt’s pharaoh. The living God overhears the cries of the Hebrew minions and sets in motion a plan for judgment upon Pharaoh and release for his bondage-people. This tale, this primary Old Testament narrative, sets the tone for all the others that follow and precede.

What about the creation stories of Genesis? Is not God’s act of creation more important than any rescue, if only because there could be no release without existence in the first place? That may be good logic, but it is not the theological-logic of the Bible itself. Genesis 1-3—important as they are—are best understood as a holy afterthought, an inspired prologue leading up to the crown jewel of the first Testament: the Exodus encounter. The first and foremost news of the Bible is that God liberates and restores. The creation narratives are later appended to the front of this tale in order to announce that the God who formed a people out of worthless slaves turns out to be the same God who formed the cosmos from meaningless chaos.

More than even the creation stories, it is the Exodus that sets the tone for what follows in the Bible. God’s compassionate ear, God’s calling of unlikely Moses, God’s judgment upon the hard heart of Pharaoh, God’s making a water-way where there was no way, God’s leading his band of folk through the long wilderness, God’s promise for a promised land. These are the contours for every good Biblical tale that follows; these are the building blocks for every other bit of news the scriptures intend to announce. And chiefly, from the perspective of our baptized journey, these are the primal ingredients for the other great normative tale of our two-tiered Bible: the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus in the New Testament.

Two stories to rule them all.

Nothing Will Be Wasted

2010-08-01T03:18:00.000-04:00

In my relatively short time as a pastor to D.B.—two years
I have nevertheless embraced the privilege
of offering this particular passage of scripture:
Romans 8, the groaning of creation, the coming redemption of all things

... the privilege of offering these gospel words
to D. and M. over the course of a
half a dozen home communions

Neither I nor the Deacons who have accompanied me
will forget those encounters anytime soon

You see, it is one thing to say to one another
We believe God is here with us now
but is quite another to share in the generous fellowship of food
and to say
Take, D. Eat. This is his body broken for you.
Swallow this bread
and take his life into yours

And with each recent gathering,
the words of Romans 8
filled his sun-drenched bedroom
on the southwest corner of the B. home

I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.

I have spent a great deal of time with these words
both in my study and at bedsides crowded by machines
and as a result
I do not imagine for a second that the Apostle means to say
Our sufferings are worthless, without weight of meaning

I think—indeed, I know—Paul means to say:
For now, there is real suffering
In the world, in this life, in these bodies

We would only disrespect the courage, patience, faith of our brother now departed if we suggested otherwise

But the stunning newness that God will soon transact
in the resurrection of his people and the recreation of creation
(a newness tasted in the appetizer of Easter morning)
When you catch a glimpse of that new world moving toward us
even if but for a moment
you will find that the sufferings of this present time are subdued into that glorious new perspective

It will be sort of like the way you go to visit a dying friend
starved of meaning in your spirit
tempted by the darkness of his circumstance
all ready to feel sorry for him

Only suddenly your find yourself leaving
warmed by the suffusing light of those rooms
with generous food in hand for your family -- Presbyterian Pesto
feeling sorry that you ever intended to feel sorry for him

It’s sort of like that, I think

A conversion of perspective
not because we settle for the bones of denial
but because we are richly fed, in the meal of grace

We come to consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed among us

To sojourn with D. and M. in these recent years
has been to know a well-attested hospitality
Many of you know of this meal far more than I
the warm welcome
the gracious space
even if shaky, the outstretched hand of fellowship
the twinkle in the eye, illuminating until the end

and as a postlude

a package of peppers or pesto to go home to your family
just because
it is in the nature of things there

This week
on the cusp of my departure
from a time of prayer and scripture with D. and family

I stood in the B. kitchen
and listened to gladsome talk
and food and meals and traditions

On the matter of M. making good use of every ingredient
she dispensed an off-handed comment about her mother

I guess I have a bit of her in me
She was of the Depression
When it came to food,
nothing was wasted,
everything was put to use

Those last words shot through me like watts of electricity

And at the great risk of melodrama
right there in the foyer of their home
it was though Romans 8 came together for me
and I could see it again, anew
what God is up to in these broken, beleaguered bodies of ours
what this God is doing amid the groaning of this world

We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, those who have been called according to his purpose.

Nothing is wasted
Everything is put to use

This does not mean that all things are good
This does not imply that
we are not Cold Stubborn Fatalists

We are Easter Christians
warmed—embraced!—by the news that
nothing will finally escape God’s
dogged insistence to deliever a new creation
from the groans of our painful labor

The recent journey of our brother is submerged in mystery, to be sure

But let the mystery rest in why it is God’s otherwise good creation
so regularly resists his call to abundant life
and appears so prone to stubborn decay

And in parallel
let there be no mystery about this news:
That what God is working for is freedom—the freedom of his children
That the Spirit is not the cause of the but the help in our weakness

That this God is, in fact,
more acquainted with our sufferings than we are
and therefore able to pray for us
to intercede for us
with groans of longing we ourselves cannot even name

That in all things God works for the good of those who love him

That in the end
in the sweeping newness of that great Easter morning to come
nothing will have been wasted
not even the loathsome persistence of Parkinson’s

The markers of this promise even now?
an infectious smile
a glimmer in the eye
a deep Friday-like concern for others
a hint of Sunday-mischief to enliven the day

It appears that many people picture
God up on high
dispenser of pain and pleasure
kind, maybe, but mostly indifferent
distributer of circumstances
with which we can only learn to cope

What if it turned out
that God was more like
a Depression Era mother
diligent
stubborn
generous
insistent that nothing be wasted
determined that no single ingredient will spoil the meal
finding divine gladness when everyone is fed

That his baptism marks his belonging to this news
That he is for now held safe in the care of this God
That in the resurrection he will be raised up, healed and whole

this is the pesto of our praise

(for DMB)

Free ... to be a slave

2010-07-09T21:40:00.000-04:00

For whoever was called in the Lord as a slave is a freed person belonging to the Lord, just as whoever was free when called is a slave of Christ. -- I Corinthians 7

I believe it only took me about half-a-dozen sermons at the start of my work as a preacher before I realized how grateful I was for the unprecedented religious freedom this country affords us Christians. Not just for Christians, of course, is this independence. Religious freedom for all: however wise or wacky, similar or strange they seem to us. (We should note, however, that plenty of folk deem us rather wacky as well. Did you hear that Apostles' Creed? We profess some strange and wonderful news ourselves.) I desire religious liberty for all my neighbors in other faiths because I am likewise grateful that it is secured for all Christians.

My own conviction is this: As a follower of Jesus, I have at stake in maintaining and defending that freedom for everyone. I hold to this, not because I want or need this country to be “Christian” in some vague, rubber-stamp sort of way, but because I am grateful for the uninhibited space to follow Jesus in the specific and deliberate way of discipleship.

- - - -

Think about what a gift we have been given as disciples of Jesus, in this country and in this era of history:

It is Sunday morning again. For us: not just another weekend for leisure or the ramp-up to another week of work. It is the Lord’s Day, Resurrection Day! We have gathered at our normal spot for word and sacrament. We are doing our thing.

And guess what?

No one has barred the door.
No one is checking our papers.
No one is censoring our speech.
No one is threatening us with bodily harm.

The lights are still on.
The doors are still open.
The Book is still on the Pulpit.
The Table stands ready for our next Meal.

What a gift.

Yet it is not so for many of our brothers and sisters around the world.

Do remember our guest preacher last summer, on the Sunday of the New Wilmington Mission Conference? Rev. N______, a spirited pastor from Zimbabwe. He told us the tale of how their church building was burned down ... 3 times ... by members the government!

The hardest decision many of us faced today was: REGULAR or DECAF? For me: Which bow-tie to don?

These 75 minutes together, in this space
Right here, right now
That we are gathered here, uninhibited

This is an extraordinary gift.

- - - -

It occurs to me that this nation’s birthday is a day for Christian communions to ask a fundamental stewardship question:

We are free. Thanks be to God. Now what? To borrow the old query of Francis Shaeffer: "Christian, how then shall we live?"

The early church teaches us through Paul’s counsel in 1 Corinthians 7: In whatever condition you were called, brothers and sisters, remain there with God.

In whatever
culture
society
philosophical milieu
political climate
socioeconomic condition
you find yourselves

Whether the winds of culture blow for you or against you, “remain there with God.” Follow Jesus Christ, and be secured by the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. In effect, Paul’s counsel is something on the order of: "Christian, bloom where you are planted."

And the terra firma of our ministry is America.

The test of our appropriation of such remarkable religious liberty is not in our unqualified or unfettered devotion to the state, but rather it is proven in our greater, deeper, wider devotion as the Baptized to Jesus and his way. Let us neither push this way of life on others in monstrous hegemony, nor surrender this way of life to others in embarrassed inclusivity. Neither stance honors the Lord of all lands.

As stewards of this particular space and time we must ask: For what other purpose exists religious liberty than for greater commitment to the one whose way we have found ourselves called to follow? This one whose grace secures us, whose power sustains us, and whose example directs us.

- - - -

The challenge that comes with independence is to maintain responsibility once the control of others is cast off. We might consider ordinary examples.

Will the teenager be responsible for the car once mom and dad are no longer visible in the rear-view mirror? Will the college student learn to manage self once the family of origin is not downstairs waiting every morning, with a nucleus of direction?

More widely, will a nation practice self-control once it is free from the political jurisdiction of a king and queen? Will a society seek the common good and practice restraint as technology offers more and more “freedom"? Just because now we can, should we?

And so by way of these analogies ...

Will Christians in this land continue to grow in discipleship and be stewards of so great a religious liberty when the prevailing culture provides little substantial pushback? For at least two hundred years now, it has remained socially acceptable in this country to be a Christian, at least in a privatized, devotional form.

How are we doing with that independence? What is the measure of our devotion? And better:
How am I doing with this independence? What is the measure of my devotion amid such freedom?

After all, we would not want such unprecedented religious liberty to foster in us over time a tepid resignation. Consider the Presbyterian congregation in New Orleans that nurtured my father to Christian faith. In 1950, it had within its walls some 1200 persons. Last year it was 15 ... all of whom had been there in 1950. (There's nothing wrong with being an older Presbyterian, unless of course you are all alone in the sanctuary.) This year the number is zero, as the presbytery has dissolved the church. True: This is not every congregation’s story. But it is more common than we like to admit. Too often, we have withered in an easy climate.

This is where the counsel of Jesus in Luke 12 proves so timely for us. Keep your shirts on; keep the lights on! Be alert! Be ready! Be poised for action! Pretend you are servants in a great household of riches. Would it not be wise to stay poised for the master’s return? to be ready to respond to his presence among you?

Let the delay of his return breed in you attentive perseverance, like disciples; not sleepy passivity, like consumers. After all, we would not want the gift of religious liberty to be, in a sad irony, our final undoing.

- - - -

Neither, however, would we want such bountiful freedom to seduce us into worshipping the sovereign state we inhabit over the risen Son whose Spirit inhibits us.

I like what Senator Byrd of West Virginia was often quoted saying o fellow members of the chamber in the heat of bipartisan debate: "Listen, I value you a great deal as a colleague, but I value the Senate even more." It seems to me that the Christian communion can mimic a similar posture with regard to this great country and proper devotion: We love this country a great deal, but we love the God who has met us in Jesus Christ even more. Not that the two always have to be in conflict with one another. But as objects of our devotion and worship, neither are they the same.

Is that posture not the earliest and best seed of religious liberty in this country? That a land and a document that would afford me such tremendous religious independence would not itself expect to be worshipped for that freedom. From the vantage point of these waters, America is, at its best, a blessed means to a more blessed end. And for the baptized, surely that greater end is to love the Lord our God with all that we have, all that we are; to love our neighbor as we would our selves.

I am Christian first and an American second, in large part because I know that one need not be an American in order to be a Christian. Rev. N_____ and his congregation, but several of a million examples. They have much to teach us about what Augustine called "ordered loves."

- - - -

It is the purpose of the Christian gospel to announce the news that, at the end of each day and at the end of my life,

that which secures my ultimate liberty
that which sets me free from all powers and principalities
that which affords the ultimate blanket of protection

is in fact no continent or nation or document

—-even the best of these, prone to decay and death.

In fact, my true life is not found in a THING or a PLACE,
or among a certain PEOPLE,
but in a PERSON

the one who taught
the one who died
the one who rose
the one who is alive

Therein I find my life, liberty, and blessedness. It is the God behind, before, and in this Jesus who deserves my ultimate devotion, the way a servant is devoted to a master. I celebrate a strange and wonderful bit of news: Once I was free, but now I am slave!

It turns out, then, to be a Christian in this land and in this time is a situation of blessed irony:

I am free as an American, to be a slave to Jesus.

Thanks be to God.

Intercessions for the Lord's Day

2010-07-01T14:58:00.000-04:00

As we gather before you, O Lord of heaven, and are gathered by your Spirit to your word, we count it a privilege to hallow your name above all others—to call you Holy, Other, Sacred. And so we give you thanks for this time and space to worship you. We come to this time awed to heaven in our hearts, yet bearing in our memories the matters of earth. From the six days of ministry now behind us, we fashion these prayers for your entire world. Your have heard our praises, now hear our intercessions.

We do pray that your kingdom will come, especially in places around the globe where the kingdoms at hand are unjust, unbalanced, unsympathetic to the call to justice and mercy. In Greece and Malaysia and the Sudan and Hong Kong and every other troubled place this week—and in our places as well—may your peaceable kingdom come, and quickly. As it is in heaven, in the space of your infinite light and love, so it may it be on earth.

We do pray that you would be generous with your daily bread around the world, both the bread the builds up the body and the bread that nourishes the soul. We pray for every hungry place—hungry for food, hungry for justice, hungry for good news, and we pray for the peculiar hunger in our own lives as well.

We pray for human relationships around the world, relations both great and small. Wherever there are broken bonds, old wounds, deep channels of vengeance, raise up voices to announce the news of your forgiveness and the possibility it brings for forgiving others, and teach us, O Lord, how to be a forgiven/forgiving people.

We pray for the church around the world—wherever folks gather under the name of Jesus, and seek to walk in his way. May none of your servants be lead into temptation, and may your Spirit deliver from evil all who are encumbered by sin or sorrow.

These intercessions we bring with us this day, and we offer them in the name of the one to whom belongs the kingdom, the power, and the glory, today and forevermore.

In Jesus’ name, Amen.

Effortful Episcopalians

2010-06-27T16:25:00.001-04:00

This procession is moving along. You are most welcome to come along with it, but don’t take it personally if we do not wait for you to get it—at least on the first try.

However difficult it may be for the neophytes to feel it, fumbling with a verbose bulletin and two—count them, two—books for worship, there is moving across the surface of this hour a determined cadence.

Celebrant—people, celebrant—people, celebrant—people.

At times we feel like some sort of high-church sculling crew: our boat made of blocks, our captains in albs. Each prayer, every response has the feel of one more pull across the shimmering waters. A race from pulpit to font to table. (Granted, the course reveals its technical traps: “What in the world was Rite II?” asks my fellow teammate, after the trip. He, too, is a rookie.) Even so, there was movement in our churchy minutia, from here to there and back again.

In this era when the rest of us Protestants are falling all over ourselves to “connect” with the burned-over crowds and on Sundays “meet people where they are,” some part of me appreciates how this boat-for-worship can—will!—move along quite without me in it. People matter, of course, but at least this liturgy calls forth more of a “we” than “me.” I am in this boat, but it is not mine.

For one thing, there are a great many actions for a great many people. The chancel is at times a rush-hour of activity. Choirs, ushers, acolytes, priests, pilgrims, all scurrying about—an Episcopalian pileup. We stand, we sit, we kneel. I sing, I speak, I look … I taste. Someone once dubbed this frenzy “the work of the people.” And because most of the movement of worship is not confined to the frontal cortex, but is embodied, in full view, perhaps for this reason it is difficult to escape the notion that none of this is about me. I am here, but this time is not mine.

So although the four-year-old two pews forward of me spent the entire Eucharist making fart-like noises with her cheeks and having a merry time of it, and even if the couple just in front of me spent the Sanctus chuckling at her mini-theater, prayer-book in hand … God was still praised. All around our gassy gal arose the larger doxological chorus. We sang and ate and sang some more, quite without her permission. Her cheeky little show, subsumed in a sea of hymnody. She made her presence known, but the boat would not be thrown off course.

“Holy, holy, holy,” high and lifted up, O Jesus.

Above cheeks and chuckles and even private connections, as in “If you don’t connect with me, preacher, I’m outta here.”

Alas, can’t you see the passing waters?
Pick up an oar and get out of your head.
Don’t you hear the captain?

Row, O self-anchored ones. Row with me across these baptismal waters. And sing as you sail. Sing to the Lord of this lake. Keep moving with me! One more prayer-pull. Feel the grace of possibly being left behind.

God is here. And we are Thine.

A Prayer for Trinity Sunday

2010-06-20T14:46:00.001-04:00

This is our worship, O God. We praise you and pray to you because that is what you made us for, and that is what Jesus taught us to do, and this is what your Spirit prompts in us now—our praise and our prayers.

From a week of living in your world, O Father, we gather now to worship you—you who are eternal, timeless, without beginning or end. This world we know is yours, and yours alone. You have made it, and so to you we lift our prayers for it. Dor people and places around the globe who cry out for your good gifts: mercy, justice, healing, truth … And we confess those sins of ours that mar the landscape of this week now finished …

From a week of discipleship in your world, O Jesus, we gather now to worship you—you who invaded our history and walked among us, wearing our flesh and announcing God’s news. This is your gospel, and yours alone. You have spoken it, and so we lift our prayers to you for those who most need to hear it. For people and places right in our own lives who cry out for faith, hope, and love, for a saving-healing-restoring word from you … And we confess those places in our own lives today that resist your call and conversion …

From a week of ministry in your world, Holy Spirit, we gather now to worship you—you who are present among us in this moment, connecting us to Christ and drawing us together in fresh unity. This is your time, and yours alone. You make it worship, and us God’s people, so we lift our prayers to you for people and places we have yet to know, for those to whom you will soon call us to go, and love, and serve … And we confess our fear of the future and our resistance to being led forward by you …

This is our worship, O God. We praise you and pray to you because that is what you made us for, and that is what Jesus taught us to do, and this is what your Spirit prompts in us now.

Good Posture

2010-06-02T17:25:00.004-04:00

Chiropractors are known to say that good posture makes for a lifetime of flexibility.

I wouldn’t know. I tend to hunch too much over my laptop, so much so that at least twice a year one of those long muscles running up my back decides to go rogue and stage a clinched-rebellion. I pay the price for poor posture and enjoy for at least a week a rather stiff neck, and limited field of vision.

It is a metaphor for life in Jesus. How we stand (or sit, or kneel) before the Lord will in large measure determine how open we are to the movement of God’s Spirit among us. Good posture makes for a lifetime of flexibility.

Take Pentecost, for instance. Sit in the pew for even a few years and annually you’ll hear recounted the wild and woolly excitement of Acts chapter 2. Jesus has departed the scene now, but his core group is gathered in an upstairs room at the Holiday Inn Express – Jerusalem. It is just another day, except that all around town another Jewish festival has brought people from all over the region to market.

So there they are, the apostles: Huddled in prayer. Waiting. Wondering. Worrying?

And then it happens, in God’s good time. Tongues of fire. Blustering winds. Movement. Confirmation! Before long, down in the parking lot, a crowd has gathered to take in this sanctified spectacle. These strangers to God’s fold hear the old salvation story with brand new ears. “Those guys up there are all locals. How is we can hear God speaking to us in our own language? I can hear!” It must be God. And as it turns out, the fire and wind of Pentecost is not about increased confusion so much as blessed understanding. God moves and speaks, and even strangers can now feel the new movement and hear the good news.

But back to posture: I’m moved by those first apostles’ willingness to stay put for spell. Family therapist Murray Bowen once quipped, regarding relationships: “Don’t just do something, stand there!” That might be wise counsel for a church on the move. This first round of disciples decides to “sit together in one place” and wait for God to move among them (Acts 2:1). Chapter 1 notes that during this time they were “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” All this, with the teaching of Jesus still fresh in their ears.

These are the stances that make for good posture before the Lord: coming together, rehearsing the teaching of the Lord, devotion to prayer, expectation … patience. This is how a people sit and wait for the Lord to move, in the good timing of providence. And this posture contributes to a certain kind of flexibility: an openness to the movement of the Holy Spirit, a willingness to flex and move when God tongues speak and Jesus winds blow. An expanded field of vision. A greater range of motion. Good posture as the people of God. Flexibility for faith.

May it be so for us.

Prayers for a Sunday in May

2010-05-08T14:52:00.000-04:00

We do praise you, O Lord, and we pray our worship today traces all your great mercies, all your providence and grace—in our lives and in your world.

We come to this prayer for others with a week’s worth of living now fresh in our memory. We have talked with neighbors in the dairy aisle and we have read Facebook updates and we have watched the nightly news and we have read the local headlines.

With all of this, we find we know what the Apostle means when he speaks of your world in labor pains: pregnant with possibility, yes, but also plenty of groaning, plenty of pain.

We intercede today for those most affected by the troubles in the creation: oil slicks in the Gulf and flood waters in Tennessee and explosions in Russian mines, and wherever else there is groaning …

We intercede today for those who are grieving, mourning the palpable loss of someone from their lives: for the Kurtz family and our Amish neighbors around this community, for the deRosa home and classmates, for those sons and daughters mourning a mother on this bittersweet day, for all who have loved and lost and groan for a reuniting …

We intercede today for the politics of the globe: for the uncertain Prime Minister of Britain and Greek debt woes and sluggish Middle East peace plans and loud protests in Thailand and especially for the untold thousands below our radar who groan for justice and peace …

We intercede today for mothers everywhere, especially those who nourish their babies and raise their children in difficult places and against incredible odds. For all mothers who groan with struggle …

As for us, where our mothers and grandmothers have nourished us with faith, hope, and love, we give you thanks. Where there is pain in failed relationships or grief in recent departures, we pray for the peace of your forgiveness and the comfort of resurrection hope.

These are our intercessions, O Lord. We tell your wonders and sing your worth, and we look for the day when all groaning will cease and all hard labor subside—all of it, transcended by the birth of your final kingdom. Until then, we pray Jesus’ durable prayer ...

Sabaneta Stories 5

2010-03-18T12:53:00.000-04:00

Two blind men were sitting by the roadside, and when they heard that Jesus was going by, they shouted, "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!" -- gospel of Matthew

The Dominican is like many other places in this world, including our own, in this respect: If you want to see the whole picture of life here, get off the main roads and get out of your car. Highways have a way of making people and places move by too quickly for real connection, and sealed-up vans provide too much insulation and false-comfort for learning the land. (If nothing else, roll the windows down as you roll along. Smell the smells. Connect.)

But nothing beats walking. When you walk (in groups, of course), you have to make contact with the world around you.

A pastor here says, "Every year I pray a small prayer to God that I could get a big SUV like those American missionaries have over across the mountain. But God keeps saying to me, "No, you are the walking man." And we should be a walking people. It is important, and Chritian, to look a person in the eyes. To see them, and to be seen. Each "hola" and "adios" and, even better, "Como esta?" is an enfleshed moment, a human encounter. And so one must walk around here, and move off the main drags ... even off of Cancu's otherwise terrifically hospitalable street. His is a great street, but it is only one corner of life here.

We walk with a guide, a friend to many, and we see things that are hard to see. Move off the highway, and with each block further away from the Sabaneta church building the life-issues move from the long-range future-vision of Cancu down to yearly, then eventually weekly survival. Three of our men and three of their sons stand in a 8 by 8 ramshackle tin shed. Holes in the roof and the hot sun above form minature Hollywood spotlights shining down to the floor, a plane cracked and broken. Half dirt, half concrete. "Seven people were sleeping here when we came through with our medical mission," our guide tells us. "You can throw all the pills you want at people, but if they are sleeping in the mud and bugs in a place like this they are never going to feel better." Standing there, smelling there, that makes sense.

The side roads here are craggy and hard ... until it rains (which is often), and then they become rivers of mud and slop. A few houses are bright with paint and promimse, but most are in various stages of masonary construction, if that. In one section there is a quarter mile stretch of concrete curbing along the road, but no pavement to meet it. Curbing, on a lousy dirt road. We all ask about this. "Elections" is the response. Will the rest of it go down, the pavement? Who knows. Maybe in four years.

Turn the corner, and tucked into a row of otherwise dilapidated houses is a brightly painted, newly-built storefront. "Banco," reads the sign above the door. Inside is a counter, with plate glass, and a window. The small space is air-conditioned (nothing here is air-conditioned), and behind the glass sits a pretty young Dominican with a low-cut top. She has a computer to use. "Banco." But it is not a bank. It is the federal lottery, and these little shops are everywhere. Understand: Next door to this financial institution is a two-room dirt-floor shack that rents for about 500 pesos a month, roughly 14 American dollars, plus utilities. But, yes, certainly this neighborhood will be helped by the lottery.

Our friend Richard needs to check in on a particular side-street family. On Sunday, they brought twin babies into the world. They are Hatians, though they have been here in Sabaneta since well before the earthquake. We duck down into the low doorframe and step into the small corrugated metal house they rent. It's dark inside, even in the middle of a hot afternoon. The one beam of sunlight slipping through the roof reveals the dust moving through the hot air. Mother's sister, a teenager, greets us gently. She has trouble looking us in the eyes, and it is hard to know if we (but not Richard) should be here or not. "Ma ma?" he asks. We move into a side room, half as big, about the feel of something in which you would store your yard tools and mower. Mom is there, and on the corner of the high bed are two diminuative infants. That description would seem redundant, except that these are the smallest newborns I have ever seen.

Mom looks tired. Sister looks concerned. Babies lay there, motionless. "They are not eating," she tells Richard.

It occurs to me that sweat is now pooling on my back, and I realize for the first time in a few minutes (attention having been fixed on the babies) that it must be 100 degrees in this room. The air is thick, like a sauna on too long, and on the top of my shaved head I can feel the heat radiating off of the metal roof. This is a toaster oven. But then again, it is their home. My own shirt now wet with persperation, I notice that the twins are dressed head-to-toe in matching blue and pink infant jumpers. Their feet are in socks, and their heads are in little knit caps. Knit caps. Their heads are covered in knit caps ... in this oven. They are motionless. "They are not eating."

Now don't get ahead of me here. She's a good mother. You can feel it. The place might be rude and bare, but it is clean and has a kind of order about it. The bed is neatly tucked and the towel-shades are drawn tight, to mitigate the sun's intrusion, I'm sure. She is trying. She is tired, but she is trying. There is a silence in the room that names how hard this visit is all turning out to be. No, I mean for her. She is away from her home, her country, and although no one says it (in Creole, Spanish, or English), all of us--black, brown or white--seem to know that the future for these little lives on the bed is alltogether uncertain. They looked to me almost like royalty, in their little stylish jumpers, dressed to the nines, crown-caps on their heads. One can only hope these warm royal robes are not their undoing.

Remember, she is trying.

(We suggest some cooler clothing, or none at all. And cool rags. We leave some bread, and Jesus' name, and we take our leave. We step outside into the sun, and instantly it is 15 degrees cooler on the skin. She seemed glad we came, which is generous of her. Risen Son, help the mothers of the world.)

Speaking of mothers, met on other streets: With skin as dark as night, Hatian women enjoy faces that beam beauty. Richard has one cooking lunch for sixty Hatian children six days a week. Rice, beans, and bread. She is tall, this cook, and slim, and when she smiles at you and slightly drops her shy face during a greeting, you feel as though you could be meeting the Queen. But this is not aristocratic beauty. She is strong, and scrappy. She has to be. She has in her care a dozen children (most of them not hers), and with giggles and laughter they all dart around the property like a flock of birds. While we hear tell of plans for a Haitian free clinic down the street, the younger Evans holds court with a gaggle of little girls, teaching them to make funny puppets with their fingers. Their giggles seem inversely proportional to their prospects.

They are surviving here, and mom-cook-queen seems more than willing to take on one more if needed.

And it is needed. Children keep coming here from Haiti every week, more and more since the earthquake. Families scrape together what they have and send who they can across the Dominican border to rally with families already here in the D.R. I teach a six-year old girl how to high-five, and Richard tells me she has just come from Haiti to join her cousins here. She made it from the border all the way to Sabaneta (probably two days) on 25 pesos (about 70 cents). As it turned out, she did not have to pay for rides on motorcycles, scooters, and in vans until the very last leg of our journey. As we practice our high-fiving, I see her in my mind: perched on a the back of a third-hand American dirtbike turned taxi, moving down the northern coastal highway at 50 miles per hour, weaving in and out of traffic, with her arms tucked around the mid-section of whatever stranger is driving. She is holding on through each dart in and out of wild Dominican traffic; she is holding on (out?) for life. Richard says, "She just kept saying to each driver, 'Sabaneta. Sabaneta.'" It worked. She is here. She is six.

Hatians making a go of it here in the Dominican have it hard. There is existing, to begin with. But what´s more, many Dominicans make sense of their world by looking down on Hatians ("Animals.") the same way most of us make sense of our world by looking down on someone. For my grandmother, it was blacks; as such, there were plenty of place she would never walk. Keep those windows up tight. I wonder, who is it for me?

But when you are a "mama"-cook-quenn, and the living is one day-at-a-time, you don't seem to worry much about complicated social dynamics and racial tensions. You just live, under your holy roof, on these hard roads, unfinished curbing and costly bancos all around. You stand up straight and you survive, with the giggles of your children in your ear and the stunning beauty of your face and the memories of home in your eyes.

These are the back roads, hard and holy.

What a gift that Mercy has passed this way.

(Matthew 20:29-34)

Sabaneta Stories 4

2010-03-17T12:52:00.001-04:00

No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known. -- the gospel of John

WORDS

Come here just once, and unless you choose to stay disconnected through iPods, cheap paperbacks, or hiding out in your room each evening, before you know it you are giving fist-bumps to new Domincan friends and over lunch asking more about interesting Sabaneta congregational politics. By Wednesday, you have forgetton about bills to pay back home, annoying in-laws, and the inbox that is probably growing exponentially with each day away. By Hump Day, you are saying to yourself: "I am involved here now. In some small way at least, I feel a part of this place. I think I want to know how all this--this church, this neighorhood, this world--I want to know how all this turns out in the end."

On Monday evening, Pastor Cancu and his wife Altagracia spoke with us after dinner. He talked first, about his life story, his faith in Jesus, and his vision for this community. But the real fun began when we asked him (them) how they had met some 30+ years ago on the other side of the island. He told the story in his typical straight-up, no-nonsense style. It was all very nice. Then she protested, through our interpreter, "No, no, no! Now let me tell you the realstory!" We howled in laughter like a pack of dogs. (If Cancu is in style a Walter Cronkite, then she is a Kathy Griffin ... without the bad language, of course. Those of us who are spouses laughed in the relief that marital tugs and twists are aparently a universal phenominon, transcultural. Nice to know!)

When people tell their story, it is difficult to resist being pulled into their lives. And when that story is interwoven with the threads of providence, grace, and calling, it is difficult not to feel the baptismal bonds growing stronger--even across of gulf of culture, language, and blue-green agua. Lives are shaped by stories. Stories are named with words. And words become a precious gift, especially when each one requires a careful exchange across linquistic barriers.

So if we share a Word-bond with our Dominican friends, a Jesus-connection across these many miles, this shared story is surely cared for by the lips of our interpreters. That this trip each year would not be possible without them is obvious as soon as the plane's door opens in Puerto Plata and one needs to find a bathroom. But more subtle and sacred is the fact that their words, and sentences, and paragraphs, and hours and hours of verbal translation--these are the bones and muscles and ligaments that allow the Word to become flesh among us in this place, in this bond. We can walk alongside Cancu and his kirk in a meaningful way, and they can teach us more and more about ministry in our own world, mostly because walking with us are those who can steward this living conversation, those who can speak the language.

The rest of us become all the more grateful as we realize throughout the week that translation is not a mere mechanical act, not a simple this-word-for-that, but rather a sagacious service cradled in understanding and respect. The task is not merely to match one word for another: bathroom for bano, cepillo de dientes for toothbrush, or "el pastor tiene una nariz grande" ... meaning, of course, "the pastor has a large nose." (This ian an oft-needed phrase among these rowdy and disrespectful Presbyterians.) Google Translate can match one word with another, but it takes an interpreter to steward a living bond.

One must fall in love with the place, and the people, and the purpose of this work. And out of that love an interpreter labors to make the right connections, to listen well and so to fashion the best words, so that both parties are on the same page and everyone is growing in fidelity. It is not just knowing the vocabulary, it is knowing why words matter at all. Because with them, sentences are formed and stories are told and lives are shared and work is accomplished ... all "a la gloria de Dios y en servicio del Hijo," to the glory of God and in service to the Son, whose Sunday-new-life is the best word spoken anywhere. Resurrección.

Our heartfelt thanks to Sonia, Marite, Joel, and Elizabeth (and others) for practicing their interpetive craft for us all this week long. Muchas gracias.

---

WHEELS

The Clen-More Presbyterians recently cooked up a pile of spaghetti in New Castle and sold it to those who came to buy it, in order to raise some money to purchase a new wheelchair for a young woman who lives just down the street and around the big corner from the Sabaneta church. Here name is Jessica, and if that nomenclature rings a bell back home, it is likely because you remember seeing her stand on her new braces in the doorway of her home, our Sandy by her side. Not that you've been to her home, likely, but you have probably seen the picture of that grand moment passed around our various churches.

Jessica is a alive with playful energy. It spills out of her smile and rolls out of her flamboyant gestures. Even so, she is unable to direct enough of that energy downward so that her legs might move her to and fro. In her 20s now, she remains either bed- or wheelchair-bound ...except for the 40 or so minutes a day when she stands in the braces made for her two years ago by friends in our partnership. Mobility remains hard. Last year this time, a used wheelchair was procured for her by our group. But the rough pavement around her family's modest morter home takes its toll on wheeled equipment, and that chair gave way. Hence, spaghetti in New Castle.

That being said, the Clen-More Presbyterians are in danger of fashioning for Jessica something of an ego. "300 people came to the dinner," their pastor reported. "We had a big picture of you for all to see." Dominican daughter and mother respond with faces agape and sighs of glad unbelief. In a word: Wow. "I am a movie star now, yes?!" Jessica asks in her broken English. We all laugh. Her legs may not work, but her impish sense of humor surely does. Then a little more innocant ego surfaces for us to see: "Tell me again ... how many people were there?" She knows the answer, the little devil. Mom shakes her head in light-hearted dissapproval, as any mother would. "O Jessica, Jessica."

But let the young lady bask in this moment. in the news of her grand ball. First of all, there is something rather gospel-kingdom-like about an otherwise unknown young lady from the poor side of town with a broken-down body and a brave family through a twist of fate and a growing friendship becoming something of a celebrity in a strange town and and in unknown church far, far away. Maybe the last will be the first, after all. "A movie star!" she says from her chair with new wheels, primping her brushed hair and tossing her hand back like Marilyn Monroe. (Hang around her just a while and you realize that she is no dummy. She gets the joke. And so we all laugh along, at her invitation.)

But what's more, let's be her paparazzi. She's earned it. So she's stuck in a wheelchair with limp legs, on the poor side of town (most sides are). Does that stop her from hosting 40 students in her home 4 days a week? Yes, she gathers up the kids and adults and even a senior citizen on the block, all those who never finished school, and she gives them lessons, and lunch, and--dare I say it--life. Stacked under their ramshackle tin carport (the car has not moved in a good while) are 8 sets of long Laura Ingalls school desks, waiting for the next session of class under her roof, in the dirt. And did I mention that she and her mother (who has the biggest, whitest, widest smile you will ever see) also cook a rice-and-beans lunch four times each week for 60 or more people along the block?

So, sure, look around their home at the pocked walls and the aging furniture and the fading American posters probably picked up for song. Watch your step outside, lest you trip over old water lines or frayed electric cords, or that cat whose ribs you can count. Smell the hard smells, shake your head, and see the girl in the chair. It could all be taken one way, sure, if you did not know it was really the other.

She is New Castle's latest Marilyn Monroe, the belle of her ball, with skin the color of rich chocolate and a smile that lights up a room and a sense of humor that will serve her well down the bumpy road still before her. O yes, and did I mention: She has a daily ministry of Christian outreach to her neighbors that would put most of our able-bodied congregations to shame.

Wheelchair delivered. Say, Marilyn ... enjoy the ride.

Sabaneta Stories 3

2010-03-16T12:52:00.000-04:00

Whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. - Paul, in Philippians

The pillow provided for me in my bed is someone's smallish sofa cushion, stuffed into a pillow case. This arrangment offers a comfort similar to a 5 pound bag of flour. Still, when I stop to think about it (at 2:30 in the morning), it occurs to me that the Sabaneta congregation has worked hard before our arrival to secure for us 30 beds from their own homes for use during the entire week. When was the last time I gave up my bed ... for anyone? Perspective.

Incidentally, imagine securing 30 beds, 30 sets of sheets, and 30 pillows for a week of 30 guests in your neighborhood. Imagine cooking from scratch 90 portions a day for a week's time. Imagine the hassle of closing down your child's school for a week in order to house a team of workers. It's no small feat.

You could make a case that our construction workers are not necessary. The blocks they are moving, the dirt they are sifting, the buckets they are lifting, it is not neccesary (or even efficient) to fly a dozen gringos in from the States for such menial tasks. That's the objective truth of the matter. We could just write a check, drop it in the mail, and be done with it. But then again, if example and service are the goals: Sending money is one thing, sending bodies is another. A bunch of strangers forming a block brigade as long as a house surely signals something important to this neighborhood. We are here neither to take over and control this gig nor to sit back and passively watch others do it all, only to pay the bill. Pick up a shovel and sift a truckload of sand and you say, "We are here to support this congregation in what it is about in this community. We are for this. We are for them, and they are for you." So let our middle-managers and engineers haul up one more bucket of sand to the second floor. Let the boys move one more bucket of mud. When you see the big picture of what this block, this wall, this building is all about, it begines to feel more like an honor to take one's place in an otherwise menial role. This, plus: Moving block gives a man some time to think about things back home, about the value of some (occassional) sweat, and about the gift of stepping back from the house at 4:00pm to see something you helped accomplish. This is good for a man, and maybe only men can understand this. Besides, the breaks for water and shade afford some good shoulder-to-shoulder conversation among each other, and that's never a bad thing in this life. Efficient use of persons? Probably not, from an Excel perseptive. Faithful labor under the son -- er, sun? All depends on your perspective.

Incidentally, the second floor of Cancu's home is really taking shape. One can now see the outline of 5 small guest rooms, with a small kitchen space and dos banos, two restrooms. There is a main room down the middle of this second floor, suitable for dining, and by tomorrow the outlines of numerous windows will be visable. This space for guests, workers, and missionaries is all a part of the long-range vision of this continuing partnership. It is exciting to imagine how this will change the nature (and ferquency?) of our visits here.

Practicing even simple medicine here can be a reall challenge for our doctors and nurses. Patients usually use the most general of terms to describe any number of conditions--terms they have heard on the street, or picked up from the crowd pressed in on the chapel entrance when our medical teams arrive. "La congestión" many say ... which can cover a multitude of issues. The ambiguity is frequent and frustrating. What's this person's story? What is this family's living condition? Is this her mother, grandmother, aunt, neighbor? Is this problem acute, or are they here hoping to store up some meds for a chronic condition for use later in the year? Is that a legitimate hoarding or not? This is by no means an exact science. Still, our people do the best they can, and they seem glad to try. For many who come, this is the only healthcare available to them and their children. Creams and vitamins and ibuprofen are simple markers toward a better future for even the smallist of children. (Today a woman brought in her 1 month old baby. Bonito!) Is all this really worthwhile? Are these visits and diagnoses and ziplocs full of pills really contributing to the long-term health of the community? Is it all making "a difference"? Depends on your perspective, I suppose. Surely the return of the same medical professionals for yet another year speaks for itself.

Incidentally, as of Tuesday evening, some 400 patients have been seen either here in Sabaneta or out in one of the travelling clinics, meeting in local chapels connected to the mother congregation. Our pharmicisit, here in the D.R. for the first time, has done a great job ... and many have pitched in on the nightly pill counting. The entire process--from suitcases to sorting to counting to bagging to travelling to setup to disbursement--is a process of love to behold.

The electricity at the church/school complex stinks, and everyone knows it. It will work fine for a day, then flicker on and off (mostly staying off) for hours on end. There is an inverter system, yes, but with 30 guests running around in the evenings needing lights and charges and fans...the batteries have a hard time keeping up with our American comforts. What a pain. Or is it? A lack of lights has an interesting way of pushing people outside, and together. A crisis of comfort can breed frustration, to be sure, but it can also birth an otherwise hidden creativity. When was the last time you sat around on a porch and laughed with friends about how silly we all are? When was the last time a spontaneous card game broke out around you and you "wasted" an hour? (Note to readers: Don't tell Cancu about the hearts games. No los juegos de azar.) Who sits around anymore in our compressed and driven world and sings (and plays) for the sake of singing and laughing? Is it a bad thing or not that the wiring in the Christian school in Sabaneta looks like an explosion at a yarn factory? Depends on your perspective.

Sacrifice. Hospitality. Labor. Humble service. Compassion. Consistant care. Spontaneous fellowship. Singing for singing sake. Christian community. "Think on excellent, commendable, Christ-shaped things," urges the Apostle. Think on these things. Fashion your perspective around your Easter faith.

When you lay down your head this night and think over a day now spent, has it all been run-of-the-mill and bereft of any meaning? Has the time you have been given, has it been a burden or a blessing? Is this mad world, and your corner it, a summons to truth and love or a draining depression? Has there been today even one moment when just a bit of resurrection light has eeked its way into the troubled world around you?

Saint on the pillow, think on these things. Has this day been about death, or life? It all depends.

Perspective.

Sabaneta Stories 2

2010-03-15T12:50:00.000-04:00

"You are still whole ... to your family, and to God."

Coveyed in Spanish, those words of encouragement were offered to a Domincan woman who at 65 finds herself absent a limb and absent any reason to get up up in the morning.

A treatable injury was not treated well, resulting in infection and the complete amputation of her leg. Now problems abound: an inadequate walker, lots of phantom pain, and a ramshackle house not laid out with an amputee in mind. She is discouraged. Who wouldn´t be? She is the mother-in-law of one of the directors of the Christian school this partnership has help to build and helps to fund. So through those channels word came to us of her situation, and one of our interpreters and our occupational therapist went out for a visit. She is in a tough spot, this new neighbor to our group, and after another fall last week it is likely her tenuous wound will need to be operated on again. Good medical counsel was given. A plan was hatched to secure this week a better walker (one that does not collapse when she puts her weight on it). In hindsight, however, perhaps the reason our pair was sent to her came in the heartfelt message. Eye to eye, one woman to another: "You are still whole, to God."

Wholeness. Peace. Shalom. We forget that the Biblical expression of peace is not merely the absence of violence, but moreso the presence of true life. Wholeness. All can be well, even in this world, even in this body.

The Domincans make wholness in community and easy grace. They are comfortable in their skins, content with themselves and their vibrant culture, and so it is a seamless effort for them to make us Americans feel comfortable around them. After dinner, the assistant pastor pulls out a guitar and the Dominicans teach us songs to sing in Spanish. This goes on for an hour. One cannot help but be pulled into the singing and clapping. Ignorance of the tune or the rhythm is not a source of self-conscious embarrasment, but rather an invitation to learn--to belong. A group game develops--a most Domincan game, quick and challenging for anyone who does not know Spanish. But our friends here are patient with us until we learn the play and lose ourselves in the fun. Sure, they laugh heartily when we mess up the words and have to move to the end of the line, but they laugh just as lustily at themselves and their own playful demise. They practice a certain peace with life, and as such they put us at peace. One wonders if some in our group feel more at home here than in the States. One wonders how long this wholeness will last upon our return, under the load of American ambiquity and disabling self-conciousness.

- - -

Monday began with breakfast under Cancu´s canopy. We read a Psalm and then Paul´s teaching from 1 Thessalonians: "So deeply did we care for you that we were determined to share with you not only the good news from God but also our very selves." The plan for the day, for sharing our selves, was discussed ... and then the labor commenced.

Most of our men folded into the construction work. The project this year is to put a second floor on the pastor´s house, owned by the congregegation. These extra bedrooms and a bath will (1) provide more housing for future groups in our partnership, (2) provide a safer place to stay for any who come down to work at other times during the year, and (3) will provide safe shelter for Cancu and others in the event of flooding--a frequent threat.

A Domincan worksite is an entire world unto itself. Among the locals--many of them church members--there is always a brain to the operation, and then some quiet masons at work, and then some basic workers who haul and place. It takes an American a little time to figure out just who is who. The ingredients of the effort, however, are much more easily discerned: block, sand, cement, and rebar. And it is with these rudimentary elements that our people come into the mix. We sift the dirt free of rocks and pebbles. We hoist the resulting sand up a story to the roof of the house. We move concrete block from the street to the sky, and then we bring the block to the Domincans as course-by-course a wall develops under their watchful eye. There is a kind of beauty to their work, another kind of wholeness, if you will. They spread out morter like a mix for a meal. They stack a block. They examine said block. They adjust that block in the still-maliable morter until it lines up just as it should. And then the whole step begins again. By lunchtime, and surely by supper, something like a room with spaces for doors and windows has taken shape. They have a way of doing things, and it works. The wise guest on these roofs takes time to learn what they are doing.

Meanwhile, it is hot. Muy calor (no caliente). We Americans learn the hard way that we are now half the distance between the States and the equator. Simply, we are closer to the sun. And you can tell. So the boys on the roof drink lots of water, and by the end of the day the bodega across the street has been bought out of Dominican Gatorade. Fluid in. Sweat out. But stand back from it all (in the shade, mind you), and there is now new wall for all to see. Shelter. Home. Wholeness.

Medical teams (a doctor, a nurse, and an interpreter) are seeing 50 patients in the morning and another 50 in the afternoon, both here at the clinic in Sabaneta (across the street from Cancu´s church and school) and out in regional chapels-turned-clinics. After all these patnership years, this process is a well-oiled machine. Domincans purchase tickets for each family member needing to be seen by a doctor. No ticket, no visit. (Cancu says that people should have an investment in their own care.) Only the common and treatable ailments are handled, with more serious issues referred to what specialists and hospitals exist on this north side of the island. Nevertheless, there is never a ticket not used. The investment is not in the short-term antibiotic, but in the long-term health of a region. Better than pain meds, children´s vitamins are the better symbol of Cancu´s big vision.

There´s someting whole about a chapel turned clinic. By simple pragmatic plan, the docs and nurses see patients down in the front of the little sanctuaries--often on the small rostrum where pulpit, table, and font would be for Sunday. Walk in the door of the chapel then, and one sees rows of families waiting to be seen, facing the front, toward the small wooden cross hanging up high at the apex of the ceiling. These are buildings made for wellness, blocks and morter of wholeness. Jesus-teaching for life on Sundays, Jesus-care for the body on Mondays. That seems right.

Domincan culture at large is loose and flamboyant, easy-going to the point of excess. By contrast, the morays of the Domincan Evangelicals are much tighter and restrained--no smoking, no drinking, no dancing, etc. They have chosen to seperate themselves from the wider cultural norms in order to practice a faithful witness. Even the church and school buildings in Sabaneta have a kind of focussed, firm look out about when compared to the more free-flowing neighborhood around them. Noticing this pattern, one of our youth asked, quizically, "If they are seperate from the people around them in so many ways, then how can they connect to them? How do they reach out?" Our informal late-afternoon circle of conversation, huddled under the shade of courtyard tree, pondered that missional question for a moment. Then someone said, "The meds." And that was it. The meds. Our friends are seperate, yes. But they serve. Or at least Cancu pushes them to serve. The medicines, the clinics, and the school, and the water treatment, and the pharmacy, and scholarships ... These are efforts at wholeness that, while not apologizing for seperatness, reach across the boundaries of social morays and transact Jesus-peace for thos who need it most. This is how they feel called to bear the light, by beingn other, only then to serve others. And so we lug our 22 suitcases of pills, our wheelchair in two large boxes, and our doctor´s tools that draw the suspicion of TSA inspectors--we lug these enacted prayers to this island to help our sisters and brothers bless their neighbors. "Come to the chapel. Be made whole."

- - -

In the care of a recent American president, the term "compassionate conservative" took a terrible hit. But down here, there might just be something to the approach. Cancu expects something of people, because--you can hear it in his story--the Lord has expected something of him. He will not let the gospel be trampled upon by low expectations and a kind of easily-manipulated affection. He takes the long view, and resists the temptation to conspire in quick fixes. "Cancu, we have brought you money for school lunches." "Thank you, but no. Lunches are here and then gone. Families can learn to support themselves in that way. What I could use are microscopes for our lab, and items that last for the school." The long view. "Cancu, how many patients should our doctors plan to see this year?" "I want you only to see a certain amount, so that there are medicines to last throughout the year and so our people do not think that care only happens when the Americans come around." Restraint, born of a larger vision. After 27 years, this community knows he is man to be resepcted, both because he will demand something true and right from you and that he (and Jesus) will aboslutely have your back if you are in need. Somehow, he holds both together. Case in pont:

On Monday morning, the annual scholarship meeting was held. The Sabaneta chapel was filled with parents and children, gathered to hear about the gift and responsibility of financial support for schooling--both here at the Evangelical school and, for older youth, at the university on the island. Forms were filled out, expectations were named, and the Clen-More folks shared with the families who their American sponsors are and why Cancu believes education is so important. Later in the day, after dinner, he would stand before our group and explain that thanks to the help of our partnership, lo these many years, no less than 25 college graduates have come from this Sabaneta neighborhood. What´s more, now some of those graduates are returning to the community--to run the schools, to practice medicine, to live and work and witness. Hearing him speak, one realizes why in ministry we must always take the bigger and longer view: Cultures are not changed overnight, and brain-drains are not reversed in one flash-in-the-pan visit. Community development, and a Christian witness therein, takes decades ... maybe a lifetime. But the fruit of such labor is a kind of lasting wholeness: education and character and faith coming full circle, to bless and build up others.

"You are whole now, thanks to Jesus."

Be at peace, friends. And whether your ministry today is on this island or on your own, transact that Jesus-peace in this stubborn world until all is well for all.

Sabaneta Stories 1

2010-03-14T12:48:00.002-04:00

Santo Santo Santo!
En numeroso coro, santos escogidos Te adoran sin cesar ...

"Holy, holy, holy! All the saints endlessly adore your name ..."

There is something quite right about the fact that our week in Sabaneta begins with Lord´s Day worship. Though most of us cannot share in the language here (even college Spanish is found wanting with the rapid pace of local dialogue), and even though our respective skin colors reveal no apparent commonality ... despite ourselves, we share a sturdy bond in Jesus. That is both grace and summons. This bond is made all the more palpable by the arms-wide-open hospitality of the Dominican Chrisians--more hugs and kisses than before church than even your grandmother could muster. Yes, worship is exactly the right way to begin this week. Sharing in book, bath, and meal. Singing and singing and more singing. Laughter. Silence. Prayer. This is what the baptized do, and it is our priveledge to do it alongside our font-family here. The four plaster walls of the modest Sabaneta sanctuary reverberate with drums, shakers, and the voices of God´s people: Santo Santo Santo! Holy, holy, holy!

Indeed, holy is the Lord, and holy is the space where Jesus´people gather to sing and pray.

Saturday was a long day. Many us skipped an entire night of sleep in order to make a 2am departure. Our flights were seamless and uneventful, but still it made for a tiresome 24 hours. Saturday sleep, then, was a true gift. Sunday morning brought breakfast behind Pastor Cancu´s house--a sturdy, covered, open-air eating place built years ago by previous teams. Over breakfast, we practiced two songs we would sing in worship and talked about the agenda for the rest of the day: worship, lunch, tours, more pill-counting, and a special concert out in a nearby village.

They speak here of "Domincan time." If worship begins at 9:30, everyone knows that means 9:30ish. A typical American finds this either annoying/lazy or endearing/wise. Choose the latter, because our Domincan sisters and brothers could teach us a few things about worshipping well as a community of saints. They take there time with this affair. There is plenty of hugging and greeting before worship begins. Songs are sung well, and there is always time for one more. Why not? What else would we be doing on ressurection day? Look in their eyes and you do not see the next thing on their agenda, another waiting box on a to-do list. There are no Blackberrys to silence (well, maybe a few flip phones), no matters at work looming over their heads. It is time to worship ... and so we did, from 9:30(ish) until noon(ish).

I suppose some matters are worth doing well, no matter how long it takes. Santo santo santo.

Pastor Cancu led us in prayer, and various church leaders read scripture from both testaments. Words of welcome were spoken to us, and our group of 30 gathered down front to introduce ourselves and add two more songs of our own to the worship. The preacher for the day lifted up the tale of the disciples scared out of their minds in the stormy boat, from Matthew 14. He leaned heavily on Jesus´ blessed admonition not to be afraid, for he is near.

Indeed, there is some fear here: Will there be another earthquake on this island? Will our grandsons be corrupted by the hard-thumping Reggaeton music, so popular now among the youth of this island? Will our granddaughters be swept up into local prostitution? Will Cancu serve us for more years to come? There is much to fear, many things are unknown. The preacher insisted that, nevertheless, when the Lord calls us to do great things in this world, we do not have to be afriad. God is faithful still. Santo santo santo.

After the sermon, a young boy was brought forward to be baptized. His face was worrisome, but Cancu--normally fierce with focus, straight as an arrow--was gentle and kind. They moved together like father and son toward a smallish silver bowl. Eyes closed. Water all over the head. Quiet all around, save for the most beautiful Spanish I have ever heard. New life. All is well. The lad returned to the pew with his mother, greeted with a gladsome unison "Amen" in Spanish.

Meal followed bath. Generous loaves of Dominican bread held high for all to see, and based on the blessed looks on the faces of the Amercans, some moments do not need a translator. Come. Eat. Be grateful. Jesus is here. The Domincan bread has baked into it what seems to be the slight taste of liquorice, of all things. Point is, it catches the palatte off gaurd. And it should: This is the blessed body of the Lord, broken for us. Beware already-holy-selves, and be blessed you sinners.

Like I said: two and a half hours. But the thing is you don´t know it. No air conditioning, no PowerPoint, no bulletins, and it moves along in its own blessed way. What´s the hurry, American friends? Santo santo santo.

After worship, we gathered back at Cancu´s house for a traditional Domincan lunch: rice, beans, and what are essentially boiled bananas. Excellent. (Imagine feeding 30 hungry Americans three meals a day for seven days, all on your back stoop, with a few propane burners and an open-pit fire. As my father used to say: "God bless the cooks.")

The afternoon brought more pill-counting for many, in the continual effort to ready the pharmacy to supply meds for hundreds of patient encounters throughout this week. Meanwhile, those here for the first time were treated to van-tours of the surrounding countryside and adjacent villages near Sabaneta. Stops were made at the various chapels associated with the mother church in Sabaneta, most of which have been built over the years by previous teams.

One tour stopped in the home of the chapel pastor near Boca. A school teacher by day, on nights and weekends she is preacher, pastor, and prophet. Almost daily, she makes her way down to the road, where gambling and the sex-trade runs deep but not hidden. She preaches to anyone who will listen. She is on the front lines of a broken world--a brokeness apparent in ramshackle sex-shacks and on young girl´s faces. This place is not typical Domincan fare, thank goodness, but it is here nonetheless. A rough place. So she preaches, and prays, and serves those who will be served. "It is my priveledge," she says in rapid Spanish. "I look forward to retiring from teaching so I can serve the Lord in other ways." What did I do today to shed a little Easter-light on a darkened world? I wonder. Santo santo santo.

Evening brought dinner and, for many, a concert by one of the church members in a nearby chapel. He sang, we sang, and we all sang some more. We clapped and swayed, and at one point, the tallest and whitest among us were ushered forward for some clumsy dancing near the front. Funny thing about Domincan hospitality: One never feels made fun of. It appears we are okay with them. There is freedom in love. Santo.

Nighttime brought wind, rain, and electricity that did a dance of off and on all throughout the night. The fan is working ... now the fan is not ... now the fan--This is the Sabaneta version of counting sheep. It is hot and sticky here, even in March, even at night. But stiill, we slept. Well, some slept ... and snored. Others did not sleep. Patience with one another: through the night, at meals, in hard labor. All part and parcel of practiciting Jesus community.

This too, in its own way, Santo.

On Marriage

2010-03-02T14:44:00.002-05:00

"Two live best together who live in God." -- D.P.

Wilderness Gifts

2010-02-24T20:15:00.002-05:00

We should not be so quick to assume that Jesus' well-attested foray in the wilderness was torturous, and only that. That "blessing is ease and ease signals blessing" is our well-packaged religious assumption, not his. Fierce temptations notwithstanding, there is -- I will argue -- a certain gift of landscaped clarity out in the wilderness space. The barren ground, the long sheet of cracked earth, the absence of cacophonous voices -- the wilderness has a way of subduing the storm of competing demands. Such a blanket of immense quiet stills even the most internal of voices. The stillness is only threat if one has come to worship the noise. Otherwise, there is new space here. God's flaming wind has room to blow.

In that sense, then -- and since we so rarely have control over our arrival in them -- we should learn to work with the rugged spaces rather than against them. What is this time about? What is the space working to signal? Where is the Sunday rising?

One matter is for certain: He who sojourned there sojourns now.

Provision

2010-02-03T16:18:00.000-05:00

Mary, Mary … how does your garden grow?

Aware of the agrarian setting in which he lived, Jesus was quite fond of agricultural metaphors. For those of you who farm or garden, this serves to make a reality as foreign to us as the “kingdom of God” an easier realm to imagine. Jesus: God’s movement among us is like a tiny mustard seed (Matt 13), like something hidden in a field (13), like a liberal vineyard owner (20), or like someone who sows seed and is subsequently shocked by the result (Mark 4). “The seed sown in the ground soon sprouts up and grows, but the sower does not how.”

As in gardening, so it is with the kingdom: There is our planning and tending work to be done, yes. But in the end, at harvest time, the flowers that bloom and the fruit that grows are not the result of silver bells, cockle shells, or any such ascertainable concoction. New life is a stupendous mystery—a delightful gift from a giving Easter-God.

I’m grateful to be a seed-sower among you in this time -- scattering good kernel, tending to planted rows, and trenching for hydration. I rejoice in the news that

1. I do not do this work alone, but share it with officers, staff, and leaders both official and unofficial.

2. The locus of my particular work is with scripture and sacraments, both of which bloom best chiefly in Lord’s Day worship—my favorite venue for ministry.

3. In the end, the fruitfulness of said sowing is not in any of our the hands. As one of your elders recently remarked, “God does not call us to achieve, only to be faithful. Achievement is up to God.” When life springs forth among us, it is always the good gift of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—Planter, Bloom, and Growth.

Church, church … how is God’s garden growing?

The old Scottish Presbyterians liked to call those elders other than the pastor “Ruling Elders.” The title was not intended to bespeak authoritarianism, but rather measurement. How do we measure up to the comfort and challenge of the gospel? How are we growing as a people of God? How do we compare, standing next to this Jesus who looms so tall among us? In 2010 your elders are reflecting on our ministry of provision: providing for our common growth by providing the seeds, planting, and irrigation of ministry. Scripture, sacraments, worship, prayer, service, fellowship, leadership, service—these and many others seeds are what we hope to sow liberally in our congregation in the coming year.

May our wonderment be that of the sower in Mark 4:27. Seeds go down, time passes along, and by God’s good provision fresh fruit springs forth among us.

Infrastructure

2010-01-31T22:02:00.000-05:00

I’m no economist. Most months I’m doing well to forecast the next four weeks in the life of my checkbook. But smart people I’ve read suggest that when times are tough, and if the government insists on dumping lots of money on the problem, it should put it to work in infrastructure—roads and rails, beams and bridges. (If I were president, the next great American project, on the scale of Kennedy’s moon-shot, would be high-speed intercity passenger rail all over the place. Get me to New York City in 3 hours without ever leaving the ground. It can be done. But then again, as is obvious and good, I’m not the president.)

I am, however, blessed to be a Teaching Elder. And as a foreman on that big project of building a moving fellowship of believers, this much I know: Whether the times are lean or large, we Christians are never harmed by a boost in our kind of infrastructure—shoring up the bridges and byways over which our living faith moves.

The prophet rings the phone on the construction site:

“In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord!
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God!” —Isaiah 40

The Holy Spirit moves—in worship, in words, in a will to push us out those handsome wooden front doors and into the byways and alleyways of our well-traveled lives. That the Spirit moves is of no doubt. The only question for us remains: How is it with the highways on which that Spirit will move? How is our infrastructure? Crumbling or creative? Suffering or supportive? Neglected or new every morning?

Scripture, prayer, service, fellowship, reflection, relationships — These and others are the pathways along which the word of the Lord tends to come, when it comes. And it will come. Here and there, now and then. But it will come, indeed. It is our glad privilege to be ready for its arrival, and its departure, with us in tow.

Hardhats, anyone?

Open

2010-01-26T14:01:00.001-05:00

I believe in the True Presence. I don’t understand it, but I don’t need to understand it. If you say “I don’t believe in something,” you close the door to growth. And if you say, “I don’t understand, but I want to,” you are open to more. I choose to believe. I want to believe. I don’t understand how or why or whether. But I choose to believe.

--sagacious church member,
reflecting in group discussion on what happens at the Table

Welcome Christmas Child

2009-12-24T23:53:00.004-05:00

"Welcome Christmas, Christmas Day"

"Fah who for-aze — Dah who dor-aze"

Of course, adorable as they are
and with all due affection for their creator-physician Seuss
we, here, are not the Whos down in Whoville

On the corner of Market and Maple this night,
perhaps our prayer is “Welcome Christmas, Christmas Child”

Welcome child
While we stand
Heart to heart
And hand in hand

Christmas news is in our grasp
as long as we have hands to clasp

And what news, exactly, are we clasping?

Middle-aged Joe
Teenage Mary
commonplace Jews

who welcome parallel angels
that bring provocative signals
that hang providential shingles

signs

announcing

a birth to be
an unexpected expectancy
a divine intrusion
an unwelcomed welcome

a baby messenger ... teacher ... deliverer
the well-known stranger
born for all, known by many, followed well by few
(surely not well by me)

Welcome, welcome, Christmas child

And so it is, then, we Who-Christians
all around this Who-world

when the weather turns chilly
and the days grow short in the month of 12
and the kids come home from expensive educations

we gather in our who-churches
and sing the oddest of who-songs
with the strangest of who-words

Silent night, holy night! Son of God, love’s pure light.
Radiant beams from Thy holy face,
With the dawn of redeeming grace.

Christmas words, at once
familiar as the snow
right as rain

a refrain as orienting this time of year
as your neighbor’s pumpkin roll

And yet, upon reflection, their meaning
is as obtuse to us as the person they praise

So, on the one hand:

Welcome, Familiar Friend

After all, do we not see ourselves in this Bethlehem baby:

fleshy
dependent
squeals and fits of life
naked before God

He is we. We are he, Seuss might say.

And so we assume we know all about him. Our Who-savior.

Yet when a little later he opens his mouth
his holy babble is not recognizable to our who-ears,
invested as we can be in our who-world and its who-ways

He says:

Just as the Lord has forgiven you, you also should forgive.
Want to take hold of your life? Let it go, for God’s sake.
Want to live? Take up your cross and follow me to mine.

What words are these?
What Seusical nonsense does he rhyme?
From what planet is this babbling-baby-Lord?

It may as well be
Dah who dor-aze
Fah who for-aze

Word now breaking heaven’s silence
Long-awaited, familiar stranger
Welcome, holy other

He comes from a place, from a grace, we cannot comprehend
His origin is beyond our telling
His purpose, beyond our control

Yet upon his arrival,
he looks as though he could be your cousin’s child,
from Greensburg
(Nice people, in fact. As long you don’t talk football.)

Welcome, confounding mystery

How can your Deoxyribonucleic acid be both ours, and God’s?
How is it you speak our who-language,
yet you know first-hand the one who is?
How are you both my brother and my God?

Fragile finger sent to heal us 
Tender brow prepared for thorn 
Tiny heart whose blood will save us

Welcome, splendorous mystery
Welcome, holy child

Welcome to our church, our homes, our block
Welcome to our time, our space, our mess
Welcome to this corner, this service, these hearts

Take your place
amid packages, homecomings, and fantastic fudge
amid sledding and sautéing and secret sobbing
amid new who-scooters, new who-boyfriends, new who-disappointments

Gather with our great Aunt Ellen
Gather at our great big meals
Gather up our great hunger
for justice
for renewal
for life
for all

Welcome, welcome, Christmas child
to this season of deep gladness
to those who know departing sadness
to this era of ambivalent madness

Wrap our injured flesh around You 
Breathe our air and walk our sod 
Rob our sin and make us holy

Welcome, child of God.

Born to expire that in dying we might live
Sent from high to serve down low,
that those bent low might stand up tall
Word of God now disturbing heaven’s long quiet

Your Christmas grace is within our grasp
Give us hands, and hearts, to clasp

Welcome, holy child

Welcome to our world

(some words above from Welcome to our World by Chris Rice)

Advent prayer

2009-12-12T21:26:00.001-05:00

Break forth, O beauteous heavenly light, 
And usher in the morning; 
O shepherds, shrink not with afright, 
But hear the angel’s warning. 
This Child, now weak in infancy, 
Our confidence and joy shall be, 
The power of Satan breaking, 
Our peace eternal making.

Break forth, O beautiful heavenly light. Break forth around us and illuminate the world in which we live. Give us eyes to see what you see, O Lord: a world broken, rent, in a thousand cross-like ways; yet a world, being reconciled and redeemed by your love—with a million resurrection possibilities.

We come to worship this Advent morning with six days of living on our hearts: 144 hours of walking in the Way while walking in your world. 8600 minutes is long enough to gather a week’s worth of intercessions, our fervent prayers for those we know in need—for neighbors, strangers, lovers, friends, coworkers, roommates … even our enemies. We pray for them now …

Break forth, O beautiful heavenly light. Break forth into the lives of those who are today covered in the darkness of grief, mourning the death of someone they love. We pray for all we know who are shadowed in grief …

Break forth, O beautiful healing light. Break forth into places of struggle and illness. Shine on those in need of healing and hope, cause cells to grow and hearts to heal and spirits to quicken. Shine upon those we name now …

Break forth, O beautiful Christ-refracted light. Break forth into the lives and homes and places of all those who walk in darkness—the darkness of doubt, of despair, of disappointment and dread. From the smallest family to the largest nation, where there is bad blood, bring healing; hatred, peace; resentment, freedom; wreckage of relationships, healing and new life. Shine your light, O Christ, in the places we name now …

How we thank you O Lord that we need not shudder in fear.
How we thank you for the angelic message of purposeful hope.
How we thank you that Christ shares our weaknesses
and makes buoyant our confident joy.

Nothing Accursed

2009-12-11T21:46:00.000-05:00

And the one who was seated on the throne said,
“See, I am making all things new.” -- Revelation 21

R. and her husband spent forty plus years in the business of helping people find just the right place—a place for shelter, a place for family, a place for living. After all, as they say: “Location, location, location.” I bet a great many of us occupy our places of habitation because of their guidance and transaction.

This is what I want to say this morning: We who have loved someone and then lost someone … We who have felt the ache of imagining the world without a father, mother, or a loved-one in it ... We who grieve … We are, in our heart of hearts, looking for – longing for – just the right place—a place of refuge, a place of release from suffering, a place for life eternal. We are in the business of hoping. Our hearts cry out to God:

Location, location, O blessed new location.
O for a place, for a time,
where and when God’s creation
and God’s children within it
are no longer threatened
by advancing time,
by encroaching tumors,
by goodbyes, untimely.

It is to those who grieve, to those who ache for another place, to those who struggle with the brokenness of the world that the news of Revelation 21 comes, a sweeping vision a place soon to be unveiled. It is a large, living picture of time soon on its way. It is, if I may, the New Testament’s best property listing. It is a sacred prospectus. It is a glimpse of God’s future, the precise details of which are beyond telling, beyond technical description.

Contra the cable TV preachers, Revelation 21 is not interested in vacating the mystery of how it will be. It is simply interested in the news that it will be. Not because we can explain it, decode it … but because God has promised it.

A new heaven and earth. No more sun or moon: God is the light of all. No more temples or sanctuaries, as handsome and helpful as they are: God is all in all. No more tears: God has remade creation, from top to bottom. In fact, “nothing accursed will be found there.”

No disease,
no departures,
no despair.

R’s baptism is the mark that she is sealed in this vision. Her profession of faith was her own indication that she was confident in this living hope. And so we name today the good news that she is bound up in this sweeping promise; she is already glimpsing the leading edge of this stunning vision; she will, together with all of creation, together with all the saints of God—not by their virtue but by God’s grace—she will be raised up holy and whole. And until then, she is held safe in God’s good care until it fully and completely unfolds.

This bold New Testament faith does not cancel out our grief, or sequester it, or judge it … as if, one either believes the good news or one grieves. Christian hope in the vision of Revelation 21 honors our grief, gathers up each precious tear, affirms every ache of the heart. Because, every lament is a prayer for a new location, every tear is a bold request for a new time, every sign is a plea for a coming time when God will be all in all.

In honor of her roots, we borrow four questions and answers Episcopalian catechism, from The Book of Common Prayer:

Q. What is the Christian hope?  A. The Christian hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God's purpose for the world.

Q. What do we mean by the resurrection of the body?  A. We mean that God will raise us from death in the fullness of our being, that we may live with Christ in the communion of the saints.

Q. What is the communion of saints?  A. The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.

Q. What, then, is our assurance as Christians?  A. Our assurance as Christians is that nothing, not even death, shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Thanks be to God.

Out on the (Holy) Periphery

2009-12-01T22:45:00.000-05:00

In that region there were shepherds living in the fields, keeping watch over their flock by night. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them … -- Luke 2

Who doesn’t enjoy the Christmastime tale of the sheep-herders abiding in the fields, and who hasn’t dressed up a child in a bathrobe and towel for herding in a pageant full of cardboard sheep? The shepherds of Luke 2 are a holiday staple. Hearing their story again brings a sense that all is right-side-up with the world.
Yet God is turning the world upside down.

It must be so, if we are to believe Luke’s account that it is to shepherds, of all people, that the messengers of heaven make their explosive appearance. “God’s chosen fellow has come!” they sing out. Only, let us observe that this choral anthem is delivered, not from the choir loft of the downtown temple, or from the steps of the royal city hall, or on the stage of the popular amphitheater. The song rings out in the outskirts of town, out in the fields, on the periphery of the world’s typical attention. The first hearers of God’s gospel: third-trick sheep-tenders whose names we are never even told. Not preachers, not priests, not theologians. Shepherds. Sideliners.

It could be that one of the body’s finer attributes is the eye’s peripheral vision—the ability to notice the sidelines, what’s afoot off center. “Who’s that coming up behind me? Is that my turn there? Watch out … here comes a fast ball out of nowhere!” There is a lot happening on the margins of our existence, and, similarly, it is the account of Luke more than any other gospel that summons us to imagine God busily at work in the margins of the world.

Consider Luke’s cast of characters. Father Joe: a first-century Jewish everyman. Mother Mary: an otherwise unknown teenager from the lower ranks of society. She herself gets the joke inherent in God visiting her, of all people (Luke 1:48). Fisherman. Tax collectors. Hemorrhaging women and leprous men. In this tale, old women get pregnant (1:18) and even dependent children are welcomed in to the fellowship of those of follow God’s unlikely messiah (18:16). Luke presents us with a shepherd willing to risk the safety of the centered hoard to secure the protection of one stuck in the margins (15:4). This is God, out on the holy periphery.

So then, insists Luke, Christmas is a time for clearing our tangential vision. Rub your eyes and pay attention all-around, because if God is whimsical enough to dispatch a sky-splitting singing telegram to a band of third-shift animal wrestlers out on the edges of reality, then this God is just as likely to be up to something marvelous and life-altering out along the margins of your life, too.

Some stranger speaks truth. Some coincidence smells of providence. Some impossible dream will not go away. Some forgotten piece of your story jostles for attention. Some summons to serve keeps popping up in the oddest of places. Some hint of resurrection tickles your imagination. Each could be dismissed as the ordinary weirdness of the world; each could be embraced as the movement of God. Meanwhile, all the Bible knows how to do is to demand that you your seatbelts are fastened and your tray tables are locked, because one is never quite sure what improbable, peripheral means God might use to invade and heal the world, and your life in it (1 Corinthians 1:28).

So have the merriest of Christmases. He is born in Bethlehem.

Oh, and watch your flank.
We serve a sneaky God.
(Just ask the shepherds.)

Burst the Bubble

2009-11-01T08:13:00.001-05:00

Come, ye thankful people, come,
raise the song of harvest home;
all is safely gathered in,
ere the winter storms begin.
God our Maker doth provide
for our wants to be supplied;
come to God's own temple, come,
raise the song of harvest home.
-- Henry Alford, 1810-1871

November. Turkey and stuffing cometh. Thanks be to God.

Families differ, of course, on their habits and hang-ups around the Thanksgiving table. But in one form or another, there is often a kind of bubble that hovers over the big meal: a certain pressure to keep the conversation light, keep it general, keep it not-about-us in ways other than who is hoarding the potatoes. After all, there is national politics to debate, football losses to thrash out, workplace woes to deconstruct.

(No bubble over your table? Then thanks be to God. No need for what follows.)

Imogen Heap has a nice little ballad about a child at the feasting table that keeps hoping (praying?) that her family will steer out of its predictable skid of holiday arguments and tensions by actually naming their love for one another. The chorus, her prayer:

It's that time of year
Leave all our hopelessness's aside
If just for a little while
tears stop right here
I know we've all had a bumpy ride.
I'm secretly on your side

My simple November charge is to burst the bubble, whatever it may be. Take the lead and take a moment to name the goodness and greatness of God you have known in your life this year. “Raise a song of harvest home,” Alford might say. Don’t worry so much about whether others will follow suit, or how they will feel about it. Just worry about whether you can trace the lines of God’s generosity in your own continually-unfolding narrative of baptized faith. And for that matter, go ahead and trace the lines of your love for those around your table. Sure, they already know how you feel. But they need to hear it, and we need to name it.

Bubbles remain intact in families because, by and large, we worry too much about honoring old habits of silence or protecting familiar discomforts. To be sure: No one is suggesting a diatribe, or a lecture. Merely a little testimony: that blessed first-person singular song of gratitude whereby at Thanksgiving one surpasses turkey-passing for a little truth-telling—the truth of God’s way with you, how it is that “all is safely gathered in” in your life this very year.

Raise a glass. Raise of song of thanks to God. Burst the bubble.

Remembrance

2009-10-15T20:54:00.002-04:00

Speaking not as a preacher but as a son, and on behalf of my two older siblings — to whom I have looked up all my life – it is an honor to offer for my family words of remembrance about our dear father, now departed.

And, of course, there is only one appropriate way to begin: To make a long story short …

Indeed, the old man could tell a story — lots of them, and they could spring forth at any given moment. If you asked John to turn on the light switch in the living room, inevitably you would become the beneficiary of a 20-minute recounting of the time he visited the Thomas Edison Museum. “110 volts, 60 hertz!” he would explain, with that gleam in his eye. Even if you couldn’t care less about Mr. Edison’s preferred voltage, you had to admit you had a good time learning just a bit more about it.

Repetition was such feature of his storytelling that we often threatened to number his tales (1, 2, 3, and so on) thereby saving everyone a great deal of time. “You remember, number 14 …” and we’d all laugh. “That’s a good one.” Now, amid the silence, I suspect we’d give anything to hear him tell one again, in full.

Dad was a masterful storyteller, not by any formal training in the craft, but simply because he paid attention to the world around him—especially to people, and the funny things we do, our endearing folly.

His stories reveled in the everyman, because he was one himself, and he knew it. Everyday fellows like Otis, our grandfather’s yardman, who when told by his boss to “take the handle off the lawnmower and put it in the trunk” for servicing across the lake, Otis did just what he was told. Dad always said: “The joke was on Papa. He arrived in New Orleans, opened the trunk, and found – what else? – the handle!” Dad loved that story.

He also loved to tell about the man who called the local Cleco office with an electrical problem. “Mr. Hawkins, your company is sending too much electricity to my house and you’ve ruined my electric blanket.” “How do you know this?” dad asked. “Well, when my wife and I get into bed at night we get a big shock.” (This is a true story.) “Don’t believe me? You should come by and experience it for yourself.” (Incidentally, through a process of elimination, Electrical Engineer Hawkins determined that the culprit was not Cleco, but fuzzy slippers on shag carpet—plain ole static.)

Then there was the story about the two teenage girls at a Covington Presbyterian Church picnic years ago. “Mr. John! What kind of ice cream are you making in your ice cream machine?” Without missing a beat, the old man said: “Spinach.”

He told tales about the past, about his beloved New Orleans during the war, about presidents he remembered hearing on the radio, about the Army in Kansas and atomic bomb tests in Nevada. He had an insatiable appetite for history, biography, politics, and street-level philosophy. Jack and I spent an evening with him in St. Tammany hospital this summer, and all he wanted to do was talk about the 700-page biography of Winston Churchill he was reading … again. This hunger to learn all he could about the world around him has been bequeathed to his daughter in the form of a strong academic rigor and a fierce curiosity of the mind.

He told tales about machines: boilers and Buicks and Baldwin locomotives. Hear him recall the story of getting a stubborn substation back online after a hurricane and you’d swear it was a page torn from Homer’s Odyssey. He liked machines, and how they work, and why it matters. In the care of his eldest son, he has left an impressive mechanical aptitude, and a passion for it, and with those gifts: a strength of character to keep the whole matter of machines quite human.

In the end, however, the stories that loomed the largest in his imagination turned out to be from the Biblical narrative, and he studied the scriptures with an engineer’s precision. Just last week, his life ebbing away, he told me he was looking forward to teaching again the woman’s Bible study one more time. (Hey, my father was no fool.) He especially loved the Old Testament. He was fascinated by King David and loved to read about the old patriarchs – their blessings and their curses.

This summer, after a brief but endearing visit with dad in the hospital over Father’s Day, I found myself writing about Laban – an obscure Old Testament family head, remembered mostly for his final blessing.

Allow me to finish with these words, honest as they are about dad’s recent health struggles. I offer this episode as a testimony to dad’s best legacy for his children and theirs – a living faith in Christ Jesus.

- - -

June 22, 2009

My father has every reason to be self-centered these days.

His legs no longer move him from here to there. He is fifty pounds less the man he was just a season ago. His bones press outward under his dermis like knobby sticks in a pile. He cannot put on a shirt without ready assistance. He is dying, adagio.

If ever there were a time for self-absorption, for pity and loathing heaped on his own head, this would be it. And yet.

We all held hands around his hospital room — an impromptu sanctuary consecrated amid hoses, drips, and medicinal odors. The bubbling water in the little tank on the wall provided our only prelude music—its watery gurgle, a baptismal reminder.
We were all there, but it was drawing to a close, and it seemed good and right that we pray. I was all set to do my part as the family preacher, when suddenly a sacramental query fired across my brain: What if the victim here was instead the host?

“Dad, will you pray for us?”

No hesitation. He cleared his throat, moistened his tongue with a sip of water. The way he dropped his head to pray suggested that he would have fallen prostrate, would his body have allowed him the ancient gesture. His voice was strangely high-pitched, high up in his throat, as if suddenly he was in a different way, a holy way.

“Dear Lord, we just want to thank you, for your love in our lives.”

“Lord, you have been so good to us, blessed us in so many ways.”

“Father, we thank you for our family, for being here with us now.”

I broke the old rules and opened my eyes, looked up and across the room. The words came forth from his broken-down frame like a Sunday song, in an artful cadence not to be expected from a man who spent his life working square electrical equations and smiling on objective facts. They were not those overly pious words born of denial, those prayers we sling to God in order to convince ourselves. His words were more solid than that, more substantial. It was as though they had been waiting to be spoken for some time.

Midway through this Great Prayer of Thanksgiving, he turned the tables on us. He began praying for his children and grandchildren, including those not present. He blessed each one of us, by name, and by his grammar it was not clear if he was talking to his family or to God. I remember thinking that this was prayer at its finest imprecision. Over his grandchildren, he prayed:

“May God give you good health, help you make good grades, and work that matters in the world. May the Lord bless you as you raise your own families with love and faith. May God guide you in the way you should go. May you trust in the Lord always.”

This went on for some time.

The length was not so much because the old man was rambling—a preferred mode of speech, as we all know. No, he went on and on because he could, because there was time to take, because it was his time to take it. If not then, when? If not there, where?

It was a thing worth getting right, this prayer. It was one last equation to be solved. It was fastidiousness born of love. It was his Christ-shaped shot across the bow his stubborn demise.

It was his blessing, on the cusp of departure.

Genesis 31:55 says, “Early in the morning old Laban rose up, and kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. Then he departed and returned home.”

Ironic, really: Because of our concern for him, we had gathered to his bedside. But because of who he was – who he had become, by God’s grace – he chose to make the moment about us.

Goodbye, Laban. Go in peace. Thanks for the stories.

You looked sharp, you stayed tight.
You did good.
You got it right.

Legacy

2009-10-01T06:45:00.000-04:00

A resident of Covington, Louisiana, since 1979, John C. Hawkins, Sr. was the beloved husband of Lucile (Puddin) Smart Hawkins. He is also survived by his children, Dr. Sarah H. Ross (Dennis), John (Jack) C. Hawkins, Jr. (Diane), and The Rev. Ralph W. Hawkins (Elizabeth); grandchildren, Andrew Ross (Miriam), Ainsley Ross, Michelle Hawkins, John Hawkins III, Lonnie Hawkins, Ella Hawkins; sister, Mary Hawkins, M.D. of Flora, MS; sister-in-law, Lane Smart of Covington; and many cousins, nieces, and nephews. He was preceded in death by his parents, Ralph and Pauline Hawkins.

Born in New Orleans on September 26, 1933, he served in the US Army from 1952 to 1954 and took part in the Upshot-Keyhole Atomic Test in Nevada in 1953. After discharge as an E-5, sergeant, he was a member of the American Legion Post 16 in Covington. He graduated with a BSEE from LSU in 1958 and an MAS from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 1975. Employed for over 40 years in the electric utility industry, he retired from Cleco in 1998. He was a registered Professional Electrical Engineer in Louisiana and five other states.

He was ordained as an Elder at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Huntsville, AL in 1965 and repeatedly served on the Session of Covington Presbyterian Church. He also served on the Committee on Ministry for the Presbytery of South Louisiana for five years and acted as Commissioner to the General Assemblies of 1977 and 2002. In 2004 he was Lay Supply Pastor at the 3rd Presbyterian Church, New Orleans. He also served at various times as Moderator of the Sessions at Carrollton, Berean, and Gentilly Presbyterian Churches in New Orleans and 1st Presbyterian Church in Ponchatoula.

Relatives and friends of the family are invited to attend the funeral services on Friday, October 2, 2009 at 11:00 AM from at Covington Presbyterian Church, 222 Jefferson Ave., Covington, LA 70433; visitation AT THE CHURCH will begin at 9:00 AM on Friday.

Graveside services with Military Honors will follow at Pinecrest Memorial Gardens.

The family would prefer donations to Covington Presbyterian Church.

Dazzling Difference

2009-09-03T22:33:00.002-04:00

Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. – Mark 9

When the motel alarm blasted its harsh news at four in the morning, I immediately began second-guessing my ambitious plan to be on top of the mountain for sunrise. My spouse had no second thoughts on the matter, mostly because she had concluded from the get go it was a fool’s errand. Still, like groggy recruits at boot camp revile, we rolled out of bed and filed out to the car. At the top of Cadillac Mountain, now 4:40 a.m., I was astonished to discover three score of tourists strewn along the eastward rocks of the parking lot. Turns out we were not the only wearisome pilgrims.

We found an unclaimed boulder and settled in for the show. It was chilly, with a blanket-worthy breeze moving across the pavement. We must have looked a bit disheveled from the hasty ascent, as the man next to us held out his large open yellow box and inquired, “Cheerios?” (Nothing like toasted whole goodness at 1500 feet.)

All around us people were waiting, chatting about this or that: When should we swim today? Popovers at Jordan Pond? Did you call the kennel now that we are staying one more day? … the stuff of middle-class vacations. Each little huddle: a little world unto itself.

And then it started.

It’s a funny thing: I spent at least a week anticipating being “one of the first in the nation to see the sun rise,” and when it finally commenced all I wanted to do was look at the faces all around me. Those illuminated faces. Everyone, awash in the purest pinkish-orange I have ever noticed. Even my own little flesh-and-blood—already so vital in her toddler years—looked more alive than ever. And no one said a word, awash as we were in the stunning newness of another day.

What a difference the sun makes.

I like to imagine that the disciples in Mark 9 were not keen on making the hike up the high hill with Jesus. Indeed, when the goal is to seek the Lord, we are not always motivated to move upward either. First, there’s the hike itself, arduous and bumpy. But there is also the real possibility that we will be changed by the encounter—“bleached by light” as Mark suggests. That’s enough to keep a pilgrim down below, on the solid ground of “normal.”

Even so, at the summit, everything was made new again for Peter, James, and John—Jesus’ “Three Amigos”. Sacred solitude, up above the world. Engulfing light. Changing garments. And by the end, the divine voice of reaffirmation and summons (verse 7): “This is my beloved. Listen!” It must have been the case that the view from the top of this mountain affected their view of life back down below. Surely the vision of God’s beloved—illuminated, reaffirmed, sent forward—affected the way these fellows led their lives in the days that followed. Surely the bright light of God’s glory on their faces retrained their eyes to see God’s glory awash in the world. A new day.

What a difference the son makes.

It is for each of us, and together as a congregation, to know the grace of higher ground, of transfigured perspective. Let us regularly get up to a higher place—for prayer, for peace, for perspective. The hope is not merely for a reorganized to-do list, or that we would later put our shoulder more boldly the grindstone of life. The hope—indeed, the promise—is for illumination. We look and long for the bright light of the risen son, casting its gaze upon all our laboring, loving, and living.

Ready to climb?

Presbyterian Gifts

2009-06-23T23:56:00.003-04:00

Rooted in Tradition ...

Christ alone is head of the church, and his example is one of service. Church leadership is spread around so that Christ alone is lifted up and honored in all matters.

Salvation is not an end unto itself, nor merely a matter of eternal destiny, but also a calling to humble service and loving stewardship in the here and now.

Baptism, not ordination, is the marker for ministry. All of God’s people are called to love the Lord their God, love neighbor as self, and to practice faith, hope, and love.

We ordain some to three offices needed to nourish, guide, and serve the church in its common ministry. Pastors, Elders, and Deacons exist not for their own sake, but to provide for the ministry of all God’s people in the world.

As the Jesuits have done within the Roman Catholic tradition, so Presbyterians have blessed the Protestant churches with gifts of acumen and learning, with a “faith seeking understanding.” Faith is more than intelligence, but it includes intelligence.

“The great ends of the church are the proclamation of the gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.”

Growing in faith …

We are a Christian tradition reformed from the excesses of the medieval church, and in every subsequent era we are always subject to reformation according to the word of God.

Scripture and Sacraments are the primary means by which God forms and reforms us as faithful people. These are fundamental, and all other elements of worship are in service to them.

Though there is fruit in it for us, worship is foremost about the living God.

While our officers vow to be stewards of Reformed-Presbyterian way, no one is excluded from membership in the body of believers for any other reason peripheral to faith in Jesus Christ. Furthermore, to be Presbyterian is to be ecumenical.

One generation of believers passes on to the next its better interpretations of scripture (in confessions and creeds), but those interpretations are never equated with scripture.

"In gratitude to God, empowered by the Spirit, we strive to serve Christ in our daily tasks and to live holy and joyful lives, even as we watch for God's new heaven and new earth.”

Laban

2009-06-22T23:41:00.005-04:00

My father has every reason to be self-centered these days.

His legs no longer move him from here to there. He is fifty pounds less the man he was just a short season ago. His bones press outward under his dermis like knobby sticks in a pile. He cannot put on a shirt without ready assistance. He is dying, adagio.

If ever there were a time for self-absorption, for pity and loathing heaped on his own head, this would be it.

We all held hands around his hospital room -- an impromptu sanctuary consecrated amid hoses, drips, and medicinal odors. The bubbling water in the little tank on the wall provided our only prelude music—its gurgle, I suspect, a baptismal image. It seemed good and right that we pray.

I was all set to do my part as the “family preacher” -- an office as ambiguous as it is honorable. Then a sacramental query fired across my brain: What if the victim was also the host?

“Dad, will you start us off?”

No hesitation. He cleared his throat, moistened his tongue with a sip of water. The way he dropped his head to pray suggested that he would have fallen prostrate, would his body have allowed him the ancient gesture. His voice was strangely high-pitched, high up in his throat, as if suddenly he was in a different way.

Dear Lord, we just want to thank you, for your love in our lives.
Dear Lord, you have been so good to us, blessed us in so many ways.
O Lord, we thank you for our family, for being here with us now.

I broke the old rules and opened my eyes, looked up and across the room. The words came forth from his broken-down frame like a Sunday song, an artful cadence not to be expected from a man who spent his life working electrical equations and smiling upon solid facts. They were not those pious prayer-words born of denial, those praises we sling to God in order to convince ourselves. The words were more solid than that, more substantial. It was as though they had been waiting to be spoken for a little while.

Midway through the Great Prayer, he turned a corner. He began praying for his children and grandchildren, one at a time. He named each of us, even those not present, and the posture of his voice was such that one could not be sure if he was talk-ing to his family or to God. It occurred to me that this was prayer at its finest imprecision.

May God give each of you good health, good grades, and work that matters in the world. May the Lord bless you, that you might raise your own families with love and faith. May Jesus guide you in the way he would have you go, leading you always.

This went on for some time.

The length was not so much because the old man was rambling -- a mode of speech he is fond of, as we all know. No, he went on and on because he could, because there was time to take, because it was his time to take it. If not then, when? If not there, where?

It felt like a thing worth getting right, this prayer. It was fastidiousness born of love. It was one last beautiful equation to be worked out. It was his Christ-shaped shot across the bow of his stubborn demise.

It was his blessing, on the cusp of departure.

Ironic, really:
We had gathered about him in our concern;
in his courage he made it about us.

Early in the morning Laban rose up, and kissed his grandchildren and his daughters and blessed them. Then he departed and returned home. - Genesis 31:55

Goodbye, Laban. Go in peace.

High Green

2009-06-14T22:38:00.004-04:00

Roll on, over flatlands, foothills, and bogs
Roll on, ‘cross gulleys, creeks, and channels
Roll on, past fields, hamlets, and boroughs

Shuffle through ribbon bends in the line
Blast over road crossings where they wait
Chug away from platform-stops, siding-rests

Roll on, from the brisk rain to the arid sun
Roll on, from headwaters down to gulf lands
Roll on, past the hulks of labor’s great past

Shoot by locals, shifters, sisters in the hole
Thump over diamonds and other rows to hoe
Squeal ‘round tight changes in your course

Roll on, keeping the pace and making up time
Roll on, with the seasoned and virgins alike
Roll on, with lives aboard as varied as the run

From one high green to another
It's your time to move

Roll on

One Pneumatic Year

2009-06-13T01:00:00.000-04:00

pneumatic |n(y)oōˈmatik| (adjective) 1. containing or operated by air under pressure, 2. of or relating to the spirit.

Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” – John 20:21-22

For the privilege of living and working among you these last twelve months as your latest pastor, I offer you my heartfelt thanks—even as I also raise up to God grateful songs. Albeit swift, it has been for me a rich and substantive year. Allow me a singular anniversary article in which to name three places of vocational gladness and three prayers for continued Spirit-breathed growth for our church.

I am humbled to be your Teaching Elder at such a time as this. Preaching in particular and the shaping of Sunday worship in general are the strongest burdens I feel in my ministry. So many of you have communicated to me your glad response to this emphasis, which has had the effect of confirming my sense of call here and prompting me to pray—fervent prayers for the Spirit to blow vigorously in me and in you, filling our scripture-shaped worship in the days ahead. Working with our worship staff week to week has been most stimulating for me, and I am so grateful for the competence and commitment they bring to every Lord’s Day service. Still, my most fervent prayers are for you, congregation, as we together worship week to week: Can we sense the Spirit of God in-spiring our worship? Where is the Lord sending us in scripture to grow in knowledge and wisdom? Do we know that pneumatic peace of God in the way those early disciples did? None of us can respond to Jesus if we do not know Jesus, so in every season of a church’s life its prayerful engagement with scripture is a vital concern. Pray for your preachers, even as your preachers pray for you. I am grateful to be one of them.

I am appreciative of the opportunity to be your Moderator and a Head of Staff, working with your officers and staff to equip this flock for its work. My interest in these two formal titles, and the fact that I refer to them from time to time, is not rooted in their potential for vanity but in the urgent function associated with them. Whether with officers or staff, my burden is to bring scripture and the Presbyterian way to bear on our common work of “equipping the saints (you) for the work of ministry.” Presbyterians have a wonderful tradition of spreading church leadership around, so as to avoid the personality cult or the one-person show. Elders lead the flock, Deacons serve those in need, Trustees steward our facility, Staff support and direct our ministry, and Pastors strive to imbue the entire offering with scripture and sacraments … all of this, with an eye toward blessing you to be a blessing to others. As such, it has been my privilege this year to ask all our leaders: As the Father has sent the Son, where is God sending NWPC just now? Where are we feeling the tug of the Spirit, the pneumatic push of Christ in our midst? What is the Lord up to in our ranks? I look forward to seeing how those sacred questions are met with Spirit-filled discernment.

Finally, as to relationships, I am so delighted to be your Pastor (the official title), one of your pastors (a collegial function), and your brother in Christ (a gladsome bond). You are a delightfully fascinating congregation—rich in a variety of persons and deep with spiritual gifts. The apparent simplicity of the borough in many ways belies the great breadth of your experiences, perspectives, and Christian faith. And so I might ask: Where is Christ sending you in your life? Where is the pneumatic push of the Holy Spirit for you? To what ministry within or (especially) beyond our congregation are you being called?

“Pneumatic” … filled with the Spirit … propelled into ministry by the wind of God. Grateful for small seas already crossed, I look forward to sailing with you through the next 12 months. Come Holy Spirit.

RWH

Look Back

2009-06-10T00:28:00.001-04:00

Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord, graduates. On behalf of our entire congregation, I write to convey our most fervent blessing as you make the transition into this next season of your life. Many of you have moved among this flock for many years, and beginning soon most of you will move beyond it—venturing to far-flung places for work, education, and—no doubt—much adventure along the way.

As you go out from us, we give to you this little charge: From time to time, look back and remember your baptism. Yes, we want you to remember your home church, your youth group, and the like. And surely in time you’ll find that a place like New Wilmington has a certain gravitational pull, such that you’ll be back every now and then. While we hope you do not forget us, more than anyone or anything else we want you to look back upon your own baptism. Remember who you are; remember whose you are. Your baptism is the marker of both.

To be sure, at the time of your graduation, your gaze is quite rightly fixed forward. Like a restless runner braced in a starting block, you are surely fixed upon your future and the new freedoms and opportunities that lie therein. It is a terrific time of life: looking down the long course of things now so spread out before you, this race you now run on your own two legs. What a gift, to be able to gaze out upon numerous possibilities. We know, because we’ve been in those blocks, too.

Even so, make sure that in every turn of the course you take a glance back over your life to see that truest of starting points: the baptismal waters, where you were first marked as belonging to God. Though you have by now outgrown most of the features of your childhood, by God’s grace there will never be a time when you will have outgrown the sign and seal of God’s claim upon you. Look back on this glorious fact from time to time—long enough for it to shape the way you run on ahead into the rest of your life. Commit yourself to engaging scripture, offering your prayers, serving those in need, loving your enemies, and rooting yourself in a fellowship of Christians wherever you may be. Do these things, not because you have to, but because you can. They are your glad response to the news that “you can do all things through him who strengthens you” (Philippians 4:13). Keep looking ahead, but also keep looking back upon the call of Christ.

Speaking for the entire congregation, I say for them: congratulations on concluding all your high school achievements. The peace of our Lord go with you in the seasons now before you.

Sunday

2009-06-07T01:52:00.002-04:00

Easter: God is always a step or two ahead
The angel’s rhetorical question to the women at the empty tomb – “Why do you look for the living among the dead?” – suggests that we serve a God who resides mostly in the future. God is neither buried in some remote past nor captive to the realities of this moment, but is always working in our future and calling God’s people to trust in his ability to make a way where there is no way. 1 Corinthians 15:1-11; Mark 16:1-8

Because of Sunday: Sing in Doxology
If our worship is built on the notion that God is master only of the status quo, only of the world as it is now, then our singing will likely be plain and listless. But Easter morning prompts us to sing in praise of the God who trumps the status quo, by fashioning new life where before there was only death. We sing in praise to one who is not bound by the Friday-dilemmas of our lives. 1 Peter 1:3-9, Matthew 28:8-10

Because of Sunday: Live in Hope
To be caught up in the mystery of the risen Christ is to live our lives in between two resurrections: Jesus’ on Easter Sunday; ours in a time yet to come. By analogy, it as though we play the “game” of faith on a field with two end zones, with two victories—one behind us, one before us. The promise of God’s “new heavens and new earth” gives shape to a life of hope in the here and now. Acts 2:24-33, Revelation 1:4-8

Because of Sunday: Take Courage
If Christ has been raised from the dead and is alive and present to the world through the Holy Spirit, and if we are “in Christ,” sharing a living bond with him, then we can have courage in ministry precisely because he has “overcome the world.” His reality in heaven is now our reality on earth. 1 Thessalonians 2:1-4, John 16:29-33

Because of Sunday: Stand in Wonder
From the vantage point of a strictly empirical point of view, belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus could appear foolish or outdated. But it could also be possible that the bright light of Easter morning calls into question the notion that scientific scrutiny is the only mode by which we can know the living God. Like Thomas, the risen Christ invites us, not to trump our critical thinking, but to transcend it—to stand in “shock and awe” before the victorious mystery of Easter Sunday. John 20:24-31

Because of Sunday: Sense your Vocation
The risen Christ greets the earliest Easter disciples with a word of shalom, then sends them out into the world inspired – literally! – with God’s spirit. For all the ways the resurrection hope colors our view of the future, perhaps the most pressing implications of Jesus’ resurrection are for the here and now—in our being sent into the world. Our vocation is shaped not merely by what we do to earn a living but by the particular places God’s spirit sends us as resurrection-peace-people. Acts 4:23-31, John 20:19-23

- - -

Q. 46. What do you affirm when you say that "on the third day he rose again from the dead"? That our Lord could not be held by the power of death. Having died on the cross, he appeared to his followers, triumphant from the grave, in a new, exalted kind of life. In showing them his hands and his feet, the one who was crucified revealed himself to them as the Lord and Savior of the world.

Q. 47. What do you affirm when you say that "he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father"? First, that Christ has gone to be with the Father, hidden except to the eyes of faith. Second, however, that Christ is not cut off from us in the remote past, or in some place from which he cannot reach us, but is present to us here and now by grace. He reigns with divine authority, protecting us, guiding us, and interceding for us until he returns in glory.

Q. 63. What is the mission of the church? The mission of the church is to bear witness to God's love for the world in Jesus Christ.

Q. 64. What forms does this mission take? The forms are as various as the forms of God's love, yet the center is always Jesus Christ. The church is faithful to its mission when it extends mercy and forgiveness to the needy in ways that point finally to him. For in the end it is always by Christ's mercy that the needs of the needy are met.

Q. 65. Who are the needy? The hungry need bread, the homeless need a roof, the oppressed need justice, and the lonely need fellowship. At the same time -- on another and deeper level -- the hopeless need hope, sinners need forgiveness, and the world needs the gospel. On this level no one is excluded, and all the needy are one. Our mission as the church is to bring hope to a desperate world by declaring God's undying love -- as one beggar tells another where to find bread.

— 1998 Presbyterian Study Catechism

Jesus, 1x

2009-04-01T10:47:00.000-04:00

Holy Week: Christianity in normal playback

Think of each Lord’s Day worship service we share as Christianity in fast-forward. A Sunday morning order of worship is designed to take us through a complete sweep of life in relationship to the living God—the entire faith, in 70 minutes.

In accelerated playback, it looks something like this: We are weekly confronted by the grandeur and grace of this God, which prompts our prayers for a broken world and our confession of our broken lives. That raw confession is met by a ready assurance that the Judge is also our Redeemer—and so we sing and celebrate that inexhaustible love. The world and our lives reframed by this grace, we are then ready to hear a fresh word from the Lord. It is a living word, brooding with power and possibility; we cannot help but respond to its call. And so we gather our treasures, we offer up the work of our church, and we ready ourselves to reenter the world and our lives with a new vision of what God is up to among us. All the while, throughout this weekly fast-forward, we draw widely from the breadth of scripture: a psalm here, a gospel reading there, perhaps a passage from an epistle to round the whole thing out. Scripture: here, there, and yon. This is Christianity, at 10x.

If every Sunday is one more stab at the complete package, one more race from start to finish, then think of Holy Week as our annual opportunity to playback Christianity at normal speed. One week a year, we slow down the narrative of Jesus’ life and ministry to its normal, proper pace. Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, Holy Saturday, and Easter Sunday each in their own way give us the opportunity to walk with our Lord frame by frame through the divine drama: the humility of his service at the table, the betrayal by his friends in the garden, the pain of his demise on the cross, the silence of his death-absence on Saturday … the astonishing news of his victorious transformation on Sunday.

These four days are the core of our Christian confession, the building blocks we use to stack up the remainder of our belief and action as we do business with this God. Holy Week presents us Jesus, at 1x.

Friday

2009-03-26T13:14:00.004-04:00

Friday and Sunday: Days of First Importance
The events of Friday’s cross and Sunday’s resurrection form the twin lenses through which every other facet of our faith is properly seen. We interpret our struggles and sin through his dying; we celebrate our hope and triumphs through his rising. 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Friday: The Mark of Commitment
Jesus interprets his own death as a sign that he is a “good shepherd” and not merely a “hired hand.” His willingness to enter death is a sign of his deep commitment. The good news of Friday is not that he suffered, but that he suffered. John 10:11-18

Friday: The Response of Fear
At a basic level, Jesus’ death is the culmination of his constant challenge to the ruling religious elites in his own faith family. They are fearful of losing their status, so they plot his demise. Truth shaped by love is always a threat to those invested in a broken status quo. Acts 2:22-24, Matthew 12:9-14

Friday: The Cry of Forsakenness
Jesus’ cry of lament permits and models our own crying out to God—a sign, not of unbelief, but of firm faith in God’s willingness to hear and respond. Likewise, the widow models tenacity in prayer. Judges 3:12-15, Luke 18:1-8, Mark 15:34

Friday: The Covering of Death
Paul draws on the language of Leviticus 17:11 to argue that God is the proactive agent, not the passive recipient, in Jesus’ sacrificial death that covers and contains our sin. The problem solved by the atonement of Christ’s death is not God’s (unanswered wrath) but ours (a propensity to spread our sin). Romans 3:21-26

Friday: The Ground of Sympathy
In his forsakenness on the cross, Jesus suffers the depths of human pain, thereby he is able to sympathize with us in our weaknesses—“tested in every way as we are, yet without sin.” For as much as Jesus makes known to us the living God, as a great high priest Jesus also makes known to God the struggle of humanity. Hebrews 4:14-16, 5:7-10

Friday: The Descent of Divinity
Jesus, from the heights of his status with God, freely descends on the cross to the depths of our plight. It is not his dying that makes him savior, but rather that as savior, his dying displays his true nature as one who came to serve, not to be served. He descends to us, that we might be raised up to God. Philippians 2:5-11

- - -

Question 42. What do you affirm when you say that he "suffered under Pontius Pilate"? First, that our Lord was humiliated, rejected and abused by the temporal authorities of his day, both religious and political. Christ thus aligned himself with all human beings who are oppressed, tortured, or otherwise shamefully treated by those with worldly power. Second, and even more importantly, that our Lord, though innocent, submitted himself to condemnation by an earthly judge so that through him we ourselves, though guilty, might be acquitted before our Judge.

Question 43. What do you affirm when you say that he was "crucified, dead and buried"? That when our Lord passed through the door of real human death, he showed us that there is no sorrow he has not known, no grief he has not borne, and no price he was unwilling to pay in order to reconcile us to God.

Question 44. What do you affirm when you say that he "descended into hell"? That our Lord took upon himself the full consequences of our sinfulness, even the agony of abandonment by God, in order that we might be spared.

Question 45. Why did Jesus have to suffer as he did? Because grace is more abundant -- and sin more serious -- than we suppose. However cruelly we may treat one another, all sin is primarily against God. God condemns sin, yet never judges apart from grace. In giving Jesus Christ to die for us, God took the burden of our sin into God's own self to remove it once and for all. The cross in all its severity reveals an abyss of sin swallowed up by the suffering of divine love.

— 1998 Presbyterian Study Catechism

Convoluted Math

2009-03-25T19:19:00.002-04:00

Christians have a funny way of dealing with time.

You’d think life could be a simple affair: Take each day as it comes, think only about today, make meaning from the time you are in. Easy enough, yes?

But not us. No, we’re terribly complicated people, we ecclesiastical eccentrics. We are hard folk to understand. Our meaning-making is a constant act of convolution—backwards and forwards; looking back, looking ahead. One goes to church to hear a good word for today, but the preacher spends most of her 20 minutes dabbling in 1900 year old stories, or he talks on and on about some time still to come, when “the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea.” It must drive our neighbors mad, what with our heads always either stuck in an ancient book or off in some picturesque future.

But this is how it works in the fellowship of those who walk in the Jesus way. We make meaning for the moment by first making sense of God’s past, which then begs our imagination of the future, a future that inevitably presses upon the present with its gravitational pull. (See what I mean? Bonkers.)

Scripture teaches us to take our best shot at what God might be up to with our today by playing back the narrative of what God has been up to in our past, which is the ground for imagining what God will be up to in the future ... in the light of which we live today. (Check out something like Joshua 4 for how this works. “Remember: God made a way across this river. Imagine: There will come a time when your kids will inquire. Therefore: Pick up some sacramental rocks and walk on.)

It’s canonical algebra: God did x. God has promised to do z. So get busy today doing y. Turns out x = z = y.

This is why your grandmothers and/or your Sunday School teachers wanted you to learn your 12 tribes, your 10 commandments, and your 12 apostles (and in each case, the narrative that cradles them). The stuff of the canonical narrative is the raw material for rightly imagining a God-shaped future, the frame of which brackets the day now before us.

He died/was raised. He will appear again. Live in-between, live now. X = Z = Y.

Ludicrous from the outside looking in. Life-giving from the inside living out.

Tell Me More, Grandmother

2009-03-01T01:00:00.001-05:00

On stretching our ability to listen to Scripture

On the hunt for a specific answer to a particular dilemma? Sometimes it can feel as though the Bible elicits from you more frustration than faith. Maybe you are continually vexed by a troublesome in-law. You look up “in-laws” in the small concordance or index in the back of your study Bible. Likely you’ll get a few “hits,” and perhaps some of the verses noted shed some diffuse light on your situation. (If nothing else, you’ll get a chuckle out of reading about some of the more interesting in-laws of antiquity, like Moses’ father-in-law: quick with the advice in Exodus 18.)

But sometimes even when your topic-of-need appears in the Bible, none of the cited verses hit you square between the eyes. They are not far off, perhaps, but they are not spot on, either. So you set down your Bible with a sigh, having hoped that in clear tones it would simply tell you what to do the next time your mother-in-law comments on the relative cleanliness of your living room. (Why can’t she just keep quiet?)

If there is a downside to the mass production of personal Bibles in the last century, it may be the prevalent notion that the Bible can readily answer all of our immediate life questions when we need it to. (Remember those black “8 ball” toys from a generation ago? Ask it a question, shake it up, and see what answer floats to the top of its murky interior. How handy!) Yet a hasty scramble through the Bible to look up quick wisdom about “money” or “fear” or “other religions” often plunks you down in the middle of some strange narrative that calls for more setup and study than you have time.

In 15 years of teaching adult Sunday School and Bible studies, I have noticed that the most helpful sections of many a person’s Bible seem to be the study notes and sidebar mini-commentaries found in numerous recent versions. It’s an understandable trend: At least these notes, written in this century, go a ways toward making the Bible more relevant to our workaday lives. When I graduated from high school, the Ladies Circle of my church gave us each a book of “Precious Bible Promises”—individual verses plucked from their context and arranged by relevant life-topic (peace, promiscuity, prayer, etc.). It was a lovely gesture, but such books send a not-so-subtle message: By its crude self—unaided, unedited—the Bible will frustrate your quick search for solutions.

To be clear, there are solid answers to our problems in the Bible. “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life,” Jesus counsels us in Matthew 6 … “what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?” He’s right, of course, and his words surely place our current problems, whatever they are, in better perspective. (I remember a certain night when, as a much younger man, I was wrestling with a rather poor decision in my past. I hastily flipped open a nearby Bible and randomly discovered for the first time Psalm 32, with its summons to confession and its assurance of God’s lasting pardon. It was exactly what I needed.) Aided by the Holy Spirit, the Bible will do its best to be there for us when we need it. (Psalm 124)

But what about those moments when it is not, when it feels like your questions and its answers are not synced up, not on the same page? What about when it feels like you and the Bible are in two different conversations? (Psalm 10) More precisely, how can we stretch our ability to listen more closely to scripture, to balance our ways of asking with its way of answering? How can we be present to it, even as we hope it will be present to us?

Consider your grandmother.

If you are (or were) lucky enough to have a wise and thoughtful grandparent, from time to time you would likely go to her for some practical advice. “Grandma, I have to decide if I want to play basketball or be in the band. Why can’t I do both? What should I do?” If she loves you and wishes you well, she’ll probably make some helpful suggestions—this, despite that fact that she knows little about basketballs or bassoons. Indeed, for a child, a good grandparent is a sturdy, fixed point in a fast-paced, haggard world. One can always be counted on in a pinch. So over the years, you come and go from her house—in from one event, off to another, with brief chatting in between. And all the while she’s there, ready to hear all about the trials and tribulations of being a modern kid. Graciously, she’s even willing to sprinkle some of her sagacity over the life and times of your story. (Proverbs 2:1-15)

Now on the one hand, you could look upon her as merely someone who will always give advice and counsel when you need it. You could see her as existing mostly for you, and not expect much more from your relationship. It’s likely she won’t complain about this, because at least this way she gets to see you once and awhile.

But on the other hand, what would happen if one afternoon you lingered in her living room long enough to stoke her story, to hear her tale? “Grandma, tell me what it was like when you were a kid.” Or maybe in response to some odd piece of counsel she gives you, you ask, “Grandma, how can do you feel that way? That’s not quite the answer I need. I don’t understand how you could see it that way.”

Inevitably, a narrative begins.

“It was 1933, and my parents were broke. Back then, you see, people had to struggle to make ends meet. Why, we didn’t even own a car until …” What follows is more of her story than you’ve ever heard before. And the more she tells, the more a new world begins to take shape in your imagination. As she tells you about war, the price of meat, and walking to school both ways, it is as though some portal opens to a strange time, to some distant country, some other world. “When the sirens went off at night, we all had to go to the basement and wait for them to stop.”

If nothing else, before long, there is a twinge in your tummy that signals a new truth: Maybe you don’t know quite as much as you thought you knew. Maybe your life-questions, though still pressing, are not quite as urgent as they seemed an hour ago.

Eventually, she brings the whole story back to your situation. “So you see, that’s why I think the way I do, why I feel the way I feel. But of course you have to make this decision for yourself.” Learning to listen to the Bible is like this: The more we appreciate its own story, the more our questions are reshaped to hear its answers.

So, yes, go to the Bible with your urgent questions and vexations. In moments of confusion and doubt, pray for illumination and trust that the Holy Spirit will meet you somewhere in the pages of your gold-leafed Bible from Barnes & Noble. It will be so.

But your Teaching Elder invites you to stretch your ability to listen to Scripture on its own terms. One can search for plausible answers in its pages, yes; but we can also search for the proper questions. Aided by the Holy Spirit and furthered by our patience, over time the Bible will teach us how to listen as it speaks to us in its own terms. Truth be told, the Bible is less interested in making itself relevant to our world than we care to admit. It wants to name another world, another reality. It wants to tell its own story on its own terms, in its own time. It startles us by asking us in our search, “How relevant are you to me?” (Mark 10:17-22)

Here’s how it seems to work: You run to the Bible for help with this or that quandary. “Absolutely. Glad to help out,” say its pages. “Nice to see you again. Pull up a chair. Let’s see … where to begin? Ah yes, here we are: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people …”

At this point, the restless, impetuous pilgrim interrupts the conversation. “What? This has nothing to do with my situation! Forget it.” A pregnant pause commences, after which I can imagine the Bible looking back across the table in knowing confusion. “But you wanted to know how best to solve your problem. This is how. It begins here.” It begins in some strange narrative. (Mark 1:1, Luke 1:1-4, John 1:1-18)

If you’ve stuck with me this long, my contention is this: In the way that taking the time to hear your grandmother’s story on its own terms brings her person and advice to life, similarly, learning to listen to the Bible on its own terms brings its Creator and counsel to life in us. It will assist in solving our personal problems, but it will not let those problems dictate how its truth is to be told.

After all, at the end of all our quests for counsel is a call to conversion. For as much as we need solutions, we also need a savior: the truth of an eternal God enfleshed in our not-so-eternal midst. When Jesus says, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” he’s not just giving preachers fodder for sermons on other religions. It is his way of saying that the solutions we seek, the counsel we crave, the advice for which we grope in the pages of scripture is more alive than we could ever imagine. The answer is animated, alive … arisen! It is so alive, in fact, that it will even transform our questions, even turn our quest for advice on its head. It turns out that we belong to a living law, an enfleshed answer, a risen reason for our living. The patient pilgrim traveling these pages comes to see that our lives and our problems will never fully find their proper perspective until we are immersed in his life and his promises. “Take up your cross and follow me,” says Jesus, as if to announce that only in following down his path to Sunday will our Friday challenges make any sense.

The Methodist bishop William Willimon makes this claim more baldly than I:

The Bible intends to be more for us than just a book of rules, a repository of helpful principles for better living. Attempts to use the Bible like that are bound to be frustrated by the nature of the Bible’s way with the truth. Scripture is an attempt to construct a new world, to stoke, fund and fuel our imaginations. The Bible is an ongoing debate about what is real and who is in charge and where we’re all headed. So the person who emerged from church one Sunday muttering, “That’s the trouble with you preachers. You just never speak to anything that relates to my world,” makes a good point. To which the Bible replies, “How on earth did you get the idea that I want to speak to your world? I want to rock, remake, deconstruct and rework your world!”

So when someone says that Scripture is impractical and unrealistic, tell them that what they probably mean is that Scripture is difficult and demanding. When we read Scripture, allowing it to have its authoritative way with us, submitting to its peculiar way of naming the world, we are being changed, transformed, sanctified in the hearing. God is breathing an enlivening Holy Spirit upon us, Jesus is speaking directly to us, and a new world is being created by the Word. It’s Genesis 1 all over again.

Thus when we read Scripture, we’re not simply to ask, “Does this make sense to me?” or “How can I use this to make my life less miserable?” but rather we are to ask, “How would I have to be changed in order to make this Scripture work?” Every text is a potential invitation to conversion, transformation, and growth in grace.

“How would I have to be changed in order to make this Scripture work?” That’s learning to listen to the Bible on its own terns. By analogy, it’s like asking, “How do I need to grow up in order to be more like my grandmother?” You came to her mostly to hit her up for some advice; you leave her with a fresh vision of another world, and a summons to see your own reality in a new light. So it is with scripture. It will answer some of our questions, to be sure. But the Bible does its best work in reorienting our questions and transforming our lives. (Luke 24:5)

This is why our sustained reading and studying of scripture are so vital to our growth as God’s people. One has to spend enough time with its way of speaking for it to do its long, slow thing—for it to have its way with our vexing questions and our cherished assumptions. Sunday morning classes, Bible study groups, sermons in worship, and our own personal Scripture engagement during week are all at their best when they stretch our scripture-listening capacities. These appointments with the Bible are God-breathed to the extent that they slow us down long enough to linger a while in the living room of our Lord. “Tell me more,” you might say to your grandmother as she spins her vivid tales. And to the Bible we collectively say show us more. “Teach us to see what you see, teach us to hear what you hear.” With the turn of every page, our prayer becomes that of those seekers in John 12:21 – “We wish to see Jesus.”

Pools

2009-02-06T22:14:00.001-05:00

More and more as the years roll along, I find my best energy for pastoral ministry wells up from two primary pools of labor. The first is the planning and leading of Lord’s Day worship, especially the preaching of scripture and the sharing of the sacraments--both with an eye toward empowering a congregation for Christ’s ministry in the world. The second pool is the ongoing development of leaders from among a church’s ranks--equipping the church for its ministry by equipping its officers to lead in that ministry. “Presbyterian” (led by elders) is a great way to be a church, precisely because it’s setup of pastors and officers leading together provides for a church’s growth and prevents it from becoming a one-person show or, worse, a cult of personality. We share in leadership just as we share in ministry--both, stoked and steered by the Holy Spirit.

Postlude

2009-01-29T01:00:00.001-05:00

A handful of stints and setbacks.
Before you know it your world is
reduced to capsules, frustration.
Kingdoms given over for others

to reign; the monarch has taken
his first exit. Still, one comes on
every odd day to grant him a few
more. For a time it was one big

procedure after another. Turns
out he lives thanks to five dollar
plastic tubing. Still, it is living.
A walk forward into resignation

and fresh faith. Independence
lost in a parked car; old bonds
recast in each new “love you.”
A fair trade, perhaps, in a new

economy of hasty demise. Is the
slight gurgle in the throat more
fluid or more feeling? It is not
clear. Somehow the end brings

immunity from old hesitations.
This much is clear: There is the
muscle’s failure. There is a good
Lord. And there is each new day.

He could fill them with a pouting
regret, but he seems to move on
ahead. The days are for making a
few last moves, new cane in hand.

His stoop has the clearest sermon:
Welcome the grace of letting them
do for you the things that always
signaled you were still in the game.

Do what you can do, control what
you can control. As for the rest, the
old haunts, the comforting rituals,
the efforts of another, younger era,

let them go,
in peace.

Breathing In, Breathing Out

2009-01-28T10:05:00.004-05:00

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. You shall love your neighbor as yourself. – Jesus in Mark 12

“[They’re] second nature to me now.
Like breathing out and breathing in.”
– Professor Higgins, lyrics from My Fair Lady

Place your reading on hold for just a moment and pay attention to your breathing. Inhale, exhale. Inhale, exhale. Breathing in, breathing out. It is the basic labor of living—breathing—and yet how easily we neglect its indispensable nature in the bumbling rush of another day. Consider, for instance, how essential it is that both actions work in concert. What happens to us if we only exhale and do not inhale is obvious to all: We pass out from lack a lack of air! Exhaling needs inhaling in order to replenish what has just been given up. But no less important, if not as apparent, is the reverse: Take in a deep, full breath. Your lungs are now replete with life-giving oxygen. Now hold it. What happens? After a time, you are (again) in danger of passing out. Even satiated lungs need exhalation in order to make room for fresh wind. All day long your body takes care of this rhythm for you. Breathing in, breathing out: the reciprocal gift of life.

So it is, I believe, with the church’s life of gathering in and going out. Each week, dependent as we are on the Holy Spirit, we take in to our lungs of faith the fresh air of scripture. “Love the Lord your God,” Jesus commanded us, and scripture is the chief way we take God’s life into our own. The same wind that hovered over the still-unformed creation, the same wind that blew through those first astonished disciples—it is the same wind that blows through us as we engage the Jesus tale. Scripture feeds us, forms us, and firms up our relationship with the living God. “Take a deep breath,” your doctor is prone to say at a checkup. Your preacher might just as well say the same thing on Sunday mornings.

Yet even scripture alone is not all that we need. The crisp air of the Bible’s witness is likely to burn in our lungs if, after a time, we do let it out into the world. The word of the Lord urges our sure response, and so we cannot help but spend the next six days or so exhaling God’s life wherever we go. “Love your neighbor,” Jesus commanded us, and so we breathe out acts of service: actions (and sometimes words) that point beyond ourselves or our church to the goodness of God. Come Saturday, if its been a week worthy of God’s grace in our lives, we’ve just about exhausted our air supply. And so once again we gather together for Sunday inhalation. Breathing in, breathing out: the reciprocal gift of life.

We need both: Scripture and Service. The congregation that excels at service in the world but does not attend to Scripture and its derivative practices (worship, prayer, reflection, etc.) will likely do much for God and neighbor, but end up exhausted and depressed in the end—virtuous asphyxiation. The body can only go so long without oxygen. Similarly, the flock that gives ample time to engaging its Bible, but does not look for ways to be in service to others (public or private, formal or informal) will find its lungs quite full but its muscles quite atrophied—holy hyperventilation. It is possible, after all, to pass out from too much air. Scripture and Service need one another in the same way that we must breathe in and breathe out in order to live. Over time, our prayer is that of the good professor Higgins. We hope that this sacred rhythm, this holy respiratory cycle, will become “second nature” to us—as effortless as our body’s own life-giving breathing.

If this analogy works for you at all, then you might consider with me the role of your Session—your pastors and elders together in leadership. If, in fact, a congregation is called to engage Scripture (breathing in) and practice service (breathing out), then it is possible to imagine our Session as a group of respiratory therapists. The old Scottish Presbyterians liked to call active elders “Ruling Elders,” by which they meant not ruling with a heavy hand, but “ruling” in the sense of measurement and gauge. As a first act of leadership in any season, a Session is charged to ask of itself and its congregation: How is it with our breathing? Are we prayerfully engaging Scripture together? Are we joyfully sharing in service together? As to our effectiveness: How does this or that program, plan, or personnel decision help our congregation breathe in more deeply the wind of Scripture and/or breathe out more effectively the service to which our Lord calls us? If it does neither, is it really ours to take up? How well are we equipping our children and adults to breathe in and out on their own? Are our lungs clear, free of any obstructions past or present?

I invite you to ask of your own life what our elders are asking of our congregation’s: How is it with your breathing? Are you able to breathe in the word of God and breathe out God’s life in your own? Let’s work—pray—to keep the oxygen flowing, until, by God’s grace, it is second nature to us all.

Crowded Ear

2009-01-27T14:59:00.000-05:00

In these shrill times,
with our thick filters
and anxious lobes, in
this season of proud

religion and excitable
doubt, when the only
measure of ‘truthful’
is my own tickled ear,

in the emptiness of a
cacophonous era, in
the vanity of my own
precious convictions,

speak, O Lord. Speak.

I. W. T.

2008-12-29T22:47:00.003-05:00

Made of steel, and
a comfort to many.
Storied. Hilarious.

Be warmed, after
the long winter of
your brave demise.

Our Mirror

2008-12-25T01:00:00.001-05:00

He is the reflection of God’s glory and the exact imprint of God’s very being. - Hebrews 1:3

Mirrors are wonderful gifts: a simple piece of glass, with a silver backing, suitable for seeing a reflection. They reflect light from one place and shine it another. They allow you to see angles of perception otherwise unseen.

What an astonishing thing we Christians claim at Christmas: That the wailing, wrinkly, writhing baby in the well-attested manager ... the one sought by scruffy, smelly shepherds and mysterious sages from afar ... the one entrusted to an otherwise unknown little Palestinian family from across the tracks ... Our confession is that this one, in faith and in fact, is the “reflection of God’s glory.” We are bold to believe that he is our mirror.

So come to the manger; gather to the creche. Push your way to the front of the crowd, past herders and travelers, past angels and oxen, past father old and mother young. Push your way to the front and peer into the bed of straw. You’ll find there a living piece of glass, a little new life with a backing of silver.

And note the angles (not just the angels), because angles are everything with mirrors. His is 30, maybe 40 degrees, such that when you look down, expecting to see a burgeoning baby boy, you see instead the glory of the living God.
Your line of sight is miraculously redirected upward: from the lowliest of accommodations, to the splendorous wonder of God’s habitation; from a feeding trough turned crib to the exalted throne of God’s perfect judgement and more perfect mercy. You sight moves from a fledging baby, 20 minutes into the world, to the great eternal One, timeless and mighty--who was, who is, and is to come. I give to you Jesus of Nazerth -- God’s ironic and illuminating mirror for all to see.

You might ask, quite rightly: Have all these Christians who have come before us, who gave us Hebrews 1:3 and who have pointed to it ever since, do they mean to say that to see this baby is to see the real God, to see what one looks like in person is to how the other appears in eternity? Does the Divine skin favor the complexion of a 1st century Middle Eastern family?

No. God is Spirit, more real than even our fleshly reality. God is no more brown than God is white. If anything, all of our various skin tones are but mere shadows of God’s mysterious and illusive image.

Well then, do they mean to say that because we got a baby boy and not a baby girl, God is He as opposed to Thou?

Hardly. That God is “He” in our parlance is only a statement about our ridiculously limiting English pronouns. Gender is God’s gift to us, not our category forced upon God. Besides, that Jesus was a boy and not a girl is only proof that God is willing in God’s grace to condescend to the lower forms of creation in order to make known good news. “It’s a boy!” might just be another way of saying “God has to do what God has to do.”

No, look again into the mystery before us. Hear again the astonishing conviction of scripture.

Its not the skin or sex that is the mirror in the manger. It is the manner, the way, the words and deeds of deliverance of the one whose birth we remember this night that reflects back to us the real look of God. This curious little baby does his best reflecting in his living, in his dying, in his rising again.

Want to see what God looks like, what God is up to in the world, what is most true in God’s heart of hearts? Look over there, says the New Testament. Look at this long-promised messenger, look at his words and his ways: he gives eyes to the blind, legs to the lame, hearts to the heartless. Look and see the glory of God reflected among you.

Now look over there, on Friday. See the cross of Christ, as he hangs on your death nail and cries out your stricken grief. See God’s eternal word, dying before you, and see the glory of God reflecting among you. Now look again, one more time ... look to Sunday. See the empty tomb; see his astonishing new life. See the scars of your sins now no longer deathly. He is alive. Death and all its derivatives have not the final word. Look at his resurrected body, and see the glory of God reflected among us.

Teaching and healing; dying and rising. That’s what God looks like to the naked eye.

It is the mirrored mystery of our glad confession: that in Jesus of Nazareth -- particular, peculiar, perplexing Jesus of Nazareth, born this night -- that in his word and in his way we catch a living glimpse of God on the loose.

Your mirror is he.
Your angle on the mysteries of heaven.
Your silver-backed, light-reflcting, 30 degree up angle to God.

See him born this night.
See him for what he is.
See him, and believe.

A Prayer for Christmas Day

2008-12-24T14:47:00.003-05:00

O Christ, born this night in sacred simplicity, conceive in us tomorrow a living, breathing, growing faith in you. Deliver us from holiday diversions and distractions, and in our homes and hearts bring forth in the morning gifts of awe and wonder and jubilation--that we might sing the praises of our God.

O Christ, giver of sight to the blind, open our eyes on the morrow, that we might see—not only the comfortable companions of our familiar lives—but also our neighbors in need. Remove from our lenses the cataracts of comfort and consumption, and give us eyes to see afresh the places and people and problems to whom you bid us go in lowly service.

O Christ, calmer of storms, of threatening winds and rains, speak tomorrow a word of peace—your quiet shalom—into any troubled homes and hearths. Where there is strife, speak a word of healing. Where there is pain, speak your calling to forgiveness. Where there is grief, speak words of hope. May the day be a balm for all who struggle in this life.

O Christ, present for all time in the Godhead, resident of heaven’s borough, break open our boredom and unstop our imaginations, that we might learn again to see the wonder and majesty of God’s glory—the livingness of our Lord made known in your life. May Christmas Day assault our spirit’s senses. Tune our hearts to sing your praise for all the ways you have blessed us with astonishing new life.

O Christ, lowly in your service to us yet Lord of all forever, we offer to you the Christmas Day now before us. Bless our homes with charity, bless our hearts with faith, and bless our congregation—all congregations!—with witness and work worthy of your kingdom and its goals.

This we pray for Christmas, in your good and lasting name. Amen.

Nothing Wagered, Nothing Gained

2008-12-23T14:37:00.004-05:00

I find a get a little tense this time of year. I want to believe I’m simply being honest with myself. My wife tells me I’m just a Grinch. Could be. (I do know that if I hear Johnny Mathis sing “Sleigh Bells” one more time on my car radio I’m likely to commit a heinous crime.)

But it’s more than Muzak.

It’s these well-traveled “Christmas stories” in our Scriptures. They make me nervous. I find that Gospel readings are like small dogs: the smaller and cuter and more cuddly they appear, the more likely they are to nip you where it hurts. I worry that these gospel tales have grown so familiar to us that they no longer pop as they should.

For instance, we all love those wisemen from the East, with their Burger King crowns and boxes of bling, following the star on their well-known adventure. It’s comfy tale. But, my God! They follow God’s light right up to Herod’s doorstep, right into the throws of a murderous political machine that makes Illinois’ Governor whatever-his-name shenanigans look like kids’ play.

Is Matthew suggesting that following the light of Christ will inevitably bring us into conflict with the anxious powers of the world--when the boss suggest you cook the books, when the big kid suggests you all beat up on the little kid, when the neighborhood gossip group invites you to tear down the stranger. Is Matthew suggesting that God’s great light, while bringing warmth, also exposes darkness? “Be prepared,” say the wise men, “to grapple with all sorts of selfishness, sinfulness, and sanctimony.” What a narrative! And to this we say, “Look here, I just want to celebrate Christmas.”

But these are unsettling stories. Old Zechariah: He cannot imagine his geriatric wife giving birth to a prophet--or anyone, for that matter. So in response, God takes away his voice until John the Baptist is born. Lovely. Shepherds: minding their quiet business late into a third shift. Suddenly the sky is ripped open. Luke says, simply, “They were terrified.” You think?

And then there’s Mother Mary. Christmas would not be complete without hearing from good old Gabriel, with his soothing baritone voice, Canon in D playing lightly in the background, and  a rose-colored gel softening the spotlight on Mary’s pristine face.

(Now you know why my wife calls me a Grinch.)

Yet my sarcasm is not about deriding Scripture, but about naming our propensity to domesticate it, to tame it, to turn salvation -- God’s dogged insistence that the world be set to right -- into a sentiment. We want to keep at bay this potent Holy Spirit that advances on Mary and turns her young life upside-down. We want a “holiday,” not a life-change, so we tend to plane off the rougher edges of Jesus’ birth until there is no more risk telling his story.

But this is a risky narrative, full of delicacy and danger: an unwed teenage mother; an intruding, insistent angel; an overcoming, overshadowing Holy Spirit.

Could there be in a sacred tale a finer line between disaster and triumph? Could there be a more dangerous announcement to young girl than an angel letting her in on the fact that you, Mary -- untutored, unknown, unwed, unsophisticated Mary -- you will be vessel for divine revelation. Could there be a more delicate venue for God’s activity than a young virgin’s womb? Consider it: The living God! Flying in low and under cover, sneaking into world under our radar, in the fuselage that is, of all things, a virginal uterus. (Even our English Bibles get in on the domestication. Note the NRSV: “She was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.” It sounds like they’re having tea.)

Astonishing gospel! Dangerous narrative. Unbelievable God.

And yet what I respect about the Bible is its dogged insistence on presenting the story. To my laments of risk and danger I hear the Bible saying back to me: “You know what, preacher? It is a remarkably hard tale to swallow. We know that better than you do, in fact. But nothing wagered, nothing gained. Risky? Absolutely. But also righteous. And revelatory. Her little womb, a window into God’s way with the world.”

Pull up a chair in the delivery room, the OB/GYN office that is Luke 2. Take a seat and see how God’s living word brings forth impossible new life. After all, could there be any more provocative an image for what God might be up to among us than the delicate picture of God’s divine Spirit -- that same breathing, brooding Spirit present at the creation of all things, hovering over the unformed waters of chaos and nothingness of Genesis 1 -- that same Holy Spirit brooding over the wilderness of an empty tomb. (Did I say tomb? I meant womb.) Christmas and Easter … they start to look a lot alike when you begin to get their New Testament meaning: God’s love brings forth unimaginable life.

So amid all that is before you this week, amid wrapping and running and baking and driving -- right on the thick of your life, be it blessed or beleaguered -- I invite you once again into this riskiest but most righteous of confessions: Consider the dangerous possibility that the same Holy Spirit that brooded over the waters of creation, the same Holy Spirit that brooded over Mary’s waters, is the same Holy Spirit of God broods over these moments when we gather in Jesus name, and the same Spirit that broods over your bed every morning -- unbidden, unsolicited, but always inviting farther and farther down this Jesus way, toward the Father.

This same Holy Spirit hovers over your life, inviting you to consider what impossible new thing God might do with the pregnant possibilities of new day: those fertile but not-yet-realized possibilities for fresh faith, new ministry, living witness.

No matter what dangerous road God calls you down, no matter what impossible dream God invites you to dream, no matter what risky, barren wilderness God invite you to cross: Remember, God’s love brings forth unimaginable life. “Nothing will be impossible with God,” says the angel.

Our dangerous response? “Here we are, servants of the Lord; let it be with us according to your word.”

The Same God

2008-12-22T17:21:00.001-05:00

Let the stable still astonish:
Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, rag-wrapped laid to cry
In a trough.
Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said, "Yes,
Let the God of Heaven and Earth be born in this place."
Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms of our hearts
And says, "Yes, let the God of Heaven and Earth
Be born in THIS place."

Leslie Leyland Fields

Matthew 20:34

2008-12-19T01:11:00.004-05:00

What a practical gift it is to rediscover your own contingency in God's sprawling cosmos of necessity. What a take-home prize, to stumble again into the penultimate status of your knowing what's really up with reality. Like Atlas before us, we are prone to carry around too large a burden--the shouldered heavy ball of our presumed omniscience. But we don't know all that much, really. And this could be the gift, not the curse.

After all, perceptions come and go with the day's winds, like snow that blankets one hour then melts away the next. Without some hard work on the inside, we inevitably see what we need to see when we need to see it. The life-lenses we presume are large and smudge-free are actually, quite often, rather compact and cloudy--the kind of view of things you got as a kid when you turned your father's binoculars around and looked through the wrong end. Only, if you didn't know you had them wrong-ways to your face, you'd think the world was simply distant and bulging. Normal is only lamron spelled backward.*

Most days we don't know the whole truth of things. Stumbling onto this fact is only a lurching disappointment if in the first place you imagined it was your vocation to run the world. Believing that the "reflection of God's glory" (Hebrews 1:2) can open blind eyes is bound to be the hardest for those who already think they can see. Otherwise, our contingency in the face of God's necessity is a true gift, the ground of our glad assurance. Thank the Lord that the Lord is not depending on little old me for a firm and final rendering of the day's reality. Most days I'm lucky if I get my eyes opened at all. In my blindness, the light tends to bend to fit my brokenness.

So of all the things "being saved" might mean, surely it includes being saved from myself--the tempting tyranny of my own little truths. (God help the sinner who confuses his sure faith with God's inviolable grace.) If I see at all, it is because I have been seen. My assurance of a reality firmer than my own is not finally bound up in my knowing, but in the unforeseeable promise of my being known.

People say they want to see proof of God's existence. I'd rather prefer that God envision proof of my own. At least when the looking moves in that direction, there is a good chance that the data is really real.

With deep gladness we rejoice: It turns out God's vision is much better than our own.

*To turn a phrase from F.B.

Psalm 37:7

2008-12-13T01:48:00.007-05:00

I love snow.

I love that it sparkles.

I love how it turns on and off.

I love how it descends in slow motion.

I love how it sounds, crunching under my boot.

I love that my daughter likens it to mashed potatoes.

I love how one can long for a season never really known before.

I love how revealing one’s snow-giddiness in conversation separates the sheep from the goats.

I love how the world sounds, or doesn’t, when the snow has fallen for a time and the lawn is covered in mass and no one has come by in a while; when it feels as though the sky has unfurled over every corner of the neighborhood some long-stored-away quilt. Every yard a cot, tucked down tight for inspection.

Listen.

The world is padded in a way not so just an hour ago. Cotton. I cannot hear the neighbor kids. No howling mutts, no highway swoosh, no heat pump starts. And no news from across the seas.

A sabbath from their assumed cacophony.

I hear creation waiting stilly.

I love this sanctuary.

Comforter.

Snow.

Have a Very Daring Christmas

2008-12-10T12:05:00.001-05:00

With Christmas comes four sets of familiar New Testament characters - some shepherds, father, some sages, and a mother. I suspect we annually underestimate just how daring their stories invite us to become.

This season, dare to believe that your otherwise diminutive position in the world matters to God. A chief challenge of modern living is the daily overload of painful world news coupled with the reality that 99.9 percent of it is beyond our control. I am not the president-elect, the pope, or the prince. What can I (we) do about a sickly Sudanese child halfway around the world? Yet remember the witness of our Advent friends the shepherds, working third shift on a hillside full of sheep. In a world of Herod the Greats and other big names, they remain nameless throughout history; yet it is they, not he, for whom the heavens are opened and God’s angels deliver their wonderfully disruptive news. “What’s this?” ask the nervous pastors and elders, “God is supposed to work through the proper channels! We have an appointment in the temple come Saturday, right?” Yet there is their God, alive and well out on the dodgy end of town, conscripting nameless herders into the ministry of good-news-telling. Shepherds? It’s a joke. Dare to believe there is work for us all to do.

This season, dare to risk public disrepute for the sake of some worthy calling. How often do we sense a divine nod in this or that new direction, a slight Spirit-filled push toward a scruffy neighbor in need, or some growing sense of call to bold new action in the world. But who wants to appear the fool? Who wants to disrupt the social patterns that have worked so well for us for so long? So instead we lay low, dressed in the warm sweater of other’s esteem. Yet remember the witness of our brother Joseph, who nine months from December finds himself in a real pickle: a pregnant fiancee and high-minded neighbors. But in the middle of the night, a messenger gives him a provocative invitation to move through the disgrace, not around it. God asks him to trust that some larger effort of goodness and grace is afoot--a ministry that will, in the end, vindicate all the public mumbling. Neighbors and their opinions come and go; the love-summons of the gospel remains for us all.

This season, dare to imagine that there is treasure worth seeking beyond what can be procured on Black Friday, or Cyber Monday. Here we are, called to practice a spirit-filled ministry in a time when Big-Box greeters are trampled to death in the mad rush toward “everyday low prices.” How much is a life worth these days? Indeed, these are strange times for us Christians on this continent: On the one hand, we are the very people who most know how to celebrate that the material treasures of this world are God’s created-good-gifts. We know the Giver and thus we name the gifts, so we should be the last people on the block who are scrooge-ish about material matters. But on the other hand, you and I make our profession in a time of hyper-abundance. Christians around the world must hold to this faith under a tyranny of oppressive powers; we hold the faith under the tyranny of Costco, Ollie’s, and Fuel Perks. What’s real treasure when credit comes (came) cheap? Can one find one’s life at the bottom of a bargain bin? What does it a profit a people to secure gifts for everyone on your list, only to sequester your soul? Remember our wise travelers “from the east,” who for reasons no one will ever truly understand, set out on a journey for some treasure more substantial than what already fills their coffers. In the end, even these elites from the east seem willing--wanting!--to lay down serious coin at the feet of an otherwise lower-class child on whom such astounding promises are attached. This season, dare to believe that you will find your God-given life in the unlikeliest of places ... like a Bethlehem barn.

This season, dare to imagine that the barren places in your life are the seedbeds for God’s next act of newness. Families sometimes falter. Marriages grow cold. Hearts are held captive, rubber-banded to broken events decades in the past. Our lives are a curious concoction of grace and wilderness. Is it any wonder that some among us come to the end of their ropes, unable to imagine anything new under the sun? Yet remember our sister Mary, the Christ-mother, whose understandable metaphysical doubt at the news of her pregnancy is met with an angel’s assurance that “nothing is impossible with God.” What a risky narrative we steward: an unwed teenage mother conscripted to surrogate the divine. It’s a tale so provocative it irritates “family value” hawks and fierce feminists alike. I say, let the scandal of Mary’s life-filled-womb rock us from our religious slumbers; let it summon you to imagine what impossible new thing God might do with the lifeless, wilderness places of your life. Don’t get hung up on the biology of her virginity (as the church has done for centuries); think as the Bible thinks: Mary the Virgin is one more willing-but-unable servant in a long line of Biblical stories wherein God makes a way where there was none before. It cannot be; it was. There was no life; there was life. He was dead; he is risen. Dare to believe there can be a bright Easter morning on your twilight Christmas Eve.

Have a very daring Christmas.

Thanks Be to God

2008-11-07T10:33:00.003-05:00

November is, by all accounts, a month for giving thanks. Our neighbors know that as well as we do. (Let the turkey consumption and the requisite napping commence.)

Still, the holy work of being grateful is not merely in experiencing the feeling but in naming our particular blessings before the Lord. By analogy, what good does it do my beloved for me to feel grateful for her place in my life if I do not also regularly name that thanksgiving to her? Gratitude is only as good as its specified return. I imagine it is not so different with the living God (Psalm 7:17). As the old song urges, “Count your many blessings. Name them one by one. See what God has done.”

This is one of the features I appreciate about Paul’s numerous epistles. The apostle practices specificity in his thanksgiving. He names before the Lord and before his congregations the particular textures of his gratitude—the spaces and places in which he sees the Spirit of God loose and living among them.

We also constantly give thanks to God for this, that when you received the word of God that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human word but as what it really is, God’s word, which is also at work in you believers. – 1 Thessalonians 2:13

So it is, in similar fashion, we baptized folk are called to name before the Lord that which has blessed us along our way. It’s not only a November thing to do, it’s a Christian thing—year round. What follows, then, are a few samples from my own growing list of recent thanksgivings to God—gratitude about you, as a congregation, as I come to know you more and more with each passing month.

For instance, I give thanks to God for the wonderful music you make to the Lord week after week. In recent years, you have stretched yourselves—some reluctantly, some joyfully, I’m sure—to lift up to God praise that is as varied as it is vibrant. I commend you for receiving this effort, and for sticking together around a matter that would surely undo a less mature congregation.

I give thanks to God for the strong sense of “What’s next?” I feel among you, especially among your elders and deacons. You are not a congregation the seems shackled to your past; so many of you seem genuinely curious about what the Spirit might yet be up to in your midst. I celebrate what I sense as a holy expectation about the coming years. After all, I suspect God is more interested in our willingness than in our expertise. Those first disciples knew little about what was in store, only that they must go when they sensed themselves called (Matthew 4:19).

More concretely, I give thanks for our sanctuary—the look, the feel, the shape, the function. It feels traditional but not stuffy, open but not rootless. To be sure, a church is not its building, yet the four walls that surround a people’s worship and work is not incidental, either. Space matters, to the extent it helps and does not hinder our calling to be the body of Christ in this place. The first time I walked into your Sunday space (during an interview last winter), I was struck by how handsome, how Reformed (word and sacraments—front and center), and how well-cared for the room is. All this says much about a congregation. It is an honor and a delight to be lead-worshipper among you on each Lord’s Day.

I give thanks that this congregation is, to say it one way, a womb for mission. Tables and shawls and compassion are born here. It feels to me like down deep in the psyche of this place there are old, deep, missional reverberations that will not let this fellowship turn wholly inward upon itself. Key decisions in the past often appear marked with an impulse to consider how you might be, more and more, in service and witness to neighbor and world. I hear: Let the paint chip a bit on the Social Hall baseboard, let the tan tile in the bathroom go another year—there’s mission beyond these walls to consider. I love it.

Finally, more personally, I give thanks to God for the ways in which you have welcomed my family and worried over their needs. What has for months been to us a new place is fast becoming for us our new home, and your gracious “hello” (beginning with those blessed bow-ties) has helped to make it so.

- - -

As I was leading my daughter through the trick-or-treat gauntlet that is Waugh Avenue on the night before Halloween, I bumped into a pack of middle school girls from our congregation, hard at work in their annual canvas. Suddenly one of them had a revelation: “Hey,” pointing at me in fresh realization, “you go to our church, don’t you?”

Indeed I do. A fact for which I am most grateful to the Lord.

From Symbol to Service

2008-11-06T05:57:00.010-05:00

I'm thrilled about what Mr. Obama's election represents in the way of race relations in this country. As a child of the deep South, I am especially mindful of what it will mean come January to watch a black family move into our white house. Were she still alive, my paternal grandmother would be mortified at the sight. And for all my great love for her, my feeling is she would deserve the lonely company of her own pitiful indignation. "Pride cometh before a fall."

Still, the proof of Mr. Obama's greatness will be in the pudding of his decisions. The only thing wrong with the current brand of youthful idealism that has bumped him into office is its hasty willingness to elevate symbol too far over service. Any among us who choke on his skin color should be called out for what you are, but social progressives can also be (unwittingly) condescending when they look straight through a man and only see their cause on the other side. Symbols don't save. Said Ms. Doolittle to the Professor: "Don't talk of love. Show me."

After 72 hours of happy celebration, let us remember that symbolic figures are only as helpful to the common good as the quiet decisions they make behind closed doors. Thomas Friedman, himself in awe of this week, is still right to ask, "Obama will always be our first black president. But can he be one of our few great presidents?" To his query I add my own: Will he call us all to do the hard work of rebuilding our country by tightning our belts, or will he let us continue to think we can live today on tomorrow's bill?

Given the terribly complex matters we face at home and in the world, what will matter most in the end is how Mr. Obama inhabits his new role, how he functions as a consistent tone-setter and example. Words matter a great deal, but only those who have never had to make any hard decisions out on the lonely point of leadership would impulsively, even if innocently, smother the burden of private character under the blanket of public cause.

Hopefully, four years from now, we will not have had to choose between the two.

Mr. Obama, we celebrate the skin you are in. Absolutely we do. Still, what we need now is sagacious leadership--red or yellow, black or white.

Advent Talk

2008-11-05T10:40:00.004-05:00

Like many important efforts dependent on clear thinking and hard work, "theology" has lately suffered a bum rap at the hands of those who assume it is the sole purview of brainy elites. (A colleague of mine landed in a new church. About the previous preacher one member gushed: “He was very smart. I couldn’t understand most of what he said.”) This is distressing for those of us invested in “equipping the saints” for thinking and living the faith.

Theos = “God.” Logi = “word, speech, utterance.”

Put them together and you get God-talk, God-speech. Add “Christian” as a sacred prefix, and suddenly the church finds itself in a living God-conversation anchored in the life and witness of the scandalous New Testament Jesus. Good theology (talk) requires a brain, but loses its necessary humility if it becomes brainy. It can get along better when propelled by intelligence, but wisdom is the more necessary ingredient. It is aided by the professionals who write and publish, but their work never supersedes ours.

Good Christian theology is the primary responsibility of the same inimitable congregations wherein that faith is first lived. Like politics, it is a local affair. Theos-speech is that daring act of discussing within our ranks what the astonishing life Jesus just might have to do with our own. Together we steward a strange and wonderful story about a baby precariously born to peasant parents, tendered in a feeding trough while visited by curious herders, and promised for generations as the agent of God’s new life for the world.

Now there’s a matter up for God-discussion.

Good theology asks: What does this tale have to do with our own?

Soil Tests

2008-10-08T11:01:00.005-04:00

They are like trees planted along the riverbank,
bearing fruit each season.
Their leaves never wither,
and they prosper in all they do.

- Psalm 1 (New Living Bible)

A chief challenge of the times in which we live is the reality that most of us are cut off from the real sources of our food. Ask a child from whence cometh apples and—no real fault of her own—she is likely to say “from the store.” Never mind the toil of those who labor in groves far away; never mind the remarkable yield of such productive creatures as fruit trees—doing their thing season after season. Fruit just happens in our world. Unlike in earlier generations more agrarian than our own, most of us (but not all of us, Mr. Johnston) are afforded no daily connection to its source.

The convenience of the produce section of Giant Eagle not withstanding, there are implications to this cutoff for our Christian faith. Spiritual fruit does not simply happen in our lives. Just as no famer would propose standing before a bare field and shouting “make fruit!” … so we cannot expect our lives to bring forth signs of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-25) without a proper planting, tending, and harvest. It turns out that modernity contains an ironic twist for believers: The more convenient the world around us, the more challenging it is to nurture within us a deep and abiding Christ faith. Last time I checked, Giant Eagle doesn’t carry piety.

Still, “those who delight in the law of the Lord, meditating on it day and night, they are like trees planted along the riverbank.” This is not mere moralizing on the Bible’s part. Think less of the psalmist wagging his finger at us and more of a disciple who has lived long enough to figure out that soil matters—where we plant our lives makes a difference. The psalmist can look back over his life and appreciate that good farming makes for “bearing fruit each season.” (Matthew 13:3-8)

Remember this background when your Stewardship Packet comes around this month. Without much reflection, we are tempted to look upon pledge cards and time commitments and the like as a narrow one-way street. “The church needs more from me,” we might sigh, scribbling down some hasty numbers. Turn it back in on Sunday, and we’re off the hook for another year.

But I invite you to eschew this flattened view of discipleship. Instead, consider this matter of stewardship as a busy two-way street. There is no doubt that a congregation needs from God’s people their time, talent, and treasure in order to do the ministry Christ is calling it to do. The arrow pointing from you to the church is clear and obvious.

But there is also an arrow flowing toward us. We need the church. We need it in our lives to call us to attention, to take notice of our walk with Jesus, to consider the soil in which we are planted. Stewardship materials are soil tests: Am I bearing any fruit? Am I growing or dying? Am I planted by streams of righteousness or by ditches of degeneracy? Am I cutoff from the true source of my life or is there living water flowing through me? (John 4:13-14) It is the difference between casually plunking a bag of apples down in your cart and spending a day in an orchard—planting, fertilizing, harvesting.

One of our Active Elders recently said it well from the pulpit: “God is not an accountant. God looks at our hearts.” This is another way of inviting us not to confuse the apple (our giving) with the tree (our lives). God desires our hearts, not our wallets; still, our wallets—perhaps more than anything else—will likely show in what kind of soil we are planted. Our fruit will tell us what is really going on with the tree, if we are open to learning.

Let us be open to learning. You could make quick work of your Stewardship materials and be done with it. That is your choice to make. But your pastor invites you to dig a little deeper. Let us all commit to take some soil samples in this new season, to remember again the source of our abundant life. Let us press beyond an easy, convenient faith to instead discover (again!) the “joys of those who do not follow the advice of the wicked … but [instead] delight in the law of the Lord.”

From whence cometh your fruit?

Hydration

2008-10-04T13:58:00.004-04:00

Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. It will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. - John 4:13

The vexing danger of dehydration lies mainly in the fact that we just don’t know how thirsty we are until someone gives us cool water to drink. Absent a good and deep well, the body struggles to find moisture where it can. Meanwhile, most of us have a tremendous capacity for convincing ourselves that we feel “just fine”—our outer assurance belying our inner starvation. A few out there imbibe whatever liquid will grant them release from their reality; many more are awash in a saccharine sweetness that, while wet, does little to sustain them. Some understand quite well that they are parched, but assume that it is simply their lot in life to whiter and die. Whatever the response to our dehydration, there is not much that can replace the simple, satisfying nourishment of water.

The liquid of the New Testament, liberally spilled out on a given Sunday morning, does not run far over dry, parched land. For this reason alone, it is reassuring to know that the spring is inexhaustible.

Notes for Jumpstarting a Challenge

2008-09-20T23:34:00.002-04:00

Christian stewardship is, at bottom, the conviction that everything we have (our stuff, our time, our money ... even our lives themselves) are all gifts from God and thus belong to God.

Lots of people in our culture talk about "self-made" men and women, by which they mean people who have worked hard and pulled themselves up into success by their own strength and effort. We Christians respect those stories, but we do not choose to think about our lives in that way. If anything, we are God-made people: We are created by God, and whatever success we achieve in this life is ultimately a credit back to that creating God--who loans us the abilities and time, talents and strength to labor and love and live.

When you look upon your life in this way -- given by God, owned by God, blessed by God -- then giving to others in need, giving to the church's common ministry, and giving to efforts God nudges us to give to ... these become easy efforts, glad gestures. We give with a grateful, cheerful heart, because we know God is behind it all anyway.

So our theme for tomorrow - memories - is not really about memories, per se (like going to the beach, or your favorite childhood toys, etc.) but about our memory of God's faithfulness to us in the past. This includes the specific ways God has blessed you in your particular life, but it also includes those larger, all-encompassing blessings that are gifts to all of us even if we cannot yet see them as such. This world to live in; food and air and water; families to raise us; crops to feed us ... each of these, God's global gifts.

And of course, as Christians, the superlative gift that blesses us all (and which we remember each week in our gathering and sending) is the gift of Jesus as Christ. That he is a part of our history, our shared story, is our biggest clue that God loves us, that God wishes us well, and that this same God is willing to do what it takes to set our lives and the world to the right.

This is good news, because at 17 (or consider my Ella, only 4) you may say to yourself ... "I'm not certain I have any specific memories of God's blessings in my particular life." And yet, one could say that our Lord Jesus--his life, his dying, his rising--is a part of your memory, because through baptism and through your faith your are connected to HIS life, HIS story, HIS blessings. That's the mystery and blessing and burden of faith.

So stewardship (our taking care of the gifts of God in our lives) begins not with guilt (I guess I HAVE to give) or obligation (I guess I SHOULD give) but with joy (I know I CAN give ... back to God ... to those in need ... to God's church). If we think of our lives as solely our own, in that self-made sense, we are likely to be stingy and selfish. If we think of our lives as immeasurable gifts from a loving God, then we are likely to be generous with what we have. After all, we know it is a gift to us in the first place.

Consider this metaphor: When I was in high school, I might have been tempted to say to myself: "Geez ... my parents ... nothing but a nuisance and a drag with their rules and regs and expectations. I'm moving out on my own." But had I done that -- moved out on my own -- I would have quickly discovered all of those things they were doing for me that I had not really considered or taken seriously: food, roof over my head, an allowance, a sense of right/wrong, help when I was sick, encouragement when I was down, etc. It would surely not take long for the absence of these generous gifts, and the challenge of producing them by myself, to call me back home.

So upon moving back in, I would therefore be moved to live in a certain new way under their roof. I would be more grateful for all of the sacrifices they make for me, more aware of the costs they incur for me, more loving toward them and more appreciative of the fact that countless bodies around the world do not enjoy even one third of those gifts. In other words, I would seek to be a better steward of their many gifts -- both obvious and subtle -- that they give to me every day.

It is not so different with the Christian life. We are sometimes tempted to "go out on our own." "Who needs faith, what with its high expectations, commandments, and demands." But a little while on our own, absent the faith, hope, and love the undergirds our living, we are likely to come back to God with a fresh sense of gratitude for all that God for us on a daily basis -- if we would but open our eyes to see it.

So when we remember God's faithfulness in the past (as Israel is reminded to do in the Old Testament passage for tomorrow - Deuteronomy 9:7-18), we are again made aware of all that God has done for us, and we are nudged and prodded and called to live differently in the future -- with joyful hearts, with an eye toward those in need, with open hands and not tight fists.

Has there been a time when you took someone or something (or even God) for granted for awhile, only to realize the hard way that your life would be very different, likely a lot less, were it not for that person, that gift, or our God?

or

What are some of the specific ways you can look back over your life, and your family's life, and see God's gifts and blessings to you? What would your life be like had these gifts (people, things, time, etc.) not been given to you and your family by God? What decisions could you make in the future to make certain God know you are grateful for them?

or

Who is a Christian you know (in your family, neighborhood, church, etc.) who exudes gratitude? What do you know about their story that points to how God has blessed them? What do you learn from watching how they live their life?

Challenge us along these lines.

Tempest

2008-09-19T08:35:00.003-04:00

Come, Spirit tempest. Move across our watery chaos,
bringing winds and water for disturbing your church.
Come ashore with righteous indignation: circulating
over our slumbers, troubling those firmer idolatries.

Come, Spirit tempest. Blow with Word-winds across
our complacent comfort. Shake loose from moorings
the lines of numbing entertainment; pry us free from
worship at the feet of Convenience. Unsettle us again.

Come, Spirit tempest. Scour our crowded lives with a
purifying wind. Prune away the deadwood of empty
words and easy sentiment. Gather up the life-litter we
so heedlessly overlook. Strengthen us for new living.

Come, Spirit tempest. Bring a howling, hallowed word.

Genesis 1:1-2, Acts 2:1-2

A New Day

2008-09-09T17:07:00.001-04:00

A Psalm for Those Who Struggle

The night has now gone.
Another day has come.

In the anxious hours of the evening, I bore my soul to you.
I could hide no longer.
Even the darkness could not cover me.
Your word was heavy upon me—a yoke tightened with purpose.
The disparate elements of my soul could no longer cohere.
I felt your judgment upon me, your disappointment with my days.

Still, I opened my life to you, and you did not strike me down.
You heard my cry, witnessed my exposure.
You are—all at once—judge and redeemer.
I named my sin before you, charted the wayward courses of late.
Then I lay down in peace, unburdened.

And now comes a new day.

With the morning is a new beginning, one more Easter for living.
I do not deserve this gift, O Giver of all time and space.
Yet it has arrived, as sure as your history with me.
Help me to make the best of these unfolding hours.
Direct my steps, that each one will show your mercy.
Teach me to walk with a certain humility, grounded in your love.

The night has now gone.
Another day has come.

All Wet

2008-09-07T17:01:00.000-04:00

“The water used for Baptism should be common to the location, and shall be applied to the person by pouring, sprinkling, or immersion. By whatever mode, the water should be applied visibly and generously.” Book of Order W-3.3605

Baptismal waters flowing down from above
Ubiquitous water. All over: a sacred mess
Generous, rich—like the grace it signs
A bath. Not a spot or a dash or a dab
Flowing freely, running liberally
Washing, cleaning, dissolving
From faucet to font to life
Marking and mending
Stained and sealed
Promise claimed
Welcoming
Home

The Privilege of Doing More

2008-09-06T16:30:00.002-04:00

At 75, my father’s health is failing. It’s no secret. When people ask how he is doing of late, he tells them. It is what it is, and it makes him just a bit more reflective than usual.

I was recently with him for a week, and together we sat down with Richard Magg—director of our denomination’s post-Katrina recovery efforts—to talk about what Presbyterians have been doing in New Orleans this year. As we prepared to say goodbye to Richard, with a pat on the back my father encouraged him to keep up the good work. Then dad added, reflectively, “You know, it’s a real privilege to be able to do the Lord’s work. I only wish I had done more of it.”

From his vantage point, near the end of his life, he wishes he could have done more in ministry. From my vantage point, having watched his life, I know he’s done a lot. In fact, my father is likely one of the best Christian stewards I have known. He has always worked hard to provide for his family, and done well at it; still, he’s never had the sense that he is somehow a “self-made man.” When he tells his life story, it’s clear in his retelling that he knows it by God’s grace that he is who he has become. When he names his involvement in numerous ministries over many decades, you can hear a kind of boyish note of wonder in his recounting—as if to say, “I can’t believe I’ve had the privilege of being a part of something like this.” He’s always been generous with his time, talent, and treasure; quick to respond to a genuine need, great or small.

His life as I’ve watched it puts me in mind of a bit from our Book of Order:

"Those who follow the discipline of Christian stewardship will find themselves called to lives of simplicity, generosity, honesty, hospitality, compassion, receptivity, and concern for the earth and God’s creatures." W-5.5005

Indeed. Stewardship is about the privilege of being able to do more for God, for others. Stewardship is not primarily about fundraising for the church’s budget, even though supporting our common ministry financially is certainly one of our common callings. But long before we speak of your wallet or our church budget, Christian stewardship begins in our hearts. It begins the moment we look back over our lives and recognize that, were it not for God’s astonishing generosity to us, we would not be where we are today. Indeed, would we even be at all?

If one is truly a self-made man; if one can see no trace of grace whatsoever in her story; if the unfathomable generosity of God made known in the Friday-Sunday tale of Jesus does nothing to stir the soul or prick the heart—then I would say there is little to worry about regarding stewardship. You’re off the hook, because you are on your own. Don’t give if you’re not grateful. Otherwise it’s just a religious tax on your stuff, a burden instead of a blessing.

But of course we are not on our own. For baptized folk, the idea of a “self-made man” is oxymoronic. What I have learned by watching my father over the years is that giving follows gratitude. When I gaze upon what God has done—for me, for us, for the world—I am moved to give of myself, precisely because I know that the same Lord who has blessed me thus far will be the same Lord who undergirds the remainder of my living. I can give, precisely because what I have is a gift to me in the first place. Even the ability to labor in order to secure resources is itself an astonishing gift.

Those who come to the end of their lives and have the time to reflect upon that fact can teach us much about the decisions we make along our way. Will we come to our conclusion and regret never giving of ourselves? Will we face the finish line and recognize that we never really got started living in the first place? Will we spend our time and treasure on labors and loves that do not matter all that much from the perspective of Jesus? These are stewardship questions. They begin in our hearts, not our checkbooks or calendars. The first and real pledge we make is our commitment to follow Christ where he leads, through faith, hope, and love. Get that right, and the rest will follow.

Before you write any checks, before you spill any ink in your day planner, before you fill out a single pledge card … prayerfully consider what God has been up to in your life thus far. Consider what you hope to be able to look back on at the close of your days. Giving follows gratitude, and it is the glad privilege of those who have come to know God’s unfathomable blessings.

If ever the call to renewed Christian commitment and the challenge of Christian stewardship feels burdensome to you, remind yourself that it is a blessed burden. Remember the testimony of my father—and those similar examples in your own life. By God’s good grace, his only apparent regret in giving of himself in ministry to others all these years is that he has not been able to do even more.

May it be so for us as well.

This Ongoing Conversation

2008-07-26T21:29:00.003-04:00

As I opened a carton full of packed-up books, as the first current of Lawrence County air filled the cardboard spaces, I swear I heard a sigh of relief from within. Or maybe that was me. As a self-confessed bibliophile, it is not too much to say that my volumes are to me like old friends. As such, I've been carrying around a certain measure of guilt about the more than two months they have been forced into squeezed stasis together, pinned up in cardboard havens like boatloads of refugees en route to some new world. Unpacking each box means, well, we are together again, at last, on a new shore. (Pathetic, I know.)

To say that my books are dear friends is another way of saying that each one, to a greater or lesser degree, is a partner in an ongoing conversation about the nature and purpose of Christian orthopraxy—for me, for the church. This faith we share is not a static, mechanical enterprise; not a dead commodity able to be traded as is. It is, rather, a living, breathing, audible exchange about life and love in Jesus of Nazareth, about adoring God above and neighbor beside, about being serious stewards of God's implausible mysteries.

As such, each volume on my new shelves represents one more voice that has contributed to this ongoing dialogue in my head and heart. To be sure, a few are distracting voices: books I drag along through this life because they belonged to someone important to me, even if their content has little to do with my workaday questions and answers. (From my grandmother Pauline: Spurgeon on the rapture.) Many in the collection are helpful on a some singular key point—a place to which I regularly return to reexamine some specific angle of this Christ confession. Still, the best bound conversation partners are those handful of preachers, teachers, trainers who—in print, if never in person—travel along with me on almost a daily basis. Their labors have focused my own; their lenses have colored my own; their voices reverberate around in my head as I preach, plan, and prod in every new season. These always get a shelf unto their own—some new loft with a view.

I feel for those pastor-preacher-theologians for whom this faith is a dead, stagnant enterprise. Though safer and far more predictable than the kind of hard-won fruit a robust conversation inevitably produces, still I think there can be little that is life-giving to a congregation if there are no other voices around your table other than your own ... or perhaps those yellowed, corner-curled notes from seminary—aged cues that long ago outlived their expectancy. One cannot expect to nurture any sort of living conversation in the sanctuary on Sunday morning if, in fact, there has been no conversation in the preacher’s piety throughout the week.

I can only speak for myself: For me, this bit of Jesus-news is a lively, sometimes unruly din of a conversation. It is as if some of my most helpful volumes beg to be heard. After all, to say that a man died under our weight, and that he was raised up from our burdensome demise, and that he lives and breathes in the same space as the One who casts and keeps all things ... There is surely much to talk, much conversation to be had about a confession with such starling markers.

While we celebrate when they come along certain moments of near-absolute clarity, days for making clear claims and asserting strongly old promises; still, for most of us on most days, ours is a living conversation chockablock with deep questions and tentative answers. (The answers are usually tentative, not because there is not Friday-Sunday truth to be found, but because we are deaf and dumb and mute most of the time.) One can—indeed, one should—spend the better part of a lifetime digging deeper and deeper into this strange and wonderful orthodoxy. One must gather around one's table, add to one’s shelves, more and more helpful and faithful voices as the months and years roll along—all so that this ongoing conversation is rich, and deep, and true.

Which prompts the question: Who sits at the head of the table? Who gets the best shelf?

I have long suggested to church officers in training that when we, the ordained, vow to make Scripture an "authority" in our both our lives and in the common life of the church, that to which we are committing is the bold act of leaving empty the largest seat at the head of our conversing table.

Metaphorically, each of us being a steward of God's gospel in print is not unlike a boardroom table surrounded by various inputing voices—most of which reside right within your bones. Reason is there, seated next to experience. Intuition is just across the table, looking straight on at history—both yours and the more corporate story that shapes us all. The life and times of your family of origin has a big seat at the table, as does the prevailing culture. (Their seats might be ex officio, but they are no less vocal, or compelling.) Feelings certainly have a say, as does logic; this is, if you can keep these two from scrapping with each other during the meeting. Gathered around also are trusted friends, public opinion, and—for many of us, at least—many aforementioned volumes.

In other words, every event, every existential corner, every necessary decision involved in our daily effort to be human … It all requires that we distill these myriad voices, each one vying for our utmost attention. This can be hard work; to a greater or lesser degree, each voice has its own agenda and persuasion. Occasionally, something is seated at your table that is so vocal, so demanding, it drowns all voices but its own. Such is life, then: a protracted board meeting in which one seeks consensus among a din of perspectives.

I believe, then, that to claim Christian scripture as an "authority" is to leave open for the ancient book that privileged, instrumental seat at the head of your table. "Here," we say prayerfully to the canon, "sit here. Sit here and speak. Speak clearly and with determination. Speak in such a way that you will direct and align these many other voices." When it works well, no other voice at your table is ever fully lost in the exchange, yet neither will any other voice leave the conversation unchanged. Reading scripture is an act of inclusive hierarchy.

I have long thought that having a prayerful, purposeful conversation with the bound canon is akin to sharing a conversation with your wise, old grandmother. If she is a woman of any virtue and grace, as good grandmothers always are, she will on the one hand make you feel as though you actually have some real part on the conversation. This is something of a loving trick, because on the other hand, when she speaks, the depth and breadth of her seasoned wisdom will swiftly convince you that your standing in the conversation is not nearly as important as it initially seemed.

You are touched and even a bit proud that she gives your callow ideas the time of day, but more and more you are simply happy to have her speak—to tell her story, to make her case, to lift the veil of her sacred silence long enough for you to hear what really matters to her, to God. She will treat you like a peer simply because that is her gracious way; in the end, however, you know that you are in fact not peers. By her grace, you are a player in the conversation; but by her wisdom she is the authority on most matters under the sun. As such, she deserves to sit at the head of your gathering table—a place reserved for her, not merely out of provincial respect, but because she has unequivocally earned it.

Reading scripture together; dubbing it an “authority;” it is a bit like that. The Bible will not scream at us like an impetuous child, but neither will it beg like a confused parent. We are players in the ongoing conversation—that is the grace; still, we leave for these ancient words the privileged seat the table. Those many other voices in our lives—reason, logic, story, emotion, to name but a few—they are not demolished in this ongoing conversation. We are not asked to surrender these gifts, only that we remain open to the possibility of their redemption along the way. They will not be silenced, but they will finally be subdued.

That is the surprising grace within this ongoing conversation.

Jesus' Ordinary People

2008-07-22T21:57:00.001-04:00

Our preacher this morning was the Rev. Joan Gray, immediate past moderator of the General Assembly of the PC(USA). Her presence in our pulpit prompted in me this memory.

It was late in my senior year, and we preachers-to-be were all taken aback when our pastor-teacher encouraged us not to use the likes of Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa, or John Calvin in too many of our sermon illustrations. On a first take, her strong imperative seemed counter-productive, if not heretical (at least concerning Father Calvin), but she was pretty sure of herself.

She explained.

"Everyone already knows that Mother Theresa was a saint, a hero, the best of the best. The problem is that everyone in your pews also already knows that they will never measure up to the likes of her. They are not inspired to try; instead, they stand back in awe. They admire her from a distance, unable (unwilling?) to hear the call of that same gospel for themselves."

It had never occurred to me that too much hero emulation in the church could turn out to be counter-productive. "Instead," she instructed us, "talk about ordinary Christians, everyday Christians. Testify in your sermons to what you see God doing in the plain folk with whom your path crosses week to week. Talk in your sermons about what it looks like to follow Jesus Christ on a normal Tuesday morning. Help your people to see what this faith looks like in their everyday, humdrum lives. That is the burden we bear."

It was good advice, not the least of which because it has stuck with me a decade later. More substantially, though, her directive resonates with the New Testament. Says Paul (who we might note is not so much invested in the self-esteem of his congregants), "Not many of you were wise by human standards; not many were influential; not many were of noble birth. But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise; God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong." For Paul, there is no other recipient of the gospel besides a plain old ordinary sinner. God works in us, ordinary us, so that it will be clear who gets the credit for whatever new life flows from your story.

I'm certain Moderator Gray has a place for the great ones among us -- the Kings, the Mothers, the Reformers. Her homiletical encouragement should not be taken as a blanket disparagement of their witness. Rather, I think, she calls upon the church to thaw out its frigid hero-worship and exchange it for the more daring work of boldly imagining, week in and week out, what this Friday-Sunday bit of news might look like on a most ordinary morning day. Ordinary sinners claimed and called by an extraordinary grace. What does this look like at 10:27, Sunday evening?

That is the burden we bear.

fluorescence

2008-07-07T21:58:00.008-04:00

already i have a preferred way into the place
not so much a doorway
a time of day
early
before shuffling and chatting arrive

the air hangs heavily all around
reposed through another night
i am first to agitate the dust
corners felt
tenuous groping
steps reveal a slumbering inside cavern

there i stand
alone
the space of this risky vocation
i
and dust
and twenty score of empty stations

all of it cloaked in some obscurity
tucked beyond reach
hidden in a still not-yet dawn

except
that curious corona
casting its gleam all about
like some great electric eye

someone has let him be
(again)

illumination
adjustment
i can see

o thank God

Bow Ties and Blessings

2008-06-26T09:24:00.010-04:00

There is something about a sanctuary full of Presbyterians all (well, mostly all) donning bow ties that endears a pastor to his new church. Some were diminutive and others cumbersome; lots of clip-ons and yet a few really tied; most homemade just for the occasion, with a few dug out of the closet after many years. It was quite a sight: bow ties everywhere, as far as the eye could see. One young man was proud to report later that the tie he was handed at the door actually matched his summer shirt. Terrific.

It was a gutsy move, I suspect. Would the new pastor be blessed or bothered by this sweeping gesture? What will he think about us, clipped-on as we are? Will he get the joke, or will the joke be on us?

I can only speak for myself: Immediately, it was a blessing. What a gracious gesture, to reach out in my direction in fun and in love. What a brave decision, to take the lead is expressing a warm 'hello.' Some would have waited to see who made the first move; many would have held back until it was safe to advance. But a room full of bow-tie-wearing Presbyterians says much about a congregation's willingness to risk, to reach out, to bless and not to burden. (After all, it takes a person of unusual fortitude to don a bow tie!)

Isaiah 6: Then one of the seraphs flew to me, holding a live coal that had been taken from the altar with a pair of tongs. The seraph touched my mouth with it and said: "Now that this has touched your lips, your guilt has departed and your sin is blotted out."

Bow ties remind me of blessings, and God making the first move.

We are saved and so we serve a God who has deliberately reached out and whole-heartedly made the first move; by a free act of grace, crossed the otherwise un/natural divide between us in order that we might be cleansed, claimed, and called. This is a God who does not wait for us to make a first move, does not hold back mercy until the merciless are merciful, does not avoid the risk of reaching out and lifting up. The seraph flies in our direction before ever we had wings for reciprocation. "We love," 1 John rightly concludes, "because God first loved us."

Bow ties and blessings, then. A congregation reaching out in a gracious gesture of welcome; the living God reaching out in a saving act of coal-cleansing mercy. The former, a great gift to this new pastor in a new place and among a new people. The latter: undeserving and undergirding life abundant for us all.

Thanks be to God for both.

From This Little Room

2008-05-07T21:23:00.003-04:00

In this little room I put my pen to the paper,
To write what’s in my heart down on a page;
With every line, a silent prayer is being lifted
That the song will somehow find its way
From this little room, to your heart.

Steven Curtis Chapman

Over 750 letters in nine years. 434 Sunday sermons. 108 newsletter articles. 45 e-mail meditations. (You’re reading #46.) Numerous liturgies, lessons, and prayers. Untold e-mails, both sacred and mundane. Each and every one: a new collection of words and phrases, a fresh gathering of print and script, an attempt at blessing God’s people through lines of language.

And every bit of it, from this little room.

I am going to miss these four little walls nestled in the front corner of your fine church building—a sacred little space otherwise dubbed “the pastor’s study.” For nine important years in my life it has been my little nook, my crucible for concocting language, a cauldron of prayer, pondering, and prognosticating. Many a word has flung forth from this place in many a mode, hopefully for better and not for worse. I have been most grateful to occupy this little room for as long as I have; I am honored now to turn it over to its next occupant—one who will inhabit it soon enough, in God’s good time.

Of all the blessed muscles a pastor is called upon to flex, I think I may be most grateful for the opportunity to write to you over these years from within these four walls. The mediums have been myriad, but the task has always been the same: to write, to you, God’s people, about the various and sundry elements of walking together along this Jesus-way. It has been my great privilege to take a weekly shot at gathering enough words—and proper ones, at that—to point to and pronounce that Eternal Word that calls to us all.

What I know for certain is that I love to write, to shape living and holy words on your behalf. I cannot speak to the quality of my words. Nor can I judge the faithfulness of my writing. Both are a matter for God to take up in the end. But I do know that I love to do it, that I need to do it, that—more than any other ordained labor—it is the best way I “work out my own salvation with fear and trembling” (Philippians 2:12) … and your salvation, too. To wonder, to inquire, to rebuke, to comfort; to dream and to hope, to vent and to pray; to wrestle with angels and demons … with only a keyboard, an open Bible, and my knowledge of your lives and mine nestled deep in my bones.

So, here at the end of our time together, I can only offer you my profound thanks: for receiving my meandering meditations in your already crowded inbox; for welcoming my Sunday morning proclamations into your already busy ears; for opening my letters and deciphering my notes and putting up with my poor speling … er, spelling.

Where there has been error or injury, please forgive me. Where there has been illumination and blessing, give thanks to God. All I can own is my earnest need to tap away on these qwerty keys before me, to write to you about this strange and wonderful gospel that has gripped our lives, to work out—letter by letter—my own feeble attempt at being a steward of God’s many astonishing mysteries (1 Corinthians 4:1).

And all of this, from this little room, to your heart.

I shall miss this space very much. And this is just another way of saying I will miss you very much. Thank you for listening and reading and receiving my words for some 466 blessed weeks.

That’s about 465 more than I deserve.

Doubling My Joy

2008-04-29T15:12:00.002-04:00

Friendship improves happiness and abates misery,
by doubling our joy and dividing our grief.
Joseph Addison

Saying goodbye to this kirk and its people has turned out to be much harder than I had imagined.

I always knew it would be difficult. One doesn't put down a hundred months of roots and expect them to turn loose with hasty ease. But what has surprised me is just how strenuous a good goodbye can be, how much it takes out of a person. A colleague of mine recently wrote that "grief is the tax we pay on loving others." That makes sense to me right about now. It's probably why so many people in this life seem to "cut and run," because they intuitively understand that loving and just departures are hard work for the heart.

Still, it is a blessed work. If grief is indeed a tax then it is a levy well spent for me, a privilege upside-down, a measure of the bonds of friendship and partnership we have enjoyed over these years. Truth be told, I am honored to ante up here at the end. After all, my belief is that such bonds not-easily-undone are part and parcel of the gospel.

During my time as your preacher, I have tried to make a business out of preaching that very point: bonds with Jesus Christ necessarily and happily create bonds among his people. You can't have Jesus without his people, and 9 times out of 10, why would you want to? If there has been a text that has guided me in this near-decade theme, surely it has been 1 Thessalonians 2:8—We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us. (NIV)

I remember well the first time I became acquainted with this little sentiment, buried in the preface to one of Paul's major epistles. It was in seminary, in an upstairs classroom, around a table with several classmates and a theologian. The topic was "evangelism in pastoral ministry," and I had just been complaining about all the negative baggage the term "evangelism" carried for me at the time.

During my freshman year at a large university, I had joined a Christian ministry group whose favorite activity was to scour the campus dormitories knocking on doors and passing out tracts. I had joined mostly for the fellowship, but was quickly recruited for the weekly canvas. I hated every minute of it, mostly because I never could shake the feeling that we could have just as easily been selling dishwashing powder, or insurance, or drugs. It always felt to me as though Jesus—the sacred and saving Jesus that had been so interwoven into my life since infancy—was simply to us a commodity, one more product to peddle door to door. We'd gather in our monthly meetings and compare numbers, everyone patting themselves on the back for the "incredible witness" they were to their fellow students.

If that was "evangelism," then I had already had enough. But to my astonishment, our theologian—a professor of evangelism, no less—agreed with my assessment. He related his own similar experience from another era, his taking place on a beach somewhere. And when I asked in frustration what the proper antidote to all this was, he pointed me to 1 Thessalonians 2:8. "For Paul," he explained, "the gospel must always be shared in the context of genuine love, amidst growing relationships. We share the gospel; we share our lives. In the most faithful of circumstance, the two always go hand in hand."

I had never had someone put it that way before; moreover, I had never noticed Paul's little litmus test for proper faith-sharing—this little text, buried in the Thessalonian letter. Until that day, I had assumed that one had to throw the evangelism-baby out with the bathwater-experience of my undergraduate days. As such, Paul's expression of affection to the Thessalonian Christians was a Godsend to me. A new light turned on my in my theological head; suddenly I could imagine what, in fact, a robust Christian community looked like: As we share the news of Jesus, we share our lives—and vice versa. To paraphrase Joseph Addison: The grief we lay at the cross of Christ is divided among the saints who bear it with us; the joy we experience in the news of God's Easter-grace is doubled by the gift of sharing it with others. "Friendship improves happiness, and abates misery." Relationships protect the news about Jesus from collapsing into yet another commodity for selling and consuming; the gospel truth keeps our common church relationship from decaying into yet another run-of-the-mill human organization. And so it goes, hand in hand.

In more than 400 sermons over nine years, we've listened together to a lot of Biblical texts, we've collectively covered a lot of holy ground. But this New Testament theme—sharing with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well—has certainly woven itself into many a sermon on many a Sunday. As such, it seems like a fitting place to end.

I want you all to know what an inestimable privilege it has been to be your preacher and teaching elder over these many years, to be a steward among you of the good news of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection. But I also want you all to know what a blessing your friendship has been to me and my family—your support, your concern, your responsiveness. On both fronts—preaching and personal—you have doubled my joy.

Altavista Presbyterian Church,

I have loved you so much that it has been my delight to share with you not only the gospel of God but my life as well, and the life of the Hawkins family, because you had become so dear to us.

I could not have said it better myself.

Impossible Resurrection

2008-04-03T01:00:00.000-04:00

Every now and then people feel stuck. The circumstances of their lives, the sins and consequences of their own actions, or the inflictions of others' trespasses upon them create an impossible, immovable situation. A logjam. A roadblock. A room with no doors or windows – no way out. Stuck. This kind of thing is deadly.

And so the pastoral question arises: Can you imagine any way that God could be at work in this situation? Any way that God can redeem this mess?

Answer: No, I cannot imagine any way out of this. I don't see any way to go.

It would seem to me that for people in that kind of place, Easter morning is a particularly startling and happy occasion. In the most unlikely of ways, God chose to work things out for Jesus. The impossible situation of his death is turned upside by an empty tomb. And once again I am reminded that we belong to a religion whose roots lie in the odd fact that a man came back from the dead. If you are looking for a sensible faith, orthodox Christianity is not the place. Try the Unitarians, because there is nothing sensible about resurrection.

For some, the fact of Jesus' new and different Sunday-morning-life is intellectually too embarrassing to name, or empirically too impossible to believe, or socially too bizarre a thing with which to be associated. Fair point.

But for those of us "stuck" in places of deathly impossibility, cross and resurrection is the very power and presence of God. See 1 Corinthians 1 for more on this.

One theologian describes Jesus' journey to the cross as a walk into a dark room, a room with no doors or windows or perceivable ways out. The room's name is death. He took upon himself the sins of the world and it killed him. We killed him. No more and no less. We get together on "Good" Friday because it's worth sitting for a moment with the hard fact that he died. And for us, no less. (In order to feel the power and punch of Easter morning, perhaps we must pretend for a moment that we really don't know how the weekend ends up – a practiced naïveté.)

He died. And there the story ends.

[pause]

Impossible story! Dreadful ending.

[pause]

But then God does an amazing feat. Suddenly – out of nowhere, it would seem – a door appears in this deathly room. An impossible door, but a door nevertheless. It is a door through (not around) death and out to the other side, resurrection life. This same Jesus, dead before, is now restored to a similar yet better life.

"Impossible," you say. Yes. And true. The one true thing, in fact.

So let's be clear. Easter morning is not for the well ordered life. Stay home or go golfing (weather permitting) if your world is already well settled and well managed. Otherwise you'll have no need for a new-life-door and, by default, you'll have no need for Sunday.

No, Easter morning is for the lame, the paralyzed, the broken, the confused, the depressed, the stuck. Easter Sunday is for everyone who cannot see a way out of whatever room holds them captive—including that great big room that holds us all captive, hereafter referring to by the church as "sin." Easter is our morning to entrust ourselves again to following this resurrected Jesus through God's unpredictable door of new and different life.

Or, the put it Paul's way in Romans 6:

That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new grace-sovereign country.

Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection. We know that when Jesus was raised from the dead it was a signal of the end of death-as-the-end. Never again will death have the last word. When Jesus died, he took sin down with him, but alive he brings God down to us. From now on, think of it this way: Sin speaks a dead language that means nothing to you; God speaks your mother tongue, and you hang on every word. You are dead to sin and alive to God. That's what Jesus did.

Blessed impossible Easter. Thanks be to God.

Resurrection Freedom

2008-03-26T08:54:00.002-04:00

When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him.
Luke 24:30

Whereas the three years of Jesus' life we know about seem marked by arduous decisions and heavy crosses (Luke 9:51; Matthew 26:39), his post-resurrection life is striking in its utter lack of difficult choices for him to make.

In his final chapter, Luke portrays our risen Jesus in three different settings. In each one, gone are the moments of arduously choosing the way of the Father, of fighting off counter claims and callings, or of grappling with the option of another way besides the cross and Good Friday. In his astonishing new life, there is now only the kingdom's way. There is no more choice to make! His struggle is over. His decisions not to exploit his status but to empty himself for others have now been redeemed and exalted by the Father.

So it is then that at the unspeakable empty tomb, at the famed Emmaus meal, and at Bethany's poignant departure, Luke's emphasis subtly shifts from the now settled matter of Jesus to the new choices facing his followers. The Christ has come to the end of his many crossroads; his followers are just beginning to set out toward theirs.

I imagine that after the resurrection to come, we will find that the daily decision to worship God and not another will no longer be demanding, difficult, or freighted with consequence. Our choices will come easily in the ineffable light of God's glory (Revelation 21:22-27). We will pray as continually as we breathe. And the current plea of the Lord's prayer – that God's will be done on earth as it already is in heaven, God's space – will finally and fully be granted. Difficult choices are a fixture only of this passing age.

That our will and God's will be in sync—this is both the goal and the promise of God's coming time. And yet the New Testament is bold to believe that the fruits of that future can be accessed even now in Christ. St. Paul urges us, in light of the resurrection hope, to be "steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord, because you know that in the Lord your labor is not in vain." The resurrection to come takes the death out of our life-decisions even now (1 Corinthians 15:58).

He is risen! We will one day rise to bask in his glory. Even now we walk in newness and life. Thanks be to God for this first week of the Easter season.

The Harder Way

2008-03-25T22:38:00.004-04:00

But Moses said to the LORD, "O my Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor even now that you have spoken to your servant; but I am slow of speech and slow of tongue."
Exodus 4:10

Occasionally, someone asks me how they can "discern God's will" for his/her life. That's a tall order. Inevitably, the prophet's words in Micah 6:8 pop into my head—a verse that was sealed in my memory during youth group days. "O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God." (NLT) Over the years, this verse has invited me to imagine that, more often than not, "God's will" for us is less a strict, preset path and more often about the way we walk with Jesus Christ. In whatever work or play you choose to take up, wherever you choose to take it up, do it with justice, mercy, and humility before God.

Still, that's not what people mean when they ask. We want to know what path to choose, which course God would have us take, which route we should follow at this or that juncture in our lives. And it's a reasonable request, I think, as most of us will face more than a few difficult choices in our lifetimes.

I suppose there are the obvious guidelines for faithful discernment: Pray … a lot. Immerse yourself in Scripture, as what you read there will inevitably shape what you finally discern. Talk to people you trust; hammer out your decisions on the anvil of good, honest conversation with fellow pilgrims. After these measures, "wait patiently on the Lord" (Psalm 37:7). All of this is good advice, and I've both given it and received it over the seasons. The Lord will not turn a deaf ear to our earnest prayers for guidance (Matthew 7:7).

But still I think there is one other way for the Christian to discern God's will for his/her life. Faced with a choice of this path or that path, I suspect that the place Christ will usually call us is precisely the place that's harder to go. (I know, I know … this is not what you wanted to hear.)

But consider Moses, the stuttering leader-hero of the Hebrew slaves. Trying to run from his troubled past, God slips up on him in the enigmatic burning bush (Exodus 3-4) and summons him to return to the same Egypt from which he had earlier fled. Why? God has something he wants him to say to Pharoah (the superpower of the land, whose thumb keeps God's people from freedom). Something to say?! A stutterer? This is some kind of joke, right?! So, Moses protests … a lot. But God insists … a lot. God's will: Moses can no longer hide out there in the lonely comfort of the Midian wilderness. God's calling turns out to be the harder way, and Moses' must choose between comfort and trust. As Sara Groves sings, "I am caught between the promise and the things I know."

It is not that Christ somehow takes pleasure in our pain, or revels in the burdens of a harder path (Matthew 11:28-30). It is rather, I think, that Christ will not have us worshipping our securities. It is the will of God to keep us alive to his constant calling—our faith fresh, our responsiveness to the Spirit supple. Too often we find our sanctuary in the predictable routines of a rather settled life, not in God's sheltering grace. This will not do for a God who has audaciously set out to redeem the world (1 Corinthians 15:20-26) and invites us to lend a hand.

So, we should not be surprised when we sense a tug down a new, challenging path. After all, we bear on our lives the baptismal mark of a Jesus who is always calling his people farther down the path of discipleship (Matthew 16:24-25). The Christ way (and therefore Christ's will) often turns out to be the harder way, if for no other reason than along those Jesus-paths we learn how to trust more deeply in this saving-sanctifying-sending God. Moses goes to Pharoah; Jesus goes to the cross; we go more faithfully into our lives, looking for those moments when we are called to walk in greater trust.

Storage

2008-03-21T16:34:00.010-04:00

A Good Friday meditation on John 19:42

Pardon us, patron of Arimathea, companion
of Jesus. We did not mean to trail on your
heels, intrude upon your generous committal.

Truth be told, we have all followed you down
this garden route, traced your secret path
down to this newly-hewn vault. Why? We’ve

heard tell of a given space for laying his body
down, and, well, it would mean a great deal
to us if we might take a look. We propose no

disrespect. We are not voyeurs, not gawkers,
not disinterested spectators. Like you, we are
his people, his lowly band, and we’d hoped to

see for ourselves this place of his resting.
What’s more, we’re hoping it is a generous
space, with plenty of corners for storing a few

items. What’s that you say? What are these
things we are carrying? Indeed. We suppose
these are why we’ve slipped here to find you,

slinking down this trail to his unlikely tomb.
You see, we’ve brought a few things with us,
some items we have cleaned out of our lives.

Most of it is junk, really. Tokens of our past,
little reminders of all the failures and fears,
deeds and deaths, sins and sorrows we sadly

cannot seem to throw away. Once we started
to dig into our cupboards, our many secret
places, we discovered buried there more than

we could really manage. These are all parts
of our stories that have no life in them, large
pieces of our lives that have languished in us.

We’d like to know if we can store these things
here, with him. We’d like to ask if we might
bury these matters alongside him, if of course

there is any extra room at all. Why here, why
now? Well, call us crazy, but we have in our
heads this strange notion: If ever there was a

place where this old junk could be put to use,
if there was ever a chance that this hopeless
stuff might be rectified, renewed, reborn—

surely it would be here, with him, today.

Another Lenten Prayer

2008-03-20T15:07:00.002-04:00

I offer here a prayer written during this Lenten season by one of our confirmands—a seventh grader in our congregation who will, this Easter Sunday, be professing her Christian faith for the first time. It is a prayer applicable to all of our lives, regardless of our age or the length of our journey with Jesus. RWH

Dear God, Thank you for this beautiful earth you created for us. Thank you my family, friends, pets, and the opportunity to learn more about you. Thank you for food, shelter, and clothing that we have. I pray for my family, friends, and myself. I also pray for the people who are suffering from poverty and sickness. Please bless all these people. I ask that you watch over us and keep us safe. I pray that I will follow your teaching and learn from my mistakes. I also ask that you forgive my sins. Thank you for all these people who have help me get where I am today. Again, I pray for my family, that our love will grow stronger for each other every day. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

by Allison Mabry

Turning Sacred Corners

2008-03-19T09:15:00.002-04:00

Elizabeth and I recently watched Waitress, an oddly endearing, sometimes bawdy story about Jenna—a poor, pregnant waitress trapped in a terrible marriage and an inexorable life. Mostly because her days already seem so controlled by others' infantile demands, the news of her first pregnancy brings her little of the customary maternal expectation and joy. In the months leading up to the birth, as she writes to the baby in a journal for expectant mothers, she apologizes in advance that she will be unable to bond with the child and, frankly, that already she resents the arrival of one more person who will take but not give. Whereas she had earlier considered leaving her controlling husband (who demands, "I want you to promise me right now that you will love me more than this baby!"), now she has to stick around and become even more dependent on a selfish spouse who is hopelessly stuck in adolescence.

Right up through the delivery, Jenna is the epitome of stoicism. She is determined not to fall for this baby, not to get entangled … that is, until she lays eyes on the child. "Oh my God," she says, as the nurse hands to her the latest unrequested demand on her energy and affection. As she cradles her lovely, helpless child, you can feel the months of resentment and fear melting away. And right there, the entire movie turns a corner: It is as if, in handing Jenna her baby, the nurse has given her a new vision for her life, and the strength to go and get that done. (You cannot help but smile as Jenna, holding her new baby, finally musters the courage to tell her monster of a spouse where he can go.)

Kerri Russell's excellent portrayal of Jenna turning her corner—fearing the pain, yet surprised by the joy—in a way reminds me of Holy Week. After all, who wants to give up a Friday night to come and hear again about the sad sufferings of a first century Jew? Who needs to be told even more bad news, yet another tale of a blessed thing ruined by the fears and insecurities of the powers that be? Who would cozy up to a story that ends, at least on Friday, in a heinous crucifixion? Every year, we Christians are tempted to pass stoically over Good Friday, holding our breath and hoping not to get entangled in the mess. (Let us note, however, that it is not really Jesus' death we fear, but our own.)

But then comes a corner, a sacred turn. You walk into church on Easter morning, and if the stunning flowers and the ardent music don't assault your senses and melt away your restraint, surely the strange and wonderful tale of an empty tomb and a living, liberated Jesus will. "I have seen the Lord," Mary exclaims to the others, and you cannot help but feel that in some real way you have, too. Even more, hearing again about the unfettered new life of Christ seems to have a way of throwing a new light on yours. Things once deemed impossible seem possible in the light of this impossible day. The faithfulness of God in raising up Jesus makes it possible to imagine the faithfulness of God amidst our own tombs—actual or symbolic. (1 Peter 1:3-9)

Concerned that Easter hope might lull Christians into a detached triumphalism, our 1998 catechism asks, Does resurrection hope mean that we don't have to take action to relieve the suffering of this world? Answer:

No. When the great hope is truly alive, small hopes arise even now for alleviating the sufferings of the present time. Reconciliation -- with God, with one another, and with oneself -- is the great hope God has given to the world. While we commit to God the needs of the whole world in our prayers, we also know that we are commissioned to be instruments of God's peace. When hostility, injustice and suffering are overcome here and now, we anticipate the end of all things -- the life that God brings out of death, which is the meaning of resurrection hope.

"The life that God brings out of death" … Turning a corner … A fresh vision for living … New life equals new courage. It is the stuff of Easter Sunday. For fictitious Jenna, it was a delivery room; for us, the sanctuary space long dedicated to telling this wild and wonderful Easter story. Maybe we should all show up this Sunday in hospital smocks, ready to practice our heavy breathing, ready for new life to appear. Perhaps the gowns would be a bit much, but know this: One good look into that empty tomb, and everything will be different. Together, we pray, "O my God." Together, we turn a sacred corner.

Lowly Entry

2008-03-14T11:23:00.002-04:00

As he was now approaching the path down from the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of the disciples began to praise God joyfully with a loud voice for all the deeds of power that they had seen, saying, "Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"
Luke 19:37-38

Say what you will about Jesus, but no one can accuse him of vanity. Throughout his ministry, he regularly chooses to usurp his own status and conduct himself in a lowly, modest estate. Such a pattern causes the Apostle Paul to sing with the early Christians: "He did not regard his status as something to be exploited, but emptied himself …" (Philippians 2:6-7).

Near the end of his ministry, Jesus' final entry into Jerusalem was a significant crossroads, literally and vocationally. How would he conduct himself? How would he make his obvious entrance? How would he respond to the great attention his word and way had received?

Faced with these choices, Jesus makes surprising selections: A scruffy donkey, not a white stallion; common men's cloaks, not a rug of royalty. And instead of professional choirs or a trumpet procession, a chorus of rough rocks are his hired backup singers.

If God is indeed this Jesus' Father, then we all imagine that at his disposal is absolute power and might. But as it turns out, to the surprise of our impulsive faith, absolute power is not the greatest attribute of our Lord. His strength is in his weakness. He who judges us on high has become our servant down low. This is his decision. (Isaiah 53:4-12)

As his covenant people, we are derivative representatives of God's lowly kingdom as we daily enter the gates of our communities. How will we conduct ourselves as servants of the Servant? Will we exploit our status as "the saved" or will we empty ourselves and thereby demonstrate God's saving-weakness to all?

A blessed Palm Sunday to you all.

Willingness

2008-03-04T21:03:00.001-05:00

"Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets."
Luke 5:5

If our reputation is cast by the company we keep, Jesus the Messiah gets off to a questionable start (see Luke 5:1-11). Ineffectual fishermen a kingdom do not make. Their abilities are most unimpressive, yet Jesus' determination to claim them, of all people, is remarkable: He looks over the masses to spot them, he climbs into their boat and not another, and he tells them where to cast out their nets. A wrangler or a wonderworker—we are not altogether certain. But Jesus leads them to the big haul.

The great crowd gathered there at the shore suggests that Jesus faced a defining decision on that shore: What kind of people would he call to do his work? Who would he draft to speak his words? How impressive would their résumés have to be before he gave someone a kingdom-job? "Master, we have fished all night and caught nothing. But if you say so …" Unsuccessful fisherman, perhaps. But they were willing, trusting. And maybe that is the feature of their faith Jesus most wanted to see.

Our Lord chooses to build his kingdom with those who choose to trust that God's surpassing power can overcome even their most anemic offerings. It is not what they can do, but what God can do through them that lands them the job, just as they landed those fish (see 1 Corinthians 2:1-5).

Faced with the many decisions of another Lenten week, will we fish all night for nothing or will we trust in the surprising, ample provision of the Lord? Will we also drop all our pale efforts and follow him? What shoreline choices will you make this week?

Home At Last

2008-03-03T21:53:00.002-05:00

(For CREW; written in 2000)

The impressions left within us are all rather permanent; the sentiments are as genuine as they are palpable.

Serenity. Safety. Predictability. Warmth. Security. Lodging. Rest. Comfort. In a word, home.

The houses in which we grew up, if they were filled with even a small measure of goodness and virtue, usually become for us a kind of sun around which the rest of our lives will orbit. Even say the word – "home" – and suddenly most of us are transported back to a precise place where our lives first took shape. Life will ebb and flow and take us many places, but home remains, well … home.

For me, the scenes are unfailing. Six-pane windows overlooking a murky river. Deep brown carpet which provided rocky ground or stormy seas for many a toy expedition. More stairs than our dog could count, though she knew exactly which one caught the afternoon sun. Doors that would not shut securely. Floors that creaked under all ages of feet: each of them victims and victors in the relentless aging of a place enjoyed by several generations.

This place is a part of who I am. Remove it, and you have removed something of me.

To be sure, not everyone in this life is so blessed to have experienced the rootedness of a family home place, but many of us have. The structures come in all shapes and sizes; they represent all levels of means, from frugality to opulence. The lands on which they stand are as diverse as we are when we start swapping stories of our youth. But the consistent trait among all our growing-up-homes is that the places themselves somehow root us in life, they form and shape us in inexplicable ways. It is almost mystical, how four walls and an interior space in some way take on a kind of life of their own. "Home is where the heart is," one often hears. Indeed, for such places soon become the center of who we are, or at least of who we once were. And when life throws us experiences and challenges that are sometimes too great to bear, it is to those homes and what they represent that we are often tempted to retreat.

Some of us can still make this retreat. Others cannot. For some, legal deeds have changed or buildings have been razed; fences are not mended enough to visit or our familial ties have sold shop and long since moved away. Whatever the blockage, for too many of us the retreat to "home" is possible now only in the memories that linger. Homelessness—if not in actuality, at least in the heart.

But how silly are these hearts of ours! Such places, are they not simply the sophisticated rendering of wood and materials – no more alive than a pile of lumber and a box of nails. Why do these places captivate us so?

And from the vantage point of Biblical hope, what do we make of these feelings, these deep memories, these peculiar but consistent places in our hearts that treasure so deeply the places of our early living? Is there any value in these sentiments? Is the call of a home place simply the tug of some worldly treasure, the kind of obstacle to grace that lures one backwards into memories even while Jesus-faith calls us forward into new life? Pining away for home – is this anyway for the baptized to behave?

Perhaps. And maybe even more than we know. One wonders if our pining away for home is our hearts' easiest method of pining away for God. Our frequent sinning notwithstanding, most of us still hunger for grace and redemption because we daily see a world about us that is, theologically speaking, quite homeless. We hunger for a safe place for our hearts, our lives—a home.

There is no homelessness with Jesus. In him "all things hold together." We are rooted in his mercy, secured in his grace, housed by his regard, bound up in his promises, hemmed in by his presence, and held tightly by his resurrection. We long for the security of homes because we long for the security of everlasting life in him. And for those in Christ, that treasured heart-space now occupied by the places of our earthly living will one day soon be fully occupied with resurrected "homes" that are similar, yet wonderfully better. You start moving from one house to the other they day you are baptized.

The Apostle Paul tries to explain our life now with the resurrection life to come. He says to the Corinthians (chapter 15) that it is sort of like a seed and its resulting beautiful flower: the two are different, yet they are similar. No one confuses a sunflower seed for the sunflower it yields, yet neither does anyone imagine that the one has nothing to do with the other. If you know something about the beauty of a seed, you necessarily now something about how beautiful the flower will be.

And so it is with us. The moments of deep gladness in our lives, however fleeting they may be in such a broken world, they are nevertheless like signposts pointing to an a deeper gladness promised beyond the grave, in the resurrection to come. The safety of our homes points us onward to the safety of our Home. We are remembering God's future. In a word, resurrection. The raising up of our bodies – these bodies – in a new and transformed ways, all in God's good time.

We miss our homes, many of us. We miss the way we were when we were in them. But do not imagine, saints of God, that what you once knew so well and what you now miss so deeply have nothing to do with that which is to come. It is now on its way, this resurrection life. That sacred space in your heart, it is already being filled with the joy and glory of a new home that is not yet finished. One that is similar, yet wonderfully different.

Our old homes, Christ's new home.
Our bodies now, our bodies then.
Seeds, flowers.
Seeing dimly, seeing face to face.
Remembering the past, remembering the future.
Home for awhile, home for good.
Fleshly bodies, resurrection bodies.

Similar, yet wholly (and holy) different. Jesus saw it coming in his own resurrection:

"Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house there are many homes … And you know the way to the place where I am going."

Indeed. And it is nice to be home, at last.

The Better Part

2008-02-28T15:09:00.000-05:00

Now as they went on their way, he entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home. She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord's feet and listened to what he was saying. But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, "Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me." But the Lord answered her, "Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her."

Luke 10:38-42

This familiar interchange between Jesus and the village sisters is a crossroads, a moment for decision, for all involved. Offered an invitation, Jesus chooses to accept the gift of generous provision and warm company. Met by a rabbi whose teaching apparently stirs her soul, Mary chooses literally to adopt the posture of a pupil. Faced with the responsibilities of hosting an eminent guest, Martha chooses to busy herself with recipes and resentment. And thus it all plays out, familiarly so.

But what interests me now, in this Lenten season, is the second choice of Jesus: his decision to place receptivity to God's word over responsibilities to fulfill. He honors Mary's decision to learn and grow, calling it "the better part." We can only assume he means "the better part" of life lived with and for God (see Psalm 119).

To be sure, the sisters' contrast is not a proof text for all faith and no work. There are times to labor and times to learn, days to be Martha and days to be Mary. The wisdom Jesus' commends is this: knowing how to choose which posture is faithful at what time. Hurried, haggard, task-oriented living turns out to be no living at all, if in the end one has no knowledge of the One who gives life in the first place, and who gives it abundantly in this same Christ. In the manner of Mary, regular sitting before God's Word turns out to be the better part of life. Indeed, it is even a necessary part of life if all those other pieces – the many details of living we must all steward – are to make any sense at all.

Jesus commends for us the better part. What choices will you make with your time during this third week of Lent?

March Madness

2008-02-27T10:34:00.004-05:00

These are shrill times.

It seems everyone has something to say these days, some new bit of noise to add to the deafening din all around us. When the Grammy for Album of the Year goes to a beehived, tattooed, wiry British singer (Amy Winehouse) who is best known for a sassy, swinging tune about the all-too-serious matter of drug rehabilitation—"Ya try to make me go to re-hab, but I say no, no, no"—you know we're not in Kansas anymore. The track makes even the grim denial of a drug problem sound like a toe-tapping good time. Such noise.

And we preachers can be just as shrill. Just last week, a colleague forwarded to me a link to a video on the Internet featuring a preacher in Arizona who for five minutes passionately expounds on a cryptic Old Testament verse that the King James version renders, "… him that pisseth against the wall." His inspired conclusion? "Real men urinate standing up. The Bible says so!" (I promise, Presbyterians, I'm not making this up.) And the best part? It's been viewed some 80,000 times since he posted it online last month.

So much noise, even from the church. And I'm certain that in my time I've added my own ridiculous preacherly contributions to the chatter.

How do we speak our Christian story amid such clamor, inside and outside our walls?

For several months now, I've been reading a biography of Walker Percy, a southern novelist, essayist, and moralist who lived and wrote in the same little Covington, Louisiana, in which I grew up. In point of fact, he was our neighbor. His home was just through the trees—a fact that may constitute my only real claim to fame in this life! Percy converted to Christianity in the 1940s as a young man, soon becoming a devout Roman Catholic. His newly adopted faith, especially its claim that humanity is more than merely a set of biological processes playing themselves out, shifted his entire subsequent writing career (6 acclaimed novels and numerous essays) to wrestle with subtle questions of how faith, hope, and love could be possible in this topsy-turvy, mechanized, modern world.

Percy frequently bemoaned the sad state of language in the shrill times of the twentieth century, especially what he dubbed the "threadbarness of religious words." G-O-D was at the top of his list of complaints. What can the word "God" possibly mean anymore if the preacher yells "God says!" while down the street a sailor yells "God %$#&." The more holy the referent, the more susceptible the word becomes to overuse, meaninglessness. Early in his career, Percy concluded by complaint:

When the holy has disappeared, how in blazes can a novelist expect to make use of it? [It has been said] that God has left us, and I think that one can give this a Catholic (Christian) reading that though he has not left us, his name is used in vain so often that there remains only one way to speak of him: in silence. Perhaps the craft of the religious novelist nowadays consist mainly in learning how to shout in silence.

"Shouting in silence." That for me puts a fresh, new spin on the matter of evangelism, that business of learning how to tell this New Testament story we steward and to invite others into it with us. A stance of reverent silence, at least occasionally, may just make for the most faithful evangelism in these noisy times in which we live.

The Gospel of Luke reports that, as Jesus hangs dying on his cross, "all his acquaintances, including the women who had followed him from Galilee, stood at a distance, watching these things" (Luke 23:49). And while Luke does not say they were silent, I cannot help but imagine they were. There they are, taking it all in, standing in awe and grief and silence as God's Beloved, their Rabbi-Messiah, surrenders his life right in front of them. There is nothing any of them could have said more powerful than their awe-full silence.

Before we know it, beloved, another Holy Week will be upon us. We Christians are annually gifted with seven days (Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday) to "stand at a distance" and "watch these things" unfold before us again. Of course, it's not really again, for the New Testament loves to celebrate the good news that this one Friday-Sunday weekend has happened "once and for all" (Romans 6:10, Hebrews 9:11-12, 1 Peter 3:18). But there is another sense in which it very much happens again, and again, right before our own eyes and ears. We break the Christ-bread and break open the Christ-story, hearing again about his agonizing death (and what it means) and of his astonishing new life (and what it means, such as in Luke 24:13-35).

I just can't help but wonder, amidst such nonstop chatter about Grammys and Primaries and War and Weather, if we believers might do well to huddle together for some sacred silence—deliberate moments of worship wherein the Holy Spirit creates fresh space in our cacophonous lives to hear again to the message that has come to us. Come join me and your elders for another Holy Week of hearing and responding in this way. And as you come, remember Psalm 62: For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation.

Hush now, busy world; hear this strange and saving story we have to tell you. Quiet now, believing church; listen again to this bit of massive news that saves and sends you.

Silence.

A Lenten Prayer

2008-02-23T10:42:00.004-05:00

As once again we make this journey to the cross of Good Friday, and to the astonishing empty tomb of Easter Sunday, we ask of you, Holy Spirit, that the gospel of our Lord Jesus will illumine this challenging way and make straight our harder paths.

As we make this trek, change us from within. Implant the living word deep in our hearts and cause it to take root. My we on that Friday die to all those matters not yet transformed by your love. And on that Sunday of all Sundays, may we be raised up to new life—fresh, lasting, blessed Christ-in-us life.

We do long for this sort of change, O Lord. But even when we do not, grant us the very longing we so desperately need to begin this journey.

Speak to us through the testimony of Jesus. Amen.

Don’t Mess With Me (or Texas)

2008-02-20T11:19:00.003-05:00

Even a preacher understands how easy it is to neglect the Scriptures. Hey, life happens … especially for persons with other lives under their care.

But when those of us who have been Christians for some time (read "those of us who should know better"—myself included) let many months go by without so much as a glance at an open Bible, I wonder if this may be because we instinctively recognize that this volatile yet vivifying word about Jesus will, to put the matter plainly, mess with our lives (Hebrews 4:12-16). Show me a fool with symptoms-a-plenty who deftly avoids a trip to the doctor and I'll show you a man smart enough to know that if he goes he'll have to make some changes. Familiar misery will usually trump any future in which we are not in control.

Contrary to popular opinion, it is not really change that we fear. It's death. Specifically, with regard to engaging the Scriptures, we fear the death of those persons/places/things we doggedly believe can save us. Perhaps we hold on to them so tightly because a nice, well-worn idolatry—however poorly it may actually be working for us—is always safer and more comfortable than a comprehensive Easter transformation. (Psalm 32, Colossians 3:1-17)

After you read a demanding passage in, say, the gospels, or in one of Paul's letters, the really good questions to ask of it are not, "How can I make this speak to my life?" or "How could this possibly be relevant to my world?" That's likely trying to cross the bridge in the wrong direction. To have any chance at all of hearing a word from the Lord, the better questions to ask of the Bible are: "What would have to change in me for this passage, promise, or prayer to be true?" "What in my life would have to die?"

It's not that Jesus takes pleasure in our pain. It's that until we get to the bottom of our "don't mess with me" neglect, we'll have no ears to hear what he has to say.

One day one of the local officials asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to deserve eternal life?" Jesus said, "Why are you calling me good? No one is good—only God. You know the commandments, don't you? No illicit sex, no killing, no stealing, no lying, honor your father and mother." He said, "I've kept them all for as long as I can remember." When Jesus heard that, he said, "Then there's only one thing left to do: Sell everything you own and give it away to the poor. You will have riches in heaven. Then come, follow me."

This was the last thing the official expected to hear. He was very rich and became terribly sad. He was holding on tight to a lot of things and not about to let them go.

Luke 18:18-23 (The Message)

A Day at the Senate

2008-02-15T08:00:00.003-05:00

Rap. Rap. Rap.

"The Senate will now come to order."

The sudden clap of the lieutenant governor's gavel tore me away from a rather indulgent moment of people-watching—my favorite of clandestine hobbies, and one easy to rehearse in a place as interesting and alive as the Patrick Henry building. I was growing amused by our elected officials, so many of whom arrived in house just in the nick of time. I was even more amused by the amount of snack items one Senator was hurriedly stuffing into her desk, as if preparing for a sleepover. Ah … people. Nevertheless, it was time to invoke.

Everyone stood. I adjusted my three button suit, found my appointed place at the lower lectern, and cleared my throat.

Almighty God, Giver of all life, Shepherd of all souls, and the generous Provider of every moment we have been given …

Indeed, it was a generous moment for your pastor. My delight over an invitation last year from Senator Charles Hawkins to deliver an invocation before the Virginia Senate was matched only by the pleasure of the fleeting moment itself—four months of anticipation over forty seconds of prayer. I guess every dog does has his day!

A number of Virginians I know, upon hearing of my trip to Richmond, indicated to me their surprise that the assembly still even allowed public prayer, much less planned for it. Yet my experience there suggested a differing disposition. If warm hospitality and practiced procedure are any indication of predilection, then Senate seemed to welcome the moment of prayer. Perhaps it had already been a long day!

… with certain humility and with an eye toward the considerable tasks before this body, we ask today that you would send forth your deepest blessings, your richest benevolence of wisdom and discernment, courage and resolve …

Background to my words: If a populace is to rise above its lowest common denominator of virtue, and if its representatives are to provide for that difficult ascension, then surely the necessary ingredients must come from someplace—Someone—other than our own well-worn ideologies and victory-hungry designs. That was my assumption as to why a house would make room for an invocation—an official summons of divine blessing, help from above.

And I further decided that I am not yet a cynic about such a prayer. I reasoned that I could neither cajole or verify a senator's sincerity on the matter of actually looking to and trusting in the God revealed to us in the Scriptures. Whether boilerplate or bona fide, I had no control. All I could do, I decided, was to bring to bear the vision of providence inherent to the Christian gospel I represent.

… such that the actions of this assembly might transcend the walls of this institution and go forth with haste to bolster the peace, purity, and unity of our Commonwealth. Without your superintendence, O Lord, efforts here at governance are for naught. But with your blessings, your direction, our citizens will surely prosper.

I must admit that I am a sucker for solemn formality, and the Senate has it in spades. From the "All rise!" to the ancient mace under glass, from the solemnity of the moment to the dignity of the assembly, there is still something about being in a place that is "bigger" than your normal everyday world. It seems a gift every now and then to swept up from our sometimes oppressive informality, for language and practice to exhibit dignity and grace.

All of this was in my mind as I worked in advance to craft prayerful language that was befitting to the formal occasion and—even more important to me—suitable for invoking the blessings of a God as awe-full as the Triune One whom we worship and adore. Will God accept our informalities? Surely. But God also deserves our superlative best.

Lord of Life, we are certain that you shape the grand courses of history, but we are also bold to believe that your gracious Providence extends even down to the details of living, to the subtleties of our particular lives.

And yet … it is also be true that sometimes our humanity is forgotten under the blanket of official rhetoric and public debate. When we do not know a person (in this case, our elected officials), we are prone to dehumanize them and thereby to expect from them more than they (or anyone) can deliver. And when formality is the only guise, never buttressed by genuine relationships, then I imagine that among elected officials themselves—and surely among the public—their personal stories, their particular lives are apt to be forgotten

As such, as I prayed for wisdom and for words, as I anticipated the assembly over which I would ask the Lord's blessings, for weeks a singular thought kept recurring in my mind: the formality of the capital notwithstanding, at the end of the day these people are human beings—blessed and cursed, able and unable as the rest of us. This theme persisted long enough in me that I concluded it was an urging of the Holy Spirit.

As such, in light of your grace for all who seek you, I also today invoke your blessings upon each and every member of this Assembly. For amidst all the trials and tribulations of our Commonwealth and its people,amidst all the deliberations and decisions facing this body, represented in this Senate are also myriad lives, personal histories, individuals in your image—with homes, families, and stories of their own.

I thought a lot about the tenor of political banter in our state, about the weight of an oppressive bifurcation in public opinion, and I wondered how often invited clergy simply prayed, not for issues and items, but for them—as persons, men and women. Perhaps frequently; perhaps never. I did not know, so I decided to offer an intercession.

Where there is difficulty or burden, send your strength. Where there is frustration or grief, bring your hope. Where there are gifts or callings yet undiscovered, shine your light …

As for me, whenever these gifts—strength, hope, light—descend from the heavens, I assume it to be the fruits of our risen Christ. The only hope I know or can imagine is hope formed in the crucible of the New Testament cross and resurrection. As such, my language in prayer typically follows suit.

Yet I was interested—albeit, not surprised—to receive with my formal invitation from the Clerk of the Senate an additional sheet of paper: Guidelines for Prayer in a Pluralistic Society. Contained in the memo were reminders about the religious diversity of our society, and therefore of the Senate also, and how one should pray there with a corresponding sensitivity. It suggested that one should drop from one's invocation as many specific, creedal, and personal names for "the Deity" as possible—the less explicit, the better. (Well, there went my "I make this prayer in Jesus' name.")

Now to be fair to our lawmakers' clerk, there were merely guidelines, not rules. I do not imagine I would have been driven out to the edge of town for naming the particular name of Christ. But the whole idea did get me thinking: We Americans like to speak of our pluralism, the great breadth of our tolerance for varying creeds, culture, and concepts. Yet what we in fact seem practice is not plurality, but a kind of contrived oneness—a "unity" maintained by boiling the rich stew of our faith down into a thin gruel. If we truly practiced plurality, if we mustered the maturity we like to imagine we posses, we would in fact welcome the specificities of faith, expressed in the particular and peculiar language of prayer.

In an ideal world … (But alas, we do not live there.) So for now, I imagine that I am willing to hear an invocation close with some other name tomorrow if I can end with "Jesus" today. That would more accurately be pluralism—multiple voices. As it is, to pray in generic terms is perhaps to expect generic results. Take away the intercession ministry of the risen Christ, and I have little means or desire or language to pray. It is difficult to know which is the greater concession.

And yet, I thought about Paul in Athens (Acts 17), who carefully flew the gospel of Christ in under the radar of the rather generic religious sensibilities of the day—and in doing so brought those within earshot to the heart of the matter. One has to make careful connections between Scripture and the prevailing culture, and not mock the genuine invitations for speaking a word and asking for a blessing. In the end, I left off his Name from my prayer, but strove to lace his Words throughout mine. I trust this was befitting to his ministry.

… such that each of these women and men who serve us might come to know again of your loving-kindness and sustaining power, and from the overflow of that generous grace, that they might minister to our Commonwealth throughout these momentous days.

All in all, it was a tremendous experience—fleeting but poignant. To speak to God before the oldest democratic body on the continent; to represent you there, Altavista Presbyterians, and our greater Kirk as well; to be greeted by so many hospitable people with so much on their plates; to imagine in prayer that here and there, now and then, the wheels of our government are in some real way greased by the merciful Providence of God in Christ …

This, O Lord, is our invocation today. Amen.

P.S. On my way out of the room after my prayer, while the Senate moved on with its busy agenda, a kindly senator quietly rose and stopped me at the door with a handshake. "Thanks for being here," she whispered. I thanked her for thanking me.

And then, with an endearing mixture of gratitude and pride, she whispered, "You know, I'm a Presbyterian, too!"

My Tricky Valentine

2008-02-14T21:23:00.002-05:00

It seems to me that we Presbyterians have had a kind of tricky relationship with romance in general and Valentine's Day in particular. The month of February has no particular place of honor in our church year, falling midway between the bright festival of Christmas and the rather ominous season of Lent. The liturgical planners rather plainly dub these weeks "ordinary time." Blah.

But February is renowned among our neighbors for being a month of love, romance, and even passion. The symbols of this abound in shops and on cards: hearts, candy, flowers, and more shades of red and pink than you ever knew existed. But what's a baptized life to do with all this talk of passion? What's the church to make of romance—is it virtue or vice?

In general, we Presbyterians tend to be a little wary of our emotions, or at least the public display of them. We take Paul's decree to do all things "decently and in order" to its most logical extreme! We have often had a kind of love/hate relationship with our inward affections. We know all good things come from God, and yet we always have in the back of our minds the fear that all good things can also become our idols and our masters. A person who quite naturally "falls in love" is one thing; a person ruled by passion and enslaved by affection is quite another. More or less, we have publicly steered clear of the whole matter, recognizing that there is hardly a thing less "orderly" than romance! It can wholly undo even the most put-together of lives.

Perhaps we have overcorrected. We need to learn again how to be courageous exegetes, daring interpreters of the Scriptures, relearning the art of claiming the inherent giftedness of a thing without succumbing to the temptation to exploit it. See Genesis 2 for a story about goodness and exploitation. Or consider the Song of Songs in the Old Testament. I was never really satisfied growing up with the official explanation I was given as to why a sensual, romantic love poem was in fact a Holy Spirit-inspired, church-endorsed member of the sacred canon. "It's about Christ and his church," we were told. Please. Adolescents are not so easily fooled. It's a hot-blooded valentine, written from one beloved to another, played out in the presence of God. Shocking! Indecent! And Biblical.

Must this love poem be some sort of cryptic ecclesiology in order that its place in our Bibles be legitimated? Is our embarrassment about affection the Bible's problem, or ours? Could it not be that the romantic love and sensual affection—created by God and born out in the covenantal relationships of men and women—is endorsement enough for its place in the canon, and for affection's station in the baptized life?

But, you say, sins and saints tend to hang together. The goodness, even greatness of such emotions is rarely so pure and undefiled. Just look around.

Yes, I know: Nothing like a little total depravity to ruin a good date. Granted, that's true. We do live in the world, this world, and we often fall short of the glory so manifest in the goodness of God in Christ. Our affections easily become our idols and we are prone to sin all over. We let affections in marriage grow cold. We let affections beyond marriage kindle just enough to entice us. Obvious affections in others we watch with both envy and disgust. Let's not pretend, most who are alive have known these and many other romantic temptations. Theologically speaking, the whole thing is just downright messy.

Maybe old Paul is helpful here. Consider 1 Corinthians 8. It might be worth a read this day. His whole argument there is about food and sacrifices—issues that seem light years away from us. But substitute romance for food and suddenly the teaching comes alive. When romantic affection becomes the idol we worship, we are in trouble. The passion is only sinful when it passionately drags us away from God.

When we are in love with being in love, when we hunger for passion because our own has long faded, when we organize our life and time in order that our thin sensualities might be satisfied, when we pour out affections on others in order that they might recapitulate them and in turn give us meaning and purpose … these are the angst-ridden alters of romance which mistakenly command our worship and, as such, ruin our lives. Paul's point is this: Even that which is so good and right can become terribly demonic. Don't stumble, he says. And don't cause others to stumble either.

Instead, if you have it, let passionate romance for your beloved spring out of the baptized life, out of your response to God's passionate mercy in Christ, in honor of the goodness and divine image with which you have been endowed, in celebration of the marvelously mysterious affection that cultivates between woman and man, out of the deep gladness for the strength and stability of your marriage vows (or those soon to be), and as an expression of your gospel agape for your beloved, your loving acts that build up the other's life. Out of these matters let your romance flow—without shame, without embarrassment. This is your worship, says Paul, living your life before God.

"For there is only one God, and through him do all things exist." All things. Even romance.

Have a blessed St. Valentine's Day.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

2008-02-13T21:10:00.001-05:00

The story of the young man with his many possessions has always haunted me. Matthew 19:16-22 is where you can find it. While this poignant gospel scene has popped up in many a stewardship (or better, church budget) sermon, I guess I have never really felt that the crux of this ephemeral conversation was really about money. It's more about saying goodbye, about breaking up. It is about leaving behind one relationship and choosing to foster (follow) another.

We all have our certain crutches, to greater or lesser degrees. Crutches: habits, ideas, fantasies, possessions to which we cling tightly because we believe, however erroneously, that they will get us through. We believe that they will be there for us when others will not. We suppose they will save us … from facing the truth, from coming to grips, from being alone. In that way, they feel like old friends to us. Companions. And like an old man with his literal crutch, we hobble along through life with these "friends" of ours. Each step is painful, but even pain can be comforting in its familiarity.

That's the problem for our young text-friend. He has a relationship with his stuff that is too entrenched, too familiar, too much an integral part of his life for him to imagine saying goodbye. Indeed, breaking up is hard to do. This is how I read the deep sadness of the twenty-second verse. He grieves what he knows he cannot, or will not do.

But what really haunts me, I suppose, is that at the end of this conversation about relationships and decisions, our Jesus lets him walk away.

Some part of me wishes that our Lord would in a dash go running after him, claiming our friend after all—Jesus giving up his stake in a kind of divine game of chicken. But he does not. Somehow, amid his inscrutable predestined grace, God still manages to guard enough freedom for us to walk away.

Like many a teenager, years ago I probably settled too often for friends of a lower quality—and here I mean the human kind—because, even though I knew in the end they would probably be no good for me, they were available. They were present in the moment. And sometimes in the harsh data of the moment, it is hard to trust that anything will get better in the future. So it was for the Hebrew children of old: Egypt may have been slavery and suffering, but at least it was predictable and well-known. Freedom is hard won when an unlikely future seems too far away. See Exodus 14:10-12 for more on such fears.

All I know is that we are mostly creatures of comfort. We are willing to entertain even the worst of habits and ideas and behaviors if it means stability, familiarity, consolation. And even when we know our old cronies are no good for us, even when we learn that we always get into trouble when we hang around together, the prospect of being alone in our newfound freedom is often too much to bear.

Again, this kingdom-exchange between our young friend and our young savior is not about money at all; not about things, either. It is about leaving old securities behind. It is about breaking up with one in order to be engaged to another. Religion he can do. Morality and decency he already practices. But the call of Christ hits him hardest when it asks him to leave behind his old friend-who-is-no-friend at all.

In these moments the calling of Jesus to new/free life can seem so crazy, so impossible. But I imagine that Christ is most alive in us, for us, precisely in those risky but righteous moments—those junctures of trust when we feel deep within us that frightening/wonderful call to leave behind the old and embrace the new. I do not imagine these calls come because our Lord relishes our sin suffering or delights in our raw difficulties. I imagine they come because, in the end, there can be no life abundant as long as there are competing claims. Our comforts are no longer holy when we worship them.

Our Comforter is a jealous God, not likening the competition we so regularly stack up against him. So the One who deserves our worship will likely ask us to give away our crutches until we are able to walk behind him unhindered in his Friday-Sunday way.

To walk away from Jesus in burdened-sadness; to walk toward him in trusting-fear. Those are the only options for most of us, on most days. The former is familiar and safe—granted. The latter, however, is surely abundant life.

It Is Written

2008-02-12T15:55:00.000-05:00

Jesus answered him,
"It is written, 'One does not live by bread alone.'"

Every Sunday we pray in the Lord's Prayer, "Lead us not into temptation." In at least one instance in Jesus' life, however, the answer to that prayer was a sobering "no."

Quick on the heels of his beautiful baptism (Luke 3:21-22), Jesus finds himself in a barren place. The Spirit brings him to the "wilderness"—a situation no doubt familiar to him, as it was so utterly familiar to his ancient forty-year forbearers in faith. Indeed, God has a long history of rescuing his people from the wild, barren, even deadly places (Exodus 16:35, Ezekiel 37:1-14).

Consider the undeniable gravity of Luke 4:1-13. In his lonesomeness and hunger, our Lord is besieged by a trinity of temptations. Each one is alike in that he is being enticed to choose a different vocation, another (no doubt easier) way of being messiah. Shall he exploit his status with the Father to secure a more certain and painless future, or will he trust that in the calling he has been given, God will surely supply his legitimate needs? To be (the Christ) or not to be … that is the question in this wilderness, his wilderness.

It should be noted that amid the onslaught of attractive alternatives—these three temptations to forget both who he is and whose he is—his chosen remedy is not his creative originality or some fantastic superpower. The Jesus of Luke's gospel is neither a virtuoso genius nor a plastic superhero; he is the beloved of God. As such, he fends off the devil with the best "power" at his disposal: the old, old word of the Lord.

Thrice he is temped, and thrice he replies: "It is written…"

His quick recall of those inspired scriptural words suggests countless little stewardship choices along his earlier life's way: I shall use this moment to feast on the word of the Lord (cf Luke 2:46). And having feasted often, he now knows the word of life even amid his current famine. By God's word, Jesus is not only shielded from the clutches of substantial temptation, he finds the strength he needs to embrace his true calling. Indeed, by the very next verse, he is off and running (Luke 4:14).

Here's a Lenten question for us all: If even our Lord looked to scripture in his time of vexing need, how much more does it behoove us to stockpile plenty of scripture in the cupboards of our mind? Engaging the Bible often is no mere item of duty on some religious to-do list. Time spent feasting on scripture might just turn out to be the difference between life and death.

Every word of God proves true;
he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.
Proverbs 30:5

May the old, old promises of God take root and bloom in your life, and in the lives of those you love, during this Lenten journey to Easter.