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
June 13, 2009
June 10, 2009
Look Back
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.
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.
June 7, 2009
Sunday
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
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
April 1, 2009
Jesus, 1x
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.
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.
March 26, 2009
Friday
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
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
March 25, 2009
Convoluted Math
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.
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.
March 1, 2009
Tell Me More, Grandmother
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.”
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:
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.”
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