Doubling My Joy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.