Soulfarer

Fourth Saturday of Advent: Christmas Eve

2011-12-24T08:22:00.001-08:00

Fourth Saturday of Advent
Christmas Eve
December 24, 2011

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. (Psalm 46:1)

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. (Matthew 1:18)

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman. . . (Galatians 4:4)

A common complaint about Christian faith is that it insists upon particularity. As the story goes, there is this particular God who raises up a particular people in a particular spot on planet earth. 2,000 years ago a particular baby is born in a particular manger on a particular day. And yet, in the midst of all that particularity, there is supposed to be something universal happening.

This is an offensive claim for some folks. If God had meant for the particular story of Jesus to be one for all people of world—and the only true story—then why have it happen in such a small, insignificant, particular spot in history? Why not make something extraordinary take place in all parts of the world, with zillions of angels blowing trumpets and creating a ruckus, making sure that no one misses the point?

It appears that, when God immerses himself in human life and history, he does it in a particular way because that’s how real things happen. All true historical events are particular; none of them are independent of time and space. The earliest Christians were insistent on that theme: This is not a made-up story—it is real, it happened, we saw it all, and it happened in this way. Jesus was really born at a particular moment in time; he didn’t pop out of the sky or spin out of a magic lamp—he was born of a particular woman, in a way that binds him to all human beings throughout all history. The birth of Jesus is simultaneously particular and universal.

That God would be our help is one thing; that he would be our help by encountering the world in a particular way is another. It confounds us that such a particular act could have universal effect. But so our claim goes.

In the particularity of human life, God has sent his particular Son to be Emmanuel—God with us. And that is for us all.

Fourth Friday of Advent

2011-12-23T08:04:00.001-08:00

The Fourth Friday of Advent
December 23, 2001

O sing to the Lord a new song; sing to the Lord, all the earth. Sing to the Lord, bless his name; tell of his salvation from day to day. (Psalm 96:1-2)

We wait for justice, but there is none; for salvation, but it is far from us. For our transgressions before you are many, and our sins testify against us. Our transgressions indeed are with us, and we know our iniquities: transgressing, and denying the Lord, and turning away from following our God, talking oppression and revolt, conceiving lying words and uttering them from the heart. Justice is turned back, and righteousness stands at a distance; for truth stumbles in the public square, and uprightness cannot enter. Truth is lacking, and whoever turns from evil is despoiled. The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice. (Isaiah 58:11b-15)

Then his father Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke this prophecy: “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, for he has looked favorably on his people and redeemed them. He has raised up a mighty savior for us in the house of his servant David, as he spoke through the mouth of his holy prophets from of old, that we would be saved from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us. Thus he has shown the mercy promised to our ancestors, and has remembered his holy covenant, the oath that he swore to our ancestor Abraham, to grant us that we, being rescued from the hands of our enemies, might serve him without fear, in holiness and righteousness before him all our days. And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.” The child grew and became strong in spirit, and he was in the wilderness until the day he appeared publicly to Israel. (Luke 1:67-80)

The prophet Isaiah was not shy about letting everyone know that their world was a wreck, and that God was keenly aware of the problems generated by his own people. That Israel would turn her back on God and lose sight of justice would break God’s heart and cause him to take action. The people had already suffered the consequence of their unfaithfulness by being hauled off into exile. But there was more that God would do.

Would God destroy his people and wipe them from the earth? Would he shoot lightning bolts and raise up hordes of scorpions to punish them? After all, isn’t that the way of angry deities? No, God would one day do something even more outlandish than that, and scandalize the world with his reckless behavior.

He would forgive them, and rescue them from themselves and all that sought to destroy them.

The psalmist relishes in God’s salvation for his wayward people, long before Jesus arrives on the scene. In Zechariah’s song of praise, he rejoices in the birth of his son, John, and looks ahead to his announcement that God is bringing forgiveness to his people.

Christmas is expressed in many ways: Through worship, in family and friendship, with acts of kindness of generosity. But at it’s heart it is about God’s reckless, unfathomable forgiveness that has come in and through his Son, Jesus.

Fourth Thursday of Advent

2011-12-22T08:16:00.001-08:00

Fourth Thursday of Advent
December 22, 2011

Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. But his mother said, “No; he is to be called John.” They said to her, “None of your relatives has this name.” Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. He asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And all of them were amazed. Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. Fear came over all their neighbors, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. All who heard them pondered them and said, “What then will this child become?” For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him. (Luke 1:57-66)

Most people go by the names given to them by their parents. There might be nicknames and legal changes that come along, but names are still given. We keep those names throughout our lives and they form part of our identity as human beings. It’s hard to really be human without a name.

When Elizabeth gave birth, it was rightfully expected by everyone that her child would be named after his father. It was a common practice in that time, so the local folks looked forward to seeing a little Zechariah running around soon. But her husband had been told by God that the child would be named John, and Elizabeth stuck to her guns when people challenged her. Zechariah believed the command about the name as well, and when he announced it, he was able to speak again.

The friends and relatives saw two things take place that caused them to ask the question, “What then will this child become?” The first was the unconventional naming of the child; the second was the miracle of Zechariah receiving back his ability to speak. If this child was not to be named after his father—one who served Israel as a priest—then what would he become? His birth was accented by a miracle. Will this child be special?

Indeed he was special. He announced the coming of Jesus and called Israel to repentance. He was also imprisoned and executed by Herod, dying young and committed to his service to God. He might have lived a lot longer if he had simply been named Zechariah and then followed in his father’s footsteps.

But John lived out another path, called the name given to him by God. His life ended harshly, but it ended with John immersed in the calling that defined him. He lived true to the God who had named him.

Along with our given names, many of us go by other names that have defined our lives: Lonely, unloved, unworthy, not good enough, too far gone, and others even more demeaning. We might not like those identifiers, but whether we like them or not, they come to form who we think we are.

But, like John, God has chosen other names for us. Names like Beloved son or daughter; child of God, and friend of Jesus. These kinds of names have already been given to us and we don’t often realize it. They are our real definers.

With names like those, what then will we become?

The Fourth Tuesday of Advent

2011-12-20T07:07:00.000-08:00

Fourth Tuesday of Advent
December 20, 2011

And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” (Luke 1:46-55)

…truly God has listened; he has given heed to the words of my prayer. Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me. (Psalm 66:19-20)

Mary has a significant role to play in the story of Jesus. She gratefully obeys God when he tells her of his intention to bring Jesus into the world; she gives birth to Jesus; she is present at his death and among the first to encounter the empty tomb. She is clearly an important player in this great drama.

Mary was correct in her prediction that all future generations would call her blessed. So far, that tradition has primarily been kept alive by Catholics, while Protestants tend to push Mary a bit to the margins. Nevertheless, she is important to the story.

In her prayer of praise, she lifts her eyes up to the Lord and acknowledges his heart for the lowly. She has experienced his favor for herself and she sees that same favor throughout the story of Israel. Mary demolishes the idea that the rich are the ones blessed by God; it is those in need who find his care. She sees Israel in general as needy, and in this mysterious, joyous anticipation of the birth of her son, she expects help to come to the nation.

There is a hint about God’s intention in the birth of Jesus in Mary’s prayer. She says that God’s help will come to Israel “according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” That promise first appears in Genesis 12:1-3:

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Mary understands that this gift of new life is for her, but not for her alone. It is the culmination of a promise made to Israel long ago—a promise for Israel, for the sake of the entire world—for the sake of us.

The Third Friday of Advent

2011-12-16T07:10:00.000-08:00

Third Friday of Advent
December 16, 2011

The word of the Lord came to Zechariah, saying: Thus says the Lord of hosts: Render true judgments, show kindness and mercy to one another; do not oppress the widow, the orphan, the alien, or the poor; and do not devise evil in your hearts against one another. But they refused to listen, and turned a stubborn shoulder, and stopped their ears in order not to hear. They made their hearts adamant in order not to hear the law and the words that the Lord of hosts had sent by his spirit through the former prophets. Therefore great wrath came from the Lord of hosts. Just as, when I called, they would not hear, so, when they called, I would not hear, says the Lord of hosts. . . (Zechariah 7:8-13)

As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God. (Psalm 40:17)

For we American church people, those who are in a place of suffering often become categorized as something other than us. We might have some widows here and there within our congregations, but we tend to be short on orphans, aliens, and the poor. We know they’re around, but they’re more out there than in here.

Aliens and the poor get a fair amount of press these days. Aliens are characterized as mostly illegal and a problem for American society. Sure, we have poor people, but as I heard someone comment recently, maybe it’s mostly their own fault—drugs, booze, and downright laziness will get you every time. It’s such a shame.

It’s easy for us to reduce people to categories that we believe do not include us. In our society we often create narratives for their existence, and then vocalize our preferences for legislation that will take care of the problems.

Many of us, however, are about five paychecks away from joining one of these unfortunate categories. Lose a job, lose a house, you just might be part of the category of people that used to be them. Get desperate enough, you might even sneak across a border for work. The line between us and them isn’t quite as distinct as we imagine.

People I know in churches that reach out to the poor and needy find their stories and identifications changing on them. The people they impact—even the ones who have messed up their lives—cease to be others and begin to be brothers and sisters. It’s a profound change, and an important one.

The Bible speaks so often about God’s heart for the needy and the requirement of the people of God to care for those in need, that it’s a bit startling. If we’re saved by grace and not by things we do, then what’s the big deal? It’s about souls, right?

Maybe yes, maybe no. Maybe it’s about the whole person. Maybe it’s about all of us, and we’re all in God’s heart. There is no us and them, but only the us that God loves and draws into his circle of care and compassion. This is a participatory faith, not one of spectatorship.

In the birth of Jesus, we stop and remember that he was born in a poor place. Others recognized the needs of his family and brought gifts. Jesus was among the poor and found care.

The Lord takes thought for us.

The Third Thursday of Advent

2011-12-15T06:30:00.001-08:00

Third Thursday of Advent
December 15, 2011

“I will not accept a bull from your house, or goats from your folds. For every wild animal of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the air, and all that moves in the field is mine. If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.” (Psalm 50:9-12)

Sometimes people who believe in God think that God needs something from them. The sacrificial system of ancient Israel was complex and multi-faceted, and it served to orient the life of the entire nation around the God who had rescued them from their slavery in Egypt and formed them into his people. The system of sacrifice was not for God, but instead for the people.

Over time, however, folks began to see the sacrifices of Israel as a way to make God pleased with them. That way of thinking caused them to get very upset when Jesus arrived on the scene, seeming to play fast and loose with their systems of worship.

The Bible really doesn’t characterize God as needy. God doesn’t seem to need anything from us to get something to happen, like forgiveness or love. God does however, require some things from those who claim to be his people. For example:

He has shown all you people what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

While God is not needy, God embraced human need in the coming of Jesus. As an infant, Jesus comes to us as one dependent on human care and protection. When his family later feels threatened by Herod, they move to Egypt and find protection there. God is not needy, but in Jesus God has fully experienced human need.

When Jesus is described as Emmanuel—a Hebrew word meaning “God is with us” (Matthew 1:23)—the implications are breath-taking. In Jesus, the God who needs nothing from us, including our various sacrifices, has come to be with us. The birth of Jesus should fill us with wonder as we consider that God has fully invested himself with us. The story might explode later with a cross and an empty grave, but it begins quietly with a human birth that draws us into the life of God in a way that we can scarcely imagine.

God is with us.

The Third Wednesday of Advent

2011-12-14T06:10:00.000-08:00

Third Wednesday of Advent
December 14, 2011

Why should I fear in times of trouble, when the iniquity of my persecutors surrounds me, those who trust in their wealth and boast of the abundance of their riches? Truly, no ransom avails for one’s life, there is no price one can give to God for it. For the ransom of life is costly, and can never suffice that one should live on forever and never see the grave. When we look at the wise, they die; fool and dolt perish together and leave their wealth to others. Their graves are their homes forever, their dwelling places to all generations, though they named lands their own. Mortals cannot abide in their pomp; they are like the animals that perish. Such is the fate of the foolhardy, the end of those who are pleased with their lot. Like sheep they are appointed for Sheol; Death shall be their shepherd; straight to the grave they descend, and their form shall waste away; Sheol shall be their home. But God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me. (Psalm 49:5-15)

We human beings have been trying to buy our way out of death for a long time. Much of our contemporary debates about national healthcare are about every person’s inalienable right to keep disease, injury, and death from having their way with us. While we all might celebrate the wonders of medical science that have made many diseases either non-threatening or merely inconvenient, the result is that we deal with premature death much less frequently than we would have a hundred years ago. We’ll pay whatever is necessary to keep death at bay.

The psalmist speaks of the illusion that wealth can ultimately keep the rich from the same fate that awaits all human beings: death. Everyone probably understands this, but it’s difficult to accept the fact that even the most accomplished, productive life ends at the grave, making all that has been created by that person’s effort relevant only to the heirs. The grave—Sheol—has a room reserved for everyone who is born on planet earth.

But the psalmist anticipates something more than a stop sign at life’s end. People may not be able to buy their way out of death, but God will on day bring a rescue from the grave. The rescue is described in terms of a ransom—a price paid to retrieve someone from the clutches of kidnappers or other enemies. The psalmist sees that rescue coming, and hopes in it.

This ransom language would find its way into Jesus’ reflection on his own coming into the world:

“For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

In the coming of Jesus, people would once again anticipate God’s rescue from the destructive domination of sin and the grave that is its end. The truth will come out: We humans don’t have what it takes to save ourselves; it is God who takes the loving initiative to ransom us from the grave.

The Third Tuesday of Advent

2011-12-13T06:35:00.001-08:00

Third Tuesday of Advent
December 13, 2011

“Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming.” (Matthew 24:34-42)

I once worked with a man who had escaped from Russia in the late 1970’s when he was twenty-one years old. He told stories of being harassed and beaten by agents of the KGB, who were not shy about showing up at someone’s house in the middle of the night to take them away for interrogation or torture.

Jesus’ words about his future coming have often been interpreted as a warning that the faithful will be taken up into heaven while others will remain on earth to suffer whatever fate awaits them. He clearly states that no one but God the Father knows when all this will happen, but that hasn’t stopped people from trying to lock a date on the calendar anyway.

Like my Russian friend, the Jewish people of the early first century knew what it was like to live in a police state. During times of rebellion there would be nothing to stop the Romans from hauling people off in the middle of the night, leaving others behind. In that situation, being left behind would be the better option. When Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans just a few decades later—costing more than a million lives—being taken would mean slavery or crucifixion. Happy would be those who were left behind.

Like his coming at his birth, Jesus’ return is expected to be to a world that is still broken and dangerous. Matthew 24 describes all the dramas that will continue before he comes back, and they are dramas that have been played throughout human history. Things are not expected to get better.

Regardless, Jesus says to keep awake. The shepherds who were awake at the angelic announcement of Jesus’ birth could have focused their eyes only on the sheep in their care. Instead, they became awake to a new reality, the birth of a child that signaled the inbreaking of the kingdom of God. We too can stay awake to all the turmoil of national politics and disasters while sleeping through the coming of the Son of Man. Plenty of people were awake when Jesus was around, but not all were awake to him.

The Third Monday of Advent

2011-12-12T07:50:00.001-08:00

Third Monday of Advent
December 12, 2011

Therefore, thus says the Lord, I have returned to Jerusalem with compassion; my house shall be built in it, says the Lord of hosts, and the measuring line shall be stretched out over Jerusalem. Proclaim further: Thus says the Lord of hosts: My cities shall again overflow with prosperity; the Lord will again comfort Zion and again choose Jerusalem. (Zechariah 1: 16-17)

I will write on you the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem that comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name. Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. (Revelation 3:12b-13)

When I think of God bringing all things to closure on planet earth, I imagine the “new heaven and new earth” (Revelation 21:1) that is just like a perfect national park, except better. It will be a paradise and there will be no need for buildings, roads, vending machines, or trash cans. The temperature will be ideal, food will grow on all the trees, and pollution and graffiti will be no more. I can run free without anyone bothering me.

The Bible, however, keeps talking about the image of a city—Jerusalem, to be exact. God speaks through the prophet Zechariah about his affection for the city of David. In Revelation Jerusalem is renewed and recreated as a heavenly gift to the world. The return of Jesus includes the restoration of a site in the Middle East that has been a hotbed of controversy and drama for thousands of years.

Why a city? Cities are where people interact, trade, engage culture, and make their own marks through architecture and engineering. Cities are also dependent on outside resources for fuel, food, and raw materials. Crime finds fertile ground in the city, and the need for governance is always high there.

The city is where intrigue is birthed—the plot to kill Jesus was hatched in Jerusalem, and when he was executed he was banished from the place of human life and crucified outside the city. Yet, God speaks of the city as the heart of his earthly recreation. Perhaps that’s why Jews, Christians, and Muslims can’t stay away from Jerusalem.

It occurs to me that God’s desire for human beings is not that they wander alone through a bountiful wilderness, but that they live together under his rule and reign, dependent upon him for all things. The new Jerusalem will be a city, but it will be one that draws people together for a shared life in the unhindered presence of God.

Our story starts in a garden, but it ends in a city where God says, “See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more, for the first things have passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4). Now, that’s a city.

The Second Saturday of Advent

2011-12-10T07:08:00.001-08:00

Second Saturday of Advent
December 10, 2011

Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning. (Psalm 30:5b)

When he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples came to him privately, saying, “Tell us, when will this be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” Jesus answered them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birthpangs. Then they will hand you over to be tortured and will put you to death, and you will be hated by all nations because of my name. Then many will fall away, and they will betray one another and hate one another. And many false prophets will arise and lead many astray. And because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of many will grow cold. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. And this good news of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the world, as a testimony to all the nations; and then the end will come. (Matthew 24:3-14)

I imagine that Jesus’ words to his disciples were just a bit disturbing to them, and also to those who would read them over the following three centuries, as the persecution of the church ebbed and flowed. If the first disciples were expecting Jesus to restore Israel to her former glory, then warnings about wars, famines, earthquakes, torture, and death would not be the good news they were desiring. It must have been disheartening to hear that people would rise up and distort what Jesus had done, and that folks would turn away in coldness.

It seems that every time we have a major earthquake or wars break out, people claim that this is it: Jesus is coming. These are the signs. The only problem with those kinds of predictions is that natural disasters and wars have been going on for a pretty long time. The torture and killing of people who are perceived to run cross-grain to the dominant culture is nothing new. It’s the way of the world.

But Jesus says that the good news of the kingdom, in spite of all that global ruckus, will still be proclaimed. Yes, the end will come, but it will come to a world that exists in upheaval, violence, and oppression. Those things are not aberrations; they are normative for the world.

Those who endure seem to experience and anticipate a different reality. We live in that tumultuous world, but we who follow Jesus have a citizenship in a different kingdom. We might accept the world as it is, but we know that God’s desire and plan is for a new heaven and a new earth. We endure not simply because we are hanging around and waiting for the end, but because God’s kingdom is real for us, and he has deposited his Spirit within us.

The Second Friday of Advent

2011-12-09T07:17:00.001-08:00

The Second Friday of Advent
December 9, 2011

In you, O Lord, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me. Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. (Psalm 31:1-5)

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you, desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (Matthew 23:37-39)

Christmas, here in the US, is mostly about happiness and the giving of gifts. The giant blow-up Santas, Snoopys, and Frostys that are powered by generators on people’s front lawns and accompanied by pop holiday songs, can only bring joy to heart of any worshipper. Knowing that the credit card debt we incur during the holidays serves to boost end-of-the-year retail sales in a damaged economy reminds us of the real spirit of Christmas. At least, it reminds us of some kind of spirit.

In the story of Jesus’ coming at his birth, we see a society fighting to retain its religious and cultural identity while living under the domination of Rome. There were multiple stories of life being told to the people. The religious story was one of keeping the Jewish Law and allowing the power elite to frame orthodoxy by their own preferences. The control story belonged to Rome, and it demanded allegiance to the Empire under penalty of death; there could be no lord but Caesar.

There were some who cried out with the psalmist, seeking God for a rescue. But when Jesus came, he was ultimately rejected as the rescue everyone demanded. He recognized that when he lamented over Jerusalem and reflected on their history of destroying their own prophets when they didn’t like the message. Jesus knew what was coming for him. There were other preferred, dominant stories, and Jesus brought something so different and so counter to the other stories that he was rejected by those who thought they had cried out to God for help.

It is interesting that we frame the celebration of Christmas within our own desires for happiness, comfort, and prosperity. But the story of the birth of Jesus is a very different one than the one we enjoy. The joy in his story came in the midst of poverty, mystery, paranoia, and mass murder, but also in the anticipation that God was acting in human history. Some would see that; others would not.

I have to admit that I like all the lights and music and fun of our Christmas celebrations. But I do have to ask myself: If all that was taken away, and all that was left to me was my confidence in the witnesses who have gone before me who tell the story of his coming, would that be enough?

Would Jesus be enough?

“Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” (Revelation 2:29)

The Second Thursday of Advent

2011-12-08T07:35:00.001-08:00

The Second Thursday of Advent
December 8, 2011

Trust in the Lord, and do good; so you will live in the land, and enjoy security. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act. He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday. Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him; do not fret over those who prosper in their way, over those who carry out evil devices. (Psalm 37:3-7)

Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. (Revelation 8:17a)

When people get together, there is drama. Whether it is nations, congresses, cities, neighborhoods, or families, something inevitably happens to cause division, strife, and orneriness. Give us the space to be together, to delight in one another’s company, to share a common life or mission, and we’ll pick a fight before the day is over.

When I was a kid we had Thanksgiving dinner at the home of some distant relatives. I was out in their front yard throwing a football to myself when a family—a young couple with two kids—burst out of the house next door and raced to their car, an older man at their heels. Once the people were in the car, the older man went to the driver’s window and punched the younger man in the face several times. As the driver pulled the car forward to leave, the other man kicked out the rear side window, shattering glass all over the kids in the back seat. I was told that, later in the day, the man doing the punching and kicking went to the home of this family with a shotgun and tried unsuccessfully to shoot the other man.

It appears that the argument was about telling other people’s kids to behave. Now that’s worth a killing.

Churches are like extended families (and sometimes like small cities), and some of the dynamics of strife emerge there, more often than we’d like to see. There are numerous denominations here in the US that are splitting apart in angry division. Some individual churches are attacking other groups of Christians vehemently. Still others attack the world at large, insisting that God hates the people that they hate.

It’s not possible to characterize the church as one thing, since it is so diverse and complex. Nevertheless, it might not be far off the mark to say that things are a mess.

When the rest of the world sees what we’re up to–since our more divisive and goofy antics are the ones that make the popular headlines—I don’t think they typically see a church that trusts in the Lord and does good (even though there are churches that do that) or one that waits patiently for the Lord and doesn’t fret (although there are churches that do that as well). We tend to be just as frantic and fractured as the rest of the world, and that’s what imprints the popular mind. It imprints us as well.

In the season of Advent we reflect on Jesus’ birth–his coming into the world. The world into which he was born was messy, and ours is no better. In Advent we also anticipate Jesus’ return to us. I wonder what kind of church he’ll find, in all its diversity and complexity, when that happens? If he returned today, what would he see?

Let anyone who has an ear listen to what the Spirit is saying to the churches.

The Second Wednesday of Advent

2011-12-07T06:20:00.001-08:00

Second Wednesday of Advent
December 7, 2011

Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples, “The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat; therefore, do whatever they teach you and follow it; but do not do as they do, for they do not practice what they teach. They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them. (Matthew 23:1-4)

But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. (Revelation 2:4)

We often think of the scribes and Pharisees as a bunch of villains. They wear fancy religious clothing, they act pious, they are oily and scheming and generally up to no good. Jesus, however, had some things in common with these folks. Like them, he taught about the resurrection of the dead; like them, he valued the Law and the Prophets. He apparently even approved of them as teachers and encouraged his own followers to pay attention to them and to live out what they taught. The scribes and Pharisees sought to keep the people of Israel from forgetting about God and losing their identity as God’s people, so they continued to teach from their scriptures. Jesus approved of that.

What Jesus didn’t endorse was the disconnect between their roles as teachers of the faith and the way they actually practiced what they taught. More than once Jesus would call them “hypocrites” and condemn their duplicity. It wasn’t enough for Jesus that the teachers had their doctrines down pat; without those things being expressed in real life, the teachers lost credibility.

This might create a problem for some of us, because there is a way of thinking that equates authentic Christian faith with having your information in order. If someone pops up with a new way of looking at our cherished doctrinal convictions, then accusations of heresy and blasphemy (or, most chillingly, of being liberal!) abound. Correct information that translates into belief is big for us. Yet, there is a danger to equating faith with accurate doctrine. As James would say: You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder (James 2:19).

It appears that Jesus would agree that information is a good thing. After all, he taught quite a bit and brought new ways of thinking to people who had been immersed in traditional Jewish faith. But the connection to life was crucial for Jesus. He pronounced salvation to the house of Zaccheaus as soon as the tax collector promised to make things right with people he had cheated; he celebrated the faith of the Centurion who trusted in Jesus’ authority; he healed a paralyzed man, lowered through a roof and sustained by the faith of his friends, confessing no understanding of his own. Jesus did not isolate faith into a simple creed or systematic theology; faith impacted the whole of life for him.

Theologians have long debated about the relationship between faith (often translated as right belief) and works (doing good things). While there can be distortions on either side, both have to be grounded in one thing: Our first love. Faith grounded in anything other than God’s love for us, including right thinking or right doing, is bound to go awry. When Jesus, in John’s vision in Revelation, speaks to the church in Ephesus, he celebrates their good works. But he stops them in their tracks when he reveals what they have lost: Their first love.

In Advent we celebrate both the birth of Jesus and also his anticipated return. At the end of it all, will he find us concretized in our right beliefs, or worn out by our doing of good deeds, and in either case claiming authentic faith? Or will he find us lost in the love of God, where belief is translated as trust, and good works flow out of love?

The Second Tuesday of Advent

2011-12-06T07:02:00.000-08:00

Second Tuesday in Advent
December 6, 2011

Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, “Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, ‘Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.’” And Amaziah said to Amos, “O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king’s sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom.” Then Amos answered Amaziah, “I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees, and the Lord took me from following the flock, and the Lord said to me, ‘Go, prophesy to my people Israel.’ (Amos 7:10-15)

The Lord is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts; so I am helped, and my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. The Lord is the strength of his people; he is the saving refuge of his anointed. O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them forever. (Psalm 28:7-9)

King Jeroboam did not want to hear the prophetic words that Amos was speaking, and understandably so. Amos said that the king would die violently and the people of Israel would be hauled off into exile. So, in hearing these disturbing words, rather than change his ways and turn himself and the nation to the Lord, he told Amos to head south to the southern kingdom of Judah. Maybe he figured that what he couldn’t hear wouldn’t hurt him. He was wrong.

For his part, Amos confessed that he was not an expert at the prophetic role, but was just a humble working man. It was the Lord who had called him out and gave him this difficult assignment, and he obeyed. Amos wasn’t seeking power or notoriety; he was only responding to the call of God for that moment in time. While his word was good, the hearers did not hear.

Prophets who challenge the status quo are rarely heard. Just after the massive financial collapse of 2008, it was discovered that a number of economically-savvy people had warned about this disaster. If nations (particularly the US) didn’t act responsibly, then calamity would surely follow. Apparently no one who could facilitate change listened to the warnings, and the collapse came as predicted.

In the events surrounding the birth of Jesus we see the same kind of dynamics at work. Israel had long awaited her Messiah and prophets had told of his coming. Visiting astrologers from Persia came in search of the Messiah, and king Herod recognized that the time had come when his kingship would be exposed for the sham that it was. So he responded as quickly as he could with a violent act of infanticide. If you can’t hush up the prophetic words, then murder just might do the trick. Herod was also wrong.

The ones who remain in hope, however, continue to look to the Lord. They know better than to bank on the machinations of the dominant ones in power. Instead, they speak out their confidence in God: “O save your people, and bless your heritage; be their shepherd, and carry them forever.”

The Second Monday of Advent

2011-12-05T07:09:00.000-08:00

Second Monday of Advent
December 5, 2011

Make me to know your ways, O Lord; teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth, and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation; for you I wait all day long. Be mindful of your mercy, O Lord, and of your steadfast love, for they have been from of old. Do not remember the sins of my youth or my transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember me, for your goodness’ sake, O Lord! (Psalm 25:4-7)

“And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is God not of the dead, but of the living.” (Matthew 22:31-32)

Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead. . . (Revelation 1:5a)

Certainty isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be. There are a lot of things about which we’d like to be certain, but sometimes our desire to grasp tightly to our certainties creates problems for us.

The people who were quizzing Jesus about the resurrection didn’t believe in it in the first place. Their questions to Jesus weren’t about learning from him, but rather intended to trip him up. They wanted to discredit Jesus in order to shore up their certainties. Jesus, of course, turns their own scriptures on them. His reference to the Hebrew scriptures doesn’t prove the resurrection of the dead; it merely points to the confidence he had in God’s intentions for his people.

The psalmist asks God for a deeper life in knowing God’s ways, for mercy, and forgiveness for past sins. The prayer assumes that God is listening and responding, ready and willing to grant the requests that resonate with God’s heart. The psalmist is confident in God’s attentiveness and willingness to act.

Certainty isn’t what we need; we need confidence.

Certainty in the unshakable rightness of our doctrines can easily replace our confidence in God—after all, when you’ve got all the answers, the mystery evaporates and maybe you don’t even need God any longer. When you’re certain that you’ve got plenty of money, you start forgetting about how God meets your daily needs. When you’ve got your life all figured out, it’s easy to quit looking for the surprises that God brings and you forget that very often, our preferences run counter to what God desires.

In the opening chapter of Revelation, Jesus is referred to as “the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead.” We have confidence in what God will do because we have confidence in Jesus, who once said, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Jesus is our faithful witness to the character, nature, and intentions of God. We have confidence in our life with God now and in the life to come because Jesus has gone before us, the firstborn of the dead.

Our so-called certainties can box us in. It is confidence that we need.

The first Saturday in Advent

2011-12-03T08:10:00.000-08:00

First Saturday of Advent
December 3, 2011

Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said. So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality. Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?” But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites? Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius. Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?” They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away. (Matthew 22:15-22)

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and for ever. Amen. (Jude 24-25)

Religious people can be tough on one another when they suspect that someone thinks differently than they do about something concerning faith. Some of the people who were wary of Jesus were busy about doing that, and thought that they’d come up with a really clever way to trap him. They figured that he was in trouble regardless of his answer about taxes: If he said it was lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, then he would expose himself as a compromised Jew; if he said it wasn’t lawful to pay, then they could report him to the Roman authorities as a lawless rabble rouser.

Jesus, however, turned the tables on them with his simple words, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.” Paying taxes to Caesar were just part of their reality. There would always be someone in charge who demanded payment for services rendered, whether real or imagined, and Jesus didn’t seem concerned about that.

His words, however, strike a disturbing chord. There are things that go to Caesar that are different than the things that go to God. Taxes are about money and represent the economic fuel that keeps governments moving. But that which goes to God is different from any kind of economic or material substance. On that, Jesus does not want his hearers to be confused.

Christians, however, throughout the ages have indeed gotten confused about this. From Jesus’ coming at his birth to the gatherings of the first Christians, this confusion has caused persecution and hatred. By the fourth century people began to confuse the Empire with the Church—a confusion that exists in some form even today in certain places. In the 1930’s and 40’s, people in Germany began to allow Hitler’s agenda to be compatible with the state church’s agenda. Even in the US we often confuse our nation (or at least our preferred political party) with the desires of God.

If some sort of tribute is inevitable when it comes to nations and rulers and governments, then what sort of things are for God? What things are separate, unique, and sacred? Jude says it well: Glory, majesty, power, and authority. That belongs to God. Let Caesar have his taxes.

The First Friday in Advent

2011-12-02T06:34:00.001-08:00

First Friday of Advent
December 2, 2011

Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows. . . . You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures for evermore. (Psalm 16: 4a, 11)

Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of hosts, will be with you, just as you have said. Hate evil and love good, and establish justice. . . (Amos 5:14-15a)

The ancient people of Israel had no end of opportunities to worship the various gods of the surrounding nations. One of the worst was Molech, a god borrowed from the Phoenicians, who demanded the regular sacrifice of children. Others, like Baal and Asherah, were more about fertility and prosperity, and caught the attention of the Israelites when they wanted plenty of children and more productive crops.

Regardless of the choices, worshipping any of the local gods instead of the one true God did not end up well for the people. Ultimately it was a significant part of Israel’s downfall and ultimate exile. When the people looked back over the disasters that had destroyed their nation, they would surely lament their abandonment of God.

Their turning back to God was not, however, merely a cognitive affirmation that Israel’s God was better than the others. It was a turning that was to result in a transformed way of living that would be demonstrated in the community that was God’s people. Worshipping the one true God would result in life rather than multiple sorrows, and that life would look like the seeking of good over evil and establishing justice—that is, making right that which had gone wrong—in their land.

When Jesus appeared on the public scene, one of his earliest messages—borrowed from Isaiah 61—rings with this call to goodness and justice:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19

We’ve got more than our share of seductive gods in our US culture. We have gods of consumerism, materialism, politics, and religion. We hear the call to worship the stuff that makes end-of-year retail numbers look good; we are told that if we give full allegiance to a particular political party, we stand on the side of right and all will be well; the demands are made to let self-interest rule supremely and let the poor fend for themselves, and prosperity will follow; we are lured into certainty when we are told that our brothers and sisters in Christ are our enemies if they don’t see things exactly as described by some new prophet. And so our sorrows are multiplied as these gods promise us the Moon and instead deliver us into Hell.

In the coming of Jesus, who comes as God’s anointed to bring, among other blessings, liberation from the worship of all that is not God, we are confronted with life rather than death, with good rather than evil, with justice rather than oppression. It’s not just that we might be freed from the grip of those idols, but also that we might not worship at their altars and preach their gospels.

In this Advent season, perhaps more than in other years, reflecting on the past, present, and future coming of Jesus is crucial for us. We are in a bad economy that demands consumption in order to prosper; we are entering an election year when promises of justice and goodness often ring hollow and draw us into the worship of political preferences.

God help us. Come quickly, Lord Jesus.

The First Thursday in Advent

2011-12-01T07:40:00.001-08:00

First Thursday of Advent
December 1, 2011

. . . yet you did not return to me, says the Lord. (Amos 4:6b)

Since all these things are to be dissolved in this way, what sort of people ought you to be in leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set ablaze and dissolved, and the elements will melt with fire? But, in accordance with his promise, we wait for new heavens and a new earth, where righteousness is at home. (2 Peter 3:11-13)

The prophet Amos spoke harshly to the people of Israel. In chapter four he speaks for God, who chronicles all the disasters that have come upon the people, taking credit for each one, yet lamenting with each remembrance that the people did not return to him.

Israel’s history as it is told in the Bible is one of the people’s faithfulness that morphs to idolatry and unfaithfulness, and then back again, over and over. It’s a roller coaster ride of relationship with the God who had called them to be his people for the sake and blessing of the world, and the cars were riding off the rails. Amos speaks harshly, but behind the words we can hear the heartbreak that God seems to suffer because of the people’s refusal to come home.

I don’t know about you, but I find it easy to avoid God in both bad times and good—I don’t discriminate at all. When times are bad, I’m busy figuring out how to get things back to normal again or being just plain depressed about the circumstances. When things are going well, then I forget about God all together because I’m feeling self-sufficient and able to take care of myself. I think I have a lot in common with Amos’ first audience. Maybe you can identify with that.

In light of what the early Christians expected and what the Scriptures teach—that everything that now exists will one day be transformed into God’s new heaven and new earth—Peter asks the question that cuts to the heart of our core identity. As God’s people, expecting what God will one day bring about, how should we live? What kind of people should we be? Peter doesn’t point to natural disasters as motivators for repentance, but rather recognizes that we belong to God’s future, even though we live in an earthly present. So do we live within the boundaries of the present status quo (this is a particularly important question in a US election year, when the season on hatred and false witness is open to all), or do we live as citizens of the kingdom of God?

Peter says that we do, indeed, wait for God. But we also live as God’s children, set apart by him for the blessing of the world.

The First Wednesday in Advent

2011-11-30T07:01:00.000-08:00

First Wednesday of Advent
November 30, 2011

O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion! When the Lord restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad. (Psalm 14:7)

But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day. The Lord is not slow about his promise, as some think of slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance. But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and everything that is done on it will be disclosed. (2 Peter 3:8-10)

A few years ago I went to the doctor because of a respiratory infection. I sat on the paper-covered examination table while he checked things out and asked me a series of questions. In the process he discovered that I worked for a theological seminary, so he took advantage of the circumstance of my medical captivity to interrogate me about when Jesus was scheduled to return. As much as I tried to dodge the issue—after all, he was the guy with access to needles and probes and such, and I feared retribution for offering an unacceptable answer—he persisted. I finally reminded him that I was sick and needed repair, so he prescribed some antibiotics and I went on my way, leaving the question of Jesus’ expected return unanswered.

People have been trying to get that date on the calendar for a long time, to no avail. The psalmist doesn’t demand precision in terms of timing, but he echoes the cry of Israel for God to bring deliverance so that their exile and oppression will end. The anticipation was that deliverance looked like the restoration of Israel’s glory days.

The early followers of Jesus saw deliverance in a new light. Rather than expecting to be delivered from the rule of the Roman Empire, they came to understand that God, in and through Jesus, had delivered them from the power of sin and death—all that was behind earthly oppression. Deliverance for them looked like turning to the God who had rescued them from every demanding voice of dominance that was not God, and freed them into a new life.

Still, they anticipated that something the ancient Hebrew people called “the day of the Lord,” when God would upset the order of the earthly kingdoms and make things right, especially for Israel. The early Christians still looked forward to that day, but now with broader scope. The God who would make things right wanted things to be right for all people, “not wanting any to perish.”

Peter spoke of that day in dramatic language, signaling a global change in everything we’ve come to know. His words mirror those of Jesus in Revelation 21, as a new heaven and new earth are established, and he announces, “I am making all things new.”

In this season of Advent, we are drawn into the newness of God’s story. We don’t have to wait for a distant, highly-publicized date of return on the calendar to enter into what God has made new: It’s all here now. As Peter spoke of God’s desire for all people, we are invited to turn (which is the meaning of “repent”) to the God who has made himself known to us in Jesus.

The First Tuesday in Advent

2011-11-29T07:59:00.000-08:00

O Lord, do not rebuke me in your anger, or discipline me in your wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are shaking with terror. My soul also is struck with terror, while you, O Lord—how long? (Psalm 6:1-3)

People cry out to God all the time, wondering why in the world (or in the heaven) he doesn’t do something. Doesn’t God know what’s going on here? Doesn’t he see the financial problems, the wars and genocides, the crime, and the discontent? More personally, has God lost track of MY problems?

The psalmist cries out to God, “My soul also is struck with terror, while you, O Lord—how long?” He is terrified, while God does—what? Wait around? Kill some time? Make a few extra planets? Where is he? What is God doing while all this is going on? And how long will he ignore this disastrous situation?

Indeed, how long? The people of ancient Israel would resonate with that cry because they had become a people in exile. Even by Jesus’ day their freedom to live in their own land was limited and controlled by the Romans. They were a people in exile at home. Certainly when the everyday Israelite saw centurions marching through town or, even worse, witnessed the occasional crucifixion of Jewish offenders, the cry would well up: How long, O Lord?

When Jesus was born, few people anticipated that he was the answer to that prayer, How long? Herod saw the birth as a threat to his throne and staged a quick infanticide to address his fears. Years later the religious leaders of Jerusalem would employ the power of Rome to do away with Jesus, again fearing a threat to their dominance. Waiting for God is rarely convenient for those who hold all the power.

In the season of Advent we reflect on the coming of Jesus at his birth. At the same time, we look forward to his coming again, when God recreates the heavens and the earth, and his kingdom comes in its fullness. But what about in between? Are we, like the ancient Israelites, left alone to wonder, How long?

The amazing thing about the two Advents is that the space in between is not devoid of God. God’s presence has been promised to us in another Advent—the ongoing presence of the Holy Spirit. It is through God’s Spirit that Jesus’ claim is made good:

“And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:20b)

We are not left alone, and God has not left the building.

First Monday in Advent

2011-11-28T07:33:00.000-08:00

First Monday of Advent
November 28, 2011

When they had come near Jerusalem and had reached Bethphage, at the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, saying to them, “Go into the village ahead of you, and immediately you will find a donkey tied, and a colt with her; untie them and bring them to me. If anyone says anything to you, just say this, ‘The Lord needs them.’ And he will send them immediately.” This took place to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet, saying, “Tell the daughter of Zion, Look, your king is coming to you, humble, and mounted on a donkey, and on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” (Matthew 21:1-5)

Therefore, brothers and sisters, be all the more eager to confirm your call and election, for if you do this, you will never stumble. For in this way, entry into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly provided for you. (2 Peter 1:10-11)

The story of Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem—what most Bibles title, “The Triumphal Entry”—always puzzles me. I think I understand why Jesus did what he did, because he was fulfilling Scripture but also giving the people a different image of their Messiah than they expected. What puzzles me is why the people were so excited at seeing Jesus riding on a donkey. Did they expect that the donkey would suddenly transform into a huge, sweaty stallion with flaring nostrils and iron hooves? And did they think that Jesus would morph into a muscular and deadly ninja who would slaughter the Romans right on the spot? I don’t know. I’m just wondering.

What is clear in the gospels is that the people did expect something from Jesus that was different than what he was offering. People loved his works of healing and deliverance, and marveled at his teachings. But they also wanted to see the kind of power that put Israel right back in the driver’s seat and ran the Romans back to Italy where they could get busy inventing pizza.

In the days of the early church, leaders like Peter had to keep reminding people about their identity as followers of Jesus. Like most of us, they were tempted to expect other things from Jesus than what he was offering. Peter has to remind them about their “election” (not the idea of being chosen at the exclusion of others, but being chosen for the benefit of the world) and that they are to order their lives around traits and values such as faith, goodness, knowledge, self-control, mutual affection, and godliness. When people get off track, he says, they “stumble” into things that end up corrupting them.

In this beginning of the Advent season, it might be good for us to stop and consider what we’ve been expecting from Jesus as he comes to us. If we’re expecting prosperity, power, the baptizing of our political party, or anything other than the Jesus who draws us into the new reality of the kingdom of God, then we’ll stumble and experience the corruption that comes from being immersed in the wrong world.

In his book Death on a Friday Afternoon, Richard John Neuhaus wrote,

“. . . In this life and in the world to come, those who follow Jesus will receive everything they want, if what they want is to follow Jesus.”

Looking for a New Rhythm of Life

2011-11-24T06:38:00.000-08:00

The holidays are upon us again, reminding Christians in American that we have only two religious holidays that we are allowed to observe: Christmas and Easter. Along with the rest of the nation, we busily spend our money on holiday-related consumer goods, but we also devote ourselves to a total of approximately two hours of religious observance. That’s all that our calendar will allow.

There is something wrong with this, at least for Christians. What many (particularly those in Protestant, evangelical traditions) seem to forget (or perhaps never realized), is that we are living the rhythms of our lives by the wrong calendar. There is a different calendar for us that meanders and strolls rather than sprints and constantly gasps for breath. It’s a calendar that leads in deep reflection and worship rather than in squirrel cage-demands and mandated national observances.

Christians have something called the Church Year. That calendar begins the year in late November with the observance of Advent (the coming of Jesus), which runs then continuously through Christmastide, Epiphany, Lent, Holy Week, Eastertide, Pentecost, and then something called Ordinary time (the season when our immersion in worship remembers that we live out the Jesus life one day at a time). Churches that observe this calendar do so with colors, prayers, liturgies, music, and even feasts. During the week people have resources of prayer and devotion that follow these seasons throughout each day.

I did not grow up observing the calendar of the Church Year, but I’ve become fascinated with the richness and depth of a shared rhythm of life that is ordered around what we consider to be the greatest story of the ages: The story of God’s redeeming and reconciling work in and through Jesus.

What puzzles me is how often I share my interest in the Church Year and find my Christian friends recoiling from the idea as though I was suggesting a fifty-mile pilgrimage along a hard, rocky road on our bare knees. Cautions against legalism and deadness rise to the surface and the invitation to find the order of life in Jesus’ story often falls flat.

It’s the standard, twelve-month calendar that many seem to prefer. Why would we need a calendar with all that unnecessary religious stuff when we’ve got one that serves both the nation and the church (in that order)? You know that calendar: It’s called the Gregorian Calendar, and it’s months are named after Roman gods and goddesses and even a couple of dead Roman emperors. Yes, indeed—there’s a rhythm of life we Christians should easily embrace.

Of course I’m being just a tad sarcastic (or is it ironic?). I’m not against the Gregorian calendar. After all, it’s how most of the world schedules travel and work days and other movements of human life. But for we who follow Jesus, there should be a deeper rhythm that plays beneath all of that. Observing the Church Year should keep us in a perpetual state of wonder, thanks, and worship. Yes, anything can be degraded so that it is dead and meaningless (even things like marriage, prayer, and “contemporary” worship). That’s no excuse for letting our lives be framed by anything other than Jesus.

The Slippery Slope of Generational Churches

2011-11-22T12:10:00.000-08:00

There seem to be an increasing number of “dechurched” bands of people getting together to figure out how faith looks once a person feels disenfranchised from church. I’ve read research about this and heard from more than one significant Christian leader about this trend.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that everyone has left church, or that those who have end up in isolated home groups looking for a fresh identity. But there’s enough of it to catch my attention, and certainly the attention of those who watch for these kinds of things.

I was with one such group recently. They were devout in their love of God and faith in Jesus. They expressed love for one another, worshipped and prayed fervently. And all, even after many decades of faithful church connection, found themselves outside of an established church setting.

This got me to thinking about church life in general. There’s been a trend since the 1970’s to reconfigure church and its various practices in order to reach a new generation (at that time, my generation—the Baby Boomers). Of course, the Roman Catholic Church got busy with this a decade earlier, but the Evangelicals eventually honed the practice into a veritable industry.

What has happened since that time is a growing separation of generational cohorts within the church. So, once the Boomers’ offspring came of age, that old Rock ‘n Roll worship vibe was seen by them as outdated and tired. They just couldn’t relate, so new generationally-crafted churches emerged. Or, if that didn’t happen, young people just left church altogether as soon as they got out of high school.

I’m seeing a systemic problem with all of this. I’m not against worship gatherings that are sensitive to their cultural contexts, but when the worshipping life of the church is grounded in the preferences of a particular generation within a culture, then it must reinvent itself for each subsequent generation or die. This is not just a problem for so-called mainline churches, but also for the churches that have emerged over the last thirty or forty years. With each generational change comes the risk of alienating the prior generation and lurching inevitable toward irrelevance when a subsequent generation hits puberty.

It occurs to me that the sacramental and strongly liturgical churches have something to teach us here. In more traditional liturgies, everyone potentially dives deeply into Scripture and communal prayers. Yes, there is a sermon, but it’s usually brief and completely overshadowed by the heart of the worship time: The Eucharist.
All who are present participate—young and old, clergy and non-clergy. Prayers are spoken, songs are sung, confession echoes, bread and wine are shared. There is an ancient and eternal sense about what is happening, something not limited to a particular generational preference.

We all might be helped to rethink the meaning of the word service when it comes to church. Is it service to me and my kind, giving us what we like and serving our preferential needs? Or is it service to God as we rehearse the story of the ages and submit ourselves to his love, grace, mercy, and forgiveness? As the apostle Paul stated so well:

I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. (Rom 12:1)

I believe this is worth thinking about.

The Fourth Day After Easter

2011-04-28T06:51:00.000-07:00

Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,  whose hope is in the Lord their God,  who made heaven and earth,  the sea, and all that is in them;  who keeps faith for ever;  who executes justice for the oppressed;  who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;  the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;  the Lord loves the righteous.  The Lord watches over the strangers;  he upholds the orphan and the widow,  but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin. (Psalm 146:5-9)

He heals the broken-hearted,  and binds up their wounds. (Psalm 147:3)

“This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you.” (John 15:12-16a)

If you’ve ever showed up to a party that is already in full swing, you know how it feels: Conversations are in motion, the music is playing, the food is out and partially eaten. But people greet you as you arrive because you’ve been expected all along and they’re glad that you’ve finally arrived.

Sometimes people view God as being outside of the drama of human existence and then, after people scream, yell, and pray, he finally decides to intervene so that he can get back to tricking us with fake planets like Pluto or whipping up the next natural disaster just to mess with things.

The Bible offers a different picture of God: He is already involved in everything that is happening. It is God who creates and sustains all life; it is God who initiates justice and care for the hurting and the needy; it is God who brings healing to the wounded. Yes, people do cry out, but not to a god who is deaf half the time to their cries, but instead to the God who is fully aware, fully present, and already at work.

Jesus presents the face of God within his own life and character. Jesus loves those who have followed him, and he loves them as friends. They are not simply religious functionaries; they are beloved friends. He tells them that they have been drawn into what God is doing in the world and are a part of his work.

“You did not choose me but I chose you.” People sometimes debate about these words as if they are about some sort of determinism regarding how God chooses who is in and who is out. But Jesus is speaking about how God works: God’s work comes before anyone is aware of what is going on. God is the initiator and we get to respond to what he is doing. The disciples did not hunt up God by chasing down Jesus and demanding that he let them join his club. Jesus spent 40 days in the wilderness, wrestling in prayer, and then chose his followers as an answer to that time of communion with his Father.

Every time we respond to God we are showing up to a party that is already in full swing. When we trust our lives to Jesus, God doesn’t say, “I’m really glad that you showed up. Now, what is your name, again? I’m really kind of busy, you know.” God has been at work in and around us the whole time, drawing us, calling to us, loving us even as we went along our own merry way. God started the party without us, but he also reserved a seat for us, waiting for us to finally arrive.

The Third Day After Easter

2011-04-27T07:25:00.000-07:00

But as for me, I will look to the Lord,  I will wait for the God of my salvation;  my God will hear me. . .

Shepherd your people with your staff,  flock that belongs to you,  which lives alone in a forest  in the midst of a garden land;  let them feed in Bashan and Gilead as in the days of old. As in the days when you came out of the land of Egypt,  show us marvelous things. (Psalm 7:7, 14-15)

I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15:5)

Most of us are waiting for something. We’re waiting for a big break, waiting for our ship to come in, waiting for the right person to come along, waiting for quitting time, waiting for retirement. We do a lot of waiting. It seems life too much of our life is spent in some kind of waiting room filled with old magazines and bad coffee.

The ancient people of Israel were in exile, and they waited. Perhaps some had lost hope in God, lost hope in ever returning home again, and lost hope in their future. The prophet Micah, however, speaks of hope in waiting, because he intends, regardless of what everyone else does, to wait on God. He trusts that God will hear him.

Micah describes the people as a flock of sheep who are surrounded by a lush land, but are isolated in a forest—not the best environment for sheep. He calls on God to be their shepherd and to show his people marvelous things once again. He believes that life in the garden is their destiny rather than hiddeness in the shadows of the forest. The prophet recalls the history of God’s people and how God acted in the past to rescue them. He is confident that God will act again.

I’ve experienced crazy things in my life that I can only interpret as the work of God. Exact amounts of money for specific needs have shown up at just the right time; cries for help for those I love have been answered; direction for life choices has come in surprising ways. Yet, when things in life get dicey, I start waiting on the wrong things. I wait for a brilliant idea to emerge from my own brilliantness to solve the problem, or I wait for new strategies to emerge, or I wait for financial markets to wake up and make my future brighter than it seems. It’s a painful waiting and there is no rest in it.

Jesus employs the metaphor of the grape vine to make his point about waiting. I’ve been to wineries and seen grape vines at work. They just sit there, doing what grape vines and branches do. The branches are wedded to the vine, and the soak up sun, soil, and water and the fruit follows. I love visiting wineries because they feel so peaceful and relaxed. If that’s what waiting is really about, then I’m all for it.

The brand of waiting that Jesus recommends is one of abiding, or living. It’s not a waiting that is passive, isolated, or disinterested, but is instead a waiting that is immersed in the life of Jesus. There is a rhythm of trust in that kind of waiting, because Jesus moves in concert with the desires and intentions of God, and that waiting-life works its way into our lives by the breath of God’s Spirit—the Holy Spirit. Abiding in Jesus is a life of participation in what God is doing all around us. It allows for the best kind of waiting.

the Second Day after Easter

2011-04-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

The Lord works vindication and justice for all who are oppressed. He made known his ways to Moses,  his acts to the people of Israel.  The Lord is merciful and gracious,  slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.  He will not always accuse,  nor will he keep his anger for ever.  He does not deal with us according to our sins,  nor repay us according to our iniquities.  For as the heavens are high above the earth,  so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him;  as far as the east is from the west,  so far he removes our transgressions from us.  As a father has compassion for his children,  so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him.  For he knows how we were made;  he remembers that we are dust. (Psalm 103:6-14)

“I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them. . . I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” (John 14:18-21)

When I was in the Navy I worked in an old building that had three restrooms on the bottom floor, and each was clearly labeled: Men; Women; Officers. The message was clear to we enlisted folks who were at the bottom of the military food chain: We had our own restrooms and we were not to share those facilities with our officers, who were, historically, men.

The only problem with this set up was that there were now two female officers who worked on the first floor of this building. Every so often one of them would use the “Officers” restroom just to make a point. After all, they too were officers. It was their right. It was an act of equality and justice.

In our culture equality, rights, and justice are often bundled together in our thinking. We believe in equal access to all things—after all, we have the right to pursue almost anything we desire, and to hinder that process is perceived as an act of injustice.
The way that the Bible describes justice in relation to God is very different from our cultural constructs. Justice is seen as God engaging with broken humanity and setting right what has been damaged by sin and oppression. Even to those who have transgressed, God offers the possibility of forgiveness. This comes from his love and compassion, described so beautifully in Psalm 103.

When Jesus speaks to his friends in John 14, he deepens the understanding of God’s love by describing it not only as compassionate, but also present. He speaks of his life being embedding in the life of God the Father, and that this life will live within those who trust him. He describes the Holy Spirit as the “Advocate,” the one who comes alongside us to help us. This is more than God looking over his damaged children and relieving them from punishment; this is God fully present as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, to his children who are, in all appearances, dust.

It is sad when we reduce Christian faith to a set of concrete statements of belief. At the heart of Christian faith is the initiative of God, which comes before anything we believe, and the promise of his presence living within us, transforming us from dust to beloved children. This is God worth trusting. First we trust, then we come to articulate what we believe. As John says in another place,

In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us . . . (I John 4:10a)

A Devotional for Easter Sunday

2011-04-24T07:53:00.000-07:00

After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, ‘He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him.’ This is my message for you.” So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me.” (Matthew 28:1-10)

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:5-11)

When Christians celebrate Easter, it is typically joyous. The dark coverings of Good Friday are drawn back, the windows are opened, the bright flowers are produced, and the songs of joy are sung. There is no more need for sadness and grief; he is risen, and all will be well.

The first friends of Jesus, however, did not experience joy until later. Initially, fear and disbelief dominated them—Jesus twice tells them, “Do not be afraid.” The guards at the tomb were terrified to the point of catatonia; t is likely that they later exhibited the signs of PTSD. In Luke’s account of the Resurrection, the male disciples don’t believe the story that the women tell about the empty tomb and the angels. They thought it was “an idle tale” (Luke 24:11). Their own gender prejudices might have made the women’s report suspect to them. They found it hard to believe.

It would be interesting to celebrate Easter in a cemetery. One particular tomb could be arranged ahead of time with the doors thrown open and a coffin smashed to bits, the corpse nowhere to be seen. People dressed like angels could leap out from behind gravestones and trees, scaring the pants off everyone by yelling, “He is risen!” Then everyone could gather together and be allowed to share all their doubts about faith and God. Starting an Easter celebration with fear and doubt might align us with the experiences of the first disciples; it might also create a new kind of space for Jesus to appear and show that he is truly alive.

It was only long after the events of the Resurrection that some theological interpretation started to emerge. People like the Apostle Paul looked deeply into the life of Israel, reflected on the story of Jesus, and realized that something cosmic and global was happening as a result of the local event of Jesus’ resurrection. This was a story for all people, and human lives were being drawn into the death and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus, who had been condemned by the power of sin, and then snuffed out by the power of death, now stood victorious over both those dark forces. When we trust our lives to Jesus, his story becomes ours; Paul says that we, too, are now freed from the dominance of both sin and death.

A story that launches in fear and disbelief, in a dusty spot in a faraway place, becomes a story of joy and hope, a story for people in all places at all times. Even for those who are still troubled by fear, Jesus comes and urges, “Do not be afraid.” For those who struggle with disbelief, he reaches out and cries, “Greetings!”

He is risen. He is risen indeed!

Holy Week, Day Seven: The Last Words of Jesus

2011-04-23T11:25:00.000-07:00

Then Jesus, crying with a loud voice, said, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” Having said this, he breathed his last. (Luke 23:46)

It has been said that Humphrey Bogart’s last words were, “I should never have switched from Scotch to Martinis.” Other famous people have uttered final words that were profound, desperate, or just plain crazy. People will say all kinds of things at the point of death.

Jesus had every right for any of the above, given his circumstances. We would understand his final cries to be of incomprehensible anguish or utterances coming from hallucinatory pain. Instead, he offers the words from the prayer book of his people—the Psalms.

You are indeed my rock and my fortress;  for your name’s sake lead me and guide me,  take me out of the net that is hidden for me,  for you are my refuge.  Into your hand I commit my spirit;  you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God. (Psalm 31:3-5)

People often think of death as a giving up of all that is valuable and precious to us—human life. In crying out in the words of the Psalm, Jesus brings to the minds of the witnesses to his death something very different. This time of suffering will end, not in the obliteration of life, but instead in Jesus’ entrance into the refuge of his Father.

In both the Hebrew and the Greek of the Bible, the same word is frequently used for spirit, breath, and wind. As Jesus offers his spirit—the breath of God that brings about all of life on earth—he breathes out, offering back to God the life that was his in the first place.

Even as people speak, breath is at work. Our words are formed by teeth and tongue, breath and mind. As God speaks, word becomes flesh; breath becomes life.

And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. (John 1:14)

It is intriguing to note that much of the last words spoken by Jesus on the cross were words of prayer. His prayers were not simply the isolated, painful cries of a dying man, but rather the corporate prayers of the people of Israel, gathered into the slowly diminishing life of Jesus, who had come for the sake of his own people and the sake of the world. Jesus cried not only for himself, but also on behalf of Israel, bringing the pain of their exile into his own time of agony.

All the witnesses to Jesus’ death could understandably assume that sin and death had won the day. Rome and Jerusalem conspired in deceit to do away with Jesus; their success was realized when Jesus breathed his final breath. The claws of death would surely wrap around one who died as a criminal and a failed Messiah.

Jesus, however, did not fear such a destiny. As his life dwindled to a dull glow, he laid his spirit into the hands of his Father. Death would not enjoy a victory over Jesus; he belonged to God, and would be received home. Death would have to look around twice to figure out what had just happened.

The confidence that Jesus had in his Father’s desire to receive him gives us hope for ourselves. The same Father who embraced the spirit of Jesus upon his death will one day receive us as well. When Resurrection comes, spirit and body will reunite in God’s new heaven and new earth. There is no shortage of hope for the people of God.

Day Six of Holy Week: The Last Words of Jesus

2011-04-22T08:27:00.000-07:00

“It is finished.”

When new houses are built, all the skilled workers play their parts—creating a foundation, framing, running wire and pipe, making roofs and walls and ceilings—and then leave for the next project. A clean-up team comes in and picks up all the fragments of the job so that people can move in. The workers still carry a responsibility for the integrity of their work, and they will have to return to fix something if it doesn’t work properly.

However, the workers have no responsibility for what the inhabitants do once they move in. If the marriage collapses, the electrician will not be called to account. If illegal drugs are manufactured in the bathroom, the plumber will not have to answer to the police. The workers’ relationship to the house ends when it is properly completed and ready for occupancy. What happens after that is not their concern. They are finished.

Jesus’ final words on the cross imply a number of things. Truly, Jesus’ life is finished. He is breathing his last, and he will now die, as all humans must. Along with his death, the power of Rome has finished its murderous work on yet another person. For those standing close to the cross, those words might have confirmed what they already believed: All that Jesus had said and done was finished, as was the life they had shared together.

But some other things were finished as well. All that had come to be represented in Jesus—the life of Israel and the life of the entire human race—would no longer be subject to the final word of sin and death. Yes, sin would still rattle its cage throughout the world and every new birth would end in a grave, but their power to pronounce the end of the story was finished. And if we truly believe that the very fullness of God was in and with Jesus, then God’s immersion in the totality of human existence was finished; from conception to death, God’s sojourn in the life of the human race was complete.

Unlike the workers who move on when their work is done, what was finished in the death of Jesus would launch into a new reality with a cosmic purpose. This was not a finishing that was over and done with no relationship to what would come next, but it was rather a finishing that would explode to a new level in the Resurrection (the Greek word for finished implies this purposeful relationship). To the average onlooker, Jesus the failed Messiah who died on Friday was truly finished and had gone the way of others before him. But Sunday was yet to come, and what appeared to be finished would turn reality on its head. Like a seed that appears dried and dead but, when planted in the ground, becomes a living plant, so would the finished, dead body of Jesus enter the tomb and emerge with new life for all.

We humans, who so often lack vision, can easily look around and declare ourselves “finished.” We’ve hit a wall, we’ve made too many mistakes, we’ve missed too many opportunities, and we are finished. But the story in which we are invited to live doesn’t leave us finished as though we’ve reached a silent ending. On one level we may be finished, but in Jesus we find that we can launch into a new life that doesn’t deny what has happened before, but now wraps up the past into a present that brings hope and promise for the future.

Things may no longer look as we imagined they would, but passing from death to a resurrection life rarely keeps things looking the same. The resurrected Jesus was not a reanimated corpse, but a real body from which death and its effects had been banished. There were still the marks of the past in Jesus’ hands, feet, and sides, because what had happened to him was real. The new life, however, wrapped up the past into the new and purposeful life that was launched on Easter.

Day Five of Holy Week: The Last Words of Jesus

2011-04-21T07:12:00.000-07:00

“I am thirsty.”

Thirst is a basic human response to the need for liquid. The human body has more water in it than any other kind of element. A person can go for a long period of time without eating, but lack of fluids can do some serious damage.

Thirst is also painful. It racks the body and creates incessant, rasping reminders in the mouth and tongue. It doesn’t come and go; it takes up residence.

That Jesus would thirst should come as no surprise. After losing blood in the process of crucifixion and then being exposed to the elements that day, thirst would be natural to him. But his thirst also should not surprise us because Jesus was a real person, suffering in a very real, human way. This man was no divine illusion pretending to die, as some involved with the first-century so-called “mystery religions” might have claimed. Jesus was real, and true. His suffering and death were authentically human, experienced in time and space.

As the Apostle John wrote to affirm this,

We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us. (I John 1:1-2)

We are told that Jesus was not offered water to satisfy his thirst, but rather “vinegar.” It was actually a cheap wine that the soldiers kept handy for themselves—after all, crucifying people was a taxing business. It is also added to the text that this cry of Jesus was, again, part of a scripture that needed to be fulfilled:

I looked for pity, but there was none;  and for comforters, but I found none.  They gave me poison for food,  and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (Psalm 69:20b-21)

There is an interesting parallel here: The same Egypt that oppressed and enslaved the ancient Hebrew people later gave shelter to Jesus and his family when they were in need; now the same Romans who worked their dark machinery to end Jesus’ life are giving comfort to the one they are killing. That comfort doesn’t come from outside of the soldiers’ resource, but rather from the very jug of wine that they use to comfort themselves. The oppressors have become the comforters.

Jesus’ own people stood back and watched him die; mockery and grief were mixed in a paradoxical cocktail. Even the most devoted of Jesus’ followers lacked the ability to minister to his needs. The soldiers, however, attended to his thirst.

The complicity of the Jewish leaders with the Romans created a vehicle of death that was swift and sure. Enemies locked arms as they unleashed their power on Jesus. At the end, however, those who would have been considered to be far removed from the people of God brought the only attempt at comfort to the dying Messiah. It be a Centurion who would make the declaration,

“Truly this man was God’s Son!” (Matthew 27:54b)

There is something the outsider sees that the insider misses. I have heard several high-profile atheists state that, while they think religion in general is bunk and Christians in particular are fools, Jesus is at the very least, admirable. They sometimes puzzle at the lack of seriousness with which Christians take their own Savior.

Maybe there is something for us to learn from those who watch from afar.

Holy Week, Day Four: The Last Words of Jesus

2011-04-20T06:48:00.000-07:00

And about three o’clock Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is,
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)

I know a man who, as a teenager, was arrested along with two friends for minor drug possession. The judge gave the parents a choice: The boys could spend three months in the county jail, or receive probation and be turned over to the parents. The parents got together and agreed that some jail time would serve as an excellent lesson to their wayward sons. During their time in jail, one of the boys was horribly abused by some seasoned criminals. He suffered a mental breakdown and never fully recovered from the experience. Lesson learned.

The idea of being forsaken by one’s parents is painful. Parents are supposed to be primary caregivers, and to abandon a child—especially when that child is in desperate need—is an offense to most people. The idea of God abandoning Jesus at his greatest time of need is a nightmare. After all, if God would do that to Jesus, would he also do it to us?

There are theories about what is really going on when Jesus cries out, agonizing over being abandoned by God. One is that the divine part of Jesus is extracted so that the human part fully suffers. Another is that God needs an innocent, perfect person to suffer and die in the place of the human race, and he turns his back on Jesus so that his anger can be fully satisfied. There are other theories as well.

Jesus, however, is not crying out simply from his own place of pain, uttering words that are his own. He is quoting from the Hebrew scriptures, speaking the words of a text that would have been familiar to the Jewish people gathered at his execution:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?  Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?  O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer;  and by night, but find no rest. (Psalm 22:1-2)

Perhaps the rest of the Psalm would echo through the minds of the people on that day, as the psalmist describes agonies that correspond to the pain suffered by one being crucified:

All who see me mock at me;  they make mouths at me, they shake their heads. . . I am poured out like water,  and all my bones are out of joint;  my heart is like wax;  it is melted within my breast;  my mouth is dried up like a potsherd,  and my tongue sticks to my jaws;  you lay me in the dust of death. For dogs are all around me;  a company of evildoers encircles me.  My hands and feet have shriveled;  I can count all my bones.  They stare and gloat over me;  they divide my clothes among themselves,  and for my clothing they cast lots. (Psalm 22:7, 14-18)

In the last words of Jesus, words that sound desolate and alone, the agony of Israel in exile is mirrored. Yes, there is a prophetic ring to the Psalm as Jesus enacts the descriptions of suffering that the psalmist so strikingly describes. But there is something else happening as well: In his suffering, Jesus is fully identifying with Israel’s sense of abandonment. Israel continues to ask when they will be liberated from foreign powers, and Jesus takes that cry into himself.

God, in Jesus, has not left the scene of suffering, turning his back impassively, waiting for his wrath to be assuaged. God is fully present in Jesus, indentifying to the point of death with Israel’s condition—and, ultimately, the condition of the entire world.

And, in our condition, God continues to identify and share our pain, fully identifying his life with ours.

Holy Week, Day Three: The Last Words of Jesus

2011-04-19T06:14:00.000-07:00

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (John 19:26-27)

My college chaplain used to say that he worried about the big things of life, while his wife worried about the little things. He worried about big things: the economy, war, social upheaval, and national politics. His wife worried about the little things: what they would eat, where they would live, how the bills would get paid. He thought that was a reasonable trade-off. He was, of course, joking.

Jesus dying on the cross was a big thing. It was big because first, he represented all of Israel in that place of death. He took within himself all the suffering and pain that Rome could dish out to a people that had lost their way. It was also big because, as Israel represented the entire world to God, so did Jesus die on behalf of the world. He took on the inevitability of human death that stalks all people of the world. And it was big because a real human life was being slowly snuffed out in a horrible, tortuous way.

While hanging on that cross, Jesus expressed concern about a little thing: His mother’s care. But why did he bother to do that, especially under those circumstances? Certainly Jesus had other family members who could care for her; why John, his close friend and disciple?

Maybe there is a clue in something else that Jesus said. He once looked at his followers and claimed them as his own family:

“Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:49b-50)

In his last words to Mary and John, Jesus seemed to be redefining what it meant to be a family in the present reality of God’s kingdom. His mother and his friend had faithfully followed him, even to the place of his death. In their solidarity with him they entered into a new relationship that was not boundaried by genetics or bloodlines, but rather by faith. Mary would not be a boarder in John’s house; she would be his mother. John would not be Mary’s landlord; he would be her son.

There is something potentially wonderful about families that are made up of parents and children. But life in the kingdom of God creates a new kind of family that binds us together in a way that transcends the hereditary. Rather than defining family as being grounded in a common DNA, family is now grounded in common faithfulness. This new family embraces its members not because there is genetic necessity, but because the glue that holds it together is God’s love.

It is also a risky family because it is one designed to take in and care for the stranger. The ethic of hospitality runs deeply through the shared life of the people of God, and it always shakes things up, taking the commonplace and predictable and turning them into the risky and questionable. Such is the life of this new family.

Were can this new family be found? Sometimes it is in churches, or at least in aspects of churches. Other times it is found more organically among people gathered in non-traditional settings. It isn’t usually found in contexts that are grounded in common interest or a comfortable chemistry. There is too much safety in those settings, and it’s too easy to violate the predictability of the environments to allow for hospitality. It can only be found when the common ground is the love of God.

Holy Week, Day Two: The Last Words of Jesus

2011-04-18T07:06:00.000-07:00

“Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

The desire for power drives much of the drama of humanity’s story. Posturing for advantage and control underlies most of the conflicts of history, both global and local.

In Mark’s gospel (chapter 10), James and John approach Jesus and ask for the positions at his right and left when he comes to a place of power. Jesus says that they do not understand what they are asking, and that those places are not his to grant. The other disciples are angered when they hear about the request, possibly because they hadn’t thought of it first.

At the end of the story, both Luke and Mark subtly address the irony of that request for advantage:

When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. (Luke 23:33)

It appears that the power to grant the places to the right and left of Jesus came from the power of Rome rather than from Jesus. Jesus’ executioners decided who would be on either side of Jesus, and these would not be places of power, as James and John wrongly assumed. These were powerless places, places that would end in death.

It is from the right and the left that Jesus hears conflicting interpretations about what is happening to him. One man mocks him, ridiculing Jesus’ so-called messiahship that appears to have no ability to save anyone from the power of the Empire. The other man offers a rebuke to the first:

“Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.” (Luke 23:40b-41)

This condemned criminal sees what others have missed: Jesus is innocent. He shares the place of the criminals’ death but he doesn’t belong there. The religious leaders and the power of Rome have come together to label Jesus as a wrongdoer, one deserving death, but the criminal knows otherwise. In his place of powerlessness, he sees the truth about Jesus.

This, however, is all that he knows. There is no evidence of theological depth or a correctness of understanding of faith that could be labeled “Christian.” He has not believed in Jesus because Jesus died for his sins; he and Jesus still live. All he knows is that Jesus is innocent, and that God must be with him. That is probably why he made a request that stands in sharp contrast to that of James and John:

“Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” (Luke 23:42)

Jesus promise that the two of them will indeed be together in “Paradise,” the anticipated place of rest that will follow death. Even before resurrection there will be rest in Paradise, and the man will enjoy that rest simply because he asked to be remembered.

Once again, Jesus reaches out, even in his agony, to the least among the people. A dying criminal has no credentials of righteousness or any claim to a reward. But this one was remembered, and Jesus did not cross to the other side of death that day alone.

Holy Week, Day One: The Last Words of Jesus

2011-04-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

“Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).

In his book The Source of Life, Jürgen Moltmann reflects on his time as a POW in Scotland and England. He had been a German Air Force pilot during World War II, was captured, and detained until 1948. During that time, he claims, through the kindness of the local people around the camp, he gave his life to Jesus Christ. After the end of the war but before he was sent home, he and some others were given permission to attend a theological conference, an event that was to be a profound gift to him, in ways that he did not anticipate.

At the conference some Dutch students approached Moltmann and his friends and described the loss they had suffered at the hands of the Germans. Moltmann was crushed by the guilt that he felt, and feared that this new life he had found was about the crash to the ground. But the students’ tone changed. They said that, because of Jesus, they could now reach out in forgiveness and become brothers in Christ with the ones who had been their former enemies.

In war, as in other tragic places of human conflict, people do not know what they are doing. Moltmann thought he was being loyal to his country, but had been duped by Hitler and his thugs. But he didn’t know what he was really doing. The Dutch students’ revealed the truth about what he had done, and then offered forgiveness. First, the guilt was identified and acknowledged; then the power of forgiveness reordered the relational landscape.

Jesus had been horribly mistreated, and then crucified as though he were a criminal. His own people had turned on him and conspired with the Romans to subject him to the most tortuous death the Empire had sanctioned for its non-citizens. Everything about this was wrong, and Jesus could still see the faces of those who despised him as he slowly died on the cross.

We Christians today celebrate the cross as the primary icon of our faith. The earliest Christians shied away from the cross as a symbol because of the horror associated with it. Sometimes we speak of Jesus’ death on the cross as if it were the only significant event of his life, something even orchestrated by God. Yet, Jesus asks for those who are killing him to be forgiven. What they are doing is not a good thing; it is in line with the historic sin of Israel, a sin that Jesus lamented:

“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!” (Matthew 23:37a)

Christian thinkers over the decades following the events of the gospels thought deeply about what it meant that God would fully inhabit a human life, suffer, die, and be raised from death. They would find a depth to God’s forgiveness in this story—a story they found themselves still experiencing—that went far beyond anything they had ever before considered. They would be stunned to realize that God’s love broke all the boundaries of ethnicity, gender, and socio-economic status (“There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.” – Galatians 3:28).

It is easy to put boundaries around forgiveness, to limit even God’s mercy and love. We see the limits of our own understanding challenged when Jesus, before the pivotal moment of his death, asks that God forgive the people who have seen to his murder. I believe we can be confident that God heard his prayer. That before the death of Jesus, before the people could repent of their crime, Jesus asked that they would be forgiven. If there are boundaries to the love of God, we do not truly know what they are, as much as we might like to make that claim.

Not even our theologies, it seems, can limit God’s love and forgiveness.

A Devotional for the Thirty-Ninth Day of Lent

2011-04-16T08:12:00.000-07:00

O Lord, what are human beings that you regard them,  or mortals that you think of them?  They are like a breath;  their days are like a passing shadow. (Psalm 144:3-4)

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord”, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more. (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

In a course on ministry, my teaching partner and I ask our students to respond in writing to the question, “If God is thinking about you right now, what is on his mind?” You would think that a group of seminary students would be fairly positive in their answers, but the majority usually struggle with the idea that God is thinking anything positive about them, or even thinking about them at all. It’s a tough place for them to be, and it has changed the way we teach the course.

I wonder if the responses of my students mirror the way most people feel about God. Certainly the psalmist reflects on the temporal nature of human life. We are born, we live for a while, and sooner or later we die. People just seem to come and go on planet earth, like a bunch of shadows that ultimately lack any substance. Why would God be concerned about these mortal puffs of wind?

One of the crazy things about the Bible is that it keeps telling the story of the God who thinks constantly, cares deeply, and acts redemptively toward human beings. Yes, there is much said about God’s anger and wrath, but most of that is consequential; God’s wrath is usually expressed in people getting what results from their misbehavior. Even so, God keeps coming back at people, renewing covenants, forgiving sin, bringing hope and promise. This God of greatness keeps coming at us, living among us, drawing us toward him in love and healing. It’s a crazy story. But it’s crazy enough to bring us hope.

Jeremiah seems to describe God’s plan to have a people that no longer “know” him by regulation and requirement, but instead really know him deep within their lives. They will be a people who have experienced the pain of corporate sin, because their entire nation—a nation raised up by God to be his light in the world—turned from God and everyone suffered for it. They will become a people who know God through the transformation of forgiveness, and they will know him as they never have before.

What is God thinking of us—you and me—right now? What do you see in your mind? Is he angry and looking for something to smite you with? Is his back turned because he is disgusted with you? Is he simply preoccupied with things greater than our skinny little existences, and can’t be bothered with thinking about us in the first place? Or is he reaching out, as a loving Father to a broken, wayward child who is stumbling home, hoping for a crumb of bread, only to find a feast spread out, the music turned up, and joy enough for everyone?

God is thinking of you right now. What does he think?

A Devotional for the Thirty-Eighth Day of Lent

2011-04-15T06:15:00.000-07:00

All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord;  and all the families of the nations shall worship before him. For dominion belongs to the Lord, and he rules over the nations. (Psalm 22:27-28)

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29:4-7)

When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well . . . (John 12:9-10)

I’ve heard it said that Christianity is a club that exists for the benefit of its non-members.

The movie Of Gods and Men tells the true story of a group of Trappist monks who live and minister in a Muslim community in Algeria. The monks gather daily for prayer and worship, but the rest of their time is spent caring for the people of the community with prayer, medicine, counsel, and friendship.

Too often the Christian faith is viewed (both by outsiders and insiders) as a religion that one must get into, with the objective of getting each member into heaven one he or she dies. The above movie suggests a way of living out the way of Jesus that is very different from the former view, and is probably much more in line with Scripture. It is also offers the challenging idea that Christians could intentionally be among non-Christians (Muslims, no less!) and love, serve, and care for them, looking for the presence of God among them.

That God would be generous to those who are not technically the people of God has scandalized religious people for thousands of years. Yet our Scriptures point to God’s generous desire for the entire world; his longing that all nations would turn to him and worship. While the Bible also speaks of judgment, God’s heart for the world cannot be overlooked.

Even when the people of Israel are hauled off into exile, God tells them to settle in and live, but also to pray for the welfare of the non-Jewish nation that has brought them into exile. The words offered by Jeremiah must have puzzled the ancient Jewish people. Why pray for those who had taken them captive?

We see God’s generosity clearly in Jesus. His critics found his care for the poor, sick, and marginalized to be an offense against respectable religion because he preferred people over regulations. Jesus even reached out to the dead, including raising his friend Lazarus from the grave. Even that upset the religious leaders, so much so that they planned to do away with Lazarus. I suppose it didn’t occur to them that if Jesus could do it once he could do it again.

Still today religious people sometimes bristle at the idea of God’s generosity toward the world. It can be offensive to hear that your own certainties about being “in” while others are “out” might be wrong. Yet our Scriptures point us to being a people through whom all the families of the earth will find blessing; that we would pray for our apparent enemies and seek their welfare.

I think those Trappist monks had it right. Yet, in the end, even they paid a high price for their faithfulness. You’ll have to see the movie to know what I mean.

A Devotional for the Thirty-Seventh Day of Lent

2011-04-14T07:19:00.000-07:00

[Jesus] went away again across the Jordan to the place where John had been baptizing earlier, and he remained there. Many came to him, and they were saying, “John performed no sign, but everything that John said about this man was true.” And many believed in him there. (John 10:40-42)

O Lord, my heart is not lifted up,  my eyes are not raised too high;  I do not occupy myself with things  too great and too marvelous for me.  But I have calmed and quieted my soul,  like a weaned child with its mother;  my soul is like the weaned child that is with me. (Psalm 131:1-2)

Many years ago we took part in a simple Easter sunrise service on the beach. Only twenty or thirty people showed up (it was, after all, very early and very cold), but the time was rich with worship and sharing. Our pastor offered a short message that was inviting and deep.

As we gathered, I noticed a young man jogging along the shore. I knew him—we were both in the Navy at the time, and I was aware that he lived near the beach. He saw me, stopped, and listened for a while. At the end, he asked me who the guy was doing the speaking. I explained that it was our pastor, and my friend went directly to him to talk. I found out, minutes later, that he prayed to trust his life to Jesus. Over the next year before we got out of the Navy, we had the joy of serving together in that church.

I know that we religious people are good at celebrating things like Christmas and Easter in a big way. Yet both events took place originally at the margins of the human community. King Herod was making a lot of noise while Jesus was quietly born in a stable. Just before Jesus’ resurrection, the drama was found in the city, where the religious leaders conspired to do away with him. John chapter 10 tells of Jesus withdrawing from the accusations of the leaders and heading back across the Jordan, where others came to believe in him. Bigness and excitement do not always translate into environments where God is doing his best work.

In the US, we can move from zero to 60 in a flash, and then stop on a dime and do it all again. We can do things bigger and more exciting than almost anyone, but that doesn’t always translate into the best. When it comes to God’s work among people, much of it happens in quiet, undramatic places: Jesus is born at the margins of the city, and God becomes man; Jesus withdraws to pray, and his disciples become his answer to prayer; Jesus dies in a lonely place outside of Jerusalem, and God absorbs all the power of sin and death; God raises Jesus with only a few terrified Roman guards as witnesses, and sin and death are defanged while all things begin to be made new.

Quiet is a difficult thing for many of us. We have so much informational and entertainment-oriented input that our cultural ADHD is rampant. For us, it is work to find a quiet place. But it may actually be the place where God waits to offer his touch, his word, his healing. The psalmist may have been thinking of lofty things when he referred to “great and marvelous,” but those things for us might be the cacophony that surrounds us on a daily basis. They might only be great and marvelous in their dominance and volume.

I wonder if Jesus still goes to the lonely quiet places that are outside of our daily dramas. I wonder if he goes there to meet us, and then waits, and waits, and waits.

Lord, have mercy.

A Devotional for the Thirty-Sixth Day of Lent

2011-04-13T07:03:00.000-07:00

If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities,  Lord, who could stand?  But there is forgiveness with you,  so that you may be revered. (Psalm 130:3-4)

Again I ask, did Israel not understand? First Moses says,  ”I will make you jealous of those who are not a nation;  with a foolish nation I will make you angry.”  Then Isaiah is so bold as to say,  “I have been found by those who did not seek me;  I have shown myself to those who did not ask for me.”  But of Israel he says, “All day long I have held out my hands to a disobedient and contrary people.” (Romans 10:19-21)

I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. (John 10:14-16)

The story of the downfall of the ancient city of Sodom is a dismal one. It is often thought that that Sodom’s crime was a sexual one. But the prophet Ezekiel interprets things differently:

This was the guilt of your sister Sodom: she and her daughters had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy. (Ezekiel 16:49)

The people of Sodom violated a fundamental code of the ancient near east: Hospitality. The strangers visiting Lot should have been treated kindly by the community. Instead, the men of Sodom sought to violate the visitors in the most degrading way they could imagine. Apparently the people of Sodom liked things the way they were, and having strangers in town shook their system of life. It also offered them a possible distraction from the boredom of excess. It’s a scandalous story.

The story of the people of God is also a scandalous one. First, the one (Abraham and his descendants, who will be become Israel) are chosen for the sake and blessing of the many (all the families of the earth). Then Israel repeatedly turns away from God in order to compete with the very nations they were called to bless. God himself becomes scandalous to Israel when he reaches out to people groups that are not Israel. Jesus repeats this scandal when he speaks of “other sheep” who will listen to his voice.

The Apostle Paul’s quoting of Isaiah shows that God’s heart is for more than just a select few. Isaiah speaks of God revealing himself to those who haven’t even asked for him. When you consider yourself to be part of God’s original chosen people, those are fighting words.

I sometimes wonder if the complacency that characterized Israel in those days could be found in the complex and fractured world of the church. We sometimes think that being a Christian is about describing who is in with God versus who is out, and end up viewing ourselves as a kind of select few. How are we so different from our spiritual forebears of Israel? How shocked we might be if the prophetic word came to us that God was reaching out to a people yet unknown to us. What if it ended up being people we considered to be enemies of our faith? We should certainly share Israel’s sense of scandal if that were to happen.

The psalmist points out a profound truth: If God were to list our iniquities—our sins, violations, and failures—no one would have a leg to stand on. But none us—not Jew, not Gentile, not rich or poor, not man or woman—are left standing alone. God himself stands with us, offering forgiveness where there has been sin, so that we might become the people he has always desired.

God’s scandalous ways will always violate our non-hospitable sensibilities. That’s how most of us came to faith in the first place.

A Devotional for the Thirty-Fifth Day of Lent

2011-04-12T07:13:00.000-07:00

I lift up my eyes to the hills—from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord,  who made heaven and earth.
He will not let your foot be moved;  he who keeps you will not slumber.  He who keeps Israel  will neither slumber nor sleep.
The Lord is your keeper;  the Lord is your shade at your right hand.  The sun shall not strike you by day,  nor the moon by night.
The Lord will keep you from all evil;  he will keep your life. The Lord will keep  your going out and your coming in  from this time on and for evermore. (Psalm 121)

So for the second time they called the man who had been blind, and they said to him, “Give glory to God! We know that this man is a sinner.” He answered, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see.” They said to him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” Then they reviled him . . . (John 9:24-28)

I was blessed to grow up in a home where I felt protected. When I was at home, I always felt safe. When I was out and about—playing with my friends, going to and from school—unpleasant things sometimes happened to me that caused me to feel unprotected and threatened. But I knew that home was around the corner, and once I arrived there, my fear and pain would diminish and I would find safety again.

The Psalmist sings of God’s great protection, and it is a beautiful word of comfort and hope. The ancient people of Israel would reflect on this psalm, as many would do in years to come, even in the midst of pain and suffering. The opening line is telling: The song begins by looking for help. The longing for God’s protection comes when protection is needed the most.

After Jesus healed the man who was born blind, the man’s day must have been spent trying to adjust to his new sense of vision and to try to make sense of all things he was seeing. He would drive his family and friends crazy asking them who was who, and what certain things were. There would be laughter and joy as everyone celebrated God’s goodness. But soon thereafter, trouble comes. The religious leaders are not happy with what Jesus is doing, and the formerly blind man is brought in for questioning. When they don’t get the answers they want, they treat the man abusively and kick him out.

Trusting in God doesn’t mean that we escape the evil and suffering that is characteristic of our world. But our trust is in the God who does not let those things have the last word in our lives. Even when circumstances lead to death, we can still trust God for the life that is yet to come. When sin and death are rendered toothless, we are able to live in the midst of pain as we trust the One who has conquered it all.

A Devotional for the Thirty-Fourth Day of Lent

2011-04-11T06:30:00.000-07:00

The Lord showed me two baskets of figs placed before the temple of the Lord. This was after King Nebuchadrezzar of Babylon had taken into exile from Jerusalem King Jeconiah son of Jehoiakim of Judah, together with the officials of Judah, the artisans, and the smiths, and had brought them to Babylon. One basket had very good figs, like first-ripe figs, but the other basket had very bad figs, so bad that they could not be eaten. And the Lord said to me, “What do you see, Jeremiah?” I said, “Figs, the good figs very good, and the bad figs very bad, so bad that they cannot be eaten.”
Then the word of the Lord came to me: Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I have sent away from this place to the land of the Chaldeans. I will set my eyes upon them for good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up, and not tear them down; I will plant them, and not pluck them up. I will give them a heart to know that I am the Lord; and they shall be my people and I will be their God, for they shall return to me with their whole heart. (Jeremiah 24:1-7)

As he walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (John 9:1-3)

Right after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, I met a man near New Orleans who had lost everything he owned—his home, his business—when the storm hit. His family was safe, but he remained in the area, attempting to assist family members whose homes had been destroyed. He told me that he and his wife had been talking about God and church lately, but had taken no new steps of faith in their lives. He suggested that this was how God decided to get his attention. My friends and I tried to help him see that God probably didn’t decide to wipe out the entire Gulf coast just to get the man to clean up his act.

The people of Israel might have been thinking along those lines when everything came crashing down for them. Even though there were people, such as their king and other leaders, who had led the nation astray, there were others who remained faithful to God. Even so, everyone suffered the consequences of the nation’s sin. Jeremiah points out the God was fully aware of this, and rather than let the faithful ones languish in exile, he promises them a future in which they will know him and carry the true identity as his people.

Jesus’ disciples wanted a reason for the blindness of the man they encountered. For them, the man’s condition had to be a result of someone’s sin. But Jesus counters that belief when he says that there is no connection, but rather that this was an opportunity for God’s works to be revealed.

But wasn’t there purpose in the man’s blindness? After all, Jesus does say that the man was born blind “so that.” However, all people are born so that God’s works might be revealed in them. This man’s blindness pushed him outside the respectability of the Jewish community. Most would assume that God had cursed him. Now this blindness would be broken so that God’s intentions for the world would be shown to all. Through the man God would show that sickness and disease would not have the last word in God’s kingdom; those who were perceived to be at the margins of faithfulness would be drawn to God’s center.

There is a puzzle to God’s faithfulness. While good people suffer as frequently as bad people, God enters into those painful realities to bring hope and promise to those who will turn to him. We often see suffering as the equivalent of a lightning bolt from heaven (cosmic antics attributed to Zeus rather than to the God of the Bible), when it is part of all earthly brokenness. But God still enters in, and his faithfulness trumps all grief.

A Devotional for the Thirty-Third Day of Lent

2011-04-10T07:33:00.000-07:00

Thus says the Lord of hosts: Do not listen to the words of the prophets who prophesy to you; they are deluding you. They speak visions of their own minds, not from the mouth of the Lord. They keep saying to those who despise the word of the Lord, ‘It shall be well with you’; and to all who stubbornly follow their own stubborn hearts, they say, ‘No calamity shall come upon you.’ (Jeremiah 23:16-17)

But turning and looking at his disciples, [Jesus] rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. (Mark 8:33-34)

In the ancient world, it was common for a runner to be dispatched from the front lines of a battle to report the status of the troops to the military leaders. There was a Greek word used to describe the message when it was one of victory, and in English we usually translate that word as good news, or gospel (gospel is the Old English word for good news). It is the word used when Jesus says,

‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.’

If that runner, however, brought his message of victory to the side that was losing, his message would he received as bad news, and he would probably suffer for bringing it. What is good news for one may be bad news for another.

The prophets of Jeremiah’s day seemed to be in denial over the plight of Israel. They claimed to have dreams and visions of everything being alright when in fact they were about to be overrun by foreign invaders. As a result, the people had no motivation to turn back to the Lord. The delusion allowed them to return to business as usual. The prophets claimed to have good news, but they were wrong.

In the weeks following the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the US, people flocked to churches, looking for answers, hope, and comfort. Soon, however, most churches returned to their usual, familiar congregations as those visitors drifted away. It is very possible that these visitors wanted a return to what had been normal, and being part of a congregation wasn’t a part of their business as usual.

Most of us can relate to that. Good news for us is often having things the way we prefer them to be. Jesus recognized this with his own followers. When he spoke of his impending suffering and death, Peter got after him. To speak of such a thing could not possibly be good news. But Jesus challenged Peter rather harshly, and then told the crowd that had gathered that to follow him would be to take a path that was very different than “business as usual.”

In Jesus Christ, there is good news. The good news is that the kingdom of God has indeed broken into human history, and the twin powers of sin and death have been disarmed. But this good news does not translate into “life as I prefer it.” It is a new life under the rule of God, and that takes a very different form than can be considered normal in any nation or culture. That is one reason that following Jesus can be perilous: When the status quo is challenged, danger is a distinct possibility.

It is a good thing for us to reflect on the meaning of this good news of God’s kingdom, and to try to disengage it from our American, British, Bulgarian, or Chinese cultural preferences. The call of the people of God is to bring blessing to all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:1-3), but that includes the proclamation of good news. This is the good news that comes from the victory of God, and it may be very different from business as usual.

A Devotional for the Thirty-Second Day of Lent

2011-04-09T08:24:00.000-07:00

Let this be recorded for a generation to come,  so that a people yet unborn may praise the Lord: that he looked down from his holy height,  from heaven the Lord looked at the earth,  to hear the groans of the prisoners,  to set free those who were doomed to die;  so that the name of the Lord may be declared in Zion,  and his praise in Jerusalem,  when peoples gather together,  and kingdoms, to worship the Lord. (Psalm 102:18-22)

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. So Jesus asked the twelve, ‘Do you also wish to go away?’ Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Did I not choose you, the twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.’ He was speaking of Judas son of Simon Iscariot, for he, though one of the twelve, was going to betray him. (John 6:66-71)

My office is in a business complex that is shared by a vocational training school. Many of the students are training to work in the field of nursing. You can tell who they are, because at their break times they gather outside, wearing their green scrubs, and smoke cigarettes with their teachers. I marvel at this. With all the research that has emerged over the last few decades about the health hazards associated with cigarettes, you would think that young people preparing for careers in health care would have caught onto that reality. One would hope that the succeeding generations would grasp this better than their forebears, but apparently that isn’t the case.

The psalmist continues to lament Israel’s adversity, but also hopes that future generations will learn of God’s faithfulness and respond in a way that avoids the disasters of those who have gone before them. He dreams of descendants who have not yet come into the world, who will not bend the knee to idols or engage in acts of injustice and oppression, but instead will praise the Lord.

I wonder if Jesus thought about this Psalm during the events that were recorded in John 6. He has pressed the people who have been following him—people who have considered themselves to be his disciples—by speaking of the hard realities of truly being God’s people. Many of them, while enjoying his miraculous works, didn’t much care for the real life of following Jesus, and they took off. The only ones remaining were his original twelve disciples, including Judas. So, while Jesus still has followers, a band of men who represent all of Israel, there is still danger in the ranks.

Again, it is God’s faithfulness to his people and to the world that comes to the forefront. Judas, along with the others, were an answer to Jesus’ prayer when he his out in the wilderness for forty days. Jesus prays for those who would follow him, and he gets Judas. To be fair, he also gets Peter, who chickens out at the end, and Thomas, who is cynical about the resurrection. In their frailty and confusion, these twelve represent all of God’s people to Jesus. They are the psalmist’s future generation of hope. But God remains faithful to them, even in their failure.

This is good for us to remember. Each successive generation simultaneously responds to and reacts against God. The various factions of the church continue to reflect faithfulness and worship while simultaneously acting out in brokenness and sin. We can be a bi-polar people, just like those who have gone before us.

In John 17, Jesus prays, ‘I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me’ (vv. 20-21).

Jesus prays this prayer, and he gets us.

Lord, have mercy.

A Devotional for the Thirty-First Day of Lent

2011-04-08T07:36:00.000-07:00

O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;  for his steadfast love endures for ever.  Let the redeemed of the Lord say so,  those he redeemed from trouble  and gathered in from the lands,  from the east and from the west,  from the north and from the south. (Psalm 107:1-3)

Therefore, the days are surely coming, says the Lord, when it shall no longer be said, ‘As the Lord lives who brought the people of Israel up out of the land of Egypt’, but ‘As the Lord lives who brought out and led the offspring of the house of Israel out of the land of the north and out of all the lands where he had driven them.’ (Jeremiah 23:7-8a)

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

The people of God always seem to be a people in exile. First, God rescues the ancient Hebrews from their bondage in Egypt. Then, many generations later, the entire nation of Israel turns from God, is overrun by foreign invaders, and hauled off into exile. As they did in Egypt, they began to cry out to the Lord, and he opened the way for them to come home again. The psalmist celebrates God’s goodness in saving his people from trouble.

Jeremiah acknowledges that Israel’s relationship to God is a rescuing one. Early on they claimed the identity of a people that had been rescued from slavery in Egypt; in the era after their exile, they would claim the identity of a people that had been liberated from lands other than their own. While this liberation would bring them home, they would still be under the dominance of foreign rulers. They would be in a kind of house arrest in Israel, but at least they would be home.

It’s difficult today for us to think of ourselves as being a people in exile, especially in the US. Because of a sense of freedom, it doesn’t usually occur to us to think about being dominated by outside powers. But in every land, whether the US, Venezuela, Lithuania, or England, the people of God are a people in exile. All nations are centered on self-interest and, while people might benefit materially at times by that, it is a very different interest than that of God’s.

There is another exile in which all people live: It is the exile into the inevitability of suffering and death. We go from day to day as if these things aren’t lurking outside our doors, but they are. People who suffer often find themselves in isolation—a kind of personal exile from the land of the living. Those who grieve the loss of a loved one feel as though they have been hauled off into the shadows of loneliness, a place where others need not go.

In the midst of this exile, the people of God gather to declare a different reality. The God who has always rescued his people is the God who is with us, and he is present in our exile. When we gather around those who suffer and those who mourn, sharing their pain, we participate in what God is doing in those who are hurting. When the people of God live out the reality of God’s rescue in communities of faith, care, and love, isolation is broken. While we may still live with the threat of suffering and death, we enact God’s love as we care for one another; in that enactment we not only trust in God’s presence with us, sharing our suffering and grief, but we also hope in a future when God will make all things new.

“See, the home of God is among mortals.  He will dwell with them;  they will be his peoples,  and God himself will be with them;  he will wipe every tear from their eyes.  Death will be no more;  mourning and crying and pain will be no more,  for the first things have passed away.’ (Revelation 21:3-4)

A Devotional for the Thirtieth Day of Lent

2011-04-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

You know the insults I receive,  and my shame and dishonor;  my foes are all known to you.  Insults have broken my heart,  so that I am in despair.  I looked for pity, but there was none;  and for comforters, but I found none.  They gave me poison for food,  and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink. (Psalm 69:19-21)

Then the Jews began to complain about him because he said, “I am the bread that came down from heaven.” They were saying, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?” Jesus answered them, “Do not complain among yourselves. No one can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me; and I will raise that person up on the last day.” (John 6:41-44)

Psalm 69 contains a reference that is usually characterized as prophetic in that it points to Jesus. While it was written long before Jesus’ time, it refers to one who is suffering and is given vinegar to drink, just as Jesus would one day be given vinegar (actually, cheap wine) as he suffered on the cross. There are a number of such prophetic references in the Old Testament, and Christians have long cherished them as prophecies that were fulfilled in Jesus.

Most if not all of these prophetic texts originally refer to Israel. They speak to an Israel that suffers, is mistreated, and so on. While there is great value in recognizing the prophetic quality of these texts, there is something else to consider: Within these prophetic links, we see God, in and through Jesus, fully identifying with the life of Israel and ultimately with the entire world.

The psalmist speaks of insults and shame. We see Jesus suffering those same things. When Jesus is dying on the cross he cries out the utterly lonely words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) These words are often interpreted as Jesus crying out in isolated despair, which may have been true. But he was also quoting from a familiar Psalm (22), as Israel cries out in exile. In his suffering and death, Jesus identifies with the people to whom he was sent and who have rejected him. In and through Jesus, God fully identifies with all of us.

I believe that this is important. God is sometimes viewed by people as being distant and crafty, orchestrating disasters, pain, suffering, and loss for some mysterious and unknown purpose. Yet, in Jesus, we see God entering fully into human life, suffering, and death. This is no distant God who does not relate to us, but one fully engaged with all that it means to be human.

Some friends of mine just suffered the tragic loss of a loved one. Will we see God as the one who has set this up or allowed it to happen in order to do something that is incomprehensible to us, and that could only be acheived by this dark event? Or will we see God entering fully into the pain of this loss, grieving with us on the one hand, but also receiving the one who has left us with joy and eternal love?

We think of God being King, of being “in control,” and so we wonder why things like this happen. Is God not strong enough or not willing enough to stop tragedy? I believe that God is indeed King, but he rules over a broken and desperate world, where sin, suffering, and death are still active. But in Jesus, who fully identifies with our wounded condition, those oppressors of human life have been confronted and disarmed, and they will no longer have the last word. The God who is with us, the God who shares our tragic existence, will one day silence and destroy those enemies.

In the meantime we are drawn to him, and in the last day, he will raise us up.

A Devotional for the Twenty-Ninth Day of Lent, the Fourth Sunday of Lent

2011-04-06T07:06:00.000-07:00

I will sing of loyalty and of justice;  to you, O Lord, I will sing.  I will study the way that is blameless.  When shall I attain it? (Psalm 101:1-2)

Just like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel. (Jeremiah 18:6b)

Everything that the Father gives me will come to me, and anyone who comes to me I will never drive away; for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me. (John 6:37-38)

A man once explained to me, at length, the benefits of a workout routine. He spoke of muscle tone, cardiac health, and mental clarity. It all sounded glorious and disciplined. It was the life of one who had attained a heightened state of physicality. I marveled at what he appeared to have attained, and despaired at my own lack of devotion to health. After a while I asked the man how long he had been participating in such a rigorous program of exercise. He said, “Two days.” It appeared that he was describing his hopes and intentions more than he was describing his reality.

Psalm 101 describes a life that is fully devoted to God and that shuns all evil. The psalmist claims, “I will not set before my eyes anything that is base” (v. 3a), and “A haughty look and an arrogant heart I will not tolerate” (v. 5b). It all sounds so righteous and sinless, until you return to the opening line of the Psalm: “I will study the way that is blameless.  When shall I attain it?” The Psalm is a reflection on hope and intention rather than on a reality that has escaped all sin.

God, through the prophet Jeremiah, seems to wonder about the hopes and intentions of the people of Israel as well. He describes the work of the potter, who forms a pot out of clay, then seeing its imperfections, tears it apart and reforms it again. God says that he will do that with any nation of people, including Israel. As they turn from him and engage in destructive and oppressive ways, he will tear them down. If they turn from those ways, then God will reform them in his own design. God is not willing to allow sin to reign, but he is also willing to reform those who turn to him into people after his own heart.

Jesus claimed to do only that which was the intention and desire of his Father. When Jesus said, “. . . anyone who comes to me I will never drive away,” he was revealing the heart of the Father. Any who come to him will not be driven away. God does not take injustice, oppression, and—in general—sin lightly, and will not allow them to have the last word. God’s last word is “. . . anyone who comes to me I will never drive away.”

As the Lenten season turns into Easter, we will reflect on the resurrection of Jesus. In his death, we will see that sin and death does indeed win the day when Jesus is killed. But that day is not the final day. When Jesus is raised from death, God shows that he has the last word about who wins the day. And all those who have lost hope, will come to him. They will never be driven away.

A Devotional for the Twenty-Eighth Day of Lent, the Fourth Sunday of Lent

2011-04-05T06:14:00.000-07:00

The heavens proclaim his righteousness;  and all the peoples behold his glory.  All worshippers of images are put to shame,  those who make their boast in worthless idols;  all gods bow down before him. (Psalm 97:6-7)

Thus says the Lord: For the sake of your lives, take care that you do not bear a burden on the Sabbath day or bring it in by the gates of Jerusalem. (Jeremiah 17:21)

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Romans 7:21-25a)

When I entered boot camp many years ago, my world became undone. From one day to the next I was required to do things I had never done before, and to do them with regularity. I had to shave off my hair, wear special clothes, and learn a new language. All this would reform me from a 19-year-old aimless college student into a member of the US Navy, and I would carry this new identity for the next four years. A lot of times I wasn’t happy about the whole thing, but all I could do was resist something that wasn’t going to go away.

God rescued the ancient Hebrew people from their slavery in Egypt, and soon thereafter handed them laws and codes of behavior that would frame their new existence as a people. This was very different from their former life, where they spent their days in forced servitude. They emerged from their captivity with the mindsets of slaves, and Egyptian ones at that. When God required new things from them, it wasn’t sheer legalism, but rather the way they would be reformed as his people, with the one true God at their center rather than the sun god of the Egyptians.

Over time, the people would come to see this life-giving, reforming law of God to be something that was to be obeyed in order to curry God’s favor and to wear the badge of “righteousness.” Keeping the Sabbath became legalistic rather than a joyous time of rest and worship in the presence of God. If you kept the Sabbath, then you were providing evidence of your own righteousness. This was clearly not what God intended.

The Apostle Paul understood this, since he grew up and was nurtured in that same culture. He recognized that to try to do all the right things to please God ended up just showing us how messed up we really were, because we just couldn’t do enough things right to please anyone. His words in Romans 7 are almost humorous: I try to be good with my mind, but my body misbehaves. It’s like having a segmented personality. Everybody, in their hearts, knows how this works, and it causes no end of frustration. Paul winds up by declaring that there is a rescue from this mess, and God himself brings it about in and through Jesus Christ. God is not waiting around for us to make him happy; when we are at our messiest, he saves us from all forms of condemnation, especially the kind that we heap on ourselves.

If you’ve been in one of those places where you keep beating yourself up for wrongs that can’t be undone, for past offenses that cause you no end of regret, don’t waste your time bargaining with God about it; he just doesn’t need it, and neither do you. He already knows the messes we’ve created, and still he comes toward us, with arms of forgiveness opened wide, and with a love that transforms broken human hearts into hearts that beat with his rhythms of grace and love. That’s what believing in Jesus is really about: Believing that all he says and does reveals the true heart of God. It’s a belief that is crafted out of wonder and trust.

A Devotional for the Twenty-Sixth Day of Lent, the Fourth Sunday of Lent

2011-04-03T07:42:00.000-07:00

O hope of Israel,  its savior in time of trouble,  why should you be like a stranger in the land,  like a traveler turning aside for the night?  Why should you be like someone confused,  like a mighty warrior who cannot give help?  Yet you, O Lord, are in the midst of us,  and we are called by your name;  do not forsake us!

You shall say to them this word:  Let my eyes run down with tears night and day,  and let them not cease,  for the virgin daughter—my people—is struck down with a crushing blow,  with a very grievous wound.  If I go out into the field,  look—those killed by the sword!  And if I enter the city,  look—those sick with famine!  For both prophet and priest ply their trade throughout the land,  and have no knowledge. (Jeremiah 14:8-9, 17-18)

May God be gracious to us and bless us  and make his face to shine upon us,  that your way may be known upon earth,  your saving power among all nations.  Let the peoples praise you, O God;  let all the peoples praise you.
Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,  for you judge the peoples with equity  and guide the nations upon earth.  Let the peoples praise you, O God;  let all the peoples praise you. (Psalm 67:1-5)

I became a public school teacher right after college. My principal was a great guy, but he never really saw what I was up to in my classroom. My annual review consisted of him dropping in for 15 or 20 minutes during a lesson, and then telling me that I was doing fine. I appreciated that he trusted me to do my job, but I recognized that he wasn’t really present to my work, and he didn’t really know what was going on in my little world. Had I not known him better, I would have concluded that he didn’t really care.

Jeremiah offers a paradoxical lament: God seems to be unavailable to the self-inflicted troubles of Israel, yet he is present in the midst of his people. Jeremiah believed in God’s presence rather than in God’s detachment, but the devastating circumstances of Israel’s destruction and exile suggested that God had forgotten his people.

But Jeremiah hears a word from the Lord and passes it on: God is present to all the horror of Israel’s downfall. He weeps with grief at the death and disease that now characterizes what remains of Israel. While Israel’s destruction has come as a consequence of the nation’s own actions, God is still present, experiencing with the people—a people who have turned away from him!—all their pain and suffering.

We often talk about God as though he is “up there” while we are “down here.” While the Bible clearly shows God to be above and beyond all creaturely existence, he is also shown to be fully present to the world. Sometimes we look at natural disasters, disease, or war as something God inflicts from afar in order to punish wicked people. It rarely seems to occur to us that God is suffering along with those who suffer, much like Jeremiah’s description of God crying over the pain of his wayward people.

The prayer of the psalmist extends the sense of God’s presence and care to the entire world. He looks forward to a time when all nations will respond to God with joy. The people of God will be instrumental in making God’s glory known to the world, but that is a work that comes from the heart of God for the nations.

In our day-to-day grief and longing, God is fully present. Our own limited sight causes us to think he might have forgotten us, but the witness of Scripture gives us hope for his presence and for him to rescue us. Even in our brokenness and pain, God engages, waiting for us to turn and trust him anew.

A Devotional for the Twenty-Fifth Day of Lent

2011-04-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

Who considers the power of your anger?  Your wrath is as great as the fear that is due to you.  So teach us to count our days  that we may gain a wise heart. (Psalm 90:11-12)

For as the loincloth clings to one’s loins, so I made the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah cling to me, says the Lord, in order that they might be for me a people, a name, a praise, and a glory. But they would not listen. (Jeremiah 13:11)

“Whoever is from God hears the words of God. The reason you do not hear them is that you are not from God.” The Jews answered him, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?” Jesus answered, “I do not have a demon; but I honor my Father, and you dishonor me. Yet I do not seek my own glory; there is one who seeks it and he is the judge. Very truly, I tell you, whoever keeps my word will never see death.” (John 8:47-51)

When I was a kid I had a joke card that read, “I’m not hard of hearing, I’m just ignoring you.” I showed it to my aunt, and she insisted that I show it to my uncle. I did show it to him, but for some reason he didn’t think it was very funny. I have come to understand how he felt.

It’s one thing to miss something that has been said or to be unable to hear. It’s another thing to hear and then ignore. It appears that the people of God have a long history of hearing and then ignoring.

The psalmist is offering more than just words of wisdom. He speaks of the people of Israel living out their days in exile, suffering the consequences of their deafness toward God. The psalmist is a realist; he knows they will live one way or the other. They may as well immerse themselves in this new life in order to become wise. Perhaps it will also be a time to learn to listen.

Jeremiah also speaks of God’s lament over Israel’s unwillingness to listen to him. He offers a strange metaphor: His intention was that Israel would be like a loincloth—an undergarment that would cling closely to the skin and the intimate parts of the body. God’s desire was for his people to cling closely to him, to praise and honor him, and to express his glory to the world. Again, their hands were pressed over their ears.

Jesus, many years later, accuses his critics (again, the people of Israel) of not hearing God. Jesus revealed God’s heart for Israel and the world, bringing healing, life, rescue, and assurance of God’s love. The response of the dominant leadership of Israel was to suggest that Jesus was not really a Jew but, instead, a Samaritan (Jewish people did not think highly of Samaritans), and also that he was inhabited by demonic forces. Jesus reminds him that his way lines up with God’s eternal intentions. In that way is life. But the people seem to keep choosing death.

I’m not sure we’ve gotten a whole lot better at listening. Every time someone comes up with a way of looking at the Bible or thinking about God that challenges some dominant dogma, people start throwing around accusations of heresy, blasphemy, charlatanism, and so on. Usually these claims are made absent of any form of listening. Not every new idea is good, but the refusal to listen can be a symptom of a much deeper problem: Deafness to anything but our own self-created certainties.
We have to be very careful about this. I suspect that the people who refused to listen to the likes of Jeremiah and Jesus didn’t think they were shutting their ears to God, but they were. Having open ears doesn’t mean that all things are valid, but it does allow us to remain open to the possibility that we’ve gotten something wrong along the way. After all, we religious folks have a long history of getting things wrong.

Sacrifice and offering you do not desire,  but you have given me an open ear. (Psalm 40:6)

A Devotional for the Twenty-Fourth Day of Lent

2011-04-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

O Lord, God of my salvation,  when, at night, I cry out in your presence,  let my prayer come before you;  incline your ear to my cry.

For my soul is full of troubles,  and my life draws near to Sheol.  I am counted among those who go down to the Pit;  I am like those who have no help, like those forsaken among the dead,  like the slain that lie in the grave,  like those whom you remember no more,  for they are cut off from your hand.  (Psalm 88:1-5)

But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 6:8-11)

Stories about post-death existences intrigue me. Vampires, zombies, and ghosts violate the finality of death, but in a way that makes them very unpleasant. They are separated from everything that lives, but they still get to hang around and bother everyone. There is a subtext to these horror stories: Even if death can be cheated, you probably won’t like it much.

The psalmist speaks of death in a desperate way. He feels as though he is already in the company of the dead because it seems like God has forsaken him. For the ancient Hebrews, death was a shadowy post-life experience if it was anything at all. To be consigned to the grave was to be truly gone and forgotten, even by God.

Some might say that for death to simply be the end of life—a shutting off of human consciousness—would be a relief from the stresses of human life. Others see horror in eternal nothingness—such a thing is unfathomable to us. To sleep and never wake is something that perplexes and frightens us.

The older I get the more concerned I am about the whole death thing. I’ve been a follower of Jesus for a pretty long time, but I still find myself fretting from time to time about what happens after death. I appreciate all the metaphors in the Bible about the heavenly city and all that, but I still wonder what it might be like to die and enter a realm that I have never before experienced. Worse yet, what if I’ve been on the wrong track all along, and death is just death, or even an eternal banishment to a mall in New Jersey? You never know.

The apostle Paul, however, speaks of a greater hope than my dark little mind can create. He recognizes the power that sin and death have over human beings. He also understood the magnitude of God, in Jesus Christ, experiencing human death—in essence, allowing the powers that destroy human existence to have their way with him. Paul says, that in the death of Jesus, all human death is represented. He dies on our behalf in that he represents us all in that terminal place.

It is the resurrection of Jesus that gives a sucker punch to death. In the post-death Jesus there is no ghoulie or ghostie, but a new life that destroys death’s power to have the final word for human beings. Paul says that the resurrection of Jesus also represents something for all of us: Hope that we will also be made new, and that death will not speak finally for us.

But there is something more in Paul’s words. Resurrection is more than an anticipated hope; it is a living reality. He says that, if we have died with Christ—that is, if we have trusted our lives to what God has done in Jesus and no longer allow sin to dominate us—then we now fully identify with him in his resurrection. And that means that our lives are now grounded in hope rather than in despair.

Hope changes the way we live today.

A Devotional for the Twenty-Third Day of Lent

2011-03-31T06:50:00.000-07:00

As a deer longs for flowing streams,  so my soul longs for you, O God.  My soul thirsts for God,  for the living God.  When shall I come and behold  the face of God?  My tears have been my food  day and night,  while people say to me continually,  “Where is your God?”

These things I remember,  as I pour out my soul:  how I went with the throng,  and led them in procession to the house of God,  with glad shouts and songs of thanksgiving,  a multitude keeping festival.  Why are you cast down, O my soul,  and why are you disquieted within me?  Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,  my help and my God. (Psalm 42:1-6a)

So Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own, but I speak these things as the Father instructed me. And the one who sent me is with me; he has not left me alone, for I always do what is pleasing to him.” As he was saying these things, many believed in him. (John 8:28-30)

The depth of our desires depends on accessibility. My desire for food may be real, but I am not overwhelmed by it when I stand before my full refrigerator. My desire for friendship doesn’t break my heart when I am surrounded by friends. But take away access and the desires peak.

Right after Emily and I were engaged, I was sent across the country for training in the US Navy. When we were together every day in our hometown, I wanted to be with her, but my desire was met because we had access to one another. While I was on the other side of the country, my desire to be with her was overwhelming because I knew it would not be possible to be together again for several months.

The psalmist speaks of a deep longing to be with God—a thirst for God. This is more than the cry of the pious heart; it is the cry of one who has lost everything. This psalm is a lament about the nation of Israel being crushed by foreign invaders and sent into exile. All that was familiar about their shared life of worship (as corrupt as it had become) was inaccessible to them. The people who had turned from God now demanded to know where God could be found in this disaster. The psalmist speaks of hope, but it is a hope experienced in bondage. He would long for God as a deer longs for flowing streams, especially when those streams have dried to dust.

Ten days after hurricane Katrina demolished the Gulf coast, I traveled with some friends to Louisiana to help people who had been dislocated by the storm. I met several people who confessed that they had been disinterested in God until all they had was lost to them. It was an important part of our time there to reach out to these hurting people.

It’s a bit like for all of us, isn’t it? When things are going well, God seems easily accessible and our longing for him can be minimal. Jesus, however, speaks of the Father differently. He refers to God as the one who is with him, who has not left him alone. Jesus seemed deeply connected to his heavenly Father at all times, and not just when things got rough.

Maybe it would be a good thing to stop every so often and reflect on the things that numb us to God’s presence. Mostly they aren’t bad things; they are the things of everyday life that produce a sense of self-sufficiency. If our paychecks stopped, how quickly would we be on the streets? How easily could sickness, accidents, or disasters leave us alone and desperate? This isn’t an exercise in despair, but rather a reflection on reality. All that we have is tentative and fleeting. When we stop to remember that, desire for God might reappear.

When our desire for God has dried up, hope is still accessible. When we remember who we really are, God becomes real to us, and our desire may now spring to life and be satisfied.

A Devotional for the Twenty-Second Day of Lent

2011-03-30T06:03:00.000-07:00

O that my head were a spring of water,  and my eyes a fountain of tears,  so that I might weep day and night  for the slain of my poor people!  O that I had in the desert  a traveler’s lodging-place,  that I might leave my people  and go away from them!  For they are all adulterers,  a band of traitors. (Jeremiah 9:1-2)

“But my people did not listen to my voice;  Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts,  to follow their own counsels. O that my people would listen to me,  that Israel would walk in my ways!” (Psalm 81:11-13)

Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life.” (John 8:12)

Getting what you want is not always a good deal. In one of my favorite Twilight Zone episodes, a criminal is killed and wakes up in the afterlife. His mysterious host tells him that he now can have everything that he has ever wanted. The man, assuming that this must be heaven, indulges himself in his every desire, getting any woman he wants, always winning at cards and pool, never without a pocket full of cash. After a while, the routine and boredom makes him crazy, so he demands from his host that he be sent to “the other place.” His host smiles wickedly and responds, “But Mr. Valentine, this is the other place.”

After generations of chasing after idols and investing themselves in international politics and conflicts, God finally gave the people of Israel what they wanted: A life without him. God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah in a voice that is filled with grief over the loss of the people. The psalmist, likewise, expresses sadness over the demands of the people to have their own way.

There is a renewed interest, at least among many American Christians, in the topic of hell. While much of the American imagination about hell is more informed by movies and images from Dante’s Inferno than it is by the Bible, it is still a topic worth exploring. In the end, hell appears to be a life without any trace of God, and it can be experienced while people are still alive. How it might work on the other side of death is where the discussion gets really heated. The idea of having some sort of existence without God—not just ignoring God, but having his presence completely extracted—is disturbing enough on its own; that we might exist in such a state because of our own demands is even worse. Hell just might be the ultimate in getting exactly what we want, if what we want is everything on our terms.

Following in the way of Jesus doesn’t always line up with what we want. Yet, Jesus claims that following him removes us from wandering around in darkness and places us in the light of life. I imagine that a life without God is the worst kind of darkness imaginable. It wouldn’t be just the absence of light, but also the absence of goodness, kindness, decency, compassion, and love. Think about being surrounded by like-minded people who lack all of those things because of God’s absence. That would truly be hell.

The very presence of Jesus among his own people is the in-flesh demonstration of God’s unfailing, persistent love. The numerous texts of lament in the Bible do not result in God finally giving up on his people. Jesus comes, in the fullness of the Father, and calls his people to reconciliation and faithfulness. They still respond violently, demanding what they want, which is a life without Jesus. But God still doesn’t give up, and in the resurrection he brings the light of life to bear on the world.
If we demand and receive a life without God, it won’t be out of God’s neglect.

The Truth about the "Age of Accountability"

2011-03-29T08:36:00.001-07:00

In the midst of the brouhaha about Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins, a number of questions have resurfaced, such as the concept of the Age of Accountability: The age at which God holds people accountable for their response to him. So, infants and small children are usually exempt from the ravages of hell since they are considered too young to be accountable for their faith. But what is that age?

Historically, those who subscribe to this concept suggest somewhere around age 13.

Age 13. Really? REALLY?!?!? I've been 13. I know people who are 13. Age 13 is when human beings lose their minds. Age 13 is when mind and body crash into each other, screaming with contradictory voices and violating every normal standard of human behavior. I wouldn't trust me as a 13-year-old to mail a letter, let alone be accountable for my eternal destiny. People who are 13 don't even have fully-formed brains.

People become mature adults later than in years past. I know of people in their 30's who still live with their parents or are trying to accomplish things that prior generations did 10 years earlier. Maybe the real age of accountability is somewhere around 37.

Imagine this scenario: A man, recently killed when driving his parents' 2009 Toyota Prius, stands before God, trembling at God's verdict that is about to be declared. God is clearly angry.

"AND WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO SAY FOR YOURSELF?" Screams God.

"Nothing, sir. Except that it wasn't my fault," stutters the man.

"What—your LIFE wasn't your fault? Give me a break."

"I just couldn't get it together. Plus the economy . . ."

"ENOUGH!" The heavens shake at God's voice. "Give me your driver's license."

The man hands over his wallet and God angrily pulls out the license, reading it carefully.

"Hmmm," God hums. "Born in 1977. That makes you 34, right?"

"Right."

"Okay," says God. "You clearly can't be held accountable for much of anything. Good thing you haven't yet turned 37, or I would have held you responsible for that night in Las Vegas."

"But I was really drunk . . ."

"Don't push your luck, son. Come on in."

A Devotional for the Twenty-First Day of Lent

2011-03-29T07:44:00.000-07:00

Give ear, O my people, to my teaching;  incline your ears to the words of my mouth.  I will open my mouth in a parable;  I will utter dark sayings from of old,  things that we have heard and known,  that our ancestors have told us.  We will not hide them from their children;  we will tell to the coming generation  the glorious deeds of the Lord, and his might,  and the wonders that he has done. (Psalm 78:1-4)

For the people of Judah have done evil in my sight, says the Lord; they have set their abominations in the house that is called by my name, defiling it. And they go on building the high place of Topheth, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire—which I did not command, nor did it come into my mind. (Jeremiah 7:30-31)

Therefore [Abraham’s] faith ‘was reckoned to him as righteousness.’ Now the words, ‘it was reckoned to him’, were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. (Romans 4:22-25)

Nations like to tell stories of the past, especially when the stories are celebrative. The accounts of bondages broken, enemies overcome, and triumph over adversity fill national imaginations and are passed on to each new generation. Some of the stories are true and others are legend. The parts that are more likely to be avoided are the ways the nations have oppressed others, damaged their own citizens, looted treasuries, and any number of violations.

The psalmist opens up by preparing the hearers for a history lesson that must be passed on to succeeding generations. All must be taught, he claims, and so he begins an account that he describes as “dark sayings of old.” The national imagination of Israel included past sins and violations against God and others. The consciousness of the people would be branded with the recognition that Israel, a nation like no other, a people formed and nurtured by God to be his light in the world, had turned from God and suffered dire consequences.

The prophet Jeremiah offers graphic detail of Judah’s (the southern half of what was originally Israel) offences: The sacrifice of children in the fires of Topheth, a site of pagan worship in the valley of Hinnom (referred to by Jesus as Gehenna, which is usually translated in English as hell). Jeremiah goes on to say that the fate of wayward Israel will be in that same place, where their bodies will be stacked like cord wood, serving as food for scavenger birds.

The stories of the people of God are not sanitized in the Bible. Their own family history is both redemptive and dark, and it is, we are told, not to be forgotten. As a people before God, they are to always remember who they are and from where they have come. It is, in many ways, a dark story.

We, as followers of Jesus, now share that family history. We are given, however, a new act to this play of call, formation, sin, disaster, and exile. The apostle Paul says that we share the faith of Abraham as we trust in what God has done in Jesus. This Jesus, who represents all of Israel and the whole of the world, allows himself to be destroyed by all the forces of evil, suffering the consequences of this dark history on behalf of all. But this is not just a story of vicarious suffering and death; it is a story of God’s dismantling of the power of sin and death to close the book. In the resurrection, the story begins anew, and the people of God, while remembering our dark history, now trust in the author of the story to write the ending that he has always intended.

Devotional for the Twentieth Day of Lent

2011-03-28T06:55:00.000-07:00

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Amend your ways and your doings, and let me dwell with you in this place. Do not trust in these deceptive words: “This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord.” (Jeremiah 7:3-4)

Do not remember against us the iniquities of our ancestors;  let your compassion come speedily to meet us,  for we are brought very low. Help us, O God of our salvation,  for the glory of your name;  deliver us, and forgive our sins,  for your name’s sake. (Psalm 79:8-9)

Yet many in the crowd believed in him and were saying, “When the Messiah comes, will he do more signs than this man has done?” The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering such things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent temple police to arrest him. (John 7:31-32)

Institutions seem to take on lives of their own. People become committed followers of professional sports teams (often over multiple generations), even though the players routinely change, and most aren’t from the team’s hometown anyway. It is the institution of the team that captures the fans’ loyalty. A business might dominate the spotlight of an industry for decades, and people point to the long-term work that it has done. Yet, the personnel of that company and its structures have routinely changed over the years. Institutions appear to become bigger and more alive than the people who inhabit them. They can also create a loyalty that is focused on a concept rather than reality.

The ancient people of Israel allowed the institution of their temple to provide evidence of their faithfulness to God. Even though the prophet Jeremiah spoke to them of their duplicity, they would point to the institution of the temple and claim that they were acting justly when, in fact, they were oppressing the poor and worshipping idols. Jeremiah pointed to a disaster yet to come, one that would come as a result of Israel’s defiance.

The psalmist speaks in the midst of the people after that disaster had arrived. Israel chose to play politics by the ways of the rest of the world, and they lost at that game. Jerusalem was destroyed, and the people hauled off into exile. In their new existence, Israel cried out for a rescue and for forgiveness.

When Jesus came along, claiming to be the one sent by God to bring rescue and forgiveness, he was not received well by the ruling religious elite. Jesus didn’t speak of defeating foreign invaders or making Israel a dominant world power, but instead spoke of truly being God’s people, ones who lived out the implications of forgiveness and love in the midst of their own exile. His words challenged their control and their sense of being right. After all, they had evidence: The institution of Judaism was still alive, and their temple and holy city, Jerusalem, were in tact (even though they were now under the boot heel of Rome). Their best solution to the problem of Jesus was to try to arrest him.

When it comes to God, it is easy for us to get institutional. We find comfort in our affiliation with a particular church or denomination, or we lock ourselves into neat certainties with unquestionable doctrinal positions, and then point to those things as evidence of our piety. Being part of a community of faith is important, as is being able to affirm common beliefs. But believing in our institutions, even if they are religious ones, doesn’t equate with being a people whose lives are transformed and whose engagement with the world is redemptive. Even right belief alone doesn’t accomplish that (“You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder” – James 2:19).

Institutions are fine, as long as we see them for what they are. God desires our hearts.

Devotional for the Third Sunday of Lent, the Nineteenth Day of Lent

2011-03-27T08:10:00.000-07:00

“Go home to your friends, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.” And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed. (Mark 5:19-20)

Say among the nations, “The Lord is king! The world is firmly established; it shall never be moved. He will judge the peoples with equity.” Let the heavens be glad, and let the earth rejoice; let the sea roar, and all that fills it; let the field exult, and everything in it. Then shall all the trees of the forest sing for joy before the Lord; for he is coming, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with his truth. (Psalm 96:10-13)

Justice is an important idea in the Bible. In our world, justice can sometimes be translated as fairness, punishment, or revenge. But in the Bible, justice comes from God and is, at its heart, the work of putting right that which is wrong; of bringing restoration to that which is broken; of healing that which is sick. That’s why you read so much in the Bible about God’s concern for the poor and the disenfranchised.

The text in Mark 5 comes at the end of the story of Jesus healing a man who was infested with demons. The guy was a wreck—naked, filthy, living among the tombs, terrorized by his demonic parasites, and a horror to the local villagers. When Jesus cast out the demons, the man was transformed. Someone in Jesus’ group must have given up items of their clothing, because the man is described as being “clothed and in his right mind.” The local townspeople are a little distressed because the demons inserted themselves into a herd of pigs (this was obviously not a Jewish neighborhood) and ran them off a cliff. When Jesus starts to leave the region, the man begs to come with him, but Jesus refuses. Instead, Jesus sends him home to his family and his village to declare what the Lord had done for him.

In this story, we see Jesus enacting God’s justice. Everything about the demon-possessed man was broken. Jesus cast out the demons, someone found him some clothes, and then cleaned him up. Jesus, rather than letting the man come away with him, sent him home to declare what the Lord had done. But in doing that, more that had been broken would be restored. The man would be reconciled to his family and friends, he would engage in the productive life of his village, and be resocialized into the land of the living. He would become human again.

The psalmist declares that, when God brings his justice, the whole of creation will rejoice. When God’s justice comes, it is enacted with righteousness and truth, countering the dominance of all that is destructive, oppressive, and false.

God’s justice will, however, often run cross-grain to the dominance of the world culture. Just as the people in Mark 5 couldn’t appreciate the restoration of the broken man because of the loss of the herd of pigs, sometimes the enactment of God’s justice is obscured by other dominant cultural values. That’s just the way it goes, it seems.

But it doesn’t have to be that way for us.

Devotional for the Eighteenth Day of Lent

2011-03-26T07:43:00.000-07:00

For scoundrels are found among my people;  they take over the goods of others.  Like fowlers they set a trap;  they catch human beings. (Jeremiah 5:26)

Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil.” (John 7:6-7)

But you indeed are awesome!  Who can stand before you  when once your anger is roused? From the heavens you uttered judgment;  the earth feared and was still when God rose up to establish judgment, to save all the oppressed of the earth. (Psalm 76:7-9)

A few years ago I learned that my great-grandfather, a preacher and hymn writer, authored a lengthy book titled, The White Slave Hell: Midnight in Chicago Slums. Chief among the concerns he expressed about liquor, tobacco, and gambling, was sex trafficking. He wrote of brothels in Chicago that were staffed by young women recruited from Europe, whose lives had been destroyed by forced prostitution. His call was for the church to rise up and oppose this horrible industry. The book’s copyright date is 1910.

We increasingly hear stories of human trafficking all over the world, including here in the US. People’s hearts are stirred when they hear of the suffering of people who are forced into slave labor and sexual bondage. It is even more distressing when we recognize that these practices have characterized the world for a very long time, sometimes right under the noses of religious people.

God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah and identifies those among the people of Israel who are enslaving others. The combination of power and greed produces an evil that is absent of heart or soul, and those who benefit from the practices appear to be willing to fight to protect their work. Jesus recognized that when evil is opposed, hatred is the immediate response. It is a dangerous task to oppose evil.

People who like to talk about theology will often speculate about the nature of God’s wrath. I’ve heard some comments that make God sound like Zeus, zipping around the heavens looking for someone to smite with a lightning bolt. The psalmist, however, speaks differently about God’s wrath. It is anger that results in judgment, a judgment that pursues the rescue of the oppressed.

Bono (of the band U2) is quoted as saying, “God is with the vulnerable and poor.” I think the Bible would agree with him. When God establishes justice, oppression is revealed, and God gets angry—not, apparently, angry in order to destroy, but angry in order to rescue. The God of the Bible seeks to rescue a world gone mad, and he starts with the oppressed. Maybe that’s why, when John the Baptist inquired about whether or not Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus answered:

“Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offence at me.” (Matthew 11:4-6)

But people did take offense, and Jesus was killed as a result. If, as we believe, the fullness of God was in Jesus (Colossians 1:19), then what happens when the ultimate messenger of rescue is killed by the dominant powers of the world? It means that evil won the day.

There is something coming, however, called resurrection. When the One who came to bring rescue to the world defeats evil and death, something awesome has broken into the world. And it is an awesomeness into which we are invited to participate.

Devotional for the Seventeenth Day of Lent

2011-03-25T07:16:00.000-07:00

More in number than the hairs of my head  are those who hate me without cause; many are those who would destroy me,  my enemies who accuse me falsely.  What I did not steal must I now restore? O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you. (Psalm 69:4-5)

“You search the scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that testify on my behalf. Yet you refuse to come to me to have life.” (John 5:39-40)

Many years ago at my daughter’s middle school, a young male science teacher was accused of inappropriate sexual conduct by two female students. He was immediately suspended pending an investigation and the story of the accusations appeared in the local newspaper. After a few weeks of drama, the two girls confessed that they had fabricated the story and that the teacher was innocent. Regardless, the teacher’s reputation and career had been ruined in the process. I don’t recall seeing a follow-up story in the newspaper.

The psalmist objects to the possibility of restoring something he didn’t steal in the first place. It just isn’t fair to have to do that. However, when false accusations come, the accused is put in that position. To remain silent is to allow the forces of evil to have their way with you. It isn’t that the accused is without fault or error; God alone sees those things clearly. But false accusations are not part of God’s agenda; they are acts of terror and power that seek to destroy.

Jesus must have scandalized his opponents even though he acknowledged that they were ones who searched the scriptures. They were religious leaders, so why wouldn’t they do that? But Jesus went on to say that they “think” that eternal life is found in those sacred texts. These leaders had indeed constructed theological positions crafted from their particular interpretations of scripture, and they used them to falsely accuse Jesus of everything from blasphemy to demonic possession. Jesus knew the scriptures better than his opponents did, and he understood that they pointed to him, and in him was life. His accusers, however, would have none of that. They believed they had a corner on eternal life and were willing to lie and kill to secure their positions. In the end, Jesus was silent, and allowed the forces of evil to unleash their fury on him.

We who follow Jesus can find ourselves at odds with one another over all kinds of things, from doctrine to practice, from high church to low church, from one interpretation of scripture to another, from one political position to another. It’s one thing for us to challenge one another, to disagree with one another, and to seek to correct one another. It’s another thing to take our interpretations of scripture, doctrine, theology, politics, and practice, and start thinking that in them we have eternal life. When our positions become concretized and canonized, we can find ourselves, intentionally or unintentionally, making false accusations against those we should be calling brothers or sisters.

Perhaps we need a corporate discipline of confession that should precede every argument or debate that we have with one another. We can gather our notes, review our positions, confer with those who support us, and then come together and pray,

“O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.”

Then, after our disputes and discussions wind down, we would come to the Lord’s Table, sit side by side, brought together in common fellowship by the One who has invited us to come and dine. In doing these things, we might not have to restore what we didn’t steal.

Devotional for the Sixteenth Day of Lent

2011-03-24T06:07:00.000-07:00

My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart! (Jeremiah 4:19a)

“Very truly, I tell you, the hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For just as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself . . .” (John 5:25-26)

I received news last night that I man I met many years ago—a former pastor—took his own life. It is a sad report, shocking and disillusioning for those who knew him. How is it that one who has lived his life in close relationship with God give up hope? What does God do when someone purposely ends his or her life?

Perhaps the real question is: What limits are there to God’s love and forgiveness? Is self-murder (which does not offer the opportunity for repentance prior to death) a final, desperate act that is unforgivable by God? Christians throughout the ages have offered numerous theological theories about suicide, some claiming it to be a final, unforgivable crime; others offer the possibility that God offers hope even to those who take this tragic, ultimate step (see the Roman Catholic Church’s official statement here).

Take, for example, Judas Iscariot. He tipped off the religious leaders so they could arrest Jesus. What did he think would happen? It is likely he wanted them to press Jesus to ramp up what Judas assumed was an agenda of revolution. Judas didn’t know until later that he had sold Jesus into death. When he discovered that, he tried to undo his work, giving back the money and confessing to the leaders. They scoffed at him and told him to take care of things himself.

How was Judas to do that? He operated in a religious culture that had certain ritual requirements regarding confession and forgiveness. When your own religious leaders abandon you to your sin, what choices are left? Judas took the only path that made sense to him. He saw himself as beyond redemption. With the psalmist, he would have cried out, “My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart!”

Jesus claimed that God the Father had granted him the very life of God, a life that the Son could freely dispense. In Jesus, we see the character and heart of God expressed in living, human, flesh. So deeply did Jesus identify with the tragic nature of human existence that, even in the throes of death, he could cry out, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34). When a person commits suicide, as in so many of the tragic areas of human life, they do not know what they are really doing. They believe they are submitting to the power of hopelessness, that hopelessness has the last word for them, and they are wrong. On the other side of this life, they will encounter the author of hope. How many on that side will hear the voice of the Son of God, and live?

We should consider the boundaries and limits that we think we can impose on God’s love and forgiveness. The story of our Scriptures should inform us of the many attempts of the religious community to do that, only to find that God turns their certainties upside down with his generosity. While we can always refuse God’s love and demand a life without him—on either side of death—our theological theories that limit God do not have the power we try to grant to them.

In the life we will ultimately share in God’s new creation—a life beyond this one—it wouldn’t surprise me to bump into Judas along the way. I imagine him sitting by himself, maybe under a tree, staring off into space and saying to himself over and over again:

“Can it really be? Is it really true? I never really knew . . .”

It might take him a few thousand years to come to grips with the unimaginable generosity of God. And he will probably share that space with a lot of other people.

Devotional for the Fifteenth Day of Lent

2011-03-23T05:52:00.000-07:00

The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well. Therefore the Jews started persecuting Jesus, because he was doing such things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, “My Father is still working, and I also am working.” For this reason the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he was not only breaking the Sabbath, but was also calling God his own Father, thereby making himself equal to God. (John 5:15-18)

I will give you shepherds after my own heart, who will feed you with knowledge and understanding. (Jeremiah 3:15)

The Bible has a number of accounts of religious leaders reacting angrily, and sometimes violently, against the generosity of God. For example: God wants to redeem the gentile people of Nineveh, and Jonah the prophet gets upset when it actually happens; God sends the prophet Jeremiah to his own people, calling them to a place of forgiveness and faithfulness, and they put a contract out on his life; Jesus heals a man on the Sabbath, and the leaders plot to kill him; the Holy Spirit falls on a bunch of gentile God-fearers, and the early Christian leaders in Jerusalem have to call a committee meeting.

When the generosity of God challenges the dominant power structures, all hell breaks loose. In Jonah’s case, it wasn’t the pagan power structures that railed against God—in fact, they led their own people to repentance. It was Jonah’s place of power as a Jewish prophet that was in jeopardy. If the Ninevites are beloved by God, then what would it do to Jonah’s sense of religious privilege? Jeremiah’s call for the people to turn away from worshipping idols and to return to faithfulness to God would be upsetting to the way the nation had ordered its corporate life. Jesus’ claim that the rules of the Sabbath could not bind God’s generosity threatened to unravel the control that the religious leaders had over their own people. If gentiles can receive the Holy Spirit, then the uniqueness of the Jewish Christians is at stake. This is dangerous business.

There is a natural push-back when we are told something we didn’t already believe. Tension is created when we believe one thing and then are told another. If you believe that God despises any work done on the Sabbath, and then some itinerate prophet heals somebody and claims that God himself is at work on your holy days, then your entire belief system is at risk. You can consider the new information and cast aside your old views in favor of this good news, or you can resolve the tension by destroying the one who is rattling your cage. Too often, in the Bible, the religious elite chose the latter.

God tells Jeremiah that he will give new shepherds to Israel. They will not only nourish the people with “knowledge and understanding,” but they will be ones who know God’s heart. It isn’t enough that these shepherds will be doctrinally sound; such claims to certainty often lead to elitism. They will also be tuned into the heart of God—the God who often scandalizes his own people by his generosity. Their nourishment will come from God’s heart rather than from a newly revised textbook.

The generosity of God pushes against our religious sensibilities, because those sensibilities are often framed by ways of thinking that are our own invention. We systematize God in an attempt to understand his ways, then set the systems in concrete and persecute anyone who challenges our thinking. We religious people have a long history of this kind of behavior. We should read the Bible more often so that we fear our own legacy.

God is generous, but he isn’t reckless. His generosity aligns with his desire to redeem the entire creation, and for some reason that makes us mad.

God, forgive us.

Rob Bell's book, Love Wins

2011-03-22T13:58:00.000-07:00

I received Rob Bell's book in the mail yesterday, and finished it this morning. After hearing some of the harsh critiques suggesting heresy and universalism, I am puzzled. I'm wondering if the critics and I read the same book.

If there is anything Rob claims, it's that the Bible offers the story of the God who pursues the whole world, and whose desires are the full redemption of all creation. I resonated deeply with most of the book (I should probably read it again, given my eagerness the first time through). I didn't hear a declaration of universalism, but I did hear about God being more generous than most of us have considered.

I think I'd like to offer two words of caution to my brothers and sisters who see this differently (after they have, of course, actually read the book):

The first relates to honesty. Critique if you must (that can be healthy and constructive), but do so with integrity. Make sure that you are offering an assessment of something actually written, and be civil in your engagement. After all, like the rest of us humans, you could be mistaken in your views. None of us wants to bear false witness.

The second is about something that has a significant biblical precedent. When Jesus spent time with tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans, and those generally classified as "sinners," he was soundly condemned by his own religious community. They were angry about the possibility of a God so generously described through parables like the Lost Son, and therefore sought to silence Jesus permanently for his heresy. We need to be careful lest we cast our lot with their kind.

Upon finishing Rob's book, it occurred to me that it really wasn't for the people who are critiquing it. It's really more for those who have stood on the perimeter of faith, fearful of stepping in because of their fear that God despises them. It's for those who gave up hope that they could ever be favored by God because of their past and even their present. It's a book for those who can't imagine a God so full of love that he would pursue the broken and the lost with fervor. I know people like this, and I will give them this book. I think Rob knows people like this as well, because he is a real pastor.

Read this book.

Devotional for the Fourteenth Day of Lent

2011-03-22T06:46:00.000-07:00

Hear the word of the Lord, O house of Jacob, and all the families of the house of Israel. Thus says the Lord: What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves?  They did not say, “Where is the Lord . . . ?” (Jeremiah 2:4-6a)

Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’ The official said to him, ‘Sir, come down before my little boy dies.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. (John 4:46-50)

Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. (Psalm 62:8)

It has been said that people become like the things they worship. The prophet Isaiah wrote a satire about a man who cuts a piece of wood, uses half of it to make a fire to cook his food, and then fashions the other half into an idol that he bows down to worship. The man is portrayed as an idiot who acts like his head is made out of wood, just like his idol.

The prophet Jeremiah warns the people of Israel about their family legacy in forgetting about God and turning to idols. They became worthless, just like the objects of their worship. It’s an awful thing to be judged as having no worth, but by tethering their lives to things that don’t matter at all, the people began to reflect the images of their gods of choice.

The man who came to Jesus was a royal official, so he was very likely a person of prominence and means. If his son was ill, he would have undoubtedly sought out and paid for medical care, which appeared to have little effect. So he came to Jesus in the midst of a crowd who had seen Jesus do miraculous things, and they celebrated him like he was a rock star. The man was desperate and came to Jesus for help. Once Jesus assured the man that his son would live, the man “believed the word that Jesus spoke” and put himself into gear, heading home to see what had happened. We find out later that the son was indeed healed and restored to his father.

We westerners put a lot of trust in our brains. We are children of the Enlightenment and we find it easy to locate our identities in what we think. When we say we “believe” something, we usually mean we’ve come to a conclusion about the validity of something. So when we claim to believe in Jesus, we often mean that we’ve concluded certain things about faith that puts us in the Christian camp. For too many of us, it also means that, once having drawn such mental conclusions, we can move on with our lives, trusting in whatever suits us and identifying our lives with the other objects of our worship.

The man who believed Jesus about the healing of the son did more than give mental assent to Jesus’ healing powers. He trusted that Jesus was telling him the truth (in the Greek of the New Testament, the word for believe is the same word for trust) and went to receive his son. Belief can allow us to offer a nod to creeds and doctrines; trust, however, is about relationship. To believe in Jesus is not in the same category as believing in ghosts or believing that there are aliens in Roswell. To believe in Jesus is to trust the living Son of God to be real and present in human life right now.

When the psalmist says that God is a refuge for his people, he means that God offers the only safe place that is real. The other so-called safety zones of our lives—our money, our status, our careers, and so on—are temporary at best and are dehumanizing as definers of our worth.

So we pour out our hearts. We can do that with the One we trust.

Devotional for the Thirteenth Day of Lent

2011-03-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?” (John 4:27)

In God, whose word I praise, in the Lord, whose word I praise, in God I trust; I am not afraid. What can a mere mortal do to me? (Psalm 56:10-11)

Fear is a powerful and reactive emotion. When we are frightened we move quickly and with energy. It’s part of our innate desire to survive, so when we hear a bear sniffing around our tent, we instantly come to high alert, without much thought except to remain safe. When we soon discover that the so-called bear is just the family dog checking out the surroundings of the campsite, the fear that overwhelmed us dissipates rapidly. Fear can hit 60 in 2 seconds and then stop on a dime as if nothing happened.

The larger context of John 4:27 is the conversation that Jesus initiated with a Samaritan woman. The reason that his disciples were astonished when they saw what was happening was that faithful Jewish men were not supposed to have any contact with Samaritans, especially the female type. Samaritans were considered to be half-Jewish heretics, and Jews stayed away from them. What were Jesus’ disciples to make of this violation? Was there fear woven into their astonishment?

Fear is often associated with the possibility of loss. If someone can take something from me, then fear and the need to protect rise up. Perhaps the disciples feared losing their faithful Jewish leader to the uncleanness and heretical ways of the Samaritans. This kind of fear of loss rose up in a number of people who opposed Jesus. They saw him reach out to tax collectors, prostitutes, and others defined by the general category of “sinners.” In fact, he was once mocked by being called “friend of sinners.” Those who feared losing their dominant place in their society sought to silence Jesus by having him illegally executed. Destroying what you fear normally causes fear to dissipate because everything can then go back to normal.

We who follow Jesus get caught up in fear all the time. The US legislature passes laws that we don’t like, and we join our party of choice to scream about fear. Someone writes a book exploring and challenging certain theological viewpoints, and fear drives the critics to cast the evildoer into outer darkness, where there is weeping, gnashing of teeth, and a loss of royalties. We hear a viewpoint about faith that is different than ours, and we withdraw, fearing that we are about to lose something vital to our eternal destiny.

Some of this is natural. When we are hit with something that runs cross-grain to our closely held beliefs, there is a reaction against the possibility of change. Often we seek to discredit the new idea. Other times we hunker down and shore up the props of our belief system. Less frequently to do we listen deeply and openly, asking God to show us if perhaps we have seen things incompletely and are now being invited into something richer and more generous than what we knew before. At the very least, we might actually learn to love those we had feared, even if we don’t agree.

The psalmist speaks of trusting God and not being afraid. “Do not fear” is the most common admonition in the Bible. It probably has to be repeated a lot because we humans carry fear around like keys in our pockets.

Love is also powerful. But unlike fear, it isn’t reactive or violent. It requires presence and the willingness to be changed by relationship. Fear is not the way of Jesus, but love clearly is.

Devotional for the Twelfth Day of Lent, The Second Sunday of Lent

2011-03-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? Those who have clean hands and pure hearts, who do not lift up their souls to what is false, and do not swear deceitfully. They will receive blessing from the Lord, and vindication from the God of their salvation. Such is the company of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob. (Psalm 24:3-6)

Then [Jesus’] mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:31-35)

I was a Boy Scout for one year when I was twelve. I signed up, got my uniform, picked up the Scout handbook, and started memorizing some things like the Scout oath and the 12 Points of the Scout Law (“A Scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind . . .” and so on). I didn’t have to know any of this stuff to get in, nor did I have to give evidence that I was good at any of those things before the Scouts took me in. But if I was going to be a Boy Scout, it was expected that I would act like one. Wearing the uniform came with an identity that was to be lived out in everyday life.

The psalmist describes a people with clean hands and pure hearts. These are the ones to receive God’s blessing. They are the ones who are to come to the Temple to worship. I don’t imagine that there was a guard at the Temple entrance checking everyone’s hands and interrogating them about their hearts in order to let the right people in. This Psalm describes the character of the people who are seeking God and living with integrity as a response to God’s love. This isn’t about behaving well enough to gain God’s favor; it’s about living in the identity as God’s beloved people.

In a similar way, Jesus speaks of those who do the will of God as if they are the equivalent of his family. Family members don’t do things to be qualified as family; they are family by sharing things like DNA, parentage, and love. Strangers don’t generally enter our homes and start doing the dishes in order to be accepted as family. Brothers and sisters and mothers are already bonded by familial connection, and as such they are supposed to live out that identity in ways that are real.

People often get confused at this point. A follower of Jesus does not have the job of trying to make everyone else feel guilty about the way they live. Instead, those who follow Jesus are called by God to live in that identity. The Bible tells us that we don’t even have to do that by our own strength, but by the presence of God’s Spirit within us. Doing the will of God and being Jesus’ family is not an issue of qualification, but rather being who God is forming us to be.

Devotional for the Eleventh Day of Lent

2011-03-19T08:56:00.000-07:00

It is not enemies who taunt me—I could bear that; it is not adversaries who deal insolently with me—I could hide from them. But it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend, with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God with the throng. (Psalm 55:12-14)

In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered; and having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him . . . (Hebrews 5:7-9)

We’ve all been let down by a friend, cast away by a lover, or mocked by former friends. It’s always painful and usually a profound shock to our inner life. We don’t usually see these things coming, except maybe in retrospect. We are often deeply invested in these relationships, and we expect them to endure and to meet certain needs in our lives. Even in the healthiest of relationships, disappointment and betrayal remain possibilities.

There is always something missing in human relationships. Those relationships are incomplete and imperfect in some way. In the best of friendships, someone is bound to move away or eventually die, leaving a state of loss and grief behind. Yet, we continue to be shocked when pain comes to us through the people we have loved.

Sometimes we speak of our love for others as “unconditional.” This is mostly wrong. Human love always has some sort of condition attached to it. It is never given in a truly free way. Unconditionalality is the character of God’s love. Henri Nouwen describes it this way:

This unconditional and unlimited love is what the evangelist John calls God’s first love. ‘Let us love,’ he says, ‘because God loved us first’ (I John 4:19). The love that often leaves us doubtful, frustrated, angry, and resentful is the second love, that is to say, the affirmation, affection, sympathy, encouragement, and support that we receive from our parents, teachers, spouses, and friends. We all know how limited, broken, and very fragile that love is. Behind the many expressions of this second love there is always the chance of rejection, withdrawal, punishment, blackmail, violence, and even hatred. (In the Name of Jesus, 25-6)

God’s full, complete love is shown most clearly to us in Jesus. The writer of the book of Hebrews describes Jesus as “having been made perfect.” There is an important point to be made here: It isn’t that Jesus was run through an earthly boot camp in order to qualify as God’s source of salvation; it is that God, in the person of Jesus, experienced all of human life, which included suffering and death. In suffering and death Jesus became “perfect” (the Greek word in the New Testament for “perfect” can also mean “complete”). If Jesus would have dodged the dual bullets of suffering and death, then he would never have fully identified with human beings, because suffering and death are included in the drama of human life.

This is how God’s first, complete, and perfect love is portrayed to us. God comes among us in the person of Jesus and lives the fullness of human existence in his conception, birth, life, suffering, and death. In his resurrection, the limits of that experience are exploded. God does not let us down by saying, “There you go. Through Jesus, I’ve experienced it all, including death. Now quit whining and take your medicine!” Instead, there is hope and promise on the other side. There is no possibility of betrayal with God like there is with us. Unlike the second loves of human relationships, God’s first love is complete, full, and unconditional.

Devotional for the Tenth Day of Lent

2011-03-18T06:27:00.000-07:00

For the Lord your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them with food and clothing. You shall also love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt. You shall fear the Lord your God; him alone you shall worship; to him you shall hold fast, and by his name you shall swear. He is your praise; he is your God, who has done for you these great and awesome things that your own eyes have seen. (Deuteronomy 10:17-21)

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:14-16)

As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. (Psalm 40:17)

In a course that I co-teach with a friend of mine, we ask our students to respond in writing to a statement and a question that always challenges them: Imagine that God is thinking of you right now. What does he think? Every time we do this, the majority of the students struggle to believe that God would bother to think about them at all; and if he were to think about them, his thoughts wouldn’t be all that pleasant.

The psalmist makes the claim that God does indeed take thought for us. What is the character of this God who holds us in his mind? He is described as mighty and awesome, impartial, and worthy of fear and worship. He is also described as compassionate and loving toward widows, orphans, and strangers. The writer of Hebrews offers a metaphor for Jesus—the One in whom the fullness of God dwells—as a high priest who fully relates and identifies with human weakness. Because of that sympathetic identification, we can trust that God receives us when we approach him and is happy to extend mercy and grace to us as we need it, which is pretty much all the time.

While western Christianity can get a bit narcissistic about our relationship with God, making it all about me, it is about me as a subset of us. Yes, God’s concern is for the world, but I am part of that world. God’s love and care is universal (“For God so loved the world”), but it is also, it seems, particular. The Lord takes thought for you and me. I find that to be a stunning revelation.

This God who is awesome, mighty, and who is to be feared and worshipped, thinks about us. He cares for widows, orphans, and strangers. This is God unlike the other so-called gods, who were seen as distant and capricious, disdaining humans and not slow to cast bolts of lightning in their direction. This God is impossible to figure out, with his mightiness on the one hand and his loving care on the other. This is the God who has created all things and sustains all things, and yet, he takes thought for me.

Ask yourself: If God is thinking of you right now, what does he think? If your answer is a dismal one, think again. Then approach the throne of grace boldly. He has mercy and grace in abundance to give to you. At all times, you are in his mind.

Devotional for the Ninth Day of Lent

2011-03-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (John 3:19-21)

So then, a sabbath rest still remains for the people of God; for those who enter God’s rest also cease from their labors as God did from his. (Hebrews 4:9-10)

Mark this, then, you who forget God . . . (Psalm 50:22a)

I wish the Bible didn’t speak of judgment, but it does. We don’t see God clicking his tongue at the evil of the world and saying, “Oh, those crazy kids. What will they do next?” God’s judgment is inevitable, so says the Bible, and it’s a serious thing.

Most of the divine judgment we see in the Bible is directed toward God’s own people rather than the rest of the world (there are exceptions—for example, Sodom and Gomorrah, Ninevah. But before anything disastrous happened, God sent Abraham and Jonah to give everyone a chance to change direction). God’s plan of rescue is for the whole world, and his people were always to serve as a light to all the nations, that the world would turn to God. It’s a bad deal when God’s own people forget about him.

In John chapter 3, Jesus is conversing with Nicodemus, a prominent Jewish leader. Their conversation is more about Israel in general than it is about Nicodemus in particular, and the judgment of which Jesus speaks is directly applicable to those known as the people of God. Forgetting about God has dire consequences. You can’t forget about God unless you have known God in the first place. Judgment lands first with God’s people.

I had a friend who very insightfully defined sin as “forgetting about God.” He didn’t consider himself to be a Christian—more of a seeker, really—but his words have stuck with me. Once you forget about God you have to find another way of orienting your life. Drop God out of the picture and terms like good and evil become defined by things we prefer or by cultural consensus. Adolf Hitler, the 20th century poster boy for evil, was an expert at that. He recast God in Hitler’s own image, absorbed the German church into his Nazi agenda, and made the persecution and mass murdering of people acts of righteousness. This from the same nation that gave the world the likes of Martin Luther and Johann Sebastian Bach. Forgetting about God is costly.

The writer of the book of Hebrews, while offering the hope of entering into God’s rest by faith, also warns that there have been and will be those who fail to enter that rest because of disobedience. There is judgment in that warning, and it is again directed toward the people of God. If those who have been called to be God’s own people forget about God and recreate life by their own preferences, the consequences are dismal. A world without God is no place to live.

Hell might be the space God gives to the people who want to forget him for good. Imagine people who want a world where all goodness, all love, all healing, all mercy and grace, are extracted. It would be a dark place indeed. Imagine wanting such a place. Worse yet, imagine God giving people exactly what they want.

Richard John Neuhaus wrote, “. . . In this life and in the world to come, those who follow Jesus will receive everything they want, if what they want is to follow Jesus.”

Of all the things I want, not forgetting about God needs to be at the top of the list.

Devotional for the Eighth Day of Lent

2011-03-16T06:54:00.000-07:00

Before I was humbled I went astray . . . (Psalm 119:67)

So I turned and went down from the mountain, while the mountain was ablaze; the two tablets of the covenant were in my two hands. Then I saw that you had indeed sinned against the Lord your God, by casting for yourselves an image of a calf; you had been quick to turn from the way that the Lord had commanded you. (Deuteronomy 9:15-16)

When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the signs that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people and needed no one to testify about anyone; for he himself knew what was in everyone. (John 2:23-25)

When you read about the wanderings of the ancient Hebrew people in the Old Testament, they seem like a roving band of idiots. Time after time God rescues them with some miraculous event, and then they turn around and do something stupid, as though nothing ever happened. Their leader, Moses, is mad at them most of the time because they aren’t getting what is going on: God has saved them from slavery in Egypt, provided for them in the wilderness, and is committed to their well-being. I don’t know if they think that God is just a nomadic deity who happened to be passing by Egypt when they cried out for help or what, but they sure are quick to forget about God’s great deeds and then recreate him in their own familiar images.

It appears that things hadn’t changed much when Jesus arrived on the scene. He healed people, chased away demonic spirits, raised the dead and a whole variety of other amazing things. People got excited about Jesus because of this, and believed that he was the long-awaited Messiah. Why wouldn’t they believe that, with all the benefits he was bringing to the people?

Yet, Jesus knew that behind that belief was something untrustworthy. Later in the story we learn that he was right, as the same people who cheered for him ended up populating the crowd that supported his crucifixion. Again, another band of idiots.

The only problem with my assessment is that I’m pretty sure we’re all part of the same idiotic family (okay, maybe me and not you). I’ve had things happen in my life that were, from my perspective, clear answers to prayer. Sometimes those answers have come in such a startling way that I’ve had to look around and see if God has materialized behind me just to enjoy the surprise. But it only takes a day or two and some more trouble and I’m discouraged and lamenting about how the pain of life now dominates my world. I may not build golden calves to worship, but I can create all kinds of familiar mini-gods as I attempt to solve my problems.

On one level it seems hopeless that Jesus knows what is in everyone. If he knows about my duplicity and my capacity for going astray, then why would he want to have anything to do with me? But on another level, it is a comfort that he knows what is in us, because in the midst of the brokenness that often rears its ugly head, he sees the ones always loved by God; the ones with whom God has fully identified in the person of Jesus; the ones on whose behalf Jesus lived, suffered, died, and was raised. We may be just a band of idiots, but we are also the objects of God’s love and care.

I also believe that God does not intend to leave us in our idiotic state. By degrees we keep learning to trust him, and to turn from all the mini-gods that we have created in an effort to make God into a predictable certainty. Along the way the awareness of our tendency toward sin humbles us, and in our humility we can cease going astray.

Devotional for the Seventh Day of Lent

2011-03-15T06:52:00.000-07:00

Now Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant, to testify to the things that would be spoken later. Christ, however, was faithful over God’s house as a son, and we are his house if we hold firm the confidence and the pride that belong to hope.

Therefore, as the Holy Spirit says, “Today, if you hear his voice,  do not harden your hearts as in the rebellion, as on the day of testing in the wilderness,  where your ancestors put me to the test, though they had seen my works for forty years.  Therefore I was angry with that generation, and I said, ‘They always go astray in their hearts, and they have not known my ways.’  As in my anger I swore, ‘They will not enter my rest.’” (Hebrews 3:5-11)

Now that we have the Internet and various social media like Facebook and YouTube, information and images about Christians behaving badly can be passed on and enjoyed by millions of people. We can both see and hear about people disrupting the mourners at funerals with claims about God’s hatred, others who announce with glee that natural disasters in which many lives are snuffed out are clearly the judgments of God, and still others who jump into the political fray and mimic the dismal behavior too often found in that arena.

All of this helps people to come to the conclusion that Christians, in spite of all their convictions about sin, heaven and hell, and so on, are really no better than anyone else in the world. And they would be right in that conclusion.

The ongoing biblical story about the people of God reveals a lot of bad behavior: God rescues the ancient Hebrews from their bondage in Israel, and in no time they are acting up, turning from God and making an idol to worship. God gives them a place to live, where they will be a nation of worshippers, living under God’s leadership, and before long they want to compete with their neighbors, so they make an army, demand a king, and start playing national politics by the rules of the world. Jesus comes to call the people back to their destiny as God’s people, bringing healing and hope, so they create a conspiracy and have him nailed to a cross. It goes on and on. Even into our time.

It probably shouldn’t surprise us that much when we who follow Jesus act badly. After all, we have all the potential for misbehavior that is in anyone. At the same time, we would claim to be a people who are being transformed by God, and as communities of people called churches, we confess our weaknesses and failures to God and to one another, we turn again from our dark deeds, and when all is said and done, we try to come together as communities of hope.

Hope is the key here. The writer of the book of Hebrews says that we Christians are like a house that has been built by God and is cared for by Jesus himself. We are allowed both confidence and pride, but not in ourselves, because that never works out. Our confidence and pride comes in hope. This is not wish-dream hope, but rather hope that is in the God who has plans for the world, and those plans involve a people established by him, who will be a light to the rest of the world. Yes, sometimes we behave as badly as everyone else, but in this house built by God there is confession, forgiveness, and healing. We embrace those things now in a stumbling way; our hope is in God’s ultimate plan of healing for all of the world.

It’s not a good thing when we behave badly. But when we do, the One who cares for us, Jesus the Christ, is faithful to bring us into the desires of our heavenly Father, to be forgiven and healed, transformed yet again by his love, and given space to return to be forgiven and healed again when we stumble anew. There is great hope in that, not only for us, but also for the whole world.

Devotional for the Sixth Day of Lent

2011-03-14T07:14:00.000-07:00

Happy are those who consider the poor; the Lord delivers them in the day of trouble.  The Lord protects them and keeps them alive; they are called happy in the land. You do not give them up to the will of their enemies.  The Lord sustains them on their sickbed; in their illness you heal all their infirmities. (Psalm 41:1-3)

Why do you boast, O mighty one, of mischief done against the godly?  All day long you are plotting destruction. Your tongue is like a sharp razor, you worker of treachery. (Psalm 52:1-2)

Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, [Jesus] himself likewise shared the same things . . . (Hebrews 14a)

It isn’t difficult to have an enemy. As long as you have something to lose or protect, there will be enemies, both real and imagined, ready to take what you have. Whether it is a competitor in business, an opponent in politics, a nation across a border, or a neighbor across a fence, enemies remain a possibility in human relationships. And where there are enemies, there is drama.

This kind of drama requires a person to allow the enemy to take up rent-free space in our heads. You have to be vigilant about enemies, because they plot destruction. Therefore, you have to look for the signs, all the time, whether they are there or not.
Psalms 41 and 52 both speak of this kind of drama. There are enemies who love evil, ones who plan to heap destruction upon the righteous. But Psalm 41, before it laments about enemies, opens with a celebration of those who care for the poor. There is something different about them, and the Lord protects them.

Think of the difference: Those whose lives are oriented around the fear of enemies can only think about enemies. Those who consider the poor are not being threatened by anyone; they are giving away what could have been protected, and in doing so they identify with those in need rather than with the ones who might forcibly steal and destroy. The orientation of life changes from an orbit of fear to an orbit of love.

The writer of the book of Hebrews describes Jesus as sharing the same flesh and blood as the rest of the human race. This is an important concept in Christian faith, because we believe that in Jesus, “all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19). In some inexplicable way, God, in and through Jesus, shared our human existence. In Jesus, God fully identified with us in our fear, our poverty, our brokenness, and ultimately, in human suffering and death. This is not God lashing out in a rage at his enemies, but God near and at hand, understanding everything about our weaknesses and sharing them with us.

Fear is not only a visceral response, it is also an identity. It creates closed fists and high walls, with strategies to keep enemies at bay. But God doesn’t summon us to fear. We are summoned to order our lives around the One who identifies and cares for us in a way that is only glimpsed when we care for the poor. In all of our drama, it is we who are the poor, and it is God who opens his hand to us in the person of Jesus.

Devotional for the Fifth Day of Lent (The First Sunday in Lent)

2011-03-13T08:25:00.000-07:00

O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. Because your steadfast love is better than life, my lips will praise you. So I will bless you as long as I live; I will lift up my hands and call on your name. (Psalm 63:1-4)

Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who live in it.  Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy at the presence of the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity. (Psalm 98:7-9)

The news about the massive earthquake in Japan is now into its third day. The death toll rises sickeningly and the whole world seems to be crying out in pain. Many churches today will bring that pain before God in prayer.

When a tragedy like this strikes, people don’t usually blame the earth. They might blame God or global warming or some other source outside of the actual event, but the earth is not typically the culprit. We expect the earth to do what it does, even when we recognize the human suffering that might result.

Psalm 63 is framed as a Psalm of David when he was in the wilderness. This was a man who had seen the glory and beauty of the Jewish Temple and had worshipped God in it. In his displacement he reflects on those experiences, recognizes his circumstances, and engages in worship. He is without the familiar surroundings and trappings of his faith community, and his soul thirsts. He affirms, however, that the love of God surpasses life itself, and so David worships.

It is difficult to worship God during a time of pain and loss. The questions of why? haunt us and we try to find meaning in the hard experiences of our lives. Some of those experiences of life are consequential; we humans often take actions that produce destructive results. But something like an earthquake is not one of those things. The earth is a dangerous place and when it does what it does, we often suffer.

The Bible repeatedly speaks of God’s love and care for the whole of creation. Yet, the creation itself (including human beings) is fractured and wounded. Jesus proclaimed the good news of the kingdom of God, proclaiming and demonstrating the victory of God over all evil, yet God’s rule and reign is over an earth that is deeply damaged. The Bible maintains that God intends for a better day to come.

Psalm 98 describes the future coming of God’s judgment of the world, but not as a judgment of anger or condemnation. Instead, it is seen as a judgment of righteousness and equity. It is a judgment that sets all wrongs to right, healing all wounds and reorienting the entire created order around the love and care of God. In that expectation, the physical aspects of the earth—seas, expanses of water, soil, rocks, and even tectonic plates—will rejoice. In the expectation that God will put all things right, the world trembles in anticipation.

In our world we have no shortage of tragedy, both natural and self-inflicted. We who follow Jesus worship regardless of circumstances, trusting our today to God, and anticipating a tomorrow when God’s intentions for a new heaven and new earth come to pass.

Devotional for the Fourth Day of Lent

2011-03-12T07:16:00.000-08:00

Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name.  For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.
 As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.”  By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed. (Psalm 30:4-7)

In the Bible, faith and trust are not different things. For example, the word commonly used in the Greek New Testament that is usually translated as faith can just as appropriately be translated as trust. It’s easy to see them as related but different concepts; faith may be viewed as a way of thinking, something abstract and conceptual, while trust usually implies relationship.

I might say that I have faith and mean that I have a belief system established in my mind. It can be come a place of certainty, a place from which I cannot be moved. I can operate my life independently and self-assuredly with that kind of certainty. Trust, however, is a bit messier. In a relationship of trust I can’t call the shots—I have to rest in the integrity of the one I have trusted and prepare myself for an outcome that I can’t control.

In my Bible, Psalm 30 is described as a song or reading for the dedication of the Temple. In one sense it celebrates Israel’s protection from international enemies. In another, there is the recognition that an overblown sense of security is unstable and risky, because when circumstances suggest that God’s face is hidden, dismay is the result.

When I am feeling prosperous, I find it easy to forget about God. When I have enough money to buy my weekly groceries, I feel no need to pray, “Give us this day, our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). God’s face becomes hidden, but not because he is hiding from me. It’s because I’m busy looking at myself.

In my experience, I have been amazed at God’s trustworthiness, even when I have been absent and self-possessed. It is never sufficient for me to ramp up my belief system to somehow please God; my response to God comes in the confession that I have trusted in my prosperity rather than in God. I need to release my self-trust in order to trust in the faithfulness of God.
The psalmist describes what happens in that turning to the trustworthiness of God:

You have turned my mourning into dancing;  you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,  so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you for ever. (Psalm 30:11-12)

Devotional for the Third Day of Lent

2011-03-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

O come, let us worship and bow down, let us kneel before the Lord, our Maker!  For he is our God, we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice! (Psalm 95:6-7)

He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter). (John 1:42)

The ancient Greek philosopher Epictetus said, “We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak.” Political drama and radio talk shows are examples of how mouths and ears become disconnected. In those contexts, there is much talking but very little listening. In general, the art of listening is a rare expression.

There have been many times in my postures of prayer and worship that I have informed God about issues of concern, or spoken back to him musical doctrines and descriptions of himself that may or may not be accurate. Then I get on with my business or go to lunch. I suspect that God has a high tolerance for this, since he knows how we human beings can be. I can easily be all mouth and no ears.

The psalmist calls us to the place of worship, but also pleads for listening. In the rest of the text he recounts Israel’s past failures in this regard and the consequences that came about because of their refusal to listen to God. Worship is described here as a receptive posture, a place of readiness, where ears trump mouths.

In the gospels, Peter is regularly portrayed as a brash, mouthy, lout. He has his good moments, but he is quick to speak and react, only to get reigned in later on. His first encounter with Jesus, however, required that he listen. In that moment of listening, Jesus changes his name from Simon to Peter. Jesus affirms that he knows who Peter is, but he describes in a name who Peter will become.

Jesus’ counsel about prayer in Matthew 6 seems to include brevity (although, his prayer in John 17 takes up a whole chapter). The Lord’s Prayer is fairly short, and in the prelude to the prayer Jesus speaks of the folly of heaping up “empty phrases.” I wonder if Jesus is advising us to use our mouths sparingly (after all, he says, our heavenly Father knows what we need before we ask), because the most significant part of our prayer and worship is listening.

I’m not particularly good at listening for the voice of God, but I’m working on it. It’s not that difficult, really. It just involves being quiet and attentive. There are no magic steps to listening, except to move into the posture of worship, and be quiet. The ears are there for a reason. We don’t have to do anything to them to make them work.

The only risk with listening to God is that he might tell us something that changes us, like the way Simon was changed to Peter. Most of us resist change, even from God. But the posture of worship is one of vulnerability, and resistance to change closes the ears and results in self-protection. To not allow God to speak change into our lives is to grasp a former identity without receiving the word about what we will be.

Listening to God is not a passive process. When God speaks, it usually comes with a summons to trust and follow him into unknown territory. But when God speaks, our response brings life to that good word.

Devotional for the Second Day of Lent

2011-03-12T07:13:00.000-08:00

For you are a people holy to the Lord your God; the Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on earth to be his people, his treasured possession.
It was not because you were more numerous than any other people that the Lord set his heart on you and chose you—for you were the fewest of all peoples. It was because the Lord loved you and kept the oath that he swore to your ancestors, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. (Deuteronomy 7:6-8)

Do not fret because of the wicked; do not be envious of wrongdoers,  for they will soon fade like the grass, and wither like the green herb.
Trust in the Lord, and do good; (Psalm 37:1-3a)

As much as we might like the idea of a personal relationship with Christ being the definition of being a Christian, it just isn’t, at least not in the way that we usually think. It is about us as persons, but as persons who comprise the people of God. Christianity isn’t about me to the exclusion of us.

That God would chose to have a people, and to do that out of love, challenges the idea that this enterprise is all about me. On top of that, God’s choosing of a people is about his plan of rescue for the whole world (see Genesis 12:1-3 for starters), and it breaks the idea that Christianity is something exclusive; that it sets this special people apart from everyone else so that we know the difference between the good guys and the bad guys.

Exclusivity breeds fear because there is always something to lose. There are standards, convictions, certainties, and predictable environments that are at risk if we don’t remain exclusive. It’s not that there aren’t real dangers in the world or that there aren’t people out there who have evil designs, but those aren’t usually the fears that define us. We can be defined by who God has called us to be, or we can be defined by what we fear losing.

The Psalmist tells us not to fret. That is a consistent call in the Bible—to not be afraid. The answer, we are told, is not found in hunkering down and protecting ourselves from everything that is not us, but rather in trust and doing good. We can’t trust in the things we are grasping—those things we fear losing—but we can trust in the Lord. And we can’t waste our time in shoring up the props of protection (which too often means hammering down our doctrines, labeling the heretics, railing against enemies both real and imagined, and demanding a better world that is too often defined by our political preferences than by the desires and intentions of God), but we can do good. We can be the people that God has chosen, to be loved by him, and to demonstrate his love to the world. That’s the kind of good we can do.

I must admit that I’d often like this whole thing to be accomplished between Jesus and me. I wouldn’t mind being part of us if everyone else would behave. Then I remember that all the brokenness of the church and the world is in me as well, whether in practice or just in potential. So there is no escaping the us of Christian faith. From the life we share in the embrace of God’s love, we trust in the Lord and do good.

Devotional for the First Day of Lent

2011-03-12T07:08:00.000-08:00

Ash Wednesday

He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14)

. . . steadfast love surrounds those who trust in the Lord. (Psalm 32:10b)

It bothers me that I can relate to the Pharisee at least as often as I can relate to the tax-collector in Jesus’ story. Regarding others with contempt—even those who have violated trust or committed serious offenses—requires a trusting of the self that allows me to assure myself that I could never be like “other people.”

But I am.

In Jesus’ great sermon in Matthew chapter five, he makes the claim that people who harbor anger have something in common with murderers, and that those who entertain lust have something to share with adulterers: The same state of the heart. Jesus seems to cut to the heart, so to speak, of what is really at the center of human desire.

The path to greatness and the achievement of significance is found in self-trust, we are often told. There are enough books on reaching one’s potential, capitalizing on strengths, grasping the riches of the market, or even finding the secrets to capturing the riches of God. But Scripture doesn’t offer self-trust as a way forward for the people of God. The way forward is trust in God.
One of the signs of trusting God is confession. In confession, we open ourselves to God, offering up our vulnerability and shoving aside the false protection that is self-trust. The psalmist sings,

While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long. (32:3)

Self-trust is costly. Surrounding ourselves with a false self of protection and strength is corrosive to the heart. Opening ourselves to God, by contrast, brings life and the embrace of God’s love.

One of my confessions to God is that I am, indeed like other people—even like the worst of offenders. I have a heart that is capricious and selfish, and until I open myself to God, I run the risk of trusting in a self that is ultimately untrustworthy. And so I confess.

Along with St. Augustine, I can now declare,

You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.

What about Military Chaplains?

2011-01-09T09:54:00.000-08:00

I recently stumbled upon an article on the Internet titled, “The Unique Voice of the Army Chaplain,” by MAJ Donald W. Kammer. He sees the role of the military chaplain to be more than a minister to military personnel based on their needs and religious preferences. He understands the role to be prophetic in nature, requiring a willingness to live in the tension between international conflict and Christian ethics. He is not unaware or inattentive to the failures of some chaplains in the past to be true to that calling, but he does not allow those failures to negate what he considers to be a significant call to ministry.

I know that not all people are in agreement about the ordaining, commissioning, training, etc., of military chaplains. Some are concerned that to send Christian ministers into the military will lead to an endorsement of war and the killing of human beings, enemy or not, who are made in the image of God. Others see military chaplaincy as an appropriate and patriotic vocation.

I am an anti-war person. In making that claim I am not saying anything disparaging about US military troops, nor am I making a statement about US involvement in any particular war. I’m just saying that, as far as war goes, I’m against it. I don’t know how any sane human can be pro-war. The phrase “war is hell” is not attributed to a 1960’s college radical, but to General William Sherman, who saw his share of hell during the US Civil War. War, I’m convinced, is a bad deal, and I’m against it all.

Having said that, war appears to be a constant global reality. As long as there are nation-states with borders and self-interest (and, of course, sin), there will be war. As Jesus observed, there will be always be wars and rumors that war is on its way (Matt. 24:6 and Mark 13:7). There are tragedies occurring on the earth all the time, but the tragedy of war is the worst that humankind, in its dark creativity, has ever manufactured.

It is into that tragic context that we send military chaplains. If the work of the chaplain is, as some have complained, a work of endorsing armed conflict and the destruction of human lives (as long as they are on the opposing side), then we should never allow the word “Christian” to describe that work. It would be a demonic form of deviant ministry and no Christian should ever go near it.

However (and I think MAJ Kammer would agree), to characterize the ministry of the military chaplain in that fashion would be a caricature of the true calling. Kammer calls it prophetic, and so it should be, with courage and integrity, even when it runs counter to what military leadership thinks is right. Such a prophetic work would be willing to receive the consequences of speaking in that way because that would be the way of the prophet.

There is another ministerial aspect, I believe, to the work of military chaplaincy. A student of mine, who was training for chaplaincy in the army, described his vocation as “a ministry of presence.” He understood the role of the chaplain to be one that was present to people who found themselves in the most tragic context on earth—the place of war. While, like other military personnel, the chaplain wears a uniform, unlike the others is considered a non-combatant. That distinction places the chaplain in a unique role of being among yet distinct from those who are the object of ministry.

I believe that a military chaplain can be both anti-war and a functional pacifist. I believe that because I have come to understand in some way that God, in the person of Jesus the Christ—the God who desires that all the families of the earth will find blessing (Genesis 12:3), who is reconciling the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:19), who is planning for a new heaven and a new earth (Rev. 21:1-5)—has entered into the most tragic place ever. That place is the community of human beings who love, hate, destroy, and create; who stone prophets and kill their own Messiah. Into that place God becomes Emmanuel, God with us. Rather than endorse our sin and our self-created tragic pathways, Jesus brings the fullness of God (Col. 1:19) and enters completely into that tragic, human reality, letting all of the power of evil have its way with him.

I am not a pacifist, but I am pacifistic (that is, I am inclined toward peace) and against war. But I am also against hatred, abuse, divorce, adultery, and injustice. Having been a pastor, I’ve been up to my ears in contexts characterized by those tragic realities. I’ve had to be present to people and situations that horrified and offended me, but the call to ministry has required me to remain in those places, seeking to speak a prophetic word, to be present to both the sinner and the sinned against. Such is the way of Christian ministry.

And, I believe, that includes military chaplains.

Reflections on a High School Reunion

2010-10-04T07:24:00.000-07:00

High school reunions have a particular character about them, depending on the attendee's phase of life. Since the members of the class are roughly the same age, the phases are, to some degree, shared in common. Life passages such as marriage, having and raising children, and building careers mark these reunions, either making us feel satisfied with our station in life or wondering if we might have missed the train to prosperity-ville.

A forty-year reunion however (such as the one I attended this weekend), has a unique character. We're pretty much past the career-building stage (some have even retired—early, of course!), and if we have children, might even be able to brag about our amazing grandchildren. Few of us care or remember our former level of popularity (for the record, mine was fairly low and now happily forgotten) or our academic achievements (another low for me since my high school studies interfered with my adolescent Idiot Phase). Life now tends to have a more settled, reflective character to it.

While I'm sure there were folks at our gathering who carried the weight of sadness and pain, a general mood of happiness dominated the evening. It was interesting to see the dance floor fairly deserted because people were gathering in groups, reconnecting and sharing stories about life. I found great joy in rekindling some old friendships and even making some new ones (Facebook, of course, will save us from disconnection). With age there seems to be a willingness to be more vulnerable than we might have been in the past. The people I spoke with seemed willing to open up their lives in ways that were very meaningful.

The impending approach of this particular reunion has caused me to wonder: Why does this brief slice of our shared history remain so significant to us? We've all had other seasons of life, from college to military service to jobs, yet it is the high school experience that draws us like moths to a porch light.

I suspect that we come back because, unlike other life experiences, high school is our transition from childhood to adulthood. We enter as nervous, gangly kids and exit as adults-in-waiting, perhaps still nervous and maybe a bit confused, but now eligible to vote, get married, and fight wars. The high school experience imprints us deeply.

Above all, however, I think that reconnecting with our high school classmates in our old hometown drops a kind of historic anchor for us. Regardless of what we've done (or not done), no matter where we've traveled (or not traveled), we come together and remember that we lived in a particular time and place; that, in a company of aging witnesses, we can declare that we grew from childhood to adulthood and were known by others. Whether we accomplished great things during that brief splash of time or if we just coasted through, we were there and we matter.

We also come together to offer evidence that we've moved on. We're no longer stuck in whatever category framed us a young people, but we've moved from that place to something different. For that, most of us are grateful.

Gratitude. That's what I was feeling. As a religious sort of guy, I was grateful to God for the gift of life and the evidence that it is a life that I share with others. And I was grateful for the people with whom I've journeyed, those who arrived on Saturday night to let the journeys intersect for another brief moment in time.

Sin and Nations

2010-07-08T07:26:00.000-07:00

In his book Justification, N. T. Wright points out that in ancient Jewish thinking,

"'Transgression . . . is the actual breaking of the law, whereas 'sin' is any missing-of-the-mark, any failure to live as a genuine human being, whether or not the law is there to point it out." (p. 119)

The modern nation-states of our world, by their nature, focus on self-interest. Survival and prosperity are the highest priorities of nations, and the citizens of those nations expect their governments to pursue those ends.

Some nation-states are global transgressors, violating human rights and intentionally flaunting their perceived sovereignty to the detriment of other people groups. But all nation-states are subject to sin.

Because of the focus on self-interest, all nation-states will inevitably fall into sin. When the ultimate priority is self, whether as individual persons or as nations—sin will result. It misses the mark of God's intention.

But modern nation-states are organized that way, and that's just the way it is. Only one body of people in the history of the world has come into existence for the sake of the rest of the world rather than itself: The People of God. God's call to Abram in Genesis 12 sets the stage for that new people, and results in the creation of ancient Israel and, ultimately, the dispersed people we call followers of Jesus:

"Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’" (Genesis 12:1-3)

Followers of Jesus dispersed throughout all the nations of the world can love their respective countries without deifying them, because they are free to recognized the inherent sin in the construct of nation-states. More importantly, followers of Jesus can remember that they remain, primarily, citizens of another kind of people, a people destined to bless all the families of the earth. We are, as pointed out in the New Testament book of First Peter, ". . . a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light" (I Peter 2:9).

We are the only people on earth who exist not for our own sake, but for the sake of others.

Thinking about "Clean Fiction"

2010-07-06T19:49:00.001-07:00

I just finished editing my manuscript for a novel I have written called The Dead Cry Out. It's a supernatural mystery novel with some underlying theological questions. There is a murder or two, some ghosts, and a smattering of cussing. There's no sex, so is my novel "clean?" My publisher now has the manuscript, so I guess I'll find out soon enough.

I understand the avoidance of gratuitous sex, violence, and coarse language in a novel. On the other hand, if you are writing about a couple of thugs planning to kill someone, making one of them say "Phooey" or "Merciful heavens" might just kick the reader right out of the story. They would probably talk like dirty-mouthed tough guys, and the reader would expect that. It doesn't need to be gratuitous, but it should be somewhat realistic.

I've attempted to get some of my undisciplined characters to talk and act nicely, but they won't cooperate. They do tend to take on a life of their own, and you know this if you've done any writing of fiction.

Some websites and blogs that I've read suggest that "clean fiction" is specifically for Christians because Christians can't tolerate profanity, violence, or sex in their novels. I don't think that's right. Almost all Christians I know routinely read about gang rape that results in death, murder by impalement, sex with prostitutes, and some of the most graphic and violent executions imaginable. It's all there in the Bible, so I'm sure that I'm right about this.

Lord of All

2010-07-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

Historically, Christians have often gotten in trouble for being lawbreakers. I'm not referring to those who proclaimed faith in Christ and then embezzled money or ran off with someone else's spouse. I'm talking about those who violated the laws of their nation by proclaiming that Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not.

The earliest Christians were persecuted based on allegations that they were cannibalistic (consuming body and blood of Christ), incestuous (evidenced by calling one another "brother" or "sister"), and subversive (proclaiming that there could possibly be another Lord of the world besides Caesar). That last crime of subversion was the only allegation that was true.

Christians who loved and cherished their countries have sometimes had to violate the laws of those nations. Free African-American Christians in the late 1700's in the US violated US law by rescuing newly-arriving slaves in Savanah, Georgia, and helping them escape to the North. Although their church (The First African Baptist Church--the oldest church of its type in the US, and built to hide rescued slaves in hidden underground rooms) was raided a number of times, the crimes were never revealed until many years after slavery became illegal. Had they been caught in their rescue attempt, they would have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

We see more recent examples in how Christians reached out to rescue Jews from the claws of Hitler and his demonic Nazi regime. Those who were caught violating the law against aiding and abetting Jews were arrested and imprisoned and/or executed (think of Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich Bonhoeffer as examples).

While these acts would be seen by the respective nations as illegal, the Christians committing those acts would have seen them as obedience to the true Lord of all. The present realities of the Kingdom of God demand an obedience that puts all other lords in their rightful places. It's a hard road for Christians to travel, but they've been traveling that road for a long time now. It's not only hard because of the consequences of that proclamation, but it's also hard because we can attempt to validate our own acts of lawlessness in the name of Jesus.

In the US, I could stand on the street corner all day and yell "Jesus is Lord!" and no one would really care as long as I didn't obstruct traffic or keep people from shopping. It's not illegal to do that here (thankfully). But the proclamation itself is a reminder to me that national leaders, governments, nation/states, and so on, are not Lord. Only Jesus is Lord. With a national US holiday coming up, it's important to remember that.

Does proclaiming Jesus as Lord mean that one is anti-country? I hope not, because a country is more than land surrounded by borders; it is a body of people, made in the image of God. However, if I proclaim that Caesar is Lord (identifying my own personal Caesar as a favored political leader or party), then I may run the risk of being anti-Jesus. Proclaiming Jesus as Lord, however, requires me to look past all the boundaries and walls and political values that separate human beings from one another, and recognize that God's love, made evident to us in the real, historic person of Jesus and continuously poured out by his Spirit, is for the world.

I believe that loving Jesus and serving him as Lord allows people to love their respective countries without worshipping them. The call to Abram in Genesis 12, that through his descendants all the families of the earth would be blessed, is lived out in the power of the Holy Spirit when we proclaim that Jesus is Lord and Caesar is not.

What Paul might teach us about illegal immigration

2010-06-25T12:53:00.001-07:00

I have made a stumbling attempt in some prior postings about thinking, as Christians, about illegal immigration in ways that transcend the various political views that seem to dominate these kinds of discussions. So, after a phone call this morning with one of my daughters, I was inspired to consider how a very short letter in the New Testament might help with this conversation.

The letter of Paul to Philemon is quite short, and it's a wonder that it was ever preserved in the first place. Paul is in prison in Rome and he is appealing to a fellow Christian, a man named Philemon, to receive his slave Onesimus in a way that transcends the requirements of Roman law.

Most scholars would say that Onesimus was a runaway and had become a Christian in Rome, where he was somehow connected with Paul. Roman law permitted severe punishment for the slave when returned to the master, and strong penalties for those who had harbored such runaways. Paul was in a ticklish situation.

Paul's letter reorients the issue away from the requirements and benefits of Roman law to the requirement of love. Paul would have likely held in tension three strains of thought: Roman law (he was a Roman citizen), Jewish law (which allowed the harboring and protection of runaway slaves), and the new ethic of love based in Jesus Christ (which would shift all perspectives and transcend all other laws).

Not only would Philemon (and his church, also addressed in this letter) be called upon to live out the implications of Christian love in showing mercy to Onesimus, but he would also need to live in a reoriented relationship with his slave, receiving him as a brother in Christ. This theme is picked up by Paul elsewhere, where he speaks of a life in Christ in which there is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female (see I Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:28, and Colossians 3:11 for examples).

As Roman citizens, both Paul and Philemon could have taken politically-based opinions: Philemon could say that conforming to Roman law was an obedient action and therefore the right Christian response. Paul could say that Roman law was wrong and it should simply be violated. We don't know how Philemon responded, but we do know that Paul didn't take either route.

Paul not only doesn't challenge any sort of legal claim that Philemon might have, he also doesn't address the issue of slavery at all. He seems to accept it as a social reality. Instead, he calls upon Philemon to respond to Onesimus in a new, transformed way. Their reunion is not to be characterized by harsh punishment, but rather by forgiveness and love. Onesimus might still be a slave (we don’t know if he was an indentured servant or a spoil of war), but he would have a new relationship with his master because both had new relationships in Christ.

As we ponder our own contemporary issues, including illegal immigration, Paul's call to live out human relationships in the ethic of the kingdom of God is important to us. Our response has to transcend either the baptizing of our preferred political positions or the embracing of lawlessness. As followers of Jesus, we have to recognize that our relationships to other human beings cannot be limited by national borders or boundaries. Nation-states may be compelled to guard and secure their borders, and perhaps with good reason. But Christians are not in that business. We are not in the business of political/military power, of fostering fear, or of lawlessness. We are in the business of love.

Like the relationship between Philemon and Onesimus--master and slave, now brothers in Christ--we also have sibling relationships with people beyond our borders. Are there illegal immigrants in the US who are our brothers and sisters in Christ? Does that change anything for us? That is not to limit our love to only those who share our faith, but it should cause us to stop and reflect on how Paul might advise us in this situation.

First Review of Shadow Meal

2010-06-19T06:37:00.000-07:00

EUCHARISTIC MEDITATIONS FOR "MERE CHRISTIANS"

A Review of Michael McNichols, Shadow Meal: Reflections on Eucharist. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2010.
by Gregory Holmes Singleton, PhD, OFR
Community of St. Francis, Chicago

Just as C.S. Lewis presented Mere Christianity by transcending denominational and theological fine distinctions (or flew under their radar—choose the image that works for you), so Michael McNichols wisely brings us into reflective encounters with Eucharist as experienced rather than wrangle with dead-end debates on how real “Real Presence” really is. In place of static definitions, McNichols places the Eucharist in the context of the complexities, ambiguities and contradictions of daily life. Conversely he also puts the complexities, ambiguities and contradictions of daily life in the context of the Eucharist. In so doing, he invites us to think about this “Shadow Meal” as a place where we meet one another in Christ, a place where we meet Christ in one another, and where we experience a foretaste of the feast to come.

McNichols is an Evangelical theologian with considerable pastoral experience. The theologian is certainly present in these reflections, but the pastoral spirit dominates the substance and the style of this book. Some of McNichols fellow Evangelicals may have some problems with his mystical and downright sacramental perspective on Eucharist. Conversely, some Western Catholics, particularly those with a bent for scholasticism, may have difficulty with the lack of dogmatic definition. This Western Catholic Christian reviewer (with a slight touch of Eastern Orthodoxy in him) found the book both a delight and wonderfully instructive. I found food for thought at every page. Like the “Shadow Meal” itself, I was nourished not only when I partook, but the nourishment remains as I continue to contemplate the varied (and often humorous) reflections offered between the covers of this slim volume with huge implications

A Solution to the Undocumented Worker Presence in the USA

2010-06-13T13:28:00.000-07:00

After reading Joel Stein's article on the last page of my current TIME Magazine, I was inspired to come up with a workable solution for dealing with the presence of undocumented workers in this country. I share it with you now.

All undocumented workers would get a special residence card, giving them legal status in the US. They could be hired as employees with no problem, they wouldn't have to fear being stopped by the police for looking like a Central American, a Canadian, or a Lithuanian. They would take a loyalty oath, and then make one crucial and non-negotiable promise:

To spend money like a person possessed by consumeristic, demonic monkeys.

Here's how it would work: In the first year of legality, each person would promise to spend a specific sum of money on non-essentials during that year. So, over and above food, toothpaste and gasoline, they would also have to buy gummy bears, glow-in-the-dark shoelaces, and annual Disneyland passes. Each year, that required sum would increase. So, for example, in the first year, they might have to spend $1,000, $2,000 the next, and so on. Just to make sure they were really serious, along with their special residence card, they would also have to wear an ankle bracelet that kept track of their purchases, like the one Lindsay Lohan has to wear to keep track of her boozing. If they came up short in one year, the deficit would carry over to the next.

After five years, the ankle bracelet would be removed, full citizenship would be granted, and a credit card with a $30,000 limit would be issued. From that point on, consumer spending would be guaranteed, high interest rates would fuel the financial services sector, and the GDP would have new citizens to crank it up, right along with Christmas spending, which of course is what religion is all about (hence the connection to the above image).

I think I've said enough. You can plainly see that this is the best of all possible solutions in the best of all possible worlds.* If you can't chase them out, then suck them into the vortex of spending and debt. Heck, it's the American way! If it works for those of us born here, then it will work for the newcomers.

*With apologies to Voltaire.

Immigration as an electoral catapult

2010-06-08T19:06:00.000-07:00

Today is the primary election for governor in the state of California, where I reside. The front-running Democrat is strategically silent about immigration while the Republican candidates spar over who is tougher on the subject. There will be more rhetorical blood on the wall once we get past the primary. The issue has become a catapult to thrust the candidates into the spotlight.

I've posted previously about how churches might consider a response to the immigration issue in a way that doesn't simply sanctify a preferred political position, but rather engages with immigrants (both legal and illegal) with an ethic that reeks of Jesus. See my prior posts for details.

But our country does need to reform its immigration policies. Just building stronger, longer, higher, and more patrolled walls is an insufficient response. Some have suggested amnesty for undocumented workers, and the angry responses make the idea seem as outrageous as recommending euthanasia for people suffering from seasonal allergies (please be disturbed, both my liberal and conservative friends, that the suggestion of amnesty first came from former US President Ronald Reagan in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986).

One thing that needs significant reform is our own nation's self-righteous attitude about the state of undocumented workers in this country (I'm not talking about heinous criminals, so settle down). We have allowed sloppy border security and closed our eyes to the practice of companies hiring illegal immigrants at poverty wages (good, capitalist practice, of course), but then screamed in protest when we suddenly became aware of the millions of people who have taken advantage of the opportunity to crawl out of poverty. We, as a nation, are culpable in this problem, and we need to own up to that. It's a shameful situation, and we Christians ought to be the first to confess the sin, and then offer leadership to our government in responding appropriately.

Neither the words "Democratic" or "Republican" are satisfactory adjectives to precede the word "Christian." And I mean it.

Has the Church lost its redemptive creativity?

2010-05-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

The ongoing debates about immigration (fueled most recently by the new Arizona law) are filled with confusing rhetoric (like, confusing the terms "immigration" with "illegal immigration") and high emotion. Those who cry for open borders fail to consider the impact on the resources available to these pilgrims (think: hospitals, police protection, services provided by tax dollars, etc.) and also what happens to towns (especially border towns) when criminals from across the borders make their way in so that they can conduct illegal actions. Those who cry for closed borders come off as harsh and inhumane, forgetting that this is a country formed by immigrants, and that our current processes for legal immigration may be faulty. They also seem to think that building a wall will actually work. Any boy over the age of 10 knows that a wall is made for climbing.

During the disaster created by Hurricane Katrina a few years ago, I went to the Gulf Coast and participated with a network of churches from Louisiana to Mississippi to Alabama that had come together (like a bunch of Facebook friends) to share resources, deliver goods, feed the hungry, and shelter the homeless. The government could barely fix the roads, railways, and downed power lines--the devastation was that bad. One sheriff said to me, "I don't know what we would have done without the Christians." I could tell by the big pistols he was carrying that he was a man prone to seriousness.

A vast network of churches in the Gulf Coast area--assisted by volunteers coming from as far away as Ohio, California, and Canada--dropped their denominational distinctives, turned their fellowship halls into food warehouses and their sanctuaries into dormitories, and did what the government could not do: Care for the people. That was redemptive creativity.

What if churches in Arizona (and anywhere else, for that matter), banded together and asked God for a better idea? Do we believe in Jesus? Do we believe that he rose from the dead? Do we believe that when he rose from the dead he had a new body? Did that new body have a new brain? Has that new brain had any new ideas in 2,000 years?* I bet we could ask him and he'd come up with something no one else has thought of.

I wish I had a magic solution to this issue, but I don't. But I'll bet Jesus does. If, as my friend Tim Storey says, the best we can do is baptize a preferred political ideology, then we are truly bankrupt. I think if churches came together and quit expecting the government to solve everything for us, we'd get surprised by the results. Could the governments of nations be blessed by something like this? I suspect so. Would there be some pain and suffering in the process? I suspect so. Prophets are not always welcomed in their home towns.

Hospitals, welfare systems, and schools were, at one time, the realm of the church. The governments of the world liked the ideas enough to co-opt them. Perhaps we should now ask God: "What next?"

*Thanks to the late Dr. Ray Anderson for saying something like this in a systematic theology class. It has always cracked me up.

Arizona Law and the Church

2010-05-05T09:46:00.000-07:00

The recent Arizona Law (SB1070) that makes it illegal for undocumented aliens to live in or travel through the state has caused significant reaction across the country. Entire cities have boycotted the state while others celebrate the proactive stance. While Christians might have social and political views that line up on one side versus the other, there is a larger question that must be asked:

What is the church's proper response to these kinds of social realities? Is it sufficient to simply pick a side and join in?

A friend of mine who is a Christian leader in Arizona advises the people he influences to use this situation as an opportunity to bring a new kind of leadership to the table. I think this is appropriate counsel. Rather than Christianize the political posturings of one side or another, a different kind of leadership is required--a leadership that is informed by Jesus.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer faced this in Germany at the beginning of World War II. He was horrified that the state church had submitted itself to Hitler's National Socialist agenda and called upon the "confessing" church to take a new stance of leadership. He insisted that, when the state acted unjustly, the church's role was to confront with state with its wrongdoing. If that did not end the oppression, then the church's next step was to shelter and protect the oppressed. If that failed, then the church had to act, albeit tragically, by shoving a spoke in the wheel of the state. In other words, take steps to stop the machinery of injustice. For Bonhoeffer, that resulted in his (as a pacifist!) joining the conspiracy to assassinate Hitler.

It would be a gigantic and inaccurate leap to equate Arizona's recent move with the Nazi terror of the last century, and that is not my intent. Instead, I would challenge us to think of a way that the church brings the leadership of God's kingdom to bear in an unjust world. Yes, illegal immigration has problematic social, economic, and legal results. But we do not begin with people as immigrants (or as any other imaginable label). We begin with them, as we do with all people, as co-humans made in the image of God. As such, we are called to bring a new kind of leadership in a broken, unjust world.

I would also add that the instigators of these laws are also co-humans made in the image of God. Redemptive leadership should reach into those places as well.

Is such leadership possible?

Is God really trustworthy?

2010-04-23T09:28:00.000-07:00

Recently two of my grandsons have dealt with significant health issues. We have prayed for them, their parents have seen to proper medical attention, and the boys seem to be doing well. We can breathe easier. It seems that God has heard us. All appears to be well. We can trust God.

But what if something goes awry? What if their condition changes and their health deteriorates? What if our prayers do not receive the answers we desire? Can we trust God in that?

Almost twenty years ago, a dear friend of mine was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given three months to live. He was a devout Christian, and many of us prayed for his healing. His lovely wife and four young daughters loved and depended upon him for their care. He made it seven months and then died. We trusted God for healing, but got death instead. We found no answers to our questions about why such a good man had to die.

I've prayed for others over the years, including three more people who had cancer. One had a small tumor that concerned his doctor. The other two were given death sentences, but still underwent treatment. All three recovered. I cannot claim with absolute certainty why they recovered. Even with grim prospects for recovery, maybe the medical treatment won the day. Maybe God really did bring healing. All I know is that we prayed and they all got better. We were able to rejoice in God's goodness and trust that he heard our prayers.

Both of my grandsons had either birth difficulties or early-age medical problems that would have probably resulted in their deaths had they lived a hundred years ago. Our medical technology intervened and both have been enjoying robust lives. When I stop to think about it, I am grateful that they are in our lives at all.

So who do I trust in all of this? God? Science? Random flukes of the universe?

I need to mention that one of the three above-mentioned cancer victims did later die. His death was due to an accident in his home, not due to cancer. We prayed, he went through treatment, he recovered, and he died anyway. But that is the way of all people--of all living things--isn't it?

I can sit with my grandsons--talking, laughing, playing--and thank God for his care and love. I am grateful that I can trust God for all this joy. But could I sit at the graves of ones I have loved, and then trust God as well? Or is my trust linked only to the delivery of my expectations through prayer?

I think the answer lies in seeing God as trustworthy regardless of our expectations. The two disciples on the road to Emmaus (in Luke's gospel) are disappointed that Jesus didn't turn out to be the liberator that they had expected. They had trusted God, but he seemed to have let them down. The resurrected Jesus--the one who had just recently suffered and died--came alongside them to set them straight. If God is to be trusted, then our expectations and desires have to be subordinate to God's.

I'd like to be in the place where I trust God no matter what. If I (or the ones I love) live, then we trust our lives to God. If we die, then we trust that our lives are fully embraced by this trustworthy God, that we might one day enjoy him in the new heaven and the new earth.

Faith and Trust are interchangeable words in the Greek of the New Testament. But for us, faith can be purely cognitive. We can claim that we have faith just because we've ordered some information systematically in our heads. Trust, however, is relational. It comes out of full engagement with the trustworthiness of another. I can really only trust God within my relationship with him.

In the meantime, I still pray and hope. Within all that, I try to trust.

Hitler and Idiots

2010-04-10T07:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I drove through the post office on my way to work and saw a booth set up on the sidewalk, sufficiently distanced from the post office door to satisfy any regulations about political affiliation. The booth had a nice little umbrella and several large signs around the sides inviting people to come and sign a petition to impeach the President.

Adjacent to each of those signs were large posters featuring a photograph of Mr. Obama and another man (I couldn't tell, from my car, who he was), both sporting Hitler-esque moustaches.

In our society, people are free to voice their opposition to all kinds of things, including presidential administrations, acts of Congress and decisions made by the Supreme Court. People can satirize our governmental leaders without fear of being arrested during the night or being banished to the wilderness of Iceland. We are free to voice our opinions, right or wrong, and that's okay with me.

I wonder why, every time a president does something people don't like, that president is equated with Adolf Hitler. You remember him, right? He's the German (Austrian, actually) dictator whose close followers revered as God, who took over the State Church, replacing crosses with swords and Bibles with copies of Mien Kampf. He orchestrated the deaths of six million Jews and thousands of others he considered ethnically impure. He invaded neighboring nations, absorbing them into his empire and planned to take over much of western Europe, if not the world, launching a world war that cost between 50 and 80 million human lives.

I have seen caricatures of US Presidents--both Democrat and Republican--with little Hitler moustaches on them. How is it that we equate our Presidents with someone like Hitler? How is it that being the President of a country like the US can instantly be the same as being a deranged European dictator? Given our system of government, is that even possible?

This is not a new thing. After shooting President Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth leaped onto the stage of the Ford Theater, breaking his leg, and shouting (in Latin), "Thus always to tyrants!" It seems that, when we don't like our presidents, we equate them with tyrants and dictators. When you have demonized your opponents, you no longer have to debate reasonably. Raw emotion will do nicely.

The issue is summed up nicely in an exchange between six-year-old Karen and her parents in a clip from the UK comedy Outnumbered. Karen's father has just explained to her that it is important to respect and be tolerant of other people's views about life. Her response is thoughtful and helpful:

"What, even idiots? Even if they want to stab you in the eye with a pencil?"

Well said, Karen.

Love Hurts

2010-04-07T07:52:00.000-07:00

"Love hurts, love scars,
Love wounds, and mars . . ."

I like this Bryant and Boudleaux song (my favorite version is by Emmylou Harris). It sounds ironic, since love is supposed to be happy and joyful rather than painful.

But it's true. Love hurts.

Yesterday morning, just before stepping into a day full of meetings, Emily called me to say that our 12-year-old grandson just had a seizure and was being rushed to the hospital. Jacob is diabetic, and it turns out that he had a severe drop in blood sugar and his insulin pump wasn't connected. All his tests came out normal and he was home that afternoon.

But the news that morning disrupted everything inside of me. I dearly love my kids and grandkids. Jacob is the firstborn grandchild and was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes at age 3. He's a strong and brave kid, and all of the medical stuff he's had to endure gives him a special place of concern in the hearts of all the family members. Hearing that he had become helpless--even for a few minutes--and was at risk caused a physical sensation in me. It actually hurt. Love hurts.

I am reminded in this that we can avoid things like broken relationships, loss of loved ones, betrayal and so on if we could just not love. Without love, those things have no fertile ground. Without love, people cannot harm us. They cannot betray us. We won't feel the pain of loss when they leave or die. For those things to happen, love has to exist.

The pain that we all felt yesterday at the news of Jacob's plight was medicated in the afternoon by the sound of his voice on a phone, through our visits to see him at home, and a return to some kind of normalcy that let us rest for a while. But even this morning, the residual pain is still there.

We're told in the Bible that love is found, not in how we love, but in how God loves. All of the pain and loss we can endure and inflict comes after God has already loved. Much of what I've learned in studying the Bible can be summed up this way:

Love hurts.

Good Friday and the Atonement

2010-04-02T08:55:00.000-07:00

In our observance of Good Friday (also known as Great Friday, Holy Friday, and Black Friday), we solemnly view the suffering and death of Jesus with an eye to Sunday--the day that we celebrate his resurrection. We would never observe Good Friday and then skip Easter. Without Easter Sunday, Good Friday is just another day that a good person dies a bad death.

It is interesting to me that, in our debates about the Atonement (trying to answer the question, Why did Jesus die?), we sometimes act as though Good Friday is the most important part of the story. If the death of Jesus, by itself, accomplishes something for God (assuaging his anger toward sinful humanity, setting the scales of justice right, relieving the offense against God's holiness, etc.), then the cross is really where the story ends. The death of the Innocent One somehow fixes everything that has gone wrong. The resurrection is just a bonus.

It is significant to me that the church has traditionally tied the events of Holy Week together, culminating in Easter, then moving toward the observance of Pentecost and the movement into Ordinary Time, where we live out the implications of God's work in the world, one day at a time.

The death of Jesus is truly significant, but not when it is seen as an isolated, transactional event that satisfies a need that exists in the heart of God. The story is bigger than that.

Institutions and Idolatry

2010-03-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

Isaiah 44 speaks of the irony that is revealed when a man cuts down a tree to create fuel for his fire and an idol for his worship:

"Part of it he takes and warms himself; he kindles a fire and bakes bread. Then he makes a god and worships it, makes it a carved image and bows down before it." (Isaiah 44:15)

The wood offers a reasonable service to the man--the wood can be used to build a fire for warmth and for cooking. The wood becomes a servant, giving of itself for the blessing of the man. But the wood then becomes the master, fashioned in a shape that the man deems worthy of worship.

Even though the Bible sometimes refers to idols as "nothings" (see, for example, Isaiah 44:10), they become demonic when they are given the power of mastery. The wooden idol is nothing; and yet, it has power over the man when he grants that power, permitting himself to orient his life around that which is nothing.

There is an application here, I believe, to the power of institutions.

Institutions are constructed to give shape and organization to something organic and alive. In their best contexts, institutions serve human beings in a variety of ways. Over time, however, institutions often morph from servanthood to mastery, and serving the institution becomes the primary interest of the people connected to it. When that which was initiated as a servant becomes a master, the demonic becomes real. The idol is no longer a nothing.

Shadow Meal

2010-02-17T09:09:00.000-08:00

My new book, Shadow Meal, is now in print and available here.

The Motif of the Eucharist

2010-02-09T07:38:00.000-08:00

Interesting how there have been different motifs when it comes to the Eucharist. One is the altar, which makes one think of sacrifice. Another is the passing of the elements across rows of people, each looking straight ahead, suggesting a context of solemnity and minimal interaction. Still another is the Eucharist offered at stations throughout the sanctuary, where people come, take, eat and drink at their own instigation, remaining isolated as individuals and free as choosers.

More and more I am seeing the Eucharist as the table of Jesus, a table around which people may gather. It was given to us as a meal, shared with one another, a sharing that comes at the invitation of Jesus and in which the people look across at one another, meeting the eyes and touching the hands of those who are intimately gathered.

How does the shared meal motif speak into our celebration of the Eucharist? What would that look like in the worshipping life of the church?

Death of Movements?

2010-01-31T08:31:00.000-08:00

Interesting conversation stemming from Jason Clark's post here. Of particular interest to me were the links to both Tony Jones and Jason Coker.

I'm currently reading How the Mighty Fall, by Jim Collins. Movements and organizations go through various phases that precede their collapse. I'm wondering: In movements and institutions that we label "Christian," do we experience the same cycles of growth, success and then decline that for-profit corporations go through because we continue to organize by contemporary business models? Is there another way for us, with different expectations and measures of "success"?

Coming to the Table

2010-01-27T18:26:00.000-08:00

Is the table of Jesus about being qualified and certified? Or is it about hospitality and wonder--welcoming the awestruck stranger?

The Table in Time

2010-01-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

Is the Table of the Lord - the place of Eucharist - a memory of the past, a realization of the present, or a foretaste of the future? Or all?

Worthiness at the Table of Jesus

2010-01-24T17:26:00.000-08:00

By the early second century, according to Justin Martyr, the Eucharist was already limited to people who affirmed the tenets of the faith and had been baptized. Just 100 years earlier, Jesus served that Last Supper (and first Eucharist) to twelve friends who didn't get it, had deep reservations about Jesus, were about to cut and run, and included one who was selling Jesus out to his murderers. Yet Jesus served them all. Interesting how the boundaries of right belief and proper membership emerged so quickly.

Eucharist-Shaped Church

2010-01-23T07:51:00.000-08:00

The evangelical church has, in my view, made a mistake by either marginalizing the Eucharist or using it as ancient/future window dressing. If we dare explore the Lord's Supper as a narrative/eschatological expression, we might find that we unstick ourselves from our desperate need to produce, perform and sustain the props of a western Christendom that may be gasping its last.

President Obama's Nobel Award

2009-10-10T09:17:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some research into the make up of the Nobel Institute after hearing about the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama. Here's what I have learned:

1. The Nobel Institute is not in Nobel, Ontario, Canada, as many people might have assumed, but is rather in Oslo, Norway, which is somewhere in . . . Norway.

2. The entire staff and nominating committee of the Nobel Institute are very, very, very white, which is apparently what happens to you if you live for a long time in Norway.

3. Norway is actually considered to be part of Europe, which means that the people associated with the Nobel Institute are probably European. And Norwegian.

That's why this whole award to a first-term, first-year American president is a puzzle to those of us who actually live in the country over which he presides. We Americans are, they say, industrious, pragmatic, and all about results. How can the Nobel committee award the Peace Prize to someone who hasn't accomplished some things that have measurable results? If that's how it works, then maybe I can get the Nobel Prize for Literature because I'm thinking about writing a world-changing book. Somebody needs to suggest that to the Norwegians.

The GOP is mocking the president by claiming that he is receiving the prize just "for awesomeness." We Americans believe in having potential, but we generally don't give prizes for it.

Since I heard the news yesterday I've been thinking about this on two levels. First, why would a group of European intellectuals agree on this award? Second, Do I reflect on this as an American who has some particular political affiliation or as a follower of Jesus?

First, the Nobel committee claims that it awarded the prize to Mr. Obama for "his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama's vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons." We haven't see the accomplishment of full international diplomacy or the cooperation between peoples, but maybe the committee sees it as a foretaste of what could be. Perhaps they also see Mr. Obama's efforts as a change in the way the US has been perceived by the rest of the world. So it could be that the award was given because of what the President represents to the world. Maybe that's a European perspective contrasted to a USAmerican perspective.

Second, as a follower of Jesus, how do I reflect on this? It won't do to just pick political sides and christianize our rhetoric (although, in spite of the head-scratching that some may have over the logic of the award, I really don't understand why we wouldn't consider it somewhat of an honor that the President of our country just got the Nobel Peace Prize. Why we want our national leaders to crash and burn--as though that would be a good thing for the nation--remains a puzzle to me). Without turning anyone into a 21st century messiah (which I am not trying to do), are we able to reflect eschatalogically about this event?

To think eschatalogically is to consider how the intentions and purposes of God, which will be fully realized one day, are given in the here-and-now as a foretaste of what will come. What God gives in sign and wonder offers a deposit on the fullness that he will one day bring in the new heaven and new earth. In the continuum of Israel, Jesus and the church, we find a representative community that gives evidence that the kingdom of God is breaking into human history. We should be the ones who understand the value and meaning of something that is already, but not yet.

Maybe that group of Norwegians were having an eschatalogical moment when they made their decision. Maybe they were thinking about what might be.

I'm not qualified to say whether this award was given appropriately or not. However, I was in Europe in 2004 and got a taste of what it's like to be from a country that no one else seems to like. That America would be seen in a different light appeals to me. But no matter how we view this award, we might be better served (and be better servers) if we see it through the eyes of those who live in the expectancy of what we hope will one day be--not in political or military maneuverings, but in the reality of the kingdom of God.

Is Compassion Misplaced?

2009-08-21T07:27:00.000-07:00

The release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi by Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill has scandalized and horrified many. al-Metrahi's hero's welcome in Tripoli has enraged the people who still grieve the loss of the 270 people who died as a result of the bombing that took place twenty-one years ago. The rage that has been expressed through the media has been constant since al-Megrahi's release.

I cannot fathom the pain that must be felt by those who lost loved ones in that bombing. The sense of injustice must be overwhelming for them. I understand the power of their emotions.

Secretary MacAskill defended his decision by saying,

"In Scotland, justice is tempered with compassion. That is why he has been allowed to go home to die.

"I'm showing his family some compassion. I accept it is a compassion not shown to families in the United States or Scotland.

"But we have values and we will not debase them and we will seek to live up to those values of humanity that we pride ourselves on."

As I read his statement about the particular Scottish value of compassion, my mind went to a story told by the German theologian Jurgen Moltmann of his time of captivity in Scotland and England at the end of World War Two. Moltmann had been involved in the aerial bombings of strategic locations in Holland and was captured toward the end of the war. When the war ended, he and others were kept in the camps for the purpose of re-education so that they might return home to Germany and create a new culture there.
When Moltmann and his comrades learned of the Nazi atrocities in the death camps (as regular military, they had not been aware of the genocides), their shame was overwhelming. Many refused to return to Germany. Moltmann, however, found forgiveness in a way that he could never have anticipated. In the preface to his book, The Source of Life, he reports this experience:

“In Kilmarnock the miners and their families took us in with a hospitality which shamed us profoundly. We heard no reproaches, we were accused of no guilt. We were accepted as people, even though we were just numbers and wore our prisoners’ patches on our backs. We experienced forgiveness of guilt without any confession of guilt on our part, and that made it possible for us to live with the past of our people, and in the shadow of Auschwitz, without repressing anything, and without becoming callous.”

I have to wonder: Is there actually something embedded in the hearts of the Scottish people that allows such forgiveness in the face of obvious and confirmed guilt? Moltmann goes on to give an account of his confrontation, after his conversion to Christianity, with some Dutch theology students who relayed the effects of the bombings in which Moltmann had participated. Yet, through tears, these students reached out in forgiveness and embraced their German brothers, claiming that it was only through Jesus Christ that such forgiveness could take place.

I don't know which is more troubling to me: The sense of injustice seen in releasing one convicted of the deaths of so many people, or the disturbing ring of the Gospel in the actions of Secretary MacAskill. Jesus pointed out the counter-intuitive nature of life in the kingdom of God:

"You have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of your Father in heaven; for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax-collectors do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matthew 5:43-48)

I know nothing of Secretary MacAskill's religious leanings. But I have to wonder if it is possible that the permeation of the Gospel in a culture can actually produce a counter-intuitive response to hatred and violence that becomes scandalous and incomprehensible to the rest of the world. Certainly Jurgen Moltmann, even before his conversion, experienced forgiveness in that context and now, it appears, so has al-Megrahi.

I continue to grieve along with those who lost loved ones in the bombing of PanAm flight 103. At the same time, my hope is that the Gospel of Jesus will continue to permeate our lives and culture. The counter-intuitive nature of the kingdom of God will continue to disturb us, but perhaps that is how we Christians might be the light of the world.