There’s a billboard not too far from our home that features a fresh-faced 20-something’s smile, and not much else.
Most of the advertising space surrounding the relatively small feature photo is blank, save for the following text:
“Listening. Caring. Doing the right thing.”
That’s it. No advertiser name. No sponsoring organization. No phone number or Web address. No identifying information whatsoever. Just six words, a head shot, and a lot of white space.
Why? Why invest the time? Why impose on the graphic designers? Why spend money to develop and erect such a resultless visual experience that can’t possibly sell anything or direct potential customers anywhere?
Then I recalled the Sunday during my seminary years when my faculty advisor accompanied me to worship to get a feel for how I was doing “in the field.” On the return trip to Lexington, our evaluation conversation eventually turned to the sermon I had preached that morning. He liked my delivery, thought I was well prepared, and that I had said some good things. But then he asked why my sermon could not have been delivered at a convention of the American Psychological Association.
It was not a knock against the APA, but a necessary corrective to the foundation of my sermon. What was it, my advisor wanted to know, that made what I had said a proclamation of the Christian Good News? I had cited no Scripture. I had hardly invoked the name of God. It was, he rightly noted, a speech more than a sermon, an inspirational halftime pep talk more than a faithful declaration of the Word of God.
What he wanted to know was why passer-by listeners would conclude there was anything particularly “Christian” about my sermon. The truth was, they wouldn’t...just as passer-by drivers cannot conclude there is anything particularly...anything about the billboard near our home.
When we fail to connect our actions to our motivations we devalue our motivator (Jesus), and virtually guarantee that others will credit us for blessings not of our creation. Feeding hungry, visiting sick, building homes, or donating to disaster relief efforts without identifying Christ as our cause invites the world to think highly of us – which feels nice, but is wrong – rather than the one who has already fed, visited, rebuilt, and donated his life to us. Such identifications, in isolation, will convince few if any to connect to Jesus; but without them, the spotlight will never shine on its only deserving target.
Years ago someone told me Christians must never speak the name of Jesus without also doing a good deed, AND they must never do a good deed without also speaking the name of Jesus. That is, make a difference to people, then make it clear why you’re doing so.
Or, in billboard-ese: Listening, caring, doing the right thing...in Jesus’ name.
Pray with me:
O God, St. Francis of Assisi asked you to make him your instrument -- do the same for us; just leave such a strong imprint of your hand on our us that when we fail to credit you, others will have no trouble seeing the truth. You are an awesome God. In prayer we give you praise and glory. Today, in life may we at least give you recognition. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Monday, September 17, 2007
Much to Do about Nothing
The Details:
When: Saturday past
Where: My home office
What: A media frenzy
The Scene:
I, seated in my home office chair, angled toward the computer monitor on which is displayed Major League Baseball’s Website, through which I am tuned to the New York Yankee’s home radio broadcast of their big game with the arch rival Red Sox. In addition, on the PC I have opened a couple of news- and politics-related Website as well as my e-mail application.
At my right foot, below the computer desk, sit speakers attached to the PC, on the face of which is a power/volume knob by which I can control how much, if any, of the speaker’s output reaches my ears.
To my left, atop the PC tower, is an AM/FM radio tuned to the local affiliate of the Hawkeye Sports Network, this day broadcasting coverage of the intra-state football rivalry between Iowa and Iowa State.
Slightly behind me and to my right is a television connected to a satellite’s worth of channels, currently employing a list of favorites I’ve labeled simply “Sports,” allowing me to rotate quickly and efficiently through available games.
The Operation:
Amidst that phalanx of gadgetry, for a couple of hours on Saturday I danced a ballet – call it “The Multitasker.” Fluidly switching from output to output, from pause command to mute button, I conquered as best I could the devilish detail that neither the Hawks’ nor Yanks’ television product was in sync with its radio com padre. My objective was to watch plays before hearing them, then flip and turn and click as necessary to listen to the homie announcers’ spin, a result whose pursuit kept me in perpetual motion since the TV Yanks were forty-five seconds ahead of the Internet radio variety, while the Hawks on TV lagged five seconds behind the radio network. It was quite the show, quite the dexterous display from a fan eager to have to it all ways.
The Lesson:
When the circus ended and I didn’t have to think about the direction from which I would receive the next bit of information overload, I connected my brief laptop dance to experiences common in today’s culture. In this frenetic, technocentric age, it’s almost required that we adeptly handle the random but persistent information storms that seek our attention from all angles.
Newspapers, radio, and television are the grizzled veterans, but today they are joined by an online universe far greater in size, scope, and potential immersion. From online bill paying to news and entertainment delivered to cell phones and computer screens, today’s information consumers are bombarded with options. The more experienced and proficient the consumer, the more likely he or she will choose many rather than only a few of those options, the result being a divided, distracted attention span. Add to these new media such things as family life (can you say “soccer practice”?), work, and friends, and the result is life pulled in more directions than there are points on a compass.
What happens to our spiritual health in such a cacophony of options? When the next appointment, obligation, text message, or other information over/download is just minutes away, what happens to our spiritual focus? When there is no such thing as time away, how do we manage time away with God?
Given the attractive choices modern times provide – choices that are frequently not mutually exclusive – it’s easy to rationalize reductions in our time spent in prayer, Scripture reading, or worship. “I just don’t have time!” is an excuse likely to generate considerable empathy... except from God.
It’s not often noted, but the Israelites Moses led out of bondage in Egypt lived in a spiritually pluralistic piece of the world. Witness the first commandment, which demands only that people have no other gods before God – an obvious, if also tacit acceptance of the existence of other gods, other diversions of attention. Later in Israel’s history, the rise of monotheism (one God; only one God; no others; get it?) demanded that people make an irrevocable choice. In our current age’s technological pluralism, I think we need to revisit Scripture’s demands. (How about Jesus’ rejection of would-be followers who wanted to bid farewell to family members before turning their attention to him?)
Because God is not satisfied to be among the inputs we consider, it was challenging fun to manage multiple Websites and various media outlets from my home office chair last Saturday, but it was not a template for healthy spirituality. It’s not enough to speak a “Thank God” every now and then, if that’s our sole or even just primary voice of praise. It does not suffice to gather with Christians on Sundays, if those meetings are our week’s only worship.
I know you’re busy. I know the modern world gives you all kinds of options. But I also know God doesn’t accept second place. Leave a comment to tell us about how you make sense of all this.
Pray with me:
Help me acknowledge then filter out the things that distract me from you, God. I am a busy person, but not too busy to stay busy with and for you. I accept your command for first place in my life. Direct me to choices that reflect that acceptance. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Thursday, September 13, 2007
That Thing God Does
Laurie, my office partner at the church, tells of the lost tooth that her daughter Gracie the other night expectantly placed beneath her pillow before falling asleep.
Morning – and its well planned payout – came, but not without a twist. Laurie says she went to Gracie’s room, her daughter still sleeping. There on the floor – on the hardwood floor that not long ago was covered with carpet – lay the enamel moneymaker, the lost incisor upon which Gracie had placed her faith. Mom and dad had forgotten that the tooth fairy does not take walk-in appointments. They had placed no money under the pillow.
Until, of course, Laurie found the stray tooth lying in full view, on a floor until recently covered with carpet, carpet that would easily have hidden the tooth from the most determined parent’s searching eyes.
More, the tooth – the missing marker of monetary momentum – had escaped its usually well-secured cocoon under Gracie’s pillow. Typically, she places lost teeth in a trench directly below her head, no doubt in an effort to prevent the precious object’s loss in advance of the forthcoming financial transaction. This time – maybe for the first and only time – Gracie must have lodged the tooth uncharacteristically close to the edge of the bed, which allowed it to fall to the floor in plain view of a grateful mom, who just happened to have a dollar bill close at hand. Grace awoke, searched for and celebrated her new wealth, not at all aware of the back story, which her mom believes was a God thing.
Then there’s my wife Shari’s grandfather’s current hospitalization for pancreatitis, a potentially life threatening inflammation of the pancreas. The other night Walter suffered seizure-like symptoms – dizziness and shaking limbs, to name two. Upon transport to a hospital, ER personnel and the usual buffet of tests tracked down the pancreatitis, whose symptoms do not include seizure-like events of the kind Walter suffered at home. To this moment, doctors know his disease, but can’t explain his symptoms or connect them to his condition.
Shari can. She believes it was a God thing, to get her grandpa the care he actually needed.
God things come in packages little and large, in moments serious and sublime. God things come at the crack of dawn and in the middle of the night. God things save us and the people we love from everything from embarrassment to ... you name it.
I mean it. You have to name your God things, because they can’t penetrate determined ego, and are easily cloaked by false bravado or personal desperation. God things are obvious, to the willing and faithful; but they dress in camouflage before the eyes of people too busy, too hopeless to care.
Do you need a God thing in your life today? Do you need a miracle, small or significant? How about a sign, a little teaser from heaven to certify God’s involvement in your life? You shall have one if you’re a willing labeler, if you’re willing to experience life today as a pressure-sensitive board, every impact upon which potentially leaves a divine signature, every incident of which is an occasion of God’s personal encounter with you.
Not every God thing is dramatic or profound. To be honest – and probably a bit heretical – most are too small or too personal to merit the attention of this kind of essay. But exist they do, in your life, at your point of need.
But not if you want the credit for your life’s good turns. Or you honor coincidence or serendipity. Or you think God has abandoned your cause and left you to fend for yourself. In all of those cases, you will claim your God things as either “you things,” or no-things.
As a result of God things, a child has renewed faith in a predictable, if unseen, friend; a parent has been saved from explaining that friend’s unforgivable absence; and a grandfather is able to receive and appreciate visits from adoring family. Our God is an awesome God (thing), indeed.
Pray with me:
I want to see you, feel you, hear you, touch you, be convinced of you today, God. Chances are I will get in the way of that outcome, so make your self and your things clear. But don’t be surprised if I misunderstand (or just miss) your entrance in my life; I can get pretty self-consumed. You’re not done with me, yet – thank you – even though I sometimes act as if you are (or that I am done with you). Hang in, then so will I. In the name of Jesus I pray, Amen.
p.s. Any God things to tell us about? Use the "Comments" link below this post to share your witness.
Morning – and its well planned payout – came, but not without a twist. Laurie says she went to Gracie’s room, her daughter still sleeping. There on the floor – on the hardwood floor that not long ago was covered with carpet – lay the enamel moneymaker, the lost incisor upon which Gracie had placed her faith. Mom and dad had forgotten that the tooth fairy does not take walk-in appointments. They had placed no money under the pillow.
Until, of course, Laurie found the stray tooth lying in full view, on a floor until recently covered with carpet, carpet that would easily have hidden the tooth from the most determined parent’s searching eyes.
More, the tooth – the missing marker of monetary momentum – had escaped its usually well-secured cocoon under Gracie’s pillow. Typically, she places lost teeth in a trench directly below her head, no doubt in an effort to prevent the precious object’s loss in advance of the forthcoming financial transaction. This time – maybe for the first and only time – Gracie must have lodged the tooth uncharacteristically close to the edge of the bed, which allowed it to fall to the floor in plain view of a grateful mom, who just happened to have a dollar bill close at hand. Grace awoke, searched for and celebrated her new wealth, not at all aware of the back story, which her mom believes was a God thing.
Then there’s my wife Shari’s grandfather’s current hospitalization for pancreatitis, a potentially life threatening inflammation of the pancreas. The other night Walter suffered seizure-like symptoms – dizziness and shaking limbs, to name two. Upon transport to a hospital, ER personnel and the usual buffet of tests tracked down the pancreatitis, whose symptoms do not include seizure-like events of the kind Walter suffered at home. To this moment, doctors know his disease, but can’t explain his symptoms or connect them to his condition.
Shari can. She believes it was a God thing, to get her grandpa the care he actually needed.
God things come in packages little and large, in moments serious and sublime. God things come at the crack of dawn and in the middle of the night. God things save us and the people we love from everything from embarrassment to ... you name it.
I mean it. You have to name your God things, because they can’t penetrate determined ego, and are easily cloaked by false bravado or personal desperation. God things are obvious, to the willing and faithful; but they dress in camouflage before the eyes of people too busy, too hopeless to care.
Do you need a God thing in your life today? Do you need a miracle, small or significant? How about a sign, a little teaser from heaven to certify God’s involvement in your life? You shall have one if you’re a willing labeler, if you’re willing to experience life today as a pressure-sensitive board, every impact upon which potentially leaves a divine signature, every incident of which is an occasion of God’s personal encounter with you.
Not every God thing is dramatic or profound. To be honest – and probably a bit heretical – most are too small or too personal to merit the attention of this kind of essay. But exist they do, in your life, at your point of need.
But not if you want the credit for your life’s good turns. Or you honor coincidence or serendipity. Or you think God has abandoned your cause and left you to fend for yourself. In all of those cases, you will claim your God things as either “you things,” or no-things.
As a result of God things, a child has renewed faith in a predictable, if unseen, friend; a parent has been saved from explaining that friend’s unforgivable absence; and a grandfather is able to receive and appreciate visits from adoring family. Our God is an awesome God (thing), indeed.
Pray with me:
I want to see you, feel you, hear you, touch you, be convinced of you today, God. Chances are I will get in the way of that outcome, so make your self and your things clear. But don’t be surprised if I misunderstand (or just miss) your entrance in my life; I can get pretty self-consumed. You’re not done with me, yet – thank you – even though I sometimes act as if you are (or that I am done with you). Hang in, then so will I. In the name of Jesus I pray, Amen.
p.s. Any God things to tell us about? Use the "Comments" link below this post to share your witness.
Thursday, September 6, 2007
A Day Late; a Quarter-Century Later
September 5 was the 25th anniversary of the first Sunday I ever preached and got paid for it. Or, in slightly more theological terms, the anniversary of my first day as a pastor of a congregation.
It was the first Sunday of September 1982. Classes at Lexington Theological Seminary were underway. My living arrangements, text books, and orientation to the city were in process, but I had yet to cement my “field work” position – the required, minimum one year ministry “lab” setting whose purpose was to provide the practical experience for which no professorial lectures could substitute.
Over the span of an hour and twenty minutes I drove from Lexington to Henry County in Kentucky, using the twisty back roads designated by the seminary’s field work supervisor. Having left earlier than I needed to, the wrong turns I made along the route produced anxiety and frustration, but no lasting consequences.
As I pulled onto the small gravel parking lot of the small country chapel called “Drennon Christian Church,” what first struck me was the gathering of people loosely assembled outside the building; I thought them to be the congregation’s welcoming crew...or jury pool. They were the people who would decide my fate, who would cast votes on whether to retain my one-of-these-days professional services as their pastor.
Greetings and salutations typical of people new to each other preceded what proved to be a relaxed and, I believed, successful worship experience. For the only time in my entire ministry, that day I reused a sermon, a reflection piece first preached for the congregation of my college days in Iowa City. After worship we had a bit of discussion time, then I went outside while the Drennon Congregation voted.... I won.
Did I ever win. Out of those nondescript beginnings arose a spiritual, pastoral, educational, affirmational relationship the likes of which I know I will never see again. Though small in number, the Drennon folk proved enormous in impact. Though without the alleged perks and prestige of larger congregations, the Drennon church demonstrated better than any collection of textbooks or classroom conversations what the church is, or at least is supposed to be: loving, tolerant, receptive people united in the cause of Christ.
That first Sunday provided an ample preview of coming attractions. Following worship, as was and would continue to be the practice throughout the three years of my ministry, a family in the congregation invited me for dinner. The drive up the hill from the church to their lane was quite the challenge for my Chevy Vega, but I forgot the mile-long climb when I took the first bite of what I thought was roast beef from the cornucopia set out on my host’s table. It was salty; that’s all I remember today. I thought Kentucky residents had found a new way to package salt, to make it more palatable to the salt-resistant by giving it the shape and color of roast beef. Turned out that the saline solid was country ham, which, as you may know (but I didn’t!), is salt cured.
In the instant of my first bite of country ham I knew I had been transplanted into a new and very different culture, I had become the biblical stranger in a strange land. My new church family lived different, talked different, were very different from me.
I, midwest. They, south.
I, city. They, country.
I, fast paced. They, relaxed.
I, one way. They, the other.
And yet it didn’t matter. Somehow we forged a strong partnership, an effective ministry. They and I, people who grew up on very different sides of the country, became great and trusting friends. My loyalty and appreciation for the Drennon Church so moved me as to produce annual return visits during the first decade-plus of my ministry with the church I now serve, a series that was sadly interrupted for several years in the late 90's into this century before resuming last September, a series whose latest member is my visit to the Bluegrass this weekend in observance of our 25th anniversary.
Perhaps most amazing about my relationship with the Drennon congregation was that I learned about and resisted the potential of my serving there a month or so before I decided finally to attend Lexington Seminary. I reacted coolly to the offered position; in fact, I was disappointed. I thought the church too small for my needs, too limited for my skill set (yes, I was pretty freaking stupid back then). In polite rebellion, I sought out another seminary – in Indianapolis; my second choice among Disciples schools – and even interviewed with a Presbyterian congregation an hour or so from Indianapolis. But God had other plans for me, a reality pounded into my spirit when I learned that the Presbyterian church could not call a non-Presbyterian pastor. Still, by grace and grace alone, the Drennon door was still open. Against my not-better judgment, God led me back to the open door, a door I reluctantly entered, a door because of which my life is forever and indescribably blessed.
I write this piece to let you know how much I love the people in that little Kentucky church, to praise God for gifting my life and pastoral journeys with what was, not surprisingly, supremely and exclusively the right soil in which my ministry to take root, and to encourage you to be on the lookout for your version of this kind of grace. I don’t know your needs, but I know the one who does. I don’t know your desires, your preferences, the road map you have laid out for your life, but I know the one who knows where you need to go and whom you need to welcome you there.
My Drennon experience, now a quarter-century old, tells me we can’t predict, or many times, even identify God’s directing hand. Often, the only view we have of divine guidance comes in life’s rear view mirror. But I know there is a hand, there is a map, there is an open door...somewhere. Just be prepared to change course when the map takes you where you didn’t plan – or thought you wanted – to go.
No single essay, no single book can say what I need to say about the church I met 25 years ago this week. So, two words will have to suffice: Praise God.
Pray with me:
You changed my life in a single relationship 25 years ago, God. Thank you. May at least one reader of these words have his or her own encounter with this kind of grace, God. May he or she not try to predict or even identify your move, but rather just be moved by it. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
It was the first Sunday of September 1982. Classes at Lexington Theological Seminary were underway. My living arrangements, text books, and orientation to the city were in process, but I had yet to cement my “field work” position – the required, minimum one year ministry “lab” setting whose purpose was to provide the practical experience for which no professorial lectures could substitute.
Over the span of an hour and twenty minutes I drove from Lexington to Henry County in Kentucky, using the twisty back roads designated by the seminary’s field work supervisor. Having left earlier than I needed to, the wrong turns I made along the route produced anxiety and frustration, but no lasting consequences.
As I pulled onto the small gravel parking lot of the small country chapel called “Drennon Christian Church,” what first struck me was the gathering of people loosely assembled outside the building; I thought them to be the congregation’s welcoming crew...or jury pool. They were the people who would decide my fate, who would cast votes on whether to retain my one-of-these-days professional services as their pastor.
Greetings and salutations typical of people new to each other preceded what proved to be a relaxed and, I believed, successful worship experience. For the only time in my entire ministry, that day I reused a sermon, a reflection piece first preached for the congregation of my college days in Iowa City. After worship we had a bit of discussion time, then I went outside while the Drennon Congregation voted.... I won.
Did I ever win. Out of those nondescript beginnings arose a spiritual, pastoral, educational, affirmational relationship the likes of which I know I will never see again. Though small in number, the Drennon folk proved enormous in impact. Though without the alleged perks and prestige of larger congregations, the Drennon church demonstrated better than any collection of textbooks or classroom conversations what the church is, or at least is supposed to be: loving, tolerant, receptive people united in the cause of Christ.
That first Sunday provided an ample preview of coming attractions. Following worship, as was and would continue to be the practice throughout the three years of my ministry, a family in the congregation invited me for dinner. The drive up the hill from the church to their lane was quite the challenge for my Chevy Vega, but I forgot the mile-long climb when I took the first bite of what I thought was roast beef from the cornucopia set out on my host’s table. It was salty; that’s all I remember today. I thought Kentucky residents had found a new way to package salt, to make it more palatable to the salt-resistant by giving it the shape and color of roast beef. Turned out that the saline solid was country ham, which, as you may know (but I didn’t!), is salt cured.
In the instant of my first bite of country ham I knew I had been transplanted into a new and very different culture, I had become the biblical stranger in a strange land. My new church family lived different, talked different, were very different from me.
I, midwest. They, south.
I, city. They, country.
I, fast paced. They, relaxed.
I, one way. They, the other.
And yet it didn’t matter. Somehow we forged a strong partnership, an effective ministry. They and I, people who grew up on very different sides of the country, became great and trusting friends. My loyalty and appreciation for the Drennon Church so moved me as to produce annual return visits during the first decade-plus of my ministry with the church I now serve, a series that was sadly interrupted for several years in the late 90's into this century before resuming last September, a series whose latest member is my visit to the Bluegrass this weekend in observance of our 25th anniversary.
Perhaps most amazing about my relationship with the Drennon congregation was that I learned about and resisted the potential of my serving there a month or so before I decided finally to attend Lexington Seminary. I reacted coolly to the offered position; in fact, I was disappointed. I thought the church too small for my needs, too limited for my skill set (yes, I was pretty freaking stupid back then). In polite rebellion, I sought out another seminary – in Indianapolis; my second choice among Disciples schools – and even interviewed with a Presbyterian congregation an hour or so from Indianapolis. But God had other plans for me, a reality pounded into my spirit when I learned that the Presbyterian church could not call a non-Presbyterian pastor. Still, by grace and grace alone, the Drennon door was still open. Against my not-better judgment, God led me back to the open door, a door I reluctantly entered, a door because of which my life is forever and indescribably blessed.
I write this piece to let you know how much I love the people in that little Kentucky church, to praise God for gifting my life and pastoral journeys with what was, not surprisingly, supremely and exclusively the right soil in which my ministry to take root, and to encourage you to be on the lookout for your version of this kind of grace. I don’t know your needs, but I know the one who does. I don’t know your desires, your preferences, the road map you have laid out for your life, but I know the one who knows where you need to go and whom you need to welcome you there.
My Drennon experience, now a quarter-century old, tells me we can’t predict, or many times, even identify God’s directing hand. Often, the only view we have of divine guidance comes in life’s rear view mirror. But I know there is a hand, there is a map, there is an open door...somewhere. Just be prepared to change course when the map takes you where you didn’t plan – or thought you wanted – to go.
No single essay, no single book can say what I need to say about the church I met 25 years ago this week. So, two words will have to suffice: Praise God.
Pray with me:
You changed my life in a single relationship 25 years ago, God. Thank you. May at least one reader of these words have his or her own encounter with this kind of grace, God. May he or she not try to predict or even identify your move, but rather just be moved by it. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Frankly, I Don't Cotton to the Idea
We took one of our nieces to the circus over the weekend. Good time, especially for her – which, of course, was the point.
One of the must-have additions to our niece’s Barnum & Bailey experience was the admittedly odd pairing of a large colorful hat and a bag of tri-colored cotton candy, packaged together, I assume, to sucker people like Shari and me into finding value in the combination’s $10 price tag. The hat was a souvenir; the candy was a both a treat and hark back to one of my past loves.
I remember being such a cotton candy fan in my youth, especially the conquest of stuffing large handfuls of the airy concoction into my mouth. My latest encounter with the stuff, however, has me wondering what I ever liked about it.
I pulled a large piece from the bag as a taste test, expecting it to prompt a nostalgic trip down my culinary memory lane. Instead, what I experienced was the sudden – make that instant – deflation of the alleged candy once it hit my tongue, disappearing to a sugary pinhead within seconds. A large web of spun satisfaction within a breath or two reduced to nothing, prompting a similarly empty look on my face. Subsequent tests produced the same result, leaving me to conclude that either candy contained better cotton forty years ago, or I didn’t have much of a discerning palate in those days.
Now much older and a bit wiser than I was in my youth, I can explain the candy’s disappearing act. I know how it’s made, that its “cotton” is an intentional illusion, an attempt to convince purchasers that there is more there than meets the eye. As I took my first bite from the bag, I knew what I was getting into, I knew that it was “eye candy” in the sense of candy to the eye much more than to the mouth.... I had just forgotten.
When people come to our churches looking for spiritual food, what do we offer? What does your church offer to its hungry patrons?
To people looking for a taste of the nourishment they once knew, to people valuing spiritual nostalgia who seek to reconnect with their sacred side, what do we offer?
How do we feed those new to the table, people who know little more than that there is something missing in their lives, something they can’t provide themselves?
A criticism made of some of today's largest, most popular churches and preachers focuses on a question of substance. “It’s all entertainment!” critics protest, fluffy theology gift wrapped in high energy, low necessity worship whose nutritional value diminishes rapidly...like circus cotton candy.
Some so accused are no doubt guilty, but the fact that their churches thrive in this spiritually contentious and skeptical era tells me somebody’s being fed. Said preachers and churches may be preparing and serving the ingredients (God, Jesus, the Bible, etc.) differently than we do, but somebody’s obviously liking their cooking. We don’t have to eat what’s on their plate, but we had better pay attention to it.
And what about us who live in older, established churches? What do we offer? How do we prepare and serve the Word? “Friendly” servers and “helpful” hosts are a start, but today’s spiritual restaurateurs demand more. They know meat from gristle, and natural flavors from artificial. They won’t tolerate the disappointment of spiritual cotton candy, however it is packaged or presented.
Think about Jesus feeding the 5,000. The first need of the crowd was physical, not spiritual hunger. Caring little for his or his disciples’ convenience, refusing to understate the power of faith, Jesus responded with bread and fish aplenty. Need identified. Need met.
Consider the wealthy man who sought from Jesus the spiritual satisfaction of eternal life. Jesus commanded him to expand his vision of faithfulness beyond following commandments, to include sacrificial giving and devoted following. The wealthy man refused the food, but once again Jesus identified and met the need.
What are the needs of the people in your community? What are you doing to meet those needs?
When the circus sells that hat/candy combo, its principal aim is instant cash, not lasting enjoyment; with help from my family, the Ringling boys may consider that a mission accomplished. When we in the Body of Christ “sell” Jesus to others, what’s our main objective? The moment’s experience, or a life’s transformation?
Pray with me:
God, give us modern Christians the passion and vision we need to feed the modern multitudes. Help us tailor our message to feed hungers, to quench thirsts, to direct people to the bread of life and living water. We are much too polished at fancy place settings and elaborate presentations. Show us the way to the cupboards that are forever well stocked in the name of Jesus, Amen.
One of the must-have additions to our niece’s Barnum & Bailey experience was the admittedly odd pairing of a large colorful hat and a bag of tri-colored cotton candy, packaged together, I assume, to sucker people like Shari and me into finding value in the combination’s $10 price tag. The hat was a souvenir; the candy was a both a treat and hark back to one of my past loves.
I remember being such a cotton candy fan in my youth, especially the conquest of stuffing large handfuls of the airy concoction into my mouth. My latest encounter with the stuff, however, has me wondering what I ever liked about it.
I pulled a large piece from the bag as a taste test, expecting it to prompt a nostalgic trip down my culinary memory lane. Instead, what I experienced was the sudden – make that instant – deflation of the alleged candy once it hit my tongue, disappearing to a sugary pinhead within seconds. A large web of spun satisfaction within a breath or two reduced to nothing, prompting a similarly empty look on my face. Subsequent tests produced the same result, leaving me to conclude that either candy contained better cotton forty years ago, or I didn’t have much of a discerning palate in those days.
Now much older and a bit wiser than I was in my youth, I can explain the candy’s disappearing act. I know how it’s made, that its “cotton” is an intentional illusion, an attempt to convince purchasers that there is more there than meets the eye. As I took my first bite from the bag, I knew what I was getting into, I knew that it was “eye candy” in the sense of candy to the eye much more than to the mouth.... I had just forgotten.
When people come to our churches looking for spiritual food, what do we offer? What does your church offer to its hungry patrons?
To people looking for a taste of the nourishment they once knew, to people valuing spiritual nostalgia who seek to reconnect with their sacred side, what do we offer?
How do we feed those new to the table, people who know little more than that there is something missing in their lives, something they can’t provide themselves?
A criticism made of some of today's largest, most popular churches and preachers focuses on a question of substance. “It’s all entertainment!” critics protest, fluffy theology gift wrapped in high energy, low necessity worship whose nutritional value diminishes rapidly...like circus cotton candy.
Some so accused are no doubt guilty, but the fact that their churches thrive in this spiritually contentious and skeptical era tells me somebody’s being fed. Said preachers and churches may be preparing and serving the ingredients (God, Jesus, the Bible, etc.) differently than we do, but somebody’s obviously liking their cooking. We don’t have to eat what’s on their plate, but we had better pay attention to it.
And what about us who live in older, established churches? What do we offer? How do we prepare and serve the Word? “Friendly” servers and “helpful” hosts are a start, but today’s spiritual restaurateurs demand more. They know meat from gristle, and natural flavors from artificial. They won’t tolerate the disappointment of spiritual cotton candy, however it is packaged or presented.
Think about Jesus feeding the 5,000. The first need of the crowd was physical, not spiritual hunger. Caring little for his or his disciples’ convenience, refusing to understate the power of faith, Jesus responded with bread and fish aplenty. Need identified. Need met.
Consider the wealthy man who sought from Jesus the spiritual satisfaction of eternal life. Jesus commanded him to expand his vision of faithfulness beyond following commandments, to include sacrificial giving and devoted following. The wealthy man refused the food, but once again Jesus identified and met the need.
What are the needs of the people in your community? What are you doing to meet those needs?
When the circus sells that hat/candy combo, its principal aim is instant cash, not lasting enjoyment; with help from my family, the Ringling boys may consider that a mission accomplished. When we in the Body of Christ “sell” Jesus to others, what’s our main objective? The moment’s experience, or a life’s transformation?
Pray with me:
God, give us modern Christians the passion and vision we need to feed the modern multitudes. Help us tailor our message to feed hungers, to quench thirsts, to direct people to the bread of life and living water. We are much too polished at fancy place settings and elaborate presentations. Show us the way to the cupboards that are forever well stocked in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Sunday, August 26, 2007
Thank You, Mother
Whether in recent days you have read or heard about these haunting words and their original source, give them your full attention now:
"Where is my faith? Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."
"Such deep longing for God -- and ... repulsed -- empty -- no faith -- no love -- no zeal. (Saving) souls holds no attraction -- Heaven means nothing -- pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything."
"What do I labor for?" “If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."
"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear."
"I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God -- tender, personal love. If you were (there), you would have said, 'What hypocrisy."'
"I utter words of community prayers -- and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give -- but my prayer of union is not there any longer -- I no longer pray."
Mother Theresa. You know, the beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner who is apparently on the fast track to sainthood?... Yeah, her. She said or wrote all of those words, revealed in a new book about her to be published this fall, in correspondence sent to friends and confidants over the last several decades of her life.
What’s your reaction?
Secular press reports I’ve seen treat this like another of the Mother’s miracles, though one with a wounded and stained history. The reports express surprise, as if it is some kind of newsflash that a person of such high spiritual regard, such laudable and selfless achievement, could experience, let alone openly confess, doubt and distrust of this magnitude.
There’s nothing necessarily mischievous about these secular takes. I doubt media people have it in for Mother Theresa, her beatification, or her place in Christianity’s hall of fame. More bluntly, I assume there are great numbers of Christians who upon hearing of her doubts reacted with similar surprise.
“She was a pillar of faith! No way she felt that much doubt.”
“She’s going to be a saint! They wouldn’t let her be a saint if she were that weak.”
“She’s my role model. I need her to be strong so I can be strong. Please tell me she didn’t really think those things!”
It is the faithful’s naive and needy from whom surprise at Mother Theresa’s doubts will sound most loudly. The naive, because they think of the spiritual journey as a linear progression in which travelers are stronger today than they were yesterday, and will tomorrow continue their steady, predictable advances. The needy, because invulnerable heroes – people who escape the demons of doubt – are for them an essential source of hope from whom even a hint of weakness can be crippling.
Seasoned followers of Jesus, however, will be heartened, not surprised, by Mother Theresa’s discouragement. First, because personal experience long ago proved to them that the road to spiritual growth is neither straight nor smooth-surfaced. Advances along the path today are painfully and easily erased tomorrow. Second, and I think more important, because followers of Jesus know that spiritual heroes conquer doubt; they don’t dodge it.
Exhibit A, Jesus. In the Garden at Gethsemene on the night before he died, all but abandoned by accompanying friends, Jesus pleaded with God to take away what seemed to be his inevitable fate. Yet, doubts clearly surfaced, he concluded his prayer with the conquering cry, “Not my will, but your will be done.”
Spiritual heroes survive doubt, but they can’t eliminate it.
Or, on a cross placed ignominiously between the death trees of two criminals, Jesus demanded God’s attention via the opening words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But in the end, victory sounded with his final breaths: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Spiritual heroes overcome doubt, but they can’t avoid it anymore than you or I can.
I honor Mother Theresa’s candor. That she chose to follow one from whom she felt so completely isolated, and by whom she felt wounded, abandoned, and helpless – that she fed and housed thousands, and loved millions of others while inside she wrestled with imponderable spiritual issues is a blazing testament to hope... my hope. After reading the quotations with which this essay began I know that in the spiritual despair of my past I had good, hopeful company, much the same company as I will have the next time.
Later on today – perhaps three minutes after I post this piece – when I am once again vulnerable, I will look to heaven and thank God for all the saints, including Mothers named Theresa.
Pray with me:
If she could, if he could, if they could... so can I. Help me learn from the example of other followers, God. May I learn not only from their service, but also from their doubt. Not only from their faith, but also from their fears. May I learn from them that to be obedient is not to be happy in the moment, but rather joyful in the end. In the name of Jesus I have had my doubts, yet in his name I still pray, Amen.
"Where is my faith? Even deep down… there is nothing but emptiness and darkness... If there be God — please forgive me."
"Such deep longing for God -- and ... repulsed -- empty -- no faith -- no love -- no zeal. (Saving) souls holds no attraction -- Heaven means nothing -- pray for me please that I keep smiling at Him in spite of everything."
"What do I labor for?" “If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true."
"Jesus has a very special love for you. As for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great that I look and do not see, listen and do not hear."
"I spoke as if my very heart was in love with God -- tender, personal love. If you were (there), you would have said, 'What hypocrisy."'
"I utter words of community prayers -- and try my utmost to get out of every word the sweetness it has to give -- but my prayer of union is not there any longer -- I no longer pray."
Mother Theresa. You know, the beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner who is apparently on the fast track to sainthood?... Yeah, her. She said or wrote all of those words, revealed in a new book about her to be published this fall, in correspondence sent to friends and confidants over the last several decades of her life.
What’s your reaction?
Secular press reports I’ve seen treat this like another of the Mother’s miracles, though one with a wounded and stained history. The reports express surprise, as if it is some kind of newsflash that a person of such high spiritual regard, such laudable and selfless achievement, could experience, let alone openly confess, doubt and distrust of this magnitude.
There’s nothing necessarily mischievous about these secular takes. I doubt media people have it in for Mother Theresa, her beatification, or her place in Christianity’s hall of fame. More bluntly, I assume there are great numbers of Christians who upon hearing of her doubts reacted with similar surprise.
“She was a pillar of faith! No way she felt that much doubt.”
“She’s going to be a saint! They wouldn’t let her be a saint if she were that weak.”
“She’s my role model. I need her to be strong so I can be strong. Please tell me she didn’t really think those things!”
It is the faithful’s naive and needy from whom surprise at Mother Theresa’s doubts will sound most loudly. The naive, because they think of the spiritual journey as a linear progression in which travelers are stronger today than they were yesterday, and will tomorrow continue their steady, predictable advances. The needy, because invulnerable heroes – people who escape the demons of doubt – are for them an essential source of hope from whom even a hint of weakness can be crippling.
Seasoned followers of Jesus, however, will be heartened, not surprised, by Mother Theresa’s discouragement. First, because personal experience long ago proved to them that the road to spiritual growth is neither straight nor smooth-surfaced. Advances along the path today are painfully and easily erased tomorrow. Second, and I think more important, because followers of Jesus know that spiritual heroes conquer doubt; they don’t dodge it.
Exhibit A, Jesus. In the Garden at Gethsemene on the night before he died, all but abandoned by accompanying friends, Jesus pleaded with God to take away what seemed to be his inevitable fate. Yet, doubts clearly surfaced, he concluded his prayer with the conquering cry, “Not my will, but your will be done.”
Spiritual heroes survive doubt, but they can’t eliminate it.
Or, on a cross placed ignominiously between the death trees of two criminals, Jesus demanded God’s attention via the opening words of the 22nd Psalm: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But in the end, victory sounded with his final breaths: “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Spiritual heroes overcome doubt, but they can’t avoid it anymore than you or I can.
I honor Mother Theresa’s candor. That she chose to follow one from whom she felt so completely isolated, and by whom she felt wounded, abandoned, and helpless – that she fed and housed thousands, and loved millions of others while inside she wrestled with imponderable spiritual issues is a blazing testament to hope... my hope. After reading the quotations with which this essay began I know that in the spiritual despair of my past I had good, hopeful company, much the same company as I will have the next time.
Later on today – perhaps three minutes after I post this piece – when I am once again vulnerable, I will look to heaven and thank God for all the saints, including Mothers named Theresa.
Pray with me:
If she could, if he could, if they could... so can I. Help me learn from the example of other followers, God. May I learn not only from their service, but also from their doubt. Not only from their faith, but also from their fears. May I learn from them that to be obedient is not to be happy in the moment, but rather joyful in the end. In the name of Jesus I have had my doubts, yet in his name I still pray, Amen.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Countdown to 50 - Redemption
Final random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday tomorrow.
I have arrived at the last hours of the fifth decade of my life. A few hours and change from now it will be B-Day, an arcane observation brought to you as a precursor to this week’s final reflection.
My last word before 50 is actually an encouraging one, about progress and hope. When I review the seasons of my life, I do not find one that did not in some laudable, necessary way build upon, improve upon, learn or veer from its predecessors. I am today a better person than I was in my thirties. I was in that decade a stronger, more reliable cog in God’s human wheel than I was in my twenties, etc.
The advances have not been linear, of course. Just as no summer season is sunny and 85 every day, so have my personal seasons been unpredictable collections of stormy, seasonable, and delightful conditions. But from the convenience of hindsight, I can say I have always been better than before.
In my teens I cultivated the seeds of silliness and sarcasm that have so well served me since. But I was also naive, intensely, sometimes laughably naive, about the real world.
The twenties never roared for me as they did for our nation last century, but in them I stretched enough to open myself to profound educational experiences at Iowa and in seminary, encounters of the mind and heart that effectively coerced the surrender of my naivete while surrounding me with supportive, encouraging friends and mentors, people who picked me up when I fell and, in some cases, still share part of the road with me today.
But the twenties were also home to profound personal crisis, to the naming of the internal brokenness that had accompanied me unchallenged for most of my still-young life.
In my thirties I figured out, finally, who and I was. The answer not only provided the subject of my masters’ thesis (the seminary called it a “final project” or some such thing, but in my forties I learned that “thesis” sounded a hell of a lot more impressive), it also rooted my heart in hope that my life could mean something, a potential I had not authentically owned in previous seasons.
But also in my thirties I ended a marriage, only haltingly implemented the strategies for personal growth discovered the previous decade, and stalled professionally, allowing ministry to be a creative, but far too repetitive exercise. Though the world around me was changing fast, I didn’t. Though I could see the effects of those changes, I did nothing to respond to them. Naivete redivivus, perhaps.
And in the forties? I rediscovered physical exercise, which had been a missing person in my life for ten or more years. I acknowledged, finally, that the church wasn’t in Kansas anymore; it was time for change. I discovered God’s gift of a person, Shari, with whom I now share marriage. And I claimed more than ever before ministry as calling – divine imperative – rather than profession or career.
The decade was also home to the ethics case that prompted the most poisonous challenge to that call. While there is no doubt that the case was the most hurtful, disgusting experience of my life, during its hell I discovered that I was willing to fight for what/who I believed in, that I valued integrity about as much as anything, and that justice sought could suffice in the absence of justice received. In an earlier essay on this blog I confessed the flawed ways in which I handled that case, but it was the desert through which I had to journey in order to be the better person I am today.
Which is not at all to say the “perfect person” I am today. As this decade closes I speak no bon voyage to the haunting professional insecurities that have made frequent appearances on the Express. Since 1997, but more precisely, in the last 5-8 years, I have bounced mercilessly between celebrating and denying God’s call on my life. It’s been quite the struggle, one that, in these forties’ waning hours, I know I am better equipped for than ever before.
So what of the approaching fifties? I haven’t got a clue, except, with history as corroboration, that at the end of them I will believe myself to be a better person than I was on that humid August night in ‘07 when I brought this essay to a close.
May a similar conclusion accompany the end of your life’s next season.
Thanks for sharing this week with me. And if you’ll permit...
Happy birthday, Bill.
Pray with me:
For every moment that became an incident that joined with others to create patterns that produced the seasons I look back upon, in the name of Jesus I say thank you, God.
I have arrived at the last hours of the fifth decade of my life. A few hours and change from now it will be B-Day, an arcane observation brought to you as a precursor to this week’s final reflection.
My last word before 50 is actually an encouraging one, about progress and hope. When I review the seasons of my life, I do not find one that did not in some laudable, necessary way build upon, improve upon, learn or veer from its predecessors. I am today a better person than I was in my thirties. I was in that decade a stronger, more reliable cog in God’s human wheel than I was in my twenties, etc.
The advances have not been linear, of course. Just as no summer season is sunny and 85 every day, so have my personal seasons been unpredictable collections of stormy, seasonable, and delightful conditions. But from the convenience of hindsight, I can say I have always been better than before.
In my teens I cultivated the seeds of silliness and sarcasm that have so well served me since. But I was also naive, intensely, sometimes laughably naive, about the real world.
The twenties never roared for me as they did for our nation last century, but in them I stretched enough to open myself to profound educational experiences at Iowa and in seminary, encounters of the mind and heart that effectively coerced the surrender of my naivete while surrounding me with supportive, encouraging friends and mentors, people who picked me up when I fell and, in some cases, still share part of the road with me today.
But the twenties were also home to profound personal crisis, to the naming of the internal brokenness that had accompanied me unchallenged for most of my still-young life.
In my thirties I figured out, finally, who and I was. The answer not only provided the subject of my masters’ thesis (the seminary called it a “final project” or some such thing, but in my forties I learned that “thesis” sounded a hell of a lot more impressive), it also rooted my heart in hope that my life could mean something, a potential I had not authentically owned in previous seasons.
But also in my thirties I ended a marriage, only haltingly implemented the strategies for personal growth discovered the previous decade, and stalled professionally, allowing ministry to be a creative, but far too repetitive exercise. Though the world around me was changing fast, I didn’t. Though I could see the effects of those changes, I did nothing to respond to them. Naivete redivivus, perhaps.
And in the forties? I rediscovered physical exercise, which had been a missing person in my life for ten or more years. I acknowledged, finally, that the church wasn’t in Kansas anymore; it was time for change. I discovered God’s gift of a person, Shari, with whom I now share marriage. And I claimed more than ever before ministry as calling – divine imperative – rather than profession or career.
The decade was also home to the ethics case that prompted the most poisonous challenge to that call. While there is no doubt that the case was the most hurtful, disgusting experience of my life, during its hell I discovered that I was willing to fight for what/who I believed in, that I valued integrity about as much as anything, and that justice sought could suffice in the absence of justice received. In an earlier essay on this blog I confessed the flawed ways in which I handled that case, but it was the desert through which I had to journey in order to be the better person I am today.
Which is not at all to say the “perfect person” I am today. As this decade closes I speak no bon voyage to the haunting professional insecurities that have made frequent appearances on the Express. Since 1997, but more precisely, in the last 5-8 years, I have bounced mercilessly between celebrating and denying God’s call on my life. It’s been quite the struggle, one that, in these forties’ waning hours, I know I am better equipped for than ever before.
So what of the approaching fifties? I haven’t got a clue, except, with history as corroboration, that at the end of them I will believe myself to be a better person than I was on that humid August night in ‘07 when I brought this essay to a close.
May a similar conclusion accompany the end of your life’s next season.
Thanks for sharing this week with me. And if you’ll permit...
Happy birthday, Bill.
Pray with me:
For every moment that became an incident that joined with others to create patterns that produced the seasons I look back upon, in the name of Jesus I say thank you, God.
Friday, August 17, 2007
Countdown to 50 - As Old as I Feel
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
[WARNING: THIS ONE LIVES DOWN TO ITS "RAMBLING" DESCRIPTION!]
Among my mom’s favorite aphorisms was “You’re only as old as you feel.” Variations on the same theme included “Age is just a number,” and “I’m 39 and holding.” I guess those were the slogans of her protest against aging.
Have you ever asked yourself how old you feel? Did you have an answer? I don’t, because I have no experience with ages other than with the ones through which I have already passed.
An exaggerated example: Due to the recent death of a Japanese citizen, a 114 year-old American now holds the title of world’s oldest living human. How can anyone other than possibly the 110+ crowd know anything about that lady’s experience? I can tell you what 49 feels like; talk to me on Monday and I will offer a snap review of 50. But as for any age I have yet to pass through... haven’t got a clue.
We have well developed age-based stereotypes, of course. Some true, some not. Some fair, some not: Kids are flexible and boundlessly energetic. Twenty-somethings are in the physical, albeit unrefined prime of their lives. Middle-agers expand around the waist, belly or behind. Seniors are wrinkled and deteriorated, at a deeply secreted rate moving inexorably to the end of their lives.
There is truth to any generalization, but not necessarily relevance. Most age-based generalizations aren’t relevant. What does it mean to feel "old," and why does it matter? Why do we cast our debilitations in terms of age rather than, say, symptoms?
Frequently I hear people grumble, “It’s not easy getting old,” as if age is the culprit, when clearly it is not. You rarely hear people say the more descriptive and accurate, “It’s not easy waking up with arthritis, or gout, or bad vision;” it’s more often about their age.
Hey! I could attribute my growing baldness to my age! After all, twenty years ago I had more hair than I now have. So, it’s not easy (nor as hairy) getting old.
With this essay I declare my independence from age. I am Bill Coley, a person increasingly fit for his....
Well, that didn’t work. I try again:
I am Bill Coley, a person who has to call his doctor in the next couple of weeks because the doc wants to check the usual suspects now that I am about to turn....
Not that either.
Hmm. Age is in fact just a number, but it seems to be an inevitable one.
How old are you?
Pray with me:
God, you are timeless. You offer the gift of forever to everybody. We can’t possibly know what forever feels like until we get there, but one day we will, because time and age mean nothing to you. Keep us on, but diverted from the clock, diverted so that we will spend more time living than counting. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
[WARNING: THIS ONE LIVES DOWN TO ITS "RAMBLING" DESCRIPTION!]
Among my mom’s favorite aphorisms was “You’re only as old as you feel.” Variations on the same theme included “Age is just a number,” and “I’m 39 and holding.” I guess those were the slogans of her protest against aging.
Have you ever asked yourself how old you feel? Did you have an answer? I don’t, because I have no experience with ages other than with the ones through which I have already passed.
An exaggerated example: Due to the recent death of a Japanese citizen, a 114 year-old American now holds the title of world’s oldest living human. How can anyone other than possibly the 110+ crowd know anything about that lady’s experience? I can tell you what 49 feels like; talk to me on Monday and I will offer a snap review of 50. But as for any age I have yet to pass through... haven’t got a clue.
We have well developed age-based stereotypes, of course. Some true, some not. Some fair, some not: Kids are flexible and boundlessly energetic. Twenty-somethings are in the physical, albeit unrefined prime of their lives. Middle-agers expand around the waist, belly or behind. Seniors are wrinkled and deteriorated, at a deeply secreted rate moving inexorably to the end of their lives.
There is truth to any generalization, but not necessarily relevance. Most age-based generalizations aren’t relevant. What does it mean to feel "old," and why does it matter? Why do we cast our debilitations in terms of age rather than, say, symptoms?
Frequently I hear people grumble, “It’s not easy getting old,” as if age is the culprit, when clearly it is not. You rarely hear people say the more descriptive and accurate, “It’s not easy waking up with arthritis, or gout, or bad vision;” it’s more often about their age.
Hey! I could attribute my growing baldness to my age! After all, twenty years ago I had more hair than I now have. So, it’s not easy (nor as hairy) getting old.
With this essay I declare my independence from age. I am Bill Coley, a person increasingly fit for his....
Well, that didn’t work. I try again:
I am Bill Coley, a person who has to call his doctor in the next couple of weeks because the doc wants to check the usual suspects now that I am about to turn....
Not that either.
Hmm. Age is in fact just a number, but it seems to be an inevitable one.
How old are you?
Pray with me:
God, you are timeless. You offer the gift of forever to everybody. We can’t possibly know what forever feels like until we get there, but one day we will, because time and age mean nothing to you. Keep us on, but diverted from the clock, diverted so that we will spend more time living than counting. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Countdown to 50 - Six Flags, Some Red
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
The title track of Bonnie Raitt’s magnificent album “Nick of Time” describes her joy in finding the love of her life a bit later in her life than the social norm. Among the lyrics of the song are these:
I see my folks are getting on
And I watch their bodies change
I know they see the same in me
And it makes us both feel strange
No matter how you tell yourself
It's what we all go through
Those lines are pretty hard to take
When they're staring back at you
Oh Oh Oh, scared you'll run out of time
Of such panic are mid-life crises made, I suppose. Fears of unrealized dreams, unfulfilled ambitions, incomplete personal mission projects; fears that it’s now too late to accomplish what in our younger days we thought we would accomplish, that aging’s biological and physiological juggernauts have generated too much momentum to be stopped or even slowed before our names are added to their victim lists.
I don’t think I ever experienced a mid-life crisis. For men, aren’t they most frequent in their 40's (women are probably different; usually are)? I don’t remember a time when I had to have a sporty convertible or when I felt a desire to transplant into a younger generation’s culture to convince myself, if no one else, that there was still tread left on my life’s tires. I don’t look back with regret on the big choices I have made over the years; there isn’t much I would change, were the circumstances to repeat. I spend a lot of time on our treadmill, but that exercise is a natural extension of my life-long attraction to walking, rather than a reflection of a need to look younger than my age.
I’ve had crises, no doubt, but they were situational, not seasonal; once the precipitating incident resolved, so did the crisis. Mid-life crises aren’t as much connected to specific events as they are to generalized needs of the heart and soul; those I haven’t had. Not in family. Not in marriage. Not among friends. But in ministry, in the church, that’s another story.
My seasonal crises have been, oddly and cruelly enough, faith based. Recounted on several occasions in this blog, my struggle with doubts about my call to ministry has been a recurring character in the Coley drama. Often over the years I have asked God whether I was ever actually called to ministry, and if so, why that call had apparently been cancelled without notice. Unknowingly, perhaps I concocted my call out of the anxiety of a graduate studies program at Iowa I chose to give up in the spring of 1982. Or rather, maybe I correctly perceived the original call, but the memo suspending my licence to practice had somehow been lost in the bureaucratic menagerie of heaven’s many responsibilities, leaving me in the church and in the line of fire, no longer indemnified by divine underwriters.
However explained, there have been times when I questioned, not simply whether I was up to a particular task in ministry, but whether I could claim its particular call. That’s a crisis.
As I evaluate my first fifty years, I appreciate my childhood more than ever, I value my time at the University of Iowa immensely, and realize the grace of countless beautiful people with whom I have crossed paths since. But ministry is the unresolved mystery. It’s been an emotional and spiritual roller coaster, at times profoundly grateful for the privilege of serving Jesus; at other times profoundly angry to have been swindled into such a torturous career.
Most troubling, I don’t see the roller coaster stopping before I retire (or quit, or go to prison for spray painting protest graffiti on the walls of every church in the Quad Cities). This chaotic movement from suffering to satisfaction seems to have mastered perpetual motion. I can’t stop it. I can hardly manage it, except to know that I have company – people like the Old Testament prophets, who regularly barked at God for bringing them into revolving unrest.
There is no happy ending to this entry, but neither do I intend a sad one. Today was a good day. I am looking forward to the weekend. Monday will be a fine birthday. I’m in a good mood. It’s just that I know the coaster will begin its next climb to chaos at any moment, and I will almost certainly be on board.
Today’s invitation to leave a comment is about your crises, mid-life or otherwise. I doubt there is much to learn from my present confessional, but your experience might help someone in their struggles. Consider it.
Pray with me:
God of every crisis, author of every life, and Lord of every collision of those two forces, be my spiritual GPS through the maze of life. Help me locate important landmarks. Inspire me to journal valuable experiences. Conect me with people who will accept my fallibility and culpability, as well as people who will raise their hands with mine in praise when life is well lived and much loved. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
The title track of Bonnie Raitt’s magnificent album “Nick of Time” describes her joy in finding the love of her life a bit later in her life than the social norm. Among the lyrics of the song are these:
I see my folks are getting on
And I watch their bodies change
I know they see the same in me
And it makes us both feel strange
No matter how you tell yourself
It's what we all go through
Those lines are pretty hard to take
When they're staring back at you
Oh Oh Oh, scared you'll run out of time
Of such panic are mid-life crises made, I suppose. Fears of unrealized dreams, unfulfilled ambitions, incomplete personal mission projects; fears that it’s now too late to accomplish what in our younger days we thought we would accomplish, that aging’s biological and physiological juggernauts have generated too much momentum to be stopped or even slowed before our names are added to their victim lists.
I don’t think I ever experienced a mid-life crisis. For men, aren’t they most frequent in their 40's (women are probably different; usually are)? I don’t remember a time when I had to have a sporty convertible or when I felt a desire to transplant into a younger generation’s culture to convince myself, if no one else, that there was still tread left on my life’s tires. I don’t look back with regret on the big choices I have made over the years; there isn’t much I would change, were the circumstances to repeat. I spend a lot of time on our treadmill, but that exercise is a natural extension of my life-long attraction to walking, rather than a reflection of a need to look younger than my age.
I’ve had crises, no doubt, but they were situational, not seasonal; once the precipitating incident resolved, so did the crisis. Mid-life crises aren’t as much connected to specific events as they are to generalized needs of the heart and soul; those I haven’t had. Not in family. Not in marriage. Not among friends. But in ministry, in the church, that’s another story.
My seasonal crises have been, oddly and cruelly enough, faith based. Recounted on several occasions in this blog, my struggle with doubts about my call to ministry has been a recurring character in the Coley drama. Often over the years I have asked God whether I was ever actually called to ministry, and if so, why that call had apparently been cancelled without notice. Unknowingly, perhaps I concocted my call out of the anxiety of a graduate studies program at Iowa I chose to give up in the spring of 1982. Or rather, maybe I correctly perceived the original call, but the memo suspending my licence to practice had somehow been lost in the bureaucratic menagerie of heaven’s many responsibilities, leaving me in the church and in the line of fire, no longer indemnified by divine underwriters.
However explained, there have been times when I questioned, not simply whether I was up to a particular task in ministry, but whether I could claim its particular call. That’s a crisis.
As I evaluate my first fifty years, I appreciate my childhood more than ever, I value my time at the University of Iowa immensely, and realize the grace of countless beautiful people with whom I have crossed paths since. But ministry is the unresolved mystery. It’s been an emotional and spiritual roller coaster, at times profoundly grateful for the privilege of serving Jesus; at other times profoundly angry to have been swindled into such a torturous career.
Most troubling, I don’t see the roller coaster stopping before I retire (or quit, or go to prison for spray painting protest graffiti on the walls of every church in the Quad Cities). This chaotic movement from suffering to satisfaction seems to have mastered perpetual motion. I can’t stop it. I can hardly manage it, except to know that I have company – people like the Old Testament prophets, who regularly barked at God for bringing them into revolving unrest.
There is no happy ending to this entry, but neither do I intend a sad one. Today was a good day. I am looking forward to the weekend. Monday will be a fine birthday. I’m in a good mood. It’s just that I know the coaster will begin its next climb to chaos at any moment, and I will almost certainly be on board.
Today’s invitation to leave a comment is about your crises, mid-life or otherwise. I doubt there is much to learn from my present confessional, but your experience might help someone in their struggles. Consider it.
Pray with me:
God of every crisis, author of every life, and Lord of every collision of those two forces, be my spiritual GPS through the maze of life. Help me locate important landmarks. Inspire me to journal valuable experiences. Conect me with people who will accept my fallibility and culpability, as well as people who will raise their hands with mine in praise when life is well lived and much loved. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Countdown to 50 - They Weren't What They Were
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
On occasion I do the math related to my and my parents’ ages at various stages of my life. For example, thirty years ago, when I was in the last weeks before a return to the University of Iowa for my junior year, my parents were each 50 years old, the same age I will reach next Monday.
Thirty years ago my parents were so old. They looked old. They sounded old. They acted old. There was such a gulf between my modernism and their ancient-ism. I don’t remember being conscious of their numeric ages, but I recall being aware of our generational divide, which I obviously interpreted as their being old.
Today I am the age they were when I was a brand new 20-something. I don’t feel old. Though I clearly look older than before, I don’t think my appearance has fully surrendered its middle age moniker. And one of my ministry’s principal passions is to think and act younger than I am, so as to stay connected to the community our church needs to be desperate to reach........ I’m not old.
Yet, thirty years ago, my 50 year-old parents were.
I talked about this with a member of our afternoon Bible study group today. When I posed to her the historical setting introduced above, she said of my 1970's parental perspective, “They were ancient, weren’t they?” She knew, not that my parents were ancient back then, but that I would have viewed them so.
I suspect that it’s both universal and unavoidable: The more different we perceive people to be from us, the more prone we are to judge them inferior, deficient, or...older than us, whatever the origins of the differences. And then, eventually, if life demands or directs that we become like those from whom we were once so different, we come to understand that our youthful judgments were unfair because they were essentially mechanical, mathematical, and procedural, not personal.
So it is with racial bias. My goodness, it’s mechanical thinking to look at a person of an ethnic heritage different from yours and conclude that he or she is in any consequential ways different from (i.e. inferior to) you. Simple is the equation: Country of Origin + Dialect of speech - Years in mainstream America = Snap judgment.
But thirty years ago, I wasn’t smart or old enough to figure out how unfair I was being to my parents. I think it amusing that age was the problem back then when I assessed my parents... my age, not theirs!
What about you? In your youth, how did you perceive your parents or other elders? Were they in some odd sense older then than at any other time in their lives due to the indiscretions of your youthful judgments? Leave us a comment. Your experience can help us.
Today I have more respect than ever for my parents. Not only because I have a longer-term view of their achievements and contributions, but also because I now realize when they were my current age they had to put up with me at age 20!
Pray with me:
God, help me to think as young as the youngest, to act as wisely as the oldest, to choose as smartly as the wisest, and to love as completely I have been loved, by my parents and by you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
On occasion I do the math related to my and my parents’ ages at various stages of my life. For example, thirty years ago, when I was in the last weeks before a return to the University of Iowa for my junior year, my parents were each 50 years old, the same age I will reach next Monday.
Thirty years ago my parents were so old. They looked old. They sounded old. They acted old. There was such a gulf between my modernism and their ancient-ism. I don’t remember being conscious of their numeric ages, but I recall being aware of our generational divide, which I obviously interpreted as their being old.
Today I am the age they were when I was a brand new 20-something. I don’t feel old. Though I clearly look older than before, I don’t think my appearance has fully surrendered its middle age moniker. And one of my ministry’s principal passions is to think and act younger than I am, so as to stay connected to the community our church needs to be desperate to reach........ I’m not old.
Yet, thirty years ago, my 50 year-old parents were.
I talked about this with a member of our afternoon Bible study group today. When I posed to her the historical setting introduced above, she said of my 1970's parental perspective, “They were ancient, weren’t they?” She knew, not that my parents were ancient back then, but that I would have viewed them so.
I suspect that it’s both universal and unavoidable: The more different we perceive people to be from us, the more prone we are to judge them inferior, deficient, or...older than us, whatever the origins of the differences. And then, eventually, if life demands or directs that we become like those from whom we were once so different, we come to understand that our youthful judgments were unfair because they were essentially mechanical, mathematical, and procedural, not personal.
So it is with racial bias. My goodness, it’s mechanical thinking to look at a person of an ethnic heritage different from yours and conclude that he or she is in any consequential ways different from (i.e. inferior to) you. Simple is the equation: Country of Origin + Dialect of speech - Years in mainstream America = Snap judgment.
But thirty years ago, I wasn’t smart or old enough to figure out how unfair I was being to my parents. I think it amusing that age was the problem back then when I assessed my parents... my age, not theirs!
What about you? In your youth, how did you perceive your parents or other elders? Were they in some odd sense older then than at any other time in their lives due to the indiscretions of your youthful judgments? Leave us a comment. Your experience can help us.
Today I have more respect than ever for my parents. Not only because I have a longer-term view of their achievements and contributions, but also because I now realize when they were my current age they had to put up with me at age 20!
Pray with me:
God, help me to think as young as the youngest, to act as wisely as the oldest, to choose as smartly as the wisest, and to love as completely I have been loved, by my parents and by you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Countdown to 50 - My New Favorite Stringed Instrument: the AARP
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
Proof that I am about to change age ranges has arrived in our family mail box three times over the last couple of weeks in the form of marketing mailings from the good folks at AARP. While the realities of population demographics, generational turnover, and government financing have in recent years increased the official retirement age, AARP has apparently seen fit to recast its eligibility definition downward to include my (soon) age or older. Consequently, I have received at least three flyers, folders, envelopes, or whatever from them.
Not that I opened them, mind you! Perhaps as a form of civil disobedience against their expansive definition of aging. Perhaps in demonstration of some secreted denial that I am in fact getting on in years. Perhaps simply as another example of my refusal to enable mass marketing campaigns (a.k.a., junk mail). I don’t know why I didn’t open any of the letters, but I know I didn’t.
Which is kind of odd, actually, because in the last year I have thought about retirement more consistently, more afffirmingly than I ever imagined. The numbers from my annual denominational pension report race through my mind at least a couple times a year. I have a spreadsheet on which I track the predicted result of that fund’s increase in value. I have calculated how much we will need, how much we may have, and where we might obtain the millions that will be needed if I am to achieve my dream of retiring in the well-wired guest house on the estate of Bill and Malinda Gates.
So I’m thinking about retirement. Is that a sign of aging? A sign of professional burnout or frustration? Or is it simply a sign that I need something to occupy my free time? If you’re a baby boomer, what are you thinking about these days?
I also think about life after life more than ever. As intimated in a recent essay on this blog, I think about reunions with my mom and grandparents. I think about reconnecting, in whatever way God sees fit, with the people who over the years have so influenced my journey. And I think about eternal chat room conversations with people like Beethoven, Einstein, and the author(s) of the Bible’s “Job.”
Is that a sign of aging? Or of roiling faith? Or spiritual curiosity?
I am in an unusual season of my life. Still creative. Still childlike. Still interested. Yet also attracted to new and possibly telling issues and subjects. . . . just not to AARP mailings.
I wonder what the countdown to 60 will read like?
Leave a comment about your experience, if you feel like it. Don’t worry about making sense; it should be obvious to you that I don’t.
Pray with me:
What a time this is, God. Creative, but uncomfortable. Energized, yet attracted to slower paced life. Hopeful, yet never fully confident. Part of it’s the world we live in. Part of it’s that we’re all changing, time and age wait for no one. So stay close. May your promises never get old as we continue the walk toward your light in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Proof that I am about to change age ranges has arrived in our family mail box three times over the last couple of weeks in the form of marketing mailings from the good folks at AARP. While the realities of population demographics, generational turnover, and government financing have in recent years increased the official retirement age, AARP has apparently seen fit to recast its eligibility definition downward to include my (soon) age or older. Consequently, I have received at least three flyers, folders, envelopes, or whatever from them.
Not that I opened them, mind you! Perhaps as a form of civil disobedience against their expansive definition of aging. Perhaps in demonstration of some secreted denial that I am in fact getting on in years. Perhaps simply as another example of my refusal to enable mass marketing campaigns (a.k.a., junk mail). I don’t know why I didn’t open any of the letters, but I know I didn’t.
Which is kind of odd, actually, because in the last year I have thought about retirement more consistently, more afffirmingly than I ever imagined. The numbers from my annual denominational pension report race through my mind at least a couple times a year. I have a spreadsheet on which I track the predicted result of that fund’s increase in value. I have calculated how much we will need, how much we may have, and where we might obtain the millions that will be needed if I am to achieve my dream of retiring in the well-wired guest house on the estate of Bill and Malinda Gates.
So I’m thinking about retirement. Is that a sign of aging? A sign of professional burnout or frustration? Or is it simply a sign that I need something to occupy my free time? If you’re a baby boomer, what are you thinking about these days?
I also think about life after life more than ever. As intimated in a recent essay on this blog, I think about reunions with my mom and grandparents. I think about reconnecting, in whatever way God sees fit, with the people who over the years have so influenced my journey. And I think about eternal chat room conversations with people like Beethoven, Einstein, and the author(s) of the Bible’s “Job.”
Is that a sign of aging? Or of roiling faith? Or spiritual curiosity?
I am in an unusual season of my life. Still creative. Still childlike. Still interested. Yet also attracted to new and possibly telling issues and subjects. . . . just not to AARP mailings.
I wonder what the countdown to 60 will read like?
Leave a comment about your experience, if you feel like it. Don’t worry about making sense; it should be obvious to you that I don’t.
Pray with me:
What a time this is, God. Creative, but uncomfortable. Energized, yet attracted to slower paced life. Hopeful, yet never fully confident. Part of it’s the world we live in. Part of it’s that we’re all changing, time and age wait for no one. So stay close. May your promises never get old as we continue the walk toward your light in the name of Jesus, Amen.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Countdown to 50 - A Week to Go
Daily random ramblings as I approach my 50th birthday next Monday.
In January of this year I had such a lofty vision of my ascendancy to the middle of my life’s first century on August 20, a vision constructed of three ambitious fitness goals.
— to walk a local annual 10K event in under 90 minutes
— to log 600 miles in treadmill workouts
— to lose a total of 25 pounds, returning myself to the healthy weight that bad eating habits and prolonged inactivity surrendered over the last couple of years
How’ve I done?
— I didn’t enter, let alone complete, the 10K event.
— Current estimates predict close to 560 treadmill miles by Monday, not 600.
— I’ll close my 40's some 5-8 pounds over the healthy weight goal.
Taken out of context, each of those results has merit. Separated from the ambitions they originally reflected, I could make a case that these months before the debut of the throwback dramatic series “BillColey Five-O” have been productive,
But such a case would of necessity rely on explanations and rationalizations. I’d have to explain the injuries that hampered my 10K training efforts, the same injuries that stole as many as a dozen days from my treadmill regimen. And I would have to remind you that the older we get the harder it is to lose weight, so coming up short on the weight loss isn’t such a surprise.
Given your personal experience, you might then accept, even relate to my explanations, but something about them would bother me. I think because over the last four or five years I have come to give high value to accountability, taking responsibility for personal actions and their consequences. At some point, accountable people need to stop explaining their failings and do something about them.
As I approach middle age (each of us is entitled to our own definition of when that epoch begins!) I look back with bemused chagrin upon my first five decades. I have developed and displayed remarkable dexterity when it comes to stepping away from full responsibility for my actions. I can tell you why my best efforts in and outside the church didn’t work, why they might not work the next time, and why, in the end, it won’t matter as long as I tried.
But something tells me, if God’s interaction with my life continues its current pattern, I won’t be able to tolerate the excuses very much longer — I will have to make changes. Which, I suppose, means I have something to look forward to in my life’s next fifty years... if nothing else, a 10K race in which I actually participate.
Leave a comment on how you handle/explain/defend your failings. . . or a note rationalizing why you didn’t.
See you tomorrow.
Pray with me:
God, every day brings us closer to you, if not spiritually, then hope-fully. May I accept your guidance, learn from your wisdom, and be an instrument of your grace. I don’t understand my life, but by your mercy, I don’t have to. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
In January of this year I had such a lofty vision of my ascendancy to the middle of my life’s first century on August 20, a vision constructed of three ambitious fitness goals.
— to walk a local annual 10K event in under 90 minutes
— to log 600 miles in treadmill workouts
— to lose a total of 25 pounds, returning myself to the healthy weight that bad eating habits and prolonged inactivity surrendered over the last couple of years
How’ve I done?
— I didn’t enter, let alone complete, the 10K event.
— Current estimates predict close to 560 treadmill miles by Monday, not 600.
— I’ll close my 40's some 5-8 pounds over the healthy weight goal.
Taken out of context, each of those results has merit. Separated from the ambitions they originally reflected, I could make a case that these months before the debut of the throwback dramatic series “BillColey Five-O” have been productive,
But such a case would of necessity rely on explanations and rationalizations. I’d have to explain the injuries that hampered my 10K training efforts, the same injuries that stole as many as a dozen days from my treadmill regimen. And I would have to remind you that the older we get the harder it is to lose weight, so coming up short on the weight loss isn’t such a surprise.
Given your personal experience, you might then accept, even relate to my explanations, but something about them would bother me. I think because over the last four or five years I have come to give high value to accountability, taking responsibility for personal actions and their consequences. At some point, accountable people need to stop explaining their failings and do something about them.
As I approach middle age (each of us is entitled to our own definition of when that epoch begins!) I look back with bemused chagrin upon my first five decades. I have developed and displayed remarkable dexterity when it comes to stepping away from full responsibility for my actions. I can tell you why my best efforts in and outside the church didn’t work, why they might not work the next time, and why, in the end, it won’t matter as long as I tried.
But something tells me, if God’s interaction with my life continues its current pattern, I won’t be able to tolerate the excuses very much longer — I will have to make changes. Which, I suppose, means I have something to look forward to in my life’s next fifty years... if nothing else, a 10K race in which I actually participate.
Leave a comment on how you handle/explain/defend your failings. . . or a note rationalizing why you didn’t.
See you tomorrow.
Pray with me:
God, every day brings us closer to you, if not spiritually, then hope-fully. May I accept your guidance, learn from your wisdom, and be an instrument of your grace. I don’t understand my life, but by your mercy, I don’t have to. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
You Might Already Be a Winner!
The flyer’s cover achieved my attention:
Congratulations. Your Rewards Are Here!
Because it was sent from our bank, I believed the mail to be legitimate, and so tore it open in search of my rewards.
Peeling back the first flap heightened the excitement:
Your Rewards Certificate is Inside! You’ve already started earning points toward great rewards. All 8 prize levels are full of perfect rewards that are perfectly within reach.
Removal of the tri-fold’s final flap revealed the featured item – a five piece set of luggage for just 800 points – and the temptation of awaiting goodies:
Congratulations! By using your convenient debit card, you have earned point toward a free gift! Below is a certificate you can enter into your rewards account. Once you receive 100 points you can select a prize!
My eyes moved to the top of the flyer where were pictured items such as watches, air travel, televisions, and audio systems, all free of charge to earners of sufficient points. . . . If thrills could kill!
Turning to the only flap I had not reviewed, I discovered a decorative certificate, reminiscent of a bank check, the report of our particular rewards. There in the middle of the flap, in bold print and accompanied by an impressive 32 character ID code, were our points: 1.
More than zero, but less than any everything else, we have earned one point. Only 799 to go for the luggage. Only 3,999 before one of the TVs comes our way. I can taste that second point already. . . . Though I really don’t know what we did to earn it.
The flyer mentions a debit card, which we own, but use exactly once a week at a local grocery store. If it took just five years of grocery store visits to produce our first rewards point, we’ll be packing fresh suitcases by the year 4002. (Though we may have to negotiate with the bank, since the flyer reports our reward point expires in 2009.)
One of the few things my fellow followers of Jesus can do that will raise my ire is to promote a rewards-based Christianity, an assertion that appropriate actions — usually sacrificial financial donations to the ministry promoting the rewards program — result in predictable and beneficial consequences. One Christian television network devotes much of its programming to preachers and other theological pundits who, with fire in their eyes and screeches to their voices, attempt to persuade viewers to call in...and win.
I’ve heard promoters call it seed planting or harvest offerings. “God is waiting to unleash a blessing in your life,” shouts the preacher. “But first you must show your faith. Call the number on your screen. Plant the seed. Show your faith. Then wait for the harvest.”
Captivated audience members wave arms and faces to heaven in apparent agreement, perhaps testifying to their own experience, but more likely energized by a desperate hope that the preacher’s right.
My encounter with the teaching of Scripture is that what awaits participants in this faith-faced shell game is a lot like the rewards flyer I described earlier. I envision the excitement produced as program players tear into their colorful rewards flyer.
“Congratulations! Your rewards are here!” announces the cover.
“Your Rewards Certificate is Inside!” says the second pronouncement, a bit deeper into the flyer, its print jiggling wildly in the players fidgety fingers.
Almost unable to contain their enthusiasm, with sugar plum fairies break dancing in their heads, the rewarded players rip open the flyer’s final flap to discover a certificate that is both less colorful and more attractive than the one described above.
“I am with you to the close of the age.”
Vainly the players search for a rewards points update, an account number, a personalized ID code, something, anything to certify their progress toward the promised blessings. But there is nothing else on the page.
Having located receipts for their gifts, the distraught players call the ministries with whom they had planted their seeds, but discover that those ministries are all out of business. Jesus’ is the only business still open, and he’s offering only one rewards program:
You preach, teach, tell, and baptize in my name. I’ll be with you.
And as for those preachers who proffered that other approach to rewards? That’s for another essay.
Pray with me:
God, in Jesus you changed the world; sadly, we don’t always let Jesus change us. Help me figure Jesus out. Help me both understand and practice surrender to him. Do something with my need for things, as I do something today to prove I no longer need any other reward than your company in his name, Amen.
Congratulations. Your Rewards Are Here!
Because it was sent from our bank, I believed the mail to be legitimate, and so tore it open in search of my rewards.
Peeling back the first flap heightened the excitement:
Your Rewards Certificate is Inside! You’ve already started earning points toward great rewards. All 8 prize levels are full of perfect rewards that are perfectly within reach.
Removal of the tri-fold’s final flap revealed the featured item – a five piece set of luggage for just 800 points – and the temptation of awaiting goodies:
Congratulations! By using your convenient debit card, you have earned point toward a free gift! Below is a certificate you can enter into your rewards account. Once you receive 100 points you can select a prize!
My eyes moved to the top of the flyer where were pictured items such as watches, air travel, televisions, and audio systems, all free of charge to earners of sufficient points. . . . If thrills could kill!
Turning to the only flap I had not reviewed, I discovered a decorative certificate, reminiscent of a bank check, the report of our particular rewards. There in the middle of the flap, in bold print and accompanied by an impressive 32 character ID code, were our points: 1.
More than zero, but less than any everything else, we have earned one point. Only 799 to go for the luggage. Only 3,999 before one of the TVs comes our way. I can taste that second point already. . . . Though I really don’t know what we did to earn it.
The flyer mentions a debit card, which we own, but use exactly once a week at a local grocery store. If it took just five years of grocery store visits to produce our first rewards point, we’ll be packing fresh suitcases by the year 4002. (Though we may have to negotiate with the bank, since the flyer reports our reward point expires in 2009.)
One of the few things my fellow followers of Jesus can do that will raise my ire is to promote a rewards-based Christianity, an assertion that appropriate actions — usually sacrificial financial donations to the ministry promoting the rewards program — result in predictable and beneficial consequences. One Christian television network devotes much of its programming to preachers and other theological pundits who, with fire in their eyes and screeches to their voices, attempt to persuade viewers to call in...and win.
I’ve heard promoters call it seed planting or harvest offerings. “God is waiting to unleash a blessing in your life,” shouts the preacher. “But first you must show your faith. Call the number on your screen. Plant the seed. Show your faith. Then wait for the harvest.”
Captivated audience members wave arms and faces to heaven in apparent agreement, perhaps testifying to their own experience, but more likely energized by a desperate hope that the preacher’s right.
My encounter with the teaching of Scripture is that what awaits participants in this faith-faced shell game is a lot like the rewards flyer I described earlier. I envision the excitement produced as program players tear into their colorful rewards flyer.
“Congratulations! Your rewards are here!” announces the cover.
“Your Rewards Certificate is Inside!” says the second pronouncement, a bit deeper into the flyer, its print jiggling wildly in the players fidgety fingers.
Almost unable to contain their enthusiasm, with sugar plum fairies break dancing in their heads, the rewarded players rip open the flyer’s final flap to discover a certificate that is both less colorful and more attractive than the one described above.
“I am with you to the close of the age.”
Vainly the players search for a rewards points update, an account number, a personalized ID code, something, anything to certify their progress toward the promised blessings. But there is nothing else on the page.
Having located receipts for their gifts, the distraught players call the ministries with whom they had planted their seeds, but discover that those ministries are all out of business. Jesus’ is the only business still open, and he’s offering only one rewards program:
You preach, teach, tell, and baptize in my name. I’ll be with you.
And as for those preachers who proffered that other approach to rewards? That’s for another essay.
Pray with me:
God, in Jesus you changed the world; sadly, we don’t always let Jesus change us. Help me figure Jesus out. Help me both understand and practice surrender to him. Do something with my need for things, as I do something today to prove I no longer need any other reward than your company in his name, Amen.
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Bill Coley and the Lifely Hallows
SPOILER WARNING!! If you are a “Harry Potter” fan and intend to read, but have not yet completed the last book in the series, you may not want to read this entry. Proceed at your own risk (or come back when you’ve finished the book!)
There’s a scene late in the final Harry Potter book in which the title character concludes that if his arch nemesis — the series’ embodiment of evil, named “Voledemort” — is to die, he, Harry, must also die. Willingly, Potter marches into a forbidden forest, on the mission of his life... and death.
On the way to his destiny, he opens a metal object inside which he discovers a magical item called the “resurrection stone,” one of the book title’s “deathly hallows.” (Read the book, if you want explanations for all these Potterisms!) The stone has the power to connect its user with people who have died, though the connection established is neither complete nor satisfying enough to be deemed a reunion.
Seeking comfort and encouragement in his last steps before death, Potter employs the stone to summon his parents, his godfather, and another confidant, all who had died earlier. While the book prompted potent emotions from me, it was this conversation between destined and departed that brought the most fervent tears.
“You’ve been so brave,” says Harry’s mother.
“You are nearly there. Very close. We are...so proud of you,” adds his dad.
Harry wants to know whether death hurts. His godfather tells him death is “quicker and easier than falling asleep.”
Seconds later, the pre-game pep talk concludes this way:
Harry: “You’ll stay with me?”
Dad: “Until the very end....”
Harry: “Stay close to me.”
Conventional wisdom argues the more you care about Harry and his exploits, the more this scene will get to you, but I think its appeal is more universal than that. The prospect of facing life’s ultimate punctuation mark having first been braced by people who have traveled the road you’re on, should sear anyone’s heart.
I envision approaching death’s entrance hand-in-hand with my mom, she telling me about the morning she woke up feeling ill, somehow correctly concluding that she was going to die. I imagine her describing her experience, most likely in minute detail (this is my mom, we’re talking about!), then telling me about the surroundings of heaven before attending to my pressing need for encouragement as I near life’s most mysterious threshold.
I picture my paternal grandparents rising to cheer my carrying on grandpa’s pastoral mantle, as they hold open their arms, affectionately noting how long it has been since they last saw me, how cute I was when I sat on his lap and kissed his puffed-out cheek, and how good it was, all those years ago, for her to have my siblings and me spend nights at their house. Then, I see them calmly and quietly pointing to the gates of glory while assuring me we’ll have plenty of time to talk.
I cried as I read Harry Potter’s forbidden forest conversation, largely because it symbolizes for me a transcendent intimacy and hopefulness. If fear can be vanquished in the face of death, then there is no final fear. If hope can be rekindled in the moments before one’s last breath, then there is no deadly despair. If the people of your past can accompany you to the portals of your forever, then death indeed has lost both its sting and victory.
The ultimate welcoming cheerleader, of course, is Jesus, the one whose example fuels Scripture’s passionate pronouncements about eternal life. Had Harry asked Jesus whether death hurt, I wonder whether Jesus would have said anything about the rusty nails, or the scornful crowd, or the brooding, lonely sky? I rather doubt it. I think he would rather have echoed Harry’s parents encouragement: “You’re almost there.... I am so proud of you.”
At least I pray that’s what Jesus would say to Harry...and to me.
There’s a marvelous song by Carolyn Arends called “We’ve Been Waiting for You,” in which she transforms the welcome home she and her husband have for their newborn child into the welcome she hopes one day to receive herself in heaven. Like the Potter conversation related earlier, these lyrics, taken from the end of the song and intended for her child, bring me to tears. I hope you’ll understand why, and that you’ll experience healing visions of resurrection with the people of your past.
“Another journey awaits us
So when I have to leave
I am pretty sure that I'll be frightened
But even if I cry, please understand
I will know I'm not alone
When my room is ready I'll go home
And when I reach the gate
I'm going to hear them saying
We've been waiting for you
We're so glad you came
We've been looking forward
To showing you the place
There's so much in store and
We've been waiting for you”
Good night, Harry.
Pray with me:
I don’t know whether death will hurt, or whether I will be frightened. But I do know who will be waiting for me, and who cheers and inspires me today. In the present, for the future, I am okay, thanks to you, God. No wonder we have eternal life: to have enough time to express our appreciation. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Still Stained
It didn’t garner me a cover shot on GQ magazine, but recently, for the first time in decades, I wore an undershirt – you know, one of the Fruits of the Loom.
For all of my adult life I had resisted the white cotton things, believing them to be superfluous sweat producers. Whatever human body subsystem it is that produces upper body perspiration has always functioned very well in me. Not wanting to add to the precipitation single layer clothing inspires from me (or, I guess, perspires from me!), I shied away from undershirts.
But then I had an epiphany. Not something dramatic like, “God is telling me to take this new path in life!” Or, “I see now the meaning of all human existence.” No. My epiphany was more meager: I finally understood why people wear undershirts.
I ought to feel stupid writing about this discovery, but I don’t, because for me eye-openers about the obvious are not uncommon. Not wanting to pile on the embarrassment, I will simply tell you that in my youth I had, shall I call it, an “interesting, but not biologically likely” explanation of how daddies helped mommies get pregnant. When I discovered the truth – just before graduating from college, as near as I can recall – it was as if scales fell from my eyes as I beheld a brave new, and far more pleasurable, world.
So it has been with the undershirts. What joy I have known, exercising dominion over underarm sweat stains. What pride has arisen, observing the better fit of my dress shirts. What self-confidence has swelled, realizing I have busted yet another childhood myth. What expectation has grown, predicting the next profound but practical truth I will uncover.
And so it is with my spiritual life. The longer I live, the more I discover how much I don’t know. The more mistakes I make, the more rebellions I lead, the more struggles I face, the more I understand how incomplete is my understanding of God and God’s ways. The more I apply what the world labels “intelligence” to the design of my life, the more I claim to have mastered life and its sweat-producing subsystems, the more it’s obvious my best choice is to shut up and listen because I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Back in the fall of 1982, just weeks into my seminary career, on the drive back to campus from the church I then served I reflected on the results of an apparently pastoral conversation held during my after-worship calls. For the encounter in question, I had concluded that I had been where I needed to be, for the persons who needed me, and had provided the precise and particular word those persons needed to grapple with their reality. Watching the road spill past my eyes still wide with pride, I said in an audible whisper, “God, what we do is so important.”
The remaining years of my seminary experience taught me how arrogant, immature, and spiritually vacuous was that claim. By the time I graduated I knew that what we do hardly matters, and in fact, will usually just get in the way. What’s important is how completely we surrender to God, so that God can do something through us. Twenty-two years in full-time ministry have demonstrated that I will likely never reach a wiser conclusion.
And neither will you, by the way. Don’t permit this essay’s clergy orientation mislead to believe that I intend to exclude you from accountability. Spiritual truths don’t discriminate between clergy and laity, between preacher and preached-to. If you follow Jesus, you need to learn to sit down, shut up, and surrender.
The Apostle Paul told the Christians in the ancient city of Corinth that when he was a child, he spoke and thought like a child, but the longer he lived, the more he put away his childish ways. So it is with us spiritual travelers. We spend this life discovering how little we know, and how dependent we are on the one who gives all life.
People who care about the words of people who preach, invest in those preachers at least the appearance of hope that the preachers have traveled a bit more of the spiritual road, that they understand what matters and why, and have achieved a spiritual maturity worthy of their ministries. While this may be true for some, perhaps several of my colleagues, it may not be true for me. After all, I just figured why guys wear undershirts.
And what about you?...
Pray with me:
You are amazing, awesome, lovely, and patient...oh, so patient, God. Thank you for putting up with me, and for still finding a use for me – and the rest of us. I can’t guarantee that I won’t revert to my childish ways, but I can say I know the only one who can rescue me from their clutches. Thanks. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
For all of my adult life I had resisted the white cotton things, believing them to be superfluous sweat producers. Whatever human body subsystem it is that produces upper body perspiration has always functioned very well in me. Not wanting to add to the precipitation single layer clothing inspires from me (or, I guess, perspires from me!), I shied away from undershirts.
But then I had an epiphany. Not something dramatic like, “God is telling me to take this new path in life!” Or, “I see now the meaning of all human existence.” No. My epiphany was more meager: I finally understood why people wear undershirts.
I ought to feel stupid writing about this discovery, but I don’t, because for me eye-openers about the obvious are not uncommon. Not wanting to pile on the embarrassment, I will simply tell you that in my youth I had, shall I call it, an “interesting, but not biologically likely” explanation of how daddies helped mommies get pregnant. When I discovered the truth – just before graduating from college, as near as I can recall – it was as if scales fell from my eyes as I beheld a brave new, and far more pleasurable, world.
So it has been with the undershirts. What joy I have known, exercising dominion over underarm sweat stains. What pride has arisen, observing the better fit of my dress shirts. What self-confidence has swelled, realizing I have busted yet another childhood myth. What expectation has grown, predicting the next profound but practical truth I will uncover.
And so it is with my spiritual life. The longer I live, the more I discover how much I don’t know. The more mistakes I make, the more rebellions I lead, the more struggles I face, the more I understand how incomplete is my understanding of God and God’s ways. The more I apply what the world labels “intelligence” to the design of my life, the more I claim to have mastered life and its sweat-producing subsystems, the more it’s obvious my best choice is to shut up and listen because I don’t know what I’m talking about.
Back in the fall of 1982, just weeks into my seminary career, on the drive back to campus from the church I then served I reflected on the results of an apparently pastoral conversation held during my after-worship calls. For the encounter in question, I had concluded that I had been where I needed to be, for the persons who needed me, and had provided the precise and particular word those persons needed to grapple with their reality. Watching the road spill past my eyes still wide with pride, I said in an audible whisper, “God, what we do is so important.”
The remaining years of my seminary experience taught me how arrogant, immature, and spiritually vacuous was that claim. By the time I graduated I knew that what we do hardly matters, and in fact, will usually just get in the way. What’s important is how completely we surrender to God, so that God can do something through us. Twenty-two years in full-time ministry have demonstrated that I will likely never reach a wiser conclusion.
And neither will you, by the way. Don’t permit this essay’s clergy orientation mislead to believe that I intend to exclude you from accountability. Spiritual truths don’t discriminate between clergy and laity, between preacher and preached-to. If you follow Jesus, you need to learn to sit down, shut up, and surrender.
The Apostle Paul told the Christians in the ancient city of Corinth that when he was a child, he spoke and thought like a child, but the longer he lived, the more he put away his childish ways. So it is with us spiritual travelers. We spend this life discovering how little we know, and how dependent we are on the one who gives all life.
People who care about the words of people who preach, invest in those preachers at least the appearance of hope that the preachers have traveled a bit more of the spiritual road, that they understand what matters and why, and have achieved a spiritual maturity worthy of their ministries. While this may be true for some, perhaps several of my colleagues, it may not be true for me. After all, I just figured why guys wear undershirts.
And what about you?...
Pray with me:
You are amazing, awesome, lovely, and patient...oh, so patient, God. Thank you for putting up with me, and for still finding a use for me – and the rest of us. I can’t guarantee that I won’t revert to my childish ways, but I can say I know the only one who can rescue me from their clutches. Thanks. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
One (or more) Truly False Church(es)
The lead from an article posted July 10 by the Associated Press, dateline: Lorenzago di Cadore, Italy —
“Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.”
And then,
“"Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," the document said. The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession - the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles.”
Great.
I thought for sure we had moved beyond this kind of divisive rhetoric in modern Christianity. (Well actually, I thought it had been co-opted by the Bible thumping Protestant groups which live under a delusion that they have some kind of exclusive patent on what it means and looks like to follow Jesus.) As the eminent street theologian of his generation, Rodney King, would ask, can’t we all just get along?
I have no animus toward, no judgment against, no death wish for the Roman Catholic Church. I value its tradition. I celebrate its membership. I thank God for its necessary role in nurturing the Body of Christ through its first 16 centuries. Some of my best and longest-standing friends in the Quad Cities happen to be Catholic. Without fear or flinch I celebrate Catholicism’s place at the table of our – that would be OUR – Lord.
Now why can’t it return the favor?... And it’s not even a favor! Why can’t “The One True Church” acknowledge what Jesus mandated: that all who love each other, tell his story, and follow his commandments are his church?
You might think I am on an anti-Catholic rant, but I’m not. As intimated earlier, Protestants engage in equally mystifying and, I think, unbiblical division of sheep and goats; some of the things Protestants have said about Catholics over the last five hundred years make the Pope’s latest treatise sound flattering. My point is that while it’s sinful when any follower of Jesus diminishes or marginalizes another follower of Jesus because of his or her denominational tradition, when the traditions themselves engage in that diminishing or marginalizing, the sin becomes a destructive curse.
Think about the intrusion of religion into the current political climate. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism has been an issue. Why? Are Mormons spiritually inclined not to care about Iraq, education, or the health care crisis?
Journalist Christopher Hitchens – a self-described “anti-theist” – has published a scathing diatribe against religion called “God Is Not Great,” a best-seller that has been raised temperatures on a host of news channel talk fests. In large measure he strikes out against the practice of religion – oh, I don’t know, maybe the way Christian denominations and traditions speak of each other? – rather than the experience of faith. Can we really blame Hitchens?
I have small ambitions for this piece. I want you to know, and I hope you will share with others the following declaration: Whatever your tradition, in whatever form of faith community you were reared and are now fed, if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, if he is Lord of your life and head of your church, I am humbly proud to believe us parts of the same family. We may disagree on some things, on all things theological, but that's okay because what matters is not what distinguishes us, but who unites us.
The Apostle Paul, who was definitely NOT a member of my denomination, said it for the ages when to the Christians in Galatia he wrote:
So you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have been made like him. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all Christians—you are one in Christ Jesus. *
Today Paul would write, “There is no longer Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox or Anglican, Methodist or Pentecostal.” Not that the Church(es) would listen....
Pray with Me:
Remind us, God, that we are the keepers and stewards, not the designers, of the flame of Christ on earth. When we, whatever our background, get too high on our holy horses, get our attention – knock us off, if necessary – then remind us of the blessing and promise of your Son, our Lord, Jesus, the one whose Church we ALL are, and in whose name we pray, Amen.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
* Galatians 3.26-28 (NLT)
“Pope Benedict XVI has reasserted the universal primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released Tuesday that says Orthodox churches were defective and that other Christian denominations were not true churches.”
And then,
“"Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," the document said. The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they do not have apostolic succession - the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles.”
Great.
I thought for sure we had moved beyond this kind of divisive rhetoric in modern Christianity. (Well actually, I thought it had been co-opted by the Bible thumping Protestant groups which live under a delusion that they have some kind of exclusive patent on what it means and looks like to follow Jesus.) As the eminent street theologian of his generation, Rodney King, would ask, can’t we all just get along?
I have no animus toward, no judgment against, no death wish for the Roman Catholic Church. I value its tradition. I celebrate its membership. I thank God for its necessary role in nurturing the Body of Christ through its first 16 centuries. Some of my best and longest-standing friends in the Quad Cities happen to be Catholic. Without fear or flinch I celebrate Catholicism’s place at the table of our – that would be OUR – Lord.
Now why can’t it return the favor?... And it’s not even a favor! Why can’t “The One True Church” acknowledge what Jesus mandated: that all who love each other, tell his story, and follow his commandments are his church?
You might think I am on an anti-Catholic rant, but I’m not. As intimated earlier, Protestants engage in equally mystifying and, I think, unbiblical division of sheep and goats; some of the things Protestants have said about Catholics over the last five hundred years make the Pope’s latest treatise sound flattering. My point is that while it’s sinful when any follower of Jesus diminishes or marginalizes another follower of Jesus because of his or her denominational tradition, when the traditions themselves engage in that diminishing or marginalizing, the sin becomes a destructive curse.
Think about the intrusion of religion into the current political climate. Mitt Romney’s Mormonism has been an issue. Why? Are Mormons spiritually inclined not to care about Iraq, education, or the health care crisis?
Journalist Christopher Hitchens – a self-described “anti-theist” – has published a scathing diatribe against religion called “God Is Not Great,” a best-seller that has been raised temperatures on a host of news channel talk fests. In large measure he strikes out against the practice of religion – oh, I don’t know, maybe the way Christian denominations and traditions speak of each other? – rather than the experience of faith. Can we really blame Hitchens?
I have small ambitions for this piece. I want you to know, and I hope you will share with others the following declaration: Whatever your tradition, in whatever form of faith community you were reared and are now fed, if you call yourself a follower of Jesus, if he is Lord of your life and head of your church, I am humbly proud to believe us parts of the same family. We may disagree on some things, on all things theological, but that's okay because what matters is not what distinguishes us, but who unites us.
The Apostle Paul, who was definitely NOT a member of my denomination, said it for the ages when to the Christians in Galatia he wrote:
So you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus. And all who have been united with Christ in baptism have been made like him. There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all Christians—you are one in Christ Jesus. *
Today Paul would write, “There is no longer Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox or Anglican, Methodist or Pentecostal.” Not that the Church(es) would listen....
Pray with Me:
Remind us, God, that we are the keepers and stewards, not the designers, of the flame of Christ on earth. When we, whatever our background, get too high on our holy horses, get our attention – knock us off, if necessary – then remind us of the blessing and promise of your Son, our Lord, Jesus, the one whose Church we ALL are, and in whose name we pray, Amen.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
* Galatians 3.26-28 (NLT)
Tuesday, July 3, 2007
Broken Promised Lands?... ADDENDUM
[TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEXT OF THIS ADDENDUM, YOU MIGHT BENEFIT FROM FIRST READING THE POST THAT IMMEDIATELY FOLLOWS IT.]
As I wrote the original “Broken Promised Lands?” post, my car sat in the parking lot of a local grocery store, the victim of either a bad battery or starter. My sister-in-law had kindly provided me a jump – to no avail – and then a ride home, where I called my auto dealer to learn its preferred towing company. When I called the towing concern, I heard only its voice mail, which assured me of a call back within five minutes.... An hour later I called the tow company again, apparently so that I could enjoy again the soothing strains of the voice mail’s five minute promise.
My first thought upon receiving the voice mail’s reprise was, I’m not supposed to have the car towed; it’s only the battery, which we will be able to replace on our own. [TRANSLATION: It’s a God thing.]
Well, the towing people never called, and I never sought other options – I think because my spirit was so convinced of the God-thing thing – so nothing happened until Shari returned home from her day’s overtime hours. We scurried over to my car, discovered it to have no more pulse than four hours earlier, then trekked down the avenue a bit to an auto parts store, which sold me a battery and even provided loaner tools to complete the replacement. We were back home, two working vehicles in the garage, within an hour of when we left the house.
Now that’s was a God thing. Clear. Unmistakable. Not debatable.
But it wasn’t just one God thing; it was two. The first was that my battery died in a safe place, not far from home, my sister-in-law’s kindness, or the auto parts store. The second was that it came on the same day and in the middle of the original post’s storm clouds of doubt and hesitation about our congregation. God worked multiple magic in my life today.
I’d ask why can’t all God things be this obvious, but I fear what would have to break down in order for me to get the answer!
Pray with me:
You are good, God. I’m not, at least very often, but you are. And for that, at least until my next season of doubt, I praise you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
As I wrote the original “Broken Promised Lands?” post, my car sat in the parking lot of a local grocery store, the victim of either a bad battery or starter. My sister-in-law had kindly provided me a jump – to no avail – and then a ride home, where I called my auto dealer to learn its preferred towing company. When I called the towing concern, I heard only its voice mail, which assured me of a call back within five minutes.... An hour later I called the tow company again, apparently so that I could enjoy again the soothing strains of the voice mail’s five minute promise.
My first thought upon receiving the voice mail’s reprise was, I’m not supposed to have the car towed; it’s only the battery, which we will be able to replace on our own. [TRANSLATION: It’s a God thing.]
Well, the towing people never called, and I never sought other options – I think because my spirit was so convinced of the God-thing thing – so nothing happened until Shari returned home from her day’s overtime hours. We scurried over to my car, discovered it to have no more pulse than four hours earlier, then trekked down the avenue a bit to an auto parts store, which sold me a battery and even provided loaner tools to complete the replacement. We were back home, two working vehicles in the garage, within an hour of when we left the house.
Now that’s was a God thing. Clear. Unmistakable. Not debatable.
But it wasn’t just one God thing; it was two. The first was that my battery died in a safe place, not far from home, my sister-in-law’s kindness, or the auto parts store. The second was that it came on the same day and in the middle of the original post’s storm clouds of doubt and hesitation about our congregation. God worked multiple magic in my life today.
I’d ask why can’t all God things be this obvious, but I fear what would have to break down in order for me to get the answer!
Pray with me:
You are good, God. I’m not, at least very often, but you are. And for that, at least until my next season of doubt, I praise you. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Broken Promised Lands?
I think I had a God moment on Sunday.
I’m preaching a sermon series on change – our congregation’s need for and resistance to it. While the first two parts of the series laid out the need and some symptoms of resistance, Sunday’s third part took the series’ first dig into the teaching of Scripture, focusing on the complaints and criticism of change voiced by the Israelites on their way out of Egypt to the Promised Land.
The sermon’s invitation was for those who, in spite of their personal attitudes and ambiguities toward change, wanted our church to reach the Promised Land God intends for us. In the first 30-45 seconds of the song that followed the sermon, there was no movement in the pews. Then quickly the ice broke, and out of the corner of my eye I saw people from all over the room moving forward, a higher percentage of the room on the march than my sermons ever generate. (Some Sundays, I swear my invitation to stand while we sing sparks interest in only half the room!)
The small throng of us gathered at the front of the worship center held hands and prayed that something genuine was happening, that God’s spirit was the instigator in the incident of which we were clearly a part. The prayer ended, people moved back to their seats, worship continued to its close, and all of us – those who came forward and those who did not – walked out of the church building, into the rest of our Sundays.
Later in the day it occurred to me that something important may have happened during our worship. So many people, some with tearful eyes, responding to a call for change in our church, a congregation steeped – “mired” might be the better word – in its past. Over the next 24 hours I heard from others who had been in the room Sunday morning. They, too, reported the germination of serious hope as a result of whatever had happened.
For several years we have been pursuing a change agenda; as Sunday languished in its final hours, I wondered whether the worship experience had dislodged us from an ice jam?... Or, had the congregation merely been giddy that the changes in our worship service that had taken effect that day were actually going to cut the length of our worship by the advertised 10-15 minutes?
It’s the question of exactly what did happen that intrigues me, and upon which I invite your reflection. Some of us are interpreting Sunday’s experience as a “God thing,” a presentation of the holy in our midst. But was it? What qualifies as a “God thing”? When does an “everyday thing” transform into its godly cousin?
I ask, because in my spiritual journey numerous have been the occasions when I believed God was intervening in my/our congregation’s situation, when God was acting purposefully on my/our behalf or for my/our best interests. It was a feeling I had, a hunch that possessed me, an intuitive surmise that the current course of events was no coincidence, no happenstance encounter with good fortune. I believed God was leading me/us out of our exile. That is, I was having a God thing.... But it didn’t turn out that way. What I thought were good leads, led to murky dead (or dying) ends. What I perceived as divinely inspired paths to destiny, destined me/us to fates and frustrations not much different from, and obviously not much better than the status quo. What I thought were “God things” were...not.
....Or maybe they were.
I hope I am confusing you, because if I am, then I am making myself clear. There are moments when I know I am in the midst of a God thing...and it turns out I am right. There are other times when I know I am in the midst of a God thing...and it turns out I am wrong, at least apparently. How and when do you know the difference? By what criteria do you discern whether God’s is the hand stirring your life’s cauldron?
I am not certain of the answer, but I do know these are some of the issues that fueled a fog over my Sunday enthusiasm. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the moment, nor that I thought it insignificant that so large a proportion of the worship group came forward to pray, but that I was not sure where it all fit in to our larger, longer journey toward our promised land.
There’s a moment in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah when God says this to the residents of Judah, then on the way to exile in Babylon:
“The truth is that you will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me in earnest, you will find me when you seek me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord. “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and bring you home again to your own land.”
How about this? My problem is I don’t know how many of my seventy years have passed.
How about your count of yours? Think about it and let us know. I’d love to receive your response to these issues.
Let Us Pray:
God, you’re alive, you’re working, you’re engaged in our lives. We will grant you those, now grant us more. Tell us, show us, demonstrate to us that exiles end, seventy years time frames don’t last forever, and your things can still be our things. We await your help to direct our paths to the promised lands you have in store for us. We look forward to your hand’s guidance and your grace’s provision until we get where you’re leading. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
I’m preaching a sermon series on change – our congregation’s need for and resistance to it. While the first two parts of the series laid out the need and some symptoms of resistance, Sunday’s third part took the series’ first dig into the teaching of Scripture, focusing on the complaints and criticism of change voiced by the Israelites on their way out of Egypt to the Promised Land.
The sermon’s invitation was for those who, in spite of their personal attitudes and ambiguities toward change, wanted our church to reach the Promised Land God intends for us. In the first 30-45 seconds of the song that followed the sermon, there was no movement in the pews. Then quickly the ice broke, and out of the corner of my eye I saw people from all over the room moving forward, a higher percentage of the room on the march than my sermons ever generate. (Some Sundays, I swear my invitation to stand while we sing sparks interest in only half the room!)
The small throng of us gathered at the front of the worship center held hands and prayed that something genuine was happening, that God’s spirit was the instigator in the incident of which we were clearly a part. The prayer ended, people moved back to their seats, worship continued to its close, and all of us – those who came forward and those who did not – walked out of the church building, into the rest of our Sundays.
Later in the day it occurred to me that something important may have happened during our worship. So many people, some with tearful eyes, responding to a call for change in our church, a congregation steeped – “mired” might be the better word – in its past. Over the next 24 hours I heard from others who had been in the room Sunday morning. They, too, reported the germination of serious hope as a result of whatever had happened.
For several years we have been pursuing a change agenda; as Sunday languished in its final hours, I wondered whether the worship experience had dislodged us from an ice jam?... Or, had the congregation merely been giddy that the changes in our worship service that had taken effect that day were actually going to cut the length of our worship by the advertised 10-15 minutes?
It’s the question of exactly what did happen that intrigues me, and upon which I invite your reflection. Some of us are interpreting Sunday’s experience as a “God thing,” a presentation of the holy in our midst. But was it? What qualifies as a “God thing”? When does an “everyday thing” transform into its godly cousin?
I ask, because in my spiritual journey numerous have been the occasions when I believed God was intervening in my/our congregation’s situation, when God was acting purposefully on my/our behalf or for my/our best interests. It was a feeling I had, a hunch that possessed me, an intuitive surmise that the current course of events was no coincidence, no happenstance encounter with good fortune. I believed God was leading me/us out of our exile. That is, I was having a God thing.... But it didn’t turn out that way. What I thought were good leads, led to murky dead (or dying) ends. What I perceived as divinely inspired paths to destiny, destined me/us to fates and frustrations not much different from, and obviously not much better than the status quo. What I thought were “God things” were...not.
....Or maybe they were.
I hope I am confusing you, because if I am, then I am making myself clear. There are moments when I know I am in the midst of a God thing...and it turns out I am right. There are other times when I know I am in the midst of a God thing...and it turns out I am wrong, at least apparently. How and when do you know the difference? By what criteria do you discern whether God’s is the hand stirring your life’s cauldron?
I am not certain of the answer, but I do know these are some of the issues that fueled a fog over my Sunday enthusiasm. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate the moment, nor that I thought it insignificant that so large a proportion of the worship group came forward to pray, but that I was not sure where it all fit in to our larger, longer journey toward our promised land.
There’s a moment in the Old Testament book of Jeremiah when God says this to the residents of Judah, then on the way to exile in Babylon:
“The truth is that you will be in Babylon for seventy years. But then I will come and do for you all the good things I have promised, and I will bring you home again. For I know the plans I have for you,” says the Lord. “They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. In those days when you pray, I will listen. If you look for me in earnest, you will find me when you seek me. I will be found by you,” says the Lord. “I will end your captivity and restore your fortunes. I will gather you out of the nations where I sent you and bring you home again to your own land.”
How about this? My problem is I don’t know how many of my seventy years have passed.
How about your count of yours? Think about it and let us know. I’d love to receive your response to these issues.
Let Us Pray:
God, you’re alive, you’re working, you’re engaged in our lives. We will grant you those, now grant us more. Tell us, show us, demonstrate to us that exiles end, seventy years time frames don’t last forever, and your things can still be our things. We await your help to direct our paths to the promised lands you have in store for us. We look forward to your hand’s guidance and your grace’s provision until we get where you’re leading. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
Sunday, July 1, 2007
A Hole-y Life
In the last two weeks technology has betrayed me, abandoned me, laughed at me, and enjoyed the senseless tirades with which I responded to its rebellion.
By now I am so beleaguered, I won’t get the sequence correct, but I believe the first act of aggression was my PDA — one of those handheld computers people use to organize, communicate, and entertain. I’d been experiencing intermittent problems for several months, but one night, during an attempt to backup the unit’s data, its screen went black and stayed black. All recovery methods failed, prompting me to search Ebay for a replacement.
Next came the laser printer at the church office. The task was simply to print some mailing labels for the newsletter we were preparing for the post office. The first page of the labels printed without issue until its final two rows, upon encounter with which the printer made a horrifying screech, produced two rows of solid black rectangles, and then unceremoniously shut down, two onboard dummy lights the only visible sign of distress.
Next was our newly-installed satellite television system. So smart I thought I was to recommend to my household that we switch from cable, whose rates had increased four times in the last sixteen months. Though I don’t yet question my suggestion, the morning one of the four TVs we have connected to the system refused to work, my best efforts online and on-hold with tech support not withstanding, had me shaking my head...and nudging a few middle fingers.
This morning in worship the issue was our projection software, the application we use to beam worship visuals, Scripture verses, and song lyrics to the congregation on a large screen. In the middle of my sermon I heard a ping, one you may occasionally have heard from your Windows PC, depending on your setup. To hear any sound at that moment of worship was unexpected and most likely bad news. Sure enough, the worship software had frozen. Dead. Useless. New worship center wallpaper. Our only recourse was to reboot the computer while I proceeded with my message, reading a referenced Bible text, not from the screen, but from, of all things, an actual Bible. It was quite the scene, watching Shari return to the software and then catch up with me in the sermon slides.
You have no cause or intention to care about the arcane minutiae of my recent techno pratfalls, but I share it with you to season your receipt of this piece’s core observation about what we hold on to.
I am a techie, a geek, a gadget freak. I like most anything that glows or goes when pushed, prodded, or powered on. I depend on my gadgets – personal, portable, owned, or borrowed – to inform, delight, and occupy me. Without them I am not on my game, in fact, I'm not sure I have a game without them.
* When the PDA expired, so did I, at least until I recovered from the shock.
* When the “dish” died, it was like our household had lost a quarter of its nine lives.
* And don’t get me started with reading Scripture from an actual Bible!
None of these failures was permanent; in time I discovered costless workarounds for all of them. But the experiences reminded me how fragile are our dependencies. We connect lifelines, expectations, and future plans to people and possessions that don’t always, can’t always meet them. (God, the horrors were I required to pay bills by check through the mail!) What’s worse, most of us have inadequate backup systems, so that, when failures occur, we’re in a mess.
Some years ago one of the church vitality gurus I appreciate used the astrophysics concept of a “wormhole” to describe the present age. Wormholes are theoretical points of rapid transit from one time/space of the universe to another. The church vitality expert said life is changing so fast in the modern era that it’s like we’re in a wormhole. And in the wormhole, only one thing is sure not to change: Jesus. Hold on to no-thing, no one else, because no-thing, no one else is guaranteed to get through unchanged.
What do you hold on to? On what do you depend with an expectation that it will always be there, just as you need it, whenever you need it? Your health? Your financial holdings? Your family? Tomorrow morning’s alarm?
I am not about to surrender my tech connections, but the failures described at this piece’s beginning have served sufficient notice that I need more effective backup measures. I don’t know what’s been swirling around you lately, but chances are the notice thereby served to you is not much different.
We live in a wormhole. It’s good and helpful for us to hold onto each other, but let’s make sure we have our free hands raised and secured.
Pray with me:
In ways I can’t describe and only you can know, you pulled me through another day today, God. Thank you. Today felt different from yesterday. Chances are, tomorrow will feel different still. Disabuse me of temporary, ineffective security blankets. Make clear to me the path and the connection to your Son, the only one guaranteed not to give up, give in, or fail on me. May he always be my dependency, as I live and pray in his name, Amen.
By now I am so beleaguered, I won’t get the sequence correct, but I believe the first act of aggression was my PDA — one of those handheld computers people use to organize, communicate, and entertain. I’d been experiencing intermittent problems for several months, but one night, during an attempt to backup the unit’s data, its screen went black and stayed black. All recovery methods failed, prompting me to search Ebay for a replacement.
Next came the laser printer at the church office. The task was simply to print some mailing labels for the newsletter we were preparing for the post office. The first page of the labels printed without issue until its final two rows, upon encounter with which the printer made a horrifying screech, produced two rows of solid black rectangles, and then unceremoniously shut down, two onboard dummy lights the only visible sign of distress.
Next was our newly-installed satellite television system. So smart I thought I was to recommend to my household that we switch from cable, whose rates had increased four times in the last sixteen months. Though I don’t yet question my suggestion, the morning one of the four TVs we have connected to the system refused to work, my best efforts online and on-hold with tech support not withstanding, had me shaking my head...and nudging a few middle fingers.
This morning in worship the issue was our projection software, the application we use to beam worship visuals, Scripture verses, and song lyrics to the congregation on a large screen. In the middle of my sermon I heard a ping, one you may occasionally have heard from your Windows PC, depending on your setup. To hear any sound at that moment of worship was unexpected and most likely bad news. Sure enough, the worship software had frozen. Dead. Useless. New worship center wallpaper. Our only recourse was to reboot the computer while I proceeded with my message, reading a referenced Bible text, not from the screen, but from, of all things, an actual Bible. It was quite the scene, watching Shari return to the software and then catch up with me in the sermon slides.
You have no cause or intention to care about the arcane minutiae of my recent techno pratfalls, but I share it with you to season your receipt of this piece’s core observation about what we hold on to.
I am a techie, a geek, a gadget freak. I like most anything that glows or goes when pushed, prodded, or powered on. I depend on my gadgets – personal, portable, owned, or borrowed – to inform, delight, and occupy me. Without them I am not on my game, in fact, I'm not sure I have a game without them.
* When the PDA expired, so did I, at least until I recovered from the shock.
* When the “dish” died, it was like our household had lost a quarter of its nine lives.
* And don’t get me started with reading Scripture from an actual Bible!
None of these failures was permanent; in time I discovered costless workarounds for all of them. But the experiences reminded me how fragile are our dependencies. We connect lifelines, expectations, and future plans to people and possessions that don’t always, can’t always meet them. (God, the horrors were I required to pay bills by check through the mail!) What’s worse, most of us have inadequate backup systems, so that, when failures occur, we’re in a mess.
Some years ago one of the church vitality gurus I appreciate used the astrophysics concept of a “wormhole” to describe the present age. Wormholes are theoretical points of rapid transit from one time/space of the universe to another. The church vitality expert said life is changing so fast in the modern era that it’s like we’re in a wormhole. And in the wormhole, only one thing is sure not to change: Jesus. Hold on to no-thing, no one else, because no-thing, no one else is guaranteed to get through unchanged.
What do you hold on to? On what do you depend with an expectation that it will always be there, just as you need it, whenever you need it? Your health? Your financial holdings? Your family? Tomorrow morning’s alarm?
I am not about to surrender my tech connections, but the failures described at this piece’s beginning have served sufficient notice that I need more effective backup measures. I don’t know what’s been swirling around you lately, but chances are the notice thereby served to you is not much different.
We live in a wormhole. It’s good and helpful for us to hold onto each other, but let’s make sure we have our free hands raised and secured.
Pray with me:
In ways I can’t describe and only you can know, you pulled me through another day today, God. Thank you. Today felt different from yesterday. Chances are, tomorrow will feel different still. Disabuse me of temporary, ineffective security blankets. Make clear to me the path and the connection to your Son, the only one guaranteed not to give up, give in, or fail on me. May he always be my dependency, as I live and pray in his name, Amen.
Wednesday, June 6, 2007
Out of Gas
In search of gas for our lawnmower, the other day our gas can and I took a walk to a convenience store/gas station up the street a few blocks. When I reached the pumps, I noticed but paid no attention to handwritten signs taped to their fronts. Following the usual regimen of a credit card swipe and receipt preference selection, I engaged the pump’s cheapest (CORRECTION: least outrageously expensive) blend. Nothing.
I then actually read the sign on the pump’s face, from which I learned that the station had run out of unleaded and premium gas (that would be the least and most outrageously expensive blends). Ever quick on processes of elimination, I deduced there was one choice left for me and my can. Unfazed by the prospect of spending an extra dime a gallon, I pushed the mid-grade button then pulled the trigger. Again, nothing.
I reread the signs – no unleaded or premium – then moved toward the store’s entrance, where I was greeted by an exiting employee, she with more hand-drafted signs in tow.
“Are you out of all gas?” I asked, hoping soon to wake up on the well irony-ed sheets of this farcical moment.
“Yeah, it looks like we are. We thought we had the mid-grade stuff, but it doesn’t look like we do,” was the employee’s authoritative reply.
“Do you expect to get gas anytime soon?” I continued, by now working hard to contain my derision and salvage my excursion’s mission.
“Well, we hope so. We called them, but we never know when they’ll come by,” she said, sounding little like the take-charge leader types I expect to find behind convenience store cash registers.
Some creative four letter commentary punctuated my return home, after which I discovered that the gas outage was a contained phenomenon, as I filled our gas can at another station in the neighborhood.
How does a gas station run out of gas?
A few years ago, when I was not nearly as health conscious as I am today, I drove through a Burger King drive thru for lunch. I ordered a Whopper, or a double cheeseburger, or something in the beef section of the restaurant’s menu.
“We’re out of hamburger right now,” said the would-be server.
“You’re out of hamburger?” I asked, thinking the drive thru’s speaker was seriously distorting the worker’s words.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Do you expect to get any hamburger in any time soon,” I continued, not knowing that one day I would put an analogous question to a convenience store worker.
“Well, we have some on order, but we don’t know when it will get here,” she explained.
I drove away from the Burger King without my Whopper, muttering respect for Clara Peller, of the infamous 1980's Wendy’s commercial, who asked “Where’s the beef?” but apparently never found it.
How does a hamburger restaurant run out of hamburger?
There are lots of people who will visit churches in a few days looking for spiritual hope, sustenance, and connection. Perhaps the word “church” on the congregations’ main signs will prompt expectations of success; perhaps recommendations from friends or family, maybe a dusted-off childhood memory of the church’s prominence and potential, or a desire to learn more about some guy named Jesus will create optimism as those folks gather with the churches they visit.
I wonder how many of those spiritual travelers will drive away asking, “How does a group of Christians run out of Jesus?"
Pray with me:
Help me be a clear reflection of Jesus, God. No questions. No hastily written excuses. He is my Lord, or so I say. May no one cross my path in worship this weekend having to ask whether I have run out of the one in whose name I pray, Amen.
I then actually read the sign on the pump’s face, from which I learned that the station had run out of unleaded and premium gas (that would be the least and most outrageously expensive blends). Ever quick on processes of elimination, I deduced there was one choice left for me and my can. Unfazed by the prospect of spending an extra dime a gallon, I pushed the mid-grade button then pulled the trigger. Again, nothing.
I reread the signs – no unleaded or premium – then moved toward the store’s entrance, where I was greeted by an exiting employee, she with more hand-drafted signs in tow.
“Are you out of all gas?” I asked, hoping soon to wake up on the well irony-ed sheets of this farcical moment.
“Yeah, it looks like we are. We thought we had the mid-grade stuff, but it doesn’t look like we do,” was the employee’s authoritative reply.
“Do you expect to get gas anytime soon?” I continued, by now working hard to contain my derision and salvage my excursion’s mission.
“Well, we hope so. We called them, but we never know when they’ll come by,” she said, sounding little like the take-charge leader types I expect to find behind convenience store cash registers.
Some creative four letter commentary punctuated my return home, after which I discovered that the gas outage was a contained phenomenon, as I filled our gas can at another station in the neighborhood.
How does a gas station run out of gas?
A few years ago, when I was not nearly as health conscious as I am today, I drove through a Burger King drive thru for lunch. I ordered a Whopper, or a double cheeseburger, or something in the beef section of the restaurant’s menu.
“We’re out of hamburger right now,” said the would-be server.
“You’re out of hamburger?” I asked, thinking the drive thru’s speaker was seriously distorting the worker’s words.
“Yeah. Sorry.”
“Do you expect to get any hamburger in any time soon,” I continued, not knowing that one day I would put an analogous question to a convenience store worker.
“Well, we have some on order, but we don’t know when it will get here,” she explained.
I drove away from the Burger King without my Whopper, muttering respect for Clara Peller, of the infamous 1980's Wendy’s commercial, who asked “Where’s the beef?” but apparently never found it.
How does a hamburger restaurant run out of hamburger?
There are lots of people who will visit churches in a few days looking for spiritual hope, sustenance, and connection. Perhaps the word “church” on the congregations’ main signs will prompt expectations of success; perhaps recommendations from friends or family, maybe a dusted-off childhood memory of the church’s prominence and potential, or a desire to learn more about some guy named Jesus will create optimism as those folks gather with the churches they visit.
I wonder how many of those spiritual travelers will drive away asking, “How does a group of Christians run out of Jesus?"
Pray with me:
Help me be a clear reflection of Jesus, God. No questions. No hastily written excuses. He is my Lord, or so I say. May no one cross my path in worship this weekend having to ask whether I have run out of the one in whose name I pray, Amen.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Something Different This Way Comes
My current vacation has not distracted me from my spiritual practice of daily Bible reading. I am at the moment five days into my least favorite book, Old Testament or New, Leviticus.
What a challenge. Rules for sacrifices of all sorts. Detailed prescriptions for various offerings (make sure you rub the goat’s blood on the right big toe, not the left!). Minutiae regarding women’s menstruation. Tips for distinguishing between leprosy and other skin infections (Hint: Black hairs in the afflicted area, good; yellow hairs in the afflicted area, not good). As I said, what a challenge.
Most of us modern faithfuls have little use for this kind of legislative Scripture. Rules of such specificity have minimal application in a world fundamentally transformed by medical, technological, and social progress.
We don’t want to know the process by which people were declared “ceremonially unclean.” We aren’t impressed, and in fact, are a bit miffed by the exclusion from the Israelite community of people with illnesses not of their own creation. We don’t benefit from detailed recipes for sacrifices no longer practiced. In sum, we’re hard pressed to discern why Leviticus matters to 21st century humanity. . . . More personally, I rejoice that on Thursday I will move on to the scintillation of “Numbers.”
Just when my reactive boredom persuades me to consider striking Leviticus from my spiritual practice’s reading list, the word “holy” makes one of its 77 appearances, none more penetrating than this, found in the eleventh chapter:
“ I, the Lord, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God. You must therefore be holy because I am holy.”
The book’s obsessive-compulsion with ritual and cleanliness and hygiene is explained in a single word: holy. Israel must be different – “set apart” is a phrase oft-employed – from other nations. Any people chosen to represent a holy God must themselves be holy. Any community daring to define itself as God’s light to the world must shine so that others will notice its glow. The rules, the ceremonies, the details in Leviticus are of little practical consequence for us, but the divine demand for holiness is a spiritual necessity.
For the last several years I have experienced a burgeoning passion about good, right, holy living. Not perfection, mind you, but holiness – different from the rest. There is right and wrong (though we probably disagree as to what they are!). What we say, how we respond to need, want, and inclination all matter.
** If the Joneses are bad role models, don’t keep up with them.
** If a course of action is wrong/immoral/inappropriate, regardless of its potential benefits don’t pursue it.
** Worship’s seeming decline as a spiritual practice in our culture is not a permission slip for followers of Jesus to abandon Sunday morning praise.
** Among lies, neither size nor color matters (“a little white...”).
** Whether we hold the door open for the person coming behind us, whether we tolerate racial, gender, or sexual orientation intolerance even a single appearance, whether we’re authentic reflections of Jesus to our world in the next thirty minutes – not just the next time we’re otherwise unencumbered – matters.
It all matters. . . because God is holy and expects holiness from us. God expects you and me to live differently than the surrounding throngs.
Not “asks for”
Not “wishes for”
Not “humbly requests”
Expects. Demands.
Leviticus is an insufferable read, until we hear its central siren: God has made you different. Live that way.
Four more days to finish the book. A lifetime to prove I understood what I read.
Pray with Me:
God, you believe in me more than I believe in myself, which is one component in your demand of more from me than I often offer. Keep after me. Be intolerant of my excuses. Be encouraging of my efforts. Be gracious through it all. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
What a challenge. Rules for sacrifices of all sorts. Detailed prescriptions for various offerings (make sure you rub the goat’s blood on the right big toe, not the left!). Minutiae regarding women’s menstruation. Tips for distinguishing between leprosy and other skin infections (Hint: Black hairs in the afflicted area, good; yellow hairs in the afflicted area, not good). As I said, what a challenge.
Most of us modern faithfuls have little use for this kind of legislative Scripture. Rules of such specificity have minimal application in a world fundamentally transformed by medical, technological, and social progress.
We don’t want to know the process by which people were declared “ceremonially unclean.” We aren’t impressed, and in fact, are a bit miffed by the exclusion from the Israelite community of people with illnesses not of their own creation. We don’t benefit from detailed recipes for sacrifices no longer practiced. In sum, we’re hard pressed to discern why Leviticus matters to 21st century humanity. . . . More personally, I rejoice that on Thursday I will move on to the scintillation of “Numbers.”
Just when my reactive boredom persuades me to consider striking Leviticus from my spiritual practice’s reading list, the word “holy” makes one of its 77 appearances, none more penetrating than this, found in the eleventh chapter:
“ I, the Lord, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt to be your God. You must therefore be holy because I am holy.”
The book’s obsessive-compulsion with ritual and cleanliness and hygiene is explained in a single word: holy. Israel must be different – “set apart” is a phrase oft-employed – from other nations. Any people chosen to represent a holy God must themselves be holy. Any community daring to define itself as God’s light to the world must shine so that others will notice its glow. The rules, the ceremonies, the details in Leviticus are of little practical consequence for us, but the divine demand for holiness is a spiritual necessity.
For the last several years I have experienced a burgeoning passion about good, right, holy living. Not perfection, mind you, but holiness – different from the rest. There is right and wrong (though we probably disagree as to what they are!). What we say, how we respond to need, want, and inclination all matter.
** If the Joneses are bad role models, don’t keep up with them.
** If a course of action is wrong/immoral/inappropriate, regardless of its potential benefits don’t pursue it.
** Worship’s seeming decline as a spiritual practice in our culture is not a permission slip for followers of Jesus to abandon Sunday morning praise.
** Among lies, neither size nor color matters (“a little white...”).
** Whether we hold the door open for the person coming behind us, whether we tolerate racial, gender, or sexual orientation intolerance even a single appearance, whether we’re authentic reflections of Jesus to our world in the next thirty minutes – not just the next time we’re otherwise unencumbered – matters.
It all matters. . . because God is holy and expects holiness from us. God expects you and me to live differently than the surrounding throngs.
Not “asks for”
Not “wishes for”
Not “humbly requests”
Expects. Demands.
Leviticus is an insufferable read, until we hear its central siren: God has made you different. Live that way.
Four more days to finish the book. A lifetime to prove I understood what I read.
Pray with Me:
God, you believe in me more than I believe in myself, which is one component in your demand of more from me than I often offer. Keep after me. Be intolerant of my excuses. Be encouraging of my efforts. Be gracious through it all. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
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