Fooling Ourselves

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (1 John 1:8).

I’m weighing in late on the whole Katrina mess. Plenty has been said and written in an effort to capture the enormity of the loss and the depth of the pain visited upon the gulf region and New Orleans in particular. The words are sometimes helpful, but not always. Sometimes too many words have a way of diminishing that of which they speak. When Job suffered the loss of his children and property and health he had three friends who came to be with him and comfort him. At first they did quite well. They wept with Job. They sat with him in silence, no one saying a word, for seven days and seven nights. And then . . . they started talking. Things went south from there.

Ignoring the negative example of Job’s friends, I’m throwing my own words into the mix. But the words that come to me now aren’t really about pain and loss. I don’t have much to say about who should have done what and when they should have done it. What I find worthy of discussion, weeks after the storm, is simply us. People. People everywhere, not just along the gulf or in New Orleans.

Katrina raises significant questions for people of faith, especially those of us who treasure ideas like the sovereignty and providence of God. What did God have to do with this? Does God get directly and actively involved in nature? If not, what kinds of things does God actually do? If yes, why would God allow this kind of devastation? These aren’t new questions. I was asking them back in December when the Tsunami struck Southeast Asia. I didn’t arrive at a good answer then. I don’t have good answers now.

But here’s something of which I am absolutely certain. The Bible is right about us. It describes our condition perfectly. It does so with stories. It does so with logical argumentation. Over and over in scripture our condition is named. We are sinners. There’s something fundamentally wrong within us.

That’s what Katrina has shown me. There’s the obvious evidence that came out of the flooded and incapacitated city of New Orleans. It’s as if something wicked was unleashed in the city, something different than what was already there. But theft and rape and lawlessness don’t get to the depth of what sin is. Katrina has forced us to look at the social and racial issues surrounding poverty. Attitudes have been revealed; attitudes of indifference, attitudes of blame, as well as attitudes of entitlement. They are born from a common source – the bent condition of the human soul. We are sinners.

I want to be quick to add that much that is good and noble has been called forth by the tragedy of Katrina. A spirit of benevolence, a willingness to sacrifice, courage and strength and love – these have been present in good supply from all over the nation. But to say we’re sinners doesn’t mean we’re totally void of anything good and worthy. It simply means that what is good and worthy is damaged.

Eugene Peterson, in his recently released Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, makes reference to a 1910 book by G.K. Chesterton title What’s Wrong with the World? Peterson says that our standard answers to that question have to do with knowledge, power and money.[1]

If the world’s real problem is ignorance, then the answer is more and better education. If the world’s real problem is weakness, then the answer is political reform that gives power to the marginal and neglected. If the world’s real problem is poverty, then the answer is providing resources and putting more of the world’s people to work so they can sustain meaningful life.

But none of these get to our real problem. As good and important as education, government and business is to our well being, “at the core of who we are there is something wrong.”[2] Our scriptures name the real problem: sin.

It’s gotten rather hard to say that these days. Not many are buying it – and that includes the many who occupy church pews every week. There are plenty of decent well behaved people who understand sin solely in terms of immoral and criminal activity. But sin, biblically understood, isn’t an act as much as it is a condition. “It is a diagnosis.”[3]

That’s why John says so bluntly, “if we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves.” To think that we’ll be made right by education, government or commerce is wishful thinking. If we think that way we’re simply fooling ourselves. The only real answer to what ails us is forgiveness. When we tell the truth about ourselves and own what’s truly gone wrong, God is faithful and will do the work of making things right.

In the aftermath of Katrina we’ve been made aware of great need. There is need for shelter, clothes, jobs, medical care. And among all of this there is a need for good news. This kind of good news will not likely be announced by the President, but is weekly announced by God’s people, the church. What is wrong can be made right. As John reminded his people, “the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin.” This is the gospel, and if we think the world will be changed for the better without it, we are truly fooling ourselves.

[1] Eugene H. Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, 317-19.
[2] Ibid., 319.
[3] Ibid.

Prayer After Sitting in the Car Pool Line

A week ago my children went back to school. There’s much lamentation these days about the way schools seem to be starting earlier and earlier. In the minds of most students, August is barely a part of what they regard as “summer.”

Well, this summer the Crumplers got a taste of the way it used to be. (I hear it used to be this way – I really don’t know). We didn’t start school until the day after Labor Day. My kids have been back at it now for a full week. This means that we had the entire months of June, July, and August for summer break. It was a great summer, and while it does seem that most schools systems are robbing their students and families of perfectly decent, hot summer days, I have a confession to make. We were ready for the day after Labor Day. I mean . . . really ready. Ready for some routine. All this talk about requiring schools to begin the school year after Labor Day sounds great until it gets to be August 15th or 20th and your children are still roughly a decade away from driving a car.

But we made it. And now we’re a week into the school year and starting to feel the weekly rhythms.

Since my kids are at a new school this year, Marnie and I have had plenty to be prayerful about. We’ve prayed for a smooth transition, for new friends, for teachers who will connect well with them and thus teach them well, for their sense of competence in the work required of them. But sitting here on a Tuesday morning, having just dropped them off at car pool about an hour ago, I’m thinking about wisdom. For me, and perhaps for most parents, this is the prayer above all prayers. I want my kids to gain wisdom. In his introduction to the book of Proverbs in The Message, Eugene Peterson offers this definition of wisdom:

Wisdom has to do with becoming skillful in honoring our parents and raising our children, handling our money and conducting our sexual lives, going to work and exercising leadership, using words well and treating friends kindly, eating and drinking healthily, cultivating emotions within ourselves and attitudes toward others that make for peace. Threaded through all these items is the insistence that the way we think of and respond to God is the most practical thing we do.

Accordingly, Peterson renders Proverbs 1:7 as follows:

Start with God – the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.

I want my children to make good grades, but more than that I want them to make good decisions. That may not seem like such an urgent matter when you’re talking about a first grader and a second grader. The weight of decision making sits light upon them these days. But their capacity to bear the weight later, when the stakes are higher, is being formed right now.

And here’s what’s truly unsettling about all of this. There’s nothing in the book of Proverbs (as far as I can tell) to suggest that wisdom will come from some kind of educational institution. Schools have role in cultivating and teaching wisdom, but they can’t be looked to as the source of wisdom. Scripture seems to assume that wisdom is gained and passed on in the context of relationship. Wisdom’s natural habitat is personal, not institutional. Throughout Proverbs there is the sound of teaching that takes place from parent to child, one on one. Wisdom isn’t gained by reading as often as it is by conversation. “Pay close attention friend to what your father tells you; never forget what you learned on your mother’s knee” (Prov. 1:8, The Message). If my kids are to gain wisdom, it’s up to Marnie and me.

That’s an amazing thing to ponder. As I do, it becomes clear to me that as this school year begins I need to do more than pray for my children. I need to pray for myself. I need to pray for something to pass on to them. I need to pray for wisdom.

If any of you lacks wisdom he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him (James 1:5 NIV).

I’m counting on that.

For Marnie on Our 9th Wedding Anniversary

Marnie,

The house is quiet and you are sleeping – you and two others who were only a hope to us on this day nine years ago.

I just went downstairs to find a little volume of poems by Wendell Berry. The book bears the title The Country of Marriage and I thought I might find something to quote: something more beautiful than what I’m able to write on my own, something that spoke with eloquence of the love I feel for you and the life we’ve shared for these nine years.

I found the book – but not a poem. Berry doesn’t sound like me. Better said, I don’t sound like him (unfortunately. I’d love to write like that).

This is a little book you gave to me, but I had forgotten when. As I thumbed through the pages, finding nothing for you in the poetry, I found something from you. A brief sentence you had written on the title page. You always like for something to be written inside a book when you give it (and receive it). Even now I think of the first book I gave to you early in our dating days. I was so formal and careful. You were under-whelmed with what I wrote as I recall, and it was indeed under-whelming.

But there on the page bearing the words The Country of Marriage, you added a few handwritten words of your own. “We’ve entered this wonderful world and country.” And then the date – September 1, 1996. You gave this to me the day after our wedding. I had not remembered that. I can only guess that you had bought the book before our wedding and you gave it to me that day. As I remember September 1, 1996 we didn’t go in any bookstores. We’re both geeky sometimes, but not that geeky.

Here’s something that strikes me as fitting. As I searched in the basement office for The Country of Marriage I came across another book entitled Blink (by Malcolm Gladwell - not about marriage). The title of one book speaks to the title of the other. Our nine years in the country of marriage seem to me like a blink. Our seniors may smile at that because they’ve got 20 or 30 or maybe even 50 years to reflect upon – but what is true of decades is no less true of a decade minus one.

The other day you told me you had found some important video tapes – our wedding, your ordination, my ordination. I think about nine years and it occurs to me that in the same sanctuary where we were married nine years ago, I was ordained nine years prior to our wedding. And on that warm Sunday evening in May of ’87 you were seated in the choir loft singing with the choir. It causes me to marvel at what I would have never dreamed on that night. There we both were, in the same sanctuary, seated on the platform behind the pulpit (as we so often are now) but without the slightest idea of what would take place in that same room nine years later. Did we even speak to each other that night in 1987? Your father placed his hands on me and prayed or said something. He knew no more than we did. I would not even know he had participated in my ordination were it not for the video record of it.

(Those two who were only “hopes” to us nine years ago have come into the study. They are very real and wanting some attention. I’ll finish later).

In May of 1987, kneeling in the sanctuary, I could not imagine what God was doing or was going to do over the next nine years. On August 31, 1996, standing with you in almost the exact same spot, the same was true. I was certain and remain certain of our vows, but we had no idea where the next nine years would take us – to our little house on Jane Street, to our semi-rural home in North Carolina, to the stomping grounds of our youth in Atlanta; growing from 2 to 3 in Houston, and then becoming a foursome in Raleigh. God has been so good to us.

This day of our anniversary is marred by the images and news of destruction and loss on the gulf coast after hurricane Katrina. There’s a slight sense of dissonance in sitting comfortably in front of this computer, now with sunlight streaming through the windows, meditating on the string of blessings that runs through our years of marriage. There is and always will be much in the world that is broken. Today these words from Calvin Miller resonate with me as words that are right and honest.

And though the floods of life may come and the waters of life threaten us, (this) scripture still stands: “Many waters cannot quench love, rivers cannot wash it away” (Song of Sol. 8:7).

So these nine years, as I think of them this morning, speak so clearly to me of grace. The gift of grace that you are to me; the ways you bring life to me and our home; the laughter and determination and restless zeal; the ways you parent our children; the grace of seeing you use the gifts God has poured into your own life. These nine years speak of the grace that is hidden in the mystery of time; grace that does what we never dreamed of.

I’m writing this to let anyone who reads it know that I am a blessed man, that God has been kind to me far beyond my deserving.

I’m writing this to let you know that I love you and I love the nine years we’ve shared. What will the next nine, or next one, hold? We will live by grace and continue to make our way through the country of marriage.

Finding Your Way Home (wrap up)

Tom Hanks as Commander Jim Lovell

Two sons, both far from home.

The younger removed by miles, impatient in his youth, having no regard for his father’s honor or the family’s reputation. The elder son stays close to home, but the joy of being in the family has been replaced by duty. When it’s time to celebrate, he can’t come in.

As Jesus tells this story, we never see what the elder son decides to do. But in the story of the younger son we see that there are a couple of different ways to find your way home.

Some time after leaving home, the younger son ran out of money. At the very same time the economy took a terrible turn because of a famine, and he began to be in need. He took a job feeding pigs, but the job didn’t pay. He was hungry and he envied the pods that were given to the pigs.

In this state of need and hunger, the younger son comes up with a plan. He devises a speech that he will present to his father. Kenneth Bailey summarizes as follows: “having failed to find a paying job in the far country, he will try to obtain his father’s backing by becoming gainfully employed in his home community. He will yet save himself by keeping the law. Grace is unnecessary. He can manage himself – or so he thinks.”

The younger son does not return home out of remorse. He is driven by hunger, and he has a plan whereby he can make things right.

In her book Traveling Mercies, Anne Lamott recounts a time in her life where she was falling apart. Her life was an absolute mess – a relationship with a married man, too much alcohol, too much drugs, the wheels were coming off. In desperation she called a priest. Gradually, and with the help of this priest she made it through this dark time, and years later she asked her friend the priest to tell her what that first meeting was like when she had called him in her desperation. He told her
Here you were in a rather desperate situation, suicidal, clearly alcoholic, going down the tubes. I thought the trick was to help you extricate yourself enough so you could breathe again. You said your prayers weren’t working anymore and I could see that in your desperation you were trying to save yourself.

“In your desperation you were trying to save yourself.” When the younger son is hungry and in need and no one will give him anything, that’s what he does.

But there is another way to come home. While the younger son was running through his money, and then feeding pigs, his father seemed to know that someday he would return. His father also knew that if his son did return, there would be great shame and rejection from the village. The only way to avoid this was to get to his son before the neighbors did. So he waited and watched, waited and watched, until the day came. While his son was still at a distance, he did something unheard of. He ran to him. By getting to him first, by embracing him, he demonstrated publicly that there was reconciliation. The rejection of the neighbors was no longer fitting because the father had received his son and brought him home.

The son had a plan to become a wage earner; to work hard; to make things up. But there is a better way to come home, and that way is to simply allow the father to bring you home. This is grace. You don’t come home with your plan for making things right. The father comes to you, and he brings you home. He comes to you and he removes your shame.

This is how we are saved. Jesus comes to us. As Paul wrote it, though he (Jesus) was equal with God he did not regard equality with God something to be grasped, but he humbled himself and took the form of a servant. He came to us and submitted to death, even death on a cross.

There’s a scene in the movie Apollo 13 in which family, friends and people from NASA have gathered at the home of commander Jim Lovell as they anxiously wait for the astronauts to return home. They are all gathered around the TV and the newscast is showing a piece of an interview with the astronaut in which he is telling about his experience as a naval aviator, trying to land on an aircraft carrier in the Sea of Japan.

Because of combat conditions the carrier was blacked out – no lights. Lovell had no radar and no homing signal. When he turned on his map light the entire cockpit shorted out. He was surrounded by pitch blackness, he had no idea how he would find the carrier. Then down below in the ocean, he saw a trail of green. The carrier was churning up algae in the ocean, a phosphorescent green algae trailing behind the ship like a carpet. If Lovell’s cockpit instruments had been on, he would have never seen it. Lovell concluded the story by saying, “you never know what events might transpire to take you home.”

Our standard navigational instruments are the things we rely to make our own way home; those things that we look to or depend upon to tell us we’re o.k. That might be our money, our connections, our smarts – whatever. And sometimes those navigational instruments simply aren’t working. It’s then that God goes to work down in the deep places. This is the work of the Spirit leading us home.

The God we come home to knows us even at a great distance; he runs to us and meets us where we are. He takes our shame and brings us home. And there’s no better way to get there.

Finding Your Way Home: A Meditation on Luke 15:11-32

Like all children, my children love stories – and like all parents I often find myself the story teller. Sometimes the stories come from books: Dr. Seuss, Frog and Toad, Magic School Bus, Curious George. But sometimes the stories are stories I make up. These are never very good stories as far as stories go, but my children love these because there is always a little boy or a little girl in the story. They love these stories because they know they’re in it. They see themselves in the story.

The same is true for us and the parables of Jesus. Truth be told, we like stories too. And when we hear parables we see ourselves in the story. This may be why Jesus’ teaching ministry was so powerful. The gospels tell us that he never taught them without a story. And the gospels also tell us that people were amazed at his teaching. When Jesus taught, the crowds gathered around him, on one occasion pressing him so badly that he taught from a boat pushed out into the water. In his teaching people found themselves. They heard God’s voice and saw their lives.

Of all the stories Jesus told there are none that show us our lives and God’s nature like the story of the prodigal son. There are so many dimensions and levels to this story, and we can easily find ourselves connecting with it in a number of ways.

Many of you resonate with the waiting Father. In the three stories that Luke 15 clusters together, there is a person who loses something: A shepherd searching for a sheep, a woman searching for a son, a Father waiting and looking every day for his son.

To lose something is painful. Earlier this summer I lost a marriage license. As the wedding ended I reminded the couple that I needed the license. They reminded me that they had given it to me at our last meeting. I pretended to remember this and then went straight to my office and looked in my files. I had the envelope to mail the license but no license. I searched everywhere. (Let me add at this point that if you’re reading this and I did your wedding earlier this summer – I’m talking about someone else). The county office involved helped us correct the situation, but about two weeks ago I was moving my office and guess what I found? I felt great rejoicing just like the stories describe.

But your pain may be far more serious than the irritation of losing car keys or a marriag license, especially if (like the younger son) someone you love has gone off. It may be your child. You thought you had raised them to value certain things or to be a certain kind of person, and then one day they made it perfectly clear to you that they weren’t who you thought they were and they had no intention of being who you wanted them to be. They might not have left, they may still be under your roof this very day – but you feel like you’ve lost them.

Some of you have lost a spouse. The person you love has re-directed their affections. They may be in love with their work. They may be in love with someone else. Whatever it is, they’ve gone to a far country, and even when they’re at home they are distant.

There are children here today who have lost their parents; children who perhaps hold on to a hope that Dad or Mom will come home. They may be waiting for mom or dad to get home from the office; they may be hoping they’ll come home again to live.

Our experiences of loss help us connect with the waiting father. But as Jesus told these stories it was clear that we are not the shepherd or the woman or the Father. In this story we are to see ourselves in the sons. We are the ones who need to find our way home. The parable we commonly refer to as the prodigal son is actually a parable about two sons. The story Jesus tells falls into two scenes or acts that focus on each son – both of whom need to come home.

This is obvious when it comes to the younger son. He disgraced his father and his family by asking for his inheritance before his father was dead. His request in effect said “I can’t wait for you to die.” This was far more than a personal insult to the father. The entire community would have known this. He disgraced his family and alienated himself from the community. After this request he had to go to a far country. He couldn’t stay there.

But the older son is also in need of finding his way home. At the end of the story, when the father throws a party for the younger brother, the older son cannot come in. He stands off at a distance – angry, resentful.

This is where we find ourselves. Some of you are far from God because at some point in your life you became convinced that God and faith and religion were the major barrier to having a good time and enjoying the good life. You decided you’d had enough. You walked out on it.

Some of you are a long way from God and you’ve been in church all your life. But though you’ve never walked out you’ve lost the capacity to enter into the joy, the celebration of being a child of the father. You’ve become dutiful.

Your distance from God today may be the distance of youthful rejection; it may be the distance of duty without joy – but whatever it is, the parable calls you to find your way home. That can happen in two ways and we’ll take a look at those in the next post.

Smart Fish

Fishing with John at Watercolor

"Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I will make you fishers of men" (Mark 1:17).

"But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32).

Last week on vacation we were either in the water or on the water. Most of the time we were in it – swimming in the ocean or (most often) in the pool near the house where we were staying. On two mornings we were on the water. We spent some time Kayaking on a 200+ acre lake, and when we’d had enough of that we spent a little time fishing from the dock.

I was impressed with whatever kind of fish might have been in that lake. These were smart fish. The fishing poles provided to my kids were simple cane poles with a line and a hook. Nothing fancy. The boat-house also provided a small plastic container of bait – small shrimp and shrimpy-like parts. I would place a shrimp on the hook and John would lower the bait into the lake. The red and white floater attached to the line rocked gently in the water, and then it bobbed, tugged from beneath. John jerked up on the line – but no fish. What was noticeable was the diminished form of the shrimp. The fish was eating without taking the hook.

John lowered the bait back into the water. Again the floater disappeared for a quick moment, and we attempted to set the hook only to pull the shrimp from the lake nearly gone. Something was getting a meal. We repeated the steps outlined above and this time drew a bare hook from the water. Can fish laugh? I imagined this fish (these fishes?) snickering, calling their fiends over to the feast.

Indeed they had a feast. We kept feeding them shrimp, they kept eating, and nothing was caught.

Jesus told his first followers that he would give them a new reason to wake up every day. Instead of pulling fish out of the Sea of Galilee, they would bring men and women into the Kingdom of God. I’ve wondered about how that works these days. How do the marginally churched, the cultural Christians, or outright pagans come to be followers of Jesus Christ?

The Church seems alternately anxious and oblivious to the question. The oblivious are losing members. The anxious are packing the house – but is it possible they’re dropping a hook, providing attractive bait, but not really catching disciples? Generalizations won’t work and don’t help – but our culture is not too different from the lake at Watercolor. There are plenty of smart fish out there. They know how to sample our programs, they like the ramped up sounds of our praise and worship, they’ll listen to a speaker who knows how to lift their spirits without burdening or taxing the mind. How much of what we’re doing is shrimp on a hook, there for the tasting and taking with out much risk for the fish?

It may be that less is more. On the day John actually caught a fish someone said to us, “you need a smaller hook.” They gave us their pole, a pole with a small hook, and we baited the hook with a smaller piece of shrimp. Did it really make a difference? I don’t know, but my son pulled a fish out of the water.

Jesus said, “if I be lifted up I will draw all people to myself.” Ultimately, Jesus brings people to himself when he’s lifted up. Programs won’t do it, worship that rocks won’t do it – though both have a place in the life of the church. What we have to help us fish for people and bring them into the kingdom is Jesus. Telling his story, living his life.

We’re surrounded by smart fish, but the call Jesus gave to Peter and Andrew hasn’t changed. And just maybe there’s something to be said for smaller hooks.

No (or few) Explanations Needed?

They read from the Book of the Law of God and clearly explained the meaning of what was being read, helping the people understand each passage (Nehemiah 8:8 NLT).

As we were getting ready to leave for the beach this past weekend I grabbed a copy of Wendell Berry’s novel Jayber Crow and threw it in my bag. As it turns out, I’ve been enjoying Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies this week. Still, while taking a quick look at Berry’s novel, deciding whether I really wanted to pack it, I noticed a page placed just before the table of contents. It read:

NOTICE
Persons attempting to find a “text” in this book will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a “subtext” in it will be banished; persons attempting to explain, analyze, deconstruct, or otherwise “understand” it will be exiled to a desert island in the company of other explainers.
BY ORDER OF THE AUTHOR.

Those words got my attention in as much as I’ve been preparing to preach on the story of the prodigal son. This is an intimidating parable. Richard Allen Farmer, with well over 20 years of regular preaching under his belt, said it took him that long to feel ready to preach on the prodigal son. I can understand why.

I’m not exactly sure what Berry meant about “attempting to find a text” or “subtext” but I understand his aversion to explainers. I say this as one with a proclivity for explaining. For me there is a close connection between teaching and explaining. I guess Wendell Berry would number me among the “explainers.” I’m not apologizing for this. In fact, I have allies in the work of explaining, Ezra the priest being one of them.

After the exiled Hebrews had returned to Jerusalem and rebuilt its walls, they took a break to listen to Ezra read from the Word of God, the books of Moses. This was no perfunctory snippet as prelude to Ezra’s lengthy exposition. Ezra read from the Law from early morning until midday, “and the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law” (Nehemiah 8:3). Ezra was aided by a small army of priests who helped the people understand what the Law meant. They would read from the Law clearly and explain it. Some translations say they “gave the sense” of the reading. Here is one of the earliest examples of expository teaching.

But back to Wendell Berry’s grousing and the story of the prodigal son. As helpful (and necessary) as good expository teaching is, the last thing I want to do is “explain” the parable of the prodigal son. As a novelist and poet, Berry knows that efforts to explain and dissect a story or poem often do violence to the story or poem. Something is lost, namely the power of the story or verse. Stories and poems do their own kind of work in the mind and heart. They don’t sit there motioning for help like people on a rooftop during a flood, hoping a good explainer will find them and lower the rope of analysis to rescue them. They are quite capable of taking care of themselves, thank you.

I admire Ezra, but I admire Jesus more. And Jesus did very little explaining. He did a great deal of story telling. And those who first followed Jesus and heard him tell those stories chose to tell us about Jesus by telling more stories. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John don’t explain much, even when some explanation would be helpful. For example, our questions about the “meaning” of the crucifixion and resurrection would be less perplexing if the gospel writers had done a little more explaining. Thankfully, there’s always Paul, who excelled in explaining and exhorting.

At the beginning of part three of Lamott’s Traveling Mercies, she quotes a line from Martin Buber. “All actual life is encounter.”

That’s what teachers are really after – an encounter. Specifically, an encounter between the listeners/ congregation and God. Even as Ezra read from the Law, the people responded with worship. They bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Something was happening that didn’t allow people to simply sit and think about what they had heard. There was encounter, worship.

Inevitably, I’ll end up explaining some aspects of the prodigal son story. Frankly, parts of it need explaining to 21st century listeners. Hopefully, the explanation won’t bleach the life out of the story. Hopefully, by the Spirit, there will be an encounter with God. And hopefully, whatever happens, folks will have a little more patience and grace than Wendell Berry.

Solitude, Community, and "March of the Penguins"

“He withdrew about a stone’s throw beyond them, knelt down and prayed” (Luke 22:41).

Last night Marnie and I took the kids to see March of the Penguins. The movie is a documentary about the long trek made by Emperor Penguins when it is time to mate and bring new little penguin chicks into the world. This isn’t something that they’ll do just anywhere. There is a nesting ground, a particular place that they instinctively know how to find – but getting there requires a very long walk, nearly 100 miles. This is amazing for an animal that, for all practical purposes, has no legs and takes steps by tottering back and forth from foot to foot.

To make the journey they join together, forming a massive community of black and white as they trudge toward their destination. At one point the little pilgrims formed an extended line that seemed to stretch out endlessly. As they moved across the barren and brutal terrain of ice and snow I wondered about Moses and the exodus out of Egypt. What did that look like?

Of the many beautiful and powerful scenes captured by the film makers, the parts that remain firmly lodged in my mind are the images that captured the critical role of the collective gathering while telling the story with pictures of a single penguin or one particular couple.

The journey that forms the plot of the film is one that cannot be made by a solitary penguin. One image showed an Emperor penguin, who through circumstance or weakness or old age had not managed to keep pace with the group. The solitary black figure continued to trudge across the expansive frozen wilderness. The vast emptiness of the scenery served to punctuate the loneliness of the image. The narrator, Morgan Freeman, explained that the fate of such a solitary traveler was to simply disappear into the whiteness surrounding it. Being separated from the community was a death sentence.

Once the eggs have been laid they must be carefully guarded from the cold by remaining hidden under a flap of skin between the father’s feet – a kind of fleshy pouch that envelops the egg until it hatches. Yes, the Fathers do this. Once the mother lays the egg, she transfers the egg to the male. The male guards and holds the egg for about eight weeks while the females make the 100 mile walk back to where they came from. There the females will feed, and return, making the walk yet again, to feed their chicks.

As the males wait, the days shorten, daylight all but disappears, and winter unleashes its nastiness. The only hope of survival is in the group itself. The males huddle, turning their backs to the harsh elements, taking turns at being in the warm center of the community. The film described this gathering as a new organism – hundreds of penguins forming a singular living entity for the purposes of survival.

My wife likes to jokingly remind me that in marrying me she saved me from the life of a monk. I won’t acknowledge it to her – but she’s right. She’s not very accurate because even monks live in community. In fact, community is at the heart of monasticism. But I know what she’s saying. She keeps my inclination to solitude in check. She loves a party, lots of people. She helps me by prodding me to at least go the parties. But more than that, together she and I have been blessed with a little community of our own. I can’t imagine my life without her and John and Anna. Not all people find community in marriage and family, but they’ve got to find it somewhere. What marriage and family save me from is myself. They puncture the lie that “life is a story about me.”[1]

March of the Penguins not only said something to me about my family, but it had powerful implications for the church and what the church ought to be. Life is not a journey that we can make in isolation from others. Moreover, the life of faith is not something we can do well on our own. The image of the isolated penguin and the picture of the huddled fathers both conveyed one message. To be alone is to die.

The spiritual life is peculiar in this way. It grows in solitude, but it shrivels up in isolation. Dallas Willard observes that solitude holds a place of primacy among the spiritual disciplines. Solitude gives us distance and perspective. In solitude we find freedom from “ingrained behaviors” that are set against God and life in his kingdom.[2]

But isolation has a way of eroding the life of the Spirit by turning the self in on itself. Isolation is nothing but self in which God shrinks and moves to the background while the self and all its quirks and fantasies and fears grow large.

On the night of his arrest Jesus did something that we would do well to imitate. Of course, we do well to imitate everything that Jesus did, but this is especially interesting. As he sought out solitude, he took three friends with him. The gospels tell us he was in anguish, and when you’re in anguish you need people around. And yet, you need the space of solitude. Jesus went out with the twelve. As Matthew tells it, he left them but took Peter, James and John. He asked them to “keep watch with me” and then he went a little further. Luke omits the presence of Peter, James and John, but he uses the vivid phrase “a stone’s throw.” In this scene in Gethsemane, solitude and community mingle. Both are necessary.

Emperor Penguins and Christian disciples; neither do well alone. We need others around us, even if “a stone’s throw” away. We need the rhythm of solitude and community – always careful that solitude not become isolation.

Marnie, John and Anna – along with my parents and my in-laws, brother and sister, and others whom God has given to me. And the Peachtree Presbyterian Church. After last night I see myself waddling and tottering like a penguin and I can’t imagine the journey without them.

______________________
[1] Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz, 182.
[2] Dallas Willard, Spirit of the Disciplines, 160-61.

"Don't Move Until You See It"

Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him (Psalm 37:7).

You don’t have to be an athlete to have a favorite sports movie. I’ve never placed a foot in a boxing ring, never been in the same room with one as far as I know, but I love Rocky (the sequels get increasingly predictable). I never played football, but I love Rudy and Remember the Titans. And what about The Rookie and Hoosiers and Seabiscuit? I even felt a surge of adrenaline at the sappy Disney film Racing Stripes. There’s just something powerful about contests of skill and strength and endurance. They are inherently dramatic.

This past weekend I re-discovered one of my favorite sports movies. The sport is chess. The movie is Searching For Bobby Fisher. I don’t play chess, and I’m not going to argue whether chess is actually a sport. Seems to me it has as much right to be called a sport as golf or bowling. Definitions aside, the movie evoked in me some of the same responses as those other films. Strange as it may be, there’s some high drama in this movie.

Searching For Bobby Fisher is about a seven year old kid, Josh Waitzkin. I guess he’s what we would call a prodigy. After observing some men playing a rapid game of chess in a park, he gets it. He grasps the game, understands it. He’s gifted. Among other story lines, the movie tells of his rise in the national rankings.

As with almost every sports movie, the drama reaches its height in a contest that takes place at the end of the film. Josh has encountered a player whom he fears. Another incredibly gifted kid – but different than Josh. This kid is like a cold predator at the chess board. He has quiet ways of taunting. He isn’t playing a game, he’s hunting. His face is expressionless, like some kind of shark staring at you from the other side of the board. After battling his fears (and they are multi-layered) Josh ends up facing this player for the national title.

They play each other countering move with move until Josh looses a key piece, the queen, to his opponent. He’s appears to be stuck, slightly shaken. As he eyes the board his teacher is in another room (with all the hyper-competitive parents) watching the match by video feed. At this very moment his teacher sees the way to victory. He speaks softly as if coaching Josh.

“You’ve got him Josh . . . it’s only twelve moves away . . . don’t move until you see it.”

Oddly, the drama of the game is unfolding as two people sit quietly across from each other. The action is captured only by movements of the eyes, movements that reflect the workings of the mind. As Josh gazes at the board he remembers a time when his teacher abruptly swept the board clean, knocking every piece across the hardwood floor, forcing Josh to visualize the moves in his mind. Now with a national title at stake, Josh creates a vacant board in his mind and sees the moves unfolding.

All the while, his teacher coaches with a whisper “don’t move until you see it.”

It takes strength to wait. At some level we all know this. Many of us confess to not being patient people, not being able to get still and wait. It’s torture. Thus, actually waiting demands a certain kind of strength. We know this, and yet our culture has given us a de facto definition of waiting as weakness and passivity, a form of laziness. But you can’t see deeply into things, into life, when you’re hurried. A frenetic life doesn’t allow a person to visualize twelve moves ahead. Eugene Peterson observes that “patience is a difficult condition to come to terms with in a technology-saturated culture that is impatient – worse, contemptuous – of slowness.”[1]

When we’re stuck, not sure what’s next, shaken by a direct hit life has dealt to us, patient waiting is excruciating. But our biblical ancestors understood that waiting patiently before the Lord is required of those who desire to live whole and well. Isaiah reminds us that those who wait on the Lord will be renewed in strength, mounting up with wings, walking, running without growing weary. How often does the Psalmist resolve to wait patiently before the Lord? Granted, this waiting isn’t always something the Psalmist delights in. Sometimes the question is posed, “how long must I wait?” (Ps. 119:84). Still, waiting is the fundamental posture of a prayerful life. We bring our requests, our needs, our lives before God, offering them as a sacrifice, waiting in expectation (Ps. 5:3).

And yet, the life of faith cannot be all about waiting. The counsel of Josh Waitzkin’s teacher doesn’t always work for those who seek to life a life of faith, following Jesus. If we resolve to not “move until we see it,” we’ll likely never move. In our waiting before the Lord we rarely get full disclosure, all twelve moves, the winning resolution. Sometimes we simply have to make a move. Moves 2-12 remain a mystery, but we can take step one. That God asks this of us is seen in his call to Abraham. “Go to a land I will show you.” (Gen. 12:1) The movements of the Spirit cannot be discerned like the movements of a chess game. It’s far more mysterious, like wind, moving where it will.

The Christian life is lived in this tension. We wait patiently, not driven by the demands around us or the anxieties within us. And yet we are not content simply to wait, and waiting until all the moves are clear is often a failure to trust. Living in this tension constitutes the drama of our lives, real life drama.

And in these ordinary, daily dramas, far more than a national title is at stake.

____________________
[1] Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, p. 337.

A Lesson from Lance

If we claim we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we’re obviously lying through our teeth – we’re not living what we claim. (1 John 1:6, The Message).

I have never felt like I have much of a “testimony” to share. That’s not to say I don’t believe God has done anything in my life. It’s just that what God has done isn’t very exciting or dramatic. I have a story, a faith story, to be sure – but it isn’t very interesting.

The truly compelling stories, the kind of stories that show God intervening in a life and turning that life around – those are stories that have punch. They make people take notice. Among those stories is that of Chuck Colson. This guy was at the top of the Washington power structure, a key player in the Nixon administration, implicated in the Watergate mess, convicted and sentenced . . . and then converted. Now that’s a story.

I find myself wanting to add another name to that list, another story that forces the unbelieving world to deal with the reality and power of Jesus. The name is Lance Armstrong. Sadly, however, there’s no story.

Of course, there’s an incredible story of an athlete. An incredible story of overcoming a pervasive aggressive cancer. An incredible story of six Tour de France victories. As of this writing it appears that Lance is less than a week from making it a perfect seven. Unheard of. Unbelievable. An amazing story.

But Jesus isn’t in it.

My interest in this isn’t entirely pure. I guess there’s a little “wouldn’t it be great to have Lance on our side” kind of thinking. That’s not a concern for evangelism, seeing a person come to faith in Christ. That’s marketing. I guess I want to use Lance the same way Nike or Trek does. Thus ends my confession.

Mixed motives aside, it is truly amazing to me that God doesn’t figure more prominently into the Lance Armstrong story. Few lives have been as marked by the grace of God as this man’s life. It seems to me that every inch of his existence is smudged with God’s fingerprints; everything from his natural athletic ability, to the fact that he’s still alive, much less riding a bike – riding and winning. How does a story like that manage to omit God? It baffles me.

But Armstrong manages to do just that in his book, "It’s Not About the Bike." For example:

“I don’t know why I’m still alive. I can only guess. I have a tough constitution . . . I can’t help feeling that my survival was more a matter of blind luck” (p. 3).

At one point Armstrong sounds unnervingly defiant when he says

Quite simply I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person . . . if I did that . . . then I believed that should be enough. If there was indeed a God at the end of my days, I hoped he didn’t say, “but you were never a Christian, so you’re going the other way from heaven.” If so, I was going to reply, “You know what? You’re right. Fine.” (p. 117)

Lance is trusting in himself, trusting in his own best attempt to “live a true life” – whatever that means. The more I think about that, I don’t think I’m guilty of only envying Lance as a poster boy for the Christian faith. I feel a sense of sadness when I read his words. But sadder than Armstrong’s misplaced trust in his “true life” is the reason he seems to feel that way about faith and about Christianity in particular.

Early in the book Lance explains that he basically grew up without a father. Lance’s mother was 17 when Lance was born, and he never knew his birth father. At a young age, his mother married a man who adopted him and gave him the name Armstrong. Lance has little good to say about this man. Among the memories that left an enduring mark on Armstrong is this:

“Terry Armstrong was a Christian . . . but for all of his proselytizing, Terry had a bad temper, and he used to whip me, for silly things. Kid things, like being messy. . . as a result my early impressions of organized religion was that it was for hypocrites” (p. 21).

The extent to which Armstrong’s lack of faith in God can be attributed to this one person isn’t clear. What is clear is that as a child Armstrong knew a Christian who seemed to live out of his anger, not love. In Armstrong’s mind and memory this connection was never made: he was a Christian and he loved me. Terry Armstrong's life and faith didn't connect. As a Christian, he didn’t exhibit anything compelling or attractive to Lance.

There's really nothing new here. This is what pastor John seems to be writing about to his congregation, a congregation fractured by some who claim to know Christ, to be in the light – but live life stumbling around in the darkness. Their lives negate their claim. To be in the light means to live a certain kind of life. Faith is lived. Doctrine isn’t a head thing, it’s a life thing. John is succinct in making his point. “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did” (1 John 2:6).

There are plenty of lessons to be learned from Lance: lessons about hope and determination, self-discipline and self confidence – and yes, lessons about grace. But hidden behind these prominent lessons is a quiet lesson about the power of lived faith and the impact it can have on another person. One person’s refusal to acknowledge God can’t be blamed entirely (or mostly?) on another person's failure to walk with God. Still, I can’t help but wonder. What if a very young Lance Armstrong had known a Christian whose love for Jesus translated clearly into love for him? What a story we might be telling right now.

And maybe even today the narrative is open-ended. The story has yet to be concluded.

These Are Serious Times

You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky, but why do you not know how to interpret the present time?” (Luke 12:56 ESV)

Here in Atlanta we’re dealing with the after-effects of Hurricane Dennis. In Georgia that means plenty of rain, some flooding and loss of power in some areas. It also means we’re relatively fortunate given what some areas along the gulf coast are left to deal with.

Relatively fortunate . . . most of us.

There’s been a news story in Atlanta that I can’t make sense of, can’t get my mind around. Part of my brain wants to wrestle with it to see if I can arrive at some suitable way to think about it. Another part of my brain wants to forget about it and pretend it didn’t really happen.

On Sunday night a 35 year old man in the Decatur area went to bed, probably with the sound of rain peppering his roof. Sometime early Monday morning a massive tree fell on his house, ripping into his bedroom and killing him. He has a wife and small children. They managed to escape. The newscasts keep saying that this man died instantly. I keep wondering how they know that and I keep praying it’s true. Perhaps we’re not supposed to ever get comfortable with stories like that. TV tries to help us. We get about 60 seconds of the tragedy and then we break to something else, often some clever and funny commercial that makes us smile again. It’s the randomness of it all that bothers me. The randomness means that no one has immunity.

So if that’s the case, what are we to do with that? How do we live and what does it mean to live well. These are the questions that have been stirred up this morning as I read through the text of Luke 12. The scripture hasn’t offered an explanation. It rarely does. But to listen to Jesus is to hear some things that need to be heard as we watch the movements of a hurricane and hear about a family robbed of a father and husband and see a mangled and charred bus on the streets of London.

It seems like the people among whom Jesus lived were very much like us. Over the past weekend I was constantly turning on the weather channel. The frequency of special weather bulletins on our local TV channels signaled the level of threat and fed our voracious appetite for radar images and information about trajectory and wind speed. This is the kind of thing Jesus confronts in Luke 12:54-56. Jesus observes that his audience is very perceptive and interested in weather patterns. They know that cloud from the west, coming from over the Mediterranean Sea, will be full of moisture. “There’ll be rain,” they say. Likewise, these folks know that a south wind, coming from the arid desert places, will be like an oven blast. “It’s gonna be a hot one,” they say.

Jesus makes his point with a question. “You know how to read the weather, but why can’t you interpret this present time?”

It’s “this present time” that deserves our attention, our efforts to discern accurately and respond wisely. The pressing question of Jesus’ day, and ours, is “what is God doing?” The people to whom Jesus spoke were good at reading the almanac, interpreting earth and sky, but they were missing the work of God present among them in Jesus.

In his book Serious Times, James Emery White shares this quote from Paul Helms:
“The whole of a person’s life is fundamentally serious, something for which he is responsible before God, and for which he will have to give an account . . . He is individually responsible to God for what he ‘makes’ of it.”[1]

White recounts a line from a letter written by John Adams to his friend Thomas Jefferson toward the end of their lives. “You and I have lived in serious times.”

This is what Jesus knew. This is what he wanted others to understand. This is what we need to understand as well. These are serious times. This theme is woven throughout Luke 12 – in a sense, through the whole of scripture. In the voices of prophets, Jesus, and the apostles, the call is consistent. Don’t miss what matters most. Don’t be distracted by the dramatic and thus miss the truly urgent.

We respond to the randomness of a fallen tree not by trying to avoid trees or by sitting up all night during storms. I heard a radio interview on Saturday with an American woman who lives in London. The interviewer asked, “will this terrorist attack cause you to come home?” The answer was no. It made me think, “why would coming back to the USA be a good response? What would that solve?”

Jesus said, “don’t fear those who can only kill your body and then do nothing else. Fear the one who holds your eternal destiny, who can throw you into hell” (Luke 12:4-5).

We don’t answer the urgency of these serious times by simply protecting ourselves against terrorists or hurricanes. We answer the urgency of these days with readiness. Jesus uses the image of a boss returning from a business trip to find workers productively engaged. Be ready, watchful, alert. “It will be good for those servants whose master finds them ready, even if he comes in the second or third watch of the night” (Luke 12:38).

These are serious times.

And serious times call for serious lives. This doesn’t mean sour and sober, guarded and tentative. It does mean looking deeper than wind and clouds, getting beneath the surface, interpreting the days in which we live, ready to be a part of what God is doing. This is what Jesus calls us to. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it” (Luke 9:24).

[1] Quoted in James Emery White, Serious Times, p. 10.

Jesus Freedom

All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his lips . . . (Luke 4:22)

Woe to you when all men speak well of you . . . (Luke 6:26)

The assigned text in my Bible reading plan nearly fell on Independence Day, but not quite. July 4 and Luke 4 were separated by a day or so, but I’ve been holding them together in my head. The link is freedom and the way we celebrate it and the way we define it.

July 4 is all about freedom: fireworks, flags, parades, food, certain songs played by military bands. It’s a blend of history and politics. It’s about patriotism and pride. We remember and celebrate the birth of our democracy. We celebrate the kind of freedom that tells us we can do anything we dream about doing. We revel in our identity as the land of opportunity.

Luke 4 is also about freedom – but freedom of a very different kind. This chapter shows us a Jesus kind of freedom. It opens with the wilderness temptations. As Luke tells it Jesus was tempted for 40 days. Mark makes it sound like 40 days of prayer and fasting with the temptations coming at the end of that period. Either way, Jesus is free. Hungry, but free not to eat. Wanting to make an impact, but free not to dazzle people. He is free to say no.

The chapter also says alot about the way people responded to Jesus – the way crowds gathered around him. His freedom is seen in his indifference to them. That’s not to say he didn’t care about people or love people. It is clear that he does – but he doesn’t need their approval or applause or admiration. The center of the chapter tells about Jesus’ inaugural sermon. He took Isaiah 61 as his text and after the reading jumped immediately to his application: today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. This didn’t go over so well. At first there had been a sense of hometown-boy-made-good. But the more Jesus talked, the less delight his neighbors felt in his first sermon. By the time Jesus wraps it up, they’re furious with him.

His freedom is an odd mix of love for people and indifference to them. His freedom shows me that I’m not as free as I’d like to be. Jesus heals many, but he never plays to the crowd. Many are amazed at his teaching. Many are offended at his teaching. It doesn’t matter. He’s free of the need to be spoken well of. He’s free of the fear of not being highly esteemed.

Jesus freedom means not living or acting in order to determine what others think or evoke a favorable response. It means not living or acting in order to avoid a negative response. Jesus freedom is found in a clear sense of identity and calling. That’s why the admiring crowd in Capernaum couldn’t hold Jesus for very long. “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent” (Luke 4:43).

I’d like to be free – not just free to attend any church and to cast a vote and go to school and start a business and wave a protest sign and write my congressman. I’m grateful for those things, and too often guilty of taking them for granted. But I’d like to be free with a Jesus kind of freedom. Free to give myself heart and soul to what God is doing, what God is calling me to do. Free to do so without practicing impression management.

This is the truest meaning of religious freedom.

Worthy of Imitation: Simeon

Moved by the Spirit, he went into the temple courts (Luke 2:27)

I can imagine that for a moment he thought about not going. Missing this one day wouldn’t really matter. The place was large and busy. No one would miss him. And besides, he was feeling how the years had settled on his bones like rust. The familiar ache associated with getting up every morning was much sharper on this day, stabbing his joints and pushing the blade a little deeper with every slow move he made. For a moment it seemed like this would be a day to stay at home and be still.

I imagine him alone in his house. His wife has been dead for years. He’s seen most of his friends leave this life, and he wonders from time to time why he hasn’t been allowed to join them, why he’s still here.

But those thoughts never linger for long. He knows why he’s here. And he knows why, once he’s been up and moving for a while, he’ll walk yet again to the temple for a time of prayer. The Holy Spirit has revealed to Simeon that he will not die until he sees the Lord’s Christ (Luke 2:26). This is what Simeon lives for. This is what gets him up every morning and braces him against the pain of old age.

This is why Simeon knows he will not stay home today.

I’m not exactly sure what it means to be a “spiritual” person, but there’s considerable interest in the question today. Within the pages of scripture Simeon stands out as someone worth paying attention to. We really don’t know much about Simeon. We don’t know anything about his family. We don’t even know if he’s old. What we do know is that he has been “waiting for the consolation of Israel.” How long has he been waiting? We don’t know that either, but to me the waiting implies a lengthy period of time.

There are some obvious reasons why Simeon should inform our understanding of spirituality: Luke’s text – the only text that tells us anything about Simeon – states plainly that Simeon was righteous and devout, and the Holy Spirit was upon him. This is about a close as scripture comes to saying “he was a spiritual person.”

But what strikes me is the balance that characterizes Simeon’s life before God. He is grounded, persistent, patient – but not dry or lifeless. The balance is captured in a brief phrase from Luke 2:27. “Moved by the Spirit, he went into the Temple courts.”

Simeon’s life embodies two aspects of spirituality that are too often separated: an alertness to God's Spirit in familiar set patterns of worship. Here is a man who is deeply rooted in the practice of his faith. It is hard to imagine that going to the temple was a novelty for Simeon. This man is “righteous” which means he has regard for the law of God. He knows it well and follows it carefully. Going to the temple is simply what he does. He’s done it countless times before. His life before God is shaped by the familiar patterns of temple worship.

But there is nothing rote or mechanical about this. The often walked route to the temple is a Spirit led trip. This man embraces the familiar patterns and practices of worship with expectancy, even with yearning. His heart is fully alive to God. He isn’t going through the motions, worshiping on autopilot. Any suggestion that genuine spirituality requires something spontaneous and new won’t find support in Simeon. He is rooted in the tradition, and sensitive to the Spirit’s leading.

On the day Luke tells us about, Simeon was (again) ready and expectant. He was poised to see what others missed. In the midst of his practiced routine of prayer, he was able to notice the young couple with their baby. Again, the imagination can’t help but kick in here. How many others were bustling around the temple courts that day? How many had hurried to make the hour of prayer. How many others, like Mary and Joseph, were there in obedience to the Law?

Simeon makes his way to the couple and extends his wrinkled hands, gently cradling the infant Jesus. And then he prays. He has seen the salvation of God. In his arms he holds the weight of a nations dreams and a lifetime of waiting. This child – a light for the Gentiles and the glory of Israel. The aim of Simeon’s life has been realized. He’s ready to die, to be dismissed.

I go to church every week, and I have for most of my life. I took a couple of years off in college, but sleeping in is fun for only so long. I started going back. In my life, going to church is simply something people do. I look at Simeon and I have some hope that maybe going back to church was Spirit led. Such a thought never occurred to me at the time. As I got older I knew I wanted to be involved in helping others make their way, or way back, to God. I became a pastor.

The challenge (and the fun!) today is helping people forge a Simeon-like spirituality. By this I mean a life before God that is deeply rooted and yet spiritually alert - holding to the shared practices of believers through the ages, and yet anticipating the work of God in fresh ways in our midst today. There are too many Christians who hold doggedly to the familiar practices of worship, but do so without the slightest expectation that God is doing anything in them or around them. And there are just as many who are convinced that God is at work, but to see it will require scrubbing away the barnacles of familiarity and tradition.

So for me Simeon is a model, a kind of hero: patient, prayerful, persistent. Making his way day after day to the temple, and yet expectant and alert to God - just as we manage to get up every Sunday and pile into the van and make our way to Peachtree Church, a place where God is working, where salvation is happening in the lives of people. I want to show up every week looking for it and expecting it. It’s easy to miss, but it’s there. Simeon teaches us to see it.

Worship: A Wild Thing

. . . let us be thankful, and so worship God with reverence and awe, for our “God is a consuming fire.” (Hebrews 12:28-29 NIV).

About eleven years ago I made my first (and so far only) trip to Alaska. I spent two weeks there, feeling small in the vastness of the place, marveling at sights massive and expansive, enjoying daylight that lasted past midnight and never went away entirely. In the middle of that trip my hosts took me to the mountains. The journey required the services of a bush pilot. No roads could get to where we were going. He landed on a grass runway not far from some small hunting sheds (the word “cabin” suggests something more substantial than what was there). He helped us unload our gear and supplies and said, “I’ll be back for you Wednesday.”

There we were. No electricity. No plumbing. No radio, TV or DVD players. No stores to run to. Nothing but wild. Our two day stay in the mountains would involve walking from one cluster of hunting sheds to another cluster, and then hiking back again. At one point during this trek I heard a distant howling. “What’s that,” I asked. “Wolves” I was told matter of factly.

I remember that trip now, and what strikes me about it isn’t what I saw or did there. What I recall above all of that is simply this: Never once was I bored. I could use any number of words to try and capture what that experience was like. I was awed, thrilled, at times scared, grateful, occasionally hungry, tired – but never bored.

Why is it that the most common criticism of church is the word “boring.” There are other criticisms to be sure, some more pointed and scathing than the accusation of dullness, but “boredom” seems to head the list of negative impressions associated with church in general and worship in particular. Boring worship. How did we ever get there?

A couple of weeks ago the California Supreme Court handed down a decision about the liability of amusement parks relative to roller-coasters and other rides. The technical legal question had to do with whether such rides are public carriers, or something like that. I don’t know the details of what the court was trying to decide. However, what caught my attention was the commentary of a legal analyst on one of the cable news channels. He basically summarized the court’s opinion in simple terms. The minority of the court argued that when a person rides a roller-coaster they know there is an element of risk or danger involved and they willingly assume such risks by getting on the ride. In fact, the element of danger is part of the reason for getting on the ride to begin with.

But the majority disagreed. They said that amusement park patrons want the experience of danger the ride provides, but they want it with the assurance of safety.

I don’t know the legal implications of that opinion, but I think the majority was right. We want the exhilaration without the risk. We want an experience that won’t cost us too much. And what’s more, what the California Supreme court said about amusement park patrons might well be said about many who attend church worship services. There’s an appetite for spirituality that’s exhilarating or comforting, a Christianity that that buttresses our pursuit of the American dream and strengthens us as we accumulate comforts - and it does all of this without disturbing us.

But this is exactly what soon becomes boring. There’s nothing vast or expansive or the least bit threatening about this kind of spirituality. The reason I was never bored in the mountains of Alaska was because I knew that the place could kill me. Being in the middle of the Alaskan mountain range is very different from standing at a distance and taking pictures. Taking pictures of mountains is what tourists do. Hiking those mountains within earshot of wolves pushes one beyond mere observation. The sights are still beautiful, but something is at stake.

The Hebrew prophets couldn’t tolerate religious tourism, worship with the illusion of safety. To draw near to God was to be immersed in something entirely overwhelming, threatening, awesome. The prophet Malachi gave assurances that God would one day come to his temple, but he added a caution. “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap” (Malachi 3:2). Jeremiah stood in the temple gates and confronted those who came with empty words, repeating over and over in some kind of mantra, “this is the temple of the Lord, this is the temple of the Lord” (Jeremiah 7:4). They came with words, living any way they wanted, thinking that the mantra would make them safe. Isaiah’s temple vision showed him the truth about himself and left him fearing for his life (Isaiah 6:5).

There’s no way worship should ever be boring. And worship that tries to deliver a spiritual experience at little or no cost will inevitably become boring. To enter the sanctuary is to watch the pilot leave you in the wild. This memory of Alaska gives me a new way of looking at what it means to lead people in worship. It’s taking them to vast country of God and God’s ways, both merciful and terrible, and leaving them there to deal with what they find or what finds them. You can make it out alive, but not unchanged.

The Beach, Billy Graham, and the Check-Out Line at Kroger

"You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake" (1 Thess. 1:5b).

For me, being at the beach is a balancing act - a negotiation between time spent with children in the ocean or the pool and time by the ocean or the pool reading. Actually, there isn’t much balancing to be done. I read until my kids plead with me to “get in.” I know that pretty soon we’ll go to the beach and they won’t want me anywhere around, so they never have to plead too long. Once I’m “in” I throw them around until they (and I) have had enough, then back to my chair and my book until the next invitation.

For the past five days we’ve been enjoying the Atlantic coast near Charleston, S.C., and when I’ve been able to sit in a chair on the beach or by the pool I’ve been making my way through Donald Miller’s Searching For God Knows What. So far Miller’s message boils down to this: Christianity is not a formula. You don’t become a Christian by following a formula, and you don’t live the Christian life by following a formula or doing certain Christian things. Miller says that we’ve tried to make Christianity formulaic and this presentation of the faith is simply no longer compelling. The formulas don’t make people want to become Christians. To say “believe these things in this order” and then instruct people to “behave this way and do these things” just doesn’t get it. Miller still has a firm grasp on the doctrines we believe and the kind of life we are called to live, but he insists on a relational context for all these things. The neglected relational dynamic of Christianity needs to be recovered. That’s what I understand this book to be about.

He’s not had to work too hard to convince me. As a seminary student I was required to take a course in personal evangelism. The course rightly required students to actually go out and share their faith with another person and then report on the encounter. The church I attended at the time had a Sunday afternoon evangelism ministry whereby people were trained to share the gospel and then sent out along Hemphill Ave. in Fort Worth to do just that. I signed up and for several weeks walked up and down Hemphill Ave. trying to initiate conversations that would eventually allow me to “witness.”

What I noticed on these Sunday afternoons was that directly across the street from the church was a park where large crowds of people – mostly Hispanic – gathered every week to play soccer. Oddly, none of us who had been trained to “witness” ever went over to the park to play soccer. Sure, there might have been a language barrier. But the larger barrier was a relational chasm. We shared the faith by laying out a formula, an explanation of ideas. We didn’t share the faith by playing soccer. Miller is trying to tell us to do less explaining and play more soccer.

With these ideas in my head we left Charleston yesterday and made the five hour drive home. On the way back my wife and I listened to a radio talk show from Flushing Meadows, New York - the site this weekend of what may well be Billy Graham’s last crusade here in the U.S. Billy Graham is 86 years old and still preaching. With the Milleresque take on the Christian faith fresh on my mind I listened to the talk show host interview Franklin Graham about his father’s ministry. It occurred to me that when Billy Graham preaches, the heart of his message seems to be what Miller calls a “formula.” He often describes life apart from Christ, then moves to what life can be like with Christ, then tells people how to move from one condition to the other, which is to say from “life without” to “life with.” Tens of millions of people have heard him preach and no doubt thousands have had their lives impacted by his message.

And yet now, when interviewers talk to him or talk about him, what seems to captivate them is the man’s life. Not a formula. A life.

Fast forward a few hours. We’ve made it home, I’ve unloaded the van, and it seems we need milk. One thing you’re sure to need after being away for a week of vacation is fresh milk. So off I go to make a Kroger run. I quickly get milk and a couple of other impulse items and get to a check-out line behind someone else who had only come in for a few items. Pleased with my luck at finding a fast moving check-out line, I place my items on the conveyor belt, barely noticing the lady who has gotten in line behind me. I pay my $13.00 and change, take my receipt from the cashier, and just as I’m about to bolt for the car I hear, “God bless you sir.” I turn and the lady behind me hands me a tract – bold red with white and black lettering. The front of the tract reads “Is Jesus Christ your Savior?” I say “thanks” and head for the car.

No conversation with her. No real connection. Her style was more hit-and-run. Only I was the one on the run. I don’t doubt that this is well intended by her. She may know that people don’t like to talk to strangers about religion. So she just does the quick hit with a tract and lets it go at that. She thinks of it as planting a seed. Again, freshly Miller-minded about such things I thought of the “formula.” The tract told me what I need to believe for Jesus to be my savior and for me to go to heaven. As far as I can tell from a hurried glance, every word of it looks true. But this truth came to me void of the relational context Miller writes about.

After a few days at the beach, the drive home listening to the radio talk show, and the run to Kroger, I’m aware again of how critical it is that doctrine be lived. Doctrinal truth shows itself in a life. The absence of a life doesn’t render the doctrine untrue – but it does seem to render it weak, even boring.

Billy Graham is effective with his formula because of his life. A piece of folded paper is less effective because a life is absent. The paper is no less true. By the Spirit, it can change a life – but the Spirit most often seems to work through other lives.

In Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians he says to them, “you know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake.” This statement comes right on the heels of his summary of how the gospel message came to them – not only in word but in the power of the spirit and with full conviction. Their message was backed up by their life.

Tomorrow is Sunday. I’m back at church, doing things pastors do: Teaching the bible, helping lead worship. But this isn’t a day for me to “go back to work.” I want to get back at it tomorrow simply living a life. That’s fairly obvious and quite simple – but not always easy.

With some help from Donald Miller, I’m trying to come back from vacation but not go back to a “job.”

"My Whole Life Has Been a Waste"

Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for sake of the gospel will save it (Mark 8:35 TNIV).

I’ll confess, I’ve pretty much written him off.

Say the name “Mike Tyson” and the words and images that come to my mind are void of grace. I say it to my shame, but it’s the truth. Rapist, convict, wife beater, ear biter, animal -that about sums it up. Still, I was troubled when I saw the front page of the June 3-5 issue of USA Today. An article on Tyson ran under this headline: “My Whole Life Has Been a Waste.” Those are Tyson’s own words. He continues:

“I’ll never be happy. I believe I’ll die alone. I would want it that way. I’ve been a loner all my life with my secrets and my pain. I’m really lost but I’m trying to find myself. I’m really a sad, pathetic case.”

I’ve got alot to learn about showing grace and loving like Jesus loved – but I know this much with certainty: no one should ever have to feel that way about their life, at least not in a conclusive, final way. Sure, there are days, seasons and circumstances when anyone could say the same thing – but Tyson’s words should never stand as the final verdict.

Tyson’s words raise a question: what is a “wasted life?” Further, what's the connection between a “wasted life” and a poorly lived life? Does "wasted" require disastrous mistakes or choices? As heart-wrenching as Tyson’s assessment of his life is, there is something yet more tragic. Far too many people are wasting their lives and don’t know it. They’ve not left a trail of wreckage behind them that screams “wasted life.” In fact, to most observers their lives look enviable. Good jobs, nice homes, good looking family, ski trips in winter and beach trips in summer. That’s the life.

But even a life that’s comfortable and attractive can be wasted. And it is wasted because it is spent entirely in the pursuit of something that isn’t worthy of the gift that life is. We’ve all got one life, one shot. What will we do? How will we live it? How will we invest our energies? To whom and to what will we give our best self?

Jesus told a story to make this very point. A certain man was quite savvy and lucky in the conduct of his farming business. His acreage yielded a rich harvest and he found himself with more crops than he could handle. His plan was good business, but not-so-good living. “I’ll expand the business. I’ll build larger barns. I’ll store the surplus and then take early retirement.” That was the business strategy. As for his life, the plan was simple: take life easy, eat, drink and be merry (Luke 12:16-21).

God called this man a fool. He was a fool because on day one of the “be merry” plan he was required to give an accounting of his life. The story says it happened that very night, suggesting to my imagination a sudden and quiet death in his sleep. In an instant his soul was required of him. All he could show was stored crops – and who would get that now?

In his book, Don’t Waste Your Life, John Piper tells of two elderly missionaries, both single women, who were killed overseas in an auto collision. Piper asks, “was that a tragedy?” His answer: no, that was not a tragedy. He then shares a story from Reader’s Digest about a couple who has taken early retirement in Florida. They spend their days boating, playing softball, and collecting sea shells. This, says Piper, is a tragedy. To spend the closing years of your one life collecting shells and playing softball is a tragedy. I don’t take this as a wholesale condemnation of recreation or retirement – but the point is well taken. We’ve got one shot. What will we do? What is worthy of the gift?

Again, the words of Jesus: “Whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it” (Mark 8:35). To waste life is to spend our days and our best energy grasping at the good life as our culture defines it, or as we define it in terms of our own cravings and dreams. To yield life, to give it up as a kind of sacrifice for God to use – this is what it means to live and live well.

Interestingly, Mike Tyson has also spoken words that echo this good news, this gospel. Following his recent loss in the ring, Tyson was quoted as saying, “when I was younger, I felt life was about acquiring things. But as I get older, I know life is totally about losing everything.”

Tyson may be closer to redemption than any of us think. Much closer than others whose lives appear to be so much more “together.” Wasted life? Perhaps not. The verdict is still out.

(Suggested summer reading: John Piper, Don't Waste Your Life, Crossway Books, 2003)

A Prophet and a Shower Door

“These people say, ‘the time has not yet come to rebuild the Lord’s house.’” (Haggai 1:2)

Last Saturday I felt like Ty Pennington, host of “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” I felt handy, like a real pro, like a guy who knows how to fix things. The occasion for my new-found confidence with the tool box was the successful repair of a sliding glass door on my bathtub – a job that took less than 30 minutes and cost less than $5.00. Nothing was made over, and nothing about this project was extreme. But the door was repaired and I had a hand in repairing it. Honestly, that the job required so little is the source of some embarrassment for me. Here’s why.

The door had been broken for months. Many months. Not enough months to qualify as a year – but enough months to get uncomfortably close. The sliding door that acts as a “shower curtain” on our tub lost a small wheel. This wheel allows the door to move smoothly and easily along a metal track. Without the wheel, the door is stuck. Luckily, the other half of the sliding glass door still moved easily, allowing us to step in and out of the shower without trouble.

“I’ll need to fix that,” I mused. My declaration was notably noncommittal.

“That wheel on the shower door needs to be fixed,” my wife patiently observed (as the weeks passed). “Yes, you’re right,” I agreed.

But every day half of the door worked just fine, and the fact that the other half of the door was broken bothered me less and less – until after some weeks or months I hardly noticed it at all. Next thing you know it’s early June, and finally we had an open Saturday. My wife drew up a project list for the day, and the sliding glass door on the tub topped the list.

Around the year 520 B.C. God raised up a prophet in Jerusalem. His message was simple. The people there had come home after decades in exile. They had been given permission to rebuild the temple, but after roughly 15 years of being back in their hometown, the temple was not rebuilt. Some years earlier a start had been made, but the job was abandoned for a variety of reasons.

Maybe at first this troubled the residents of Jerusalem – they could see the foundations and knew the job needed to be finished. But years passed. The temple remained in ruins. The people were busy scratching out a living, trying to grow food, trying to survive. After a while the ravaged temple site became part of the Jerusalem landscape.

So God gave a message to Haggai. “The time is now. You’ve tended to your own homes. You’ve invested energy in making yourselves comfortable here. It’s time to get things in order and put first things first; time to build the Temple.”

For many people who claim a relationship with God, the most formidable challenges in the life of faith are not the big issues like “doubting the existence of God” or “renouncing the faith” or “rejecting the church.” These faith crises are certainly real – but far more often faithful people simply confuse life’s priorities. Belief in God is maintained, church attendance and other religious practices continue, but other things take the place of our highest affections and our best energies. The problem isn’t disordered thinking as much as disordered living.

For some, though they hold sound beliefs, their walk with God is in disrepair, perhaps a state of ruin. But we have a remarkable capacity for tolerating this kind of thing. It doesn’t take long for prayerlessness to feel “normal.” Hang around a church long enough and you’ll see what enormous effort it takes for people to establish a habit of weekly worship, and how easily the same habit can be abandoned.

We need to hear the words of this prophet. Direct, blunt, in your face truth about our capacity for neglecting what is central to life. Haggai’s answer to the apathy of the people isn’t complicated – go gather wood and supplies and do the work. We tell ourselves the same lie that the people of Jerusalem bought into: that there will be a better time. But there won’t be a better time than right now. Don’t wait for things to slow down at work. Don’t wait for the kids to get a little older. Don’t wait. The time is now.

Thirty minutes and five dollars fixed my shower door. What might God do with our modest efforts to put first things first?

The Incredibles (wrap up)

For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands (2 Timothy 1:7).

. . . train yourself to be godly (1 Timothy 4:7).

When I was in seminary a pastor whom I very much admired tanked his ministry. Paul uses the term “shipwrecked.” I don’t know what happened – but he resigned his church, left his wife, and began selling funeral plans door to door.

My guess is that somehow, very gradually, he had started living Bob Parr’s life. He was getting by, moving from day to day cramped into a tiny little vehicle. The make and model of these suffocating boxes may vary widely. For this gifted preacher, the make and model that folded him up was called “pastor.” That, to me, is particularly sad.

I wonder if there was another way. Is it possible that this man could have salvaged something of his vocation and his family? Tragically, when we feel ourselves cramped and depleted by the lives we live, we often reason (or rationalize) our way to some wrong conclusions. We’re tempted to conclude that, in order to live with “power” and become our truest self, we must throw off every vestige of the confining life we’ve been living. But this isn’t the power or love or self discipline Paul spoke of to Timothy. Seeking this kind of power ironically leaves destruction in its trail – ruined careers, fractured families, disillusioned friends, scarred congregations.

My quest for gospel in The Incredibles begins to break down at this point. Bob Parr finally throws his irritating little boss through five or six walls. This necessitates a new career path of some kind, superhero or no. But the kind of abundance I’m interested in as a follower of Jesus isn’t obtained by stealing abundance from someone else. I return to the closing questions of my last post: what does it mean for us to live with power? How do we become the people God intends for us to be in the lives he’s given us right now? How do you live with power in the job your have today, among co-workers you’ll see again tomorrow, with family members who will be there when you wake up in the morning?

Holding Pixar’s brilliant movie up to the light of scripture, I find these answers.

First, we’ve got to know that there is an enemy and the stakes are high. Bob Parr did not re-discover his identity as Mr. Incredible simply because he was bored. There enters into the story a threat of horrible destruction, a spirit of malice, a figure who craves power but gives no thought to how it is used. This nemesis calls forth a person, a family, capable of putting up a fight. In the life of faith this is commonly called spiritual warfare. Too many Christians don’t take this seriously. It hasn’t occurred to them that there is an enemy actively seeking the destruction of their faith (1 Peter 5:8). What power they have lies dormant – a “super-suit” tucked away in the back of the closet.

Second, there is a need for rigorous training. One of the most amusing scenes in The Incredibles is the moment when Bob tries to fit into his super-suit after years of living a normal average guy life. He looks awful – flabby, bulging. Not the buff figure he once was. It isn’t enough to pull the suit out of the closet and put it on. We’ve got to be able to wear it well. And this requires training. Bob goes to work. Motivated by a need and a challenge, he lifts boxcars to get back in shape. Dallas Willard is dead-on when he says that living like Jesus isn’t something we simply choose to do in a moment of crisis. It’s something we are because of an overall way of life we’ve adopted. Athletes call this way of life “training.” Christians train by shaping life around the classic disciplines: prayer, worship, study, giving, etc. There is no power apart from training.

Third, we need to identify our particular gift, our God-given “power,” and put it to regular use. The Parr daughter, Violet, in her first battle experience, cannot generate an adequate force field to protect her family. After more engagement with the enemy, that changes. She becomes confident in her ability. Paul reminded Timothy to “fan into flame” the gift that had been imparted through the laying on of hands.

This leads to the fourth element of a powerful life of faith: a family. Mr. Incredible could not have prevailed against his enemy (“Syndrome”) alone. His particular gift – sheer physical strength – wasn’t enough. He needed every member of his family, including the youngest and seemingly weakest. They each had a gift that they brought to the fight. God gives us a gift and calls us to use it with in the context of a family, a community of faith. With every member using their God-given power, the gates of hell cannot prevail against God’s purpose and his ultimate victory in the world.

Finally, this power in which we are invited to live as followers of Jesus is really not our own. The fight isn’t ours either. The battle is the Lord’s, and somehow he sees fit to use us. He works through us in our weaknesses. In fact, when we are weak, he is strong. We know power as we decrease and allow him to increase. We don’t get to be the heroes. But we do get to participate in what God is doing.

And this is truly incredible.

The Incredibles

“For God did not give us a spirit of timidity, but of power, of love, and of self-discipline.” (2 Timothy 1:7 NIV)

It’s been a wet week in Atlanta. Almost every day I drive by the neighborhood pool and tennis courts. Even when the pool has been open this week, the lifeguard has been a solitary figure – getting paid to listen to the radio. The cloudy skies and uncommonly cool air have not motivated folks to seek out water.

Sadly, this wet week included Monday – the Memorial Day holiday, and the first Monday of “no school” for my kids. At mid-morning their capacity for creative play hit a lull. I’m not proud to admit it, but I did what many please-let-me-rest parents do. I put in a movie. But it wasn’t just for my kids. I love this movie. This movie looks like it was made for the kiddies, but it wasn’t. Sure, kids love it, but grown ups have good reason to love it too. I’m talking about The Incredibles.

The Incredibles is about a family of super heroes living in a kind of exile. Public opinion has taken a peculiar turn, and “supers” are no longer esteemed and loved. Their exploits on behalf of the common good are no longer regarded as honorable. They are considered to be a nuisance, a threat to the public welfare. “Supers” are forced to go underground, to assume “normal” lives and conceal their powers.

Among these many exiled “supers” is a family of five, the Parr family. We don’t learn until late in the movie of the baby’s special gift or power, but the rest of the family can’t contain themselves, try as they might. Bob Parr (Mr. Incredible) is a hulking man of enormous physical strength. His wife Helen (Elastigirl) can stretch and contort to almost any shape. Their daughter Violet makes herself invisible and radiates force fields at will. The middle child is Dash who, true to his name, moves with lightning speed.

I don’t want to spiritualize The Incredibles by finding some “hidden” meaning where none exists. Still, while there may be no theology to speak of in the movie, there is gospel – good news. And the good news in this movie is about power and identity; themes shared in common with our scriptures and with our faith. The Parrs are a family trying hard to conceal who they are. They possess power that they won’t use. But as long as they are living this way, their lives are constricted and flat. It isn't until the Parrs begin using their powers in a large and worthy cause that they become their truest selves.

The picture that is lodged in my mind is the image of Bob Parr – Mr. Incredible – driving home from work. His massive frame is shoved into a tiny little car, his body wrapped around the steering wheel. That image of Bob Parr bulging in the confines of his little car has come to reflect for me the way many of us live our life in Christ. We don’t live with a sense of power. There are moments, even if fleeting, when we sense that the life we’re living isn’t the abundant life Jesus came to give us. Our lives seem constricted, ordinary and routine. We too move about shoved into tiny boxes of day to day just-getting-by patterns of life.

Bob Parr, hiding in his cubicle and his little car, was a frustrated, disengaged, bored man. The good news, the gospel, comes to him as an invitation to once again be Mr. Incredible. The outfit he used to wear has been hidden away, hung like an artifact in a museum. But a moment comes when he clothes himself in the outfit of a “super.” He is re-born.

Paul reminded his protégé Timothy that God has not given us a spirit of fear or timidity, “but of power, of love and of self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7 ). His words sound like a call or challenge to Timothy to embrace who God had called him to be, an invitation to his true self.

What would it mean for us live with power, love and self-discipline? What would it mean for us to open the closet where our truest self had been safely tucked away, and become the people God has called us to be?