When Love is Weaponized

I have been evicted from my home office.

Now, it’s for a very good reason – my wife and I will welcome our second baby girl into the world in November.  We have three bedrooms upstairs in our house and then a lot of space downstairs in the basement.  Yours truly has the honor of taking up new residence in the basement so beautiful girl #3 in our house can have a room with the rest of the family.

In this process, I was cleaning out closets, and I came across a shotgun that my father-in-law had passed down to me that came from his father-in-law.  It’s a Remington 1100, a pretty little semi-auto that fires 12 gage shells.  I own a couple of firearms that I use entirely for sport (I’m not a hunter) and maintain as the illusion that I am prepared to defend my home, like I’m Jason Bourne or something. Spoiler alert: I’m not.  Also, I live in rural Kansas.  One of the things you do for fun in rural Kansas is shoot guns.

Anyway, I wanted to move the weapon to a new storage space and realized it was loaded.  Normally I don’t leave my shotgun loaded – I fire whatever ammunition I have loaded at the range.  I’m not a firearm expert nor am I a gun aficionado, so I had to call a friend of mine who is far more knowledgable than me to walk me through the steps of safely unloading a semi-auto shotgun.  It was easy and I was careful and safe, but something occurred to me in the process:

The trigger of a gun is dangerously intuitive.

There are, generally accepted, four basic rules of firearm safety.  One of them goes like this: “keep your finger outside the trigger guard until you are ready to shoot.”  I’ve seen it written in different ways.  “Keep your finger off the trigger unless you’re ready to fire at your target.”  “Aim first, be sure you want to shoot your target, then put your finger on the trigger.”  It seems so fundamental one might think, why is this even a rule in the first place?

It’s because the trigger of a gun is seductive.  Children learn to “play with guns” at an early age – we have water gun fights, cowboys, soldiers, and cops are popular childhood heroes.  Video games are full of gun-toting heroes and villains, and even cartoons have cartoony-laser guns of various sorts.  I’m not commenting here on the sociology of gun play or violence in America.  My point is that, with a gun in our hands, we are practically wired to pull the trigger.  Don’t believe me? Pick one up and hold it for a minute and see where your finger goes.  Sadly, it takes absolutely no skill to pull a trigger.  All it takes is enough muscle.

If you’ll grant me the analogy here, I think that we have become a trigger happy culture.  Let’s depart from actual triggers and firearms and talk about our interactions with other people; more particularly, I’m speaking about our conduct with others online.  We are confronted continually and consistently and perpetually with viewpoints and opinions that are contrary to our own through social media.  It’s inescapable, unless you don’t use social media.  If you don’t use social media, God bless you – I really mean that.

Yet with an overwhelming influx of connectivity has come an alarming increase of hostility.  It would seem that this principle is operating in reverse.  Shouldn’t more connectivity mean more understanding?  Shouldn’t quicker connection equate to faster developing intimacy?  This has not proven to be true.

Enter: the trigger pull.

It is much easier to pull the trigger on someone than it is to seek to understand.  It is much easier to counter an opposing view by taking your finger off the trigger guard and squeezing a few shots off in the direction of another than to lower our weapons and talk it out.  It is much easier to destroy than to heal.

The greatest travesty of all trigger pullers is the one who claims to do it “in the name of love.”

Rarely is a so-called love-forged bullet fired at someone else received in love.  Bullets never heal – even non lethal bullets can gravely wound.  Intentions don’t matter when they’ve been weaponized; they only cause collateral damage and leave pain and suffering in their wake.  Damaging news (and non-news) links, misapplied and skewed facts, scathing memes, sarcastic emojis and post “likes” and reactions…when loaded into the chamber of a gun called TRUTH and fired “in love” only take life, not give it.  It takes a relationship to correct and rebuke, and it takes great care when we do it.

Jesus teaches that we should love our neighbor.  It’s easy to throw that verse out and leave the definition of neighbor hanging.  Jesus doesn’t.  In Luke 10 he tells one of his most famous parables about the “good Samaritan.”  It’s important to recognize that Jesus gives this parable in response to the question, “and…who is my neighbor?” coming from a guy who wants to “justify himself.”  You can read: “defend his position” or “prove that he is right” or “settle a debate” or “win an argument.”

To catch you up, a good guy gets beat up by bad guys on the side of a busy road.  A bunch of religious people ignore this guy – they’ve got better things to do or seemingly good reasons not to intervene.  A Samaritan though, gets to be the hero of the story – and this was absolutely shocking to the hearers in Jesus’ time.  Samaritans were dirty, half-breed idolaters who were seen as inferior.

Then Jesus pulls one of those ultimate teacher moves.  He forces the guy to say it – to admit it – that the one who was the neighbor, that did right by the guy, was the guy everyone didn’t want to like in the story.  Not only was he the hero, but then Jesus commands, “Go and do likewise.”  Wait – what?  Did Jesus just say do the same thing our “enemy” would do in this story?

Two final (and quick) observations here.  First: which group of people is your Samaria?  Is it liberals?  Republicans?  The LGBTQ agenda? Evangelicals?  Is it the atheists?  Fundamentalists?  Which group of people just stink when you catch a whiff?  Which group of people make your stomach turn with how backwards they have it (according to you)?  Can you imagine a world in which they could get something right?

Second: are you trying to help those who are beat up by the side of the road by firing bullets from the gun of TRUTH into them, hoping they will get it right and pick themselves up? Or are you extending a hand of grace to them?  Are you stopping by to care for your neighbor, to nurse them back to health in relationship, and to show them a glimpse of the depth of God’s love for them?  Are you looking for the image of God in every individual and sharing God’s love with them?  Are you defined by your love?

You can’t weaponize love.  I hope, church, we quit trying.

Being’s Source ‘Begins to Be’

A short reflection during Advent.

Emptied of his majesty,
Of his dazzling glories shorn,
Being’s source begins to be,
And God himself is born!

– Charles Wesley, Hymns for the Nativity of Our Lord, Hymn IV

This phrase floored me this morning.  Thank God for poetry and hymns and the foolishness of poets and hymn writers (and theologians and preachers, too).

How can the source of being begin to be?  Aristotle argued the beginning of all things to have an ‘unmoved mover,’ a source who was not acted upon, someone who was “the alpha…the beginning.”  Maybe this someone could or couldn’t be known, according to Aristotle.

Charles Wesley – and the whole orthodoxy of Christian faith – would beg to differ on the knowing part.

How can the source of being begin to be?  Beats me.  The Incarnation is a beautiful mystery.  Embracing it seems to be the only option for a person of true faith.  Mary Syzbist puts it this way in one poem for her collection Incarnadine:

But you can’t have two worlds in your hands and choose emptiness.

It’s times like these where I feel like it’s easier to relate to Mary, who “treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart.”  I don’t think she could explain them either.  But she held two worlds in her hands.  She stared them both down and picked faith.  Picked truth.  Picked love.

She picked the source of being.  God, grant me the faith to do the same, every single day.

5 Ways To Appreciate Your Pastor in October

October is “Pastor Appreciation Month.”  If I’m being honest, I really struggle to appreciate Pastor Appreciation Month.  There are a number of reasons for this.  For one thing, it feels pretentious for those of us in ministry to get a whole month dedicated to what we do!  Some professions get a week, or a day, or the local church gives them a Sunday – but it is very rare to score a whole month.  It feels like we ministers have cornered the market on “yay, thank me!” in a calendar year.  I feel like this is the kinda thing Saul would’ve pulled for.

Another thing that I struggle with is the propensity for an awkward tension to set into a congregation.  The pastor wonders, “How much do these people actually love me or not?” based upon gifts given or not given.  The church, meanwhile, by-and-large has no idea that Pastor Appreciation Month even exists.  Those that do might wonder, “Why do I have to give my pastor a gift – they don’t give me a gift for doing my job!”

Having aired out my own stinky laundry on this, let me bring a question into view:  Could we approach Pastor Appreciation Month in a whole new way that doesn’t aim to hit our wallets?  I think we can and, in fact, I think there are several vital ways that churches can show their pastor just how much his or her ministry makes a difference.  I submit to you 5 ways to appreciate your pastor in October.

1. Forgive your pastor.

In my twelve years of ministry, I have done and said a lot of stupid stuff.  Here’s the kicker: I have no idea how 95% of that has hurt anyone.  Why?  Because for some reason, people are either too intimidated by their pastors to be honest with them about a hurt, or too uninterested or uncommitted to their church to bring it up.  It gets swept under the rug because their pastor might get mad or make excuses or try to defend the behavior*.  Or it’s too much of a bother to resolve, so let’s just head on down the way to the next church – there’re plenty of options.

I don’t know any pastor worth their salt that isn’t interested in mending relationships.  It’s biblical and most pastors are pretty into the bible.  If you are carrying hurt from a leadership decision or a pastoral blunder, forgive your pastor!  (Side note: this is biblical too!)  You cannot imagine the impact forgiving your pastor has on them – it is life-giving and freeing and will end up being one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself in the process.  Just don’t forget to tell them about it so that they know.

2. Compliment & encourage your pastor.

One of the things pastors don’t learn in seminary or ministry training is the incredible amount of negativity that gets flung onto ministry leaders.  There’s always something wrong with the building.  One volunteer or this leader is always causing a problem (sometimes it’s the pastor, see above).  Especially in solo pastorates, there are a million and one things that need to get done and many of them are left undone, buried in other priorities.  Often, ministry ends up feeling like the pastor is constantly getting torn down for all of the problems – which is not (individually) each person’s intention who brings them a concern.

Pastors don’t often hear what they are doing well.  Can we all agree that it’s ok to dislike the way some things are going or to have a concern and yet be able to say, “but boy, my pastor rocks at ____________”?  The thing is, “good sermon, pastor” only goes so far.  Tell her how the sermon spoke to you.  Assure him that his visit or phone call meant something.  Engage her when she teaches a class, talk about what was insightful about it and how she brought it to life.  Explain how his prayers inspire or motivate you.  That’s the kind of encouragement that sticks and lifts your pastor up.

3. Invest in your pastor’s spouse.

The world of ministry has changed from the way it was 40, 50, or 60 years ago.  Households of two college-educated parents with two student debt loads are common and necessitate two-incomes to survive.  That means that the old stereotypes of the pastor’s spouse may not hold water.  Don’t expect your pastor’s spouse to be at every single thing the church has on the calendar – he or she may also be tending to children or working at their job.  This doesn’t mean they are a bad pastoral spouse; it means there are other responsibilities they fulfill that likely allow your pastor to do what they do as freely as possible.

Instead of critiquing a pastor’s spouse, one way to show appreciation is to build their spouse up.  Numbers 1 & 2 apply here – forgive and encourage, without a doubt. A nice note to show appreciation or sharing a specific story about how the spouse’s faith has impacted you can make a big difference.  Check in with them.  Ask questions of the pastor’s spouse that don’t relate to the ministry – he or she lives it, day in and day out, as they watch their pastoral spouse rejoice and suffer, praise and lament the hardships of ministry.  Pastoral spouses especially feel the effects of the “glass house,” where everything is seen and judged.  Be a safe space where they can let their guard down and be honest and open and vulnerable.  Ministry can be lonely.

4. Send your pastor on a date with their spouse.

Sometimes, your pastor and his spouse are “move-ins” to your community.  They don’t have any family or longstanding friends they can rely on for free or cheap babysitting.  There are times when it can feel like ages between dates for a pastor and their spouse.  Ministry is moving too fast.  The demands of the spouse’s career are pushing too hard.  Though the state of the pastor’s marriage is not your responsibility, it can be a wonderful ministry to offer him or her a guilt-free date night with their spouse.  You don’t even need to provide the cost of dinner – the childcare is the biggest stressor.

The only cost is your time and energy, and you might fall in love with their children a little bit more as a result.  What a blessing to having loving, goldy church goers hanging out with my children!  Suzanne and I have been given this gift here and there in our ministry and it has made all the difference in seasons of our marriage.  It gives us a chance to step away from living in a parsonage connected to the church and the demands of our daughter and have some space to breathe and dream.  Marriage is the deepest most intimate relational well a pastor draws from outside of Jesus.  Feeding that is like watering the deep roots of the pastor’s spirit.

5. Gift a gift that shows interest in who your pastor is.

Pastor appreciation gifts don’t need to cost a lot of money (or any if you’ve been following along).  The first four points have hopefully illustrated that you can appreciate your pastor in many ways that don’t involve physical gifts.  But if you do want to give your pastor a gift, give them something that will actually speak to them.  Some pastors would love another “sword of the Lord” letter opener.  Some pastors would proudly wear a purple Isaiah 40:31 tie with a majestic eagle on it.  Others like coffee and Batman movies and chocolate sheet cake (…cough, ahem).

Know your pastor and give them a gift that shows interest in who they are.  One side benefit of this is that it expresses care.  Being known is an important feeling; when people are known they know they can be loved.  Your pastor likely knows several things about you and asks after your interests.  Return the feeling and know what he or she likes. An inexpensive gesture in this regard can make a world of difference – trust me, he or she is not expecting any gifts, let alone something that costs a lot of money.

Thanks for loving us.

When it’s all said and done, I don’t really dislike Pastor Appreciation Month – I just dislike some of the baggage it carries.  If you encourage a pastor in your life in one of these ways I promise you you’ll be showing them an extra measure of love – and that love goes a long way in the dark valleys and pits of church leadership, when a pastor feels insecure or unworthy or rejected.  Thanks for loving us – it makes a difference.

 

*This obviously excludes cases of abuse of all stripes.  If you are being abused by a leader in ministry, never ever ever let forgiveness or some such spiritual fleecing be used to manipulate you into looking past abusive and harmful behavior, especially if it is systematic or shows a trend.  A true man or woman of God guilty of abuse (hopefully in a fleeting incident of sin and not a pattern) will fess up to it and own the consequences.

Hell – A Poem

HAPPY Magdelene, to whom

Christ the Lord vouchsaf’d t’appear!

Newly risen from the Tomb,

Would He first be seen by Her?

Her by seven Devils possest,

Till his Word the fiends expell’d;

Quench’d the Hell within her Breast,

All her Sins and Sickness heal’d.

– Charles Wesley, Hymn III, Hymns for our Lord’s Resurrection

 

In a time of solitude last week, I reflected on this stanza from Charles Wesley and wrote the following poem.  This is a reflection on what it feels like on my worst days when the “Hell within [my] Breast” gets the louder word.  There is hope buried in the poem, though.  Here it goes:

 

Hell is not a place

but a face.

Hell is not a he or she

hell is me.

Hell is in me.

 

Hell is the place my sick heart tabernacles

unaware of fiendish shackles

not self-imposed

but self-inflicted;

until evicted

by the One who fixed it.

 

Hell is the sick heart – at the start –

which fell apart

like fragile art

placed neatly into childish hands

who could not know the Artist’s plans

for, lack of listening to instruction

historically leads to mass destruction.

 

Hell is each thought, each word, each deed

which is performed out of the need, to

win and take and force my druthers

that always ends up costing others

and satisfies a deeper lust

to just…

become the God I must

have been made to be.

So –

worship me.

When “Good Guys” Break Bad

It’s easy to root for Robin Hood.  Afterall, who doesn’t love the story of someone taking wealth from those who have more than they need and redistributing it to those who have a desperate need?  Sure, we may not directly condone his methods but we like his mission.

It’s easy to root for young Vito Corleone from The Godfather Part II.  He sticks up for the neighborhood by taking it to the current regime of bullies who run the place.  He protects those who can’t protect themselves.  Nevermind that he becomes the self-same monster he first wrestles against in the process; it’s easy to overlook for all his noble rebellion.

It’s…less easy – or perhaps uncomfortable – to root for Bryan Cranston’s Walter White in AMC’s cult classic television series Breaking Bad.  If you haven’t seen the show (which debuted 10 years ago and finished in 2013) beware spoilers ahead.  White is a poor public educator at a high school who, when given a terminal cancer diagnosis, turns to the manufacture of illegal drugs (methamphetamine) in order to provide an inheritance for his family upon his death.  A noble cause.

There’s a saying about noble intentions and a certain road to hell that applies here.

From Walter to Heisenberg

In his journey of illegal activity aimed at a noble cause, White transforms into an alter-ego, a crime boss named Heisenberg.  White attempts to keep these personalities secret and separate.  For much of the show, he straddles the line between the two – the meek, family-first Walter White and the violent, cutthroat criminal bent on dominating the meth market.  As the story often goes, however, the two worlds of competing intentions within a person eventually collide and fallout ensues.

In White’s case, he embraces his “Heisenberg” persona.  There’s a pivotal scene in the series where White demands of another dangerous criminal: “Now…say my name.”  The criminal responds “Heisenberg,” to which White is pleased.  The line is no longer straddled: it’s been crossed.  The “good guy” Walter White has become the despicable “Heisenberg” in dramatic fashion.  The pretense is dropped.  The means are not simply justified by the ends – they are abandoned, cast aside, made irrelevant.

As I watched Breaking Bad over those years I found myself starting to root for Walter White.  He was a Robin Hood type – an unlikely hero to an unknowing family.  He was a noble Vito Corleone – challenging the system of terrible teacher pay, the underdog in a street fight where leaving a legacy and setting his family up for success were the stakes.

As he became Heisenberg, however, my perspective shifted.  I realized that I had been duped, cleverly, by good writers crafting a complicated story that was playing on several of my emotions at once.  How could I continue to root for the Walter White I had embraced, loved, cheered on, as he steadily became a monster of his own making?  The question shifted even further: which persona was the real one, Walter White or Heisenberg?  Had Heisenberg been lurking beneath the surface, wearing a Walter White mask all along, and I’d missed it?  Was I implicitly rooting for the bad guy in the first place?

Fessing Up

We are in a disturbed place in our nation right now.  For my generation, this is a time and place in our culture where ideological differences in politics and policy-making are ripping people apart.  People are confessing – along with Kevin Costner – that they no longer ‘recognize’ America.  There is severe mistrust on all sides of the partisan aisles of authorities that comes hot on the heels of multiple movements, an example of which are the revelations that the #MeToo movement has brought into the light.

As a nation, it feels as though the people we trusted to bring about the right kind of change – noble causes, causes that support more responsible freedom, plans that solve tough issues and provide solutions with a high moral bar – are desperately failing.  We handed over the keys to more than just policy and law-making: we handed over the keys to our hearts, to our consciences, to our dreams and collective vision of America.

We got duped.

In the latest crisis, we find out that in the name of safe borders and responsible immigration policies – which no one in their right mind would argue against – children are being separated from their families, the process of unifying families is muddy, and the conditions of which appear to be deplorable.  It’s hard as a normal citizen to sort out all of the facts in one supreme, objective column that denies partisan biases, so discernment is necessary here.  By posting these links I am neither condoning or promoting any particular news outlet or commentator.

Our Robin Hoods, or Vito Coreleones, our Walter Whites have gone to accomplish something we can support.  But in the process, they have become Heisenberg.  They have embraced means that can no longer reasonably justify any end.  They have crossed lines that we aren’t willing to walk across.  They’ve misused sacred texts and sought to justify the unjustifiable.

By “we” I am referring to the collective tribe that I belong to: conservative evangelicalism.  This is a dirty word, a tarnished label, a battered brand in our country today.  Some in our tribe cling to that as a frayed badge of honor and cry out “persecution!”  Others (with which I admit that I find my alignment) seek to use that term as little as possible given the baggage assigned it.

Some will say, “I told you so.”  Some will say, “You should’ve seen it coming.”  They’re right.  It’s hard to admit it, but they are.

3 Thoughts on Getting “Un-Duped”

In this already long blog post, I want to offer my opinion on 3 potential ways going forward that can lead us – healthily – out of the “head-stuck-in-sand” ostrich posture that has been taken and into fruitful conversation.  If you aren’t there yet – and you don’t believe that your Walter White politicians have turned into Heisenberg – then you might disagree.  That’s ok.  We’re in this together.  Oh…and check out the first thought, at least.

Quit equating disagreement with hatred.

This is the core problem with social media in a nutshell: if you don’t agree with me, you hate me.  If you didn’t “like” my post, you don’t like me as a person.  If you don’t embrace my opinion, you don’t embrace me.  If you don’t cheerfully support every thought I have, you ruefully reject me as a person.  This is flawed thinking.

Stop it.

It’s quite possible to love someone without agreeing with them.  It’s quite possible to like someone without “liking” their social media posts.  It’s quite possible to disagree with someone while embracing them and wishing for them to thrive.  It’s quite possible not to support a person’s personal line of thinking and still cheer them on.  One author calls this “covenant-keeping” between one another and argues that when this is outsourced to an institution (government or church, even) it becomes a systematic problem in the process of embracing each other as human beings (see Volf note below).  We’re called to love our neighbors, not to condone everything they think or do.

Critically examine your allegiances.

In an interesting book by Matthew Bates, the Greek word for faith, pistis, is reframed as “allegiance.”  I’m not sure I wholesale agree with Bates on everything, but his thesis is sound: simple intellectual assent is not sufficient as “saving faith” in Jesus; it takes pledging allegiance to God and his kingdom, and this is what is meant when we confess and believe in Jesus (see Bates note below).

Where do your ultimate allegiances lie?  When the people you align with twist biblical interpretation to maintain authority over the land they “possess” or make fun of references to children with disabilities in order to discredit another political agenda, you should be bothered.  If you’re not, you should be asking, “who have I truly pledged my allegiance to?”

“Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater,” they say.  I’m fine with that to a point.  The question here is not about whether or not our leaders have flaws and blind spots.  They do – I have faults and blind spots, you have faults and blind spots, we all do.  The question is, who is the “baby” in this example?  If you will, who are you “bathing” or, pledging your allegiance to? I’d much rather have the one baby in history – born of a virgin, to immigrant parents, in a manger because nobody with a room bothered to help a scandalous family in a deep time of need – in my “tub” than anyone or anything else.

Do something with your convictions.

There has been a ton of fire levied at people who say “thoughts and prayers are with” such-and-such.  In many ways, it’s a cynical criticism of people who don’t know or care about what praying means to a person who is faithful.  However, in another sense, it is a warning to the church and to believers of the world’s weariness with words not accompanied by action.  True prayer changes us, says Richard Foster, and it leads us into action (see note on Foster).

The world is tired of Christians telling them how things should be and then doing nothing.

Is your prayer life leading you to act on your convictions?  Great!  Here’s a list of 10 things you can actually do to help immigrant children who’ve been separated.  I haven’t vetted each of these personally, but they sound like a great start.  If you live in these areas, consider being present physically and praying and speaking with families.  Reach out and do something.  Prayer is the place to start, but it can’t be the only thing the church has to offer people who are suffering.

The Greatest of These is Love

I won’t suggest that the intersection of faith and politics in public life is easy.  It’s not.  However, I think there is a way forward, a via media or “middle way,” where the religious and nonreligious can walk hand-in-hand to make reasonable, moral progress in policy-making.  If the church can embrace some steps to being “un-duped,” and if she can place her loyalties where they belong, then maybe – just maybe – she can reject the Heisenberg syndrome of her worldly idols and pledge allegiance to her true Prince of Peace and Lord of Love, Jesus.

 

 

Notes

Miroslav Volf in Exclusion & Embrace, 1996, pp. 140 – 156.

Matthew Bates in Salvation by Allegiance Alone, 2017, pp. 24 – 25.

Richard Foster in Celebration of Discipline, 1998, p. 33.

What Are We Waiting For?

This is the second in a series of blogs for the 2017 Advent season.  Find the first reflection here.

It’s hard to ignore the glaring conflict between the American dream and the Kingdom of God.  Unlike love and marriage or a horse and carriage you can, in fact, have one of these and not the other.  Some would even warn that these two things are mutually exclusive, that they cannot be held side-by-side or co-valued in harmony.

The problem with the American dream is that it is subject to its own little-g god.  This god does have a name and that name is mammon.  Jesus is clear that it is impossible to be a slave “owned” by two competing masters and I think this is the case with the American Dream and the Kingdom of God.

Before we get any further and you think me anti-American, let me clarify something.  I’m infinitely grateful to have been born to the people I was born to in the country I was born in.  I had no control in the matter, which amplifies my gratitude in that I can’t somehow praise myself.  I’m thankful for the freedoms we enjoy in our nation.  I’m thankful that we have a history rooted in Christendom.  I’m thankful that our values and morals have ancestral roots in the Bible.

I am not thankful for the American dream.

The American dream is an ideal that was likely founded with good intentions, something of a morality play on this idea that anyone in a free nation can rise up by their own bootstraps and make a better life for themselves.  It has evolved, grown sharpened teeth and serrated claws.  It’s spit is venomous and disease-ridden and it’s eyes are hungry and dangerous and shifty.  It has enthroned mammon – “the way of commodity that is the way of endless desire, endless productivity, and endless restfulness without any Sabbath” – and dethroned God, the God of rest.

Traditionally, the second week of advent sees the lighting of the “Love” candle.  As we embrace this season as one of longing, of waiting, of expecting, we are confronted with the question: what is it that we love?  Do we cling to an earthly ideal that mirrors the coveted American dream that plagues our churches?  Do we await the payout of mammon which costs us everything and fails to eternally deliver on any of its promises?

Or do we await the coming King who will usher in the true Kingdom of the God of rest, the Lord of the Sabbath?  We are reminded with a easily-worded but deeply difficult exhortation that requires wrestling from 2 Peter 3:11-13:

“Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be?  You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming.  That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat.  But in keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, where righteousness dwells.”

The way of this world has already been judged by God, who – thanks to the nature of his grace – sent us his son, Jesus who proclaimed both freedom and salvation to all who surrender their lives to him.  The fulfillment of this narrative of salvation is something theologians refer to the consummation and it’s the topic Peter is honing in on in our passage above.

Everything we know now – in its fallen way, in its broken state – won’t be mended or fixed and put back the way that it is. That’s not the message of consummation. The message is rebirth.  Remaking.  Recreation.  This is a brand new thing.  Yeah, DC Talk was right.

We reflect on Christ’s coming during Advent as the newborn king; but we also await the next time he comes to set finish what he started.  Until then we strive to live holy and godly lives – as those sealed by and empowered in the Holy Spirit.  We don’t do this so that we can transactionally earn God’s grace – we can’t.  We do this because this is the stuff of God: holiness, justice, righteousness.  We’re living, practicing for a kingdom that’s coming.  We’re accepting God’s formation as a way of aligning our own lives with the life of Jesus.  We want our loves and habits to reflect the things of God.

What is it that we are waiting for?

Are we waiting for the kinds of things that the world tries to tune our hearts to – money, possessions, power, the idols of self?  Or are we expectant for Jesus to make things right.  Are we hoping for more of the same?

A Posturing Prayer

Lately, I’ve found myself more and more concerned with my prayer posture.

There are certain physical postures appropriate to prayer, such as bowing, kneeling, lying face down, lifting up hands, and a lot more. I think physical postures are important and they are meaningful and they should be assumed as the Holy Spirit leads.

I’m not talking about physical posture today. I want to talk about the inner posture of prayer.  Evelyn Underhill, a spiritual who lived at the turn of the 20th century, put it this way: “prayer, then, begins by an intellectual adjustment.”¹  This quote stuck with me and on me like an aroma or a bandaid – take your pick.

A couple of months ago I noted a “posturing prayer” in my journal, a prayer to return to that inspires me to adopt an intellectual adjustment for prayer.  The words might not mean much to you reading this post, but perhaps the spirit of the prayer is something you can capture for your own prayer life.  I hope that it serves as a reminder of the inner posture of our life, the necessity of assuming a internal position of surrender in our hearts.

Lord:

Let me be still.
Let me be quiet.
Let me be empty.
Let me fall dumb.

So that:

You will move.
You will speak.
You will fill.
You will wizen.

“May the words of my mouth-”

be few! –

“And the meditations of my heart-”

be pure! –

“Be pleasing in your sight, O Lord,

My Strength
and My Redeemer.

Footnotes

1. This is a quote from a selection found in Devotional Classics: Selected Readings for Individuals and Groups edited by Richard Foster & James Bryan Smith.

Two Dogs, a Beer, a Funeral…& Jesus

I originally wrote this piece for my church’s website in January 2017.  This reflection comes from an event that occurred when my wife and I pastored in northeast Wyoming.

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I had a hard time seeing the sign for the turnoff – not only was the setting sun blaring into my face through my car’s windshield, but this was the kind of place that GPS didn’t know about.  I had paper directions.  The last time I used paper directions was when I printed them out from MapQuest at a university computer lab.

I was headed to a funeral service.  I’m not sure that service is the best descriptor.  A service denotes order, specific function, and an agreed upon liturgy.  This…funeral didn’t have any of those elements.  But it did have hurting people, and I do hold one simple conviction as a pastor if I hold any: hurting people need to be loved.

The Beauty in Longing

This is the first in a series of blogs for the 2017 Advent season.

This year will be the first Christmas without my grandpa.

Since he passed on that hot afternoon in late August, my family has been making firsts.  Dad turned 60 without him around.  The first Thanksgiving came and went without him. His birthday was December 22 and it’ll come steadily into focus and then fade away just before Christmas – without him.

Slaying a Giant

“And so castles made of sand, fall in the sea…eventually.”

When Harvey Weinstein’s story broke, a chink in the armor of the rich and the powerful of Hollywood’s elite was exposed.  Thankfully (in this case), the media and the nation at large jumped at an opportunity to expose moral corruption in the ranks of the culture-makers who move and shape using the power of visual arts.  It wasn’t long before the long, sharp blade of scrutiny pierced through this particular armor and began to wound a system of abuse.  A list of the accused* has steadily grown.  The authorities have mobilized,vowing justice.

The problem is, reputations carry weight.  How we have conducted and do conduct ourselves matters and the things we do don’t go away or disappear with time.  I don’t mean to suggest that people don’t change – they can, they do.  And I don’t want to imply that there is no room for repentance and forgiveness.  But that’s not what we’re talking about, here.  We’re talking about people leveraging status and power to do things they knew they shouldn’t have been doing and now find themselves “caught.”