Clarification on Yesterday's Post

With Saturday worship, a busy writing schedule, a church-related get-together this evening, and preparing my taxes, it's unlikely that I'll post anything much today.

But I did want to clarify something about my post of yesterday, here. First of all, I appreciate all the expressions of encouragement I've received from many who read the post. In addition to the few comments below, I've also received encouraging and supportive emails from folks. So far, I've received no negative comments about the post. Consider the following words of clarification a sort of spiritual prophylactic for some readers and a bit of explanation for others.

If the piece incites any xenophobic or religious crowing in you, you've missed my point. The same needs to be said to those who think that I myself was engaging in xenophobic or religious crowing; nothing could be further from the truth.

Yes, I do believe that Jesus Christ is "the way, the truth, and the life," as He Himself says and that no one can come to the Father except through Him, as He also says.

But I don't believe that Christians are inherently better than Muslims nor do I think that Christians are less prone to violence or vengeance-seeking than Muslims. Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Jews, and every other member of the human race share several things in common:

• We're all sinners. That is, we're born enemies of God and His call that we love God and love neighbor.
• We're all loved by God. That's why God the Father sent God the Son, Jesus Christ, into the world. All who believe in Christ--that means, in Biblical terms, entrust their lives to Him--will live with God forever.

The fact that the members of those Alabama churches have reacted as they have to the destruction of their places of worship is a tribute to how Christ enters (and the way He enters) the lives, minds, wills, and psyches of those who believe in Him.

Not all who call themselves Christians allow Christ to call the shots in their lives. (Most of us struggle in a lifestyle of daily, conscious surrender to Christ to overcome the very human impulse to resist letting Christ call the shots in our lives. I'm one of these strugglers.) The Alabama believers I wrote about yesterday obviously do allow Christ such access to their wills and minds and decisions that they can actually pray for the forgiveness of those who have violated them!

Not all who call themselves Muslims allow the desire for vengeance and violence to overtake them.

My point from yesterday was that while hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Muslims acquiesced to the very human (and evil) impulses for revenge, born in part of a belief that God is present in brick and mortar, those Alabama folks whose places of worship have recently been burned down have reacted more placidly. They did so, I think, for two reasons:

• Jesus' teaching about forgiveness and the way that forgiveness gets enacted in the lives of those who dare to follow Him.
• Their awareness that a church building is only a building. An old Christian hymn, favored in my Lutheran circles, begins, "Built on a rock, the Church shall stand, even when steeples are falling!"

Why the Iraqi Muslims and the Alabama Christians React Differently to Having Holy Places Destroyed

I've been struck over the last several days by the reactions of Shiite and Sunni Muslim devotees to the bombing of the Askariya shrine in Iraq on Wednesday. This act of senseless destruction and willful desecration, presumably perpetrated by Sunni-connected insurgents, has unleashed a spasm of tit-for-tat mosque-bombings, the murders of at least three imams, and the kidnapping of yet another cleric.

Although Christians have been guilty of more than our fair share of sectarian violence, including the pitting of Protestants against Roman Catholics in Northern Ireland in recent memory, it was difficult for me not to contrast the calls for revenge and apologies emanating from the various Muslim communities in Iraq with the reactions voiced by Christians in Alabama in the wake of recently having their church buildings burned.

These Christian believers certainly want the perpetrators of the violence to be apprehended and brought to justice. I do too. But the predominantly-reported reaction from these folks has been to pray for the perpetrators of the crimes, asking God to forgive them.

In this reaction, those Alabama Christians, black and white, are manifesting the ethos and approach commended by Jesus. Jesus urges His followers to pray for our enemies. (Our enemies, by the way, aren't supposed to be people we hate, but only people who hate us.)

Jesus not only tells us to forgive as we've been forgiven, but when teaching the Lord's Prayer, with its petition, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," He explains that we will only be forgiven to the extent that we ourselves are willing to forgive others. Christians are thus taught that the failure to forgive is a wall that we erect between God and ourselves.

As a garden-variety sinner who just spent some time yesterday asking God to help me forgive people who have hurt me, I find the reactions of those forgiving Alabama Christians amazing, exemplary, inspiring, and intimidating.

But beyond the call to forgive others, I believe that there is another reason the Alabama Christians and the Iraqi Muslims have reacted so differently to the destruction of their places of devotion and worship. It's that they have a different sense of the importance of place.

This coming weekend, Christians all over the world, will be celebrating the Transfiguration of Our Lord. Reading from the Gospel of Mark, they'll remember the moment when the heavenly glory and deity of Jesus was put on display for three of His disciples on top of a mountain.

There, two Old Testament figures, Moses and Elijah, came from the ancient past to talk with Jesus while Peter, James, and John looked on. Dazzled by the sight, Peter suggested that three tabernacles, or booths, or houses, or places of worship be built in honor of Jesus, Moses, and Elijah.

Apart from the absurdity of building tabernacles that would pay equal homage to Moses and Elijah as that given to Jesus, God-enfleshed, there is another big problem with Peter's plan: It's rooted in a futile human desire to capture God, to bottle the holy, to domesticate the fierce, wild presence of Christ. But Christians believe that no matter how impressive a place like Saint Peter's Basilica may be, for example, God is no more present there than He is in an inner-city storefront church where a few worshipers read the Bible, pray, and sing songs of praise. You cannot capture God in a place!

In the Old Testament, at the dedication of the Temple he constructed to be the site of the Holy of holies, where it was thought God dwelt on earth, King Solomon was forced to concede that God doesn't live in houses made with hands. And when God came to this planet in the Person of Jesus Christ, He said that wherever two or three people are gathered in His Name, there He would be in the midst of them!

It's good to have buildings where people can worship God, study His Word, serve their neighbor, and be deputized for making disciples for Jesus Christ. But a building is only a tool. For Christians, when we're at our best, the church is never a building. The Church is God's people, striving each day to follow Jesus Christ, the Savior Who, as a free gift, saves all who renounce their sin and trust in Him.

I suspect that it is this belief, along with Jesus' call that His people forgive, that accounts for the forgiveness and the calm expressed by those violated by the bombers in Alabama. They know that all the places of this earth are only temporary. I suspect too, that very different beliefs account for the vengeance being demanded and exacted by those who have been violated in Iraq.

[You might be interested in a two-part series I wrote last fall on The Place of Place in Faith and Life. The series was inspired by the withdrawal of Israel from the Gaza Strip and by the displacement of many in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. See here and here.]

UPDATE: Thanks to both Pastor Jeff at Conblogeration and to Rick Moore at Holy Coast for linking to this post!

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Immodest Proposer at Immodest Proposals has also linked to this piece. Thank you very much!

Let's Hear It for Adversity! (Column Version)

[I write a column for a local chain of newspapers. I adapted an earlier post, lopping off some words here and tightening up the prose there, to turn it into the latest submission.]

One of my favorite writers recently quoted assassinated black leader, Malcom X, who said, “If you can come through the snow and the rain and the sleet, you know you can make it easily when the sun is out and everything is all right.”

I'm not so sure about that. The sunny days when things were going well have usually been the times when I have made my worst decisions. It seems that when I'm more hard-pressed, I'm more sensible and as a result, call on help from God and from others. In the sunny days, I get full of myself and neglect to seek the counsel I need. Disaster has usually been the result.

When I speak of disasters, I'm referring to everything from decisions that were simply stupid to actions that were sinful violations of God's will. (Something I've often only realized after I woke up and smelled the hubris.)

In the latter category, the classic--and extreme--example is Israel's King David. David is described in the Bible as a man after God's own heart. For decades, he endured being attacked by adversaries. But through all that adversity and challenge, David's God-shaped character shone. He was exemplary.

Then came years of relative ease when David grew lazy--physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Yet Israel still had its adversaries: the Philistines. It was the duty of the king, once spring-time made military operations possible, to lead the army into battle.

But one spring, David decided to stay in his palatial digs in Jerusalem and let the army go off to do the fighting. It was while doing this--fat, sassy, self-satisfied, living in sunny days--that David looked out from his heightened vantage point and saw a beautiful woman named Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop, as was the custom in those days. David sent for this woman to come to the palace.

Bathsheba, it turned out, was the wife of one of the soldiers serving in Israel's army. But Bathsheba became pregnant with David's child. David panicked. He didn't want a scandal.

He arranged for Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, to get a pass, supposedly to report to the king on how the battle was going. David was sure that Uriah would take advantage of the downtime to see his wife. They would do what husbands and wives do after not seeing one another for awhile, David reasoned, and it would appear that Uriah was the father of the baby in Bathsheba's womb. David would get off scott-free, as the saying goes.

But it was considered a point of honor with soldiers in Israel's army in those days that if all of the army didn't have access to the comforts of home, no indvidual soldier would take advantage of them. Uriah was an honorable man. After the king insisted on filling his belly full of food and strong drink at the palace, Uriah didn't go to Bathsheba. He slept on the stoop outside the king's palace overnight.

Appalled that his plan had failed, David sent Uriah back to battle with a note to the commander. In the note, David directed that while the enemy was engaged, things were to be arranged so that Uriah was killed in battle.

Ease and the lack of adversity in his life had caused David to commit adultery, for which he was unrepentant, and then to murder an innocent man. Later, David was confronted for his sins and he did genuinely repent. God forgave him and David rendered faithful service to God and to Israel after that. But the rest of David's life was marked by tragedy and difficulties of his own making.

I don't like experiencing adversity. But I'm wary of ease.

Let's Hear It for Adversity!

Tamar Jacobson, one of my favorite bloggers, cites this quote on her blog today:

If you can come through the snow and the rain and the sleet, you know you can make it easily when the sun is out and everything is all right. Malcolm X

I commented:

I'm not so sure about that. The sunny days when things were going well have usually been the times when I have made the worst decisions.

It seems that when I'm more hard-pressed, I'm more sensible and as a result, call on help from God and from others. In the sunny days, I get all full of myself and neglect to seek the counsel I need. Disaster has usually been the result.

When I speak of disasters, I'm referring to everything from decisions that were simply stupid or counterproductive to actions that were sinful violations of God's will. (Something I've often only realized after I woke up and smelled the hubris.)

In the latter category, the classic--and extreme--example is probably Israel's King David. David is described in the Bible as a man after God's own heart. For decades, he endured being attacked by adversaries and worked tirelessly to be faithful to God, to bring unity to his people, to compose songs that praised God in worship, and to be charitable and helpful to his hard-pressed followers--many of whom were dismissed as society's losers. But through all that adversity and challenge, David's God-shaped character shone. He was utterly exemplary.

Then came years of relative ease when David grew physically, emotionally, and spiritually lazy. But Israel still had its adversaries, though: the Philistines.

It was the duty of the king, once spring-time made military operations possible, to lead his army into battle. But one spring, David decided to stay in his palatial digs in Jerusalem and let the army go off to do the fighting.

It was while doing this--fat, sassy, self-satisfied, living in sunny days--that David looked out from his heightened vantage point and saw a beautiful woman named Bathsheba bathing on her rooftop, as was the custom in those days. David liked what he saw and sent for this woman to come to the palace. Bathsheba, it turned out, was the wife of one of the soldiers serving in Israel's army.

Long story shorter: Bathsheba became pregnant with David's child. David panicked. He didn't want a scandal. He arranged for Uriah, Bathsheba's husband, to get a pass, ostensibly to report to the king on how the battle was going. David was sure that Uriah would take advantage of the downtime to see his wife. They would do what husbands and wives do after not seeing one another for awhile, David reasoned, and it would appear that Uriah was the father of the baby in Bathsheba's womb. David would get off scott-free, as the saying goes.

But it was considered a point of honor with soldiers in Israel's army in those days that if all of the army didn't have access to the comforts of hearth and home, no indvidual soldier would take advantage of them. Uriah was an honorable man. After the king insisted on filling his belly full of food and strong drink at the palace, Uriah didn't go to Bathsheba. He slept on the stoop outside the king's palace overnight.

Appalled that his plan had failed, David sent Uriah back to battle with a note to the commander. In the note, David directed that while the enemy was engaged, things were to be arranged so that Uriah was killed in battle.

Ease and the lack of adversity in his life had caused David to commit adultery, for which he was unrepentant, and then to murder an innocent man. Later, David was confronted for his sins and he did genuinely repent. God forgave him and David rendered faithful service to God and to Israel after that. But the rest of David's life was marked by tragedy and difficulties of his own making.

I don't like experiencing adversity. But I'm wary of ease.

The Buckeyes' Miracle Season Continues!

Last Friday, my wife, son, and I all had days off from our work and decided to go visit my parents and my wife's mother in our hometown, Columbus. While there, we went to get pizzas at my choice of the restaurant selling the best pizzas on the planet, Tommy's on West Lane Avenue in Upper Arlington.

A poster there showed the schedule of the Ohio State men's basketball team. Looking at the final five games on the regular season schedule, I commented to my son, "They very easily could go 4 and 1 before the Big Ten tournament." Another guy waiting on his 'za nodded in agreement, both of us thinking that, while not impossible, it would be difficult for the Buckeyes to get a road win against Michigan State in East Lansing.

But, the miracle season for OSU's men's program continued to offer surprises on Wednesday night, as they defeated the Spartans on their home court. Road wins have been almost impossible to come by in the Big Ten this year, making the Buckeyes' late-season win against an outstanding Michigan State team amazing! The victory makes OSU 20-4, tied with Iowa for first place in a conference that will probably place seven teams in the NCAA tournament.

As I've said before, I've always fully expected the Buckeyes to vie for Big Ten and national titles next season. But this year has been a total and wonderful surprise! Anything that Thad Matta's crew does from now on will be the proverbial icing on the cake!

"Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down"

Last year, my friend and colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot gave me permission to post his outstanding Ash Wednesday, 2005 sermon here. Go read it for some real inspiration!

A Bit About Ash Wednesday and Lent

One week from now, on March 1, Christians all over the world will be celebrating Ash Wednesday. It begins a forty-day season of spiritual renewal and preparation that precedes Easter Sunday. The season is called Lent.

Actually, there are more than forty days between Ash Wednesday and Easter. But the Sundays that fall during Lent are never counted as part of that somber season. For Christians, Sundays are always "little Easters," days when the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is celebrated, and Lent emphasizes other aspects of Christian belief.

The word Lent is from Middle English and means spring, the season of the year with which Lent somewhat corresponds. According to Philip H. Pfatteicher and Carlos R. Messerli, writing in a book called Manual on the Liturgy, "Lent [as a season of the Church Year] derives from the [period of] preparation of [adult] candidates for Baptism [in the Church's early history]. By the middle of the fourth century at Jerusalem, candidates for Baptism fasted for 40 days, and during this period...[instructional] lectures...were delivered to them."

Of course, forty is an important number in the Bible. Jesus was tempted in the wilderness for forty days. The Old Testament book of Exodus says that God's people wandered in the wilderness for forty years. The rains that produced the great flood recorded in the book of Genesis lasted forty days and forty nights. So, it was natural that Lent would become a forty-day period.

Pfatteicher and Messerli say that after Christian faith was legalized in the Roman Empire in 313 A.D. "the period of preparation for Baptism became a general period of preparation of all Christians for Easter." That continues to this day.

Ash Wednesday itself, say Pfatteicher and Messerli, features a mood of "penitence and reflection on the quality of our faith and life." The goal is to call believers to remember their mortality, dependence on God, and need to seek God's help in disciplining themselves to surrender every part of their lives to Jesus Christ.

This year at the congregation I'm privileged to serve as pastor, Friendship Lutheran Church, we're committing ourselves to heeding Jesus' call to be servants of God and of others. We're taking our cue from Jesus Himself, Who on the night before He was executed, washed the feet of His closest followers. This was servant's work, but Jesus said, "If I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." In other words, the ultimate trademark of greatness is Christian servanthood.

During these forty days, we'll be receiving training for our participation in the special service emphasis we've adopted: encouraging the youth of our community, particularly by supporting the Boys and Girls Club of Clermont County. To hotwire the DNA of the congregation with the habit of Christian service, we'll also be using daily readings and holding four Wednesday evening, "Soup, Salad, and Servanthood" gatherings.

We felt that learning to become servants of God and neighbor would be a more significant Lenten discipline than giving up chocolate, losing ten pounds, or refraining from swearing for forty days. We're asking God to make lasting changes in our characters, habits of living that can be our offering to the One Who gives forgiveness and everlasting life to all who believe in Jesus Christ!

Second Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Mark 9:2-9

Check out Brian Stoffregen's comments on this passage here. You'll have to overlook the fact that he misspells Deja Vu, which unfortunately all of us in this part of Clermont County, Ohio, know how to spell.

A Little Bit of This and That

Regular readers of Better Living will have noticed that lately, I haven't been posting as often as usual. The big reason for that is that I'm getting ready for the upcoming Lenten season, which starts on March 1.

This year, our congregation is doing something really wonderful during this forty-plus-day season that precedes Easter. It's our own project, which we're uncreatively calling Forty Days to Servanthood. But that's the only uncreative part of the whole thing. A team of congregational members are putting things together. My main job at this point is writing daily readings of 400-words or less, which we're hoping that every member of the congregation will read twice during each day of Lent. (Every adult and teen member, that is.) My plan is to post those readings here, starting on March 5.

Servanthood is foreign to all of us, I suppose. But I think it's especially the case with me. With a knowing smile a few years back, one of my sisters observed of me as a youngster, "You always wanted to be the center of attention." I suppose that I did. (It's amazing she didn't say that with malice, by the way!)

In servanthood, we pay heed to Jesus' call to militate against our natural impulse to be the center of attention, seek what we want, and look out only for ourselves.

One of the many things that God is teaching me these days is that servanthood is more than an appropriate response to the God Who has loved and served us through Jesus Christ, it leads us finding our very own God-designed way of life. Studying and writing for this project has enlivened me to this fact again!

A few things before I button it up for the night:

The New York Times had an interesting article today, inspired by all the tumbles being taken by Olympic skaters. It deals with a question that scientists evidently can't answer yet: Why is ice slippery? There are several theories advanced, but none pass scientific muster. When I mentioned the Times article to several folks before a Bible study this evening, one engineer asked, "Did they talk with any engineers?" When I said that no engineers were cited in the piece, he said that was their problem because any engineer could explain why ice is slippery.

To my embarrassment and shame, it's been awhile since I last linked to articles on Darfur. Briefly, Darfur is a region of Sudan. There, government-supported terrorists engage in brutality against the local population, forcing millions from their homes.

For some basic information on Sudan and Darfur, click here.
The US government is urging the United Nations to finalize plans for a UN peacekeeping force in Darfur. See here.
Scotsman Stephen McGinty reports on his trip to Darfur and what he learned, here.

And then, there's the bird flu threat, for which Senator Bill Frist, Republican majority leader and a physician, reiterated on the five minutes of Hugh Hewitt's radio show I was able to listen to before heading to that Bible study tonight, America is not prepared to address. Here's a portion of the interview containing Frist's very straightforward assessment of the Avian Flu threat we face:

HH: Let's ask you to put on your doctor's hat. What do you see as the percentage of likelihood that Avian Flu will become transmissible human to human?

BF: You know, I started talking about this about a year and a half ago. And at the time, I said we were unprepared, and I said that my biggest concern was once that bird flu, which has now killed over 300 million birds, or caused the culling of those birds. Once it jumped to humans, and then came to Africa in animals, that rich melting pot, which is done last week in Nigeria, moving West the Vietnam area all the way to Turkey yesterday...every day, the likelihood of having that last, what we call an antigenic shift occur, increases. And day by day, things are getting worse and worse. I think we're unprepared today, as you know. We're unprepared today as you know. We're making real headway, but still unprepared. I don't want to put a percentage on it, but I think we need to increasingly invest, become prepared, educate the American people, because it takes just one more little antigenic shift for it to become transmissible. And once it becomes transmissible, it is going to cause a lot of mortality in this country.

HH: Has Secretary Leavett done his job, do you think? And the President done his job in terms of getting the balls rolling, and putting out the alarms?

BF: Hugh, I think they've been very aggressive. I called for a Manhattan project about a year ago to pull together the best of investment, government, non-government, private sector, our universities, and we're not there yet. But in December, we put a substantial investment in our preparedness, in our first responders, in our research and development, and in rebuilding our vaccine manufacturing capacity. 25 years ago, we had 26 vaccine manufacturers out there. Today, we only have three. Right now, it would take about 14 months to make a vaccine. In 23 weeks, in 1918, more people were killed than in all the history if HIV/AIDS. That's how quickly this moves. The past vaccine manufacturer, targeted liability in the event there's an emergency in December...we invested about $4 billion dollars in our preparedness, but we've got a long way to go.

HH: Now Senator Frist, give me your understanding. It's spreading like wildfire right now, and in Indonesia and China, today, this very day, there are massive kills underway of poultry, wild and domestic. Who has the authority, should the bird flu in birds get to the United States, to order these kind of poultry kills, which will obviously impact our economy a great deal. Whose got that right?

BF: Well, your point is very well taken. Ultimately, the Secretary of Health and Human Services is going to make the call. But it very quickly falls over into the agriculture, farming community, because that is where one of the first steps will be taken, the actual quarantining, telling people to stay at home, advising people from a public health standpoint will go through the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Secretary Leavett.

HH: But is there a federal law that authorizes federal authorities...I'm thinking after Katrina, we did this dance with the locals where they didn't want us in, and as a result, the feds got blamed. Is there a federal statute on the books that says the Director of HHS operaing pursuant to Presidential authority, can take control of neighborhoods and of poultry farms, and things like that, and order sequestration and anything else that needs to happen?

BF: There's specific provisions for things like what we just talked about, in terms of manufacturing, vaccine manufacturing, protection from the use of anti-viral agents, and dictating the use of anti-viral agents. State law, in most states, are either addressing or have addressed, although about half of them have not yet addressed the actual quaratining commands. And that will come from the state level, and it will be upon advice from the federal level, but ultimately from the state level.

HH: Senator Frist, what happens if we have a replay of New Orleans, where the advice being given from the federal level is disregarded or simply not acted on by local officials. That was a matter of life and death. This could be a matter of pandemic.

BF: Yeah, this is much bigger.

HH: Should there be stand-by authority for the...

BF: The risk now, because this is an infectious agent, to which you don't, nor do any of your listeners today, have any natural immunity to this. That's what's so unique about this virus, and unlike the common flu virus, or any other virus that you know, practically. You have no immunity, and that's why there's been about 170 people, 169 infected. About 60% of those people have died, because there's no natural immunity. And second, in all likelihood, it'll spead, even if you're not infectious, even if you're not coughing and sneezing. You couple those things together, there'll be rapid spread through not just a geographis location, but across this country, with there to be massive devastation. A Congressional Budget Office, or General Accounting Office prediction of what would happen if there was similar penetration to what happened in 1918, 1919, would affect our economy by a decrease in our economy size, or our GDP, by about 5%, or about $600 billion dollars.

HH: We've got a minute left, Senator Frist. So should the Congress of the United States equip the President with the authority he will need in the even that states are simply ineffective or recalcitrant?

BF: Well, I think so. I think so, but I'm addressing this from the straight-out public health standpoint, and my knowledge from the science of how ill-prepared we are as a nation today. Now also, let me just say, Hugh. I don't want my comments to be used to cause panic and paralysis. I do want the American people to know that I, knowing what I know as a scientist, as a doctor, believe that we're unprepared, and we're doing everything we possibly can in terms of monetary investment, but also organization, delivery of the appropriate medicines that are possible. And I think it's incumbent on us to have clear lines of authority from the President through the Secretary of Health and Human Services, through the states, down to the local communities.

Also check out this article from Voice of America, which includes this paragraph:

Medical experts say the bird flu virus could mutate into a form that could be transmitted from person to person. Since people would have no immunity to this new flu virus, such an outbreak could lead to a worldwide epidemic, causing widespread illness and death. In 1918, a flu virus killed more than twenty million people around the world.

I'm not worried about the Avian Flu threat. Actually, I'm grateful that unlike previous generations who had no warnings that the possibility--the likelihood--of pandemics loomed in their futures, we do have warnings. We can do something about this.

Above all, we need to pray, not just that such a pandemic can be avoided, but that governments around the world will take the steps necessary to be prepared for such an eventuality.

As citizens, we also need to push our governments to take appropriate action. Let's be proactive, not reactive!

By the way, the Bible study group is looking at Acts (Acts 1:1-14:10; Acts 14:11-26:32; Acts 27:1-28:31) and I hope to resume my series of posts on our discussions (see here and here) soon. We're into chapter 8 right now.

Calls for Change in Port Decision Likely to Be Heeded

When Republican governors, like Robert Ehrlich of Maryland and George Pataki of New York, and conservative commentators, like my friend Hugh Hewitt, disagree with a decision made by this President, they're likely to be heard by the White House.

All of these and others have voiced concerns about the Bush Administration decision to allow a company based in the United Arab Emirates to operate ports in this country. Hewitt says:

The idea that an Arab country with an active al Qaeda organization, even when that country is a strong ally of the US as the UAE is, can be trusted to operate a border facility of enormous complexity and thus vulnerability cannot be sold to the public or defended as a thoroughly vetted for security concerns...[the prospects of al Qaeda infiltration are too great]...

It is a long war, and even our allies in the Muslim world have to understand that homeland security will interfere with the otherwise ordinary flows of commerce.

The Bush Adminsitration needs to back away from this deal as quickly as possible.

This President, known for decisiveness and for not looking back, will perhaps, be loathe to reverse himself. But, hearing his friends and most ardent supporters express their belief that the port decision must be reversed will probably cause the President to do just that.

In fact, I think that politically, the President can turn such a reversal to his advantage. "My fellow Americans," he can say, "while we believe that there would be no threat to homeland security if the acquisition proposed went through, we're also pleased that after four-and-a-half years, our citizens have responded to my calls for vigilance and that you remain vigilant about the threat of world terrorism. After the events of September 11, 2001, no President could be more aware of the malice of the terrorists than I am. I've heard your concerns and I share them. I have therefore decided that we will allow only American firms or firms from countries with whom we are closely allied to operate the ports of America."

Avian Flu Update #4: Experts Perplexed

The International Herald Tribune reports that scientists who have long expected the H5N1 Avian Flu virus to spread are surprised that just this past weekend, the disease was found in migratory birds in widely disparate places, including northern Germany and Lyon, France. This is after the disease had remained an Asian phenomenon for some time. Notes the article:

International health experts have been predicting widespread outbreaks of the virus for about six months, since concluding that it could be spread by migrating birds. But the acceleration of the disease's appearance has perplexed experts, who had watched the H5N1 virus stick to its native ground in Asia for nearly five years.

This doesn't bode well. Keep praying and keep pressuring your congressional representatives, state legislators, and local officials to take all appropriate actions--from the acquisition of appropriate medicines to plans for the use of auditoria, college dormitories, and church buildings as makeshift hospitals--with deliberate speed.

Previous deadly flu outbreaks have been of the Avian variety and have resulted from mutations those viruses have undergone which make human-to-human passing-on of the disease possible.

First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Mark 9:2-9

[These "passes" at the weekend Bible lessons are produced mainly for the benefit of the folks I serve as pastor at Friendship Lutheran Church. Others may find them helpful, since I usually preach on Bible lessons appointed by the lectionary. I'll diverge from that pattern during the upcoming Lenten season, which begins with Ash Wednesday on March 1.

[In this "pass" at the text, I'm just going to present some general comments, followed, I hope, by verse-by-verse commentary in later passes.]

This week's Bible lesson: Mark 9:2-9

2Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, 3and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. 4And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. 5Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” 6He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. 7Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” 8Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus.

9As they were coming down the mountain, he ordered them to tell no one about what they had seen, until after the Son of Man had risen from the dead.

General Comments:
(1) This weekend brings us to the end of the Epiphany Season of the Church Year. (For more on the Epiphany Season, read here.) The sabbath lessons of the season are always bracketed by remembrances of Jesus' Baptism (the Baptism of Our Lord) and by the subject of this weekend's emphasis, the Transfiguration of Our Lord.

These texts fit in well with the Epiphany Season, the purpose of which is to highlight those incidents, especially the early ones, which pointed to Jesus' deity.

In both of these "Epiphany bookends," a voice from heaven affirms Jesus' "office" as Savior of the world, the promised Messiah. The voice's reference to Jesus as "Son" is more significant than it might seem. The term implies a closer kinship than that of an earthly son to his father. It means to have a single identity. Paul makes this explict in a few majestic verses that come at the beginning of his letter to the Colossians:

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers—all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. (Colossians 1:15-20)

In his account of Jesus' Baptism, Mark diverges from those of the other Gospel-writers (Matthew, Luke, and John) by saying that the voice was only heard by Jesus Himself. But here, in his Transfiguration account, the voice is heard by Peter, James, and John (and presumably Jesus). The first time, the voice comes to affirm Jesus in the course He's about to pursue. In the second, the voice affirms the beliefs of the three members of Jesus' inner-inner circle.

(2) In the past, some Biblical scholars, who always seem to be looking for ways to deconstruct and reconstruct Biblical texts to suit their own preferred ways of telling the salvation story, held that this was originally an Easter story which Mark and the other Gospel writers read back into an earlier time in Jesus' ministry, as a way of indicating that His Lordship had been revealed to the disciples even before His death and resurrection. But as one commentator, Hugh Anderson, points out, that theory comes to grief in the face of an important fact: In all of the incidents recording post-Easter encounters with Jesus, the resurrected Lord speaks. He doesn't do that here.

(3) Beyond dying and rising for our benefit, Jesus also came into the world to establish a community of faith devoted to living in love toward God and others. This community of faith, which is essential to God's mission in the world, is called the Church.

Of course, on Pentecost Day, fifty days after His resurrection, Jesus would send the the Holy Spirit. He is the source of godly power that has energized the Church ever since, the One Who gave birth to the Church. (And keeps giving birth to it. Check out John 3:3.)

The Spirit came to call out the Church that, under Jesus' leadership had existed in embryonic form. (You can read about this in Acts 2.) In this embryonic fellowship, Jesus had created a spiritual and an organizational infrastructure.

In His leadership, Jesus employed a method that will be familiar to almost anyone who's gone through an executive leadership or business management program. It had several components:

He spent the least time with the masses; more time with His disciples or students or followers (a group which, Paul reports, numbered about 500 people); more time still with the Twelve (the apostles); and the most time with three apostles, Peter, James, and John. In other words, the greater the leadership role to be taken by people, the more time Jesus spent training them.

The make-up of Jesus' training program was mainly made up of three steps: He showed them how; He was with them as they did what they showed them; He set them loose to do what He'd showed them; He had them come back for debriefing and refinement.

At the Transfiguration, Jesus was with the inner-inner circle of Peter, James, and John (PJ2). In his commentary on this passage, Brian Stoffregen observes:

This is the second time the "inner three" are set apart in Mark. They witness the raising of Jairus' daughter from the dead in 5:37ff. It is then ironic that these three question what the rising from the dead could mean (9:9-10). The same word anistemi is used in both contexts.

The next time Jesus takes these three with him is in the Garden of Gethsemane (14:33). The three who have seen his power to raise the dead, who have seen his heavenly glory, also see his earthly agony. In these last two instances, they, especially Peter, respond poorly. On the mountain Peter wants to build booths. In the Garden they are to stay awake and pray, but they fall asleep three times.

It's a tribute to the power of God's Holy Spirit to transform people that these three unpromising characters gave faithful leadership to the Church as it carried the life-changing Good News of Jesus into the world!

More specific comments on the passage later, I hope.

For Presidents' Day

A few posts about our American chief executives for your Presidents' Day pleasure:

Garry Wills on James Madison's PresidencyTR: Leadership and the Call for Sacrifice
The Book I Always Meant to WritePresident Bush Faces Critical Time
Foreign Policy Over Burritos and Tacos
His Excellency, Samuel Betances, and the Promise of America
A New Approach to Naming Our Greatest Presidents
More Whatcha Reading?
Today is the Birthday of America's Sixteenth President (2004)
My Four Favorite Lincoln Books
My Picks for the Four Best U.S. Presidents (my esteem for Lincoln has increased since this piece was written)
Where's the Rest of Me?
The Curse of Second Presidential Terms
'1776' Underscores Washington's Greatness
Fisher Ames on Washington
Image-Making and the Crapshoot of Democracy
Reflections on JFK's Assassination, the Unthinkable, and the Reliable
Who's the President's Anti-Model When It Coms to Social Security Reform?
A Biography of the Other Adams
SOTU: How to Fix It

Called to a Community of Serving

[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Church during worship celebrations on February 18 and 19.]

Mark 2:1-12

Among my favorite U2 songs is one they did with blues guitarist, B.B. King abou twenty years ago, When Love Comes to Town. The last verse and chorus say this:

I was there when they crucified my Lord
I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword.
I threw the dice when they pierced his side
But I've seen love conquer the great divide.

When love comes to town I'm gonna jump that train
When love comes to town I'm gonna catch that flame.
Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down
But I did what I did before love came to town.

Love comes to our town, to our world, to our lives in the Person of that Lord Who was crucified and then rose, Jesus Christ. And when He comes to us, everything is changed.

In our Bible lesson, we find an incident from Jesus’ ministry that combines, as life often does, high drama and slapstick comedy. We also find that the love of God in Christ has come to town, specifically to the town of Capernaum.

At the end of last week’s Bible lesson, a man Jesus cleansed of leprosy couldn’t contain himself, told everybody what Jesus had done, and after that, Jesus’ life was like that of a rock star. He couldn’t go anywhere without having crowds chasing after Him. Jesus found it necessary to stay in wilderness places.

But everybody needs to go back home to recharge their batteries and Jesus had already picked Capernaum, a city on the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee, as His hometown. Some think that Jesus may have had his own place there, though most believe He had taken up residence in Peter’s house. Be that as it may, Mark seems to tell us that Jesus tried to steal into town for a restful visit to His home.

That proved impossible. Mark tells us, “When he returned to Capernaum after some days, it was reported that he was at home. So many gathered around that there was no longer room for them, not even in front of the door; and he was speaking the word to them.”

As Jesus speaks, something that must have looked comical unfolds. Four men, carrying a paralytic friend on a mat, are desperate to get close to Jesus. They’re sure that Jesus can heal the man. But every effort they make to get to Jesus fails. Finally, they get an idea: They’ll take their friend up onto the roof of the house Jesus is in. Then, they’ll rip the roof open and lower the man and his mat down to Jesus. Now, this wouldn’t have been as difficult to do as it might seem to us: Most houses in first-century Judea had exterior staircases that led to the roof and the roof itself would have been “made of saplings laid flat, with branches and twigs spread over them, and clay patted down over this and baked in the sun” [like adobe]. I imagine that when Jesus saw these four men lower their paralyzed friend down to Him through the roof, He laughed out loud. Mark tells us, “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’”

Of course, when the theologians who are on hand--the Scribes--hear this, they’re horrified. “Who is this Jesus,” they say to themselves, “to go around forgiving sin? He’s being disrespectful of God because only God can forgive sin.”

Jesus knows what they’re thinking and so, He confronts them. “Which is easier to do: Tell this man his sins are forgiven or tell him to get up off his mat and walk out of here?” Without letting the shocked preachers respond, Jesus turns to the paralyzed man and tells him: “Pick up your mat and walk out of this place.” To everybody’s amazement, that’s exactly what the man is able to do.

There are lots of things we could say about this incident. But today, I want to lift up just two important lessons from this day when love came to town, when Jesus came to Capernaum.

The first is this: Faith in Jesus makes us part of a serving community. When you begin to follow Jesus, it makes you desperate to help others. Because you know that you’re in God’s hands forever and that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus, your heart opens up to serving, loving, and praying for others. The paralytic’s friends went to outrageous lengths to place their friends in the presence of Jesus.

Let me ask you a question: How desperate are you to place people you know in the presence of Jesus? Desperate enough to pray for someone going through a tough time? Desperate enough to volunteer for a ministry? Desperate enough to invite a friend to worship with you? Desperate enough to sacrifice or to give some of your time for someone who has a need? Desperate enough to get involved in one of our monthly outreaches?

A friend of mine once shared a homely illustration that I’ve stolen and used many times. He said that having faith in Jesus Christ is like His being in the middle of an arena, filled with people, and each person who trusts in Christ, stepping closer and closer to Him. The funny thing is that as those people get closer to Christ, they also get closer to each other. That’s the Church and we’re called to serve one another.

But, through our life together, we’re also called to serve and care about all the other people in that arena, the world. Like the four men who lowered their friend to Jesus, may we realize that faith in Christ makes us part of a serving community.

Second: Jesus’ healing has an impact on more than just one person. Everyone who witnessed Jesus’ memorable encounter with the paralytic man was affected that day. And the impact happened even before He told the man to pick up his mat and walk away.

You see, in those days, a sort of caveman theology prevailed. It said that if you were seriously ill or paralyzed or afflicted in some other way, the reason was that you or your parents were unrepentant sinners. This caveman theology would have also held that righteous, upstanding people shouldn’t have anything to do with those who were afflicted. But the four men who lowered Jesus on that mat, who had trust in Jesus and His love for the whole human race, evidently thought that such notions were bunk. And Jesus demonstrates that He thought they were bunk too. He tells the paralytic, even before He was healed and well, words that the man never have heard in His whole life, words that told Him that He was spiritually healed and was one with God even before the paralysis was lifted from his body! (It was only to show the scribes that He really had the authority to forgive sin--an authority that only belongs to God--that Jesus then gave the man physical healing.)

All of the people gathered around that door in Capernaum saw that in Christ, there can be forgiveness of sins, oneness with God, the greatest healing of all, and that there can be other kinds of healing, too. The healing of this one man created a ripple effect of faith and an awakening to what Jesus could do in their own lives!

A man at my internship congregation once approached me to share something with me. “My son didn’t want anything to do with God for years,” he told me. “But some people at a church in the town where he lives helped him when he was out of work. One guy gave him some leads. A woman watched his kids when he went on interviews. Another man prayed for him and always asked how he was doing. A month ago, he went to church. I was skeptical, Mark. But he’s been in worship every week since then and last night, he told me, ‘It feels good not to be mad at God any more, Dad.’” At that, the man’s eyes glistened with tears. His son’s broken life was healed. But so was a father’s broken heart. The spiritual healing that comes through the power of Jesus Christ always creates such ripple effects.

You and I, my dear friends, are the means by which Jesus’ love comes to this town. Through our faith in Christ, we’re made part of a serving community. And when we bring Christ to others, His healing, forgiving touch will have an impact on more than just the person who is healed.

Friendship, our serving community of faith, has been called together by God to share Christ in this part of God's world. We summarize this call in our motto: “Joining hands with God and neighbor.” May that be our passion, our lifestyle, and our trademark.