I was also moved by what I was able to see and hear today of the Reagan funeral and later, the committal services in California.
The elder President Bush's comments were heartfelt and moving, especially coming from a man not gifted in public speaking.
Margaret Thatcher's tribute, put on videotape because encroaching years and illness prevent her from speech-making, was more touching than I imagined possible. To my surprise, she referred to the late President repeatedly as "Ronnie," denoting the personal as well as political closeness that characterized thea side of Thatcher I'd not seen before, was the visage of the "iron lady," defying age, frailty, and death to fly both to Washington and after a long day, on to California. I was impressed that she sang our national anthem at the committal service and standing on her own, she paused before the casket to pay her last respects.
The eulogies given by the late President's surviving children were each, in their own ways, effective and affecting. Each, again in their own ways, gave testimony to their father's faith and the assurance with which they faced his death, believing that he is with God in heaven. Each showed remarkable polish and Ron P. Reagan showed flashes of the Reagan wit, wielded with a delicate and deft touch.
I loved the gracious, faithful words to Nancy Reagan, uttered by the Reagans' pastor. As my wife said, both he and Michael Reagan managed to give witness to their faith in Christ without being heavy-handed.
I watched the MSNBC coverage tonight because I so appreciate Chris Matthews' enthusiasm and his love for country and his respect for people of goodwill from all sides of the political spectrum. He recognizes that at the end of the day, we're not Republicans or Democrats, just human beings peculiarly blessed to be Americans.
May we all remember that from those to whom much has been given, much is expected. That may be the best lesson we can draw from the week of pageantry, remembrance, and goodbyes we have just completed.
Friday, June 11, 2004
On Following Jesus...
I was moved today when I read these words from Craig S. Williams and his blog:
Great words! More often than I care to admit, I get caught up in myself, in looking good to others, and all the rest. Following Jesus isn't always easy; but it is the way of life. Thanks for the reminder, Craig Williams!
We have a culture of admirers of Jesus. Many of us have been admirers for a long time. But when Jesus beckons us to follow, we leave the safety of admiration behind and we go to where Jesus is. As I mentioned earlier (see The Beckoning God blog) God is calling us out into deeper waters where he is, away from safety's edge. Where Jesus is going in the Gospels is a cross. He bids us to come and die - die to our selfish wants and needs and life. Once done, he gives us new life - his life. We take him on. As John the Baptist said, "He must increase and I must decrease."
Great words! More often than I care to admit, I get caught up in myself, in looking good to others, and all the rest. Following Jesus isn't always easy; but it is the way of life. Thanks for the reminder, Craig Williams!
Thursday, June 10, 2004
Thoughts from the Rummage Sale
Women from our congregation, planning and preparing for a retreat weekend they'll be giving to other women, are sponsoring a rummage sale this weekend. All day today and tomorrow, people will be bringing their "rummage," items scrounged from basements, closets, and book shelves to be sold on Saturday. My wife and I gathered up enough items to fill both our van and her car.
As we sweatily packed things to take to the church building today, my wife said, "The next time I start to buy something, stop me." Of course, I won't stop her and truth be told, I am by far, the most acquisitive of the two of us. It's not that I'm a big materialist---or at least I'm not the fevered kind of materialist to which I like to compare myself in order to salve my guilty conscience. Books are my weakness, of course, and I appall my wife (and sometimes myself) by how easily I cave in to the temptation of any book that hooks me.
But like my wife, when these rummage or garage sales come along, I'm astounded to meet up again with the long-forgotten items. Their appeal now is lost on me, but once they caused me to readily part with my cash. They make me ask myself, "What was I thinking?"
Lots of times, I suppose, I was thinking that something about this object could service my delusion of self-sufficiency. Often, the things I buy are little more than offerings to the god of me. That isn't a pleasant admission, but it's true.
The other day, a new acquaintance of mine and I were railing against the insanity of churches having lots of expensive real estate and decorative goo-gobs while millions are going hungry. It's a line of thought worthy of consideration, to be sure. But what's good for the goose is also good for the gander: What about all the goo-gobs I buy? How might they be used for better purposes? Better, that is, than genuflecting at the altar of me.
Jesus had something to say about all of this, of course. He told a story about a man whose land produced a bumper crop. He resolved to pull down his barns and build bigger ones to store his excess food. Then, the guy tells himself, I'll sit back and relax. Then, Jesus says:
That puts things in perspective. Like the ubiquitous Mr. Anonymous once said, "The U-Haul doesn't follow your hearse to the cemetery."
I've come to believe that showing restraint while shopping and giving items away for the rummage sale can be like sticking forks into the devil. They can be acts of rebellion against the evil of materialism. And they can be ways of getting myself free from stuff so that I can live for God, provide for my family, and give both myself and my money to the cause of Christ in the world.
My guess is that my relationship to material goods will always be a bit like the relationship of an AA-enrollee to alcohol. For as long as I live, especially in America, I will be a recovering materialist. But my prayer is that I'll always be in recovery and always moving toward God's way of doing things, away from my addiction to Sam's Club.
As we sweatily packed things to take to the church building today, my wife said, "The next time I start to buy something, stop me." Of course, I won't stop her and truth be told, I am by far, the most acquisitive of the two of us. It's not that I'm a big materialist---or at least I'm not the fevered kind of materialist to which I like to compare myself in order to salve my guilty conscience. Books are my weakness, of course, and I appall my wife (and sometimes myself) by how easily I cave in to the temptation of any book that hooks me.
But like my wife, when these rummage or garage sales come along, I'm astounded to meet up again with the long-forgotten items. Their appeal now is lost on me, but once they caused me to readily part with my cash. They make me ask myself, "What was I thinking?"
Lots of times, I suppose, I was thinking that something about this object could service my delusion of self-sufficiency. Often, the things I buy are little more than offerings to the god of me. That isn't a pleasant admission, but it's true.
The other day, a new acquaintance of mine and I were railing against the insanity of churches having lots of expensive real estate and decorative goo-gobs while millions are going hungry. It's a line of thought worthy of consideration, to be sure. But what's good for the goose is also good for the gander: What about all the goo-gobs I buy? How might they be used for better purposes? Better, that is, than genuflecting at the altar of me.
Jesus had something to say about all of this, of course. He told a story about a man whose land produced a bumper crop. He resolved to pull down his barns and build bigger ones to store his excess food. Then, the guy tells himself, I'll sit back and relax. Then, Jesus says:
But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?'[Luke 12:13-21]
That puts things in perspective. Like the ubiquitous Mr. Anonymous once said, "The U-Haul doesn't follow your hearse to the cemetery."
I've come to believe that showing restraint while shopping and giving items away for the rummage sale can be like sticking forks into the devil. They can be acts of rebellion against the evil of materialism. And they can be ways of getting myself free from stuff so that I can live for God, provide for my family, and give both myself and my money to the cause of Christ in the world.
My guess is that my relationship to material goods will always be a bit like the relationship of an AA-enrollee to alcohol. For as long as I live, especially in America, I will be a recovering materialist. But my prayer is that I'll always be in recovery and always moving toward God's way of doing things, away from my addiction to Sam's Club.
A Good Hamilton Biography
I personally feel that the best short biography of Alexander Hamilton is that by Richard Brookhiser. Brookhiser is a wonderful writer and both sparingly and thoroughly evokes the personality, character, mind, and work of this complicated American founder.
Reagan on the Ten Dollar Bill? Take a Deep Breath and Count to Ten
In the wake of Ronald Reagan's passing, there are a lot of well-meaning proposals being made to honor him. But the days immediately following the death of a beloved person are not prime time for making such decisions.
The most disturbing of these proposals, I think, is the one that would place Ronald Reagan's picture on the ten-dollar bill in place of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton may be considered a "weak link" because most Americans know little to nothing about him. They may know that he died in a duel and that's about it. But Hamilton, who emigrated to what became the United States from poor circumstances on the island of Saint Croix and grew to be an extradorinary man, is someone contemporary Americans would do well to know better. He was brave in battle during the Revolutionary War. He wrote the lion's share of articles that make up The Federalist Papers, playing an important role in shaping the US Constitution and its critical part in forging America's national identity. He was a brilliant jurist and writer. And perhaps most importantly, as Washington's secretary of the treasury, Hamilton established America's free enterprise system. Clearly, Hamilton should not be bumped from the ten-spot by President Reagan or anybody else. As an economics major himself, the late President, I feel certain, would agree.
If Mr. Reagan is to be honored on our currency, perhaps a new denomination could be established that would feature him.
The most disturbing of these proposals, I think, is the one that would place Ronald Reagan's picture on the ten-dollar bill in place of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton may be considered a "weak link" because most Americans know little to nothing about him. They may know that he died in a duel and that's about it. But Hamilton, who emigrated to what became the United States from poor circumstances on the island of Saint Croix and grew to be an extradorinary man, is someone contemporary Americans would do well to know better. He was brave in battle during the Revolutionary War. He wrote the lion's share of articles that make up The Federalist Papers, playing an important role in shaping the US Constitution and its critical part in forging America's national identity. He was a brilliant jurist and writer. And perhaps most importantly, as Washington's secretary of the treasury, Hamilton established America's free enterprise system. Clearly, Hamilton should not be bumped from the ten-spot by President Reagan or anybody else. As an economics major himself, the late President, I feel certain, would agree.
If Mr. Reagan is to be honored on our currency, perhaps a new denomination could be established that would feature him.
Something of Interest...
Mark Roberts' web log has a wonderful reflection on humility, inspired by the remnant of an ancient Roman sculpture on display at the Vatican. The fragment is a representation of the bust of the emperor Augustus. The original statue would have been over fifty feet tall.
Writes Roberts:
I like that!
Writes Roberts:
Historians acclaim Augustus as one of the great administrators of history. Under his able rule, the Roman Empire experienced unprecedented peace (the pax romana) and prosperity. Yet, ironically, all that remains of his giant statue is a big head. And this head is not the focal point of some temple in honor of Augustus the god, but is simply one exhibit in the immense Vatican Museum – a museum that ultimately honors someone who was merely an insignificant Jewish boy during the years of Augustus’ reign.
I like that!
Sunday, June 06, 2004
Never Run Out of Gas!
Second Timothy 1:3-7
Confirmation Sunday
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, June 6, 2004)
Down in Florida, there’s a sign posted along a highway as you come to a bridge that says: “It is against the law to run out of gas on this bridge.” That’s understandable. Every carload of people depends on every other carload of people to keep going. Otherwise, everybody’s progress stops.
The same is true in other parts of our lives. We depend on ourselves and on others to keep making progress. But more often than not, it seems, we run out of gas. Nearly ten years ago, Ann and I attended her twenty-fifth high school class reunion. Since Ann and I graduated just one year apart from the same high school, I knew lots of people in her class. But when I walked in, I was stunned. Looking people over, I turned to Ann and whispered a question: "Who invited all of these old people?" It wasn’t just their grey hair or their middle-age bulges. Most of us are “blessed” with those things after a certain point in our lives. It was the demeanor of many of our old schoolmates. They acted older than their years: rundown, almost afraid of living.
There’s a reason for that, I think. Most people seem to get to a particular point in their lives—it may be when they’re confirmed or they graduate or they get their first full-time job or they have their first child, or hit their fortieth birthday—and they sort of die. They run out of gas. They let milestones become millstones...or even tombstones. Henry David Thoreau had it right when he said that, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” It’s sad.
The novel and movie, The Natural, by Bernard Malamud, tells the story of a once-promising baseball player whose career is seemingly ended by an act of violence committed against him and the scandal that ensues. More than a decade later, that career is miraculously resurrected. But because of his age and his past injuries, he knows that he doesn’t have many playing years left. To his old high school sweetheart, he laments, “Things sure turned out different.”
Sometimes life can turn out so “different” from what we expect that we just give up, like one of those cars running out of gas on a Florida bridge. Disappointment leads to inertia and a decision to opt out of living.
Young people—those of you this morning affirming your intention to follow Jesus Christ throughout your adult lives and those of you who have just graduated from high school—the words of today’s Bible lesson are for everyone. But I picked them especially for you. God and we of the Church are counting on you, as we count on each other every day, to not run out of gas.
When disappointments and setbacks come, don’t give up. Jesus Christ died and rose for you so that, with a direct and personal relationship with God, you can keep growing, keep living, keep becoming the person God invented you to be! And that’s a process that never ends, even in eternity.
Our Bible lesson was written by the first century preacher, Paul, to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul and Timothy had a history, sort of like the history that our own Tim Vogel has with you young people. Paul had watched Timothy grow up in the loving Christian home created by his mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois. And elsewhere, Paul calls himself Timothy’s “spiritual father” and refers to Timothy as “my beloved child.”
In today’s lesson, Paul remembers that special moment when he placed his hand on Timothy’s head to ordain him as a pastor, much as I will place my hand on the heads of our Confirmands today. Paul tells Timothy:
"...I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline."
God has wonderful plans for those who follow Him...eternal plans. He doesn’t promise us easy lives. But He does promise to be with us and that ultimately, He will turn every evil that befalls us in this life into eternal good. That promise is for you, young people, and for everyone here this morning. God has work that only you and I in our unique ways can do. God has blessed us so that we will be blessings. If we followers of Jesus run out of gas, the whole world will pay the price. The world needs us!
That’s really what Paul is saying when he tells Timothy and us to rekindle the gifts of God. Another word for rekindle might be recharge. Every follower of Jesus Christ must recharge themselves in order to accomplish what God has in mind for our lives.
And another word for rekindle might be reposition. I’ve used this analogy before, but since the Reds are doing so well these days, I’ll use it again. In baseball, an outfielder has no control over what pitch the pitcher throws or over how the batter hits the ball. But a good outfielder will be able to anticipate where a hit ball is going and reposition himself to make the catch. God has blessings He wants to bat our way, beginning with the unearned gift of everlasting life. To receive it, we reposition ourselves by turning away from sin and surrendering to Christ. God also wants to give us the power and strength that comes from intimacy with Him. But again, to receive that free gift we need to reposition our lives, leaving time in our days for God to come to us.
But how do we do that? I laughed this past week when I read about a prison break from a minimum security prison in England. Two inmates escaped and immediately ran to a high-security prison. They did it on purpose. It seems that the two young men had just gone through drug rehab. But the discipline was so lax in the minimum security prison, with drugs bought and sold openly, that the two inmates, Audie Carr and Benjamin Clarke, were afraid that they would slip back into drug use again. They didn’t want that. So, they literally repositioned themselves so that through the discipline of the tougher prison, they could get the strength to keep their lives on the right path.
Over the past several years, we’ve talked at Friendship about seven habits of joyful people. Historically, the Church has called these habits, spiritual disciplines, habits that refuel us, rekindle our faith, reposition us to receive life from Jesus Christ.
The seven habits are: regular worship, service in Jesus’ Name, prayer, study of God’s Word, sharing your faith with others, encouraging others with God’s love, and giving to the cause of Christ. People who engage in these habits give God openings into their lives. They’re like doorways through which we welcome God to come into our hearts and minds. We may get wrinkled. We may get grey and flabby. But through these habits, our whole lives brim with the vitality, power, and passion that God gives to people who surrender to Him.
The other day, I spoke on the telephone with a friend of Philip’s, a former classmate of his from college. I’ll call her Christy. Christy isn’t having an easy time of it right now with the job that she’s working, getting started in life. But I know that she’s going to be okay because even in the midst of the challenges, she isn’t running out of gas. She’s rekindling her faith and refueling on God’s love by keeping her regular appointments with God. She clearly has incorporated the habits of prayer, worship, service, study of the Bible, witnessing about Christ, encouraging others, and giving in her everyday life. Later this summer, she’s going on yet another mission trip to Russia, sharing the Good News of our God Who loves us as we are and helps us to be everything we can be when Christ is our Lord and Savior!
One final thing. Followers of God make mistakes. Our judgments can be wrong. We can fail. We sin. But when those things happen, it isn’t time to give up. It’s time to look up! Ask God for forgiveness, for new wisdom, and for the power you need to go on living a good life for Jesus Christ. That is a prayer God always answers. He’ll answer it for everybody here this morning. In fact, sometime this week, I hope that everybody who has never done so before or who feels the need to recommit their life to Christ, will take some time to be alone with God and do what our Confirmands are going to do today. Tell the Lord that you know Jesus died and rose for you and grateful for that, you want to live a life in which you turn away from sin and turn toward Christ. Tell God that you want to make those seven habits the seven meeting places where day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out, you will meet the God Who loves you and is committed to helping you become the tremendous person you were born to be. This week and each day of our lives, let’s refuel on God, rekindling His gifts to us. When we do that, I guarantee that we will never run out of gas. We’ll just keep going, right into eternity!
[The story of the sign on the Florida Highway appears in Leonard Sweet's wonderful book, SoulSalsa.]
Confirmation Sunday
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, June 6, 2004)
Down in Florida, there’s a sign posted along a highway as you come to a bridge that says: “It is against the law to run out of gas on this bridge.” That’s understandable. Every carload of people depends on every other carload of people to keep going. Otherwise, everybody’s progress stops.
The same is true in other parts of our lives. We depend on ourselves and on others to keep making progress. But more often than not, it seems, we run out of gas. Nearly ten years ago, Ann and I attended her twenty-fifth high school class reunion. Since Ann and I graduated just one year apart from the same high school, I knew lots of people in her class. But when I walked in, I was stunned. Looking people over, I turned to Ann and whispered a question: "Who invited all of these old people?" It wasn’t just their grey hair or their middle-age bulges. Most of us are “blessed” with those things after a certain point in our lives. It was the demeanor of many of our old schoolmates. They acted older than their years: rundown, almost afraid of living.
There’s a reason for that, I think. Most people seem to get to a particular point in their lives—it may be when they’re confirmed or they graduate or they get their first full-time job or they have their first child, or hit their fortieth birthday—and they sort of die. They run out of gas. They let milestones become millstones...or even tombstones. Henry David Thoreau had it right when he said that, “Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.” It’s sad.
The novel and movie, The Natural, by Bernard Malamud, tells the story of a once-promising baseball player whose career is seemingly ended by an act of violence committed against him and the scandal that ensues. More than a decade later, that career is miraculously resurrected. But because of his age and his past injuries, he knows that he doesn’t have many playing years left. To his old high school sweetheart, he laments, “Things sure turned out different.”
Sometimes life can turn out so “different” from what we expect that we just give up, like one of those cars running out of gas on a Florida bridge. Disappointment leads to inertia and a decision to opt out of living.
Young people—those of you this morning affirming your intention to follow Jesus Christ throughout your adult lives and those of you who have just graduated from high school—the words of today’s Bible lesson are for everyone. But I picked them especially for you. God and we of the Church are counting on you, as we count on each other every day, to not run out of gas.
When disappointments and setbacks come, don’t give up. Jesus Christ died and rose for you so that, with a direct and personal relationship with God, you can keep growing, keep living, keep becoming the person God invented you to be! And that’s a process that never ends, even in eternity.
Our Bible lesson was written by the first century preacher, Paul, to a young pastor named Timothy. Paul and Timothy had a history, sort of like the history that our own Tim Vogel has with you young people. Paul had watched Timothy grow up in the loving Christian home created by his mother, Eunice, and grandmother, Lois. And elsewhere, Paul calls himself Timothy’s “spiritual father” and refers to Timothy as “my beloved child.”
In today’s lesson, Paul remembers that special moment when he placed his hand on Timothy’s head to ordain him as a pastor, much as I will place my hand on the heads of our Confirmands today. Paul tells Timothy:
"...I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands; for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice, but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline."
God has wonderful plans for those who follow Him...eternal plans. He doesn’t promise us easy lives. But He does promise to be with us and that ultimately, He will turn every evil that befalls us in this life into eternal good. That promise is for you, young people, and for everyone here this morning. God has work that only you and I in our unique ways can do. God has blessed us so that we will be blessings. If we followers of Jesus run out of gas, the whole world will pay the price. The world needs us!
That’s really what Paul is saying when he tells Timothy and us to rekindle the gifts of God. Another word for rekindle might be recharge. Every follower of Jesus Christ must recharge themselves in order to accomplish what God has in mind for our lives.
And another word for rekindle might be reposition. I’ve used this analogy before, but since the Reds are doing so well these days, I’ll use it again. In baseball, an outfielder has no control over what pitch the pitcher throws or over how the batter hits the ball. But a good outfielder will be able to anticipate where a hit ball is going and reposition himself to make the catch. God has blessings He wants to bat our way, beginning with the unearned gift of everlasting life. To receive it, we reposition ourselves by turning away from sin and surrendering to Christ. God also wants to give us the power and strength that comes from intimacy with Him. But again, to receive that free gift we need to reposition our lives, leaving time in our days for God to come to us.
But how do we do that? I laughed this past week when I read about a prison break from a minimum security prison in England. Two inmates escaped and immediately ran to a high-security prison. They did it on purpose. It seems that the two young men had just gone through drug rehab. But the discipline was so lax in the minimum security prison, with drugs bought and sold openly, that the two inmates, Audie Carr and Benjamin Clarke, were afraid that they would slip back into drug use again. They didn’t want that. So, they literally repositioned themselves so that through the discipline of the tougher prison, they could get the strength to keep their lives on the right path.
Over the past several years, we’ve talked at Friendship about seven habits of joyful people. Historically, the Church has called these habits, spiritual disciplines, habits that refuel us, rekindle our faith, reposition us to receive life from Jesus Christ.
The seven habits are: regular worship, service in Jesus’ Name, prayer, study of God’s Word, sharing your faith with others, encouraging others with God’s love, and giving to the cause of Christ. People who engage in these habits give God openings into their lives. They’re like doorways through which we welcome God to come into our hearts and minds. We may get wrinkled. We may get grey and flabby. But through these habits, our whole lives brim with the vitality, power, and passion that God gives to people who surrender to Him.
The other day, I spoke on the telephone with a friend of Philip’s, a former classmate of his from college. I’ll call her Christy. Christy isn’t having an easy time of it right now with the job that she’s working, getting started in life. But I know that she’s going to be okay because even in the midst of the challenges, she isn’t running out of gas. She’s rekindling her faith and refueling on God’s love by keeping her regular appointments with God. She clearly has incorporated the habits of prayer, worship, service, study of the Bible, witnessing about Christ, encouraging others, and giving in her everyday life. Later this summer, she’s going on yet another mission trip to Russia, sharing the Good News of our God Who loves us as we are and helps us to be everything we can be when Christ is our Lord and Savior!
One final thing. Followers of God make mistakes. Our judgments can be wrong. We can fail. We sin. But when those things happen, it isn’t time to give up. It’s time to look up! Ask God for forgiveness, for new wisdom, and for the power you need to go on living a good life for Jesus Christ. That is a prayer God always answers. He’ll answer it for everybody here this morning. In fact, sometime this week, I hope that everybody who has never done so before or who feels the need to recommit their life to Christ, will take some time to be alone with God and do what our Confirmands are going to do today. Tell the Lord that you know Jesus died and rose for you and grateful for that, you want to live a life in which you turn away from sin and turn toward Christ. Tell God that you want to make those seven habits the seven meeting places where day-in and day-out, week-in and week-out, you will meet the God Who loves you and is committed to helping you become the tremendous person you were born to be. This week and each day of our lives, let’s refuel on God, rekindling His gifts to us. When we do that, I guarantee that we will never run out of gas. We’ll just keep going, right into eternity!
[The story of the sign on the Florida Highway appears in Leonard Sweet's wonderful book, SoulSalsa.]
Saturday, June 05, 2004
About President Reagan
Looking at C-Span's airing of Ronald Reagan's Farewell Address of January 11, 1989, I was struck by what an incredible speaker he was. Because it had been some time since I had seen anything more than sound bites from Reagan addresses, I guess I had forgotten how well he deserved the title, the Great Communicator. In fact, he is peerless in that category among active politicians today.
And make no mistake, communication is absolutely fundamental in leadership. A leader with communication skills, including Reagan's enviable capacity for sticking to what was of central importance, can accomplish a great deal.
Whether Reagan was a great president or not is something that future historians, more removed from his time in office, will have to decide. To my mind, it's unlikely that he will be so judged because greatness is something elicited by the most challenging of circumstances and times. Reagan faced no Great Depression, Civil War, or World War Two. The fall of Soviet Communism, with which Reagan is often credited, was the inevitable result of that horrible system's inherent inertia as well as forty-plus years of the containment policy initiated by President Truman and, I firmly believe, prayer. And, contrary to his conservative principles, Reagan piled up the largest budget deficits in US history.
But that he wisely pursued just a few goals, undergirding them with his incredible skill as a communicator, setting the table for future Republican triumphs, cannot be taken away from Reagan. He was an effective chief executive and obviously a personally decent man.
And make no mistake, communication is absolutely fundamental in leadership. A leader with communication skills, including Reagan's enviable capacity for sticking to what was of central importance, can accomplish a great deal.
Whether Reagan was a great president or not is something that future historians, more removed from his time in office, will have to decide. To my mind, it's unlikely that he will be so judged because greatness is something elicited by the most challenging of circumstances and times. Reagan faced no Great Depression, Civil War, or World War Two. The fall of Soviet Communism, with which Reagan is often credited, was the inevitable result of that horrible system's inherent inertia as well as forty-plus years of the containment policy initiated by President Truman and, I firmly believe, prayer. And, contrary to his conservative principles, Reagan piled up the largest budget deficits in US history.
But that he wisely pursued just a few goals, undergirding them with his incredible skill as a communicator, setting the table for future Republican triumphs, cannot be taken away from Reagan. He was an effective chief executive and obviously a personally decent man.
Whatcha Reading?
I get asked all the time what I'm reading. I try to keep two or three books going at the same time. Doing so keeps my brain from moving into comfortable ruts and sometimes allows me to make interesting connections I wouldn't otherwise make.
Currently, I'm reading three books. One is Kevin Phillips' well-researched and rather brutal look at the Bush family, American Dynasty. Phillips, a one-time Republican thinker whose work in the late-60s and early-70s, anticipated the rise of the current GOP majority, is well-known among some for his longtime service as a pithy commentator on National Public Radio. (As you read his evocative prose in this book, you can almost hear Phillips enunciating each word.)
Like another Nixon era functionary, John W. Dean, Phillips is now a political independent and is highly critical of George W. Bush. He doesn't see Bush as a conventional Republican or conservative at all. Rather, he and the Bush clan are portrayed by Phillips as royalists who employ conservative rhetoric in order to pursue their primary ends: influence, cash, and power. It is a withering critique.
A second book is a revised edition of Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders. Whatever leadership a person may take on---whether as a pastor or a CEO, this book can be of immense help. Filled with wisdom about what it takes to lead, drawn primarily from the Bible, but also from History and other sources, this will help leaders lead with integrity, putting God's priorities first, one's ego last, and doing what is best for the people whom the leader is meant to serve. This is the second time I've read Spiritual Leadership and I heartily recommend it.
The third book I'm reading is part of the new Henry Holt and Company set, The American Presidents Series, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The books of the series are obviously meant to provide thoughtful readers with quick, general introductions to the lives and presidencies of figures they may not know well. Schlesinger has also shown an interesting penchant for selecting persons to write the biographies you might not first associate with their subjects.
The volume I'm reading at present is Rutherford B. Hayes by Hans Trefousse. I selected this book to start my foray into the series because Hayes, an Ohioan like me, is a bit more obscure to me, although I have always been intrigued by his moral sensibilities and the connection to places in Ohio with which I am personally familiar. The book sometimes seems truncated, subjected to an editing process which leaves one with an impoverished sense of the man or his motivations. But it does give a good overview of his life and whets my appetite for learning more about him.
Currently, I'm reading three books. One is Kevin Phillips' well-researched and rather brutal look at the Bush family, American Dynasty. Phillips, a one-time Republican thinker whose work in the late-60s and early-70s, anticipated the rise of the current GOP majority, is well-known among some for his longtime service as a pithy commentator on National Public Radio. (As you read his evocative prose in this book, you can almost hear Phillips enunciating each word.)
Like another Nixon era functionary, John W. Dean, Phillips is now a political independent and is highly critical of George W. Bush. He doesn't see Bush as a conventional Republican or conservative at all. Rather, he and the Bush clan are portrayed by Phillips as royalists who employ conservative rhetoric in order to pursue their primary ends: influence, cash, and power. It is a withering critique.
A second book is a revised edition of Spiritual Leadership by J. Oswald Sanders. Whatever leadership a person may take on---whether as a pastor or a CEO, this book can be of immense help. Filled with wisdom about what it takes to lead, drawn primarily from the Bible, but also from History and other sources, this will help leaders lead with integrity, putting God's priorities first, one's ego last, and doing what is best for the people whom the leader is meant to serve. This is the second time I've read Spiritual Leadership and I heartily recommend it.
The third book I'm reading is part of the new Henry Holt and Company set, The American Presidents Series, edited by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. The books of the series are obviously meant to provide thoughtful readers with quick, general introductions to the lives and presidencies of figures they may not know well. Schlesinger has also shown an interesting penchant for selecting persons to write the biographies you might not first associate with their subjects.
The volume I'm reading at present is Rutherford B. Hayes by Hans Trefousse. I selected this book to start my foray into the series because Hayes, an Ohioan like me, is a bit more obscure to me, although I have always been intrigued by his moral sensibilities and the connection to places in Ohio with which I am personally familiar. The book sometimes seems truncated, subjected to an editing process which leaves one with an impoverished sense of the man or his motivations. But it does give a good overview of his life and whets my appetite for learning more about him.
A Book for Remembering D-Day
Once upon a time, theology, the study of God, was considered the queen of all disciplines. Of course, nothing is more important in life than cultivating an understanding of and a relationship with God. So, I believe in the preeminent importance of theology. A lifelong study of God helps us understand our purpose in life, God's grace offered through Jesus Christ, and how we are to live with others, among other things. John Adams, America's second president, observed that American democracy would not long endure unless its citizens were marked by the selfless love for God and neighbor that come to those who have genuinely surrendered to the God known in Jesus Christ. I think that he was right and I believe that whether its importance is appreciated today or not.
But if theology is most important for us to study, second in importance, it seems to me, is the equally neglected discipline of History. People without an understanding of History operate in an anchorless vacuum. To be responsilble citizens, parents, neighbors, or human beings, it is simply imperative that people know about History. Jefferson spoke of this and convinced the young American Republic to make public education, including a strong commitment to civic education, a feature of our national life. Ronald Reagan, I noted today as C-Span aired his presidential farewell address of January 11, 1989, spoke of how important History and civic education are.
So, on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day, I want to recommend a great book that families can read together. It's one I read to my own family a few years ago. Citizen Soldiers, written by the late historian and biographer, Stephen Ambrose, tells the story of the soldier's war in Europe. I guarantee you that when you read it, there will be times when it moves you to tears and it will demonstrate how American democracy gave our fighting forces a leg-up in facing down tyranny during the Second World War.
But if theology is most important for us to study, second in importance, it seems to me, is the equally neglected discipline of History. People without an understanding of History operate in an anchorless vacuum. To be responsilble citizens, parents, neighbors, or human beings, it is simply imperative that people know about History. Jefferson spoke of this and convinced the young American Republic to make public education, including a strong commitment to civic education, a feature of our national life. Ronald Reagan, I noted today as C-Span aired his presidential farewell address of January 11, 1989, spoke of how important History and civic education are.
So, on the eve of the sixtieth anniversary of D-Day, I want to recommend a great book that families can read together. It's one I read to my own family a few years ago. Citizen Soldiers, written by the late historian and biographer, Stephen Ambrose, tells the story of the soldier's war in Europe. I guarantee you that when you read it, there will be times when it moves you to tears and it will demonstrate how American democracy gave our fighting forces a leg-up in facing down tyranny during the Second World War.
Friday, June 04, 2004
Dorado Covenant Signers Provide Voice for ELCA Majority
Senior pastors from a number of Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) congregations recently gathered to approve a simple statement of faith. The Dorado Covenant has since attracted the signatures of many pastors and laypeople from across the ELCA. I believe that this simple statement bespeaks the sentiments of the vast majority in the ELCA.
There is a crisis confronting this denomination of which both I and the congregation I serve are partners. In a nutshell, the crisis is over what is the ultimate authority over the Church's life, faith, and practice.
Lutherans have always been "people of the Word." That is, we have always held that the inspired Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the authoritative source and norm of all we say, do, and proclaim.
No Lutheran would claim to be perfect or to understand Scripture perfectly.
Every Lutheran would claim the Augsburg Confession's affirmation that it is sufficient for the unity of the Church that the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and the sacraments rightly administered. No other authority is needed but that of God as expressed in His Word, apprehended by faith, given to us by Jesus Christ.
But today in the ELCA, it seems that some would replace the authority of Scripture with the authority of an episcopacy.
Others would replace the Bible as God's authoritative voice with science, societal trends, sociological musings, or even fleeting emotions.
The most prominent current flashpoint in this crisis of authority is the debate and official study of sexuality and homosexuality. I believe that most members of the ELCA want to be welcoming to all people who desire to sincerely repent and wrestle with their sin and those who wish to sincerely battle their own temptations. This includes those who would identify themselves as being gay or lesbian. But each day, we face a steady drumbeat of propaganda---from both official and unofficial ELCA sources---telling us that such an open, loving attitude is insufficient. We're told, in effect, that we must now legitimize some sins. We're told that the Bible must be overridden by a new stance more in touch with feelings, than with God's clearly expressed will.
But it is cheap and eternally destructive grace to tell people that overt and unrepetentant rebellion against God is acceptable.
Being a coward by nature, I would prefer not having to stand with the Bible on this and other issues. And on the issue of homosexuality, I would like to be able to cave into what has clearly become the prevailing view of our culture. But as Christians, we are called to be countercultural and to be faithful to the whole counsel of God.
This is why I find the Dorado Covenant and its simple affirmations so refreshing and encouraging. They incite hope in me that we may yet see our Lutheran body clearly and unambiguously stand for the authority of Scripture in all phases of our lives.
Below is the text of the Dorado Covenant. You can learn more by going to the web site: http://www.doradocovenant.org/about.htm.
The Dorado Covenant
1. We covenant to teach a high view of Scripture. We trust the Bible to be the only final authority for all aspects of life.
2. We affirm an aggressive, positive stance on kingdom expansion and congregational growth.
3. We choose to advance the use of all spiritual gifts through unleashing the priesthood of all believers.
4. We teach and practice that a full sexual relationship belongs exclusively within the biblical boundaries of a publicly committed legal marriage between one man and one woman.
5. We believe that mission and ministry is best accomplished within the context of congregations. Facilitating that mission and ministry should be the central focus of all expressions of the Church.
The Original Signers
Bill Bohline, Hosanna, Lakeville, MN
John Bradosky, Epiphany, Dayton, OH.
Eric Burtness, St. Matthew, Beaverton, OR
Chuck DeHaven, St. Paul, New Braunfels, TX
Steve Dornbusch, Calvary, Golden Valley, MN
Roger Eigenfeld, St. Andrews, Mahtomedi, MN.
James Glesne, Decorah, Decorah, IA
Roger Gordon, King of Glory, Tempe, AZ
James Hinkhouse, Kinsmen, Houston, TX
David Housholder, Grace, Huntington Beach, CA
Mike Housholder, Hope, West Des Moines, IA
Tim Johnson, Zion, Anoka, MN
Mike Nelson, Alleluia, Naperville, IL
Ralph Olsen, King of Kings, Woodbury, MN
Olaf Roynesdal, East Side, Sioux Falls, SD
Scott Suskovic, Christ, Charlotte, NC
Paul Ulring, Upper Arlington, Columbus, OH
John Weber, Christ Our Shepherd, Peachtree City, GA
George Weinman, Roseville, Roseville, MN
David Zellmer, Lutheran Memorial, Pierre, SD
We invite individuals, pastors and church councils to sign this document.
There is a crisis confronting this denomination of which both I and the congregation I serve are partners. In a nutshell, the crisis is over what is the ultimate authority over the Church's life, faith, and practice.
Lutherans have always been "people of the Word." That is, we have always held that the inspired Scriptures of the Old and New Testament are the authoritative source and norm of all we say, do, and proclaim.
No Lutheran would claim to be perfect or to understand Scripture perfectly.
Every Lutheran would claim the Augsburg Confession's affirmation that it is sufficient for the unity of the Church that the Gospel is rightly proclaimed and the sacraments rightly administered. No other authority is needed but that of God as expressed in His Word, apprehended by faith, given to us by Jesus Christ.
But today in the ELCA, it seems that some would replace the authority of Scripture with the authority of an episcopacy.
Others would replace the Bible as God's authoritative voice with science, societal trends, sociological musings, or even fleeting emotions.
The most prominent current flashpoint in this crisis of authority is the debate and official study of sexuality and homosexuality. I believe that most members of the ELCA want to be welcoming to all people who desire to sincerely repent and wrestle with their sin and those who wish to sincerely battle their own temptations. This includes those who would identify themselves as being gay or lesbian. But each day, we face a steady drumbeat of propaganda---from both official and unofficial ELCA sources---telling us that such an open, loving attitude is insufficient. We're told, in effect, that we must now legitimize some sins. We're told that the Bible must be overridden by a new stance more in touch with feelings, than with God's clearly expressed will.
But it is cheap and eternally destructive grace to tell people that overt and unrepetentant rebellion against God is acceptable.
Being a coward by nature, I would prefer not having to stand with the Bible on this and other issues. And on the issue of homosexuality, I would like to be able to cave into what has clearly become the prevailing view of our culture. But as Christians, we are called to be countercultural and to be faithful to the whole counsel of God.
This is why I find the Dorado Covenant and its simple affirmations so refreshing and encouraging. They incite hope in me that we may yet see our Lutheran body clearly and unambiguously stand for the authority of Scripture in all phases of our lives.
Below is the text of the Dorado Covenant. You can learn more by going to the web site: http://www.doradocovenant.org/about.htm.
The Dorado Covenant
1. We covenant to teach a high view of Scripture. We trust the Bible to be the only final authority for all aspects of life.
2. We affirm an aggressive, positive stance on kingdom expansion and congregational growth.
3. We choose to advance the use of all spiritual gifts through unleashing the priesthood of all believers.
4. We teach and practice that a full sexual relationship belongs exclusively within the biblical boundaries of a publicly committed legal marriage between one man and one woman.
5. We believe that mission and ministry is best accomplished within the context of congregations. Facilitating that mission and ministry should be the central focus of all expressions of the Church.
The Original Signers
Bill Bohline, Hosanna, Lakeville, MN
John Bradosky, Epiphany, Dayton, OH.
Eric Burtness, St. Matthew, Beaverton, OR
Chuck DeHaven, St. Paul, New Braunfels, TX
Steve Dornbusch, Calvary, Golden Valley, MN
Roger Eigenfeld, St. Andrews, Mahtomedi, MN.
James Glesne, Decorah, Decorah, IA
Roger Gordon, King of Glory, Tempe, AZ
James Hinkhouse, Kinsmen, Houston, TX
David Housholder, Grace, Huntington Beach, CA
Mike Housholder, Hope, West Des Moines, IA
Tim Johnson, Zion, Anoka, MN
Mike Nelson, Alleluia, Naperville, IL
Ralph Olsen, King of Kings, Woodbury, MN
Olaf Roynesdal, East Side, Sioux Falls, SD
Scott Suskovic, Christ, Charlotte, NC
Paul Ulring, Upper Arlington, Columbus, OH
John Weber, Christ Our Shepherd, Peachtree City, GA
George Weinman, Roseville, Roseville, MN
David Zellmer, Lutheran Memorial, Pierre, SD
We invite individuals, pastors and church councils to sign this document.
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
A Lesson from Ike
Commemorations of the June 6, 1944, D-Day invasion at Normandy have drawn my mind to thoughts of its leader, Dwight Eisenhower. Ike, as he was called, led the Allies in the greatest amphibious military landing in history and in the subsequent successful campaign to liberate Europe from Nazi tyranny.
Shakespeare once observed that some have greatness thrust upon them and that was certainly true of Eisenhower. Through a long military career, he served capably. But by the time he’d reached his early fifties, it appeared that Eisenhower’s chances to achieve anything of note as a soldier were nil. It turned out though, that through his work under such difficult personalities as Douglas MacArthur and through personal development, Ike had become uniquely suited for commanding and working with an international fighting force brought together to defeat Hitler.
Eisenhower’s life demonstrates that it’s foolish to underestimate either the achievements or potential in others. Each human being, under the right circumstances, with affirmation and opportunity, is capable of being more and doing more than even they may realize. Every person is a precious creation of God.
This is something that Eisenhower himself seemed to know. In his book, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, Eisenhower recounts an incident that occurred when he was an upperclassman at West Point, the US Military Academy. It was the custom in those days for the first year students—Plebes—to be “hazed” or “crawled,” treated with disrespect by the other cadets. One day, Eisenhower recounts, a Plebe, scurrying to obey orders given to him by another upperclassman, literally ran into Eisenhower. The Plebe fell to the ground. Eisenhower writes that he used “all the sarcasm and scorn I could muster...,” and asked the guy what he had done before coming to the Point. “You look like a barber,” he told the cowering Plebe.
“He stood up,” Eisenhower writes, [and], “said softly, ‘I was a barber, sir.’ I didn’t have sense to apologize to him on the spot...I just turned my head and went to my tent where my roommate, P.A. Hodgson, was sitting. I looked at him and said, ‘P.A., I’m never going to crawl another Plebe as long as I live...I’ve just done something that was stupid and unforgivable. I managed to make a man ashamed of the work he did to earn a living.”
By all accounts, Eisenhower was as good as the vow he made that day. Thirty years later, while serving as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, he was known for the respect and reverence he showed for the lives of all under his command. Unlike other generals, when Eisenhower met with GIs, the citizen soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen who put their lives on the line in freedom’s defense, he always asked about their past lives and honored the civilian work to which he hoped they could return. His battle plans always strove to minimize the loss of life.
He extended this same consideration and respect to both the vanquished and to the victims of war. Eisenhower’s moving and shocked post-war accounts were among the first in-depth reports the world received about the Holocaust. To one who saw the value and potential in people, the murder of six-million Jews was profoundly disturbing.
I bring all this up because, it seems to me that we live in a crass time in which the dignity and potential of people are constantly demeaned. “Reality” TV shows derive much of their “entertainment value” and popularity from showing people being subjected to insult, unkindness, and condescension. We seem to forget that every human being is created, quoting a mysterious phrase appearing in Genesis in the Old Testament, “in the image of God.” Looking back sixty years later, at D-Day and the man who planned it, that phrase, denoting the dignity and potential of every human life, is a good thing to remember.
Shakespeare once observed that some have greatness thrust upon them and that was certainly true of Eisenhower. Through a long military career, he served capably. But by the time he’d reached his early fifties, it appeared that Eisenhower’s chances to achieve anything of note as a soldier were nil. It turned out though, that through his work under such difficult personalities as Douglas MacArthur and through personal development, Ike had become uniquely suited for commanding and working with an international fighting force brought together to defeat Hitler.
Eisenhower’s life demonstrates that it’s foolish to underestimate either the achievements or potential in others. Each human being, under the right circumstances, with affirmation and opportunity, is capable of being more and doing more than even they may realize. Every person is a precious creation of God.
This is something that Eisenhower himself seemed to know. In his book, At Ease: Stories I Tell to Friends, Eisenhower recounts an incident that occurred when he was an upperclassman at West Point, the US Military Academy. It was the custom in those days for the first year students—Plebes—to be “hazed” or “crawled,” treated with disrespect by the other cadets. One day, Eisenhower recounts, a Plebe, scurrying to obey orders given to him by another upperclassman, literally ran into Eisenhower. The Plebe fell to the ground. Eisenhower writes that he used “all the sarcasm and scorn I could muster...,” and asked the guy what he had done before coming to the Point. “You look like a barber,” he told the cowering Plebe.
“He stood up,” Eisenhower writes, [and], “said softly, ‘I was a barber, sir.’ I didn’t have sense to apologize to him on the spot...I just turned my head and went to my tent where my roommate, P.A. Hodgson, was sitting. I looked at him and said, ‘P.A., I’m never going to crawl another Plebe as long as I live...I’ve just done something that was stupid and unforgivable. I managed to make a man ashamed of the work he did to earn a living.”
By all accounts, Eisenhower was as good as the vow he made that day. Thirty years later, while serving as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, he was known for the respect and reverence he showed for the lives of all under his command. Unlike other generals, when Eisenhower met with GIs, the citizen soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen who put their lives on the line in freedom’s defense, he always asked about their past lives and honored the civilian work to which he hoped they could return. His battle plans always strove to minimize the loss of life.
He extended this same consideration and respect to both the vanquished and to the victims of war. Eisenhower’s moving and shocked post-war accounts were among the first in-depth reports the world received about the Holocaust. To one who saw the value and potential in people, the murder of six-million Jews was profoundly disturbing.
I bring all this up because, it seems to me that we live in a crass time in which the dignity and potential of people are constantly demeaned. “Reality” TV shows derive much of their “entertainment value” and popularity from showing people being subjected to insult, unkindness, and condescension. We seem to forget that every human being is created, quoting a mysterious phrase appearing in Genesis in the Old Testament, “in the image of God.” Looking back sixty years later, at D-Day and the man who planned it, that phrase, denoting the dignity and potential of every human life, is a good thing to remember.
Monday, May 31, 2004
What is the American Dream? (short version)
[A column I wrote over four years ago, which is under my May 30, 2004 post, seems timely today. So, I revised it to fit current specifications for columns appearing in the local chain of suburban Cincinnati newspapers for which I write, and submitted the following.]
Today, when people talk about 'the American Dream,' they seem to view it as a synonym for making lots of money. But that isn't how the phrase was originally used in the early part of the twentieth century.
From the perspective of the phrase's originator, the American Dream is about two things.
First, it's the dream of being free: free to worship as one wishes, free to speak one's mind and to effect what happens in government, free to choose the career path that seems best for us, free to get an education, free to marry whomever we wish to marry, and so on.
Second, it's the dream that our freedom can be kept in tension with the responsibility that each of us bears to treat our neighbor with respect and consideration.
Freedom within a community of caring. That's the American Dream.
It's true that the United States is flawed and that our reality rarely matches our ideals. We must admit that there have been terrible things done by our country.
But when we Americans are at our best, it's when we live out this American Dream. It happens when we let each other enjoy the freedom this country was founded to bring and when we care for others.
For me, the American Dream is best articulated in the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Written by Emma Lazarus, it says nothing about money or possessions and reads in part:
"'Give me your tired, your poor,
'Your huddled masses yearning to be free,
'The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
'Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,
'I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"
The real American Dream is a vision of a land (and a world) in which every person is free to be all that God made them to be and where every person is committed to helping others fulfill that same destiny.
There is so much more to being an American or a human being than how much we possess. The penetrating question of Jesus Christ challenges us to see that. "What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose...themselves?" Jesus asks. His question helps us to see what we can readily observe in America today: It's possible to have fat wallets and empty lives.
The only way we can have a society characterized by freedom within a community of caring is if we turn to Jesus, God-in-the-flesh. Jesus gives us the relationships with God and neighbor we need to use freedom wisely and to share it with our neighbor.
I'm not perfect. (Just ask my family and friends.) But when I turn my life to Jesus Christ, He gives me the confidence and security I need to be who God made me to be. He also gives me the confidence and security to let others be who God made them to be.
The American Dream has little to do with politics, even less with economics. And the surest route to living the real American Dream--freedom in a community of caring--is through Jesus Christ. Let's follow Him and make the dream a reality!
Today, when people talk about 'the American Dream,' they seem to view it as a synonym for making lots of money. But that isn't how the phrase was originally used in the early part of the twentieth century.
From the perspective of the phrase's originator, the American Dream is about two things.
First, it's the dream of being free: free to worship as one wishes, free to speak one's mind and to effect what happens in government, free to choose the career path that seems best for us, free to get an education, free to marry whomever we wish to marry, and so on.
Second, it's the dream that our freedom can be kept in tension with the responsibility that each of us bears to treat our neighbor with respect and consideration.
Freedom within a community of caring. That's the American Dream.
It's true that the United States is flawed and that our reality rarely matches our ideals. We must admit that there have been terrible things done by our country.
But when we Americans are at our best, it's when we live out this American Dream. It happens when we let each other enjoy the freedom this country was founded to bring and when we care for others.
For me, the American Dream is best articulated in the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. Written by Emma Lazarus, it says nothing about money or possessions and reads in part:
"'Give me your tired, your poor,
'Your huddled masses yearning to be free,
'The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
'Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,
'I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"
The real American Dream is a vision of a land (and a world) in which every person is free to be all that God made them to be and where every person is committed to helping others fulfill that same destiny.
There is so much more to being an American or a human being than how much we possess. The penetrating question of Jesus Christ challenges us to see that. "What does it profit them if they gain the whole world, but lose...themselves?" Jesus asks. His question helps us to see what we can readily observe in America today: It's possible to have fat wallets and empty lives.
The only way we can have a society characterized by freedom within a community of caring is if we turn to Jesus, God-in-the-flesh. Jesus gives us the relationships with God and neighbor we need to use freedom wisely and to share it with our neighbor.
I'm not perfect. (Just ask my family and friends.) But when I turn my life to Jesus Christ, He gives me the confidence and security I need to be who God made me to be. He also gives me the confidence and security to let others be who God made them to be.
The American Dream has little to do with politics, even less with economics. And the surest route to living the real American Dream--freedom in a community of caring--is through Jesus Christ. Let's follow Him and make the dream a reality!
Sunday, May 30, 2004
What is the American Dream? (original version)
[This is a column I wrote about four years ago. It seems relevant today.]
Recently, my daughter's German pen pal, a fifteen year old named Sarah, wrote to her with an interesting question. "What," she asked, "is the American Dream?"
My daughter asked me to answer that question from my perspective. Here's part of what I wrote:
"Sarah: Today, when people talk about 'the American Dream,' it seems that they have the idea only of making lots of money and having possessions. But that isn't how I remember hearing the phrase used when I was growing up.
"I've done a little research recently, learning that the phrase was first used in the early part of the twentieth century. To the originator of the phrase and to me, the American Dream means two things. First, it means the dream of being free: free to worship as one wishes, free to speak one's mind and to effect what happens in government, free to choose the career path that seems best for us, free to get an education, free to marry who we wish to marry, and so on.
"But a second part of the American Dream is that our freedom is to be kept in tension with the responsibility that each of us bears to treat our neighbor with respect and consideration.
"Freedom within a community of caring. That's the American Dream.
"It's definitely true that the United States is flawed and there have been terrible things that have been done in this country. Slavery and the continued discrimination that African-Americans face here today is wrong. The mistreatment of Native Americans is a horrible blot on our country's history. During the Second World War, Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps for no reason, even as many of their sons were fighting and dying in the war. We are horribly materialistic and our wealth seems to make us insensitive to the needs of the poor within our own country and in the rest of the world. We've desecrated the environment.
"But when we're at our best, it's when we're living out the American Dream. We're letting each other enjoy the freedom this country was founded to bring and we're caring for each other.
"I think that the American Dream is best summarized by the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Written by Emma Lazarus, it says nothing about money or possessions:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips, 'Give me your tired, your poor,
'Your huddled masses yearning to be free,
'The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
'Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,
'I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"
Obviously, Sarah's question was important to me. I'd very much like to see an end brought to our materialistic interpretation of the American Dream. I'd like to see it replaced by the dream of a society--and a world--in which every person is free to be all that God made them to be and where every person is committed to helping others fulfill that same destiny.
There is so much more to being human than how much stuff we possess. Time and again, I hear the penetrating question of Jesus Christ, "What does it profit them if they gain the whole, but lose...themselves?" We can have fat wallets and empty lives.
Through my forty-six years on this planet, I've come to believe that the only way we can have a society characterized by freedom within a community of caring is if all of us turn to Jesus Christ, God-in-the-flesh. Jesus gives us the right relationships with God and neighbor we all need just to live good lives on this earth, not to mention in eternity.
But, lest you think I feel bleak, know this: I wake up with enthusiasm each morning because I can't wait to share Jesus Christ with more people. Jesus can change this world one person at a time! And I'm out to let everybody know that.
I'm not perfect. Far from it! But when I turn my life to Jesus Christ, I find that He gives me the confidence and security I need to be who God made me to be. He also gives me the confidence and security to let others be who God made them to be.
The surest route to the real American Dream--freedom in a community of caring--is through Jesus Christ. I hope you'll join me in following Him.
Recently, my daughter's German pen pal, a fifteen year old named Sarah, wrote to her with an interesting question. "What," she asked, "is the American Dream?"
My daughter asked me to answer that question from my perspective. Here's part of what I wrote:
"Sarah: Today, when people talk about 'the American Dream,' it seems that they have the idea only of making lots of money and having possessions. But that isn't how I remember hearing the phrase used when I was growing up.
"I've done a little research recently, learning that the phrase was first used in the early part of the twentieth century. To the originator of the phrase and to me, the American Dream means two things. First, it means the dream of being free: free to worship as one wishes, free to speak one's mind and to effect what happens in government, free to choose the career path that seems best for us, free to get an education, free to marry who we wish to marry, and so on.
"But a second part of the American Dream is that our freedom is to be kept in tension with the responsibility that each of us bears to treat our neighbor with respect and consideration.
"Freedom within a community of caring. That's the American Dream.
"It's definitely true that the United States is flawed and there have been terrible things that have been done in this country. Slavery and the continued discrimination that African-Americans face here today is wrong. The mistreatment of Native Americans is a horrible blot on our country's history. During the Second World War, Japanese Americans were placed in internment camps for no reason, even as many of their sons were fighting and dying in the war. We are horribly materialistic and our wealth seems to make us insensitive to the needs of the poor within our own country and in the rest of the world. We've desecrated the environment.
"But when we're at our best, it's when we're living out the American Dream. We're letting each other enjoy the freedom this country was founded to bring and we're caring for each other.
"I think that the American Dream is best summarized by the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Written by Emma Lazarus, it says nothing about money or possessions:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she
With silent lips, 'Give me your tired, your poor,
'Your huddled masses yearning to be free,
'The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
'Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me,
'I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'"
Obviously, Sarah's question was important to me. I'd very much like to see an end brought to our materialistic interpretation of the American Dream. I'd like to see it replaced by the dream of a society--and a world--in which every person is free to be all that God made them to be and where every person is committed to helping others fulfill that same destiny.
There is so much more to being human than how much stuff we possess. Time and again, I hear the penetrating question of Jesus Christ, "What does it profit them if they gain the whole, but lose...themselves?" We can have fat wallets and empty lives.
Through my forty-six years on this planet, I've come to believe that the only way we can have a society characterized by freedom within a community of caring is if all of us turn to Jesus Christ, God-in-the-flesh. Jesus gives us the right relationships with God and neighbor we all need just to live good lives on this earth, not to mention in eternity.
But, lest you think I feel bleak, know this: I wake up with enthusiasm each morning because I can't wait to share Jesus Christ with more people. Jesus can change this world one person at a time! And I'm out to let everybody know that.
I'm not perfect. Far from it! But when I turn my life to Jesus Christ, I find that He gives me the confidence and security I need to be who God made me to be. He also gives me the confidence and security to let others be who God made them to be.
The surest route to the real American Dream--freedom in a community of caring--is through Jesus Christ. I hope you'll join me in following Him.
How to Fulfill Our Mission
Acts 2:1-11
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 30, 2004)
Back in the 1950s, the operator of a lighthouse on the Atlantic coast was a popular man. That’s because he was so kind and considerate. Recreational boaters knew that if they ever ran out of gas while out cruising or fishing, they could contact the man at the lighthouse and he would show up with a few gallons of gas to get them going again.
One week, a large number of boaters had asked for the lighthouse operator’s help. He hadn’t noticed that with all the gas he gave away, he was running low. This was the same fuel he needed to operate the generator that powered the lighthouse.
You can imagine what happened. That week, there was a ferocious storm. Just when an incoming ship needed its way lighted into the harbor, there was no gas to power the lighthouse. Without its light, hundreds of people died at sea.
The lighthouse operator was charged with criminal negligence. One person after another testified on his behalf. They told of how helpful the man was, how he was always willing to give a hand to those in distress.
Ultimately though, the jury convicted him. When it came time for the judge to sentence the man, he meted out the maximum penalty and explained: “We’ve heard the compelling testimony of many people regarding your kindness and compassion, sir. But in doing all your good deeds, you forgot one important thing: the fundamental mission of a lighthouse operator is operating the lighthouse.”
Pentecost comes around every year to remind the Church that while there may be many things in which you and I can be involved and the world may hail us for being kind and compassionate, friendly and considerate, we really have just one mission. And if we fail at that, we may as well go out of business.
Jesus’ first followers, about one-hundred-twenty of them, we’re told, were gathered in a locked room in Jerusalem. This was during Pentecost, one of the great feasts of the Jewish faith, a time when Jerusalem’s streets were clogged with people, much as Washington, D.C. has been this weekend for the dedication of the World War Two Memorial. Pentecost fell fifty days after Passover. For those first Jesus-Followers that year, it had been fifty days since Jesus rose from the dead and ten days since He had ascended back into heaven. When Jesus last saw them, He gave them instructions: “Go back to Jerusalem and pray. At the right time, I’ll send My Holy Spirit. Filled with His power, you’ll be able to fulfill your mission in life. You’ll be able to share the Good News that everyone who turns from sin and entrusts their lives to Me...whoever will believe in Me...will have peace in their souls, peace with God, peace with others, and live forever with God.”
Sharing Jesus with others. Letting people know that they can turn from sin and through Jesus, be with God forever. That is the mission of the Church. It’s the mission of every believer in Jesus Christ—whether we’re plumbers, teachers, engineers, homemakers, or even preachers. With words, deeds, and lives, we’re to let people know about the free gift of new and never ending life offered to all by our God-in-the-flesh Savior, Jesus Christ.
And on that special Pentecost Day in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit came to make it possible for Jesus-Followers to do their job. The Spirit still comes to believers who are open to Him. And yet, when we look at the sorry mess the world is in today, the Church seems powerless and irrelevant. We get involved in millions of different things from social gatherings to road clean-up projects. All of these activities may be laudable. But you and I know that what the world needs more than anything is Jesus Christ. If we who are part of Christ’s Church don’t share Christ with the world, who will?
The actions of Jesus' followers on that special Pentecost following Jesus’ ascension can help us learn how to share Christ with a world in desperate need of Him.
First, we must be humble. A man decided to try skydiving one day. On his first jump, his chute wouldn’t open. The auxiliary chute didn’t either. He was falling with no more options. To his amazement, something started coming towards him from the ground at a rapid speed. It was a man. At the moment when they passed each other, the parachutist cried out, “Do you know anything about parachutes?” “No,” the guy shouted back. “Do you know anything about gas stoves?” Both of those guys could have used some help! It might have been theirs had they humbly asked for it earlier.
If you’re a normal human being, you’re bound to get frightened by the prospect of sharing your faith in Christ with someone else. Inviting them to worship. Telling them what Christ has done for you. We wonder if people will like us or dismiss us or see us as Bible-thumpers. We need to be humble enough to go to God and admit our need of His help.
Jesus’ first followers, a crowd not known for their boldness, were given a huge mission: share Christ with the world. They had already seen Jesus murdered. They knew that doing anything in Jesus’ Name was going to be risky business. And yet, they’d also seen Jesus rise from the dead. They knew that He gave forgiveness and hope to anyone who follows Him, no matter how far a person they may have wandered from God. They knew that the lives of people who follow Jesus are better forever. So, they humbly went to God and admitted they couldn’t do the mission that Jesus gave them without the Holy Spirit Jesus had promised to them.
It’s amazing the promises God makes to people who humbly rely on Him. Listen to two of them:
“If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time.”
When we empty ourselves of egotism and self-doubt, God fills us with His power. He sends us confidence, healthy self-esteem, and the ability to fulfill our mission as followers of Christ.
We need humility. We also need to be honest. We need to admit to our helplessness not just to God, but to each other. The world’s problems are huge. We can’t face them, solve them, or deal with them without God.
I was once talking with a woman active in her church, but unencumbered by that fusty churchiness that can turn people off of God. She was real. She told me convincingly one day that there is great power that comes when people are able to admit their helplessness to each other. “You know where I learned that?” she asked me. When I said, “No,” she told me, “The sad thing is that I didn’t learn it in church. I learned it at Alcoholics Anonymous.”
AA, rooted as it is in Christ and the Church, understands the power that comes to people when they admit their powerlessness. Too often in the institutionalized Church, we’re so busy trying to fool people into thinking that everything is okay in our lives, that we forget this truth. But God’s Word tells us that His power is perfected in our weakness. God can only use people honest enough to admit their weakness.
A pastor I read about was a talented preacher. People would flock to hear him from miles around. Then a strange thing happened. He developed the most horrible case of stage fright and stuttering. He literally could not preach any more. He left his church. His wife took on a second job and they and their family moved in with her parents. He wrote desperate letters to colleagues and classmates, asking for their prayers on his behalf. That pastor never did get over his stage fright or stuttering. But in owning his weakness and asking for prayers, several people got the idea for a new ministry for him. They invited him to wrtie for a magazine. He was so good at that, he was later hired as an editor. Later still, he became a writer and eventually, a producer of inspiring TV and radio shows that touched millions of people.
Just before the events we’re told about in today’s Bible lesson happened, the book of Acts says that Jesus’ followers huddled together, “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” They were humble before God and honest with one another and God sent the Holy Spirit so that they could fulfill their mission.
And finally, those first followers of Jesus show us another critical element to explain how you and I can share Christ with others: They did it. They trusted God’s promise and went out into the city and shared the Good News of Jesus with the world around them. And thank God they did! Because they did, you and I live each day in the hope of Christ and the peace of God. They passed the message of Christ onto others. And now it’s up to us. May we never forget our mission of sharing Christ with others. And may we take the three simple steps taken by those first followers of Jesus: humbly asking for God’s help; honestly owning our weakness to one another; and then, powered by God’s Spirit, sharing the best news the world will ever hear, the Good News of Jesus Christ!
[The story of the lighthouse operator is one told by Pastor Gerald Mann in one of his messages. The story of the parachutist was told by Steve Goodier in his book, Touching Moments: 60-second readings that touch the mind and the heart. Inspiration for much of this message comes from the book, Humility by C. Peter Wagner.]
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 30, 2004)
Back in the 1950s, the operator of a lighthouse on the Atlantic coast was a popular man. That’s because he was so kind and considerate. Recreational boaters knew that if they ever ran out of gas while out cruising or fishing, they could contact the man at the lighthouse and he would show up with a few gallons of gas to get them going again.
One week, a large number of boaters had asked for the lighthouse operator’s help. He hadn’t noticed that with all the gas he gave away, he was running low. This was the same fuel he needed to operate the generator that powered the lighthouse.
You can imagine what happened. That week, there was a ferocious storm. Just when an incoming ship needed its way lighted into the harbor, there was no gas to power the lighthouse. Without its light, hundreds of people died at sea.
The lighthouse operator was charged with criminal negligence. One person after another testified on his behalf. They told of how helpful the man was, how he was always willing to give a hand to those in distress.
Ultimately though, the jury convicted him. When it came time for the judge to sentence the man, he meted out the maximum penalty and explained: “We’ve heard the compelling testimony of many people regarding your kindness and compassion, sir. But in doing all your good deeds, you forgot one important thing: the fundamental mission of a lighthouse operator is operating the lighthouse.”
Pentecost comes around every year to remind the Church that while there may be many things in which you and I can be involved and the world may hail us for being kind and compassionate, friendly and considerate, we really have just one mission. And if we fail at that, we may as well go out of business.
Jesus’ first followers, about one-hundred-twenty of them, we’re told, were gathered in a locked room in Jerusalem. This was during Pentecost, one of the great feasts of the Jewish faith, a time when Jerusalem’s streets were clogged with people, much as Washington, D.C. has been this weekend for the dedication of the World War Two Memorial. Pentecost fell fifty days after Passover. For those first Jesus-Followers that year, it had been fifty days since Jesus rose from the dead and ten days since He had ascended back into heaven. When Jesus last saw them, He gave them instructions: “Go back to Jerusalem and pray. At the right time, I’ll send My Holy Spirit. Filled with His power, you’ll be able to fulfill your mission in life. You’ll be able to share the Good News that everyone who turns from sin and entrusts their lives to Me...whoever will believe in Me...will have peace in their souls, peace with God, peace with others, and live forever with God.”
Sharing Jesus with others. Letting people know that they can turn from sin and through Jesus, be with God forever. That is the mission of the Church. It’s the mission of every believer in Jesus Christ—whether we’re plumbers, teachers, engineers, homemakers, or even preachers. With words, deeds, and lives, we’re to let people know about the free gift of new and never ending life offered to all by our God-in-the-flesh Savior, Jesus Christ.
And on that special Pentecost Day in Jerusalem, the Holy Spirit came to make it possible for Jesus-Followers to do their job. The Spirit still comes to believers who are open to Him. And yet, when we look at the sorry mess the world is in today, the Church seems powerless and irrelevant. We get involved in millions of different things from social gatherings to road clean-up projects. All of these activities may be laudable. But you and I know that what the world needs more than anything is Jesus Christ. If we who are part of Christ’s Church don’t share Christ with the world, who will?
The actions of Jesus' followers on that special Pentecost following Jesus’ ascension can help us learn how to share Christ with a world in desperate need of Him.
First, we must be humble. A man decided to try skydiving one day. On his first jump, his chute wouldn’t open. The auxiliary chute didn’t either. He was falling with no more options. To his amazement, something started coming towards him from the ground at a rapid speed. It was a man. At the moment when they passed each other, the parachutist cried out, “Do you know anything about parachutes?” “No,” the guy shouted back. “Do you know anything about gas stoves?” Both of those guys could have used some help! It might have been theirs had they humbly asked for it earlier.
If you’re a normal human being, you’re bound to get frightened by the prospect of sharing your faith in Christ with someone else. Inviting them to worship. Telling them what Christ has done for you. We wonder if people will like us or dismiss us or see us as Bible-thumpers. We need to be humble enough to go to God and admit our need of His help.
Jesus’ first followers, a crowd not known for their boldness, were given a huge mission: share Christ with the world. They had already seen Jesus murdered. They knew that doing anything in Jesus’ Name was going to be risky business. And yet, they’d also seen Jesus rise from the dead. They knew that He gave forgiveness and hope to anyone who follows Him, no matter how far a person they may have wandered from God. They knew that the lives of people who follow Jesus are better forever. So, they humbly went to God and admitted they couldn’t do the mission that Jesus gave them without the Holy Spirit Jesus had promised to them.
It’s amazing the promises God makes to people who humbly rely on Him. Listen to two of them:
“If My people, who are called by My Name, will humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
“Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that He may exalt you in due time.”
When we empty ourselves of egotism and self-doubt, God fills us with His power. He sends us confidence, healthy self-esteem, and the ability to fulfill our mission as followers of Christ.
We need humility. We also need to be honest. We need to admit to our helplessness not just to God, but to each other. The world’s problems are huge. We can’t face them, solve them, or deal with them without God.
I was once talking with a woman active in her church, but unencumbered by that fusty churchiness that can turn people off of God. She was real. She told me convincingly one day that there is great power that comes when people are able to admit their helplessness to each other. “You know where I learned that?” she asked me. When I said, “No,” she told me, “The sad thing is that I didn’t learn it in church. I learned it at Alcoholics Anonymous.”
AA, rooted as it is in Christ and the Church, understands the power that comes to people when they admit their powerlessness. Too often in the institutionalized Church, we’re so busy trying to fool people into thinking that everything is okay in our lives, that we forget this truth. But God’s Word tells us that His power is perfected in our weakness. God can only use people honest enough to admit their weakness.
A pastor I read about was a talented preacher. People would flock to hear him from miles around. Then a strange thing happened. He developed the most horrible case of stage fright and stuttering. He literally could not preach any more. He left his church. His wife took on a second job and they and their family moved in with her parents. He wrote desperate letters to colleagues and classmates, asking for their prayers on his behalf. That pastor never did get over his stage fright or stuttering. But in owning his weakness and asking for prayers, several people got the idea for a new ministry for him. They invited him to wrtie for a magazine. He was so good at that, he was later hired as an editor. Later still, he became a writer and eventually, a producer of inspiring TV and radio shows that touched millions of people.
Just before the events we’re told about in today’s Bible lesson happened, the book of Acts says that Jesus’ followers huddled together, “constantly devoting themselves to prayer.” They were humble before God and honest with one another and God sent the Holy Spirit so that they could fulfill their mission.
And finally, those first followers of Jesus show us another critical element to explain how you and I can share Christ with others: They did it. They trusted God’s promise and went out into the city and shared the Good News of Jesus with the world around them. And thank God they did! Because they did, you and I live each day in the hope of Christ and the peace of God. They passed the message of Christ onto others. And now it’s up to us. May we never forget our mission of sharing Christ with others. And may we take the three simple steps taken by those first followers of Jesus: humbly asking for God’s help; honestly owning our weakness to one another; and then, powered by God’s Spirit, sharing the best news the world will ever hear, the Good News of Jesus Christ!
[The story of the lighthouse operator is one told by Pastor Gerald Mann in one of his messages. The story of the parachutist was told by Steve Goodier in his book, Touching Moments: 60-second readings that touch the mind and the heart. Inspiration for much of this message comes from the book, Humility by C. Peter Wagner.]
Friday, May 28, 2004
Pentecost Prayer Requests
This coming Sunday is Pentecost, the birthday of the Church. It was on the first Pentecost after Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension back into heaven that God sent the Holy Spirit to the praying followers of Jesus. The Spirit made it possible for this once-timid bunch of "losers" to move into the world and communicate the Good News of a God Who is for us and has proved it through Jesus.
That continues to be the thing that makes the church the church: We're the community that in word and deed, shares the hope of Jesus Christ. Peter, who gave a great sermon on that Pentecost, writes elsewhere in the New Testament to Christians: "Be prepared always to give an account of the hope that is in you, but do it with gentleness and reverence."
In a world that has gone crazy with fear, hatred, violence, promiscuity, and war, may the Church always be so prepared!
According to Acts 1:14, Jesus' earliest followers prepared themselves to become the church and to share the Good News of Jesus by spending time in humble, submissive, surrendering prayer and worship. When we spend time with God in prayer and in looking at His Word, He pumps power, insight, courage, and compassion into our lives.
This Pentecost, we need to pray for forgiveness for our sins of selfishness and hard-heartedness. (I know that this rotten old sinner needs to do that anyway.)
We need to pray that as on that special Pentecost after Jesus' ascension, God will fill us with the Holy Spirit and we can be renewed in sharing Jesus with the world.
This Pentecost weekend, please also keep the following concerns in your prayers:
(1) Pray for the people of Chechnya. They continue to be subjected to the most oppressive and ruthless treatment imaginable, at the hands of their Russian overlords.
(2) Pray for the people of Sudan, also subjected to oppressive and violent treatment.
(3) Pray for the health and safety of the little girl our church sponsors through World Vision. Sinanzinkosi Moyo, who turned seven years old this past Sunday, lives in a little village in Zimbabwe. Pray that she will grow physically strong and spiritually strong, relying on the Lord Jesus Christ.
(4) Pray for the peoples of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. These two nations, which share an island in our Western Hemisphere, have recently been afflicted with flooding. Haiti, the most impoverished nation in the West and among the poorest in the world, has been afflicted for decades by political turmoil, by governments which inflict torture and murder on people, and by the grim oppression of voodoo superstitions. Pray that God will help both countries to be free of their past and to be open to the freedom of Jesus Christ as they rebuild their lives.
(5) Pray for those victimized by flooding in our own midwest. Ask God to help them rebuild their lives and to sense that they are being empowered by Christ as they do.
(6) Pray for an end to the fighting in Iraq. Pray for the people of Iraq, that God will help them to rebuild their lives. Pray for the protection of military personnel. Pray for the protection of relief workers and of innocent civilians. Please pray for the safe release of Matt Maupin from his captivity in Iraq.
(7) Pray for the imprisoned peoples of China, North Korea, and Cuba. Grant that God will make a way for them to be free even in their oprression, free from sin, death, and futility through Jesus Christ!
(8) Pray for an end to the deadly impasse between Palestinians and Israelis. Ask that God will insure that the legitimate aspirations of both peoples will be met and that peace will reign between them.
(9) Pray that God will bless the people of Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Cincinnati, one of our neighboring parishes, as they dedicate a building addition on Pentecost Sunday. Ask God to help the church to use the new facility to His glory. Also ask God to protect the church from idolizing the building. Pray that God will help the people to see the bricks and mortar they dedicate as tools to be used in their mission of loving God and loving neighbor. Ask God to help them to wear the place out glorifying Him!
(10) Ask that God will protect the world from terror.
(11) Pray that we Americans will hunger and thirst for Jesus Christ. Ask God to help us to humbly submit to Christ, turn from sin, and love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Have a blessed Pentecost celebration!
That continues to be the thing that makes the church the church: We're the community that in word and deed, shares the hope of Jesus Christ. Peter, who gave a great sermon on that Pentecost, writes elsewhere in the New Testament to Christians: "Be prepared always to give an account of the hope that is in you, but do it with gentleness and reverence."
In a world that has gone crazy with fear, hatred, violence, promiscuity, and war, may the Church always be so prepared!
According to Acts 1:14, Jesus' earliest followers prepared themselves to become the church and to share the Good News of Jesus by spending time in humble, submissive, surrendering prayer and worship. When we spend time with God in prayer and in looking at His Word, He pumps power, insight, courage, and compassion into our lives.
This Pentecost, we need to pray for forgiveness for our sins of selfishness and hard-heartedness. (I know that this rotten old sinner needs to do that anyway.)
We need to pray that as on that special Pentecost after Jesus' ascension, God will fill us with the Holy Spirit and we can be renewed in sharing Jesus with the world.
This Pentecost weekend, please also keep the following concerns in your prayers:
(1) Pray for the people of Chechnya. They continue to be subjected to the most oppressive and ruthless treatment imaginable, at the hands of their Russian overlords.
(2) Pray for the people of Sudan, also subjected to oppressive and violent treatment.
(3) Pray for the health and safety of the little girl our church sponsors through World Vision. Sinanzinkosi Moyo, who turned seven years old this past Sunday, lives in a little village in Zimbabwe. Pray that she will grow physically strong and spiritually strong, relying on the Lord Jesus Christ.
(4) Pray for the peoples of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. These two nations, which share an island in our Western Hemisphere, have recently been afflicted with flooding. Haiti, the most impoverished nation in the West and among the poorest in the world, has been afflicted for decades by political turmoil, by governments which inflict torture and murder on people, and by the grim oppression of voodoo superstitions. Pray that God will help both countries to be free of their past and to be open to the freedom of Jesus Christ as they rebuild their lives.
(5) Pray for those victimized by flooding in our own midwest. Ask God to help them rebuild their lives and to sense that they are being empowered by Christ as they do.
(6) Pray for an end to the fighting in Iraq. Pray for the people of Iraq, that God will help them to rebuild their lives. Pray for the protection of military personnel. Pray for the protection of relief workers and of innocent civilians. Please pray for the safe release of Matt Maupin from his captivity in Iraq.
(7) Pray for the imprisoned peoples of China, North Korea, and Cuba. Grant that God will make a way for them to be free even in their oprression, free from sin, death, and futility through Jesus Christ!
(8) Pray for an end to the deadly impasse between Palestinians and Israelis. Ask that God will insure that the legitimate aspirations of both peoples will be met and that peace will reign between them.
(9) Pray that God will bless the people of Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in Cincinnati, one of our neighboring parishes, as they dedicate a building addition on Pentecost Sunday. Ask God to help the church to use the new facility to His glory. Also ask God to protect the church from idolizing the building. Pray that God will help the people to see the bricks and mortar they dedicate as tools to be used in their mission of loving God and loving neighbor. Ask God to help them to wear the place out glorifying Him!
(10) Ask that God will protect the world from terror.
(11) Pray that we Americans will hunger and thirst for Jesus Christ. Ask God to help us to humbly submit to Christ, turn from sin, and love God and love our neighbors as we love ourselves.
Have a blessed Pentecost celebration!
Monday, May 24, 2004
Called to Be Jesus' AMEN!
John 17:20-26
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 23, 2004)
Today’s Bible lesson is part of a prayer by Jesus. It’s up to us to be the Amen to it.
Amen, you know, is a Greek word. It’s found often in the New Testament portion of the Bible. The New Testament was written in Greek because in the first century, Greek was the language of the world, the language of trade and diplomacy and scholarship, the way English is the language of the world today. Amen is a word which can translated variously: so be it; this is absolutely true; this is what we believe; or simply, Yes!
By custom, it’s a word we put at the ends of prayers. We do it to affirm our belief that the God Who has commanded us to pray in Jesus’ Name has heard our prayers and will fulfill His promises to answer those prayers.
It can be used in other ways as well. But, all these uses of the word Amen can get worn out and rob it of its meaning. A little boy was asked what he thought amen meant and he said, “Peace out, dude!”
I have often thought that some Sunday I should write the worship celebration so that every time we would ordinarily say, Amen, we would shout Yes! instead. In fact, let’s try that right now. I’ll make a statement and you respond with the word, Yes! Here goes...We believe in Christ; YES! We can do everything in Christ’s strength, YES! We will give the pastor a million dollars, YES!
Okay, I only meant two of those. But here is the point: Saying Amen to Christ and His authority over our lives isn’t nearly as important as living it.
The prayer of Jesus that makes up this morning’s Bible lesson is a segment of what Bible scholars call Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus is on the brink of offering Himself on the cross, the perfect Lamb of God Who will be killed for the sins of the world. In this part of the prayer, Jesus prays that all who follow Him, in every time and place, will be as united as He and God the Father are. He says that when we who follow Jesus are united, the world will see God’s glory and they too, will want to follow Jesus and become part of God’s family.
That’s awesome stuff. And, as Christians believe that this prayer must accord with Jesus' will and that God answers such prayers.
But there is a problem. A man died and was told to join the latest group of entrants who were going to be given a tour of the place by Saint Peter. Peter proceeded to take the group down a huge corridor from which large rooms ran. “Okay,” Peter would say, “you Baptists get off here.” They’d walk a little further, “Catholics here...” Still further, “Methodists...Pentecostals...Presbyterians...” About half of the new residents of heaven were still with Peter when he announced, “For the next 100 yards or so, I want to ask you to keep absolutely quiet, particularly as we pass the next door.” The group did as Peter requested. They passed the door in silence. After they’d walked further down the hall, the group came to another door and Peter announced, “Episcopalians here.” One person got curious though, and raised his hand to ask a question: “Why did we have to be quiet as we passed that one room?” “Oh,” Peter said, “that was the Lutherans. They think they’re the only ones here.”
The fact is that in spite of Jesus’ prayer, we who confess Jesus Christ as Lord don’t behave as if He and His blood on the cross have made us one. A look at the sorry recent history of Northern Ireland, where Roman Catholics and Protestants have fought and killed each other is all the reminder we need of that.
The reason is simple. Imagine for just a second that some time ago, you got a mail from an out-of-town address. It looked like it might be important. But because you didn’t recognize who the sender was and you were so busy, you just filed it away in a corner of your desk to be looked at later. More recently, as you prepared to move, you found the letter, still unopened, along with a stack of forgotten documents. Absently, you open it up and discover that it’s from a lawyer, notifying you that you have inherited a large sum of money. You immediately dial the number at the top of the letterhead and discover that yes, the money is still available to you. They’ve just been waiting to hear from you.
It’s just the same with Jesus’ prayer: The unity that He prays will be exhibited among all Christians is His gift to us. We just have to claim it!
But why should we claim it? I have to warn you that the answer to that question will be of no interest to those who have a “What’s in it for me?” attitude about their faith or about being part of the Church.
The only people who will be interested in the unity for which Jesus prays are those who let Jesus change them from being members of the me generation to those who are part of God’s we generation. Jesus wants us to claim the unity He gives to those who follow Him “so that the world [will] know” Him and the Father.
And that's an important goal for the follower of Jesus. A few years ago, Ann and I wanted to get the deck on our house cleaned and treated. Ann had done it a few years before and wasn’t satisfied that she’d been thorough enough. We asked around and found a company we thought would do a good job. They did. And you know that ever since then, we’ve recommended the same company to many other people. There’s nothing like the testimony of a satisfied customer. Our unity with other believers in Jesus is a powerful testimony that we are satisfied customers. We tell the world that even though we’re sinners who don’t deserve forgiveness and life, Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead to give us those things and has changed us into loving people.
And we want our lives to say Amen to Jesus’ prayer so that the whole world will know that Jesus really can a change a life from the inside out.
Today, we’re honoring someone—actually, two someones, because Tim could never do the things he does without the support, understanding, encouragement, and permission of his wife, Laurel. But let me tell you something: I am so proud of Tim, our youth director. He gives countless hours of time, attention, and prayer to what he does for the young people of this congregation and community and for others. And he does it for one simple reason: He wants to be an Amen to Jesus’ prayer; he wants everyone to know about Jesus’ love. And so, just as God has made Tim part of Jesus’ one family the Church, Tim wants to see that family grow in strength of faith and in the numbers who say, “I follow Jesus!”
A few weeks ago, I was feeling guilty because of all that Tim does and that we can’t yet pay him for it. We were talking on the phone and I was about to apologize to Tim, when he said, “Thanks, Mark.” “Thanks for what?” I asked. “Thanks for letting me do all this!”
That’s an extraordinary attitude!
It’s the attitude of a servant of Jesus.
It’s the attitude needed for each of us to roll up our sleeves and say, “Sure, I don’t agree with everything the person at my church or the person at the next church says and does, but I love them anyway and we work on the same team for the same Savior.”
It’s the very attitude that shows us—and the watching world around us—that the crucified and risen Jesus has taken up residence in our lives and in our congregation.
In coming weeks and months, you’re going to be hearing a lot about a special three-weeks that will be happening in the fall at Friendship. It’ll be called, new beginnings.
It holds the promise of elevating the life of our congregation to greater heights of faithfulness and love and unity. I believe that it can help us to be open to God acting powerfully in the life of our church and our own lives.
If that sounds good to you, I ask you to resolve right now that with God’s help, you will be a living Amen to Jesus’ prayer.
Take some time to tell God that you want to be so united with Christ and all who follow Him so that His love will power your every move and everyone will see the Jesus in you!
That’s what Jesus wants for Friendship Church and that’s what He wants for each one of us!
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 23, 2004)
Today’s Bible lesson is part of a prayer by Jesus. It’s up to us to be the Amen to it.
Amen, you know, is a Greek word. It’s found often in the New Testament portion of the Bible. The New Testament was written in Greek because in the first century, Greek was the language of the world, the language of trade and diplomacy and scholarship, the way English is the language of the world today. Amen is a word which can translated variously: so be it; this is absolutely true; this is what we believe; or simply, Yes!
By custom, it’s a word we put at the ends of prayers. We do it to affirm our belief that the God Who has commanded us to pray in Jesus’ Name has heard our prayers and will fulfill His promises to answer those prayers.
It can be used in other ways as well. But, all these uses of the word Amen can get worn out and rob it of its meaning. A little boy was asked what he thought amen meant and he said, “Peace out, dude!”
I have often thought that some Sunday I should write the worship celebration so that every time we would ordinarily say, Amen, we would shout Yes! instead. In fact, let’s try that right now. I’ll make a statement and you respond with the word, Yes! Here goes...We believe in Christ; YES! We can do everything in Christ’s strength, YES! We will give the pastor a million dollars, YES!
Okay, I only meant two of those. But here is the point: Saying Amen to Christ and His authority over our lives isn’t nearly as important as living it.
The prayer of Jesus that makes up this morning’s Bible lesson is a segment of what Bible scholars call Jesus’ farewell discourse. Jesus is on the brink of offering Himself on the cross, the perfect Lamb of God Who will be killed for the sins of the world. In this part of the prayer, Jesus prays that all who follow Him, in every time and place, will be as united as He and God the Father are. He says that when we who follow Jesus are united, the world will see God’s glory and they too, will want to follow Jesus and become part of God’s family.
That’s awesome stuff. And, as Christians believe that this prayer must accord with Jesus' will and that God answers such prayers.
But there is a problem. A man died and was told to join the latest group of entrants who were going to be given a tour of the place by Saint Peter. Peter proceeded to take the group down a huge corridor from which large rooms ran. “Okay,” Peter would say, “you Baptists get off here.” They’d walk a little further, “Catholics here...” Still further, “Methodists...Pentecostals...Presbyterians...” About half of the new residents of heaven were still with Peter when he announced, “For the next 100 yards or so, I want to ask you to keep absolutely quiet, particularly as we pass the next door.” The group did as Peter requested. They passed the door in silence. After they’d walked further down the hall, the group came to another door and Peter announced, “Episcopalians here.” One person got curious though, and raised his hand to ask a question: “Why did we have to be quiet as we passed that one room?” “Oh,” Peter said, “that was the Lutherans. They think they’re the only ones here.”
The fact is that in spite of Jesus’ prayer, we who confess Jesus Christ as Lord don’t behave as if He and His blood on the cross have made us one. A look at the sorry recent history of Northern Ireland, where Roman Catholics and Protestants have fought and killed each other is all the reminder we need of that.
The reason is simple. Imagine for just a second that some time ago, you got a mail from an out-of-town address. It looked like it might be important. But because you didn’t recognize who the sender was and you were so busy, you just filed it away in a corner of your desk to be looked at later. More recently, as you prepared to move, you found the letter, still unopened, along with a stack of forgotten documents. Absently, you open it up and discover that it’s from a lawyer, notifying you that you have inherited a large sum of money. You immediately dial the number at the top of the letterhead and discover that yes, the money is still available to you. They’ve just been waiting to hear from you.
It’s just the same with Jesus’ prayer: The unity that He prays will be exhibited among all Christians is His gift to us. We just have to claim it!
But why should we claim it? I have to warn you that the answer to that question will be of no interest to those who have a “What’s in it for me?” attitude about their faith or about being part of the Church.
The only people who will be interested in the unity for which Jesus prays are those who let Jesus change them from being members of the me generation to those who are part of God’s we generation. Jesus wants us to claim the unity He gives to those who follow Him “so that the world [will] know” Him and the Father.
And that's an important goal for the follower of Jesus. A few years ago, Ann and I wanted to get the deck on our house cleaned and treated. Ann had done it a few years before and wasn’t satisfied that she’d been thorough enough. We asked around and found a company we thought would do a good job. They did. And you know that ever since then, we’ve recommended the same company to many other people. There’s nothing like the testimony of a satisfied customer. Our unity with other believers in Jesus is a powerful testimony that we are satisfied customers. We tell the world that even though we’re sinners who don’t deserve forgiveness and life, Jesus died on a cross and rose from the dead to give us those things and has changed us into loving people.
And we want our lives to say Amen to Jesus’ prayer so that the whole world will know that Jesus really can a change a life from the inside out.
Today, we’re honoring someone—actually, two someones, because Tim could never do the things he does without the support, understanding, encouragement, and permission of his wife, Laurel. But let me tell you something: I am so proud of Tim, our youth director. He gives countless hours of time, attention, and prayer to what he does for the young people of this congregation and community and for others. And he does it for one simple reason: He wants to be an Amen to Jesus’ prayer; he wants everyone to know about Jesus’ love. And so, just as God has made Tim part of Jesus’ one family the Church, Tim wants to see that family grow in strength of faith and in the numbers who say, “I follow Jesus!”
A few weeks ago, I was feeling guilty because of all that Tim does and that we can’t yet pay him for it. We were talking on the phone and I was about to apologize to Tim, when he said, “Thanks, Mark.” “Thanks for what?” I asked. “Thanks for letting me do all this!”
That’s an extraordinary attitude!
It’s the attitude of a servant of Jesus.
It’s the attitude needed for each of us to roll up our sleeves and say, “Sure, I don’t agree with everything the person at my church or the person at the next church says and does, but I love them anyway and we work on the same team for the same Savior.”
It’s the very attitude that shows us—and the watching world around us—that the crucified and risen Jesus has taken up residence in our lives and in our congregation.
In coming weeks and months, you’re going to be hearing a lot about a special three-weeks that will be happening in the fall at Friendship. It’ll be called, new beginnings.
It holds the promise of elevating the life of our congregation to greater heights of faithfulness and love and unity. I believe that it can help us to be open to God acting powerfully in the life of our church and our own lives.
If that sounds good to you, I ask you to resolve right now that with God’s help, you will be a living Amen to Jesus’ prayer.
Take some time to tell God that you want to be so united with Christ and all who follow Him so that His love will power your every move and everyone will see the Jesus in you!
That’s what Jesus wants for Friendship Church and that’s what He wants for each one of us!
Do Christians Grieve?
The "five stages of grief" were first introduced to the world by Swiss-born psychiatrist, Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. Kubler-Ross worked with the victims of terminal disease and over time, observed that they typically went through five seasons of grief.
The five stages Kubler-Ross identified were, in turn: denial, anger or resentment, bargaining (in which the patient tries to strike a bargain with God for a few more years of life), depression (as the reality of impending death comes home), and acceptance ( a time of facing death with calmness).
What has subsequently been learned is that any person facing any grief in life–the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage, the loss of a job, whatever–must negotiate these same five stages of grief if they are to become psychologically and spiritually healthy again. Acceptance is the stage at which we are able to acknowledge our grief and move on with our lives.
There are some people who claim that Christians are exempt from grief. "I'm too busy rejoicing to grieve," they like to say. But that's rubbish and such an attitude can be downright un-Christian. It can cause us to get stuck in denial when grief strikes us and it can make us hatefully insensitive to the grief of others.
A man I know went to a funeral viewing one evening. The wife of a high school classmate had lost her battle with cancer. Later that week, the man spent some time with his twin brother and mentioned having been at the viewing. "Oh, yeah," his brother said rather breezily, and then asked how their classmate was doing. "As you can imagine, he's devastated," my friend replied. The twin was incredulous. "Devastated?" he repeated questioningly. "He's a believer in Christ. He knows he's going to see his wife again in heaven. How can he possibly be devastated?" The twin brother's response indicated his belief that there was something wrong with the faith of a believer who grieved.
But the Bible, God's Word and the Christian's authoritative truth source, doesn't accuse people who grieve of being unbelieving! For example, in talking about the promise of resurrection which all who turn from sin and follow Jesus Christ have, the first-century preacher, Paul, writes in the New Testament: "...we do not want you to be uninformed...about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who died" (First Thessalonians 4:13-14).
Notice that Paul doesn't say that Christians don't grieve. He says that there is a qualitative difference in the way Christians grieve: Christians grieve their losses, but live with hope that the risen Jesus will ultimately and eternally make things right.
Christians know that whatever befalls them, they have hope. "...[I]f we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him" (Romans 6:8).
But Christians also know that in this journey through life, we will grieve.
The person with hope in Christ can, over time, traverse the stages of grief healthfully, and through it, learn how faithful Jesus is to His promise to be with us always!
The five stages Kubler-Ross identified were, in turn: denial, anger or resentment, bargaining (in which the patient tries to strike a bargain with God for a few more years of life), depression (as the reality of impending death comes home), and acceptance ( a time of facing death with calmness).
What has subsequently been learned is that any person facing any grief in life–the death of a loved one, the end of a marriage, the loss of a job, whatever–must negotiate these same five stages of grief if they are to become psychologically and spiritually healthy again. Acceptance is the stage at which we are able to acknowledge our grief and move on with our lives.
There are some people who claim that Christians are exempt from grief. "I'm too busy rejoicing to grieve," they like to say. But that's rubbish and such an attitude can be downright un-Christian. It can cause us to get stuck in denial when grief strikes us and it can make us hatefully insensitive to the grief of others.
A man I know went to a funeral viewing one evening. The wife of a high school classmate had lost her battle with cancer. Later that week, the man spent some time with his twin brother and mentioned having been at the viewing. "Oh, yeah," his brother said rather breezily, and then asked how their classmate was doing. "As you can imagine, he's devastated," my friend replied. The twin was incredulous. "Devastated?" he repeated questioningly. "He's a believer in Christ. He knows he's going to see his wife again in heaven. How can he possibly be devastated?" The twin brother's response indicated his belief that there was something wrong with the faith of a believer who grieved.
But the Bible, God's Word and the Christian's authoritative truth source, doesn't accuse people who grieve of being unbelieving! For example, in talking about the promise of resurrection which all who turn from sin and follow Jesus Christ have, the first-century preacher, Paul, writes in the New Testament: "...we do not want you to be uninformed...about those who have died, so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with Him those who died" (First Thessalonians 4:13-14).
Notice that Paul doesn't say that Christians don't grieve. He says that there is a qualitative difference in the way Christians grieve: Christians grieve their losses, but live with hope that the risen Jesus will ultimately and eternally make things right.
Christians know that whatever befalls them, they have hope. "...[I]f we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with Him" (Romans 6:8).
But Christians also know that in this journey through life, we will grieve.
The person with hope in Christ can, over time, traverse the stages of grief healthfully, and through it, learn how faithful Jesus is to His promise to be with us always!
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
How to Help Your Grieving Friend, Part #2
In my last column, I shared three basic lessons I have learned from experience and the Bible on how you can help grieving friends. They were: listen to your friend; don't try to talk your friend out of their grief; and don't explain what you don't understand. Today, four more of those lessons.
Lesson four is this: Let your friend be angry with God. A deeply faithful Christian man whose granddaughter had recently died told me, "Sometimes I get angry with God. I know it's horrible; but it's true." I assured him that what he was feeling wasn't horrible. I reminded him of such people in the Bible as David and Job, who always believed in God, but also got angry with God when dealing with grief or the threat of death. And I told the grieving grandfather, "The fact that you're angry with God proves your faith in God. You would never be angry with someone you didn't think was there."
Most of the time, when we respond to people's anger, no matter its source, with condemnation, it only makes them dig in their heels. God says in Proverbs 15:1, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Letting your friend get angry with God will prevent their anger from becoming an ongoing feature in their life.
Lesson five: Don't avoid talking about your grieving friend's loss. Often, friends fear that if they do so, they'll only make their friends feel sadder. But a grieving friend already is sad and if it seems natural to mention a friend's dead loved one, for example, or if your friend mentions that person, you should be willing to talk about them as well.
A woman once told me, "My friends avoid speaking of my late husband like a plague. What they don't seem to understand is that when they do that, it makes me feel as though they think he was unimportant or that they want to pretend he was never there." Through the years, I have heard that grieving woman's words echoed by other grieving people. You honor your friend when you're willing to discuss with them the people or circumstances they grieve.
Lesson six: Pray for your friend. You should pray that God will bring them comfort, for sure. But you also should pray that God will use you as a conduit for the blessings you want your friend to receive. Whenever I visit people who are dealing with grief, I always ask God to fill me with His Holy Spirit, allowing God's love for my friend to flow through me. Jesus says that the world will know Him when His love is visible in us. Pray that God will love your friend through you.
Finally, if you're a follower of Jesus, your friend will probably eventually want to know what has allowed you to be so helpful to them. You can honestly say that it isn't you who have been helpful, that you have prayed over every step you took with them and that God has guided you. You can tell them that you belong to an eternal God Who has destroyed the power of death and that anyone who trustingly follows Jesus Christ has hope beyond the grave. At the right time, after you've lovingly taken the journey of grief with your friend, that will come as very good news for them!
Lesson four is this: Let your friend be angry with God. A deeply faithful Christian man whose granddaughter had recently died told me, "Sometimes I get angry with God. I know it's horrible; but it's true." I assured him that what he was feeling wasn't horrible. I reminded him of such people in the Bible as David and Job, who always believed in God, but also got angry with God when dealing with grief or the threat of death. And I told the grieving grandfather, "The fact that you're angry with God proves your faith in God. You would never be angry with someone you didn't think was there."
Most of the time, when we respond to people's anger, no matter its source, with condemnation, it only makes them dig in their heels. God says in Proverbs 15:1, "A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Letting your friend get angry with God will prevent their anger from becoming an ongoing feature in their life.
Lesson five: Don't avoid talking about your grieving friend's loss. Often, friends fear that if they do so, they'll only make their friends feel sadder. But a grieving friend already is sad and if it seems natural to mention a friend's dead loved one, for example, or if your friend mentions that person, you should be willing to talk about them as well.
A woman once told me, "My friends avoid speaking of my late husband like a plague. What they don't seem to understand is that when they do that, it makes me feel as though they think he was unimportant or that they want to pretend he was never there." Through the years, I have heard that grieving woman's words echoed by other grieving people. You honor your friend when you're willing to discuss with them the people or circumstances they grieve.
Lesson six: Pray for your friend. You should pray that God will bring them comfort, for sure. But you also should pray that God will use you as a conduit for the blessings you want your friend to receive. Whenever I visit people who are dealing with grief, I always ask God to fill me with His Holy Spirit, allowing God's love for my friend to flow through me. Jesus says that the world will know Him when His love is visible in us. Pray that God will love your friend through you.
Finally, if you're a follower of Jesus, your friend will probably eventually want to know what has allowed you to be so helpful to them. You can honestly say that it isn't you who have been helpful, that you have prayed over every step you took with them and that God has guided you. You can tell them that you belong to an eternal God Who has destroyed the power of death and that anyone who trustingly follows Jesus Christ has hope beyond the grave. At the right time, after you've lovingly taken the journey of grief with your friend, that will come as very good news for them!
How to Help Your Grieving Friend, Part #1
[This is the first of two columns I've just submitted to the editor at the Community Press newspaper, for which I write a column. I hope you find it helpful.]
How do we help friends who are grieving?
Over the course of the years, I've learned some important basic lessons about this, both from personal experience and from my reading of the Bible.
If you have a friend who is grieving, whether over the death of a loved one, a divorce, a job loss, or a move that has taken them many miles from familiar faces and places, they can use your help. Fortunately, the principles I've discovered can be used in face-to-face conversations, over the telephone, and even, I have learned, in internet instant messaging. So, to help you help your grieving friend, here are three of those lessons I've learned. In my next column, I'll share four more such lessons.
First and most importantly, listen to your friend. Frequently, whether it's because of our own discomfort or a penchant for wanting to "fix things," we can go to our grieving friends and shower them with torrents of consoling words. But what grieving people most need is to be listened to. Their pain and grief need to be acknowledged.
In the Old Testament book of Job, a man is aggrieved when he loses first, all his sources of wealth and then, all of his children in a natural disaster. Three friends come to visit Job (pronounced with a long "o"). One scholar has pointed out that the friends do something very wise at first. They let Job "vent," allowing him to give full expression to his agony, his questions, his anger. Then, they make a mistake: They open their mouths. My biggest mistakes in life and in trying to help hurting people, have never come from listening. They've always come from talking.
Second, don't try to talk people out of their grief. Grief is something which, over time, follows a more or less natural course. Sometimes more time and sometimes less is required. It depends on the person, their level of faith, and their particular grief. You can't truncate grief with words.
Some people think that they need to give the aggrieved person a "pep talk." But such talks are really designed more to make the talker feel they've done a good turn than to do any real good for anyone else. A woman's husband died. At the funeral home viewing, a man decided to "cheer her up." He said, "I know you feel bad now. But you'll get over it. My wife died. But I immediately went out and found another wife. You can find another husband." That's a true story and it's truly awful.
Thirdly, don't try to explain what you don't understand. When people grieve over their losses, they wonder, as all of us do, why this has happened. The person who wants to help the friend who is asking this question must resist the temptation to answer it. In all honesty, your friend doesn't want to have a rational explanation anyway. They simply want to be able to say, "This isn't fair!"
And it isn't fair. Life often isn't fair. At the end of Job's forty-two chapters, we're left with this answer to the question of why grief befalls us: We live in a world where bad things happen. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that bad things rain on the good and the evil alike. Why that is so, no one living on this planet is wise enough to say. Only God knows the answer to the question of why and you don't need to play God by pretending to have that answer.
I'll present the other basic lessons I've learned for helping your grieving friends in my next column.
How do we help friends who are grieving?
Over the course of the years, I've learned some important basic lessons about this, both from personal experience and from my reading of the Bible.
If you have a friend who is grieving, whether over the death of a loved one, a divorce, a job loss, or a move that has taken them many miles from familiar faces and places, they can use your help. Fortunately, the principles I've discovered can be used in face-to-face conversations, over the telephone, and even, I have learned, in internet instant messaging. So, to help you help your grieving friend, here are three of those lessons I've learned. In my next column, I'll share four more such lessons.
First and most importantly, listen to your friend. Frequently, whether it's because of our own discomfort or a penchant for wanting to "fix things," we can go to our grieving friends and shower them with torrents of consoling words. But what grieving people most need is to be listened to. Their pain and grief need to be acknowledged.
In the Old Testament book of Job, a man is aggrieved when he loses first, all his sources of wealth and then, all of his children in a natural disaster. Three friends come to visit Job (pronounced with a long "o"). One scholar has pointed out that the friends do something very wise at first. They let Job "vent," allowing him to give full expression to his agony, his questions, his anger. Then, they make a mistake: They open their mouths. My biggest mistakes in life and in trying to help hurting people, have never come from listening. They've always come from talking.
Second, don't try to talk people out of their grief. Grief is something which, over time, follows a more or less natural course. Sometimes more time and sometimes less is required. It depends on the person, their level of faith, and their particular grief. You can't truncate grief with words.
Some people think that they need to give the aggrieved person a "pep talk." But such talks are really designed more to make the talker feel they've done a good turn than to do any real good for anyone else. A woman's husband died. At the funeral home viewing, a man decided to "cheer her up." He said, "I know you feel bad now. But you'll get over it. My wife died. But I immediately went out and found another wife. You can find another husband." That's a true story and it's truly awful.
Thirdly, don't try to explain what you don't understand. When people grieve over their losses, they wonder, as all of us do, why this has happened. The person who wants to help the friend who is asking this question must resist the temptation to answer it. In all honesty, your friend doesn't want to have a rational explanation anyway. They simply want to be able to say, "This isn't fair!"
And it isn't fair. Life often isn't fair. At the end of Job's forty-two chapters, we're left with this answer to the question of why grief befalls us: We live in a world where bad things happen. In the New Testament, Jesus tells us that bad things rain on the good and the evil alike. Why that is so, no one living on this planet is wise enough to say. Only God knows the answer to the question of why and you don't need to play God by pretending to have that answer.
I'll present the other basic lessons I've learned for helping your grieving friends in my next column.
Monday, May 17, 2004
Out with Religion, In with Jesus
John 5:1-18(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 16, 2004)
Our Bible lesson for this morning shows Jesus picking a fight to make some important points for our lives.
As it begins, we find Him walking on one of the big porticoes of the Jerusalem temple. It’s by the Sheep Gate, the entry into the city through which lambs brought there for sacrificial slaughter are herded. There is a natural pool at a place called Bethesda, a name that means House of Mercy.
There is a reason for its name. The water occasionally bubbles and churns. Many think that at the moment when it is most agitated, the very first lame, diseased, or blind person who can crawl into it or be thrown into it will be healed. Because of that pool and the legend that surrounds it, masses of people huddle around it at all hours of the day, hoping against hope that at the moment the pool churns they can be the first to receive its mercy.
Like other good Jews of His time, Jesus had come to Jerusalem at least three times a year for the proscribed religious festivals since He was a boy. He has probably walked this very place, surrounded by the lame, blind, and paralyzed, many times. He may have even seen one particular invalid, a paralyzed man who’d been looking for his chance for healing in the pool for thirty-eight years. Our Bible lesson in fact, tells us that Jesus knew that this man has “been there for a long time.” Jesus may have noticed the man and passed Him by before. But the fact is that Jesus chooses this moment and this sabbath day of rest to approach the paralyzed man.
He asks the man, “Do you want to be healed?” Talk about an easily answered question! But the man, perhaps understandably, doesn’t answer Jesus directly. He begins to whine about years of being elbowed aside just when he needed to be thrown into the water. Jesus ignores the man’s flood of words and simply commands him to stand up and pick up the mat on which he’s been living all these years. The man does so. He doesn’t stop to thank Jesus. Instead, He walks away as the watching crowd surrounds Jesus. In the house of mercy, the man seems to simply take this miraculous gift for granted.
Soon we see another reaction to this miraculous sign of Jesus’ love and power. Unaware perhaps of who the man is, they ask him what he’s doing. It’s the sabbath day, a day for rest and here he is doing work, lugging his mat around. “You can’t do that,” he’s told, “it’s against our religious traditions!” Instead of honoring Jesus, from whom he’d departed in such a hurry, telling what an amazing blessing Jesus had given him, the man says, “It’s not my fault I’m carrying this mat. The man who made it possible for me to walk told me to do it.”
But Jesus has done exactly what He set out to do. He has picked a fight with people for whom religion was more important than knowing and following God. He has demonstrated His power to bring the healing and help of heaven even to an unworthy ingrate, a man whose selfishness and penchant for taking blessings for granted remind me of myself, frankly. But Jesus has also made this very important point: If we’re going to have the life He wants to give, we need to be willing to give up on our habits, our traditions and instead, follow Him!
If you and I are going to follow Jesus all the way into eternity, there are some things that need to change. The religious folks who railed against Jesus that day were unwilling to change. Even the once-paralyzed man was unwilling to change. Jesus found him later and warned him that unless he turned from sin, something worse than paralysis would befall him: he would be separated from God forever. But after hearing that warning, the man runs to the religious authorities to rat on Jesus and thereby act the part of “a good religious man.” Jesus shows us here that there are some things that need to be changed all through our lives with Christ.
First: We must change our attitudes. Faith in Jesus Christ isn’t really a religion. Faith in Jesus is the heart and soul of a new relationship with God. When we turn from our sin and allow Christ to be the ruler of our lives, He changes us. He makes it possible for us to grow in our relationship with Him and to begin to live as human beings were designed to live: in love for God and love for others.
I was presiding at an outdoor worship at a park once. A man came before the service was to begin and sat down for a second in the front row and then left. I asked him why he was leaving. “There’s no cross here. How can we have worship when there’s no cross?” It was all I could do to bust a gut. For centuries, the Church worshiped without a cross where they gathered. In fact, throughout the early years of the church, the cross wasn’t their central symbol; it was a fish. But the man left in a huff, convinced that all our prayers and praises sung to God were meaningless because we hadn’t erected two hunks of wood in the shape of a cross. He valued a symbol of our faith more than he valued intimacy with Jesus. Others value the rules and norms and rituals of faith more than they value Jesus. Some value certain ways of singing and doing liturgy more than they value Jesus. These are all the ways of religion. They cannot give us the freedom from sin or the freedom to live as God's children that only comes to those with faith in Jesus!
Really committing ourselves heart and soul to Jesus Christ is a far more difficult way to live than is the religious way. In religion, people try to shove the God we meet in Jesus Christ into a little box from which they pull Him on Sunday mornings or when they really want something from Him.
They also think that unless you do certain things in a certain way, God won’t show up. Don’t carry mats on Sunday, they may say. That way, they think, by “being good,” jumping through the right hoops, God will be forced to favor you. Religious traditionalists suffer from the delusion that by following proscribed rules, God will be forced to bless them. They never bargain for how much God wants to bless them. Jesus is the living, crucified, and risen proof of that!
These religious folks are really atheists in the sense that they’ve made themselves gods and turned the God of the universe into a kewpie doll they can control. They don't really trust God; they trust and worship themselves.
When we look at Jesus’ earthly life, we see that He kept those traditions that allowed Him to love God the Father and to love His neighbor. Otherwise, He bagged tradition. To follow Jesus, we need to change our religious attitudes into Jesus attitudes.
We also need to make another change in our lives. We need to be people of action, sharing God’s love always. Once Jesus enters our lives, He stirs us to new ways of living. Sometimes, Jesus may call us to take dangerous actions to follow Him. He certainly did a dangerous thing when He flouted religious authority to heal the lame man!
Roland Hayes was the son of ex-slaves, born in Tennessee in 1887. In Chattanooga, where his mother had taken Roland and his siblings following the death of their father, the family sang in the church choir. One day, the choir director played recordings by two of the most famous singers of the time, Enrique Caruso and Nellie Melba. When Roland Hayes heard the recordings, he was so moved that he later said, “I believe that God has called me to sing a message of peace and brotherhood around the world.”
Many years later, in spite of the odds against a black person in the early twentieth century ever achieving anything, Roland Hayes was on the brink of becoming a celebrated concert singer. In 1924, he was booked to sing at a great hall in Berlin. Success there would set off a chain reaction of engagements throughout Europe. En route to the concert though, Hayes was called to the United States consul’s office in Prague. He was told that he would need to cancel his concert in Berlin. The French had just taken over the Rhineland from Germany and were using American blacks as an occupying army. The consul was certain that no black-skinned man would ever be accepted or be safe in Berlin at the time.
But Roland Hayes prayed about it and decided that he could not cancel the concert. Ringing in his ears was the advice his mother had always given him: “Roland, you can do it if you believe you can and if you give your life to God.”
On the night of the concert, Hayes and his black accompanist entered the Beethoven Concert Hall from the behind the stage, so as not to be seen. As the curtain went up, Hayes prayed, “God, make me a horn for the Omnipotent to sound through.” But when the audience caught sight of Roland Hayes, the hall filled with hissing, catcalls, and insults. People were trying to shout him off the stage. His accompanist suggested that he and Roland Hayes should leave. Standing, with his hands folded, Hayes prayed again, “God, what shall I do?”
And then he had an idea. He whispered to the pianist, “Let’s begin with Beethoven’s This is My Peace.” The audience listened attentively as Hayes finished that song, sang several more classical pieces, and then ended with spirituals and plantation songs. At least for that night, Hayes did sing a message of peace and brotherhood, just as he’s dreamed of as a boy. He went on to become one of the most successful concert singers of the twenties, thirties, and forties. Later in his life, he was on the faculty at The Ohio State University.
We need to be ready to take a chance for Christ all the time. This past week, I ran into Cynthia Petrie, formerly a member of the West Clermont school board. She and I and a number of others in the community had been asked to act as judges for the senior exit action projects at both Glen Este and Amelia high schools. If you know Cynthia, you know that she’s a person of deep faith in Christ. We were talking about the things that can scare us in this life and as we parted, she said with a smile, “When you know where you’re headed, nothing in this life should really scare you.”
A person with an attitude like that can face anything in life and can accomplish a lot because he or she simply aren't afraid of failure. Failure is temporary. Setbacks are temporary. So are illness, poverty, and even death. The follower of Jesus Christ can dare to love God and love neighbor extravagantly and recklessly, knowing that our past is forgiven and our future is secure. We belong to God forever! We live each day knowing that whatever the world may say, we have God’s acceptance and power for love living in us!
Jesus tells us quite directly in today’s Bible lesson that He and God the Father are one. Jesus is God in the flesh. That being so, it simply makes sense to follow Jesus and to pay heed when He calls us to turn away from religion as usual, to change our attitudes and let Him be the absolute God and Lord of our lives. And it makes sense, that we become people of action, who put hands and feet, toil and commitment in our confession that Jesus is our God.
Let’s be people of changed attitudes and changed actions. Let’s be people through Whom the love and power of Christ shines always! Let’s leave religion behind and let Jesus be our leader!
[The story of Roland Hayes' concert in Berlin in 1924 is told compellingly in Robert Schuller's wonderful book, The Be-Happy Attitudes. I learned more about Hayes from a Google search on the web.]
Our Bible lesson for this morning shows Jesus picking a fight to make some important points for our lives.
As it begins, we find Him walking on one of the big porticoes of the Jerusalem temple. It’s by the Sheep Gate, the entry into the city through which lambs brought there for sacrificial slaughter are herded. There is a natural pool at a place called Bethesda, a name that means House of Mercy.
There is a reason for its name. The water occasionally bubbles and churns. Many think that at the moment when it is most agitated, the very first lame, diseased, or blind person who can crawl into it or be thrown into it will be healed. Because of that pool and the legend that surrounds it, masses of people huddle around it at all hours of the day, hoping against hope that at the moment the pool churns they can be the first to receive its mercy.
Like other good Jews of His time, Jesus had come to Jerusalem at least three times a year for the proscribed religious festivals since He was a boy. He has probably walked this very place, surrounded by the lame, blind, and paralyzed, many times. He may have even seen one particular invalid, a paralyzed man who’d been looking for his chance for healing in the pool for thirty-eight years. Our Bible lesson in fact, tells us that Jesus knew that this man has “been there for a long time.” Jesus may have noticed the man and passed Him by before. But the fact is that Jesus chooses this moment and this sabbath day of rest to approach the paralyzed man.
He asks the man, “Do you want to be healed?” Talk about an easily answered question! But the man, perhaps understandably, doesn’t answer Jesus directly. He begins to whine about years of being elbowed aside just when he needed to be thrown into the water. Jesus ignores the man’s flood of words and simply commands him to stand up and pick up the mat on which he’s been living all these years. The man does so. He doesn’t stop to thank Jesus. Instead, He walks away as the watching crowd surrounds Jesus. In the house of mercy, the man seems to simply take this miraculous gift for granted.
Soon we see another reaction to this miraculous sign of Jesus’ love and power. Unaware perhaps of who the man is, they ask him what he’s doing. It’s the sabbath day, a day for rest and here he is doing work, lugging his mat around. “You can’t do that,” he’s told, “it’s against our religious traditions!” Instead of honoring Jesus, from whom he’d departed in such a hurry, telling what an amazing blessing Jesus had given him, the man says, “It’s not my fault I’m carrying this mat. The man who made it possible for me to walk told me to do it.”
But Jesus has done exactly what He set out to do. He has picked a fight with people for whom religion was more important than knowing and following God. He has demonstrated His power to bring the healing and help of heaven even to an unworthy ingrate, a man whose selfishness and penchant for taking blessings for granted remind me of myself, frankly. But Jesus has also made this very important point: If we’re going to have the life He wants to give, we need to be willing to give up on our habits, our traditions and instead, follow Him!
If you and I are going to follow Jesus all the way into eternity, there are some things that need to change. The religious folks who railed against Jesus that day were unwilling to change. Even the once-paralyzed man was unwilling to change. Jesus found him later and warned him that unless he turned from sin, something worse than paralysis would befall him: he would be separated from God forever. But after hearing that warning, the man runs to the religious authorities to rat on Jesus and thereby act the part of “a good religious man.” Jesus shows us here that there are some things that need to be changed all through our lives with Christ.
First: We must change our attitudes. Faith in Jesus Christ isn’t really a religion. Faith in Jesus is the heart and soul of a new relationship with God. When we turn from our sin and allow Christ to be the ruler of our lives, He changes us. He makes it possible for us to grow in our relationship with Him and to begin to live as human beings were designed to live: in love for God and love for others.
I was presiding at an outdoor worship at a park once. A man came before the service was to begin and sat down for a second in the front row and then left. I asked him why he was leaving. “There’s no cross here. How can we have worship when there’s no cross?” It was all I could do to bust a gut. For centuries, the Church worshiped without a cross where they gathered. In fact, throughout the early years of the church, the cross wasn’t their central symbol; it was a fish. But the man left in a huff, convinced that all our prayers and praises sung to God were meaningless because we hadn’t erected two hunks of wood in the shape of a cross. He valued a symbol of our faith more than he valued intimacy with Jesus. Others value the rules and norms and rituals of faith more than they value Jesus. Some value certain ways of singing and doing liturgy more than they value Jesus. These are all the ways of religion. They cannot give us the freedom from sin or the freedom to live as God's children that only comes to those with faith in Jesus!
Really committing ourselves heart and soul to Jesus Christ is a far more difficult way to live than is the religious way. In religion, people try to shove the God we meet in Jesus Christ into a little box from which they pull Him on Sunday mornings or when they really want something from Him.
They also think that unless you do certain things in a certain way, God won’t show up. Don’t carry mats on Sunday, they may say. That way, they think, by “being good,” jumping through the right hoops, God will be forced to favor you. Religious traditionalists suffer from the delusion that by following proscribed rules, God will be forced to bless them. They never bargain for how much God wants to bless them. Jesus is the living, crucified, and risen proof of that!
These religious folks are really atheists in the sense that they’ve made themselves gods and turned the God of the universe into a kewpie doll they can control. They don't really trust God; they trust and worship themselves.
When we look at Jesus’ earthly life, we see that He kept those traditions that allowed Him to love God the Father and to love His neighbor. Otherwise, He bagged tradition. To follow Jesus, we need to change our religious attitudes into Jesus attitudes.
We also need to make another change in our lives. We need to be people of action, sharing God’s love always. Once Jesus enters our lives, He stirs us to new ways of living. Sometimes, Jesus may call us to take dangerous actions to follow Him. He certainly did a dangerous thing when He flouted religious authority to heal the lame man!
Roland Hayes was the son of ex-slaves, born in Tennessee in 1887. In Chattanooga, where his mother had taken Roland and his siblings following the death of their father, the family sang in the church choir. One day, the choir director played recordings by two of the most famous singers of the time, Enrique Caruso and Nellie Melba. When Roland Hayes heard the recordings, he was so moved that he later said, “I believe that God has called me to sing a message of peace and brotherhood around the world.”
Many years later, in spite of the odds against a black person in the early twentieth century ever achieving anything, Roland Hayes was on the brink of becoming a celebrated concert singer. In 1924, he was booked to sing at a great hall in Berlin. Success there would set off a chain reaction of engagements throughout Europe. En route to the concert though, Hayes was called to the United States consul’s office in Prague. He was told that he would need to cancel his concert in Berlin. The French had just taken over the Rhineland from Germany and were using American blacks as an occupying army. The consul was certain that no black-skinned man would ever be accepted or be safe in Berlin at the time.
But Roland Hayes prayed about it and decided that he could not cancel the concert. Ringing in his ears was the advice his mother had always given him: “Roland, you can do it if you believe you can and if you give your life to God.”
On the night of the concert, Hayes and his black accompanist entered the Beethoven Concert Hall from the behind the stage, so as not to be seen. As the curtain went up, Hayes prayed, “God, make me a horn for the Omnipotent to sound through.” But when the audience caught sight of Roland Hayes, the hall filled with hissing, catcalls, and insults. People were trying to shout him off the stage. His accompanist suggested that he and Roland Hayes should leave. Standing, with his hands folded, Hayes prayed again, “God, what shall I do?”
And then he had an idea. He whispered to the pianist, “Let’s begin with Beethoven’s This is My Peace.” The audience listened attentively as Hayes finished that song, sang several more classical pieces, and then ended with spirituals and plantation songs. At least for that night, Hayes did sing a message of peace and brotherhood, just as he’s dreamed of as a boy. He went on to become one of the most successful concert singers of the twenties, thirties, and forties. Later in his life, he was on the faculty at The Ohio State University.
We need to be ready to take a chance for Christ all the time. This past week, I ran into Cynthia Petrie, formerly a member of the West Clermont school board. She and I and a number of others in the community had been asked to act as judges for the senior exit action projects at both Glen Este and Amelia high schools. If you know Cynthia, you know that she’s a person of deep faith in Christ. We were talking about the things that can scare us in this life and as we parted, she said with a smile, “When you know where you’re headed, nothing in this life should really scare you.”
A person with an attitude like that can face anything in life and can accomplish a lot because he or she simply aren't afraid of failure. Failure is temporary. Setbacks are temporary. So are illness, poverty, and even death. The follower of Jesus Christ can dare to love God and love neighbor extravagantly and recklessly, knowing that our past is forgiven and our future is secure. We belong to God forever! We live each day knowing that whatever the world may say, we have God’s acceptance and power for love living in us!
Jesus tells us quite directly in today’s Bible lesson that He and God the Father are one. Jesus is God in the flesh. That being so, it simply makes sense to follow Jesus and to pay heed when He calls us to turn away from religion as usual, to change our attitudes and let Him be the absolute God and Lord of our lives. And it makes sense, that we become people of action, who put hands and feet, toil and commitment in our confession that Jesus is our God.
Let’s be people of changed attitudes and changed actions. Let’s be people through Whom the love and power of Christ shines always! Let’s leave religion behind and let Jesus be our leader!
[The story of Roland Hayes' concert in Berlin in 1924 is told compellingly in Robert Schuller's wonderful book, The Be-Happy Attitudes. I learned more about Hayes from a Google search on the web.]
Monday, May 10, 2004
Jesus' Final Instructions
John 13:31-35
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 9, 2004)
Every parent and child can identify with Jesus' words to us in today’s Bible lesson. Spoken just before He went to the cross and His resurrection, they’re a lot like words that parents say to their children as they entrust the kids to babysitters.
In the lesson, Jesus is with the inner circle of His followers, the twelve. He’s about to fulfill His whole purpose for coming to earth. He’s going to be “glorified,” Jesus’ term in John's Gospel for the whole movement through His execution, death, and resurrection. The events of the next few days will see Him decisively destroy the power of sin and death and futility over the lives of all who turn from sin and follow Him. But it will also mean leaving His followers behind.
To reassure the men who form Jesus' core group as He prepares to go to cross and tomb and resurrection and into heaven, Jesus makes three main points.
First: He says that He has to go away. Jesus speaks tenderly to these brawny men. “Little children,” He tells them. “I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and...’Where I am going, you cannot come.’”
Next: Jesus says, basically, that He wants them to be good to each other and not tear each others’ heads off. (Every parent has given these instructions to their children as they leave for an evening out!) “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says. “That you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
Finally: Later in their time together, near the end of chapter 14 in John’s Gospel, Jesus will tell these disciples—and us, because He was speaking to us, too—that He isn't leaving them or us alone. "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My Name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” Jesus is promising to leave us in the care of the world’s best babysitter, the Holy Spirit.
There are times when we may feel that God has left us alone to deal with life. We may feel like the man, going through a horrible time, who once told me: “Mark, I pray and I pray. But it feels like all of my prayers just bounce off of the ceiling and I’m talking to myself.”
But Jesus does something to help us to know that in times like this, we aren’t alone. He gives the new command we hear in today's lesson. He tells us to “love one another.”
You may think: That doesn’t seem new. We all know the greatest commandment, to love God and to love neighbor. But Jesus is telling us something more than that. He’s telling the people who make up His band of followers in the world, the Church, to love each other.
The Church exists not only to share the Good News of Jesus with the world, you know.
The Church also exists to be what I have sometimes called a support group for recovering sinners.
But Jesus created the Church for still another reason. You’ve heard me tell the story of a little boy, in bed, afraid of the monsters he imagines lurking in his closet, calling out to his dad. “Daddy! Daddy!” When dad arrives, he wraps his arms around his boy and asks what’s wrong. “I’m afraid,” the little boy says. “There’s no reason to feel afraid, honey,” the father says. “Your mom and I are just down the hall and remember that Jesus is always with you.” “I know that,” says the little guy. “But I want someone with skin on him.”
The Church is made up of lots of people with skin on them. And the Church is meant to be there to give us all assurance in the times when we feel alone or afraid or filled with grief that the God we know through Jesus Christ (Who Himself is God with skin on Him!) really is there and He really cares for each of us.
And so, Jesus says, we need to cherish this gift of the Church. We need to love it.
But we need to be careful how we love it.
Ann and I once knew a woman who, everywhere she went, spoke of her husband in the most glowing terms. At card club, she told the other women that her Norman was so smart, so kind, so considerate, such a great father. She did the same thing at work and at the ballfields where she watched little Norman and Susie play baseball. She did the same thing at the PTO meetings. You would have thought that Norman was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The only problem was that whenever this woman got back with Norman, she could hardly stand him. He didn’t seem nearly as intelligent, resourceful, kind, or considerate as she’d painted him as being to her friends and anyone else who would listen. The real Norman wasn’t perfect. He was ordinary. A few years later, that woman left Norman. Why? Because he wasn’t as perfect as she’d dreamed he was or that she thought he was supposed to be.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian, who lost his life because of his opposition to Adolf Hitler, wrote a book about the Church called, Life Together. One of the things he warns followers of Christ about is our penchant for loving our dream of the Church more than we love the Church as it really is.
Christ did create the Church. Christ did give us the Church to be the body of Christ in the world, to put skin on God when the world can be bleak or difficult or challenging...and to give us hints of the joy, peace, and fellowship of heaven here on earth.
But every person who is part of the Church has something in common: We are all ordinary, imperfect, sinful human beings. Jesus commands us to love, not our dream of the Church, but the Church as it really is, with all its imperfections. This is so difficult that, like Norman’s wife who left Norman in order to find the perfect man, many people hop from church to church to church or leave the Church altogether in order to find the perfect congregation. This side of heaven, they’ll never find the perfect church.
And yet, it is precisely this Church composed of ordinary people that we are to love. Quite frankly, there isn’t a congregation I’ve visited yet that wasn’t composed of characters who could populate a sitcom. Every church is filled with quirks and idiosynracies and bad habits.
And, as C.S. Lewis points out in his book, The Screwtape Letters, the devil will work hard to point us to the foibles and faults of the people who make up any church. You’ll look around and perhaps see the pastor who talks too long, or the man—desperate to be needed—who annoys everyone by trying to be helpful, or the woman bathed in some musty-smelling perfume, or the man with the absurd comb-over. And you’ll think: Is this the body of Christ, Jesus’ grand and glorious Church? And Jesus will tell you, “Yes...and you are to love it! Love all who are part of the Church just as I have loved you.”
How? How can we honor Jesus’ final instructions by loving our brothers and sisters in faith?
One clue is that Jesus sends the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to fill us and to help us do what we are incapable of doing on our own.
The other clue is in Jesus’ phrase, “as I have loved you.” When Jesus went to the cross, He didn’t have some fake smile smeared across His face. He didn’t say, “I just adore the way you wince when you pound nails into My flesh.”
The greatest temptation Jesus must have ever felt was the one He faced on that day when the whole world condemned Him and cried for His blood. Then, He must have been tempted to say, “There is nothing to be loved in the people of the world. They’re filled with hatred, sin, and imperfection. I’m pulling myself off of this cross and they can all go to hell.”
But Jesus didn’t do that! You see, Jesus knew a simple truth, of which I have spoken before: Love isn’t always what you feel. Sometimes love is what you do in spite of how you feel. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus stayed the course. Because He did, loving us even when He may not have liked us very much, He won everlasting life for us.
When we love Jesus’ Church—warts, imperfections, sins, and all—the Church can become what Jesus means for it to be: the living reminder that while we may not be able to see Him as He sits enthroned in heaven, He hasn’t left us alone and He still loves us!
There’s a story told of two men, boyhood friends who loved each other very much. A series of unfortunate circumstances forced them to live in separate, hostile countries. One day, one of the friends, now a merchant, traveled to visit his friend. The king got wind of a stranger from an enemy country walking his streets. He had the man brought to him.
Convinced that the merchant was a spy, the king ordered his execution. But the man said, “Your majesty, if I’m unable to take care of my financial affairs before I die, my wife and children will be left destitute. Please let me go back to my country to set things right and then I will return to face my fate.”
The king exploded, “Do you think I’m a fool? Whoever heard of a prisoner returning to the executioner without force?”
But the man replied, “I have a friend here who will be security for me.” Incredulous, the king called the man’s friend in and asked, “Will you be security for your friend? Understand that if he doesn’t come back, you will be executed in his place at nightfall thirty days from now.” The man said that it would be an honor to offer his life as security for his friend.
The king then let the stranger and gave him thirty days to get his affairs in order. On the thirtieth day at dusk, the merchant hadn’t yet returned. His friend was brought to the executioner’s block. Just then, the merchant arrived, pushed his friend aside, and said, “I am ready to assume my punishment.” But his friend wasn’t so easily convinced. “Please, friend, you have been like a brother all these years. I have prepared myself over this past month to die in your place.” They argued like this for several moments while the king and his courtiers watched in disbelief.
Finally, the king ordered the executioner and his sword removed. “I have never seen such devotion in my life,” he said. “Both of you are pardoned.” Then the king called the two men before him. “Deep friendship is a rare jewel,” he said. “I beg you, allow me to join you as a third.” From that day forward the two men became friends of the king.
When the world around us sees the people of the Church loving one another and caring for one another, imperfections and all, just as we have been loved by Christ, they will see that we are companions of the King, Jesus. And they too, will want to be His companions.
Jesus’ final instructions to us are simple. “Love...one another...[j]ust as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Our simple prayer each day must be, “Lord help me to love others as I have been loved by you.”
[The analogy between Jesus' instructions in John 13:31-35 was created by Laura Jernigan in a message which appears in: The Abingdon Preaching Annual 2004 Edition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003)
[The story of the king and the two loyal friends appears in Stories for Telling: A Treasury for Christian Storytellers by William White (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986)
[The books Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoefer and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis are widely available in various editions in many bookstores.
[For my understanding of "glorification" in the Bible's Johannine literature, I am indebted to my professor and mentor, the late Bruce Schein. His explanation of John's Gospel, Following the Way, is classic.
[I have also consulted with the web-based exegetical notes of Brian Stoffregen and the commentary of R.C.H. Lenski in the preparation of this message.]
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 9, 2004)
Every parent and child can identify with Jesus' words to us in today’s Bible lesson. Spoken just before He went to the cross and His resurrection, they’re a lot like words that parents say to their children as they entrust the kids to babysitters.
In the lesson, Jesus is with the inner circle of His followers, the twelve. He’s about to fulfill His whole purpose for coming to earth. He’s going to be “glorified,” Jesus’ term in John's Gospel for the whole movement through His execution, death, and resurrection. The events of the next few days will see Him decisively destroy the power of sin and death and futility over the lives of all who turn from sin and follow Him. But it will also mean leaving His followers behind.
To reassure the men who form Jesus' core group as He prepares to go to cross and tomb and resurrection and into heaven, Jesus makes three main points.
First: He says that He has to go away. Jesus speaks tenderly to these brawny men. “Little children,” He tells them. “I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and...’Where I am going, you cannot come.’”
Next: Jesus says, basically, that He wants them to be good to each other and not tear each others’ heads off. (Every parent has given these instructions to their children as they leave for an evening out!) “I give you a new commandment,” Jesus says. “That you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.”
Finally: Later in their time together, near the end of chapter 14 in John’s Gospel, Jesus will tell these disciples—and us, because He was speaking to us, too—that He isn't leaving them or us alone. "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, Whom the Father will send in My Name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” Jesus is promising to leave us in the care of the world’s best babysitter, the Holy Spirit.
There are times when we may feel that God has left us alone to deal with life. We may feel like the man, going through a horrible time, who once told me: “Mark, I pray and I pray. But it feels like all of my prayers just bounce off of the ceiling and I’m talking to myself.”
But Jesus does something to help us to know that in times like this, we aren’t alone. He gives the new command we hear in today's lesson. He tells us to “love one another.”
You may think: That doesn’t seem new. We all know the greatest commandment, to love God and to love neighbor. But Jesus is telling us something more than that. He’s telling the people who make up His band of followers in the world, the Church, to love each other.
The Church exists not only to share the Good News of Jesus with the world, you know.
The Church also exists to be what I have sometimes called a support group for recovering sinners.
But Jesus created the Church for still another reason. You’ve heard me tell the story of a little boy, in bed, afraid of the monsters he imagines lurking in his closet, calling out to his dad. “Daddy! Daddy!” When dad arrives, he wraps his arms around his boy and asks what’s wrong. “I’m afraid,” the little boy says. “There’s no reason to feel afraid, honey,” the father says. “Your mom and I are just down the hall and remember that Jesus is always with you.” “I know that,” says the little guy. “But I want someone with skin on him.”
The Church is made up of lots of people with skin on them. And the Church is meant to be there to give us all assurance in the times when we feel alone or afraid or filled with grief that the God we know through Jesus Christ (Who Himself is God with skin on Him!) really is there and He really cares for each of us.
And so, Jesus says, we need to cherish this gift of the Church. We need to love it.
But we need to be careful how we love it.
Ann and I once knew a woman who, everywhere she went, spoke of her husband in the most glowing terms. At card club, she told the other women that her Norman was so smart, so kind, so considerate, such a great father. She did the same thing at work and at the ballfields where she watched little Norman and Susie play baseball. She did the same thing at the PTO meetings. You would have thought that Norman was the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The only problem was that whenever this woman got back with Norman, she could hardly stand him. He didn’t seem nearly as intelligent, resourceful, kind, or considerate as she’d painted him as being to her friends and anyone else who would listen. The real Norman wasn’t perfect. He was ordinary. A few years later, that woman left Norman. Why? Because he wasn’t as perfect as she’d dreamed he was or that she thought he was supposed to be.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Lutheran pastor and theologian, who lost his life because of his opposition to Adolf Hitler, wrote a book about the Church called, Life Together. One of the things he warns followers of Christ about is our penchant for loving our dream of the Church more than we love the Church as it really is.
Christ did create the Church. Christ did give us the Church to be the body of Christ in the world, to put skin on God when the world can be bleak or difficult or challenging...and to give us hints of the joy, peace, and fellowship of heaven here on earth.
But every person who is part of the Church has something in common: We are all ordinary, imperfect, sinful human beings. Jesus commands us to love, not our dream of the Church, but the Church as it really is, with all its imperfections. This is so difficult that, like Norman’s wife who left Norman in order to find the perfect man, many people hop from church to church to church or leave the Church altogether in order to find the perfect congregation. This side of heaven, they’ll never find the perfect church.
And yet, it is precisely this Church composed of ordinary people that we are to love. Quite frankly, there isn’t a congregation I’ve visited yet that wasn’t composed of characters who could populate a sitcom. Every church is filled with quirks and idiosynracies and bad habits.
And, as C.S. Lewis points out in his book, The Screwtape Letters, the devil will work hard to point us to the foibles and faults of the people who make up any church. You’ll look around and perhaps see the pastor who talks too long, or the man—desperate to be needed—who annoys everyone by trying to be helpful, or the woman bathed in some musty-smelling perfume, or the man with the absurd comb-over. And you’ll think: Is this the body of Christ, Jesus’ grand and glorious Church? And Jesus will tell you, “Yes...and you are to love it! Love all who are part of the Church just as I have loved you.”
How? How can we honor Jesus’ final instructions by loving our brothers and sisters in faith?
One clue is that Jesus sends the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to fill us and to help us do what we are incapable of doing on our own.
The other clue is in Jesus’ phrase, “as I have loved you.” When Jesus went to the cross, He didn’t have some fake smile smeared across His face. He didn’t say, “I just adore the way you wince when you pound nails into My flesh.”
The greatest temptation Jesus must have ever felt was the one He faced on that day when the whole world condemned Him and cried for His blood. Then, He must have been tempted to say, “There is nothing to be loved in the people of the world. They’re filled with hatred, sin, and imperfection. I’m pulling myself off of this cross and they can all go to hell.”
But Jesus didn’t do that! You see, Jesus knew a simple truth, of which I have spoken before: Love isn’t always what you feel. Sometimes love is what you do in spite of how you feel. Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus stayed the course. Because He did, loving us even when He may not have liked us very much, He won everlasting life for us.
When we love Jesus’ Church—warts, imperfections, sins, and all—the Church can become what Jesus means for it to be: the living reminder that while we may not be able to see Him as He sits enthroned in heaven, He hasn’t left us alone and He still loves us!
There’s a story told of two men, boyhood friends who loved each other very much. A series of unfortunate circumstances forced them to live in separate, hostile countries. One day, one of the friends, now a merchant, traveled to visit his friend. The king got wind of a stranger from an enemy country walking his streets. He had the man brought to him.
Convinced that the merchant was a spy, the king ordered his execution. But the man said, “Your majesty, if I’m unable to take care of my financial affairs before I die, my wife and children will be left destitute. Please let me go back to my country to set things right and then I will return to face my fate.”
The king exploded, “Do you think I’m a fool? Whoever heard of a prisoner returning to the executioner without force?”
But the man replied, “I have a friend here who will be security for me.” Incredulous, the king called the man’s friend in and asked, “Will you be security for your friend? Understand that if he doesn’t come back, you will be executed in his place at nightfall thirty days from now.” The man said that it would be an honor to offer his life as security for his friend.
The king then let the stranger and gave him thirty days to get his affairs in order. On the thirtieth day at dusk, the merchant hadn’t yet returned. His friend was brought to the executioner’s block. Just then, the merchant arrived, pushed his friend aside, and said, “I am ready to assume my punishment.” But his friend wasn’t so easily convinced. “Please, friend, you have been like a brother all these years. I have prepared myself over this past month to die in your place.” They argued like this for several moments while the king and his courtiers watched in disbelief.
Finally, the king ordered the executioner and his sword removed. “I have never seen such devotion in my life,” he said. “Both of you are pardoned.” Then the king called the two men before him. “Deep friendship is a rare jewel,” he said. “I beg you, allow me to join you as a third.” From that day forward the two men became friends of the king.
When the world around us sees the people of the Church loving one another and caring for one another, imperfections and all, just as we have been loved by Christ, they will see that we are companions of the King, Jesus. And they too, will want to be His companions.
Jesus’ final instructions to us are simple. “Love...one another...[j]ust as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” Our simple prayer each day must be, “Lord help me to love others as I have been loved by you.”
[The analogy between Jesus' instructions in John 13:31-35 was created by Laura Jernigan in a message which appears in: The Abingdon Preaching Annual 2004 Edition (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2003)
[The story of the king and the two loyal friends appears in Stories for Telling: A Treasury for Christian Storytellers by William White (Minneapolis: Augsburg Publishing House, 1986)
[The books Life Together by Dietrich Bonhoefer and The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis are widely available in various editions in many bookstores.
[For my understanding of "glorification" in the Bible's Johannine literature, I am indebted to my professor and mentor, the late Bruce Schein. His explanation of John's Gospel, Following the Way, is classic.
[I have also consulted with the web-based exegetical notes of Brian Stoffregen and the commentary of R.C.H. Lenski in the preparation of this message.]
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