Another Post of Pictures from Our Canandaigua Mission Trip

In the last photo, another adult crew leader, a member of a Lutheran congregation in New England, and I are showing off some of the fried dough the nursing home residents would work on. The nursing home is part of a holistic health facility in Clifton Springs. It was founded nearly 150 years ago and is a fantastic place! Several of the events which happened while we were there also involved children from a day care center, also on the campus.

[Click on the pictures to see them get bigger!]

And Still More Canandaigua Mission Trip Pics

Mikey, a member of the work crew with which I worked, appears a bit skeptical about standing around me in the second picture above.

[Click on the pictures to enlarge them...if you dare.]

Still More Fab Pics from the Canandaigua Mission Trip

See the explanation several posts below. [Click on the links to enlarge them.]

More Pictures from the 2007 Mission Trip

[Click a pic to see it bigger.]

More Pics from Canandaigua Mission Trip

[Click images to enlarge.]

Pictures from Our Mission Trip in Canandaigua, New York

On the days of June 17 to 22, a group of thirteen people from our congregation, Friendship Lutheran Church of Amelia, Ohio, participated in the Group Work Camps Foundation's Week of Hope in Canandaigua, New York. Along with seventy-seven other young people and adult crew chiefs from churches in Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, Delaware, and Maine, we went out for six hours each day in groups of six to spruce up the homes of widows, plant and clean at the city's enormous Veterans' Administration Hospital, helped a local food bank, spent time with and transported the residents of area nursing homes, and other acts of service in Christ's Name. We also worshiped, learned, had fun, and sometimes, got bored, together. It was awesome! In this and the next several posts, I'll be presenting pics of our group and the crews with which we worked.

[You can click on the images to enlarge them.]

First Pass at This Weekend's Bible Lesson: Luke 10:1-11, 16-20

[Most weeks, I present as many updates on my reflections and study of the Biblical texts on which our weekend worship celebrations will be built as I can. The purpose is to help the people of the congregation I serve as pastor, Friendship Lutheran Church of Amelia, Ohio, get ready for worship. Most weeks, I hope, it's helpful to others as well, since our Bible lesson is usually one from the weekly lectionary, variations of which are used in most of the churches of the world.]

Luke 10:1-11, 16-20
After this the Lord appointed seventy others and sent them on ahead of him in pairs to every town and place where he himself intended to go. 2He said to them, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore ask the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest. 3Go on your way. See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. 4Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road. 5Whatever house you enter, first say, ‘Peace to this house!’ 6And if anyone is there who shares in peace, your peace will rest on that person; but if not, it will return to you. 7Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide, for the laborer deserves to be paid. Do not move about from house to house. 8Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; 9cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ 10But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 11‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’...

16“Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me, and whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me.”

17The seventy returned with joy, saying, “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!” 18He said to them, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. 19See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you. 20Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.”

General Comments:
1. This passage comes shortly after the beginning of a section which starts at Luke 9:51 and continues through Luke 19:27. In it, Jesus moves resolutely toward the Father's will that He die on a cross in Jerusalem. He faces opposition throughout. But also, as in this lesson, we also see foreshadowed the empowerment of Jesus' followers to spread the reign of God that will come to them following Christ's resurrection and the sending of the Holy Spirit on the first Pentecost.

2. The more immediate context is that in the narrative immediately preceding the lesson, Luke 9:57-62, three persons, for various reasons, beg off of following Christ. But in our lesson, seventy-two (or seventy) disciples willingly go where they're sent by Him.

3. This passage resembles an incident that occurs in Luke 9:1-6. There, Jesus sends His twelve closest followers--that group of disciples referred to as "the Twelve" or "the apostles"--out on a similar mission of preparation for His arrival. Several commentators suggest that with the sending of the group in this lesson, we see that every follower of Christ is called and deputized to share the life-changing news that all with faith in Christ have new and everlasting life with God. It foreshadows the mission for all His followers which the risen Jesus summarizes for two unsuspecting disciples He meets on the road to Emmaus:

...repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. (Luke 24:47)

[More tomorrow, I hope.]

Is There Hostility Toward the Unmarried?

And should there be a name for it? These are questions asked by Ann Althouse in an interesting post today. I weighed in with my thoughts:

I don't know if I sense a hostility toward the unmarried. But there often is a shameful disdain.

Unmarried people often face the same disdain shown toward the long-married who have no children. People in both categories often seem to be seen as being less than full adults, sometimes as self-indulgent and immature.

Single and marrieds without children from among my parishioners and friends (and extended family) have reported running into this disdain and I've observed it up close.

Why do these attitudes exist?

Well, it can't entirely be explained by saying that married people (with children) are miserable and resent the "freedom" they see in the lives of singles and marrieds without children. I, for one, am happy in my nearly-thirty-three year old marriage and thoroughly enjoyed raising our two children.

Nor do I think that the disdain of singles is related to the suspicion of homosexuality. If anything, long-term singles are often seen by the people holding to the attitudes we're here describing as being asexual.

There is, I think, a more simple explanation. Some people feel that adults have to go through certain proscribed life-hoops in order to truly be considered an adult. They tend to believe this all the more if they have, in fact, gone through those hoops, no matter the quality of their marital or family relationships. They see themselves as part of an adults' club and looking down their noses on those who haven't gone through the hoops is one of the "privileges" of membership.

The phenomenon, disdain of singles and marrieds without children, is real. If you come up with a term, maybe you can copyright it.

What do you think?

It Was Inevitable

Cincinnati Reds manager Jerry Narron has been fired. Many Cincinnati fans, not to mention Reds Hall of Fame play-by-play radio announcer Marty Brennaman, have long complained that Narron failed to demand more of a team often seen to be lackadaisical on defense.

Many scratched their heads too, at the seeming indifference of Narron to the undisciplined approach to hitting evidenced by slugger Adam Dunn, on a pace to strike out over 200 times this year and unwilling to cut down his swing when the count is against him. (Dunn's 23 homeruns in 2007, consistent with his modus operandi throughout his career, have almost always come at irrelevant points in games, either with a win out of reach or safely in the bag.)

But most of the Reds' woes this year were beyond the gentlemanly Jerry Narron's capacity to influence. It's simple: The Reds' bullpen is awful. That won't improve with Narron's departure.

Nor will the Reds' occasional lapses into impotent offensive output.

I wonder a little bit about what impact, if any, Narron's departure might have on rookie sensation Josh Hamilton. The Narron family, acquainted with Hamilton since his youth, seem to have been the prime movers behind the Reds signing the outstanding outfielder after he fell into and began his recovery from a drug dependency that nearly ruined both his career and his life. Although Hamilton's groundedness in his Christian faith and the extraordinary relationship he has with his tough-loving wife are strong anchors, the Narrons were his baseball advocates and he's bound to miss Jerry. (For more on Hamilton, for whom I have endless respect, see here, here, and here. The latest issue of Sports Spectrum also has a good article on Hamilton.)

With the worst record in baseball and the season halfway completed, Reds management may decide that it's too late to salvage the 2007 campaign. Cellar dwelling may be as inevitable as was Narron's ouster. But that doesn't mean that the Reds shouldn't act to improve their bullpen. They owe it not only to their fans, but to pitching aces Aaron Harang and Bronson Arroyo, the latter of whom has been victimized repeatedly by paltry run support, to find relievers who can preserve leads and to field eight starters who will consistently demonstrate that they care.

As the modern embodiment of Dave Kingman, the free-swinging major leaguer who hit homeruns while striking out and hitting for a low average with regularity, Adam Dunn is an obvious candidate for being traded. But is there a market for him?

The local media have reported that the Yankees and the Arizona Diamondbacks have been scouting him regularly. Teams in the American League West and possibly the Los Angeles Dodgers could be interested in him. Each of these teams, for various reasons, need a homerun hitter and could have pitching to give up in any trade. But each will have to weigh heavily whether Dunn's previously mentioned offensive deficiencies, not to mention his so-so defensive skills in the outfield, are worth a trade.

The most frightening talk I hear is from those who suggest trading Ken Griffey, Jr. Granted Junior is thirty-seven years old. But after several injury-plagued years, he's having a great season, hitting 22 homeruns and better than .290. He made the shift to right field in deference to his age, but still plays sparklingly on defense. To me, it's unthinkable that this son of Cincinnati Moeller High School and of Big Red Machine veteran Ken Griffey, Sr. would end his career anywhere other than in a Reds uniform, especially since he still has a lot to contribute.

No matter how badly the Reds are playing this year, Great American Ball Park is a great place to watch a game...which is exactly what I'll be doing tomorrow night, booing Barry Bonds, whose every steroid-launched homerun thumbs a nose at the game of baseball.

God is So Shrewd

This morning, I went to SiteMeter to check on the web traffic to this site. Whenever I do this, I like to check on the referring sites. Often, I'll dash off a thank you email to those who refer to posts that appear on Better Living.

When I looked at the referring web sites today, I spied one that I'd never seen before. I clicked on the link and was shocked to find myself led to a pornographic site, a single graphic image in the middle of the page beneath which was a huge, block-lettered link to my sermon from yesterday, Husbands and Wives (Joyful Relationships, Part 3).

A sense of outrage overtook me and for a nanosecond, I considered staying on the site long enough to find a webmaster's email address in order to demand that the link to my sermon be taken down. I mean, I don't want to be associated with a porn site.

But as I entertained these thoughts, I just as quickly left the site while I sensed a heavenly voice telling me, "Hold on there, Cowboy! A porn site links to a Christian message on marriage. Who do you suppose orchestrated that one?"

God is so shrewd.

Husbands and Wives (Joyful Relationships, Part 3)

[This message was shared during worship with the people of Friendship Lutheran Church on July 1, 2007. If you live in or are visiting the Cincinnati area, feel free to worship with us at 10:00 AM on Sundays.]

Genesis 2:1-9, 15-25

A little girl had just seen the movie, Snow White, for the first time and excitedly told her grandmother about it. After recounting how Prince Charming came along and kissed Snow White back to life, she asked her grandmother, “Do you know what happened next?” “Yes,” grandma replied, “they lived happily ever after.” Her face screwed up in a quizzical expression, the little girl said, “No! They got married!”

After being married nearly thirty-three years, I can report that it is possible to be both married and happy. I agree with the sentiments of a friend of ours who gets a lot of teasing for her attempts at matchmaking. “I’ve always been happy married,” she tells us. “I just want my friends to be happy, too.”

Today, I want to look at the Biblical account of the world’s first marriage to see why marriage is a good thing.

The first reason that marriage is good is that it’s a gift from God. Marriage has its roots in God looking at the first man and saying, “It’s not good for the man to live alone.” According to our Bible lesson for today, God then sets out to make something or someone with whom Adam can share life. God creates one life form after another. But we’re told that “not one of them was a suitable companion.” Old Testament scholar Elizabeth Achtemeier says that if we could translate this passage with absolute clarity, it might say, “no companion able to complete the man’s humanity was found.”

But, as you and I know well through Jesus Christ, God’s love is tenacious. God doesn't give up on helping us. Our lesson shows us that God was determined to create the perfect companion for man. That’s when God made woman, Eve, whose name means life.

Marriage is a gift which, for those willing to treat it as such, can make marriage partners happy and complete.

A second reason we see for saying that marriage is good is that it can bring joy! Many of you have heard me say that most mornings when I wake up, among my first thoughts is to wonder at God’s grace. Like the psalmist whose words we used for our opening call to worship, I’m amazed that the God Who made this vast universe cares about me. We also see the depths of God’s care for us in Jesus, Who went to a cross and rose from the dead, to give all who follow Him everlasting life. That’s an amazing thought that brings joy!

But here’s another thought that often crosses my mind when I wake up in the morning: I’m amazed that my wife married me. Given our history--that in high school, she rightly dismissed me as a big-mouthed weasel, I find it hard to believe that she gave me the chance to become her friend, to go out with her, to marry her, and to have a life with her. Knowing that you’re loved like that brings both mystification and joy!

Third: Marriage is good because it can bring husbands and wives safe, affirming intimacy. We see this at the end of our Bible lesson for today. It tells us, “The man and the woman were both naked, but they were not embarrassed.”

This line isn’t primarily about our bodies or about sex. It’s about having a safe place to be who you are. The poet Carl Sandburg’s daughter once wrote about their parents’ marriage:

“There were never loud arguments...in our house. My father...roared...But [when he became angry] Mother coaxed him out of it. Once when he was very old, I saw him pull at a door that was stuck. He rattled the handle and shouted. My mother, a small woman, looked up at him and patted his chest. ’ What a fine, strong voice!” she said. Disarmed, he stood there in love. It was a thread established early and woven through their life.”

Carl Sandburg had the ability to be himself with his wife. I’m often astounded at the numbers of husbands and wives who tell me their perceptions of their spouses--good things and bad. When I ask them if they’ve shared these things with their mates, many tell me, “No. I could never do that!”

And yet, God made marriage to be a relationship in which we can stand naked--naked in our strengths and weaknesses, naked in our virtues and our faults--and still be loved. While openness and a certain degree of intimacy should characterize all of our relationships, nowhere should it be more present than in marriages.

Finally: Marriage can be good because it truly can provide husbands and wives and those who live close to them a glimpse of what heaven will be like. I'm not kidding! Throughout the Bible, when God wants to describe the intimacy, joy, and love that comes to all who follow God, He uses the analogy of marriage. When He wants to describe the human penchant for walking away from God, God speaks of adultery and prostitution. And one of the images Jesus uses to describe the Church is “the bride of Christ.”

Good marriages incorporate forgiveness, intimacy, loyalty, encouragement, mutual affection, and unconditional acceptance. I get a hint of heaven every time I make another bonehead move and find that the next morning, my wife is still around, forgiving me, loving me, and rowing in the same direction.

If heaven is a kingdom of undeserved grace and love, then the love of a wife or a husband who knows all about us and keeps living with us anyway must surely point us to what God has in mind for us when He calls us to follow Him. No wonder then that when Martin Luther cast about for a way to describe the family, he said that it was to be “a little church”: a place where the God we meet in Jesus Christ was to be known and celebrated in the day-in, day-out relationships that exist in families.

Of course, not all marriages are heavenly enterprises. That’s one of the reasons that so many marriages end in divorce these days. This brings us to a very important point: The goodness of marriage is only experienced by those husbands and wives who devote themselves to the hard work involved in real love.

Marriage is a gift. But like all gifts, it requires care to keep it working. Adam and Eve had a great marriage in Genesis, chapter 2, the portion of the Bible from which our lesson is drawn. It lost its luster in chapter 3. They got out of touch with God and as always happens when we lose touch with God, they fell into sin. The next thing you know, these two people who, just a few verses earlier, were gah-gah over each other, are blaming one another for the fix they’re in. Adam even tells God, “This woman you sent me has really messed things up!”

Fortunately, God didn’t give up on the first human beings as quickly as they gave up on each other. He gave them second chances. He kept loving them up and invited them to start afresh. With prayer and work, they did start again and they experienced renewal in their marriage. God helped them to do the hard work required to keep the wonderful gift of marriage in happy working order. And God can do the same thing for married people today if both husbands and wives are willing to accept God’s help and to do the hard work good marriages require.

Marriage is good because

• it’s a gift from God;
• it can bring joy;
• it can bring husbands and wives into safe, affirming intimacy with each other; and
• it can bring spouses and those who know them glimpses of heaven.
  

If you who are married don’t ever see these good things in your marriage, commit yourself now to praying for your marriage and for your spouse, asking God to give you guidance on how you can care for the gift of your marriage to make it all that it’s meant to be.

I ask those who aren’t married to pray for the marriages of family and friends so that they too can become all that God intends.

All of society has a stake in seeing that marriages are strong. God stands ready to help make that happen.

[Links to the first two installments of this series:
How to Have and Be a Friend
How Will I Know?]

Was Matthews Right to Say, 'Thank God' That Piccadilly Bombing Was Averted?

On his show this evening, Chris Matthews talked about the averted terrorist bombing near London's Piccadilly Circus. At least three times Matthews issued a "Thank God" that the attack was avoided.

Was he right to say that?

Did God prevent the bombings from happening in London today?

And if so, why didn't this same God prevent the Holocaust, the attacks of September 11, 2001, the July 7 London bombings, the Madrid bombings of March 11, 2004, or the Beslan school crisis of 2004?

As a Christian, I believe that the answers to these questions will only fully be apparent in eternity. Until then, as the New Testament portion of the Bible tells us, "we walk by faith and not by sight."

But, as I look at the historical record as presented in the Bible and at the experience of believers in the centuries since the last book of the Bible was written, I affirm several historic Christian teachings:

• God hears prayer
• God cares about what's happening in our world
• God intervenes in our world, first, out of consideration for His long-term will for us, and second, in response to our prayers, which are really invitations to God to act in our world

These assertions are either brave or stupid, I suppose. Or they are true.

That's because they diverge dramatically from the sorts of explanations offered by simplistic religious legalists, even those who identify themselves as Christians.

Remember the Muslim cleric who said that the tsunami of Christmas, 2004 was caused by the failure of Muslims in the affected countries to maintain their religious discipline?

Or the Christian clergyperson who said that the 9/11 attacks were the result of America's abortion laws and acceptance of gay relationships? (He later recanted for that comment.)

Christian theology refuses to accept such simplistic explanations of God or of world events, primarily because God is bigger than our capacity to fully comprehend Him and also because in Jesus Christ, we meet a God Who cares about and is aligned with the human race, particularly with those who suffer.

So, does God intervene in the events of history?

Just last night, during a raucous commercial air flight back to Ohio from Florida, I read some of Philip Yancey's fantastic new book, Prayer. He dealt with this very question. He writes:

Our own time has witnessed uprisings led by prayer.

In the 1980s, a pastor named Laszlo Tokes took over a small Reformed church to minister to his fellow Hungarians, an oppressed minority living inside the borders of Romania. His predecessor had openly supported the communist Romanian government, even to the extent of wearing a red star on his clerical robes. In contrast, Tokes spoke out against injustice and protested government actions. Soon the sanctuary began filling each Sunday, bringing together worshipers and dissidents of both Romanian and Hungarian descent. Membership grew from forty persons to five thousand.

The courageous new pastor attracted the attention of special agents as well. They threatened Tokes many times with violence, and one evening the police were dispatched. Word spread quickly and hundreds of Christians--Baptist, Orthodox, Reformed, and Catholic alike--poured out of their homes to surround Tokes's house as a wall of protection. They stood through the day and night, singing hymns and holding candles.

A few days later, police broke through the protestors to seize Tokes. Rather than dispersing and filing home, the protestors decided to march downtown to the police station. As the procession moved noisly through the streets, more and more people joined in. Eventually the crowd in the town square swelled to 200,000, nearly the entire population of that area. The Romanian army sent in troops, who in one bloody incident opened fire on the crowd, killing a hundred and wounding many more. Still the people held their ground, refusing to disperse.

A local pastor stood to address the protestors in an attempt to calm the rising anger and prevent a full-scale riot. He began with three words, "Let us pray." In one spontaneous motion that giant mass of farmers, teachers, students, doctors, and ordinary working people fell to their knees and recited the Lord's Prayer--a corporate act of civil disobedience. Within days the protest spread to the capital city of Bucharest, and a short time later the government that had ruled Romania with an iron fist toppled to the ground.

I've gotten myself in trouble suggesting that the collapse of the old, evil Soviet empire had more to do with prayer than the policies of governments, important though the latter may have been, especially the policy of containment as pursued by every US president from Harry Truman to George H.W. Bush.

But Yancey catalogs one instance after another in which the eyes of faith see the hand of God, responsive to the prayers of people. Yancey recites prayers offered and prayers seemingly answered in Poland, East Germany, and South Africa.

There must be many elements in the world's response to Islamist terrorism:

• Citizens, like the London EMS worker, need to be vigilant, watchful for suspicious and menacing behaviors
• Governments must enforce the law and guard their citizens from terrorists
• Christians must proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ that frees people from hatred and from performance-based religion, freeing believers in Christ to become the people God made them to be.
• Christians also must pray for protection of the world from people bent on violence, inviting the power of God into our world.

With solid historical warrant, Yancey points out:

...wherever Christian missionaries have traveled they have left behind a trail of hospitals, clinics, orphanages, and schools.

In response to Jesus' command that we love God and neighbor, Christians have always and continue to serve their neighbors--whatever their neighbors' religious affiliation.

But in addition to acting in the power of God, we're also called to pray.

Who knows? Somewhere on this planet it may be that vigilant, compassionate Christians have been praying that God would thwart terrorist attacks in Britain and that had something to do with an emergency worker seeing smoke emanating from a suspicously parked vehicle near Piccadilly Circus. Maybe it was God who ensured that the would-be terrrorists bungled their plot to violate the laws of God and of humanity.

I wouldn't be surprised.

Which is why, in an act of faith tonight, I say with Chris Matthews, "Thank God!"

[For a discussion of tragedy befalling the innocent, see here.]
[For a discussion of the role of governments in the life of the world and the rule of God, see here.]

[THANKS TO: Bill Hobbs, Annie Gottlieb, Aramis of Three Mass'keteers, Ann Althouse, and Glenn Reynolds for linking to this post.]

[THIS POST HAS been substantially cross-posted at RedBlueChristian.com.]

What's Goin' On?

With that Marvin Gaye title, I give an explanation for my absence from here of late.

At the conclusion of the mission trip in Canandaigua, NY, with Group Work Camps, I got home one week ago.

On Tuesday, my wife and I flew to Florida to spend time with our daughter and her husband. It was a wonderful visit!

Yesterday, our daughter's boss, seeing that she was distraught from having said goodbye to us at breakfast and knowing that we wouldn't take off until 7PM, told our daughter to take the day off. That was a gift!

Among the most special of memories I'll take from this short foray to Florida was late-night ice cream with our daughter. (My wife is an early-to-bed, early-to-rise person.) The best memories and the best experiences always seem to happen in the supposedly mundane and inconsequential encounters we have with those we love. The old saying is absolutely true: Love is spelled T-I-M-E.

Our daughter seems to be doing very well with her new job and appears to have the respect of her bosses. She's a on a track for management, which is exciting. Given her childlike enthusiasm and love of people, that doesn't surprise me.

My wife and I also got some "just the two of us time" and that too, was fantastic. Whenever we get to do that, we remember again how much we love and value one another. That's good for a couple soon to be married thirty-three years to remember!

The only down part of the trip was a group of loud, inebriated fellow passengers on the return flight. Particularly annoying were a man and a woman who spoke so loudly that I'm sure that two-thirds of the passengers heard their every word. They'd met at the airport lounge and gotten pretty loaded even before we boarded. She was married; he wasn't. His subtle spiel included several expressions of regret that the woman was married. She indicated that that didn't really matter to her and toward the end of the flight, they exchanged telephone numbers...and planned to find a bar to which they could retire.

But as smarmy as their dialog was, it was their loudness and that of several of their fellow revelers that was most annoying. About three-quarters of the way through the flight, a man several rows behind me asked if the two "flirts" could keep it down.

They were quieter for a short time. But soon they were as loud as before, he with his booming and increasingly profanity-laced pronouncements and unsuccessful attempts at humor, she with a loud, penetrating cackle.

When the flight ended, we waited for awhile as an elderly man was escorted from the plane by paramedics. From my seat sixteen rows back, I saw the old man kiss the flight attendant in gratitude, his wife close at hand.

During that brief wait, the cackler smacked the shoulder of one reveler and asked, "Did you have a good time?" Several people in the back replied instead: "None of us had a good time. You made it insufferable for the rest of us!" When the boomer tried to explain that he was celebrating a $300,000.00 sale he made earlier in the day, the crowd was unimpressed.

In all honesty, it's the first time I've ever encountered anything like that on a flight. My feeling is that the attendant who might otherwise have cut off the annoying group, was too busy with the special needs of the elderly man up front to note what was going on in aisles fourteen and fifteen.

A highlight of the entire trip, including the flight, was time spent reading Philip Yancey's fantastic new book on prayer. I'm sure that I'll be writing more about this in the future.

My wife, daughter, and I also had the chance to look up and briefly visit with a Lutheran pastor with whom I've corresponded and had phone chats. He's every bit as nice in person as he is from a distance!

So, have you read Yancey's book?

Have you dealt with long distances from your grown children?

Have you ever spent time on a commercial air flight with noisy drunks?

Tell me about those experiences, if you want.

Who Really Threw Windy Hager's Life Away?

"She could have done anything," says the mother of a sixteen year old high school student who has just married her track coach. "She could have set the world on fire. She threw it all away."

Windy Hager's mom may be right in saying that the young girl has thrown her life away. But if that's the case, Windy appears to have had help. When her parents had the chance and the responsibility to draw a line in the sand, they didn't do it. Instead, they signed the consent form allowing their daughter to marry a man two-and-a-half times her age. In my eyes, that makes them accomplices to Windy throwing her life away!

The relationship between Windy and her coach, Brenton Wuchae, had troubled Dennis and Betty Hager for several years. But attempts made by the parents to put an end to the illegal and clearly immoral relationship were unsuccessful.

Instead of redoubling their efforts to bring their daughter to her senses or protect her from a predatory coach though, the parents just gave up. Dennis explains pathetically: "Signing those consent forms was the hardest thing I did in my whole life, but we had to move on, it was going to kill us all."

That explanation is suspiciously similar to ones given by the parents of kids who've fallen into drug addiction, who say, "It was just too painful to see him or her going through DTs. So, I gave him or her the money to buy their drugs."

Or, "We decided to let her or him have the party with alcohol here rather than at someone else's house."

Or, "All the other sixteen year olds were going to Florida for spring break. We think it's wrong. But we can't let our kid be the only one stuck at home."

In each of these instances, as in the case of Dennis and Betty Hager, parents abdicate their jobs as parents. They willingly subject their children to risk, danger, heartache, and pain because they don't want to deal with ongoing confrontations or anger from their children. They exchange their kids' well-being for freedom from parental responsibility.

The Hagers may think that they've consented to their daughter's marriage out of love. Or maybe they think that by acquiescing to Windy's desire to marry Wuchae, they're removing a bone of contention between them and that they can now have a positive relationship with their daughter. If either of these thoughts informed their decision, they were being shortsighted.

As I see it, expressions of parental love come in two forms:

• First is unconditional acceptance and affirmation of a child's personhood. This springs directly from God's self-disclosure in Jesus Christ. God loves every human being. Parents are to reflect the God-given value of their kids.
• Second is discipline, a refusal to accept behaviors that harm people, including the child. This too, reflects God's self-disclosure. According to the Bible, God is righteous, above all valuing human behaviors that reflect love and respect for God, for others, and for the minds and bodies God has given each of us.
  

The latter expression of love is one which many parents seem loathe to perform these days. They shy away from saying, "No," to their children.

Yet, parents who truly love their children will say, "No" to destructive desires or habits of their kids.

• "No, you can't have a second candy bar."
• "No, you can't stay up until eleven o'clock on a school night."
• "No, you can't have beer at the party."
• "No, you can't go to Florida just because all the other parents at school are silly enough to permit their children to do so."

Apart from acquainting kids with the fact that life doesn't always go our ways, saying "No" in these and other circumstances demonstrates love for children, even if the kids never see it that way.

By most measures, a teen under the age of eighteen is a minor and still very much an adolescent. Dazzled by the promises of adult freedom so within their reach and twitterpated by hormones, adolescents are prone to making lousy choices, which loving parents must prevent them from making, if possible.

Parents who accede to their teens' irrational requests--such as wanting to marry someone twenty-four years older than them, whether to avoid conflict, to gain poplualrity, or because of a perverted notion of what love is all about, are really throwing their kids' lives over a cliff. And it's a shame!

[THANKS TO: The Big Lead for alerting me to this story.]

"God is not a marshmallow."

Amen!

Please Pray...

for Charlie Lehardy's son. Pray too, that you will have faith like that of the Lehardy family, trusting even in the midst of the difficulties.

Christmas in June

Following this past week's mission trip, I had today off. So I worshiped at All Saints Lutheran Church in Cincinnati's Eastgate area, where my colleague, Jim Dinkel, is pastor.

It turned out to be a fun and meaningful experience as Jim led a Christmas in June service. Jim says that we focus on the meaning of Easter every Sunday, when we always celebrate Jesus' resurrection. But in the midst of what he calls the Hallowgivemas "holiday" that begins in about September when Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas decorations mingle insensibly in stores and on homes, we tend to ignore the true significance of Christmas, when God reached down and became one of us in the person of Jesus, all so He could rescue us from sin and death!

Jim is right, I think. The Christmas season is actually supposed to begin on December 25 and go to January 6. But each December 26, we hurry it away like so much discarded wrapping paper. (For more on the church year, see here.)

It was fun singing several Christmas songs during worship, although I did feel a little silly whistling them when I headed to Chipotle for lunch.

It's good for a pastor to occasionally worship with someone else leading and to listen to someone else's preaching...even I get tired of the sound of my own voice!

What Do You Make of This Dream?

I usually don't remember dreams. But I guess that this one occurred close enough to my waking up this morning that I remember it.

I've been gone the past week, participating in a Group Work Camps Foundation 'Week of Hope' mission trip with three adults and nine youth from our church. (It was a great experience.) I'm taking tomorrow off and we'll be having a guest preacher.

In my dream, for some reason, my wife and I have to run over to the church building, which is about three miles from my house. It's Sunday morning. As I enter the church lobby, I glance at my watch and note that it'll be ten minutes before the service is to begin. Somehow, I slink into the church office without anyone noticing my presence. I'm both relieved and mystified by that; I want to get out before the service starts and not call attention to myself.

I run off some copies in the church office and write down some information for which I'd been looking.

Just as I come out of the office, I see the guest pastor breathlessly walk into the church building, an alb and stole flung carelessly over his arm. He must have had trouble getting here today, I think. (I have no idea what the guest pastor for tomorrow looks like. But in my dream, he's a man of about my age, mid-50s, squat, but powerfully built. He wears black hornrim glasses and a brown clerical shirt. His hair and moustache were once black, but are now sprinkled with grey.)

While I want to go and be out of his way, I decide that, since I'm there, I really should say something to him before I leave. I follow him into the sanctuary. While there isn't a huge crowd inside, I note that there are new faces and some people who've been with us lately and have returned, continuing a trend we've seen lately.

Again, as in the hallway, I somehow slither through undetected. And again, I'm relieved and mystified.

Try as a I might, I can't seem to reach the guest pastor. I do get within ten feet of him, but he's busily speaking with the worship accompanist. Knowing that he'll feel hairied if I try to greet him now, I set out for the parking lot.

When I get there, my car is nowhere to be seen. Instead, in the spot where I'd parked it, I find a cable car. My wife is inside. She explains that the conductor--of a trackless cable car?--needed to go do something and wanted me to take it for awhile. The end of my dream finds figuring out how to steer the thing, avoiding bumping into any of the cars on the lot, and heading out onto the street next to our church building.

So, what do you make of this one?

McCartney's 'Memory Almost Full': A Review

Back in September, 2005, when Paul McCartney's last studio LP, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, was released, I said:

No one who reads this blog will be surprised by my confessing that I'm a fan of Paul McCartney.

But you probably also know that I'm far from an uncritical fan...

I went on to enumerate some of the releases of McCartney's solo career which I classified as anywhere from great to horrible. He's had a few duds and he's had LPs that were only saved by a few flashes of brilliance. Yet, overall, his solo output has been fantastic, the past disclaimers of the rock and roll intelligentsia notwithstanding.

I'm not alone in that assessment. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Bob Dylan called McCartney's solo output "awesome." My twenty-two year old daughter recently informed me that among the young people with whom she works, Macca has suddenly become hip again. But is the new outbreak of Maccamania warranted?

Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, I believed then, was the best LP of McCartney's solo career, an uncommonly even and uniformly interesting collection of songs which was rightly nominated for the Grammy for Best Album of the Year.

It was widely believed that the former Beatle's teaming with young producer Nigel Godrich, who had the temerity to tell the star that he hadn't liked the way McCartney initially played the song, How Kind of You, had challenged McCartney in ways that had only previously happened with the other three Beatles and their producer, George Martin. McCartney even said that working with Godrich was like being in a band again.

As McCartney looked to complete an LP which he actually started before connecting with Godrich, he entered a period like those that have been artistically dangerous for him in the past. Often, spurred by successes and his innate desire to please, McCartney has followed good records with ill-advised ones.

On top of that, McCartney, who has no small ego, may have felt a twinge of resentment for the credit given to Godrich for Chaos. He most likely felt that he had something to prove.

But, in spite of all the danger, Memory Almost Full is a very fine LP. It's not on a par with Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, which sets a very high standard. But Memory Almost Full is a very good LP, a collection of solid and interesting songs.

For the most part, McCartney's lyrics here display the same clarity he achieved in the previous collection.

But it's the music and the arrangements that truly stun the listener of Memory Almost Full. While McCartney's voice continues a decline that has been noticeable for several years now, it's still a more than serviceable instrument, one which he sometimes uses in surprisingly soulful ways.

Thematically, as with his 1989 release, Flowers in the Dirt, McCartney is contemplating his own mortality (The End of the End). He's also looking back incredulously on a life that no one could have imagined his living back when he was born in Liverpool on June 18, 1942 (Ever Present Past, That Was Me, Vintage Clothes). In the former song, McCartney also insists that even if we wear the old stuff, we need to keep looking forward. That's been a McCartney trademark, artistically and in his life. Unlike musicians less than half his age, McCartney is still capable of surprising us musically. And he manages to do that numerous times on Memory Almost Full.

There are some good rockers on this release, too. I think especially of Only Mama Knows, which is preceded and closed with a lucious string arrangement, and the silly but infectious, Nod Your Head, which closes out the set.

Two songs will be readily identified as McCartneyesque, the LP's first two tracks, Dance Tonight and Ever Present Past. As likable as the two tunes are, I think that they were poor choices for being highlighted as singles in the UK and US, respectively, as they have been. For the first single, I would have chosen either That Was Me, a jazzy autobiographical number I really love, or Only Mama Knows. Both are likely to make non-McCartney fans stand up and take notice.

Maybe the most interesting song on the album is Mr. Bellamy. With its narrative, it reminds the listener of such Macca classics as Eleanor Rigby and Paperback Writer. McCartney describes it as a kind of opera. Punctuated by a staccato piano, intriguing percussion, a clarinet solo, and a clipped French horn, McCartney tells the story of a man who refuses to come down off of a roof, his therapist, and the firefighters down on the street who want to rescue him. McCartney voices the firefighters' part in his best bass: "Steady, lads/Easy does it." McCartney's father was a volunteer firefighter. So, armchair therapists can have a field day, if they want. (Such efforts are notoriously difficult when speaking of a McCartney song, which are rarely directly autobiographical.)

Of further special interest is Gratitude, a soulful ballad in which McCartney proclaims his thanks to a lover with these intriguing words in its bridge:

I should stop loving you
Think what you put me through
But I don't want to lock my heart away
I will look forward to
Days when I'll be loving you
Until then, gonna wish and hope and pray...

Given McCartney's divorce from Heather Mills, the amateur therapists will have still more to ponder and yammer about with this one.

Another highlight of Memory Almost Full is its medley that begins with Vintage Clothes.
In an interview clip on his web site, McCartney claims that this is the first time he's tacked together tunes in medley form since Abbey Road. That may prove that his memory is almost full because medley-construction is something he's done both within songs (think, Picasso's Last Words and Uncle Albert and Admiral Halsey) and on LPs (think, Band on the Run and Red Rose Speedway) several times through his solo career. This effort isn't comparable to his best medleys, although the lyrics are thematically linked and the individual songs are good.

In summary, McCartney avoided the artistic dangers to which he's in the past succumbed and produced a really fine LP. If Chaos and Creation was an A+, this one is an A. I recommend Memory Almost Full.

[UPDATE, 07-02-07: On repeated listenings to Memory Almost Full, I find myself falling in love with it more and more. It's an aural feast and in a way, the most compellingly personal LP of his solo career.]

Book Review: "Grace That Frees: The Lutheran Tradition"

[Below is a review I just submitted to Trinity Seminary Review, the journal of Trinity Lutheran Seminary, my Master's Degree alma mater.]

Grace That Frees: The Lutheran Tradition (Traditions of Christian Spirituality Series). By Bradley Hanson. Maryknoll, New York: Orbis Books (www.maryknoll.org), 2004. 159. pp. ISBN 1-57075-570-1 $16.00 (Paperback)

Spirituality is a slippery word, difficult to define. But I like the definition given by Bradley Hanson, author of this helpful look at Lutheran spirituality. “A spirituality,” he asserts, “is a faith with a path.”

But can one really speak of a Lutheran spirituality? One might not think so. As Hanson observes, “...Lutheranism is sometimes regarded by both those outside and inside the tradition to be seriously deficient as spirituality, even opposed to it.”

The reasons for this, according to Hanson, appear to be twofold. First, Lutheranism began as essentially a theological dispute, one in which right doctrine was regarded as central. Stereotypically, spirituality is seen as something that happens in the wifty regions of the heart. Lutheranism, while not disdaining the heart, is intent on right thinking about God as a way of staying true to God’s self-disclosure as recorded in Scripture. Second, traditional notions of spirituality as a set of rigorous disciplines performed by a spiritual seeker is inconsistent with Lutheranism’s radical theocentrism, the belief that everything is initiated by God, not us.

But in a rapid and readable survey of Lutheran faith, life, and practice, Hanson demonstrates the rich, diverse spirituality that has existed--and still exists--among Lutheran Christians.

“When you pray,” a wise Lutheran layperson once told me, “begin by reading God’s Word.” Hanson shows us how thoroughly Lutheran that approach is. Lutheranism--encouraged by such major voices as Luther, Melanchthon, Arndt, and Bonhoeffer--has always held that “we need to learn to pray by having the Word of God shape our prayer.”

Hanson, professor emeritus of religion and director of the Grace Institute for Spiritual Formation at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, shows how the Lutheran emphasis on grace alone, Christ alone, Word alone, has spawned a rich array of spiritual practices that includes devotional literature both simple and sophisticated; a sacramentalism that reveres God’s mysterious grace; hymns steeped in Scripture; and worship that has historically been diverse, emphasizing the accessibility of God in Christ, among other things.

This book would be a great text in seminary and college courses on Lutheran history, theology, and spiritual practices. Pastors will also find useful points to ponder here. I can even see it as helpful place for some congregational groups hoping to grow deeper in their faith, to go. This is a fine survey.