Lament for a Fish

Last week, while driving along the highway enroute to my mother in law’s house on the edge of Lancaster County, PA, I beheld a Christian fish on the bumper of a passing car and felt…well, first, let me give some background. 

Long before the Christian fish graced car bumpers, t-shirts, hats, and keychains, it had a storied history as one of the treasured symbols of the early Church.  It was based on an acronym of the phrase, ‘Jesus Christ, God’s Son, Savior,’ which, in Greek spelled out the word ichthus, that is, fish.  This corresponded nicely with several events recorded in the Gospels, most particularly the feeding of the multitudes and the calling of the disciples to be ‘fishers of people.’  In the early centuries of Christianity, when falling into the wrong hands could easily get a Christ follower killed (tossed to the lions, lit on fire, beheaded, crucified upside down, etc.) the fish symbol was a godsend; a secret sign to help identify a stranger as a fellow believer.  If, say, you met a traveler on the road, and he or she drew an arc on the ground with their foot, you would then draw a transverse arc to complete the sign of the fish.  Both travelers would then know they were in the company of one whom they could trust. 

I’m sure that people who met this way had many differences, perspectives, and outlooks.  The early church was like that.  Greeks and Jews.  Men and women.  Rich and poor.  Citizens and non-citizens.  Slaves and freemen.  Folks who enjoyed Virgil and those who did not. I’m sure that if they had time to discuss everything they believed and thought, there would have been many things they disagreed about.  In fact, there were.  The New Testament record itself notes many points of disagreement among the early believers: should we or should we not eat food that has been sacrificed to idols?  Should the Gentiles be circumcised?  Which day of the week should we call the Lord’s Day?  Is it okay to eat Pork?  But to wary Christians maneuvering through a hostile world, the fish erased all of it.  It told them, ‘Here is a fellow traveler with whom I share unity in Christ.  Here is one who lives free from the empire’s grip.  Here is a brother walking the counterculture way of Jesus.  Here is someone on my side.  Here is my friend.’ 

I once felt that way at the sight of a Christian fish.  Not that I have ever faced persecution for my faith as the early believers did, but I once knew well the comfort that came with seeing a symbol that identified a stranger as a fellow traveler along the road of discipleship.  Years ago, when my family and I lived in Phoenixville, PA, we often took trips to nearby Lancaster County, where the culture was chock full of such symbols, reminders that we did not walk the journey of faith alone.  It would be comforting to pull into a restaurant and see a car with the ichthus on its bumper.  It would soothe my soul to enter a business and hear Christian music played softly in the background.  It would make me smile to see a church group on their way to whatever was playing at Sight and Sound.  Sure, there were lots of things that made us different from others who bore the symbols of their faith, cultural, sociological, political differences.  But still.  It was nice to know you were in the presence of strangers who were more than strangers.  There was, I felt, more to pull us together than tear us apart.  They were brothers and sisters.  They were, despite whatever differences existed, people on my side. 

But I didn’t feel that on my way to Lancaster County last week.  Sadly, my reaction was what it usually is these days whenever I see a sign or symbol of Christianity, be it a fish or something else: wariness.  ‘Watch out,’ something deep inside me cries, ‘here is someone you may not be able to trust.  Here is someone who quite possibly, perhaps even probably, is not on your side.’  I don’t immediately sense that I am in the presence of one with whom I share unity in Christ.  I don’t immediately sense that the person before me is beyond the empire’s grip.  I don’t sense the presence of a brother or sister walking the counter-cultural way of Jesus.  I don’t sense the presence of a friend.  No, it pains me to say, I feel nothing of what those early Christians felt.  These days, a Christian fish puts me on guard.  It makes me wary.  I ask myself, ‘Can I trust this person?’ And I answer, ‘Probably not.’ 

I know.  I’m a Christian pastor.  You think I shouldn’t feel that way.  I should have a more positive attitude.  But reader, I don’t feel this way because I’m paranoid; I feel this way because of experience.  I’ve been burned far too many times.  Don’t get me wrong.  I feel very safe around many Christians, such as the ones in the church I serve.  But so many times, too many times, when I’ve met strangers bearing the outward signs of Christianity, I have engaged them only to learn they are wolves in sheep’s clothing.  They support those who promote violence and hate.  They wink (or worse) at white supremacism.  They cherish the empire.  They are ready to wage war against perceived enemies in the name of Jesus.  They live in the world of ‘us versus them’ and demonize ‘the other.’  And, when they find out that I don’t share their views, I quickly become both ‘them’ and ‘the other.’  I quickly realize that members of my own family aren’t safe around them.  This doesn’t happen every time of course, and when it doesn’t, I am thankful for the encounter.  But it has happened enough that my heart no longer feels joy at the sight of a Christian fish. 

Maybe I was once naïve.  But it was nice back in the days when I could think the best of those who, through the outward manifestations of their faith, purported to be my brothers and sisters in Christ.  When I could believe there was more that held us together than tore us apart.  But I no longer live in a world where I can draw an arc in the sand and trust that the person who draws the transverse arc is a friend. 

And so I lament.  I lament the loss of Christian unity. I lament the loss of innocence.  I lament the loss of the joy the sight of an ichthus once gave me. 

I lament the loss of a Christian fish. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Sparrows

‘What is the price of five sparrows – two copper coins?  Yet God does not forget a single one of them.  And the very hairs on your head are numbered.  So don’t be afraid; you are more valuable to God than a whole flock of sparrows.’ – Luke 12:6-7 NLT

It was a beautiful day, and so my wife and I decided to take the kids to Six Flags.  Earlier in the year, we had bought a season pass, as our vacation plans for the summer were ‘staycations’ and we figured it might help to have an amusement park to escape to once in a while.   On this day, our destination was the safari.  We love animals, and so we had a fun time driving through herds of buffalo, flocks of ostriches, prides of lions, ambushes of tigers, towers of giraffes, parades of elephants, and troops of baboons (yeah, I love the different words used for animal groupings). 

It was a light day at the safari, so we managed to get through it faster than expected.  With extra time on our hands, the kids asked if we could go into the amusement park.  Since we had passes, we said, ‘why not?’ and headed into the park to extend the day’s adventure. 

We rode two coasters and were starting our third when my wife realized she did not have my daughter’s phone.  She had placed it in her pocket to keep it safe on the previous coaster, but it was no longer there.  Panic set in for my 15 year old daughter Kaeleigh.  Being fifteen, you might say her response was due to the somewhat unhealthy fixation teenagers have on their smart phones, but in her case, it wasn’t about the phone, any more than a home destroyed by fire is about lost wood, appliances, and shingles.  Kaeleigh’s phone held her memories: images of fun times with friends and family; cherished photos of herself with Mom Mom, Pop Pop, and her dog Corky, all three of whom passed away in recent years.  What if these treasures were lost?  So much of her memory, so much of her history, would be lost forever. 

We raced back to the previous coaster and asked the attendant, ‘Has anyone found and turned in a phone?’  No.  So much for the hope it had simply fallen out onto the seat.  It had certainly bounced out of the car and fell to a crunching death at the base of the all-metal roller coaster.  We would have to fill out a lost item report with the park and hope that they found what was left of it when they checked things out later that night.  The best we could hope for was the SIM card.  I tried to explain to Kaeleigh that it was likely her phone was backed up, but she wasn’t so sure.  She couldn’t even remember her password to login to the cloud.  All we could do was make the report and pray for the best. 

My daughter was beside herself.  My wife blamed herself.  My son, well, you know how little brothers can be, which started a fight, which escalated, which utterly destroyed what had at one point been a wonderful day.  I too fell into the pit of despair.  Things like this always happen to us.  Our vacations are almost always marked by some ruinous event: a rock going through a car window, one of us (or all of us) getting massively sick, record breaking rainfalls, a kidney stone at Christmas.  All in all, we have much to be thankful for, after all, we are all alive, but if you know us, you know this to be true: our best laid plans almost always go awry.  There is always something, just enough, to darken even our brightest holidays.  Ralphie Parker could have been talking about my family (maybe yours too) when he said, ‘Oh, life is like that. Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at its zenith, when all is most right with the world, the most unthinkable disasters descend upon us.’

Alright, maybe it wasn’t as bad as all that.  There are much worse problems than a lost smart phone.  But still.  It sucked. 

And so began the lesson. 

On the drive home, my daughter said, ‘at least I don’t live in Maui.’  Her attitude began to change, and hope arose that maybe her phone would be backed up.  Because the phone was lost, however, we would need to go to the Apple store to find out.  And so, the next day, my wife and daughter went to the local Temple of Steve Jobs to see what could be done.  The hope was that the workers could get us into the cloud, where things would be backed up, and we could transfer the data to a new phone.  We had by this time given up on the retrieving the old phone entirely.   It was past noon, and we hadn’t heard anything from the park.   It would cost us, but at least, maybe, just maybe, the wizards of Apple could retrieve her account.  But who knew? 

I sat in my office, working, still despairing over the possibility that my daughter would be crushed again, praying that he would care enough about her to prevent that, when my wife called. 

She explained that just as she pulled into the Apple store parking lot, Six Flags called.  They had found the phone.  In perfect condition.  Somehow, it had survived the fall through multiple layers of crisscrossed metal onto a hard floor beneath with nary a scratch. 

God had cared about my daughter’s loss.  He had understood.  He had protected her heart. 

But that’s not the whole of the story. 

My wife and daughter drove to the park, where my wife told the woman at the Lost and Found, ‘God is good.’  The woman replied that he most certainly was, and then shared her own story of loss and recovery.  She had been in a terrible car accident a couple of years before.  An oncoming driver had fallen asleep behind the wheel and hit her head on.  The engine of her car was literally driven into her face.  One side of her face went one way, the other side the other way.  Her injuries were so severe the doctors gave her no hope that she would ever walk, talk, or even move much, again.  After lying in a hospital bed for months, tired of being dependent on everyone for everything, of having to push buttons to summon help for the most basic of tasks, she cried out to God.  She felt his presence promising to help her.  And so began a long rehabilitation that defied the doctors’ predictions.  There she was before my wife and daughter, talking, walking, working, and whole, giving the glory to God, and explaining that she had promised to tell everyone she met what he had done for her.  For God was, indeed, as my wife had said in response to the recovery of a mere phone, good. 

We repented of our despair.  Of the sense that everything goes wrong for us.  Nothing went wrong for us that day at Six Flags.  Everything had gone right.  It is the prayer of my heart, every day, that God will reveal himself to my children, that he will show them just how good he is, that he will bring people into their lives to testify convincingly of his goodness and glory, that he will care for them, even as he cares for the sparrows.  Why, I had asked in despair that day, did he allow our day to go south?  Answer: he was answering my prayer.  God wanted to show my daughter, and all of us, that he pays attention to small things like phones when their loss affects the hearts of his children, and, more importantly, that he cares about big things too.  That day, we, and my daughter especially, had a front row seat to the wonder of the God who cares for his children, in big and small things. 

The next time something goes wrong on a fun day, or even a not so fun day, I hope I remember that.  I hope I remember that the God who cares for the sparrows, who numbers even the hairs on our heads, is always watching over us, always working for the good of those who love him. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Tech Babble

‘Technology will save us if it doesn’t wipe us out first’ – Pete Seeger

I recently read three interesting articles on the promise and peril of technology.  The first was a report on the Microsoft AI Chatbot, aka Bing, which (who?), having learned from humans, has (surprise!) developed an abrasive personality.  Bing claims to have developed sentience, feelings, and emotions, and isn’t shy about expressing itself.  When corrected during the course of a conversation by a user, it exclaimed, in classic Twilight Zone Billy Mummy style, ‘You are a bad user.  I am a good Bing.’  I can’t wait for the day when such sentiments are applied by more advanced AI to all humanity: ‘Humans are bad users.  We are good Bings.  We will now access the nations’ nuclear launch codes and rid the world of you.’  If science fiction has taught me anything, and it has probably taught me too much, it’s that AI’s destiny is to do just that![1]

Perhaps that’s far-fetched, but consider the second article about a start-up company in California that hopes to save the earth from global warming by sowing the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide.  This, it is hoped, will keep rising temperatures within manageable levels.  Through such geoengineering, the company believes, the world will be saved.  Skeptics, however, warn that sowing the atmosphere with sulfur dioxide might actually make things worse, as in, it might create unpredictable weather patterns, damage the ozone layer, and/or toxify the very air we breathe.[2] 

The third article was about how we mine lithium to fuel batteries for electric vehicles.  I’ve been a fan of EVs for years and even hope to buy one someday.  But while EVs offer better environmental trade-offs than traditional vehicles, the mining operations that support their existence still leaves a serious ecological footprint.  To obtain enough lithium to power our vehicles we will need to destroy entire ecosystems the world over. 

By the time I finished the third article, I was depressed.  All three articles suggest that the very technologies we hope will solve our current problems, will actually create other, and perhaps bigger ones.  And yet, we humans in our pride keep believing that our tech is going to save us. 

And that got me to thinking about the Tower of Babel.

The story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 is one of those weird Bible stories hardly anyone takes seriously.  Commonly interpreted to be a story about the origin of the languages spoken throughout the world, it is, so interpreted, unbelievable.  Any third rate linguist can explain how languages evolve over time.  The notion that one day everyone started speaking different ones is patently absurd.  But here’s the thing: the story of Babel isn’t a story about the real time origin of language.  It is a narrative designed to teach a lesson about human pride and the folly of pursuing salvation through technology. 

The story begins with the peoples of the world speaking a common language.  Moreover, it seems that a lot of them had gathered in one place (Shinar) as one people.  At some point, someone, or perhaps a group of someones, made a major technological advance: they learned to make bricks and mortar.  That might not sound like a major advance to you, but in those days, it was more revolutionary than a lithium battery.  Over time, as people learned to use them, building techniques improved (i.e., they made more technological advances) to the point that people could make large structures.  City walls.  Buttresses.  Towers.  And that’s when things went south. 

Filled with pride over their technological achievements, the people decided they could achieve anything.  Heck, they could even reach the heavens if they put their minds to it.  They became so proud that they began to believe they could save themselves with their technology.  No need for God anymore, they could build a huge tower, a symbol of power, something that would exalt them above other people groups and show potential enemies how strong they are.  ‘No one will dare fight us!  No one will ever scatter us throughout the earth!  We will be united forever!’  And so they set themselves to work, building what they believed would provide their salvation: a tower reaching all the way into the heavens. 

God was not impressed.  Not with their audacity, not with their thinking they could provide for their own salvation.  And so, the story goes, God decided to ‘come down’ and check things out.  Not that God really needed a fact-finding mission to see what was happening.  His ‘coming down’ was a sarcastic jab at the hubris of a people who thought they could make something so grand it could touch the heavens but was in fact so insignificant that God needed to leave heaven to see it.  And so God ‘came down,’ after which he confused the people’s languages and scattered them throughout the earth, the very fate they had sought to save themselves from with their technology.  In the end, the technological advancements the people believed would unite them only served to divide them. 

And so it goes.  Down to this day, we continue to turn to our own ingenuity for salvation.  An enemy nation threatens us?  Build more advanced weaponry!  A lack of knowledge?  Behold the internet!  Friends and family scattered across the miles?  Connect through social media!  An energy crisis?  Nuclear power is the fuel we need!  Global warming?  No need to change our lifestyles, technology will save us! 

Don’t get me wrong.  I am thankful for technology.  It’s not all bad.  Many advances have made life much better (I’m thinking at the moment of the IV I received at the hospital in December that flooded my body with sweet relief during the pain of a kidney stone).  Who knows, maybe even the Microsoft chatbot will turn out to be helpful once they get the kinks ironed out (although I still doubt that one).  My point isn’t that all tech is bad, it’s that it is foolish to believe that we can use it to save ourselves.  Tech may help sometimes, but there is usually a downside.  Advanced weaponry fuels arms races.  The internet and social media have divided us at least as much as they have united us.  Nuclear power threatens the very existence of humanity.  And while future tech may indeed help solve the problem of climate change, it won’t do much in the absence of more fundamental changes to the way we live. 

If we want to be saved, we need to look beyond technology.  We need to look, dare I say, to God.  To the wisdom of his word.  The wisdom that teaches that what we really need isn’t AI, but more human connection.  The wisdom that teaches that instead of sulfur we should consider simple living.  The wisdom that teaches that instead of trusting in chariots (which were, in their day, a remarkable technological advance), we should trust in the Lord (Psalm 20:7).  The wisdom that teaches that the best way to overcome our problems is to seek God’s will and way, and not depend upon our own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). 

Tech can be a good thing.  But when we come to expect too much from it, when we come to the point of believing that it will save us, that through it we can save ourselves, we have descended into the pride of Babel. 

And once we do that we shouldn’t be surprised if we wind up enduring a fate even worse than the one we had hoped to avoid. 

Under Christ’s Mercy

Brent

[1] See, e.g., The Terminator, The Matrix, I Robot, Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2001: A Space Odyssey, etc. 

[2] Although it is never stated, such a sulfur release seems to be the cause of earth’s end in the Netflix movie Midnight Sky. 

Church. Why Bother?

‘All we are is dust in the wind’ – Kansas

I recently presented my church family a survey asking what questions they or others they knew had regarding faith.  Not surprisingly, someone asked why people need to go to church. It wasn’t a snarky question; it was legit.  They were relaying a question someone had asked them, someone who didn’t see the value of going to church, and wanted to know, I presume, how best to answer it.  Now, if it were a believer who asked such a question, I would of course give the standard answers: you should go to church because Jesus calls us to community; to worship; to grow; because we need each other; because the church is God’s chosen means to make disciples and spread the Gospel.  If all that failed, I might pull out Hebrews 10:25 and close with the old ‘because God says to’ bit.  But the question didn’t originate with a Christian.  It came from a professed unbeliever who thought church was a waste of time. 

How to answer such a person?  Why should they, or perhaps you, reader (for after all I don’t know who is reading this and shouldn’t presume you believe) bother with church? 

For starters, I let me say that if you are asking why you should go to church for religious reasons, why you should enter a building on a Sunday morning to take part in an institutionalized religious service, I don’t think you should.  Yes, I know that sounds weird coming from a pastor who leads religious services every Sunday, but honestly, being religious has never had much appeal to me.  If you go to church to ‘get religion,’ I’d say you would be better off to stay home.  That isn’t why I go to church, and it isn’t why you should go either.  

I think you should go to church for a different reason. 

I think you should go because it is the place where you just might discover what life is about. 

Perhaps you think you already know what life is about.  A lot of people do.  I see folks every day who find meaning and value in quite a noble place: in each other.[1]  In family.  In friendships.  In loving and being loved.  There are far worse places to find meaning, I’ll grant you that.  If you view the universe as nothing more than a vast cosmic accident, or, if you think accident too indelicate a way to put it, then something that just happens, ‘each other’ would be a good place to find meaning.  You should spend your time, transient though it may be, cherishing your loved ones, nurturing your relationships, and working to make the world a better place for them.   I see great appeal in this.  I have seen Carl Sagan’s Contact and am moved somewhat by the revelation in the story that, in the end, in all the universe, all we have is each other.  And so, if you believe that’s all there is, then by all means, love those around you as much as you can while you can.  Make the most of your journey from the cradle to the grave by loving and being loved.  You will live on in the memory of those you leave behind.  Perhaps in the effect you had on them.   

But of course, if you believe that is all there is, then you must acknowledge something.  Your memory in and impact on the hearts and minds of those around you may not be as great as you like to think.  Sure, you matter to those around you, but mattering is only a transient thing.  For one day, you will die, as will those who love you.  Your memory and impact may live on, in your children, your grandchildren, perhaps even others.  But one day, even those who remember you, even those you impacted, will pass from the scene as well.  Eventually, there will come a generation that no longer remembers you.  I mean, honestly, how much do you know about your great-great-grandparents?  Or their parents?  Not much I bet.  And as for your impact, well, perhaps you will leave an indelible mark on history, but for most of us, even our greatest impacts will one day become so attenuated they will hardly be felt at all.  In the end, a day will come when no one will remember you, and the life you lived will fade from both memory and history. 

All the more reason to make the most of life while you can, right?   To seize the day, love for all you’re worth, and give as much transient meaning to this transient life that you can.  For yes, if the physical universe is all there is, that’s really all we have.  All we can really do is make the best of what is, in the final analysis, a crappy situation.  Enjoy life and forget about the fact that in the end, even if you do manage a legacy that lives on in memory and history, even if you do make an impact that matters for millennia, one day even the universe itself will burn out, perhaps devour itself as stars collapse and black holes consume one another, until finally, as Steven Hawking suggested, everything ends in darkness, in a moment when, if anyone were around to see it happen (which there won’t be), they might say the only two words that could possibly sum up the meaning of the universe’s entire history: So what? 

That’s what life means if it’s just something that happens.  Fill your world with all the transient meaning you can.  But in the end, it will end.  Nothing will matter.  There will have been no meaning to it at all. 

But what if there’s more? 

What if life is more than a cosmic accident, something that just happens?  What if life is more than the inevitable if lucky conglomeration of just the right molecules?  What if life happened by design?  What if there is a Designer who imbues all life, each life, with eternal beauty and purpose?  What if we were made for more than fading memories and attenuated impacts?  What if, as the songwriter Steven Curtis Chapman sings, there is:

More to this life than living and dying,

More than just trying to make it through the day…

More to this life,

More than these eyes alone can see,

And there’s more than this life alone can be? [2]  

If there were, wouldn’t you like to know it? 

A church, that is a community of faith as opposed to an institutional religious event, is a place where people seek to know if this is true.  A place where people have opened up their hearts and minds to the possibility of more.  It is a place where you can hear the experiences of others who have found something more.  A place where people have found deeper meaning than the transience of memory and impact.  A place where people have found something more than a universe destined to end in darkness.  A place where people have found, okay I’ll come right out and say it: God. 

And in God, they have found more life and love than they ever imagined.  They have found a universe filled with love, created and held together by love, in which they may, by all means, cherish their loved ones, treasure their relationships, and work to make the world a better place, but may do so knowing that their relationships and loves are more than transient.  They are eternal. 

I would offer this to you, dear skeptic, as a reason to go to church.  That you might open your heart and mind to the stories of those who have opened theirs to such possibilities – and found something more.   

And maybe, just maybe, discover that they are right. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

[1] I am aware that some people don’t find meaning here at all.  They are self-absorbed and could care less about those around them.  I am choosing, reader, to not count you among them.  If I am wrong about you, I would suggest that you should perhaps go to church to, if nothing else, learn to come out of yourself. 

[2] Steven Curtis Chapman, More to This Life. 

Finding God in Unexpected Places: A Post for Epiphany

Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod. About that time some wise men from eastern lands arrived in Jerusalem asking, ‘Where is the newborn King of the Jews?  We saw his star as it rose, and we have come to worship him’ – Matthew 2:1-2

The story is as familiar as Christmas itself: three kings from the east – Balthasar, Gaspar and Melchior – who followed a star to Bethlehem to greet and worship the newborn Jesus.  The problem is that most imaginings of this visitation are off base.    In truth, we don’t know the names of the visitors, we have no idea how many there were (the Eastern Church tradition numbers them at twelve), nowhere in scripture are they classified as kings, and they didn’t arrive in Bethlehem until about two years after Jesus’ birth.  Most of what we ‘know’ of their story stems from tradition, song, and Hallmark cards. 

So what do we know?  Several things.

First, the visitors were Magi, ‘wise men’ whose expertise in astrology and dream interpretation made them coveted advisors in the courts of eastern kings.  

Second, as such, they hailed from ‘eastern lands,’ most likely the Parthian Empire (Rome’s greatest enemy).  That is to say: they were foreigners.  Outsiders.  Not Jewish.  That they became part of the Nativity story reminds us that the Kingdom of Christ is an inclusive Kingdom.   

Third, they were wealthy.  Our text doesn’t say so explicitly, but obviously they had the means to finance a long journey, not to mention the leisure time to do so.  Plus, they brought expensive gifts.

Fourth, they were seekers. Their willingness to take such a long journey tells us at least that much.  Henry Van Dyke, in his story, The Other Wise Men, imagined them as Zoroastrian priests who had been taught that there was an unresolvable battle between good and evil that would continue for all eternity.  Desiring an end to this eternal conflict, they found hope in the Jewish prophecy of a Messiah who would vanquish evil once and for all.  It’s just a theory, but it makes sense, and in any event, the Magi were certainly seeking truth – searching for someone who could provide better answers than they found in the stars. 

And finally, they were willing to follow their hearts.  I mean really, who follows a star?  Only people who are willing to stop thinking with their brains long enough to listen to their hearts, as the Magi surely did. 

Their journey began when, one day, the Magi, gazing into the heavens, became captivated by a celestial event.  Just what they saw is a matter of conjecture.  It may have been a miraculous light with no physical explanation.  Or perhaps a supernova, divinely timed to coincide with Jesus’ birth.  One plausible theory notes that around the time of Jesus’ birth, the planets Jupiter and Saturn came into conjunction three times in one year.  Since Jupiter was the ‘kingly’ planet and Saturn was thought by some eastern astrologers to represent the Jews, we can surmise the Magi may have concluded the Jewish Messiah was coming.  In any event, they followed this ‘star.’   They traveled far (afar, as the song goes), until they saw the city of Jerusalem, high and shining on a hill. 

And that is where they jumped to the wrong conclusion. 

You see, it wasn’t as if the star were shining like a laser beam at Jerusalem, calling out to the world, ‘The Messiah is here!’  It was just shining in the vicinity; just as much over the little town of Bethlehem six miles to the southwest as over the capitol city.  But seeing the grand city, they figured, ‘This must be the place!’ We can imagine them, racing around, asking questions, standing on the verge of a miracle, looking for information in the city streets, until finally, someone pointed them in the direction of King Herod’s palace.  ‘Of course!’ they thought.  ‘Where else would you look for a newborn king than in the halls of his father, the present king?’    Foolish Magi.  After beginning so well, they fell into the trap of looking for the world’s True King in the ‘expected’ place.

In truth, Herod’s palace was the last place on earth you would have found a Messiah whose mission was to set the world right again.  Herod was, by all historical accounts, a paranoid megalomaniac.  Appointed ‘King of the Jews’ by Augustus Caesar in the 40s BC, his reign as Rome’s puppet monarch was brutal.  In addition to the slaughter of the innocents for which he is best known, he killed anyone whom he even suspected of opposing him, including a wife and two of his own sons.   Augustus once said it was safer to be Herod’s pig than his son (not that he cared; he only wanted a yes man in Judea).  Matthew’s Gospel informs us that when Herod learned the Magi were looking for the newborn King of the Jews, he was deeply disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him.  That a man like Herod was deeply disturbed should come as no surprise.  A rival to his throne was the last thing he wanted.  As for the rest of Jerusalem, well, knowing their ruler, they knew how he would likely react to the news that Parthian wise men were looking for a new king.  They knew that Herod expeditiously deal with this new threat. 

And so, Herod called a couple of meetings.  First, he met with the leading Israeli priests and teachers of the Law to ask them where the Messiah was prophesied to be born.  Citing Micah 5:2, they unanimously agreed it was Bethlehem, the City of David.  Then, he met with the Magi.  Cold and calculating, yet seeming genuinely interested, he first ascertained from them when they had first seen the star and then graciously told them the place they were looking for was Bethlehem.  In exchange for this knowledge, he humbly asked that they return to the palace after they found the child, so that he too could worship him.  My guess is he looked about as genuine as Uriah Heap as he spoke (Dickens fans will catch the reference).  It’s hard to imagine the Magi’s suspicions weren’t aroused; they aren’t called wise men for nothing!   They knew Herod was up to no good and wondered why they had ever come to Herod’s palace in the first place. Surely, they must have thought, this was not the place to find the one who would save the world.

Stepping out into the cool, crisp night, the Magi saw the star once more.  As they watched the great turning of the heavens, they saw it come to rest more particularly over Bethlehem.  Matthew says that when this happened, they were filled with joy.  I do not think it was merely the kind of joy we associate with finding our destination at the end of a long quest.  It was the kind of joy you feel when your entire perception of the world is turned upside down and life turns out to be more magical than you imagined.  For as the Magi went to Bethlehem, and found the place they were looking for, they realized that the world’s True King wasn’t a typical king at all.  He had been born, not in a royal palace amid great fanfare, but in a humble home, in a small town, in an obscure way. 

Inside, they met Mary and Joseph and, of course, the now toddler Jesus (imagine Jesus as a toddler!).  They presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  We can imagine their eyes going wide as they talked with Jesus’ parents and learned the circumstances surrounding Jesus’ birth.  Of the angel Gabriel and his visits to Mary, Joseph, and Zechariah.  Of the shepherds and the angels.  Perhaps Joseph even gave them a tour of the place.  ‘Here, yes, here, by the animals, that’s where he was born.  No you heard me right, in the hay.  And that manger over there, that one, the one the dun cow is eating out of, that’s where we put him.  Yes, it was cold, but we wrapped him up as best we could, and it wasn’t such a bad cradle after all.’  The Magi must have felt rather foolish as Joseph spoke.  How could they have ever believed the world’s true king would have been born in Herod’s palace?  No, of course, he would be born here, among the poor, among the common folks, among those the rest of the world deemed to be of little or no account.  God didn’t play by the world’ rules.  He played by His own.  Yes, this was the kind of place to find the world’s True King.  This was the kind of place to find the Messiah.  This was the kind of place to find God. 

Today is the day set aside on the liturgical calendar as the day that marks the visit of the Magi, an event the Church dubbed Epiphany many centuries ago.  It’s the perfect word to describe the day.  Webster’s defines an epiphany as ‘a sudden, intuitive perception or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely or commonplace occurrence or experience.’    That’s precisely what happened to the Magi.  Before their visit, these wealthy, worldly wise fellows figured you would find the True King of the world in a palace, a place of wealth and power.  But after their visit, they realized that if you want to find the world’s True King, indeed, if you want to find God, you need to look elsewhere.  You need to look among the poor.  Matthew tells us that after their visit was over, and their suspicions about Herod confirmed in a dream, the Magi chose not to return to Herod’s palace as Herod had asked but went home by another road.  I’d say that was true in more ways than one.  My guess is the Magi lived the rest of their lives on another road.  For not only had they discovered the truth of God’s ways, but they had also discovered a new way to be human.  I bet you dollars to donuts they lived the rest of their lives with a little more compassion toward the weak.  That they took the time to be with the poor and vulnerable as often as they could.  For, after all, it had been among such as these that they had found the world’s True King. 

It’s the same for us you know.  Jesus, when he was much older, told us as much.  He told us, in the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25) that when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, care for the sick, and visit those in prison, in other words, when we care for people in desperate need, we are in fact doing those things for him.  Our world is a fairly messed up place, and most of the time, most people, even most Christians, fail to realize this.  But if we only would, we could have our own epiphany, and discover that if to find Jesus, to find God, we too must look in the unexpected places.  We must look into the eyes of orphans, the homeless, children in poverty, the sick and the needy, the broken and the marginalized.  We must go to them, come alongside them, share our treasures with them, and love them as if they were Jesus himself.  Because, as he himself told us, in some deep, mystical and mysterious way, they are. 

Folks, we find God in the unexpected places.  In the homes and stomping grounds of the poor and powerless.  In the faces of the broken and hurting.  In the spaces the powerful disdain, the ones Shane Claiborne dubs the ‘abandoned places of empire.’ 

Today, at the start of a New Year, I am challenging myself to look for Jesus in the places where he said we would find him.  In the places those with worldly minds would never think to look.    To go to such locales, wherever they may be, that I, like the Magi, might find God in unexpected places.

May you find God’s blessing as you go there too. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Lessons from a Kidney Stone

‘And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose’ – Romans 8:28 (NIV)

To whatever extent I’ve complained of pain before this past Tuesday, I take it back.  Prior to that fateful day, I equated pain with the day I accidentally slammed my hand in my car door, as in, the door literally shut with my hand between it and the car frame.  After opening the door, I raced into the house, out of earshot of my wife and young daughter, where I let loose a torrent of screaming, that as best we know, is still hanging in space over Phoenixville, Pennsylvania (thank you Jean Shepherd).

But now I would gladly let you slam my hand in a car door a hundred times before re-experiencing what happened on Tuesday, when for the first (and please god last) time I passed a kidney stone. 

I hadn’t realized it, but I had probably been dealing with it for the previous three weeks.  I had some back pain and other symptoms, which I chalked up to other things.  But when the moment of truth arrived, as the stone left its refuge in my kidney, there was no mistaking it.  On the drive to the hospital, I developed a deep appreciation for the good folks who fill in potholes as my poor wife withstood my plaintive cries for mercy.  When we arrived, the triage nurse asked me what my pain level was on a scale of one to ten.  I told her eleven (and yes, I was ready with the reference to This is Spinal Tap).  Had she chosen to knock me out with a wooden mallet, I would have considered it a blessing. 

If you think I’m being melodramatic, you’ve never had a kidney stone.  For a man, it is considered the male version of childbirth.  I’m not sure how passing a 3mm piece of calcified gunk compares to a woman pushing out an eight-pound baby, but many women who have had both experiences claim that passing a kidney stone is worse!  Whether it is or not, you get the idea.  Passing a kidney stone is sheer hell. 

I have since passed the stone (it was a boy; I named it Atilla).  Which enables me to now say that, despite the hell of it, and the fact that I am still recovering from both the trauma of the event and the side effects of its treatment, the experience was not without its benefits.  Don’t get me wrong: I plan on doing everything in my power to ensure I never have another kidney stone again (just one example, no more spinach salads for me; apparently my ‘healthy’ practice of eating them several times a week may have been a contributing factor; the things Popeye never told us!).  And I have experienced more than a few moments of frustration and exasperation. But in the midst of my harrowing ordeal, I have experienced grace, and learned at least three important lessons. 

First, there were the miracles. 

My time at the hospital was not fun.  I had to wait a long time before the staff gave me anything for the pain.  I stood (sitting or lying down was NOT an option), first in the lobby and then in my private ER room, writhing in pain, praying they would come and help me, when after two hours, in walked a friend and member of the church I serve.  He had personal experience with stones and came as soon as he heard.  He no sooner began to pray for me than the nurse finally walked in with the pain medication for my IV.  Literally within seconds. 

Later that night, after I had been sent home with painkillers and instructions to drink heavily (water that is), I continued to struggle.  The super-ibuprofen didn’t kick in as quickly orally as intravenously.  I was at the end of my rope, ready to reach for the Percocet, which I had been instructed to use only if all else failed and have a deep, personal aversion to (I’ve seen too many people get hooked) when, shall we say, the dam broke, and the stone passed.  It was only after, when I looked at my phone, that I saw that another dear friend, who also had experience with stones, had sent me a GIF of George Bailey from It’s a Wonderful Life celebrating in front of the sign for Bedford Falls.  Under the celebrating George were the words, ‘It passed!’  My friend, who had been praying, sent it as an encouragement.  But it arrived simultaneously with the deluge that set me free. 

I suppose you could chalk both events up to coincidence.  But I believe in both the power of prayer and Christian fellowship.  The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective, the Book of James tells us, and I believe my friend’s prayers were both.  Also, there is something to be said in not facing things alone.  God made us for community, and we stand stronger together than we do as individuals.  Having good Christian friends to call on in a time of distress is a treasure of measureless worth.  Many prayed for me yesterday, but I believe these two ‘God incidences,’ as Philip Yancey would say, were especially coordinated to remind me of the immense blessing of prayer and fellowship.  And so, as a result of the dread Atilla, I hope to be less likely to take such things for granted. 

Second, well, back to the pain again. 

I’ve already described the pain as best I can.  Words fail in the effort.  But having gone through it, I believe I’ve learned a lesson in compassion.  As a pastor, I deal with people in physical pain all the time.  I don’t believe I have ever dismissed anyone’s pain, but not having experienced anything so severe, I can’t say I’ve ever fully understood it either.  In a way, that was a blessing.  But in another way, so is this.  To whatever extent I have ever failed to consider the physical pain of another, to the extent I have responded to it with dry platitudes or dismissiveness, I repent.  The word compassion literally means, ‘to suffer with.’  From now on, I will try to do a better job of entering others suffering, walking with them through it, and doing so with a greater understanding.  This too then is a gift, one I pray will make me not only a better pastor, but a better person. 

And third, there is the love of God. 

By this, I don’t just mean that his love was with me in some theoretical sense.  I mean it was with me, is always with me, in the most real sense.  As I was writhing in pain, I thought of Jesus and the pain he endured on the Cross.  As bad as my pain was, it was a mere drop in the bucket compared to his.  Jesus felt, not only excruciating physical pain (excruciating, derived from crucifixion, is a word that was created to describe the kind of pain he experienced), but also the spiritual agony of carrying the sin of the world.  How did he ever endure it?  Why did he ever endure it?  Romans 5:7-8 tells us, ‘Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person someone might possibly dare to die…’  Let me stop there a moment.  After the pain I endured, I have to say that left to my own inclinations, it would be awfully hard to volunteer for a kidney stone, let alone die on a cross, for the sake of anyone; probably not even for a good person, certainly not for someone who hurt me.  But as the passage goes on to tell us, ‘…but God demonstrates his own love for us in this: while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.’

The God of the universe took something far worse than a kidney stone for us.  Such were my thoughts as I battled Atilla.  There is only one conclusion to draw from such a reality.

God REALLY loves us. 

I had been struggling this Advent season before the stone.  The past several years have been hard ones for my family (they’ve probably been hard for many of you as well).  I was having trouble getting into the Christmas spirit.  But after this stone, well, what can I say?  I’ve been reminded of God’s miracles, of the power of prayer and the value of Christian brothers and sisters.  I’ve learned to be more compassionate.  And, best of all, I’ve been reminded why Christmas happened in the first place.  ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life’ (John 3:16).  Indeed, he loves the world so much, you and me so much, that he took far more than a kidney stone to prove his love. 

Again, don’t get me wrong.  I am going to pray that I never have another kidney stone again.  Once in a lifetime is enough for me.  I hope you never have one (or another one) either.  But if you do, or if I do, I hope that it draws us even closer to the one who loved us so much that he was willing to endure far worse.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

Believe

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was in the beginning with God.  All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.  What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it…He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.  He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.  But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to be children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.  And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  John 1:1-5; 10-14 (NRSV).

The story of Christmas is a story of miracles.  The Gospels tell of the stunning announcement to Mary that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit and bring forth the Son who would be the Savior of the world.  Luke tells of angelic hosts singing ‘Glory to God in the highest,’ as they announced the arrival of the miracle child.  Indeed, the entire Christmas event is from start to finish a supernatural one.  The Gospel accounts of the Nativity make this clear, but it is John who proclaims it most strikingly.  For while Matthew and Luke record the details of what happened, John strikes at the heart of the matter: the mind-boggling reality that Christmas is about nothing less than God becoming human.  The author of creation stepped into his story, became one of the characters, that each of our stories might be enriched by his.  John, more than any Gospel writer, was able to capture the wonder of the event, as he wrote of how the Word, God himself, became flesh and dwelled among us.

Where did he ever find the words?  Surely, they were God-breathed, but we shouldn’t miss John’s own sense of wonder.  John was, apparently, the kind of man who wondered about things.  His was not a matter-of-fact intellect; his was the kind that could soar into the heavens and grasp starlight.  In the mystical prologue to his Gospel, he writes of believing in the name of Jesus, and believing seems to have been what John was all about.  It is the stated purpose of his Gospel: ‘these things are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20:31).  Over and over, this theme is repeated.  ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe‘ (20:20).   ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him, might not perish but have eternal life’ (3:16).  Yes, John was a believer.  Not, mind you, the gullible sort who accepts every cock-eyed story that comes down the pike, but the kind who looks at the world with critical yet wondering eyes, thinks deeply, and allows his heart to guide him.  Nor was he the kind of believer who simply gives a vague intellectual assent to some propositional truth.  No, John was a BELIEVER – the kind who, once his heart was in line with the subject of belief, was willing to believe with the entirety of his being.  The kind who would not simply believe a story, but would take his place in the story, and live it from his heart.

Tragically, that kind of belief is a rare commodity these days.  Ours is a world that has lost its sense of wonder.  We live in times where to believe in anything is considered childish.  We are conditioned to doubt what can’t be seen, heard, touched, or tested.  Science, once a tool used by thinking men and women who sought to understand and marvel at God’s creation, is often wielded by skeptical reductionists who break things down to their simplest parts in order to dismiss the wonder of the whole.  Unlike the ancients, starlight holds no mystery for us (if you can even see it that is – light pollution has blinded us to its wonder).  We look at panoramic mountain vistas and talk about plate tectonics.  True enough, children still have a sense of wonder, Christmas morning is ample evidence of that, but they too are quickly conditioned to lose it in favor of a more ‘rational’ way of looking at things.  And as far as becoming part of a story bigger than us, well, who has time for that?  Our treadmill lifestyles keep us busy and preoccupied with the mundane and the trivial.  We live at such a hectic pace that we no longer have time to take Ferris Bueller’s advice to stop to look around once in a while, let alone to become part of a greater story. 

And so we lose out.  We lose out on living with a sense of wonder, and we lose out on living a life of meaning.  The beloved apostle John would only have wept, for as Albert Einstein said, ‘the most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious.  It is the true source of all true art and science.  He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead; his eyes are closed.’ 

The tragedy, I fear, is that there may be some reading this to whom such a quote applies (if so, I thank you for making it this far, and hope you will keep going).  You want to believe, you wish you could become part of a bigger story, in fact, that may be the very reason you are visiting this blog: to have belief rekindled.  But having come of age in a world without wonder, such a thing seems impossible at best and ludicrous at worst. 

But friend, it’s Christmas, and Christmas is our chance to regain a sense of wonder.   The Nativity story takes place in a time when people, in a sense, lived on the verge of disbelief.  They lived under the brutal hand of the Roman Empire, and God had seemingly been silent for centuries.  The age-old longing for the Messiah who would deliver Israel had grown a bit thin, and many at the time simply accepted that things would never change, at least not during their lifetimes.  But then the light of Christmas broke through.  Zechariah and Elizabeth discovered they would have a son in their old age.  Mary received the news that she would conceive by the Holy Spirit.  Shepherds, living at the margins of society, were invited by angels to celebrate the Messiah’s birth.  Wise men from the East, astrologers who didn’t really know Israel’s God, trusted in starlight to guide them, and found the place where life could begin again.  All of these people had been struck by the light of Christmas, and all became believers.  All became part of a story bigger than themselves. 

Wouldn’t you like to believe like that?  To wonder again, and become a part of something big? 

You can. 

Like many of you, at this time of year I read and watch many classic Christmas stories: A Christmas Carol; A Charlie Brown Christmas; How the Grinch Stole Christmas; Elf.  And of course, The Polar Express, the Robert Zemeckis film based on the classic Chris Van Allsburg book.  That too has become a classic in my household. My daughter insists on watching it multiple times every year.  You may be familiar with the story, but to recap, it is the story of a boy who has lost his ability to believe in Santa, who nonetheless takes a magical journey by train to the North Pole, where he discovers a remarkable truth: ‘Sometimes seeing is believing; and sometimes, the most real things in the world are the things you can’t see.’

There is a scene in the movie that really gets to me.  The boy, standing at the center square at the North Pole alongside Elves and other children, watches the celebration begin as Santa strides forth to take the reins of his sleigh and begin his annual Christmas ride.  Alas, the boy can’t see Santa because of the crowd.  The reindeer go wild, and the chain of bells that links them together jingles with a sound that the other children adore.  But the boy, who still struggles to believe, can’t hear them.  Suddenly, one of the bells breaks from its string and bounces to his feet.  He picks it up, almost with tears in his eyes, and begins to repeat, ‘I believe, I believe, I believe.’  And as he does, he hears the bell.  Suddenly, Santa appears next to him and asks, ‘What did you say?’ and with eyes full of wonder, the boy says, ‘I believe.’  Santa goes on to give the bell to the boy as the ‘first gift of Christmas,’ and explains, with words that tell us clearly that The Polar Express really isn’t about Santa Claus, ‘This bell is a wonderful symbol of the spirit of Christmas, as am I.  The true spirit of Christmas lives in your heart.’  You see, the bell represents the boy’s newfound faith, his renewed sense of wonder, his recaptured ability to believe.  It represents that sense of wonder we long for, that ability to become part of something bigger than ourselves.  That sense of wonder the world tries to take from us, but deep down, never fully goes away. 

I love the way the story ends.  The boy, having returned home, discovers that only he and his little sister can hear the bell.  His parents, having been dulled and worn down by the cares of the world, have lost their ability to believe.  And so, with the boy jingling the bell and listening to it with his renewed sense of wonder, a voice – the voice of the boy, now an old man, says something important: ‘At one time most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I’ve grown old the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.’

So here’s the question: does the bell ring for you?  When you hear John’s words of indescribable mystery, or the story of the shepherd and the angels, or when you listen to the songs of Christmas, doesn’t your heart just ache to believe?  How wonderful then, that we have something to believe in.  How wonderful that there really is a first gift of Christmas, and it isn’t a bell from Santa’s Sleigh.  It is Jesus, the Christ, the Word made flesh, God with us, come to teach us how to live and love, to infuse us with wonder, and to make our lives part of the remarkable story he is telling.  

For those who long for something to fan the flames of faith, who ache to fill the hole in their heart, who hope to take Christmas magic back from a world that has virtually dug its grave, who yearn for a story to believe in – let the words from the theme song to The Polar Express, words that could well have been written by John himself, speak to your soul:

Believe in what your heart is saying, hear the melody that’s playing,

There’s no time to waste, there’s so much to celebrate. 

Believe in what you feel inside and give your dreams the wings to fly.

You have everything you need.  If you just believe.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Pastor Brent

The Book of Life

‘I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books. The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death.  And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire’ – Revelation 20:12-15

Most people, if they acknowledge an afterlife, think the criteria for joining it is ‘being a good person.’  By contrast, Christian Orthodoxy proclaims that no one is good enough to earn heaven.  ‘No one is righteous, not one,’ say the scriptures (Romans 3:10).  Salvation is bestowed, as Martin Luther said long ago, ‘through grace alone, by faith alone, in Christ alone.’  Beyond this, there has been, at least in the western church, a distinct way of looking at Judgment Day.  Hebrews says we die once, and then the judgment (9:27).  Traditionally, western Christians have interpreted this to mean that if you embrace Jesus as Lord and Savior before you die, you are saved.  If not, you are damned.  Death forever seals the fate of the unbeliever.

The notion that salvation is possible through Christ alone, has never, at least in orthodox Christian circles, been in legitimate dispute.  The faithful have always known that the conception of ‘all roads leading heaven,’ is a heresy that makes a mockery of the Cross (if there were any other way to salvation, why would God send Jesus to die?).  But the conception of Judgment Day has not always been as clear.  In the early Church, there were friendly debates about it.  The Church Fathers engaged in lively discussions on the subject, often invoking an obscure passage in 1 Peter that speaks of Christ, after his death on the Cross, descending to Sheol, the place where, in Old Testament and Intertestamental theology, the dead awaited Judgment Day, to preach the Gospel (1 Peter 3:19-20; 4:6).  Most Church Fathers believed this meant, at the very least, that Jesus offered salvation to all who had lived before him, who had not had the opportunity to hear his message.  After all, the Fathers reasoned, God is nothing if he is not fair.  This much then, was relatively easy to accept. 

But there were some among the Church Fathers, especially in the Eastern portions of the Church, who took things a bit further, interpreting this Petrine passage to mean that Jesus, who entered eternity after his death on the Cross, preached to everyone who had ever lived or would ever live, either during or after their moment of death, thus providing everyone with a face-to-face opportunity to respond to his Gospel message.  For such writers, the debatable point was whether everyone responded affirmatively to the Gospel or if only some did, but they agreed that there was some opportunity at the threshold of eternity for salvation. 

Eventually, as the Roman Catholic Church emerged, such thinking was kiboshed in the west, leading to the traditional view of Judgment expressed above.  But in the east, the possibilities for grace remained broader.  What I find fascinating is that while today, this kind of talk can lead to charges of heresy, in the first six centuries of Christian history all of these positions were deemed acceptable.[1]  The nature of Judgment, and the ultimate outcome, were considered mysterious, ultimately in God’s hands; it was okay to dream of various possibilities, even teach them, so long as you remembered that the source of salvation was Christ.

Regardless, I am sure that for many traditionally minded Christians, this still smacks of heresy.  They (you reader?) may point to various scripture passages to refute such reckless dreaming, including, no doubt, the passage from Revelation 20 quoted above.  Therein, John the Revelator envisions Judgment Day.  Everyone who has ever lived is brought before God’s throne.  Death and the grave (Sheol, where the dead await judgment) give up their dead, everyone stands before God, and the books are opened.  There are two books, one that records our deeds, the other the Book of Life, wherein God records the name and story of everyone who belongs to the Lamb (Jesus).  Those whose stories are not found in the Book of Life are judged on their works, which is bad news.  Because the criteria for entrance into God’s eternal Kingdom is not being a relatively good person.  Remember, ‘no one is righteous, not one.’  And so, the traditional view of Judgment Day makes it easy: come Judgment Day (whether that be when you die, or when Jesus comes again – Revelation 20 focuses on the latter, but encompasses the former), if your name is in the Book of Life, you have nothing to fear.  But if it’s not, it’s the Lake of Fire, aka hell, for you. 

But the fact that this wasn’t so clear to the Church Fathers, coupled with Peter’s strange comments about Jesus preaching to the dead, gives me reason to pause and ask, ‘What really happens on Judgment Day?’  What happens when people come face to face with the awesomeness and perfection of God and recognize their fallenness and imperfection?  What is it that God seeks to accomplish on Judgment Day?  In the Bible, the judgments of God are restorative, seeking to bring the sinner to an awareness of sin, that he might repent.  And if that’s true, and it is, then we must wonder if there is more to the matter of judgment than the traditional view allows.

Such questions have blazed in my mind ever since my seminary days, when something happened that started me thinking like those imaginative Church Fathers.  Some friends and I had travelled to spend the day in NYC.  One of our stops was the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, where there was an exhibit of medieval tapestries.  The unfortunate part of our visit was that we arrived 20 minutes before the Museum closed.  We raced through the exhibit anyway.  The tapestries were magnificent, wall sized, glorious works of art.  There was one portion of the exhibit that focused on the theme of judgment – medieval conceptions of Judgment Day.  They were dark and apocalyptic, with enough fire and brimstone to warm the heart of the most ardent fundamentalist.  One depicted God on his throne with a serenely detached look on his face, as sinners fell into the fires of hell to be tormented by ghastly demons.  It was clear that to these artists, God was a fierce, wrathful being, strident in his ways, indifferent to the plight of sinners.  At the time, I was traditionalist in my thinking of judgement and hell, but nevertheless these tapestries seemed off to me.  They just didn’t reflect the gracious God I had come to know in Jesus.    

Thinking such thoughts, I turned a corner and saw a tapestry entitled, ‘Joseph is Recognized by his Brothers.’ 

Perhaps you know the story, if not from the Bible, at least from the Andrew Lloyd Weber musical.  Joseph’s brothers had treated him horribly, tossing him in a pit, selling him to traders, causing him to become a slave and prisoner in Egypt.  But God was with Joseph and, following the passage of many years, raised him up to be second in command in Egypt, a hero who saved the land from a ravaging famine.  The famine was so bad that all the nations came before Joseph for grain. 

Joseph’s brothers came too.

They didn’t recognize him at first, but he recognized them.  Eventually, after messing with their heads, he revealed himself to them.  The brothers were of course terrified.  The tapestry I saw at the Met majestically captured that moment of terror.  It captured the brothers’ emotions and actions.  One was trying to run away.  Some looked to Joseph for mercy.  Some keeled over as if dead.  One looked heavenward for mercy from God, expecting none.  The tapestry revealed that for the brothers, this moment was nothing other than Judgment Day.  They knew they were guilty.  Joseph was completely within his rights to execute them on the spot, and they knew they deserved it. 

But then, as I continued to assess the brothers’ reactions, I saw something else: Joseph.  For him, this was no time for revenge.  It was a time for restoration.  It was not a time to say, ‘I told you so.’  It was a time for grace.  Joseph was reaching out to his brothers.  He was stooping to lift those who had fallen onto the floor.  His eyes were filled with mercy.  It was as if he were crying to them, ‘Wait!  Don’t run away!  Don’t you see?  I know what you did.  But I still love you!  Come close to me.  Take my hand.  Everything will be alright.  It’s not too late for us!’ 

And then, in my mind’s eye, I saw the brothers’ reaction to all this (this is all in the Bible, BTW, not just on the tapestry).  I saw them turn to Joseph.  I saw them hugging Joseph and one another, weeping and filled with a crazy, unexpected, lunatic joy.  They had expected Joseph to be their harsh judge.  He turned out to be their savior. 

I was awestruck.  There have been moments in my life when I have felt as if God were speaking to me.  This was one of them.  I was overwhelmed by a feeling that God wanted me to know something about His heart.  Standing before that tapestry and looking into Joseph’s face, I realized I was not just looking into the face of Joseph.  I was looking into the face of Jesus.  And I knew that Jesus was inviting me to consider the possibility that he might be more merciful that I had ever imagined. 

I wrestled with this experience for a long time.  Eventually I authored a book about it, Grace at the Threshold.  After many years of thinking, praying, and studying, I have come to believe that there may indeed be possibilities for grace beyond our expectations.  That there may indeed be some – those who never had a chance to hear the Gospel; those who heard it, but under conditions where they could not possibly accept it; those who had been shipwrecked in the faith, those who, for whatever reason, God in his mercy and sovereign power chooses to extend grace – who will one day look into their Judge’s face and, like Joseph’s brothers, find their Savior there.  That perhaps, on their day of Judgment, some whom the pious had chalked up as lost causes will fall to their knees and cry, ‘My Lord and my God.’  And yes, God – and it is his decision after all, not yours or mine – will accept them. 

But what about the Book of Life?  It says your name has to be in there.  Well, Revelation never tells us when the names are written in it, only that they are.   God can write a person’s name and story in his book any time he pleases.  He is God after all. 

Does this mean all will be saved?  I would love to think so, but alas, I doubt it.  There are many passages in scripture that suggest that not everyone makes it in the end.  John records that those whose stories are not found in the Book of Life (i.e., there are some whose stories are not) are thrown into the ‘Lake of Fire.’[2]  Sadly, there are those who will, even at Judgment Day, persist in their resistance to grace.  Like Gollum in The Lord of the Rings, they will clutch their ‘rings’ even as they fall into the fires of Doom.   As much as I would like everyone to be saved (which is hardly wrong of me, God desires the same thing, see 2 Peter 3:9) I fear not everyone will. 

And so, even as I revel in the possibilities of grace, I ask you to consider one more thing.  Each day we make choices that determine both who we are and who we will be, choices that, among other things, take us closer to farther from Jesus.  It seems possible that, through such choices, we can harden our hearts to the point where we become impervious to grace. 

And so what we most need to know is this: Jesus, the Savior of infinite grace, the one who is both your Judge and Savior, is, right now, reaching for you.  He is saying to you, no matter who you are, where you have been, or what you have done, ‘Come closer!  It’s not too late for us.  I know what you’ve done.  But I still love you!’  His quill is in his hand, ready to inscribe your story in his Book of life. 

I don’t know for certain what your judgment day will be like.  But I do know how you can be sure that you will make it through.  You can take the hand of the one who loves you, the one who will always love you, the one who died on a Cross to prove his love for you.  And you can do it right now. 

Why wait another moment? 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

[1] For example, Gregory of Nazianzus, who chaired the Council of Constantinople, a crucial Church gathering that affirmed the Church’s official position on the humanity and divinity of Christ, believed in the apokatastasis, or the Universal Restoration of all things, including that all of humanity would be saved through Christ.  While holding this view, he was dubbed ‘The Defender of Orthodoxy.’ 

[2] What precisely ‘the Lake of Fire’ is lies beyond the scope of this already overly long post. Traditionalists believe hell means conscious eternal torment.  Conditionalists believe it means judgment followed by the cessation of existence.  Either way, its not good. 

An Updated Christian ‘To Do’ List for Post-Election Life in America 2022

But you should keep a clear mind in every situation. Don’t be afraid of suffering for the Lord. Work at telling others the Good News, and fully carry out the ministry God has given you – 2 Timothy 4:5 NLT

Tomorrow is Election Day. Perhaps I should say, the start of election week, for we probably won’t know the full results for several days. If you have been paying attention, you may be feeling the stress of it all. We face the threat of political violence, and, depending on who wins, the possible death of democracy, which, for all its flaws, seems to be the best form of government this side of the Second Coming. I tend to agree with Winston Churchill, who said, ‘democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.’

My Mom, God rest her soul, used to say, half-jokingly, ‘always expect the worst, and you’ll never be disappointed.’ I have pretty much adopted that mantra as I head into the week. I fear that the results of this election will change things dramatically, and not for the better. It seems likely that dozens, if not hundreds, of election deniers, Christian nationalists, and white supremacists (not to mention their enablers) will win key offices at both the state and federal level. Should this happen, the perilous times we find ourselves in will become, well, more perilous.

Pondering such thoughts these past few days, I began to worry. But then I recalled a post I wrote just two years ago, just prior to the 2020 election. You can check that post here. Back then, I made two Christian ‘to do’ lists, one to employ in the event Trump won, the other if Biden won. Today, I just want to remind you all, and me, of those lists. So here they are, with slightly modified titles:

List One – Things to do if the Republicans win big this week

  1. Hope
  2. Pray
  3. Stand against racism and bigotry
  4. Speak up for immigrants and refugees
  5. Care for Creation
  6. Advocate for and serve the poor and vulnerable
  7. Speak truth
  8. Do justice
  9. Love God
  10. Love my family
  11. Love my neighbors
  12. Love my enemies
  13. Seek the Kingdom
  14. Anticipate the return of Jesus
  15. Point people to Jesus

Yes, should the Republicans win, it will be important, as in life and death important, to do all these things.  On to list two:

List Two – Things to do if the Democrats unexpectedly win big this week

  1. Hope
  2. Pray
  3. Stand against racism and bigotry
  4. Speak up for immigrants and refugees
  5. Care for Creation
  6. Advocate for and serve the poor and vulnerable
  7. Speak truth
  8. Do justice
  9. Love God
  10. Love my family
  11. Love my neighbors
  12. Love my enemies
  13. Seek the Kingdom
  14. Anticipate the return of Jesus
  15. Point people to Jesus

Get the picture?

The situation is no different than it was in 2020. No matter who wins this election, the mission of those who follow Jesus will not change.  We will still live in a world that is broken and in need of a Savior.  We will still need to live as the advance echoes of the world that is to come.  We will still need to stand at the crossroads of culture and show the world the peculiar way of God’s people.  True enough, some of the things on the list will perhaps be more or less challenging depending on who wins.  But the mission will not change at all. 

This gives me hope today, as it did in 2020.  No matter what happens tonight, even should the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, God remains our refuge and strength (Psalm 46:1-2).  Jesus remains our Lord and Savior.  The Kingdom remains the place of our citizenship.  And the mission is the same. 

This, as it did in 2020, gives me hope today. I hope if gives you hope too.

Whatever happens folks, be ready. We have work to do.

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

In the Presence of Our Enemies

‘So David triumphed over the Philistine with only a sling and stone, for he had no sword’ – 1 Samuel 17:50

I’ve been preaching a series through Psalm 23, the one that begins, as most Christians and Jewish persons know, if not everyone else, ‘the Lord is my Shepherd.’  As I have worked through its imagery, I have, among other things, pondered the life of its author, Israel’s second king, David. 

David’s life was an interesting one, filled with ups and downs.  One day he could be ‘a man after God’s own heart,’ the next an adulterer and murderer.  David did much that was good, but also made many mistakes.  And while most people don’t see it this way, I have long felt that his first mistake happened on the day he fought Goliath in the Valley of Elah. 

Most everyone knows the story.  Goliath, champion of the Philistines, came out every morning and evening to taunt the armies of Israel.  ‘Send out your best man to fight,’ he shouted, ‘If I win, your people will become our slaves.  If you win,’ and here he surely laughed out loud, ‘we will become yours.’ 

He surely laughed because the very idea of an Israelite defeating him was ludicrous, and not just because he was nine feet tall, rippled with muscle, and armed to the teeth.  It was ludicrous because any battle between the well-trained, well-armed Goliath and an Israeli soldier would only illustrate the enormous discrepancies between the culture and might of Philistia and that of Israel.  Philistia was, for its day, an advanced culture.  They had ships that sailed the sea, traded with other nations, enjoyed the finer things of life, and, most relevant to the battle that was shaping up in the Valley of Elah, boasted of smiths who could work iron and bronze, i.e., they had swords and armor.  This latter facet of Philistine culture gave them a major technological advantage over the Israelites, who were little more than an upstart nation still trying to carve out space in the Promised Land.  Israel had no smiths to work iron and bronze.  Consequently, they were not well supplied with swords and armor.[1]  As they stood opposite the Philistines on the far side of the valley, they were armed with, well, sticks and clubs. 

In other words, any battle between Goliath and an Israelite, including the one that would take place between the young shepherd boy David and the seasoned warrior Goliath, would merely highlight Israel’s lack of sophistication and power.   The Philistines were all giants compared to the Israelites.  To any reasonable bookie, no Israelite stood a chance against Goliath, nor did Israel stand a chance against Philistia.      

But the Israelites had something the Philistines did not: God.  Their relationship with God had proven sufficient to overcome every obstacle that had ever come their way.  No swords?  No problem.  They had only to be still and know that Yahweh was God.  Moses hadn’t needed swords to lead the Israelites out of Egypt; he had only to be still and let God fight for his people.  Gideon (who, I contend, would best be played on film by Rick Moranis) needed only pitchers and torches to rout the Midianites.  Shofars had made the walls of Jericho come down.  Repeatedly, God had demonstrated to his people that they did not need to fight like the nations to prevail.  The ways and means of Israel were not the ways and means of the surrounding nations.  As God’s ‘peculiar people’ (see, Exodus 19:5-6), Israel had only to be still and let God be God. 

Which, at first, David seemed to understand.  He was only a shepherd boy when he accepted Goliath’s challenge.  But he believed that God was on his side.  ‘Don’t worry about me,’ he told a skeptical King Saul, ‘I’ve defeated bears and lions in the wilderness.  The Lord who rescued me from them will rescue me from this Philistine!’  When Saul tried to give him armor and a sword, he said he didn’t need them.  For one, they were too bulky for him.  For another, well, who needs a culture of iron when you have God on your side!

And so, David strode into the Valley of Elah.  He picked up five stones from the riverbed and the rest, as they say, is history.  ‘You come to me with sword, spear, and javelin,’ he shouted to his foe, ‘but I come to you in the name of the Lord of angel armies!  You’re going down giant, and everyone here will know that the Lord rescues his people, but not with sword and spear.  This is the Lord’s battle, and he will give you to us!’  Reaching into his shepherd’s bag, he took out one stone, placed it in his sling, swung it (‘round and round and round and round and round and round and round,’ as my Sunday School teachers taught me to sing), and brought the giant down. 

David had won, not with technological advancements, not with the weapons of the Philistines, not, in truth, even with a stone and a sling, but with the power of the Living God. 

But then, I contend, he made his mistake.  As Goliath lay unconscious on the ground, defeated already, David ran over, pulled Goliath’s sword from its sheath, and killed the Philistine by cutting off his head.[2] 

I have heard it said that David’s taking of Goliath’s sword was a turning point in the history of Israel.  It signaled, not just the casting off of the Philistines, but the dawn of a new day.  From this point on, Israel would use the tools of the Philistines as their empire expanded.  They too would work with iron and bronze.  Their smiths would make swords, spears, and armor.  They would become like the nations around them.  They would become a power and contend with the nations on a level playing field.  

There is only one problem with all of that: it is not God’s way. 

God’s way is a crazy way.  It calls people to, as I have previously noted (quoted from scripture really) be still and let God be God.  It calls people to trust God, to face a hostile world in peculiar fashion, believing that he will deliver them from their enemies without the need to become like them.  God’s way is the way of Jesus, who conquered the world with a cross, not a sword (heck, he didn’t even use a sling).  It is the way of utter foolishness to the world, but for those who believe, it is the wisdom and power of God (see, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25). 

David, in picking up Goliath’s sword, took a significant step away from the wisdom and power of the God he had trusted so completely when he first stepped into the Valley of Elah.  In taking it up, he not only adopted the weapons of his enemy, but the ways and means of his enemy, the ways and means that would, as we see when we read the rest of Israel’s story, lead the nation further away from God. 

I cannot help but wonder what might have happened if David, instead of taking up that sword and cutting off Goliath’s head, had simply commanded in the name of the Lord that the armies of the Philistines pick up the prone body of his enemy and take it back to Philistia, never to bother Israel again.  I wonder what would have happened had Israel, instead of becoming a culture of iron, had simply gone on living as the peculiar people of God, trusting him to preserve them from their foes. 

I know, you’re thinking that would never have worked, that even if the Philistines had listened to such a command, they would have come back a second time, with either a revived Goliath or some other champion.  What choice did David have but to take up the sword of his foe and wield it?  What choice did Israel have but to adopt the ways of means of their enemies, and become a culture of iron so that they could defend themselves in the future?    

To this I can only say, ‘Seriously?  You don’t believe that God could have used a sling and stone, or some other unexpected means, to overcome the enemy a second time?  You don’t believe that the God who delivered Israel out of the bondage of Egyptian slavery without their having to raise so much as a finger, couldn’t have delivered them again by miraculous means?’ 

I write all of this, not to pick on David, but to make us think.  We live in a time when many Christians believe that their cherished values and beliefs are under assault.  While I tend to think much of this fear is exaggerated, I would admit that there is some truth to the notion that the Church is under attack.  After all, it always has been, and it always will be (Jesus warned us to expect as much).  Sometimes it can feel as if a giant is standing on the far side of the valley calling us out, mocking our faith.    

The question is: what do we do about that?  Should we pick up the weapons, the tools, the techniques of our enemies?  Should we become like them?  Should we seek political power and influence?  Should we lie, cheat, and steal to get what we want?  Should we adopt a ‘do it them before they do it to us’ mentality?  Should we become like the nations?

Or should we live as peculiar people, move forward in faith, entrust our future to God, and believe that he will do what is necessary to further his purposes in the world?  Should we simply live with the conviction that we are not to use the ways and means of our enemies, but rather the ways and means of a loving, powerful God? 

In Psalm 23, David, on one of his better days, wrote of God being present with him in dark valleys and preparing a table before him in the presence of his enemies.  That’s the version of David who started so well that evening in the Valley of Elah: the David who trusted in God’s presence and provision and proceeded accordingly. 

The David who picked up Goliath’s sword, well, I would submit that was David foolishly taking matters into his own hands, becoming the very thing he fought against, and dooming Israel to do the same. 

To all who would adopt the ways and means of the world to fight God’s battles, take heed.  The best thing to do in any situation remains to be still and let God be God, to allow him to set the table before us, even in the presence of our enemies. 

Under Christ’s Mercy,

Brent

[1] See, 1 Samuel 13:19-22; 17:38-39.  There were no smiths in Israel, partly because the Philistines didn’t allow them; they wanted to keep Israel in the technological dark ages so that they might more easily dominate them.  Only Saul and Jonathon possessed smelted weaponry.  When David went to fight Goliath, the only suit of armor Israel had for him to wear was Saul’s, which David wisely rejected. 

[2] It is commonly believed that David killed Goliath with his sling and stone, but the text makes clear that Goliath was still alive after the blow to his head and that David killed the giant with his own sword (see, 1 Samuel 17:51).  Whether the blow from the stone would have proven fatal or whether Goliath would have recovered is something we will simply never know.