"Tight lines" is a blessing fishermen offer each other, a wish for lines taut with the weight of good fish. May God grant that the lines written here be taut with His blessings.
Wednesday, 01 July 2009 | |||
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Thrills and Thorns | |||
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Yesterday was our thirtieth anniversary. Beth and I were
deeply grateful to be celebrating three decades of good marriage. Much of
our joy revolves around two grown daughters who are becoming strong and
faithful Christian young women. It might be easy to be a little smug about our family happiness. In fact, yesterday I filled out yet again an annual report for a sociological study in which we and our youngest daughter have been participating since she was a baby. It seems to center around life success in relation to family relations and the presence or absence of some destructive behaviors. So once again I sat and marked "No" to a long list of questions about smoking, excessive alcohol consumption and use of illegal drugs. I also indicated, as usual, that our family regularly eats meals together, talks about what is happening in our daughters' lives, and enjoys a pretty peaceful atmosphere. Working through the study questionnaire and recalling all the ways families can go wrong might contribute to some smugness. It might be easy to think that our good behavior is the reason we've been able to stick together and raise two good kids. We might very well fall into thinking about married life the way Paul carefully avoided thinking about spiritual life in II Corinthians 12:2-10. Just as Paul made sure to refrain from boasting about his own deep spiritual experience, Beth and I must make sure to give God all the credit for any marital success we've enjoyed. Just for myself, I know that my own flaws make me far from the ideal husband or father. In our text for this week, even Paul recalls an ecstatic spiritual experience far beyond any of which his Corinthian critics might boast. Yet he refuses to boast and also recalls that God gave him a constant reminder of his spiritual and bodily weakness, a "thorn in my flesh." So all that Paul cares to boast about is his weakness, because God's power is made perfect in Paul's weakness. That is what we all ought to say about our own successes, whether marital or financial or athletic or spiritual. God displays His power in our weakness and the glory is all His. One of the perennial questions of Scripture is the nature of Paul's "thorn." Suggestions include epilepsy, poor eyesight, some physical pain, or difficult temptations. One commentator suggests that we're not told the exact nature of the affliction so that more of us might readily identify with the apostle, seeing our own trials in his. That means each of us could well discern our own "thorns," painful gifts from God to keep us humble, even when enjoying worldly or spiritual blessings for a season. | |||
Wednesday, 10 June 2009 | |||
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At Home | |||
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Gnosticism from Paul? This week's text is difficult as Paul
appears to express a desire to escape from this present embodied life,
seeking a life out of the body in heaven. Verse 8 in
II Corinthians 5:6-17 is often misquoted as "To be absent from
the body is to be present with the Lord." The misquotation
effectively equates a bodiless state with being in God's
presence. Yet what Paul is longing for is not bodilessness (he refers to such a state pejoratively as "nakedness" just before this in 5:3-4). It is just that, at present, short of the resurrection, becoming absent from the body is the only way to come completely into the presence of the Lord. But that does not at all imply the body is bad or merely a shell needing to be shucked off in order to obtain a more perfect spiritual existence. It's that, given the choice, to be at home in the body or to be at home with the Lord, Paul would prefer the latter. And so might we all. Paul derives confidence, expressed in both verse 6 and verse 8, from his assurance that even if forced to leave his body, to die, he will be in the presence of the Lord. In other words, the Christian has absolutely nothing to lose. If we live in the body, we live for the Lord and (v. 9) make it our goal to please Him. If we die and depart our bodies, we find ourselves in His presence. This leads ultimately to the conclusion in verses 16 and 17 that we are all becoming "new creations" in Christ. In some sense the newness is already here in the confidence we are given that, come what may, we will live in and with our Lord. I pray for that sort of confidence to fill my own heart in the days ahead. | |||
Tuesday, 26 May 2009 | |||
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The Groaning Spirit | |||
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Our coffee maker seems to speak in the wordless groans Paul
mentions in verse 26 of our text for this coming Sunday,
Romans 8:22-27. As it perks coffee, if all else is quiet, one's ears
get the impression of a conversation going on just beyond the range of
intelligibility, as if a radio show were playing in another room. Which
is exactly what we thought the sound was the first time we heard
it. So our groaning coffee maker is the sound I imagine as I think about how the Holy Spirit comes alongside and prays with us in our prayers. In the text, the groaning intercession of the Spirit resonates with the groaning of the whole creation in verse 22 and we ourselves groaning inwardly as we wait for the completion of God's kingdom, which Paul here describes in verse 23 as waiting "eagerly for our adoption, the redemption of our bodies." For myself, there are two sorts of occasions when I find myself "groaning inwardly" in eager waiting for what God is going to do. The first is on deeply moving, beautiful occasions when I have the feeling that I would like to stop time and simply stay in that moment. A happy family gathering, a bright morning beside a mountain lake, or a joyful gathering at the Lord's Table will make me sigh inside for the day when such gladness and beauty will actually be forever. On the other hand, those times when I feel deeply that something is not right with myself or the world also make me grown inwardly. Moments of sorrow for past sins, sitting beside someone dying or in pain, or just seeing creation's beauty blighted with some garbage or ugly development all cause me to groan for God's new and better day. And as Paul says in verse 26, I don't even know quite what to pray at such times. Praying for a good moment to last or a bad one to end soon seems trite and generally fruitless. Our sighs for the redemption of ourselves and our world really do often seem beyond words. That's why the gift of the Holy Spirit's own groans is so wonderful. He prays with us when we do not know what to pray for ourselves. The word for "help" in the phrase, "the Spirit helps us" in verse 26 carries with it an image of one person coming alongside another to pick up one end of a load. This business of communicating with God the deepest longings of our hearts can be a massive burden, but God Himself has chosen to carry it along with us. Verse 27 arises out of the fact that God knows both Himself and us better than we do ourselves. So out of that deep understanding of who we are and what He desires for us, He sends His Spirit to pray with us better prayers than we can pray alone. Even when we do not know what God's will is, the Spirit is bringing our prayers into conformity with His will. So as our coffee maker groans, or the wind moans through the trees above our house, or as I feel my own aching sighs for things to which I cannot even give words, I rejoice in the sounds and the feelings as signs of God's helping, groaning Holy Spirit. May He lift and carry all our prayers deep into the presence of God. | |||
Thursday, 14 May 2009 | |||
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We Shall Overcome | |||
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I'm just barely young enough to have missed the impact which
the signature song of the civil rights movement had on friends and
colleagues a little older than I. Though it's hard to grasp it fully,
with a secularized account of the civil rights movement now an accepted
part of the American story, "We Shall Overcome" reflected the
Christian spiritual roots of the hope in which a generation demonstrated
for fair and equal treatment of people of all races. Ultimately the hope which motivated the civil rights marchers goes back to the connection we've seen drawn throughout I John between love for God and love for others, between a living faith in the saving work of Christ and living acts of love in the name of Christ. In I John 5:1-8, John begins the final weaving together of these two threads. In verse 4 we receive reassurance that the Christian hope is not just for a world of love somewhere in a future paradise, but that the love of Jesus Christ is already breaking into, transforming and overcoming this troubled world. The common lectionary ends the lesson with verse 6, an odd stopping point because there is a natural break between verses 5 and 6. Verse 6 begins a line of thought that really carries forward all the way through verse 12 or 13. So I've opted to extend the reading on through verse 8 for this coming Sunday. It's partly because verses 7 and 8 are so wonderfully mysterious and the lectionary leaves them completely out of any assigned reading. Verses 7 and 8 are certainly difficult. They were apparently corrupted in Latin texts of the third or fourth century (adding a specifically Trinitarian mention of Father, Son and Holy Spirit). Even with the addition the meaning is murky. What is the significance of the testimony of the "the Spirit, the water and the blood?" Augustine tries to work it out in terms of the Trinity, arguing that the Spirit here is actually the Father who is pure "spirit" (see John 4:24), the water is a symbol of the Holy Spirit (see John 7:38, 39), and the blood is a symbol for Christ. I prefer an ancient understanding which sees the water and the blood as the brackets of Christ's ministry, His baptism and the Cross. From there we can understand Spirit, water and blood as ongoing witness to the life and work of Jesus in the life of the Church, specifically in the fellowship of the Holy Spirit and in the sacraments of baptism and holy communion. Thus the arena for victory in Christ is seen to be the worshipping Church. If love for God and love for each other is going to take form in a visible overcoming of the present world, then it will take place within the lives of a people who gather in a community collected by the Spirit and marked by the celebration of the sacraments. In other words, the Christian practice of love cannot be separated from nor replace our practice of worship. So let me with utmost respect for the zeal and loving spirit of sister congregations, question a recent innovation by which some fellowships have taken to dispensing with Sunday worship, as often as once a month, in favor of a morning of community service. I hesitate to disparage this, because so much good is being done and so much good will is generated. Yet I do wonder if the spiritual energy which pushes us into loving service can be sustained if we start to sever the connection between the witness of Spirit, water and blood and the good we are trying to do. Even more deeply, I wonder if we can continue to be people of God, people of Christ, without the continual and regular witness of worship and the sacraments. In the meantime, for me and our congregation, I freely admit that we are probably stronger on the worship side and need to be drawn a little more into visible displays of the reality that Christ is overcoming the world in our midst in acts of love. So my questioning of the practice of others is only with a deep sense of my own deficiencies. And, in the end, thanks be to God and not to our own efforts, we shall all overcome, or better, He shall overcome. | |||
Wednesday, 06 May 2009 | |||
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The Antidote to Fear | |||
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I just discovered a kind of backward reassurance in the
challenging passages we've been reading from I John. In this week's text,
I John 4:7-21, the apostle once again emphasizes the command he's
been pushing all along, to love one another. The challenge of the command
is especially strong in verse 8, "Whoever does not love does not
know God" and in verse 20, "If we say we love God yet hate a
brother or sister, we are liars. For if we do not love a fellow believer,
whom we have seen, we cannot love God, whom we have not
seen." As I struggle with my feelings toward a handful of people who have troubled my life, John's emphasis on love toward others is not very comforting. When I struggle to love a difficult person, John causes me to fear that my love toward God may be bogus. I was oddly relieved to read a sermon by William Brosend, at the beginning of which he suggests that all John's talk about love in this letter signals that relationships in the Christian community to which he wrote must have been pretty dicey. Brosend suggests that John's church was not unlike our churches today, where we constantly deal with fractured relationships. Thus, as I said, it's a kind of backward reassurance or the pleasure of company in misery. Yet it helps me when I reflect on the fact that even then, in the first decades of the church, Jesus' people needed to be strongly and pointedly reminded of His command to love each other. . . because they weren't any better at it than I am. Even more helpful in this text is John's constant reassertion of the priority of God's love over our love. Verse 10, "This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us. . ." Verse 16, "And so we know and rely on the love God has for us." Verse 19, "We love because he first loved us." Any love we have begins in God's love. We are not asked to manufacture our own output of love, but are invited to tap into the prior gift of God's love to us in Jesus. That's how, despite all our own imperfection and failure to love each other, we can still receive and begin to live in God's "perfect love" that "drives out fear." There remains an urgent call to grow in love. I can't become complacent on the basis that John's church was no better than our own in the business of love. Changing that is one major point of his letter. What we learn is that we have no need to despair when we fail in love. We need not fear God's judgment as verse 17 says. We may continually return to the fount of love in what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. From that starting point, we can make faulting and humble progress in learning to love each other, and thus genuinely demonstrate in our lives that God's love is real. | |||
Wednesday, 29 April 2009 | |||
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Hearts at Rest | |||
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As I stopped at a traffic light in Portland last week, I
found myself right next to what is becoming a more and more familiar
sight, someone holding a cardboard sign requesting assistance. At first I
was tempted to ignore the young woman, because I was out of my usual
offerings for such situations, coupons for fast food. Yet having just
come from a moving time of worship with fellow pastors, I couldn't just
ignore her. So I dug down in my pocket, rolled down the window and
reached out with a handful of change. I offer this story not because I'm
particularly proud of it, but because I think it reflects some of the
tensions in our text for this week. In I John 3:16-24, the apostle places his emphasis on love. Truth and love are the two great themes of this letter and over and over it stresses the need for Christians to hold onto the truth of Jesus Christ and to hold on to the love of Jesus Christ. In reality, the two are inseparable. Verse 17 is the sort of Scripture message that helped fueled my desire not to go by without giving the woman something. Yet I still feel conflicted about my "gift" of perhaps 80 or 90 cents, which I saw her carefully counting as I drove away. After all, I had a twenty dollar bill in my wallet. In my heart, I wonder if should not have given her more. That's why I'm grateful that, along with its strong call for visible and active expression of love, the text includes verse 20, "If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is stronger than our hearts, and he knows everything." I could (and sometimes do) go on and on second-guessing myself and my motives no matter how good my actions might be. If I had given the girl $20, I might be wondering now if I had not heavily enabled some self-destructive behavior like drugs or alcohol. I cannot, simply through my own good works, set my heart at rest (as verse 19 suggests). It's only through the grace of Christ that I let go of my heart's self-condemnation and have any confidence in my relationship with God. That's why the constant conjunction of truth and love is so key to John and to our Christian lives. That's why we read in verse 23, "And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us." We can't have faith in the truth of Christ without expressing it in love, but our hearts cannot rest easy in our expressions of love without faith in the truth of Christ. It's amazing how well the message of Scripture fits and answers the tortured turnings of our psyches and does finally set our hearts at rest. | |||
Tuesday, 21 April 2009 | |||
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A Diamond Someday | |||
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My wife is always chagrined when I juxtapose two pieces of
poetry which I think express a thought from this week's text,
I John 3:1-7, particularly verse 2. The problem for Beth is that one
bit of lyric comes from country-western singer John Anderson: "I'm
just an old chunk of coal, but I'm gonna be a diamond someday,"
while the other comes from one of her favorite poets, Gerard Manley
Hopkins, who wrote: A beacon, an eternal beam. 'Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm; ' world's wildfire leave but ash: I am all at once what Christ is, ' since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, ' patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Now, I freely admit that Hopkins captures a bit more of John's thought, and a bit more eloquently, yet I still like the homely phrasing of Anderson. In any case, Anderson's song does some justice to where John goes with this thought that we will someday experience the glory of being made like Christ. Anderson sings: I'm gonna kneel and pray every day, Lest I become vain along the way. and I'm gonna learn the best way to walk I'm gonna search and find a better way to talk I'm gonna spit and polish my old rough edged self Till I get rid of every single flaw What Anderson sees (in rough, coal-like sort of way) is that the promise of diamond-hood, of being made someday like Christ, carries an ethical dimension. We want to live in anticipation of the glory we will share in. John says in verse 3, "All who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure." We struggle and strive to leave sin behind because, through grace, we have the hope of being remade into the sort of beings God always intended us to be. Why not begin living in some of that glory now? Why not start moving ourselves in the right direction? Yes, until that day when see the object of our efforts clearly, until we are face to face with Jesus, our efforts will prove lump-like and potsherd-broken, but John sees that as no reason not to strive now to be "righteous, just as he is righteous" (v. 7). So greetings this week to all my fellow lumps of coal, and I look forward to greeting your diamond sheen in our Lord's presence one day. | |||
Monday, 13 April 2009 | |||
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An Advocate | |||
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O.K., I told a lawyer joke in a sermon earlier this year.
It's easy to join in the general spirit of lawyer bashing that seems so
prevalent in the popular mind. Although these days Wall Street executives
might make attorneys appear as paragons of virtue, relatively speaking.
In any case, I need to admit that, when you need one, a good lawyer is a
blessing. When it comes time to thread through web of the legal system,
you want someone both empathetic and competent on your side. You want an
attorney who shows some human concern and sympathy for your plight and
you also want someone who has the legal ability to help you. A lawyer is
sometimes called an "advocate." "Advocate" in our text for this week ( I John 1:1 - 2:2) chapter 2, verse 1 is the Greek word paraclete. The most familiar use of that word is in the Gospel of John, chapter 15, where it is used of the Holy Spirit and often translated, "Comforter." But here in I John the Advocate is Jesus. He is our Advocate when we sin. You might say that the whole prologue to I John is meant as an assurance that Jesus is truly able to help us in the role of advocate. Verses 1-4 of chapter 1 are John's eyewitness testimony to having heard, seen and touched the living Word who came down to die and to rise again and offer eternal life. What John is proclaiming is the Easter faith that Christ is risen, in the body, a tangible and visible declaration of eternal life. As verse 4 says, this what makes our joy complete. To accept that truth of the risen Jesus and life in Him is to be brought into fellowship with all who accept it. Yet verses 6-10 of I John 1 recognize that there is a hindrance to the completeness of our joy in this fellowship we have with each other in the truth of Christ. We sin. God is light, says John, and we are struggling with the darkness we bring into our fellowship with each other in God. So we are assured first that Jesus Christ is who He must be in order to help us, a human being with a body that could seen, heard and touched, but also the divine Word of life who was with the Father before He appeared on earth. In the traditional formula, he is truly human and truly God. As such, He is the perfect Advocate for sinners. As a human he understands and sympathizes with our weaknesses, as Hebrews 4:15 says. As God he is competent to do something about our sin. He can forgive us and free us from its grip. The Greek word translated "atoning sacrifice" in the NIV/TNIV is hilasmos. It can either mean "propitiation" or "expiation." A propitiation is an appeasement of someone who is angry. There is a theological tradition which sees Christ's sacrifice as a propitiation of God's wrath on our behalf. But translated "expiation," the word can also mean the removal of that which is offensive, the removal of sin. I, and our whole Covenant theological tradition, tend toward this latter understanding. It fits with chapter 1, verses 7 and 9. It's not just that Christ propitiates an angry God and frees sinners from the penalty of their sins. It's that His dying and rising actually free us from sin, purify us. Which all creates the tension we feel here as John talks about these things. On the one hand, there is a strong call and expectation in 1:6 that true Christians will not sin, "If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth." On the other hand, there is a clear recognition that Christians will continue to sin and will continue to need an Advocate who forgives and purifies us. So we have 1:9 and 2:2. That tension between an ideal holiness which we seek and a realistic recognition of sinfulness with which we struggle seems to ring exactly true with my experience. | |||
Thursday, 09 April 2009 | |||
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If Not . . . | |||
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O.K., so I'm going to change the lectionary epistle lesson
for Easter this year. I'm on a plan to preach the epistle lessons all
year, but in the Easter cycle I'm much more excited about the text from I
Corinthians 15 that's assigned for next year (cycle C rather than this
year's B). Some of this wonderful chapter is also assigned for late
Sundays in Epiphany, which means it seldom actually appears because an
early Easter often cuts the Epiphany season short. The basic argument is that denying resurrection of our bodies
leads to denying the resurrection of Christ, which leads to the conclusion that
Christian faith is pointless, which no believer wants to suggest. So no
true believer can, with rational consistency, deny the resurrection of the
dead. | |||
Wednesday, 01 April 2009 | |||
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Humble Savior | |||
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He always showed up at the church door with a wad of trash
in his hand. No, he was not some derelict, but one of our men who simply
appointed himself to walk our grounds upon arriving and pick up any
litter he found before he came in to worship. He asked no recognition for
this or for many of the other small and often anonymous acts of service
he offered over the years. My trash-gathering friend understood our text this week, Philippians 2:5-11, and the whole general thrust of the Palm Sunday story which shows us Jesus' own humility. I find this message about Jesus and the examples of several genuinely humble saints I've known to be terribly challenging to my own life and attitude. As I consider once again Paul's direction to have, in my relationships with others, "the same mind as was in Christ Jesus," I am humbled by my lack of humility. It feels like the Church as a whole may currently be blessed with new opportunities to be humbled in service to each other and to our world. A Gospel message sounding notes of power or victory seems a bit discordant with the present time. Finding opportunities to offer the grace of Jesus coupled with unaffected and humble service seems more in harmony with what folks need to hear right now. As I think about this text and our Lord's humbling of Himself in order to save us, I would especially be glad to hear from others your own stories of Christians you know who have been examples of humility and service. May Holy Week renew in us all the desire to have the mind of Christ. | |||
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Profile |
I am the pastor of Valley Covenant Church in Eugene, Oregon. I love to flyfish and hike along the beautiful rivers in our area. I welcome your comments as I share sermon work in progress and occasional other thoughts.
Thank you for visiting this blog. I invite you also to visit my web page.
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