"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, 28 July 2010 | |||
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Painful Love | |||
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"This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you."
Bill Cosby got a lot of laughs pointing out how ridiculous that sounds to
a child about to be spanked. Yet any parent knows there is a bit of truth
in the old cliche. To demonstrate love by inflicting needed punishment on
a disobedient or rebellious child is a painful experience for a parent.
In our text this week from
Hosea 11:1-11, the prophet allows us to hear God espousing very human
emotion in response to Israel's disobedience and rebellion. Throughout Hosea, the northern kingdom of Israel is constantly identified as "Ephraim." Ephraim of course was only one of the ten tribes of the north and was in fact just one of the two tribes which sprang from Joseph. Yet Ephraim played the predominant role in the north. Jeroboam, the first northern king, was from Ephraim, as were Joshua and Samuel. In Ephraim's territory lay the important northern sacred sites of Bethel, Shiloh and in later expansion, Shechem. So "Ephraim" becomes Hosea's familiar and intimate name for the whole northern kingdom. In verse 3 Hosea pictures God remembering that He "taught Ephraim to walk," with the familiar image of a parent bending over and holding a little child up by his arms as he learns to take steps. And it's the name Ephraim in God's mouth when in verse 8 He suddenly turns from his determination to punish His people to an equal or stronger determination that, in spite of all their sins, "How can I give you up, Ephraim?" God is pictured as a parent in the midst of punishment suddenly overcome by tender emotion and love for the disobedient child. "My heart is changed within me; all my compassion is aroused." There was an old man in our Nebraska congregation who had the name Ephraim. We all called him "Eph." A dedicated student of the Bible, Eph loved these verses where God is expressing His tender love for Ephraim, especially the verse about God teaching Ephraim to walk. A similar tenderness for Ephraim is also found in Jeremiah 31:20. I think these verses where God spoke tenderly of Eph's namesake became for the old man a sign of God's tender love toward Eph himself. Reading those verses he could recall ninety years of God's compassionate and gentle guidance of his own life. My hope is that as we read these verses this week we will also recall God's sometimes tough but always at the same time tender love toward us. Even when we are determined to turn away from God, He is still reaching for us, still full of compassion, still calling us to return. Verses 10 and 11 nicely picture the mixture of ferocity and tenderness in God's love with an image of a lion roaring for its children to come back. The lion roars, but then the children return "trembling like birds from Egypt, like doves from Assyria." May you and I experience both God's ferocity drawing us back from our self-destructive ways and His tenderness welcoming us home into His presence. jjj | |||
Wednesday, 14 July 2010 | |||
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Hungry Ears | |||
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This past Sunday Beth and I went to hear Mendelssohn's "Elijah" at our community concert hall. Just before the orchestra began, the first sound we heard was a ringing phone coming over the sound system. It was a prelude to an announcement such as has become commonplace in movie theatres. "Please silence your cell phones and other electronic devices." And rightly so. How terribly distracting it would be to hear someone's Michael Jackson ringtone right in the middle of "If with all your heart, you truly seek me," or "He watching over Israel, slumbers not, nor sleeps." Recently I've heard about the "Sabbath Manifesto," which grew out of the "National Day of Unplugging," a suggestion that we all abstain from any use of communication technology (cell phone, computer, TV, etc.) for 24 hours. It seems like a good idea to carve out a little quiet and peace in life, and a space for reading, through a weekly sabbath from all electronic devices. One could almost imagine that if God were to speak from heaven or through a modern-day prophet to our world, that the very first word to us all might be what comes at the end of verse 3 in our text, Amos 8:1-12, "Silence!" Chapter 8 of Amos is a bit of a mixture of images and themes, but overall God is addressing a frenzied, hurried way of life that is bent on buying and selling and which ignores and exploits the needy. The first image of a basket of ripe fruit graphically introduces the announcement that God's time is ripe to judge Israel for its frantic, selfish lifestyle. God declaration of displeasure with those who observe the Sabbath while chomping at the bit to be back in business, and then to do business dishonestly, strikes close to home. Look at the oil companies suing the federal government to end the moratorium on offshore drilling and even Obama's own spill study commission saying that the moratorium will cause economic harm. There can be no rest from the need to produce and generate wealth. With computers at home and Blackberries and iPhones in our pockets, many of us can not get away for even a few hours from the need to work and be productive constantly. It's no wonder that even though the Bible is incredibly more available than ever before, even on those portable electronic devices, that even Christians read and understand it less and less. There's just no time. God through Amos clearly addresses Israel in the 8th century B.C. with the words, in verse 11, "The days are coming when I will send a famine through the land--not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord." It's a prediction of the time when in the midst of being overrun by the enemy Assyrians, the people of Israel will anxiously seek a word from God but will not receive it. Yet verses 11 and 12 might also reflect our own time, when overly noisy and busy lives effectively drown out God's voice and create in their own way a famine of the Word. The contrast and model for us appears nicely in the Gospel lesson from Luke 10:38-42, as we see Mary declining to be caught up in the frantic, busy work of Martha, but instead quietly sitting and listening to Jesus. Here I would suggest a moratorium on defending Martha in this text. Yes, work is necessary, and those who work hard are deserving of respect and assistance. And Martha has her own moment of spiritual profundity (see John 11:27). But Mary is the role model many of us need in the present day in order to hear God's Word in the midst of a culture and economy that has us constantly in motion and constantly listening to other sounds and voices. And the irony is that I'm tapping this out on my keyboard and if you read it, it will be via the same electronic media that is starving us of the voice of God. So I suggest your next act be to shut off the computer and get out your Bible. Peace. | |||
Thursday, 08 July 2010 | |||
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Standards | |||
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At a pastor's gathering this morning, a speaker urged us to
stand up for moral values, the example being his own stance toward a
governor in another state in opposition to a bill allowing gay marriage.
I couldn't help but think of the texts for this Sunday, beginning with
Amos 7:7-17, the vivid image of God's plumb line set in the midst of
Israel, displaying its crookedness in relation to His divine
standards. Yet the anger of the Lord expressed in Amos' prophecy was not directed against sexual immorality, although it surely existed there in the northern kingdom. No, the substance of God's complaint through this prophet is found in chapter 5, Israel's record of injustice and exploitation of the poor. The standard by which God is measuring His people in Amos is echoed by Jesus in the Gospel text for today, Luke 10:25-37, the parable of the Good Samaritan. Asked what the standards are for receiving eternal life, Jesus elicits from one of the Jewish lawyers Jesus' own answer to a similar question, the great commandments: love God and love your neighbor. When, as lawyers will, the man wanted to quibble about the exact application of the second commandment, Jesus responded with a story that hung a living plumb line against our behavior. Will we "go and do likewise," or will the model of the Samaritan show up our spiritual lives as out of kilter? Our epistle lesson from Colo ssians 1:1-14 holds up the same sort of standard in verse 10 as Paul expresses his constant prayer that the work of the Spirit in Christians lives will be such that "you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work. . .." Back to Amos, where the consequences for not measuring up to the standard, for appearing as a building out of true, is destruction of supposed holy places in verse 9. The rest of text is a judgment specifically against the priest Amaziah who tries to quiet Amos. The last verse declares that Israel itself will be judged by exile. When a building ends up leaning, whether through faulty construction or settling into soft ground, it may be the only solution is leveling it and starting over. May that not be the end of our stories either as individuals or as churches or as the Church. May we turn to the truest plumb line of all in the love of Jesus Christ and seek His grace to stand straight for love and justice to all in need. | |||
Wednesday, 30 June 2010 | |||
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Accepting Advice | |||
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"Spiritual direction" is a growing dimension of our pastoral community in the Covenant Church. A couple years ago I sought out a colleague with some training in spiritual direction and asked him to meet with me and offer some guidance. It was a helpful time with a person who asked good questions, listened well, and helped me find some peace at a difficult time in my life and ministry. Yet when it came to the actual direction part of the experience I think I found myself feeling a little like Naaman in our text for this week: II Kings 5:1-19a. During our second or third meeting, after having listened to my description of my current spiritual life and issues, my spiritual director handed me a photocopied list of Scripture texts as a prompt for prayers and encouraged me to use it in my daily devotions between then and our next meeting. I confess that my first reaction was to be underwhelmed. Like Naaman expecting Elisha to come out and offer loud invocations of God and wave his hands over his leprosy, I had expected spiritual direction to be a little more dramatic, a little more complex than an invitation to read some Bible verses and think and pray about them. Yet as Naaman's servants point out to him in verse 13, the simplicity and mundaneness of the direction should not count against it. God is throughout this story speaking to the Aramean (Syrian) commander in quiet and rather homely ways, beginning with the captured Israelite servant girl. For a belated Father's Day outing, my family took me Monday to see "Iron Man 2." It was an enjoyable diversion, yet a very clear reminder that we are taught by our culture and the entertainment we view to believe that life's problems are resolved by dramatic, explosive measures accomplished with heroic struggle and stunning brilliance. Yet true life, true spiritual life in Christ is not like that at all. As the Gospel lesson ( Luke 10:1-20) shows, the life of discipleship is a quiet plod from one place to the next, often meeting with rejection and failure and needing to move onto the next point in life. And when the dramatic does happen, when the leprosy is healed or the demons flee, Jesus says not to rejoice in those things, "but rejoice that your names are written in heaven." So when the advice I hear is to kneel down and do the same old daily prayers yet once more or open the Bible to read a verse I've read a couple hundred times before, I'd like to recall Naaman heading down to the muddy, ordinary Jordan River to dip himself not once but seven times over in its water. A great miracle of healing was given to him, but it came through AND was followed by a humble submission to an ordinary and less than spectacular spiritual practice. Writing to a fellow monk about how to study, the great Thomas Aquinas said, "Do not wish to jump immediately from the streams to the sea, because one has to go through easier things to the more difficult." It's good advice for spiritual life as well, and my hope is that you and I can accept such simple advice without scorn and follow it faithfully. | |||
Thursday, 10 June 2010 | |||
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Get What You Want | |||
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In Garrison Keillor's
column that appeared in our newspaper last Sunday, he reflects on the
fact that he recently found himself looking at pictures taken by
underwater cameras of the inky plumes of oil leaking out of the sea floor
in the Gulf. The irony was that at the time he was viewing those images
he was 37,000 feet in the air in a jet that demanded hundreds of gallons
of fuel derived from oil. He felt his own complicity in the Gulf disaster
by virtue of his own desire to travel quickly and far. Our text for this week from I Kings 21 calls us all to reflect on our own desire, greed and covetousness and how it may lead to disastrous consequences, not merely for our own lives, but for people around us. King Ahab's petty wish for a particular piece of ground, which he is unable to obtain, is a pretty apt metaphor for the many petty desires which drive so much of what we do. We come by coveting naturally and it is constantly fueled by advertising. I "know" I need a better, faster laptop, the latest book by my favorite fantasy author, and a newer car with less miles on it. We might congratulate ourselves on having avoided Ahab's particular depth of covetousness, for we commit no unscrupulous acts to get what we want. Yet we might want to worry if we are not headed in the bad king's direction when we find our happiness marred by the lack of things we desire. Ahab's childish sulk is not too a far cry from the place I find myself in occasionally when I begin to dwell too much on what I wish I had. It may not be a very large step past such a sulk to obtaining what I want by some compromise of honesty or integrity. It's helpful then to consider the unplanned pairing of the story of Naboth's vineyard with the Gospel lesson from Luke 7:36-50. The woman who anoints Jesus' feet is not motivated by covetousness at all. As parallel readings tell us, she gives up an enormously expensive jar of perfume for a single act of worship. She is motivated by thankfulness, especially, Jesus points out, thankfulness for forgiveness. It's good strategy to combat a vice with a virtue. Our lessons this week invite us to combat covetousness with thankfulness. When we begin to sink into the dark place created by wishes that cannot possibly all be fulfilled without the darkness entering our own beings, we may be redeemed by simple thanksgiving for God's grace to us in our wretchedness. Now that I think about it, I'm reminded of seeing the opera "Faust," early this year with my opera-loving wife. The old man Faust is ruined by his unrepentant coveting of youth and his lust for a young woman named Marguerite. Though she gives into his seduction and even ends up murdering her own illegitimate child, in the end angels proclaim Marguerite's salvation because she turns away from her desire for Faust and is humbly repentant. May such repentance and turning from our own rampant desires deliver us from fates like Ahab's and Faust's and lead us deeper into our Lord's grace and salvation. | |||
Wednesday, 26 May 2010 | |||
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Craftsmen | |||
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Wednesday, 19 May 2010 | |||
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Babel to Benediction | |||
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One of the latest chapters in Arizona's struggle with a huge
Hispanic presence was its Department of Education's crackdown on teachers
of English with heavy accents. Such instructors have the option of taking
classes to improve their English usage, but may lose their jobs if
sufficient improvement is not forthcoming. Unity of language is generally considered a blessing, and, at least it seems in Arizona, something to be fought for when it is threatened. People without a common language may also lack common values and goals in many arenas, political, social and personal. We all recognize the problems that arise at home when we encounter someone who does not speak English or when we travel to a place where English is not generally spoken. Thus it's surprising that the story of Babel in Genesis 11:1-9 not only does not value linguistic and social unity, but appears to deem them a threat to right relationship with God. On the surface of it, the tower-building endeavor has several qualities we would be inclined to admire. It is creative and ambitious and it does a fine job of unifying human beings and centralizing civilization. Not unlike the American space program in the 1960s and 70s, it gathered a national identity around an exciting, but peaceful project that calls for ingenuity, sacrifice and a spirit of adventure. Yet the text shows that God regarded the Babel project as presumptuous and misguided. He steps in to unravel that precious time of human unity with a confusion of language and a geographic dispersal of the city's inhabitants. The primary sin involved in Babel appears to be pride, the desire to "make a name" for themselves in a way that seeks to rival God (hence the intent to have the tower reach the heavens). However, the text also displays God wanting to scatter human beings at this point. The end of the previous chapter speaks of the descendants of Noah and his sons, spreading out as nations over the earth. Babel is calculated to prevent that spread, to establish a human-centered unity, which God chooses to frustrate by both linguistic diversity and a "scattering" of the people. As we look toward Pentecost this Sunday, we remember that Acts 2:1-11 is often seen as a kind of reversal of the linguistic confusion of Babel. In contrast to the chaos and scattering we can picture at the end of the Babel account, we see everyone hearing and understanding the Good News in Acts 2, and a great in-gathering with the first mass conversion to Christianity. The unity and linguistic harmony destroyed at Babel are restored at Pentecost. But we must be careful in drawing this traditional (back at least to Chrysostom) connection between Babel and Pentecost. What was given through the Holy Spirit fifty days after Easter was not at all a relaxing of God's judgment on the false unity and pride of Babel. In fact, a unified language was not restored at all, but a unified understanding (hearing) despite the speaking of different languages. The unity of Pentecost is a unity of diverse people centered around an experience of Christ. In a sense, Pentecost does not reverse Babel but brings the grace of God into human life in spite of and in the midst of Babel. Pentecost may be a call for Christians to protest and resist harsh, uncharitable and merely human attempts at unity like Arizona's desire for linguistic purity. No matter how precious our distinctive linguistic and cultural heritages or how comfortable it might be to unify around a single language, our stake is ultimately in the God who confused the languages and scattered the peoples of earth so that He might bring them together in Himself. | |||
Thursday, 06 May 2010 | |||
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Community and Connection | |||
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Yesterday a Russian Muslim couple was detained for several
hours by Indian security when the woman's behavior raised suspicions for
the flight crew on a SpiceJet flight. Reportedly she was tall, did not
remove her burqa (veil) while eating, and did not speak at all. They
feared she might be a man trying to disguise his identity. Yet it was all
a false alarm, generated by cultural differences and a false perception
of what turned out to be an innocent observation of the custom that one
never removes a burqa in public. Our text for this Sunday from Joshua 22 picks up the odd story of the false perception by Israelites on the west side of the Jordan of a religious act by Israelites on the east side. Reading commentaries has given me a couple fancy names for these two groups. The land ceded by Moses to tribes on the east side is "Transjordan," hence the two and half tribes there are "Transjordanians," while Canaan proper on the west side is "Cisjordan," so the inhabitants there are "Cisjordanians." We remember that the Transjordanians are the tribes of Reuben and Gad and half of Manasseh (East Manesseh). The other 9 and a half tribes are the Cisjordanians. Even the technical titles reflect a bit of the issue that's at work here in chapter 22. The prefix "cis" means "on this side." So even the labels have an orientation toward the larger group of nine and a half tribes as somehow being Israel proper, the ones who truly inhabit the promised land. So the stage is set for the misunderstanding when the Transjordanians presume to build a second altar to God, raising fears that they will disregard and forsake God's proper altar in the Tabernacle which now resides in Cisjordan, across the river some distance away and not at all convenient for the sacrifices and worship of tribes on the east side. Yet the happy ending to the story is that it's all a misunderstanding. The Transjordanians never meant to actually worship at and offer sacrifices at their duplicate altar. Instead it's a reminder, a "Witness," that they too are part of Israel and are called to true worship at the one altar of the one true God. It's an obscure but good text for our times when Christians are still divided in so many ways, by doctrine, by sacramental understanding, by worship styles and by differing conceptions of the nature of the Church and its mission. What we may perceive as pernicious error in doctrine or practice among other believers may often turn out to be only our false perception of innocent attempts to remain true to the same Lord we all worship. Our Covenant denomination has a good history of trying to overcome some of those dividing and distancing mistaken perceptions and seeking unity among all those who know Christ. We certainly haven't always done it well and our little denomination of 160,000 might be perceived as simply another splinter group and division. Yet my prayer is that we will let our willingness to countenance differing styles and convictions (while holding tight to the center of Christ and the Scriptures) drive us toward the unity that God wanted for Israel and that Jesus wants for the Church. Twice already this week I've been in conversations about ways in which churches of different denominations might work together, in one case for ministry to physical needs, and in the other case for Gospel outreach through a joint Vacation Bible School. May our Lord help us to keep setting up "altars" of faithful service and cooperation that point to the unity we enjoy in Him. jjj | |||
Tuesday, 20 April 2010 | |||
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Scattered Seasoning | |||
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It was one really salty bite of eggs. Our family enjoys
scrambled eggs and I take pride in whipping them up, then cooking them in
butter with plenty of wrist action as I flip and dice them in the pan to
come up fluffy and yellow. I always add salt and pepper before cooking.
One morning I shook in the salt but forgot to stir and whip the eggs
before dumping them in the pan. All the salt stayed in one part of the
batch and one of us took that unfortunate bite. The rest of the eggs were
bland and needed salt added. The seasoning needed to be distributed,
scattered throughout the whole batch. Though Joshua 21 looks like one more ancient geography lesson, its description of the distribution of cities and pastureland to the Levites contains a lesson for us. Those who represent God and serve others on His behalf need to be scattered around in our world so that the "salt of the earth," as Jesus called us, might season human life everywhere. It's not too big a leap to see ourselves as Christians as Levites for the cities and towns in which we live. The Levites scattered around Israel taught people the Law of Moses, consulted with those who were trying to discern God's will, and played something of a local judicial role. Their very presence across the land reminded the various tribes of Israel that they all had one God and that they were not to worship other gods. As rich and deep and close as Christian community in the Church ought to be, it is not meant to be an isolated fellowship huddled in a fortress. When the members of a typical local church depart from worship on Sunday morning, they are going out into their various neighborhoods to represent and communicate the presence of God in the places where they live and work. The ideal and hopeful verses at the end of Joshua 21 seem to me to display the state of affairs which comes to communities, and ultimately to the world, when God's people are functioning well in their role as "Levites" or "salt," dispersed representatives of God's grace and presence. "The Lord gave them rest on every side. . .. Not one of their enemies withstood them. . . Not one of all the Lord's good promises to the house of Israel failed; every one was fulfilled." May we learn how to give room to God's presence in our own lives, and then learn to be God's presence among the many lives we touch each day. | |||
Tuesday, 13 April 2010 | |||
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Refuge | |||
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To where do I run when I feel threatened? Often it's home.
There I will my wife who will understand me when no one else does and
peace and quiet amid comfortable, familiar, safe surroundings. It's hard
to imagine where one might go when home itself does not feel safe. Yet
that's the situation God commands Israel to provide for in
Joshua 20. For those who have nowhere else to hide from a vengeful
retaliation for causing an accidental death, there are designated cities
of refuge. The background to Joshua's provision for cities of refuge is God's direction in this regard to Moses in Numbers 35. For those who imagine the law of the Old Testament to be a simplistic and primitive system of bloody retaliation, the city of refuge concept is an eye opener. Here we find a clear understanding of the concept we label generally as accidental or "involuntary manslaughter," the killing of another human being without any intent to kill and possibly without any negligence. The cities of refuge constituted a major improvement in ancient systems of justice and were meant to stem endless bloody cycles of retaliation between families when there was no true culpability for a death. As spiritual heir to Israel, the Church receives from the Lord something of the nature of a refuge in itself. Jesus models that for us in our Gospel lesson this Sunday from John 21:1-19 as He compassionately "rehabilitates" Peter after his denial before the crucifixion. The mercy Jesus shows toward Peter shows us how we ought to treat those seek refuge among God's people even though they may have wronged us or others. In short, churches ought to be safe places, places of refuge for those who are struggling with the consequences of their own actions. Just as the ancient Israelite cities of refuge did not provide a haven for those guilty of actual murder (there was a hearing and a trial to determine this), churches as places of safe refuge do not condone or excuse genuine wrong-doing. But our call is to put mercy first, to provide places where people are welcomed and helped, rather than condemned. Those refuge city elders needed great wisdom when a fleeing killer showed up at their gates. So we need great wisdom in order to provide refuge to those truly in need of safety and understanding and yet challenge and correct those who have intentionally and willfully done great harm. Overall, though, we will probably want to err on the side of mercy in order to correct the imbalance in the perception that most people have of evangelical churches as judgmental, condemning communities where no one who has seriously failed is "safe." We will want to do everything in our power not to shoot the wounded, whether by addiction, divorce or whatever failing has them standing at our door in hope of refuge. May our own churches be houses of safety and refuge for hurting, sorry, failed people. May we know how to welcome them and treat them with both justice and love. May we reflect the compassion of our Lord which broke into Israel's life with a surprising provision to temper simple revenge and broke even more surprisingly into the world in the mercy of Jesus Christ. | |||
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Recently I was talking with church members who would be vacationing in New Mexico. I urged them to stop in to see the Loretto Chapel when they visit Santa Fe. The old chapel, which is now privately owned as a museum, contains a marvelous wooden spiral staircase constructed around 1880. The identity of the craftsman behind the staircase is unknown and a sweet little
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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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