A Bowl of Stew and a Birthright

I sat with a dear friend this morning for a while. As our conversation sometimes does, it gradually drifted toward politics and specifically the made for television rally that just occurred in front of the Lincoln Memorial. I do not profess any real great interest in politics but try to follow it just enough to keep up with what's going on. So with great interest I listened to my friend describe the events in Washington. I honestly listened out of a great deal of respect that I have for him. I realized as we engaged in the dialogue that we probably couldn't be farther apart on our views of this event specifically and in other areas of politics as well. It doesn't really matter because I love my friend and respect his opinion.

To a good segment of believers in our country tt seems as though we just witnessed the possible beginnings of revival this past weekend. God, country, old fashioned values, freedom...it was all there except maybe the apple pie and Chevrolet. To the Evangelical faithful it was preaching to a choir on steroids. After all, how could one argue against turning America back to God? Lord knows we have fallen from our glory days as a nation and it seems as though we finally have a hero with enough influence to rally the faithful to do something about it. Beholding the supporting cast of celebrities, power-brokers, and influencers had to send a spike of spiritual adrenaline up the spines of many who had become weary in longing for the good ol' days.

The whole thing reminds me of the story in the scriptures of Jacob and Esau. Esau, a skilled hunter comes in from the chase one day extremely tired and hungry and longingly looks at the stew that his little brother Jacob had prepared and was undoubtedly eating before him. Caring only about the immediate need in front of him, Esau exchanges his future inheritance as the firstborn son for immediate gratification in the present. It seemed like the right thing to do at the moment until his appetite was sated. Once he had a chance to reflect on the swap from something other than a hungry belly it was tragic. An entire future of blessing sold for the comfort of a meal today.

The fact is, we are all Esau to some extent. We constantly trade off our sonship for bits and pieces of comfort, security, pleasure, possessions, and the path of least resistance. Every teen who gives up his or her virginity is Esau. Every individual who is in financial debt is Esau. Every family that buys into a lifestyle requiring two incomes just to keep up with the bills is Esau. Every person who dishonors the Sabbath rest is Esau. Every church that lowers scriptural standards just to increase its numbers is Esau. Everyone who places hope in political systems, human messiahs, and influencial celebrities is Esau. Esau's dilemma is our dilemma and it never goes away.

For much of the conservative church world the desire for a champion, a false messiah, a political hope that will ease the burden of life and taxes is the hunger pang that consumes all thinking. We already have a Messiah and his name is Jesus. But our Messiah leads in ways that fail to accommodate current fleshly cravings and quick fixes. His idea of progress is represented in the slow work of leaven carried out by his disciples no matter what country or political system they find themselves. We would rather have our cultural heroes and political alliances that will do the hard work of the kingdom for us and do it by November's election.

Make no mistake about this. Underneath all of the rhetoric being spewed out about God and Country, with a healthy dose of religious values on the side, is a concern for money. Money that is either sent to Washington to be spent, or money that remains in our pockets to spend. It is always about money. As J.P. McCarthy used to say, "It's not about the money...it's about the amount!" That is so true here. There have always been taxes and government spending, it is the amount that is being debated. Contrary to what most good Christians believe, our American Revolution was not about paying taxes. It was about taxation without representation and the last I checked the representatives of every people group in our country make our laws. We now have what we rebelled against England to get.

Politics is always about the money. The political stew that is offered for everyone's hunger comes in two bowls: Liberal bowls and Conservative bowls. Both bowls are simply not worth selling out our religious heritage over. In a blog that represents a view contrary to what most God-fearing Evangelicals believe Russel Moore brilliantly offers a unique perspective on the whole thing. He states, "There is a liberation theology of the Left, and there is also a liberation theology of the Right, and both are at heart mammon worship." (http://www.russellmoore.com/2010/08/29/god-the-gospel-and-glenn-beck//) To the liberal money is the means to power through redistributing wealth to the "havenots". To the conservative money is the means to power by promising the "haves" that they can keep theirs and even get more. In both cases it is a means to power. Even those who have reminded me on more than one occasion that "it's not about the money, it's about freedom" have to admit that in their christeo-religious foray they equate freedom to having money and the loss of money through taxation as loss of freedom. (I'm not sure at what percent of taxation freedom occurs but it is always less than what we are paying now.) It's always about money or as Moore puts it "mammon worship."

There are no quick fixes to our current situation in America. If tax rates are brought to zero it won't bring back the good ol' days. Reducing taxes won't fix the sights I see driving through our inner city. Oh...and by the way... ask the American Indian how the good ol' days were for them as we settled their lands. Ask the black man how it was when America was really at its best and the Founding Fathers were establishing "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" for all. Check out the plight of the Hispanics ungraciously dubbed "wetbacks" by those who employed them for labor that caused their backs to glisten with sweat under the heat of summer for which a pittance is given in compensation. Sorry folks, we didn't get here by traveling the holy path of righteousness as some would have us believe and we didn't get here because the right or the left sold us out. We are here because we are sinful and sinful people always take the bowl of stew over the likes of justice, delayed gratification, generosity, sacrifice, discipline, and long term wisdom.

I wish Christians could get as excited about the words of Jesus as they do the rhetoric of the Tea Party. I wish that the ideas of justice for all, helping the poor and needy, living in contentment, and other gospel values stirred the passion of God's people more than a television or radio celebrity. I wish we could all find the words of a Jewish Rabbi to go and make disciples more riveting than the promises of politicians to make life better. I wish we could say "No thanks" to the bowl of stew that seems like the perfect answer to the life we crave and embrace the call to a kingdom that asks us to lay down our lives for Him.

My Big Fat Greek Problem

The great philosopher Aristotle is quoted as saying, “If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development.” Stated some 350 years before our Lord walked upon the earth, the foundational wisdom in this statement is still relevant today. I normally don’t put a lot of stock in Greek philosophers because I have my hands full trying to understand biblical wisdom. But in this case I find it ironic that a Greek mind would tell us something so important to our faith. Ironic because it is the Greek mindset that has led us away from the beginnings and development of scriptural faith. Let me try to explain.

I am sure that we all understand that the Jesus we see in pictures, movies, and murals is not the Jesus of scripture. He was not a white man. He did not have long hair. He would not have resembled anything we probably picture in our minds. He certainly did not walk and conduct himself within terms that we are comfortable with. Instead:

• Jesus was Jewish
• Jesus was a Jewish Messiah sent to lost sheep of the House of Israel
• Jesus was raised in a Jewish home that faithfully practiced the Jewish faith
• Jesus was circumcised the eighth day according the Torah (five books of Moses a Hebrew)
• Jesus lived in a Jewish homeland called Israel
• Jesus was from the richest area of Jewish faith in Israel called Galilee
• Jesus was educated by learning Torah as a boy
• Jesus participated in the Jewish feasts as a boy and as a rabbi later in life
• Jesus wore Jewish attire including a Tallit (outer shawl or cloak) Tzitzit (four tassels on the corners of the Tallit) and Tefillin (two straps with boxes worn on the forehead and the left arm near the heart) Each piece a reminder of Torah and essential to the prayer and devotional life of a Jew.
• Jesus observed the Jewish Sabbath
• Jesus was most comfortable with and best received by the Pharisees with who he engaged in debate
• Jesus taught mainly Torah and apart from the Tanakh (Moses, Prophets, and Writings) he had nothing to say
• Jesus’ disciples were all Jewish – 11 from Galilee and Judas from Judea
• Jesus trained his disciples in Torah (his yoke being his interpretation of it)
• Jesus commanded his disciples to go and do the same with Torah in making disciples
  

These are our beginnings and the development of the Christian faith. Do we understand them? This is not exactly true. Actually the beginnings of our faith go all the way back to Abraham who was the first human being that God titled with “Hebrew”. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Twelve Tribes, Moses, David, Elijah, and Elisha were all Jewish. From Moses onward, these patriarchs form the foundation of our faith in living out the Hebrew way of life as defined by God in Torah. Hebrews 11 displays them before us in their acts of faithfulness and Hebrews 12 tells us that these are the ones who constitute the great cloud of witnesses that we now walk before in our faith journey. In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul tells a gentile church, that “our fathers” experienced the very salvation and baptism we do and serve as our example. In doing so he emphatically states that a Jewish Israel is our heritage as Gentiles now in Jesus. In Galatians 3, Paul tells us that if we are in Christ, we are Abraham’s seed and heirs according to his promise. Do we understand these beginnings and this sovereign development that God chose to do his redemptive activity within?

Do we understand that some thirty years following Christ’s death on the cross that a zealous Pharisee named Rav Shaul, (Apostle Paul) himself a disciple of the great Rabbi Gamaliel, shares with his beloved disciple Timothy to “continue in what you have learned and have firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it and how from childhood you have been acquainted with the sacred writings, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.” These writings from his childhood were the Hebrew scriptures of the Tanakh (Old Testament) and that they were to make him wise in the salvation of Jesus. There were no “New Testament” writings to which Paul could have been referring to. And do we understand that it is these scriptures that the great passage that ensues about inspiration alludes to in “All scripture is given by inspiration of God and is profitable…” Is it possible that the great Hebrew writings and Jewish practices actually have a place in a Christian world beyond stories, allegories, and bits and pieces of wisdom? These are our beginnings and our development that we should observe and understand.

The church labels 78% of its Bible as “Old Testament” implying that it is out-dated and irrelevant. The God of this Old Testament barely resembles the God that is worshipped in most congregations today. In fact most of us breathe a sigh of relief as we deem the Hebrew stuff as non-binding upon us as believers. That nasty law and that angry God have been replaced by grace and a loving Heavenly Father. But is that our beginnings and is that our development? What do we observe and what do we understand in its place? In displacing our roots, ignoring the olive tree we’ve been grafted into, and virtually celebrating our ignorance of all things Jewish from scripture, we have succeeded in creating a whole new faith. It bears little resemblance to the one we read about from our 22% of remaining text. What have we replaced it with? In short we have traded a Hebrew heritage rich in scriptural treasure for a Greek mindset of spirituality and thought. I hope to write more on this later.

I am not suggesting that we convert to Judaism, but I am suggesting that we embrace our beginnings and treasure our development in order to gain insight into the authentic faith brought to us by Yeshua Mashiach, the Hebrew equivalent of Jesus Christ. I am suggesting that the 78% that we consider “Old” is actually the key to understanding the 22% that we believe to be true. And I am strongly suggesting that we are clueless regarding that which we do believe as Christians without understanding the Hebrew framework that it rests upon. I also think that a Greek philosopher was warning us about the consequences of allowing his own Greek world to supplant the beginnings and development of our historic Hebrew faith.

Revisiting Obedience

The theme of scriptural obedience will just not go away. I am still troubled by the fact that obedience gets so little attention in today’s church world. It certainly seems to be relegated to an optional activity that lies a great distance from the top of the spiritual food chain. Just believe in Jesus we are told. Have faith in Christ we declare to the masses. Trust in the saving work of the cross we are instructed. It is as if all of scripture has been reduced down to the activity that is known as believing and the entire plans and purposes of God are somehow summed up in a moment in which someone utters “some form of faith filled words” that signify that they in fact are now in compliance with God’s conditions for life now and forever.

While obedience may be alluded to, it is clearly a secondary theme in today’s gospel and certainly not something that carries eternal consequences with it. We wrap obedience up in terms that move it from the arena of holy requirements pleasing to a holy God into spiritual options that we might consider for living a better life. Obedience is now a pick-and-choose exercise that we might consider to better our marriages or families, our standard of living, our health, or our status in a church or community. Gone are the ideas of commandments, obligations, or duties that we must embrace and obey in order to live as God intends. Gone is the idea that obedience has any relevance to eternal life. Gone is the idea that what we do with our lives is of utmost importance both now and forevermore. We have successfully replaced faithfulness with faith and reconstructed faith to mean belief.

A brief overview of the teachings of Jesus suggests that scriptural faith is just the opposite of what we now celebrate. Here are a few of the words in red that might bear attention:

• "Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!" Luke 11:28
• “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” John 14:15
• "If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him” John 14:23
• “Whoever does not love me does not keep my words.” John 14:24
• “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.” John 15:10

Here are some words that are not in red that enforce the words of Jesus from other parts of our New Testament. We might want to reconsider our whole framework of what the faith should look like if we dare take these seriously:

• “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” - John the Baptist
• “It is not those who hear the law who are righteous in God's sight, but it is those who obey the law who will be declared righteous” - Apostle Paul
• “And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” - Writer of Hebrews
• “We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands.” - Apostle John
• “Since you call on a Father who judges each man's work impartially, live your lives as strangers here in reverent fear.” - Apostle Peter
• “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” - Apostle James

My list could go on. It shouldn’t have to however. What we do matters to God. It is clear from Jesus and it is clear from those who interpreted him to others. And it is not as if we can just place obedience in the special category of “pleasing God” or “making God’s day” without any other connections to spiritual life. If we bother to think that idea through with any type of intelligent thought, we would need to believe that a displeasing life to God doesn’t really matter as long as we believe. We are called to obey God and this obedience has consequences. The difficult parable of the sheep and the goats that Matthew records from Jesus implies that eternal consequences rest upon the actions we take in living an obedient life. However much we wish to equate eternity solely with an act of faith, scripture leaves us with an uneasy testimony to the contrary.

Lest I give the impression that obedience is something that I have all figured out, let me say with conviction that I find it troubling. It is troubling to me personally and troubling to me as a leader. What are we to obey? What are the commands that we are obligated to embrace and live in order to please God? What are the commands of Jesus that we do to show our love for him? For those who wish to simply sum it up as “Love God and love others” I wish to extend some caution. If all of scripture is reduced to those five words, then it seems as though there is a great deal of wasted ink within scripture. I agree that all the Law and all the Prophets are fulfilled in these words, but it is not as simple as five words. Furthermore, what does loving God and loving others look like? How would I know if I’m doing it? We all exist with some form of legendary status in our own minds. It is only concrete things within the world of reality that force us to evaluate where we truly are. I may think that I could compete on an NFL football field; the fact that I may not be able to finish a 40 yard dash might suggest otherwise. Commands from Torah and commands from Jesus all point out specific applications that in reality form a series of 40 yard dashes indicating whether we in fact love God and others.

I wish I knew the parameters for obedience. A minister friend of mine suggested that Jesus’ commands are not binding on us since they were given before the cross at the concluding chapter of Jewish Law and before the onset of grace. I struggle with that. If the one I call Lord has nothing to say to me then something is wrong. Another minister friend suggested that Jesus lived the Law perfectly so I don’t have to. That grace is now the guiding force in everything we do. The implication to this is frightening as it suggests that we can do pretty much whatever we want because we are under grace (a state that resembles much of what is in practice in the lukewarm Christendom we see today by the way!). Others quickly point out that actual obedience to commands is not necessary as long as we want to obey. In other words, God knows our hearts and the feeling I have in my heart of love for Him and others are what counts. To be honest, that is terribly frightening as I sense God knows more about my heart than I do and what he knows is not favorable to the cause.

The answers are not easy ones for the call to obey must have something tangible to attach itself to. Otherwise judgment makes no sense. It makes no sense that is unless we see our judgment only as one of reward while those outside of the “faith” suffer the ignoble experience of being judged for their sins. That picture sends Christians to a wonderful fantasy world with visions of mansions, crowns, and divine “atta boys” for accepting Jesus as Savior. It also sends shudders down my spine. It makes the whole judgment process hinge on the question, “Did you or did you not believe in Jesus?” and transforms God’s justice and holiness into a judgment call on whether the person actually believed or not. On the basis of that, demons seem to have a shot because James suggests that they themselves believe (something that he invokes in his argument for the status of works and obedience within the parameters of New Testament faith). This issue demands a fresh visitation of scripture and more conversations with others around the table of spiritual community. It won’t go away. I hope that you will engage in the discussion and revisit this final frontier of Christianity.

The God Who Is

My thoughts today are centered on the God of scripture. By scripture, I mean all of scripture. Who is he? What is he like? Why does he do what he does? Where does he reside? How can I know him? These are just simple questions but the answers are more complex than we think. This is especially true when we dare examine more than just a few select passages from our Bibles. If God is a loving heavenly father who welcomes us into his presence as scripture teaches, then he is also a consuming fire that we are to fearfully consider as taught by the same scriptures. (Both concepts come from the New Testament by the way.)

I have become convinced in recent months that unless we understand the world from which scripture was originally written and engage our hearts and minds with the mindset of those who first heard its message, we are in danger of missing the main points and more critically in danger of redefining our faith in terms outside of scriptural faith. How we in our modern world naturally think and process and interpret is radically different than the audience that would have heard Jesus speak. We are even more removed from the those who participated in the faith during the times of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David. We cannot dismiss those people and their ways as being irrelevant to us. It is wrong to suggest that those patriarchs of the Old Testament participated in a faith that is radically different from ours or knew of God in terms that we now know are archaic compared to our New Testament status.

We assume that the Bible is a book of facts to be learned. We also assume that it fits together into a logical framework that ultimately produces a "How to do Life" manual. In fact, in today's most celebrated churches, the Bible is simply a source of information to deal with the felt needs we encounter in doing life. Many churches design their presentation of scripture around the felt need of the week. The really ingenious churches actually spend time polling people as to the felt need of the week and then utilize scripture accordingly. But that is not how and why scripture was written down and certainly not the revelation that prevails of God's person and God's modus operandi.

I ran across this quote from a book I'm reading that goes like this, "it pleased God to reveal himself not through timeless teachings, or some heavenly knowledge, but through the events of a particular history, and to and through people who were caught up in that history, and who were in every case people of like passions with ourselves and subject to the limitations of our flesh." The truth of the matter is that these people were Hebrews and the language and culture that they possessed is the framework within which any relationship with God must be understood. We ask for definitions; we receive pictures. We want defined doctrines; we are given stories. We covet black and white facts; we are given images. We require information to make tables and graphs and charts; we are presented poems and prophetic prose that requires its own unique thesaurus and dictionary. Unless we understand this fundamental fabric in which our scriptures are handed down to us, we will be spiritual versions of Dumb and Dumber without a clue to the scriptural world around us.

For example, how did Pharaoh's heart get hardened? Believe it or not, we in the western church divide over this question. We have to know and we have to know the truth. Scripture tells us that God hardened Pharaoh's heart (Ex. 7:3). That settles it! Oh but it tells us that Pharaoh hardened his own heart just a chapter later (Ex. 8:15). Don't mess with us...tell us one way or the other! But God doesn't reveal himself that way. We are not satisfied until we settle on an "either/or" stopping point that we can be confident of. God is either sovereign and predestines or man is free to choose and God must await the fruit of that decision. What happens if God is both sovereign and awaiting our decision? I would argue that the Hebrew world flowed easily within an "and/both" paradigm and never concerned themselves with its doctrinal ramifications. Rather, they viewed Pharaoh's situation as a warning to avoid becoming hardened themselves. They were as comfortable with the idea that God could and would fix some one's destiny as they were with moral responsibility and the idea that one could change God's mind.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace yet he tells us that "he did not come to bring peace to the earth but rather a sword." Which is he, the Prince of Peace or the one with a sword? Like all good westerners, you will probably side with the Prince of Peace idea because it fits what we want from God. Perhaps we need to become more eastern in our understanding and frame the Prince of Peace as one who requires a man to leave his family or forsake his parents in order to follow him...a forsaking that could bring untold grief and heartache to those who choose not to follow. The peace he gives is incredible. The conflict he causes is painful. God is not simple. Jesus is not simple either. There is no box to contain Him.

God is near to everyone of us. David declares in Psalm 139 that he knows every intention of my heart and there is no place that I can go from his presence. Yet the prophet places God enthroned in the heavens with earth as his footstool. All of creation cannot contain him. He is both intimate and transcendent. When Moses encountered God on Sinai, what he saw was a God who revealed himself as, "a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin" (Ex. 34:6-7a). Ah....we like that! The very next thing that God reveals about himself "but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation" (Ex. 34:7b). So is God merciful and forgiving or is he holy and exacting justice upon future generations of a people whose actions go without remorse? Because of our enlightened mindset, we demand to have it one way or the other. I suggest that the God of scripture feels no obligation to accommodate us and exists as the God who is. We, like those who have gone before us, must believe that he is both merciful and just.

My point to all of this is that rather than accommodating our need to identify and qualify God in terms that we can easily embrace and be comfortable with, we must place ourselves in his story. This means in all of the story...Old Testament included. Rather than serving as public relations people who seek to create a God from the pages of scripture that culture can be comfortable with, we must press on to know and represent the God of mystery. As the psalmist wrote some years ago, "Our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases." He doesn't have to explain why he loved Jacob but hated Esau. He doesn't have to apologize for choosing Israel and judging the Hittites. He does not have to answer his critics who demand an explaination for his partiality toward David, a man tainted by murder, adultery, and deplorable domestic skills, while finding easy reason to bring his predecessor Saul to an inglorious death.

We are the ones that need to change in our understanding of who he is. Until we embrace the words of scripture within the context from which they were written and seek to understand the world and culture that God chose to pen his eternal words we will be left with a make-believe God, created from select scriptures, who is comfortable, manageable, and predictable. We will build our systems of doctrine and our assurances of heaven while missing out on the amazing God of scripture and his call to include us in on his story. May we never settle for less than amazing.

Random Thoughts from a Funeral

The captain of the ocean liner bound for Europe gently knocked on the door of one of his passengers and requested the man join him on the bridge of the ship. Upon arrival, the captain spoke softly to the gentleman, “A careful reckoning has been made, and I believe we are now passing the place where the Ville de Harve was wrecked. The water is three miles deep.” The passenger turned and walked out onto the deck of liner and leaned over the rail peering into the water and allowed the fullness of moment to flood his mind and captivate his heart. Slowly but surely, words began to come to him and taking a pencil and tablet he penned the following words:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
These words and the verses to follow have since been immortalized into the hymnals of churches everywhere regardless of denomination or nationality.

What is behind these words and why are they so powerful? Perhaps the other details of the author’s life would help us understand their significance then and their significance now.

Horatio G. Spafford was a very prominent and successful attorney practicing law in Chicago in the 1860’s. He married his wife Anna and together they established themselves as an integral part of life amid Chicago’s hustling and bustling ethos. His successful law practice allowed him the financial resources to secure a large portion of real estate along Chicago’s famed waterfront. As a couple they befriended a young preacher named D.L. Moody who would go on to become a world renowned minister in the mold of Billy Graham today. To this man, they became close friends, Horatio became a close confidant, and together they both became among his most ardent supporters. They also began their family by giving birth to a son and four daughters. Their lives reflected financial, emotional, social, spiritual, and parental success. They were living the American Dream.

But then things began to unravel and circumstances would deliver some of the harshest consequences anyone could be asked to endure. In 1870, their four year old son contracted scarlet fever and died. In 1871 the Great Chicago Fire destroyed every one of Horatio’s valuable real estate holdings along the waterfront. Aware of the hardships that his friends had faced, Moody invited them to England to help him in a great evangelistic campaign that he was conducting in 1873. They decided to take their friend up on his request believing that by getting away they could enjoy some much needed rest, they could put some distance between themselves and the tragedies back home, they could spend time as a family enjoying the sights and sounds of London and its surrounding country, and though deeply suffering themselves they could help their friend whose success in ministry was flourishing.

So off to New York they went, hearts set on the excitement before them, with full intentions to board a French steamship that would take them to England. However, just prior to sailing, news came to Horatio that he was needed back in Chicago to attend to an important business matter that couldn’t wait until his return. He made the decision to put his wife and four daughters on the ship, return to Chicago, wrap things up as quickly as possible and catch the next ship to join his family. Having said his goodbyes, he departed back to his city where 9 days later he received a telegram from his beloved Anna. It simply read:
“Saved Alone”
You see, on November 22, 1873 the French ship Ville de Harve collided with the British vessel named the Lochearn and sank in only 12 minutes claiming the lives of 226 people. His bride Anna stood bravely on deck with daughters Annie, Maggie, Bessie, and Tanetta clinging desperately to her as the ship sank. Her last memories were of the violent waters tearing her youngest from her arms…the very waters that Horatio now fixed his focus upon. Only a plank that somehow floated beneath her unconscious body kept her afloat. Upon being rescued and realizing the fate of her daughters she broke into total despair until a small voice spoke to her, “You were spared for a purpose.” She would later recall to a close friend, “It is easy to be grateful and good when you have so much, but take care that you are not a fair weather friend of God.”

So we rejoin our story where we started and see a man who in three years time has lost a son, lost his fortune, and now lost his four daughters and he is staring out over the waters at the very location where the latest tragedy took place. With the grief of a father occupying one side of his heart, a vibrant faith residing in the other, and pen in hand he began to write. Let 's reread the words of the first verse again and maybe you will be able to connect the dots better:
When peace like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll;
Whatever my lot, Thou hast taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul.
These are amazing words when placed within their context.

Life is broken. We all know that. Our world is full of broken relationships, broken families, broken health, broken motives, broken promises, broken morality, broken culture, broken…..you get the picture. We live in a broken world. To live in denial of it is to be like the proverbial ostrich whose head is found firmly entrenched in the sand. And it’s not as if our positive thinking can fix it either. We can’t wish it to go away and we can’t find a refuge that protects us from it. The truth is we take brokenness with us wherever we go, because if we are honest, we all know that we ourselves are broken. Scripture tells us we need a Savior, someone to restore what is broken. Christianity informs us that it is God himself who assumes that task.

All of the brokenness around us erodes a most critical fundamental pillar to life itself. It drives a stake in our hearts that lays claim to an idea that God, if he exists at all, is above all of this and doesn’t really care. We are told throughout scripture that God is good and God is faithful. The essence of scriptural faith is built upon these two important aspects of God’s character. He is good! He is faithful! Our broken world does its very best to get us to question that. From the very first days in the Garden of Eden, the seeds of discontent before God have been sown calling his goodness and faithfulness into question. These seeds of doubt demand that we abandon that belief and declare our independence with questions that ring of … “How could a good God allow…? and … Where is He in all of this mess?” The result is a loss of hope, or worse yet a sense in which… “I’m going to do whatever it takes to make sure I get mine and I really don’t care about the rest.”

You see…It is what we do to navigate the brokenness in life that is important. It is how we handle the broken places in life that makes up our legacy and defines our ultimate contributions to family, friends, and society. Three years of heartrending brokenness sent their best shots into Horatio Spafford’s heart demanding that he yield to the doubts they brought about his God. And seized the deepest grief that a man could imagine, he turned to his Creator and with brazen faith declared “It is well, it is well with my soul.” His recognition that God is good and God is faithful at a time when brokenness was screaming its loudest, seized the moment and carried him through his broken landscape. His loss was redeemed by God to be our gain in such a way that for the past century and beyond, we in the church can declare with him that same refrain. “It is well, it is well with my soul.” To this day, I cannot sing this great hymn without being overcome with its message and I try to affirm its truth each day of my journey before I retire at night.

We are reminded from scripture that brokenness does not win. In a place called Gethsemane some 2000 years ago, a man stared straight into the face of all of the world’s brokenness. The sight caused such anguish that we are told that he sweat drops of blood. The reality of the world’s brokenness was so great that he cried out to be rescued from its weight. That same brokenness was later placed upon him as he hung on a cross with such crushing weight that he cried out, “My God, My God why have you forsaken me?” It was on this cross that the scriptures tell us that Jesus absorbed the totality of brokenness and offered something called Shalom to our world in its place. The cost to us for this Shalom is to believe in that event and then live as if it’s true. Our faith in this act of eternal redemption begins the process of healing the brokenness in us so that we might heal the brokenness in the world around us.

In the glorious resurrection of our Lord Jesus that was to follow, God has forever declared that sin is ultimately defeated and that death will ultimately be destroyed and that the new heavens and new earth will one day usher in a Kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy that will reign forever. We affirm this truth over and over with the words, “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven” when we recite his prayer. It was in this truth that Horatio Spafford staked his claim when he penned those words.

What we do today has consequences, good or bad, that carry over to tomorrow. I urge you to make today count and take a step toward mending the brokenness that exists in your world. Perhaps it is restoring or renewing your faith in the good and faithful God. Perhaps it is mending a broken relationship, or helping to restore a broken family. Maybe it is to comfort those with broken health, or to question those with broken motives. It could be to make right a broken promise, or to change some broken morality. Maybe it is to help reform a broken culture. It starts with the little things. My prayer is that at the end of this day, as you close your eyes, and welcome the sleep that brings refreshment to your life, you will be able to join Horatio Spafford with all honesty and sincerity, and declare, “It is well, it is well with my soul.”

My Reformation Proposal

For the past twenty five years my life has been shaped by the reformation. The great reformers such as Luther and Calvin have shaped my faith and given me the tools to frame life within the basic teaching of scripture. I consider them heroes; particularly Martin Luther, who risked his life in taking on the only known expression of Christianity and the most powerful entity in the world. His words, "Here I stand; I can do no other. God help me." still echo within my soul. Not as words of defiance, but as words of resolve and commitment to the truth of scripture in the face of church practice.

What were the conditions existing in the church of his day that brought out such heroic actions and such powerful words? I suggest that several prominent themes were behind the wayward activity of the church needing this kind of radical reform. Among these themes were several of note:

1. Church leaders who left the radical call of Jesus to serve their churches by making disciples for the promise of power, influence, and prestige that lay waiting for them. They became infatuated with big, infatuated with wealth, infatuated with privilege, and infatuated with the influence they could wield in the world of political power.
2. A prevailing theme of heaven and hell that crowded out the more prominent matters of faith and obedience established in the first covenant with Israel, confirmed by Jesus in his call to the Kingdom, and fleshed out by the apostles in the Epistles. Ultimately heaven became a commodity that was bought and sold with the proceeds going to the church. The church became the only official means in which heaven was attainable. The Great Commission of the church to go and make disciples was supplanted with an obsession to transport the masses to heaven regardless of the spiritual condition of their lives.
3. A process that transformed the rich tradition of the biblical text into an organizational and missional manual to support church practices, structures, activities, and dogma. The richness of the Story of God was contorted into a slice and dice compilation of principles that were used to build a faith empire. The result was an empowered church to which people owed their allegiance, service, money, and talents.

These three themes along with numerous others all worked to produce a church that needed awakening. That awakening came in the form of a call to return to the simplicity and discipline of scripture. The question we must ask today is are we now in need of another awakening? It seems to me that we are dangerously close to many of the very things that evoked that historic protest years ago.

Though no one is asking me, here are my suggestions for a new reformation:

1. Restore the radical call to make disciples. This is hard tedious work in which church leaders are transformed from corporate CEO's or privileged clergy into servants who impart the faith, the whole faith, to others. This will require a transition from organizational power and clergy privilege to relational servanthood.
2. Restore the rich Jewish heritage of the faith. The church's departure from Judaism begun by Constantine has radically altered the faith. In replacing the Hebrew mindset for a Greek mindset we have become a faith of assent rather than transformation. Mix in the values of the Enlightenment and Modernity and you see a faith that has become little more than moralism on the one side or transcendentalism on the other.
3. Restore the importance of the whole of scripture. Rather than starting with where we are and using the Bible as handbook for a better life, we need to move into the story of scripture. For most people, the Bible goes from Genesis 3 straight to the Cross and then to Revelation. This has resulted in an ongoing tragic unfolding of misinformation and an unfortunate rewriting of faith history.
4. Restore the preeminence of the biblical theme of Kingdom. The Kingdom of God was the message of Jesus and his words were directed to life in that Kingdom. Replacing Kingdom with heaven has caused churches to rewrite their mission statements from making disciples to issuing travel tickets to the other world.
5. Restore the importance of spiritual communities of believers who live missionally together in order to impact their world. Take back the ideas of salt and light from the clutches of institutional program and restore it to the tough work of loving one another and our neighbors. By this will all men know we are his disciples.
6. Restore the idea that Christianity is hard work and only advances through the hard fought efforts of people paying the price to be holy. While grace was at the heart of the first reformation, obedience needs to be at the heart of this one. Because of the grace that is ours, we can be different and being different makes the ultimate difference.

Well...that's my list. To add another would make seven and that would imply that it is perfect. Six will do for now. I feel so much better now that I have fixed the church. Now....if I can only figure out how to love my enemies...

Longing for Home

The theme of exile is the theme of the entire Bible. From the opening pages of scriptures until its final chapters, exile dominates the Holy Spirit's dictation. In Genesis we are sent into exile. In Revelation we are returned to the new heavens and new earth made possible by our glorious Lord Jesus. If we understand this scripture takes on significant meaning. If we fail to grasp this, we are left with bits of pieces of text that we somehow try to arrange into a road map for living that has no true destination.

We are exiles. Make no mistake about it. The word means to be absent from one's home our country. When I say exile, I do not mean we are absent from heaven, our true home. Scripture never assigns the place we call heaven as our true abode. Our "citizenship is in heaven" as the Apostle Paul says to the Philippians, but it was not from heaven that we were sent packing when the whole problem of sin emerged. We are exiles from a Garden and that Garden was on earth.

Exile involves more than just a geographic place however. While it is true we were created to live in the Garden of Eden, located somewhere in the Mid-East, we were created for a certain kind of life as well: the Garden life. We were created for life lived in the presence of God in the midst of a good creation of which we were to steward for our Creator. Rebellion sent us packing from this place and cherubim keep us from returning at the moment. Exile not only means absence from a physical Garden but also from a way of life known most fully by the conditions within that Garden.

The conditions that define our exile are described best in the Hebrew concept of chaos. Within a short time of being exiled from the Garden, a brother kills his brother, weird relations emerge between the sexes, hearts become increasingly evil, a flood wipes out the earth, a tower is built to reach into the heavens, and so on. Chaos is the term used to describe life in exile. Its counterpart, shalom, is Hebrew term used to describe life as we imagined it in the Garden or life as it was meant to be within God's blessings.

The theme of exile is graphically portrayed in God's Story involving Israel. Israel existed under a system of chaos known as Egypt where life was hard, tyranny reigned, and slavery was the way of life. From this place of chaos God promised to bring his people into the land promised to Abraham, a land of plenty, a land of milk and honey. These are terms used to evoke the idea of shalom. Their training in the wilderness was for the purpose of preparing them to live in the land enjoying shalom. Their lives were to be ordered by the Law of Moses, a reflection of the original Creator's divine nature. The existing chaos of the land represented by the pagan nations and their practices was to be destroyed and everything that represented life outside of God was to be removed. Chaos was to be set aside and shalom was to be the rule. It was a picture of God returning his people from exile into a land and a calling resembling the original Garden we were made for.

Most of the history of the Old Testament centered on Israel's failure to remove vestiges of the pagan world of chaos. They did not drive out the pagan nations, they did not remove the pagan idols of human rebellion, they did not live according to the laws of God that framed a life resembling the original homestead. Life in the Promised Land became no different than life in exile. Despite a new geographic residence, the exiled lifestyle of chaos held dominion. It held dominion until God had enough and sent them packing into exile once again to the pagan nations that they were meant to influence. If they were to live the exiled lifestyle, they could live it in a place of exile. Chaos ruled!

Various shades of that exile existed for Israel until the day that Jesus was baptized and declared that the Kingdom of God was at hand. In that day Rome served as the host of chaotic life in exile. While Israel lived in the land that they were promised, they did so under the heavy hand of Roman rule and in the midst of pagan idolatry at its most developed state. Every genuine Hebrew longed for the promised visitation of their God to end their exile and restore them to their rightful place of prominence in their land of promise. (Read Psalm 126 for a sense of this longing.) It is to this cry that Jesus devotes most of his teaching and applies most of his miracles. He was the One who would restore shalom and end chaos. He was the One who would bring God's people back to the Garden and end the exile for good.

That is the message of the cross and glory of the resurrection. Jesus has secured shalom on our behalf. He has brought an end to chaos. We catch glimpses of the Garden here and there when we pray, or when we worship, or when we read, or when we gather, or when we break the bread and drink the cup. In Christ we are offered a life of shalom and freedom from the bondage of chaos. When the scriptures tell us we are free or have freedom, it is in this sense that it is referring. Someday we will experience the full view of what the small glimpse we now have teases us with. Until then we are called to live within the reality of shalom while exising in the chaotic world in which we find ourselves.

If you are like me, you long for the fullness of shalom in the new heavens and new earth. It is what we were created for. Like the people of God who have gone before us who were strangers and pilgrims in our world, we long for a city whose maker and builder is God. Every time I pray, "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven" I sense a stirring for life as it was meant to be. I fear that many who belong to God however, think that life in exile is actually pretty good. The ethos of chaos is somehow strangely mixed with the promise of shalom into a strange blend of lukewarm faith in a faux land of promise. Like the Israelites who adapted to the pagan lands that took them captive and became pagan themselves, many mistake the American Dream for shalom and end up serving some sort of money, sex, or power instead of the risen Messiah.

When life becomes comfortable in exile, we are in a bad place. When the daily desire to see, even if only a glimpse, a chaos-free world for everyone is missing, we know that we have sold out. When we are not wrestling with how to live within the scope of shalom to our neighbors, spiritual communities, places of employment, and families we betray the cross to which all of this chaos ultimately must answer in humble submission. When we are not troubled, stirred, awakened, and moved to action in dealing with the chaos we find in our own lives through the spiritual disciplines, we are shirking our calling to be light and salt to the chaos around us. Whatever the case, we must recognize that we are exiles in a pagan world called to live as though we are in a Garden that we can only see in bits and pieces. Shalom!