Beautiful agony.

Today is Ascension Sunday, marked by the Acts text from earlier this morning. Next week, we’ll celebrate the birthday of the Church at Pentecost. But today, we’ve seen the resurrection, and we know that battle against sin and death is won. Christ has gone to heaven to prepare a place for us, and we’re left here waiting.

We’re waiting for a world that will be made right again, for a world where we can see God’s presence in everything we do. We’re anticipating the arrival of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth, and we’re surprised that it has happened yet.

Of course, this world in which we are left hasn’t yet heard that the battle has been won, so they’re happy to ignore us until we become a problem and then persecute us when we do, which is where we find ourselves in 1 Peter 4:12. Listen now for the Word of the Lord

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you.

Continuing in Chapter 5:6:

Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you. Discipline yourselves, keep alert. Like a roaring lion your adversary the devil prowls around, looking for someone to devour. Resist him, steadfast in your faith for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering. And after you have suffered for a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support, strengthen, and establish you. To him be the power forever and ever. Amen.

The grass withers, and the flower fades, but the Word of our Lord shall stand forever Thanks be to God

Wait, what was that about a fiery ordeal? I didn’t sign on for that. I’m here for the potlucks and the coffee. Nobody asked me about suffering when I joined the church. I thought once I became a Christian that would mean that my suffering was over, and God would protect me forever and ever amen. You’re welcome to your suffering if you like, but now that God’s on my side I don’t need to anymore. That’s how you know I’m saved, because I’m blessed, and don’t suffer...But that’s not what the text says.

We’re American Christians, and whether or not one thinks that we live in a “Christian Nation,” we certainly don’t have to face the same kind of persecution with which the church to whom this letter was addressed lived every day. This letter is addressed to the exiles of the Dispersion, which means these exiled are Jewish Christians living in other countries. These peoples would have lived as second class citizens, if they were citizens at all, and could be banished on the whim of local governors, and were deprived of their own homeland, even if they thought of where they lived as home. This was a time before the Roman Empire made persecuting Christians a national pastime, so these are persistent local persecutions. The kind of thing where merchants won’t sell you their goods, just because you used the name of Christ in blessing your meal. The kind of thing where will slap you with a lawsuit without any proof, just so you’ll go away. The community is pushing Christianity out in every way it can because it is different. Christians aren’t being thrown to the lions, but they might be lynched. So where can we, who live in a wealthy country and in a safe community, stand in this text? Because we don’t suffer like that.

Maybe not like that, but we do suffer. We suffer from all kinds of stress, we suffer from disease, our finances aren’t as secure as they used to be, our families fight, our friendships end, as do our marriages, and we are left needing so desperately to be restored, supported, strengthened, and established, but our suffering for a little while lasts a whole lot longer than we like. And our conversion doesn’t call the cavalry to conquer our doubts and end our suffering.

So why be a Christian then, if we still have to suffer? After all, we, as creatures, are programmed to avoid pain and seek pleasure. Wouldn’t we get more converts if it gave us an easy out from the hardships of this world? And yet it doesn’t. It’s not easy, and it’s counter-intuitive, and it’s risky. Discipleship flies in the face of what we are hardwired to do, because not only does it away from those things that please us, but it tells to pick up our crosses and go to our deaths along with Jesus. God, you love us, why are you asking us to take on some of Christ’s suffering? You’re all powerful, can’t you just make it go away?

Our understanding of suffering is that those who are able to avoid it do so, the association we make in our own minds is that the powerful do not suffer, only the weak do. If a person falls on hard times, we talk about them as the “weaker brother,” and offer to help them only out of our strength, but we preach Christ crucified, which is foolishness to those who desire logic. Our God doesn’t need to follow our logic, our God isn’t bound by what is dreamt of in our philosophy.

Our God is powerful enough to take our sins onto himself, that we might be spared the wages of sin that we had earned. It begins with God taking a share in our suffering. But not just a share, God took all shares upon himself in the crucifixion. And in that moment, God also suffered the profound abandonment that we all fear. “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” It wasn’t glamorous, It wasn’t glorious, it wasn’t a superhero moment, it was a man’s desperate cry as Christ was separated from God. Our God loves us enough to suffer at our hands for what we had done, and continue to do. Our God is powerful enough to claim that suffering, go where by definition God was not, and come out on the other side.

And so the suffering is no longer our own. But neither are we our own. Rather we belong to God, who adopts us through Christ’s death and resurrection.

When I was about ten years old, my Dad had us installing some new drainage pipes in the Burke county red clay of our back yard. We of course chose to do this in the middle of July, when temperatures could be described as fiery. Burke County is not especially famous for its red clay, but I can attest that Burke County red clay, when exposed to heat, reacts like any other red clay in the world. That is to say, it turns to brick. So I’m waist deep in a hole that I’ve been working on for hours trying to dig a pipe out of the ground so we can spend more hours putting a new pipe in, and I’m thinking that this is quite the ordeal, out in this fiery weather, and maybe Dad’s testing us. Teaching us the hard way so that we’ll appreciate it that much more when he shows us the easy way, that we’ll shout for joy when the glory of the magical power tool that will make my shovel obsolete is revealed.

So I look up at my father, who was of course, on the back porch, in the shade, with a large glass of ice tea in his hand, watching us work.

“Dad” I say, “Is there an easier way to do this?”

“Sure,” He replies, taking a long slow sip of his drink, “Have sons.”

Like a child learning to do chores, it would be easier on us if it was all just done for us, but we are asked to do it anyway, because our heavenly Father knows that we’re not taking on Christ’s suffering, we’re taking up our own crosses to claim not only our suffering, but also our redemption. We are responding to this act of perfect love out of gratitude for what is already done on our behalf. A child washes a load of laundry, or mows the lawn, or cleans the house, or digs a ditch for a drainage pipe. A Disciple follows this example and takes part in the suffering on Christ’s behalf, not because Christ couldn’t get by without it, or because God will reward us with an extra star in our crown or whatever. We act because we have to respond in faith to what God has done for us, even though it means choosing to the suffering that accompanies that action.

We were suffering before we were in Christ, so in that sense, not much is changed. What has changed is that now we have the Father to restore us when we are empty, Christ to support us when we are falling, the Spirit to strengthen us when we grow weak, and through all this God establishes us as territories of God’s own kingdom, and as members of God’s own household. We still suffer, but we do not suffer in bondage to sin and death, rather we suffer along with all creation in the birth pangs of a new age, and we know God shall wipe away every tear from our eyes.

This passage tells us that while we are suffering, the Spirit of God is resting on us. That spirit resting on us sounds to me like a firm hand, holding us to our task until it is completed, because it is so easy to back away from our calling. It is a weighty blessing, a crown, but a crown of thorns, and it keeps us grounded on this Ascension Sunday, because we still have work to do.

This time last week, I was driving to Savannah, GA on my honeymoon. A number of y’all attended the service where Leah and I married one another. I spent most of that weekend in a haze of excitement and nervousness, but the image that penetrated that haze was of my families, Barnard, Boshell, Potter, and Taber all working together at the rehearsal dinner. We carried food for one another, served one another bread, opened and poured wine, and taking care of all the other minor inconveniences that we do to show each other love around a dinner table. In some small way, the work, and the tiniest bit of suffering that accompanied it, mirrored the Kingdom of Heaven for me. It’s not a state where there is no suffering, it’s one where that suffering is totally overshadowed by the love we hold for one another. We barely even notice that we’re tired, or that we’ve spilled something on our new outfit, we are suffering, but it’s so minor next to what we are doing for one another. This is the work we have been waiting for, this is why we remain in a suffering broken world.

I spent the hours preceding our wedding in a beautiful agony, waiting for the arrival of the moment when I would see Leah walk up the aisle. It’s not the dread of bad news that saps all of ones energy to act. But it is exhausting and debilitating. It’s not the excitement of a Christmas morning where one can’t help but wake up earlier than an uncoffeed parent would prefer, but it is an anticipation of what is to come. It’s not the nervousness that comes with hearing back from a job interview, but it is something on which my life hinges. It’s a suffering in which one can rejoice, because the suffering is not the end of the story. For me, it was a wedding, for the church, it’s being exalted by God, and it all happens in due time.

The suffering is important, and reflects the work we need to do in a world that still needs its savior. We become Christians because we have seen a part of that work, and feel compelled by gratitude to take join in the fiery ordeal that is a part of this task.

We join the church because the community of faith means we don’t have to suffer alone, we have such a great chorus of witnesses telling us, “I remember when I stood there, and I remember when it was hard. I also remember that ours is the God who works wonders, and who’s path to the promised land is through the waters. It is still hard, and we do suffer. But we can, with God’s help, get through this.”

Our brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering, the birth pangs of the expectant mother, the excited terror of the groom waiting for his bride, the weighty blessings of a church called to live in a suffering world. Our suffering is not a sign that God has abandoned us to our sinfulness, it is a sign that our world still needs its savior. Our savior is risen, our savior has ascended to heaven, and our savior will come again to complete the work of creation’s redemption. Because the God of all grace has called us to his eternal glory in Christ, and the end of the story is not a suffering crucified God, or even a rising from the dead. Neither is it an ascension that leaves us staring in wonder, or a gift of the Spirit. Our story will end as it began. The God of all creation shall restore that creation, and will support us as we love one another, and will strengthen the relationships between us and God, and will establish a world where all will know that the Lord is God. When God finishes all the work that God has been doing, God will bless that day and call it holy. And it will be good.

Oh Peter.

Oh Peter from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

Our third scripture reading this afternoon comes from the 14th Gospel of Matthew. This story comes right after Jesus dismisses a recently fed multitude, and has gone up onto the mountain to pray by himself. The disciples are out on a boat in the middle of a storm. Listen now for the Word of the Lord.

Matthew 14:25-33

Very early in the morning he came to his disciples, walking on the lake. When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified and said, “It’s a ghost!” They were so frightened they screamed.

Just then, Jesus spoke to them, “Be encouraged, It’s me. Don’t be afraid.”

Peter replied, “Lord, if it’s you, order me to come to you on the water.”

And Jesus said, “Come.”

Then Peter got out of the boat and was walking on the water toward Jesus. But when Peter saw the strong wind, he became frightened. As he began to sink, he shouted, “Lord, rescue me!”

Jesus immediately reached out and grabbed him, saying, “You man of weak faith! Why did you begin to have doubts?” When they got into the boat, the wind settled down.

Then those in the boat worshipped Jesus and said, “You must be God’s son!”

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

---

Oh Peter. You’ve got to give it to him, he certainly tries. He is by no means lukewarm, and definitely at least tries to keep the Lord always before him. When he sees Jesus out on the lake, we can almost hear him say to himself, “If Jesus can do that, I wanna too!” So at a word from the Lord, Peter gets out of the relative safely of the boat, and joins Jesus in the storm.

Oh Peter, why’d you get out of the boat.

Imagine Peter telling the story to some folks later: So there’s this storm right? And we’re all out in the boat trying to keep her afloat, and she’s doing a pretty good job of protecting us from the waves that are battering us. Then we see Jesus out walking on the water. So we start freaking out, and Jesus calls out to us and says “Chill out, it’s me, no worries.” So I get the big idea to call back, and I say “If that’s really you, prove it! Tell me to come out there with you!” And Jesus yells back “Well come on then!”

Oh Peter, why’d you get out of the boat. We all knew where this was going, we all knew you were just going to sink.

Jesus responds simply, “Come.” And in that short command, Peter hears enough that he’s willing to do something as ridiculous as trying to walk on water with Christ.

Maybe he heard the Word that was with God and was God in the beginning. Maybe Peter heard the voice that called out “Let there be light!” Or the word given to the ancient Israelites “Hear O Israel: The Lord is God, the Lord alone!” Perhaps in Jesus’s command to walk on the water, Peter heard the words recorded by Isaiah, “Comfort, O Comfort my people.”

Peter certainly heard the voice that said “You give them something to eat.” We know he heard the words of the Parables contained in that simple command. He heard the voice that cast out demons and healed the sick and lame. He heard the words of the sermon on the mount. He heard the voice that said long before, Come, follow me.” Christ is doing something that reveals that he is God, and Peter hears all of that authority in Jesus’s voice, and gets out of the boat.

Oh Peter, why’d you get out of the boat. We all knew where this was going, we all knew you were just going to sink. You’re just a poor sinner, you can’t walk on water.

Jonah makes a great foil to this story. He gets the command from God to “Go” and immediately gets on to a boat, hoping to run away to the farthest reaches of the earth to prevent another people from experiencing God. He expects the hull and mast to protect him from not only the storm they encounter, but his identity as a prophet. His attempt is an image for the way all of us try to run and hide from what God has created us to be, because we can’t get past our own weaknesses and fears. So we hide on a boat until someone throws us out into the raging waters, and a large fish comes to swallow us. Jonah hears the command, and books passage on the farthest ranging boat he can find. We’ve all heard this same call. And we can’t help but build little boats around ourselves to protect us from being honest and vulnerable. But when Jesus speaks in this passage, Peter gets out of the boat, and joins Jesus in the storm.

Oh Peter, why’d you get out of the boat. We all knew where this was going, we all know you were just going to sink. You’re just a poor sinner, you can’t walk on water. Come back to where it’s safe, stay out of the storm, we don’t want you to sink.

Peter does begin to sink, and for some reason, rather than running to the boat, he cries out “Lord, rescue me!” And Jesus does, and says to him: Oh Peter, my beloved little idiot, why did you doubt? I didn’t call you out here because it’s safe, I called you out here because you belong here, with me, in this raging power that you cannot understand or control.

This is a great pulpit. Great big piece of wood to lean on, Great place to *thump* for emphasis when a prophet says “THEREFORE!” It’s also a nice sturdy barrier to protect those of us who preach from those of us who hear. This is a great pulpit, but there’s this terrifying little brass plaque on the back that says “We would see Jesus.” And though I’d like to use this pulpit as a boat to protect myself, that little piece of brass grabs me and proclaims in my ear that there’s a storm out there, and I’ve got to get out and walk in it.

We do love these things that provide limits, boundaries, control. Especially when we’re doing something that risks as much of ourselves as preaching does. But we don’t need to hold onto these little boats, our futile comfort blankets that we think keep us afloat when it would be easier to be overwhelmed. We don’t need the boats, because the voice that spoke creation into being, the Son who redeemed us, and the God who reigns over all, the Word made flesh, who is foolishly in love with us, says “Come.”

Although Peter sank, his great triumph is that of all the disciples, he alone was willing to trust God enough to get out of the boat in the first place. Likewise we will sink, from time to time, I don’t doubt that. We will begin to have doubts that will drive us down into the chaotic waters. Sometimes we have to sink before we remember to cry out “Lord, rescue me!” But our God is powerful enough to save us, and loves us enough to drown alongside us when we will not be helped. The world asks us, as we ask ourselves, why in the world would we go into this storm, why would we leave behind the safety of what we build around ourselves.

Oh Peter, why’d you get out of the boat? We all knew you were just going to sink. “I’ve got to get out of the boat, even if I sink, because that’s where Jesus is. Never mind the storm, my God told me to come. That’s why I get out of the boat.”

Endgame

Endgame (Psalm 77) from Joseph Taber on Vimeo.

I cry aloud to God,

aloud to God, that he may hear me.

In the day of my trouble I seek the Lord;

In the night my hand is stretched out without wearying;

My Soul refuses to be comforted.

I think of God, and I moan;

I meditate, and my spirit faits. Selah

You keep my eyelids from closing;

I am so troubled that I cannot speak.

I consider the days of old,

and remember the years of long ago.

I commune with my heart in the night;

I meditate and search my spirit:

“Will the Lord spurn forever,

and never again be favorable?

Has his steadfast love ceased forever?

Are his promises at an end for all time?

Has God forgotten to be gracious?

Has he in anger shut up his compassion? Selah

And I say, “It is my grief

that the right hand of the Most High has changed.”

I will call to mind the deeds of the Lord;

I will remember your wonders of old.

I will meditate on all your work,

and muse on your mighty deeds.

Your way, O God, is holy.

What god is so great as our God?

You are the God who works wonders;

you have displayed your might among the peoples.

With your strong arm you redeem your people,

the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. Selah

When the waters saw you, O God,

When the waters saw you, they were afraid;

The very deep trembled.

The clouds poured out water;

the skies thundered;

your arrows flashed on every side.

The crash of your thunder was in the whirlwind;

your lightnings lit up the world;

the earth trembled and shook.

Your way was through the sea,

Your path, through the mighty waters;

yet your footprints were unseen.

You led your people like a flock

by the hand of Moses and Aaron.

We’re in the midst of Lent right now, which means that our confession is still waiting for the assurance of pardon. That assurance will come at Easter. Throughout Lent, however, we are mirroring Christ’s fasting in the wilderness. We willingly put ourselves in the place the psalmist describes in the first ten verses of today’s text. We approximate spiritual desolation to prepare ourselves for the Joy of the resurrection. Because we need both, we need to know and understand the fullness of our own humanity, and that means we look for a while at the darkness, so that we can know what it is to be blinded with the light of Easter Sunday. But in looking at the Lenten Barrens, We can also remember the hollowness of when it was not an affectation, but an experience.

My soul refuses to be comforted. I’ve been there. As described here, it’s as if even though the psalmist wants so desperately to be comforted, but their own nature prevents it. I’m confident that we’ve all been there. I’m sure some of us are there now. And Lord, when we raise up our heads it’s not to sing a song of praise but a defiant shout challenging why would you, who is supposed to love us, call us into this mess. You who are sovereign, put us here and we’re covered in filth and cannot find our way out of it.

We don’t sleep. We look around and see the injustices in the world around us, people suffering at the hands of nature in Japan, people suffering under the heel of dictators in the middle east, people suffering in our poorest neighborhoods from crime and hunger, people suffering in this room, from hurt, from fear, from the anxieties we pile up on ourselves because we have so much that is expected of us, and we want to be good. So we don’t sleep. Because the world you created and called good has fallen and we are trapped in that fall. Our cry is not, at these moments, How great thou art, it’s where are you. Because where we are, in these first ten verses, we can’t see you, and our soul refuses to be comforted.

Where are you, oh God? Because we’re trapped in a saccharine poem about how you carry us through the hardest parts of our lives and that is why we only see one set of footprints. And we’re looking for the magic prayer that will make it all better, and we’re looking for the perfect poem to assure us that you are walking with us. But there’s a hurricane while we walk on this beach, and the only thing we can see carrying us is the tide as we’re swept away.

God, We know you’re out there, when are you going to show yourself?

We are desperate, oh Lord, for you. We’re starving for the glory we keep hearing about in the hymns our grandparents sing to us. Our hands are stretched out without wearing out of fear that if we take even the briefest rest, we’ll miss the moment when you reveal yourself. Our hands are stretched out without wearying because we want to feel the joy well up from within us, but no matter how long we try, we are enveloped in a darkness where rather than being filled with your glory we feel a profound hollowness. And the taste of our Grandparent’s hymns sours in our mouths when we try to swallow them.

All we can taste is the condemnation and how richly we deserve it. And so we ask the questions, echoing the psalmist. God, we know you’re out there, but where are you now, when we feel so abandoned? God’s absence confirms our fears that we have been passed over, and that God’s steadfast love, for us at least, is at an end. The Theologians rationalize to us that God is still with us, and the words of poets try and comfort us with empty assurances and we try and pretend that we’ve got it all together, but our soul refuses to be comforted, and we don’t sleep, and our own hypocrisy stops our mouths from testifying to what we once knew in our core. And we are in mourning, because as far as we can see, God has turned away from us. And that change means our death.

But then, I read verse eleven again, and see it differently. “It is my grief that the right hand of the most high has changed.” The Spirit moves through the language from “I am sick at heart, for the right hand of the most High has changed,” to “The Right hand of the Most High has changed my grief.”

And we remember.

We remember like we are sneaking up behind ourselves, afraid that if we name it before it’s formed, or even think too hard about it, we’ll startle the truth, and scare it away. Because we’re in the wilderness and still cannot see the God who loves us enough to die for us. We still cannot see the God who chooses us even and especially when we consistently reject her. Even though God keeps our eyelids from closing we still cannot see an end to this tomb, all we see is our own emptiness in the face of it. But we can remember. And by remembering, we can trust.

And so I call to mind the deeds of the Lord. And I remember who you are. You are God. You are the God who says to the waters “Be still”, and they are still. When the same water that destroys cities in floods after hurricanes, or threatens nuclear disaster after earthquakes, or washes away entire peoples after tsunamis, when these waters see our God, the very deep trembles.

We’re still in the wilderness, We’re still blind to what God is doing, and all we can see ahead is the road to Jerusalem and the shameful death on the cross for ourselves. But we remember that our God redeems his people with a strong arm.

God redeems us when we’re in these first ten verses by giving us verse eleven and moving our despair into hope. “And I say, ‘It is my grief that the right hand of the most high has changed.”

It’s not much action, but when we are entrenched in a war against our own souls and will not be comforted, turning our hearts is huge, and exactly what we need. It moves the stories at the end of the psalm from ‘Isn’t it pretty to think so” into voices saying “We are your kinsmen, and the air is thick with their company.” The company of voices who have been in that desolate wilderness. Our spiritual kinsmen have seen the mighty works of the Lord, and they have seen that God brings God’s people out of that wilderness and into the promised land. And we remember that these are our songs, and our stories, and that God will lead us through once again.

We, in our desire to play at being God and control our own destinies might prefer that God reveal the endgame to us, but that is not, at least in my experience, how God chooses to act in our lives. So God transforms our introspective despair into a memory that identifies with a God who’s path is through the mighty waters. Once we accept, with God’s help, that these stories are, in fact, ours, we cease to trust in ourselves but in the God who raises the dead. In that moment, we know that we too will be raised up out of our despair.

The psalmist wrote in a time before Christ’s death and resurrection, and so identifies with the struggles of a people brought out of slavery through the waters and into nationhood and a land of plenty. We’ve seen God do even greater things. We’ve seen God become one of us, die for us, and break the power sin and death have over us. We are in the midst of Lent, wandering with Christ in the wilderness, wandering with the Israelites in the desert, wandering through our own refusal to be comforted, and their stories are our stories. And knowing their stories, we can know that our story doesn’t end in our darkness, but in God’s redeeming grace. We cannot see past the cross yet, but we can remember that the story doesn’t end there.

This text shows us that when we cannot see through our darkness, God turns our lament into remembrance. We remember, according to this text, that our God works wonders, and we are empowered to act through our memory of faith. Because we remember that God’s love is steadfast, and God is faithful, and compassionate, and remembers us, because we are precious in God’s sight, and honored, and he loves us. Therefore the God who calls into being things that are not, whose path is through the waters, will lead us like a flock, and though God’s footprints are unseen, we know that we don’t need to see. Because our God, the God who loves us, is the God who works wonders. And we will find the grace we’ve always had when God leads us to the promised land of Easter morning.

Peace-byterians?

So at the recent General Assembly of the PC(USA) church, a motion was passed to form a 6 year commission to investigate whether nonviolence should be the official stance of the church.

Linkage:
http://www.pc-biz.org/Explorer.aspx?id=3047

Those of you who know me know that I'm a pacifist, and have been for a couple of years now. I fully support this move, but would like to point out a couple things about it:

1) It's non-binding. Thee PC(USA) does not presume, as some other churches might, to tell people what to thing, or how to act. This means that if a Presbyterian feels called to serve in the Military, they are certainly welcome to do so. It just means that the church wishes to move away from the "Just War" theory that has been our stance since the Reformation. If you feel called to Military Service, no one will at our church will think you less a Christian.

2) It simply exploratory at this point. The motion itself, if you read the link above, is to explore that possibility and come back with a report in a few years, which will then be approved, or not, and go out to the various Presbyteries for futher ratification. Representative Government is fun. If you disagree with it, let the committee know! If you're all for it, as I am, let them know that too!

I looked up all the biblical references made in the motion, and there are more than I had anticipated. Then again, I'm already convinced. There are, however, significant portions of scripture that are devoted to warfare, as it is a significant part of the human experience.

I am of the opinion that the majority of these scripture passages are not about our strength, or the strength of any nation, but about the strength of God. If we trust too much in our own strength, we will trust too little in God.

I am however, willing to have my mind changed if someone can do so. So please, disagree with me openly; discuss it so we can both come to a fuller understanding of God's will for our church.

Comfortable.

“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, to discover that I had not lived.”

Most people will recognize this as a quotation from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. It’s also used in the movie Dead Poets’ Society to open the meetings of the society that lends the film its name. This quotation is a call to experience life to the fullest, a call that, unfortunately, frequently goes unanswered.

There are plenty of excuses for ignoring life. I can’t afford that right now, I work too much to be able to do that, I’ll get around to it later. Or even stronger ones, what will happen when I’m gone? Entire industries are built on that question. I’m sure you can supply your own excuses for surviving rather than living. I know I have. Almost all of my excuses, and I’d imagine yours, involve comfort. Once I’m able to live comfortably, I’ll be finished; then I can concentrate on living.

Hear the contradiction inherent in that concept. Once I’m done building a life, I’ll start living it. God has charged us with a verb, and we’ve neutered it and made it a noun.

There’s another story in the Bible, commonly known as the parable of the rich fool. In this parable, the man stores up a great amount of wealth and when he finally starts to enjoy it he is out of time. If we spend all our time filling our barns for a rainy day, we will forget to enjoy the sunny ones.

I’m a young man, I’m building up for my life. I’m a Senior at Presbyterian College, with plans to go on to graduate school afterwards. What’s stopping me from doing what I love now? I certainly don’t love the sleep deprivation, tests, or work that goes along with school.

I know how to deal with school. That’s a comfortable world for me. I know the outcome before it happens. It’s predictable. It’s safe. It’s comfortable.

Nowhere in the Bible does God call us to be comfortable. Nowhere in the Bible does God call us to be safe. Nowhere in the Bible does God do anything that’s predictable. God told Peter to step out of the boat and onto the water. God told Gideon to send most of his army home and let the battle belong to God. God told Abraham to leave his home and go out into the wilderness. God told Moses to give up his sheep and return to Egypt. God told countless lame people to get up and walk. God told us, tells us, calls us, and commands us to trust God. The evidence surrounds us. God feeds the birds of the air and the clothes lilies of the field. How much more will God care for you?

A few years ago I dated a girl who wanted to be a Meteorologist when she grew up. She was scared of storms. This was not out of a mature desire to face her fear, but rather out of an attempt to know when a storm would strike so that she could hide from it.
I can imagine her as a child sitting in front of the television screen waiting for the weather report and furiously scribbling down notes as John Cessarich read from his teleprompter, putting images and ideas together to relieve her own anxiety. Her fear of storms motivated her to put faith into probability and scientific guesswork. As far as I know, she still runs for cover every time she hears thunder.

We’ve all got our equivalent of storms. For some of us it’s the dark, the strange noises we hear at night, for some of us it’s ghosts, the presence of something evil that wants nothing more than to oppose God. For others it’s a terrorist attack or the death of a loved one. People fear layoffs, eviction, debt, rising gas prices, an economy that’s going down the tubes, any storm that rocks our safe little boat. Some people fear that President Bush and his policies will never leave office, others fear what will happen if he does. All of it gives us pause, all of it is legitimate, even the irrational fears are nothing less than real to those who suffer from them.

And so we worry. About everything, the smallest detail or the most universal experience, somebody worries about it. I worry about a lot of things. Will I be able to pay off my student loans? Will I get into the grad school I want? Will I pass this test or that quiz, or will I be able to get all of my credits in on time and graduate with my friends. Will I get a good job, will my current friendships drift apart over the years, will I have a good marriage, will I have healthy kids, will my car keep running, will I be able to afford gas to go see my girlfriend.

Will I answer God’s call for my life?

There’s the biggest one for me. Am I the man God calls me to be? Am I headed in the right direction? And I worry about it. And so do you, maybe not about the same things, maybe you worry about a house and a job and a retirement fund. But still we worry, and sometimes, we don’t sleep.

And it solves nothing.

Verse 27 tells us the truth we already know. “Can any of you by worrying add a single hour to the span of you life?” No, we can’t.

Jesus calls us on it too. “You of little faith,” he says. Oh we of little faith. Every worry is a testament to our lack of trust that God will feed us and clothe us and watch over us lovingly.

That is not to discount the reality of the suffering in this world, or to say that God loves those who suffer less than those who do not. God does love those who suffer. God does love those who lose everything, God sent Christ to the world so that those who feel they have lost everything will not be lost themselves. God keeps us and love us. In spite of all our little rebellions, God is in control. God has the final say.

Indeed our Heavenly Father knows all the things that we need, even when we do not. God knows that we only have a short time in this world, this world that God created and called good. God gave us this world and told us to fill and subdue and have dominion over. God gave us this life and made it worth living. So what’s stopping us? We want our lives to reach our ideals, our goals, and too often we sacrifice the very things we need in order to achieve what we think we want. We want security, we want safety, and we want comfort. But our creator, our redeemer, our God wants us to climb out of our rickety boats built with our own hands out of illusions and worries, and join God out in the middle of the storm.

We may not have Peter’s strength to leave the boat. We may not be able to sell off all we own, give the money to the poor and follow Christ. We may not do everything, or even most things right. But we can strive to take little steps to leave the demands of this troubled world behind and seek first the Kingdom of God. The rest, as scripture tells us, will take care of itself.

We don’t all end up in the woods in order to live deliberately. God doesn’t call us to a specific place or a specific method or political ideology. God call is simple: Love God, and love one another. Live a life abundant, today’s trouble is enough for today, tomorrow will bring it’s own trouble. Don’t let it pile up before it even arrives. Choose to live, rather than build a life. Choose God. Seek God’s will.

The most optimistic point in the human experience came when God freed us from sin and death. Our redemption through Christ’s faithfulness guaranteed to all of creation, that God is in control, that God loves us, and that God has already taken care of us. God has taken care of us. Give up your comfortable spot and rejoice. Go out into the world that God has given us all and be with God in it.

Seek God’s kingdom, answer God’s call, and not only will we seize the day in a way more meaningful than the authors of that phase could have imagined, but we will go with God.

Let's talk about Worship

I'm going to take a break from studying Greek to talk about Worship. I was raised in the 11:00 Sunday Morning model which involves things like liturgy, hymns, a sermon, and an almost exclusively passive congregation. What does it say about our churches when the most lively part of Worship is when the Children run to the front of the church? That's maybe 60 seconds out of the hour long service.

I'm not satisfied with that. I want a Church that is alive. We use words like "vibrant" to talk about worship, but really anything that isn't vibrant is dead. Our current worship style is a lecture, and the congregation is the audience.

Take a look at your pastor next time she steps into the pulpit. I think you'll find that there is a strong resemblance to a podium on a stage, and that frightens me.

It doesn't frighten me because of any idolatry that might be occuring, confusing the pastor as someone who has all the answers. It frightens me because it limits the ways people can experience God.

Think about your worship service. How do you experience it? I'm not talking figuratively, I want to know what senses are stimulated during a worship service. For the vast majority of Christians, I would imagine that the only one that gets used to any extent is ones hearing.

We hear the scripture read, we hear the sermon delivered, we hear the anthem sung, we hear the corporate prayers, we hear the responsive liturgy, we hear the music. We might also see the architecture of the church, or the symbols on the walls, or the words printed in the bulletin or in the hymnal, but a creation as amazing as the human eye can certainly do more than follow words on a page.

I don't think the church is being a good steward of the senses God has given God's people.

I am a Word oriented person, which means that I, of all people, should be able to identify with the traditional style of worship that puts so much weight behind reading and hearing the Word. But even something as basic as a text can come alive just by remembering what it is I like about words. I love the way words sound when spoken aloud, I love the way that a particularly delicious word feels in my mouth when I say it, I love the coarse texture of a page on my finger as I trace the lines across a printed page. I love the acrid smell of an old book, well loved over time by many readers. I experience words with my eyes as I read them, with my ears as they are spoken to me, with my mouth as I say them aloud, and with my hands as I hold the physical books themselves.

And yet very little of worship involves those senses, and worship involves matters much more important than poetry.

I think the reason that people don't step out of this model is because it's the only color on their palate. They either don't know of another way to worship at all or they don't know another way to worship while remaining faithful to their traditions and theology. The truth is, Worship only needs a very basic framework, and needs a change from time to time to keep it from growing stale.

Imagine a worship service where the preacher chose not to read a prepared speech during the pulpit, but instead used the tools given to the world by Abstract Art to create a visual representation of the emotions of a scripture reading. This is only moderately different than turning off the lights during a Good Friday Service. I would not recommend the preacher paint first and then explain what he created, then we just have another sermon. I would challenge that pastor to splash the paint on the canvas while the scripture was being read, to give an immediate visual connection to the text, not a reminder.

Imagine a Congregational Prayer where rather than reading in an unofficial chant the group gripped a rough stone in their hands and meditated on the brokenness in their own lives as mirrored in the cracked gravel, then release the stone to clatter on the floor as they symbolically give up their own brokenness and embrace the wholeness of God.

Imagine passing out coarse sandpaper to a congregation and having them run their fingers over it while being told the story of the forty years in the wilderness, and then replacing it with a soft cloth when the promised land is reached.

Imagine a church service that is conducted in silence, with images given to direct congregant's thoughts, and physical touch given to emphasize the oneness of the community.

We all experience God in different ways, why do most Churches only allow people to express their understanding in one way? Worship has the potential to be much more far-reaching than the model we are currently using allows.

Reflections on Connections

I want to start this post by thanking those at WPC who are responsible for giving me the $75 for Greek School Textbooks. Such a gift is a very generous recognition of the time I spent both leading their youth groups two summers ago and the time I've spent in the Disconnects Band helping to lead their contemporary service for the past year even though I am a member of First Presbyterian Church of Morganton. To have the church acknowledge that they value these gifts is a humbling affirmation, and the support as I continue my Theological Education is very much appreciated.

I was recently invited to preach at the CONNECTIONS Service at Waldensian Presbyterian Church in Valdese, NC. I have been volunteering my time for their 8:30 service over the course of the past year, playing guitar in their praise band.

The service was started, as I understand it, as an outreach to the community which might not always identify with the liturgy of a traditional service. The stand up/sit down/sing/responsive reading/preacher lectures for 20 minutes/go home model doesn't resonate with everyone. However, due to force of habit, a minister who is already running around taking care of everything a church that size needs, and a lack of experience with non-traditional worship styles, the service kind of became a traditional format with a Powerpoint presentation instead of a bulletin and music that wasn't always out of the hymnbook.

Since I have attended and helped lead non-traditional services over the years, I expressed my desire to help organize a service to try and break this rut and help return CONNECTIONS to the outreach vision which is so important to the life of the Church.

So the session approved me as a supply preacher for the CONNECTIONS service, but I wanted to do more than give that twenty minute lecture that is well known and effective in a traditional service. I wanted to start from the ground up and really shake people out of their comfort zones and show them what was possible.

When I took Introduction to Christian Education with Dr. (then Mrs.) Felicia Douglas we covered the importance of arrangement of space in creating the atmosphere of worship, or sunday school, or any number of other uses for a room. When chairs are set up in rows with a podium (or lectern) at the front the room lends itself well towards lectures and note-taking, but does not do so well for discussion. Likewise, arranging people around tables makes for great small group projects, but is lousy for lecturing.

In a traditional service, the room is arranged for a lecture, the people sit in rows, the action of the service happens in the Chancel area. People also have a tendency to sit in the back row. I wanted to avoid that, so I set the room up in a circle. I moved the Disconnects Praise Band from the front, which mirrors a choir in the chancel, to the back. That prevented people from sitting in the "back row." I wanted people to be pushed forward so they would feel connected to the service, and so that they would get involved.

I also used a "worship center" model for the Prayer of Confession. As soon as people entered the room, they were asked to sit at a table and write down a worry that had been holding them back over the course of the previous week. They were then asked to place the post-it on which they had written their worry on the front of the Communion Table. These worries were referenced again in the Prayer of Confession that was read aloud later in the service and were eventually removed and placed in the offering plate, as a symbol of both our confession of trying to control our own lives and giving that control up to God.

The music and liturgy were all pretty basic, I didn't change much from what we normally do in CONNECTIONS. Where the traditional service used the NRSV translation of Psalm 77 for the Call to Worship, I borrowed from The Message paraphrase of that same Psalm.

When it came to the Affirmation of Faith, I did something very different. Rather than having the congregants read the Apostle's Creed, or another familiar excerpt from the Book of Confessions, I instead showed a YouTube video:



But that still didn't cover the actual presentation and explanation of the Word. The scripture passage for the day was Psalm 77. I took that and did a Lectio Divina reading with it, which is actually a devotional tool that is designed to take an hour by itself. I adapted it to an abbreviated discussion based model so that it would work well in a worship format. The congregation participated very well and had an excellent discussion. All I needed to do was moderate the discussion so that those that wanted a turn could all speak, and to encourage those who were a little more timid about sharing what jumped out at them from the text. I didn't take notes during the discussion, so I'm not prepared to share details about it, but I will say that Waldensian Presbyterian Church is full of a variety of views on scripture and are willing to talk about it. I was very pleased with the way the discussion went, especially as it was the first time it had been done. I'd predict that with some practice at this kind of thing it would be harder to limit the discussion to the time allotted than to motivate people to talk.

The service went, in my mind, very well. I would recommend that a Worship Team be formed to help take some of the pressure of planning this service off of the Minister and the Disconnects' Bandleader. Such a team could be tasked with exploring other possible methods of worship and would allow for more preparation time for the service. I would certainly put the Minister and Bandleader on this team, but having others to help them would certainly make both their busy lives easier and the service more vibrant. It has been my pleasure to help lead worship for the past year, and I hope that it continues to grow and provide the outreach ministry to the fullest of WPC's potential.