Stumbling in the Word

I stumbled this morning while reading the Word.  No, I was not reading from some handheld internet device, nor was I walking around while reading from the Bible.  Instead, I was just cruising along.  The verses were turning into chapters and I was on the way to really making some headway in my reading of some of Paul's stuff.  When I got to II Corinthians 7:1, I stumbled.  It was as if some mental foot got caught on a vine throwing me down and stopping dead my forward progress.

 

I picked myself up and went back to that verse which grabbed me and would not let go.  When I read it the second time, it read the same way it did the first time.  Actually, it was not the whole verse, but just a phrase from it which said, "...making holiness perfect in the fear of God."  I wondered how holiness was made perfect.  The first people I knew who were called holiness dressed in somber tones and always seem to take everything dead serious.  Is holiness made perfect by being more holy than they appeared to be?  Or, does it happen as we insist on the King James Version of the Bible and nothing else?  Or, maybe there is a holiness language to be learned and used?

 

As I found my mind returning to the phase throughout the day, it seemed that holiness is never going to be made perfect if it is something dependent on my actions, or any of our actions.  Holiness is not really about what we do, but about what God desires to do through the action of His Holy Spirit at work in a heart that is emptied and eager only for His presence.  We do not need more of the Holy Spirit to become more perfect in holiness.  Instead, we need to be sure the Spirit has all of our heart.  Give the Holy Spirit free reigns in the inner places of the heart and there is no end to the possibility of holiness being made perfect in us. 

What I Don't Know

When I was younger, way younger, I knew a lot more than I do now.  Everything about matters of personal belief, my understanding of God, and the way we should live as a Christian was very clear back then.  Things were black and white.  Ironclad.  Wiggle room was not something to be tolerated.  My world was filled more with answers than questions.  I must have been wearing the robe of the Pharisee underneath that black ministerial robe I put on most every Sunday.

 

Somewhere along the way to now, not exactly sure when, I lost some of the certainty about things concerning God.  I started seeing more gray in my life.  I began to understand that everything was not nailed down quite as tightly as those desk were in the novel, "The Hotel New Hampshire."  I come to an awareness that there is more grace in the hands of God than ever I had even considered.  God was not out to get me, but to deliver me from myself.  None of this means there are not things that I consider to be theological bedrock.  Some things are still poured in concrete.  But, even as grace abounds over sin, so does grace abound over the "shoulds" of life.

One of the things a greater awareness of grace does is to give me the freedom not to know as much.  You know how it is.  Grace enables us to live without having to have all the answers for ourselves and others.  Becoming comfortable with "I don't know" is an option.   The more grace we see in our world, the more we become able to leave things in the hands of God which is where things belong in the first place.  Maybe you agree with me.  Not having to have it all figured out is such a great relief. 

What I Know

What I know is,
  well,...better.
  I know better
  than to ask
  those questions
  that start, "Why?"

To ask them 
   is to play
   what I know
   to be a game
   known as
   "Endless Pursuit."

But, still I ask
   why...not sure.
   Maybe it is
   to be honest
   with myself,
   You, as well.

"Why, Lord? Why?"
   Not listening,
   at least not long.
   This I learned
   when asking "Why?"
   so long ago.

The Coming Wind

There have been those afternoons when I have heard the rushing wind crossing the line of trees down in the branch as it prepared to race across the hayfield to the place where I was standing.  Actually, the sound was the sound of the tree tops suddenly coming to life with this surprising and unexpected breath from the distant horizon.  No one knew the wind was coming.  Not the trees.  And though I welcomed it on those hot and still afternoons, I was as surprised as the waving trees.

 

When Jesus talked about the Spirit to Nicodemus, He used a word which can be translated "wind" or "spirit."  And when the gospel writer Luke spoke of the coming of the Holy Spirit in the second chapter of Acts, he used the image of rushing wind.  There are other windy moments in the Biblical story and they often seem to usher in the arrival of the holy.    On these days when the wind has kept everything moving in its path, it has been easy for the mind to wander to thinking about the Holy Spirit. 

 

The Holy Spirit is ever present with us.  The Word speaks of the Holy Spirit as One who dwells and abides within us.  And even though we know this to be true from years of following after Jesus, we still find ourselves surprised sometimes how He can move upon us in overwhelming and powerful ways.  When the Holy Spirit unleashes Himself fully in our lives, every part of our inner being is touched and moved.  Nothing about our life is as it was before this wind of God is felt hard against our soul.  When it happens it is not for our pleasure, but for some purpose of God.  When the Holy Spirit grabs our attention in a powerful way, we should not run to tell others, but we should run to the place where we pray and seek out the answer to the question, "Why?" 

Watching the Wind

Today I spent some time watching the wind.  Of course, no one can really watch the wind.  You can feel it.  You can hear it.  But, there is not watching it.  The only watching to be done is the way the things around us acknowledge its presence.  Such was the case today as I watched trees being captured by this unseen presence which was powerfully sweeping through them from root to soaring branches.  For a moment all my attentive energy was captured as surely as every branch was captured by this powerfully blowing wind. 

 

As I watched and thought about what was before me, I was reminded of the way the wind prunes the tree.  Decaying and dead limbs are no match for the wind and soon break and begin their journey to the ground where they would, if left alone, become part of the natural compost which nurtures the tree.  And, of course, the wind is life giving.  The pecan trees which grow around here depend on the wind to pollinate so that another crop of pecans are produced.  

 

As I watched the tree moving from top to bottom in response to the presence of the wind, I wanted to ask a tree if it gave itself willingly to the wind, or did it push against it trying to stand erect and tall as it always seems to do.  I wanted to ask if the movement of the branches spoke of abandonment on the part of the tree, or a moment of being completely overwhelmed by the power of the wind.  I wondered and even dared to ask.  Perhaps, it was not really a question for the tree, but a question for my heart.

Name That Tune

Last night as I put my head on the pillow waiting for sleep to come, a phrase from a gospel song suddenly showed up in my mind along with the tune.  So, as we sometimes do, I sang the words in the quietness of my mind.  It was indeed the kind of singing no one could hear.   The singing of that one phrase led to the one that followed it and within a minute or so I was remembering and quietly singing a song I had not heard or sung since a child.  It was a comforting song.  At the time I thought it was like a prayer.  I went to sleep with this song of faith stirring my heart and memory.

 

About dark tonight I remembered the moment.  I had gone through the whole day without that holy moment being remembered.  It surprised me that I had not thought about it much earlier in the day.  But, I had not.  The whole day passed before I remembered that moment of praying through an old song.  The only problem is I cannot remember the song.  I just remember the moment.  I just remember it having happened.  The words, the tune, the name of the song was all remembered so clearly last night as I was about to go to sleep, but today it is completely gone.  Try as I might, I cannot force my mind to bring it back into conscious thought.

 

I wish I knew.  I would like to remember.  I remember thinking I would write it down in my journal.  I wonder if anyone can help me.  Remember the story of Daniel interpreting the dream of Nebuchadnezzar.  The King had a dream he wanted interpreted, but he would not tell the wise men who might interpret it the actual dream.  Their challenge was to interpret a dream they did not know.  Only Daniel was up to the task.  But, as the story unfolds in the second chapter of Daniel, it was the Lord who revealed the dream and the interpretation to Daniel.  Just wondering.  Anyone with a Daniel like connection who might help me remember that song?

The Road Much Traveled

I have been walking on this road for a long time.  If I started walking it at baptism, I was nine years old.  If you figure from the time I mark as the moment I said "yes" to Jesus as an adult, then the walk begins just before I graduated from high school.  Looking back, though, gives me a sense that I was on the road before either of those two life changing events.  I think dealing with my father's death at age seven was the first time I found my feet on the road that would finally bring me to faith in Christ. 

 

Regardless of the place where I stepped on this road, I have been on this journey of faith a long, long time.  In the beginning I had no sense of the others who had walked the road ahead of me.  As the years have passed I have come to an awareness of the many footprints that are etched in the dirt behind and ahead of me.  I am not the first one to walk this road.  Peter and John have left their footprints on the path.  The Apostle Paul, too.  Others have left evidence of being on the road as well.  Francis, Clare, Ignatius, John of the Cross, Martin Luther, John Wesley, Dwight L. Moody, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, E. Stanley Jones, and Mother Teresa  are just a few of the others whose footprints can be seen.

 

If all who walked this road could walk it at the same time, there would hardly be enough room for these feet of mine to walk.  I should never be on the same road as these anyway.  And when I stop and realize that the first feet on the road were the feet of the crucified and risen One of God, I find myself knowing that my place is not on the road, but somewhere off on the side where only sinners dare walk.  But, then the road I have been walking is not just a dirt filled dusty road marked by the footprints of the saints, but a road covered with grace.  And, so by the grace of God, I walk on.

The Everchanging Read

I am not exactly sure what year I started reading the Bible, but it was a long time ago.   I can also remember my first Bible and, actually, still have it stuck back in a box.   As I think about a life time of reading the Word, it seems that I have read it for different reasons at different times in my spiritual journey.  As a young boy,  I was taken in by the stories, particularly those in the Old Testament.  If there were discrepancies or things that I could not understand, it did not bother me, nor keep me from reading. 

 

Later in my early Christian years, it became a spiritual "how to" book.  Far too much legalism worked its way into my beginning years of the journey and I read the book to find out how to do the Christian life, what to do and not do, and how to judge whether others were on track.  The pleasure of reading as a boy was replaced by the duty of young believer.  And, of course, as I moved along into college and seminary, the Word became something other than a spiritual guide.  It became a textbook to be examined and questioned.  Lost was the wonder of the boy reading and in its place came the skeptic out to prove everything.

 

As I have become an old man, I find myself more like the boy.  Maybe such is how life works.  I still read the Word, but it is more like an old friend who has enabled me to make it this far in this journey of faith.  I read with gratitude and respect.  I no longer read out of duty.  I read with longing and expectation.  I still have some questions, but mostly, I want to just sit with this old spiritual companion and listen for the voice of God Who I have learned still speaks.  

A Good Trade

When I was a boy, comic books cost a dime.  To get more mileage out of the dime, my friends and I would trade our comic books with one another.  Trading is in many ways a lost art these days.  When I was serving as pastor in Vidalia, I came to be good friends with Ron, the Episcopal priest.  He was there when I arrived and still there when I left after ten years.  Ron and I traded books.  He gave me a copy of "The Book of Common Prayer" and I gave him a copy of "The United Methodist Hymnal."  It seemed like a good exchange at the time, but as the years have passed, it seems to me that I got the best end of our trade.

 

I say that I got the best end of the trade because I have used that book more times than I can count.  I learned a new appreciation for written prayers and liturgy as I started using it.   My congregation benefited from it as I used some of the material within those pages in our Sunday liturgy.  But, what I really learned more than anything else was the value of a liturgy that has been used for more than just a generation.  I found power being unleashed in my own life as I became immersed in prayers and spoken words that the Christian community had been using for a long, long time.

 

I learned that our disdain for written prayers and liturgy is more of a judgment on ourselves than on a tradition which may not be as extemporaneous as ours.  There is this great stream of words and prayers and other liturgical expressions which has empowered believers and to stand within it with an open heart can be a powerful moment of worship.  Every community of faith has its liturgy.  It may not be filled with tradition, but it is still the order for the church.  To throw out something used for centuries simply because it is old is a great loss. 

Over and Over

I can remember where I was when I learned the soliloquys from Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar."  It was in Mrs. Evan's high school literature class.   And while I cannot quote any of those long literary masterpieces as I did back then, every now and again some parts of one or the other will rise up out of the gray matter to be recited again.  However, I cannot remember when I learned "The Apostle's Creed," or "The Lord's Prayer," or "The Doxology," or some other memorized piece of liturgy.  It just happened.  But, where it happened was in church services.

 

The "when" may not be as time specific as my Shakespeare memorizations, but the "where" is certain.  Church is where it happened.  While I was squirming through the hour and while I was paying more attention to quiet mischief, I was learning.  I was actually doing more than just learning.  I was being shaped by what I was receiving through a kind of spiritual osmosis.  I have come to the conclusion over the years that more soaks in than most of us realize.  There is something very positive and very life giving about those hours we spend in the worship services of the church. 

 

Many of us learned the great hymns of the church as our mothers and fathers patiently held a hymn book down low enough for us see while their finger moved along the page showing us where to read.  Those hymns I learned way back then from my mother's prompting became so imbedded in my spiritual memory that it often seems I walk around with a hymnbook in my heart.  I am grateful as an old worn out Christian that I have such treasures to sustain me for the rest of the journey.  I only regret that so many of our young are missing out on this spiritual osmosis which strengthens me on the journey. 

Early Risers

The last church I served as pastor hired a young woman from South Korea to work as a Minister of Music.  As I got acquainted with her, I learned some things about the church in Korea.  I had often read that the church culture of that country placed a great emphasis on prayer.  What I had read was more than just true.  Even while living here and giving leadership in our church, she would often go to early morning prayers at a community Korean service.  It was something the church did every day.  People would gather to pray before going to school, before going to work, and before beginning their day.   Her native church had a rich tradition of its people gathering to pray in the early morning hours and not even being in this country changed that part of her spiritual life.

 

I fear the church we know as the American church places a great deal of value on things other than praying.  We are not a people raised to gather to pray.  When I was growing up, churches had Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting, but it was not really about prayer.  It was more like an informal worship service, or a Bible study.  People will gather to worship on Sunday, fuss about money at budget meetings, and come in great numbers for musical concerts, but do not offer a gathering for praying and expect a crowd.  And, most assuredly, do not expect a crowd to gather for prayer before the sun comes up.

I have a hunch that all of this speaks more to the problems of our church today than most might figure.  We want to say the problem is with the apathy of people, the lack of money to do the big program stuff and build the bigger buildings, or maybe even the theological uncertainties.  It is easy for most of us to point toward the reason the church of our day struggles.  To consider the possibility that a lack of prayer is undermining it seems a bit too simplistic to everyone, except maybe those Korean Christians who are gathering before the sun to pray. 

Seeds in the Ground

Our lives are full of memories.  Some of the memories are powerful and unforgettable.  Others are like a story without an ending.  Sometimes we get caught up in life with other people, share a brief moment together, and then paths go different ways never to be joined again.  Most of us can look back over the span of the years and see those unfinished stories.  It is hard not to wonder how things turned out.

 

I remember a young couple who lost a daughter at childbirth long years ago.  Our lives touched in those moments and I have often wondered how the years have gone for them.  I think about some of the young people who spend time with me trying to sort out their future, but the years have provided only space that has separated us.  And, I often think about all those sermons I preached.  Some of them were good for sleeping, but there were a few along the way that seemed to touch a heart in a way that promised change.  But, there are things we never know.  We never know how so many of the stories from our past were actually written.

 

It all points to the probability that such is a part of God's plan.  If we knew too much about the rest of the stories we have helped write, we might likely feel like a total failure, or maybe we might get carried away and give ourselves credit which should only be given to the work of the Holy Spirit.  The truth is we are seed planters.  Seeds are what we hold in our hands.  Seeds are what we thrown out into the lives of others.  Sometimes those seeds take awhile to make something which can be seen and sometimes they seem all but wasted.  Some things belong to God.  The seed planting belongs to us.  Anything after that belongs to Him. 

The Hardest Verse

Some Words from the Scripture are just hard.  Harder than most.  Hard enough that we do not really want to linger on what is being said.  While the Sermon on the Mount has many such words, one from the 5th chapter of Matthew has always stood out.  Beginning in verse 23 the Word says, "So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go, first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift."  (Matthew 5:23-24)  It is one of those verses which is often read so fast because we know ahead of time what it is going to say so we miss what it does say.

 

Out there in the places we live, blame is always taken into account when it comes to reconciliation.  If we are right and another is wrong, then logic says it is not our place to initiate words which might lead to reconciliation and be construed as being a softy.  This Word of Jesus allows none of this.  It says that if we realize some relationship which touches our life is broken, then we should do what needs to be done to get it right.  It says nothing about who is right or who is wrong.  Who  is right or wrong does not matter.  What mattes is the broken relationship.

 

It is a hard word indeed.  Too many times we live in a world of broken relationships because someone has wronged us and we are waiting on them to come to us.  Pride is such a demanding creature.  It is also a destructive one.  It is especially destructive when it comes to relationship building.  Jesus does not care about right or wrong.  What He cares about is our getting things right again.  If we are really serious about being a follower, then there is no other choice.

A Busy Place

A few weeks ago I made a trip down to Waycross, Georgia where I was born and where so many of my family are buried.  Actually, it was not the attractions of the town that sent me on my trip, but the graveyards in the countryside.  I wanted to stand alongside my father's grave at a small country cemetery.  I ended up standing at his grave, the graves of uncles and aunts, grandparents, and great-grandparents.  The two cemeteries were quiet places.  I never saw another soul walking the grounds where so many had been left.  But, then, no one expects a graveyard to be a busy place.

 

As we read the Easter story today, it is a different picture that we see.  The place Jesus had been buried could be characterized as a graveyard and it was as busy that Sunday morning as "Grand Central Station."  People were coming and going.  Some were walking and some were running. Some were amazed ordinary folks, others were bewildered soldiers.  There were even angels present to help bring clarity to the emptiness of the empty tomb.  And, of course, somewhere around was the One who had been put there dead only a few days earlier.  The sun had hardly shown itself and the place which should have been quiet was filled was so much coming and going.

 

Imagine for a moment what was happening just on the other side.  If there is a thin veil between here and there, between earth and heaven, between the sounds of mortals and the sounds of the angelic, then imagine for a moment the scurrying about to see and the sounds of trumpets reverberating through the courtyards of the eternal.  Jesus had risen.  Never had earth or heaven had such news to proclaim.  It is still the same on this holy day.  Never has earth or heaven had such news to proclaim.  Christ is risen!  Christ is risen indeed!