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Bob Dylan - Must Be Santa

Perhaps its a little early for Christmas stuff but when Bryan posted this I couldn't help but get on board with it.

Did I mention that all royalties from this his Christmas in the Heart album will be going to Feeding America.

What's in a name?

I received a phone call today inquiring about what it would take to have children baptized in the church. The caller mentioned that they had grown up Lutheran but had been in a boy scout troop that met in a Presbyterian church.

I began to explain what it meant to be baptized as a Christian when the caller stopped me in my tracks and asked if Lutheran and Presbyterian were considered Christian. It wasn't a trick question, it was simply a question from someone outside the church looking in not having any idea what the labels meant!

For those of us on the "inside" we may be surprised by this as we assume that the known denominational label means we are Christian and we assume everyone else should know this too. The reality is that from the "outside" Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Assemblies of God... might just as easily be a cult. They are simply badges of differentiation, ways for insiders to tell themselves apart but they are confusing labels for the outsider trying to figure the whole thing out. 

Does the upfront public declaration of a particular identity help or hinder the un-churched in their faith formation?

Semi-New Cars!!!

I received this business card in the mail. I've seen cars listed as 'certified used' but 'semi-new' is a new one for me!

A Call To Treason? Maybe... What do you think Paul means?

 
Do you ever find a particular verse of Scripture just eating away at you? Gnawing its way deep into your being? I've had that experience recently.

Paul's words in Romans 12 as he quotes from the Proverbs have been gnawing at me now for a while. It is a chapter that opens with Paul's call to no longer, "conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind." It is then followed by a call to live humbly, exercising the gifts we have been given to support the body of Christ and then, as in Corinthians, he talks about love.

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord's people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

Good stuff!But then comes the hard stuff...

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position.Do not think you are superior.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," says the Lord. On the contrary:

"If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head."

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

So why should I feed my enemy when he is hungry and give him a drink when he is thirsty? Apparently this is one way to show your enemy you love them. OK, but surely giving aid to the enemy is an act of treason in the eyes of the state.

Imagine you are part of the Roman army laying siege to Masada (these verses went written with 21st century enemies in mind), what is you goal? To force them to surrender by depriving them of access to food and water, the main military strategy behind a siege. Now as part of that Roman army you are a Christian and you read Paul's words, what do you do? Do you feed your enemy and get them something to drink? What do you suppose would happen to a Roman soldier providing this sort of support for the enemy?

I wrestle with these verses, they gnaw at me because they are not simply a call to provide basic needs for even our enemy but rather they go against the powers the state uses to suppress and defeat the enemy. How do you think a first century Roman would have read these words? What would Paul say if he were to write this to 21st Century America?

Jesus said his kingdom was not of this world, clearly we are to live by a different standard, a different way than the nations of this world would have us live.

On the eve of Remembrance Day

All over the world its known as Armistice Day, or Remembrance day, it was the day that was to bring an end to the war known as "the war to end all wars." The eleventh hour of the eleventh day on the eleventh month.

My grandfather fought in that war, he was with the North Irish Horse regiment in 1914 and then receieved a commission and served with the Royal Warwickshire Regiment for the remainder of the war. He was one of the fortunate who survived, but because of the horrors he experienced would never tell his story. His brother-in-law, too survived the war and did tell his story, but not until late in life when he shared that when the whistle blew for them to get out of the trenches and charge the enemy lines one young (maybe 18) year old got scared and froze. My grandfathers brother-in-law was a member of the firing squad that shot him for cowardice. I guess if you won't charge the enemy then you have to be the enemy. What a needless waste of life!

Of course "the war to end all wars" didn't! It simply marked the beginning of modern warfare. Many have killed and been killed in the pursuit of their vision of freedom and we are indeed reminded of this on Remembrance Day.

English Poet Laurence Binyon wrote...

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

But freedom that is bought and defended at the cost of human lives is hardly one that jives with the gospel. It is (or should be) an uneasy alliance that exists between church and state. For the church tells us to love our enemies, it tells us to pray for those who persecute us, it tells us to feed our enemy when they are hungry or provide them a drink when they are thirsty.

I love the freedom I have and I recognize that many have died in trying to keep it that way. I do wonder though if there isn't a better way and if the freedoms I enjoy are worth the price that has been paid?

While we honor those who fought for freedom, let us never honor war and let us not get the two mixed up. War is a horrible thing, it represents the worst of humanity.

As Wilfred Owen wrote of his WW1 experience...

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, 
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs 
And towards our distant rest began to trudge. 
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots 
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; 
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots 
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling, 
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; 
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, 
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . 
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, 
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight, 
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace 
Behind the wagon that we flung him in, 
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, 
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; 
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory, 
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est 
Pro patria mori.

I don't suppose to many kids today are memorizing this poem in school the way I did in Northern Ireland. Perhaps they should.

Saints Can Be Fun Too!

I've been listening to a lot of Billy Joel recently and was struck again by these lyrics, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints / Sinners are much more fun..." from 'Only The Good Die Young.'

If truth be told I have found this to be the case time and time again. I know far to many Christians who are so concerned with the eradication of sin from their lives that they have completely forgotten how to have fun in life. It's not that we shouldn't lament our sin or that we shouldn't seek to become more Christlike in all we do, its just that we don't have to become boring killjoys in order to do so!

Celebrate life, Jesus came to give us life to the full, what could be more wonderful than that. We need more joyful relevant followers of Jesus in the world today. I don't mean more people who compromise with the world to fit in, I mean people who know the joy and freedom of a life lived in Christ, people who truly can be a light for the world.

He Came To Church One Day (conclusion)

Some of my readers had expressed hope that this would be a continuing saga. It might be. The end is simply yet to be written. I was only going to write the first piece and drop it after that but I decided to add a couple more thoughts.

Who is the person in the story? He started off being modelled after the experience a friend had in church and ended up as me! Perhaps you can see elements of yourself in the story too. 

He came to church one day... (part 3)

He found himself pulling into the parking lot in front of Caribou Coffee. As he walked inside he felt the aesthetic warmth of the wood and earth tone decor and felt better about life. The gas fireplace was lit in the corner to add to the ambient warmth. Placing his order for a large Latte he thought about how wonderful it was to be able to enjoy the simple pleasure of a cup of coffee in a comfortable space.

As he stood at the end of the counter waiting for the espresso machine work its magic his eyes wandered perused the one pound bags of coffee waiting to be purchased... Guatemala, Costa Rica, Rwanda, Kenya, Yemen. As he pondered the farmers working the fields in these far away places and all that had to go into getting the beans from the fields of Africa and South and Central American to his cup he thought, "Perhaps, even the simple pleasures in life aren't so simple after all." This his eyes came to rest on a bag labelled "Fair Trade." "Why," he wondered, "do we need such labels on bags of coffee?" Publish

His phone bagan to vibrated in his pocket indicating that he had received an email message. It was a response to his facebook status update, it simply read, "Who cares! Life's Shrt, praty on :-)" Laughing at his 'friends' lousy use of a phone keyboard he thought knew that he still cared about the answer.

Feeling comfortably alone in the coffee shop filled with others he sat down in a large leather chair to read the morning paper.

He came to church one day... (part 2)

As he climbed into his car to leave that Sunday morning "service" he flipped on his satellite radio while checking his bluetooth connection before making a phone call when he was caught off guard by the song playing over the speakers, "Would you know my name/If I saw you in heaven?/Would you feel the same/If I saw you in heaven?/I must be strong and carry on/cause I know I don't belong here in heaven..."

It was Eric Clapton singing about the 1991 death of his son, Conor. As the song continued to play he began to think about the big questions in life, is there any meaning and purpose for our life on earth beyond personal happiness? Is there life after death? If so, will we recognize one another in the next life? Is there a heaven and hell? How do I assure myself of a place in heaven?

He had hoped he might have found the answers to some of these questions in the church he had just left but instead he had experienced a place that appeared irrelevant and detached from the world in which he lived. Reflecting on the song playing on the radio he recalled Clapton being interviewed on Larry King and stating that he stopped singing this song in 2004 because he felt he had moved past the loss. "But," he wondered to himself, "did he ever truly find peace?" 

Grabbing his iPhone he posted a tweet which was linked to his Facebook account, "Wondering about the meaning of life?"

As he pulled out of the parking lot the song on the radio switched over to Billy Joel's "It's Still Rock And Roll To Me." He began to sing along and soon forgot about the questions that troubled his mind just a few moments before.

He came to church one day...

He was a very successful businessman, achieving Vice-President by his late 30's, full of confidence and sure of what he wanted from life. As an adult he had never ventured inside a church building until one Sunday morning he took a seat in the back row. On his way in he was handed a folded piece of paper by one of the ushers. As he took his seat and glanced at the piece of paper he was holding he assumed it to be the playbill.

First up was some interactive speaking between someone called the Liturgist and the rest of the people. He could handle that without to much discomfort as he listened in on the words being spoken, not yet convinced of the truth contained in the words. As the back and forth dialogue ended a musical instrument, strange to his ears began to play, it was the organ. He'd never heard the organ played live before and he wondered why this dominant instrument of the middle-ages was still being used in churches today, weren't the other instruments of our culture, guitars, keyboards, drums much cheaper than an organ? But just as this thought was forming in his mind everyone in the congregation grabbed a blue book, stood up and started to sing.

He saw two blue books in front of him and quickly found the one he was looking for, flipping to the hymn number he was puzzled by the musical notation in front of him. He couldn't read music and was uncomfortable with this unnanounced expectation that he would stand and sing. After the song was done he glanced at the playbill and realizing that there would be two more occasions on which he would stand to sing he mentally prepared himself so as not to be caught off guard.

He enjoyed the part of the service where the children came forward, it was "cute," but he wasn't sure that the kids really understood what the well-intentioned adult was trying to communicate to them. "Clearly," he thought to himself, "they mustn't have any teachers in this congregation."

Following the next hymn, which he had looked up while the person up front was praying for the kids, the offering was received. He had braced himself for this, knowing that churches always took money from people at their services. The choir sang well he thought as the ushers passed the plates down the aisles, it gave him time to reflect on how odd it seemed to be sitting on a bench inside a building. "Pews, that's what church people call these benches," he thought to himself. As he wondered why a bench wasn't simply called a bench he was once again startled as music started and everybody stood again. No hymnals this time but everyone was singing, he listened, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow..." not knowing the words he stood there for an awkward couple of moments before everyone once again sat down.

The pastor said it was time to pray, everyone closed their eyes and slouched forward in their seat, it was a Presbyterian church so rather than kneel or stand to pray the people invariable slouched. He enjoyed listening the pastor talk to God about the concerns of the world but wondered why he changed the tone of his voice to do so but once again before being able to finish his thought he was caught off guard as those in the know rattled off the Lord's Prayer. He knew most of it but was embarassed when he started to say, "forgive us our trespasses..." while the congregation uses the shorter, "forgive us our debts."

Surviving the Scripture reading and mostly enjoying the sermon, although he didn't understand why the preacher didn't have either a handout for notes or use of a projection system for his "presentation."

As he checked his playbill again he saw there was one piece of singing left and then something called a Benediction. He knew some Laitn and broke it down realizing it meant "to speak well of." This puzzled him further as he assumed the talk by the pastor was the time of speaking well. He didn't feel the need for another sermon so he slipped out during the last verse of the hymn.

As he made his way to the car he wondered about the experience he had just had. It was uncomfortable, he expected that, it was foreign to his ears, he expected that. The English used in the hymns was an older dialect, not English as used in the contemporary context, he wondered why it hadn't been updated, this was the 21st Centurty that these people were trying to live in. He couldn't understnad why the pastor made no use of modern communication devices (other than the microphone) for his talk, perhaps it was a budget issue, it certainly couldn't have been a conscious decision, not if they were serious about reaching out to the unchurched in their community. 

Rattled by the level of discomfort he felt he was sure that he had made the right decision that church was not for him or his family.