And then the Sunrise...

Revelation 21:5b, “...Behold, I am making all things new...”

I get up fairly early in the morning. I watch the sunrise most mornings from the comfort of my chair. I sit in the corner of the living room with the middle blinds drawn, drinking my coffee and reading the news. I peek out the window and get to see the morning begin. It's a beautiful way to start the morning.

The sunrise reminds me of a few things.

One lady has a nice house, nice car, nice husband and family but struggles with self esteem, she hates herself and daily tries to balance her blessed life with her own disparaging view of herself that invades her every thought.

Another man has a good family, good friends, no financial worries. But he hates his job and going to work every day burdens him with despair and he wants to quit but he can't as he is the sole breadwinner. Other job prospects have not worked out and he is not able to quit and do anything else.

Yet another woman has a great job, new car, great house and lots of friends. But her family is falling apart due to her sham of a marriage that few know about. She is unsure what to do about it so she does nothing and stays miserable.

When the sun rises a new day unfolds and with it, new problems, or, perhaps, old problems in a new skin. The new day reminds me that life continues with all it's difficulties and stresses. And that leads me to a greater truth…

One day, one day...all these problems, all these lies, all these piles of sorrow and rivers of tears, all these songs of loss and books of our searching for meaning and significance. All of these will be made new...not destroyed but refined. Purged. Dipped in the scalding judgment of truth.

God will, one day, paint the final sunrise and creation will sigh with contentment...and so will we.

How to Define Church

“I'm not even supposed to be here today!”

-Dante Hicks

Some concepts are hard to define. Take the word church. When we say, “I'm going to church Sunday”, we understand that to mean we are going to a building where other people are going. We show up at this building and depending on our tradition we will sing, talk, listen, take communion, or even genuflect. Some may open a Bible when they show up, others may take notes while other people open their Bibles, some may open a lectionary. Some may read passages in their native language and others may read in Latin.

But church is not merely a building. We call various buildings “church”. And we define various gatherings as the members or “bodies” of First Baptist Church, or First Christian Church or the Methodist Church. But the building is only where the people show up, they could really designate anyplace and show up. Some traditions, after a particularly fiery service, will say, “we had church today”. Meaning that something dramatic or emotional happened during the service.

We also call the people who are of the Christian faith “the church”. In other words, the people themselves who have committed their lives to the belief and practice of the Christian faith are the church. We see this illustrated by the bulk of the New Testament. The believers in Rome, Paul says, “To all who are in Rome...called to be saints.”-1:7. In his letter to the Corinthians, 1:2, “To the church of God which is at Corinth...” and He introduces his letters to Galatians in the same way, “to the churches of Galatia...” and in Ephesians he says, “to the saints at Ephesus”.

Paul is talking to individual people when he addresses them as the church in this city or that city. The people did not meet in buildings at that time, they met in homes. So Paul is writing to people's home addresses letters to be read to all the people who come together in homes to read the Word, pray, and go out and share the news of Jesus Christ as Messiah.

For some reason, in modern times, we have made a big fuss about coming to church activities, coming to a building and meeting there and we call that church. We don't call Bible study church, even though it is, we don't call believers meeting together for lunch church. Many tend to emphasize coming to the church building for certain services as the only definition of church that is applicable.

And if you don't come? Well then we'll throw Hebrews 10:25 in your face and quote it as if it confirms the idea that we should go to church services at such and such time in such and such a building and be connected there. I'm not trying to say don't go to a church, getting involved with a group of people where you can be challenged and grow is great. But to say that this verse speaks specifically about going to 9:45 services every Sunday and nothing else is ridiculous.

So how do we define church? The church is the group of believers gathering together, it is not individualistic, you cannot say that you personally are the church and never interact with other people of the faith. Church is gathering in homes, church is chatting over the gas pumps early Saturday morning, church is the lunch break conversation, church is the group of people holding the same faith doing life together. The building has nothing to do with it. You can't contain God in a building anyway.

  Acts 17:24"The God who made the world and all things in it, since He is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands."

Should we Raise Kids in Church?

“That's a fine-looking high horse
What you got in the stable?
We've a lot of starving faithful”

-Hozier

I grew up in church. I grew up in the South, and while I didn't grow up in the Deep South, most of my mom and dad's family are from that region, so I have roots that reach there. I grew up in the Bible Belt. I grew up going to a private, fundamentalist Baptist School for the entirety of my education. I grew up with a dress code and a code of manners and an air of expectation that included male patriarchy and female subservience.

I grew up riding my bike or walking everywhere in town. I grew up eating dinner at other people's houses because if you stayed long enough another place was set. There are lots of traditions I grew up with that still stick with me after many years. Playing outside for hours, drinking from a hose. Not asking too many questions.

I also grew up confused….

I went to church at a small southern baptist church, it's still there if you want to visit. I'm sure the people are still just as friendly and the atmosphere still welcoming. If it's anything like I remember it will be quiet, reverent and laid back but a touch of class here and there. Like a party where everyone dresses up in nice shirts but wears jeans too, comfort with a touch of respectability.

I also went to a small, Pentecostal church, and specifically one which emphasized a doctrine which is not recognized by Orthodox, mainstream Christianity as within the bounds of accepted doctrine. They embrace Modalism, or more properly called Sabellianism. It was developed by a third century theologian named Sabellius. The idea, in miniature, is that God is not a trinity but one and that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are different “modes” of expression.

These 2 churches could not have been more different (for all the heresy of the Pentecostal church I might add that they were mostly extremely nice people).  As I grew up with all the things previously mentioned I also grew up confused and terrified by these two radically different and in many ways, oppositional, views on God and salvation and in how we should live our lives.

This has, to say the absolute least, left me with a healthy skepticism of churches that emphasize or prey on people's emotions. It has left me somewhat stone-hearted against too much emotionalism in church services and suspicious of those who revel in such a thing.

So how are we to conduct ourselves as parents, grandparents, caregivers, when it comes to children and the church? During my childrens lives they have experienced churches of a similar theology, all of the same denomination with minor differences. We have visited various churches but mostly only attended 4 churches that I can think of, on a consistent basis in the last 11 years. Some have been good experiences that we still cherish and some have been a dark place where we would never go back even if we were paid.

This makes me wonder...is this good for our children? Is it good to go from church to church? Granted I went to two very different churches but there was consistency you can say that for sure. With the rare exception I attended those churches until I was 18 years old and even on rare occasion when I came back to town for the next year or two. So for almost 2 decades I had some sense of familiarity, some sense of belonging because I grew up there, those churches were as much a part of my hometown and childhood as the local people, the local restaurants, the streets and the familiar hangouts we all flocked to on the weekends.

My children have had very little of that. Is that ok? Is this a good way to grow up in church? Will this leave them more confounded than comforted? And what do you do if you can't find a church at all? I mean there's plenty of churches but there's not many GOOD churches. Many churches are social clubs, others are simply landmarks and staples of the community that people attend to worship their hometown memories and complain about the state of affairs of it all. Other churches were once great but due to corruption, sin or other issues are simply a shell where the Holy Spirit no longer lives. He's already written that the property is condemned but nobody pays it any attention.

No church is perfect because the moment you step in the door you guarantee that it won't be but where do we draw the line between consistency and contentment? And what do we draw that line with? 

Jesus for the Depressive...

Oh your hands can heal, your hands can bruise
I don't have a choice but I still choose you

-The Civil Wars: Poison & Wine

Many people in America (other parts of the world too but I live here) suffer from depression in some shape or form. I'm not a doctor but I do work in the Mental Health field so I see a lot of things but you don't have to be in that field to see, experience and live many different dark dreams of depression.

Maybe you have experienced it for a short time while grieving the death of a loved one. Maybe you have an aunt, a mother or brother who lives with depression. Maybe you know someone who has sought the ultimate relief from depression and committed suicide. Or maybe, just maybe, you experience it yourself.

Jesus is for the depressive.

I'm not entirely sure but I would wager a guess and say that people suffered from depression during the days Jesus walked the earth. Maybe during Jesus' healing ministry days when he healed the blind, the crippled, the feverishly ill and the demon possessed, maybe he also healed the depressed? Those who cried themselves to sleep, those who never find happiness at parties, with food, with fellowship, with friendship? Those who think of dying so much they never know what it's like to live?

There are those that push memorizing and reading Scripture as a help for depression and I am certainly for that and think it is helpful. But I think we overlook something very simple at times.

Maybe John 5:39-40 will help, “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life.”

It is not in the Scriptures that we have help, it is in the author Himself, the Word of Life, the Word made flesh. It is not in much reading of the Bible that we come to help, not necessarily, it is in calling out to the one who writes these words on our hearts that we are soothed and stilled in our soul.

We would do well to pray the simple prayer of the man who didn't know what to say to Jesus when asking for help in Mark 9:24, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!” It says that he cried out the prayer to Jesus with tears. So, let the depressive cry out with tears to Jesus for help.

Why I Wouldn't Vote for Ben Carson

“The problem is, many of the people in need of saving are in churches, and at least part of what they need saving from is the idea that God sees the world the same way they do.” 

-Barbara Brown Taylor

I think the conservative element, especially among Evangelicals, are much too enamored with Dr. Ben Carson. While I am most certainly pro-life and hold other conservative values which would, no doubt, line up with many of Carson's positions I have a few things “against him” so to speak.

Carson got into trouble recently speaking about gun control and applying it to the Holocaust, stating, in a nutshell, if the Jews had more guns and had not been under oppressive gun laws implemented by the Hitler regime they could have fought back more effectively. So the Holocaust would have been less likely if there were more guns?

This not only sounds absolutely stupid and slightly crazy to me but many others. Even the ADL, “Anti-Defamation League” has spoken out against this view. Let's be clear, this is all hypothetical that we're speaking of but Carson is no historian and he's treading on a dangerous hypothetical scenario that not only makes him look ignorant but also a little crazy.

I'm not anti-gun, far from it, but giving everybody more guns is not the answer we need now and it's not the answer that was needed years ago. Dr. Carson thinks that by explaining, in hypothetical “what I would do” scenarios he is expanding on what his policy would be but he isn't. He's painting himself into a corner with words which he won't be able to get out of, and we have another example besides the Holocaust quip.

When asked about a recent school shooting Dr. Carson suggested that if he were in that same scenario he would have “rushed the shooter” banking on the fact that the shooter can't shoot all of us, they can only shoot one person at a time. In other words he would fight back. How patently absurd, how callous this is to the victims. It almost shames them, implying that maybe they would be alive if they had just acted differently. He doesn't come right out and say that but that's what is implied.

Who really knows what they would do in any given situation? You can say, “I would do this...” all day long but you really have no idea how you will react when something terrifying happens, when adrenaline kicks in and something tragic is in full swing you don't always pick some noble or brilliant course of action. Many times, I would wager, when people are faced with life or death, they simply try and cling to life as much as possible and don't make bold, saucy moves. This isn't the movies and true heroes are hard to come by in that regard.

So who would I vote for? Strike up a conversation with me and I might tell you...and I won't even give you a hypothetical...

Jesus is Fire...

Matthew 3:11, NRSV, “I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

It's fun to find the opposites of things, some are obvious, far and near which we all learned from Grover on Sesame Street. Friends and enemies, of course we could claim the middle ground is the confusing “frenemy”. Some are more difficult, what is the opposite of fluff? What's the opposite of cantaloupes?

A pair of dynamic of opposites is presented here in Matthew 3, water and fire. Water cools, quenches, floods, engulfs, sustains and nourishes. Fire burns, consumes, destroys, refines, and eliminates all the impurities for the purity that is inside to show through.

John is presented as the water, Jesus as the fire. This is an interesting comparison, John is baptizing with water but he says that one is coming that will baptize with fire. But if you look through the gospels you will see that Jesus never baptized….so what is the meaning here?

I suppose it depends on what we mean by baptism doesn't it? Some people will say baptism comes from the Greek meaning “to immerse”. Others will say it means to “pour over” and others will show support for both. I will be honest here, if Greek scholars are still in debate over this, and they know Greek, I doubt I will settle it since I don't know it at all.

I think we can say this though, baptism seems to be an important event. John is particular about who he baptizes, even turning people away, see vs. 7-8 of this chapter. Jesus is baptized and it is a watershed moment, when he begins His public ministry and He doesn't have just anyone perform it, he has John do the honors. Jesus commands believers to baptize as one of the ongoing rites of the church.

If John is water we can compare him to water in this way, water is perishable, it dries up, you can have a flood but it will dissipate at some point. The flood waters that come, have a source and when that source dies down, the waters begin to slowly subside, they do not build in intensity. Once the source is cut off, you have no more raging storm to battle just the aftermath.

If Jesus is fire then you have a very different comparison. Fire burns until it runs out of oxygen or fuel to burn. Fire jumps and spreads and grows bigger, even if you dig trenches and wet the fuel, fire is utterly destructive, destroying everything in it's path. There is no clean up after a fire, there is only destruction and building something new.

But what does come after fire is new growth. The fire puts nutrients into the soil which allow for the first buds of new trees, plants and flowers to slowly make their way though. Out of the destruction, out of the utter death of everything, comes new life.

That's where the Holy Spirit comes in and that's why Jesus is bringing Him because there is no growth without the Holy Spirit, there is no awakening the soil, there is no speaking to the dead, “grow, live, breathe!” without the breath of God.

And just like man was first made out of dirt, we are made out of ashes and breathed into by God...that, my friends, is why Jesus is fire.  

Forgive Me Not

“Love is not a victory march. It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah...”

-Leonard Cohen

Matthew 11:28-30 NRSV. “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

A very poignant lesson on forgiveness lurks in Matthew 11. If you are familiar with the Bible at all you are probably familiar with all the verses we love to quote on forgiveness, but maybe this one isn't quoted in that context as much. Maybe you've heard this in the context of the maxim, “Let go and let God”, which is not a thing, by the way. It's empty talk that Christians use when they don't actually have anything meaningful to say or can't think of anything to say. There's certainly nothing Biblical about it.

So let's peruse the passage shall we? The beginning of chapter Jesus and His disciples split and Jesus is spending some time on his own. John's disciples encounter him and bring some questions from John, that would be John the Baptist. He has his doubts, he's maybe discouraged or unsure, a smidgen on the hesitant side.

Instead of answering them directly, Jesus points them to actions He has done and things that are happening throughout the community, “the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed”-vs. 4-6.

Jesus is effectively telling the disciples and John, and all the other listeners around him, look at what I've done but also and possibly more importantly, “go and talk to the lepers who are no longer lepers, the blind who now see, the lame who now walk the same roads we do”. Jesus is inviting them to investigate the testimony of others that have encountered him and decide for themselves. He doesn't give them a direct answer of “yes”.

I'll spare you a detailed exegesis of the rest of the chapter but suffice to say vs. 7-24 are full of strong words from Jesus. He praises John but basically affirms John's suffering and doesn't dismiss it, He then points to all the evidence that has been given to the people He has been talking to and pronounces judgments on them if they do not accept his words as truth.

The last section in this chapter dovetails off all this and brings it to a conclusion. The song lyric from Panic at the Disco seems to fit the sentiment nicely, “All you sinners stand up, sing hallelujah”. The last few verses are a wonderful breath of fresh air compared to the previous verses. So why does Jesus say these things? He doesn't say them to affirm that our troubles will be light when we follow him, this is no, “follow Jesus and never be sad or depressed” card. What Jesus seems to be reinforcing is that his message frees the heart and that freedom will spill over into your actions. We still have struggles, we will still have aches and pains, long nights and difficult days. But Jesus speaks to the matter of the most importance, the burden of the heart and the afflictions that pile up on it, that burden of the soul that can only be lifted by Jesus. But you know what's interesting about this passage? Jesus talked about the things He had done, pointing to Him, they took direct intervention and action. May we do the same in our community so people can see what a forgiven theology looks like in action.

“I thought about why forgiveness is so hard in our culture, because there's two affects or emotions that people fear the most, and it's shame and grief...I thought faith would say, 'I'll take away the pain and discomfort'. But what it ended up saying was, 'I'll sit with you in it'. -Brene Brown