What Does All This Mean?

“Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went toward the tomb. The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.” –John 20:1-9
 

I came across a piece of artwork this week that haunts me. My comments will betray the fact that I am no connoisseur of art, so prepare yourself. I will fully admit that I cannot wax eloquently on the elements that make a piece of artwork extraordinary.  All I can tell you is this: The men's expressions in this image speak to me.
 
The piece is entitled, The Disciples Running to the Sepulchre, and it is housed in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris. In it, artist Eugene Burnand captures well what it must have felt like for Simon Peter and John to approach Jesus’s empty tomb.
 
I am struck by these individuals’ postures. They are leaning forward, eager to make sense of what they had been told. Peter’s expression is one of bewilderment. John looks concerned and uncertain. Both of them look as though they are pressing forward into a headwind, their thoughts not able to keep up with the unfolding reality before them.
 
John, in particular, holds my attention. His hands, clasped to his chest, suggest a hope that he seems hesitant to fully embrace. His eyes, squinting against the wind, are peering into the distance. Behind his gaze, we sense a question forming: “Could it be?”
 
Easter raises questions for us. We know that the resurrection of Jesus means something. But what, exactly, does it mean? What does it mean that God defeated death? How does that impact our lives? What impact does the resurrection have on our day to day routines?
 
The scripture confirms our hunch about this moment. The two disciples, upon investigating the empty tomb, have a hard time grasping what has happened and what that means for what should happen next. “For as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.”
 
In the spirit of Easter, and in life on this side of an empty tomb, we should be slow to jump to conclusions about the resurrection, and even more reluctant to dismiss the events of Easter as something we should somehow accept without question. In other words, the resurrection is something we should take seriously. We should give ourselves space to contemplate the reality that God can redeem everything. Yes, everything (apparently)…even and especially death.
 
Consider using this piece of art to prompt a contemplative prayer as you consider, like all disciples throughout the ages, what all this means.
 

More Than I Could Ever Ask or Imagine

It was a cold and dreary Saturday in January. Rebecca and I had made arrangements for childcare and we were preparing to go to a local restaurant. We had scheduled a meeting with some individuals who wanted to spend a couple of hours getting to know us. I was both excited and unsure. Our conversation around the table could have a significant impact on our future. The year was 2012. The restaurant was in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

For the better part of a year, I had been discreetly pursuing a call to serve as a pastor of a church. A ten-year veteran of associate ministry—primarily to college students and young people—I had begun to sense a shift in my vocational identity. I was proud of the work that we had accomplished in my 6 years of developing a ministry to 20-Somethings in Chattanooga, and I was curious to see if what I had learned in young adult ministry could be replicated at the broader congregational level.

Rebecca and I loved our time in Chattanooga. We loved our church. The church that I served at had been encouraging and supportive throughout my ministry and it was hard to imagine leaving it. And yet, I felt called to preach more regularly and to serve in a capacity where a church could cast a new vision together, taking risks and seeing what was possible in Christ’s Name.

As the associate pastor in Chattanooga, I preached every other month or so. When it became apparent that I was slated to preach one Sunday in January of 2012, I shared this news with a church that had expressed some interest in my candidacy as their pastor. Actually, I shared this news with two churches. At that time, Rebecca and I were considering two church possibilities—both of which could not have been in more different contexts. One church was located in a large southern city in a suburban setting. The other church was nestled in a beautiful valley, on Main Street in a Western North Carolina mountain town. Both churches had sent representatives to meet with Rebecca and me that Saturday, albeit a couple of hours apart but at the same restaurant. That next day, I would preach to three distinct congregations at the same time—our home church, and members of the search committees from these other two churches would be present. Simply put, all of this felt disorienting. The weekend felt like a game show.

And yet, I will never forget what our conversation with the members of the search committee from the First Baptist Church in Sylva felt like. It was our first real contact with the church, but our time together had a unique quality to it. It seemed like we were old acquaintances. The timing of our laughter worked. The conversation had a natural ebb and flow to it. Our informal interview felt unforced and natural. The result of our visit was unmistakable to both Rebecca and me. The Holy Spirit was present in our time together, and it was the moment that I began to fall in love with you. Although I had not met anyone else from the First Baptist Church of Sylva, I sensed an inimitable pull toward you. Even though our conversation lasted little more than a couple of hours, you were already becoming home to me.

A call is a mysterious experience. I have little doubt that you have experienced it yourselves. Whether it was a job, or a relationship, or even the purchasing of a new home, I suspect that you had a moment where, inexplicably, you were being led to a particular calling.

The genesis of my calling to serve as your pastor began that weekend some five years ago. My prayers changed as a result of it. I began to pray that if this was God’s will that God would finish what He had started. Throughout the interview process, the follow-up phone calls, my visits to Sylva, and my initial conversations with you, I felt this call grow within me.

Calls, of course, are not one-sided. A call to a particular place or form of ministry must be a shared decision. Like any relationship, mutuality is necessary for a healthy union to develop. I was honored and deeply humbled to learn from you that this calling was confirmed in your decision to extend an invitation for me to serve as your pastor.

And that sense of call has not changed these past five years. In truth, I suspected that it would. I had enough experience in church life to enough to know that congregational ministry can be uniquely hard. While there is no doubt that my calling to serve as your pastor is challenging, I can tell you in full honesty that it is absolutely where I long to be. My love for you is stronger than at any time of my tenure as your pastor. I am privileged to preach from our pulpit. I am touched by your trust when you are hurting. I am awed by your good heart, and your servant-filled motives. I am thrilled to represent you locally and beyond. I am proud of our heritage and the legacy of our church’s work. I love serving as your pastor and count it as a gift from God.

Thank you, First Baptist Church, for recognizing and celebrating my five years of service with you. I am deeply moved by your gift for me and my family. Thank you for your support and well-wishes. Thank you for walking alongside me as we listen for God’s direction for the living of these days. Thank you for your patience with me when I make mistakes, and for your encouragement to me when I am not at my best. Thank you for loving my family and for choosing to be church with us. Thank you for inspiring me with your stories of a steadfast faith that is stronger than you know. Thank you for being my church home and my family of faith.

“Now to our God who by the power and work within us is able to accomplish abundantly more than we could ever ask or imagine, to God be the glory in the church and to Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” –Ephesians 3:20-21

Remembrance through Reenactment

Much to my chagrin, it looks unlikely that time travel is possible.
 
How can we be so sure? Well, no has ever visited us from the future. Pressing the point, no one from the future has ever traveled through time to prevent the tragedies and terrors that have beset us.
 
The author Connie Willis has a fun take on the question of time travel. In her fictional future, individuals no longer study history as we might. Instead of learning about ancient cultures in dusty old libraries, historians physically travel through time to observe history. Of course, these historians must be careful that they do not alter the natural evolution of time and circumstances, lest their meddling might create a cataclysmic disaster.
 
Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel back to Jesus’s day and age? Have you ever found yourself wishing that you could observe the significant moments in our faith history? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to observe David fighting Goliath? Or wondered what Jesus’s voice sounded like, or to witness one of his miracles, or to be at the foot of the cross?
 
When we read scripture, the Word of God—literally, the revelation of God—helps us to make sense of past events. Scripture becomes truth because God breathes life in to the words on the page so that we can see Jesus and feel His presence. As a church, our task is to create an environment so that we can experience God’s story in a dramatic way.
 
Although we cannot physically travel back to the Holy Land in a DeLorean, à la the Back to the Future movies, or observe someone’s preserved memories in a Pensieve, à la the Harry Potter epic, we can replicate the events from the past so that we can better understand them.
 
Thursday, April 13 is Maundy Thursday. The use of the word Maundy comes from the Latin word, mandatum, which means ‘commandment.’ It refers to Jesus’s instructions to his disciples during the Last Supper for them to “love one another.” Traditionally, Maundy Thursday is a time when the church shares communion together. It is a time where we recreate the moment that Jesus breaks bread and shares the cup. For when we do so, we do so in “remembrance of Him.”
 
We remember Christ when we reenact Jesus’s last meal with his disciples. We understand Jesus’s life, ministry and sacrifice when we share table fellowship.
 
This year, we will be offering a Passover Seder experience in order that we might better understand Jesus’s last night with his disciples. We will do so by trying to experience firsthand what his Passover meal would have been like. The Bible tells us that Jesus and his closest followers would have had a Passover meal (known as a Seder, which means “order”) before they retreated to the Garden of Gethsemane.
 
In an effort to better recall Jesus’s life and teachings, we will gather on Maundy Thursday in our Mission and Fellowship Center at 6:00 PM to have an experience that more nearly matches what Jesus and his disciples were doing. Although the experience will not be a meal as we know it, we will be sampling small items of familiar foods.
 
Luke teaches us: “Then came the day of Unleavened Bread, on which the Passover lamb had to be sacrificed. So, Jesus sent Peter and John, saying, “Go and prepare the Passover meal for us that we may eat it.”
 
We will be preparing an experience for you to better see, hear and touch Jesus on that Maunday Thursday evening. Let’s discover together what it must have been like to be with Jesus during those last, fateful hours.
 
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Our Passover Seder will take place at 6:00 PM on Thursday, April 13 in our Mission and Fellowship Center. This one-hour experience will be appropriate for families with elementary school children, grades 1 and up. A nursery will be provided for infants up to Kindergarten. Please email us (fbcsylva@gmail.com) or call the church office to let us know that you will be attending so that we can be prepared for our time together.

Subtle Lies and the Deceptions We Sow

“Lying is not only saying what isn’t true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than is true…” –Albert Camus

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.” Exodus 20:16

In other words, do not lie.

Now, before you dismiss this passage of scripture as out of touch with reality or inconsequential to modern life, consider that it’s one of the Ten Commandments. Still not impressed? This is not an isolated commandment. The scriptures are replete with references imploring us to be honest. 

On Tuesday morning, I heard a disturbing story on National Public Radio’s show Morning Edition. The segment was, “The Truth Is, Lying Might Not Be So Bad.” Commentator Shankar Vedantam was reporting on the conclusions discovered from a recent scientific study on lying:

“Researchers found something that we won’t find surprising: Once participants (in a study on lying) told the first lie, the second lie became easier to tell. And the magnitude of lies increased over time.”

One scientist put it this way: “It turns out that the brain also reacts very strongly to a first act of lying, but then as we keep on lying more and more the brain stops reacting to it. So, we start by being aware of this dishonest act and we are at least aware of it, but over time it just goes into the background and we don’t pay attention to it.” 

According to the study, we typically won’t change our behavior until we experience enough discomfort from the consequences of our deceit to alter our ways.

As Vedantam concludes, “The first step down the path to deception makes every step easier.”

When we ruminate on the commandment that we are not to lie, most of us will admit that telling straight up falsehoods is wrong. We’ve experienced enough pain from telling outright lies to make us think twice before we boldly proclaim that we did not eat all the oatmeal cream pies when in fact, we did.

We know this is wrong and we know we will be punished for it. In truth, our spouses love their fair share of the Little Debbie Snack Cakes.

No, for most of us, deceitfulness comes in the form of changing the truth to fit our needs and desires. We report an event from our point of view. We shape the hearing of a conversation according to our best interests. We omit details. We emphasize the wrong things. We overinflate and use hyperbole. We tell the story the way we want to tell it.

Is that a lie? Yes. Yes, it is.

When we push and pull on the truth to suit our own ends, we are violating God’s commandment. In the first place, when we manipulate reality to fit our own agenda, we are making ourselves out to be our own god. It is a selfish posture that seeks the best for ourselves. Second, others will discover that we are not trustworthy. They will experience us as shifty dodgers who cannot be relied upon. This is not a good recipe for healthy relationships as this kind of deception results in suspicion, conspiracy theories and toxicity.

I can’t remember who told me this, but I’ve never been able to shake it. Trust is earned like money is earned and banked. Deceit spends the currency of trust. And when the vault of trust is empty, it won’t matter how significant that final withdrawal of trust is. When your trust is bankrupt, the relationship ends. It’s why we say that something was, “The straw that broke the camel’s back.”

Jesus calls Satan the author of lies. In him there “is no truth.” Satan deceives because his motivation is clear. He wants us to be our own god. The Deceiver wants us to pursue what’s best for ourselves. He wants us to believe the lie that what is best for us is what’s best for all. This has something to do with a snake in a garden, but I digress…

There are two things that are required here. First, we’ve got to stop telling falsehoods. Period. Second, we’ve got find ways to acknowledge when we are wrong, or have messed up. We should be forthcoming about other people’s points of view, even when they’re not in our best interest. Few things earn our respect more than individuals who can admit when they are wrong, and have a reasonable outlook that is circumspect.

And finally, we’ve got to be aware that lying is like a cheap, but effective drug. Once we start, it’s hard to stop.

Lessons from Little League

It’s a gray, March afternoon and I’m sitting in an alarmingly blue lawn chair watching my son from beyond the outfield fence. The mountains that frame the horizon still look like the dead of winter, but the Little League practice that is unfolding before me signals the presence of spring.

On the field, three adults are positioned around the diamond directing the boys in a drill to improve their fielding skills. One coach hits the ball in the infield, another catches the boys’ (sometimes errant) throws, and another gives them feedback on what the boy just did so that they can improve.

“Remember boys, we want to be better today than we were yesterday.” The coach continues, “And we want to be better tomorrow than we are today.”

The boys dig deeper, run harder, and are focused on the task at hand.

It’s impressively clear to me. The boys are learning the game of baseball.

This is no small feat. Baseball is a challenging game to understand. It’s even more difficult to perfect. Hitting a round ball with a round bat requires skill. Throwing the ball and hitting the cutoff man requires agility and fundamentals. Knowing how to see where the ball is hit before the batter swings demands experience. As anyone who has watched a T-Ball game of 5 year olds will agree, the game of baseball doesn’t work unless it is learned and practiced.
Faith requires practice, too. But many of us don’t believe that. Oh, don’t get me wrong. I think we believe that learning and practicing the faith are valuable. But I’m not so sure we believe it’s critical to being a person of faith.

Let me take that back. Most of us want our children to be exposed to faith and to be given opportunities to practice the ancient traditions that have helped us to hear and respond to God. So early on, we make a commitment to take them to church where they can become familiar with the stories of our faith. We are glad that our faith leaders teach our children how to read the Bible, how to pray, and how to worship. And then we rejoice when our children profess Christ as their Savior and are baptized in His name.
But then something happens.

After our baptisms, we often assume that since we have become professing followers of Christ that we are done with our faith development. Once that critical milestone has been met, we assume that there’s nothing else to learn or to practice. After the bar mitzvah-like, rite of passage experience of our baptism is over, we conclude that faith development is somehow extracurricular.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Faith requires practice, perseverance, sacrifice and commitment. The Bible calls this discipleship. Jesus calls individuals to practice the faith with him. He tells his students that they will be fully trained when they look like the teacher (Luke 6:40). At its core, our goal in discipleship is to become more and more like Christ. This doesn’t just happen. It certainly doesn’t just happen when we emerge from the waters of our baptism. We never graduate from the practices of faith.

Keeping with the metaphor of baseball, imagine what it would be like for a young lad to presume that he’s ready for the Major Leagues after only signing up to be on a Little League team. This sounds preposterous, doesn’t it? Then why would we treat the development of our faith this way? Perhaps deep down, we don’t think our faith development to be an important factor in our lives. If this makes us feel uneasy, let’s consult with our actions and behavior as the ultimate judge of our values.

“Remember boys, we want to be better today than we were yesterday.” The coach continues, “And we want to be better tomorrow than we are today.”

As I watch the boys excel, fumble and grow in their understanding of the game of baseball, I am impressed by this: the children have a zeal for learning. They hustle, they dig deep, they fall down and help one another get back up. The boys want to learn, they want to improve, they want to contribute to the team.

I am inspired by their passion to work as a team and to improve together; imagining what it looks like when our churches have as much enthusiasm and zeal to serve, to love and to grow. Jesus called this the Kingdom of God and it’s nearer—and more possible!—than you think.

The sun is beginning to set on practice. The boys are still out there, and their coaches are fired up. They know that this is how they improve as a team.

And no one, no one wants to leave. 

The Alternate Ending to Last Sunday’s Sermon

If I could re-preach last Sunday’s sermon, I would. Let me explain.
 
While shaking hands with church members at the sanctuary’s front door after the service on Sunday, I heard a few of our folk talking about how they wanted to know how the story that I shared in the sermon ended. The story went like this:
 
When I was a small child, the iron that sat in the laundry room fascinated me. My mother, ever the perceptive parent, recognized my interest in the shiny, angular object and warned me never to go near it. Of course, that only heightened my interest and I waited for an opportunity to get close to it.
 
One day, an opportunity presented itself. My mother had been in the laundry room one morning but had disappeared into another part of the house. Seizing the moment, I drew close to the iron and marveled at its curious dimensions and the distorted reflection of the room in its mirror-like surface. I did not touch the iron gently with my finger. No, I took my entire hand and pressed it up against the face of the iron as though I was high-fiving the laundry tool.
 
I remember that my hand momentarily stuck to the fiery hot surface and I pulled it back quickly, stifling a yelp. The pain came in waves and I felt nauseous at what I had done. But cry out for help, I did not. Instead, I tiptoed into the kitchen, retrieved a cereal bowl and filled it with cold water. Then, I retreated to the house’s crawl space where I submerged my blistered hand while I hid from my mother.
 
Why did I not cry out for help? Why did I hide? I hid because I was ashamed of what I had done. I hid because I knew that I had disobeyed my mother and was certain that she would be upset with me.
 
“Jeff,” one of our church members implored after worship, “We want to know what happened to you after you hid from your mother.”
 
In truth, it never occurred to me that the story needed the kind of resolution that was requested by a couple of our church members. To me, the point of that childhood memory was that our first impulse—like Adam and Eve’s—is to hide when we have committed a sin.
 
But this is where I failed.
 
You may recall that I mentioned that God’s response to Adam and Eve’s disobedience felt less like punishment—that is, being banished from the Garden—and more like a lifting of the veil of protection from the world’s pain and terrors. The consequences of our sins have real world implications that oftentimes cannot be undone. When we sin, other people can get hurt. When we disobey God, we ourselves can get hurt. When we don’t do what we should do, people can suffer unnecessarily.
 
Here’s how I should have ended the sermon:
 
When my mother found me in the crawl space, she was not angry with me. To my surprise, she was deeply saddened that I had been hurt. She found me, and --of course--she cared for my wounds. My mother didn’t want to berate me. She wanted to care for me in my pain.
 
I believe that one of the reasons that God wants us to live lives that are sanctified (think, set apart) is because sin causes pain. Yes, it separates us from God’s Holy presence. And yes, it is only through the gift and sacrifice of Christ Jesus that our sins are atoned. But more than anything, I think, God does not want us to suffer. And sin causes pain. God’s declarations that we should avoid sin are rooted in the reality that God does not want us to hurt. My mother did not need to punish me for disobeying her. The consequence of my willful disobedience was punishment enough.
 
Let’s also not forget that my mother comforted me in my pain, just as the Good Father cared for his prodigal son who had decided to return home. God wants to hold us, especially in our woundedness.
 
If I could re-preach my sermon, this is how I would have ended it. 

Storm Warning

I’m sore today. My ankle has a strange ache. The wrist that I injured years ago feels bruised. This can only mean one thing.
 
A storm is brewing.
 
If the forecast for Wednesday afternoon pans out, March will come in like a lion. We may not have to listen hard for its roar.
 
When I was a child, this would have been unwelcome news. I was both fascinated and terrified of severe weather. Few things disturbed me more than the all-too-familiar sound that would accompany tornado warnings on the radio or TV. Growing up in an area that received a handful of tornado threats a year, I knew that there was genuine cause for concern. The thickening, swirling black clouds felt inescapable as they moved overhead. The torrential rain deepened my distress as it blocked my ability to see where the threat might come from. And the lightning and the thunder chased me from the window and to the safest part of our house.
 
Over the years I’ve discovered that storms come in many shapes and sizes. Storms are not confined to any one particular season, and they can hit without the warnings we’ve come to expect from the National Weather Service. The storms we experience in life are just as powerful as the thunderstorms we experienced as a child, with one exception. The storms in our lives tend to be far more dangerous.
 
Here’s Jesus’s take on storms: “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its fall!”
 
You’ll notice that Jesus never suggests that there’s a chance that the rain might not come. As we might find ourselves saying, “It’s not if it will storm, but when it will storm.” In our lives, rain, wind and floods are inevitable.
 
I spend a lot of energy trying to prevent storms. I don’t like the feeling of helplessness in a storm. I certainly want to avoid the damage that comes from storms, so I’ll do most everything I can to avoid one. In order to sidestep the disruptions and difficulties a storm presents, I’ll do everything I can do to shield myself. But perhaps my energy is misplaced.
 
Jesus knows that storms are a part of life. If memory serves correct, Jesus survived his fair share. Jesus’s encouragement to us here is preventative, but not in the way we might think. God does not direct us to try and prevent storms. Instead, God encourages us to prepare in advance so that we can survive the storms.
 
“Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.”

It will not surprise you to learn that we often see an uptick in church attendance when people are trying to weather a storm. Church is a refuge, of course, and God’s presence is a sanctuary when we are in distress. This is most-certainly a good thing.
 
And yet, I’ve also discovered that once the storm passes these individuals stop attending church or seeking God’s presence like they did during the heart of their distress. While not shocking, this makes me sad. For I absolutely believe that the best way to prepare for a storm is to nurture a strong bond to the One who can best protect us from it when it hits.  
 
By trusting God and obeying his commandments, we situate ourselves well to weather the storms that we will inevitably experience in life. The best thing that we can do for ourselves and for our loved ones is to nurture our relationship with God by taking his words seriously and putting them into action today.
 
Storms will come. But hear the Good News of the Gospel! Jesus is the One who gives us the strength and the grace to survive them. 

Whether We Like It or Not, the Church Matters

Why bother? Why stay connected to a faith community? Why choose church when there are so many other things we can do with our time?
 
Good questions, all. They’re not mine. They have been raised countless times over the years because of our largest generation’s notable absence from church. No, Millennials—that is, those who came of age around the turn of the century (think your 20- and 30-something children and grandchildren)—are not the only ones who are not coming to church. Baby Boomers long ago began to check out of our congregations and Gen Xers, mainstays in the glory days of the youth group era, have become disconnected as well. What makes Millennials unique is the unprecedented number of them who are apparently done with church.
 
Since our young adults are the best expression of our culture, it would be good of us to listen to them. If we are going to be the Body of Christ, we cannot be satisfied with a paraplegic expression of Christ’s presence.
 
I cannot begin to capture the level of dissatisfaction and frustration that young people have for the church. As a member of the smallest generation in American history (and in full disclosure, a member of a generation known for its angst and cynicism), I’m not able to speak for Millennials. But a quick online search will yield a bumper crop of thoughts on the matter. Here’s just a sampling of their essays and blog posts:
 
“Five Things Millennials Wish the Church Would Be”
 
“Dear Church: An Open Letter from One of Those Millennials You Can’t Figure Out”
 
“10 Reasons Millennials Are Sick of Church”
 
“Want Millennials Back in the Pews? Stop Trying to Make Church Cool”
 
“The Loneliness of Being a Millennial in Church”
 
“12 Reasons Millennials Are OVER Church”
 
Depressed yet?
 
Well, I am. Daily, if not hourly, I am confounded, frustrated and dismayed by the Church’s (think Church universal, not necessarily our local church) apparent disconnection with 20- and 30-Somethings. But in truth, while Millennials seem to be the most accurate expression of our culture, they are simply exhibiting symptoms that we all have. Our church’s relationship with the American culture is complex at best and hostile at worst. Regardless of how we got here, empty pews, vacant parking lots and missing people groups trouble me.
 
One particularly frustrated voice that I heard recently (see the blogs noted above if you want the gory details), reminded church leaders that Millennials (and the rest of us, for that matter) have at our fingertips a vast collection of sermons and services ready for download, streaming and podcasting. Technology enables us to be able to eliminate the voices of preachers and would-be prophets who we’d rather not hear. We can hone in on the best, the brightest, the most articulate and the most entertaining when it comes to exposition of scripture and life application. I report these facts dispassionately, for this is the world that we live in. And none of this is bad, except for the fact that it can lead us to the inevitable question: With all of these resources, why bother with church at all?
 
Having spent the overwhelming majority of my ministerial career working with and serving the Millennial generation, I tend to see them from the vantage point of a concerned older sibling. Our young people are supremely gifted and uniquely skilled for the world in which we live in. They are motivated and passionate about making a difference in the world. Their enthusiasm for life is infectious, and their capacity to love the ‘least of these’ is unmatched. This is why I’m sad that they are not more represented in our churches. This is why my heart hurts when I read such angry ‘open letters’ to the churches who taught them about Jesus in Sunday School, chaperoned their youth retreats, cried with them when their boyfriends broke up with them, prayed for them when their best friend was hospitalized, and sent them care packages when they went off to college.
 
So what do I think? Why should any one of us bother with church? We should care about the church because the church is how we encounter God. The church provides multiple voices, experiences and perspectives that help us to understand scripture and life. The church is an intentional community, charged with the responsibility of carrying us from our birth to our death—framing our experiences with the love, grace and convicting words of Jesus.
 
We bother with church—regardless of our age—because of community. When young people are not with us on Sunday mornings, they are often investing in community that encourages and sustains them…whether on a disc golf course or at a chic restaurant serving brunch. But what our church community has to offer that these other (often healthy and well-intentioned) communities do not have is a commitment to hear and follow the commands of Jesus, the Christ. And as followers of Jesus, we stake a claim on the fact that Jesus makes all the difference in our lives, in our relationships, and for all of eternity. So, we choose church because we choose Jesus, remembering that Jesus chose us, even to the point of death.
 
How can we better reach a world, a community, or a neighborhood when they couldn’t care less about the church? Well, for one thing, we should seek to be as healthy a community as we can be without sacrificing the prophetic reality of Jesus’s message. A healthy community welcomes all (First Baptist, we are uniquely gifted at this as our newcomers routinely report how hospitable we are), and invests their time, energy and attention in all. Hill Harper captures the core of this well: “Fundamentally, we all want the same thing. We want to love. We want to be loved, and we want to matter.” Since Jesus taught us what love looks like, the church is well situated to provide this kind of community.
 
Have I oversimplified this? Oh dear Lord, yes. But I don’t think that negates the truthfulness of my claims. Yes, we should talk about ‘how’ we do things. We absolutely want our worship and discipleship efforts to be representative of our community. Yes. But this should never be the main thing. The main thing is Christ revealed in community—what Paul calls the Body of Christ. And our goal together is to keep the main thing the main thing.
 
The final moment in worship on Sundays is to grab the hands of those with whom we have been worshiping and to pray together. The answer to our questions—as it has always been—is that we must do far more than simply clasp one another’s hands. We must hold fast to one another, to one another's lives, to our terrors, to our disappointments and to our triumphs. It’s Christ that holds us all together in life, and we’re all the stronger for it.  

(Dis)Unity

Fragmentation. Division. Fracture.
 
These are a just a few of the words to describe the story of the Christian Church through the centuries.
 
As we have been discovering this winter in our Adult Bible Study on Wednesday nights, the history of the church has been shaped by disagreement. In the midst of our differences, we have found it hard to be in communion with one another. So, not surprisingly, our history is one of excommunications, splits, and even violence.
 
Although this reality may shape our identity, surely we can agree that this is not a Christ-centered strategy for how we are to move forward together.
 
Jesus’s prayer in the Gospel According to John comes to mind: “I ask not only on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me (John 17:20-21).”
 
As Christians, as Protestants, as Baptists, our legacy is one of division. At a risk of oversimplifying our complex past, the fruit of our disagreements has poisoned our relationships, fractured our partnerships and broken bonds of friendship. How do we end the cycle of disunity and discord?
 
We can break out of our broken systems through obedience to our Lord Jesus, who said: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all (Mark 9:35).” Humility, and not our runaway egos and visions of personal vindication and grandeur, is the posture that will reset our relationships and repair our alliances.
 
Fragmentation. Division. Fracture.
 
These words describe more than the Christian religious tradition. They are also a fitting commentary on our relationships to our fellow countrymen and women. Our predilection toward partisanship and modern tribalism has positioned us to vilify one another. Depending upon who you ask, there is little that unites us. We do not know how to be civil to one another, and we do not want communion with those who disagree with us or see the world differently than we do. We are, I argue, already at war with one another.
 
All evidence to the contrary, I am not naïve as I sound.  I know that we have disagreements; some of them quite significant. But our differences—whether in our families, in our churches, or in our communities and our nation—should not be empowered with the ability to tear us apart from one another. Yes, we have disagreements. Yes, our allegiances to our respective tribes can create rifts. But without a table for us all to sit at together, our efforts to secure our own agendas will be imperialistic and void of any spirit for common ground.
 
Strangely, I believe that there may be an opportunity for the same institution that seems to have a monopoly on division and dysfunction to lead here. Yes, I believe that the church—yes, even our local church—can model for our community and our nation what it can look like to be unified in a common cause. For us, our confession that Jesus Christ is Lord unites us amidst our differences. The trust that we can have in one another as a congregation of followers of Jesus can become the basis for accomplishment even though we may disagree individually on most everything else. The tie that binds us together is Jesus, not our social or political allegiances.
 
Jesus holds us together.
 
And to actualize, and strengthen, this bond, we must practice humility in how our ideas and beliefs intersect with one another. Imagine what the church would have looked like if it had practiced Jesus’s command centuries ago?
 
Well, Jesus’s prayer—I believe—would have been answered.
 
We would all be One.
 
Let's practice unity in Christ even when we want to argue about everything else. Jesus’s disparate disciples turned apostles did just that. And look how that turned out.
 

If You Choose

The man was desperate and deranged by the hopelessness of his condition.
 
He could not recall how long it had been since he had felt the touch of another person. Disconnected from his community, his family and his friends, the man had been quarantined. His condition rendered him unclean. And as such, he was forced to live like a vagabond, cut off from people, living in shallow caves and shaded groves.
 
His body ached. He had no way of knowing whether his condition was mild or life-threatening. The man only knew that he was unclean and that he could not be reunited with his loved ones until his condition improved. Until that long-awaited moment of healing, he would be a living dead man; his hope like a rain that falls but never reaches the ground.
 
The man was a leper. He suffered from a terrible, and liberally diagnosed, skin disease called leprosy.
 
He had tried most everything he could think of to heal himself. His efforts, however, only aggravated his condition and depressed his already feeble spirits. Staying on the edges of towns and festivals, he could never seem to work up the courage to approach a teacher, rabbi or healer for relief. Since he was unclean, drawing close to others was strictly forbidden and could result in his death.
 
But this time was different.
 
The man had heard from other lepers of a man—Jesus of Nazareth—who drove out demons, healed the sick, and taught that the Kingdom of God was at hand. Unable to resist the magnetic pull of this man’s promising presence, the leper seized his moment, breaking through the crowds and flinging himself before the prophet.
 
“Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean.”
 
People around him immediately drew back, repulsed by his condition. His statement also drew a smattering of snickers from the crowd. “If you choose?” they repeated. Was healing really that simple? Was healing possible just because Jesus was willing to heal him?
 
Meanwhile, Jesus had stopped and was now giving the man his full attention. Jesus seemed moved by the man’s proclamation of faith. Shocking the crowd and eliciting gasps, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I do choose. Be made clean! (Matthew 8:3)."
 
“Immediately,” the Gospel reports, “his leprosy was cleansed.”
 
*****
 
This story humbles me and compels me to examine the faith of the leper. First, the leper acknowledged that he was not well. This is not always the case with us, is it? Some of us ignore the deficiencies and dis-eases in our hearts and in our bodies for long stretches in our lives. We choose denial. Or worse, we choose self-diagnosis and self-care. And we know how that typically works out.
 
I’m also impressed with the man’s hunger to get to Jesus. He takes a risk, violates the cultural norms, and strives with every ounce of his being to have an encounter with Jesus.
 
And how about the man’s faith? It is a fully committed, no-turning-back, profession of faith in Jesus’s ability to heal him.
 
Jesus touches him. Jesus heals him. He is made well. He experiences shalom.
 
*****
 
This story reminds me of the Jesus Prayer. It is an old spiritual discipline, practiced by the faithful from a variety of Christian traditions. It is simple, and to the point. It is both profession of faith and petition for mercy.
 
“Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy upon me, a sinner.”
 
The prayer should sound familiar. It is a combination of well-known scriptures from the Gospels. Followers of Jesus have prayed this prayer—typically in a contemplative manner by internally saying this simple prayer repeatedly—as a declaration of Christ’s Lordship and our need to be saved.
 
Frederica Mathewes-Green says it better than I can: “The problem is not in God’s willingness to have mercy, but in our forgetting that we need it. We keep lapsing into ideas of self-sufficiency, or get impressed with our niceness, and so we lose our humility. Asking for mercy reminds us that we are still poor and needy, and fall short of the glory of God. Those who do not ask do not receive, because they don’t know their own need.”
 
As our journey with the Encountering God continues, perhaps this needs to be said: Those who encounter God do so because they truly desire to be in God’s presence.  

"Lord, if you choose, you can make me clean." 

Actually, the choice may be up to us.