March Madness

I got a chance to go to a couple of basketball games this week, part of the NCAA tournament and even though it wasn't a wise decision to spend the money on tickets my youngest son was on spring break and wanted to go watch Tennessee play so I did a financially foolish thing in order to spend time with him doing something we both enjoy. At least I am convincing myself that it was all about the relationship without any trace of selfishness. I know though that there were definitely mixed motives in my decision making, I can't take self out of the equation.

That is part of the problem with wisdom and the whole tree of knowledge of good and evil, our motives are constantly questionable, rarely altruistic. We have a couple of choices then, to abandon all hope of doing anything truly good or to realize that God's love for us and desire for us are what drove Him to die on a cross. Desire and gain aren't necessarily bad motives, but we have to sort out good desire from bad and redefine gain.

Jesus told his followers and would-be followers to count the cost, understand the risks, and then go all in. Paul was an amazing man in that way. In Acts 9 we are told that God said He was going to show Paul all that he would suffer for the sake of the Name of Jesus and then Paul took the job. Read 2 Corinthians 11 and you will see that what he suffered was more than most of us could even begin to imagine. We have a very different Christianity in the 21st century in many American churches, one without suffering as part of the equation. Too bad for Paul he didn't know he could rebuke suffering and that suffering is from the debbil (see the movie The Waterboy). He seemed to think that at least some of his suffering was from God to purify Him and change his desires. That kind of wisdom is in short supply these days.

Get Wisdom - but what is it?

Wisdom, it seems to me, is applied knowledge, skillful living. It is embracing truth as a lifestyle not just intellectually. The problem is in the sorting out of the incredible supply of information we receive in order to get at truth, and in particular, unchanging truth. Many of the "truths" I learned in school seem not to be truths at all. I am not suggesting anyone was dishonest in my education, just that they were wrong about how things work. Primarily that has to do with advances in research but it could be that we just have to admit that we can't know everything with the degree of certainty we believe we can. There are certain propositions we state as categorical truths today that we find later to be not as clear as we thought at the time.

Wisdom is in the sorting out of information to get at truth and then living by the truth. In all that process belief is involved. In today's world. global warming requires belief when conflicting science is presented, belief is required that the economy isn't going into the tank, belief is required that the war in Iraq was based on legitimate intelligence reports, and all of these then lead to a commitment in life to the truth that falls out of those belief systems.

Sometimes it seems that faith is slammed because it is based on that which is not seen and therefore thought to be delusional, but all of us have faith in something whether we can name it or not. We believe that concepts like justice and truth exist at all and that requires faith that either of those are part of the universe. Why should there be justice or fairness? Wisdom, to me, is the recognition that since there is a universal will to justice and truth it must exist somewhere and then seeking after the author of it all. Could random mutations in any way lead to the justice we believe in? Is survival of the fittest a justice concept we are committed to or is doing unto the least of these the concept that captures our hearts and lives. Survival of the fittest is a power concept not a servant one.

Wisdom then is what GK Chesterton said, "Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid."

Wisdom and Understanding

So what is the genesis of wisdom? There was certainly wisdom on display in the lives of many in the book of Genesis: Noah, Abraham, and Joseph are wonderful examples of men whose wisdom led them to greatness. In all cases, wisdom was displayed in their lives by hearing God's command and obeying it. Can we say then that wisdom originates with God, particularly in His Word? Wouldn't wisdom on our part then be obedience to that command? If we would live wisely we would follow God's commands for the conduct of our lives, love the Lord your God with everything within you and love your neighbor as yourself. We think we know how to do that yet do any of us keep that first command well?

We are told that Solomon was the wisest man in the world and that all the world knew of his wisdom and that the queen of Sheba particularly came to Israel to see this wonder. We are also told the genesis of this wisdom in 1 Kings 3 when the Lord told him to ask for anything, similar to some of Jesus' words that anything we ask in His Name will be granted to us. What was Solomon's request? "Give your servant therefore an understanding mind to govern your people, that I may discern between good and evil, for who is able to govern this your great people?"

That request puts us back into the garden. He asked the Lord for the ability to discern between good and evil, not seeking it in books or learning or any other place, but from the Lord. We may not need the wisdom to govern as Solomon did, but what wisdom do you need for today? Seek this wisdom of the Lord, knowing that this is a prayer that pleased the Lord. It is a prayer that is obedient to Jesus' command in Matthew 6 to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness. If there is one thing I need above all else it is wisdom for the journey and the journey actually begins in this prayer.

The Beginning of Wisdom

The word Genesis simply means beginning. The book begins with the words, "In the beginning God..." It makes sense then that if all things began at God's initiative then He has greater wisdom than anything that comes after those words. If that is logical, then why did Eve think fruit could impart greater wisdom? Wouldn't something have to demonstrate its wisdom in order to hold the promise of sharing it? We can't make fun of Eve as simple or foolish if we do the same things. Think about some of the superstitions in our world that believe in the power of inanimate objects and you'll see that we haven't advanced far beyond Eve's belief in the power of fruit.

Those of us whose worship regularly includes a celebration of the Lord's Supper are familiar with the verbs Genesis uses for Eve's actions in the garden. They are simple but they are so familiar to me that they jump off the page, she took and ate. We use the words that the Gospels tell us Jesus used at the Last Supper, "Take, eat." There is a huge difference between these two taking and eating moments, not the least of which is that Eve took and ate in disobedience to the Lord's command to not take and eat of that particular fruit while the disciples (and we) take and eat in obedience to His command. Jesus also did one other action that we don't see in Genesis, he blessed the bread. Eve couldn't ask God to bless what she was doing and she knew it.

We are told again and again in the Old Testament that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. How would the fear of the Lord have been wisdom in Eve's case? For her and Adam, fear came later, after they had disobeyed. Fear isn't just adoration, it is also acts as restraint if we believe that sin has a price. What is the price of sin in our lives? For Adam and Eve there was, in addition to being tossed out of the garden, a relational price in their relations with God and with one another and it only got worse in the second generation.

Knowledge and Wisdom

In preparing for my Easter sermon I got to thinking about what exactly the cross means in a cosmic way. It relates back to the beginning of time, in the garden. God took His time in dealing with original sin. In the Old Testament when sin got really bad, there was a flood that wiped out the earth (Genesis 6.5 - The LORD saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.) Not too many generations later we get the tower of Babel and the division of people by language due to the arrogance of mankind. God's people had to wait in Egypt for over 400 years before the sin of the inhabitants of the land of promise was great enough that there was no hope of repentance and reformation. God hates sin but has incredible but not unlimited patience with sinners. His creation, particularly that part which bears His image, is of infinite value to Him. Sort of like the crummiest piece of furniture I own is the most valuable to me because it is the one thing I ever made on my own from my own plan.

I have spent a long time now (more than 2 years) teaching through the book of Genesis with a group of guys and I can't get away from it in my thinking. The temptation posed to Eve is that in eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil her eyes will be opened and she will become like God. When I read that I think about babies of all things. It is always fascinating to see a baby's eyes opened, not at birth but later when their field of vision expands and you can see that they get it at a new level. That is the promise held out to Eve by the serpent. The problem is that while it is wonderful to see the eyes of a baby opened it isn't long before what they see becomes spoiled by sin and the second opening of the eyes brings about not wonder and delight but cynicism.

Eve interprets this promise in an interesting way, and we have made the same mistake ever since. She believed "that the tree was to be desired to make one wise" (Gen 3.6). The mistake she made and that we make all the time is that the tree was a tree of knowledge not a tree of wisdom. Isn't there a huge difference between knowledge and wisdom or are we not yet wise enough to see that difference?

Easter 2008

Alleluia! He is risen! What a wonderful way to start a worship service, by proclaiming that to a congregation gathered to worship the risen Christ. The response to that acclamation by the congregation is, "He is risen indeed! Alleluia!"

We could do that every week since each Sunday is a celebration of the resurrection but we choose not to in order to focus on other aspects of His work at various times through the year. This season, which lasts until Pentecost, fifty days later, is the season of rejoicing each week over the resurrection of Jesus as the first born from the dead so we use that acclamation as the beginning of our worship.

Recently someone compared this pattern to legalism and I don't understand the comparison. It would be like someone asking me who I thought would win the NCAA basketball tournament, receiving my answer and then asking me if I took into consideration Peyton Manning. The two things have nothing to do with one another. The liturgical calendar we choose (important word) to follow ensures that we don't focus on one aspect of God at the expense of the full counsel.

The calendar gives my life a rhythm and pattern that I need. Since most of us don't live by the seasons as we did when farming was the norm, the only discernible rhythm to our lives (at least mine) was sports or school terms. I need an internal, spiritual rhythm as well that allows me to sync my life with the Word of God and the work of God.

Holy Saturday

The season that begins in Advent and ends at Pentecost is the reason I am an Anglican and this week is the most intense but also my favorite week of the year. I love the liturgical calendar that forces me both as a pastor and as a worshiper into setting the resurrection behind a veil for a time and immersing myself in the Passion. I appreciate the long season of Lent and its denial of some pleasures in order to make more room for God in my life and its culmination in the terrible but necessary crucifixion of Jesus prepares me to celebrate on Easter.

I have been thinking about that calendar the past couple of days and appreciating that it can roughly be divided into two grand divisions that correspond to the two divisions of the Ten Commandments, love God and love your neighbor.

This Advent to Pentecost round is the love God part, focusing on the birth of Jesus, the revealing of Jesus' identity, all that leads to the cross, and then the working out of life in the Spirit leading up to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The final Sunday of that round is really the following one, Trinity Sunday, when every preacher gets a test of orthodoxy to see how well they can walk the tightrope and explain the Trinity without lapsing into someone's pet heresy.

The second great division of the calendar changes the focus to how we are to live as ambassadors. I know many people prefer for me to preach week after week on their life but I am thankful that our tradition allows me to say no to that request. Our lives need to be re-contextualized by His life and we need to spend this long season when we focus on Him alone. We spend most of our time on this earth in self-centered ways, it is important to understand that we live in a Christocentric world when we become Christians, the same way His life was lived with one thought, pleasing and glorifying the Father. I am glad of this rhythm of life.

Good Friday

The promise of presence is what Moses said "yes" to and what sustained him all the days of his life in the wilderness leading the people. When God threatened to not go with them after the incident with the golden calf, Moses pleaded with the Lord that if He wouldn't go with them then He shouldn't send them out from that place. The pillar of fire that followed by night and the pillar of cloud by day had to have been a great comfort to Moses and to all the people.

What Jesus continually taught the disciples was the principle of abiding, the principle that Paul talked about when he said to pray without ceasing, being in constant contact and communication with the Father. Jesus promised that this intimacy we know as indwelling was possible and desirable if we continually seek Him. What would our lives look like if we were constantly seeking the presence of God? How many fewer phone calls would I make in a day if I honestly believed He was always available to chat with me? He promised that in their work of leading a new exodus that He would be with them (and us) always, even to the end of the age. We have the same promise Moses had and yet so often I avoid the Tent of Meeting with Him and seek counsel from others in a way I never see either Moses or Jesus doing.

The promise of presence is what makes the cross and the words, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me" so difficult. The intimacy and accessibility of the Father was broken, the presence was gone, and all because of sin, my sin, your sin. It was the worst moment of Jesus' life, that breaking of relationship as our sins were cast on Him. Do we experience the weight of our sin in that way? Can we not wait to repent in order to restore that intimacy or do we even know what that feels like?

Maundy Thursday

I can't tear myself away from Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3 and the questions, "Who am I?" and "Who are You?" because these are the questions answered definitively this week at the cross and at the empty tomb. I am the one for whom Jesus suffered and died. He is the God incarnate, man divine.

The mission we have been given is like the mission given to Moses and those two questions are the ones about which we have to be clear. Even when we know the answers, we need the promise of presence that Moses received and that Jesus gave the disciples, otherwise we are on a fool's errand.

I understand Moses' hesitation to get started on this work, he was a man who had failed in the past, once burned, twice shy. Over these forty years he had gotten over the notion of his own importance and had gotten comfortable in this bucolic life of a shepherd with a wife and family. There doesn't seem a high probability of success and in fact God promises Moses it won't be easy and in fact in chapter 4 says He is going to harden Pharaoh's heart so that he won't let the people go. After all that though, Moses decides to take on the job anyway. Sounds like what happens this week and the decision Jesus made to come down here.

19 March 2008

The second question Moses has for God is "Who are you?" This will answer the question Moses had been asked the last time he tried to help his people. The answer to this question is a bit enigmatic, "I AM who (or what) I AM." It isn't a name at all, it is the biggest description you could imagine because in Him is contained everything and nothing contains Him. All the rest of the revelation of God is creed, He is the God of their fathers, the God who delivered them, the God who gave them the land...the God whose Son was incarnate from the virgin Mary...died on the cross, rose from the dead...continues to be present through the Holy Spirit...will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead...whose kingdom shall have no end.

When John wrote his Gospel he included his own statements of faith, the first 18 verses of the book which end with, "No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known." What he says that Jesus particularly revealed about God was grace and truth. That doesn't mean that grace and truth were in short supply before Jesus came or that no one knew that about the Father until Jesus revealed it. Grace and truth were always the hallmarks of God's dealing with His people.

He chose Abraham and from him created a people, he remembered his covenant with those people and then through Moses redeemed them from slavery and entrusted His Name to them. Grace and truth were always part of the bargain. Grace is defined as "unmerited favor." There is nothing that tells us that Abraham or Moses or the people have done anything to deserve God's attention or mercy. David asked "What is man that you are mindful of him?"

The answer to Moses' question is overwhelming and in John's Gospel particularly we hear Jesus completing the sentence that begins with I AM in many ways, much like my name only begins with my first name and if I want you to understand who I am will require many other modifiers. Moses has just begun a conversation with God that will fill in the blank at the end of that sentence. This week, Holy Week, supplies the fullest exposition of God's character and nature and in the process we get the divine answer to the first question as well, "Who am I?"

18 March 2008

I can't help being struck this week as we move towards a celebration of Easter with the parallels between Moses and the Exodus on the one hand and Jesus and the work of the cross on the other. It was clearly something Paul saw and reflected on often as he returned to the image of slavery and bondage so many times in his writings to the churches.

Moses' first question is "Who am I?" He wants to know what God delivering the people has to do with him personally and how can he be a part of this whole plan, it seems silly that the man who has been a shepherd now for forty years will go to Pharaoh on behalf of anyone. There was a time, now long ago, that he thought he could make a difference, thought that his birth and preservation from the edict of Pharaoh to kill all the Hebrew male babies and taking into Pharaoh's own household had all been part of a divine plan. Surely over these forty years tending sheep for his father in law he had often thought how foolish he had been to believe anything at all, that all of that was simply some cosmic accident not a divine plan.

Don't we all want to know "Who am I?" when we pray to God? I know I want to understand why there have been times in my life when I thought I knew what God was up to and stepped out in faith and gotten burned badly. It makes you "turtle", afraid to stick your head back out of the shell. I have gone through periods when I just couldn't pray because of things like this, the questions I was asking of God weren't being answered (at least to my satisfaction) and I needed answers. I think Moses' question actually contained all those questions about the past, it reflected on forty years of "What the **** happened" back there in Exodus 2.14 when he was asked "Who made you prince or judge over us?" He wants the answer to that question, the last words he heard before fleeing Egypt.

God's answer is a non-answer but it seems to work for Moses. All God says is, "But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain." It seems that this was the same promise Jesus had, the promise of presence, and the same one He left with his disciples if they would continue the work (Matt. 28.20). Jesus went through all the pain of the Passion because of us and God was with Him, sustaining Him and then comes that horrible cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" I wish I could be so sensitive to God's presence that my sin caused me to cry out in such anguish of separation.

17 March 2008

When the people cry out to save them in the book of Exodus, we are told "God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew." That is all comforting that God hears and sees, remembers and knows.

The problem is that He didn't answer their prayers in the way they wanted Him to, at least not initially or for a very long time. When He appears to Moses in the burning bush God repeats all these same verbs to Moses and says I have come down to deliver the people and then, "Come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt." Why doesn't He just do it Himself? Why get a guy like Moses, who doesn't want to go anyway, involved in all this?

I know a bit about how Moses felt. The heroes of the Bible all heard God say, "Where are you?" and responded, "Here am I." Moses responded to God in the same way. The whole excitement of talking with God more or less went away when God told Moses what his marching orders were though. I am sure Moses was excited that God planned to deliver the people, Moses himself had heard and seen some things that prompted him to try and get involved forty years earlier and that didn't work out too well. He was understandably reluctant to try again.

It is one thing to know that God hears and sees us and knows our sufferings. It is often quite another thing to accept His solutions.

13 March 2008

In sorting through some of this I am struck by the reality that sometimes it requires what I would say is a certain amount of holy discontent with the way things are in my life to cause me to change. I like to think I am someone who is okay with change but what I see is that there are some things in my life that I won't change until the pain of not changing becomes acute enough for me to get past the inertia of complacency.

In our daily reading for the next week or two we are in Exodus where God sends the plagues on the Egyptians in order to make it possible for the Israelites to leave. It strikes me that in the beginning of the book the Israelites are slaves and aren't happy but when Pharaoh makes things more difficult for them they get mad at Moses and blame him for the "problem." Along the way in the years in the wilderness, they recall the time in Egypt with a certain wistful tone, and their memory of it gets better the longer they are in the wilderness. The things they remember are the things they don't have in the wilderness, not the bitter slavery of those days.

We tend to remember the good old days without the bad parts included. God has to give them commands regarding the Passover feast and the Feast of Booths which forces them to live as their ancestors did, i.e. not in permanent dwellings, for a period of time. Both those festivals require them to participate by remembrance in the bitterness and difficulty of life their ancestors had. It is only through that participatory remembering that they are able to celebrate with joy their new situation in the land of promise.

It seems to me that inertia is our biggest enemy. God is calling us to more or less constant change for the better and we find our place of comfort and settle in, look at the couch or chairs in most people's houses and you can see that physically as true. Pain is often what we need to start moving again.

10 March 2008

When I read the story of the raising of Lazarus (John 11) I am always astounded that John tells us first that Jesus truly loved Martha, Mary and their brother and begins his next sentence with: so when he heard Lazarus was sick he stayed where he was two more days. It seems completely ridiculous to say he loved them all so he didn't show up when they really needed Him. The reality is that this fits more with my life experience of God.

I have lived long enough to have had times of intense disappointment with God. There have been times in my life when nothing made sense at all and there has been one particular time when that lasted almost five years. In that time I blamed myself for turning my back on Him when I first thought I was called into ministry and believed this was my punishment. I had just come back to Him after more than a decade of walking apart and had experienced the sweetness of forgiveness and suddenly my world crashed in around me and the only explanation that worked was two-fold, I was being punished and God was incredibly cruel. My thoughts veered back and forth between the truths I knew about God and my experience of Him being dramatically different from those truths. Believe me when I say I know what it means to send a message to God and His response is, "I'll wait a while and let this get worse."

I realized in this last week with some disappointments in my life that some of that stuff still needs to be healed, there is residual doubt in my life that still processes like George on Seinfeld, believing that on the verge of "success" (however that is measured in life) God will snatch it away. I know better but that idea still nags around the edges and all it takes is a little disappointment for it to rush back into my heart and head.

8 March 2008

When hard things come, we all become like the disciples in John 9 when they see a man born blind, we look for answers to the question "Why?" We like things to have specific causes not general ones. The disciples asked who sinned and ventured guesses of either his parents or the man himself. Too many Christians think exactly like this, something is wrong there must be blame to affix. If I can figure out why something isn't what is should be in someone else's life then I don't have to think any more about it and my world doesn't have to make room for it and I can give myself a pass on stepping into the situation in any way.

When stuff happens in my own life that hurts, it is much harder for me to deal with it. I can plead my own case and know that the answers aren't as simple as they appear to outsiders. I have to think about it all the time and the answer to the why question no longer really matters, I just want to fix it, or better yet, I want God to fix it.

How much time do you think the man born blind had given to the question why? Strangely, he seemed okay with the premise that it had happened simply so that God could display His work on this day, forty years later. How long does our own pain have to last before we can say okay to that answer?

7 March 2008

As a Christian I believe in a fallen world on a theological level but at a personal level it is often painfully apparent that what I really believe in is something else. Theologically I am clear that "the fall" means that things aren't the way they are intended to be and that they won't ever be until the kingdom of God is established. It is one thing to know that and quite another thing to live it.

I have a built-in expectation of "fairness" that causes me to get upset with God when I am affected by unfairness and injustice. Unfortunately, that same sensor is less affected by unfairness and injustice to others and sometimes my own pain is God's wake-up call to me to look and think beyond myself. It reveals to me just how self-centered I am and how I fail to be thankful for all that I have.

It is when I see this in myself that I marvel at Jesus. I see His life and His words being consistent in a way that I almost never see in my own life. My faith sometimes seems disembodied from my life, especially when it comes to God's sovereignty over all things in a way that I never see in Jesus' life. I like sovereignty better as a doctrine than a reality because I like control.

As we move towards Holy Week, I wonder if there is any hope that I can begin to live like Him, allowing myself to trust the Father that all things are working together according to His plan, even when they are painful for me in the moment.