The Too-Big Mortgage That Got Paid in Half the Time

The Lord said to Gideon, “You have too many men. I cannot deliver Midian into their hands, or Israel would boast against me, ‘My own strength has saved me.’” (Judges 7:2)

By the time you read this message, Old Union Church will have paid off the mortgage for our new building.  At a meeting on May 13, the session voted to cash in the building fund investments.  This money, together with the money in the building fund checking account and the expected profits from the garage sale and car cruise, are enough to pay off the final $26,000.  Generous donors and eager helpers at our fund-raising events enabled us to reach attain this goal far ahead of schedule.

Some background information may help you appreciate this accomplishment.  At a congregational meeting on June 2008, we voted to take on a $300,000 loan to build our fellowship hall.  The total cost of the project was $750,000, and we had raised $450,000.  It was not an easy decision to take on this loan, and many of us worried that it was more than our church could handle.  Construction began in October 2008, at the worst possible financially time for more than a generation.  The financial crisis that began the Great Recession took away a third of the money we had saved for the project.  In December we had to increase the loan by 50%, from $300,000 to $450,000, in order to complete what we had already started.  What had begun as a daunting challenge now seemed insurmountable.  And yet here we are, less than ten years into a twenty-year mortgage, making our final payment.

It would be easy to congratulate ourselves on what we have been able to achieve.  But if we do, we would fail to see God’s mighty action.  As I wrote in this column after we had to increase our loan, “If we could complete this building project on our own, where would the faith be?  But if we are brought to our knees and realize that the project will indeed succeed only with God’s blessing, then we are well on our way to living out our faith.”

When God called Gideon to battle the Midianites who had invaded the land, he mustered an army of 32,000.  But God told him that these were too many soldiers, and he whittled Gideon’s army down to only 300 men.  He did so in order that Gideon and his countrymen would realize that the victory came not from themselves, but from the Lord.  In the same way, when God called us to build, he whittled away our resources so that we would realize success could only come from his hand and not our own.  And now we see how God has provided for us beyond what we thought possible.

Paying off the church mortgage is only the most recent example of the astonishing things that God does in our congregation and through its people.  It is only the latest reminder that God is at work in his church.  As we make plans for the future of our church, and as we face challenges and opportunities in our personal lives, remember the lesson of The Too-Big Mortgage That Got Paid in Half the Time.

Christmas and Easter Christians

It’s just about that time of year again.  The faithful worshipers who show up at church every Sunday morning will once again be joined by “C & E Christians:” those who come to Christmas Eve and Easter services, but are notably absent the other 50 weeks of the year.  They make an easy target for clergy and for regular attenders.  These are the people who keep the church’s ministry and outreach going throughout the year, who deal with all the messy and complicated parts of church life: from Bible studies to community service to paying the electric bill to making sure the grass is mowed and the snow is shoveled.  I can almost hear the voices now: “Where are all these people the rest of the year?  Why do they think they can just show up a couple times a year and assume that the church will be here for them?  We could really use some more help to keep this church going.  If faith really mattered to them, they’d be here every week.”  And so on.

To some extent, these complaints are warranted.  Yes, a healthy and meaningful faith in God leads us to deeper commitment and involvement in his work in the world.  It is eager to learn more, to worship more, to serve more.  And yes, the church is an institution (among other things) that requires the participation and contribution of people to keep it going.  Even more importantly, however, is the message that is rarely spoken but underlies the cynical jokes made at the expense of the C & E Christians: we miss them.  We enjoy having them with us.  The life of the congregation is meaningful and exciting for us, and we want them to share it with us.  (Somehow, however, we tend to overlook the times and ways that people have been hurt, angered, or ignored in the life of the church.)

As true as all this is, however, sharing pews with twice-a-year worshipers is a testimony and a reminder for the regulars.  Sometimes we may get lost in the trees and fail to notice the forest that we’re in.  We become so accustomed to the ins and outs of our faith and of congregational life that we fail to remember the most important parts of all.  We gather to worship a God who took on flesh to share our humanity with us, and to redeem that humanity through his death and resurrection.

Christmas is meaningless without Easter, and Easter is irrelevant without Christmas.

Christmas is a celebration of God appearing in human form.  In the person of Jesus, divine and human are joined together.  In the defining words from the council of Chalcedon in 451, we worship Jesus Christ “at once complete in Godhead and complete in manhood, truly God and truly man… recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation.”  It is a divine mystery that theology can point to but never fully explain: how Jesus is both fully and completely God while at the same time being fully and completely human.  Perhaps uniquely among all religions (with the possible exception of the Hindu god Vishnu), the God of Christianity fully and completely shares our human experience.  We worship a God who knows personally the joys and struggles of what it means to be human.

Easter is a celebration of the redemption of humanity through the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.  One traditional way to understand redemption is that Jesus reconnects sinful humanity with its loving God; theologians have composed several “theories of atonement” to explain exactly how this happens.  I find meaning in the metaphor of a bridge: Jesus is the “bridge” that spans the gap created by our sin between humanity and God.  He reconciles the relationship between God and us that was broken by our sin.  But a bridge is only helpful if it is firmly anchored on both sides of the gorge.  A bridge that takes you only halfway across is no bridge at all.  If Jesus was only God and not human, or if Jesus was only human and not God, he would leave us stranded halfway across the span to reconcile God and humanity, and would not have accomplished the redemption we find in him.

The Christmas and Easter Christians may be on to something.  By adding their presence and their voices to these two special worship events each year, they help us to recognize their importance.  Without Christmas, the incarnation that it celebrates, Easter would be an action by God that never touches human existence.  And without Easter, Christmas would celebrate the creation of a “bridge” with no purpose.

So if you are a “Christmas and Easter” Christian, welcome.  I look forward to the testimony you will share, simply by being with us, about the importance of who Christ is and what he has done.  If you are a “regular” church-goer, make room in the pew and in your heart for those whom you only see twice a year.  They have something valuable to offer to us.

A Letter from the Apostle Paul

Archaeologists have recently discovered the following lost letter from the apostle Paul.

Paul, a servant of God who enjoys the status of education and Roman citizenship in the eyes of the world, but who finds his greatest worth as a child of the Father, chosen and beloved long before I could claim to have achieved this identity, and who is driven by the spirit of Christ within me to live as a citizen of his kingdom and to proclaim the joy of the good news of the redeeming love of Christ Jesus to a distracted and fault-finding world: to the church that seeks follows and enjoys his will, greetings.

I thank God every time I remember you in my prayers for the deep compassion you embody, not only within your fellowship but with all those in need whom you encounter.  I thank God for your generosity that is aroused in times of need, and for the joyful cooperative spirit you share as you work together in the name of Christ. Many lives far beyond the reach of your fellowship have experience the love, hope, and encouragement of God because of you.

The call of God the Father upon us all exceeds the imagination of any human mind. The exhortation of the Spirit upon our hearts seeks even greater compassion and engagement than we could know from our own sinful nature. And the actions of Christ Jesus are not limited to the deeds recorded in the Scriptures, but continue to move the mission of us, his beloved body.

For Christ did not set for us the example of a comfortable devotion marked by personal prayer, weekly gathering, and care for those close to us and similar to us. As commendable as these things may be, they are only the beginning. Your piety must lead you to action. Your awareness of needs that are close to home must drive you to seek out those whom no one considers to be close to them. Your study of my teaching must grow legs to carry you into a broken world so beloved by God that he left the glory of heaven to bring healing. And that healing comes almost always through his work mediated by the church he has established.

Look up from what is comfortable to see the uncomfortable path that God has opened before you. For God has not called you to a life of complacent worship and fellowship. He has already equipped you with all you need to be a beacon in the world, not only in in your community but wherever sinfulness and unrighteousness, injustice and impoverishment still dominate the lives of those whom Christ wills to share the blessings of new life.

Open yourself to the leading of the Spirit.  Do not be controlled by your sense of inadequacy, for all the riches and power of Christ are yours. Focus your attention not upon what cannot be done, but upon what God calls you to do. As you act in faith, he will accompany and empower all that you do in his name.

I commend to you my brother Peter, who carries this letter to you. Listen to what he teaches, but always with an awareness of his own imperfect understanding of The Way. Challenge one another as you progress more and more to the perfect knowledge and practice of the way of Jesus Christ, which will be realized on the day we will all encounter him face to face.

Greet one another with a holy hug or handshake.

Stronger Than You Think

To paraphrase the classic children’s song, “We are weak, but He is strong.”  We can never outgrow those words and the message behind them.  We never truly experience the power of God’s work in our lives until we acknowledge our weakness.  Otherwise, we keep pushing God out of the way and try to take control ourselves.  Once we abandon our prideful conceit that we have what it takes to manage our lives, we have opened ourselves for his power to work within us.  As Paul told his friends when he struggled with an infirmity in his life, “His power is made perfect in my weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

It is God who makes the sun rise, not us.  It is God who guides the course of planets and nations.  When we try to take matters into our own hands, we generally make a mess of it all, and eventually ask the Lord in humility to clean it up for us.  “Let go and let God,” as the old saying goes.  Don’t try to do for yourself what is ultimately in God’s hands.  Surrender your life to him.  Put yourself in his hands.  “Trust in the Lord, and lean not on your own understanding,” as Proverbs puts it (3:5).  We would all do well to live by these words

Perhaps, however, at times we learn the lesson too well.  While it is true that we depend upon the Lord for all things, and ultimately are powerless over the affairs of our lives, this does not mean that we should sit back helplessly and await God’s activity.  God will act; have no doubt about that.  But how?

I’m convinced that God prefers to act through his people.  He works his power by bestowing it upon the faithful, who then act in God’s name to do incredible things that no human on their own would be capable of.  It may be a great societal injustice, or a character flaw within themselves.  God could use them to turn their community upside-down, or to bring hope to a single person.

If you look at what God has placed before, and if you have heard his call to do something about it, you have several choices.  You can laugh at God and how absurd his plans are.  You can look around you for someone else to take care of it.  You can collapse in a pile of despair and depression, overwhelmed by the impossible.

Or, you can stand up.  You can claim the ability and the strength that God is giving you.  You can look the situation straight in the eye, and know that you can handle it with the Lord’s power at work in you.

Don’t ever hide behind the excuse that “I’m only human.”  You are a child of God.  He has given you, and all of us, responsibility to change the world, to change the lives of people around you, and perhaps most difficult of all, change yourself.

Yes.  We are weak and he is strong.  But that is not an excuse to hide behind.  It is a reminder that our weakness is irrelevant when we accept the strength he gives to us.

Helpful Suggestion or Harmful Criticism?

Years ago I learned something about myself that I try (sometimes successfully) to keep in mind.  When I talk with someone about plans they have or what they have done, I tend to focus on how they could improve it.  In my mind, I think I am suggesting how they can make something good even better.  Unfortunately, what they hear is criticism about what I think went wrong.  I’ve learned that people can hear my comments in the way that I intend if I begin by telling them what I appreciate about their work.  It’s best when I remember that the good quality of their efforts may not be as obvious to them as it is to me.  And I’ve learned that broad comments such as “You did a great job!” aren’t as meaningful as pointing specifics about what they did well.

I realized I still have a lot of work to do on this issue when I met with our student pastor recently to talk about a sermon he had preached.  He did an amazing job in so many ways, and the congregation members had nothing but good things to say about it.  But my brain automatically went to how his good sermon could have been even better.  I was surprised and saddened when I found out he had been dreading our conversation for that very reason.  I still have a lot of work to do in this department.

Unfortunately, I don’t think I’m alone in this endeavor.  Our church’s theme is “Encourage one another and build each other up,” but too often we discourage one another and tear each other down.  I know about comments that I believe people made with the best of intentions, but stung the recipient.  Some of the faithful servants in our church have confided in me about the criticisms they have received about their work, which sometimes even led them to question if they should continue in their labors.  I know of others in our congregation who choose not to get involved in the work of the church for fear that someone will criticize what they are doing.

Perhaps sometimes you may believe that a fellow church member is hurting our congregation by what they are doing.  If so, please put thought into how you can express your concern in a way that honors the value and worth of that person.

Other times, you have an idea about how their service in our church could improve.  Your thoughts may be exactly what we need to hear.  When you voice them, however, please be sure first to tell the person that you appreciate their efforts, and give specific examples.  Your words will more likely then be heard as an encouraging suggestion, rather than a discouraging put-down.

God often speaks to us through the voice of others.  You have the amazing opportunity to remind fellow members of your church family about the Lord’s great love for them, and the pleasure he finds in what they in his name, and the devotion they express in their service.  Your words of encouragement may be exactly what a struggling brother or sister needs to hear.

Are You an Ox or a Sheep?

Are you an ox or a sheep?  People in ancient times knew a lot about both of these critters, but these days they’re not as familiar to most of us.  However, they offer two different ways to understanding who we are, and how we can relate to God.

Sheep are led and fed; the shepherd guides and cares for them.  In return, they provide fleece, which becomes good sturdy and warm woolen clothing.  The sheep grow their wool without any effort and stress.  They simply go about their merry way under the care of the shepherd, and the wool comes naturally.  Research shows that sheep who are well fed and cared-for produce superior fleece.  And the sheep do it without any work of skill of their own.  It’s all up to the one who takes care of them.

Today’s dairy cattle live similarly to the sheep of ancient times.  The farmer monitors and manages their feed and living conditions, and the cows produce their milk naturally.  Good milk production comes not from the cows’ efforts or exertion, but from what the farmer does to care for them.

Oxen, on the other hand, are whipped and worked.  In the olden days, the ox was everyone’s powerhouse: pulling the plow, threshing the grain, powering the mill.  The ox driver pushed them to strain themselves and give their maximum effort to be productive.  Any rest the oxen received was simply so they could be more effective for their labor the next day.  The oxen endured difficult lives of hard work.  There were no green pastures for them; only the yoke and the stall.  The Bible frequently mentions the ox yoke as a symbol of oppression and punishment (for example, Exodus 6:6-7, 1 Kings 12:13-14, Jeremiah 27-28, and Galatians 5:1).

Scripture tells us that Jesus is our Good Shepherd (John 10:11), and we are sheep of his pasture (Psalm 100:3).  God did not intend for us to live like oxen; such an existence came from a life lived far away from him and his good plan for us all.

When we recognize God’s love and power in our lives, it is normal and healthy for us to want to respond by giving him our very best.  But the Lord is our shepherd (Psalm 23:1),who makes us lie down in green pastures and leads us to still waters.  He is not our harsh ox driver, driving us with whips and goads. The more closely we follow him and receive what he offers for us, the more fulfilling and blessed our lives become.  And what we offer to him in return flows as naturally from who we are as fleece grows on a sheep. 

God leads and feeds us.  As we follow him and receive what he offers, what we offer to him in return flows naturally from our lives.  Our service and devotion to him is not compelled with harsh discipline; it is rather an effortless response that flows from within.  For this reason, we discover joy instead of drudgery when we follow God’s leading, whether it is to care for those in need, express our faith to the curious, or act for justice.

Are You a Zombie or a Spirit?

As most people within screaming distance of Evans City know, zombie horror began in our area with George Romero’s movie “Night of the Living Dead.”  So as Halloween approaches, I have a question for you: would you rather be a zombie or a spirit?

Christians celebrate the new life that we know in Jesus Christ.  But in order to enter the new life of his resurrection, we must first die to the old life we once knew.  As Paul wrote to the Romans, “We were buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life” (Romans 6:4).  Paul goes on to describe how the death of our old life frees us from sin, which now no longer has control over us.

And yet we choose to live like zombies clawing their way out of the grave.  The problem with zombies is that they don’t know they are dead.  They stagger around with outstretched arms and soulless groans, trying to live a life they no longer have.  In the same way, we cling to what we used to have and what we used to be.  We seek fulfillment and enjoyment from the activities and interests that we had before we died with Christ.  And like zombies that can’t get enough flesh to eat, we are never satisfied.

Zombie Christians orient themselves to the pursuits of the old life.  Instead of realizing that they are dead, they believe that they must continue to live as they had before.  The only difference is that as Christians they try to restrict themselves from the excesses of the old life by putting up barriers and following “thou shalt nots.”  They ask “What can I keep from my old life and still be a Christian?” in the same way that zombies try to hold onto what few faculties they have that have survived the grave.

God did not put us to death with Christ in order for us to be zombies.  He took away our old lives because they were destroying us, and because they would never allow us to experience the joy, peace, and meaning that he desires for us.  The sooner we stop trying to live a life that we no longer have, the sooner we will enjoy the new life that Christ has given us.  God’s blessings come to us not as some sort of restricted or whitewashed version of the old life, but through an entirely new existence that basks in his love.

God has given us a new life by filling us with his Spirit, his very presence to empower us, to guide us, and to show us at all times that he is with us, and that he takes great pleasure in us.  The life of the Spirit opens us to possibilities that could not be possible of even conceivable before we died.  The always-new, always-amazing presence of God awakens in us the very essence of our humanity, and we discover for the first time who we really are.

So I’ll ask you again.  This Halloween, and for the rest of your life, do you want to be a zombie, or live in the Spirit?