Keep Christmas Real

Last month our church  youth group took part in “Alive Pittsburgh,” an outreach to homeless people held on the North Side.  Hundreds of volunteers and hundreds of guests spent the day together, meeting each other and enjoying the festivities.  The event included clothing give-aways, competitions and prizes, vision and hearing testing, haircuts, music, and food.  Our group was assigned to the prayer team, which meant that we got to spend time talking with the guests, getting to know them, hearing their stories, and offering to pray with them.

Of the dozens of people that my partner and I got to know, one couple touched me more deeply than the others.  I would guess that they are in their mid to late twenties, and if I had met them anywhere else I wouldn’t have had a clue that they are homeless.  They are living in a tent in a homeless camp in the city.  When I asked if there was something they’d like to pray about, they told me that they are expecting a baby.  We prayed for the baby and mother’s health, a safe delivery, and that they would find a place to live before the baby was born.  I couldn’t tell underneath her heavy winter coat how far along the woman was in her pregnancy, but the odds are that the baby will arrive long before the return of warm sunny weather.

As I reflected later upon my encounter with this couple, soon to become a family, I realized that the Christmas story isn’t so warm and fuzzy after all.  Mary and Joseph were much like the couple I got to know: worried about finding a safe and warm place for their child to come into the world.  The reality of Christ’s birth was much harsher than what is portrayed in the nativity scenes we’ll enjoy this month, complete with stables, friendly animals, adoring angels and worshiping shepherds. 

When we sanitize the Christmas story and convert it into heartwarming tale, we miss the entire point.  Jesus did not come to mingle with the satisfied, with those who will give and receive frivolous and extravagant gifts, with those who will gain ten pounds in December because of all the good cooking.  Jesus came to share life with parents giving birth in the cold, with families driven from their homes out of desperation or violence, with those whom everyone else ignores or reviles.

And when Jesus comes into our hearts, he turns them toward the “least of these,” as he called the suffering and abused people of the world in one of his parables (Matthew 25:31-46).  As we are transformed more and more into the image of our Lord, we are drawn more closely to those whose lives he came to share: those whom the world would rather throw away than acknowledge.

As we seek the coming of Christ during this Advent, may we care more about homeless parents than Christmas carols, more about refugees than tinsel and lights, more about the mistreated than a new pair of fuzzy slippers.

"The Nativity," by Gari Melchers

in my opinion, the most realistic depiction of Christ's birth:

an exhausted mother and a worried father

[PS: If you want to make a difference for the homeless in Pittsburgh, such as the couple I met, I encourage you to connect with LIVING Ministry.]

A Proposal to Reduce Hateful Speech

As I said in my sermon on Sunday, “Hateful words spawn hateful deeds and violence….  The shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill on Saturday proved that we cannot afford this kind of talk anymore.  It is too dangerous, it has real-world consequences, and it literally kills people.”

I see a great deal of hateful speech on Facebook and other platforms for communication, much of it motivated by politics.  I suggest the following strategy for us all to confront and challenge hate.

From my time in Ghana, I’ve come to appreciate how Christians and Muslims work and live together with mutual respect and care.  In the days after 9-11, some Islamic extremists tried to incite hatred against Christians in Ghana.  The Christians did not have to respond or react to it all, because the Muslim leaders immediately and strongly condemned the hatred that these extremists displayed.  May we follow their example in our political disputes.

It’s natural for us to condemn hateful speech coming from the other side of the political divide.  Doing so, however, only fans the flames of anger and division.  Instead, let’s police the extremist language coming from our own political tribe.  Conservatives, call out the hateful rhetoric of the alt-right and other right-wing extremists.  Progressives and liberals, oppose dangerous words coming from the far left.

It’s much easier to notice and point out the excesses of people with whom you disagree.  It’s much more productive, and advances the cause of peace and justice, to correct those who share your overall perspective.

This is one way in which we can honor those who died on Saturday, by doing our part to improve how we debate and disagree with each other.

Christian or Church-ian?

Peanut butter and jelly.  Salt and pepper.  Bread and butter.  Milk and cookies.  Macaroni and cheese.  Pancakes and maple syrup.  Spaghetti and meatballs.  My goal is not to make you hungry, but to think about things that naturally go together.  Some less delicious combinations include lock and key, socks and shoes, needle and thread, nuts and bolts.  I’m sure you can come up with many more examples!

However, we’ve lost the connection between two other things that go together as naturally as pencil and paper: church and faith.  From the very beginning of Christianity, it was impossible to imagine one without the other.  Those who put faith in Christ were part of the church.  And those who were in the church put their faith in Christ.

On the one hand, the experts tell us that increasing numbers of people claim to be able to live out their Christian calling individually.  They want no part of the complicated, demanding, and sometimes frustrating issues that come working together with other people.  These believers are quick to point out the many obvious flaws with “organized religion” and claim that they don’t need other people to follow Jesus.  While we do have a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ, that relationship constantly draws us into relationships with others who call him Lord.  By my count, Scripture offers about thirty “one another” commands: what we are to do together, and how we are to treat each other.  Without any exception in the Bible that I can find, when God calls someone he calls them to share life with others.

On the other hand, however, are the people whom I’ll call “Church-ians.”  They care deeply about their congregation and their fellow members.  These are the faithful who attend church regularly, give sacrificially, and show up at all the special functions.  They want the building to be good repair, the pews and Sunday School classes to be full, and the church accounts to run in the black.  As commendable as such values may be, they are merely empty husks if they are not motivated and empowered by a love for the Lord. 

Just as the Bible encourages to live out our faith in community, it also condemns empty deeds of religiosity.  Isaiah railed against those who come near to the Lord with their lips, while their hearts are far from him (29:13).  Jeremiah mocked those who celebrated in the temple of the Lord while their lives were utterly divorced from his teaching (7:1-11).  Jesus himself offered a tongue-lashing against those who maintained and promoted religious institutions and practices but utterly missed the mark when it came to love and devotion (Matthew 23:13-39 and Luke 11:37-52).

If you count yourself as “spiritual but not religious,” I challenge you to investigate how the Bible teaches us to live out our faith together.  And if you are devoted to the health and well-being of the church, I challenge you to consider what motivates that devotion.  Either way, you will discover a joy of living that’s better than hugs and kisses, healthier than soap and water, and more inspiring than the sun and moon.

Biblical Authority?

Most Christian groups claim the Bible as our ultimate authority for understanding God and his will for our lives.  But we don’t always act that way.  I’m not speaking about the fact that studying the Bible is more like a good idea than actual practice for many of us.  That’s true, unfortunately, and for decades pundits have bemoaned the decline of Biblical literacy in our churches.  There is another, subtler issue at work in the way we study the Bible, when we actually take the time to crack it open and read it.

Philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer compared the way we read the Bible, or any other book, to how we play a game.  You have to play a game by its rules, or you just won’t get the point of the game.  For example, you can’t tackle someone during a basketball game, and roll a six in Monopoly and move five spaces.  In the same way, when you read the Bible you need to enter its world, so to speak, to get at its meaning.

That’s harder to do than it sounds.  We often come to the Bible with our own ideas, values, and priorities, to find out how it answers our questions.  But if the Bible truly is an authority for us, we ought to go one step further and allow the Bible to teach us what really matters.  The questions and issues that we think are so important may not really matter for the way that the Bible describes life and faith.

For example, many people wonder if we will recognize our loved ones in heaven.  We miss them terribly and hope to be reunited with them.  The Bible, however, is frustratingly vague about this issue.  Apparently that’s not a big deal in heaven, no matter how important it seems to us here on earth.

Many churches consider homosexuality to be a foundational issue upon which Christians must take a stand.  Congregations have left denominations over this issue, and many churches include it on the “What We Believe” page of their website.  However, this topic is barely footnote in Scripture, only mentioned a handful of times.  If the Bible truly is our guide, why would we get bent out of shape over something that it treats so trivially?  And why do we blithely ignore other concerns that the Bible discusses often and in great detail, such as economic justice for the poor and observing the Sabbath?

Such fascination with arcane trivia in the Bible jumps into overdrive when it comes to questions about Christ’s return.  “End-times” topics such as the mark of the beast, the rapture, and millennialism arise from brief, and my opinion often misunderstood, allusions in Scripture.  They are certainly not the central themes in the Bible’s description of our future hope.

I’ve even heard people say that the key to understanding all of Scripture can be found in an obscure verse in Genesis that describes how the “sons of God” had children with the “daughters of humans” and gave birth to the Nephilim.  God did not give us Scripture as a puzzle or mystery to solve.  His desire is for us to submit ourselves to the Bible’s own priorities and values, and reflect on how we can live them out in our lives and in our world.

How Was Your Day?

“How was your day?” That’s the question my wife and I often ask each other in the evening as our days wind to a close.  I’ve noticed that my answer to that question each day focuses on how many tasks I accomplished, or on the quality of the work that I’ve done.  On a good day I may tell her about a meaningful hospital visit, and on a day that didn’t go quite as well I may describe how I’ve fallen behind on the things I want to get done that week.  In other words, I evaluate the quality of my days according to how much and how well I worked.  And because my life is composed of the days that I live, this means that I consider how good of a life I am living based on how productive I am.

The grace of Jesus Christ sets us free from “works righteousness:” the belief that in order to be set right with God we must obey his law perfectly.  As we read in Ephesians, “It is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast” (2:8-9).  The redeeming work of Christ, through his death on the cross and his resurrection from the tomb, has opened the way for us to enjoy the fullness of a loving and blessed relationship with God.  We do not need to prove ourselves to God, and we do not need to earn our salvation.  We need simply to put our trust in Jesus, and God sees us as righteous and holy.

This is the core of our Christian faith.  And yet, I find myself slipping into a sort of works-righteousness that is based not upon how well I follow the Ten Commandments and the rest of the law, but upon how well I am able to make progress on my to-do list.  A “good day” means that I’ve scratched some things off the list, and a “bad day” means that I’ve fallen behind and wasted opportunities to achieve the goals I’ve set for myself.  On the theoretical, spiritual level I wholeheartedly believe that my worth comes from the loving favor of Jesus Christ.  But on the day-to-day practical level, I live as though my value as a person depends upon what I’ve done.

Certainly, God wants us to be productive and hard-working, just as he wants us to follow his commands and obey his will.  But he considers us to be “precious and honored” in his sight (Isaiah 43:4), and to be his beloved children (1 John 3:1) because of what Christ has done on our behalf, and not upon anything we have done or ever could do for ourselves.  His love for us does not depend upon what we do, or upon how much we do.

If you’re like me, it’s time for us to redefine what makes for a “good day.”  Instead of evaluating our lives by what we have accomplished, we can consider instead how much of God’s love we have experienced.  On a “bad day,” our struggles and preoccupations may cloud his glory from our sight.  But on a “good day,” we recognize his goodness in every whisper, in every shadow, and every stirring of our hearts. On a good day, we realize how deeply our Father loves us, and we know the presence of the Spirit within us.

Ready for a Change

The church has changed dramatically over the past decade or so.  These changes have happened not only at Old Union, but in churches within our community, across the Presbyterian Church, and throughout our nation.  The church is no longer the respected institution it used to be, and participation in a church is no longer a common expectation and regular part of people’s lives.  Even the definition of a “regular attender” has changed from someone who might miss one or two Sundays a year, to someone who is in church three out of four Sundays a month.  Here at Old Union we’ve seen worship attendance decline, and the average age of worshipers increase.  In other words, we are just like most churches in our nation.

Old Union is moving into uncharted territory, as we seek to be faithful to the mission God has given us in a changing society.  We could wring our hands in despair, or we could try to swim against the stream to bring back the “good old days.”  I’d like to suggest instead that we work together to pay attention to what God is doing, what he continues to call us to do, and how we can respond in faith.  The challenge is to adapt: continue to be who we are as we enter a strange new world.

From the reading and research I’ve done on this issue, I’ve realized that Old Union has all the pieces in place for us to do this well.  The experts say that for churches to adapt to new situations, they need several things.

1. TRUST: We are church that recognizes its leadership to be faithful, competent, and capable.

2. STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: We connect our lives with each other in harmony and compassion.  And we easily include new people into our church family.

3. SENSE OF PURPOSE AND VISION: Our theme verse, 1 Thessalonians 5:11, gives us a clear understanding that our mission as a church is to “encourage one another and build each other up.”  I hear people repeat this phrase often (and just at the conclusion of worship!) as we talk about the work and life of our church.

4. ACTIONS THAT MATCH MISSION: We do not merely say that our purpose is encouragement and up-building; we live out these goals individually and as a congregation.

5. PRAYER: The life of our church, and the lives of its members, are bathed daily with healthy doses of prayer for God’s guidance, mercy, and strength.

No one, other than God, can tell us what the future will hold, because our present situation is completely unlike any that we can remember from the past.  The way forward for Old Union is not to try what worked a decade or five ago, or to attempt quick fixes or to tinker with how we do the things we continue to do.  God is calling us into a future that we know nothing about, by remaining true to what makes Old Union what it is, as we trade the comfortable and customary for the difficult and unfamiliar.

Do we have the courage to seek and to follow where God is leading us?

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.