Preparing for Worship

 

Worship is the most important thing that we do as humans.  After all, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism puts it, our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  We worship God individually and as families, but our weekly gathering to worship together is central to our lives as Christians.  When something is important to us, we want to prepare well for it.  For example, we put more time and effort into preparing the Thanksgiving dinner than we do for a typical lunch on a typical Tuesday.  In the same way, it’s important for us to prepare well for our Sunday worship.

 

So, what do you do to get ready for worship?  Of course, there are practical, down-to-earth things to take care of.  If you are joining us in-person for worship, you have to get dressed and drive to the church in order to arrive in time.  If you join us by livestream, you have to log in to Facebook on your computer, notebook, or smartphone, go to our group page, and hope that everything works as it’s supposed to.  If you join us by phone, you need to dial in, enter the access code, and hope that I remember to start the conference call.

 

But preparing for worship involves much more than the mechanics of getting yourself to worship, in-person or virtually.  Worship preparation includes the important work of preparing your heart and spirit to enter into the presence of the Almighty.  If you are worshiping at home, preparation may include creating a mini-sanctuary space of your own, free from distractions.  You may want to include something like a candle or a cross to help focus your attention on the Lord.  If you are worshiping in the church, preparation for worship may mean taking time to sit quietly in the sanctuary and direct your thoughts toward God’s presence.  No matter where you are, your worship preparation may include praying for those about to lead worship and for those who are worshiping with you.  It may include disciplining your mind not to wander toward other demands in your life for the next hour.  You may want to read the Scripture passages, prayers, and words of the songs that will be part of the service.  You may want to review the names of the people for whom we will be praying, and to consider any prayers that you may want to share during the service.

 

Our ancestors in the faith understood the importance of worship preparation.  Psalms 120-134 are known as the “songs of ascents.”  Traditionally, they were sung by pilgrims as they ascended the hills surrounding Jerusalem in order to gather at the temple for festivals.  We can find inspiration in their words to help our spirits “ascend” into the Lord’s presence ourselves as worship time draws near.

 

Entering into the Divine Presence for worship is nothing to be taken lightly.  It is not only our duty, but our honor and great privilege, possible only because of the redeeming work of Christ, who has made us worthy to come before the Lord.

A Season to Prepare

 While the rest of the world thinks that this is Christmas-time, we Christians believe differently.  And because we’re the ones who created this holiday, our opinion ought to count for something.

The church actually has a whole calendar of its own, complete with seasons, to guide our worship of the Lord throughout the year.  The Christian year begins with Advent, the season we’re in right now, to guide our expectation and hope of the Lord’s coming.  Advent is followed by the Christmas season, which begins on Christmas day and ends on Epiphany, the holiday celebrating the visit of the three wise men.  (The “twelve days of Christmas,” by the way, are the twelve days from Christmas to Epiphany.)  The next season is Lent, 40 days of reflection and repentance leading up to Easter.  Our Easter lasts for 50 days until Pentecost.  And the rest of the year is known by the lackluster moniker of “Ordinary Time.”

The name of our current season, Advent, is derived from the Latin word for coming or arriving.  Everyone around us is singing that “Santa Claus is coming to town,” while we declare that the Lord Jesus is coming.  My recent series of sermons and devotions considered the promise of Christ’s return that we find in the book of Revelation.  Our world may be a crazy, messed-up place that brings heartache and grief (especially in 2020!) but we look to the time when Christ will return to destroy the power of evil and death and to gather his people to himself.  The day is coming, but in the meantime we wait.

We find guidance for our worship and devotion to the Lord as we await his second coming by revisiting the words and events of those who awaited his first coming so long ago.  Isaiah and other Old Testament prophets declared the message of the coming Messiah, and individuals such as Mary and Joseph displayed great courage and faith in the events leading up to his coming.  My sermons during this Advent will focus on John the Baptist, the person God sent to prepare the way for Christ’s coming.

Our observance of Advent suggests a reflection on two questions:

1. How am I preparing myself for Christ’s coming?  Unlike Santa Claus, Jesus does not keep a naughty list and a nice list.  He offers his grace and love to all who open their hearts to him.  The problem for us is that after we’ve opened our hearts to him, we close them again so easily.  Repentance, or turning our lives to Christ, is not a one-time event.  It is a continual act of preparation.

2. How am I helping others prepare for Christ’s coming?  We each in our own ways share in John the Baptist’s work of preparing people to receive our King.  No one but the Holy Spirit himself can bring a person to Christ, but he does his work through us.  We can make the most of the opportunities and gifts he sends our way to help others discover “the wonders of his love.”

Perspective

 It’s time for us to reset our sense of perspective.  Perspective, literally, is when nearby objects seem larger to us than those that are far away.  I demonstrated perspective to my granddaughter recently by holding up my thumb and asking her to compare its size with some cars in the distance.  We both knew, of course, that the cars were bigger than my thumb, even though from our point of view my thumb seemed larger.  One of great advances of the Renaissance was the use of perspective in art.  Before then, artists portrayed everything as the same size, regardless of how far away they were.

 

Many things in our lives appear to be bigger and more consequential than they really are, simply because they happen to be what’s right in front of us.  An everyday household chore may seem to be more important than our relationship with a distant friend, because we see the sink full of dirty dishes but the friend is only somewhere in the back of our mind.  It is good, of course, to have a tidy kitchen.  But friends are more important than plates and bowls.  We know that, but somehow we struggle to find the time to make the phone call or send the email.

 

As we travel through this month of October, the upcoming election is going to loom bigger and bigger in our lives.  As rancorous and divisive as the political battlefield has become, it’s hard to imagine how things could get worse, but that very well may happen.  Already, political disagreements have caused tensions in families and have strained once-close relationships.  Angry interactions can no longer even be considered to be debates, because no one listens to anyone who doesn’t already agree with them.  All we seem interested in doing is yelling at people from “the other side.”

 

Perspective.  Cars are bigger than thumbs.  Friendships are more important than dirty dishes.  And people are more important than politics.  This is not just my opinion: this is what our Lord Jesus himself demonstrated in his atoning death.  Christ died for people.  In doing so, he not only revealed the incalculable preciousness of each person, but he increased our value by raising us up to be the children of God.  Psalm 49:7-8 tells us “No one can redeem the life of another or give to God a ransom for them – the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough.”  What had not yet been revealed to the psalmist is that there is only one payment that is ever enough for a person’s life; 1 Peter 1:18-19 proclaims “It was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed … but with the precious blood of Christ.”  Nothing on the face of the earth in the minds of people could ever compare to that.

 

Christ died for people.  He did not die for institutions or ideologies, for politics or positions of power, for countries or constitutions.  As important as each of these may seem to us, they cannot compare to the value of each person’s soul.  Your life, and the life of that person whom God wants you to touch with his grace and love, matters more than all the kingdoms of the earth or all the wealth of Wall Street.  I encourage you to keep this perspective in mind as we draw closer to November 3.

The God of Disruption

 

I love it when things go well and everyone gets along.  I’ll take smooth sailing over choppy seas any day.  But if you’re like me, I wonder if this prevents us from experiencing the fullness of God’s plans for us.

We Presbyterians are often accused of considering 1 Corinthians 14:40 to be the most important verse in the Bible: “All things should be done decently and in order.”  We prefer to cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s.  At times we may focus more on the way things are done and pay less attention to what needs to be done.

The God who inspired the words of 1 Corinthians 14:40 is the same God who overturned the money-changers’ tables in the temple.  That was hardly something done decently and in order!  Scripture is full of times when God used times of disruption and chaos in order to transform people and nations.  He uprooted Abraham and Sarah from their comfortable home in Haran to establish a new nation.  He used Moses to lead the Israelites for forty years in a desert wasteland.  He inspired prophets to speak jarring and sometimes offensive words to the nation’s leaders and people.  He tossed Mary’s world upside-down by turning her into an unmarried pregnant teenager.  He knocked Paul to the ground and struck him blind.  The list goes on and on.  Jesus himself did not accomplish our salvation by making sure not to make waves or offend anyone.

It’s no coincidence that our nation’s awareness of racial injustice and calls for action have arisen during the unprecedented disruption we continue to experience because of COVID-19.  This may be yet one more example of God’s transforming activity happening during disturbing times.

I learned a similar lesson a few years ago when I earned a certificate in executive leadership.  According to the experts, change only happens in an institution (such as the church) when there’s an optimal amount of discomfort.  If everyone feels happy and comfortable, no one is motivated to do anything different.  And if tensions are high and everyone is on edge, you can’t find the common ground you need to work together.  But if we find that happy middle ground of just enough disruption and tension, we’ll want to act and we’ll be able to work together as we do so.

At our denomination’s recent national General Assembly, some people wanted to propose some positive and significant actions.  But what they were proposing, and the way that they proposed it, didn’t align with the procedures in place to make the meeting run smoothly.  So they were silenced, and we’ll never know if God wanted to use them to lead our denomination in a new direction.  I wonder how many times and in what ways I, and we as a congregation, fail to follow God in bold and unsettling directions because we “just want everyone to be happy.”

Are you ready for God to shake up your life?

The Men from Mars

For roughly two decades, beginning in 1958, Old Union Presbyterian Church was home to a men’s gospel quartet known as The Men from Mars.  The group was very well-known in our region, and even today most people from that generation continue to speak of the group with fondness.  The Men from Mars performed on the radio and recorded two full-length albums and a 45 (for those of you under the age of 40, a 45 was a small record that only had a couple of songs on it).  The group received national attention and had the potential to become a professional group if its members had wanted to.  Speak with me if you would like a CD or mp3 recordings of their music.

As you listen to their music, it’s easy to pick out the high notes sung by first tenor Ross Karnes, who had been the church’s pastor when the group began.  You can also appreciate the deep bass voice of George “Jiggs” Fiel.  And of course you’ll enjoy the fine voice of lead singer and soloist, Lester Knox.  Otto Kalmeyer provides the piano or organ accompaniment to their songs.

One voice that is very hard (at least for me) to recognize in their rich harmonies is the one surviving member of the group who is still part of Old Union: baritone Ray “Zeke” Knox.  There are a couple of songs in which his voice comes out for a line or two, but otherwise he blends in with everyone else’s voices so well that I can’t pick him out.

One might be tempted to think “Well, if we can’t hear Ray in the songs, he must not have mattered much.  The group could have done without him and been a trio instead.”  Were you to think along these lines, you’d be gravely mistaken.  As I told Ray at his brother Lester’s funeral earlier this year, he had the most important part of all to play in the quartet.  Without Ray, nothing would have held together the voices of the other three members of the quartet.  He provided the glue or the backbone that held all the singers together in a way that enabled them to create such beautiful music.  Lester and Ross and Jiggs may have gotten praise for their individual voices, but that’s all they would have been without Ray.

Life in our church can be similar to the Men from Mars music.  There are certain prominent, easily-recognized roles that some people play: pastor, committee chairs, musicians, session members, deacons, and so on.  We are the “Lesters” of the church who get the attention and the notoriety.  But the most important roles in our church are the ones like Ray’s part in the quartet: rarely noticed or recognized, but critical for the group to keep together.  Like him, they are the glue or the backbone that allows all of us to be able to work together as a church family.  Without the contributions and presence of those who blend us all together into a marvelous harmony, the life of our church would be empty and fractured.

When you see Ray next, thank him for his gift of music, and for the model he provides for unnoticed but powerful ministry.

How Does God Guide You?

How does God guide you?  I suspect that we often don’t even seek his guidance.  We may not admit it, even to ourselves, but we function from what one author has called “functional atheism.”  In spite of our professed belief in God, we forget about him completely when it comes to the practical, ordinary events of life.  Instead, we trust our own intuition or ability to think through a situation.  Or, we may turn to a trusted expert (let’s check the forecast before scheduling the family picnic).  Other times, we’ll rely on superstition (wear those lucky socks for the Steeler game!) or blind chance.  Our first challenge, therefore, is to become more aware of God’s active presence in even the most minor aspects of our lives, so we can seek his guidance and instruction more fully.

But even when we have resolved to seek God’s guidance, we run into a second challenge.  How can we discern the Lord’s guidance so that we can follow faithfully?  Scripture, of course, is the “witness without parallel,” as the Presbyterian Confession of 1967 puts it.  The Bible, above all else, provides God’s authoritative instruction for life and faith.  Unfortunately, however, the Bible frequently does not include clear guidance for specific decisions you may be making.  It’s clear, for example, that you shouldn’t punch your neighbor in the nose when you’re angry with her.  But the Bible won’t help you decide how to manage the family budget or if you should trade in your car this year.

We are also able to discover God’s will for us through prayer.  And unlike Scripture, prayer is a means for God to provide us with tailor-made instructions.  Problem solved, right?  “Take it to the Lord in prayer,” as the old hymn puts it.  Well, not so fast.  God’s instructions through prayer may be specific, but our ability to recognize his instruction leaves a lot to be desired.  We easily confuse the Lord’s voice with what we think the answer “should” be, or with what we want the answer to be.  We often fail to recognize his voice in the midst of all the others that vie for our attention.  To complicate matters even more, God often guides in startling ways, challenging us to view our situation completely differently.  If we’re not prepared to be surprised, we may dismiss what God has to say.

In addition to the authoritative but general guidance of Scripture, and the specific but easy to miss guidance of prayer, God blesses us with a third means of guidance: the wisdom of other believers.  Even though we are all imperfect followers of the Lord, he often uses others to point us in the right direction.  Last winter I had two conversations that illustrated this point for me.  The first was with a member of our congregation who wished she could attend church, but is unable to because of her health.  As she put it, “I need the church to correct errors in my thinking.”  An hour or two later I spoke with another congregation member who was planning a dangerous course of action.  He told me, “I feel this is what God wants me to do, despite what others say.”  The first person appreciated how God “corrects our errors in thinking” through the wise advice of fellow Christians.  The second person refused to accept such guidance, and did so at his own peril (although I’m happy to report that he is safe).

Scripture, prayer, and the counsel of fellow believers.  With these tools at your disposal, may you be able to follow God more nearly this month!

What the World Needs to Hear

As a church, we have a radical message to proclaim to the world.  It may be easy, particularly for those of us who’ve been part of the church our entire lives, not to realize how shocking the gospel is, and to fail to grasp the enormity of the challenge that we proclaim it.  I’ve recently encountered two examples of how the gospel undercuts the messages in the world around us.

“God loves you.”  This simple statement can sound ridiculously simple, even trite, for those who have lived a long time with an awareness of God’s love for you.  But in my work as a pastor, I frequently encounter people who don’t believe it, or who can’t comprehend, as Ephesians 3:18 puts it, the width and the length and the height and the depth of the love of Christ.  Far too often, when I ask someone if they know that God loves them, they’ll respond with a comment such as “I hope so” or “I wish I could believe that.”  I recently spoke with someone who believed that God would reject her because of a deep-seated pain from her past.  And I recently spoke with another person who thought that God was angry with him for failing to meet a goal that was beyond his ability.  And these were both people who grew up going to church!  Never make the assumption that people can conceive of, let alone believe, the fullness of God’s love for us.  The burden of our own sense of guilt, or of criticism we have received from others, or of the need to “measure up,” hinders many of us from realizing the power of grace: God doesn’t need a reason to love us.  He just does.  Unfortunately, this good news is often undermined by well-intended church leaders who feel it necessary to emphasize our sinful condition apart from God’s love.  I don’t feel the need to point this out because in nearly 31 years of ministry, I have never met someone who was not already fully aware of their sinfulness.  But I’ve met plenty who doubt God’s love for them.

“God desires unity.”  If you’ve attended worship at Old Union Church even once during the past two months as we’ve been studying Ephesians (or if you’ve listened to my sermons on the website), you know that this is a pervasive theme throughout the letter.  But this concept is not limited to one book of the Bible.  For example, 2 Corinthians 5:19 tells us that God has given us the “message of reconciliation,” and Jesus’ final prayer with his disciples was that we may all be one (John 17:20).  We look forward to the day when all of creation will be united under Christ’s lordship.  No exceptions.  Someone who heard me preach this recently took great offense at this concept of unity for all people.  She proceeded to pepper me with outlandish claims about what “they” were doing, and that I am deceived if I don’t think we should do everything we can to oppose “them” with everything we’ve got.  But even if “they” are guilty of everything she claimed, Christ is nonetheless calling us to work for reconciliation toward the goal of unity.  I don’t think she’ll be listening to any more of my sermons, but unfortunately I suspect that she may find preachers who will support her divisive spirit.

God loves you.  God desires unity.  Such simple but profound truths.  The world needs to hear these words.  Our community needs to hear this message.  Some of your friends and family members may need you to help them wrestle with the reality of the gospel.

Radical Hospitality

Our church session is reading and discussing the book “Five Practices of Fruitful Congregations,” which our temporary pastor used during her time at Old Union earlier this year.  In November, we talked about the first of these practices: “radical hospitality.”  We commented on how important hospitality was in the culture that the Bible comes from, and as we prepare to celebrate Christmas we considered how scandalous it was that no one in Bethlehem shared hospitality with a woman about to give birth.

“Radical hospitality” means more than providing a warm welcome and helping someone feel at home, although it certainly includes that as well.  Hospitality becomes “radical,” or out of the ordinary, when we take the initiative to reach people, rather than waiting for them to come to our doorstep.  One example of such “radical” hospitality is the team of people from our church who go to a local foodbank each week to share conversation with the patrons as they wait for their food package.

Question: In what other ways can we initiate hospitality”?

Hospitality often includes an invitation; think of the invitations you are receiving for holiday gatherings.  Without the invitation, you wouldn’t know when to show up!  As the number of people who have never been inside a church continues to grow, our invitations can include a sense of what to expect, especially for those who don’t know a doxology from a benediction, or who may have had negative church experiences in the past.

Question: Imagine walking into our church for the first time.  Would you know where to go and what to do?

When an invitation is given with a sense of obligation (“you should, or you ought to”) it describes a duty to follow, rather than hospitality to receive.  A good basis for an invitation is a conversation about how the church has made a difference in your life.

Question: What excites you about our church?  What do you most appreciate about it?

Once someone responds to an invitation and comes to church, radical hospitality means taking the extra steps to let them know they are welcome and appreciated.  For example, someone recently moved from her regular seat to sit beside a guest during worship.

Question: How were you welcomed the first time you came to your church? What could have made the experience better for you?

          Hospitality continues once the guest becomes a part of the church family.  Some churches (and families!) send subtle messages to those who have recently joined, letting them know that they’re not part of the in-crowd yet, and that they must conform to our expectations, instead of being their true selves, before they are accepted.

Question: On a scale of 1 to 10, do you expect newcomers to conform to our ways of doing things, or do they change the character of our church with their unique contributions?

Taking Pictures of Squirrels

As part of my sabbatical earlier this year, I spent two weeks visiting national parks in Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico.  I hiked for a week in the backcountry of Canyonlands, then spent a day each at Capitol Reef, Bryce Canyon, Zion, Lake Powell, and Canyon de Chelly.  Although I am a Pennsylvania boy through and through, and I love the beauty of the Keystone state, I saw breathtaking scenery that filled me with awe.

Maybe too much awe.

Scenery that, at the beginning my trip, seemed majestic struck me as mundane and ordinary toward the end.  I found myself looking at majestic mountains and amazing rock formations and ancient petroglyphs, but my only reaction was “eh.”  I had already taken hundreds of photos of breathtaking scenery; why did I need to take one more?

I realized that I was experiencing what I dubbed “awe-fatigue.”  It’s similar to “compassion-fatigue,” which generous people feel after they have responded to one desperate need for help after another.  After a while you simply run out of the ability to respond with compassion to the victims of the latest disaster, because your tank of compassion has run dry.  In the same way, my ability to have my jaw drop in wonder and say “Wow, isn’t that amazing!” had reached its limit.

Then I saw it, as I was walking along the Virgin River in Zion National Park, swollen with flood waters from the melting snows in far-away mountains and surrounded

sheer cliffs towering 2000 feet over my head.  My fellow park visitors were captivated by the squirrels who scampered and begged for food along the footpath.  They oohed and ahhed, called their friends over to see, and stopped to take pictures.  Of squirrels.  Regular old gray squirrels, just like the ones you’ll find in any city park or backyard tree.  They were blind to the extraordinary because they were focused on the ordinary.

How often are we like tourists in Zion National Park, taking pictures of squirrels while ignoring the majesty around us?  God has placed us in an incredible world and has surrounded us with amazing people.  He constantly lavishes unbelievable love and blessing and grace upon us.  But we respond with “awe fatigue” of our own, noticing only the problems and difficulties, focusing upon the trivial when God thrusts the astounding right under our oblivious noses.

Today, take a moment.  Clear your mind of the clutter of everyday living.  Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and look at your life again.  Notice the astounding beauty.  Appreciate the blessings around you.  And most importantly, pay attention to the people in your life.  Notice how amazing and profound they are.

And give thanks.

Guerilla Blessing

How would you like to be a secret agent for God, involved in a clandestine operation to fill the world with his blessing?  Here’s your opportunity to begin sending the Lord’s grace into people’s lives without them ever knowing about it.  It’s easier than you may think, but it sends more of the Lord’s power than we can understand into the lives of people who need it more than they realize.

During my recent sabbatical, I was introduced to the practice of “Guerilla Blessing.”  All that it requires is a belief in the power of prayer, and the ability to care about other people.  Imagine that you find yourself among a group of strangers: other shoppers in the store, other drivers in traffic, other fans at a sporting event.  Randomly choose someone to look at, preferably without them even knowing it.  As you do, silently pray, “May you know joy.  May you know peace.”  Then shift your gaze to another person.  “May you know joy.  May you know peace.”  And then another.  And another.  “May you know joy.  May you know peace.”

As you spend those few seconds holding someone before the Lord, something will happen within you.  Suddenly that stranger will become a real person to you.  They are no longer “that white truck in front of me,” but a man whom you can imagine is tired after a long day’s work.  You may begin to wonder what kind of job he has and what sort of family he is going home to.  She is no longer that person with a shopping cart full of groceries in front of you in the check-out line, but somebody’s mother or daughter or sister or wife.  Is her heart full of happiness, or is she going through the drudgery of a monotonous routine?  Has she just had an argument with a friend, or will she get unexpected good news the next time she checks her email?

Your prayers of blessing, “May you know joy.  May you know peace” are effective, because they do not depend upon that person accepting them, or even knowing about them.  They make a difference because their potency depends not upon their awareness, or upon your knowledge of that person.  They depend upon the grace of the Father, who sent his redemption into the world through the death and resurrection of his Son.  He sent his redemption to us when we were not only unaware of it, but actively resisting his love.  Your “guerilla blessings” are a way for that redeeming grace to touch another person in a new way.

I learned about “guerilla blessings” while I spent a week in Chicago with a community of Roman Catholic sisters who spend their days praying for a city, nation, and world in need of God’s mercy and grace.  Each Friday they pray for a safe weekend in Chicago, painfully aware of the gun violence that takes so many lives.  On Monday they grieve when they hear the number of shootings have taken place.  But I am convinced that without their own form of “guerilla blessing,” that number would be so much greater.

Unseen Footprints

“Your path led through the sea,

     your way through the mighty waters,

     though your footprints were not seen.” (Psalm 77:19)

One of the things I enjoy about live theater, perhaps more than the actors themselves, is the stagecraft.  (Maybe it’s because I was on stage crew in high school.)  People work behind the scenes to pull off audience-pleasing effects.  They dart out, dressed all in black, when the lights are darkened between scenes, to reset the stage.  A good theatrical crew member is invisible, never seen or noticed by the people in the seats.

Similarly, movie production crews don’t want you to be able to tell the difference between live action and computer-generated images (or CGIs).  If the dragon seems as real as the Hollywood superstar riding on its back, the animators have accomplished their goal.  They don’t want people to realize that they’ve done anything at all.

Just like God.

The author of Psalm 77 describes his distress about feeling separated from the Lord.  He remembers his “songs in the night” and joy that God had brought into his life.  But now that joy is gone.  Had God forgotten him?  Had the Lord rejected and abandoned him in anger?  Eventually he finds consolation by remembering “the deeds of the Lord,” and his miracles from long ago.  Recalling God’s faithful actions in the past gives him the confidence in God’s continuing care and guidance that he needs to persevere.  Even though he can not feel the Lord’s power in his life, he knows that it is real.

Psalm 77 offers an encouraging perspective for those times when God seems absent.  When the psalmist considers God’s powerful actions in the past, he remembers how he parted the Red Sea to lead the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt.  As the 19^th verse puts it, God’s path led through the sea, even though his “footprints were not seen.”

As I read this verse, I recognize how God is invisibly at work during the times when he feels distant from me, and when his love seems as remote as a favorite song from long ago.  God has not rejected me or abandoned me.  He is not too busy keeping the universe spinning to remember little puny insignificant me.  I am never puny or insignificant or forgotten in the eyes of God.  And neither are you.  He is working mighty deeds and powerful actions all around us, all the time.  His blessings are present every moment of every day, and he pours his love upon us like the waters of Niagara Falls.  God does great things, but his footprints are not always seen.

You may not see God’s footprints in your life.  But he is acting in power to show his love and to change your life.

A Day in the Life of Pontius Pilate

He awakes, with his tongue hot and dry and his whole chest raw like a wound.  So even before breakfast he makes his first major decision.  While still in his pajamas, he walks downstairs to the closet where he keeps his extra cigarettes, takes out the two and a half cartons that he finds there, and puts them out with the trash.  There are the remains of a pack in the pocket of his suit coat and some loose cigarettes lying around the house in various places.  All of these he carefully destroys, slitting them with his thumbnail and flushing the tobacco down the toilet, so he wouldn’t be tempted to fish them back out of the garbage.  After dinner the evening before, the talk had turned to politics and they had been up for hours, talking and smoking.  This morning he is paying the price for it.  He knows all about the surgeon general's warning.  He has seen the usual photographs of a smoker's lungs.  He has been a three-pack-a-day man for over thirty years.  So his prebreakfast decision is a decision for life against death, and he sees it as his death that he slits open with his thumbnail and flushes away.

He is Pontius Pilate, of course: the procurator of Judea.  His day is starting out well, and he feels better for it.  He has just taken a step to become a new man, a better man, a man who can handle whatever the world brings without relying his tar and nicotine. Not even the morning paper, filled with stories of poverty, crime and corruption, upsets him as he leafs through it in the back seat of the limousine that carries him through the city.  As the car rolls along he glances out at the world from time to time through the tinted windows.  Children are playing in the dirt, heavily armed policemen patrol the streets, and beggars crowd the temple gates.  Other people could carry on about how rotten everything is.  But Pilate's business is to keep the ship afloat from day to day.  And he is not doing a bad job of it.  There are no major complaints from Rome.  The Jews are content.  And he himself, if not exactly happy, is happy enough.

When he was a young man, he dreamed of greater things than being a provincial procurator, but he could have done a lot worse.  His sons had the best education money can buy.  His wife keeps having troubling dreams, but she is in the hands of a good therapist.  Their marriage isn't what it used to be, but he keeps looking forward to the day when they can retire to the villa outside Ostia.  That will be relaxing.  But in the meantime, he has appointments to keep, and he keeps them.  When he arrives at the office, the sitting area is full of people waiting to see him, texting and tweeting on their phones, and reading old copies of Time Magazine.

The chief of the occupational forces is in a sweat because a Jewish festival is upon them and he expects trouble from the fanatics.  The Jewish God, not knowing which side his matzoh is buttered on, wants Rome out; he wants the peace that passeth understanding instead of the peace of Rome.  Pilate starts to reach for a cigarette, and then remembers.  He picks up a pencil instead and starts to chew on its eraser.  What passeth his understanding is the Jews themselves, who have never had it so good.  What passeth his understanding is how they can knock themselves out for a God who supposedly runs history, when history has run over them and left them as beggars in this strip of rock and desert that they call the Promised Land.  He orders the guard doubled around the temple and the whole garrison put on alert until the Passover passes over.

And the appointments continue.  The tax people are full of excuses for why the quota wasn't filled last quarter.  A man has a scheme to solve the city's water problem, which so happens to include Rome buying his property to build an aqueduct.  An epidemic is raging through the old slave district, and there are complaints about packs of orphans scavenging on the streets for food.  A few days ago there had been some kind of demonstration at one of the city gates with an up-country preacher at the center of it, and the Jewish leaders want to handle this troublemaker before things get worse.  But of course, because of some arcane religious requirement that Pilate really doesn’t understand, they can’t come into his office to speak to him.  With a grunt and a grumble, still clenching the pencil in his teeth, Pilate gets up from his desk and walks out to meet with them. 

Once outside, he takes the pencil out of his mouth and asks matter-of-factly, "What are the charges?"  One of the ringleaders stands up and said, "If he wasn't a troublemaker, we wouldn't have brought him here!"  Pilate sighs.  The day may have started out well, but these pesky Jews are enough to drive anyone to distraction.  With all of their strange customs, Pilate never comprehended the things that get them worked up.  And he didn’t particularly care, either. Now they bring a man in, someone who was supposed to be a messiah, whatever that is, and they won’t even tell him why he is such a menace.  But Pilate agrees to see the man if that’s what it will take to keep the peace.  If they want him to see their God, he will see him too.  The more the merrier.

As Pilate walks back to his office, he gets a call on his cell phone from his wife.  She’s had another night of bad dreams.  As she goes on, he can hear that she's crying.  And Pilate can picture her, sitting there with the phone cradled between her ear and her shoulder so she can light a cigarette like she always does when she starts to cry.  He can almost smell the smoke as she lights it and then starts talking again.  He tries to distract himself, to keep from thinking about the cigarette. As his wife talks, he stares out the window.  Down in the courtyard a ragged child is talking to a soldier.  On the windowsill a pigeon preens her feathers.  Finally his wife hangs up, and he swings back to the desk.

While he was talking, they had brought in the up-country preacher for questioning. Pilate is caught off-guard, and before he knows what he is doing he takes a cigarette from the box on his desk and lights it.  The man stands in front of him with his hands tied behind his back.  You can see that he's been roughed up a little.  His upper lip is puffed out and one eye is swollen shut.  He looks unwashed, and he smells unwashed.  Pilate is not sure if the man looks ridiculous, or if he looks pathetic.  If it were just the two of them, he would give the man busfare and send him back to the boondocks where he came from.  But the Jews think he’s trouble, so Pilate stands up and takes a good look at the man.  He can't quite explain it, but even with the swollen eye and torn clothes, the prisoner seems to carry himself with dignity.  There seems to be more to this fellow than there is to the ordinary fanatic. 

"So," Pilate says, "You're the king of the Jews."  He almost doesn't understand the man's reply, between his thick country accent and the split upper lip.  "Is that your own idea, or did someone else tell you that?"  Pilate flicks the ash off the end of his cigarette into the ashtray.  The trouble with these Jews is that none of them are willing to give a straight answer to a simple question.  This backwoods preacher is making him uncomfortable, as though he belongs in this office and Pilate is the prisoner.  So he tries to regain control with a more straightforward question.  "What have you done?"  But the man with the split lip doesn't give him an answer to that question.  Instead, he answers Pilate's first question. "My kingdom is not a part of this world."  He isn't sure what the man means by that, but he did catch the part about being king.  Finally, one of these Jews said something that he can understand.  "Oh, so you are a king, then!"  And the man replies, "You could say so.  I have come to bear witness to the truth."

Pilate has to sit down.  The day had started out well, but now everything is giving  him a splitting headache.  Maybe at a different time, in a different place, with a different person, Pilate would enjoy talking about truth.  Philosophy is one of his hobbies, after all.  But not with this fellow, who doesn't act the way prisoners are supposed to act.  Truth.  Why talk about truth?  Where did this guy get the idea of talking about truth?  Pilate takes a long drag on his cigarette, and with narrowed eyes and a cynical smirk he sneers, "Truth?  What is truth?"  He asks it half because he would love to hear an answer to the question, and he hopes this man has one.  He asks it half because he is certain that there is no answer, and that would mean he has one less thing to worry about.  But this man with the split lip gives Pilate no answer.  No answer except, with his one good eye, he stares Pilate straight in the face.  Pilate cannot match his gaze, and he hurries out to speak with the Jewish leaders again, leaving the man with the swollen lip and unsettling presence behind in his office.

He finds the Jewish leaders just outside the lobby, impatiently pacing on the sidewalk in front of the building.  When they see Pilate come out they gather around with angry, challenging expressions on their faces.  “Well,” they ask, “are you going to crucify him or not?”  Crucify?!  Who said anything about crucifying this fellow?  They save that kind of punishment for the worst of the worst.  At most, he needs to be gotten rid of quietly, not be made into some spectacle.  But no matter what he says, Pilate makes no headway with these stubborn men who surround him.  They demand nothing less than crucifixion.

It occurs to Pilate that perhaps it was not the best idea to leave the prisoner alone in his office, so he hurries back inside.  All this running back and forth takes a toll on him, so he pauses a moment to catch his breath before going back into the office.  Maybe it’s because of what all those years of smoking have done to his lungs, or maybe it’s because he simply doesn’t want to have to face the man again.  What was it about him? Not even Caesar himself could unnerve Pilate the way this – what was his name? – Jesus – did.

When he enters, Pilate finds the man staring out of his office window at the city below.  He looks sad, but oddly not for himself.  He seems to be more concerned about the people below than he does for what might happen to him.  He turns to Pilate as he closes the door, with the same piercing, inscrutable gaze.  By now Pilate is beside himself.  He desperately wants another cigarette to calm his nerves, but he knows it won’t do any good. 

Exasperated and frustrated, he shouts at the man, “Who are you?  Where did you come from?”  But the only reply the prisoner gives is that unsettling look, before he turns to stare out the window once more.  “Don’t you understand?” Pilate practically screams.  “Don’t you know that I could have you crucified if I wanted to?”  The man turns back, with an amused look on his face.  “The only power you have over me is what God has given you.  The people who brought me here are worse criminals than me.”  And then again, he goes back to looking out the window.

In his younger days, Pilate had fancied himself an athlete.  But all these years of smoking cigarettes and sitting behind desks have taken a toll on his health.  Wheezing and breaking into a sweat, he makes the trip back to the elevator, down to the lobby, and out the door again to confront the pompous fools who were making today such a nightmare.  “Fine!  If you want to string this man up, go right ahead.  Here he is!  I don’t care what you do, just get that man out of my office!”  And under his breath he adds, “And get him out of my life.”

Back in his office, some time and several cigarettes later, Pilate gets out of his chair to look out the window: the same window that the mysterious man had been looking out of earlier.  By now, he supposes, the troops are probably done beating the man and are on their way out the city to crucify him.  Sure enough, in the street below he sees the procession going outside of town.  He is surprised to see how many people are following behind.  Apparently this Jesus is more consequential than Pilate had given him credit for.

His mind goes back the question he had asked earlier in the morning: “What is truth?”  Not truth as in “what is right and wrong?”  But a different kind of truth.  The truth that shapes reality and brings meaning to existence.  What is truth?  What really matters?  What is at the center of what makes life worth living?  What gives purpose to governing a province, or trying to quit smoking, or saving up for a retirement villa in Ostia?

As Pilate continues to look out the window at the man being led to his execution, he is startled to see the man pause, for just a moment, and look up at Pilate as he is watching.  There is that look, one more time.  The gaze that penetrates to the depths of Pilate’s soul that he does not even know that he has.  This time, it drops Pilate to the ground, sobbing in tears.

At that moment he realizes that he had asked the wrong question.  Instead of asking “What is truth?” he should have asked “Who is truth?”  Now he knows the answer.  And he has sent him out to die.

Saved from and Saved for

We are saved by Jesus Christ.  This basic declaration of our faith takes on powerful significance this month as we remember how he won our salvation through his atoning death on the cross and his victorious resurrection from the grave.  Many minds much wiser than mine have pondered exactly how Christ saved us, and what this salvation means.  Although it ultimately is a glorious mystery that lies beyond full human comprehension, we celebrate this salvation, and we honor and worship the God who provides it.

As we prepare for the Easter season, I’d like to ponder three questions what arise as we consider our salvation in Jesus Christ.

1. AM I SAVED?  Unfortunately, many people worry about their salvation.  Have I done what it takes, or believed what I need to believe, in order to be saved?  This form of thinking probably arises from comparing the salvation that Christ provides with other desirable things: we have to earn them or deserve them.  The entire point of Christ’s self-giving love is that there is nothing we need to do receive, other than simply to open our lives to it.  If you want what Christ has to offer, it is already yours.

2. WHAT AM I SAVED FROM?  The simplest, most obvious answer is that we are saved from sin.  But that simply leads to another question: what is sin?  We commonly understand sin to be the acts of disobedience and destruction that we commit: those things that hurt God, others, creation, or ourselves, or which violate God’s will.  Christ has saved us from punishment for these actions, even if we still must face their consequences in our world.  But the Bible also portrays sin as the force that opposes the reign of God in our lives and in our world: it is the power of evil.  Christ’s death and resurrection has freed us from sin in this sense as well.  We are saved from broken relationships, from isolation from God, from fear and despair, and so much more.

3. WHAT AM I SAVED FOR?  We may not ask this question as often as we ask the others, but it may be the most important question of all.  Christ has saved us for a purpose, for a reason.  In salvation he equips each of us uniquely to serve him each in our own special way.  We Presbyterians in particular are aware that God has a plan for our lives: that our salvation is the beginning of a life lived for him.  God’s love for us extends beyond rescuing us from the terrible situations we find ourselves in, and which we often bring upon ourselves.  He loves us so much that he wants to include us in the great work he is doing to establish his kingdom and to bring all creation into the glory that he has prepared.  He loves us so much that he has chosen each of us, individually and as a community, to play our part in his great plan. 

As we travel together from Palm Sunday through Maundy Thursday and Good Friday to Easter, I invite you to contemplate not only what Christ has saved us from, but what he has saved you to do in his name and for his glory.

Spiritual Nutrition

Our 4 year-old granddaughter is learning about good nutrition in preschool.  She is now very good at pointing out what is “good” food (chicken, milk, vegetables) and what is “sometimes” food (ice cream, pop, cupcakes).  “Sometimes” food is, as the name suggests, food that you can eat every now and then.  But if you make a habit of eating only these foods, you’re not going to grow big and strong….just big and fat.

What’s true about physical food for our bodies is also true about spiritual food for our souls.  The sorts of spiritual influences you surround yourself with will affect the health and condition of your soul.  So what are you feeding your soul?

Some people enjoy the spiritual equivalent of twinkies.  They look appealing, taste good, and go down easy.  But they provide only empty calories that fail to support and active and healthy body.  Spiritual twinkies are the feel-good messages that surround us.  They tell us that someone else is the problem, and that “somebody” ought to do something about it.  They tell us that we are perfectly fine just the way we are.  Instead of challenging or stretching us with new ideas to ponder, they simply spit back out at us what we already believe, so that we can remain comfortably ignorant.

At the other end of the spectrum we find the spiritual equivalent of tofu.  While tofu may have its fans, most people find it as appealing as library paste…only not as tasty.  There’s no doubt that it’s healthy, but most of us find it so unappealing that we’d rather take our chances with greasy hamburgers and French fries.  Spiritual tofu has no interest in winning over friends: just speaking the hard-to-accept truths of life.  They convey the message that in order to be spiritually healthy, you must live a bland, harsh life devoid of any joy or excitement.  It’s good for you, but it’s not very good.

Fortunately, God loves us too much to allow us only the choice between twinkies and tofu.  He wants us to enjoy the goodness of the life he’s given us, and he wants us to find that enjoyment in what fulfills and strengthens us.  The spiritual nourishment that he offers is more like chicken soup: healthy and satisfying at the same time.  It will challenge and stretch us, but also provide us with joy and peace.  Just because something feels good does not mean it is God’s message of comfort for us.  And, just because something sounds challenging and difficult does not mean that it is God’s message of guidance for us.

Unfortunately, however, spiritual food doesn’t come with nutrition labels.  So how can you tell twinkies and tofu from chicken noodle soup?  Or, to quote 1 John 4:1, how can we “test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world”?  We can find a hint in John 10, where Jesus tells us that the sheep learn to recognize the voice of their shepherd.  The more time we spend listening to and for our Shepherd speaking to us, the easier it will be for us to recognize his words of guidance in confusion of the many messages we receive.

Finding a Balanced Self-Understanding

Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you (Romans 12:3).

Worship at Old Union Church each Sunday includes a Confession of Sin and Assurance of Pardon, because of the important message they give.  They bring to our awareness the key aspects of our relationship with God, which we can so easily slip away from.  Confession and Pardon provide us with an honest appraisal of who we are in the eyes of God, when our own self-estimation or the messages we get from people and influences around us can easily lead us astray.  It is our way, each week, to heed Paul’s advice to the Romans.

On the one hand, as Paul puts it, at time we “think more highly of ourselves than we ought.”  The human psyche does a wonderful job of glossing over our own faults and shortcomings.  We may be quick to point out how others are at fault, but we can usually find a convenient explanation for our own actions.  Or, we simply forget about the error of our ways or the faults of our character.  We surround ourselves with people who will puff up our ego and make us feel good about ourselves.

Confession gives us a healthy correction.  When we become aware in worship of the majesty of God, our self-pretension becomes exposed for the fraud that it is.  Confession reminds us, each week, that we are not holy and perfect.  We are not as wonderful as we think that we are.  Confession knocks down our pride, especially when it is based on an over-inflated view of ourselves.

On the other hand, Paul encourages us to think of ourselves “in accordance with the faith God has distributed” to each of us.  Just as our human nature may blind us to our faults, it can also magnify them to the point that we are overwhelmed by our inadequacies and faults.  Confession, if it is not balanced by an assurance of pardon, only drives us more deeply into the pit of self-doubt and shame.  Voices around us and from our past far too often accuse us of our sinfulness, and the guilt that we bear.

The Assurance of Pardon helps us to see ourselves in a different light: in the light of the faith that God has given to us.  The assurance declares that we are valued and honored in God’s eyes.  We are precious and beloved by the Creator of all things.  There is so much to us that fills God with delight and joy when he considers us.  The assurance reminds us of the great lengths to which God went so that we may enjoy the fullness of his love.

The Confession of Sin and Assurance of Pardon steer us safely between the dangers of pride on one side and of shame on the other.  If you think too highly of yourself, the Confession of Sin will humble you.  And if you believe you are worthless, the Assurance of Pardon will proclaim the goodness that God finds in you.

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.