Lent is coming soon and it will inspire a good fast. That’s good, because I could use one. But until then, I think I am determined to receive whatever I am served at whatever table I am seated to see God revealed. Last week was a feast.
Valentine morsels
Monday it was linguine, Mexican linguine at Paloma. (I don’t understand their brand, but it was delicious). My Valentine told me she was going to let the conversation flow wherever it flowed and enjoy it. She gladly wore the bracelet I bought her from the Eyes Gallery, which is always full of Mexican oddities. (Do you detect a south-of-the-border theme?) The blessing was easy to spot in the surprisingly good pasta: many Valentine’s Days and deep, comfortable love. Given where we come from and our native incapabilities, that is no small blessing.
Quesadilla morsels
Tuesday it was a quesadilla at ten o’clock after buying a minivan. I have the van sitting in the garage waiting to be driven, waiting for grandchildren to grind chocolate into it, chocolate I probably shouldn’t have given them. The quesadilla asked the question as I impatiently waited for the cheese to melt, “How much are you going to pack into this week?” The voice of Jesus was in the quesadilla.
Brotherhood morsels
Wednesday morning it was the granola of brotherhood with the band of cell-leading brothers at Morning Glory. Their partnership seemed like a sudden development. Suddenly everyone loved one another and was committed to the group like it is life-saving. It made my yogurt especially sweet to be with them. In spite of all their professional and family pressures, they want to have a life in Christ that makes a difference.
Neighbor morsels
Wednesday night it was limp pasta at the Gold Standard with my neighbors. We decided to have dinner together rather than just meet for snow shoveling. My one neighbor was ready to tell stories about Vietnam and gang life in North Philly. We were focused on his seventeenth and eighteenth years. They were entertaining years. Jesus was in the entertainment, in seeing people who I don’t normally see just the way they are, in offering understanding, and in waiting for love to do what love does.
Team morsels
Thursday noon it was spanakopita with the pastors in the Lebanon Farmers Market. (No kidding). I could have had the Kenbrook Camp lunch but we evacuated to visit Jonny’s mother (thus preventing his early demise). She has an Egyptian-food stand in the market and served us what undoubtedly amounted to the entire day’s profits. Delicious. The pastors are deliciously spiritual and committed to one another. The conversation was deliciously spiced with talk about Coptic Christians in the midst of Egyptian upheaval. Jesus was definitely at the table. Rich fare.
Cell morsels
Thursday night it was a horseradish chip at the cell meeting. My cell knows I am repenting of my weird dietary habits this year, but what is a few chips going to hurt? They also know I rarely leave the supermarket without buying something I have never eaten, like horseradish-cheddar potato chips. God was in the being known and still being loved.
Family morsels
Friday it was the family feast for the twins’ birthday — toddlers and babies everywhere, new houses and new developments, faith stories, disappointments, negotiations about how to be a clan. Again, even while washing every dish in the house afterward, it all seemed like a blessing. I am so happy it is all right to come to our table and tell the latest miracle story about how someone bumped into Jesus by bumping into one of us.
Friend morsels
Saturday it was overpriced burb food with friends who are worth suffering bad food for. We were shooting for PF Chang’s and ended up at Redstone (don’t bother – but then, I realized I am very spoiled by Philadelphia food). Jesus was especially in the tales of woe that surfaced, and which were received, and which benefited greatly from being told in a place where one is sure to be loved.
Mission morsels
Sunday it was a carb-feast with the women of Shalom House and their Guidance Team (I look forward to meeting the men of Shalom House, soon). Jesus was easy to see in the vision of their listening tour, and in the creativity around the table. In the desire to see big things happen, it is often easy to overlook just how big it is to participate in what is happening already!
Grandchild morsels
Then, Sunday night, Josiah made sure I got one of the Tootsie Pops on the snack table. That’s a big deal to me. Papa needs a Pop. Being loved by a child loosens up the hard candy shell around my inner child.
This week, I honestly hope my spiritual food is not accompanied by so many calories. But I am encouraged to consider each morsel as a gift and have a feast of love when the babaganoush and diet cherry Pepsi are passed to me like bread and wine.
This poem reflects the theme of our benefit last Friday night that promised to uncover the “real” St. Valentine. I’m not sure the event did that, and I am not sure this poem does much better, since it references later exaggerations as 3rd-century fact. But my valentine said it needed to see the light of blogosphere day. So I offer it to you.
The first almond blossoms had begun to green
when the Goths began to mass in the north.
Emperor Claudius, the Butcher, turned his eye
to the budding men of Rome’s underground.
Where love flowered, he put down his boot
and forbade the young men to seal their vows,
“Rome is doomed if her imperial needs
Are thwarted by the demands of squawking babes.”
The church in Rome had grown like a wild vine,
and tending it was a priest named Valentine,
who was blind to the edict and married the church
and included the faithless in proclaiming their faith.
The powers quickly found his garden of grace,
burst in and beat him beyond recognition,
then buried his love even deeper in their prison,
where forty-six captives soon sang praise by his side.
The jailer’s blind daughter in the first dew of spring
had never seen a flower or the first light of day.
The saint prayed again and light spread further;
his last words to Julia: “From your Valentine.”
On the day lovebirds mate in 269, they say,
the guards dragged him to the place of execution.
For marrying against the emperor’s order
he lost his head in a final spray of blood and love.
The powers rage against the blossom of covenant:
each spring a new war, each day a deeper blindness,
every season of time a new martyr to take a stand
in the ever-foolish cause of revealing God’s image.
Emptiness, yearning, incompleteness: these unpleasant words hold a hope for incomprehensible beauty. It is precisely in the seemingly abhorrent qualities of ourselves — qualities that we spend most of our time trying to fix or deny — that the very thing we most long for can be found: hope for the human spirit, freedom for love.
This is a secret known by those who have had the courage to face their own emptiness. The secret of being in love, of falling in love with life as it is meant to be, is to befriend our yearning instead of avoiding it, to live into our longing rather than trying to resolve it, to enter the spaciousness of our emptiness instead of trying to fill it up. — Gerald May in the Awakened Heart.
Fear of emptiness
It is hard to see emptiness as a friendly place. Our whole quest as a society is going the exact opposite direction — filling up our houses and storage units with stuff and our schedules with activities. I think a lot of us have sex in a vain attempt to fill and be filled. Gerald May is talking about something with which we are not very familiar.
I was struck with my own fear of that empty place in me when I reflected on our meetings last Saturday. At the monthly training I was surrounded by 50-plus loving people; then at the Leadership Team meeting I was with dear comrades, among whom are some of my closest friends. Yet I still came away feeling distant and fearful of my emptiness. I expected something from the meetings I did not get. I wanted to leave with joy, motivation and faith. There was so much joy, motivation and faith in the room, one would think it was hard to resist! I’m not saying I did completely resist. But the meetings did not satisfy my yearning. In fact, they seemed to heighten it.
I thought it might be helpful to name what we often feel in the middle of the sea of goodness and grace in which we swim.
Impossible expectations
As I said at the meetings, I seemed to meet a series of seriously empty people looking for fullness last week. They were making careful assessment of Circle of Hope (and me!) to see if we were likely candidates to meet their need. I resented being assessed like that. And I was sure I did not meet the test, which made me feel inadequate and guilty. But I relate to the search. I feel sorry for the seekers like I feel sorry for myself. When you’ve been hollowed out by drugs or other addictions, when you went to your parents and found them wanting or neglectful, when your mate broke your heart, the emptiness can feel desperate. We certainly don’t want to look somewhere that is going to injure us again! Our insides make definite demands, even if we don’t want them to!
I am often in a quandary as to what to do with myself. Much more do I wonder how to talk to someone else who appears at the door empty and ravenous and yet picky about the food served, even resistant to being fed. If we do not lose ourselves to find ourselves in Jesus, we are just full of it — that is, we are full of impossible expectation. I don’t always have a good solution for people who haven’t gotten to the end of thinking they can fill themselves up, or that they will be filled up if they just hook up with the right person, if they find the right community, of if they get a few friends. It will not all be better.
I know my life is not better until I enter the spaciousness of my emptiness and meet God there. The wide plain of our loneliness is the homeland of the Holy Spirit. Let’s be kind to ourselves as we realize this. As obvious as the thought might seem, the reality of moving that direction is excruciating. Rather than being merely irritated with the hungry packs sniffing the air around us for connection or running away from the fear of lack of it, let’s stay near each other and help one another with the terrors of life in the Spirit.
It is Menno Simons Day. If you would like the 90-second recap, you can find one here. (I love the tone of the narration!)
Some people say that the amount we encounter in a week of the 2010s is like what we might have experienced in a year of time past. For instance, Hilary Clinton felt the need to call unprecedented meeting of all her ambassadors this week to try to get a handle on the U.S. response to the upheaval in the Middle East and North Africa — things are changing fast. On Menno Simons day (died Jan 31, 1561), it is good to remember that many years in the 1500’s were like last week in Egypt. Without social media and technology, change took longer to take hold in the past, but it was no less earthshaking. Menno Simons struggled for many years with how to respond to the new opportunities for faith and action that came to him as a priest in the crumbling Catholic Church of the Netherlands.
A delegation of Jesus-followers who wanted a radical way of life, came to Mennon Simons and asked him to be their leader. He became a leader in the Anabaptist movement upon request. The delegation came while the memory of Munster was fresh. Radical reformers took over that city and tried to usher in the second coming by force. Simons had a more reasoned and gentle way, and he promoted that way the rest of his life. Get the whole story here.
He told the delegation who asked him to lead the scattered Anabaptists that he would pray about the matter of his leadership. When they came again, as he says in his writings, that he surrendered his “soul and body to the Lord … and commenced in due time … to teach and to baptize, to till the vineyard of the Lord,… to build up His holy city and temple and to repair the tumble-down walls.” He was re-baptized soon after his withdrawal from the Catholic Church in 1536. By December 7, 1542, one hundred guilders were offered by the authorities of Leeuwarden for the apprehension of Menno, who appeared by night at different places to preach and baptize.
Menno Simons turned away from mere tradition and became Bible-centered in all his beliefs and practices. Once he had turned to the Bible, he took it for the Word of God and made it the cornerstone of all his work. His writings are filled with Bible quotations. His approach to the Bible differs from that of other church-reformers in the 1500s. For Simons, everything is, above all, Christ-centered. Every book and every little pamphlet he wrote has this motto on the front page: “For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ” (1 Corinthians 3:11). Christ-centeredness marks his theology and the practices he derived from the Bible. Discipleship, or a fruitful Christian, life was very strongly emphasized.
Also emphasized was the fact that discipleship does not take place in a vacuum or as a matter merely between the individual and his God, but rather within the congregation, the church of Christ. Menno’s faith is therefore not only Christ-centered but also church-centered. His chief concern was the living in the true body of Christ. Again and again he refers to 1 Corinthians 12:13, 25-27, and Colossians 1:18-24. The prerequisites for being part of the church according to Menno are regeneration and willingness to bear the cross of Christ. These two are inseparable. Discipline was as natural in the church of Menno Simons as any normal function of the healthy body.
Menno Simons was one of my heroes of the faith when I was first becoming a Christian as a history major in college — I ended up being a history-of-Christianity major! As I met my ancestors in the faith, I kept meeting people in every era who seemed to “get it.” The majority of the church might be adapting to whatever political or philosophical emphasis dominated the world, but God always had someone who notably kept the true faith and fed his or her era with it. Menno Simons was one of these people.
Today, among the many things he has left us in our inheritance from him, I offer four exhortations that match his convictions:
Pay attention to how the Lord wants us to respond to the times. Be afraid, if you must, but don’t let fear stop you from obeying your heavenly vision.
Take the lead. Simons did not think he had it in him, either. True leadership may be less about charisma and more about consistently doing what needs to be done.
Be Christ-centered. As the Egyptians are demonstrating, regimes and ideas come and go. What we can demonstrate is that the word of Jesus is everlasting. The word is not about “god” or “values” it is about the Lord.
Build a real church. This is the Anabaptist genius that I appreciate the most. The majority of the reformers in the 1500’s either cleaned out the Catholic church and kept the framework, or made up an alternative wedding between state and church with better theology. The Anabaptists took the reform movement to its radical basis and tried to live it out. I’m still impressed that they were so much the church that the authorities wanted to arrest them! May our authorities see us as that real and so not them that we pose a threat.
The LORD will extend your mighty scepter from Zion, saying, “Rule in the midst of your enemies!” Your troops will be willing on your day of battle. Arrayed in holy splendor, your young men will come to you like dew from the morning’s womb. Psalm 110 (NIV 2010)
Last night a collection of the Broad and Washington men got together for their somewhat random public meeting. I was encouraged to see their sincerity.
In many sectors, men have a bad reputation: callow, dominating, selfish, unreliable, even unnecessary. Look at many sitcoms and men are represented in such an unflattering light that one wonders if they have any dignity left at all. But the men gathered last night belied such stereotyping. They had some stuff.
Psalm 110, a “royal” psalm extolling the virtues of King David and all kings that follow in his footsteps, includes characteristics one would hope for every God-lover, woman or man. But today, I feel like building up the men, who are under attack, in some ways, these days, and who need to bring what men bring to their families, their congregations and their friendships. The mission is healthy when the men have faith and share it.
So here are four things I see in this psalm for the men to put on.
Being aware of the enemies. Gwen gave me a little snippet from the research the other day that explained why female babies (like Lulu!) are much more likely to give us eye contact than their brothers. The boys have an instinct for looking at the horizon and scanning the territory for enemies. Or they are looking for antelopes for dinner. I don’t know if this is true. But the body of Christ certainly could use some awareness of the territory and some decent hunting.
Putting on holy array. “To be arrayed in holy splendor” probably seems kind of a crazy image to many men. They are arrayed in the same sweatshirt for six years (as I am as I write in mine from the 2004 Eagles NFC championship!). Black, drab nondescript, anonymous clothes are what sell year after year. It is almost like we’ve gone Confucian: “the tallest stalk of grain gets the overseers riding crop.” It takes some audacity to aspire to holiness and wear it shamelessly, without being proud, just being real.
Coming from the womb of the dawn. There is never any hint in the Bible that men don’t need women, or vice-versa. Coming from a womb is a good thing. The “womb of the dawn” is a beautiful image of creativity and eternity. The workmen are downstairs right now having their version of giving birth in my second floor bathroom (which finally got to the top of the rehab schedule after 15 years of gestation). The plumber was very excited last week to reveal the faucet he had ordered! He loves the restoration he is effecting. When the men are excited to create, holiness breaks out.
Bringing the dew of their youth. In a dry land like Israel, dew is a crucial source of water. In a dry spiritual landscape like the Northeast U.S. the God-generated youthfulness of spiritual awareness is what the men need to bring. When we go to battle against the powers that seek to enslave us, the Holy Spirit undermines their tired old lies and clumsy tactics with the ever-newness of living water. The young in years bring it physically with their courage. The old in years bring it with their character and wisdom. Together they are a transformative tribe.
Psalm 110 is a splendidly uncynical picture of hope in a new king, a picture of God’s fecundity in a dangerous world. I pray that all men (and women of course, but today is focused on the guys) would take on their birthright as sons of God, not giving in to the diminution of their dignity that the world is foisting upon them. How great it is to be seen as dew from the morning’s womb!
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean. Matthew 23:25-26 (For a great dramatization, check this out from Jesus of Nazareth)
Inside the cup
The “cleaning the inside of the cup” part is on my mind today. One reason for that is that I’ve done a lot of cleaning lately. I had a moment to continue my ongoing cleaning-out of the Shalom House basement the other day – that man had the best stuff buried in the debris he left! I have a construction project going on in my house, so that part of my life is pretty dirty. And Circle of Hope BW just hired a new cleaner (thanks, Lord!).
My parents were big on cleaning, so I am kind of picky about it. That’s mostly because they were picky with my cleaning abilities, not because I find some moral purpose in having things spotless! One of my specialties in the family housekeeping was floors. My father, the bosun’s mate, was a passionate trainer for cleaning floors. For him, the use of brooms, even mops was a purely-preliminary step for swabbing the deck. No floor was clean until one got down on his hands and knees and scrubbed. If brushes (down to toothbrushes) were necessary, they should be at hand.
And the big thing, the thing that separated real cleaners from pretenders, was the art of rinsing. Here is the theory for rinsing: Even if one doesn’t use soap, the goal is to extract every bit of soapy/dirty water off the floor, get it ALL into the bucket and out the door. (And don’t spill it on the back porch or your mom will slip on it when she gets back from the store). Do not, under threat of unpredictable repercussions, just spread that dirt around into an even layer that makes it look like the floor is clean. If Dad is running around in his socks and undies (which he will be!) the evidence of your sloth will be quickly discovered.
Spiritual cleansing
While floor cleaning may be a subject for me and my therapist, thorough spiritual cleaning is a good subject for Jesus and me. It is tempting to just sweep the dirt here and there in our lives and never get it into the dust pan and out the door. Our relationships, our leadership, our societal obligations show even more evidence of random sweeping. We spread more toxic dust with our wifty attempts to appear tidy than we accomplish cleaning, most of the time. Much more is it challenging to get down on our knees and inspect the floor for the layers of waxy build-up and grime that we can’t see, it is so far under the nose on our face that is so plain. It is even more challenging to give the floor of our hearts a good scrub, dump the bucket far outside our spiritual house and be ready for living water.
I hope my metaphor is doing more than entertaining you. Along with all the personal dirt you should stop sweeping around, we should all get out our dustpans and clean up the mess building up around us. For instance, today should be called “national racism day” in honor of Martin Luther King. The whole country keeps sweeping that sin around. It is not just the sin of being mean and depriving people of their rights. It is the sin of losing sight of what a clean floor looks like. Behind racism is the sin of imagination-deficit. It is the sin that makes us blind to what we can do to make a difference, like making a friend with someone who is not immediately likely to be our friend, like letting our anger about societal lies and injustice boil over, like Jesus. I know you have heard this before. But I don’t know why Jesus is the only one who seems to notice his socks are dirty.
Pundits are working overtime on the attempted assassination of Gabrielle Giffords, and I certainly do not intend to become another one. But as a leader in the church, I think it is important to help people think through what is going on in the world.
Forced into privacy?
So often, these days, the church has a “private” sphere of existence to match the privatized faith of its members. Christians in the United States do not generally practice the conviction of Anabaptists and consciously stay separate from the godless ways of the world. They are more likely to be driven into privacy by the unacceptable nature of their “views” and the supposed irrelevance of their faith. That pressure is reinforced by legal and public-school teaching that faith is just a personal choice or preference and has no objective value.
I told the congregation last night that they may be increasingly called upon to have objective value in a society that is increasingly frayed at the edges. When the society is committed to domination by violence — as the U.S. has been for over a decade in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere, when the policy of the government is to flood the country with guns in the name of “freedom” and “rights,” when the political discourse is about winning and not about the common good, where the police are increasingly militarized death dealers, expect the forces of evil to be more bold.
Will Loughner’s death worship wake up the powers?
I hope Jared Loughner’s attack results in some common sense governance. If the government bans hand guns and stops the revolving door treatment for mental patients that will be great. I am not anticipating the U.S. government to abandon deeply entrenched convictions, however.
As for the church, I hope the attack wakes us out of our general acquiescence to the spirit of the age, drives us out of our preoccupation with arguing about human rights and nonessentials, and convicts us to speak the truth in love to a fearful and endangered people. We followers of Jesus have a lot to say and demonstrate in relation to this attack to a population subject to death.
Apparently, alongside his other problems, Jared Loughner was religious. He had a shrine to death in his backyard, according to the Daily News. Police investigators had seen the symbols before. Parts of the media and Arizona Republicans are rushing to label Loughner in scientific terms as “unstable” and dampen down his ability to make a rational choice. That is likely to prove true. But along with being influenced by his psychological issues and the political maelstrom our leaders have created, he was apparently influenced by evil quite directly.
Lead us not into temptation
One of the main benefits I derive from being a Christian is that when I pray, “lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil,” I can expect a reply. Loughner was apparently praying the opposite. He had already given over to temptation and was assigned to deliver evil.
We won’t be able to overcome evil with evil, as is the general policy of the government and domination system. We won’t be able to overcome evil with scientific explanation – especially when the government won’t contribute enough to mental healthcare to respond to the explanations. We will have to overcome evil with good, or it will not be overcome.
That’s where we come in as followers of Jesus. The system dominates us and explains us away, too – and who knows when the millions of guns may be turned on us! But we have the response of God to our cries, seen in Jesus and resident in His Spirit, to help us receive good and to offer good. I hope this incident helps wake us up to how necessary we are.
Just owning our value as God’s co-workers makes a difference. Acting creatively to speak the truth in love in troubling times makes even more of a difference. Whether we have a cogent commentary to offer about current events or not, we can certainly tell our story about Jesus and the reality he has revealed to us. He said: “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33)
And we are put on earth a little space That we might learn to bear the beams of love. William Blake
“I think William Blake was right about the purpose of humanity; we are here to learn to bear the beams of love. There are three meanings of bearing love: to endure it, to carry it, and to bring it forth. In the first, we are meant to grow in our capacity to endure love’s beauty and pain. In the second, we are meant to carry love and spread it around, as children carry laughter and measles. And in the third we are meant to bring new love into the world, to be birthers of love. This is the threefold nature of our longing….
Choosing love will open spaces of immense beauty and joy for you, but you will be hurt. You already know this. You have retreated from love countless times in your life because of it. We all have. We have been and will be hurt by the loss of loved ones, by what they have done to us and we to them. Even in the bliss of love there is a certain exquisite pain: the pain of too much beauty, of overwhelming magnificence. Further, no matter how perfect a love may be, it is never really satisfied. The very fulfillment of a desire sparks our passion for more; sooner or later we discover a deepened yearning within what felt like satisfaction. Even in their beauty, the beams of love can often seem too much to bear.” Gerald May in The Awakened Heart
I am signing up for getting hurt again this year.
Who’s with me?
I have a lot of resolutions on my list, again. Some of them are the same as last year. But at the top, I am putting, “Suffer.” I mean, suffer with Jesus, the Son of God who is love.
I don’t mean that in some grandiose way, as if I were Jesus. I just want to use the capability I have, born of the capacity the Lord has patiently enlarged in my heart over years of loving me.
Oh yes, I want our network to operate efficiently and productively. I want to meet all the modest goals we have set. I want to make good investments in buildings and business. I want to use our money efficiently and effectively. I don’t want to waste a minute. But we can do most of that and just get tired and irritable. We can do a lot of that with further arguments about justice. We can do a lot of that by exercising power and leveraging guilt and fear.
I want to act out of my heart connected to the heart of it all. I want to stay vulnerable to what Gerald May called “our passion for more…a deepened yearning within what felt like satisfaction.” That will cost us. But, at the end of the year, I want to have invested my days in eternity and experienced eternity invested in the year. The beams of love are shining. I want to bear them.
I wanted to have a nice long visit with Stephen, since his day fell on a Sunday this year. But then the snow moved in big and we cancelled the public meetings. So let me offer a variation on what I wanted to deliver this way, on the blog.
Good Carrie
If you read my blog, you know that I was mad at Carrie Underwood this week. She and I have a very rocky relationship. We were way in love, not too long ago, when she sang Jesus Take the Wheel
And the car came to a stop
She cried when she saw that baby in the backseat
Sleeping like a rock
And for the first time in a long time
She bowed her head to pray
She said I’m sorry for the way
I’ve been living my life
I know I’ve got to change
So from now on tonight
Jesus, take the wheel
Take it from my hands
Cause I can’t do this on my own
I’m letting go
So give me one more chance
To save me from this road I’m on
That was nice. And the video brings tears to my eyes, especially when the couple comes back together over their kitchen table after fighting about the bills.
Disneyfied Carrie
But then Carrie wrote a song herself for The Voyage of the Dawn Treader which was almost exactly the Disneyfied thing I was complaining about before Christmas in the PM. She sang that “we would all be kings and queens of anything if we just believe (in whatever). It is written in the stars. Faith and love will keep us strong. Exactly who we are is just enough.” No mention of Jesus this time. No crying. No praying. No sorrow for the way she was living. No hint that she couldn’t do it on her own.
So Carrie and I are having a hard time. I hope we can work it out, because she seems very nice and I think she is one of the best people to ever win American Idol.
I think I understand her a little bit. Because here we are celebrating St. Stephen’s Day right after Christmas. It just seems a little out of place to get all martyr-y right after Christmas when we got all those presents and ate all that food. I don’t know why they didn’t just get all the martyr days into Lent where they belong! Christmas is totally the feast of lights in the midst of dark; it is very hopeful. Europeans of yore really wanted to get hunkered into the family bunker and eat a lot of stuff with fat in it so they could survive the blistering cold winter in Germany. Americans want to take the kids to the mall to cash in gift cards on the 26th, not consider the life of the first Christian martyr, who cashed in his life after he saw God revealed in glory! — talk about letting Jesus take the wheel! People usually skip St. Stephen because he is a bit much. If his day wasn’t referenced in the song Good King Wenceslas, we probably would never hear about Stephen at all.
Begin the Twelve Days right
I don’t know if there was a big strategy for when St. Stephen’s day should be celebrated, but I would not be surprised if some theologian thought it was very important to get a notable martyr on the calendar right at the beginning of the twelve days of Christmas. While the historical account of the birth of Jesus is definitely important to repeat, I’m sure some theologian would suspect that people might get lost in the angels and babies and warm family feeling of Mary and Joseph camping out in a barn and miss the whole point, so he thought, “We’d better stick something else in here — I’ve got it! St. Stephen!” Some hard guy like Martin Luther probably thought these verses about the incarnation should go on the Christmas cards of all true believers, not some sweet picture of a holy family surrounded by air-brushed cattle or something worse. After all, this is the meaning of the incarnation:
Have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!Philippians 2:5-8
St. Stephen’s Day would certainly help us to consider the true goal of incarnation, if we let it actually get into our calendar, much more our consciousness. Stephen is just a regular person, he is not even one of the first apostles. He is just a guy with the mindset of Christ Jesus who gets noticed for having it by people who oppose the influence of his faith. He is a regular person who one day is eating dinner with his family and the next day is making himself nothing — a true servant of Jesus with nothing to tell the authorities but the truth. He is, like Jesus, obedient to death, while Paul is watching it all happen — look at him in the back of this painting dressed in green.
You can read the whole story of Stephen in Acts 6 and 7 Here is the part about how his martyrdom got started:
“Stephen, a man full of God’s grace and power, performed great wonders and signs among the people. Opposition arose, however, from members of the Synagogue of the Freedmen (as it was called)—Jews of Cyrene and Alexandria as well as the provinces of Cilicia and Asia—who began to argue with Stephen. But they could not stand up against the wisdom the Spirit gave him as he spoke. Then they secretly persuaded some men to say, “We have heard Stephen speak blasphemous words against Moses and against God.” So they stirred up the people and the elders and the teachers of the law. They seized Stephen and brought him before the Sanhedrin. They produced false witnesses, who testified, “This fellow never stops speaking against this holy place and against the law. For we have heard him say that this Jesus of Nazareth will destroy this place and change the customs Moses handed down to us.” All who were sitting in the Sanhedrin looked intently at Stephen, and they saw that his face was like the face of an angel. Acts 6:8-13
Stephen went through the whole history of Israel to prove that it was not he but his accusers who were detractors of Moses. He ends up telling it like it is:
“You stiff-necked people! Your hearts and ears are still uncircumcised. You are just like your ancestors: You always resist the Holy Spirit! Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute? They even killed those who predicted the coming of the Righteous One. And now you have betrayed and murdered him— you who have received the law that was given through angels but have not obeyed it.” When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep. Acts 7:51-60
Let’s do some Bible study on being like Stephen who is like Jesus. Some people, like Stephen have the gift of martyrdom. Some say this is the spiritual gift you only use once! But it is more of an attitude, a mindset, like Jesus had, which gives us the spiritual strength to face our false accusers and hold on to our faith. The gift of martyrdom is the spiritually-born courage to be who we are and to obey the heavenly vision we have seen, even if people would like to hurt us, mock us, or even kill us.
Iraqi Christians need this spiritual capacity right now. Many of them have cancelled much of their usual Christmas celebration this year because Islamic militants have been attacking their church buildings for the past six months, and it is getting worse. The Kurdish government in Northern Iraq has offered Christians sanctuary, but it’s not like everyone has the money to get up and move. Since October attacks have escalated and priests and worshippers have been killed. One militant group, the Islamic State of Iraq, has explicitly stated that their fighters will kill Christians “wherever we can find them.”
In the United States, our people with the gift of martyrdom, must help us stand up against state-sponsored irreligiosity, against the Disneyfication of spirituality and much more. When I was in Costa Rica, my genial host, an American ex-pat, discovered I was a pastor and immediately said something like, “My family never talked about religion or politics at the table,” — giving me notice, in a very nice way, that I should watch what I say. It is a battle every day, just to be a faithful follower of Jesus. Even before you open your mouth, they tell you to shut up!
A self-giving lover and truth teller
So here is some encouragement from the Bible to let the movement of God’s Spirit in you make you like the self-giving lover and truth-teller Jesus and Stephen were, even if it costs you. And for those of you with the spiritual gift — I hope I encourage you to go ahead and get us ramped up to face what we have to face and not cave in to the pressure to dampen our flame or hide our faith altogether.
In some places in the Bible the idea of being gifted by the Spirit to act in ways the body of Christ needs is plainly stated. Gifts are particular aspects of God’s life in believers that some of us have more than others. We’ve all got the Spirit of God at work in us through our connection to Jesus, but some of us have a calling to do one thing more than another. The distribution of these gifts is not a science, but it is clearly observable. In 1 Corinthians 13 Paul says, while he is in the middle of a lengthy teaching on spiritual gifts that, “If I give all I possess to the poor, and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”
Give over my body to hardship could also be translated, and is translated as, “give my body to be burned.” That’s a clear reference to being martyred. The root of the word of “martyr” is about giving witness. One is burned because he or she is expressing their faith. The Apostle Paul is certainly into this. He tells the Philippians after they have contacted him in Rome, while he is under house arrest: “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life — or by death.” Philippians 1:20
To “deliver oneself up” is the gift of grace God gives members of the body of Christ by which they undergo suffering for the faith even to the point of death, while consistently being a witness of the truth and love in Christ. Jesus clearly taught that this would happen. He told us that all believers will suffer persecution at some level. (Merry Christmas!) — ” If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world. That is why the world hates you. Remember what I told you: ‘Servants are not greater than their master.’ If they persecuted me, they will persecute you also. If they obeyed my teaching, they will obey yours also.” John 15:18-20
Some believers burn with a fearless witness that often puts them in danger Paul was like this. He told the church in Corinth” “We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers and sisters, about the troubles we experienced in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt we had received the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. Then many will give thanks on our behalf for the gracious favor granted us in answer to the prayers of many.” 2 Cor. 1:8-11
The one with the gift of martyrdom will be forgiving , like we saw Stephen ask God not to hold his murderers sins against them. Peter counsels people to be patient when they are persecuted, trusting in God, not vengeful, even joyful, full of praise: “Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name.” 1 Peter 4:12-16
The gift encourages others to passionate mission and prayer. The gifted ones keep us out on the front lines of our purpose The Apostle Paul was chained up in his house for being a Christian when he went to Rome and this is what he said about it: “Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear.” Philippians 1:12-14 When persecutions arise, there are those gifted to glorify God through them. This could be a gift given to meet the ongoing, daily persecution, or for the crisis situation.
We all need the Holy Spirit with us to face the inevitable opposition we will face because we follow Jesus. You who are gifted martyrs, please don’t hold back, even when you think we don’t want you around. We need your courage; we need you to keep us on the frontlines, lest we not be like Jesus at all — Jesus, who is ready to be born into trouble and to die with it on his shoulders, Jesus, who is confident that resurrection is in his future.
It is the most wonderful time of the year for movies. I enjoyed “TheVoyage of the Dawn Treader” last night. It was very beautiful. Reepicheep was the best actor among all the stilted children wielding swords. The voice of Liam Neeson was nice to hear, speaking as Aslan, who Edmund names as “the son of the Emperor over the Sea, who saved me and saved Narnia.” At least Edmund named Aslan that in the book.
Eustace and Reepicheep
Lite Religion
For marketing reasons, I guess, producers find it necessary to go light on the religious nature of the Chronicles of Narnia when they film them. I was just complaining last week in our public meeting about how Disney feeds us watered-down, Disneyfied myths to compete with the story of Jesus, as if Santa were not bad enough. This installment of the Narnia series was distributed by 20th Century Fox, Disney’s twin, owned by NewsCorp, which is lead by possibly the devil incarnate, Rupert Murdoch.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader plainly says it is based on the Chronicles of Narnia, so as not to offend the heaven-based C.S. Lewis, no doubt. It is not totally denuded of Christianity, but it is striking what they choose to water down and reinterpret. The freeing of Eustace from his dragon skin was the most disappointing moment of all. It was so disappointing I have actually typed out the passage in the book for you, so you can remember what really happened. The account in the book is one of the most pleasant renditions of how God frees us from sin and draws us through baptism into the healing process of our new life. It bears repeating. Read this to you children, don’t just let them see the movie version. If you just take them to the movie, they’ll get too much Murdoch, not enough Lewis, and very little Jesus.
“Then the lion said—but I don’t know if it spoke—You will have to let me undress you. I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty near desperate now. So I just lay flat down on my back and let him do it.
“The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt more than anything I’ve ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know—if you’ve ever picked the scab of a sore place. It hurts like billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.’
“I know exactly what you mean,” said Edmund.
“Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off—just as I thought I had done myself the other three times, only they hadn’t hurt—and there it was lying on the grass: only ever so much thicker and darker and more knobbly looking than the others had been. And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me—I didn’t like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I’d no skin on—and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why. I’d turned into a boy again. …
After a bit the lion took me out and dressed me—
“Dressed you. With his paws?”
“Well, I don’t exactly remember that bit. But he did somehow or other: in new clothes—the same I’ve got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream.”
“No it wasn’t a dream,” said Edmund. “I think you’ve seen Aslan.”…
“But who is Aslan. Do you know him?”
“Well—he knows me,” said Edmund.
Carrie, how could you?
The second most disappointing thing about Voyage of the Dawn Treader was Carrie Underwood. She wrote the song that will probably be competing for the Academy Award for best song. I was watching the credits for once because I wanted to see where they filmed the movie (New Zealand, of course). So I could not miss Carrie singing one of those songs that is religious without any Jesus in it. I think it is probably exactly the kind of song Lewis would have had Wormwood producing in the Screwtape Letters to make sure humans are fed light faith that doesn’t even need to be tempted.
Here is the most delusion-inducing stanza:
We can be the kings and queens of anything if we believe.
It’s written in the stars that shine above,
a world where you and I belong, where faith and love will keep us strong,
exactly who we are is just enough
there’s a place for us, there’s a place for us.
I’m sure Carrie means well. And if one listens to the whole lyric with Jesus in mind, it is easy to supply the truth that is not stated. But she could have least said, “If Aslan rips your skin off you have a chance to live.” She might have said, like the movie even said, “If you meet the Aslan of our world, who goes by another name you can enter that place for you.” Instead, she ended the watered-down tale by watering it down even more. I tuned to Gwen and said, “What is this b.s. song doing here?” (That’s my problem, of course.) Love you Carrie, but shame on you. You should have let Jesus take the wheel on that one.
I hope you enjoy The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. It is fun. There are moments that are moving and mysterious. It does not miss all the Christian underpinning it should have. It is a good tale. If you unmuzzle Jesus while you are there, it will actually be a growth experience, too: receiving what is given and lamenting what is not.
Emptiness, yearning, incompleteness: these unpleasant words hold a hope for incomprehensible beauty. It is precisely in the seemingly abhorrent qualities of ourselves — qualities that we spend most of our time trying to fix or deny — that the very thing we most long for can be found: hope for the human spirit, freedom for love.
He told the delegation who asked him to lead the scattered Anabaptists that he would pray about the matter of his leadership. When they came again, as he says in his writings, that he surrendered his “soul and body to the Lord … and commenced in due time … to teach and to baptize, to till the vineyard of the Lord,… to build up His holy city and temple and to repair the tumble-down walls.” He was re-baptized soon after his withdrawal from the Catholic Church in 1536. By December 7, 1542, one hundred guilders were offered by the authorities of Leeuwarden for the apprehension of Menno, who appeared by night at different places to preach and baptize.
