Total Pageviews

Monday, October 31, 2016

The Spirit of Writing: Review of "Walking on Water" by Madeleine L'Engle

The Spirit of Writing
            Along with ‘Dancing on the Head of a Pen’ (Robert Benson) and ‘Creator Spirit’ (Steven Guthrie), ‘Walking on Water’ by Madeleine L’Engle is among the beautiful descriptions of the creative process that I have read.  And like Guthrie, L’Engle shows the way creativity and one’s life as a Christian are inevitably intertwined.  The Christian does not create ‘Christian art.’  The artist works very hard to create beautiful art (be it poetry, music, novels, plays, or paintings).  Because the artist follows Jesus Christ, what she ends up creating is infused with the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit speaks through the art without the work being intentionally evangelistic.  L’Engle writes beautifully about both Christianity and the creative process.
            One great insight of the book is the way science expands (not reduces) one’s faith.  L’Engle wrote this at the beginning of the 80’s, long before Francis Collins and John Polkinghorne and others taught us that science can actually grow someone as a believer and Christ follower.  L’Engle was saying this almost 4 decades ago. 
            She doesn’t trust theology as a discipline nearly as much as she trusts the way scientific discovery can grow the faith of the believer.  Perhaps this is because writers like Polkinghorne and Alister McGrath and N.T. Wright had not yet become popular in her time.  Perhaps she was listening to the wrong theologians.  But, she admits more than once her own prejudice against theology.  I found her admission to be a welcome expression of humility.
            L’Engle resides in a world of artists who that some readers may find difficult to access.  She recognizes that and tries repeatedly to close the gap while at the same time remaining firmly planted in the world of dreamers and seers and creators.  If a reader struggles to see as L’Engle sees, I recommend pushing through and attempting to see differently.  See with childlike imagination.  The world is a big place, and artists like Madeleine L’Engle help the rest of us see more of it.  

"I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review."

Haloween

‘Halloween’ began nearly 2000 years ago in Ireland as a Celtic festival involving the warding off of ghosts.  It was co-opted by the Roman Catholic Church 609 AD.[i]  Immigrants from Europe revived old country traditions around “All Hallows Eve” in the United States in the 19th century.  The day became associated with vandalism until there was a shift in the 1950’s.  At that time, Halloween morphed into the family-friendly neighborhood holiday we now celebrate.
 Today, Halloween is a $6 billion industry in America.  Some Christians feel followers of Jesus should not celebrate Halloween.[ii]  I respect the argument Jamie Morgan makes in the article cited in the footnotes.  I don’t agree with him, but I respect the case he’s making.  If a person’s participation in Halloween festivities truly is a celebration of witchcraft, then I would join him in renouncing all participation in the day.  In this line of thinking, I would renounce non-Christians legends around Christmas, Easter, Valentine’s Day, and other holidays.  But, I think you can have a good time with costumes and candy without giving any ground to witchcraft (which is real and very dangerous), just as I think candy canes and Old St. Nick are OK for Christmas.  Our legends and traditions are part of who we are and they don’t have to be inherently evil or in conflict with our deepest reality, our identity in Christ.
For my family, Halloween is a time to enjoy dressing in costumes and being out in the neighborhood with friends.  It is communal and family fun.  Aside from the need for added rigor in dental hygiene, I find Halloween harmless.  It brings my family tremendous happiness when we look at old Halloween trick-or-treating photos.  My oldest is now 14.  Soon he’ll be too old for this.  The thought of it makes me sad. 
My decision as Christian to participate in what I see to be a benign, religiously ignorant holiday should not be taken to mean I don’t believe in spiritual warfare.  I most certainly do.  I believe demons are real and roaming about, spreading mayhem and harming people on the earth.  I have been present for exorcisms, both successful and unsuccessful.  My reading for this morning, Luke 4:31-37, is one of many passages which deal with demon possession.  Before Jesus exorcises the demon, it is able to throw the possessed man to the ground.  Jesus saves him, but some damage has been done. 
Yes, I believe demons are very real.  And maybe, Halloween can be a time for demons to wreak damage in the lives of men and women.  However, I believe demons are just as potent at all times of the year.  We constantly must be on our guard against the wiles of the devil (Ephesians 6).  Prayer is how we stay on our guard.  We have to, through worship, prayer, Bible reading, and acts of service, build up our relationship with God in Jesus Christ.  We have to learn to listen to and heed the voice of the Holy Spirit.  In these ways, we are connected to the God who protects us.  In the light of God, those dangerous demons are utterly impotent. 



[i] http://www.history.com/topics/halloween/history-of-halloween
[ii] Here is one article that makes this point - http://www.charismanews.com/opinion/52738-why-christians-absolutely-should-not-celebrate-halloween

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Faith from Fear

In my previous post, I shared the manuscript of the first message I wrote.  Here is the sermon I actually preached.  I worked this up this morning.  I sat down to read my first manuscript, and while it wasn't terrible, it was not right either.  I don't know if this one is right, but it is what the church got.






Faith out of Fear (Jonah 1:4-16)
Rob Tennant, HillSong Church, Chapel Hill, NC
Sunday, October 30, 2016

But the Lord hurled a great wind upon the sea, and such a mighty storm came upon the sea that the ship threatened to break up. Then the mariners were afraid, and each cried to his god. They threw the cargo that was in the ship into the sea, to lighten it for them. Jonah, meanwhile, had gone down into the hold of the ship and had lain down, and was fast asleep. The captain came and said to him, “What are you doing sound asleep? Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the god will spare us a thought so that we do not perish.”
The sailors[a] said to one another, “Come, let us cast lots, so that we may know on whose account this calamity has come upon us.” So they cast lots, and the lot fell on Jonah. Then they said to him, “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?” “I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.” 10 Then the men were even more afraid, and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” For the men knew that he was fleeing from the presence of the Lord, because he had told them so.
11 Then they said to him, “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?” For the sea was growing more and more tempestuous. 12 He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” 13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring the ship back to land, but they could not, for the sea grew more and more stormy against them. 14 Then they cried out to the Lord, “Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.” 15 So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. 16 Then the men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.

The men of the sea, the mariners, were among the bravest of people in the ancient world.  Their ships were ancient.  If they ran into trouble on the open ocean, no coast guard was coming.  There would be no search with the coordinated efforts of several nations.  They were on their own.  And they certainly would run into trouble.
But, they did it.  They set out on the Mediterranean Sea in search of adventure and prophet. They came from different places, different cultures.  And on the ship, with nothing but trust in one another, they journeyed about the known world.  They were definite believers in God or in many gods, but their religious practice amounted to superstition more than faith. 
On this day, at port in Joppa, they would make the Tarshish run as they had before.  A few days at sea would bring temporary wealth and at the end rest and relaxation awaited.  They took on passengers as they had before – this time an Israelite who said as little as possible and kept to himself. He was aloof.  Did he think himself superior?  Did he look down on the sailors?  Would they make life miserable for him because of his standoffishness? 
It did not matter.  The captain admitted him passage and took his money.  They had no care for why he came.  The simply told him to stay out of the way as they did their work.  They did not ask for his story – not at first. 
Was it a beautiful day when they set sail?  The port of Joppa shrunk behind them as they moved into the deeper waters.  They were experienced navigators who by the stars and the winds and the familiar landmarks always knew their location.  The one thing that might throw them was if a significant storm arose.
It did.  The winds started up as the sky blackened.  No panic.  They had seen this before.  But when the lightning cracked across the sky, it felt particularly close.  When waves began to rise, sailors began to comment in a way more tinged with fear than the normal seaman exaggerations.  “I’ve not seen waves like this before,” said one man.  This was his third Joppa to Tarshish run.  “That rain is running sideways,” another exclaimed.  And he was far saltier than the first who spoke.  Then, the man who had been on the seas longer than any spoke solemnly. With a note finality he said, “Men this is trouble.  Call on your gods.”
As they followed their elder’s advice, the boat began to toss and turn, nearly heeling over.  At this point, their prayers were fear-filled prayers.  They made recitations.  They promised things.  They prayed panicked prayers.  Have you ever prayed a promised-filled, panicked prayer in your life?  Then you might understand what this men were doing. 
The prayers didn’t work.  They began tossing cargo – their prophets – overboard.  This entire trip would be for nothing.  No money waiting in Tarshish; and not a one of them even paused, because in panic, we throw whatever we have overboard if it will save our lives. 
The prayers didn’t work.  Neither did lightening the load.  There was nothing left to throw overboard.  They were going to die, and die completely penniless.  The captain ran below deck.  Was he turning coward?  Not this captain.  He was tough, windblown, and fearless.  A moment later he re-emerged with the Israelite.
Now these superstitious sailors were all interested in his story.  This storm was an act of God.  They had no doubt.  Each one had prayed.  Then, they took a dice that had black on three sides and white on three.  In the midst of the tempest they lined up and each man rolled.  Each one came up white.  The Israelite might as well join them in their panic.  He rolled.  Black.  What had he done? 
The sailors were in his face.  “Tell us why this calamity has come upon us. What is your occupation? Where do you come from? What is your country? And of what people are you?”
“I am a Hebrew,” he replied. “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land.  I am on the run, fleeing my God.  He has brought this upon us.”  He said this soberly, with no trace of terror.  Who was high-minded fool? Was he so taken with his own dignity that he could not see the death about to swallow them? 
The men were even more afraid, and said to him, “What is this that you have done!” He looked into the driving rain and let the drops, like wet bullets, pelt his face.  “Tell us, darn you. “What shall we do to you, that the sea may quiet down for us?”
He said to them, “Pick me up and throw me into the sea; then the sea will quiet down for you; for I know it is because of me that this great storm has come upon you.” 
Fool.  Fool!  Fool! Fool!  God was punishing the boat, the sailors, and the sea itself because of his arrogance.  Did he think these sailors wanted to bring God’s wrath on themselves by sending him to death?  They began rowing furiously, praying they were headed south, to the coast of Egypt.  It would be a full day’s row in ideal conditions.  But we don’t act logically when we are panicked, do we?  Have you ever been there?  Life is so out of control that you do something that makes no sense in an attempt to fix things.  That’s why we say, “she’s losing it.” 
Reality set in on them.  Prayer hadn’t worked and only increased their fear.  Throwing everything overboard had not worked.  When they confronted Jonah and heard his story, their fear spiked.  Now, they saw the insanity of rowing in this squall.  One more prayer was all they had left.
 “Please, O Lord, we pray, do not let us perish on account of this man’s life. Do not make us guilty of innocent blood; for you, O Lord, have done as it pleased you.”  So they picked Jonah up and threw him into the sea; and the sea ceased from its raging. 
What conversations did they have in the blue-skyed, quiet calm?  Not a one.  Not one sailor said a thing.  The image of Jonah sinking to the depths was emblazoned on their minds.  Those sailors would never forget that image.  At every turn in this tale, one thing was clear.  The fear in those men grew incrementally.  Each new twist drove the tremors deeper in their souls.  Now, with the danger past, they were spent.  The men feared the Lord even more, and they offered a sacrifice to the Lord and made vows.
After chapter 1, we don’t hear from the sailors again in the story, but by the end of Jonah, we are left to wonder.  What did their lives look like after they worshiped on the deck of their ship as the soft waves gently rocked them?  We suppose that they made it to Tarshish, but then what?  As each sailor, got off that boat, how was his life different after his encounter with the living God.
            How about our lives?  One of the cornerstones of the way we try to live as a body of believers is the encounter.  We pray that when we gather, people will meet God in this place, this gathering of believers.  In that meeting with God, when holiness exposes us completely, including our darkest secrets and deepest pains, will fear drive us to our knees in confession and worship?  Or will fear make us runaway and pretend that God is far off somewhere, mostly uninterested in our lives?  We at HillSong try to set conditions so that you will meet God here and stay with Him.  Meet God and be made new in the process. 
            God controls how He will reveal himself.  When he does, we decide if we will run away, or if stripped down, we will kneel at the cross and receive forgiveness and grace and new life. I don’t know what you’ve been through today.  I don’t know the pains stabbing at your heart.  I don’t know the brokenness that drove you to panic and then despair. 
            I pray this morning, you’ll open your eyes and mind and heart wide enough to see God.  When you see God, I urge you step into the fear.  Step to the cross and let the Lord hang your sins on it.  Name your personal disasters, see God in them, and then give yourself to Him.  Let the Lord wash you and bring you up from the waters clean, refreshed, renewed, and alive.  The sailors in Jonah 1 help me see the new possibilities of life that come when, in our fears, we step to God.  Faith can come out of those moments – life renewing faith.  I pray you will see that too and that you will step toward God right now.

AMEN

Holy Fear

This was the sermon I planned to preach this morning (Oct 30, 2016).  It is not terrible, but it had two things wrong with it.  It is too similar to what I preached on Oct 23rd, and it is not what I really wanted to do.  So, I scrapped it at the last minute.




To understand the way the sailors of Jonah chapter 1 related to God, we need to look at the New Testament, the Gospel of Luke, chapter 5.  There, Jesus is already extremely popular, but has not yet called together his 12 disciples.  He is preaching by the shore.  After his sermon, he see Simon Peter, and Jesus tells him to put his fishing nets out in the deep water.  Peter responds that he has not caught anything all night.  Peter probably wants add, ‘Why are you, a carpenter, telling me, a fisherman, how to fish?”  What he actually says is “If you say so, Jesus, I will let down the nets.” 
            The catch is so massive, the nets began break and two others have to help him and they fill two boats with fish.  Awestruck, Peter throws himself at Jesus’ feet and, groveling, says, “Go way from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.”  The holiness of Jesus shined a light on his own condition.  Peter could see who Jesus was and who he, himself, was.  He shakes with fear.  Jesus gently raises him to his feet and says, “Fear not.”
            This phrase comes up throughout scripture.  When an angel appeared to Daniel, the angel had to tell Daniel, “Do not be afraid” (10:19).  He had to say this because Daniel was very, very much afraid in the presence of this Heavenly being.  The angel who told Mary she would be the mother of Jesus began by saying, “Do not be afraid, Mary” (Luke 1:30).  In the book of Revelation, the resurrected Christ himself appears to John of Patmos and when John sees him, in awestruck terror he falls to the ground, the life scared out of him.  Jesus raises John saying, “Do not be afraid.”  And in Luke 5, Jesus tells a terrified Peter he need not fear.
            Fear is appropriate and inevitable.  God’s holiness magnifies the corruption sin has inflicted on humanity.  We were created “good,” made in God’s image.  Sin reduces to less than the vision God had in creating us.  In creation, we reflected God’s glory. Tainted by sin, we fall short of God’s glory.
            Yet Jonah was dishonest with himself when it came to appropriate fear of the Lord.  Seeing God, we know that running from God is impossible. Jonah saw God with greater clarity than we do.  He was a prophet called to a specific mission.  His sense of God was particularly sharp.  Yet, he who knew how futile running would be ran!
            Why he ran is a matter of debate.  He was told to prophesy against Nineveh.  God did not say a word about saving Nineveh.  Jonah was sent with a judgment prophecy.  Later, Jonah will claim that he knew God was going to relent from punishing the city (4:2), but that comes after the fact.  That’s like picking the winner after the game has been in played.  In chapter 1, when God tells him to go in verses 1-2 and in verse 3, he goes in the opposite direction, we are not told why.   What’s obvious is the absurdity of it.  He knows God.  He knows there is nowhere one can run from God.  Yet he runs from God. 
            God is holy and we are profane because of sin.  We were created to be holy, but every day, we make choices to rebel against our creator, and the accumulation of sin mocks the God of the universe.  We should fear God, but in a way that compels toward reverence.  Our fear should lead to worship, not retreat.
            This is not like the fear one might have of an abusive parent or of a bully or a dictator.  If you have been a victim of abuse or molestation, that is a different kind of pain and a different kind of fear.  That fear is a fear of evil, an evil born in the heart of the one doing the abusing.  God is not like abuser, the molester, the rapist, the bully.  God is who we run to in order to get away from the abuser. 
            I throw in this caveat because fear has in many cases been a destroyer of faith.  A lot of broken people won’t come to church, and more importantly, don’t think to turn to God for help because the people who taught them about God are the same people who abused them.  Pastors have been guilty of every form of abuse and it is awful.  When my title is “Fear out of Faith,” I do not mean the type of fear related to abuse.  When people have been abused, we who make up the body of Christ have to give them grace and mercy and we do this with enormous patience and gentleness. We have to be the community in which they are safe from fear.  God is graceful and merciful, patient and inviting and gentle.
            God is scary where holiness shines a light which reveals our sinfulness and our smallness.  Peter saw that miraculous catch of fish and wanted no part of it.  But, he didn’t run away.  His mouth said, “Go away from me Lord.”  But his body said something else.  His body was at Jesus’ feet, clinging to Jesus’ knees.  Jesus met him at that point of internal conflict.  Right there, Jesus called him to be a disciple.  Peter wanted to be as far from Jesus as possible and as close to him as he could get; he wanted both at the same time.
            Jonah, possessing much greater knowledge of God than Peter, much more experience in his relationship with God, only wanted the first part of the equation.  He just wanted to bail out, to flee, to get away from God.  His fear led him to abandon his own faith and to accept a gross self-deception.  Many believers today want to know God and then to disavow God when knowing God has implications for our lives.  Would-be disciples settle for the same self-deception that tugged at Jonah as he fled God. 
            People convince themselves that it is enough to check off “Christian” on the census, to tell others “I am Baptist,” to go to church 3 or 4 times a year, and to memorize the Lord’s Prayer.  That’s sufficient to be right with God and that’s all they want.  They don’t want to actually know God.  This hands-off approach to faith requires almost nothing, it has no impact on the person’s life at all, and it produces someone who has no sense of what God is about in the world.  That individual might be a church member.  However, that individual has no relationship with God. 
            That person with the noncommittal faith deep down knows he or she is living a lie, but it feels easy to keep living it.  It feels scary to open ourselves up completely so that the depths of our hearts are fully exposed before the living God.  That’s terrifying because when we do that, we are inviting God to step in and begin changing us from the inside.
            In the book of Jonah, we see God willing to do that, step into the lives of people, even for non-Jews.  The sailors on the boat where not Israelites.  They believed in God – or in gods – but, they did not know God.  The storm at sea confirmed something they already believed.  The world is much bigger than them, and it was beyond their ability, even as able bodied mariners, to control it.          The mariners’ response to all loss of control was to run to God.  When Jonah told them his god was the creator of land and sea, those sailors believed without hesitation.  And their fear increased.  They believed God would sink their ship because of Jonah and they would go down with. When Jonah told them the solution was to throw him into the sea, their fear increased more.  They hesitated.  They tried rowing (it hadn’t worked before, and it didn’t work now).  Then, they prayed, and threw Jonah into the sea.  The waves stopped battering the ship, the wind died down, and rain stopped.  The storm was over.  And, like Peter trembling at the miraculous fish catch they feared God even more. 
            In verse 12, Jonah tells the sailors, “I worship the Lord, the God of heaven.”  The actual Hebrew word is not “worship.”  It is “fear.” Jonah literally says, “I fear the Lord, the God of heaven.”[i]       The book of Jonah displays real faith that comes out of genuine fear of the magnificent holiness of God.  Jonah speaks this fear but betrays himself by running, and ends up swallowed by the fish and the sea.  The sailors live what Jonah says.  Their fear leads to worship.
            After chapter 1, we don’t hear from the sailors again in the story, but by the end of Jonah, we are left to wonder.  What did their lives look like after they became God-fearing worshipers?  They made it to Tarshish.  As each sailor, got off that boat, how was his life different after his encounter with the living God.
            How about our lives?  One of the cornerstones of the way we try to live as a body of believers is the encounter.  We pray that when we gather, people will meet God in this place, this gathering of believers.  In that meeting with God, when holiness exposes us at our worst, will fear drive us to our knees in confession and worship?  Or will fear make us runaway and pretend that God is far off somewhere, mostly uninterested in our lives?  We at HillSong try to set conditions so that you will meet God here and stay with Him.  Meet God and be made new in the process. 
            God controls how He will reveal himself.  When he does, we decide if we will run away, or if stripped down, we will kneel at the cross and receive forgiveness and grace and new life. I don’t know what you’ve been through today.  I don’t know the pains stabbing at your heart.  I don’t know your brokenness. 
            I pray this morning, you’ll open your eyes and mind and heart wide enough to see God.  When you see God, I urge you step into the fear.  Like Peter, even though you want to say “away from me Lord,” I pray you will step to God.  Step to the cross and let the Lord hang your sins on it.  Let the Lord wash you and bring you up from the waters clean, refreshed, renewed, and alive.  The sailors in Jonah 1 help me see the new possibilities of life that come when we step to God.  I pray you will see that too and that you will step toward God right now.
AMEN




[i] E. Achtemeier (1996), New International Bible Commentary: Minor Prophets I, Paternoster Press (Peabody, MA), p.262

Friday, October 28, 2016

Encouragement for Christians in ‘Every Little Thing’

https://www.amazon.com/Every-Little-Thing-Making-Difference/dp/0801018420/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1477687398&sr=8-4&keywords=every+little+thing



            I promoted the book Every Little Thing when it first came out because the author is my friend and I believe in her motivations and in her calling.  Now, I want to re-introduce the book to anyone who might read what I write.  Put simply, in this book Deidra Riggs encourages Christians to say ‘yes’ to God.  The book is full of delightful stories.  Here I will touch on three vignettes that stand out for me.
            First, in the chapter titled “The Gospel needs to be lived,” she recites small, every day ways the ‘work of our hands’ can be offerings to God.  Her lengthy list of examples include many things that I have done in my life.  I can recall doing these each of these things, sitting at the side of the hospital bed, washing the dishes quietly (hoping not to wake my wife), and giving my $25 per month of my paycheck (in 1992) to sponsor a child in Kenya.  None of these acts felt holy or sacred at the time, but D. Riggs shows how these simple things can be tied to my walk with Christ.  She says, “We don’t step into a fairy tale when we choose to live out the gospel” (p.133).  It is real.  It is tiring and beautiful, normal and extraordinary; and, it is real.
            Second, in chapter 8, building on the theme of witnessing to the reality of faith in everyday life, she writes, “All around us, in cotton socks with heels worn thin, walk mighty warriors whose stories will never qualify them for the cover of a magazine” (p.158).  Through much of the latter part of the book, Riggs appeals to Gideon and the contrast of one whose self-perception is total insignificance, but is called “mighty warrior” by God.  I truly appreciate her treatment of the Gideon story.  Whenever I tackle a task where it seems I lack resources but also it is clear that the task is from God, I tell those with me that we have been given “Gideon’s 300” and that’s all we’ll need.  As someone who also appeals to that story in my own faith expression, I was greatly heartened by Riggs’ writing on Gideon.
            Finally, I love the sermonic ending at the close of chapter 9.  “Would it be alright,” she asks, “if God took over from her?”  She proceeds with an inviting string of “would you,” “can you,” “would you,” “can you,” questions that draw the reader to a point of involvement.  Up to now, she has delighted the reader with stories of the thrill of skydiving tandem and the shock and then beauty of moving from the east to Nebraska.  She’s such a gracious story teller, it has been easy listening.  But now at the close the ready has been lovingly nudged to this.  “Can you find a way to release the hold you’ve got on your dreams and your plans for your life?  Can you trust that God has got the best offer going” (p.178)?


            Reader, I recommend that you buy and then read this book.  But I close out this writing asking you not to consider this a book review.  Rather, deal with the question asked.  Can you trust God and turn your life over to Him?

Monday, October 24, 2016

Asleep in the Storm (Jonah 1:1-17)



Sunday, October 23, 2016

            Is our faith awake or asleep? 
            It’s a question, one for each and every one of us to ponder. 
            We do this corporately – as a body.  Is the faith of HillSong Church awake?  As a worshipping community, are we alive and so animated that when people enter our gathering, they know God is here?  Are we awake?  Or are we so lethargic that someone can come, worship with us, leave, and have it make no impression on their lives? Awake or asleep?
            We also deal with this question as individuals.  Is my walk with Jesus, my personal faith, alive, vibrant, and palpable?  Or is my faith napping, inert, and languid, so lacking in vigor there is hardly a pulse?  What about yours?
            Awake or asleep?
            The faith that is alive and alert is in step with Jesus.  We see the Holy Spirit everywhere because the Holy Spirit is everywhere. We see God in everything because God is Lord over everything.  We are aligned with God so tightly that even when a word from God seems foolish, we can see how God it as work in it.  Or, even if we can’t see it, we can trust because our faith is alive and an alive faith trusts God.
            The sleeping faith is like the guy whose faith is like a hat.  He keeps that hat on a shelf and keeps it totally clean.  It is radiant, such a beautiful hat.  On Sundays, he puts that hat on and at church, man, he looks good in his bold-colored, dashing hat.  After church, he comes home, puts the faith hat on the shelf where it stays until for next Sunday. 
            The problem is that faith never covers him anywhere except in church.  In the working world, in interactions with his neighbors, at home with his family – in all these places, his faith has nothing to say.  He doesn’t have it with him.  After a while, he gets a little lazy about cleaning his faith hat.  He won’t wear it to church unless it is clean.  But he doesn’t want to clean it.  So he doesn’t go. 
After a month, he looks at how dusty his faith hat has become and he cleans it up, nice and bright.  And he’s back in church.  Maybe he comes a couple of weeks in a row.  But, he is still not at all that jazzed about cleaning that hat, and he still won’t come without it. 
Soon, it’s back on the shelf, collecting dust.  At Christmas he can feel how sleepy life has become, how distant from God he really is.  But when he goes to get his faith hat for the Christmas Eve service, it has been so long and is now so dust-covered, he can’t tell what color it originally was.  In him is an impulse to worship because there is an impulse to worship in all of us.  It is part of how God created us.  We are made to worship.  But this guy has now fully bought into the lie that he can only worship God if he’s at church with his faith hat on in perfect form.  He doesn’t know that faith is something always with us because his is asleep.
As we go through the book of Jonah, I want each one of us to take a hard, honest look deep into our own souls and into the soul of our church.  Are we – am I – awake, or asleep?
The book of Jonah is a story.  Critics say it is a fictional story told for theological reasons.  There was no historic person named Jonah.  Other critics respond, ‘oh yes there was.’  Each side in the conversation gives reasons for their points of view.  Our goal is not to resolve that debate. 
            Rather, we recognize that whichever side is correct, Jonah is told as a story and this story is included in our Bible under the guidance of the Holy Spirit for the purpose of shaping our lives and our faith.  From the original writing to the translations to the reading of Jonah down through history from 600 BC to now, the Holy Spirit has formed the worshiping community as the community has met God in this book.
            That’s what we want to do.  For the next five weeks, we will enter the Biblical book of Jonah.  I pray that we will meet God in its pages.  I pray that this story will be a mirror.  Our lives are like a road.  And God’s story is a road.  I pray that as we go through Jonah, those roads will merge and we will see that God’s story and our story come together to form one story.  When we live that in one story, we can’t help up but wake up and see God in our lives.
            From the outset, Jonah wastes what he has.  He fails to regard his resources.  If God speaks to you, then relationship with God is a resource in your life.  You can access that relationship.  Jonah does the opposite.  The first words are “the word of the Lord came to Jonah.”  He turns away from the word of the Lord.  When told to go east, he head west, first to Joppa, and then on to Tarshish.  He wants an ocean between him and the word of God.  He disregards his resources. 
            He also misuses them.  “He went down to Joppa and found a ship going to Tarshish; so he paid his fare and went on board.”  Money is not evil or good.  Money is a resource.  A millionaire can be a Christ-follower as long as she sees her millions to be in service to God.  If she hoards her millions, builds her life around keeping and growing her millions, and makes enemies because she chooses money over relationships, then her money has become an idol that will destroy her life.  But, if she manages her money with wisdom and cunning, all the while knowing that the money is in her possession but actually belongs to God, then she will use that money to promote the Kingdom of God by spreading the love and compassion of God.  Jonah was not spreading compassion.  He was running.  He misused his resources.
            He disregarded his resource – the call of God.  He misused his resource – the money he had that he could have used to answer the call.  Finally, he neglected his resource and this brings to the heart of the matter.  In the relationship with God, we are invited to prayer.  Memorize Hebrews 4:16 – “Let us approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
            As the port of Joppa faded in the distance and Jonah looked out over the open sea, he knew he was in trouble.  He knew the moment he stepped on that boat.  He was in trouble because he knew God.  He was in trouble because his faith was very much awake, but he acted as if he could somehow catch God napping.  We can’t slip out the backdoor while God’s dozing.  God doesn’t doze.
            How in the world could Jonah sleep in the midst of a storm at sea that was so violent, the veteran sailors feared for their lives? Jesus did the same thing.  He was with the disciples in the middle of the Sea of Gailiee when a storm whipped up and began thrashing the boat.  Jesus sat on a cushion conked out while the frantic disciples, many fishermen and experienced boatmen, made futile efforts to gain control. 
            I thought about these two stories, Jesus asleep in the storm in Mark 4 and Jonah asleep in the storm in Jonah chapter 1.  I have been in a boat, below deck, in choppy water.  You get thrown up and down without ceasing.  There’s no sleeping.  It’s all you can do to avoid losing your cookies.  Yet, Jesus and Jonah slept as hard as I do when I am in bed.  How did they do that?
            First, I think both men had something similar working in their favor.  Both had a faith that was very much awake.  Jonah wanted to leave his on the shelf.  He tried.  When he packed for Tarshish, he did not put faith in his suitcase.  But, we cannot contain or transport God – God is not held by us.  Jonah and Jesus both heard God’s voice audibly.  Both knew their faith was awake, alive, and at times very loud – even if Jonah pretended otherwise.
            The awake faith is why they could sleep in a storm.  Each man knew he wasn’t in a tempest.  Each knew he resided in the hands of God.  The difference is Jesus shared his faith all the time.  The gospel of Mark is the most subdued in proclaiming who Jesus was.  Some readers describe Mark as keeping a ‘Messianic Secret.’  But even in Mark, Jesus’ identity is obvious. 
            In chapter 1, the voice of God speaks at his baptism (v.11).   In chapter 2, Jesus forgives sins (v.9-10), something only God can do.  Mark’s readers knew this, so they knew when they read of him forgiving sins that Mark was associating Jesus with God.  And, in chapter 3, demons call Jesus “Son of God” (v.11).  These creatures resided in a realm we cannot perceive with our five senses.  Jesus is where that realm and our observable universe converge.  These demons could see that and they knew who he was.    
Jesus, sleeping in that boat, is one instep with God.  As if to make the point, when the terrified disciples wake him, he calms the storm.   He has authority over the weather.  Who but God?
Conversely, when Jonah sleeps on the boat, he is sleeping on his mission.  Jesus slept assured of who he was.  Jonah sleeps trying to flee who he is.  The disciples may have been confused, but not because Jesus wasn’t transparent.  Their failure to recognize Jesus was due to how mind blowing it is that the God of the universe was before them in the form of a man, a man they knew.  Jesus’ faith never got put on the shelf.
We’ve already reviewed the ways Jonah tried his best to be the opposite of what God planned.  He disregarded his resource of call; he misused his resource of money; and now here, in the middle of a storm at sea, he neglects the resource God gives us all – prayer. 
Just as the disciples in their panic roused Jesus, the sailors on the Joppa-to-Tarshish line woke Jonah.  The captain said, “What are you doing sounding asleep?  Get up, call on your god! Perhaps the God will spare so that we do not perish” (1:6).  These sailors were truly religious men, real God-seekers.  They did not know God, not the way Jonah did.  But, they knew there is a god.  And they were sure this storm that was about to swallow them had come because God was angry at someone on their boat.  They had questioned everyone else.  It had to be Jonah.  The faith of the sailors was unrefined, but it was real.  God would rather we come to Him raw than have us polish our faith up so that our answers are theologically impressive, but then set aside as ornamentation.
The story pivots – for the first time – when Jonah comes clean.  He wakes up and just as important as rousing, he tells the truth.  More pivots will come as we make our way through Jonah, but the first is crucial for us as we see ourselves in it.  Are we truthful about who we are?  We do not possess our money. We do not own our own lives.  We are God’s.  We are His possession.  Everything changed when Jonah acknowledged that and our lives pivot when we are truthful about who we are.
“I worship the Lord, the God of heaven, who made the sea and the dry land” (v.9).  Jonah’s statement?  Yes, but more importantly, this is our statement. When we are trying to navigate the challenges of life, we must recognize that we are God’s.  We have to wake up, come clean, and be truthful about who we are.  The beginning of a vibrant life is the truth-telling.
When Jesus woke up, he calmed the storm.  When Jonah fessed up, shortly after, the storm died down, the sailors were saved, and they worshiped.  We’ll get back to the sailors in Jonah chapter 1 next week, but this morning we finish with Jesus and the 12 and with us as we gather under the Lordship of Jesus Christ.
At his command, the storm calmed immediately.  Before that though, even while it raged, he was with him.  That’s why he says, “Why were you afraid?”  Our lives are filled with storms.  We have individual struggles.  And we see big picture problems that affect people throughout the world – in some cases, people we know and care about it.  God is with us in the midst of these storms.  God loves us as His beloved, precious children.  He never abandons us and when it looks bad, we are not alone.  The one who loves us is the Lord, the God of heaven.
This week, stay awake, alert, and attentive.  Be open to God’s word and to the whisper of God’s Spirit.  And if you feel you’ve been asleep, don’t worry.  The God of the resurrection can blow away all the dust that has gathered on your sleepy faith and infuse your life with a vibrancy you did not know was possible.  God will help you awake and the world will come to life as the eyes of your heart open.

AMEN

1:50AM



I was in and out, weird dreams flooding my brain.  I was just short of something, can’t recall what; just adrift, barely unconscious.  A fitness program?  My exercise wasn’t quite enough?  Was that it?  No.  Not quite.  What?  Something was off.  I looked at the clock.  1:50AM.  That was 2 hours, 17 minutes ago.
            I’d guess I had fallen asleep at around 10:25, something like that.  Now I was lying awake with a serious neck ache.  I went to the bathroom.  I adjusted my pillow 100 times, trying not to rouse my wife.  I came downstairs and spent several minutes looking at the ESPN website recap of the day in the NFL.  I looked at the new college football rankings, happy to see Michigan at #2.  I tried sleep again.  Back to bed, then up.
            Finally, I came down at 3:3o.  I did a few of the stretching exercises a physical therapist showed me years ago when a painful stiff neck had become a chronic problem.  It’s weird.  For my stiff neck, he had me stretching my groin and hamstrings and tightening my core muscles and working on groin muscle strength.  It worked (or the neck pain just went away on its own).
            Either way, neck pain is not allowing me to sleep tonight.
            My friend Phil, a rock of a Christian, a real saint, once chided when I bemoaned a bout of insomnia.  I was whining on Facebook at 3AM (like I am doing in this blog now), and Phil told me to “redeem the time, man!”  He meant pray!  Maybe he had in mind Psalm 119:148.  “My eyes are awake before the watches of the night, that I may meditate on your promise.”  Phil was right.  Insomnia is an opportunity to pray.
            Yesterday (Sunday) morning, in my sermon on Jonah, I remembered that in the storm (a literal storm at sea, or the “storms” of life), we run into opportunity.  Dark, scary times, painful times are opportunities to meet God in prayer.  So too is this night of my insomnia.  I sit here awake, knowing how tired I will be throughout today.  But, I don’t focus on that.  I set my brain to God.  The Holy Spirit is here.  It is good.
            I will, in a moment, be back on the floor, stretching, tightening core muscles.  I will, in the next moment, be back in my chair reading the Madeleine L’Engle book I am reviewing.  She’s writing about the intersection of art and faith.  It is beautiful writing.  But of course it is!  It is Madeleine L’Engle.  Maybe, I will read Psalm 119 – all of it.

            Before I get all that done, it will be 5:30, 6:00AM.  My 7-year-old daughter will come down, eager to start the day because she loves riding the school bus.  She wakes up afraid that she’s missed it. We haven’t needed an alarm clock in years.  I am not always happy when she wakes so early.  But, I love it when she comes to me as I sit in my chair.  She comes for a good morning hug.  Many days, it is the best moment of the day.