My Prayer for Muslims Murdered in Chapel Hill

When I originally wrote this I had just seen the CNN report.  As more information comes out, it seems maybe this wasn't a hate crime, but rather a dispute over parking (http://wunc.org/post/chapel-hill-shooting-what-we-know-so-far).  I can't decide what's worse, killing for hate or killing for a parking space. Either way, my prayers at the end remain.
          
  I begin with Isaiah 42.  I can’t think of where else to begin. 

42 Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
    my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;
    he will bring forth justice to the nations.
² He will not cry or lift up his voice,
    or make it heard in the street;
³ a bruised reed he will not break,
    and a dimly burning wick he will not quench;
    he will faithfully bring forth justice.
⁴ He will not grow faint or be crushed
    until he has established justice in the earth;
    and the coastlands wait for his teaching.

           

            This morning, CNN reported[i] that Craig Stephen Hicks murdered a student at the school of dentistry at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.  Hicks murdered Deah Shoddy Barakat, already in the dental school, his wife Yusor Mohammad who was about to enter the program, and Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, Yusor’s sister and a N.C. State student.  Three victims, each under the age of 25.  This is an awful tragedy.

            CNN reports that Hicks was an atheist and that he murdered these three because of their Muslim faith.  Christian pastors need to be the loudest voices decrying this tragedy.  We must stand with our Muslim friends against evil of this sort.  I have many Christian friends who love to rant about the evils of Islam.  In these exhortations, my friends mix critique of a religion with xenophobia and a hatred of all things Arab (even though millions of Muslims are not Arabs). 

            We Christians need to speak up and stand with our Muslim friends in the name of Jesus and for the sake of peace and love.  Yes, just an hour ago, I posted a blog that is a book review of Jenny Nordberg’s The Underground Girls of Kabul.  Yes, my blog post is critical of aspects of Muslim culture, most notably the lack of rights for women.  However, I do not hate Muslims.

            I cannot hate Muslims.  I look to the story in Isaiah’s poetry.  God has called a servant who brings justice.  God’s servant is most gentle with those in society who are most vulnerable.  “A bruised reed he will not break.”  He is for those who are weak, exposed, and in the minority.  God’s will is that those trodden under foot, those stomped under heel be raised to health and shalom (peace with the possibility of prosperity). 

Obviously dental school students are undergoing training that will lead to affluent professions.  So in that sense these murdered are not vulnerable in the way the poor and under resourced are vulnerable.  But Muslims in America are a minority at a time in history when many of our soldiers are fighting wars in predominantly Muslim cultures where the enemy combatants are Muslim extremists.  Clearly some Americans like the evil idiot, Mr. Hicks, cannot discern between an upstanding, peace loving citizen (of any nation) and a misguided terrorist.  Muslims in America have to face prejudice that aligns them with terrorists when in fact they just American dental students (or NBA players or school teachers or cab drivers).  Sometimes the prejudice comes out in ignorant Facebook posts.  Sometimes it becomes extreme, like in the case of the murderer Craig Stephen Hicks.

            I believe Jesus perfectly fulfills the role of the servant described in Isaiah.  So in this story, he is on the side of Deah, Yusor, and Razan.  He stands with the victim.  Jesus loves Muslims more than I do.  I know my Muslim friends see him as a prophet while I see him as the Son of God and the Savior of the world.  Christian views of Jesus and Muslim views of Jesus are completely incompatible.  There is no middle ground.

            However, Christians can affirm that Jesus loves all people.  And today, we Christians can and must declare solidarity with Muslims.  We must say it and mean it, #MuslimLivesMatter.  I don’t want Muslims killed or harmed or marginalized.  I want them to have the same opportunities for a good American life that I enjoy. 

            A particularly chilling aspect of this story for me is Hicks’ age.  He’s 46.  In a week, I turn 45.  A guy just about exactly my age killed three young people full of life and potential.  Why?  Somehow his life led him to be an atheist and a person full of hatred.  Somehow in the same number of years, my life led me to this point.  I am shocked by what happened.  All I can think to do is pray.

            Oh God, whose servant will not be crushed until he has established justice on the earth, give justice to the families of Deah, Yusor, and Razan.  Give mercy and healing to their parents and to those who loved them and weep for them.  Raise up in our community people of peace, pastors and Muslim leaders who will stand together for peace.  Bring healing to our blood-stained world. 

            And Father in Heaven, convict the heart of Craig Stephen Hicks.  I have in this writing, accused him and berated him, and Lord, I am not sorry.  His sins have ended three lives.  I pray he will spend the rest of his life behind bars.  And I pray in that time that he will meet you and his heart will be turned. 

            Lord, only you possess knowledge of the eternal destiny for Deah, Yusor, and Razan.  Some of my conservative Christian peers would confidently declare them hell-bound because they failed to verbalize a faith in Christ.  I cannot do this.  Lord of the cross and resurrection, I pray for these young people.  I look at their photos on CNN and see beauty and life.  I pray you would receive them with your Holy love. 

AMEN

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[i] http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/11/us/chapel-hill-shooting/index.html

Review of the Underground Girls of Kabul

            I know that the situation in Afghanistan is not the norm for all women in the Muslim faith.  I know that there are situations in some Christian communities where women lack equality with men, access to education, and opportunities to reach their potential.  I say this because I don’t want to overstate the case.  However, I find Jenny Nordberg’s book about women in Kabul and throughout Afghanistan to be credible.

            Because it is believable, it is hard to accept.  Women in Afghanistan have no rights.  Even the individual Nordberg gives the most attention to, the politician is under heel in her own home.  Jenny Nordberg has opened a world that most Americans and westerners never see or understand.  Now that she has revealed it, I still don’t understand it.

            I come away from my reading of “The Underground Girls of Kabul” thinking there is no way in traditional Islam that women can ever be fully human.  Combined with the experiences shared in Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s “Infidel,” I am left to conclude that a main thread of Islam involves the violent subjugation of women. 

            I am a Baptist pastor who tries to afford women every opportunity men have within the church.  My more conservative Baptist peers do not feel women should be allowed to be ordained as pastors.  I do.  However, even the conservative Baptists in the United States have no objection to women becoming doctors, lawyers, politicians, or university professors.  The rights denied women in conservative American Christianity while wrong pale in comparison to the way women are subjugated in normative Islamic life in Afghanistan.

            I think Jenny Nordberg went through real hardship to research this book and her final product is a gift to any thinking person who wants to understand the situation in conservative Islamic communities.  Writers who go the extent she did to accomplish her work help make humankind smarter.

The Praying Life

Sunday, February 8, 2015

            My grandmother is 92.  No one in our family has lived to that age.  When she was 86, she got really sick.  I began preparing for her death.  Most people don’t live into their 90’s.  It is happening more and more, but it is not a tragedy when someone over 85 dies.  I want to be careful with this.  I am not casual about anyone’s death.  We read in 1^st Corinthians 15 that death is the enemy.  It is serious and whenever my grandmother does die whether is this year or when she is 100, we will grieve.  But it is not a tragedy.  It is a full life, lived well. 

            And that would have been true had she died a few years ago when she was sick at 86.  Even so, we prayed for her recovery.  Relative in 8 different states were praying.  In our family, Meme is a revered, saintly figure.  And she recovered. 

            Did she get well because we prayed so hard.  Maybe.  My grandmother was on the wrong medication and once it was changed, her depression was gone.  Her zeal for life, even at 86, returned and is still there now at 92. 

            So what do we see?  Meme recovered because of everyone’s prayers or Meme recovered because they finally got the medication right?  I don’t even try to know the answer.  I believe prayer helped.  I know my praying helped draw me to God.  God walked with me in a tense, uncertain time.  Life is full of tension and uncertainty.  If Meme had died, God would have helped me cope.  Someday she will die.  When it comes prayer will help us because prayer is conversation with God and God loves us.

            Christ followers live in prayer.  When we are right in our walk with God, our lives are prayer-filled lives.  If you think, Uh oh, my life is not prayer-filled, I may not be where I need to be, spiritually speaking, don’t worry.  God is not staring with arms angrily folded, glaring at us and thinking, you better get this right.  God loves us with mercy and grace.  God’s desire is to walk with us.  We are more aware of God when our lives are built on prayer and immersed in prayer.

            In the book Streams of Living Water, Richard Foster writes that the prayer-filled-life is defined the “steady gaze [or a person’s] soul [is] upon the God who loves us” (p.49).  The stead gaze of her soul is upon the God who loves her.  The steady gaze of your soul is upon the God who loves you.

            I don’t know about you, but that is kind of different from the way I normally think and talk.  We would suppose Christians – we – are praying people.  But when we say that, what exactly are we saying?  Again, consider Foster’s quote, “the steady gaze of the soul upon the God who loves us.”  Do you picture an esoteric aesthetic who retreats to the mountains and sits in silent mediation?  Or the monk, cloistered in a cell, chanting for hours on end?  We can imagine the guy steadily gazing upon the soul of the God who loves him.  I can’t see myself being that guy.

            I imagine myself and it is a week before Christmas.  Christmas shopping needs to be done.  There is a Christmas event at church.  My older son is singing in school choir’s performance at Barnes and Noble.  My younger son has a basketball game.  I need to finish my sermon.  We have out-of-town company.  And both Candy and I are sick.   If someone is tempted to chalk that up to “Christmas stress,” there are numerous other times in the year that the schedule is that full.  And we know a lot of people, devoted Christian people, who are as busy as we are.  How are supposed to “maintain a steady gaze upon the God who loves us?”  We are so caught up jumping from one event to the next, we don’t have a steady gaze on anything. 

            But it is not just stress that interrupts us and gets in the way of living the praying life.  The problem of evil crops up. I read an interview just this week touching on this. A British actor, one I thoroughly enjoy in films, was asked about his atheism.  The interviewer said, ‘what if you died and found there is a God?  What would say to him?’  The actor replied, ‘I’d say to God, bone cancer in children.  What’s that about?’  He went on to name other dreadfully awful tragedies.  He blamed God for all of it.[i]  If there is God, that God is to blame for all the evil and suffering in the world.  The theological term for this is theodicy; the problem of evil. 

            It is a reasonable thing to consider when we talk about prayer.  Pondering evil, how do we pray at all?  We think about the suffering that is in the world and it gets heavy?  If we have a heart, we are wearied by the plight so many people face.

            Each of the four gospels offers examples of Jesus at prayer.  In Mark’s account we see Jesus, right in the midst of a very full life, making space to gaze upon God.  And, Jesus does surrounded by examples of the pain and suffering that the actor and many atheists cannot stomach.  No one hates the evil and the hurt humans endure more than Jesus.  This is why he came. 

In a Sabbath day service with Jesus preaching in the synagogue, a man interrupts everything.  His maniacal rants make it clear that he is possessed by a demon.  Today we see such a thing and chalk it up to severe mental illness.  I believe demons are real.  I believe demons are real.  I believe mental illness is real.  There is no way to determine what was up with this guy.  He came off as insane as he interrupted Jesus’ sermon with his crazed rants. 

            Then, the unexpected; the demons recognize Jesus.  “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?  Have you come to destroy us?  I know who you are, Holy One of God.”  What was this demon saying?  Jesus was the son of Joseph and Mary, not God.

            Jesus sternly called out the demons and they obeyed.  The affair rocked that little Capernaum synagogue.  They had seen possessions, but never had they witness demons meekly submit to a man’s authority.  This was the carpenter’s son.  Jesus became the talk of the town.  Simon Peter’s mother-in-law had a debilitating fever.  Jesus touched her and she was back to full health. 

            Word spread.  There’s a miracle man at Simon Peter’s house.  Mobs of people descended on this out-of-the hamlet, and Jesus responded to every need.  He and his disciples walked from village to village, teaching the Kingdom and casting demons out of people. 

            Once, a leper came to him.  Lepers were supposed to stand at a distance and shout “unclean” so other would stay away.  One was so desperate, he violated convention and ran right up to kneel before Jesus.  Jesus was “moved with pity.”  He healed the man. 

            In Mark Jesus was always hurried and rushed by crowds.  The word that characterizes Mark’s gospel is “immediately.”  Every need was right now.  On one occasion, Jesus was so exhausted, he fell fast asleep in the bow of the boat.  Waves lifted the small craft high in the air and then slapped it down hard on the water again and again.  The 12 disciples held on for dear life.  I wonder if the tax collector got seasick.  I doubt he was an experienced sailor.

Jesus, also not a boatman, lay in bow and snoozed away.  The only time people gave him any space was when he was in the middle of the sea in weather not fit for man nor beast.  If ever someone did not have time to pause and cast a steady gaze of the soul upon the God who love us, it was Jesus.

Jesus knew busyness, yet he prayed.  His relationship with his Father-God deepened as he prayed in trying times.  Jesus could not be who he was without prayer.  Mark 1:35: “In the morning, while it was still dark, he got up and went out to a deserted place, and there he prayed.”  He prayed at meals.  He prayed with large crowds in the country side.  While he hung dying the cross, he talked to God.  Mark’s gospel shows how normal it was to see Jesus praying. 

As a guest in Simon’s home, he sacrificed sleep, rising pre-dawn so he could focus on God.  Everyone else was still in bed.  He was fully human and needed sleep as much as anyone.  Something he needed more than sleep was time with his Heavenly Father.

Other times, he went far into the wilderness, leaving crowds behind.  I know I sacrifice prayer time for tasks, sometimes very necessary things; sometimes not-so-necessary.  Jesus sacrificed tasks, and appointments because prayer took priority.  He built his life around it.  He did not fit prayer into the life he was building.  Everything else came after he had his time with God.

How does this look in your life or mine?  In 2015, with all the ways life gets filled, how do we live the praying life as Jesus lived it?

It begins with the development of our relationship with God.  No one can do this for you or for me.  We go to God together as a community.  Together, we sing.  Together we serve.  Together we pray.  We all have to be in it.  There is no surrogate faith.  Your mom, my friend, an elder – no one else can develop your life with God.  It is you and God.  It is God and me; we have to step toward the Father in prayer. 

God has stepped toward us.  Jesus came – God in flesh.  Jesus took the penalty of sin upon himself.  With death on the cross and his resurrection, sin no longer comes between us and God.  We repent, he forgives, and the relationship is right there to be lived.

We are made ready for stressful days through our prayers during the calm times.  We make daily prayer a top priority.   What I offer here are a few possible ways one might enter the praying life.

It could be every morning.  With that first cup of coffee, you read a few verses, write your thoughts and prayers in a daily notebook, and then spend at least five minutes in quiet, talking in your spirit to God and listening in your heart as God speaks to you. 

It could be a quiet meditation.  You make sure every day to arrive at work 5 minutes early, but you don’t go in right away.  You sit in your car for 5 minutes.  Read a passage in the Bible. Spend quiet moments asking God to prepare you for the day ahead. 

Perhaps you have young children.  As the school bus pulls away, you pull out your Bible and set it on your kitchen table.  The next 20 minutes will be you, God, the word, and your prayer notebook.  And nothing else gets that time.

Peter woke up.  No Jesus.  Where was he?  Peter, Mark says, “Hunted” for Jesus.  I don’t know if Jesus was done praying when Peter found him, but Jesus was ready to go. 

When shape our lives so that we get to those desert places alone God and daily, we linger there.  When those quiet moments become fixed in our lives and prayer is normal for us, then everything else falls in place.  It does not mean everything is easy or perfect.  It means we are in touch with God.  We sense God’s presence and hear when God speaks.  Like Jesus, from our times of prayer, living the prayer-filled life, we are ready to live the purposes and works God has for us. 

So, copy the master.  Carve out space so that life is filled up with prayer and thus filled up with God. 

AMEN

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[i] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/11381589/Watch-Stephen-Fry-brands-God-utterly-utterly-evil.html

The Compassionate Healer

I did this message several years ago, and then revisited it this past week.  I thought it worth posting even though it is a bit long.

Sunday, November 5, 2006

            In 1990, an ice storm hit Roanoke.  My best friend took to the streets to see how fast his sled would go.  It was a back road, and it should not have been a problem.  But, he got going so fast, he lost control and rammed into the bottom of a parked car.  He ended up with 60 stitches in his head.  He could have been decapitated.  A few years later, fully recovered, he married his college sweetheart and began working with his dad.  Then, at 26, his wife left him for another man.  She was the only woman he had ever loved and she was gone.  Broken hearted, he began the painful road to recovery.  Then one day, he woke up and could not move.  My friend is a natural athlete.  He can dunk a basketball; he can run for miles without stretching & without getting tired or sore.  In pick-up football games, no one can cover him.  He woke up and could not move his body.  His brother discovered him, got him to the hospital, and within a week, the unexplained illness was gone and he was back on his feet, healthy again.  Around the time he turned 30, his company fired his father.  He still had a job, but his father was dismissed.  He had to recover once again, and this time in very awkward circumstances.  A few years later, he left that company to work for his father’s new company.  A few years after that, he was the one fired.  This past summer he remarried.  Physically, emotionally, relationally, my best buddy from high school has had to go through periods of healing; and, sometimes it was hard to know if the healing would ever come.  But, it has and it continues to.  And, I think my friend’s story has some unique aspects to it, but it not uncommon. 

People have injuries to the body.  We have crushing blows that hit the heart.  We need help overcoming the things that wound us.  Today we begin a series of 6 messages from the Gospel of Mark on miraculous healings.  It’s the supernatural power of Jesus on display.  Scientists, doctors, and historians have no explanation for the stories we will hear.  Did these miracles really happen?  Is it just legend, or exaggeration, written down generations after the fact?  Is it wishful thinking?  Wouldn’t it be great if there was a guy who loved everybody and healed everybody?  Wouldn’t that be wonderful? 

I believe the stories of Jesus’ miracles are real, historical.  These things, the healings included, happened. 

            So what do we learn from them?  How does it help the church and the faith of individual Christians today to know the tales of miracles Jesus performed 2000 years ago?  And why, of all the miracles, we would zero in on healing? 

I have am in some way connected to over 20 people that have needed some form of care -  the emergency room, the operating room, the hospital, home health care or hospice care.  Some were over 80, but not all.  I spent time with children who did not know if they would live or die.  A lot of these folks I visited were a part of this church or my former church; others weren’t.  Some were members of my own family.  Some were friends from years ago.  Over 20 people, in 2006, and the year isn’t over.   Why talk about healing?  Everyone needs it.  And, I believe the healing offered by Jesus happens today.

However, before we talk about being made well and being made whole, we must acknowledge some problems.  The first one is the lack of 21^st miracles.  I have never been associated with a healing that a doctor could not explain.  Maybe you have, but most I know have not.  Most today have never seen or heard about a truly miraculous event.  It’s an age of science and highly developed medicine.  Maybe the miracle is what God has allowed brilliant doctors to learn.  I don’t discount that at all.  But, the unexplainable seems to fall into the realm of superstition and is not the stuff educated people listen to.  That’s the first problem.

The second is not everyone is healed.  I know a pastor from El Salvador whose granddaughter was diagnosed with leukemia late last year.  I visited her and prayed with her family at UVA hospital in Charlottesville.  Her mom and sister confidently told me that if the leukemia killed her, they would testify that she had gone to be with the Lord and give Him glory.  If she survived they would praise God for the healing.  The little girl felt the same way.  Her doctor did not give her much of a chance to make it.   But, we received a report in June that after some radical treatments that had a low success rate, she was cancer free!  Praise God!

In the book Disappointment with God, Philip Yancy tells about a thriving church that he visited in a village in Peru.  That sentence itself is cause for joy.  The people of this region had been steeped in ancient traditional religions until a missionary came and introduced them to Jesus.  When he visited, Yancey discovered a church that had grown strong over its 40 years of life.  He also discovered a small, forgotten stone monument; a tribute to one of the missionaries who helped found the church.  God worked through this young man to introduce the entire village to Christ.  But, the young missionary’s 6-month old son was hit with an onset of vomiting and diarrhea.  The child died.  As the village around him grew in faith, the young missionary was arrested in grief.  His heavy heart made him so sick; he was pulled from the mission field, never to return to mission work.

What’s the difference in the 2 stories?  In the first one, a pastor’s granddaughter survived.  In the second, a missionary’s son died.  Why did one live and not the other?  If we credit God with healing in the 1^st case, do we blame God for not delivering in the 2^nd?  I don’t have an easy answer – no one does.  I am highly suspicious of anyone who offers trite answers.  The hardest funeral I ever did was for a 6-month-old child. 

We don’t see as many miracles today as we read about in Mark.  That’s a problem.  Some people are healed and some aren’t.  That’s another problem.  As we proceed to examine these great stories in the Bible, I can’t promise that you or I will find the exact healing we might be looking for.  That’s a third problem.  As we discuss healing, I have to say, God has not told me that at HillSong, we will no longer need crutches or wheel chairs or doctors or treatment plans or medicine.  I cannot stand before you and promise medical miracles. 

I do have something to offer though.  It’s the most important part of the healing stories.  It goes deeper than the physical body.  And it is far more important to Jesus than physical healing.  At the center of this passage, when the disciples come to Jesus because mobs of sick and demon possessed people want to be healed, Jesus responds, “Let’s get out of here.  Let’s go to other villages.”  Does he want to depart so he can heal in other places?  No, he’s going to preach.  He says, “That’s what I came to do.”  Jesus’ mission was to tell people how they could know God.  Along the way, he did perform many miracles.  But his purpose was to preach about the kingdom of God and how people could surrender their hearts to the will of God and be adopted as children of God. 

Furthermore, at the heart this reading from Mark, when the crowds want the miracle worker to end all disease, discomfort, and disturbance in Galilee, Jesus retreats to the wilderness.  He doesn’t make it easy.  He gets away from it all so he can pray.  He needs spiritual strength because the crucial work that lies ahead, the eternal task, is spiritual, not physical.  Physical hurts are real and problematic and for some people utterly disabling; but spiritual disease is far worse in Jesus’ mind. 

So what I offer, actually what the Holy Spirit offers in the face of needed healing, is what Jesus tried to give when people wanted miracles.  Jesus tried to give hope.  Jesus tried to build faith.  Jesus tried to mend broken souls by offering forgiveness.  Jesus tried to change lives by freely giving the love of God to all who would receive it.  He’s still doing that and it’s still needed.

While he was pastor of FBC Macon, GA, Chuck Poole wrote the book Don’t Cry Past Tuesday.  He opens talking about a walk he took one day to visit his friend, a priest at the Catholic Church across the street.  As he entered, he noticed a sign that said “Cry Room.”  It was just off the sanctuary, a room where parents could hear the service while their babies cried.  The worship service came through on a speaker but the walls of the room prevent the babies’ cries from disturbing other worshippers. 

As Poole walked away, a thought hit him.  That sign, “Cry Room,” should hang outside of every sanctuary and worship room in every church.  The sign should be in the main room for the adults because this should be a safe place for people who need to cry.  Poole writes adults need a place to “confess their deepest guilt, ask their toughest questions, and tell their darkest stories; adults need a place where they can find help with all the heavy luggage of their unhealed diseases, unrealized ambitions, unresolved mysteries, and unfulfilled hopes.  … [This place, the gathering of the church, must be a place where] the shoulder stooping, sleep-robbing, heart-breaking fears, shames, and hurts of life are voice, not silenced; acknowledged, not denied.”  Our gathering is “where the protest of hope is lodged against the evidence for despair. … [We – followers of Jesus the healer – are] bearers of grace to the troubled and keepers of hope for the weary.”  Moreover, the church is where we come, when we what need more than anything is to have the arms of God wrapped around us in an embrace. 

Yes, Jesus healed the body some times.  His purpose though, in the first century and today, was to heal the soul.  Often those with Him, even the beneficiaries of miracles missed the biggest blessing! 

When the man stricken with leprosy came to Jesus, he didn’t say “Heal me.”  He asked to be made clean because leprosy was viewed as a disease of the soul.  One with this condition was not allowed to enter the temple.  The leper wasn’t permitted to touch others.  He was isolated socially and cut off from God.  This leper that came to Jesus broke the rules.  He was supposed to stay away, but in desperation, he crossed the lines to beg for redemption.  Jesus too broke the rules.  Those who were clean were to avoid the sick and diseased.  It was forbidden to touch an untouchable, but Jesus stepped outside the box religion had worked so hard to build.  He grasped the man and with love said, “I am willing to help you.  Be clean!”  The leprosy left the man and Jesus instructed him to go to the priest and worship God thereby being declared clean in the proper way.  Jesus did not simply heal him.  He restored him.  For the healing to be complete and the man to be accepted back into the society, he had to go to the priest.

At this point, the man forgot why he came to Jesus.  He came asking to be cleansed.  When he got what he asked for, he then disobeyed the healer.  Jesus said, “Don’t tell anyone about this.  Go to the priest.”  The man never went to the priest.  Instead he ran through streets shouting through a bullhorn the wonders of the miracle worker.  It makes for good copy, but this healed leper did receive Jesus’ most important offering.  He didn’t re-enter a relationship with God and with the worshipping community.  Instead he settled for The National Inquirer, Geraldo, and his own reality TV show.  Jesus wanted to mend a soul, but the man became a spectacle.

Simon’s mother-in-law reacted differently.  When Jesus came to her, she did not have leprosy.  She had a fever that could have been fatal.  People around her would search for spiritual failures on her part as a reason for this affliction.  When Jesus saw the semiconscious sweating woman, he didn’t say a word.  He took her by the hand, raised her from the bed, and helped her to her feet.  In the whisper of a moment, the healer took one from the deathbed to vibrant life.  Mark doesn’t record a single word she said; only that at once she began serving Jesus and the disciples.  In that way, she became a humble, obedient, servant of the healer and gave what was needed.  Jesus was an itinerant who needed people to host him and his men and to feed them.  Simon’s mother-in-law responded to healing by giving what she could offer, something needed, and thus joining Jesus in his work.  As we go through the healing stories, we see that the response to the healing was more important than the initial miracle.  Those who responded by embracing relationship with God received the greater gift.

Dr. Paul Brand, a Christian and a specialist who worked with lepers in India, reported one encounter.  He examined a bright young man and as he went to tell his diagnosis, he set his hand on the man’s shoulder and began talking.  As the translator interpreted Dr. Brand’s words, the young Indian began to shake and weep.  This surprised Dr. Brand and asked the translator about it.  The young Indian explained to her through his tears, that before Dr. Brand put an arm around, no one had touched him for years.  Spurned by society because of his disease, he had become isolated in the worst way.  Whatever medical help Dr. Brand could offer was just gravy.  The meat of the healing was the embrace. 

It is this way with Jesus.  Sometimes the body is healed.  On more than one occasion, he brought the dead back to life.  But, the bodies he healed broke down again.  Lazarus and the others he resuscitated died again.  However, the souls that come to God through faith in Jesus are forever changed, forever healed.  It is the embrace of Heaven we need the most.

The NIV translation states that when the leper came to Jesus, he was filled with compassion.  Jesus ached for this hurting man and with him.  In our church family there are parents who come to God trembling because they worry about their children.  There are teary eyed adult children who now have to care for ailing, aging parents.  There are hearts crumbled, trying to pick up the pieces in the after math of a damaging relationship.  There are singles, beautiful people, who struggle with the gnawing ache of desiring marriage and family life, unsure if it will ever come.  There are people who used to dream, but stopped dreaming after the dreams were shattered one time too many.  The Holy Spirit knows the pain you bear and the scars I carry.  The Holy Spirit is here and when one of us is driven to our knees in desperation, the Holy Spirit responds as Jesus did.  Filled with compassion, the Holy Spirit begins the work of repairing our lives.

In November 2003, Lisa Shearin, from Dunn, NC, a mother of 3 kids all in their 20’s, had a stomach problem and ended up in a coma.  This was just before Thanksgiving.  She awoke on New Year’s Day.  Miraculously, one doctor said, her brain was in tact and in time, she regained all of her capabilities, movement, and senses – save one.  She was blind and is to this day.  The headline of the story about her in the Biblical Record is “Loss of sight doesn’t steal woman’s joy.”  Her journey through blindness has had twists and turns, and ultimately it increased her faith.  The first year, as she bumped into things learning to navigate in unending darkness, she suffered a broken nose 4 times and a separate shoulder.  It was hard, but she felt the tug of the lord on her heart.  The eyes of her soul opened wide.  Today, she is still blind.  But, she sees God at work in her life and at least once a month testifies in churches about how God is using her.  She teaches life skills at a school for the blind.  She is an advocate for sight impaired persons.  Here’s what she says in this article.  “I think a lot about learning to see people with my heart.”  Then she says it is worth it to be blind because she has learned to see people in this way. 

This woman has received the deep healing of Jesus.  His compassion for her didn’t lead to repaired eyes, but to a transformed soul.  Will all of our prayers be answered exactly as we hope?  I can’t guarantee that.  But, I promise the one who hears our prayers loves us more than we can know and heals in ways we might not even realize that we need. 

Are carrying a heavy burden, be it emotional, physical or spiritual?  Jesus wants to help.  Do you know someone who needs, more than anything, the soul healing only He gives?  Bring your friend here as we spend the upcoming weeks with the great physician.  Jesus, the compassionate healer, has great love for you, is ready to heal your heart, fill your life, and draw you into the father’s arms. 

Let us pray

Amen

On a Long Walk with God (Lent 2015)

On a Long Walk with God

            Lent begins two weeks from today on Ash Wednesday (February 18).  We will have our worship service at 7PM, which officially begins our journey to the cross and then to Easter.  Every year, I do what I will this year, encourage the church family to take up spiritual disciplines as an effort to “die to self” and recognize our dependence upon God.  This annual rhythm of refocusing reminds us of the centrality of God as we know God in Jesus Christ.

            For my part this year, I have not decided upon specific disciplines yet.  I know I need to rededicate myself to practices I do throughout the year: Bible reading and journaling.  I know my discipline will include fasting.  Jesus assumes his followers will fast in order to give themselves fully to God (Matthew 6:16).  I know I will pray with a sense of expectation.  I believe my prayers are heard by a real, present, involved God, not wishes shouted into a well. 

            There is something else I know.  This season of commitment to spiritual discipline and commitment to my part in developing my relationship with God is something that happens within a lifelong walk.  I became a Christian in 1981.  I have been in a household of Christ followers from birth.  Parents and Grandparents prayed for me before I was born. 

            I don’t mean for this short post to sound matter-of-fact.  There is nothing normal or ho-hum about walking in step with the God of the universe.  And that is what I believe I am doing.  I am on a walk with the God who created … everything.  I may not always acutely sense God’s presence but intellectually and emotionally, I do not doubt it.  And it is amazing.  When I feel dull or sleepy in my walk with God, I am falling under an enemy’s spell, allowing the Evil One to lull me into a dangerous slumber. 

            It is not matter-of-fact.  It is familiar.  I know God knows me.  I know God will love me even if I fail to observe Lent at all.  If between now and Easter, I don’t even pray a single time, God still loves me.  However, I will miss something.  I don’t know what, exactly.  But is going to speak, and I don’t want to miss that.  God is going to act, and I want to see it and be part of it. 

            I also want to be more like him.  By that I mean I want to forgive more easily and freely. I want the patience Jesus had.  I want to love in a way that transforms me and the one to whom I extend agape love, be it my wife or my child or my enemy.  I want all that is Godly in Christ to define me.  So, I will take up these disciplines in a way that is unique to Ash Wednesday, Lent, Good Friday, and Easter. 

The rest of the year is just as much a time to die to self and live in Christ.  But this season has a quality to it unlike any other. I hope and pray that on April 6 (the Monday after Easter Sunday); I wake up a different person than who I am today.  I hope and pray that on that day, I know something about God I don’t now know.  I want there to be a palpable Holy Spirit presence in me.  That is the journey I am on and have been for a long time.  I am grateful for this life, life with God.  With God beside me, I will take the next step on this walk.

The Heavenly Invitation - an invitation to live in Mutuality

 Isaiah 55:1-13

Sunday, February 1, 2015

          A boy is given a football as a gift.  It has a new, right-out-of-the-box smell.  He holds it, imagining himself to be Tom Brady. [i]  It is slightly underinflated, just perfect.  In the yard, he sees how far he can throw it.  Then he runs and picks it up.  He sees how high he can kick it.  Again, he fetches his new football.  About this time, his friend walks.

          “Hey, what are you doing there?”

          “I got this new football.”

          “Can I throw with you?  We can run some pass patterns.”

          “No.  It’s mine.  I am going to play with my football.”

          “But you’re just fetching it.  A football isn’t for just one person.”

          “It’s my football.  Now, get out of my yard.”[ii]

          Jesus tells a story about a king who gives a great banquet.  You can read about it in Matthew 22 and Luke 14.  How great would it be to be invited to a king’s feast?  Politics aside, I think most Americans would count in an honor to dine at the White House.  It would be a once-in-a-lifetime type thing.  We would cancel other commitments for this.  Who would reject an invitation to such a thing as a king’s feast?

          In the story Jesus tells, a lot of people send regrets.  “Apologies, but I have too much work and cannot get away.”  “So sorry, your majesty, but farm chores call.”  “I’ve just been married.  What’s that?  Bring my wife too?  No thank you.  Maybe next time.”  In Matthew, Jesus says this is the Kingdom of Heaven.  God is obviously the king, and the guests can’t seem to find time to eat at God’s table.  For them the things of earth take precedence over the heavenly invitation.

          This will not do, so, says Jesus, the king goes out to find others who might actually come.  The chosen ones rejected his invitation.  Now he sends his servants to invite everyone they can find, the good and the bad, Matthew tells us.  Luke reports that they go to the highways and the back roads where they find the lame, the crippled, the poor, and the blind and these are the honored guests at God’s table because these are the ones who recognize how much they need what only God can give. 

         

          What’s a selfish boy playing with his football alone got to do with a king’s banquet where the guests refuse to come?  In both stories, the main action cannot happen unless people are together, sharing time, giving and receiving. 

Think about a pass in a football game.  The biggest, meanest guys on defense, the d-linemen, are coming to flatten the quarterback.  The only way he has time to throw is if his linemen keep the defense away for a few seconds.  The fastest guys on the defense are going to cover his receivers.  He can only complete his pass if his 3 or 4 receivers their routes properly.  Then, he has to do his job and throw to the one who is separated enough from the defender.  Then, he has to make a good throw.  He has to hit a moving target.  Great.  But we’re not there yet.  His receiver has to catch that ball.  Maybe it’s raining.  Maybe the receiver is trying to catch the ball but is near the sideline and has to sort of watch his feet and the ball the same time.  Maybe the defense and right at the moment the ball hits the receiver’s hands, the defender spears the receiver in the small of the back.  Just completing a pass requires several people doing things correctly.  It cannot be just one or even just two.  It is a concert in which every participants needs to be on time.

The banquet is a different picture, slower paced, less tense, more relaxed.  However, the presence of people who all come with the same purpose in mind is necessary.  The king’s feast is a celebration.  Everyone first of all must come.  Second, we must come hungry.  Third, we must come with hearts ready to be with the other guests and share dinner-table conversation.  Fourth, we must come with the knowledge that this is special.  From time to time, I buy fast food and eat while listening to the radio in my car.  I enjoy those little moments, but this is not that.  This is the king’s feast.  In Matthew, the king comes across a guest not wearing a wedding robe and that one is kicked out.  The wedding robe comes to all who are baptized in the name of Jesus.  The church is the bride of Christ.  For this feast to be what God intends, we must come ready to receive the blessings God gives and dressed in our faith in Jesus. 

The football story and the banquet story are analogies that point to this. In the kingdom of God, our cup overflows with blessing, but none of these blessings can be enjoyed alone.  As God reaches to us, God does so expecting us to embrace one another and to come to Him arm-in-arm. 

Today we reach the pinnacle of Second Isaiah, the incredible invitation in chapter 55.  “Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!”  The blessings from God cannot be purchased, only received with gratitude.  Second Isaiah proclaimed extended this invitation from God.

Then the people of Israel returned to their home and found it in ruins.  The walls around Jerusalem were gone.  The temple was gone.  The great city of David was rubble.  Where were the great things the prophet promised when we were in Babylon? In his initial comments on the third portion of Isaiah, 56-66, Paul Hansen poses these questions.  “What happened to the brilliant promise of light proclaimed … by Second Isaiah?  Are we dealing with failed prophecy?”  In answer to his own query, Hansen writes, “The message of Second Isaiah does not constitute a scientific prediction of future events; rather it is a visionary description of God’s plan for creation and of the part that [God’s faithful people] was to play in that plan.”[iii]

Does this relegate prophecy to a vague kind of background sound that informs how things ought to be but doesn’t say much about how things are?  Is Isaiah 55 a beautiful picture but not much more than wishful thinking when held up alongside reality? 

The prophecy becomes real life progressively.  Yes, things were rough when the exiles returned to Israel, a broken country.  But they did return.  In the stories of their return told in Nehemiah, Ezra, Haggai, Malachi, and Isaiah 56-66, we see signs pointing to the future of God’s kingdom.  We get hints of it what it will be.  Those stories show the Isaiah 55 vision just a bit. 

The picture comes in sharper images and bolder colors in the gospel.  “Come … you that have no money, come, but and eat.”  And we read of Jesus feeding 4000 with a few loaves.  We see Jesus multiply one young boy’s lunch, loaves and fish, to feed 5000 and produce 12 baskets of leftovers.  Isaiah sings, “Come buy wine and milk without money and without price.”  We sit with Jesus the night before his crucifixion at his table, the Lord’s Supper.  We eat the bread, his broken body.  We drink the wine, his blood, the new covenant, everlasting life. 

We hear Isaiah’s poetry; “See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you, because of the Lord your God, the holy one of Israel” (55:5).  And we hear Jesus tell the first disciples, “You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8). 

The prophecy of Isaiah 55 is exactly what Dr. Hanson said – a vision and the vision will come to its full reality when Jesus returns, judges, the world, and calls all who his disciples to live with Him for eternity in the Kingdom which is the join together of Earth made new and Heaven made new.  In our bodies, resurrected and made whole, we will live with God and each forever.

Until that day, the prophecy is in the process of fulfillment.  When we hear the word of God and respond in obedience, seeking God, worshiping God, and loving our neighbor, we live into God’s reality and we start to sense the higher ways of God.  God says, “My ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts” (55:9).  We learn some God’s higher thoughts as we follow God’s lead in the way live our everyday life. 

Do we want to, with our own eyes, see the dream of Isaiah 55 come to life?  I suggest that three choices, which each require receiving and giving, lead into us into Kingdom life where humans flourish.  This life animates the picture painted in Isaiah 55.

First, we choose to practice hospitality.  I have known Christ-followers in different churches who opened their home at Thanksgiving time to all adult who for any variety of reason would otherwise spend the holiday alone.  I think of Thanksgiving as a family holiday.  But these wonderful saints, and I know several do this, decide that any person is welcome into their family.  Of course for it to work, some have to accept that invitation.  The guests put away any sadness that comes with spending Thanksgiving alone.  The sadness is real, but a feeling of welcome also moves into the heart.  The sadness has to make room for something new; an invitation.  You are wanted.

Another example of hospitality: take someone to lunch.  A member here takes me out to eat at least a couple of times a year.  In those meals, we share our hearts for the Lord, for people, and our conversation go in many directions and are always blessed.  He gives the invitation, I accept, and we go and God is present.  We could come up with numerous other forms.  Find how you best give hospitality.  Extend an invitation.  When you are invited, with gratitude, accept and receive the love given to you.

Second, we choose to give grace and live in grace.  Grace is unearned favor.  We come to Jesus knowing we are sinners, but in his shed blood, our sins are washed away.  We receive his forgiveness and grace, and the stand as righteous children of God.   Give grace to someone who has failed.  Give grace to someone who hurts you.  This does not mean we are doormats or we take abuse as masochists.  It means we don’t let the injury destroy any hope of relationship with the offending party.  We give grace to the enemy in hopes that he and we could be transformed and go from enmity to brotherhood.  And, when someone reaches out to us in all our failure, we receive the grace they offer.  We repent of whatever harm we’ve done and live in joy and grace.

Third, we choose to see time as a context for relationship-building instead of a commodity we have to hoard or spend.  Relationships don’t happen quickly.  Be prepared to invest time in another person.  Hospitality works best when it comes at a leisurely pace.  It doesn’t have to be drawn out.  A lunch date is not that long.  But it cannot be hurried.  Give all of yourself in the time you have with the other.  Grace assures that festering wounds will not pollute our fellowship table.  Allow grace to wash over your relationships.

We seek out opportunities for hospitality, extend grace, and give our time to others.  The metaphor Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf uses to describe this life is embrace.  He writes,

Embrace implies that the [individual] and the other belong together.   For the self, shaped by the cross of Christ and the life of [God as trinity, Father-Son-Spirit], … embrace includes not just the other who is a friend but also the other who is the enemy.  Such an [individual] will seek to open her arms toward the other even when the other holds a sword.  The other will of course have to drop the sword … [for] embrace to take place.

If the other accepts the invitation, drops the sword and accepts the embrace, then both move into a life in which things can be produced, built, and erected.  The life of both can flourish with the blessing God.  It starts with the building of friendship.  That starts when we hear God, follow his lead, and open our arms, our hearts, and ourselves in hospitality and grace. 

Then, as Isaiah says, we will “go out in joy, and be led back in peace.  The mountains and hills will burst into song.  All the trees of the field shall clap their hands.  And it shall be a memorial to the Lord, an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off (55:12-13).

AMEN

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[i] This was preached Super Bowl Sunday.  The Patriots played the Sea Hawks.  In the AFC championship game there was a controversy because in the 1^st half the Patriots quarterback Tom Brady was throwing with footballs that were deflated below the NFL required pounds per square inch.  Talk about the controversy dominated not only sports talk shows but even national news in the days leading up to the Super Bowl.

[ii] N.T. Wright (2008).  Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church, HarperOne (New York), p. 200.  What I have written here is an adaptation of an analogy Wright makes.

[iii] P. Hanson (1995).  Interpretation: A Commentary for Preaching and Teaching: Isaiah 40-66.  John Knox Press (Louisville), p.187, 188.