The Slow Work Of God

‘Above all, trust in the slow work of God. We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay. We would like to skip the intermediate stages. We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new. And yet, it is the law of all progress that it is made by passing through some stages of instability--that it may take a very long time. Above all, trust in the slow work of God, our loving vine-dresser.’ - Teilhard de Chardin

I have a confession to make.  Marcia and I are not the best gardeners in the world.  We try hard, but it often seems that our success have more to do with luck than with care and intentionality.  Our garden this summer is a perfect example.  We tried to start from seed this year (I know.  All of you real gardeners and farmers are laughing at the fact saying, ‘Is there any other way to grow a garden’?  Give us a break.  We lived in the city a long time!).  At first, everything seemed to be going splendidly.  We dutifully planted seeds in the little planter that would sit in our guest room receiving the warmth and sunlight they needed.  It was a joyful experience to see the different seedlings sprout and to begin to imagine what they would be when they grew into full and mature plants outside.  We mapped out where we would plant each of these little ones when we moved them outside.  I could almost taste the peppers, the tomatoes, the basil, and everything else.  This was the easiest thing we had ever done!

That is, until the transplanting.  Some of our precious seedlings died, some seemed to never grow, and there was no lack of frustration and second-guessing in wondering what was going to happen to our garden.  Was something wrong with the soil?  Was the dirt too hard?  Were the plants not mature enough to be outside yet?  We looked for quick fixes.  We tried to loosen the soil more than we already had.  We planted more seeds to try to get them to grow completely ignoring the map we had created.

All I can say now is that I am unsure of what we did right or wrong.  We are still trying to learn those lessons.  The good news is that many plants in our garden are thriving and doing quite well (though because we abandoned our map, we also are not quite sure what several of the plants actually are!), and I am sure this is completely independent of our efforts.  Plants are meant to grow, and when they get the sunlight, soil nutrients, and water they need, that is what they do.  The slow work of God, setting the rains and the sun and the warmth to motion, is bringing our garden to life, and we trust that it will bear fruit.

A garden has been a metaphor for the spiritual life for many people in many times and places, and there are so many obvious reasons.  Those small, little seeds that hold so much power and so much life can be a metaphor for so many things - for our own spirits, for the good news of Jesus at work within us, for the ministries and relationships that we care for, nurture and sustain as individuals and as a church.  And we, just like an impatient gardener, can try to rush them to their fullness, we can take easy ways out, we can looks for quick fixes to avoid the necessary instability that leads to so much of the growth.  Ultimately, the overwhelming reality of it all is that the slow work of God will not cease despite our best efforts to hurry it up!  God works in the joys and excitements of new things sprouting to life in our lives and in our church.  God works in the dry and unstable periods when we wonder how we will make it through and whether the struggle and difficulty is even worth it.  God works in the pruning when there are things that we need to let go of for new life to grow.  And God works in the joy of harvest when we celebrate the fruit that comes from both our labor and our trust in the slow work of God.  May God continue to do his work, in our lives, in our church, in our communities, and in our world, and may we have the patience to trust that God’s work is done in love - whether it is on our time table or not.

What Are You Looking For?

The first words out of Jesus’ mouth that are recorded in the Gospel of John are, “What are you looking for?” (John 1:38).  It occurs in the story where John is soon to baptize Jesus.  As Jesus approaches, John calls out, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!”  Two who had been following John for a while start to follow Jesus, and he turns and asks them this question.

The Gospel of John is one of the masterful works of theology in all of the Bible.  It does not take long to see this.  The book begins with the theological work in the prologue talking about Word, Light, Life, Flesh, and more.  It is a magnificent piece of theological work that names Jesus as the Word of God present at Creation and now here in the flesh!  The Gospel of John is also known for its creative writing as well.  Simple words and phrases are infused with deep and powerful meaning and imagery.

So, when we read something as simple as Jesus first words spoken in the book, we hear the simple words of a man wondering why two people have started following him, but we also hear a deeply profound word about the purpose for the rest of the book.  It almost serves as a clue to those reading John’s testimony that, in reading this story, you will see and encounter Jesus, the word made flesh, the lamb of God, the savior of the world!  What are we looking for when we read the Gospel of John?  We are looking for none other than Jesus!

In some ways, I think that this is how we ought to read all of the Bible, not just the Gospel of John.  When we read, we ought to be looking for Jesus.  That seems pretty obvious, but let me try to explain a little more.  It seems logical that when we are confronted with a moral or ethical dilemma, as people of faith who believe the Bible to be the word of God, we would go to the text to look for answers. It seems to make sense as well that we would try to find the places where the Bible may address this topic specifically, and we would allow those texts to be the core of our quest to understand the Biblical teaching on the matter. There is some strength and merit to that approach and it is a common method amongst people of faith, but I think we need to be careful about it as well. What I mean is, what does the Bible reveal? Is at an ethical guideline and a moral code or is it a lens through which we see Jesus? That is a simple, either/ or question, and I understand it is more complex than that, but I think that question, “What does the Bible reveal and how does it do so?” is a critical question for all of us who seek to take the Bible seriously as a source for faith. When we read the Bible looking for a moral code, it seems to be that we are practicing a form of fundamentalism where following God means knowing and following a set of rules and dogmatic statements. That can be done without any sense of a living breathing relationship with God through Jesus, and that, as we know, is not what faith is about.

No, just as faith is not about following a moral code, reading the Bible is not about deciphering a set of rules either.  The Bible reveals to us who God is, who we are, and how God redeems that broken relationship through Jesus.  The reality is that much conflict that exists among people of faith today can, in some ways, be boiled down to differences in how we read the Bible.  They are differences of what it means for the book to be a living and inspired word.  Some want it to be like a legal code parsing each letter and phrase seeking the minutiae of each word trying to find the hidden meaning behind it all.  Some want it to be nothing more than an ancient artifact giving us insight into the history, culture, and spirituality of another time that has had a deep impact on modern life and culture.  I would like to suggest that the inspiration, the life, and the perfection of the Bible is that it shows us who Jesus is.  It points us to the son of God, the savior of the world, and it shows us that there is a better life, a new life, that comes when we follow him.

The next words that Jesus speaks in the Gospel of John?  After the two have responded to his question of what they were looking for by asking him where he is staying, Jesus says, “Come and see.”  Yes, indeed, come and see.  Read these words of life, and you will see the lamb of God, the Word made flesh, Jesus.

Why The Cross Matters More

Like many of you, I awoke on Monday morning to the news that American troops had apprehended and killed Osama bin Laden.  Also like many of you, this news was met with a touch of patriotism, but more so, relief.  After 10 years, the leader of the group that had carried out the terrorist attacks of 9/11 had finally been apprehended.  As an American, I understood the enthusiasm and even some of the celebration that came with the demise of an enemy.

But as a Christian person, I quickly began to ask myself, how am I to respond to this news?  Is the death of another person, even someone as terrible as Osama bin Laden, truly something to celebrate?  The gravity of the whole situation set in.  The reality is there have been thousands of deaths over the past ten years that are lamentable, sad, and bring us some degree of grief.  Is Osama bin Laden’s another or should it be treated differently?  I read a quote recently from the Vatican that I thought summarized well a Christian response to this news.  It said, “Osama bin Laden, as we all know, bore the most serious responsibility for spreading divisions and hatred among populations, causing the deaths of innumerable people, and manipulating religions to this end.  In the face of a man's death, a Christian never rejoices, but reflects on the serious responsibilities of each person before God and before men, and hopes and works so that every event may be the occasion for the further growth of peace and not of hatred.”

In the economy of this age, we live with the regrettable reality of hatred, division, suffering, and war.  The sad reality is that we all know that the death of Osama bin Laden will not be the end of it.  If history has taught us anything, it is that we human beings are very capable of choosing conflict over peace, choosing hatred over love, and choosing death over life.  It will no take long for a new face and a new name to become the common enemy of us all.  More blood, whether innocent or guilty, will be shed, and none of it will atone for past losses and sufferings.  Osama bin Laden did and said terrible things.  Even worse, he did and said those things in the name of God.  But the sad reality that is faced by all of us, especially by those who have lost husbands and fathers, mothers and wives, children and grandchildren in the past 10 years, is that his death will bring none of them back.

The reality we face in this age is that we have so little faith to believe that there is only one person whose blood has any ability to atone for anything, and that is why the cross means so much more.  Perhaps the best way for us to respond to this historical event, namely the death of bin Laden, is to renew our commitment, in word and deed, to faith in Jesus Christ whose death and resurrection is the only reality that matters.  In Matthew 25, Jesus tells about the coming of the new age when ‘the Son of Man comes in his glory” where all will be gathered before him and Jesus will separate the sheep from the goats.  The criterion for this judgement?  When did we see someone naked and give them clothes, someone hungry who we fed, someone thirsty who we offered a drink, a stranger who we welcomed, or a prisoner who we visited?  This is not some claim to a works-based righteousness, but rather a reminder that any true follower of Jesus lives a life marked by compassion, humility, mercy, and love.

I trust that God will judge Osama bin Laden for his sins.  I trust just as much that God will judge me and you as well.  My hope and faith is that the blood of the lamb will be sufficient and will wash us white as snow.  As Americans, perhaps our response to the death of Osama bin Laden should be to do something good for a neighbor, to do something to promote peace, to give and care for those who are suffering because of this 10 year war.  What better way to show the world that we are not the selfish, hoarding, war-mongering, infidels that bin Laden thought we were than to show the world, in word and deed, that we are something far different.  As a Christian, perhaps our response should be to show that we are not children of this age, but we are people who seek an age to come.  We are not people of vengeance and hate, but we are people of peace and resurrection.  Perhaps we ought to take Jesus seriously and we should give the naked clothes, give the hungry some food, give someone who is thirsty a drink, welcome a stranger, and visit a prisoner.  In doing this, we show the world that the cycle of sin, death, and destruction is over.  There is a new way to live, and there is new way for us to live and love in relationship to God and each other.  There is one blood that was sufficient for all.  His name is Jesus.

Practice Makes Perfect

Hi friends, I know it has been a while since anything has been posted here.  So, I thought it was time.  Last month I wrote an article for The Scroll that I wanted to share with you.  Unfortunately, we never ended up publishing the November issue.  So, here is that article:

“Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. ... if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.” -1 John 4:11-12

    It has been kind of an exciting week at our house.  Our daughter, Anastasia, took her first steps.  They were the clumsy, half-falling/ half-moving forward type that all babies take when they first make the switch from crawling to walking, but we are enjoying it nonetheless.  The excitement in her face, the ways she falls into us at the end of her short journey, all of it wonderful!

    It has us thinking about the first time Josiah walked as well.  Just as clumsily and unsteady.  You would not know it now though.  In fact, his default mode of movement now is to run or climb from place to place.  Those clumsy steps his sister takes?  In the distant past for him.

    All of this makes me think of that idiom, ‘practice makes perfect.’  Of course, we know that this is not entirely true.  While Josiah has practiced his walking/ running, and Anastasia will as well, they are not perfect, nor will they ever be.  Even I trip sometimes and I have 30 more years of experience at this walking thing than them.  But, even so, there is this sense in life that practice builds things into our lives in a way that they become almost intuitive.  They become second nature to us, things that we do not even think about all that much.

    I think that this applies to our spiritual lives as well.  I read this week how Mother Theresea required the nuns who worked with her in Calcutta to stop their work three times a day for an hour of prayer.  When one thinks about the work that they did, how could they not stop and pray?!?!?!?  There is no way they could have done that work of caring for the sickest of the sick, the poorest of the poor, without having themselves firmly rooted in God and God’s Spirit’s work in their life.  But their practice of prayer gave them the strength, the conviction, and the compassion to continue in their work, to love people as well as they could.

    We are not necessarily involved in works of compassion to the extent of the Sisters of Mercy, but our calling is no different than theirs.  I read this week where someone said, ‘if the gift of the Christian life is to be loved fully by God, the calling of the Christian life is to love well.’  God has given us a precious gift of love in his son, Jesus Christ.  Our calling then, is to take that gift of love, and to share it - in love of God, in love of others, and in love of self- the person God has made us to be.  However, if we are not people who practice our faith, we are people who will not grow and learn either.  Anastasia will stumble for a while, but she will learn, with our help and support, and soon she will be just as fast as her brother!  Our spiritual journeys are similar.  We must be people of devotion and prayer.  We must be people of worship and alms-giving.  These must be part of our weekly and daily practice.  If not, we will simply stumble, trip, and fall through this life as well.

    Perfection is a difficult word when we are talking about spirituality.  The truth is none of us will ever be perfect.  We will stumble, we will make mistakes, we will fail to respond faithfully.  But God’s love is perfect, and God’s perfect love resides within us, and so we must continually seek to know that love more fully that we too may grow and be changed by it.  As we continue to live a faithful life, as we continue to practice the faithful life, a life marked by love of God, others, and self, God’s love is perfected in us more and more.  When we slow down, when we make the space for God in our lives, when we practice our faith, we know more of God’s love for us, and we know more of who we are as God’s children.  The practice of our faith rooted in the Spirit gives us the strength, conviction, and compassion to love well.  We are ready to love others more fully and more authentically in ways that our world desperately needs.

'sunday morning tears' by Denise Butwill

After a conversation with Pastor Paul I had a few ideas for a blog entry floating around in my brain. Some time later I went as far as to create an outline in a word document, but never did more.

On a seemly unrelated note, finishing one book and looking for another to start I picked up my son’s summer reading book, The Color of Water: A black Man’s Tribute to his White Mother by James McBride (excellent read by the way). I was touched by this book in many ways, but in particular by one scene where the author and his mother are in church, and the mom is crying. She is crying because God makes her happy. Ah I think I cannot wait until Kevin reads this part, maybe he will understand his mother’s Sunday morning tears. Well this was a Saturday evening, the next morning during service, pastor Paul quotes C.S. Lewis in his sermon: “We read to know we are not alone”.  Yes I think – that’s right let me tell you about what I read last night.

Some of you may have noticed my Sunday morning tears, especially friends in the choir. Like McBride’s momma, it is often the singing of a favorite or touching hymn that starts the tears. But unlike McBride’s mother my son has seen me cry plenty, especially during these letting go years. I wish someone had warned me to bring tissues before I sat through Toy Story 3 to watch Andy decide what to do with his toys as he prepares to head off to college.

Why do I cry? I cry because my children are growing up, my tears are both in mourning and in wonder at the people they are becoming. My father is terminally ill, I cry for the injustice and for joy because he is still enjoying a good quality of life. When I read the paper I cry for the family torn by violence and for the criminal that could be driven to such acts. And on Sunday mornings in Salem church I cry for all these reasons and because I feel the presence of the Holy Spirit dwelling in and around us sustaining us and making us  humble for all we could be. For in no other place on such a regular bases do I feel these words come alive Matthew 18:20 (NIV) “For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” I cry because I am happy to be a part of God’s church family. Thank you Salem.