A few years ago I took a trip to New York City to meet with some folks at our denominational mission agency headquarters to talk about Haiti. Outside of my first ride on the NYC subway and a couple decent slices of pizza in Greenwich Village, the trip turned out to be a bust. Five out of the six people who were supposed to meet with us bailed at the last minute. I never did get to talk to anyone about our denomination's work in Haiti, and to top it off, my flight out of LaGuardia was delayed due to rain.
When I had left two days earlier, my ticket said I was supposed to land in Dayton by 7pm, so instead of driving my car to airport, I decided to ride. It was June, so I knew I could get home before dark. No problems, right?
Wrong.
My flight was supposed to be direct from NYC to Dayton, but with all the changes and cancellations I ended up on a plane bound for Cincinnati. I arrived a little before 11pm, and having missed my connecting flight the airline offered me an all-expenses paid overnight experience in C Terminal. I found two other guys trying to get to Dayton, so we split the cost of a car service... about 60 bucks apiece. By the time we arrived in Dayton it was after 1am, and it was raining.
Heavily.
I uncovered my bike, put the soaking cover in one saddlebag, put my clothes in the other, put on my raincoat and water-proof gloves, and headed for home.
Have you ever ridden at night, in heavy rain, when the sky is completely dark, and you can't see a thing? I hadn't. Ever. I avoided, whenever I could both riding at night and riding in any other weather than whatever it is we call "good weather" here in Ohio. I'm what you call a "fair weather" biker or as my hard core friends like to call it, I'm a wuss.
But I'd just spent my last sixty bucks on a car ride, and I really wanted to go home, so into the night I rode.
I didn't have a visor, so my glasses were my windshield. The lines on the road were obscured from the rain and lack of available light. I couldn't see squat.
Soon I was passed by a semi going about sixty. I settled in a fair distance behind him, and just followed his tail lights as far as I could, until he pulled over for the night. The rest of the evening I either lived off the head lights of vehicles coming up behind me, or followed tail lights of those ahead of me so I could stay on the road. I just followed the lights on the highway, until finally, very late at night, or very early in the morning, I saw the unmistakable glow of the refinery, the lights and flame lighting up the rain in sky.
It was a beautiful sight, all that orange light. I meant that home wasn't that far away. Lights on the highway, guiding me home, to a city shining in the middle of night.
You probably don't think of Lima, Ohio that way do you? Well, I can tell you, soaking wet in cold rain, that's exactly how I felt.
Jesus described himself as the light of the world. He does this many different times, but the one I like the most happens after an unusual occurrence in the courtyard of the Temple of Jerusalem. It's described to us in the 8th chapter of John.
Jesus prays alone that morning to start the day on the Mount of Olives, the same Mount of Olives where he will descend into Jerusalem in Palm Sunday to the cheers of "Hosanna", and the same Mount of Olives were there is a garden called, "Gethsemane", which is a word that means "olive press", where he would sweat blood the night before he died, begging his Father for another way to save the world from sin and death. He prays on the Mount of Olives, and then descends into the city, through the Temple Gate into the Temple where he begins to teach.
Soon, though, the Temple priests and authorities, into the middle of the Court of the Gentiles, drag a woman accused of adultery. And in that moment, these learned scholars who were tired of getting their butt handed to them again and again by a carpenter's son, decide to use the occasion to see if this time they could get him say something either stupid, wrong, or so offensive that the crowds who loved Jesus - the least, the last, and the lost - would quit following him around and maybe even turn on him so they could arrest him without incident or riot.
"Moses", said the religious super-preachers of the day, "commanded us to stone an adulterer to death. What you think Jesus? What do you think we should do?"
In the year where we pay special homage to lady bikers, I think it's appropriate to use this scripture this day. In a world where women had no say, no power, and no standing, Jesus looks past what is, to what should be. He befriends women. Champions them. Empowers them. In a world where a husband can leave his wife with absolutely nothing and no repercussions, Jesus holds those men accountable for their actions. There are no second-class citizens in Jesus eyes... not lady-bikers, not 1%ers, not weekend biker warriors, or even wusses on Kawasakis.....
Those who appear the furthest away from God, are loved by Him the most. Don't hear that much any more, any where do you.
But it's true. And so Jesus kneels down, thinking about his answer, and begins doodling in the dirt with his finger, not saying anything. The priests wouldn't leave him alone, but there he knelt, just doodling. And then, slowly, he got up. In the Greek it tells us that he moves toward the center of court, next to the woman who is all but doomed, and utters those powerful words.
"He who is without sin, may cast the first stone."
After everyone, dumbfounded, drops their stones, he turns to the woman, tells her that if no one else condemned her, neither did he, and told her to go and live a better, new, life.
And that's when he does it... he looks at the crowd and says, "I am the light of the world; those who follow me will not walk in darkness, but will have Light in life."
"I am the light of world; those who follow me will not ride in darkness, but will have Light in life."
You know, all this crazy worship service is a little light. Just a dim taillight on the highway of life chasing after the ultimate Ride Captian to let you know you are either on the right track, or if you have been riding in the darkness, that there's someone safely ahead of you that you can follow until that day you see the glowing light of Home.
I don't know, maybe in the story you identify with the Pharisee. I know they're out there. I get complaints every year. Too much rock music. Too much fun. Not enough Jesus. Not enough about salvation. I baptized a little baby this morning. You can bet I'll get a letter or two about it. About how baptism is for believing adults and teens only. If you're out there thinking this, that's fine. Come see me later. We can have a little discussion about what the Greek word "Oikos" and how its how it's used in the the sixteenth chapter of Acts. I'd be happy to have that conversation with you.
But I wish we wouldn't. Because there's a whole world out there filled with condemned people, people who don't know any better and just follow the crowd picking up their rocks to throw, and confused people standing by not knowing exactly what to do. You can rile up the crowd if you want, but remember... Jesus is just doodling in the dirt right now, and he's the light in those people's darkness.
For your darkness.
This little worship service and the short prayer I'll say for so many of you when you pass me by later - "May this bike, and all who ride upon it, be blessed by the Living God" - is all geared to just let you know that if you came looking, hoping, wondering, whether or not Jesus Christ really does teach us what's important about life. How to live. How to love. How to forgive. How to be forgiven. How on that Friday he took your nails, your crown, and your cross, so that on Easter morning you wouldn't just be gifted with life after death, but life in a world filled with death, well then you have come to the right place because that's what this service is... a light on the highway, guiding you home.
You are loved exactly as you are, infinitely, without hesitation and measure.... and yet, you are promised so much more than what you have. You are meant for greater adventures that you don't need to necessarily go seek out on some highway somewhere. Follow Jesus, and if you do it right, you'll find yourself looking in your rear view mirror, in the darkness and the rain, and there will be a headlight.... following you.
I started visiting this guy in the hospital. Every year he comes to the blessing. He's very, very sick. We don't ever use the words "going to die" around here because only God knows how many days each of us gets, but let's just say he knows he's most likely more days behind him, than in front of him.
I sat and we talked about it. He's got little kids. Lives filled with lessons that need to be taught that he's not sure he'll be around to teach. But there's one lesson, not really the one the you want to be assigned, but an important lesson none-the-less he decided to take on. He decided to tell his kids the truth about his disease and most likely what that disease will result in.
And then he did the most remarkable thing. I mean, he isn't a saint or a perfect guy or anything. Ask him or his buddies and they'll tell you he's far from it. But he did this remarkable thing. He tells his kids the truth about what's coming, and then he tells them this.... that he loves them.
You see he doesn't want them to wonder. He doesn't want them to ask "what if". He doesn't want to leave it unsaid. He wants them to know. To know that he loves them, that he's found peace with Jesus, and that the love Jesus has for him and for them, can't be defeated by death.
A light on the highway for those kids. A light on the highway for all of us in that room. A light on the highway for all of us here.
You might be in a place where you feel like Jesus is doodling in the dirt as the fate of your future hangs in the balance. Or maybe you were following someone you thought was taking you home, but just took you for a ride. But in terms of what God wants for you, and what others need from you, Jesus is the light. The light emanating from a beautiful place you call home. A light that seen in a thousand little lights, all on the highway, following the one plowing through the darkness on his divine Kawasaki.
Jesus is the light. If no one else has condemned you, neither has he. Now go and live a better, good, loving, disciple-making life.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday, April 22, 2011
Believing Without Seeing
I have a confession. It's tough to admit and I'm not sure how coming clean this way will effect the way I'm perceived, but in this culture where people feel the need to bare even the most minute details of their life ("Going grocery shopping. Hope they'll take these expired Fruit Loops coupons.") I figure you might as well know the truth.
I'm a Facebook junkie.
It's ridiculous, I know. I mean I probably shouldn't care what color you decided to paint your bathroom, what vegetable you steamed for dinner, or anything about your latest pictures of your cat.... but I do. I check Facebook so often on my phone that I think my wife is about to stage an intervention. I check it in meetings, before and after dinner, while I'm watching TV, when I'm on the phone with someone else.
Help me. I'm a Facebook junkie.
It's not all bad though. Occasionally I stumble on something useful or thought provoking. Such was the case when to my surprise, I saw this article in the Toronto Globe written about this fair city we call home. It comes to us from a reporter, who for reasons unnamed, decides to stop here for the night on his way from someplace north of Lima, to someplace south. In the article, the reporter is surprised at the decay he finds in the city. Abandoned buildings. Empty houses. Urban blight. In Detroit, he says, he expects such things, but in towns like Lima he's surprised at the effects of our community being "crushed by the tectonic plates of the global economics" (or some such similar overwrought metaphor). And then he takes a plenty of potshots at our two-WalMart metropolis as a place where people eat at faux-Mexican restaurants only wear baseball caps, stretch pants, and camouflage. He paints us as a post-industrial apocalyptic community where drug dealers no longer hang out due to a lack of financial opportunity.
In short, in the words of the author, living in Lima is "a no-job, no-hope reality". A place Phyllis Diller, once joked, you escape from.
If you live here, or lived here, you get used to people taking potshots at your home. I mean, I don't know why the author of the article is so surprised at the condition of our town. He could find the same kind of blight in Toledo, Dayton, Hamilton, Middletown, Youngstown, Akron, Ironton, and countless other cities and towns all over Ohio. Heck, hasn't he ever heard the song "Allentown"...
Well we're living here in Allentown
Where they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem their killing time
Filling out forms. Standing in line.
Billy Joel wrote this 25 years ago. As the industrial fortunes of the country have continued to decline, discovering a depressed section of the City of Lima in 2011 is akin to going to Berlin and discovering they tore down the Wall. And while I'm sure there are more than a few people locally ready to affirm everything the Globe reporter observed, by no means is this a place where hope has jumped ship. I'd concede that from an economic standpoint, at least over the last thirty years, we've racked up more losses than wins, but that doesn't mean that Lima as a community is losing.
If that's what you see, then, well.... your eyes deceive you.
Like a lot of kids growing up in Lima, in high school I was bucking to get out of here to someplace "not boring". I went off to college, married my high school sweetheart, and after a few more years living here while working on my graduate degree, moved off looking for greener pastures.
But then a funny thing happened... after eight years away, we actually started missing Lima, Ohio and when the opportunity presented itself, we moved back.
Part of the reason for our willingness to return was that we learned something the author of the article apparently doesn't know: there's a post-apocalyptic section or two in every town and city in every town, everywhere. Columbus, for example, has become a mecca for people across the state and the country. It's a place of opportunity, where a mix of public and private sector jobs in every field imaginable are available to qualified applicants. And yet, in Columbus, while there are better bookstores, a larger mall, and more places to eat, there are still drug addicts, crime, run down buildings, empty factories, and in addition to all of that, it seems to take at least 40 minutes to get anywhere. Lima might not be Disneyworld, but what place is? I mean, Disneyworld is built on the backs of a lot of part-time laborers working for little more than minimum wage without benefits.
Where exactly is Nirvana? If you live on the beach in Hawaii, and your neighbor's kids are crying from hunger, have you found paradise?
Name me a town, and I'll point to statistics that show growing social ills. Lima once rode growth spurred by the discovery of oil. Now we know the truth about boomtowns where the future appears to be nothing but bright and rosy: their foundation is built on a bubble that eventually, as the winds of fortune blow elsewhere, burst.
And all the while the poor are shut out either way due to a lack of jobs or an affordable cost of living. Silicon Valley for example is riding a second wave right now of tech fueled growth, but if all you can afford is a house that five families have to share in a dilapidated part of town, how much better off are you really?
No. With the Globe columnist, I'll have to disagree. The quality of life in a community, any community, can't be based on what can be seen and observed. Rather, that which is important, which should be counted, when a community, or for that matter any organization, family, or individual is measured as desirable or undesirable, are characteristics that can't be seen down your nose from a car window. In fact, it can't be seen at all.
I know that sounds confusing. Some sort of preacher's hocus pocus. But it's true.
I have a friend who works for a large corporation in Detroit. For two or three years before he was re-located to a city which has become the poster child for America's industrial decline, he lived in Southern California. SoCal is a place where temperatures start in the 70's and sunshine every day. A place so filled with opportunity that even the Kardashians can become huge stars. And yet, his only regret now as a Motor City resident was that he didn't leave SoCal sooner.
"Detroit is filled with the same people we grew up with", he told me. "Hard-working, honest, decent, good people. If character counted for anything, Detroit would be one of the finest places in the world to live. All I know, is I hope we never leave."
All of this from a man who, with his wife, just adopted two young foster children left in the wake of the only dimension of the city the Globe reporter could see. It's people like my friend the father who yields pictures of his young son and daughter with great pride and enthusiasm who make Detroit, or Toledo, or even Lima a great place to live. You either get that, or you don't.
You can't see good. You can't see decent. You can't see honest. You can't measure character. You just can't. I wish the Globe columnist had recognized this. His entire column might have been different. For while certainly there is here in Lima a hunger for something better than what is, there is also an abundance of people who live hopefully, instill it in their children, and realize what someday some lucky people in post-industrial apocalyptic Shanghai will learn: what makes life worth living has nothing to do with shifting tectonic plates of economic fortune.
Everything important can't be seen. When you believe that, you'll know it's true.
That's why I think Jesus made it a point to let Thomas, who now believed death was beaten as he put his hand in Christ's side, that the greater blessing would be for those who did not see, and yet still believed in the message of the Gospel. A message filled with hope, love, grace, mercy, and a belief in a Kingdom of Heaven that couldn't be seen, but was yet still present and emerging. Jesus calls us to pursue all these things with the fervor and passion that can't come from out of a properly applied scientific method, but rather only through a faith realized so completely that a slave trader was compelled to write the words, "Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I'm found. Was blind but now I see."
The greater blessing is for anyone, living anywhere, who doesn't trust their eyes, but rather only trusts that which can't be seen. Understand that, and the Kingdom is at the gate Lima, Ohio. It's at your gate, wherever you are.
If you keep reading the story after Luke ends, and Acts begins, you'll discover that Jesus' resurrection becomes the confirmation Peter, James, John, and the rest of disciples need to put their faith into a Kingdom that by all acceptable and normal measures, seems ridiculous. A place where the first become last and the last become first. A place where peacemakers are blessed and those who earnestly want to know and live righteously find fulfillment. A place where leaders wash the feet of their followers and assure them that what they'll accomplish will be far greater than anything the leader accomplished in his own lifetime.
A Christian's whole life is invested in what can't be seen, and a refusal to accept as true a no-hope reality.
The fact is that nobody who lives in Lima and likes it (of which there are many of us) is devoid of hope or broken beyond measure. It is possible to make a very nice living here, but if that's not possible countless volunteers, agencies, churches, and service organizations band together, striving to form a safety net to catch those who are falling between the cracks. It's a place where the soup kitchens get funded out of a sense of humility one check or dollar at a time, and where the Rescue Home keeps the "Jesus Saves" sign on with donations from people who know "there but by the grace of God, go I". Its a place where people are always dreaming and working toward something better because, while they can't see it, they know it still exists. Maybe tectonic forces crushed many of our factories, but our spirit is left intact.
I'll close with this.... last fall our community buried a great man. Dr. Gene Wright. Dr. Wright was my doctor growing up. As a kid he made me stick out my tongue and say "ah", and later as an adult, he chastised me about my weight. I was one of thousands, I suppose, who could say the same. In his life he was instrumental in not only keeping Lima healthy, but also training up generations of new doctors, improving our health care facilities (which are now our principle employers), and because he was well aware of the challenges people without health insurance faced, the founding of Allen County Health Partners, a publicly and privately funded agency that provides health care to thousands of people who currently are not insured. He was an ordinary person who did extraordinary things all because when he sat in the pew, he believed what he heard when he was told that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. He spent his whole life making sure that on his watch, all God's children here would get to stick out their tongue and say "ah".
I serve a congregation in community filled with Dr. Wrights. They bust their hump raising millions of dollars for causes of all kinds. They donate hours upon hours of their time. They pray "thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven", and then live it out. They understand that there are variations on the joke, "First Prize: A week in Lima, Ohio. Second Prize: Two weeks in Lima, Ohio", and are still love this place they call home enough that they give back to it, willingly and passionately.
And like Dr. Wright, they are strangely compelled by their belief in things unseen. A hope not yet fully realized. A love that defies logic. And a willingness to make sacrificially an investment in the kinds of mercy and grace that make town like ours, a great place to live.
I'm a Facebook junkie.
It's ridiculous, I know. I mean I probably shouldn't care what color you decided to paint your bathroom, what vegetable you steamed for dinner, or anything about your latest pictures of your cat.... but I do. I check Facebook so often on my phone that I think my wife is about to stage an intervention. I check it in meetings, before and after dinner, while I'm watching TV, when I'm on the phone with someone else.
Help me. I'm a Facebook junkie.
It's not all bad though. Occasionally I stumble on something useful or thought provoking. Such was the case when to my surprise, I saw this article in the Toronto Globe written about this fair city we call home. It comes to us from a reporter, who for reasons unnamed, decides to stop here for the night on his way from someplace north of Lima, to someplace south. In the article, the reporter is surprised at the decay he finds in the city. Abandoned buildings. Empty houses. Urban blight. In Detroit, he says, he expects such things, but in towns like Lima he's surprised at the effects of our community being "crushed by the tectonic plates of the global economics" (or some such similar overwrought metaphor). And then he takes a plenty of potshots at our two-WalMart metropolis as a place where people eat at faux-Mexican restaurants only wear baseball caps, stretch pants, and camouflage. He paints us as a post-industrial apocalyptic community where drug dealers no longer hang out due to a lack of financial opportunity.
In short, in the words of the author, living in Lima is "a no-job, no-hope reality". A place Phyllis Diller, once joked, you escape from.
If you live here, or lived here, you get used to people taking potshots at your home. I mean, I don't know why the author of the article is so surprised at the condition of our town. He could find the same kind of blight in Toledo, Dayton, Hamilton, Middletown, Youngstown, Akron, Ironton, and countless other cities and towns all over Ohio. Heck, hasn't he ever heard the song "Allentown"...
Well we're living here in Allentown
Where they're closing all the factories down
Out in Bethlehem their killing time
Filling out forms. Standing in line.
Billy Joel wrote this 25 years ago. As the industrial fortunes of the country have continued to decline, discovering a depressed section of the City of Lima in 2011 is akin to going to Berlin and discovering they tore down the Wall. And while I'm sure there are more than a few people locally ready to affirm everything the Globe reporter observed, by no means is this a place where hope has jumped ship. I'd concede that from an economic standpoint, at least over the last thirty years, we've racked up more losses than wins, but that doesn't mean that Lima as a community is losing.
If that's what you see, then, well.... your eyes deceive you.
Like a lot of kids growing up in Lima, in high school I was bucking to get out of here to someplace "not boring". I went off to college, married my high school sweetheart, and after a few more years living here while working on my graduate degree, moved off looking for greener pastures.
But then a funny thing happened... after eight years away, we actually started missing Lima, Ohio and when the opportunity presented itself, we moved back.
Part of the reason for our willingness to return was that we learned something the author of the article apparently doesn't know: there's a post-apocalyptic section or two in every town and city in every town, everywhere. Columbus, for example, has become a mecca for people across the state and the country. It's a place of opportunity, where a mix of public and private sector jobs in every field imaginable are available to qualified applicants. And yet, in Columbus, while there are better bookstores, a larger mall, and more places to eat, there are still drug addicts, crime, run down buildings, empty factories, and in addition to all of that, it seems to take at least 40 minutes to get anywhere. Lima might not be Disneyworld, but what place is? I mean, Disneyworld is built on the backs of a lot of part-time laborers working for little more than minimum wage without benefits.
Where exactly is Nirvana? If you live on the beach in Hawaii, and your neighbor's kids are crying from hunger, have you found paradise?
Name me a town, and I'll point to statistics that show growing social ills. Lima once rode growth spurred by the discovery of oil. Now we know the truth about boomtowns where the future appears to be nothing but bright and rosy: their foundation is built on a bubble that eventually, as the winds of fortune blow elsewhere, burst.
And all the while the poor are shut out either way due to a lack of jobs or an affordable cost of living. Silicon Valley for example is riding a second wave right now of tech fueled growth, but if all you can afford is a house that five families have to share in a dilapidated part of town, how much better off are you really?
No. With the Globe columnist, I'll have to disagree. The quality of life in a community, any community, can't be based on what can be seen and observed. Rather, that which is important, which should be counted, when a community, or for that matter any organization, family, or individual is measured as desirable or undesirable, are characteristics that can't be seen down your nose from a car window. In fact, it can't be seen at all.
I know that sounds confusing. Some sort of preacher's hocus pocus. But it's true.
I have a friend who works for a large corporation in Detroit. For two or three years before he was re-located to a city which has become the poster child for America's industrial decline, he lived in Southern California. SoCal is a place where temperatures start in the 70's and sunshine every day. A place so filled with opportunity that even the Kardashians can become huge stars. And yet, his only regret now as a Motor City resident was that he didn't leave SoCal sooner.
"Detroit is filled with the same people we grew up with", he told me. "Hard-working, honest, decent, good people. If character counted for anything, Detroit would be one of the finest places in the world to live. All I know, is I hope we never leave."
All of this from a man who, with his wife, just adopted two young foster children left in the wake of the only dimension of the city the Globe reporter could see. It's people like my friend the father who yields pictures of his young son and daughter with great pride and enthusiasm who make Detroit, or Toledo, or even Lima a great place to live. You either get that, or you don't.
You can't see good. You can't see decent. You can't see honest. You can't measure character. You just can't. I wish the Globe columnist had recognized this. His entire column might have been different. For while certainly there is here in Lima a hunger for something better than what is, there is also an abundance of people who live hopefully, instill it in their children, and realize what someday some lucky people in post-industrial apocalyptic Shanghai will learn: what makes life worth living has nothing to do with shifting tectonic plates of economic fortune.
Everything important can't be seen. When you believe that, you'll know it's true.
That's why I think Jesus made it a point to let Thomas, who now believed death was beaten as he put his hand in Christ's side, that the greater blessing would be for those who did not see, and yet still believed in the message of the Gospel. A message filled with hope, love, grace, mercy, and a belief in a Kingdom of Heaven that couldn't be seen, but was yet still present and emerging. Jesus calls us to pursue all these things with the fervor and passion that can't come from out of a properly applied scientific method, but rather only through a faith realized so completely that a slave trader was compelled to write the words, "Amazing Grace how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now I'm found. Was blind but now I see."
The greater blessing is for anyone, living anywhere, who doesn't trust their eyes, but rather only trusts that which can't be seen. Understand that, and the Kingdom is at the gate Lima, Ohio. It's at your gate, wherever you are.
If you keep reading the story after Luke ends, and Acts begins, you'll discover that Jesus' resurrection becomes the confirmation Peter, James, John, and the rest of disciples need to put their faith into a Kingdom that by all acceptable and normal measures, seems ridiculous. A place where the first become last and the last become first. A place where peacemakers are blessed and those who earnestly want to know and live righteously find fulfillment. A place where leaders wash the feet of their followers and assure them that what they'll accomplish will be far greater than anything the leader accomplished in his own lifetime.
A Christian's whole life is invested in what can't be seen, and a refusal to accept as true a no-hope reality.
The fact is that nobody who lives in Lima and likes it (of which there are many of us) is devoid of hope or broken beyond measure. It is possible to make a very nice living here, but if that's not possible countless volunteers, agencies, churches, and service organizations band together, striving to form a safety net to catch those who are falling between the cracks. It's a place where the soup kitchens get funded out of a sense of humility one check or dollar at a time, and where the Rescue Home keeps the "Jesus Saves" sign on with donations from people who know "there but by the grace of God, go I". Its a place where people are always dreaming and working toward something better because, while they can't see it, they know it still exists. Maybe tectonic forces crushed many of our factories, but our spirit is left intact.
I'll close with this.... last fall our community buried a great man. Dr. Gene Wright. Dr. Wright was my doctor growing up. As a kid he made me stick out my tongue and say "ah", and later as an adult, he chastised me about my weight. I was one of thousands, I suppose, who could say the same. In his life he was instrumental in not only keeping Lima healthy, but also training up generations of new doctors, improving our health care facilities (which are now our principle employers), and because he was well aware of the challenges people without health insurance faced, the founding of Allen County Health Partners, a publicly and privately funded agency that provides health care to thousands of people who currently are not insured. He was an ordinary person who did extraordinary things all because when he sat in the pew, he believed what he heard when he was told that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand. He spent his whole life making sure that on his watch, all God's children here would get to stick out their tongue and say "ah".
I serve a congregation in community filled with Dr. Wrights. They bust their hump raising millions of dollars for causes of all kinds. They donate hours upon hours of their time. They pray "thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven", and then live it out. They understand that there are variations on the joke, "First Prize: A week in Lima, Ohio. Second Prize: Two weeks in Lima, Ohio", and are still love this place they call home enough that they give back to it, willingly and passionately.
And like Dr. Wright, they are strangely compelled by their belief in things unseen. A hope not yet fully realized. A love that defies logic. And a willingness to make sacrificially an investment in the kinds of mercy and grace that make town like ours, a great place to live.
Friday, March 04, 2011
How Big Is Your Dream?
We started this series asking the question, "What is the sign of Jonah?". It's a question raised in Matthew 16 when the Pharisees and Sadducees asked Jesus to do something miraculous, perform a sign, that would prove he was the Son of God, and Jesus said that only sign they needed was the sign of Jonah.
And if they didn't understand that sign, no other was necessary.
So for the last three weeks, Charlotte, Daniel and I have been unraveling the mystery of what the sign of Jonah actually is, and what it might mean to us.
To date we've picked up a lot of clues. Initially we discovered that God has a will for all of us. It might at times be pretty broad - live righteously - and at other times it might be quite specific. Like, for example, to go to Nineveh and tell its inhabitants to get their act together or face the Lord's judgment. In either case, God will use us either because we been faithful, or as a cautionary tale - as a living example of what happens when we do the opposite of what God desires for us. In either case, if you remember, God uses Jonah even in his disobedience, and the sailors on the boat sailing for Tarshish who begin the story as pagans, end the story offering sacrifices to the living God. Pharisees and Sadduccees can't imagine God using anybody except those who perfectly kept the Law. But they were wrong...
Clue #1: People moving in the wrong direction in life are still used by the Lord.
Next, Daniel helped us understand that while Jonah believed God lived in the Temple of Jerusalem, he discovered the Lord present in the belly of the fish. Remember this was the popular belief of the day. God lived in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Only the priests could stand in God's presence, and at that only at certain times of the year. And yet, Jonah calls on God in the last place he should be present, and God shows up. And because God shows up, Jonah finds out that even smelling and looking like someone who had been in a whale for three days, that God, in his presence, would still use Jonah. Pharisees and Sadduccees couldn't imagine God being anywhere but the Holy and Holies, but they were wrong....
Clue #2: God just isn't present in the Temple, but everywhere, even in the foulest places imaginable.
Finally, last week, Charlotte talked about how sometimes the Good News sounds like bad news. But in this case, the Ninevites don't hear bad news. Even though Jonah was outsider who reeked of fish vomit, the word from the Lord was received whole-heartedly by the entire city-state. More than likely God had been preparing their hearts to hear the Good News of God's willingness to reconcile them to Him. Maybe it was because, as some scholars believed, the Ninevites worshipped sea gods, and thus could take a guy vomited out of a fish seriously. Maybe doubt had already existed in the minds of those in power that they were leading people in the wrong direction. Who knows. All we know is the word of the Lord is received by Ninevah. For them, the word is Good News. But in a world where the Pharisees and Sadduccees saw those who didn't know God as second-class citizens, as sinful lost pagans, as the enemy, that God would use an Israelite prophet to call foreigners to repentance, and to do so successfully, was bad news. It was inconceivable. It meant, really and truly, that God wanted to use his people to be a light of hope. To speak in a way that hearts who had not heard Him yet were being prepared to hear. The Pharisees and Sadduccees wanted to write the rest of the world off, but
Clue #3: The Good News doesn't always sound like Good News to us, particularly if we have to make room God's couch (or even give up our seat) to let others rest near Him.
Which brings us today. Jonah, having watched God spare Nineveh, is ticked. In his heart of heart, we find out, unequivocally, that Jonah's biggest fear is that God will forgive a nation of people he deeply hates, and hates with good reason. They have, in the past treated Israel cruelly. They've committed unimaginable crimes against the most innocent Israelites. Jonah doesn't even want to imagine that God might let these people off, let alone actually care about them.
Even love them.
The Pharisees and Sadducees hate a lot of people. They hate sinners because they believe they were blocking the day God's justice and judgment would come. They hated Samaritans because for historical reasons, they worshiped God in a different temple, and while they had Jewish blood in them, had intermarried with, of all people, Ninevites.
And they hated Romans. Man did they hate Romans. They hated them the most of all. They hated them for their cruelty. They hated them for being pagans. They hated because they made life so difficult for everybody with their corrupt, brutal form of government and taxation.
They hated them. Hated them to the degree that the idea that, like Jonah in today's scripture, the idea of being personally inconvenienced bothered them more than the death and destruction of every Roman man, woman, and child. Whole families wiped out meant less than a lack of shade for themselves on a hot, hot day.
The Pharisees and Sadducees prayed for the wrath of God to destroy their enemies, but...
Clue #4: God's mercy is extended to all, and where it's accepted, it will be released like a torrent whether or not you think the receiver is worthy.
Four clues to understand the sign of Jonah. When we add them up, what do we get?
God's desire is to be reconciled with all humanity.
So, here's the question: Are you a sign of God's desire?
That's a big question. For all their knowledge of scripture... all the energy in living a Holy life... even the work they would do for the widows and orphans.... the Pharisees and Sadducees weren't signs of God's desire.
I find this to be personally very sobering. We can hate sin and what it does to people, but we've no license to hate people themselves no matter how infuriating we might think they are. In fact, we're called to be sign posts of God's desire of reconciliation and peace. To speak in ways that hearts are already being prepared to hear. In Jonah's case, the word was straight and simple, covered in fish vomit and seaweed.
I know there are plenty of people out there who would be happy to speak a straight and simple word to people who they felt were the most vile sinners. But they'd rather speak that word on a high horse, gleaming white in the bright sunlight assured that God's smiting would smite those needed to be smoted.
The best example, bar none, that I can think of is the Phelps family in Topeka, Kansas. The folks who travel around to let you know that God's judgment on America is sealed. Do you know these folks have called you dogs? They've called you whores? They've called our church, this church, a dog kennel, and me a son of hell? A young man from our community whose grandmother, in particular, was a long-time faithful member of this church, died in action while serving in Iraq. When Christian Neff's death was announced, it didn't take 24 hours for the Westboro Baptist Church to announce their intention to picket his funeral at this church.
They said he was going to hell. That our church is a dog kennel. That you are all whores. That I am a false prophet. And not one word uttered at us, or to anyone else anywhere, is said with the hope that you or I will be redeemed. In their sick, twisted minds, all the Phelps family wants is for you and I to hate them with even greater passion. For their contempt for humanity, anyone who is not them, is so great, that they would pray that your hate would grow so that your torment in hell, forever would be greater and greater.
They have no idea what the sign of Jonah is.
For it doesn't really matter how virtuous a life you lead. If it's devoid of love and compassion for others - particularly the most unlovable of the unlovable - Paul, a Pharisee who one day woke up to discover that even though he knew Jonah's story backwards and forwards, didn't live a life that understood it's meaning, tells us that if you gave everything you had to the poor, possessed the power to make mountains jump, or even offer yourself as a martyr for the faith, if you don't love, if you don't stand as a sign post of God's desire to be reconciled with everyone, every chip you think you've earned with God, is a sham and a dream.
Listen... be principled. Be disciplined. Hold yourself to the highest standards. Believe passionately in God's righteousness and put yourself to the task of working out that righteousness out in your own life.
But don't hate. Don't scapegoat. Not anybody.
Not your that person who hurt you. Not that person who abandoned you. Not that person who is a vile pig. Nobody.
God is calling you to dream His dream... the reconciliation of his children to Himself.
Now, don't get me wrong. I get that what I'm asking you to do is virtually impossible. Everybody hates somebody, me included. African warlords who enslave children to slaughter in their name. Druglords who rule with fear and intimidation to enslave others. Adults who do unmentionable things to children.
If it were up to me, I'd say just kill 'em all, and let God sort them out. I don't care about the circumstances. I don't care about what happened to them as children or whatever it is that has turned these people into sociopaths.
But I hate to say this... God's compassion for whoever it is you've decided is the scum of humanity it not withheld. It does not yield. There is an ocean of mercy that need only to be accepted waiting to wash over every single one of these people.
And what's more, I just might be the person who needs to be the sign of God's forgiveness for the very person I hate. A sign that may, out of my unwillingness to go when called to speak the Good News in a way hearts are already being prepared to receive, might have to be delivered with a humiliated, defeated me, smelling of fish vomit and covered in seaweed.
So, let me leave you with this. Sin, I think, has left each of us just little bit challenged. Emotionally challenged. Intellectually challenged. Spiritually challenged. We have obstacles to overcome to begin embracing God's dream. Challenges to be overcome to be an effective disciple of Jesus. Challenges to be overcome so that we can effectively disciple others.
We hate somebody. We don't believe in ourselves. And we're tempted to put others down so we can stand on their bent backs to try to put us a little bit closer to God.
But even if we're imperfect, if we trust God, we can in certain moments, with certain people, being the perfect mirror, reflecting the light of love into a dark place not suitable anyone.
Are you a sign of God's desire? Will you trust Him to fashion you into beacon of hope He needs you to be?
And if they didn't understand that sign, no other was necessary.
So for the last three weeks, Charlotte, Daniel and I have been unraveling the mystery of what the sign of Jonah actually is, and what it might mean to us.
To date we've picked up a lot of clues. Initially we discovered that God has a will for all of us. It might at times be pretty broad - live righteously - and at other times it might be quite specific. Like, for example, to go to Nineveh and tell its inhabitants to get their act together or face the Lord's judgment. In either case, God will use us either because we been faithful, or as a cautionary tale - as a living example of what happens when we do the opposite of what God desires for us. In either case, if you remember, God uses Jonah even in his disobedience, and the sailors on the boat sailing for Tarshish who begin the story as pagans, end the story offering sacrifices to the living God. Pharisees and Sadduccees can't imagine God using anybody except those who perfectly kept the Law. But they were wrong...
Clue #1: People moving in the wrong direction in life are still used by the Lord.
Next, Daniel helped us understand that while Jonah believed God lived in the Temple of Jerusalem, he discovered the Lord present in the belly of the fish. Remember this was the popular belief of the day. God lived in the Holy of Holies in the Temple. Only the priests could stand in God's presence, and at that only at certain times of the year. And yet, Jonah calls on God in the last place he should be present, and God shows up. And because God shows up, Jonah finds out that even smelling and looking like someone who had been in a whale for three days, that God, in his presence, would still use Jonah. Pharisees and Sadduccees couldn't imagine God being anywhere but the Holy and Holies, but they were wrong....
Clue #2: God just isn't present in the Temple, but everywhere, even in the foulest places imaginable.
Finally, last week, Charlotte talked about how sometimes the Good News sounds like bad news. But in this case, the Ninevites don't hear bad news. Even though Jonah was outsider who reeked of fish vomit, the word from the Lord was received whole-heartedly by the entire city-state. More than likely God had been preparing their hearts to hear the Good News of God's willingness to reconcile them to Him. Maybe it was because, as some scholars believed, the Ninevites worshipped sea gods, and thus could take a guy vomited out of a fish seriously. Maybe doubt had already existed in the minds of those in power that they were leading people in the wrong direction. Who knows. All we know is the word of the Lord is received by Ninevah. For them, the word is Good News. But in a world where the Pharisees and Sadduccees saw those who didn't know God as second-class citizens, as sinful lost pagans, as the enemy, that God would use an Israelite prophet to call foreigners to repentance, and to do so successfully, was bad news. It was inconceivable. It meant, really and truly, that God wanted to use his people to be a light of hope. To speak in a way that hearts who had not heard Him yet were being prepared to hear. The Pharisees and Sadduccees wanted to write the rest of the world off, but
Clue #3: The Good News doesn't always sound like Good News to us, particularly if we have to make room God's couch (or even give up our seat) to let others rest near Him.
Which brings us today. Jonah, having watched God spare Nineveh, is ticked. In his heart of heart, we find out, unequivocally, that Jonah's biggest fear is that God will forgive a nation of people he deeply hates, and hates with good reason. They have, in the past treated Israel cruelly. They've committed unimaginable crimes against the most innocent Israelites. Jonah doesn't even want to imagine that God might let these people off, let alone actually care about them.
Even love them.
The Pharisees and Sadducees hate a lot of people. They hate sinners because they believe they were blocking the day God's justice and judgment would come. They hated Samaritans because for historical reasons, they worshiped God in a different temple, and while they had Jewish blood in them, had intermarried with, of all people, Ninevites.
And they hated Romans. Man did they hate Romans. They hated them the most of all. They hated them for their cruelty. They hated them for being pagans. They hated because they made life so difficult for everybody with their corrupt, brutal form of government and taxation.
They hated them. Hated them to the degree that the idea that, like Jonah in today's scripture, the idea of being personally inconvenienced bothered them more than the death and destruction of every Roman man, woman, and child. Whole families wiped out meant less than a lack of shade for themselves on a hot, hot day.
The Pharisees and Sadducees prayed for the wrath of God to destroy their enemies, but...
Clue #4: God's mercy is extended to all, and where it's accepted, it will be released like a torrent whether or not you think the receiver is worthy.
Four clues to understand the sign of Jonah. When we add them up, what do we get?
God's desire is to be reconciled with all humanity.
So, here's the question: Are you a sign of God's desire?
That's a big question. For all their knowledge of scripture... all the energy in living a Holy life... even the work they would do for the widows and orphans.... the Pharisees and Sadducees weren't signs of God's desire.
I find this to be personally very sobering. We can hate sin and what it does to people, but we've no license to hate people themselves no matter how infuriating we might think they are. In fact, we're called to be sign posts of God's desire of reconciliation and peace. To speak in ways that hearts are already being prepared to hear. In Jonah's case, the word was straight and simple, covered in fish vomit and seaweed.
I know there are plenty of people out there who would be happy to speak a straight and simple word to people who they felt were the most vile sinners. But they'd rather speak that word on a high horse, gleaming white in the bright sunlight assured that God's smiting would smite those needed to be smoted.
The best example, bar none, that I can think of is the Phelps family in Topeka, Kansas. The folks who travel around to let you know that God's judgment on America is sealed. Do you know these folks have called you dogs? They've called you whores? They've called our church, this church, a dog kennel, and me a son of hell? A young man from our community whose grandmother, in particular, was a long-time faithful member of this church, died in action while serving in Iraq. When Christian Neff's death was announced, it didn't take 24 hours for the Westboro Baptist Church to announce their intention to picket his funeral at this church.
They said he was going to hell. That our church is a dog kennel. That you are all whores. That I am a false prophet. And not one word uttered at us, or to anyone else anywhere, is said with the hope that you or I will be redeemed. In their sick, twisted minds, all the Phelps family wants is for you and I to hate them with even greater passion. For their contempt for humanity, anyone who is not them, is so great, that they would pray that your hate would grow so that your torment in hell, forever would be greater and greater.
They have no idea what the sign of Jonah is.
For it doesn't really matter how virtuous a life you lead. If it's devoid of love and compassion for others - particularly the most unlovable of the unlovable - Paul, a Pharisee who one day woke up to discover that even though he knew Jonah's story backwards and forwards, didn't live a life that understood it's meaning, tells us that if you gave everything you had to the poor, possessed the power to make mountains jump, or even offer yourself as a martyr for the faith, if you don't love, if you don't stand as a sign post of God's desire to be reconciled with everyone, every chip you think you've earned with God, is a sham and a dream.
Listen... be principled. Be disciplined. Hold yourself to the highest standards. Believe passionately in God's righteousness and put yourself to the task of working out that righteousness out in your own life.
But don't hate. Don't scapegoat. Not anybody.
Not your that person who hurt you. Not that person who abandoned you. Not that person who is a vile pig. Nobody.
God is calling you to dream His dream... the reconciliation of his children to Himself.
Now, don't get me wrong. I get that what I'm asking you to do is virtually impossible. Everybody hates somebody, me included. African warlords who enslave children to slaughter in their name. Druglords who rule with fear and intimidation to enslave others. Adults who do unmentionable things to children.
If it were up to me, I'd say just kill 'em all, and let God sort them out. I don't care about the circumstances. I don't care about what happened to them as children or whatever it is that has turned these people into sociopaths.
But I hate to say this... God's compassion for whoever it is you've decided is the scum of humanity it not withheld. It does not yield. There is an ocean of mercy that need only to be accepted waiting to wash over every single one of these people.
And what's more, I just might be the person who needs to be the sign of God's forgiveness for the very person I hate. A sign that may, out of my unwillingness to go when called to speak the Good News in a way hearts are already being prepared to receive, might have to be delivered with a humiliated, defeated me, smelling of fish vomit and covered in seaweed.
So, let me leave you with this. Sin, I think, has left each of us just little bit challenged. Emotionally challenged. Intellectually challenged. Spiritually challenged. We have obstacles to overcome to begin embracing God's dream. Challenges to be overcome to be an effective disciple of Jesus. Challenges to be overcome so that we can effectively disciple others.
We hate somebody. We don't believe in ourselves. And we're tempted to put others down so we can stand on their bent backs to try to put us a little bit closer to God.
But even if we're imperfect, if we trust God, we can in certain moments, with certain people, being the perfect mirror, reflecting the light of love into a dark place not suitable anyone.
Are you a sign of God's desire? Will you trust Him to fashion you into beacon of hope He needs you to be?
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