RICHARD'S STORY

On May 16, 2014, I spent an amazing forty minutes with my friend, Richard Helphand.  I met him about a year ago, just after he had come to Christ and was baptized.  Today He is dying. He knows it.  His life is ebbing away in an assisted living facility in Glendale, California.  The doctors have given him from two weeks to two months, and assured him that they have done all they know to do.  Now they are tying to keep him comfortable.  He went into hospice care this morning.  He told me that he was ready for the future, that if God wanted to take him it would be okay, and that if God wanted to keep him here, it would be okay.  With King David of old he said, “I trust in You, O Lord, I say, ‘You are my God.’ My times are in Your hand” (Psalm 31:14-15).

Room 110 became a sanctuary today, an altar, where a dying man, his wife, her son, and a pastor met God.  The ordinary became the place of encounter and a monument of praise and thanksgiving to God for his mercy and grace.  In the face of imminent death we were reminded of astonishing grace as we read the words of Psalm 46, “God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.  Therefore we will not fear, though the earth should change and though the mountains slip into the heart of the sea; though its waters roar and foam, though the mountains quake at its swelling pride” (vs. 1-3).

Life and death are all around us everyday.  Much of what happens to us and around us is beyond our control.  Powers greater than us speak, and we have no choice but to bow to them.  We can deny death, complain about it, criticize it, and even pretend that it will never come to our door, but it will; if not today, some day. We can count on it.  There are not a lot of things in life about which we can be certain; death is one of those things.  The death rate is 100 percent.  We can put off death by eating healthy and exercising appropriately.   Modern Medicine has given us ways to prolong life but truth is that none of us is going to get out of this world alive.  Better make peace with it.

As I sat with my friend and his family I couldn’t help but think about something Jesus said to Martha of Bethany in John 11.  She was grieving the loss of her brother when Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again” (John 11:23).  Martha believed Him and affirmed her faith when she said to Him, “I know he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (vs. 24).  Apparently Jesus had something more in mine because He responded back to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.  The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.  Do you believe this?” (vs. 25-26).  With that Martha responded, “Yes, Lord…I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who is to come into the world” (vs. 27).

In this conversation Jesus speaks of both death and life, and speaks of them so casually that they almost flow together, almost mingling the two into one.  It is as if He is saying, “Yes, you will die.  No, it isn’t the last event of your life.”   Dying and living, stamped with His resurrection image.  Death happens but it isn’t the end.  Life as we know it ends, but only for a moment.  Death speaks and life obeys.  Life speaks and death dies.  The two get lost in the greatness of the resurrected, “Son of God,” and everything gets redefined.

In room 110 death is winning the battle but it is also losing the war.  My friend’s heart is fixed on Jesus.  Hope fills the atmosphere.  Endings have taken a back seat, and new beginnings fill the room.  The Resurrection and the Life is in that room, and my friend is on His way to a future created and won by the One who is Lord of lords.  “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus” (Revelation 22:20). 

            Yesterday I went to room 110 again.  Richard was surrounded by his family, friends, and work associates; Fourteen of us.  All of us were saying our goodbyes.  I got to lay my hand on his head, to pray with him, and to thank him for being my friend and brother in Christ.  Tears flowed, hugs were sustained, silence was very loud.  Death was winning the battle and we all knew it.  We all also knew that death would not be the final word spoken in this room.  God was in that room and defeat was absent.  It was then I understood again that “weeping may stay for the night, 
but rejoicing comes in the morning” (Psalm 30:5). 

This was yesterday.  I just received word that my friend passed away at about 6:00 a.m. this morning.  Room 110 is very empty.  Yet, emptiness is not Lord, and I cling to a word of truth that has brought hope to countless millions through the centuries,  

… [T]he perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

“Where, O death, is your victory?


Where, O death, is your sting?”

… But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
                                     -- I Corinthians 15: 53-57

           

Room 110 is empty today because death has spoken but, with the apostle Paul of old, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). 

What was that word?  Oh, yes, “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus”

ONE MORE WORD ABOUT EASTER

In “The Shawshank  Redemption,” Stephen King has Andy Dufresne telling Red that people had to, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”  On this Monday after Easter the word to us is, “Get busy living.”  Remember the old spiritual

Lord I keep so busy praisin' my Jesus, Ain't got time to die. 


When I'm helpin' the sick, Ain’t got time to die.
 


When I'm feedin' the poor, Ain't got time to die. 

 


When I'm givin' my all (I'm servin' my master) Ain't got time to die 

 


Let me tell you if I don't praise Him the rocks are gonna cry out.

Glory and honor, glory and honor 
Ain't got time to die 



Glory and honor, glory and honor 
Ain't got time to die.

Let’s get busy living in the grace, vision, and power of the Resurrected and now living, Lord Jesus Christ.  

HOW SHALL WE HEAR GOD'S WORD?

John Wesley’s heart was to be a man of one book, the Bible.  The 1996 edition of The Book of Discipline of the United Methodist Church explains, “"Wesley believed that the living core of the Christian faith was revealed in scripture, illumined by tradition, vivified in personal experience and confirmed by reason."

The authority of Scripture is very much under attack these days.  People of the Church are knocking it around like a Ping Pong ball.  How it will all play out in the long haul, I’m not qualified to answer.  I do know that my heart resonates with Mr. Wesley’s.  I believe in tradition and personal experience and reason, but I also believe “the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments, given by divine inspiration, inerrantly revealing the will of God concerning us in all things necessary to our salvation, so that whatever is not contained therein is not to be enjoined as a article of faith” (Article IV of the XVI articles of Faith in the Church of the Nazarene).

In his book, Simply Christian, N. T. Wright says, “The Bible is nonnegotiable” (173).  I think he is correct, and I also think there is a lot Biblical negotiation going on in this, so called, post-modern world. 

Jude said “Beloved, while I was making every effort to write you about our common salvation, I felt the necessity to write to you appealing that you contend earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints” (vs. 3). His reason for this appeal was based on the fact that “certain persons have crept in unnoticed, those who were long beforehand marked out for this condemnation, ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into licentiousness and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (vs. 4).

I suppose the ball is in our court now.  How is the contend[ing] earnestly for the faith which was once for all handed down to the saints, going down in our culture and around the world these days?  I fear we have a negotiated Bible now, and that it is being used to defend worldviews rather than shape them.  It seems we need the Bible to say what we need it to say and once it says what we need it to say we, in turn, add to it, “Thus says the Lord.”

At any rate, and whatever the true condition might be in these early days of the twenty-first century, I invite you to hear the words of a Christlike man I admire.  John Wesley wrote,

To candid, reasonable men, I am not afraid to lay open what have been the inmost thoughts of my heart. I have thought, I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God: Just hovering over the great gulf; till, a few moments hence, I am no more seen; I drop into an unchangeable eternity! I want to know one thing, — the way to heaven; how to land safe on that happy shore.

God himself has condescended to teach the way: For this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! At any price, give me the book of God! I have it: Here is knowledge enough for me. Let me be homo unius libri.

Here then I am, far from the busy ways of men. I sit down alone: Only God is here. In his presence I open, I read his book; for this end, to find the way to heaven. Is there a doubt concerning the meaning of what I read? Does anything appear dark or intricate? I lift up my heart to the Father of Lights: — “Lord, is it not thy word, ‘If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God?’ Thou ‘givest liberally, and upbraidest not.’ Thou hast said; ‘If any be willing to do thy will, he shall know.’ I am willing to do, let me know, thy will.” I then search after and consider parallel passages of Scripture, “comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” I meditate thereon with all the attention and earnestness of which my mind is capable. If any doubt still remains, I consult those who are experienced in the things of God; and then the writings whereby, being dead, they yet speak. And what I thus learn, that I teach.

TRUTH AND TICKLED, INCHING EARS

The first quarter of the 21^st century might appropriately be called the age of the tickling of ears.  The apostle Paul spoke of how “the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths” (2 Tim. 4:3-4, NASB).  The New International Version translates these verses, “For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths.” 

This might just be that “time” of which Paul Spoke.

It is certainly a time of multiplicity, peppered with a pluralism that numbs the mind and undercuts any word that might be held to be an authoritative word.  This all raises a question for me, “On what authority does a word that seeks to speak with authority, in dismantling all other sources of authority, have that authority to do so?” 

Sadly, to live in a one-up-man-ship world where “itching ears” determine what the current truth shall be is just a new version of the old Junior High adage, “My dad can beat up your dad.”  Only now it is, “My authority can beat up your authority and that means your authority is inferior; so there.  Put that in your peace pipe and smoke it.” 

I John 1: 5 says, “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.” Ephesians 5:8 says, “walk as children of Light.”  Jesus said, "I am the Light of the world; he who follows Me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the Light of life"  (John 8:12).  These verses assume some kind of authority-- truth, if you will.  The buck stops somewhere, and in Scripture that stop is Truth in the person and life of Jesus.   

What seems to be so cut-and-dry in Scripture, in these days of political correctness, pluralism, and intolerant-tolerance, has become unclear, uncertain, and a mystery embraced by lack of clarity. Even the church of Jesus has a thousand viewpoints on just about every issue to which it addresses itself and the message it is sending to the world is “We don’t know for sure what we believe about anything anymore but we sure believe it.” 

It is a crazy world, isn’t it?  My attempt to convince you that my authority to put down your authority is confronted with your attempt to convince me that my authority is only assumed on my part and is not backed up by the reality of life, which has, of course, fully endorsed your authority.  It’s just my opinion.  So, we go round and round and round claiming an authority the other does not embrace as authority; and on and on it goes.  (I got tired just trying to write this paragraph). 

Consequently, pluralism is the new standard of authority.  I don’t know who had the authority to make this the new standard, but it is among us, and it is alive and well.  The word out there now is that there is no absolute truth.  Everything is either situational truth or truth for some sub-set of beliefs somewhere, but truth is not and cannot be absolute.  Truth is relative.  Believe and embrace what you perceive to be authoritative, and I’ll do the same, just don’t try to make your authority be my authority.  Then, like ships passing in the night we miss each other, call it good, and move on merrily unaware that there is an iceberg ahead about ready to do us in.

As a follower of Jesus Christ I am compelled to deal with a Savior who insists that He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life” (John 14:6).  That just upsets the whole apple cart, doesn’t it?  Not much wiggle room here -- the Way, the Truth, the Life.  That just about covers everything doesn’t it?  What to do? What to do?  Is this just His opinion, or is it the truth?  And, in an age when all authority is called into question and is not total or absolute, but personal and situational and tribal, what do we do with someone who comes to us and says, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life?” 

Personally, I believe Him.  He has proven Himself to be who He says He is?  He lived in and among us, and He never deviated from His message.  He suffered, died, was raised from the dead, gave His Holy Spirit to those who would received Him, and created a Church that has moved through two thousand years of history, with every opportunity in the world to die away, but didn’t.  People who have embraced Him have come to know that He really meant it when He said He came that we might have life and have it to the full (John 10:10).  Not only did He mean it; He did it. 

I know this doesn’t set well with folks who have set their itching ears on their “own desires,” and are busily accumulating for themselves teachers who will reinforce those desires and who make it easy for them to “turn away their ears from the truth and …turn aside to myths.”  And, truthfully, I don’t expect those folks to believe a word I am saying; and, I’m okay with it.

One of the things I like about absolute truth is that you can throw it out there, and let me be or not be whatever it is or isn’t.  If it is really absolute truth, it can take the heat; and if it can’t take the heat it isn’t really the truth.  So, I give you Jesus.  Break Him if you can.  If He can be broken He’s not much of a Savior, anyway.  If He can’t take the heat He is not the Messiah He says He is.  Break Him.  Crucify Him if you want, and He will rise up on the third day, in the most outrageous act of authority in human history. 

The story of E. Stanley Jones continually touches a cord in my life.  As a missionary to India in the early and mid twentieth century he wrestled with the idea of sharing Jesus in a world that was rooted and grounded in pluralism and saturated with a myriad of religions.  Of that struggle he wrote,

There came the time when I inwardly let go.  I became willing to turn Jesus over to the facts of the universe.  I began to see that there was only one refuge in life and that was in reality, in the facts.  If Jesus couldn’t stand the shock of the criticism of the facts discovered anywhere, if He wasn’t reality, the sooner I found it out the better. 

My willingness to surrender Christ to the facts was almost as great an epoch in my life as my willingness to surrender to him.  In the moment of letting go I could almost feel myself inwardly turning pale.  What would happen?  Would the beautiful dream fade?  To my happy amazement I found that He not only stood, but that He shone as never before.  I saw that He was not a hothouse plant that would wither under the touch of criticism, but He was rooted in reality, was the very living expression of our moral and spiritual universe – He was reality itself.

I have, therefore, taken my faith and have put it out before the non-Christian world for these seventeen years and have said, “There it is, my brothers, break it if you can.”  And the more they have smitten upon it the more it has shone.  Christ came out of the storms and will weather them. 

The only way to kill Christianity is to take it out of life and protect it.  The way to make it shine and show its genius is to put it down in life and let it speak directly to life itself.  Jesus is his own witness.  The Hindus have formed societies call Dharm Raksha Sabhas – Societies for the Protection of Religion.  Jesus does not need to be protected.  He needs to be presented.  He protects himself. (E. Stanley Jones, The Christ of the Indian Road:  Abingdon Press: New York, 1925, 1927; p. 140-141).

That’s where my heart is.  “Jesus does not need to be protected.  He needs to be presented.”  I find no necessity for Jesus’ Church to be a defense attorney for Jesus.  The great need is for those of us who call Jesus, “Lord,” to live out the meaning of His Lordship in our communities.  We don’t need to argue absolute truth questions.  We need to live redeemed and transformed lives.  After all, if Jesus is all we say He is doesn’t He redeem and transform; and if He doesn’t why do we tell people He does?

Here’s an idea.  Instead of going through life defending God, why don’t we go through our days living the God-life that has come to us through Jesus?   Make Jesus look good, because He is good.  Be a fragrant aroma of Christ.  Let’s live and move and have our being in the God who “emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam’s helpless race” (From Charles Wesley’s Hymn, “And Can It Be”).     

Be a wonderful problem, by the conduct of your life, for those who want nothing to do with Jesus.  I don’t know how well I do it, but I really do want the quality of my life to put context and meaning to my words. 

Go and be a person produced by the God of grace and love and mercy and forgiveness.  In an argument oriented world, if you don’t win arguments, don’t let it get to you.  Keep on living the life.  Arguments come and go.  In the cultures of our world, today’s truth may be tomorrow’s ferry tale.  Who knows?  Love Jesus.  Be real and authentic.  Be vulnerable and transparent.  If Jesus is who He says He is, even your weakness and humanity won’t do Him in.  Someone who doesn’t agree with you may try to tear Jesus apart in your life; don’t let it get to you.  If they crucify Him again, He’ll rise up again.  If He is who He says He is let the folks do whatever it is they do.  As for you, just keep loving Jesus and living in the life of His Life.    

The old hymn says it for you and me, doesn’t it?

My faith has found a resting place,


Not in device or creed;


I trust the ever living One,


His wounds for me shall plead.

I need no other argument,


I need no other plea,


It is enough that Jesus died,


And that He died for me.

(Eliza E. Hewitt, aka Lidie H.    

Edmunds,1891)