LET IT BEGIN IN ME

When Jesus was raised from the dead the reality didn't immediately impact the disciples.  For ten of the eleven it took an appearance of Jesus on Sunday evening to shock them into a new normal of reality.  For the eleventh, Thomas, who wasn't present at the first gathering; it took another week, another appearance, and a visible manifestation of Jesus' wounds.

I've always thought that a resurrection would so shake the disciples that change would be immediate.  Not so, however.  I suppose the shock of it all could so overwhelm them that it would take time to process.  On the surface resurrection from the dead is hard to believe after all; absurd might be the best word. 

Perhaps that is why Jesus called His Church into a process of being His witnesses in the world. Perhaps we ought to be patient with people if they don't believe our witness as quickly as we might like.  To be a witness requires that we be among people, living out the ramifications of our own life-changing encounter with Jesus.  Hopefully, then, as we live with them, Jesus will shine through us and they will be drawn to Christ as the Holy Spirit works in their lives.  It may happen quickly.  It may take time.  Only God knows the ways of the human heart.

As Christians live in their world, seeking to be salt and light, the most important prayer of our hearts ought to be, "Your kingdom come; Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven" (Matt. 6:10). Our role, then, is to live like we so fully embrace the ways of God's kingdom that our influence, energized by the Holy Spirit, will intrigue people and perhaps help them come to Christ.  Regardless of what they do or not do concerning Christ Jesus, our role is to offer people love, hospitality, and forgiveness.

This is a particularly important truth these days as our world turns to violence more and more often.  How does the Church make Jesus known in this violent age?  How do we Christians engage in the discussion and live as faithful followers of the Prince of peace?   What difference does it even make for there to be Christians throughout the world?

On Thursday July 14, 2016 the attention of the world turned to Nice France, where a man purposefully drove a truck into a crowded street killing 84 people and injuring many others.  Many people, one more time, are seeking to name the event.  Was it terrorism?  Was it the act of a mad man?  Was it ideologically based?  Was it simply the act of a man with pint-up anger issues? Name it what we will, it was murder.  It was one more act of man's inhumanity to man.  One more time death won and life lost.  We'll go on, mind you.  We always do; but at what cost? 

How does the sanctity of life become a mindset in the human condition? What will it take to end the violence and usher in a true day of peace?  I don't think the leaders of the world know what to do.  They know how to give wonderful talks after horrific events but they don't seem to know how to lead the world forward into a true civilization where violence is rare or extinct. We ought not to be too hard on them, however, because violence exists in our own neighborhoods and cities and homes. 

What needs to happen so that peace can be realized throughout the world?  Where do we begin?  Is it even worth the effort to try, knowing the broken condition of the human heart?  Knowing the current disdain for Christians through North America, will our voice be welcomed?  What can we do so as to reveal to the world the life of Jesus Christ and His great love for the world? 

I am only one voice, with very little influence, so I might just be speaking to myself.  Yet, maybe the self is where the answers ultimately lie.  Maybe addressing issues like peace can't really be address at the macro level.  Maybe peace is always a micro matter.  The apostle Paul speaks to the Church when he says, "If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone" (Romans 12:18). 

Let not anger be on the part of the church.  Let not anger be on the part of followers of Jesus.  In 1927 Baylus Benjamin McKinney wrote a poem-prayer we might need to make a part of our prayer life.  He wrote,

Send a revival, O Christ, my Lord,

Let it go over the land and sea.

Send it according to Thy dear Word,

And let it begin in me.

"Let it begin in me."  Ah, there's the rub.  The work of the Holy Spirit is done in the human heart; in my heart, and yours. 

What does that "revival" look like?  It is very difficult for me to see God bursting onto the scene like He did in Acts chapter two.  At the same time who would have ever believed at the time of the early Church that one Saul of Tarsus would come to Christ?  Maybe God has one more surprise to lavish onto the world.  I don't know.  I only know that God works in the human heart and that if enough transformed human heart's merge into the marvelous wonder called "Church," praying and living out the meaning of, "Your kingdom come…Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven," the possibility of peace will work its way into the human situation. 

Maybe the peace we all seek will come one person at a time.  After all, the church is comprised of persons as persons, persons living in the spirit of these holy words,

Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.  Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped" (Phil. 2:3-4). 

Do we really want peace?  Do we really want a safe world in which to raise our children? Do we really want safe neighborhoods?  Do we really want wars to cease? 

Maybe Mr. McKinney is on to something.

Send a revival, O Christ, my Lord,

Let it go over the land and sea.

Send it according to Thy dear Word,

And let it begin in me.

Let it begin in me.  Isn't that a part of what Jesus meant when He said, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me" (Matt. 16:24)? 

PEACE IN A TIME OF VIOLENCE

Whether it is Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, Canada, the Middle East or Middle America, violence dominants the world today, and good people of power in many places throughout the world seem to have no answers as to how to stop the killing and destroying. Caring people speak wonderful words after violent events, tears are shed at funerals around the globe, and innocent men, women, and children are left grieving the loss of loved ones and fellow countrymen, even as they wonder how in the world man's inhumanity to man will ever cease.

Sadly, I turn again to counsel I wish were unnecessary, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it" (Jeremiah 17:9).  Jesus took it a sobering step further when He said,

That which proceeds out of the man, that is what defiles the man.  For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed the evil thoughts, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, deeds of coveting and wickedness, as well as deceit,  sensuality, envy, slander, pride and foolishness.  All these evil things proceed from within and defile the man (Mark 7:20-23).

It seems that the human being has a heart sickness that desperately needs to be healed.  

I'm not sure our biggest threat in the United States, at least, is Islamic terrorists.  Sure they want to take us down, and we need to be on guard every day, but it seems we really don't need them to help us be taken down.  Give us enough time and we'll take ourselves down.   We're pretty good at that all ready.  Death and destruction are all around us.  It might come from an unprincipled police officer, a violent sniper hiding behind "Black Lives Matter."   It might come from an angry man who in his rage kills a four-year-old girl in Altadena, California.  Pick your poison.  It is everywhere to be found. 

I speak as a middle class white male, which immediately calls my credentials into question.  However, I am close enough to many black males in our culture to get a sense of the stress under which they live.  In fact, I am privy to many people in the black community, male and female. I've heard their stories and tried to process the questions they carry and the uneasiness they feel.  I'm not sure I am capable of feeling their pain, but I have looked into their eyes and have had no doubt whatsoever that they live under a dark shadow in a culture in which all people are said to be created equal. 

I don't know how to stop the violence exploding from within the human heart.  I do know that there are enough issues of brokenness in my own life that I ought not to judge people too harshly.  I also know that in the "land of the free and the home of the brave" there is a lot of dying and death at our own hands. 

This planet has issues that need to be dealt with, and I am seeing no evidence of progress out of violence into peace.  I only know that when someone dies, be it here or abroad, it involves all of us because, as John Donne wrote back in 1624, "Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind."  Truly, none of us escapes the ripple effect of violence, dying, and death.  Like it or not, we are in this thing called life, together. 

My heart ached a few days ago when a former teaching colleague of my wife's wrote a Face Book post.  She is an African American young woman responding to contemporary conditions of our culture.  Hear her words,

I just want to cuddle my baby and not worry about how I will have to explain to him someday that he must be careful when riding through La Canada or walking in the affluent neighborhoods of Pasadena because he's Black, and a police officer may think he's suspicious.  Of course he will know to not commit crimes and to obey authority, but he must also know that people will find him threatening (especially if he has his dad's size).  I hope he does not have my feisty spirit because talking back could get him killed.  I just want to hold my baby and pray for a future that is better than today.  I have dedicated my life to making the world a better place. I wish the same could be said for more of us. May God have mercy on us all.

Can you feel her anguish?  I'm not going to use her name because her comments might ignite existing anger in someone's heart and put her life in danger.  Let me just say that her story is our story, too.  At least it ought to be.  Donne wrote, "No man is an island entire of itself.  Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."  Ladies and gentlemen, we are in this thing together, and we had better look deep within our very souls and take hold of something greater than ourselves, something that includes us all. 

When the founding fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence they included these words,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

I'm not convinced at all that the founding fathers meant Black people when they wrote the words "All men are created equal."  Slaves simply were not equal.  Don't even go there.  Over the years our culture, moving slowly like a turtle, through many tears and sorrows, have sought to change the trajectory of the nation, but here we are 240 years into the experiment, baffled at the anger and hostility that still exists, stunned that rage reigns so supreme that it raises its ugly head in just about every facet of society.

I live in my culture as a Christian, a man seeking to be a Christ-like man.  I believe Jesus is God's response and initiative to the deepest needs of the human heart.  Many people disagree with me, and that's fine.  Everywhere we turn, though, there are people of the Jewish faith, the Muslim faith, as well as Buddhist and Hindus, and people of a hundred other faiths and beliefs, even people of no faith at all.  We live together on this planet.  At this point in history it is the only planet we have on which to live.  We had better solve this violence issue, and soon, or the planet is going to faith and belief and ideology and cause itself out of existence.

I thank God for the local church of which I am a part.  We are seeking to be Christian through and through, and our worship lifts up the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  In this atmosphere our pastor believes that church must be a safe place for people to come, find a place of healing, a place to connect, a place comprised of people who are living out the implications of hospitality.  If I've heard him once I've heard him say a thousand times that we are not here to judge people.  That's God's job.  We must leave that kind of insight and knowledge to One who is sovereign and all knowing.  Our role is to be shaped and formed into the image of Jesus and to live out the implications of the Sermon on the Mount. 

We are certainly not perfect, and would never knowingly leave the impression with others that we are so.  Yet, we are real and we are honestly seeking how to live out the meaning of a cruciformed life.  Our Savior is the Prince of Peace, and our intention and commitment is to be like Him by the way we live and move and have our being in the world.

Whatever you believe or not believe join me in an effort to make for peace in the neighborhood in which you live.  I don't have much sway beyond the small sphere of influence in which I live, and even then I'm pretty sure I don't have that much sway.  Still, I do live in a house that sits on a street in a town that deals every day with anger and violence.  Hardly a week goes by that we don't read in the paper about a senseless death or a senseless act of violence, a gang shooting, road rage, racial confrontations, ethnic unrest, and simple acts of tribalism and ego hurting.  The truth is I live in a city I love.  It is beautiful city of many cultures and languages.  I love living here.  Yet, we all know that on any given day, one little act or misdeed could light the fuse and this town could be a war zone in a heartbeat.

Is this the way we want to live?  Is this what the future will look like?  Is there a way to give peace a chance, to give hope a chance, to holster our weapons and smoke a peace pipe?  God help us, I hope so. 

I surely hope so.

Let me close with John Donne's complete statement.  Please take it to heart because we all are only one unfortunate event away from a tragedy that could take us to the hospital, waiting anxiously for a doctor's report or to a cemetery in which we weep over the body of a loved one.

No man is an island, entire of itself. Each is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were; as well as if a manor of thine own, or of thine friend's were. Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, send not to know for whom the bell tolls, It tolls for thee.

ORLANDO, MATEEN, US, AND ME

The first murder ever recorded is in Genesis 4:8. Cain, feeling envy and jealousy toward his brother, killed Abel in an act of violence that pales in comparison to the violence at work in our word today.  When God confronted Cain about this evil He simply asked him, "What have you done?" (Gen. 4:10).

            This is the question I would ask of Omar Mateen, who, on September 12, 2016, gunned down forty-nine fellow human beings, and injured another fifty-three, "What have you done?" I would add, "Who do you think you are?  Who went away and left you in charge of who should live and who should die?  What have you done, Cain?"

            Jeremiah the prophet of God spoke of people "who have eyes but do not see; who have ears but do not hear" (Jer. 5:21).  Then he added, "The heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately sick; who can understand it?" (Jer. 17:9).  What have you done Omar-Cain?

            My heart hurts as I look at the world of violence in which we all live now.  Our Wisdom literature reminds us, "There is nothing new under the sun" (Ecclesiastes 4:9).  Solomon had concluded, "That which has been is that which will be, and that which has been done is that which will be done" (Ecc. 4:9).  To a great degree he was right. 

The human race doesn't seem to catch on.  Generation after generation we just keep on killing each other.  Countless numbers of people seem to live to get what they want when they want it, and if they don't get it, they will kill you.  Every race, creed, and color has fallen victim to the ways and means of death.  One would think that at this late date in human history we would catch on; but we don't. 

            However, the tragedy at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, calls me to some personal soul searching.  I am reminded of Paul's counsel to the Corinthian church when, in reminding them of how the ancients had taken their eyes off God and turned to their own devices, said "Let him who thinks he stands take heed that he does not fall" (I Cor. 10:12). It is very easy for me to condemn Mateen's actions, a condemnation that is rightly deserved; however, as a follower of Christ mine is not to condemn or condone.  Mine is to be shaped and formed into the image of Jesus, to lift Him up in the mist of the messiness, and to live out the implications of being in relationship with the God of all grace (I Peter 5:10).

            What might those implications look like?  One pastor spoke of how he wished more people in Orlando had died.  This pastor now has death threats on his own life.  So, the cycle of violence continues, with each side believing their viewpoint is morally superior, and we are getting no where.

            It is a dangerous and toxic age in which we live.  At this late date in history it seems we're still struggling to find our way.  I wonder if that might be one of the reasons Jesus referred to Himself as "the Way" (John 14:6).  It seems the human race is lost, even the best among us.  The planet is in trouble.  No matter what the issue might be opinions about it come down to about 50/50 or 51/49.  As a planet, we've never been as divided as we are now, and that "now" is post WW1, WW2, the Korean police action, the Vietnam War, and countless other acts of nation against nation and tribe against tribe and ethnicities against ethnicities and gangs against gangs.  When is it ever going to end? 

            I don't believe it is going to end until the world finds "the Way."  "The Way," also known as "the Prince of Peace" is the world's best hope for learning to live together in a broken, dangerous, and hostile world.  Until people begin to recognize that what we've been doing for the past six thousand years or so is not working, we will continue to journey down the same roads that lead to destruction, death, and funerals.  This does not seem to me to be the best way to move into what we all hope will be a good future.

            A popular cliché making the circuit these days says that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.  Six thousand years of recorded history tell us that we might just all be insane, if that definition is true.  We live in a world that wants what it wants when it wants it and if it doesn't get it, it will steal, kill, and destroy in an effort to get it anyway.  The result?  Destruction, death, and funerals.

            I believe Jesus offers a better suggestion.  In Jesus God "emptied Himself of all but love and bled for Adam's helpless race" (Charles Wesley).  I know countless numbers of people don't buy into this but those who have actually embraced Jesus have found that the possibility of peace actually does exist.  So, I guess in the end I am speaking to those folks who have discovered Life that is Jesus.  It is up to those folks, among whom I name myself, to live out the implications of a God who would empty Himself of all but love and bleed for Adam's helpless race. We are a people of the cross and the One we follow embraced people from all walks of life and created a community that many, many, thought would never get out of the first century. 

            It did get out of the first century, however, and when that community is doing it right hate dies away, rage is laid to rest, and people are loved for the persons they are. 

I'm only one voice and my audience is very small, but I believe that if those of us who dare say we believe in and follow Jesus really acted like, the possibilities of God would be lavished on His world.  And, truthfully, the world doesn’t doesn't need the institutional church.  It needs Jesus; and there is a difference.  Jesus said, "They will know you are my disciples by the love you have for one another" (John 13:35). 

So, Church, myself included, may we heed these words:

Rise up, O Church of God!

Have done with lesser things.

Give heart and mind and soul and strength

To serve the King of kings.

Rise up, O Church of God!

The kingdom tarries long.

Bring in the day of brotherhood

And end the night of wrong.

                                   (Based on the words of William Merrill, 1911)

BRING IN THE DAY OF BROTHERHOOD AND 

END THE NIGHT OF WRONG.

SEEKING, SATISFACTON, AND SERENDIPITY

It is hot, by Pasadena standards at least, and I am looking for ways to stay cool.  Ice water, AC's and shade trees are high on my agenda today.  I love cold and have often wondered how cold it would have to be for me to cry out, "Enough."  Other people want to go to Hawaii and I want to go to the North Pole.  Vonnie says I can go if I don't mind going alone. 

I have been thinking about what makes a person happy.  Is that the right word, happy?  Maybe satisfied is a better word.  Happy is such a chameleon of a word.  But satisfied has about it a sense of peace, and peace always has a wonderful ring to it.  So, satisfied it is. 

What makes a person satisfied? Weather?  Stability?  Money?  Power?  Sex?  Affirmation? Accomplishments?  Family?  Conquest?  Self-giving?  Love?  Forgiveness?  Doing good deeds?  Justice?  Mercy? 

What if being satisfied was not even the right word?  Suppose, the pursuit of anything for its own sake fell short of what it means to really be who we are?  What if being satisfied was a bi-product that came with the pursuit of something greater than being satisfied? 

I love the word serendipity.  It means to discover something accidentally, while in pursuit of something entirely different.  Suppose being satisfied is a gift of serendipity.  In pursuit of living an excellent life one finds a deep-seated inner satisfaction.  It wasn't the reason for the pursuit but it was a gift given in the pursuit. 

Suppose Jesus knew what He was talking about when He told His followers to seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness (Matt. 6:33).  Suppose it is in the seeking we find the abundant life He also promised (John 10:10).  Suppose that life really is meant to be lived in response to the grace and mercy of God?  

Once upon a time I thought that one of these days my ship was really going to come in, and when it did, I was going to do great things for God.  Then I recognized the ship was already in.  Waiting for the ship became a hindrance to embracing the ship that was already there.  That was the day life really became alive for me. 

The one-of-these-days insanity died that day and the grace and mercy of God became the awesome arena in which life began to be lived.  Pursuit gave way to a Person.  The Person, Jesus, embraced my life and life itself became the gift because He, Himself, is Life. Life became imbued with His life, and ever since then I have sung with John Newton, "…Amazing grace…I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see."