Pastor’s Page

In a country that continues to lose its moral bearings, is it any wonder that it is increasingly more difficult to distinguish between those who really need help and those who do not?

In the years I lived and worked in Chattanooga, I cannot begin to recount all of the times that I was approached by someone on the street asking for money. On one occasion, a man in an wheelchair popped a wheelie and ended up tipping over backwards. I quickly went over to ask him if he was okay, thinking he could have hit his head on the pavement. He rolled over onto his knees, looked up at me and asked for money. A friend who was with him promptly smacked him on the head.

On another occasion, a friend of mine and I were coming out of the movies and were approached by a fellow named “Kevin Smith.” We listened to his story, and decided to give him a ride to the Salvation Army. They would not take him in, and when we planned to leave him there he got a bit upset. Finally, we agreed to drop him off at a restaurant, and gave him a few bucks for something to eat. My friend invited him to church, and over to his house for a meal on Sunday after church. He offered to pick him up, and told him where to be and at what time. He never showed. Some years later, “Kevin Smith” approached me while I was on a lunch break. He did not recognize me, and before he could begin his story I simply said, “I don’t have any money for you.” He walked away without a word.

The other night I was on my way home from a meeting, and coming around the exit ramp noticed a man standing outside of his car trying to waive someone down. I pulled over and rolled down the passenger-side window, and, boy, was he happy to see me. I am not going to attempt to recount everything he said, but his basic claim was that he needed money for gas, and TDOT would be there in about 20 minutes with a gas can. Shortly after I gave him some money, he drove away.

Many of you will recall that the final episodes of the TV sitcom Seinfeld were centered around an incident when Jerry, Elaine, George and Kramer all witness a car-jacking, and make no attempt to come to the victim’s aid. Shortly thereafter, they are arrested for not adhering to the newly passed “Good Samaritan Law.” Their indifference (and the history of their indifference) becomes the focal point of the story, allowing for clip after clip from previous seasons to be shown again. Their self-centered lives ultimately prove to be their undoing, and the last laugh is on them. What an interesting cultural commentary upon our society this provides, and how ironic that our societal decline is even evidenced by those claiming to need the help of a Good Samaritan.

To fully grasp the comments below you should probably read 2 Kings 3. However, if you choose not to, here is a brief synopsis.

In 2 Kings 3, the “good guys” (Jehoram, king of Israel, Jehoshaphat, king of Judah, and the king of Edom) are about to totally wipe out the “bad guys” (Mesha, king of Moab, and the Moabites). But at the moment of imminent victory we read this surprise ending: When the king of Moab saw that the battle was going against him, he took with him 700 swordsmen to breakthrough, opposite the king of Edom, but they could not. Then he took his oldest son who was to reign in his place and offered him for an ascension offering on the wall. And there came great wrath against Israel. And they withdrew from him and returned to their own land (vv. 26-27).

In his commentary, where this episode is explained in greater detail, Peter Leithart offers the following:

This unnerving story reveals something of God’s ways with humanity in general. What is God up to in history or in the specific history of our individual lives? That is often difficult to answer, and frequently, just when we think we have a sense of what God is doing, he turns things inside out and upside down and does something else. He is a living God, and that means he is the God of surprise endings. He does this not because he takes malicious delight in toying with us, nor does he trap us to guffaw over the resulting pratfalls. The God of surprises is wholly righteous, wholly good, wholly just, wholly love, wholly light without a shadow of turning. He is faithful with the faithful, but the faithful throughout the centuries testify that God is a God of surprises. God surprises us because we have only the slightest grasp of what is actually going on in history or in our lives. God surprises us because he is doing far, far more than we can imagine, and his plans are far bigger that we can perceive. God surprises us with roadblocks and obstacles because he wants us to grow up from complaining, sentimental childish Jehorams into mature adults, into the image of Jesus, who learns obedience by what he suffers” (182).

Another gem from Peter Leithart’s commentary on 1 & 2 Kings. Regarding the story of 2 Kings 16, he writes:

The account of Ahaz raises another challenge to contemporary Christian practice. For a variety of reasons, Christian worship in many contemporary churches has adopted liturgical styles from the worlds of entertainment or advertising. When success depends on copying the latest methods, the church’ apparently staid traditionalism, its claim to be the object of God’s special favor, its claims to be the Eden of God, the holy mountain, the house of the living God, can look quaint if not downright proud.

Better to adjust our worship and our language to the dominant cultural power, it is thought, than to keep up the arrogant pretense that we enjoy a special status. In adapting itself to the world, the church is departing from the pattern or model that should govern its worship. Only when the church follows the [model] of heavenly worship does water flow from the temple to the world. If the church adopts the [model] of Damascus, then the nations are on their own, and no water will flow to renew the parched land. Soon such a church will cease to have any purpose of being; ultimately, it will no longer be (248).

Currently reading Ralph C. Wood’s, Literature and Theology. A gem of a book.

An excerpt from the introduction:

Christianity is a supremely story-centered and story-borne religion. Christians are called to center their lives around the singular story of God’s ordering and reordering of the world. It is not surprising that, as a story-telling people, Christians would have followed the example of their Jewish forebears in being a People of the Book. Though it has many other qualities, the Bible is first and last the narrative of God’s people, the recounting of His dealings not only with Jews and Christians but with all the other peoples as well, from the original Creation until the final End. Nor is it any wonder that a people whose lives are sustainted by the Grand Drama of God’s work in the world should have produced yet more stories and books of their own. This little book of mine is an attempt to relate some of these later stories and books to the One Great Story and Book.

Beginning where a Christian’s life begins in the Church – at baptism, Dr. Wood delves into the baptismal imagery of “The River” by the ever-provocative Flannery O’Connor. He moves on to consider vocation through the lens of Walker Percy’s The Moviegoer, and the matter of compansionship via J.R.R. Tolien’s The Lord of the Rings. Further, the works of T.S. Eliot, G.K Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, and Walter Miller are brought to bear on other aspects of the Christian life. Hardly a work for pastors or theologians only, Dr. Wood’s collection of essays are engaging, challenging, and thoroughly edifying for a wide range of readers.

Horace Doss was buried today in an Alabama countryside. He was a beloved husband, father, granddaddy, and great-granddaddy. Cancer overtook him suddenly, and he died on August 25, 2009 at 1:30 PM. Surrounded by his children and their spouses, he opened his eyes wide, looked around the room one last time, smiled, and breathed his last in this earthly life. He was a man whose faith was firmly fixed upon the Lord Jesus Christ, and the fruit of that faith is evident in the legacy he leaves behind in a believing wife, believing children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. Mr. Doss steadfastly served the Lord, and during his years of Gospel ministry he even baptized his granddaughter, Denise, who is a member of St. Mark – a moment with her grandfather she will always cherish.

On the same day of Horace Doss’ death, Senator Ted Kennedy also succumbed to cancer. Likely, you have read the reports, or seen the coverage on various news stations recounting Kennedy’s legacy. He was known as the “Liberal Lion” – a political appellation which is ironically fitting. According to a recent Time magazine article, Senator Kennedy was a man of quiet Catholic faith and prayer. While I am not willing to discount that the Lord uses Obadiahs for the purposes of His kingdom (see 1 Kings 18), it does not appear that the Liberal Lion qualifies for such status. Dated August 3, 1971, Ted Kennedy closed a letter with the following statement:

When history looks back to this era it should recognize this generation as one which cared about human beings enough to halt the practice of war, to provide a decent living for every family, and to fulfill its responsibility to its children from the very moment of conception (emphasis added).

Mr. Kennedy’s pro-abortion voting record indicates that his conviction on the responsibility to children from the moment of conception did not last.

Tomorrow the coverage of the Senator’s funeral will be extensive, likely complete with aerial views. I doubt that Mr. Doss’ funeral today received as much fanfare in the press, if any at all, and suspect the procession was not followed by a helicopter. But who was the greater man? The one who leaves behind a legacy of death? Or the one who leaves behind a legacy of life? I never met Senator Ted Kennedy, nor did I ever have the privilege of meeting Horace Doss, but I look forward to meeting Mr. Doss in Glory.

I have to confess that I’ve found the media coverage of the deaths of Michael Jackson and Steve McNair a bit difficult to swallow at times. Basically I’m being told to overlook any of the glaring flaws either of them had, and simply focus on their contributions to society. Implicit in this: negative statements about these men are frowned upon.

At Steve McNair’s memorial service, Bishop Joseph W. Walker, III exhorted: “Drop your stone the next time you write about Steve McNair. Drop your stone the next time you text somebody. Drop your stone the next time you twitter. Drop your stone, those of you in the barbershops, the beauty shops. Those of you walking the streets on the corner, drop your stone.”

I assume the bishop’s comments stem from Jesus’ instruction in John 8:7: Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone…. If this assumption is correct, then I understand the bishop to be instructing his hearers that no one should judge Steve McNair in a negative light because all of us are sinners.

Well, there’s a modicum of truth in that, even as a sinner writes this post. However, does the fact that we are all sinners therefore mean that we are not to call sin “sin”? No, not at all, and Jesus wouldn’t have us to be so undiscerning. We are called to judge, but not to be hypocritical judges, keeping a healthy perspective on our own sin (see Matthew 7:1-5). We are to rightly view the sins of others, and be duly warned as a result (1 Corinthians 10:6-13).

Instead of telling everyone to drop their stones, why not take up Jesus’ words from Proverbs:

[The forbidden woman’s] feet go down to death; her steps follow the path to Sheol… Why should you be intoxicated, my son, with a forbidden woman and embrace the bosom of an adulteress? For a man’s ways are before the eyes of the LORD, and he ponders all his paths. The iniquities of the wicked ensnare him, and he is held fast in the cords of his sin. He dies for lack of discipline, and because of his great folly he is led astray (5:5, 20-23).

He who commits adultery lacks sense; he who does it destroys himself (6:32).

Sadly, Steve McNair fulfilled these words, and I can’t help but wonder that Bishop Walker would have been better served to instruct his listeners to learn from McNair’s folly. This isn’t to say that Steve McNair didn’t have many other fine qualities or that he didn’t significantly contribute to his community, for clearly he did. However, neither does this mean that we should pretend that his adultery was insignificant. It was significant, and it is significant to McNair. If he could return from the grave today, I have no doubt that he would tell us so. Is his adultery insignificant to his wife and children? Hardly. Then why are we to ignore it? And why should a minister of God’s word speak in such a way that encourages everyone to do so?

I suppose some would contend that it would be bad form, uncaring or unloving to speak plainly about Steve McNair’s adultery at his memorial service. Maybe so. Or maybe it is uncaring and unloving not to speak the truth to a society that needs to know that God will not be mocked, and that what a man sows he also reaps (Galatians 6:7).

Cyndere’s Midnight is the second book in the Auralia Thread by Jeffrey Overstreet, and is another thoroughly enjoyable read that I heartily recommend. The plot and pace of the book makes it difficult to put down, and you will probably find yourself wanting to sneak away to a quiet room in the house or a corner in a coffee shop in order to read undisturbed. As the story progresses from Auralia’s Colors, the obvious and subtle imagery Mr. Overstreet employs in Cyndere’s Midnight builds a delightful sense of anticipation and thoughtful reflection. Here is another bit of fiction that will not leave you disappointed.

For a recent book study at St. Mark, we read and discussed Charles Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol. With Advent just a couple of weeks away, I wondered how reading this tale might influence our thinking, and impact our Christmas celebrations. Time will tell, I suppose, but it dawned on me some days after the discussion what might be the most important contribution that A Christmas Carol can make to our present generation; an obvious fact that initially eluded my contemplations of the story. What is it? Pictures. Pictures of real, meaningful and unapologetic celebration. Celebration that has a purity and essence that we moderns have lost, and desperately need to regain.

G.K. Chesterton contended that Dickens “was not only English, but unconsciously historic. Upon him descended the real tradition of ‘Merry England,’ and not upon the pallid mediaevalists who thought they were reviving it. The Pre-Raphaelites, the Gothicists, the admirers of the Middle Ages, had in their subtlety and sadness the spirit of the present day. Dickens had in his buffoonery and bravery the spirit of the Middle Ages. He was much more mediaeval in his attacks on mediaevalism than they were in their defences of it….

“In fighting for Christmas he was fighting for the old European festival, Pagan and Christian, for that trinity of eating, drinking, and praying which to moderns appears irreverent, for the holy day which is really a holiday. He had himself the most babyish ideas about the past. He supposed the Middle Ages to have consisted of tournaments and torture-chambers, he supposed himself to be a brisk man of the manufacturing age, almost Utilitarian. But for all that he defended the mediaeval feast which was going out against the Utilitarianism which was coming in. He could only see all that was bad in mediaevalism, but he fought for all that was good in it. And he was all the more really in sympathy with the old strength and simplicity because he knew that it was good and did not know that it was old. He cared as little for mediaevilsm as the mediaevals did. He cared as much as they did for lustiness and virile laughter and sad tales of good lovers and pleasant tales of good livers… . He had no pleasure in looking on the dying Middle Ages. But he looked on the living Middle Ages, on a piece of the old uproarious superstition still unbroken; and he hailed it like a new religion. The Dickens character ate pudding to an extent at which the modern mediaevilists turned pale” (Charles Dickens, The Last of the Great Men).

It is precisely this ever-present spirit that sings to us throughout the carol. Who among is not drawn to the infectious, heart-felt joy of Scrooge’s nephew? Who among us would not thrill to throw ourselves to the dance with Old Fezziwig and his wife? Would we dare to be too serious, or claim we have not practiced enough? Who of us would not confess, with Dickens himself, the desire to be one of the children who “were not forty children conducting themselves like one, but every child conducting itself like forty?” And we have yet to mention the elaborate descriptions of food that can no more be supported on the page than the prize turkey by its legs. Can any of us approach the delight of the Cratchits in their goose, pudding, and each another? Would any of us venture not to join the revelry with Fred, his wife and their friends? Would we be too mature for their games? Or would we understand that “it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child himself.”

We need these pictures, for they instruct us in the life to be lived. They give us glimpses of the life we have neglected, and need to restore. They are pictures of hearts that laugh, and know truly the meaning of “Merry Christmas!” Let us listen well to Dickens’ Carol, and hasten to join the song.

This is an insightful and challenging quote taken from Laurence Hull Stookey’s Eucharist: Christ’s Feast With the Church.

It is tragically ironic that for many earnest contemporary Christians, heaven is dismissed as something that distracts us from reshaping life on earth. In this view, heaven functions as an escape hatch, a refuge for those who refuse to deal with practical realities. This is a grievously debased understanding of heaven – and one alien to the New Testament teaching. For the first Christians, heaven was a hope to be instituted already on earth of the grace of God at work in the community of the faithful; for this reason the church perpetually prayed, ‘Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.’ The church still so prays without unceasing – but often uncomprehending of the meaning of the petition. These are no idle words spoken in between the affirmation of the holiness of God’s name and the petition for daily bread. They are instead a profound assertion of the coherence of divine righteousness and daily life.

The church that would proclaim true and enduring good news to the world necessarily first grasps the vision of the Great Feast in heaven and prays and labors endlessly for the effecting of feasts of love on earth, radiating from the Table of the Lord. ‘Labors endlessly’ does not imply we shall achieve this by human effort alone. Community is given by God, but it is never given magically or imposed upon the unwilling. Those who were compelled to come to the feast in Jesus parable (Luke 14) were not the ones who declined the invitation.

Laboring endlessly means, rather, this: So much in human nature seems to override commonality and to work for splintering that people of faith are called to resist deliberately and aggressively all inclination to isolate persons from persons, classes from classes, races from races, and nations from nation. Apart from conscious and courageous decisions to seek out and to extend community, nothing important or lasting is likely to happen. Just as the gracious God seeks us, luring us to a sumptuous banquet at a common board, so we are also called to embrace divinely given community by answering the invitation in order that God’s house may be filled – not merely by us, but by all whom God has made and longs to reunite in a feast perpetual.

This quote is taken from a sermon Charles Spurgeon preached on Psalm 90:17: Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.

Do not have any fear of failure, beloved; if you really worked for God, you have worked for a cause that cannot know defeat. It may not win tomorrow, or the next day, but God can wait. Age comes upon us, but nothing shall ever make him decrepit; and through the course of ages, God can wait. I always feel, with regard to the causes in which we are engaged, when people tell us that we are in the minority, ‘Very well, we can be content to be in the minority at present, for the majority will be with us one day.’ We cannot doubt that when God is with us. Ay, and if we are alone with God, God makes majority enough for all true hearts. But even counting human heads, the truth shall yet have the majority. God can wait; he knows how to contrive gainsayers, and bring them round to his side. Our little plans come to an end in a few years; we cannot afford to bring them out unless they do; but God can let his capital lie idle for thousands of years if it is necessary. He is so rich that it does not impoverish him, and he will get his interest by-and-by.

In his commentary on 1&2 Kings, Peter Leithart makes the following observation in relation to 2 Kings 14, and the conflict between Amaziah, king of Judah, and Jehoash, king of Israel. I find it particularly challenging because you have to conclude that the Lord will even use the unrighteous to instruct the righteous. And that being true, healthy self-examination and a humbling of oneself before the Lord seems to be the right response of faith.

According to Deut. 28:7, those who keep covenant can expect victory in battle. Amaziah does right (2 Kgs. 14:3), while Jehoash does evil (13:11), yet when the two face each other in battle, evil defeats righteousness. Amaziah is a wise king who fears Yahweh, yet Jehoash is the one who tells a wisdom parable and gives sound counsel to his southern counterpart, warning that those who exalt themselves are debased (14:10). This chapter shows the same complexity of rewards and punishment that we find in other wisdom literature, most notably in Job and Ecclesiastes. Jesus was not the first to deny a one-to-one relation between righteousness and success (John 9:1-3). This is a constant theme of Scripture, and certainly by this point in 1-2 Kings, a reader will realize that God is not mechanical or predictable. Throughout the narrative, Yahweh has shown that he is free to show mercy where he pleases. He spares Ahab’s kingdom for a generation when Ahab repents, he extends life to Gentiles through the prophets Elijah and Elisha, he preserves and saves Israel despite its persistent idolatries. History does not falsify the promises of Deut. 28, but it does show the free sovereignty of Yahweh, especially his freedom to show mercy (239).

From time to time I hope to share some of the stories we’ve been reading to our boys. Deborah and I are always on the lookout for more good books to read to them (and enjoy ourselves). I hope you’ll share some of your favorites too. Here are a few that have stood out of late.

Mortimer’s First Garden, by Karma Wilson, is a very clever allegory of the “mustard seed theology” of the kingdom of God. The story moves from misunderstanding about the kingdom; to the beginning of the kingdom at the resurrection; to the perseverance of faith, culminating at last in feasting and rest.

The Book of Giant Stories, by David L. Harrison; illustrated by Philippe Fix. There are three short stories, the first of which we liked the best, but the illustrations are especially impressive.

The Water of Life is a Brother’s Grimm tale retold by Barbara Rogasky; illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman. Classic stuff. Hyman has also illustrated Margaret Hodges’ works Saint George and the Dragon and The Kitchen Knight, Lloyd Alexander’s The Fortune-Tellers, and scores of others.