Living with Matthew 5-7

I'm going to be posting now at a new location (virtually speaking).

The Want of Peace.

These are some stats regarding the 535 members of the United States Congress:

* 29 have been accused of spousal abuse
* 7 have been arrested for fraud
* 19 have been accused of writing bad checks
* 117 have directly or indirectly bankrupted at least 2 businesses
* 3 have done time for assault
* 71 cannot get a credit card due to bad credit
* 14 have been arrested on drug-related charges
* 8 have been arrested for shoplifting
* 21 are currently defendants in lawsuits
* 84 have been arrested for drunk driving in the last year

I'm reading Evan Carton's book "Patriotic Treason" about the life of abolitionist John Brown. Brown's contemporary Wendell Phillips asserted that Brown "loosened the roots of the slave system" in the United States. Once I'm through I'll post more well developed thoughts. I'm fascinated by the convergence of so many important issues in the life of one man: Love of God producing love of neighbor, social justice, emancipation, the place of violence in the Christian life, racism, patriotism, the Declaration of Independence, the US constitution, civil obedience and disobedience, the Church's place as an agent of social change. In his essay "The last days of John Brown", Henry David Thoreau said: John Brown's career for the last six weeks of his life was meteor-like, flashing through the darkness in which we live. I know of nothing so miraculous in our history." I'm looking forward to gaining more insight into this fascinating man.

Many of you know by now that Jill, the kids and I moved to Newark OH back in August. I took a staff position here at Newark Naz as pastor to families. I took the position for two reasons: 1. I get a chance to spend my time nurturing and equipping whole families to be followers of Christ. 2. The leadership of this faith community decided not to be conformed to the pattern of this world and sold a 48 acre plot of land outside the city. The land had been set aside for a shiny new building that probably would have propelled this church into the 2,000 plus range in terms of worship service attendance. When they sold the land and decided to stay here in this "less than desirable" neighborhood, it made me take notice. While I'm sure that I wont always see eye to eye with Wes (Wes Humble the lead pastor here) or other staff members, I thank God that I have the opportunity to work with people who believe that we can actually live out Matthew 5-7. That they aren't just "pretty words" as Dallas Willard would say. That it is possible to love God and neighbor. That we can live justly, love mercy, and walk in humility with our God. God grant us the courage to live as your followers and not just admirers. Peace...

I usually don't like bumper stickers but I saw one yesterday that made me laugh. It said:

"Frodo failed. Bush has the Ring."

I'm not really into bashing the President but if you're going to bash him, you may as well be creative. :-)

One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

My Grandfather passed away last week after suffering from bone cancer. He was a good and a simple man. He liked a well mowed yard, a warm house, and good tobacco. He put the needs and wants of his family and others above his own. I'll miss him.

These are excerpts from some e-mail correspondence on the place of political rallies, flags, and party promotion in worship:

Here's the issue. Are we talking about the United States relative to other countries? If so then there's no question in my mind that we have the best form of government on the planet. We have the best economy, we have the highest quality of life (by which I mean that we can get what we want and need. However, it's debatable how good that really is for us). We have the most freedoms and for the most part, the ability to choose our direction in life. If we are comparing our form of government to that of France, England, China, Saudi Arabia or any other country then we have nothing to complain about. But that's not what we're comparing it to. We're comparing the USA to God's kingdom, and in that kind of comparison it falls woefully short. We are compelled to pledge allegiance to the Kingdom that will last forever not the one that is fading away.

I am so thankful for those that have gone before us in this country. I honor them and study them and listen to them every chance I get. It's a huge part of how I know who I am. If we're talking about giving our allegiance to any country in the world I would give mine to this one, the one built on the blood, sweat, and tears of our ancestors. But that's not what we're talking about. We desire to give our allegiance to the Kingdom built on the One who sweat great drops of blood and shed that same blood for us on the Cross. Our country versus others is apples vs. apples and in that case I'll take my Jackson county apples any day. Our country versus God's kingdom and I'm taking His kingdom, whether that is offensive or not.

On the subject of worship services: I personally never preach politics from the pulpit (at least I don't support any party or candidate). It's not because the danger of nationalism, though that would be a good enough reason for me. I don't do it because the pulpit is not mine, it's not our country's, it's only for God. It is for our proclaiming and hearing His words as members of His Kingdom, not for speaking the words of a worldly empire to citizens of that empire. There may be other times and places for that, but not in worship. Worship is for God, not the USA.

I want to honor my wife's papaw, Dinzle Brown. He drove a jeep up onto the beaches of Normandy on June 6th 1944. As a student of history that blows me away. His jeep eventually ran over a land mine and he was knocked unconscious. A German nurse found him and took him to an Allied medical unit. He fought in many battles throughout the remainder of the war in Europe and Africa. I can't tell you how many times I've been talking to him about things I've studied and he was actually there at specific battles as if he stepped right out of the pages of history. He is one of the greatest people I know, mostly because I see Christ in his actions and hear Christ in his words every time I'm around him. I honor him for his great sacrifice. I love him because he points me to the one who's sacrifice was ultimate...

It is hard sometimes to go against the flow and say things that you know are true, but are not popular. My grandfathers and my wife's grandfathers fought in WWII, my uncles fought in Korea and Vietnam, and my friends have served in Iraq. I love them all deeply and am in awe of their courage in such circumstances. On the 4th of July I will celebrate their lives and thank God for them. I have a deep appreciation for the fact that because of them I can sit here in peace and write this. Many of them are heros to me far beyond their military service.

It saddens (and angers) me though that we have elevated our country and its values to a place of equality with our Faith and ultimately with God. The reality in such a situation is that we have elevated our country's values above God (I think that any time you elevate something to equality with God you have actually elevated it above God). We would certainly never say that, but we function that way. We constantly question God's way, the way of radical peace and reconciliation, but we are infuriated when people question our governmental leaders (that is, when they're the ones we like!). I could say from the pulpit that "turning the other cheek" or selling everything and giving it to the poor is too hard and highly impractical without hearing a peep from the Christian community. If on the other hand I say that the war in Iraq is unjust and that our President has at the very least committed a grave error in judgment (if not a full blown moral lapse), I would come close to being ostracized. This despite the fact that Christians in Iraq are dying from our missile strikes (There are thousands and thousands of Iraqi Christians). Christians are dying from our bombs! We don't condemn such anti-Christian action and certainly don't call our country love and pray for our enemies. We turn a blind eye to the death our own kind for the sake of our American "values" and our dependency on Empire to keep us safe. Such is the state of the Church when we're in bed with the worldly Empire, as it was when Israel's kings ruled and Israel's prophets were stoned to death. Such is the state of the church when our politics are so closely tied with worldly political parties.

We are a house divided.  It is one of the main reasons we have so many problems.  When we become agents of this worldly Empire we divide our allegiance.  To God, divided allegiance is no allegiance at all.  I have a feeling that when we stand before God, He is going to call us to account for the fact that we prominently displayed the symbol of a worldly kingdom in our worship services which are supposed to be devoted solely to Him.  We have a loving and merciful God but not a God who is prone to sharing us with any other gods.  I'm picking on the American flag but it is only a symbol of how our connection and dependance on worldly Empire has drawn us away from God.  (By the way how many churches will be flying the American flag above the Christian flag on the 4th?!  Not that I think the Christian flag has much meaning but if we're going to fly them, then which one goes on the top?  Who are we really pledging allegiance to?). We will never be what we could be or should be until we depend solely on God without faith in any worldly Empire.

Christ is risen!

I'm combining a reading of Thomas Merton's "Passion for Peace" with Brueggemann's "Finally Comes the Poet". Both Merton and Brueggemann keep coming back to the same concept: the kingdom of God is something "other" than our general experience of "reality". Both men call us, either by word or action (or both) to proclaim and live this "other reality" despite the constant barrage which proclaims in it's own right that God's kingdom does not exist. In his "A Devout Meditation In Memory of Adolph Eichmann", Merton muses on the fact that a psychiatrist found Eichmann to be "perfectly sane" and what that says about the so called "real world". He says:

"And so I ask myself: what is the meaning of a concept of sanity that excludes love, considers it irrelevant, and destroys our capacity to love other human beings, to respond to their needs and their sufferings, to recognize them also as persons, to apprehend their pain as one's own? ...The worst error is to imagine that a Christian must try to be "sane" like everybody else, and that we belong in our kind of society. That we must be "realistic" about it. That we must develop a "sane" Christianity: and there have been plenty of "sane" Christians in the past. Torture is nothing new, is it? We ought to be able to rationalize a little bit of brainwashing, and genocide, and find a place for nuclear war in our moral theology. Certainly some of us are doing our best along those lines already. There are hopes! Even Christians can shake off their sentimental prejudices about charity, and become sane like Eichmann."

And so we proclaim a kingdom that doesn't translate to the "real" world. "It is, rather (as Brueggemann says), the ready, steady, surprising proposal that the real world in which God invites us to live is not the one made available by the rulers of this age." Such is the good news.


Peace...

Last Sunday I preached from the 10 Commandments I believe for the first time. For about a year or so it has been slowly dawning on me what a beautiful and freeing gift they are when viewed through Jesus. They are reflections of the character of God and yet we often view them as a heavy burden, a list of rules for a "religious" life. The truth is, if followed, they lead us to a life that is free of all the destructive patterns that truly enslave us. Obviously the "if followed" part is fairly significant. We have a difficult time dealing with the letter of the law let alone the spirit of the law (see Matthew 5-7). But placed together with the work of Jesus Christ, and the sustaining presence of God's Spirit they lead us to a life that is life-giving rather than life-taking. Here's a couple of quotes from Dallas Willard regarding the Ten Commandments:

The Ten Commandments really aren’t very popular anywhere. This is so in spite of the fact that even a fairly general practice of them would lead to a solution of almost every problem now facing Western societies. They are God’s best information on how to lead a basically decent human existence. - The Divine Conspiracy

Malnutrition, war, oppression, class and tribal conflict, overpopulation, crime, violence, and family strife would eventually cease to be possible as mass conditions, because individuals would not cooperate in their development and would take measures to stop it. - Spirit of the Disciplines

I know that the loss of Mark Plamer will leave an empty space for many of my friends who are a part of LP and it's extended family. I pray for you all to have peace and to have strength for this day. I wish I had known Mark. I have seen his life reflected in the lives of many of my friends. It is a beautiful reflection. It is a reflection filled with hope that reaches beyond the present grief.


"Like a summer rose, I'm a victim of the fall
But I am soon returning
Your love's the warmest place the sun ever shines
My morning yearning"

Be restored in the presence of your Love and your Savior, Mark. Be at peace.

My new picture says "The more you consume, the less you live." Kurt Bosworth and I were talking about it yesterday. I'm not sure what the opposite would be. I do know that I've proven "The more you consume, the less you live" over and over in many different ways. Superficial consumption is a plague.

A friend of mine told me about this group of people who are working with the poverty stricken areas of rural Ohio. Good Works resonates with my heart since rural Ohio is my heritage. These guys are living it out in an area where most of the people are simply forgotten. I'm going to go down and hang out with them soon.

For the Christian, heaven is not a goal; it is a destination. The goal is that “Christ be formed in you,” to use the words of the apostle Paul (Gal. 4:19; all passages quoted are from the NRSV unless otherwise noted.” To the Romans, he declares, “Those whom [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son” (8:29). And to the Corinthians, he says, “All of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image” (2 Cor. 3:18; emphasis added in all three). Thus the daring goal of the Christian life could be summarized as our being formed, conformed, and transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. And the wonder in all this is that Jesus Christ has come among his people as our everliving Savior, Teacher, Lord, and Friend. He who is the Way shows us the way to live so that we increasingly come to share his love, hope, feelings, and habits. He agrees to be yoked to us, as we are yoked to him, and to train us in how to live our lives as he would live them if he were in our place.

- from Becoming Like Christ by Richard Foster

But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an everflowing stream (Amos 5:24).

Dadkii waa dhibtee nagala soobax
Dhibkii waa batee nagla soobax
Dhiigi waad qubtee nagala soobax
Dhulkii waad gubtee nagala soobax

"You have exasperated the people, so come out with it.
"The troubles have increased, so come out with it."
"You've spilled the blood so that it drains on the Roads, so come out with it."
"You've burnt the root of the earth, so come out with it."

- K'naan

Pray for peace in Somalia...

Well, these past couple of months have been probably the hardest in my "ministry" experience. It has taken up all my emotional energy and much of my time. I know that my family has felt how distant and tired I've been. I hate that. God calls us to love and love and love some more. Sometimes it is very ugly and difficult to deal with. I know that community isn't warm and fuzzy but I wish it didn't have to be so cold and filled with thorns! Let me make a suggestion to all of you who are kind enough to read my thoughts: approach your relationships (with God and others) with humility. It is the way to reconciliation, which is the point to begin with.

Father, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven!

Sometimes it seems like a privilege to help people deal with their brokenness. Sometimes it just sucks.