More than I ask or imagine. . .

New Clothes for Easter: A Sign and Seal of Something More

I wrote this following article for our Newsletter at Lycoming Centre.  After I told my Mom that I got a new suit for Easter, she and Dad came up for Easter as a surprise, but it just shows how much they taught me through even something like clothing.

I remember my brown suit.  I was 4 or 5 and the pictures show me standing proudly in my Easter suit.  In my early childhood, I can remember wearing new suits every Easter and my sister having a bright and beautiful Spring dress.  My parents always dressed us up for church, but on Easter, that was a game changer. We wore bright-colored new clothes that were only fit for weddings or Christmas if we had not grown out of them by then.

Easter, from my earliest memories was about color and newness. I have no idea about the origin of pastel colors and Easter, but my parents entrusted me with a great worldview by communicating the newness and uniqueness of Easter. The greatest central fact of our faith is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from Death on the Cross.  The resurrection is his enthronement celebration where God declares before the watching world that- Yes, He is the Son of God! This is not some random coincidence or aberration in history, but the very beginning of a new history.  All things are being made new now in King Jesus' lordship, and his primary means of that work of newness is you and me.  The Church's calling is to be a New People.  Granted, we are sinners, but the Holy Spirit that raised Jesus that first Easter is raising us in Him as well. We are no longer dead in our sin!

In the first few centuries of the Church, new converts were baptized on Saturday night or Early Sunday morning before Easter.  After the baptism, they would be given new white robes to wear for the Easter service. Easter was celebrated for 7 weeks culminating in Pentecost Sunday. So every Sunday, these newly Baptized believers would remind the Church that they are new people and have a new calling.

This Easter, consider where are you called to bring the newness of Jesus' Kingly New Reign. Where is God calling you to die to your selfishness and pride and to live a resurrection life? How can you, your family and this church show our community that Jesus is renewing all things? Let not just your Easter apparel show that something is special about April 8 this year, but let your conduct, your repentance, your generosity, your forgiveness and your newness of heart be a witness to Christ's resurrection!

Entering into the Darkness of Love: A Maundy Thursday Reflection

The term Maundy Thursday comes from the Latin for "New Commandment" Mandataum Novum.  It comes from Jesus on that night before he was betrayed and arrested John 13:34 34 “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." 

Jesus will demonstrate the full extent of his love in washing the disciple's feet and eating with them.  But his love does not end there. Through this night, Jesus will go through that lonely valley as he anticipates his calling to the Cross beginning with the arrest, the stripping, the flogging, the trials, and the shame.  It is this dark time that Jesus enters into, and that we must enter into as well.

Jesus enters into this new commandment, and this is only a preview of what he is doing by enduring the Cross. The call of Maundy Thursday is not just to cognitively remember but to re-enter the drama of that night.  If you have ever really loved someone, you hate to see them go through pain.  What is even more painful is when they are walking on a path that will eventual pain.  Love in this sense is what Paul alludes to in 1 Corinthians "Love suffers long" (King James). Love must experience this darkness.

We must understand the call of love is always a path to service and suffering.  We must examine our loves. Do we love those God has placed in our life with such a long suffering? Do we understand what we label as love is just infatuation to be terminated when we do not "feel" the same way again?  Have we refused the call of love? Would we rather 'fix' people than walk with them, weep with them, and even be hurt by them?

Behind all of these questions is the example of the Great Shepherd who has gone before us who endured the Cross fully entering into the darkness of love.   The effect of entering into this darkness means that light has dawned.  It is no longer darkness because the light of love has illuminated everything. Our Shepherd is good and calls to us, saying, "Follow Me".

Follow Him, this Maundy Thursday.

What We Really Mean When We Say, "I Know God Forgives Me, but I Just Can't Forgive Myself"

You have done it again.  Last time you swore you would not do this again. It may be a burst of anger, an addiction, a lie spoken in fear, or a hurting of someone you love or yourself.  Immediately the dark thoughts come, "how can there be any fear of God in my eyes?"  You can start beating yourself up making promises to yourself and others about "never again".  After a while the surmounting broken promises to yourself make you think that you are unusually sinful, broken, and lost.   You may even tell a friend, "Yes, I understand God forgives me, but I just can't forgive myself!"

Actually, this quote really shows that you do not understand that God forgives you in Christ.  When you can't forgive yourself, you are really saying, "I can't believe that I have done that!"  It really comes back to you, your performance, and your pride.  Actually, when you are at your worst having blown it and know that there is no good in you, then and only then, are you ready for Grace. 

Grace turns your gaze away from your failures, your broken life, and your pride to look deeply at the Triumphant and Relentless Love of God in Christ.  Psalm 51 and Psalm 103 are great songs of joy in the midst of getting caught or being at the bottom.  Notice in these psalms how the focus is on the "plenteous" grace of God in Psalm 103 and joy in Psalm 51.   Sin promises the world, but only our God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ can really deliever on his promises that we may enter his rest and joy.  So we can boldly claim His promises, we can come, be forgiven, and find joy.  There will be consequences to train you, but they are signs of God's loving discipline as a son or daughter. Those hard times are part of his love because in the end there will be joy.

This Holy Week, know that you are forgiven and be at peace.

Grieve for Renewal: A Work of the People Short Film feating @ScottyWardSmith

As I finish a sermon series on Lamentations, I have been reflecting on the nature of prayer and hope.  It seems that there is something inherent in prayer that would include lament and grief over the way things are longing for renewal and transformation.

Here is a film with Pastor Scotty Smith, my pastor in college.  I still remember after Easter in 1996 he was grieveing the loss of his mentor, Jack Miller. I remember how that impacted me so greatly, though I did not even know it at the time. I ended up at Westminster Theological Seminary in Philadelphia, PA and being a called pastor at one of the church's of the movement that Jack Miller had begun.  Here, Scotty calls the artist or the one "living the artful life" as he calls it to grieve for renewal.  I hope you enjoy!

The Injustice, The Scandal, and Lamentations: Making Sense of Penn State in Prayer

 

 

   Living in Central PA now, there is one story that everyone is talking about the Penn State  scandal.  In preaching the book of Lamentations, I am seeing this whole scandal in a new light.  Lamentations details the destruction of the city Jerusalem and the punishment that was brought on by their injustice and sin.  While the destruction is terrible, the reason that is has happened is detailed in Lam 3:

34      To crush underfoot
         all prisoners in the land,

35      to deny a man his rights
         before the Most High,

36      to deprive a man of justice—
         would not the Lord see such things?

The answer of course, is "Yes He will see and He will act."  Therefore, when justice happens God has seen and acted.

My sermon last week was on praying prayer of vengence, known as the imprectory psalms.  Praying that God would bring justice is so vital to those who do not have a leading voice.  God hears those prayers and brings justice. I used the example for someone who has been abused. Tolerence or sentimental notions of God being only a tolerate God will not give hope.  God will bring judgment to those who oppress and victimize. He will make things right again. Only God who loves deeply and passionately will see and act in response to the prayers of the victimized and abused.

The Penn State story broke Saturday up here but no one knew the details until Monday or late Sunday.  I have seen friends go through the whole process of greif. They see JoePa fired and the end of everything for the program that dominated sports life here. They see the program they love turn to something diabolical.  Those abused children have cried out and God has heard their prayer.  Finally the abuser will be brought to justice and the whole system needs to be disrupted.

Below is a video of Matt Millen, a former Penn State football player reacting to the scandal.  As he processes what has happened he breaks down around minute 4:00 of the clip.  He says, "When we can no longer protect our children, then we as a society are pathetic".  This scandal is not just about one man's violent abuse or one university's inaction. This has far reaching implications in our whole society, from our obessions with sports to our families breaking down allowing for children to be preyed upon.  We are sick, and we are pathetic as a society. This is an opportunity for us to repent to examine our lives and call out that God would change our hearts and the hearts of others.  We should also pray that God would end such victimization of our children and bring justice to those who have no justice.  Only before the throne of God can we begin to let this change us. We also give honor to the victims by allowing it to change us. Let justice come as Jesus makes all the wrongs right.

O God, would you fogive us as a people and individually in ways that we have contriubuted to this culture where the most vulnerable are the most violated.  Have mercy, Lord, and may Jesus' victory triumph in this whole event and in our world's history.

 

How Can I Change the World? It begins in the Sanctuary of the Lord.

I have always been a big fan of the idea that you live how your worship.  I firmly believe that worship services train us as God's people to live for him.  Below is an article by Mark Horne on How to Change the World?  Hope you enjoy it.

10 things a church can do to change the world

by Mark Horne

The principle to keep in mind is that we have to change ourselves first.

1. Participate in the Lord’s Supper Every Sunday in Worship
The Kingdom is again and again a feast. The Church is the beachhead of the Kingdom. Does Jesus ever tell a parable comparing the Kingdom to a lecture hall? Does he ever compare the Kingdom to a music concert? Then lets not stop up the Kingdom at the source. Lets get it right. Lets eat and drink.

2. Drink Wine in Church
Duh. How else would you worship a glutton and a drunkard? The Gospel is New Wine that bursts wineskins–not grape juice that sits there inert. You want to know if God can forgive a sinner like you. Get it in a cup and drink it down and you will know. That changes everything.

3. Sing the Psalms
By sing, I mean chant. Don’t remake the Psalms to fit a rhyme scheme. Sing the words that are there according to an accurate translation. What would happen if we did this? For one thing a ton of bad theology would be exorcised.

Arise, O Yahweh
O God, lift up your hand;
forget not the afflicted.
Why does the wicked renounce God
and say in his heart, “You will not call to account”?
But you do see,
for you note mischief and vexation,
that you may take it into your hands;
to you the helpless commits himself;
you have been the helper of the fatherless.
Break the arm of the wicked and evildoer;
call his wickedness to account till you find none.
Yahweh is king forever and ever; the nations perish from his land.

4. Pray the Psalms
Arguably this is redundant with the point above. But I want to stress that God wants us to pray things like:

judge me, O Lord, according to my righteousness
and according to the integrity that is in me.
Oh, let the evil of the wicked come to an end,
and may you establish the righteous—
you who test the minds and hearts,
O righteous God!

There are people and whole churches who claim to be Bible-believing who think this is sinful to pray. You can’t change the world for God if you think He is really a Pharisee unless he has the help of your styleguide by which to edit his prayers.

5. Tell people in church that God has forgiven them.

Don’t preach that God forgives some people somewhere some time. Tell the professing Christians in front of you, and their children, when they confess their sins together, that God has wiped each one of their slates clean. The good news that is going to change the world is not that God forgives someone somewhere at some time.

(Yes, God forgives them at other times, including when they pray apart. But these things are not opposed. Rather, one helps the the other. Those who are trained to believe that God hears and forgives them will be encouraged to trust God for the same at other times and places.)

6. Believe the whole Bible and teach it like God really meant it.

Because saying, “You’re getting too much of your theology from the parables” mostly means, “Jesus was a stupid peasant who told misleading stories that we have to carefully strip down to a single point that we found in Paul’s Epistles”–or rather, “that we found in Westminster Confession” (or, “… the Councils of Trent” or whatever). I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that God isn’t blessing churches who don’t like the Bible.

7. Preach Jesus as King but Avoid Petty Politics

Jesus is Lord and he wants a visible unified entrance to the Kingdom (Church) as a witness to that fact. We have to obey what Jesus says, but we also have to recognize how divisions and arguments actually can undermine the theocratic Faith. So find some highly obvious points in the public square to harp on (i.e. abortion), but try not to get bogged down in minutia (don’t preach Christian libertarianism, socialism, or whatever from the pulpit).

8. Let the Great Commission be your commission

If you think you know what this means, go read it, and ask yourself what this says about being “born again,” “faith,” or “evangelism” compared to what it says about obedience, theocracy, baptism, and ongoing teaching/training of everyone.

9. Worship like the Bible matters

Does it not strike anyone as odd that, if you want to attend a worship service that took you systematically through Scripture, you would be better off in an Episcopal, formal Lutheran, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox service rather than a Baptists, conservaitve Presbyterian, or “Bible Church” assembly? Is God supposed to speak to us in the Church or not? If not, how are we supposed to see anything change, let alone the world?

10. Live Corporately like Matthew 18 is in the Bible

I mention the whole chapter on purpose, by the way, because it is obviously focused on humility and forgiveness, and in that context gives directions for accountability and purifying the Church. I think that is important because, while not one church in a hundred includes Matthew 18.15-19 in their real canon, some that do can be so zealous (I’m using a euphemism) about it as to reinforce the temptation to neglect it. But it is in the Bible and it is an operating instruction from the Lord Jesus. So obey Him.

My Credo Part Three: Judgement and Mercy in Christ

As continuing this series on my Credo, I wrote about the Christology and Trinitarian views of the Primitive Church before the split between East and West.  I love that ecumenical team work but as you will read below, I have the Holy Spirit proceeding from both the Father and Son as the Western church has taught.  I take that position knowing that the Filioque Controversy behind that statement. The question is where in the Nicene Creed the Western Church added the phrase filioque to the original "the Holy Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son." I firmly believe that both sides of the church were talking past each other as Christians have been known to do. Another lesson in church history why we need one another as Christians.

I believe Jesus is the eternal Son of God eternally begotten by the Father.  The Holy Spirit proceeds from both the Son and the Father.  This is the Trinity that is united as one Godhead in three distinct persons all equal in power and glory.  The Son is the image of the invisible God while at the same time he is fully human.  He was born of the Virgin Mary living a life that succeeded where humanity had failed in the past, then died on the Cross as a propitiation for humanity’s rebellion and mine.   Then, the Father declared him to be the Son of God with power by raising Him from the dead by the Holy Spirit.   The Gospel message is that Christ died and rose again to defeat death. He is coming again to make everything right bringing even more peace and prosperity as Heaven and Earth become one.  Thus, humanity and creation are brought into the fellowship of the Trinity after the world is purified through Final Judgement.

I firmly believe that Judgement was poured out on the Cross of Christ, but there is still a final judgement coming.  I am not a universalist and I do not think that all paths lead to God.  As I will divulge later, I am a Post-Millenialist so I believe at the end there will be universal salvation because there will be no one left on Earth except the church.  BB Warfield in The Plan of Salvation calls this the escathological 'all'.  Salvation is collective, personal, universal and particular in Christ, "rolling as a mighty ocean in its fulness over me".

My Credo Part Two: I Believe in God the Father Almighty

 

This is my opening paragraph on my statement of faith. I followed the Apostle's Creed, and as always being anchored in History always wins.

"I believe in God the Father who created all things invisible and visible.  I believe that God’s Creation was good revealing the way things are supposed to be in Peace (Shalom), comprehensive human flourishing.  Every human being lives in God’s world with a longing to know the Creator behind all beauty, pleasure, love, and goodness.  I believe that humanity committed cosmic rebellion, sin, against God’s created Peace.  This rebellion infected every part of humanity and left no part of the human heart or mind untouched, thus we are totally depraved.  God began putting this beloved Creation back together through Abraham, Isaac, Israel, and ultimately and finally, Jesus and his people, the Body, which is his Church."

It is a very simple story, but one that we often forget.  Being a story teller, I wanted to embellish and say more about the Creation Narrative and poetry.  I wanted paint the picture, but then I could have turned in the Bible and just highlighted the whole thing. 

In these types of statements, what you do not say also speaks volumes.  In the area of science and faith, I do think you do damage to force the text to say 6-24 hour days.  I believe the notion of everyone saying that is has to be is already living in the Scientific world and submitted to it.  Science does not give me my values, my worth, my purpose, my family, or my story.  So why would I want to put science there in The Story.  Science is supposed to be about hypothesis and repeatable events, but this is difficult with history. The question of origins is about values.  Is this God's world? Yes  Do we owe him honor and worship living lives in obedience because this is his World and he calls the shots? Yes.  We are not animals helpless to our appetites, and we are not clocks knowing precision.  The Story is accurate and qualitative and its authority wants to do more in us and through us than just tell time. The Story, God's Truth in Scripture, wants us to worship and love with a full thankful heart.

The Fellowship of Presbyterians: Why a New Reformed Body? #MN2011 @fellowshippres

Here is a just posted video from the Conference from Minnesota that I attended last month.

 

 

John Crosby - "Why a New Reformed Body?" from Fellowship of Presbyterians on Vimeo.

My Credo Part One: Too Many Influences Make Me a Theological Mutt

Yes, I am a mutt and a theological one to boot. What I mean is that I have a Presbyterian tradition and call, but my background and theological outlook is much more broad.  Recently in my transition to the PCUSA, I had to write up my theological commitments in about a page.  This practice showed me how influenced I am from many different angles by such a diverse amount of traditions.  Below is a list of influences historical and literary that have formed my view of theology, Scripture, and the Church. My next few posts will be paragraphs from that theological summary.

Methodism- In my formative years, I attended a UMC church that said the Lord's Prayer and Apostle's Creed every week.  This had its effect in my having these truths drummed into me at a very young age. The power of repeated words said in unison gave me direction in my prayer.

Fellowship of Christian Athletes- You may have heard that the Christian faith is about a "relationship not a religion".  Now I consider it cliche but it was very powerful for me as a teenager. It was through this ministry that I began to learn to repent of my sin, even intentional and premeditated sin.

Thomas A Kempis- At Vanderbilt, I read "On the Imitation of Christ" for my Class on Reformation History. It was the first textbook that I read that grew my faith.  His mysticism intrigued me when I thought everything was about a re dedication of your life.

John Calvin- I remember reading the "Institutes" for the same class above and thinking, "This man knows a God much bigger than Max Lucado".  Granted I did still love Lucado, but the capacity and vision of God's power turned my world upside down. I am a Presbyterian today because of that encounter.

Westminster Theological Seminary- I graduated in 2004, and am still amazed at how the whole program from Biblical Studies, Counseling, Church History, Apologetics, and Theology formed one whole worldview and Biblical view. 

James Jordan and Peter Leihart- These two Westminster graduates took me to a place of appreciation of the whole Christian tradition including some elements of Anglicanism, Catholicism, and Orthodox.  They were very keyed into the symbolic worldview that dominates the Hebrew Mind.  I am continued to be encouraged by their agrarian worldview, biblical theology, and sacramental practice.

NT Wright and Karl Barth-Although these guys are very different, I saw them both as suspect at one time, but now see tremendous amount of gain in interacting with their thought.  I do not sign on to everything they say, but I do find they help me think through the truth of Scripture.

The Jack Miller Movement- This is a renewal movement out of Westminster Theological Seminary that emphasized Sonship and understanding the blessings of salvation to such an extent that your functional theology would be the same as your formal theology.  So if you really believe that you were justified by Christ's work and not based on your own performance, you would be less defensive, less self-righteous, but more loving and trusting. This movement was influential to Tim Keller and the ministry of the PCA.

Eugene Peterson- The author of The Message has given me a view of Pastoral practice that I will never exhaust and never recover from.  As a college in the PCUSA, I have found his view of pastoral ministry to be so appealing and so church affirming. From his series on Spiritual Theology to The Contemplative Pastor, I have learned how to see my calling and see my story to be about God's Story in Christ.

GK Chesterton and Charles Spurgeon-My two fat Englishmen!  I cannot tell you how influencial both of these men have been.  One is Catholic and one is Baptist, but both enjoyed life and the romance of orthodox belief.  I guess in many ways I am right in the middle of both of these men, but tremendously indebted to them. How can I love both liturgy and freedom in worship?  Because I have been so influenced by both of these men.  I highly recommend Orthodoxy by Chesterton and Morning and Evening by Spurgeon to begin.  I could go on for hours about these guys, but that is another post.

Friends and Family- The diversity of my geography and network have opened my eyes to see life through many different windows, and even recommended the above influences. I am a product of all of those and am full of thanks for all of you.