More than I ask or imagine. . .

A Demonstration against Secularism: The "Natural" Healing of Music

Secularism is "the negation of man as a worshiping being, as homo adorans: the one for whom worship is the essential act which both 'posits' his humanity and fulfills it".  Alexander Schmemann said this in his famous book For the Life of the World.  Every now and then, there are items in the news or on the web that testify to humanity's fundamental desire to worship. 

Below is a video that has been shared on Facebook and Twitter from a documentary about a Music Therapy treatment.  An elderly man with Alzheimer's Disease or Dementia, begins listening to music and he is brought to life.  The doctor says "Henry is restored to himself, he has remembered who is, and reacquired his identity for a while through the power of music".  Although the clip ends with a praise of technology, the real healing was not from drugs or therapy but the "music of the spheres", a gift of God Almighty who sang life into being. 

Oftentimes, I forget that I am a beloved son in Christ.  When I forget this, my anxiety will take over as the fruit of my selfishness.  Through the ages, music calls us out of the selfish abyss and brings us back to ourselves.  We remember who we are.   The Call to Worship every week in Church is a call to die to myself and live as part of a new humanity as the Church.  In myself, I am in exile, and every Sunday is a homecoming.  

Enjoy the video, remember who you are and worshiping the God from whom all blessings flow. 

 

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!

Holy Saturday Reading: Psalm 88

The modern existential novel holds no thrill for me except on Holy Saturday.  I am thinking of James Joyce's Ulysses or Faulkner's Light in August as epitomes of this genre.  These and other such novels show an angst and an experience that is not driven by narrative but rather what life is like when the narrative is lost.  There is an ebb and flow and a journey but no plot resolution.  For many readers this is simply unsatisfying.  I want a good story, but the novel will end with nothing there to give that satisfaction of the completed story.

For one day a year, that lack of resolution should stick with us.  Psalm 88 is a perfect Pslam for this day, and is used in many lectionaries for today.  Why is Psalm 88 a good one?  Because it does not resolve. It never comes back to "But I will trust in the Lord" or "wait for Him" or "seek refuge in the Lord's Anointed".  It just ends with no resolution, being in need, oppressed, and lonely.

Reading Psalm 88 identifies with our experience as experience long before existential angst was popular in the 20th century. In fact, the nature of faith is a posture that is honest about suffering and longs for God to redeem even when circumstances seem to not be resolving.  The psalm also reminds us that God "remembers our frame, and knows we are dust" (Psalm 103). Ultimately, our stories, our journeys may not be satisfyingly resolved for us, but our story will resolve in the larger great narrative that God is writing. The satisfaction must wait.

As we wait on Holy Saturday, let us remember Psalm 88:

      1 LORD, you are the God who saves me;
         day and night I cry out to you.
      2 May my prayer come before you;
         turn your ear to my cry.

      3 I am overwhelmed with troubles
         and my life draws near to death.
      4 I am counted among those who go down to the pit;
         I am like one without strength.
      5 I am set apart with the dead,
         like the slain who lie in the grave,
         whom you remember no more,
         who are cut off from your care.

      6 You have put me in the lowest pit,
         in the darkest depths.
      7 Your wrath lies heavily on me;
         you have overwhelmed me with all your waves. i
      8 You have taken from me my closest friends
         and have made me repulsive to them.
         I am confined and cannot escape;
         9      my eyes are dim with grief.

         I call to you, LORD, every day;
         I spread out my hands to you.
      10 Do you show your wonders to the dead?
         Do their spirits rise up and praise you?
      11 Is your love declared in the grave,
         your faithfulness in Destruction?
      12 Are your wonders known in the place of darkness,
         or your righteous deeds in the land of oblivion?

      13 But I cry to you for help, LORD;
         in the morning my prayer comes before you.
      14 Why, LORD, do you reject me
         and hide your face from me?

      15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death;
         I have borne your terrors and am in despair.
      16 Your wrath has swept over me;
         your terrors have destroyed me.
      17 All day long they surround me like a flood;
         they have completely engulfed me.
      18 You have taken from me friend and neighbor—
         darkness is my closest friend.


The New International Version. 2011 (Ps 88:1–18). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.

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.

The Day before Palm Sunday, Blind Bartimaeus

In my daily reading of Scripture, I came upon the story of Blind Bartimaeus which is such a bridge between Jesus instruction to serve instead of rule to the Triumphal Entry in Jerusalem.   James and John ask to be great, but Jesus asks if they can drink the cup or be baptized with his baptism.  Of course, they have no idea what Jesus is talking about even though he had just predicted his death again.  But Jesus tells them that the path of greatness is through service.  Then shows this to his disciples by asking Bartimaeus what he wants. Service bookends Palm Sunday. Jesus enters Jerusalem as a King, but he serves the people through the Kingly Rule of the Cross.

Service is always a dying to yourself and a giving of life to others.  This can be exhausting if you do this from your own strength, but the power must come from some where else. All my power goes into preserving my life, but that greater power, that weight or burden of glory is being worked in me that I may serve.  Service will always interfere with what others think is important, but greater importance is Christ's call to service healing, teaching, dying and rising.  I am still learning this and have miles to go for sure.  The sure sign of Christ's Spirit is a working of joy in service with patience and self-control.  May it be in us as well.

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!

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.

An Invitation to Lament: The Bible "Rolling in the Deep"

I am beginning a sermon series on Lamentations this Sunday.  Many of our hymns or songs in Evangelicalism have no room for lament.  Lamenting is part of life and reflects the glory of God in whose likeness we are created.  I find that the only place in our culture we can lament is break up songs.  Country songs do this too.  What happens when you play a country song backwards?  You get your wife, car, and dog back, as the old joke goes.  But this morning I was thinking about our lack of lament in our culture and heard this song, Rolling in the Deep.  Adele reminds me of Dusty Springfield, and the song reminds me of the Stone's great anthem, Gimme Shelter.  In the video, a city is destroyed, a warrior stirs up the dust that is settled, and plates are broken. What a great picture of relationship loss and struggle. Enjoy the video with the song as an example of modern day lament.

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".