There and Back Again

To Rochester and back. Tractor repairs last Wednesday night. Bible Study Thursday morning at 6:30am. Into the study for study that turned out to be counseling with some hurting souls and fellow who is looking for a church home. Then, still moving at a speed slightly slower than a jet plane, the Reed family headed to Ohio to see grandma and grandpa.

Friday was supposed to be on the lake. And we were on the lake until we were blue from cold and damp from wave. The highlight of the day was watching my nephew's high school take on the number one team in New Mexico for the boys state championships and almost beat them. Peter fouled out with just a few seconds left, but next year looks good for them.

Back to Indiana today--preaching in the morning. Then back to Ohio for a parade and cookout on Monday. I should have signed up for frequent flyer miles at Indy Lube. Speaking of Indy the big trick tomorrow is to preach two services in the early morning hours and then slip out of town without getting caught on the interstate with 300,000 or so folks on their way to the track.

More on the Psalms

How do we understand the Psalms? For Brueggemann, the Psalms are strange, foreign, and inherently subversive. Through the use of both stylized form and through the evocative use of language the Psalms attempt to crack through the walls of live as it is usually lived to see something beyond. The Psalms disrupts and gives a glimpse of another world--giving the people of God a voice to engage the deep reality of life.

Ugh--sounds a little pendantic. Let me work through this again. Take Psalm 73. Good Christian folk know that envy is a bad thing. We are not supposed to be jealous of our neighbor. In fact, there is an explicit command about this troubling dilemma. Yet, in spite of knowning the dangers of envy, most of us struggle with it--though we seldom bring it out into the open and confess it. Sadly, in our failure to address envy we continue to be held captive to it.

Then comes along Psalm 73 where we hear the psalmist say what we practice: "I was envious of the arrogant when I saw the prosperity of the wicked." And then the psalmist pours out the troubled waters of his soul. These folks, he says, keep on getting richer and richer, even in their wickedness. All the while, I'm being a good guy and I don't any good breaks!

The Psalm gives the place to say what is really going on within us. But it does more. The deep power of the Psalm is that it transforms our trouble and takes us into the sancturary. There, along with us, the psalmist notes the ultimate reality of the end of all things and of all people. He then concludes that he has the best thing of all--"my flesh and my heart may fail, but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever."

If left to our own devices, adrift in the backwaters of our culture, we have no adequate resource to resist simply becoming one with the attitudes of our culture. Our culture would say, "look, if you want something, you probably deserve it. So go get it." But the world of the Psalms pictures another set of possibilities--with poetry and imagination the Psalms offers an alternative that leads us into faith and into the presence of God.

Do we have the courage to really pray through the Psalms?

Rochester, MI

180 ministers from perhaps 8 different fellowships are gathering at Rochester College for their annual sermon seminar. David Fleer and company continue to improve this innovative and engaging event for people who preach. The theme is the Psalms—particularly preaching from the Psalms.

For non-preaching types the difficulty may not be obvious. However, to take hymn or a piece of poetry and then preach it, thus shaping it into another form altogether (namely, an oral narrative) requires some imagination and lively engagement. I found out today that my own reluctance to preach from the Psalms is widely shared.

And yet. . . . Walter Brueggemann, a noted Old Testament scholar who has had a long career of functioning as a prophet, challenged me to address the particular limitations that the Psalms create for preaching and bring the Psalms into worship and preaching.

Why? For one reason is that the Psalms offer to the church an expression of faith that is strangely absent in American churches. That expression is the voice of the person who believes in God and yet is disappointed, stranded, let down, or even abandoned—the lament. In our American quest for success we can easily ignore and neglect persons found in the fringes and the shadows.


For example, one presenter, John Mark Hicks, noted that when he taught the Psalms in America he often has to take a great deal of time to explain these lament Psalms. Americans don’t understand them. Yet, on a recent trip to the Ukraine, a country with a long history of invading armies and oppression, Christians there struggle to understand psalms of thanksgiving. Lament psalms they knew quite well.

Throughout the day today I kept asking why this is important. It isn’t just because many of the psalms are lament psalms that we often ignore. Down deep I kept asking the significance of this large part of the Old Testament. Then a connection occurred. It is important because it reflects the reality of life.

Frankly, life isn’t always tidy and neat. Sometimes the good guy doesn’t come in first. Sometimes bad things happen to good people. Sometimes God is silent and we lay beaten and bloody on the floor. To ignore the dimension of faith that frees us come into the presence of God and to ask haunting questions is a faith not worth really embracing. Really, are there not times, when faced with an inexplicable event in our lives or in the travesty of human experience when we can really say with the desperate heart who said:

“How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I bear pain in my soul, and have sorrow in my heart all day long? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me? (Psalm 13)

If faith is to be real and consistent with both the brokenness of the world and the character of God, lament will have its recognized place among the people of God.

Da Vinci De coded

The furor doesn't seem to die. Christianity Today picked it up again in the current issue. The rub is how we perceive fiction. Is fiction simply a neutral genre that has no real impact on reality? Or does fiction carry freight--the power to influence and persuade?

I think we have to conclude that fiction is not neutral. Otherwise we wouldn't have literature departments in every university wrestling with how to appropriate meanings from texts.

So if fiction is not benign then there rests some responsibility on the part of an author to use his media with integrity. That is where my own beef comes with Brown. Brown makes liberal and uncritical use of revisionist history in his story--notably suggesting that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married, had a child, that the orthodox church put down true followers of Jesus who were feminist goddess-worshippers.

Now, as a novelist, Brown can do whatever he pleases with the development of his story line. Fiction is indeed, fiction. However, Brown leaves his readers with a clear impression that much of his work is based on historical fact. This leaves the reader with a quandry. She either assumes that Brown's comments on church, Jesus, and Christianity are true, contrary to the witness of historical work. Or, worse yet, the reader is invited into a position that says that history doesn't really matter. You can tell history anyway you want to.

Neither position is worth a hoot. Everyone has some history that matters to them. Everyone has some story that they want to make sure is told "the way it happened." To pick and choose about what history "matters" and what history can be "revisioned" is hardly a way to establish something true and meaningful in life.

Somehow or another, I think that Da Vinci, ironically enough, would agree.

Humidity

Moving rapidly into summer's steam
Leaving stark memories of cold air's icy embrace
Approaching the long days of daylight and homemade ice cream
Plotting the slowdown of the dizzy pace.

Enough, enough. I really wanted to write about the lousy humidity but now all I can think about are the good things of summer.

Thanks God for summer (and humidity)!

Casting Lots

The disciples in Acts one utilized prayer as the one central work. They devoted themselves to prayer; prayer became the significant factor in choosing a replacement for Judas. After establishing the core criteria for the replacement two men were identified. They prayed asking for God's response to be evident and then they rolled the dice.

I wonder if contemporary disciples would be willing to follow such a model? Establish the criteria, identify the options, give God the lead through prayer, and then flip a coin?

That would take trust, wouldn't it?

Sending Off a Daughter

I buy airline tickets online anymore. Usually Orbitz is my site of choice--mostly because I can remember my password there. Keeping up with passwords is the real bane of an internet existence!

This morning the ticket was not for me. It was for my 17 year old daughter Leslie who will be traveling this summer to Washington DC for a leadership conference. It is an honor for her and she is excited. I am confident that the experience will bring great learning opportunities and interactions that will sharpen her knowledge, confidence, and skill.

But why did I have such a hard time clicking on the "purchase ticket" button this morning? I suppose I have at least a partial answer. After 17 years you get attached to your children. And after taking care of all their needs it just takes some getting used to the idea that they can and should be more independent and free.

I wonder how God sees us. Does He ever let us go with some reluctance--preferring to protect and yet knowing that for our maturity and faith development he must let us go? Could that be why there are times in my life when I cry out for God to make something clear for me that I have no clear sign? Could it be that God works in the shadow rather than directly so that I grow up a little more?

The thing that gives my heart courage in those lonely spaces in my life is believing that there is a place in God's heart that would really like to rescue me from my struggles. But He chooses not to because He desires to see me grow and mature--living out a maturing faith and not wallowing in the cradle of infancy.

I believe that.

I know that I will take my daughter to the airport this summer and send her off with joy and hope. It is what is good and right for her. I also know that I will long for her--resisting absurd temptations to travel to DC my self. Indeed, such is the love of the Father.

Convergence

Spent some time today with Jonathan Nimrod, a representative with Fellowship of Associates of Medical Evangelism. FAME works in third world countries building clinics, sending medical supplies, taking medical personnel into different places in the world to extend the gospel through medical care. Expressing care though healing opens doors and bears witness to the truth of the gospel. This organization is headquartered here in Indianapolis.

This Sunday our Missions Committee will present some options to Westlake for missions. One of those options is medical missions. Coincidence?? Opportunity?? Hand of God??

Note to Robert Webber on baptism:

Not only does waters of baptism present us with an identity aligned with the creative work of God at creation or as a passage rite. Another powerful metaphor for understanding identity and baptism lies in the notion of new birth (John 3).

Like my birth into the family of my mother and father, I do not create my spiritual identity. I receive it. It comes to me simply because I was born into that family. The relationship I have with father and mother, along with my siblings, is a relationship that is formed by forces that fully outside of my control.

Thus, being born into the family of God by God’s gracious work, I am placed into a life-giving, life-nurturing relationship with the One who created me and re-created me through Jesus. My identity as a son or daughter of God frames the days of my life—more fully and completely than the name I was given when my mother gave me life.

Baptism is the God-designed, visible mark of this reality. As my 11 year old daughter, who is currently preparing for baptism, almost intuitively knows. “It is time for me to make clear to myself and others, my commitment to Jesus.” I respond, “Why?”

“Because I want to be known as a Christian,” she says.

To enter the waters of baptism is be in the place where God discloses his grace to us and to the world. When my daughter leaves the baptismal pool, wet and joyful, she enters into a reality that fundamentally changes her life. God has received her into his family and she takes up his name. In announcing Christ as Lord and Savior, she is embraced by her new brother—Jesus.

Back Home Again

. . . in Indiana. Only Hoosiers will recognize that attempt at humor!

Hugs to my daughters and my son. Sleep in my own bed--I don't have a sleep number but I do enjoy my firm mattress! Worship with folks at Westlake. A relatively quiet Sunday afternoon doing what the mother in our house wanted to do--nothing except having a little cake and ice cream on the back porch taking in the warm colors and sounds of spring. Home again.

The big news at Westlake is that someone slipped in and stole the speaker/monitors off the platform last Sunday afternoon. I can only hope I can recognize those big JBL speakers in the back of some car at a stop light somewhere hammering out deep bass notes!

Seriously the good news is that people are coming to faith and ministries are touching people's lives. As Paul said, "whether I come and see you or am absent and hear about you," (Phil 1.17) the gospel is demonstrated by God's people.

Whereever you find the gospel being lived out, that is where home is.

Thanks

Out at Pepperdine University for the Bible Lectures. Sometimes I think that simply coming to Pepperdine is spiritual inspiration. You don't even have to attend any preaching events or worship services. With the ocean laying out in front of you, the wonderful follage, the mountain terrain, and the warm sun and cool sea breeze--well, you get the picture.

I got the chance to chat with Greg Taylor, editor at Wineskins, last night. Greg, along with many others, are creating an exciting online journal the I recommend highly to you. If you enjoy engaging others in dialogue about faith and discipleship, you find good resources there. See the link on this page.

Greg also placed a link to my blogsite there. He told me last night that someone wanted to know who I was and why should they read this blog. That has started me in to thinking why anyone would want to read these musings. I really don't have an answer to that.

What I do know is why I write (or teach or preach). I write because it is good to write. It is one way that God works out of me what I need to learn and what can sometimes (God is gracious) help others catch a glimpse of God's work within them.

So whether you read or not, I'll be writing. And if you read something that points you toward God, then thank him.

I think it is time to go catch some more ocean breezes!

Sitting on the dock of the bay

Spending a few days in Marina del Rey in west Los Angeles provides for some interesting observations. 1) The Venice pier is a wonderful place to gain perspective. 2) No matter where you go people are pretty much the same. 3) Faith is necessary—whether you are entering the 405 or leaving behind that which familiar to you. 4) Remember, while eating in nice seafood restaurants that Atlantic salmon has to be flown in to LA—just like it does to Indianapolis!