The Ancient Future Church

Confusion and Misplaced Blame Regarding Connecticut

In the wake of Friday’s slaughter of the innocent, there has been much debate and recrimination. How does one write sensitively about these issues? I am not sure it can be done. The bodies aren’t even buried. Our hearts still ache. Personally, I can still taste and feel the acid in my throat.

Just the same some things are worth saying. Who is to blame? What is at fault? It is not the presence of guns. It is not the banishment of God. It is reality of evil and the ease with which we dismiss it.

Not the presence of guns

If only we had better guns laws, greater restriction or the banishment of them all altogether. If only! I’ve been to Rwanda too many times and stood on the graves of a million people killed in one hundred days, nearly all with machetes. Anything in the hands of those who seek to do harm is a potential weapon. Gas chambers were used at Auschwitz and chemicals upon the Kurds. More than 60,000 were killed in sixty seconds at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Just a few years ago two men killed hundreds including children with a Ryder truck loaded with fertilizer anyone can buy at Home Depot. People determined to kill will kill. Banning guns won’t stop the slaughter of the innocent any more than prohibition stopped drinking.

Not the banishment of God

I will grant you times have change and the name (not person) of God once celebrated in public life has been pushed to the margins by the system. But the presence of “established” prayer will not make a school more Christian any more than a Christmas tree prominently placed in the town square will make a community Christian. Sitting in McDonald’s doesn’t make you a hamburger and sitting in a library doesn’t make you a book or intelligent. If God is who he says he is, he is ubiquitous. Being present where there is prayer does not mean God is precluded from being where prayer is not and all at the same time.

God is in Connecticut. His is the only heart breaking more than ours. If there is something to lament it would be the absence in school and elsewhere of disciples, a people of unfailing hope, and those are made by God through tribes and villages, families and individuals. Disciples fear God and not man. Where prayer is forbidden, disciples pray more and without apology and with a willingness to suffer the nation and/or culture imposed penalties. By the way, banish us more dear nation and we will flourish in the face of it. “Dear is Plato. Dearer still is Truth.”

Is the reality of evil

We are a people who have forgotten we are at war. Woe to the people who call good evil and evil good. But more woe is upon us who do not acknowledge evil. Evil is not the absence of good. It is a force with which we must contend.

Some people are evil. Some are mentally ill. Both are empowered to some degree by our unwillingness to take evil seriously.  Evil is sinister and by whatever means available it will destroy good.

Someone sees aberrant and anti-social behavior in every hour of every day. Admit it. Some people are devoid of empathy and compassion. This is evil and yet we don’t call it out until the innocent are slaughtered. It is so not PC. Our silence is a plague. Everyday someone walks away from a marriage heaping untold pain upon a spouse and children all for the ecstasy of five minutes of sexual pleasure or the teenage rush of falling in love and we have deemed it legally a “no fault divorce” or promoted it as amicable. If we cannot call selfishness selfishness, how will we call evil what it is? Denial is both terribly naïve and dangerous.

Some are mentally ill, and the evil one uses shame to prevent us from seeking help. I once pastored a young boy who was crying out for help by cutting himself. His parents would not seek help. This would be scandalous among the socially elite. They sought help only under threat of reporting the situation to government authorities. Fear God? No. Fear members of the country club and the government? Yes. This is plainly evil distorting priorities that should be obvious to anyone. Let us find the courage to say, “I am Adam Lanza’s Mother.”

Neither evil nor an obsession with it should control our lives. There is a greater power. Thanks be to God! But the denial of evil should not be a governing principle in our lives either or animate the way in which we order them. This is to live a lie. And as Scott Peck reminds us so well, people of the lie wreak havoc upon the world.

If anything, it is the reality of evil and the ease with which we dismiss it that accounts for the slaughter of the innocent.

Forget not the war!

Advent 3, December 17, 2012

2 Peter 1:1-11

“ . . . by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.”

We were created in the image of God. Is it any surprise that our Maker is trying to restore us to it? Sure we don’t become God. But to the extent that we are transformed, we partake of the divine nature. This is more evidence that God is pleased to meet us where we are but not satisfied to leave us there.

There is so much more to our life in Jesus than fire insurance. Having saved us, He would gladly heal and restore us. He would make us effective and fruitful. That is if we would let him.

We tend to be blind and shortsighted about what it is he wants to achieve in us. Why? What is the greatest obstacle to growth? In biblical terms, man “has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins.” Little happens in us when we have forgotten the magnitude of what God has done for us. The apostle John says that we love because he first loved us. In the absence of being loved we don’t love, at least not well.

A friend once lamented the absence of fruit in his life. “Why is there not more?” The first place to examine is the extent to which we have experienced the forgiveness of sins. I doubt the relationship is one to one, but there is a corollary. If we have not experienced the former, there will not be any of the latter.

Being forgiven bears fruit. Be forgiven. Accept that you are a sinner and the forgiveness of sins. Open this gift on Christmas!

Advent 2, December 13, 2012

2 Thessalonians 2:1-12

“Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to meet him, . .”

He is coming again. Do we get it? He will come again to claim that which is his. Are we ready?

A week ago Monday a dear friend had pre-term labor at 34 weeks. She and her husband had to make a 3:00 am trip to the ER. Medically things were probably pretty good. Without diminishing the risk, it’s fair to say medicine is seeing the vast majority of infants safely through a thirty-four week delivery. However, my friends did not have a single bag packed or the all-important car seat installed. If the baby become had come, they would have been scrambling. Fortunately the labor was halted with the hope that this child will not make his way into the world till mid-January.

Of course my friends have a pretty good excuse. 34 weeks is not 40. What would be our excuse if Jesus returned today? We have been told to keep watch, be vigilant! Did we not take him at his word? Too busy building the retirement account? Planning the Christmas party? I am thinking these things may fall on grace-filled but unsympathetic ears.

What could we do to prepare? Verse 12 says readiness is found in believing the truth and taking no pleasure in unrighteousness. Are we believing the truth? How would we know? Answer me this. “Where is the truth altering the way we live?” An inability to cite where the Lord is transforming us should give us pause especially in a season of expectation and preparation.

Advent 2, Tuesday, December 11, 2012

1 Thessalonians 5:12-28

“He who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.”

Just do it! Great slogan Nike has given us. Significant enough, it is to Nike, to be trademarked.  Step up and man up are the Just Do It’s of another age and culture. Taken as meant and we are the center of the universe not unlike in the slogans “Have it Your Way” and “You Deserve a Break Today.”  It is all about us, me, you. These appeal to our basest of instincts. They feed our narcissism.

When it comes to be sanctified, being transformed into the likeness of Jesus and leading a life worthy of our calling, it is all about God. He sanctifies. We are kept sound and blameless. “He will do it.”

Culture teaches one thing. Jesus teaches something else. Which one has captured our imaginations?

“Just Do it! Please God.”

Advent 2, December 10, 2012

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11

“And there will be signs in the sun and moon and stars, and upon the earth distress of nations in perplexity at the roaring of the sea and the waves, men fainting with fear and foreboding of what is coming in the world;”

Between the Mayan calendar, tsunamis and hurricanes, the fiscal cliff and unrest in the Mideast, we are experiencing Paul’s prophesy, not figuratively but literally. Who could have imagined 50 years ago a day in which there was fear and foreboding especially among American Christians? We were the arbiters of our fate and the captains of our destiny.

Not so much any longer. We may steer our personal ship but in the grand scheme of things, as Rodney Clapp stated so well, we are chaplains, not captains. We are not appreciated (or persecuted) as much as we are ignored. We helped create a culture that longer finds us necessary to its existence. There is fear and foreboding now because the once powerful church has been benched, relegated to the sidelines.

What to do? Concede? Fight to reestablish power (by finding a new Ralph Reed and electing a few more religious conservatives)? There is another option. We could revisit what Jesus started and actually become a people who unashamedly and unapologetically follow Jesus and that with no (public) benefit to us save responding to the one who came to us in the hour of our death.

Recovery begins with facing the facts. The horse is dead. It is time to get off. The ship is sinking. It is time to abandon ship. Don’t worry. Be happy. The life boat is quite secure.

Advent 1, December 7, 2012

Luke 20:41 – 21:4

“They will receive the greater condemnation.”

Who will receive the greater condemnation? The Chaplains of Culture! These are the religious who are motivated by self-glory and the honor of men. They like to be recognized and treated well. They put out a façade. They want to look and sound good. It is about them and the rewards. They will give the invocation at the bowl game and yes accept that sideline pass or box seats for the game.

Of course love of people to the extent that the love emanates from and well emulates the love of God is noteworthy. Men bearing first and promoting second such love among others rightly receive a hat tip from those in the streets. But how many speakers of truth are chaplains of culture? In the Bible speakers of truth are called prophets. They are summarily dismissed, an embarrassment to the cultured. They are stoned and sometimes killed. They are not chaplains of culture. They don’t get tickets to the game.

Truth isn’t spoken to pick a fight. Prophets are not contrarians. They speak truth because truth matters. It is what they know will set themselves and others free. Here is the rub. Their proclamation supposes bondage. That word is not gladly received by culture. Free people aren’t fist pumping its purveyors.

It seems well impossible to be a speaker of truth and a chaplain of culture. Woe to the pastor or church leader who forgets this. He receives the greater . . .

Advent 1, December 6, 2012

I Thessalonians 3:1-13

“You yourselves know that this is to be our lot.”

Who knew that nearly 2000 years later we would find ourselves in the same place! Suffering and rejection is our lot.

Many at are a loss to explain our condition but it is actually quite simple. The age of Christendom is closed. The post-Christian era has begun. This does not mean faith is failing. It certainly does not mean the Father is not upon His throne. It means that people, mostly western people, are no longer born into culture that assumes Christianity binds us together.

It is simple to explain but not simple to accept. No one likes to play second fiddle. No one compete for that chair in the band. Christians are not exempt. What do you mean we are a minority? What do you mean we no longer reign in the halls of power?

Simple to explain it is. Easy to accept it is not. But we need to get over it and get back to the work of advancing the Kingdom one person at a time apart from the crutch of a culture that accepts Christianity as a foregone conclusion. Get over it indeed. “You yourselves know that this is to be our lot.”

Advent 1, December 5, 2012

Luke 20:19-26

“but he perceived their craftiness, . . “

“but marveling at his answer they were silent.”

So who is crafty or craftier? Jesus to be sure! They seek to trick him into saying something that would put him at odds with secular authorities. Don’t buck Caesar. Otherwise be prepared for his wrath. That was the threat implicit in their question.

But Jesus is older than Caesar. The word “likeness” or image is in the opening verses of Genesis. “So God created man in his own image.” So some things bear the image of Caesar. Certain other things bear the image of God. Give to Caesar that which is Caesar’s and to God that which is God’s.

Brilliant! Give Caesar coins. Give God your life.

This was illustrated well in a church service in Africa years ago. The plate was passed for the offering. A new and zealous believer was unfazed by the absence of money in her bag. When she received the plate, she put the plate on the floor and then stood in it. Offering made.

She understands the passage well. This is the true meaning of “All in.”

Advent 1, December 4, 2012

I Thessalonians 2:1-12

“So we speak, not to please men, but to please God . . . We never used either words of flattery, . . or a cloak of greed, . . But we were gentle among you, like a nurse taking care of her children. So, being affectionately desirous of you, we were ready to share with you not only the Gospel but also our own selves, . . “

In this short passage we see Paul’s motives and conduct while planting a church among those in Thessalonica. Paul’s pattern has something to teach us. Our planting should be bold, authentic and caring

BOLD – We speak so often these days to tickle ears or bind together what is already homogeneous. Our appeals are to man. While caring, Paul spoke truth in order to please God. As my friend Paul says often, “what you save them with you save them to.” Youth redeemed by coke and pizza and adults redeemed by Gospel lite will want a steady diet of the same. No more bait and switch. No more grace without truth.

AUTHENTIC – We are sowers of seeds not producers of fruit. We are often tempted to use our oratory skills or honed powers of persuasion to produce what God has not produced, at least not yet. Ministry is our living. Success is our identity. Too bad! We must sow and plant with a love that expects nothing in return. God reaps the harvest.

CARING – Being bold and being real does not and should not preclude caring or planting with respect and sensitivity. So many church folk are indignant at the ambivalence toward morality among unbelievers. Why should anyone expect unbelievers to order their lives like believers? By definition they don’t believe what we believe. It serves no one to part ways over morality before we connect over redemption. Secondly, as much as we would like to think we are pursuing what is true, we are not always right. Humility dictates that we acknowledge that people hear the same truth and draw different conclusions or in their Christ given freedom apply the same truth differently in their lives. In certain circles of mine it is too easy to equate the redeemed with the religious right. Truth be told, I have met a lot of folks in the religious right who are likely unredeemed. They are religious. They are conservative. They are not followers of Jesus. Personally, the Gospel makes me conservative, the paleo-orthodox kind, in some ways and liberal, the believing love and not law transforms, in others. Do we care/love enough to hang with who folks have no interest in what we are selling? Do we have images of Jesus sending or driving people away? In the face of the rich young ruler’s misplaced confidence in the life he has lived, Jesus loved him.

If we want to plant something that will withstand the test of time, we would do well to be bold, authentic, and caring, in our endeavors to establish a church. Unless the Lord builds, . .

1 Advent, Monday, December 03, 2012

Isaiah 1:-10-20

“Bring no more vain offerings; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and the call of assemblies – I cannot endure iniquity and solemn assembly.”

Yesterday marked the beginning of the New Year in the life of the liturgical church. It begins an annual cycle of anticipating the coming of Christ, his birth, ministry, death, resurrection and anticipating his coming again in great glory. In the midst of what could be or become religious activity, it good to be reminded and remember our faith is always a matter of the heart and willingness and obedience.

Bill O’Reilly made news recently by arguing, in an attempt to defend Christianity in the public square, that Christianity was not a religion but a philosophy. Umm, no! If anything “Christianity is a way of life in the footsteps of Jesus.” It is nothing more and nothing less. I appreciate Bill’s efforts but he only confuses what should be fairly simple in any age. We should live into the high calling of being like Jesus with or without the support of the public square. Is God expecting less obedience in the Chinese simply because their government seeks to suppress faith? While I desire a “Christmas” tree over the vague and feckless “holiday” one, I am quite sure we can do without it. In fact true faith might flourish when are symbols are rejected. The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.

In his defense, O’Reilly is right when he says that Christianity is not a religion, certainly not one of offerings to God. This is apparent in Isaiah in an age in which offering were routinely made. The smoke, the assemblies, the seasons offended God especially when offered by rebellious people.

What did God want in the age of offerings? A committed people! Cease evil. Learn good. Seek justice. Correct oppression. Defend the fatherless. Please for the widow. All these things are achieved without walking through the door of the church.

Here is where my pastor friends say stop. We cannot forsake assembling. And with that I agree. But God clearly says he will take obedient people over an assembly so if we err it should be on the side of obedience and not offering another service to appease God. He is appeased or pleased by commitment and obedience. Let our assemblies be a sign of that.

Word? Assemble less if necessary in order to follow more.