Through A Glass Darkly

When I arrived as a new pastor in a sleepy mountain town two decades ago, a pastor from another small church invited me to pray with him for God's revival in our high mountain valley. Soon, we gathered the new Episcopalian rector, two Pentecostals from neighboring villages, and a handful of assorted independent community church pastors. Most of the Baptist pastors would have nothing to do with us, nor would any of the other mainline churches. This ragtag band met together once a month for 10 years, praying for God to invade the valley in power, making it a haven of restoration for those bludgeoned by Gospel ministry in hard places, and sweeping through the hard ranks of unbelievers, bringing many to Christ. However, at the end of those 10 years, the founder of our group left for another call, and he was replaced in his church with a man who was ambitious and gifted, and who had no time to waste on praying with other pastors. In very little time, they reached what appeared to me to a modest circle of unchurched people. . . but mostly drew people away almost every other church in town. In the hypercharged climate of consumerism, people walked away from the communities of faith in which they had raised their children, cared for the sick, worshipped weekly for years, and broken bread together. They traded in the hard work of being a people of God to join the newest, latest, greatest thing. So, the town ended up with a megachurch, a broken unity among what had been like-minded churches, a competitive environment, and a strong surge of self and turf protection.

So, where's the worth in all of that? Where's the significance of years of investment that a number of caring people put into tearing down walls between Christians, building a unity that proclaims to the world that Jesus is risen (John 17:21,23), nurturing servanthood between congregations where it doesn't matter who gets the credit, and defeating the whole consumerism plague . . . undone overnight, in the name, supposedly, of Jesus?

On our two mens' climbing trips this summer, Dan Dermyer was our teaching pastor. And on Monday evening of both trips, he opened up the story of Job, which just so happens to be about this very subject. Job, as many of you may remember, was an innocent man who was visited by breathtaking calamity and loss. In fact, he pretty much lost everything: his wife, children, possessions, health, and his closest friendships. He was accused of being the reason for the losses, that it was God's punishment for being a sinner, and a hidden one at that. In spite of his protestations, no one believed him.

But as he gained traction in his rebuttals of these accusations, Job gathered strength of conviction, that perhaps God was the bad guy, that God was responsible for wronging him, that God was the author of these evils being visited upon him. Job throws his challenge at God, demanding an answer to the question, "So, why did all of this destruction happen? Where were You?"

Until at last God stopped him dead in his tracks with this question: "Will you condemn Me that you may be in the right?" (Job 40:8) To which Job crumbles and confesses that he is utterly wrong for blaming God, that God is never the author of evil.

And God, we notice, never answers Job's question.

God leaves it in the realm of what, for us, is mystery. Like looking into and through a mirror dimly (I Corinthians 13:12). As if the Psalmist had it right all along, saying, "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain." (Ps. 139:6) Perhaps there are bigger things afoot, things beyond our ability to take in and understand and carry within us without doing inestimable damage by knowing them.

But in a sense, although one must wait for it for centuries, God does answer Job's question. "Will you condemn Me that you may be in the right?" For God answers in the Person of His Son, Jesus, who took upon Himself the utter condemnation that belongs to Job and issues forth from Job, so that Job might be in the right. And you and me, too.

Which tells me, in the end, that whatever is happening in wretched, destructive, unfathomable, agonizing, seemingly stupid and outrageous and wasteful events in life, which make NO SENSE AT ALL, and which call into question significance and worth and what really matters, that we will find in the end something better than a suffocating view of God's sovereignty that "makes every instance of pain and loss an indispensable moment in a grand scheme whose ultimate synthesis will justify all things. . . [but at the high price of believing] in and lov[ing] a God whose good ends will be realized not only in spite of - but entirely by way of - every cruelty, every fortuitous misery, every catastrophe, every betrayal, evey sin the world has ever known." (David Hart, "Tsunami and Theodicy", Wall Street Journal)

So, when we live enveloped by mystery, especially when it involves suffering, it is our comfort that the God we know through Jesus Christ "has come to rescue creation from the absurdity of sin and the emptiness of death, and so we are permitted to hate these things with a perfect hatred. . .and that [until that glad Day of salvation is upon us] the world remains a place of struggle between light and darkness, truth and falsehood, life and death. . . [and as a result] I can imagine no greater comfort than the happy knowledge that when I see the death of a child I do not see the face of God, but the face of His enemy."

Remember the Bony Finger

How do you find the worth of something when it lies in ruins? When all of the marks of success, as we measure success in the dominant culture in which we live and move, are, at the very least, damaged beyond recognition? Where's the significance of one's work and life to be found when that work and life can visibly show little to no fruit?

I remember being a commissioner to the 1992 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. The major issue before that G.A. was the adoption of a document that spoke out of both sides of the mouth about the life of the unborn, trying to affirm that people who had scruples regarding ending the life of a fetus could file for a conflict of conscience and redirect where their medical insurance premiums would be used; while at the same time maintaining the right of women to end that life if they so chose. I joined a cadre of like-minded commissioners, strategizing on many fronts to seek a better document, and a better solution for the PCUSA. We labored in 18 hour days for almost 2 weeks. And on the last day of the GA, we lost everything. Every motion. Every minority report. Every change in language. I walked off the floor of the last plenary session defeated and in tears. Where's the worth in that?

It's at this point that God has been insistently but mercifully helping me in recent weeks, regarding much more recent, bitter disappointments. As I wrote in my last blog, He has taken me back again and again to His love. That significance ultimately is found in the decision He has made in His freedom to love me. Us. His people. His creation.

But He has spoken another word to me, as well.

Sovereignty.

I must be quick to say, however, that I do not necessarily wield this word the way that all those within the people of God use it. I have no patience with those who approach theology as if it is a detached theoretical exercize, one which intends to make sense out of all of life, answering all but a very small number of questions. Theology in general, and sovereignty as an example of it, are always applied pastorally in Scripture. Truth about God is brought to bear on broken hearts, lost hearts, angry hearts, hopeless hearts. Scripture, I believe, leaves many questions unanswered, perhaps because the answers are too marvelous for us; we cannot attain to them.

The sovereignty of God, therefore, has become for me a pastoral word, one which quiets my heart and brings relief and comfort to me. It is not an appeal to a theological construct that explains who gets chosen by God and who gets consigned to hell. It is the quieting voice of the great shepherd of the flock, assuring me that there is much that I cannot see, but that He can. Reminding me that the story isn't over. That He has an uncanny way of turning things to the good, things that on the human side of responsibility have been done from ill motives and even hearts of evil.

This is the One who in His sovereignty chose a pagan king to rule over Babylon, and gave to him kingship and greatness and glory and majesty for the sake of the wellbeing and blessing of much of the ancient world that lay outside of the people of God, the Jews (Daniel 5:18). This is the same One who collected all of Daniel's prayers, not discarding a single one, and who as a result threw into being the answers to those prayers. . . only, they were being carried out in the realm of spiritual warfare, out of Daniel's visibility and awareness (Daniel 10:12). It is this sovereign One, who David says keeps "count of my tossings," that David goes on to ask, "Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?" (Psalm 56:8) In other words, God does not forget any of them, and they all matter to Him, and He weaves them all into His purposes.

When I came off the floor of G.A. that last time, Elizabeth Achtemeier stopped me. She was a theology professor at one of our seminaries, a brilliant, fiery, orthodox, godly woman, with a heart for all the little ones in the world, perhaps especially the unborn who have no voice of their own. And she in her frail 5 foot 3 inch frame wagged her bony finger in my face and said, "Take heart, Paul; for God will yet have His way. But you and the others have done your part: you were faithful."

So, in the face of an unbelieving world that has no use for such partially blind faith, I have been going back to that very thing. To trust the One I cannot see, who is doing a work I cannot see, because of promises He has made in and through Jesus Christ.

It is enough.

If You Can't Get Out Of It, Get Into It

It's been a full two months since I even have attempted to sit down and write. A wilderness time for me. I have languished in the in-betweenness of my life, not sure where it's headed, not clear what my job description at work is yet, and certainly not sure what God is wanting from me, at least in terms of direction. I belong to and have poured my best energies into a denomination which is self-destructing, and there is no sense of security that it will hold together long enough to get to retirement years. I have pastored in four wonderful churches, our personal, visible investments in each certainly diminished if not exposed as failed. Many of the relationships that mattered the most to me here in Kansas City in the last 5 years have been damaged. So, I have thought a lot about worth. What has worth?

Over the last two weeks, I have been in Colorado, helping lead two mens' climbing groups. We successfully got55 of 56 men and boys to the top of at least one "14er," a summit whose elevation is above 14,000 feet. At least 14 of those men summitted their very first 14er. It's a very rewarding experience to help "midwife" this kind of life experience, especially when it draws men closer together (because they need each other), brings men to life changing transformation through Jesus Christ (because they need Him), and exposes men to a new lifestyle in which they take care of themselves and the creation. It was helpful to me, because it provided a climate in which to think about what is worthy. . . that is, what has worth.

That's what I'm going to write about over the next few weeks. Any of you who never have a qualm or fear or wonderment about "worth," you can skip this blog site for a while. But for those of you who, like me, struggle with a sense of lost worth or confusion about what really matters, or who cry out for meaning and significance and don't want to miss what God might have in mind. . .I want to share what God's been illuminating to me.

In Outward Bound, the outdoor training program that challenges people to take responsibility for their lives, they have a saying: "If you can't get out of it, get into it." That is, if you can't evade the circumstances you are in, if the issue won't die, if the storm or the cliffband or the injury or the lack of equipment won't disappear, face it. Throw yourself at it. Turn your full attention to it. Take responsibility for what you have control over.

So, ironically, here's the first and foremost thing I am re-learning about worth. Worth begins, ALWAYS, in the heart of God. Worth and significance are found in the love of God. Period. And my part, what I have responsibility for in order to find my way into that love and thus to hear that worth experientially, is to surrender to His love.

In these two weeks, I have had time to sit with the Word of God, allowing the Holy Spirit space, I guess, to imprint pictures somewhere inside of me; to mediate truth in head and heart, making it come alive to me in Scriptures like this one:

"How can I give you up, O Ephraim?

How can I hand you over, O Israel?

My heart recoils within Me;

My compassion grows warm and tender.

I taught Ephraim to walk. . . but they did not know that I healed them.

I led them with cords of kindness with the bonds of love;

and I became to them as one who eases the yoke on their jaws, and I bent down to them and led them.

I will not execute my burning anger, I will not again destroy Ephraim;

for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst,

and I will not come in wrath." Hosea 11:3,4,8,9

And this:

"Fear not, O Zion; let not your hands grow weak.

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty One who will save;

He will rejoice over you with gladness; He will quiet you with His love;

He will exult over you with loud singing (some translations say "He will dance over you").

I will gather those of you who mourn for the festival, so that you will no longer suffer reproach."

Zephaniah 3:16-18

And this:

"This I know, that God is for me." Psalm 56:9

So, whatever the events of my (and your?) life that scream worthlessness, or at least the questions about what matters in your life,

and especially if you find that you can't get out of having to deal with such questions,

I would recommend that you press into the storm and discover that in the awfulness of self-doubt and woundedness and feeling like a loser, you would discover there is One awaiting you in the hard place who also knows the pain of self-doubt ("Father, is there another way?"), aloneness ("Father, where are You?"), and resolution ("Father, into Your hands I surrender"). Because of love.

So, if you can't get out of it, get into it.

Little is Big

It has been a long time since I've written anything. I think part of that is because life has been too full to have time to reflect, and at this point I can't bring myself to use the blog as a place to write about trivia. Moreover, there hasn't seemed to be anything particularly gripping that I have thought anyone would especially want to hear, or that I was prepared to share with a wide audience.

Until last Wednesday.

A little background information. I have started riding my bike to work on any and every day that I don't have to have a car to drive across the city for something later in the day. I leave early with work clothes in my backpack, a towel, some instant oatmeal, and toiletries; ride the 6.3 miles to church; shower in a small bathroom shower tucked away in the church facilities; and make and eat my breakfast, all before work hours begin. The route, thanks to some great city planners here in the Kansas City metro area, follows Tomahawk Creek, then Indian Creek, almost door to door from our house to the church. So, along the way, it moves through dense forest, revealing amazing glimpses of big river turtles, deer, oppossum, racoons, snakes, bobcats, and the usual birds, squirrels, and rabbits. It's awesome. One other thing: the creek beds, as all the soil around here, are lined underneath with shelves of limestone.

So, when the thunderstorms come blasting into this area, like they did last Tuesday night, dropping several inches of rain in a short period (about 3 inches in 3 hours last Tuesday), the water is immediately trapped in the creek channels so that the water rises precipitously. I always thought that flashfloods in the desert were outrageous (how could that water not drain immediately into the sand?); here, I am just as dumbstruck that water has nowhere to go.

At any rate, those 3 inches of rain left the creeks high and rushing on Wednesday morning. It was thrilling to see the huge volume of water surging down Tomahawk and then Indian Creek. Whereas the creeks normally run about 8-10 feet below the bike path, this day they were running probably 4-5 feet below the path. The speed and thunderous noise of it all spoke of danger and risk. I was loving it.

And then, all of a sudden I came around a sharp corner, angling up to the top of a rise. . . 20 plus feet above Indian Creek. . . and the path was covered with tree limbs and debris, 2 feet high and 20 feet across. On the top of the hill! In fact, I estimated I was standing, at the edge of the debris, an easy 25 feet above the normal water level in the creek. And 3 inches of rain had lifted this massive landfill of tree limbs the thickness of my upper legs to this highpoint. After I picked up my bike and carried it across this wasteland, and then moved carefully on along the bikepath, I began to realize that everywhere on this trail the water line from the night before was in fact at that incredible height. At last, some adventure in downtown KC!

All of it reawakens in me something that many have told me over the years: little is big. Or at least it can be. The power of an idea, like the value of the individual, for example, can overturn centuries of bondage to the "divine right of kings," as it did in the Renaissance and Reformation. One person's encouragement of another at just the right moment, usually unknown to the person speaking, can turn a life, a family's complexion, a company's direction, a nation's destiny. Just 3 inches of rain, which is a little in the big scope of things, can lift an incredible weight to an incredible height; how much more with human beings.

This is at the heart of so much of what Jesus taught about the Kingdom of God.

"If you want to be big in the Kingdom of God, you can't be. Only those who are little can be big in the Kingdom of God" (Mark 10:43-45, my paraphrase)

"Truly, I tell you, this widow has put in more than all of them." (Luke 21:3, the story of the widow who put in two pennies, which was all she had)

"To such as these belongs the Kingdom of God" (Mark 10:13-16, Jesus speaking of little children, who could do nothing, gain no merit by good deeds, nor even understand what Jesus was doing to them as He prayed for them)

It seems to me that such high waters as visited Indian Creek last week are a sign in the physical realm of something true in Kingdom of God: that that which is little is powerful, big, amazing in the hands of God.

It's Time

"It should not be denied, either, that being footloose has always exhilarated us. It is associated in our minds with escape from history and oppression and law and irksome obligations, with absolute freedom, and the road has always led west."
Wallace Stegner, The American West as Living Space

It's time. It's getting past time for me. Oh, I got to go west in late December and did the best snowshoeing I've ever done, in subzero weather at that. And Susan, Sarah, and I got to go west to Utah in March to hike our favorite desert hikes. But it's amazing to me how powerful and unending the call of the West is to me. Maybe it's what Father Schmemann (Russian Orthodox priest whose journals I am reading) is getting at when he says, "It is quite difficult to live until you feel at home." (The Journals of Father Alexander Schmemann, 1973-83) Maybe it's because the dry heat and alpine meadows above 11,700 feet and emerald green in Iron King Basin and the hoodoos in Bryce Canyon - maybe it's because that's where I feel at home.

At any rate, it's time to go again. To enter into being footloose, to escape obligation and history and bury myself in the wilderness once again - whether it's in the Rockies or the canyons of Utah or the glaciers of the Cascades, it's time to go home.

My Covenant Group

One of my favorite quotes, ever, is about the astonishing, breathtaking potential of people all around us:

"It is a serious thing. . . to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, in a nightmare. . . All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. . . There are no ordinary people. You never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilization, these are mortals, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we work with, joke with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. . . And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love. . ."

C.S.Lewis, The Weight of Glory

Over the last 32 years, I have watched the glory of which Lewis writes emerge in 3 men. For the last 19 of those years, I have seen such "everlasting splendours" up close and personal. In my covenant group - Peter, Allan, and Trevor.

We met in seminary. They were fresh out of college. I had just gotten married, was 3 years older, all my classmates had graduated, and basically Susan and I had no friends. So, they as freshmen and I as a senior fell in together. And by the appointment of God, I think, we were forged into something of His own making, although that would not become clear for years.

After we went our separate ways, the other 3 ended up serving PCUSA churches back east, while Susan and I migrated back to Susan's home church (PCUSA also) in the Pacific Northwest. We stayed in touch. But then, in 1990 we began to meet together as a covenant group, meaning that we made promises to one another and to God that bound us together in love. We agreed that it would be an annual event. We've now been meeting yearly 19 times. We travel once a year from long distances and from all around the country, to meet for 5 days.

Along the way, we have shared pretty much everything about ourselves with each other. We take turns doing self-disclosure each year, sometimes for 3-4 hours apiece. We know each one's weaknesses, failures, fears, temptations, spiritual gifts, losses, griefs, dreams, nightmares, favorite books and movies. We know each other's spouses, parents, and children. We came to Trevor's side when his son Colin got killed as a freshman in college. We have sorrowed in the deaths of parents.We have agonized as each one has left one call to serve another congregation. We cook together, celebrate national championships together, go running together, argue about theology together.

In all of this, we have shared so much of life that we never have a need to start back at the beginning. We share a common education, the same denomination with all of its flaws and painful recent history, are from the same economic class, bear the same color and gender, are of the same nationality, and are within 3 years in age of each other. When we regather, we simply start where we left off. There's so much that never needs to be said, so much to be built upon, so much equity we have with one another, so much hilarious and delightful history we have made or lived together, so many of the same books we have read. We are living through the same huge cultural phenomena at the same time, die daily from the same agonies, have the same profession. I'm sure that many of you will say, "How BORING!" But in a world that is saturated with impermanence, a crass consumeristism that breeds faithlessness and betrayal, this group is one of the greatest comforts of life, evokes some of the greatest joys in life, gives hope in the midst of a hard, cruel valley of the shadow of death, revives the soul for the next leg of the journey, provides the next year's reading list(!), kicks one another's butt, quiets the incessantly accusing voices we hear inside, and demands a greater attentiveness to the most important part of the call to pastoral ministry: to love the people place under our care.

And perhaps most importantly, we help each other to believe that none of us is a mere mortal. That each of us is someone of astonishing beauty, the very reflection of the living God. And we gain eyes to see who is really there, not the mask that is on the outside.

In all the world, everyone needs a covenant group in which Christ is present and given His rightful place. If you don't have such a group, seek one. Pray for one. Call people to form one. Don't stop until it happens. Because life is too hard to go through on one's own. And, to use a paraphrase of 2 Corinthians 3:18, "We are what we gaze at."

Juno

Seen any good movies lately?

Susan and I don’t go out to see a lot of movies. There’s always something else that needs to be done, or so it seems. We’ve been known to be picky about what we see. Movies can cost a lot. But every once in a while, we get a sense about a certain movie, a sense that there’s something there worth taking in.

Like Juno, for instance.

Don’t get me wrong, Juno’s not a safe haven for Christian sensibilities. It’s laced with profanity and adult themes. It’s about a high school girl (Juno) who gets pregnant, decides she’s too immature to raise the baby, and seeks a couple who would adopt the child. There’s barely a hint of the Judeo-Christian worldview at most turns. Everything seems to be playing out in a postmodern, post-Christian setting. The Church is treated as irrelevant.

But there’s something there nonetheless. The characters, easily boxed and labeled early in the movie, become real as the movie progresses. As the drama unfolds and the conflict builds, it’s as if their true selves are revealed. Indeed, in some notable cases, they mature and develop. Juno’s dad comes off as a brusque, distant, judgmental type when Juno tells him she’s pregnant; later, he embraces Juno with something akin to what you and I might call hesed, that covenant love in the Old Testament that makes promises that bind us to others unconditionally. Juno’s stepmother is sensible and cold towards Juno in the beginning; later, she blooms in courage and protectiveness for her. Vanessa, the woman who is seeking to be the baby’s adopting mother, is revealed at first to be anxious, controlling, and fearful; but in one of the most tender scenes in the movie, she melts, pressing her hands and face up to Juno’s belly, to feel the baby moving. Vanessa becomes increasingly transformed into a woman of centeredness and strength.
But Juno herself goes through the most significant transformation. She grows from child to young woman. She discovers and affirms that the fetus has feet, is a live human being, and must not be aborted. She sorts out who is authentic and trustworthy because of their honesty, compassion, faithfulness, and courage. Juno faces the rejection and marginalization from many of her peers with her own courage.

Through it all these characters manifest something like what C.S.Lewis highlights in The Great Divorce. In this thin volume, surely one of the most brilliant works he ever wrote, Lewis shows people arriving in heaven from hell as ghosts. “Now that they were in the light, they were transparent. . . man-shaped stains in the brightness of that air.” But the longer beings remained in heaven, the more solid they became. They were transformed. They became who they were meant to be, real, in their glory.

That’s what God is up to in this life. God is making us real. We’re meant to be solid selves, not whispy images. We are meant to be in all our glory, which is borrowed, of course, from Jesus Himself. Juno has the right idea. Jesus has the right stuff to make it happen.

I am thinking that watching movies, like reading books, is the exactly right setting to call us into prayer. To prompt us to pray for God to work what is good and right in what we are seeing and hearing in our lives as well. Seen any good movies lately?