A Poem for the Rural Homestead

I came across this poem recently--hope you enjoy it as much as my family did.

Farm Country
by Mary Oliver

I have sharpened my knives, I have
Put on the heavy apron.

Maybe you think life is chicken soup, served
In blue willow-pattern bowls.

I have put on my boots and opened
The kitchen door and stepped out

Into the sunshine. I have crossed the lawn,
I have entered

The hen house.

Christians, Churches, and Christmas

For some Christians, the season of Christmas brings about a question of debate: should we celebrate Christmas? After all, we're not commanded in scripture to observe Christmas, Advent, or Easter.

I've often thought that the reason we in the mainline church have "Easter and Christmas Christians" was that in emphasizing these high points of the church year, we in some way diminish the weekly Lord's Day. Why come every Sunday when the big holidays are the times that really count?

Despite these misgivings, I have come back around recently to appreciating a basic church calendar. By remembering the high points of Christ's life on the calendar, the church declares that our faith is rooted in history. We are also reclaiming time for the kingdom of God.

Pastor Gregg Strawbridge wrote an excellent overview of these points in this article on his website at All Saints Presbyterian Church. I encourage you to read it and leave me your comments.

LATE ADDITION: If you have all night and a day, here's another article I came across that defends Christmas celebrations. Happy Holidays!

Sermon Leftovers on Stewardship

As I have been writing up the sermon this morning, I have had to leave something out that I just don't have the time to cover, but it is interesting.

When the early church brought money to the apostles for the ministry of the word and to help those in need, Acts 4:35 says that they "put it at the apostle's feet." In other words, they trusted the apostles to distribute the money as they saw fit. No strings attached.

Today some donors leave gifts to the church, but there are many restrictions--use it for the building only. Use it for mission only. Use it for curriculum only. While givers may want to leave money to things they are passionate about, I wonder how the apostles would have received gifts with restrictions?

Books I'm Reading

Through a friend, I found a place called Library Thing on-line. You can now get a feel for what I'm reading currently on the sidebar. Let me know what you think of the books.

Library Thing is pretty cool too--you can get lots of recommendations of books similar to what you have in your library.

Investing in True Securities

“‘Wall Street’ No Longer Exists” read one headline earlier this week. There is no end to the superlatives thrown at the current financial shakedown. Some are calling it the worst crisis since the Great Depression. Others are calling it simply the greatest financial crisis in our nation’s history—ever. We are used to media-generated crises in our country, but this time the hysteria is grounded in grim reality.

Credit markets froze last week. Banks weren’t lending to each other, and loans to companies and consumers were in danger of drying up, effectively stalling the economic engine of our nation. Now that the feds are proposing nearly one trillion dollars to take bad debt off the banks’ books, the dollar is in a freefall, causing oil and gold to go haywire.

One could point a lot of fingers in this time of crisis. Some have argued that the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 forced banks to make loans to those who really couldn’t repay them. Others have argued that the feds’ policy of easy money and low interest rates in recent years allowed people to take on debt upon debt—until the whole scheme started to crumble with failing mortgages.

It’s easy to fix blame in times of crisis. But for those who think about life from of a Christian worldview, these recent events shouldn’t come as a complete surprise. The Apostle Paul warned us about money, saying not to put our “hope in wealth, which is so uncertain.” (1 Tim 6:17) Likewise Jesus told his disciples, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy.” (Matt 6:19) The bible warns us that money is fleeting. It can be here one minute and gone the next. It is not the proper place to look for stability and security.

This observation is not meant to be a “gotcha.” Many Christians (including myself) will have lost some money in their investments over recent weeks. To point out the bible’s warning about money’s slippery quality is meant to draw us to the path of wisdom. After Paul’s warning, he immediately follows it up by saying, Christians should “put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment.” Jesus follows up his warning by saying, “But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy.”

There is a place to invest. By all means, invest in your retirement plans and stock funds. But keep in mind that these investments aren’t your first or primary line of hope. The world’s financial institutions will never tell you that in their advertising. Instead, your primary line of hope & investment must be in God, whose spiritual riches and delights are far superior and permanent than anything money can buy. David praised God in the Psalms writing, “You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in your presence, with eternal pleasures at your right hand.” (Psalm 16:11) MasterCard can’t touch this priceless security.

The Church Repellent

This is my third article for the Ada Herald here in the month of September.

If Christians have the truth, “why is it the case that they are repellent precisely to the degree that they embrace and advertise that truth?” asks Will Barrett in Walker Percy’s novel The Second Coming. In the novel, Barrett is a wealthy Southerner whose life is spiraling out of control. He questions reality, and he wonders why Christians, if they have the truth, remain largely unattractive to those searching for meaning in life.

Perhaps you’ve thought similarly about Christians. Maybe you’ve been hurt by a particular church in the past, perhaps one that was too controlling. Maybe a co-worker gossips about you, yet you know he is also a church leader. Hypocrites in the church have always kept many from considering the claims of the Christian faith. Christian preachers might be a turn-off, especially the televangelists. These individuals often do repel to the degree they advertise the truth.

If I could attempt to explain a piece of Christian teaching for a moment, I hope that you would be willing to reconsider your opinion of Christians. The vast majority of churches believe that Christians remain sinners even after coming to faith in Jesus Christ. We believe that we are forgiven for our sins, yet the tendency to sin remains in our hearts. Only over a lifetime of prayer, worship, and yes, even being around other Christians, do we slowly become more like Christ. The change in our lives that we hope for doesn’t happen overnight.

To put this another way, you shouldn’t be surprised to see Christians who fail to live up to the teachings of the bible. The bible teaches that we will fail, in this life, to live up to all its teachings (read, for example, Romans 7). So in failing, we are in fact being consistent with biblical doctrine! Now that’s not meant to be a smart excuse for our failures. Its meant to be realistic about the Christian life, about the struggle in our hearts to overcome sin and to grow in godliness.

As a Christian pastor, I’ve been around lots of Christians. I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. Yet for the most part, the Christians I know are quietly putting their faith into practice. They are working in the Ada Food Pantry and at Restore. They are praying with their children. They are rebuilding the Gulf Coast. They are worshipping on Sundays, hearing preaching from modest pastors, and trying to live out their faith with the help of the community of the church.

I will be the first to admit that Christians will let you down. But in the end, I would encourage you to look past Christians to God. God is really the one you need to be thinking about more than the people of God in Christian churches. Even if a Christian fails you, God hasn’t changed. He is still your creator. He still gives you life, and breath, and everything else. Don’t let God’s people keep you from seeking God. I would even be so bold as to suggest that if you want to know God, there are many Christians in local churches who would be glad to offer humble and gracious direction.

Why Pastor's Wear Robes

I have mixed feeling sometimes about wearing a robe to preach on Sunday morning. Here's an interesting article about it from a Reformed perspective.

Internet Paralysis

This is the second article being published for the Pastor's Pen this month (Sept 08)

“Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along like a guy on a Jet Ski,” writes Nicholas Carr in a provocative article titled, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” The article was published this summer in the Atlantic Monthly. In it the author observes how he is less and less able to read a book cover to cover or to follow a complex argument to its conclusion.

He postulates that over time, reading blogs and email has changed the way he handles words. He skims things he used to dig into. He clicks from one article to the next without staying with something to the end. The internet, for all of its upside, does change the way we learn and handle information. We are less patient with words. We lack the ability to concentrate. Our work is more scattered and less focused.

The poet Donald Hall once made the point that contentment is found in something he calls absorbedness. It is “early morning hours, concentration on the page and its words, total loss of identity, hours that pass like seconds or without any notion of time elapsing.” In other words, the quality of life is improved by our ability to get lost in our work or our reading without a sense of distractedness. On the flip side, a frenetic quality to life leaves us frazzled.

In my own life, I recognize symptoms of distraction. I keep track of the books I read, and when I first started my work as a pastor, I was reading 30 to 40 books a year. Now I must confess I’m down to about 10. Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve had six children in those years, but I also notice as my internet use has increased during this time, my ability to get absorbed in reading or study has been hampered. It’s far easier to check email a dozen times a morning than to sit down and translate a Greek passage from the New Testament.

If Nicholas Carr is right, Christians of all people should be concerned. We are people of the book. Our faith arises out of the scriptures. Our ability to grow to maturity in the faith rests on our ability to read and ponder the bible. Whether you’re engaged in serious biblical exegesis or practicing lectio divina (a more contemplative style of reading the bible), you need the ability to concentrate and to attend to the words on the page.

Friends and civic leaders alike extol the virtues of the internet. I use the internet myself. It’s helpful for finding sermon illustrations and keeping up with friends. Yet the internet does seem to be changing the way we learn and think. We might have more information at our fingertips, but we are less and less able to understand and digest that information. If internet use is paralyzing our analytical ability, we might want to do something about it now—while we can still think about it.

Christian Citizenship

I am writing the "Pastor's Pen" column for the Ada Herald this month. Here is this week's article:

Barak Obama made a surprise stop at a Lima church this past Sunday. The pastor didn’t receive final confirmation of Obama’s visit until 8:00 that morning. The press and others around Lima didn’t get wind of his stop until they saw police barricades around the church. Everyone was caught off guard at his coming.

The thing that surprised me about his stop wasn’t so much that he came but the way the worship service went on without much fanfare. The pastor said that he resisted the urge to alter his sermon to preach at Obama. The candidate himself didn’t address the congregation from the pulpit. He simply sat under the preaching of God’s word and worshipped.

Far too often we see churches becoming platforms for political candidates, either right or left. Pastors take to the pulpit to say their candidate is God’s man for the job. The candidate delivers a message—half sermon, half pep talk—to people who you never would have imagined came together in the first place to worship Jesus Christ.

This disturbing trend makes the fact that Sunday’s worship in Lima managed to stay a worship service both remarkable and commendable. The bible reminds Christians that “our citizenship is in heaven.” (Phil 3:20) Yes we are Americans, but Christians are citizens of God’s kingdom first and foremost, and as the Apostle Paul continues in that passage, “we eagerly await a savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is tempting, in an election year, for Christians in both political parties to forget that their hopes ultimately rest in a king whom they cannot see. With political conventions dominating the airwaves, candidates from both parties making astounding promises, and the media giving round the clock coverage, it is easy to get swept up in the tide of enthusiasm for politics itself as a kind of national savior.

The Psalmist reminds us that “God is king of all the earth,” and in scripture we see God raising up kings with one hand and deposing kings with the other. It is the Lord God and his son Jesus Christ who, in the power of the Holy Spirit, hold out the promise of salvation. It is right to gather and worship this great God, keeping politics in proper perspective—subservient to God, who alone “reigns over the nations.” (Psalm 47:8)

The Charge of Hypocrisy

The charge of hypocrisy is often leveled at those in public positions of leadership who fail to live out their beliefs. We can think of Ted Haggart in the church and Larry Craig in congress. Both leaders acted in ways that differed from their professed beliefs. The bible of course cautions us about hypocrisy. Both the writer of Proverbs in the Old Testament and James in the New warn us about “double-mindedness.” We should be concerned about hypocrisy in our lives and seek to root it out wherever we find it.

But at the same time, the public outrage against hypocrisy is over the top at times. I got to thinking that we could categorize people with respect to belief and action. There are those who have true beliefs and true action. Let’s call them T/T (True belief/True action). Then there are hypocrites like Ted Haggart. They have true belief and false action. We could label them T/F (True belief/False action). But there is a third category. There are those who have false belief and false action. We could label them as F/F (False belief/False action).

If you accept my general categories, isn’t it true that a person in the T/F category is still better off than someone in the F/F category? For example, if a Christian professes belief that he should pray, and he does, then he is a T/T believer and should be commended. If a Christian professes belief in prayer, but doesn’t pray, he is a T/F Christian and should be encouraged to make his belief match his practice. But if your average person on the street doesn’t believe in prayer and doesn’t pray (making him an F/F), why does he have the moral authority to judge the T/F as a hypocrite? Isn’t he in the worst position of all three?

We should point out that all Christians will have some level of hypocrisy in their lives. All of us are fallen, and all of us are in a process of growth, trying to match our practices to our beliefs. We are continually hindered in this process by our fallen nature. During this season of Lent, ask God to root out hypocrisy that you might become a T/T. Pray also that God would soften the F/Fs in your life, that they might see true belief as at least the first step towards God.