A GOOD COMBINATION

There are some things in life that are just made to go together. Hamburgers obviously need fries to be complete. Abbot needs Costello to make the comedy work. The Old Testament needs the New Testament for the Christian revelation to be fully understood. A blank page (or computer screen these days) needs meaningful words to become something valuable and inspiring. A good stew needs uglai to be perfect. (If you haven’t tried stew and ugali, trust me—or better yet visit East Africa and try it out).

Another combination that makes sense but which works out less often that a burger and fries is the combination of a pastor and a congregation. When the combination works, it is a beautiful thing. When it doesn’t work, it is a disaster not only for the church and the pastor but also for the wider Christian community because it shows our inability to actually follow the faith that we claim.

There are a variety of reasons why the combination doesn’t work. Sometimes, both congregations and pastors enter the relationship without God’s clear leading. That combination is going to fail simply because it results from people presuming to know as much or more than God. They either ignore the need to consult God on the potential combination or assume that what they want it what God wants.

While that is unfortunately a more common reality than most churches and pastors want to admit, I am going to ignore it in this post—I may deal with it sometime. Today, I want to look at why a combination put together by God goes wrong. Presumably, if God in his infinite wisdom brings together a pastor and a combination, it is literally a match made in heaven—so why would it fail?

Most of the time, the match fails because one side or the other or both forget something vital and important. They forget that God himself has selected this congregation and this pastor to be linked together for this point in time. God created the combination because at the point in time the pastor and congregation come together, it is the very best for both in the ever unfolding divine plan for the redemption of creation.

That may sound like a pretty big understanding of what is a very common reality—afterall, there are probably millions of churches around the world and therefore millions of pastor/congregation combinations. Do all of them have that same divine seal of approval making that particular combination a significant and vital part of God’s overall plan of redemption? Well, if both congregation and pastor ( and denominational leadership where applicable) have faithfully engaged in the process and have been fully open to the leading of the Spirit, then yes, their combination is a divinely planned connection that has a part to play in the overall process of moving a sin-scarred world towards its eventual rebirth.

And if that is true, then congregation and pastor need to work together to discover what God envisions them as being a good combination. The gifts, talents, needs and potentials of both pastor and congregation have been carefully and divinely considered and the combination brought together so that the congregation can continue to develop in faith, so that the pastor can continue to develop in faith and so that the overall momentum leading to the full redemption of creation can be maintained. When either the pastor or congregation—or both—forget the divine reality behind their being together, the whole thing gets out of whack.

Instead of seeing their combination as being for the betterment of both and the advancement of the kingdom, each side sees only what they want and seek to achieve it at the expense of the other—and also at the expense of putting yet another kink in the overall plan of redemption which God then has to work around.

Much better for both pastor and congregation to recognize the divine nature of their calling, to accept the need for mutual submission, to humbly seek the Spirit’s guidance as they seek to discover and express the reason for their coming together. When pastor and congregation mutually submit to each other and all submit to God, they are truly a good combination that will work even better than stew and ugali because stew and uglai will have a temporary effect while a good combination of pastor and congregation will have eternal effects.

May the peace of God be with you.

A GOOD PASTOR

I have never been called to serve as the pastor of a perfect church. But that is okay since none of the congregations I have been called to serve were calling a perfect pastor. I wasn’t perfect before they called me, I didn’t become perfect when I served the church and I didn’t become perfect when I left the congregation. There are some pastors who manage to achieve perfection—but only a few years after they have left the congregation and when succeeding pastors have more glaring weaknesses than they had. But while hindsight might make a pastor look perfect, that is more a case of selective remembering than actual reality.

Like congregations, pastors are not perfect. We are called, we are forgiven, we are gifted—but we are not perfect. We pick up our calling and carry it out with a confusing blend of good and bad that can be wildly infuriating to both pastor and congregation. We provide the absolutely perfect ministry that changes a life one minute and the next, we drive three other people to question not just our call but our basic faith.

When congregations forget that pastors aren’t perfect, all sorts of problems develop. Congregations forget to test the spirits, as I John 4.1 tells us. This allows us as pastors to operate without accountability—and the worst thing we can give to an imperfect individual is a freedom from accountability. With no accountability, we have no reason to see or acknowledge or deal with our imperfections. Generally, lack of accountability results in increased imperfection, not less imperfection.

When congregations forget that pastors aren’t perfect, it become very traumatic when the real imperfections manifest themselves. While some congregation members can and will ignore any and all imperfections, most people will eventually discover the pastor whom they thought was perfect isn’t perfect and that will create all sorts of responses, from mild irritation to rejection of the church to rejection of the faith.

When pastors forget that pastors aren’t perfect, the consequences are even worse. When we pastors forget that we don’t have it all together, we then begin to minister from our imperfection, not from our commitment to God. Our desire for power gets wrapped in “doing God’s will”; our need for approval overshadows the need to speak the truth of God; our desire for affection rewrites the moral standards of the faith. We end up hurting not just ourselves but the wider church. Our imperfections can often become the institutionalized dysfunction of the congregation or denomination.

So, let me be clear. Pastors are not perfect—nor will we be perfect this side of eternity. And since that someday perfection simply isn’t the reality here and now, we pastors need to learn to minister as imperfect people and congregations need to accept the reality that their pastor isn’t perfect and won’t be perfect—and wasn’t actually perfect in the case of former pastors.

How do we imperfect pastors minister to imperfect congregations? I think we start with honesty. It isn’t quite the blind leading the blind—but is the imperfect pastoring the imperfect. If we all start there, then we can become mutually accountable and responsible. As an imperfect pastor of an imperfect congregation, I need to make sure that both I and the congregation are willing to commit proper time and resources to seeking the leading from the Perfect that we need. My latest and greatest idea that will revitalize our church and change the face of Christianity needs the careful and prayerful consideration of the congregation to make sure it isn’t actually an expression of my imperfection wrapped in a few decontextualized Scriptures. While I am called to be their pastor, I am not called to be their boss or dictator. Rather, both pastor and congregation are called to mutual responsibility and accountability as we together seek to offer our imperfection to God so that he can bring us all closer to what we are meant to be.

The churches I have been called to serve as pastor didn’t get a perfect pastor when they called me. But then again, they didn’t have one before I arrived (no matter what the older members say) and they won’t have one after I leave. As long as I and the congregation remember that, we are better able to seek God’s perfection to deal with our imperfection.

May the peace of God be with you.

A GOOD CHURCH

I have never been called to serve as the pastor of a perfect church. In fact, sometimes, I have found myself called to churches which were struggling with some serious dysfunction. I have also had contact with a lot of other churches over the years and have yet to find a perfect church. Because of the nature of the connections I have had with many congregations, I have often ended up discovering the hidden dysfunction in even the best of churches.

Now, I want to be clear at this point—I don’t go looking for the problems in various congregations. I am actually not overly interested in the internal dynamics of other congregations—most of the time, it takes most of my energy and ambition to cope with the realities of the congregations that I have been called to serve. But because I have taught pastors, written about the struggles of small churches and been the pastor of churches with open problems, I have learned much more about many congregations than I want to know.

The end result of all this experience with churches is the depressing insight that there are no perfect churches. That might seem like a totally unnecessary statement of the obvious to some people. But I think many people pay lip service to the imperfection of churches while at the same time assuming that the congregation they are part of or want to be part of is somehow an exception to the rule. Whatever the reason, there are plenty of believers out there looking for the perfect congregation.

To those of you still looking, let me be clear: there are no perfect churches. They don’t exist. Every Christian congregation in the world is going to be a confusing blend of good and bad; right and wrong; inspiring and depressing; perfection and imperfection. The congregation that produces the deeply spiritual Good Friday worship will also discriminate against some people groups. The congregation that condemns any deviation from their norms loudly and publically will also love and care for their disabled members in ways that put others to shame.

No matter what the congregation looks like from the outside, once you become a part of it, you will see both the good and the bad. Well, actually, you might see both, although there is a more than even chance that you will only see one or the other. We human beings are prone to selective vision so we can and do block out the parts we don’t want to see. But if we are honest with ourselves, we will soon discover that the great congregation has some serious problems and the dysfunctional congregation has some seriously good expressions of the faith.

There are no perfect Christian congregations. There are just gatherings of believers who are trying to work at and work out their faith in the context of a Christian community. Running through the whole of the New Testament is the assumption that believers will form communities and that these communities, which we call churches, will be imperfect expressions of the ideal that the New Testament writers keep pointing is towards. Many of the letters in the New Testament were actually written in response to the lack of perfection in various congregations.

Very early in ministry, I realized some implications of the lack of perfect congregations. If there are no perfect congregations, I will never be called to one—and even more importantly, I will never create one. My ministry goal isn’t to create a perfect congregation but to work with the imperfect congregation I have been called to so that together, we can overcome some of the imperfection and dysfunction and become a better congregation—not a perfect one but a better one. And the goal of every member of every congregation should be the same. We become part of a congregation and seek to use our gifts to make an imperfect gathering a better gathering, all the while recognizing that we are never going to be perfect.

Rather than look for a different congregation when we see the problems in the one we are at—or give up on the church completely, as some have done, our response to the reality of imperfection in the church probably needs to be confession of our part in the imperfection, acceptance of the reality of the imperfection and commitment to doing what we can to make things better. We might never become a perfect church but we can become a good church.

May the peace of God be with you.

PRAYER

With the start up of the churches I pastor after the winter break, I am now back to leading another Bible study. This one has been looking at prayer. We have been using two Biblical prayers as our discussion starters. As we have worked through the Lord’s Prayer and begin looking at the prayer in Gethsemane, we have had ample opportunity to think about, discuss and speculate on prayer, as well as many other topics, some related and some that seem to come from nowhere anyone can identify.

The start up of this study has caused me to take another look at my prayers. Basically, I have two somewhat separate prayer lives. One is what I would call a professional prayer life. I am a pastor of active congregations which means I pray a lot: several times during each worship service, before and after Bible studies and meetings, during pastoral visits, over the phone and occasionally on the street. By any standard, I have a very active professional prayer life. That goes with the territory—anyone called to Christian ministry needs to expect that they will spend a lot of time praying for anything and everything.

My other prayer life is my own private and personal life. And while it isn’t always totally clear which category any given prayer fits, in general, I have a pretty good sense of when I am praying professionally and when I am praying personally. Well, actually, I have a really good sense of when I am praying professionally. I am not always clear when and even if I am praying personally.

Let me give an example. I am sitting in my work chair after finishing writing a sermon. That always leaves me with a sense of mental confusion and fatigue and a feeling that what I have spend so much time writing is worthless. I contemplate what I have written and mentally mutter, “What a pile of junk!”. My question is: When I say that, am I commenting on my sermon, expressing the mental fatigue that comes with having finished writing a sermon or actually praying?

Sometimes, I see that comment as an actual prayer. I have a somewhat warped sense of humor and tend to make comments that people who know me understand but which others might find quite strange. Since I work at being open to God’s leading when I am writing a sermon (mostly), if I am conscious of a hearer of my end of sermon comments, it would be God. Is it a valid prayer to call what he has (hopefully) helped me produce a pile of junk—or worse?

I mean, shouldn’t a pastor who has been in the business for many years and prayed enough to total up to months or years of time finish the sermon process with a heartfelt, “Thank you Lord for this wonderful expression of your grace”. Maybe that is what some would expect—and there may be some pastors who actually pray that prayer every time they finish a sermon. I have actually prayed it a few times, times when the sermon flows and even my writing fatigued brain can see the value of the sermon.

But mostly, when I finish, I am going to nudge God in the ribs, wink and comment on the junkiness of what I have produced. If I really thought it was junk, I wouldn’t have written it. But the stress of the writing process, the energy required to keep God, the congregation and myself in proper balance during the writing and the simple fatigue that results comes together to produce an offhanded, dry, somewhat negative comment on the whole thing. I am expressing my fatigue to myself and God, a fatigue that doesn’t allow me to actually objectively evaluate what I have produced—easier by far to semi-jokingly insult it because both God and I know I don’t really mean it. I am ultimately acknowledging that with his help, I produced something that he will use later as part of his and my ministry in the churches that will hear the sermon.

Would it be more reverent and spiritually mature to simple tell God thanks for the leading and help and the hint on the third point? Probably. I may get there someday but for now, God knows what I am doing and we are both comfortable with my end of writing prayer.

May the peace of God be with you.

SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE

Recently, some of my electronics have been giving me indications that they are thinking about retirement. Since some of them are getting really old for electronics, I have been observing their symptoms with some mixed feelings. I appreciate my electronics and use them heavily—while I am not totally dependent on them, I would be very reluctant to go back to pre-electronic days. But at the same time, new electronics are new—better specs, new tricks, updated everything.

So, given the realities of my aging electronics, I began researching the possibilities for replacements. I began with my tablet, which I use heavily in my ministry—I don’t do paper anymore, carrying everything on the tablet. The research thrilled my tech loving heart. Eventually, I discovered two real possibilities: one looked good and was much cheaper than the second choice. However, before I bought, I checked reviews and discovered that it didn’t perform as well as the more expensive one, which went to the head of the list.

I was ready. I was in the store, looking at samples and lifting and touching—I wasn’t actually salivating, at least not physically. I was almost ready to pull out the charge card and make the purchase when something told me not to buy right then. Since we had other stuff to do, I moved on, figuring I would be back soon to get my new tablet.

What I didn’t know then was that the something telling me not to buy was actually a spiritual message. God was speaking. Now, before you stop reading, let me explain. I think that faith needs to touch every area of life, which means that God should be a part of every decision, including what electronics I buy. I know that, I tell people that, I preach that. But at some point, my love of electronics sort of shoved that insight into the background. After all, what does faith have to do with tablets? The only tablets mentioned in the Bible are made of stone and had zero battery life.

But as I thought about buying a new, expensive tablet that would do everything I wanted and more, I believe that God was also at work, seeking to convince me that there were other options that just might be more pleasing to him. I am still not sure whether God is deeply concerned about which tablet I buy or if he is more concerned with my being willing to involve him in the process, although based on my past experience, I am pretty sure that his first concern is that I involve him in the process and then he can help me make a better decision.

Is buying a new tablet a faith decision? Well, according to many sermons I have preached, everything has a faith connection so my decision about a tablet should involve a faith component. I think that was the message God was sending in the electronics store when I just couldn’t quite buy the tablet my research—and desire—told me was the best choice for me.

Since then, I have gone back to the research process—but I have also specifically involved God in the process. I am not expecting God to become a celebrity spokesperson (spokesbeing?) for any particular brand of tablet. Nor am I expecting him to give me a list of divinely approved tablets. But I am expecting that if I open the process to God, he will do what he always does when we bring him into the process. He will help us evaluate and examine and think through things in a different way.

In this particular case, it seems that buying a new, expensive tablet probably isn’t the best decision. My desires for new tech got in the way of some realities that involving God helped me see. The new, expensive tablet would look really great—but in truth, it is more than I really need. As I thought and allowed God some part in the process, I began to see other options, other ways that would work even better and be more realistic. I will eventually end up with some new tech, some repaired tech and more of what I need.

This has been an interesting process—who knew that buying tech could be a spiritual exercise? Well, actually I did—but forgot to remind myself of what I keep telling others.

May the peace of God be with you.

EASY ANSWERS

There is an old joke among some clergy that the right answer to any question asked in Bible study or Sunday School is Jesus or God—and if the person answering has a bit of theological insight and a slightly argumentative attitude, the case can be made that either answer is the right one. I ran into a version of this the other day.

Through a somewhat convoluted route, I discovered that the answer to my recent feelings of fatigue was to take more time to pray and come closer to God. Now, on some levels, that particular answer makes some sense. I am a pastor and things get busy and it is easy to let my devotional life slip—prayer gets done only when I have to for ministry purposes; Bible reading gets done just for preparation of something for the church; quiet time becomes a prelude to a nap. All of us and perhaps especially pastors could probably use some more personal devotional time, which makes the answer sort of right.

But in this case, the sort of answer really isn’t the right answer. I was not fatigued because my relationship with God was suffering. If anything, my relationship with God was suffering because I was fatigued. I was feeling fatigue because the churches that close for the winter had started up for the year and during the first two weeks of that, I had three funerals, all of people I had known and liked for many years. The combination of start up and funerals and extra Easter worship services made me tired.

For me, the danger of quick, easy and automatic answers is that they generally contain enough truth to sound good, especially if we mentally squint while delivering the answer. But such answers generally reveal a lack of understanding of the reality of the question or context or specifics. In my various forays into the field of training pastors, I have discovered that we pastors have a terrible tendency to trot out the simple and quick answer rather than put on the time to really discover what is going on and what is really needed.

I understand that pastors (and other spiritual leaders) are busy. I have been a pastor for more years than I want to count and can only remember a few times in all those years when I didn’t have a dozen things demanding attention—and those times were during the intervals of unemployment between churches. The rest of the time, well, the rest of the time, finishing a sermon means needing to start another one; ending a Bible study topic means beginning research on the next one; leaving the funeral means wondering if there is time to visit at the hospital before the coming meeting; going on vacation means working extra before and after so as not to get too far behind.

But being busy isn’t an excuse for finding and passing out all the simplistic and easy answers that we in ministry are sometimes tempted to do. Real ministry requires that we focus on real people with real needs and help them work towards real solutions. The model for this process comes, interestingly enough, from the traditional Sunday School answer: Jesus (or God, if you want to be argumentative).

As I read through the Gospels, I discover that Jesus didn’t have general, simple, easy answers. He provided people with answers and solutions that reflected the realities of their particular situation. Take the stories of two rich men, for example. The rich young ruler and Zacchaeus (Luke 19.1-9) and the rich young ruler (Luke 18.18-22) have a lot in common: they both have money, both are obviously searching for something; both are interested in Jesus. Yet Jesus has different solutions for them. One gets a visit and the other gets a clear and difficult choice. Jesus responds to the specific people and their specific needs.

We pastors are not Jesus and so don’t generally have the ability to instantly understand the fullness of a person like Jesus did. But we are pastors and our calling does generally include the gifts necessary to enable us to listen to people and discover the reality of their complex situation and the wisdom to allow the Spirit to work through us as we are used to help them discover their unique answer to their unique issues.

Anyway, I am going to take a nap—that will deal with my fatigue better than anything right now.

May the peace of God be with you.

GETTING BETTER!?

My list of hoped for gifts always includes gift certificates for the various ebook sources I regularly buy from. Every gift event throughout the year gives me a few certificates, which I ration out over the course of the year, picking and choosing books that look interesting. I recently finished one of the resulting purchases. I didn’t particularly agree with everything the writer said, which is always a plus for me—why bother to read something I already agree with?

One of the themes of this book was that humanity is getting better and better. As a species we are maturing and developing and becoming….The writer couldn’t actually say what we were becoming—but I will get to that in a bit.

In many ways, he was repeating an idea in vogue near the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Now, I am old but not that old but some of the reading I have done so much of over the years supplied this information. At that point, various writers were assuring us that humanity was getting better and better all the time. Those writers did have a goal and a direction in mind. Many of them were writing from a Christian perspective and were sure that humanity was becoming more and more what God planned us to be.

The recent book I read wasn’t written from a Christian perspective and so had more trouble saying where we were going as a species. Since he was approaching everything from an evolutionary perspective, the best he could suggest was that we were evolving well.

I find it interesting that this idea of the perfectibility of humanity is still being trotted out. The evidence is stacked seriously against this thesis. The Christian run at the theory in the late 1800s and early 1900s was pretty much destroyed by the horror of World War I. Any remnants and holdouts were wiped out by World War II. The present restatement of the theory sounds good but really only works if you squint so that you don’t see the evil that stalks humanity today.

If you can overlook the modern day racial, cultural, economic, sectarian, political and other unnamed divisions that are hardening into life choices; if you can pretend that people seem to believe that killing a bunch of people is a legitimate way to settle differences or make a political point; if you can tune out all the anonymous hatred that social media enables and supports; if we can ignore the abuse, disrespect and comidification of the weak by the strong—if you can do all that and ignore a bunch more stuff, well then humanity is getting much better.

I can’t ignore the evil and consequent suffering. I would like to be able to think that humanity is getting more and more Christian. I would be willing to settle for humanity to be evolving into some vague better reality. But the evidence is just too powerful for me to accept such ideas. There are certainly individuals and groups who manage to overcome humanity’s drive to cause pain. There are times and places where we humans actually treat each other well.

But on the whole, the idea of a perfect humanity will always crash on the rocks of the inherent evil that plagues our species. I approach this issue as a Christian and we have a theological explanation for the problem—we are sinful. Essentially, we are self-centered and want the world to revolve around us. If you don’t want to approach the problem from a faith perspective, we might suggest that there is something flaw in our generic make up that drives us to make choices that have negative consequences for ourselves and others, choices which can and do threaten the existence not just of our species but of many others as well.

I will stick to the Christian line of thought—it is what I know and what I believe. As Christians, we believe that there is an answer to the problem of evil, especially the evil that comes about as a result of the selfishness of humanity. The answer isn’t found within us, nor is it found in the possibility of a random genetic mutation that makes us better. We need to surrender our selfishness to God because only by getting out of ourselves can we become more than we are.

May the peace of God be with you.

NOT ANONYMOUS!

Many of my Kenyan friends were pleased to discover that my given names come from my grandfathers—they felt that somehow my parents had known their tribal naming customs and followed them. The fact that many of them couldn’t easily pronounce any of my names didn’t take away from the fact that my names fit their customs. To solve the pronunciation problem, they gave me another name, one from their culture which fit my circumstance. Later, some of the students I taught gave me at least one nickname—I say at least one because this one they revealed to me. There may have been other names that they didn’t reveal—these were students, after all.

So, I have a name. Actually, I have several names, all of which I acknowledge and to be honest, am proud of. I appreciate the family connection coming from my given names. I also deeply appreciate the names given to me by my Kenyan friends. My names are a basic part of who I am; they mark my place in the world; they connect me with others and cultures. I would likely still be the same person with a different name but still, the names I have been given are important to me. I am careful to introduce myself with the appropriate name in the appropriate circumstance.

When I am in Kenya, for example, there isn’t all that much value in giving people my Canadian given and family names. I tend to use my Kenyan name, which, in the right circles is recognized. Most of the people in the church we work with there know me or know someone who knows me, at least as long as I use the Kenyan name. In Canada, I use some version of my given names—mind you, that doesn’t always go over well because many people find “Legassie” hard to pronounce.

I am who I am and my names are a part of who I am—and despite the increasingly anonymous culture we live in, I choose to be known by name. To be honest, I hate hiding behind anonymity. When faced with an anonymous survey, I often choose not to fill it out—and if I do fill it out, I often sign it.

When I read something that interests me, I try to discover who wrote it—I want a name to put with the thoughts—not a made up net identity but a real name. It doesn’t really matter what culture the name comes from expect that it can’t come from the internet culture. I tend to ignore stuff identified by strange letter and number combinations or timely slogans or some other way of hiding identity. If I have something to say, I am going to own it—and for me, part of owning it is to tell people who I really am. Not telling them who I really am suggests that I am not really committed to what I am saying or that what I am saying isn’t that important or, perhaps, I am a coward.

I am aware that this puts me at odds with a significant part of our culture, the part which prefers not to be known as they slash and trash and troll and generally spew vitriol and anger and disrespect all over the internet. It puts me at odds with the moral cowards who send anonymous letters to people they don’t like telling them to move or change or even die. My desire for names puts me on the opposite side of a culture that wants increasingly to be able to say and do whatever it wants without taking personal responsibility, which suggests to me that we are fast developing a culture that doesn’t want to deal with consequences.

I am probably a dinosaur because I want real names from real people. If I disagree with someone enough to speak or write it, I am going to let them know who I am. If people disagree with me enough to speak or write it, I want to know who they are. And if people don’t give me their name with their comments, I am going to ignore their comments. This, I think, it part of the personal honesty that my faith teaches. I am who I am and my name is part of who I am. If I am going to be honest, you need to know my name.

May the peace of God be with you.

A PLACE TO STAND

When I was young, both chronologically and spiritually, I lived in a time and place where the physical and theological grounding of life were clear and firm and solid and comforting. Life was easy because there were clear answers and everything was simple. School, home, church, culture all gave the same answers for the same issues and we all agreed on them.

Of course, there was that somewhat confusing set of events when I was 9 or 10 when we switched from one denominational church to another but there was a simple answer for that helped ease my confusion. My father, who hadn’t attended worship decided that it was time to attend but he would only go to the church that was his, or at least where my grandparents attended. That was an acceptable answer because family was always important in our world.

But as I grew chronologically and theologically, I began to run into more and more troubling realities, places where my firm footing was suddenly shaken. The ground under my feet turned from bedrock to sand, gravel or even mud. I discovered, for example, that my treasured KJV Bible wasn’t acceptable for the introductory Biblical studies course—I had to buy and read a different translation. Things got even worse when I realized that I actually liked that translation.

It kept getting shaky. I discovered that some people didn’t actually walk the aisle to become believers. Some weren’t baptized like I was. Some found comfort and encouragement in other denominations. Even worse, there were some people who believed—and practised—the scary idea that a Christian could drink alcohol. And then, somewhere along the line, I discovered that some Christians actually engaged in pre-marital sex. And then, I discovered that some people called themselves believers and were willing to accept the idea that Jesus was more of a mythical figure than a real person. A few suggested that maybe Christians could be found in all political parties and all denominations. And then, the biggest blow of all—some were suggesting that there wasn’t actually any rock in the first place, that everything was relative and flexible and sort of muddy anyway.

Slowly and painfully, the ground I stood on was becoming shakier and muddier and was often more of a trap than a solid support. I sometimes felt that I was wallowing in a mud pit rather than standing on the solid rock—and then I heard a lecture about plate tectonics that told me that even solid bedrock of the earth was in motion. While I didn’t have a crisis of some sort, I did need something, a place to stand that I could be sure of.

One temptation was to decide that the mud I was standing in was actually solid rock. If I called the mud rock long enough and was loud enough and sure enough and strong enough, I could petrify the mud and move everything back to the past when my place to stand was big and solid and comforting. That was a real temptation, one that many people I know have tried to use.

But for me, mud is mud—calling it rock and pretending it was solid really didn’t make it any less muddy. I decided that I needed a different answer. Instead of trying to turn mud into rock, I would find the solid rock, the places where I could stand that were going to support me and enable me to keep going.
I discovered some solid ground—or perhaps it is better to say that God through the Holy Spirit led me to some solid ground. I don’t have a lot of solid ground but what I have is real and strong and unchanging—and most of all, it is sufficient. Standing on that bedrock allows me to engage the mud all around me—and I discovered that I actually enjoy the mud to some extent when I am not in danger of drowning in it or getting stuck.

I don’t have as many answers as I had when I lived in that long ago time of endless solid rock. But I do have some answers, answers that give me a place to stand as I interact with the mud and relativity that marks most of life. And the solidest and most important part of the bedrock is the grace that God extends to me and everyone else.

May the peace of God be with you.

DAVID THE BLOGGER

The worship service at one of the churches I serve has a unique addition to the order. Right after I read the Scriptures, the congregation has an opportunity to ask questions or make comments. This came about as a result of a suggestion by one of the members and has become a highlight of the worship for both pastor and congregation. While there are occasional Sundays where nobody has a question or comment, there are generally some interesting comments and questions—and several times a year, the ensuing discussion become so interesting and valuable that we never actually get to the sermon, which means I am prepared for another Sunday.

Recently, the Scriptures came from Isaiah and Mark. Both passages prompted some comments and we batted them around for awhile. And then, one of the congregants had a question about the responsive reading that we had used earlier in the worship. It was a legitimate question because the reading was Scripture, a reading from Psalm 27.

The question concerned the author of the Psalm. The question and discussion focused on David rather than the Psalm itself. We re-established the fact that David wrote many of the Psalms but not all of them and then the discussion began to look at the character of the writing. The questioner wanted to know a couple of things:

• Can we figure out what David was doing at the time he wrote each Psalm?
• Why are the Psalms so different from other parts of the Bible, like the Gospels for example?

The first question was relatively easy to deal with. Some Psalms identify the circumstances of the writing either in an explanatory note at the beginning or be the content. The second question was more interesting, at least for me. David’s writings are different from the Gospels or the Epistles or the History books partly because David was a poet whose response to the realities and events of his life drove him to record his thoughts and feelings. He wasn’t writing history, biography, theology, explanations, or apologetics. David was writing his feelings.

The best explanation of the difference I could offer was to suggest that if David had been alive today, he would have been a blogger. I don’t read a lot of blogs but many of the ones I do seem to be focused in the writer’s response to their life and the realities they see and experience. Certainly there are the factual blogs, the history blogs, the informative blogs—but there are also a uncounted number of blogs that deal with the writer’s feelings and responses. Even this blog has a strong element of that, although I will never be accused of being a poet.

David used his poetry to help himself deal with his life—and given that his life had a significant number of highs and lows, he had a lot to deal with. In his day, his audience would have been limited to people in the royal court and the temple. But somehow, through the grace of God, some of his poetry was recorded and made available not just to the people of his day but also to people of all time. David probably holds the record for the all time highest number of views—and likes, for that matter.

While it is interesting to speculate how well David would have done as a 21st century blogger, there is no need to actually speculate on his ability to connect with people. His words, written over 2500 years ago in a small, somewhat backwater country in a language that most of us don’t speak manage to cut across time, language and culture and touch something within us that shouts that he got it—he understands. We read his blog, we are touched by the words and ideas and emotions, we react—and most of the time, we are helped. The poetry from the past enables us to deal better with our life in this very different present. And, given the track record, if the world lasts another 2500 years, or 25,000 or 250,000 more years, people are still going to read the Psalms and be touched and changed and helped.

That is pretty good for a 2500+ year old poet who was just trying to make sense of his life using his propensity towards poetry. Most of the rest of us: bloggers, preachers, writers, even poets can only dream of writing something so significant.

May the peace of God be with you.