FIRST SNOW

In the last few weeks, I have run onto several recent immigrants to our area, several of whom haven’t had the pleasure of driving in snow. They were talking a bit about the process of discovering snow tires, low speed trips, watching the weather, allowing more time than normal and all that sort of stuff that I grew up knowing. While some of the people I have been talking to have several years of winter driving under their seatbelts at this point, they confess to still being nervous.

Generally, winter driving doesn’t make me nervous—except for the very first storm that puts real snow on the road, especially if that storm begins during the day time and the snow accumulates before dark. Then, I get really nervous. A minor part of the nervousness comes from the inherent danger of driving in snow—that is a good nervousness because it causes me to remember all the winter driving techniques that I have learned over the years: slow down, don’t make sudden starts or stops, slow down. allow lots more space between cars, slow down, pay more attention to oncoming traffic, slow down, never pass the snow plow and finally, slow down. Remembering and following these rules has saved me from lots of accidents. The accidents that I and others had to prove the value of these rules did have a positive side.

But remembering the rules accounts for only a minor part of the nervousness. Most of my anxiety and stress with winter driving comes from having to share the road with other drivers. Most drivers in Canada quickly remember and adapt to winter driving techniques—but there are a few who seem to think that driving in snow and slush is exactly the same as driving on clear dry roads. Those drivers really bother me. They may think they have control as they pass several prudent drivers, slipping and sliding as they (probably) curse and fume at all us slower drivers. But they don’t have as much control as they think and their next accident is only a slip away—and my nervousness comes from the fact that I really don’t want to be in their way when they lose their tenuous traction and spin out. Slippery roads mean I have very little chance of avoiding their out of control vehicle.

When I meet or am passed by such a driver, I almost always get around to asking myself why people do stuff like that—generally, that comes after I question their sanity in less than ministerial terms. (I freely admit to not being perfect and there is nothing like a poor driver to bring out my imperfection). I don’t actually know why I ask about their motives because ultimately, the answer is basic theology.

We are sinful beings, a traditional theological way of saying that we are all selfish and think that we are the centre of the world. We tend to think that if the world doesn’t revolve around us, it should and we have a tendency to act in ways that confirm our selfishness. So, if I don’t want to slow down on snowy roads, the world needs to accommodate me. I may justify it by saying that I am an experienced driver or that I have a car that is good in snow or that I have four wheel drive or that I can handle the snow better than others but the reality is that my sinfulness is showing.

And that means that I need to do some work on myself. While I tend to focus on their sinful and selfish poor driving, I probably need to focus more on my sinful and selfish judgemental attitude. I might be driving slower than they are but I am being as sinful as they are—and since I can’t really reform them, I need to focus on what I can really control: my driving and my attitude. I probably need to drop the stone that I want to throw at the poor driver and deal with my own sin.

It is much easier and more gratifying to judge the other driver—but as a follower of Christ, I need to allow the Holy Spirit (and maybe the police) to deal with that driver while I ask for the Spirit’s help to deal with my own sin.

May the peace of God be with you.

JUMPING FENCES

I was recently visiting a spot near an urban setting where there are several waterfalls, deep gorges and beautiful views. Since it is near a lot of people, there were lots of visitors, even on a cold, cloudy day like the one when we visited. Whoever ran the sites had provided parking, good trails and lots of fences along the steep drops. The fences were high, strong and plastered with signs telling people not to climb the fences or cross the fences because of the dangers presented by the steep high gorges.

We stopped at one spot to take pictures and as I was looking for the best angle, I spotted two people who had clearly decided the signs were not for them—they were at the bottom of the gorge, clearly enjoying their much better view. A little later along the trail, at another photo spot, I saw another pair of people who had crossed the fence line and descended the steep cliff to get a much better view.

One of the people accompanying us on the visit mentioned that the local fire department has a special unit trained to rescue the significant number of people who cross the fence and get stuck at the bottom of the gorge. The unit has lots of practise because the signs simply can’t overcome the desire to go where no one has (or shouldn’t have) gone before.

Metaphorically, I am no stranger to climbing fences and wandering in territory that could be difficult or dangerous—a lot of my work in ministry has taken me into areas that others have warned me to avoid. That has caused some problems and produced some significant ministry. As a teacher and mentor of other pastors, I have tended to encourage people to see the fences and occasionally challenge them, while being aware of the possibility of danger.

But that metaphorical fence jumping somehow doesn’t seem to be anywhere near the same as the physical jumping of a real fence and deliberately stepping into a dangerous situation that just might require significant time, effort, expense and risk on the part of other people to pull out the fence jumper.

I am not entirely sure what inspires such behaviour. I know that some of us see warning signs as a challenge. Others are pretty sure that only normal people need to avoid the dangers. Some might suggest that it is their right to step into dangerous positions. Others, perhaps ignore signs and warnings and assume they can do what they want. And the majority of people who jump the fence seem to get away with it, probably through a combination of luck, skill and possible divine intervention.

But each success encourages another attempt. Each time a fence jumper is spotted, another is encouraged to go deeper or higher or further. And eventually, the rescue crew has to step in; the sign painters prepare another sign; the lawyers begin figuring out who pays for what—and in the meantime, someone else is going to jump the fence, probably using the sign as a support to climb the fence.

We humans don’t like limits. We have all sorts of justifications and reasons and explanations. But probably the best and most profound explanation comes from the Bible. We are sinful people. I am using that word in the broad sense—we are essentially self-centered and selfish, convinced that if the world doesn’t revolve around us, it should. This self-focus is at the root of all fence jumping going all the way back to the day when a man and a woman climbed a fence to eat from a tree that they had been told not to eat from.

In our desire for self-gratification, we miss some significant realities. We miss the fact that some things are bad for us. We will suffer physically, emotionally, spiritually or some combination of those. Others will suffer as well—and unfortunately, others will sometimes suffer a whole lot more than we do when we cross the fence. The person who falls down the cliff because they copied my successful attempt at jumping the fence suffers much more than I do.

But for all that, I can’t quite bring myself to say that we must always stay within the fences. Some fences need to be jumped—the real trick is figuring out which ones need to be jumped and which ones need to be respected.

May the peace of God be with you.

THE CANE

For the past few weeks, my very old knees have been complaining about still being engaged in the work of carrying me around. They have been complaining for years but for some reason, this last couple of weeks has seen the complaining develop into a sort of strike. One knee became so weak and painful that walking became seriously difficult—and since the other knee is weaker to start with, the extra strain on it meant that I began to sit lot and waited until there were several reasons to get up.

And, because I can’t sit all the time, I dug out my cane and started using it when I had to go further than a few feet. This was a major event for me. I am somewhat stubborn, somewhat independent, somewhat dedicated to accomplishing what I want to do free of help. I resisted glasses as a teenager for several months; I resisted hearing aids at a 60+ year old for several years and I resisted the pain in my knee for longer than anyone knows. But I realized that if I was going to make it from the car to the church hall for Bible study, I would need the cane—rolling along wouldn’t be all that successful while carrying my briefcase and water.

It wouldn’t be all that big a problem, though, because I always arrive first and would be inside and settled before anyone else arrived. And, if I followed my usual practise of being the last one to leave, most wouldn’t even notice my limp or the cane. Although I joke sometimes about using the cane to garner sympathy, I really don’t like the limits the cane illustrates or the multiple questions and so on that accompany the cane.

Shortly after I began the drive to the study, I realized I was in trouble. The long awaited resurfacing of our road was underway—and I managed to arrive at the work site just as the traffic going my way was stopped. There was still time but as the wait stretched on into minutes, I began to fidget and wonder how much longer and all the rest. There are no other practical routes from my house to the Bible study so my only choice was to wait. Finally, we were allowed through, although we had to drive slowly behind the guide truck for what seemed like hours. I couldn’t even make up a lot of time after we were free of the work area because several of the cars in front of me were obviously being driven by people seeking to save the planet by poking along well under the speed limit.

But I could still arrive before most people, I thought, at least until I came up to the second set of road works and flagperson, who also timed their work perfectly to stop me for another several minutes, followed by another slow trip behind the follow me truck and another forced speed reduction by the drivers in front.

I finally arrived—and most of the members of the study were there, either standing by the locked door (the person who normally opens the door and turns on the heat was away that day) or sitting in their cars waiting. So, I park, open the door and crawl out of the car and stand unsteadily as I juggle my briefcase, water and cane. By the time I was standing with everything sort of in control, most of the study group was right there, asking what was wrong, if they could help, did I need anything, was I okay.

Eventually, I got inside. One person took the key to open the door, another ended up with my water, a third had the briefcase. No one offered to carry me but that was probably just because of the fact that all of us are actually too old to make such foolish gestures. I did actually appreciate the help—it is much easier to use a cane when I don’t have anything else to carry at the same time. Getting out was the reverse—all my duties and burdens were taken on by others. All I had to do was limp to the car and fall inside.

I hate being dependent on anyone or anything. But honestly, it was really great to have people so willing to help out and the cane made the trip from the car to the hall much easier. My pride can be a real problem at times.

May the peace of God be with you.

TWO BUILDINGS

One of the realities of being a pastor for rural churches is that I get to work in some really old buildings. One Sunday recently, both worship services occurred in old buildings. One dates back to 1835 and the other to 1833. In another pastorate, we were responsible for a building that was put up in 1810. By European standards, these are of course relatively new buildings—but by our standards, they are very old.

These buildings have all the drawbacks that you might expect from such an old building: limited facilities, inadequate electricity, inefficient heating systems, no cooling system, poor parking, uncomfortable and fixed seating. Most of them are wooden buildings, which always need serious work—the 1835 building needs sills replaced and the 1833 building has had major work done recently. The majority of them indicate their age with the tell tale scent of mold and decay. Basic maintenance jobs tend to be expensive and eat up lots of time, energy and money getting them taken care of.

There are some advantages to the buildings: we have a place for our church to gather, we can enjoy the old-time craftsmanship, we can complain about the hard seats. If we get enough money and support, we can and so make some modifications that make them better for our purposes.

But lots of people ask why we are so committed to these old, expensive, inefficient buildings. Generally, the only people not asking that question are the ones who have regularly worshipped in the buildings year after year. New comers, people from away, leaders of bigger congregations in other places, denominational dealership, even theology professors ask the question a lot, sometimes assuming that just because they ask the question, we inhabiting these old buildings will see the light and abandon the buildings.

But those of us who worship in such buildings aren’t asking the question. A person like me who has pastored congregations like this for years used to ask the question. These days, I don’t bother asking because I know the answer. Why do we in small churches keep meeting in old, antiquated, expensive to maintain and heat buildings? The answer is simple: because we can.

We don’t worship the building—well, maybe a few do. Mostly, we continue to inhabit our buildings because they are ours. We worship week after week and the building itself enhances our worship. Occasionally, the enhancement is a result of the building itself–the acoustics, the craftsmanship, the view—but more often, the enhancements occurs because of what the building houses.

It houses our memories. That seat at the back left—that is where I first went to Sunday School. The third pew from the front in the centre, that is where Deacon Zeke used to sit—he was a wise and wonderful example of the Christian faith. That pew right there—that is where I was sitting when I decided to follow Jesus. That Communion table—that was donated by my great-grandparents and my great-grandfather made it by hand from wood he cut himself.

The building houses other memories as well. We remember those we grieved and whose lives we celebrated at the funeral. We remember the weddings when new families came into being. We remember those who grew up in our midst and went on to serve God in the pulpit or the mission field. We are reminded each week of the faithful whose memories are collected and celebrated in our buildings.

We keep our buildings because they hold the memories. We keep our buildings because they allow us to celebrate the cloud of witnesses that are part of our story. We keep our buildings because they are a visible symbol of the endurance of our faith. We keep our buildings because they help our faith.

We don’t worship our buildings and we don’t need the building to have and express our faith. If the building is beyond repair or suffers a fire, we will grieve. We will mourn the loss—but we won’t lose our faith. We will still be believers, albeit believers struggling to find a place to locate our memories.

Our old, inefficient and expensive to maintain buildings could disappear and our faith would continue. But we have them—and because we have them, we can and do use them to enhance our faith.

May the peace of God be with you.

BEYOND SELFISHNESS

I am colour blind and by now, most people I spend any amount of time with know that. Most of them have asked me what it is like and I have given the explanation, including how I deal with traffic lights. But even with all that, people who know me well regularly give me directions that include turning at the orange and purple sign and following that road to the green house, directions that are incredibly useful to most people but which are totally useless to me and many others.

I also get really upset when I am reading a magazine that gives me a really interesting survey results in the form of a graphic in which each variable is represented by a different colour, all of which look pretty much the same to me, making the chart useless to me.

My response is simple: I am starting a movement to outlaw colour or at least colour where it matters. You can have your colours in the privacy of your own home, as long as you aren’t exposing children to them. But outside, there needs to be a complete absence of colour where it matters. Traffic lights, directions, magazine charts—anything that relies on colour will need to be re-formulated and re-visioned so that we who can’t see colour are not longer the victims of discrimination and prejudice and danger.

The unfortunate reality of our modern age is that it I actually started such a movement, there would be followers, some of whom would commit completely, filing the quest for a colour neutral world with anger and partisanship and bickering and maybe even anti-colour terrorism. We all want our agenda to be the agenda for everyone and struggle to deal with the fact that our wants and wishes are not the most important things in the world.

This is also an approach that is bound to create more problems than it solves because once I begin pushing my stuff, others feel the need to push back in defence of their stuff. If I see colour, why should I have my freedom limited because of those who can’t?

This is the problem of seeing ourselves as the centre of the universe—there is no room for anyone else. And this is the essential problem that God was faced with at our creation. We were created with self-awareness and self-understanding and the ability to love and appreciate ourselves. I think that is part of the meaning of being made in the image of God.

But we need to remember another part of the meaning of the image of God to balance this self awareness. Being made in God’s image also means that we were created to be in relationship with God. In fact, we can only realize the fullness of who we are and what we are meant to be when we are in relationship with God. This relationship with God gives us the proper perspective on creation. We are important and significant bur we are to be in relationship with God, a relationship which helps us understand the real order of creation.

We are not the centre of creation. Our thoughts and desires and wishes are not the be all and end all of everything. Getting my way isn’t the goal of life. Making people do things my way isn’t the purpose. Trying to make everyone into me isn’t why I am here.

The antidote to human selfishness is an openness to God. As we develop the relationship with God that is inherent to being made in his image, we learn how to deal with our selves without becoming self-centered. When we are God-centered, we fit in the universe. We discover that in God’s vision, we have a place that fits and works. We are not at the centre but we are in the universe, we are important and we do have a place.

Our faith is rooted our being willing to open ourselves to God and accept his vision and version. We are required to surrender our desire to be God and be willing to be in relationship with the real God, who by definition is a God of love and compassion. Surrendering our selfishness to His love and compassion allows us to become who we really are in a way that no selfish plans and schemes can ever do.

May the peace of God be with you.

RIGHT AND WRONG

I really enjoy the current emphasis in police TV shows and movies that puts lots of emphasis on using scientific, psychological and sociological input when it comes to solving crimes. I know enough about all those areas to know that in real life, things simply don’t happen that fast nor that easily but since it is TV and movies, I really don’t care—I am watching it for diversion, not education.

I am also interested in the way writers are seeking to deal with the realities of crime. In the old days of black and white TV, crime shows were simple: the bad guys were really bad and the good guys were really good. We all wanted the bad guys caught and we cheered for the good guys. These days, well, everyone is troubled and conflicted and crimes are generally committed by people who we would like to have coffee with, at least on the days when they aren’t going to commit some horrendous crime.

One show I was watching went even deeper to spend some time dealing with the confusing area of motivation. The murderer had committed several murders and as she was being interviewed, she revealed that she had no choice—the murders were the only way she could ensure that her daughter won the competition she was involved in. It was her duty as a parent to help her child.

Now, on some levels, I rebel at that woman’s explanation but on some other levels, what she is saying makes perfect sense. And even more, it strikes me that it is a very modern approach to a very old problem. Well, technically, it is a post-modern approach to an old problem.

Our behaviour is based on our underlying beliefs, our philosophy of life or our theology or however we describe the stuff underneath everything that defines reality and provides us with a sense of direction and morality and right and wrong. Our western culture used to have a fairly clear, dominant underlying foundation based loosely on the Judeo-Christian tradition with some bits and pieces added or subtracted for convenience. These days, we have replaced that with a variety of underlying ideas and philosophies, some of which make a bit of sense and some of which conflict with others. Taken all together, though, it means that we in the west really don’t speak the same ethical language anymore and even worse, we generally don’t want to understand another standard.

The bottom line is that right and wrong have become something of a popularity contest. If we can get enough people to support our particular approach to right and wrong, it becomes the norm. If we know how to use social media well enough to create a strong public response that will scare politicians enough, we can even create legislation that will give some serious legitimacy to our approach.

I am not going to complete this post by saying that we need to get back to the good old foundation that worked so well in the past. The most obvious problem is that the Judeo-Christian foundation didn’t work all that well. Our past is filled with injustice: the theft of native land, enslavement of non-whites, discrimination against out of favour faith expressions, prejudice of all kinds and shapes, rules and regulations that favoured some and harmed others. Our traditional sense of right and wrong was just as distorted and rotten as the present system of anything can be justified—in the end, it only works for some people some of the time.

Definitions of right and wrong come and go. Foundational systems rise and fall. The essential problem is that they are all flawed because of the fact that in the end, we are all selfish and self-centered individuals who think that we should have the freedom to do what we want while at the same time being able to make sure everyone else does what we want.

The essential selfishness is our basic human problem and it is what the Bible calls sin. We tend to think of sin as a list of right and wrong things—but those are only symptoms of the essential problem which is our selfishness. No system has even been developed that can really deal with that problem simply because those devising the systems are all selfish at heart themselves.

The problem isn’t the current philosophical foundation and the answer isn’t going back to an older one—the problem is the reality of our human nature and that takes something more significant to change, which we will look at in another post.

May the peace of God be with you.

MY DAY OFF

One day recently, I was so tired at night that I barely made it through the 10:00 news—I think I was awake during most of it but I am also pretty sure that I didn’t focus fully on what was being said. My reading time before going to sleep was rather brief—the words on the ereader didn’t seem to make sense, either because of a software problem with the ereader or a different problem with the actual reader.

I know why I was tired. The day had been very full and part of a very full week. It began with study time. I had a worship service to prepare for the local nursing home. I got that done and then turned to the funeral service that I had prepared the day before. I read it over, tinkered a bit with it and transferred it to my tablet. By then, it was time to leave for the funeral service. I arrived early, spent some time talking with people and at the appropriate time, lead the funeral service.

When that was done, I went home for lunch ( and a brief nap), followed by some work on a session for the lay preaching class that would be happening the next day. I also gave some though to a sermon because Sundays inevitably show up each week and the congregation expects me to have something to say. And so until the lay preaching class members are ready, that means I need to have a sermon prepared. I didn’t write the sermon that afternoon—I reached a point where I couldn’t do any more creative stuff and so too a bit of time to do very little.

But the day wasn’t actually done. After supper, I had a counselling session with a couple I have been working with for a while. We had been doing well but there had been some external trauma that we needed to work through. But after that session, I was done for the day. At that point, I think I began counting the minutes until I could actually go to bed.

As you probably guessed from the title, this all happened on my day off. I was not supposed to be doing any work that day, let alone everything I did. And this is where I have something of a problem. I grew up in the era of ministry being a 24-7 occupation. Clergy worked all the time—it was part of their commitment to God. There was stuff to be done—important stuff and no one called by God could expect to slow down.

I never bought into that particular myth. I have always believed that even clergy need a healthy work/rest balance and I have worked hard over the years to have such a balance. As a teacher and mentor of clergy, I have encouraged ministry students to take care of themselves and even scolded a few for not working on a healthy balance in their lives. Over the course of my ministry, I have worked hard not to work too hard.

But that week on my day off, I spent most of the day working. And it isn’t like I will get that day back during the week—that week was just beyond belief and there was no time, except for the few hours freed up because of a cancellation because of a snowstorm. I broke all my own personal rules about work/life balance that week.

And while I know many clergy who like to brag about how much they work, I don’t feel proud about my week—I feel equal amounts of fatigue and guilt. Fatigue because I worked too much with too little rest and guilt because I didn’t get the balance right.

Fortunately, not every week is like this and most weeks, I do get my day off. Equally fortunately, I have learned how to forgive myself for breaking my rules of work/life balance. Some days and some weeks inevitably demand more that I am supposed to give. But as long as I can forgive myself and make sure that I eventually get the break and rest I need, things will be okay. I am doing what God has called me to do—and part of that calling involves self care, which means I might have worked one day off but I won’t work every day off.

May the peace of God be with you.

I CAN DO IT BY MYSELF!

The man just wants to be left alone. We don’t know about his past but hints and clues suggest that his life hasn’t been easy. There may be something terrible back somewhere but all we see now is a strong, independent individual who just wants to farm his farm, herd his cattle, fish his fish, research his research, raise his family—that part varies depending on the movie. What doesn’t vary is the need for independence and the lack of a need for much in the way of relationships with other people.

This movie, book, TV show, coffee shop tale is something of a theme for our western culture: the strong, capable independent hero who just wants to be left alone. He (sometimes, she) needs nothing beyond what he produces himself. We in the west like to think of ourselves in terms of this cultural archetype—we are all like this, or wish we were like this.

And this cultural desire for independence is part of the reason why Christian worship attendance in Canada is so low when claims of being a Christian are still relatively high. Just as we celebrate the hero taking care of business by himself, we have developed a faith culture that sees faith as not needing anything beyond an individual and God—and if we are really honest, the God part of the equation is open to a great deal of interpretation. We are not all that comfortable with God unless we have the independence to tinker and edit so that the God who is the focus of our faith looks and feels like we want him (her, it) to look and feel.

We are, in reality, a culture that celebrates independence. We don’t really like obligations that are imposed by relationships. We don’t want to owe people. In fact, we have created a culture that tries to reduce every interpersonal transaction to the lowest common denominator—and that tends to be money.

If I pay for something, I am still independent and in control. I made the money, I chose to spend it. The relationship is bounded by the financial transaction. There is no need for gratitude, returning favours, mutual support—all that kind of ucky and troubling stuff that relationships and commitments bring.

I am aware that I am overstating the reality. But our western independence is a reality and it does, I think, have an effect on how we western believers relate to each other and the church. To be a part of a church might suggest that we need something or someone. At the very least, it suggests that someone might be able to ask us for something and we might not be in a position to say no. And so it is easier and safer in the long run to conceptualize our faith as a part of our independence.

My very western faith is focused on God—we have a good thing going here. I don’t really need God and he doesn’t really need me but we can get together now and then and within the rules of my independence, I can do whatever—maybe complain about the difficulties of life, maybe blame God for some trouble, maybe tell God how to do her job. I don’t actually need God but it is nice to have him or her around, as long as God doesn’t make any unreasonable demands, like suggesting that I join a church.

So, we have become a culture of independent Christians, people whose faith is expressed in solitude and not in community. And while there is certainly a need and encouragement in the Christian faith for solitude, it isn’t the defining characteristic of the Christian faith. And the deeper, darker, ignored reality is that it really isn’t a defining characteristic of our western culture.

Remember the independent hero standing on his own two feet, dealing with life on his terms? Well, doesn’t that movie always end up with the hero discovering the wonder of a relationship as he battles for the woman or the child or the older couple or even the dog or horse? Doesn’t the movie end with the independent hero happily trading his independence for the relationship?

Our culture may love the theory of independence but the practise tends to be lonely and boring. Our culture and our faith in the end need us to be in real relationships with real people.

May the peace of God be with you.

WHOSE SIDE IS JESUS ON?

I have been involved in learning about my faith from the very earliest beginnings of my faith journey. I have had a lot of teachers: my parents, pastors, professors, writers, friends, parishioners. Being a perpetual student allows me to learn from almost anyone and almost any situation. I have learned that I need to be discriminating and willing to evaluate what I am learning, though, because not everything I learn has equal value—and in the end, not everything I learn is true.

And that is important because it seems that the amount of information about faith has exploded. Mostly, this is a result of the increase in media options. Everyone today had an opinion and a way to make that opinion known. And so we are inundated with information about faith. And if we are not willing to think about what we hear and read, we are likely in trouble.

According to various media sources, for example, if Jesus were alive today, he would support banning assault weapons or he would be carrying an AR-15. He would be in favour of opening immigration doors wide or he would support restrictive regulations that protect our homes. Probably, he would speak in King James English—or maybe he would rap the Gospel. Jesus would be a capitalist—or a communist. He would be a conservative voter—or a liberal one. Jesus wants the unborn protected—but he also stands for reproductive rights. I personally am pretty sure that Jesus was left-handed but there are many others who suggest that he was right-handed.

Jesus and our faith get drafted by everyone and everybody who feels that their ideas and causes need a bit of a push. And the real tragedy is that no matter what side drafts Jesus, there are believers who are prepared to accept what they are told without question. The underlying reality is that we all want to assume that Jesus is like us and believes like us and that gives us a divine supporter for our side. The fact that the New Testament is silent on many of the major cultural issues allows us to pick and choose and cherry pick bits and pieces that we can weave into a divine approval of our side.

To see Jesus and the rest of the Christian faith as simply a support and confirmation of what we already believe and want is really to miss completely that reality of Jesus and the faith. Jesus didn’t come to us to confirm what we want confirmed. Jesus came because not one of us was getting it right. The best of us still weren’t what we were supposed to be. And if we couldn’t get it together individually, there was and is absolutely no chance that we can get it together as groups—our cultural standards are as shot through with wrong and evil as our personal standards.

Jesus came to rescue us from ourselves—and there was no question that we needed rescuing. We were going to hell in a handbasket. Jesus came to deal with our wrongs, beginning with the individual personal wrong in our lives and moving out from there to the cultural wrongs. To treat Jesus as anything but a divine statement about our inability to get it right is to miss entirely the point of the Christian faith and reduce Jesus to a personal and cultural flunky that we can use to support our stupidity, wrong and evil.

Jesus isn’t the supporter of our ideas that we often want him to be. In reality, he came to point out just how wrong we are and that even at our best, we are still a long way from what we were meant to be. He came to rescue us from our self-induced messes and at the same time, to stand as a clear and powerful statement in opposition to our self-centered wrongness. Rather than use Jesus to support our ways, we need to see Jesus as standing outside our lives, existing to show us a better way than any culturally, politically or personally correct idea that we might have.

May the peace of God be with you.

THOUGHTS DURING WORSHIP

Because of the fact that I am a pastor, I rarely get to attend worship where I am not involved somehow in the leadership of the service.  That means that my involvement in worship tends to focus on what is going on and what I need to do next and how the worship is flowing.  In addition, because I am a pastor, I am also watching the congregation picking up clues and hints and indications about how they are reacting to the worship as well as how they are in general.

However, that isn’t all that I think about during worship.  At one recent worship, I came to worship in pain.  I am not sure if I overdid walking or the change in weather affected me or I was sitting too much but my knees and shoulders were seriously painful.  Standing to lead worship was tolerable, although I took the two steps up to the pulpit area a bit more slowly than sometimes.  But when I announced the offering and sat down, I noticed something.

The pulpit chair is really low–and the creaky knees that I currently possess did some severe protesting at the extra distance to sit down.  Normally, I grab the chair arm and use that to take some of the strain–but the shoulder taking that strain decided it was going to lodge a protest.  I did set down but to be honest, it is more like I fell the last inch or so.  Since the choir does their special right after the offering, I had a few minutes to recover–and wonder if I would be able to stand up after the special.

Now, I am not alone having such issues. There were at least 3 canes and one walker in use during that worship service–remember, we are an older congregation.  I know for a fact that I am not the youngest person there but that particular day, there were only about 4 people younger than me there.

But as I was sitting in that way too low chair, listening to the choir and wondering if I would be able to stand without looking like my knees were in open rebellion, I wasn’t thinking too much about the others in the congregation.  I was thinking about my knees, my shoulders and the fingers on my left hand, all of which seem to have decided that arthritis was a good choice.  I was conscious of being 65, conscious of not being able to do what I used to do, conscious of having to think through even simple physical activities like standing up from a too low chair without further upsetting my knees.

I am getting old.  Now, I know that aging is a state of mind and that we are only as old as we think we are and that my attitude makes a difference and that 65 really isn’t old anymore.  I have heard all the platitudes, I may actually have used them now and then, hopefully not to shut someone up as they talked about their struggles with aging.  But in spite of all the propaganda to the contrary, aging isn’t a picnic.

I hurt–and that is a direct result of living for a certain number of years. I am tired a lot–and that is a result of just not having the energy I used to have.  I forget things–well, to be honest, that has always been a problem and has stayed about the same over the years.  But I do notice a decline in what I can do and in my level of physical comfort.

What am I going to do about all that?  Well, when the choir finished their selection, I grabbed the arm of the chair, put my painful knees under me and levered myself up to begin the prayer time that came next in the order of service.  I carried on with the worship, preached my sermon, concluded the worship service, carefully stepped down the two steps and then, at the impromptu meeting to arrange our annual tea and sale, volunteered to be there pretty much the whole day.

Which is to say that I am getting older, I have more aches and pains, I am slower and more limited in what I can do but I am adapting and I am going to do what I can while I can as much as I can.  Learning to live with and around my limits just might be a sign that I am developing some maturity.

May the peace of God be with you.