Fishing with Nets

Simon answered, “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything.  But because you say so, I will let down the nets.” – Luke 5:5

Our scripture lesson today is one of the early stories in Jesus’ ministry where he calls Simon Peter, James, and John to follow him.  These three were partners in a fishing business in Capernaum.  Jesus met them by the water as they were tying up loose ends after a night of fishing.  As the story goes, Jesus asked if he could step into one of their boats.  He wanted room to teach the crowd of people who had gathered around him as he was standing on the shore.  After he had finished teaching, he remained in the boat and told Peter to push off from the land and do some more fishing.

The immediate problem was that the fishing trio had just come in from an unproductive and unsatisfying night of work.  They hadn’t caught anything, and, presumably, the nets and gear were already cleaned and put away. They were ready to go home and rest.

Peter protested mildly. He was a professional fisherman, after all, and Jesus was only a carpenter.  But to his credit, Peter did as Jesus suggested.  In fact, the gospel quotes Peter as saying:  “Master, we’ve worked hard all night and haven’t caught anything. But because you say so, I will let down the nets.”  They shove off, cast their nets where Jesus says to throw them, and sure enough, they pull in the biggest catch they’ve ever had.

The last scene in the story is of the three Galilean fishermen walking away from their boats to follow Jesus.  Jesus says that from then on they would still be fishermen, but fishers of men.

The church has long used this story of the miraculous catch of fish as a jumping-off point for evangelism.  Countless churches have had men’s outreach groups named “The Fishermen’s Club” or something like it. Many a Christian has worn a small piece of jewelry in the shape of a small fish hook as a reminder of their calling to invite others to follow Jesus. (They should be nets, of course, but the intention is there.)  And children and adults alike have sung songs about it: “I Will Make You Fishers of Men,” “Keep Your Lure in the Water,” and others.

Evangelism is certainly one of the things the church ought to do.  Understood rightly, it’s one of the great privileges we Christians have: to offer to others the same good news we have received. Christianity, unlike the exclusive, ethnic, and sometimes secretive religions of both Jesus’ and our time, is an open faith.  Anyone who wants to believe the story and come into the family of God can do so.

Evangelism is nothing more than telling the story of God’s redeeming love in Christ to people who might want to hear and believe it.  In fact, the word comes from two Greek words:  eu, which means good, and angelion, which means message or news. So, to be an evangelist is, quite literally, a story-teller with a good ending or one who reports good news.

What Jesus did when he connected fishing on the Sea of Galilee with “fishing for men” was to say that he intended Peter, James and John to be story-tellers like he was.  This good news/story-telling is a lot like casting a net into the waters, Jesus says.  You cast your net and you pull it in and you see what you caught. This is how we are going to get more people to follow us.

As an interesting and not unrelated aside, this imagery of casting something broadly is reflected also in the parable of the sower – another story often used for evangelistic efforts.  That story, you will remember, is told in all three synoptic gospels. (In Luke it’s in chapter 8.)  It is about seed that is spread – broadcast, really – on different kinds of ground, some of which is fertile and some which is not.

So some seeds sprout and grow into larger plants and some do not.  But the seed represents the good news of God.  The sower is anyone who tells the story.  Whether any seed germinates and grows is dependent upon the quality of soil – the spiritual sensitivity of the hearer.

Evangelism, in our day, has often gotten connected with the modern skills of salesmanship, marketing, and public relations.  These are highly developed, finely focused means for selling the products and services of our day.  And the church has not been uncreative, lacking, or slow in trying to use them.

I saw recently in southwest Ohio a church that made it clear just what kind of people they were trying to reach.  On its brightly lighted sign along the highway was the offer of free Starbucks coffee if you came inside.  Note they weren’t simply offering free coffee, as other (unrefined? boorish?) churches might do; it was Starbucks coffee. Clearly these people knew who they wanted in their church.

[In the interest of full disclosure, I happen to like Starbucks coffee and buy it often.  But I am not unaware of its upscale image.]

My own denomination recently began a public relations campaign called Rethink Church.  And on the outside of the brochures about the campaign are photographs of hard wooden pews in an empty building — signifying many of our present churches, I gather.   On the inside of the flyer, however, are pictures of handsome, fit, successful young twenty-somethings all smiling.  Rethink Church is about getting these young, prosperous, and good-looking people inside the doors.

I’m all in favor of encouraging the younger generation to find their place in the kingdom, of course.  But what I’m really in favor of (and I think God is with me on this) is everyone else being inside, too.  How about a brochure with pictures of the disabled, or the overweight, or the imprisoned, or the poorly dressed, or .. well, you get the idea. I mean if you want to fasten your sights on some people more than others, let’s go after the ones Jesus tended to go after – the ones the world tends to ignore.

You see what happens when you trade the images of fishing and farming for marketing and sales, don’t you?  You trade the broadcasting of seeds and nets and leaving the results of what you get in the hands of God for the increasingly narrow selling of your message to those whom you alone have decided you want in your church.

I am not so sure Jesus intended his disciples to be so focused.   This broadcasting of seeds and the throwing of nets may not be simply primitive illustrations of evangelism which can be tossed lightly aside by us.  They may very well be the appropriate illustration of what Jesus meant we are to do and how we are to do it.

We have a story to tell, so tell it, Jesus says. Leave the catch up to me.  Even though I’m a carpenter, I know where the fish are better than you do.

Don’t Change the Story

[C]ontend for the faith once given to the saints.… [B]uild yourselves up in your most holy faith.  — Jude 3, 20.

The one-chapter epistle of Jude was written to encourage Christians to “contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints.”  (v.3) There were false teachers in the church who promoted a corrupted brand of the gospel.  Their message did not square with what had already been laid down as true and, more importantly, licensed immoral behavior.

Don’t listen to them, Jude says.  They are godless people who preach only to justify their own immorality and they want you to join them in their dissipated ways.  Nothing good comes of this, Jude says.

The epistle of Jude is as clear as anything else in the New Testament on how faith influences behavior.  Give the false teachers their due:  they knew the traditional gospel of Jesus Christ could never allow them to behave immorally.  So they changed the story (Jesus isn’t God so I don’t have to listen to him) … and now they can!

Spinning the story line of the Christian message, slightly or significantly, has long been an attractive temptation for people who want God’s support for whatever it is they want to do.  Often, you don’t even have to change the gospel, you just emphasize some parts to the exclusion of others.

The win-at-all-costs athlete who prints on his shoes, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me,” will pretty much ignore passages about the last being first and the weak being strong.  The hot-tempered man who likes to point out the anger of Jesus when he upset the tables in the temple often ignores words about self-control and kind words.  The rich woman who thinks God has blessed her so she can live a comfortable life conveniently overlooks passages that say riches are given to some to help those who have little.

Jude’s words to “contend for the faith once given” are often called upon for faithfulness to orthodoxy which is not to be dismissed as unimportant.   But the tenor of the letter is about believing alike not so we all have the same ancient beliefs but so we all have the same godly virtues.

Jude writes to keep the same faith as “once delivered to the saints” because what one believes has a bearing on how one behaves.  And since the world will always see how we behave before they ask what we believe, believing rightly is not irrelevant.  Indeed, it is where a life that becomes the gospel begins.

So contend for it, Jude says, and build yourself up in it.

God Made It Grow

I planted the seed in your hearts, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow. – I Corinthians 3:6

I’ve never been much of a “my church is the best church for everyone” pastor. Nor have I ever thought that I’m the best spiritual director/pastor for every Christian.  I’ve long found comfort and wisdom in Paul’s words (see above) to the Corinthians who is willing to spread the responsibility around.   Churches are places where people ought to grow in their life with God, of course.  And pastors are people called by God to give leadership – by word and deed – in spiritual matters.

But it’s abundantly clear that no one church, and no one pastor, can possibly serve the spiritual needs of every believer.  So, in concert with Paul, I’ve come to look at my work and the ministries of my churches as suited for a particular segment of the market among spiritual seekers.  We’re all at different milestones in our spiritual journey and have different needs.  I, and my churches, can serve some believers, but it’s apparently bad ecclesiology to think we’re suited for all.

So I have also tried to be smart (and humble) enough to recognize that churches and sermons besides mine could also offer spiritual direction in ways mine could not.  Indeed, a Christian just might, on my watch, leave my church for perfectly good spiritual reasons.  Or join my church for the same.  In either event, it is God who gives the growth and who deserves any real credit.

I had a conversation the other day with an old friend who is pondering a change of church membership.  She has a long history with her present church.  But life circumstances and her own sensitivity to God is leading her to think about a move.  “What did I think?” she asked me.

I told her what I have already written above.  I also wrote that I didn’t think decisions like that ought to be made hastily.  I even suggested that a certain amount of anguish, suffering and cost/benefit analysis ought to accompany such a decision.  (I am not a fan of flighty church-hopping.)  Still, I didn’t think finding another church, if done for the purpose of one’s spiritual growth, was always a bad idea.

Of course, I also said that once a person decides to join a new church, he or she ought to give themselves wholeheartedly to the service of Christ through that church.  Don’t change churches just to be fed, I said. Change churches so you can be a better servant, too.

My friend is still thinking about it.  And I don’t know if she’ll stay or go.  But I do trust that she and God will work things out for the best.  Because no matter where you go, if you followed God to get there, you are where you ought to be.

The Village Well

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” – John 4:7

John’s gospel (Ch. 4) tells of a meeting which Jesus had with a woman in Samaria, in the village of Sychar.  He and his disciples were passing through the region on their way to Galilee.  While the disciples went looking for food to eat, Jesus rested himself by the community water well.  It was at this well that Jesus met her.

He asked her for a drink of water because, we read later in v. 11, he didn’t have anything to get the water out from the well and she apparently did.  She was surprised at his request, explaining that he was Jew and she was a Samaritan woman. (John parenthetically and helpfully adds cultural context:  “…Jews do not associate with Samaritans.”)  Still, he engaged her in a conversation which eventually led to the deeper and spiritual matters of “living waters” which Jesus offered to her.  From this conversation came the famous words, “Everyone who drinks this (earthly) water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the (spiritual) water I give him will never thirst….the water I give will become …a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (13-14)

By the time we get through chapter four, we have read that the woman was so affected by Jesus that she told her whole neighborhood about him.  They in turn came out to meet him and they, too, came to believe that he was “the Savior of the world.”  (42)

It’s one of my favorite stories in the gospels.  It’s a story about a conversion (conversions, actually) that rises to no higher entertainment level than a simple conversation between two people.  Jesus initiated it, of course, with a straightforward request about water.  But from there on, anything Jesus said about spiritual or moral matters was only in response to the woman’s desire to know more:

Q. Why are you talking to me?
A. I’m not like other men.
Q. Where does living water come from?
A. Me.
Q. Can I have some?
A. Sure. Go get your husband and he can have some, too.

And so on.

My all-time favorite book title about sharing one’s faith is Bill Hybels’ Just Walk Across the Room.  You don’t have to read the book to know what it’s about.  It’s worth reading, though, but the title sums up all 200+ pages.   Sharing your faith with others doesn’t have to begin with any more complicated a maneuver than being willing to walk across a room (or resting at the town water source) and saying hello to somebody you don’t know, or don’t know very well.  Then you let God and they do the rest.

If they want to know more, they’ll ask. But you don’t force a response. It’s not about making a sale right now or memorizing the Four Spiritual Laws before you get there. It’s being sensitive enough to somebody else’s insecurity that you’re willing to be something they didn’t expect, viz. friendly, unprejudiced, and authentically interested in them as a person.

Been to any village wells lately?
– KDS

The Village Well

Pastor’s Word

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus
said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” – John 4:7

John’s gospel (Ch. 4) tells of a meeting which Jesus had with a woman in Samaria, in the village of Sychar.  He and his disciples were passing through the region on their way to Galilee.  While the disciples went looking for food to eat, Jesus rested himself by the community water well.  It was at this well that Jesus met her.

He asked her for a drink of water because, we read later in v. 11, he didn’t have anything to get the water out from the well and she apparently did.  She was surprised at his request, explaining that he was Jew and she was a Samaritan woman. (John parenthetically and helpfully adds cultural context:  “…Jews do not associate with Samaritans.”)  Still, he engaged her in a conversation which eventually led to the deeper and spiritual matters of “living waters” which Jesus offered to her.  From this conversation came the famous words, “Everyone who drinks this (earthly) water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the (spiritual) water I give him will never thirst….the water I give will become …a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (13-14)

By the time we get through chapter four, we have read that the woman was so affected by Jesus that she told her whole neighborhood about him.  They in turn came out to meet him and they, too, came to believe that he was “the Savior of the world.”  (42)

It’s one of my favorite stories in the gospels.  It’s a story about a conversion (conversions, actually) that rises to no higher entertainment level than a simple conversation between two people.  Jesus initiated it, of course, with a straightforward request about water.  But from there on, anything Jesus said about spiritual or moral matters was only in response to the woman’s desire to know more:
Q. Why are you talking to me?
A. I’m not like other men.
Q. Where does living water come from?
A. Me.
Q. Can I have some?
A. Sure. Go get your husband and he can have some, too.
And so on.

My all-time favorite book title about sharing one’s faith is Bill Hybels’ Just Walk Across the Room.  You don’t really have to read the book to know what it’s about.  It’s worth reading, though, but the title sums up all 200 pages.   Sharing your faith with others doesn’t have to be any more complicated than being willing to walk across a room (or resting at the town water source) and saying hello to somebody you don’t know, or don’t know very well.  Then you let God and they do the rest.  If they want to know more, they’ll ask. But don’t force it. It’s not about making a sale right now or memorizing a number of Spiritual Laws before you get there. It’s being sensitive enough to somebody else’s insecurity that you’re willing to be something they didn’t expect, viz. friendly, unprejudiced, and authentically interested in them as a person.

Been to any village wells lately?
– KDS

Born a Martyr

The whole life of Christ was a continual passion; others die martyrs, but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha (where he was crucified) even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for, to his tenderness then, the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after; and the manger as uneasy at first, as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas Day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day.

John Donne – From a sermon preached at St. Paul’s, Christmas Day, 1626.

Simply Christmas

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.” – Luke 2:15

In Bethlehem is the famous Church of the Nativity.  The Roman emperor Constantine’s mother, Helena, built it in the fourth century to cover and protect the site of the true manger.  The church is one of the oldest in Christendom and is a regular tour stop for pilgrims today who travel to Israel.

But it is not a particularly beautiful building.  The typical first-time visitor to the church will remark on how worn out, even dirty the place looks.  Even more, the inside of the church is a hodge-podge of devotional trappings that have been placed there over the centuries by one Christian group or another.  It’s a virtual landfill of candles, icons, tables, lamps, wires, and chains.

The reason people go to the church, of course, is to see where Jesus was born.  Inside the church, down a few narrow steps, beneath the altar, and on the floor is a fourteen-pointed silver star that marks the site.  Pilgrims pass by it, perhaps pause and kneel down, and then move on, allowing others to do the same.  In a few more minutes, everybody’s back outside, squinting in the sunshine.

I’ve been there four times and each time, someone has asked me what it’s all for. (Tradition.)  They ask, “Why can’t they clean up the place.” (Don’t know.)  Or they ask, “Is this really the place where Jesus was born?” (Probably not, but it’s close.)

When Americans go to Bethlehem, they want the simple story of Christmas – as they understand it – to be affirmed.  They want Jesus and Mary and Joseph and maybe the shepherds and a few animals. And not much more.  At the very least, they want the place cleaned up.  All the candles and lamp stands and overhead wires are confusing and detractive.  “What does this have to do with the birth of Jesus?” they ask.  I can’t say I blame them.  It’s a lot to overlook.

But as distracting as the lamps and the candles and all the chains that hold them up may be, it’s worth pointing out – before we get too uppity – that we do the same thing, in our own way, to our own Christmas.   Here, it’s not icons or lamps or chains.  But it is gift buying, card sending, party attending, house decorating, and tree trimming that do little but drive us to exhaustion and make us forget that we are commemorating the birth of Jesus, the coming of God into the world.

Really, now don’t you wonder what the neighbors must think?

Your neighbors who know you as a God-fearing, church attending Christian all the rest of the year, they look at the snow globe Santas on your lawn, hear you complain about your hectic schedule, see you pull out of your driveway heading to the store for yet another round of shopping or yet another Christmas party, and they must think, “What does any of this have to do with Christmas?  Can’t they at least clean the place up?”

We could, of course, try to explain what this and that thing are for and why we do them.   But we may never be asked.  The impression is already made.   Besides, should we have to?

You Can’t Write Your Own Obituary

We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ … according to what one has done, good or bad. 2 Cor 5.10

In 1902, Mark Twain, then 67, published an open letter to the press on the already written obituaries about him.  (Newspapers regularly write and keep in their files pre-death obituaries on famous people.) Twain was worried that the already written obits may not put him in the best light when the day of his passing arrived.  So he offered to rewrite them for the newspapers with a more favorable bias for himself.  He even offered to pay for the extra work of editing.

Twain explained he wasn’t so much concerned about the “facts” of his life as the “verdicts” of some obituaries.  And, as he clearly expressed, good words about him in this present world might help “as a favorable influence usable on the Other Side, where there are some who are not friendly to me.”  (Harpers. 11-15-1902)

Mark Twain had a lifelong interest, albeit rather distant, in life after death.  He often expressed both his doubts and convictions with a touch of humor.  In his Biography he wrote, “I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of truth that there is a future life… and yet – I am strongly inclined to expect one.”  On heaven he wrote, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”  About hell, he characteristically remained aloof:  “Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell and I have only a vague curiosity about one of those.”  (Letter to William Dean Howells, May 20, 1891.)

Twain’s offer to edit his standing obituaries was, of course, not serious. He knew as well as any of us that if we are judged on “the Other Side,” flattering words in obituaries will bear no weight at all.

What will count will be not the “verdicts” either from our friends or our enemies, but the hard sharp “facts” of our lives.  It will be God who will deliver the verdicts.  Of that we can be glad, for it is God alone who knows the hard facts of our deeds and intentions – the passions of our hearts.

This matter of divine judgment in the afterlife can sound old fashioned.  But I know of nothing in all scripture – and this is quite a Biblical doctrine – that helps us to focus on the purpose of life more than knowing that we will be held accountable.  Samuel Johnson once wrote, only partly in jest,  “Nothing more wonderfully concentrates a man’s mind than the sure knowledge he is to be hanged in the morning.”   And with no jesting at all, the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians:  “We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ … according to what one has done, good or bad.”  (2 Cor 5.10)

So what does it matter what our friends – or our enemies – say or write about us?  Not much, really.  Only God’s “verdicts” matter on the “facts” we leave behind.

In 1902, Mark Twain, then 67, published an open letter to the press on the already written obituaries about him.  (Newspapers regularly write and keep in their files pre-death obituaries on famous people.) Twain was worried that the already written the obits may not put him in the best light possible when the day of his passing arrived.  So he offered to rewrite them for the newspapers with a more favorable bias for himself.  He even offered to pay for the extra work of editing.

Twain said he wasn’t so much concerned about the “facts” of his life as the “verdicts” some obituaries might come to.  And, as he clearly expressed, good words about him in this present world might help “as a favorable influence usable on the Other Side, where there are some who are not friendly to me.”  (Harpers. 11-15-1902)

Mark Twain had a lifelong interest, albeit rather distant, in life after death.  He often expressed both his doubts and convictions with a touch of humor.  In his Biography he wrote, “I have never seen what to me seemed an atom of truth that there is a future life… and yet – I am strongly inclined to expect one.”  On heaven he wrote, “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”  About hell, he characteristically remained aloof:  “Travel has no longer any charm for me. I have seen all the foreign countries I want to except heaven & hell and I have only a vague curiosity about one of those.”  (Letter to William Dean Howells, May 20, 1891.)

Twain’s offer to edit his standing obituaries was, of course, not serious. He knew as well as any of us that if we are judged on “the Other Side,” flattering words in obituaries will bear no weight at all.

What will count will be not the “verdicts” either from our friends or our enemies, but the hard sharp “facts” of our lives.  It will be God who will deliver the verdicts.  Of that we can be glad, for it is God alone who knows the hard facts of our deeds and intentions – the passions of our hearts.

This matter of divine judgment in the afterlife can sound old fashioned.  But I know of nothing in all scripture – and this is quite a Biblical doctrine – that helps us to focus on the purpose of life more than knowing that we will be held accountable for how we spend these lives of ours.  As Paul wrote to the Corinthians:  We must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ … according to what one has done, good or bad. 2 Cor 5.10

So what does it matter what our friends – or our enemies – say about us? Not much, really.  Only God’s verdicts finally matter.

At the Table Together

When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. — I Corinthians 11:20

Among the stories in the news this past week was the awarding of the Summer Olympic games in 2016 to the city of Rio de Janeiro.  The Brazilians are happy, of course, and so is the whole South American continent since this will be the first time the Olympics will take place down there.

Rio had been in contention with Madrid, Tokyo, and Chicago.  From what I’ve read, a great deal of effort and money is expended by every hopeful citiy with the hope of convincing the Olympic Committee that they’re better than all the other cities for hosting the games.

What made this year’s choice of Rio de Janeiro such news was also the quick exit of Chicago as a possible site.  It was the first to be “voted off the island” despite the presence of a stellar group of Windy City representatives such as Oprah and President and Mrs. Obama.  There were those in the media who took it for granted that the charm and prestige of such highly visible Americans would lead to a slam dunk for Chicago to be chosen.

But it did not happen and, ever since, the hometown writers have been expending no small amount of ink wondering what went wrong.  Chicago does not even have the luxury of having come in a close second.  It was last among the four candidates.

Nobody likes to lose of course, but Americans seem to be excessively prone to hand wringing and second guessing when it happens to us. We are a competitive people, you know.  Whether it’s in the school yard, at election time, in the market place, or even in church, we play to win. And when we play hard, we take it hard when we lose.

Still, for many of us, this life of winning and losing – this world we have created of winners and losers – is so familiar to us that it’s hard to imagine life being any other way.  If we win, we celebrate.  If we lose we take it hard and determine to win the next time.  The world, we have come to believe not a little simplistically, is made up of two kinds of people – winners and losers.  It’s how we categorize the members of the human race.

We take this situation for granted and so easily that it often comes as a surprise – if we understand it at all – to read in the scriptures that in the kingdom of God, the last will be first, the weak are the strong, the givers are the real getters, and the dying are those who are finally learning what it means to live.

This is not an idea that is easily digested even by those of us who are, by confession, citizens of the Kingdom. In fact, I am of the opinion that there is not an idea in all of scripture that is resisted so regularly as the one that says that coming in last is God’s idea of true victory.

There is still a lot of America in us American Christians.

But it’s in there, this upside-down kingdom idea of success.  It’s plain as day and not infrequently mentioned.

It doesn’t matter how many motivational speakers you listen to – even those who claim to Christian preachers – about working hard and playing hard so you, too, can be a winner.  We hear quoted Philippians 4:13:  “I can do all things in Christ” as if it that’s all there is to the gospel.  Nope, in the kingdom, things aren’t like that.  For God, you’ve already got too much of the world in you.  What you need more than anything is to lose a lot of it just to make some room for the spiritual treasures God wants to give you.

All of this is what lies behind the Apostle’s words to the Corinthians when he wrote to them about the disturbing way some of them were conducting the Lord’s Supper.

It seems that there were, among the members of the church, some who were relatively wealthy.  When these wealthy Christians came to worship and the sacrament of Holy Communion was offered, they brought picnic baskets full of food for themselves and just for themselves.  They spread the table cloths, laid out the good china and silver, set the bottle of wine in the ice bucket and ate a full meal.

Such an ostentatious display of wealth was bad enough, but they did it while other members, poorer members, looked on and were not invited to share in the bounty.  They called the meal the Lord’s Supper, but it was nothing like it.  It was exclusive and divisive and had no place in the church.   What did Paul think of this?  He said it wasn’t the Lord’s supper at all.  He said that they were doing more harm than good.

It’s hard to imagine a church doing more harm than good.  Even with our faults, we’re still usually on the plus side as far as being a good thing for the world.

Still, that is exactly how Paul described the state of affairs in Corinth.  In the church, there is not supposed to be winners and losers, hungry and well-fed, rich and poor, quick-witted and dim-witted, popular and ostracized.  The church of Jesus Christ is supposed to be an alternative community – visible and open to the rest of the world – where the old categories of losers and winners fall away in favor of brothers and sisters.  We’re supposed to be where people go who are tired of getting beaten up by the never-ceasing competition of the world.

More harm than good?  Indeed, this is how Paul describes a church that still looks and acts too much like the world.  For Paul, the world doesn’t need a church that merely appropriates its competitive ways even if it quotes the Bible as it does so.   When a church acts like the world, it is  deceiving the very people to whom it is supposed to be witnessing.  It would be better if such a church did not exist at all, wrote the Apostle.

What the world needs is a better way, indeed a different way altogether, of finding meaning and purpose in this short life we have on earth.  The losers in the world’s games of life – and there are many – need to know there is someplace where they can go and find the sustenance and acceptance and love they are not getting in the world.  In the Kingdom there are no winners and losers because everybody is at the table.

Paul thought it was about time the Corinthians did as much. If he were among us today, I’m certain he would think the same about us.

In the Absence of Blessings

Then Jesus told [Thomas], “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” – John 20.29

I recently finished reading Rosemary Mahoney’s, The Singular Pilgrim.  She tells of pilgrimages she made to holy sites in England, France, Israel and elsewhere.  She is not particularly religious.  She frequently shares her doubts about one part or another of the Christian faith as she writes.  But she grew up a Roman Catholic and is still respectful because her mother is a strong and sincere Catholic.  Her mother is also confined to a wheelchair because of childhood polio.

Mahoney went to Lourdes, France, where she visited the famous grotto of Bernadette’s vision of the Virgin Mary. People from all over the world go to Lourdes to pray, to be healed, or to represent loved ones who need healing.  Even though Mahoney was not personally convinced of the miraculous character of the water of Lourdes, she still sent a small vial of it back home to her religious mother.

When she returned from France, she visited her mom and asked if she did anything with the water.  Her mother said that she applied it to her leg just as she had been told.  “And what happened?” she asked her mother who was sitting in her wheelchair.  “I flew up the chimney,” she said dryly.   “What really happened?” Rosemary tried again. Her mom said, “Do you think, Rose, that if something had happened, I’d be sitting here in this chair right now?”

Mother and daughter talked a while longer and wondered aloud about the mysteries of life:  why her mother wasn’t healed, why she got polio as a child, why her mother’s two sisters who also got polio died and she survived.

“Was it God who saved you?” Rosemary asked her mom.  “I can’t answer that,” she said.  “I don’t know if he involves himself so minutely.  But I do believe that God is love.  And when I get into bed at night my last thought is a prayer.  I say to God, ‘See me, hear me, know that I am here.’”

“Do you think he sees you?” Rosemary asked.  She answered quickly, “Without question.”

Mahoney then writes, “My mother’s future has grown short; a cure at this late date would probably not change many things for her, and she seems now to have little interest in one.  She, who is fond of quoting Jesus’ phrase, ‘Where there is love, there also is your treasure,’ has found her health elsewhere.” (72-73)

It’s a kind of faith, a health that is rare even among those who call themselves faithful, a conviction that God is always good even though life is not.  It reminds me what I once heard the Christian psychologist, Larry Crabb,  say about suffering and disappointments in the Christian life.

“What is God up to when sorrow comes, when prayers don’t get answered, when the abundant life is abundantly unfulfilling?” he asked aloud. “What is God trying to do?”  And then he answered:  “I think what God is trying to do is to make people who will trust him in the absence of blessings.”

When the sun goes down and we put our heads upon our pillows at the end of the day, it is enough to pray, “See me, hear me, know that I am here.”

– KDS

Emeralds and Promises

Since they are no longer two but one, let no one separate them, for God has joined them together. – Matthew 19:6 NLT

My wife and I are going to the beach in North Carolina later this summer.  It’s the week of vacation we’re spending with my daughter and her husband and his parents.  It looks to be a good, relaxing time for all, some intentional laziness interrupted by seafood suppers, the occasional swims in the ocean, and the slow reading of good books.

We’ll also mark our 35^th wedding anniversary that week.  When I asked Pam what the traditional gift for 35 years was, she said she thought it was “emerald.”  But I looked it up and it turns out that emeralds come at 55 years; coral and jade are for thirty-five.  So, she has to live with me for another twenty years if she wants an emerald, I said.

Still, she was a good sport about it.  I saw a television show not long ago about a working emerald mine that was open to the public in, of all places, North Carolina.  When I asked her if she would like to go see it and dig for emeralds when were down there later this summer, she took me up on the offer.  Really, she’s a treasure hunter at heart.  So, if we’re lucky, this might be an emerald anniversary after all.

The list of corresponding gifts with wedding anniversaries started, apparently, in medieval Germany.  Upon twenty five years, so the story goes, friends and neighbors would give to a wife a silver wreath to mark the many years of good relations.  If they lived together for fifty years, a gold wreath was given.  Over time, the list grew larger to include just about every year up to sixty. It starts with paper for the first year, skips through wood at five, moves to silk for the twelfth, pauses momentarily at china for twenty and eventually settles on diamonds for those lucky and persistent enough to make it a full three-score.

Marriages, in the Christian world, are supposed to be life-long relationships.  And while romantic love is what brings most couples together, it is the virtue of promise keeping that keeps them together for the long haul.  As anybody knows who has been married long enough to appreciate, say, the gift of wood, it’s not all romance all the time in the holy estate of matrimony.  There are times when it’s the promise – sometimes only the promise – that keeps two people together.

I know that has been the case for Pam and me.  I would love for the world to think our marriage has been nothing but roses and cherries with the occasional minor difference of opinion on paint color. But we’ve been through a lot and not without outside help – the encouragement of friends and family, even the occasional couch-sitting at the counselor’s office.  But we’re still together.

I mean after thirty-five years, we’re still together.   Maybe we’re just simpletons and don’t know any better.  Maybe we’re cowards and don’t have the guts to do something else. I don’t know.  I am quite reluctant to suggest it’s because we’re made of stern stuff; we’re not.  Or to criticize those once-married couples who did not stay together for whatever reason.  I will not judge.

But somehow or another, certainly by the grace of God, we’re still keeping our promises and we’re still together.  So, whether we find anything in the emerald mine in North Carolina or not this summer, it will certainly be a gem of an anniversary.