A Change in the Air

In the previous post, I mentioned that I was about to go to the sermon seminar in Austin. The outcome of that event was profound. Annette and I have moved to Austin to work with the University Avenue Church of Christ. Because of this move, I am redirecting my energies from this seldomly serviced blog to one that will be more attentively served.

So I invite your interest in www.heartofaustin.blogspot.com
This will be my vehicle for interaction and response to the ministry as it unfolds at UA.

God bless us all.

They Smell Like Trouble

I am going today to the Sermon Seminar in Austin. I am supposed to speak at lunch on Tuesday and Wednesday. The speeches are supposed to be, as I understand it, light and humorous with a bit of lurking truth. Sounds like I am about to channel Joel Osteen. 

Actually I welcome the opportunity to speak at lunch. At a lunch I can follow the pattern of my homiletics guru Chris Rock, who preaches a rather strong brand of ethics in a comedic lattice. His language is not great, but you hear a Stoic street preacher if you listen through the profanity. 

Well enough of the cognitive dissonance created by mentioning Osteen and Rock in the same piece. What I am hoping to do in Austin is talk about church members on Tuesday and church leaders on Wednesday and make the point that they both smell like trouble, with apologies to Lynn Anderson and his book, They Smell Like Sheep. The fact is that any casual observation of church life will argue that we are all just a mess. Even the New Testament bears witness to the unusual character of some of the saved. Demas and Euodia raise questions about us all. Even Paul was evidently not exactly plain vanilla. I have given up on the notion that church is about being with all the wonderful people. 

I have decided that church is about being about knee deep in the slop of life with all the others who are knee deep, too. When we run into one another and we're being weird, we should just hug, pray and keep slogging on to glory. Even the best of us, whoever that one is, is a mess. But all we messes are being saved. God loves us. We smell to high heaven, and He loves us. Let us love one another.

Hello Again

I have been blessed lately by misguided souls asking why I hadn't added to this space in a while. I appreciate the thought that anything written here in the past might have been helpful. Elijah has always been one of my heroes not because he confronted Baal, but because he was not a literary prophet. While other prophets might polish their oracles against Edom, Elijah spurned the pen and left time for running and pouting, whining and hiding. Elijah did some pretty wonderful things, but he didn't write about them. Other folks wrote about his exploits and his confrontations with the popular powers.

Now while this may seem to be an apology for laziness, one might at least note the outcomes of the literary prophets versus the outcome of the life of Elijah. Isaiah was sawn into. Jeremiah shuffled off to Egypt with the folks even the Babylonians didn't want. Elijah hops in the chariot of fire and flies off to glory. The one who asked to be allowed to die, wasn't. So…I am thinking that the prophet who leaves no writings may be the superior prophet.

Even on the Mount of Tranfiguration, the Great Non-Literary Prophet gets to meet with Elijah, the one who blazed that inkless trail. Well, Moses was there, too. Chalk one up for the writers.

I will probably write a bit here, since the way it looks I am headed for being sawn in two and not to any meeting with a chariot of fire. But I really admire Elijah.

Reality for Breakfast

And we sat there at breakfast with Dee talking to us. She is the director of the NOAH project for battered spouses and their children. She was telling us stories of the abused, trying to get us to care about them in our souls and in our churches. We were ministers of churches in town. She said that some ministers don’t know and some churches don’t care. I just stared out the window into the morning sun mourning all the conversations I’ve had with those beaten by the loves of their lives. I wasn’t ignoring Dee. I was hearing her through years of pain. I was hearing her knowing that every Sunday I shake the hand of a man — the hand that has beaten his wife and his son. The not-at-all-right hand of fellowship.

Dee quoted a statistic. They always have stats. More than twenty percent of homes have some form of violence going on in them. Can that be? In a church like ours that ratio would mean be a hundred homes in violence. Surely in a Christian community the number would be smaller, but halving the number means fifty homes that know violence. I feel like Abraham bidding with God for Sodom. What percentage would you be willing to take, Eddie, to feel like the number is acceptable?

I am unable to convince myself that we are totally immune because I know we are not. I know now of ten homes where some form of violence is common. I can find two percent off the top of my head.

And we are not alarmed. We have committees meeting to redecorate meeting rooms. We have committees organizing for world missions. We have children who cower while daddy roams the house drunk. We have women who endure emotional and physical abuse. We have men whose wives treat them like dirt. No committees are meeting to plan strategies of salvation for the abused. It is too hard to deal inside the circle of privacy — a place we have decreed safe for the abusers and deadly for the abused.

Dee told the story of the man who would sit in church with one arm around his wife. With the other hand, he would pinch her in the side continually through the worship service. Sing and pinch. Pray and pinch. For her, pain joined her prayers.

I stared out the window into the morning sun and wondered if we in the church are like that man: singing the praises and inflicting the pain. As long as we do nothing, say nothing, advocate nothing, we enable the abusers, creating their safe place and cheering them on.

Six Weeks

Six weeks ago I had surgery on my spine. Tomorrow the doctor should release me. I will get to take my neck brace off. I will get to drive my lonely, little Accord.
Freedom.
I have so many people to thank for their prayers. The get well cards have piled up like snow drifts. The love of the Body of Christ is a marvelous thing—a treasure. I have sat at the focal point of that love. All of that care focused on my worthless hide.

To God be glory! To the people of God be thanks! For myself I pray that I will always be humbled in heart because of the rich blessings I have received. I am unworthy of such grace. That's what makes it grace.

Love to all. I will try to write now on a more regular basis.

Pain in the Neck

I have been inactive here for a bit. I have been getting ready for some surgery on my neck. I will have an anterior cervical diskectomy tomorrow morning at 8:00. I have two sites where stenosis is severe enough to impair the function of my spinal cord. I will have a six week long recovery period. See you in January.

Living by Faith

I know that a blog space is not actually preaching space. But I want to reflect on some of the material I have been preaching lately.

This "Living by Faith" series of sermons we have shared this fall demands to be taken seriously. It is impossible to preach this material and keep it at arms length. Some sermons are 007 sermons—they leave you shaken but not stirred. This material stirs me at least to think two thoughts that call for response.

There's the "by faith" part. Time magazine ran a cover story recently asking the existence of God question. I love it when the believers take on the unbelievers. Both sides rally all their facts. They run out their arguments to the end of the logical cul-de-sacs they both live on. One side ends with eternal matter; the other ends with eternal Spirit. Both positions require faith. Believing in eternal matter takes one's mind to the same precipice that believing in eternal Spirit does—with one great exception. Matter doesn't care about itself. But in the Judeo-Christian view, the Eternal Spirit from which all things came, come and will come loves the creation. We have faith in this God.

"By faith" takes us into a different world than the merely sensual one or the philosophically skeptical one. The "by faith" world is rich with promise and paradox. The "by faith" world aches for the fulfillment of the work of God. In this world we live in the atmosphere of the Father, the Son and the Spirit. Nothing is trivial. In every success and failure, God works to bless his children and call the world to himself. The world is no wound, abandoned watch. The world displays form and life that moment by moment draws its vitality and shape from God. Our faith tells us: this is our Father's world.

I have not been able to shake the overwhelming sense of "God-with-ness" surrounding my life and ours together in Christ. Maybe we are called to bear with-ness to the world. The God who is and who made all things is with us. Not one shred of our life takes place outside his presence and influence.

The second part of this is the "living" part. The very idea that faith can be or needs to be lived out strikes me as odd sometimes. Perhaps it is the Greek in all of us who whispers to me that the truly important things in the world are conceptual. We think about, muse over, reflect on, ruminate about the significant stuff. Why isn't that enough? Why do we have to mar a perfect concept like grace with the ugly and fitful way we are called to receive it and give it to others. Why is love something if you give it away? Why isn't it more to hold it and think about the elegance of love in the abstract?

I guess that is the point isn't it? God doesn't give a flip about the concept of himself or about the ideas floating around in our heads. For out of God's essence came the cry, "Create! Let there be…!" Out of his nature came not only promises but fulfillment after fulfillment. Our God acts. Our God doesn't just exist; He lives and works. He is love and the Lover. He expects the same dynamic engagement from us. Ideas turn to energy. Wonder calls for will and work. We are called to live by faith.

The greater reality is faith reality. The greater task is living faith out in the grit and gristle. Live by faith.