Children of Light

The lectionary epistles text this week includes that powerful admonition from Paul that suggests who we are must impact what we do. In Ephesians 5:8 we read, “For you were once in darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of the light.” (NIV) Light is never neutral – it always dispels the darkness.

In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, Life Together, he begins his wonderful reminder of what living in Christ must look like by saying “It is not simply to be taken for granted that the Christian has the privilege of living among other Christians. Jesus Christ lived in the midst of his enemies. At the end all his disciples deserted him. On the Cross he was utterly alone, surrounded by evildoers and mockers. For this cause he had come, to bring peace to the enemies of God. So the Christian, too, belongs not in the seclusion of a cloistered life but in the thick of foes.” (page 17)

Most of us who have been a part of the church for a while recognize how easy it is to live “in the seclusion of a cloistered life.” I’ve heard it said that once an outsider becomes a believer, he or she will quickly have only “insider friends.” The safety and comfort of being among insiders is both a blessing and a challenge. The blessing, of course, lies in the fact that it is in that fellowship of the body of Christ that we have opportunity for what Paul describes in Romans 1:11-12 as “the mutual encouragement of our faith.” The challenge is that such fellowship can become so addictive that we end up isolating ourselves from the world that so desperately needs what we have discovered. But the world that needs what we have discovered is increasingly less likely to simply wander into the fellowship of a church building to discover it.

Light needs to be light. We are “light in the Lord” and our commission is that we “live as children of light.” It isn’t that Paul wants us to participate in what he describes later in this paragraph as “deeds of darkness” but without the light, those deeds can never be exposed. The model for our life, as Bonhoeffer so eloquently describes, is Jesus – who typically lived life “in the midst of his enemies.”

All of this seems helpful in the context of learning to speak more clearly with “we” instead of “I” in describing our efforts to “live as children of light.” It is in the mutual encouragement of our fellowship with one another that our strength, our courage, our commitment to being “light” can find its strength. Exposing the “deeds of darkness” is never a one-person job. And even if, in some circumstances, an individual happens to be the source of light that exposes darkness – the strength of the light is never “I” but “we.” Of course, that “we” includes Jesus who has declared that we are “children of light.”

In this Exodus-like journey called the Christian life, we live in the paradox of knowing that we have been set apart as the body of Christ, yet we have been called to expose the deeds of the darkness. In that body we find strength, and in our efforts to expose darkness we risk our safety and comfort.

We can’t do that alone. It will always be “us” together.

Shoveling . . . A Lesson in Ministry

My grandfather was, in my mind, the quintessential southern farmer, whose lifetime spanned the twentieth century – from 1902 to the early 1980s. When I first read Ferol Sams’ triology that focused on growing up in the poor, rural south in the Great Depression years, I felt like I was reading about the world that my father grew up in as one of six children in my grandparents’ home.

Until I was in my early teens, my grandfather was a dairy farmer. As the oldest grandson – I was privileged to spend many days with him and at the dairy barn. There were about 60 Guernsey cows and everyone had a name. Among my favorites were “Themesong,” who got her name because she was born during Vacation Bible School when I came home singing the “themesong” for that two week summer trauma for boys who would prefer to be on the farm than in a Bible School classroom all morning. Then there was “April,” named for obvious reasons, and whom I can still see in my mind the morning I discovered that she had died during the night in giving birth to a calf.

The dairy barn that my grandfather used was equipped with electric milkers, and a huge refrigerator tank where the milk was kept until Coburg Dairy’s truck came by every other day to haul to the processing plant. I grew up drinking milk out of that tank, and to this day, refuse to drink milk out of a plastic jug!

The dairy barn itself was my favorite place to be. Eight cows at a time came in the barn. Over the years they had perfected their own pecking order – and you could just about make a roll sheet and check them off in order – early every morning (I didn’t always make the 4 a.m. call) and every afternoon (I seldom missed the 4 p.m. call). The cows would come in the barn – Queen Mary was always first – and put their heads through a stanchion – which was then closed so they would stay in place while being milked. Eight cows at a time – who were being fed “sweet feed” as we called it – a special blend provided by Purina for milking cows.

If you’ve been around farm animals very much – you won’t be surprised to know that once they were in place putting food in one end, inevitably something would happen on the other end. But dairy farmers had that figured out and right down the middle of the milking room was a trough in the floor. It was about four inches deep and twelve inches wide – and was right at the most appropriate place. As soon as that action began, there was a square faced shovel that was used to push the problem out the end of the dairy barn, where it would be collected and hauled off to fertilize something later.

My grandfather wasn’t just a dairy farmer – not that to be that would be a bad thing – but he was involved in county politics. He served on the gas rationing board during World War II, was on the county’s agricultural committee that met monthly, and other similar activities. He was well respected as a gentleman, a farmer, and a wise counsel.

I remember the afternoon, just after 4 p.m. when the first round of eight cows had just entered the barn, that Mr. Goodyear, the County Extension Agent, stopped by the dairy barn. In effect, he worked for the county agricultural committee and made regular visits to see its members, my grandfather included. He was a graduate of Clemson University with a degree in agriculture and was quite impressed with what he knew about farming, though he had never been one.

Sure enough, no sooner than he walked in the barn, the eight cows eating that sweet feed began to do what cows always seem to do in those circumstances. My grandfather picked up the square faced shovel and began to shovel the manure out of the barn.

When he finished, Mr. Goodyear seemed a little frustrated by the whole scene and said to my grandfather, “Mr. Huxford, a man of your stature shouldn’t be pushing manure out of a dairy barn. You’ve got workers who can do that.” I can’t say in here quite as directly as my twelve year old ears heard it originally, but my grandfather, whose vocabulary could be a bit salty at times, said, “Mr. Goodyear, if you want milk at the end of the day, you’ve got to be willing to shovel a little manure along the way.”

Sometimes in my 32 years of working at ACC, and certainly in the 20 year journey of preaching at First Christian Church in Tyrone, I’ve thought about that saying. I’ve shoveled a dairy barn or two full of manure – but that’s okay, for I’ve also seen some cold, Grade A milk put up on the shelf. I could spend all day telling you stories of ACC students whose lives I have been privileged to influence in one way or another, “cold, Grade A milk” – that makes me forget about the manure I had to shovel to get the opportunity.

As young Christians with a life time of real ministry before us – this is not a bad life lesson to remember. None of us can afford to think we’re too good to shovel a little manure occasionally and none of us can afford to focus on the manure and forget about the milk!

We’re in good company if we take this lesson to heart. Perhaps my grandfather learned it from Paul himself. Listen to his words in Philippians 3:8,9 – More than that, I regard everything as a loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things, and I regard them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, . . .”

The Greek word I translated rubbish is skubalon. In Greek, it was not exactly “mixed company vocabulary.” My grandfather would have loved that word – he used an English equivalent we would consider impolite vocabulary in key moments – like his response to Mr. Goodyear. Here’s how the standard Greek lexicon defines it – “useless or undesirable material that is subject to disposal, refuse, garbage, manure.” In their comment on Philippians 3:8 (the only place in the NT this word occurs) they suggest a paraphrase “to convey the crudity of the Greek – ‘It’s all crap’.”

So, in the spirit of my grandfather, and more to the point in the spirit of Paul’s admonition in Philippians – if we want fresh, cold, Grade A milk at the end of the day – we’re probably will need to be willing to shovel a little manure. But that’s okay – the end product is well worth the effort.

Forty Years of Stubbornness

Psalm 95 is the psalm for this week’s lectionary readings, and will be read in churches all over the place as we gather to worship. Many scholars think it was used by ancient Jews at festival times as a way of both praising God and reminding themselves that worship and obedience are inseparable issues. During the season of Lent, such praise and reminder might be helpful to us as well.

The final verse of the first stanza includes powerful words to get us focused on why praise of Him is so important in our lives. “For he is our God, and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.” (95:7) In other words, God provides! Some attempts to paraphrase verse seven say “We are his people whom he cares for as a shepherd cares for his sheep.”

The verses that lead up to verse seven are filled with language that points to God’s greatness and power – ultimately to his capacity – to care for us as a shepherd cares for his sheep. The “depths of the earth” and the “heights of the mountains” are his. The sea is his and it was God who formed the dry land. Our only reasonable response is to worship him, to bow down before him, to kneel “before the Lord our Maker.” (95:6)

All of that language stands in the starkest of contrasts to the second and last stanza of the psalm. How could we fail to listen to Him? Why would we harden our hearts against Him? Even though we have seen His power and might – why do we continue to test Him?

Stubbornness perhaps? The “forty years” of 95:10 remind us quickly of the Exodus, and the forty years of wandering in the wilderness of Sinai – while the Promised Land was “just around the corner.” In Numbers 14:33-34, the Hebrew Bible points out that those “forty years” reflected God’s response to their unfaithfulness. In words that can be a bit disturbing, God declares to the wanderers “you will know what it is like to have me against you.”

What makes all of this so amazing is that these very people, who stubbornly refused to obey God, were daily surrounded by evidence of His “caring for them as a shepherd cares for his sheep.” There’s the daily manna, the water from the rock, the quail, the pillar of fire, the cloud, the bronze serpent lifted up, and, of course, all of the rather spectacular events that God used to begin the journey in the first place. “They do not regard my ways” (95:10) is God’s view of the whole mess.

Forty years of stubbornness got them nowhere. Numbers 14 describes it with this rather haunting phrase, “the last of your bodies lies in the desert.” (14:33)

These 40 days of Lent can be times of reflection, repentance, commitment, and transformation. We have this beyond-description God who is great. He is mighty! He is our Maker. He desires to be our shepherd. Yet sometimes our own stubbornness gets in the way and our own spiritual lives appear to contain little more than a time of roaming around in the desert of our own failure and disobedience.

What could happen if – on those occasions when we meet to worship and we read Scripture that reminds us of God’s greatness and we sing songs that proclaim His greatness and we hear sermons and Bible studies that focus on His greatness – we determine in the deepest places of our own hearts that we will obey Him?

Unlike the children of the Exodus who are described as “a people who err in heart, and they do not regard my ways,” (95:10) we are called to be men and women who seek after the heart of God and in that seeking, demonstrate the love of God to all of creation.

For me, during this season of Lent, that means a regular reminder of the “we” of my spiritual journey. Like the first readers of Psalm 95, our fellowship together in Christ can be both a time to praise the greatness of our God and remind ourselves (not the “me” but the “us”) that this great God has called us to obedience

Opportunity

In a kind of rambling conversation with a friend who, along with his wife, serves in a very difficult part of the earth, I was asking about some of the natural disasters that had occurred where he serves in the past few years. It seemed to me like such challenges were occurring on a regular basis and when I hear about them, I always wondered if my friends were okay.

My question to him in this conversation was how these disasters affected their ministry and the believers who serve with them. His reply was interesting – not exactly what I expected. He first said that such disasters provided unparalleled opportunities for Christians to serve in a context where Christians are often viewed as outcasts. Two things immediately came to mind – one was that deep need often trumps previously held attitudes and the other was how amazing it was that Christians who had been made to be outcasts in their culture would turn around and serve the very people who wanted to exclude them. That makes me think about the offering Paul was collecting among Gentile believers to help the famine-stricken Jewish Christians in Judea. It reminds me of Paul’s comments in 2 Corinthians 8 about the Macedonian believers, who “Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability.” (2 Corinthians 8:3-4, NIV)

The second thing my friend said, in a bit of a light-hearted manner, was, “It makes you want to pray that God would keep sending disasters!” He really didn’t mean that, of course, and followed it up with comments that made it clear. But he did say that believers had learned in his part of the world – a part of the world where they are so often excluded from life – that they could take advantage of such moments and serve in the name of Christ.

Since Thursday evening of last week, our news has been non-stop in telling us about the awful situation in Japan. Every day the news seems to be a little bleaker and the potential danger to Japan, and the rest of the world in some ways, is significant.

While I would never say “God caused the earthquake to give us an opportunity,” I do wonder if the response to the earthquake, in addition to compassionate investment as we see among the Macedonians in 2 Corinthians 8, shouldn’t be to think “Here’s an opportunity.” The vast majority of Japanese people are not Christians. Missionaries I know have served there for decades, sowing the seed of the gospel, with very little to show in terms of harvest. But maybe this is an opportunity to model the Christian faith in ways that garner the attention of people in that part of the world who aren’t Christians. Perhaps, like the Macedonians, we should give out of our poverty, beyond our ability.

Who knows what can happen when believers serve in the name of Christ! In 2 Corinthians 9, as Paul is wrapping up his comments about these offerings, he says, “You will be made rich in every way so that you can be generous on every occasion, and through us your generosity will result in thanksgiving to God.” (2 Corinthians 9:11, NIV)

This is an opportunity. May believers all over the world respond like the Macedonians!

The Pronouns of Lent

Somehow it seems that the simple fact that God looked at Adam all alone in the Garden and declared “It is not good for the man to be alone” would suggest that God is not fond of us humans using too many singular pronouns! Unfortunately, Christian vocabulary seems to ignore (maybe disagree) with that idea.

I hear a whole lot of I, my, and mine and a lot less of we, our, and ours. The plural pronouns we do use seem to be more in the realm of “us v. them” instead of “we.”

In Jim Henderson, Todd Hunter, and Craig Spinks’ The Outsider Interviews, Todd Hunter writes a section titled “Everything I Learned about Dialogue Since I Knew It All.” In the brief chapter, he lists six things he learned over the years in trying to create dialogue among Christians and “outsiders,” the authors’ term for people “outside” the Kingdom. One of his six is “We need a little less us and them and a little more we.” (page 169)

The “It is not good for the man to be alone” creation idea makes me think about Jesus’ comment in Matthew 18 where He says “Where two or three come together in my name, I am with them.” Despite the temptation to think “If I could just shut the office door . . .”, it seems clear that the Lone Ranger syndrome is not born in the heart of Jesus. That surely implies that whatever gifts for ministry and service I have as an individual, they only work, matter, and help change the world because of the “we” with whom I’ve gathered around Jesus.

As you are reading this, I am in Tacna, Peru, teaching for Seminary of the Nations. “I” could never do this were it not for the dozens of women and men whose lives have impacted mine – from parents to teachers to mentors to . . . And, of course, had I not married well, such a trip might not happen either. If many, many believers didn’t invest in Seminary of the Nations, there would be no funds to get me there. And, if Dr. Steve Hooks didn’t manage those funds well and invite me to go, it would never happen. Were it not for the work of Christians in Chile and Peru and missionaries like Doug Kallestad, even if I got there, there would be no indigenous pastors to teach. So how could I ever be comfortable just thinking “I am going to Peru?”

None of those questions even begins to exhaust the list. If I’ve read (and been taught by lots of “we” kind of people in my life) the Bible correctly, I surely shouldn’t leave out God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in the “we” of my life.

On this Ash Wednesday, 2011, I’ve decided, with the help of lots of people around me, that first person singular pronouns need to be less frequent in my life and I should start recognizing the power and reality of “we.” I want to eliminate the tendency we sometimes have to look at the world in terms of “them” and “us.” I want to remember that whatever the “I” that identifies who I am means, it means little or nothing without awareness of the “we” that has contributed to that person.