Remember Sarah Who Bore You

After the narrative of Abraham and Sarah in Genesis, the name Sarah only appears once in the entire Hebrew Bible – Isaiah 52:9. That text says “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him.” (ESV)

In that text, the Lord declares to His people who are pursuing righteousness and seeking him, “look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.” (51:1) Then comes the “remember Sarah who bore you” comment. Whatever else these words might suggest, it seems impossible that they don’t serve as a reminder that Israel can ill afford to assume that there weren’t people of God who existed before them. In fact they can’t afford to think they could exist without the lives of those who came before them. 

It is so easy to slip into an attitude that suggests the present life we live and enjoy “just happened.”  Isaiah seems to think that if we are “pursuing righteousness” and “seeking the Lord” we ought to “remember Sarah who bore us.” It intrigues me that the only other place in the Hebrew Bible her name gets mentioned after Genesis is in a reminder that we shouldn’t forget how we got here.

I am currently sitting in my office looking around. I sit behind a desk that was given to me by an elder form First Christian in Tyrone who was one of the most authentic, spiritual people I’ve ever known. I learned tons about life, Jesus, and serving God sitting up all night with him while he barbecued pigs for the church’s homecoming dinner on the grounds every fall.

I didn’t just get here.

I can look at my book shelves. I see books given to me by Professor Jim Evans, who taught me Greek, how to really engage Scripture, and a lot of other stuff about life. I have a book or two from Professor Roy McKinney, who took me under his wings as a young college professor and made me what I ought to be, not what I might have been. That list could keep going, but you see the point.

I didn’t just get here.

Hanging on the wall not too far from where I’m sitting, there is an ordination certificate from Russellville Christian Church, the little country church I grew up in in South Carolina. There are eleven signatures on that certificate – one of them from my Dad and one from my Dad’s brother, Uncle Billy. Only two of those people are still alive, but forty-plus years ago they thought I was trustworthy enough to be set apart for ministry.

I didn’t just get here.

I have the privilege every semester to walk into classrooms at Point University and teach young adults about Jesus and His kingdom. But would those classrooms even be here were it not for those who stood in similar rooms before me – in many cases, before I was even born? Point has better programs, better prepared professors, a broader curriculum, and all kinds of “better” than we once did – but could that “better” exist had it not been for those who went before us?

I didn’t just get here.

I live in a place where I have lots of personal freedom. But I know that didn’t just happen and thousands upon thousands paid high prices for me to have the freedom to write this blog and post it without fear of being arrested like Bonhoeffer was for doing similar things in his world. Obviously all of our history isn’t good – some of it is, quite frankly, embarrassing. The history of Israel was exactly perfect either, but God seems comfortable telling His people “Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you.” 

I didn’t just get here.

I can look out of my second-floor office windows onto the Denver and Helen Sizemore Courtyard at Point’s J. Smith Lanier II Academic Center. If you know anything about Point and its history, that sentence has a ton of “remember Sarah who bore you” in it! The floor of the courtyard has a huge collection of engraved bricks that lots of people purchased in memory of Point-connected people. I can’t read the names from my office, but sometimes I just go down there and read names.

I didn’t just get here.

For the last chapel service of the Spring 2018 semester, we focused on the theme “Hope: Discover Life by Continuing the Story.” I still have the wrist band on my arm with “Continue the Story” written on it. (I still have some of these wrist bands, if you would like one, send me an address and I’ll mail it to you.) God has been writing a story for centuries – and without that story, we simply wouldn’t be here. I can’t “continue the story” without “remembering Sarah who bore me.”

As a preacher, I always dreaded preaching on Mother’s Day. The only Mother’s Day sermon I preached that I still remember was titled “Remember Sarah Who Bore You.” I gave a healthy nod to the fact that while we talk a lot about Abraham, there would be no Isaac with Sarah. It was barren, old Sarah who, like Abraham, trusted God and the first huge step toward “the fullness of time” was taken.

I didn’t just get here.

Revisionist history can be a dangerous practice if we are studying world history, U.S. history, the history of any part of our existence.

But it is never more dangerous than when those of us who claim to be seeking righteousness and the Lord forget to “remember Sarah who bore us.” 

We didn’t just get here.

To Be Killed By a Mocking Bird . . . With Apologies to Harper Lee

Growing up on a farm I learned at an early point in life that the world God created is pretty interesting. Among my earliest “remembered thoughts” is fascination with the fact that you could plant a little seed with fuzzy stuff on its outside in the spring, and by early fall it will have produced cotton. From the barely peaking out from under the soil first sight of something amazing, to beautiful white flowers that turn pink by the end of the day with the bees have finished their work, to “bolls” that are hard, green, and pointy, and finally to those bolls bursting open with beautiful white cotton – with more of those fuzzy little seeds. 

Next time you put on a clean, fresh cotton shirt – you might want to say a little prayer of thanksgiving for the way the good Lord made creation!

I have early memories of dairy cows. At my grandfather’s dairy farm, they all had names. I was pretty young when I knew I could call them all by name. One was called “Themesong” because the grandkids came home from Vacation Bible School singing the “themesong” about the time she was born. There was April, May, and June as I remember, and Queen – her name says all that needs to be said. I remember the morning my grandfather told me April had died overnight giving birth to a new calf. She was brown and white in color, and had deep, brown eyes. I can still see her in my imagination. 

I’m not a vegetarian, but honestly if I start thinking about April and her friends while eating steak, it makes eating very difficult.

When I was about twelve, I remember killing a pretty big rattle snake (remember this is the South Carolina low country where I’m growing up!) with my BB rifle. I shot it right between the eyes somehow and it died. Out in the woods – where I always would go when opportunity arose – had the snake bitten me you’d probably need to visit me at my grave at Russellville Christian Church cemetery. I think my mother wondered if she had given birth to the next Chuck Connors and The Rifleman or perhaps God must have something planned for me.

If you pay attention, there are lots of observations from nature that will get you on your knees thanking God.

When Point University moved from East Point to West Point, more than a few people asked me “When are you moving to West Point?” I have nothing against West Point and am thrilled when I see the impact Point has had on this little town and its surroundings, but my answer was (and is) “I’m not.” That was always followed with “you’re going to drive to West Point from Tyrone every day?” The answer, “Yes, it’s not that far!”

When people pressed further on this issue I often say, “I’ve spent too much time and too many dollars in my yard – I can’t walk away from that.”  Creation – plant life as well as creatures – is way too fascinating to ignore.

In my yard in Tyrone I have plants given to me by people like Ramona Brown, John Wade, Orval Morgan, our neighbors in East Point the Burnetts, Irma Redmon, the old ACC campus,  the Petenbrinks, my parents, my good friends the Atkinsons, and others. I can walk around and show you plants given to us when mine and Vicki’s parents died over the years, plants given to us when one of us was hospitalized, and plants we saw somewhere and just bought. We have plants that were on the pool deck at Vicki’s mother’s home in St. Petersburg when she died and I’ve kept them going, rooted new versions, and shared with others – even in the more challenging north Georgia climate for “Florida comfortable” plants.  

If we just slow down enough to notice, creation is amazing. Or, as the psalmist declared, “The heavens declare the glory of God.” (Ps. 19:1-6)

Yesterday I was with our oldest daughter Sarah as she was moving into her new house. We were at the storage facility where her worldly possessions were being loaded by movers to be taken to her new home. I went over to my car to get a drink of iced coffee I had left there. As I went to open the door there was a huge praying mantis right by the handle. I jumped back – insects make me nervous

Here he (or she!) is: 

.

 

I decided maybe I wasn’t thirsty after all and walked away, hoping it would be gone by the time I came back. Thirty or so minutes later, I came back and sure enough, it was still there. I went around to the back and got a magazine from a box I was taking to Sarah’s. I brushed the mantis away. I thought they were more hoppers – but this dude could fly. He went sailing across the parking lot doing all sorts of mantis acrobatics.

Finally he was about 150 feet away, flying over the top of the moving truck, when out of nowhere a mocking bird came into sight. I don’t know if the mocking bird missed on the first dive bomb or was doing some sort of set up maneuver, but it missed on the first effort.

The mocking bird quickly did a few acrobatics itself and came up from under and behind the mantis and grabbed it. The mantis lost that battle, but the mocking bird family must have had a feast. It was at least four inches long and in my imagination I can see a little family of baby mocking birds thinking “Man, what parents we have!” At some point, it is all about perspective. 

If you’re the mantis, you are probably thinking “If that guy would have just left me alone I’d still be here.”  If you’re the mocking bird, you might think, “What a great guy – he made the mantis fly right in front of me and look at the lunch we had!”

That little story may be a pretty good reminder that while creation does bear witness to God’s “invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature,” (Romans 1:20) we should temper our observations from creation with “the law of the Lord” and “the testimony of the Lord” which are “perfect” and “sure.” (Ps. 19:7-11)

Like creation and Scripture – Psalm 19 remains a mystery to me. It seems that when I pay attention to the world God made around me and engage in His intentional revelation in the Word (ultimately “the Word that became flesh" – John 1:14) I have a much better potential to achieve a place in life where “the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” (Ps. 19:14)

If you’re wondering, this may be why I keep telling Point students and anyone else who might occasionally listen to me: read Scripture outside and pay attention to both creation and the Word!

If that mantis could write a book it would surely need to be titled, To Be Killed by a Mocking Bird. I can only wonder what the plot line would be. I’m pretty sure I’d get blamed for its demise!

Study More. Preach Less.

Study More.  Preach Less.

Written in 1962 by Helmut Thielicke,  A Little Exercise for Young Theologians, remains required reading in Christian colleges and seminaries around the globe. Earlier this morning I ew-read for what may be the hundredth time! It is one of my “before-the-semester-begins disciplines. One of my favorite lines – and one students I have read the book seem to hate the most – is “For the reasons I have mentioned I do not tolerate sermons by first semester young theological students swaddled in their gowns. One ought to be able to keep still.” (page 12) 

Thielicke is writing over fifty years ago and the world has changed and he is writing in the context of German Christian practice. I get that and I’m not particularly interested in telling anyone that he or she can’t share their faith. But I am interested in that phrase “one out to be able to keep still.”

Fast forward to April of this year and you might have seen the issue of Christianity Today that focused on the life and ministry of Billy Graham. If you haven’t seen it, it is worth finding. One of the articles in this issue is titled “What I Would Have Done Differently.” It basically is a collection of quotations from Graham where he expressed regrets.

One of those “regrets” is about preaching. John Stott, in his wonderful book on preaching, Between Two Worlds actually has this same quote in it in a chapter titled “A Call to Study.”  Here Graham’s “regret” about preaching.

                                One of my great regrets is that I have not studied enough. I wish

                                I had studied more and preached less. People have pressured me

                                into speaking to groups when I should have been studying and

                                preparing. Donald Barnhouse said that if he knew the Lord was coming

                                in three years, he would spend two of them studying and one 

                                preaching.  I’m trying to make it up.

That was originally published in an interview Graham did with Christianity Today in 1997.

If you think about it, that really isn’t all that different from Thielicke’s sentiment in  A Little Exercise for Young Theologians.

Unfortunately we live in an age where politics is not the only area of life where polarization happens. In the world of biblical studies and ministries, it is easy to find the polar opposites of those comfortable to spend a life time studying with little engagement with the community of humans around them; and those who spend all their time engaged with the community of humans around them with little or no real study of Scripture.

If I’m hearing Graham correctly, it really isn’t “either/or” but “both/and.” But it is so easy to overreact to the one who can’t tell me about Jesus because all he or she is interested in is how the synoptic gospels came into being in the first place. Yet, what in the world would make me think I can pick up a piece of Scripture written 2000 years ago, in a language that isn’t my native tongue, to a culture that has little similarity to my own, and written by people who would recognize hardly anything about living in the 21^st century and really understand its message?

If you’ve read Stanley Hauerwas’ Unleashing Scripture you might be thinking that I, like Hauerwas, think that the Bible should be taken away from North American Christians because we aren’t smart enough to read it and think that it’s all about democracy and we get to vote on what we like and don’t like. 

But you would be wrong!

What I do think though is that there is a desperate need right now for well-educated kingdom leaders who have figured out how to be biblical and relevant at the same time. After all, you can be so biblical that no one will listen to you and you can be so relevant that you really have nothing to say. In both extremes, the same thing happens – God’s truth is not heard. 

A local politician recently posted a clip from Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson. The point of the video was “college is too expensive” and “education outcomes” aren’t what they should be. The politician’s conclusion was that government ought to invest less in education. I don’t watch Carlson for a variety of reasons, including his pompous, self-inflated view of himself, and the extraordinary joy he seems to get in being condescending to others he deems less intelligent than himself. But from what I’ve seen of him, he is pretty good at manipulating facts to “prove” his talking points. I would also bet my last dime that he goes to a well-educated doctor, sends his kids (if he has any) to schools with well-educated teachers, and chooses to fly on airplanes whose pilots are well prepared for flying a modern jet airliner.

Here’s my point: in general, we don’t just stumble upon the kind of truth that can transform our lives. If the church decides that education is too expensive and education outcomes aren’t what we expected and gives up on “educating students for Christ-centered service and leadership around the world” as our mission at Point states – we can only expect fewer and fewer transformed lives. 

Almost any of us who have been believers for a while can scan through a paragraph in the Bible and declare “this is what it means to me.” The problem is, it wasn’t written to you! That’s not to say it doesn’t speak into your life – just that the way to get there isn’t by casually saying “this is what it means to me.” It means what God, the ultimate author meant it to mean to those whose ears were the first to hear it. From that vantage point – what a text meant – we can safely arrive at what a text means. We need good biblical scholars to help us here. 

I love Matthew’s editorial comment at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. That is where he says, “the crowds were stunned by His teaching, because He taught as one who knew what He was talking about, not like the poorly prepared teachers of that day.” (Huxford paraphrase, but I hope accurate!)

It’s one thing for a preacher/teacher to tell you what someone else knows about a subject – but a completely different think if he or she can tell you what they know. It seems to me that the world in general and the church in particular is in deep need of preachers, teachers, leaders “who know what they are talking about” because they have spent time with Scripture in a way that gives authority to their words.

That doesn’t mean only the educated elite can read Scripture. It does mean however our more devotional reading of Scripture can be greatly enhanced in an environment where resources are available – including well educated leaders – to help make sense of what we are reading!

To come full circle, I come back to Billy Graham’s “I would study more and preach less” comment. Surely if he – perhaps the greatest preacher of the twentieth century – felt the need to study more, most of us ought to get in line behind him for a seat in the library.

In that spirit, here are a few suggestions:

• ·         Good Bible study resources are more available today than ever, take advantage of them.

• ·         Good Bible study does take time – find a way to block out some space in life to converse with God through His Word.

• ·         Read the Bible devotionally, the more I get the big story firmly fixed in my brain, the more sense the smaller parts of the story will make.

• ·         Not everyone is called to be “pastors and teachers” to use Ephesians 4 language, so the point of this isn’t that you must be a Bible scholar to talk about the meaning of the Bible.

• ·         It can be helpful, however, to have a trusted person in your life with whom you can talk about the Bible and its meaning. Some parts of the Bible are more complicated than others and that means we could all use a trusted resource to help us navigate through these ancient and challenging but life-transforming words.

• ·         Read things other than the Bible. People like Scot McKnight, John Walton, Ben Witheringnton, Larry Hurtado, N.T. Wright and others are writing some outstanding, accessible to non-academic types, stuff.

• ·         Read the Bible expecting it to be counter-cultural and counter-intuitive. I promise you the Bible will shake your world if read properly and it won’t sound a whole lot like modern Western culture. If your reading of the Bible makes some cultural or political approach to life sound perfect, there is a good chance you need to do some re-reading.

• ·         Some of our reading of the Bible – especially the devotional kind – ought to be outside where the testimony of creation and the testimony of the Word can join hands in helping the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to God. (Ps. 19)

If you’re still reading – all I can say is “Thanks!” This has gone on longer than I intended, but frankly, I’m just tired of such “baby food” being dished out in sermons, lessons, devotions, articles, and whatever when there is such a desperate need for some “meat and potatoes.” (Hebrews 5:11-14)

The only way to discover “meat and potatoes” is to  have the courage “to keep still a bit.”