Creation and Reboots

For Christmas this past year, my wife gave me a “squirrel-proof hanger for my bird feeders.” It’s deluxe! In fact, it is so nice that I decided I had to buy new feeders to use, the old ones looked too tired and worn. It really works – squirrels are yet to find a way to the feeders.

Since late December when I installed it and filled the new feeders with really good bird seed, I have seen all sorts of birds. I’m writing this is mid-August and I am still putting seed in the feeders and seeing an impressive gathering of God’s original orchestra and choir: birds!

I can step out of the garage onto the drive way and quietly stand and watch. There is a kind of rhythm to their eating that is impressive. Certain birds prefer certain feeders. The murder of crows (yes, a “flock of crows” is a “murder of crows.”) are too big for the feeders so they are around the feeder on the ground eating what the smaller birds scatter as they eat. Two different species of Woodpeckers have visited us during the summer.

If you go out just before sunrise, the music is amazing.  Little wonder Psalm 19 begins with “the heavens are recounting God’s splendor, . . .day by day it points out speech.”

Another early morning practice for me is Scripture reading. I am striving to be very disciplined about this. If Scripture really is what God says it is, then there is no reason I should ignore it. The more I pay attention to creation and Scripture, the more convinced I am that I should be doing at least some reading outside – in creation. When I do that, I am hearing the heavens (creation, even birds!) declare God’s glory as I read His Word, which this same Psalm (19) says “The Lord’s instruction has integrity, bringing life back . . . is trustworthy, making the naïve smart.”

I love that phrase “bringing life back.” That sounds like a worthwhile kind of reboot. What I have finally learned is that when I pay attention to the world God made and take time to engage His word that the Spirit gave – that can “bring life back.” It is the kind of daily reboot that makes life worthy living and allows us to experience a kind of significance that beats achievement any day of the week.

Not surprisingly, Psalm 19 ends with “May the sayings of my mouth be acceptable to you, and the murmur of my mind before you, Yahweh, my crag and my restorer.” That is from The First Testament a new translation of the Old Testament I’ve read through this summer. In more familiar terms, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, our strength and redeemer.”

What if the reboot moments in our lives at Point this year brought us to next May where our every word and every thought honored God?

                                                Best of any song

                                                is bird song

                                                in the quiet, but first

                                                you must have the quiet.

                                                                Wendell Berry

Give Me Jesus

“Our parents refused to accept this gift as a gift and instead used their separateness as a club, hoping to force all peoples to speak their tribe’s language. Thus, at Babel war was born, as the fear of the other became the overriding passion that motivated each group to force others into their story or to face annihilation. The killing begun in Cain was now magnified as humankind’s cooperative ability unleashed a destructiveness that is as terrible as it is irrational. Humans became committed to a strategy of destroying the other even if it means their own death. Better to die than to let the other exist. To this day we thus find ourselves condemned to live in tribes, each bent on the destruction of the other tribes so that we might deny our tribal limits. Our histories become the history of war as we count our days by the battles of the past.” (Hauerwas, Stanley. The Hauerwas Reader. Page 145)

In a great Pentecost Sunday sermon, Stanley Hauerwas suggests that at some level, the purpose of Pentecost was to undo what happened at Babel. He creatively links the “confusion of tongues” at Babel with everyone hearing the good news at Pentecost in their own language. What happened at Babel, undone at Pentecost.

But what draws me to the quote above from that sermon is that if we changed but a word or two, it could appear on the editorial page an any American newspaper today. “The killing begun with Cain” . . . happens all too often in our country - in “mass contexts.”

Every time we experience tragic moments like what just happened in El Paso and Dayton, we hear the clamoring of voices with quick solutions. No doubt some of those solutions would be helpful. No doubt some would make little or no difference. I don’t think I’m smart enough to make the call but am smart enough to know that God’s long-term plan for humankind was not as Hauerwas aptly describes Babel. Yet it seems like so much of the world, not just our own country, seems “condemned to live in tribes, each bent on the destruction of the other tribes.”

What is disturbing to me, in addition to the awful evilness of these acts, is how small a voice the church has in our national conversation. I know many believers are speaking about gun control, the kind of tribalism that generates hatred of one another, and similar ideas. But you can say all of that and then some with little or no authentic Christian voice.

At least part of the uniqueness an authentic voice can bring to the table is the worth of every human being. Others don’t have to share my skin color, my language, my worldview, my gender, my geography, or even my values to be people of worth. The Genesis way of talking about that would be to simply say “we are all created in the image of God!”

But it isn’t just mass shootings. I live in metro-Atlanta. Most mornings I listen to the local news while getting read for work. We have lots of “killings” in our city that are the result of people just driving through neighborhoods and shooting up houses, apartments, and the like. People are too often killed in robberies where the amount taken is a pitiful exchange for a human life.  Georgia prisons,, like is true for many of these United States prison systems, are over-crowded warehouses that are poorly cared for – both the facilities and the prisoners. We seem to operate on an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” mentality that denies the humanity of those who are there. Then we are perplexed at the recidivism rate in our prison systems. 

Would it make a difference if we followers of Jesus were more known for declaring “we no longer need to live in Babel” instead of a voice that often sounds as though some lives either have no value or aren’t as valuable as others?

Would it make a difference if we were more known for the kind of behavior Jesus models which seems to suggest value for every human life, even people like adulteresses, foreign women, crooked tax collectors, occupying army leaders, and more, instead of being know for how tightly we can draw the circle to include our tribe, but not some others?

It seems to me that if the gospel doesn’t transform our Babel-like world into the joy and hope of Pentecost, maybe we aren’t preaching it as we should. After all, Paul declared that “the gospel is the power of God unto salvation!” (Romans 1:16)

There’s a Christian singer by the name of Jeremy Camp who recorded a version of Give Me Jesus. When I rise, when I eat, when I go to bed, when I die – give me Jesus.

What if . . . instead of offering condemnation, distain, judgment, and condescension, we decided “to give the world Jesus”?

Would that make a difference?

The church desperately needs to present its prophetic, unique voice in the conversation of our culture. That voice needs to offer the saving grace which only Jesus can provide.

The Gift of Freedom and Responsibility

Jesus can sometimes be down-right offensive! I often think that the difference between us and Jesus in this area is that He offends us with what matters; we often offend over “stuff” that has no eternal significance!

Let me give an example.

In Luke12:33-34, after telling the parable of the rich fool, Jesus says, among other things, “sell your possessions and give alms.” (12:33) That is followed by “Yes: where your treasure is, there your heart will be too.” (11:35) The Kingdom New Testament. N.T. Wright)

Then Jesus talks about watchfulness. (11:35-48) When the master returns, he will bless the servants whom he found awake and ready. Mixed in all of that is the idea that “the son of man is coming at a time you don’t expect.” (11:40) The whole idea of “being ready” or “watchful” as the servants care for the master’s possessions seems rather intense. 

As though that weren’t enough, Jesus wraps up this conversation by saying “Much will be required from one who is given much; if someone is entrusted with much, even more will be expected in return.” (11:48)

I happen to be reading in this part of Luke during the week before we in the United States celebrate the birth of our country on July 4. We’re obviously not a perfect country and some of that lack of perfection is born in my own citizenship! But the simple truth is that we have freedom about which much of the rest of the world can only dream. 

Here are some realities about my own freedom:

• ·         I go to meet with fellow believers to worship every Sunday, I have never even received a speeding ticket on my way to worship, much less been arrested for assembling.

• ·         I work for an institution whose mission is “to educate students for Christ-centered service and leadership throughout the world.” I have received a “warning ticket” for speeding, but it had nothing to do with where I work or an attempt to harass me for being a follower of Jesus.

• ·         Earlier this week, I had lunch for a student taking a directed “studies on preaching” course with me this summer. We ate in a public place. We talked about a great sermon he listened to this week; the sermon he is working on about David and Abigail in 1 Samuel 25; and the chapter out of the textbook he is reading. No one said, “you can’t do that religious stuff in my restaurant.”

• ·         The lady who cuts my hair, when I told her about my wife’s illness, stopped in mid-hair cut and announced to the salon we were having prayer. My regular doctor tells me every time I see her “I’m praying for Vicki.” No one is yet to make an effort to say “you can’t do that here.”

I could go on. We’re not perfect – but “Wow!” We really have a lot of freedom. 

Here are some additional realities about our world, not my personal realities, but my brothers and sisters in Christ.

• ·         245 million believers will experience “high levels of persecution” in 2019 – a rise of 14% over 2018.

• ·         One in nine Christians experience high levels of persecution worldwide.

• ·         4,136 believers were killed for faith-related reasons in the “to 50 countries” for persecution in 2018.

• ·         Christians are frequently detained without trial and church buildings are frequently attacked in the top 50 countries.

(That information is from World Watch List 2019 published by OpenDoorsUSA.)

Then in the deep recesses of my mind and heart – that place where we sometimes try to bury “the offense of Jesus,” I hear Him say, “to whom much is given, much is required.”

I realize this is a complicated issue and am equally aware that I am not smart enough to come up with a solution. But . . . “to whom much is given, much is required.”

At our worship last week we prayed for “world refuge Sunday.” Many refuges are  in that condition because of persecution.

Thursday, July 4 is upon us. As we celebrate our freedom, perhaps we could at least take a moment and pray for persecuted believers all around the world.

After all, “to whom much is given, much is required.”