I Can't Explain Him

It’s springtime in the south, and in a normal year our hot topic might very well be tornadoes.  It seems as though every spring horrific tornadoes pop up when a cold front comes rushing south to push down the “warmer than normal” temperatures.  Inevitably we will see stories on the national and local news outlets about destruction, death, and general mayhem left in the wake of killer storms.

Tornadoes have odd patterns. Sometimes the video images we see after the storm will have one house utterly destroyed and a house next door seemingly untouched. How does that happen? A few weeks ago, my wife and I spent a few days on Florida’s “forgotten coast” where Hurricane Michael hit as a level four storm in October 2018. We could still see tons of damage. But what was obvious was that in a variety of places many houses, businesses were destroyed, while some survived nearly intact. How does that happen?

I suppose a good conversion with a well-educated meteorologist could explain all kinds of principles from the world of weather, maybe physics as well, that would help answer that question. It is also possible that the smartest of the meteorologists might also say, “we don’t know everything about how these storms work.”

While walking around the town of Port St. Joe on the forgotten coast, I noticed that the beautiful, traditional looking First Baptist Church was still unusable. The steeple was on the ground at the front entrance and the roof of the sanctuary was on the floor. But a little further down the street, less than a mile, the Methodist Church in Port St. Joe, right on St. Joseph’s Bay, seemed to have suffered much less damage and was being used regularly. 

That isn’t unlike what you often hear on the news after a tornado rumbles through a southern or mid-western neighborhood like a freight train wreaking destruction all over the place. But you almost always see destruction abutting no damage. In these cases, you often hear people declaring “God saved my house, my possessions, my life . . .” But what about the people next door? Did God not care about them? In the remarkable question the disciples ask Jesus in John 9, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (ESV)

Or in the case of First Baptist and First Methodist in Port St. Joe – “did the Baptists sin worse since their church building’s damage was more catastrophic?”

Or in the aftermath of Alabama tornadoes, “Did my next-door neighbor sin worse because her house was destroyed and her children killed and mine weren’t?”

The way it comes out far too often is “I’m so glad God blessed me and my family,” while the next-door neighbor can only wonder about a God who randomly blesses one family and ignores the other, right next door.

I’m not doubting God’s sovereignty over the world. I’m not doubting the power of prayer. I’m not doubting my own need to pray – I pray daily and often for lots of things, including the safety and blessing of God on my wife and children.  I’m not even doubting that God has blessed and protected us in important ways over the years. Specifically, right now I’m praying that God will help us avoid Covid-19. But I’m confident that the pastor’s wife who died yesterday of what seems to be Covid-19 was praying similarly to me.

The real question isn’t “can or does God bless us?” Rather the real question is “how do I talk about the blessing of God without sounding like the disciples who assumed ‘someone sinned’ in the case of the man born blind?”. Or to put that another way, “Can I talk about God’s blessing without sounding as though people who don’t experience this blessing must be sinners with more tragic records than I have with God?”

To put this whole issue in current perspective, assuming I am not afflicted with the corona-virus, don’t become ill with Covid-19, and live to tell the story – how can I tell the story in a way that doesn’t make people who have loved ones who can’t tell that story, even more frustrated with God?

The problem is, as is true so often in theological thinking, we allow our western, Enlightenment’s focus on individualism to become the focus. When that happens, my prayers become more selfish, my testimony becomes more ego-centric, and God becomes something like personal property. When my prayers aren’t answered as I instructed God, I’m frustrated. When they are answered as I instructed, “look how spiritual I am.”

I know this current cultural crisis won’t go on forever. (At least I think I know that!) What I hope is that those of us who trust in God’s providential care won’t talk about that care in ways that turn off others to Him. But the more self-centered our comments will be, the more likely that will be the outcome.

As a follower of Jesus, I am not so much called “to explain” God as I am “to trust” God. If I can explain Him, of what need would I have of Him? (See Romans 11:33-36)

That trust has convinced me (2 Timothy 1:12) that a day is coming when He will, once and for all, make all things right. In my head, Genesis 2 will be come our eternal story. In the meantime, life is going to be impacted with the Genesis 3-11 story. But I can’t forget that the resurrection of Jesus put some serious limits on the power of sin and death – the “strong man” as been tied up. (Mark 3:27) So despite some “momentary and light afflictions,” I anticipate an “eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.” (2 Corinthians 4:17)

Today I want to celebrate the good stuff and lament the not-so-good stuff. I want to celebrate and lament in ways that point others to God, not away from God.

 

The challenge is, how can we manage to do that?

I’m confident I don’t know the full answer to that question. But my prayer about my own witness is that like the well-educated meteorologist who likely would say “we don’t know everything about how tornadoes work,” I will have the courage to say, “I don’t know everything about how God works.”

God save us from those who won’t say that!

Choking to Death on Camel Stew

If you’ve read Matthew 23, you may remember that Jesus is described as confronting the Pharisees of His day in ways that no other gospel can match. He isn’t in the best of moods and sounds a bit like a Hebrew prophet bringing a law suit against Israel for their unfaithfulness.  The series of sayings that begin with “woe to you,” or “Woe betide you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!” as N.T. Wright translates it in his Kingdom New Testament, is a powerful reminder of the need for a serious course correction.

The woe that I personally keep coming back to – perhaps out of some need to make sure it couldn’t be said of me – is the saying found in verses 23, 24. Here it is from Wright’s translation:

               "Woe betide you, scribes and Pharisees, yhou hypocrites!" Jesus went on. "You tithe mint and dill and cumin, and you omit the serious matters of the law like justice, mercy, and loyalty. You should have done these, without neglecting the others. You're blind guides! You filter out a gnat, but you gulp down a camel.

 

We first meet the idea of tithing when Abram gave Melchizedek a tithe of the spoils of war gained from victory. (Genesis 14) In the Law – Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy all insist that a tithe should be given to the Lord. Most would assume that means a tenth of all of one’s income. From the comments Jesus makes to the Pharisees – it sounds as though they took the principle of tithing in an extraordinarily serious manner. They tithed their herb gardens – mint, dill, and cumin included. With scrupulous detail, they made sure “they paid their tithes” as I’ve heard some believers describe the process.

Jesus is not opposed to such a detailed and determined approach to tithing. “You should have done these” is how He responds to it. 

Yet, that isn’t all that Jesus said.

“You omit the serious matters of the law like justice, mercy, and loyalty.” They are “blind guides” because the rigid legalism with which they tithe is not matched with a commitment to issues more important than making sure you gave a teaspoon of mint, dill, and cumin to the Levites. 

The Law had much to say about justice, mercy, and faithfulness (covenant loyalty). The prophet Micah  would have shouted a fervent “Amen!” to this criticism Jesus offers. Do you remember what he said, summarizing much of what the Law pointed toward, in Micah 6:8? “He has told you, O man, what is good: and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (ESV)

For Jesus, focusing on minutia at the expense of the weightier matters is as though we strain out a tiny little gnat (unclean for sure, Lev. 11:41) while gulping down a camel, also unclean (Lev. 11:4) and the largest of the beasts common to Palestine.

It doesn’t take an advanced degree in theology to figure out that Jesus wants us to pay attention to all that God has asked of us, even in areas where we might think “no big deal, it’s such a small matter.” So this isn’t an invitation to become a libertine about such matters.

But neither doesn’t it take that advanced degree to realize that when my focus on such relatively minor issues convinces me that justice, kindness, and walking humbly with our God don’t matter, I’m little more than a blind guide who fastidiously strains out a tiny gnat from my soup but ends up choking to death on camel stew.

Pick up a daily newspaper or spend thirty minutes watching your favorite media news source and you will see issues related to justice, mercy, and faithfulness all over the place. Walk or drive around the town or city you live in – and it won’t be hard to find issues related to justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

Unfortunately – it isn’t unusual to hear self-proclaimed Christian leaders straining gnats while choking on camel stew when it comes to how we address these important issues. 

The Pharisees seem to be more focused on maintaining a preferred way of life than on taking the good news of the kingdom of God seriously. Perhaps it was some political theory that they adopted over and above the gospel.

May we not follow their steps and one day hear Jesus say, “Woe betide you, scribes and Pharisees, you hypocrites!”

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.