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.

Afraid of Perceptions

The good news included the fact that the unemployment rate for the United States dipped below 9%. Something like 220,000 new jobs created in one month showed signs that we were, at long last, digging out of this difficult period of economic struggle. The corresponding bad news was that I heard one economist say that it would take years for our job rates to return to what we assume acceptable – 4% or less unemployment.

While the national unemployment rate dipped below 9%, the rate in Georgia was still above 10%. Our rates for foreclosure on homes remain near the top in the nation and we keep being told that the value of our homes will continue to decrease until the foreclosure story runs its course. That’s not very encouraging for a guy about to enter the decade of his 60s, the last decade that most people participate in the “full-employment” phase of life.

But that doesn’t bother me nearly as much as the fact that our unemployment rate seems unmovable and I don’t see a lot happening that will change that. The cold, hard facts of life remain just as constant: a minimum wage job in our culture won’t provide anything close to a reasonable livelihood. Such wages hardly cover the cost of health insurance – which of course means that most people in those jobs end up with no health insurance and we simply end up adding energy to the endless cycle of dependency, poor health care, and ultimately higher taxes. Those higher taxes motivate us to elect men and women to Congress who promise to drastically cut government spending, only to realize upon arrival that cutting spending is much easier to promise than to actually do.

In Georgia – but I suspect this is true in most places – it appears that two very challenging problems rise to the top like rich cream does in milk from a Guernsey cow. One involves education – and it includes the horrendous dropout rate for high school students and the often equally horrendous inability to read and write competently for many high school graduates. The other involves the problem of single mothers and unwed births. While certainly not an exclusively urban problem, it does seem to have reached nearly pandemic levels in some urban areas.

This is where the challenge of afraid of perceptions enters into the equation. As I’m writing this, I’m wondering whether or not I will have the nerve to post it as a blog entry. It isn’t because I’m afraid that it is untrue, mean spirited, or otherwise inappropriate. It is because when these issues are talked about, we often are perceived to be racists. While it is true that these two problems – education and unwed births – are apparently more serious in urban settings and, at least in our culture, urban settings are more likely to be populated by ethnic minorities, it shouldn’t mean you are a racist if you say “we must find a way to fix this.”

It is also true that to say having children without two parents involved in the birth and raising of that child is not good; to do so often results in the perception that you don’t like babies and are somehow condemning the child for his or her parents’ immoral behavior. But is certainly not a necessary conclusion!

In reality, it seems that to allow my fear of the perception some might cast my way that I am either a racist or baby hater – or both – to cause me to never say “we can do better” actually does make me a racist or baby hater. I know that graduating from high school with such limited verbal and math skills that a person will never get beyond the minimum wage jobs of our culture is a recipe for a life of dependency upon others to eke out an existence. I know that the challenge of raising children is almost more than two engaged parents can manage, one parent alone makes it really challenging. Put those two things together – poor job potential and a child (or children) to take care of – and life is simply a struggle every single day.

I simply can’t take Jesus seriously – love God and love my neighbor as I love myself – and not say “we must find a way to fix this.” To do otherwise makes me less than a disciple should be and makes me guilty of assuming that the life of a plantation slave is appropriate, even 150 years after we began a war among ourselves to declare that it isn’t!

Not one word of this has as its purpose the endorsement of any political party. Democrats, Republicans, Independents, Tea Party, Green Peace, Socialist, Communist, or any other entity I know of has the slightest chance of solving the problem. It is a problem of the heart, and even God’s Law proved to be inadequate in solving heart problems, why would anyone assume government can do better?

What if the church rose to the occasion and declared “we must fix this problem.” No one congregation, no matter how well meaning, could actually pull that off by itself, but churches – followers of Jesus – who take seriously the call of Jesus to go and make disciples might actually pull of the miracle of our age. Our reluctance probably is a result of lots of things – the lack of knowhow, lack or resources, frustration with previously tried programs, and, and this is the one I think is most serious – we don’t want our talk about the problem to let people perceive us to be racists.

One of the things that always creates renewed interest on my part in Jesus is that He wasn’t afraid of perceptions and He marched out into His culture and turned things upside down as He created a right-side up opportunity. Our culture is upside down right now – we are quite comfortable in letting poor education and poor moral behavior pass right in front of us without a word being said. “Let the Legislature fix it” or “Let the Congress fix it” – all the while demanding that our taxes be lowered, not raised.

I think Jesus might want to turn that upside down and say, “Let the church make disciples and fix it!”

Better Things

Hebrews 6:9 contains a note of confidence that must have been a welcome relief to the first readers of this great epistle. “We are confident of better things in your case, things that belong to salvation.” Knowing of another’s confidence can be a powerful motivator – especially when the source of the confidence is someone you respect.

The word translated, “confident,” is used often by the writer of Hebrews and means something like “to attain certainty in reference to something or someone, to be convinced.” When I know someone is “convinced” about me, it motivates me to strive harder.

The idea of “better things” is also worth a comment. “Better” implies that “good” already exists. The word used here is consistently used in the New Testament to describe God, as in “only God is good” or to describe God’s behavior, or even to describe behavior that followers of God can and should do, as in “seek to do good for one another.” (1 Thessalonians 5:15)

One more note about the verse – and this one has to do with positioning. Hebrews 6:9 follows a paragraph (5:14-6:8) that can be appropriately described as the strongest warning to be found in Scripture about the challenge of “having fallen away.” (6:6) In the terms used by the text, such a moment has the potential of “impossible to renew.” Students of Hebrews have debated since these words were written exactly what they might mean. But regardless of how I read those words – is it really impossible or should these words be read more hypothetically – it seems you have to say they are a serious reminder of how important it is to continue on the journey that began when we “have once been enlightened.” (6:4)

Amazingly, right after such a stern warning, the preacher in the writer of Hebrews jumps to “We are confident of better things in your case, things that belong to salvation.” In other words, the warning seems necessary in the sense that it has to be uttered, but unnecessary in the sense that no one has to be its victim!

Most of us are surrounded by people who occasionally need a warning. Some of us even muster up the courage to hold our family, our friends, our colleagues to some level of accountability. I wonder how much difference it would make if, even when the warning we have to utter is pretty stern, we followed it up with the preacher’s voice of Hebrews and expressed “confidence of better things?”