Perceptions from a Pewboy

Do you consider yourself to be a dreamer? By dreamer here, I do not simply mean one who engages in the literal dreams of nighttime sleep. I also mean the figurative dreaming that some people seem to be particularly gifted to do. As I see it, a dreamer is a person with a particularly vivid imagination who pays attention the strange things that other people do not see; who considers possibilities that other people tend to overlook; and who generates ideas that other people often dismiss as unrealistic and untenable. A dreamer is a sort of visionary who glimpses reality with a lens far different than the one formed by a desire to perpetuate a comfortable status quo.

Based upon that definition, would you consider yourself to be a dreamer?

I don’t know if I am a dreamer any longer or not, but I think that I started out as one. In fact, I spent a good portion of my childhood dreaming up imaginary scenarios for myself in which to play. Many of those imaginary scenarios were based upon my favorite television shows. One day, I would pretend to be Matt Dillon, the heroic marshal from “Gunsmoke.” But just when I had my holster and cowboy hat in place, I would pause to read a comic book, and then I wouldn’t want to be a cowboy anymore. I’d want to be Batman. So I’d take off the holster and put on my Batman mask. But as soon as I fastened my utility belt, an episode of “Star Trek” would appear on the television, and then I wouldn’t want to be Batman any longer. I’d want to be captain James Tiberius Kirk, captain of the Starship Enterprise.

A good portion of my childhood was spent in this playful schizophrenia, moving quickly and effortlessly from one imaginative context to another, one character to another. It was in the midst of one of those imaginative contexts that I came to the dinner table one evening wearing a black vest and a plastic futuristic pistol at my side. My mother said to me, “Who are you supposed to be tonight?”

“Well,” I said, “if you must know, I’m Han Solo, captain of the Millennium Falcon. It’s the ship that made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.” To which my mother responded with these exact words: “Eric, how in the world did you become such a dreamer?”

Children make for good dreamers. Children dream more imaginatively than anyone else. But, sadly, we tend to grow out of our capacity for imaginative dreaming as we age, don’t we? We allow ourselves to do that, I think, because we know very well that the world can be hard on adult dreamers. Adult dreamers are looked upon as impractical and irrelevant. Sometimes they are seen as a threat because they see things differently than other people. Sometimes we even go so far as to kill our adult dreamers because we want so desperately to be rid of them and their strange ideas.

Martin Luther King, Jr. was a dreamer. He dreamed of a world of racial equality in which people would be judged not by the color of their skin but the content of their character. He was killed for that dream.

People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie Ten Boom were dreamers. During the Second World War, they dared to dream of a Germany that would stand against the evils perpetuated by the Nazi regime. Corrie Ten Boom was imprisoned in a concentration camp for her dream. Bonhoeffer was hanged for his.

In the Old Testament, Joseph was a dreamer. He was a young man who was prone to peculiar visions of an alternative but divinely preferred future into which his family and the people of Israel were moving. But his brothers hated him for his dreaming. They saw his dreaming an effort on Joseph’s part to claim dominion over them. And so, one day, the brothers ambushed Joseph, threw him into a pit, and then sold him to some travelers who took him as a slave into Egypt.

Joseph’s story reminds us that the human penchant for dismissing dreamers is nothing new. It was happening even in Old Testament times, even in the lineage of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Even then, the world could be hard on dreamers. Even then, dreamers like Joseph often found themselves violently dismissed because people wanted so desperately to be rid of them and their strange and threatening ideas.

There was another dreamer. His name was Jesus of Nazareth. He dared to dream of a kingdom in which prostitutes were valued as much as the temple priests; a kingdom in which the face of God could be discerned in the faces of the poor, the broken, and the marginalized; a kingdom in which rebirth and transformation were doorways into the salvation of God. Where did that dream lead him? It led him to a rugged cross where he bled and died for the sake of the world.

Dreamers often have important things to say, things that other people will never dare to say. But the world can be painfully inhospitable to dreamers. Sometimes we even nail our adult dreamers to a cross because we want so desperately to remove them from the conversation.

I was once a part of a church that had a dreamer in it. Her name was Olivia, and she was notorious for her dreams and visions and her willingness to talk about them amidst a congregation that had grown impatient with her impracticality and her penchant for mystical metaphors. One day at a Bible study, Olivia spoke up. “I had a dream last night,” she said.

“OK, Olivia, tell us about your dream.” (That was what I SAID, but what I THOUGHT was this: “Olivia, we only have a half hour left in this Bible study, and we don’t have time to waste on your nonsensical dreams, which I’m sure have nothing at all to do with the subject matter of our study.”)

“Well,” she said, “in the dream, hundreds of children of all different colors were standing outside our church building, pounding on the doors to get inside. But inside the church, all of us were dancing to music that was so loud that we couldn’t hear the pounding. The children were pounding on the doors to get inside, and we weren’t listening to their cries.”

“When I woke up after the dream,” Olivia said, “my pillow was wet with tears.”

“OK, Olivia, thanks for that.” (Thinking to myself, “Can I please get back to my lesson plan now?”)

In my mind, you see, I had already dismissed Olivia. As quickly as Joseph’s brothers had dismissed him in the Old Testament, so did I dismiss Olivia because her dreams and visions were an inconvenience to me.

The very next day, two youth in the community committed suicide independently. One was 19 the other was 17. Both of them were alienated from their family, and neither one of them had a connection to a church. As soon as I heard the news, I thought about Olivia’s dream—a dream about children pounding on the doors of the church, crying to get inside and not being heard.

I thought to myself in that moment, “It’s time for me to listen to the dreamer more attentively, because she’s seeing the things of God.”

“Sing aloud to God our strength,” proclaims the psalmist in the 81st psalm. “Shout for joy to the God of Jacob.”

In this directive moment of Scripture, the psalmist, of course, is demanding a particular kind of worship from his audience—passionate and vibrant worship; worship that involves loud singing and shouts of praise; worship that can be rendered only by people who are deeply invested in the One whom they are worshiping.

“Raise a song,” writes the psalmist, “sound the tambourine, play the sweet lyre and the harp, blow the trumpet, for I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt”

Part of my personal fondness for the psalmist’s vision of worship in Psalm 81 is due to his conviction that all musical instruments are to be used in the community’s worship of God: not simply the voice, but also the harp with its seamless flourishes; and not simply the harp, but also the lyre with its sweet intonations; and not simply the lyre, but also the tambourine with its unsettling percussion; and not simply the tambourine, but also the trumpet and other wind instruments with their unparalleled brightness.

We could add to the list without changing the meaning of the text. God is to be praised not simply with the organ but also with the keyboard. And not simply with the keyboard but also with guitars and drums and clarinets and flutes. God is to be praised with traditional hymnody. (Yes! Absolutely! We jettison the theological poetry and evocative arrangements of traditional hymnody at our great peril.) But God is also to be praised with contemporary and meditative praise choruses.

Dare I say it: God is to be praised both by people who like to hold a hymnal and people who prefer looking at a screen!

In the 81st Psalm, one encounters a worshiper who advocates using every possible musical expression in the worship of God. It is an advocacy emerging from the psalmist’s conviction that the God of Jacob deserves something more than a single kind of music or a single kind of instrument. In fact, as the psalmist makes clear, the God of Jacob is so vast in nature and so majestic in sovereignty that the only worship that will ultimately suffice is the kind of worship that utilizes every portion of the music that God makes possible: the harp, the lyre, the tambourine, the trumpet, the voice, and every other musical expression that humankind can possibly render.

“Bring it all,” says the psalmist, “for we are worshiping a God who deserves all the world’s music.”

Therein lies the theological foundation upon which the psalmist’s liturgical framework stands. He seems to be absolutely convinced that authentic worship is far more about God than it is about us—far more about God’s creative glorification than it is about our musical preferences and proclivities. If this is indeed the case—if worship is indeed more about encountering a vast and unsettling Creator than it is about catering to the liturgical whims of a particular congregation—then how can worshipers spiritually afford to settle for anything less in their worship than creativity, artistic diversity, and a stubborn resistance to liturgical myopia?

A few years ago, the church to which I was appointed sent a mission team of 15 youth and 11 adults to the gulf coast in Mississippi. I was privileged to be part of that team. We worked hard to help people to rebuild or repair their homes. We established relationships with the homeowners, thereby helping them to understand that we cared about them and not just their property. Then on Friday night (our last night there), we held a closing worship service.

Interestingly, the worship service was held, not in a sanctuary, but a dining hall. There were no bulletins. No organs or keyboards. No shirts and ties. No liturgical garments. There were just 26 tired but spiritually attentive souls making themselves available to the presence of God in worship at the end of what had been an important week of ministry. We sang some familiar hymns and choruses. We talked about the things for which we were grateful that night. We heard from Scripture. And then we shared the bread and cup of the Lord’s Supper, both of which tasted particularly sweet that night.

At some point during that worship experience, we sang a version of “Amazing Grace” that that particular group of worshipers had come to treasure. When it was finished, one could have heard a pin drop in that large dining hall. It was a reverent silence into which we had been ushered by the Holy Spirit, the kind of supernatural silence in which the still small voice of God often makes its way into the deepest chambers of a human soul.

Following the worship service, I sat down beside one of the youth who seemed to have been very moved by the experience. “Wow,” he said. “I wish that every worship service could be like that.”

“What do you think it was that made it so special,” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But it was like Jesus was here—right here—and nobody wanted to think about anything else but him.”

I decided to take the risk of asking another question:

“What do you think it would take to make every one of our worship services like that?”

His response was as heartfelt as it was insightful: “I’m no expert,” he said, “But maybe it has to start with people believing that Jesus is really here. Maybe if we really believed it—maybe if we REALLY believed that Jesus is showing up and paying attention to what we are doing— then worship would always feel like something big and important.”

In some ways, that young man was giving expression to the very same message that the psalmist articulates in Psalm 81, and the message is this: If we really believe that God is the recipient of our worship, and if we really believe that the presence of God is manifesting itself in our worship (in other words, if we really believe that Jesus shows up and pays attention when we worship), then worship is always something big and important—something deserving of every musical instrument that we can fit into the sanctuary! If we really believe that we are glorifying the majesty of the triune God and not simply going through the motions, then worship is always something that deserves quiet lyres and loud trumpets!

“Sing aloud to God our strength,” writes the psalmist. “Shout for joy to the God of Jacob. Raise a song, blow the trumpet—use every musical instrument you have!” To read these words as Scripture is to come to the conclusion that the discipline of worship is God’s ordinance and God’s timeless decree. Authentic worship ushers us into the presence of God in ways that are particularly transformational and revelatory. In fact, the psalmist would have us believe that the discipline of worship is to our soul what breathing is to the body. It is just that urgent and just that essential.

How much time to you spend thinking about the judgment of God?

It’s a hard subject, isn’t it? We would much rather focus on the tender portions of God’s character—love, mercy, tolerance, and acceptance. In fact, I’m not sure how much attention people are willing to give anymore to God’s all-encompassing judgment. My hunch is that we have spent so much time dealing with superficially and stridently judgmental people (and there are plenty of those) that we have gradually dismissed the righteous and perfect judgment of God from our theological discourse.

Yesterday, however, as I listened to the words of the 82nd Psalm being read as part of the morning worship service, I was suddenly and powerfully reminded of the unsettling fact that the judgment of God is a biblical reality that cannot be ignored or trivialized.

Psalm 82 begins in this way: God is seated in the divine council—a poetic image in which heaven is pictured as a divine courtroom where God is the irrefutable judge.

Then the Psalmist offers a one-sentence lament: “How long, O God, will you judge unjustly and show partiality to the wicked?” This, of course, is an eloquent way of saying “Hey God, why do the wicked people seem to be doing so well here on earth?! Why not place a heaping helping of your wrath upon those people?!”

There is an appealing honesty about that line of questioning, isn’t there? Which one of us, after all, has not secretly (or not so secretly) wished the judgment of God upon Osama Bin Laden or some other individual whom we perceive to be wicked?

But the Psalmist quickly moves from his sharp lament to a heartfelt beckoning of God’s judgment upon the earth: “Arise, O God,” the Psalmist says, “arise and judge the earth. Give justice to the weak and the orphan. Maintain the right of the afflicted. Rescue the weak and the needy. Arise, O God, and judge the earth.”

Notice that the kind of judgment that the Psalmist envisions in this moment of Scripture is not a judgment concerning our eternal destiny. It is not a judgment, in other words, concerning heaven and hell. Rather, the kind of judgment for which the Psalmist prays in this Scripture is a present and earthly judgment, a judgment that makes right what seems to have gone horribly wrong. It is a judgment that produces justice for the disenfranchised and the marginalized. “Arise, O God, and judge the earth.”

In the New Testament, Jesus also speaks of the judgment of God. He speaks of it as an occasion in which all the nations of the world are gathered before the throne of the returning king, the exalted Christ. In that judgment, Christ will separate the sheep from the goats, the redeemed saints from the unrepentant sinners. And what is the criterion for judgment, according to the New Testament? Simply this: Did you feed the hungry? Did you clothe the naked? Did you care for the sick and the prisoner? In other words, did you see my face (the face of Jesus) in the least and the lost? Did you live out your salvation in such a way that your life served to incarnate my love and my ministry in the world?

Both testaments, then, old and new, speak powerfully about the reality and comprehensiveness of God’s perfect and righteous judgment. But what are we to make of this biblical subject matter as disciples of Jesus Christ endeavoring to be faithful in the year 2010? How are we to understand the judgment of God?

It is true, after all, that, over the years, people have sometimes attempted to say far too much about God’s judgment, proclaiming far more than God has revealed and venturing into theological terrain that is not theirs to enter. Some have even gone so far as to speculate concerning the specific population of the eternal kingdom (as though we have sufficient wisdom to discern with great specificity who is “in” and who is “out”).

And yet, although there is great danger in saying too MUCH about God’s judgment, there is also great danger in saying too LITTLE about it.

When we speak of God’s judgment, we are speaking of a God who cares about all that transpires in the unfolding of human history; a God who is always laboring to bring about justice where there is injustice; a God who is redemptively at work to rectify everything that has been distorted by human sin.

When we speak of God’s judgment, we are speaking of a perfect and holy God who has the capacity to be both heartbroken and angered by human sin and disobedience. That particular fact (brightly illuminated by Psalm 82) might just inspire us to resist the temptation to make God into nothing more than a heavenly grandpa who coddles us and winks at our disobedience. “No,” says the Psalmist, “do not reduce God in that manner. Do not make God into something smaller than what God really is—a token deity that fits more conveniently in your preconceived worldview.” The Psalmist reminds us that God is nothing less than a perfectly righteous and holy judge who dares to love humankind enough to hold us accountable for the things we do and the things we don’t do.

When we speak of God’s judgment, we are speaking of a God whose mind-boggling righteousness places substantial demands upon the lives of those who wish to love and worship this God. Which is to say, the righteous judgment of God, if we are thinking about it in the right way, inspires us to bring our lives into alignment with what that righteous judgment requires.

Perhaps most of all, when we speak of God’s judgment, we remind ourselves of the urgency of our relationship with Jesus Christ, whom the New Testament describes as the One who prepares us for judgment. He prepares us by graciously and mysteriously imparting to us HIS righteousness, thereby making it possible for God to look upon us in judgment and see first, not the ugliness of our sin, but the righteousness of the Son.

Such is the wonderfully illogical salvation that God has made possible in Jesus Christ—a salvation brought to us by a Savior who stands with us and for us in judgment and whose righteousness graciously becomes OUR righteousness.

Today, I am praying the prayer the Psalmist prays in the 82nd Psalm: “Arise, O God, and judge the earth.” In other words, make things right. Make this world into the world that you created it to be. Bring the purifying fire of your righteous judgment.

But to the Psalmist’s prayer, I add this petition: “God, help me—and help all your people—to stand upon the secure ground of Jesus Christ where the purifying fire has already burned.”

It has become one of my convictions that healthy and holistic leadership is leadership that stubbornly refuses to become fixated on results at the expense of relationships. To put it another way, healthy and holistic leadership is leadership that resists the temptation to become so obsessed with a particular destination that it begins to overlook the meaningful and revelatory encounters occurring within the journey.

Interestingly, this conviction found fresh illumination recently as I spent some meditative time with the first eight verses of the twelfth chapter of John’s Gospel.

The situation in this moment of Scripture is as follows: In a profound expression of both her love for Jesus and her adoration of his Lordship, Mary (the sister of Martha and Lazarus) takes the most expensive perfume that she owns and pours it over Jesus’ feet. My sense is that this gesture represents her most extravagant effort to help everyone in the room, including Jesus, to respect more deeply the nature of his life and ministry. It is Mary’s way of placing a tangible exclamation point upon her belief that Jesus is to be set apart and anointed for the purposes of God.

It would have been considered inappropriately intimate, by the way, for a woman to touch a man’s feet in public. It would have been considered even more inappropriate for a woman to dry his feet with her loose hair (since loose hair was often the style worn by prostitutes). In this biblical moment of consecration and adoration, however, Mary is not particularly concerned with societal norms and conventional etiquette. Her only desire is to do something extravagant and tangible to honor the One before whom she is willing to kneel.

Unfortunately for Mary, however, one of the disciples is also present at this meal. His name is Judas—and, yes, it’s THAT Judas.

Judas apparently has a different idea concerning who the Messiah is supposed to be and what the Messiah is supposed to do. He seems to believe strongly in the pursuit of ethical action and social justice. When he sees Mary pouring the expensive perfume onto the feet of Jesus, he cannot contain his displeasure over what he perceives to be a sinfully profligate display:

“Hold on,” Judas essentially says to Mary. “What’s the meaning of this?! We could have sold that perfume for a lot of money, all of which might have been used to minister to the poor!”

Judas, you see, is fixated upon a very noble end result: specifically, the end result of providing for the needs of the poor. And, before succumbing to the temptation to criticize Judas for missing the point, one must first acknowledge that caring for the poor is indeed a priority that has always been located somewhere very close to the heart of Jesus’ ministry.

But Jesus responds to Judas’ interruption with something other than an affirmation: “Judas,” Jesus says, “leave the woman alone. She bought this perfume so that she might keep it for the day of my burial.”

“The poor will always be with you,” Jesus continues, “but you will not always have me.”

Jesus’ teaching in this moment must not be interpreted as an effort on his part to downplay the urgency of caring for the poor. Even a cursory examination of Jesus’ life and ministry makes crystal clear the fact that the poor were always inseparably linked to the kingdom he came to inaugurate. Therefore, when Jesus tells Judas that the poor will always be with us, it cannot be regarded as an expression of indifference toward those living in the social margin of poverty.

But Jesus does seem to be teaching Judas that it is entirely possible for people to become so fixated on noble goals and ethical pursuits that they become inattentive and unavailable to the moments of authentic relationship that are developing right in front of them.

In this significant moment of Scripture, Mary is honoring Jesus in a way that bears witness, not only to her life-altering theological convictions concerning Jesus’ ministry, but also to her vulnerability and devotion. I am grateful that Jesus is a wise enough Savior (and a sensitive enough leader) to recognize the sanctity and preciousness of the moment.

Is it essential for leaders to keep the big picture in mind. Yes.

Is it essential for leaders to be vision-casters for God’s preferred future? Absolutely.

Is it essential for leaders to remind their people of the destinations and the end results for which they are working? Without a doubt, yes.

But it is also essential that leaders not become so idolatrous about their desired destinations and end results that they grow desensitized to the people standing alongside them in the journey, many of whom who are hungering for relationship and validation.

Back in 1995, I spearheaded an effort to launch a new worship service in the church to which I was appointed at the time. I was in my twenties, gung-ho for God and absolutely convinced that the God’s kingdom depended upon the successful launch of this new worship service. In fact, if my calculations back then were correct, then this new worship service would eventually become the eschatological doorway through which Jesus would return! (If any of you have ever been overzealous in your spearheading of a new ministry, then you will understand that my exaggerated description of my attitude is at least partially accurate.)

I’m pleased to report that the worship service began in successful fashion. Best of all, that worship service is still in place, fifteen years later.

Three months after the worship service began, I had a conversation with a church member who told me something unsettling. “You know,” she said, “I tried to talk with you half a year ago about some of my concerns about the new worship service.”

I told her that I remembered the conversation (vaguely).

“Well,” she continued, “I just wanted you to know that it never felt like you really listened to me. It felt like you were so eager to defend what you were trying to do that you didn’t really want to make any room for a differing viewpoint.”

I began to feel that burning sensation of being inwardly convicted.

“I’m not mad at you,” she said. “I know that you were really excited about what you were doing, and I’m thrilled that the new service has begun so well. But I just wanted you to know that it hurt to feel pushed aside. It hurt to feel like you didn’t care about what I thought.”

I’ll never forget that conversation because of the way in which it made me to understand how easy it is for leaders to become so fixated on holy results that they lose sight of the relational, tender, and Christ-centered moments that the Holy Spirit makes possible along the way.

In many ways, I am still learning this lesson. Not a month goes by that I don’t find myself playing the role of Judas, allowing my preconceived desires for particular results to interrupt a Mary’s effort to anoint the feet of Jesus.

In the New Testament book of James, after the author highlights the unholy behavior of mistreating the disenfranchised and ignoring the poor, he offers a teaching that is as timeless as it is revelatory: “What good is it,” he writes, “if you say that you have faith, but do not have works?” (James 2:14)

What does Scripture mean by “works?” I have always believed it to be a reference to those tangible works of ministry that bear witness to the kingdom that God inaugurated in Christ. Works of compassion and justice. Works emerging from a heart that has been transformed and reoriented by the love of Jesus Christ. “What good is it,” the biblical author writes, “if you say that you have faith but do not have works? If a brother or a sister is in trouble and lacks daily food, and you say to them, ‘God bless,’ but do not do anything to supply their bodily needs, what is the good of that?”

Then the biblical author encapsulates the urgency of his teaching in a powerfully unsettling way: “So,” he writes, “faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead.” (James 2:17)

I invite you to allow yourself to be unsettled and perhaps even undone by that biblical teaching for a moment. Allow the teaching to make its way into every chamber of your soul. “Faith by itself, if it has no works, is not a saving faith. It is a dead faith.”

Over the centuries of Christian theology, Christian thinkers have perpetuated what I consider to be a misguided and unfortunate debate. The debate is normally referred to as the “faith versus works debate,” and it hinges on this theological question: Are we saved by faith or are we saved by our good works? People on both sides of the debate cite particular scriptures to support their arguments. The people who believe that we are saved by faith alone (in Latin, “sola fide”) are quick to cite scriptures like Ephesians 2:8-9, which reads this way: “By grace we have been saved through faith, and this is not our own doing, but the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast.” That’s a pretty clear teaching, right?

But hold on. Because, on the other side of the debate are the people who maintain that salvation is received—not EARNED, mind you—but RECEIVED through the doing of good and compassionate works. They cite scriptures like Matthew 25:31-46, in which Jesus makes clear that, in the final judgment, our eternal reward or our eternal punishment has much to do with whether or not we have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked, cared for the sick, and visited the prisoner. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells us that our good works are indeed an integral portion of the salvation that God has made possible.

For centuries, the theological debate has raged on, spawning hugely unfortunate extremes and unnecessary distortions of biblical truth. But in the book of James, it is made crystal clear to us that debating over faith and works is something like debating over bloodflow and breathing. Which would you rather do without, the flow of blood through your veins or the intake of oxygen? That would be a ridiculous conversation, since life depends upon both of these processes.

In much the same way, salvation depends, according to Scripture, upon both faith and good works. They are both manifestations of God’s saving grace, and they are both inseparably joined in the life of discipleship. Faith, without works, is dead. Good works, without faith, are random and unsubstantiated.

But allow me to be very clear about this: I am not suggesting that we have the wherewithal to EARN our salvation through either our faith or our works. We have neither the rectitude nor the righteousness to accomplish that. Salvation is God’s accomplishment and God’s gift, offered to us in grace. We cannot earn it, nor can we ever achieve it by our own merit. We can, however, RECEIVE God’s gift of salvation. (I don’t think that I have to say much to remind you that there is a vast difference between earning a prize and receiving a gift.)

The God-given, Spirit-empowered mechanism by which we RECEIVE God’s gift of salvation is the two-tiered mechanism of faith and works: faith in Jesus Christ accompanied by the good works that the love of Christ inspires within us.

The Greek word for faith that is utilized in the second chapter of James is a word that implies significantly more than an intellectual agreement or a cognitive speculation. In fact, the Greek word for faith is one that implies trust, reliance, dependable relationship. The kind of saving faith that Scripture describes, in other words, is a life-changing relationship with the living and ever-dynamic Christ—a relationship that changes us inwardly to such an extent that it becomes the joy of our life to bless others with works of mercy, not for the purpose of inflating our ego, but for the purpose of giving expression to the glorious and relentless love of Jesus Christ. That is why Scripture is able to say with conviction that faith without works is dead. If our faith is not accompanied by consistent works of mercy and ministry, then our faith cannot be a LIVING relationship with the LIVING Christ, whose very nature is to identify with the least and the lost.

The book of James would have us to believe that a disciple is a person of faith, but not just any faith. More specifically, a disciple is a person whose faith is nothing less than a daily walk with Jesus Christ and whose life bears witness to that daily walk through the frequent rendering of good and merciful works.

Part of what I love about the Psalms in the Old Testament is the way in which they run the entire gamut of human emotions. Granted, we tend to give more attention to the psalms that are comforting and cheerful in spirit: “The Lord is my shepherd…” or “Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth…” or “Enter the gates of the lord with thanksgiving, and enter the courts of the lord with praise.” Those tend to be the psalms that we choose to memorize.

But as one moves throughout the Psalter, it becomes very clear that the Psalmist is no stranger to the darker moods of the human condition. Sometimes one finds the psalmist angry—angry at God and angry at other people. Sometimes one finds the psalmist a bit sarcastic and cynical. And sometimes one finds the psalmist heartbroken and weeping:

“As a deer longs for flowing streams,” are the words of the 42nd Psalm, “so longs my soul after you, O God.”

Don’t sentimentalize the imagery of that. In a time of severe drought, the sight of a deer desperately panting for water is not a pretty sight. A thirsty, panting deer is not far from complete dehydration and death.

Have you ever felt that way? Have you ever felt so depleted by the circumstances around you, so spiritually dehydrated by your grief or your pain, that it felt as though you were panting, spiritually speaking, desperately panting for the refreshing water of God’s presence that seemed to be nowhere to be found. That is the kind of condition that the psalmist calls to mind with this imagery. It is not a cheerful condition. It is a condition of severe spiritual thirst. I’m convinced that many of you know what that condition feels like.

“My tears have been my food day and night,” the psalmist continues in Psalm 42, “while people say to me continually, ‘Where is your God?’”

Have you ever cried yourself to sleep over a broken heart that you are reluctant to reveal in the light of day? Have you ever done so much crying that the tears ran down your cheeks and across your lips so that you could taste their saltiness as they became your food for the day?

This is the emotional condition of the psalmist in the 42nd Psalm. He does not tell us about the specific circumstances that are causing his grief. Had he lost a loved one? Were his family members suffering? Had he come down with a severe illness? Had an enemy taken over his land and destroyed the spirit of his people? We don’t know. And we don’t have to know, do we? Perhaps the particulars concerning the circumstances are not what’s important here. What is important is that, in Psalm 42, the psalmist does not feel as though he is being cared for by a loving shepherd who makes him to lie down in green pastures and who leads him beside the still waters. That is a different psalm and a different mood. In Psalm 42, we find a psalmist who feels broken and desperate and strangely disconnected from the presence of God.

So, what does the psalmist do? How does he manage his grief and despair? Quite simply, he thinks back. He remembers. He spends time calling to memory the faithfulness of God in the past:

“These things I remember”, writes the psalmist in the fourth verse of the 42nd Psalm. “These things I remember as I pour out my soul.”

He goes on to talk about the memory of more joyful days of worship in the temple, when the entire multitude of people joined together in songs of salvation. He then goes on to talk about places in which he had apparently encountered the presence of God in powerful and life-changing ways: One of those places is the River Jordan, where Jesus himself would eventually be baptized. Another one of those places is the Hermon Mountains, tall peaks where perhaps the Psalmist had a vision of God’s sovereignty and majesty. Still another one of those places is Mount Mizar (Mizar is a word that literally means little mountain), a relatively small hill where perhaps the Psalmist experienced God’s comforting grace during a time of extended prayer. “These things I remember,” writes the psalmist. “These things I remember.”

When confronted with a season of pain and suffering, what is it that the psalmist does? He spends time remembering. More specifically, he spends time remembering those transformational glimpses of God have been given to him throughout his life, those revelatory encounters with God that filled him with a life-altering awareness of God’s presence and God’s power and God’s goodness. The grieving psalmist deals with his present suffering by turning to God’s faithfulness in the past, not for the purpose of dwelling on the good old days, but for the purpose of regaining a vision of a God who is greater than his suffering and who still deserves to be praised.

It is a scripture that reminds us that, when we are confronted with pain and suffering, our memory is important. Because, through our memory, we can join the psalmist in remembering what God has done in the past, thereby regaining our sense of conviction that that same God is holding us in the present and carrying us forward into a redemptive future.

One of the most important purposes of the church’s ministry is precisely this: the church’s ministry helps its people to remember. When we gather to sing the hymns of faith, what are we doing? We are helping one another to remember the majesty of a God who deserves nothing less than our most vibrant songs of praise. When we read from the scriptures that have been in existence for thousands of years, what are we doing? We are helping one another to remember the story of the things that God has done throughout history. When we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, this meal that Jesus instituted on the night when he gave himself up for us, what are we doing? We are helping one another to remember the life, death, and resurrection of the One in whose grace we are set free and by whose name we are saved.

In a notoriously forgetful world, one of the most important purposes of the church’s ministry is to help its people to remember, so that, like the psalmist, we might be able to say even in seasons of hardship, “These things I remember. These things I remember.”

In your personal walk with Christ, what are the things that help you to remember your most significant encounters with God? What are the things that help you to remember that day when you first came to Christ? That day When you first experienced God’s healing? That day When you first found yourself making different decisions because of the transformation that the Holy Spirit had brought about within you?

Over the last couple of months, I have begun keeping a photograph on the nightstand beside my bed. The photograph was taken on a Sunday morning in the late summer of 1989 (20 years ago). It is a photograph of the very first baptism at which I ever officiated as a pastor. I’ve officiated at hundreds of baptisms since this day, but this was the first.

I was so excited. Back then my sense of God’s calling upon my life was fresh and powerful. I felt as though I had been equipped with a vision and a vocation and a purpose that would carry me through anything. On that day, when I held that baby in my arms, tears of joy ran down my face. As a 23-year-old, I sensed that I was right smack dab in the middle of where God wanted me to be.

And so I keep the photograph on my nightstand these days, and I look at it every morning when I wake up. Why do I do that? Quite simply, I do it to remember. I do it to remember the excitement of that day. I do it to remember that the God who called me to ministry that day is still calling me to ministry 20 years later.

That kind of remembrance is important to me. That kind of remembrance is sometimes what sustains me when I find myself frustrated with ministry. On those days when I feel spiritually dehydrated (like a deer panting for streams of water); on those days when I feel that I am not effective enough as a pastor; on those days when I’m heartbroken by my own behavior or the disordered priorities of the church’s people, this simple photograph has a way of helping me to remember that it’s all about Jesus and that the journey is still very much worth the investment.

What are the things that help you to remember the Lordship of Jesus over your life? What are the things that help you to remember what that Lordship has meant to you over the years?

Those, I think, are important questions. Because, as the psalmist helps us to understand, sometimes our remembrance of how God has been with us in the past is the key to managing the heartache that we experience in the present so that we might be able to approach the future with a sense of holy hope.

Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said: ‘Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh. Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you who are full now, for you will be hungry. Woe to you who are laughing now, for you will mourn and weep. Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets.’ (Luke 6:20-26)

This is a portion of Jesus’ teaching that has come to be called “the Beatitudes.” The word “beatitude” is a derivative of a Latin word that means “blessing,” or, more specifically, “extreme and abundant blessing.” The word “beatitude” became connected to this scripture because, in it, Jesus utilizes the vocabulary of blessing: “BLESSED are you who are poor…”

Of course, what makes this portion of Scripture so unsettling and even scandalous is who it is that Jesus describes as being blessed.

I suspect that the world in which Jesus lived was similar to our world in the matter of defining blessedness. Our ideas of blessedness tend to be formed and driven by a network of presuppositions emerging from what might be called our common sense. Common sense, for example, tells us that it is unpleasant to be poor. Therefore, we quickly arrive at the common sense conclusion that being blessed means a enjoying a condition of wealth and privilege.

Common sense tells us that it is unpleasant to be hungry. Therefore, we quickly formulate the common sense idea that being blessed means having every one of our appetites satisfied the moment they demand to be satisfied.

Common sense tells us that it is unpleasant to weep, or to be hated or reviled because of our faith. Therefore, we quickly manufacture the conviction that blessedness must mean the opposite of such unpleasant realities.

The result of such thinking, of course, is a popular definition of blessedness that I would suspect was the same in Jesus’ day as it is in ours. Blessedness equals wealth and privilege. Blessedness equals a condition that is comfortable and happy and unchallenged.

It is precisely these notions that Jesus challenges in the Beatitudes, and he does so by shattering the people’s presuppositions concerning who is truly blessed in the kingdom of God. Is it the wealthy folks who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are wealthy, but blessed are the poor.”

“What?! Wait a minute, Jesus! That goes against what we know to be the economics of blessedness!”

Is it the well-fed who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact , woe to you whose stomachs are full now, but blessed are the hungry.”

“What?! Back up, Jesus! You had us, then you lost us!”

Is it the happy and the laughing who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are laughing now, but blessed are those who weep.”

“OK, now you’ve gone too far!”

Is it the comfortable and the safe and the well-protected who are blessed in the kingdom of God? “No,” Jesus says. “In fact, woe to you who are well-treated now, but blessed are those who are hated and reviled for my sake.”

“Jesus, you’re turning everything upside down!”

Therein, I suppose, is the nature of the Kingdom that God inaugurated through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It is a Kingdom in which everything is turned upside down (or, more appropriately, right side up). The kingdom of God, to put it another way, is Jesus Christ, shaking up the world and transfiguring the way things are done and conceptualized, in such a way that the world begins to reflect more vibrantly the heart of the One who created it.

If the Beatitudes tell us anything, they tell us that it is impossible to live in the kingdom of God without being reborn into a new way of living and a new way of looking at the world. In the kingdom of the world, the poor, the hungry, and the persecuted are ignored or, at best, pitied. But in the kingdom of God, they are the blessed ones.

Please do not misunderstand the nature of Jesus’ teaching in the Beatitudes. He is not glorifying poverty or human brokenness. He understands, far better than we do, the pain and the heartbreak of these conditions. But perhaps Jesus’ point is that, in the kingdom of God, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the broken are blessed in a very particular sense precisely because they know how desperate and needy they are.

Many of us, after all, live in the illusion of being in control. By contrast, the poor, the disenfranchised, and the broken understand daily their need for salvation and deliverance. Many of us live in the illusion of self-reliance, believing that we have no need for a savior. By contrast, the poor, the disenfranchised and the broken are often fully and eagerly prepared to receive the salvation and wholeness that the kingdom of God makes possible. Many of us have become so dull and desensitized in our places of privilege that we might not even recognize the kingdom when it is right in front of us. By contrast, a desperate, persecuted, and needy soul is often far more attentive and available to the nuances of God’s grace.

After all is said that can be said about the Beatitudes, perhaps Jesus is telling us that the poor and broken have something on us. They have the potential to be more receptive to God’s transformational power than we are, because, quite simply, God is all that they have. For many of us, God is nothing more than a weekend hobby that we accommodate whenever it fits into our busy schedule. In that sense, the poor and the broken may very well be more abundantly blessed than we are simply because they have a greater potential for living in the abundant joy and hope that always accompany a heartfelt reliance on God.

It is most certainly true that we tend to sentimentalize the Beatitudes in our contemporary churches. We tend to put them on church banners. “Isn’t that nice? Jesus is saying something sweet about poor and weeping people.” But the Beatitudes are not to be sentimentalized. Quite the contrary, in fact. We would do well to tremble a bit as we read them. They announce nothing less than the world-altering reality of the Kingdom of God. And none of the other radical teachings of Jesus (like the urgency of loving our enemies and taking up our cross) will make any sense to us unless we first embrace the foundational truth that the Beatitudes make clear—the truth that Jesus is ushering in a new world order.

On Tuesday night, Bishop Thomas Bickerton spent the evening with a gathering of pastors and laypersons from the Washington District. During that gathering, the bishop referenced Acts 11:1-18 in a way that I thought was significant. I have been pondering that portion of Scripture ever since.

Think for just a moment about how frequently we teach our children about the distinction between that which is clean and that which is dirty. I can still hear my mother’s voice:

“Eric, don’t put that quarter near your mouth. It’s dirty; you don’t know where it’s been.”

“Eric, don’t put that pen in your mouth. It’s dirty; you don’t know where it’s been.”

On Easter Sunday, just a couple of weeks ago, I ate a jelly bean that had fallen onto the floor. My mom immediately rendered her familiar refrain: “Eric, don’t eat that jellybean. It was on the floor. It’s dirty!”

I proceeded, of course, to explain to my mother the scientific intricacies of the five-second rule, which maintains that the jellybean only gets dirty if it stays on the ground for more than five seconds. And I was way faster than that! So down the hatch it went.

Much of our conceptualization of the world, I believe, is dependent upon what we define as being clean and what we define as being dirty. Such definitions will often dictate how it is that we compartmentalize the human pilgrimage and how it is that we will evaluate the people who are making that pilgrimage.

There is nothing new about the distinction between clean and unclean. In fact, throughout the biblical story, people of faith adhered to some very strict laws concerning the boundaries between that which was considered to be clean and that which was considered to be unclean. The people looked upon those laws as being the God-given means by which to organize the people of God, in such a way that the people of God would remain distinct from the rest of the world. Therefore, in the Old Testament, certain animals were labeled unclean and could not be consumed as food. In fact, animals labeled unclean were not even to be touched. Certain conditions and illnesses were also labeled unclean. As a result, people who found themselves struggling with those conditions and illnesses were separated from the rest of the community in an effort to preserve the cleanness of the rest of the community.

Perhaps the most substantive distinction of all, however, was the distinction that the Jewish people made between those who were Jewish and those who were not Jewish. As history continued to unfold, all of those who were not Jewish by birth were considered Gentiles, which is a word that literally means “from the same family, race, or clan.” The Jewish people utilized the word “gentile” to describe everybody in the world who was not Jewish. There were Jewish people and there was everybody else—Gentiles.

By the time of the New Testament, with some exception, the Jewish people considered all Gentiles to be unclean in the human sociological network. Jewish people, therefore, were not to spend time with Gentiles. They were not to establish friendships with Gentiles. They were not to break bread with them. They were not to visit in their houses. Gentiles were unclean, and there was no five-second rule.

That is why the Jewish people are so angry with Peter in the 11th chapter of Acts. Peter had been taking the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, and the Jewish Christians were not at all pleased with his indiscriminate evangelism. He had been engaging in the inappropriate intimacy of breaking bread with gentiles, spending time with them, talking about Jesus with them. When Peter arrives at Jerusalem, the Jewish people who had come to faith in Christ begin to criticize him. “Why are you eating with those unclean people,” they say to him. “Jesus was sent for the Jewish people, not for the Gentiles. Jesus lived among the clean, not the unclean.”

Peter explains himself by telling the people about an unsettling vision that he had recently been given by God. In his vision, he saw a large sheet coming down from heaven. In the sheet were a number of animals—reptiles, birds, four-footed beasts of prey—all of which would have been considered unclean by the Jewish people, including Peter. In the vision, Peter hears a voice from heaven telling him to get up, to kill some of those animals, and to consume the meat as part of his dinner.

Peter responds to the voice in the way that any faithful Jew would have responded: “No,” he says, “I will not kill those animals because those animals are unclean. And nothing unclean has ever entered my mouth.” The voice from heaven then says this to Peter: “What I have made clean, you must not call profane.” What I have made clean, in other words, you must not treat as being unclean.

I describe that vision as an unsettling one because of the way in which it contradicts the Jewish distinction between clean and unclean food—a distinction with which the Jewish people had been living for centuries. Here is the voice of God telling Peter that all of those laws and rules concerning clean and unclean, although they might have served the purpose of galvanizing the Jewish community, were nevertheless not what God ultimately intended for the world

The vision that Peter had, obviously, was not simply about animals and food. It was about people. More specifically, it was about Gentile people. That vision was God’s way of communicating to Peter that Jesus Christ had ushered in a new kingdom and a new way of looking at the world. The words that God speaks in the vision are these, “Peter, I have created these animals to be clean,” but the deeper meaning of God’s words is this: “Peter, I have created these Gentile people to be clean. Who are you to call unclean what I have created to be clean.”

Peter’s vision makes clear to us that the Lordship of Jesus Christ has broken down the walls that we are so eager to create between human souls. The Lordship of Jesus Christ has eradicated the artificial distinctions that we so often create between those we label clean and those we label unclean. In short, the Lordship of Jesus Christ has transformed the world in such a way that we are now able to look upon everyone that we encounter as a precious soul that God created to be clean.

If we really believed that, how would it change the way we treat people? How would it change the way we evaluate people and the way we minister to people? How would it change the way we think about the church and its mission? Where would we be willing to go and what would we be willing to do for the sake of Jesus Christ if we really believed in our heart that everyone we encounter is a precious soul that God created to be clean?

In my twenty years of pastoral ministry, I have officiated at 197 weddings. That averages out to be about 10 weddings a year. I know the wedding liturgy like the back of my hand. In fact, one time, I was dreaming that I was officiating at a wedding, and when I woke up, I actually was! My experience tells me that, in the cultural hoopla that often surrounds the contemporary wedding, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain a spirit of worshipful and Christ-centered integrity in the process of planning and facilitating a service of Holy Matrimony.

But whenever I am tempted to lose my belief in the sanctity of weddings, I normally spend some time in the second chapter of John’s Gospel. I do this because, in that particular chapter, Jesus finds himself at a wedding. His presence there is a powerful reminder to me that Jesus must have believed that weddings were worth attending and celebrating. His presence at that wedding reminds me that I can ill afford to become so cynical that I lose sight of the sacred marital covenant that lies beneath all the layers of cultural distortion.

The wedding at which we find Jesus is not a celebrity wedding. It is not the wedding of a dignitary or a social bigwig. Rather, it is a small town wedding, filled with small town people. The small town in question is Cana of Galilee. Jesus is there. So is his mother, Mary, and so are his disciples. The fact that all of them were invited leads us to believe that perhaps the bride or groom is a relative of Jesus’ family, or at the very least a close family friend. At any rate, everyone is celebrating—and yes, no matter how hard the faithful United Methodist or Baptist might try to avoid this detail, wine was involved in the celebration. Not drunkenness. Scripture speaks against that. But we cannot deny the fact the celebration of a first century Palestinian wedding included the enjoyment of wine. That detail, of course, makes the crisis of John 2 all the more compelling, and that crisis is this: They run out of wine at the wedding celebration.

Were there more guests than they had anticipated? Were people consuming at a faster rate than they had calculated? Did somebody forget a case of Kendall Jackson down at the state store? We don’t know. All we do know is the celebration is still going on, and there is no more wine to be found.

There’s a panic—much like the panic that would occur at a Steeler tailgating party if the supply of Iron City ran out. Mary, the mother of Jesus, somehow gets pulled into the panic. Maybe someone in the wedding party pulled her aside and said, “Look, we have a little problem here. We’re out of wine. So we thought maybe you could talk to Jesus. We don’t know if it will do any good, but we figure that anyone whose baptism inspires the heavens to open could probably put together a few jugs of cabernet!”

Mary says to Jesus, in true, motherly, passive-aggressive fashion: “They have no wine.”

(Translation: “Jesus, do something!”)

Jesus response is interesting: “Woman,” he says, “what concern is this to you and me?” Don’t assume that there is annoyance or disrespect in Jesus’ words. What Jesus is really asking is a reasonable question: “Woman, is this really something that should concern us? I’m not sure that this is something significant enough for us to panic over. It’s just wine, for goodness sake. What does this have to do with us?” Then Jesus adds this phrase: “My hour has not yet come.” What does he mean by that? Does he mean that the time for miracles has not yet come? Does he mean that the time for revealing his glory has not come? We’re not certain. But it is clear that Jesus’ first inclination here is not to do anything that is going to draw attention to his miracle-working power. He senses that the time is not yet right for that, that the conditions are not yet conducive to people being receptive to what he might have to offer.

Mary, not receiving the response for which she had been hoping, walks off, but not before offering one final word of instruction to the servants who were standing nearby: “Do whatever he tells you,” she says to the servants.

(Translation: “Just in case he changes his mind about doing something to help our wine situation, follow his instructions, no matter how strange they might seem.”)

(Further translation: “Even if Jesus asks you to stand on your head and whistle, do it.”)

We are not told about Jesus’ thought process over the next few minutes of the story. But he must have been thinking about something that inspired him to change his mind. Perhaps it occurred to him how much of a social embarrassment it would be to the bride and groom to run out of wine at their own wedding. Or perhaps he sensed that people would lose their focus on the celebration and start griping about what they didn’t have. Or perhaps Jesus simply had a hankering for a good pinot noir! Whatever his reasoning, Jesus decides to do something significant. He instructs the servants to fill the jars with water, which they do. He then instructs them to give some of that water to the chief steward to try, which they also do. When the steward drinks the water, his tastebuds, along with the tingle in his throat, tell him a mysterious truth: The water was water no longer. Somehow, the water had become very good wine. Problem solved. Crisis averted. Miracle rendered.

This is Jesus’ first recorded miracle in John’s gospel. Part of what I appreciate about the miracle is that it is relatively insignificant and small in the larger scheme of things, especially when compared to some of Jesus’ other miracles. After all, compared to healing a leper, or making a lame man to walk, or blind man to see, or compared to causing Lazarus to walk out of the grave, what’s a little bit of wine at a wedding?

But therein, I think, is part of the revelation. The story tells us that it doesn’t have to be something monumental in order for Jesus to pay attention to it. It simply has to be something close to the human heart. Jesus cares about the things that mean something to us. Think about the significance of that. The God of the Universe becomes incarnate in a Jesus who pays attention even to the small things. People’s feelings. People’s dignity. People’s pain. People’s embarrassment over not ordering enough wine for the wedding. Jesus cares about those things.

He might have said to his mother, “Woman, does this small thing really concern me?” But he eventually answers his own question in the affirmative. “Yes, as a matter of fact, this small thing DOES concern me. And I’m going to do something about it.” In a world in which we are often made to feel anonymous and unknown, as though we are little more than a social security number, tonight we are blessed with a story that reminds us that Jesus is different than the world. Jesus is attentive to the small things like people’s feelings and their wedding celebrations. In that sense, maybe this first miracle is just as important as all the rest, but in a different kind of way.

It is interesting to me that next weekend’s lectionary gospel reading is Jesus’ parable about the ten bridesmaids and their lamps (Matthew 25:1-13). Five of the bridesmaids, never waning in their anticipation of the arrival of the bridegroom, keep their lamps well-fueled, that they might be fully prepared should the bridegroom arrive in the dark hours of the night. The other five bridesmaids, however, allow themselves to slip into an inexplicable condition of foolish apathy concerning their degree of preparedness. Their supply of oil runs low, and they do not replenish it in a timely fashion.

When the bridegroom finally arrives, the five unprepared bridesmaids are elsewhere, desperately searching for some oil for their lamps. As a result, the five unprepared bridesmaids miss the wedding. They are shut out because they lost sight of the urgency of a well-fueled lamp.

The kingdom of heaven, Jesus says, is something like this story.

If that is indeed true, then we can draw some significant conclusions:

–The kingdom of heaven is a condition in which people are so thoroughly enlivened, impassioned, and transformed by the reality of Jesus Christ that they stubbornly refuse to succumb to the dullness, the apathy, and the indifference that so often characterize the human pilgrimage.

–The kingdom of heaven is a daily realm in which followers of Jesus approach life, not with a spirit of dullness, but with a spirit of unwavering zeal; not with a spirit of apathy, but with a spirit of relentless joy; not with a spirit of indifference, but with a spirit of vibrant preparedness, as though they sense that they are preparing for something eternal.

–The kingdom of heaven, in other words, is a way of living in which followers of Jesus approach all of life, not with empty spiritual lamps, but with lamps that are well-fueled by a radical commitment to the things of God, a radical obedience to the statutes of God, and a radical devotion to the ministry of God.

Over the last couple of days, I have spoken to some Christian Democrats who are absolutely thrilled with the results of Tuesday’s election. One might say that their lamps are burning very brightly right now. The problem is that, in some cases, their lamps are burning with the oil of political euphoria, which, as history reveals, never lasts very long. A biblical response to such Christian Democrats might be this: “Brothers and sisters, be careful. Make sure that you have the right kind of oil in your spiritual lamps, and don’t be too quick to rely on the cheaper fuel of political success and power.”

I have also spoken to some Christian Republicans this week, a few of whom were moping around as though the world had ended. One might say that their lamps are rather empty right now. (This, by the way, is the problem I have with disciples of Jesus Christ who invest too much of their soul in the American political system: When the politics don’t go their way, they are left with empty lamps.) A biblical response to such Christian Republicans might be this: “Brothers and sisters, get over it! Cowboy up! Put some fresh oil in your lamps and burn them brightly for the sake of Jesus Christ (who remains politically unaffiliated).”

One other thing: I have heard no fewer than five racist “jokes” since Tuesday concerning President-Elect Obama (stupid and sickening barbs about having to change the name of the “White” House and replacing the White House garden with a watermelon patch). All five of the racist barbs came from people who were part of a church community. Given this, I am led to believe that, instead of celebrating the monumental significance of the fact that a black man has been elected to the highest office of a nation whose history is replete with racial division, some Christians are choosing to fill their spiritual lamps with the putrid oil of continued racism, resentment, and hatred.

In this world where many lamps are not burning very brightly right now and where many other lamps are burning with the wrong kind of oil, may this become the prayer of our heart: “God of the ages, pour the oil of Jesus Christ into my spiritual lamp, that I might burn brightly and rightly for him and for the ministry of his kingdom.”