Perceptions from a Pewboy

As I mentioned in my last post, the ancient story of Noah and the ark affords to us a glimpse of the perfect holiness and righteousness of God, both of which form a divine character that cannot accommodate the flourishing of human sin.

But there is more to the glimpse than this. In the story, we also discern God’s relentless desire to provide a means of deliverance and salvation. The means of deliverance and salvation in this case is is a boat—a big one— to be occupied by those like Noah and his family who are willing to honor God and who are willing to subordinate themselves to God’s ordinances. “Make yourself an Ark” God says to Noah, “because the waters of judgment will come, and I want there to be a means of deliverance for the only people on earth who are humble enough to acknowledge my sovereignty.”

What’s God’s motive here? Why does God even care about the building of the ark? The answer, in one word, is covenant. “I will make a covenant with you, Noah, because you have seen fit to honor me. I will make a covenant with you and your family.” Even in this story about God’s righteous judgment, the nature of God is a covenant-making nature. Which is to say, the nature of God is to provide for his people a gracious means of deliverance from the crushing waters of sin and death.

I did my seminary work at the Divininty School of Duke University. One of the symbols in Duke Divinity School’s logo is a boat. In fact, if you were to go to the divinity school’s website, you would see the words “Duke Divinity School,” accompanied by the small image of a wooden boat with a cross in it. Why the boat? Quite simply, that boat represents a vessel like Noah’s ark.

Throughout the church’s history, Noah’s ark has been looked upon as a symbol for the church. Because the church, like Noah’s ark, is for people who are willing to participate in God’s covenant of grace. The church, like Noah’s Ark, is for people who are desperate for God’s deliverance from the raging waters of sin and death. The church at its best, in other words, is the spiritual ark for those who are spiritually drowning. Which is to say, the church’s ministry, like the ark itself, is a tangible manifestation of God’s gracious deliverance from a sinful condition to which God stubbornly refuses to give the final word.

So, this strange ancient story affords to us an unsettling glimpse of a God’s righteous judgment. But it also affords a reassuring glimpse of God’s gracious deliverance. In that sense, the story of Noah’s Ark reminds of the story of Jesus, a savior who himself becomes the ark of grace onto which drowning sinners are invited to climb. It is the same pattern, after all—the pattern of a God whose rightesousness compels him to take sin seriously, but whose mercy compels him to provide a way out. It is the story of Noah. It is the story of the church. It is the story of Jesus Christ.

I suppose lingering question is obvious: How do we respond to this kind of God? How do we respond to a God who is so awesomely holy and so relentlessly gracious?

Perhaps the best response is the one at hand. We respond to this God in the way that Noah responded to this God: with radical obedience and commitment, even when the thing to which we are being called is hard, and sacrificial, and even seemingly absurd. My favorite verse in the entire story is Genesis 6:22, which reads this way: “Noah did all that God commanded him to do.”

They are revolutionary words, really—words that communicate a willingness to do something radical and absurd for God in a world that preferred to ignore God altogether. Can we afford to offer to God anything less? Can we afford to make our response to God anything less than a Noah-like obedience and commitment?

Or, think about it in this way: Can we afford to offer to God anything less than our passionate commitment to building the “ark” of faithful, radical, and obedient discipleship that God is calling us to build?

Keith McIlwain (or, after this most recent blog post on Noah and the great flood, perhaps I’ll call him Keith McIlRAIN), offers some excellent reflection and commentary on the very same biblical text on which I will be preaching this weekend: An ancient story about a guy, a big boat, and the peculiar methodology of an ever-active God.

In nineteen years of ministry, I have never preached a sermon on the story of Noah and the Ark. In fact, I haven’t really encountered the story in any meaningful way since I used to sing about it in Sunday School. You remember the song, don’t you? “The Lord said to Noah, you’d better build and arky, arky…”

Some 35 years later, here I stand, confronted with the challenge of preaching a sermon on this ancient story. What do we make of the story? Is it historically accurate? In other words, did the story of the great flood really happen? Or is it a fable, some grand metaphor designed to titillate the spiritual fibers the human soul? And how are we expected to believe that all of those animals lived together on a boat, anyway? I mean, I realize that there is a biblical vision of peace that involves the lion lying down with the lamb. But on that ark, the only peaceful thing that a lamb would have done for a lion would have been not to cause him heartburn as he passed through his digestive system.

The story just doesn’t make much logistical sense, does it? We can’t figure out the math. We can’t fathom the architectural and nautical plans. We can’t distinguish between the fact and the fiction. And so most of us, being the sophisticated intellectuals that we are, keep the story of Noah’s Ark at a safe distance, smiling at its quaintness, nodding at its whimsical charm, but all the while denying the story access to the deepest chambers of our spiritual reflection. It may be one of the most familiar of all the Old Testament stories. But if you are like me, you have probably never spent much time reflecting upon the deeper and more significant truths that the story reveals to us about the God who holds perfect authority over both the raging waters and the dry land.

And that is unfortunate. Because, beneath all of our questions about the historicity of the story, beneath our various fixations on some of the problematic details of the story, there exists a narrative, inspired by the Holy Spirit, that affords to us a significant glimpse of the nature and character of God. In the story, for example, we glimpse the perfect righteousness and holiness of God—a righteousness and holiness that form God’s character into the kind of character that cannot accommodate the flourishing of human wickedness.

How does the story begin? It begins with really bad news: “Now the earth was corrupt in God’s sight and filled with violence.” It’s interesting that the Hebrew word used here for corruption is a word that implies a condition of such amplified wickedness that people were actually competing with one another in that regard. It is a word that calls to mind an Olympics of iniquity in which everyone seems to be going for the gold medal. Were people morally worse back then than they are now? I doubt it. But for whatever reason (and who can know the mind of God in this story), for whatever reason, God had reached what, at that point, were the limits of his tolerance. Therefore, God decides to take a cosmic mulligan. He decides to shake the Etch a Sketch of what he had created, so that everything would disappear and leave him with a fresh canvas on which to create something new. “I have determined to make an end of all flesh” God says, “because the earth is filled with violence.” (Notice, it is our violence that God highlights in his judgment, thereby revealing that, even in the often violent pages of the Old Testament, violence is never what God intended for the global community.)

Cynics might be inclined to ask with a smirk , “What kind of God is this that destroys the souls he has created? I thought that he was supposed to be a God of love!” Well, let’s be honest. This is a tough one for us to reconcile. But, then again, we don’t have the divine perspective do we? Nor we know what it is like to be perfectly holy and perfectly righteous in every portion of our nature. Perhaps, in this story, humankind’s wickedness is like poisonous gas to the lungs of the divine anatomy. If that is at all the case, then it makes sense that God would want to destroy the source of the poison, doesn’t it? Not out of hatred, not out of tyranny, but out of a desire to put us out of our misery and out of his.

Perhaps therein lies an important and often overlooked truth for us. In this world that desperately attempts to make God into a glorified Hallmark card or a winking grandpa who ignores our wrongdoing and coddles us on his lap, perhaps part of the purpose of this ancient story is to remind us of the fact that ours is the awesomely and frighteningly holy God whose very character is violated by our sin and our violence. That doesn’t mean, of course, that every natural disaster is to be looked upon as God’s judgment. That’s not the point of this story. But the story does remind us that sin and violence will always be an ugly and serious business for God. The inspired writers of this ancient story understood at least that much.

But there is more to the glimpse. We see in the story, not simply the frightening implications of God’s righteousness and judgment, but also God’s relentless effort to provide a means of deliverance and salvation. I’ll touch upon that later on today in my next post. Thanks, Keith and others, for moving with me into the depths of this great biblical narrative.

When I was a boy, I used to spend a great deal of time wondering about strange things. For example, one of the things that concerned me about being an astronaut (which I was convinced was my vocational destiny) was the uncertainty of how astronauts dealt with certain biological processes when they were in space. Being a modest lad, I was greatly troubled by the question of how astronauts maintained privacy when having to…uh…”jettison some excess fuel.” After all, such matters were never addressed in any episode of Star Trek. Did each crew member have his own toilet? Was there a plumber on board? Or did Scotty have to handle those matters too? (”I’m working as fast as I can, Captain!!!”)

At any rate, you can imagine my instantaneous transport back to my childish curiosity when I read this story by Marcia Dunn in a recent USA Today:

NASA rushed Wednesday to get a special pump on board shuttle Discovery to fix a balky toilet at the International Space Station. The space station’s Russian-built toilet has been acting up for the past week. The three male residents have temporarily bypassed the problem, which involves urine collection, not solid waste.

Russian space officials are providing the pump to launch aboard Discovery on Saturday. The shuttle’s seven astronauts arrived at Kennedy Space Center a few hours ahead of the start of countdown Wednesday afternoon.

At the same time, a NASA employee was en route to Florida from Russia with the 1 1/2-foot-long pump and related hardware, which was packed in a diplomatic pouch and carried onto the commercial jetliner as 35 pounds of hand luggage.

To make room for the pump inside Discovery’s crammed cabin, NASA was going to pull out some wrenches, a spare part for the space station’s oxygen generator, and a microbe-killing device for use in the European space lab.

‘Clearly, having a working toilet is a priority for us, so some of these things that we didn’t need for the next six months or so could wait,’ said payload manager Scott Higginbotham.

It all sounds so painfully mundane, doesn’t it?! This is hardly the life of glamorous adventure that I associated with space travel when I was a boy!

OK, because I am experiencing some boyish excitement about the whole matter, I will go ahead and offer these next tidbits. I ask for your forgiveness in advance.

Do you know which astronaut Russia should send to the space station to fix the broken toilet?

“Urine” Gagarin.

Was that beneath you? Try this one: What do you call an astronaut manually trying to unclog a space toilet?

Kneel Armstrong!!

Well…I tried.

If you’ll excuse me, I am suddenly thirsty for some Tang.

Are any of you fans of the writing of Flannery O’Connor?

Born in Savannah, Georgia in 1925, O’Connor spent her life as a devout Catholic. In her writing, however, O’Connor avoided the kind of Roman Catholic didacticism that might have made her an apologist for her faith. Instead, O’Connor chose to become more of a literary prophet, illuminating the hypocrisy and the cruelty that often manifest themselves within the organized church—particularly within the intensity of Protestant fundamentalism in the deep south.

O’Connor, who died from complications related to Lupus when she was 39, wrote many short stories, but only two novels. Her two novels were “Wise Blood” (1952) and “The Violent Bear It Away (1960). I would recommend both works. O’Connor’s prose is as deft as it is nimble. In her writing, she creates a literary world that is so compelling in its imagery and so mesmerizing in its happenings that, before long, the readers find themselves standing amongst the characters and seeing themselves in their faces. Reading O’Connor is a slow and deliberate journey, but is always worth the time.

O’Connor comes to mind because, just today, I found myself watching the 1979 film adaptation of her novel “Wise Blood.” (It was part of Saturday’s rotation on Turner Classic Movies.) The film, directed by John Huston, is a strong and faithful cinematic retelling of O’Connor’s important story about a young man named Hazel Motes whose bitterness toward what he perceives to be the hypocrisy of the church drives him to become his own preacher—a preacher of “the church without Jesus Christ.”

In the film, Hazel is brought to life by none other than Brad Dourif. Dourif’s name should be familiar to any of you who enjoy horror films. Dourif played the Gemini killer in “Exorcist III”. He played a mad scientist in “Alien: Resurrection.” He played a gas station attendant in the slasher film “Urban Legend.” And, lest anyone forget, he was the voice of Chucky in all of the “Child’s Play” movies about Chucky, the killer doll.

In “Wise Blood,” Dourif plays Hazel Motes, an angry young man (cue Billy Joel) whose choirboy looks and preacher-like mannerisms belie his internalized bitterness toward a church whose presence in the world he passionately resents. In a particularly stark diatribe, Hazel expresses his scorn for the church and the Jesus it preaches:

Every one of you is clean, and I’ll tell you why. If you think it’s because of Jesus Christ crucified, you’re wrong. I ain’t saying he wasn’t crucified. But I’m sayin’ it wasn’t for you. I’m starting a new church…It’s the church of truth WITHOUT Jesus Christ crucified. And it won’t cost you nothin’ to join my church…I don’t need Jesus. What do I need Jesus for?

Later on in the film, Hazel begins preaching in a courtyard (perhaps an unintended homage to John Wesley preaching in the open air). The sermon that Hazel preaches is even bolder in its rejection of the mystical and redemptive Christ that the church has historically preached:

What you need is something to take the place of Jesus. Something that would speak plain. Now, the church without Christ don’t have a Jesus. But it needs one. It needs a new Jesus. One that’s all man without blood to waste.

Hazel’s sermon caused me to pause and rewind (ah, the beauty of DVRs!). I spent several minutes reflecting upon the kind of “religion” that he was preaching—a Christ-less journey in which the need for atoning blood and mystical deliverance is replaced by an unadulterated humanism in which we become our own saviors. According to Hazel, there is no need for redemption because there was no Fall. Furthermore, there is no need for the shedding of divine blood because there is a far wiser blood than that—the wiser blood of humanistic truth and fulfillment.

It would be cheap and easy for me at this point, I suppose, to make a connection between Hazel’s “Christ-less” and “repentance-free” religion and the condition of denominational Christianity. “Sounds like United Methodism on some days,” I might say, “a denomination in which inclusiveness is often championed over repentance and in which personal fulfillment often takes priority over Christ-centered transformation.”

But, quite frankly, even more frightening to me is the thought of how frequently Hazel’s theology has manifested itself in my own personal ministry and discipleship. How frequently, for example, have I lived as though personal repentance were unnecessary, winking at my own transgressions and rationalizing my own iniquities? How frequently have I attempted to reduce Jesus theologically to a comfortable theological nicety instead of subordinating myself to the transformational power of his atoning Lordship? How frequently have I trusted the “wise blood” of my own proclivities and preferences (as though they were all acceptable) instead of allowing those proclivities and preferences to be washed in the far wiser blood of Jesus?

Here’s the point: Although I might blanch at the starkness of Hazel Motes’ rejection of Christ and his advocacy of a Christ-less church, I cannot shake the feeling that we—no, make that “I”—have been guilty of incarnating my own brand of “Hazel-ism” by practicing a Christ-less discipleship in a much more subtle fashion. My words are not as obviously blasphemous as Hazels. Neither are my actions. But, in my heart, I must be willing to confess that, like Hazel, I am prone to jettisoning Christ from his rightful throne so that some more palatable “messiah” might occupy it.

Here’s to Flannery O’Connor for creating a prophetic piece of literature that still has the capacity to bring a pewboy to his knees in a spirit of humble repentance.

Straight from the “too cool to be true” file, check out this story from a New Zealand newspaper called the Marlborough Express:

Two New Zealand pilots whose plane ran out of fuel landed on a wing and a prayer, literally, on Wednesday.

Grant Stubbs and Owen Wilson from Blenheim, just south of Wellington, New Zealand, were in a microlight plane when the engine cut out

‘When you’re in a microlight, if you crash, you usually die. I turned to O B (Wilson) and he told me that we had no fuel,’ Stubbs reported.

‘I asked what we should do. He told me just to pray and to pray hard.’

Stubbs said he prayed to God to get them over a ridge, and they finally landed in a small grassy area, right beside a 20-foot-high sign that reads ‘Jesus is Lord.’

Of course, even if these two dudes had died in the crash, Jesus would still be Lord. But isn’t it fun to hear about a sudden realization of one’s mortality and a dramatic awakening to matters of eternal significance?

Speaking of airplanes and faith, did you hear about the monk who flew to Hawaii for free? He used his frequent friar miles!

Admit it, you’re sort of chuckling—in that “man, I can’t believe he’s actually ordained” kind of way!!

The inception and rapid growth of the Methodist movement in Eighteenth Century England make for an inspiring story of spiritual awakening. A key feature of the Methodist movement was the development of the Methodist classes and societies. Classes were small gatherings in which Christian believers would meet regularly for the purpose of prayer, study of Scripture, and holy accountability. Several of these Methodist classes would then be grouped together in a “society,” which, of course, generated a larger and more expansive sense of community for the people called Methodist.

Always eager to practice good oversight and leadership in the Methodist movement, John Wesley, the founder of the movement, formulated what came to be known as “the three general rules.” The general rules, which still appear in the United Methodist Book of Discipline, were designed to remind the early Methodists of the kind of life to which they were being called through Jesus Christ. The three general rules are these:

-First, DO NO HARM. (Wesley further explained his rule as the avoidance of every kind of evil, including the vain usage of God’s name, engagement in activities that do not glorify God, drunkenness, and unrestrained self-indulgance.)

-Second, DO GOOD. (Wesley defined goodness here as the regular offering of Christlike love and mercy to all people, coupled with the rendering of compassionate ministry to those who are hungry, marginalized, sick, or imprisoned.)

-Third, ATTEND UPON ALL THE ORDINANCES OF GOD (For Wesley, these “ordinances” included the public worship of God, family and private prayer, searching the Scripture, fasting, and the regular celebration of the Lord’s Supper.)

These three general rules, according to Wesley, were to govern the thinking and behavior of the Methodist classes and societies. Methodists, in other words, were to be people who did no harm, who instead did good, and who diligently attended upon the ordinances of God, all for the sake of Jesus Christ and his kingdom.

In recent days, a United Methodist Bishop by the name of Reuben Job wrote an excellent little book entitled “Three Simple Rules: A Wesleyan Way of Living.” In the book, Bishop Job suggests that it is time for United Methodist followers of Jesus to rediscover and reclaim the three rules as an ethical paradigm for the life of discipleship.

Our current episcopal leader in Western Pennsylvania, Bishop Tom Bickerton, gave the “Three Simple Rules” book to all of his pastors as a Christmas gift this year. This week, I joined some of my colleagues in ministry for a two-day retreat during which Bishop Bickerton lead us in a reflection on the three simple rules.

I currently find myself praying over how the three simple rules might impact the current season of my discipleship to Jesus Christ.

How might I become more intentional about doing no harm? (This question compels me to examine my life for the purpose of discerning where it is that I am wounding the souls of others with my sarcasm, my flippancy, my quickness to anger, my eagerness to have the last word and win the debate, my cavalier insults, and my arrogant efforts to put people in their place when I disagree with them.)

How might I become more intentional about doing good? (How is it, in other words, that I might cultivate a passion for doing the good and merciful thing instead of the destructive and hurtful thing? And what might some of those “good things” be into which God is currently calling me to pour myself?)

How might I become more diligent about attending upon the ordinances of God? (In his book, Bishop Job rewords this third rule so that it reads, “stay in love with God.” With all due respect to Bishop Job, I like Wesley’s wording better. “Staying in love with God,” in my mind, makes the third rule dependent upon our capacity to generate a romance with the divine. If history has taught us anything, it is that we are painfully fickle in that regard. “Attending upon the ordinances of God,” I think, is a much clearer reference to the centrality of the ordinances and spiritual disciplines through which the Holy Spirit ushers us into a transformational intimacy with the presence of God. No matter which phrase I use, however, the challenge is the same. It is the challenge of organizing my life around the spiritual disciplines instead of merely squeezing the disciplines intermittently into my pre-formed schedule and agenda.)

I am grateful for Wesley’s three rules. I am grateful for the opportunity that I have had to reflect upon them over the last couple of days. And I am grateful for my brothers and sisters in the land of blog who might just be inclined to join me in a recommitment to the life of doing no harm, doing good, and attending upon the ordinances of God.

As many of you have heard, La Mar Carlson, a United Methodist pastor and the District Superintendent of the Washington District in Western Pennsylvania, suffered a major stroke on Sunday afternoon. La Mar, his wife Rachel, and their son Nathan have been at the center of my prayers ever since. Their extended family has been good about ministering to them in these difficult days—a ministry that includes staying in the Carlson’s home in Washington and managing their domestic responsibilities.

The following is an e-mail that I just sent to the members of our church’s intercessory prayer team. I sent the e-mail to update the prayer team concerning what I know. I asked Rachel and Nathan for permission to share my update with a wider audience. Their response was essentially this: “By all means, share it with everyone, so that all might pray.”

Here’s the e-mail that I just sent:

Hello, members of the prayer team.

Nathan Carlson asked me to stop by Mercy Hospital yesterday (Tuesday), which I gladly did. I was Nathan’s candidacy mentor in his journey toward seminary, and we have established a good friendship over the years. It was a blessing to see Nathan face to face in this difficult time.

While I was there, Rachel asked me to visit La Mar and have prayer with him. Again, I was glad to do it. It was hard to see La Mar so incapacitated, as he is such a vibrant individual. But he seemed to recognize me, blinking once for “yes” when I asked if he could hear me and even shedding some tears in the course of our prayer time.

Rachel is a strong woman of faith who seems to be holding up remarkably well, considering the circumstances. I would say the same about Nathan. They both asked for continued prayers and are very much grateful for the support and love of their brothers and sisters in Christ.

La Mar is my district superintendent. Much more importantly, La Mar is my friend and has been a faithful mentoring presence in my life for many years (since I was a seminarian, in fact). My heart is broken over this entire matter. But I know that we have a God who specializes in healing, sustenance, and deliverance. Therein is our great hope.

It all reminds me of how incredibly fragile and precious this human journey really is. One Sunday afternoon, in the middle of a lovely meal on Mother’s Day, everything changed in an instant for the Carlson family.

In one sense, La Mar, who has always been a bold and creative preacher of the Word, is preaching an important sermon to us, even in the midst of his struggle. His sermon is this: “Live every day as though it were your last. Tell the people dearest to you how deeply you love them. Cling to the Lord Jesus, who will faithfully stand beside you, both in days of health and rejoicing and in days of struggle and sadness. And live the kind of life that matters, the kind of live that foreshadows the eternity that God has prepared for us.”

Thanks for being there, my friends. Your prayer ministry means the world to me.

Gratefully,
Eric

I downloaded three new albums from iTunes a few days ago, all three of which have made their way into my consciousness via the mystical conduit of my iPod.

The new albums (all recently released) are as follows: “Hard Candy” by Madonna (perhaps you’ve heard of her!).

“Mudcrutch” by Mudcrutch (featuring Tom Petty).

And “Time Stand Still” by The Hooters.

I don’t think that I have to say much to you about Madonna’s musical career.

Mudcrutch, interestingly, was Tom Petty’s original band and the one with which he was making music long before the Heartbreakers came along. This album represents the fulfillment of Petty’s long-held dream to make a recording with his old buddies.

Do any of you know The Hooters? Back in the 1980’s, The Hooters (a Philadelphia band) made some interesting music and had some commercial success. “All You Zombies” and “And We Danced” were two of their biggest hits. Also, Rob Hyman, the frontman for The Hooters, co-wrote Cyndi Lauper’s hit “Time After Time.” This new album revisits the synthesizer-rich music of the 1980’s but infuses it with a lyrical depth that only age and experience can generate.

Of particular interest to me is the fact that all three albums, in different ways, give expression to the sense of alienation and social fragmentation that postmodernity has never been shy about naming and lamenting. In the song “Miles Away,” for example, Madonna poignantly describes a troubled relationship that is best experienced over geographical and emotional distance:

You always love me more, miles away
I hear it in your voice, we’re miles away
You’re not afraid to tell me, miles away
I guess we’re at our best when we’re miles away

For Madonna, as one might expect, the temporary way out of this alienation is to be found in the fleeting intimacy of the dance floor (and the sexual liaisons to which the dance floor often leads). Madonna’s solution is evident in the song “Dance 2Night:”

Let’s dance tonight, dance tonight
and groove and see the world
And we’ll hold hands tonight, hands tonight
just a boy and just a girl
I wanna dance tonight, dance tonight
Take a chance tonight, chance tonight
lets groove ourselves to the world

For Tom Petty and Mudcrutch, the alienation of which I speak is clearly visible in the face of a marginalized “orphan”—not a literal orphan, but a broken soul robbed of his place in the human family by the disenfranchising effects of tragedy and bad choices. In the song, “An Orphan of the Storm,” the listener finds himself or herself confronted with the sadness of a desperate longing for relational salvation:

So lord send me down
A fallen angel
With a miracle to perform
And I ain’t the kind
Who gives up
But I’m so tired of rain
Lord I’m just an
Orphan of the storm
Now somewhere down the line
There must be salvation

Like Madonna, Mudcrutch sees a way out. For Mudcrutch, however, the way out is not Madonna’s intoxicating dance floor, but rather a life-changing recognition of the redemption that is present (but hidden) on every street and in every circumstance. The song “This Is a Good Street” puts it this way:

This Is a Good Street
This is a good heart and you can’t take it. You can bend it, bruise it and shake it. But no my dear you can’t break it.
This is good heart.
This is a good bed.
Tis is a good room.
This a good house.
This is a good street.
This is a good street.
This is a good street.

The Hooters, who have a long history of optimism in their music, are nevertheless realistic enough on their current album to acknowledge the agony of regret over a broken relationship. Their title track “Time Stand Still” articulates a desire to hold providence over the passage of time for the purpose of revisiting past relationships and rectifying former mistakes:

If I had a little more time with you
I’d be the man you’d want me to
do all the things that I should to
if I had a little more time with you

If I had a way to make time turn back
I’d find a way to get you back
one of these days I know I will
when I find a way to make time stand still

But The Hooters’ new album resonates primarily, not with regret, but with a sense of rebirth—a rebirth that is clearly expressed in the song “I’m Alive:”

I’m looking older now than when I was a kid
but feeling younger now than I ever did
and I’ve got no situations playing tricks upon my mind
I’m feeling christmas in the middle of July

In the morning, in the night
though I walk though the valley of the shadows
you are the light of my life
and the song in my soul
and the beat of my heart
and the rock in my roll

The clear reference to “the valley of shadows” leads me to believe that even The Hooters understand the urgency of the human need for a Shepherd.

If one listens carefully to the music on these three albums, one cannot help but discern a soteriological hunger that is as deep as it is broad. It is a hunger for meaningful interaction, for persoal validation, and for social deliverance. Perhaps most of all, it is a hunger for redemption—a redemption for which people are desperately searching in dance clubs, city streets, and wayward relationships. My experience with these three new albums has illuminated another important bridge between the sacred and the secular. If I stand on that bridge, I can see on both sides a yearning for wholeness emerging from the reality of human brokenness and fallenness.

I can’t help but think that Jesus wants to be on both sides of the bridge—and already is—since he is ultimately the only One in whom wholeness can be found. I wonder what Madonna would say about that?

During yesterday’s celebration of Pentecost, I offered this story to the people of Central Highlands Church.

On the final day of General Conference, I shared a cab ride to the airport with another delegate who was also staying at my hotel. As soon as he entered the cab, he said to me, “You’ll never believe what I just did.”

“What did you just do,” I asked.

“I just left one hundred dollars in my hotel room.”

“What?! You better hurry back upstairs and get it while you still can!”

“No,” he said, “you don’t understand. I didn’t leave it there by accident. I left it there on purpose.”

“I don’t get what you mean.”

“It’s kind of hard to explain,” he said. “Last night I had a weird dream about the person who cleans my hotel room. In the dream, the person who cleans my hotel room is a middle-aged woman whose life is very hard and who spends long hours every day cleaning hotel rooms that she would never be able to afford for herself. The last thing that I heard in the dream before I woke up was a child’s voice.”

“A child’s voice? That’s kind of bizarre. What was it saying?”

“Well,” he said, “that’s where it gets really strange. The voice was saying ‘bless her.’ That’s it. Just two words, over and over again: ‘Bless her. Bless her. Bless her.’”

“What do you think it meant,” I asked.

He looked at me incredulously, as though he couldn’t believe that I was missing the point. “You don’t even have to ask that question, do you,” he responded. “You know as well as I do that that child’s voice was most likely the Holy Spirit telling me to be generous to the overworked and underappreciated person who would be cleaning my room after I left.”

Moments later, he added these comments: “Please understand,” he said, “I’m not telling you this because I am proud of myself. I’m telling you this because I am absolutely amazed that the Holy Spirit can inspire a tightwad like me to leave a hundred dollars in a hotel room for someone I’ve never met!”

End of story!

Sometimes people will ask me, “How do I know if I have been born again?” or “How do I know if the Holy Spirit is working in my heart?” There are no litmus tests to employ in such matters. But if Jesus’ teaching from John 7:37-39 is to be trusted (that “rivers of living water” will begin to flow out of a Spirit-filled heart), then it is safe for us to assume that one of the most trustworthy signs of a Spirit-filled heart is that that heart begins to overflow with the living water of an ever-deepening love for God and and ever-deepening love for people.

And here’s the thing: A Spirit-filled heart will sometimes begin to overflow in some wonderfully surprising ways. Sometimes, for example, a Spirit-filled heart will begin to overflow in the form of some new Christ-honoring practice or discipline that people take up simply because they love Jesus and want to do something special to bless him.

Other times, a Spirit-filled heart will begin to overflow in the form of some new season of repentance into which people enter simply because they are sick of engaging in patterns of behavior that grieve the One who has saved them.

And yes, sometimes a Spirit-filled heart will even begin to overflow in the form of an inexplicable willingness to leave a one hundred dollar tip for a cleaning woman that we’ve never met, simply because the Spirit would have us to honor the preciousness of her personhood.

Some two-thousand years ago, the Holy Spirit encountered the disciples at the Pentecost festival. That encounter changed everything, and that’s good news. But here’s the better news: Two-thousand years later, the Holy Spirit is still around, still powerfully and redemptively at work in the world, still forming people into faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. My sense is that, if we really believed in this Spirit, if we really allowed him to have complete management over our heart so that our heart began to overflow with a relentless love for God and an equally relentless love for people, there is no telling how deep the living water might get around these parts.

A blessed season of Pentecost to all of you.

Dorothy was right, wasn’t she? There really is no place like home (a fact that becomes abundantly clear to me whenever I am called upon to spend some time far away from home).

First of all, allow me to go on record for the purpose of weighing in on the really important issue of the weekend:

“Iron Man” is a very well-made and entertaining film! Robert Downey Jr., no doubt channeling the gritty hardships of his troubled past, carries to the screen precisely the kind of charismatic intensity needed to bring roguish billionaire Tony Stark to life. The story is good without being unnecessarily cumbersome. The actors seem to be genuinely invested and engaged. The special effects are relentlessly impressive. And, if I may be completely honest, Iron Man’s armor is way cool.

If you see the film, don’t leave before the credits finish. That’s all I can say at this point.

Beyond my cinematic journey into the Marvel universe, I have also spent the weekend attempting to gain some perspective on my experience of General Conference. Here are some of my lingering reflections:

*There is a myriad of beautifully-gifted, abundantly creative, and impressively articulate souls in that portion of the church called United Methodism. The music, dancing, liturgy, and preaching that I experienced at General Conference were, by far, the richest portion of the entire experience for me.

*I’m really glad to be part of a denomination whose heritage has placed an emphasis upon BOTH personal piety AND social ministry and justice. Both points of emphasis regularly found expression in the work of the General Conference. A denomination that can, in the same breath, speak about both the centrality of prayer and the urgency of preventing malaria in Africa is doing something right.

*The pace and schedule of General Conference did not allow sufficient time for sleep, quiet reflection, and prayerful contemplation of the issues before us. It brought about an environment of weariness and frustration in which discernment was sometimes difficult to find. There must be a better way of streamlining petitions or altering our polity for the purpose of creating a more edifying experience of holy conferencing.

*It is impossible for a group of one thousand people to wordsmith legislation (although this fact does not prevent a number of people from trying).

*United Methodism is a truly global church, thanks be to God! In fact, the American United Methodist Church must now look to United Methodism in the African countries and Korea for guidance and leadership (since those are the places where United Methodism is flourishing). Hearing testimonies of the work of the church from some of the African and Korean delegates was nothing short of life-changing for me. God is powerfully at work in the denomination around the world.

*That said, I am brought to tears when I think about the decline of the United Methodist Church in America. In fact, one of the things that became clear to me at General Conference is that we plan our denominational budget assuming a continuing decline over the next quadrennium. Decline, in other words, is so much a part of the current American ecclesiastical ethos that we build it into our budgeting formula! I am wondering like never before why it is that we are missing what our African and Korean brothers and sisters seem to have found in abundance. Perhaps some of you have some ideas about this.

*We are a deeply divided denomination on a number of important levels. We are divided theologically (a division that becomes particularly clear when one compares the theological orthodoxy of our existing social creed to the praxis-oriented theology of the new litany that now accompanies the social creed). We are divided over the issue of homosexuality (which, of course, is an issue inseparably linked to differing interpretations of biblical authority and sexual purity, not to mention our church’s theology of marriage and ordination). We are divided in our ecclesiastical interpretation of the ministry of the General Church within United Methodism (with some seeing the General Boards and Agencies as being too liberal and too unfocused to redeem and others seeing them as one of the church’s best features). We are still divided by racism (which was made clear to me when I overheard a white delegate sitting behind me affirm his friend by saying “Thanks, friend, that was mighty white of you”). I do not highlight these divisions in order to convey as sense of pessimism. Too often, however, these divisions are ignored or sidestepped without being sufficiently named and owned. We may very well be able to stay at the table together (thanks to the unifying power of Jesus Christ), but genuine unity demands of us the hard work of acknowledging the specific divisions that can often break our hearts.

*The protest/witness offered by those in our denomination who are calling for the church to become more welcoming and affirming of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people was an important but painfully difficult thing to experience. I am grateful that our bishop (Tom Bickerton) came to pray with the delegation during those challenging moments.

*My personal opinion is that United Methodism needs a new hymnal like it needs a hole in the head. Unfortunately, I’m a part of the minority! The General Conference approved the creation of a new hymnal, to be published by 2013. I’m sure that I’ll be on board with it by then.

*General Conference officially changed the mission of our church from “Making Disciples of Jesus Christ” to “Making Disciples of Jesus Christ for the Transformation of the World.” There was very little theological reflection about this matter. I am in agreement with some of my fellow-bloggers that this is not a helpful expansion. Making disciples is a thoroughly biblical concept, while transforming the world is not. Nowhere in Scripture are we told that we are to transform the world. In fact, the clear witness of Scripture is that the primary purpose of the church is to BE the church, rather than to convince the world to behave differently. Social transformation, as I see it, is not the church’s mission, but rather a byproduct of the church’s mission. All of my thoughts on the matter are inconsequential, of course, since the new mission statement was adopted by a majority vote. So get out there and change the world (and don’t forget your iPhone). By the way, please understand that I am not cynical about this issue. I simply long for a deeper theological conversation before we change something as important as our church’s mission statement.

*At General Conference, my personal opinion is that inclusiveness is championed at the expense of personal holiness and transformation. When one preacher spoke of the idolatry of our “right thinking and doctrine,” applause and cheers were offered. In the next section of his sermon, when he spoke of the “idolatry of hospitality that eliminates the urgency of personal repentance and transformation,” the people responded with silence (a “cue the crickets” kind of silence, in fact). Inclusiveness, among many, has become the only ecclesiastical criterion that matters. I heard very few references made to rebirth and sanctification, and even fewer to radical and sacrificial obedience. Again, I am not cynical about this, nor am I attempting to get you to jump on my personal bandwagon. I am simply calling it as I saw it.

*At times, I was overcome with a sense of spiritual schizophrenia at General Conference as I attempted to figure out where I fit in to the current United Methodist configuration. I am certainly not a theological liberal (a phrase that I prefer over “theological progressive” because of its neutrality). Nor do I feel comfortable aligning myself with those conservatives who are eager to demonize the other side and who are absolutely convinced that they have everything figured out. So where does that put me? Maybe I’m an evangelical liberal…or a liberal evangelical…or a regressive progressive…or a bilabial fricative!!!!!!!!

*I wonder who has the highest I.Q.–Tony Stark, Bruce Wayne, Reed Richards, or Bruce Banner. I fear that many would eliminate Tony Stark too quickly from this competition because of his proclivities as a rapscallion. But give the guy some props, would you?! Creating that suit of armor is no small feat. Dr. Strange and The Martian Manhunter will have to judge the competition.

*Here’s my final thought, straight from our United Methodist liturgy: “The church is of God and will be preserved to the end of time…” I believe this with all of my heart. I simply wonder how it is and where it is that United Methodism will fit into the preserved Church.

I am grateful to all of you who blessed me with such kind and encouraging comments on this blog over the last couple of weeks. Your presence in my life means more to me than I could ever explain. Please be aware of my gratitude.