On the Brink

The recent series "Living on the Brink" from 2 Timothy received responses that were sobering. Person after person thought it was time we stopped whistling through the graveyard and say out loud that things in this world are crazy weird dangerous right now. 

Many of us have had some sweet years with things going along pretty well. We know what our faith was like during those times. We got to dabble with this or that idea or imagine a ministry initiative of one kind or another. The thought process was calm. The stakes were manageable. This thinking at the shallow end of the pool was comfortable. And nothing much had to be done in the near future. No crisis loomed. 

To be sure we have all had various crises in our personal lives and families. Still all those difficulties took place against a backdrop of relative comfort and ease for most of us in middle-class in America. Now the world of worry and want that the poor have long known has become a world that threatens to dominate. A sane and sober man has looked into my eyes within the last 24 hours and said, "I think that we may see levels of need and people in situations within the next two or three years that we never thought we would see here." 

Hmmm. What to do? What if the life that folks on the margins of life have always known becomes more the norm? What if more and more of us take our place living on the margins of life where money, work, time and comfort are scarce? What becomes of our life and faith then?

What we found in 2 Timothy is still a good place to start when framing a faithful answer to how to live on the brink. 

The first thing we do is recover our weak flame of gift and calling and claim the power of God in Christ Jesus our Lord, standing unashamed in this world with all of its challenge and trouble. 

The second thing we do is focus with greater clarity on the word of God — the God-breathed word that is unchained, powerful and life-shaping in all situations. 

The third thing we do is lift our eyes from the immediate and urgent and lock our vision on the promises of God that stand today and stretch out into a richly satisfying and rewarding eternity. 

This life may indeed become more uncertain. We may see the sand on which many, and perhaps even we ourselves, have built their lives for what it is. This wild, raging sea of a world is the right place to stand on the ever moving wave of the present as it absorbs the future and leaves the past. We are on the edge, the brink, the wave. Let the metaphors roll and tumble to describe where we are, but … really this is where followers of Christ have always stood and demonstrated their faith to the world. 

Don't be afraid.

God bless us all.

Standing on Holy Ground

This summer I got to perform a wedding for dear friends in Rome, Italy. The couple was beautiful. The setting at San Saba church and at the reception on the old Appian way made the wedding unforgettable. The cab ride back to the city also etched itself into my memory. 

As a part of being in Rome, Annette and I walked through the Colosseum and the palace grounds of the Roman emperors. While the buildings were magnificent, I kept hearing the voices of the Christians who had lived and died in those places. Tacitus says Nero lit his gardens with the burning bodies of Christians. He entertained his guests by having Christians sewn into the skins of animals and letting the dogs tear and devour them. The Colosseum floor often ran red with the blood of multitudes of Christian men and women. 

Those ancient, faithful ones would not renounce their faith in the face of sure and tortured death. They affirmed the reality of their faith rather than succumb to their fear in the critical moments of their trials. In Colosseum a cross stands victorious in the ruins. The empire is gone. The Colosseum is in ruins. The cross and resurrection still stand. Those who died, live. 

It was good to stand on that holy ground. I could hear their voices. I could hear another voice, my own, asking, "Eddie, what would you have done?"

Wilderness Wonderings

Ruth Haley Barton uses the story of Elijah's successes and fears as the subtext for her Invitation to Solitude and Silence. She points out the uncomfortable truth that after every success may come fear and doubt. She assures that before any great encounter with Holy God comes a wilderness to cross. God often offers rest and restoration after a trial only so we will have the strength for the journey across the vast desert to that sweet place of communion in the hollow of Mt. Horeb.

So why do we panic at the prospect of the wildernesses of our lives and of our churches? It is plain. Nothing is attractive about the waterless places in our life where God seems remote; temptation is strong; the flesh is weak; the evil one breathes his hot breath on our necks; our vision is clouded; our memory of former intimacy with God grows dim. Nothing is attractive about the wilderness except... it is the path to a greater intimacy with God; a greater strength of the Spirit in our lives; a more crushing defeat for the evil one; a clearer view of the past, present and future of our lives in God. 

I know the wilderness—lately. I serve a church that knows the wilderness—lately. While the temptation to despair and self-pity besets us each day, the thought of what lies at the end of the journey thrills me and, I hope, all of us. So let's fall in love a bit with sun and sand and sky and journey on until nothing is more real than God in our presence and we in His.

Purely Personal

This week my grandson Sailor turned three. I want to share with you the piece I wrote on the day he was born. He came a bit early. I was not there. I was an assistant leader on a trip to Israel. At the very time he was born in Austin, I was in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. When I got back to the hotel, I found out that he had been born and at the time I was in the church— about the time I took the photo above.  So I wrote this piece:

An April day and far away I hear of you

Born on the day that I stand in Bethlehem

All around the icons of Mary and her baby

Watch me, smiling at what they know...

That your mother has strained in the morning

And brought you to light.

I feel so far away from you and my heart would break

If I did not know that the One who caused the sun to rise in Bethlehem

Caused the son of my son to rise in Austin

So in my heart -- peace, as I wait to hold you.

'Til then, I pray 

Bless God the Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth

For the great gift of life in Sailor Durham Sharp

Now may you be blessed with faith, love and hope all your life

And may you be an instrument of justice in the hand of God.

Amen.

It was a good day. Happy Birthday, Sail!

Breathing In and Out in the Kingdom of God

Jesus told his followers that he was doing the work of his Father. He came into the world with something to do. He was on a mission. Jesus had his identity. He had his relationship with the Father and the Spirit. Jesus was completely stocked with all the desired inner life elements. The inward disciplines of retreat and prayer were a part of maintaining his life.  All of the innerness prepared him for his outward life -- the life of giving, listening, serving, healing, teaching, hurting, crying, suffering, dying. His inner life undergirded his outer life -- his work.

While one could argue that a life of inner devotion might be a work offered to God, that is not a complete offering by any means. We are meant to get on with doing the work of the Kingdom of God. The inner life and outer life are two sides of our Christian respiration. We have heard it forever. We cannot just breath in and in and in. We cannot always exhale. The rhythm of life and the rhythm of Christian life are the same: breath in and breath out.

What I have learned about all this from myself is that my fleshly self doesn't want to breath in or out in the Kingdom of God. My flesh does not want the holy desire of my spirit or the presence of the Holy Spirit. Like an obstructing airway, my dark heart does not want early mornings with the Lord or late night devotion. My flesh wants to reserve my inner world for fears and imaginings unspeakable. My flesh does not want me to take time and energy for acts of faith. My flesh makes out my Daytimer without room for caring for others. My flesh is always trying to book me for stardom and attention. My flesh cares nothing for crosses — not that of Christ, not one for me. My flesh has one hand around my throat crushing my airway; the other hand tries to trip me every step I take toward loving action.

So today I have to commit out of my heart and mind to want what my flesh cannot stand. I have to commit to want the life God can give in Christ. Against the backdrop of the disaster my flesh desires for me, I can see a different life. I can see life in the presence of God's sweet Holy Spirit. I can see the Cross of Christ as the expression of God's love for the world and for me in that world. I can open myself to holy CPR as God breathes his Spirit into me. I can open myself as the example of the ministry of Jesus calls my Spirit-given gifts into meaningful action. I can see that life. 

I pray that my spirit's hopes will overcome the desire of the flesh. When I died to the flesh in Christ and was raised with the Holy Spirit, this impossible life became possible. Today I must urge my spirit to continue to want in me what the Holy Spirit wants in me: breathing in and out in the Kingdom of God. We can do this. By God's grace,we can do this.

God help us all.

Palm Sunday Coming

This Sunday is Palm Sunday. 

I didn't grow up knowing about Palm Sunday. We didn't think holy thoughts about holy days. We were every-Sunday-is-holy folks with a conceit that such a regular focus made us better than the folks who were spiritual on an annual calendar. But now. I guess because I am aging, Sundays come twice a week, and the annual holidays seem to be pretty frequent. So, I am thinking about Palm Sunday. 

Jesus was kind and sweet to the people of simple hopes and nascent faith. They had little, if any, idea what Jesus was going to be about, but they showed up and showered the road with greenery and Jesus with praise. What did Jesus think of all that noise? He could have been cynical, knowing how the week was going to unfold into betrayal, inquisition, torture and crucifixion. He might have been happy knowing that the joys of the triumphal entry into Jerusalem would pale in comparison to the following Sunday's triumphant re-entry to life from the tomb.

I think it is wonderful that Jesus was willing to play the part of the earthly king coming to accept his kingdom. I think it is wonderful that he is as willing now to walk into my own conflicted heart as he was then to enter Jerusalem's contradictory scene of faith and doubt, anger and joy. I want to stand on tip-toe in my own life and watch him enter my life to accept shame for me, die for me and live for me. May each of my days, and I pray yours to, be a Palm Sunday day.

I am thrilled that Jesus enters our gathered worship, invited and praised, willing to be honored by the imperfect, but eager voices of his people. May he always enter. May every Sunday be a Palm Sunday for us in our churches.

"Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!"

It is not good for man to be alone...

Since I had the time and focus to blog last, I preached a three sermon series on men and women in the public worship assembly. I tried to show from the text that the core teaching was that from the beginning the image of God was projected best into the world when men and women together were fulfilling the responsibility to fill and manage the earth. In the same way, the image of God is presented well as men and women do the work of the Kingdom of God in the world together. 

The overture of the ministry of the church plays at Pentecost and the lyric is from Joel. The word of the Lord comes heralding the day when the sons and daughters of God will prophesy as the Holy Spirit rains down. That day has come in Acts 2. How the church that began under such words would become one in which the women would be excluded from having a voice in the family meetings around the family table is mystifying. The Corinthians were told that the men and the women could pray and prophesy as long as the men looked like men and the women looked like women. To be sure the disruptive wives were to be silent and ask their poor husbands at home. And it is not without cause that Paul tells Timothy to urge a quieter and more serene demeanor from the overbearing women teaching in Ephesus. 

Still I hear with louder, clearer tones the words of Paul to the Galatians, who are plummeting back into legalism, that now because of Christ the Jew-Gentile distinction is done; the slave-free distinction is done; the male-female distinction is done. I am thankful that God has worked to restore the wonder of his image in the life of the church as men and women work together without power and authority other than the power of love and the authority of the giftedness distributed by the Holy Spirit. This is not a matter of caving in to the demands of contemporary culture; it is the matter of restoring an ancient, honorable culture of man and woman together before the fall in the fellowship of the Father in the quiet of a garden.