Following Jesus with Reckless Abandon

Greetings All,

     This week's 'thought' comes from a fascinating little book entitled, "Holy Fools - Following Jesus with Reckless Abandon." I picked it up at a local bargain basement for $.99. (One of the better deals I've found in recent months, especially when one considers the quality of the book!)
     It's written by Matthew Woodley who began his journey as a 'holy fool' after coming to realize his life as a comfortable, respectable, and "nice" pastor wasn't exactly what God had called him to be -- nor us.
     The book is honest, well-written, realistic, theologically sound and challenging. And it lives up to the claim made on the cover: "A spiritual jolt for when your respectable faith becomes deadly dull." This particular selection (a story of sin on Woodley's part, and the grace he learned) has to do with "Embracing Ragged Sinners." Enjoy.

     "I'm afraid that we (in the church) have become so ghettoized that we no longer (like Jesus) make contact with 'sinners' -- and we like it that way... 

     So we return to Phillip Yancey's question: 'What would it take for a church to become a place where prostitutes, tax collectors, and even quilt-tinged Pharisees would gladly gather?' I would answer: It takes holy folly -- and not just one or two holy fools, but an entire community of holy fools. If it takes a village to raise a child, it also certainly takes a community to embrace fellow sinners and raise new followers of Jesus.

     About a year ago a bunch of big, tough-looking, pasta-addicted Italian guys with names like Sal, Vinny and Johnny, rented the abandoned restaurant next to our church building. They were trying to create a fine dining experience in an ugly part of town. Even after everyone told them it was a dumb idea (in five years this location had chewed up five restaurants), they did it anyway. They called it "316" because it was located at 316 Main Street.

     As they were getting ready to open for business I paid them a visit, because: (1) I'm a very nice Christian neighbor and (2) I wanted to scope out the building so that after the restaurant failed we could use it for a cool young worship service. But when Sal and Vinny and Johnny discovered I was a local pastor, they asked me to come back in a week and bless the building. Of course, this put me in a tough spot: How do you bless something you want to fail?

     A week later I returned and offered one of the most insincere blessings ever given in two thousand years of professional Christian blessings. It was very awkward. They kept calling me 'Father,' and I kept waiting for the Godfather to show up. They begged me to stay for a drink, so when I asked for ginger ale they laughed hysterically and poured me a glass of their best Scotch. (Just for the record I hate Scotch, but I did sip some of it despite the elders meeting that night.)

     My wife and I became good buddies with Sal and Johnny and Vinny. They let us eat expensive meals at 316 for free. When my wife read to them 3:16 from the Gospel of John, they were so moved they framed it and hung it in the middle of the restaurant. I even repented and started praying with utter sincerity that God would bless 316.

     We invited them to church, and Johnny actually showed up for Easter Sunday, and occasional Sundays after that. Another guy named Guido (or Jimmy) wanted to come, but Vinny told me he had to spend a few years at 'college' (i.e., the local jail). 

     About two months later, Johnny pulled me aside after a worship service. He showed me a pretty little box and said, 'I want you to pray for this box.' After praying for a building, I figured I could pray for a box. 'Sure, Johnny, but what's in there?' Tears welled up in his eyes as he said, 'These are the ashes of my twenty-nine-year-old daughter. She was murdered in Vegas. She told me that she had found Jesus through a church out there, but then she was shot. Will you bless her remains, and will your church help me do a memorial service for her?' My heart shattered, I gasped for air, and I whispered, 'Of course we'll be there for you Johnny.' I couldn't meet Johnny's request to pray for dead remains, but I would do everything in my power to walk beside Johnny in the depths of his grief. 

     The next week my wife and some other folks from the church helped me with the memorial service. We packed out the place with big Italian guys who stood by Johnny and wept like babies. I spoke from Isaiah 53 about how we're all just a bunch of lost sheep but Jesus loves us like a Good Shepherd. They wept even louder. Through it all, I was proud of our church family. I had started out acting like a religious jerk, but God used the entire church anyway to reach beyond our ghetto walls. We were acting like a community of holy fools.

     How do we heal the wounds of broken people living in a broken world? It doesn't happen with programs or strategies. It happens person to person, through a complete identification of oneself with others. And it happens not just with a solo holy fool, but with an entire community committed to a lifestyle of holy folly."

     What else could one add?

     May God bless you as you seek to venture out of the fortress, or the "church ghetto" of respectability and niceness, as he calls it, and identify with those "sinners" living in the border lands all around us.

In Him, Pastor Jeff

Don't Give it up

Greetings All,   

 

     Today's 'thought' addresses an increasingly prevalent problem in modern church circles--lack of church attendance.  It is taken from Phillip Yancey's book, "Church: Why Bother?" and it begins with the question,"Is church really necessary for a believing Christian?"  

 

     In days gone by church attendance used to be considered somewhat "mandatory."  Not always in a "legalistic" sense (as some people are quick to reply), but in a truly devoted, committed, testimony to the world, I need this, I benefit from this, God commands it sense.  The Lord's Day used to be seen as the Lord's Day and not just the Lord's hour, or worse, his 45 minutes or half hour -- something one fits in among a multitude of other equally pressing (or in reality, not so pressing) commitments and desires. 

 

     And because it was the Lord's Day, they understood that at least part of it was to be spent in the House of the Lord; the House of Worship, or the "Meeting House" as it was called in early New England to differentiate from the "church" (which is the people of God and not the building they meet in). 

 

     Hebrews 10:25 made it clear: "Do not forsake the gathering together of yourselves, as is the habit of some..."   The reason?  It was a time to gather together in a world often hostile to the faith and encourage one another.  The word encourage is a compound word from "en" (meaning "in") and cour (meaning "heart") and essentially means to "infuse with courage" or "infuse the heart with strength to go on."  Gathering with others for worship, fellowship, instruction, prayer and praise encourages both us and them to keep our gaze focused on Christ, grow in Him and persevere in the faith.

 

     This thought addresses why many people (including the author at one point) do not do so. It also offers some food for thought and reasons to reconsider going back if you have forsaken gathering together with others for worship on Sunday morning. I have also inserted a related section from Yancey's book, "What's So Amazing About Grace?"  I trust you will find them helpful. Enjoy. 

 

     "Is church really necessary for a believing Christian? Winston Churchill once said that he related to the church rather like a flying buttress: he supported it from the outside.  

 

      I tried that stategy for a while, after I had come to believe...and had committed myself to God.  I am not alone.  Far fewer people attend church on Sunday than claim to follow Christ.  Some of them have stories similar to mine: they feel burned or even betrayed by a former church experience.  Other simply 'get nothing out of church.'  Following Jesus is one thing; following other Christians into a sanctuary on Sunday moring is quite another.  Why bother?  As the poet Anne Sexton put it:

 

                            'They pounded nails into his hands,

                             After that, well, after that everyone

wore hats...' (men might add ties)

 

      As I reflect on my pilgrimage I can see that many barriers kept me away from church.  First was hypocrisy.  The atheistic philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was once asked what made him so negative toward Christians. He replied, 'I would believe in their salvation if they looked a little more like people who have been saved.'

 

     Scarred by the absolutist fundamentalism of my childhood, I too approached church warily.  On Sunday mornings Christians dressed up in fine clothes and smiled at each other, but I knew from personal experience that such a facade could cloak a meaner spirit.  I had a knee-jerk reaction against anything that smacked of hypocrisy until one day the question occurred to me, 'What would church look like if every member were just like me?' Properly humbled, I began concentrating on my own spirituality, not everyone else's. 

 

      God is the ultimate judge of hypocrisy in the church, I decided; I would leave such judgment in God's capable hands.  When I did so I began to relax and grow softer and more forgiving of others.  After all, who has a perfect spouse, or perfect parents or children?  We do not give up on the institution of family because of its imperfections -- why give up on the church?...

 

    What changed my attitude toward church?  A skeptic might say that I lowered my expectations somewhere along the way, or perhaps I 'got used to' church just as, after numerous false starts, I got used to opera.  Yet I sense something else at work: church has filled in me a need that could not be met in any other way.  Saint John of the Cross wrote: 'The virtuous soul that is alone... is like the burning coal that is alone.  It will grow colder rather than hotter.'  I believe he is right. Christianity is not a purely intellectual faith.  It can only be lived in community.  Perhaps for this reason I never entirely gave up on church. At a deep level I sense that church contains something I desperately need.  Whenever I abandon church for a time, I find that I am the one who suffers.  My faith fades, and the crusty shell of lovelessness grows over me again. I grow colder instead of hotter.  And so my journeys away from church have always circled back inside."

 

    It was Billy Graham, I believe, who used to tell people that if they found the perfect church they shouldn't join it, for then it would no longer be perfect.  Yet believing that requires that we maintain an honest inwardly focused gaze directed at our own imperfections and shortcomings, rather than the typical outward gaze that looks for the imperfections and shortcomings of others and then upon finding them (which one can always easily do) uses them for an excuse to leave or neglect attending church.  

 

   One thing might help the defection rate, though.  And that is if the church focused on being the church Christ called it to be.  We can never erradicate things people will use as an excuse to avoid church, since as Yancey admits, the problem really rested in us and not others. But it would help erradicate some of them if we followed his advice given in this second quote: 

 

 

   

    "'In the world Christians are a colony of the true home,' said Bonhoeffer. Perhaps Christians should work harder toward establishing colonies of the kingdom that point to our true home...  If the world despises a notorious sinner, the church will love her.  If the world cuts off aid to the poor and the suffering, the church will offer food and healing.  If the world oppresses, the church will raise up the oppressed.  If the world shames the outcast, the church will proclaim God's reconciling love.  If the world seeks profit and self-fulfillment, the church seeks sacrifice and service.  If the world demands retribution, the church dispenses grace.  If the world splinters into factions, the church joins together in unity.  If the world destroys enemies, the church loves them. That, at least, is the vision of the church in the New Testament: a colony of heaven in a hostile world."

 

               With prayers that we might display such subversive behavior,  

 

Pastor Jeff

Praying

Greetings All,

This weeks 'thought' is by Philip Yancey, and has to do with prayer, or specifically, how to pray correctly. Actually, it suggests we may need to move beyond even thinking there is a "correct" way to pray which everyone who prays needs to adopt at all times. In fact, he suggests that when we push forth the idea that there is only one correct way to pray, or that we must do it as so-and-so did it, we can actually inhibit a prayerful spirit and authentic praying. It comes from his book, "Grace Notes" - one of the better devotional books I've read lately. Enjoy.

" 'I'll never pray like Martin Luther... I'll never have the spirit of Mother Teresa.' Agreed. We are not called to duplicate someone else on earth but to realize our authentic selves. 'For me to be a saint means for me to be myself,' said Thomas Merton.

I learned long ago that I could never match my wife's instinctive skills as a social worker or hospice chaplain. When I meet with someone in dire straits, I start to interview them. When my wife meets them, she immediately tunes in to their concerns. Our prayer practices reflect another difference: I tend to pray in scheduled, ordered times while she prays in spurts throughout the day.

Apart from the requirement that we be authentic before God, there is no prescribed way to pray. Each of us presents a unique mix of personality, outlook, training, gifts, and weaknesses, as well as a unique history with church and with God. As Roberta Bondi says, 'If you are praying, you are already doing it right.'

Over the years the church has repeatedly shifted its empahsis in prayer. Early Christians prayed for strength and courage. Then the state church composed majestic prayers. The Middle Ages stressed penitence and a plea for mercy. Later, Anselm and Bernard of Clairvaux led a rediscovery of the love and mercy of God, and St. Francis called forth a carefree joy. Meister Eckhart, Teresa of Avila, and the Quaker George Fox explored the interior, mystical silence of the heart, while Brother Lawrence practiced God's presence while doing mundane work. Luther steered toward practical devotion, even as Calvin emphasized the majesty of God.

The diversity continues today. I have stood in a Russian Orthodox cathedral and watched grandmothers weep though they understood barely a word of the Old Slavonic prayers. I have listened as Korean Presbyterians in Chicago sang hymns and prayed loudly through the night. In some African-American churches, you can barely hear the prayer for all the cries of 'Amen!' and 'Now listen, Lord!' In Japan, during congregational prayer, everyone prays at once, aloud. Members of a Chinese house church in Germany continue the stringent practices of the mother country, sometimes praying three days straight while fasting. In Ukraine worshippers stand to pray, while in Africa they dance."

Prayer does not come natural to us, any more than 'taking every thought and making it obedient to Christ' comes naturally to us (II Cor. 10:5) - which is part of what praying accomplishes. Therefore, some type of instructional training, method or help in developing prayer into a spiritual habit or discipline is helpful - since regular periods of time spent with God are indispensable to the nurture and growth of our relationship with Christ.

Yet what we often fail to see is that prayer can be carried out in many ways - I'm one who believes it should be - if we are to keep it fresh and vibrant and meaningful. Sometimes I feel led to sing hymns to God during my prayer time. Sometimes I read and own and voice back to God prayers which others have written. Sometimes I kneel, and sometimes I lay prostrate on the floor, and sometimes I stand with arms raised. Sometimes I focus on entering God's presence with confidence, and other times I will simply plead, "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the eternal God, have mercy on me, a sinner." I have shouted in prayer, though I've never danced (although I'm sure its not wrong)! My preferred demeanor before God is to focus on the divine injunction to, "be still and know that I am God" (Ps.46:10) -- though its never limited to that.

If, as they say, "variety is the spice of life," then it would make sense to avail oneself of the many different methods, and forms, and postures, and mental and emotional focuses of prayer, be it silent or audible, in song or dance, kneeling or standing, joyful or reverent. Yet whatever it is, it should always an honest expression of where we are at on that particular day.

The point after all is to pray, and to pray always, remembering as Roberta Bondi says, 'If you are praying, you are already doing it right.'

With prayers that we would respond more frequently to God's inward calls to prayer,

Pastor Jeff