Holy Week Friday - Why Good Friday and Easter Sunday are Better than Christmas

Before all the Christmas elves get mad, I begin by saying the celebration of the Savior’s birth is a joy and delight to me and my family.  Even the American Christmas culture, though much of it misses the whole point of the holiday, is delightful in many ways.  Music, decorations, special foods - these are all so very good.

But if we want to climb to the pinnacle of high holy days as Christians, we will reverently bear ourselves over the incline of the incarnation to the mighty heights of Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  It is here where the birth of Christ finds its fulfillment - the very reason for the manger in Bethlehem.

Perhaps we’ve prettied up Christmas too much.  In reality, a poor, young frightened couple are in a terrible fix, with labor pains coming and not a bed to be found.  God providentially provides an animal’s shelter.  This is not a clean, sanitary, comfortable place.  Silent Night is not playing in the background.  There is no hospital, doctor or even midwife available.  And if you’ve experienced birth, you know it’s messy, difficult business in the best of conditions.  This is the glorious palace into which our God descended as a fully human baby boy.

He grew up, and walked this earth, and the loveliness of His ways and His character could not be contained if every book in the world and every inch of the internet were engaged for that task.  Yet His purpose was not primarily to teach and heal and show the way, but to die.

Good Friday is the holiday that provides the richest gift to the poorest beggar.  The good news Jesus came to tell, He then demonstrated when He willingly gave up His brilliant, perfect life for the likes of us. To be the One to take on himself the penalty for our sin.  Heaven thundered and roared and the sky darkened in the middle of the day when the Savior of the world offered up the gift so great the whole world can’t contain it.  It is wrapped in the red blood of Christ, and sparkles with the gold of redemption for every soul that simply believes, from the beginning of time to the end.  

Good Friday is better than Christmas.

In the treasure of the gift of Christ, we find not a lifeless salvation.  If Jesus is dead, Christianity is just another religion, with a great teacher-prophet, who is not mighty to save. As the bible declares through the pen of the Apostle Paul:

“And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins”. ~ 1 Cor. 15:17

But Christ is indeed raised.  And by many historical evidences, as Pastor Tim Keller says:

“The resurrection of Christ is both intellectually credible and existentially satisfying.”

And so, this magnificent present of the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is teeming with life.  The box, so to speak, is alive and bursting to be opened.  God’s Easter gift is freely given to all who will come to the tree on which Jesus died, and the tomb from which He emerged to devastate death and hell - and believe.

Easter is better than Christmas.

Have a very merry Easter.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Thursday - Gethsemane, History's Lynchpin

The Garden of Gethsemane is Holy Ground.  As we consider the agony of  our precious Lord in the garden, we may want to kneel, and in a quiet, reverent tone, repent in dust and ashes.  Poetry speaks when regular prose will not do.

Gethsemane: The Linchpin

In Gethsemane

You wept for sin's sure toll on all things good.

Struggled, in clean white beauty 

the filthy horrors of perdition...

striving to destroy you, striving to destroy yours.

Your Father, firm to keep light for darkness.

Relentless with His "no" to your plea:

"Let this cup pass."

You bled through pores your own hand formed for cooling

While white hot fire from ugly death pressed, burned

shaking all your primal, human flesh.

All God, all man in the valley of decision...

The fate of every man

on One man.

Who can bear such loneliness?

"Let this cup pass."

The acid of distress, scalding, ablaze in your chest, your heart.

Fear, rage, murder, envy...all OUR vice laid hard on you.

Gethsemane, the linchpin of the ages...

where God meets God and all hope rests on this:

"Let this cup pass...

yet not my will, but Thine be done."

Onward to Calvary.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Wednesday - Why You Want a God of Wrath

The idea of a wrathful God makes people angry and upset. If you find yourself in a conversation with an agnostic or a nominal Christian about the nature and character of God, you’ll probably hear some rendition of the following:  “I don’t believe in the kind of God presented by some people, an intolerant, demanding God.  I believe in a God of love…”  There was a time I said the same thing, even as a younger Christian.  And for sure, the love of God in Christ is what this week is most profoundly all about.  But I want to spend a few minutes on the uncomfortable subject of the wrath of God.  Because it’s the truth - a biblically sound part of the WHOLE truth, and because it’s a liberating and compelling truth indeed.

For starters, let’s look at a few scenarios:

• Tamar, the young, beautiful daughter of King David, is raped by her half brother and then hated by him, not to mention permanently ruined in the Jewish culture of the time she lived.
• A 13 year old girl in New York state is abducted while riding her bicycle, sexually assaulted, killed and her body hidden by her murderer.
• Black men and women in Africa are rounded up, chained together and stuffed into dark cargo holds, taken from their homes and families and sold like animals into a lifetime of slavery.
• 6 million Jews are starved, tortured and exterminated in Nazi concentration camps in the 20th century.
• A thirteen year old disabled boy from Delmar, NY is smothered in the back of a van by his caretakers.

Of course, the list of injustices in the history of the world, those known and unknown, those great and small, could go on endlessly, the sheer volume of them orbiting around the earth to the sun a thousand times.  

As the Creator, Sustainer, and King of the Universe, how ought a good, loving God respond to these atrocities?  Should He ignore them in the name of being “kind and loving”?  Should He minimize them and give the perpetrators an extenuating circumstances excuse?  Should he shrug His cosmic shoulders and forget they ever happened in the name of being tolerant and understanding?

God forbid.  The New Testament declares:

“The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.” ~Romans 1:18-19

It is precisely the beautiful goodness of the nature of God to utterly abhor sin of any kind.  Forget just the obviously horrific sins in the list above. Would it be ok for God to wink at people cheating on their taxes, ruining their bodies with drugs, alcohol, food or work addictions?  Can He simply look away from nasty emails sent at work or laziness that impacts the flourishing of a family?  Can He stand by while the dug-in, unrelenting selfishness of every human being goes about the business of destroying all that is lovely and precious in the world He made?

If God were to dismiss without a peep any sin, he would no longer be a good, righteous and just God.  

“God is light.  In Him there is no darkness at all.”  ~ 1 John 1:5

God has powerful, perfectly just wrath against any unrighteousness, and I’m glad He does.  You should be too.  We want a God who hates darkness.  Who hates double-crossing and racism and murder.  Who hates everything that perverts and twists and ruins us and those we love.  Those HE loves.

You see the problem, don’t you?  Of course you do.  You and I, we aren’t the heroes in the stories of the bible.  More often than not, we’re the villains.  We are the bad guys.  We are lost and justly under the wrath of a good and lovely Master of the Universe.  

Ah, but here’s the genius of the gospel… God must punish and take vengeance upon sin, or He ceases to be just.  And so He holds court as the righteous judge.  And you and I and every person ever born, save One, are found guilty. Then, from the back of the courtroom, comes a man.  A God-man, with spike holes in His hands and a spear hole in His side. A man who was dead, but now is alive. That man holds out those hands to His father, the judge.  And His father is glad, knowing that the full fury and wrath of His righteous judgment have already been satisfied.  The typhoon of light that burns and kills darkness has been unleashed on the Righteous Son of God, who alone could bear the sin of all men on this third rock from the sun, this home of the people He made for relationship with Himself. And the gavel comes down with a shocking verdict…”not guilty”.  The sentence of death was already meted out to Another, and with God there is no double jeopardy.

Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century preacher put it this way:

“In the gospel, God never trifles with human sin; we proclaim full, free, immediate forgiveness to the chief of sinners, but it is not in a way that makes us think the sin is trivial in God’s esteem.  By the sacrifice of his Son, God renders it possible for him to be merciful without being unjust.  In the substitution of Christ Jesus, we see justice and mercy peacefully embracing and conferring double honor on one another.”

So like the first day of spring, God in his son Jesus brings hope. He comes and saves us to the uttermost:

“Therefore he is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them. ~Hebrews 7:25

And God the Father, perfect in light and life, has HIS reward.  He’s the very One who sent Jesus into the world.  For this very reason.  That all who believe upon Him may not perish, but have everlasting life.

So you see, you want a God of wrath.  Who is also a God of unrelenting, unrivaled, justifying love.  Repent, believe and be saved.  Then go, and make disciples of the wonderful Jesus, who with His father and the Holy Spirit devised the brilliant plan to be both just and the Great Justifier.

Blessed be His name…

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Tuesday - Through Many Dangers, Toils and Snares: John Newton and Amazing Grace

There may be no better song as an anthem for Passion Week than the most famous hymn ever written in the English language - Amazing Grace. The lyrics of this masterpiece of gospel truth were penned by a sparsely educated British sailor-turned-pastor, who elegantly communicates (with mostly 1 syllable words) the profound beauty and power of the grace of Christ.

As western culture moves with exponential speed away from a shared understanding of our human limits, the concept of the need of grace becomes more and more foolish to modern man, if considered at all.  Despite the overwhelming evidence of the reality of the sinful nature, and the failed attempts of mankind to “make a better world”, the resistance to the need of a Savior remains.  It is in this moment in modernity, when personal freedom is elevated to the pinnacle of virtue (how’s that workin’ for us?), that the lyrics of Amazing Grace and the story of the man behind the song are an oasis in a desert of self absorption and bad theology.

John Newton’s story is a textbook example of the adage “truth is stranger than fiction”.  This forum is too brief to outline the whole drama of Newton’s life, but I recommend going deeper with him, especially through the letters he wrote (which were the social media of the the 18th century).  In light of the topic here, suffice it to say that through a series of circumstances John Newton found himself occupying the position of captain of an African slave trade ship, where he witnessed and was party to the great evil of the capture, torture and sale of human beings.  This wicked era of human history created a hurricane of inhumanity so malevolent that the calamitous winds of that social villainy continue to blow today.  

But through the unbounded grace of a  Greater Wind -the convicting power of the Holy Spirit - John Newton recognized the absolute corruption of the human heart - especially his own- and the impossibility of cleansing the stain of sin from his soul. No hope could be found in good works, in self awareness, in charity. Here, in this place of his soul’s ruin, Newton discovered that most needful truth, indeed the only rescue for the disastrous shipwreck of sin:

The unmerited grace of Jesus Christ in His death on the cross.

John Newton repented of his sin and placed his trust in the atoning blood of the Son of God.  Period.  That is amazing grace.  There is nothing that can add to it, and nothing that can take away from it. 

And out of this conversion came not only a hymn that will likely be sung in heaven, but a providential earthly good as well.  John Newton became a mentor to William Wilberforce, the great British abolitionist who fought relentlessly for his entire career in Parliament to end the slave trade in his nation.  Newton advised Wilberforce to enter into politics instead of the pastorate when he was a young man deciding on a career path.  And in an ironic turn of the wheels of divine superintendence, the words of a redeemed slave trader played a critical role in the eventual abolition of the slave trade in the United Kingdom.

Though not popular and not pleasant, the bible says two things we need to hear as we approach Good Friday:

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

~Jeremiah 17:9

AND

“…for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

~Romans 3:23

None of us have captained a slave trade ship.  But we have by our very  nature rebelled against God and His perfect, beautiful justice and righteousness.  The only hope for you and I is the amazing grace of God.  We cannot fix ourselves.  That’s why this coming Friday is called good.  The best.news.ever.

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind, but now I see.

’Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

And grace my fears relieved;

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed.

Through many dangers, toils, and snares,

I have already come;

’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

And grace will lead me home.

The Lord has promised good to me,

His Word my hope secures;

He will my Shield and Portion be,

As long as life endures.

Yea, when this flesh and heart shall fail,

And mortal life shall cease,

I shall possess, within the veil,

A life of joy and peace.

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow,

The sun forbear to shine;

But God, who called me here below,

Will be forever mine.

When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

Bright shining as the sun,

We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

Than when we’d first begun.

John Newton

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Holy Week Monday - There's No Vaccine for This

There is no lack of uncomfortable subjects for conversation in 2021.  Vaccines, mask mandates, the last election…any of these can turn a polite communication into a dog fight in mach 2.  But if you really want to clear out a room, bring up that age old killer subject that makes the most loquacious of men suddenly mute and sends a natural born gossip hunting for the back door out.  

Death is the most inevitable, dependable, solid truth in each of our futures.  It’s not up for dispute, has no controversy to come up against, and cannot be foiled by great virtue, great intellect or great strength.  The bible calls it “the last enemy”, and indeed it is - completely undefeatable by all the powers of man.  It is as sure as day turning to night.  And it is the most off-limit topic of human discourse.

Lent is the great reminder, the bell ringing in the tower to sober up mankind to the brevity of life and the certainty of death.  In all the beautiful, horrible passion of holy week, there is no avoiding the ultimate truth.  Only One man defeated death.  And only He is its remedy. 

John Donne was an English poet who lived around the turning of the 16th century.  In those days before antibiotics and RNA vaccines, sickness would pass through a town and wipe out large swaths of a population swiftly.  Donne was lying on his bed, listening as the church bell rang out for each death, ring, ring, ring.  And it was there he penned the poem that included the famous line:

“Ask not for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

He survived that particular plague (and graced the world with works of profound and beautiful poetry).  But death did ultimately come to John Donne, as it will for you and me.

Here on the solemn ground of Holy Week, where we remember the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, perhaps a wise first step in our meditation should be to listen to the bells ourselves.  It is not morbid or brooding to consider daily the words of the brother of the Son of God, recorded for our good:

“For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time, then vanishes away.”

~ James 4:14

I squirm under this serious question that drives me to repent of the wasted time in my life, and to reorient my days toward the thing that really matters.  In this week especially, the bell tolls loud for the waking up of souls to the great reality that life is brief.  Ask not for whom the bell tolls, my friend, it tolls for thee.  And for me.

How much greater, then, the truth that sounds louder than any death nell. As we “proceed to the route” as GPS advises, we will find on Good Friday the hope that makes this short stretch meaningful and hopeful.  The bell tolled for Him - even though He was God.  His death bought us life.  Not a stingy 80 years of toil and trouble, but an everlasting spring in the Kingdom of Love.

Today, don’t avoid the reality of your mortality.  Let it sink in.  Let it drive you to the cross of Christ, for whom the bell tolled.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Weighed on the Scales and Justified: Christmas, Original Sin, and The Cosmic Dumpster Fire

 The doctrine of original sin is not popular today, despite the profound evidence of its truth.  But for anybody who has any self awareness at all, recognizing how rotten we can be is not at all a stretch.  And I’m not talking about looking backwards to Hitler or Stalin, or looking outward to drug dealers and murderers, but looking inward and examining our own fantastic capacity to be wretched.  Ask me how I know…

So here we are in Advent, and what the heck am I doing talking about the darkness of my own soul in the midst of this season of twinkling lights and cheer?  Shouldn’t the words tapped out on my keyboard be filled with hope, joy, and peace on earth?  I’m getting to that.  But the bad news is always better delivered first.  

The history of the human race, though certainly punctuated with acts of mercy, courage and grace, is more often than not an ugly, twisted trip down familiar roads with the repetition of evil being as sure as the rising and setting of the sun.  In my survey through the Old Testament books of history and of the prophets, I’ve gotten whiplash going from good king to bad king…but bad kings are in the lead by a country mile.  And even the good ones have simply terrible moments, so insidious is the bent toward self - the prideful root of all wickedness.

God at one point, very early on in the history of mankind, looks upon the world and the scriptures record this devastating revelation: 

“And it repented Jehovah that he had made man on the earth, and grieved him at his heart.”

~ Genesis 6:6

People had become so horrifying in their selfish ambition and the evil inclinations of their hearts that the Creator was actually saddened and regretful that he started the whole thing.  Only His infinite love and the knowledge of His plan to make something good out of this cosmic dumpster fire staid His hand from closing down the whole operation.  That’s where Christmas comes in…

In those years before the birth of Jesus, prophecies and hints, psalms and stories of a coming deliverer peppered the inspired writings of the saints of God.  Everywhere you look in the pages of the Torah, and the other OT books, the coming Messiah is forecast.  A tired world, groaning under the weight of the tyranny of wicked kings, and indeed, even worse, under the slave driver of personal sin, was straining to somehow find a rescuer.  And God, who will not be rushed and who knows the sovereign timing for all things, at the perfect time sent his begotten son to gestate in the body of a virgin Jewish girl from a backwoods (or desert) town under the thumb of another miserable ruler.

In this unlikely place the whole eternal history of human begins stood on the point of of a knife.  Could it really be true, that God really does love us lost, grimy children - enough to come personally to our rescue.  To stand in our place.  To remain just himself, not bent as we are, but willing to bend to be our justifier?  Not to wag his finger but to spread His beautiful arms across the wood and with every pounding of nails not regret anymore but for the joy set before Him endure the cross?  To know every evil thought, motive and deed of every one of us, but to be determined to do what was always the point of Christmas: to come save us, out of unthinkable love, simply because we cannot save ourselves.

I found my self completely undone one day last week, reading from the Old Testament book of Daniel.  A very bad king, Belshazzar, was drunk and having a party with his cronies and concubines.  He used the gold goblets that were sacred objects of the temple for his alcoholic shindig.  Worship of other gods was part of the extravaganza.  It was all fun and games until a hand appeared and wrote on the wall for everyone to see.  “Mene mene tekel parsin”, the words read.  Only the great prophet Daniel could interpret the meaning: “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting”.

When I read those words, I shuddered.  ‘I too, Lord, being weighed on the scales, am found wanting.  The private sins, the envy, the selfish motives of my heart, and things too embarrassing to mention here - these leave me as far from a Holy God as east is from west.”

But as quickly as the thought came, so came the words of grace, relief and Christmas mercy beyond my reckoning:

“Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.

~ 1 Corinthians 6:9-11

And God showed me a brick being placed on the other side of the scales, and that brick was the justifying grace of the blood of Christ.  And Jesus in His inimitable way spoke to my heart: “You have been weighed on the scales and found justified.”

And so there it is.  The wraparound to Christmas. The hope, joy, cheer, twinkly lights, popcorn garland and every other good and beautiful celebratory delight.  There it is: peace on earth, good will toward men.  There are the people living in darkness who have seen a great light.  There is the conquering gift greater, far greater, than the curse of original sin - that meaty, difficult doctrine that would kill the heart in us if not for Christmas.

Not by works of our original crooked hearts, but by the gift of grace of a perfect Savior, are we weighed on the scales and found justified. Loved. Treasured.  Valued.  We couldn’t do it, so God descended and did it Himself.

Jesus in a manger.  Jesus in the garden. Jesus on the cross.  Jesus in the tomb. 

Jesus risen, forever high king of all.  Jesus, the Great Justifier.

There is absolutely no Christmas gift that compares.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann

Defiant Gratitude and William Bradford's "Epitapheum Meum"

William Bradford, perhaps the most well knows of all the English separatists to make the crazy trip across the Atlantic on the Mayflower in 1620, lives on at our Thanksgiving table every year.  Part of our tradition is to recite his poem, "Epitaphium Meum".  At one point the verse simply says:

"In fears and wants, through weal and woe, 

As pilgrim passed I to and fro..."

(Weal is an old English word for prosperity, happiness and well being.)

Pilgrimage is a theme that has captured my heart for a lifetime.  This idea of leaving behind an old life, venturing out on the uncharted, seeking a fit homeland for the breadth of one's deepest desires - and despising the pains and troubles to get there- this is the stuff of every great story.

Most people know about the hardships the first puritans endured to find a home wide enough to hold their greatest treasure: an unfettered relationship with Jesus Christ  These folks were tough.  They were weird by our modern cultural norms, but deeper and stronger that just about any American alive today.  They had something I keep thinking about, a rare and beautiful quality that makes these sojourners stand out in the dark landscape of history:

Defiant Gratitude. 

You've likely known a few of these types of folks in your lifetime.  They have not had easy lives.  The wilderness they have travelled - through addiction, loss, betrayal, heartache and a thousand other snares- has not suffered them to be resentful or bitter, but winsome and grateful.  Here in 2020, (a kind of crappy year by most modern standards), I long to leave my complaining behind and get a little closer to the attitude of my long-dead puritan brothers and sisters.  They, who in their first winter lost half their company to pestilence.  They, who were separated by an ocean (with no modern communication) from beloved family and friends in England and the Netherlands.  They, who despite all of those troubles and many more practiced defiant gratitude.

What are some simple ways defiant gratitude can play out?  

When self pity comes because this holiday season does not meet our expectations, we can blast the music and dance anyway while making the stuffing (my plan for tonite!)  

Write down 3 blessings in your life and rejoice over them.  

Tell someone you're thankful for them and why.

For my fellow pilgrims, followers of the One and Only, for us I pray a deep humility that will cause us to make gratitude a way of life.  We are always looking for God's will for us. Here it is in black and white:

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18

Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

For any of my dear friends who are not followers of Christ who may read these words, I pray heartily: be reconciled to God.  He is the Captain of  your Mayflower, ready to take you on a great pilgrimage to Himself - a land so broad and beautiful that it is impossible to put into puny words.  You only need step aboard the ship.  Nothing would fill my heart with more gratitude than to share this wild trek with you on the narrow road to the blessed heavenly homeland. Sinners like me, saved by grace, walk gratefully through the mountains and the valleys of this temporary territory.

Happiest of Thanksgivings! May it be will with your souls!  I've included the William Bradford's poem in its entirety below.  

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

LS

Epitaphium Meum

by William Bradford

From my years young in dayes of Youth,
God did make known to me his Truth,
And call'd me from my Native place
For to enjoy the Means of Grace.
In Wilderness he did me guide,
And in strange Lands for me provide.
In Fears and Wants, through Weal and Woe,
As Pilgrim past I to and fro:
Oft left of them whom I did trust;
How vain it is to rest on Dust!
A man of Sorrows I have been,
And many Changes I have seen.
Wars, Wants, Peace, Plenty have I known;
And some advanc'd, others thrown down.
The humble, poor, cheerful and glad;
Rich, discontent, sower and sad:
When Fears with Sorrows have been mixt,
Consolations came betwixt.
Faint not, poor Soul, in God still trust,
Fear not the things thou suffer must;
For, whom he loves he doth chastise,
And then all Tears wipes from their eyes.
Farewell, dear Children, whom I love,
Your better Father is above:
When I am gone, he can supply;
To him I leave you when I dye.
Fear him in Truth, walk in his Wayes,
And he will bless you all your dayes.
My dayes are spent, Old Age is come,
My Strength it fails, my Glass near run:
Now I will wait when work is done,
Untill my happy Change shall come,
When from my labours I shall rest
With Christ above for to be blest.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow...Finding the Truth in the Hot Minute

 “For what is your life?  It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.”

~ James 4:14

In the vernacular, “you are here for a hot minute.”

If you’re 20, you don’t believe this, not really.  If you’re 60, you can sing Joni Mitchell’s The Circle Game song with earnestness.  “It won’t be long now, till you drag your feet just to slow the circles down...”

Partly because of the brief nature of human existence, it is impossible to get a larger view of life without outside help. People everywhere are grasping for some small bit of happiness in their minuscule time span.  Meaning and purpose are elusive when you look for them within your drop of mist, a drop that’s ironically on fire with rage, fear, violence and selfishness.  (The old fashioned, offensive word for all of this is Sin).  And when you look within yourself, the droplet within the drop, things are no better.

It is unpopular in this particular droplet of time to look to something ancient or large or most un-vapor like as a possible source of wisdom and practical help for the freaking mess we are in.  But many, many before us, those pre-modern, unsophisticated folks who managed to get far enough to keep the world populated, thought it wise to look outside of their mist bubble.  And though “we didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the world’s been turning” to quote Billy Joel, the majority of people in those unsophisticated times believed in something larger than themselves.  They attributed the ordered world to something or someone that was NOT them. And maybe because hauling water and chopping wood and manually editing a book with a pen made room for undistracted thought, it was easier for people to transcend their droplet and get a view of the wide wonder of it all.

Whatever the reason, the further we moderns seem to get away from validating anything thought or written before the 20th century, the worse our interior lives become.  There have always been sad people, suicidal people, anxious people, angry people.  But just look up the suicide rate graphs by year on the internet, and I’ll rest my case.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I am a follower of Jesus Christ, although a stumbling, bumbling one with a great deal of forgiven sin in my rear view mirror, including from this morning.  So you already know where I’m going with this.  We need something solid.  Something non-misty, something like a rock and refuge and lighthouse at the same time to navigate and understand our place in this long running story of here today, gone tomorrow. Or, better said, someONE.  It is absolutely critical that we put down our phones and go chop some wood or haul some water, or whatever it takes to stop being distracted long enough to grab hold of what’s true and lasting. We’re not meant to be spectators in the mist, tossed about in a meaningless fog until we die.  

When God in a jaw dropping display of humility sent Jesus to this sorry planet, just about every human being on earth believed in something bigger than themselves.  And knew something was wrong with the world. And with themselves.  They mostly feared some kind of god, because they saw the bigness and scariness and sublime beauty of the world they lived in.  Jesus shocked (and appalled) the people of 1st century Palestine by saying that he was indeed God, the exact representation of the Father, and that he cares about all the misty little creatures he thought up and created, and in fact loves them.  And He said there’s a solid place to stand, and He’s the solid place.  And then he proved His love by dying and taking all the sin of the misty world on Himself.  He actually became a mist.  But then the mist got back up out of the tomb.  And the world has never been the same hopeless place because hope became Someone solid if we would only believe it.

This truth has been relegated to fairy tales by many clever modern people. In the 21st century, education is the answer, funding is the answer, the answer is to be found in the midst of the mist. And we are free to believe the words of whosoever we choose in a vaporous world.  Freedom is the great gift of course, because without it love is impossible. And the whole point of this affair from God’s point of view is to love a people, and have that people love Him in return.  But that’s another post...

When Jesus rose from the dead, Thomas the disciple wasn’t there at His first appearance. But later, Jesus appeared again to His followers. And Thomas, who doubted the reality of the resurrection, was met with something solid, something outside himself, someONE made of flesh and blood that did not ultimately succumb to here today, gone tomorrow.  Christian tradition has it that Thomas was eventually martyred for his faith.  But not before he and a small group of others started a fire of love that is still changing mists like me thousands of years later. 

Find out what’s true in your hot minute.  It matters more than anything else.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

LS

A Call to the Banquet - Full Capacity Seating

We finally celebrated our daughter’s 25th birthday dinner last night.  Being born in April didn’t set her up well for a good time in 2020.  But steaks, salmon and special drinks were on the menu, along with wonderful conversation and sibling jabs.  It was strange though, and a little bit sad, not to have the place packed - not hearing the sounds of many voices delighting in the good food, delighting in one another, making the warm atmosphere of the room bright and bursting with the beautiful color of human celebration.  Restaurants are stuck at half capacity rules right now.

This morning I read the familiar parable Jesus told at a dinner party with some well to do religious folks, who as usual were watching him closely to catch him in a religious error.  He relayed the story of a man giving a large banquet.  He invited people who he knew - likely friends and relations in his wide circle.  One by one the folks gave excuses for not coming.  In today’s culture, the equivalent reasons might boil down to “I’ve got too much other stuff to do right now.   Let’s be practical, maybe when things slow down in my work/relationships/daily distractions.”  The man was miffed.  Imagine, you are putting on an extravaganza at no small expense, for people you know and love, and the invitation is met with a big fat NO.  “You’re not that important to me.  I’m not stopping my routine to celebrate with you.”

This man in the parable was exploding with generosity.  He was so anxious to share his abundance, that he had his servant go out to the streets and alleys of the city and invite every manner of person.  The “respectable, intelligent, elite” people turned him down.  So he opened the doors to the poor, blind, maimed, and crippled.  He invited the prostitutes, tax collectors, dingbats, swindlers, deadbeats and goofballs of every sort. He wanted to fill that elaborate ballroom with people.  He wanted to see people eat, drink, be merry, and generally flourish in every way.  And he wanted that banquet hall full of the rejoicing of people loved and forgiven who knew they didn’t deserve it.  He crammed them in, serving no doubt the best wine and the finest food, playing the best music and clothing them as they came in with clothes that would make the famous movie costumer Edith Head blush.

Jesus told parables to get at the truth.  He’s no respecter of persons.  The spiritual banquet of life with  Christ is offered to all.  Sadly, many turn Him down.  But His banquet hall is still filling up, despite what this “world with devil’s filled” (as Martin Luther penned), says or thinks. The penitent man greets the invitation with great gladness of heart.  And why wouldn’t he?  The invitation to have the rot of sin removed from our souls, to be promised the difficult but satisfying climb of sanctification in this life, and to share a relationship with the dearest, kindest and best the world has ever known... A man would have to be mad to refuse.

As for the Master, He is determined to fill his room, his LARGE room, with many. “Go out into the highways and hedges and make them come in, that my house may be filled.” (Luke 14:23).

Covid19, a world in unspeakable pain, the ugliest lies and divisions - none of these can stop the love of God.  He will have His beautiful banquet, and the restaurant will be at full capacity.  Bursting at the seams with life and joy.  No masks, no closed salad bars, no lack of any good thing.

The question is - the biggest question you’ll ever have to answer - is how will I respond to the invitation.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

LS

The Cosmic Tragedy of Social Distancing

“Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got til’ it’s gone..” ~ Joni Mitchell

Its only been a few weeks for most of us.  Weeks without a chat over coffee with a friend, participation in a Sunday worship service with voices both angelic and creaky, Friday night tacos with our besties.  Being the resourceful creatures human beings are, we’ve come up with work-arounds for our isolation.  Face Time, Zoom, Webex - these have all helped, and I’m grateful for them.  I’ve spent the last 4 days using Bomgar to train hospital employees remotely, and I thank God for that.

But there is no substitute for presence.

Nothing takes the place of looking into the eyes of another soul and seeing the one-of-a-kind strokes of the Artist who made them.  There is no substitute for the live and in person voice of the quirky guy at the gym or the warm embrace of the folks at a support group, or the thousands of other simple daily vignettes of social intercourse.

I’ve learned very quickly how much I’ve taken presence for granted.  I myself am quarantined because of contact with a person testing positive for Covid19.  I’m no hard luck case for sure.  I live with family members, I can work from home.  I’m blessed.  But I miss the physical presence of others.  And it hasn’t even been a couple of weeks.

This strange time we’re living in has me thinking and praying in ways I haven’t before.  I look at Abraham in the bible, whittling away at God in a conversation about his nephew Lot, as he presses to see just how deep the mercy of God will actually go. Abraham is right in God’s face, boldly stepping closer with each question:  “Will you spare the city for the sake of 40 righteous people…30…20…10”.   Abraham didn’t stand stoically before a cold, distant deity, observing all the proprieties of servant and king.  Abraham boldly pleaded for his kinsmen, and the scriptures actually call him “a friend of God”.  The wicked city fell, but not before Lot and his family were ushered out of there in the most hurried move in history.  

Abraham did not practice social distancing with his God.  Neither did David, Isaiah, Daniel, and a whole host of lesser known saints sited in the pages of the wild and powerful word of life.  

The greatest tragedy of all, far more deadly than any foul microbe, is a life lived in isolation from the One who created us for Himself.  Here is God’s great sorrow.  He has made us for true presence with Him, and we have run from Him.  Or ignored Him. Or hated Him.  

In a herculean move of self abasement, this High King of all so desired our presence that He actually shed His kingly garments in exchange for the soiled robes of men. He himself took on our weakness.  And He did what only He could do: He destroyed the pestilence that keeps us apart.  He himself became the remedy and antidote for the killer with a 100% death rate.  Sin.  

The Gospel is the beautiful breakthrough that saves the world from the disease which none of us can escape.  The heart of God is broken.  He seeks for people who will talk to him, listen to Him, come to Him for life and deliverance.  There is no substitute for life with our Father.  

The Covid19 pandemic has become for me a metaphor and a grace.  It has forced me to look at my own spiritual complacency, made me far more grateful, and caused me to become a little bit more like Abraham.  Every day I desperately need the intimacy with my Father that I was born for.  And what’s more, I can approach Him without shame despite my sin and weakness.  Because I’ve taken the cure - faith in the death and resurrection of the Son of God, who “loved us, and gave Himself for us.”

I am praying that brilliant and resourceful people will find a way through this twilight zone we are living in.  I look forward to baseball, dinner in a restaurant and getting my hair cut again.  But my greatest prayer is that this social distancing will cause the world to seek the One whose heart longs for fellowship with us - and not from a distance.

Your friend on the pilgrim road,

Loriann