Look! Up in the Sky

Stephen B. Sample is president of the highly successful University of Southern California.  I’ve been reading his marvelous book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership.  In the chapter titled, “Know Which Hill You’re Willing to Die On,” he writes about the need for a leader to be consciously aware of his moral beliefs and the basis for those beliefs.  Thus, Sample sometimes poses to graduates at commencement ceremonies this question:  How do you feel about God? 

He assures the graduates that he’s not trying to sell them a particular religion.  The question was not how should you feel about God, but how do you feel about God?   He acknowledges that, way down deep, his listeners may not believe in God, or that they may believe but have no wish to have a relationship with God.   His conclusions are so striking as to merit a quote: 

What I have found, however, is that the vast majority of people–leaders and followers alike–duck this question altogether…  Discovering how one feels about God is simply too difficult or frightening for most people to address in any serious or meaningful way. 

There are millions of people who regularly attend religious services, and yet haven’t the foggiest idea of how they feel about God, or what kind of relationship they have with their God, or what they expect of him, or what they believe he expects of them.  And similarly, there are millions of agnostics who have concluded that questions pertaining to God are simply unanswerable or unimportant, and yet find it impossible to fully suppress their concerns for the spiritual and transcendental aspects of their own existence. 

Samples goes on to imply that being fully human involves having feelings for and some sort of relationship to God.  That certainly accords with my own experience as a pastor and evangelist.  Recently, I’ve been working with some people in their twenties and thirties who’ve lived more or less apart from God all their lives.   A couple of them had lots of questions for me.  A couple of them are intrigued, but, so far, they’re keeping the church at arm’s length.  One came to one worship service and a Bible study, then…well, fled is the best descriptive term.   (I can’t get that girl to even talk about it anymore.)   A couple of these people I’ve had the privilege of baptizing.  One is growing in faith.  The other…well, the jury’s still out on him.

I have no idea what Stephen Sample’s own religious beliefs are.  I don’t know if he’s a Christian or not, though I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he is.  But here I stand with him:  to be human is to be aware, however dimly, of God; to wonder and worry about Him.  It’s also, unfortunately, to run and hide from Him, to sew fig leaves about our nakedness and squat in the bushes until that unearthly Presence passes by. 

I know the feelings.  I have them myself from time to time.  I believe that God became a human being in Bethlehem of Judea.  I believe that, in the face of a thirty-three year old Jewish carpenter named Jesus, we see God’s face.  Nevertheless, we’ll never be entirely comfortable with God.  Nor, indeed, should we be.  The best we can be is honest enough to admit that He scares us yet brave enough to turn to Him. 

Let’s pray that it may be so.    

What if you could go back in time and change history?  Check out my review of Stephen King’s new novel, 11/22/63, “The Stubborn Past.” 

www.thefish.com

A while back, I preached from The Song of Solomon, a biblical book which, as you may know, consists of passionate love songs.  Recently, it came to my attention that some person or persons had been upset with the sermon.  I’m not going to attempt to reproduce what was said to me about it at that time.  For all I know, the report may have been made up out of whole cloth.  I tend to doubt that, though.  If nothing else, the reporter was bothered by the sermon. 

I wasn’t greatly surprised, or particularly annoyed.  I’m a big boy.  I know that sex is a volatile subject, in and out of the pulpit.  I also know that, even at this late date, some church folks can’t handle it.   Some people have kept their brains in deep freeze for so long, they don’t notice the date, let alone what’s going on around them.   I feel sorry for them. 

As I’ve thought about it, I’m rather glad somebody was stirred enough by preaching to say something about it, even if what they said wasn’t flattering to the preacher; even if it didn’t even make a lick of sense.  Not everybody liked or understood what Jesus said either.  At one point, practically his entire congregation walked away from Him for preaching cannibalism (cf. John 6:52, 66).  At least, that’s what they said he was preaching.   Not everybody liked what Peter and Paul had to say either.  As the old pulpiteers used to say, when those old boys preached they caused either a revival or a riot!  I’d say I was in good company, then–except I’m not nearly as brave or bold as those men were.   The sad fact is, I tend more to step blindly into the yellowjackets’ nest than go bravely to it.   

But I do have my moments, times in the pulpit when I come not with a hot cup of coffee and a warm piece of pie, but with a sword.  And there’s a reason for that.  Every now and then, my church needs to know that, paid though I am, I’m not doing this for the money.  Every now and then, beloved, the church needs to be shocked, stirred, challenged.  They may not get it.  They may never get it.  But woe unto the preacher who does get it–and says nothing. 

I draw a paycheck for doing what I do.  My congregation supports me financially.  I’m not ashamed of this arrangement.  Besides the fact that the New Testament provides ample justification for paying the pastor, this pastor needs the money!  But I’m not called to make a buck any more than I’m called to shoot the bull.  Woe to me if I don’t preach the Gospel, not just the cozy, comfy parts but the sticky wickets.  Woe to me, as Jesus said, when all men speak well of me.  Verily, I am doing something wrong, something for which I will answer, for which I will receive the harsher judgment.  

Got a preacher?  Good!  Pray for him, encourage him, tell him you want and need to hear the truth, even when you don’t like it–especially when you don’t! 

As Steve Brown says, “You think about that.  Amen.”

Over a bowl of frozen chocolate yogurt, I watched another episode from the second season of Star Trek, the original series.  In “Return to Tomorrow,” Kirk, Spock, and Doctor Ann Mulhall, played by the lovely Diana Muldaur, lend their bodies to three advanced, but disembodied, alien intelligences.  The aliens say they wish the transference only long enough to build android bodies to live in.  They’ll then return the used bodies to their hosts.  Who are they kidding?  Two of the aliens, the ones inhabiting Kirk and Mulhall’s bodies, are honorable.  The third, who takes Spock’s body, is not.  

The ending is patently ridiculous, with various characters ”sharing consciousness” and minds jumping from bodies into machines and back into bodies.  It reminded me of the latter Universal horror flicks in which Dr. Frankenstein pulled brains out of people and stuck them into other people willy nilly. 

Yet the episode is not without its charms.  It’s noteworthy among fans for Kirk’s stirring “Risk” speech in which he declares why his crew should participate in this bizarre project.  The speech is worth quoting here: 

They used to say if mankind could fly, he’d have wings-but he did fly.  He discovered he had to.  Do you wish that the first Apollo mission hadn’t reached the moon, or that we hadn’t gone to Mars and then to the nearest star?  That’s like saying you wish you still operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut like your great-great-great-great grandfather used to.   I’m in command.  I could order this, but I’m not because Doctor McCoy is right in pointing out the enormous danger potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced as this.  But I also must point out that the possibilities–the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally great.  Risk!  Risk is our business.  That’s what this starship is all about.  That’s why we’re aboard her.  You may dissent without any prejudice.  Do I hear a negative vote?

William Shatner was always a fine actor, albeit with a tendency to ham.  In response to his passionate delivery here, some might say you could smell the bacon frying right throught the screen!   Yet, I must admit, I’m a sucker for a great speech.  When Kirk was done, I was ready to find me a Starfleet to enlist in! 

I was also struck again by the power of words, and reminded of the need a leader has to speak.  In Steven B. Sample’s marvelous book, The Contrarian’s Guide to Leadership, he says that any leader who thinks that a memo is as effective as a face-to-face meeting, or that an email is as effective as a phone call, is still playing in the minor leagues.  He adds:

The contrarian leader knows that the human brain is prewired at the deepest levels in favor of the spoken word; if you wish to really inspire your followers and touch them at their emotional core, you must speak to them. 

As a preacher, I know the power of words.  I know that people take my words seriously, even when I’m joking.  It’s a great, even grave responsibility to be a speaker.   Leaders are, of necessity, speakers.  I must confess that, at times, fearing that responsibility, I’ve allowed myself to sink to a lower level of communication–an email instead of a phone call.  

Good ol’ Kirk calls me back to the captain’s chair.   Risk, leaders, is our business. 

The head of the statue was made of pure gold, its chest and arms of silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, its legs of iron, its feet partly of iron and partly of baked clay.  While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands.  It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them.  Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the fold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer.  The wind swept them away without leaving a trace.  But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.  Daniel 2:32-35

The Rock started out small.  An out of the way place at night, most people snoring.  It rolled like a coin between the dirty feet of shepherds in the field. 

Actually, the rock didn’t look like a rock at all.  It looked like a baby of all things.  But, even before he was a bump on Mary’s belly, he was rocking the world.  When he was born, he got some astrologers from Babylon, the descendants of the people old Nebuchadnezzar had depended on, to mount their camels and go hunting for him.  

He grew up a carpenter in the backwater of Nazareth.  Nothing more.  At least, that’s what his brothers thought. When he started preaching, he made no money, wrote no books, gathered no great fame.  The trouble the authorities had with him, the stir he caused, was basically local.  His was a routine crucifixion.  They did them all the time.  

They put him the ground and rolled a big rock over him.  They had no idea the rock would continue to roll.  They had no idea how far.  They had no idea how big it would grow or what powers would fall before it.     

No earthly power can stand before the Rock of Ages.  How much less my little kingdom?  From time to time, it’s good to look down and see my own feet of clay.  From time to time, it’s good to remember that my earthly time is passing.  But, to use Isaiah’s phrase, ”upon this mountain,” I shall remain.   “The world and its desires pass away, but he who does the will of God abides forever” (1 John 2:17). 

See His kingdom.  Receive His kingdom.  Enter His kingdom.   Amen.

Barb and I have been watching our way through the second season of the original Star Trek.  Although the first season is generally considered superior, the second has much to offer–drama, suspense, excitement, humor.  Here’s where the triumvirate of Kirk, Spock, and McCoy melded.  Here’s where we saw the Apollonian Spock struggle with his human side.  Scotty’s brogue,  Checkov’s nationalism, Uhura’s beauty–all flared in the style and verve of that second season. 

It left us with some memorable dialogue: 

“Farewell, Jim Kirk.  I will watch the stars for your return.”

T’Pau:  “Live long and prosper.”  Spock:  “I will do neither.  I have killed my captain and my friend.”

“A hundred–serpents for the Garden of Eden.” 

It also thrilled us with two memorable pieces of music:  Spock’s theme and the Fight theme, both of which were first heard in the classic episode “Amok Time.” 

It’s a real pity the “suits” at NBC never got Star Trek.  In their contempt for the show, they thought they could kill it (and, unfortunately, creatively speaking at least, the third season was a zombie in comparison to the vitality of its predecessors).  Ironically, they freed it from the confines of their network to become a cultural phenomenon.

One of my favorites from the second season is “The Immunity Syndrome.”  In this one, the exhausted crew of the Enterprise must battle a gigantic, voracious amoeba.  Silly?  Of course.  But nobody could possibly call it boring!  

 The heart of the episode is the almost childish rivalry between McCoy and Spock as they vie for the chance of piloting a shuttlecraft into the monster.  The three men assemble for the captain’s decision. Wearily, Kirk tells Mr. Spock he’s sorry. Bones misunderstands, thinking he’s got the job. Kirk corrects him: “I’m sorry, Mr. Spock. You’re best qualified.” The smile dies on the doctor’s face. Yet, McCoy already has his hands full pumping stimulants into Kirk’s bloodstream. “How long do you think you can keep taking this stuff,” he growls. “It’ll tear ya apart!” We smile. We know Kirk can handle it, just like we know that, eventually, the threesome will be reunited.

I recall Leonard Nimoy speaking of the comradarie of these characters in Shakespearean terms:  “We few, we happy few.  We band of brothers.  For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.”   As a pastor, I know that sharing leadership with a band of brothers can be problematic, not to say frustrating, at times. But I also know what it is to be alone at the top.  It’s not easy, nor is it good. 

Among other things, Star Trek reminds us that we were made for fellowship with each other.  We want to come back, just like the crew of the Enterprise has again and again.  We want to boldy go, just like the bold crew of the Enterprise did at the end of every episode, on into that field of endless stars, into eternity.  And we want to go together.

My review of the new ABC series, Once Upon a Time, is now posted at www.thefish.com

Check it out!

Years ago, I read a book co-written by Eugene Peterson and Marva Dawn, The Unnecessary Pastor.   Ever since then I’ve been wrestling with the role and function of the Pastor–what he is, what he’s to do–and, by extension, the role and function of the Church.  If one is looking in the books of either Peterson or Dawn for practical help in “engaging the culture” or how to get more young families in the doors or how to successfully switch from old timey to hip music, one should look elsewhere.  I’ve read more of Eugene than Marva (sorry, female preachers still kinda scare me), but they’re two of a kind.  Both see the greatest problem with the modern American evangelical church as being its culture-worship.  The consumer culture, in which we’ve been raised to believe we should be able to have it our way, has nothing to tell the leadership of the church that it needs to hear.   

This morning, I was reading an interview with Peterson from 2005.  As I say, I’ve read the man.  I know what he thinks.  Nevertheless, the things he said in this interview blew me away.   He starts out by comparing consumer-driven worship to Baal worship: ” The Baal priests could gather crowds that outnumbered followers of Yahweh 20 to 1. There was sex, there was excitement, there was music, there was ecstasy, there was dance. ‘We got girls over here, friends. We got statues, girls, and festivals.’ This was great stuff. And what did the Hebrews have to offer in response? The Word. What’s the Word? Well, Hebrews had festivals, at least!”     

A little later, he tells a story about something that happened in an old Norwegian Lutheran congregation.  Parents were struggling with a couple bratty kids during worship.  This is, of course, every preacher’s nightmare (or it used to be at least, before cry rooms and staffed nurseries).  It wasn’t a very nice service.  “But,” Peterson adds, “afterwards I saw half a dozen of these elderly people come up and put their arms around the mother, touch the kids, sympathize with her.”  They could have been irritated, he says, but they weren’t.   In evaluating smaller, more traditional congregations where this sort of quiet ministry goes on, Peterson says, “I think there’s a lot more going on in churches like this; they’re just totally anticultural. They’re full of joy and faithfulness and obedience and care. But you sure wouldn’t know it by reading the literature of church growth, would you?”

As our Norwegian brethren might say, “You got that right.”    

Asked whether such a staid church is merely an “institutional” expression of the faith, Peterson replies, “What other church is there besides institutional?”   He sees the popular notion of identifying “felt needs” as an invitation to manipulation, to seeing people merely as a means to an end. 

For Peterson “irrelevance” is an empty threat.  He illustrates his point by telling another story:  When his pastor son, Eric, wore a robe one Sunday, a couple of his unchurched neighbors were there.  The man and his wife were the stereotypical people his new church was designed for–suburban, middle management, totally secular.    Eric figured they’d come because they were neighbors and the man liked him.  He was surprised, therefore, by the fellow’s response when he asked him what he thought about the robe:  “It made an impression.  My wife and I talked about it.  I think what we’re really looking for is sacred space.  We both think we found it.” 

And, just in case you haven’t figured out by now where this old pastor’s coming from:  ”I think relevance is a crock. I don’t think people care a whole lot about what kind of music you have or how you shape the service. They want a place where God is taken seriously, where they’re taken seriously, where there is no manipulation of their emotions or their consumer needs.”

In the ever changing parlance of the street, this rocks my world.  Right now, Church Growth and its surrounding issues are anything for me but an armchair exercise.   The congregation I serve is one of dozens serving a community of 25,000.  A couple of these churches would classify as “mega.”  Several others are “mini-mega.”   The majority of  the churches in our city probably run well under 200 in Sunday morning attendance.   My church is in the latter group.   Five years ago, a rancorous split took almost a third of the congregation.   Since then, we’ve been hit again and again by divorce, death, and discontent (Hm, 3D.  Who says we’re not cutting edge?).  We build up, fall down, rise, drop.   The median age of our congregation is 55.  (As you might, therefore, imagine, our worship tends more toward the traditional.)  Currently, we’re in a genuine financial crisis.   Though there’s much love in this church, much grace, our leaders wonder–and worry–about the future. 

As I survey the scene, I feel the tension between the Urgent (more members, more income, more umph) and the Important, between the American desire to do it bigger and better and Christ’s call to simple faith and obedience.  I know which of these is of eternal significance.  I know which, as the apostle John wrote, is passing away.  Nevertheless, the tension remains.   

I don’t know how to wrap this up neatly.  I can only ask for your prayers, as I do for the pastors of all the churches that look like the one I just described.

My review of the new Fox series, Terra Nova, is posted at www.thefish.com under the title, “Jurassic Park Redux.”  Check it out!

Well, I am death

None can excel.

I’ll open the door

to Heaven or Hell.

I’ll fix your feet

so you can’t walk.

I’ll lock your jaws

so you can’t talk.

-Ralph Stanley

Death is the king of all terrors, isn’t it?  Woody Allen said, “I’m not afraid to die.  I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”  Without death, the paperback racks would be empty.  Without death, there’d be no dramatic television (given how many “reality” shows there are, you’d think we’d conquered death already!).  Without good old death, there’d be no horror movies, no Halloween!  Death sells because we’re afraid of it, repulsed by it, anxious to put it off just as long as possible! 

That’s why we dose ourselves with vitamins, sweat on treadmills, become experts in nutrition.  We demand more from doctors and medicine than ever before (one reason the cost of health care keeps going up).  We demand that death be rendered harmless and helpless. 

But the darkness remains, the shroud over all peoples, the veil over all nations.  This nasty drink, this bitter cup.  I knew a woman who was selling Formaldehyde as a cancer cure.  Yep, take a few drops in water each day.  She stopped selling it after her husband died of cancer. 

In a sense, they were on the right track:  swallow death to defeat it.  They just didn’t have the power.        

But on this mountain, Isaiah says, God will swallow up death forever (Isaiah 25:8).  God knows how much we fear and hate it.  He knows because he wore the body of a man, Jesus.  Jesus wept at the grave of his friend. In the garden, inches from the cold, grasping hand, Jesus sweat bloody sweat and prayed, “Take this cup from me!”  But the cup remained before him, smoking, noxious, poison.  And He drank it down.  He drank it all. 

On this mountain, He will swallow up death forever.  What does Isaiah mean “on this mountain.”  The word “mountain”  pops up again and again in the book: 

 11:9 They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea.

2:2 In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as chief among the mountains; it will be raised above the hills, and all nations will stream to it. 

57:13 When you cry out for help, let your collection [of idols] save you! The wind will carry all of them off, a mere breath will blow them away. But the man who makes me his refuge will inherit the land and possess my holy mountain.

He’s talking about Mt. Zion, the site of David’s city, Jerusalem, which came to be thought of as the city of God. 

David took it by stealth from the Jebusites, by sneaking in and climbing up.  God took it again by sneaking in—as a baby on Christmas, the last thing you’d expect!  But whereas David and his mighty men took Zion by climbing up, Jesus took it by coming down, down to earth, down to the cross, down into the grave.  And then He came up out of that grave on the third day.  He pulled the grave inside out and upside down, then up, up until it became a mountain!  

We make mountains out of molehills.  God makes mountains out of pits!  

Job asked if a man dies whether he’ll live again.  Job didn’t get an answer.  It took Jesus to answer him, to answer all of us.   Jesus, who stood like Samson between the pillars of death and despair and pulled them down: “I am the resurrection and the life.  He who believes in me will live, even if he dies.” 

Recently, I read of an aged New Testament scholar who sat by the casket in which lay the body of the love of his life.  A former student approached him, asking if he was all right.  The old man said, “Of course I’m all right.  Do you think I’ve been preaching fairy tales all my life?” 

And all God’s people said?  Amen and amen.