Preacher's Post

11/27: Advent Thoughts From The Magi

The Christmas season has officially started.  It’s Black Friday and the rush is on.  Oops.  It’s not the Christmas season anymore.  It’s the Holiday season.  The change of moniker further indicates the erosion of the traditional Christian cues which gave us a sense we lived in a land friendly to our faith.  As Christians, we don’t feel that way anymore, so I know what’s next.  I’m going to start getting the inflammatory emails sent by well-meaning and usually loving people…emails that express outrage over the loss of our beloved cultural cues and advocate less than love for the people we hold responsible for our disorienting experience. 

I get it that Jesus and the things of God have been shoved to the side of our culture.  I tried to find an advent calendar for our grandchildren and discovered that most of the advent calendars available today are secular in nature.  I did find the Lego Star Wars Advent calendar, but I’ve searched in vain for references in Matthew or Luke which indicate any Star War characters were involved in the first Christmas.  So that one is a mystery to me.

11/20: Patches of Green

I love listening to Garrison Keillor’s Tale of Lake Wobegon…a place where "all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average."   As Keillor weaves his story, there is always a hint of grace, and the scent of goodness, even in the most awkward or difficult situations.  I guess what keeps me glued to my radio is there is the glimmer of hope in this mythical town that somehow translates into hope as I turn the radio off and turn my attention to the world as it is, not as I would want it to be.

Hope looks for what is good.  Hope seeks the patches of green which sprout up in the most unlikely places.  Yancy cites the amazing patches of green that appeared after the devastating Mt. St. Helen’s blast in 1980.  I remember that event well, as I’d spent time around this majestic mountain that had been compared to Mt. Fuji, but had actually made the trek to the summit.  With that unbelievable blast, all that changed as the east side of the mountain blew out leaving what looked more like a moonscape than the verdant green which had surrounded the mountain before.  By the next growing season, patches of green appeared and spread. 

11/13: Serpent Wisdom

The other night I was listening to a panel of bright and successful citizens from all walks of life talk about what is wrong with our nation.  One of the panelists said, “We can’t take care of everybody.  In a capitalist system, there has to be winners and losers.”  Yes?  Maybe?  It was one of those comments that just seemed to leap out at me from the discussion taking place.  In life, there are winners and losers.  This is Darwinian economics 101, and there is no mistaking that from a purely utilitarian perspective, unfettered capitalism is very efficient.  But how do I reconcile that gentleman’s comment with my faith?  If the kingdom of God is where God’s reign is being experienced, so it is not so much a place as it is a state of being.  And if that state of being will involve following Jesus so that I’m living more and more like him, so that my life is characterized by a growing love of God, and my neighbor as myself…then how shall I then live in this world so that I not only have one foot in this life, but the other is firmly planted in the kingdom of God? 

I don’t have answers, but these are the kind of questions Christians have pondered before me when they were confronted by a world whose values clashed with the values of being a Jesus follower.  If we believe we truly answer to a “higher authority” rather than the powers and principalities of this world, there are inevitably going to be value conflicts.  If there aren’t, something is wrong.

Grace-ful living is at some point going to have to wrestle with the issues raised when love requires justice, the kind of biblical justice that means that we put love to work in real life situations and do the right thing because it’s the right thing to do.  The prophet Isaiah captured the tension that must be present along with grace.  As we said last week, grace does not free us to do wrong.  Grace frees us to do what is right.

11/6: Loopholes

This is how Eugene Peterson translated Paul’s argument against “cheap grace” in Romans 6:1-8:

So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land! That's what baptism into the life of Jesus means. When we are lowered into the water, it is like the burial of Jesus; when we are raised up out of the water, it is like the resurrection of Jesus. Each of us is raised into a light-filled world by our Father so that we can see where we're going in our new grace-sovereign country. Could it be any clearer? Our old way of life was nailed to the Cross with Christ, a decisive end to that sin-miserable life—no longer at sin's every beck and call! What we believe is this: If we get included in Christ's sin-conquering death, we also get included in his life-saving resurrection.  

There’s always someone looking for a loophole so they can leverage the system to their advantage.  The whole idea behind loopholes is there is a system to beat.  I had a good laugh with my friend Jim when we stopped in at a North Lake Tahoe casino a number of years ago and he promised me he had a “system” for beating the house at blackjack.  So I gave him $20—he put in $20—and in five minutes we left the blackjack table $40 dollars lighter in the pocket.  He laughed and said, “There’s my system…I put my money down and they take it.”