Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 9

12/9/2007, 8:35 am -- by | No Comments

Sunday, December 9, 2007
Second Sunday in Advent
“Fling wide the portals of your heart;
Make it a temple, set apart
From earthly use for heaven’s employ,
Adorned with prayer and love and joy.” (From Lift Up Your Heads, Eternal Gates by George Weissel; in the Vespers Reading in The Divine Hours)

This hymn expresses almost perfectly the sentiment of Advent. The first verse essentially says, “Jesus is on the way;” and our response is summed up in this second verse. Because the Savior is here, our response must be to open our lives completely to Him. We “fling wide the portals of our hearts,” giving Him complete access to our lives, to tinker in whatever nooks and crannies He wishes to change. The goal of all this is holiness, that is, we wish for our hearts to be “set apart,” different from the rest of the world. We have different purposes: we have moved from “earthly use” to “heaven’s employ,” trading in human purposes for God’s purposes in our lives. We also have a different sense of what makes us beautiful: “prayer and love and joy” serve as our adornments rather than whatever the world is calling beautiful at the present moment.

In what ways are you pursuing holiness today? Let me suggest that the hymn’s message is a wise one. In order for us to become set apart, in order for us to allow God’s purposes to shape and mold our desires, we first need to “fling wide” open the gates to our heart. Our first step has to be to allow Christ unfettered access to our lives.

We often pay lip service to this without realizing what it really means. It means that in a sense we can never be at home here, as many in the world are. Our sense of security cannot come from our jobs, our homes, our nation, our possessions, for allegiance to Christ may (probably will) threaten these things from time to time. Instead, our sense of security has to come from its best and only source: from God himself. “All other ground is sinking sand,” says another hymn, and this is true. To become truly holy, truly set apart, can be a painful process of letting go of other allegiances that are comfortable to us.

May the next few days of Advent be for you a time of “flinging wide” the gates to your heart, and allowing Christ access. Even when it’s scary, even when it’s painful, may you find your security not in created things, but in God himself. May this be so not for your own sake alone, but for the whole world you can touch with the hands of Christ.

Advent Devotional — Saturday, December 8

12/8/2007, 8:00 am -- by | No Comments

Saturday, December 8, 2007
“Yes, I know the plans I have in mind for you, Yahweh declares, plans for peace, not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope. When you call to me and come to me, and pray to me, I shall listen to you. When you search for me, you will find me; when you search wholeheartedly for me, I shall let you find me.” (Jeremiah 29:11-14a; a midday reading from The Divine Hours)

On the face of it, this passage is part of a letter from Jeremiah to the people in exile in Babylon. The first paragraph of the letter is downright depressing: to the people who had hoped that this exile would be short-lived and that they’d be able to return home soon, Jeremiah says, “Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease” (Jer 29:5-6). In other words, settle in; you’re going to be there a while.

But then Jeremiah delivers this word to the people, that God still has plans for them, plans for a future and a hope. Though many of them would not live to see it, God still had their best interests in mind. There would be a future for God’s people.

I remember during my time in college, we would sing a song where the words were simply the NIV version of this Scripture: “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for good to give to you a future and a hope.” The song caused many sentimental tears as seniors contemplated life beyond Houghton and reflected that God would take care of them wherever they went.

Of course, this is true. But in that setting there was something supremely foreign to the original text. We were college students, many of us children of privilege, graduating from a school known as one of the “Evangelical Ivies.” We were going into a world where job prospects were bright, where a degree could take us a long way in business, ministry, or graduate school. Most of us were returning to homes where our parents would put a roof over our heads and food in our bellies as long as we needed them to, while we got our feet under us.

This word was not written to children of privilege; it was written to foreigners and aliens in exile. And it did not tell them that if they just held on, they would see evidence of God’s faithfulness; it assured them that they would not see such evidence. And even though they would not see such evidence, still God was faithful. It assured them that even though they would live and die as foreigners, God was still in control and had a plan bigger even than their individual lives and success.

One cannot hear this passage as it was intended until he is in exile. One cannot understand it until she has given up their need for resolution in their lives; we cannot grasp it until we have given up our need to understand, reconcile, or be satisfied with their lives. Only when we have given up happiness as a main goal can we know, as those ancient exiles did, that God has a plan bigger than ourselves.

Advent Devotional — Friday, December 7

12/7/2007, 8:30 am -- by | No Comments

Friday, December 7, 2007
“Lo, how a rose e’er blooming
From tender stem hath sprung!
Of Jesse’s lineage coming,
As men of old have sung.
It came a floweret bright,
Amid the cold of winter,
When half-spent was the night.” (Lo, How A Rose, 15th century German carol; part of a reading from the Vespers Office in The Divine Hours)

Jesus as a rose; it is a decidedly non-Scriptural thought, but worthwhile. The passage to which the hymn alludes is, of course, Isaiah 11:1: “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.” The idea is that the line of David, long since considered dead, would again gain life in a coming king, a king we Christians understand to be Jesus. Of course, Jesus is depicted as a young shoot which will grow into a strong tree, noble and majestic, even more so than the stump which preceded it.

And yet those 15th century German Catholics (Christians were all Catholics then) took this verse and made Jesus not a strong tree, but a tender, beautiful rose. Not a sapling rising up from a dead stump, but a gentle, defiant rose poking through the snow in the dead of winter, even in the middle of the night. As I say, the image is not Scriptural, at least not exactly. But I think it is an important image nonetheless. In a way, they are quite similar; each points to Jesus embodying life even in the midst of death all around him. Both dead tree stumps and long German winters are inhospitable to life, and both saplings and roses point to life in the midst of such inhospitality.

But I think the analogy of the rose is an important one because it is beautiful, and if I may say it, feminine in a sense. Often, we characterize Jesus’ life and mission in stereotypically masculine terms: conquering death and hell, vanquishing demons, achieving our salvation and rescuing His people. Yet Jesus’ life was more than a contest won, more than a task accomplished.

His was also a life that embodied beauty. Can we not say that the Christian life is the most beautiful life there is? Can we not say that the Christian vision of a life rightly lived, using the gifts He has given us for His sake and the sake of the world, is not just effective but also beautiful? Was not His self-sacrifice on our behalf not only justifying but beautiful?

Christ came to do more than the simple accomplishments of tasks that needed to be done; He came to embody this beautiful life and to allow us to enter into it more fully than we ever could on our own. For that we need more than a utilitarian tree; we need a beautiful Rose.

Advent Devotional — Thursday, December 6

12/6/2007, 9:15 am -- by | 3 Comments

Thursday, December 6, 2007
“But there is one thing, my dear friends, which you must never forget: the Day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then with a roar the sky will vanish, the elements will catch fire and melt away, the earth and all it contains will be burned up.” (2 Peter 3:8, 10, part of a reading in the Midday Prayer in The Divine Hours)

Peter wrote to a congregation in crisis. The church had been targeted for whatever reason by a group of teachers espousing false doctrines; Peter wrote to set the church straight and to encourage them to hold fast to the truth.

One of the doctrines these false teachers taught was that Christ was not going to return. One can understand how such a doctrine would make sense to this congregation. Christ had come and gone at least 30 years prior to the writing of this letter, and as the first generation of Christians were dying out, no doubt it was tempting to rethink this vital Christian doctrine and try to make sense of it some other way.

2 Peter argues strongly that Christ will indeed return, and offers another reason for Christ’s delay: that God reckons time differently than we do, as “with the Lord one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day” (3:8). God’s time is not necessarily shorter or longer than ours, it is just different; and it is impossible to predict when Christ will come back. But Peter ramps up the intensity a bit by reminding his listeners to be aware that the Day of the Lord was coming with apocalyptic signs and suddenness. Since the time was impossible to predict, Christians needed to live in a constant state of readiness.

The paradox of Advent is that on one hand, we are awaiting the coming of a helpless baby; on the other, we are awaiting a day in which the sky will vanish and everything will burn up. Whether or not we take the passage literally, the point is clear: the coming Day of the Lord will be a day of tremendous apocalyptic upheaval in which nothing will be left untouched. This seems far removed from the pastoral scenes that decorate our Christmas cards.

This paradox is a healthy thing, because it forces us to realize anew that Jesus was no ordinary baby. Here is one destined to cause the rising and falling of many people. Here, in the stable, is the chief cornerstone of the New Jerusalem; here, in the stable, is the stumbling-block to the Jews and the foolishness to the Gentiles; here, in the stable, is the first-fruits of those who have died; here, in the stable, is the one who will rend the sky and bring forth the Day of the Lord, when we all will stand in His presence, as our advocate and judge.

Advent Devotional — Wednesday, December 5

12/5/2007, 9:30 am -- by | No Comments

Wednesday, December 5, 2007
“Cease doing evil. Learn to do good, search for justice, discipline the violent, be just to the orphan, plead for the widow.” (Isaiah 1:16b-17, part of the Midday Reading in The Divine Hours)

Isaiah here gives us quite a difficult to-do list. In the context of a passage where God has grown tired of his people’s offering, what Isaiah is essentially asking us to do is to repent, to re-orient our lives — and this is done through active steps of discipleship.

Our Christian subculture assures us that the important thing is what we believe, not what we do. Check the bumper stickers at your local Christian book store: “Christians aren’t perfect, just forgiven.” “No Jesus-no peace. Know Jesus-know peace.” And these are true as far as they go. But here Isaiah makes the point that what makes our worship acceptable to God is also a matter of what we do. It is a matter of ceasing one way of life and beginning another. It is about knowing goodness and justice rather than self-aggrandizement. It is about caring for the weak in society (the widows and the orphans) and about the violent (notice the command to “discipline” rather than “punish” the violent).

John the Baptist took all this one step further: “Repent,” he said, “for the Kingdom of God is at hand.” God is coming and if you want to be able to stand in his presence — if you want this to be good news instead of bad news — you will need to purify your lives. You will need to take on certain practices, and you will need to let some dear things go.

During Advent, the call is the same: God is coming! And for much of the world this is a threatening truth. The story of Santa and the elves provides a non-threatening alternative to the story of the coming of God into the world. Santa doesn’t demand much except a passable week of good behavior close to Christmas; but God sees through our souls with the Creator’s eye and longs for us to live up to the capabilities with which he created us.

In order for the coming of the baby Jesus to be good news and not bad news for us, we too have to re-orient our lives. It will mean thinking of ourselves as owned by and submissive to God, as opposed to the freedom-loving autonomous moral agents most Americans conceive themselves to be. It will mean thinking of the world as a holy, flawed place, as opposed to the romantic ideas of nature harbored by some, and as opposed to the unimportance placed on the world by others.

But even more than thinking differently, it will mean acting differently. It will mean decisively leaving behind old practices and embracing new ones, knowing that if we can get our hands and feet to act differently, our hearts and minds will catch up.

Advent Devotional — Tuesday, December 4

12/4/2007, 10:00 am -- by | No Comments

Tuesday, December 4, 2007
“The days are coming — declares Yahweh — when the plowman will tread on the heels of the reaper and the treader of grapes on the heels of the sower of seed, and the mountains will run with new wine and the hills all flow with it. I shall restore the fortunes of my people Israel; they will rebuild the ruined cities and live in them, they will plant vineyards and drink their wine, they will lay out gardens and eat their produce. And I shall plant them in their own soil and they will never be uprooted again from the country which I have given them, declares Yahweh, your God.” (Amos 9:13-15, reading from the Midday Office in The Divine Hours)

Often, we picture eternity of the Lord as a time of total rest. That certainly is one picture of heaven that we get in the Scriptures. This is quite another picture. Here, the day of the Lord is pictured as a day, not of rest, but of incredibly fruitful work. The ground is so fertile that the minute the grapes are picked, someone comes through to plow the land to prepare the next crop; the minute the grapes are sown, someone is coming along to pick and stomp them for the new wine. People rebuild cities, not like today’s cities, but cities where people will own their land and have a connection to it, growing their own food and their own wine. In all, Amos pictures a people rooted in a country given them by God, working the precious gift of the land and always seeing a reward for their labors.

This is one of the busiest times of the year for a pastor. The season causes all sorts of pastoral issues for people, ranging from the first holidays without loved ones to Seasonal Affective Disorder because of the short periods of daylight. There are services to get together, bulletins to print, sermons to write, parties to attend, and the list goes on. Most frustrating is when I feel that I’m barely keeping all the balls in the air, doing everything but not able to do it as well as I’d like.

The vision that keeps me going through this time is the thought of vacation at Christmas time. After the last service Christmas Eve, we buy take-outs at the Exton Diner (a yearly tradition for us) and eat at about 10:30 at night. We get up Christmas morning and suddenly there are no responsibilities. We join my parents for Christmas dinner and then sometime in the next couple days we usually make a pilgrimage to western New York to spend time with Jill’s family until after the New Year. Then I am rested and rejuvenated for the next season of the year. Often, we think of the Christian life in this way — a season of work here on earth to be followed by rest in heaven.

But I’m not sure I’d want that kind of heaven. Haven’t you known a time on earth here where your work was so meaningful, so right? Haven’t you known a time when you were working and saw the fruits of your labor right in front of you? I have. There are times when I preach and the words flow off my tongue and right into the hearts of people who need to hear it, and I know they receive it because they tell me so. In those moments there is nothing I would rather be doing than working, than practicing the craft that God has given me to practice. And I’m sure that as it is for preachers, so it is for bakers and salesmen and writers and accountants.

The point of Advent is to look forward to the Day of the Lord, which came in Jesus and is coming again some day. As we await Jesus, let’s not simply await rest, though we need it; let’s look forward to a day when our work will be fruitful and meaningful.

Advent Devotional — Monday, December 3

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Monday, December 3, 2007
“Listen now, House of David: are you not satisfied with trying human patience that you should try God’s patience too? The Lord will give you a sign in any case: It is this: the young woman is with child and will give birth to a son whom she will call Immanuel. On curds and honey he will feed until he knows how to refuse the bad and choose the good.” (Isaiah 7:13-15, a reading from the Midday Prayer in The Divine Hours)

Traditional Christian interpretation has held that this passage is a Messianic prophecy, that the child named Immanuel, to whom we are to look forward, is indeed Jesus himself. Despite historical criticism that looks for another figure closer to Isaiah’s day to fulfill this saying, this meaning has persevered. Today, many Christian scholars take the approach that this saying may well be double-layered: it may refer to a person in Isaiah’s day as well as to Christ, in some mystical way.

This double meaning makes a lot of sense when we look at our lives. “Immanuel” means, of course, “God with us.” And whatever the exact nature of this prophecy, the Christian is able to say with confidence that, in Jesus, God is with us to the full. And yet there are innumerable other ways in which our lives hint at God’s presence each day: in the dying of the earth in the fall and its rising in the spring; in the presence of a mother at a cradle; in the presence of a daughter at a death-bed; and primarily in the word of Scripture rightly read or proclaimed. Yet none of these hints of God’s presence takes away from the fullest expression of God’s presence among us through Jesus. In fact, all of these hints gain fuller meaning when we see them in light of Christ; in fact, these hints can even point us to Jesus and the fullness of God’s presence with us.

This season is a particularly fruitful season to look for those hints of God’s presence. A selfish world suddenly turns (at least partly) generous; themes of family, hospitality, and giving resound with this time of year. May God use these hints to point you to the fullness of his presence through a relationship with his Son.

Advent Devotional — Sunday, December 2

12/2/2007, 12:30 pm -- by | 1 Comment

Sunday, December 2, 2007
“Restore us, O God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved.” (Psalm 80:3; part of the Vespers Psalm, in the Vespers Reading, p. 6)

Part of the reason Advent and Christmas speak so profoundly to our spirits is the fact that they echo the eternal battle between darkness and light. In many of the world’s religions, darkness is a metaphor for confusion, chaos or sinfulness, while light is a metaphor for viewing the world rightly, in order, in holiness. Christianity is no exception. Throughout the Gospel of John, for instance, we read about the struggle between darkness and light, starting in the very first chapter: “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it” (John 1:5). In this verse, Jesus is described as the light, the very embodiment of holiness and wisdom, the one the darkness can not overcome.

This verse from Psalm 80 is a profound statement. It is written from the perspective of a person who is being severely tested. In the words of verse 6, “You have made us the derision of our neighbors, and our enemies laugh us to scorn.” It is certainly more severe testing than most of us have ever known; it is a psalm written from deep darkness. The writer’s nation is the laughingstock of the known world, and daily people fear for their lives.

In the midst of a life like that, it takes great faith to say, “Show us just the light of your face, and we shall be saved.” We have a hard time saying it even in our little trials! We beg God for solutions we can see: a windfall of unexpected money, a negative test result from the doctor, a letter of acceptance from the grad school. We often need these resolutions to prop up our failing faith.

And yet it is not the resolutions of difficulties that save us. Only the presence of God can save us; only the light of God’s countenance can cut through the darkness. What we need, though often we cannot express it, is not money, health or acceptance. What we need is the light of His countenance more than any of these things.

What will come at Christmas in your life is anybody’s guess. You may have a Christmas straight out of a Currier & Ives scene: the whole family gathered, a great feast on the table, three inches of snow on the ground and more falling, even a couple of Clydesdales outside. Or circumstances may force you to spend the holiday alone, watching re-runs, eating instant noodles in a dark, lonely family room. You may even spend it with a sick relative. Who knows?

But what makes Christmas special, and amazing, is not the fact everything is just so. It is the fact that the light of Christ is cutting its way through the darkness. And darkness has no answer for the light which is to come.

But for now, during Advent, we symbolically enter the darkness, and wait. And our heart’s cry, “Show us the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved,” is a cry heard in heaven.

Does your branch of Christianity celebrate Advent? What does it mean in your tradition? Is it, as suggested here, a symbolic entrance to the darkness in order to wait anew for the light? If so, I hope this devotional is a good guide on the way. If not, welcome to the darkness! Maybe these devotions can make this Advent a time of reflection for you in a way the season has not been before.

Advent Devotional — Introduction

12/1/2007, 3:00 am -- by | 1 Comment

Each day from Sunday, December 2 until Tuesday, December 25, Pastor Mike will share with Bweinh! a special Advent devotional!

One of the things I have come to realize as a young man is the power of rituals. The process of repeating the same behavior again and again — sometimes “meaning it,” sometimes not — often has the effect of putting new layers of meaning into those actions. So a school fight song ceases to be simply a collection of syllables and notes but causes memories and friendships long dead to flood back. Or seeing a baseball game makes one nostalgic for youth, and time spent at the ballpark. Or even finding a rerun of a beloved TV show brings back the family and friends with whom you used to watch it.

Most American churches are long on inventiveness and short on ritual. “Ritual” has a bad connotation, meaning something empty and not heartfelt. We relentlessly invent new ways of doing church, new songs to sing, new prayers to pray, new approaches to preaching. We design contemporary, clean churches that self-consciously resemble office parks. But in so doing, we forget the simple power of repetition in rituals. Change in a human being is rarely like dynamite blasting away rock; more often it is like the slow erosion of water on that rock, gradually shaping and smoothing the rock into something different. It is that type of change–gradual but no less real–that ritual is designed to work in us.

All this is to say that as a kid, I grew up loving Christmas. It was the one time of year when a good evangelical Protestant boy could experience all the ritual he could handle! At Christmas, everything was a ritual — the Christmas Eve service, the kinds of cookies my mother baked, the reading of ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, the food on the table Christmas Eve and Christmas Day; all these were rituals. Even new Christmas behaviors were evaluated on whether or not they’d make for good rituals. A new TV Christmas special, for instance, was judged on whether or not it was worthy of being part of the tradition, like Rudolph and Frosty, or whether it was fly-by-night and would be ditched next year. Having grown up in a culture that did not ritualize easily, Christmas was a breath of fresh air.

It is with this in mind that I present to you this daily Advent devotional. It is my sixth (!) such effort since becoming the pastor at Exton in 2002; I suppose that just writing these is becoming another Christmas ritual for me! Regardless, I hope that it builds in you a desire to make this a ritual: a time spent with the Lord each day during Advent. I know there will be some days you feel like it, and some you don’t. There will be some days you reach the end of the devotion and feel that the text or my reflection has spoken directly to your soul, and there will be some days you wonder why on earth I’ve chosen what I’ve chosen or written what I’ve written. I hope you enjoy and appreciate the days that touch you, and I hope you keep with it after a day which does not seem particularly meaningful, so that God can shape you with the power of ritual.

This devotional can be used in one of two ways:

1. Use it on its own. Just read the text printed for the day, and the reflection.

2. As part of a larger daily process of prayer. Those of you who know me well know that I find prayer books very useful. They help to keep my prayer life structured. One book that I have used is The Divine Hours by Phyllis Tickle. This book has four short times of prayer, written out, for you to repeat out loud or silently each day: in the morning, midday, evening, and before retiring. It is actually a three-volume set that covers the whole year. However, the author has also released just the Advent and Christmas season in a little paperback called Christmastide.

Each of my daily reflections will be taken from a piece of the prayers printed there. So if you want to join me in a deeply prayerful Advent, pick up the book and use it for your personal devotions and use this set of reflections to amplify the process of prayer there. (If you prefer, The Divine Hours are printed online each day here.

I hope this little book of reflections helps you in reflecting on the greatest gift of God — his Son!

I need the wisdom of Bweinh!ers…

09/17/2007, 2:39 pm -- by | 5 Comments

…to help me with my sermon this week.

It’s on Luke 16:1-13, the parable of the dishonest manager.

Any insights into the parable that readers/contributors have would be welcome, but I’m especially wondering if you think it’s fair to treat this parable as an allegory. I can’t find any reputable commentary that says it is, but it just seems so logical to me that when a master and a steward appear in a parable, it’s likely about God and religious leadership (see the parable of the vineyard, Mt 21:33-45).

To me, one of the messages of the parable is that wise Christians share the good news that the crushing debt the world thinks it owes God is much less onerous than it seems. The shrewd and generous Christian reflects the shrewdness of God, who is not so much about exacting punishments that fit the crime but showing deep love to His creation. So God commends us when we do this, because our “shrewdness” reflects his “shrewdness.” We are cunning and unfair in the same way God is cunning and unfair–always working quietly to give us more than we deserve.

Is this a fair reading of the text? What do you think?

Of Football, Falling Planes, and False Attachments

09/10/2007, 6:12 pm -- by | 2 Comments

Like all of us, I remember exactly where I was six years ago Sept. 11. Those were days while we were both in school, days before we had children, days for sleeping late. So I woke up around 8:15 or so and hopped in the car to the Acme to pick up my Daily News, which I planned to enjoy with a nice cup of coffee. I didn’t have the radio on, which I suppose was unusual. I went in and bought my Daily News (Bobby Abreu was on the back page and the Phillies had a crucial series with the Atlanta Braves coming up) and I saw some employees huddled around a TV. I left the Acme around 9, flipped on KYW News Radio and it was obvious the world had changed forever. Mixed in with the grief and shock I felt that day was an emotion it has taken me six years to admit to myself, much less to any of you:

I felt alive.

Now, mind you, I don’t mean to say that I liked what was happening that day. But there was a sense on that day that, for the first time in my life, what I was living was real. There was a vitality to the day; when I went to the seminary where the students had a prayer meeting, I kissed Jill goodbye with more intention. The love I had for my colleagues was deeper, as we exchanged warmer hugs. The frustration I felt at some of my would-be prophetic colleagues for their easy answers was more than academic.

Perhaps I felt that for the first time in my life, I was part of something real. Perhaps, in fact, I felt so alive because I felt–maybe for the first time, really–that I might die.

The miracle of the day, or maybe not a miracle but common grace that God gives all of us, is that I was OK with that. I felt like I might die, but still I felt completely safe, like there was a life no terrorist could touch inside me. I felt like the course of my life was being altered by something enormous and world-shaking, that suddenly being a Christian was going to be a dangerous and underground thing again, and at the same time I felt completely assured that I would be OK as an alien and a stranger on this earth–or at home in heaven.

I still haven’t sorted out exactly why I felt that way on that day. But I think that it had something to do with the fact that, for the first time in my life, everything was up for grabs. For the first time, all the things that tied me down no longer had their power to bind. All the secret peace treaties I had drawn up with America — “You protect my body with military might and provide me with a prosperous land, and in return I’ll serve God” — all those treaties were now null and void because it became apparent that America could not keep them. I think I felt alive and safe in God on that day because everything but God was under threat.

Henri Nouwen wrote and spoke extensively about “false attachments.” A “false attachment,” for Nouwen, is when you give your emotions, your heart, to something which ultimately disappoints. In The Genesee Diary, Nouwen talks about how he so often allowed his spirits to rise and fall based on his number of speaking engagements, his perception of how others looked at him, and even whether or not he received mail. As he saw it, he allowed so many things to dominate his heart rather than the One who would free it to be all it could be. I think on September 11, 2001, for the first time, I saw my false attachments for what they really were–powerless to deliver the satisfaction I believed they would. Those terrorists intended it for evil, and indeed wrought great evil through it. Yet on that day, I think I saw what I will clearly see when the Kingdom comes in its fullness: I saw that all earthly kingdoms and peoples were powerless, and I saw that there is only One who is worthy to be attached to. This, I think, is why I felt fully alive.

Fast-forward six years to a time when I did not feel fully alive: Sunday’s Eagles- Packers football game. The Eagles are historically ill-prepared for season openers, and managed to lose a game to a vastly inferior Green Bay squad which spent most of the day unable to get out of its own way. And I’m angry. In fact, I was so angry I watched the Giants-Cowboys game in hopes that somehow, someway, both teams would lose, or at least make each other miserable in the process. I wasn’t quite to the point of hoping that players got injured; but I was actively hoping to see some disappointment. The Giants scored an early touchdown on a long pass to Plaxico Burress; but then they botched the extra point and their punter got squashed in the process. This was good, as I saw it, because everyone was disappointed.

I wondered today how things have changed in the last six years, a full fifth of my life. All I know for sure is that today I am still experiencing residual anger about the capricious bounces of a football, while six years ago I felt alive even though planes were falling all around me. This is the power of false attachments, and to be honest, I have no idea when they came back. I have no idea how I got here; I have no idea when exactly I signed away my birthright for this mess of pottage. All I know is that false attachments creep back in when no one is looking, and if we are not vigilant against them, we are complicit in their power over us.

May God save us, his people, from false attachments; and may it not happen through terror, but through a re-birth only his Spirit can provide.

Through with exams

08/20/2007, 12:05 pm -- by | 2 Comments

Hi all–I know some of you were praying with me through the ordeal of my comprehensive exams at Drew University. I finished two of them this past week and have one left in November. This is the kind of exam that essentially boils down to “Write everything you know about…” The exams were 6 1/2 hours long; my Reformation Liturgies exam was just over 10,000 words and my Revivalism and Frontier Worship exam was about 12,000 words. Pastors can say a lot without saying anything, though, so I’m just hoping I did well enough to pass!

Anyway, thanks for your prayer and concern on my behalf!

Best of Bweinh! — The Palms

07/23/2007, 1:45 pm -- by | No Comments

Originally published on April 2, 2007.

I was talking with our church’s associate pastor yesterday. Steve and his wife Francesca served as missionaries for eleven years — four in the Dominican Republic and seven in Bolivia. We were talking about the palms, as yesterday was Palm Sunday. I’m not sure if the churches of other Bweinh!tributors hand out palms, but our church does.

As Steve and I broke apart the palms to hand out after the service, he told me that in Bolivian Catholicism, the tradition is that the palms are woven into crosses and then kept all year. The following Ash Wednesday (forty-six and a half weeks later), the palms are brought back to the church and burned to make the ashes for Ash Wednesday. I knew that in some Catholic traditions, the palms were burned for their ashes, but I figured the palms were kept at church. I didn’t know that individuals took them home and kept them on their own.

Palm Sunday is one of those holidays I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with. I love it, but all the same, it leaves me uneasy. All it does, really, is remind me how fickle people can be. One minute we’re waving palms and singing, “Hosanna!” The next minute we’re just itching for an execution.

Watching a palm desiccate and crumble throughout the year might just remind me of that. In our church, kids use palms as swords and then leave them, forgotten, on the playground or the floor of the fellowship hall. But keeping it and watching it lose its green, watching it become brittle and guarding that it doesn’t completely fall apart — that might just remind me of how fleeting emotions are. You can shout “Hosanna!,” but if that’s all you have, then before long, your spirit will look much like this dry palm, and maybe crumble just as easily.

To employ a phrase one scholar uses (about something completely different), Palm Sunday is a holiday that “carries the seeds of its own destruction.” The minute we make worship solely an emotional event, we ensure that there will be a time when worship is impossible. Like a palm, our emotions too will wither and come to life in cycles, through the seasons of our lives, and worship will mean something different in each of those seasons.

This is not to say that emotions are unimportant in worship. I have had deep emotional encounters in worship with the living God, some ecstatic, some devastating. But we must realize that the reality of worship does not depend on emotion–it depends on whether or not we have met with God. How will we know if we have met with God? A simple test is whether or not we have changed as a result. When people meet God in the Bible, lots of different things happen, but everyone changes. When you encounter the Almighty, the Unchangeable One, you change.

In the end, the message of the palms is deeply prophetic. When we rely simply on emotion or intentions, our efforts fail — sometimes slowly, sometimes spectacularly. Eventually, our good intentions borne of emotion burn up, and then they mark us as human, as fallen, as made of dust and returning to dust. Perhaps this is when the real change starts, when we see God and our first impetus is to repent in ashes, rather than to wave the palms.

Pied Beauty

07/16/2007, 11:26 am -- by | No Comments

“Pied Beauty”
by Gerard Manley Hopkins

Glory be to God for dappled things–
For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;
For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;
Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;
Landscape plotted and pieced–fold, fallow, and plough;
And all trades, their gear and tackle and trim.
All things counter, original, spare, strange;
Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)
With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;
He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change: Praise Him.

I am not a poetry person, usually. Yet I ran across this poem a couple years ago and it captured me and has not let me go. I love how it images the “useless” things in creation: freckles, the play of clouds in the sky, the chestnuts that fall to the earth. All of these things are “counter, original, spare, strange” and yet their beauty cannot help but point to the greatness of the One who made them.

Romans 8:19 says, “The creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God.” Why? Why bother? Why would creation wait for us? Isn’t the creation Hopkins describes perfect on its own? What possibly could creation want from us?

I think creation longs for us because the children of God are to be the pinnacle of all this wonderful creation. We, of all people, can afford to be counter, original, spare and strange to a world which lives in captivity to itself. When God set us apart to be his people, he made us beautiful and strange in the same way so much of his creation is beautiful and strange. We do not have to reflect the tired gray of those around us; instead, we can be dappled and beautiful and strange and point the world to the Beautiful One.

It was a wonderful revelation when I realized that part of our call as Christians is to be beautiful, the pinnacle of a beautiful creation. Not what the world calls beautiful, not silicone or sinew, but the simple beauty of being what we were created to be. I struggled (and still struggle) to have the world see me as pious, knowledgeable and wise, but at my best I am simply focusing on being beautiful, on settling for no other agenda for my life than finding who I am and being that person. This is a personal task, to be sure, but never individualistic–I discover myself best in community, when other beautiful people are gently alerting me to what is beautiful in me.

What about you? Will you settle for being virtuous in another person’s eyes? Will you allow the Democrats or the Republicans to sell you their version of the beautiful life? Will you allow the tabloids to tell you who is beautiful? Will you allow Pottery Barn to define beauty for you?

Or will you follow the One who dared to say the beautiful life always begins with a crucifixion? Will you be children of that God? Will you be counter, spare, original, strange? Will you be a playful part of the way God is redeeming creation? The chestnuts and the finches, the trout and the skies–all of dappled creation awaits your answer.

The Road to Emmaus

07/10/2007, 11:05 am -- by | 3 Comments

Apologies should be sincere.

My last apology for my infrequent postings was sincere.

So is this one.

The difference is, I hope, that I’ll actually be better about posting more often.

To encourage me to do so, I hope you’ll pray that my pastoring and studying time is more efficient so I have more time for this worthy project.

Or you could send a love gift.

Large bills are fine.

Anyway, onto my thought for today:

The story is told in Luke 24 of a time when Jesus met two of his disciples on the road to Emmaus. Jesus had risen from the dead, but these two disciples did not yet know this; they had heard that the tomb was empty, but nothing was at all clear or certain at that time.

The trouble was, in the words of verse 16, “Their eyes were kept from recognizing him.” So Jesus asked them what they were talking about, and they told him the story of the crucifixion and the empty tomb. Jesus was amazed that they still didn’t get it and began to explain the story to them. “Beginning with Moses and the prophets,” we read, Jesus “interpreted to them the things about himself in all the Scripture.” Finally, the three arrived at home, where Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it and gave it to them. Then, and only then, did they recognize him.

I wonder if it would be too big a stretch to see this as a model for church. I think not; Luke was that great chronicler of early church history and I think he here is laying a foundation for how we are to see the church.

Word. And Table. And then we see Jesus.

Like those two disciples, we arrive into the presence of the Lord on Sunday confused. Like them, we hear rumors of God stirring, but for all intents and purposes, the evidence points to God being dead. We come into the Spirit’s presence, call for God to be with us, but like those two disciples, we don’t even know He’s here.

But then the Word is broken open; psalms are read, the gospel is spoken, the words explained and taught, the divine Word demonstrated. And then, likewise, we come to the Table and the bread is broken, and there–finally–we see Him clearly, in the Word and the Table, in the truth and in the fellowship; there we see the Broken and Spilled Out One.

I wonder if you have thought about worship in this way: not as entertainment, not as edification, but as encounter. The kind of encounter that leaves your heart “burning within you,” as it did for those disciples on that day. Be open to the encounter of the Word and the Table.

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