I'll Be Home for Advent

Last Sunday, one of the children of the church said to me, "Pastor Chris, I'm tired of waiting. I'm ready to light the big candle." She was referencing the Christ Candle in the center of the Advent wreath at First Pres. Each week we light one more candle, gently illuminating, flame-by-flame, the worship space. And each week during the children's time, I ask them, "How many candles did we light today?" Once they give the answer, I ask, "So how much longer do we have to wait?" And you can tell from their faces that however long it is, it is too long.

So this one little girl had enough of the waiting and spoke her heart. "I'm tired of waiting. I'm ready to light the big candle."

Truth is, I'm with her, and I suspect I speak for many.

I am tired of waiting for peace on earth, good will to all. I am ready to see peace on earth, an earth freed from war and genocide, from fear and insecurity, a world that no longer has room or time for nuclear weapons or troops in Afghanistan. I agree with the President when he says that is not the world we inhabit, and that as long as there is evil in the world, there will be the need for weapons and war. I know. We still light the Advent Candles in such a world, casting whatever bit of light we can muster against so great a darkness, and we wait. We wait for the day when the Prince of Peace establishes peace once and for all and the Gentle Shepherd guides us to a world freed of pain. But there are times when I grow tired of waiting. I'm ready to light the big candle.

I am tired of waiting for human redemption. As a pastor I see too many good people struggling against so many forces, within and without. Marriages crumble, children get in trouble, cancer invades a household, people struggle to live into their identities as children of God. I see a lot of brokenness. Sometimes it is overwhelming. Against such brokenness the best I can do is light the Advent Candles, one at a time, hoping against hope that they will be enough to guide the way. Baptismal water, bread broken and wine poured, a word scattered like seed; all seem meager light indeed in such darkness. I wait for the day when we human beings awaken to the persons we truly are, the persons God intended us to be; beautiful, shining, beloved children of God. But there are times when I grow tired of waiting. I'm ready to light the big candle.

I am tired of waiting, in other words, for "the Kingdoms of this world to become the Kingdom of our God and of his Christ..." I am tired of waiting for home.

On a dark evening in just a few days, we will gather and light that big candle. From it we will each light our own, singing "Silent Night, Holy Night." And as the sanctuary fills with light, we will choose to believe all over again that somehow in this Child there is the "dawn of redeeming grace." The waiting will be over.

Even though in many ways we will continue to wait as much the day after Christmas as we did during the month before, the news that greets us each year on this silent, holy night changes the character of our waiting. We are no longer passive observers, we are active participants in the coming kingdom, choosing to live by its increasing light even as we wait. We become people of peace even as we wait for peace; we become authentic human beings even as we await our full redemption. We live in the home God intends even while we await its completion in all the world.

It is the mystery and wonder of Advent and Christmas. We wait for One who is already come.

That's why we light the big candle.

I can't wait.

What about John 14:6?

I have been asked this question quite a bit in the wake of a series of Wednesday Night Live studies Dr. Gary Brown and I conducted on something he calls "Interspirituality." During the study, we spent time discussing the western (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) and eastern (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc) religious traditions and the ways they intersect with and inform one another. Specifically, we looked at the spiritualities that emerge from these traditions, seeing the ways the Jewish, Christian, and Islamic mystical traditions more closely resemble the eastern religions in their approach to spirituality. Our time together was enhanced by a visiting lecturer from Vanderbilt Divinity School, John Thatamanil, who helped us think about the Bhagavad Gita in conversation with the Gospel of John.

The conversation about the Gospel of John led naturally to a session on John 14:6 - "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." This passage had come up several times throughout the semester, both in class and in private conversations. So last night I began a two-session close reading and study of John 14. We only made it to the verge of the verse in question and next Wednesday we will dive right into it.

One of the things we discussed last night is that as in real estate there are three important things: location, location, location; so in Bible study there are three important things to keep in mind: context, context, context. It is easy to get so familiar with passages like this one, especially ones that often get quoted as single verses, that we lose context and, consequently, meaning.

So here's my question for my readers as I look toward next Wednesday. How do you read this text in light of the presence of people of other religions no longer, as Thatamanil says, across the ocean, but often across the bed? The reality of inter-religious and interfaith dialogue is no longer a theoretical question for missionaries, but a day-to-day practical question for all Christians who take their faith and the faith of their friends, neighbors, co-workers, and family members seriously.

Is Christ the only way to God? Should people of other religions be recipients of our evangelism? Are there many paths to God? If so, what do you do with a text like John 14:6 and many others like it (though not as explicit perhaps) scattered throughout the Bible? Does reading this text in a wider context change the way you look at it? How do you personally think about your acquaintances of other faiths? Is there a middle position between the extremes of complete acceptance of other faiths or complete rejection?

Please share your comments. I will keep them anonymous if I share them with the class on Wednesday night, but I would love to know how folks on this blog are thinking about these issues.

Luckenbach...Way Back:Waylon and Willie and the Saints

I recently went to a Willie Nelson concert. I will take a moment now for those of you who know my musical tastes to recover...

I went at the invitation of my friend Ronald Crutcher, who is a good theologian and lover of all things Willie. I had to lay aside all the stereotypes of Willie Nelson I had formed in my early years growing up in north Alabama in order to accept this gracious invitation, which was not hard to do since I trusted Ronald's instincts. I'm glad I went. Had I not, I would have missed what can only describe as a sacred experience.

We arrived in downtown Nashville and went for a burger and beverage at Tootsie's Bar and Lounge. If you're going to see Willie, you can't do much better than a pre-concert appetizer at that historic spot on Lower Broad. The walls are filled with photos of old Nashville country music stars, and, with its two stages, the place was hopping.

Then we made our way to the Ryman Auditorium. The Ryman is the closest thing to a country music shrine we have. All over the walls are icons of the Opry, relics that are as meaningful to country music as the bones of the saints might be to a Medieval cathedral. The pews - pews! - that serve as seating give the feel of a house of worship to this venue, which is fitting. When I finally found my seat and looked up at the stage, it was hard not to imagine the ghosts of all those performers that I often heard emanating from my grandfather's radio on a Saturday night looking out over us with delight.

And then Willie took the stage. According to Ronald, he is around seventy-six years old, but he really hasn't changed all that much from the Willie Nelson that I encountered from time to time growing up, mainly, again, through my grandfather. Long hair, cowboy hat and boots, weathered face, deep-set eyes - he has the look of a wise sage who has been around a block or two in his time, which he has.

The first words out of his mouth were a tribute to the Ryman. He said it was a deep honor "to be standing on this stage." And then he said the song he was going to start with was written by someone I didn't recognize. And he began singing. I did not know the song. And so it went for the majority of the concert. Willie would announce the song-writer, say a brief word about the song, and then sing it. Most every song was one I did not know. I also noticed that the only people who would clap or respond when he announced a song were folks who were - how to put this? - around the same age as Willie.

Because our seats were toward the front and to the right, I was also able to see that Willie was using a teleprompter for almost all the songs. At first I thought this was odd. But about half-way through the concert, I finally realized what was happening. Willie was paying tribute. He was singing songs he probably never had sung before, but had carefully selected for this venue. He was at the Ryman, and he wanted to sing the old, old songs by saints long since gone. Here was a man who for most of his life was shunned by the "Nashville Establishment," but who, in the twilight of his career, in his tell-tale voice, was giving honor to the voices of those who made the Ryman, and Nashville, and Willie, who they were. Having only a few days earlier celebrated All Saint's Day in church, I felt that Willie was observing his own version of that holy day when we recognize all the saints of every time and place take their places among us, and acknowledge that we are because they were.

Eventually he sang all the old favorites: "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," "On the Road Again,"etc. He ended his time with a rousing chorus of "I'll Fly Away," and the entire place sang with him. In that moment I swear I could hear Roy Acuff, Hank Williams, Sr., and the whole lot of those Nashville saints singing along.

Willie stayed behind to sign autographs. He was still leaning over the stage, all seventy-six years of him, smiling and laughing and signing as Ronald and I left. People of all ages and backgrounds crowded the stage to pay him homage. His selflessness, his generosity, his humility, and his grace will stay with me for a long time. Heck, I may even buy some of his Cd's.

Again, I'll let you recover...

Books

Day two at Montreat, and I made a trip to the bookstore after my run. I can never get out of there without spending some money (I am what my mother would call "book poor"), and today was no exception. Some of you have asked what I am reading this week. I brought a box of books from my study, and today I purchased the following:

The Stewardship Companion, by David N. Mosser
Accompany Them with Singing: The Christian Funeral, by Thomas G. Long
Karl Barth: Theologian of Christian Witness, by Joseph L. Mangina
Theology Today: Reflections on the Bible and Contemporary Life, by Patrick D. Miller
Five Smooth Stones for Pastoral Work, by Eugene H. Peterson
Simply Wait: Cultivating Stillness in the Season of Advent, by Pamela C. Hawkins
While We Wait: Living the Questions of Advent, by Mary Lou Redding

Later this week I plan to go to Asheville and visit the best bookstore in the world (in my opinion anyway), Malaprops, where I hope to buy some good fiction.

This immersion in the world of books causes me some pause, since I have heard the recent rumblings that books will soon go the way of eight-track cassettes, vinyl LP's, and VCR's. I know the many ways that an electronic reader like the Kindle will make book reading easier. I know that if I had one of them, I would not have had to haul my bag of books up the hill to sit in the rocker and read to the sound of the stream. I also know Kim expects one for Christmas, and will probably think everything that follows is pure bunk.

I know all that. And it may just be that I'm sentimental or quickly becoming irrelevant, but I like the weight of the book in my hand, and the texture of the paper, and the joy of turning one page after another. I like underlining and dog earring. I like holding my place with a finger while I hunt down a passage. Mostly, though, I like the materiality of the printed page. In a world that is fast becoming digitized, where everything can be reduced to zeros and ones, the book stands as a needed retreat; a corporeal, bulky, heavy reminder that not everything can be reduced to bits on a screen.

Like a flowing stream, a rocking chair, and the experience of the printed word.

Advent as Thin Place

I am in Montreat this week for my annual study leave/reading week. It is a Sabbath time I try and set aside each year to catch up on neglected reading in theology, biblical studies, church leadership, and fiction. I also use the time to do more intense planning for the upcoming year that begins at Advent. It is always a fruitful time, and rejuvenating. This year I placed this blog on my agenda so I can try and get back on track with posting.

The small house I am staying in is actually in Black Mountain, since smaller Montreat homes were hard to come by this time of year. This necessitates my driving over to Montreat each morning for my run. I woke up this morning and discovered that it was warmer than expected for early November in the mountains. The deck faces the rising sun, so I got the full force of the morning light and made a decision to wear shorts and a t-shirt for the run.

After a short drive down the mountain where I am staying and over to Montreat, I got out of the car and immediately noticed that it seemed ten degrees cooler. Even though I was a little cool at the start, after warming up a bit the run was perfect. I shouldn't have been surprised. It always seems cooler and crisper in Montreat, and I've rarely had a bad run in that thin place.

By "thin" I don't mean the air, though it always seems different here. No, I mean it in the ancient Celtic (and perhaps a bit overused) way. Though it is overused, it is the closest thing to truth I can think of to describe this setting. The Celtics meant it to describe a place where the veil between heaven and earth is especially thin, and one can almost sense the other side. I, and generations before me, have always experienced Montreat in just this way.

Leonard Beechy, a Mennonite writer who contributed to the latest issue of "The Christian Century" magazine, describes thin places in more chronological terms as "twilight time. Celtic folk called it 'the time between the times,' the enchanted moments at dusk and at dawn when the veil between this world and the world beyond us is thin, and we seem to breathe its air."

Maybe it is the way the mountains shade everything in Montreat, or maybe it is the times I have shared here with family and friends listening to grace-filled sermons, ascending music, world-shattering lectures, long walks and runs, or jumping around in the creek that runs right through it. Whatever the reason, this is a thin place for me, a place where with each breath I sense the Kingdom coming and already present.

That is the mystery of the season of Advent, that the Kingdom is coming and already here. Advent is a thin time of year, a time between the times, a time "between what is dying and what is being born, between the 'already' of Christ's reign and the 'not yet,' of Advent."

All of us from time to time need to experience thin places and times. I hope you have such places, whether they are near or far away; and I hope you will see Advent this year as such a time. We all can be so distracted and dismayed by the hurry, stress, and uncertainty of the times in which we live. We can be lulled into a kind of drudgery, missing the signs of Christ's coming Kingdom, believing that what we see is all there is and all there ever will be.

To just this kind of people, to people like us, Advent comes with a shout. Christ is coming! His Kingdom is already taking root all around for those with eyes to see. His grace is life-giving. His promises are true. His time is now.

Let us prepare together to enter a thin time, where the air feels different, full of God. Because, in truth, it is.

Why So Angry?

I took a little summer break from blogging that turned into a big summer break. I have not blogged, nor have I read others' blogs. I've missed them all, but this summer was the last one at home before our son Caleb went off to college, so, to use old biblical language, it was "meet" that I slow down, disconnect, and savor. Which I did. And now, after a bit of adjustment, it's time to come back.

I was disturbed to see Kanye West jump up on the stage at the MTV Music Awards and take the microphone away from Taylor Swift. As most everyone knows by now, he rushed the stage and took her moment in order to say he thought the moment should have gone to Beyonce. No one knew quite how to respond at the moment it was happening, especially Taylor.

Serena Williams got in a bit of trouble the other day. The line judge calls a foot fault, and suddenly Serena is threatening to stuff the ball down her throat. When asked about it initially, she says she used to be a lot worse, that this little outburst was nothing. If threatening assault on a tennis judge at the U.S. Open is "nothing," then I feel sorry for the poor souls who had to endure her in her more violent stage.

And by now no one needs to be reminded of Representative Joe Wilson, whose shout of "You lie!" as the President was giving a speech to a joint session of Congress bespoke an anger that could not be contained on the largest and most public of stages.

Most commentators are calling these incidences breaches of civility, and point to them as further evidence of our culture's deterioration. The best of these so far was David Brooks' op-ed in the New York Times on September 15 - http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/15/opinion/15brooks.html?_r=1&em

I think incivility is a symptom, however, of a deeper dynamic. All three of them, it seems to me, are angry. And I'm not talking about a passing, in-the-moment kind of anger, but rather a simmering rage. It is the kind of rage that will make an otherwise normal person interrupt a speech before Congress, move toward a line judge brandishing a ball as a threat on national television, and jumping on a stage to take a microphone from a nineteen year old girl who just won her first MTV award. These are not acts of incivility only, but of anger.

These very public events point to a larger dynamic throughout our culture as well. We are an angry society. Drive anywhere in most American cities, for instance, and it doesn't take long to see the anger emerging in road rage. Watch or listen to political so-called talk shows, and they are usually nothing more than two or three or more persons trying to shout the others down. The churches are not immune, many of them filled with angry people taking it out on whomever they can, keeping many of our congregations constantly in conflict.

The facts are indisputable. The question is why.

I was taught in Psychology 101 that anger is nothing more than the way the body responds to fear. If that is the case, then our culture is filled with fear. We fear the fragile economy will take away our jobs and our livelihood and decimate all that we have worked hard to save. We fear terrorism at home and abroad. We fear changing neighborhoods, increasing diversity, and climate change. We fear crime. We fear sickness. We fear the unknown. We fear death. Turn on the television or the computer or open the newspaper and you will be bathed in fear. The news industry feeds on it and lives by it. It is inescapable.

The fear is manifesting as anger. We are much more comfortable saying "I am angry" than "I am afraid."

And yet the time may have come for us to admit what we know deeply: we are afraid. For it is only when we admit this freely, when we take responsibility for our fear, that we who call ourselves Christians can turn to the One who overcomes all fear.

"There is no fear in love; perfect love casts out all fear."

Love casts out fear. It is not easy, but it seems to be true. The more we love, the less we fear. The more we step outside the stifling confines of our anxiety and reach toward the other in love, the less power the anxiety has over us. The cross is the perfect symbol for the power of love in the face of fear and the anger it breeds.

It is said of Will Campbell he once told a reporter who asked him if he was afraid of the KKK members he spent time pastoring - even though he disagreed with everything they stood for -that "I'm too busy lovin' 'em to be afraid of 'em."

Love was on display when Beyonce gave up her moment so that Taylor could have hers back. The seeds of it are all around us in persons who refuse to allow fear to rule in their hearts. It is perhaps the truest hope we have for a return of civility in our culture.

Love. As simple, and complex, as that. Merely love.

Everything Happens for a Reason

Sunday I preached a sermon based on Psalm 29 that included a story of an experience I had on the high school mission trip I am excerpting below. If you are interested in the full context of the story, you can hear the sermon at http://www.presbyweb.org/ or you can read it at http://www.fpcfranklin.org/. Here's the excerpt:

"As many of you know, I was able to be with the high school youth for part of this past week in Port Arthur, Texas, on a mission work trip. We were assigned a home to work on that had been damaged in Hurricane Rita three years ago. The roof had been damaged and water had come in and ruined the ceilings in a bedroom and the kitchen. One of our tasks was to rip out the ceilings and replace them.

Colln Henry and I were placed on demolition duty. I’m sure they were trying to keep me as far away as possible from anything approaching skilled labor. We were so good at tearing out the ceiling in the bedroom that the next day we were asked to do the same job in the kitchen. Some relatives had been in the house in previous months, had done some work in the kitchen, and had managed to tear out the ceiling and replace about half of it with new dry wall. I did not know this. I’m sure Colln did, but he was not one to question the authority of his pastor, so he said nothing when I announced that we would start on the front side of the kitchen and work our way back. The front side was the brand new dry wall.

We punched through it and began ripping it out. We got about half way through the front, when someone walked by and broke the news to us. We were horrified and quite sure that the homeowner would ban us from the site once we told her what we had done. Suddenly the room was filled with cameras, and I figured I needed to go ahead and tell you now, since these images will no doubt grace the screens in Wilson Hall soon enough.

The homeowners, a grandmother, her daughter and granddaughter and two small children, had been living in the aftermath of this storm, in a house filled with mold, ceilings falling down around them, for three years. Someone in their family had come in and taken time to give them a new ceiling, a ceiling which we had just ripped out for no reason.

When they went to get the grandmother to tell her, I immediately set about looking busy, not wanting to face her. So I didn’t see her face, but heard very clearly her words: “Everything happens for a reason,” she said. “Everything happens for a reason.” At first I thought maybe she had misunderstood what we had done. Surely she would be upset. But no, it was clear that she fully comprehended, but was choosing to see something else besides the chaos and failure, to make meaning where there was no meaning to be made. “Everything happens for a reason.”

Now, I’ve got to tell you, I have never really believed that. I believe that sometimes bad things just happen, and that if there is a reason, it is one that we will not be able to see this side of glory. Hurricanes strike, cancer attacks, people lose their jobs, wars are waged, death arrives, and unknowing but well-meaning pastors are handed crowbars, unsupervised. Some things just don’t make good sense...

Colln and I kept tearing out the new ceiling; the damage had been done. As we did, we made a discovery. A portion of the ceiling had not been insulated when the previous work was done, a significant oversight that would have cost the family over time. This would never have been discovered had we not made the mistake of punching through that new dry wall.

I told you that I don’t really believe it, but all through the plane ride home and in the days since, I can’t shake those words: “Everything happens for a reason.” We were told the homeowners were not church people, but I have my doubts, for behind that phrase, “everything happens for a reason,” there seems to be a deeper faith that sees, riding on the storm - in this case quite literally – One who, in the end, gives even a storm meaning.

In the midst of the storm, what do you see? May we be given eyes to see not chaos, but the Triune God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Rider on the storm, enthroned on the waves. Amen."

In the days following I have had no fewer than twenty different conversations with people about the idea that "everything happens for a reason." Some strongly disagree with the sentiment; others not only believe it is true, but structure their lives around it, seeking to make meaning out of even the most devastating and tragic of situations. The conversations have been so lively and important that I wanted to continue them here on this blog.

So what do you think? Does everything happen for a reason?

Photos from Country Music Marathon

Assorted photos from the 2009 Country Music Marathon. These are friends from First Presbyterian.

Study and Formation

I had a chance to visit my Alma mater - Vanderbilt University Divinity School (www.vanderbilt.edu/divinity) - this morning. It is delightful to visit this campus any time, but especially in the summer, when the flowers are in bloom and there are very few people around. I wandered into the library and saw a single student hunched over an old book. As I passed the table, he didn't even look up at me. He was clearly engrossed in the book, furiously writing out notes; his entire body alive with discovery. I have no idea what he was studying, but I would be willing to wager at that moment he was being formed by his encounter with that old text. I suspect he will leave the library a different person from when he arrived. I remember with joy my own time in that school and the hours of discovery and transformation I experienced there.

We are formed by study. Classically understood, to study is to pay close attention, to sit with a text or a person or an idea until we are formed by the encounter. Richard Foster says that study is a "specific kind of experience in which through careful attention to reality the mind is enabled to move in a certain direction." The operative words here are "careful attention," which is why true study - as opposed to rote memorization or test preparation - is a rare thing in our time.

Foster asserts that the mind "will always take on an order conforming to the order upon which it concentrates." This is another way of saying what I remember many thoughtful teachers communicating to me in my childhood and adolescence: "garbage in, garbage out." Those things that I carefully paid attention to would form my mind, they said, and so I should take care to place my attention - my study - on things of beauty and worth.

In the book of Proverbs - which we are currently studying at First Presbyterian - the sages are constantly urging the hearer to "hear," "accept," meditate," "be attentive" to the words spoken. The sage knows that there are other voices out there vying with the voice of wisdom. The one who wants to be wise must always be carefully attentive to discern between them.

I have learned in my own ministry that I must set aside time each day for careful study. If I do not, I will find myself responding to a thousand pressing needs but neglecting the one thing needful. If I do not allow myself to be formed by study, my ability to present in a helpful and wise way with these other concerns is diminished. I know many ministers - and I am often one of these ministers - who are what one pastor calls "a quivering mass of availability." Never disciplining themselves to study, they become burned out, unhappy, and, worst of all, less than effective preachers, teachers, and caregivers.

This is not only a problem in the ministry, however. All of us, no matter our vocation, are diminished if we do not take time to devote careful attention to those things which form us into committed followers of Jesus Christ. This is especially true for the primary audience of Proverbs - the young. A recent New York Times included an alarming article (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/26/health/26teen.html?em) on texting and the ways that this technology is inhibiting teenager's ability to give the focused attention necessary to study. It seems that more and more of our days, and the days of our children, are filled with distraction. We are so connected in largely superficial ways with one another that we are becoming disconnected from the source of true life.

I was reminded during my visit to Vanderbilt this morning of the importance of setting aside time and space for serious, formative study. It is nothing short of a spiritual discipline, and one we neglect at our peril. Let us set aside each week a time when we can become lost in learning, minds and bodies alive with discovery, formed by our encounter, and transformed in our walk of faith.

Communion and Conflict

Last week our presbytery debated and voted on a controversial issue. I thought our conversations were helpful and informative, and we once again demonstrated that Presbyterians can talk about things on which we disagree without dividing.

In the midst of this positive day, however, it came to my attention that there was a minister in our presbytery, along with the elder commissioner from his congregation, who refused to take Communion. According to those who are in the know, he refuses to celebrate the Lord's Supper at the common Table because he perceives many of us who do not agree with him to be outside the faith. He does not share Communion with us because he believes we are not in Communion with Christ.

I say "us" because I am quite sure I fall in the camp of those with whom he disagrees. In fact, it is possible that if we apply the standards he seems to set across the board, his time of Communion might be lonely indeed. For who among us comes to the Table of the Lord in perfect unity of agreement with the sisters and brothers who approach the Table alongside us? Who among us comes to the Table of the Lord free from sin? It seems to me that this minister has taken the very sign of God's grace in our midst and put a fence around it, turning it into a test of righteousness.

I will often say these words to invite persons to the Table, taken from the Book of Common Worship of the Presbyterian Church:

"Friends, this is the joyful feast of the people of God!
They will come from east and west,
and from north and south,
to sit at table in the kingdom of God.
According to Luke,
when our risen Lord was at table with his disciples,
he took the bread, and blessed and broke it,
and gave it to them.
Then their eyes were opened
and they recognized him.
This is the Lord's table.
Our Savior invites those who trust him
to share the feast which he has prepared."

Notice what this invitation does not say. It does not say, "Our Savior invites those who are righteous," or "holy" or "theologically correct" or "politically correct" or "liberal" or "conservative" or any of the other ways we divide ourselves both in the culture and in the church. All that is required is that we trust in Christ. I make a point of saying that this is not a Presbyterian table, or this congregation's table, but it is the Lord's Table, open to all who trust in Christ, all who are baptized in his name, whether young or old, no matter your denomination.

The Table of the Lord is a place of grace where we are met by the risen Lord, and where, if we see clearly at all, it is only because he, in grace, has opened our eyes. It seems to me that the only prerequisite for coming to the Table is an acknowledgment of our own blindness. Jesus, when the Pharisees said, "Surely we are not blind are we?" responded, "If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say 'We see,' your sin remains" (John 9:40-41).

The minister sat on his hands during Communion because he thought he saw so much more clearly than the rest of us, and he led his elder commissioner to do the same. Their sin remains. But the good news for them is that grace abounds, and one of the places it can be found is at the Table of the Lord, where they can be joined by fellow sinners, feeding on mercy broken like bread, drinking from the cup of our common salvation, sharing the peace which only Christ can give. It is an invitation to all sinners, and one I hope they will accept.

Running Update

I am back after an extended time away from blogging. I do want to thank everyone for all your words of support and encouragement as I attempted a personal best in the Country Music Half Marathon. Alas, it was not to be. The temperature on race day was really warm, and about half way through the race I realized I was not going to get anywhere near the time for which I had hoped. I ended up missing the mark by thirty minutes, which is really bad. The day was brutal for a number of folks, with over forty people being taken to the hospital for heat-related issues.

Soooo, I've recommitted to breaking two hours at the St. Jude Half Marathon in December. The weather should be much more cooperative, and hopefully all my weight goals will be in place. So far I have kept off most of what I lost, so I'm looking at around 5-10 more pounds. In the end, the most important thing for me is staying fit and healthy, but I would love, love, love to break two.

So it's back to the pavement, a little strength training, and lay off the fries...

Vacations, Re-Creation, and THE RACE

I have taken a bit of a break from posting while Kim and I went on vacation. This is our annual post-Easter week on the beach (if it happens in March we go to the mountains). We stayed at Seagrove Beach in Florida, and were blessed with six days of sun, temperatures in the 70's and low 80's, and nothing to do but enjoy it.

We rented bikes and rode all over scenic 30-A, enjoying Seaside, Watercolor, Grayton, and Blue Mountain beaches. We ate, mostly in our condo. One of the joys of these trips are the meals we prepare together for two. On this trip, we tried to do the meals we prepared as healthy as possible, and succeeded for the most part. The meals out?...not so much. I'm sorry, but this southern boy cannot resist a plate of fried fish or po-boy sandwiches, and French fries will always be my biggest weakness. So if I were giving myself a grade, it would be a C on the eating...maybe a B-.

I did run four days, including a long run of six miles on Saturday. It was really humid and quite warm, which made the runs difficult, but I got through them. With the biking and two or three long walks on the beach, I think I offset the eating pretty well.

Final result - I gained three pounds. erg....

The good news is that I've done well since being home, and I think I lost what I gained. I will weigh in on Saturday morning before the race to see how close I got to my goal.

The half marathon is Saturday. It is supposed to be in the high 80's here, but I'm hoping to be off the course before the real heat arrives.

I'm going to give everything I have to get in under 2 hours, and it will take everything I have to sustain the necessary pace for the full 13.1 miles. We start at 7 a.m., so I appreciate any thoughts and prayers you might send my way.

A few people have asked me why I run. I've never really been able to answer that question before this year. But going through this more intentional process - especially during Lent - has opened my eyes to a few things, and I think I have an answer now. It comes from a line in the movie, "Chariots of Fire," and it is quoted by Richard Foster:

"When I run, I feel His pleasure."

When I put one foot in front of the other, I feel that I'm doing something that is making me a better husband, a better father, a better friend, a better pastor...and that all those things are helping me become the person God wants me to be. So yes,

"When I run, I feel His pleasure."

That's it, that's why I run...

Prayer: Who's in the Room?

There are always at least two people in the room with me whenever I think about, write about, or preach about prayer. I met them while I was a student pastor in a small Tennessee town, barely nineteen years old and trying to preach and pastor among this little rural church. My encounters with them have formed, and continue to form, my understanding of prayer.

Mark was a fifteen year old kid who loved nothing more than being out in the woods on the weekends, hunting, fishing, and riding his three-wheeler. His life was typical of most of the teens in that community; raised close to the land, acquainted with the ebb and flow of nature, full of life. One weekend I received a call that Mark had an accident on the three-wheeler and was at Vanderbilt Hospital in critical condition. When I arrived at the hospital, I discovered a devastated family. Mark was in a coma, he was probably brain-damaged, and it was not likely he could breathe on his own. I stayed with the family while they agonized over a decision no parents should ever have to make. Prayers filled the waiting room, rose up from the little community in homes and sanctuaries, and surrounded Mark as he laid unconscious on the bed. In the end, they removed him from life-support and we all prayed for a miracle even as his life slipped away.

Russ finished his freshman year of college at Tennessee Tech and was on his way home for the summer when he slipped off a rain-soaked two-lane road and down a steep gully. He died instantly. His family called and asked if I would come to their home in the hours after the accident. I entered a home filled with the kind of pain that even now, twenty years later, is hard for me to describe. Russ was the youngest of their children, incredibly smart, and a decent, loving, committed disciple of Jesus Christ. The senselessness of his death took our breath away, and left us with nothing, it seemed, to say, or believe, or hope.

Mark and Russ - and their families - are always in the room with me when it comes time to pray. They are a constant reminder of the words of C.S. Lewis, "Every war, every famine or plague, almost every death bed, is a monument to a petition that was not granted."

I have to admit that for a long time after these experiences, I was reluctant to pray with any kind of specificity. My prayers became generic odes to "Thy will be done," hardly recognizable from one to the next, no matter the situation. I feared that if I actually prayed for healing, say, or reconciliation, or relief in concrete situations, I was doing violence to their families. How dare I suggest God answers prayers for any other individual or family, when God did not answer the prayers of these families?

In those years my faith was hardly distinguishable from the "Watchmaker God" of the Deists. God merely winds up the world and then retires to the Divine equivalent of the Bahamas to watch it all unfold, never entering into its ebb and flow, never influencing its events, never getting involved. It seemed to me an offense to the memory of Mark and Russ and their faithful families to think of God in any other way. Harold Kushner once famously posited that God had to either be all-powerful or all-loving, but could not be both and account for evil. He settled on all-loving but impotent. I was willing in those days to grant all-loving and all-powerful, just absent.

It was Richard Foster who woke me up to my immature thinking. He writes, in discussing the spiritual discipline of prayer:

"In our efforts to pray it is easy for us to be defeated right at the outset because we have been taught that everything in the universe is already set, and so things cannot be changed. And if things cannot be changed, why pray...It is stoicism that demands a closed universe, not the Bible."

Foster challenged me to expand my idea of prayer from simply telling God what I want to listening for what God was saying to me. Soren Kierkegaard says, "A man prayed, and at first he thought that prayer was talking. But he became more and more quiet until in the end he realized that prayer is listening."

Gradually my immature ideas gave way to a much richer, though complex, understanding of prayer. Prayer demands a listening heart, a humble spirit, and a profound connection with those for whom we pray. Prayer is an active discernment of the ways God is at work in a given situation, and a humble recognition of that Divine work. Sometimes prayer involves words; often it does not. Listening is the doorway to intercession. But it is a listening that does not shy away from speech. It demands the kind of daring specificity that mirrors the radical specificity of a God who would live among us in a first-century Jewish peasant and die a shameful and violent death.

Mark and Russ will always be in the room. But their presence need not silence my prayers. Instead, I (and we) can dive into the mystery of God-with-us, knowing that God does not reside far off, but near, in Jesus Christ, and that even in our weakness and vain attempts to speak the unspeakable, the Spirit intervenes with sighs too deep for words.

There were a lot of sighs and groans and loud, inarticulate cries that rose up in those days as we stood watch with Mark and as we grieved Russ. I never stopped to consider that maybe the source of those sighs was the Source of all that is, seen and unseen; the One who prayed until drops of blood fell like sweat from his beaten brow; the One who cried from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me"; never dared imagine God was the One "whose heart was the first of all our hearts to break."

Mark and Russ are always in the room when I pray, and so is the One they called Lord. That's why I still pray, sometimes against all odds, with great specificity.

Quick Update

I don't have time to really write anything today, as Easter Day preparations are in full swing, but I did want to provide an update on yesterday's 12 mile run.

Clarke and I ran the full 12 at a 9:31 pace. While that would bring me in around three minutes past my two hour goal, I typically always run a little faster on race day. So it should come right down to the wire.

I also weighed after the run - which is cheating just a bit, since my body was totally depleted of fluids, but, hey, I should get some added benefit from running 12 miles! - and was sitting at 191.5, exactly fourteen pounds lost since setting the goal. That leaves six pounds to go in two weeks. That will probably come down to the wire as well.

On a different note - Good Friday brought devastating weather to this area later in the day. A tornado touched down in the Murfreesboro area, killing a young mother and her nine-week-old baby, injuring many more, and destroying houses. Please keep all affected in your prayers.

Important Week

Today I am hovering right at a loss of twelve pounds, and a 9:40 minute mile. I ran ten miles Saturday at that pace. I mapped out the ten mile trek through my neighborhood, and it was fun running. It was a beautiful, warm day and there were lots of folks out. Each turn saw families of all kinds out walking, working in the yard, throwing footballs and baseballs, and grilling. There was a good spirit everywhere. I'm glad to live in a neighborhood filled with life. When the sun comes out, this community teems with energy.

I became fatigued toward the end. I really need to run earlier in the day to avoid the heat, but I am not constitutionally predisposed to early morning anything.

After a rest day today, I plan to run five miles Tuesday, do some cross-training cardio on Wednesday, three miles Thursday, and then run twelve miles Friday. This will be my last really long run before the race, and should tell the tale. I hope to lose at least four of the remaining eight pounds I need by Sunday, but that may be too optimistic. We go on vacation the week after Easter, and I will do some running down there, but I know myself well enough to know that my diet may suffer (I think it is close to a mortal sin to diet while on vacation), and I will need to really work hard at it when I get back. So, we'll see. I feel pretty good about where things stand at the moment.

It is Holy Week. We have services Thursday, Friday, and Easter Day. Lots of my friends in the ministry really dread these days from a vocational standpoint. The week can be draining. But I have always loved it, even with all the busyness. This week really is the reason we exist; the story we tell on each of these holy days is what gives life and meaning to all the others.

So it is an important week on many levels for me. I invite your prayers for the congregation, for me and all the staff, and for all Christians everywhere who walk this week in the shadow of the cross toward the light of the empty tomb.

On Caleb Going to College

At times I feel like this is all a dream, and
I will wake and find he is still two, and
we are walking on the beach hand in hand, the
brilliant light of the descending sun silhouetting us,
causing her some pause before she finally, slowly
takes the picture.

The photo stands on our mantle, accompanied by many others;
poor attempts all to duplicate that one fire-lit evening, the
light daring us to see what lies just beneath:
Glory.



Okay, that's my lame attempt at free verse, trying to come to terms with having a son going to college. If it makes it onto the blog, please be gentle...And if you've made it this far, you deserve a real piece of poetry that gets at the same thing:


Sentimental Moment Or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road
By Robert Hershon

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand.

Failure

Last Saturday morning, I failed.

There, I said it. It took a while for me to say it, and I went through various drafts trying to find ways of saying it that might soften the blow to my ego, but in the end it just needs to be said. I failed.

Nothing in the week preceding the run indicated the failure that awaited. I kept my training schedule, and on Thursday I even ran 3 miles at an 8:29 pace, which was a personal best. Saturday morning I woke up feeling well, motivated, and certain that I would improve on my time and distance from the previous Saturday. Clarke and I were to run 11 miles, and I was shooting for a 9:20 pace. I woke up on Saturday weighing in at 195.6 pounds, a ten pound loss since beginning this regimen. All the signs were good.

The run was going well until mile 4, when I began feeling more fatigue than I should in my legs. My breathing became more labored at about mile 7, prompting Clarke to advise, "Notice your breathing; you're breathing too hard." Just a little short of mile 9, I had to quit. We were about as far as we could be from the parking lot, which meant the "walk of shame" would be lengthy.

The predictable voices in my head came in right on cue: "Your goals are too lofty," "You're no athlete," "What made you think you could run that fast," and on and on. On this day, however, those voices were countered by another one. Clarke and I began talking as we made the long journey back to the cars. I let him know how disappointed I was. He said he had made very similar walks from failed training days, recounting one incident that involved jumping a fence and calling his wife to come pick him up. I said I felt like perhaps it was the couple of beverages I had enjoyed the previous night at the Belcourt with Kim. He nodded knowingly and let me know that he had been down that road as well. I said I thought maybe I over-trained on Thursday, running way too fast. He said he had the same problem, and tried training just three days instead of four, which seemed to work for him.

It went on like that for a while: steady footfalls on the warm pavement, Clarke hearing my confessions and letting me know that he had walked all those roads as well, and still did, sharing what can only be described as grace while we traveled in the shadow of failure.

At some point we began talking about other things: family, faith, movies, basketball. Eventually we were in the parking lot. As we stood there, it became clear that the journey we had just taken was, for me, journey from shame to hope. The failure was real, to be sure, but the hope generated from the experience of the community of a fellow sojourner was real as well, and more powerful.

The Lenten walk means, if it means anything, that we are sustained in the midst of our brokenness, failure, and shame by the One who "offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the God who was able to save him from death..."

Theologian Jurgen Moltmann calls the God revealed in the Christ who journeys through broken humanity "The Crucified God." I believe more and more along with Dietrich Bonhoeffer that "only the suffering God can help." It is this God who travels with us on the road that leads from failure and shame to hope. The desperate cries of a world that includes suffering in the Sudan, spilled blood and endless conflict in the Middle East, dramatically rising levels of poverty in this country, and a global economy reeling from recession; these cries rise to a God who knows, and feels, and suffers with this world.

At times, I want God to move more decisively. I want God to intervene and set things to rights. I scream for a God of justice. There are times when this God who suffers with and journeys alongside us just doesn't seem powerful enough to change anything. I cry, along with the psalmist, "Oh that you would tear open the heavens, and come down!"

But then I find myself wandering on some long road of failure or other, trying to find my way home, feeling alone. I look up and find, in the community of faith, in the quiet conversation with a friend, in the smile of a child, in the swinging of a Habitat for Humanity hammer, in the table-talk with a homeless guest, in the silent strength of an AIDS ministry, in the confident prayer of a hospice chaplain, and in countless small acts of defiant hope, that I am caught up again in the mystery of God-with-us.

It is enough.

Meditation: It's not Just for Gandhi Anymore

I will admit it. When I first picked up Richard Foster's book, "Celebration of Discipline," and saw that the first discipline in the book is meditation, I almost put it down. Images immediately came to mind of a cloistered monastery; cold, damp walls reverberating with a collective "ommmm" as robed adherents rocked gently back and forth, index finger to thumb in the lotus position. I thought of Thomas Merton and Mahatma Gandhi, Henri Nouwen and John Michael Talbot; good people all, great even, but high on a pedestal and unattainable for mere mortals like me. And I thought of all those times when I've been put off by "new age" people on "a journey," who seemed to be so insistent on gazing at their own navels that they rarely noted the wider world just beyond their consuming selves.

But the book had come highly recommended by a close friend whom I trusted, so I resisted that initial dismissive impulse and began reading. The first chapter was a transforming experience in which a whole host of preconceptions were challenged and dismantled, and a rich world opened before me.

Foster grabbed me with the very first lines: "In contemporary society our Adversary majors in three things: noise, hurry, and crowds. If he can keep us engaged in 'muchness' and 'manyness,' he will rest satisfied. Psychiatrist Carl Jung once remarked, 'Hurry is not of the Devil; it is the Devil.'"

Even for folks like me who long ago gave up on the notion of a literal little red guy with horns, tail, and pitchfork living underground; it is a compelling image of what Paul called "principalities and powers," and what Foster calls our "Adversary." The things that stand against us, he seems to say, are less obvious than the traditional pitchfork-yielding Devil of Medieval art. They are things that seem good at first glance: busy schedules, crammed agendas, frenetic activity, active social calendars, and instant information/communication. Foster wrote this book long before the internet or the phenomenon of Twitter/Facebook/MySpace or, yes, blogging; but there's no doubt all these things have only intensified the "muchness and "manyness" and "hurry" that characterize our day and makes our Adversary smile.

Foster begins his book with meditation because he believes it is the doorway to all the other disciplines. We must, for our own sakes and for the sake of the world, go beyond the superficialities of our day, slow down, go "deep into the recreating silences," and find that center where God longs to commune with us. God is always speaking, always revealing Godself to us, both individually and communally. We are the ones who find it hard to hear for all the noise.

To hear God's voice is not only for the Merton's and Nouwen's of our day, but is God's gracious gift to all God's children. Cultivating the discipline of meditation is one way to place ourselves in the arena of grace (to use an idea of Shirley Guthrie). We cannot control God, we cannot dictate to God where and how God will speak, but we can put ourselves in the place where God has been known to speak before. The biblical witness and the witness of Christians through the ages is that we can hear the voice of God more clearly when we silence other voices vying for our attention, when we practice intentionality in our inner lives.

Foster is not big on mushy sentimentality. He eschews the popular notions of meditation and spirituality that claim a "buddy-buddy," "me and Jesus" outcome. Rather, he describes meditation as both "intense intimacy" and "awe-full reverence." Foster is likewise quite dismissive of the ideas of some forms of meditation that try to get people to detach from the world in some blissful inner state and never re-engage. The purpose of meditation is to experience the deep peace and presence that comes from communing with God in order to re-engage the church and the world in a way that will be effective and grace-filled.

This has always been my biggest criticism of much that passes for spirituality in our culture - especially our religious culture - today; that it is too focused on the self and not the other, that it devalues the importance of life in Christian community (the church), and that it is unconcerned with the social engagement that was so much a part of Jesus' witness and work. Foster shares these criticisms and yet is unwilling to do away with the idea of spirituality and meditation because of these contemporary corruptions. Rather, he seeks to reclaim them.

He convinces me. So I took on the challenge of expanding my conception of prayer and implemented some of the methods he recommends for meditation. Foster encourages at the beginning the setting aside of a particular time and place each day. It needs to be a time and place quiet and free of interruption, with no telephone (or cell phone or computer) nearby. You should have a posture that reflects an inward state of calm and contemplation, whether that is sitting, standing, or kneeling. He recommends opening the palms upward to instill a feeling of receptivity. You might either close your eyes or look out on nature.

There are numerous forms of meditation. One can meditate upon a favorite Scripture passage, reading it through several times and listening for emphases that seem to come to your mind. Another form - and one I found very helpful and have practiced with some regularity since first reading this book almost twenty years ago - is called "re-collection." I begin by placing my palms down as a symbolic way of indicating my desire to turn over any concerns I have to God. I might say, "God, I give over my insecurity over the upcoming meeting today." Whatever is weighing on my mind, I symbolically release it. Then I lift my palms up in a posture of receptivity and receive God's grace, peace, and joy. It is always amazing to me what these simple movements will do for my sense of God's presence and my prayers both for myself and for others. Through this I have discovered that meditation is not just for the spiritual giants, but God's gift to us all.

Meditation is really a doorway to the other disciplines, which all in one way or another call for the simple yet difficult practices of setting aside time, slowing down, quieting the mind, and reflecting on our relationship with God.

I would love to hear your own experiences with meditation or your reactions to these ideas. Perhaps you have a story of a way this discipline has affected your life, or you want to help fill out these reflections with thoughts of your own. Meditation remains a highly misunderstood concept in the western church, and I freely admit that I am often quite critical of some of its most ardent advocates. But Foster has a way of cutting through a lot of those concerns for me and getting to the heart of the matter. What about for you?

On the Way

9:01 miles. Time 1:25:32. Pace 9:29.

Friday morning I got on the scales and weighed 198 pounds. This is a loss of 7.6 pounds from my initial 205.6. I lost 7.6 pounds in six days. While that seems great at first glance, it's too much, too fast. Several people tell me it's probably just water-weight and will slow down soon. Kim tells me I'm eating too few calories and it is not healthy. Since she is rarely wrong, and I learned long ago to trust her instincts and wisdom, I'm altering my plan from 1500 calories a day to 1800-2000 calories a day. I will keep monitoring the weight-loss rate.

I am keeping up with my calories on a website called The Daily Plate. You get to it by first going to www.livestrong.com, and then following the links. It is completely free. It has a hug database of foods, including restaurant foods, and exact calories. I just started this yesterday, and it informed me that I should be taking in 2200 calories per day while I am training. See, Kim is always right.

I ran my long run yesterday afternoon with my great friend Clarke Oldham. He is an excellent trainer and offered to run with me to help me reach my goals. He established the pace and kept me moving, and when it was all done we ran 9:01 miles in 1 hour 25 minutes 32 seconds, for a pace of 9:29 minutes per mile. I still had a little in the tank when it was over, and this was running at the end of a long Sunday filled with meetings, on the fuel from a lunch eaten five hours previously, and without my mandatory can of Red Bull. If all those other thing had been in place, I think I could have done even better.

A 9:29 pace would bring me across the line in the half-marathon in 2 hours and 1 minute. So my immediate goal is to get rid of that 1 minute. Clarke was encouraging. If I can maintain my training regimen and keep losing the weight (at a slower pace), I hope all the goals will be met.

I'm learning a few things about myself in all this. I'm re-learning the power of community. Without Kim's daily love and inspiration, as well as her willingness to count those calories along with me, I could not do this day after day. Caleb and Chandler never fail to ask me if I ran and how I did. They may not realize it, but those simple questions warm my heart and make me want to do it...for them. Clarke's willingness to forgo his own goals (he is an extremely talented runner who could run this race much faster than he will be with me) is a true example of friendship and generosity. I cannot thank him enough. The people at church who follow this blog are all so encouraging, many of them asking me on Sunday how things were going. John, as always, is a constant source of grace. All these, and so many more, make such things possible. Community. I talk about it a lot. In matters of faith it is indispensable. Turns out it is indispensable in running and living a healthy lifestyle as well.

I am also learning that the limits I experience in matters of eating and running are largely self-imposed. It is amazing how quickly I can think my way out of doing what I know I need to do. Likewise, with a shift in thinking, it is amazing how much more I can do. One cannot only train the body. One has to train the mind as well.

And this is where those spiritual disciplines come into play.

More on that later...

Eating, Running, and Lent

It is time for me to get serious about a few weighty matters.

I guess I'm like a lot of other folks with good intentions but poor self-discipline when it comes to eating and exercise. In five weeks time, I hope to change all that.

Every year I train for the Country Music Half-Marathon, and every year I complete it in over two hours. Last year I posted my personal best of 2 hours and 6 minutes. Pathetic. Do you want to know why it was pathetic? Because I half-trained for the half-marathon last year. I changed nothing about my eating, got out and ran half the amount of time I should have, lost no weight, came in at 2 hours 6 minutes - and here's the pathetic part - was happy about it.

Now I know what many of you are going to say. "Stop beating yourself up, Joiner. Lots of people sat on their couches eating doughnuts that very morning while you were running the streets of Nashville. At least you got out and did it." I know that's true. Some of the spectators had the temerity to eat the doughnuts right there on the sidelines in our full view. So, yes, I know there are points for trying. I understand grace (most of the time).

But here's the thing. I know there's a whole world out there waiting for me, just beneath the surface of things. What possibilities will open up if I run every training run in my training plan? Where might things lead if I actually ate healthy portions and lost twenty pounds? How might my life be different - and the life of my family - if I went all in, weaned myself off cholesterol medication, and actually began feeling more energy with which to love, care, and live life? I sense that world, waiting to be discovered, waiting for me to get serious.

I suspect Lent is much the same way for many of us. We mean to engage the spiritual disciplines of prayer, study, worship, meditation, simplicity, and so on. We have good intentions. But life gets in the way, and soon enough all those good intentions go out the door as we become the equivalent of couch-potato Christians.

It's not that God loves us less because of this failure, and it is certainly not true that we are somehow less than baptized children of God because we come up short. Those of us who are Presbyterian and Reformed believe we do not earn God's favor and that our relationship with God is not based on a divine brownie point system.

But we sense - do we not - that there is a world out there we are missing, a depth of love and grace and peace that God longs for us to experience, but which we cannot see. We cannot see it because we have not trained enough in the language of prayer, in the discipline of study, or in the countless other ways by which we are enabled to recognize God's grace. This lack of vision will not keep God from coming to us in grace, and it will not keep God from welcoming us as God's children. What it will do is impoverish us, keeping us plodding along, happy with things as they are, and completely oblivious to the glory that lies just beneath the surface.

I for one am tired of plodding along. Take a good look at the photo of at the top of this post. I won't look that out of shape much longer (my apologies to John Leggett, but this was the only recent photo I could use as a "before" shot).

Today is March 14.
Today, I weigh 205 pounds.
Today, I run a 9:45 mile.
Today, I train at half intensity two or three days a week.
Today, I eat what I want when I want.

The Country Music Half-Marathon is April 25.

Forty-two days.

Time to get serious.

In forty-two days I will weigh 185 pounds.
In forty-two days I will run a 9 minute mile.
In forty-two days I will run the County Music Half-marathon in under two hours.

All of this I will not do on my own. I have a wonderful support system in my family, in my church community, and I hope in all of you reading this blog. It's been there all along; I have been the one hesitant to accept it. One can never embark on anything of substance alone.

More than this, however, I know that I can do nothing absent the grace of God in Christ, in whom I live and move and have my being. Each breath, each step, each day, all of it is gift. It's time I used the gifts I have been given. But make no mistake, all such gifts, all so-called "self" discipline, begins and ends in God.

Kind of like Lent.

I Rejoiced the Day You Were Baptized

This past Sunday I had the honor of worshipping with Massanutten Presbyterian Church and baptizing Aaron Leggett, son of our dear friends John and Alayne Leggett (check out his blog at www.kairoscorner.blogspot.com). Spending time with the Leggetts is always life-giving. John and I have been friends since college days, and ours is a friendship that has only deepened in all respects as the years have passed. So I was moved beyond words when he and Alayne invited me to baptize Aaron.

The weekend was only made better by our accommodations. We were invited by Ellen Blose to stay in her home while she made the trip to middle Tennessee to see her grandchildren Aaron and Lauren, members of First, Franklin, play roles in a school drama (I'm told congratulations are in order for both of them on great jobs). This home has the best view in all the valley according to many locals in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and after staying there we believe it. We were privileged to be awakened by the gentle nudge of the sun coming up over the eastern ridge of Massanutten, which we followed by sitting on the deck, cups of coffee in hand, overlooking the valley. We found ourselves rejoicing together with the psalmist: "I lift mine eyes to the hills, from whence cometh my help..."

The home itself is the family place where Ellen and the late Bill Blose raised seven daughters, one of whom, Sarah, is a member of First, Franklin. It was great being able to stay in this house, which is filled with meaning for that family. The old walls themselves seem to speak of the faithfulness of generations. It was not hard to see how it is that Sarah has come to live out her baptismal identity in such profound ways among this community in Franklin. Those baptismal waters run deep in the Blose household.

Kim, Chandler, and I went hiking with all the Leggetts (John, Alayne, Rachel, Sarah, and Aaron) in the Shenandoah National Park on Saturday. I will post photos of this excursion soon on the blog, and they will do a much better job than I can of showing the breathtaking beauty into which we descended as we made our way down to the falls. Walking down the path, next to the running stream, and seeing it widen out until it fell some fifty feet into the valley below was a powerful baptismal reminder as we headed into worship on Sunday.

On Sunday, after hearing a great sermon from the Parish Associate Ann Pettit, including a profound children's sermon on the sign of baptism, we moved to the font of the beautiful sanctuary at Massanutten Church. John and Alayne, along with their delightful daughters Rachel and Sarah (with whom Chandler loved spending a large portion of the weekend playing wii and other games), came forward and presented Aaron for baptism. Throughout the service I was struck by the palpable presence not only of the Spirit of God, but of all the saints of every time and place, who seemed to take their place around the font as Aaron stepped into this ancient baptismal stream. The reality of the covenant was strong in that place as we remembered the faithfulness of generations that culminated in this scene. Fathers and mothers, grandparents and great-grandparents, Sunday school teachers and pastors stretching back countless generations, each taking their place in front of this universal font of deliverance, declaring their faith in Christ and in a God who pursues us in love through the power of the Spirit.

Aaron is so very young, and he cannot yet even speak, but we know, even now, that he is not alone, and that he has been spoken to and spoken for by a God who summons us and claims us before we are able to respond. He will be raised, I have no doubt, to live into this baptismal identity. The world may call him many things, some laudable, and some not so much, but his core identity will always be baptized, beautiful child of God.

We all left that place drenched in these covenantal waters, rejoicing along with the writer of 1 John: "See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are" (1 John 3:1). I was also hearing the words of the Hymn, Borning Cry:

I was there to hear your borning cry
I'll be there when you are old.
I rejoiced the day you were baptized,
To see your life unfold.

May Aaron's life unfold with the constant awareness of the One who has called him by name in baptism and who will never leave him or forsake him.

Fast forward one day....I open the paper to discover that one of the fastest growing groups in religious affiliation polling are known as "Nones." Seemed an interesting juxtaposition. More on that later...

Lent and the Art of Spiritual Maintenance

I am still chewing on C.J. Thompson's sermon from last night's Lenten mid-week service. In it he invited us to examine our lives this season in an effort to see if there were any golden calves in the way of our relationship with God that needed to be ground up. It is a question that is worth pondering not only during Lent, but each day.

He was referencing the text from Deuteronomy 9:13-21 that tells the story of Moses coming down from the mountain, tablets of law in his hands, to discover the people dancing around and worshipping a golden calf. The last part of the text says, "Then I (Moses) took the sinful thing you had made, the calf, and burned it with fire and crushed it, grinding it thoroughly, until it was reduced to dust; and I threw the dust of it into the stream that runs down the mountain."

As the text was being read, I marveled at the violence of the verbs: burning, crushing, grinding, throwing. This golden calf is such a danger, such an offense, that Moses wants to obliterate it. One also gets the sense that Moses is afraid if the slightest remnant of the thing remains, someone might be tempted to scoop up even the dust of it and set it on an altar.

It was while I was reflecting on this violent text that C.J. made the connection I wish he had not made, turning it from a curiosity, an odd text for those of us who like to think of ourselves as biblical scholars to haggle over, and making it instead deeply personal. No longer was it a golden calf that those Israelites bowed to long ago; now it was my own golden calf, my own attempts to seat someone other than God on the altar of my life.

As I reflected, I saw traces of gold everywhere. The first thing I look at most mornings these days is the state of my retirement account, and find it determining my mood, praying my morning prayers to the gods of money and security. I rushed by my daughter's bedroom door last night in a hurry to get to my favorite television show, completely ignoring her requests for "one more story," telling myself that I was tired and I deserved some peace and rest, bowing ever so deeply to my golden self. Our presbytery is conducting a series of discussions leading up to what could be a controversial vote, and I find myself joining in the caricatures of those who disagree with me, silently wishing that they would just stop talking, believing in my hubris that my opinion is the only correct one on the matter, doing obeisance to the gods of pride and perspective. I could go on. The golden calves are numerous, crowding out the path, limiting my vision, burying my faith.

Just when I am ready to give up on the idea that I can ever clear out all these shiny cows, I am reminded by the final image of what I tend to forget: I cannot do this work on my own. The waters running down from the mountain, into which Moses throws the dust of the idol, symbolize for me the waters of baptism, in which God takes me as I am and washes me. It is God who sets me on the path. It is God, in the Crucified One, Jesus Christ, who comes to me, to us, right in the midst of our idolatry and makes a way where there was no way. The Lenten journey is not ultimately about what we do or don't do; it is about what God longs to do in us and through us.

Lent is a time, I believe, when we are invited to practice disciplines that open us to the grace of God; a grace which pours down off the mountain, washing up all that hinders our walk, and renewing our faith. Perhaps the best I can do is invite God to take all those golden calves and burn/crush/grind/throw/wash them, and me.

There was a lot to chew on last night, and you can probably tell I am still chewing. What do you think? How would you respond to the invitation to address all those golden calves in your life?

I Want My Ashes

I was sitting in my study busily preparing for Ash Wednesday when I heard a gentle, almost imperceptible knocking at my closed door. When I opened the door, I looked down to see one of our preschoolers staring up at me. Her mother was close behind, and prompted her daughter by saying, "What was it you wanted to ask Pastor Chris?"

The little child said, softly, "I would like my ashes."

"Your ashes?" I asked, unsure at first what was being said.

Her mother then explained that they were not going to be able to be present for the service later that night, but that her daughter insisted she wanted her ashes. They were coming to see if I had them and, if so, if I would place them on the little girl's forehead ahead of time.

I didn't have them ready yet, but we worked out an arrangement so that I could come downstairs to the preschool before the end of the day and place the ashes on her head.

I scrambled around after the morning Bible study, going up to the outdoor pavilion and burning the palm branches from last year's Palm Sunday service in the grill. Time was running short before preschool let out, so I removed the ashes from the grill earlier than normal, mixed some olive oil in with the still smoldering ashes, and headed downstairs.

It must have been quite a sight (and smell), as I took the little girl out into the hallway with her mother, knelt down and placed my thumb into the still-warm, smokey mixture, smudging it onto this four year old child of God's forehead - the same forehead on which I traced the cross after her baptism four years before - and pronouncing words that caught in my throat as I said them, "Remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Later that night we began worship with a breathtaking musical piece, sung by a gifted trio of singers: Mendelssohn's "Lift Thine Eyes." His interpretation of Psalm 121 is ethereal, setting a perfect mood for this day when we recognize our mortality and, in that recognition, come to understand our only true help is from the God who neither slumbers nor sleeps.

When the time came for the imposition of ashes, my colleague C.J. and I stood in different corners of the sanctuary and met those who wished to receive them. There was a great crowd, and almost everyone received ashes, so it took some time. I had those predictable moments of emotion as I placed the ashes on Kim, Caleb, and Chandler. It is never easy to say the words no husband or father wants to permit.

At the end of it all, after the benediction was said and we filed out, the only thing I could think about was that four year old girl, knocking on her pastor's door, wanting her ashes. She was lifting her eyes, not to her pastor, but to a God she has experienced in the enfolding arms of this congregation, in stories told in Sunday school and nursery, in a home with faithful parents, in the remembrance of her baptism each time she comes forward to witness another child being baptized, and in the manifold ways she is told, every day, every week, "You belong to God."

It is only someone who knows this deep sense of belonging - this rock-bottom awareness of God's grace - who can bravely say, "I want my ashes." I am grateful to worship and work in a place that instills this baptismal identity in all who come.

This Lent I am committed to emulating the brave faith of one of our youngest members. I want my ashes.

Housekeeping

I have changed the settings so that it will be easier to make comments. Several folks, including my wife Kim, mentioned that they tried, but had to sign up first. You should be able to comment now.

We had a wonderful service of worship last night. I will post more thoughts on that later. It will suffice now to simply say that I give thanks to God for First Presbyterian and the family of peace and grace it is.

Ashes to Ashes

This week we mark the beginning of Lent with the observance of Ash Wednesday. At First Presbyterian, for only the second time in our history, we will impose ashes on the foreheads of those who desire it, saying, "You are dust, and to dust you shall return."

Frankly, I can see why it has taken 186 years for First Presbyterian to celebrate Ash Wednesday. Reformation sensibilities aside, this annual cross-shaped smudge on the forehead is not a pleasant reminder. Though we cloak it in the ancient "dust to dust" language, the fact is that Ash Wednesday is really a reminder that we are going to die.

We are going to die. The little five year old boy who approached me last year at this service and offered me his lollypop even as I traced the sign of the cross on his head is going to die. So is the young couple who came through my station hand-in hand, love in their eyes, taking them off each other only long enough to watch as my blackened thumb approached their brows. The attorney who rushed from his busy office and barely made it in time to get in line will die as surely as the homeless person who came out in the bus for a hot meal and a warm bed. All these faces, young and old, rich and poor, all colors, all circumstances, all one day closer to the inevitable. I can understand why we try to avoid it. Who wants to be reminded of their own mortality?

No one wants to be reminded, of course, which is why Ash Wednesday is important. It is important because we are all of us prone to forgetting that we are mortal. In our forgetfulness, we are apt to think that we are responsible for all we are and all we have. In our forgetting, we are tempted to fall headlong into a culture that is, as my old professor Peter Hodgson says, "soulless, aggressive, nonchalant, and nihilistic."

When we remember we are dust and to dust we shall return, we affirm the heart of the Reformed Tradition, "God is God, and we are not." We acknowledge our utter dependence on God. We recognize that each breath we draw is gift, and each day we live is grace. We are freed from striving, freed from anxiety, freed from fear. We are dust. We belong to God. On Ash Wednesday, we remember who we are.

I hope at some point tomorrow, whether you receive ashes or not, you will take the time to begin your holy Lent by remembering:

You are dust.
You belong to God.

First Post

I am making a tentative step into the blogging world with this post. I intend it to be what the title suggests, a place to stop off and enjoy a wee dram of whatever suits my (and your) fancy.

"A wee dram," for the uninitiated, is a Scottish phrase used to describe a small amount of the local beverage of choice (usually a single malt of one sort or another). Used here, it refers to the sharing of small amounts of whatever is on my mind regarding life in the church or out. I hope it will not be a monologue, but rather a chance for interaction. I am one of those Presbyterians who still believes we are better together than apart, and that means all of us, especially those with whom I may disagree. So I welcome conversation with all who are willing to talk, whether Presbyterian or something else.

And so it begins...