It's Good Friday.  Around the world today, people claiming the name of Christ will gather to commemorate His death nearly 2000 years ago.  Whatever our denominational differences or various traditions, we today proclaim in faith that somehow His death is good news for us.  It is one of the Christian faith's distinctive features, this doctrine of the vicarious atonement of Jesus of Nazareth.  No other faith system has deity bridging the gap between infinity and humanity through suffering and death.  At the cross justice and mercy meet as sin is dealt with as truly abhorrent and mercy makes a way for grace to restore the sinner to life when we deserved death.

In Jesus' own teaching he said repeatedly that there was a connection between receiving forgiveness from God and extending it to others.  In one such instance he rebuked Simon (not Peter) for his attitude toward the sinful woman who anointed Jesus' feet, saying "Therefore I tell you, her sins, which are many, are forgiven-for she loved much.  But he who is forgiven little, loves little." (Luke 7:47)  Those who are the beneficiaries of the lavish provisions of Christ's death cannot help but deal with the sins of other in the same way, by absorbing them themselves.

With this understanding of forgiveness and the meaning of Christ's death, it would be well of us on this day to reflect on Western evangelicalism's emphasis on individual responsibility where sin and salvation are concerned.  There is a tension in Scripture that must be observed between individual responsibility and corporate solidarity and identity.  We see both taught clearly whether it is in the OT prophet Ezekiel saying "the soul who sins shall die" (Ezekiel 18:4) alongside the first of the ten commandments in which God says he visits "the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me" (Ex. 20:5), or in the NT Ananias and Sapphira being held to account individually for their sin while the church in Corinth suffered corporately in sickness because of the congregation's sins (1 Cor. 11:30). 

We have tended to emphasize individual responsibility and minimize corporate realities that are taught by Scripture.  This becomes apparent when we try to distance ourselves from sins of the past by saying that we are not responsible for what went on before us.  On one level this is true, but the Psalms give us examples of God's people collectively confessing the sins of their ancestors and Nehemiah acted on that example in leading the people of his day in repentance and confession of the sins of their fathers going back 1000 years (Neh. 9).  Indeed, the very need and possibility of the cross is rooted in the idea that one individual can stand in for the actions and fates of others.  We stand condemned in Adam, being counted as guilty participants in his sin.  Because of the cross we stand justified in Christ, being counted as righteous participants in his death and resurrection.  So if anyone has a basis to claim appropriate and meaningful responsibility for historical sins, it is believers.  We have a prophetic opportunity furnished by the gospel to lead in confession and repentance of our nation's sins and in so doing, "bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ."

On this Good Friday I am grateful that "by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous." (Rom. 5:19)

That clip is from one of my favorite movies, the 70s screwball comedy "What's Up Doc?"  It takes place in the courtroom scene at the end of the film where Ryan O'Neil's hapless character is trying to explain the unbelievable (and hilarious) series of events that have transpired over the previous 90 minutes.  The judge's wish to "skip over this part" became a catch phrase in our household growing up whenever we encountered something unpleasant or confounding.

As I continue this series of posts about the spiritual disciplines, this clip reminds me of our approach to Scripture.  The Bible, in its two Testaments, 66 books and no fewer than 2 dozen different types (genres) of literature, can be a bewildering read.  Many of us, influenced in large part by the preaching we have received, gravitate towards the New Testament and Psalms.  Fully 2/3 of our Bibles are darkened to our minds as we rarely (if ever) look at them.  

I understand why this is the case.  The laws of Moses, especially Leviticus, can be horribly perplexing when they aren't downright boring.  They strike us as antiquated and in some cases unjust.  The prophets use imagery that is alien to us, speak of nations and kingdoms that no longer exist, and their oracles often seem like unsolvable riddles.  The wisdom literature is oftentimes little better and while we know the story of Job, his dialogue with his friends can seem repetitive and inaccessible to us.  Even the historical books, which contain narratives that should be easier to grasp, can be challenging with the complicated stories of political intrigue that often seem far removed from having very much to do with God and His plan, to say nothing of the genealogies of Genes and Chronicles and the land distribution registry that takes up 10 chapters of Joshua.  All of this leads us to have Bibles that are well-marked where Paul or John is the author, but that have huge sections where the pages have never seen daylight.  

When it comes to the discipline of the Word, there are numerous ways to interact with it.  I broadly think in terms of contemplative disciplines and cognitive disciplines.  Cognitive disciplines seek to fill our minds with the truths of Scripture to inform our thinking.  Among these disciplines are reading, study, memorization, preaching and teaching (providing and hearing).  Contemplative disciplines seek to fill our hearts with the truths of Scripture to inform our affections and wills.  Among these are meditation, prayer and praise, life application, and devotional reading.  Simple reading is one of the cognitive disciplines and is, of necessity, our starting point for any of the others.  

Paul, in his farewell charge to the Ephesian elders reminded them that as an essential feature of his ministry he "did not shrink from declaring to [them] the whole counsel of God" (Acts 20:27).  In other words, God has made known His will, purpose and decrees throughout history and particularly preserved much of that revelation in what we refer to as "The Bible".  To expose ourselves primarily to less than 1/3 of it is dangerous as we will certainly miss some things.  We will also become prone to be selective in what we choose to hear God say to us.  In other words, we reach a point where we want to "skip over this part".  

I have taken this charge from Paul directly to heart in how I plan my preaching calendar each year.  The Word is always about Jesus in some way, so each year we spend the time between Advent and Resurrection Sunday in a Gospel.  The rest of the year we spend time in one Old Testament narrative (going through them chronologically), one non-narrative Old Testament series (Wisdom, Law, Prophet, etc.) and one New Testament epistle.  This "balanced diet" is complemented by the fact that, other than the gospels, I will not preach a book twice until I've from every book at least once.  This has produced the "12 year plan" for my preaching that we are now four years into.  My goal is to remove some of the obstacles to our grasping of certain parts of Scripture and to equip us to be confident to hear God's voice from every part of His book. 

So let me encourage you to evaluate your discipline of reading.  It is not necessary to understand fully everything you read, that is for the discipline of study.  It is not necessary that you immediately make sense of how to obey what you read, that is for the discipline of application.  It is not necessary that you feel your heart warmed to God by what you read, that is for the discipline of devotion.  It is an act of humility to yield ourselves to His word simply because it is His word.  We should expect that it will often not be immediately appealing to us.  He had to speak precisely because we are in error.  So regard the difficulties as an invitation to look closer rather than looking away.  If there are portions of Scripture you have never read, or only read once or twice, consider starting there.  Consider a one year plan to read the whole Bible through (there are numerous options for this, and I have created my own if you are interested).  Whatever you do, I encourage you to read the Book and don't be surprised if there is something significant in the parts you may have been tempted to skip over before.

​May God add to the reading of His Word!

I woke up praying this morning.  I do not say that piously, this is not a normal occurrence for me.  It's just that this morning as I opened my eyes, I felt my spirit groping towards my heavenly Father with an awareness that I needed to start the day with some acknowledgement of Him.  After a few stumbling attempts at formal prayer, the phrase came to mind "This is the day that the Lord has made, I will rejoice and be glad in it."  I expressed my heartfelt desire to God that whatever else might come after my feet hit the floor, I would approach it with joy, knowing the day was His and not mine.

My wife is away at the moment and so I am parenting our kids solo for a few days.  This means that one of my responsibilities is making my children presentable before taking them to school each morning.  Kelsey ensures that their wardrobe is set in advance and Calvin (our 9 year old) takes care of his own grooming.  Eva and Zoe, our twin 7 year olds, however, still need someone to do their hair each day, and right now that means me.  On my best day there are basically two things I can competently do with my daughter's hair: a pony tail and a half pony tail.  Involved in any attempt at styling their hair is the task of brushing it.  For whatever reason, it seems that if I am brushing their hair, my girls feel that I am scraping glass shards across their scalps based on their screams and tears.  I know about brushing from the bottom and brushing slowly and that I have no baseline for understanding the pain that girls experience since my hair has never reached below my ear lobes.  For all that, I think our neighbors have been tempted to call CPS on more than one occasion based on the howls coming from the upstairs bathroom at bedtime when I'm on duty.

So this morning was no different for one of my daughters, who was already in a tender spot because of some unmet expectations in her morning.  The tears and cries came which inevitably delayed the whole process of getting everyone ready and out the door for school.  Patience is a virtue in such cases, just rarely one of mine, and so I ordinarily would respond with frustration and abrupt words to move things along.  This morning, though, the words of my waking prayer came back to me in that moment and so I paused, held my daughter, and prayed aloud over her that she would know that this was God's day and that he had made this day from eternity past and known everything that would happen to her and her brother and sister in it from the beginning.  I prayed that she would be able to rejoice in that reality no matter what came her way.  She calmed down and our day proceeded as planned.

I just got a call from her school that she had a fall on the playground that resulted in a bloody nose but was nothing serious and that she is OK.  It occurred to me that God knew that would happen in this day He had made and I prayed again that my daughter would be able to rejoice in spite of such an unwelcome thing in her day (which I will no doubt hear about when I pick her up).  As I said, this is not my normal way of engaging with God or my kids, but it served as a teaching moment for me (more so than for my daughter I think), that I often think of prayer as asking God for things rather than as positioning myself in a posture before His throne.  My prayer this morning didn't "fix" anything and was't "answered" in the sense we usually think of.  Instead it put me, and I hope my daughter, where we needed to be to face the day.  It put us in the care of the Shepherd of our Souls.  It made me conscious of His reality as the day unfolded.  Like I said, not a normal day.  But then I think, why shouldn't this be my normal?

This past Friday, we said good-bye to arguably the most influential follower of Christ of the past century as Billy Graham was laid to rest in North Carolina.  In the days between his passing and the services on Friday numerous reflections were offered on his life and ministry and there was a remarkable consistency to them.  They all emphasized the integrity of his life and message, his gracious yet consistent presentation of truth, and above all, the simplicity of his message.  Many of those who wrote or spoke of his passing would not have agreed with, or believed in the gospel that Rev. Graham preached, but they all articulated what it was clearly, just as he had done.  

Such a testimony and life raise the question of how it was achieved.  I do not profess to be excessively knowledgable about Billy Graham's life and habits, but it was clear that he was more than a student of the Word, he was a lover of it.  The simplicity of the message he presented could easily be dismissed as an unintellectual faith, or as a rote formula.  However, to maintain such a simple message so consistently over so many years suggests not a rigid dogma but a deeply planted reality that informed all of who he was.

​I posted a couple of weeks ago about the significance of the spiritual disciplines for our growth as the first of a series that would explore the various disciplines as they have worked in my life.  So often we approach the disciplines as ends in and of themselves, rather than as a means to achieving our ends.  For instance, many of us have inherited the idea of maintaining a regular devotional practice, if we have been steeped in the American evangelical tradition.  This regular time spent in God's word is a noble and necessary pursuit for the follower of Christ.  Oftentimes, however, the task itself becomes the goal, as though the measure of how spiritual you are is how faithful you are with your "quiet times".  This has the effect of producing either crushing guilt or unbearably smug self-righteousness.  It's safe to say that if a spiritual discipline has these sorts of results, we are probably doing it wrong.  Billy Graham's use of the Word reflected someone whose heart had been captivated by it as a great love, not enslaved by it as a great burden nor elevated by it as a badge of pride.

So how do we imitate that sort of discipline?  For me, I have found that it starts with our goal.  The goal of Bible reading is not to read the Bible.  Jesus said to the religious leaders of His day: "You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life." (John 5:39-40)  Scripture is a window that reveals God to us.  Our goal in approaching any of the disciplines must be to encounter and know the living God so that we too might have life.  Any other goal will result in dead religion.  Scripture in this approach is the "living and active" word that becomes written on our hearts.  It keeps our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.  The result is that the more we know of Scripture, the simpler our message becomes and the surer we are of it.

In order to experience this powerful ministry of the word, we must move beyond simply reading to engage the person of Jesus in the word.  In my next post, I will examine the different ways in  which we can engage with Scripture that prevent it from being merely a dead letter, but rather the vehicle through which we hear and know the voice of our Shepherd.    

"If we as followers of Jesus can help make it harder for another human being to take a life, ... should we as followers of Jesus not be in favor of that? I mean, if we are truly pro-life?"
This question was posed by a friend of mine in a Facebook conversation last week surrounding the shooting in Florida.  It got me thinking (again) about how we as citizens of heaven might be able to speak into this debate in redemptive ways.
​
To be sure, the conversation regarding how to address mass shootings, and particularly those occurring in schools, is complex and fraught with challenges.  It is not made easier by the fact that deeply held convictions loom large on all sides.  As I have observed and engaged in the discussion in the last 5 days, I am concerned by how followers of Christ speak into the discussion.  What follows are three types of statements I have seen Christ-followers make both in recent days and in other similar discussions in recent years that I feel in some way betray our responsibility to present grace and truth as ambassadors of the Kingdom of Heaven.  My prayer is that we will take these observations to heart such that our conversation "might be always gracious, seasoned with salt, so [we] may know how [we] ought to answer each person" (Col. 4:6). 

1) It's a heart problem, bad people will disobey laws.  This line of thought is often accompanied by some analogy: vehicle deaths, opioids and illegal drugs, box cutters on 9/11, Hitler's use of cyanide gas and Cain's use of a rock or club to kill Abel (by the way, Genesis is silent about his weapon).  There are three problems with this approach.  First, it suggests that laws are useless unless they perfectly prevent crime, which is to argue against laws at all.  Of course the root problem of crime is the human condition of sin and only the gospel will ever perfectly address that.  However, Romans 13, among other passages, establishes laws as means of common grace to restrain sin, albeit imperfectly, in the meantime.  Second, in all of the instances I mentioned above, we do have laws to restrain the lethality of the objects by controlling them (we license drivers, register cars and have a legal drinking age; prescriptions are required for legal drugs; we now screen for any sharp objects on airplanes).  Third, it ignores the fact that while evil people will find a way to kill someone if they are determined to, not all weapons are equal in their effectiveness. In the case of mass shootings, the weapon used absolutely impacts the number of lives claimed (the Vegas shooting demonstrated that emphatically).  Ironically, Hitler turned to cyanide gas after finding that guns were too time consuming and expensive to achieve his purposes.  At the end of the day I'd rather face an evil person armed with a rock than with an AR-15.

2) Our culture has abandoned God and that's why these things happen.  There is no question that we live in a culture that is distant from God and resistant to His truth, but there are a few problems with this type of statement.  First, it implies that God is absent and uninvolved in the affairs of our nation, which misrepresents his sovereignty and grace.  More significantly, it implies that there was a time in which our nation and culture were somehow broadly aligned with God's ways.  It is beyond dispute that institutional Christianity used to occupy a more central place in our nation's life, but that is not the same thing as a heartfelt commitment to God and His ways.  If tolerance of violence or a disregard for life is a barometer of our nation's godliness, it would have to be observed that we have never had a robust moral character.  We actively endorsed the wholesale enslavement of Africans and slaughter and dispossession of Native Americans until 100-150 years ago.  Following that we endured a century of segregation that was accompanied by a culture of lynching without consequence in which thousands were killed as a spectacle to which children were often brought and of which postcards were made to send to family and friends with pictures of the event (for a detailed history of this check out this link   https://eji.org/reports/lynching-in-america).  In the midst of that we fought a war against tyranny and genocide but employed the targeting of civilian populations with firebombs as an acceptable strategy.  We then legalized abortion and now witness not just homicide (which has always been present) but indiscriminate mass killings.  To suggest violence and disregard for human life is new in our country is to ignore our history.  All nations have sins for which God will hold them accountable and all nations serve to restrain the worst of our evil by the existence of their cultures and governments.  No country is perfectly wicked, none is basically righteous, some nations are worse than others, but all nations are weighed in God's scales of justice and are found wanting.  All nations at all times need to hear the gospel call to turn to God, not to return to some mythical moment in their previous history.

3) There's nothing to be done.  While I have not seen anyone say this directly, it is often the implied conclusion of the previous two types of statements.  This is inexcusable as followers of Jesus.  If we have nothing to offer to our neighbors who suffer from these events and fears that benefits in the here and now we deny the truth of the gospel.  The gospel is not only a matter of the heart and is not only a matter of hope in eternity.  The hearts transformed by eternity give space for God's spirit to break forth in the here and now and produce foretastes of the Kingdom.  This line of thinking is denied by our posture towards other things.  Those who suggest there is nothing to be done legislatively or practically to mitigate mass shootings would never suggest that we not strive to see abortion restricted (although that is a heart issue as well), or that laws preventing racial discrimination have not improved things and shouldn't have been passed (although there is still work to do), or that while we will always have the poor among us that we should not seek to alleviate their suffering.

In short, the pessimistic fatalism that we often present with these lines of argument is in contrast to our calling to be beacons of joy and hope.  People without Christ can be expected to cast shadows but we should be the light of the world.

A pastor addressing a group of seminary students uttered that phrase Monday afternoon and it has been swirling in my mind ever since as I have tried to distill my feelings and thoughts in the wake of the horrendous events that unfolded this past Sunday in Texas.  It has been a challenge for me to give voice to everything in my heart regarding this tragedy,  In this post I don't intend to offer a theology of suffering or a recommendation of what a practical "gospel" response to the threat of violence looks like.  

When the shooting at Sandy Hook happened I was a school teacher and I couldn't help placing myself in that situation and realized that, given how I knew I would have responded had it been my school, Kelsey would have been a widow that day.  That event hit close to home in a way no other tragedy ever has.  Until Sunday.

I couldn't help but think of my congregation and to put myself in the place of the Pastor Frank Pomeroy.  I can easily imagine the special variety of survivor's guilt he will struggle with.  Shepherds always feel that they are responsible to be present with their flock, especially in times of great trial.  He is simultaneously mourning the loss of his daughter and 25 members of his church.  He is simultaneously juggling his personal grief, the ordinary burden a pastor carries when ministering to a grieving family times 25, and a national spotlight as the country's attention asks him to already render decisions about the future of his facility.

So while there are many thoughts I have regarding many theological and practical matters, none of them are clear because I can't shake the thought of what that pastor is experiencing and what I would be doing if in his place.  Because whether we like it or not, what was said to me on Monday is true: the sanctuary is not secure.  For centuries it was true that church buildings served as physical sanctuaries from violence because even the most lawless brigand respected the sanctity of the church.  That has not been true for some time and Sunday was just the most recent reminder.  And yet it is important for all of us to lean in to the other truth I encountered Monday from Isaiah 49:16 - "Yahweh has engraved you on the palm of his hand."  In an insecure time, we as his people, sheep and ungdershepherds (aka sheep), are always and ultimately secure, carved into the hand of our heavenly Father.  So we can say with another sheep: what can separate us from the love of God?  Shall terrorists or madmen, trucks or guns, hurricanes or wildfires?  No! In all these things we are more than conquerors through Christ.

See you all Sunday at the sanctuary.

As I drove in to work this morning, I heard on the radio that Gord Downie passed away earlier this week at the age of 53.  For those of you, who like me haven't the faintest idea who he was, let me share what I have learned.  He was apparently a big deal in Canada as the lead singer of the band The Tragically Hip.  A big enough deal that Canadian PM Justin Trudeau spoke about his passing and got fairly emotional doing so.  The radio station I was listening to played a portion of his remarks and a phrase stuck out to me.  He said that Gord loved Canada and not in a nebulous way but that he loved every corner and story and aspect of the country.  He then said that as great as Gord believed Canada was he knew it needed to be better and that he worked towards that end.

Hearing that emotional statement from Canada's leader about a musician's life and impact got me thinking.  It reminded me of what Alaina shared with us on Sunday from Jeremiah 29.  Most of us know verse 11 in which God assures the exiles that He has good plans for them.  We are less familiar with the verses that precede it and are foundational to it and that Alaina reminded us of.  Verses 4 through 7 tell the exiles to seek the good of the city that has exiled them.  They are instructed to seek its "shalom", its holistic peace, because in that will be found their shalom.

As I connected these two thoughts, I realized what is so distressing at times in this day of deep divisions, strife and protest.  So often the voices railing in our culture are one-note voices and that note is anger.  It is usually either the anger of protest or the anger of defensiveness.  Too often it seems that it is hard to tell whether the angry people love the people or the country they are angry with.  And far too often, our voices as followers of Jesus are of that one-note variety.  It is not only possible, it is necessary, as ambassadors of the gospel of reconciliation that we seek the shalom of our cities.  This means that we are neither complacent about those things that hinder shalom, nor that we approach those hindrances without a deep love for our city.  Not an abstract love of a nebulous idea, but the kind of love that Trudeau praised in Gord Downie.  Like I said, I don't know anything about the man other than what I heard this morning.  I do know that if I died, I'd want someone to be able to say of me that I loved my city that deeply and truly and that that love drove me to seek its shalom.

Some thoughts from yesterday's sermon application.  I know many of you were not there and for those that were, I sometimes find that seeing something in writing after hearing it can reinforce it.  So here are the three key takeaways from the story of Gideon in Judges 6-8.

1. Faith Not Fear
Writ large across the story of Scripture, from Genesis 3 until Revelation 20, we see this theme.  Adam and Eve are invited to live as image-bearing royal priests and administer God's good world, trusting in the goodness of his grace to give them everything they needed as an unmerited gift.  In eternity we will live in constant grateful recognition of that grace, and trust it fully so that our lives will be truly eternal and blessed.  In between that beginning and end, we see people struggling with various degrees of faith's dark twin, fear.  It is ultimately fear of God, fear that He does not love us or have our best in mind, or that he is not really good or that he is not really powerful enough to save us.  That is the root of sin and it replaces godly fear of God (faith) with the cowering fear of man.  Our response is to hide from relationship with God and others, to cover our shame and to fill the void that the absence of genuine relationship creates.  Gideon demonstrates all of this.  He hides from his family, he covers the shame of his weakness in repeated tests of God's goodness and power and he fills the void by tyrannically abusing his position among his fellow Israelites.  We must ask ourselves what we fear and replace it with faith in the God who has called us into His service.

2. 300 by the Numbers
In all of Gideon's doubting, God never abandons him and as the God Who Hears, is faithful to respond to all of Gideon's doubts, tests and questions.  Part of that is the famous whittling down of Gideon's army of 32,000 that is "too many" for God to save Israel from the countless army of Midian and their allies.  The two-stage reduction leaves Gideon with 300 men.  These were chosen by God and it occurs to me that they could have left when looking at the odds but they chose to stay.  It also occurs to me that God could have used zero people, but chose to use 300.  So as I reflect on our church, I hear the call of God for each of us to be committed to His service with our time and treasure.  Here are some numbers for you.

People who call Berean "home": about 400
Average Sunday attendance at present: between 225 and 275
Implication: Most of us are here only 2 or three times a month and that's just Sunday worship.  The church (that's all of us) exists to "Honor, Grow and Serve".  It is not unreasonable to suggest that our commitment to weekly worship attendance be matched by a weekly commitment to serve.  On an annual basis this would mean 52 active points of service per member, or roughly 20,000 total commitments per year.  Many of our ministries (Gathering, Choirs, Bible Studies) meet only half the year and do not require an every week commitment.  Other opportunities (committees, praise team, Treehouse) are monthly commitments.  Each of us should examine how much we are currently doing, and candidly, too many of us are not yet doing anything.  Gideon needed all 300 and so do we.

Number of "Giving Units" in the church: 211
Number that have given during 2017: 129
Number that have given to the Capital Campaign overall: 106
Implication: nearly half of our people have not invested any financial resources in the mission of our church.  We invest in things we believe are important and our giving should never be out of guilt or obligation but out of an irrepressible enthusiasm for God's mission.

3. Changing Clothes
There's a fascinating statement made of Gideon in Judges 6:34.  The English translations render it "The Spirit of the LORD clothed Gideon".  The Hebrew is fairly clear, if oddly worded, that it should read "The Spirit of Yahweh clothed himself with Gideon."  Think about that.  God put Gideon on in order to work his salvation for Israel.  Now Gideon, inexplicably managed to ignore this powerful reality of God's empowering presence and continued to act in fear, immediately testing God with the double fleece experiment.  That's what Paul calls "quenching the Spirit" I think.  In New Covenant terms though, the church as the Body of Christ and the dwelling place of the Spirit uses the same language.  The Spirit puts on the Church (that is, Jesus) in order to work God's deliverance.  And so we are commanded in Romans 13:14 to "put on Christ".  While I cannot explain the mystery of why God, from Creation and into eternity, insists on working in and through fallible and finite humans when He could just do it Himself, it is abundantly clear that he does.  He wants to put us on and do His work through us.  Will we let Him or will we quench the Spirit within us?