Rally day is always a festival day for me. The joys of believing are specially entwined with the joys of belonging as one finds one's way to the House of God. What a privilege we are given to gather with God's people week after week.
On arriving today I was reminded also once again of the care given that House in preparation for our coming--hardly noticed by many, perhaps, consistent as it is. We have more or less come to expect it. Hidden disciplines extended, day by day and week after week, tending to floors, walls, and carpets--not to mention all the special setups required of doorkeepers who thus minister to us by facilitating our worship, study, and fellowship.
A day in thy courts is better than a thousand, the psalmist says (84:10a). Indeed! That's exactly how I felt from arriving until leaving God's House today. And I realized the whole time while there how in no small measure the pleasure of it was due to staff colleagues who in devotion no less than mine--perhaps even greater--silently make their witness to what the psalmist then goes on to say, I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness (84:10b).
May God help us as ministers to be as faithful in our preparations for serving God's people as those doorkeepers are who prepare the way for us who come in and go out from God's House week after week. And may he give us the grace not only to recognize their combined efforts but offer each of them personally out thanks as well!
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Monday, September 7, 2009
Why Write?
On this Labor Day I am making my way through Ralph Wood's recent book on Flannery O'Connor, arguably in his view the greatest Christian writer in 20th century America. The book catalogues her fascination with what he calls "the Christ-Haunted South," which is the nexus out of which she wrote. A devout Catholic, O'Connor was both fascinated by and admiring of the a fundamentalist Baptist tradition that she saw--in its spirit if not always its theology--as an antidote to the pervasive nihilism in both the secular and religious life of her time.
O'Connor's writing is not an easy read. Her short stories, the main body of her work, are filled with weird characters and strange evocative narrative that seem on the surface almost scandalous and therefore irrelevant, less than acceptable to average people. Yet time spent in them creates in one a passion for reading more of her and her characters--largely I think because they point to a passion for the life of faith that unmasks the trivialities that so dominated the secular and religious life of her time.
Afflicted with lupus and dying already in her thirties, the tenor of her spirit remains a haunting reminder to all of us that death itself, as she once wrote, is "the most significant position life offers the Christian," just as, Wood reminds us, the psalmists say in 39:4 ("Lord, make me to know mine end and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am") and 90:4 and 12 ("So teach us to number our days ... that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom").
With a deft sense of style as well as humor, and a dogged determination not to think of herself as anything special, this literary giant put her whole vocation as a writer in wonderful perspective. Reflecting on Jesus parable of the talents she wrote a friend, "The human comes before art. You do not write the best that you can for the sake of the art but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as he sees fit."
No wonder being dead she yet speaks so powerfully and redemptively. The God she loved and believed in so passionately is seeing to that.
O'Connor's writing is not an easy read. Her short stories, the main body of her work, are filled with weird characters and strange evocative narrative that seem on the surface almost scandalous and therefore irrelevant, less than acceptable to average people. Yet time spent in them creates in one a passion for reading more of her and her characters--largely I think because they point to a passion for the life of faith that unmasks the trivialities that so dominated the secular and religious life of her time.
Afflicted with lupus and dying already in her thirties, the tenor of her spirit remains a haunting reminder to all of us that death itself, as she once wrote, is "the most significant position life offers the Christian," just as, Wood reminds us, the psalmists say in 39:4 ("Lord, make me to know mine end and the measure of my days, what it is; that I may know how frail I am") and 90:4 and 12 ("So teach us to number our days ... that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom").
With a deft sense of style as well as humor, and a dogged determination not to think of herself as anything special, this literary giant put her whole vocation as a writer in wonderful perspective. Reflecting on Jesus parable of the talents she wrote a friend, "The human comes before art. You do not write the best that you can for the sake of the art but for the sake of returning your talent increased to the invisible God to use or not use as he sees fit."
No wonder being dead she yet speaks so powerfully and redemptively. The God she loved and believed in so passionately is seeing to that.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Christ's Body, the Church
In his annual report to our denomination this year, Covenant President Gary Walter used an image that we all do well to heed. It had specifically to do with how we see ourselves as individuals in relation to our local church, and how we see ourselves as churches in relation to the denomination. Taking us back to root understandings when the Covenant was founded, he laid out before us as individuals and churches a powerful--and I believe biblical--reminder:
"Did you ever stop to think that we chose for ourselves the name The Evangelical Covenant Church, not The Churches of the Evangelical Covenant? We purposefully chose the single, more organic name Church.
"It intentionally invokes Paul’s teaching on the living Body of Christ…made up of many parts, yes, but never standing apart from one another. “Churches” for me has an organizational implication of retaining separateness; “Church” as a living organism has the implication of essential oneness and unity."
What a difference that understanding has made in my life. From childhood it supplied to and in me a security that being essentially on my own could never have supplied. It not only planted my spirit in the rich loam of being "In It Together," as President Walter has now termed it, but set me free from the awful spectre of continually wondering, like so many are these days, "How am I doing?"
The greatest challenge of our time in my view, religiously and politically, is to rediscover our identity--where "home" is for us, the place from which we venture out to work in the Lord's vineyard every day and return at night to renew and rest our spirits.
I once asked an earnest and energetic young man part-way into a local church job interview, "Where is home for you,?" Not lacking in ideas as to his ministry and his gifts, that query somehow struck him to the quick. "That's a great question," he replied, "I'm not sure I know!" What was supposed to be a half-hour interview turned into a two-hour dialogue that moved us both. And on rising after prayer, before leaving, he asked simply, "Could I have a hug?"
The Covenant Church we have inherited as Church--one body of churches conjoined in Christ--is a treasure. What becomes of it now moving forward depends on whether we heed our President's wise reminder that we are "In It Together."
Are you praying for, present with, and supportive of the whole body we are as a Covenant Church, not to mention Christ's larger body of which it is only a part? Is the Covenant just a cardboard house for you to do your own thing, or a home your inhabit and care about with all the others who bear its name with you in the larger body of Christ?
"Did you ever stop to think that we chose for ourselves the name The Evangelical Covenant Church, not The Churches of the Evangelical Covenant? We purposefully chose the single, more organic name Church.
"It intentionally invokes Paul’s teaching on the living Body of Christ…made up of many parts, yes, but never standing apart from one another. “Churches” for me has an organizational implication of retaining separateness; “Church” as a living organism has the implication of essential oneness and unity."
What a difference that understanding has made in my life. From childhood it supplied to and in me a security that being essentially on my own could never have supplied. It not only planted my spirit in the rich loam of being "In It Together," as President Walter has now termed it, but set me free from the awful spectre of continually wondering, like so many are these days, "How am I doing?"
The greatest challenge of our time in my view, religiously and politically, is to rediscover our identity--where "home" is for us, the place from which we venture out to work in the Lord's vineyard every day and return at night to renew and rest our spirits.
I once asked an earnest and energetic young man part-way into a local church job interview, "Where is home for you,?" Not lacking in ideas as to his ministry and his gifts, that query somehow struck him to the quick. "That's a great question," he replied, "I'm not sure I know!" What was supposed to be a half-hour interview turned into a two-hour dialogue that moved us both. And on rising after prayer, before leaving, he asked simply, "Could I have a hug?"
The Covenant Church we have inherited as Church--one body of churches conjoined in Christ--is a treasure. What becomes of it now moving forward depends on whether we heed our President's wise reminder that we are "In It Together."
Are you praying for, present with, and supportive of the whole body we are as a Covenant Church, not to mention Christ's larger body of which it is only a part? Is the Covenant just a cardboard house for you to do your own thing, or a home your inhabit and care about with all the others who bear its name with you in the larger body of Christ?
Thursday, September 3, 2009
Meet Alice and Art
I first met them three or four years ago, while serving as Interim Pastor at Salem Covenant Church. I had heard that Alice had taken sick and was soon to be hospitalized. So I phoned their home to inquire if I might visit them, and was greeted by Art's voice. "Today would not be a good day," he said. "I'll be gone all afternoon." I asked him to take my number and call me back when it would be convenient and was startled to hear him say, "I can't. I'm blind."
Here was a woman whose long pilgrimage through illness has led now to chemo treatments for cancer. And a loving husband whose own condition, I later discovered, not only included blindness but a serious heart condition as well. Every visit I have made to the Blaisdell home since then, not to mention Unity Hospital, has left me praising God for these two.
Blaisdell seems an appropriate name for them, almost parabolic in the sound of it. Blazing their way together through life's dell, helpless in one way healthwise, but for the most part stable in spirit--even cheerful. People of faith, hope, and love. Uncomplaining in adversity. Wanting our prayers, of course, and glad for our presence alongside. Yet not clutching straws, realistic and in their own way vibrant.
We laughed last night about that first phone call, and in the glow of evening talked openly about all that lies ahead--for her and for him. Turning to Scripture I read from the Psalms, Matthew, and Romans, clearly food for their souls. You could see it in their eyes. I prayed--asking God to sustain their spirits and give them hope. Then Alice took over, wanting to tell me about of her recent trip with her daughters--over 3,000 miles by car no less--to extended family in far away Idaho and all that meant to her. In her condition family wanted her to fly but she insisted she wanted an auto trip. When it was time to go, I asked them to rise, gathered them close, and with my hands on their heads pronounced the benediction.
As I drove off, Art was standing at the door, buoyed in spirit, I believe, as if longing for more. And I was in tears of gratitude for the privilege God has given me just to visit such saints in light, whose lives and spirits in spite of their condition are such a powerful witness to the things in life that remain and matter for Christians.
Surely God himself has blest and kept Alice and Art. Clearly he is still making his face to shine upon them and be gracious to them. Yet not only so. Time and again, through them, he is also lifting up the light of his countenance on me.
Here was a woman whose long pilgrimage through illness has led now to chemo treatments for cancer. And a loving husband whose own condition, I later discovered, not only included blindness but a serious heart condition as well. Every visit I have made to the Blaisdell home since then, not to mention Unity Hospital, has left me praising God for these two.
Blaisdell seems an appropriate name for them, almost parabolic in the sound of it. Blazing their way together through life's dell, helpless in one way healthwise, but for the most part stable in spirit--even cheerful. People of faith, hope, and love. Uncomplaining in adversity. Wanting our prayers, of course, and glad for our presence alongside. Yet not clutching straws, realistic and in their own way vibrant.
We laughed last night about that first phone call, and in the glow of evening talked openly about all that lies ahead--for her and for him. Turning to Scripture I read from the Psalms, Matthew, and Romans, clearly food for their souls. You could see it in their eyes. I prayed--asking God to sustain their spirits and give them hope. Then Alice took over, wanting to tell me about of her recent trip with her daughters--over 3,000 miles by car no less--to extended family in far away Idaho and all that meant to her. In her condition family wanted her to fly but she insisted she wanted an auto trip. When it was time to go, I asked them to rise, gathered them close, and with my hands on their heads pronounced the benediction.
As I drove off, Art was standing at the door, buoyed in spirit, I believe, as if longing for more. And I was in tears of gratitude for the privilege God has given me just to visit such saints in light, whose lives and spirits in spite of their condition are such a powerful witness to the things in life that remain and matter for Christians.
Surely God himself has blest and kept Alice and Art. Clearly he is still making his face to shine upon them and be gracious to them. Yet not only so. Time and again, through them, he is also lifting up the light of his countenance on me.
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