Epiphany on the Way to Lent and Easter

Shattered shards of clay pots, that’s all we really are. Knowing it deep within and being reminded often—whether in dreams by night or everyday events--there is no hiding from our own brokenness as human beings. Is that why the pervasive anxieties all around are so hard to truly face, much less absorb? The Old Testament Nathan’s prophecy to King David was hardly spent on him. It continues through the ages, coming down on us as well: “You are the man!”

One can, of course, like so many keep doing, run and hide from it all, proudly pretending innocence. We see it all the time in others and know it in ourselves, deep within. Ought we not rather thank God that he persists in calling the likes of Nathan to break through our hidden nature and confront us with our sin?

What’s so amazing about grace is that the God who thus probes our depths does so not to destroy our lives but to recreate them from within. Stay up on your own high hill and you will be brought low. But receive him in the valleys of your life and you will be exalted.

Read the hymn by Joseph Hart (1712-1766) below—even sing it to the Beach Spring tune if you can. Allow it to illumine the darkness within you. And let it awaken the joyous reminder that God sent his Son to make us whole.

Come, you sinners, poor and needy, bruised and broken by the fall;
Jesus ready stands to save you, full of pard’ning grace for all.
He is able, he is able, he is willing, doubt no more;
he is able, he is able, he wis willing, doubt no more.

Let not conscience make you linger, nor of fitness fondly dream;
all that he requires of sinners is to turn and trust in him.
He will save you, he will save you, ‘tis the Gospel’s constant theme.
He will save you, he will save you, ‘tis the Gospel’s constant theme.

Lo! th’incarnate God, ascended, pleads the merit of his blood;
venture on him, venture wholly, let no other trust intrude:
none but Jesus, none but Jesus can do helpless sinners good.
None but Jesus, none but Jesus can do helpless sinners good.

The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 324

Laugh a Little--at Yourself!

I've always felt that one measure of good people is their ability to laugh at themselves! We all know folks, of course, who love to poke fun at others. But play a joke on them, or tell one at their expense, and they are easily offended. Why is that, if not that they are too insecure to face up to their own foibles?

I once heard my father refer to a hymn often sung by the earliest Covenanters that included a phrase something like "tell me my faults." Pietists recognize the wisdom in that, even while resisting the spirit of some who take it too far. What matters in the long run is one's ability both to tell a joke and receive one at his or her own expense. A good rule of thumb in that regard is probably learning the high art of telling jokes occasionally on oneself.

J.J. Daniels (1862-1957), a Covenant pioneer pastor, put it well, balancing his gifts as a story teller with the willingness to be a story receiver as well. His advice, written down by Herbert Palmquist, is full of communal wisdom and well worth pondering: "There is so much bad in the best of us, and so much more in the worst of us, that it behooves all of us to keep our eye on the rest of us."

Wandering and Wondering

It was late October, last year. My son Peter and I were wandering with a tour group among the ancient pyramids in Egypt. Full of wonder at their magnificence I was already entering into my biblical inheritance as the spiritual son of a wandering Aramean.

How much deeper than my nationalistic roots, so rich in themselves, do my roots in the faith extend? Am I not, like my biblical fathers, still going forth as Abraham did "to a land he knew not where"? Shall I identify myself only as a Swedish American and not an Egyptian? Caucasian only, and not Middle Eastern as well?

Some thought it silly to purchase a Bedouin head covering, but it seemed natural doing it, feeling somehow as at home in their native habitat as in my own. Where is my home after all, I wondered in those moments? Who are truly my father and mother, and who truly my sisters and brothers?

To be thus drawn beyond oneself into the broader stream of life, even if only momentarily, was to be reminded that life in God is so much broader, so much deeper than we tend often to realize. It is also far more satisfying, as was immediately manifest in the shielding from the sun and its heat my new acquisition was providing.

What followed over two weeks on tour were further illustrations of the same awareness, in yet more climes and circumstances. My Lord came out of Egypt--"that Scripture might be fulfilled," the Bible says. He also came out of Bethlehem of Judea, and Nazareth and Capernaum in Galilee. And in the city of God that is Jerusalem he so identified even with those who crucified him that he made clear the concern and love of God for everyone.

On one of our last days in Jerusalem before returning home, I bought for my son and me--from a Muslim merchant, no less--two lovely handmade liturgical stoles, each embedded with a series of Jerusalem crosses. "I have Jesus in my heart," that Muslim said with deep emotion, "and you have Jesus in your hearts. Someday when all the foolishness of this life is over, we will meet together with him in eternity."

Surely wearing a Bedouin head dress doesn't make me a Bedouin. Nor does buying a liturgical stole from a Muslim make me a Muslim. But both of them bought will linger in my possession as sacred reminders of my own calling from God to see and regard all humanity in the greater light of his love.

'The People, Yes!'

Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote in his letters and papers from prison (Prisoner for God, Macmillan, 1959): In the last month or two I have learned for the first time in my life how much comfort and help I get from others.... We often want to do everything ourselves, but that is a mark of false pride. Even what we owe to others belongs to ourselves, and is a part of our own lives. And when we want to calculate just how much we have learnt ourselves and how much we owe to others, it is not only un-Christian but useless. What we are in ourselves and what we owe to others makes us a complete whole (p. 78).

Other greats in human history have witnessed to the same. Carl Sandburg's epic poem ("The People, Yes!") pays similar tribute. And Harry Truman, when asked in leaving the presidency of our nation whether he felt diminished by becoming just another commoner once more, flashed back by declaring that he was "highly honored to be returning to the people."

Covenanter L. Arden Almquist, after a lifetime of service as a missionary doctor and later as head of our world missions program, said in his marvelous book, Debtor Unashamed (Covenant Press, 1993), that he learned more from the African people than he taught them.

In my own life as a human being--not to mention my vocation as a minister--I can witness in my own small way to the same. It is people that matter to God, and all who learn to love and serve them as he does, even in their foibles and imperfections, finds not only the high honor of being named among them but the reward of losing one's life for his sake and the gospel's in service to them.

Ariana Paz has written of Carl Sandberg: "His words are still relevant today and his belief in the power of people to go forward no matter the odds is simply yesteryear's 'Yes We Can.' These are tough times for our country and for all of us individually but his words to me say, 'yes we will prevail.'"

All leaders, religious and secular, would do well to pray daily and earnestly with hymn-writer Fred Kaan:

Teach us, O Lord, your lessons, as in our daily life
we struggle to be human and search for hope and faith.
Teach us to care for people, for all, not just for some,
to love them as we find them, or as they may become.

The Covenant Hymnal: A Worshipbook, No. 589)