Loving, Fearing

I was glad that God (I thought) had opened the door to something that I wanted very much – something I almost ached for, something I prayed for. In a very short time, with confusion, I’ve given up on it in fear of the Lord. The fear is real.

I’m flawed, and my understanding of the Lord is flawed, and no doubt that’s where the confusion comes from. But the only course that I can take is the one that, rightly or wrongly, I think that I should take.

But at least an essay sprouts in the ashes.

1. Everybody needs a Zipporah.

Maybe Moses was so crazy-in-love with his sons that he couldn’t bear to inflict the pain of circumcision on them. So on his way back to Egypt, God tried to kill him. Zipporah his wife saved Moses by circumcising his son and touching the foreskin to Moses’s "feet" (a euphemism for genitals). She said, "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!" (Exodus 4:25 (NRSV).) God left Moses alone then.

2. Touched by an angel, almost.

Baalam son of Beor, a prophet of God, was on his way to the Moabite king. The king had summoned him to curse Israel, so that the Moabites might defeat them in battle. An angel stood in Baalam’s path, ready to kill him. He could not see the angel, but his donkey could. The donkey balked three times, and Baalam beat it twice and made it go forward. The third time the donkey balked, it couldn’t go to the left or right, because the angel of the Lord stood in a narrow place with his sword drawn. So the donkey sat down under Baalam.

Baalam beat the donkey with his staff, and donkey spoke to him. Then Baalam looked and saw the angel. It terrified him, and he lived. But later he helped Israel’s enemies against the Israelites. Maybe his new donkey was less glib. He was killed by the Israelites while he was among the Midianites.

The most frightening part of this strange story is that before his near-fatal trip to join the Moabites, Baalam refused to go with them; but when they importuned, he consulted God, and God told him to go. Yet God was angry that he went. (Numbers 22.)

3. A place of threshing.

King David angered the Lord by conducting a census of the military-aged men of Israel and Judah. God sent a destroying angel against David’s kingdom. The angel killed 70,000. David saw the angel as it stood above the threshing floor of Araunah the Jebusite. (2 Samuel 24.) (In the parallel account in1 Chronicles, the threshing floor belongs to Ornan the Jebusite.)

The angel stood with his sword stretched over Jerusalem. David feared the angel. Instructed by the angel, he built an alter on the threshing floor and sacrificed to the Lord. Then the Lord told the angel to sheath his sword. It was there that Solomon built the temple of the Lord.

This story in 2 Samuel 24 begins, "Again, the anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying ‘Go, count the people of Israel and Judah.’" (NRSV) 1 Chronicles 21 begins, "Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to count the people of Israel." (1 Chronicles 21:1 (NRSV).)

4. A place of sifting.

After the last supper, before he went to the Mount of Olives, where he was arrested, Jesus said to his disciple, "Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers." (Luke 22:31 (NRSV).) The metaphor "sift all of you like wheat" is interesting when you remember that God stayed his destroying angel on the threshing floor of Araunah (or Ornan).

5. Love or fear?

Should we fear God or love him? The Bible says both. "Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell." (Matthew 10:28 (NRSV).) "‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment." (Matthew 22:37-38 (NRSV).)

To say that we should fear God makes me feel spiritually primitive compared to my friends who walk only in the love of their loving father. It does. I’m told that the most frequent phrase in the Bible is "fear not". I trust that’s true. But it also feels weird to want to apologize for saying that it’s right to do what the Bible says, and the Bible plainly says, "Fear the Lord."

We might think that it’s one or the other, but we can hold both thoughts. That’s possible if we think of a destroying angel in our path, with his sword drawn, and his eyes on our necks. And God holding him back. We love God for his protection; we fear him for the possibility that he might withdraw that protection.

It’s possible if we think of Satan demanding to beat us like stalks of wheat and to toss us into the air, to blow away like chaff. We love Jesus for praying for us, but we fear that he won’t.

6. Primitive.

Still, some people reject the idea of fearing God as a primitive idea for primitive people who cling to a primitive form of Christianity. A highly-regarded seminary professor said vehemently that God is always for us.

That was many years ago. The professor and I happened to be interested in the same woman. I had no business chasing her, because I was not her equal; he had no business, either, because he was married. He once asked me if I was being "good", and it seemed to be a taunt.

The right answer would have been "Yes" and "No", but if I had answered him I would have said "Yes" and believed it. And if he had asked me if I feared God, I don’t know what I would have said, but the truthful answer would have been "No". Two decades later, after what I think was my flight from my duty to God, after mental illness, and after several attempts to kill myself, I have learned to fear God.

Maybe it’s plausible to say that fear is a primitive response to God. But I needed it for the primitive part of me, and I still do. "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." (NRSV.)  Our spirits love; we need fear of the Lord to keep our flesh from overwhelming our spirits.

7. And yet.

But it has to be fear and love.

Since my time of madness, I’ve been exasperated because it seems that people take God’s mercy for granted. After my hope was restored, I labored to do right, to live up to the professor’s taunt, to be good. (I’ve mentioned the professor twice. Bless him. I was acquainted with him maybe two decades ago; I have no idea who he is today, and he may be a very good man. He was a good man then, at least in part, like me.)

Early Sunday morning a few weeks ago, I thought that God wanted me to go to both the early and the late services at my church. I thought that was crazy, and that the pastor would see me sitting in both services and think that I was a tool. And I didn’t know for sure that I was getting guidance, and I didn’t know for sure that it was from God. I decided to go to the early service, and then to pray about whether to stay for the second service. Based on what happened later, I think that God was behind this.

The sermon was about the grace of God. I didn’t like that; as I listened I mentally thumbed through my ideas about obedience being the important lesson for the comfortable in our time.

The sermon arose out of the pastor’s experience with watching sailboats on a lake in a park. The metaphor described how the boaters succeeded least who tacked straight into the wind. And it seemed plausible that God really had spoken to him in his place of need in that park. But as I listened, I realized that the sermon touched me, too, in my place of need.

Of course, the sermon was mostly the same in both services. But here’s the thing about the first service, the service that normally I don’t go to. Afterward, an elderly woman came up to me. She asked me if I was Ian that she knew from swimming at a certain pool in Riverside. I told her that in some ways she was right, because Ian is a variant of the name Jon, and I was a swimmer, but I was not the man she knew.

I felt affection for her, so I asked her name. It was Grace.

8. Summing up.

I hope I’ve learned not to bet against the mercy of God, but not to take his mercy for granted. Maybe to love God and to fear him is another way to say that.

9. Prayer (by John Newton).

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,
and grace my fears relieved;
how precious did that grace appear
the hour I first believed.

Shame and Its Uses

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! [Luke 13:34 (NRSV).]

1. Looking in.

Christians are mocked for "feeling guilty about being human." Thanks for that. I am human. And I am guilty.

Some things about me shame me. Some are things I do or have done; some are things I don’t do or haven’t done. I'm unhappy with some of my thoughts. Sometimes I find an attitude that I don’t know about until something happens that makes it rise to my awareness. It’s like kicking over a rock and finding a creepy, scaley thing.

Not that I want to play King of the Hill, grappling with all challengers to be Most Lowly. I know there's good in me. But this essay focusses on the blessing of knowing the other parts. Since mine is the only life I've lived, I use own my life for illustration.

Shame isn't popular, nor guilt. But if a thrifty hunter uses all parts of a deer, why should heaven waste any part of our common human experience?

2. Faith Jenga.

Faith is a game of Jenga. That’s the game with a small tower of stacked blocks of wood. The object is not to be the last one to pull out a piece of wood before the tower collapses. Stay with me. I’ll tie this in.

Some Christians won’t pull out a single block. Every part of the Bible, and every story in it, is historic and accurate in all its parts. Fine.

Other Christians pull out so many blocks that it’s a marvel that their faith-tower stands at all. OK.

I’m somewhere in between. But when the Bible says that God rewards those who seek him, I believe that. That's part of my Jenga faith-tower.

3. Gaining the image of God.

Maybe it’s a cliché  to say that God is not found on a mountain top, but in our hearts. So seeking God is the journey to grow into the image of God.

In a way, it’s like a pilot overhearing nuances in the conversation of another pilot and knowing from those signs of shared knowledge that they share an occupation. Those signs might go over the heads of people who don't fly. Likewise, as we grow into the likeness of Christ, we recognize Jesus, and he recognizes us.

Not that we become perfect in this world. And not that we can advance without God’s grace. That’s true of believer and non-believer alike.

And not that gaining God’s image is all internal and detached from what we do. It isn’t. What we do, how we treat people, how we serve them, is the essence of godliness.

But part of becoming more perfect is wanting to. And that’s where I began this essay, looking inside and feeling shame. I read an online newspaper, and I had a negative reaction to a person I read about because of his high merit and his race. My reaction shamed me. I feel shame as I write this. I did not know that that was in me, but God did. Now I know, and I can start to purge it, with God’s help, with all possible speed.

Humility has value.

4. Rebellion.

The point is, I suppose, that God blesses us by showing us what he sees but we don’t. He gives us eyes to look inward.

Not long ago, I wrote an essay (Sowing with Tears) in which I associated youthful disobedience to God with the collapse of my life. To use the Jenga metaphor in a different way, I pulled out too many elements of faithfulness, and the tower came down.

That’s a plausible explanation but maybe not the right one, and certainly not the only one.

5. No catastrophe wasted.

It may be that God gave me directions, not because he expected me to do what he said or seemed to say, but so as not to waste the catastrophe that I was headed into. I had an unrealistically high opinion of myself (weirdly fused with fear and un-confidence). If I had not refused to do what I thought I should do, I would not have realized that I was like Jerusalem in the quotation at the beginning of this piece. God wanted to protect me from what he knew was coming. My arrogance kept me from getting under his wing. I did not board the ark as the clouds gathered.

My un-rightness was known to God. God, in his mercy, made it known to me. But it took everything going to hell for me to realize it.

After everything went to hell, for years I lived with the belief that salvation was lost to me. My prior unconscious sense that heaven was inevitable was stripped away like a grizzly strips bark from a tree. My pre-catastrophe confidence in the inevitability of heaven defied much of scripture. Now, I do not bet against the mercy of God, but I do not take it for granted, I hope. And I think that puts me in a better place than I was before.

6.  Yes, but.

But scripture supports a possibility apart from my life's collapse as the discipline of the Lord or a teachable moment. That's the possibility expressed by the book of Job, Psalm 44, and John 9:1-7 (esp., “'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  Jesus answered, 'Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.'" (NRSV).)

Sometimes, stuff just happens.

As to my history, I think the truth lies in the first two possibilities. There was a supernatural part to the collapse of my life. Much of my interpretation of the experience came from that part of it. In the years afterward, I've tried to put those parts into piles labeled "From God", "From Evil", and "From Illness".  My understanding is imperfect. The sorting continues.

Maybe as time goes by the sorting becomes less important, and I'm left with the blessing of humility in greater measure than I had before. I'm left with a gladness for the belated restoration of hope. Both of those are, to me, a kind of rebirth.

7. Prayer (Psalm 139:1-6 (NRSV).)

O Lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
   you discern my thoughts from far away.
You search out my path and my lying down,
   and are acquainted with all my ways.
Even before a word is on my tongue,
   O Lord, you know it completely.
You hem me in, behind and before,
   and lay your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
   it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Listen, Hear

I couldn't write this essay if I hadn't made so many mistakes. And I probably wouldn't want to.

1. The idea of this essay.

Hearing God is a struggle for me. I accept that some of what I hear is from God. Some is not. And sometimes what I hear from God is not clear.

To be guided by God is glorious and humbling. It's humbling, for me at least, because the uncertainty of it puts me face-to-face with the difference between me and the chosen disciples of Jesus. Jesus spoke in parables to the crowds; to the disciples he spoke plainly. I am more of the crowd than among the disciples, as my uncertainty about what follows shows.

That's fine. It compels me to seek God, which is what I want.

So these are ideas about hearing from God. The ideas are roughly in the order that they came to me as I wrote. The ideas tied to scripture are trustworthy. Hopefully, all of them at least circle scripture.

Clearly, these aren't rules, for three reasons. First, these ideas can’t contain the Lord. God breaks out of neat rules. Second, everyone is different; everyone’s experience of God is in some way different from anyone else’s. Third, I’m learning, myself.

So these are my assumptions.

2. Ideas about knowing God’s will.

I

The Bible is the foundation of knowledge of God’s will.

God can use whatever he wants to reveal his will.

Knowing God’s will is priceless. Our lives started a short time ago; he was before the universe. We see around us; his vision is infinite. "God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything." (1 John 3:20 (NRSV).)

God’s will is trustworthy. Our futures are safer in his hands than in our own.

Time usually is our friend to understand God’s will. When there is urgency, God can tell us. But we drive most haste, not God.

When we ask for guidance, we don’t necessarily get it right away.

When we ask for guidance, we don’t necessarily get what we expect. We don’t necessarily get the answer we want. God is unpredictable.

II

God rarely, if ever, speaks through lust. A spiritual person rarely says, "I think I’ll consult my sexual urges about that." (Or greed, or selfish ambition, or pride, for that matter.)

There are godly spirits, and there are un-godly spirits. Christianity, in some of its forms, loses much when it believes only in benign spirits. We can be fooled if we don’t know that some spirits are malign. "Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world." (I John 4:1 (NRSV).)
 
Our wish for something alone doesn’t mean that it’s God’s will. We need to pray for wisdom and seek confirmation.

Our opposition to something alone doesn't mean that it’s God's will. We need to pray for a will conformed to God’s, so that our own stubbornness is not a barrier; but we need to seek confirmation.

Sometimes we learn the why of God’s will only with time; and sometimes not in this lifetime. There’s stuff going on in heaven and earth, and we have no idea.

Peace is a better mark of God’s will than anxiety. Sometimes it pays to pray until we have peace.

Guidance that appeals to love is more likely from God than guidance that appeals to ambition.

III

Sometimes we know that God is guiding us; often we don’t, even if he is.

"[T]he wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy." (James 3:17 (NRSV).)

It may be easier to follow guidance about things that seem small, than about things that seem big. Like what to wear or where to have dinner, compared to who to marry or where to live. The importance of small-seeming things may be the practice they give on calling on the Lord, or in hearing him.

Discernment of spirits – telling which are from God and which are not – gets better over time with experience and reflection.

Discernment of spirits is one of the spiritual gifts mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12. Believers generally have these gifts in some degree. (They include, for example, faith and wisdom.) But some believers have an unusual, high ability at one or more of them.

It helps to seek prayer-support from others we trust to know God’s will.

It helps to seek counsel from others we trust to know God’s will.

IV

God told Abraham to sacrifice his son (and stopped him from sacrificing his son). We are not Abraham.

It's valuable to talk to others about how to know God's will.

Sometimes God addresses us, but we misunderstand his message.

Sometimes we make assumptions about God's meaning that go beyond his message.

 Persistence pays off. Or not. God is God. And that's a good thing.

We often want to know the wrong things.

We need to have a practice of worship and prayer and praise and thanksgiving and confession and study and meditation before we suddenly need to know God’s will. But it would likely be a mistake to let any lack of these things stop someone from calling on the Lord. Every journey has a start. Some journeys have many starts.

V

It helps to be in a supportive community when we call on the Lord. But any lack of community shouldn’t stop a person from calling on the Lord.

We all make mistakes. Sometimes, through a mystery of grace, our mistakes turn out to be the will of God.

Blessing follows obedience. Sometimes soon; sometimes not soon. Sometimes visible; sometimes invisible.

God guides us through circumstances. We need to practice looking for what God is doing, to join him in it. For this we need new eyes for God’s will that don’t look through lenses of our appetites.

Opposition and difficulty don’t necessarily mean that God is against what we’re doing; an open door doesn’t mean he’s necessarily for it.

Our appetites, fears, and frailties can interfere with our willing spirits like cataracts interfere with sight.

When God brings about circumstances, it may be a mistake to think that we know why he has done what he has done. It’s always a mistake to think that we know every reason. God’s thoughts and his purposes are higher than ours.

VI

The better we know God’s character, the easier it is to know God’s will. At the end of a lifetime of study, our knowledge will be finite.
 
The better we know ourselves, the better we know how our own desires and ambitions color our knowledge of God’s will. We may be blind to own flaws, or how they influence us.

"There's a divinity that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will." (Hamlet)

Sometimes we have to act before we’re sure. That’s easier with smaller things than with bigger things.

God’s will can become more clear as we take a step of faith.

Frank Laubach was a missionary and a renowned 20^th Century mystic. He said, "Talk a great deal to the Lord."

Frank Laubach also urged a lot of inner-quiet and listening.

VII

If we try to hear God, we need to be ready to accept the silence of God. There may also be times when we need to listen to that silence.

The best equipment to hear God is a willing spirit, a listening ear, and patience.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying for wisdom.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying for a spirit that desires to do God’s will.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying for humility.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying for God to search their hearts with them.

Nobody was ever harmed by praying to know God.

3. Prayer.

Lord, guide us. Teach us to trust, hear, and follow. Amen.

The Weakling, Outsider King

The virgin birth of Jesus and Jesus rising from the dead are to many folks things of fiction, hope for the simple, flip-the-page fables.

To believers, they are simple truth. Why not? You can peer from the side of a mountain at sunrise. The distance of the stars, the sun rising, birdsongs as the sun brightens the land, the busy-ness of nature that uncurls with the sun’s rolling warmth – these make it believable that a virgin can give birth, and the dead can live again. If nature came from nothing, what is impossible?

1. The most amazing passage in the Bible?

That’s why, more than the immaculate conception, or the resurrection, or the Exodus from Egypt, or the four horsemen of Revelation, this might be the most amazing passage in the Bible. And there’s nothing supernatural about it. It’s very human. It takes place after Jesus is arrested.

[A]fter flogging Jesus, [Pontius Pilate] handed him over to be crucified. Then the soldiers led him into the courtyard of the palace (that is, the governor’s headquarters); and they called together the whole cohort. And they clothed him in a purple cloak; and after twisting some thorns into a crown, they put it on him. And they began saluting him, "Hail, King of the Jews!" They struck his head with a reed, spat upon him, and knelt down in homage to him. After mocking him, they stripped him of the purple cloak and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him out to crucify him. [Mark 15:15-20 (NRSV).]

2. Cruelty has reasons.

Why did these soldiers crudely disrespect Jesus? Maybe because:

He was a Jew. To Roman soldiers, that made Jesus an outsider. It’s the same when a White looks down on a Black; or a Muslim on a Christian; or an Indian on a Pakistani.

Also, he was weak. He was completely under their power.

And he was a law-breaker. So, as they saw it, he deserved the welts and bleeding slices on his back. Soon he would die a slow, painful death, and they were fine with that.

And he was a "king". And likely these Roman soldiers hated kings – or centurions, or emperors, or anyone else who they had to bow to, who kept them from having their own way.

3. Weakness.

It’s the weakness that most amazes. A cohort of soldiers pushed around, mocked, and spat upon the human expression of the God of gods.

And God permitted it.

This is the God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah with fire. This is the God who in one night slaughtered 185,000 soldiers besieging King Hezekiah’s Jerusalem. This is the God who calmed a storm with words.

This God stood by.

This forbearance was not an act of power. It was an act of character. The character, in its way, amazes more than the power.

Jesus’s act was an act of submission to humankind. And it was not submission to humankind in its nobility, wisdom, and compassion. It was not Good clasping respectful hands with Good. It was submission to humankind the shallow bully. It was submission to a cohort of soldiers that acted like a pack of jackals and debased a man about to suffer and die. They desecrated God, and God let them.

4. The Messiah.

The people waiting for the Messiah were waiting for a Psalm 66 Messiah. They were expecting, and wanting, a Messiah that would make his enemies "cringe", even if he also let others roll chariots over their heads.

They were expecting a Psalm 2 Messiah, who would break the kings of the earth with an iron rod and smash them like clay pots.

5. Jesus the un-God.

This Jesus was the Messiah? The world must wonder if we expect anyone to accept this. It goes against intuition. It does now. It did then.

But I choose not to fight that fight every day. The fight that breaks out in my mind more often than whether God is God or Jesus is Jesus, is this: what kind of Lord is he?

Everyone has a god. If they crave wealth, wealth makes them hop. If it’s beauty, or drugs, or liberalism, or learning, so be it.

But I want these words of Joshua tattooed on my heart:

Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord." [Joshua 24:15 (NRSV).]

Every day I pray for a pure heart, because I don’t have one. But the God of infinite might who gives his son over to treatment by we men described in Mark 15 – this God is perfect. He’s the God I want to serve.

6. The Jesus who is.

And this Jesus is the opposite of his oppressors.

They hated him because he was an outsider, and he was. But he spoke with the Samaritan woman. He told the story of the Good Samaritan. Jews hated Samaritans, but Jesus did not. And Jesus told his disciples to make disciples of all nations. There is no outsider with Jesus.

They hated him because he was weak, and he was. But he is close to the broken-hearted. He cares for the poor. And the blind. An the sick. And the dying.

They hated him because he was a law-breaker, and he was. But he kept company with sinners, and seemed to prefer them to the so-called righteous.

They hated him because he was a king, and he is. But Jesus loves his God and Father, and he submits completely to his father’s will.

I trust this Jesus. My salvation is safer in his hands than in my own.

7. Prayer.

Lord Jesus, day by day, bit by bit, please make me like you. Amen.

We Are All Saints

We are small and of no account.

That’s my church: All Saints Episcopal on Terracina, across Magnolia Avenue from Riverside Community College.

1. Shrub among cedars.

We’re a shrub among cedars. The shadow of Rick Warren’s Saddleback Community Church touches us from Orange County. They plan to plant churches in Europe and Asia. And Harvest Fellowship, a few miles away, overflows its deep, wide sanctuary into an outdoor amphitheater where the preacher is a giant on a giant screen. I’m speaking of the Riverside campus. There’s also an Orange County campus, and smaller campuses elsewhere. Harvest reaches worldwide at sports-stadium events.

These are two nearby colossi among several.

2. Moses and Joshua.

But here I am at All Saints. My road to hope took me first to Harvest, and I was glad to be there. The preaching was good, and I reclaimed the habit of Bible study because of it, after over a decade of neglect. Pastor Greg Laurie was my Moses, bringing me out of Egypt.

But, rightly or wrongly, I think that God took me from Harvest to All Saints. And at All Saints Father John was my Joshua, leading me across the Jordan River to the promised land. Not that he necessarily knew that he was doing that. I told the story in an earlier post about how I was restored to hope, having believed for a long time that I would die condemned.

3. High church.

All Saints is high church. The priests dress in liturgical robes. There is an alter. If it’s profaned (like someone casually leaning on it as if it were a kitchen counter), there is a ritual to restore its holiness. Before taking their pew, most members of the church bow toward the alter.

Which some might think is over-the-top. Their theology might teach that God is everywhere. They are not wrong. And since God is everywhere, to them there might be nothing special about the sanctuary, the alter, or the priests.

There we disagree. My Evangelical friends and I agree that that God is everywhere, and where God is, his holiness is with him. But, rightly or wrongly, I think there’s something special about a church.

Maybe it’s like this: Moses could wear his sandals anywhere; but in front of the burning bush, he had to take them off, because he was on holy ground. There is blamelessness like Job had, but his righteousness was not the righteousness of God. There are levels of holiness, levels of God’s presence, and there’s something somehow higher about the sanctuary. The high-church elements of All Saints express that higher-ness.

4. Wide church.
 
In the view of some Evangelicals, the Episcopal church seeks out sin, and when it finds it, it makes it a bedrock of its doctrine.

Since getting opinions, I’ve never attended a church where I agreed with everything I heard. But at least I understand the positions. That’s been true in Evangelical churches. It’s true at All Saints.

Ultimately, they might be right or wrong. We are saved by grace. We won’t earn our way into heaven with an answer sheet, a number-two pencil, and a certain percent of right answers. And more than some churches, the Episcopal Church knows that.

We don’t define ourselves by a particular doctrine or orientation. We are united by The Book of Common Prayer. It contains certain core beliefs.

It also has liturgies – words and orders of worship. It has prayers and psalms. I carry The Book of Common Prayer with me. When I recognize that my thoughts are going away from God, I can pull it out, read a prayer or a psalm, and feel afterward that my mind in more subjugated to God.

Sometimes I seek out a particular psalm; sometimes I read what I happen to open to. Often times what I open to is apt for my needs; other times, I find a psalm more apt by reading forward or backward.

5. Liturgy.

The congregation shares in the blessing of the worship, so it also shares in the conduct of the worship. This is not a come-sit-and-leave church. Worship is active.

This is different from many Evangelical churches where there is singing, but the main event really is the teaching. The teaching is often high-quality, usually lengthy. Heaven forgive me, I think I never heard a whole Evangelical sermon without looking at least once at my watch.

So: at All Saints, there are four substantial readings from the Bible. There is an Old Testament lesson, a psalm (which the congregation reads out loud together), a reading from an Epistle, and a reading from a Gospel. They relate to each other in some element or theme, and the sermon picks up a thread from them.

There are the hymns. The hymns are traditional – not to everyone’s taste. I like many of the modern hymns of other churches, but I cherish many of the ancient hymns. Some people might say: "When I Behold the Wondrous Cross? Wake me when it’s over." But I often study the words in the hymnal after the singing stops, to hold onto a thought from whatever hymn we just sang.

There is confession. We read a liturgical confession, the same one every week. It’s generic, "[W]e have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed," etc. Then the priest pronounces the forgiveness of sins. I think the same thing about this that I think about the specialness of the sanctuary. I believe that God moves through priests in a special way. The Holy Spirit is not bound or limited by sin; therefore, he can act through a priest without regard to the holiness of the particular priest, and he is not limited by any priest’s lack of holiness. So there is authority behind the forgiveness of sins, pronounced every week.

There are other readings, said or sung by the congregation. Hearing and saying them each week fixes them in the mind. So it’s easy to remember them in times of busy-ness in the world. Like:

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father, Lord God, Lamb of God, you take away the sin of the world: have mercy on us; you are seated at the right hand of the Father: receive our prayer. [Etc.]

There is communion, every week.

There is sharing the peace. The congregation mingles for a few minutes, shaking hands and speaking peace on each other.

There is the sermon. It's shorter than sermons in many churches, because other elements of the worship occupy relatively more time in Episcopal services compared to some others.

(All this is not in the order that it happens in the service.)

6. Learning curve.

All of that implies that worship at All Saints  is not passive. But with time, you pick up on things. Father John knows that, and so he might briefly explain how to do communion, if you choose to do so. (The usher comes to your pew; you go forward; you kneel at the front rail; the officiant puts a wafer in you hand; you consume it; then the cup comes; you sip from it, or you cross your arms over your chest instead and receive a spoken blessing.)

The bulletin has a blue sheet and a white sheet, and it took me a while to learn which sheet to look at to find, for example, the psalm being read, or to be able to say the prayer with everyone else.

7. The congregation.

The congregation is varied. There are fiercely conservative members of the church who (*shudder*) call Governor Jerry Brown Lucifer. Others (*ahem*) made substantial effort to get Barack Obama re-elected. We are mixed race; we are mixed orientation.

I walk into the sanctuary on Sunday and sit. Others are there ahead of me, and more come in behind. Many of them kneel and pray for several minutes before the service begins.

More than any other mainline church I have gone to, I know at All Saints people have had supernatural experiences. A woman described seeing an angel at the foot of her hospital bed and knowing then that she would get well. Others have had supernatural visions. My sister-in-law speaks English roughly. She joined me at church once. She didn’t follow the words, but she felt God in the hymns.

There is broken-ness at All Saints, too. In a Bible study, it turned out that a surprising number of these people had known homelessness.

And there’s trouble. We’re human. We fall down as to one another.

8. Bethlehem.

I think of All Saints and I think of words in Micah chapter 5 – not that we will be great, nor that the Messiah will come out of us, but in the sense that, overlooked in the world, we are known to God. God regards the small, the last-born, the lowly.

I don’t want to be arrogant. No man, no woman, no church, no parish is guaranteed tomorrow. I am not; nor is All Saints. But I’m hopeful. And I’m glad to be a part of this small church, overlooked like tiny Bethlehem. Who knows what good might come out of a tiny church unknown in the wider world?

9. Prayer (from The Book of Common Prayer, p. 817.)

Almighty and everliving God, ruler of all things in heaven and earth, hear our prayers for this parish family. Strengthen the faithful, arouse the careless, and restore the penitent. Grant us all things necessary for our common life, and bring us all to be of one heart and mind within your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Sowing with Tears

Three decades ago, I asked God who I should marry. I got a forceful answer that seemed supernatural. It was a woman I knew from church. She was nice, but I didn't want her for a wife.

So I read books about supernatural guidance; but I did so like a lawyer, looking for a loophole. After that, I rejected what seemed to be God's clear guidance in other ways on other substantial matters.

Then, without drugs, my life collapsed spectacularly, in ways that usually only illegal drugs can bring about. My hope left. It has since been restored.
 
With Jesus, some people ask questions and get answers. Some people get better. Some people get angry. And some people seem to want their question back, like me; like the young man who kneels before Jesus to ask the way to eternal life.

As he was setting out on a journey, a man ran up and knelt before him, and asked him, "Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?" Jesus said to him, "Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone. You know the commandments: ‘You shall not murder; You shall not commit adultery; You shall not steal; You shall not bear false witness; You shall not defraud; Honor your father and mother.’" He said to him, "Teacher, I have kept all these since my youth." Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." When he heard this, he was shocked and went away grieving, for he had many possessions. [Mark 10:17-22 (NRSV).]

1. A story without an end?

We don’t know whether the young man sells everything he has and follows Jesus.

The young man goes away grieving. But grief often has stages, and the last stage can be acceptance. So: for all we know, it could be that the young man got to the end of his grief and did what Jesus said to do.

After all, his zeal was clear. He ran to Jesus. He knelt at his feet. He followed all of the laws of Moses. If he did so humbly, out of deep longing for God - if Psalm 119 was written on his heart, maybe this meeting between the young man and Jesus led to an excellent result.

2.  Three kings.

When the Israelites under slavery ask Pharaoh for freedom to go to the desert for a festival to the Lord, Pharaoh refuses, and he makes them make bricks at the same pace as before. But he makes them gather their own straw for the bricks; before, he supplied the straw.

When the Israelites come to Rehoboam, Solomon’s son, they ask him to lighten the tax burden that his father had laid on them. He refuses. He says that his little finger is thicker than his father’s loins. He says that his father whipped them with whips; he will whip them with scorpions.

And Jesus, loving the young man who ran to him and knelt, gave him more to give up than the young man thought that he could.

This gives new meaning to the phrase "To those who have, more will be given; and from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away." (Mark 4:25.) I usually think of this as spiritual wealth added to spiritual wealth; but, here, the young man has the law of Moses on his back, and Jesus tells him to carry it without his riches, adding poverty to his burden.

3. A pattern.

When the young man knelt in front of Jesus, Jesus’s disciples had already left everything to follow him (though most of them started with less than the young man). Peter points out their sacrifice. And Jesus promises them reward. But see the warning here, wedged between blessings, easy to overlook:

"Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. [Mark 10:29-30 (NRSV).]

Persecutions. Those who yearn for God above children, parents, brothers and sisters, and material wealth – they will be persecuted. Which, apparently, is the calling of Christians.

Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same intention (for whoever has suffered in the flesh has finished with sin), so as to live for the rest of your earthly life no longer by human desires but by the will of God. [1 Peter 4:1-2 (NRSV).]

In case this bitter herb were not abundant enough in Mark 10, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come to Jesus and tell him "Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you." (Mark 10:35 (NRSV).) Jesus doesn’t choose door-number-one; he asks them what they want before he makes any promise. They tell him that they want to sit at his right hand and his left when he comes into his glory.

Jesus then equates pain and promise -- at least, promise in the afterlife. "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" (Says the man who will, in love of humanity and obedience to God, give himself up to be whipped, spat upon, beaten, basically tortured – the man who will die thirsty under the sun unable to move because his hands and feet are nailed to timber.)
 

James and John say that they can. And Jesus acknowledges that they will – suffer, that is. (Mark 10:29.)

The other disciples apparently aren’t quite paying attention, because they’re resentful of James and John.
 

In Mark 10, people start asking for things in verse 13: parents want Jesus to bless their children.

4. Leaving clothing behind.
 

The caboose in the Mark 10 caravan of gimme’s ends with blind Bartimaeus casting off his cloak, receiving his sight, and following Jesus. And I wonder if Bartimaeus’s gesture, casting off his cloak and going to Jesus to get his sight, is a freighted literary gesture. I wonder if it ties the chain of connected stories that start at Mark 10:13 to something that happens in chapter 14.
 

Because after Jesus is arrested, Mark 14 ends with this:

A certain young man was following him, wearing nothing but a linen cloth. They caught hold of him, but he left the linen cloth and ran off naked.

I have no proof, but I like to think that this is the young man who knelt before Jesus, who, in the end, gave up all he had to follow his Savior.

5.  A man after Jesus's own heart.

It's easy think of the young man who knelt in front of Jesus and mentally rebuke him. But that overlooks that Jesus looked on him and loved him. We know that Jesus is love personified, but biblical declarations of Jesus's love for a specific person stand out.

If the follower who left his garment in the hands of the pursuers was this young man, his change of heart came quickly. This likely would not have happened if he had  rejected what Jesus said. Grief is one thing; rejection is another. The young man grieved. That left open the possibility of change. "May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy." (Psalm 126:5.)

6.  Why the young man was better than me.

I wrote about my rejection of God's guidance. To be clear: to investigate supernatural guidance is a good idea. Not all guidance comes from God. But there were three vital differences between this young man and me.

First, my heart was not right. I was stubborn, proud, and selfish. Thirty years on, after pain, humiliation, and grief, I am less so. I'm more like the young man. Now I fear and trust God more than I did. Those two attitudes toward God might seem paradoxical, but they aren't.

Second, I was determined to go against God's guidance. I wanted to say "No." That was wrong. God defies neat rules, but I think that saying no to God was like stopping my ears and stomping off. It cut off my ability to hear him. God did not have to withdraw his holy spirit or take away his blessing. I cast them out.

Third, I argued with God, but I didn't enter into a conversation with him. Praying always for willingness to do God's will, and, hopefully, meaning it and getting it, I could have said what I thought, speaking openly and honestly with him. The conversation might have been short, or it might have gone on for a time. God might have changed my mind; or he might have shown me that I misunderstood his will; or, maybe, he might have relented. I will never know what the outcome would have been, because I never humbly entered into that conversation.

And that's why the young man in Mark 10 was a giant, compared to me.

 

7. Prayer.

Lord God, your son who freed us from our sins taught us to pray, "do not bring us to the time of trial." We offer that prayer. We also offer ourselves to your will, to your love, to your wisdom, hoping for eternal life. We plead for strength and patience, so that suffering will not strip away our hope. All glory and authority to the one who suffered every sin of the world to be taken into his own body. Amen.

Earth, Heaven

It wasn’t a fist-shaking, jaw-thrusting rant at heaven. But I doubted the goodness of God.

It wasn’t a low opinion of him either, really. But I was praying, and I was praying words of the hymn Holy, Holy, Holy. Holy, said three times, speaks of the perfection, the perfect goodness, of God. When I reached the third holy, I was uneasy. I lofted a question to God: "Really?"

1. Mud everywhere.

In fairness to me, I see a lot of crap on a daily basis. It’s everywhere. And I even try to avert my eyes so I don’t see crap that I don’t have to see. I skip a lot of movies.

In my work as a lawyer, even among the best people of our (local) society, things aren’t right. There are people who eat delicious hors d’oeuvres in members-only country clubs while tuxedo-ed artists play soothing music on gleaming grand pianos. They have status and wealth that others envy. Their future comfort seems promised by stock portfolios and homes and overflowing bank accounts. They drive past sweating, food-stamp needing plastic-bottle pickers; they don't see them through the shiny windows of the air-conditioned, leather-seated luxury of their brilliantly engineered, valet-polished cars. Some are lawyers who use their tax-payer funded lawsuits to ruin lesser people, for no measurable benefit to society. They stand for the rest. If I were in their place, I would be them.

I look at them, and I look to God, and I say, "really"?

Not, of course, that I’m a jewel.

Maybe I’m like a man who has lived under months of rainfall. There’s mud in the streets, there’s mud on the sidewalks, there’s mud in the parking garages, and, when I go into my house, mud goes in with me. I can’t imagine a world without mud.

2. Cracking through clouds.

I forget what it’s like to jet away from a rainy climate. The ascent at the end of the runway presses you gently into your seat as the rain-soaked airport falls away, and soon you’re lost in clouds. Soon after that, you crack the sky above the clouds, and the brilliant sun shines down on you, and it shines back up from the layer of clouds below you. The brightness gladdens your spirit, and you gaze at mystic fields and fantastic towers of cloud-architecture that goes on forever.

3. Visions.

It’s good to remember people who have had spiritual cloud-cracking experiences.

Like Moses, who asked to see the glory of God. God allowed it, but he allowed Moses to see him only from behind; the glory of his face would have destroyed mortal Moses. Moses saw from a cleft of a rock.

Like righteous, ruined Job, who took his gripe to God. God gave him a vision of God's own glory. Amazed, Job covered his lip and took back his complaint. The fact that he covered his lip was significant. Lepers in Old Testament times, as they walked, had to cover their lip and call out "Unclean! Unclean!"

Like Isaiah the prophet, who was in the temple, and he saw God in heaven. God’s robe reached down and its hem filled the temple. The vision was overwhelming. ""Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; yet my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:5 (NRSV).)

Like Paul, who took beatings, whippings, stonings, ship-wreckings, starvation, exposure to harsh weather, imprisonment, ridicule, all for the sake of spreading the Kingdom of Heaven. But one day, he was carried up into the "third heaven". He "heard inexpressible things, things that no one is permitted to tell." (2 Corinthians 12:4 (NRSV).)

Like the apostle John. He was at the end of his life, starving on the Island of Patmos. There, he had the glorious vision that is the book of Revelation. And part of what John saw was the worship and praise and honor of God that takes place in heaven.

4. On earth as it is in heaven.

It’s rare to break though the clouds as Moses, Job, Isaiah, Paul, John, and others did. At least, it’s rare to do it in that way. But we can praise our God, and then our thoughts and words accord with heaven. In heaven, all of present hardships and privations fade like a dream fades to one who wakes up.

On earth, we need better eyes. And when I say "we", I mean "I". I would like a dream like Jacob had, with angels ascending to heaven and descending to earth, and God next to me. I would like to wake up and say, like Jacob, "Surely the Lord is in this place – and I did not know it!" (Genesis 28:16 (NRSV).)

The seraphs that Isaiah saw cried this to each other: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole earth is full of his glory." (NRSV.) It would be good to know the glory of God around us.

5. Prayer (by Reginald Heber):

     Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
     Early in the morning our song shall rise to thee.
     Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
     God in three persons, blessed Trinity!

     Holy, holy, holy! All the saints adore thee,
     casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea;
     cherubim and seraphim falling down before thee,
     which wert, and art, and evermore shalt be.

     Holy, holy, holy! Though the darkness hide thee,
     though the eye of sinful man thy glory may not see,
     only thou art holy; there is none beside thee,
     perfect in power, in love and purity.

     Holy, holy, holy! Lord God Almighty!
     All thy works shall praise thy name, in earth and sky and sea.
     Holy, holy, holy! Merciful and mighty,
     God in three persons, blessed Trinity.