It’s Complicated

I’m reading a book about climate change, by a scientist. And his over-arching theme is: it’s complicated. We have societal ills, one of which is a growing number of persons with mental illness living on the streets. How do you fix it? Give them housing they can’t take care of; give them medications they don’t want to take; give them money to buy what? It’s complicated.

A few years back a mega-church chose to get involved in Africa, to solve some of the humanitarian problems and in so doing, to share the Gospel. But their fixes created more problems, because they didn’t understand the problems well to begin with. Why? Because it’s complicated. 

But the Gospel isn’t complicated. Oh, it’s involved. It involves a long story. But the story isn’t that complicated, and the gist of the Gospel, the Good News, is simple enough for a child to understand.

God does not ask us to build a ladder by which we can climb to His level (through doing good works, or learning the right verses). It would take a ladder tall enough to reach all the way to a holy heaven where God lives. There is no such ladder. If we try to get to God by climbing a “righteous” ladder, we will find in the end that the ladder is leaning against the wrong structure.

Instead, God lowered a ladder from heaven, on which Jesus came down to our level. He became like us, so that He could bear our sins, so that He could give us, freely (called “grace”) His righteousness. By faith, not in my own ladder-climbing skills, but in what Jesus has done for me, based on His faithfulness, not mine - I can receive salvation as a gift. It’s the reverse of what we would expect. But it’s not complicated.

Now, trying to live a good life in they world, and at the same time living for Jesus - well, that’s complicated. It’s like standing in two rowboats in the water, the left leg in one boat, the right let in the other. Someone’s going to get wet. Or, as Jesus said, “No man can serve two masters.” It’s complicated.

Or, trying to belong to a church where everybody wants to serve, but also always be happy. That’s complicated. Service takes sacrifice, and sacrifice is hard, like dying to self, and we find it difficult to die to self (like Jesus did for us), so, it’s complicated.

Sheryl Jo

When I made an entrance into this world (through no help on my part) my sister had already been pioneering a path for me for a year and a half. She was the first-born of my young parents, and so with Sheryl, there was a lot of “what do we do now?” questions. By the time I came along, it was more, “we’ve done this before.” 

Of the four children born to my parents (2 sisters after me), I don’t know if Sheryl was the prettiest (I don’t want to offend the others), but she certainly had the best smile. She was good with people, and easy to make friends with. She cared too much (in my opinion) with being popular, betraying, I think, an insecurity that didn’t really need to be there. 

Mom and Dad had all of us involved in music (a great gift to us, by the way). Sheryl and I sang duets occasionally in church. Our Sunday night services always made lots of time for special music, especially from the younger ones. I remember singing with her “A soldier in the army of the King of kings am I; He called me to His colors and for Him I’d live or die.” I don’t feel much like a soldier these days, nor do we tend to sing those kinds of songs. But Sheryl’s soldiering days are over. I don’t believe her mind remembers where she’s been, or where she’s going. 

Sheryl will turn 65 this week, on July 27. She won’t know it. At this “young” age, she has no idea how old she is. She’s got Alzheimer’s. She no longer walks, or talks. She does not feed herself. As I fed her lunch this past week, she did not respond to questions like, “do you want more?” or “would you like some pie?” She might open her mouth if you held the fork close, or just turn her face away. She can’t seem to focus on a picture on one’s mobile phone, but just looks off in the distance at nothing in particular. It’s as if she’s not there, though her body is. 

“To be absent from the body” is “to be present with the Lord,” Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:8. I wonder if it’s possible that Sheryl, in a sense, is already with Jesus. I don’t know. I do know that, though Sheryl’s diseased brain may not be able to hold thoughts of God, God holds on to her, this child of His and sister of mine. 

My visit with Sheryl was shorter than the drive. There was no conversation. Just me saying dumb things that came to mind, trying to jog a memory not there. But as I left, I hugged her, and received the best smile. A really nice gift. 

It Only Takes a Spark

It Only Takes a Spark

Sunday, July 11, 2021

We were sitting down to dinner in the quietness of our home when someone came pounding on the front door. “Your garbage is on fire,” she shouted, pointing to my leaf bags out at the street. “Drat,” I said to myself. “Not again."

It happened to me once before, in the back yard. I had cleaned some ashes out of our little, raised fire pit and put them, along with some weeds, in a leaf bag. The fire had gone out the night before. Some time later, I saw my leaf bag smoking and had to tear it apart in order to douse the ashes. The second time, I had waited longer. There had been a little rain. No signs of life. And this time, the leaf bag of weeds and a dash of ash made it out to the front curb.

There’s an old ’70’s song from church youth groups that went, “It only takes a spark to get a fire going; And soon those all around can warm up in its glowing.” That’s the song that came to mind when the people came to the front door.

The song goes on to say, “That’s how it is with God’s love.” It only takes a spark, and then it spreads. The story of the Ethiopian eunuch traveling home to Africa from Jerusalem is a great, Biblical example of this. We don’t know why he was in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost. He could have been a God-fearer, as Gentile worshippers were called, visiting during one of the great feasts. Perhaps he was there on king’s business. But he was going home with a portion of Scripture open in his lap - the book of Isaiah.

Philip, one of the Jerusalem church’s early deacons, was transported by the Spirit to visit the eunuch. He explained the Scriptures, showing that Jesus would be the One who would fulfill the sin-bearing described in Isaiah 53. And the eunuch placed faith in Jesus.

A eunuch is one who has been castrated, oftentimes in relation to service in a royal household. He had no hope of having children, a family, or a heritage. Except that God said: “Don’t let the eunuchs say, ‘I’m a dried-up tree with no children and no future.’ For this is what the LORD says: .. I will give them—within the walls of my house—a memorial and a name far greater than sons and daughters could give. For the name I give them is an everlasting one. It will never disappear!” (Isa. 56:3–5 NLT).

And so the Gospel came to Africa. It only takes a spark. 

Serenity and Tenacity

David Augsburger has written a book called “Dissident Discipleship,” an Anabaptist view of what it means to walk with Jesus in this world, following the way of Jesus. In his chapter called “The Practice of - Tenacious Serenity,” he begins with the story of Annie Funk on the Titanic, who, having been given a seat on a lifeboat, saw a mom and children left behind on deck. She immediately stood up and traded places.

Serenity is a settled commitment to do the right thing. It avoids crises and consternations, because the decision has already been made. In Annie’s case, she knew the right thing to do, and so the decision was rather simple. A determination to do the right thing, no matter what.

And it’s the “no matter what” that brings in the tenacity. Because sometimes doing the right thing is hard, or costly. It involves sacrifice. But in the “way of Jesus” described in “Dissident Discipleship,” sacrifice is not an exceptional experience for the Christian. It is the normal experience. It takes seriously the very serious phrase in the famous verse, Romans 12:1 - “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice..” Serenity is not easy, but it’s simple. Tenacity is the willingness to do the hard things, if they are the right things.

One of the gentlemen in my philosopher’s group observed that I was experiencing “misplaced anxiety.” In a sense, what he was detecting was a lack of serenity. He wasn’t seeing a settled commitment. He saw rattled thoughts and emotions. Yes, life is spinning around us. But we can’t control those things. We can be calmly determined to do the right thing, no matter what.

Here are a couple of quotes from Augsburger as he tries to help us understand this counter-cultural concept; this “Jesus” concept:

• It is the willing yieldedness of the stubbornly faithful yet incorrigibly nonconformist radical disciple.

• Serene tenacity is the quality of yielded fortitude, of surrendered steadfastness that stays the course, commits the soul, and relinquishes the self to what is truly good, what is ultimately priced, what is the will of God.

It is not passive, but engaged with God as we seek to walk the way of Jesus, like Jesus, refusing to follow the cues of the world.