Hope, Prayer, and Harvey

Fearing that we might run on the rocks, they let down four anchors from the stern and prayed for day to come. - Acts 27.29

Some translations say "wished." The Greek verb will bear either reading. Sometimes the difference isn't all that great.

In these days following Hurricane Harvey, as Rockport and Port Aransas lie leveled and Houston treads water, people of all faiths and of no faith cast what anchors we can and yearn for the dawning of some sort of good news. Boundaries between wishes and prayers, or between both of those and despair, sometimes lie awash beneath the oily murk of the flood. 

And still the waters rise and the rocks grow nearer, and still the dawn delays.

In his book The Table of Inwardness, Calvin Miler calls for the "Christifying" of such moments. He tells the true story of an Omaha priest who arrived on the scene of an accident in which a gasoline tanker pinioned a family in their car then burst into flames and roasted the occupants alive. The minister knelt near the holocaust and prayed. Miller observes: "'What good did it do?' That is not the issue. His prayer Christified the event." 

Of such moments Miller explains, "I write I.N.R.I. on the most tangled of circumstances. As soon as they are autographed with his name, they yield to meaning and to life." We must, he insists, envision "a world more real than this where God watches and cares and loves."

Whatever storm savages your ship, wherever it drives or maroons you, cast whatever anchors of action you can from the stern, gaze with whatever sight you can to the future, and kneel in between. If, in that moment, your praying seems more like wishing, don't worry. Claim the name of Christ over whatever you've got, and know that God's got you.

Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters. 

- Colossians 3.23, New Revised Standard Version

Doug Lyman left a Benedictine monastery for the world of high finance. It's not the way it looks.

Lyman's Christian quest took him from the hermetically sealed world of fundamentalism to the smug righteousness of liberalism to the convolutions of philosophy to the United States Marine Corps to the Benedictine cloister, where he learned that even vows of poverty require financial savvy. In the face of bankruptcy, he learned that money, like everything, carries a spiritual component.

He also noticed that a great deal of his spiritual counseling involved financial planning. "I would say, 'I'll pray for you, but let's make a budget." As a schoolteacher (the secular work he undertook to pay the bills) he found his colleagues facing retirement with no pensions. So Lyman left his order and went to work for an asset management company co-founded by a Hindu nun.

He now calls himself a "suffering-prevention specialist."

Paul, as Luther long ago insisted, does not make sharp distinctions between the secular and the spiritual when it comes to ministry. Whatever work we perform, whatever need we find to meet, the apostle commands, put yourselves into it. Work heartily (American Standard); do it from the heart (CEB); do it enthusiastically (HCS). The Greek literally reads, "from the soul." Paul's admonition, and Lyman's example, remind us that there are no sacred and secular activities, only holy and unholy ones. The rule becomes simple: eliminate the profane; attack the Godly.

What task does your hand find to do today? Go at it full boar, tear into it like a shark on a seal pod! You are a suffering-prevention specialist working under the authorization of the Suffering Servant. I'll pray for you, but let me make you a hamburger. I'll pray for you, but let's build you a house. Throw your soul into service, and bring glory to God.

For more on this story, see The Monk Who Left the Monastery to Fix Broken Retirement Plans

Haman, Jesus, and Charlottesville

Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose words saved the king, stands at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." - Esther 7.9

The legend that Dr. Joseph Ignace Guillotin, inventor of the eponymous device, died by that very method, is fake news; in fact he died in bed of natural causes. The myth arose because the Jacobin revolutionaries did indeed imprison the good doctor at one point; it persists because it would be such a delicious piece of historical irony if it were true. There is indeed a horrible yet satisfying symmetry to the idea of disasters "fall'n on the inventors' heads," as Shakespeare phrased it, something deeply human in Mahalia Jackson's warning that "If you dig one ditch you better dig two/Cause the trap you set just may be for you."

Satisfying, deeply human - and solidly biblical:

Whoever digs a pit will fall into it, and a stone will come back on the one who starts it rolling. - Proverbs 26.7 

For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. - Matthew 26.52

You reap whatever you sow. - Galatians 6.7

The story of Esther warns us that the gun of action kicks as hard as it shoots. Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so to them (Matthew 7.12) is a sentiment as practical as a balanced checkbook. It should not be stitched into samplers or slapped on bumper stickers, but printed on the opening page of textbooks on accounting.

Haman built the gibbet on which he himself died. He hung at the end of a rope woven from the twisted strands his own hatred. I couldn't help but remember this story when I read about racist mobs marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, chanting, "Jews will not replace us." Indeed they will not; if Scripture and history mean anything, those protestors themselves will be pushed to the margins of society or to extinction - the very place they intend for the descendants of Israel: They will replace the Jews.

If my words and deeds invite others to stand meekly on the margins of injustice, I had better put my own ego on a diet. If my choices instruct the outcasts to get comfortable in their ghettos, I would do well to develop a taste for poverty. If I seek to silence dissent, I should buy myself a comfortable gag.

Many that are first shall be last, our Master has taught us, and the last shall be first. "They" will not replace "us;" we will replace each other, and the only exit from this moral maze is to look long and hard to the One who replaced us all.

Holy Hill, Batman!

So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.

- Ephesians 2.19-22

On June 18 of this year professional golfer Bruce Koepka won the 117th United States Open with a cumulative score of sixteen under, four strokes better than his nearest competitor. This left him thirty-eight strokes ahead of last-place finisher Hao-Tong Li who clocked out at twenty-two strokes over par.

But both Koepka and Hao-Tong, and every golfer in between, had access to one resource: Every player who shanked and sliced his way around the eighteen holes of the Erin Hills golf course in Wisconsin, as he addressed the ball from the eighteenth hole tee-box, could catch sight of the twin spires of Holy Hill Church, a Catholic basilica that soars into the skies above the fairway. It actually sits three miles from the country club but occupies the highest ground in that part of the state, so that players can glimpse it from thirteen holes on the course. The fifteen friars who minister there schedule multiple extra masses throughout the three days of the competition and usually notice several pros in the congregation. Attendance at confession also rises after each round. Because the seal of confession is sacred, no one knows exactly what sins the golfers cop to.

Of course, no one actually believes that God will place a finger on the scales of a particular competitor, but I think the visibility and, if I may use the term, “catholicity,” of the basilica offer an interesting metaphor for prayer: Through Jesus Christ by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, God the Father makes himself present to each of us in the midst of our trials and struggles. If we employ Paul’s metaphor, not only are we welcome to this temple: we are this temple! We, together, the body of the saints living and departed, comprise this place of holy refuge. A few thoughts, then, from the metaphor of Holy Hill:

• The church should be visible from every vantage point of the daily business of life. God does not care about golf; Christ died for golfers.
• The church should be available to every person without distinction regardless of their place on the world’s leader board.
• The church should be approachable to those who bring their struggles and stumbles before the throne. Our God is the God of the sand traps and the rough just as much as the fairways and the greens.

         God calls the church to be the city set on the holy hill whose light cannot be hidden, but which instead beckons to champions, duffers, and everyone in between.

For more information, see For Golfers Who Curse Their Play at the US Open, There's Always Holy Hill

Reclaim the Time

Redeeming the time, because the days are evil. - Ephesians 5.16

Congresswoman Maxine Waters wasn't playing. 

On Thursday, July 27, the House Financial Services Committee, on which she sits, heard testimony from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. When her turn came to grill the guest, the gentlewoman from California's 43rd district asked a simple question: Why had Treasury not responded to a letter she sent them. Secretary Mnuchin, knowing that each committee member received only a five-minute slot, opted to run out the clock. Instead of answering, he launched into an elaborate encomium of Waters' public service.  "I don't want to waste any time on me," Waters replied.

When Mnuchin squirted more verbal ink and attempted to vanish behind it, Waters pulled a procedural power-play. The Floor Procedure in the U. S. House of Representatives, Section XI/paragraph B states, "The gentleman who has yielded may at any time 'reclaim' his time and then the other Member must stop speaking and allow him to continue."

"What (the chair) failed to tell you," Waters explained, "was you're on my time. I can reclaim it.He left that out, so I'm reclaiming my time." At each subsequent interruption or evasion, she whacked the witness with the same wooden ruler: "Reclaiming my time."

That's a very accurate depiction of Paul's admonition to the Ephesians. Various translations render the phrase, "making the most" or even "buy up." But the King James' redeeming and the Congresswoman's reclaiming are pretty good: The word means to go into the marketplace and exchange one form of wealth for another. The fellow who found the buried treasure "redeemed" the field in trade for all he possessed (Mt 13.44). Pau's word for time, by the way, doesn't mean the kind you dole out in five-minute slots; it refers to opportunity and might better be translated, "chance." Waters exchanged the fool's gold of flattering platitudes for her one shot at hearing the truth.

When the Devil dangles distractions before you today, refuse to be re-routed. Don't waste any time on you. Remind the enemy that ever since the coming of Christ, he's on your time, and you mean to use it to proclaim the truth of the Gospel.

What truth do you have the chance to tell today? What word does the moment require from you? Don't play! Reclaim your time!