Our Lady of Capitol Heights

. . .Mary, who was engaged to him, and was with child. - Luke 2.5

Rosa Parks was not the first who refused to give up her seat.

Nine months before Parks' courageous act, Claudette Colvin went to jail for the same decision. The fifteen year-old had boarded a bus in th Capitol Heights section of Montgomery on her way home from school when the driver ordered her to yield her seat to a white passenger. When she refused, the driver called the police, who yanked her off the vehicle and charged her with disturbing the peace, violating segregation laws and, for good measure, assault.

Colvin's case went to trial, where she prevailed, but the canny leaders of the civil rights movement chose instead to make Parks the face of the bus boycott. Colvin was too young, for one thing. Also, she did not project the middle-class image which Parks possessed. Perhaps most important, she became pregnant shortly after the incident, and an unwed mother was seen as playing to the racist narrative of the white establishment.

History has born out the wisdom of this move, but one cannot escape the irony: No one thought that a lower-class unwed teenage mother could be the vehicle of freedom.

Mary had the same liabilities, and the same doubts: How can this be? But when she launched into her own version of "We Shall Overcome," she embraced God's insistence on using not only the least, but the least likely. He has exalted those who were humble. 

So be careful before you decide who can and can't be the means of Christ breaking into the world. Who knows, it might even be you.

After this I looked. . . . - Revelation 7.9

Shakespeare called death, "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns." Maybe that was true in 1600, but not, it appears, four centuries later. In fact, we find ourselves awash in accounts of the afterlife. I personally know one individual who claims to have made the round-trip, but there are plenty of others.

Darryl Perry, a financial adviser from Florida, claims that after a six-month heads-up, God spirited him away to Heaven where, awash in brightness, warmth, and color, he met several relatives and, eventually, God who, against Perry's veto, slung him back to earth. Mary Neal, an orthopedic surgeon from Wyoming, drowned while kayaking; she also saw lots of lights and colors before making the return trip to write her book, To Heaven and Back.

Then, of course, there's Colton Burpo who, as a toddler, died of a burst appendix and visited the afterlife preparatory to publishing the best-seller, Heaven Can Wait. Well, it was ghost-written (so to speak) by his dad, Todd, a Wesleyan minister. The franchise now includes a website, a children's book, and a feature-length movie. 

Are these accounts true? I like what my friend and colleague Dr. Tony Miranda of Stark College and Seminary says on the subject: "I don't know. What I do know is, we don't need them." And we don't, because we have one account of such an incident that the ancient church recognized as divinely inspired and has continued to read, one which remains a best-seller (well, the anthology that includes it is a perennial best-seller) after two millennia. Sure, we argue about what it means, but that only proves that for two thousand years now, we've agreed that whatever it means is the truth. The apostle John went to Heaven (without the bother of dying) and, at Christ's behest, wrote an account of his experiences. We know it as The Revelation.  

So what is Heaven like? Well, it's a little disappointing. John didn't meet any dead relatives, such as his brother, James, one of the first Christian martyrs. In fact, to hear John tell it, Heaven seems to be entirely focused on the throne of God and the worship God receives there. In Revelation 7.12, for instance, redeemed souls in glory offer seven-fold praise to the Almighty. The number seven is big in Heaven, if John is any indication. Here, it most likely conveys the idea of the sum total of all possible praise. James and Peter and Paul, all probably dead by the time John wrote, could've been jostling shoulders in the scrum and never even noticed one another, so focused were they on the Lord. 

Mark Twain once noted that, for the average person, Heaven "has not a single feature in it that he actually values. It consists - utterly and entirely - of diversions which he cares next to nothing about, here in the earth, yet is quite sure he will like them in Heaven." Heaven for eternity; Sunday worship for ninety minutes max.

And toss in another factor: John's Heaven jumbles up redeemed souls from both sides of the world's border walls: from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages. And since John could plainly see this to be the case, we conclude that their nationalities and pigmentations and dialects do not meld into a tasteful beige and a bland Esperanto, but retain all of their racial and regional peculiarities. 

Once again, Twain wonders that "Here in the earth all nations hate each other, and every one of them hates the Jew. Yet every pious person adores that heaven and wants to get into it. He really does. And when he is in a holy rapture he thinks that if he were only there he would take all the populace to his heart and hug, and hug, and hug." 

So as our dreams of endless green fairways and calorie-free ice cream fade in the face of an eternal worship service, and our red-lined racial boundaries buckle, we have to wonder: If Heaven disappoints us, is there something wrong with Heaven? Maybe the better conclusion is that there's something wrong with us.

Jesus said the two greatest commandments are to love the Lord our God with everything we've got, and to love our neighbor as ourselves. Then, in the Parable of the Good Samaritan, he defined a neighbor as the guy we tell light-bulb jokes about. Since salvation is by grace alone, maybe these two ordinances are not ways to get into Heaven, but ways to like it when we get there.

Maybe Heaven, like coffee or opera or Russian novels, is an acquired taste. And maybe the process of acquiring that taste is what the Bible calls "sanctification." And maybe we'd better start developing our appreciation for the Heaven that really exists. So go to church on Sunday, and sit next to somebody who isn't like you - or somebody you don't like! If it won't help get you into Heaven, it will help you get into it once you're there.

Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it!" 

- Genesis 28.16

If you've ever watched a police procedural show on television, you've heard someone say, "We've put out a BOLO on the suspect!" The acronym stands for, "Be On the Look Out for." The idea is that the person you want is out there, but you might not spot them if you did not know to be looking.

Advent is the BOLO season of the Christian year. The Messiah is coming, but in ways, and in places, and through people we don't expect: a helpless baby, born in a no-star hotel, to an unwed mother. Zecharias sees an angel where he expected only a cloud of incense. The shepherds see a heavenly battalion where they expected only sheep. The wise men see a star that defies their carefully-crafted zodiac. 

The ongoing soap opera of Harry and Heels (the literal translation of "Esau" and "Jacob"), reminds us to pay this kind of attention. Jacob has conned his big brother one time too many and made Canaan too to hold him so he does a runner to Haran, some five hundred miles to the north. (Think of Al Pacino's character in "The Godfather" who takes it on the lam to Sicily after he offs a rival mob boss.) Just a few days into his trek he sacks out on a hillside expecting nothing more than a bad night's sleep. (I've never understood why someone would use a rock for a pillow.) Instead, God appears; even so, Jacob must pay attention. Notice a couple of interesting things.

In one way, the vision fits Jacob's expectations. What he sees is probably not a "ladder," but a "stairway" reaching to Heaven (like the Led Zeppelin song). Some scholars believe this was a ziggurat, the stepped pyramids with a central staircase that featured in the pagan religions of Mesopotamia. The idea was that the priest would ascend the steps to get in shouting distance of the gods in order to cut a deal. The Tower of Babel was probably designed along these lines.

However, notice a few important differences: First of all, instead of a portal for human beings to ascend to the heavens, this was a means by which heavenly agents entered human turf in order to be active in their affairs. More importantly, God does not park in the penthouse. The best translation of verse 13 indicates that God stood "beside" the whole structure (NRSV). So Jacob learns that heavenly intervention in the world is not achieved but received, and that the God of Abraham and Isaac is not absent but present. Most important of all, God's promise in verse 14 is that "all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and your offspring." The gist of the blessing that Jacob had swiped was the ultimate coming of the Savior to set right Adam's original sin. 

"Surely the Lord is in this place - and I did not know it!" 

So here's the payoff: Advent offers a time of preparation for the arrival of Christ in our world in new ways that reconfigure our religious expectations. God works within our cultural matrix, but repurposes our theological categories with the shock of grace.

So, waking or sleeping, working or resting, be on the lookout for Christ, who comes to us daily, often in a distressing disguise. When he comes, we must do what Jacob did: mark the moment by offering to God whatever means of revelation God chooses: a rock for a pillow, or an emotional rock in my psychological shoe; a perfect child, or a stew-hustling identity thief who troubles the family hearth. God uses it all to bring in the Kingdom of Heaven.

As the poet Elizabeth Barret Browning writes, "Earth's crammed with heaven/And every common bush afire with God/But only he who sees takes off his shoes."

He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb, the mount of God. - 1 Kings 19.8

No one should live more than a ten minute walk from a good walk.

This is the position of the National Recreation and Parks Association and Urban Land Institute, which has coaxed the mayors of two hundred and twenty cities across America into signing on to support their project. The idea is that urbanites should be able to reach a green space within a half-hour's trek from anywhere in their town. Experts insist that even a brief walk through nature provides wonderful health benefits. Minneapolis has long since achieved the ten-minute desideratum and, perhaps as a result, ranks as the healthiest city in the country. Of course, multiple studies add that adequate sleep and a healthy diet have similar effects. 

Consider, then, the case of Elijah.

The crusty old prophet bursts on the scene declaring famines, eating carrion, sponging off widows, raising the dead, confronting kings, calling down divine fire and, for an encore, making it rain. At the end of all this frenetic prophetic exertion, he sort of flames out. The queen threatens his life and he bolts, paving his retreat with prayers that lay the blame on God. Then an interesting thing happens: he takes a nap. When he wakes up, he eats some bread (whole-grain and organic, no doubt). and has a drink (water; not soda). Then he takes a walk - granted, he exceeds the ten-minute minimum by over five thousand percent but its still a stroll to an outdoor location.

Then he hears from God.

Many of us live ten minutes or less from our next crisis. Sometimes it seems that only nanoseconds separate us from an angry mob of demands. When our skins get thin and our prayers grow peevish, it may be time to follow the Lord's prescription: take a nap; have a snack; go for a walk. Don't wait for ideal conditions: Elijah slept in the shade of a day hot enough to bake bread on a rock! Don't insist on an extended vacation: if you don't have forty days, the scientists tell us that even forty minutes will do. 

Make your way to the mountain of God; then you can judge molehills accurately.

They called to the mountains and the rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!" - Revelation 6.16

C. S. Lewis dismisses Isaiah's vision of the Peaceable Kingdom as "eastern hyperbole" because, he complains, lying down by the lion "would be rather impertinent of the lamb." Even a vegan lion, Lewis explains, would continue to be "awful," though it had ceased to be "dangerous."

John answers Lewis' objection when he presents the churches with a wrathful lamb and smuggles in overtones of both Isaiah 2, with its images of judgement, and Isaiah 65, where the coming of God's perfect kingdom reconciles former foes. "People will flee to the caves in the rocks and to holes in the ground from the fearful presence of the Lord and the splendor of his majesty, when he rises to shake the earth" (Isa 2.19). "The wolf and the lamb shall feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox" (Isa 65.25). In Revelation, God accomplishes this miracle, not just by making the predator less predatory, but by making the lamb more fearsome. John has invited us to rejoice in a Lamb that stands slain (Rev 5.6), but he now reminds us that it is this very Lamb who has unleashed upon the earth the seven-sealed scroll of God's fierce wrath.

In this day, when popular theology posits a Christ whose love differs little from the cuddly patience of a child's stuffed toy, one does well to remember that before Isaiah envisions the Peaceable Kingdom, he posts a roster of those included and those excluded (Isa 65.8-16), and that before John sees the sixth seal broken, the fifth seal separates the souls of the martyrs in Heaven from the earth-dwellers who face domination, war, famine, and death (Rev 6.1-11). 

It is not eastern hyperbole but prophetic poetry which manages to see that love without wrath is indulgence, and softness without fear mere sentiment. For whosoever will, the Lamb stands slain to appease his own righteous wrath; for whosoever won't, that same wrath awaits. Mary had a little Lamb; his fleece is as white as the robes of the martyrs, but his wrath is as black as goat's hair and as red as blood shed in unrighteous anger. The Lamb, or the Lamb: Take your pick.

For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become a transgressor of the law.

- James 2.10

On Friday, November 9, Michael Rogers of Melbourne, Australia, was a hero. A week later, he was a criminal.

After suspected terrorist Hassan Khalif Shire Ali stabbed three patrons at a local shopping mall, and as he held off three police officers with his blade, Rogers, who is homeless, rammed the suspect repeatedly with a shopping cart. His quick thinking allowed the cops to apprehend the perpetrator without further violence. The internet fell in love, with admirers opening a Go Fund Me campaign and raising over eighty grand to benefit the newly-minted celebrity.

Then law enforcement took a dekko at the grainy cell phone footage and discovered that Rogers had a number of outstanding charges for theft and B&E. He turned himself in on Friday, November 16, one week after his much-publicized heroics.

Seems ironic. The whole thing reminded me of that slab of dialogue in Disney's "Black Pearl," where Captain Jack Sparrow rescues Elizabeth Swan only to face arrest and hanging as a pirate. As Admiral Norrington explains, "One good deed is not enough to redeem a man of a lifetime of wickedness." To which Captain Jack quips, sotto voce, "Though it seems enough to condemn him."

James makes the same point regarding any effort at works salvation: no amount of good-deeding expunges the stain of original sin. As D. L. Moody once observed, if you hang a man from the roof by a chain of ten links and one breaks, he falls, despite a ninety-percent success rate!

But James does not leave us at the mercy - or mercilessness - of our spotty track record. Instead, he points us to "the law of liberty," which he also dubs "the royal law," "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Christ, who kept the whole law without fail, sacrificed his perfection in place of our failure and by that act offers us redemption. 

The National Homeless Fund says it will hold the money for Rogers in hopes that he can settle his issues and start a new life. One prays for such an outcome. But his story serves as an example to all of us that our only hope for eternal life lies, not in acts of heroism, but in the mercy shown us by the sacrifice of Christ.

But as one was felling a log, his ax head fell into the water; he cried out, "Alas, master! It was borrowed." - 2 Kings 6.5

In his novel The Marquis of Lossie, George MacDonald describes the spiritual state of an artist: 

 "He was not altogether innocent of saying prayers; but of late it had grown a more formal and    gradually a rarer thing. One reason for this was that it had never come into his head that God cared about pictures, or had the slightest interest in whether he painted well or ill. If a man's earnest calling, to which of necessity the greater part of his thought is given, is altogether disassociated in his mind from his religion, it is not altogether wonderful that his prayers should by degrees wither and die."

A borrowed hatchet blade might have seemed too small a thing to bring to the prophet who had parted the Jordan, but it was, at that moment, the biggest thing in this young man's world. Iron was a new technology, and thus expensive: Imagine accidentally flinging a friend's new smart phone into the local swimming pool! The hapless construction worker does not weigh the worth of his request in the balances of Elisha's greater prophetic calling; he bleats out a heart-felt cry for help with what most touches his life at that moment.

The result is of more than immediate economic impact. Elisha reveals the power of a God who reverses nature's expected order: iron floats; what naturally sinks to the bottom suddenly surges to the surface. The God who creates the world cares about a contractor's balance sheet. This prefigures Jesus, who revealed a God who puts the last first and cares when a sparrow dies. 

Christians often sensor our prayers because logic sneers that God has better things to do. As a result, our prayers wither and die by degrees. As Dallas Willard notes, "Prayer simply dies from efforts to pray about 'good things,' that honestly do not matter to us. The way to get to meaningful prayer for those good things is to start by praying for what we are truly interested in. The circle of our interests will inevitably grow in the largeness of God's love."

So pray about what touches you; God will find a means of greater revelation in responding to that small request, and your soul will grow larger so that it may be touched by greater things.

We will drink no wine, for our ancestor Jonadab the son of Rechab commanded us, 

"You shall never drink wine, neither you nor your children."

- Jeremiah 35.6

When Bear Bryant led his second-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide into the 1979 Sugar Bowl against the top-ranked Penn State Nittany Lions, fans and sports writers immediately noticed that something was missing: the Bear's signature checked fedora. The legendary football coach had sported that distinctive headgear throughout his career, but on this day he appeared bare-headed on the sidelines.

Asked about the sartorial alteration, Bryant replied, "My mama always told me to take off my hat indoors."

That forty-fifth edition of the famous bowl game took place in the New Orleans Superdome back when roofed football venues were still something of a novelty. Despite everything he had riding on the contest, and despite the notable superstition of coaches about changing a winning routine, the Bear put deference to his mother above all other considerations. (Must've worked: The Tide defeated Joe Paterno's outfit in a hard-fought 14-7 battle and Bryant notched his fifth national title.)

When the prophet Jeremiah, acting on God's instructions, invited the Rechabites to belly up to the bar, they cited a similar precedent: Family tradition forbade them from tippling. The Rechabites weren't anybody special. Though they could claim distant kinship to Moses by marriage, they were a small outfit who scraped a living on the nomadic fringe of Israelite life. In unfamiliar circumstances, surrounded by the elite of society and with the Babylonian marauders stalking their ancestral stomping grounds, they could have been forgiven for taking a belt, perhaps out of fear or politeness or the simple notion that in times like these, Cary Nation herself might need a stiff drink. But they held fast: We don't do that in our family.

Jeremiah suddenly switches roles and goes from barkeep to prophet, using the Rechabites as his sermon illustration. They heeded the dusty mandate of a dead great-grandfather while Israel spurned the commandments of the living God. Jeremiah carefully calibrates the contrast: The text makes seven references to the "ancestors" of these gypsies, and contains seven statements by the Lord regarding obedience. ("Obey" and "listen" are the same words in Hebrew.)

Final note: "obey" translates the Hebrew word sh'ma that begins the ancient Israelite creed in Deuteronomy 6:4, "Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord alone." For God, "hearing" is not a mere auditory phenomenon but an active response. Hearing may start with the ears, but it always ends with the heart and the hands.

To this day, I won't walk through a door ahead of a woman, because that's what my mother taught me and I am far more afraid of her than of the fiercest feminist who ever burned a bra. I sometimes wonder if I fear God to the same extent.

When the seconds tick off the clock, with the game on the line, how faithful are we to the living law of our living God?

Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

- Hebrews 12.1

Game three of the 2018 World Series took longer to play than the entire 1936 Series. In the bottom of the eighteenth, after seven hours and twenty minutes, Dodgers slugger Max Muncy parked the 561st pitch of the night over the left-field fence for a walk-off homer that nudged the final score to 3-2. It was 3:30 in the morning. Red Sox reliever Nathan Eovaldi threw a record-breaking ninety-seven pitches over seven innings. At one point, the Dodgers clubhouse chef sent a round of peanut butter and banana sandwiches to the dugout to fortify the weary players.

Baseball, unlike football or basketball, has no clock and no ties. The game lasts until somebody wins. 

The author of Hebrews calls on Christians to exercise an extra-inning faith. Let us run with perseverance. The Christian life is not a sprint but a marathon, a lifelong slog with a moving finish line. It is less about speed than about steadiness; staying focused counts for more than being fancy; it is a contest where the most important ability is durability.

Despite all the doomsday box scores configured by an endless line of debunked latter-day prophets, the Church really doesn't know where she stands. Is this the ninth inning? The third? The eighteenth? The next crack of the bat may be the clarion call that heralds Our Lord's return, or just one more steady swing. 

So run today's race today; play well the inning you face. Feast on the fortified food of the faith then grab your glove and go out there again. . .and again. . .and again. Let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins. - 1 John 2.1

One woman claimed that yes, she was selling food on the street without a permit, but that was all right because her folding table was not a food court. A man admitted that he had parked his car illegally, but argued that everyone else on the street did so as well. One man said he was pretty sure he had not been drinking from an open container in public, although he was drunk and couldn't remember anything that happened that day.

If a New York police officer issues you a citation for various non-criminal offenses, you can appeal it to something called the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, or OATH. There is one in each borough of the metropolis. It's a rather intimate process: a judge (sans robe and gavel) meets you face to face across a small table in a tiny room. The judge hears your explanation and either enforces or dismisses the charge. It works just over forty percent of the time, mostly because a lot of the excuses don't wash. Most people don't bring a lawyer. 

Yes, my yard was full of trash, but it wasn't mine. Yes, I was drinking in public, but I had almost finished the beer when the cop came along. Yes, my bodega sold cigarettes to an underage patron, but the cops sent him in there in the first place. 

Innocence is one thing. Excuses are another. 

Scripture makes it clear that we will all face God's version of the OATH. Our Judge will not be informally attired, but swathed in the blood-stained robe of his perfect righteousness. True, he will not hold a gavel; instead, a he clenches a double-edged long sword between his teeth. But it will be intimate: One on one we hear the record read out. We may offer excuses, but cannot justify ourselves. As Adam and Eve learned to their grief, peer-pressure or "the devil made me do it" won't wash. The conviction rate in that court will not be forty, or even ninety-nine, but one hundred percent.

The difference is that our Judge has sworn a different kind of OATH - a promise to cover our transgressions in his perfect innocence. He has done our time, paid our fine, taken the heat. In that court, we can bring a lawyer who works pro bono; moreover, our Judge is also our Lawyer. He will not plead our innocence, but his. He will not ask the court to dismiss the penalty, but will argue that it has already been paid and produce his pierced body as a receipt. He's never lost a case.

Don't make an excuse; repent. Don't plead extenuating circumstances; plead the extended arms of Christ on the cross. 

The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house,

but it did not fall because it had been founded on rock.

- Matthew 7.25

When Hurricane Michael chugged across Mexico Beach on the Florida Gulf Coast, the storm clear-cut the coastal village and left nearly nothing standing; nearly. "The Sand Palace," Russel King's beach house, stood tall. The rain gushed in runnels from the eves. The flood waters never reached the floors. The winds broke a small window.  

Russel King and his nephew, Lebron Lackey, had built for the big one. 

The forty foot pilings held up. The specially chosen screws held on. The reinforced steel held out. By design, the exterior staircase detached like a tearaway football jersey and took none of the stucco with it. King and Lackey knew the storm was coming, and planned accordingly. Their creation exceeded state wind storm standards, and the category-four bluster fell one hundred miles per hour short of its maximum. 

Such security did not come cheap. Charles A. Gaskin, the architect who designed the three-story edifice, said the owners paid roughly double the going rate per square foot.

The rains fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock.

Jesus took life's storms as a given. He allowed no room for speculation: the world will test the life you build; the big one is out there and everyone sits in the center of the bull's eye. The only question is one of preparation. 

Christians often read this famous parable in terms of personal salvation: Only a life anchored on the Rock of Ages has a beach home's chance in Hell of holding up. 

That's a legitimate application, but not the real interpretation. Jesus proposed this parable as the capstone to a sermon that deals with life choices: Whether to pray; how to handle oppression; what to do with one's money. His blueprint exceeds the legal requirements: murder is a cat-four offense, but forgiveness defies the cat-five forces of hatred. If adultery topples purity, plan to hold off lustful thoughts. Public piety looks good but can't withstand the headwinds of harsh reality; private prayer and fenced-in fasting forty feet below the surface of the soul invite the vortex of hard times to do their worst. 

You have heard that it was said to the people long ago. . . .But I tell you. . . .

Kingdom living costs you double what Moses' building code demands, but it stands strong when life gets real. Dallas Willard once asked if it was better to have good insurance on a car with bad brakes, or good brakes on an uninsured vehicle. Jesus prioritizes sound architecture over a prime policy. To mix the metaphor, the Lord isn't selling fire insurance; he's offering an asbestos soul.

Every day, Christians face the same question in the onslaughts of life's inevitable storms: Does Jesus really know what he's talking about? Build your house by the Kingdom code; pay the price our Almighty Architect demands.

For the message about the cross is  foolishness to those who are perishing, 

but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

- 1 Corinthians 1.18

A new directive in the German state of Bavaria requires that a cross hang above the entrance of every government building. Christian Moser, mayor of the Bavarian village of Deggendorf, doesn't see a problem. "This is about culture, not religion." Bavaria's premier, Markus Soder takes a similar view: "The cross is not a sign of religion." Indeed, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in 2011 the cross is "a passive symbol" with no overtones of indoctrination. Mayor Moser explains that when he hangs a cross in a city office, "It has to be visible, but also discreet." 

It shouldn't surprise anyone that religion is taking a nosedive in Bavaria even as Christian symbols mount a comeback. 

Paul had a different idea about the cross: He cared less about displaying it and more about proclaiming it. He did not think Christians should wear one; he thought they should bear one. Tradition tells us that the Roman Empire once displayed a cross in a public place - when they crucified Peter on one, upside-down. 

In America, when T-shirts, Bible covers, and internet memes drape crosses with the Stars and Stripes, or superimpose Betsy Ross's design over that ancient instrument of death, thoughtful Christians might do well to ask if such actions make the cross more about culture than about Christianity, empty it as a sign of religion, and turn an active offense into a passive symbol. As the cross becomes more visible, it also becomes more discreet.

A sensible cross may comfort, but only an offensive cross can save.

The tempter came and said to him, "If you are the son of God. . ."

- Matthew 4.3

Right field in Yankee stadium is not user-friendly for opposing players.

The wall is only eight feet high and directly abuts the warning track. This gives fans greater access to players than other ballparks where a higher wall and the intervening bullpen provide a buffer. And these aren't just any fans. To begin with, they are New Yorkers, a tribe not known for their civility. And these aren't just any New Yorkers, but the famous "Bleacher Creatures," a mongrel race whose taunts serve as a sort of tenth man in the home team lineup. 

Nor do these right-field rowdies content themselves with the usual insults and profanities: They do their research! In a contest on Mother's Day fans strafed Oakland Athletics right fielder Mark Canha with (in)appropriate season's greetings including insulting his mother's meat balls. Someone found out that Canha is part Italian and knew the taunt would connect. As C. S. Lewis observed, envious people are not above lying, but will tell the truth when possible; it hurts more.

When Jesus invaded the wilderness, he ceded the home-field advantage to the Enemy. In scriptural symbolism, the desert is where the demons dwell. Jesus took his place in deep right field with a low barrier between himself and the tempter. In the bottom of the ninth, things heated up. And the Enemy had done his research: If you are the Son of God. . . . The grammar there indicates a level of doubt: "Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that you really are God incarnate." J. B. Philips renders it, "If you really are the Son of God. . . ." 

A thing like that could make a guy glance away from a towering pop-fly and muff the easy out. Jesus, however, kept his eye on the ball and met Satan's sneers with Scripture. He fielded three straight screamers and retired the side.

Our Lord's example reminds us not to let the opponent get inside our heads. The right field wall may sink low and sit near, but even the devil (or Yankee's fans, take your pick) must abide by the rules. An old legend says that when Saint Antony holed up in the desert a rowdy band of demons gathered outside his cell and bellowed their threats. The saint replied, "If there were some power among you, it would have been enough for only one of you to come. But since the Lord has broken your strength, you attempt to terrify me by any means with the mob."

Pay attention to who's in your head. Don't rent out space to the Devil. Keep your eye on the ball.

Let both of them grow together until the harvest; and at the harvest time I will tell the reapers, Collect the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat in my barn. 

Matthew 13.30 

Pastor Oscar Banks of South Shore Christian Church in Corpus Christi tells the story of a children's sermon that took a hard left turn. The pastor asked the boys and girls what she would have to do to get into Heaven, proposing increasingly heroic acts of service and self-sacrifice. Well-schooled, the kids said no, that none of that would do the trick. In mock frustration, the pastor fumed, "Then what do I have to do to get into Heaven?"

"Well," replied one little boy. "First of all, you have to be dead."

Jesus threads the same idea through this parable: We never do well to get ahead of Heaven. Heaven comes after we've waited it out with the weeds. Utopian schemes of earthly paradise, Jesus warns, only make things worse. In fact, a lot of waiting goes on in this entire chapter: the farmer has to wait for the seeds to find good soil after a lot of trial and error; the hearers have to wait until the meaning of the parables emerges and most won't stick around that long; the birds have to wait until a mutant mustard seed goes full-on giant sequoia and the housewife has to wait for the dough to rise. 

So what is the calling of the Christian in this weedy old world? Put down the perfectionistic weed-whacker, tend to what's growing, and wait it out. And be humble: Someone has said that a weed is only a plant growing where I don't want it, and a lot of our condemnation of others has far more to do with their inconvenience to us than their disobedience to God. And be joyful: One day servants of the Householder will conduct a surgical strike, burn the bad seed and bundle us into his barn. Until then - on your job, in your family, at your church - don't expect Heaven; you're not dead yet.

To the angel of the church in Ephesus, write. . .

- Revelation 2.1

John's revelation begins with the risen Christ and moves quickly to the embattled Body of Christ. Chapters two and three of the Revelation consist of letters to seven churches. Interpreters have long debated the symbolic meaning of these congregations. Are they a sort of eschatological doomsday clock that ticks off the seconds and Sundays that remain before the Lord's return? Could we synchronize our sanctification with Revelation's Rolex and blow the whistle on the Thief in the Night?

Whatever one's position on this issue, one thing is clear: These congregations may have symbolized The Church, but they existed as churches. However they may relate to the end times, they fought out their faith in real time. If they are symbolical, they are first geographical.

They are unique: Christ addresses each community in terms that resonate with its own culture, and addresses their unique struggles, weaknesses, and strengths. They are typical: The pattern of address, commendation, rebuke, promise and warning runs throughout the seven with minor variations. Indeed, since John includes their letters in his Letter, he invites them to read each other's mail (quite literally). We can't think this was for purposes of gossip or bragging rights, so they must have been enough alike that this kind of snooping would do them good.

But here's the interesting thing: John doesn't write to the churches; he writes to their pastors. The Greek pronouns in the seven letters are singular: you, not y'all. And all that stuff about removing candlesticks? It puts the burden squarely on the shepherd. To be fair, interpreters debate whether angel means, you know, an angel, as if each congregation has a celestial foreman, or should be translated as "messenger," referring to the pastor. John is clearly into angels; he's also into the book of Daniel: quotes it twenty or so times, depending on who's counting; and the book of Daniel at least hints at territorial seraphim (Dan 10.13). Still, the New Testament also uses the word in the terrestrial sense, and anyway, how do you address a letter to an angel? Probably it means "pastor."

This reminds us of the words of Herman Melville in Moby Dick when his narrator, Ishmael, ponders a pulpit shaped like a ship's bow: 

"What could be more full of meaning?—for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm of God’s quick wrath is first descried, and the bow must bear the earliest brunt. From thence it is the God of breezes fair or foul is first invoked for favourable winds. Yes, the world ’s a ship on its passage out, and not a voyage complete; and the pulpit is its prow."

So when your pastor mounts to the pulpit on Sunday, be in prayer. The risen Christ says the hurricane is coming, and you need to hear the foul weather protocol. 

I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

John 10.11

Do we love ivory, or elephants?

I once heard the story of an ivory hunter back in the days when the sun never set on the British empire. He returned to England fabulously rich, and at a dinner party the young men plied him with questions as to how they could replicate his success. The old boy replied, "Everyone goes to the jungle to hunt for ivory and they all discover the same thing: It isn't that hard to find ivory; the problem is that when you do, there's always an elephant attached."

Well, not necessarily. 

Elephants world-wide face extinction due to the predations of poachers who slaughter the beasts for their valuable dentition. A mature animal mounts a set of tusks that top out at over one hundred pounds each; at $1K per kilogram, that cashes out to about $100,000. At the Addo Elephant Preserve on the Eastern Cape of South Africa this pressure has led to a unique survival strategy: tuskless elephants. A recessive gene that normally affects about two percent of the population now appears in a large percentage of the females in this region. Poaching has dropped to nearly nothing; why kill the animal when there's no payday attached?

But here's the interesting thing: Addo's park rangers have not stood down. Instead, this eighty-soldier army polices its ponderous charges using military tactics and weaponry, including air support and motion-detecting sensors. They shepherd their charges through thick bush rife with plants that have names like pig's ear, spike thorn, and mother-in-law's tongue! They place a high price on useless beasts; they risk their lives for pointless pachyderms.

Few people in Jesus' world had ever seen en elephant, so he chose sheep to make the same point. The good shepherd sacrifices himself for the flock, a clear statement that he cares for them as living things rather than simply so much rolling stock. Esau's birthright meant nothing to him if he was dead; Jesus instead operated on the logic of love and laid down his life for his mangy inheritance.

In a day when aftershave-soaked televangelists preach sweet-smelling sermons from behind a shield-wall of ivory dentition, God calls pastors to admire ivory, but to love elephants. Sheer your sheep for the wool, but love the sheep for themselves.

Ministry is not all ivory and love-offerings. It is often thick hides and sharp brambles. God calls pastors to go on safari through thick thistles suitable for weaving a crown of thorns, to spend their lives on useless elephants whose only claim to care is that Christ loved them enough to die for them. Our best preaching may fall like pearls before pachyderms, but we will one day hear the Good Park Ranger say to us, "Well done, thou good and faithful servant."

We take every thought captive to obey Christ. - 2 Corinthians 10.5

Parasitoid wasps are a thing. 

It appears that they roofie other bugs and turn them into a living incubator for the wasp's eggs - which hatch into larvae and devour their host then bust out like high school football players through a blast sign. Gross, huh? (Yeah, but at least one of 'em does it to cockroaches, so it brings balance to the force.) This appears to have been going on for forty million years, if you believe what the scientists say about the fossil evidence. 

Think about that: a hostile, alien being that hijacks the brain, making a creature cultivate the means of its own destruction. 

Paul knew all about this. That's why he declares in 2 Corinthians 10.5 that he "takes every thought captive." He deploys the same Greek verb he uses in Romans 7.23 to speak of  seeing "in my members another law. . . making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members." For Paul, this is war. "Damn the mosquitoes! Full speed ahead!" (Sorry. "Wasps" doesn't make the pun.) 

The devil is a parasitoid insect who co-opts us as surrogate wombs to nurse our own destruction. The good news is that we can choose other roommates. "The peace of God," promises Philippians 4.7, "which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus."

I have a friend who is a ventriloquist. When she makes a mistake in her routine, she manipulates the puppet so that it turns slowly toward her and eyes her before asking, "Who's working your head?" It's a pretty good question.

But the word of God is not chained. - 2 Timothy 2.9

President Donald Trump gathered a covey of prominent Evangelical pastors in the State Dining Room of the White House on Monday, August 20. He used the huddle to tout his temporary suspension of the Johnson Amendment, which forbids churches from endorsing politicians at the peril of losing their tax exempt status. The President expressed the belief that the lack of this license explains the slump in church attendance in America.

"Maybe it's why you are very plateaued," he theorized. "I really believe you're plateaued because you can't speak. They really have silenced you. But now you're not silenced anymore." The President went on to warn his acolytes that they'd better get their flock to the poles in November because "you're one election away from losing everything you've got."

Politics aside, the President's pronouncement amounts to this: Political activism enlivens the church, so only a politician can give it life. 

Paul had a different take. From a windowless dungeon far below the street-level of first century Rome, he urged Timothy not to vote, but to voice the Christian hope: "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David - that is my gospel." For that gospel, Paul exulted, "I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the gospel is not chained." 

Paul faced execution, not tax exemption; his problem was not losing political headway, but losing his head. Yet Paul boldly declares that the Gospel, not the government, gives life to the church. Shackles jangled at his wrists and ankles as he side-hopped about his cell like a convict on a chain gang even as the message of the risen Christ ran rampant throughout Rome. Paul was imprisoned, but the gospel was not plateaued. He did not need Caesar to set him free in order to proclaim that Jesus makes us free indeed.

Religious liberty matters. Sincere Christians differ about politics and particular candidates. Vote your conscience. Just never make the mistake of letting an earthly leader tell you that the church's future rests in the hands of a political party or partisan agenda. The gospel is not chained, the power of God knows no plateaus, and the only maximum security that matters is the eternity security of a soul that on Jesus has leaned for repose. We are not one election from losing everything we've got; we the elect have got all the riches of God in Christ Jesus, and they can never be lost.

Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it. 

- 1 Corinthians 12.27

Honeybees and blue orchard bees pollinate apples and cherries in different ways. For openers, honeybees won't work in cold weather, while blue orchard bees love it. Honeybees are extroverts who live in big colonies that keepers can move from farm to farm; blue orchard bees dwell in solitude and it's not practical to cart them around. Pollen clings to the honeybees' legs but to the blue orchard bee's belly. The two species opt for different flight patterns, working at separate levels.

For all of these reasons, both together do better than either one alone.

When Jim Freese of Omak, Washington, wanted to up the yield on his crops, he supplemented rented honeybee hives with homegrown blue orchard bees. His cherry production doubled. Some studies say the potential increase could be ten-fold. 

Paul thinks the church works best when we use multiple pollinators. Vision, hearing, and olfactory each performs a vital functions; eyes and hands, heads and feet need one another; apostles, prophets, teachers, and miracle-workers, healers, helpers, leaders, and cheerleaders aim for completion, not competition. 

So bee the bee God made you to be and celebrate the same truth in others. Bee and let bee, and watch the church bear much fruit to the glory of the Sower of the seed.

Making the most of the time, because the days are evil.

- Ephesians 5.16

The Seneca chief Red Jacket once heard a white man complain that he did not have enough time. "Well," he replied, "I suppose you have all there is."

Scholars debate the exact shade of meaning in Paul's verb, "making the most." Translations range from "redeeming" (KJV), to "making the best use" (ESV), to "don't waste your time" (Message). What matters is that Paul employs a marketplace metaphor. Time may not be money, but it is a form of currency and we all get the same amount: all of it. The question is what we will do with it. Because we live in evil days, we must invest wisely. As that great theologian, the country singer Bobby Bear, said in "The Gambler," "Every hand's a winner/Like every hand's a loser." Be careful, Paul admonishes, how you play your hand.

Paul does give a couple of interesting suggestions as to how to go about this. Interestingly enough, neither of them has to do with the latest day planner or efficiency app. First, he suggests sobriety (v.17). This category expands to include any activity that encourages one to "pass" time instead of "spending" it. When we binge-watch Netflix or ramble around the social media scene, we tend to lose track of time - and lose time. Second, he suggests worship, especially worship that involves congregational singing. Musicians speak of "keeping time," which means, not preserving it, but marking its passage in ways that bring one into sync with others. Sober up and sing, Paul urges; mark the moments with the rhythm of praise.

Of course, all of this raises the question of which way of attending to time merits the investment. Benedictine Abbot Philip Lawrence observes, "The early monks often pointed out that when someone knocks at the door, it is Christ. Sometimes when Christ knocks at the door it is an emergency; other times it is something important; sometimes it is just someone wanting to say 'hello.' But it is always Christ." When people want our time, Jesus wants our time; but even with Jesus, we have to ask what kind of time the situation merits.

"We have trained them," gloats C. S. Lewis' arch-tempter Screwtape, "to think of the Future as a promised land which favoured heroes obtain - not as something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whoever he is, whatever he does." Or as Annie Dillard observes, "How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days." 

So keep time. Catch your days. Invest well. We all end up time-broke, facing eternity's audit; have something to show for it.

So teach us to number our days,

That we may present to You a heart of wisdom.

- Psalm 90.12

In 1971, health food maven Jerome I. Rodale appeared on the Dick Cavett show. Among other delicacies, he offered his host a dish of asparagus soaked in urine. Cavett declined the snack. (Although, really, how much worse could it have tasted than regular asparagus?) Rodale boasted that he planned to live to be one hundred.

He died on stage just as the program wrapped up. Heart attack at seventy-two, less than three-quarters of the way to his goal.

Moses, the purported author of Psalm 90, did better. He made it all the way to one hundred and twenty. (Just a side note: urine is not kosher.) Yet he begs God for the good sense to know that a long(er) life ends the same way as a short one: in death. The smart move, then, is not to learn how to keep on living, but to learn how to live well. Moses isn't asking the Almighty to run the math and give him a calendar date. He asks instead to live as one who recognizes that he will be dead for a lot longer than he will be alive.

When Mr. Vane, the narrator of George MacDonald's bizarre novel Lilith, inherits his father's estate, he visits the library, "whose growth began before the invention of printing." He observes that, "Nothing surely can impress upon a man the transitory nature of possession than his succeeding to an ancient property!" So teach us to number our days.

In Shakespeare's Henry IV Part II, when a friend warns him to prepare for death, the elderly roisterer Falstaff sneers, "Do not speak like a death's-head; do not bid me remember mine end." His willful amnesia regarding mortality does him no good, of course. He's dead before the curtain comes down.

The Bible has a fair amount to say on this subject. Remember how short my time is! bleats the speaker in Psalm 89.47. Psalm 39.4 comes in on the descant: O Lord, make me know my end and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting I am. The author of Hebrews drives the final nail of reality into the coffin of mortality: It is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgement. (Heb 9.27)

Eat all the organic veggies you want (urine optional); jog or do yoga; give up coffee (which will at least make your life feel a lot longer); we're all travelers on a finite road that dead ends into a headstone. So teach us to number our days.

That we may present to you a heart of wisdom: Ultimate wisdom lies in the heart we present to God on that great and final day when the trumpet sounds. Only faith in Christ can ready our hearts for that moment. Number your days, because your days are numbered. Have a heart whose wisdom leads you to seek salvation.

He said to them, "Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her; and if she divorces her husband and marries another, she commits adultery." - Mark 10.11-12

A recent financial advice column asks the romantic question, "Should you get a divorce now or later?" The piece goes on to analyze several impending changes in the income tax code and weigh each in the balances of whether it would leave someone richer or poorer after splitting up a marriage. Spoiler alert: Nobody really seems to know.

I don't understand economics. I've always sympathized with President Harry Truman, who lamented, "Give me a one-handed economist. Mine all say, 'on the one hand. . .but on the other hand. . . ." What I do understand is the logical fallacy of the false dilemma: The headline asks of divorce only "when" without leaving any room for "whether." 

Another thing I understand is that Jesus thinks divorce is a really bad idea. Yes, Scripture does allow for exceptions to this guideline. Yes, circumstances count and passages like this one have been used repeatedly to entomb women in abusive relationships. But at least Christians should be able to agree that the couple's tax bracket is not the place to begin pondering. A prenuptial agreement makes as much sense to me as buying the extended warranty: I always want to ask the guy, "So, you're telling me your product is such a piece of junk that I should bet on it breaking down?"

I'm not talking to those who have suffered through the dissolution of a marriage. I know few people who despise divorce quite as much as those who have been its victims. And we do well to remember that the woman in John 8 appears on trial alone and Jesus takes her part against an unjust system. But I don't think it's too much to ask that Christians, faced with the question, "Should you get a divorce now or later?" would answer, "No."

Now the works of the flesh are. . .envy. . . .I am warning you, as I have warned you before: those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. - Galatians 5.20-21

In an article in the New York Times, columnist Tim Herrera asks if the reader has ever felt angry when outperformed by a friend. "It's O.K.," he soothes. "You're not a bad person. Our brains are programmed to feel that confusing mix of pride and jealousy, and we have self-evaluation maintenance theory to thank."

Well, that gets nearly everything wrong.

You are a bad person (a "sinner," in the blunt old language of the Bible), it is your soul that is (hay)wired to think that way, and you have human depravity to thank. Fancy concepts like "self-evaluation maintenance theory" may explain the mechanism involved but that makes as much sense as saying that a drunk can blame his boozing on the theory of fermentation.

Envy, as sins go, ranks right up - or down - there. It shows up on the most-wanted poster of the Seven Deadly Sins and Paul slaps it in the lineup card of the works of the flesh. It's worse than greed (another of the Maleficent Seven); greed wants what someone else has while envy just doesn't want the other person to have it. And Herrera's "solution" only compounds the problem: When a friend one-ups you, try to think of something you do better so that pride can soothe your envy! It's like curing warts by bathing in acid. 

The problem with envy is that it is an attitude, not an action. "Thou shalt not murder" is pretty easy: don't slip arsenic into anyone's salad. Jesus, of course, makes it harder when he says, in essence, don't even wish you could, or think it would be a nice idea if someone else did. Envy adapts well to the nice things we might say to or about the person of whom we're jealous; it can piggyback on our kind actions and hijack them with ease. 

When frontal assaults fail, it's time for the insurgent warfare of spiritual discipline. Practices of withdrawal, like silence when we would like to drop the denigrating observation or offer the poison-apple praise, solitude when we'd rather seek the solace of the rest of the bitter losers, and fasting when we yearn to stuff our insecurity with Twinkies, can cut the supply lines of our raw ego. Practices of engagement, like offering some anonymous service to the one we envy, or thanking God in prayer for that person's accomplishment and the good that will come from it, or maybe just attending the small celebration of the recent achievement, are a flanking maneuver around the entrenched position of evil. Of course, attacking the sin of envy begins the same way as the battle against all sin: Calling it sin, repenting of it, and pleading the blood of Christ not just as a cover-up, but as a cure. The fruit of the Spirit, which Paul names next in Galatians 5, grows out of a deep relationship with Christ and starves out the dandelions of our old flesh.

So to paraphrase an old Country/Western song, if you find the good fortune of a friend (or an enemy or someone you hardly even know) starts to make your brown eyes green, don't psychoanalyze, don't justify, and don't rely on self-control. Repent and seek Jesus. (And don't worry if your friend is also better at that than you are!)

And a superscription was written over him in letters of Greek, and Latin, and Hebrew, 

This is the King of the Jews.

- Luke 23.38

On May 14, 2018, the United States moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. One week earlier, street signs went up to guide travelers to the new location. They were big white arrows that said, "U. S. Embassy" - in Hebrew, Arabic, and English.

That makes sense. People who live in the city, and who visit the city, may speak any one or all three of these languages. Hebrew is the official language of the nation. Arabic is the Palestinian tongue; the marginalized (and, some would argue, native) population speaks it. English is the lingua franca for global trade.

The embassy is a public place of official business and everyone wants to know how to find it.

It worked the same way at Calvary. Pilate posted his sign in the three dominant languages of his jurisdiction: Latin, for official government and military business - a little like Hebrew in modern Israel; Hebrew, for the marginalized native populace - a little like Arabic in modern Israel; Greek - the universal medium for commerce. 

Of course, Pilate's sign didn't tell people how to get somewhere; it told them where they were: in the Roman empire and don't you forget it! 

Still, it strikes me that the crucifixion was as much a public event as the opening of an embassy. That makes sense because it was, in one way, exactly that: The Christian embassy on earth is the cross of Calvary. This is the only place that holds authorization to issue official passports into Jesus' kingdom. So it happened in a place everyone could find, with an explanation everyone could understand. 

It reminds me of the stirring cry of George Macleod: 

"I simply argue that the cross should be raised at the center of the marketplace as well as on the steeple of the church. I am recovering the claim that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral between two candles, but on a cross between two thieves; on the town’s garbage heap; at a crossroad so cosmopolitan that they had to write His title in Hebrew and Latin and Greek … at the kind of place where cynics talk smut, and thieves curse, and soldiers gamble. Because that is where He died. And that is what He died for. And that is what He died about. That is where churchmen ought to be and what churchmen ought to be about."

I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and I heard behind me a loud voice like a trumpet.

Revelation 1.10

Two things: John went to church, and the Lord snuck up on him.

I was in the spirit on the Lord's day. (who will dispute anything) dispute the exact meaning of the phrases "in the spirit" and "the Lord's day." The former might refer to the kind of ecstatic experiences mentioned in the Old Testament, or it might simply mean John had chosen to place himself before God in prayer and praise. "The Lord's day" could refer to a time-warp which transported the apostle to the great and final day of judgment so often mentioned by the prophets, or it might just mean Sunday. I tend to lean toward the more prosaic readings: it was Sunday and John went to church. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day.

Of course, he went by himself. In verse nine, John reveals that persecution had cut him off from the seven congregations of Asia Minor who lived so deeply in his heart. Still, he made the choice to join them by carrying out the same spiritual exercises at the same hour. 

I heard behind me. Then the risen Christ appeared to him and glutted his sense and his senses with the wild and whirling visions of the ultimate triumph of the Kingdom of Heaven. But notice how it all begins.  I have been to the Grotto of the Apocalypse on the isle of Patmos in the Mediterranean. Our guide showed us a depression in the back wall, which tradition says John hollowed out by resting his head there when he slept. I have always imagined him facing the back wall, where perhaps he had scratched a cross as a focal point of his devotions. At any rate, when Jesus dropped in, he wasn't standing where John was looking: I heard behind me. 

That should encourage all of us who gather weekly with other saints to celebrate the resurrection. Maybe we didn't feel ourselves to be in the spirit. Maybe we only showed up because it was the Lord's day, our Sunday obeisance of obedience. Maybe the crowd was small. Discipline, dosed with habit, was all we had, so that was what we offered. And maybe we didn't hear trumpet blasts, only the low-end Hammond electric organ badly played by a devout volunteer. And maybe we didn't see seven golden lamp stands, only the flickering luminescence of that one florescent tube that the deacons really should have replaced by now. And maybe we didn't see the resurrected Lord in a blaze of bronze and blinding white with a voice like many waters, only the pastor with his comb-over and middle-age spread and a voice like a dripping faucet. And maybe the sermon didn't reach to the end of time but only seemed that long.

Take courage! Somewhere, behind your back or over your head or right under your nose, Christ appeared and moved with power. And wherever it was, you were there, in the spirit on the Lord's day, a part of that because you did not stay apart from the prosaic pew-sitters, yourself included, who did their Christian duty. As Charles Williams says, "Usually the way must be made ready for heaven, and then it will come by some other; the sacrifice must be made ready, and the fire will strike on another altar." 

One more thing: verse twelve begins, and I turned. Don't insist so hard on God honoring your seating chart. Wherever you hear the voice, turn.

Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones. - Psalm 137.9

Abbot Philip Lawrence of the Monastery of Christ in the Desert in New Mexico, noting that the monks of his community pray their way through 270 psalms per week, admits that, "It takes a lot of inner work to come to appreciate the Psalms." Contrary to the modernizing trend, the abbot and his brothers still pray the entire Psalter, even though "the images of the Psalms can be graphic, violent, and even a bit ugly at times."

He's right, of course: It isn't all green pastures and uplifted gates. These ancient Hebrew poets call their enemies horrible names and ask God to do horrible things to them. Sometimes, they call God some pretty horrible names because they think God has done horrible things to them. Various commentators have offered various bread-crumb trails through this perilous territory. C. S. Lewis offered the creative approach of reading these passages as a caution against provoking those feelings in others by treating them unjustly. Dietrich Bonhoeffer advised readers to see, on the cross, God's ultimate answer to these pleas. C. H. Spurgeon, that rugged old Baptist, warned the comfortable reader against false spirituality: "Let those find fault with it who have never seen their temple burned, their city ruined, their wives ravished, and their children slain; they might not, perhaps, be quite so velvet-mouthed."

But for my money, Walter Brueggemann who, while he includes and affirms the foregoing views, sums up this way: "My hunch is that there is a way beyond the Psalms of vengeance, but is a way through them and not around them." The wily abbot is right: pray them; pray them all without once refusing to set a dainty spiritual foot into the muddied waters of our souls. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, his own life raped by the injustice of Stalin's Gulag, cries out, "The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" The cursing Psalms are God's scalpel to lay bare the diseased portions that yet cling to our converted hearts, and to cut them away mercilessly which, in the end, means mercifully.

For we are an aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and those who are perishing; to the one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance of life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? - 2 Corinthians 2.15-16

Elephants in Kenya can tell a Masai tribesman from a Kamba by a single sniff from a considerable distance. That's good for the elephant, because the Masai hunt elephants and the Kamba don't. 

It's good to know in advance whether someone is on your side. Of course, that doesn't help much if you can't get away and don't have the option of changing sides.

Paul tells the Corinthians that Christians give off a different spiritual smell depending on whose doing the huffing. He's working out a rather complex military metaphor that he introduces in verse 14: the Roman military parade. When a Roman general won a great victory, the senate voted him a triumph. They rounded up all the captured booty along with a selection of the prisoners and marched the whole cavalcade down the main street of town where, along with other ceremonies, they sacrificed the POWs to the appropriate god. One feature of these festivities was the burning of clouds of incense. 

If you were a member of the conquering army or citizenry, it probably smelled great. If you were a prisoner chained to a chariot wheel, not so much. Christ moves in often-unseen victory through our world and every person can pick a side. One day, however, when the battle ends and we behold the Lord in his glory, that choice will be fixed forever.

Who is sufficient for these things? Paul feels the weight of the burden: When we declare the gospel, we force people to pick a side, and they define their eternal destiny when they turn up their noses at the scent of grace. Our problem, in other words, is not whether people like our smell; it is whether we smell of salvation. 

Were not ten made clean? But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? - Luke 17.17-18

As a species, we aren't very thankful. A recent study reveals that random acts of kindness receive a "thank you" only about one time in twenty.

The good news is that most people will help when asked, gratis, with no negotiation or prior expectations. Across cultures, granted favors exceed refusals at roughly a seven-to-one ratio. "Ask and ye shall receive," it seems, is a general truth not limited to prayer. Which is fortunate, because the same study reveals that people request assistance about once every ninety seconds! 

So we get what we want eighty percent of the time but acknowledge the help on only five percent of those occasions.

It is interesting that the experiment focused, not on institutional or business settings, but homes, where people know one another. We are least grateful to those we know best. In fact, most languages, spoken in small communities of close relationships, lack any word for "thank you"! 

Something similar may have been at work when Jesus confronted ten scruffy lepers somewhere in the wilds of Palestine. The nine Jews may have looked at the thing as part of the perq package of their heritage: Of course a Jewish messiah would heal Jewish lepers. Jesus was family; he wouldn't expect acknowledgement from the home-folks. Anyway, they may have thought they'd said "thank you;" the study revealed we over-rate our own gratitude on a regular basis.

The Samaritan, however, remained enough of an outsider that he could still be shocked by grace. 

Two interesting notes: First, this story, found only in Luke's gospel, comes toward the end of what scholars call "The Journeyings Toward Jerusalem." In 9.51, Jesus "set his face to go to Jerusalem" and to the cross.  Second, Jesus tells the Samaritan to "get up," the Greek word used for the resurrection of Christ. 

Jesus went to the cross that we might know the resurrection from death in sin to life in the Spirit. Have you said thank you today?

Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek.  - John 19.20

The City of Jerusalem has posted road signs directing travelers to the United States Embassy. The signs are in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. 

These placards, like the thing to which they point, pulse with political symbolism. In Hebrew they say, "You have a powerful friend;" in Arabic they say, "You have a powerful enemy;" in English they say, "You have power." Posted at prominent points of public traffic, they shout their message for all to see. They tell passersby not just how to get where they're going, but the directions things are going in general.

Pilate installed a sign above the head of the crucified Christ: "Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews." In Hebrew it said, "You have a powerful enemy;" in Latin it said, "We have power;" in Greek it said, "Crazy, huh?" Just like the embassy signs, Pilate's poster hung atop a pole on a well-traveled road where no one was likely to miss it. Just like the embassy signs, Pilate's placard meant not just to tell people which way to go, but which way things were going. It amounted to a "Do Not Enter" sign that warned would-be messiahs against taking to the freedom trail.

Modern-day Jerusalem sits at the center of controversy and refuses to be ignored. The trilingual signs throughout the city call not just citizens and tourists, but the entire world to take a stand. Skull Hill just outside first century Jerusalem occupies an even more central intersection and insists on a decision. We can adore or we can abhor, but we cannot ignore. As George MacLeod declares, Jesus died "at a crossroads of politics so cosmopolitan/that they had to write His title/in Hebrew and in Latin and in Greek." 

The ultimate question is one asked by the same Pilate who composed the sign of Jesus' death-sentence: "What should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?" (Mt 27.22)

Jesus, looking at him, loved him. - Mark 10.21

This passage, from Mark's account of the rich young ruler, seems straightforward enough: Jesus gazed at the youth and felt love for him; Jesus loves the little children - wonderful, but not unexpected. However, interpreters often miss a couple of factors. 

The first problem has to do with language, specifically that word looking at. The original verb can refer to an intent gaze. In the Old Testament it often carries the idea of respectful attention. But it can also describe a harsher stare. Richard Hicks of Vanguard University describes it as "a loving glare."

The second issue arises from the context. After Jesus "loves" him, the Lord unleashes a rather harsh mandate: You lack one thing; sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me. Mark makes it clear that the youth himself didn't think much of it: he was shocked, and went away grieving.

So love begins with a dirty look and ends with a difficult order. 

This seeming contradiction is not so hard to reconcile if one pays attention to the pivotal word: love. It is not the term for friendship-love, the kind of love provoked by something in its object. Mark doesn't say that Jesus liked this kid. He uses the word for God's love, the love that flows out on its own accord with no thought of what comes back. Jesus stared the man down and chose to love him anyway - enough to tell him a harsh truth but the only truth that could set him free.

God is love, 1 John 4.8 assures us. Our culture often reads this with an unconscious gloss: God is love, so it's all good. But God is love does not mean that sin does not matter to God; it means that we matter more. God is love does not mean that repentance is unnecessary; it means that repentance is possible. God is love does not mean, "Don't sweat the small stuff, and it's all small stuff;" it means that Jesus already sweat blood over our sins, and that there are no small sins.

God is love means that God's all-seeing eye glares on us until the sinful secrets of our hearts stand revealed. God is love means that nothing God sees in us discourages God. God is love means that God offers the only possible cure: complete repentance. As Angela of Felino heard the Lord say, "I have not loved you in jest; my love for you is no trifling thing."

The question is never whether God sees me; God does. The question is never whether God still loves me; God does. The question is whether I will endure the glare of grace and go forward, or go away grieving.