The Mask

Masks are very much in the news and in evidence. But what of the masks we have been wearing long before Covid19?  In his last book, “Till We Have Faces,” C.S. Lewis retold the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche as a parable about humanity’s relationship to the Lord Jesus. The title came from a question posed in the book, “How shall they (the gods) meet us face to face till we have faces?”  Have you ever considered the mask, the covering that you, that we all, put on every day? We hide from ourselves, our neighbor and God. Look at history. Think of the “Red Scare,” of 1917 that birthed the Espionage Act, so many innocents put into jail, so many citizens deported. Never heard of any of it? That’s no accident. We sweep things under the rug; hide from our own cruelties. Who remembers McCarthyism and the lives that it destroyed? What of the ways that we barred black people from farming in our region? These are just three examples of the way we cover up. We love our masks. And believe me, I don’t exclude pastors. On the contrary, we in ministry love to cover up our feelings and our failings.  God is very patient but his patience has an end.  His is not okay with our lies, our masks, our coverings, our burial shrouds. Is this now the time that God has chosen to rid us of our masks, “to destroy the face covering that is over all the nations,” (Isaiah 25:8)? We are the same as the disciples, deniers, betrayers and murderers, Christ-killers. This is us. But remember, it’s sinners that God saves.  Let’s pray in accordance with his promise in Isaiah 25 that God destroys our masks, and now “we all with unveiled faces” look to the Lord and shine, looking at, seeing at last, our neighbor and “going from glory to glory.” (2 Cor. 3:18)

Not All Gospel

 Did you know that not everything in the Bible is gospel? Certainly all of the Bible is “God-breathed, useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction and for training up in righteousness” But the gospel is something specific. Paul and Jesus expected us to search the scriptures; when we do we are led to Isaiah 52-55 first of all. The gospel is the news of the coming of the seed of David, that root out of dry ground. He took on our sins. He healed, righted, all of us who were so wrong. The gospel is justice.  It is, to quote the famous hymn, “God rest ye merry, gentlemen, let nothing you dismay, remember Christ our savior was born on Christmas day.” Though we put Jesus on the cross, God meant it for our good. The salvation of the cross is for Christ-killers like us. But there are other parts of the Bible as well, “But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” A man once told me that he could always repent, sometime in the future. I was dumbfounded. How do you know you will able to repent?  When Jesus comes again, one may be so used to turning from him, denying him, one will walk oneself right into hell. Let’s read all the Bible, all of it is for our good.

"Till We Have Faces"

“Till We Have Faces”

In Matthew 22, Jesus is asked about the law and gives a summation that was well-known in his day, “Love your neighbor as yourself.”  Yet however good this is, the new covenant outshines it by far. The new covenant reveals that our neighbor loves us.  The new covenant is the revelation that the Lord is this neighbor.  But there’s more. It doesn’t only mean seeing that the Lord is the neighbor who loves us but also the vision to see our neighbors and the love shining in their faces towards us, and even by reflection who we really are in Jesus. Right now of course this is not seen all the time.  Isaiah 25 speaks of “the veil,” “the covering,” that is over all nations. We do not see one another or the Lord; the face of God and man is obscured. But one day the veils will be removed, the face coverings taken away and we will. Paul writes that this has already begun to happen, “And we all with unveiled faces, reflecting the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image going from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord.” As a minister I see this every Sunday, I look into the faces of those before me and I see a light and a love beyond words. I begin perhaps to see even the face of the Lord. In C.S. Lewis’ last book, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, “Till We Have Faces,” written with the help of his wife, Joy Davidson, the main character asks “how can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” Using this myth the Lewises were telling us that we have covered over and suppressed the knowledge of the Lord Jesus, we have covered over and suppressed his face and ours. But God removes the covering and the face is revealed. We will see our neighbor. Then God will swallow up death in victory and all tears will be wiped away and people will say, “Look! This is our God, we have waited for him and he will save us; this is the Lord, we have waited for him.”

Knowing God

              What matters is knowing God. Certainly there are decisions that we make; we need to hear the voice of our teacher telling us what to do, to hear that voice behind us saying, “this is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21) But what matters first of all is that He is no longer hidden (vs.20). When Mary Magdalene in the garden was weeping, there was a man—she supposed him to be the gardener—who spoke with her but then after having turned away she heard his voice, saying her name, “Mary” and she turned towards him and said, “Rabboni” which means in her home language of Aramaic, “My teacher.” She knew him now and then he gave her work to do, “Go to my brethren…” So we see, the first thing in both the Old and New Testaments, is to know the Lord; this is the precious pearl of great price. When Jesus said her name, it was the same as when he said, “Lazarus, come out.” He had awoken her heart to see. Everything begins here with the Lord speaking a word and calling into being the things that are not. The reason why the assembly and even sometimes the church building itself is a sanctuary, a place of refuge is because Jesus is our sanctuary, we cannot help but follow after him, even the church building can’t help but become something of a sanctuary, “the very stones… “(Luke 14:40). Why then is the church is locked during the week? Why would it ever be locked on  Sunday morning? This looks too much like the disciples locking themselves in. They inadvertently were preventing Jesus from entering, preventing the cure to all their diseases from entering! Were it not for his resurrected strength and power he would not have been able to go in and save the disciples. But he passed through the locked doors, destroying their self-imposed prison house. My foster sister in Chicago went to churches on Sunday morning trying the doors last month; they were all locked but then she came to a church worshipping, praise God! The church building itself is a sanctuary but the assembled worshippers even more a sanctuary.  And let us not forget the expectation of privacy in these troubled times. No arm of the government, no one not “in-house” should ever be advised by minister or anyone else who worshipped and when. The church, the assembly is a refuge because this is what the Lord is and looking at him we become like him.

Knowing God

What matters is knowing God. Yes, there are decisions that we make; we need to hear the voice of our teacher telling us what to do, to hear that voice behind us saying, “this is the way, walk in it.” (Isaiah 30:21) But what matters is that He is no longer hidden (vs.20). When Mary Magdalene in the garden was weeping, there was a man—she supposed him to be the gardener—who spoke with her but then she heard his voice, saying her name, “Mary” and she turned and said, “Rabboni” which means, “My teacher.” She knew him now.Then he gave her work to do, “Go to my brethren and tell them…” So, the first thing is to know the Lord; it’s the pearl of great price. When Jesus said her name, it was the same as, “Lazarus, come out.” He had awoken her heart to see. Everything begins with the Lord speaking a word, calling into being the things that are not. The reason why the assembly and even the building itself is a sanctuary, a refuge is because Jesus is. (Luke 14:40). Why then is the church locked, ever?—but especially on Sunday! The disciples locked the door, inadvertently preventing Jesus, preventing the cure to all their diseases from entering! But he’s able to tear down all our prisons, release the captive. My friend in Chicago went to churches on Sunday trying the doors, but then something wonderful, an assembly in the parking lot. The building is a refuge but the people even more so.  And this leads us to remember one thing more. No one should ever be “told on” because they worship. No arm of the government should ever be told or even ask who worshipped and when. The church, the assembly is a refuge because this is what the Lord is. Praise God for this time; we are learning to know him.

Black and White, Slave and Free

Black and White, Slaves and Free

Did you know there is racism in the Bible?  In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron attempt a coup d’etat against Moses, a take-over.  He is married to a black woman and they are not pleased. They ask, “Has the Lord indeed spoken only through Moses?”  Now Moses is the meekest of men and says not a mumblin’ word against his brother and sister but the Lord takes issue.  He calls them on the carpet, “come out you three, to the tent of meeting” and he proceeds to tell them how much he loves Moses, and when the Lord finishes speaking his anger is kindled against Aaron and Miriam and when the pillar of cloud is removed from over the tent, Miriam is leprous, her skin has been turned as white as snow.  I know there might be some who say, “How come God did not punish Aaron too?"  But remember Aaron is the representative of the entire people of Israel, moreover think what God is conveying here.  It’s as if God is saying, “You want a white woman, I will give you a white woman!”  When Aaron and Moses see Miriam they are horrified.  They plead with God, Moses says “Heal her, O God, I beseech thee.”  Their prayer is granted and Miriam is healed after seven days.  God chastises those whom he loves.  God is teaching his beloved about the evils of racism.  As a white woman myself I have begun to be aware of some of the privileges and rights that I enjoy that my black brothers and sisters do not.  I have never been redlined. Black people came to our region from the south in the early 1900’s but they were not able to buy land on which to create their farms; they were not able to pursue their vocations. Can you imagine? What would you do?And it’s not just in the past: I have very rarely been suspected of shoplifting in a store but I have observed young black girls in the store, people look at them askance. They see it too.  I had no fear of driving at night in Evanston, Illinois where I was a teenager. Black teenagers had this fear constantly. Black moms and dads have to have “the Talk” with their children. It’s not a talk about the birds and the bees, it’s a talk about how to stay alive-how to come back home alive. Put your hands on the wheel, tell the officer before you make any move that you are just going for your wallet in the glove compartment. My mom and dad never had to have this talk with me. I haven’t been sent to jail for shouting and laughing in a mall; many young black men have.   My family and I enjoy the fruit of many generations of being accorded our rights; we have been able to pursue happiness without the roadblocks that have been constantly set in the faces of the descendants of slaves, the builders of this country.  In Anglo-Saxon law a slave is not just freed by proclamation, a slave is freed when he is given three things: land, a mule, and a sword. So with all due respect and love to Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation which I often quote, by my reckoning, slavery never ended since neither the slaves nor their descendants have ever been given any of the above.  Dear readers, God’s word bears fruit (Isaiah 55). His word is the word of liberty, not only for one part of society but also for the builders of this nation, the slaves and their descendants.

Common Sense in the Time of Coronavirus

Common Sense

 The woman with the flow of blood knew that if she touched the fringes of Jesus’ garments she would be saved. She’d been fighting her disease for twelve years; it had become a battle. Her faith, the gift from heaven of “establishment,” that is, being rooted and grounded in knowledge of the Lord’s goodness, had shown her the truth: salvation clung even to Jesus’ ritual fringes. As we consider the way we live now, many wonder if the real disease is fear. When we are in the grips of it, good decision-making is impossible. When confronted by any threat, even one far more terrible than coronavirus, the first order of business is to confidence and calm. But panic has the nations of the earth, in its deadly, heady, delusional grip. But let us consider the woman with the flow of blood. She had common sense, or perhaps we should say, “communion” sense. With the Lord, in communion with him, all fear is cast out.  But what of those times when we are felled by fear?  The Bible tells of a man who had fallen among thieves but was saved by the Good Samaritan. So often, we are those fallen by the wayside, felled by the thief called Panic.  The Good Samaritan sees us where we are, helpless, and has compassion and saves us. The Good Samaritan is the Holy Spirit who restores us to common sense, “communion sense,” communion with the Lord and with one another, partaking of the bread and the wine as the disciples do, as the seventy elders did at Sinai. The first order of business for us is to seek after communion with the Lord. Our constant prayer, should be that all fear would be completely driven from our land and destroyed from the face of the earth and that instead, the Holy Spirit would come in and restore us to common, “communion,” sense.

The Source

The Source

The American people are indeed “full of vim and vigor,” just as the President said on Tuesday, but let’s further his thought. What is the source of that merriment, good cheer, lustiness, patient perseverance, exuberance and life?  It’s Jesus.  It is the Lord who gives life, eternal vim and vigor as it were. There is a misconception--we always picture eternal life as “going to heaven when you die.”  This is not what the Bible teaches.  Consider the reading for Sunday (which I sincerely hope you will hear in person), when Jesus tells Martha, “your brother will rise again.” Martha replies, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” To which Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life”—To paraphrase: “No Martha, life is right now, life is here!”  The meaning of Jesus’ coming is that mankind will remain forever, body, soul and spirit. There is no more death and we are not going to die. Now, don’t get me wrong, the Bible is the most realistic book that there is about death.  It’s in this same chapter in John that Martha speaks so frankly of her brother Lazarus in the tomb,” Lord, he already stinks, it’s been four days!” Talk about keeping it real.  But Jesus knows something far weightier, something that pushes death right off the stage. He says, “I am the resurrection and the life.”  And he does not keep this life to himself, he gives it to us and indeed all creation.  That’s why the American people are lively. That’s why we cannot be “locked up” as the President also said. Not because we aren’t an “incarceration nation,” not because we don’t lock ourselves up in places far worse than any prison. It is because Jesus comes into every locked room and trap and frees the prisoner. Consider the lock-up that is the epidemic of busyness and delusion. Last week people were forced to stop and breathe even if only for a moment.  Families took a break from cars and walked around and enjoyed themselves. Our waters and skies were finally clear all over the world. My sister called me last week and told me about how she had woken up on Monday morning and her face “felt weird.” It took her a few moments to realize why. She was relaxed for the first time in years. Jesus means eternal life, vim and vigor, but if he is the source then we also have to rest.  We must stop in the name love, stop and listen, stop and go for a walk, stop and just do one thing at a time, stop and hug somebody, stop and concentrate, stop and not go anywhere, stop and go visit friends and family even when it interferes with work, stop and do nothing and be bored.  This is also a part of having vim and vigor if our vim and vigor comes from the source of all vim and vigor, the Lord Jesus, our peace and wholeness.  God loves us, he sticks by us, he loves us too much to let us go on in delusion and  tortures.  The difference between God and ourselves is simple. The reason that he is so “other,” is because he is so good.

Meet on Sunday

We must reject all fears and meet in person to worship on Sunday.  After having said this let me assure the reader that I encourage those who are even the least little bit disinclined to come, to feel more than free in their decision! We will see each other soon Beloved!  I look forward to talking with you over the phone or online or in person in a different setting. You are constantly in my prayers. Remember no matter what happens, we are one in the Lord Jesus!  But after having said this, let's keep the services going and the doors open on Sunday! What's my thinking here? It was Jesus' cross that brought the disciples together on the first day of the week and then he came among them confirming his work on the cross and comforting them, breathing on them, giving them the Holy Spirit, empowering them. As the Israelites were gathered together on the near side of the Red Sea in fear and anguish, so were the disciples brought together. Just as the Israelites were brought through the water together and believed and worshipped and rejoiced on the far side of the Red Sea so the disciples worshipped the Lord when he came among them.  It was always risky to gather on Sunday both for the disciples and for their friends and families.  They must have known and agreed that following Jesus might very well bring down the wrath of the Roman Empire on Israel.  When they followed Jesus they were indeed risking the destruction of the nation, a nation which was and is the light of the world.  But empowered by Jesus, Jesus who seeks and saves the lost, they were obedient.  Today persecuted Christians meet openly and in secret on the first day of the week. Certainly this is a risk to themselves but much more harrowingly this meeting, this obedience is a terrible risk to family, friends and tribe, many of whom are not even believers.  But they have learned that they must obey Jesus without counting the cost.  They must overcome even these fears and stand.  This is not to say that those who do not want to come to church should not feel free not to come.  When this situation has passed we will run to welcome them back to church and "the spoil of those who stayed behind will be the same as those who went into battle." But we must keep the churches open on Sunday for worship, obedient even in the face of the most harrowing fear.  With the help of the Holy Spirit we will soon find the answer to the powers that be that seek to cheat, mistreat and control us.

Queen of The Sciences

There is an old joke or adage that goes something like this:  A physicist labors to climb a mountain and when at last he reaches the summit he finds the theologian at the pinnacle,  waiting for him.  In the 19th century, scientists laughed the opening verses of Genesis to scorn; “How ridiculous,” they said, “in the Bible, light appears before the sun and the moon and the stars.”  Later, however, the intellectual heirs of these same scientists grew silent when their own theories pointed to the primacy of light, before sun, moon or stars.  And there is much more.  Consider, how the Bible points to the need to take care of the oceans even before the earth (Genesis 1:28b).  Only now are do we begin to understand how connected we are to the oceans.  God gave us to be gardeners, caretakers, helpers to all creation beginning by quieting and comforting the places where we live but then immediately looking to the oceans, coral reefs and icebergs.  God gave us to be stewards and helpers of these things at the very beginning, how much more in the new creation in Jesus?  Or consider Jesus' emphasis on guts.  Yes, you read that right.  When the Good Samaritan has compassion on the man who has fallen among thieves, what it actually says in the original language, is that the “guts,” the “innards” of the Good Samaritan were moved when he saw the wounded man. All of us understand this feeling but science is now beginning to see how the guts, the innards, are actually the cornerstone of the immune system and have been called “the second brain.” Or consider the first man, Adam. His name comes from the Hebrew word “adamah” or “earth.”  Adam was formed from the earth; he and Eve are dirt. Only now is science beginning to discover its importance.  To the horror of their watchful mothers and fathers, babies routinely put little things found on the floor into their mouths, but immunologists have discovered that this dirt is essential for the baby; it is is child’s immune system training itself.  Society and science are learning more and more about the soil—it can be amended, it can “grow” (terra preta), it lives.  To our sorrow we have also learned that the earth can be poisoned and deadened, but, I would hasten to add, it can and will be revived, by a people following Jesus; Jesus, “who does not fail or become discouraged” until he has righted all that is wrong, Jesus who is the chief gardener.  There is no need for theologians in the pulpit, pew or professor’s chair to “harmonize” science with the Bible.  Students of the Bible, professional or amateur (and that’s all of us) simply need to do the work that Jesus has given us to do, namely to hear the Bible (large swaths of the Old and New Testaments) read on the Lord’s Day (Sunday), together in our congregations, then to study the Bible the rest of the week, on our own or in our bible study groups. There is one more task though.  It is to be confidant, remembering that theology is “queen of the sciences,” remembering so that we are not overcome with shock when we find ourselves with an insight that has not yet occurred the physicist, astronomer, historian or cancer researcher.  God loves the world and gave himself the work of making us a “people in the know.”  He does all things well.