Jim Street

"I will not ask and I will not put the Lord to the test." (Isaiah 7:12)

The words sound good.  So righteous.  So pious.  So noble.

They belong to Ahaz, the young king of Judah (8th century B.C.)  Ahaz is in the midst of a political storm.  Assyria is a threat to the north.  The kings of Israel (the northern kingdom) and Aram have approached him to join an alliance against Assyria.  If he refuses to join them, they threaten to topple his kingdom and set up a puppet king who will do their bidding.

Isaiah, the prophet, has promised Ahaz that God will shield him from the two "smoking firebrands."  He has assured him that the kingdom will stand if he, Ahaz, resists the temptation to take matters into his own hands and puts his faith in God.

Isaiah even offers the guarantee of a sign: "Ask of the Lord anything you want, Ahaz.  Ask for a sign in the highest heavens or even in the depths of Sheol.  The Lord wants you to know beyond all doubt that He is faithful to you.  All he wants is for you to be faithful to Him."

That's when Ahaz replies that he will not test God in that way, that he will not ask for a sign.

So noble.  So pious.  So righteous. 

The truth is that Ahaz does not want assurances from God.  Ahaz does not want a demonstration of God's faithfulness.  Ahaz does not want to "risk" faith when he has already decided what he will do.

Why place your faith in the unseen God when you can trust your own abilities, your own plans, your own agenda?

Ahaz has already plotted to join the king of Assyria against the kings of Israel and Aram.  (II Kings 16)  Ahaz already knows what he wants and what he will do.

We might think that Ahaz is a fool.  Why any one of us- when given the option of trusting God or trusting ourselves- would trust God...wouldn't we? 

Well...wouldn't we?

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For resources related to the season of the church year or the Revised Common Lectionary go here.

For a series of questions for personal reflection/small group discussion on the RCL texts for the week go here.

"When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent word by his disciples and said to him, 'Are you the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?'" (Mt. 11: 2-3)

We do not know why John asked sent his disciples to ask the question of Jesus.  Matthew does not tell us.  Indeed, Matthew doesn't even seem interested in knowing. 

However, that does not stop us from wondering and speculating.  As a teacher once told me: "We believe in the maxim 'where the Bible speaks we speak and where the Bible is silent we are silent.'  However, we also apparently believe in the maxim 'where the Bible speaks we are silent and where the Bible is silent we speak.'"

I know my own doubts and uncertainties.  And, as a pastor, I often hear others express theirs as well.  Sometimes life can be so hard that doubting is the best we can do. I read this text with those doubts rolling through the back of my mind.

I do not know whether John doubted or not.  I do not know whether uncertainty crept into his dank cell or not.   It may have been that John saw his destiny written on the prison wall and sent his disciples as a way to quell their doubts about the identity of Jesus.  Perhaps John was engaged in a bit of "succession planning."

Whether it was because of his own doubts or because of the questions of his disciples, John did send them to Jesus with that question: "Are you the one who is to come or should we wait for another?"

My guess is that it is very hard to see the inbreaking reign of God from within the walls of a damp prison or as you are perched precariously atop a three-legged stool and straining to peer through a tiny, barred-up window.

I recognize the dangers of going beyond the text.  Anything I say about John's motives in asking that question would be "arguing from silence."

However, I also recognize what happens to us when we are cut off from the world, imprisoned (if only for a time) in the darkness of doubt, shackled in the chains of despair, and fettered by fears.   What seemed so clearly the case in the carefree daylight is lost in the shadow of the terrifying moment.

"Are you the one who is to come or should we wait for another?"

John had heard what Jesus was doing.  (Note: Matthew says that John heard what the Messiah was doing!) But John heard about it in prison.

Perhaps from his own vantage "what Messiah was doing" was not what John thought the Messiah would or should be doing.  Given his wilderness sermons, John may have imagined something more...earth shattering.  After all, John had drawn terrifying word pictures of the ax being laid the roots and of days of wrath coming over the horizon.

Jesus did not say "I AM the ONE" to John's disciples.  Jesus appealed to the words of the prophets, to the images of Jubilee and to the songs of Israel: 

"Tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised and the poor have good news brought to them." (vs. 4-5; NRSV)

Tell John that miracles abound but also tell him who the recipients of those graces are: the blind, the deaf, the dead, and the poor.  The overlooked, the outcast, the forgotten are being seen, brought close and remembered.

And all of them...these poor...are hearing good news.

God is at work-perhaps in unexpected ways -but working nonetheless.  Look closely and listen...you are locked for a time in your cell of despair but your experience is not the breadth and depth and height of God's working.  The kingdom is breaking through and things spoken of by prophets, indeed the words of John are coming to pass...the world is being turned upside down as the kingdom of God breaks through in Jesus.

We don't know what the disciples of John did after that.  We don't know whether they returned to John or not.  We don't know whether John was satisfied by the reply of Jesus.

However, I cannot help but wonder: Did it cross John's mind what Jesus did not say? Did it strike him that Jesus did not say, "and the prisoners are set free"?

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For resources related to the season of the church year or the Revised Common Lectionary go here.

For a series of questions for personal reflection/small group discussion on the RCL texts for the week go here.

I am often put off by some of the Christmas songs because they are so sentimental, so romantic and so not-my- experience.

Sometimes I feel as if I am going to blow if I hear one more song about holiday cheer, faces all aglow, happy shoppers on their way down glistening, snow covered city sidewalks.

I live in the Atlanta area.  The last time we had snow at Christmas was around the time the Magna Carta was being signed.  And as for happy faces all aglow....ha!...I say, "Ha!"

I see harried faces (even hairy faces!), distracted faces and most of them anything but "all aglow." 

I live in the suburbs.  You see tail lights all aglow.  You see strip malls.  You see enough concrete and black top to cover Rhode Island.  You see power cable, telephone lines and litter.

To many Christmas songs I say, "Bah!"

Unless....unless I hear those lyrics not as descriptions of what is but as yearnings of what could be.

Maybe there could be a day- even here in the 'burbs of HOTlanta"- when there is snow on the ground, happy people scurrying here and there with nothing more than a "Merry Christmas" on their breath.

Hearing those songs in that way may just rescue me from my humbuggery.

Reading the Isaiah texts in the Revised Common Lectionary is really what has rescued me from another season of singing, "Bah, bah, bah, bah, baaaah.." instead of "Fa la la la laaaa."

Listen to these words about the coming the Day of Lord...

"He shall judge between the nations and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn more any more." (2:4)

Or read these words and just imagine...

"The wolf shall sleep with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them.  The cow and the bear shall graze together, their young shall lie down together, and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand in the adder's den.  They will not hurt or destroy on my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea." (11:6-9 NRSV)

I suspect there were those who first heard Isaiah's words with a "bah" and a "humbug."  They read the paper like everyone else; they watched the evening news.  They worked in the sweatshops and traversed the market places.

No more war?  No more studying war?  No more tragedies?  No more "nature red in tooth and claw."

Bah!

All those folks are gone.  However, the words of Isaiah still stand and give their hope.

Isaiah expresses a vision.  However...and this is important...Isaiah's vision is not simply the poetic expression of wishful thinking or overwrought romanticism.  Isaiah is not Mel Torme sitting at a piano in California in the heat of summer writing about "chestnuts roasting on an open fire."

Isaiah speaks to human yearning, yes.

But the word Isaiah speaks, the vision that Isaiah describes is not Isaiah's word and not Isaiah's vision.  His word and vision are not simply the yearnings of one man or the whole people. 

This is the word and the vision of the God who is faithful and who will do what God promises. 

Advent is the time of yearning...ours and God's! 

Advent is the time when we are reminded that our deepest longings, the ones we offer up to heaven, will be met (and then some) by the God who never leaves us nor forsakes us!

As you may know we are experiencing a drought in Georgia, USA.  Although we've had a good rain on this Thanksgiving morning, we are far behind what is needed to fill our reservoirs.

Indications are that within a few months the Atlanta area will be in a real water emergency if something drastic doesn't occur. Our governor, Sonny Perdue, has taken it on the chin from critics for leading "pray for rain" sessions on the steps of the state capital building.

To say that things are getting  desperate would be an understatement.

As a result of the drought many of us are thinking more about water conservation.  To this point, we have been so blessed with water that most of us took it for granted.   That was wrong and you can be sure that our sins are finding us out.

For the past couple of weeks I have been thinking more about the matter of gratitude and have been trying to remember to articulate my thanks as often as possible. 

A couple of days ago I wrote that giving thanks on a consistent basis helps us to realize that our lives and everything that comprises our lives is a gift given by the hand of God.   I see the offer of ongoing thanksgiving as a practice that opens our eyes to the gift and gifts of life.

I think in the past I have thought that the way to become more thankful was to grow in my understanding of this "life-as-gift" idea so that I can be thankful.  I am now beginning to see that it really is the other way around: we learn to see life and everything in our lives as gift when we undertake the practice of gratitude.

Continual thanksgiving helps us to remember that.  (After all, how often do we give thanks for the things we believe we have earned?)

This "gift" awareness that is growing from the practice of gratitude touched me in a small way yesterday.  I got into the shower and when I glanced up at the streaming shower head I saw that water as a gift and I immediately began to think about what a precious gift it is and how much I have to grow in my stewardship of it.

Later I was driving in my car thinking about that brief flash of insight when I began to say to myself: "Well, of course you see it as a gift NOW!  That's called 'supply and demand'.  Water is in short supply and that is why you see it as a gift."

I then thought: "No..that's why I see water a valuable.  However, I do not think of all things that are valuable as gifts.  Someone might work hard and believe that their home is a product of their hard labor.  They would see their home as valuable but they would not necessarily see their home as a gift."

I don't think you can think about water or anything else in this life as gift without simultaneously thinking that there is a Giver. 

The water flowing from my shower head?  Yes, I pay for it.  Yes, it is valuable and I am seeing its value grow everyday as the supply diminishes in this part of the world.

However, I see it primarily as a gift, a gift given by a loving God, a gift over which I am a steward.

Working on expressing gratitude is helping me see the world in a new light....the light of grace.

If we would become "gratitudians", that is, people whose lives are characterized by gratitude, we would do well to practice gratitude.

We become what we do.

Consider the words of Paul in Ephesians 5:20: "...be filled with the Spirit, as you sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs among yourselves, singing and making melody to the Lord in your hearts, giving thanks to God the Father at all times and for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ."  (NRSV)

Focus on those italicized words.  Paul uses a participle, which denotes continuing action, underscores it with the word always, and underscores that with the phrases "at all times" and "for everything."

Do you think maybe Paul thought that giving thanks ought to be a constant practice among followers of Jesus?

I read that this way: Always keep on giving thanks all of the time for everything and in ever situation.

Paul doesn't seem to think there are occasions when we should not offer thanksgiving!

His call is for constant, consistent, ongoing, thanksgiving at all times and in every circumstance. 

Now does that mean that we must constantly walk around repeating the words, "Thank you, thank you, thank you?"  Well, that wouldn't be a bad practice would it? (It might get a little tedious, especially for those of us who are not multi-taskers!)   But maybe that's what it would take for us to develop the habit of thanksgiving as we journey toward becoming gratitudians.

I think the deeper point is to become someone whose life is marked by gratitude, whose very being exudes gratitude, whose every gesture and word is filled with grace.

Such a person is a constant offering of gratitude. 

Let me add one other thing here that goes beyond this text, something I just realized this week-end...More often than not, far more often (maybe even always!) Paul directs all thanksgiving to God.  

While a few examples may exist of Paul offering thanks to a person, his practice seems to be to thank God for the person and for their actions.  "I thank God for you.." is more often on the lips of Paul than a mere "Thank you..."

I had not noticed that before this week-end when I was flipping through my trusty Strong's Concordance and noticed time after time when Paul employed that kind of language.

I think that kind of 'thank you' is better than a straight to the face thank you. 

When we thank God for someone (and/or for what they have done) we rightly name them and their action as "gift."   They are not just accidentally in our lives and their presence and their action are not accidents either. 

They are signs of God's grace. 

In thanking God for others and their actions, we place ourselves, the other,  and their their action toward us all within the province of grace. 

We are thus living the moment in the domain of ultimate reality, that is, in the domain of the sacred.  The ordinary give and take of life becomes charged with the grandeur of God.

I thank God for you!  I thank God for your many kind words of encouragement.  I thank God for good and patient people who read what I write because I have little choice but to write (or speak!)  I thank God for you because without you I could not be me.

You see?  My simple act of writing and your simple act of reading is a gift- a sign of grace, a sign of the love and presence of God!

Now what if we saw everyone and everything with those eyes?

More tomorrow.

For several weeks now I have had a phrase repeating itself in my mind: "The enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called."   That thought entered my mind as I prepared a sermon on Acts 1:14.   That text speaks to the response of the 120 disciples in Jerusalem as they waited for the promise of the Holy Spirit to be fulfilled.  

Jesus had taught this group- some had denied him, some of them had fled at the moment of His arrest, some had hidden out- concerning the coming of the Kingdom.  He had called them to mission and ministry and told them that they would be His witnesses in familiar and unfamiliar places both near and far away.  He had told them to wait on the Spirit of God who would clothe them in power.

And there they gathered...an inadequate people facing an enormous calling.

They did not flee this time.  They did not scatter.  They did not deny what he had said.

They prayed, all of them, together with the women.

The phrase rolled through my mind again last night as I listened to the news about what had happened at Virginia Tech.  Having spent a number of years ministering and teaching on college campuses, I could just imagine the trauma that the students, staff and faculty must have endured (and will endure for some time...for some even a lifetime.)

I wondered yet again about the state of our world.  And I wondered about the state of the church.

I asked myself: "What ought we be doing differently as the church that could help stem the tide of violence in our society?"

The answer I heard in my own heart and mind was that we need to do a better job of equipping one another for ministry out in the day to day world.

I wondered how the world might change if all Christians were better equipped to listen to people who are lost and in pain.  I imagined an army of people wearing t-shirts or buttons that said: "If you need to talk, I will listen."

I thought about those Kleenex commercials with the guy who sits in a chair and listens to a person sitting on a couch in the middle of a downtown sidewalk.  I thought about how that might be one way of going about being the church...be willing and able to pull up a chair and just listen to someone lost and in pain.

Not long ago I was talking to a couple of guys who are on the staff of a large church.  I asked them about a particular ministry in their church and they replied: "All they do is listen to people; they never get around to ministry."

Hmmm.....

Yesterday I was reading a book on prayer. (I am reading several right now)  The author reminded me that prayer is a 2-way street.  God initiates prayer.  We pray.  God listens.  God speaks.  We listen.

Prayer is listening.

I'm rambling....

It just seems to me that the world might be a different place if all of Jesus' disciples made listening one of their central ministries.

And maybe...just maybe...the best place to start such a ministry is in prayer where we speak to God but also listen to God... especially as we contemplate the "enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called."

A while back I taught a class at Emmanuel School of Religion in Johnson City, TN on what the care of the hurting might look like in a missional church.  The more I studied the missional church literature the more it seemed to me that prayer must be central to the missional church.   (For a good idea of what the missional church is, check out this link.)

After I got back, I read the first four chapters of Acts (for the umpteenth time) and it struck me that within the first chapter that the earliest disciples were placed in a spot that I describe as the tension between "the enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called."

Some of these folks had fled and denied during the trial and crucifixion crisis.  Even after they had been taught by the risen Lord, they still didn't quite get it.  ("Are you going to establish the kingdom now?") And here Jesus was telling them they would be His witnesses to the uttermost parts of the world. 

When confronted with the "enormity of the call and the inadequacy of the called" the church prayed...hard...constantly...together.

During the past couple of months you might say I've been convicted and convinced as to the importance of prayer.    

The call is the same and we are still as doofy as ever.   The world is in a mess and we have constructed the best churches that good management can build.

But where's the power? 

I just don't see how the well-managed, highly programmized church is in any way adequate to the calling.  (Not that God- thank God- doesn't use our meager efforts!)

It seems to me that if our calling is to follow the God who is on mission, that if we are to discern how God is moving in our midst and join God in God's mission, that if we are to be a resurrected community of the resurrected Lord,  and that if our call is to reach out to lost, suffering, broken, breaking, hurting people we had better pray.

All of that has set me to thinking about what a praying church might look like.  

I've put the question to some of our prayer warriors at North River.  I've asked them to respond to questions like this:

What would a church be doing to become known as a praying church?

If being a praying church was a crime, what evidence would exist that we are guilty? 

I'd love to hear from anyone who reads this blog...

How would you answer those questions?

What would you be observing in a church that is becoming known as a praying church?  

Help me think about this, please.   You can comment below (you have to join first) or you can just drop me an email.

I'm not kidding...help me out.  Thanks.

V

The Psalms provide a vocabulary for prayer.

While a case can be made that prayer is the totality of a life lived as an offering to God, we do also identify as prayer those moments when we actually speak to God.  

We speak to God with our mouths in two ways: through gestures-grunts, groans, sighs, cries and anguised shouts- and with words.  While the gestures may stand alone as prayer, words are always nestled in gesture. 

All prayers are songs. 

We do not offer God words alone.  We offer God words couched in gesture.   In what gesture did the Psalmist couch: "My God, my God why has thou forsaken me?"  Anger?  Despair?  Disappointment?  Frustration?    Did the Psalmist sigh those words or cry those words?

While we may not always be able to determine gesture from a text, we can learn the words of the text, the vocabulary of the text.  Those words can infuse our prayers and broaden our range of expression.

The Psalms provide a vocabulary of praise, of confession, and of contrition.   They teach us the words to use when we address God and express our thoughts and emotions about God and about our lives. 

Think about the vocabulary of praise.  The Psalmists (at least in our English translations!) use words like "praise", "extol", "bless",  and "worship."  Each of those words expresses praise and yet each word provides nuance to our praise.  As we learn the vocabulary of praise we are freed to address God and express ourselves.

"I praise You God;

I extol Your name.

I bless You, Lord

And worship You."

Think about that little prayer of praise.  Do the different synonyms of praise suggest even slightly different things or are they all the same? 

lV

Reading and praying the Psalms puts us in the company of all the saints who have preceded us.

I read this morning that Etta Baker has died at the age of 90.   Etta Baker was a Piedmont Blues guitar player who influenced every finger-style guitar player there is- whether he or she knows it or not.  Any picker who plays a Merle Travis lick or even a Chet Atkins riff can thank Etta Baker for inspiring those guys to pass along the pickin'.   

Few people outside the fingerstyle or blues community have ever heard of Etta Baker. (She spent most of her working years laboring in the Buster Brown factory in North Carolina)   However, her finger plucks, picks, and pulls reverbrate through  generations of players. 

Of course, each of those players adds their own twists and turns.  Every so often one of them, usually some kid still wet behind the thumbpick, brings along an innovation and leaves us older guys scratching our heads wondering "why we never thought of that"- if we can even make out what the kid is doing.

However, true innovation is rare.  I suppose you could say true innovation- that is, bringing something new to the world- happens...oh...once in a not-ever. 

Most pickers are part of a tradition and are damn proud of it.  To be told that you played something as well as Chet or with as much life as Merle Travis or in the style of Doc Watson is be truly complimented.  To be told that you are an innovator is good too...but only if the innovation pays homage to the Ettas, Chets, Merles and Docs who have gone before you.

Playing with the pickers of the past is a fine way to spend an lazy evening or a lifetime.

To read and pray the Psalms is to pray with all of the saints who have gone before you.  You may be praying with your grandma, or your great, great grandpa.  You will certainly be praying with Martin Luther and Thomas Aquinas.  You will also be praying with the Apostle Paul and Peter, James and John.  You will utter the words that helped shape Jesus' prayers.  You will weep and praise with all those Hebrew saints who worshipped God in the Temple, the synagogues and  out on the hillside.  

Think about it: It is quite something to utter the words of David, the King- the man after God's own heart.

When we read the Psalms...better...when we pray the Psalms we enter the company of the beloved saints of God.  Their voices become our voices; their habits become our habits.

I firmly believe that many of us have shot ourselves in the foot by falling so deeply into the "contemporary."  Contemporary music.  Contemporary worship.  Contemporary ministry.  Contemporary..."with the times."  We have especially shot ourselves in the foot if we are so arrogant to think that what we have brought upon the earth is anything truly innovative.

Recently I've rekindled my interest in poetry.  I dug around and found a book by the American poet, Mary Oliver.  Here is what she says about the "contemporary" as it applies to young poets and their poetry:

"...since you want to be a contemporary poet, you do not want to be too much under the influence of what is old, attaching to the terms the idea that old is old hat-out of date.  You imagine you should surround yourself with modern only.  It is an error.  The truly contemporary creative force is something that is built out of the past, but with a difference.

Most of what calls itself contemporary is built, whether it knows it or not, out of a desire to be liked. It is created in imitation of what already exists and is already admired.  There is, in other words, nothing new about it.  To be contemporary is to rise through the stack of the past, like the fire through the mountain.  Only a heat so deeply and intelligently born can carry a new idea into the air." (A Poetry Handbook, p. 11-12)

When we read and pray the Psalms we enter into a tradition and we praise and cry and rage with that great cloud of saints who cheer us on and wait for us to join them.

lll

The Psalms remind us that we can bring everything before God.

In his book, The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud wrote: "We hide our moral arrears in the breeches of respectability."  The story of the Fall tells us as much.  After the Great Rebellion, Adam and Eve, covered themselves in fig leaves and hid in the brush. 

No one wants to stand in the presence of God with his pants down.

We not only hide our "moral arrears", we hide our fears, doubts and questions behind veils of piety.  As a former professor of mine used to put it: "We would rather offer God our dignity than our selves."

Perhaps we think God will not notice our drooping drawers or will not call the roll and note our absence.  Maybe we think that when we are out of sight, skulking in the bushes, we are out of mind.  Maybe we think God is as easily duped by a plastic smile as our all-too-willing friends and neighbors are.

The Psalmists teach us that we can bring our sins, our failures, our doubts, our rage and even our faithlessness before God.  They remind us that God is always open.  They assume a vision of God as One who leans forward with an ear cocked to catch the slightest nuance of every gasp, groan, and growl we utter.

The Psalms teach us that we can- no, that we must- come before God "just we are without one plea". 

Naked.

The Psalms teach us to surrender our dignity and offer our briar-scratched selves to God.