Author: firstdelray

Crowds again gathered near to Jesus. Wherever Jesus seemed to travel, word would quickly move among the community and people would drop whatever activity that engaged them to listen for a word from Jesus – any word. Such was the power of the spoken word that fell from the lips of Jesus. That day was no different than today. As the old maxim goes, “Time is money.” If people stopped whatever they were doing to hear a word from Jesus, there was perceived value in that word. The value was simply that Jesus addressed life – life, as we have to live it. Jesus’ words were never dissociated from life. They were deliberate, vital, life-giving. Jesus never spoke to simply capture an ear. Jesus came to solve problems with living.

On this particular day, the first word spoken by Jesus was, “Happy.” It is not possible to over-estimate the significance of that beginning. This was not a chance word – a word chosen at random. Jesus could not begin his sermon that day with any other word. It was an inevitable word. The whole point of God coming to God’s people in flesh and blood, to live life as we lived life, was to experience life as we experienced life. Life is difficult. Daily, the determination to be happy, to experience life as God intends, meets with disappointment, inequity, and struggle. Our experience is Jesus’ experience. In the final analysis, Jesus sought to lessen the struggle. So, Jesus chooses this day to offer practical guidance for a happy life.

It is a welcomed word. The world is captive to an instinctive desire for happiness. Many may struggle for happiness day following day on what seems an endless journey. We might imagine that to be the story for many who gathered that day to listen to Jesus. Yet, the desire remains undiminished. However painful life may become, people cling to the hope – the possibility – that happiness might be claimed. Each of us believes in it, we seek it, the thought of happiness possessing us, demanding to be possessed. It is as though the great verdict of the world is that God intends that we are happy and Jesus has come do what is necessary to deliver on God’s intention.

As the people listened that day to Jesus, they heard God’s manifesto – they heard God’s singular concern for the well-being of all people. This would be the driving purpose, the driving force at the center of Jesus’ ministry. The absence of happiness was the cause of the world’s misery. The broken, the listless, the weary gathered at the foot of a mountain that day to be encouraged that hope remained in their grasp. Lives scorched by sin, lives on the cusp of despair nevertheless hoped against hope that there might be another day with beauty available to them. Matthew tells us that such a number gathered that they were a crowd. Looking at them, Jesus sat down and taught them. He began with one word, “Happy.”

Joy,

There are people in the church who have a favorite hymn but not a favorite Scripture. They have picked out a favorite piece of music to feed their soul, but they do not have a favorite selection from the Bible to feed their mind. The soul is well nourished. The mind is not. Why would this be? I recall a woman telling me that she does not need to study the Bible. She studied the Bible formally in college classes. That was forty years ago! Asked what her favorite Scripture was, she responded, “To thine own self be true.” That is not from the Bible. It is from the Shakespearean tragedy, Hamlet. Yet, she sings in the church choir each week. Classic, traditional church music feeds her soul, she told me. Nourishing the soul while neglecting the mind.

Paul writes to Timothy that God inspires Scripture for expanding the mind. The essential value of Scripture is to teach, show mistakes, for correcting, and for training character. Beautiful sacred music inspires and takes a weary soul to a place of rest and nourishment. That is important in the life of a disciple. However, it is not enough. Paul reminds us here, as he does in other places, that God created us for a purpose. God created each person to be useful to God. Scripture makes us useful. Scripture shapes us, forms us, and equips us to be participants in God’s work in the world. Inspired by sacred music while lacking usefulness to God is unfinished discipleship.

We belong to God. Paul is clear on that point. Can you imagine staffing your business with people who lack the basic skill set to get the work done? Christian baptism is Kingdom staffing. Baptism is God’s claim on us. God chooses us and provides the Bible as a training manual for equipping us to be useful. Baptism is also our promise. We promise to make God’s work the very center of our life. That means that we will expand our capacities for accomplishing each task God places in our charge. Done well, God’s Kingdom expands continually affecting positively more and more lives. That results in the exponential growth of God’s purposes in the world. That is, if each newly baptized disciple is useful.

I am asking that you feed your mind daily on God’s word in the Bible. Memorize passages that seem particularly meaningful. Throughout the day, as you go about other tasks, recall to mind those passages you have memorized. Think deeply about why that particular passage is important to you. That simple process accomplishes a big part of God’s work in each person—reflecting on what God intends for us to hear from a portion of Scripture that resonates with us. Prayerfully ask two questions: “What would you have me hear, O Lord?” and “What would you have me do, O Lord?” Day after day, you will discover that God’s Spirit is upon you, equipping you for God’s good purposes in the world. That is what discipleship looks like.

Joy,

In the January, 2020 issue of Runner’s World magazine, a woman shares her struggle to complete the New York City Marathon. Halfway through the twenty-six-mile run, personal resources ran out. Physical and emotional resources depleted, she would walk to the sidelines and drop out. Except, there were people on the sidelines. Strangers to her. Moreover, not one of them would let her stand with them on the side of the street. They were not rude. Rather, they shouted, cheered, and pushed her forward with words of encouragement. Strangers would not allow her to quit. She finished the marathon in last place. However, she finished the race!

That is the business of the church! We encourage people not to give up on the race. We shout words of encouragement. We urge them to continue, particularly when it is difficult. We do so in the certain confidence of God’s strength that never falters. Showing up for worship is a shout from the sidelines. Serving in some ministry, alongside others, is a shout from the sidelines. Financial giving to ensure that the church continues to move forward is a shout from the sidelines. Paying attention to others, listening deeply, and caring with an expansive heart, is a shout-out from the sidelines. Each is a real and meaningful means of urging people forward when they face every kind of struggle, difficulty, and challenge.

Some years ago, the distinguished Christian thinker and teacher, Lesslie Newbigin taught that the primary task of the Christian is engagement. Preaching is important. Teaching is important. However, the primary task of the Christian is deep and meaningful engagement in the lives of those we encounter every day. What the church preaches and what the church teaches is not the primary concern of most people. What is most urgent in the lives of the common person is the question “Is there someone who cares?” Authentic engagement in the life of another, championing them through difficulty, create a ripple effect that changes multitudes of lives.

The single greatest mistake that Christians make is the assumption that their faith is a private matter. Such an assumption directs the believer down the path of selfishness. Comments such as, “I can be a good Christian without going to church” reveals that selfishness. As Newbigin argues—and as the apostle Paul asserts here in his letter to the Thessalonian Church—Christians are to gather so that they may mutually encourage one another. Demonstrations of care, support, and encouragement are shouts from the sidelines to those discouraged and defeated by life. These “shoutouts” become enough for those whose own resources have become depleted to finish the race.

The beginning of the matter is faith. Faith does not mean the absence of doubt. As Jesus spoke to his disciples for the last time, the Bible tells us that some of them doubted. Their doubt did not bother Jesus. What Jesus did was to command them how they were to live after he left them. Here, faith is the determination to live “as though it is true.” When two people make marriage vows to remain together “until death do they part” they are aware of the staggering divorce rates. They are aware of the possibility that their marriage may fail. Yet, they begin their life together on faith, the determination that they will remain together until death. Hebrews instructs that we begin the search for God “as though God does exist.”

Faith is not putting aside all doubt. It is determining to believe that God is there, just as we are present in the world. Faith is not putting aside all arguments against the existence of God but, rather, choosing to “accept as true” that God loves and understands and is interested in the smallest details of our life. A serious quest for God will put away all excuses for not beginning to seek God, excuses such as not having sufficient time to be alone with God each day, and sincerely strive to be in a personal relationship with someone as real and present as a spouse or dear friend. Faith is an acknowledgment that God is someone who is worth our worship, our love, our striving to learn from, and a decision to follow.

Let the one looking for God then turn each day to a quiet place, a place free of the possibility of interruption and distraction. In silence, think of God as present. Perhaps make a mental picture of God standing directly in front of you or seated right beside you. If it helps, picture God as Jesus groomed as your favorite picture of Jesus, wearing the traditional dress of the Hebrew people of Jesus’ day. Some find sitting in a church before a stained-glass window of Jesus helpful, as do I. Imaginatively, look into tender eyes and see arms outstretched to embrace you. At that moment, confess how you have wronged others and God. Pour out your hurts, disappointments, and longings. Share with God your unmet needs.

Then, after the silence, accept the forgiveness of God, the forgiveness you have heard proclaimed from the pulpit, read in the Bible, or shared with you by those who believe in Jesus. Accept the forgiveness even if you find it difficult to believe that anyone can forgive you, even God. By faith, trust the promise that you are forgiven. Trust that God has taken all that you are ashamed of and removed it from you. As God has placed all of it behind you, now make a mental picture that your back is turned to it and you face forward with no guilt. In that new freedom—and in gratitude—resolve to learn from Jesus and to live as Jesus teaches us to live. Hebrews promises that God will reward you—promises that you will find God.

Joy,

Reading the Bible, with a fresh and alert mind, impacts and stirs the reader in extraordinary and often unanticipated ways. Because the printed words belong to a real, present, and active God, the words are used imaginatively and purposefully, in a tailored fashion, for each individual reader. Reading the Bible is never a solo activity. God, in the Holy Spirit, is always present, accomplishing a purposeful work in the mind and heart of the individual who comes expectantly to experience something new. When the mind is dull and expects little from reading the Bible, this dynamic and amazing power is absent. In my own engagement with the Bible each morning, I experience three reoccurring themes.

First, the Bible reveals the purposefulness of God. Perhaps in no other place in Scripture is this more clearly and directly presented than in the twelfth chapter of Genesis, verses 1–3: God promises to bless Abraham. But, with penetrating clarity, this blessing is ultimately for the purpose of blessing all of humanity. A blessing to all people, of all nations, is the bottom line of God’s promise to Abraham. God’s unfolding purpose may be too vast and, at times, imperceptible, to be grasped this side of the grave, but, at least, we are assured by the Bible that the world has been delivered from meaninglessness. With this knowledge, we can live quietly and confidently, trusting the care of the future to God.

Second, the Bible reveals God’s call upon each person. Assuming a robust theological posture, the Apostle Paul declares in Ephesians 2:10 that we were, “ . . . created in Christ Jesus to do good things. God planned for these good things to be the way that we live our lives.” Candidly, Paul corrects the notion that followers of Jesus Christ are to participate, here and there, in good work. No; good work, or doing good things, is to be our way of life. It is all part of God’s divine activity that our own lives be caught up in the one grand purpose that God is continually unfolding in the world. Each person’s life is made integral to God’s resolve to gather the nations under the Lordship of his Son, Jesus Christ.

Third, the Bible reveals God’s power. God is not defeated. With panoramic vision, Paul captures the human condition in Romans 8: “Who will separate us from Christ’s love? Will we be separated by trouble, distress, harassment, famine, nakedness, danger, or sword? As it is written, we are being put to death all day long for your sake. We are treated like sheep for slaughter. But in all these things we win a sweeping victory through the one who loved us.” (verses 35–37) Contrary to appearances, difficulties, hardships, and death will not defeat God and those who belong to God. The struggle will certainly manifest itself in every life. But in the end, we will discover that our life has been guided and loved, and that disaster is over-ruled. More, we will find that nothing of value is lost.

Joy,

It is always possible to dwell on the bright as well as the dark side of life. Yet, for many people, they are inclined to direct their attention to what may go wrong, to anticipate the bitter rather than the sweet, the tears rather than the smiles, and the difficulties rather than the opportunities that may lie in the New Year that stretches out before them. This way of looking at things is probably nothing more than a carryover from how their parents approached life from year to year. Perhaps this is a view fashioned by disappointments and struggles over many years. But it remains a choice that anyone can make—quieting the voice of negativity and grasping the promise of faith that God is for us as we cross from one year to the next.

This is not to be blindly idealistic. People of faith know as much about real trouble as any non-believer, perhaps much more, in fact. Those who don’t have faith often need a distraction to push through each day, some measure of artificial stimulation. Having no faith or hope they look to escape from the real challenges that confront every one of us. Alcohol, recreational drugs, or acquiring things of luxury and comfort divert attention from life’s challenges and disappointments. Conversely, people of faith are genuine realists. They acknowledge and face real misfortune and then look right through the trouble to something beyond—they see hope in the promises of their faith. That is the real difference.

It should be clear that the Bible never asks that we turn away from the facts, that we deceive ourselves in order to be a people of faith. As Christians we are aware of our own capacity for greed, and cruelty, and selfishness. We know that those who would trample over us care little about our faith and that disillusionment lurks around every moment of every day. Such has always been the case and always will be. Emerson said: “He has not learned the lesson of life who does not every day surmount a fear.” But, in faith, we can look into the dense fog of the New Year without too much uneasiness because God moves forward alongside us, a God that is always struggling with us, always bringing good out of evil.

Life can be a struggle. Not every cloud will have a silver lining and not every wrong will be righted in this life. Ambitions may continue to remain unfulfilled and broken relationships may never be repaired. But that does not diminish the promise of faith that God is for us. Whoever believed that every round of disappointment, and meanness, and heartbreak is the whole story? Life also consists of laughter, moments of happiness, and serendipitous occasions of surprise and delight. Each struggle to be experienced above the loud clamor of negativity. Our own free agency allows us to choose the tone that we attach our lives to. Perhaps all we need in the New Year is to be reminded that if God is for us, who is against us?

Joy,

My wife, Grace, and I collect nativity sets. Over the course of our marriage we have collected over thirty, each beautiful and unique in their own way. Several have come from Congo, Africa, where my wife was born and raised by missionary parents. Others are from Guatemala, Argentina, Peru, Mexico and Israel. There are also beautiful sets from Alaska and from Native American reservations in the west. Two are whimsical sets from North Carolina – one that depicts every character of the nativity as black bears and another as red cardinals. They have been fashioned from metal, stone, clay, wax and wood. Each represents a cherished memory and all stir the wonder of that first Christmas.

Christmas begins with wonder. It is a story whereby we are reminded that God has come into the world for every generation and for every person. It is a story that defies reasonableness. God, the creator of the heavens and the earth and all that is them, comes to earth as a vulnerable baby, to parents of little material possessions, in the non-descript town of Bethlehem. The parents have no stature, no power and no capacity to provide anything more than a manger to place their first child. Absent is any hint of privilege, any suggestion that this family will ever attract the notice of others. Yet, shepherds are drawn to the nativity, leaders of great nations travel considerable distances to bring gifts of substantial value and angels sing from the heavens of the birth of Jesus. The story is astounding, incredible, and outside the parameters of credible story-telling. Serious engagement with the Christmas story begins with wonder.

Wonder is not doubt. For those who doubt, they are unable to see. Their eyes are clouded by a determined focus on what they understand. Wonder exists where there is hope in inexplicable love, and uncommon generosity. Wonder springs from believing that there is more in life than can ever be explained and the deep desire to be surprised. Christian wonder arises from the ancient promise of a God who cares deeply for us, clinging to that promise tenaciously, particularly at those times when there seems to be so little evidence for it, and paying attention, recognizing that God may surprise at any moment. The shepherds and the magi arrived at the nativity not because of incontrovertible proof that the Holy Son of God was born but because they were paying attention to a God that surprises.

For Christmas to be more today than a nostalgic glance backward there must be a recovery of wonder. We cannot rejoice at Christmas unless we rejoice that this is a season where images of the nativity – in our homes and churches, on Christmas cards and wrapping paper – remind us that God comes to us in unexpected moments, in a surprising fashion, and always in a manner that is beyond our ability to understand. We live in a world that doesn’t know what to make of the love of God; a love that is free of ulterior motives. God baffles us and mystery and wonder permeate God’s presence and activity in the world, including the Christmas story. The Christian faith has never asked that we dismiss our questions. But its promises are realized only when we permit ourselves to experience expectant wonder once again.

Joy,

Thomas Long taught a three-week class, Preaching the Gospel of Matthew, during the summer of 1992. The first day we were assigned homework that seemed daunting – prepare for the next day a mini-biography of each name in Matthew’s genealogy, which begins his Gospel. Each student worked late into the night in the Princeton Seminary library, occasionally looking-up at one another to gauge one another’s reaction to the surprises we were uncovering. As we proceeded with name after name in the family tree of Jesus Christ, it seemed we were reading the scandal page of one of those sensationalist newspapers found in larger cities. Sprinkled throughout the bloodline of Jesus were checkered people: Rahab, the prostitute, Ruth, that brazen Moabite, and King David himself, father of a son with another man’s wife. Brokenness abounded!

If we are honest, many of our families are much like Jesus’ family. Sprinkled throughout our bloodline are scandals, betrayal, addictions, and moral failure. My paternal grandmother was an alcoholic, who lost her marriage due to her addiction, my father, as a teenager, attempted suicide as a result of a mother who couldn’t raise him and a stepmother, who wouldn’t, and, eventually, was raised by a grandmother. My mother’s father abandoned a wife and children to begin another family that she would become part of and mental health issues – including a struggle with depression – etched its mark upon both her and her brother. Most of my life I have struggled with depression. Brokenness is an unwelcomed guest that many of our families are familiar with. The common challenge is to overcome our embarrassment and to look for God’s wondrous power to transform each one of us.

Joseph struggled as we do. He is engaged to Mary and had reason to believe that the wedding would proceed according to the tradition and custom of his Jewish faith tradition. Then, Mary is pregnant with a child that is not his. Soon, Mary would be showing. Careful wedding plans have now gone awry. Joseph must have felt betrayal, embarrassment, and anger. What is he to do? On one hand, Joseph, being a righteous man, could not tolerate his fiancée’s apparent infidelity. The law and personal honor demanded that he break-off the engagement. There seemed to be no other option. On the other hand, Joseph loved Mary and could not imagine her suffering the indignity and ridicule that would be hers by a public separation on the charge of infidelity. So what does Joseph do? A quiet separation would protect both Mary’s welfare and Joseph’s honor.

Then, God gives Joseph a new commandment, “a new and higher law,” writes Thomas Long, that required “a new and higher righteousness”: “Joseph son of David, don’t be afraid to take Mary as your wife, because the child she carries was conceived by the Holy Spirit.”[i] Here was an invitation to shatter the confines of a law absent of grace and become a genuinely righteous man that moves toward others, including his fiancée, with embracing love. Rigid obedience to the law cannot and should not stand in the way of God’s mercy. In the chancel of First Presbyterian Church of Delray Beach is a beautiful stained-glass window. Someone in worship once commented to me that the beauty of that window provided comfort each week. Yet, one must not overlook that the beauty of that window is created from shards of broken glass painstakingly reassembled by the hand of a master artist.      

Joy,

[i] Matthew G. Long, Matthew, (Louisville, Kentucky: Westminster John Know Press, 1997) 13.