Divine Friendship

Out of all the things that I miss from my old college/university days, it is the network of friends I had who were a regular part of my life. Since being married and moving back to NB, my social life more or less consists of my wife, her family, and a handful of people from our church. And since I’m the pastor, I often feel like I have to be measured and deliberate about cultivating friendships inside the church (whether that’s right or wrong, I’m not sure).

Whereas once I could call up friends at a moment’s notice to go out to a movie, now it seems to require a vast assembly of factors to come into play at the same time to make it work at all. The few friends I have around here also all have wives, kids, jobs, responsibilities, commitments, etc. So usually I simply don’t bother. It hardly seems worth the effort. And there never seems to be the opportunity. Time often works against me when it comes to this. So I complain about it instead, normally to my wife!

In thinking about this, I realize something else. It’s not really about going to a movie once in awhile. More is going on than a desire to get out on occasion for some fun social time—though I would definitely welcome more of that! On top of wanting to head to the theatre with a couple of friends on the odd evening, I feel something deeper: the lack of genuine friendships, that personal space where I can be totally myself, feel accepted and loved and, yes, enjoy myself, laugh, and just have fun.

Part of why I feel this lack, I think, is it can become a little too easy to see myself only in terms of the responsibilities I fulfill: father, husband, and pastor. Of course, I get the fact that being a father is not only about responsibilities I fulfill and that being a husband is not only about obligatory duties. This is, in the best of times, also true of being a pastor. Each of these aspects of my identity involves relationships; all personally engage me. Indeed, I consider my wife to be my best friend.

But—and I hope I am not alone in this—sometimes I just want to be me. I want to be free of that feeling that in this situation I have to be something and not only somebody, free of the need to be performing tasks and instead freed to enjoy the slow passing of time over a conversation about shared interests, hobbies, concerns or whatever. Friendship is the space within which that freedom is most often experienced. I miss being around people—around friends—who simply want to be around me because I am who I am, and because we both read the same kinds of books or listen to the same kind of music or watch the same kinds of TV shows and movies.

Already I mentioned to the fact that as a pastor I don’t feel the freedom others should feel in cultivating friendships with people in church. This isn’t to say people from church are excluded from my social life; rather, the degree to which I would be able to experience that sense of genuine friendship, of intimate disclosure and honesty, of personal closeness and openness is very limited when it comes to folks in my congregation. And this is precisely the kind of friendship I am really talking about. It may include going to the movies, but it isn’t limited to that.

And the thing is, I don’t believe that friendships are frivolous and peripheral to all other relationships. Though so many of us become too busy with family life and work to put any energy into potential or existing friendships (I’m looking in the mirror here!), I think that friendships help us to be more of ourselves, to fulfill our God-given identities, to help us see more clearly who we are and who we can be. Other people draw out of us more than we can draw out of ourselves.

When it comes to Christian friendships, their value is that they’re a form of spiritual encouragement and support, and one of God’s ways of meeting us himself. In all the evangelical talk of having a personal relationship with God, one thing is often missing: that we often experience our own relationship with God through the relationships we have with other believers; that is, our relationship with God is vertical, yes, but it is also horizontal. To some extent it is vertical only if it is also horizontal.

To put it more practically, only when I experience friends praying with me (and for me) can I sometimes understand how it is that God is personal—and that he is with me. Perhaps this is why I’ve occasionally felt a connection between the struggles I have in my prayer life and the lack of Christian friends with whom I can pray in the same room.

In my experience, the times when I’ve felt the presence of God most closely are rarely those times when I’ve been alone; instead, there are usually at least a couple of other people in the room. Those moments when I have been most aware of God’s friendship are those moments when I have been most aware that God has provided me with Christian friends. While not encompassing the full meaning of the title, I think, too, this is part of what it means to call God Emmanuel, “God with us.” And though it’s true that knowing this involves a whole lot more than going out with a friend to the movies, maybe it at least needs to begin there. Hmmm . . . maybe I need to make a phone call?

Grace and Brokenness

“The heart is a bloom, shoots up through the stony ground.”
– U2, “Beautiful Day”

“But a certain sign of grace is this: From the broken earth flowers come up, pushing through the dirt.”
– David Crowder Band, “Wholly Yours”

“But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.”
– Paul the Apostle, 2 Corinthians 4:7

None of us likes to be vulnerable, to display weakness. Oddly, and paradoxically perhaps, this also true of people in churches. You would think that if there were a place where we could be more honest about our fallibility and frailties, it would be among God’s gathered people, people who gather under the sign of the cross and the promise of the resurrection. Instead, we hide behind masks of feigned happiness; or at least sometimes we do.

Our lives are a combination of stony ground and broken earth where only God is able to make anything bloom or any flowers push through—indeed, we are, as Paul writes, earthen vessels, each of us an example not only of grace but of our perpetual need for it. Why we have an instinctual propensity to conceal this truth behind a veneer of strength, I don’t know for sure.

This isn’t to say that we should all put our particular weaknesses on view for all to see—discernment and wisdom is needed when making ourselves vulnerable. But I do think that some basic acknowledgement that we are all broken, all in various states of disrepair, is an important for what it means to be church. More than that, only when we can be free to express honestly our all too human shortcomings will we also open ourselves to the possibility of grace.

Weakness—indeed, vulnerability—lies at the very heart of the gospel, if not at its end. We worship a God who, mystery of mysteries, willingly subjected himself not only to the limitations of human flesh but also of human suffering—an excruciating form of martyrdom that, in human terms, was a sign not of glory and strength, but of humiliation and shame. Only because Jesus is our God and Lord, the same Jesus who made the journey to Golgotha, can we also admit to our weakness and even in our weakness discover God’s power.

In this way, admitting to our brokenness is not a source of shame for us, a cause for embarrassment, but rather the only route available to receive the grace of God. We do this personally when we confess our need for Christ and bring our sins to him so that we might receive forgiveness; but we also should do this communally. Recognizing together our need for divine provision and strength becomes a vehicle for God’s grace to become operative in our lives.

I have heard people say that they do not attend church or try it out because they don’t feel good enough to sit amongst all those good Christians. Such logic reveals two things: first, a tacit recognition of their own human imperfection and sin and, second, a misunderstanding of what being in church actually entails. Or what being in church should entail; sometimes we believers can feed the very misunderstanding that keeps others from exploring a life of faith in our communities. That we do so is to our shame because it keeps people who need grace from understanding the gospel.

In my experience, sometimes unbelievers are more prepared to be vulnerable and honest than believers about their sin and failures. Maybe those of us who gather from week to week in sanctuaries can learn something from this example, especially since the only thing that separates us from those who’ve yet to come to faith is the very grace all of us stand in such desperate need of receiving: we actively recognize our need for grace while there are many, even knowing of their brokenness, do not. The only difference between those who are Christians and those who are not is Jesus and his grace, his inexhaustible willingness and endless capacity for causing flowers to bloom even in broken earth and stony ground.

Getting to the Last Page: Part 2

In one of my recent posts I said, “I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own relationship with God and about how hard it is sometimes to give it a lot of thought or consideration because God is what I do for a living. I don’t intend for that last sentence to sound irreverent, but being a pastor sometimes makes it hard to spend time focusing on your own faith, on your own walk with Christ.”

At the heart of what I was feeling was something of a disconnect that can occur too easily: the separation of ‘professional’ ministry and personal faith. Part of the reason a pastor may experience this is because each week you’re responsible for preaching, organizing a worship service, perhaps preparing music, leading group studies, and visiting; and in the midst of all this—the appointments and events that fill our day-planners—our own relationship with God can end up on the periphery.

I know that I’ve felt this. Life can get pretty busy, and between making sure I fulfill all of my pastoral and family responsibilities my own personal faith can sometimes fall between the cracks. But when this happens, it doesn’t take all that long—but even then perhaps it takes too long!—to realize that something isn’t quite right. Something is askew.

And though all of my vocational responsibilities are getting done, some indefinable quality needed in the midst of fulfilling my vocational calling is missing. That indefinable quality is the one thing that is indispensable: God. And of course God is not a quality, but a person, the Person, the reason why my vocation exists at all. But because he’s not, strictly speaking, visible, we can, unfortunately, ignore him and carry on doing ministry on our own.

Now when I say we can ignore him, I don’t really mean that. Instead, we neglect prayer. We read books other than Scripture. We fail to spend time quietly meditating in his presence. We avoid dealing with our own spiritual life for the sake of the ministry and in doing so we inadvertently impair our ministry; that is, we hinder our own ability to serve others by being reminders of God’s grace and light.

But the fact is that the two cannot be separated; professional ministry and personal faith go hand in hand. It is the dynamic between the two that makes a pastor. I say that, of course, and I believe it, but I am not always the best example of it.

So all of this is going through my head, and in my case I’m trying to find my way back to that balance, and while in my office one day I come across—accidentally?—a book. I was looking for a completely different book, which I never did find. The book whose spine drew my attention was Henri J.M. Nouwen’s The Living Reminder: Service and Prayer in Memory of Jesus Christ. I actually took it off the shelf because I couldn’t read the spine! It’s a thin book, less than a hundred pages, and I once I had it my hands I took a quick glance at the introduction. Here is what I read:

“What are the spiritual resources of ministers? What prevents them from becoming dull, sullen, lukewarm bureaucrats, people who have many projects, plans, and appointments but who have lost their heart somewhere in the midst of their activities? What keeps ministers vital, alive, energetic, and full of zeal? What allows them to preach and teach, counsel and celebrate with a continuing sense of wonder, joy, gratitude, and praise? These are the questions of this book.”

And as soon as my eyes poured over these words, I knew I had to read this book. It was just one of those moments where it felt like what I could have regarded as a coincidence or accident—the plucking off the shelf of a book I wasn’t even looking for—was actually a God moment.

That being the case, I’m reading it in anticipation that God wants to say something to me through these pages. I don’t know precisely what yet and maybe I won’t know right away. I’ll hopefully have more to share later. But right now reading this unassuming little volume feels to me like a small, seemingly insignificant act of obedience. I’m hoping and praying that my reading will bear rich fruit even if my doing so only results in a small nugget of insight or encouragement. That alone is reason enough to get the last page.

Receiving (and sometimes missing) grace

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about my own relationship with God and about how hard it is sometimes to give it a lot of thought or consideration because God is what I do for a living. I don’t intend for that last sentence to sound irreverent, but being a pastor sometimes makes it hard to spend time focusing on your own faith, on your own walk with Christ. And even saying my God is what I do for a living misconstrues the truth and misleads. It’s a weird vocation in that who you are is all mixed up and can get all confused with what you do. If I weren’t a pastor, I’d still read my Bible, but I wouldn’t see sermon outlines in every passage I read (not that I do this all the time but it does happen). If I weren’t a pastor, I’d still pray, but I wouldn’t be leading a whole congregation in prayer each week. Being a pastor means blurring indistinguishably the line between the personal and professional or vocational.

Ironically, sometimes all that goes along with being a pastor can have the effect of crowding out consistent prayer time and Bible study. The very thing I want to teach others to do, I struggle to get done myself. Again, the language of “do” intrudes. The word “be” is much better. But I can’t teach others to be something I myself am not. I can’t pass on habits, spiritual or otherwise, that I don’t myself practice. I worry about this – I worry about how my own failures and weaknesses affect my congregation and how perfect I need to be to be the pastor they need me to be.

Underlying this sometimes, and in some ways, is a failure to grasp grace. Core to the good news is that God comes to us—forgives, redeems, reveals, makes new, and heals—without any effort on our part. We don’t deserve this. He doesn’t have to extend this grace, but grace—and love—are his character (as are holiness, mercy, goodness, justice and many other attributes). He passes on salvation not as a prize for good behaviour but out of an overflowing of good will toward his creatures.

I admit I don’t get grace well enough—that is, while I understand it theologically and biblically and intellectually, many of my attitudes, reactions, moods, and ways of thinking have not yet been sufficiently transformed (converted!) by the reality of this grace, by the reality of who God is. And who he is for us.

I hope admitting such a thing isn’t too startling in coming from a pastor. All I know is that when I look at myself, I see so much need for spiritual transformation. I can discern endless cracks in the walls, leaks in the plumbing, and drafts coming in from the outside.

One of the things I don’t like about being a pastor is that I spend a lot of time not being transparent. That is, most of the time around folks in my congregation it isn’t appropriate to admit to my own struggles and weaknesses and flaws. This is true even if one of my struggles is particularly dogging me at the moment. Finding a place where one can be spiritually open with all the messiness found in even a pastor’s heart is not easy. Companions are not easy to locate. Or maybe I’m not very good at recognizing them when they’re standing right in front of me. Maybe part of me feels I have to be closed off even to people outside the church who could be potential spiritual companions.

Even when posting on this blog, I’ve been quite cautious about the degree of my openness and how personal and direct I allow myself to be—it’s not an anonymous blog and people I know, including some from my church, read it (once in awhile anyway!). Exercising discretion in disclosing personal matters is something every pastor learns quickly.

Part of me wonders (and is still very much figuring out) how a pastor is supposed to relate to his congregation—what he should be and what they would like him to be and what he ought to be could very well be three different things! Though doubtless there is at least some overlap.

Whatever the relationship, certainly grace plays a central role. For even if the pastor does disclose a personal struggle (though not one damaging to his authority or credibility or the well-being of the church; that is, not serious moral failure) that startles some or is simply unexpected in its honesty, hopefully people will still see the pastor as pastor even if the cracks and flaws are more clearly seen. Certainly that is how I hope my people see me—and it’s how I hope they see one another: though broken, God-made; though flawed, redeemed; and though struggling with sin, rescued from its slavery. Seeing one another through the eyes of grace means seeing one another as God does—means relating to one another how God does. We don’t (hopefully!) expect moral perfection of ourselves; and neither should we expect it of those around us.

My prayer for the coming year—though not a steadfast New Year’s Resolution—is that I can learn to rest more comfortably in God’s grace and that I will be, in my attitudes and actions, more transformed by this same grace. I wonder how much our church lives—our journeys of faith and relationships with God—would change if only we had a deeper grasp of not only grace but of the God who in mercy continually extends it in our direction.

Surprise!

Sometimes God surprises us.

Sometimes?

Well, maybe he surprises us more often than that. Or it could be too that things that should leave us surprised and even gasping in wonder instead become commonplace to the point of being mundane. Those of us who follow Jesus can, over time, come to take certain realities for granted. Good news becomes old hat. This is unfortunate, because there is hardly anything more surprising than salvation. But having been raised in church and in having gone to church essentially my whole life makes it more difficult sometimes to appreciate what in Christ I have been given. I think this is true of more people than just myself. And so we almost stop believing that God can surprise us.

I've been reading great book recently by Miroslav Volf called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Once I am finished, I plan on posting a fuller book review. Right now I'm only about halfway through. But his description of God's nature as Giver and Forgiver is worth its weight in gold. It can occasionally take someone else to stir your heart and mind and remind you, and perhaps teach you anew, about the heart of the good news and the person and work of Jesus Christ. While my family attended a tea party on Sunday afternoon, I took some time for myself to relax and read more of this book. And in the process God surprised me, reminded me, and even brought me something of a fresh understanding of the reality of salvation.

Here's just one example: We often talk about Jesus' death for our sin as replacing ours. Jesus died for our sins, in other words, so we would not have to. And Christ is indeed our substitute. But, as Volf points out, this is not quite how scriptural logic and theology runs. In 2 Corinthians 5:14 Paul says, "One has died for all; therefore all have died." Then Volf says this: "Christ's death doesn't replace our death. It enacts it, he [Paul] suggested . . . Now we see that we were also in Christ. What happened to him, happened to us. When he was condemned, we were condemned. When he died, we died." Volf observes that this what our union with Christ entails. This is what it means to be in Christ. This example connects to Volf's discussion of forgiveness, God's justice, as well as a couple of false images of God that people sometimes gravitate toward.

Anyway, this may or may not genuinely convey my reason for surprise, but it reminded me of how some of our more common ways of speaking about salvation miss the mark or at least the depth of the biblical presentation. We can have very cliched and formulaic ways of talking about salvation in our churches that in their own way diminish the staggering reality of what God has done in Christ. A part of our being able to not only appreciate this reality ourselves but to proclaim this reality to others means recovering a deeper biblical understanding built on the very language Scripture uses. We can hardly expect other people to see salvation in Christ as good news, when for us it continues to be old hat! We, too, need to be surprised (again!) at who God is and what he has done.

Tomorrow's Sermon--"Being Gifts"

I hope that anyone reading this tonight (Saturday, April 3) isn't from my congregation, because that means they'll be getting a double dose of sermonizing. I posted another sermon recently on God as Giver and this one is the follow-up to that one. It's on spiritual gifts. Hope it provides some food for mind and heart. Here it is:

“Being Gifts”
1 Corinthians 12:1 – 26

Introduction—giving what God has given

Now you may not know it by just looking at me, but I don’t know much about cars. Really! Let me tell you a story, just in case you need me to prove my point. Though I’m guessing you probably believe me and don’t need the convincing!

Almost a year ago our car began giving us some trouble. It wouldn’t start when we turned the key. In fact, it wouldn’t do anything when we turned the key. Once, when we were supposed to go into Saint John for an appointment, our car refused to start in our driveway. So I called Ronnie Sullivan. Ron and Gail lived close and I figured he probably knew more about cars than me. He came over, examined our engine carefully, spent time going over different options, and eventually was able to get the car going. At first just getting a boost seemed to do the trick. That didn’t last. Ronnie thought it was either the battery or possibly the fuel pump. It turned out to be the fuel pump.

When our car wouldn’t start, I needed someone else to help. This is because I know virtually nothing about cars. I’m the kind of person who, if I ever found myself stranded on the side of the road unable to get my car started, would open the hood, look at the engine and hope against hope that I would see a big, brightly coloured OFF/ON button! So I need someone else who really knows what to look for under the hood of our car. Thankfully Ronnie was available to give his time, knowledge, and experience—and in giving these things, he gave himself to help me.

A few weeks ago we talked about how everything we have is sheer gift, given us by God the ultimate Giver; how we do not deserve the gifts he gives; and how as a result we are called to become good givers ourselves. Now this week we’re going to elaborate on that last point: what it means to become good givers. Specifically, I want to talk about is spiritual gifts. We’ll see that it’s about giving to others what God has given to us. And hopefully at the end of all this we will see that it’s not so much about what gifts we have as it is what gifts we are.

God gives us all spiritual gifts

I have a close friend whose son will soon be five years old. So he and his wife are now looking into educational options. Their son is also exceptionally bright, and is already doing grade three reading and math, so they have understandable concerns about how he will take to the public school system. Friends at their church who are teachers have already told them that the public system isn’t going to know what to do with him! We could easily say, then, that this little boy is gifted.

Not every child is gifted in this sense. Not every boy and girl is this advanced in their skills and abilities. Not every four year old boy and girl is capable of reading at a grade three level. So we call such children gifted. The problem is that sometimes we take that term—gifted—and apply it in ways that are inappropriate.

In other words, when we hear the word gifted, we usually hear the word “exceptional.” Or we hear some people but not me. “Sure,” you think, “Some people can work at an advanced level, but I’m average. I’m not gifted.”

So then we apply this logic to the notion of spiritual gifts. People hear “spiritual gifts” and think that this term only applies to a select few, perhaps the spiritually elite of the church. They think of spiritual giftedness in the same way that we think of a gifted child, as the exception rather than the rule. But this isn’t how Scripture sees it.

We read from 1 Corinthians 12 this morning. And there Paul lists some spiritual gifts. He does the same in Ephesians 4 and Romans 12. These lists of gifts in Scripture are not exhaustive. In other words, there are spiritual gifts that God can give to his people that are not listed here. For instance, I don’t see listed in any of these passages the gift of music—and, no, singing does not count as speaking in tongues! But certainly we would include music as a spiritual gift. This just means that if you find yourself scanning these Scriptures and don’t see anything you think might be your spiritual gift, it doesn’t mean you don’t have one; it just means Paul didn’t mention it.

This means that every Christian—every person who has accepted Christ as Lord and confesses him with their lips and lives—has a spiritual gift. This is the rule and there are no exceptions. That means each of us is gifted! So if you are born again and trust in God as your redeemer, you have a spiritual gift, whether you know what it is or not.

Spiritual gifts are simply the unique ways God has made it possible for each of us to serve one another, to give ourselves to one another in love, for the purpose of growing in Christ. God has made you to serve those around you in a way that is uniquely you. Your specific combination of passions, interests, talents, experiences, and personality all come together to make your unique giftedness. It’s not just about what you have. Who you are is a gift.

God only gives the gifts we need

How many of you remember the comic strip by Gary Larson called The Far Side? I remember seeing one once that showed a huge group of penguins. Now of course all of these penguins looked the same. And right in the middle of the cartoon one of these penguins was standing up, holding his little wings in the air, and singing at the top of his lungs, “I gotta be me!” This poor penguin, though he looked exactly like all the others, wanted desperately to be unique, to be different, to be distinct from the crowd around him.

As we can see in our passage, Paul tells us there are a variety of gifts and activities given us by God. Paul makes this quite clear. Also clear is the fact God gives these gifts according to his will and purposes. We’re not the ones who determine our gifts: “All these [gifts] are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses,” Paul says in v.11. Earlier he says “there are varieties of activities but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone.” God decides who gets what gifts.

Sometimes we don’t like people who are different. From a very young age we learn to exclude people because of their differences—because of how they differ from us. We learn to distinguish, and we learn to discriminate. We form cliques and sub-groups. And I’m guessing school is pretty much the same—that kids are still organized according to the groups into which they fit.

And sometimes we don’t like being different. From a very young age we learn to conform, to try and fit in so that we will be included. We minimize our differences, and often what makes us unique, what makes us us, so that others will accept us.

When either of these attitudes infects a church, it’s a sickening sight. It was happening at Corinth. Some were saying, arrogantly, that there were people in the church who weren’t needed—the eye was saying to the hand, “I don’t need you”—and some were saying that they weren’t needed—“Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body.”

But Paul undercuts both attitudes: any attitude of arrogance or superiority that looks at others and says, “I don’t need you!” and any attitude of inferiority or insecurity that looks at others and says, “They don’t need me.” Neither attitude is scriptural.

Now before I found myself in need of Ronnie’s help with our car, I might not have considered his skills and gifts that important. It’s possible that I might have thought myself superior—I have, after all, many years of theological education under my belt! Or even as he was helping me I might have lamented my own inability when it comes to cars. I might have found myself envious rather than grateful, wishing that I had his gift instead of whatever gift or gifts I have. Neither of these reactions to someone else’s skills is a good one.

But while I definitely am not the sort of person you ask over to help fix your car, the next time Ronnie can’t get any sleep because he just can’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity or because he’s particularly distressed about that whole free will-predestination conundrum, I’ll be there!

Whatever the particularities of your personality, your history, experiences, your life, you are a gift to those around you—and you are as needed as anyone else in the body of Christ. And whatever you may think of those around you, however their personality, their habits, their quirks may rub you the wrong way, they are a gift to you. We need one another precisely because of our differences. God has given us the spiritual gifts we need to grow in Christ. That is to say, we need one another to grow in Christ.

God ultimately gives us one another

I was having coffee with another pastor this past week and we were talking about spiritual gifts, and he said something that has stuck with me. He said that spiritual fruit is the fuel for the spiritual gifts. And in a way, this speaks to God’s reason for giving us spiritual gifts.

Spiritual fruit is about having the character of Jesus—about becoming more Christ-like. We need to have both the fruit of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. God gives us the gifts of the Spirit so that we can help one another follow Christ. It’s how we build one another up and encourage one another. The purpose of the gifts is Christ-centered. Put another way, we are called to support each other in becoming more Christ-like.

James Packer puts it this way: “For Paul it is only through Christ, in Christ, and by learning of and responding to Christ, that anyone is ever edified. So spiritual gifts must be defined in terms of Christ as actualized powers of expressing, celebrating, displaying, and thus communicating Christ in one way or another, either by word or deed.”

As someone who plays a little guitar, I can improve my skills and my playing to a certain degree on my own. I can study and increase my understanding of music. But nothing makes a better musician than playing with other musicians. So when I practice with the worship team, I learn things that I could never learn on my own. Not to mention the fact that the music sounds better with more people playing!

I might be able to grow as a follower of Jesus on my own to a certain extent, but I can only become more fully mature as a follower of Jesus when I practice with other Christians. You’ve heard the saying about couples, “They make beautiful music together”? The same is true of Christians working together to follow Jesus.

If one of you encourages me in my walk with Christ, in the way that God enables you to do so, the gift you have given me is you. By helping me follow Christ, you are being a gift to me. That’s what spiritual gifts are ultimately about: giving ourselves to one another. Preparing for today’s message, I was reading a commentary on our passage from Paul. One of the things the author said really gets to the heart of what this is about. He said, “It is not so much a matter of having a gift as of being a gift.”

God gives us spiritual gifts; and in so doing he gives us to one another, you to me and me to you. These spiritual gifts are not only given by God, they are empowered by God’s Spirit; they are only effective because of God. This means it’s not about congratulating ourselves on whatever gifts we have, but being thankful for the gifts we are and the gifts we have in one another. Being spiritual gifts is about being Christ to one another; the purpose of these gifts is to build up the body of Christ.

To sum up, the source of these gifts is God; their power is from the Spirit; and their purpose is to lead us and others closer to Jesus. We are given to one another so that we might be more fully given over to Jesus and his kingdom. And it is because these gifts are embodied in specific people that it is, as I said, more about being gifts than having gifts. This means you can’t separate the gift from the person.

Conclusion—imitating the Giver by being gifts

In his book Free of Charge Miroslav Volf says this: “In and of itself, no particular thing in the world is a gift. We do have so-called gift shops, full of all sorts of little things we usually give to friends and acquaintances. But things sitting on the store shelf are not gifts. Just like any other thing, an item from that store becomes a gift when you buy it and give it to someone else. A gift is a social relation, not an entity or an act in itself. It is an event between people.”

Take a moment and look around you. Imagine each of the people around you as gifts—as gifts precisely in their uniqueness, because of how they are different from you—and ask yourself, “Who here has been a gift to me and how? Who here has helped me follow Christ, has helped me in my faith?” And then take another moment and ask yourself, “How can I be a gift to these people? How can I help someone else follow Christ better? How can I help someone in their walk of faith?” Knowing how you are a spiritual gift begins by asking such questions.

One of the practical consequences of thinking through spiritual gifts is considering how well our present church structures and ministries allow people opportunity to be the gifts they are and to use the gifts they have. In traditional church culture, this is how it usually goes: there are specific non-negotiable ministries and programs (Sunday school, youth group, Bible study, etc.) and so we try and find people to fit the positions needed to run these programs.

But what if ministries and programs were instead organized according to people’s spiritual gifts in the church? One of the characteristics of a healthy church according to Natural Church Development is a gift-oriented ministry. The notion here is to say, well, we have some people gifted in this area so how can we create a ministry opportunity for them and help prepare them to serve more effectively? In this model, programs and ministries are defined by who people are not simply by what we need them to do.

Such an approach to ministry, to church life, to following Jesus together as a community, does a much better job at honouring the unique ways God has made each of us. It makes ministry more about relationships than activities. It grounds our identity as a church more securely in the sovereignty of God by basing what we do on what he has given us. It helps us recognize more clearly our need for one another because the spiritual gifts are given, as Paul says, “for the common good.”

And ultimately to recognize the distinct ways God has enabled us to serve, how it is that we are gifts to each other, is what it means to honour God the ultimate Giver who has not only given us to one another but has also given himself. Today we receive these gifts, the bread and the cup, as we celebrate that God, in his infinite mercy and out of his abundant grace, has given us his Son, Jesus Christ, and that in doing so has given us life. May we, in being good stewards of the life we have been given, also be gifts to one another.

A Recent Sermon

This is not just a recent sermon but the last one I preached before getting the flu. It began, strangely, as a sermon about giving. I was going to look at 2 Corinthians 8, 9 where Paul is encouraging the church to make good on their promise to help the Christians in Jerusalem. But as I was working on it, I realized that it was important to provide some foundation for our giving; namely, I realized that we had to look at what it means to call God a giver first. Admittedly, I was also inspired by a book I've been reading by Miroslav Volf called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace.

The follow-up sermon I will hopefully finish for next Sunday is called "Being Gifts." And though it looks at how we give, it is not at all about financial giving. It's going to look at spiritual gifts and the importance of these gifts for the life of a church community and how using our gifts, whatever they may be, are the most important way we can give ourselves to Christ and his people.

Anyway, below is the sermon on God as giver. I hope it gives both your heart and mind some food for thought.

“God the Giver”
Matthew 6:25 – 34; James 1:17, 18

Introduction—it is blessed to receive!

On the first Christmas my wife and I were together we were just recently engaged, and I spent a lot of time over the holidays with her family. It was also the first Christmas in a long time that I almost felt like a kid again. You see, she must have told her parents all about my interests and likes because many of the gifts they got me were things I actually asked for and those that weren’t were still very thoughtful and personal. I still use those homemade pillow cases! I was truly astonished and overwhelmed by their generosity.

We’re told by Jesus that it is more “blessed to give than to receive,” and I think this is true; but, I tell you, that Christmas I felt pretty blessed by what I received! And I know, we’re taught to think that as Christians we should enjoy giving more than receiving, but am I the only one here who feels blessed to receive gifts? How many people here love to get gifts? You can be honest, because your pastor is putting his hand up too!

And no matter how generous anyone else is to us—family or friends—no one is as generous to us as God is. So this morning we’re going to look at what it means to call God a giver; and not only a giver but the giver. That God is the ultimate giver means the first thing we need to be are good receivers. Today we’re going to ask what God gives, how God gives, and why God gives. And hopefully as we do so we will be even more surprised by God’s generosity, experience even more humility and gratitude in the face of it, and be moved to become even better receivers as a result of it.

What God Gives—Surprised by Generosity

Now I can think of at least a few occasions when not only has our daughter referred to something as “mine” but when she did so because another child wanted to play with that particular toy. Lots of kids do this. Another child visits, goes to play with a toy that belongs to the child they’re visiting, and that child snatches the toy back and says, with some indignation, “Mine!”

And it’s not only children that are possessive about their belongings. We adults can be that way too. We might not snatch back our “toy” but we might find ourselves wanting to do so. At the very least we do divide things between “mine” and “not mine.” Conflict can even arise when there is a dispute over what’s “yours” and what’s “mine.”

I had two uncles who ended up having a huge conflict over a piece of land left to them by my grandfather when he died. It was so bad that they didn’t speak for years. Thankfully they eventually reconciled but it’s still a shame that so much time was wasted by a fight over a piece of property. Especially since that land didn’t really belong, strictly speaking, to either of them. It was given to them by my grandfather. As such, it was a gift. And the fight that resulted missed this point and thereby dishonoured the giver.

Nothing we own or have is ours. We possess nothing, properly speaking. All that we have and experience as blessing—homes, cars, food, jobs, family, friends, and career opportunities—are gifts given to us by God. Our passage from James tells us that “every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights.” All the good in our lives that we know comes from God. God gives us everything.

Recognizing this is a simple extension of acknowledging that God is our creator. Not only does all we have come from him, we come from him. We owe God our very life. He’s the one who breathes life into us. Psalm 104:30 says this of God’s activity as creator: “When you send forth your spirit, they are created.” Apart from God, we would not be. And so, likewise, apart from God, we would have nothing. So everything we have is gift.

No matter who our employer is or how we provide for our living that ultimately we rely on God. To use an imperfect analogy, whoever signs your pay-check, the funds come from God’s bank account.

This is a call to trust in him as giver—as our heavenly Father who gives us every good and perfect gift. We see this, too, in Jesus’ words from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew that we heard earlier. Here Jesus points to birds of the air and says to his followers, “They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”

Jesus wants his disciples not to worry about food and clothes like other people do: “So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the pagans run after these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” So, Jesus says, if God takes care of even the birds of the air, will he not also take care of you? Is he not worthy, therefore, of your trust?

But trusting God as the ultimate giver, the one who ultimately provides us with all we need, is not always easy. This is where prayer comes in. Trust in God is most fully embodied in prayer. This is why in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus teaches us to pray “give us each day our daily bread.” Jesus is teaching us to rely on the Father of lights, on God’s ongoing providential care. By praying these words we gradually learn to move from worry to trust, from anxiety to faith.

In his letter to the Philippians, Paul encourages prayer for very similar reasons. “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” In other words, turn your cares into prayers! Trust God, because God is the one who gives us everything we need. To experience and know God as the ultimate giver means, or at least it should mean, being surprised by his generosity and approaching him in faith.

How God Gives—Experiencing Humility and Gratitude

That God gives us everything we need, that he is the source of our life and all of our blessings, leads us to ask: How is it that God is such a giver? What reason could God have for being so utterly, completely generous?

As a father, I want the absolute best for my child, for my daughter. I want her to be healthy, happy, and to have the best education we can provide, the best opportunities, and, most of all, I want her to know, love, and serve God. Why do I want this? Is it because she always demonstrates that she deserves such things? Is it because she’s entitled to have the best this world has to offer? Or is it simply because I am her father and all fathers want the best for their kids? This is what it means to be a father, at least ideally.

God’s reason for being infinitely generous and giving to us is that he is Father. Being the ultimate giver is the essence of who he is. Like James tells us, “Every good and perfect gift” comes from God. And this is so because God himself is goodness. He gives because of who he is; giving is what a good God does.

We probably all have the feeling sometimes that we are owed something—maybe even owed a good life or perhaps a better life. Maybe it’s a fleeting feeling. But there are people who develop a sense of entitlement, that they deserve better than what they have.

Here’s an example:

If I happen to come into some extra money or have fewer expenses in a given month, I might be easily tempted to use that extra money to get myself a treat, something I couldn’t normally afford. So because I work hard to provide for my family, do my best to be a good person, father, husband, pastor, Christian, and citizen, I find myself saying, “Go ahead, treat yourself. You deserve this.” And I might indulge that impulse even though that extra money could be used more wisely or thoughtfully: put a little more on an outstanding bill, give a little more to the church or another good cause, or lend the money to someone I know is in need. But that little voice persists: “You deserve this.”

But when it comes to what God gives, we deserve none of it. He doesn’t give us anything we have based on our merit. We haven’t earned God’s gifts, be it our job, our material possessions, our family or even our very breath. God gives because of who God is: a heavenly Father who loves his children.

This should be a humbling thought. We have what we were not owed, have gained what we have not earned, and have been given what we have not deserved. Knowing God is the ultimate giver, the one who gives us everything, leads us to trust him—leads us to open our hearts to him in prayer, to leave our worries at his feet, and surrender our cares to him. Knowing that all he gives he gives out of his sheer goodness and not because of anything we have done should lead us to a posture of humility.

Humility and thankfulness. I began today’s message by telling you about my first Christmas with my wife's family. At the time I felt overwhelmed, humbled, by their generosity. I’m sure some of you have had occasion to feel that same sense of humility when you’ve received a gift. And usually our first response is to thank the giver.

The same is true of the gifts we receive from God—not only should his generosity lead to our humility, but also our gratitude. We give thanks to God, we express our thanks for all that God has given to us. This, too, we do in our prayers, just as in our prayers we turn to God to meet our needs.

One of the things we always—or almost always—do in our home at mealtimes is give thanks or say grace. It can sometimes seem rote, but it makes us stop even if for a moment to remember that what we have comes from God. Even our little girl will say grace, sometimes without prompting!

As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 9:15, “Thanks be to God for his indescribable gift.” Just as knowing God gives us everything leads us to turn our cares into prayers, when we experience God’s goodness through his gifts, we need to have an attitude of gratitude. Or as someone else has said, “Faith receives God’s gifts as gifts; gratitude receives them well.”

Why God Gives—Becoming Good Receivers

God gives us everything, and he does so because of his goodness, his sheer willingness to give even though we deserve none of his gifts. But if we don’t get these gifts because we deserve them, what purpose does God have in giving as he does? Is God interested in doing more than simply blessing us with all that we have? Are we to sit back and just enjoy what he gives?

In our culture, we have something called ‘returning the favour.’ Someone does something for us, we feel obligated to do something for them in return. Someone gives us a gift, shows us generosity, we feel obligated to give them a ‘return gift.’ But when we talk about God being the giver, what can we possibly give to him in return? Though we owe him everything, we can offer him nothing. Since we have received everything from God than what can we possibly give to God?

Theologian Miroslav Volf has written a profound and wonderful book called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. Speaking about what we do in response to God’s giving, he says this: “God gives so that we can exist and flourish, but not only for that. God gives so that we can help others exist and flourish as well. God’s gifts aim at making us into generous givers, not just fortunate receivers. God gives so that we, in human measure, can be givers too.”

As God’s people, we are called to imitate God, to be godly. While we can only ever do this in an imperfect manner, this means practicing generosity ourselves. God’s word to us is one of unfathomable kindness—an extraordinary degree of giving of which our lives can only ever be a faint echo. But imitate God’s giving we must. Otherwise we dishonour both the Giver and the gift.

Conclusion—“It is more blessed to give . . .”

In his novel The Brothers Karamazov, Fyodor Dostoyevsky tells the story of an old peasant woman who was quite wicked and who died without leaving a single good deed behind. She lived for herself, taking whatever she could by whatever means. And over the course of her life, she showed no interest in being kind or generous to anyone. After she died, the devil seized her and threw her into the lake of fire. Dostoyevsky continues the story this way:

“So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers he could remember to tell to God; ‘She once pulled up an onion in her garden,’ said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You take that onion then, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise, but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’ The angel ran to the woman and held out the onion to her. ‘Come,’ said he, ‘catch hold and I’ll pull you out.’ He began cautiously pulling her out. He had just pulled her right out, when the other sinners in the lake, seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ As soon as she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning there to this day. So the angel wept and went away.”

If this were a true story about how to get into heaven, it would be a bad one. Even the most profound act of human generosity doesn’t warrant God’s favour. If there is anything true in this story, it is the picture of a God whose generosity extends to even the very wicked.

But perhaps it’s true in another way also. If only this woman had shared her onion with those who were grasping at her heels, she could have escaped the fires of selfishness and greed that ended up consuming her. Instead, by holding onto the onion as tightly as she did, she lost both it and herself.

I said at the beginning that while Jesus tells us “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” that we can still feel blessed by also being receivers, by gratefully and humbly receiving the gifts we are given by God. Yet while this is true, we can never truly be good receivers until we also learn to give. Otherwise we run the risk of losing what we’ve been given and ourselves just like this woman in Dostoyevsky’s novel. And it is only when we learn to give away the gifts that we can truly say that we know the Giver.

Shhh . . . Again!

Today, sometime around mid-morning, the power went out in our neighbourhood. It doesn't happen very often and as usual it didn't last terribly long. But when it did go out, that meant the TV was off, we couldn't listen to the radio, there was no phone ringing, and even a couple of our appliances which were in mid-cycle stopped. We couldn't go online either. So for a short time we had to endure an imposed silence of sorts.

I didn't mind.

Lately, I've been feeling more stressed than usual. The pressures of ministry, home, and finances sometimes have a cumulative effect that ends up being more than the sum of their parts, and that's been true the last little while. And for me, if I'm already on edge or feeling irritable or stressed, noise can easily exacerbate my attitude. And by noise I mean any media. Sometimes my daughter, whom I love dearly, can make unwanted noise too. But, blessedly, during this brief respite from noise, she was with my wife reading stories. It allowed me to sit back and quietly read my Bible. There wasn't much else to do or much else I could do! It almost felt like God was telling me to sit down and shut up. And to sit down and shut up is not far from a description of what Sabbath ought partly to be about.

But quiet has to be self-imposed too. The power usually is there to make the appliances whir, the TV to distract, the laptop to hum, and the phone to ring. So effort is needed to find room for quiet in a world that far too often tempts us to fill every waking moment with noise. Even lately I've noticed a desire in me for more quiet, for more evenings of simply sitting with my Bible, a good book, or even a good magazine. My recent experiences of the sound of silence, however short-lived, have thoroughly reminded me of this. But the challenge I face is whether I will willingly allow silence to penetrate my otherwise noisy life.

All I know is that perhaps having quiet around me is related to having quiet inside of me, that allowing myself the experience of silence will hopefully promote a stillness of spirit, a space into which God can speak and be heard. And this is really the trickier part: stilling the noise on the inside of the heart and mind. Even if there is quiet all around, I can be all noise and distraction underneath. That's one of the reasons I suspect we surround ourselves with noise of whatever kind: to keep the restless sounds of our hearts from being heard. And I suspect that there are times when this may be more or less unconscious. We aren't always aware of our attempts at self-distraction; they become effortless and habitual. It doesn't take a whole lot of motivation to turn the TV on or surf the internet; deliberately placing ourselves in a position to listen to the stillness of God's voice requires discipline. That, unfortunately, is something many of us, pastors included, desperately lack. We fear what we may hear, perhaps?

But God desires to speak to us. Indeed, he has spoken to us ultimately in his Son, the Word. And he speaks to us in the words of Scripture, which tell of the Word. He is present when we pray. In fact, he is present even when we don't pray. He is always present to us; but we are not always present to him. And being present to God is all the more difficult when we allow the inferior "words" of everything else around us drown out the possibility of hearing his voice. Maybe what we need are more power outages!

Location, Location, Location!

Our church is sort hard to find for some. If you don't know the area well, you might just get lost while on your way. And it's also on a street that's out of the way, not a main thoroughfare. We don't get a lot of drive-by traffic. In order to direct people, we do have a small street sign marked with an arrow pointing, with relative accuracy, toward our church. However, our sign is in desperate need of replacement, something I hope will happen this spring. The significance of signage is perhaps worthy of its own post. That's not my main point today. Rather, I'm thinking of that perennial catch-phrase used to express the value of land and real estate: location, location, location.

Once when talking about our church with another pastor, he commented that our church is actually in a terrible location. It should instead be at the bottom of the road that leads into our community where people would immediately see it rather than in a spot that requires a handful of left turns. As it is, our church lacks a certain obvious visibility. It's not about blinking and missing it. It's more about being situated where even if you keep your eyes peeled you're just not likely to drive by casually on the road where our church is.

Some churches, in order to improve their ministry, will take steps to improve their location. I know of one church which is currently engaged in such a re-location project. But of course not all churches have either the calling or the ability to take such measures. For some churches, ours included, our location, whatever it may be, is something with which we simply have to contend.

And this is true of life as a whole. Location defines us. We are where we are. And oftentimes we can't simply pack and move someplace else. The specificity of our location is the result of years of decisions, unforeseen circumstances, the unseen hand of God and, hopefully, all our honest if flawed attempts to listen to and follow God.

Take me, for instance. What is my location? I am geographically located in a small LSD (local service district) where I currently serve as the full-time pastor of a small, rural Baptist church. The area in which I live is not even large enough to be considered a village or town. We have no local municipality. I hadn't even heard of this place before being called as pastor! And of course my being located here has to do with not only with physical location, but a whole plethora of factors.

One of these factors in my locatedness is that I am also married. That I am not a single male also locates me in a specific place. That I am married played a role in my accepting the call as pastor both here and in my previous church. That I am married plays in a huge role in any future locatedness--my wife and I have to be in agreement about any major decisions regarding moving or a change of ministry. Yet another factor is that I am also a father. We have a young daughter who is roughly three and a half years old. This also plays a powerful determining role. Being a parent both is part of my locatedness and determines my locatedness. So family plays a huge role in my present location.

My own personal background--emotional, intellectual, relational, spiritual, etc.--also plays a huge role in my locatedness. Who I am has been shaped by a variety of influences. I am, yes, who God has made me (and continues to make me!), but I am also a product of my parents, family members, childhood experiences, schooling, encounters with people odd and normal, and in fact all of life. I can’t always articulate it precisely, but I can often sense layers of experience playing a role in present day decisions. Simply put, it's like when someone says to you, "You're just like your father!" And that's only one example.

Try as we may, we cannot entirely escape the various layers of locatedness that accumulate over time like sediment to make us what we are. Some aspects of our locatedness may be nothing more than fossils, but when excavated and revealed afresh by a present crisis or major life change or even the stress of everyday life they come to life again. Who hasn't been surprised by how we can find ourselves in a situation where we begin to think, speak, and act as if we were still that nervous middle school kid?

Much of life seems to be about dealing and negotiating with our locatedness. As I said, we are where we are. And if we can't move to another, more pleasant location, then we have to live with our current surroundings.

What I am getting at with all of this? Why have I recklessly abandoned proper grammar to make up a word like ‘locatedness’? Well, when you think of that phrase, ‘location, location, location,’ the obvious implication is that the where of where you are located makes all the difference. Whether your home is located in an upscale suburban neighbourhood or in a poor rural community will determine the price of your home. It indicates value. If you want to be somewhere worth being, then move to a better location.

Sometimes we want to change the particulars of our present location in life. Perhaps our job is unsatisfying. What about that unexplored career path? Do we wish we had made different decisions along the way? Or maybe being a parent is more stressful than we had anticipated. It could be that the kids we had weren’t part of our original plan. We thought we knew our husband or wife better when we married them. Possibly we were hoping for more material prosperity or at least more creature comforts. All in all, life is hardly perfect. Our location is not ideal. And we sometimes entertain thoughts of what re-location might be like.

But, to point out the obvious, we are where we are. Whatever our present location, that’s what we have to contend with. We can’t just quit our jobs, dump the wife, and lose the kids; though many have used such tactics to change their location. Rarely is it this simple, however. And rarely is this a good idea (Well, quitting a job may sometimes be justified). Often such a move is a poor attempt at escapism, or of loosing ourselves from unpleasant constraints in life. As they say, the grass is always greener . . .

But the fact of the matter is all locations have value at least insofar as all locations have redeemable value. That is to say, the God of the Bible is a God who is at work not only on a grand cosmic scale that encompasses galaxies and solar systems, but one who is also at work on our street, down our lane, and in our neighbourhoods and homes. Wherever we find ourselves, there is nowhere we can be where God cannot work to redeem. This means if our marriage is in trouble, God can work redemption there; if our kids are out of control, God can work redemption there; and if we don’t like our job or are struggling with what our job ought to be, God can work redemption there. So in the same moment as I find myself daydreaming or even seriously contemplating re-location, God wants me to know that he can carry out some renovations right where we are, that he can produce something of value even at our current location.

We know this because God himself acquired locatedness in the incarnation, in that most miraculous of moments when eternity entered time, when infinity became bound by limited dimensions. We know that God places eternal value on our present location because he had for a time his own location in space and time. When the Son of God became flesh and blood, the particulars of our lives, the various levels of our locatedness, took on inestimable value. This is often what is called "the scandal of particularity," the idea, offensive to many, that the truth of God revealed in Jesus is true because of its very particularity, specificity, and locatedness. Most would rather see the truth of God as revealed in Jesus as a specific instance of a more general truth that can also be seen elsewhere--this is not the only way God has revealed his truth, but one of many--than consider the possibility that only in Jesus, this particular instance of divine revelation, is the truth of God made known fully and completely. Yet this is what we as Christians believe.

And the particularity of the incarnation means that God takes seriously the here and now of where we are. Whatever our location, God cares. So whereas sometimes we'd prefer a God who would graciously remove us from specific circumstances and lift us up beyond the often messy details of our lives, instead we have a God who--according to the incarnation--"moved into the neighborhood." We have a God who instead enters into our circumstances and is present to us in the midst of them. That God is like this means that while sometimes a move to a new location is a wise decision, often God wants to save us right where we are.

So our church is not located in an ideal spot. Does that mean for God to use us to reach the surrounding community we have to move to another location in the community, that unless we do we are consigned to irrelevancy? Or is it more true to say that no church is located in an ideal spot, that our placement can never be perfect, but that despite this, God can still work miracles, wonders, and redemption in our midst anyway? While it may be true that if our church were located in a more visible spot that we might get more drive-by traffic, more frequent visitors, and have a stronger presence, I also think that we rely too much on the world's way of thinking if we reduce the potential of our church's impact to those factors. Relying too much on the world's way of thinking also makes light of God's power. Certainly he is not limited by what we define as limitations! And certainly God is not limited by location, whether that of our church or our own. To my thinking, then, if God is into real estate, then every location has value, value that comes from and is produced by him, not by any street address or spot on a map. It's all about location, all right, but it is God and not us who ultimately determines the redeemable value of any location.

A Good Mystery

I'm not much of a fiction reader, so most of my fiction comes from film and television. Yes, I can concede that this might be a poor man's substitute, but, as I already said recently (see my last post), I like watching TV. Enough with that. My point here is that more specifically a lot of the shows I watch are mysteries or serial dramas, ones that end each episode with a cliffhanger or unresolved story and therefore have the ability, to a greater or lesser degree, to hook you. In the best (or worst??) case scenario such shows might be described as addictive. One example of this would be 24. That this show is potentially addictive is not much of a surprise given that every episode occurs in real time and ends at the end of every hour. This, quite possibly, is both a pro and a con when you have the DVD set and are not watching it from week to week--there is no reason to wait for the next episode; you can watch the next one right away! However, this does lead to the occasional late night . . . So such shows are best reserved for occasions when rising early isn't required the next day! The point is that while I don't read mysteries I do like watching them.

Now when I say mystery, I mean something specific too. Take The X-Files, for instance. Here's a show that counted on its stories being unresolved and on having an overarching mythology that often raised more questions than answers. Such a method of telling stories reflected a key belief on the show, that there are mysteries in life, unfathomable phenomena, that escape the explanatory power of science and reason. To resolve every story and answer every question is tantamount to saying that there are no mysteries inherent in life, that there is nothing beyond what science can tell us.

I think what is attractive about such stories is that we love that there is mystery. It's like the poster on Special Agent Fox Mulder's office wall says, "I want to believe." We want to believe that there is more to life than what we can see with our eyes and touch with our hands. Such possibilities, whether it's the possibility of the existence of extraterrestrial life or the possibility of the existence of God (for me, of course, this is more than a possibility even if it remains a mystery in its own way), promise us meaning and purpose, a way to define ourselves beyond the mundane routines of everyday life. It's no wonder that the producers of The X-Files often liken Mulder's search for proof of alien life to the search for God. Both are mysteries that bring life meaning. So no wonder shows like this become so popular in a world where people long for significance and identity, purpose and direction. Or even just a good mystery.

But, you see, the odd thing about shows like The X-Files, Lost, and others, is that the more questions they answer and the more mysteries they resolve the less satisfying they are. That's when the writing begins to show weak spots. While adept at posing the questions and identifying the mysteries, they are often profoundly inept at providing meaning to the mystery and giving answers to the questions (even if they remain entertaining). Once the mystery gives way to explanation, we often find ourselves profoundly dissatisfied.

So as entertaining and well-produced as any TV show might be, no such show can really provide a person's life with meaning. While they serve as a corporate sponsored reminder that there are mysteries in life, they can no more give us purpose than Dr. Phil can dispense sound, life-changing counsel in short segments between commercial breaks. Though people seek meaning there, even if unconsciously. Hence the large number of fans that absorb and analyse the details of such shows in hopes of cracking the code. It takes more than a good mystery to do that. It takes the best mystery, the only one that truly satisfies. That's the mystery we have in the Bible.

In Ephesians the apostle Paul talks about this mystery and how he had been entrusted to make this mystery plain to everyone: "I became a servant of this gospel by the gift of God's grace given me through the working of his power. Although I am less than the least of all the Lord's people, this grace was given to me: to preach to the Gentiles the boundless riches of Christ, and to make plain to everyone the administration of this mystery, which for ages past was kept hidden in God, who created all things." The apostle here refers to the gospel of Jesus Christ as a mystery. He is saying that until the advent of Christ into the world, the mystery of God's plan was a secret, known only to God himself. He says something similar in Romans. And in Colossians Paul comes right out and says that this mystery is Jesus Christ.

Most people want more than they have. Life doesn't provide automatically a deep, satisfying sense of meaning and purpose. Lots of people wander through life feeling the weight of the world and of the ultimate questions without ever really landing on an answer that quells the thirst and satiates the hunger. This, I think, leads to a sense of loss, but without telling us what it is that we've lost. "My heart is restless, oh God, until it finds rest in You," prays Augustine. We enter this world with a gaping hole in our hearts, one that is, unbeknownst to us, God-shaped. So we try with all our might to fill this hole with any number of things, and usually these things only serve to feed the hunger and increase our thirst. At the very least satisfaction is temporary.

The mystery of God, that there can be wholeness and redemption, fullness of meaning and purpose, has been revealed in Jesus. God's plan in Christ is to disclose his means for saving human beings from their sin and brokenness so that we needn't spend any more time wandering and wondering, lost and directionless, like a ship drifting on the sea. That God-shaped hole in our heart can only be filled by Jesus, for in him the fullness of who God is and what he is up to has been made known.

The big difference between the mystery presented in various TV serial dramas and the mystery of the gospel is that while the presentation of the mysteries in such shows is usually more compelling than any answers they can give, the opposite is true of the good news. We spend our lives consciously or unconsciously looking for answers to life's mysteries, wanting to experience the deep satisfaction that comes when we discover meaning and purpose for ourselves, and it is only when we find our heart's true home, in Jesus himself, that we are satisfied. It's the only mystery that, when revealed, is more compelling than the questions we ask and the attempts at seeking meaning we make. That makes our faith in Christ not just a good mystery, but a great one, the only one worth truly being revealed to us.

Something Extraordinary

I'm about to pack up and go to the office. My wife and daughter are away until later today so I could work at home, but sometimes work requires the feel of an office. It's going to be a busy week, one that involves some rush to get things done. Or so it seems at the moment. My wife is going to an overnight retreat on Friday night which means it'll be my little girl and I until sometime Saturday evening. That means I have to have my sermon done (or at least 90% done) before Friday night. That's not how it usually works. I sort of wish the retreat was last week when, quite unexpectedly, my sermon was done just before lunch on Friday. But I have to trust that the Lord who provided then will provide this time as well. Even for a pastor, or at least this pastor, that's not always easy.

How easily our faith becomes mundane and all too ordinary, especially when we can't even muster enough trust to believe that God will help us get through a week with all its priorities and responsibilities. At our adult Bible study we were looking at Jesus' power over sin and one of the questions was: when have we questioned Jesus' power and authority? Most of us as Christians probably don't question Jesus' power and authority directly, doubting in plain sight that God can do great things. We affirm his greatness. He applaud his power. We verbally attest to our conviction that God has the authority and the power to pull off miracles. We stare in awe, blankfaced at his actions as recorded in Scripture. And then we go on living as though he can do nothing about our everyday circumstances. Our actions, as the saying goes, are more powerful than words.

If I consider that God created all the universe, that in him I live and move and have my being, how can I doubt that he can also provide me with a sermon for Sunday? If I consider that all things are made in, through, and for Christ, how can I doubt that the Lord can enable me to get through this week? How is it that we can read Scripture, with its incredible portrayal of God in all his majesty and glory, and still end up believing only what our eyes will show us? How is it that we can allow our moods and the number of hours we've had for sleep so easily determine the earnestness and persistence of our prayers? When will the scales fall from our eyes? Lord, help us see.

While I completely understand and accept that much of life is ordinary, a shopping list of duties and responsibilities, of chores and errands, must it be the case that our faith is confined by the same boundaries? I know that since much of life is this way, our faith has to make sense of and be relevant to the everydayness of our routines and schedules; but where is the sense of mystery, of transcendence, of our faith, while addressing the ordinary, being about less--or rather more--than the ordinary? Shouldn't there be a levity to faith to match the gravity of life?

I do have those moments when, for some reason, all of life's problems, while still very much there, no longer have the weight I normally assign them. I can't quite describe it, but it's as though the reality of God--though very much unseen--seems more real and powerful than the reality of everything else that I can see. And it's not a forget-your-problems-happy-escapist-sort-of-feeling. Seems to me it's a gift. I can't summon it. I can't worship myself into it. I can't pray myself to it. This makes it even more odd because knowing that I did not and cannot manufacture such a perspective means that faith itself is a gift. I can't force my faith; but I can ask for it to grow.

Now when I get to the office there will be the temptation, a temptation that forever is there, to rush ahead and dash into work. I'll want to make the phone calls I have to make. Plan. Wrack my brain for sermon ideas. Think over music for Sunday's worship. Such an attitude is, in some ways, endemic to our culture. And it's not necessarily unhealthy as far as it goes. But in ministry it can be a problem insofar as it makes it about what I do. And there is a sense in which the less I do the better. To think otherwise, that all of this pastoral work is the fruit of my labours, the result of my gifts and talents, and that if I can't pull it together out of thin air, then there is something wrong with me and I should look into another vocation or career or job, is to neglect the very reality at the heart of ministry, the reason and rationale for ministry in the first place: the reality of God. But that takes faith. And that's something only God can provide. So I have to ask for it. In other words, ministry should, though it doesn't always, begin and end and be immersed in prayer. In neglecting prayer, I allow my ministry, such as it is, to make that downward slide toward the ordinary, where mystery has been replaced by methods, transcendence by technique, and faith by sight. Only a prayerful life informed by the revelation of Scripture can find itself sure that in the midst of doctor's appointments, burnt suppers, coughs and runny noses, late night risings to calm an upset child, and feeble efforts at sermon preparation that the God who called the simplest and grandest elements of creation into being can also grant me life and faith. Only God can help me see and live in the ordinary with a faith that is more than the ordinary. That's something extraordinary.