JOY - A COMMUNITY BUSINESS

Dearest family,

On the third Sunday in Advent, I did the first half of a presentation in which I was arguing that JOY is a community business, not just a private affair. Granted, joy is a fruit of the Spirit in our personal lives and without our intimacy and unity with the vine, Jesus Christ, we will not reproduce it. In a way, I was inserting my message into Bo’s series on the “one another’s” of the NT. You see, your private lack of any manifestation of this fruit has an effect – a bad one – on others, just as your manifestation of this fruit has a good effect. Yes, our fruitfulness comes from the Lord and is for the Lord. But it is clearly also for the benefit of others.

Briefly, I showed you how this fruit of joy is so vital to healthy and transformed community life. YOU have a role to play in another’s joy. The presentation of joy in the incarnation narratives is never just a private personal matter. Gabriel’s word to Zechariah that “He will be a joy to you” is not just private and personal because the angel goes on to say “many will rejoice.” When Elizabeth’s pregnant joy is learned we read of her neighbors that “they shared her joy.” And that joy of hers, quickened by the joy of a visiting Mary, sets off joy in her unborn son. Mary’s spirit that “rejoices” in God her Savior is not a solo performance, but is going to be expressed by all the generations who will be in the choir that call her blessed and share her joy. The “good news of great joy” that was announced to the shepherds was not for them alone in their splendid isolation but for “all the people.” Because the joy was for everyone, they went and became the first evangelists of the NT, and “spread the word concerning what they had been told.” If this joy had not been communal, had not been expressed, then Zechariah and Elizabeth would be closeted at home choosing baby clothes, the neighborhood would be going about their usual depressing and repetitive order of business, Mary would be a soloist whose song would be off the charts in a week, and the shepherds would still be telling depressing stories about their worst encounters with wolves. In the advent story, the spiritual joy of one is always the promotion of the joy of all.

In all the attention given to tongues of fire at the birth of the church community there are other descriptions of the community that pass under the radar. But the point I want to make is that at the end of chapter 2 there is another very significant and essential description of the young church’s DNA: “they ate their food with gladness…praising God.” One of the key verses that Peter quoted in his Pentecost sermon was from Psalm 16, explaining what had happened, what defined the character of that new day, what was going to be the mark of the church? “You will make me full of joy in your presence.” Joy is unabashedly Pentecostal, fundamental to our ecclesiology, and fundamental to our soteriology. It is the sign of a saved life. It is the calling card of a redeemed community. My main point is simply that at the beginning of the history of the church, joy is the description of an entire community. There is solidarity and unity in their expectation, experience and expression of joy. It is an evidence, it is an ethos, and because it is the fruit of imputed righteousness, it is an ethic. It was an indelible mark of the work of the Holy Spirit.

This description of joy marking an entire community is consistent with the rest of the scriptural record, where, as in the advent narrative, joy is never just presented as only a privatized and personalized affair: “You shall rejoice…you and your household…” (Dt. 14:26); “All the men of Israel rejoiced greatly” (1 Sam. 11:15); “You shall rejoice in your feasts… and all who are within your gates…” (Dt. 16); “All the people of the land rejoiced…” (2 Kgs.11:20); “Let all your saints rejoice…” (2 Chrons.6:41); “Rejoicing because God had given them great joy. The women and children also rejoiced (!)…” (Neh. 12:34); “When the morning stars sang together and all the angels sang for joy…” (Job 38:7); “Let the heavens rejoice…” (Ps. 96:11); “When things go well the city rejoices…” (Pvbs.11:10); “When the righteous triumph there is great joy…” (Pvbs.28:12); “All the Jews had joy…” (Est. 8:17); “Rejoice all you Gentiles…” (Roms.15:10); “All the members of COSC rejoiced always!” (Hezekiah 3:9) And just in case you think there is any reason or excuse not to be part of that community of joy, Romans 12:5 throws us in there whether we like it or not: “Rejoice with those who rejoice.” So you can’t stand on the sidelines even if you are a self-consumed, self-piteous miserable blighter. Here is a challenge to, and exposure of, our fleshly moodiness, and the dictatorship of our unsanctified emotions, with all their spats and little fits and tantrums. We realize that the lack of joy as a fruit normally points to a lack of many of the other fruits, like patience or self-control. Anyway, Romans 12 abolishes the bleachers when it comes to community joy. Joy is expected, experienced and expressed as a communal identity, which I believe is more than simply the sum of the joyful parts or a consensus joy. Joy actually marks the spirit and character of the corporate life, as well as the individual members. God’s presence can be visceral in our midst. There is joy in His presence, so if He is among us there will be joy. You cannot separate joy and presence. In His presence is fullness of joy! This is one of the powerful ways that God breaks out, breaks in and breaks through a community’s life, as its joy-infused identity engages the world, even the worst of battlefields. Joy in the Holy Spirit, the joy of Jesus, is a much unused defiant, demon-terrorizing weapon of our spiritual warfare that is so mighty to the pulling down of oppressed and depressed strongholds, whether in an individual life or a nation.) But that’s another message!

In our community life, we are simply reflecting what is true for the prior community of the God-head, this eternal interplay of joy and delight between them, each one seemingly outdoing the other in glorying and blessing and affirming and serving. Joy is Trinitarian, communal. Joy is for community. Even God himself expresses His joy in a necessary community context. You can be miserable alone but not joyful. Joy needs and finds a company, an audience: first heaven then earth. You’ve got to tell somebody. Joy seeks for agreement; its longing includes the longing for companions and thus we find that joy is a vital and necessary glue for community relationships, for binding and bonding fellowship, as it inspires and fuels and feeds and tutors and perpetuates our unity. And in His kindness, God gives us these communities, like our local church, as a laboratory for holy experimentation, not only for experiencing joy in this world, but for anticipating the joy that is always yet to come.

Let me quote two verses from the New Testament Church’s songbook, the psalms, that influenced the affective life of the early church.

• “I was glad when they said to me... let us go to the house of the Lord… where the tribes go up…” (Ps. 122:1) We have here a call to the community members to gather for the enjoyment of God. The psalmist is reminded by others in the community about the need for him to be part of the tribal gathering. As a result of this invocation, he goes. He is immediately the recipient of spiritual joy before he even gets to the place of communion in community. Members of the community were used by God to stir his heart and he submitted to the aroused longings.

• “Let the righteous be glad…rejoice before God.” (Ps. 68:3) Again we see joy being incited, stirred up. If the first psalm passage was an invocation to joy this is maybe a provocation. The point? We have a call and a role within the community in calling one another to expect corporate joy, to experience corporate joy, encouraging one another to express joy. This is a shared responsibility.

I love the description of Paul and Barnabas’ mission in Acts 15:3 as they went through Phoenicia and Samaria and “caused great joy to all the brethren.” The accounts they gave of God’s effective work through their mission, how they ministered, was actually causative when it came to joy in the community. To summarize this point about joy as a community business:

• Whole communities can have a character of joy and can corporately express joy.

• Within the communities, members can be causatively used by God to encourage and promote the spiritual God-directed, life-changing, world-changing joy of others.

Joy is a community business, a community fruit. So where am I taking you? To my next message to launch the new year when I will give you a top-ten of ways you can live out 2 Cor. 1:24 and become like Paul “ a helper” of another’s joy in the community. You could begin by showing up for the Christmas Service on Saturday at 6:00p.m. full of the joy of the Lord and brim-full of worship because that gospel of great joy has transformed your life.

Joyfully yours,

Stuart

JOY IN THE INCARNATION NARRATIVE

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.(ESV)

John 1:14

INTERPRETATION A-F

Dearest family,

Thank you for your attention on Sunday. An entire epistle in a single message – the day of miracles has not passed! But needless to say, I cannot summarize the all the internal intricacies of Paul’s argument in a short pastoral letter. You will have to download it if you did not hear it, and probably do so even if you did. It was a ot to absorb! But let me reiterate why I bothered to bring this epistle to the pulpit.

First of all, because I want you to know that when there are big and challenging cultural and societal and institutional evils, like racial irreconciliation, the gospel has something to say about it, but importantly, has something to say that is not just rhetorical and general, but something that penetrates our own houses and our own hearts, and as we see with the very personal relationship of Philemon and Onesimus, it creates the grace space to be vulnerable, to be accessible, to confess, to forgive, to receive, to release, to commit to the shared responsibilities of sitting at the same Lord’s table – to grow and mature in a walk of faith together that is new for all of us, and to refuse the lie that it cannot be done because the weight of social and cultural and racial pressure is stacked up against us, as it was against Paul, Philemon and Onesimus.

Secondly, because this letter is the piece of New Testament that has been such a divisive text in American race relations in the body of Christ; because a deeply unresolved and submerged history comes to the surface whenever it is mentioned; because it has been a weapon used against black slaves by professing Christian white slave-owners; because its truths were so misinterpreted that it was excised from the canon and the consciousness of the black American church, thus robbing them of precious truth about the power of the gospel to break the bondages and heal wounded relationships and reconcile the irreconcilable – because of all these racially bent reasons, I wanted to bring it to the pulpit, to confess my sorrow at all I have learned of this history of exegesis and its contribution to the pain and anger of African-American Christians for generations. I wanted to ask for forgiveness, at a place of identificational repentance with the generations of pastors who used this text as a means of abuse in the support of slavery. I wanted to recover its simple gospel power and powerfully persuasive appeal for my life and relationships, and for yours.

But thirdly, and especially, I wanted to publicly recover it for all my beloved African-American brothers and sisters who are part of this community of faith, Christ Our Shepherd, and give this letter that was stolen from previous generations, back to you to make it yours – the gospel affirmation that we are brothers and sisters in the flesh as well as in the Lord, and that we need each other’s faith in order to live reconciled lives, and live healed of the traumas and woundedness of our false identities and the consequences of our own sins, as well as the sins of our fathers.

Throughout these three messages on both observation and interpretation of the text, I have sought to bring the writings and thoughts of African-American exegetes and scholars to bear on the discussion. I began my message on Sunday by quoting Professor Lloyd Lewis and I closed it with an observation, a hope of his. He writes that this is a time of choice “for black exegetes to claim Philemon as their own and as an indication of good news and of a new arrangement for blacks. I believe that African-American people who study the Bible and who are concerned with issues of human freedom and liberation can take heart from Paul.” And so can, and should, white Americans who love the Bible. So let’s together make this text equally our own, as an example of the power of the gospel to break evil contracts and restore us into reconciled covenantal relationships that will, to use Paul’s words to Philemon and the church in his house, “appeal…on the basis of love.”

The grace of God takes all the legitimate and justifiable grounds of our decisions to separate or withdraw from under our feet and invites us to walk by faith on the water of fellowship and reconciliation. Of course we bring the jumble and brokenness of who we are to the conversation but the primary issue is not who he or she is, or what he or she has done, but about who Christ is to us, and what he has done for us. It is not about evaluating our brother and sister so much as it is first about elevating Christ. If you just look at me, you’ll find plenty of reasons to reject me. But if you look first at Jesus, you’ll find plenty of reasons to accept me – not least of which is that he has already accepted me. So for my sake, for our sake, for Jesus’ sake, let us always first see each other “in Jesus” even as Paul appealed to Philemon to see Onesimus the same way. When Paul sees things in Christ he sees Onesimus not as a slave or a runaway renegade but as a “brother” and as a “son.” He sees Philemon not as a slave-owner but as a “dearly beloved…fellow worker and partner.” Onesimus will see Philemon not as a master but as a brother and Philemon will see Onesimus not as a slave but as a brother. And you will see……..not as a …….. but as………. (Fill in the blanks.)

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

ASKING WITH FASTING

16 “And when you fast, do not look gloomy like the hypocrites, for they disfigure their faces that their fasting may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 17 But when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, 18 that your fasting may not be seen by others but by your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.(ESV)

Matthew 6:16-18

PHILEMON: PART 1

Greeting

1 Paul, a prisoner for Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To Philemon our beloved fellow worker 2 and Apphia our sister and Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church in your house:

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philemon's Love and Faith

4 I thank my God always when I remember you in my prayers, 5 because I hear of your love and of the faith that you have toward the Lord Jesus and for all the saints, 6 and I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective for the full knowledge of every good thing that is in us for the sake of Christ.[a] 7 For I have derived much joy and comfort from your love, my brother, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you. . . . (ESV)

Philemon

PHILEMON: INTRODUCTION

SABBATH

Dearest family,

If we hear the word ‘stewardship’ the first thing we think about is what? Money. That will be the discipline that will be addressed next Sunday. We have all heard the truism: ‘show me your check-book and I will tell you what your priorities are.’ The idea here is that our use of money is the best measure of our resources. But what I argued on Sunday, in preparation for next week, is that it is not just about your check-book but about your calendar. These two are vitally related and impact each other, and we may want to conclude that the primary currency of life is not money but time. Of course, an American consumer society has its own version of how these two relate, in the words of Benjamin Franklin: Time is money!

We looked at a NT and an OT consideration when it comes to this matter of disciplining our time. I was not interested in a few techniques to manage your time better, but in some foundational biblical truths that will help us to make wise decisions about not only how our time is ordered, but what we choose to do. If you do not manage yourself you will not manage your time. If you do not value yourself you will not value your time. If you are short on purpose you will be long on procrastination. If you don’t have a sense of place you won’t have a sense of time.

A NEW TESTAMENT CONSIDERATION: redeeming time

• “Be very careful then how you live – not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be foolish, but understand what the Lord’s will is.” (Eph. 5:15-17)

• “Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful…Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders, making the most of every opportunity.” (Col.4:2-5)

• “The end of all things is near. Therefore be clear minded and self-controlled so that you can pray.” (1 Pet. 4:7)

• “Do this, understanding the present time. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, because our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed… The night is nearly over, the day is almost here. So let us put aside the deeds of darkness and put on the armor of light. Let us behave decently…” (Rom. 13:11-14)

Note that the consideration of a right and disciplined use of time is integral with a knowledge of God’s will, which assumes a knowledge of His Word; with prayer; with personal holiness. The fact that you manage your schedule brilliantly does not mean that you are managing your time righteously. For a Christian, godly time management is a consequence of godly life management.

The Greek word for measureable time is ‘chronos’, from which we get words like chronology. Scripture is clear that we cannot have a spiritual handle on chromos, if we do not have a spiritual character. Think of the characteristics of Jesus, as presented by the fruits of the Holy Spirit, that are necessary for handling time rightly: peace, faithfulness, self-control and of course patience. The delays that we perceive in terms of time, are met with patience which is a delay of certain natural responses and reactions to that delay. Chronological delay that would incite unspiritual reactions, is met with a response of character that delays unspiritual reactions. Chronos is always picking a fight with character. Think about how much anger is generated by our responses to time. By the way, this is a serious confrontation between these two. Leo Tolstoy wrote: “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”

One of the key applications of the power of Christ’s redemption in the life of a disciple is presented in Eph. 5:15-17: the redeeming of time. Time is presented as a principality and a power in Roms. 8:38 – “neither present or future”. It cannot separate us from the love of God but it seeks to. The work of Christ re-arranges our view of time. Whoever believes in him “will not perish…” (the tyranny of time is powerless and is overcome) “but have everlasting life.” Salvation changes our relationship to time and our experience of time. All would be bleak and hopeless and fearful if Jesus had not entered time and humanity and supremely through his resurrection broken the power of time to destroy us, by destroying death itself. So the Bible talks about two kinds of people: the wise who have an understanding of their time and therefore the times, and the fools who do not. There are three simple things that every disciple needs to engage in order to number their days aright, in order to be disciplined in their stewardship of time passing.

separate us from the love of God but it seeks to. The work of Christ re-arranges our view of time. Whoever believes in him “will not perish…” (the tyranny of time is powerless and is overcome) “but have everlasting life.” Salvation changes our relationship to time and our experience of time. All would be bleak and hopeless and fearful if Jesus had not entered time and humanity and supremely through his resurrection broken the power of time to destroy us, by destroying death itself. So the Bible talks about two kinds of people: the wise who have an understanding of their time and therefore the times, and the fools who do not. There are three simple things that every disciple needs to engage in order to number their days aright, in order to be disciplined in their stewardship of time passing.

1. RESTORING THE PAST
Time past, as you know, has an incredible power. The power of an unredeemed, unforgiven, unrenewed, unrestored past is always active in the present. It invades present time and seeks to RULE the present and ROB the future. Is your life in a right relationship to the PAST? (Why we are committed to Healing prayer. It is a discipleship of time issue.)

2. REDEEMING THE PRESENT
The word used here in Ephesians, ‘exagorazo’, means to purchase out of – it is the idea of redeeming time, or literally buying it back, buying it up, seizing opportunity amidst opposition. It is the idea of a bargain hunter – ransoming time from the bondage of evil, rescuing it from wasteful purposes, from being the currency of anyone else but the Lord. The idea is not just negative: as in don’t waste time, but positive: proactively seizing the opportunity. Why does it need redeemed? For the reasons that Paul gives to the Romans and Ephesians and Thessalonians. Because the days are evil, the opportunity for good is diminishing, and because the day of reckoning is coming, the availability of time to live and serve God is also diminishing. Christians are presented as the wise (sophoi), marked by these two things: making the most of the time and discerning the will of the Lord. Are you redeeming the time? How? Where is time robbed, wasted, lost, surrendered, squandered? What is time spent on? What are you fearing or denying? What are the dominant objects of your focus and concern? What are the opportunities to be seized? How do you make decisions about what you do with your time. Is Paul’s advice to the Philippians important to you, to live daily asking for knowledge and discernment, approving what is excellent.

3. REMEMBERING THE END
The great accusation of Jerusalem by God through Jeremiah was: “she remembered not her end.” There are two great motivations for our holy use of time:

1. The fact of judgment: what is it about the use of our time, our works, that will follow us, that will not be wood, hay and stubble?

2. The hope of heaven: all about what kind of treasure the expenditure of our time purchases

There is a tragedy of time passing without the fulfillment of God-given gifting’s and potential. None of us want these words on our tombstone: “He had potential.” Hosea 13:13 “Ephraim…he is a child without wisdom; when the time arrives he does not come to the opening of the womb.” (Hosea ends: “Who is wise? He will realize these things. Who is discerning? He will understand them.” 14:9-10) There is at least one person who has taken the shortness of time to heart as the great spur for action. “Woe to the earth and the sea! Because the devil has gone down to you! He is filled with fury because he knows that his time is short.” (Rev. 12:12) The increase in the intensity of evil and demonic activity should be matched by the increase in wise fervency of the redeemed, who as such, redeem the time because these days are evil.

AN OT CONSIDERATION: resting time It’s not the time but the space that’s the problem. In a word, I gave you some ‘peas in a pod’, a number of observations about the nature and DNA of the biblical Sabbath, that although not incumbent on believers to keep, nonetheless teaches us so many things about our expectations of ‘holy time’, about the importance of rest and most particularly, about finding our rest in Jesus, the one that the Sabbath foreshadowed. If you weren’t in church these ‘peas’ won’t mean much so you will have to listen to it. But for those who were there, and gave up on notes, here were the headings: precept, principle, prescription, prefiguration, protagonist, present (as in gift), presence, provision, prevention, preservation and protection, productivity, prohibitions, promise, praise, profession. Go write your own message… if you have the time… maybe after you have read that book on time management that you have been meaning to read the last ten years!

Anyway, what I am really saying is… (sorry, no time to finish…)

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

“The train of God’s grace is always on time.” (A persecuted believer)

HOSPITALITY

Dearest family,

The ‘discipline’ that we considered on Sunday in our summer series was ‘hospitality’. Perhaps you thought it strange that these two words would be coupled. Doesn’t that take all the fun out of hospitality and make it sound onerous? Only if you have a wrong understanding of discipline. Several factors affirm the need to understand hospitality as a spiritual discipline, including that fact that it is exampled and commanded in the OT in the life of Israel, and in the NT in the life of the church. On Sunday, we also saw that given the nature of the church as a household, given the nature of the Lord’s Supper, given the way that hospitality images are used to present the nature and experience of our salvation – hospitality is fundamental to the life of a disciple. We saw that Jesus was utterly dependent on it, and that in his roles as guest, host and invited stranger, the welcome of God was expressed in hospitality terms.

In an attempt to begin a brief theology of hospitality we observed the following points: (listen to the download for details):

1. Hospitality is the non-negotiable presentation of the gospel and the basis for our understanding our communion and community with father, Son and Holy Spirit.

2. Hospitality is the non-negotiable means for the proclamation and propagation of the gospel (see Gospels and Acts)

3. Hospitality is the context for discipleship and training

4. Hospitality is the key means to build relationships within and outside the church

5. Hospitality is an ethical issue for all believers, not just an elective possibility for some. It is the non-negotiable means for the expression of our faith through love. (1 Pet. 4:9; Rom. 12:13; Hebr. 13:1-2)

But as well as all these observations, we are more than aware of the many obstacles and hindrances to hospitality, that require the discipline of obedience to continue to practice it. What things run interference with hospitality in your life and home?

• Busyness resulting in lack of time

• Desire for privacy: home time as down time as my time

• Weariness leading to: can’t be bothered, lack of motivation, lack effort, energy

• Lack of money: widow of Zarephath was commanded by God to show hospitality to Elijah at a time of famine. As a result, her flour and oil jars did not run empty. We are just called to give what we have. This is how we learn like the widow that we cannot out-give God.

• Too much work, too much trouble

• Self-isolation

• Laziness, selfishness, slovenliness

• • Perceived lack of ability: we are not asked to be Iron Chefs.

• Shame (mess, circumstances); house proud (don’t want any mess)

• Lack of self-confidence, insecurity.

• Bad past experiences: personal, familial

• Bondage of temperament (shy, un-assured, fearful of intimacy, rejection, vulnerability, fear of failure)

• More influenced by familial or cultural norms than Christian truth

These hindrances explain why hospitality is a discipline. Hospitality is a conscious decision because it involves a conscious obedience, and a conscious commitment and a conscientious effort. We should begin by asking for two things:

• For a prepared heart for Christ’s concerns and affections and perceptions 

• For a prepared home – for others, not just oneself, and not just for those that we want to entertain, but those who need more than food (company, encouragement, touch etc.)

When Jesus commissioned his disciples to go into the nation and preach and heal he added this instruction: “Whatever town or village you enter, search for some worthy person there and stay at his house until you leave.” (Mt. 10:11) Hospitality was the sign of receptivity. When you get to Acts and the account of the growth of the church, it is impossible to ignore how hospitality is vital to the story. It is the hospitality of a Gentile to Peter the Jew that breaks open the mission to the Gentiles. At a time when we are engaging the sin of racism in our country and the dire consequences of racial irreconciliation that impact all of us, I hope you took to heart the point about hospitality being a key, a bridge to racial reconciliation. It was in the context of hospitality in the home that the greatest irreconciliation of Jew and Gentile was overcome by the power of the Holy Spirit. Hospitality shatters social and racial boundaries, and invites a deep sharing of our cultures and personal lives, as expressed in how we live and how we eat and what we eat, and how we decorate and what we hang on our walls, and what stories our photographs tell. It is about dignity and equality, about transparency and vulnerability, about giving with no expectation of return. (If the church is meant to be a reconciled community, no wonder hospitality is a non-negotiable qualification for spiritual leadership – 1Tim. 3:2 and Tit. 1:8) How can we underestimate this earthquake of salvation deliverance that rocked the world when Gentiles showed hospitality to Jews and they ate the hot-dogs and the shrimps from the barbecue! Enjoying the hospitality in Joppa, Peter went for an afternoon prayer and sunbathe. It says he got hungry and wanted something to eat. Guess who acted as the waiter and chef? God dropped a sheet full of meat on him in preparation for his next experience of hospitality that would usher in a brand new transnational community of faith that would see the dividing racial barriers of centuries broken and destroyed. Again, the church was born in hospitality. It says that Peter stayed with them for “a few days.” He then walked straight into a storm of criticism with the circumcised believers. Why? “You went into the house of uncircumcised men and ate with them.” And talking of world-shaking breakthroughs that began with hospitality, it was in the home of Philemon that reconciliation was effected when a slave became a brother. I’m going to be teaching two or three messages out of Philemon in September but note that it was hospitality that was the wedge that pried open the slave-master relationship to bring down empires of injustice. It started with hospitality.

From the Garden of Eden where God invited our first parents to eat all the food provided, to the marriage supper of the Lamb in Rev. 19, from Jesus asking us to open the door of hospitality to him in Rev. 3:20 to his description of his heavenly work as preparing a place for us, the call of scripture to us is to have a hospitable heart to Father, Son and Holy Spirit so that we have hospitable homes to those both in the church community and outside it. When it comes to church growth, hospitality is the program. My heart and my home become the building blocks of the church. It is hospitality and not the building fund that accommodates the work of the church. How accessible are our homes. Can people come in? Are people invited in? The location of our home is no spiritual accident. Do we have a theology of place? “He determined the exact places where they should live…” (Acts 17:26) Have we read Jn. 1:4 recently? “The word became flesh and moved in to the neighborhood.” What would your definition of a hospitable person be? Do you meet your definition? John writes in his epistle “we ought to show hospitality”. If our heart and our home was the norm for the community, what would be the health of the community? If everyone in the community was just like us, what would be the state of hospitality? If the church had no building and just our home, would it grow if our home was typical? Would it be able to meet there? If not, why not? I’m suggesting that it is no good just talking about community as if it only has to do with what happens in the building we call the church; if it is only about what the church corporate does to foster, develop and nurture relationships. Given that God’s house is actually our house, it is fundamentally about our heart and our home and its response to others, especially the household of faith. Again, the discipline of hospitality is the program. Cheers!

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

(2015) UNANSWERED PRAYERS, PT. 2

Dearest family,

First of all, to all those who were there on Sunday, thank you for your great support of the barbecue after church that raised funds for the education of girls who are in the church plants in northern Togo. We desire the “girl-effect” to be effective in these contexts. $20 supports a child for a year’s schooling, covering their supplies and basic classroom needs. The good news is that we raised enough to educate 100 girls for the next school year. There are 100 others that we still want to support for the 2015-2016 school year. If you were not there on Sunday and would like to be part of this collaborative TAG effort then you can send your check (made payable to: The Antioch Group) for $20 or any amount. Mail to TAG at the church address. We are so excited about supporting this mission for the third year. Thank you to you all.

There was a lot of food on Sunday and nothing was left over except a few hot dogs that will be consumed at The Porch. There was also a lot of spiritual food in the preceding sermon. If you were in attendance you will know that it is not easily reduced to a short pastoral letter so I encourage you to download it and listen to it at your own pace. I ended the last message by asking if it was possible to close the gap between our asking and His answering; between our actual speaking and His assumed hearing; between our wanting and the waiting; between what we expect and what we experience; between what we are hoping for and what is actually happening? What bridged that gap between Abraham’s childlessness and the Pleiades and Orion? But it seems that he found a way to keep staring at stars. “Against all hope Abraham in hope believed.” (Rom. 4:18) Does that settle everything for us? We do not want to accept specious rationalizations as to why our asking is in the pending tray, if in fact it made it even that far. But is it not reasonable to at least ask about some possible explanations for the “gap” that might help close it somewhat? Can we look for some reasons?

By way of introduction I recounted how C.S. Lewis articulated his thoughts about asking, which he described as “the problem without an answer”. What ‘reasons’ would Lewis have been open to countenance? Several, I think, but with a proviso. In his typical self-effacing way he offered a throw-away line at the end of his essay on the efficacy of prayer, expressing his own weakness, but gently yet firmly warning about being too dogmatic about any area that we cannot fully fathom, or about legitimate tensions that we cannot resolve but have to keep taut in order to get the whole picture. Though a permissible discussion, there are not enough reasons to close the gap.

If a friend either refused to respond to our request, or denied it altogether, we would want to ask questions and seek reasons. We look for reasons for unanswered prayer to make sense of things, to make sense of relationship with God, in the same way that Lewis did, but with the same cautions. God is not threatened by this endeavor. “If God doth not grant your petitions it will put you to study a reason of that his dealing: and so you will come to search in your prayers and the carriage of your hearts therein to see whether you did pray amiss.” (Thomas Goodwin) James does confirm that we can ask “amiss.” (Jm. 4:3) Three hundred years later, another commentator, J. Oswald Sanders conducted “a post-mortem on unanswered prayer” and suggested that “behind every unanswered prayer is a reason, which we must discover for ourselves.” (‘Prayer: power unlimited’) Peter does advise us that there are things that “hinder our prayers” (1 Pet. 3:1-7) and I mentioned well over twenty scriptural reasons for unanswered asking that are accounted for by the reasons that God refuses to listen.

What should we make of this? I would affirm Goodwin’s encouragement to us to “study” and “search” in a way that is open to check one’s own heart and humbly seek to learn, especially things that are convicting and formative for personal growth in asking. Who knows but in that process we may discover some things that will influence an answer. However, though I agree with the thought that there is a reason for every unanswered prayer, I do not believe that they are all discoverable, or that we must discover them. The faith that we need to ask is the same faith that we need to be operative when an answer is not forthcoming. Reasons alone will never close the gap.

That said, I did give a descriptive presentation (not a prescriptive one) to point out some of the possible ways of ordering our understanding of unanswered asking, without it being an inflexible classification – the kind of systemization that I argued is neither desirable nor possible. These were:

Dismissals – asking that is unheard because of reasons that God gives, not unanswered. (Ask Heran in the office if you want a more detailed list of some scriptural examples.) We are referring here to asking that is not answered by God because He refuses to listen; He chooses not to hear.

Disqualifications – This refers to inappropriate asking. For example, God can take no responsibility or give any support to something asked which is non-sense or which contravenes God-given laws of nature, or which contradicts his own nature and character, His will and His word. We cannot ask for God’s blessing on something He has clearly said He cannot bless.

Delays – This is when the prayer room becomes a waiting room. There are delays of fulfillment that appear to us as unanswered asking, but the fact is they have been heard, and more than that “decreed.” (Daniel 9:25, 26, 27) Although we are not as assured as Daniel of the ‘decree’ being a done deal, we can be equally assured that we are heard, and equally sustained to wait. That being said, it is not easy, which is why we looked at the scriptural exhortations to be patient and to wait eagerly. I love the way that John Stott put it: “We are to wait neither so eagerly that we lose our patience, nor so patiently that we lose our expectations, but eagerly and patiently together.” (The Message of Romans) Delayed answers are assumed given the scriptural emphasis on importunity and ceaseless asking.

Deferrals - Some unanswered prayers are divinely willed deferrals. Our asking is necessary and timely as it is being ceaselessly expressed, but it is being ‘stored’ to be answered another day, or another time that may well be beyond our sojourn on earth. Stephen’s last breath was asking for something which was answered after his death. Denials – This is about taking ‘no’ for an answer. Unlike ‘dismissals’, asking which may be denied will likely be an appropriate desire, a legitimate request given present perceptions, a reasonable inquiry given current understanding. It is the apparent acceptability of what is asked for that makes the acceptance of a denial so difficult. Although it is true that delays are not denials, it is easy to understand why an interminable delay will be assumed to be a denial. Having said that, there are denials. Scripture presents us with some examples, and they were all experienced by stellar saints, (we looked at Moses, David and Paul) and at one who was the saintliest of all, Jesus. If denials were the membership qualification for this alumni group we would be less concerned about them!

Divine discretions – I called these “creative unanswers”! There is a saying that suggests that sometimes the answer to our asking is not rejected but redirected. Divine discretions do not deny the requests but apply their intentions and desires to different applications and outcomes. Of course, this still feels to us like a deprivation or a diversion. After our asking has pitched the way that things need to be, it is as if God says, “You are on the right track, but how about we do it like this not that?” Abraham’s prayer for Ishmael was answered in Isaac. What Moses asked for himself was to be fulfilled in Joshua. David’s prayers for the child who died revert to Solomon. David asked to build the Temple, but again, the answers were reserved for Solomon. Though the specific thing asked for was not delivered in the terms in which it was asked, nonetheless, this asking was not ‘unanswered’ but applied in a way that advanced God’s glory, fulfilling his renown more than answer to the original request would have done.

You could argue that as great as the problem of his suffering was for Job, it was the matter of unanswered asking that gave rise to so much of his tortured argumentation. The fact that this is the concern of possibly the earliest written text in scripture, suggests how foundational this matter is to the human soul. It is God himself who gives Satan an allowance to test Job, and surely his unanswered asking tested his faith. Peter argues that the suffering of our trials “have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold… may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Pet. 1:7) The good news is that the glory of God remains the outcome of the testing of faith. The bad news is that we may have to wait till the parousia for this being validated and vindicated. Calvin conceded that circumstances may convince us that God has forsaken us, and confirmed that unanswered prayer sorely tests faith. His observation does not sound very comforting, that God may have us “to lie a long time in the mire before he gives us a taste of his sweetness.” The continuance of asking at such times, with eager patience, is the outworking of faith.

Psalm 56:8 records: “You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” Yet, like Job, we know how easy it is to give up and question the viability and veracity of asking. Why not just crumple the script of our asking and throw it in the ever-filling trashcan of unanswered prayer? The prelude to the Bible’s great chapter on heroes and heroines of faith is addressing those who stood their ground “in the face of suffering.” (Hebr. 10:32): “So do not throw away your confidence… have need of endurance… receive what is promised…. He who is coming will come and not delay.” (10:37) Of course, this sounds a bit rich given the fact that delay, denial, deprivation, diversion (whatever you want to call it) is characterizing the present problem. At least it affirms us, and we know that God himself is not unmindful that it really is a delay. So we have a choice. Though there is pain in what is experienced by us as unanswered, will we throw away our request into the trashcan, or will we trust our tears to the bottle? Avoiding the dismissals and disqualifications, bearing the delays and deferrals, accepting the denials, will we be discreet in trusting God’s discretions? What will our response be to unanswered asking? The trashcan or that bottle?

Pastorally yours,

Stuart

(2015) UNANSWERED PRAYERS, PT. 1

Dearest family,

CONTRARY TO MY REPEATED REFERENCES ON SUNDAY TO WHAT I WOULD BE COVERING ‘NEXT WEEK’ (I WAS WAY TOO EAGER!) MY NEXT MESSAGE ON ‘UNANSWERED ASKING’ WILL BE ON JUNE 14TH. NEXT WEEK, AS YOU ALL KNEW, IS THE WOMEN’S RETREAT AND OUR SERVICE LED BY THE MEN’S MINISTRY TEAM. SORRY ABOUT THAT!

Anyway, back to the matter in hand. There is no disagreement, either in scripture or in the historic testimony of the church, its teachers, and its congregants that there is much asking that is not answered. But there are divided opinions about how this should be perceived and understood. The trite truism that there are no unanswered prayers, because the answer is always ‘yes, no or maybe’ is a somewhat facile sounding and unhelpful place to start. No jaunty jingle will serve to provide healing balm or resolution for an unanswered asker who feels caught in the no-man’s land between the request and the response. The longer the answer is in coming, the more that space is marked out by emotional and theological barbed wire and spiritual land mines. Although silence is at first the mark of a good listener, the protracted silence to asking raises some questions: was the phone off the hook, was the phone picked up, was it just a recorded message, was it heard, did it register, will there be a return call, is the line cut?

Precisely because of the nature of the challenges, it is tempting to avoid them altogether and refuse to admit there are any possible problems. Or one can adopt the approach of the happy sloganeers whose platitudinous, ‘bumper-sticker’ style theology shouts things like ‘Let go and let God’ – peppy cheers that are always delivered from the sidelines of another’s pain. If you are hanging on to every word, when there is not even a word, then ‘letting go’ is not good advice. The other temptation is to try to impose a fool-proof, fear-proof, mystery-proof template on all the inchoate thoughts and feelings that arise, and come up with a one-stop explanation. When things do not make sense to us, it is our wont to try and rationalize what is happening as best we may, in the hope that some coherence will emerge from our confusion that will make us feel better about ourselves and more pointedly, about God. We want a system that will provide some order, that will be comforting enough to distract our attention from the irregular shaped thoughts and concerns that cannot be accommodated. It is not that the scriptures are short on counsel, but we have to resist the temptation to take all that they do say, and force it into a construct that rationalizes everything to our satisfaction. The bottom line is that there are going to be some things missing that we just do not know and some things present that we just do not understand. “A determination to know what cannot be known always works harm in the Christian heart…We dislike to admit that we do not know what is going on, so we torture our minds trying to fathom the mysterious ways of the Omniscient one. It’s hard to conceive of a more fruitless task.” (Tozer) This does not mean that we do not try at all to seek understanding - we should do so. But it does mean we are not going to be tortuous in trying to explain everything that seems to be torturing us. We are not going to call something a ‘mystery’ as a convenient cover-up for not engaging the truths and realities of a situation, nor are we going to try and rationalize what is indeed a ‘mystery’. In all our asking, there will be times when we need to discern the boundaries of our questioning an un-answering God. Others would put it more strongly: “Our insistence on being answered means we are always off track…The purpose of prayer is that we get ahold of God not the answer.” (E.M.Bounds) But as Spurgeon said: “There is no fanaticism in expecting God to answer prayer… There can be no reason for praying if there be no expectation of the Lord’s answering.” Can we have a godly expectation that does not become a fleshly insistence?

For now, “What do you define as unanswered?” is a reasonable question. The most obvious unanswered asking is simply that which was never asked in the first place – sadly. The way we most generally define ‘unanswered’ is the silence of God, the absence of His apparent response to something that has been asked to be effected on our terms and our timing, according to the needs of ourselves or others, as we perceive them best. By ‘our terms and our timing’ I am not suggesting a selfish view of things but simply the nature of the need as best understood by us. Indeed, our perceptions are not necessarily complete or even fully accurate, but our asking is unanswered to the extent that the fullest presentation of our request, with the strongest expectation possible, remains unfulfilled. Reasons why our presentation may have been inadequate or why our expectations were possibly unfounded are open for discussion, with the proviso that such an exchange is conducted with neither an offensive posture towards God, nor a defensive posture towards oneself.

On Sunday, we looked at a number of different images that have been used to capture the feelings and frustrations, the pains and problems of unanswered asking. One of these was in Lamentations.“You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through.” (Lam. 3:44) In the previous chapter these people described themselves as being “covered…with the cloud of his anger.” (Lam. 2:1) They are sitting alone “in the silence” of unanswered asking. “Even when I call out or cry for help, he shuts out my prayer. He has barred my way with blocks of stone.” (Lam. 3:8-9) Clouds sound more hopeful. It is a catalogue of woe. In fact, outside the crucifixion of Christ, there is no darker presentation of dereliction in scripture. This is unanswered asking of a kind that is second only to the unanswered asking of Jesus on the cross.

However, there is something for us to learn here. The silence of unanswered asking elicited some responses that many can identify with: “He has walled me in…He has weighed me down…I have been deprived of peace…my soul is downcast...” The lack of an answer that wears you down becomes the loss of much else: “My splendor is gone and all that I had hoped for from the Lord.” (3:19) All this asker can do is “remember my affliction.” The challenges of unanswered asking are not in question. However, there are three things here that teach us how to hold on and be held up.

1. We do not have to succumb to accusing God sinfully, even though we feel that we are somehow being sinned against by the silence. They do not accuse God of being deaf, dumb and blind to their unanswered state. They know that He hears their asking: “Do not close your ear to my cry for relief.” (3:56). They know He can still speak other things to them and is not mute: “You said, Do not fear.” (3:57) They know He can see their situation: “See O Lord how distressed I am…Look O Lord…You have seen the wrong done to me…” (1:20; 2:20; 3:59) The answer they want may not have appeared but God is not absent. He is very much present.

2. When he remembers the affliction concomitant with the silence, he chooses not to limit his remembrance to the immediate only: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.” What makes the difference in what has already been described as a hopeless circumstance? “Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (3:22) The well-known hymn that we sing inspired by these words is not the confession of worshipers at joyful ease with their lovely lives. It is a classic example of the kind of praise that is forged in the furnace of affliction, in the prison cell made with those “blocks of stone” he was talking about. There is no unanswered asking that can keep out the truth about the character and nature of our God, unless we choose to refuse their remembrance, and in the process of dealing with what seem to be God’s apparent denials of us, we become deniers of Him.

3. These acts of remembrance have a knock-on effect. They renew their asking by inviting God to join the remembrance review: “Remember O Lord what has happened to us; look and see our disgrace.” (5:1) There then follows an iteration of all the terrible things that require an answer, but this time, it does not end with a focus on their unanswered plight. It is not that they are suppressing anything because in the middle of their Godward affirmation (“You O lord reign forever”) the pained frustration unashamedly breaks through again without mincing the words: “Why do you always forget us? Why do you forsake us for so long?” (5:20) But here is the point. Despite the awful facts of their predicament, they are not asking for all the things on the unanswered asking list to be taken care of so much as for the relationship to be recovered with the unanswering Answerer: “Restore us to yourself, O Lord…renew our days as of old.” (5:21) Precisely because it is the sense of relational intimacy that is affected by unanswered asking, especially the longer it drags out, it is what becomes the greater subject of renewed asking. They were clear what they were after but was this what God was really after all this time? Their desire for Him was now more than their need for their answer. The things they wanted had been trumped by the Person they needed, even though they are still struggling with the fear that they may have been rejected.

Thus in these times of unanswered asking, closed doors are not necessarily the final word when the lubricating oil of the Holy Spirit is applied to their hinges. It is not inevitable that the sky will be as iron; cloudy, almost certainly, but as Lamentations shows us, they ultimately cannot stop us getting through, or shafts of God’s light getting through to us. But we still remain ‘unanswered.’ Is it possible to close the gap between our asking and His answering; between our actual speaking and His assumed hearing; between our wanting and the waiting; between what we expect and what we experience; between what we are hoping for and what is actually happening? What bridged that gap between Abraham’s childlessness and the sight of Pleiades and Orion? On starry nights was he tempted to stop looking up. It seems that he found a way to keep staring at stars. “Against all hope Abraham in hope believed.” (Rom. 4:18) Does that settle everything for us? We do not want to accept specious rationalizations as to why our asking is in the pending tray, if in fact it made it even that far. But is it not reasonable to at least ask about some possible explanations for the “gap” that might help close it somewhat? Can we look for some reasons? More about this next time….

Pastorally yours,

Stuart