VillagePastor

Monday Morning Cliff Notes

This weekend, I quoted at length from a chilling article out of the NY Times, written last week by one of my favorite writers, David Brooks. The following is a summary of his assessment of what is going on in some of the darkest places in our world:

“Ours is a world increasingly of warlords—from Iraq to Sudan to Sierra Leone to Somalia, violent, stupid men,who would be the dregs of society under normal conditions, but rise amid the trauma, chaos and stress and become revered leaders. And then these same men command squads of young men who have left the moral universe—who kill for fun, profit—and worst of all—for faith—because they find it more rewarding to massacre and loot than to farm or labor or make any sort of positive contribution to society. Eventually, some become hyper aggressive and turn into perfect killers—others become passive and fatalistic—and move down a mental descent until it is possible to kill without hesitation or regret.”

Sadly, we see this on the news almost every night. Hate blinds the heart of men, as recounted in this interview with a Hutu man, who had killed his Tutsi neighbor, and explained it this way—“At the fatal instant, I did not see in him what he had been before…His features were indeed similar to those of the person I knew, but nothing firmly reminded me that I had lived beside him for a long time”.

I quoted this, because I talked about the faith of Noah. And sometimes it feels like we are in the days of Noah, when evil dominated the inclinations of man, when a demonic inversion of values and a nihilistic world view gripped the hearts of men at seemingly every level. My current reading of The Great War for Civilization by Fisk, and his assessment of the Middle East, only underscores the sense of the depth of depravity in our present world. The world as it currently is seems to be prompting people to think more seriously about evil (cf two recent books published, Os Guinness’ Unspeakable and N.T. Wright’s Evil and the Justice of God). Reading these, I am grateful, that just as in the days of Noah, God sees and grieves over the human condition, and acts to carry out His perfect will at the perfect moment.

Could it be that, more than at any time, God is calling the church to exercise the same faith as Noah, to step out into the unseen, in light of God’s warning, and prepare for the judgment to come? This was Noah’s faith (Hebrews 11:7). Should it not be ours? For a day is coming, as Peter warned the church (2 Peter 3:10), when God will judge the evil of this world—only it will not be by flood but by fire. Noah had his ark—we have the church to be about building. Noah called for repentance, invited people into the ark. So, the church has been given a message of grace, a mandate to invite people to enter into Jesus before it is too late.

And while most of us are aware, all too many are not taking this with any real sense of urgency today. I’m not always sure I am. Some seem to be waiting in the half built ark, securing their seats, when they need to be about building. Others are too absorbed in the passing world, living in light of what is instead of adjusting to what will be. And most of us are too distracted or fearful to invite people in.

But here’s what I wonder—if the flood did not come until the ark was built, could it be that the coming fire will not come until the church completes its building? Could this not be behind Peter’s call to be radical followers of Christ and “hasten the coming of the day of the Lord” (2 Peter 3:12)? Could it be that while we wait for God, this sovereign God is actually waiting for us?

While we should dream dreams, and build careers, and have families, and delight in life, we cannot escape the tension of living also in light of eternity, preparing in light of a coming day that the earth and all that it is will be renovated by fire. This present evil is only a reminder we need to be more committed to this than ever, asking that something of God’s future kingdom break into the present, that regimes mysteriously change—that men’s eyes are reopened, that Christ will invade the hearts. This, as Wright notes, is our glorious, strange, puzzling and ennobling vocation. And if we get more serious about it, we can hasten the coming kingdom.

Books That Help Get One Through the Night

Call it distracted by the holidays, grading finals, Christmas Eve services—I can’t believe I last wrote Nov 21. It’s not for want of reading—or writing. It’s winter, that time for reading, and I’m in that undisciplined moment of reading too many things, and getting few to any books finished. Some books are challenging me to rethink the cost of discipleship, like Dissident Discipleship. In the first sermon of the new year, I challenged our church to be more radical in our followership of Jesus—but what will this mean? Augsberger’s book gives some scary answers—especially his chapters on stubborn loyalty and habitual humility. Read these only when you are ready to let the Spirit do more needed damage to your self-centeredness.

I also just finished an amazing overview of the history of worship by James F. White, A Brief History of Christian Worship. I continue to be impressed with the fact many of our worship debates would be settled if we understood the historical sweep of worship. Much of the medieval approach to liturgy, that gave greater weight to the Eucharist, art, and other expressions, did so to fill a vacuum created by failed preaching. Civil turmoil, plagues, crusades all took their toll on trained ministry and educational institutions. It causes me to wonder if some of the contemporary push for a greater emphasis on liturgy, readings, art, celebration of the Eucharist comes as a natural response to mediocre preaching, that in part is due to failed training (or worse—a disregard for training). Ideally, I would love to see worship give greater emphasis to all of the above—a place where the word of God is powerfully proclaimed (that is—the intent of the text is carefully discerned and prophetically declared such that people hear God), but done in a context where liturgy, art, calendar, ritual and visuals, and great music combine to immerse us into deep worship. This is the liturgical/homiletical renewal we need. Unfortunately, the pendulum needlessly swings from one extreme to another.

Perhaps the most disturbing book I am about a fifth of the way into is Robert Fisk’s The Great War for Civilization. It is an unnerving overview of Middle East events over the past twenty five years. No wonder it is over 1100 pages! It is one horror after another, and while I have little stomach to read about dishonor, torture, and betrayal, I am again reminded that history has so much to teach us. If we would listen to it, we might be less prone to repeat it. It is uncanny how so much of what is going on in the present ME, particularly Iraq, is a repeat of what happened to the British and others in earlier years. You can’t read many pages without crying out for justice, and remembering this is what the church is to be about. As NT Wright notes, God’s passion for justice must be ours—a call for justice that transcends the nations.

Which brings me back to a book I am still savoring from last Fall--NT Wright’s, Simply Christian. For here Wright reminds us we live in this tension between the already and not yet, creation and new creation. And they overlap and interlock, meaning that while we ponder the present evil and injustice—and the brokenness—of this world, we can celebrate in advance its healing. The only way to make sense is to look ahead, when the earth will be filled with the glory of God, and the only way to live is to pray that something of the future enters into the present—and we live each day to follow Jesus.