VillagePastor

REFLECTIONS LEAVING BEIRUT

It’s my fourth time here. I’ll never forget my first time flying over the city. From the plane, Beirut looked like one vast open wound. Sadly, despite efforts to close the injury and see it heal, the wound keeps opening. Fighting broke out just up north while we were here, and it still continues in Nahr el-Bared. There is an unease, a sense of yet another Lebanese tragedy. It’s heart breaking because this is such a beautiful place, and the people radiate a Mediterranean charm.

I keep coming here because I am convinced that Lebanon is critical to the sharing of God’s great news of healing through Jesus. Few other places in the Middle East are as open to the gospel. The location and diversity make this a place of strategic and spiritual importance.

Being here, I am both really encouraged, and yet somewhat discouraged, by what is happening within the body of Christ.

First, the encouragement. I am staying at a seminary that is reaching students within the Arabic world—students from Sudan, Morocco, Egypt, Lebanon (like those pictured). The guys are serious about what they are doing, and the organization they serve under has made real headway in living Christ. Last summer, they were on the front lines of being Jesus to a people rocked by bombings. I come here because I want to play a part.

But I must admit I am somewhat troubled by the church. I am meeting some pretty solid pastors, like Tony. He, his wife Wafa, with a Ph.D., have left the corporate world in Bahrain to live in downtown Beirut and lead a church. And they face as many obstacles inside the church as outside the church. Outside, there is a crowded neighborhood, and surrounding organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah and Sunni Fatah al-Islam, and a culture in despair and resignation.

Inside the church, there are its own challenges. I preached there last night. Nice people for sure, but I could not help but wonder if they understand that hanging on to their traditions and rituals may be making them irrelevant to a world that is desperate to see an incarnational Christianity, to see Jesus—see a church with the radical empowerment of the Spirit, a place of welcome and laughter, of healing and hope—people coming to faith—people coming with their small faith and leaving empowered to turn the world upside down. People who come to find that the only one to fear in this crazy place is God—for as McManus puts it—what we fear is what we’re subject to—and the only one we’re subject to is Jesus!

The stakes are just too high to settle for anything less. The work on the Cross accomplished too much to live otherwise. He disarmed the powers—we’ve been raised from the grave. Now if we would only live it in all places.

Some Final Thoughts Regarding My Journey

A few days ago, I stood across from the Harod Valley, near Jezreel.  It was here, some 3000 years ago, a man named Gideon stood with 300 men at Harod Spring, looking at an enemy whose numbers were impossible to count (Judges 6).  The odds were overwhelming—but not to God.  All that He required was faith—and once Gideon came to grips with God’s intention to keep placing uncertainty before him, calling him to step out irregardless—he and his small band pushed this force all the way back across the Jordan.

 

I stood for a time, because I wanted this Valley to etch itself in my heart.  I’ve had several such moments over here, and their relevance for today are reinforced by Paul’s words in Romans 15:4: “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.”

 

In other words, as I have journeyed in the Middle East, God shows me more than history and culture and stories.  He whispers—“I’m the same God, and I can take your obstacles, no matter how overwhelming, and send them running.  But in the midst of your uncertainties, I am still requiring the same thing I required of Gideon—faith. Will you step out and trust Me?”

 

My take is that for most of us, that is a hard thing.  And I am wondering if the question in these days is not so much—“God, where are You?” but—“Church, where are you?  When will you start believing?”

   

NT Wright says it well at the end of his wonderful book, Simply Christian: “It is time, in the power of the Spirit, to take up our proper role, our fully human role, as agents, heralds, stewards of the new day that is dawning.  That, quite simply, is what it means to be Christian: to follow Jesus Christ into the new world, God’s new world, which He has thrown open before us.”  And that requires bold faith.

MUSINGS FROM ISRAEL

I am on my way back by bus from Ashquelon to Jerusalem—a good moment to write a blog. It’s my third trip to Israel, but ten years since the last one. Some things are the same—the traffic, the starlings making music every morning, shop keepers haggling for your shekels. But lots of things have changed. Here are my ten immediate impressions:

1.   Things seem relatively calm, and yet the evidence that there is an underlying tension is everywhere. In two separate conversations, one with a Jewish shop keeper and one with an Arab cab driver, they both are convinced a significant war is looming and could come by summer. Young people everywhere are in uniform—a rite of passage almost. It’s common place to see rifles and handguns. People seem pretty casual, but there is a vigilant spirit for sure. An act of violence is anticipated—it’s just a matter of when. One scene sort of captured it all. I mentioned to my guide that an Israeli police car had its lights flashing, and yet it was waiting at the stop light like all the other cars. But she was unfazed for, as she put it, their lights are always on.

2.   Looking from a mount over the area south of Bethlehem, where any semblance of green is quickly passing away under a scorching sun, or walking through a Judean wilderness, as our group did yesterday, one comes away with a distinct impression that God brought Israel into this land to say—the only way you will survive is to trust in Me. A land flowing with milk and honey is simply saying it is a land of goat’s milk and dates, and all can dry up in a moment. It is a harsh, rugged place—and I realize this is as God intended for all of us. Desperate for Him, who wonderfully provides—but close to the edge, so that we dare not depend on ourselves. The sad side of Israel’s history is that it has often depended—and continues to depend—on itself.

3.   The wall being built to divide Palestinians and Israelis has decreased the incidence of terrorism. But it has also imposed a deep ugliness on the land. To me, it symbolizes everything that is wrong here. Rather than build a bridge, it is a way of saying—stay on your side and we will stay on ours. But what is yours and what is ours is determined by who has the power, and those with the power seem to impose injustice all too often.

4.   I have met Palestinians and Israelis who both want peace, want a future. Who simply want a family, a home, a life, but are often overshadowed by extremists who want neither peace nor a future. And neither government has served the people well, whether it is the radical Hamas or an Israeli government that seems all too corrupt.

5.   I wonder if a day is coming it will no longer be so attractive to visit the holy land. That where there once was a vast wilderness, or a hill country, or a shephelah, where one could imagine the parable of the good Samaritan, Jonathan in battle, or David meeting Goliath, one will have to look past the new developments, the malls, and even the McDonalds. It is much harder to get the picture I want, that does not include the modern with the ancient. And the rush to build, to secure rights to a land, is surely going to soon face the tension—at what cost to people on a pilgrimage to go back to their spiritual roots?

6.   I wish religious institutions had not got hold of the holy sights. Though they may feel they have protected something as sacred, their ornaments and rituals have defaced so much of it. I could do without visiting the sight of Jesus’ birth, or entering the Holy Sepulcher. The layers of gaudiness detract from what should have been—a simple trough and dirt, a simple cross and rock.

7.   I always have to prepare myself spiritually for this experience. I am drawn to a certain  intimacy with God that comes from walking in the footsteps of Jesus. And yet, because this is a place where major religions converge, it can be perplexing. I meet Muslim and Jew who speak of the same love for God I do, who are every bit as devoted as I am—and more so—and just as convinced that what they believe is true. Not that it causes me to doubt John 14:6—but it is something I experience and wrestle through each time I come here.

8.   There is a romanticism about the land—a Mideast charm. But maybe we in the west romanticize it too much. Today I watched a shepherd tend his sheep. He was maybe in his early twenties, with a boombox in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and a baseball cap rather than a head scarf. The sheep were their usual dumb self, smelly, foraging off a rather barren landscape. Not the Scottish highlands I imagine, not the rugged, fierce shepherd that has often been portrayed. Could it be God chose a metaphor of great low regard and earthiness to underscore His humility, as well as our desperate condition?

9.   Walking through Hezekiah’s tunnel was a profound experience—how they built this to bring water into the city was an amazing achievement. And then I read the words of Isaiah, what God had to say when they were finished-“You built a reservoir between the two walls…but you did not look to the One who made the water, or have regard for the One who planned it” (22:11). Our best achievements are meaningless if God is not in it.

10.  There is only one hope for this place—and every place—Jesus.