Thanksgiving Ghetto

I am something of a holiday junkie - I especially love the fall and winter ones: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. As much as I love them, they are often disappointing to me. I recognize it's because a single day can't possibly bear the weight of my expectations. And that the build-up to most holidays, especially Thanksgiving and Christmas similarly overwhelm the day itself.

Last Sunday evening I had to speak for a few minutes to a church audience about Thanksgiving (I was the filler between two youth skits). As I sat in the pew during the first skit I had no idea what to say. I did a quick search for the word "thanks" on my Android Bible and noticed something obvious. The word "thanks" appears in a central moment of the Christian faith - the Last Supper. When Paul writes about it later, he says "Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ?" (I Corinthians 10:16 NIV 1984)

Thanksgiving? A meal, an ordinance, a sacrament that focuses on sacrifice is one of thanks? I have read many words of thanks over the last few days and even weeks. Most, if not all, were thanks for good things. Rightly so. But Jesus says "thanks" to His Father as He faces His own death. I get the notion of our thanksgiving in the midst of Communion for God's gift in Jesus Christ. But to give thanks in the midst of suffering, for suffering, for loss?

Am I grateful for the ways that God allows me to make sacrifices for Him? Can I stand in the midst of my friends and family and say "thank you" to God when grief and loss come to me?

I'm not quite there. Or, honestly, even close. The more I lose - a natural function of age and experience by the way - the harder this becomes.

But it is necessary. It is central. Perhaps I can't really be thankful until I give thanks in the midst of what I have lost.

Gratitude, real thanksgiving, is bigger than my blessings. It is more than what I have received with gladness. Saying "thanks" only for what I want and love is too small a thanks. It can't bear the weight of life or faith. My gratitude is overwhelmed when I can only give my thanks to God once a year or when I feel it for that matter.

Give thanks in every situation because this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

(1 Thessalonians 5:18 CEB)

River of Dreams

Yesterday (Sunday) was the one year anniversary of what was one of the most painful and difficult days of my life. What I didn't know a year ago was how much more pain the year ahead would hold. My grandmother died. My dad died. One of my dearest friends died. The issues and incidents that led to that awful day continued to spin out in the months that followed. You get the picture.

Billy Joel did a song some years back called "River of Dreams." I first heard it while I was in seminary (someone used it as the background to a video project) and I have loved it ever since.

The lyrics include these lines:

"I go walking in my sleep

Through the valley of fear

To a river so deep

I've been searching for something

Taken out of my soul

Something I'd never lose

Something somebody stole"

This song came to mind because I have felt like this song for the last year. I didn't lose anything - faith, hope, optimism, joy. They were stolen from me that day - "taken out of my soul." I wish I could say they came back. I have had some moments of peace and some times of refreshment. But the things stolen have remained just that - stolen.

Jesus said in John's Gospel -- "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy..." (John 10:10 NIV 1984). What is stolen from us by life, by others, by our own mistakes and sins - doesn't come back. It doesn't just return like a tide that ebbs and flows. Nothing I do will bring back my dad or grandma. Nothing can make that day a year ago (and the other days like it that followed) as if it didn't happen.

One of the things I have realized over the recent weeks is that I have to replace what has been stolen. I have to replace what has been robbed from me. I have to search for what is lost. I have to reclaim what I know to be mine by God's gift.

Jesus continues in John 10:10 with these words "I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full." Do you hear your own struggles in these words today? What has been stolen from you that you ache to recover - and perhaps can't?

I am praying for a year that is full of life. And if you read these words know that I pray for you as well to have the fullness of life that the Life Giver brings.

It's the Great Pumpkin...

Last night we (my 10-year old son and I) engaged in one of our annual Halloween rituals - watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown. I'm not sure why I have never considered the message(s) underlying this annual holiday entertainment.

Consider Linus' belief in The Great Pumpkin. It's unclear where he gets this idea. But he sticks to it. Despite the ridicule of his sister and friends. Despite Sally's abandoning him. Despite the fact that The Great Pumpkin doesn't show up. It's clear, too, despite the evidence that Linus will stick to his belief as the show comes to the closing credits.

And then there's Charlie Brown. In an oft-repeated scene, he falls for Lucy's invitation to make a run at kicking the football. And, yep, she moves it at the last minute. Despite her promises. And then she observes that her written promise wasn't notarized so it's not binding. She explains away her once-again pulling away the ball.

Charlie Brown then goes trick-or-treating with his friends. At every door, his friends get candy, money, prizes. And he gets a rock. A rock??? Who gives kids rocks for Halloween?? But that's what he gets - and only rocks. At every house he visits!

Hmmm... Oh. Well. Am I Charlie Brown and Linus?

I have been on a sabbatical for the last two weeks. During that time I have spent a great deal of time thinking about my life, my faith, my ministry and vocation. I don't know that I have any earth-shaking revelations to share. Or any revelations for that matter. But as I watched this Peanuts special for the ??-th time I realized that I may be more like Linus and Charlie Brown than I have cared to admit.

Despite the evidence, I have persisted in believing things that just aren't so - things about people's character or behavior (a la Lucy), things about how I am *certain* God wants to work or will (a la Linus). It's not that I don't believe anymore or have lost my faith in God. Quite the contrary.

But I don't want to be a Linus who continues to hold to beliefs and hopes that are without foundation. I don't want to be like Charlie Brown who keeps charging at the football and ends up (again) on his butt. So I need to get out of the pumpkin patch and not fall asleep there. I need to stop charging at targets where people say one thing and do another.. and another... and another.

I have no idea what this means in terms of my life or ministry. Except that I want to be free of The Great Pumpkin and Lucy.

I am afraid what will happen when I watch A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and A Charlie Brown Christmas. Or am I?

Thank God It's Friday

Every Friday I see it - Facebook friends, people I follow on Twitter - real friends, associates, colleagues, family - all saying 'Thank God it's Friday.' Most of us live our work weeks for the moment when we are freed from it. 5:00 PM on Friday is the highlight of most weeks for most of us.

Today is Good Friday - the Friday of all Friday's if you will. The highlight of not a week but a history. Outside it's raining and cold. Not very much like spring. I know how this day feels. I feel it - the cold, the rain, the dark. Like that Good Friday of centuries ago I am living a life of death this Friday. I lived for many years a life that was pretty privileged. I've not ever been rich or pampered. But I lived for most of my life surrounded by boundless opportunity. I had lifelong friends. I knew people. I had access to almost anything I wanted and if I didn't I knew someone who did. Life was good, even when I didn't see or recognize it.

Good Friday of 2011 I am living in what I now understand is the death of that life. The death of ease. The death of the hubris in which I was surrounded and that penetrated my soul. And I find myself serving a church in the same place - a place of death. A death this is equally painful. A death that is filled, as all deaths are, with sadness and loss. But a death that is the only answer to a depth of pain and wrong.

Problems that are deep have only one solution - a radical, painful procedure. For the follower of Jesus it is death. Jesus' death was painful, humiliating and long. It was not something that we want to spend too much time pondering. We want to look away. Our own deaths will be no different - how could they be?

One of my great heroes wrote these words in what most consider his greatest work:

"The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. … we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with His death—we give over our lives to death. … When Christ calls a man, He bids him come and die. …death in Jesus Christ, the death of the old man [or nature] at his call. Jesus’ summons to the rich young man was calling him to die, because only the man who is dead to his own will can follow Christ. In fact, every command of Jesus is a call to die, with all our affections and lusts. But we do not want to die…" (Dietrich Bonhoeffer - The Cost of Discipleship)

So on this Good Friday I am praying for death - for my own to be complete; for the death of my friends and family; for the death of churches that need to die. Only in this death can we find life. Hoping this is a Good Friday indeed.

Obedience Sucks

Okay you may cringe at the word but I can't find a synonym that captures what I am thinking better. Obedience sucks. It's hard. It is not the pathway to blessing and comfort. It is, instead, the surest way to the cross. An invitation to die. A way to experience resurrection but only after the pain of Good Friday.

I don't know where I got the idea - surely not from Jesus by the way - that if I could just grow in my obedience, life would get easier in direct proportion. If I only follow God's will more closely then things will improve. But they didn't and they don't.

Not quite two years ago I made a decision that has profoundly impacted my life. At the time I was sure it was God's will for me and my family. Several times over the months since I have experienced confirmation of this. I remember thinking "This will mean good things and new opportunities. God will work out the things that are hindering me. And these difficulties? The answer lies in obedience."

Guess what? I imagine you know what follows. Things did change - for the worse. My circumstances have sunk to a new low in so many ways that I couldn't have imagined. I can say, with only slight risk of hyperbole, that these months have been among the worst of my life. And to top it all off, I had a chance to revisit this decision not long ago - in effect, to undo it. Nope. God made abundantly clear that this path is the one I am supposed to be on. Swell.

I don't mean to sound whiny, although I can be. I am simply realizing in a powerful way that obedience to God's will is most often a direct line to suffering and challenge. Jesus obeyed God utterly. He was rejected by his people and betrayed and abandoned by his friends. He was tortured and executed in the end.

Two of my heroes also obeyed God and paid for it. Eric Liddel (the runner who was one of the featured characters in the movie Chariots of Fire) obeyed God's call to the Chinese mission field and died of a brain tumor in a Japanese prison camp. Dietrich Bonhoeffer joined a conspiracy to save Germany from Hitler and ended up dying on a gallows a short term before the camp where he was held was liberated. Both men had a fame and opportunity that would have made them celebrities had they acted differently.

Now I would not say that my obedience or my trials are like Bonhoeffer's or Liddel's - let alone Jesus'. But they remind me, as do others who have walked this way before me, that this is a hard, painful road. And it's one I need to walk more faithfully.

Back to it.

Shackled to a Corpse

Yes, you read the title correctly. It is the title of an episode of one of my favorite historical programs, The First World War. The only television experience more likely to drive my wife crazy is The Civil War by Ken Burns.

The corpse in question was the Austro-Hungarian Empire to which Imperial Germany was yoked during the First World War. This European power was at the end of its long life, although it didn't yet know it. Composed of a dizzying array of cultures, languages, and religions it had little to hold it together. Internal violence and discord were high and led to the events that launched the Great War. And the empire's demise.

This phrase, "shackled to a corpse" has been haunting the edges of my mind this week. How many corpses - dead things, heavy things - are linked to me and drain my energy as I drag them behind me? You don't need much imagination (and I am sure it's better if you don't have much) to realize what dragging a dead body around attached to your ankle would be like. A morbid image at best. But one that fits well not only the waning days of the German Empire, which World War I also brought to its own end, but also how we often live.

Jesus tells a man in Matthew 8:22 (NIV) "Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead." These words always sounded harsh to me. The man tells Jesus he has to bury his father first and then will follow him. Not bury his own dad? But my thoughts this week and last bring this into focus . I have all kinds of dead things hanging on to my life. God wants me to live a new life, not a new life that is still encumbered with the things of death to which we are so often drawn. I keep thinking - "I will bury this one day." And it just keeps dragging behind me.

Maybe I have some burying to do of my own, or at least some things to let bury themselves.

Run and Hide

I am a hider. When I am tired, I want to retreat and hide. When I have a difficult conversation, I will avoid it. When I see someone in the grocery store that I would rather not see, I have to resist the urge to quickly scoot down the next aisle before I am seen. Some of this is my introversion. Anyone who reads this and knows me will not be surprised. On the Meyers Briggs stuff I come out INTJ. I would rather hide and reflect than stay and fight. That's me anyway.

But this is more than introversion - it is being human. When Adam and Eve hear God coming after they have done what they weren't supposed to do - the next thing they do is hide. Moses runs and hides after he murders an Egyptian. Saul hides when he's afraid he'll be picked as king. Elijah hides from the murderous Jezebel. I could go on - but you get the picture. We are a race of hiders.

And hiding isn't always as straightforward as these example. We hide in busy-ness so we don't have to face something or someone that needs our attention. Adam and Eve covered themselves with leaves - we do it with calendar pages. We hide behind the face we show to the world, introvert or not. We hide behind other people (sometimes literally). We hide behind our perceptions and our fears and our ignorance.

And what we ultimately hide from is God, just as Adam and Eve did. Always. Because God wants us to be naked - not physically. But to have nothing between us and Him, nothing between our lives and His life. Nothing in the way of experiencing a light and love and goodness and mercy and wonder that is then reflected from us so that others can see it too.

But this is painful - because to stand in this light is to admit all of it - the stuff that light shows that I don't want to admit even to myself. It means being vulnerable to God, yes, but also to others - others who don't always (even the best of them) share the light and love and grace. All of which can be painful. If you expose your skin to the sun and you aren't careful, you may get a sunburn. But that doesn't mean that we should wrap ourselves from head to toe either does it?

So where - and why - and how - are you hiding?