God's facebook

I'm new to all of this facebook business.

But apparently I've been linked to a pretty big one all along.

Logos2Go

Psalm 56.8 You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.

Why I'm not "tracking" you

"I'm trackin' ya"

You hear this expression everywhere these days. It can mean:

1. To be aware of something, as in: "Did you hear about the unrest in China?" "Yea, I'm trackin' it on Fox."

2. To understand something, as in: "To get to the Costco, take a left, then turn right, got that?" "I'm trackin' ya."

3. To follow someone's example: Recently my son said he just might pursue a career in academia after all. Then he said: "I'm tracking ya."

Here is why I'm uncomfortable with "tracking ya":

To "track" something or someone comes from our increasingly cyber-dependent culture. We bomb Afghanistan by toggling joysticks in Virginia. We're tracking it all. See those little blips on that computer screen? They're bad guys, and we're trackin'em.

To ascribe powers of "tracking" to myself is to make me in the image of a cyber-creature. I'm Robo-Man, and I'm trackin' ya. It impersonalizes me. It impersonalizes community.

But I am not made in the image of a cyber-machine; I am made in the image of God. My mode of contact, my mode of awareness, of understanding, is not by tracking.

It is by the Spirit speaking to my spirit. It is not machine-to-machine. It is Life-to-life. Its operation is called fellowship. And its fruit is called communion.

So I don't want to track you. I want to be in communion with you.

Logos2Go

Ezekiel 11. 5 ... for I know the things that come into your mind, [every one of] them.

Job 21.27 I know full well what you are thinking, the schemes by which you would wrong me ...

Romans 8.14 ... those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

1 John 1.7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

God speaks once; we hear it twice

The wonder of it all is that God speaks once.

That is infinitely better than him not speaking at all.

Once he has spoken, we can hear it twice. And the second time is just as good, if not better.

Perhaps the first time our hearts were not attentive enough, so we get another chance.

Perhaps the first time we just didn't hear clearly, so we can listen again.

Perhaps the first time -- if it is like all of those other "first times" of earthly experience -- perhaps that first time now seems far in the past; perhaps it has lost some of its glitter.

Well, the second time is fresher today.

Once he has spoken -- and he has; that is the wonder of it all -- we are forever filled with hearing. There is a lifetime of hearing.

A symphony of hearing.

That is why listening is far better than talking.

Logos2Go

Psalm 62.11 Once God has spoken; twice I have heard this: that power belongs to God.

1 Samuel 3.10 The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, “Samuel! Samuel!” Then Samuel said, “Speak, for your servant is listening.”

Hebrews 1.2 ...in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe.

Mark 4.23 If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear. (This statement occurs 3 times in Matthew, 3 times in Mark, 2 times in Luke).

Job 42.5 I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees You.

The danger of giving sermons

The Didache is part of the body of writings by the early Church Fathers, meaning church leaders who lived in the first through about the third centuries, AD.

It is good to read these writings because, basically, they show how much better the inspired writings of the Bible really are. Sometimes you wonder how people in the early church decided which writings to include as part of the Bible and which to exclude. One way to know is simply by reading the excluded works. The difference in quality, and in Spirit, is obvious.

For example, the Didache (which means "a Teaching"), draws from many passages of the standard Bible. But the way it adds nuances to some of them is not only awkward, it underlines the dangers of sermonizing. Consider:

Didache 1.24 says: "Happy is the man who gives, as the commandment bids him, for he is guiltless!"

As best as I can determine, this is a vague reference to 2 Corinthians 9.7: Each man should give what he has decided in his heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. But notice the nuances and twists:

1. "God loves a cheerful giver" (Corinthians) is different than "happy is the man who gives" (Didache) The latter makes the happiness dependent on giving, which is not the biblical sense.

2. "...as the commandment bids him" (Didache). What commandment? By this small phrase the Didache adds a commandment to give -- and implies that you'll be happy if you follow through with this commandment.

3. "... for he is guiltless!" (Didache). Really? So guiltlessness is now dependent on giving.

All of this sounds biblical; none of it is.

The danger in giving sermons is to take a passage of the Bible and, rather than expounding it, using it as a springboard for additions and nuances that the passage really does not permit.

I had this in mind as I was preparing a sermon for this morning, and it altered several things I was planning to say.

Logos2Go

2 Corinthians 9.7 See above

James 3.1 Not many of you should presume to be teachers, my brothers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

Spokane versus Philadelphia on the 4th of July

Here is one difference between Spokane and my other home town, Philadelphia.

On the 4th of July, everybody GOES to Philadelphia. The city is, after all, the seat of Independence: "We the people ..." That was written a bus ride away from my first apartment.

Never mind that I lived in Philadelphia five years before bothering to visit the Liberty Bell. The point is, all that 1776 stuff was just a bus ride away. My first job out of college was a 5 minute walk from the Bell.

It used to blow me away that tourists actually came to Philadelphia... ("Where are you from?" "Oh, we're from Tennesseeeeee." And I would think: Good grief what are they doing here ...not humid enough in Nashville? That sort of thing).

But come they did. And come and come.

And now I appreciate the difference, because ...

... On the 4th of July, everybody LEAVES Spokane.

It happens a day or two before. You're minding your own business, checking off your to-do list. And suddenly it dawns on you: where is everybody?

It's not like they've declared a holiday at the office. It's just taken for granted that, a day before, you slip away.

Evaporate.

Nobody gives a hoot. In fact, it's the cultural thing to do. Go fishing. Go boating. Go golfing. Go camping.

Go to Coeur d'Alene.

If you're in the office at 3pm on the 3rd, for example, you feel like you're one dedicated guy. At least a lonely one. What's the matter with you?

Jeremy and Ivy came up yesterday from Pullman (that would be a tiny town 70 miles south of here -- nothing much going on there either). They are spending a day with us before, ahem, GOING TO THE LAKE.

After dinner we took a walk.

And nobody was around.

Logos2Go

Acts 17.24-26 The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands.And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else. From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live.

Fame, Fog, Fall

God does not allow many of us to be famous because, if He did, we would be more vulnerable to a fall.

In anonymity, in days of small things, He gradually stitches together his work in us.

You would think that as God Almighty, He would welcome prominence and fame.

But just because he is God Almighty, He has no need for prominence.

With fame, a man becomes exposed. He is moved outside the covering of simple (and anonymous) friends of like mind and heart, and placed under the covering of, say, a security detail.

I am thinking of that governor in South Carolina. He espouses a Christian worldview, but somehow this husband and father of four managed to slip off to Argentina for a tango on the sidelines.

A standard response might be: but for the grace of God, there go I.

Well okay, I guess I wouldn't want some pretty thing to take a shine to me. Stay away.

But when something this big happens to one who supposedly follows Jesus -- I mean, flying from South Carolina to Argentina to mess around takes a bit of planning and bravura -- constructions of the heart must have been going on for quite some time.

And the fog of fame made him think he can do it.

Logos2Go

Matthew 20.23 So He said to them, "You will indeed drink My cup, and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with; but to sit on My right hand and on My left is not Mine to give ..."

Proverbs 16.18 Pride goes before destruction, And a haughty spirit before a fall.

1 Corinthians 1.26-29 For you see your calling, brethren, that not many wise according to the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, [are called]. But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.

And also this from St. Ignatius

At that picnic at St. Ignatius, we also talked about generations.

I think people who were once young but are now so quickly old -- (and isn't it like that? One day we are young; but the next day, my goodness, 60 is just around the corner!) -- I think older people often talk about generations.

My friend said that she knew little about her grandparents.

And so, yes, we all confessed we didn't know much about our grandparents. I mean, really know about them: their aspirations, their vulnerabilities, the world in which they lived. We know little to nothing about any of it.

And that was just two generations ago.

So ... what would our grandchildren know about us?

It puts all of our causes into perspective, doesn't it? All of our passionate commitments, the pressing goals we have for our lives, our frustrations, angers, the people we do and do not like ...

In two generations, no one will know any of it.

And so as we ate our sandwiches on the grounds of St. Ignatius, my friend said that the only thing that matters is showing the love of God to others while we still can.

The Chinese culture has a saying: "sacrifice one generation for the next ..." This means that mom and dad, for example, would work menial jobs all their lives, and save penny after penny, so that their kids can go to Harvard or Oxford.

That is not a very welcome idea in our culture. Here, everybody goes for his or her own gusto.

But what does it all matter. Once I was strolling with a friend in a garden in China, and I remarked on the wonderful decorative stone pavements. My friend responded by saying that this was once a cemetery, but they just covered over all of it ...

Even graves are swept away.

In the Bible, the prophets of old searched intently and with the greatest care about salvation from God. And what did they find? Well, it was told them that this salvation they were searching earnestly for ...

... was not for them, but for us.

Logos2Go

1 Peter 1.10-12 Concerning this salvation, the prophets, who spoke of the grace that was to come to you, searched intently and with the greatest care, trying to find out the time and circumstances to which the Spirit of Christ in them was pointing when he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories that would follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves but you, when they spoke of the things that have now been told you by those who have preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven...

Jeremiah 1.5 Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you ...

1 Corinthians 13.12-13 ... Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known. And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.