Neither Protestant Nor Catholic

Today is a birthday of sorts for me! I have committed this day, January 24th, 2010 to memory. (1-2-4 ought to prove easy to remember!)

What's the occasion? It's this: I realized today for the first time that I am neither Catholic nor Protestant. I belong to Christ. The freedom that comes with that realization is nothing short of exhilaration.

Labels bring baggage. Several years ago I realized that I was neither a Democrat nor a Republican. Neither label sat well with me anymore, and letting go of all political associations was greatly freeing. I no longer had to defend the rogues in either party.

Shedding religious labels (save my identification with Christ and his global church) likewise releases me from an awful lot of baggage. Barges of it. I want to be free of labels and baggage alike. Thanks be to God, shedding labels (most of them, anyway) is a God-sanctioned activity.

Galatians 3:28
There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, Republican nor Democratic, Catholic nor Protestant for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

I have, of course, taken a few liberties with the words of St. Paul. The more modern labels are insertions of my own. But seriously, could those additions do anything to make the verse more radical than it was to begin with? Keeping in mind the world Paul lived in, I'd say the answer to that is an emphatic No!

Leaving aside the books that could be written about the distinctions between Jews and Gentiles, and between slave and master, would anyone care to assert that their allegiance to a particular political party or wing of Christendom is stronger than their own sexual identity? Strong as the distinctions between male and female are today, they were even sharper 2000 years ago.

So.... why today? Why is today truly the first day of my post-Protestant life? The answer is this: in church today we had a guest speaker for Sunday School who discussed interactions between Protestants and Catholics. Suffice it to say that by the time this visiting speaker had finished his talk about the differences between Catholics and Protestants, I was in the grips of a new realization that I am neither one.

I belong to Christ. And neither Protestants nor Catholics have a lock on what that looks like.

I Read The Scriptures. Then The Scriptures Read Me.

Yes, I read the words. I knew the passage already, and nothing new was popping out. I prepared to move on to other things. Other readings, other prayers.

And suddenly I was struck with a yearning to really commune with God, and to allow that passage to speak to me... if only God would intervene.

"Lord," I prayed, "give me eyes to read these words and hear you. If you have something to say."

I then returned to the same dusty passage, and Awe filled me.

Suffice it to say the lesson would be proven unlearned if I disclosed what scripture verses I am referring to. But the passage could not have been more clear. And it could not have been more applicable. And I had never seen before in my life that this (frankly) bizarre little episode from the Old Testament spoke volumes into my life, revealing a depravity. A behavior of heart and tongue which I needed to be forgiven of (for the past) and to stop engaging in (for the future).

Is this the same passage I read only a few minutes earlier? Yes, but this time the scriptures read me. I was revealed.

Thanks be to God, who hears our prayers and yearns to bring us to a better place. Thanks be to God, for the scriptures which he uses to accomplish this purpose. Thanks be to God, who forgives us our sins if we will confess them and repent of them. Thanks be to God, the revealer of all things.

Perhaps I Must Be The First To Change

I have observed in my life that I gladly take note of certain "signs" (real or imagined) that God is indeed in agreement with my recent thoughts, concerns or actions. These signs arrive frequently in the form of scripture verses that come my way unrequested, comments in books I am reading, sermons that speak to the same topic... situations that arise over the course of the day... you name it.

We're all looking for signs that we're not alone on our quest. I suspect I'm not terribly unusual in this regard. That said, I must admit that these sorts of sightings are always at risk of sliding toward something akin to Christian astrology. But I digress.

Anyway... I noticed yesterday that I was ignoring some "signs" that were quite obvious. If I had been looking for them, they would have bowled me over. But since the little confirming messages were in utter opposition to my chosen course.... I didn't like them. So I tried to pretend I had not seen them. God was talking, but I wasn't listening. Didn't want to.

But God didn't let me off the hook, and a little voice in my head pointed out the hypocrisy in what I was doing (I hate that...) and forced me to return to what God was saying to me through the books I was reading that morning.

The message was quite clear. Don't focus so much on when and how that other person is going to change. I want YOU to change.

The situation with the other person need not be described in any detail. Suffice it to say that, in my great spiritual wisdom, I felt that someone in my life needed to change. Nothing extraordinarily serious, but serious differences in opinion nevertheless. I wanted that person to come to share my viewpoint, but I wasn't thinking about how to woo them in this regard. No. I wanted to hold the high moral ground and wait for this individual to ascend to my heights. Preferably on hands and knees. (These are exagerrated words, to be sure, but perhaps not so exaggerated as I'd wish them to be.)

God apparently had a different take on the matter, and he shared those thoughts with me via two back-to-back readings from two separate books.

First, the passage from Douglas Steere:

“You may pray for the release of some area of life in a friend and find that you are called upon to set right something in your own life that has acted as a stumbling block to him. ... In intercessory prayer one seldom ends where one begins.”

Food for thought. For another day. I put the book down and picked up The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis next. My hands were fast, but God was faster still. Resuming my reading at the point of the bookmark, I found this:

Everyone, it is true, wishes to do as he pleases and is attracted to those who agree with him. But if God be among us, we must at times give up our opinions for the blessings of peace. Furthermore, who is so wise that he can have full knowledge of everything? Do not trust too much in your own opinions, but be willing to listen to those of others. If, though your own be good, you accept another's opinion for love of God, you will gain much more merit; for I have often heard that it is safer to listen to advice and take it than to give it. It may happen, too, that while one's own opinion may be good, refusal to agree with others when reason and occasion demand it, is a sign of pride and obstinacy.

So I put that book down too. But God wasn't having it. With both sets of words hammering at me, I reluctantly began to consider how they might be applied to my day. A novel thought. Practical application!

I really don't know what exactly what needs to happen next between that person and me in order to resolve our impasse. I suppose I'll have to trust that one to the Lord. But this much I do know now, thanks to God's gentle sledgehammer: my heart was in the wrong place, and the first person who needs to change is me.

Sufficient unto the day is this task alone.

Strike The Rock, And Water Will Come Gushing Out

Exodus 17:6
"Strike the rock, and water will come gushing out"

I guess I never noticed these words before, but they were in my readings for today. How amazing is the tapestry which God wove in our holy scriptures, through dozens of writers over thousands of years.

And yet it all holds together.... miraculously so.

From the ancient scriptures of the Old Testament, we read so many prophecies pointing us to Christ. A few of them are as follows...

Here, one of a gazillion foreshadowings of the Christ to come...
Psalm 118:22
The stone the builders rejected
has become the capstone;

Here, a mystical foretelling of days to come, and the kingdoms yet to be seen....
Daniel 2:34-35
While you were watching, a rock was cut out, but not by human hands. It struck the statue on its feet of iron and clay and smashed them. Then the iron, the clay, the bronze, the silver and the gold were broken to pieces at the same time and became like chaff on a threshing floor in the summer. The wind swept them away without leaving a trace. But the rock that struck the statue became a huge mountain and filled the whole earth.

Here, a prediction that his disciples would flee at his darkest hour...
Zechariah 13:7
"Awake, O sword, against my shepherd,
against the man who is close to me!" declares the LORD Almighty.
"Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered,
and I will turn my hand against the little ones....


So much for the Old Testament. And of course this is just a small sampling...

On to the New Testament. The Christ finally does appear, and Jesus lives up to these and so many other scriptural prophecies. Among so many things he did and said which confirmed them, he had also these words to share:

John 4:10
Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."

And, of course, the Apostle Paul must have his say too!

(an explicit reference to Exodus...)
1 Corinthians 10:4
They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.


And yet. And yet. And yet.

After all these things, most of which I was familiar with... I still never noticed until today the simple hidden message here:

Exodus 17:6
"Strike the rock, and water will come gushing out"

And indeed, that is exactly what happened. The rock (that was Christ) was indeed struck... and living water has been gushing out ever since, just as God promised all along.

Can This Bird Die in Mid-Song?

...Not literally, of course. Death is ugly, and we'll likely not have energy for song in those last moments.

I ask this question as a follow-up to yesterday's question: Can this bird sing in any cage? That question was precipitated by yesterday's Book of Common Prayer reading from Jonah. I was challenged by they way Jonah belted out a song of praise from within the belly of the great fish.

After writing that blog, however, I went on to the Gospel reading for the day, which was taken from John 11. It covers the death and resurrection of Lazarus.

Jonah on steroids.

The story is terse in the telling. Lazarus was sick and dying. His sisters sent for Jesus, hoping he would come and heal him. Upon receiving the news, Jesus intentionally and purposefully refrained from visiting Lazarus until it was too late. Jesus then intentionally and purposefully showed up four days late — and proceeded to raise Lazarus back to life.

Once again... we readers know the whole story well, and so perhaps gloss over unpleasantries because we know the good ending. But poor Lazarus didn't have that luxury.

Jonah may have faced a bleak situation, but Jonah never died. Jonah was set free of his cage long before the throes of death approached. Lazarus, however, had to face death and meet it — because Jesus, in his infinite wisdom, thought it would be better that way.

Worse yet, Jesus didn't bother to explain any of this to Lazarus beforehand, either! So Lazarus met the end of his life with no escape from his condition and no clue as to what Jesus was up to. Lazarus died while Jesus was out of town.

Could Lazarus sing a song of praise to God through the entire ordeal? Not likely.

This passage is terrible in its greatness and mystery. Jesus, as always, was way beyond our normal ways of thinking. Jesus may have been out of town, but Lazarus was not out of his thoughts. He explained to the disciples, "Lazarus is dead, and for your sake I am glad I was not there, so that you may believe." The gospel writer John must have known just how bizarre and terrible this sounded, because he went on to write, "So although Jesus loved Martha, Mary, and Lazarus, he stayed where he was for the next two days."

John took pains in this account to point out two basic facts. Jesus did have power over death, and he did love Lazarus. So how did these two facts collide in Lazarus' life? They met a third terrible truth head on, which was this: Jesus had the long view in mind, and Lazarus was a pawn in a greater game.

It would be by raising a dead man to life that Jesus would strengthen the faith of lives untold throughout the ensuing centuries. Jesus wanted to give the world a cosmic demonstration of his power over death, and Lazarus happened to be the man he picked for the occasion.

How did Lazarus feel about this arrangement? We'll never know, since the gospel does not say. If Lazarus trusted to the very end that Jesus was in control and that Jesus loved him, he could have died with a song of praise in his heart. Odds are, however, that Lazarus was as bereft of hope as those living people Jesus encountered when he entered the scene.

How did Jesus feel about the situation? As soon as he arrived, he was overcome by sorrow. He wept. He was greatly troubled. The New Living Translation states that he was deeply angry. Garden of Gethsemane aside, I wonder if any other passage portrays Jesus in greater distress than the distress he evidenced here.

Why was he so upset? Because we mortals seem so singularly unable to die in mid-song. We have so little hope. Jesus knew and knows what we only dimly hope for. God wins in the end, and those he calls his own will rise again!

But we mortals see this ever so dimly. No wonder Jesus felt a demonstration of God's power would prove helpful.

Lazarus most likely died without hope on his first pass. I am sure Lazarus was more prepared on his second go-round.

As for me, I am the beneficiary of Jesus' longer view. I have the story of Lazarus to encourage me. Knowing this story, I hope that I too can rejoice in the mysteries of God's bigger plan — even if it involves my death in circumstances that neither I nor anyone else can understand.

Lord, let me sing to the very end, come what may.

Can This Bird Sing In Any Cage?

It's a bizarre little question, but I ask it anyway. Can this bird sing in any cage?

Jonah sets the bar high.

Jonah 2:9
"But I will offer sacrifices to you with songs of praise,
and I will fulfill all my vows.
For my salvation comes from the Lord alone."

Did Jonah unleash these words of praise from a dry beach? After his miraculous escape from certain death?

No.

Jonah sang these words while he was still deep below the surface of the sea, stuck in the stinking belly of a great fish. He sang these words in the dark.

It is in the following verse that we read of Jonah's release. "Then the Lord ordered the fish to spit Jonah out onto the beach."

A lesson for me? I think so. It goes like this: It is impossible to praise God during times of trial if I insist on waiting for the trials to pass before I start to sing. It's a tautological truth — a no-duh sort of thing. And yet I seem still not to have learned it.

Jonah worked this out. He learned to sing before he knew the ending of his story. Perhaps this was one of the lessons God wanted to teach Johah.

It is easy for us to expect Jonah to sing. We know his story. When he does bring forth his song of praise, we easily gloss over the circumstances in which he did so — because we already know how his story ends.

My story, however, is not done yet, and I don't know the ending. Can I sing anyway? Now? Suddenly the task seems not so simple.

As I discussed in an earlier blog, I am in possession of what I'll refer to here as my Financial Tar Baby. FTB, for short. I didn't ask for my FTB, but in own folly I sunk a foot deep into it. It wasn't take long before both of my feet were cemented in. Then both my hands.

My little FTB could teach a few tricks to the famous Tar Baby that Brer Rabbit tussled with. Along with Brer Rabbit, I have struggled mightily to escape my FTB. In the process I have lost a lot of time and a great deal of money, but the harder I try to break free, the more amazing the circumstances which arise necessitating yet another day with that little FTB still in my care.

The Brer Rabbit video in the hyperlink (provided above) pretty well captures exactly how I feel. It's only 3 minutes long, so I just watched the whole thing. At the end of it, the clip fades out with Brer Rabbit completely stuck in a puddle of tar in the middle of the road. Two predators gleefully dance around the miserable rabbit.

As if to rub salt in my wound, the narrator's parting words regarding Brer Rabbit go as follows:

"Poor little critter. He learned a powerful lesson, but he learned it too late. But it just goes to show you what comes of mixin' up with somethin' you've got no business with in the first place."

Ouch. Boy, can I relate! My folly got me into this mess. And how. But is my situation really the same? Exactly? To the point, did I really learn this lesson a little too late? If so, then God's timing is off, and I have no reason to sing.

But God is sovereign, and I am still alive. It is not too late. God's good plans for me are still unfolding. Jonah may be sitting in the belly of a fish. I may be sitting on an FTB. No matter! I can still trust in my God and rest in the knowledge that God wasn't too late with Jonah and he won't be too late for me either.

Jonah needed a bit (a lot?) of refining. Sometimes the belly of a stinking fish is a good place for that kind of work. Maybe it's what I need too. If all this is true, then what I need is Holy Patience. I need to learn to Wait.

While I am waiting, there are useful things I can do. For starters, I can thank God for what he is teaching me through all this. But why stop there? Perhaps I should, along with Jonah, even try singing just a little bit.

Even in this cage.

Supposing I Were A Dead Man...

I find these words amazingly useful.

Supposing I were a dead man...

...I wouldn't have to defend my actions. Dead people don't need to do any explaining.

Supposing I were a dead man...

...I wouldn't have any dignity to protect. People can attempt to tar my name all they want. I'm dead, after all. What do I care?

Supposing I were a dead man...

...I could dispose of my dreams for glory. Dead men don't need it. I can get on with the quiet business of being dead. Glory is for the living.

Galatians 2:20
I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me...

So that's how it's supposed to be. Not only must I die, but Christ must live. What does that mean in practical terms?

Well, for starters, when I am mistreated or scorned, I need not take it personally. It's business as usual for Jesus, and he can take care of it. It's his name that's on the line... provided I am indeed dead to myself, and if indeed it is Christ who is living in me.

And indeed business as usual for Christ does mean that vindication will eventually come. Because the living Christ does want glory. Christ will be again vindicated and glorified — in me!

But Christ has his own timing and his own ways. His timing includes eternity. His way includes a cross. And Jesus never takes shortcuts to glory.

So to return again to the question: supposing I were dead... and Christ were living in me. What should I expect? The same thing that happened to Christ when he was living in his own body.

Mark 10:29-30
"I tell you the truth," Jesus replied, "no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.

Philippians 1:29-30
For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him...

I should expect, then, many opportunities to prove that I am dead — or prove that I am not. It all comes down to this: how will I respond to persecutions, suffering, and disgrace. Perhaps even bodily death. If I accept and endure these test as part of the territory and go away rejoicing, then truly indeed I have died already, and Christ is now living in me.

Acts 5:41
The apostles left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name.