"To Him be glory forever": March 2019

Wednesday, March 27, 2019

The Owner's Son

"Thank you for giving us the Bible and teaching us about yourself through it."

Those words were in Robin's prayer the other day. Our habit each evening is to read the Bible together and then for one of us to pray. As she said those words I thought, "Ouch! One thing I just heard from the Bible had to do with people, and our hearts towards God, and it wasn't pretty."

The passage we had just read was Mark 12:1-12, the Parable of the Tenants. Briefly, it goes like this: A man builds a vineyard and all the accessories, then rents it out while he goes away. Harvest time comes and he sends a servant to get what is due him. The tenants beat the servant and send him off. The owner sends a number of other servants, who are treated worse, including at least one death. Finally, the owner sends his son, thinking the tenants will respect him. Good idea, but bad outcome. For the tenants the opportunity to kill the heir means they think that they can grab ownership of the vineyard for themselves. The parable closes with the news that this act by the tenants will not bring about their freedom, but their destruction at the hands of the owner.

Parables are pictures painted in words, designed for us to understand truths about God that we might not have picked up on before. One thing the Parable of the Tenants shows is God's persistence in sending messengers to his children, messengers to call them to live towards God as they should.

But what stood out to me that evening was the deep-seated human desire to be its own god, to the point of killing the owner's son in the mistaken belief that it was the way to achieve freedom from any responsibility towards the owner. The Parable of the Tenants peels away all the layers that cover the human heart's desire to be its own ruler, not bowing down to anyone or anything.

That desire for freedom from God is the worst desire I or anyone else could ever achieve. In the parable it results in the destruction of the tenants at the hands of the owner. And in life? The consequences of freedom from God are not so clear cut. On both ends of the spectrum, from those who love God to those who hate him, we can find the complete range of the good and bad of life. The Bible shows that it is only as human life comes to an end that we get an idea of what a life that welcomes God really looks like. Or what a life that rejects God looks like.

And so to come back to the parable, in the end I'm glad that the owner didn't stop with sending his servants, but that he made the effort of sending his son. The truth is that like the tenants, I pushed all servants of God away, but that did not stop the Son from eventually reaching me, for my own good.

They saying goes "God is good, all the time!" And the goodness of God is seen most clearly in the face of His Son, Jesus, who comes, against the natural desires of our hearts, for me and for you, so that we can live today and eternally as God's dearly loved children. Amen.

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Bucket List

I had a phone call the other day where I mentioned the little adventure I have planned to run this summer. My friend said, "Oh, bucket list!" I replied with something along the lines of, "Just something I thought I would attempt before I get any older."

I appreciate my friend's excitement, but I don’t really function with a bucket list mindset. Sure, there are things I would like to do in life. There are goals that I have set in the past, and there may be other goals set in the future. But there is no list of things I would like to do before I "kick the bucket" and no longer have the time or opportunity.

The obstacle for me and the bucket list idea is that is has a tendency to value the things of this world beyond the things of the world to come. And as a Christian, that could be a problem. Make a list of ultimate things to pursue and then get them done and cross them off during the unknown amount of time remaining. It can put the focus on the things of today, without giving the promise that lies ahead it's due. And the promise is pretty amazing.

1 Peter 1: 3-5 puts it like this:

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time."

The idea of an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading is pretty amazing all on its own, but Peter adds that it is "kept in heaven, for you." This isn't an abstract inheritance, but something personal awaiting each and every Christian.

But what could it be? The answer to that particular question will just have to wait on God's timing.

If you have a bucket list, that is fine, but keep in mind that for you there may be much something better. If you are a Christian one day you are going to come into something that will make every single thing on your list look paltry and insignificant by comparison.

And today I'll close with a link to a really good song that casts our vision forward:

Christ is Mine Forevermore

Thursday, March 14, 2019

The Custodian?

"Are you the custodian?"

That was the question recently when someone saw my keychain. "I'm not the custodian, but sometimes it seems like it" was my reply. I'm the pastor of a small church, and in addition to my main responsibilities the fact that it is a small church, and that I live next door, makes it only "natural" that I do some other things. These other things include occasional custodial work, some building repairs, minor work on the church car, unlocking/locking up the building for other users, and some other things that don’t come to mind at present.

I need keys to the various doors of the church, the parsonage, the gym/education building, a storage shed, as many as four vehicles, and two post office boxes. Over time I have assembled a collection of keys that, to this point, give me access to everything I need. A few keys unlock multiple doors, and several fit only one single door. Once we had a doorknob break. I couldn't repair the door knob but I could replace it with an old one sitting in our storage shed. An old one that happened to have a single key with it.

Lots of keys, virtually all of them having a necessary purpose, kind of like you'd expect the custodian to have, except I'm not the custodian. Well, not exactly the custodian. Because as I thought a bit more about the key/custodian thing it occurred to me that a pastor and custodian have a lot in common in the nature of their work.

The custodian needs to know their way around the building, and how to take care of things. They need to keep an eye out for what needs to be done, and use the right tools and supplies to do the job well. Cleaning might be the greater part of the job, but it isn’t the only thing that gets done in the course of a day.

Similarly, there is a lot of care, over peoples souls, that goes into being a pastor. After five years in Dulce I would say that the biggest parts of a pastor's job are preaching and praying. As the book of Acts tells the story of the early church grew it notes that the apostles were feeling overwhelmed with all the things to attend to. And so they gathered all the disciples together and then set some aside for the various tasks of service, saying in Acts 6:4:

"But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word."

The apostles weren't necessarily better than anyone else, but they understood that there were only so many things each person could do, and that some of those tasks were the ones that Jesus specifically prepared them to do. And so that’s where they focused their energy.

For me, it works out to spending time studying, praying and preparing to proclaim God's word, Sunday by Sunday; sharing the Bible and praying with the people I get out to visit with in their homes, the hospital and care facilities; and praying over the many things that come as prayer requests when we worship on Sunday morning. And there are all the seemingly random bit of contact I have with people during the week. At the store, or post office, or just about anywhere, where a few brief words become an opportunity to point a person in the direction of the Lord.

Many things come up as "non-pastoral" duties over the course of the week. They come my way, they need to get done, and I work on them. But it is the various forms of "prayer and the ministry of the word" that I think are the most important. The diverse way those things present themselves make me think the pastor/custodian comparison holds a lot of truth. And that’s just fine with me.

Wednesday, March 6, 2019

A Snare

The picture is of a dog trap. Loose dogs are a fact of life on the reservation and for the most part we haven’t had trouble with them since we moved here. Robin and I have each had a few encounters in our exercise routines of walking and running. Around our house our policy towards the various dogs that pass through the property is live-and-let live.

Recently, we had to make an exception. There were a few dogs running around together that were beginning to cause trouble for our outdoors cat. The cat is pretty wary for danger but these dogs were beginning to be persistent in their attempts to get into the garage, where her food and bedding are. And so we called the animal control officer.

He came by on a spring-like day and set up this trap. The next day we had heavy snow. A day or two later I saw that the bait had been taken without the trap being sprung, as the mechanism was frozen in the snow.

I let it sit like that for two weeks, until one day last week when I looked outside just before dawn to see one of those same dogs running down our driveway. That morning I dug the trap out and set it in the sun to thaw. Late in the day I baited it with a piece of bread covered in peanut butter. In the middle of the night I heard a noise that sounded like howling and in the morning I got up to find that dog in the trap. I called animal control, who picked up the dog and reset the trap. That same afternoon, during a time when I was gone for just a half hour, the other trouble-making dog was caught.

That whole episode came to mind this morning as I was reading from Exodus. In the end of Exodus 23 the Hebrews receive a warning about developing relationships with the people living in Canaan, before the Hebrews go to live in that same land. Verses 32-33 say:

"You shall make no covenant with them and their gods. They shall not dwell in your land, lest they make you sin against me; for if you serve their gods, it will surely be a snare to you."

The dog trap isn't a snare, but it works in the same way. It has some enticing bait and when it springs there is no way that whatever is caught gets out on their own. Its purpose is to lure, and then capture.

I found it curious that the warning against being ensnared by false gods come so quickly after Exodus 20, where the Hebrews received the Ten Commandments. The very first one is the command to love and serve the One True God, alone. The command to never have any other gods.

On the one hand it is curious to see the warning so soon after the commandment. On the other hand, as we read history in the Old Testament, there was good reason. Their hearts frequently turned to worship virtually any and every god who came along, rather than practice singular devotion to the one who truly was, and is, God. We can't look back on them and think that we are any better today. We turn and follow false gods as readily and easily as they did.

In 2 Peter 5:8 we are warned of the danger like this:

"Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour."

So I share the image of the trap as a reminder. The bait may be tempting, but it is not harmless. Seeking after it will lead to all manner of things that are nothing but trouble.

Temptation to sin will always be around us, but as you see the bait remember that the trap is there as well, and then look to the Lord, trusting that least thing he has for you is infinitely and always better than the most tempting bait towards sin.