A Real Epiphany

January 6, 2014

Epiphany. I'm no liturgical historian, but I know today is the twelfth day of Christmas, the feast of Epiphany, celebrating the visit of the magi to the Christ Child and the gift of the Gospel to the world. The Orthodox Church celebrates Christmas tomorrow. It gets pretty confusing, but two different calendars are involved, the Gregorian, and the Julian, two dates for Christmas depending on whether you adhere to the Western or the Eastern calendar. Most Christians in America observe Christmas on December 25, as does the secular world, despite the efforts of the politically correct police to call it a "winter holiday" or some such nonsense. Unfortunately, the secularization and commercialization of Christmas has taken its toll on its religious observance. It might not be a bad idea if even we who follow the Western calendar made the switch and observed Christmas with the Orthodox. At least we wouldn't be competing with Santa Claus and the Hallmark Channel!

Few Christians in America observe Epiphany these days. As a child and teenager, I never even knew it existed. Today for most people is merely January 6, just another day on the calendar. There will be no Santa descending down chimneys, and no New Year's fireworks. But what this day on the Christian calendar signifies is not unimportant, because it reminds us that Christ did not come only for the Jewish people; he is the Savior of all. The magi were Gentiles, and their visit to the Christ Child is a portent of the evangelization of the world. I cannot even imagine how different our lives would be had the Gospel of Jesus not spread beyond the borders of First Century Palestine. Thankfully, it did, and I am among those who have benefitted from it. Western society as we know it, our understanding of the worth and dignity of the human being, our quest for knowledge; all these and more have their roots in the Gospel that we received. Most of all, salvation has been proclaimed, forgiveness offered, grace received. All this is bound up in this day we hardly notice. So, without fanfare, colored lights, or fancy wrapped gifts, I will quietly give thanks that God's love and mercy are so expansive as to have reached even me.

Cardinal Comfort

January 5, 2015

New Year's Eve marked the first anniversary of my mother-in-law's death. Ginner was a wonderful woman, about whom it was impossible to crack the usual mother-in-law jokes. I was horribly deprived by this. Actually, we all were deprived by her passing. The only person I've ever known with as much integrity and Christ-like character as she is her daughter, who in a momentary lapse of judgment many years ago, consented to be my wife.

Anniversaries of a loved one's death are usually pretty difficult, especially those first anniversaries; the first birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas without that person actually present for the occasion. New Year's Day was the first New Year without Linda's mother.

Outside one of the windows of our Millstone Room are four bird feeders, two hanging, and two feeders on stands. Chickadees, finches, tufted titmouses, mourning doves, blue jays, and woodpeckers are regular visitors. But Linda's favorites are the cardinals. She loves the bright scarlet of the male, and the more subdued hues of the female, but I think much of her love for them is residual from her father, who fed the birds and loved the cardinals that ate him out of house and home every year. These birds are a connection, a visible reminder of their love, but they are skittish, don't come around often, and scare off easily. So when one showed up at her feeder last New Year's Day, it was for her like a message from God, a small "I'm thinking of you" kind of note that gave her great comfort.

New Year's Day arrived on schedule, bringing with it those mixed feelings that accompany the anniversary of her mother's departure. Linda was OK most of the day, but there were those moments when I noticed her sitting quietly, and knew she was thinking of her mother. It was in one of those moments that the cardinal flew in to eat at her feeder. Linda confided that she had been praying for one to come by, as a sign, a reminder from God that everything would be all right.

This afternoon, I received a call from a friend whose wife is dying. She wanted me to come see her, to help her plan her funeral. I drove to Buffalo, visited for awhile, made the requested arrangements, prayed with her and her family, and came home. Linda was sitting in the Millstone Room waiting for me. I sat down so we could talk. It was a sad conversation concerning our friend, but after a few minutes, she said,  "Do you want to hear some good news?"

"Sure," I replied.

"Three cardinals came by today, and stayed for a long time."

It's a simple pleasure, a gift that some would label as mere coincidence. I would be hard pressed to state with certainty that God sends cardinals just to brighten someone's day, but I would also be hard pressed to say he doesn't. In the midst of sorrow were signs of comfort and hope, a small gift; nothing much in itself except for the meaning given it by a woman with a heart still tender from her loss. The pleasure I saw in her eyes as she told me the story is the object of my gratitude today.

Repentance...Again!

January 4, 2014

It is a rare and precious gift that too many Christians get to receive all too infrequently, but of which I am privileged to partake every single week. Our pastor's style and method of preaching the Scriptures is very different than mine, but that's OK because the Holy Spirit is behind both our preaching, and he does one thing (there's actually more than one) better than I ever did. Every Sunday before presenting the bread and the cup, pastor Joe calls us to repentance. Some people might be offended by that; others perhaps gloss over it, but it never fails to bring me up short. He reminds us that coming to the table unrepentant is serious business.

I wish I could say that there has been a week in which I had no need to repent, but that hasn't happened. I'm not going to go into any detail concerning the sins for which I need forgiveness; some would look at my list and say, "Is that all? Can't he find something more racy than that?" Others would look at my list and think to themselves, "I'm not sure I want to associate with him any more." We humans have a tendency to make comparisons in which we come out smelling either like roses or skunks. Such comparisons are never helpful, fostering either pride or despair. The only comparison we need to make is to our Hero, Savior, and Leader, Jesus Christ.

The blessing in comparing ourselves with him is that we never have reason for pride, but we also never have occasion for despair, because although we never measure up, we are always included in his invitation to come, repent, and find full and free forgiveness.

Today pastor Joe preached on tithing, using texts I have used for the same purpose many times. There was little he said that I haven't said at one time or other myself. But as I re-read the texts and the surrounding contexts, I found that God was relentless in directing his words to the spiritual leaders of the people, calling them to repentance for their carelessness in the fulfillment of their responsibilities. Here's one example: "You have wearied the LORD with your words. But you say, "How have we wearied him?" Because you say, "Everyone who does evil is good in the Lord's opinion, and he delights in them," or "Where is the God of justice?"" (Malachi 2:17). I've often looked at the mess our world is in and asked that very same question. Guess what?  It''s a sin! For this offense, and for many others, I found myself in an attitude of repentance this morning, and will no doubt find myself next week also. But, praise God, I know I will meet with forgiveness then just as I did today, and I will once more come to the Table. For that, I am humbly grateful.

It's About Time

January 3, 2015

Our granddaughter Abi can't stand the sound; says it keeps her awake. So every time she spends the night, the clock in the Millstone Room comes down from its place on the wall to be laid on the kitchen counter till morning. I can barely hear it; after all, it's a battery operated electric with a barely audible 'tick tock." Apparently, her hearing is much better than mine, but we obviously belong to different worlds when it comes to timepieces. The rhythmic ticking of an old-fashioned mechanical clock is soothing and comforting to me, music to my ears. Not so much to my granddaughter.

Hanging on a wall in our living room is a century old schoolhouse clock that hung silently in my father in law's den for years. When he died, gram gave it to me, and I immediately took it to a clock repairman in Ohio for a cleaning and rebuild. A month or so later, I picked it up and hung it in the corner, a safe distance from the heat of the fireplace, where it faithfully tick-tocked away till one day, it just quit. I opened the door to the pendulum to find it laying on the bottom. The wire holding it had broken its soldering. It hung silent till today, when I had a few minutes extra time and decided to tackle the project. Actually, I had tried a few days ago, but couldn't figure out how to pry off the hands so I could remove the face and access the works. A phone call to the repairman gave me the information I needed, and five minutes later, the works lay exposed to view.

The wire had been soldered to a thin, flexible band that was wedged into a slotted key. I pried off the band, took it and the wire out to the kitchen and laid it on Linda's glass chopping board where I soldered the two back together again. Ten minutes' work, and we were ready to reassemble the works, which I did in short order. A steady tick-tock is rewarding me from the corner, adding to the antique cast clock's melody coming from the top of the secretary against the adjoining wall.

I love old clocks. A stately grandfather clock is in the garage awaiting my attention. Hopefully, by spring it will join the others, adding to the gentle cacophony of quiet sound soothing my soul.

Time is a funny thing. The Scriptures tell us that God is above and beyond it; eternal, and that we are moving through time to when "time shall be no more." I can't imagine it. The life we know is measured in millennia, centuries, decades, years, seasons, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, and seconds. With the advent of atomic clocks, it is broken down even further. But it is all a human construct. God isn't limited by it as we are; he has, as it were, "all the time in the world," but for us, there is a time for every season under heaven, and an opportune time to be saved.

The older I get, the more aware I am of this thing we call time. I am less willing to waste it on frivolity, more concerned with squeezing every drop of life out of every second I have been given, knowing that as far as human time is concerned, there is more of it behind me than ahead of me. The clocks on my wall and on top of various cabinets and shelves are subtle and faithful reminders of this gift I hold. I owe them my gratitude. It's easy to grow deaf to their ticking, but in so doing, time slips away, never to return. At the beginning of this new year, I am grateful for these old clocks, for their steady, soft noise that reminds me of the chronology I occupy, and of the eternal significance of that which will one day be no more.

Grace, Guts, and Glory

January 2, 2014

Yesterday a pastor friend posted an article about common factors in declining churches, and posed the question, "Then what?" I responded with some thoughts gleaned from my own experiences over 44 years of pastoral ministry. He messaged me with a somewhat detailed description of his situation, serving in a declining church that seems content to live off its endowments and building rental fees, without any serious engagement with its community. He seemed pretty frustrated and discouraged.

It's always dangerous to extrapolate from one's own experience to another's. There was a time when I would look at these tiny congregations sitting in the middle of huge population centers and wonder why they weren't growing. It certainly wasn't for lack of a mission field. I suppose there was more than a little pride involved, as I would think (and sometimes say out loud), "Anyone who can't grow a church there ought not be in the business." At the time, Park church was growing by leaps and bounds, its average attendance about a third of our community, at a time when our county's population was in decline. I was invited to lead seminars on church growth with seminary students, and was all too willing to share what I knew. Problem was, there was so much I didn't know, and I didn't know I didn't know it (think it through; it'll make sense).

Then the bottom dropped out of everything here. In the middle of the implosion, I was once more asked to lead a seminary class on church growth, but this time I wasn't sure what to say. I was in the process of digesting a huge portion of humble pie, and the taste it left in my mouth spoiled my appetite for pontificating. I began however, to learn a few things from my failures, which was a good thing. Failure is too important an experience to not learn from it.

Before we almost crashed and burned, I had learned an important component of church health and growth. There are many, but I came to believe that leadership consists of finding out where people want to go, and getting to the front of the line. It really is that simple. But it's not a matter of sticking one's finger in the air to see which way the wind is blowing. The problem people have is they don't know how to articulate the dreams and hopes they have. The Protestant movement was centered around the priesthood of all believers, which means among other things, that God
speaks to people about their deepest desires, hopes, and aspirations. But the average Christian doesn't know how to articulate it. Historically, the children of Israel groaned in slavery for 400 years. They knew they weren't happy, but didn't know what to do about it. Then along came Moses, whom God appointed as leader. He didn't show up and order people around according to his own vision. He listened to God, then he spoke to the people about what God had already put in their hearts, so when he spoke, they said, "Yes! That's it! I didn't know it till now, but that's it!"

It wasn't all sweetness and light. Moses also had to speak to the powers, and they took a whole lot of convincing. The leader not only must speak to the people, he must speak to the powers, the spiritual and demonic authorities that hold people captive. They don't give up easily. The only way Moses could face pharaoh was by continually being in the Presence of the God who was more powerful than he. Even then, it was quite a struggle, and Moses was tempted to quit, especially when things got tough and his own people were after his hide. Even after their deliverance, they wanted to go back to Egypt, which became the occasion for the most important leadership test Moses faced. No leader can succeed without paying the price. Moses was willing to be blotted out of God's book of life for the sake of his people. Too many pastors are more concerned with their own safety, security, well-being than with the often recalcitrant people God has sent them to serve. Until the leader is ready to lay down his life for those to whom God has sent him, success and growth will be only a dream.

It's tough work, and not everyone has the stomach for it. Even Moses wanted to give up, but he had been chosen for the job, and what do you say to God when he points his finger in your face and says, "You're the man (or woman)!?" I'm far from being the most talented and engaging preacher. I'm too introverted to be as good at evangelism as I should be. I never mastered the art of networking or administration. The one quality I have is bulldoggedness. I don't know how to give up. And when trouble came knocking, I knocked back.

I wish I had answers for my pastor friend. I suppose there are times and circumstances when a leader just has to face reality and bury what died years ago but didn't have sense enough to lie down. I know that years ago, I made the decision that as long as Park people wanted to grow, I would do my best to help them do it. What I never told them was, if I ever sensed that they were content where they were, I would be out of there in the blink of an eye. I had no desire to pastor people who didn't want to push the boundaries and be better than they were before. God blessed me with a congregation willing to squint into the future and stick a toe into the waters. And he graciously allowed me to weather the storms and after much blood, sweat, and tears, to hand off a healthy, growing congregation to my successor. I am grateful for what I learned along the way, and for the people who were patient enough to go along with my often hair brained ideas, enduring failure after failure in order to savor the sweet taste of victory in the end. Not everyone stuck it out, but they were the losers, while those who refused to let go of the dream are now seeing blessing beyond imagination. To God be the glory! His mercy and grace have proven themselves sufficient for even a pastoral pygmy like myself.

The Best Start for the New Year

January 1, 2015

Two years ago I made a commitment to focus only on those things for which I was thankful. I've told the story, but I'll tell it briefly again. I was caught up in the presidential campaign rhetoric, which of course, always centers on the faults and failings of the opposite party, and is overwhelmingly negative in tone. It was as I said then, poisoning my soul, but I didn't realize it. On December 28th of 2012, God spoke to me, asking me what had happened to my joy. The problem was that for most of my life, joy had been pretty elusive, so I wasn't able to answer that question. All I knew for sure was that something had to change, and God not only made it clear to me that I needed to change, but also how that change was to be effected.

I stumbled across a website, aholyexperience.com which gave me daily suggestions of three things for which to give thanks. I took up the challenge, and it literally changed my life. Two years into this experiment, the melancholy which for years was a constant dark companion rarely even bothers to visit. Nothing external has changed. The world is still a mess, life has its high moments and its valleys of despair, but I am different inside. There have been occasions over the past two years when I've felt almost guilty when I count my blessings and compare my life to so many who seem plagued by illness, addiction, dysfunctional families, and economic uncertainty. People who read my posts probably wonder as I often do, if my life is exceptionally charmed. I must admit I haven't had to deal with many of the issues some people face regularly, but I also believe that a great deal of the difference between my posts and the negative and often vitriolic posts we so often see is more a matter of perspective than circumstance.

My life is far from perfect. Even more to the point, I am far from perfect. Our family has to navigate the waters of disagreement and personality differences, just as others do. We have to pay our bills, keep our home in repair, the driveway plowed or the lawn mowed, deal with sin, failure, death and disappointment, and handle all the other matters life has a way of throwing at you. We have at least a few of the aches and pains that accompany the years we have seen. The big difference in my life today and two years ago is my focus on gratitude. There have been occasions in the past two years when I've had to be quite determined to be grateful on any particular day, but it has been worth the effort. As we begin 2015, I am grateful that God brought me up short two years ago, that he saw to it that I discovered that website, and that he made good on his word. Repeatedly, we are told to give thanks, and in the Psalms, the basis for gratitude is given: "for his mercy endures forever." I have certainly discovered that my experience of the mercy, the steadfast love of God has been richer as I have learned to give thanks. As I said, life hasn't necessarily changed, but I have, and that has changed everything.

To anyone who reads these words, I offer the same challenge God gave me two years ago. Forsake complaining, avoid criticism, even when it is deserved, and find that for which in any and every situation you can give thanks. You won't be sorry.

Better than Times Square

December 31, 2014

I'm not sure whether to say the old year ended slowly or furiously. The day started out slowly enough, but I had a wedding (my last official pastoral duty) to officiate at 5:00, followed by dinner with Linda's sisters, which took us to 12:30, at which time we headed to the Lakewood Y for Park church's annual AD (Alcohol and Drug) Free Party. They focused more on cementing relationships with kids than a broadcast approach to whoever might come, so there weren't as many kids attending, but hopefully, the ones who came were responsive to the Message.

Linda and I arrived just in time to hear the Park youth band play, and then hear Katie Meadows speak. I was absolutely amazed. These kids didn't just sing; they led worship, prayed for the kids present, and challenged me to live more for Jesus. Katie spoke about losing her father last year to cancer, and the struggle she's had with fear and forgiveness. I can't speak for the kids, but I know more than a few of the adults present were in tears as she spoke articulately, with conviction and power. What an amazing young woman, who took her own still raw emotions and laid them out before her peers, then telling them that through it all, Jesus is enough.

I cannot think of a better way to begin 2015 than with these kids, and am so grateful I stopped by. They got this old boy off on the right foot for the new year. Times Square has nothing that even holds a candle to the way we began this New Year of 2015!