Wednesday Letter

Friends in Christ,
  I love the South.  Years ago, the end of November would find me huddled up in jackets and lumbering through the snow to get where I needed to be.  Checking the weather was a depressing task.  Now, I check the weather to see whether or not I'll need a sweater, let alone a jacket.
  But the cold is coming.  Winter has a way of sneaking up on us.  (I know, winter doesn't officially begin for another three weeks.  Tell that to the folks getting snow in the Northwest.)  It gets a little colder every day, but often not enough to notice, and then suddenly you find yourself walking outside and wondering how it got so cold so quickly.  The reality is that the weather was changing every day, but just in such small increments that it doesn't seem to be changing at all.

  I think the same holds true for our discipleship, particularly our prayer life.  When we pray, we are waking ourselves up to what God is doing around us.  The more often we pray, the more often our eyes and our hearts are opened to God's work in the world.  If we focus ourselves on improving our prayer habits, spending a little more time in prayer every day, then we'll notice a change in the way we see the world.  It won't be immediate, and many of the changes may be imperceptible, but years down the road we'll suddenly realize how different our life is.  It's not the work of one dramatic shift, but a thousand little ones.  In the conference I attended this spring, Eugene Peterson said that not everything is prayer, but everything can be prayer.  It's all about our attitude and our willingness to focus on God in the midst of our lives.

  There's an old saying that the best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago, and the 2nd best time is now.  So how will you devote yourself to prayer now, that years down the road, your life may be centered around an awareness of God's presence?

In Christ,
Keith

Come, Holy Spirit

Come, Holy Spirit
  Come & breathe new life into this weary soul.
  Carve new channels into my life
  That living water might course through them.

Come, Holy Spirit
  Come with wind & fire
  Consume all that is within me that is not of you
  Create in me a new landscape
  That I might frolic in the everlasting & abundant joy of God.

Come, Holy Spirit
  Shatter the ties that bind
  This confined life to the darkened dungeons of despair
  I have come to this place of my own accord
  Tied my own fetters and closed my own eyes
  Shine your illuminating light
  Show me the path home

Come, Holy Spirit
  Quicken the pulse in my chest
  Awaken me to the life of Christ within
  That leads me onward, upward, outward
  To dance with the divine
  To love without concern
  To live without regret

Come, Holy Spirit
  Gleefully abide
  Among the common and the frail
  The faith that peeks and hides

Come, Holy Spirit
  Illumine once again
  That I might hear the tale of God
  Mercifully sublime

Come, Holy Spirit
  Surprise my heart once more
  To live for God and let Christ reign
  To sing forevermore

Effective Prayer

  The longest book isn't always the best book.  For example, the US tax code is 7 times longer than the Bible.

  The newest book isn't always the best book.  It almost always looks better on the shelf, but that doesn't mean it's preferable.

  R.C. Sproul wrote a wonderful little book (it's probably more of a booklet--it's only 80 pages, and can fit in your pocket) called Effective Prayer.  The first printing was in 1984, when I was three years old.  The pages of my copy are yellowed and feel old.  The cover illustration is probably not what it would be if the book were first published today.  But the wisdom contained in this little book make it well worthy of the short amount of time it takes to read.

  The book is broken up in to six chapters--the purpose, place, pattern, practice, prohibitions and power of prayer.  Sproul talks about the reasons to pray, the ways to pray, ways not to pray, different methods to prayer, and the outcomes of prayer.  Sproul doesn't linger too long on any particular chapter, but each one is focused and well developed.

  In the end, though, the point is well-made:  to develop in prayer, you have to spend time doing it.  All the books in the world and all the seminars in the world won't make you into a dedicated person of prayer.  Spending time before God, pouring your heart out and letting God fill you, will make you a person of prayer. Dedicating ourselves to a life of prayer is the most important thing--our abilities to pray and to listen to God develop over time, but they will not develop if we spend our lives waiting to be perfect at prayer.

  So let us pray.  Deeply, often, depending on God to lead us forward.

11-25-12 Sermon

2 Kings 2:1-14
  Now when the Lord was about to take Elijah up to heaven by a whirlwind, Elijah and Elisha were on their way from Gilgal. Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Stay here; for the Lord has sent me as far as Bethel.’ But Elisha said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.’ So they went down to Bethel. The company of prophets who were in Bethel came out to Elisha, and said to him, ‘Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?’ And he said, ‘Yes, I know; keep silent.’

   Elijah said to him, ‘Elisha, stay here; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.’ But he said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.’ So they came to Jericho. The company of prophets who were at Jericho drew near to Elisha, and said to him, ‘Do you know that today the Lord will take your master away from you?’ And he answered, ‘Yes, I know; be silent.’

  Then Elijah said to him, ‘Stay here; for the Lord has sent me to the Jordan.’ But he said, ‘As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.’ So the two of them went on. Fifty men of the company of prophets also went, and stood at some distance from them, as they both were standing by the Jordan. Then Elijah took his mantle and rolled it up, and struck the water; the water was parted to the one side and to the other, until the two of them crossed on dry ground.

  When they had crossed, Elijah said to Elisha, ‘Tell me what I may do for you, before I am taken from you.’ Elisha said, ‘Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit.’ He responded, ‘You have asked a hard thing; yet, if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not.’ As they continued walking and talking, a chariot of fire and horses of fire separated the two of them, and Elijah ascended in a whirlwind into heaven. Elisha kept watching and crying out, ‘Father, father! The chariots of Israel and its horsemen!’ But when he could no longer see him, he grasped his own clothes and tore them in two pieces.

  He picked up the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and went back and stood on the bank of the Jordan. He took the mantle of Elijah that had fallen from him, and struck the water, saying, ‘Where is the Lord, the God of Elijah?’ When he had struck the water, the water was parted to the one side and to the other, and Elisha went over.
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How many of you have ever spent much time studying the life of Elijah before we did this sermon series on him?

How many of you knew he had raised someone from the dead?

Knew that he had miraculously fed a widow and her household?

Knew that he had dueled with 450 prophets of Baal?

Knew about the chariots of fire?

Elijah’s life is pretty extraordinary, and it ends in a spectacular way.  This is another one of these grand images of the Bible, one that is probably more famous than most.  Elijah is walking along and chariots of fire, led by horses of fire, descend and scoop Elijah up, taking him up to heaven.  Elisha is left behind to watch all of this unfold.  In the section just following this, some other prophets believe that Elijah has been transported somewhere else and want to go look for them.  Elisha can’t put into words what he has seen, so he finally tells them to go and look, even though he knows it is a waste of their time.  He doesn’t act surprised when they return without having found him.

So Elijah’s life has this incredible capstone, a dramatic moment to conclude his life and ministry.

We’d all agree that Elijah lived an incredible life, right?

We’d all agree that he was completely and entirely faithful to God, right?

We’d agree that he’s one of the best images of what a faithful disciple should look like, right?

So we’re all in agreement that Elijah lived as near a perfect, faithful life as anyone on this earth can, right?  I don’t see a record of sin in his life.  I’m sure he had sin, but there doesn’t seem to be much.  We could all trump Elijah in this category.

So notice, then, what happens at the end of his life.  First of all, Elijah cannot write the end of his own story.  Only God can complete our lives.  Only God can bring us through the shadow of death and into the eternal realm of heaven.  Even Elijah could not do that on his own.  God does it with chariots of fire for some, and he uses more ordinary means for many, but for all who believe, God saves.  But only God can save—we cannot.

Secondly, pay attention to the mantle.  This is Elijah’s cloak, the same cloak he threw over Elisha when he called him into ministry, the same mantle with which he covered his face when he stood on the mountain before God.  The mantle has no magical powers, and isn’t the source of anything, but it’s symbolic.  When Elijah dies, the mantle passes from Elijah to Elisha, and the work of God in the world continues.

It’s tempting to look at some of the characters in the Bible and wonder, at the time, how the story ever would have moved along without them.  Once Moses left, how would the Israelites get along?  Or Abraham, or David?  Elijah, too—he is such a giant at the time, but yet we see here that God’s work in the world moves right along—Elisha picks up where Elijah left off, dividing the river and going through on dry ground.

There is an old saying that the graveyards are full of men who thought the world could not go on without them.  As Christians, it’s wise for us to consider the same—this story we are living, the novel in which we play a role, is not our story.  It’s not about us.  The story is God’s story, and God is the central character.  None of us are indispensable to the plot, but each of us is precious, valuable in God’s eyes.  But it is God who invites us in, and it is God who gives us the chance to participate.

I want to invite you to think about puzzles.  How many of you have ever done a puzzle?  How many of you have ever had one of those puzzles that you could not complete?

I have one, and it’s my favorite puzzle.  It’s a 3,000 piece puzzle that was a gift to me many years ago.  It’s of St. Mark’s Square in Venice, and I’ve attempted it a number of times.  I can do the first 2,000 pieces alright, but I get to the last thousand and realize that it’s all sky and that every single piece looks the same.  Every time, I promise that I’ll take it slowly, going piece by piece, and that if I am patient enough I will eventually finish it.  Every time, I make it about twenty minutes before giving up and taking the puzzle apart, realizing that this is an impossible process. 

I want us to think about our life of Christian witness in the same vein.  You have a role to play.  God graciously invites us in, gives us a part to play.  Think about it this way—God gives us a bunch of pieces to the puzzle.  What God is trying to do is build his kingdom on earth, and he gives us some of the pieces to put together.

Notice that I said some.  He doesn’t give us all the pieces.  You are not responsible for this whole puzzle.  The weight of the kingdom does not rest on your shoulders.  Just like Elijah’s life, we cannot finish this work.  Only God can do this.  We are called to do our part, to live faithfully in the situation we have before us, to use the pieces in our hands.  We aren’t called to look with jealousy at the pieces someone else has.  We aren’t called to despise our own pieces.  We’re called to serve God with what is right in front of us, with what we have, rather than worrying about everything else.

Some of you may wonder how you can put the pieces together.  Well, I have good news for you.  How do you know what a puzzle is supposed to look like?  We look at the picture on the box, right?  Well, the Christian life is the same—only Scripture serves as our picture on the box.  We read Scriptures to know what the Christian life is supposed to look like.  Christ shows us what that life is like.  Other Biblical characters show us how to live, and how not to live.  By reading the Bible, we get the picture of the Christian life.  Then, and only then, can we turn to the pieces before us and try to put together our own lives, piecing together our own part of God’s story.

Now, it can be frustrating to know that we’re not going to finish the whole thing.  We want to do that.  In this country, we make a bad habit of worshipping individual achievement.  We elevate those particular individuals who seem to have it all together, who pull themselves up to success by hard work.  But this puzzle isn’t ours to complete.  We need to recognize that it’s not about us—this is about what God is doing, and God is using the church for this work.  We have a part to play, and it’s a small part, but that’s ok.  It’s not our story.  We are called to be grateful that God invites us to play a role—God doesn’t need us, but it is out of love that he calls us to live life with him.

Now, we’re not going to put all our pieces in perfectly.  We’re not always going to make the right decisions.  The puzzle isn’t going to look like a perfect representation of the picture on the front of the box.  Here is where we remember the gracious love of Christ and his atoning death.  In his death on the cross, he atoned for our sins.  In short, he corrected all of the mistakes we have made and will make in our attempt to put together our part of the puzzle.  His love washes us clean, covers us with his grace and his glory.  It is this love that completes the puzzle.

At some point we will die.  We will be caught up by a chariot of fire and taken into the halls of heaven, ferried through the shadow of death.  And this is ok—it’s part of God’s plan.  Someone else will pick up the mantle and carryon the work.  When it’s not about us, we can realize that our death isn’t the end of God’s work in the world.  God has plans to use all of us, and this is a work we do together.  When I do puzzles I don’t share well—I tend to get impatient with other people who may not work as fast as I do.  But in the work of God’s kingdom, we work together, because it’s not just about getting the puzzle finished.  It’s not about how much I can do compared to someone else.  It’s about what God is doing in and through all of us.  It’s not about me.  It’s about God.

I want to close with my dream for the church.  Now, I don’t do puzzles very often because I have a bit of an obsessive personality when it comes to puzzles.  I’m a ‘just one more piece’ kind of guy.  What that means is that I’ll start saying ‘just one more piece’ around 9:30, and I’ll finally go to bed sometime around 4:00 in the morning.  I can’t go to bed without putting that piece in, and now that piece should be easy, and then I’ll try that one, and I’m almost done with that part… you get the picture.

I want each and every one of us to have that same kind of commitment to ministry.  It’s easy to give up on the puzzle when it gets tough, to go find something more entertaining.  I don’t know if people still do puzzles—they’re probably too old-fashioned for a lot of people now.  There aren’t many electronics and flashing lights on puzzles.  We do the same to Christianity we don’t read the Bible or pray because there are more entertaining things to do.  We don’t serve others because it will involve giving up some of the things we like to do.  We place ourselves at the center of our own story and, when we do, focusing on others isn’t very appealing.  But when we recognize that it’s God’s story, to which he has called us to take part, we can set our ego aside.  We can serve others.  We can involve ourselves in lives of ministry with passion, constantly reaching out, not to earn God’s love, but because we’re so grateful for his love that we can’t stop—‘just one more piece’ in the puzzle of God’s kingdom, doing whatever we can with all the life we have to proclaim God’s work of peace, love and justice through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Let us pray