Wide Angle: Creator

Posted on October 28, 2021 by salooper57
Photo by Daian Gan on Pexels.com

God is not merely a creator; he is the Creator. This is a major theme in the Scriptures. Over sixty times, God is either said to have created or is referred to as the Creator. The biblical writers clearly thought that God’s role as creator should be kept in mind. He is sculptor, painter and composer, and the universe is his block of marble, his canvas, and his staff paper.

His “Creation Symphony” is the archetype for every form of musical expression, from Bach to Dylan to Justin Bieber. Every composer since has merely drawn from his material. Every composition since has been a “Variation on a Theme.” He made birds and streams sing, waves and waterfalls crash. The wind croons; the oceans roar; the leaves on a billion trees dance, and all his creatures keep time to the music.

God is the most daring, most imaginative artist in the universe. He has filled the seas with creatures of every shape and size and brilliant color. He paints his birds and fish and sunsets with hues so vivid and lines so bold that our most avant garde painters seem tame by comparison.

On my shelf is a book titled, “Galaxies,” by the science writer, Timothy Ferris. It includes photos taken from observatories around the world, and they are stunning. There is the Horsehead Nebula, draped like a king’s charger in royal reddish-purple, raring up at the stars forever. The Orion nebula looks as if it exploded a moment ago, when our heads were turned. Then there is the reddish orange Eagle Nebula, blazing like an astronomical forest fire, and measuring 70 light years in diameter. Since one light year is approximately 6 trillion miles, the Eagle Nebula measures about 420 trillion miles from side to side. God paints on a big canvas. Our own average-sized galaxy is bigger yet, and it is only one of an estimated 350 billion such galaxies in the universe. That is a big, big canvas.

The first verse of the Bible tells us that in the beginning, God created (that word is always and only used of God) the heavens and the earth, and he created it, the author of Hebrews tells us, simply by commanding it to be. We see this again and again in the first chapter of Genesis. Like a leitmotif in a symphony, the words “And God said” repeat, with the subsequent refrain, “and it was so.”

Verse 3: “And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” Verse 6: “And God said, ‘Let there be an expanse between the waters to separate water from water.’” Verse 7: “And it was so.” Verse 9: “And God said, ‘Let the water under the sky be gathered to one place, and let dry ground appear.’ And it was so.” God did not paint Orion’s fireworks with a brush, but with a word. He creates by speaking.

That is a theme we see repeated in the Scriptures: God’s word is powerful. He creates photons and fish and birds and rivers and mountains and suns and nebulae and galaxies just by speaking them into being. When he speaks, things happen. His word – the expression of his thought – brings worlds into being. He “calls things that are not as though they were.”1

The whole of creation is his realm, and his entire realm responds to his voice, and it does not matter whether we are talking about our home (this solar system) or our neighborhood (the spiral arm of our galaxy) or our town (the Milky Way) or the furthest reaches of the universe. God speaks, and it is so.

     1 Romans 4:17

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The Bible as Panorama

Posted on October 27, 2021 by salooper57

I have a picture from 1917 or ’18 of my grandfather’s army company. It is one of those panoramic pictures that a photographer took in numerous shots and then seamlessly joined together. Because of the way the picture was taken, it was possible for a man on one end of that long row of soldiers to sprint to the other end and have his picture taken a second time. So, in some of these old photos, you will find the same soldier on both ends of the same row at what seems like the same time! I suppose it would be possible to find the same soldier in one of these panoramic pictures on both ends and in the middle.

It is like that when we take a panoramic look at the Scriptures. We look in the beginning, at the creation, and then we turn our gaze to the end, to the judgment, and beyond. And at both the beginning and the end, we find the same figure. We look in the middle, and there he is again! And there, and there! Wherever we look, we find Jesus Christ. He is “the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.”

God’s story is as seamless as one of those old panoramic pictures, and everywhere we look we find him. Sometimes we get the idea that God’s story has been interrupted, started and stopped, or that the theme has occasionally changed. It is not so. It is one story from beginning to end. God is both the author and the actor. The Bible is, in that sense, autobiographical. It is the story of what God has done and is doing to right what has been wronged in his creation. It is the story of his love and faithfulness or, as the Scripture often puts it, his righteousness.

When I first came into possession of the panoramic picture of Company A (or whichever company it was), I went over it with a magnifying glass, trying to pick out my grandfather. Often, we do something similar with the biblical story. We focus on one detail, to the exclusion of everything else.

Now that is not wrong; in fact it is a good thing. Every detail deserves our scrutiny and rewards our effort. But sometimes it is necessary to back up and scan the whole picture, to get a wide-angle view.

On the plains of Peru there is a network of strange lines made by the ancient people, the Nazea. Some of these lines cover as many as ten square miles. For years archeologists assumed that the lines were what remained of ancient irrigation ditches.

Then in 1939, Dr. Paul Kosok of Long Island University, discovered what they really were. He flew over those plains and, from an aerial view he could see that the ancient lines that seemed so random at ground level were in fact enormous drawings – like pictographs – of birds and animals and insects.

Just so, from one perspective, the stories of the Bible seem detached and unrelated. But as we survey them from a wider angle, we suddenly see how one line leads to another to form one great picture of God’s redemptive purpose – from Genesis to the Revelation. And while there are many great men and women in the Bible, we discover that there really is only one protagonist, the lead actor throughout, and that is the Lord God himself. A wide angle view of the Bible can help us see with greater clarity (or, perhaps, see for the first time) what God is up to, and how we fit into it.

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The Restorer of Lost Things

Posted on October 24, 2021 by salooper57
Viewing time: 29 minutes

Know someone who might benefit from this message of hope? Share it! (You’ll find the share buttons below.)

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Panorama: The Bible’s Big Picture

Posted on October 23, 2021 by salooper57

I have a very old suitcase in a closet upstairs. It has not latched for generations; its hardware is broken and rusted, its leather cover torn and dried. I keep it because it came from my parents and because it is stuffed with pictures. 

In one of those photos, taken around 1902, I see my grandfather, my dad’s dad. He is about thirteen-years-old, I would guess, and is sitting on a horse. In another, I find my mother at about twenty-three, posing in front of a palm tree in Florida in a skimpy (for 1950) bathing suit, with a man I don’t recognize. Then there are pictures of my brother and me in our infancy and childhood.  In addition, there are many pictures of people I have never met and whose names I don’t know.  The photos are in no discernable order.  Some are from more than a hundred years ago, some are more recent. 

Every once in a while, I will go to that suitcase and begin pulling out pictures. I pause for a while over the ones that portray people I recognize (or think I do) and pass quickly over the ones I do not know.

Many people come to the Bible the way I go to that suitcase.  They rummage through it, looking for anything interesting or anyone they might recognize. They see no order in it, no connecting links. They treat the Bible like a jumble of unrelated snapshots – one theological, one moral, another liturgical. But the Bible is much more like an enormous panoramic photo than it is like my suitcase. It gives us a unified picture of God as he pursues his purposes in the world.

Craig Brian Larson always kept coffee table books on a stand on his desk at work. For a while he had “America’s Spectacular National Parks” displayed.  He kept it open to a breathtaking photo of the Grand Tetons.  The picture stretched from the page on the left to the page on the right.  After a few days he noticed that the right-hand page was doubled over.  It was extra long and folded in half.  In other words, he had been looking at only part of the picture.  It opened up another sixteen inches to reveal a magnificent mountain landscape he had not yet seen.

When we explore the Scriptures with a wide-angle lens, we discover that the Bible – from Genesis to Revelation – tells the same story.  Its pages unfold to reveal various aspects of an enormous panorama, too large to take in at a single setting … or a hundred settings. Whenever we open the book and turn the pages, we find that the picture extends further than we had imagined, from Creation to New Creation, from the Beginning to an Ending that never ends.

It is the picture of the compassionate and gracious God, who is slow to anger but abounds in love. The focal point of the picture – the place where the panorama comes together and makes sense – is on a hill outside Jerusalem. Somehow, when we look there, when we look into the face of Christ, we see the gracious God (who is otherwise too grand to take in) and his loving purpose for the world he has made.

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. (2 Cor. 4:6)

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Mission Trips? Go For Those Who Stay

Posted on October 20, 2021 by salooper57

I am just back from the Baja Peninsula. Not Cabo, or Mazatlán, or Acapulco, but Tijuana. We did not go to soak up the sun on a stretch of white sand beach or to get in a few rounds of golf on a Riviera Maya course. We went to work.

We went to Tijuana, a city of over 2 million people, to work with Spectrum Ministries in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods. We were not the experts from America coming to rescue the Mexican people. We were not experts at all. We were pastors and computer programmers, stay at home moms, and loading dock workers.

We did not go to tell the Mexicans who work for Spectrum what to do. We went to be told by them what needed to be done. They were the experts; we were the laborers. Whether we were building a house, visiting an orphanage, or passing out clothing and food, we did it under the direction of the Mexicans who live and work there.

Some of us had worked with Spectrum previously. Most of us, including me, were rookies who did not know what to expect. On our first day, within minutes of arriving at the Spectrum dorm, we were off to a remote neighborhood to pour a concrete foundation.

Readers may assume they know what pouring a foundation in a neighborhood entails but, if they have not done so in Tijuana, they are probably mistaken. The neighborhood lay on the side of a steep, grassless hill on the outskirts of the city. The approach to the neighborhood is on a deeply rutted dirt road that is in places unthinkably steep.

We parked about twenty feet above the postage-stamp sized lot and unbolted – I do not mean unhitched, since we didn’t have a hitch – the portable cement mixer Spectrum owns. We needed to get this heavy mixer down a steep, five-foot incline and had to dig out a spot so that it could sit somewhat level.

We then added many five-gallon buckets of sand and of gravel, along with bags of cement. When mixing was completed, we tipped the mixer so that the cement ran down an improvised trough across another fifteen feet of steep hillside and into one or other of two wheelbarrows that waited below. We did this hour after hour, while those working below shoveled the cement into the forms that had been prepared.

Three days later, we returned to build the house, which is sixteen feet long by twelve feet wide. We got to meet the young, single mom for whom the house was being built, but were glad to know the Spectrum staff had developed a relationship with her and her relatives. They will see her regularly, for they come to this neighborhood every few weeks.

For more information on Spectrum Ministries, go to https://www.spectrumministries.org/

One day, between laying the foundation and building the house, we went to a local orphanage, where we were assigned to various work crews. Some of us cleaned floors while others made minor repairs. Yet others of us went up on the roof to seal seams. When these tasks were completed, we played with the children, who are hungry for attention.

Some people who go on trips like this come home deeply burdened over the poverty they have witnessed. But poverty, like wealth, is relative. The people we met in Tijuana, some living in stark conditions, do not think of themselves as impoverished and are not looking to be rescued by white saviors from the north.

What are they looking for? I gave that a lot of thought and have concluded that they are looking for the same things we all desire: acceptance, reassurance, and love. We offered these things during the week we were there, but Spectrum does so week after week. More importantly, they tell people about the God who has demonstrated his love and acceptance through Christ.

I have come to think that “mission trips” are expensive failures for those who go to provide temporary relief. But when those who go support and enhance the work of those who stay, who week after week demonstrate the love of God, such trips can be an enduring success.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Pray About Everything

Posted on October 20, 2021 by salooper57

A sermon on Philippians 4:6-7 by Kevin Looper.

Viewing Time: 24 minutes (approximate).
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I Shall Be Made Thy Music

Posted on October 17, 2021 by salooper57

A few years ago, and for a few years in a row, it seemed like the song, “I Can Only Imagine” played at nearly every funeral I officiated. It is a good song, but I think a slight change of wording might be in order and would certainly make it more biblical. Instead of, “I can only imagine,” I suggest, “I can’t even imagine.” “I can’t even imagine what it will be like when I walk by your side. I can’t even imagine what my eyes will see when your face is before me. I can’t even imagine.”

St. Paul wrote: “Eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and human mind has not imagined what God has prepared for those who love him.” Jesus said to Nicodemus, “If you don’t believe when I talk to you about things on earth, how can you possibly believe if I talk to you about things in heaven?” St. John wrote, “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known.”

We have heard only a little – and comprehended even less – of the wild, wonderful, beautiful things in heaven. There are angels and cherubim and seraphim – and, if the books of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation give us any light on the subject – creatures that would set our hair on end.

And then there is the music. What might it be to hear the morning stars singing together? What glory, what rapture must there be at the sound of angels singing, joined by God’s holy people, and even inanimate creation bursting into praise? Tears of joy must be streaming down J.S. Bach’s face

Forget the haloed saint reclining on a cloud, playing some mournful harp. The music in heaven will delight and renew us because its rhythm is the one that resonates in our hearts and brains—and in every molecule of creation. Our hearts beat to it already, but on the day we join Christ, something more will happen. It can’t really be put into words, but it is what John Donne had in mind when he wrote, “Since I am coming to that holy room where, with Thy choir of saints forevermore, I shall be made Thy music.” We will get in. We will be united with that thing we have always loved.

But all the rapturing, beautiful, soul-transporting music of heaven will hush and become a background harmony at the ravishing sound of his voice. To hear the voice that sets angels trembling with delight, that spoke worlds into being, the voice that said, “Let there be light”; and there was light; to hear that voice say, “Well done, faithful servant. Enter into the joy of the Lord,” will be nothing short of new creation.

We haven’t seen anything yet, but we will see something soon. By the mercy of God and only by the grace of Christ, we shall see friends shining like the sun in the kingdom of our Father. We will see the heavenly Jerusalem, the city of the living God. We will see thousands and thousands of angels in joyful assembly. It will be enough to take our breath away.

Then we will see the Face that will make us new. One look, and we will be transformed with a weight of glory far beyond all comparison. In that moment we will know why we were made, why all things were made, and we will know that the making was good—was very good. Then there will be no more mourning, of crying, pain and the One seated on the throne will say with unbridled joy: “Behold, I make all things new.”

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Self-Deception: Following Your Own Echo

Posted on October 16, 2021 by salooper57

Years ago, I jumped in my Olds Delta 88, turned on the radio, and took off for town. There was a preacher on the radio who, before I got around to changing the station, said something that caught my attention. I continued to listen because the fellow seemed to have something worth saying.

He went on to something else with which I agreed, and I thought, “This guy’s not bad.” Then he said something that took me by surprise. I not only agreed with it, but it was something that I had said myself. I had never heard anyone else say it, yet he phrased it exactly the way I do.

I glanced at the car stereo. It was not set to a broadcast station but was playing a cassette tape. Apparently, my wife had been listening to a sermon on tape. Suddenly, I realized that the guy I was listening to was me. It was a sermon I had preached years earlier.

It took me about two miles to figure this out. It was not because I was utterly lacking in self-awareness—not completely anyway. The church’s recording deck and the car’s cassette player apparently ran at different speeds, pitching my voice higher than it normally is.

I had a good laugh at myself. First, because I hadn’t recognized my own voice. Second, because it took me two or three miles to remember my own sermon. (And if I didn’t remember it, how can I expect the church family to do so?) And third, because I had been internally applauding my own wisdom, which I would have been ashamed to do had I known it was me.

But isn’t that just like us? We think other people are wise, whenever they say what we say. Our own echo always carries the ring of truth.

Isn’t that what is happening in our culture today, particularly on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter? People scan their Facebook page looking to find voices that sound just like theirs. When they “like” some post on Facebook, they are frequently saying “Amen” to their own echo.

The Bible, particularly the Book of Proverbs, encourages people to seek counsel from many sources. But who does that anymore? We seek counsel from our own echo, as it bounces around social media in the form of memes, tweets, and “likes”.

Gregg Ten Elshof, Professor of Philosophy at Biola University, calls this “attention management.” We are likely to attend to the things that reinforce beliefs we already hold. And since, as William James noted, “Only those items I notice shape my mind,” we are apt not to notice the things that might undermine our truth constructs.

I have caught myself employing attention management. I have seen others, both religious believers and atheists, do the same. It is a universal problem. People who think that they have never done it are probably attention management’s most proficient users.

Ten Elshof illustrates attention management in his excellent book, “I Told Me So.” Some years ago, a study was performed in which subjects were presented evidence linking excessive caffeine use with breast cancer. After reviewing the data, subjects were asked if they found the evidence convincing. Women who consumed large amounts of caffeine found the evidence less credible than those who consumed little. Men, whether they were coffee drinkers or not, found the evidence persuasive.

In other words, people who might consider the hypothesis bad news were least likely to be convinced by the evidence. It doesn’t require much imagination to see how this works itself out in debates about vaccines, masking, congressional spending limits, belief in the existence of God or, for that matter, which college football teams deserve to be in the championship playoffs.

This problem, rooted in the human tendency toward self-deception, is not going away. What can we do about it? A first step is to humble ourselves and stop being dogmatic. A second step is to give those with whom we disagree the benefit of the doubt regarding their motives. A third step is to listen to understand, not refute. This won’t cure the problem, but it may help control it.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Re-Story Your Life

Posted on October 9, 2021 by salooper57

The way we humans think – that we think at all – is a marvelous thing. There are, of course, different parts of the brain – the mind’s amazing instrument – which perform different functions in the collection, storage, and transfer of information. When the mind uses that information, it does so (in large part) by storying.

Humans use stories to categorize and contextualize information – information that would be practically useless without the God-given ability to make stories. Storying is an essential part of what it means to be human. When God “formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life …” (Genesis 2:7), he became a living storyteller.

The way we process marital bliss and marital problems, vacations, flat tires, and personal conflicts is through stories. This means that if we categorize and contextualize information – including marriage problems and bad bosses – using the wrong stories, we will go wrong. A grateful and happy life will be simply impossible.

An illustration might help. A jet crash-lands on an island in the South Pacific. The survivors scramble off the plane and stand huddled together at a safe distance. And then someone shouts, “There are blankets, clothing, and food in the cargo hold!” As soon as the significance of that dawns on people, everyone tries to get to get to the provisions first, afraid of not getting their share. People are stuffing bread and pretzels and meat in their shirts and trying to get ashore without their fellow castaways knowing they have provisions. Everyone is afraid of starving.

Disgusted by the riot on the beach, a husband and wife decide to explore the island. What they find just over the first hill surprises them: there are cows and chickens everywhere – must have been brought by a shipwrecked vessel a decade ago or more. There are fruit trees and pineapples – the valley is filled with them. There are even cases of dried food rations that must have been left behind when those first castaways were rescued.

Instead of trying to stuff a chicken and a pineapple into their shirts, they return to the beach shouting the good news to everyone and sharing the things they’ve brought back. Why the difference? The one group is telling themselves a story of deprivation and hunger while the other is telling themselves a story of provision and plenty.

Now, one of the things to notice is that the panic the people on the beach felt was real even though the story they told themselves was false. That’s how the stories we tell ourselves work. They affect the way we feel and think. But it is even more than that: the stories are the way we think, at least in large part.

In these last few years of political turmoil and civil unrest, not to mention the calamity of Covid-19, the story many people are telling themselves is one of chaos, loss, and death. How will that affect the way they feel and think? The answer is obvious. They will experience feelings of anxiety, anger, and bewilderment.

Christians believe that their story – having been written into God’s story in Christ – is not one of calamity, loss, and death but of blessing, provision, and eternal life. This doesn’t mean that Christians don’t have troubles – a glance at St. Paul’s laundry list of hardships in 2 Corinthians 12 will convince anyone otherwise – but it does mean that whatever happens in our part of the story is being written into a bigger, better, story. It’s the best story ever, by the best author ever, with the best ending ever.

It is because St. Paul’s understood this that he instructed people to “rejoice always.” This will seem like outrageous advice to anyone who is oblivious to the larger context which Paul assumes. But if his assumption is correct, then his instruction is nothing short of life-giving.

It is time to re-story our lives. Instead of sickness, broken relationships, and political discords, we need to find a stable axis around which our lives can revolve. For Christians, this will mean interpreting and telling their story as part of the adventurous love story God is telling through Christ.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Absalom, Absalom: The Temptation of Power

Posted on October 5, 2021 by salooper57

In this sermon we dig into the story of King David’s son Absalom. We see how people can be lured away from the good life God has planned for them by the temptation to attain power illegitimately. We also see the wonderful power of true repentance.

Viewing time: Approximately 25 minutes
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