Love: It’s not a Matter of Trying Harder

Posted on February 15, 2021 by salooper57

(An excerpt from the sermon, What Goes Up, from 1 Corinthians 13. Click below to watch the entire sermon.)

What Goes Up (! Cor. 13)

People often read the love chapter [1 Corinthians 13] as if the apostle is telling them they must try harder to love. “You were impatient with that person. You should try harder to be patient. You were not kind. You should try harder to be kind. You really should do better.”

That way follows a well-worn path to hypocrisy and apathy. 1 Corinthians 13 is not about what we should be doing. There is no “should” about it.

Grammarians describe “should,” “would,” and “could” words as subjunctive mood verbs. In verses one through three, where Paul describes the lengths to which someone might go to be an honorable person, there are ten subjunctive mood verbs. This is the try harder section. But where that leads – to the conviction (verse 2) that “I am nothing” and, (verse 3) that “I gain nothing” is not where we want to go.

In the next section, which runs from verse 4 through verse 8 and contains a description of love, there is not a single subjunctive mood verb. What does that mean? It means that here Paul is not telling us what we should do but what love does do. When we read this as if Paul is telling us to dig deep and be more patient, be more kind, less envious, less angry, we only succeed in frustrating ourselves—and frustrated people do not love well.

When, later in this letter, Paul tells the Corinthians to “Do everything in love” (1 Cor. 16:14), he is not saying, “Be more loving!” He is telling them to enter into love and do what they do from there. When he tells the Galatians to “serve one another in love” (Gal. 5:13), it’s the same kind of thing. It is not, “Try harder to be loving,” as if we can manufacture love, but “Keep yourselves in the love of God” (Jude 1:21). Since “love comes from God” (I John 4:7) and not from us, “digging deep” usually only leaves us in a hole. We need to go to the source of love. We need to go to God.

That is why, in the very beginning of the next chapter, Paul tells us to “follow the way of” – or, literally, pursue – “love,” which is quite different from pursuing self-improvement. The harder we try to do loving things, the harder we’ll find loving things are to do. But the more we enter into love (and it enters into us), the more we will find that loving things happen through our lives.

Let me put a question to you: Is it hard to love people? For example, when Jesus loved the men who nailed him to the cross by forgiving them, was that hard for him? I don’t think so because he was in love. Not “in love” in the way that phrase is commonly used; no, he lived in love, moved in it, and had his being in it. It wasn’t hard for Jesus to forgive those men but it would have been hard for him to call down curses on them because he was in love and love was in him.[1]

We must keep this in mind. Paul is not telling us to do these things; he is telling us that love does these things. What we have here is neither a lovely sentiment (as some people take it) nor a grinding demand (as others take it) but a helpful description. The 15 action verbs Paul lists – 7 positive and 8 negative – reveal how love acts and does not act. That is valuable information for anyone serious about living the Christian life; that is, about entering the life of love, for it’s the same thing.

The upshot (14:1) is that we need to pursue love. And since “love comes from God,” guess where we will find it? With him. When we enter love, when it enters us, when we “keep ourselves in the love of God,” as Jude says, love ceases to be hard. In fact, our love become downright indiscriminate. We love the cashier. We love our neighbor. We love our neighbor’s petulant kid. We love our enemy. We love the person nailing us to a cross. We don’t need to try harder. We need to draw closer to the God who is love.

[1] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy, p. 183.

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The Uncommon Politic

Posted on February 14, 2021 by salooper57

(This is an excerpt from an article I wrote for The Common Politic. The entire article is available here.)

According to the political scientist Eiten Hersh, of Tufts University, “politics is for power.” In his book by the same name, Hersh, who self-identifies as a political liberal, complains that Americans have lost sight of this obvious truth. This is especially true of the left who, in recent years, has engaged in what he describes as “political hobbyism … emoting and arguing and debating, almost all of this from behind screens.”

Whether Hersh is right or not depends, it seems to me, on two things: (1) whether power is a means or a goal and (2) what type of power is being considered.

If in politics the use of power is seen as a means to an end and that end is the common good of a people, then the acquisition of power is not only a legitimate pursuit, but also a necessary one. However, power is dangerous even when it is legitimate. And it is dangerous, in part, because it is addictive.

The American Church, particularly its more conservative wing, has suffered from this addiction. In the 1970s and 1980s, under the leadership of the Reverend Jerry Falwell, Sr., conservative Christians began seeking power in both politics and the media. The Moral Majority flexed its muscle to oust liberals from Congress and “The Teletubbies” from the airwaves.

The power conservative Christians wielded grew. Politicians began courting them. For a decade or two, a presidential candidate needed to identify as a born again Christian if he were to have any hope of winning an election. I can recall George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ross Perot all answering the question, “Are you a born again Christian?” in the affirmative. From the content of their responses, I doubted whether any of them understood the question.

Conservative Christians’ power faded during the Clinton administration, then declined rapidly over the Obama years, and it frightened them. Like an addict suffering from withdrawal symptoms, they began looking for another fix. They found a supplier in Donald Trump, who promised them another round of power in exchange for their votes.

Mr. Trump followed through on his promise. Conservative Christians, especially evangelicals, were consulted. They were given influence over the selection of Supreme Court Justices and the setting of abortion limits. They were granted protections from government overreach into religious practices.

It felt good to have power again. And that’s the problem. The acquisition of power had become an end in itself for many conservative Christians, who needed power in order to feel secure. When that power was threatened, they responded with anger and even violence, which is what addicts do when their stash is pilfered.

When the acquisition and preservation of power becomes an end in itself, the results will be predictable—and ugly. But even when power is sought and preserved for the purpose of accomplishing just goals, the type of power that is in play is important. Social scientists have identified various kinds of power.

There is legitimate power. This is power that is conferred and exercised through proper and even legal means. Elected officials have such power. So do employers.

There is expert power. This is the kind of power an airplane pilot exercises. He flies the plane because he knows how and others do not. His knowledge enables him to choose where his passengers go—to exercise power over them.

There is the power of recompence. This kind of power exercises control through the promise of reward or the threat of punishment. The categories of reward and punishment include monetary (think pay raises and cuts), position (think promotions and demotions) and recognition (think prestige and shame).

There is referent power. Referent power is given to a leader by followers who respect her character and wisdom. The leader’s power comes from the admiration that followers have for her. Because they trust her, they follow her.

Each of these types of power can be appropriate, even the power of recompence. The teacher who gives a fifth grader an A or an F possesses this kind of power and the student can benefit from its wise use. The boss who fires (or promotes) an employee is exercising this kind of power and can do so for the good of both the employee and the company.

However, when the power of recompence becomes the chief form of power used in a system – whether a school, home, or government – something is seriously wrong. People cannot thrive under these circumstances. It seems to me that Mr. Trump, who achieved stardom with the words, “You’re Fired!” relied too much on this type of power. His administration – think of the extraordinary turnover it experienced – suffered from its overuse.

This brings us back to Eitan Hersh. He believes that politics is for power. I tentatively agree with him, as long as the various types of power are appropriately balanced and the purpose they serve is the common good. But even when this is so, the use of such power is addictive and potentially corrupting. And further, even when power is well used, it is destined to change hands sooner or later. The pendulum swings, gains are reversed, and a status quo is maintained.

The politic of power is the common politic, politics as generally understood. It is time for an uncommon politic, one that does not rely on the acquisition and preservation of power, one practiced by Christians in their relations with each other and those outside the church.

The uncommon politic does not seek to control others but to release them. It does not endlessly rearrange the political pieces on the board but plays a different game altogether. The uncommon politic is the politic of forgiveness.

It is uncommon. Today I read both that Democratic leaders are strategizing their revenge on Donald Trump and that Donald Trump is plotting revenge on both Democrats and those within his own party who failed to support him. This is where the unbalanced power of politics leads. And it doesn’t stop there.

Our nation is more deeply divided than it has been since the time of the Civil War generation. Hostility exists between racial, political, and religious groups. There is animosity between the sexes. Urban and rural dwellers mistrust and despise each other. The college educated have disdain for those without degrees and vice versa.

In many cases, these angry divisions are in reaction to real and egregious offences—sins. Witness the stomach-turning evils exposed by the Me Too movement or consider the unjust killings of black men. The politic of power has not been able to mend the divisions or heal the wounds. It has, in fact, widened the divisions and aggravated the wounds.

Into this setting, Christians can bring the uncommon politic of forgiveness. This involves both: (1) Confession and seeking forgiveness; and (2) releasing and offering forgiveness. Each is controversial. This is not the place to go into the issues involved, but consider the controversy each has generated. The call for reparations, for example, has evoked howls of protests from whites, who label it unjust and wrongheaded. The declaration of forgiveness toward white supremacist Dylan Roof by the members of Mother Emmanuel Church evoked similar protests from blacks who were outraged by the act.

I believe an underlying reason that people are loath to seek and grant forgiveness is that both actions are thought to bring about a loss of power. People see relationships (both personal and communal) in terms of a balance of power. Nothing unbalances the scales of power like forgiveness. People cling to unforgiveness in part because it gives them a feeling of power. People avoid seeking forgiveness because it threatens a loss of power. The cognitive substructure of these ideas is the belief that power must be retained or security will be lost.

Christians are well placed to challenge these ideas and the belief that underlies them because we know that we do not secure ourselves by our own power – whatever form it might take. Because it is God who makes us secure – the biblical support for this belief is overwhelming – we can dare to forgive and seek forgiveness.

The disciples of Jesus practice the politic of forgiveness. They are to forgive each other (Matthew 18:21-22), seek forgiveness from each other (Matthew 5:23-24), and forgive everyone else (Matthew 6:12-15). Forgiveness is one of the most recognizable marks of Jesus’s people.

(Read the entire article at The Common Politic.)

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What it Takes for Love to Last

Posted on February 13, 2021 by salooper57
Photo by Susan Kirsch on Unsplash

Hundreds of years before people began celebrating Valentine’s Day, the holiday du jour for February 14 was Lupercalia. The philosopher Plutarch refers to Lupercalia as a time when “young men of noble families run through the city naked and …strike those they meet with shaggy thongs.” They were history’s first streakers.

Though respectable people no longer took part in it, the festival was still being celebrated in the middle of the third century when a priest named Valentinus – we know him as St. Valentine –lived in Rome. Fast-forward to 496 AD. Lupercalia is a distant memory. February 14 is now the day to celebrate the Feast of St. Valentine.

Valentine’s Day is now associated with romantic love, but it didn’t start that way. St. Valentine – or Valentinus – was a third century Roman priest. He got in trouble for helping Christians (which was illegal at that time) and for flouting the emperor’s prohibition against marrying Christians. He was imprisoned, but the emperor took a liking to him – that is, until he tried to convert the emperor to Christianity. Claudius Gothicus was so angry at Valentine that he had him beaten with sticks and then beheaded on one of the major thoroughfares outside Rome.

I’ve never seen “I lost my head over you” on a Valentine’s Day card but if I ever do, I’m going to buy it.

During the Middle Ages, people somehow began thinking of the feast day of St. Valentine as a time to celebrate romantic love. The 14th century poet Chaucer wrote, “This was on St. Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate.”

Romantic love is something to celebrate, and to have a special day for it is a good thing. Christians think that romantic love is wonderful – an entire book of the Bible is about it – but they don’t believe that it is enough to fulfill us. The people who wrote the Bible had terms to signify four different kinds of love and they understood that all four are important.

One had to do with romantic love. Another had to do with friendship. A third denoted family loyalty. And the fourth referred to God’s own, never-give-up, unconditional, and self-giving love.

Romantic love is like the first stage of a Saturn rocket – the kind that went to the moon (still the most powerful thing humans have ever made). The first stage is spectacular. It’s bright and fiery and exciting. But people who only know this first stage will never attain a stable orbit in their relationship. Romantic love will get people off the ground – gloriously so – but it won’t keep them there. Unless the other kinds of love are also present, the relationship is destined to crash and burn.

Stage Two is friendship love. This is the stage that gets a relationship into a sustainable orbit. In this kind of love people don’t so much look at each other as they look together in the same direction. They play together, talk together, and work together. They pursue goals together. This kind of love keeps relationships going.

Stage Three is family love – that mother bear, protective, blood-is-thicker-than-water kind of love. Stage Three can, and often does, get pretty rocky, but it does something the previous loves cannot do. It enables people to escape the gravity of self-centeredness and attain new heights.

But the Command Module – the thing that holds it all together – is that never-give-up, self-giving God-like love. This is the love that takes people further than they knew they could go. It sees them through a lifetime and carries them on till death. It is an especially beautiful thing when a man and woman and the family they have made still love each other after spending a lifetime together. This kind of love lasts even beyond that.

According to the Bible, this love comes from God. It does not originate in an experience, whether sexual or filial. It does not even originate in a bloodline. Family members can become detached; lovers can grow to hate each other. But the “love” that “comes from God,” remains.

(First published by Gannett.)

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Telling the Good News: Answering Tough Questions

Posted on February 11, 2021 by salooper57

A common criticism non-Christian have goes like this: “Religious people think they are better than everyone else. They are so judgmental. I don’t even want to be around them.”

How do you answer? You go back to Jesus. “I don’t know if you know this, but Jesus felt that way too. The people he liked to hang out with most were the ones religious folks looked down on. When they put them down, Jesus stood up for them.”

Jesus had a lot to say about that too. Check out: Matthew 7:1-6; Mark 2:13-17; Luke 10:3-37 (the story of the Good Samaritan); all of Luke 15; Luke 18:9-14.

Some people say, “You know, I’m just not the religious type.” Whenever someone says that to me, I always respond, “I’m not either.” They can hardly believe it. But then you can go on and say: “And you know what? Jesus wasn’t either.” Then you can tell them about Mark 7:1-13, where Jesus distinguished between religion and knowing and loving God. Religion wasn’t his thing, but he was all about God. You might go on to say that the Bible hardly ever mentions religion – that’s not what it’s all about.

Then you can ask: “What? Did you think Jesus was really religious or something?” You will get their curiosity up. Who knows? That may open the door for further conversations – either with you or with some other person God will send along.

Sometimes people say, “Look, I know I’m perfect or anything – but I try to be a good person.” Your answer might be: “I think that’s great but Jesus said that God wants something a little different than just trying to be a good person. He said that what God really wants is for people to love him and to love their neighbors – the people who come in and out of their lives.”

Then you can follow up with a question: “Or is that what you meant by being a good person?”

If you are living an optimistic, connected, and principled life as a follower of Jesus, sooner or later someone is going to say to you: “If God exists, why does he allow suffering?” That is a big and intractable question. Some people will ask it as a smokescreen. Others will really want to know the answer. It helps to know which kind of person you are talking to. So, you can ask: “Is that something that really bothers you?” Or even, “Would you become a Christian if that question didn’t bother you so much?”

When I am asked that question, my conditioned (and unhelpful) response is to launch into an explanation – a kind of philosophical argument. I want to regurgitate C. S. Lewis’s entire book, The Problem of Pain. I talk about human free will and the glorious kind of world God wanted and still wants. I wax eloquent for twenty minutes – or an hour, if I’m given that long – and, when I’m all done, the person is no closer to Jesus than they were when I started.

Don’t get me wrong. I think those arguments are important and helpful. It’s just that people aren’t argued into the kingdom of God; they’re drawn into it. That’s why they need good news more than they need logical arguments. So, consider telling them the good news that God is not indifferent to our suffering. He actually lived – and lives – a human life in Jesus. (Always bring people back to Jesus.) He experienced pain and suffering, just like we do. Even more than we do. He suffered betrayal by a friend, gross injustice, and a ghastly death.

For whatever reason God set things up the way he did, he at least plays by his own rules. He hasn’t put us through anything he has not experienced himself. He is able to sympathize and to help us when we suffer. He knows – better than we do – how bad suffering can be, yet he has promised that our present suffering won’t compare to the great things that are waiting for his loved ones.

Then you can add something like: “What I’ve found is that answers to why people suffer don’t satisfy me. But the Answerer does. Is that the way it is for you too?” Keep bringing people back to Jesus.

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Telling the Good News: Right Words, Wrong Life?

Posted on February 9, 2021 by salooper57

It is natural, when we are telling people the good news, to want to make sure we have all the right words – it makes us feel safer. But having the right words won’t help if we’re living the wrong life! A life with God that is authentic and satisfying is what provide opportunities.

I’ll mention three characteristics of that kind of life. (There are of course more.) First, it is genuinely optimistic. For the first twenty years of my marriage, my wife told me I was a pessimist. I always countered that I was a realist. Now, I can say that I am an optimist.

This optimism is not a Pollyanna, turn a blind eye, kind of thing. It is a life of hope built on the certainty that God will make things right. God is so much a part of the hopeful life that it is inexplicable apart from him. If your life can be explained without recourse to God, you’re too much like everyone else.

The authentic God-filled life is also a connected life. Connectedness is largely missing in our society. Over the past few decades, social scientists have consistently found “slippages in self-confidence, growing regrets about the past, and declines in virtually every measure of self-reported physical and mental health … regardless of gender, age, marital status, and educational attainment.”[1] This in one of the world’s wealthiest nations.

Studies have found that this unhappiness is rooted in a failure to connect. Here’s how one sociologist summarized it: “Americans over the past several decades became increasingly detached from family and friends …. There is indeed a large body of evidence indicating that social connectedness … has a powerful influence on self-reported health and happiness.”[2]

It was God who said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” We understand that, but we don’t know what to do about it. Jesus does. He offers a connected life. If we are living that life, connected by dozens and dozens of threads to our church family, we will have opportunities to tell others the good news.

The optimistic life and the connected life bring opportunities and so does the principled life. Whenever we see someone living by principle, we have questions. Why do you do that? What do you get out of it? Don’t you miss it? Are there other people like you?

This is not just true of Christian principles; any principled person will raise questions. “You’re vegan? Don’t you miss a good steak?” “You only buy fair trade coffee?” “You use cloth diapers – what’s that about?” But when the principles that make you different come from Christ and his apostles, the door to sharing the good news opens smoothly.

“You mean you are celibate? Really?” “You go to church every week? I mean I know people do that, but you’re like the first one I’ve ever actually met.” (By the way, inviting people to church is still one of the most common routes by which people come to Christ. Think about who you can invite.) “I don’t understand how you can forgive her?” “Why do you give so much money to charity?” “Aren’t you going to respond to the things he posted about you?”

If you are living a life that is optimistic, connected, and principled, you will get those kinds of questions. You need to be ready with answers. And the best place to go for answers is to the life and words of Jesus because they naturally open a door for sharing the good news. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t read theologians and philosophers – some of us, at least, should. What I am saying is that we need to be so familiar with Jesus that we can answer people’s questions in his words and with examples from his life.

Here is what I mean. Someone says to you: “You’re inviting me to your baptism? I thought people got baptized when they were babies.” And you say, “Well, I’m kind of a big baby,” and you both laugh. But he says, “Why now? I mean, it’s not like you have to get baptized to go to heaven, right?”

That is an opportunity to seize! But handle it wisely. Instead of going into a long theological explanation that will go right over your friend’s head, explain that you take seriously what Jesus what said about making disciples and “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” That will almost certainly raise further questions in your friend’s mind, which is good. But if it doesn’t, you should ask a question: “So, haven’t you ever thought about getting baptized?” Questions open doors.

One of the things I’ve heard many times over the years is: “If I walked into a church, the walls would fall down.” That person is telling me that he’s done a lot of things he shouldn’t have done and he can’t imagine that God would want him anymore. That one throws the door wide open to talk about Jesus. He spoke about this kind of thing over and over. One of many places you could go is Luke 7:36-50.

You could say: “So Jesus was having lunch with a seriously religious guy, when a woman came in and did something really embarrassing. Only Jesus was not embarrassed. The religious guy thought: ‘Jesus obviously doesn’t know what kind of woman she is – what a trashy life she’s lived?’ But Jesus did know. He told the woman her sins were forgiven and put the religious guy in his place.”

And then you could ask: “You ever read one of the biographies of Jesus?” If your friend says no, you can suggest a good biography: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. If they seem interested, you can ask them if they want to read it at the same time and get together over coffee to talk about it.

[1] See Herbst, C. M., “‘Paradoxical’ Decline? Another Look at the Relative Reduction in Female Happiness.” Journal of Economic Psychology (2011).

[2] https://psmag.com/social-justice/new-research-suggests-everybodys-less-satisfied-33769

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What Superbowl Advertisers Teach Us

Posted on February 7, 2021 by salooper57

(This previously – and somewhat dated – article is still relevant on this Superbowl Sunday.)

Sixty-nine commercial spots ran during this year’s Superbowl. Each thirty-second commercial cost two million dollars, which means, if I did the math right, that advertisers spent 138 million dollars to convince us to buy their product during just one television program. One suspects that Pepsi, Anheuser-Bush, Cadillac and others don’t buy into the lingering myth that television content has no lasting effect on viewers.

John Paul II once noted that “Vast sectors of society are confused about what is right and what is wrong and are at the mercy of those with the power to ‘create’ opinion and impose it on others.”  I am not sure who the Pope had in mind when he referred to “those with the power to ‘create’ opinion and impose it” but I suspect he was thinking of those in the entertainment industry.

Television and the movies have a bully pulpit in almost every home in America.  So what do they teach?  For one thing, they teach that religious people are always suspect, usually odd and sometimes dangerous (unless, of course, they are clergy, which almost guarantees them to be dangerous).  A recent study conducted by the Parents Television Council found that 25% of  the time religious people are portrayed on television, it is in a negative light (22% of such portrayals are positive).  But on NBC, the network of West Wing, ER and “Must See TV”, over nine out of ten portrayals of religious people were negative.  Apparently someone at NBC is on a mission to warn America that religious people are greedy, mean and, very possibly, sexual predators.

Ah, yes, sex: another favorite topic for television.  According to an Associated Press article by Lynn Elber, television sends teenagers (and all the rest of us) mixed messages about sex.  A study by researchers at Stanford University and Lewis and Clark college found that teens receive a “highly inconsistent picture of what sexual relation are and can be.”

Elber goes on to quote from the study, which notes that TV lessons on sex are both “explicit and implicit” and “ranged from ‘Virginity is a sign that a boy is a loser’ to ‘Teens don’t need to be sexually active to be cool.”  I wonder which message plays best in the mind of a teenager.

John Ashton, Britain’s Health Protection Agency North West director, has no doubt.  He wrote that “…on film and television people jump into bed together…and there are no consequences.  It’s nonsense.”

And they are jumping into bed together more frequently than ever before.  Marcus Yoars, associate editor at “Plugged In”, writes that ABC, desperate to reverse flagging ratings, found their solution in “Desperate Housewives.”  It is a show built on “lingerie-clad seductresses, affair-driven story lines and suggestive dialogue.”  ABC added to their repertoire of sexually suggestive programs the high school drama, “Life as We Know It,” and the lewd, “Boston Legal.” I have to admit that I haven’t seen any of these shows, but I have seen the commercials, and that was enough for me.

Television further teaches us that women and girls need to be physically attractive.  Guys can be overweight and balding as long as they are funny, but girls have to be beautiful. If they are not? Then their best hope is to be the lovable but geeky friend of a beautiful girl. Not the role most women aspire to.

Of course, its only television.  It doesn’t really have an effect on us – or does it? Maybe we should ask what the marketing gurus at Anheuser-Bush think.  They just spent $66,666 per second to air six commercials during the Superbowl. I’m guessing they have an opinion

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A Different Take on Immigration

Posted on February 6, 2021 by salooper57

This is a true – and sad – story. I do not know the details, but I have become acquainted with the outline. It seems personal to me.

Violence, war, and famine were not happening over there. They were happening here, all around the family and the village. Dangerous men were strongarming them for protection money – money they could not afford to give, money that was needed to buy food.

There was nothing they could do. They scraped what little money they had together and paid them off. By the time the army arrived, it was too late; their tormentors were already gone. Besides that, the soldiers were as bad as the men they were fighting.

After two dreadful growing seasons – most of the people in the village were farmers – poverty was pervasive throughout the region. The farmers had no crops to sell. The village artisans had no one to buy their merchandise. Life in the village had always been difficult, always only one step ahead of indigence; but during the last three years starvation had been nipping their heels.

But word had been spreading through the village and around the region that America was the land of promise, the land of plenty. In America, there is law and order. Its people live in peace. Hard work brings prosperity there, unlike here, where it invites extortion.

People all over the village, all over the region, were talking about America. They even knew the names of the particular places where they wanted to live. Carolina sounded like heaven. Pennsylvania – lots of immigrants go there. There was work in New York. They passed around books about these places, printed in their own language, and shared them with friends and relatives.

Somehow, within a matter of months, a caravan had formed. Thousands of people, people who have lost hope of a decent life in their own country, banded together in the hope of reaching America. The countries they passed through treated them like outlaws and, no doubt, a few of them were. But most were just people, families, looking for a way to survive.

The journey to America was fraught with dangers. Too many of the emigres did not survive it. The family about which I know began the journey to America with seven members: two parents and five children, the oldest being twelve. When they arrived, there were three. The father and three of the children had died. The mother, the twelve-year-old son, and his eleven-year-old sister survived.

They crossed into America and were immediately detained. The mother was separated from her children and sent to a detention camp. Unless she had the means to provide for herself and her children – which, of course, she did not – she would be sent back. She waited in the camp for months, not knowing what had become of her children.

They had been trafficked. Separated from each other and from their mother, their lives were filled with dread. What would become of them? Would they ever be freed, as they had been promised? And, if they were, what would happen then? And, worst of all, where was their mother? Was she even alive?

We have all heard the stories of Central American caravans, of detention camps, and the separation of parents from their children. These stories saddened me, but they seemed far away and utterly intractable. This past year, when I learned my ancestors had experienced the same kinds of hardships, the contemporary stories became more real and more unacceptable.

The story I tell in this article is my 6th-great-grandfather’s story. Johann Leper immigrated from southwest Germany in 1709. His father and three of his siblings died on the journey. His mother was placed in a detention camp and eventually was sent back. He and his sister were indentured for years. It is a shame I needed an ancestor to put a face to the contemporary stories of fear and pain. I offer no solutions to the current immigration mess, only a suggestion: we must try to see that these are real people, in real trouble, with real hopes and fears. People a lot like my 6th-great-grandfather. People a lot like me.

(First Published by Gannett.)

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What We’ll Find in the Future (According to the Bible)

Posted on February 4, 2021 by salooper57

(An excerpt from the sermon Good News About the Future. Reading Time: Less than three minutes.)

Some things will, thankfully, be missing from the future. But some of the things that are missing now will, thankfully, be there in the future. The most important is God’s presence. Because of Adam’s sin in the Garden, the God-with-us became the God-away-from-us. All our woes followed on that absence. All of us have experienced the feeling that something is missing. That’s because something – no, Someone – is missing and nothing has been right while he has been away. Or, rather, while we have been away. But he will be God-with-us again. That is good news.

The promise of God’s presence has sustained his people. To Jacob: “I will be with you” (Genesis 26:3). To Moses: “I will be with you” (Exodus 3:12). To Joshua: “I myself will be with you” (Deuteronomy 31:23). To Gideon: “I will be with you” (Judges 6:16). To his people: “When you pass through the waters, I will be with you” (Isaiah 43:2). The promise of the New Covenant, which was brought into effect through Jesus, was: “I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest” (Hebrews 8:10-11).

These are promises we cherish and yet how often God has seemed far away! Like Zion, we say: “The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me” (Isaiah 49:14). God-with-us has been, because of sin, God-away-from-us.

But here is what the future holds (Revelation 21:3): “I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Now the dwelling of God is with people, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.”

But if God has desired to be with us all along, why hasn’t he? Because we couldn’t endure his presence. I don’t mean just emotionally but in every way. Sin has so unraveled us that the near presence of the holy God would unmake us entirely.

Well then how can he be with us in the future? What has changed? Christ has come. Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ has sent his Spirit into our hearts. The resurrection will transform us, remake us, into People of the Presence. We will grow and thrive in God’s presence, like a plant that loves the sun. That is good news.

What else awaits us? Every good thing awaits us. In God’s future, nothing good will be lost. “The kings of the earth (Revelations 21:24) will bring their splendor into it.” This echoes Isaiah who said that the wealth of the nations will be brought into God’s future kingdom.

(Want to watch this sermon? Click here.)

Picture it this way. You are standing in a train station. There are two tracks, running into the distance, as far as the eye can see. One comes from the east and ends at the station while the other, after a span in which they overlap, begins at the station, and runs to the west. The trains that run on those tracks are unimaginably long. The first, which arrives at the station with innumerable cars, is filled with all the riches of earths’ history.

Its treasures include business, technology, art, music, science, literature, sports, games, and more – all the good things a society (whether ancient or modern) has ever produced. But these precious things are like raw ore and are filled with impurities.

Mixed in with these good things, even embedded in them, are toxins, injustices, greed, hatred, bigotry, and inequality. The sheer volume of these evils outweighs the good things they pervade.

As the first train reaches its terminal point, it is unloaded and all its treasures are purified of their contaminants. The ugliness that has defaced earth’s beauties, the toxins that have poisoned them, the hatred that has scarred humanity’s best efforts, is removed and incinerated. This is called “The Judgment.” What is left – and there is a great deal left – is loaded onto the second train.

The age to come will not start with a blank slate. “The wealth of nations” will be brought into it. Earth’s natural beauties and every good work will be preserved by the God who never wastes anything – least of all people. The things we have rightly loved will not be lost but they, like us, will be purified. That is good news.

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What Will Be Missing in the Future (According to the Bible)

Posted on February 3, 2021 by salooper57

(An excerpt from the sermon Good News About the Future.)

There are things that have been so much a part of our experience that we cannot imagine life without them. Fear is one. Even people who have no cognitive apprehension of fear are nonetheless restrained and unsettled by it. Fear was the first emotion Adam and Eve experienced after the rebellion, and it has been the quintessential human emotion ever since.

When the fear we have carried all our lives is gone – and it will be – we will feel a heavy load has been lifted. We’ll be buoyant, as if gravity itself has changed. Like Neil Armstrong bounding across the face of the moon; like the man crippled from birth who was healed at the temple gate, we’ll go “walking and leaping and praising God.”

There are other things that will not make it into God’s future kingdom. Revelation 21 and 22 mentions some of them. One, according to Revelation 21:1, is the sea. How could there be no sea?

It is important to remember that The Revelation belongs to an ancient (now extinct) genre of literature called apocalyptic, for which symbolism is its stock and trade. The symbols in Revelation are drawn largely from the Old Testament, which is the key to understanding them. One example is the sea. John says in verse 1: “And there was no longer any sea.”

This makes sense when we understand that in Old Testament symbolism the sea regularly represents chaos and evil. For example, in the Book of Daniel (which belongs to the same genre), the beasts that devastate the earth arise out of the sea. When John says that there will be no more sea, he is telling us that the source from which chaos and evil arise will be gone. There will be no more turmoil, disorder, and confusion. That is good news.

(Want to watch this sermon? Click here.)

Look at verse 4: “There will be no more death.” Death is an intruder. It was smuggled into our world, our lives, and even our bodies through Adam’s sin. If you have been around for any time at all, you know The Book of Common Prayer is right: “In the midst of life we are in death.” But it is even worse than that: not only are we in death; death is in us. But through the resurrection of Jesus Christ our ancient enemy has already been defeated and at our resurrection it will be obliterated – expunged from the universe. That is good news!

There will be no more mourning or crying – no more tears. The inconsolable hurt that resides in the depths of the human soul will be gone. The bitter spring from which those tears flow will be dried up. In the words of Isaiah, “sorrow and sighing will flee away” (Isaiah 35:10).

There will be no more pain. Can you imagine? No more arthritic pain. No more pain from disease or injury. No more emotional pain. For some people, pain is the “enemy that is closer than a brother.” It keeps them awake at night, haunts their sleep, and meets them first thing each morning. Pain too is an interloper, but it will be stopped at the border. It will not enter the age to come.

There will be no more death, mourning, crying, or pain because there will be no more sin. Imagine walking into a room you’ve never been in before. Every inch of you is dirty. You are bedraggled, weary, and sad, carrying a weight that nearly buckles your legs beneath you. But as you cross the threshold – you don’t even know how it happens – the weight is lifted; the dirt is gone. You not only feel good, you feel better than you have ever felt, better than you knew it was possible to feel. That is what the future holds for those who belong to Jesus Christ. That is good news!

There will be no more sin (verse 8) because there will be no more sinners. And that includes you and me. We will be changed. Sin, and the devastation it has caused, will be gone. The world will be changed. No more greed. No more hatred. No more violence. No more lies. No more preying on innocent people. Sin will not be around us and it will not be in us. That is incomprehensible. That is incomparable. That is good news!

There will be no more darkness and night (21:25). In the Bible, darkness and night symbolize confusion, deception, and sin. But in the age to come, there will be light, transparency, and truth, for “the glory of God gives it light” (v. 23) “and the Lamb is its lamp.” That is good news!

There will be no more shame (21:27). Since our first parents’ sin, the black thread of shame has been woven into our very nature. It caused Adam and Eve to hide, and we’ve been hiding ever since. They hid their shame in the trees of the Garden. We hide ours in distractions and work. But shame will not enter into the age to come. No more fear of what others think. Even the possibility of shame will be removed. That is good news!

Another thing that will be missing – a very consequential thing: There will be no more curse (22:3). Adam’s rebellion brought a curse that has affected every aspect of life on earth. But the curse will be no more. And this because of Christ who, in Paul’s words, “became a curse for us.” He made all this possible. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of Jesus Christ.

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HOPE: Good News About the Future

Posted on February 1, 2021 by salooper57

The Bible gives many reasons for hope. Christians believe that the future will be good – incomprehensibly and incomparably good! This sermon shows us why.

Viewing Time: 25:51

(Excerpts will be posted later in the week.)

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