Powerful Prayers: Prayers God Loves to Answer

Posted on January 28, 2020 by salooper57

http://lockwoodchurch.org/media Colossians 1:9-12 – Part 2 (Listening time 26:00)

How strong are you? How much weight can you bench press? How many miles can you run? (In my case, it might be better to measure in yards.) How high is your vertical jump?

But what about spiritual strength? What does it mean for a follower of Jesus to be strong? Are there tests to measure spiritual strength?

Yes, there are and we learn about them from the Apostle Paul’s description of his prayer for the Colossians. There are three principal tests for spiritual strength. Take the tests – see how you do.

Feel free to comment. Best to you!

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You Need to Make a Choice: Here’s Why

Posted on January 25, 2020 by salooper57

In the biblical story of the first humans, Adam and Eve face a choice: obey their Maker’s directive or disobey and seek their own way. They chose the latter, at great cost to the race.

We might wonder why God would put them in a place where a choice of this magnitude, with such potentially catastrophic consequences, would be required. One reason seems to be this: if they were to have any hope of becoming the magnificent beings God intended, they would need to become volitional; that is, they would need to become choosing creatures.

The stakes would have been even higher had God waited until there were millions of humans before presenting such a choice. In terms of humanity’s prospects, the one thing worse than a wrong choice by Adam and Eve was a no-choice by Adam and Eve. God made them to be human, which is another way of saying, he made them choosing creatures.

One can think of the world and the entire universe, 46-billion light years across, as a gigantic choice-making factory. It is possible that God created a material universe for this very purpose: to provide humanity with the opportunity to make choices. Life on planet earth constantly creates choice-making situations. From childhood on, each person’s history provides countless opportunities to make choices, some of little, but some of enormous, consequence. People need such choices, sometimes tough choices, heartbreaking ones even, to become fully human – to become the glorious beings God intends and calls us to be.

(This, by the way, is one reason forcing religion on someone is counterproductive. It goes against the way God made us and frustrates the goal he is pursuing. In talking with others about God, there is no place for arm-twisting or manipulation.)

A Christian salesman once told me to frame questions in a way that the person I was talking to could say no, because it is psychologically easier than saying yes. So instead of asking, “Are you ready to trust yourself to the Lord and give your life to him?” which would require a yes answer before proceeding, he wanted me to ask, “Is there anything holding you back from making this decision?” In that case, a “no” or even an “I guess not” answer would suffice. But doing an end run on a person’s volitional responsibility will handicap that person from the very start. Making a choice, a clear, determined choice, is essential not because God needs us to do so but because we do.

When Jesus told his disciples not to cast their pearls before swine, this kind of thing was in mind. He did not want his students forcing their pearls of wisdom on others; didn’t want them pressuring people into decisions for which they were neither ready, nor willing. God knows humans will never be the strong, happy people he intends them to be unless they make choices: the choice to trust in Christ; the choice to give their life to God; to give their money; to deny themselves; to forgive those who have harmed them; to put others first; and much more.

We must make choices. People are not machines to be managed, and we mustn’t treat them, including our own children, as if they were. Making intelligent choices, free of coercion, is crucial to our success.

Even though we raise a battle cry whenever someone tries to limit our freedom of choice, we frequently hesitate over even the simplest choices, because choice brings with it responsibility. Yet people must make choices, or they’ll never be fully human. This reality is apparent throughout the Bible. The drama of decision is played out from Genesis to Revelation.

I have talked with people (as has every pastor) who are anxious to discern God’s will not because they desire to do it but because they think knowing God’s will will help them avoid making a mistake. God is probably less concerned about us making mistakes than we are. He does not disclose his will so that people can avoid mistakes but so they can make informed choices. Either way, they must choose. God will have it no other way.

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Powerful Prayers

Posted on January 23, 2020 by salooper57

Prayers God Loves to Answer: Colossians 1:9-12

(Note: Each week for the next five weeks or so, I will post the manuscript that goes with the audio from a sermon in the Powerful Prayers series that was previously made available. I’ve been told by numerous people that they get more out of the sermon when they read it, so we’ll give it a try. I’ve been reluctant to post written sermons for two reasons: 1) I never simply read a sermon, so what people read is not exactly what I spoke. It may be better or it may be worse but it will be different. And (2) because the sermon has not been edited for publication. With those caveats, here is Prayers God Love to Answer: Colossians 1:9-12.)

Imagine you find yourself unable to do something you want to do, should be able to do, and have done in the past – say, eat ice cream. You go to your doctor and she does all kinds of tests and discovers that you are missing an enzyme which is necessary for the digestion of ice cream. She then gives you the good news: your body can produce plenty of this enzyme just by eating mangos. But you dislike mangos; dislike them as much as you like ice cream. So what do you do? Do you learn to eat mangos (ugh!) or do you give up ice cream (aww!)?

Let’s pose the same type of question, only let’s change the issue from a physical one to a spiritual one. You find yourself unable to do something you want to do and should be able to do: recognize God’s will. You go to your pastor and he runs a variety of soul tests and comes to the conclusion that you’re missing a spiritual enzyme (of sorts) which is necessary to the recognition of God’s will. That spiritual enzyme is loving relationships with other Christ-followers.

What do you do? You are an introvert. You don’t like big groups. You just aren’t easy with people. Being in a fellowship group or a Bible study is work for you; you think of it with distaste. So do you learn to have loving relationships with other Christ-followers or do you give up on knowing God’s will?

This is a real problem in our society generally and in the church in particular and it is getting worse. We are a ferociously independent, perilously individualistic people. Ironically, the advent of personal computers and especially mobile devices – supposedly communication devices – makes meaningful relationships with others seem optional.

A survey a few years ago revealed that millions fewer people attend church services than they did two decades earlier, yet more people claim to pray daily than they did then. What that means is that people are trying to do the Christian life in isolation, which violates God’s design and cannot be successful.

But like the digestive system in the human body, the recognition system for God’s will in the Body of Christ requires an enzyme of sorts: loving relationships. Humans are interdependent by design. God made us in such a way that we cannot reach our potential without others. It is a paradox, but you cannot fully be yourself by yourself. And you cannot fully perceive and understand God’s will when your Christian relationships are unhealthy.

In Colossians 1:9-12, we have a description of the Apostle Paul’s powerful prayer for the Colossian Christian. In it, he mentions a single request, but it is an important one. He prays the Colossians might be filled with the knowledge (or recognition, as the word is sometimes translated) of God’s will. Paul understood that the recognition of God’s will is critical to the church and to our lives.

(Colossians 1:9-12) For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light.  (NIV)

Before digging into the passage, we need to set it in context. When Paul wrote, “For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying,” what reason did he have in mind? What had he heard about the Colossians that jump-started his prayers for them? He’d heard (verse 8) about their love in the Spirit. He mentions something similar in verses 3 and 4: “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, because we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints.”

Paul immediately grasped what the Colossians love for the saints meant: their church had what it needed for recognizing God’s will. They had the essential equipment for receiving messages from God.

If I’m on my way to meet you at the coffee shop but you’re trying to call me to let me know you’re running late, I will not get that message because I do not have a cell phone. I don’t have a receiver capable of picking up your message. You can try calling me a dozen times, but I won’t hear your voice. Just so, when a church does not love each other, when they ignore or, worse, show contempt for each other, they will not have a receiver capable of hearing God’s voice. They will not know his will.

When Paul heard that the Colossians had love for all the saints, he knew they could hear from God and discern his will. That’s why he began praying for them to “be filled with the knowledge of God’s will,” which he knew is enormously important to their success. He asked God to convey the knowledge of his will, verse 9, “through all spiritual wisdom and understanding.” If love is the receiver needed to capture the signal, wisdom and understanding are the router and the computer that process it. Of the two words, wisdom and understanding, wisdom is the more general. The wise person grasps God’s ways. He understands God’s values and, as such, has the framework into which God’s specific will for churches and individuals fits.

(An aside: The Bible regards God as the source of wisdom, the fear of the Lord as the beginning of wisdom, the Scriptures as a means for gaining wisdom, and humility as the condition for maintaining wisdom.)[1]

The word translated as “understanding” could be, and frequently is, translated “insight.” This is the more specific of the two words. It has to do with seeing how the big truths fit into a particular situation. Paul says the knowledge of God’s will is delivered through spiritual wisdom and insight, which is to say, through wisdom and insight that are sourced in the Holy Spirit. Without the Spirit, we will not have wisdom and insight; and, without wisdom and insight, we will not understand God’s will.

Notice the little big word “all.” The recognition of God’s will comes through all spiritual wisdom and understanding, which presents a problem. You have a little wisdom and understanding and so do I, but neither of us has all wisdom and understanding. That leaves us in need of … each other – and God designed it that way. He routinely sends the knowledge of his will to multiple people and not just one; to the Church and not just the individual. What’s more, he doesn’t usually send all of it to every person but some to one and some to another. That is why someone who is isolated from the church cannot expect to know very much of God’s will.

The way email works can serve as an illustration. Let’s say your childhood best friend is going to be in town tomorrow at noon and wants to meet you for lunch, so he sends you an email. He only has an hour, but he’d sure love to see you. When he clicks “send,” his email is broken down into packets of information, each with an IP address, which are sent separately, sometimes along different routes. When the packets arrive, they are reassembled into a meaningful message. (Well, not always, but you get the idea.)

Like email, God’s will is often broken down into packets, sent and then reassembled by a group of loving believers with Spirit-sourced wisdom and understanding. It’s not that God cannot send the knowledge of his will to one person, but frequently he does not. He intends us to relate to, and rely on, each other. If we insist on going it alone, we forfeit much of the knowledge we need to understand what God is doing in and around our lives.

A few years ago, Phil Vischer, the creator of VeggieTales was in Coldwater and he shared his story. Phil was on top of the world, wildly successful and full of big ideas for the future. In fact, he named his production company Big Ideas Productions. Because things were going so well, he concluded that God wanted to grow Big Ideas into a much larger company, so he spent millions of dollars, hired all kinds of staff, and got himself upside down financially. His cash flow couldn’t handle the skyrocketing bills, Big Ideas went bankrupt, and Phil was forced to sell all VeggieTales copyrights to another company. In a short time, his company and his life collapsed.

Phil looks back and says, “When things were doing so well, I thought that was God wanting us to expand, so we grew like crazy. Now I think it was more me having all these great ideas in my head and being so excited that I wanted to do them all at once.” He wasn’t humble, which he acknowledges. His wisdom wasn’t sourced in God and his word. And he was charting his course without counsel and flying solo. That is a recipe for misunderstanding God’s will.

How important is it for you and me and for our church to receive the knowledge of God’s will? Well, how important is it for an military unit to know whether Central Command is ordering them to attack or defend, to advance or retreat? It is critical. Look at verse 10: “And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way…” There is a reason behind Paul’s prayer: being filled with the knowledge of God’s will is not an end in itself. Such knowledge will help us (1) live a life worthy of the Lord and (2) please him in every way.

The word translated “worthy” is derived from the Greek axios, meaning “to have the weight of another thing.” The terminology developed around the use of ancient scales. Say you went to the market to buy five pounds of wheat flour. The merchant would place weighing stones on one side of the scale then fill the other side with wheat until the scale balanced or achieved “worthiness.”

Some merchants used inaccurate weighing stones or rigged the scale to their advantage, which is why Proverbs 11:1 says “The LORD abhors dishonest scales, but accurate weights are his delight.”

To live a life (literally, to walk) worthy of the Lord is to go through your day in a way that balances your lifestyle with your calling as a servant of the Lord of lords and savior of the world. Without the knowledge of God’s will, that can’t be done. And it can’t be done if we are using inaccurate weights – that is, ones that are calibrated for the non-Christian. If we try to balance our lives with the scale weights of house-size, car value, body mass index, and social media footprint, we’ll never balance out in a way that is worthy of the Lord.

Instead of using such things to measure ourselves, let’s weight the scale with: Jesus’s trust in, and obedience to, his Father; his sacrifice for his friends; his love for his enemies. Place on the scale the Lord’s patience, his care for the needy, his openness to strangers. Set our lives against those weights.

We will of course be light in such virtues, but we can at least use the right scale. God isn’t waiting for us to be just like Jesus in all these things before he’ll be pleased with us. The desire to be like Jesus already pleases him, as does every effort we make toward that end.

That brings us to the second reason behind Paul’s request for these Colossian Christians to be filled with the knowledge of God’s will: so that they can please the Lord in every way. We can please the Lord. The Lord can say of you, “Isn’t he something special!” Or, “I just love her; she’s such a delight.”

You may think it is impossible for someone like us – with all our problems and shortcomings – to please God. Only people who have it all together, famous people like Mother Theresa and Billy Graham, can please God.

It is not so. In fact, if that is what we think, our thinking is precisely backwards. It is impossible to please some people; no matter what we do, they will never be pleased. If you grew up with a mom or dad like that, you know what I mean. It is also impossible to please ourselves, at least for any length of time. We don’t stay pleased.

But it is not impossible to please God. He loves to see his children succeed. He delights in them. He sings over them. He is easy to please – but hard to satisfy. He is delighted by every honest effort his children make, but he always wants more. Not because he is a slave driver but because he knows what we can be and longs for us to experience it. He made us for glory, for perfection, for all joy, and, for our sakes, he will not be satisfied with less.

Recently my grandson Phinehas colored a picture for me and then, in his five-year-old, just-learning-to-make-letters handwriting, signed his name: PHIN. I was pleased with the picture but even more with the signature. I expect that, when he is older, his handwriting will be firmer, clearer, and flow more easily. (Then again, he could be like his dad … or grandpa.) Still, I expect his handwriting will only get better and I want that for him, but that doesn’t mean I wasn’t thoroughly pleased with his accomplishment.

So with God. He isn’t hard to please. We, with all our problems and shortcomings, can be a real source of pleasure to God, a joy within the fountain of joy. He even tells us, through the apostle, what pleases him. That is what we’ll look at next week, when we continue with the four things that bring pleasure to God our Father.

In closing, I remind you that bringing pleasure to God and walking worthy of the Lord Christ happens to people and churches who are filled with the knowledge of his will. And that knowledge comes to us like email: in packets (if you will), which often follow different routes and must be put together. This means you need other people in the church, people who are loving God and each other. I repeat what was said earlier: you cannot fully be yourself by yourself. And you cannot fully perceive and understand God’s will when your relationships with others are unhealthy.

So ask God to lead you into healthy relationships with others and to heal those that are unhealthy. Don’t be a loner.

One of my favorite authors, Wendell Berry, was walking with his friend Wes Jackson past a plot of Maximilian Sunflowers, which can grow to nearly ten feet. Jackson pointed to a plant that stood alone, disconnected from the rest.

Wendell Berry saw that this loner plant was taller than most and had bigger flowers. But it wasn’t healthy. Its blossoms were so heavy that the branches were starting to break under their weight. In one sense, the plant had “succeeded”: it was unusually tall and its flowers were impressive. It stood out from the crowd. But Maximilian Sunflowers only thrive and as they grow in community, not in isolation.[2]

That’s true of people too, especially of the followers of Jesus. Enter into the life of the church. Be involved with Jesus’s people. Don’t stand alone.

[1] Prov. 9:10; Eccl. 2:26 and Daniel 2:20; 2 Tim. 3:15; James 3:13

[2] Matt Woodley, managing editor, PreachingToday.com; source: Wendell Berry, The Art of the Commonplace (Counterpoint, 2002), pp. 139-143

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Powerful Prayers: Prayers God Loves to Answer

Posted on January 21, 2020 by salooper57

Colossians 1:9-12

Most of us don’t see obvious answers to our prayers as often as the New Testament might lead us to expect. While the Bible offers insight into why prayers are sometimes not answered (without ever making prayer into something mechanical), it also gives us examples of prayers God loves to answer.

One of those great examples comes in Paul’s description of his prayer for the Colossians – a church group he had heard about but most of whose members he did not know. I’ve used this powerful prayer many times to pray for our church, other churches, and for individuals.

Listen and enjoy. If you have comments, I’d love to hear from you.

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Why Religious Conversion Is More Than Joining a Church

Posted on January 18, 2020 by salooper57

A Muslim man once confidently told me that everyone born in the United States is a Christian, unless his family is Muslim or Jewish. I did not ask him what that means for people from Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, Sikh, or Baha’i families, nor did I ask what it meant for people who intentionally convert to one of these religions later in life.

A convert is, simply, a person who has been converted – that is, a person who has chosen to be altered or transformed. In religious conversion, a person who believed certain things about God and existence comes to believe other things and adjusts his or her life accordingly.

I know little about the way other religions view conversion or the expectations they consider appropriate for converts. If they are anything like those placed on Christian converts, they vary widely from group to group. Among the many groups that claim allegiance to Jesus, some require only a verbal profession of faith. Others expect regular church attendance, participation in instructional classes, and personal accountability in an ongoing relationship with a spiritual mentor.

Whether a simple confession or many months of intensive training, most Christian groups see the process of conversion culminating in the admission of the prospective convert into the church family, usually at baptism. This, I think, is a mistake, which does not serve the convert or the church, and does not align well with the biblical data on the nature of transformation.

To communicate to prospective converts, even unintentionally, that membership in a church body is an end in itself is like communicating to an 18-year-old recruit that getting through basic training is all there is to being a Marine. He didn’t sign up just to wear the uniform but to serve his country. Likewise, the person entering the church didn’t convert just to get her name on the church membership roll.

To think that conversion abruptly ends when one is received into fellowship in a church is to misunderstand conversion. People sometimes talk about “the moment of conversion,” as if conversion is accomplished at a single point in time. Perhaps, from God’s point of view, it is. From our point of view, it isn’t even close.

It is helpful to think of conversion as a process, much as moving to a new home is a process. One investigates the house, the neighborhood, and considers the price. Next, a decision is made: we will move to the new home. Then the papers are signed. It’s official: this is now our new home. But the process is hardly complete.

Next comes the move. It is determined what stuff will go and what stuff will stay, since not everything will have a place in the new home. What will go is packed. What will stay is disposed of or left behind.

The date finally arrives for spending our first night in the new home and with it comes all kinds of adjustments. We learn which noises mean something and which do not. We learn how long it takes to get places, like work or the store. We do maintenance. We develop routines. We discover the best places in our new home for solitude and for entertaining, for getting work done and for relaxing. We orient our lives and our schedules around our new home.

Something akin to this orientation takes place in religious conversion. A person moves to a new spiritual home and begins orienting his or her life to it. In the case of Christian conversion, a person orients his life around Christ himself: his teaching, his ways, and his stated desire for people. Christ becomes their new home.

This is the kind of thing Jesus had in mind when he told his disciples to: “abide in me.” He expected them to move their lives into his: to take up permanent residence in an ongoing relationship with him and orient their lives around him.

This is more than taking catechism classes, though they may be helpful in making the move. It is even more than being baptized. It is starting a new life; so new, in fact, that Jesus once spoke of it as being born again.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Was Shakespeare Right: Is Love Blind?

Posted on January 15, 2020 by salooper57

Okay, so someone is bound to tell me it wasn’t Shakespeare but Chaucer who coined the phrase that love is blind. I’ll give you that, but Shakespeare popularized the phrase by his repeated use of it: The Merchant of Venice, Two Gentlemen of Verona, and Henry V all include it.

Before someone has the chance to object that some Persian poet who predated Chaucer really composed the line, I’ll concede the point, but the question remains. Was Chaucer and Shakespeare (and whoever else) right? Is love blind?

The answer depends on what one means by love. Eros, I think, is often blind. Friends and family watch the lover as he ignores glaring signals and stands poised to fall into a deep ditch. Love has made him blind to his situation and deaf to his friends.

Agape love, the kind supremely illustrated by Jesus, is anything but blind. The Apostle Paul understood that it is only love that truly sees. In his prayer for the Philippian Church, he asks God to cause their love to “abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best…”

The word translated as “depth of insight” is used only here in the New Testament in its noun form. A good translation would be discernment. The word implies the ability to distinguish between things, especially between what is good and what is bad.

My wife Karen and I once spent a couple of hours at the Dolphin Research Center in the Florida Keys, where we saw a quote attributed to a Senegalese poet named Baba Dioum: “In the end, we will conserve only what we love, and we love only what we understand.” Paul, I think, would turn that around: “We understand only what we truly love.”

People who try to understand God when they don’t love him never succeed. But the same is true on a more domestic level: we will never understand a husband or wife; we will never understand our children or parents, until we love them. When our kids do something that threatens to embarrass us or cause us harm, and our focus is entirely on ourselves, we won’t really understand why they did what they did. But when we are able to love them, to seek the best for them, then our understanding of them and their actions will grow. The depth of our understanding will always be limited by the extent of our love.

Every pastor has had people come to them, full of confusion and anxiety, and asking: “What should I do?” They need to discern what is best regarding a relationship, a job, a move, and the weight of the world is on their shoulders. They are so afraid of making a mistake. But if they are not loving God and others, they are already making a mistake. If we are not loving God and loving people, we cannot make a right choice. That’s not what people want to hear. They want a formula for discerning the will of God. It doesn’t work that way. We don’t need a formula; we need love.

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I AM the Vine

Posted on January 14, 2020 by salooper57

Jesus says, “I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5 ESV). Since abiding in Jesus is the condition on which fruifulness depends, it is imperative that we have some understanding of what is involved in abiding.

Is it something mystical? Not really. I abide in my home. When I go somewhere – whether to town or across the country – I come back to my home. My life is oriented around my home. That’s where I eat meals, where I sleep, where I work, where I communicate, where I relax. I know how long it takes to get from my home to most all the places I go. I know how long it takes to get back. I plan my life around my home.

To be homeless is an enormous trial. It disorients a person. It throws everything off. Some people are spiritually homeless. They are disoriented in their spirits. They are not abiding – not residing – in Christ and so everything for them is unsettled.

You begin to abide in Christ when you join him by faith. People sometimes refer to that as the moment of conversion, as if conversion only takes a moment. The truth is: conversion is like moving to a new home. The decision to move happens at some particular moment in time; the move does not.

When we make that move, we take lots of things with us and leave others behind. They were part and parcel of our life before but we know they are not right for our new home – for Christ. Better to leave things like selfishness, deceit, gossip, malice, rage, in the dumpster when you move. Even then, you’ll often find yourself reaching for those things – it’s a habit – but moving to our new home in Christ is a time for developing new habits.

(Listen to all of this sermon by clicking the link above.)

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I AM the Vine

Posted on January 6, 2020 by salooper57

Excerpt from I AM the Vine

An exceptionally popular pastor and writer came out with a book in which he criticized the church’s “incessant habit of reaching back into the old covenant concepts, teachings, sayings, and narratives.” Later in the same book, he asked readers, “Would you consider unhitching your teaching of what it means to follow Jesus from all things old covenant?”

I haven’t read the book, which may have a lot to offer, and I realize his words may have been taken out of context. I certainly do not want to be unfair to him. But, that said, it seems to me the church has made precisely the opposite mistake. We have not reached back into the old covenant concepts, teaching, sayings, and narratives nearly enough. We’ve reached back into Reformation concepts, teaching, and sayings. And the great leaders of the Reformation were reaching back into the concepts, teaching, and sayings of the Scholastic period before them. But Jesus did reach back into the concepts, teaching, sayings, and narratives of the Old Testament, so we must do the same.

We will not understand Jesus by forcing his words into a conceptual frame he did not use. His frame was the Old Testament. If we try to understand Jesus without reaching back into old covenant concepts, teaching, sayings, and narratives, we will simply substitute our concerns for God’s and transform Jesus into a 21st century American rather than a first century Jew.

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Nostalgia and Faith: Can They Coexist?

Posted on January 4, 2020 by salooper57

No one needs faith for something that has already happened. Faith, by its nature, requires a future component, a measure of uncertainty. In situations where there is no uncertainty – the package has already arrived, as promised, the test has been scored – faith is superfluous.

Does this imply that people of faith, like myself, will not be nostalgic, since nostalgia is about the settled past and faith is about the unsettled future? I hope not, because I sometimes wax nostalgic, particularly around the holidays. I remember winter mornings when my brother and I would run out on the front porch in our bare feet to retrieve the foil-topped bottles the milkman had left. We’d pour ourselves a glass, then chew the frozen milk crystals that collected on the top.

Such memories are pleasant to me. Nostalgia is not about times of loneliness and sorrow, but about times of peace and camaraderie. The past I remember seems simpler, gentler, and more manageable. Unlike the future, the past never incites fear.

When the term “nostalgia” first came into use in the 17th century, it denoted a kind of mental illness. The doctor who coined the term described it as a “neurological disease of essentially demonic cause.” It was thought to be a type of home-sickness – the term coming from the Greek roots for “returning home” and for “pain.”

In recent years, however, social scientists have discovered various benefits that accompany nostalgia. John Tierney lists some of them in his New York Times piece, What Is Nostalgia Good For? He writes that couples who engage in nostalgia feel closer to each other. Nostalgia seems to counteract loneliness, boredom, and anxiety. On cold days, people who engage in nostalgia actually feel warmer. “The net effect,” Tierney writes, “is to make life seem more meaningful and death less frightening.”

According to Tierney, researchers have found a kind of cycle to nostalgia. While it has been found to occur in children as young as seven, it generally surfaces among people in their twenties. It fades in middle age, then returns strongly among seniors.

Whatever one’s age, nostalgia need not diminish faith. It may, in fact, encourage it. Research has shown that people generally have more confidence about the future after engaging in nostalgia.

This alteration between past and future fits quite nicely in a Christian framework. The Church, having learned from their Jewish forebears to honor the past while anticipating the future, has developed a kind of choreography which includes both. They celebrate the past, grounded in God’s historical revelation through Christ, with feast days and remembrances. At the same time they set their “hope fully on the grace to be given … when Jesus Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:13).

The best example of this is the Church’s repeated practice of taking Holy Communion. Each time she does so, it is with the instruction to “remember” and with the knowledge that this truncated meal foretells a joyful future day when “its meaning is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.” This back and forth dance, with both past and future steps, has the effect of strengthening one’s faith, not weakening it.

Nostalgia will, however, weaken faith if it becomes an addiction. Like other addictions, nostalgia can be used as a temporary escape from present pains or a bulwark against future fears. Advertisers play on nostalgia to sell their product. Politicians evoke nostalgia – with its feeling that the past was simpler, gentler, and more manageable – as they promise a return to past glory and warn against an apocalyptic future.

Like everyone else, the followers of Jesus live on the razor’s edge that separates the past from the future. But they are learning to do more than live there: they are learning to dance there. They plant their feet firmly on the events of the past but continually stretch – and sometimes leap – toward the future.

It is a difficult dance to learn and there are plenty of ways to stumble. The past is the ground on which we stand yet it must not become the box in which we’re stuck. The future is to be embraced but we must renounce the desire to grasp and conquer it.

First published by Gatehouse Media

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Extraordinary Savior

Posted on December 25, 2019 by salooper57

The theme of this year’s Christmas Eve service was “Extraordinary Savior.” “Extraordinary” is, of course, a term of comparison: If there were no ordinary people, there would be no extraordinary ones. That got me to thinking: in order to appreciate the extraordinary savior, I need to understand what an ordinary one is like.

Is there such a thing as an ordinary savior? There is, and (sadly) Jesus is often presented as one. If you spend any time at all on religious broadcasting, you’ll run into the ordinary savior. He saves people from their circumstances – poor health, insufficient income, and troubling emotions. That’s one way of identifying an ordinary savior: he only saves people from, whilethe extraordinary Savior – the real one – saves people for. Let me give you a few examples.

An ordinary savior saves people from a religionless, churchless existence. He pities those unfortunates who sleep in on Sunday mornings, go out to eat, and travel. He wants to save them from their laziness, gluttony, and wanderlust, though they aren’t looking to be saved. I suspect most people who don’t really know Jesus – they’ve heard about him, of course, but have never joined themselves to him – think of Jesus as this kind of savior: one who loves organ music, 18th century hymns, and those rousing 19th century gospel songs. He doesn’t want people missing out on these good things.

An ordinary savior also saves people from hell; that’s why he came. People were going to hell in a handbasket (or maybe a shopping cart) and he stepped in to save them. The extraordinary savior does that too, but he does more: He saves people for heaven; he saves people for service in his kingdom. It is the repeated promise of the New Testament that Christ is saving us for something important. He has a role in mind for us. He intends for us to reign with him. The ordinary savior just saves from. The extraordinary savior saves for.

The ordinary savior saves us from punishment. God got himself into a jam by making people and, now that they have gone wrong, he finds he has no choice but to punish them. The ordinary savior feels very bad about this and steps in to take the blow. There is some truth to this, but it is not the whole truth. The extraordinary savior not only saves people from their punishment; he saves them from their sins. He knows the worst punishment people can suffer is to be left in their sins.

The ordinary savior saves us from suffering, which he (along with the rest of the world) considers the ultimate evil. The extraordinary savior does not save people from suffering – doesn’t even save himself from it – but he makes sure that his people’s suffering means something; that it accomplishes something for their good and for the world. The extraordinary savior didn’t suffer so that we wouldn’t need to, but so that our sufferings might be like his: full of promise and used for good.

An ordinary savior arrives on the scene every December as a baby (one who never cries – “…little Lord Jesus no crying he makes”), then fades from sight sometime after Easter. (Although, in some cases, he doesn’t even make it to the first of the year.) Because he never gets the chance to grow up, he remains powerless. Born into a poor family, he needs our pity and perhaps even our help. (I’m not sure we don’t prefer it that way.)

The extraordinary savior does not remain a baby; he grows up. He is not powerless; he is the Lord of men and angels. He doesn’t need our pity, but he does pity us. If the baby savior doesn’t cry, the adult savior does: He weeps for us. The extraordinary savior is more than a beautiful baby; he is the Man of Sorrows, who has been touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

The ordinary savior launched a religion, and it has done quite well. It’s like the amazon.com of religions – right at the top of the heap – which makes Jesus the Jeff Bezos of the religious world. The extraordinary savior doesn’t launch a religion. He launches a revolution. He will conquer the kingdoms of the world and bring them into the kingdom of our God. He will preside over the nations of the earth. The ordinary savior may be satisfied to preside over the denominations of Christendom; the extraordinary savior will have so much more.

The ordinary savior is interested in people’s spiritual life and wants them to do spiritual things, like pray, read the Bible, and go to church. This contrasts with the extraordinary savior, who isn’t so much interested in a person’s spiritual life (as though a person were sectioned like a grapefruit, with a dozen or so lives – a work life, married life, social media life anda spiritual life). A person has real life, which is inescapably spiritual, and that’s what he cares about.

The goal of the ordinary savior is to get you to behave well: no gossip, no getting drunk, no racial bigotry, no selfishness. And while you’re at it, don’t slurp your broth and be sure to brush your teeth. He wants you to always be nice and to look out for the underdog.

The extraordinary savior cares about good behavior, too, but that is not his goal. He didn’t die so that people would be made nice but so they could be made new. He understands that behaving well is a consequence of being new. Another way of putting it is: the ordinary savior wants to reform people but the extraordinary savior wants to transform them.

All this poses a question. Do we have an ordinary savior or an extraordinary one? It’s an important question, because the ordinary savior only produces the ordinary saved. The extraordinary savior produces the extraordinary saved: children, women, and men who live purposely, endure hopefully, and love freely. The extraordinary savior is developing humanity into a race of glorious, free, wise, and loving beings. That’s what he is saving us for.

This Savior whose birth we celebrate—don’t leave him in a manger, which leaves you in control. Don’t even leave him on a cross, which leaves you loved but unchanged. Find him where he is: on a throne, which leaves him Lord and King and you his soldier, his servant, his person. This is the extraordinary savior. His name is Jesus.

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