The Last Passover

When we read the accounts of what happened in the Upper Room, we often call it the "Last Supper." Even though, of course, we continue to celebrate this supper in our Christian worship and thus, it really is to most of us, the first supper. This was the moment when Jesus poured out His blood and broke His body and told His disciples to do this in remembrance of Him. 

While it seems like perhaps this was, in fact, the first supper, the truth is that it was also the last Passover. 

Passover is a celebration that Israel had recognized since all the way back in their days in Egypt. In the first Passover, God told His people to prepare a feast for themselves and eat it with their shoes on because they were going to leave slavery that very night and walk out of their captivity and into His promise. And how were they going to do this?

He was going to go through the land of Egypt and kill every firstborn son. Every single one of them. There would not be a house in all of Egypt that was not touched by death that night. Only the blood on the doorposts in the land of the Israelites would keep them from knowing this death; He would literally pass over them. 

What the disciples didn't know in that Upper Room, what they didn't understand, was that that night would be the last night that a firstborn Son would die. 

And once again, God's people would walk out of slavery and into freedom, out of captivity and into His promise. 

That's what the Supper was about. 

That's why we still celebrate it. 

It wasn't the first Supper; it was the last Passover. From here on out, things were going to be different.  

Uncontrollable

Superstition is about our efforts to control God. But, as we said yesterday, God cannot be controlled. 

And as we think this time of year about a God who came in flesh to walk among us and let us lead Him all the way to Calvary, I have to ask the honest question: why would you want to control Him?

What do you want from God that He's not already giving you? 

You want Him to love you. He already loves you. 

You want Him to be with you. He's already with you.

You want Him to bless you. He already blesses you.

You want Him to set things right in the world. He's already setting things right in the world.

You want Him to heal you. He's already healing you.

You want Him to speak truth to power. He's is truth.

You want Him to speak grace to brokenness. He is grace. 

Everything we think we want from God - everything we need from God - is already a free gift from God. He's already giving it to us. 

So much so that He sent His Son to live among us here on earth, wrapped in our flesh, our dust on His feet. He sent Him to break bread with us and pour out His blood for our lives. He sent Him to not only enter the grave of darkness, but to walk out of it, and to go and prepare a place for us. 

What, exactly, do you want from God besides everything He already promised and everything He already is?

All you must do, friend, is believe and accept it. If this is who God is, He cannot be any other than this. He will always be this. 

And I'm telling you right now - He did not send His Son to us so He could change His mind later. That's not how this works. Even if God could change His mind, that's not the kind of thing one changes their mind about. 

So stop trying to control God and instead, just live in His love. He loves you. He really does. 

If you need more evidence of that, just look at your life and see Him poured out in it already. 

Black cats, mirrors, cracks in the sidewalk...and broken rings...aside.  

Misguided Faith

Still, when we think about superstition, it strikes us as predominantly....faith. It's something to believe in, and if we're Christians and have "Christian"-sounding superstitions, it's easy to convince ourselves that we're really just trying to get faith "right." We're trying to believe the right things in the right ways. We're trying to honor God. 

So...we're Pharisees. 

That's really what it amounts to. It all boils down to the fact that we are trying to demonstrate our faith in the smallest of all details by keeping to the very letter of everything. We're trying to demonstrate that we, alone, "get it" and that our lives, which are full of all of the good things by very nature of our "getting it" are the evidence that all things are well. 

We have put our faith in our ability to keep the faith, and in doing so, we have lost faith in anything and everything at all. That is, we no longer believe in God; we believe in ourselves. 

And that spirals down into something else entirely: we believe that we can control God. 

We believe that by doing the right things, we get the right outcome. We believe that by not breaking mirrors or walking under ladders or crossing paths with cats (or whatever Christian language we want to put on all of this), we live in God's favor and He doesn't have a choice but to bless us. 

We're in, whether He likes it or not. 

Because we've done all of the right things in the right ways. 

Do you see how quickly this takes us away from faith? 

All of a sudden, we are in the good graces of God not because He is good, but because we are. Not because He loves us, but because we are forcing Him to be good to us. Not because His ways are right, but because we are right. And now, our "faith" is no longer God loving us or even us loving Him, but us controlling Him....or so we think.

But here's what we have to remember - God cannot be controlled. 

God's blessings cannot be controlled. God's goodness cannot be controlled. God's love for us cannot be controlled. There is no crack in the sidewalk that we can either step on or avoid that changes one ounce of God's love for us, that changes anything at all about the relationship we share...except perhaps to damage it by drawing us further away from real connection. 

The very moment that we are most certain that we have God wrapped around our finger is the moment that we could not be further away from Him if we tried. 

So let us put away our superstitions - even our so-called "Christian" superstitions - and simply soak in the knowledge that God really is good and He really does love us. 

Plain as that. 

Consequences

There are some who say that there's evidence in the Bible that our faith is a bit superstitious - that what happens to us is directly related to how well we're keeping the faith or not. As evidence of this, they usually point to Old Testament passages where God pronounces curses on His people, Israel. 

And it's true - there are verses in there that seem almost superstitious. "If you don't keep the law the way I commanded you, then your enemies will chase you, your crops will fail, you will be taken into exile, and your lives will be ruined." Certainly, that sounds like enough to make any person of faith double-check their every step, making sure they aren't walking under any ladders or crossing paths with any black cats. It certainly makes it seem like we must take careful measure with the way that we are living and the things that we are doing, lest we make one little mistake and ruin everything. 

But that's not really what those verses mean. It's not even really what they say. 

When God says those things will happen to His people, He's right. They will. But not because God will inflict those things upon Israel. Rather, those are the natural consequences of living out of fellowship with Him. 

To understand the difference here, think of a very common human example. There comes an age when young children get very curious about everything, and they require a little more careful supervision. So it is common for parents of young children to warn them, "Do not touch the hot stove or your hand will get burned." 

Now, this makes obvious sense to us - touching a hot stove will cause a burn. We understand that the parent is not planning on burning the child's hand as a punishment for touching the stove; the stove is going to burn them because it is hot. 

So why, then, do we read God's statements to this effect any differently than we hear them from earthly parents? If you live out of fellowship with God, you no longer dwell behind His hedge of protection, so no wonder your enemies will find you. No wonder they will chase you. If you break fellowship and are not on God's side, then He's not on your side and the consequences are that your life appears to be cursed. 

Not because God is going to curse you, not because He's going to burn your hand, but because the thing He's warned you about will burn you...you just didn't listen. 

See the difference? 

So the impact of changing our understanding is that we stop tiptoeing around life, afraid to trip things off. Afraid to encounter the ladders and the black cats and the broken mirrors because it feels like they have some kind of power over us. Rather, we live our lives understanding the natural consequences of breaking fellowship with God, which means that we can use the events of our life as sort of a guidepost to let us know how our faith is going. Are we living within God's hedge of protection? Or are we exposed somewhere? What is a weak area that we need to shore up? Where is our faith not as strong as it needs to be? 

Where do we need to know more/learn more/love more about God? 

Very Superstitious

As we enter into Easter week, I've been thinking quite a bit about Jesus. That's probably no surprise. But what I've really been thinking about is the way that we believe in Jesus, the message that we have of Him. And that's led me to think more about superstition. 

Superstition is basically magical thinking - ascribing power to where it doesn't belong and holding onto some very irrational ideas about the way things might be connected in the universe. And it's not limited to unbelievers; Christians, too, have a fair amount of superstition in our lives. It's simply an easy trap to fall into. 

For example, I will give you a fairly recent story from my own life. Several years ago, I acquired a sterling silver ring that I wear every day on my right hand. The ring is carved out to say, "Blessed." I have worn this without any particular magical belief in it; rather, I have appreciated the reminder of my belovedness that goes with me everywhere I go. I have liked being able to look down in hard times and remember that God truly does love me. That's what this ring does for me. 

Then, a few weeks ago, it broke. (For a second time.) The thin space between the "l" and the "e" cracked, making the ring completely unwearable. So I sent it into the shop for repair, since it came with a lifetime warranty (because of course, God's blessings also come with a lifetime warranty). 

And then, weird things started to happen. Not horribly bad things, just weird things. Things that don't normally happen in my life. And I was thinking to myself, "This is strangely weird. Must be a weird season." 

Until unexpectedly, the image of that broken ring popped into my mind, and I laughed to myself. "Of course. I'm not blessed any more." 

It's a silly thought. Things in this world break. It doesn't necessarily mean anything. I would not have previously put any magical power into that ring or thought of it as anything more than the reminder that it was. Yet, I laughed at myself because it was so easy for this kind of superstitious thought to pop into my head, even as a person of faith. A thought that, I confess, I don't believe. But here it was, intruding into my belief system. 

The truth is that it's an easy trap for Christians to fall into. We know our faith is not a faith of works, but of grace, but we spend so much of our lives still searching for works, trying to justify our faith. Trying to justify ourselves. And it is this searching for works that leads us into things like superstitions. It is this kind of searching for works that leads us to magical thinking - to putting power into things that have no power at all, even when we would confess that thing's impotence if you asked us on a perfectly rational level. 

It doesn't take much from here for us to be convinced that our works are failing us, and that's why our lives are a mess. It doesn't take much from here to convince us that we are doing something wrong, that we are broken sinners, completely hopeless. It doesn't take much from here to convince us that God is disappointed in us. And now, here we are, wrestling with failure and feelings of inadequacy and looking at the broken things in our life and thinking they must mean something. They have to, right? 

But what if they don't? What if things just break? 

Bread and an Unholy Kiss

When we talk about Communion and the last meal that Jesus shared with His disciples, I think it's fair to say that we could talk about Judas Iscariot for a really long time. There's just so much in this story. 

It's easy for us to want to write off Judas pretty quickly. He's a turncoat. A betrayer. Selfish. He was there, around Jesus all the time, but he never seemed to "get it." It wasn't for lack of opportunities; it seemed to be just lack of heart. We might even call Judas a "bandwagon" disciple - it seems sometimes like maybe he was bored and got into this Jesus thing because it was a popular thing going on, and he wanted to be involved in it somehow. So he just joined up. 

But to Jesus, Judas was a disciple. 

Don't mistake this - Jesus knew exactly who Judas was. Jesus knew Judas would betray Him. Jesus knew Judas had his eyes on the money bag more than on the opportunities in front of him to invest in better things. Jesus knew that Judas was really interested in being a disciple only because it seemed like something cool going on to get involved with. Jesus knew that Judas wasn't taking His teachings to heart in the same way that the other disciples, or even the general public, were. 

Jesus had Judas at the table anyway. 

Not only did Jesus have Judas at the table, but in the very breath that He declared that He knew one of His disciples would betray Him, Jesus indicated that betrayal by giving Judas a piece of bread. 

The last thing Jesus did for Judas while He had him was to feed him. Knowing all that was coming, Jesus still took a piece of bread, tore it, dipped it, blessed it, and gave it to his betrayer. 

And that betrayer? He ran off into the night only to come back with an unholy kiss. 

That's how Judas betrayed Jesus. As a side note, this has always intrigued me. The guard had been after Jesus for a long time. Jesus's ministry was extremely public. Everyone seems to recognize Jesus as Jesus (not necessarily as Christ, but as the Jesus everyone is talking about) no matter where He goes. And somehow, when the armed forces come into the garden to finally arrest Him, there has to be some sign given to them as to which man is the one they are after. Judas says he will tell them with a kiss.

There's something about the juxtaposition of these two things that just gets me. Something that strikes my heart and makes me think more deeply, even when I don't really know what it is that I'm thinking about. Jesus gives bread to His betrayer - an honest meal, a good bit of food, deliciously dipped into the oil and vinegar that was available and customary. And that man, the one who has taken the bread straight from Jesus's hand, leans forward and kisses His face...but not in thankfulness. 

Two symbols in one story. 

I wonder what we make of them.  

The Body of Christ

Of course, if we're talking about the body, we're eventually going to get back to the body of Christ - the church. After all, if the New Testament is going to compare our fellowship to the interconnection of our physical parts, we should recognize that the things our bodies teach us about creation are things they also teach us about community. 

When our bodies teach us that we are paradoxes - strength and fragility, flexibility and limitation - then we have to realize that our fellowships are paradoxical, too. We are strong together, and we can do great things, but the more we are gathered together, the more points of potential fracture we have. Our strength is constantly tempered by our fragility. And as our bodies continue to grow, we have great flexibility in what we can do - the gifts of many that are able to touch many different areas of our communities and needs - but we must still remember that we cannot do everything. Many churches are prone to overstretching themselves, and it is this very principle that we learn from the physical body that is at play - flexibility with limitation. 

And there's something about brokenness in our fellowships, as well. It is brokenness, or failure, or fracture, that brings the whole picture back into a new focus. How many times have you heard of a church that was just rolling along, just cruising along and going with the flow until something absolutely dramatic happens that forces them to focus on something that isn't working, on a path that they strayed from a long time ago and nobody noticed? 

Churches, like bodies, are prone to both be obsessed with brokenness and also, at the very same time, to not take it too seriously. Churches often think that their strengths can overcome any weakness, that their ability in one area is enough to sustain them across all areas. It usually takes a significant brokenness for them to realize that no matter how strong their legs are, they'll never be able to breathe like this. And so the body of Christ is humbled in exactly the same way that the physical body is, when its wholeness is threatened and it comes to the point where it has to realize its interdependency and its need for all of its parts. 

And, sadly, we have adopted the name notions of "polite conversation" for the church that we have for our bodies - we don't talk about life, death, or brokenness in the ways that we ought to. We talk like we're ashamed of these things, even though they are part of the very nature of our design. 

We ought to be bodies with processes, for example, for handling waste, but too often, we are bodies who just carry a shovel and shove it under a rug. We ought to be bodies who acknowledge our shortcomings, our failures, our limitations, but we see these too often as weaknesses, afraid that we will be exploited for them, rather than seizing them as opportunities to illuminate the glories of God. We ought to be shouting with joy about life and life abundant, but somewhere, we got the idea that these are our private things...because we recognize that we are not the ones who give life at all; we are dependent upon the processes. 

Our physical bodies teach us so much, and they keep us in contact with the Creator who designed them. But they also teach us how to approach our communal bodies, the body of Christ, and the question we have to ask ourselves on both counts is...what are we learning? What are we letting ourselves be taught? 

And how is it affecting our witness?  

Polite Conversation

We're talking about the human body and how it connects us to the creation, and to the Creator, and humbles us by holding us within our limits, no matter our strengths. There is one other thing that I want to say about the human body, one more point to make in the grand scheme of important things. 

And that is that our human bodies seem to have taught us a lot, for some reason, about what we consider is "polite conversation." That is, most of the things that we don't talk about are things somehow related to our bodies. 

Despite the way it is portrayed in the popular media, and despite a push for more "openness" on the subject, there is still quite a bit of taboo about sex. A polite person does not talk about sex in mixed company, or at all, really, except with one's medical providers. (And our shame has kept us from talking about this, often, even with them.) 

The reason is actually not what we think it is. Certainly, there's something about it involving our "private" parts, the parts of our bodies that we have been told that we ought to keep covered (and God Himself told us to cover them - such as when He said there should not be stairs leading to the altar, lest someone might accidentally see up your tunic). Our sexual parts expose the nature of our shame, but that shame is not just about sin or dirtiness; it is also about a sanctity for life. 

We understand that sex is life-giving, life-producing. That it is designed for the living, to make more life and life abundant. And there's something in us that recognizes this, no matter what we proclaim to think or believe, and so we whisper about sex because we realize its power. We realize our weakness in front of it. There is nothing we can do to produce life...except sex, and there's something powerful about that that keeps us humbled in awe of it..and quiet. 

We don't talk, either, about our waste. Our bodies are designed to remove toxins from our systems, to purify our beings constantly, to always be working out the things that aren't supposed to be in us. And yet, we don't talk about our waste (or our waste-producing systems) in mixed company. It's not "polite." 

And it's because we know it's contaminated. It makes us feel the dirtiness of a broken world. We know that when we go out into this creation, we're supposed to cover our excrement. If you use the woods as a toilet, you better have a shovel to bury it. (And yet, can we talk about the number of persons who can't seem to flush a public toilet? But I digress....) We know that everything that comes out of us, liquid or solid, is something that is incompatible with our life, something that would poison us if it were to stay in our body, so we don't talk about it. Because it's death. (Or, we say, it's "gross.")

Finally, we do not talk about our brokenness. We do not talk about the things in our bodies that are not working the way they're supposed to. These things would reveal our frailness, our fragility, perhaps even our failures, and we aren't supposed to tell others our weaknesses. This is survival at its core - you don't reveal the places where you're prone to break because there is someone or something out there that will break them. 

So here we are with bodies that are beautiful, that are fearfully and wonderfully made, and somehow, we have decided that there are certain things about them that we just don't talk about, things that are not "polite" - like life, death, and limitation, even though these things are all built into us for a holy reason. These things, perhaps like no other, show the amazingness of God. 

God who, we must say, designed these very things in His great wisdom. 

Broken

What's interesting about the human body, in all of its incredible glory and its great paradoxes, is that it's one of those things that we think about most often only in its brokenness. 

When our bodies are working well, we take them for granted. When things are working as they are supposed to, we rarely think about them at all. We just go about our day, doing what we need to do, and not even really being thankful for our ability to do them. We don't really marvel at our creation when it's doing what it's supposed to do...it doesn't really occur to us. 

But break our bodies just a little bit....

Give us one little thing that doesn't work right, and it's the only thing we can think about. Give us the sniffles, and we've never thought harder about breathing. Give us a hangnail, and we've never thought more about our ability to touch things. Stub our toe, and all of a sudden, we're keenly aware of the steps that we take. 

Give us one little thing that doesn't work exactly the way that it should, and all of a sudden, we're not only thinking about our bodies in ways that we don't have to most of the time, but we feel ourselves being stuck in the paradoxes. 

Most everyone who knows me know that I am a runner. I enjoy running, and I've been running for 9 years. I enjoy the way it feels to have my body work together to embrace a strength that, in the course of my regular life, I too easily forget that I have. I like feeling strong. 

But it's also really easy for me, as someone who knows and routinely feels the strength in her own body, to become irrationally upset when something else isn't working the way that it's supposed to. 

After battling Covid, when I started struggling to breathe (as it turns out, due to prolonged hypoxia - or low oxygen levels), I was angry for a long time. I  knew my muscles were strong enough. I knew my legs could carry me. I knew what it felt like to have that feeling of strength in my body. But...I couldn't breathe. And it felt like this one little broken thing was holding all of the rest of me back from everything I was capable of. It was excruciatingly frustrating. It ate at me for a very long time. 

Because I just expect that if my system is mostly functional, it should be fully functional. If I know that it works, it should work completely. If there's a little bit of it that seems out of whack, the rest of me should be able to make up for it, as if all of my strong parts should be able to compensate for my weaker ones, even if they don't serve the same function. 

There is nothing else in my body that breathes the way my lungs do, and it doesn't matter how strong my legs are; they will never be able to breathe for me. Never. And that was a hard pill to swallow. 

This is the kind of humility that we need. We need to understand the relationship between parts of the whole. We need to understand our dependence on things to do just the things they are designed to do, and we have to understand that all the straining and struggle and discipline in all the world is not going to make one part do something it wasn't designed to do, no matter how strong it is at its own thing. We are complex systems, made up of very specific parts of the whole, and we need wholeness. 

Our bodies remind us of that. 

For some of us, they remind us of that far too often. 

But such is human living. 

The Body

With a title like "The Body," you probably think I'm going to talk about the church. Yes, of course...but not yet. I want to start out by talking about the actual body, the human body, the flesh-and-blood-and-bone body that we all have to live in. 

See, I think that we understand creation most intimately through the experience that we have with it in our own creation. And if you think about the human body, it is truly incredible. 

The body is held together by...mostly itself. Its connective tissues work together with its hollow spaces and the forces of gravity, and there's so much empty space inside the human body that you wonder how it could possibly even work. Its connective tissues have different structures depending on what they are connecting and what kind of connection that needs to be. Blood is designed to flow through every millimeter of the body, but also to be circulated back in just the same way. 

There are functions for support, for sustainment, for strength, for waste management, for vitality...and every single one of these life forces is balanced by the reality of death. The truth is that our cells are dying all the time, even as we are living because of them. 

And in our strength, we feel also our fragility. In our completeness, we feel the necessity of the smallest things. We are constantly being reminded of how important the little things are. 

Ever had a hangnail?

Think about that for a second. A fingernail. A part of your body you probably don't think about very often. Its function is to provide structure to the fingertip, helping to define it to enhance its ability to function as designed, while also providing some protection for the fragile flesh that does most of our handling of things in the world. But get a bit of that fingernail either growing or breaking the wrong way (or both), and it's very painful. For awhile. And it affects everything. 

It's strong, but it's fragile. 

Or think about the connective tissues. They allow us great freedom of movement when they are functioning properly, holding things together without restricting them. But stress or strain or even tear one of those connective tissues, and feel how quickly things fall apart. 

They are strong and flexible, but limited. 

And this is the story of the human body - it is strong, but fragile. It is flexible, but limited. It is wonderful, but prone to wear. It is the entire creation of paradoxes wrapped up in one beautiful creation, and we are designed to live in it. 

It reminds us every day of the paradoxes of God, of the wisdom of God. Of the nature of creature and Creator. Of all of these beautiful - and sometimes, not so beautiful - things. 

The body is God's gift to us, but it is also His testimony. 

Think about it.  

Preparing the Table

When we come to the Communion table, we often focus on what it is that Jesus poured out here for us - the bread and the wine, His body and His blood. And for good reason. 

But remember - this table didn't start with the gifts Jesus put on it. 

As Jesus and His disciples approached Jerusalem with the Passover just a few days away, His disciples are the ones who asked where they should go and prepare the meal for the group. For Him. Jesus told them about the Upper Room, about who to talk with, about how to find it, and it is the disciples who went and arranged everything. 

I think sometimes, we think about Communion as a bit of a cocktail party to which we were only invited - a table we show up to where the food is already prepared, and we just sort of wander in at our own convenience and pick at the offerings, taking a little bit of bread and a little bit of juice. Chewing almost mindlessly as we meander about, not really making conversation but lingering a little just the same. We think of it as a spread that Jesus has put out before us. And, biblically, that's not quite true. 

The disciples put the work into putting the space together. The disciples actually prepared most of the meal. The disciples made the space worthy of the celebration that was about to take place there. They painstakingly made sure all of the details were exactly right, for the Passover was no small thing. It required a high level of attention to the smallest sorts of things. 

And no, we don't believe in a works-based salvation. We don't believe that our value to God is in our ability to get the details right. 

But I don't think that excuses us from being the ones who set this Table, at least in part. 

I think we have to do some preparatory work. I think we have to be the ones to get the room ready. We have to be the ones to set the tables up. We have to be the ones to say, hey, we know there's something special that's going to happen here, and we're ready for it. We're readying for it. We hear it so often from the pulpit when we approach this moment, but it's true - we have to prepare our hearts and minds to participate in this beautiful sacrament. To come to this table. 

We are the disciples who have to say to Jesus, "Where do you want us to prepare the table? How do you want us to prepare the room?" We are the disciples to whom Jesus says, "There you will find the room. Here is how you get there. Here is what you do." We are the disciples who go ahead, who set out the cups, who prepare to eat and drink so that when Jesus comes and thus comes the body and the bread, we are ready to receive it. 

Come. Come hungry. Come and ready yourself. Something sacred is about to happen here, and we are the ones who set the table. 

God of Anointing

David's life only gets more complicated the older he gets. You would think that the time he spent running from Saul would have been his hard days, but harder days were coming, as he would spend some of his older years running from his own son. 

His son, not willing to wait on David's death, starts to try to take the throne early. God hasn't chosen him; he's chosen himself. David is still the anointed king of Israel, but Absalom is gaining ground. He's building a gathering of friends. Rebels, really. Men who are going to fight with him because they believe in his kingship as much as he does. Or so it seems. 

In the middle chapters of 2 Samuel, we are actually introduced to a number of new characters. Briefly, in the case of all of them. These are men who have connections to Israel and specifically to the kingship of Israel; some even served in the administration of Saul and have moved on to David. 

Now that Absalom is trying to establish himself, these men have a decision to make: who is the king? who do they follow? to whom do they pledge their allegiances? 

David tries to help them out. He tries to send them away. He tries to tell them to go ahead and go; Absalom is strong, and David is a sinful old man, and it is only a matter of time until they have a new king anyway, so they might as well get in Absalom's good graces before he violently takes over everything. 

Nobody should start out on the wrong side of a violent man. 

But several of these men look back at David, who seems to have already given up, and said, "No." No, David. We're not going anywhere. No, David. It doesn't matter if it looks like Absalom is winning. No, David, not even if you tell us to leave. Because you are the anointed king of Israel.

Period. 

David's the one with God's anointing, win or lose. David's the one with God's anointing, madman on the loose or not. David's the one with God's anointing, whether his army is twice the size of Absalom's or half the size. It doesn't matter what the external looks like or how resigned David may seem to what looks like a certain fate. 

What is more certain than anything is that he is the anointed one. Period. 

And God's anointing doesn't just leave you because things are a little rough right now. 

So whatever season of life you're in, remember: whatever God has poured out on you is still on you. Your calling is still there. Favor is still there. Grace is still there. God still deeply loves you. You are His chosen one. 

Madman on the loose or not. 

God of Good Friends

Who is allowed to speak into your life? 

God, of course. But who else? Do you have some close friends who can speak hard things to you and actually get the message through? 

This is something that the church really struggles with, especially in the world that we live in today when the general public is not as receptive to the Word of God as it used to be. In fact, the world is almost hostile to it. 

Yet, this change in the culture around us hasn't much changed our approach to spreading the message of God. We go out and proclaim God's truth, as though anyone reasonable who might hear it ought to automatically respond in rejoicing and graciousness. We watch the headlines and see the sins of the world, and we step out and condemn them. We speak truth, but it doesn't seem to do any good any more. 

And why not? 

Because we don't have the relationship with those we are speaking to that we need. 

David was a man after God's own heart, but he was also a sinner. Just like the rest of us. In one of his most famous sins, he sees a woman bathing from his rooftop (while he ought to be out on the battlefield leading the troops, mind you), and he decides he has to have her. He sends for her, sleeps with her, gets her pregnant, and then, to cover his tracks, he has her husband killed in battle. (And that wasn't easy because her husband was a genuinely good guy, and it was hard to separate him from the rest of the troops. So, in fact, many men died that day for no other reason than that David sought to kill Uriah.) 

There is no shortage of persons who could have spoken - correctly - the truth about this moral failure. I can hear you right now: "That is wrong." And of course, it is wrong. Overwhelmingly, we, as human beings, recognize that. 

So the question is not whether we can speak truth; we know we can. The question is whether anyone will hear us if we do. 

David would not have heard just anyone who chose to speak that truth to him. He might have heard their words with his ears, but he would not have had "ears to listen," as the Bible often puts it. It required someone in relationship with him, someone he trusted, someone with whom he had already had many conversations and whose voice and inflection he could really distinguish. It required someone with whom he was already so intimately familiar that this person had the right to speak a hard truth to David - it's that right, that earned trust, that established relationship, that lets David actually hear. 

Such is Nathan. 

This is why our truth is failing in the world. It's not because the world doesn't believe in truth any more, although that certainly doesn't help. The biggest problem with have with truth is that we are not first good friends. We are not first relationally invested in the world. We have not established that intimate familiarity that gives us the right to speak the hard truths. Just having the truth doesn't give us the right to be heard; we have to do the hard work of building the trust. 

We have to be good friends first. That's how God sends His truth into the world. 

God sends the truth through friends. (2 Samuel 12) 

God of Victory

One of my favorite movies has the line, "It's good to be the king." And indeed, it is. 

But it's even better to be God's king and to have the anointing of the Lord on you. 

Just ask David. 

In the early days of David's kingship, after years of establishing himself as a warrior and finding great victories for the people of Israel, David did not know defeat. He simply didn't. He was walking in the way of the Lord, even as a man on the run, and God was truly with him. 

2 Samuel tells us, "The Lord gave David victory everywhere he went."

Imagine that for a second. Just think about it. Imagine what your life would be like if everywhere you turned, there was victory. If every battle you faced, you won. If every time you came up against something, you prevailed. 

I think for a lot of us, it would change the way we live. It would change the amount of courage we have. 

It might even change the amount of audacity we have. 

Maybe that's what I love about this story. This simple little truth - that the Lord gave David victory everywhere he went - doesn't really change where David is doing. David continues asking God for guidance; he continues praying; he continues living a life of faith. At least, at first. God's victory doesn't turn David into a warmongering steamroller, blasting out into the world, sword drawn, to stake a claim. 

He simply goes where God tells him to go, when God tells him to go there, and God gives him victory. 

It's such a simple formula. I wonder how it might work in my life...and yours. 

God of the Long Way

You've probably heard that the best way to face your problems is head-on, that it doesn't do any good to try to go around them or to take a different angle. If something is going awry, best to straighten it out right away by coming right at it and not backing down, not taking "no" for an answer. 

But what if that's not always the way?

David was engaged in a series of battles with the Philistines. Being a man of faith, he continually asked God for guidance about whether or not he should even go to battle and how to secure the best outcome. So he asks God, and God tells him to go into battle against the Philistines and he will win. David charges forward, attacks the Philistines head-on, and wins, just as God promised. 

Another battle, another prayer, another plan, another victory. And on and on and on it goes. 

Until...

David is once again faced with the Philistines. He once again prays to God for guidance. God once again tells him to go, that he will win (because He will win). But...don't go and attack them straight on. Don't just march out in battle lines against them. Don't just move forward. 

Rather, God tells David to take his men and to circle around behind the Philistines, then attack them from a different vantage point. 

Could God have given Israel another head-on victory? Of course, He could have. That's not the point. 

The point is that God wanted His people to know that sometimes, you have to take the long way. 

It's easy to trust in strength. It's easy to trust in victory. It's easy to trust in promise. It's harder to take the long way. 

It's harder to go the distance, to move around, to change your angle, to move your forces. It's harder to put your strength to a different test - a test of trust. 

Think about what David and his men had to do to attack the Philistines from behind - they had to walk right past them. They had to ignore the temptation to act in their own strength. They had to forget what had happened in the past - all of their previous victories - and focus on what God had told them this time. They had to trust God's plan, not themselves. They had to believe in the new thing, not in the old thing. It was an entirely different ball game. 

The long way is the way of trust. 

It's a lesson we all need. It's tempting for us to trust in our own strength, to trust in our track record, to trust in yesterday, to trust in the way we've "always done it" but it's harder for us to trust in a new thing, to try a new way, to walk right past and not be tempted to act too early. 

The long way is hard for us. 

But sometimes, as the story of David shows us, it is the best way, too. Because sometimes, it is God's way. 

The King's Table

After Saul and Jonathan died in battle, David took over the kingship of Israel. It didn't take long before he started missing his friend (Jonathan), and he started to ask - is there anyone left to whom I can show kindness because I loved Jonathan so much? And then someone brings him Mephibosheth. 

Mephibosheth is the surviving son of Jonathan and is now a crippled man. While being saved by one of the servants, an accident occurred and now, Mephibosheth is lame. No problem, says David; you'll never have to work a day in your life anyway. He then invites the son of his friend to sit at his table and eat. 

Forever. 

David pledges to take care of this crippled man for the rest of his days. He promises to feed him at his table, to provide for him out of his storehouses, to secure for him a dwelling in the holy city of God's favor, where David has made his home. 

And the same is promised to us. 

We have been invited to eat at the table of the King. Forever. For no other reason than that we are sons and daughters, than that He is a friend to sinners. We are but lame, crippled, and broken...but no worries. Not a care. He has promised that that won't matter, that there is a place for us here. 

He feeds us at His table, the body and the blood. He provides for us out of His storehouses, mercy and amazing grace overflowing. He secures for us a dwelling in His holy city, where Christ Himself has made His home. 

Friends, we are friends of the King. That's how we got here. That's how we came to this Table. 

And because of that, this is where we will feast all the rest of our days. 

God of Home

David was anointed king of Israel long before he actually became the king of Israel. There was the little matter of Saul, and Saul's son (David's friend), Jonathan, that had to be sorted out first. It was clear that God was against Saul, but David didn't really think Jonathan had to be part of Saul's punishment. 

Of course, he did. He was the firstborn son. It's really hard to become king when you're not the firstborn son of the king, especially when the firstborn son is right there. Even with God's anointing on you, even with the people behind you, even with everyone believing in you, it's hard when Jonathan is still hanging around. God used the death of both Saul and Jonathan to help clear the way for David to step into his promised kingship. 

But not right away. 

After the deaths of Saul and Jonathan (on the same day), David asks the Lord - is it the time? Is now the time? 

God says yes, but first...go home. First, go establish your place. First, take your wives and settle down, settle in. Know where you're rooted. Know where you are. Know where you're coming from before you start going to where you're going. 

This is so important. Remember, David has been on the run for a very long time. He's been living in caves, hiding out in Philistine territory, living a double life trying to stay away from Saul but remain in the good graces of Israel. He's not had a place to lay his head, not a place that is his place, since he was first anointed and then called into the service of Saul as a musician. Sure, the first few years in Saul's house were not too bad, but when you're playing second fiddle (or first fiddle) in the place you're anointed to lead, it still doesn't feel like your place. Not like it's supposed to. 

So before David steps into the kingship, into the leadership of the entire nation of Israel, God tells him...go home. Make your home. 

He says the same to us. 

So many of us spend our lives floating around in the world. This place just isn't like it was even a few generations ago, where folks settled down and had their own rhythm of life. Everything is changing, all the time and really fast. It's extremely uncommon for anyone to spend their life in one place, be it one home or one town or one job or whatever. We are a people on the move, nomadic in a way that we haven't been in a very long time, and so there's something in us that is restless. Something in us that never quite settles down. Something in us that doesn't feel like it has a place. 

That's where God steps in. He tells us plainly - invites us, really - to a place called home first. A place of our own. He invites us to settle down, to settle in. To figure out where we are so that we know where we come from before we get to where we're going. He wants us to have roots, to have our place. And so He calls us home before anything else. 

Can you hear Him? 

Will you go? 

God of Staying

Our culture is having an ongoing conversation about the value of work. What is it worth? Is some work worth more than other work? What about work that doesn't look like work? We have long been debating the nature of stay-at-home moms, at the value of what they contribute not only to a household, but to a society (and you should check out the numbers that someone finally put to everything that SAHMs do, if you haven't already). 

There just seems to be something ingrained in us that thinks that the bigger the outward action, the more valuable the contribution. The more we "do," the more we "are." 

And the same has been true, historically, in the church. We have placed a high value on the pastors, the priests, the preachers, the evangelists, the missionaries - anyone we think is going and doing for God as a grand act of outward obedience. Anyone whose impact seems so glaringly obvious. 

But are we right to do that? 

1 Samuel 30 suggests we are not. 

If you remember this story, David and his men were going out to fight a major battle, but not all of the men were going. Some of them, for various reasons, were staying behind. They were charged with keeping watch over all the things that Israel couldn't take into battle with them, with maintaining the homestand and the supplies. 

And when David's troops came back victorious, he split all the plunder not just with the warriors who went into battle, but with all the men who stayed behind, too. 

We don't often think like this. We think that the men who raise the sword get the goods. Period. The men who put their lives on the line get the reward. Plain and simple. But that's not how God works. God understands that everyone plays a valuable role in what's unfolding, whether they're on the front lines or the homestead, whether they're leading the charge or taking charge of what's leftover. Whether they're the infantryman or the supply man. 

This is important for those of us who don't spend our lives in "the ministry," who aren't preachers, priests, missionaries. Whose headlines are not "goes out to preach the Gospel and save the world." We may not be doing the obvious things, but we're still doing the important things. There's still something holy and wonderful about what we're doing. 

And when God gets the glory? We get our share, too. He doesn't forget us just because we weren't on what looked like the "front lines." We were just quietly doing our part, and God sees that. 

God sees you.

So don't be discouraged if you don't think you're doing "big" things for God. You are. Right where you are, wherever you are. 

The men who stay behind get a share of the plunder just the same. So do your thing, whatever your thing is, for the glory of God. That's all He's asking of you. 

God Politely Declines

One of the narratives exploding in liberal Christianity is that God can't wait to join you wherever you are and take on your quest with you. If you love God, He automatically shows up for you, whatever you're doing. We have this idea that we take God with us and that His deep love for us is the same as a blind approval. 

And that's simply not the biblical truth. 

There's a story in 1 Samuel that demonstrates this fairly clearly. 

Saul was the king of Israel, chosen by God Himself to lead the chosen people. But things aren't going well; Saul's insecurities are getting the best of him, and he's slowly turning away from God's guidance. The prophet, Samuel, who guided Saul for the early years of his kingship, has died, and Saul is on his own. He's already committed a few egregious sins, and David has already started appearing on the scene as one with God's anointing on him. 

Now, we find Saul on the edge of another battle with the Philistines. The Philistines, we should add, have David on their side; he's currently hiding in their territory so that Saul doesn't kill him. (But David has no intentions of actually fighting for the Philistines nor against Saul.) Saul...starts to get cold feet. 

So Saul, a man chosen by God, a man guided for so long by a prophet, a man known to prophesy himself and who has offered (albeit illegally) sacrifices to the Lord, a man who knows that without the Lord on his side, the battle is futile...Saul prays to God. Saul asks God to show up and give him the plan. Saul asks God to come and settle his fears. 

God politely declines. 

The Bible tells us, "But He did not give him an answer, neither in dreams nor by consulting the Urim nor through prophecy." Nothing. God is simply not coming to the party that Saul is inviting him to. 

God is done showing up only when it's convenient for Saul. Saul's heart has been turned against Him for awhile, and the king doesn't want anything to do with God until he's scared. Then, all of a sudden, the Lord seems like a good idea. 

But God's not playing that game. God doesn't have a relationship with His people where you can have Him whenever you want Him and if you're not interested right now, He'll just step aside and let you do whatever, waiting to swoop in and rescue you the next time you call. 

No. Either you live your life fully for God or you accept that maybe He's not coming the next time you invite Him. 

And that's the truth that our current Christianity needs to understand - you don't get to just take God with you. You don't get to invite Him along to whatever and wherever you've decided to go. He's not coming. Rather, it is you who has to go with God.

If the chosen king of Israel can't get God to go with him when he's living in sin, what honest chance do you think you have? 

How We Lost Truth

I know - we're spending a lot of time on the concept of truth, and I, too, am ready to move on, but there's this heavy question that remains lingering that I want to address. 

That question is: how did we even lose truth in the first place? How did we end up in a world where so few persons still believe in truth? 

And...it's complicated. (Of course it is. You already knew this.) 

But here's how we got here: 

For most of human history, humans simply believed what seemed to be obvious. Whether or not it was actually true, it was considered true because it was plain to see. Things like - the earth is flat. Or the sun revolves around the earth, which is the center of the universe. We simply believed these things because this is what our eyes told us must be the case, and there was very little argument about it. We operated as a society on the acceptance of a shared understanding of the world that we called truth, and it was true, as far as we were concerned. 

Then, a few keen observers started to notice things that most of us weren't noticing, and they proposed new theories of understanding. Most of these men (a few women) were persecuted for heresy - for trying to change truth. We were completely opposed to changing truth - what is true is true and it is obviously true so why revise it and make it false? 

Science came in and started showing some evidence of its proposals in a number of areas, and slowly, we started to accept that maybe what we thought we knew, we never really knew at all. And if science could show us the real truth about things we thought we knew, then we wanted to have the real answers. So we put everything on the table and told science to tell us what it is. (This is the modern period.) 

Science promised it would answer our questions, and it did a great job...on some topics. We were convinced that if we could just advance our science and spread its influence across all areas, we could come to control all of the realities of the world and manipulate them to our own benefit. This was the promise that this new ideology gave us. Our lives were about to dramatically improve. And we were the ones who were going to improve them. 

Science started posing more questions and, honestly, guessing at more answers. It started to caution us that it could tell us what it was investigating, but it couldn't tell us any more if its discoveries were conclusive. There were a lot of questions, but few answers, but because of the faith that we had in science - especially after it proved such big things as the roundness of the earth and the proper orientation of our solar system - we accepted that what science has to say must be true. Hey, it's been right about so much; it must be right about everything else. 

But trusting in science didn't get us to where we thought it would. We didn't improve our world and our experience the way that we thought we would. Something, somewhere, was wrong. And this is where we took a dramatic turn. 

The promise of science, and modernity, was that we controlled our own destiny based on our understanding of, and application of, the truths that we know. The truths that science told us. When it wasn't working out the way that everything promised it would, when we were finally asking what was wrong with what we thought we understood, we decided that the problem can't be us. It's not that we aren't holding up our end of the bargain. It's not that we don't know how to apply science and truth or exercise our dominion over the world as we know it. 

And if the problem is not us and not our autonomy and not our ability, then the problem must be the truth that we're believing in. If we are acting on what we think is the truth and things aren't working out the way we thought they would, and we know (because we're convinced of our own superiority) that we're doing things right...then the problem must be that the truth we're trusting in is broken somewhere. 

And if truth is broken, then what can we possibly believe in? Why, only ourselves. And if we believe in ourselves, we don't necessarily need truth. We have something better. We have self-determination. 

And that, my friends, is how we came to live in a world that no longer values truth. We simply don't need it (so we think); we have ourselves.  

Linger

A few days ago at work, we had a pizza party. Shortly after the pizzas arrived, I went into the breakroom to check things out and ended up sitting down for a couple of slices before returning to my desk. (A lot of the staff was in there, and I didn't want to leave the front of our unit unattended for too long.) About 20 minutes later, one of my coworkers came back around front, and I asked her if she'd gotten some pizza. 

She said, "Aidan! I was right there. I was actually coming to sit down by you to eat, and you were gone. Just gone." 

She was right. I was trying to get back to work, but the truth is that I don't linger over food too much. I never have. I probably never will. Back in college, I could be through the cafeteria line and eat two bratwursts (on buns), a whole plate of fries, and a dessert before my roommate even got through the line and sat down. I was done eating and out the door before we even had a chance to say hello to each other in the middle of our day. 

I think a lot of the time, our Communion celebration is like this. Most churches who celebrate Communion regularly, as mine does, have the practice down to a science. We can feed 300 persons a little cracker and juice in under three minutes and get on with our service, back to our singing and preaching and teaching. 

"We now return to our regularly-scheduled services."

But if you read the story of the first Communion, the Last Supper, you'll find that it was a table to linger at. Tables, in general, were places to linger, as persons were often lying down to eat. It was a place to get comfortable, to chat a bit, to let yourself relax and settle into an entirely different kind of rhythm. 

Just look at all of the conversation that took place around the bread and the wine. Look at how the disciples had a full-on conversation, how they asked Jesus questions, how they nudged one another and gave a few little winks. How Jesus answered them and presented an entire lesson about the sacrifice that was to come. Together, they ate the bread, and they lingered - they lingered at the Table, and they lingered in the Upper Room. 

Nobody but Judas left quickly. 

Think about that for a second - for nobody but Judas was this table "quick." It wasn't just a moment; it was an experience. And an experience requires you to stay. 

What would it mean for you to linger at this table? What would it mean for you to stay awhile? What would it mean to be here long enough to share stories? To nudge elbows? To ask questions? To listen? How would it change your Communion experience if this Table was not just a place that you come, but a place that you stay? 

Will you linger a little?