ELECTION DAY NOVEMBER 3, 2020

ELECTION DAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2020 I am among the nearly 100 million Americans who have already voted, but this day does not feel anticlimactic or superfluous. It feels monumental, properly charged with both concern and hope, no matter who wins. This burden of democracy was never felt by Jesus or Peter or Paul. They never listened to endless passionate speeches trying to decide who would be the best ruler. They did not have the right of the vote. They lived under the heel of a Roman Empire that told them how things would be. Their engagement in any political process was not about control but about survival. The gift of participatory government is in part an outworking of the Christian view of humans—their full dignity and worth no matter their economic or social standing. “The ground is level at the cross” theology spilled over into “the ground is level at the courthouse” political philosophy. Together with a similar view of humans in the secular Enlightment, this doctrine of human equality produced “a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” (Lincoln’s Gettsyburg address). Lincoln’s words originally resounded when our nation was “engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.” The test was about democracy itself, Lincoln said, the idea that human beings are competent to choose their own leaders and that those leaders derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed” (Declaration of Independence). Today, President Trump and Vice President Biden are seeking the “consent of the governed.” The democratic process, most importantly symbolized by this first Tuesday of November, is itself far more important than who is elected. A single presidential term lasts four years. This elective process has been in place since the U.S. Constitution was ratified by the states in 1787. It replaced the Articles of Confederation which James Madison, a key player in the creation of a new constitution, saw as too weak to address the economic, social, and international issues that already threatened to topple the new nation. This democracy can endure just about any difficulty as long as the power of the vote is respected by all. People of faith have prayed for this nation from the very first, and we continue to do so today. Our prayers are couched, not in the either-or—“either you give me the president I want or I am out of here”—but in the both-and—“I am willing to embrace both the person I voted for AND the person that did not get my vote, depending on the outcome.” SCRIPTURE: Romans 13:1-7 PRAYER: Dear God, thank you for entrusting to us such a wonderful nation as the USA. Thank you for the power I have to cast my vote. Give me wisdom as I do so. And give me grace and courage, joy and hope, whatever the outcome. Make me an instrument of your peace.

Don’t Count Sins this Christmas

We dedicated seven beautiful children a few months ago. We brought them before God and his church. We pledged an abiding interest in and commitment to their spiritual welfare. We did so fully understanding that these babies will one day choose to do what is wrong in the eyes of God. They will sin. It is inevitable. They have a nature that is bent away from God and toward sin. This is not to say that they are ONLY prone to sin. No, they are also amazing miracles of God’s creative imagination and unending grace. They are part of the creation judged to be “very good” by the Creator God (Genesis 1:31). And they are born with a longing to know the One who has made them and to do what is right. But they will need to be rescued. The spiritual flaw which plagues them from birth—and plagues us all—is not something we can fix on our own. Despite all the instruction that we receive and all the guidelines given by parents and society, all of us err. We lack sound judgment. We do things we regret, that we know are unwise. And we do them knowing that they are unwise and harmful to ourselves and to others. Christmas is the story of how the Creator God chose to address this relentless moral and spiritual failure of humans. He acted to rescue us from our sins. God has not missed his opportune moment on Planet Earth. God actually arrived at precisely the moment he chose. This is the meaning of Christmas. It was just the right moment in the spiritual condition of humans. We were powerless. After a thousand years of trying to keep the law, it was obvious that we were not going to be able to do it. The failure of the law to bring righteousness was clearly evident to all objective observers. Some would insist that it was man’s move, that God had done all he could possibly be expected to do. He created humans. He gave them stewardship of a lush and beautiful planet. He gave them relationships and communication skills. He gave humans amazing intellectual capacities. He equipped them for social networking that would enable them to achieve their greatest potential and highest good. Humans messed up the creation of God, including and especially themselves. All sin. That is who we are and how we are. Despite our flaws, we have the moral sense to identify evil. And we are incensed at injustice and wanton death and destruction. As it turns out, the greatest barrier to faith in God is often the question of evil in the world. We cannot reconcile in our minds the state of death and disease in the world with a loving and engaged God. God acted at this very point, experiential and philosophical. He struck at the heart of ungodliness. This is what Christmas is about, God dealing with evil in the world. The ungodly are the undevout and ungrateful of the world. They display qualities that a loving God abhors and practice things which he disdains while lacking virtues which he exemplifies and commands. Christmas is the season for the skeptic and the cynic to take note. All unbelievers should contemplate for a moment the notion that God became man in order to address the fatal flaw of humanity both personal and universal, individual and comprehensive. We are sinners. The manner of God’s movement against evil is surprising--not the violent, military annihilation of evil that leaves us all as casualties and all of us wondering why no other solution was possible. God addressed violence, disobedience, sin and evil by allowing these things, working through humans, to kill his only Son. Two words stand out in the story of Jesus: love and death. God responded to the evil of the world with unconditional love. God loved us all to the dying point. It was terrible this murder of the righteous one. But it was also planned in the foreknowledge and predetermined counsel of God. “Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6). God knew that not one of us would ever be who we were created to be. Therefore, God’s one and only Son was born of a virgin on Christmas day. God became a man. He became a good man, good in the most authentic sense. He became a PERFECT man, a man as men were meant to be from their creation as designed by their Creator. This man was the Second ADAM, as Paul describes him: For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ (Rom. 5:17). Only this kind of man could take away our sin, God’s lamb without blemish, sacrificed on our behalf for the sins of the world. Christ reconciled us with God by eliminating the conflict. We were enemies of God. Christ identified all the places where we were wrong, sinful in our behavior. He addressed those through his blood. He made us clean and right through his death upon the cross for us. The ministry of reconciliation has been committed to us by God: “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:19). God was “not counting men’s sins against them.” That would be a great Christmas attitude for all the upcoming family gatherings. In the light of God’s great gift of grace, how can we do less? Oh, if we could practice and pass on the reconciliation that God has given us and NOT COUNT sins this Christmas.

Snake in the Well

Our big family moved 500 miles without leaving Texas, from Canutillo to Richland Springs, when I was a freshman in high school in 1967. I was not a happy camper when Dad announced the move. I had friends, including Irma, my girlfriend, and I liked my life the way it was. Dad insisted on the move. Mom went reluctantly too. She was terribly upset that first night, I remember, crying and saying, “It’s the worst move we ever made!” She was standing with her feet in debris in the middle of a small living room with rotten wallpaper peeling off the walls and Sheetrock sagging from the ceiling joists. The idea Dad had was to make a living farming, but 140 acres of anything in central Texas was not enough to make a living for a family of ten children. We tried, though, by picking pears, planting peanuts, raising chickens, harvesting pecans, and hunting wild turkeys for food. Mom even roasted two armadillos for dinner one night—not my favorite meal. Dad soon returned to his former professions, teaching in the local school and preaching at the local church. It was for the best, really. He was a better teacher and preacher than he was a farmer. He made ends meet, but the farm was neglected. A hand-dug water well near the deep-rutted dirt road that ran by the front gate supplied our home and the barn with water. It was open-mouthed, rimmed with rocks, and around 40 feet deep. Hidden in the weeds that grew tall in the valley, it was out of sight and out of mind most of the time. Then the water became murky, and we all became aware again of our solitary water source. Dad asked people at Locker Baptist Church what to do about the water. Locker was a tiny community with a cemetery and a white wooden church building situated on the northeast side of an intersection between a ribbon of beaten asphalt and a thinner ribbon of rutted dirt. The tiny congregation held a meeting and decided to ask Dad to preach for them, and he did. Then they asked him to become the pastor. So we were all baptized again and became Baptists. I remember this well because I voiced the loudest protest in the family against getting dunked again. The church members were concerned about the dirty water. They asked Dad if he had treated the well with bleach. He had not, he said, and vowed to treat it as soon as he could secure a gallon of bleach. “Town” to us then was Richland Springs with a population of 300 people, a school, and a couple of stores. Dad bought the bleach there. We all waded through the weeds and went down to the well to see how things would go. We peered into the pit and saw something moving. Dad sent one of his boys back for a flashlight, and soon we discovered a snake was slithering around on the water in the well, maybe 30 feet below our feet. The water was mud-colored, and we were all disgusted that we drank it, but we were also fascinated by the snake and leaned over the well for a long time to get a good look. We had no idea how that snake got in the well. Dad did not know how to extract the snake from the well. He decided to go ahead and treat the well with the snake still in it. He screwed the top off the plastic jug and poured the whole gallon of bleach into the water below. We never saw the snake again. It makes my stomach flop just to think about what happened to it, but the water soon became so clear we could see the stones at the very bottom. The bleach did the trick. We tried not to think about the snake and drank our clean water with gratitude. Humans always need water, and getting it almost always causes problems. It’s why plumbers make so much money and rain is such a big deal in every human settlement. Water is the perfect illustration of simplicity, a clear liquid that comes down from above, flows over and under rocks, gathers in puddles and ponds, and constitutes most of every human’s body weight. We cannot exist without it. The goodness of God is like water. We cannot live without it, and if we conclude that we came into existence without the goodness of God, then existence itself is a moral perplexity. We go to this well all the time, every day. The goodness of God is a reservoir of strength and wisdom that channels its way through our daily thoughts and our most profound dissertations. It is where we begin and end in our moral reasoning, and where we go multiple times a day to quench the spiritual thirst that builds in our souls. The snake is in the well, a disturbing symbol of evil that slithers through biblical history and theology from “the serpent deceived me, and I ate” in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:13) to “that ancient serpent, who is the devil, or Satan” in Revelation 20:2. Why is this snake in the well? Why does evil exist in a world created and sustained by a good God? The problem of evil is the most persistent and perplexing puzzle in religious discussion. It clouds the vision like disturbed sediment clouds the water. It makes you pause before you drink and look for a clearer spot somewhere in the pond. Sometimes you move on without the water because the snake is in the well.

Pain will come to you

Pain will come to you, deeper and darker than you ever imagined. Your suffering will be profound. It may be relentless. If not already, you will one day become acquainted with the suffering of mind and body that inevitably happens to humans in this world. You do not get to choose the events that come your way nor the sorrows that interrupt your life. They will likely be a surprise to you, catching you off guard and unprepared. You may hold your head in your hands and lament your weak condition and wonder what you ought to do. You are human, made in the image of God. You will choose your attitude and mind-set and lifestyle in the wake of your greatest sorrow and pain. You are a steward, not only of your resources and gifts, but of your limitations and disasters. Suffering will probe your soul more deeply and expose your true character more fully than all the victories life can bring. You discover both your constitution and your potential when you are called upon to give “the last full measure of devotion” (Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address). The roll call of faith is not a list of those least troubled or touched by the sufferings of life. On the contrary, the list of the faithful often includes those most beset by unjust treatment and painful ordeals. They are distinguished not by their freedom from pain but by their faithful response in the midst of it. This, too, will distinguish you in the family of humans. To suffer, that is common to all. To suffer and still keep your composure, your faith, and your smile, that is remarkable. In fact, onlookers will liken you to Jesus of Nazareth if you suffer patiently without complaint. They will note this quality of faith in you, and it will set your light upon a lampstand more surely and more brightly than any other opportunity in your life. Pain will change you more profoundly than success or good fortune. Suffering shapes your perception of life, your values and priorities, and your goals and dreams. Your pain is changing you, this is true.

The SIGN ABOVE ALL SIGNS

By David E. Crosby, pastor
First Baptist New Orleans
Easter Sunday, the Year of Our Lord 2012

One of the Onion Boys (email for explanation) asked me a few minutes ago by email about the meaning of Easter. I was happy to explain to this Muslim friend halfway around the world why Easter is the greatest celebration of our Christian faith.

The disciples asked Jesus about the signs of the end of the age. His critics had previously asked him for a sign to prove that he was the Messiah. He told them that an “evil and adulterous generation” asks for a sign, and that no sign would be given except the sign of the prophet Jonah. Jonah was in the belly of the fish for three days and three nights, and the Son of Man would be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. The only sign would be the death and resurrection of Jesus.

Easter is the day we remember the Sign above all signs. On this day, God raised Jesus from the dead. This is the message that Peter preached to the crowd on Pentecost Sunday in Jerusalem seven weeks after the crucifixion of Jesus. This is the message for which Stephen was stoned by the Jewish Council. This is the message that Paul preached in the synagogues across Asia Minor. This is the message that called together and constituted the early church. “He is risen!”

A new believer asked me why Jesus stayed in only a small region of the earth when he could have gone to all the different countries and continents. It is a thought-provoking question. My answer is this: the gospel was best-served by having a handful of people who were completely persuaded that the resurrection had occurred and that Jesus was the Messiah. These people would be intimately acquainted with Jesus and his teachings. They would be witnesses to the miracles, the sermons, and the behavior of Jesus of Nazareth. They would see for themselves the execution and the burial. They would go to the empty tomb, and they would see Jesus in his glorified body. With this core group of people who knew Jesus and knew the truth, human history could be changed and people would come to faith.

We stand on the shoulders of Peter and John today. They arrived breathless at the empty tomb that first Easter morning as we do now every Resurrection Day. And all of our lives are changed forever.

No Candidate for Public Office in the Pulpit at FBNO

By David E. Crosby, Pastor
First Baptist New Orleans
April 3, 2012

Rick Santorum, Republican candidate for president of the United States, spoke to three packed Southern Baptist worship centers during his sweep through Louisiana. First Baptist New Orleans was not one of them, and for good reasons.

I do not personally endorse candidates for public office as pastor, and I do not allow select candidates access to our pulpit. We do host forums upon request where various candidates may debate and pitch their platforms. An informed electorate is important in a democracy such as ours.

I believe in the wisdom of separating the institutions of church and state as described in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. I support the tax-exempt status of churches as entities that help our communities and do not serve as platforms for political parties.

Office holders of any political party may bring greetings to our congregation from time to time. We are commanded in Scripture to pray for them and support them. Their presence in our sanctuary is not an endorsement of their policies but recognition of their ordained mission and their importance to our common life.

Helping favored candidates by giving them pulpit time confuses people about our message and the nature of our churches. We respect the officeholder and gladly support those who seek to do good through government. But I am not the pastor of a Republican church. I am not a Democrat or Republican as pastor. Our church is not about any political party or platform.

When one Baptist church is identified with a political party, it affects all Baptist churches in some measure. This course is a departure from our Baptist history, and it is dangerous to the gospel which we preach.

Do we really want to entrust the gospel to a candidate in hot pursuit of a nomination? Is this our idea of the good news? Let’s not feature candidates in our pulpits as a way to get our church work done. And if it’s not church work, then why do it on Sunday morning?

Any candidate is happy to get the time in our pulpits. He risks nothing. The publicity is free. He is not under any obligation to the pastors or churches that endorsed him. Politicians of all stripes are willing to use any church and pastor that is willing to be used.

Many pastors love to be near the power brokers. Some even consider themselves politically powerful, and maybe they are. But the power of political office has never been the power of the cross of Christ. Christ rode a donkey into Jerusalem and told his disciples to put their swords away. He told the Roman governor, “My kingdom is not of this world.”

I pray as Jesus taught me, “Thy kingdom come.” But I am not under the illusion that God’s kingdom will be delivered from Baton Rouge or Washington, D.C. Rather, I work for the coming of the Kingdom by loving my neighbor and my enemies, caring for the poor, preaching the good news, and following the footsteps of Jesus into the trouble of my world.

The preaching of the cross may seem powerless and foolish when compared to presidencies and congressional delegations. But the cross of Christ represents both the power and wisdom of God. And it is a power and wisdom that goes way beyond what any political office can possibly achieve.

I know some people see doomsday in the current state of affairs. They think they have lost their country, and in their minds they are fighting to get it back. But civil government has never been strong enough to bring the Kingdom of God. Let’s not give up on the gospel.

Myself, I see no enduring city here. Instead, like the writer of the Book of Hebrews, I am looking for a city that is to come, that has foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Meanwhile, as the word of God instructs, we pray and work for the blessing of this city, knowing that we pray to a God who makes all things new.

Lost Down Payment

Her name was Love, this 12-day-old infant, and she was not supposed to be occupying space on the planet.

Baby dedication services during this holiday season included her, Love J’Dore, quiet in her mother’s arms before the congregation.

I introduced the baby, youngest among a dozen dedicated, and prayed for her and her family along with the other children and parents standing before us.

Her family promised that day, a week before Christmas, to teach her the truth of the gospel, and our church promised to help. This is how our church follows the example of Mary and Joseph when they came to the house of worship to present and name their newborn baby, Jesus.

Baby Love’s mother made an appointment and a down payment on an abortion when she learned that she was carrying this child. Brittnay, pregnant for the third time, felt that she could not endure another pregnancy nor care for another baby. She made her way, heavy-hearted, to the clinic in her neighborhood at the designated time for the abortion.

The clinic was closed permanently, she discovered when she arrived. She turned away from the shuttered clinic thinking about these things—and very aware of the tiny life inside her womb. She decided that this was a message from God to her and that this child growing inside her was important and precious. She gave that baby the gift of life, carried her full term, and when the baby was delivered, weighing almost 7 pounds, she named her Love.

I learned these things later, after Baby Love had already been presented to the church and after we all had spoken our vows. This child, at risk of termination before she drew her first breath, remains in my thoughts and prayers. We presented her to the Lord that day of dedication. We promised to help her mother and grandmother.

She made it into the world, Love did, but what will happen now? Will we keep our vows to her? If we keep our promises, maybe she will fulfill the promise she is to us.

Baby Love has been entrusted to us, her family, friends and community. Our responsibilities only began when her mother chose to cherish her rather than abort her. If she is ever to know the full import of her name we will need to nurture her in our playgrounds, schools, and clinics. She must sense a surrounding presence of protective care as she becomes aware of her own being in our world.

Our community is rife with violence in this new year. The cries of bereaved parents and siblings and friends rise up to heaven, and Baby Love lies in a crib in the middle of it all. Only despair and hopelessness compounded by fear and sorrow could bring such wanton slaughter to our streets. Somehow we have forgotten the promise and wonder in every new life.

We push back the darkness when we receive with faith and hope the life that God gives from the first flicker to the last dart on the EEG. The heavy responsibility accepted will be returned with immeasurable joy.

Life is a divine gift. Our own existence—and that of those around us—is a sacred trust. We announce this to our friends and family members each time we receive with joy the inconvenience and expense of a new life. Embrace each human life—the least, the little, and the lowest—and you bless us all.

Our entire community must respond to the hopelessness and despair that fosters the violence. Every single person can do so by reaching out to the frail, the infirm, and the most at-risk among us whether captured in the amniotic fluid or imprisoned by the culture of death.

If we give them love, these least among us, we unleash in them the promise of life. We crush the lie of hopelessness that ignites and feeds the hate.

Love gives its rich blessing and reward. And love makes its perpetual demand. Love cannot sit idly by while others struggle and fall. Love makes a way where there is no way. Love never turns away, never turns aside, never turns hopeless.

Love never fails.

Brittnay spared her baby, named her Love, and took on the expensive assignment of lifelong concern and care for another person on the planet.

Nothing in human experience is better and stronger—and filled with more promise—than this. Among the spectrum of human endeavors and occupations, the greatest is love.