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.

Let Nothing You Dismay

The death of a family member in and around the holiday season may accentuate the sense of loss that families feel. But the death may occur at any time of the year and change our experience of the holiday season. In some ways, we miss our departed loved ones most on these special days.

This year the sense of loss is very personal. It will be my first Christmas without my father who died December 2.

Many of us grew up celebrating Christmas with rich family traditions and wonderful meals together. We cherish vivid memories of father bringing in the Christmas tree and mother preparing the meal. We left milk and cookies on the fireplace Christmas Eve, woke up early, ran to the Christmas tree, and there discovered the gifts that Santa Claus left us overnight.

Christmas is all about the children, and the kids know it—and love it. Parents and grandparents, aunts and uncles, turn their attention to creating pure delight one magical morning.

The gifts were unwrapped each Christmas morning at the Crosby house in a storm of flying paper and bows, squeals and shouts. All mysteries were uncovered in 15 minutes, and the rest of the morning was a leisurely float through the package debris sporting new outfits and playing with the coveted gifts that topped the list.

Hence the giant hole that the death of a dear one creates in the family at Christmas. Their chair is vacant, their role unfilled. I will never again see my father at the family Christmas gathering, and the thought of it makes me sad.

I know this is not a loss for which I will find a substitute. I must now adjust my expectations of the holiday season. However, I want my words and deeds to foster peace and faith within the family, and I intend to fiercely protect and preserve for younger family members the surprise, delight and joy of Christmas.

An old man named Simeon is part of the Christmas story though he shows up eight days after the birth of the babe in the stable. He expressed to Mary and Joseph a perspective on death that ought to be considered by every grieving heart at Christmas. Simeon took that tiny infant in his arms and said, “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you now dismiss your servant in peace” (Luke 2:29).

The benevolent attention of God is a central truth of Christmas. Our Creator watches over us with tender care. He intervenes on our behalf. He intends to do us good, not harm. This perspective makes the comfort and cheer of Christmas possible. Simeon expresses it by addressing God as “Sovereign Lord.”

Simeon’s hands are wrinkled and spotted with age as he holds the infant. He knows that his own death is near. That is fine with him now. He is ready to be dismissed. He has worked like a soldier at his post. He has been faithful and attentive. He has endured the hardships that life inevitably brings. He is at peace with his impending departure.

This reminds me of my father, so full of faith and song, ready to be dismissed, living in the promise. We sang to him as he was dying. For hours we gathered around the bed, mother lying by his side. We sang to Dad because he was the one who taught us to sing, to embrace life as God’s good gift.

“Peace on earth,” the angels sang at the Christmas birth announcement in the fields of Bethlehem. It is not a pipe dream, this peace. It can prevail in the believing heart that embraces the goodness of God even in the process of dying. Simeon was ready be dismissed in peace by the God who announces peace to the world at Christmas and creates that peace day by day and year by year as we learn to trust him in both the wins and the losses, the good times and the bad.

Death at Christmas is like everything else at Christmas. It is bathed in the light of God’s grace and set in the context of his promise. “All is calm, all is bright.”

Sunbeams Down the Path

Our lifelong friends, Mac and Mary McDermott, were killed in an automobile accident near Gatesville, Texas, shortly after they left my father’s funeral. Mary died at the scene, and Mac died yesterday never having regained consciousness. Please keep their family in your prayers as they plan memorial services.

Mary was a young teenager in my father’s first pastorate in central Minnesota. She lived with us during a brief stint in Maryland.

The family met Mac, a soldier stationed at Fort Bliss, when we moved to El Paso. He was a member of the church where Dad was pastor. He helped my father build our home on the outskirts of El Paso from the stones and gravel they found in the arroyos.

My match-making mother invited Mary for an extended stay in El Paso and pushed her up the stairs at a fellowship meeting, insisting that she meet Mac. They fell in love, had a whirlwind romance, and were married for 51 years and had four children.

I saw Mary for the first time in nearly 50 years at the 60th wedding anniversary of my parents last year. Mary is the one who bought me the sailor suit I was photographed wearing as a five-year-old.

I saw Mac and Mary in the crowd as the family exited First Baptist Church of Gatesville after the memorial service for Dad. I stepped up to them, put both my arms around their necks, and hugged them close. I said, “Thank you for loving us when we were little. It made a big difference.”

Think of the ways we touch the little ones. This very Sunday we have 18 children who will be part of the parent/child dedication service. Our foster care ministry will bear fruit for generations on this earth as well as forever in heaven. The Early Learning Center and Bible study, missions, and music programs for the children are some of our most important work. Our efforts to bring Peace on the Playgrounds focus on the needs of children.

We send sunbeams far down the path when we love the little ones.

I Can See My Father Singing

My father, Russell Bryan Crosby, took off on his last adventure the Sunday before Thanksgiving. He and Donna, his bride of 61 years, packed the car and left without telling a soul. “I’m dying,” he told mother. “Let’s see if I can breathe better where it is hot and dry.” They left before 6 a.m. and were nearly to Fort Stockton in far West Texas before anybody knew. Mother was behind the wheel, and Dad was navigating with waves and nods.

They traveled to El Paso, admired a rare rainbow, and stayed with a man who lived in our home as a teenager in trouble. Then they headed north into the mountains on a course that we often traveled when I was a boy. They crossed the high mountain pass at Cloudcroft, N.M., ate some fresh apples from an orchard, and admired the towering peaks draped in snow. After 1,350 miles on the road, they made it back to the family Thanksgiving gathering.

My mother knew it was crazy for them to travel so far when he was so sick. But she told us all how delighted she is that they made that trip, their last fling together.

I was singing with my family around the deathbed of my father just a few days later. Mother was lying beside him holding his hand, and he was breathing but no longer responding.

I leaned over and thanked him for making me sing when I was a boy. Dad insisted that I sing with my brothers, even though I protested loudly, and he taught me how to do it. Song became such a great part of my life.

Singing together as men around the deathbed of our father was such a healing, helpful, joyful, and sorrowful experience.

Dad gathered us boys when we were preteens. He stood the four of us oldest ones in a row with hymnbooks in our hands. He taught us how to sing the harmonies. He did it patiently, persistently, until we got it, learned it, and loved it.

We sang together for ten years, my brothers and I, and it was formative and magical for each of us. We grew in our musical skills beyond Dad’s ability to help, and that was okay with him. We picked up instruments that Dad never learned to play. We wrote songs. Dad pulled us together, focused our energies, and helped us understand the power and beauty of song.

I picture Dad standing behind the pulpit, head thrown back, eyes half closed, singing about Jesus with a passion that no one could miss. His love for the Savior never waned through all those years. Right up the last, he wanted to sing and talk about Jesus.

I hear him calling us together for suppertime with a baritone voice booming through the hall: “Jesus has a table spread where the saints of God are fed. He invites his chosen people come and dine.” We joined him in his song until, through the years, it became a chorus of a hundred voices. It is one of the songs our family sang as friends passed by the coffin in their last tribute to our father.

I do remember my father preaching, of course. He towered above us as children, delivering God’s word in creative and interesting ways with vivid pictures and stories that made the text come to life. He instilled in us a love for God’s Word. We learned it by rote from the time we could talk.

I see him, Bible open in his lap, sitting on a stump in the forest with sunbeams dancing around his perch, getting his Sunday sermon ready. My father meditated deeply on the Scriptures. He always had a thought he was toying with, an intriguing notion, a perplexing puzzle or paradox. I picture Dad, choked with emotion, carefully retelling the story of his text.

I also see my father heaving heavy stones to shoulder height, building our rock house in the desert of El Paso, always accompanied by tiny people under foot.

My earliest memory is a train ride with my parents. I remember standing next to the bench seat on the train with a bag beside me. Some of my fondest memories of my childhood are the trips we took as a family. By the time I was 16 years old I had been in 27 of these United States.

We had several station wagons during my boyhood. The two I remember best are a big red Chevrolet and a smaller tan Buick. “How did so many of you travel in that station wagon?” I have been asked.

My reply: “You’d be surprised how many kids you can get in a station wagon if you stack them right.”

My second earliest memory is a snapshot from the hallway of the parsonage in El Paso. I woke up in my father’s arms as he carried me from the living room to my bed. The memory of being suspended and secure in his embrace stayed with me all these years. This memory may be the one that captures best how I understand and experience the Heavenly Father. Maybe trusting God comes easier when you know the strong arms of a loving earthly father.

My father’s life was all about Jesus—serving, exalting, and pleasing the One who went to the cross and accomplished such an amazing rescue for sinners like us. He experienced a powerful spiritual transformation when he asked Christ to save him as an 18-year-old. That experience was the emotional and spiritual centerpiece of his life. He found his personal foundation in Christ alone, and he anchored his family in Christ as well.

Needy Others

God gives good gifts to us. In fact, every good gift comes from God (James 1:17).

We misuse God’s good gifts. The Bible actually has a word for the twisting of the good—“iniquity.” God does not prevent the squandering or evil use of his good gifts.

God continues to give to us despite our misuse of his good gifts. In fact, we are surrounded every day by the good gifts of God who provides all things for us to enjoy.

I cannot fathom this amazing grace of God though I experience it every day. I “wonder how he could love me, a sinner, condemned, unclean” (from the hymn “I Stand Amazed in the Presence” by Charles Gabriel).

I have discovered this kind of undeserved love to be the greatest and most powerful force in my life. God sends his refreshing rain on the just and on the unjust, as Jesus said. This truth about God compels us to love our enemies and do good even to those who do evil toward us (Matthew 5:45). In fact, the good giving of God to unjust people is a core teaching of Christ and the Bible.

Sometimes I imagine myself a deserving recipient of God’s amazing grace, and I sense my own generosity withering like paper in a furnace of pride. Those in need around me I imagine as less deserving than myself. I find no good reason to transfer my hard-earned and well-deserved resources to those around me with such glaring moral failings.

I want to follow in the footsteps of the divine Giver, but I hesitate in fear that my own good gifts will be wasted or misused. Acts of charity sometimes appear to be counter-productive. How can I give in this environment of uncertainty and sin?

Love is tough as well as tender. All parents experience this truth. All human giving occurs from one needy person to the other. The needs of the giver may skew the giving so that it harms rather than helps. This is no fault of love. This is just more evidence of the caregiver’s limitations and needs.

The gift of good intention may be misused through the moral failings or limited understanding of the recipient. No caregiver can be absolutely certain that their expression of love will not be twisted for some evil purpose.

We do not escape this potential moral failure by giving to institutions. Individuals and institutions alike are susceptible to the temptations of greed and sloth.

I myself am comforted by the moral accountability of the recipients of charity. The giver of the gift is a moral partner with the recipient. I feel both sides of this responsibility as the pastor of my church. I will give an account on judgment day of my own generosity or lack thereof. I will also give an account of how I used the gifts of others.

The act of charity involves two parties, and each has their own unique opportunity and responsibility. Neither one can be held morally accountable for the other.

The closer the gift is to my own hand and eyes the more likely I am to evaluate correctly the impact of my gift. If I give my money where my hands are working, I know with some measure of comfort what my gift will do. We encourage our working volunteers to support with their money what they support with their time and energy.

Sometimes we feel compelled to respond to urgent needs far away. But we should always request—and even require—minimal financial accountability from those institutions we support including budgets, financial statements, and financial endorsement by watchdog groups (e.g., the seal of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability).

The loving gift is not minimized by asking hard questions about its use—it is affirmed and enlarged. Resources are limited. Therefore we are obliged to evaluate carefully the direction of our giving in order that we may do the most good with what we have to give.

May this holiday season find us generous of heart, active with helping hands, and wise in our loving gifts to those in need.

Thank You is Something You Say

I worked as a high schooler on several turkey farms in central Texas. In the 1970s farmers in Mills County raised hundreds of thousands of turkeys mainly for the eggs. They shipped those eggs all over the world.
Sometimes a turkey would be injured, and the owner would want to cull it out of the flock. On one such occasion, the owner suggested that I kill a turkey with a stick and take it home to my family for Thanksgiving. I was eager to do so. I grabbed a stick about six feet long, ran after the turkey, and took a big swing, breaking the turkey’s neck. But then I realized, somehow, that I had taken too big a swath, for there were two turkeys down, killed instantly by my single blow. I felt terrible and wondered what was about to happen. The owner was amused rather than upset. Knowing the size of my family, he suggested that I take two turkeys home for thanksgiving. Is it correct to say that the Lord provided abundantly for our Thanksgiving that year?
God gave a calendar of events to his people in Leviticus 23. He scheduled seven events annually for his people. They are called “feasts.” These seven feasts are celebrations of the bounty and goodness of God. God invites his people to be his guests at the feasts.
My thanksgiving is threatened by anxiety and fear. It’s not that I am ungrateful. It is, rather, that I have no emotional energy left for gratitude because fear consumes it all. I am grateful for what I have but fearful that I will lose it.
My thanksgiving is also threatened by forgetfulness. I too often forget the grace of God in which I stand. When I overlook grace, I also overlook gratitude.
These observations are intended to help preserve and cultivate the spirit of gratitude:
First, thanksgiving is something you do: “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving” (Psalm 100:4). Thanksgiving was an event in the OT. It was an activity that humans engaged in—the giving of thanks. Jesus gave thanks over and over again on many different occasions including the night in which he was betrayed.
Among the Jews, the table blessing is always a blessing of God rather than of the food. It is not so much, "Bless this food," but "Blessed be God who gave this food." The little prayer, "God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for our food" captures the essence of the Jewish table blessing and the blessing as Jesus spoke it.
We are commanded to give thanks. Perhaps your situation is very bleak and you feel that you cannot give thanks. I suggest you set aside your feelings for a moment. Just do it. Do it in obedience. Give thanks to God. Think of things to say thank you for. Deliberately, meditatively give thanks. Feelings follow obedience in this matter of thanksgiving, not the other way around.
And thankful is something you are: “Be thankful unto him” (Psalm 100:4).
Those first pilgrims in Plymouth Colony almost had a day of mourning in 1621. They had suffered through a terrible winter and lost many of their friends and family members. Their little village was surrounded by the graves of children and parents and grandparents who had not survived. Mourning seemed appropriate. Instead, though, they turned their hearts to gratitude and celebrated a day of thanksgiving.
The first time that the Thanksgiving holiday was uniformly celebrated throughout these United States was in 1863 by presidential proclamation. The country could easily have observed a day of mourning then as well, given the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans during the War Between the States.
Every day can be a day of mourning or a day of gratitude. Perhaps a little of both is mixed into every day. But we must decide if we are going to receive each day as a gift or as a burden. Will we focus upon our loss or upon our blessings? It is up to us.
The Lord’s Supper could have been a meal of mourning. It is about the shed blood and broken body of our Lord. Instead, though, it is called the “cup of thanksgiving” which we drink, the Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving.”
Gratitude is a sign of spiritual health.An ungrateful spirit is a sure sign of spiritual sickness. Note these words of the Apostle Paul from Romans 1:21: For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Futility is the companion of the ungrateful spirit. You will never know such a downward spiral until you sink into self-pity and miserable contemplation. That sort of thinking is the true bottomless pit.
Darkness is the companion of the ungrateful spirit. Their foolish hearts were darkened when they refused to give thanks. Gratitude is the declaration that life is a gift to be received with thanksgiving. Darkness settles on the soul which cannot see life as a divine gift.
My father had a farm on Hogg Creek near Crawford, Texas, not far from the ranch of President Bush. One evening I was sitting in a deer stand with my rifle when a flock of buzzards came in and landed high up in the trees above me. There were dozens of the nasty birds, and I was disgusted with them.
Just before dark, though, a flock of wild turkeys came noisily through the woods. They decided that they liked these trees, too, and began to flap their way into the lower branches and limbs. They startled the buzzards, which took flight and found another perch for the night. Maybe your Thanksgiving turkey will run off the buzzards!
One more observation about Thanksgiving:
Thank you is something you say: “for the Lord is good...” (Psalm 100:5). God deserves to be thanked out loud.
The spoken “thank you” touches the speaker. Jesus said “thank you” so often to his father in Heaven, as noted in the Gospels. Think of the thousands of times that Jesus said thank you that are not recorded. It was a habit of his life to speak his thankfulness to God.
I find that my spoken words are important to my own well-being. Sometimes I have to talk to myself. The spoken word has a power to touch and change even the one who speaks.
The spoken word also touches the hearers. Others about you will be touched and encouraged by your verbalization of gratitude. This is one reason why public prayer is so important. The public prayers of Jesus were full of thanksgiving. Offer a public prayer of gratitude at your family gathering this year. Do not lunge into the meal without first pausing and acknowledging the great God who has given every good thing to us.
You will never know the full impact of your prayers of gratitude upon the hearts of your children. Children are inclined to be grateful and to offer their prayers without inhibition unto God. Yet when they hear your gratitude they learn that God is glorious and that all of our lives we are dependent upon him. They learn the proper posture for living.
So speak out loud that “thank you” to God this Thanksgiving. It will bless you and your family and friends. And it will bless the Eternal God who made all things for us to enjoy.

Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart

Thanksgiving is the only official holiday which we celebrate which is strictly of Christian origin. It has been from its beginning a day of turning to God and giving thanks for his goodness.

Gratitude is a central Christian virtue, indispensable for those who wish to be spiritually and emotionally healthy. We cultivate gratitude on a daily basis by a consciousness of God’s grace extended to us without limit. The reality of God’s forgiveness and bountiful provision for our eternal future is reason enough to give thanks “in all circumstances” (1 Thessalonians 5:18).

The holiday itself prompts us to seek and follow the will of God. Giving thanks is “God’s will for you in Christ Jesus” (1 Thessalonians 5:18). The family and friends will enjoy a special sense of God’s presence in their group and in their lives as they give thanks to God for his wonderful blessings.

I suggest that you treat Thanksgiving as a celebration of the goodness and bounty of God--as a Harvest Celebration, so to speak. This is practice of long-standing among the people of God. You can do this in your gathering of friends and family in several ways:

First, make the reading of Scripture a part of the family gathering. I suggest reading one or more of these passages: Psalm 100; I Chron. 16:7 12, 23 36; Psalm 105:1 7; Psalm 118:19 29; Psalm 136:1 9; I Thess. 5:12 24; and Phil. 4:4 13.

Second, rehearse the wonderful works of God within your own family. Give testimonies of God's goodness around the table.

Third, sing around the table a song of thanksgiving such as the Doxology, Count Your Blessings, We Gather Together, Give Thanks with a Grateful Heart, or Thank you, Lord, for Saving My Soul. If your group will not sing, try quoting the Doxology or another familiar hymn.

Fourth, make much of the bounty upon the table, acknowledging it as a gift from God. Millions of people in our world have never seen such a feast as you will enjoy this Thanksgiving season.

Fifth, consider making a special offering to the Lord your God in connection with Thanksgiving as a concrete expression of your praise and gratitude.

Finally, the spirit of this holiday requires prayer. When your family and friends gather for a feast, someone in the group should offer a prayer of thanksgiving. While this may be a little unusual for your group, it will likely be well-received by all present on this day of gratitude.

This celebration of God’s goodness will lift our spirits, turn our thoughts heavenward, and fight back the powers of darkness that always seek to creep into our families and our own hearts. We do well by everyone around when we give thanks.

Overlapping Smoke & Rain

My rain gauge caught 11 inches of rain already, and I am still trapped inside by trains of thunderstorms. The choking smoke from a wildfire in a marsh in East New Orleans combined with the rains of Tropical Storm Lee to make for an interesting backyard experience. Only in south Louisiana where God never completed the separation of water from land do such disparate disasters overlap.

I thought my house was on fire the first time I smelled the smoke. The ceiling fan in the small alcove outside my back door apparently sucked in the smoke. I searched the attic, garage, and every nook and cranny looking for flames. Finding none, I headed out into the neighborhood on my bicycle. A neighbor was the first to inform me of the fire in the swamp. After that it became front page news.

Marsh fires smolder in the peat moss below ground as well as in the reeds, bushes and trees. Drowning such a fire requires a lot of water. At first the smoke was captured and tamped down by the falling rain of Lee. Only after I recorded a full two inches of rain in my rain gauge did a visit to the backyard smell smoke free.

Every region endures some of nature’s surprises. Blizzards and landslides do not threaten us who live behind the levees. Marsh fires and tropical storms, however, occasionally disrupt life as we know it here below sea level. Rarely in my years here have these two, fire and rain, been mixed to create such a curious vaporous swirl.

We are living through a lesson of divine providence. Lightning started the great fire that burned our eyes, irritated our throats, and sent many of us to the doctor looking for relief. No human can take credit for that electrical bolt from a cloud. Yet I wonder how many nutrias, natural enemies of our levees, perished in the marsh fire? Maybe more than thousands of hunters could bag in our recent state-sponsored nutria hunt.

And the tropical storm which suddenly emerged over warm Gulf of Mexico waters and doused the stubborn fire was likewise beyond our power to create. Yet it did us a service by suffocating the flames.

We all complain about the weather, and I am sure we will continue to do so. We wish we could have sent TP Lee to Central Texas where 10 inches of rain would have provided great relief from a drought that threatens the very fabric of their agricultural industries. Had we been able to sell this storm, Texas would have paid top dollar for it, as one of my Texas brothers observed.

Towers of swirling smoke and rain wrap an impenetrable mystery beyond our sight and thought. No aircraft can invade its eye nor any radar uncover its path. Like the ancient sufferer Job we must confess, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3).

A sense of wonder and awe should grip us as visibility drops and we pass through smoke and mist. This curious blend assaults our senses and our comprehension, and we are forced to acknowledge the limits that we so often ignore.

Mountains may stand guard over human presumption and cast their shadows upon the feeble lights of human habitation. But no one on the planet senses better than we flatlanders what capes the Almighty casts over all our comings and goings.

We bow before the Power hidden in smoke and rain and seek to plot the coordinates that help us safely navigate the storm. We brace ourselves for the next natural wonder that will test our dominion of the planet—and our camp on this expansive delta.

The unconquered tumult displays design, power and beauty. Though we cannot fathom its depths nor scale its heights we must enjoy the adventure that makes our sojourn here always rewarding and surprising.

22 Principles for Leadership While Navigating Change

(Presented at the Georgia Baptist Convention Music Conference, FBC Snellville, July 22, 2011)

1. Be Future-oriented, but informed by your past. Change happens more rapidly now than at any time in human history, and it is not going to slow down. When you are riding in a buggy it is one thing. But driving at 70 mph requires always keeping your eye on the road ahead.

2. Be indigenous. There is no point in being an “embassy” in the midst of your culture. Speak the language of the culture: “But in the church I would rather speak five intelligible words to instruct others than ten thousand words in a tongue” (1 Cor. 14:19). Do it in such a way that a lost man “will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!” (1 Cor. 14:25).

3. Be Evangelistic. Always highlight the good news of forgiveness in Christ Jesus.

4. Know your congregation. A “First Baptist Church” is not usually a church plant. You are working within parameters.

5. Do everything as well as you can do it—excellence.

6. Use a worship team to process, analyze, gain feedback, and plan the worship including the messages.

7. Love your people and be determined. Your love will do more to build unity and help people through transition than any arguments you may come up with. Especially in regard to worship, people are dealing with feelings not logic.

8. Listen. People will say that you do not listen if you fail to do what they tell you to do. But listen anyway. Listening is important because you learn things. It also tells people that you value them and love them.

9. Be honest. My leadership of worship is not about hearing God speak from heaven: “Sing hymns” or “Use guitars.” I am on my personal pilgrimage. I am fallible. I make mistakes. I am doing the best I can with the people God has given us to provide worship that brings us into God’s presence.

10. Be who you are, not who “they” want you to be. You will wear yourself out trying to be somebody you are not.

11. Give people permission to experiment and to fail. Some things we do only once and scrap them.

12. Use the gifts of your people. Equip the people for works of service. Every minister is an equipper.

13. Be faithful to God’s Word. Preach the Word. That is and should be the main event in worship.

14. Emphasize prayer. Call people to the front of the church to pray. Include prayer in all of your meetings. Keep up your personal prayer life.

15. Do the little things. It looks overwhelming when you take it all in, everything that has to be done. But sit down at your desk, pick up that telephone, and begin to make the calls that are your priority.

16. Cultivate a climate of peace—do not be anxious. Your anxiety is communicated to those about you, and it does not assist the Holy Spirit in his work.

17. Develop Rhino Hide. People are going to criticize you no matter who you are or how talented. You want to remain sensitive to others while learning how to go on joyfully and peacefully after hearing criticism.

18. Be the leading worshiper.

19. Stay for awhile. You cannot lead a church through change if you leave as soon as you hit choppy seas. Some things come with long tenure that come with nothing else.

20. Have the wisdom to know when to compromise so that you can keep going forward. You will not get everything you want every time.

21. Don’t covet your friend’s church or his worship leader or his choir or his facility or his budget or his praise team or anything else about your friend’s church.

22. Count your blessings every day.

Whoever believes should not panic!

A lama stood in the main wading pool on the creek and refused to move even when our vehicle splashed muddy water on his shaggy coat. So Janet and I took the four grandchildren downstream a hundred yards and turned them loose where no Peruvian beasts of burden stood guard.

The two wandering lamas should not have been on the farm this spring. They belong to a neighbor who bought them as a breeding pair when prices soared and left them mostly unattended when the market collapsed.

The lamas, together with a rattlesnake, two raccoons, a skunk, and a curious jack rabbit, were part of a menagerie that fascinated the grandkids between picnics in the creek bed and wagon rides through the pastures. The most frightening moment came, not with wild beasts, but with the herd of Dorper ewes and lambs who thought we were about to feed them. They surrounded the wagon, black faces bleating loudly for food, and scared the children half to death, especially Jackson, age 5.

Jackson’s rendition of John 3:16 should calm our nerves: “…whoever believes in him should not panic but have everlasting life.” Substituting “perish” with “panic” may not convey the same meaning, but it stays true to the intention of faith. Panic is generally the emotional response when we have lost control of a situation. Faith informs all situations with this truth: God is in control.

The birds, said Jesus, have a lesson to teach us. Failing to sow or reap or store their food in barns they still enjoy the provision of the Father in Heaven. Therefore, “do not be anxious” (Matthew 6:31). Believing is the cure for panic.

Next time your heart takes off without permission and your startled body starts to hyperventilate remember these words from Undine Zengel, a relatively new believer in our church:

It is an amazing gift to be in God's Kingdom here on earth and to feel like one belongs no matter what the physical circumstances. Clinging to the living Word shields from all of life's storms so that they do not destroy us even if they do some damage. There is a part they can never reach.

Whoever believes should not panic.

Fathers & Peace on the Playground

Thousands of children growing up in our community are fatherless. Many have experienced the death of their biological fathers, a very common situation in pockets of our population. One coach working in a high crime area of the Upper Ninth Ward was absent for two weeks while on vacation. A boy on the team asked the other coach, “Is Coach Jared dead?” For these young boys who have lost so many men in their lives, a two-week absence provokes such thinking.

The first pastor of the Jerusalem church, James, who is called the brother of Jesus, wrote that “pure religion” was “to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction” (James 1:27). Scholars think it very likely that Joseph, the husband of Mary, died when Jesus and James were still children. In such a case the offspring may suffer what James, who knew what it meant to lose your father, called an “affliction”—oppression and distress.

This condition is most poignantly illustrated by Hagar and her young son Ishmael, banished and abandoned by his father Abraham, weeping in the desert, full of fear and confusion, looking to die.

Children who struggle under the distress of fatherlessness are in crisis. They need the intervention and involvement of good men willing to help fill the gap. Opportunities abound on the playgrounds for such surrogate fatherhood.

A team of volunteers from our church tried to start some positive activity on one of the playgrounds in New Orleans. Local gang members looked on this activity disapprovingly and sabotaged the lights to discourage gatherings and cover with darkness their own crimes and misdemeanors.

These playgrounds, open and green, are strategic spaces in the battle for the streets of New Orleans. They represent all the common spaces we share as a community. At one time they were the hubs of healthy neighborhoods. Many adults cherish great memories created on those playgrounds. That was the intention behind their creation.

Historically the men of our community have claimed the playgrounds. They must now be reclaimed if their neighborhoods are ever again to foster the safe environments and healthy relationships that strike at the roots of violence and crime.

The playground that looks unkempt and abandoned may actually be occupied, but not by positive role models and healthy attitudes. A playground not utilized and energized by fathers and other men with good intentions may serve a purpose diametrically opposed to the original intent.

Fathers—and all those willing to stand in for absentees—must rise from their recliners, find their baseball gloves and basketballs, and foster fun and peace on the playgrounds. Instead of shaking our heads over the condition of youth in our community, let’s start shaking their hands, learning their names, and teaching them how to dribble, pitch, and hold their tempers.

Some day when they look back upon their childhood those fatherless among us will give thanks for the men with steady hands who addressed the wounded hearts they did not know they had and became like dads to them.

This Father’s Day we remember the men who held us with strong arms, taught us to throw a curve ball, helped with vocabulary and algebra, and provided for us when we were young. They were not perfect, but they are giants in our minds. All our lives we may return the favor by caring for kids. Now that is some pure religion.

Thoughts on my 15th anniversary in New Orleans

First Baptist New Orleans moved into the current church facility seven years ago this coming Sunday. The only place I ever worshiped longer than I have worshiped in our new facility is down at the old church on St. Charles and Napoleon. Together these two houses of worship have been my preaching point and pastoral assignment for 15 years.
These 15 years have been exhilarating and tumultuous. Relocation was itself a tremendous undertaking that required enormous financial and human resources. The emotional cost of relocation was perhaps its greatest price tag.
We had scarcely settled into the new facility—less than 15 months of occupancy—when Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans, and our city, including our church neighborhood, was flooded and plunged into darkness. We returned to worship at the new facility seven weeks after the storm. We used a large generator to run the lights and fans until electrical power was restored to our facility three months later. We often worked from our kitchen tables until telephone and internet services were restored almost one year after the storm.
The annual hurricane season stirs up for many of us a host of unsettling memories. We lost our friends, our businesses, our homes, and our way of life in that terrible flood. We choked on the dust from ten thousand demolitions and gagged on the rancor of rotten meat from every freezer at the curb. We sank exhausted into borrowed beds week after week, commuted a hundred miles to work and school, and led and fed waves of volunteers who donned hazmat suits and helped us clean up the awful mess.
We set up structures and initiatives in the wake of Katrina that endured for the years of clean-up but are rendered obsolete by progress. We transitioned from normal to chaos to disaster relief to clean-up to rebuild. And now we are transitioning again to an emerging new normal.
This emerging era in New Orleans is what I want to talk about today. I want to do so using a metaphor that I often used after the storm—the open door. Before Katrina all the doors were closed. After Katrina, all the doors were open.
The crisis opened all doors. Some of those doors are closed now that the emergency is past and life is returning to normal.
Rev. 3:7-13: “To the angel of the church in Philadelphia write:
These are the words of him who is holy and true, who holds the key of David. What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. 8 I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut. I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

The Student is Not Better Than the Teacher

A friend told me last Sunday, “I want to take the country back.” He meant by this, I think, that he wanted to return to a time when the United States seemed to operate within a Protestant ethos.

My own sense of Christianity and the church is that we will always be a minority in a hostile culture, even when we think we are not. I never experienced a culture that I would call "Christian" in my upbringing. This includes my Bible-belt experience at a school in Central Texas in the late 60s. I was shocked at the behavior and conversation of my new "Baptist" friends. I couldn't believe they claimed to be Christians.

My family and our faith always felt like a minority view everywhere we lived. So the desire to turn back the clock to some previous era when America was Christian and we prayed and read the Bible in public schools does not resonate with me. I experienced public education hijacked by the local Catholic establishment. They wanted nothing to do with Christianity as I understood it. The local priest opposed our Bible study and warned students not to attend even though the cafeteria served fish every Friday and everyone came to school with ash crosses on Ash Wednesday (except me).

I am still working on the idea that the church is responsible for Christianizing the culture. I don't see this approach in the ministry of Jesus or the Book of Acts. I see Jesus as almost nonpolitical. He didn't join any of the existing political groups. He did not seem to have a social agenda that I can identify. His "render unto Caesar" remark seems to represent the summation of his political activism.

Instead, he was focused on preaching the good news and gathering together a group of people who would carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. The gospel always has social implications that are to be lived out and preached. He announced his ministry in Luke 4 as focused upon the blind, the broken-hearted, the captive, and the poor. He healed the sick and cast out demons. He did not arm himself or his followers. He never took up the sword. He did not befriend the powerful elite of his day. He did not engage in social engineering.

Our Baptist heritage is bifurcated at this point. Some people tend to be more Calvinist in their approach to culture. They want to organize a Christian society, as Calvin tried to do in Geneva. That experiment most historians would judge a failure.

Other Baptists tend to follow the Anabaptist heritage of our forefathers. This is the heritage of a "free church in a free state," the notion that being the authentic church is the most powerful social strategy we can implement in any culture.

The Book of Revelation may in part be seen as a philosophy of history. You have the Beast trying to devour the people of God. The people of God are mistreated, hunted, and murdered. But their blood cries out for justice and their tears are remembered by God. God himself brings about justice when he intervenes in human history, defeats the devil, and brings a "new heaven and a new earth in which dwells righteousness."

This is not a very hopeful view, I know, in terms of this world. And it does not energize a social reform movement, so to speak. So I am trying to rethink the eschatology of the Bible and see how I might correct my perceptions.

Chuck Colson has suggested that we have a "cultural mandate" in the Bible that goes hand in hand with the Great Commission. He finds support for this, not so much in the death and resurrection of Jesus, but in the doctrine of Creation. In this view, everything belongs to God and should be under his dominion. The doctrine of creation may be where this fits, but I have always been "pre-millennial" about this matter. God made the world, and he will bring it under his authority at the end. I would be more satisfied with an understanding of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus that calls me to engage the principalities and powers of my time, including the political structures that are unjust and ungodly. Some biblical teachers have taken this approach.

I believe I am a citizen of two kingdoms: the kingdom of God and the human society of which I am a part. My citizenship in heaven is of far greater importance to me. My citizenship on earth is a stewardship. It is a gift to live in a nation where government is "of the people, by the people, and for the people." Therefore, I should be participating in this government as a Christian responsibility. I suppose this is my major motivation for political action--the doctrine of stewardship.

When I think about using the political process to further my Christian agenda, I develop a sobering hesitation. The sword of the Spirit is an extremely sharp and fine instrument. It will discern even the intentions of the heart. The sword of the magistrate is a very blunt instrument. It will strike often where it is not intended. If I choose to use the sword of the magistrate to accomplish the will of God, I may be disappointed with the result. I may discover that my efforts to Christianize my society have only resulted in confusing people about what it means to be a Christian. People may begin to think that they are Christians if they maintain certain political viewpoints or vote for a certain party. That is part of the danger of seeking to use coercive power (the government) to impose my viewpoint on the culture. Authentic Christianity cannot be coerced. So whatever I achieve in the culture is a "middle axiom," somebody said, not a perfect manifestation of the Kingdom of God.

I guess part of me wants to say to Christians, What do you really expect? They hung Jesus naked on a cross. You think now that you're going to get the power to execute? "A servant is not better than his master. A pupil is not better than his teacher. If they did this in a green tree, what will they do in the dry?" I expect the culture to scorn me, ridicule me, persecute me, and marginalize me. I don’t want to be a doormat. But I don't live under the illusion that somehow I am going to receive accolades and the Key to the City because I stood for righteousness and truth (though I did receive the Key to the City from the Mayor one year, accidentally). More likely I will be tarred and feathered or run out of town.

These questions remain before me: What will lift the light of the gospel higher in this city? What is the most effective way to bring people to Christ? How can I do a better job of making disciples for my Lord? How to I express faith through love (Galatians 5:6)?

The Things Mothers Teach Us

King Lemuel decided to share with the world the wisdom he had garnered during his ascent to the throne. These “sayings” of King Lemuel are the things “his mother taught him” (Proverbs 31:1). Restated this means that the king learned his really important lessons from his mother.

Maybe Lemuel’s mother was unusually wise and articulate. But I suspect that the king learned these things from his mother for the same reason that many of us found our mothers to be our best teachers: mothers love their children.

One night I was privileged to handle bedtime for the three preschool daughters of my eldest daughter. As I was tucking them in they started to plead, “Back scratch! Back scratch!”

“Okay,” I said, and I scratched their backs, but I could not perform the task precisely as their mother did, and they all fell asleep feeling slightly deprived.

Mothers scratch your back out of love, not duty. They hold you close, comb your hair, clean your ears, and wash your feet just because they love you. They are often our most powerful teachers, not just because they teach us when we are very young, but also because they teach us out of this context of unselfish love.

The things of which you think you are certain climb in number while you are a child. But if you are emotionally healthy and intellectually active, sometime in young adulthood that number of supposed certainties begins to decline.

The things which remain as personal certainties after the gauntlet of adolescence, education, marriage, parenting, bereavement, conflict, and grand-parenting are mostly the lessons your mother taught you. These sureties are solid ground for decision-making, relationships, and quality of life on the planet.

The king’s mother taught him to use his power for the good of others, to abandon selfish indulgence and focus on caring for his subjects in need. She cautioned him about wine and women which she said are not the prerogatives of kings but their downfall.

The king’s mother cared for him when he himself was helpless and needy and could not speak for himself—when he was a baby. That’s what mothers do. They encourage such behavior in their sons and daughters because they know it corresponds with fundamental truth and goodness.

This Mother’s Day we should rehearse the things our mothers taught us by word and example. Maybe the principles and virtues we learned from them will aid us in our current dilemmas, conflicts, and challenges. A mother’s tenderness, gentleness, and generosity should not be lost on those who now have opportunity to speak for the powerless and destitute.

If our mothers are still among the living, we should count ourselves blessed. They deserve a heartfelt thank you and a big hug if we can give it. If they have passed from this life we are still blessed to have known them and known their love. A moment’s reflection about that remarkable woman on this special day might bring a smile and a laugh. Remembering her we might even see the way forward to a higher road, a deeper love and a better life. Her selfless love continues to teach us our most important lessons.