An Augustinian Reflection on Prayer 1

There is no way around you, Father.  You are all and in all.

What does that mean for us?  How we approach you?  How we express our hearts to you?  What do we ask you to do other than what we would simply do for ourselves?

Is prayer, then,  just our “thinking” about what is best?

If prayer is about asking you for things, what’s the point if you have already determined what's best for us and are already working that out in our lives?  Would you ever give us something that wasn't best for us?

For prayer to be meaningful at all, either the outcome isn’t determined OR prayer is a transaction whereby we think (with the picture of You we have in our minds) about what’s best for us and then move toward some peace about our circumstances?

But in thinking about what’s best, we are so tempted to fall into the trap of thinking only about what’s best for me.  And even then, it’s impossible to really know what’s best for me because what I think is best only amounts to thinking about what I want, or what makes me feel better at this moment, or what attends presently to some hurt I’ve entertained.

Because prayer does more than that - because prayer places me squarely inside the space where you are sovereign outside of my design for you, I know that you are real.  In prayer, your Spirit moves me outside of my own thoughts, fears, and desires and toward a vision of my existence I COULD never - that I WOULD have never -  imagined on my own.

It’s a version of myself that I don’t like.  It’s vulnerable.  It’s frail.  It’s powerless.  It’s subject to the agendas of other people.  It sometimes loses its shape in others.  It loses its shape in You.  I can’t see the re-formation taking place because I’m measuring your work from the vantage point of my disbelief. That I KNOW this shows me how real you are. I come up against a choice I must make.  Do I resist you, Father? Or do I discern your presence - your gentle leading - and surrender?

ANCHORED! - “Knowing Christ”

It’s great to see everybody here on the this, the FIRST Sunday of a new calendar year.

2019!

How many of you are excited about 2019?  You know the reason I’m most excited about 2019?  ... 2018.

And it wasn’t that 2018 was bad.  There were lots of good things that happened in that year.  In fact, Nicholas Kristoff wrote an op-ed appearing in yesterday’s New York Times claiming that 2018 was the BEST year in human history! He cited increased numbers of people living above the poverty line and overall better access to health care as evidence for that bold claim!

But as good as 2018 might have been, I also know that God always has something better.  

Better isn’t always easy.  Sometimes better is a little scary.  Better is a little scary because sometimes we’re creatures of comfort.  It may not be very good, but it’s what I got.  And I’ve learned to make do right now with what I got so telling me that there’s something else that’s better might mean doing something other than what I’ve been doing to get something other than what I’ve got.

Do you follow me?

Or put a biblical way… “

"I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12-14) 

But what I do know is that no matter WHAT 2019 holds for me, my family and our church, that Jesus will be present to us the whole journey through.

In fact, if I were to lift up the single most important thing I need to grasp as I enter a new year it’s this - that Jesus is already here with me and he’s in charge.  The fact that Jesus is in charge could be good news or bad news for someone this morning.  Good news because Jesus always invites us into deeper, more purposeful reality with him.  Bad news because I’m not always ready to lay down and leave behind the reality I’ve grown to know.

What I’ve grown to know is the IDEA that’s in my head of how I think my life should be.  But when we meet Jesus, we’re not meeting an IDEA about Jesus.  We’re meeting a person.  We’re meeting Jesus. 

The problem is that we’re used to thinking of Jesus in terms of an idea we have about Jesus.  Jesus healed the sick.  Jesus died on a cross.  Jesus saved the world from its sin.  And those things are all true.  But still those are facts about Jesus - when we’re directed NOT just by things we KNOW about Jesus but by the spirit of Jesus himself.

Paul points this out in 1 Corinthians.  He was a persuarsive and wise preacher.  A wonderful speaker.  An amazing rhetorician. You know all those letters you read in the New Testament from Paul?  They’re sermons Paul is preaching to the Galatians, Corinthians, and Romans.  He is literally speaking to a someone who is copying down his words and then someone reads that message aloud to the the church.

 But when he writes to Corinth, he asks them to remember what it was like being together in person - because it isn’t with wise and persuasive words that he with with them, but as he says - with a DEMONSTRATION of the SPIRIT’S POWER. 

"When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstrationof the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (1 Corinthians 2:1-5) 

We don’t know precisely what that means but after reading all of 1 Corinthians, we might get a picture.  The Corinthians were used to hearing great speakers.  It was part of their culture in a way that’s not like ours.  That was what they did for entertainment.  Paul was a great speaker - a master craftsmen with words - and so it would have been easy to go away from Paul entertained by how he delivered his message.

But that would have been missing what Paul was actually bringing.  He didn’t come with a PROPOSITION, he came with a PERSON.  And the person of Jesus was a person they would encounter in POWER - through the Holy Spirit.  Things change in the presence of Jesus.  And they change in ways we can’t foresee or control or manipulate.  Because, it’s Jesus - and not us - who is DIRECTING the change.

And in twenty-six years of ministry, I’ve got to say this is the single most difficult message for a room full of highly intelligent, educated, incredibly capable, super-successful, and exceptionally good-looking people to hear - BECAUSE… we are all in charge of our lives!  Until… we’re not. 

Last week, my mom and dad and I went to the doctor to see what could be done about my dad’s “memory issues.”  And even that phrase, “memory issues,” is a quaint way I’ve tried to have control over what’s going on with my dad.  “Memory ISSUES.”  Sometimes dad is able to get the words out he wants to say.  Sometimes he struggles for minutes.

What I found out was that he got very sick back in July - and my mom and dad who can’t bear the thought of being a burden to their children - didn’t tell their sons.  So when I went back home in August and noticed a sharp decline in my dad’s ability to gather his thoughts and form his words, I started coming up with my own diagnoses - which were off because I didn’t have all the facts.

I don’t want to bore you with all the details of that visit.  But as I sat and took notes while Dad’s doctor went through a list of possible causes and then tried to narrow them down, it occurred to me that I’m not driving this bus.  

And all of my instincts to do what some of you know very well - to jump in and fix it - to gather all the relevant data, to start bringing organization to the chaos, to get a vision and make a plan, and then in a Marine Corp-like fashion, work my plan.  That thing that I do very well, wasn’t going to help me here.  It wasn’t going to change my dad’s “memory issues.”

I woke up New Year’s Day in New Orleans at the home where I grew up still with no plan.  I got my workout clothes on, put on a sweatshirt, and stepped out into the front yard to go running.  It was drizzling outside.  It had been drizzling all week.  It had been drizzling rain just about every moment we’d been in New Orleans from the moment we arrived.  Light annoying drizzle.  Non-stop. 

I pulled my hoodie over my head and just started walking toward the Levee and the bike path that runs along Lake Pontchartain.  Normally, I would take my phone and head-phones, but I left those back at the house so I wouldn’t be listening to the wonderfully inspiring messages of Steven Furtik (sorry Chrissy!) or Chris Hodges (sorry Bro and Carol!) - I just wanted to hear some wisdom - any wisdom - from God.

Something happens when you lay down the constant noise and chatter we put in our ears or in front of our eyes.  When you lay down the social media.  When you set aside the distraction and when you pay attention to just what’s simply in front of you.   In fact, I think it isn’t too far fetched to suggest that in our day and age - we won’t hear a clear word from God - until we unplug from the noise.

I got back from my walk - soaking wet.  Tired.  But here’s what I heard or saw or encountered while I prayed and listened and took in the silence of that bike path along Lake Pontrchartain.   And it wasn’t an idea about Jesus.  I believe it was Jesus.  The risen Christ doing what the risen Christ does through His Holy Spirit.  Speaking peace and life.

And for someone who likes being in charge of things and in control of his life this is some good news from God.  That while I can’t control many or most of life’s outcomes, I can be purposeful about what I cultivate and what I offer. 

This is what I think Paul meant in 1 Corinthians about seeing a demonstration of the Spirit’s power.  As we listen to the Spirit, and allow ourselves to be taken to the place where we encounter the real presence of Jesus, where we allow ourselves to receive God’s grace and love, we become empowered to be EXACTLY WHO and WHAT we’ve been called to be inside of God’s kingdom.  

And here’s something that I’m almost hesitant to share.  I’m not really sure I should. I don’t want to feed the beast of our control instincts any more than they’re already fed.  But here goes… When we determine to move and speak and live and love out of a place of God’s peace… THINGS around us begin to shift and change.  People change.  Healing happens.  Hope is opened up.  And we become Christ’s instruments of grace and healing to the broken places around us.

And out of GOD’S PEACE FOR US … we offer PEACE to OTHERS.  And that’s when the JESUS and his KINGDOM come in POWER. 

(Preached 1/6/19 @ AFCC)

Advent 2012

The journey to Christmas takes us through the season of Advent- that special time of waiting and getting ready. Today, we're setting up our Christmas tree - a live spruce deep green and odor full. Our Living room smells of pine sap just minutes after the tree has arrived. Our home is filling with expectation of Christmas coming just as our faith is full with longing for Jesus's coming. Come thou long expected Savior we sing and hope!

Alamo City School Devotional – Teacher’s Inservice Monday, July 30

Who can guess which school handbook has had the following statement as one of its guiding mission statements?

"Let every Student be plainly instructed, and earnestly pressed to consider well, the main end of his life and studies is, to know God and Jesus Christ which is eternal life (John 17:3) and therefore to lay Christ as the only foundation of all sound knowledge and Learning. And seeing the Lord only gives wisdom, Let everyone seriously set himself by prayer in secret to seek it of him (Prov. 2:3)."

Can you guess?

This is from the "Precepts" of Harvard University written in 1646 as one of the guidelines for why Harvard was founded.  Originally, Harvard was a college for training ministers, but note what the precept recognizes because I think it’s for everyone... that the "only foundation of all sound knowledge and learning" is Jesus Christ.

Today, you have taken a risk.  There are organizations that may question why a Christian minister would be asked to give a devotional to open a teacher in-service.  In fact, it might be considered impolitic that I would even draw attention to this.

Rest assured.  My initial academic training was not in religion but in philosophy at Texas A&M.  As a philosophy major, I learned that everyone - no one excluded - has a point of view.  Even the great American philosopher of education - John Dewey - recognized what he called our web of belief through which all experience must pass and be interpreted.  Everyone has a way of engaging the world, thinking about their experience, anticipating outcomes, and even, hoping for joys to come.

It has always struck me that the most honest thing we could ever do is own that perspective.  If I'm a Muslim, confess that my Islamic beliefs and practices shape what I do and say.  If I'm a Christian, acknowledge that my ways of believing did not form in a vacuum, but came through generations of believers who tried to faithfully interpret scripture and be true to the light of the gospel.  If an agnostic or atheist, the most honest thing you could do is own the stream of thought that came before you through tradition of humanism.

No perspective is without its antecedents and without some rich history of dialogue, practice, and belief.

Which brings me to the point I'd like to make this morning.

Who you are in the classroom, before your students, depends entirely on the person you cultivate OUTSIDE of the classroom.  When you step through the doors of Alamo School each morning, you will bring with you your beliefs, your dreams, your hopes, your frustrations and your joys.  You will bring a story of who you are and this story will teach every bit as much as the content you present in your classroom.  What your students will learn from you and subsequently remember will no doubt be Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic.  But far more impacting will be your character, your compassion, and your courage.  No one ever will object to this school being a place where Christ's compassion and love are poured out by everyone on everyone.

My six year old daughter - Neeley - is transferring this year from a small Christian school in Jackson to  Alamo.  She is for my wife, Susan and me, apart from our love of Jesus Christ, our first duty, our most important responsibility.  She is our joy and she will become, with her brother Will - for whom we have the same feelings -  the legacy Susan and I leave for the next generation after we leave this earth.  

We entrust her to you for her education because we believe in you.  We willingly move her from a school where people can openly teach Christian belief, to a school where people can courageously and compassionately LIVE Christian beliefs.  We do this because we know many of you and we believe in you and what you bring to the classroom.

My prayer for you is that you find the opportunity to cultivate outside of the classroom the joy, the hope, the faith, and life of salvation and obedience - what those of us in the Christian faith call the "gifts of the Spirit - with which you will instruct and shape your students in the classroom.  The greatest gift you could give this community is not necessarily a school that has the highest TCAP scores - even though those are good atta-boys to have - but children who are trained in every respect to take on the challenges we see facing our nation with the hope and confidence that they have received from us, our very best.  

And I believe in this way, we will have fulfilled the goal set for itself by Harvard in 1646 - that all learning must have its foundation in seeking life's ultimate good - which for me, as it was for them, is Jesus Christ, the son of the living God.

Let's pray.

Loving Father, this morning we pray your blessings and your favor over the teachers and students of Alamo City School.  We pray you protection and safety over them this this school year.  Keep them safe and secure.  We pray for your spirit of generosity and joy to be poured out so that the atmosphere breathed inside these walls is hope and love, learning through relationship and example, growth toward strength and wholeness.  Give us all in this community a large vision of the importance of education and teachers – who day in and day out pour out their lives so that our children grow into life.  Bless them through Christ our Lord, Amen.

Susan's birthday tulips in bloom!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Bob Ingram's Funeral Meditation

Bob Ingram Funeral

July 9, 2011

You never really get to full picture of a person’s life from just a few months of having known them.  We meet people at various seasons of their life and often miss out on childhood or adolescence or other formative seasons of a person’s life.  And so we evaluate often based on the very short snapshot that we’re given never really knowing all the love and joy, all the hurt and pain that a person has gone through – all of which contributed to who and what a person has become.

It makes us hesitant to evaluate or sum up at all.

But in some instances and in some lives we are given glimpses of a depth of character and vision that transcend our day to day encounter with them.  We hear a story or get an insight into someone’s life experiences that reveals something hidden from view.  And then we see, there is much, much more here than meets the eye. 

In the time that I knew Bob Ingram, he was already deep into his descent into full blown Alzheimers and with each week it was becoming progressively worse.   He and I sat a table with Leigh in the fellowship hall several months ago and he told stories of some of his experiences as a father and as a pastor.  The stories for him were still present to his mind even if the words were not.  Leigh helped Bob with names and places as Bob would look at her and ask, “Who is that guy again?”  Leigh would fill in the blanks and Bob would continue relating the memory.

As I listened, I began to realize that these were not just pastor’s memories.  These were the memories of a pastor who was exceptionally brilliant, educated, compassionate and in a word - iconoclastic.   Herman Norton, the dean of the Disciples Divinity House at Vanderbilt once observed that Bob was one of the most brilliant students who had passed through that school.  High praise!  He finished seminary and began pastoring during one of the most conflicted seasons of our country’s recent history – the 1960’s. 

As a seminary student in the early 90’s, I arrived on the scene after many of the significant cultural battles this country had been fought and to a large degree decided. Bob Ingram arrived on the scene just as opening shots on the issues of race, war and violence, peace and justice were being fired.   He wasn’t one to gauge the direction of the prevailing winds and play it safe.  Bob had a clear and distinct picture in his mind of what Jesus would bring to the hard questions being asked and in the either/or of “this is the way we’ve always done it” versus “Jesus is calling us to a new spirit-led way of life” – Bob chose Jesus.

Mark and I had a conversation about the time we both encountered Bob that centered on many of the justice and compassion issues we saw facing Crockett County.  We were concerned still with some of the racial divide but our focus had shifted to how sustained poverty and addiction impacted the lives of family and especially the children.  As we got to know Bob, we realized that this too had been a concern of his, here in this community, thirty years ago.  Our discussion turned to Bob.  Mark had been talking with  Bob about Bob’s vision for ministry and Bob had shown Mark some of things he’d written reflecting on his time and experience as a pastor.  What we began to recognize and appreciate was that he had been a forerunner, identifying these issues and teaching and preaching into them long before us.  And now were reaping some of the harvest – thirty years later – of seed that was sown by Bob Ingram.

Bob was an iconoclast.  What others around him believed and did wasn’t near as important as the vision of life he’d been given by God.  If others were bigoted and prejudicial, Bob would call people to inclusivity and fraternity.  If others chose to be provincial and self-satisfied, Bob would call people to a larger vision of life that saw God’s activity and beauty and purpose taking shape in ways often very different from our own.   Our God is a big God and isn’t the least bit limited to our perceptions and imperfect beliefs about Him.

In short, for Bob Ingram, there was no greater guide to life and heaven than the very life of Jesus himself.  Opinions about Jesus, theology about Jesus, dogma about Jesus could never replace what one actually encountered inside of the life of Jesus – and it was that life that releases one from the shortcomings of oneself and into a grand and encompassing and eternal life with the Father.

No one is perfect, not even a minister.  Paul said in Romans that “All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory.”  And I think that those who possess incredible vision for life in Christ perhaps struggle the most.  They’ve been given a gift for seeing into the kingdom of God and the blessing of life together as believers but then had to provide also for their family and establish some measure of security and comfort for those who didn’t have the option of choosing full-time ministry.  It’s often a tight-rope act.

 In living this tension there grace and forgiveness is sought – grace and forgiveness from God…  and from others.  As they do their best to balance calling and home life, a minister remains someone whom God has called to proclaim a vision of heaven to people hurting and lost here on earth.  And if our lives struggle to keep up with the words we speak, that doesn’t diminish the power of the words.  The vision of life in Jesus is real.  Ministers point to and speak of that life.  And pastors like their brothers and sisters who serve alongside them daily have to choose to die to self and live in Christ.   We haven’t been made exempt from the spiritual challenges faced by the people to whom we proclaim the word.  The vision Bob was given was real and powerful and transforming.  And it moved him to incredible compassion for hurting people.  He had encountered Jesus.  And his life, like all of us, was lived  - again in the words of Paul in Philippians 2:12 – working out his salvation with fear and trembling.

Bob’s life and ministry stand really as a marker to the idea that every community of faithful believers exists as a prophetic and proclaiming witness to the real presence of Jesus inside of that community and inside of the lives of the people who make up that community.  If someone were to ask the question, where is Jesus, I am certain that Bob would point to the church and say, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear you will encounter him there.

In a manner of speaking, Bob Ingram has left the world of the “now, but not yet” and entered the world that he knew and preached about and longed for.  And it’s God who gets the glory for the amazing grace that allows Bob Ingram .. and us… to live with him eternally.

Silence

I can't remember who exactly it was who said that when we appreciate poetry we assume silence as the starting place and then ask ourselves the question why and with what has the silence been broken?

I trust the same is true of our speech in worship. We could gather and a la Quaker worship, say nothing.  In the silence we would wait on God to move us to speech and break the silence only when there was fresh revelation from the Holy Spirit.

What we do instead is come with intentional speech.  We pray, we sing, we speak the word, we challenge, we praise, we hope and expect, we speak healing.  Being silent is something we could do alone.  But speaking is something that requires a hearer.  God hears our speech.  But it isn't only to God we are speaking.  Why our gathering is so important is that we have opportunity to speak INTO the lives of others who have drawn near to the person of Jesus.

Some (probably most) of the people speak the same language that we do.  But occasionally, and surprisingly, someone shows up to the place where the body meets who speaks a slightly different language.  Sometimes, different nouns describe the entities that populate their universe and so we try to translate and understand what parallels exist between our language and theirs.  Sometimes, we use the same nouns, but different verbs and the joy becomes trying to appreciate the other's experience of  life and the ways they have come to apprehend life's process and flow on terms other than the one we're accustomed to.  As challenging as this is at times, it doesn't negate the absolute value of speaking intentionally together and in our web of language pressing each other forward to a greater and deeper appreciation of God's movement in our world and in ourselves.

It's when we cease the conversation that we make the subtle declaration that our language has triumphed and there is nothing more of value to learn.  And what a small world that would be.