Picture Albums and Home Videos: Anecdotes of a Forgotten Past

I'm in a paradox about that oft-used/oft-abused instrument of preachers, the anecdote. I confess publicly now my own over-trained cynicism that comes second nature as I sit on the other side of someone else's pulpit some Sunday I'm out of my own. And I cannot help but start taking notes about how they do things, their method and technique (i.e., manuscript or free form, narrative or 3 point style, etc). And one thing I always seem sure to note is if they fall prey to the great cover-up: telling some story or anecdote or joke at the beginning in an effort to "break the ice" or "warm up the crowd". In other words, to entertain.

Sadly I fail to remember where I heard this (which is appropriate to where this blog seems to be taking me) but I've heard it said that often preachers look for a quip or clever yarn to open up sermons as a way to hide their own insecurity; to please the crowd before prophesying; to win them to your side before you bend them over and tell them what they don't want to hear. So in my over-educated, well-oiled superiority complex, I give the preacher a demerit and am then on the lookout for other indications of their short-comings (which, any good psychologist would probably tell you has far more to do with my own insecurities and short-comings than anything else). Nevertheless, the anecdote in this context becomes the sugar coating on a bad-tasting Gospel. It seems to me the Gospel deserves to be taken more seriously than a punchline or bad medicine; and is certain bigger than the kind of joke that is only laughed at to make the teller feel okay with themselves.

But this is a paradox because Jesus himself is an amazing Storyteller. He weaves images with words to give us a tapestry of the Kingdom. The most memorable, engaging sermons I've heard are often full of stories and personal testimony that reveal the Kingdom in the syntax of real-life. This accounts (sometimes humorous, sometimes grave) offer a tangible memory of the Gospel for a parishioner to take home and play with for a while.

I am rather humbled by all I've experienced by God's grace in my short life; travel, relationships, musical performances, unique experiences, etc. I love living this life God has so carefully set-up around us. And yet whenever I rummage through my memories for an illustration that I hope will not entertain or cover-up but give hand-holds to the Gospel, I have trouble making the connections. I've driven long miles, hiked through mountains and deserts and highlands, flown over oceans and timezones, but I cannot find an illustration to illuminate the journey of the friends to Emmaus (Luke 24).

My wife will grow frustrated with me from time to time (hehe, look at this, an anecdote) when she asks, "Don't you remember when ..." followed by a memory of something she or I said and despite my conscientious effort to [i]not[/i] be like those insensitive, dull-witted cavemen portrayed in TV sitcoms, I'll give her the stereotypical, "Um..." and wince. Recently, after repeating this scene, I realized that I don't remember conversations much, but impressions. In other words, I think I remember in photographs, not in video.

Perhaps a psychologist could better explain what that's about. Or maybe it is simply a sign that I'm not a very practiced observer of life but instead, I spend my energy thinking about how I feel about life (i.e., spend more time thinking about how [i]I[i/] look at life instead of just looking at life!). It's as if Monet paints my memories: as if the images are cast behind a sheet of water; a still picture that shimmers with movement. If my life were a book, it would probably be one of those coffee table books, and have more pictures than words. While I appreciate how God is created me, it would be nice to have eyes to view the world and not orbit around my own perspective; to start with the world and see where I fit, instead of starting with self and moving out.

Maybe to actually be less self-aware and just more aware is the faithful task for preachers.

Quote of the Day

"The human mind is never more resourceful than when it is involved in self-justification," author Jean Garton has written.

I don't know who Jean Garton is, but they certainly have a point.

Casting Magic

"For the sake, as he sees it, of the ones he preaches to, the preacher is apt to preach the Gospel with the high magic taken out, the deep mystery reduced to a manageable size...The wild and joyful promise of the Gospel is reduced to promises more easily kept. The peace that passeth all understanding is reduced to peace that anybody can understand. The faith that can move mountains and raise the dead becomes faith that can help make life bearable until death ends it. Eternal life becomes a metaphor for the way the good a man does lives after him. "Blessed is he who takes no offense at me" (Matt. 11:6), Jesus says, and the preacher is apt to seek to remove the offense by removing from the Gospel all that he believes we find offensive. You cannot blame him because up to a point, of course, he is right. With part of ourselves we are offended as he thinks by what is too much for us to believe. We weren't born yesterday. We are from Missouri.

"But we are also from somewhere else. We are from Oz, from Looking-Glass Land, from Narnia, and from Middle Earth. If with part of ourselves we are men and women of the world and share the sad unbeliefs of the world, with a deeper part still, the part where our best dreams come from, it is as if we were indeed born yesterday, or almost yesterday, because we are also all of us children still. No matter how forgotten and neglected, there is a child in all of us who is not just willing to believe in the possibility that maybe fairy tales are true after all but who is to some degree in touch with that truth."

~ from Frederick Buechner, "Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale"


Over lunch one day, a professor-pastor-friend in college told me that for him, whenever he would visit someone in the hospital, that he felt he should remove his shoes at the door because he was about to tread on holy ground.

Another professor, this one in seminary, once told my class that the most dangerous thing that any pastor can do is forget that they handle holy things.

And by holy, I mean magical. Call it an over-active imagination or a divorce from reality, I believe in magic. Not the cantrips we hear about in Harry Potter, that unlocks doors and makes things float. Not modern Wiccan rituals or decapatated chickens or devil worship. Real magic. What Aslan calls, after his miraculous resurrection, "The deeper magic."
What the church calls Easter.

I grew up losing myself in stories about fierce, awe-inspiring dragons, powerful and dangerous wizards and valiant, iron-clad knights. And I cannot help but believe that these journeys into another world were a vital part of the formation of my faith, perhaps as much as any other event that led me to Christ: the freedom to believe in magic; the ability to envision a world where extraordinary things can happen that make a lasting, life-giving difference for everyone. More importantly, the ability to see (on my good days) that world in this one.

I think Buechner is quite right to see the Gospel as a fairy tale. Not an entertaining story that's mostly for children and earns millions for movie-makers. The tales that actually talk back to our reality, peeling back the mundane to reveal the magic that's been there all along; the magic we're often too busy to notice.

The magic of the Gospel and its Easter-Christ, that proves He can bring resurrection to the most unlikely places and people.

But we're scientists and enlightened minds. We want hard proof before we give up our precious time and energy following leprechauns and Holy Grails. We'll take cold hard facts over warm bread and ruddy wine any day.

Because that's what we can control: our facts. Magic is beyond our control; of another world that we haven't spent enough time in to feel comfortable there. But that's just the point: faith in Christ is all about living into another world; or rather, the true world; where the grass is so real, it can cut your feet (as it does in C.S. Lewis' heaven in his account 'The Great Divorce.') .

"My kingdom is not of this world..." Jesus tells Pilate. The crowd chants for their agenda (the assassination of a God-Son they cannot contain). Weary Pilate just wants a little peace and quiet for a change, and a little truth. But even in Jesus' beaten body, magic is already at work that is going to mystically sweep away all of sin (the sin of the crowd that wants him dead, of the betrayer, of the denier, of the bystander-friend who wants to do something but is paralyzed by fear) and open the wardrobe to a magic kingdom, where peace is had, where companions and neighbors find endless joy in serving one another, where evil is easy to spot and where the King is trustworthy, compassionate and just and brings order.

And every Sunday, the preacher dances between lunacy and comfort; between the fairy tale that men and women (who "share the sad beliefs of this world") have forgotten but come every Sunday to hear and at the same time, speaking encouragement to those same tired souls. And all the while, this preacher himself fights to remember that he too is a child and that the bread and wine and Storybook and hospital rooms right there in his hands are magical; visible signs of the holy fairy tale that have punched through the veil; that has more to with the real way of things than reality itself.

The Pursuit

Philip Yancy begins his book on prayer by comparing the frustratingly different experiences of prayer between our fore-bearers of faith and us today. He quotes several legends (Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, etc.) talking about their many hours spent each day in blissful communion with God. When interviewing people today, a vast majority of responses reflect a sadly familiar tune: that while prayer is regarded as vitally important, most people found they spent only 5-7 minutes a day at it, and that, most people did not feel closer to the living God by doing so.

Someone asked me a while back for advice for some scripture passages that they might read with their spouse at night in order to draw closer to God in their marriage and also to one another. This person confessed their previous efforts left them wanting for something more and frustratingly not closer to one another.

As a younger man, I would use quiet mornings to read Scripture and journal about what I would find there. For months, this was a rich exercise. I would rise from the table, feeling like my day had perspective; as if I'd oriented myself to the map and was now ready to begin exploring. Lately, having lost that particular discipline, I feel hungry inside.

Hunger is not a bad thing in itself, really (at least, living in a culture where food is not so difficult to come by). A stomach's growl is our body's very normal way of letting us know it needs more fuel. But certainly, hunger is meant to be paid attention to and reveals an immediate need that requires attention sooner rather than later.

What are we hungering for, then? When our attempts to approach God in prayer, or to know God more through studying Scripture, end with only more longing, what are we missing?

Have we become so existential that only what we experience in the here-and-now has value to us? Maybe we've lost our ability to look at the horizon, to see where our praying and Scripture reading playing into the larger picture of who God is and where our lives fit into the cosmos; the old forest vs. trees problem. Maybe we've lost appreciation for the things that only come with time and perseverance.

"And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." ~ Romans 5:3-5

Or maybe we are too busy to think about "big things." It's become a litany of the modern day, when someone asks, "How's it going?" quite often, "busy" is one of the words that leaps to our tongues. And if we're not saying it, we're probably feeling it as this polite intrusion is keeping us from getting things done. Maybe we're just too distracted, our brains too cluttered with boxes of obligations to make space for big ideas or a bigger God. And if so, maybe we're so adept at squeezing God into our schedules that the moment we allow more space for it, we're scared at just how much space God can fill; so much bigger than any of the other boxes we shuffled around; definitely much bigger than we could lift or fit neatly into a space some where.

We can be such emotional pack-rats, grabbing hold to everything that seems to have meaning and cramming it into our attics, even though we'll forget it is there after a while, like dusty boxes full of things we'll never use but that takes up space nonetheless.

JP Moreland articulated once that although we have more stuff, more security, more food than any culture in existence has ever had, we are less happy than we've ever been. He argues that it is because in the last 3-4 decades, humanity (Western Civilization specifically) has sought to be happy instead of seeking "a life of virtue." The distinction is that we've equated virtues with ice cream: that we use the same word for foods we like and for what Christ did on the cross (i.e., "I love ice cream" and "God so loved the world...") He says that for centuries, through many cultures, people have pursued a life of virtue over one bent on being happy, and have found a level of contentment, even in the midst of adversity, that seems illusive to many today.

Is that the problem? Are we so bent on being happy, entertained and dazzled, in other words, self-absorbed, that we've forgotten what it is to be part of something bigger than ourselves? Is our stagnation with prayer and Scripture a result of trying to make our own universe, where we shuffle and arrange things around us, keeping the things that give us a moment of pleasure closer and pushing back the uncomfortable baggage we'd really rather not bring to the light of day. Doing that instead of finding the steady joy that comes when we live, not for ourselves, but for something bigger?

People are hungry for answers to questions about God, about why bad things happen, about why they are miserable, or at least, unaccountably discontent. And for some reason, we've all decided we won't be happy until there are answers that will attend to us, like butlers, and bring order to things for us. And until then, we all seem content with misery instead of the agonizing task of crucifying our self-orbiting universe and entrusting ourselves to something bigger; of surrendering our control (which is a pleasant-enough myth) to the One who is life and peace Himself.

It seems to me that seeking peace instead of happiness is more than just avoiding materialism. It's more than rearranging furniture but more like tearing out walls and remodeling altogether. Not just re-ordering but a complete reshaping. Of course, demolition is both messy and dangerous work.

In a recent Nooma video, Rob Bell talks about how often we think of God as being the One who sits way off in the distance up there, and every now and again drops down to visit, to help "blessed" people find parking spaces and bargains at the mall. In the quest to discover what God is like, he offers that perhaps God is more like a song that plays everywhere and in every person; that knowing God is not a matter of knowing the song but being in tune. I bit down on another hook when I listened to him talk about this, tears threatening to break over the wall of my eyelids. It seems to me that being in tune has less to do with understanding musical theory and more about having the courage to play.

Maybe if we all just played more, we wouldn't fret so much about "experiencing God" or finding answers.

Smoldering

"So you open the Good Book
you thumb to the common lection
and you sit down to read
your expectations minimal - what with your busy week
a few half baked prayers for illumination
waft to heaven like smoke from a smoldered fire."

~ excerpt from a Sermon by the Rev. Ralph
"Preaching - Impossible, Indispensable"

The excerpt is from a sermon that had preachers lined up in its sights. But I found its words penetrated deeper than my own practice of sermon writing.

I can't get this image out of my head. And I'm learning to pay attention when that happens. Just like I'm learning to pay attention to unexpected tears. Frederick Buechner talked about those tears that ambush us, unbidden, entirely un-manufactured or conjured. The moments when a word or image snags us to a jarring halt, like how fish must feel when the irresistible morsel suddenly becomes a lethal hook, and life turns upside down as it's yanked out of the normal world and into something that steals its breath away.

The thing about the images that leap into our hands, flailing like a trout, or the tears that crash like waves upon our cheeks, is that they penetrate with surgical precision deep into our lives, to the stuff in our souls that lives underground; our secret-est hopes and most essential needs that we mostly don't have words to articulate or even know about ourselves. But suddenly, a word or a hope that is uttered by another becomes that shaft of light into the bottom of the well, our eyes (so accustom to darkness) stung and dazzled when our expectations are sliced cleanly in two.

"...everything exposed by the light becomes visible,
for everything that becomes visible is light.
Therefore it says,

"Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you."
~Ephesians 5:13-14

"Wake me up inside, Wake me up inside
Call my name and save me from the dark.
Bid my blood to run, before I come undone,
Save me from the nothing I've become."
~'Bring Me to Life' Evanescence

So what is smoldering deep down that such an image would tear me asunder? I don't despair becoming "nothing" (as the lyrics state). But the melodic rock music that cries out with such psalmic vigor stirs something deep in me as well; the longing for more; a faith deeply in tune with the fiercely joyful melody of the Spirit; a life electrified into action, playfully daring for the sake of the Song. So the fear is not in being "nothing", but "nothing much."

I've been told that Augustine says (somewhere) that hungering after God is itself a gift. Whoever might have said it, there is truth there that I feel in my bones. It's like the way that faith in Christ is also a gift, the way that Christ is both High Priest and Flawless Lamb.

"So, surrender the hunger to say you must know.
Have the courage to say, 'I believe.'
And the power of paradox opens your eye
and blinds those who say they can see."
~'God's Own Fool' Michael Card

I hope I'm aware enough of my generation's (and my personal) longing for existential truth: to actually experience the praise and joy of God as a thrilling rush of gratitude (did King David not dance like a wild man?). But where is the peace in pursuing it? Or more importantly, where does it become not about me? Is being known enough? Shouldn't it be? What is the place where the surreal shoulders-up against our "real"?

O God, you are my God, I seek you,
my soul thirsts for you;
my flesh faints for you,
as in a dry and weary land where there is no water.

So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary,
beholding your power and glory.

Because your steadfast love is better than life,
my lips will praise you.
~Psalm 63:1-3

If the psalmists, both in Scripture and today, can long for this, can't we dare to engage the dangerous business of hope for it too?

Sky Fishing

In a novel by the penetrating Christian author and Pulitzer Prize Runner-up, Frederick Buechner, a character is flying a kite. When asked what he was doing, he responded that he was fishing in the sky. The person pressed the issue by asking what he was fishing for. And the reply was that he supposed he was fishing for God.

Keeping relationship with the living Creator of the Universe can be an inconsistent enterprise at best. You go out some days and the effort is exciting as the wind pulls the lines taut and takes us for a thrilling ride. Other days, you stand in the still field, your kite grounded by the constant press of gravity. You can run as fast as you can, feet pounding the turf, trying hard to generate lift by your own steam. And the kite mimics signs of flight from the effort. But the moment you stop, flutters uselessly to the ground. And still other days, the pouring rain keeps you from going outside at all.

And my guess is that if we’re really honest about it, there are probably more windless and rainy days than days soaring in the sun that we long for. Days like today when the innocence of a quiet town is shattered by the swings of a brutal crime. Days when the pillar of a community or church suddenly falls to the ground, never to rise again. Days when children, who have no business dying, die anyway. And we’re left, holding our kite, wondering and waiting for something to lift us up; trying as hard as we can to make it fly or waiting for a breath of wind to remind that there actually were days of wind.

In both Greek and Hebrew (the original languages of the Bible), the word for spirit (pneuma and ru-ach) is literally defined “wind.” And it occurs to me that the truer faith is not one that has God or the Bible or life or pain or politics figured out (all of them impossibilities), but the one that stands patiently and faithfully in the field, waiting through the uncertainty and doubt for the wind, certain of only one thing: that one day, the wind will blow.

“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words.” ~Romans 8:26

The Climb

"When the preacher climbs up into his pulpit, switches on the lectern light and spreads out his note cards like a poker hand, maybe even the vacationing sophomore who is there only because somebody dragged him there pricks up his ears for a second or two along with the rest of them because they believe that the man who is standing up there in a black gown with the smear of styptic pencil on his chin has something they do not have or at least not in the same way he has it because he is a professional. He professes and stands for in public what they with varying degrees of conviction or the lack of it subscribe to mainly in private. He has been to a seminary and studied all that one studies in a seminary. He has a degree to show for it, and beyond the degree he has his ordination and the extraordinary title of reverend, which no matter how well they know him on the golf course or the cocktail-party circuit sets him apart as one to be revered not because of anything he knows or anything he is in himself but because, as an ambassador is revered for the government he represents, he is to be revered for representing Christ."
~ Frederick Buechner "Telling the Truth: The Gospel as Tragedy, Comedy and Fairy Tale"

I will be traveling on an airplane twice in the next month. That means I will be faced with the unavoidable dilemma that accompanies any such travel: the question about what I do for a living.

It's a mystifying experience. It seems my very countenance has this transformative effect on my fellow travelers, for the moment I share my profession, their demeanor, their posture, their very vocabulary becomes much tidier.

Of course, this isn't reserved to the airplane but also to family dinners, where all those loving eyes turn to "the professional" to give us a "real" prayer.

While my ego sits-up and wags its tail when such attention is lavished on me, honestly it can be a bit bewildering. Of course I'm happy to pray. I love talking to God. But I feel far more compelled, both in seat 13A and my place at the dinner table to say, "No, you don't understand, I'm really just like you. I am a believer on the same quest after God, some days headed in the right direction, some days too tired to move."

But being the medicine man does not afford such liberties. Your headdress and garb set you apart. Not your skin and bones. Not your searching mind or longing heart or little faith. The black fabric and slips of paper behind glass on the wall. They set you aside as "different."

Don't get me wrong: it is a tremendous and deeply humbling honor to be called to this occupation. It is the hardest job one could ever love. But it seems that such an "ambassadorship" can afford the minister certain privileges that he is certain is more due to the quiet yet faithful members who wait anxiously for a Word from God. But the greater worry is that the occupation, the black cloth and the slips of paper, afford freely available permission to "leave it to the professional" (because in our over-worked society, we do not have time but to leave it them).

"A professional Christian." Paul says, "Of this gospel I have become a servant according to the gift of God's grace that was given me by the working of his power. Although I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given to me... " (Eph. 3:7-8). He too was seminary trained and yet gives all credit, not to his grade-point average but to the gift of God's grace. A gift that is made available to all.

My itchiness about being asked "what do you do for a living?" or to pray at family meals is never about having to say the right words on the spot but that others would miss the opportunity to meet with God too; to practice what is more often "subscribed to in private" and left to the ones society calls "professionals." A title most ministers I know would never ascribe to themselves.

And yet, Sunday after Sunday, I take the three steps that places me within view of everyone, I open a Book with trembling fingers that everyone there owns, and attempt to speak the truth of a God who is bigger than any human language nor can be contained by a slip of paper behind glass. The pulpit at the Columbia Seminary chapel holds a placard which quotes the gospel of John, "Sir, we would see Jesus", an injunction to the preacher of the sheer magnitude of what most congregations want in no longer than 15 minutes.

The only thing left is to do what every other baptized believer can do: trust in the grace of God to use the gifts placed inside to open a window to true reality, not because of being a professional, but because God's grace is sufficient.