Reflections on the Table, Part 3 (written May 13)

Dear Grace Vancouver Family,

At the centre of any home with any sense of health, joy, togetherness, belonging and family... is a Table. 

Well, here we are in week 3, part 3, already with this series of reflections on the Lord's Table. We ended last week's reflection on the Table with this: what is the sacramental life? On the backside of every bulletin we pick up on Sunday mornings at Grace Van or more recently have downloaded as a link, there is the fine print describing some of Grace Van's vision. Under the middle section on "Inward: Transformed by the Peace of God in Christ," there is a simple statement on the sacramental life and it simply reads like this, "our participation in the sacraments of bread and wine flow into our everyday lives." Have you read the fine print? Sometimes the fine print matters.

So maybe a starting point for today's reflection is asking, "what do the bread and wine signify for us?" Well, there are certain words that we as believers use that are not explicitly Biblical words, but they are words that can easily and necessarily be "deduced" from Scripture and they are important words; the two that jump to mind immediately for me are "Trinity" and,... well,... "Sacrament." 

Sacrament comes from the latin word Sacramentum which simply means "mystery." The New Testament Greek word for mystery is musterion and what musterion always refers to is the "mystery of the Gospel." The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 3:6, "This mystery (musterion) is that the Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promises in Christ Jesus through the gospel." Who are the Gentiles? The Gentiles are all who are outside the ethnic people of Israel from the Old Testament,... in essence, Jewish people. So the grand "mystery" of the Gospel is that you and I (as Gentiles, nonJewish people) have been included in the promises of God, incorporated into the family of Israel by faith,... whoa... AWESOME. 

The mystery of the Gospel is that we have been included, that you and I BELONG. Romans 1:6 says this grand mystery of the Gospel includes the Gentiles/Nations who now belong to Christ Jesus. There are very few words in my vocabulary that penetrate my heart as the word "belonging," so much so that I spent six long years working on a doctorate on the very topic!  

Remember how I opened this series and have repeated each part of it? "At the centre of any home with any sense of health, joy, togetherness, belonging and family... is a Table." So when we participate at the Table together, we participate in a table of BELONGING. And the "musterion," the awesome, unbelievable, hidden truth revealed is that we have been included as children of God to belong! 

Well, the children of the King must also behave in a way that befits their status as royalty, so this is also why we must repent and make sure we are right with King Jesus as well as our brothers and sisters every time we come to the Table.

Alexander Schmemann wrote this in his terrific book For the Life of the World:

"No one has been 'worthy' to receive communion,... all merits, all righteousness, all devotions disappear and dissolve. Life comes again to us as Gift, a free and divine gift.... we call the Eucharistic elements Holy Gifts. Adam is again introduced to Paradise, taken out of nothingness and crowned king of creation. Everything is free, nothing is due and yet all is given. And therefore, the greatest humility and obedience is to accept the gift, to say yes- in joy and gratitude."

It is this gift of G-R-A-C-E (God's Riches At Christ's Expense,... thank you J.I. Packer) that we celebrate and receive every time we come to the Table. John Calvin called the Table a "visible word" of the Gospel of Christ, of this great wondrous mystery that we have received His Grace.

So, if we are restored to our Kingly status of royalty every time we partake in this Table of belonging together as children of royalty, how ought we then step into the world on "Monday"? Well, I think the answer is fairly straight-forward, isn't it? As children of the King who continue to renew themselves in the power of the Table week-in and week-out. We live according to this "Gospel Remembrance" in all that we do and in everything that we are,... this is the Sacramental Life.

Paul put it this way in Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Do we understand we participate in His sacrificial death, again and again, whenever we participate at the Table? At the centre of any home with any sense of health, joy, togetherness, belonging and family... is a Table. We "touch and taste" the "Visible Word" of God that tells us Jesus loves us.

Pre-eminent 20th century theologian Karl Barth was once asked, "what is the most profound truth found in all the pages of Scripture?" Barth answered, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so." So we touch and taste this goodness when we gather around the Table by faith. Jesus loves us indeed.

The Sacramental Life is the whole of life set apart in love and service to our Great God. This morning I fixed my mom breakfast, paid some bills, talked to mom about going to the bank for her, picking up some meds,... also talked to her about the Day of Atonement in Leviticus 16 and the fully sufficient sacrifice of Christ in Hebrews 10. She asked questions about Moses and Jesus, who they were,... the relationship and timeline of the Old and New Testaments (she's never professed faith in Christ before!) She learned the meaning behind the word "atonement" and that the first five books of the Bible are also known by the name "The Book of Moses." I've asked many to pray for her to receive Jesus. She is now on her iPad, also taking her blood pressure,... oh, reading the New Testament book of Hebrews too in her Chinese Bible! 

I am writing this article, though I did take a break watching some YouTube clips. I'm a sucker for old professional wrestling clips with Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan (I wasn't a churched kid, but I was very faithful to be in one place every Sunday at 10a... sitting in the church of the World Wrestling Federation with patron saint Hulk Hogan, haha)... I was just ushered back into one of the sweetest moments of my childhood... Hulk Hogan body-slammed 500 lb. Andre the Giant in Wrestlemania III,... amazing (Andre did a terrific job in the Princess Bride too, not too long before he passed away). In recent weeks, I've been getting into "The Last Dance" on Netflix about Michael Jordan's remarkable basketball career; yes, I had "Air Jordans" as a young teenager in the early 80s. When I was home in Vancouver "on quarantine" because of my travels to Seattle, I worked out with my daughter Mia, when I was "off quarantine," I went and threw the football at Memorial park with my boys. We celebrated Mother's Day together last Sunday, and will celebrate Calvin's 15th birthday this Sunday. Today I have a 5:30p online workout and will talk to an asset manager about nexts steps in getting mom and dad's estate in order. I will FaceTime my dad and get new tires on my car. My sister will drive me, even though it will take less than an hour to change the tires, for precautionary reasons, I choose not to sit in the shop at this time. Tomorrow I will take my mom to get a blood test at a lab. Meanwhile, I meet with my small group on Zoom on Thursday nights, staff meetings Tuesday afternoons, had an elder candidate and advisory member training session Monday night through the Westminster Confession of Faith and a book by Michael Horton called "Putting Amazing Back into Grace." I hope to be home on Saturday and back on a 14-day mandatory quarantine. I've struggled with being home-bound so much and get down at times too like many of you.

Why do I give you all these mundane details of the minutiae around my life?... actually, I forgot to add that I brushed my teeth this morning and prefer Colgate to Crest! ... I give you these details because I want you to know that all of life is sacramental,... yes, I even brush my teeth for Jesus : ) Actually,... I do, because I want to take care of this life I have been given and honour Him with it, because it is ultimately His,... my teeth too!

This is the Sacramental Life,... the elements of the bread and wine flow into everyday life. This Sunday cannot come soon enough as Tunyi will be giving his message this Eastertide season out of John 21, where he will point us to how the disciples returned to their trade as fishermen in the wake of the resurrection. There will be much to receive from Tunyi regarding all of life as being sacramental, as Tunyi continues our series on "Living the Resurrection."

That's the Sacramental Life... sometimes the fine print matters.

Blessings dear friends,

Pastor Mike

Next Message in this Series: The Wedding Supper of the Lamb and Who Comes

Reflections on the Table, Part 2 (written May 6)

Dear Grace Vancouver Family,

At the centre of any home with any sense of health, joy, togetherness, belonging and family... is a Table. 

Last week I shared a reflection from Dietrich Bonhoeffer from his class work Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community. In Bonhoeffer's excerpt, he reflects wonderfully on the blessing of the physical presence of a brother or sister in the Lord as holding a kind of yearning for the presence of the Triune God Himself.

Let me quote from the first couple of lines from last week's Bonhoeffer excerpt:

"So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God's Word and sacrament."

Let me reflect on these lines, alongside a reflection on some Scripture verses from the Gospel of Luke 22:14-29a:

"And when the hour came, he (Jesus) reclined at table, and the apostles with him. And he said to them, 'I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.' And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he said, 'Take this, and divide it among yourselves. For I tell you that from now on I will not drink of the fruit of the vine until the kingdom of God comes.' And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it..." 

What are some observations from these verses as well as Bonhoeffer's words?

1. Yearning is Described. Jesus "eagerly desired" to eat the meal of the Passover with his disciples. Bonhoeffer describes the great yearning isolated believers have for one another as a sign of the presence of Christ Himself.

2. Gathering Around Word and Sacrament is an Anticipation of "Last Things." Jesus said that eating of this meal, we now know as the Lord's Table, was an anticipation of the Day when He would return to make all things new, establish the fullness of His Kingdom and participate once again with His people in "eating and drinking of the fruit of the vine." Bonhoeffer called this the "gracious anticipation of last things." 

3. There is Undoubtedly a "Physical Togetherness" We Witness in the Promises of this Coming Kingdom. This is why Bonhoeffer was so adamant to speak of the presence of a brother or sister in the Lord "showing up" to the exile or prisoner as a sign of the presence of Christ Himself. There is the reference in Luke 22 where Jesus speaks of His own yearning to eat of the Passover Meal "with you." In other words, as much as His desire was great, there was no fulfilling of it until He was with His people and once again would be.

Conclusion: do we realize that when we come together as the Body of Christ on the Lord's Day and "assemble" as the Israelites of the Old Covenant,... when we do those things Jesus said we should do, "until He comes,"... we are participating in the powers of the Coming Age in a way we are unable to do the rest of the week?  If I can get a little technical here quoting from New Testament commentator Joel Green, when we come together, we participate in the "eschatological advent of God's dominion." 

Yes we are Jesus' Church when we "scatter" into the world and yes we are Jesus' Church throughout the week; as we like to say at Grace Van, "Monday Matters!" Yet there is something unique and distinctive about the actual physical gathering, the "coming together" of God's people around His Word and Sacrament. My pastor Mike Malone, during my seminary years, used to say, if we really understood what was happening on the Lord's Day when we gather together, and if we truly had the eyes to see, we would be coming to "church" in crash helmets. Makes sense, if we expect Jesus and the powers of the Coming Age to meet us in such a powerful and dramatic way as we gather.

Reflections: so this leads me to a question that has come up in a handful off conversations from different quarters in our congregation; should we participate in the Lord's Table virtually via Zoom, while we are unable to gather together physically? As I said last week what this reflection would be about, my answer has been, we should "wait upon the Lord to partake." 

ONE (Yearning), we should let the yearning and anticipation in our hearts grow larger, all the while feeding ourselves off of the fat of the Word of God and its promises. Our prayer lives should grow robust during this time of not being able to "touch and taste" the Lord's goodness in the elements of the bread and wine and not being able to do so together. 

TWO (the Church), we should reconsider if we have too much defined our Christian walks primarily by our own individual lives, rather than as set in the context of the larger, physical covenanted community that is called to gather physically together regularly, but given our extraordinary circumstances, has been unable to do so. Pastor Malone used to give an annual preaching series called "Who Loves the Church?" And by "Church," Mike meant the physical people who are really there in the church community and not merely some kind of spiritualized ideal of a universal church somewhere in the world, but not in our lives. What is more, when we come to the Table on the Lord's Day, we should always be looking to our left and right (as well as above to Him) to seeing who comprises God's family, His Church, and who we are together as His. It wouldn't be difficult to write another lengthy series on the many occurrences of the "one anothers" in Scripture.

THREE (the In-Breaking of the Kingdom), if we catch this vision of the gathering of the physical presence of the Body of Christ, covenanted by faithfulness of God and the promises of one member to another, our hearts just might begin to see each Sunday in our coming together (once we are able to do so again) as nothing less than the New Heavens and the New Earth breaking through (and maybe we will start getting to "church' on time too for the opening call to worship that invites God's people to assemble,... as who wants to miss the crashing in of this "eschatological advent"?!!! : ) Oh yeah, and maybe we will start showing up,... with crash helmets too!!!

I want to suggest that the great yearning to partake in the Table as soon as possible comes from a good place. Let that yearning grow, but let's also not short-circuit the meaning of the Table by trying to find a short-cut back to it, before we the Body of Christ are able to gather together by being able to be present with one another. In the meantime, let's take the proper amount of time to reflect more fully on who we are in relationship to the Grace Van community and what kind of answer we might give to the question, "Who Loves the Church?"

Next Message in this Series: The Sacramental Life; What is It?

Reflections on the Table, Part 1 (written Apr. 29)

Here is a series of posts I wrote for our church family beginning in late April. I thought I would post them here.

Dear Grace Vancouver Family,

At the centre of any home with any sense of health, joy, togetherness, belonging and family... is a Table. 

Today, I wanted to pass on a reading from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's classic Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community. This excerpt has been one of my favourites for almost two decades now, and is especially meaningful in light of the times we are in. I was especially moved to share it, after Dr. Ross Hastings talked a bit in our Q&A time last Sunday about how this pandemic has challenged the very notion of what it means to be human and also what it means to be human together. He commented on how the best way to love our neighbour these days has been to stay away from them; whereas, true love and honouring our humanity includes embraces, touch and in the context of the Body of Christ, participation together in the sacrament of communion. 

I was so moved by Ross' comment that I thought I would do a multi-part series in the coming days on the meaning of the Table. How many parts to this series? I don't know; two? three maybe? More? We'll see. 

The first part of the series here will begin with me mostly quoting Bonhoeffer, because there is so much to appreciate about what he has to say here. Bonhoeffer wrote in Germany in an underground seminary at a time when the world was very unstable, between world wars. He gets us to think about how often when fellowship and worship with other brothers and sisters in the Lord is readily available, that we too often take it for granted. I think in a way that we have never been as Jesus' Church, at least in my lifetime, we are more open than ever to hearing and receiving Bonhoeffer's message.

So here it is, taken from his Life Together:

"So between the death of Christ and the Last Day it is only by a gracious anticipation of the last things that Christians are privileged to live in visible fellowship with other Christians. It is by the grace of God that a congregation is permitted to gather visibly in this world to share God's Word and sacrament. Not all Christians receive this blessing. The imprisoned, the sick, the scattered lonely, the proclaimers of the Gospel in heathen lands stand alone. They know that visible fellowship is a blessing. They remember, as the Psalmist did, how they went 'with the multitude... to the home of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday' (Ps. 42:4). But they remain alone in far countries, a scattered seed according to God's will. Yet what is denied them as an actual experience they seize upon more fervently in faith. Thus the exiled disciple of the Lord, John the Apocalytist, celebrates in the loneliness of Patmos the heavenly worship with his congregations, 'in the Spirit on the Lord's day' (Rev. 1:10). He sees the seven candlesticks, his congregations, the seven stars, the angels of the congregations, and in the midst and above it all the Son of Man, Jesus Christ, in all the splendor of the resurrection. He strengthens and fortifies him by His Word. This is the heavenly fellowship, shared by an exile on the day of the Lord's resurrection.

The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer. Longingly, the imprisoned apostle Paul calls his 'dearly beloved son in the faith,' Timothy, to come to him in prison in the last days of his life; he would see him again and have him near. Paul has not forgotten the tears Timothy shed when last they parted (II Tim. 1:4). Remembering the congregation in Thessalonica, Paul prays 'night and day... exceedingly that we might see your face' (I Thess. 3:10). The aged John knows that his joy will not be full until he can come to his own people and speak face to face instead of writing with ink (III John 1:14).

The believer feels no shame, as though he were still living too much in the flesh, when he years for the physical presence of other Christians. Man was created a body, the Son of God appeared on earth in the body, he was raised in the body, in the sacrament (the Lord's Table) the believer receives the Lord Christ in the body, and the resurrection of the dead will bring about the perfected fellowship of God's spiritual-physical creatures. The believer therefore lauds the Creator, the Redeemer, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, for the bodily presence of a brother. The prisoner, the sick person, the Christian in exile sees in the companionship of a fellow Christian a physical sign of the gracious presence of the triune God. Visitor and visited in loneliness recognize in each other the Christ who is present in the body; they receive and meet each other as one meets the Lord, in reverence, humility, and joy. They receive each other's benedictions as the benediction of the Lord Jesus Christ. But if there is so much blessing and joy even in a single encounter of brother with brother, how inexhaustible are the riches that open up for those who by God's will are privileged to live in the daily fellowship of life with other Christians!

It is true, of course, that what is an unspeakable gift of God for the lonely individual is easily disregarded and trodden under foot by those who have the gift every day. It is easily forgotten that the fellowship of Christian brethren is a gift of grace, a gift of the Kingdom of God that any day may be taken from us, that the time that still separates us from utter loneliness may be brief indeed. Therefore, let him who now has had the privilege of living a common Christian life with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of his heart. Let him thank God on his knees and declare: It is grace, nothing but grace, that we are allowed to live in community with Christian brethren." END QUOTE.

Reflection: when we are able once again to come back together and to assemble together as the Body of Christ, will we have spent meaningful time in our time of isolation, repenting of our complacency towards the local church where Christ organizes His people and pours out His "inexhaustible riches"? Will we reject the spirit of consumerism that tries to "get something out of church," whether inspiring sermons or great music or otherwise? Instead will we come to see Jesus' Church as that place, despite all its flaws and foibles, lack of having it together in so many ways, where we are called to press into a common life of "incomparable joy and strength" offered to those who by faith willingly see a remarkable work present by Divine Grace and through God's People gathered around the Word and His Table?

Next Message in this Series: Waiting Upon the Lord to Partake Together.  

SuperBowl Bound!!!

I thought this was a great occasion to come out of blogging hibernation. I was not a churched kid, but I did spend many Sunday mornings through my childhood at Arrowhead stadium, rooting on my hapless Chiefs. I remember as a 12-yr-old kid being filled with so much hope following the 1983 draft when the Chiefs drafted national champion Penn State QB Todd Blackledge (taking him before future hall-of-famers Dan Marino and Jim Kelly), only for Blackledge to be perhaps the greatest draft bust in Chiefs' history. So great a disappointment was Blackledge that the organization would not draft another QB in the first round until... 34-years later in 2017,... BUT WHAT A PICK!!! Patrick Mahomes is now the face of the NFL and as they say a true generational talent. And now as a result of that decision to move up from the 27th spot to the 10th spot in that 2017 draft to get Mahomes, the Chiefs are going to the SuperBowl for the first time since January of 1970 (50 years ago, over a year before I was born in 1971!) I'm especially pumped up for the late Lamar Hunt, Chiefs' owner and founder of the original AFL, and for his family. The AFC championship trophy bears his name, and in this video we see his widow Norma, who has never missed a SuperBowl game in 54 years of SuperBowls, enjoying the moment so much! Lamar's son Clark who is now CEO/owner of the Chiefs in his quiet, humble way, gives a shout-out to the Lord- how great is that? 

HOW ABOUT THOSE CHIEFS???!!!

A Christian's Role in a Politically Polarized Time

"What is a Christian's role in this politically polarized time?" I thought this short clip by Dr. Scott Redd of Reformed Theological Seminary was helpful. Redd speaks of public repentance when someone discovers that they have said something untrue about another, has bore false witness against another. What a concept, if only followers of Christ would do a better job of living a lifestyle of repentance, both privately and publicly.

That You Might Become a Good Man

". . . for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith. And a great many people were added to the Lord."  -Acts 11:24

Just yesterday on Father's Day, I received one of the most meaningful notes I have ever received. It came from our foster son Darius who is twenty years of age and expecting his first child in July. Darius comes from the hood (his own words) and has had his fair share of troubles throughout his life. Our hearts and our prayers have always been with him, though we have not always agreed with his choices and also have grieved the oppressive nature of poverty which he has known his entire life.

Darius texted to me, "Thank you for everything you've done for me on the scene and behind them. You always have made sure I was straight and I'm not even your biological son. I couldn't thank you enough for all you do and all you already have done and I don't think I could pay it back in a million years. Your love is priceless man. I'm super grateful I've had a man like you to look up to and guide me when I've needed it. Thanks for being more of a father to me than my own dad and thanks for being the man. I love you Mike. Happy Father's Day."

Needless to say, I had a hard time holding it together when I read D's text. Don't get me wrong, the notes my biological children wrote to me were terrific, but this one was probably the best Father's Day message I have ever received.

In many ways, Darius continues to struggle with life and poor life patterns passed down to him from his family of origin- we worry about him often. I also know that life on the streets is a lot different than the world my children and I have known, that "street smarts" and pointers on how to handle a situation when a gun is pulled on you, as one example, is something I have never been able to pass down to D (unlike his biological father). I still remember weeping before D when he was barely a teenager when he shared with me that he had beat up another kid- I pleaded with him to become a good young man. But I've always also understood that there are some things I do not understand, and that he would always be a recipient of my love and care regardless of his choices, bad or good. I had always been a recipient of the Lord's great mercies, despite deserving none of them, and so for nearly his entire life, spiritual fatherhood has been my joyful obligation to discharge to D.

This last year, Darius has been pursuing a barbering degree, something Tanya and I are helping him to do, but also a vocation, a kind of work, that represents that of one of my favorite characters in all of literature, Wendell Berry's Jayber Crow. My prayers are that Darius would become a good man like Jayber, who had a early childhood full of sorrows like Darius. Jayber was twice-orphaned, would as an older man befriend a woman who was in a loveless marriage. Despite his love for this woman, he promised himself fiercely to guard the proper boundary that his friend remain true to her marriage vows. Jayber always yearned to love and be loved, but also very much grew up in the world "alone," except for the loving local community he had been welcomed into and of which he had become a member. He did have a ministry, and it became most fully expressed in the work of barbering. 

Jayber as an old man reflects on his life and how his calling from above was always to be a barber, though early on in life being orphaned as he was, and hearing messages at the Christian orphanage of the value of "full-time Christian work," that he should become a pastor. Jayber initially set out to pursue a pastoral education, but having the kindness of a seminary professor, being guided by this dear man, he learned that his calling was to be elsewhere. Many years later, he would learn that it was primarily through the vocation of barbering that he would most faithfully discharge his service and work.

Jayber reflects on his work as a barber and those he would tend to who had come from an agrarian society (p. 127 of Jayber Crow), "I came to feel a tenderness for them all. This was something new to me. It gave me curious pleasure to touch them, to help them in and out of the chair, to shave their weather toughened old faces. They had known hard use, nearly all of them. You could tell it by the way they held themselves and moved. Most of all you could tell it by their hands, which were shaped by wear and often by the twists and swellings of arthritis. They had used their hands forgetfully, as hooks and pliers and hammers, and in every kind of weather. The backs of their hands showed a network of little scars, where they had been cut, nicked, thornstruck, pinched, punctured, scraped, and burned. . . . I loved to listen to them. . . ."

Recently, I was reading Every Job a Parable (pp. 147-48), and the author (a Calgarian) reflects on the vocation of hairstyling, "A stylist holds your head as you lean back into a washing basin. With her own hands she washes your hair and, if you are lucky, gives you a scalp massage. After she towel-dries you and moves you to the chair, she then takes a part of who you are physically-your hair-and cuts it, reshapes it, and (for some) recolors it! A stylist touches your body and uses sharp instruments near your eyes, and you sit there, wide open to this very intimate aesthetic intervention. In order to see God's hand at work in the parable of another person's job, you have to let their good work touch you. God knows every intimate detail of who you are-your flaws, your gray areas, the places where you are thinning-and he wants to make every square inch of your being and body new. He wants to shape you-to wash, cut, dry, and style your life. . . . Discussing what she loved most about her work, my stylist said, "Hearing the words, 'I trust you.'" Customers often step into her salon totally exasperated and give her total freedom to cut and style their hair in whatever way she thinks best. Knowing hair the way she does, assessing a person's face shape, and considering their overall look, she will come up with something her customer could never have imagined, often to their great delight. But it takes trust to get there. You need to let go and put your life in another's hands. It is only then that you will be able to experience the delight-both yours and that of the one who is making you over. Just as a stylist delights in being given this kind of trust, God does too."

Darius is pursuing barber college, and Tanya and I are doing everything we can to ensure that he finishes, but even more than that, that he sees his life as one full of possibilities to become the good man that God means for him to be, like Jayber, or perhaps like Barnabas who is described in the Holy Scriptures as a "good man, full of the Holy Spirit and of faith."

Our prayers for you dear D, have always been and continue to be, that you might become a good man.

Liturgy of the Ordinary and Purposelessness

I'm currently working through this book Liturgy of the Ordinary written by Tish Warren. I find it to be simple, accessible, thoughtful and very helpful to get us to think about God's work in the everyday rhythms of our lives. Regarding modernity, on p. 96, Warren writes:

"There can be a deep sense of purposelessness in modern work, in our day in and day out punching the clock. We live in a world where I can sit at my desk and email people I've never met in order to discuss work that I will do by staring at a screen And though we must fight against the injustice and inhumane conditions that can make modern work intolerable, we must not inadvertently create a new 'hierarchy of holiness' that elevates ancient work above our modern jobs. Part of our particular task as believers sent out by the church for the mission Dei is to learn to embody holiness, not only in blacksmithing and cheese making, but in and through work that is inevitably shaped by modernity and technology. I have to check my email. In this hour, that is the work that God has given me to do.

Most of us are not called to simply abandon the modern world for a back-to-nature ideal. Instead, even now, we must hone the crafts and habits that allow us to work well and to love our neighbors through our work, whether that neighbor is someone I've known for decades or someone sitting at a computer screen far away. I have been blessed and helped by people who do modern work well, people who have served me, their neighbor..."

I think Warren is right on, though admittedly there is a larger story around why modern work in a post-industrial, technological age can seem to be so dehumanizing, to reflect on Miroslav's word, we find much of our work to be "alienating" and to separate us from our humanity given larger structural and economic forces outside our control. A part of what Warren is pushing us towards though is a recovery of the imagination to see that even our work now does have a meaningful impact on our neighbors and contribute to their welfare and flourishing. I think of workers at a nearby factory who made oxygen masks for airplanes, who received a letter and a visit from a Kansas City-based pastor, after this pastor had a harrowing flight that lost altitude. Pastor Reid Kapple thought his life might come to an end and through the ordeal used the oxygen masks that were deployed as a result- he came out of this terrible scare and began to think about the makers of these oxygen masks put in airplanes, learning they were made by a nearby company in his "backyard" in Kansas City. Kapple wrote to the CEO of the company and shared his story. In turn, he was invited to speak to the workers, and the workers responded that no one had every helped them to see just how significant their work was; tears ensued- you can watch Kapple's testimonial here. So, if we can enlarge the imagination of God's people to seeing our work to be meaningful in ways beyond our current limited vision, but also acknowledge that we must always work to remove the larger structural forces that are oppressive in our work, then we will live in a proper tension that is our responsibility to assume as God's people.

I have much more to say about this, but I think finding tangible ways to translate the skills and gifts that we have developed in the workplace to a neighborhood or local economy of some kind where we see them directly benefiting people we know, love and care about, can go a long ways towards giving meaning to our work, but that is another conversation for another time. This book helps if this topic is of interest to you.

Close of Eastertide, "Friday Notes" Sunday Worship

Hi GV Family,

I hope this week has been one of expectant joy for you- it certainly has been for me as I was able to take up my part in Grace Van’s Eastertide Joy Challenge a little over a week ago by assisting my parents for ten days on a trip to Florida to visit their friends. The many unexpected joys of serving my dad in particular who is nearly in a wheelchair put a jump in my step this week, made me smile a lot in the ordinary rhythms of my week and gave me sweet, focused times of fellowship with the Lord in my daily times of prayer and reading. How has or is God stretching and growing you? 

While we have a stat holiday (Victoria Day) this weekend, the church calendar recognizes an even greater event that the world is yet to fully see. This Sunday is the final day in our Eastertide season, Pentecost Sunday! Pentecostos means “fiftieth” and represents that moment when fifty days following Jesus’ resurrection on Easter, the Holy Spirit was poured out in power onto God’s Beloved who had gathered from among the nations of the Mediterranean basin. Come hear about the wonder of this day in history when God’s people experienced a remarkable miracle and having received the Holy Spirit were filled with joy to the point of being thought by some to be drunk! We plan to celebrate the close of the Easter season with ICE CREAM SUNDAES!!! Also, please reflect on where God has met you with joy this season and write a one-sentence testimonial and place on our GV apple tree- the tree will be up for one more week after this Sunday! 

We will enjoy the Lord’s Supper together this Sunday. John Chan will be offering his Concepts of Financial Stewardship Class from 12:15-2:15p for those who are interested in talking through some of the practical side of managing resources. During the service, Christine Huh will be giving a short testimonial regarding her experience with our church retreat in Mt. Baker, WA which is coming up the first weekend of June,… so we have a lot of great things planned. You won’t want to miss it!

Blessings and see you Sunday!

Mike

Bulletin Quotations:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all of Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” -Acts 1:8

“Ever since the early church fathers, commentators have seen the blessing of Pentecost as a deliberate and dramatic reversal of the curse of Babel. . . . at Babel earth proudly tried to ascend to heaven, whereas here in Jerusalem heaven humbly descended to earth.” -John R.W. Stott

“And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; even on my male servants and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit, and they shall prophesy.” -Acts 2:17,18

“She had often such views of the glory of the Divine perfections, and of Christ’s excellencies,… that she was overwhelmed, and as it were swallowed up, in the light and joy of the love of God.” -Description of Sarah Edwards during The First Great Awakening

“All shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” -Julian of Norwich

Sermon Title: The Gift of the Holy Spirit

Sermon Text: Acts 2:1-21

Sermon Outline:

1. The Miracle of the Moment

2. The Reversal of the Curse

3. The Muting of Distinctions

4. The Joy of the Spirit

5. Still Needing to Be Saved

Benediction: Romans 15:13

The Eastertide Joy Challenge

This is the Eastertide Joy Challenge we are issuing at Grace Vancouver Church this season, as we continue to travel through our sermon series in the book of Daniel. Consider taking the challenge with us!

The Eastertide Joy Challenge:

Daniel lived in a world filled with sorrow, evil and persecution. And the Lord gave him prophetic visions detailing this evil in great detail. All this was so disturbing, that Daniel is even described at the end of chapter 8 as remaining in bed for a few days. Still, in the midst of his sorrow, Daniel knew that he served the God of Heaven whose Kingdom alone would always win out. Because of that knowledge, Daniel approached the world with a hopeful vision serving it faithfully in his daily responsibilities and praying fervently for it (Daniel 8:27 into Daniel 9).

This Eastertide season we recognize God’s sovereign reign in the world in a way that Daniel only anticipated, because Jesus’ resurrection was the ultimate vindication of God’s power over all evil, injustice, sin and death. Our story is one of triumph and resurrection. We can be like Treebeard in Tolkien’s trilogy who is described as “sad, but not unhappy.” He is Risen! He is Risen Indeed! 

So the Eastertide Joy Challenge for the rest of this wondrous season until Pentecost Sunday (May 20th) is this:

1. Take up the challenge for the next five weeks to renew yourself in the areas of:

            a. Prayer- egs. could be interceding for a neighbour, friend or family member
                              to know Christ, doing daily morning and evening prayers, i.e. Daily
                               Office, praying each day for the world, the church and city.

and/or

             b. Service- egs. could be in serving a neighbour, friend or family member in
                                 intentional ways or re-committing your daily life  and work to the
                                 Lord each day, taking up a new service project or opportunity.

2. Expect to be surprised by joy as you renew your obedience in these areas.

3. Write down some of those moments of joy, great and small alike.

4. Post one-sentence testimonials on the Grace Van “apple tree” that our GV kids will be constructing in the coming weeks.

5. Look forward to celebrating Christ’s resurrection joy with the GV family around Ascension Day or Pentecost Sunday!

Eastertide and New Possibilities

… Easter week itself ought not be the time when all the clergy sigh with relief and go on holiday. It ought to be an eight-day festival, with champagne served after morning prayer or even before, with lots of alleluias and extra hymns and spectacular anthems. Is it any wonder people find it hard to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if we don’t throw our hats in the air? Is it any wonder we find it hard to live the resurrection if we don’t do it exuberantly in our liturgies? Is it any wonder the world doesn’t take much notice if Easter is celebrated as simply the one-day happy ending tacked on to forty days of fasting and gloom? It’s long overdue that we took a hard look at how we keep Easter in Church, at home, in our personal lives, right through the system. And if it means rethinking some cherished habits, well, maybe it’s time to wake up. . . .

In particular, if Lent is a time to give things up, Easter ought to be a time to take things up. Champagne for breakfast again- well, of course. Christian holiness was never meant to be merely negative. Of course you have to weed the garden from time to time; sometimes the ground ivy may need serious digging before you can get it out. That’s Lent for you. But you don’t want simply to turn the garden back into a neat bed of blank earth. Easter is the time to sow new seeds and to plant out a few cuttings. If Calvary means putting to death things in your life that need killing off if you are to flourish as a Christian and as a truly human being, then Easter should mean planting, watering and training up things in your life (personal and corporate) that ought to be blossoming, filling the garden with color and perfume, and in due course bearing fruit. The forty days of Easter season, until ascension, ought to be a time to balance out Lent by taking something up, some new task or venture, something wholesome and fruitful and outgoing and self-giving. . . . if you really make a start on it, it might give you a sniff of new possibilities, new hopes, new ventures you never dreamed of. It might help you wake up in a whole new way. And that’s what Easter is all about.

Tom Wright in Surprised by Hope

The Gift of Resurrection

"Life comes again to us as Gift, a free and divine gift.... Adam is again introduced to Paradise, taken out of nothingness and crowned king of creation. Everything is free, nothing is due and yet all is given. And therefore, the greatest humility and obedience is to accept the gift, to say yes- in joy and gratitude."

-Alexander Schmemann, For the Life of the World

"He is not here; He is risen!"

-The two angels to the women in Luke 24

Good Friday- Were You There?

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they crucified my Lord?

Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they nailed him to the tree? 

Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?
Oh, sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.
Were you there when they laid him in the tomb?

Holy Week, Ordered Affections and March Madness

One of the remarkable blessings of moving to Vancouver almost five years ago, has been that my friend and mentor Steven Garber recently took a post to lead the marketplace theology department at Regent College here locally. Steve has many family ties to Kansas, the land of my upbringing, so he understands a thing or two about the region's passion for basketball, especially this time of year during March Madness.

As Steve and I watched the Kansas-Duke Elite Eight game together yesterday afternoon, we talked about our love for our sports' teams that go beyond simply a love for sports, but root us in a particular place, with a memory of belonging to a particular story. We also talked about "ordered" vs. "disordered" affections. Of course, during the game, Steve did most of the talking as I could barely take my eyes off the screen as the game turned out to be a classic among two of the bluest bloods of college basketball, with Kansas winning in overtime, on their way to the Final Four in San Antonio which will take place this Saturday. Of course, the Final Four game lands on Holy Saturday right between Good Friday and Easter.

I remember back in 2013, my beloved Kansas Jayhawks lost to Michigan in the Sweet Sixteen on Good Friday in a game they should have won. I recorded the game because it took place during our tenebrae "darkness" service, came home, opened the computer to see that KU had lost by just a couple of points. I watched the recording and learned that KU had been up by 10pts. with barely two minutes left in the game and ended up squandering the lead and losing the game. I thought about the game on Holy Saturday more than I did the significance of Good Friday and my joy was strained at best on the greatest day of the year on the church calendar, Easter Sunday.

I want for things to be different this Saturday, Kansas win or loss, but for my joy to be made complete and ordered by my greater allegiance to the Kingdom of God, so to that end I pray entering this Holy Week and Weekend. But I do so knowing that all these things, yes, even March Madness, have been the kindness of God to me granting me His good gifts. So I understand that to love something as simple as a round ball is a good and holy thing to do, but to exalt such gifts, not so much. Here I attach for your reflection an excerpt from my dissertation that was completed last year. The work revolved around how we develop as sense of belonging and home in this world.

We moved to Vancouver in 2013 to serve the family of Grace Vancouver Church and to live in a neighborhood in south Vancouver. For the first time in my life, by all external appearances, I “fit in” and found myself to be more “same” than “different” from the surrounding culture. The mosaic of various Asian cultures across the greater Vancouver landscape made it so, for the first time in my life, I had to adjust to gaining a sense of normalcy regarding my race and ethnicity in a place. In a number of ways, I have loved living in Vancouver, appreciating that eating dim sum and sushi could be thought of as “normal” activity rather than strange, or simply riding my bike along the waterfront on a beautiful Vancouver summer day with the mountains in the background. Nonetheless, my family and I have grieved the loss of what was home for so many years. After three and a half years in Vancouver, we still have a lingering sadness about the friends, neighbors, church, and place we left behind in Nebraska. I still follow the regional sports teams in the Kansas area and stay in touch with old friends. Even as I write this chapter, my alma mater, the University of Kansas’ basketball team is once again seeded number one in the NCAA March Madness tournament and primed for a deep run into the tournament. I am full of both excitement and anxiety because I care so much about Kansas basketball. I tell anyone who will listen that the inventor of the game of basketball, James Naismith, was the first coach at KU, a Canadian, and a Presbyterian minister. I am a KU graduate, a Presbyterian minister, and I live in Canada. I play basketball every Monday night at one of the local community centers in Vancouver, not because I am good at basketball but because through the years, basketball found a way to take up residence in the dwellings of my heart. How could the Lord have been so kind to me to bring all these worlds together for me in something as basic as a round ball?

I have realized that even as I felt alienated at times and was away from a sense of home those many years in the heartland of the US, also I was at home in other ways as well. 

LBD, The Terrorist Inside My Brain

As dad continues to battle Lewy Body Dementia, a lesser known form of dementia than that of Alzheimer's, I often explain to folks who are unfamiliar with the condition, that this was the condition Robin Williams was found to have been afflicted with, before tragically taking his own life. Here is an interview from a couple of years ago with Williams' widow Susan Williams regarding the effects of LBD on Williams. Of course, no two dementias have exactly the same symptoms, but the sense of being trapped in one's own mind and having some awareness as to the inescapability of the condition seems to be a consistent experience. Susan Williams wrote of the condition as having a "terrorist inside my husband's brain." 

Trendy or Essential? Integration of Faith and Work

I thought this article was quite helpful as there is an increasing interest in faith and work in Christian circles these days. Evangelicals in particular are noteworthy for stepping into the latest trend and fad. So a natural question is that as the topic of the integration of faith and work finds interest in evangelical circles, is the conversation simply trendy or essential?

https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/faith-work-integration-trendy-or-essential/

Leithart on Eucharist and Human Work

This was one of the best articles I have read in a while and thought I would pass on... Called to Eucharist

Gathered vs. Scattered and the Middle Ring

To get this out of the way up front,... apologies in advance to my former colleague Pastor Ben Loos here,... the "Middle Ring" is not a Tolkien reference : )

I remember a few years back some friends mentioning that they had neighbours who were not Christians but who were interested in spending more time with them. The comment that was then made to my friends by their neighbours was, "but we know how busy you are with your church activities." Through the years, this comment has made me think more carefully on what is faithfulness to serving God's Kingdom- most of us who have been around "church" for a while generally think of faithfulness defined by what Neil Hudson in his book Imagine Church calls "gathered church" activities. If the doors of the church are open and there are events offered there, or if church members are gathering for a mid-week activity, then we feel a bit guilty if we do not participate or show up to those particular activities. The next Sunday we show up and the pastor may say to us, "I noticed you weren't at the neighbourhood outreach the other day" and shame begins to wash over us. But truth of the matter is that we may have been spending time with those particular neighbours that evening who had commented not so long ago regarding "how busy you are with your church activities." Perhaps we were being faithful to the very thing the neighbourhood outreach at the church facility was seeking to model for all of our members, being a faithful presence to others in our own neighbourhoods and places of habitation.

The reality of our lives in a place like Vancouver is that we find ourselves scattered throughout the city, given an assortment of economic factors our city brings to us. The older idea of making a conscious decision to move into the same neighbourhood together, preferably close to the church facility for the sake of community and mission, is simply not an option for many here in our city, especially for Grace Vancouver Church members where we find our church building to be located in the very expensive west side of Vancouver and in an area of town where there are primarily one and two bedroom apartments (our primary demographic at the church is young families). I believe here Neil Hudson helps us greatly by getting us to think about the roughly 2-10 hours per week we might spend in "gathered church" activities; Hudson then adds up the rest of the hours of the week, minus necessary sleep time and calls those engagements "scattered church" activities, since the Church is about God's people, not so much a bricks and mortar building. He comes up with roughly 110 hours that represent the rest of a typical week. We are still Christ's Church during the week as we scatter, as we are when we gather on the Lord's Day and take on other ministry initiatives together. Hudson uses the number "10" symbolically by simply calling "gathered church" activities the "10." He then calls "scattered church" activities the "110." And the question Hudson brings up is this, how do we see the "110" being as significant as the "10" for faithful service to the Kingdom of God? After all, Hudson makes the point, as the subtitle of his book goes, that what we are to be doing as the Church is "releasing whole-life disciples."

Hudson then goes on to draw concentric circles where the church building and gathered church activities around the building, whether they be neighbourhood outreaches near or around the church facility or Sunday worship gatherings, is the centre. The outer ring is what Hudson calls "big issues of our world" engagements; so in the outer ring is the church's involvement in world missions or meaningful acts of justice and mercy through orphan care, serving the underserved in our communities, refugee care, as a few examples. But what about the middle ring? The middle ring is comprised of our daily contexts that involve our neighbourhoods, workplaces, families, networks of influence. The middle ring represents each of our "110." The middle ring represents most of our lives actually and is a place of meaningful mission for each of us.

If we begin to teach that the "110" is a very significant place of ministry, even possibly the primary place of it for our members, then how does this shape how we manage expectations for "gathered church" events? In one of our membership vows at Grace Vancouver, our members make the promise to "support GV in its worship and work to the best of our ability." How do we encourage our members to do that, but also manage expectations so that their "110" is also a significant part of GV's "worship and work"? What if we began by saying that the Lord's Day gathering of worship on Sundays is the one great non-negotiable where we must come together as members of the Body of Christ that is not only global, but also local and found in particular places? But what if we then helped our members work out, in very intentional ways, where their involvement in the "10" might be from that point forward, to equip them more effectively to be faithful stewards of God's Kingdom in all of life, in the "110" as well?

Now, admittedly, the tricky thing in all this is, that we are far more "alone" when we are "scattered" than when we are "gathered." And here we see why Christian believers in certain parts of the world where there is little Gospel influence tend to become insular because they are so hungry for the fellowship of other believers, and so tend to focus much more on coming together than on the difficulty of being out in the world. So the question that I'm asking is, how do we equip one another in the middle ring, i.e. the "110," which makes up the majority of our lives, but how do we do this without leaving the individual members of our church family "alone," without proper support and the strengthening they need from fellow church members throughout each week?

What do you think?

"Friday Notes" for Sunday Worship for Jan. 28th

Hello,... each week, whenever I am delivering the sermon, I put out a small note to the congregation ahead of time on Fridays called "'Friday Notes' for Sunday Worship." I include those notes here. Also, our sermons can be accessed at the Grace Vancouver Church website here.

Hi GV Family,

I am looking forward to seeing you this Sunday when we will be finishing our 3-wk. January Vision Series that has been entitled, "The Church as a Kingdom of Priests." This Sunday we are looking at a few portions of Scripture, but mostly John 5:9-17 when Jesus heals a man who has been paralyzed for thirty-eight years. The sad thing about this account is that man doesn't acknowledge Jesus or know who he is, and even after Jesus returns to him later to confront him on his wayward heart and reveals his identity to him, instead of bowing down and worshiping the Lord, he turns him into the Jewish people and authorities who then persecute Jesus upon learning his identity. They persecute Jesus because supposedly he violates the regulations of the Sabbath day by healing the man. Yet what the people failed to understand was that it was none other than the Lord of the universe who was standing before them who was the Creator of all and had made the Sabbath day in order to rejoice in all of his acts of creation. And now that the human race had gone wayward and the world was under a curse, the very point of Sabbath was to anticipate a GREAT day of restoration when all things would be RE-created in joy. This was the purpose for which Jesus came and for which he gave his life for us. As he says, "My Father is working until now, and I am working." Lesslie Newbigin wrote of this passage, "God's Sabbath rest did not mean that he had ceased to give life- for babies were born on the Sabbath and rain still fell... God is always-even on the Sabbath- the giver of life and judge of all." Also, this Sunday we will consider how we participate with Jesus in the Father's work, perhaps in more ordinary ways, but significant nonetheless as our "works" are wrapped up in Christ. 

Also this Sunday we will introduce our new office administrator Victor Olawaiye, hear a few words from Sarah Dolan, also from Tim Huh who will be doing a Monday Matters vocational testimonial. I will give an update on elder nominations and we will celebrate the Campanelli's with cake following the service, as this will be their last Sunday with us. Also, our second week of our EHS class will continue at 12:15p. . . . whew, that's a lot! but what a Sunday we have before us- you are not going to want to miss it!

Blessings and see you soon,

Pastor Mike

Sermon Title: "And I Am Working"

Sermon Texts: John 5:9-17; Rev. 5:9,10; 1 Pet. 2:9-12

Sermon Quotations:

"When he assigned to the sea its limit, so that the waters might not transgress his command, when he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him, like a master workman, and was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man."  -Proverbs 8:29-31

"God's Sabbath rest did not mean that he had ceased to give life- for babies were born on the Sabbath and rain still fell. . . God is always- even on the Sabbath- the giver of life and the judge of all."  -Lesslie Newbigin

"Hiding your faith, is a way for a believer to survive what is often a conflicted journey. . . . It would be difficult for many, despite their deep desire to identify with Christ, to live openly true to what their faith demands."  -Mako Fujimura

"Here is also wonder and glory, joy and meaning. . . . There is good work to be done."  -Steven Garber

"And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.  -Hebrews 12:1-2

Sermon Outline:

1. Jesus' Lack of "Success"
2. The Meaning of Sabbath
3. Our Participation with Jesus in the Father's Work
4. Our Hope in a Great Final Day and Present Opposition
5. The Joy of the Cross

Benediction: 

''Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labour is not in vain.'' -1 Cor. 15:58

Why Vocation Matters to the Disillusioned

This was a Facebook post from one of the brothers of a student Steven Garber teaches here locally at Regent College. Evidently Nagaland, India has a political climate and system that seems to tap into much of the disillusionment we feel here in the West.

Permanent Residents of Canada, Yay!

What a remarkable morning as, after over four years of living in Canada, today we were received as Permanent Residents of Canada! Tanya put much hard work into the application process, and our immigration official who received us today was a dual citizen (from the US originally) who so warmly and richly received us. We spent some time talking about Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and then the conversation turned to Michaelle Jean the remarkable Haitian woman who was a refugee and in time would become the 27th appointment (by the Queen of England) as Governor General of Canada, basically the highest office in the land. What a remarkable country to give opportunity for this noble woman to rise to such a position, especially in light of some of the grievous things said in recent days about Beloved Haiti. We also had to celebrate by going to Tim Horton's- what is more Canadian than that, eh?!

I thought a lot about my parents today who moved from Taiwan to the US in their mid-20s and some of what the land of my birth has meant to them as they were able to make a life of love and care for my sister and me in a strange and distant land that became home for them. The US has been quite good to them (and to us as well). Because we have been in Canada for a fair amount of time, should we pursue dual citizenship, our timeline has been expedited a bit, so that we could do so in two years.

The Greatest Showman

This behind the scenes clip brought Tanya and me so much joy we had to pass it on. We loved the sense that, despite doctor's orders for Hugh Jackman not to sing following surgery, his joy could not be contained. Art has a way of opening our hearts wide- as C.S. Lewis said, "the world rings with praise." The movie's great too!

Haiti the Beloved

Well, I was on radio blog silence for the entirety of 2017. For the first time since I began my blog in 2008, I did not post any posts for an entire year. Why not? Well, 2017 was a difficult year in many regards for me personally, not without rewards and heightened joys, but also accompanied by remarkable sorrows. Let's begin with the sorrows: my dad continued to deteriorate from Lewy Body Dementia which is a sinister form of dementia that Nashville artist Charlie Peacock commented on not so long ago having lost his own mother who had been afflicted with LBD. Peacock wrote of the condition, "not something I would wish on an enemy." How does one grieve properly the loss of the mental faculties of a father who has always meant so much to me and been present with me through thick and thin? Last year I wrote a short piece reflecting on my dad's condition in a compilation of reflections for Holy Week called The God Who Has Tears. You have to scroll down a bit to find the short reflection, but it is there.

My Beloved Tanya, wife of almost twenty-three years, continues to be afflicted by significant chronic leg and back pain to the point that some days I do not know what to do for her- I pray and I grieve the loss of what her life should be. We continue to seek various treatments and medications, but the loss and deterioration of her health is an enormous burden and we wait upon the Lord. Also, Vancouver has been a difficult place given its spiritual climate as very much a post-Christian place with little memory of Christ and the Church, and the economic pressures are significant for just about everyone who chooses to live here. Lee Beach's most excellent work The Church in Exile helps us here in North America to think intentionally about what life for Christians in a post-Christian age, where the Church is very much on the margins of society, without influence and power, means for us. We are already there on the west coast of Canada in Vancouver, and the rest of North America will soon follow. But the beauty of Beach's book presents a hopeful vision, because truth of the matter is that the Church has always been at its best in sacred history when we find ourselves outside the halls of power and influence.

This leads me to a fourth grief that has been overwhelming for me this last year. I haven't known what to do with the president not to be named south of the border. I have been in an inconsolable space of grief to see what my beloved home country has become under his presidency. I have been so glad to live north of the border and will seriously consider pursuing dual citizenship when the opportunity arises in a few years. But when questions come my way as to how we could have put this man in office, most of my immediate response is to give very little answer and mostly grieve in silence with the answer, "I can try to give you an answer as the US is very divided and the conditions that gave rise to his presidency were there long before 2016, but mostly I do not know and I am very sad." Some of my friends here in Canada have virtually no Christian influence, positive or negative, and know very little about "evangelicalism"; they ask me honest questions about the "evangelical vote," something they hear about only through media sources and wonder how evangelicals square the general lack of a moral center of some of the candidates they support with their belief system in the Bible, which purportedly has a moral center. Tim Keller's recent article in the New Yorker was helpful for at least one atheist friend who for the first time was given language to separate evangelicalism as a belief system from the cultural phenomenon of what it has become in certain pockets of the US, primarily as a cultural movement that seeks power and influence. I gave a sermon right after the 2016 election regarding some of my grief, and we lost one family (American) and the shot at gaining another (American), when they found my sermon to be offensive. However, most of our folks understood and were appreciative of the honest sharing I put forth and the directing of our attention to the Great Shepherd of the Sheep who did not disappoint as Israel's false shepherd leaders had again and again throughout her history. I barely spoke a word about anything going on politic-wise in 2017 at any point, but now Haiti and its people, beautiful as they are, were called out by the president not to be named as a "s-hole" country? Not OK.

I'm back posting, because I needed to say a word about Haiti the Beloved, a country I spent a number of years traveling to and learning from. As today is the eight-year anniversary of the terrible earthquake of 2010, I recall how the town of Mirebalais, Haiti in the Central Plateau region just a bit east of Port-au-Prince literally doubled in size overnight, because the many refugees and displaced from the capital city were taken in as strangers into the homes of those in Mirebalais and cared for in the midst of their suffering, trauma and pain. Has that ever happened here in the middle of the prosperity we experience in North America, where a town of a few hundred thousand doubles in size because of the culture of hospitality that is native to the people? It happened in 2010 in Mirebalais, Haiti and to God be the glory. There is no defense for the terrible comments by one who holds the most powerful office in the world as president of the United States- may we educate ourselves regarding the history of a place that has experienced untold corporate trauma through her history (here is a great starting point), before standing with disdain over such a beautiful and beloved people. The God who has tears, also sees His brothers and sisters in the faces of those who comprise Haiti the Beloved.

Oh yes, and I told you I would share some of the triumphs and heightened joys of 2017. After six long years, I finished my Doctor of Ministry dissertation! Here it is if you are interested in pushing through it- feel free to skip to the final forty pages of chapter 5- I think you might also enjoy the acknowledgements section which tells you some about why I have been so passionate about the project. I began the degree when my youngest Calvin was six-years-old, and I finished when he was twelve- way too long, but it is done! Another remarkable gift came to me when one of my doctoral advisors, friend and mentor Dr. Steven Garber took a job locally here at Regent College- Steve is now local and I often pinch myself to be so close to someone I have so long admired. Also, we continue to see God provide in marvelous ways for Grace Vancouver Church and the work of the Gospel here north of the border. Our family grows all the time with a tenth, eighth and seventh grader under our roof. Mia, Isaac and Calvin bring us untold joys (and some days untold griefs as well!) We were able to take the three of them, along with my parents and sister to Taiwan last fall, and they enjoyed some of their ethnic heritage in a new way, for the first time being in a country their grandparents grew up in. Dad did OK as well, likely his last time back home. So maybe I'm back blogging, I don't know,... but silence was no longer an option for me in recent days.

Be Thou My Vision and Leonard Cohen Meet (repost)

Since the great Canadian songwriter Leonard Cohen passed away this last week, I thought I would repost this very encouraging video I had originally posted leading up to Holy Week 2014. A priest adapts Cohen's Hallelujah and does a marvelous job on a young couple's wedding day. 

Arise, Ye Dead! Halloween, a Triumphal Day?!

Today marks the eve of one of my favorite days of the year, All Saints' Day! Here is a painting of the French impressionist artist Georges Rouault who depicts that Great Day of Resurrection that has been secured for all of the Lord's saints on account of Jesus' triumph in His death and resurrection! Here's a helpful little article about the ways in which the Christian can appropriate meaning from Halloween: Trick or Treat? It's Martin Luther Also consider this article written by James B. Jordan on the function of Halloween likely utilized at some point in history to mock all powers of evil that were conquered and defeated at the Cross: Concerning Halloween.

"And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross." -Col. 2:15

An Other Kingdom

I must confess, I am so utterly and totally disillusioned with the election cycle. I can barely read articles or posts (even written by thoughtful friends) about the election without becoming jaded further, cynical, angry and frustrated. I suppose I can add to the collective frustration by writing yet another post about the election season. I wrote back in February while Trump was ascending (before he began to descend) that the evangelical alignment with Trump was utterly disappointing, but not surprising, in light of the fear of our movement of being pushed to the margins of cultural power (though it is happening and will continue to do so) DT and the Evangelical Vote. Currently I am trying to give my dissertation a good push, writing and considering the idea of place and belonging.

Perhaps the most encouraging piece I read this week as I was writing was from a recent book put out by Peter Block, Walter Brueggemann and John McKnight, An Other Kingdom. If you know anything about these three, they come from dramatically different backgrounds, Block being an organizational development expert from a Jewish background, Brueggemann an Old Testament scholar and McKnight a community organizer most well-known for having developed with Jody Kretzmann the movement ABCD (Asset-Based Community Development). While Block and McKnight have been writing together since 2010 (The Abundant Community), somehow Brueggemann joined the team just recently, and my mind pretty much exploded. For NBA fans, understand that in the world of community development and those who see the handprints of the Bible all over the ideas behind ABCD, Brueggemann joining the team of Block and McKnight is more explosive and wonderful than Kevin Durant joining Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and the Mighty Mighty Warriors! : )

Block, Brueggemann and McKnight cast a vision for growth towards peace and abundance built on what they call a Neighborly Covenant. What if the place of transformation and reversing the evils of our consumer society were not so much in the place of national elections and consumer politics? What if Hunter's idea of "faithful presence" in our vocational spheres and neighborhoods was truly the way to at least hope for a flourishing society? (To Change the World) or as D.G. Hart wrote a few years ago that perhaps the greatest way to impacting society's welfare was to coach little league over and above getting too involved with national politics? (From Billy Graham to Sarah Palin). I must confess that living in Canada I have not been all-too-motivated getting my voter registration in order since I am quite ambivalent to our choices. Maybe I will. Maybe I won't. But I will get my boys to football practice this week, and I will continue to work towards building better neighborhoods in my community.

So, my apologies for adding another somewhat meaningless post to mostly meaningless posts about the election cycle. Enjoy.

"Our task is to imagine a culture ordered differently. Imagine the human benefit of an alternative to the market ideology that defines our culture. We call this the Neighborly Covenant because it enlivens and humanizes the social order. 

The Neighborly Covenant is an alternative to a market ideology that has reached its limits, no matter how high the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbs. The map we have really isn't working. It is visibly flawed. We see in every political campaign a rhetoric designed solely for marketing the candidate, not for meaning. We force all politicians into promising what they can't deliver. It becomes a concentrated version of the consumer ideology. Citizen as consumer, candidate as supplier. And so we campaign and vote on marketing slogans: liberal, conservative, values, democracy, end poverty, maintain standard of living, jobs, education, marriage this, guns that. These catchphrases are just code words, like advertising, that exploit people's needs and anxiety for the sake of candidate market share, namely winning their votes. This language is another subversion of the common good and the longing for public servants. We think the wish for an alternative culture will be fulfilled in the ballot box. 

What we are proposing is language for alternative ways to a covenantal culture. The free market consumer ideology has defined the dominant codes, that particular way of talking about our culture. This is what has led us to stalemate. Our work is to create another set of code words–ones that are active beyond election years and have different substance in defining our communal identity. This is the departure." 

An Other Kingdom: Departing the Consumer Culture, pp. xxii-xxiii