Greetings from sunny Orlando, Florida! Well, actually I’m in Kissimmee and it’s late at night. But I wanted to take a moment to tell you what you can expect from On the Jericho Road this week.
I’m down here for my annual Spring Training excursion. I started coming to Florida for a week each spring about ten years ago. Up until this year I came with Dr. Howard Giddens, my college professor/mentor/adopted father. Dr. Giddens started coming in the late 1940s, accompanied by his father and brother. Eventually they were joined by a large contingent of men from the church that Dr. Giddens pastored at the time, the First Baptist Church of Athens, Georgia. After a number of years the gang was reduced to just Dr. Giddens and his brother. Dr. Giddens invited me to come for many years; I finally made time when he told me that if I wouldn’t do the driving he would have to stop going.
For six or seven years it was just Dr. Giddens and me. I can’t even begin to tell you what those trips meant to me. He shared so much of his life and wisdom with me during those trips. Two years ago two men from my church, The Hill Baptist Church in Augusta, GA, came with us. One of those men and another one came last year. This year I am glad that I am accompanied by three men from the church. But I am sad to report that Dr. Giddens was unable to come this year. He is 96 years old now and cannot make the trip. We continue to come in his honor. In fact, on the way down on Sunday evening, we stopped and had supper at a Sonny’s barbecue restaurant, which was the place that he always wanted to stop and eat. Dr. Giddens is not with us but in a very real sense he is, for he will come up in conversation every day. Everything we do will lead me to think, “When Dr. Giddens was here we would....” I warned my companions that I would often give voice to those thoughts. They said that was fine.
Here is our schedule.
Monday: Indians @ Braves at The Ballpark at Disney
Tuesday: Cardinals @ Dodgers at Dodgertown, Vero Beach
Wednesday: Braves @ Nationals at Space Coast Stadium, Viera
Thursday: Mets @ Braves at Disney
Friday: Braves @ Phillies at Clearwater
All week long I’ll be posting about what I see on the field; I’ll especially be sharing my impressions on the 2007 Atlanta Braves. So if you like baseball, come by every day this week. If you don’t like baseball, come back on Sunday, March 25, and I’ll be on to other things!
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Movie Review: Amazing Grace
(Sabbath Blog #9)
Amazing Grace is the story of William Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament during the late 18th and early 19th centuries who fought a long battle to outlaw British involvement in the slave trade. The film recounts the struggle that he undertook, along with other abolitionists, to put an end to that horrendous practice.
The story told is a very moving one. I came away from the movie with a sense of the ethical impact that one committed person can make (and with the feeling that I customarily have after seeing such a story that most of us aren’t making nearly the impact that we could). The film paints a portrait of Wilberforce as being virtually single-minded in his passionate efforts to bring an end to the slave trade. I have learned from other sources that Wilberforce actually had very broad concerns all along the ethical spectrum; he was very interested in improving the lot of the downtrodden in England. Still, a movie can only deal with a slice of a person’s life so the focus on his abolitionist activity is understandable and proper. We can go to books for the rest.
Three specific thoughts have accompanied me since I viewed Amazing Grace.
First, service to others is service to God. Wilberforce is depicted as engaging in a real struggle over whether he should remain in Parliament or retreat to a cloistered life of reflection. Should he serve humanity or should he serve God? He decides that he can serve God by serving humanity and so he stays in Parliament and eventually wins his battle against the slave trade. Sometimes some Christians have a similar struggle. No doubt some are called to a solitary life. Most of us, though, are called to live in the world and to bring our Christian faith to bear on the lives of people and on the ills of the world. The challenge is to fuse our private life of faith with our public life of service. It can be done and when it is done great things can happen.
Second, the struggle between what is right and what is expedient never ends. I suppose that there were some people in Wilberforce’s day who did not think of the African slaves as being “as human” as they thought themselves or those like them to be. But in the debates in Parliament as depicted in the movie, the arguments against abolishing the slave trade were primarily economic in nature. “We can’t run the plantations without slaves; if we get out of the slave trade, the French will just step in and prosper at our expense.” “The economy of the Empire will collapse without slaves.” So went the arguments. In too many circumstances, our thinking about what is right from a Christian perspective and what is right from a people perspective (which usually constitute the same perspective) is clouded by what we think is best for us from an economic perspective. The Old Testament prophets and Jesus himself certainly offer some pertinent words in that area.
On a side note, I was struck by a statement made in the movie about what motivates people’s attitudes and actions. At one point in the story, England was at war with France. Someone said, in a discussion about people’s attitudes toward the slave trade, that when the war was over, the people would rediscover their compassion. In other words, people are motivated by self-preservation and by fear as well as by economic considerations. Sometimes they are all tied up together. Perhaps when it comes to the way that we Americans think about and take action toward immigrants and toward people of other faiths, when the war is over, we will find our compassion again.
Third, heroes of the faith are human heroes. I’m sure that Wilberforce had many more flaws and problems than the movie depicts. Nevertheless, he is presented as a very human figure. He has severe health problems. His marriage brings him much solace and encouragement. He struggles with depression over the difficulties he has in enacting his anti-slavery legislation. He has conflicts with foes and with friends. In short, he is flawed but faithful. That’s about the most any of us can expect from ourselves.
Amazing Grace renders a valuable service in raising William Wilberforce to a higher place in the public’s consciousness. In so doing, the film also makes us think about the power of the Gospel and of people who are committed to Christ to effect change in a world that always needs it. Perhaps, upon learning about the way William Wilberforce lived, we will go and do likewise.
Amazing Grace is directed by Michael Apted and written by Steven Knight. It stars Ioan Gruffudd, Romola Garai, and Albert Finney. It is presently in theatrical release.
Amazing Grace is the story of William Wilberforce, a member of the British Parliament during the late 18th and early 19th centuries who fought a long battle to outlaw British involvement in the slave trade. The film recounts the struggle that he undertook, along with other abolitionists, to put an end to that horrendous practice.
The story told is a very moving one. I came away from the movie with a sense of the ethical impact that one committed person can make (and with the feeling that I customarily have after seeing such a story that most of us aren’t making nearly the impact that we could). The film paints a portrait of Wilberforce as being virtually single-minded in his passionate efforts to bring an end to the slave trade. I have learned from other sources that Wilberforce actually had very broad concerns all along the ethical spectrum; he was very interested in improving the lot of the downtrodden in England. Still, a movie can only deal with a slice of a person’s life so the focus on his abolitionist activity is understandable and proper. We can go to books for the rest.
Three specific thoughts have accompanied me since I viewed Amazing Grace.
First, service to others is service to God. Wilberforce is depicted as engaging in a real struggle over whether he should remain in Parliament or retreat to a cloistered life of reflection. Should he serve humanity or should he serve God? He decides that he can serve God by serving humanity and so he stays in Parliament and eventually wins his battle against the slave trade. Sometimes some Christians have a similar struggle. No doubt some are called to a solitary life. Most of us, though, are called to live in the world and to bring our Christian faith to bear on the lives of people and on the ills of the world. The challenge is to fuse our private life of faith with our public life of service. It can be done and when it is done great things can happen.
Second, the struggle between what is right and what is expedient never ends. I suppose that there were some people in Wilberforce’s day who did not think of the African slaves as being “as human” as they thought themselves or those like them to be. But in the debates in Parliament as depicted in the movie, the arguments against abolishing the slave trade were primarily economic in nature. “We can’t run the plantations without slaves; if we get out of the slave trade, the French will just step in and prosper at our expense.” “The economy of the Empire will collapse without slaves.” So went the arguments. In too many circumstances, our thinking about what is right from a Christian perspective and what is right from a people perspective (which usually constitute the same perspective) is clouded by what we think is best for us from an economic perspective. The Old Testament prophets and Jesus himself certainly offer some pertinent words in that area.
On a side note, I was struck by a statement made in the movie about what motivates people’s attitudes and actions. At one point in the story, England was at war with France. Someone said, in a discussion about people’s attitudes toward the slave trade, that when the war was over, the people would rediscover their compassion. In other words, people are motivated by self-preservation and by fear as well as by economic considerations. Sometimes they are all tied up together. Perhaps when it comes to the way that we Americans think about and take action toward immigrants and toward people of other faiths, when the war is over, we will find our compassion again.
Third, heroes of the faith are human heroes. I’m sure that Wilberforce had many more flaws and problems than the movie depicts. Nevertheless, he is presented as a very human figure. He has severe health problems. His marriage brings him much solace and encouragement. He struggles with depression over the difficulties he has in enacting his anti-slavery legislation. He has conflicts with foes and with friends. In short, he is flawed but faithful. That’s about the most any of us can expect from ourselves.
Amazing Grace renders a valuable service in raising William Wilberforce to a higher place in the public’s consciousness. In so doing, the film also makes us think about the power of the Gospel and of people who are committed to Christ to effect change in a world that always needs it. Perhaps, upon learning about the way William Wilberforce lived, we will go and do likewise.
Amazing Grace is directed by Michael Apted and written by Steven Knight. It stars Ioan Gruffudd, Romola Garai, and Albert Finney. It is presently in theatrical release.
Friday, March 16, 2007
Bowie Kuhn
Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of major league baseball from 1969-1984, died yesterday at age 80. Kuhn served as commissioner during the years that I really started paying attention to baseball; indeed, he is the first commissioner about whom I remember hearing. I remember not liking him very much. The best I can recall, I thought that he was too dictatorial in the way that he did his job. From what I have read since his death was reported, some contemporaries of his had the same opinion that my self-righteous adolescent brain formed.
Now that I think about it, though, I understand better what a tough job he had. The position has a basic conflict built into it; the commissioner is supposed to uphold the integrity of baseball, a game which is of course played by the players and coached by the coaches and umpired by the umpires, but he is an employee of the owners. Nevertheless, he also has some authority over the owners; he can suspend an owner for conduct deemed detrimental to the game, for example. He famously suspended some of the most famous owners in the game, including Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Braves owner Ted Turner. But the commissioner is in a tough spot just by the nature of the job.
Kuhn presided over a period of tremendous progress but also of tremendous upheaval. World Series night games were first played during his tenure. I remember watching the very first one; it was played on October 13, 1971 between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles. For a school-aged fan, that was a positive development. During the time that he served, major league baseball expanded by two teams in both the American and National Leagues with each league being divided into two divisions the winners of which would meet in a playoff series to determine the World Series participants. I liked that because in the first year of divisional play in 1969 my beloved Braves won the Western Division, even though they lost in the playoffs to the Miracle Mets.
(It was weird that the Braves were in the Western division along with San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Houston. It was especially weird when you consider that the Eastern Division included, besides New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal, the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals. The last time I checked, Atlanta was east of Chicago and St. Louis. St. Louis is the “Gateway to the West,” for crying out loud. That ridiculous situation was finally rectified in 1994 when the leagues went to three divisions and the Braves were moved to the Eastern Division. Unfortunately, that realignment also led to the introduction of a “wild card” team into the playoffs, a move to which I was and am opposed. Second-place teams should not be in the baseball playoffs, and I don’t care how many of them win the World Series.)
Many developments occurred on the labor front in baseball during Kuhn’s tenure. Salaries skyrocketed mainly due to the advent of free agency. Under the reserve clause system, a player was bound to his team even after his contract expired unless the team traded or sold him to another team. A federal arbitrator ruled in 1975 that players could leave their team when their contract expired, which of course made them available to the highest bidder. (One of the first free agents was pitcher Andy Messersmith, who signed with the Braves. Ted Turner wanted him to wear number 17 with the word “Channel” over it as an advertisement for Turner’s cable channel WTBS which carried the Braves’ games. That was not allowed).
Kuhn made one of his most controversial moves just as free agency was coming into play. In June of 1976, Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley, knowing that he was about to lose some of his stars without getting anything in return for them, sold the contract of pitcher Vida Blue to the New York Yankees for $1.5 million and the contracts of outfielder Joe Rudi and pitcher Rollie Fingers to the Boston Red Sox for $1 million each. Kuhn voided that sale because he judged it to be detrimental to baseball. The Red Sox were and are my favorite American League team, so I was miffed. In retrospect, I can see the validity of Kuhn’s concerns. The idea of owners auctioning off their best players was troubling. I’m not sure, though, that it is any more troubling than the players auctioning themselves off. On the one hand, Finley was astute in seeing what was coming and in trying to get ahead of the game; he was skilled at that. On the other hand, Kuhn was justified in trying to keep a lid on a volatile and still developing situation.
The bottom line is this: leadership is tough. As a pastor, I think about such issues all the time. A pastor wants to be true first and foremost to the Savior who has called her or him to the ministry of the Word and to the service of the Kingdom of Heaven. But in the real world of the church, there are competing visions and conflicting concerns and differing constituencies. Nobody will agree with you all of the time and sometimes nobody will agree with you at all. Like a baseball commissioner or any other leader, you just have to follow the best light you have and be as true to your core principles as you can be. Hopefully, when you die, people will be able to say what they are saying today about Bowie Kuhn: “We didn’t always agree with him, but we did respect him.”
Now that I think about it, though, I understand better what a tough job he had. The position has a basic conflict built into it; the commissioner is supposed to uphold the integrity of baseball, a game which is of course played by the players and coached by the coaches and umpired by the umpires, but he is an employee of the owners. Nevertheless, he also has some authority over the owners; he can suspend an owner for conduct deemed detrimental to the game, for example. He famously suspended some of the most famous owners in the game, including Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Braves owner Ted Turner. But the commissioner is in a tough spot just by the nature of the job.
Kuhn presided over a period of tremendous progress but also of tremendous upheaval. World Series night games were first played during his tenure. I remember watching the very first one; it was played on October 13, 1971 between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles. For a school-aged fan, that was a positive development. During the time that he served, major league baseball expanded by two teams in both the American and National Leagues with each league being divided into two divisions the winners of which would meet in a playoff series to determine the World Series participants. I liked that because in the first year of divisional play in 1969 my beloved Braves won the Western Division, even though they lost in the playoffs to the Miracle Mets.
(It was weird that the Braves were in the Western division along with San Francisco, San Diego, Los Angeles, and Houston. It was especially weird when you consider that the Eastern Division included, besides New York, Philadelphia, and Montreal, the Chicago Cubs and St. Louis Cardinals. The last time I checked, Atlanta was east of Chicago and St. Louis. St. Louis is the “Gateway to the West,” for crying out loud. That ridiculous situation was finally rectified in 1994 when the leagues went to three divisions and the Braves were moved to the Eastern Division. Unfortunately, that realignment also led to the introduction of a “wild card” team into the playoffs, a move to which I was and am opposed. Second-place teams should not be in the baseball playoffs, and I don’t care how many of them win the World Series.)
Many developments occurred on the labor front in baseball during Kuhn’s tenure. Salaries skyrocketed mainly due to the advent of free agency. Under the reserve clause system, a player was bound to his team even after his contract expired unless the team traded or sold him to another team. A federal arbitrator ruled in 1975 that players could leave their team when their contract expired, which of course made them available to the highest bidder. (One of the first free agents was pitcher Andy Messersmith, who signed with the Braves. Ted Turner wanted him to wear number 17 with the word “Channel” over it as an advertisement for Turner’s cable channel WTBS which carried the Braves’ games. That was not allowed).
Kuhn made one of his most controversial moves just as free agency was coming into play. In June of 1976, Oakland A’s owner Charlie Finley, knowing that he was about to lose some of his stars without getting anything in return for them, sold the contract of pitcher Vida Blue to the New York Yankees for $1.5 million and the contracts of outfielder Joe Rudi and pitcher Rollie Fingers to the Boston Red Sox for $1 million each. Kuhn voided that sale because he judged it to be detrimental to baseball. The Red Sox were and are my favorite American League team, so I was miffed. In retrospect, I can see the validity of Kuhn’s concerns. The idea of owners auctioning off their best players was troubling. I’m not sure, though, that it is any more troubling than the players auctioning themselves off. On the one hand, Finley was astute in seeing what was coming and in trying to get ahead of the game; he was skilled at that. On the other hand, Kuhn was justified in trying to keep a lid on a volatile and still developing situation.
The bottom line is this: leadership is tough. As a pastor, I think about such issues all the time. A pastor wants to be true first and foremost to the Savior who has called her or him to the ministry of the Word and to the service of the Kingdom of Heaven. But in the real world of the church, there are competing visions and conflicting concerns and differing constituencies. Nobody will agree with you all of the time and sometimes nobody will agree with you at all. Like a baseball commissioner or any other leader, you just have to follow the best light you have and be as true to your core principles as you can be. Hopefully, when you die, people will be able to say what they are saying today about Bowie Kuhn: “We didn’t always agree with him, but we did respect him.”
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Read Josh Ruffin, Again
Go to www.metrospirit.com and click on "Music." Under "Music Features," the articles "Kenny Bridges Interview," "Moneen at Sector 7G," "Whoop & Holler," and "Blood, Sweat, Energy Drinks" are all by Josh. Also, under "CD Reviews" you can read his review of the new album by The Alternate Routes.
Tell him what you think at jlruthven84@yahoo.com.
Tell him what you think at jlruthven84@yahoo.com.
Confession
Final Score: Georgetown 80, Belmont 55
I confess: I am not the kind of prophet who can tell the future.
I further confess: I am not a very effective good luck charm.
I confess: I am not the kind of prophet who can tell the future.
I further confess: I am not a very effective good luck charm.
Living the Forgiven Life: Embrace the Transformation
(A Lenten devotion based on Ephesians 5:8-14 & John 9:1-41)
Can you imagine the man in today’s Gospel text, having been given his sight by Jesus after spending his entire life in darkness, ever approaching life the same way again? Or, to think of an even more extreme case, can you imagine Lazarus, having been brought back to life by Jesus after spending four days in the tomb, ever looking at life in the same way again? Being touched by Jesus in such dramatic ways produces changes; it brings about a transformation. We who have been forgiven by God because of the death of Christ on the cross have been changed in dramatic ways, too. But we need to embrace the transformation. Are we fully embracing the transformation that comes with being forgiven? Another way to ask that question would be this: are we living the Christian life for all it’s worth? Yet another way to ask it would be this: are we really living like saved and baptized people ought to live?
Today’s epistle text encourages us, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Some scholars believe that this was part of a hymn or a reading that was used at the baptism of new believers. How appropriate it is for us today. We need to understand that we have been saved, that we have been forgiven, that we have been raised from the dead, that we have been freed from our sins. We need to understand that people who have been made alive by Christ have been made alive really to live. We are supposed to be different and we are supposed to live differently because we are in fact different. We are in light rather than in darkness; we are alive rather than dead. So, we need to take the Christian life seriously. How seriously are you taking it? We have been forgiven by God in Christ. How do we go about living seriously in that forgiven state? How do we go about embracing the transformation that is ours?
We embrace the transformation by living in light of our experience with Jesus. The blind man in our Gospel text had been born that way. He had lived his entire life in darkness. Then, because he had been touched by Jesus, he was able to see. He had to live his life in light of that experience with Jesus; he could do no other. And why would he want to do any other? As great as the man’s experience of gaining his physical sight was, the truly great event occurred later in the story when he came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah (v. 38). That was when his spiritual blindness was cured. Even though we know nothing of the man’s life after that point, we can be sure that the greater change came because of his belief in Jesus as Savior. That’s the greatest experience there is.
You just can’t have an experience with Jesus and remain the same. But we need to be intentional about living the forgiven life. We need to be intentional about embracing the change that has come upon us. As Ephesians puts it, “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light” (v. 8a). Notice the powerful way the verse puts the situation: sin once held such sway in our lives that it can be said not just that we were in darkness but that we were darkness. But when the Lord comes in to our lives we are not just in the light but we are light. Because of that drastic change in our reality, we are called to “live as children of light” (v. 8b). Being Christians does not put us on autopilot. We have to intentionally choose to live as Christians are called to live.
Now, we don’t do so in our own power. We are inspired and taught by the grace and love of our Lord. But the truth still is that good habits come from good practice. I’ve been reading about a baseball player who wants to be a better hitter this year. During the off season he studied film of himself. He changed his batting stance. He took lots of batting practice. Now, his goal is for the right ways of doing things to become second nature to him. Meanwhile, though, he has to exercise the discipline of choosing to do the right things rather than doing the wrong things. Otherwise, his old habits will continue to run his life. Similarly, we have to purposely choose the things that are “good and right and true” (v. 9). Such choices will pay off in the long run.
We embrace the transformation by testifying of our experience with Jesus. When you have an experience with Jesus you have a testimony about that experience. Your experience is your experience and your testimony is your testimony. If you’ve been touched by Jesus you have something to share. When the blind man was healed there was some disagreement among people as to his identity. He just kept on saying, “I am the man” (v. 9). That’s the main thing we have to tell, isn’t it: “I am the one whom Jesus touched and this is how he touched me.” We say, “This is who I am and Jesus is the one who made me this way.” We tell the story of Jesus but we know the story of Jesus because of the way his story intersects our story. We tell of what Jesus has done for us.
Some care should be exercised here. My college teacher Dr. Howard Giddens used to say of some preachers, “They say more than they know.” Some non-preacher Christians are like that, too. They feel compelled to act as if they have all the answers and as if all things are simple to those who know the Lord. We should be careful not to say more than we know, though. When the Jewish authorities told him that Jesus was a sinner because Jesus healed on the Sabbath, he said, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (v. 25). Now, we know that Jesus was not a sinner. But we don’t know everything about Jesus because we can’t know everything about God. Such is the nature of God. But we know what he has done in our lives and that’s what we can talk about with confidence: “Once I was blind, but now I see.” We should study all we can and pray all we can and learn all we can but we need to accept that we’ll never have all the answers.
How do we testify about what Jesus has done in our lives? We do so by living as Christians ought to live. It’s interesting how Ephesians encourages us: “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” Try. Make the effort. Know that it may not always be clear. But try. And then live in light of what you learn. Certainly such living means that you’ll avoid the works of sin that characterize the ways of the world. But positively it means that we’ll live in ways that reflect the light of Christ and that show the works of darkness for what they are. We bear witness to Christ by living in ways that reflect the transformation that he has brought about in us.
But we also testify about what Jesus has done in our lives by talking about it. How we should admire this man who insisted on talking about what Jesus had done in his life. He had to go up against the religious experts of his day but he would not back down because he knew what Jesus had done for him. We need to be ready to make our defense and to share our testimony. We each have our own story to tell but each story is the story of what Jesus has done. Tell it. Tell it faithfully. Tell it lovingly. But tell it. Someone you meet today may need to hear it.
We embrace the transformation by valuing our experience with Jesus. One result of the formerly blind man’s insistence on telling his story was that he was kicked out of his synagogue (v. 34). His parents, when questioned by the authorities, had been afraid to say too much because they knew that those who confessed Jesus as Messiah were to be put out of the synagogue (v. 22). In the early years of the church such became a real problem. The man was persecuted for his faith; he was made an outcast because of his insistence on bearing witness to his experience with Jesus. He had to make a decision that his experience with Jesus was more valuable than any other relationship he had or than any other reality that brought meaning to his life
What do we really value? Do we really value our experience with Jesus? Are we embracing the transformation that Jesus has wrought in our lives by valuing our relationship with him more than we do anything else? Think of how you make decisions. Think of how you choose to live. Think of the brand of ethics that your practice. Think of those things to which you do and don’t give priority. Do your choices show that your experience with Jesus has been truly transformative and that he truly is your priority? Or are there things that you are valuing more highly and embracing more closely than him?
It is important, as we live the forgiven life, that we intentionally embrace the transformation that Jesus has caused in our lives. We need to be committed to living the Christian life. That commitment needs to be purposeful and it needs to be radical. We need to bear witness to what he has done in our lives with our lives and with our words. It needs to be clear who we are and whose we are. Is it clear in your life today?
Can you imagine the man in today’s Gospel text, having been given his sight by Jesus after spending his entire life in darkness, ever approaching life the same way again? Or, to think of an even more extreme case, can you imagine Lazarus, having been brought back to life by Jesus after spending four days in the tomb, ever looking at life in the same way again? Being touched by Jesus in such dramatic ways produces changes; it brings about a transformation. We who have been forgiven by God because of the death of Christ on the cross have been changed in dramatic ways, too. But we need to embrace the transformation. Are we fully embracing the transformation that comes with being forgiven? Another way to ask that question would be this: are we living the Christian life for all it’s worth? Yet another way to ask it would be this: are we really living like saved and baptized people ought to live?
Today’s epistle text encourages us, “Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” Some scholars believe that this was part of a hymn or a reading that was used at the baptism of new believers. How appropriate it is for us today. We need to understand that we have been saved, that we have been forgiven, that we have been raised from the dead, that we have been freed from our sins. We need to understand that people who have been made alive by Christ have been made alive really to live. We are supposed to be different and we are supposed to live differently because we are in fact different. We are in light rather than in darkness; we are alive rather than dead. So, we need to take the Christian life seriously. How seriously are you taking it? We have been forgiven by God in Christ. How do we go about living seriously in that forgiven state? How do we go about embracing the transformation that is ours?
We embrace the transformation by living in light of our experience with Jesus. The blind man in our Gospel text had been born that way. He had lived his entire life in darkness. Then, because he had been touched by Jesus, he was able to see. He had to live his life in light of that experience with Jesus; he could do no other. And why would he want to do any other? As great as the man’s experience of gaining his physical sight was, the truly great event occurred later in the story when he came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah (v. 38). That was when his spiritual blindness was cured. Even though we know nothing of the man’s life after that point, we can be sure that the greater change came because of his belief in Jesus as Savior. That’s the greatest experience there is.
You just can’t have an experience with Jesus and remain the same. But we need to be intentional about living the forgiven life. We need to be intentional about embracing the change that has come upon us. As Ephesians puts it, “Once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light” (v. 8a). Notice the powerful way the verse puts the situation: sin once held such sway in our lives that it can be said not just that we were in darkness but that we were darkness. But when the Lord comes in to our lives we are not just in the light but we are light. Because of that drastic change in our reality, we are called to “live as children of light” (v. 8b). Being Christians does not put us on autopilot. We have to intentionally choose to live as Christians are called to live.
Now, we don’t do so in our own power. We are inspired and taught by the grace and love of our Lord. But the truth still is that good habits come from good practice. I’ve been reading about a baseball player who wants to be a better hitter this year. During the off season he studied film of himself. He changed his batting stance. He took lots of batting practice. Now, his goal is for the right ways of doing things to become second nature to him. Meanwhile, though, he has to exercise the discipline of choosing to do the right things rather than doing the wrong things. Otherwise, his old habits will continue to run his life. Similarly, we have to purposely choose the things that are “good and right and true” (v. 9). Such choices will pay off in the long run.
We embrace the transformation by testifying of our experience with Jesus. When you have an experience with Jesus you have a testimony about that experience. Your experience is your experience and your testimony is your testimony. If you’ve been touched by Jesus you have something to share. When the blind man was healed there was some disagreement among people as to his identity. He just kept on saying, “I am the man” (v. 9). That’s the main thing we have to tell, isn’t it: “I am the one whom Jesus touched and this is how he touched me.” We say, “This is who I am and Jesus is the one who made me this way.” We tell the story of Jesus but we know the story of Jesus because of the way his story intersects our story. We tell of what Jesus has done for us.
Some care should be exercised here. My college teacher Dr. Howard Giddens used to say of some preachers, “They say more than they know.” Some non-preacher Christians are like that, too. They feel compelled to act as if they have all the answers and as if all things are simple to those who know the Lord. We should be careful not to say more than we know, though. When the Jewish authorities told him that Jesus was a sinner because Jesus healed on the Sabbath, he said, “I do not know whether he is a sinner. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (v. 25). Now, we know that Jesus was not a sinner. But we don’t know everything about Jesus because we can’t know everything about God. Such is the nature of God. But we know what he has done in our lives and that’s what we can talk about with confidence: “Once I was blind, but now I see.” We should study all we can and pray all we can and learn all we can but we need to accept that we’ll never have all the answers.
How do we testify about what Jesus has done in our lives? We do so by living as Christians ought to live. It’s interesting how Ephesians encourages us: “Try to find out what is pleasing to the Lord.” Try. Make the effort. Know that it may not always be clear. But try. And then live in light of what you learn. Certainly such living means that you’ll avoid the works of sin that characterize the ways of the world. But positively it means that we’ll live in ways that reflect the light of Christ and that show the works of darkness for what they are. We bear witness to Christ by living in ways that reflect the transformation that he has brought about in us.
But we also testify about what Jesus has done in our lives by talking about it. How we should admire this man who insisted on talking about what Jesus had done in his life. He had to go up against the religious experts of his day but he would not back down because he knew what Jesus had done for him. We need to be ready to make our defense and to share our testimony. We each have our own story to tell but each story is the story of what Jesus has done. Tell it. Tell it faithfully. Tell it lovingly. But tell it. Someone you meet today may need to hear it.
We embrace the transformation by valuing our experience with Jesus. One result of the formerly blind man’s insistence on telling his story was that he was kicked out of his synagogue (v. 34). His parents, when questioned by the authorities, had been afraid to say too much because they knew that those who confessed Jesus as Messiah were to be put out of the synagogue (v. 22). In the early years of the church such became a real problem. The man was persecuted for his faith; he was made an outcast because of his insistence on bearing witness to his experience with Jesus. He had to make a decision that his experience with Jesus was more valuable than any other relationship he had or than any other reality that brought meaning to his life
What do we really value? Do we really value our experience with Jesus? Are we embracing the transformation that Jesus has wrought in our lives by valuing our relationship with him more than we do anything else? Think of how you make decisions. Think of how you choose to live. Think of the brand of ethics that your practice. Think of those things to which you do and don’t give priority. Do your choices show that your experience with Jesus has been truly transformative and that he truly is your priority? Or are there things that you are valuing more highly and embracing more closely than him?
It is important, as we live the forgiven life, that we intentionally embrace the transformation that Jesus has caused in our lives. We need to be committed to living the Christian life. That commitment needs to be purposeful and it needs to be radical. We need to bear witness to what he has done in our lives with our lives and with our words. It needs to be clear who we are and whose we are. Is it clear in your life today?
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Bracketology
The NCAA basketball tournament got underway last night with the “play-in” game that determined the team that would earn the 64th and final spot in the “big dance.” For those of you who missed it, Niagara defeated Florida A & M and earned the privilege of getting pummeled by Kansas in their next game. But, the field is now set and Niagara is in it; they should be proud.
I confess that I am not much of a basketball fan. I am a hard-core fan of baseball, which is the world’s most perfect sport. I also like to watch college football; it’s a great spectacle. Somewhere along the way I lost my interest in basketball. It wasn’t always that way. We lived in Louisville, Kentucky for seven years and during that time I became a fan of the University of Louisville Cardinals. They won a national championship during our first school year in Louisville (1979-1980) and during our last year there (1985-1986). They’ve not won one since. Obviously, we functioned as a good luck charm for them.
Lots of people all over the country are filling out their tournament brackets this week. Given that I’ve stopped keeping close watch on college basketball, I don’t do that anymore. I have considered conducting an experiment, though. I’ve heard of people conducting a similar test with the stock market. Here’s how it works. First, get some expert financial managers to select the stocks they think are going to do well. Second, get another group to select a portfolio by taping the stock market pages from a newspaper to a wall and throwing darts at it; they then buy the stocks that their darts hit. Then, at the end of twelve months, see whose stocks have done better. So, I thought about throwing darts at the bracket and seeing how it turns out.
Of course, I could do a careful analysis of each team and try to pick the perfect bracket. The perfect bracket would be one in which you pick the correct winner of every game all the way to the final. I heard somewhere that the odds of doing that are one in one quadrillion. A quadrillion is a one followed by fifteen zeroes, or six more zeros than in a billion. I understand that you have much better though still astronomical odds of winning the lottery or even of getting struck by lightning while you’re going to buy a lottery ticket. Still, lots of people are going to try and lots of people are going to bet lots of money on the outcome.
As for me, I’ll just sort of pay attention until they get down to the Final Four. If I can, I’ll watch the National Championship game.
For what it’s worth, here’s my pick: Belmont University, the #15 seed in the East Region, will go all the way. After all, I used to work there, and I’m a good luck charm.
Just ask the Louisville Cardinals.
I confess that I am not much of a basketball fan. I am a hard-core fan of baseball, which is the world’s most perfect sport. I also like to watch college football; it’s a great spectacle. Somewhere along the way I lost my interest in basketball. It wasn’t always that way. We lived in Louisville, Kentucky for seven years and during that time I became a fan of the University of Louisville Cardinals. They won a national championship during our first school year in Louisville (1979-1980) and during our last year there (1985-1986). They’ve not won one since. Obviously, we functioned as a good luck charm for them.
Lots of people all over the country are filling out their tournament brackets this week. Given that I’ve stopped keeping close watch on college basketball, I don’t do that anymore. I have considered conducting an experiment, though. I’ve heard of people conducting a similar test with the stock market. Here’s how it works. First, get some expert financial managers to select the stocks they think are going to do well. Second, get another group to select a portfolio by taping the stock market pages from a newspaper to a wall and throwing darts at it; they then buy the stocks that their darts hit. Then, at the end of twelve months, see whose stocks have done better. So, I thought about throwing darts at the bracket and seeing how it turns out.
Of course, I could do a careful analysis of each team and try to pick the perfect bracket. The perfect bracket would be one in which you pick the correct winner of every game all the way to the final. I heard somewhere that the odds of doing that are one in one quadrillion. A quadrillion is a one followed by fifteen zeroes, or six more zeros than in a billion. I understand that you have much better though still astronomical odds of winning the lottery or even of getting struck by lightning while you’re going to buy a lottery ticket. Still, lots of people are going to try and lots of people are going to bet lots of money on the outcome.
As for me, I’ll just sort of pay attention until they get down to the Final Four. If I can, I’ll watch the National Championship game.
For what it’s worth, here’s my pick: Belmont University, the #15 seed in the East Region, will go all the way. After all, I used to work there, and I’m a good luck charm.
Just ask the Louisville Cardinals.
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