The Church Lady visits The Hill Baptist Church

The Metro Spirit is the alternative weekly newspaper here in Augusta, GA. One of their regular columns is called The Church Lady. Writer Angel Cleary visits a local church and then writes an article about her experience there. She recently visited us at The Hill. What follows is what she wrote. The esteemed Fred Gunter, our Associate Pastor Emeritus, is the "old male vocalist" to whom Angel refers.

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AUGUSTA, GA - Where have the old male vocalists gone? When a church features a soloist, I’ve noticed, that at least at the services I’ve attended, the performer is typically female. I’ve actually only witnessed two guys in 41 church services sing a song.

The irony, of course, is that most music ministers are men. I’m not alluding to anything here; it is just a trend. Maybe there just aren’t any men with decent vocal chords.

So last Sunday when I attended the 11 a.m. service at Hill Baptist Church, I was pleasantly surprised to hear an older man sing an offertory solo.

I entered the sanctuary and found a seat in the back row. There were plenty of seats, though. For some reason, no one sat in the first four rows, leaving an empty chasm between the altar and the first row of people, like that invisible comfort zone boundary the self-conscious won’t cross at small-venue concerts.

Still, the service wasn’t awkward. The liturgy was formal, like that of a Lutheran or Episcopal service. We sang a few hymns and read some Bible verses, standing and sitting at apropos times.

Then for the offertory, a white-haired man, who must have been in his late 60s or early 70s, sang a popular Baptist hymn. His voice was clear and youthful, and if I’d had my eyes closed I would have thought he was in his 30s.

Where the liturgy was mostly formal, the sermon was casual and conversational.

The pastor spoke about how the only way to deal with loss of all kinds is to surrender to the idea of impermanence and accept that everything is a gift of God.

His manner of speech had empathy about it, as though he keenly feels human suffering. This sensibility no doubt comes from his own personal experience of loss which he shared during his sermon. At the tender age of 16, he said, he lost two important role models in his life, and for the next few years of his life he had a fear of losing people. At the same time, he desired a human connection, but this fear kept him pushing people away.

It was a touching sermon. I very nearly choked up as he spoke.

His blog also reflects that sense of empathy. In it he candidly deals with issues of separation of church and state, the terminally ill, immortality and even discusses his own battles over some issues.

Often pastors only share personal anecdotes or lame metaphors. “Jesus takes care of us the same way a mother dog takes care of her puppies” — I swear I heard a pastor use that one once. It was wonderful to hear from the pulpit that pastors are human, too.

A Break from Blogging

I will be taking a brief break from blogging. My next post should appear on Wednesday, July 16.

Thanks for reading!

MLR

Free Indeed

(A Religious Liberty Sunday sermon based on John 8:31-36)

On Friday we celebrated Independence Day here in the United States of America. Freedom is a terrible thing. Frankly, it’s easier to live in bondage.

I spent some time this week looking at the newborn babies in the hospital nursery, some of them just a few minutes or hours departed from the womb. Just a little while ago they had been safely confined in their mothers’ belly, warm and snug and peaceful. Now they were stretching their arms and legs out toward the wide and wild world, their bodies twisting this way and that, their mouths at times still and at other times contorted in yawns or cries. They were free. It is God’s way that those little babies don’t know what lies ahead of them. Otherwise, they might petition the Almighty for a return to the womb. Now they have to live. And in living they will have hard choices to make. And always they will live with the temptation to accept slavery rather than freedom.

The problem that the people conversing with Jesus in our text had was that they were at the same time blind to their slavery and wanted to remain in it. They wanted to remain in slavery to their culture and to their assumptions because such slavery let them avoid the terrible freedom to relate to God for themselves and to live the adventuresome and dangerous life that comes from that relationship.

Our text is part of a dialogue between Jesus and some people that deteriorated into a controversy. Jesus challenged them to listen to him and to follow him so that they would know the truth and the truth would in turn make them free. They balked at the idea, saying that they were descendants of Abraham and they had never been slaves to anyone.

They obviously suffered from selective memory loss. Their ancestors had been slaves in Egypt. After liberation, they wanted to go back to Egypt; they preferred the security of slavery to the challenges of freedom. Perhaps Jesus has that in mind in what he said. These were people who “believed” in him but he challenged them to continue in his word and thereby to be his disciples. Freedom was found in such following. But they didn’t want that. They wanted to keep trusting in being children of Abraham.

Jesus said to them, “Everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” That set me to wondering what their sin was. What was the sin of these “descendants of Abraham”? The obvious answer is that they trusted in their religious and national pedigree. That’s understandable—their people had an amazing history. To be a descendant of Abraham and a member of the nation of Israel was a good thing. But it was not the best thing. It was not the freedom-giving thing. The best thing was to enter into the relationship of trust and grace that Jesus Christ made possible, to come to trust in God rather than in pedigree, but these folks were unable to get past their allegiance to that into which they had been born. As Jesus pressed his point that being a Jew and being a citizen of Israel wasn’t enough, they grew angrier and angrier.

It’s kind of like what happens these days among some church-going or at least church-belonging folks when some preacher suggests that some of us may put too much stock in being, say, Baptist or even in being, say, American. But it’s something we need to think hard about. It is just as possible for people these days to say, “What do you mean I’m a slave to sin? I’ve been a member of this Baptist church all my life” or “What do you mean I’m a slave to sin? I’ve been a citizen of the most blessed country on earth all my life.”

Really, though, to be free in Christ is to be free of all of that. Oh, I don’t mean that when you are a Christian you don’t care anymore about your country—far from it. To love your country with the love of Christ is to love it with the greatest love you can. But I do mean that when you are a Christian you look to Christ for your identity and for your direction and for your very life. You’re not bound to your national loyalty in such a way that you can’t recognize that while our country has given and does give us a lot, it can’t give us what we need most—a personal relationship with God. Only Jesus can do that. And so in Christ you’re set free to love your country honestly and openly rather than blindly and inappropriately.

The people debating with Jesus put their national pedigree ahead of their relationship with God. We can’t do that.

One sin of the descendants of Abraham was an attraction to power, be it that of their own leaders or that of the leaders of other countries. We see that, for example, in the desire of the people to have a king. The Old Testament ideal was that God would be the King of Israel and that the leaders of the people would be his representatives. When God finally agreed to let them have a king, he had Samuel tell them about how the king would abuse his power and take advantage of them, but they still wanted the monarchy with all its trappings. They wanted to be like the nations. Another problem was that Israel was always relying on alliances with other, more powerful nations, rather than trusting in God for their security.

Modern American Christians are tempted by a similar attraction to power. We have over the last few decades seen some rather unseemly alliances develop as some Christians and some Christian leaders have sold their souls to one political party or philosophy or another or as they have tried to extend “Christian” influence by storming the halls of power. Suffice it to say for today that neither our government nor any other government nor any earthly institution is capable of being the embodiment of the kingdom of God or is capable of being the vessel containing and sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ. Only the Church, which is the Body of Christ that is empowered by the Holy Spirit of God, can be those things. That is not to say, I hope you understand, that Christians should not try to influence the process and that we should not exercise our voice—far from it. But it is to say that if we let ourselves get caught up in the pursuing of power and in the exercise of power, we will very quickly lose our way and the true gospel will get lost.

Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw share the following insight in their new book Jesus for President.

When Jesus predicted his death at the hands of the Romans and the religious elite, Peter wouldn’t have it (Matt. 16:21-23). He said no to Operation Slaughtered Lamb. The Scriptures say Peter took Jesus aside and rejected the plan Jesus had laid out, saying, “Never, Lord! This shall never happen to you!” And Jesus turned to Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”… Peter just didn’t get it. He couldn’t imagine a president who dies on a cross. He would have rather had a Savior who glides into Jerusalem in a polished limousine than one who chooses to ride a lowly donkey. He still had in mind the things of kings, of Pharaoh, of Herod. He wanted to save the world through militaries and markets and foreign policies rather than through sacrificial love and grace. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008, p. 87)

The Church loses something essential when we marry the powers of the world rather than being the salt and leaven that we are meant to be.

Besides, we are free to be free from all of that because our freedom is in Jesus Christ! We are free to be in the world but not of the world. We are free to be citizens of the United States while our ultimate and primary citizenship is in the Kingdom of Heaven. We are free to be salt and light in the world and to work toward spreading the kingdom of God in the world even while we realize that the structures of the world can never be made “Christian.”

“You shall know the truth, Jesus said, “and the truth shall make you free.” “If the Son makes you free,” he said, “you shall be free indeed.” In other words, in Jesus we find the freedom that matters most: freedom from sin. The essence of sin is trusting in anything or anybody other than God. In Jesus we are set free from the idolatrous trust in anything that is not God. In Jesus we are set free from the futile effort of trusting in earthly things to bring about heavenly realities. We are citizens of heaven. We happen to live in America.

This is Independence Day weekend. On Friday we celebrated the independence of our nation and those freedoms that are ours because we are Americans. How blessed we are to live in this great country! As Christians we should be the best citizens around. We should pray for our country and we should do everything we can to help make sure that we remain free.

What I have tried to emphasize, based on this challenging text, is that we nonetheless need to take care lest we fall prey to the sin of the people whom Jesus confronted. Their sin was that they put being descendants of Abraham ahead of entering into a true relationship with God. A related sin was the attraction to power that was a part of their birthright. We have the blessed opportunity to be Christian people in the midst of a great nation that is nonetheless an earthly empire that will always need the witness of Christ. We do our best work as Christians when we build his kingdom.

I know—such talk is odd and hard to get our minds and hearts around. But, in the words of Flannery O’Connor as she re-worked the words of Jesus, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd.” If we are in the truth of Christ and if we are set free by the truth of Christ and if we follow the truth of Christ, we will look and sound odd in any culture, including the American one. But that’s good. It’s good because what this nation needs from us—what this community needs from us—what this world needs from us—is exactly the oddness and wonder and love and grace of the Christian truth. And we—and only we—are free to live it. That’s being free indeed!

Column at EthicsDaily.com

My post Struggling Toward Religious Liberty Sunday appears today at EthicsDaily.com.

I Remember Them

I still remember the first person who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease that I ever visited. I’m sure that I had seen other people who had the disease but this lady was the first one to whom I ever heard the diagnosis applied. She spent her days curled up in a wheelchair, her arms and legs drawn to awkward angles, her mouth slightly open, and her eyes staring off at nothing—or everything. Her good husband spent all his time waiting on her, the love he was so elaborately dispensing slowly draining the life from him.

There have over the years been so many of them—so many people with whom I have shared time and space but who may not have known they were sharing it with me.

I remember the young husband and father who was left a quadriplegic by a horrendous traffic accident. He could not talk. He had to be fed with a syringe and later through a feeding tube. He would blink his eyes at me. His almost but not quite widow believed that he communicated that way. I hoped not.

There have over the years been so many of them—so many people with whom I have shared empty and halting and awkward and holy words but who were never able to reciprocate with a word of their own.

I remember the woman who had always been so very strong but whose cancer had left her a shell of herself so that all she could do was lie there. I would stand over her with her family and watch her sleep until finally I would say a prayer and leave. All the while all I could think of was how mad she would be about how helpless she was had she been able to realize how needy she had become.

There have over the years been so many of them—so many people with whom I have sat or stood who would have given almost anything for the simple dignity of standing or sitting with me but from whom a disease had ripped even that.

There have been so many. The three of whom I have written crossed my path years ago. But the people whom they represent have been in my life continuously for over twenty years now. I may well see someone today or tomorrow who will be unable to talk with me or look at me or relate to me in any way.

Perhaps they did not or do not remember me. But I remember them. I am haunted by them. I am moved by them. I am frightened by them. I am challenged by them.

And I am confronted by them. In them I am confronted with my own mortality and my own frailty and with my fear of those realities. I am confronted with the possibility of the decay and loss of my mental and/or physical capacities. In those moments of pastoral ministry it’s not supposed to about me. It’s supposed to be about them. But how can I help but see in them an image of what I don’t want to happen to me or to those I love most deeply? That may not be a bad thing. Perhaps my fear at least draws me into their situation a little bit and creates a higher level of sympathy than I would otherwise have.

And I am blessed by them. Sometimes I find myself thinking, “There but for the grace of God go I.” Does not that thought imply, though, that the grace of God has nothing to do with what they are experiencing? Does it not imply that were such to happen to me it would somehow occur outside the grace of God? I can’t believe that. I can’t believe that and maintain my faith. I have to believe that somehow, in a mysterious, maybe undetectable, but still real way, God’s grace is churning away in what they are going through. This much I know: I often walk away from those encounters—frankly feeling grateful that I can walk away—feeling that somehow I have been in the presence of the holy.

Maybe it all comes down to the fact that God’s strength really is seen—and is even made perfect—in our weakness.

Yes, I remember them. I remember them all.

When I do, I grieve. I grieve what they lost and what we lost in what they lost.

But when I do, I celebrate. I celebrate the lives they lived and the mysterious grace that hovers around them.

Salon.com on "Saving Darwin's God"

Salon.com has a fascinating interview with physicist and theologian Karl Giberson, author of the book Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. It's very thought-provoking and worth the time it will take you to read it.

Death Lessons at EthicsDaily.com

My post Death Lessons appears today at EthicsDaily.com.