Let Your Light Shine

Sometime in the fifth century BC, not too many years after Jewish exiles returned to Judah from Babylon and several hundred years before Jesus was born, a preacher delivered a message preserved for us in the fifty-eighth chapter of the biblical book of Isaiah.

The preacher told the people that when it came to worship, they were missing the point. As with all preachers in that day, this one believed so strongly that he was speaking for God, he could actually quote the Lord’s words. So he presents the following words as if God is speaking them about the people:

Yet day after day they seek me and delight to know my ways, as if they were a nation that practiced righteousness and did not forsake the ordinance of their God; they ask of me righteous judgments, they delight to draw near to God (v. 2).

These words display some holy sarcasm. God says that the people act as if they want to know and do what God wants them to be and do, but they really don’t. They “worship,” God tells them, only for what they think they can get out of it. Their focus isn’t on God, but rather on themselves.

God particularly addresses their practice of fasting, which is the giving up of something (food, for example) for a period of time in order to become more aware of your dependence on God. Speaking through the prophet, God tells the people that their fasting is meaningless (as are their other worship practices, no doubt) because they keep on mistreating and oppressing people.

Then God says,

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin (vv. 6-7)?

The fast God wants, God says, is for God’s people to help the helpless, to lift up the downtrodden, and to liberate the oppressed. If the people would do that, God tells them, “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn…” (v. 8a).

Real worship focuses on God, not on ourselves. We truly worship when we worship in order to show our love for God, not in order to gain something for ourselves. And we truly worship when our love for God leads us to love other people, especially those whom life has beaten up and beaten down.

Put simply, if you go to the church, to the synagogue, or to the mosque, and then go out into the world to hate, oppress, misuse, abuse, manipulate, or take advantage of people, you aren’t worshiping.

The fifth-century preacher told the people that if they’d care for those whom the world disrespects and disregards, then their light would shine in the world’s darkness.

You may have one of those candles in a jar. As long as you leave the lid off the jar, the candle burns just fine. But put the lid back on the jar while the candle is burning, and the flame is immediately extinguished. That’s because oxygen fuels the fire, so without oxygen, the fire goes out and the light gives way to the darkness.

Love fuels our fire and keeps our light shining. If we give in to selfishness, hate, and cruelty, then we give way to the darkness. But if we keep loving in ways that lead us to serve, give, and share, then our light will keep burning brightly.

We overcome darkness with light. We overcome hate with love.

MacArthur Park, Reconsidered

A few days ago, my wife Debra and I had the privilege of joining our beloved friends, college roommates, and fellow travelers Randy and Jennie Berry at Eddie’s Attic in Decatur to hear Jimmy Webb talk about and play and sing some of the wonderful songs he’s written during the course of his career.

And boy howdy, has Webb written some great songs.

He wrote three of Glen Campbell’s biggest hits: “Wichita Lineman,” “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” and my favorite Campbell recording, “Galveston.” He also wrote the Fifth Dimension’s hit “Up, Up, and Away,” Brooklyn Bridge’s “The Worst that Could Happen,” and Art Garfunkel’s “All I Know.” That list barely scratches the surface of the pile of songs Webb has written.

Another of Webb’s well-known songs is “MacArthur Park.” The original recording by actor Richard Harris went to #2 in the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1968. Waylon Jennings’s version won a Grammy award in 1969. Donna Summers’s disco version was a hit in 1978. Who’d have ever thought you could dance to “MacArthur Park”? Well, I couldn’t, because I can’t dance—but lots of people did.

Webb has caught a lot of grief over the years for “MacArthur Park.” Some people have said that the lyrics are over-the-top. Read the second verse and the refrain, and see what you think:

I recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
And the old men playing checkers by the trees

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
Cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

As for me, I think the lyrics are beautifully written and their symbolism is majestic and fascinating.

Still, I confess to having poked a little fun at the song myself, although to be fair, I mainly joked about Richard Harris’s overly dramatic (in my estimation) rendition.

After seeing Webb perform, I found a 2014 Newsday article where he said that “MacArthur Park” is

just a song about a girlfriend of mine, Susie Horton, and this place on Wilshire Boulevard where we used to have lunch, which is called MacArthur Park. And the truth is that everything in the song was visible. There’s nothing in it that’s fabricated. The old men playing checkers by the trees, the cake that was left out in the rain, all of the things that are talked about in the song are things I actually saw. And so it’s a kind of musical collage of this whole love affair that kind of went down in MacArthur Park.

Webb also said that he wrote “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” at about the same time, as the love affair was coming to an end.

But I didn’t know that background when I heard Webb sing “MacArthur Park,” so that’s not what caused me to conclude that the song really belongs to him.

It was the way he played and sang it. His rendition was every bit as dramatic as Richard Harris’s version, but it was more powerful, I think because it was so real. Maybe it’s because he sang it liked he had lived it, which he in fact had. Webb’s presentation of “MacArthur Park” was, in a word, authentic.

There are at least three lessons in this for all of us.

First, we should speak authentic words that come out of authentic lives.

Second, we should listen to those who do.

And third, we shouldn’t listen to those who don’t.

Wars and Rumors of Wars

War… What is it good for? Absolutely nothing!

Some of you will recognize those words, written by Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong, from Edwin Starr’s 1970 hit single “War.” Released while the war in Vietnam was still raging, it was a bold anti-war statement.

Maybe we need to listen to it again.

I was twelve years old in 1970 when the song was blasting from radios and jukeboxes, so the possibility of my being drafted was six years away, which at that age seemed so far in the future that I could scarcely imagine it. As things turned out, by the time I turned eighteen, the draft had been abolished. In fact, I didn’t even have to register for the draft, as no men born between March 29, 1957 and December 31, 1959 were required to do so.

I wish no one had to register for the draft. I wish we didn’t need military forces or weapons. I wish no American man or woman—or man or woman of any nation—would die in armed conflict ever again. I wish we had peace all over the world. I wish that wars never happened. I wish that nations would get along.

But I’m neither naïve nor stupid. I know I won’t get my wishes.

Nevertheless, I believe war should always be the last resort and never the first option. I believe that leaders of nations should do everything they can possibly do to work problems out without going to war.

Like the song says, war isn’t good for anything.

Well, it seems to be good for business.

This brings me to another line in the song “War”:

It ain't nothing but a heart breaker
(War) it's got one friend that's the undertaker.

War actually has lots of other friends. Way back in 1963, Mr. Dylan pointed out some of them in his song “Masters of War”:

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks.

You that never done nothin’
But build to destroy
You play with my world
Like it’s your little toy
You put a gun in my hand
And you hide from my eyes
And you turn and run farther
When the fast bullets fly.

War is big business. So is the preparation for war that takes place during peacetime.

In 2019, the United States spent $649 billion on defense, which is more than the next seven highest-spending countries (China, Saudi Arabia, India, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, and Germany) combined. Large military contractors make a lot of money. In 2017, military arms manufacturers in the United States and other countries had almost $400 billion in weapons sales.

So I guess military contractors are friends of war too.

Now, as I said earlier, I’m not naïve. I realize that a strong defense is necessary to preserve peace and to discourage aggression by enemies. I’m grateful for our military personnel who keep us safe.

I’m also grateful for our intelligence services and diplomats who work behind the scenes to preserve peace and prevent war. I’m furthermore grateful for government, non-government, American, and international organizations that work to address issues to improve the human conditions that, if not addressed, can lead to conflict.

Some evangelicals are also friends of war, particularly war in the Middle East. As far as I can tell, it’s a small subset of the evangelical world. But these folks think they’ll profit from war in an eternal way. They think that a war in the Middle East will help usher in the apocalypse, after which they’ll be riding high and sitting pretty.

Such thinking is wrong, foolish, dangerous, unbiblical, and sub-Christian. Christians serve the Prince of Peace who said, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” We should do all we can to encourage and promote peace.

The drumbeats of war can get very loud. Let’s not let them drown out the melody of peace.

A Christmas Memory

I was born in 1958, so most of my childhood occurred during the 1960s.

Each Christmas Day in that decade followed a set schedule.

First, I would wake up very early in our little house on Memorial Drive in Barnesville. The house rule was that I had to wake my parents up before going into the living room to see what Santa Claus had brought me. This was so my father could arm himself with his Brownie 8mm movie camera, equipped with its panel of spotlights, to film the spectacle. We would then enter the place of wonder, where I would receive the first installment of my Christmas bounty.

Second, we would get dressed and go to the home of whichever Abbott was hosting my mother’s family’s Christmas celebration. If we were hosting it, we’d get dressed and stay home. After enjoying a delicious Christmas lunch, we’d open presents, and I would receive the second installment of my Christmas bounty.

Third, we would drive the ten or so miles to Yatesville, where we would slide into the Ruffin family’s Christmas celebration that was already well underway at MawMaw and PawPaw’s house. We’d open presents, and I would receive the third installment of my Christmas bounty.

By late in the afternoon, I was antsy to get home so I could play with all the stuff I’d had to leave there that morning. We’d say our goodbyes to whatever Ruffins remained and get in the car.

Then Mama would say, “Now Mike, we have to go see Mr. and Mrs. Lashley before we go home. Be sure to thank them for the gift they’ll give you.”

We’d go spend a little while with that elderly couple. They were nice. They would indeed give me a present, and they’d exchange presents with my parents. I noticed that they seemed particularly happy to see my mother.

At some point—I don’t recall how many times we visited them before I wondered enough to inquire—I asked my father why we went to visit Mr. and Mrs. Lashley.

Somewhere along the line I had heard about my mother having been engaged to a fellow named Buster before she married my father. Buster was killed in France in the days following the Normandy invasion, so he and my mother never married.

When I asked about Mr. and Mrs. Lashley, my father said, “Do you remember hearing about your mother’s fiancé, Buster? He was Buster Lashley. Mr. and Mrs. Lashley are his parents.”

I’m sure I responded with something deep, like, “How about that” or “Huh.”

But I’ve given it more thought over the years.

I’ve thought about a woman, who happened to be my mother, and her husband visiting the parents of the man she was once going to marry. I think about them doing so two decades after he died. I assume they had been doing so every year since they got married in 1946.

I think about how as they chatted in the early evening on those Christmas Days, they must have all thought, at least a little, about what might have been, but wasn’t, and about what might not have been, but was.

I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Lashley sat there thinking, “It could have been Sara and Buster. We wish it had been.” I wonder if they also thought, “We’re glad it’s Sara and Champ.”

I wonder if all of them thought about how the horrible and the wonderful, the painful and the blissful, and the losses and the gains exist side-by-side in this life, and how if you’ll just hold on, hoping, trusting, and trying, putting one foot in front of the other, it will all somehow, someway, work out in the long run.

I don’t know if they all thought about any of that.

But I, the son of Champ and Sara Ruffin, who could not have existed had they not married, sure do think about it.

Advent

The church is in the middle of the Advent season. The word Advent means “arrival.” During Advent, we anticipate the arrival of Jesus Christ.

There are four Sundays of Advent. The fourth and last one is the Sunday before Christmas Day. So Advent is a season to anticipate the arrival of Jesus Christ in his birth, which we celebrate on December 25, the first day of the twelve days of the Christmas season.

Jesus was born 2,000 years ago, so we aren’t actually waiting for him to be born. We are rather waiting for our celebration of his birth.

On the other hand, we might keep in mind the prayer request in the Christmas hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem”: “O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in; be born in us today.”

During Advent, we also anticipate the coming of Christ to us. Even if we are Christians, even if we have been Christians for so long that we can barely remember a time when we weren’t, we still need Christ to come to us. We still need him to show us how we should follow him, how we should serve him, and how we should represent him in the world.

I no longer share memes on social media, but if I did, I’ve been seeing one lately that I would. It says something like, “I’m not concerned about putting Christ back in Christmas, but I do think we should put Christ back in churches.”

I know that sounds harsh, but I mean it to be thought-provoking. Both churches and individual Christians would do well to spend time during Advent carefully and prayerfully reading the New Testament Gospels, asking God to help us better understand who Jesus really is and what it really means to be his followers.

I can’t know exactly where such a quest will lead us. But I will say this: we should find ourselves being more committed to giving ourselves away for the sake of other people.

So during Advent, we await the arrival of Christ in his birth in Bethlehem. We also await the arrival of Christ in our individual lives and in our churches’ lives in whatever ways he wants to come to us.

During Advent, we also anticipate Jesus’ second coming. The New Testament teaches that one of these days, Jesus will return to fully establish God’s reign. When Jesus comes again, all will be as God intends for it to be.

We’ve been waiting a long time for Jesus’ second coming. We may wait a lot longer. Or we may not. We can’t know when Jesus will come again.

When we read what the New Testament writers say about Jesus’ second coming, we find them often encouraging their readers to be faithfully active in the meantime. We aren’t to sit around waiting for God to make everything as it should be. We are to be doing all we can to make things as good as they can be.

We do that by sharing God’s grace, mercy, and love with our attitudes, our perspectives, our words, and our actions.

We aren’t able to make everything good and right. Only God can do that, and God will through Christ do it someday.

But we are able to make things better, because the Jesus who was born in Bethlehem is also born in us. If we will get to know him better, we will follow him better. And as we follow him better, we’ll help make our homes, our communities, and our world better.

I think it would be great if, when Jesus comes again, he could look around and say, “Things here are a lot better than they might have been,” and if he could then say to those who follow him, “Well done, my good and faithful servants.”

Thankful

I am thankful for…

…all the people in this big world of ours. I wish I could know them all.

…the few people in this little life of mine. I’m glad I can love them and be loved by them.

…the teachers who taught me.

…the students who teach me.

…public servants who truly serve.

…barbecue, fried catfish, steak, and fried chicken, and for surprisingly good cholesterol levels.

…all the amazing things I’ve learned about God, Jesus, and the Bible.

…the fact that, after over four decades of study, John 3:16 still pretty much sums it up.

…for Jesus being the Savior we need, not the one we want.

…for my Good Wife, whom I never have deserved, do not now deserve, and never will deserve, and who doesn’t like it when I say things like that.

…for my children and grandchildren, who, even if I do someday publish my great novel (I must write it first), will be my greatest legacy.

…for small churches that faithfully meet to worship, to hear the word proclaimed, and to fellowship, and for the pastors who faithfully show up to preach, teach, and serve.

…for streaming television services that make it convenient for me to watch all the great programs I would watch if I had time.

…for one show I have managed to watch—The Man in the High Castle—that offers the necessary reminder that it could indeed happen here.

…for people who don’t act like they know more than they know.

…for people who don’t act like they know less than they know.

…for all I’ve grown past, grown through, and am still—and always will be—growing into.

…for the Beatles. I mean, where would we be without them? Also for Badfinger, the Raspberries, and Grand Funk Railroad. I mean, we’d be fine if none of them ever existed, but I sure like them, so I’m glad they did.

…for National Public Radio, which is more informative and educational than all the television news channels combined

…for our Sleep Number bed. Right now, I’m a 70.

…for all of you who read the words I write and think about them a little bit. I am truly grateful.

Court Prophets

First Kings 22 tells a story about the danger of preachers cozying up to politicians.

The story takes place in the ninth century BC. What had been the United Monarchy of Israel under king David and his son and successor Solomon has become two kingdoms. A king named Ahab rules the northern kingdom of Israel, while Jehoshaphat rules the southern kingdom of Judah. The two kings are meeting to discuss going to war with Syria.

When Ahab asks Jehoshaphat to join him in fighting against Syria, Jehoshaphat expresses his willingness to do so. But he makes a request of Ahab: “Inquire first for the word of the LORD.”

So Ahab calls in four hundred prophets. That’s four hundred preachers.

That’s a lot of preachers.

Ahab asks the preachers if he should go up to battle. All four hundred of them affirm that he should. They guarantee him that God will give him success.

Hearing the unanimous opinion of the four hundred prophets, Jehoshaphat says, “Is there no other prophet of the LORD here of whom we may inquire?”

See, Jehoshaphat knows how this game is played. The four hundred prophets are court prophets. They serve the king more than they serve the Lord. Their job is to support the king in whatever the king wants to do.

They probably don’t even think about what God really wants. Or if they do, they’ve sold themselves out to the king to the point that they assume that God wants whatever the king wants.

Jehoshaphat knows this. He has court prophets of his own. He knows that preachers who hitch their wagon to a powerful politician represent the politician, not the Lord.

But going to war is serious business. Jehoshaphat would like to hear from a prophet who isn’t just going to say what the king wants to hear.

When Jehoshaphat asks if there might be another prophet available, Ahab says, “There is still one other by whom we may inquire of the LORD, Micaiah son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophesies anything favorable about me, but only disaster.”

In other words, the preacher Micaiah always tells the king the truth.

Ahab sends for Micaiah. The messenger who goes to get Micaiah advises him that he should make things easy on himself and agree with what the four hundred court prophets are saying. Micaiah responds, “As the LORD lives, whatever the LORD says to me, that I will speak.”

After some verbal sparring, Micaiah tells Ahab the truth: if he goes to war against Syria, he won’t come back alive.

For speaking the hard truth to the king, Micaiah goes to prison. For telling the king what he wants to hear, the four hundred court prophets go on about their useless business.

We’re told that Ahab does indeed die in battle.

We’re not told if Micaiah ever gets out of prison. But we are told that he represents God well. The Bible honors him for speaking truth to power and for not dishonoring his call by aligning himself so closely to the king that he loses his spiritual, moral, and ethical way.

There are important lessons here for preachers in our time.

First, preachers should be careful about aligning themselves too closely with political power.

Second, if preachers have a relationship with someone with political power, they shouldn’t be yes women or yes men.

Third, if preachers have the ear of someone in political power, for God’s sake, for the church’s sake, for the nation’s sake, for the world’s sake, and for their own sake, they should tell the truth.

As for what that truth is—well, we Christian preachers really should look to Jesus, shouldn't we?