Contagious Belly Laughs

In the midst of a world whose madness keeps getting more pronounced and whose madness promises to get even more pronounced in the next week or so - what are all you clear-headed folks to do? When mayors are threatening to cancel Christmas, churches are holding sad-faced segregated diversity sensitivity trainings, and racist Boogala-fire-breathers from the right are threatening to attack cities over against masked Antifa-er brick-throwers on the left, what should Christians be doing? Do we mournfully wear our masks, avoid worshipping together and go along with the whole thing quietly, with our quiet, sensitive voices? Do we angrily demand “our freedoms” and buy more ammo? When the culture is convulsing and having a whole bunch of remarkably emotional fits - How are the people of God to respond - like if we actually believe the Gospel is true? 

Proposal: Deep, cascading, belly laughs. The sort that go all the way down to your toes. 

Wait a minute (I can hear some of you saying in the back), shouldn’t we be a bit more, well, sad? Maybe even afraid of what’s to come. Shouldn’t we treat All This Seriousness with a bit more seriousness - with furrowed brows, and soft glistening eyes, and an understanding nod? What about all this death? What about all this economic and psychological suffering? What about what could happen if That Guy is president in February?

Well, to clarify, you should weep with those who weep. You should stand by and with those who suffer. But I don’t mean anything like abstract people with abstract weeping. If you see your neighbor in need, sick, without much hope - don’t laugh at them.  If someone you know is suffering a terrible injustice, don’t laugh at them. But as you stand back and look at the world losing its collective mind, laugh deeply, heartily. Be a jolly lover of neighbors and weeper with weepers. And do not be frightened by the madness that swirls around right now. 

There are two grounds for this jolly laughter. Two things I would implore you to hold on to as we continue to worship together on Sundays, turn to the Bible for how to understand everything, and do our best to practice hospitality to one another and our neighbors. Here are two reasons we must keep singing, and laughing as we do so. 

First: In Romans 8:18ff., God promises that the suffering surrounding the Christians in Rome (which in the context includes things like poverty, sickness, hunger and slaughter in verses 35-36), once its all collected and accounted for will be accounted as nothing compared to the weight of the beauty and goodness to be given to us through all of it.  It is scary. It is truly painful. But it is the birth pains of glory. Magnificent, overwhelming glory. For all who belong to Jesus, we find ourselves in the birthing room and there seems to be a lot happening right now. It may even seem like chaos, like sadness and death are certain (after all we are in a hospital). But something altogether beautiful is happening. God is doing all of this right now. People are losing their minds and there’s a lot of noise, but God is subjecting the whole world to this futility, and He’s doing so in hope. Oh just wait - Paul says in verse 25, you can’t see it yet, but everything is going to be just glorious. 

Second: This is all well and good, but does it justify the laughter I’m advocating for? Why all the laughing? In Psalm 2 God shows us what this patient hope looks like when confronted with the convulsions coming from the nations. Here is what God does in Psalm 2:4, “He who sits in the heavens laughs…” The nations, with very serious faces and complex crayon-colored diagrams align themselves against God and his rule - his truth, his beauty and his goodness. They press against His sanity, His order, with very serious plans to cancel Christmas this year. And right when you expect to hear a fire-breathing roar from heaven, instead you hear infectious laughter. It is a laughter that unravels rebellion and the fears of His people and sets God’s enemies to flee. It is a laughter, rooted in the glorious hope Paul talks about in Romans above. You cannot stop the glory He is delivering right now. 

I imagine God’s laughter to be the most glorious sound in all the universe. And like all good laughter it is unavoidably infectious. Laughter spills into a room and pretty soon everybody whose in on it can’t help themselves. I remember sitting in a room as people told stories about my mom after she died. I was pretty sad. I was weeping. And yet some of those stories, I mean, she was a doozy, absolutely hilarious. And then somebody, I don’t remember who, started having a laughing fit - just like my mom used to have. And soon, in the midst of all the tears the whole room was laughing uncontrollably. The One Who Sits in Heaven laughs way better than that. And when all his enemies come together, he laughs.

So, Christian, learn to laugh at these days. Live and worship and love as those who are free: truly free. Forgiven of all our sins, children of the God who owns and runs all things, and living in the world that is His to give. Drink wine, sing and celebrate the days that are to come. And when you see the world’s madness - laugh all the way down to your toes. 

Shaking

We worship a God who delights to shake things. He has done so again and again and again throughout our short history. This can be the cause of no small amount of confusion. And if you don’t know what’s coming, or what to expect, it can lead to a kind of unnecessary despair. Let me explain.

You find yourself in the normal rhythms of everyday life here in 21st century America. You’re ordering your burrito on your phone, meeting friends for happy hour, observing relatively normal political disagreements in the various Op-Ed sections of the newspaper and otherwise enjoying all the conveniences of modern day living. Here things are, continuing as they always have, only with more burritos, nifty cameras that fit in your pocket, and better TV. Your job is okay, your kids are going to school everyday, you aren’t embarrassed by the President, and you can go up to the mountains often enough. You spend your days largely concerned about how many burritos your eating, how much screen time your kids are digesting, and how you can get to the mountains a little more often. Then a pandemic hits. Your kids are now on their screens 10 hours a day to get their math homework, which is just beyond what you can recall from your own math classes. You can’t buy burritos anymore because all the burrito shops are closed. The mountain towns have become viral swamps according to the news, so you can’t go there to get away from it all. Politics have turned into a giant dumpster fire and then there are the literal fires. What, only 8 months ago was mostly a nice, normal world with some idiosyncrasies that were a bit annoying, has become an apocalyptic ball of uncertainty with no sign of where we can land this mad plane. 

Now in the middle of all this, if you forget what I said up front, namely “We worship a God who delights to shake things,” you could be confused, even a little riddled with anxiety. You might think this is all just a big ball of madness being thrown into a washing machine filled with radioactive goo. But you’d be forgetting one of the most fundamental things God does, and you’d miss that this madness isn’t a flaw of this whole thing called history, but rather a feature. God shakes things and he does so according to plan. In other words, these things aren’t chaos, but rather they are headed somewhere on purpose.

The author of Hebrews reminds God’s people in chapter 12:26-29

“At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, “Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.” This phrase, “Yet once more,” indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire.”

This shaking is filled with glorious purpose. We’ll see this weekend in Romans 8 that it is a shaking accompanied by groaning and suffering - real suffering. But that the glory that will be revealed on the other side will cause us to count that suffering as nothing. Think about that for a minute or two (or well, a lot longer)… All this shaking and the accompanying fall-out - which can be devastating and could get quite a bit worse - all of that loss which is real and the Bible doesn’t make light of (and we shouldn’t either) will be nothing compared to the glorious and gracious accomplishment of God. 

You see, He shakes in order to establish that which can’t be shaken. Here is a God who, with glee, overturns all our perceived stabilities in order to give us what is truly stable. He overturns all our mediocre beauty for what is in fact beautiful and glorious and good. So what are we to do with all this shaking? Well, we should do what the author of Hebrews instructs us to do: Worship with awe and reverence. Gather with the saints, tremble and marvel in the presence of a God who can shake everything, worship Him and then, give thanks for this kingdom He loves to give in the shaking - an unshakeable kingdom full of beauty and grace. 

He isn't Reacting.

Most Wednesdays I get out of the city, head up to the mountains, and take a seat perched above the South Platte River. I spend those Wednesdays wrestling with the text I’ll be preaching the upcoming Sunday, praying, and being reminded of something absolutely essential in our age. Here I see gallons and gallons of water steadily pouring down the valley. It doesn’t stop. It doesn’t wait to consider what’s happening all around. It asks no questions about the upcoming presidential election or what latest controversies are boiling in the lives of people around it. Here are trees, big evergreens and a small grove of aspens, swaying in the wind but mostly just standing there, oblivious to all the concerns and the latest outrages everyone’s all jazzed about. Here are mountains, definitely unmoved by all the things that throw us around, changing our blood pressure, anxiously spinning our thoughts and emotions as we are moved by an endless wave of news and scandals and trends. It dawns on me this particular Wednesday that here is an entire world, full of glory and life and death and all manner of things - speaking constantly about the sovereignty, power and majesty of God - and it has almost no regard for the things that consume most of our lives and news cycles. 

And then, still sitting in this same spot, I consider the Scriptures themselves. Here is testimony and law and song and grace upon grace fixed on pages by God’s Spirit. All of them witness to God’s sovereignty, His power and his majesty. All of them unmoved by our fears and ambitions and tragedies. Here is a rock of God’s revelation - of truth and beauty and goodness that is not concerned with responding to all our latest foolishness and not attempting to coddle us in our sins and anxieties. Rather, here is a word that simply and gloriously stands, in the midst of all our madness and seeming chaos, it stands and speaks the same word over and over and over again - unchanging, unconfused. And such a word, in a culture such as ours, can be a rather remarkable anchor. An unmoved Word in the midst of stormy seas and a cacophony of voices demanding your attention. Here is another grace given to us in the Bible - a steady and sure word.

The Westminster Confession (echoing the author of Hebrews words) tells us in chapter 1: “Therefore it pleased the Lord at sundry times, and in divers manners, to reveal himself, and to declare that his will unto his church; and afterwards, for the better preserving and propagating of the truth, and for the more sure establishment and comfort of the church against corruption of the flesh, and the malice of Satan and of the world, to commit the same wholly unto writing…” 

“…for the…comfort of the church…” 

God has given us these sure words, these unchanging words for the “comfort of the church.” It isn’t simply the content of His words that are to comfort God’s people, it is also the simple fact of their existence, their unchanging nature is itself to be a comfort to the church. These trees, this river, these mountains do what they do - and they keep doing what they do, because God has commanded them to and only because God commands them to. These words, in this marvelous book called the Bible, they are given to us, unchanging, as a comfort, a steadying rail as we’re shoved and pushed and spinning around often confused by the storms that swirl around us. 

Another thing strikes me in considering this comfort: God is not reacting. He is not spinning around, scrambling to make sure he stays ahead of the latest trouble or confusion. He isn’t coming up with new responses to address an ever changing world. He isn’t updating his research in light of new sociological and scientific data. He has spoken. His word and his words stand forever. When we return to dust, with our political and social agendas, his words will remain - always doing what they were intended to do. When we return to dust, with our anxieties and addictions and rebellions, his words will remain - always doing what they were intended to do. 

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” - Matthew 24:35

“I bow down toward your holy temple and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness, for you have exalted above all things your name and your word.” - Psalm 138:2

“For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” - Isaiah 55:10-11

The Good News of Specificity

There is a big difference between simply saying “I love you” and saying “I love *this* about you” as a dad. Oh, we should and must tell our children that we love them, but there is something powerful in expressing specific delight in some aspect of who your children are. There’s a big difference in telling your children to “behave” or “be responsible” and telling your kids to clean up their rooms, brush their teeth and go to bed at a certain time. The specificity matters, its an important part - both in expressing delight and in shaping behavior. But such specificity can be hard - both in parenting and in the work of evangelism and discipleship in the church. 

One of the more subtle ways that otherwise bible-believing Christians avoid God is through our tendency to believe and confess in generalities. We can accept the Bible’s teaching on sin, the need for repentance and confession, the kingdom of God, the call to believe in Jesus and to then obey him. Pastor’s will teach these things. Christians will get together and talk about these things, read about these things and admonish one another concerning these things. But they all remain marvelously general. They never touch the ground. Sin is treated as generally as possible. We might occasionally confront things like pornography or esoteric concepts like pride or a failure to love - but I find it rare that we will talk about specific sins and specific instances of biblical obedience in the concrete realities of everyday life. I think we avoid concreteness in our own lives and in pastor’s sermons for a few reasons. 

Living in one of the most divided eras in our culture’s memory, I think we are terrified of interpersonal conflict. And while the Bible confronts ideas and philosophies, it does so by confronting concrete behaviors. While it commends faith and obedience to Jesus, it does so through concrete actions and relationships and practices. If we begin to get specific with either our own behaviors or the lives of our neighbors and friends, the teaching of Scripture goes from being a theoretical set of potentially appealing ideas to actually confronting real lives, real addictions, real fears, and real comforts. The command of Scripture is not simply an esoteric call to have some new ideas layered on top of a life lived in modern, secularist and individualist terms. It is a specific call to believe something new about the world and God and ourselves and to therefore live differently in that world. This necessarily means conflict with specific ways that we or our neighbors are actually living. And while conflict can be done really poorly. It ought to be pursued in love and because of love. Evangelism will involve conflict. Discipleship will involve conflict. Conflict is often very painful - strong relationships can be shattered. Our own need to be well-liked or respected can be threatened. Its often right here, when we start talking about specific ways that God has commanded us to live that we can find ourselves embarrassed because of how God speaks or feeling the pain of our own need to repent of specific behaviors and change. Specificity creates conflict in our own lives and with our friends. 

Another reason we avoid this specificity is fear. It is easy to appear courageous when a pastor stands up and preaches about sin and the need to repent of sin, the centrality of the cross, and the offer of forgiveness. But to do so without naming specific ways that real people and real ideas and real behaviors are in conflict with God and what He says is to treat the gospel as a series of theological platitudes. If we champion the systematic teachings of Scripture without speaking to the specific ways it calls people and cultures to real repentance and obedience, then we may sound bold and orthodox and courageous, but we’ve avoided the actual places where courage and boldness are needed. 

But one of the glorious implications of the incarnation is that holiness and obedience and faith have been seen and touched and heard. James warns us that faith without the (concrete) fruit of obedience is a dead faith. God’s gracious gift of the law and the prophets, as well as the gospels and the New Testament letters gives us enormous amounts of material to learn how to trust God and to obey God in all manner of different circumstances. The danger of sin remaining in the esoteric realm is that God’s mercy remains there as well. Instead of wonderfully concrete instances of confessing our specific sins and believing on God’s grace for those specific moments - we can be haunted by a vague sense of guilt, God’s grace can become just a generalized sense that God loves us despite the fact that we are marred by sin. Obedience becomes defined and driven more by generalities and less by the actual biblical commands and examples that can bear rich fruit in our lives. It gets reduced to common cultural norms dictated by secularist ideas from the right or from the left. But God has given us more than this. He has called us to repent of real ways that we’ve failed to obey his word. He offers forgiveness and grace for specific deeds and attitudes and ideas that we confess. 

We must make sure we aren’t simply taking Christian concepts and layering them on top of lives being lived however we want. We should insure that our evangelism isn’t doing the same thing with those who don’t believe - merely inviting them to adopt a new set of ideas to fit neatly into lives lived in rebellion against God. The Gospel addresses specific people with specific sin and specific needs with a remarkably specific hope. 

Come and Welcome

For the past 7 months we have been trained to regard ourselves as quite dangerous. We’re surrounded by signs and policies commanding us to keep our distance from one another. We quarantine the healthy. We are told we must cover our faces for the sake of love. Even our skin color has become a source of danger for others. Whiteness needs to be isolated just as the old racists believed (and believe) that blackness should be. We’ve been catechized, discipled to believe that in order to love our neighbor we must repent of our skin, stay away from one another, and cover our faces - the part of us designed to uniquely reflect God’s glory (2 Corinthians 3-4). This is a catechism from hell and it must be resisted.

The church’s witness has been badly compromised in these days. Not because we’ve necessarily abandoned the creeds, but because we’ve abandoned or neglected what is the necessary fruit of those creeds. We’ve forsaken the gathering of the church for disembodied video streaming, reinforcing the message that everyone is safer at home. We’ve abandoned the one table where we share bread and wine together, adopting instead individualized communion, segregated seminars where we are sheltered from one another’s skin, and buffet-style Sundays where the people of God eat one church’s online music, drink another’s online preaching, and abandon the practice of hospitality for one another and to our neighbors. We’ve done these things in the name of love and justice, destroying both in the process.  Hell wants this - to call evil good and to call good evil. Hell wants this - to reinforce the animosities that have haunted our nation’s past. Hell wants this- a people fearful of what the other people might be carrying, what they might breathe, or even who they are. In the name of love, indeed in the name of justice, such madness must be resisted. 

Each Sunday the liturgy begins with a call to worship. Here God calls his people together, as their father, to worship, to pray, to read, to baptize and to eat. He welcomes us as his children -brothers and sisters, not as potential disease-carrying threats. He brings us together, not as embodiments of racist oppression or victimization, but as one family, one tribe gathered from the nations of the earth. He calls us to testify in song and prayer with faces reflecting his glory and grace. He issues an invitation to come and be welcomed home, to be together in his presence with lives that overlap, breath and song that overlaps, and even bread and wine that overlap. We meet one another as a redeemed people. We meet one another as forgiven people. We meet one another, with bodies and faces and stories to tell. Unlearn the unhuman catechism. Worship the triune God with body and with people. Go to church. Come and Welcome.

Three Governments and the Government

A Primer on Governments and Authority

As we near the upcoming delight known as the United States election, I thought it might be good to provide a basic primer on how government and authority work from within the Christian tradition - and particularly the reformed Christian tradition. This will have the effect of telling you what bumper stickers to buy, which neighbors to harass and, hopefully, who to direct your angry electorate letter to. I specify the “reformed tradition” because the Anabaptists have their own take (its wrong, and frankly kind of weird - but prevalent in our day), the Catholics have theirs (its terrifyingly wrong), and the Anglicans’ theirs (its interestingly wrong). So here’s a swing at a relatively short explanation of it: 

Christians begin with a basic and yet all-encompassing confession: Jesus is Lord.

Jesus tells his disciples that all authority in heaven and on earth had been given to him. The announcement of the Kingdom of God is a claim laid upon all the earth, every nation and every sphere. Nobody and no institution is excluded from all of heaven and earth.  Everybody and everything is answerable to him, they have to obey him. 

To make it more explicit: You have to obey him. Your neighbor has to obey him. Congress has to obey him. The Supreme Court has to obey him. The mayor of Denver has to obey him. The Starbucks manager has to obey him. This is necessarily uncomfortable, but it is also unavoidable. There will be a god ruling over every particular thing - every government, every family, every individual. To deny that Jesus should be obeyed in all these spheres is to say that Jesus should be disobeyed in some of these spheres and that is a denial of the basic Christian confession: Jesus is Lord. 

Does this mean that America should be a “Christian nation”? Well, yes, now that you ask, it does. To deny this, is to say that God wants America to be a secular nation, to disregard his character, his laws, his justice, etc. To deny this, is to say that God wants America to find some other standard by which to evaluate its life. To deny this is to deny the commission of Jesus himself who told us to “Disciple the Nations.” What standard can we as Christians appeal to beyond the words of God? Some say “Common sense.” But there isn’t really much of that around anymore. Some say, “the will of the people.” But that’s terrifying. The will of the people has frequently led to some rather devastating horrors. A society that grows out of the worship of the triune God would reflect his character, his grace, his law and his love - and none of these things are in conflict. Every society will have a god. All laws are religious laws. The question is which god’s laws are they? And is that god a good one?

But I am getting away from myself. The main point here, is that Jesus possesses all the authority that is.

The Bible establishes other authorities underneath his authority. In the Scriptures we see three fundamental governments that are given authority over different areas of responsibility: the family, the church, and the government (or the magistrate). All three governments have their own lanes, their own particular responsibilities. All three governments are given tools by which to exercise their responsibilities in the world. All three governments are to explicitly obey Jesus as they do the things they’ve been called to do. 

The Family: The family is given the ministry of raising and discipling (education) children, the well-being and flourishing of people through healthcare, as well as the production of wealth and fruitfulness. The father is given responsibility to rule his home and to see it bear fruit (think raise godly children and work and produce wealth in the world.)  This government is to oversee work and child-raising. (Included here would be things like healthcare and education). As businesses in our world becomes increasingly complex, its helpful to see these entities as vast partnerships between families taking the raw materials of the earth to produce fruitful things. The charge of this government is to raise children to know and fear God, to grow up, get married and raise other children. And raise your children to work hard with their hands and their minds and bring fruit and wealth and life from the raw materials of this world. We do these things in the light of the gospel of Jesus and in obedience to God’s law. This means that generous hospitality (a key note describing the homes of God’s people) is integral to the life of this government whether around the dinner table or in the businesses started. The father and his family and the various businesses and institutions they produce answer to the rule of Jesus. 

The Church: The church is given the ministry of grace and peace, of word and sacrament. The church is charged with discipling the nations, bringing all the peoples of the earth to recognize Jesus’ Lordship, to trust in his death and resurrection and to do all that he commands. For this unbelievable task they are to bear the Word, the sacraments (water, bread and wine), and discipline. Elders are to bear this authority as the church gathers for worship and calls all the peoples to worship and obey God in every sphere of life. We declare the good news of what Jesus has done for us in his life, death and resurrection and testify to his ascension as King and Lord. In other words, the means the church is given for this gargantuan task is simply its worship. We worship the Triune God in Spirit and truth. We worship as His covenant people (in person, preferably without masks, with bread and wine and cleansing water) and the nations are transformed. The church and her ministers answer to Jesus.

The Magistrate (or the State): The government is given the ministry of justice. She bears the sword to punish evil-doers and ensure that the just are free to flourish. The heated arguments in our day about the definition and nature of justice are therefore really vital debates that Christians must engage in biblically. Good governments insure that people and their businesses and families are free to thrive and bear the kinds of fruit they are commissioned by God to produce. Different governmental systems are more or less effective at doing this. Studying U.S. civics will expose you to the rather marvelous way that the U.S. system was designed to do precisely this. Monarchies attempt this in other ways.But regardless of how the system is organized, the magistrate answers to Jesus. 

None of these three “bring the kingdom of God,” rather they testify and submit to the kingdom of God through their faithfulness in doing what Jesus commands in the sphere’s they are given responsibility over, and using the means that God has given them to do so. All three are accountable to defend and execute justice and mercy with the authority they’ve been given (the magistrate with the sword, the church with her discipline, and in family and businesses according to just balances.) The temptation is to always put too much stock in the ability of any one of these to do too much. Our age is particularly prone to believing that the magistrate might save us from poverty and disease and suffering. But this isn’t what the magistrate is designed by God to do. The family cannot function as the church. The church can only supplement the work of the family. When the church fails to be faithful to her calling or her gifts, she should be called to repentance. When the magistrate fails to be faithful to its calling (corruption) or when it reaches beyond its established boundaries (tyranny), it should be rebuked and called to repentance. 

The failure of any of these three effects the collapse of society. The faithfulness of these three can be used to aid the flourishing of the other two. Strong churches shape the life of the family and call the magistrate to faithfulness (think Reformation Scotland). Thriving families lead to thriving economies for everyone and can result in a healthy state and churches. While these three spheres have different lanes, the lanes are deeply interdependent. 

When we confess Jesus is Lord we are making a politico-religious-cultural statement. He rules everything. He forgives sin and he calls all people, all institutions to repent, to be forgiven and to submit to his reign in everything. 

What Singing the Psalms Does

One of the things we are trying to build at Trinity is a robust culture of Psalm singing. We’re at the very beginning of this work and so we’re trying a bunch of different routes to this destination - a bit of a convulsive start to what we pray will be a pervasive part of Trinity’s culture not only on Sundays, but in every context where we gather. We imagine parishes, elder meetings, men’s and women’s gatherings to be marked by singing the Psalms together. There are a number of different reasons for us to pursue this sort of thing, but there are a few particularly reasons that are vital to the cause of discipleship in our age. 

1. We need instruction in how to pray in our age.
   God promises us in Romans 8 that the Spirit will instruct us in how to pray, because we do not know how to pray as we ought. The primary tool the Spirit wields in teaching us how to pray in an age where all our allegiances can be so easily confused is the Psalter. Far too many Christians either abandon the Psalms altogether or see them merely as a kind of divine permission for self expression. The idea being that the Psalms are filled with all kinds of joy and doubts and anger, therefore we are allowed to express our own joys and doubts and anger. But the Psalms are not primarily about Divine permission. They are about Divine instruction. The Psalms reframe the world, they redefine it for us again. They help us to discern history and our neighbor and the acts of God all around us. Here is a collection of prayers that teach us to pray rightly in the face of God’s providential work all around us.
   

2. We need instruction in what to feel in our age.
   In an age where people are either trained to abandon their emotional life altogether or they are utterly ruled by their emotional life. The Psalms teach us what to feel and when. Our emotional lives are simply the expression of our loves, our fears, our anxieties and our allegiances. They are vitally important in our obedience to God and they must not rule us. Rather, me must, as in everything else, submit them to God’s word. Here in the Psalms we learn how to conform our emotions to the realities described in its songs and prayers. We learn when to rejoice. We learn what to hate. We learn how to be thankful. Our age has often made a god of what we feel. Right and wrong, truth and falsehood are no longer in submission to God and his decrees, but rather are merely expressions of our own feelings. The Psalms offer an oftentimes jarring corrective to this sort of thing.
   

3. We need the right enemies and the right conflict in our age.
   We live in a divided age and oftentimes those divisions are dictated to us from secular sources named CNN or Fox News. The problem isn’t so much the reality of division, its where they tend to draw the lines. The Psalms are the songs of God’s hosts - his armies. And if you approach them expecting that here, in the sphere of Christianity and religion we are escaping the divisions that are so prevalent in our day you will not understand them. Here are enemies defined by God. Here is a framework for understanding the good guys and bad guys, good and evil, and the great conflict at the heart of our history. We learn how and where to fight in the Psalms from God Himself. 

So let us sing these Psalms with brothers and sisters, children and old, in defiance of the old dragon and his children. May we sing loudly, having our affections reordered and our allegiances set right. 

Go to Church

My goal here is simple: I want you to go to church.  I want the church to eat bread and wine together again and be shaped by the singing, reading and preaching of the word of God. My hope is that churches will unapologetically consider their work together (liturgy) as being absolutely essential for the functioning of society. There are, of course, caveats to be considered when gathering during the continuing spread of COVID-19, but those caveats are getting thinner as more and more data is made available (here are the CDC statistics breaking down mortality by age groups) and increasing numbers of epidemiologists release their collective take on the public and social response (Here is a link to the Great Barrington Declaration). 

To summarize the data - COVID disproportionately harms older, compromised individuals and poses very little danger to younger, healthier members of the population. To summarize the statement from the scientists: the vast majority of the population needs to resume life as normal and expect to get COVID. Vulnerable populations should be isolated and supported when possible. Their assessment is that current masking and isolation policies are doing significant long-term harm to the health of the population and society. 

So, with those things on the table, I’ll put the caveats right up front: Older, health-compromised members of the church should be accounted for and cared for in ways that protect them from the spread of the virus. This support should not be compulsory, but small additional offerings can be made to serve these people, even as you encourage them to be a part of the church. We offer outdoor seating and a radio transmission to nearby cars - where people can be with the church, receive communion, and worship with God’s people - even if from behind some steel and windows. 

But regardless of how one goes about assessing the risks involved with gathering for worship, my argument below isn’t contingent on that assessment. Gathering for worship has always been riskier than not gathering for worship. There are social and health risks. These might be greater now than they were a year ago, but they are not so grave as they’ve been in the past as saints gathered for worship in far more devastating situations. The bigger issue is that we’ve spent the last 7 months inadvertently learning to avoid the risks associated with gathering for the church’s worship.  We have learned that the church’s gathering in person is optional when its risky. We must unlearn this lesson. Coffee and your couch and an internet connection will always be safer and more convenient than dressing up, getting in your car and going to a place where a bunch of people are gathering in the name of the triune God. 

Now, here are some reasons why the church must gather and worship:

1) You need the Church

The church, gathered as the people of God, administers the word and the sacrament to God’s people. These aren’t things you can receive adequately through an internet connection and some crackers and grape soda from the kitchen. These things require physical presence, they call for the practice of gathering and filling a space with song and prayer and preaching. The past few decades have seen many of us evangelicals reduce the worship of the church to either an intellectual event or an entertaining one. Those things can be done rather effectively online. But that is not what the covenant renewing worship of the church is. The church gathers together in the presence of God to renew her covenant together with Him. You can’t do that in your living room, whilst wearing your PJ’s and sending emoji’s to your friends on zoom. This is a tremendous and holy thing that requires the church’s physical presence. 

This gathering, with its singing and confessing and praying and preaching and reading is not simply a nice pick-me-up for your private spirituality. It is the fundamental means by which the Triune God gives and sustains our faith. It is the primary means by which we commune together with his Spirit. It is the primary means by which we are to be exhorted to believe and to obey. It is meant to pour steel into your spine as you live courageously in a world gone mad. You do not merely go to church because you believe, you go to church in order to believe. Pastors, your people need the worship of the church. Do not withhold this fundamental means by which we are to feed and care for God’s sheep. 

2) The City needs the Worship of the Church

The current virtue messaging of our day is that our city needs people to be isolated, masked, and to avoid any and all larger gatherings. This has been packaged as how to “love your neighbor” or as I just saw on a pretty nifty TV screen here at DIA, “Do the right thing.” Christians have been told to put others before themselves and refrain from gathering, or at least to exercise severe restrictions when gathering. I want to contend that the gathering of God’s people to worship is one of the most urgent needs our neighbors have - whether they recognize it, show up, or not. The gathered worship of the church has a leavening effect on the surrounding culture. The preached and sung Word of God, the confession of sin, the assurance of pardon, communion and a benediction wherein God’s people are sent out to bear witness to their neighbors of God’s good reign are some of the greatest gifts given to our city. Where it happens, it transforms the culture of a city. It alters the political and social discourse (just consider: as bad as the political discourse was in 2016, how much worse is 2020?). Where this practice is lost, there is incalculable loss to the surrounding city. The worship of the church preserves the world. And so, Love your neighbor by gathering for worship with the church. 

3) God is worthy of our Worship

The church inherits glorious gifts when she gathers for worship. Her worship offers gifts to even pagan cultures. But mostly, the church gathers to honor and to give thanks to God as his covenant people. His name deserves to be praised and declared in our cities. He has given us and continues to give his people gift upon gift, kindness upon kindness. Should we not gather as God’s people to acknowledge these gifts, to give thanks for these gifts and to honor him by asking for more (Psalm 104)? There are crises that may occur that could prevent the church from gathering, but these must be rare and grave. This is the fundamental labor of God’s people that gives shape and life and meaning to all our other labors in the world - be they in the professional world or in seeking to serve our neighbors. We honor God here, together, so that we might honor him everywhere.

So Christian, go to church. Worship Jesus. If prudent for your particular situation, wear a mask, sit a little further apart or sit outside, but do not forsake the gathering together of God’s people. This forsaking is no longer merely the habit of some, it is increasingly the habit of most. You need it, our neighbors needs it, and God is worthy of it. 

Blood and Fire

The Scriptures are filled with blood and fire and we should pay attention when we see them, particularly when we see them together:

1 - In Genesis 3 as Adam and Eve rebel against the commands of God they are promised the coming of this new horror: death. It is the enemy that will devour their lives and the lives of their children. But even as God spells out the ways that death will mark their lives, he offers a promise and what will be the mark of his covenant presence with his people. An animal is slaughtered and they are clothed with its skin. Blood is spilled and their sins are covered. Death will drive them from the Garden Sanctuary of Eden, and a flaming sword is set at its entrance. They can only return to God’s Sanctuary with blood and fire. 

2 - In Exodus, as Israel gathers at the foot of Mount Sinai to meet with God, Moses is invited into God’s sanctuary at the top of the mountain- the place where God will meet him. As God establishes his covenant with God’s people, blood is spilt and fire descends onto the mountain (Exodus 24-25). Here as God’s people are bound to him in his presence, there is blood and there is fire. 

3 - In Leviticus, God gives detailed instructions as to how the priestly representatives of God’s people are to approach his presence in the sanctuary. And what it immediately evident is the presence of blood and fire. There is no casually entering into the dwelling place of God. There must be blood and we must pass through fire.

4- In the coming of Jesus, his sacrifice on the cross and the outpouring of his Spirit at Pentecost there is again, blood and fire. Jesus’ own blood now speaks a better word than that of bulls and goats - but it is blood that we must have to cover our sin and bind us in covenant to our God. And the Spirit fills the disciples marking them with the fire of his presence as “tongues of fire” rest on each of them. The sanctuary has moved from a garden to a mountain to a tent to a temple to a people, but the only way into this sanctuary is through blood and fire. 

When we gather as the church each Sunday, we gather in God’s sanctuary. We come by the blood of the new covenant as we drink wine, and we come through fire as God’s Spirit has promised to attend to our worship. Fire and Blood. 

Do Not Love the World

"You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

James 4:4

I was recently reading about the preaching ministry of George Wishart in Scotland in the bloody days of the Scottish reformation. After preaching one day in Dundee an assassin came at him with a knife. Wishart fought and disarmed his assailant and then protected the would-be assassin from the mob that wanted immediate reprisal. Soon afterward he asked a young John Knox to accompany him in his itinerant ministry and to carry a two handed sword. Knox was known as “a man well hated” by Robert Louis Stevenson as he was faithfully contentious in his own day even while being perhaps Scotland’s greatest historic gift to the world (outside of whisky). There was an open conflict in those days that was very often physical as well as theological and political. A conflict that should instruct us as we’ve grown conflict-averse.

You do not love God nor your unbelieving neighbor by minimizing the distinctiveness of belief in Jesus and obedience to his law. Many of us, over the past couple decades, in church planting, preaching and general mission to secular places have put a fair amount of effort into translating Christianity into terms and emotional frameworks that are understandable and even appealing to secular people. We softened the hard, craggy edges of Scripture - both theologically and ethically. We, in many cases, succumbed to the modern redefinition of "love" to mean empathy or insuring people were kept from unpleasant feelings rather than the more objective standards for love set forth in the law and explained throughout Scripture. Along the way, I think a fear of God - of unfaithfulness to his word -was subtly replaced with a fear of being perceived as stupid, quaint, bigoted or unloving by the people we hoped to win to the gospel. This is a legitimate conflict of interest. We want our neighbors (which in Denver mean typically young, progressive, and functionally secularist) to believe the gospel and worship Jesus. But there are all sorts of things in the bible and in the way the bible says things that are hard. And these things aren't just hard in content, they are said in ways hard ways. Many have compromised the content and tone of God's words in order to appeal emotionally and intellectually to pagan people. We've called it graciousness, winsomeness, or being missional. But these compromises are a reduction of faithful witness - witness that always requires conflict.

The grace that is extended in the gospel is a grace that names sin, pointedly, sometimes mockingly. At the very heart of the invitation of the gospel is forgiveness for sins, but it is a forgiveness that accompanies repentance. The grace set forth in the gospel is a grace that saves sinners from deserved wrath and hell, in other words it is a grace that speaks in the harshest imagery and with the most devastating threats imaginable when confronting unbelief and its moral fruit. The grace declared in the gospel is a grace that forgives and justifies and then demands (as well as empowering for) obedience to all the laws of our King. The grace of the gospel demands an absolute allegiance to the rule of Jesus and everything he commands in Scripture - and these aren't just the "red letters." It is everything the whole of Scripture commands. These are hard truths, but if allegiance to Jesus means anything it must mean allegiance to Jesus when he says things that would get you kicked out of the party, the governor's office, or your neighbor's house.

But it isn't simply the content of what the Bible says that we must stand by, it is also the way in which God says what he says in the bible. If we haven't grappled with how Paul can exhort God's people to gentleness while also hoping his opponents cut off their genitalia, then we haven't let the bible itself tell us how to be "gentle." If we haven't considered that the same God who instructs us in how to pray and sing the imprecatory Psalms also commands us to love our enemies, we haven't allowed the complexity of the biblical world to shape our engagement wit the world. Paul set his life's mission to see those who don't know God to be won by the gospel and he also says, "If anyone does not love Christ, let him be damned." Biting satire is used to confront unbelief and immorality throughout the Scriptures by everyone from the prophets to Jesus himself. In other words, if you approach the bible with the idea that love requires an empathetic approach to sin and unbelief, you'll wind up condemning most of the people in the bible, including Jesus. Allegiance to Jesus means learning to not flinch or get embarrassed when he starts pining on or telling his rough jokes at the dinner party.

God establishes a paradigmatic division in Genesis 3 that runs throughout the entirety of the bible. Jesus says this division will divide families. Paul says it changes how you hear God's law - either with a hostile ear or a submissive one. Revelation portrays this division as open warfare until the end. There is no peace in this division. I think our world feels this division and tries desperately to explain it in other, secular terms - be it racialist, socio-economic, political or educational constructs. The division you feel in the world is actually real. It hasn't gotten more significant because there is an election or because of differing opinions on how to deal with COVID-19. It is a division that goes all the way down and has existed from Genesis 3 onward. But get the division right - it is a divide between belief and her children and unbelief and her children. This divide marks out the world's enemies. And if you don't rightly identify your enemies you can never obey Jesus' command to love them. And if you don't learn from Jesus how that divide manifests itself morally and ethically and theologically, you won't know whose side your on. And if you don't learn from the bible how to love your enemies, how to speak to your enemies - you'll think its about being nice and find yourself inadvertently claiming to know more than Jesus about how to be Christ-like or more than Nehemiah about how to speak to an unbelieving culture.

Faithful witness in this age requires conflict. But the conflict our Lord requires has fallen into disfavor among many Christians in our day. This conflict gets called all sorts of names: Pride, Unloving, and Obnoxious. And while there are many proud men (and women) whose fighting does fail to aim at the repentance and redemption of our enemies, and there is something to be said for a reasonable "winsomeness" in our tartness - I do not see an overabundance of courageous fighting in the corridors of Denver's evangelicalism or in the reformed "resurgence" that has grown up around us. I see a insidious love of self and cowardice masquerading as love for neighbor and a concern for mission. Pride is not conviction concerning what is true, it is a refusal to submit to God and his word. There is nothing more unloving than to pretend like everything is mostly fine as unbelief spins into chaos and madness. Winsomeness must aim to win people to an actual Lord who has declared actual things to be sin, and their consequences to be hell. Faithful witness in word and life should expect opposition from unbelief, and not assume we’re doing something wrong. We do not serve the cause of Jesus by reducing the claims and demands of Jesus. We do not love our neighbors by pretending the justice of God isn't really coming.

We have lusted after friendship with the world, covering over whatever might offend or be misunderstood and we are dangerously close to becoming enemies of God. May we repent, turn again to the Scriptures and learn again how to prophesy, how to live and how to read our world.

Christian Friendship & Sanctification

Ryan will be hosting a two-night gathering on friendship and sanctification in the weeks to come (October 13th and November 10th). We’ll spend some time on a couple of things for each of those nights: (1) Walking through an anatomy of how God tends to sanctify us and (2) discuss what it would look like to ask questions in everyday conversations to intentionally contribute to that sanctification process [you can RSVP here]. This post is a few meandering thoughts and a sort of primer for these nights.

Bonhoeffer’s Take on Community

This year, I’ve set some time aside to read works by or about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The other morning, I was reminded of how central the person of Jesus and the church were to how he saw the entire Christian life. To live in obedience takes abiding in Christ. To abide in Christ, while having significant implications for individual devotion, also necessitates abiding in His church. In his famous work Life Together, Bonhoeffer states, “Christianity means community through Jesus Christ and in Jesus Christ. No Christian community is more or less than this” [my emphasis added]. To many, ’living in community’ has become a cliché and its connection to the church merely dangles by a thread. To others, greater intentionality to the local church sounds really nice but what does it actually look like to be committed to a community that is in and through Jesus Christ? Let me try to offer an answer from a few different levels.

At 30,000 Feet

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence…” (2 Peter 1:3). This passage isn’t directly stating that God has given us other people for life and godliness but He is saying that, for your sanctification, all the instruments necessary are present. That includes being brought into a people, wise people that God places as major investors in our dross removal. Are there realms of the human experience that we prefer not to invite others into? Where can we tend to resist God using our Christian friendships (i.e. the people in the pews around us and the people that contributed to the history of the church before us)?

Above The Tree Line

Thinking back to that statement by Bonhoeffer, we need to see those that are in the church through Jesus. This reminds us that the different members of His body are not an autonomous herd but a collective unit that the Spirit has christened us with a new name. The brothers and sisters that you interact with each day are those with whom God is pleased. Jimmy does not get more of Jesus’ name than Sheri, we as a people gain the name of Christ as one body. Does the interest we take in others reflect God’s pleasure in them (imperfect, though they may be)? 

Draw this to mind this week: the engagement of the people in any local church is not mere happenstance, it is a holy people that God has called to gather at the specific cross streets they are on, for each person’s good and God’s glory (1 Peter 2:9).

Beside One Another

For a moment of scanning our own heart’s commitment to the local church in this, think of the most recent time that a brother or sister in Christ brought some of their life circumstances into conversation with you. It could have been that they were asking for your input, or they could have simply been sharing about their job, their kids, their weekend, or their suffering:

• What informed your thoughts about them as they spoke to you? The emotions you felt toward them? 

• What drove your questions and the words you chose to speak to them?

• Did you feel at a loss with what they were going through? 

• What was your hope for them?

The wonderful thing about how God works in all this: God’s Spirit is simultaneously working to give you all you need for life and godliness as He simultaneously provides it for the friend in front of you. The belief that you’d need to change them, fix things for them, or be liked by them will get you nowhere. While you seek to help them, your focus mainly needs to be on whether your intentions are honoring God. The reality is that God is doing something significant in the hearts of both of you to sanctify two holy people.

In all of this, there is a call for revival in Christian friendship. In this being such a great need, I invite you to spend a couple of nights this fall to work through a framework for being friends that seek to help sanctify one another in the local church. May God grow us in wisdom and grace!

Singing Psalms Together

One of the many gifts that God has given the church over the last 40 or 50 years has been a resurgence of thoughtful and faithful music for the church's worship as song-writing has flourished and more musicians have written music to be sung by the church. While some of the music is (rightly) derided as being excessively cliche'd or theologically vacuous, we have been given a great deal of music that both honors Jesus and lifts the affections of God's people. We should give thanks to God for his kindness to us over these decades, we should also acknowledge a significant loss that has accompanied this gift: Much of the church has given up the practice of singing and praying the Psalms in worship together.

But here in the Psalms we have the church's prayer book. Here is a marvelous book of songs, meant to teach us about the character and beauty of God, to shape our emotional life, and to help us give utterance to our longings and fears. Here in the Psalms we find what God commands us to ask of him in a world like ours. Here is how to pray for the sweetness of God's presence. Here is how to see and pray in a world where there are very real enemies seeking to destroy the faith of God's people. Here is how to see the glories of God's gifts in the mountains, and in people, and in his great redemptive works. Here is how to ask God for justice - and for mercy. Learning to sing the full range of the psalms can pour steel into your spine, encourage those who need encouragement, and give words, biblical words and images, to the prayers of God's people.

And so, as we continue to enjoy the good music that God has given the church in recent decades, as we savor the rich songs that have come to us through the centuries, we want to return to a steady diet of singing and praying together from the Psalms. We'll me adapting music that other churches have used to regain the use of the Psalms in worship and we have some musicians writing musical settings for Psalms that we can sing together. This weekend we will start to weave this into our weekly gatherings as we sing Psalm 100. Our hope is that we could build a bank of Psalms that we know and love as a church and can continue to shape our life together as a community.

Unmasking Masks or No Masks

Trinity,
 
Much of the New Testament was written to address a whole variety of divisions that kept arising in the church's early decades. Divisions over which kinds of food one could eat, what day the sabbath should be celebrated, whether the ancient festivals were binding on worshippers of Jesus.  There were even debates over whether or not gentile believers needed to be circumcised in order to be counted among God's covenant people. In other words, much - if not most - of Scripture, and therefore God's words to His people, are concerned with addressing our terrible propensity of dividing and building tribes around the wrong things.  All of these divisions represent a terrible instance of unbelief - a failure to trust in the work of Jesus and therefore, love His people. 
 
In the face of unbelieving divisions, the New Testament calls us to gather together as God's people in worship, to share communion, to show deference to one another, and to embody our unity in the face of worldly divisions.  Doing these things are a kind of protest against those divisions and a confession of faith in the singular work of Jesus.  So, before we address the recent mandate passed down by Governor Polis regarding mask-wearing, I want to call you to worship Jesus with His church on Sunday.  I want to call you to avoid silly divisions and judgments and breaking fellowship with other Christians who choose to wear masks or not wear masks. I am consistently amazed by how different God's priorities are in Scripture as compared to our present day preoccupations with political ideologies. The Scriptures call us to worship Jesus, to love one another (which even looks like deferring to one another's weaknesses), and to hold fast to what is true. With this call, come worship in unity on Sunday. 
 
Governor Polis has issued a statewide mandate requiring those of us, 11 and older, to wear a mask when inside a building for the next 30 days.  Many of us see this as a simple way to love our neighbors and slow the spread of a disease that has led to the death of thousands of people.  Many of us see this as a further example of unconstitutional over-reach by the magistrate issuing illegal edicts to gain political points. It’s okay if you see it both ways. Currently, we lease our space on Sundays from a church that has communicated that we need to abide by the Governor's edict while in their building.
 
We believe that the New Testament commands us, above all else, to worship Jesus, to express our unity and love for one another, particularly by sharing the word and communion together.  Because we believe this, we must prioritize what the Scriptures prioritize and so we’re going to ask that you to wear a mask on Sunday when inside the building or outside if the 6 feet of social distancing cannot be maintained between households.  It will be awkward and your singing will be muffled.  But instead of focusing on the constitutional issues or the issues surrounding personal liberty or how mask-wearers love people better than non-mask-wearers, we want to call everyone to worship Jesus in the unity of the faith. We’d even ask for you to sit inside with us if at all possible. We have plenty of space with access to the balcony, and while it is nice to sit outside, it’s a great thing to see everyone together in the same room.  Additionally, we’ll ask everyone to sing particularly loud!  Don’t protest masks. Protest silly divisions and the refusal to love. Protest rugged individualism that refuses deference.  Protest apathy in the face of God’s call to worship together and share communion together in person (barring personal sickness).  

Come and gather with us this Sunday at 9am or 10:30am to worship, sing, eat together, and to hear God's word. I'll be preaching on Proverbs 6 and the things that God hates and how we find wisdom for living there.  We'd also love for you to join us at 8:30am on Sunday to pray for the two worship services and our city.

Until Quite Recently...

Until quite modern times all teachers and even all men believed the universe to be such that certain emotional reactions on our part could be either congruous or incongruous to it — believed, in fact, that objects did not merely receive, but could merit, our approval or disapproval, our reverence, or our contempt. The reason why Coleridge agreed with the tourist who called the cataract sublime and disagreed with the one who called it pretty was of course that he believed inanimate nature to be such that certain responses could be more “just” or “ordinate” or “appropriate” to it than others. And he believed (correctly) that the tourists thought the same…. St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it. Aristotle says that the aim of education is to make the pupil like and dislike what he ought.

- C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Some Next Steps

Just two Sundays ago Trinity gathered for worship in the parking lot of ACA only a few days after the video of George Floyd's death went public. It was a strange Sunday for a number of reasons, among them was me, preaching from the back of a pickup truck while standing in the rain, with many of you listening from your cars through the radio. Protests were starting to spread to other cities outside of Minneapolis. There was (and is still) a dark weight hanging over our city. At the time, the issue of race, George Floyd's killing, and what was unfolding in our cities dominated every media source in our lives. It had replaced COVID as the newsworthy issue of the day and it was frankly overwhelming. To watch a black man killed by police officers on video, popping up in twitter feeds and instagram feeds right next to the picture of the latte art and the funny video of the toddler toddling across the floor was a horror that I didn't know how to process emotionally in the moment, nor as events unfolded in our own city.

When we gathered on that Sunday, I called us to a particular kind of faithfulness in this moment and in our city. As the video brought to the surface again a history of racist evils in our country perpetrated by many white folks over several centuries, as that turned to societal rage and a storm of opinions, social expectations, and all manner of (right) calls for justice, the great temptation was and is (still) to forget that we are creatures. In the deluge of information and videos and longings (again right) for the world to be marked by justice and light, we can begin to feel the pressure to act and speak and think with the power and clarity of gods. Put down that weight. We are but creatures.

The other temptation will come as the news cycle changes and the "next thing" consumes news feeds and becomes a distraction from the pain and trouble. We are a culture that is constantly hungry for the next outrage, the next terror - the next distraction. White evangelicals have a checkered and short history of getting impassioned about these issues for a few weeks and then moving on to the "next thing" with everyone else. Racial issues, generational poverty, and the animosities that exist in our city are the kinds of challenges that will take centuries and lifetimes of faithfulness to resolve. (That's right, I said centuries.) But it is the promise of God that He is causing justice/righteousness to rain down and fill the earth. So as the sense of urgency in our culture wanes in the coming days, may our love for our neighbor in obedience to our King and God not grow cool or even cold.

I want to spell out a bit, the kinds of things I believe we should be doing right now as a church community. I mentioned some of these on May 31st, but I want to expand a bit on them here.

1. Pray. Be reminded of our collective and individual dependence on God's power and his mercy. Ask him for his wisdom and comfort both for yourself and for our neighbors and for the magistrates who govern. Ask him to bring repentance and faith. Don't do this just once - make it a habit. Too often we only pray for immediate needs and in the vein of a personal religion. We must pray eschatological prayers - prayers directed at God's stated purposes for the world in light (or darkness) of present circumstances.

2. Read your Bible. Get the bible into your blood and bones. Let it give you, in the power of the Spirit, a backbone to know and love what is true and good in the face of so much falsehood and evil. May it become the thing you bleed as we confront real life problems - not just in our personal lives but in our neighborhoods and city.

3. Gather with the church and celebrate the coming and present reign of Jesus. There are few things more important for the purposes of biblical justice and truth and righteousness and goodness than the people of God - from every identity group that the world has attempted to separate us into - gathered all across our city, even in different congregations, but united in confessing the good reign of Jesus in the midst of a world that sometimes feels like its spiraling into darkness and chaos. It is not. And one of the clearest signs of this is the regular, faithful worship of God's people throughout the streets of our city.

4. Be faithful in your immediate responsibilities. The great work of God is not a revolution, it is the growing of a garden. It begins with the cultivation of faithfulness and fruitfulness in your own life, in your home and marriage, and in relationships with your actual neighbors.

5. Mourn with your neighbors and Listen to them. Jesus commanded us to weep with those who weep. Do not be calloused to the pain and fears of our neighbors. We live and worship surrounded by people who have experienced racial animosity and structural racism. We should be aware of their stories and their pain. One of the greatest gifts of the past two weeks has been a handful of conversations with friends who have directly suffered evil and injustice on account of their skin color. To hear their stories and to sit with them in their tears as these events have brought back past memories and current fears has been a gift I haven't deserved. Go to your friends and ask them to share some of their stories if they are willing. It has been eye-opening to become increasingly aware of current bigotries in our supposedly progressive city. There are a whole lot of books to read and videos to watch about racism and the history of racial injustice in our country. Some are biblical and remarkably helpful - most, frankly aren't. But none of them compare to a few lengthy and gracious conversations I've had with actual people.

6. Find ways to serve and changes to advocate for. I've been reminded since the beginning of the COVID shutdown of how much need and generational poverty is in our backyard as a community. The west side of Denver is the kind of place where $800,000 homes are across the street from Section 8 housing. We don't have to go far to find real people to serve and pain to witness. We should want all of our neighbors to worship Jesus and we should want to find ways to practically meet the needs of our neighbors as well. This will require real relationships and friendships with your neighbors. And it will involve the mobilization of different parts of our church to serve those people.

A few months ago our elders began a discussion on how to better serve the physical needs of both those within our congregation and in the neighborhoods surrounding our congregation. The first step was the formation of our diaconate fund. Recently, a handful of representatives from each of our parishes have started meeting to both build an infrastructure for identifying needs in our church as well as in our surrounding neighborhoods and then matching those opportunities with resources and people from our church. These systems will be unfolding informally and eventually formally at Trinity over the coming weeks and months. Get involved with that process, seek out opportunities to help and identify potential opportunities for members of our church to get involved with.

Revelation ends with the image of a tree in the heart of God's city - a city that has filled the earth even now. The promise is that this tree will be for the healing of the nations. This is the promise of God and the great work of the church. We are to worship and work and tangibly love as God heals our particular nation of its terrible sickness. This sickness is sin and rebellion against God. This sickness is racial vainglory and animosity. It is a history stained with slavery. It is a present filled with secularism and secularist answers to problems that have everything to do with God. The earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea (Habakkuk 2:14). In other words the world will be filled up with the real, tangible knowledge of the glory of the Lord. This is the promise of God and this filling is not happening like some switch getting flipped in the future, but rather the dawn has already broken - the world is even now being filled with this glory. The great work of the people of God is to bear witness to this glory and to uncover it even now. May we be faithful in this task.

Structural Racism, Systemic Racism and the Racism that Lives in Your Heart

I grew up in one of those mid-sized cities in Texas where there was an abundance of every kind of hypocrisy hiding just beneath a veneer of small city charm. There was a "black side" of town and a "mexican side" of town and it never dawned on me until much later that this was on purpose and even the result of policies (written and unwritten) meant to keep the city cordoned off like that. I also grew up in locker rooms, where a good friend recently reminded me, such divisions tend to get choked out. There were a few guys in those locker rooms who hated black people - all of them, even the ones in the locker room - but most of their vitriol was held in check by the fact that we were all trying to do something else - win football games. A largely meritocratic society developed (can you do your job?). My circle of friends, the guys I spent the most time with were from all sides of town. I attended elementary school in a school over in the "black side" of town in a program that pulled in kids from all over the city. A lot of those kids were in the locker room with me in high school.

In our current troubles we are being confronted with a smorgasbord of problems. Some of them are racial, some of them aren't. Its important to do a few things as we think and seek to act accordingly. First, we have to remember that none of these issues exist in isolation, they're all thrown in a giant bag and shaken about like those fried pizza dough balls covered in cinnamon sugar that Ernie's pizza used to have. But secondly, and here's the pickle, they have to be addressed separately otherwise we get a whole lot of confusion (or a really good cinnamon sugar ball that kind of melts in your mouth and makes you forget all about all the other troubles in the world for just a few seconds, but I digress...). One of the ways this confusion happens is by lumping a bunch of things into one phrase: "Systemic Racism." This is a problem for a number of reasons, but mostly because it leads people to believe and act as though the problem is a thing called The System, and the solution is to either change The System or burn The System down or reset The System. But the problems of racism and specifically racial animosity are far more troublesome than this. So let’s look at three different layers of the racism problem to start seeing how complicated this thing is, so we can start dreaming up ways to do the work we have to do. I'll use my own little hometown as an example.

Structural Racism

This is maybe the easiest to identify and the clearest thing to know how to fight. One of the things that made the Civil Rights movement so powerful was that it went to war with particular structural sins or evils. Jim Crow laws are an example of structural racism. Policies requiring black people to give up their bus seats for white riders are structural racism. Companies maintaining policies (both written and unwritten but the ones everybody knows not to violate) that forbid the hiring of black people or anyone on the basis of the color of their skin is structural racism. Any laws or policies that are designed around racial animosity or superiority represent structural racism. In my hometown any legal barriers or financial policies from banks or other institutions that prevented a black family from buying a house in my neighborhood on the west side of town represents structural racism. This doesn't mean that there will be a flood of racial diversity in that sprawling expansion of mostly identical houses - for there may be any number of reasons why a black person wouldn't want to live in that neighborhood. But anybody who wants to buy a house in that neighborhood and can afford to, should be legally free to. Its important to note that eliminating structural racism is not about outcomes but process. If there aren't any black people living in the sprawling metropolis of West Wichita Falls (no idea what the demographic make-up of that neighborhood is now), we should investigate why before we jump to structural conclusions. We want a free society, one that is marked by distinctive and diverse expressions, not one marked by monolithic results.

A society infected with the fermenting presence of the gospel should be in steady rebellion against structural racism. Laws should be overturned. Policies should be rewritten. Unwritten ones should be exposed and abandoned. This process takes time - and it should take time. Some of those policies and laws are buried underneath layers and layers of other policies and laws and just getting to them and understanding them is difficult and we're not dealing with some centralized System. Furthermore we're dealing with a lengthy history of this sort of thing. Those things leave a cultural legacy. Removing unjust structures remove impediments to freedom, they don't actually create free people and free communities. The movement of a society that is being transformed by the gospel should be towards freedom, biblical, God-centered freedom.

The Racism that Lives in Your Heart (or Might Live In There)

The world's rebellion against God is total. The bible describes the nature of this rebellion as the desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes and the pride of life (1 John 2:16). We are all a nexus of disordered desires that rule us and shape our actions, our ambitions and our attitudes. We are prideful - so prideful that we'll root that pride in the dumbest and most insane things imaginable. We do so oftentimes as a bulwark to protect our pursuit of that mixed up and destructive nexus of desires. One of the rather historically pervasive out-workings of this mix of personal evil is the racism that may live in your heart. People hate other people for having a certain skin color. This isn't merely or primarily a sentiment, it is an attitude connected to a set of actions that leads people to step on those people of a different color on their way to fulfilling those disordered desires. It’s as though the Samaritan in Jesus' story was less good and rather than stopping to help, saw that the man was from Judea and kept on going. One can harbor racist animosities and oppose structural racism. It should be noted one can harbor racist animosities and adamantly defend affirmative action, the welfare state and reparations (and they often do). And, it should go without saying, someone can attain to positions of power and hold vigorously to racial animosity.

In my high school locker room there was a starting, white, and rather gifted player who held fairly evident racial animosities. But those animosities were kept in check by two things: 1) Structural freedom. The powers that be didn't care what color your skin was so long as you did your job. The locker room wasn't divided up into racial groups. No one was restricted from trying out for the team or starting and earning playing time on the basis of their skin color. Combine these factors with the reality that he wanted to play football and there were boundaries on what impact his bigotries could have, and 2) Culture. When that racial animosity came out - there was space for a man to be a bigot, but very little space for that bigotry to come out in the functioning of the team or in practice (locker room punishments could be severe and swift from diverse sources). But notice, none of these things changed the actual individual. He even had black friends on the team, but in conversations and arguments with the guy neither the diversity of the locker room nor the shame of the locker room produced any noticeable transformation in the guy's heart towards black skin generally.

We can restrict the impact of this man's bigotry, but I can't change that man's "pride of life." No policy can. No amount of shaming and cancel culture can. No external law can do the work that only the Spirit of God can do. And not just God working through some sort of gnostic magic. But God working through the real life process of a conversion and repentance and faith and discipleship to believe God and to see and live in the world under the Scriptures. And particularly through pastors and other Christians who know him and love him well enough to name his sin and call him to repent of his sin.

A lot of what is currently happening in our cultural moment is the belief that if we just shame bigotry enough or proactively find ways to make bigotry illegal then we can solve the problem tomorrow. The law has always been impotent to free us (and society) from sin (Romans 7) - in fact all it does is arouse it (both in ourselves and in our society). Godless, un-sanctified bigotries grab hold of the law and find new and exciting ways to be bigotrous (wanted to make up a new word). (And its important to note that white people can practice racial animosity and black people can practice racial animosity and its about the most condescendingly racist thing I can imagine to deny that.) I think that's happening in at least two ways right now: 1) Anti-racism is becoming the new racism. And 2) I justify my own culturally endorsed bigotries by condemning the sins of other generations rather than my own sins or I blame it all on The System.

Systemic Racism and The System

"The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular."

This line in Dostoevsky describes at least one impulse to blame The System in our current troubles. Its how violent and destructive riots can be defended and justified (when you frame a burning business in terms of The System you no longer have to consider the person(s) whose life is attached to that business). Its how we avoid the kind of long-suffering work necessary to actually see a person transformed. And as structural sins become increasingly less common, the work that must be done to become the kind of society that reflects the justice and freedom of God is the kind of work that takes generations of worship, discipleship, church discipline and faithful christian education.

I was asked recently if I believe in systemic racism. I am finding it to be an increasingly unhelpful term because I think its too vague and presents us with an unidentifiable problem while moving people away from the real essential work necessary. But I do think it exists in primarily two forms: 1) There are racists in our society's institutions whose animosities impact the institutions they are a part of, and 2) There are cultural ramifications downstream from both past institutionalized racism and relatively pervasive racial animosity. The reality though, is that these things are really hard to identify, quantify or correct. There is no The System to tear down. There is surely still work to be done in our laws. And there is an enormous amount of work to be done in the lives of actual people. But the recession of systemic racism will not come because we burned down The System, but because we went to work building churches, discipling people, practicing hospitality and building friendships, starting businesses that are generous and well managed, creative and unencumbered by wicked bigotries. It will, in the end be overcome by generations of faithfulness in neighborhoods, businesses, government, and churches. In other words, it means a deep work of Jesus over centuries in generations of people.

Some Thoughts on the Recent Troubles

I have edited this post in a few places at the behest of good friends and pastors who have helped me say things better and help avoid at least some misunderstandings. If one is going to offend people, offend them on purpose - not on accident. I have removed the statistics concerning black and white deaths in section 4 - mostly because they became an unhelpful distraction to the main point I wanted to make there and all the numbers are in dispute (the WaPo has changed their estimates several times in the past 2 weeks without explanation). That whole section needed work so I rewrote a bunch of it in an attempt to be clearer. I took some unnecessary digs at a lot of excessively-white posturing (I’ll just call it EWP) which could’ve been heard (and was) as an attack on anybody who is feeling passionately about these issues or participating in peaceful protests, etc. That wasn’t my intent. Again, I want to intentionally offend the right people and I didn’t aim well enough. Lastly, a number of folks have asked for justifications for a white pastor to say any of this. My answer has been and continues to be that I am a pastor, my white skin doesn’t avail me of the responsibility to help our people, as best I can, to think and live biblically right now.

It has been a week of deep trouble in our nation. It began with the video of the terrible death of George Floyd with his neck pressed against the pavement under a policeman's knee. Marches protesting his death were soon followed by riots, and eventually looting and the burning of Minneapolis. These horrors spilled over into more peaceful protests, followed by looting and rioting in cities all over the country - including our own. People have rushed to speak, to act, to do something in the face of all this pain and rage. With the deluge of hot takes, sweeping moral judgments and diagnoses, it is remarkably important to find space to pray, to listen, to read the bible and to think clearly and scripturally about what's happening in the world around us.

God commands us to be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger (James 1:19). On Sunday when I addressed our current troubles, the main word I wanted to speak was a word of humility. That we would be a people who turn to the Scriptures, who hear what God says, who live on the basis of those convictions and not on the basis of anxious pressures laid out for us in news alerts, twitter feeds, or other people’s expectations of us to respond in the *Right Way.

I want us to think and feel carefully about these things. I don’t speak as an expert on racial reconciliation or the history of racial relations in our country. I am mostly trying to speak as a pastor to my people about some things I hope will guide our thinking and acting as a church in this moment.

(1) It's okay to be sad and angry. The impulse to simply and unthinkingly react to pain — our own or someone else's — is an escape and doesn't properly acknowledge the pain at all. I spent a few days wanting to throw up after first seeing the video of George Floyd’s killing. I felt pain and anger and grief all at once. We prayed about it as a family. I felt a hole in my stomach. I didn’t know what to do or say.

*We had a cat when I was young that would spontaneously yelp and go racing through our house. We thought he was playing some sort of game and would cheer him on when he did so. After he died during one of these episodes we asked a vet who told us that he likely had a heart condition and was running from the pain. We often are too quick to speak and react when we should mourn, pray and think. There are times for action. But when our impulse is to move away from pain too quickly and to just start saying and doing things - particularly in anger, there is a very good chance that we will start trying to solve the wrong problems with the wrong solutions. Such things generally lead to sin and harm. A number of Christians are speaking and acting with little biblical thought or contemplation. A lot of Christians are refusing to look at the problems at all. A lot of this is us simply trying to do something with pain and with the shock of seeing another man die. Slow down. Pray. Think. Listen.

(2) We believe the Scriptures. Always. This is just another way of saying (a confessional way of saying) that we listen to and obey God. He defines the world for us. He defines words like justice and sin and judgment and peace. We don't get to define those words, our pain and longings don't get to define those terms, other people's experiences don't get to define those terms. God defines those terms. And so we must be a people who go to the Scriptures and think with the Scriptures. And, frankly we need to learn to examine our own feelings in the light of Scripture. It is not simply that our world's way of thinking is in rebellion against God; our world's ways of feeling are in rebellion against God. And so we should begin here.

The Scriptures command us to speak the truth in love. That necessarily means speaking the truth. In a culture claiming to be outraged by racist sins, one of the most remarkable elements of our current climate is our unwillingness to speak the truth. We are more concerned about saying the "right" things rather than saying true things. We are more concerned about how we might be interpreted or what sort of impression our words might make than we are about being truly helpful and truthful. We must repent of this. Much that is being touted as courage by white Christians in our day is actually cowardice of the worst kind. It is a refusal to say the hard thing and instead to say what every other voice is already saying. Instead of coming to the Scriptures first, listening and praying, and then speaking, many are simply repeating things that everyone else is already saying in order to make sure they are heard saying the right things. Say true things. So here are a few relatively simple true things:

• Murder is a sin. It is an act of rebellion against God. If it is perpetrated by a someone in a police uniform that makes it worse, not more excusable. There is clearly enough evidence in this case to charge Derek Chauvin with murder as the state has done. This is appropriate and good and as Christians thinking biblically we should want the charges, we should want a fair and public trial, and if he is convicted during such a trial we should want him to pay the full consequences for murdering someone.

• Burning down an auto parts store because you are angry is a sin. It is an act of rebellion against God. Burning down a Somalian refugee’s restaurant is a sin. It is an act of rebellion against God as well as a horrible injustice. Attacking people who had nothing to do with the actual sin you are outraged over save for some vague and secular notion of justice and oppression is sin. This is all unequivocally clear in Scripture. If you are a Christian you shouldn't hesitate to condemn what the bible condemns. While it is important to acknowledge and even seek to understand the larger picture of what’s unfolding at this time. None of these things excuse the destruction and sin that has unfolded over the past few weeks.

• Reconciliation requires repentance and forgiveness of sin. This is a powerful and foundational component to our relationships with each other and God. Sins are defined by Scripture, are concrete and namable. However, the blanket act of apologizing for being white or "privileged" or any other characteristic cheapens the deep and important work of confessing sins, grieving them, and relying on the power of Jesus to turn from them.

(3) A great deal of the New Testament is written to fight for and protect racial reconciliation. The New Testament is decidedly opposed to all forms of racism (Col. 3:1-17; Galatians 3:27-29; Romans 2:25-29). The problem for us is that the word racism as it's used in our current secular climate says both more and less than what the New Testament says. So to be clear, the New Testament is absolutely opposed to racial animosity and racial vain-glory by anyone. Malice towards someone on the basis of their skin color is sin. Thinking yourself better than your neighbor on the basis of your skin color is sin. There are white racial sins. There are black racial sins.

Our culture's thinking is dangerously muddled here. Intersectionality, identity politics and postmodern frameworks have become commonplace ways of thinking and they define all social relationships in terms of power and oppression. The bible frames the whole world, including our social relationships in terms of a distinction between creation and creature and the subsequent idea of belief or unbelief and righteousness and unrighteousness. I am created and therefore accountable to my creator. He has given me meaning, wisdom and has commanded all that is good and forbidden all that is evil. Every action, emotion and relationship I have in this world is defined by that foundation. Whatever station I find myself in, whatever power or wealth I have and use should be grounded in that soil and the subsequent narrative that scripture unfolds about the character of this Creator and his work to graciously redeem the world. Replacing this biblical model with the polarization of power and oppressor redefines all the words and therefore purposes we are to pursue. Justice is now fundamentally about power and oppression and not about obedience to God and his law and applying that law to social relationships. Love has to do with the rejection of power and the gifts of God (renamed as privilege) rather than obedience to God and pursuing the good of our neighbor with the gifts that God has given us.

The bible, beginning from a different starting point, is actually far more nuanced. In scripture, I can have power and I can be oppressed. But just because I don't have power doesn't mean I'm oppressed and just because I have power doesn't mean I'm an oppressor. There is in scripture the righteous poor and the unrighteous poor. There are righteous rulers and unrighteous rulers. The fundamental issue is not wealth and power vs. poverty and oppression but righteousness and unrighteousness. Do I obey God's law or not? Using a power and oppression lens to decipher the world and history and people's behavior actually makes nonsense out of much of the bible and the gospel. Subsequently, it is horrifically destructive to people and to societies. It sustains divisions that the gospel destroys and it prevents gospel-wrought reconciliation even as it pursues reconciliation. It is false teaching and should be recognized, resisted and fought against.

We should hate racism, but we must hate it the way the bible hates racism, otherwise we end up treating the wrong problems with the wrong solutions and causing more harm than good.

(4) The Bible commands me to love my neighbor. It specifies what that means in the law and in Jesus' own teaching concerning the good Samaritan. A friend of mine posted recently "Black Lives Matter shouldn't be a controversial statement." I completely agree. It shouldn't be controversial to state that the lives of my black neighbors matter. And if I'm not a hypocrite, then I must care about actual black lives about when, how often and why our black neighbors are killed. Love doesn't just go about like a noisy gong shouting culturally acceptable tropes. Love does the hard work of actually pursuing the good of my neighbor.

So when I see a black man killed in the street by a police officer, I should want to know why - really, why was he killed? I should want to know possible reasons and statistical evidence. If black lives actually matter to me, then I will be concerned about the actual death of black people, actual justice, actual numbers and statistics and stories and real sins - both systemic and individual that should be confronted. Our culture is shouting a lot about systemic racism right now with little talk about the complexity of remaining racism and the cultural complexities of the troubles our black neighbors face.

When we start actually talking about real lives lost - statistics and numbers and percentages - this allows us to investigate things like bias and racism and root causes and trends and that sort of thing. When we explore the history of racism in our country government policies (some which were explicitly racist and others which weren’t and yet were extremely destructive to Black communities) and in the church, it can help us gain a great deal of context in understanding. In other words, we can start to identify real problems that can be, if not solved, worked against. If I see a series of horrific videos over the last few years of unarmed black men being killed by police officers and former police officers, and I care about loving my black neighbor I should want to learn and find out more. Why is this happening and what is actually happening? I might begin by asking how many unarmed black people were killed in the United States last year by the police. I might want to know how that compares to other unarmed deaths in the same year (to help determine if there is and what sort of racist system may be at work in law enforcement). What I'd find is that 41 unarmed human beings (of all races and genders) were killed by the police in the United States last year. (Which, if you think about the hundreds of thousands of tense, anxious interactions police engage in each year and that guns are always potentially involved, shouldn't that lead you to marvel and give thanks to God that we have such a restrained and well trained police force?) I’d also find those shootings have common contexts around any number of different issues. Some of those issues are racial, some are more oriented around poverty and have nothing or little to do with issues of black or white. This isn't to say that there aren't racist police officers. It isn't to say that there aren't problems with police practices and policies which are systemic in nature. Its just to say that the numbers alone don’t seem to support the supposition that black people are being targeted by police and killed. The problem is bigger and more complex than that.

Rather than rushing to explain all of this pain and rage in neat and packaged ways, I have to start asking more questions and relating them to my particular context and my particular neighbors. Why did Derek Chauvin not care about George Floyd's cries for help? Why did the other police officers not step in to stop Chauvin? Maybe Derek Chauvin hates black people (and this is an act of racial malice). Maybe Derek Chauvin was arrogant and powerful and afraid. Maybe he was following police protocol. There are things to oppose going on - potentially even systemic things which allow bad police officers to stay police officers, but we should make sure we are opposing the right things, especially if we're truly concerned about black lives.

Here is why all of this is relevant - If I claim to care about my black neighbors' life but I don't care about why they are actually dying, then I am a liar. These are things that can be explored and considered. Some of these things are the cultural fruits of sinful laws and practices that have decimated the black community. Some of these things have nothing to do with racial injustice at all. But if I care about the life of my black neighbor as Jesus commands me to, then I am going to do more than just rail against some vague racist system - I am going to do the work to understand the complexity of the numerous systems that surround us. If I care about my black neighbor, I am going to care about why actual black people are dying and we are going to do the rigorous and hard work of going to war on the right things and building the right things- and doing so in the right order. And frankly I have to start by caring about my actual neighbors - whether they are black, white, hispanic or whatever glorious race or nationality God has surrounding us with. I have to be concerned about actual people I see at the grocery store and in the park where I take my kids. Some of those neighbors may be black, some may be actual, real racists. And I am commanded by Jesus and empowered by Jesus to love them.

We must abandon sloganeering, prepackaged and unbiblical narratives and do the hard work of discipleship, building communities, and applying the scriptures to every part of our world. Simply shouting "Racist cops" or "Racist police system" is potentially slanderous and potentially allows us to stop doing the actual work of reconciliation and neighboring.

I remember a few years ago a panel discussion around the shooting death of Trayvon Martin and the violence suffered by black victims. Several evangelical black pastors were on a panel being moderated by a white evangelical writer. One of the pastors named Voddie Baucham kept pulling the conversation back to root causes of poverty, fatherlessness, and violence/crime within the black community as well as advocating for workable solutions. He was repeatedly shouted down and told he was missing the point (even by the white facilitator) because he was departing from the approved talking points - but he was talking about real problems with real possible (though difficult and slow) solutions. For too long this discussion has only been allowed to happen in a very well-curated space where certain talking points have been permitted and others haven’t. If we’re going to pursue the good of our neighbors - particularly in impoverished neighborhoods and parts of our city, the conversation has to include more.

(5) Lastly, a number of pastors have rightfully pointed out that the gospel is deeply concerned about justice in the world. The gospel is not about some sort of other-worldly salvation. It is God's redemption of the world. The bible tells the story of a God who is and is coming to judge the world - to put away injustice and unrighteousness and to punish sinners. It tells the story of a God who is rescuing an uncountable number of sinners by grace from that judgment through the death and resurrection of Jesus and that through those things he is remaking the world to be marked by truth, beauty and goodness where sin and death are no more. At the heart of that gospel- the very means by which God is killing all racial animosity and all other sins perpetrated by black people and white people - is a call to repentance and faith. To turn from our disobedience, our ungodly preference, and vanity to trust in Jesus our king who atoned - completely - for all our black and white sins. If we are to have racial reconciliation, if we are to see the end of black people being killed and white people being killed, this is where we must go - to repentance and faith in the work of Jesus. And our repentance must be of the kind where real sins (not vague, soft notions of power, privilege or bias, but real concrete, biblical sins) are named and forsaken. Our faith must be of the kind that really believes that all of my sins, and the sins of my Christian neighbor (both black and white) have been atoned for - they have been paid for, by Jesus. There will be justice and reconciliation nowhere else. There are no secular answers to these problems. There is no godless or Christ-less or Cross-less path to real reconciliation and justice. So we should care deeply about these things, but we must care as Christians, as people who believe the bible and think biblically about the world, and as people who seek to obey God completely.

May we pray for and love all of our neighbors. May we pray for the reign of Jesus to conquer all evil and to overcome all stubborn rebellion against his rule. May we be slow to speak, slow to anger, quick to pray, listen, and think carefully and biblically about our lives and our world.

[Trinity Women] Goodness & Obedience (in the COVID-19 days)

Friends,

I know we’re all facing so much right now and as I said the other night amongst some of you, we’re in a bit of a pressure cooker - all the feelings, thoughts, circumstances are exponentially bigger ... but the same is true to the really wonderful things. The pressure cooker of goodness is exponentially greater as well:

The ways he is providing for us, the goodness in giving us family moments, the joy our kids have in days upon days to be at home, technology, health (even if we are slightly more at risk, we are living in a time of wonderful medicines, amazon prime, good sanitizer, which all are gifts from God to help you stay healthy. etc...).  God is close, joy is near, provisions are abundant, laughter is contagious, learning is around every corner!

Let the goodness of God in this time pressure cook in you:
delight in serving your family
respect for your husband
joy to be with those God has given to you
hope for tomorrow
desire to try (and possibly fail many times in the process) new things,
constant prayers that flow from our mouths,
joy in the Word,
life from music and movies that shape the heart and mind,
boisterous "Yes's" or "Great!" or "Amazing" or "let's try!", and
patience to let children make their own lunches so they grow in resourcefulness!

In order to be women who are able to see God's goodness and walk forward with thankful hearts, we have to start somewhere and that somewhere is going to God's word and doing what it says. 

In a morning briefing that came through my email this week from the NYT, the word 'duty' was used and I was delighted.  Many don't want to touch this word with a ten foot pole, but I quite love it.  I love that God has said, "Do this Brady and I promise to use it and in the doing of the things I command, we will commune, you will be changed, scripture will be made alive...".  What also stood out was that I've seen a lot of conversation around permission to not do your duty as Christian women during this time and yet, it's applauded when doctors and nurses do theirs.  Why do we applaud them and not apply it to ourselves by striving to be women who also go forth with courage and faith in the duties and callings that God has given to us through his word?  

We live in a time where many say that our feelings dictate what we do or don't do.  But biblically, while our feelings matter A LOT, they are always be rooted in what scripture says.  We DO, because we believe and have faith that God's word is true and that our actions will pull our feelings along (or maybe not but we still have to do the thing it says).  We should not wait to act obediently until we feel it or want it but rather in the doing, in being obedient to all the things we find in the word, God will do amazing things in us (and our families!). 

A case in point to help show how obedience to God's word is played out: Corrie Ten Boom recalls in her book, The Hiding Place, when she was reminded by her sister to 'thank God for their concentration camp dorm room that was infested with fleas just as their Bible reading from that morning had told them to do'. Corrie didn't 'feel like' thanking God for the fleas jumping on the pillow she was about to lay her head down on. But she did. She obeyed: Thank you God for the beds we have to sleep in and...the fleas.  Later, they found out that it was because of the fleas, which we know God placed there as the king of the fleas, so they could openly read their hidden bibles to the women in the room each night without fear of a guards entering because, well, they feared the fleas.  They again, thanked God that he went before them, using fleas, to allow them to read the scriptures daily. 

What if Corrie and her sister had not thanked God for the fleas in the first place?  I bet their attitudes would have looked a lot like the other women's attitudes as they faced death - hopeless, joyless, gloomy - and probably would not have had as much positive influence on them as they did.  But instead, Corrie and her sister thanked God, went about their grueling work with a posture of thankfulness.  As they read the word to other women each night and did what it told them to do, their obedience and the work of the Spirit bore unimaginable fruit in one of the darkest places known to mankind.

Let’s be like Corrie and do what the word says in order to be women who radiate joy and hope regardless of our circumstances.  We will see wonderful fruit come from our obedience instead of going about our day-to-day tasks with a half-hearted attitude missing opportunities for God to display his provision and grace and kindness toward us.  Let's approach the things we don't feel like doing with hope and a belief that God will change our feelings as we obey and ask God to help us walk faithfully in obedience to his word (reference Ps. 1:2 and 1 John 5:2-5 which say to delight in the law of the Lord and to keep his commandments which are not burdensome).

C.S. Lewis helps connect the dots between faith, trust, obedience, and the eternal fruit that comes out of it.  In Mere Christianity he says, “To have Faith in Christ means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you have really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you.”

Back to the NYT article again: if the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff can fulfill the duty made clear to them based upon the occupations they work in (thank you God for their faithfulness right now!), without knowing the future and with anxious hearts and fear looming all around them...how much more can we, as Christian women/moms, who have hope and know what to do with anxiety and know where to cast our fears, be dutiful in the things God is calling us to (like making beds, email writing, paying bills, cooking dinner, reading stories, etc…)?

Women, let's let God's word pressure cook in us a joyfully obedience to ALL that it says.  Don't obey the word begrudgingly as if it offers no hope.  It should not be a burden to obey it and if it is, your faith is probably in the wrong thing, not in God himself, whom you are serving.  God will do great things through our obedience...both in us personally, in future generations, and on into eternity.   

Go to the word. 
Read what it says. 
And then do it (with joy because we're thankful God has graciously told us what to do as his children!).

Our Longings

What does it look like to live in discipleship to Jesus alongside one another? 

It’s easy to attach Christian jargon to this subject. Like trying to improve our Bible reading plans, we can buy a book that convicts us about doing a better job at ‘discipleship’, get inspired about our discoveries, but ultimately be changed very little. This can be discouraging. Yet, in severe contrast to this approach, when the Son of God declared that he has all authority and calls us to ‘make disciples’ in the entire world (Matthew 28:19), he calls us into a way of life. Today, I’ll focus on just one of the particular places in which discipleship to King Jesus kicks against the self-absorbed culture that we swim in.

The words of Paul in Romans 1 come as just one of a thousand starting places we could take. As you go forward, consider how the words of God land on your heart (i.e. how it is heard, where this rings true, what it challenges, what comes to mind).

“For I long to see you, that I may impart to you some spiritual gift to strengthen you - that is, that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine” (Romans 1:12). 

These can be verses that we sometimes skip over, maybe we think it isn’t relevant because it doesn’t seem to offer personal instruction. It doesn’t seem like the meaty theology that we’re looking for. On the contrary, it says a lot about both Paul and ourselves.

Our relationships are never neutral: our hearts are either growing deeper roots for either good fruit or bad fruit. They communicate something about the orientation of the longings of our heart. How we function in relationships either communicates a life that looks toward God or one that looks away from him. For Paul, he longs for mutual encouragement of each other’s faith. Ask yourself, what longings do you walk around with when you are at a parish dinner? Or when you grab a drink with a close Christian friend? 

Consider whether you could be longing for relationships in any ways that are counter to what God intends:

• I long to be comfortable, by spending time around those that agree with me on politics, theology, parenting, etc.

• I long for others to approve of me.

• I long for things to go well. Maybe if I spend time with God’s people, he’ll give me what I hope for. 

• I long to feel like I’m doing the right thing.

• I long to experience a spiritual or emotional ‘high’.

Alternatively, for those of us introverts:

• I long to keep people out of what’s really going on for me.

• I might long for relationships with others at some point, when I really need Jesus to show up for me.

Most, if not all of these can be a good means to a rich life but, so often, we turn these means into the end.

“So, that’s that. Let’s just do it differently.”

Actually, before we jump to thinking we can just will ourselves into doing this differently, we need to understand where the chutzpah comes from. Paul identifies himself as a slave of Christ in the opening of the letter (Romans 1:1). Paul’s way of viewing his interpersonal relationships are informed by his master. Later on, he reminds us that we are all slaves: either to God or to our flesh (Romans 6:16, see also Matt 6:24). For whichever longings in the list above struck you, what do those longings communicate about the character of your master? Are you a ‘slave of Christ’ in your relationships? 

What is so striking about Paul’s longing in Romans 1:12 is that he is really clear on the end game. When he leaves Rome, he hopes that the way he would reminisce is in how Jim, Tom, and Sally’s faith magnifies his master. Meaning, the food at the dinner parties really was remarkable…and his even greater hope was to hear of how God’s gospel is seen through the lives of these brothers and sisters and vice versa.

For Paul, discipleship isn’t a fuzzy phrase that’s detached from real relationships. When he says ‘you’, he refers to real people who have a real faith in this real world. He longs to be encouraged, including the person who has really long-winded conversations. Including the weird uncle. Including the person with whom we might naturally have beef.

What would it take for us to believe that encouragement of one another’s faith is a worthwhile way to spend our time? 

How could it reorder our conversations today? 

How could it change our prayer life?

Compare Paul’s relational desires with your own this week:

On your way to your parish dinner or a coffee with someone in our church, look in your own heart to see what you hope for in time together. How might God be sanctifying you?

During these times, what would it look like to be vulnerable about your own faith? What would seeking encouragement from them look like? Take the risk! Connect your faith with small talk. Ask them how they may be growing from the faith of others in the parish. Pray together.

On the ride home, ponder about where you saw God working. Could you have said more to encourage others? Where does it feel awkward? Feeling awkward doesn’t signify that it’s wrong. Learn to discern your unused muscles versus what is just plain weird. Begin again tomorrow.

I pray that God would make our longings one and the same with His. We look ahead to the day when all of our longings will come face to face with the one that they were made for (1 Cor 13:12).  

God (certainly) created the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1)

Let us begin where the materialists begin. How do we make sense of all that we see? How come those mountains? Why that mouse and that bird? Whence cometh that monkey and that cow? And wine and clouds and similarly shaped skulls and frogs that look so convincingly similar while being so utterly different? How do we explain the world we live in? How do we explain where it all came from? And particularly where did all this life come from? 

Now, beginning with these questions, let us add a qualifier - a rule to the answers we provide: Make no reference to God. Appeals to the Divine are forbidden. Answer the questions but do so without doing what every other human being has done in the history of the world: Explain the world assuming you can see and sense everything that there is. Leave God to the side or abandon him on the scrapheap of silly myths. We do not need him. Explain everything without giving him any credit from the outset. 

And so, what did they come up with? What sort of answers were proposed? Unbounded libertarianism + time + chance. In other words evolution over billions of years gets us to where we find ourselves now. Billions of years + matter and you can do pretty much anything says our test-takers. A pool of chemicals can turn into a pool of single-celled swimmers. Give it enough time and they can have babies with legs and lungs and eyes. Let your children become whatever they want to be and they’ll soon be flying…. Give us time, give us a bunch of elements, throw some energy into the mix and you can grow a universe just like ours. 

 But after all this time the bio-chemists and the physicists respond with, “Actually, errr, you can’t…” The Quantum physicists come along and start in with a short explanation of why the world simply doesn’t work the way we can see it does - actually almost nothing works the way we have assumed it does, not time, not matter, not light, not movement, not really anything. Social psychologists start talking about how your brother’s anxiety problem can give you cancer. We can’t get a single protein to spontaneously transform. And suddenly we find ourselves with an absolute cultural consensus around evolution and time and the origins of the universe that is increasingly indefensible - but don’t question it in public. The theory of evolution was already full of enormous holes. Now it appears to be dissolving into sand - like so many un-relatable facts crammed together but nothing to bind them and an increasing amount of space between them. In other words there’s no way to get from one small lizard-like thing to one bird-like thing - ad infinitum.

Enter the theologians. 

We Christians have been trying our best over the past few hundred years to look respectable. No one wants to look the fool. And no one wants secular smart people to think the Bible is stupid. And as Dr. Hugh Ross thoughtfully observed of the belief in a young earth created over six days: “I cannot imagine a notion more offensive to this group…” Dr. Henri Blocher speaks of anyone who questions the received dogma of naturalistic and ancient origins as being functional kamikaze pilots - crashing into the intellectual world and offering nothing but an unjustified stumbling block to, well, the smart people. And so theologians bend over backwards to make Genesis 1 & 2 clearly not teach what Genesis 1 & 2 appear to clearly teach. Does a 6-day creation story sound stupid to you? Have no fear - that’s not what Genesis 1 says. We twist the text into convoluted knots separating the meaning of the words from the objects of those same words. Day can’t mean day. Night cannot mean night. Light cannot mean light and so on and so forth. And so in the name of scientific respect for the indefensible consensus, we rip the text to shreds doing with it what we would never do to other texts in the Bible. And this is the evangelicals. 

We say nonsensical things like, “We don’t really know what Genesis 1 and 2 is all about. Its not about how God created the universe, but rather that He created the universe.” We do this with a straight face. Ignoring the hard reality that there are real words on the page that mean things. Words like “And God Said…” Words that indicate real actions over real time “…and there was evening and there was morning the third day.” Liberal protestants are more honest than we are. But a small question in the face of these exegetical contortions: Why let the materialists set the baseline? Presupposing the non-existence of God seems a bit like preloading the answer. And why would we want to make room for any explanation that begins there? Especially when its not a very good explanation…

So, a new proposal - Same question: Explain all of this. Someone needs to. There are mountains and trees and kangaroos and rhinos. Someone said that Hippos are one of the most dangerous animals on the planet? Explain. How did everything get here? But this time, no qualifiers on what is a permissible answer and what isn’t. Make as many references to God as you like. No avoiding the Divine this time. 

Genesis 1 and following: Now here is an answer with real meat on its bones. Here is a bountifully happy God speaking and commanding and existence obeying. Here is a God speaking everything into being and I do mean everything. Not just stars and water and protein molecules. I mean speaking into existence time. I mean matter. Speaking them into existence and then ordering them and then subjecting other things to them. Creating time, ordering it into days and nights and then subjecting the earth and the sun and the moon to it. I mean a God who speaks water into existence and then moves it by commanding it by his word - and it obeys. I mean a God who takes six days  (that he just created and ordered) and speaks into existence a universe that he spreads out like a tent (stop and picture that one for a moment… and then let that answer whatever odd questions people ask about light years and light and the age of the universe). Here is every atom explained. Here is every species’ origin. Here is a world whose foundation is a God who speaks and creatures (like rocks and stars and bears and humans) who obey. Here is why disobedience isn’t simply moral, it has ontological and biological consequences. God created the heavens and the earth. How? He spoke it. He spoke for 6 days (like real days, not metaphorical ones) and then rested. And it was all very, very good. It was all very, very good, because all of it - every single atom and photon and lepton - obeyed all that God had said. 

For some highly recommended reading on these subjects, might I suggest:

Creation and Change by Douglas Kelly.

Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl by N.D. Wilson

Undeniable by Douglas Axe