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CM – Sermon: Epiphany VI — Standing Firm in Christ

Sermon: Epiphany VI — Standing Firm in Christ

The Lord be with you

Bob Dylan once wrote: “Democracy don’t rule the world, you better get that in your head. This world is ruled by violence but I guess that’s better left unsaid…”

One of the metaphors that the Bible uses about life in this age is that it is a battle. Conflict and violence have always been a part of life, sad as that may be. Many of us have led relatively peaceful lives, thanks be to God, but I would wager that most of us here know someone, whether in our families or among our friends and acquaintances, that has been a victim of violence. We know people who died or were wounded serving their country in the military. We know people who have been scarred by domestic violence. Criminal violence or sexual violence touch our communities almost daily. People of all ages and all backgrounds find themselves victimized. If we stop and think about it, life can be pretty scary sometimes. There are battles going on all around us.

God’s plan for creation did not include this kind of violence, pain, and death. God made this world to enjoy shalom — peace, wholeness, a life that is allowed to flourish and thrive without fear. In the biblical story it wasn’t long, though, after Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden that violence took root. Cain murdered Abel, followed by a whole line of people exercising violent control over others. We are only six chapters deep into the story when we read, “Now the earth was filled with violence.”

From then on, we read violent story after violent story, culminating in the Son of God himself being killed violently by crucifixion. In many ways, if we read it thoughtfully, the Bible is a dark and brutal book, an ongoing tale of human inhumanity to other humans, to the earth’s creatures, and to the earth itself.

In today’s scripture, Paul pulls back the curtain on all that conflict, cruelty, and destructiveness. He shows us that behind the scenes there are forces at work, cosmic powers of chaos that are actively fighting against the shalom that God intends for our lives and for this world. Our struggle in this life is not, in the final analysis, Paul says, against other people with whom we may fight. It is agains “the rulers, the authorities, the cosmic powers of darkness, and the spiritual forces of evil in heavenly places.”

It is against these forces that Paul says we must stand. So far in Ephesians we have talked about sitting in Christ in the heavenly places, walking in Christ in our daily lives, and now we are going to talk about standing strong in Christ in the midst of the spiritual battle of life.

This battle with the powers of darkness was a chief characteristic of Martin Luther’s life. My favorite biography of Luther is called, Luther: Man Between God and the Devil. Its author describes the reformer in these words:

Christ and the Devil were equally real to him: one was the perpetual intercessor for Christianity, the other a menace to mankind until the end. …Christ and Satan wage a cosmic war for mastery over Church and World. No one can evade involvement in this struggle. …The Devil is the omnipresent threat, and exactly for this reason the faithful need the proper weapons for survival.

You can’t sing “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God” and miss the fact that Luther saw all Christians engaged in a battle with the Evil One and the spiritual forces of darkness.

In our own day, Dr. Richard Beck from Abilene Christian University has written a book called, Reviving Old Scratch. Beck, who has been sympathetic with progressive Christians who seek social justice, came to see that there is something missing in their approach. They miss the fundamental reality that there are evil forces in the spiritual realm that oppose justice and inclusion. These forces go deeper than people, deeper than the systems and structures people set up. There is a satanic force at work in the world.

The word “satan” means the one who opposes. And so, Richard Beck says,

Hate is the satan of love.
Exclusion is the satan of inclusion.
War is the satan of peace.
Oppression is the satan of justice.
Tearing down is the satan of building up.
Competition is the satan of cooperation.
Revenge is the satan of mercy. Harm is the satan of care.
Hostility is the satan of reconciliation.
There is a satan to the kingdom of God.
If you follow Jesus, you know there is anti-Jesus.

Simply put, there are forces working against the kingdom of God in this world. They are working against shalom. Whereas God’s plan in Christ is to bring life from death, to renew all creation and make us whole, allowing us to flourish as the creatures God made us to be, the satanic forces work to bring chaos, disintegration, destruction, and death.

And so, Paul tells us here in Ephesians, we must put on the armor of the gospel each day as we go about our lives. The gospel of truth. The gospel of right living. The gospel of peace and reconciliation. The gospel of faith, not trusting our own strength but the power of God. The gospel of salvation. The gospel of the Spirit and God’s word.

The harder the fight becomes, Paul is telling us, the deeper we must go into the gospel. The more we find ourselves under enemy attack, the closer we must get to Christ. The more the world in us and around us threatens to spin off into chaos, the more we must cling to shalom that God gives us through the Holy Spirit.

Now this all sounds so grand, so noble, so lofty — all this talk of great battles and cosmic powers. But you and I both know that the battle is fought in the trenches. It starts in our own hearts, with the battles we face within ourselves: Will I be a person of faith or self-reliance? Will I be a person of hope or despair? Will I be a person of love or selfishness?

It works itself out in our closest relationships and encounters: Will I think kindly of others or will I look down on them? Will I listen to others or will I despise their contribution? Will I speak honestly and kindly, or will my words be deceptive, cutting, and hurtful? Will I be helpful and available to others, or will I close myself off and think that they owe me something instead?

Unfortunately, none of us will get through this conflict unscathed. We will be wounded and we will wound others. But once again, that brings us back to the gospel, the gospel of forgiveness and cleansing, the gospel of dying to sin daily and rising again to walk in newness of life. The gospel of Christ, seated at the Father’s right hand, ruling over all the powers that threaten God’s shalom.

Did we in our own strength confide,
our striving would be losing,
were not the right Man on our side,
the Man of God’s own choosing.
You ask who that may be?
Christ Jesus, it is he;
Lord Sabaoth his name,
from age to age the same;
and he must win the battle.

May the Word of Christ dwell in us richly in all wisdom.

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: February 15, 2020

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: February 15, 2020

Happy Valentine’s Day, a day late.

Connecticut-based photographer JoAnn Marrero of From Labor to Love, has gone viral for her loveable Valentine’s Day chocolate photoshoot, which features a giant heart-shaped chocolate box filled with adorable babies dressed in red ties and headbands.

•

Valentine’s Day wasn’t always about love

The earliest possible origin story of Valentine’s Day is the pagan holiday Lupercalia. Occurring for centuries in the middle of February, the holiday celebrates fertility. Men would strip naked and sacrifice a goat and dog. Young boys would then take strips of hide from the sacrificed animals and use it to whip young women, to promote fertility.

Lupercalia was popular and one of the few pagan holidays still celebrated 150 years after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire.

When Pope Gelasius came to power in the late fifth century he put an end to Lupercalia. Soon after, the Catholic church declared February 14 to be a day of feasts to celebrate the martyred Saint Valentine.

•

We’re all a little weird, and life’s a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

• Dr. Seuss

•

That reminds me — Valentine’s Day cards have sometimes been a bit creepy.

•

Not too many love songs better than this one, written by the incomparable Dolly Parton and sung by one of the great pop voices of my lifetime: Whitney Houston

•

And, in the end, here’s what it’s really all about…

•

Other stuff from the week…

Mice scrap over a crumb of food on a London Underground station platform. The fight lasted a split second, and the mice went their separate ways. This photo was the winner of the Wildlife Photographer of the Year LUMIX People’s Choice Award. (Sam Rowley / Wildlife Photographer of the Year)

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Handler Crystal Murray-Klas sits with Siba, the standard poodle who won best in show during the annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York on Feb. 11. (Stephanie Keith / Getty Images)

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Academy Award winner for Best Picture: Parasite

From the review by Richard Roeper at The Chicago Sun-Times:

This is a film of such dramatic power and innovative comedy and romantic poetry and melancholy beauty that upon exiting a screening, you might well feel the urge to tell everyone in the lobby of the multiplex to delay their plans to check out some mainstream offering because if they truly love cinema, they should see THIS movie, immediately.

•

Pet…squirrels?

Pete the squirrel, who was a pet of President Harding. Photo from the Library of Congress/LC-DIG-hec-42488

From Atlas Obscura:

In 1722, a pet squirrel named Mungo passed away. It was a tragedy: Mungo escaped its confines and met its fate at the teeth of a dog. Benjamin Franklin, friend of the owner, immortalized the squirrel with a tribute.

“Few squirrels were better accomplished, for he had a good education, had traveled far, and seen much of the world.” Franklin wrote, adding, “Thou art fallen by the fangs of wanton, cruel Ranger!”

Mourning a squirrel’s death wasn’t as uncommon as you might think when Franklin wrote Mungo’s eulogy; in the 18th- and 19th centuries, squirrels were fixtures in American homes, especially for children. While colonial Americans kept many types of wild animals as pets, squirrels “were the most popular,” according to Katherine Grier’s Pets in America, being relatively easy to keep.

•

And now, introducing “Self-Care Barbie”

From Religion News Service:

Barbie has always filled the role that we now know as an Instagram influencer. In the ’60s she was a “swinger” in a Carnaby Street cape; in the ’80s she adopted aerobic instructor togs; by the ’90s she was pantsuited up to run for president. With her impossible physical proportions that no gym could possibly provide, and her artificial hauteur, she showed the way to the ideal life through unattainable glamour.

But last week, Mattel announced a new iteration, “Self-Care Barbie,” that transforms the company’s 61-year-old manikin into a being defined by the moral effort of such perfection. Created in partnership with the meditation app Headspace (which has also collaborated with Weight Watchers on the diet company’s wellness-focused rebranding), Self-Care Barbie, according to Mattel’s press release, informs us that the doll is designed to “introduce girls to self-care through play.”

There are actually four dolls to add to one’s shelf in the Self-Care collection. There’s a “spa doll,” who comes with a robe, and plenty of magazines to read, as well as adorable cucumber sunglasses. There’s a “fitness doll,” whose form-fitting gym kit comes with a protein bar that her plastic esophagus is unable to consume. There’s a “pampering doll,” who gets bath products and a loofah.

Finally, there is a “wellness dream” doll, who has a pillow and sleep mask. (To be fair, my personal wellness dream involves sleeping until noon). All dolls come with adorable puppies. (Also, in my mind, a reasonable form of self-care).

•

The four most wonderful words heard each February…

Gerrit Cole, NY Yankees. Gerrit Cole, NY Yankees. On Sept 18, 2019, Cole became the 18th pitcher in major league history to strike out at least 300 batters in a season. On Dec 16, 2019, Cole signed a $324 million contract with the Yankees, the largest contract in major league history for a pitcher.

“Pitchers and catchers report” are those words, of course. And we heard them this week, as Major League Baseball Spring Training opened across Florida and Arizona.

Gail and I will be in Tampa next Saturday to watch the Spring Training opener between the New York Yankees and the Toronto Blue Jays. I cannot wait to hear the sound of baseballs smacking in mitts and the crack of the bat. To have a beer and a brat, to look over a field of dreams under blue skies and enjoy a leisurely afternoon of the greatest game ever.

Ah, Fans, let not the Quarry but the Chase
Be that to which most fondly we aspire!
For us not Stake, but Game; not Goal, but Race—
THIS is the end of every fan’s desire.

From A Ballad of Baseball Burdens by Franklin Pierce Adams

•

On my winter playlist…

From the upcoming album, American Standard

CM – The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: February 15, 2020

The IM Saturday Monks Brunch: February 15, 2020

Happy Valentine’s Day, a day late.

•

Valentine’s Day wasn’t always about love

The earliest possible origin story of Valentine’s Day is the pagan holiday Lupercalia. Occurring for centuries in the middle of February, the holiday celebrates fertility. Men would strip naked and sacrifice a goat and dog. Young boys would then take strips of hide from the sacrificed animals and use it to whip young women, to promote fertility.

Lupercalia was popular and one of the few pagan holidays still celebrated 150 years after Christianity was legalized in the Roman Empire.

When Pope Gelasius came to power in the late fifth century he put an end to Lupercalia. Soon after, the Catholic church declared February 14 to be a day of feasts to celebrate the martyred Saint Valentine.

•

We’re all a little weird, and life’s a little weird. And when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.

• Dr. Seuss

•

That reminds me — Valentine’s Day cards have sometimes been a bit creepy.

•

Not too many love songs better than this one, written by the incomparable Dolly Parton and sung by one of the great pop voices of my lifetime: Whitney Houston

•

And, in the end, here’s what it’s really all about…

•

Other stuff from the week…

•

From the review by Richard Roeper at The Chicago Sun-Times:

This is a film of such dramatic power and innovative comedy and romantic poetry and melancholy beauty that upon exiting a screening, you might well feel the urge to tell everyone in the lobby of the multiplex to delay their plans to check out some mainstream offering because if they truly love cinema, they should see THIS movie, immediately.

•

Pet…squirrels?

From Atlas Obscura:
In 1722, a pet squirrel named Mungo passed away. It was a tragedy: Mungo escaped its confines and met its fate at the teeth of a dog. Benjamin Franklin, friend of the owner, immortalized the squirrel with a tribute.
“Few squirrels were better accomplished, for he had a good education, had traveled far, and seen much of the world.” Franklin wrote, adding, “Thou art fallen by the fangs of wanton, cruel Ranger!”
Mourning a squirrel’s death wasn’t as uncommon as you might think when Franklin wrote Mungo’s eulogy; in the 18th- and 19th centuries, squirrels were fixtures in American homes, especially for children. While colonial Americans kept many types of wild animals as pets, squirrels “were the most popular,” according to Katherine Grier’s Pets in America, being relatively easy to keep.

•

And now, introducing “Self-Care Barbie”

From Religion News Service:
Barbie has always filled the role that we now know as an Instagram influencer. In the ’60s she was a “swinger” in a Carnaby Street cape; in the ’80s she adopted aerobic instructor togs; by the ’90s she was pantsuited up to run for president. With her impossible physical proportions that no gym could possibly provide, and her artificial hauteur, she showed the way to the ideal life through unattainable glamour.
But last week, Mattel announced a new iteration, “Self-Care Barbie,” that transforms the company’s 61-year-old manikin into a being defined by the moral effort of such perfection. Created in partnership with the meditation app Headspace (which has also collaborated with Weight Watchers on the diet company’s wellness-focused rebranding), Self-Care Barbie, according to Mattel’s press release, informs us that the doll is designed to “introduce girls to self-care through play.”
There are actually four dolls to add to one’s shelf in the Self-Care collection. There’s a “spa doll,” who comes with a robe, and plenty of magazines to read, as well as adorable cucumber sunglasses. There’s a “fitness doll,” whose form-fitting gym kit comes with a protein bar that her plastic esophagus is unable to consume. There’s a “pampering doll,” who gets bath products and a loofah.
Finally, there is a “wellness dream” doll, who has a pillow and sleep mask. (To be fair, my personal wellness dream involves sleeping until noon). All dolls come with adorable puppies. (Also, in my mind, a reasonable form of self-care).

•

The four most wonderful words heard each February…

“Pitchers and catchers report” are those words, of course. And we heard them this week, as Major League Baseball Spring Training opened across Florida and Arizona.

Ah, Fans, let not the Quarry but the Chase
Be that to which most fondly we aspire!
For us not Stake, but Game; not Goal, but Race—
THIS is the end of every fan’s desire.

From A Ballad of Baseball Burdens by Franklin Pierce Adams

•

On my winter playlist…

From the upcoming album, American Standard

Looking forward – Upcoming posts

I realize that many of you probably had never seen a picture of me, or at least, hadn’t seen one for a while. That is me at the left. A slightly crazy smile, with a hint of mischievousness behind it, or at least I like to think so.

I haven’t been writing for Internet Monk for ten months, but plan be a regular contributor for the foreseeable future. Here is a hint of what you might be seeing Fridays in the coming weeks and months.

Anxiety, job loss, suicide, depression, side effects, and the year that was
The headline might give you a hint into what was a difficult year. (Possibly a series)

Back in the saddle
Why 2019 wasn’t all bad, and why 2020 looks to be a lot better.

A lifetime sentence
What we say can have implications for a life time. Both for ourselves and others.

How MY Facebook and Instagram became spiritually safe places
I hope you find this intriguing.

Theological disputing and baby’s milk
What does spiritual maturity look like?

Thoughts on Climate Change
From one skeptic (me), who no longer is, and why.

Meanwhile in Canada – A thorny problem
Why the balance between economic growth, climate change, western alienation, and Indigenous rights has become a thorny problem. (Might become a multi-part series)

My Bucket List
Can you guess my age from the recent picture? Why a bucket list now? What do I want to accomplish?

Religious Switching 3.0
Hopefully new data, a new graph, and an further analysis of some intergraph changes.

The Coming Evangelical Collapse – Revisiting the prophecies
A look into the statistical changes that have occurred over the last eleven years.

The books beside my bed
I haven’t been able to do much reading over the past year, so I have another large accumulation to get through.
Expect a combination of short synopses and full post reviews.

Missing a friend
An encapsulation of some of my favorite Michael Spencer posts.

Whatever happened to Michael Spencer’s commentary on Mark?
I will provide an update on where it is at and some plans for the future.

The Corona Virus
I would like to do a weekly check-in of what we might expect over the next few weeks. Format still to be decided.
My predicted trend published last week is still holding true for this week.

I said the number of dead last week was 637. I had included some of Friday’s count in that number. End of day Thursday it was 565. As of writing now, it is up to 1491 (wait, now it’s 1383, somehow it had dropped over the last hour!?!).

The cumulative number of fatalities can now be calculated by the formula 1.56 * (24 + X)^2.12 where X is the number of days from yesterday (February 13th).

The number dying each day is increasing on average by about 5 per day. The formula for this is (24 + X) * 5, using the same value for X as above.

This will be a trend worth watching over the next week or two to see if it changes.

Your thoughts
So those are some of the things I would like to write about this year. I am sure other issues of interest will come up as the year goes on.

What else would you like to see me write about? Is there anything in the above list that catches your attention? Anything you would like expanded upon?

As usual, your thoughts and comments are welcome.

A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God by Alister McGrath- Part 3 and Chapter 2- The Old World: Newton’s Clockwork Universe

A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God by Alister McGrath- Part 3 and Chapter 2- The Old World: Newton’s Clockwork Universe

We are reviewing Alister McGrath’s new book, “A Theory of Everything (That Matters): A Brief Guide to Einstein, Relativity, and His Surprising Thoughts on God”. Chapter 2 is entitled: “The Old World: Newton’s Clockwork Universe”. McGrath starts the chapter by pointing out how even though science is the patient and scrupulous accumulation of observations, it is also a quest for understanding in which we try to discern the deeper patterns and structures of our universe; the deeper truths that underlie what we can merely observe.

If an understanding of a set of observations becomes commonly accepted for a long enough period of time, we designate that as a “theory”. To the layman, a “theory” is just a good guess, but scientists use the term to refer to hypotheses that have held up to repeated testing. A theory is what a good hypothesis aspires to be, so to speak. Theories that have gained this kind of acceptance almost are taken to be self-evident. So what happens when such a theory turns out to have been wrong? What if a new theory comes along and is shown to be far superior to what we were used to?

Let’s take the movement of the planets. In the ancient world, people noticed that some of the objects in the sky seemed to move around i.e. weren’t in the same place in the sky night after night. They were termed “wandering stars” because they were useless for navigation. That’s why they had a negative association in Jude 1:13 “They are wild waves of the sea, foaming up their shame; wandering stars, for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.” If you tried to navigate by them, you would be led astray, just like the ungodly people Jude is warning about will lead you astray morally and spiritually. The ancients gave them the names of certain gods: Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

So what explained the movement of these “wandering stars”? In the second century, Ptolemy of Alexandria set out a way of understanding the heavenly bodies that would be accepted by most people for more than a thousand years. For Ptolemy, the sun, moon, and planets all revolved around the Earth in circular orbits at different distances. To account for the “wandering” of the planets, Ptolemy had a system of epicycles. It worked reasonably well, although there was no physical reason why a planetary body would also revolve in an epicycle. But by the time of the 16^th century as increasingly more accurate measurements were made, the Polish astronomer Nicholas Copernicus published a book arguing that the sun, not the earth, stood at the center of the known universe. Copernicus’ theory was wrong in several respects – for example, he believed the planets revolved in circular orbits at uniform speeds.

Johannes Kepler corrected those errors through his close study of the planet Mars in the early 17^th century. He pointed out that the Earth and other planets revolved in elliptical orbits at variable speeds. Yet Kepler couldn’t explain why this was the case. Which brings us to Isaac Newton and his proposals for classical mechanics and gravitational theory set out in his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, usually referred to as Newton’s Principia in 1687.

By careful observation, Newton set out a series of principles that governed the behavior of objects on Earth and then argued that these same principles applied to the motion of the moon around the Earth and the planets around the sun. This is reflected in the well-known, but probably greatly exaggerated, story of the apple falling on his head. Newton might have creatively embellished the story through retelling it over time, perhaps to conceal the fact that another British scientist – Robert Hooke – had developed a similar idea in the 1670s.

Newton argued that the mysterious and undetectable force he named gravity was the explanation for both the apple falling to the Earth and the moon orbiting around the Earth. Newton’s Law of Gravity states that the force of gravity is equal to a constant value (G) multiplied by the two masses and divided by the distance between the two masses squared. Newton had no idea what caused gravity in the first place and refused to speculate about its origins. Initially, Newton’s demonstration of the regularity of the laws of nature was seen as confirming the Christian belief in a God who had created an ordered universe and endowed humanity with the power of reason to discover those laws. But later, as McGrath says:

God now seemed to be pointless. Having constructed the universe and set it going, God is left without any significant role. God might retire or even die, but the universe would continue to function according to the laws by which God had caused it to function. Newton, perhaps unwittingly, had laid the groundwork for a self-sustaining and self-regulating universe, with no place for God.

Newton introduce the idea of space – a vast empty container that enclosed the sun, planets, and stars. This naturally raised the question of what this “space” was made of. As with gravity, Newton refused to speculate on this question. For Newton, both gravity and space were legitimate scientific inferences from an observable phenomenon to the unobservable entity that best explains it. Newton recognized that space and time were not things we observe directly, but were rather inferences from those observations.

On the question of the nature of light, Newton took the view that a beam of light consisted of a series of rapidly moving small particles or “corpuscles” (from the Latin term corpuscula, “small bodies”). Newton’s view of light dominated the physics of the 18^th century, but during the 19^th century, a growing body of experimental evidence suggested that light was better understood as a wave. For example, the double slit experiment was first reported by Thomas Young in 1801. His demonstration of interference by alternate bright and dark lines was taken to be clear evidence for the wave nature of light.

Many late 19^th century scientists believed that physics had finally sorted out all the great questions of the day and all that remained was to achieve greater precision in some measurements of natural properties. Yet enigmas and anomalies remained. Some observations just didn’t fit neatly into the best theories of that age. One of the most significant anomalies was known as “the advance of the perihelion of Mercury”.

The theory of relativity predicts that, as it orbits the Sun, Mercury does not exactly retrace the same path each time, but rather swings around over time. We say therefore that the perihelion — the point on its orbit when Mercury is closest to the Sun — advances. In the diagram shown here, the amount of the advance is greatly exaggerated. The actual advance is only 43 seconds of arc per century.

Like all planets, Mercury orbited the sun in an ellipse. The point at which it was closest to the sun – known as the perihelion – was discovered to move by a tiny, but observable, amount each year. Why?

The Newtonian explanation would have been Mercury was influenced by an unknown planet of roughly half the mass of Mercury positioned closer to the sun. This explanation was similar to the discovery of Neptune based on the distorted orbit of Uranus calculated by Urbain Le Verrier. In 1846, the planet Neptune was observed. The anomalous behavior of Uranus was thus resolved without abandoning or modifying Newton’s basic ideas.

Live long and prosper, Le Verrier, but guess again.

Many scientists of the 19^th century saw the discovery of Neptune as confirming the reliability of Newtonianism. This sparked a search for the proposed planet, which Le Verrier named Vulcan. It, of course, was never found.

On November 18, 1915, Albert Einstein reported to the Prussian Academy that the advancing perihelion of Mercury was explained precisely and persuasively by his new general theory of relativity. In general relativity, this remaining precession, or change of orientation of the orbital ellipse within its orbital plane, is explained by gravitation being mediated by the curvature of spacetime. Einstein showed that general relativity agrees closely with the observed amount of perihelion shift. This was a powerful factor motivating the adoption of general relativity.

Beginning in the next chapter, McGrath turns to consider the many new ideas developed by Einstein, beginning with the remarkable series of four articles published in 1905 that established his reputation as one of the most significant scientific thinkers of his age – despite the fact that he was working as a clerk in the patent office in the Swiss city of Bern, not as a research scientist at a leading Swiss university or scientific research institution.

Another Look: Give Us This Day…

I know what it means to live week to week, paycheck to paycheck.

I don’t know what it means to live day to day, without guarantee of a paycheck.

I don’t know what it means to be completely dependent on grace and mercy. I may indeed be completely dependent, but I seldom realize it. I can think about tomorrow with some confidence. I can finish one meal while already looking forward to the next one. Sure, I’m fully aware there’s no guarantee. Nevertheless, I’m not sure the word “needy” has ever really applied when it comes to the way I actually go about my business and function each day.

This makes it hard for me to grasp the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

Today, at lunchtime I sat in the hallway of a nursing home. The middle aged man in front of me was sleeping with his chin on his chest, slumped down in a high-backed wheelchair. He has a terrible disease, one which causes the progressive breakdown of nerve cells in his brain. He has been in a facility for years now, has done relatively well for someone with his disease, but there he is. And there he will be tomorrow, the next day, and the day after, until who knows when. Day after day after day.

And there I am, sitting in front of him, praying the Lord’s Prayer.

It’s a prayer he knows and sometimes when I pray it with him I get intimations that he understands and is following along. A word of it occasionally wiggles its way out of his mouth. He may be coherent enough to say thank you for when I pray. But most of the time he just sits there with his chin on his chest, or he lies on his bed on his side, curled up and staring at the wall.

I’ve met his wife and his pastor. Each of them comes at various times to feed him and sit with him. The pastor told me he often has to forcibly lift his head, fighting stern resistance to get food to his mouth. He never knows when the patient might have an outburst. It’s a characteristic of his disease. He might flail his hands violently and buddy you better get out of the way. The minister took it flush on the jaw once. Human strength, even in extremis, is remarkable. It can hurt you. Most of the time it turns out there’s no problem at all in the dining room, and there, sitting in his high-backed wheelchair he gets his daily bread.

Today in the hallway, I choke a little just saying the words.

I know that I’m going to walk out that door in just a few moments. I’ll walk down the hall, walk to my car, drive to my next visit and, sooner or later I’ll stop somewhere and have lunch. I’ll use my debit card, order a salad, and sit in my car and eat it. With my own hands, at a place of my choosing, using my own money, mobility, and sense. Later this week, my employer will deposit another paycheck in my bank, and I’ll be able to have lunch each day for the foreseeable future. Maybe even buy someone else lunch on occasion.

As a caregiver, I don’t often have to deal with this kind of survivor’s guilt, but that’s what it feels like today. It feels wrong for me to pray “Give us this day our daily bread” with this man in this place on this day because I sense the disconnect when I say that little word, “us.” It feels like I ought to say, “Give him his daily bread, Lord, I’m covered.”

I could get all spiritual here and start talking like I used to talk: I’m needy too. I’m just a beggar. I need grace and mercy just as much as the next person. If God doesn’t provide for me, I’m sunk. There is no inherent difference between my patient in the nursing home and me. He just has a physical condition that makes his daily need for God’s grace and mercy apparent. If I could look behind the scenes and see all the ways God protects me and cares for me, I would understand that I too, am just the same as the man in the high-backed wheelchair.

All true enough, but largely irrelevant to the way most of us live and think each day. When we do say it, it’s mostly spiritual posturing, the old humble bit, the right language to draw a knowing nod from those in our crowd. The words cover an existential fear so pure we’re obliged to avoid it. It’s possible I won’t really know the meaning of “Give us this day our daily bread” until I require someone to force my head back and put a spoon of puréed mush in my mouth. Honestly, I’m not looking forward to that, whether it happens tomorrow or twenty five years from now.

Will someone come and wheel me to the dining room then? Will someone sit with me and perform that lowly service? Will someone pray the Lord’s Prayer with me when I can only occasionally mutter a word or two in recognition of it? And will they find themselves choking when they get to the line, “Give us this day our daily bread”?

I can only hope so. That’s probably really what I’m praying for as I sit in this nursing home and try not to see myself in that high-backed wheelchair.

Until then I eat every lunch in defiance and fear of that day.

CM – Another Look: Give Us This Day…

I know what it means to live week to week, paycheck to paycheck.

I don’t know what it means to live day to day, without guarantee of a paycheck.

This makes it hard for me to grasp the prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.”

And there I am, sitting in front of him, praying the Lord’s Prayer.

Today in the hallway, I choke a little just saying the words.

I can only hope so. That’s probably really what I’m praying for as I sit in this nursing home and try not to see myself in that high-backed wheelchair.

Until then I eat every lunch in defiance and fear of that day.

Another Look: The Arithmetic of Grace

The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

• Deuteronomy 7:7-8, NASB

Peter W. Marty once wrote, “In a memorable Dennis the Menace cartoon, Dennis and his friend Joey are leaving Mrs. Wilson’s house loaded up with a plate full of cookies. Joey turns to Dennis and says, ‘I wonder what we did to deserve this.’ Dennis is quick to reply, ‘Look Joey, Mrs. Wilson gives us cookies not because we’re nice, but because she’s nice.’ So goes the arithmetic of grace.” (The World of Grace)

Dennis’ sentiment captures what I have always loved about the sentence from Deuteronomy 7 cited above, though I have not meditated on it or internalized nearly enough. If you take out all the intervening clauses in the verse and boil down what God is saying to Israel, what you have is, “I love you…because I love you.” It’s as simple, and profound, as that.

It’s not because we’re nice. He loves us because he loves us. Period. It’s who God is that makes the difference in matters of love, grace, and choice.

And who is he? A remarkably indiscriminate lover! After all, he loves you and me.

The Biblical record is clear from beginning to end, and well-summarized in these NT words: “Listen, my beloved brethren: did not God choose the poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love Him?” (James 2:5)

By “poor” he means not only those who have few material or monetary resources. All kinds of poverty are in view here — the intellectually poor, the morally poor, the relationally poor, the reputationally poor. In order to show that he does not discriminate against anyone, he has made a special effort to reach out to those who are, in our eyes, the most unlovely and undeserving.

God’s team roster is set forth in the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12). In the world’s eyes at least, we are talent-poor (poor in spirit, mourners, meek, crushed by injustice) and we are power-poor — we try to engage the world with inadequate, futile strategies (through extending mercy, seeking purity of heart, acting as peacemakers). Ultimately, we are the “losers” (persecuted, insulted, accused). Nevertheless, by his love and grace, Jesus calls us “blessed.”

Similarly, the Hebrew people God spoke to in Deuteronomy 7 were poor. Their ancestors had been homeless wanderers. Their parents and grandparents had become slaves, the dregs of society, under foreign rulers in Egypt. After about four hundred years of that humiliation, God intervened and delivered them in spectacular fashion from their bondage by pure grace.

You might think that would have made them grateful, but instead they became a group of unruly complainers wandering through the desert. Moses tried to shape them up during a long camp-out at Mt. Sinai, but they proved so unmanageable he had to plead with God at one point not to wipe them out in divine frustration and wrath. When they left Sinai to go to the Promised Land of Canaan, all but a few of them rebelled so badly they ended up wasting forty years walking the desert in circles. Eventually, Israel wore even poor Moses down. One day he’d had enough of their bitching and moaning, and he blew up in angry, exasperated unbelief — an act that won him a grave in the wilderness.

And, these were the people to whom God said, “[I] wasn’t attracted to you and didn’t choose you because you were big and important—the fact is, there was almost nothing to you. [I] did it out of sheer love…” (The Message) Tens of thousands of dirty-faced Dennis the Menaces got full plates of cookies because of who God is, not because they were so nice.

And guess what? The new life we have received in Jesus came the same way. There we are one day, playing in the yard, fighting and hollering, breaking stuff, getting all dirty and tearing holes in our jeans, when Mrs. Wilson opens the door and hollers out,”Hey kids, would you like some cookies? I just made some. Come and get ’em!” And if we have any sense at all, we stop what we’re doing immediately and race to see who can get there first.

Oh, there’s nothing like the taste of fresh cookies, washed down with cold milk!

The problem is, we start thinking we must be pretty special to deserve such a treat. We strut our stuff around the neighborhood and brag on the gift we received. “Why the big smile?” the kid down the street asks. “Mrs. Wilson just gave us cookies!” we exclaim. “Man, were they good!” And for some reason, we get all caught up in that warm feeling in our belly and start to think we must be pretty good kids to deserve such a treat.

Then we look up, and see that Mrs. Wilson has come out of her house again, and this time she’s offering cookies to the neighbor children who live behind us. Those kids are a pain in the butt! In fact, they’re weird. They dress and talk differently and they don’t fit in to our games very well. We try to stay away from them, but sometimes we can’t and it seems like we always end up fighting and yelling. It really gripes us that they get cookies too.

We forget the “grace” part. Remember? Mrs. Wilson’s the nice one, not me.

Peter Marty quotes Barbara Brown Taylor, who once said, “I’m not so worried about God loving me less. It is the prospect of God loving that other person I can’t stand, just as much as God might love me.” He then comments,

The most outstanding feature of God’s grace is its indiscriminate character. I’m thoroughly convinced of this, even if I cannot always appreciate it. All of the factors that determine how God might show favor rest solely on God’s wishes. Our capacity to discriminate, establish devilish screening devices, and discern unpalatable idiosyncrasies in other people cannot hold back God’s grace. Jesus refused to respect the boundaries people set up between respectable and disreputable people, between right-thinking and wrong-thinking people. In the end, it was utterances like his “prostitutes and tax-collectors entering the kingdom before the rest of us” that — literally — hung him. (The Wideness of Love)

If receiving grace doesn’t make us both grateful and gracious, we really haven’t grasped grace.

If, in our lives, we don’t “cause [our] rain to fall on both the just and the unjust,” we are not following the One who does just that. Lavishly. Freely. Indiscriminately.

If we’re upset that Mrs. Wilson is sharing her cookies with kids we don’t like, we’ve probably developed the opinion that we deserve them more. And that some don’t deserve them at all.

Hey, if you’ve got a head full of rules about who deserves the cookies and who doesn’t, I don’t think you have much room in there for a guy like Jesus. He loves us because he loves us.

And that’s the whole story.

CM – Another Look: The Arithmetic of Grace

• Deuteronomy 7:7-8, NASB

It’s not because we’re nice. He loves us because he loves us. Period. It’s who God is that makes the difference in matters of love, grace, and choice.

And who is he? A remarkably indiscriminate lover! After all, he loves you and me.

Oh, there’s nothing like the taste of fresh cookies, washed down with cold milk!

We forget the “grace” part. Remember? Mrs. Wilson’s the nice one, not me.

The most outstanding feature of God’s grace is its indiscriminate character. I’m thoroughly convinced of this, even if I cannot always appreciate it. All of the factors that determine how God might show favor rest solely on God’s wishes. Our capacity to discriminate, establish devilish screening devices, and discern unpalatable idiosyncrasies in other people cannot hold back God’s grace. Jesus refused to respect the boundaries people set up between respectable and disreputable people, between right-thinking and wrong-thinking people. In the end, it was utterances like his “prostitutes and tax-collectors entering the kingdom before the rest of us” that — literally — hung him. (The Wideness of Love)

If receiving grace doesn’t make us both grateful and gracious, we really haven’t grasped grace.

If, in our lives, we don’t “cause [our] rain to fall on both the just and the unjust,” we are not following the One who does just that. Lavishly. Freely. Indiscriminately.

If we’re upset that Mrs. Wilson is sharing her cookies with kids we don’t like, we’ve probably developed the opinion that we deserve them more. And that some don’t deserve them at all.

Hey, if you’ve got a head full of rules about who deserves the cookies and who doesn’t, I don’t think you have much room in there for a guy like Jesus. He loves us because he loves us.

And that’s the whole story.

An open invitation to evangelical supporters of President Trump…

Today, I extend an open invitation to all conservative evangelical Christians out there who support our current president.

From your perspective as an evangelical, talk to us about President Trump’s behavior and words at the National Prayer Breakfast last week.

In order to help you feel like this is a safe and open place for you to contribute your thoughts —

The only comments allowed today are those that come from SUPPORTERS of President Trump. And there will be no follow-up posts critiquing the comments that come today.

In case anyone missed it, Donald J. Trump, in a spirit of triumph over his “enemies,” waved his acquittal headline as he walked in the National Prayer Breakfast and called his political opponents “very dishonest and corrupt people.” He claimed that they had “put themselves ahead of our great country” in ways that hurt many people, including himself and his family.

Furthermore, he attacked them in terms of their religion. In a not-so-veiled reference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was sitting right near him, he said he does not like people who say they pray for you when they really don’t. Pelosi had said in December that she prays regularly for the president. Later, after the breakfast, in the East Room, the president said, “I doubt she prays at all.”

Referring to Mitt Romney, the only Republican who voted to convict him at his impeachment trial, the president said, “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” Romney had said his faith led him to make a decision of conscience.

All of this is ironic, given that the Prayer Breakfast has always been a bipartisan affair, specifically designed to bring people together despite their differences.

Further adding to the irony, the theme of this year’s Breakfast was “Love Your Enemies.” Conservative author Arthur Brookes, who gave one of the addresses, warned that our nation faces a “crisis of contempt and polarization.” He reminded those attending that Jesus called us to love and not just tolerate our enemies. He challenged the leaders present to “show people what leadership is all about” by answering hatred with love.

President Trump’s remarks, which followed, began with these words: “Arthur, I don’t know if I agree with you.” Then he launched into his speech against his opponents and in defense of religious liberty and his record in supporting religious causes.

My evangelical, President Trump-supporting friends, how do you respond to this?

Here’s what Pastor Robert Jeffress had to say, in support of the president:

Jeffress told ABC that Trump “was completely right in what he said.”

“This president, he absolutely hates phoniness; he can smell it a mile away,” Jeffress said in a separate appearance on Fox News’s “Fox & Friends” on Friday. “The president thinks there’s something inherently phony about saying you’re praying for him when you’re working to destroy him.”

He added that “the Bible supports his skepticism,” citing James 3:10, which reads, according to the New International Version, “Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be.”

Pelosi, who also attended the breakfast, defended her prayers for Trump.

“He really needs our prayers,” she said after the event. “So he can say whatever he wants, but I do pray for him and I do so sincerely and without anguish, gently, that’s the way I pray for everybody else.”

Jeffress also supported Trump’s comments about not loving his enemies, saying he told Trump this week: “Mr. President, to love your enemies means to want God’s best for them, but it doesn’t mean you’re going to be unified with them. Truth divides people.”

Jeffress also criticized Sen. Mitt Romney‘s (R-Utah) vote for Trump’s impeachment. Romney, before becoming the only Republican to vote to convict Trump on Wednesday, said “God demanded it of me.”

Jeffress told ABC that Romney’s vote “seems more based on self-promotion than religious beliefs.”

Another evangelical thought differently. Michael Gerson, who has been a consistent critic of the president and his evangelical supporters, wrote: “…the president again displayed a remarkable ability to corrupt, distort and discredit every institution he touches. The prayer breakfast was intended to foster personal connections across party differences. Trump turned it into a performative platform to express his rage and pride — the negation of a Christian ethic.”

I’m wondering what you think about all of this.

You may or may not know that I myself am a “never-Trump” person. I have been flabbergasted, not only that he got elected, but that he has garnered so much support from people of evangelical faith. In fact, that has been more of a concern for me than the president himself. As a post-evangelical, it has only confirmed and reinforced my decision to say good-bye to American evangelicalism. This behavior at the National Prayer Breakfast, it seems to me, would be a red line for those who trust and follow Jesus, and who take his words seriously.

But that’s me. And that’s all I’m going to say today.

I want to hear ONLY from supporters of President Trump in this semi-Open Forum.

Maybe you will defend his remarks and his stance, or maybe you will find them indefensible. Perhaps they do represent a “red line” for you that forces you to reconsider your support. Or maybe you think there are other, more important factors to consider.

At any rate, I will moderate closely today to make sure that you have complete freedom to express your views without any arguments from those who do not support President Trump.

I urge commenters who do not support the President to exercise restraint and just pay attention to what others are saying, no matter how strongly you may disagree.

And that includes me. My stance today is to be a listener only.

Now it’s your turn. Go.