It hence follows, that they egregiously mistake who form an opinion of the Church according to their own perceptions. And surely if that celebrated Prophet, who was endued with so enlightened a mind, was so deceived, when he attempted by his own judgment to form an estimate of God’s people, what shall be the case with us, whose highest perspicuity, when compared with his, is mere dullness? Let us not then determine any thing rashly on this point; but rather let this truth remain fixed in our hearts — that the Church, though it may not appear to our eyes, is sustained by the secret providence of God. Let it also be remembered by us, that they are foolish and presumptuous who calculate the number of the elect according to the extent of their own perception: for God has a way, easy to himself, hidden from us, by which he wonderfully preserves his elect, even when all things seem to us past all remedy...
Since then the grace of God prevails so much in an extreme state of things, let us not lightly give over to the devil all those whose piety does not openly appear to us. It also ought to be fully imprinted on our minds, — that however impiety may everywhere prevail, and dreadful confusion spread on every side, yet the salvation of many remains secured under the seal of God. f338 But that no one may under this error indulge his own sloth, as many seek hiding-places for their vices in the hidden providences of God, it is right to observe again, — that they only are said to be saved who continue sound and unpolluted in the faith of God. This circumstance in the case ought also to be noticed, — that those only remained safe who did not prostitute their body, no, not even by an external act of dissimulation, to the worship of idols; for he not only ascribes to them a purity of mind, but that they had also kept their body from being polluted by any filthiness of superstition.- John Calvin, commenting on Romans 11:2
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Cleaning Day
Today is the day I clean up my study. A friend reports that he was asked in an interview, “Are you a filer or a piler?” and if those are the choices, I have to describe myself as a piler. Every available horizontal surface is covered with stacks of paper, books, and miscellaneous objects. The upside is that it makes dusting easy. It’s probably a good thing that I have a small desk or it, too, would be piled with stuff. (See picture)
Those of you with neat work spaces will tell me how much easier it is to clean up as you go. Everything I’ve ever read about it has the same advice: every piece of paper should be handled once: filed, discarded, or passed on. Books, once read or consulted, should be returned to the shelf. Miscellaneous objects should be put in place or eliminated. It all makes perfect sense. But after working the other way for so long I have just about come to the conclusion that there’s no hope for me. I will always be a piler.
This is where I make a virtue of necessity: those who keep their workspace neat have no conception of the thrill of straightening up: of seeing the piles of paper disappear, of seeing the stacks of books back on the shelves, of seeing the knicknacks go in their proper places. The Indiana Jones-like excitement when a long-missing document is unearthed. The guilty pleasure of knowing you really should be doing something else but now have a perfect excuse not to do it: sorry, have to do this later, right now I’m cleaning up my study.
Finally I take comfort in the knowledge that nowhere does the Bible command us to be neat. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” comes, not from Scripture, but from John Wesley. When Paul says that all things should be done decently and in order, he’s talking about the community’s worship (1 Corinthians 14:40).
Now that that’s off my chest, it’s time to start straightening up.
Those of you with neat work spaces will tell me how much easier it is to clean up as you go. Everything I’ve ever read about it has the same advice: every piece of paper should be handled once: filed, discarded, or passed on. Books, once read or consulted, should be returned to the shelf. Miscellaneous objects should be put in place or eliminated. It all makes perfect sense. But after working the other way for so long I have just about come to the conclusion that there’s no hope for me. I will always be a piler.
This is where I make a virtue of necessity: those who keep their workspace neat have no conception of the thrill of straightening up: of seeing the piles of paper disappear, of seeing the stacks of books back on the shelves, of seeing the knicknacks go in their proper places. The Indiana Jones-like excitement when a long-missing document is unearthed. The guilty pleasure of knowing you really should be doing something else but now have a perfect excuse not to do it: sorry, have to do this later, right now I’m cleaning up my study.
Finally I take comfort in the knowledge that nowhere does the Bible command us to be neat. “Cleanliness is next to godliness” comes, not from Scripture, but from John Wesley. When Paul says that all things should be done decently and in order, he’s talking about the community’s worship (1 Corinthians 14:40).
Now that that’s off my chest, it’s time to start straightening up.
Tuesday, January 12, 2010
Funeral Meditations
Had one of those funerals yesterday that I would rather not have had to do: the deceased was a 33-year-old man, the same age as one of our sons, who left behind a wife and two children, not to mention a mother and three brothers. More than 700 people came to the visitation and 300 or more came to the funeral. I wrote a funeral sermon on Saturday, then after the visitation I tore it up, chose new Scriptures, and wrote a new sermon. Someone else might have done it differently, or done it better, but I was the one who was called on to do it, and I did what I hope was my best, under God. People told me it was helpful.
So while I would rather not have had to do that funeral, I was glad I was able to do it. If as the church we can’t offer something at a time like this, we probably ought to close up and sell the building. “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19 NRS)
Nevertheless, these are the times we feel most inadequate as preachers, which is probably good for us spiritually. After all, “we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7 NRS) It brings out the paradox of everything we do, from preaching to counseling to administration: nothing happens that does not happen by the power of God, yet nothing happens that doesn’t involve work on our part as well. Somehow God takes what we do and uses it, often in ways we don’t even know about.
So today I am reflecting and looking ahead to Sunday and calling on a few people, believing that God is as much a part of my ordinary activities as he was of our extraordinary activities yesterday.
So while I would rather not have had to do that funeral, I was glad I was able to do it. If as the church we can’t offer something at a time like this, we probably ought to close up and sell the building. “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Corinthians 15:19 NRS)
Nevertheless, these are the times we feel most inadequate as preachers, which is probably good for us spiritually. After all, “we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.” (2 Corinthians 4:7 NRS) It brings out the paradox of everything we do, from preaching to counseling to administration: nothing happens that does not happen by the power of God, yet nothing happens that doesn’t involve work on our part as well. Somehow God takes what we do and uses it, often in ways we don’t even know about.
So today I am reflecting and looking ahead to Sunday and calling on a few people, believing that God is as much a part of my ordinary activities as he was of our extraordinary activities yesterday.
Monday, January 4, 2010
The Big Storm of '09
Last year I took both of the congregations I serve through a series of what we called “cottage meetings.” The people gathered by small groups in private homes for an evening of sharing around the following questions, which came to me from a long-forgotten source as “Quaker Questions:”
1.Where did you live between the ages of 8 and 13, and what were the winters like?
2.How was your home heated during that time?
3.What was the center of warmth in your home during that time? (It could be a place, person, or time of day)
4.When did God become a “warm person” to you, and how did it happen?
Over the years I’ve learned to expect both conventional and surprising results from those questions, and this year was no exception. One thing that kept coming up was that most of us remembered winters as being more severe when we were growing up than we have experienced lately.
Of course I found myself wondering how much of that was accurate and how much the effect of the passing of time, blizzards and snowdrifts increasing in our memory until they assume nearly mythical proportions. Dylan Thomas, in his beautiful memoir, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, writes, “I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.” After all, we only have snow at Christmas about half the time in Iowa, yet our memories all tend to be of white Christmases.
Well. This is turning out to be a real old-fashioned Iowa winter with two- and three-day blizzards, messing up travel plans, forcing churches to cancel services—this is the first time I can remember canceling Christmas Eve services in 30+ years of ministry—and straining the already-strained budgets of towns, counties, businesses and churches as we cope with finding places for all the snow.
Interestingly, all the people I’ve talked to, even the family who went without electricity for three days, seem to be taking it all in stride, finding things to celebrate and be thankful for in the middle of some mighty serious weather. We talked, we read, we huddled together for warmth, we shoveled and scraped and ran snowblowers, and in spite of everything, we enjoyed Christmas.
As pastors, this weather makes our jobs harder in some ways, but it may force us to spend a little more time reading, reflecting, and even planning. And I guess that brings me back to the point I was making a few weeks ago: learn to adapt to what’s happening in your world, and you might find that God is giving you an opportunity.
1.Where did you live between the ages of 8 and 13, and what were the winters like?
2.How was your home heated during that time?
3.What was the center of warmth in your home during that time? (It could be a place, person, or time of day)
4.When did God become a “warm person” to you, and how did it happen?
Over the years I’ve learned to expect both conventional and surprising results from those questions, and this year was no exception. One thing that kept coming up was that most of us remembered winters as being more severe when we were growing up than we have experienced lately.
Of course I found myself wondering how much of that was accurate and how much the effect of the passing of time, blizzards and snowdrifts increasing in our memory until they assume nearly mythical proportions. Dylan Thomas, in his beautiful memoir, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, writes, “I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six.” After all, we only have snow at Christmas about half the time in Iowa, yet our memories all tend to be of white Christmases.
Well. This is turning out to be a real old-fashioned Iowa winter with two- and three-day blizzards, messing up travel plans, forcing churches to cancel services—this is the first time I can remember canceling Christmas Eve services in 30+ years of ministry—and straining the already-strained budgets of towns, counties, businesses and churches as we cope with finding places for all the snow.
Interestingly, all the people I’ve talked to, even the family who went without electricity for three days, seem to be taking it all in stride, finding things to celebrate and be thankful for in the middle of some mighty serious weather. We talked, we read, we huddled together for warmth, we shoveled and scraped and ran snowblowers, and in spite of everything, we enjoyed Christmas.
As pastors, this weather makes our jobs harder in some ways, but it may force us to spend a little more time reading, reflecting, and even planning. And I guess that brings me back to the point I was making a few weeks ago: learn to adapt to what’s happening in your world, and you might find that God is giving you an opportunity.
Monday, December 21, 2009
The Longest Night
I’m writing this on the first day of winter, December 21, which makes tonight the longest night of the year. We’ll be having a Longest Night service tonight, not so much to commemorate the Winter Solstice as to acknowledge the sense of loss and loneliness that some of us feel at this, “the most wonderful time of the year.” We’ll be missing our youngest son, who isn’t able to be with us this year, and if the weather does what they say it might, our middle son and his wife may not make it, either. Of course not seeing a family member is a lot less serious than losing a family member, and everyone who has been through that can testify that holidays can be difficult, especially the first Christmas after the loss.
At the Crawford County Hospice Tree of Lights ceremony on December 1, the speaker shared a story about how her grandmother’s noodles were the highlight of Christmas dinner for all the years she was growing up. Then Grandma died, and when Christmas came along that year, one of the sisters offered to make the noodles. The speaker said that as they all sat down to Christmas dinner, she took one look at the bowl of noodles and began to cry. It’s often the small things that are the most poignant.
As the Church of Jesus Christ we ought to be experts at dealing with loss. We have several ways of supporting people when they lose a loved one from cards to memorial gifts to the funeral dinner. But we don’t often acknowledge the losses that are harder to pin down. Having gone through two periods of unemployment in my life, I know something of the sinking feeling that brings; it’s almost a loss of self, as though my job helps tell me who I am. The changes our communities have seen over the past few years are a kind of death, and while we keep hoping they’ll come back, we know it won’t be the same.
Well, all this is kind of a downer at Christmas, but if we are going to celebrate with any kind of integrity we have to acknowledge that our celebrations are imperfect because we live in a fallen world. We are surrounded by loss, even as we live in what Titus calls the blessed hope, a text I hope everyone will read on Christmas Eve.
Scholars suggest that the accepted date for Christmas, December 25, came about by attraction to a Roman festival, the Feast of the Unconquered Sun. As the shortest day of the year came and went, the days grew longer and people celebrated the changing of the year. Winter is on its way out; Spring will come, even though it’s months away. The Church in its wisdom seized on that date to celebrate the Sun of Righteousness, who rises with healing in his wings (Malachi 4:2, an image used by Charles Wesley in “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”). The wisdom of that decision is seen year after year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, as we celebrate the birth of Christ at just the time when the earth is at its lowest point. A candle is that much brighter when it is lit in the darkness.
May the candles of Christmas light the way for you this year, and may your celebration be filled with joy.
At the Crawford County Hospice Tree of Lights ceremony on December 1, the speaker shared a story about how her grandmother’s noodles were the highlight of Christmas dinner for all the years she was growing up. Then Grandma died, and when Christmas came along that year, one of the sisters offered to make the noodles. The speaker said that as they all sat down to Christmas dinner, she took one look at the bowl of noodles and began to cry. It’s often the small things that are the most poignant.
As the Church of Jesus Christ we ought to be experts at dealing with loss. We have several ways of supporting people when they lose a loved one from cards to memorial gifts to the funeral dinner. But we don’t often acknowledge the losses that are harder to pin down. Having gone through two periods of unemployment in my life, I know something of the sinking feeling that brings; it’s almost a loss of self, as though my job helps tell me who I am. The changes our communities have seen over the past few years are a kind of death, and while we keep hoping they’ll come back, we know it won’t be the same.
Well, all this is kind of a downer at Christmas, but if we are going to celebrate with any kind of integrity we have to acknowledge that our celebrations are imperfect because we live in a fallen world. We are surrounded by loss, even as we live in what Titus calls the blessed hope, a text I hope everyone will read on Christmas Eve.
Scholars suggest that the accepted date for Christmas, December 25, came about by attraction to a Roman festival, the Feast of the Unconquered Sun. As the shortest day of the year came and went, the days grew longer and people celebrated the changing of the year. Winter is on its way out; Spring will come, even though it’s months away. The Church in its wisdom seized on that date to celebrate the Sun of Righteousness, who rises with healing in his wings (Malachi 4:2, an image used by Charles Wesley in “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing”). The wisdom of that decision is seen year after year, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, as we celebrate the birth of Christ at just the time when the earth is at its lowest point. A candle is that much brighter when it is lit in the darkness.
May the candles of Christmas light the way for you this year, and may your celebration be filled with joy.
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