A few thoughts on living "off the page"

It was one of those late night bickering sessions on the television. You know the type: four panelists from diverse points of view are sitting on easy chairs in a semi-circle. A host with an attitude attempts to incite them into a conversation, picking whatever fights might be entertaining. This is an unfortunate form of entertainment, mostly because the panelists are treated as caricatures, and somebody wants to bulldoze over their cherished beliefs.

This particular show was a thinly-veiled attack on Christianity. Within the first few minutes, the host had ridiculed one of the guests, labeled him as an extremist, and smugly made it known that he was smarter than everybody else in that studio. At the lowest point of the exchange, he pointed a finger at the Protestant minister on his show and said, “You sound like one of those people who says, ‘unless it’s in the Bible, I don’t believe it.’” I turned off the television, but my mind kept working on that supposed insult.

I love the Bible and work with it regularly. I believe the scriptures narrate our faith, in the languages and thought forms of the times when these documents were written. They were inscribed with passion. As one early witness declares, “We declare to you what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life.” (1 John 1). They were also written with great care and excellence. The letter to the Hebrews is written in the highest form of classical Greek, the stories of the Gospel of John are arranged with great care, and the sagas of 1 and 2 Samuel are narrative masterpieces. But it needs to be said that faith is always lived “off the page.”

Christian faith existed pretty well without a Bible for the first sixty or so years of its emergence. The New Testament Gospels were not written down until the church’s cemetery began to fill up, and there was the risk of losing all the stories about Jesus. Yet as important as those stories were and are, the church knew there is always Something more important than the Book - and that is the One that the Book is talking about. Christians know that Jesus is alive. The stories about Jesus teach us what to look for. They train us in how to see the invisible Christ. They prepare us to live in his presence, both today and forever.

It’s important to read the Bible every day. Otherwise we are tempted to forget who we are. At the same time, if we keep our noses in the Book all the time, we will bump into the furniture. The hard work of living as disciples of Jesus is to interpret what we read in the day-to-day realities of our lives. The parable of the prodigal son (Luke 15) becomes real when family members compete with one another. When we hear the stories of Jesus on trial during Holy Week, they challenge us to rethink what real justice would look like. And when we hear how the Lord’s tomb was found empty, that news can awaken us to live as if death has been defeated, as if brutality itself is on trial, as if Christ is reigning until his last enemy is put under his feet.

Here's the punchline: read the Book, but live off the page.

A week that I never want to miss

For eighteen years in a row, I've spent a week with a group of fifteen other preachers from around the country. We gather in a place where we can study the Bible and do some advance work on a year's worth of sermons.

We call ourselves "The Homiletical Feast," and nobody goes hungry. Here's a picture from this year's gathering, which took place this past week. We share a lot of ideas, tell a lot of stories, and swap insights on the Bible. In the process, we have become good friends.

We schedule our gathering for the third week of January, which qualifies us for great off-season rates in Florida. A lot of friends think we go down there to play all week. Well, not quite.

The fact is, good preaching takes a lot of preparation, and much of it happens when congregations aren't looking. For the fifteen or twenty minutes each week that each of us stands in a pulpit, there's a lot of spade work just out of sight from the congregation.

So this is how we do it: thinking together, praying together, all the time chewing on scripture. And I wouldn't trade it for the world.

In praise of Meg

My "baby" is twelve years old. She loves to read long novels, and keeps her mind nimble by playing challenging games on the computer.

Mostly she likes to sing - and does it well.

Last weekend, her children's choir sang with the local symphony. It was the second year that she has been asked to do this, and she is radiant when she does it.

Her current career aspiration is to become a vocal music teacher. College is only six years away, after all, so she is beginning to scout the prospects of this line of work . . .

She also knows exactly what she wants for Christmas. Is it any wonder?

Imagine There's a Heaven

Thinking about a dream-like poem from today's scripture text (Isaiah 65:17-25), I remember a monument in Manhattan. It's near the corner of 72^nd Street and Central Park West. The peaceful spot is shaped as a teardrop, set among a grove of elm trees. At the intersection of three paths is a mosaic of black and white stones imported from Italy. In the center of the mosaic is a single word: “Imagine.”

Visitors come from around the world. They sit quietly, and often leave behind flowers in the shape of a peace sign. Sometimes they use strawberries rather than flowers. It is called, in fact, the Strawberry Fields memorial – and it is right across the street from the apartment building where musician John Lennon lived.

John Lennon is the one who wrote a song called “Imagine.” It was a defining song for my generation. I grew up among 1960's dreamers, among a generation that tried to imagine a world of unity and peace. We had parents and ministers who heard the first line (“Imagine there’s no heaven”) and stopped listening to the rest of the tune. What they missed is what John Lennon was trying to envision, in his irreverent way. He could imagine a time and place when religious people stopped killing one another, countries gave up on war, and rich and poor were no longer divided.

Ironically this peace song stirred up death threats against the composer. John Lennon was gunned down at forty years old, right across the street from where the Central Park memorial announces the word: “Imagine.”

As for me, I’m not ready to give up on heaven. I want to imagine as faithfully as I can that there is such a place, and I imagine you do, too. It taps into the great hopes of the human race, both of this life and the life to come. If we believe that God is perfectly good, it’s not a far reach to imagine that wherever God dwells is a place of perfect goodness.

Isaiah draws such a picture in chapter 65 of his book. No more weeping, no more crying. Children grow up in safety to a ripe old age. There is a continuity of generations. No more of the disruption of exile: if you build a house, you get to live in it. If you plant a vineyard, you will enjoy its wine. People will be rooted. They will flourish in well-being. This is one of the great pictures of peace in the Hebrew Bible, perhaps the clearest picture after the Garden of Eden.

No more hurt, no more destruction. God’s children live in complete delight, to the delight of their Maker. Can you imagine something like that?

Matthew, Blow Your Horn

That's my tall nephew Matt tooting on a trombone. He is a really fine musician. In one of God's little ironies, he loves jazz - - which drives his mother (my sister) crazy.

We went to hear him play a gig on a recent Friday night. It was a group of high school students, and they were rocking out on old R&B hits. I knew all the words, mostly because they were tunes that I used to play when I wore a blue ruffled shirt with a Top 40 band back in the early '80's.

You know, as in, "She's a Brick...House."

Matt's high school music teacher is Dan Fabricius, a great soul who believes that music is best learned on the band stand. Dan put together this teenage band - without pay, off the clock - because he loves music and wants the world to have more musicians.

May the tribe increase.

Everybody has a shelf life

So I went into a religious bookstore yesterday, and immediately saw a sale rack. I never pass them up. I found a bargain or two and tucked them under my arm.

And then I saw two copies of my book of stewardship sermons. They have been marked down to "half off," which is cheaper than I can buy them from the publisher.

I take them to the sales clerk, who points out that they are close outs. "These are old books," she notes, "and they don't sell any more. It's time to take them off the shelves."

"Ah yes," I say, "but in a used book store, we often pay top dollar for valuable books."

"Well, that's the problem," she says. "There are too many religious books published, and a lot of them don't have any lasting value. So we need to clear them off our shelves on a regular basis." Touche.

As I mulled over whether I should say anything more, she noticed the name on my credit card. "You have the same name as the author!" she exclaimed, as I smiled silently and waited for her to make the connection. She didn't. I suppose she's not accustomed to having a has-been author in her store.

Meanwhile, let me make this invitation: If you want to buy a copy, click here. You'll notice that Amazon has a lot of used copies, some of them for only a couple of bucks. Curiously, some are also for sale at more than the original price. Hmm...

One can draw a number of lessons from this:

• Some people value your work, some do not.
• Some people once valued your work, but don't any longer.
• Sometimes people value you only if your name is the same as the author of the book you're buying (even if it's you).
• Somebody else may inflate your value if they think that they can get additional money out of unsuspecting fools.
  
• Those who sell books often don't have a sufficient regard for the labor that it took to write them.
• Just because your book is marked down or overpriced doesn't mean that you are less or more valuable in the sight of God.
  
• The thrill of getting in your name in print will not last forever; somebody has to make room for Joel Osteen.
• Everybody has a shelf life, including Joel Osteen. Here today, gone tomorrow, but the Word of our God will stand forever.

Thank God for Her

Last Wednesday, it didn’t seem the same. I was leading a communion service at Abington Manor, as I’ve done each month for the past ten years or so. Mary Clark wasn’t there to assist me. She had passed away after a long illness.

Mary was one of the very first residents of that local nursing home, living there for twenty years. A number of years ago, my friend Bob London observed her compassionate care for the other residents. Knowing her to be a Presbyterian, he said, “I’ll bet you were ordained a deacon in your church.”

“Oh no,” she replied. “And I could never be a deacon either, since I live in a nursing home.”

It was the kind of challenge that Bob always rises to meet. After a conversation with her pastor and a congregational vote, Mary was elected a Presbyterian deacon, with the understanding that her ministry would be in residence at Abington Manor. She was ordained there in the activity room, served with distinction, and I pause to honor her life and ministry.

Mary worked the hallways, offering words of encouragement wherever they were needed. Rarely to be found in her own room, she would “drop by” and be a friendly presence to the residents, with particular care shown to those who had difficulty adjusting to institutional life. She was an advocate for fellow residents, their rights, and their abilities. By all accounts, she was also the best Presbyterian bingo caller they ever had, and she saved all her bingo winnings to donate to her church.

For me, she was the Bread Lady, holding the tray each month and gently encouraging all to take in the Body of Christ. She would not distinguish between Protestant and Catholic, able or disabled. Sometimes she would wake up a worshiper and say, “It’s Holy Communion; take it, because we need it.” That remains about the best invitation to the Lord’s Table that I know.

We are called to serve Christ wherever we are – that’s one of the lessons Mary lived and taught by example. While I mourn her absence, I entrust her to the power of Christ’s resurrection. That little piece of bread that she took at communion was the appetizer for the heavenly banquet she now enjoys.

“Sometimes God drops a handkerchief,” Frederick Buechner writes, “and these people are called saints.” On the brink of All Saints’ Day, let us give thanks for the faithful folks we have known and live by their example.