3/29/10

Imperfect Praise

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased! ~Luke 2:23
 
Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest! ~Luke 19:38
 
These two verses from the book of Luke frame Jesus' earthly life. The first, of course, was the song of the angels as they announced the birth of the Messiah. The second comes from an incident a week before Jesus' death as the people praise their Messiah as he enters Jerusalem riding on a colt.
 
This second passage from Luke 19 was our pastor's Palm Sunday text. If you've ever been in church (or anyplace there was some instruction) and a lightbulb suddenly came on as things fell into place for you, then you know what I was experiencing yesterday morning as Pastor Vos opened this text to us.
 
It's interesting how similar both these praise verses are--coming at the beginning and end of Jesus' life. But there is an important difference. In the first, God--through the angels--announces the birth of his son and declares that there is peace on earth. In the second verse, the people get things--as our pastor explained--upside down.
 
The people knew their Bible, he explained. They were aware of the prophecies regarding the Messiah. So when Jesus came riding into Jerusalem from the east, on a colt, they were excited. Here was salvation! They thought that within a week, the Romans would be cast out, and Jesus would be on the throne. Their nation would be restored to them, and they would no longer be slaves to Rome. In their excitement, they declared peace in heaven--upside down and imperfect praise, for only God, from heaven, can declare peace on earth.
 
And yet Jesus accepts their imperfect, upside-down praise. In their ignorant arrogance, they were offering their praise for the wrong kind of Messiah, for a Messiah who would have delivered far less than they really needed. So how could he accept this praise? The same way he accepts our imperfect praise today--he atoned for it on the cross the next week.
 
And in the next verse, Luke 19:41, our Lord weeps for the city that does not know the things that make for its peace.

3/25/10

Take Time to Be Holy?

Take time to be holy, speak oft with thy Lord;


Abide in Him always, and feed on His Word.


Make friends of God’s children, help those who are weak,


Forgetting in nothing His blessing to seek.

~William Dunn Longstreet

It's time to revisit  my short-lived yet popular (with at least two or three people) series: "Not So Great Hymns of the Faith," in which I question how it is that Reformed people are able to suspend everything they've ever learned in catechism classes and heard in sermons about their confessions to sing silly hymns with bad theology and cloying tunes that date from the late 1800s. If you want to review the previous posts in the series, you can find them here.

I was recently struck by the silliness of the above hymn when we sang it during song service at our church. (Song service is a somewhat strange tradition to me since I didn't grow up Reformed. No one quite knows its purpose. In our area United Reformed churches, song service occurs for about ten minutes before the actual service begins, and the congregation sings songs from a songbook other than the Psalter Hymnal that we use for worship. It's kind of a hymn free-for-all.) I've probably sung this hymn hundreds of times in the past, but this time I realized how bizarre it actually is. Take time to be holy? I visualized my Google calendar, trying to find an hour here or there between dentist appointments, haircuts, meetings at work, and Bible studies to squeeze in some  holiness.

Of course holiness is to characterize our entire Christian walk--it's not something we take time to do as if there were starts and stops. Calvin says, "Of the many excellent recommendations, is there any better than the key principle: Be thou holy, for I am holy?" He reminds us that holiness means full obedience to Christ, and our holiness should lead us to "exhibit the character of Christ in our lives, for what can be more effective than this one stirring consideration?" Holiness, then, is not something to make time for; it is what we are to exhibit every waking moment of our lives.

While the hymnwriter encourages us to engage in the activities of someone who wants to live a life of holiness, it feels like he may have missed this point about holiness that Calvin makes: "Holiness is not a merit by which we can obtain communion with God, but a gift of Christ, which enables us to cling to him, and to follow him."

With its focus on our activities rather than God's greatness, this messy hymn has strange lyrics that definitely place it in the category of a not so great hymn of the faith. And if you want to read something really good on the theological ideas that have shaped so many of the not-so-great hymns of the faith, read Michael Horton's article in this month's Outlook.

3/17/10

When Character Was King

Until relatively recently, I've had little to no interest in politics. But now that the two men in my life make it a regular topic of conversation at the dinner table (and pretty much anywhere there's a supply of oxygen that makes breathing and talking possible), I don't have much choice. And these are interesting, albeit frustrating, political times. It's easy to become cynical and discouraged, to wonder if there's anyone in Washington--in government anywhere--who believes in principle, who loves America, who really cares about doing what's best for our country and its people.

And that's why I bought Jonathan Peggy Noonan's biography of Ronald Reagan, When Character Was King, for his birthday last November. I wanted him to know that there have been presidents who stand for something, who have accomplished great things, who have earned the nation's and world's respect, who understand what it means to serve their country rather than use the office of president as a platform for demanding their next multimillion-dollar book deal.

I didn't know much about Ronald Reagan. He was actually the first president I voted for back in 1984. (And lest you're doing the math to try to figure out my age, I could have voted for him in 1980 but was a freshman in college, away from home and not interested enough to get an absentee ballot.) I'm not sure why I voted for him; I really didn't know much about him except that he was a Republican, and that's the candidate Christian, small-town Ohio girls vote for. I probably appreciated his anti-abortion stance at that point. At any rate, he won my vote. And in hindsight, I'm glad he did.

A couple of years ago, a friend lent us a documentary about Ronald Reagan. I hadn't realized what an amazing couple of terms he had served until I saw the documentary. Here was a politician who took a stand and wouldn't be swayed from it, who loved his country, who was dignified yet humble, who actually made this country a better place to live, who recognized evil in the world and wasn't afraid to call it that and fight it.

And so I took a big risk when I chose Noonan's biography for our book group to read. While I was voting for Reagan, the other members of my book group were playing Barbies and learning cursive writing. They had no awareness of hostages in Iran, Mr. Gorbachev (or the other Soviet leaders who preceded him),  Reagonomics, or Star Wars missile defense systems.

And yet the book--and Ronald Reagan--was a hit with the book group. Noonan writes with a lovely, flowing, eloquent style that makes you forget that you're reading nonfiction. Her story of Reagan reads like a novel. She begins where his life begins, telling the reader that all presidents come from something. She talks about his alcoholic father and Christian mother, the poverty he grew up in, his conscious choice to live optimistically rather than cynically, the Hollywood years and Reagan's first awareness and fight against the evils of communism.

Noonan, who was a speechwriter for Reagan, is passionate about her subject, and her admiration for this great leader shows as she describes the important events of his presidency. But the thing she wants you to know the most about her former boss is that he was a man of character: he was honest, humble, a man of integrity who kept his promises and served his nation well.

Sadly, there don't seem to be many Ronald Reagans in government today, although candidates in both parties have tried to present themselves as being in his tradition--a tribute to him that he was respected by members of both parties. It's an unfortunate reality that today, presidents aspire to be celebrities unlike in Reagan's time, when a celebrity became a president. One of the interesting points that Noonan makes about Reagan, and true conservatives, is that it's an uncomfortable thing for a conservative to seek power, because in gaining it, he or she will then work to decrease the power of the government. What a striking contrast Reagan makes to the power hungry, self-important, camera-seeking crowd that wants goverment control of every aspect of our lives.

I highly recommend this book, one of the best biographies I have read. It will inspire you to know that America has benefitted from such a great president, but it will sadden you as consider the state of Washington politics today.

3/8/10

Nowhere

About a month ago, our church's youth group came over to hang out in our basement for games and fun. Our basement is a large area with lots of room, and we had set up tables for games and snacks. Jonathan had borrowed his grandparents' Wii for the evening, and we have a separate room with a ping-pong table. There were about twenty people (including the leaders), and there was no shortage of activities. So I found it a curious thing that every time I looked at one of the girls, she was pulling out her cell phone--obviously texting someone who wasn't there.

I couldn't help but feel a little bit bad for this girl. With everything that we had to offer here that evening, it wasn't enough. Not satisfied to be here in this moment, enjoying the friends and activities that were here, she kept looking for something or someone else outside, something more.

She's not unlike many other teens and even adults out there who try to escape the here and now. Not satisfied just to be in their cars driving someplace, many drivers must talk on their phone at the same time. Not content just to be shopping, shoppers must be conversing with others on their phones at the same time that they're checking out the clothing racks. The need for constant entertainment has become the school's nightmare, as students leave the now of their classrooms to text their friends--who may be sitting somewhere else in the same classroom.

Henry and I were at a local Indian restaurant Friday night, and we noticed two large flat-screen TVs on the wall. They seemed out of place with the Indian decor. Henry observed, "It used to be that eating out was the entertainment. Now there needs to be entertainment at the place of entertainment."

And that led to his other insightful observation of the weekend, which brings me back to the girl who was here with the youth group and the demand for more and more entertainment. For this young lady, to be here and to enjoy the companionship of her friends and the activities we offered was not enough. Through her texting, she was attempting to be someplace else, with someone else. She wasn't really here, and she wasn't really with her friend. Really, she was nowhere, with no one. She wasn't with the kids here, and she wasn't with her friend.

While I appreciate some of the conveniences that modern technologies have brought to our lives (I'm typing this on my laptop in my comfy chair), it is a little disconcerting to see where some of this is leading us. Clearly many are controlled by the technology rather than controlling it. They are its slaves. And it's never satisfying to be a slave. Slaves desire the freedom to be where they want to be, to be with the people of their choice. And slaves to technology demonstrate this restlessness, this dissatisfaction. The irony is, their attempts to break free of the here and now lead them nowhere, to no one.

Hopefully as this Facebooking, iTouching generation matures, it will break free of the slavery of technology and put it in its proper place. Technology is a good and useful thing, a blessing of God that can make our lives easier and more efficient. As our taskmaster, though, it robs us of our ability to find contentment in the here and now.