Hearing the Music

I Need Jesus

Why is it that we have such a hard time loving people that we disagree with? These people could be close friends or family, they could be leaders in the company we work for or of the country we live in. However these people come into our lives we often experience them as our enemy, rather than as someone with whom we share a bond. What do I mean by that? What kind of bond do we share with "these people"? This answer is not original to me, but when we experience another as our enemy, part of the problem, perhaps the core of the problem, is that we believe that they need Jesus more than we do. We forget the basic tenet of the Gospel that all are equal at the foot of the cross. This is the bond that we share with all humanity: all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. When we properly account for this fact, only to find ourselves gloriously rescued, the result can never be a prideful looking down on another, but rather, as Paul puts it in our text for Sunday, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned” (Romans 12:3). This sober judgment is the heart of Gospel living and will change our churches and our world! Singer songwriter Nathan Partain puts it this way: 

"Now I say, “Glory! Hallelujah!”, I’m so glad to be redeemed!
To be so desperate for Jesus and so gloriously weak,
I do not ever want to stray from the Community of Need,
O may I never leave dependence or forsake my Food and Drink,
I need Jesus. Oh, I need Jesus. I need Jesus. Oh, I need Jesus."

And so, we belong to the Community of the Redeemed. It is amazing how much God has entrusted to this community and the extent of the gifts that he has given to his Church. We will be looking at these more closely on Sunday (Romans 12:3-8). We will also be experiencing the receipt of one of these gifts as we install Addison as an associate pastor. I know for some this is kind of confusing. Addison is already one of our pastors. Why are we installing him? The answer is that in our ecclesial policy, as we have called him as an associate pastor, his relationship to the church has changed. As an assistant pastor he was basically an employee of the Session and not a member of the Session. Now he is called by the congregation and is a full member of the Session. We mark this with an installation and invite you to be a part of it (at our 6 pm service) and certainly invite you to continue to pray for Addison and Lynnette as they continue their life among us with this new relationship to Christ Church.

Don’t forget to sign up for one of our services this week. Please continue to be in prayer for the many dynamics involved with our moving inside. As you can imagine, folks at Christ Church fall along a spectrum of comfortability with being inside, wearing masks, etc…. Once again we come back to that central truth, we all need Jesus as we navigate the fraught nature of these days.

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Continuing Discipleship

Malcolm Gladwell, early in his book Talking to Strangers, tells a story of how Cuba duped the CIA, feeding false information to the US with a couple dozen double agents. Interestingly, over the course of the years while they were being duped, CIA agents would have opportunity to administer lie detector tests to the Cuban double agents. On a number of occasions the Cubans failed the polygraphs and the Cuban scheme could have been found out, but the American agents were so sure of their own tradecraft that they dismissed the lie detector results that contradicted their own beliefs. Pride, they say, goes before a fall.

In contrast to the cocksure agents consider Dr. J.I. Packer. Dr. Packer passed away about a month ago at the age of 93. Over the years he has helped many to know God better through his teaching, preaching and writing. But far from arrogance and pride, listen to these words, from one of his last books, Weakness is the Way:

“When the world tells us, as it does, that everyone has a right to a life that is easy, comfortable, and relatively pain-free, a life that enables us to discover, display, and deploy all the strengths that are latent within us, the world twists the truth right out of shape. That was not the quality of life to which Christ’s call led him, nor was it Paul’s calling, nor is it what we are called to in the twenty-first century. For all Christians, the likelihood is rather that as our discipleship continues, God will make us increasingly weakness-conscious and pain-aware, so that we may learn with Paul that when we are conscious of being weak, then—and only then—may we become truly strong in the Lord. And should we want it any other way?” 

Let me repeat his thought, “as our discipleship continues, God will make us increasingly weakness-conscious and pain-aware”. This, of course, is not an end in itself, but rather it is the path to knowing God. It is the path to understanding and appreciating His strength. God chooses the weak things of this world to shame the strong and the foolish things to expose those who think themselves wise (cf. 1 Cor. 1:18-30), it is only when we are weak that we truly are strong (2 Cor. 12:9,10) therefore Paul says that he will boast only in his weakness (2 Cor. 11:30). These are hard lessons to learn. May God help us along the way.

One way that he helps us is through his word. This week we will continue meeting outside on our grounds. Bring a chair to set up with your church family or stay in or near your car, either way, we gather together as God’s people to worship and to be fed from his word. Going forward we plan to continue these outdoor services along with our online worship guides for as long as we can into the fall (see Session Summary update in bulletin). In the word this week we will look at an intense story from the life of Elisha found in 2 Kings 6:24-7:20. It is a story in which the strong and mighty are eclipsed by the unclean and unnamed, as God’s word through the prophet once again brings life. I can’t wait to unfold it with you!

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Happy Anniversary

Whose anniversary are we celebrating? Why, ours, of course! That’s right, 6 years ago this coming Sunday I was installed as minister of Christ Church. It is hard to believe that 6 yrs have elapsed. Since we have been here we have had 4 kids graduate from high school. We have fostered about a dozen kids and the Lord has added Moses to our family. We have been in your homes, you have been in ours. We have seen God work in our church community; in exciting ways and in ways that have stretched us. We have met each other on mountaintops and in valleys. We have been the source of one another’s delight and we have been the occasion of each other’s discouragement. These are the realities of life together. By God’s grace we will have many more years to search out the scriptures for the deep things of grace and have the opportunity to practice them together in our community.

While these occasions do not always call for outward celebration or even recognition, I do try to use them as an opportunity for reflection. Right now the thing I feel the most weight of is the calling to serve God’s people. I have been an ordained minister for over 20 years now and I can honestly say I have never experienced a season like this one. The disruption and uncertainty brought about by the pandemic and the various responses to it, the divisions that exists politically in our country AND in our churches over proper response to cultural issues, the pain being expressed as these divided groups hurt one another, the frailty and fallenness on display amongst my fellow brothers in the ministry; each of these points to a desperate need for divine intervention. With Isaiah I say “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips” (Is. 6:5). With Paul I cry out, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Cor. 2:16)

But here is the hope, “thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere” (2 Cor. 2:14). We look at our selves and we see feet of clay and hearts of wax. But, when we keep our eyes on Jesus, our covenant making and covenant keeping Lord, there is always hope. Remember, the light has shone in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it (John 1:5)! It is this Light that guides us. It is this Light that sustains and shines through us. So let us together keep seeking the Light. Let us keep short accounts with one another that we may be long on grace. And may it be that God would spread through us the fragrance of the Gospel.