January 23, 2012 by djackson.

(Note: Pastor Grover Pinson of Windsor Park Baptist Church in Corpus Christi, my home congregation, invited me to preach in his absence on Sunday, January 22, continuing his series through the Gospel of Luke, in which we have reached chapter five. This is a slightly expanded version of that sermon.)

Introduction

I have a doctoral colleague named Layne Wallace. He is the pastor of the Rosemary Baptist Church in Raleigh, North Carolina and he and his wife Stephanie have a six-year-old daughter named Maddie. Recently, Maddie and her mother had a conversation that went like this:

Steph: Maddie, God said to honor your dad and mom. 

Maddie: I pretty sure He didn’t mean anything by that.

Now, the problem with correcting Maddie’s theology is that she is employing a strategy of biblical interpretation that most of use far too often – what Geoff Smith calls the Jesus-was-only-kidding hermeneutic. In contrast to that, our pastor started the new year off with a study of the Gospel of Luke through the lens of Romans 8.29, which tells us that we are “predestined to become conformed to the image” of Jesus. This means that whatever we observe Jesus doing or saying, however we observe Jesus living in the Gospel of Luke, we should consider that goal and the standard for our own everyday life.

But most of us are pretty sure God didn’t mean anything by that.

Dallas Willard, by contrast, invites us to imagine receiving a flyer from our church announcing a six-week seminar on how to bless someone who spits on you and to really mean it. Or live without indulging lust or covetousness. Or quit condemning people, or be free from anger. He envisions a church mission statement which reads: “We teach all who seriously commit themselves to Jesus how to do everything he said to do.”

In our text, Jesus heals a leper. The Bible says that God has predestined me to be just like Jesus, meaning I can do anything Jesus can do. Do I believe that God really means anything by that? To wrestle with that question, I want to look at two features of this story: One thing Jesus does that I can’t do yet, and one thing Jesus does that I can do but usually don’t.

I can’t heal lepers . . . yet.

Calvin Miller tells the story of his first sermon, preached at the age of seventeen in an old folks’ home in his little hometown Enid, Oklahoma. He preached for three minutes on this same passage, most of which centered on a graphic, Steven King-esque description of leprosy and its effects on the body. Dr. Miller pronounces the sermon a success because, he claims, there has not been a single case of leprosy in Garfield County, Oklahoma, in the past six decades.

Well, I won’t go into that kind of vivid sensationalism. Suffice it to say that leprosy was a communicable disease with no known treatment and which was almost always fatal. Add to this that the Old Testament often associates it with punishment for sin and you have a pretty miserable situation. And Jesus heals him. With a single touch.

Of course, we don’t see a lot of leprosy these days, perhaps thanks to Calvin Miller’s powerful preaching. But can you think of another rampant, incurable disease that leads to loathsome physical decay and is often associated with the sufferer’s own sin? The modern equivalent would be the ability to heal AIDS with a single touch.

Now, I can’t do that – and neither can you, I’m betting. If you can, let me sit down and you come up and preach the sermon. Though I’m betting, again, that if you can, you are also conformed to Jesus’ pattern in the rest of the story, and are doing the whole thing as black ops. But I should be able to do that – and so should you, if you are a Christian, predestined by God Almighty to be just like Jesus.

Moreover, we need to be able to do this – not so we can all have ice cream white suits and coifed hair and our own cable shows and custom prayer cloths. No, we need to be able to do this for at least two reasons: first of all because there is a huge amount of suffering in this world among people Jesus loves, and secondly because it would be a powerful way to show people how much Jesus loves them and what kind of God we ask them to embrace. Problem is, most of us aren’t up to the job. Dallas Willard warns that for most of us – and I’d include myself – even a grande-sized answer to prayer would be enough to vault us into weeks of spiritual smugness. A venti or a trenta would ruin us for good!

So what do we do? How do we get to the place where we not only can do what Jesus did, but can survive it? Well, look at a couple of hints in the text – maybe three: a context discipleship and the practice of two disciplines.

A Context of Discipleship

Never forget that the writers of the gospels were not just evangelists; they were theologians who arranged their stories to emphasize a particular aspect of Jesus. In addition to this, Luke was a gifted writer; one scholar has said that Luke could have taken his place in a room filled with the greatest writers of his day. If Woody Allen had made the movie “Midnight in Paris” in the first century, Luke would have been a character.

Now, here’s the point: Luke, as an intentional theologian and a gifted writer and (I probably should add) under the direct inspiration of the Holy Spirit, has messed with the chronological order of his material. Matthew 8.2 locates this story clearly just after Jesus preached the Sermon on the Mount. Luke just says “while he was in one of the cities,” which is a sort of first century formula for, “Once upon a time.” (You get the same thing with the next miracle in v. 17, “on one of those days.”) So instead of arranging these stories chronologically, Luke arranges them logically, and we need to try to figure out what that logic is.

Notice the pattern of the chapter: Jesus does a miracle (v.1-7), then calls a disciple (v.8-11). And the miracle (a miraculous catch of fish) defines what discipleship means (you will be catching men). Next, Jesus does two miracles which both involve healing a sick body (v.12-16, 17-26), then calls a disciple (v.27-39). The first miracle relates to healing someone whose disease is associated with sin. In the second miracle, Jesus outright claims to forgive sin. And those miracles define the call to discipleship because Jesus calls Matthew, a notorious sinner, in the context of being a spiritual physician, as the parable he uses shows. And in both cases, the new disciple becomes a part of the existing group of disciples with no natural affinity: Peter, the Tea Party tax payer and Matthew the Big Government IRS agent must now be fellow-citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven!
My point is that being fully conformed to Christ always happens in the context of discipleship, and it is a discipleship that relates to how we currently live our lives and it is a discipleship that includes other disciples. So you can’t use Jesus like an app. on your iPhone. If you want to act like Jesus, you must walk with Jesus in the context of a gathered body of fellow-disciples. I can’t heal AIDs with a touch – yet – but I can declare myself a serous, if novice, disciple of Christ in the context of my daily life and I can associate with other disciples even if they are unlike me.

A Practice of Secrecy

Jesus’ language here is really a little harsh. “He ordered him to tell no one.” It’s the word for a commanding officer sending an order down the line. “Go and show yourself to the priest.” Another stern term; it’s the same word Luke just used to describe how the leprosy “left him.” Jesus effectively tells him, “Shut up and get out of here!” Why would he do that? Well, it is a basic teaching of Jesus that we practice such good works as giving, fasting, and prayer in secret (Mt 6.4, 6, 18). So we see Jesus practicing the spiritual discipline of serving in secret.

I can’t heal AIDs at a touch, but I can, say, pay a bill for a friend – or even an enemy – in such a way that nobody finds out. But that’s a tough one! Richard Foster accurately observes that, “the flesh whines against service, but screams against hidden service.” But evidently if I want to be able to heal like Jesus, I will have to practice it. And if I get good enough at it, maybe the Holy Spirit can trust me with at least a grande-sized miracle and I will have the ability to keep it secret and thus not destroy my witness through pride.

A Practice of Solitude

Well, this guy breaks radio silence, outs Jesus as a miracle worker, Facebook and Twitter blow up, and Jesus is suddenly a famous healer. And what does Jesus do? But Jesus Himself would often slip away to the wilderness to pray. The King James reads, “He withdrew himself,” as if it was something he did just this one time to get away from everybody. But the New American Standard gets it right, because the grammar of the phrase indicates an unusual action (himself) and a habitual action (would often).
Now, I can’t heal AIDs at a touch, but I can decide to reject the normal behavior of my culture by regularly going for long walks all by myself. We call this the discipline of solitude. Evidently if I want to be fully conformed to Jesus, I am going to have to spend some time all alone, with no companions, no books, no iPod, no TV or radio – just me and God, which most of the time will feel like just me because, in my experience, God tends to be a silent partner in these little get-togethers. “It was an important day in my life,” admits Dallas Willard, “when I at last understood that if he needed forty days in the wilderness at one point, I very well likely could use three or four.”
Who knows? If I develop the ability to spend an hour alone, then the Holy Spirit can trust me with at least a grande-sized miracle, knowing that if word gets out I will instinctively run away where I can’t hear all the praise and get all full of myself.

So that’s the plan: View myself as a disciple of Jesus – an actual trainee in being just like Him – in the setting of other such disciples, and practice the same spiritual disciplines I see in Jesus’ life and elsewhere in Scripture. And my goal in all of this is to be able to show the world what God is like by healing AIDs victims of a deadly disease that most people think is their own fault.

That’s the thing I can’t do yet. But there is something I can do already, and if I don’t do it, I don’t see why the Holy Spirit should let me move on to the stuff I can’t do.

I can touch lepers . . . already.

“And he stretched out his hand and touched him.” Jesus didn’t have to do that. In Luke 17 he heals ten times this many lepers at a safe distance. Not only that, but Luke says this guy was “covered with leprosy.” Luke was a physician, so he knew what that meant – understood the disgusting physical deformity, the smell, and the fear associated with a communicable disease. Some rabbis said you had to give a leper a six-foot berth, unless he was upwind, in which case it was one hundred. But Jesus touched first and healed second.

“And he stretched out his hand and touched him.” The verb is one of three that Luke could have used, and it is the most emphatic. It is the word used in John 1.1 which, in the superior old King James, describes Jesus as the one whom, “we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled.” Jesus didn’t just tap this guy with the tip of his finger, then holler for a wipe like Adrian Monk the OCD detective. No, he gripped, grasped, hugged and handled! He gave the guy a shiatsu deep-tissue massage! He rubbed, brushed, buffed, burnished, furbished, kneaded and nuzzled.

Now why would he do that? Well, look at the leper’s only line in the story: Lord, if You are willing, You can make me clean. This poor guy had been so rejected, so segregated, so isolated that he couldn’t believe that Jesus would want to heal him, even if Jesus could! I think that’s why Jesus told the man only after he touched the man. I think that’s why Jesus showed him he cared before he told him he cared.

Now I can’t heal AIDs with a single touch . . . yet. But I can already touch. And it seems to me that if I won’t do what I can already, there’s no real reason Jesus should enable me to do what I can’t. It seems that touching comes before healing, that doing what I already can comes before doing what I can’t yet.

I can touch. I can sign up for the church nursery and touch dirty diapers. I can go down to The Station and shake hands with and even hug people who don’t smell good, people nobody ever touches except perhaps to cuff ‘em and stuff ‘em and haul them off to jail. I can socialize with people who, it turns out, are lonely for a reason: C. S. Lewis said it is always so much easier to pray for a bore than to go visit him! I can even volunteer at the hospital or the AIDs clinic.

Conclusion

There is a lot of power in a touch. A lot of healing power.

Beach Conger was a big city doctor in a teaching hospital in San Francisco who developed a longing to practice a more personal brand of medicine. So he bought a country practice in Dumster, Vermont, switched coasts and became a small town physician. He purchased the practice from Old Doc Franklin, a true throwback who became a doctor when requirements were less stringent, and who had not kept up with the latest developments, but whom everybody loved, and whose patients all seemed to get better.

One day Muriel Blackington came to see Dr. Conger about her arthritis. He took her hands, glanced them over, then asked to see her knees. She refused, and he explained, with some irritation, that he had to perform a full examination in order to help her. He snapped that he’d already looked at her hands. She thrust them forward again.

“Looking don’t do ‘em any good,” she drawled. “Holding is what they want.”

“We sat there for a few minutes, our hands clasped awkwardly. Then she withdrew and stood up. ‘If you want to doctor in Dumster, you gotta learn to hold. That was Doc Franklin’s way.’ Without another word, she left.”

And that’s what the miracle of the incarnation is all about. If you wanna be a healer like the Great Physician, you gotta learn to hold. That is Jesus’ way.

Posted in General | No Comments »

January 8, 2012 by djackson.

(Note: Today Pastor Darren Sutton of Solomon’s Portico in Corpus Christi did me the honor of allowing me to preach. Here is the sermon I shared with the congregation.)

Well, we’ve had an interesting coincidence in our calendar this past holiday season: Both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day have fallen on successive Sundays. Today is also a significant day, though most of us don’t know it: This is the day in the ancient church calendar when Christians celebrated Jesus’ baptism by John in the Jordan, the story we’ve just read from the gospel of Mark.

It’s interesting to me that we put so much emphasis on Jesus’ birth and so little on his baptism. No less an authority than John Chrysostom, a great Christian preacher from the fourth century, thought it should be the other way around. “Because,” he argued, “Christ made Himself known to all — not then when He was born — but then when He was baptized.” That’s true: At Jesus’ birth God sent a glorious announcement – but only to a handful of shepherds, people nobody really liked anyway, and to the Wise Men, basiclly a group of theoretical physicists from some foreign university. They were like most scientists today: Nobody could figure out what they were talking about.

But Jesus’ baptism happened before everybody, because verse five says that “all the country of Judea was going out to him, and all the people of Jerusalem.” We’re not sure if everybody saw the miraculous signs associated with Jesus’ baptism. John 1.29-34 indicates that they probably did not. But everybody saw him get baptized.

So Jesus makes himself known to us in his baptism, and that means he makes God known to us in his baptism. We have three accounts of Jesus’ baptism and they all emphasize different details, but they all agree in quoting one phrase: “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” This means that the God Christians worship is the God we see in everything that Jesus says or does. And the first thing we see Jesus do is receive baptism as a part of a gathered assembly of worshipers. And I want to use that thought this morning as a basis to talk about why baptism matters and why church matters.

First, baptism matters because God calls us not to know about God but to know God. In his famous essay “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C. S. Lewis describes the difference between standing in the dark looking “at” a shaft of sunlight, and stepping into it looking “along” the same beam to the sun beyond. Lewis likens this experience to two ways of knowing: standing outside a thing and analyzing it, and stepping into the same thing and experiencing it.

Modernity, Lewis charges, assigns “reality” to the exterior view and dismisses the interior vision as fantasy. “But,” he cautions, “it is perfectly easy to go on all your life giving explanations of religion, love, morality, honour, and the like, without having been inside any of them.”

When it came to teaching us about God, Jesus makes it clear that he has not just come to tell us about God: He has come to show us God, to be God among us. As Jesus rises spluttering to the surface, Mark’s Gospel describes the sky-splitting descent of the dove: the Heavens “opening.” That is a violent verb. In Luke 5.36 it describes a shrunken patch ripping a thread-bare shirt. In John 21.11 it is the word for a record catch of fish shredding an over-burdened net (21.11). Best of all, Mark 15.38 uses this word to tell how, at Jesus’ death, the grace of God shredded the heavy curtain in the temple that kept sinful human beings from seeing the holiness of God.
Now think for a moment about what Mark wants us to see: At his baptism, Jesus undergoes a symbolic death and resurrection, and the sky – the boundary between Heaven and earth – splits and bathes Jesus in the presence of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. At Calvary, when Jesus experiences actual death, the curtain in the temple splits, signifying that now all of us can live in God’s unbroken presence. Jesus’ baptism prophesies that moment when his death for us on the cross will tear apart every rightful boundary that the law has woven between a loving Lord and fallen creatures.

And our baptism embraces by faith the fact that this has happened to us personally! That’s why Paul will write in Romans 6.4, “Therefore we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

Now, Christians have disagreed for centuries about baptism – about how it should be done and who should receive it and what it means. The first baptisms were by immersion of adult believers; everybody agrees about that. We Baptists believe that baptism symbolizes our salvation rather than making it happen. But the point I want to make there is that all Christians have always agreed that the very act of baptism, however and whenever done, means that I stop looking “at” the light of the Gospel and decide to step into that light and look “along” it. It becomes the path of my life to God. All Christians should be baptized because God calls us not to know about God but to know God.

Next, church matters because God calls us not just to know God but to make God known. As I said earlier, everybody witnessed Jesus’ baptism, though not everybody “got it.” Some saw one more soaking wet convert to a crazy street preacher. Some saw one more person like themselves, repenting of sin. John the Baptist, however, saw the Lamb of God come to take away the sin of the world. And John 1 records that because John saw that, he told Andrew, who told Simon Peter. Someone told Philip, who told Nathaniel. In other words, the direct result of Jesus’ baptism is the organization of a visible body of believers: a church.

I think this is important because I know your history, and I know that it has not been very easy for you to keep on being the church. And I want to commend you for even being here today, for continuing the struggle to bear witness to the world that Jesus saves.

By the way, it’s never been easy, for anybody. Jesus’ “church” has a core group of twelve: One betrays him, one denies him, and nine of the remaining ten desert him and only one – as far as we know – shows up at the cross, and if it wasn’t for the women, we’d never know he had risen! If you’re looking for a church without problems, forget it. Hebrews 10.25 commands us not to forsake assembling, but to encourage one another instead. Do you think the author wrote that because it was easy for the church in that day? If it was, why bother writing it? Jesus only mentions the local church one time, and that’s in the context of kicking out a disobedient member! (Mt 18.15-18)

So if it’s so difficult, why bother? Because it is in our public, visible witness and worship that the world sees Jesus.

The great fourth century preacher Augustine, in his autobiography called The Confessions, tells the story of a friend of his, a man named Victorinus who was trying to build an academic career in the Roman city of Milan. A priest named Simplicianus challenged him to read the Bible and, as a result, Victorinus became a believer. But he kept it to himself because he knew that converting from idolatry would be bad for his career. He told Simplicianus, “Know that I am now a Christian.” The old priest replied, “I will not believe it, nor reckon you among Christians, till I see you in the Church of Christ.” Victorinus joked, “Do the walls then make people Christians?” But the priest held his ground.

Finally, Victorinus became convicted that Jesus said he will deny those who deny him. Victorinus reflected that he had never hesitated to participate publicly in idol sacrifices and public parades. So he rushed to Simplicianus and blurted out, “Let us go to the church. I wish to become a Christian.” In that day it was the custom for a convert, before being baptized, to give a public testimony of his salvation. Simplicianus offered to let Victorinus do the confession and the baptism privately, but he refused. He said that as a university professor he taught his subjects in the open; why should he refuse to profess Christ in the open? So he was baptized publicly and see what happened then: The entire church took encouragement that so famous a man would risk so much for the sake of the gospel!

You see, just by showing up today, you bear witness to the truth that Jesus really did rise from the dead and really does save. It was hard for Jesus to die on the cross and maybe it was hard for you to be here today – because your car wouldn’t start, because you worked late last night, because your heart is broken, because someone in the church has hurt you deeply. Rejoice! The very fact that you are here bears witness to the fact that you have truly embraced the cross of Christ, and that Christ has indeed risen!
So let me leave you with one final encouragement. Today we celebrate the coming of God at Jesus’ baptism. One technical term for this is a “theophany,” an appearance of God. Well, our own baptism bears witness to the fact that we will experience the final theophany when Christ returns at the end of the world. Let me encourage you to hang in there and wait for that day!

On August 29, 1862, troops under the command of Stonewall Jackson arrived at the battlefield of Second Manassas. He faced fifty thousand Yankees dug into a strong position while Jackson had less than half that many troops, low on rations and exhausted after a two-day forced march. His only hope was to hold the blue-bellies off until Longstreet could arrive with reinforcements.

The enemy attacked and the battle raged in the blistering summer heat. At one point some Georgians under the command of General Toombs charged barefoot over a briar patch, leaving bloody footprints in the hard-packed dust. When ammunition ran low, Confederate troops ran onto the field under fire to scavenge cartridges from the Union dead. Some Rebs fought the Yankees using stones. At one point General Gregg ordered his exhausted men to lie down with fixed bayonets so they could stab the Yanks if they overran their position. All the while, they prayed for sundown so that night would give Longstreet time to get into position.

“The sun went down so slowly!” recalled Virginia soldier Ham Chamberlayne. Major H. K. Douglas would later write, “For the first time in my life I understood what was meant by ‘Joshua’s sun standing still on Gideon,’ for it would not go down.” And toward the end of the day, Jackson began riding behind hard pressed lines on his pot-bellied war horse, Little Sorrel calling out, “Can you stand it for just two hours? Two hours, men.” Later, they heard him holler, “Just half an hour, men. We can bear it as long as that!”

And sure enough, the sun finally sank. The next day as the Yankees charged, Longstreet’s flanking artillery, in place at last, swept the enemy from the field.

Church, I know it’s hard, and I know you’re tired, and I know it seems that the weary sun will never set for the final time on this sinful world. But stay in the fight! And when you’re too tired to fight and must rest, fall down with the Sword of the Word clutched in your hands to stab the devil as he advances! Revelation 19 describes the great and final battle when God the Son will defeat every foe for good and always. As John the Revelator saw that final fight in his beatific vision from a prison cell on the Island of Patmos,

And I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse, and He who sat on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness He judges and wages war. His eyes are a flame of fire, and on His head are many diadems ; and He has a name written on Him which no one knows except Himself. He is clothed with a robe dipped in blood, and His name is called The Word of God. And the armies which are in heaven, clothed in fine linen, white and clean, were following Him on white horses. From His mouth comes a sharp sword, so that with it He may strike down the nations, and He will rule them with a rod of iron ; and He treads the wine press of the fierce wrath of God, the Almighty. And on His robe and on His thigh He has a name written, “KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS.”

Hang in there! Though the fight rages and the foe seems too great for your strength, your great General rides behind your lines on the white horse of victory and cries out, “Perhaps only half an hour, church. We can bear it as long as that!”

Posted in General | No Comments »

January 2, 2012 by djackson.

This is the time of year when everyone draws up top- or bottom-ten lists. You know the sort of thing - The Ten Best Sports Moments in 2011, The Ten Worst-Dressed Celebrities of 2011, The Ten Best “Wineskin in the Smoke” Blogs of 2011. (Okay, I admit I made that last one up, but it could happen.) The New York Times Magazine has done some fresh thinking on this old convention: The Meh List. These middle-of-the-roster items are, the Times says, “not hot, not not, just meh.” Average; so-so; take-it-or-leave-it. The line-up includes Starbucks seasonal drinks, the Outback Bowl, and grilled chicken sandwiches.

Culture editor Adam Sternbergh denies that his list denigrates. Instead, he claims, it locates certain cultural phenomena at “the fat middle of the bell curve of taste,” the sweet-spot equidistant from being hated because you’re a success and hated because you suck cess. “Meh” itself is not meh, earning a favorable mention by Ron Rosenbaum on the website Slate.com’s article on trendy and tacky new catch phrases. (http://www.slate.com/articles/life/the_spectator/2011/12/occupy_jokes_bad_sex_jargon_and_the_worst_ catchphrases_of_2011_.2.html) Rosenbaum goes so far as to speculate that “I think meh is the emotion of the new century. Welcome to the Meh Era, where nothing impresses us any more, nothing even has the potential to impress us.”

The risen Christ, it seems, is not into meh. It makes him go “bleh,” as in the rainbow yawn. He even says so in his missive to the Laodicean church in Revelation 3.14-22. “Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” Spit - the King James is better here: “spue,” as in “spew,” “upchuck,” “blow chunks.” Some commentators argue that “hot” and “cold” here should not be seen as opposites signifying zeal or apostasy, since we struggle to imagine Jesus saying that being lost beats being lukewarm. Maybe something to that, since only other use of this particular Greek word for “cold” comes in Matthew 10.42 where Jesus speaks of the refreshing gift of “a cup of cold water.” See, Laodecia sat roughly midway between the hot springs at Hierapolis and the cold wells of Colosse. By the time either aquifer reached the meh-dlle ground of Laodecia, its waters had settled into the insipid center. Cold water quenches; hot water heals. Lukewarm water only makes you need to go to the bathroom. Or puke.

Do you see some of your Christian siblings as sort of over-saved, their worship and witness a roiling Pentecostal pot-boiler? Do you worry that the Lord might burn his tongue if he sips to swiftly from these simmering saints? Do you see others as sort of under-saved, their ice-cube cool pursuit of the social gospel lacking in steamy soul-winning? Do you fear that their brainiac theologizing might give God a brain-freeze? And do you regret that they don’t seem able to get along, encamped as they are on the extremes of the sweeping spectrum of salvation? Stop to think for a moment: It’s the humped hilltop of the bell curve that offers the best view of both ends.

“Because you are meh, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.” It’s something to think about as we head into a new year.

Posted in General | No Comments »

September 5, 2011 by djackson.

I saw “Seven Days in Utopia” last night. Mostly because I’ll watch anything with Robert Duval in it. I swear I’d pay to watch Robert Duval read from the phone book - maybe even from the New International Version of the Gospel of Mark. There’s an old joke about small towns in Texas: “I spent a week there one night.” This movie invites you to spend a week in the tiny Texas burgh of Utopia for an hour and a half and the math just about works out.

The film is the brainchild of David Cook, a motivational speaker and golf fan (two occupations that, I confess, are completely opaque to me). It follows the experiences of rookie golfer Luke Chisolm who sextuple-bogies eighteen in front of all of ESPN then goes roaring (well, he appears to drive a Chevy Cruze, so “whining” might be the more apt verb) into the Texas hill country where he misses a cow, hits a fence, and fetches up at the feet of Johnny Crawford (Duval), a sort of ex-drunk, ex-pro, multi-gazillionaire Titleist whisperer who offers to help the kid improve his driving . . . and putting and chip shots and all the rest of it. “Uncle Johnny,” as he’s known to the three hundred and seventy-two other residents of the hamlet, invites Luke to sojourn for se’ennight in the folksy, God-fearing, and homogeneously anglo bosom of Utopia in order to find his game again.

There’s nothing very new here. Duval is Mr. Miagi to Luke’s Daniel-san. There’s even a virginal local girl whom the town bully considers his property but who, of course, falls for our mysterious young outsider. We get golf lessons that have nothing, on the surface, to do with golf: fly-fishing, flying an airplane, pitching washers at a hole in the ground, landscape portaiture. (Truthfully, I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear Uncle Johnny intone, “Paint on/paint off . . .paint on/paint off.) In the end, of course, there is method to the mentor’s madness and the young Padawan uses the force to sink (or maybe not) the winning put. It’s all very Zen, except for the part where Luke shows up in church for Easter Sunday, though that’s a little bit Zen too because there’s not a cross in sight and the whole thing is sufficiently generic to buy the world a Coke and keep it company while it sings in perfect harmony. Uncle Johnny does give the kid a Bible (a King James, too!), but even the local house of worship is simply labeled Utopia United Church. (The part is played, I’m told, by an actual Methodist church. Would we call this “method(ist) acting”?)

And then there’s the dialogue. Sometimes even Duval can’t make these lines sound like something that anybody would ever actually say. I was pretty sure that time or two I caught him ad-libbing, like a master surgeon tossing aside all the fancy equipment to do chest-compressions in desperate hopes of getting a flat-lined patient pumping again. And the movie lacks any approach to psychological realism. We discover early and often that Luke’s dad is Earl Woods gone over to the dark side. He bullies little Luke, then bullies big Luke, and finally abandons big Luke (and, of course, his inner Little Luke) on the eighteenth green when the short-game finally hits the fan. But after the kid’s week in Utopia he goes home, where father and son settle the whole thing with three sentences and a hug. The third sentence belongs to Luke and consists of, “I forgive you.”

At this point, we go beyond bad screen writing to bad theology. Because too often, for Evangelicals, grace does not perfect nature . . . it erases it. A tearful embrace does not end twenty-some years of browbeating. Reconciliation might begin that way, but there is all the difference in the world between a beginning and an ending. It is interesting that the fictional time-line of “Utopia” is seven days - just a little longer than a Baptist youth camp and about double the lifespan of a Walk to Emmaus, two more Evangelical attempts to cook instant healing through what we call faith in God but what is really, I suspect, spiritual and emotional laziness - a refusal to work with the Holy Spirit by demanding that the Spirit do magic tricks instead of miracles.

Of course in the end “Seven Days in Utopia” is no better than it is simply because it doesn’t have to be. It will show handsome profits by playing to its conservative Evangelical/Hallmark greeting card/Course in Miracles/ base. Evangelicals will forgive the icky dialogue and even the amorphous “religion” in play here because at least here’s a movie that doesn’t depict us as illiterate abortion clinic bombers. The Hallmark crowd won’t notice, their palates already dulled by a steady diet of love/dove/above poetry. The Course in Miracles folks . . . well, that’s another story but I think they’ll turn up and order the extra-large popcorn into the bargain.

I will say this for the movie: It avoids some of the worst cliches that hover just off the edge of the script and invite the producers to sink into them like a tired man hitting his Lazyboy at the end of a hard day. 1) Luke doesn’t get the girl - at least, not yet. 2) Luke’s principal rival for golfing greatness is a seasoned pro but not an outrageous jerk; he wears all black but does not huff into a mask and intone, “Luke, I am your father.” (Interestingly enough, he is Asian, the only non-anglo with any significant screen time, and though the sports casters consistently admire his prowess we are programmed to hope he loses.) 3) The local rowdies see the light and are not doused in abundant shame. And finally, and perhaps most importantly if we are looking for praise-worthy features in a low-budget Evangelical piece of agitprop: Nobody utters the word “awesome” throughout the entire flick.

Posted in General | No Comments »

July 14, 2011 by djackson.

On Sunday, June 26 the Brighton Park Baptist Church of Corpus Christi ordained Scott Britton to the gospel ministry. Captain Ron Fisher, Battalion Chaplain, United States Army and a graduate of Logsdon Seminary at the South Texas School of Christian Studies, preached the ordination sermon. This was appropriate, not only because of the longstanding relationship between the two men, but because Scott is also pursuing a call to military chaplaincy. I thought Ron’s address nailed the challenge of the Christian ministry in all forms and asked him for his manuscript, which I reproduce here.

On occasions such as this, there’s so much that could be said, but then so little would be remembered. So, I’m going to be as brief and poignant as possible.

I invite you to turn with me to 1 Peter 5. We’ll start in the latter part of v.1:

“As a fellow elder, I appeal to you: Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you. Watch over it willingly, not grudgingly - not for what you will get out of it, but because you are eager to serve God. Don’t lord it over the people assigned to your care, but lead them by your own good example. And when the Great Shepherd appears, you will receive a crown of never-ending glory and honor.”

Peter is appealing to Christians, and in this portion of his letter, a group of church leaders in
various parts of Asia Minor. This evening, I have the privilege of appealing to two Christians who are also two church leaders. Granted, one is being ordained into the Gospel ministry this evening, yet there would be no ministry of any sort apart from the other; two ministers who have proven their dedication and devotion to the person and cause of Christ through years of faithful service, one couple, each of whom compliments and completes the other: Scott and Tosha Britton.

Scott and Tosha, what I feel led to share with you this evening is by no means “new,” or “emerging,” or “radical” but rather something I find to be “forgotten” and “avoided” in the contemporary church and therefore remains “revolutionary.” And so my appeal and charge,like Peter’s, is simply this:

“Care for the flock that God has entrusted to you.” Or “Shepherd the flock of God . . .” as the NKJV states it. Verse 2 is your charge. Let me explain.

I was involved in a Chaplain training sometime back when the speaker, a well-meaning woman, began “preaching” to those in attendance, Chaplains, many of whom were senior Chaplains, about their need to catch up with the times, how they must learn to use social media, blogging, texting, FaceBook, and Twitter if they were ever to hope to reach and CONNECT with today’s generation of soldiers, so on and so forth. Incidentally, I’m not personally convinced that FaceBook came from the Holy Spirit. Anyway, when she finished speaking, an old LTC stood up and said, “Ma’am, let me tell you something . . . every time I walk into the motor pool to speak with a soldier or share a meal in the DFAC with one of my men, or participate in TNG with my troops, I’m connecting. I’m doing ministry, and not while hiding behind a computer screen. That’s “old school” ministry, and that’s who I am. I’m old school.”

Now, I believe we need to get smart on social media and learn how to connect with people through those mediums, but that takes a back seat to what this old chaplain spoke of. So my first challenge to you this evening is this, “Be old school.”

Let me say it another way. I know a lot of ministers and chaplains but very few pastors. If there’s any one trend in the church today that burdens me more than any others, it’s pastors who don’t pastor. There are many “shepherds” who have both been taught and who prefer to do “virtual ministry,” yet these same ministers would never settle for “virtual tithes.” They seem to hope we’ll be wowed by their sermons on Sunday compete with high-speed video vignettes and PowerPoint presentations which may or may not even be theirs in the first place. After all, these messages are proven to “work” and can be purchased online. They don’t answer their phones “after hours,” don’t make hospital visitations or pray for the sick,
consequently, they never see anyone healed. It’s hard to see the sick healed when you don’t pray for them. I’m just saying.

These pastors treat families as “units,” blast their congregations with mass emails, won’t answer the phone when you call and won’t call you back when you leave a message. Instead, they’ll send you a text. Isn’t that expedient? And, somehow, someway, they’ve been taught that this is what right looks like.

They’ve settled on managing programs instead of “caring for the flock that has been
entrusted to their care.”

I charge you to be “old school.” Flesh on flesh ministry. Never send a text when you can make a phone call. Never make a phone call when you know you need to make a visit. The congregation you have the privilege to serve needs to actually hear your voice; they need to see you. Never forget that the presence of a real pastor makes a real difference.

One pastor friend of mine, when recalling that season of life when his father lay dying in his bed, returns again and again to this: “Dad was there in bed, dying, and the pastor would come to the house, come into the room, sit in a corner, and never say a word. It was just what I needed.”

That’s “Old School Ministry.” You don’t attempt to explain away people’s trials; you step into their stream of suffering with them.

Be Old School.

Old School Ministers are approachable, accessible, and available That needs to be you.

Realize that close of business for you is when the day ends. There’ve been times when I’ve just walked in the house, changed clothes, and received a phone call from one of my leaders telling me, “Chaplain, I’m sorry to bother you at home, but PVT So-and-so’s mom was killed in a car accident, and the family is requesting your presence when we deliver the Red Cross message. Can you come back in?”

Never mind, I live thirty minutes away. Never mind I’m tired, haven’t seen my wife or children all day, or that I have to put my uniform back on. Never mind that my day began at 5 AM and it’s now 7 PM and I’m hungry. That soldier is my kid. I am his pastor. When my phone rings, I answer it. This is one of the ways we ministers are to “care for our flocks.”

So find out how the old timers (including the apostles Peter and Paul) conducted their pastoral care and learn to shepherd like them.

But “care” also means “feed.” A pastor must also “feed” the flock. What might this look like? I submit the following five points or “challenges” to you.

1. Cultivate a vital relationship with Jesus Christ. Now, this won’t happen for you apart from the Holy Spirit, so you better get busy about cultivating a vital relationship with the Hoy Spirit.

2. Remain true to your calling. As Oswald Chambers says in My Utmost for His Highest” (March 4 reading), “It’s easier to serve or work for God without a vision and without a call, because then you are not bothered by what He requires. Common sense, covered with a layer of Christian emotion, becomes your guide. You may be more prosperous and successful from the world’s perspective, and will have more leisure time, if you never acknowledge the call of God. But once you receive a commission from Jesus Christ, the
memory of what God asks of you will always be there to prod you on to do His will. You wil no longer be able to work for Him on the basis of common sense.”

It’s not common sense to volunteer to join the Army at war, Scottie. Within your first year of service, you will likely be deployed to Afghanistan. You and Tosha better make certain you’re called to this life because it’s a life of hardship for everyone involved.

Well then, perhaps you should just settle to pastor a little church somewhere then? I got news for you: That’s not common sense either! I’d rather be back in Baghdad.

My point to you is this: The call is the anchor. Just make sure you’re called, then stay faithful to your calling. Too easy.

Scott, remember this, if you don’t remember anything else this evening: Tosha must always come before your ministry. Period. She is to come before the girls, and she must come before your men. Now, here’s the catch: You’re not always going to be able to put your family first, but when you can, you’d better. My allegiance is to Christ before Amie but to Amie before ministry. Being her husband, and my children’s father, is part of my call. Apart from them, there is no ministry for me.

Tosha, there is no way Scott will be able to do what is required of him unless you encourage him (sometimes he’s going to need more of a push) and release him to do what is necessary. You’re going to find yourself in his shadow, not because he’s any greater than you are but because the spotlight will be on him. Forget the spotlight. Remember your call as his wife and partner in ministry, and always remember the truth that apart from you, he would have no ministry to speak of.

3. Faithfully minister the Word. Don’t compromise. Compromise is a choice, not a necessity.
The Bible says what it says. I have found that it’s not what people don’t understand about the Scripture that upsets them, but rather what they do understand and are unwilling to submit themselves to that rubs them the wrong way. Don’t apologize for that. Conviction has the power to bring about life change. Compromise can’t do that. Just preach what you heard from the Holy Spirit and you’ll be straight. And, if you don’t hear from the Holy Spirit, then don’t preach at all. This principle has served me well.

4. Be the example, and do the hard stuff. Verse 3 says, “Lead them by your own good example.” The Army doctrine of leadership is summed up like this: Be, Know, Do. Show others what right looks like. You are to be a chaplain before you are an officer, but you are a soldier before you are a chaplain. Therefore, be physically fit. If your men are doing a twelve mile ruck march, don’t go to the gym to hit the elliptical machine. You go rucking. Show them they can’t smoke you. Know the standard, and hold yourself and others to it.

Be a disciple of Jesus Christ first, and a minister of the Gospel second. You are their spiritual leader, so how is a Christian supposed to love and relate to his wife? They’ll be looking to you. How is a Christian supposed to speak? They’ll be looking to you. Be the example. do the hard stuff.

Another way to feed the flock is to:

5. Share in the life and risks of your soldiers. Consequently, this is also one of the ways we watch over our congregations. I joined a patrol one evening and one of my NCO’s said to me, “I’m really rolling the dice tonight, Chaplain.” I asked what he meant and he replied, “This is my second time to go outside the wire. The first time nothing happened, so this could be it.” I replied,

“You know what? I like those odds. I’m going with you!”

“No, sir! You don’t have to do that.”

“I insist. I’m riding up front with you.”

“What if I get blown up?”

“Then we’ll get blown up together.”

Shepherd from up front.

Posted in General | No Comments »