The Pilgrim Pastor

Have you ever felt overwhelmed with commitments?  While I was online recently, conducting some unrelated research, I happened upon this little cartoon.  Now, as a former Marine it immediately caught my attention.  As a person who was at the time feeling ever so slightly overwhelmed with the to do list that I had created for myself that day, the humor of the cartoon helped to greatly ease my burden.  It reminded me of a couple of lessons that may be helpful for you in keeping a right perspective on your burdens, tasks, and work today as well.

1.      1. The task at hand is seldom as monumental as we see it. Consider the big picture.  Compared to what it took those Marines to get to the top of Iwo Jima to raise a flag, my tasks are pretty manageable.

2.      2. Interestingly enough, this little sketch is of the popular re-raising of the flag on Iwo Jima.  When I was a Marine Corps photographer, I was once privileged to hold one of the original first prints of the actual flag raising that we found in a very tattered and water damaged book of images.  The actual thing was far less interesting of an image so they staged one that was more interesting!  The real thing is often less interesting than the image we have of it.  Be practical.  Accomplish your task minus the dramatics.  When we complain too much, even to ourselves, we have a tendency to get derailed in stress, emotion, and confusion. Take a clear look at the actual task and make a plan.

3.      3. Life is full of challenges and jobs to be done.  When we finish today’s work, tomorrows will come.  Take a moment to breath and focus on what matters.  My wife and I are always fascinated at our children’s ability to demolish the cleanliness of our home.  She and I are neat people.  Well, I am very neat and she is very clean and together, prior to all the kids who have invaded my life… we were very neat and very clean people!  What matters more though?  A clean house or happy children?  While I’d like to have both, I seldom do.  Making memories is more important than making it into the bleach-clean hall of fame.  Focus on what matters.  There will always be chores and work.  Life has a lot in common with an assembly line.

Remember the words of Nobel Laureate Sir Rabindranath Tagore “God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I sing.”

Pilgrim Pastor… working when work needs to be done… focusing on the focus… singing God’s songs of love and laughter…  

Ambition is the greatest enemy to personal peace.  The soul that finds rest in the ambitions of God, to make His name great, will learn contentment.  The soul that seeks to make its own name great will be continually restless.  Among the keys to personal success is a “letting go” of the need to strive for it.  Work?  Yes.  Strive to gain more.  No.  "In our natural life our ambitions are our own. In the Christian life we have no aim of our own, and God’s aim looks like missing the mark because we are too shortsighted to see what he is aiming at." Oswald Chambers (1874–1917) 

Contentment comes, at least in part, through the realization that my life is happening right now.  Don’t miss out on today for the hope of tomorrow’s greater joy. “But godliness actually is a means of great gain when accompanied by contentment.” (1 Timothy 6:6 NASB)

Pilgrim Pastor… trying not to miss the love in my hands for want of looking in them…

This is from my column which I contribute to the Suffolk News Herald. 

When we neglect our history, we become enslaved to the mistakes of the past. I am a student of all kinds of history, but none fascinates me more than the history of my own land.

Whether I am pouring over a record of American church history, driving past a Civil War monument and telling my wife one more time that “I’ve got to go read those inscriptions,” or visiting an important site in the civil rights movements, I am enthralled by the movements and shaping of a people so richly diverse.

Nearly 10 years ago, my wife and I spent a weekend in Memphis. Walking Beale Street was great, but taking in the Martin Luther King Jr. memorial was life changing.

Never before had the struggle for racial equality and the need for racial reconciliation in our land been so real to me than when I fixed my own eyes upon the still-bloodstained cement where this great preacher, leader and visionary was removed from this world.

History is more than dust-covered books. Our history is the story of us. It is the account of how we came to be who we are. Its story reverberates in us all. Martin Luther King Jr. sacrificed all of his tomorrows in order to give us a better today. He lived out his own admonition that “A man who won’t die for something is not fit to live.”

History is often about remembering the ugliness of this world, but not so that we can despair. No, its story teaches us to remember the love of those who gave us a greater tomorrow.

Dr. King once said, “At the center of non-violence stands the principle of love.”

Love, forgiveness and hope are the greatest forces for social change, because they affect society at the level of the individual. They transform our volition, our desires. They alter our minds and influence our will.

Society’s realities are the consequence of the dreams of individuals who are willing to dream about what the future might be — what individual people could become.

King also said, “A genuine leader is not a searcher for consensus but a molder of consensus.”

My friends, if we learn or are reminded of anything of merit this Martin Luther King Jr. Day, let us be reminded that the world needs visionary leaders who are willing to transform society at the level of themselves, their families, their communities and their societies.

What dream of a better tomorrow do you have today? How much are we willing to love, and what are we willing to sacrifice to make it tomorrow’s reality?

My heart has been stirred toward fasting for several years.  I have tried to do it and failed more times than I care to recount.  I think my focus was always on not eating rather than drawing nearer to God in the time of fasting.  Surely that is why my inner-glutton always won the tug of war with the spirit-man!

Fasting is something that God uses at times in people’s lives.  It is not a necessary spiritual discipline, such as acts of compassion and prayer, but it has a place in God’s economy for Spiritual growth.  My former professor at Liberty University, Dr. Elmer Towns, records this in his valuable book Fasting For Spiritual Break Through, in a section titled “Get in Touch with the Symbolic.”

“Not Eating.  When Israel came to Mizpah, “On that same day they went without eating to show their sorrow, and they confessed they had been unfaithful to the Lord.” (1 Sam. 7:6 CEV)  Their heartfelt sorrow was evident because they afflicted themselves through fasting.  We, too, must demonstrate to God our heart attitude.” (Regal Books, 1996, p.73)

As I have recently taking the servants reigns of a Church in transition from one season to another, I realize that if I am to lead a Church into a bold season of growth then I must take a bold step of faith as well.  I desire strongly for God to move in this place among these people.  I hunger for a move of the Spirit in this fellowship of believers and in our community, in our families, and in our homes.

For some reason, I have been particularly stirred in my need to seek God increasingly.  Only God can bring the kind of power that is needed for revival.  Perhaps it is because of awesome a future it seems that God has in store for Cypress Chapel.  Perhaps it is because of how powerful a legacy God has given to these people in this place. 

Whatever the case, I am learning a great deal from increasingly extended juice only fasts.  For the next few weeks, I’ll chronicle some of those captured insights here at the Pilgrim Pastor Blog:

I never realized how often food is available!  When taking my little daughter out of her car seat yesterday, one of the goldfish crackers she had been eating fell into my hand. Without thinking I popped it in my mouth, realized that I was doing it, and spit it out! It’s everywhere.  On television, on signs, in my daughters car seat!  

While 2/3 of the world population lives well below our minimum standard, my daughter snacks on nutritious and abundant food during a short drive to an overstocked warehouse store, seated in a comfortable seat, riding in a safe vehicle. 

Lord free us from the tyranny of our comfort so that we can identify with the poorest of poor rather than only celebrating, more often taking for granted, the blessings you have given us to share, not to hoard.

Pilgrim Pastor… trying to remember – learn – what it is like to do without and really need. 

Is it right for Christians to participate in the Santa Clause tradition?  This is a question I have been asked from time to time in my work as a Pastor.  Recently I read a Facebook post, of all things, from a woman whose rage against poor old St. Nick came through so plainly that it almost scorched the screen of my computer.  Her argument is basically that if Christians tell their kids about Santa Clause then one day when they realize that he is not real they are likely to question other things that are not real; breeding a sort of distrust in all things unseen.  She contends that they will then say “Well forget your Jesus too.  Since I can’t see Him He must not be real either!”

If we are to follow this logic though, we who believe in Jesus are going to have to ditch a whole lot of things aren’t we?  What about Humpty Dumpty?  Did humpy Dumpty really fall off of a wall?  Did all of his horses and all of his men really try to put him back together again?  I don’t think so, but maybe they did.  There are several theories as to the historical background and possible influences on that and other nursery rhymes.  One such theory about the origin of that nursery suggests that Humpty Dumpty is King Richard III of England.   Shakespeare once depicted him as humpbacked.  He was in fact defeated even though he had a great army at Bosworth Field in 1485. 

But that’s not really the point is it.  Whether this is where the nursery rhyme came from or not, we use it to encourage children with language skills, rhyming, entertainment, and to stimulate their imagination.  The historical reliability and reality of Jesus is no more at stake when we hang a stocking on our mantle than is what happened to King Richard in 1485.  They are two separate issues.  Interestingly enough, there is an actual figure in antiquity named Saint Nicholas, from whence the Santa Clause story originates, though with many twists and turns, additions of myth and folklore, and commercial indulgences over the last several centuries. 

Saint Nicholas was the fourth century Bishop of Myra in Lycia (modern day Turkey).  He was known for secret gift giving.  One story recounts him placing coins in the shoes of those who left them out for him, very likely a source of the modern day tradition of placing a stocking on the mantle for Santa Clause to fill with gifts. Perhaps families who are skeptical of the possible damage that the jolly old elf may inflict upon the next generation can learn about the historical Saint Nicholas and incorporate some of that into their holiday tradition.

Humpty Dumpty, as with other such childhood rhymes, stories, and devices above all else teaches imaginative thinking.  I am convinced that the opposite is true of what this woman wrote online on Facebook.  Teaching children to use their imagination opens their minds up to the possibility that there may in fact be magic in this universe.  In fact, it teaches them to wonder, to dream, to imagine the possibilities, and that is a part of the message of Jesus.  He imagined a world where humans could show unconditional love to one another, where hope and faith, which are unseen, are central to the lives of men, women, and children.

There are real things that cannot be seen.  I cannot see hope but without it I wouldn’t make it one day in this difficult world. I cannot see love but I see the fruit it produces every day in my life and in the world.  I cannot see faith but by its application I am guided by the God who gave the gift of Jesus, whose birth we celebrate – in my house with stockings hung, Santa on his way, a trip to Church for a candlelight service to celebrate the greatest gift that God has ever given, then back home to open the presents that Santa left.  All the while, Jesus is central and our imaginations are stirred! 

This is from a column that I contribute to the Suffolk News Herald.  It can be found here and is commentary on a local event in the life of a great church with an unfortunate happening with its shepherd:  Suffolk News Herald 

The modern cynic is right. Religion is a social ill.That is how I began a recent ministry publication, “Don’t Go to Church!” You see, though I am the pastor of a church, though I have spent more than the last decade of my life profoundly and personally invested in religious education at the highest levels, even though my wife and I have dedicated the core of our very existence to the propagation of the message of Jesus, I am not a promoter of religion as it is commonly understood.

Crazy, right? Pastors aren’t supposed to talk this way, and if they do, shouldn’t they do it behind closed doors, with the lights off, late at night when nobody is around? Surely they are not supposed to write this way and then publicize it in newspapers. Maybe not, but look around the religious world. My heart aches for authenticity in a religious atmosphere chock full of impostors and peddlers of snake oil.

You don’t have to look far to see that religion is constantly proving itself unworthy of adoration. What makes the religious headlines? Scandal. Some religious leaders may prefer to just blame the media, saying “They only report the scandalous!” But that charge is repudiated, and the media is freed from such accusation by the sheer volume of scandal abounding on the religious landscape. The media is not to blame for pointing out the obvious.

This is Christmas, and my heart breaks over the fact that religious scandal so often detracts from the beauty of the one whose reputation it seeks to promote. Jesus rejected religion because of its potentially corrupting power. He accused the religious leaders of His day of being “white-washed tombs, clean on the outside but inwardly decaying.” (Matthew 23:27) The local church is an imperfect vessel. Nevertheless, it contains the perfect, forgiving, superabundant, love of God.

Jesus came to bring the revelation of the love of God into the world, not the institution of a new religion, at least not in the conventional sense. True Christian religion is revolutionary by nature. It is the story of love so amazing as to be excessive. Jesus crashed into this world with a radical sort of love unparalleled in all of human history. That’s the story of Jesus and on the basis of His extravagant love, authentic concern for humanity, and willingness to sacrifice everything in order to authenticate that love, He, not religion, is worthy of adoration. Religion at its best is a sign pointing to something greater; a roadmap to a location of ostentatious appeal.

Imperfect religion, with its self-exalting attitudes, duplicity, and flawed love can actually be detrimental to the elevation of humanity. On the other hand, Jesus who was highly exalted, the Son of God, lowered Himself all the way to the manger in Bethlehem in order that He might be highly exalted in sacrifice on the cross.

My friend, in light of religions short comings, may I suggest that you look only to the cross to see what the love of God and true religion looks like? It looks like Jesus dying on the cross for the sake of the very ones who put Him there. That’s true religion. That’s the way God loves us in Jesus.  Religion is imperfect, because imperfect men are its fiduciaries. This Christmas season, please don’t permit the imperfections of men to keep you from the perfect love of God. The imperfections of me and my fellow “religious practitioners” are only evidence of our need for the faultless love God offers, and He offers that for free through Jesus, to whom religion points, albeit imperfectly. 

Pilgrim Pastor... pointing to Jesus and trying to stay of the way...