Where We Hang Our Hat

In the 1890s there was a small Baptist church in Mayfield County, Kentucky. The church had two deacons who were constantly arguing and bickering over some issue or the other. One of them put up a small wooden peg on the back wall so the pastor could hang up his hat. When the other deacon discovered the peg, he was outraged. “How dare you put a peg in the wall without first consulting me!” The people in the church took sides and the congregation eventually split. Today the residents of Mayfield County still refer to the two churches as Peg Baptist Church and Anti-Peg Baptist Church.

For the record, we’re neither Peg-ite nor Anti-Pegite; we’re Non-Peg-ite, just as the Bible teaches! But before we get too smug, we need to remember that we have something of a history of division in our churches, maybe over things just as silly. At the same time the Peg-ite and Anti-Pegite controversy raged in Mayfield, our churches were splitting over the use of instrumental music in worship and how missionaries could be and should be supported. We have divided over how many cups can be used in communion and how many Bible classes are permitted. We have divided over what we believe will happen at the end of time (rather than just waiting to find out). We’ve even divided over whether or not we should pay preachers! Heretics!

So why haven’t we done a better job reaching the world for Jesus? It seems to me that Jesus did the hard part, right? He loved us enough to die for us. All we have to do is love Him enough to love each other. Ultimately, what the cross was about is reconciliation. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:18-19—

All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.

Maybe the world looks at Christ’s church and poorly we get along with each other and has decided that this “ministry of reconciliation” stuff just doesn’t work very well!

Watch Your Step!

Fifteen year old Alexa Longueira was just doing what teens do—she was walking along texting one of her friends. And the DEP crew on Staten Island was doing what they do— preparing to enter the sewers to protect (DEP = Department of Environmental Protection) and serve. What they did wrong was to remove the manhole cover BEFORE they put out the orange safety cones. And what Alexa did wrong was continue her walking and text without looking where she was going. Without pausing her texting, she plunged through the open manhole and into the yuck below. She must have been using a Blackberry because iPhones surely have an open manhole app to warn of things like that. Or they should have. Fortunately, Alexa suffered only fright, a few scrapes and some foul smelling clothes. Her family, of course, is going to sue.

The same thing happens to us in our Christian life if we aren’t careful. We can be rambling along not really paying attention spiritual and walk right into one of Satan’s traps. Brian Simmons, in the Pepperdine video we watched Sunday night, told about a man named “Bob” who was just walking along, not realizing that he was becoming more and more friendly with an attractive co-worker until they went on a business trip together. Before he knew it, we tumbled through the manhole into the yuck below. If we aren’t waling carefully, those kinds of tumbles await us all.

In Ephesians 5:15-16, Paul says, “Be very careful, then, how you live—not as unwise but as wise, making the most of every opportunity, because the days are evil.” Literally, what Paul says is “Look carefully then how you walk” (ESV). Commentators actually seem split as to whether the adverb “carefully” actually modifies the word "look" or the word “walk.” Is Paul saying we are to “look carefully so we can walk” or to “look so we can walk carefully?” Well, if Alexa had been doing EITHER, she would not have tumbled into the manhole. And if Bob would have done either, he would not have tumbled either.

One of Jesus’ most favorite command was, “What I say to you, I say to everyone: ‘Watch!’” (Mark 13:37) He warns us to watch out for a lot of things-- false prophets (Matt 7:15), those who deceive us (Matt 24:4), coming of the Lord (Matt 24:42), not to fall into temptation (Matt 26:41). Spiritual inattention invariably leads to a fall. Ask Alexa or Bob... or yourself.

Revenge of the Folk Singer

What a great way to deal with customer non-service. Last year a musician named Dave Carroll was traveling on to Nebraska on United Airlines. While on the ground in Chicago, Carroll saw his $3500 Taylor guitar being tossed around by airline baggage handlers. Sure enough, the guitar was severely damaged. While United never denied the damage, Carroll got the expert run-around from various and sundry airline employees for nine months. Everyone was to blame except for United, and finally he was given the airline’s official “NO” to his repeated requests for compensation.

What is one to do? Well, most of us would just be out of luck, but Carroll is a musician. So he did what musicians do—he wrote a song and created a music video about his experience. In fact, what he promised the United employee that gave him the final “NO” (Ms. Irlweg) was that he would write three songs about his United experience and make You-Tube videos for each. Well, the first song and video is done, and it has become an Internet sensation. United now knows that you don’t tug on Superman’s cape, you don’t spit into the wind, you don’t pulls the mask off the ol’ Lone Ranger and you don’t break Dave Carroll’s Taylor guitar.



United has now (after the video received 2.5 million hits on YouTube) admitted its responsibility and offered full compensation, but Carroll has asked that they donate the money the charity. Evidently he is too busy working on his second video to go pick up their check. As Jay Guin (on whose blog I first saw this) put it, “This is satisfying at a very deep level.” BTW, if Carroll would have been flying on Delta, the song would have been “Delta Loses Guitars.”

The Man in the Mirror

I’ve been walking around the last couple of days humming Michael Jackson tunes. I never was really a huge fan, and I am surprised how easily (and often) these songs keep popping into my mind this week. It seems that my favorites (according to what I keep humming) are “Man in the Mirror” (which I’ve always liked) and “Billy Jean” (which I didn’t like, but I keep humming for some reason). Someone has said that Michael Jackson songs have been the “soundtrack of our lives,” and maybe that is true. But if I don’t stop humming these songs, I’m going to break into a moonwalk!

I watched excerpts from the Jackson memorial where a lot of people spoke of their close connection to Michael. But the sad truth seems to be that no one was really close to Michael Jackson, at least over any period of time. Diane Diamond, a journalist who covered Jackson for years and wrote a 2005 biography said it was “absolutely a revolving door” in his life as Jackson fired employees, feuded with family, and shunned collaborates and close friends who dared to disagree with him. Diamond says, “There were constantly new people in his life. He didn't want anyone to tell him what to do.”

Despite what was said at his funeral, Michael Jackson was a strange man. From the cartoonish way he dressed, to his odd (I hope only odd) behavior toward young boys, to the freakish plastic surgery— Jackson was strange. And I can’t help but wonder of some of that bizarre behavior was the result of the fact that no one was in his life to could tell him, “Michael, uhh, that’s really not a good idea.” What he had were enablers and yes-men who took his money and let him be just as strange as he wanted to be. Maybe the drugs that seemed to have killed him would not have been around if he would have listened to people who loved him. No was there to help him really look at the man in mirror and nudge him toward changing his ways.

God didn’t make any of us to live unaccountable lives. We need a relationship with God, but we also need relationships with other people who will call us into account and keep us honest to ourselves and God. James says, “Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed” (James 5:16, The Message). We need to make ourselves accountable to others so that when we get a bit strange, we have people who can tell us.

In the movie Quo Vadis, General Marcus Vinicius rides in triumph through the streets of Rome accepting the accolades and praise of the masses of Roman. Behind him is a slave who holds a crown of olive leaves above his head and repeats the words, “Remember, thou art only a man.” If Michael Jackson has close to him to remind him of that, maybe he would still be with us and making music.

Vacation Church

We have been in Arkansas since Friday and having a good visit with Mom and Dad. The trip was originally supposed to be to escort Angelynn back to Harding, but she got a job offer the day before we were to leave. So there is the answer to the joblessness across the country because of this recession-- just plan a trip to Arkansas. I'm not sure what the unemployed in Arkansas are supposed to do.

We enjoyed going to church with Mom and Dad Sunday. I usually preach 50 or so weeks out of the year, so getting a Sunday off was a real treat. We went to early service, so that meant getting to church by 8:15 a.m. That sounds early, but that is about 2-3 hours later than usual, so I felt like I was skipping church sleeping in so late. Beside the late hour of revival, there was several other differences going to church when I don't preach--

• I feel no frustration when the PowerPoint guys gets out of sync.
• I feel no responsibility when the songs don't fit the worship theme just right.
• I feel no pressure for the service not to last to long or too short
• I had to try not to fall into the "critic mode" that annoys me when I'm in charge. (I could so easily become Simon Crowl, and I really don't want anyone to do that).

In short, it's good occasionally to be able to relax and just let church happen and not feel like I have to make it happen. What I need to learn how to do is to relax and just let church happen when I am doing the planning and presenting. After all, I'm never really the One in charge.

Veggie Tales

Police were called to a church in Florida when two women got into a knock-down, drag-out fight with cucumbers. It seems that the church was giving away free veggies when the two ladies got into a disagreement over which veggie stash belonged to which lady. Soon the two women were pummeling each other with cucumbers, and the police had to be called to break up the fight. It is a blessing the church wasn’t giving away free watermelons!

OK, a fight at church over cucumbers sounds pretty silly. But then, having a fight at church over anything is pretty silly. Or really, it is a "shame" or a "humiliation." That is the world Paul uses to dress down the church at Corinth who were taking each other to court over property issues (1 Cor. 6:1-6). These believers were so interested in getting their way that they didn’t even think how their fights would impact the pagan world around them. In all of our fights over theological issues and church practices (fights that that outsiders could not possibly understand), did anyone possibly ponder how all this plays in Peoria. How can we be ambassadors for the Prince of Peace
when we can't get along with one another?

That church in Florida will forever be known as the place where the two ladies went at it with cucumbers. I wonder how many of our churches have forever compromised their witness because of fights, fusses and feuds that in the final analysis are just as silly as mixing it up over veggies.

A Community of the Cross

I got up this morning, kissed my sleeping wife and went off to work. It kinda felt like I was in an old Father Knows Best rerun. Usually she is up and moving around way before me. But today was the first day that school was out and teachers did not have to report for duty. One of the perks you get as a schoolteacher is getting the summer off; the other perk is a paycheck. So Lynn is now a woman of leisure… for the week or two that we don’t have something already planned.

My sermon Sunday is on the church as a community of the cross. I ran across a couple of quotations that I didn’t use in the sermon. Being a true conservative at heart, and thought I would conserve typing and use them here--

“Christianity has taken a giant stride into the absurd. Remove from Christianity its ability to shock and it is altogether destroyed. It then becomes a tiny superficial thing, capable neither of inflicting deep wounds nor of healing them. It's when the absurd starts to sound reasonable that we should begin to worry.” (Søren Kierkegaard)

“In terms of human wisdom, Jesus was a perfect fool. And if you think you can follow him without making something like the same kind of fool of yourself, you are laboring not under the cross, but a delusion.” (Frederick Buechner)

If Christians really believe that we are a community of the cross saved by God's grace to love and serve Him and others, then why do we spend so much time acting like it is what we have figured out or have accomplished that really makes the real difference in being the true church. Paul says focusing on human wisdom and strength robs the cross of its power (1 Cor 1:17). When we what we do (say like the format of our church music) a requirement for salvation, then we have robbed the cross of its power.

If we really would cling to the cross for dear life, we would not risk taking a hand away to point a finger at someone else.