April 2020

We’ll dig deeper into this idea of praise and how it works at our weekly study at Gather. Join us this Thursday evening at 7:30p CDT via Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274

Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

Don’t Edit Yourself Out of Your Testimony

Do you remember the end of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), when folks who’d gone missing are reunited with their loved ones? It’s one of Spielberg’s finest moments—so utterly full of joy it makes us cry. I have similar feelings when I read about the great witness reunion in the Revelation. In this vision, survivors come from “every nation, tribe, people, and language” (Rev. 7:9). They wear white robes and hold palms. Christ-like suffering has purified them. They carry peace signs.

“Who are these people?” someone asks. The same person answers: “They’ve come out of great hardship.” God will be their shelter. They’ll no longer hunger or thirst. They’ll be protected from blazing heat. Their tears will be wiped away. We later learn they survived by “the word of their witness” (Rev. 12:11). Not even death could end their story. They’re martyrs.

While we often associate “martyrs” with dying for a higher cause, it actually means “witnesses”—i.e., survivors who lived to tell their stories. Many of us are martyrs and don’t even know it. We’ve survived all kinds of struggles. We’ve come out of great hardship. We’ve been to Calvary (many of us many times). We’ve found peace. And we’ve discovered the power in our witness. Our stories empower and embolden and sustain us. What’s more they inspire and assure others.

COVID-19 is calling for martyr testimony. Even as we pray for stamina to outlast the virus, we should think about our story. How are we being changed? What has this brush with death done to us? How has this experience brought us to closer to God and one another? What will our stories be?

Telling our truth means acknowledging how ugly and demoralizing this has been. How will we tell that story? We have great examples in the Psalms, where lament surfaces on nearly every page. The poets were unabashed about voicing frustrations, doubts, and despairs, impatience with God, and anger with arrogant kings and greedy, faithless neighbors. Cleaning up their stories would distort their witness into fairy tales. To deny their misgivings about God would erase God from the story. And they were having none of that.

As you consider your coronavirus testimony, tell your whole truth. Don’t edit yourself out. Write your lament. Complain about how hard this has been. Wonder where God went and why our leaders ignored obvious warning signs that death was knocking at every border (and no wall on earth was high enough keep COVID-19 out). Rail at neighbors who cared more about their social lives and investments than rampant loss of life. Go ahead. It’s part of your story.

But, like the psalmists and Revelation witnesses, know what waits beyond the complaint. Truthfully telling our story moves us forward, to the throne of Grace, where we find shelter and shepherding, where conflict and tears become useless because the I AM who makes All Things Well is right where God has always been: with us.

This week we look at lament in the Psalms. It’s raw, even shocking. But it’s also life giving. Join us this Thursday at 7:30a CDT via Zoom.

Join the study at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274

Password: 318652

You can also phone in at 1-312-626-6799, using the same meeting ID and password.

Following Our Ancestors

During the past weeks, I’ve been thinking about my elders, meaning the wise older folks I grew up around in church. As a Boomer, I grew up around people who’d been through quite a bit: a devastating Depression, widespread material insecurity, a global war and ripple-effect conflicts in Asia, very real threats of nuclear attack, cultural upheaval, outbreaks of polio and other infectious diseases, presidential scandals, and terrorist attacks by homegrown villains—and that’s just the short list. It also doesn’t include many personal disasters that were no less devastating.

But I’ve not been dwelling on their tribulations so much as recalling how they responded to crisis in a surprisingly consistent, intuitive way. When trouble came, they quoted the Psalms, usually in the florid “biblical” language of the King James Version.

In thee, O Lord, do I put my trust… Lead me to the rock that is higher than I… In the time of trouble he shall hide me… God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble…

How did they know these verses so well to have them in ready reach? Their parents and grandparents quoted them, and their parents and grandparents quoted them, going all the way back to the ancients who sang these songs and prayed these prayers.

The Psalms are, in many ways, our ancestral legacy. They rejoice in God’s beauty and power and care, even as they paint compelling portraits of human lives and communities. The psalms often tell ugly and disturbing stories: wars and famines and widespread disease visited on communities while doubt and unfaithfulness and profound (in some cases nearly neurotic) anxieties tear at the writers’ hearts and minds. Danger and distress are all around in the Psalms. But that’s not all. God is there too.

That’s why it’s wisest, I think, to consider the Psalms as much more than a hymnal. It’s a prayer primer, a priceless example of how to pray in time of peril. In fact, it’s commonly assumed the Psalms’ durability is rooted in their prayerfulness. The majority of the poems are either laments or supplications, and even those of “praise song” variety regularly turn their hearts toward prayer.

Maybe the reason our ancestors loved the Psalms so much had less to do with their poetic beauty and more to do with their prayerful pragmatism.

In my distress I called upon the Lord, and he heard me, one of the psalmists wrote. In times of peril—even today—that’s a wonderful and necessary reassurance.

Join us this coming Thursday at 7:30p CDT as we being a new, life-giving series called “Praying the Psalms.” We will meet each week via Zoom. You can access the study at

https://us04web.zoom.us/j/564427274?pwd=WnhETHQ2Rzltc1A2SXFmTnU0ODkwUT09

Meeting ID: 564 427 274, Password: 318652

Or you can dial in at:

1-312-626-6799 and then enter the ID and password information when prompted.

Love is the Answer

It’s a Thursday evening, around the holidays. People are pouring into the city to visit relatives and honor ancient traditions. The markets are packed. A lot of last-minute planning—so much to do! Things feel especially tense, tenser than usual. But holidays always bring out the troublemakers and crazies and would-be messiahs.

Just a few days back some northerner staged a crazy parade that lampooned Roman power by doing everything on the cheap. No impressive stallions; just a young donkey. No royal carpets stretched along the route; just a bunch of threadbare coats and a few palm branches. No trumpets and cheers; just a chorus of tone-deaf provincials croaking, “Hosanna! Save us!” It was a bold move. But few noticed, given the chaotic crowds and heightened police presence.

Apparently, the self-appointed savior didn’t get the attention he needed. The next morning he turned the Temple market upside down. Called the merchants and religious leaders “thieves.” It got real ugly. And if he makes it through the week alive if will be a miracle. All it takes is one troublemaker to mess things up for everybody.

With all of this swirling around Jesus of Nazareth, it’s an odd time for a wanted man to host an intimate dinner party, maybe not the smartest move given tensions surfacing inside hiscircle. Friendships are cracking.

There’s a bounty on the Jesus’s head, a lot of cash, about $200 worth, which can feed a lot of people, fund a lot of projects. Something to consider. Then there’s guilt by association. If Jesus gets arrested, who’s next? These folks have families to think of, businesses to run, lives to live. They didn’t come all this way to land in jail!

Maybe this dinner isn’t such a good idea.

But they go and immediately everything turns upside down. (Doesn’t it always, though?) The guest of honor insists on washing their feet, a task so menial it’s usually relegated to a servant girl. Then Jesus reveals there’s a traitor and liar among them. Does he send either away? No! He shares his food with the traitor and lets the liar stay for the entire meal.

It’s all very strange. But not as strange as the topic Jesus keeps returning to. And that’s love. Jesus knows the storm isn’t lifting any time soon. He knows forces at work in the world will continue to captivate the minds and fears of millions. He knows the public is fickle and can’t be counted on to do what’s best for them. He knows the disciples are going to spend a lot of long days and nights hunkered down behind closed doors, keeping their distance from danger that walks the streets. Jesus knows the only thing to sustain them will be unshakable faith in the power of love—God’s love, his love, the shared love of his beloved friends.

Love is the commandment because love carries us through the storm, whether it’s a political firestorm in first century Jerusalem or a 21st-century pandemic that viciously preys on theplanet’s weakest and poorest. The broken governments of both eras are fueled by untrammeled greed, power plays, and brutal disregard for the truly needy. Both governments have no realsolutions and reliable answers for their problems.

Yet the word for us this Holy Week is not “fear.” It’s “love.” Love is how we ride out this storm. Love is our assurance that life ultimately overpowers death. Love is the core message that causes us to proclaim, “This is not the end of us!” Easter is coming. Amen.

Join us this week as Gather revisits Jesus’s farewell dinner with his friends. We will meet virtually via Zoom on Thursday, April 9, at 7:30p CDT. Join the conversation by going to https://us04web.zoom.us/j/998881155?pwd=NExiTTl6eUhmck85V0lUMWpZNWswQT09. Meeting ID: 998 881 155; Password: 031850

An agnostic friend texted me the other day:

“When this is all over, you’ll have something in common with literally every other inhabitant of the planet: ‘What did you do during the Pandemic?’ Maybe we’ll find we have more in common than we previously thought. That comforts me.”

There can be no doubt that what we’re going through is life altering. We’re confronting how little we actually control and we’re being called to accountability for the things we can manage. We’re suddenly and strangely aware of our personal space. We recognize that recklessness on our part holds serious implications for those around us. We’re learning the true meaning of patience, as another friend who survived COVID-19 recently told me.

We’re changing, and our choices in this crisis insist we do better. Our instincts for self-preservation extend beyond us to include everyone around us. If we are careless with ourselves, we are uncaring about others. That’s transformative thinking in a world that has habitually sacrificed community for individualism, ethical principals for economic profits, compassion for self-righteousness. The invisible space between “I” and “we” has narrowed dramatically, even though we’re keeping our physical distance. We are changing.

Nearly all transformation—real transformation, that is—comes with fear, anxiety, and trepidation attached. It ushers us into of uncertainty. It puts before us open roads with no discernable destination. To change is to become something other than, hopefully better than, maybe more than. Yet when our Maker and the planet force transformation on us, we should expect something good to emerge in what we’re becoming. News reports whisk us around the globe and the stories are all the same because (as my friend reminds us) we are the same. That will lead to comfort, even if we’ll likely travel through much grief and despair.

The Franciscan mystic, Sister Ilia Delio, is a wonderful hybrid—a theologian and scientist whose embrace of evolutionary theory yields a powerfully enlightened view of spirituality. We’re constantly changing, she tells us. “Chaos really is a saving grace… We emerge out of this long, cosmic process we call evolution. But evolution is about deep relationality. We are created for love, and that’s what keeps pulling us onward.”

As we wander through this COVID-19 desert, may we be increasingly mindful of what we’re becoming—of how we’re evolving—of what God is doing to bring forth transformation. May we never forget that love keeps pulling us onward. Its claim cannot be shaken. It calls us into, through, and out of the dangers that currently encompass us.

We are changing. We are becoming. Love is drawing us to new ways of being.

This week we’ll explore Sr. Ilio Delio in more depth as the final voice in our “Into the Mystic” Lenten series. Join us Thursday evening at 7:30p CDT as we learn more about the mystical aspects of living in an ever-changing world.

NOTE: We will meet via Zoom to enable better interactivity. It will be an exciting time together! The study can be accessed here: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/935975182. (No password is necessary.) You can also join by phone at 312-626-6799. The meeting number is 935 975 5182#.