Toy Dog

I've just finished this toy dog for my children. I won't share how long it took from start to finish since it is kind of embarrassing (lived in another house when I started it). Nevertheless, I'm pleased with how it turned out. The design comes from a vintage Playskool toy from the 50s or 60s. I used native Oklahoma cedar given to me by a friend so the project cost virtually nothing. . . about $1 for the metal studs for the ears and $1 for dollar store jump rope to use as the pull. All the pieces were turned on my lathe; afterwards I was able to make the ears and head by splitting off the rounded edges of my turning, planing those edges flat, and then using a coping saw to cut out their shapes. I had originally intended to mimic the color scheme of the original, but after I had made all the pieces, I decided the cedar looked so nice that I would just use a natural finish of sanding sealer & paste wax. As soon as I brought it in last night from the shed, I took pictures of it: the pictures reflect what it looks like before Isaiah gets his hands on it!

The Original Playskool Toy

'In any man be in Christ, he is a new creature', Trinitytide Sermon

Epistle Lesson: 2 Corinthians 5:14-21
Gospel Lesson: St. Mark 4:35-41 / St. Mark 5:1-20


The Gospel lesson begins with the rather ordinary phrase, “let us pass over unto the other side.” There is no foreshadowing of what is about to come upon their ship. It is as if he said, let’s grab a bite to eat or let’s go for a walk. Our lives too are characterized by the mundane, the ordinary, the quotidian details of life. But, of course, our lives also are seemingly interrupted by accidents and catastrophes. We never know what sort of wind, what sort of driving rain will come upon us unexpectedly. The disciples’ reaction to an accident of nature is fear. They believe their lives to be in jeopardy by a storm. Fear makes sense in a world of freak accidents and blind justice. In such a view, storms—both literal and figurative—are the playthings of chance, and we are all victims of a god who is more like a capricious child than a loving father. But God of the Bible is a loving Father. In the opening chapter of Genesis, God’s Spirit broods over the waters, transforming the chaos of the unformed world into an ordered and good creation. The Book of Psalms says—and this is unsettling for an Oklahoman—“Praise the LORD from the earth. . . Fire and hail, snow and vapours, * wind and storm, fulfilling his word” (148.7-8). Jesus teaches that his Father sends rain on the just and on the unjust; he makes his sun to rise on the good and on the evil. From the standpoint of faith there are no accidents. God is not asleep at the wheel in the storms of this life. Jesus chastens his disciples for their lack of faith. Now, what Jesus does not say is that we will always in all situations know and understand why something has befallen us. Or why we have come into the heart of a storm with our master seemingly asleep? As a man, I would like to know why hail hit our church and my home, but as a Christian, I have to trust that God is working everything together for his purposes, mysterious as they may seem to us. I can assure you that this view is much better than the alternative of seeing ourselves in a chaotic and purposeless world. My favorite image of God’s providence is that in this world, God’s good providence appears to us like the back of tapestry with unsightly knots and a rather chaotic pattern, but in the world to come, it will be as if that tapestry were turned around and we will understand how even the unexpected worked together in God’s great design. From the standpoint of this faith, we can trust that Jesus is in the storm with us, and he has power to deliver us because he is God. This passage puts before us one of the most compelling images of our Lord’s divine nature, as he calms the water and the storm in a way reminiscent of God as Creator in the book of Genesis. From the standpoint of faith, we can move from being victims of life’s storms to realizing that in Christ, we are children of God, children who know that nothing of this life—not even death—can separate them from his love. 


But we can see more about our lives. Yes, our outward lives are often assailed by storms. In fact, we seem to move from one storm to the next, and are in a relatively constant state of chaos. We know storms and catastrophes but there is also another power working in this world: the power of sin and spiritual evil. While outwardly we are assailed by storms, inwardly we are assaulted by our own inner demons: addiction, self-hatred, anger, greed, malice towards others. All these kill us and others. Notice in the second part of the Gospel lesson what the swine do when the demons from the possessed man are cast into their midst: “the unclean spirits went out, and entered into the swine: and the herd ran violently down a steep place into the sea. . . and [they were drowned] in the sea.” The demonic is self-destructive, as is sin. We think sin will make us happy or at least will not harm us, but on another cognitive level we are usually aware of how unhappy sin makes us and how sin robs us of spiritual joy. Clinging to that rage will kill you. Ask any doctor, and he will tell you that the stress of anger increases blood pressure and the rates of heart attack and stroke. Ask any Christian, and you will be told that anger roots out joy and peace. And yet in a kind of insanity we cling to that rage and anger. Addiction to alcohol or pornography will do the same thing: driving one to self-destruction. Part of the nature of sin is that it causes self-destruction. St. Augustine makes a profound statement on this point. In explaining what it means to love yourself in the command to love your neighbor as yourself, he says that to love yourself is to have compassion on yourself; to have compassion on yourself is simply not to sin because sin is that which kills us. Our Lord saves the disciples from storms, but he also delivers those who are afflicted by inner demons. In this miracle, the kingdom of God breaks into human existence. In the kingdom of God, there is liberation for the captive, freedom for the possessed, joy for those who are cast down by sorrow and despair. Listen to this beautiful succession of actions attributed to God in the Psalms: “He upholds the cause of the oppressed, and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free, the Lord gives sight to the blind, the Lord lifts up those who are bowed down. . . the Lord watches over the foreigner, and sustains the fatherless and the widow.”  Our Lord’s ministry is the manifestation of these works of God, exemplified in this miracle. Our Lord reveals God’s dominion over every spiritual evil in his coming kingdom. If our Lord delivers the man who cuts himself with stones, he will deliver you too from your self-destructive behavior. Your deliverance may not come overnight—the implication is that the man has been possessed for years—but seek the Lord in prayer of the heart, gather together in Christian fellowship, study in the Bible to hear God’s word to you—and your deliverance will come. As a young man out of university, I went through a period of debilitating depression; in a situation like this, it is so easy not to see beyond the present feelings, and to let the despair become the only thing that seems real. The God whom we worship, revealed perfectly in Jesus Christ, wants to deliver us from every demon, addiction and sin. We are his children, and our self-destructive behavior grieves him as much as a young person’s self-destructive behavior grieves his parents. 


Here is the good news. In the epistle lesson, Paul writes—in one of the most profound statements in any of his letters—that, “we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead” (2 Corinthians 5:14). Jesus died. He died in an ignoble, humiliating way. But remembering his death is not simply a recitation of a profound and moving tragedy. Rather, we believe and confess that he died as our representative and as the representative of all mankind. When he died, he took away the sting of death, and as our representative, we are freed from the fear of death. “one died; therefore all are dead.” Why is this so profound? Because the whole complex by which the world defines and divides humanity—male, female, white, black, rich, poor—has come crashing down in our Lord. Henceforth we know no man after the flesh, that is, we don’t think primary in terms of man, woman, white, African, or Jew. He is not saying that there are not real differences between men and women, Jews and gentiles, but that differences are of a secondary order when compared with the fact that all humans are those for whom Jesus died; in him, those distinctions that are the source of prejudice, oppression, violence and war are undone. The biggest difference between people is that there are those who know Jesus died for them and those who do not yet know this. All are brothers for whom Christ died. “If one died for all, then all are dead.” In that we have died with him, Paul can make the profound assertion—which words might have echoed the man delivered from a legion of demons: “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” As a new creature, we do not need to fear the literal or figurative storms of this life because we trust that in the words of the Bible, “all things work together for the good of them who love God”. As a new creature, we are delivered from every spiritual and oppressive evil and have died to self-destroying sin to live a new life of spiritual joy and love. As a new creature, we know the gathering of Jesus Christ crosses political, ethnic and economic lines; in the kingdom of God, there can be, there is no “us and them,” only the brothers and sister of the one who died for all. 

Trinity Sunday Sermon

Today is the Feast of the Holy Trinity. It is not the day in which the doctrine of the Trinity should be reduced to palpable images or figures. No doubt you've heard of the ice, liquid water, and water vapour image as a metaphor for the Trinity. In a children's book on the Trinity I came across this week, the author states that the Trinity is like an apple which has a peel, flesh, and core with seeds. But when we speak of the three persons of the Trinity—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—we are not speaking of different parts of God, or in the case of the water metaphor, of changing states or masks of God. One of the most helpful phrases on the doctrine of the Trinity comes from what is called the Athanasian Creed which historically, together with the Apostle's and Nicene creeds, was considered to be the basis of Christian confession. The Athanasian Creed states in part, “the Catholick Faith is this: That we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; Neither confounding the Persons : nor dividing the Substance.” To confound the persons is to blur the distinctions between the three persons of the Trinity and their role in salvation history. That which makes them distinct is their relation to one another: the Son is begotten of the Father; the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. On the other hand, to divide the substance, is to emphasize the differences of the persons to such an extent that the result is a belief in three gods. The Tri-une God is one Lord, one Almighty, one Being that is not created, one Being that is eternal. This one phrase uproots most of the images of the Trinity that will be heard from pulpits today: “we worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, Neither confounding the persons, nor dividing the substance.”

The purpose of the feast day becomes more when we consider where it falls in the course of the church year. The church year begins with Advent around the first of December. Advent anticipates the second and first comings of our Lord Jesus. His nativity is celebrated at the end of Advent with the 12 days of Christmas. Epiphany—the manifestation of Jesus as both God and man, especially to the wise men—follows in January and February. In the next season Lent, we recollect our Lord's temptation—in which he faced and overcame all the temptations common to man. The climax of Lent, of course, is Holy Week and the commemoration of our Lord's last days, his crucifixion and triumphant resurrection on Easter Day. Forty days after Easter Sunday, we remember that Jesus ascended into heaven where he intercedes for us and from where he sends his disciples the Spirit. Ten days later on Pentecost—last Sunday—the church gives thanks for the coming of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles and church. From Advent to Pentecost we remember the events by which we confess that God entered into history to save humanity from sin and death. The crown of these successive events is Trinity Sunday. Do we have Trinity Sunday now because we are turning from events to ideas or philosophy? Not at all. Trinity Sunday follows this yearly re-telling of salvation history in order to remind us that our belief in a Tri-une God is shaped and formed by God's self-revelation in these saving events. For example, we confess our Lord to be God the Son, the second person of the Trinity, because we are confronted by the reality of Jesus, a man, yes, but a man so unlike his contemporaries, so unlike us, that he stands out in the Gospel narratives—from birth to crucifixion to resurrection—as more than perfect man, being perfect God as well. Even the best of men do not claim to have power over spiritual evil, to heal and raise the dead and even to forgive sins. This man Jesus also claims that God is his Father in a way unique and exclusive to him. If untrue, this is the worst kind of arrogance or perhaps insanity, but if true, we have to reckon with this man, this perfect human who is also the only-begotten Son of God. We also confess the Holy Spirit to be the third person of the Trinity because we are confronted by the Holy Spirit. According to the Bible we know the invisible Spirit because we have a desire to love God and others and because we have a desire to do that which God commands. The Spirit leads us to Jesus, transforming us into disciples of Jesus. The Spirit can speak to us in a still small voice in our hearts or be manifested in powerful and dramatic ways as the book of Acts witnesses. All this leads one to conclude that the Spirit is not it, but thou, a personal presence even as Jesus was personally present with his disciples. So, you see, the doctrine of the Trinity is not really the speculation of philosophers who have discovered something new about God; the doctrine of the Trinity is the natural and logical result of reflecting on  the saving events we've commemorated over the past six months.

This begs the question: why does the doctrine of the Trinity matter? Isn't it enough simply to believe in God? A hymn that is often sung on Trinity Sunday is known as St. Patrick's Breastplate—it's hymn 268. The text traditionally attributed to St. Patrick is a statement of faith in God as a sure protector from all the evil that we encounter in this life. The words are a figurative breastplate for the Christian who devoutly recites them. The hymn opens with these words:
            I bind unto myself today
            The strong Name of the Trinity,
            By invocation of the same
            The Three in One and One in Three.
Each today, when we wake up, we do not know what will to happen to us. Some days, maybe even many days are predictable, but there are a lot of days that are filled with twists and turns, interruptions and accidents, at least from our limited perspective. Each day can often feel like an obstacle course. The conviction stated in St. Patrick's Breastplate is that we can face this obstacle course through the strong name of the Trinity, and here is where we come to the reason why the doctrine of the Trinity is so important. The doctrine of the Trinity is important and the Trinity is invoked in the Breastplate of St. Patrick because the doctrine of the Trinity, that God is a trinity of persons, Father, Son and Spirit, recalls for us the saving events wrought by the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that God the Father so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that Christ has given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweetsmelling savour. The doctrine of the Trinity reminds us that our Lord has ascended into heaven and has sent to us another Comforter to lead us into all truth and to bear witness with our spirit that we children of God. The Trinity is invoked in St. Patrick's Breastplate because we are to live our lives in the context of these saving events, our Lord's incarnation, baptism, and temptation, his passion, crucifixion and resurrection, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. We are to see the birth of a precious child in the context of the birth of God's son in a stable in Bethlehem. We are to see our awakening to the things of faith in the context of Jesus' baptism as he opens the way for our new, spiritual birth; we are to see our temptations and failures in the context of our Lord's temptation and his victory over that temptation, a victory that we share in, in as much as we belong to him. We are to see our death and mortality and the death of our loved ones in the light of the cross of our Lord Jesus, who by his death has taken away the sting of death. We are to see our hope for a future, greater life, in the context of our Lord's triumphant resurrection and his ultimate defeat over sin and death. It is, thus, no surprise that the second verse of the Breastplate continues with these words:
            I bind this today to me forever
            By power of faith, Christ’s incarnation;
            His baptism in Jordan river,
            His death on Cross for my salvation;
            His bursting from the spicèd tomb,
            His riding up the heavenly way,
            His coming at the day of doom
            I bind unto myself today.
The alternative to seeing our lives in the context of the saving events worked by the Holy Trinity is startling: without his blessed passion and precious death, without his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension, without the coming of the Holy Ghost, our lives become unmoored, a meaningless sequence of events that tend toward chaos, decay and destruction;  sorrow after sorrow we move from amusement to amusement in order to anesthetize our loneliness and spiritual emptiness. On the other hand, our lives find their true purpose and meaning in the life of the Trinity and in the light of the redeeming work of the Trinity. In our confession of the Trinity, we embrace and find our lives in the life of the Trinity and in the confidence of this faith in overcoming every trial, temptation and evil of this life.
            I bind unto myself the Name,
            The strong Name of the Trinity,
            By invocation of the same,
            The Three in One and One in Three.
            By Whom all nature hath creation,
            Eternal Father, Spirit, Word:
            Praise to the Lord of my salvation,
            Salvation is of Christ the Lord.

Maundy Thursday - Christ: The Sacrament of Love

“Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” – John 12.24

These words come out of the mouth of Jesus while in the temple, after the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. Some Greeks come to the disciples, expressing their desire to see Jesus. Perhaps, they had heard of his power, how he heals the sick and broken, how he claims to forgive sins. They may even have heard rumors that this Jesus is possibly the messiah, the promised king who would restore Israel and gather together God’s dispersed people. They are curious and they are attracted to his spiraling celebrity. In a similar way, later we learn that Herod wants to see Jesus so that he can see one of his miracles. The crowds are curious and, like a moth to a flame, are attracted by his fame.

We behave much the same way if we see a famous person, say, your favorite actor. I wonder what she is really like in person, you ask yourself? Should I say something to her, or should I pretend not to recognize her and just coolly say hello? And what would really impress us is if she behaved towards us as if we were friends. And then asked us what our favorite movie is in which she appeared, and obliged us with an impersonation of the character. In other words, we would love it if she would indulge our curiosity and glory in her fame. The same thing could be said if we saw an admired statesman, say Ronald Reagan. Except we might wish that he would give us some display of his superior eloquence and political power.

Jesus, of course, rejects the trappings of fame and the hunger of popular curiosity. In a way, he rejected these when he would not worship Satan, to gain all the kingdoms of the earth, when he would not cast himself off the pinnacle of the temple—a public religious house—thereby proving that he is God’s Son. He would not feed our hunger for miracles by turning stones into bread, and for the same reason, he tells many of those he heals not to spread what he has done. He rejects our curiosity and attraction to his fame. Why? Well, not for the usual reason that he wants to maintain his privacy. Rather, Jesus rejects human curiosity, the power of fame, the power of might, in order to proclaim something so fundamental that it is like the very air we breathe: He comes to proclaim love.

The disciples of Jesus approach him to arrange a meeting between the curious crowds and our Lord, and this is what he tells them, “The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” This temptation to embrace fame and power is just like the ones he had at the beginning of his ministry. Jesus will not oblige them in the way they wish because now is the time for him to be the seed that falls into the ground and dies. It is self-evident that the seed that does not die abides alone. How many interviews with celebrities evince the fact that even with the acquisition of fame and wealth, happiness and abiding love can remain elusive? How many great and powerful leaders have died having wealth and power but essentially alone? And their great empires soon turned to dust.

In the northern frontier of the eastern European country of Ukraine, there is a city by the name of Pripyat. It is a city like many others: there are streets and schools, homes and civic buildings, apartment buildings and even a ferris wheel. Only this city is not like other cities, for no one lives there. And even though the skyline is filled with modestly tall apartment buildings, not one is inhabited, and in fact, in the spring, streams of water run through many of the buildings. The other striking feature of the skyline is the amount of green that meets the eye. Abundant poplars fill out much of the space between the decaying buildings, their long, narrow shape bulging out of concrete parking lots and asphalt streets. Pripyat is the city of 50,000 that was evacuated permanently on April 27, 1986, a day after the Chernobyl accident in which an explosion at a nuclear plant sent a huge cloud of radioactive material into the atmosphere. Although the decaying city of Pripyat may have something to say about the wisdom of utilizing nuclear power, it has a much more important and powerful message: the things of this world fade, deteriorate, and die; even things that appear to have great permanency can have that permanency threatened in a day; most things that are thought of as permanent have a permanence that is illusory. Furthermore, fame and power are transitory; crowds are fickle and merciless, and power wanes, sometimes without explanation. But love alone abides. Love cannot be stolen. It cannot be corrupted by decay. True love is that which is freely given without any expectation of reward or reciprocation. This is the love that a mother gives when she puts her child’s needs and wants before her own. This is the love that Christians are commanded to give one another; they are told: seek not your own good but the good of others. This is the love that Jesus freely gave to us when, though he was rich, he became poor, taking our broken human nature upon himself, and, though not obliged to do so, declaring himself to be one of the family, our elder brother. This is the love Jesus gave when he offered up his life on the cross, as the one perfect, eternal sacrifice for sins and not for ours only but for sins of the whole world.

On this night, we gather to remember the last supper of our Lord Jesus before his arrest, and to remember that on this night he instituted the simple meal of bread and wine that is a feast of love. It is interesting that in John’s Gospel the institution of the Lord’s supper is not recorded, as in the other three Gospels. Instead, on that night, John records our Lord’s washing of the disciples’ feet, an act of service that symbolizes what Jesus will do for them on the cross in less than 24 hours. But John does not fail to mention this all important meal. You see, in John’s Gospel, the Last Supper, the institution of Holy Communion actually occurs on Calvary. Jesus says before his arrest, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.” He is the grain of wheat, that does die, that gives his life freely. And as he pours out his life on Calvary, this single seed of wheat—this single seed of love—bears a great crop of wheat. The wheat engendered by his death is the bread that we eat in this Sacrament of Holy Communion. As he dies on Calvary, Christ is the true sacrament of love. He is the sacrament that we receive and commemorate every time we gather at this, His table, to be nourished once again by Him and to eat of this wheat, his flesh, given for us and for the life of the world. “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.”

Bible in 90 Days Schedule (Revised)

History

The Bible in 90 Days is a reading schedule developed by Ted Cooper, who after purchasing a Bible (Zondervan NIV, Large Print, Thin Line Bible) realized that by reading 12 pages a day he could read the Bible from cover to cover in 90 days. Actually the exact figure is 88 days with two "grace" days. Zondervan now conveniently prints NIV, Large Print, Thin Line Bibles just for this program. The only difference from the Bible Ted Cooper purchased are headings every twelve pages, "End Day 8","Begin Day 9".

Personal History

In my church I am currently leading a group of people reading the Bible in 90 days with this program. We are doing it partially as a Lenten devotion, although we had to start a number of weeks before Ash Wednesday in order to finish during Holy Week. This is the second year I've used this particular schedule. I didn't feel I could ask others to use it, if I had not done it myself and could say with certainty that it is achievable. In fact, as a fairly average reader with respect to speed, I only have to read from 40-60 minutes per day. It is difficult to tell, but I think about fifty people are reading the Bible on this schedule.

The Problems

There are two major problems with the schedule for the Bible in 90 Days as it stands, and they both are a result of being tied to a particular printing of the Bible. The first problem is that exactly 12 pages are appointed for each day. While this rigid regularity perhaps has some merit, it results in very illogical breaks in the text. I couldn't help noticing the first time I used this schedule, that with minor changes--a subtraction or addition of a page on a particular day--could make the breaks in the schedule much more natural, leading ultimately to greater comprehension. A perusal of the original schedule will evidence its inadequacies in this regard. A particularly egregious example is day 53. The schedule breaks at Isaiah 66:19, four verses before the end of the book! Another example is day 38, when the book of Job, which has been read for three days could be concluded but instead ends at the second to last chapter, leaving the brief forty-second chapter for the following day. Days 79, 80 and 81 are also alarming. In that case, the last half chapter of Acts is read on the same day with most (but not all of Romans). By merely lengthening the reading on Day 79, the reader could on days 80 and 81 read Romans and 1 Corinthians in one sitting, an exercise that, I think, commends itself.

A second and perhaps more serious problem is in the way modern Bibles type-set Hebrew poetry. The trend since the Revised Standard Version (1952) has been to set Hebrew poetry in English stanza form. A look at a modern printing of the Psalms, for example, shows how much white space is on a page, compared with say a page from the book of Genesis. The result of this additional white space is that on the days when poetry is largely or exclusively read--all the poetic books and much of the prophets--far fewer words are read than in other narrative portions of Scripture. A survey of the word count of the readings in Genesis and Psalms showed a average difference of 3000 words. While the original schedule divides the Bible into 90 pieces (88 to be exact), they are far from equal, despite all being twelve pages.

A Proposed SolutionI think it makes greater logical sense to develop a schedule that is not tied to a particular printing of the Bible. This also frees the reader to use any Bible, of any translation, he may own. An old King James Bible is ideal to calculate 88 equal pieces because the type is set consistently throughout the Bible (each new verse begins a new paragraph). By using this Bible, my hope was to close the gap between the word count on days in narrative portions of Scripture versus days in poetic portions. A survey has shown that the schedule below does close this gap considerably. Of course, I did not simply want to find out a word count for the entire Bible and divide that by 88 so there is still some fluctuation.

The schedule, in fact, is not rigidly tied to an exact number of pages which frees it to break in much more natural places. In the revised schedule, one will notice the readings always break at a chapter and a number of times on a book. On Day 50, Ecclesiastes and Song of Solomon are read in their entirety. In the subsequent four days, the book of Isaiah is read. In the New Testament, on Days 78-80 the book of Acts is read, followed by the entirety of Romans on Day 81. All this is accomplished by merely reading one or sometimes two pages more or less on any given day.

I hope this schedule may be useful to the reader of God's Word. Whatever schedule is used, one will be blessed in reading the Bible and hearing again the message of God's saving acts in history. Please feel free to email me if any would like Word or Excel files of the schedule for printing.

Note: the schedule will appear clear if it is saved to the hard drive and viewed or printed as a picture. 

Sexagesima Sunday Sermon

[24] Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run, that ye may obtain. [25] And every man that striveth for the mastery is temperate in all things. Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we an incorruptible. [26] I therefore so run, not as uncertainly; so fight I, not as one that beateth the air: [27] But I keep under my body, and bring it into subjection: lest that by any means, when I have preached to others, I myself should be a castaway.

- 1 Corinthians 9:24-27

[40] And there came a leper to him, beseeching him, and kneeling down to him, and saying unto him, If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean. [41] And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will; be thou clean. [42] And as soon as he had spoken, immediately the leprosy departed from him, and he was cleansed. [43] And he straitly charged him, and forthwith sent him away; [44] And saith unto him, See thou say nothing to any man: but go thy way, shew thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleansing those things which Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them. [45] But he went out, and began to publish it much, and to blaze abroad the matter, insomuch that Jesus could no more openly enter into the city, but was without in desert places: and they came to him from every quarter.

- Mark 1:40-45

How do we know God’s character? How do we know, for example, that God is love and not a malevolent and mischievous deity, as the jaded Mark Twain thought at the end of his life? According to Christianity, we know God and his character by his self-revelation, what he tells us about himself. A facebook profile for an individual is full of details, nuances about favorite books, movies; habits, likes and dislikes. God represents himself much more succinctly; it is not a set of words that he uses to reveal himself, but a single Word, the man Jesus. The Gospel of John calls Jesus the Word of God, and for those in the first audience of this Gospel who were Greek and had a secular education, they would have connected this idea of the Word of God with Greek philosophy; But for the Jewish audience, the Word of God would evoke the words of the prophets, who received the Word of the Lord. The prophets were the vehicles through which God revealed himself to his people Israel. But the final prophet, the Word himself, comes to reveal God definitively, for all times and all places. Jesus is the Word of God—God’s self-revelation—not simply on account of the words he has to say, although this is obviously an important part of his message. He is also the Word of God in his actions, in how he relates to the people of his own time. This is very well illustrated in the Gospel lesson today.

In the account, a leper approaches Jesus asking to be cleansed. Now leprosy in the Old and New Testaments was probably different than the leprosy with which we are familiar. The leprosy we know causes extreme lacerations to the skin; fingers and toes can fall off, and death is not an uncommon end. The leprosy of the Bible appears to consist of relatively mild skin lacerations, which by comparison do not sound too severe; however, according to Old Testament law, someone with this type of leprosy was prohibited from living within the walls of a city or from entering the temple. In the language of the Pentateuch, a leper is unclean; he cannot worship in the temple; he cannot be touched without making the one who touches him unclean and therefore, at least for a time, unable to enter the temple. It is likely that in the parable of the good Samaritan, the priest and Levite pass by the bleeding and beaten man because touching him would have made them unclean and therefore unable to fulfill their formal religious duties. A leper or any person who remained unclean for a long period—like the woman with the issue of blood—would have felt cut off from society and cut off from God.

Notice the reaction of Jesus to this leper: “Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him.” Jesus is moved with compassion; God is not simply aloof and detached from the trials and troubles of humanity. What Jesus reveals about God is that God is moved to pity by the sufferings of individuals. But this pity is not simply the pity of abstract good will towards the less fortunate. Jesus has pity and his pity moves him to identify with the leper, to share in a small way in his affliction. By touching the leper, our Lord himself becomes ritually unclean. This is precisely the point of the incarnation, God the Son, identifies with the plight of man—his bondage to sin and death; he takes this plight upon himself and shares, as a brother, in our afflictions.

To the leper’s declaration—“ If thou wilt, thou canst make me clean”—Jesus says, “I will; be thou clean.” Jesus has compassion on the leper, he identifies with him by touching him, and finally, by his power, he makes the leper clean, restoring him to society and, in a very tangible sense, to God, by making him fit to enter the temple. Amongst our peers we are very accustomed to hearing ‘I will not’ to our requests. Part of the process of growing up seems to be accepting that we will encounter these disappoints, these rejections, all the time. But the word of Jesus is different. To the leper, he is a yes that negates all the no’s that society and established religion had issued to him.

Listen to what a Jewish scholar has to say about this incident from the Gospel: “Here we begin to catch the new note in the ministry of Jesus; his intense compassion for the outcast, the sufferer, who by his sin or by his suffering, which was too often regarded as the result of sin, had put himself outside respectable Jewish society, who found himself rejected and despised by men, and believed himself rejected and despised by God. Here was a new and lofty note, a new and exquisite manifestation of the very pity and love which the prophets had demanded” (quote by Sir Moses Haim Montefiore from Branscomb, The Gospel of Mark, p. 38). The fact is to a degree we all are lepers and outcasts. Even the most popular teenager, if he were honest, would say that he felt, at least to a degree, like an outsider. The only difference between people really are those who know that they are outcasts and those who all their lives have tried to deny and hide this reality, by conforming themselves in such a way that they will be accepted. Once we can identify ourselves as outcasts, then we are ready to hear the word of Jesus to us: “I will; I will, be thou clean.” We can hear the invitation of Jesus: “Join me in the fellowship of God; join me in the community, the family of my people.” What freedom is to be found, when we can hear this “I will” as spoken to each of us as individuals. There is no longer any need to make ourselves clean: touchable by our fellow men and able to enter into the temple and the fellowship of God; we have been made clean by this word of Jesus, “I will.” To put it in its simplest terms, this “I will” means that we have a home and family: our home is fellowship with God, our family those who share in this fellowship. The very longing of the human heart is for home and for family, and we have it, freely given, in our Lord Jesus and his word of “I will”. This is the freedom of a Christian, and you can see how it runs counter to the movement of individuals in society who are striving to be accepted by God and by their fellow-man.

From this standpoint of freedom, we can enter the sanctified life of a Christian. For example, as Christians—those who follow in the teachings and example of Jesus—we ought to have a particular compassion and love for the rejects and forgotten—the lepers—of our society. Those who their whole life have heard “I will not” are to hear the voice of Jesus, “I will”, through our lips. Paul writes of this sanctified life in the Epistle lesson today. From the standpoint of knowing ourselves as those freely accepted and made clean by Jesus, we can know our final destination. In a series of sports metaphors, Paul compares the Christian life to a race and a boxing match. It would be to misunderstand the lesson, if we heard it saying that we just need to try a little harder or that the Christian life is about competing with other Christians. The first point to be made about this passage is that it reminds us that we are indeed in a race. Most people do not even realize this; they live as if life were a dress rehearsal. The second point is that we need to run the race knowing the destination; you don’t want to run backwards around the track or off the track altogether. In the same way, we need to hit our opponent, not simply punch the air in futility. If you knew you were going to run a marathon tomorrow or fight a boxing match, there would be certain things you would do today: you wouldn’t eat this, you’d train, you’d go to bed early; in the same way knowing we have a race to run and a destination means we will consequently live in a certain way. Now, all this is true because we see it modeled and fulfilled in Jesus. He has already run the race set before him and gone on to glory where he sits at the right hand of God. We hear the word of Jesus, “I will” and we are set to the destination to which he has already led the way. The Swiss theologian, Karl Barth, describes this reality beautifully, when he writes in his Church Dogmatics, “What the Holy Spirit positively wills and effects. . . is always a human existence that deserves to be called a life to the extent that it is lived in the light of the royal man Jesus, in an attentiveness and movement to Him, because the Christian who receives and has the Holy Spirit recognizes and acknowledges that this man [Jesus] died for him and has risen again for him, that [Jesus] lives for him, that [Jesus] is the Owner and Bearer, the Representative and Lord of his life, and that in [the] exaltation [of Jesus] he too is exalted and set in a living fellowship with God” (Barth, CD IV.2, p.375). If the day has never come for you, may today be the day you hear Jesus word of acceptance and healing, “I will, be thou clean”, and in hearing this word may know that our true and final home is in God.

Bow Back Windsor Chair

For my 30th birthday, B sent me on a trip to make a chair with the man I call my wood-working mentor, although wood-working is really just a metaphor for life. In five days, I basically finished making this chair. Many happy hours--and a few frustrated ones too--were logged in that dank and cold basement, with the strains of Mozart and Bach as a suitable soundtrack. B definitely qualifies for wife of the year--nearly seven days alone with two small children!

Here are some thoughts about why I love wood-working. For one, wood-working requires undivided attention. There is no room for anxiety of any kind. To employ an over-used but true cliche, you are living in the moment, not slavishly looking at a clock every 10 minutes. B can tell about how I go out to my shop to do some wood turning only completely to lose track of time, wandering in at 10:30 or 11:00 with shavings hanging from my beard. I also love wood-working strangely because it involves compromise: one has an ideal of the project in mind, but there are always imperfections, known most acutely by the maker. Accepting these imperfections is part of the process of completing a chair. Without my mentor present, many steps in the project would not have been completed through worrying about imperfections. This is wonderful medicine for my exacting--mostly unrealistic--standards. To be able to say 'it is good enough' is thrilling, and one of those life lessons I am still trying to learn.