Amen Corner

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Up

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up About ¾ of the way through Pixar's Up, Russell, the main child character, says something that sums up the whole movie very nicely.  I wish I could remember it verbatim, but I can't.  And I can't find it on the web, either.  So here's my best attempt.  He says:
The wilderness is a lot different than I expected.  It's a lot wilder than the books made it sound.
Up reminds us that it's not just the wilderness that ends up being different and wilder than we expected; it's all of life.  The two main characters can testify to this.  Carl has recently become a widower.  The first ten minutes of the film chronicle his relationship with his wife, Ellie.  It makes for a beautiful movie within a movie.  Russell is a boy growing up with an absent father.  (Are his parents divorced?  I can't remember.)  Both people are coming to grips with all of the ways that life has tossed them around and dashed their expectations. Be warned, if you're prone to crying at the movies, bring some tissues for this one.  There are Bambi's mother/"Baby Mine" from Dumbo kinds of sad moments.  I asked my 3 year old if he liked the movie and he said, "Yeah.  It made me sad." But please don't let me scare you away.  The other message of Up is that grace also comes in wild and unexpected ways.  One of the great joys of watching it is getting to see how these two people who are suffering their own losses find new life together.  (I can't imagine that I'm ruining the movie by telling you that it has a great, great ending.  It is, after all, Disney.)  With them, we learn that good things happen if we can let go of the plans we have made and embrace the unforeseen.  One scene illustrates this really well, but I don't want to ruin the surprise. As a Christian I can't watch it without remembering how Paul says "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9)."  Or how he reminds us that God is capable of making something good come out of even the worst events of our lives (Romans 8:28). Deep thoughts aside, the movie is a lot of fun.  Be prepared to laugh hard every time Dug the talking dog or any of his counterparts shows up.  And, once again, the artistry is stunning.  I could watch the balloons in all their translucent wonder all day long. Or I suppose I could blow up a real balloon and watch it.  Isn't it funny how good animation can remind us that there is beauty in the mundane?

Son Castle Faire Vacation Bible School

vbs-027Hear Ye! Hear Ye!The King hereby decrees that your are invited to Son Castle Faire Vacation Bible School! Come and relive the time of castles and kings at Son Castle Faire. You'll use your talents to serve God, the King, and you'll enjoy roally entertaining Bible stories, crafts, games and music. Be here June 22nd - 26th from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. All kids in kindergarten through 6th grade are invited to attend. Reserve your child's spot by registering online or calling the church office today.

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Memorial Day

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It's Memorial Day weekend.  Tomorrow, grills will be fired up.  Flags will be flown.  There will be parades in every city.    And, yes, people will also visit cemeteries. My Grandmother will no doubt pay a visit to the Maness family graveyard.  Her late husband and two of her brothers were World War II veterans.  She still calls it "Decoration Day." Memorial Day was originally designated as a day to mourn Union Soldiers killed during the Civil War.  But soon the whole country was observing the day, remembering Union and Confederates alike.  Following World War I the day was expanded to include anyone killed while in the military service.  By the way, the nation's oldest annually held parade is the one in Portsmouth, and tomorrow our own Bob Kiser will be the Grand Marshal of the 125th event. Scripture is full of opportunities to remember.  From the very beginning, it's clear that God understands our need to make sure we don't forget.  The Passover Feast is a remembrance of God's acts on behalf of the people of Israel.  It's a recollection of how God brought them out of Egypt.  Numerous times in the Old Testament, the people are commanded to remember where they have come from and Who has brought them. Of course, the New Testament picks up the same theme with the Lord's Supper.  It used to be that just about every communion table I ever saw had Jesus' words, "Do this in remembrance of me," etched into its front.  Jesus takes the memorial service of the nation of Israel and creates with it a memorial service that can be observed by all of the people of God. As most of you know by now, Rachel and I are out of town today.  Mike Dossett is very kindly stepping in.  He had some opportunities to preach while he was stationed in Germany.  I love it when our elders preach.  And not just because it means I'm getting a break.  I love it because it is an opportunity for the leaders of our church to speak to the congregation.  I don't know about you, but as one of the sheep, I need that.  I'll look forward to listening to Mike's message online. In the meantime, pray for our safe travel, and I look forward to worshiping with you next Sunday.  Today, I hope you will have your own Memorial Day service.  I hope you will look back and remember all of the sacrifices that have been made for you.  I hope you'll remember those people who sacrificed in order to serve you: parents, friends, mentors.  And I hope you'll remember the one who paid the ultimate sacrifice to make us all children of God. Just don't go looking to visit Him in a cemetery.  There is no grave to decorate.  As the angel said, "Why would you look for the living among the dead?"

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Leap of Faith

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The following quotes are taken from a series of journal entries written by a man who has recently lost his wife (H.) to bone cancer.  They are just a few of the raw, honest reflections on pain and suffering that are to be found in the memoir.  Read the quotes and see what kind of impression of the author forms in your mind.  Would this be someone you'd like to know?  How strong would you say his faith is?  Check out these quotes:
  • Talk to me about the truth of religion and I'll listen gladly.  Talk to me about the duty of religion and I'll listen submissively.  But don't come talking about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.
  • They tell me H. is happy now, they tell me she is at peace.  What makes them so sure of this?  ..."Because she is in God's hands."  But if so, she was in God's hands all the time, and I have seen what they did to her here.
  • Sooner or later I must face the question in plain language.  What reason have we, except our own desperate wishes, to believe that God is, by any standard we can conceive "good"?  Doesn't all the...evidence suggest exactly the obvious?
  • What chokes every prayer and every hope is the memory of all the prayers H. and I offered and all the false hopes we had...hopes encouraged...by strange remissions, by one temporary recovery that might have ranked as a miracle...Time after time, when He seemed most gracious He was really preparing the next torture.
The author?  C.S. Lewis-the prolific Christian author known for his incisive defenses and explanations of the Christian faith and for his fantasy series, The Chronicles of Narnia.  They are part of a personal diary called A Grief Observed.  Would you have imagined these thoughts to be the work of a Christian artist?  For the record, we get to see some healing take place.  In the end, his faith is changed but not obliterated. Also for the record, reading these quotes only makes me want to know Lewis more.  His bravery and honesty are to be admired.  He does not flinch in examining the problem of pain. Neither does the writer Paul.  It is hard to read Romans 7 and 8 while wearing rose-colored glasses.  Today we're going to read a reflection that Paul has on suffering.  But it also leads us to another one of the passages that I'm referring to as "security blankets," because they give us hope even in the most difficult of situations.  These passages remind us of our theme.  They encourage us with the knowledge that "His divine power has given us everything we need" (2 Peter 1:3).

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A Brief Follow-up and a Briefer Taunt

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First for the follow up: More than one person has said that Sunday's message got them to thinking.  It also got them talking with each other.  That's about the best thing I could hope for in a sermon.  The egotistical side of me also hopes that you think I'm brilliant, but I'm learning to let that go. What I hope for is a message that stays with you and makes you want to talk about it with others.  I'd love for you to talk about it with me if you want.  I've said this before: My big problem with the idea of preaching is that it's such a one-way enterprise.  It's necessary and important and there are people who are really good at that kind of communication.  But I still prefer teaching, because dialogue is possible. My other problem with preaching is that it pushes me to be simple rather than complex.  There's something to be said for simplicity and clarity.  But it's harder for me.  I prefer being able to talk to both sides of the issue. All that to say, I realize that the way God is working in our world can't be reduced to one analogy (card game, GPS, or anything else).  God works in a bunch of different ways.  I further realize that "why" isn't always a bad question to ask.  I just think it's important to ask the "what" question alongside it. Now for the taunt: You probably won't hear much from me between now and the end of the month.  Most of you know that we're leaving tomorrow on a Caribbean cruise.  I'll be much too busy snorkeling, swimming, eating, drinking, playing, sightseeing, reading, shuffleboarding, etc.  All of that leisure is not to be taken lightly and will thus demand my utmost attention. I will miss being with you this Sunday, but not enough to cancel the cruise.  See you on the 31st.

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God Work

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I'm reading a book by Randy Harris called God Work.  Now a professor at ACU, he was at Lipscomb when I was there.  In fact, Rachel and I met in one of his classes.  The book reads like a "Greatest Hits."  Some of the things in the book I remember him saying in class.  The rest I can hear him saying.  I would imagine anyone who's had him can hear that Harris style coming through. We might be reading this book together on Wednesday nights some time soon.  But don't wait for that.  Go ahead and order it. I will probably be sharing quotes from this book on and off.  Let me start with this one:
Hans Georg-Gadamer somewhere said "Conversation is not me trying to convince you to my point of view or you trying to convince me to yours.  It's both of us trying to be convinced by a third thing, which is, the truth."  I'm not tying to win you over, and you're not trying to win me over.  We're both trying to be won over by the truth which can happen when we take a humble position before God and the truth and which tends to make our conversations go so much better.
What do you think?  Leave a comment.  I've got something to say about it, but I want to hear from you first.  Have a good weekend.  Looking forward to seeing everyone on Sunday.  We'll be talking about Romans 8:28.

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Do Re Mi

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This one's for those of you who have ever watched a musical and wondered what it would look like if people were to spontaneously burst into song and dance, "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" style, in real life.  There are some theological musings below the video, but don't feel like it's necessary to read them.  Maybe you just need to watch and enjoy.  Am I the only one who finds it impossible to watch this video without grinning, even after viewing several times? In fact, I would be ashamed to admit it if it weren't for so many other people saying the same thing in the comment section on youtube, but I even get a little teary eyed. So this whole thing got me to thinking about Genesis, more specifically the creation account in Genesis 1-3.  We're told that, "in the beginning" the earth is "formless and empty".  The picture we're supposed to get is of absolute chaos.  The world is not a safe place for anyone. And then God speaks into the chaos and the result is order.  God separates things (water from land, darkness from light, etc.) in order to create a safe place for his creation to exist.  And he does all of this so that He can exist in relationship to his creation. As I've said before, the point of the creation story is that creation is good.  It is not an accident.  God takes meaninglessness and provides meaning.  He takes lifelessness and creates life.  Before creation we would be as safe in this world as we would be on the surface of Mars.  After creation, we have a home. The same thing happens in this train station in Belgium.  One way to look at it is to say that, in the beginning, the station is formless.  People going from here to there, lost in their own little lives, unaware of the others who are around them.  From above, the station seems chaotic. And then, seemingly from out of nowhere, there is a voice.  And suddenly two people respond to the voice.   And they're no longer moving on their own.  Which is to say that they are moving with each other and they are moving under the direction of something that is bigger than they are. And from there, more people are drawn into this act of creation.  The chaos disappears; the dance envelopes everyone.  People cannot remain isolated.  Some try to join the dance; others do a dance of their own.  But no one in the train station remains isolated.  Order comes from chaos. Finally, a connection can be made between chaos and the effects of sin.  We tend to think about sin in terms of guilt.  We stand condemned to die because we have run afoul of the judge.  Grace comes along and pronounces us innocent. That's true, but it's only part of the picture.  The other part is that sin creates chaos.  It wrecks our lives, it wrecks the lives of those around us.  It isolates us from one another.  But grace has the opposite effect.  It brings order.  It brings us from isolation into community.  Think about it.  When you experience God's grace do you not feel like things are suddenly clearer, less chaotic?  With God's grace life is a safer place to be.  Not only because it brings us forgiveness, also because it transforms us.  I think this isn't far from the meaning for the Hebrew word Shalom. Psalm 40 1 I waited patiently for the LORD; he turned to me and heard my cry. 2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.

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Word to our Mothers

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There will be no Mother's Day sermon on Sunday.  Even though, Sunday is Mother's Day.  (Cough, ahem, cough!  Don't forget the moms in your life!  Especially you husbands and sons out there.)  We'll be serving up a big thank you to all the moms, but I won't be preaching a Mother's Day sermon.  And that's because, well, I'm a dude. So what do I know about being a mom?  I can speak a little bit about what it means to be a dad.  And I can talk generically about being "a parent."  But I have no clue what it means to be a good mom.  It's the same reason I don't preach on how to be a good fighter pilot.  The only thing I know about flying a fighter jet is that, if a MiG's on your tail, you can hit the brakes and he'll fly right by.  And, if you're too close for missiles, you'll have to switch to guns. (Thank you, Maverick.)  Along the same lines, I know that being a mother is like taking your bottom lip and pulling it over your head.  (Thank you, Mr. Cosby.  Nice sweater.) Soooo.  Like I said, no Mother's Day sermon.  Just a big thank you to all you moms out there.  Our kids would be in peril without you.  Technically, our kids wouldn't be anything without you. I thought about asking a mom to preach the sermon on Sunday, but something tells me that might create a few problems.  So, how 'bout you moms out there let us hear from you now?  The floor is yours.  Leave a comment.  Tell us what you've learned about being a good mom.  What did your mom teach you?  Wanna give a shout out to one of our moms at church?  Someone you think is doing a great job?  Don't be shy!  Let's hear it!  Gentlemen, you can leave a comment, too, as long you're lavishing praise and not preachifyin'. Let me just take this chance to thank the mother of my children.  I love you, baby.  I know it's a cliché to have a dad who always says, "Go ask your mother."  But in our case it's just the right thing.  You're so much smarter.  All that, and you'll be able to handle our kids' medical emergencies while I'm curled up in a fetal position in the corner.  What a woman!

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Peanuts and Cracker Jacks...

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...gimme Some! James and Judy P. are putting together a Tides Game for Tuesday, 6/23.  It's "Roll Back the Clock Night"--$.25 hot dogs, popcorn & cokes.  Interested?  You can sign up on the sheet outside the office or leave a comment below with your last name and how many will be coming.  Or you can send me an email.  The cost is $8.50 per ticket. This is a popular night and will probably fill up fast, so we need your $ by 5/20.

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Above My Pay Grade

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Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. (Philippians 6:6) Prayer is not overcoming God's reluctance ... it is laying hold of his highest willingness. --Richard Trench Rachel was about 2 months pregnant with our oldest child on September 11, 2001.  This means that I haven't yet had to explain that awful day to any of my children.  So far they are blissfully unaware of evil and tragedy of that scope.  I remember that there was a lot on the news shows about how to talk to kids about it.  But it still seems like it would be a difficult task. Author and preacher Erwin McManus talks about having to explain 9/11 to his children, then 13 and 9: "...I remember sitting down with our kids. Now, I knew what I wanted to tell them. I wanted to tell them that old cliché-the safest place to be is in the center of the will of God. Haven't you heard that? The safest place to be is in the center of the will of God. It's so beautiful. It's just so unbiblical. I wanted to tell them, "Look, we're Christians. We're followers of Jesus Christ, so this would never happen to us. We're on the other side of the country. It's really, really far away. If you'll just walk with Christ, you don't have anything to worry about." In fact, what I wanted to do was give them a good, old, Christian lie. But I knew that I had to tell them the truth. And so I told my children that morning that what we learned is that we have no control over when we die, or even how we die, but what we have control over is how we live." Is it really any different with anyone?  When faced with tragedy, don't we want to tell each other that "everything will be OK," or "God wouldn't let that happen to us?"  Never mind that Jesus assured his followers that they would face troubles in this world (John 16:33).  It's still tempting to seek consolation in false notions of safety. But Paul suggests another route to courage--one that doesn't seek to avoid pain or troubles.  As we'll see this morning, Paul points to the power of prayer in living a courageous life. That's a dangerous phrase: "the power of prayer."  It's open to significant misunderstanding.  So today we'll look more closely at the power of prayer.  We'll seek to understand how such prayer can bring with it a "peace that passes all understanding."  I hope you'll get a glimpse of that peace this morning.

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Susan Boyle

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In Sunday's message I referenced the Susan Boyle video (now viewed nearly 40 million times on YouTube).  Some of you said that you still have not seen it.  You can watch it by clicking here.  I can't embed it.  You can also click here to read an interesting commentary by a Catholic priest named James Martin on the world's fascination with her.  There's also this take on it from our local paper. The two views aren't mutually exclusive.  It's probably a little bit of both.  It got me to wondering why I enjoyed seeing Mrs. Boyle do so well.  Part of it is the relief I feel at seeing disaster averted.  My son occasionally hides his eyes when he sees a character on TV about to get in trouble or be embarrassed.  That's how we feel when someone like Susan Boyle comes on stage.  It's like there's a voice that says, "Stop her before she makes a fool of herself!" Imagine our surprise, our relief, our elation, when she's not pathetic but glorious.  It's the surprise that gets our attention. I agree with Fr. Martin.  Perhaps we are drawn to this performance because it is a reminder of God's power to do the same.  To see the glorious in the mundane.  It's the great reversal that Jesus delights in pointing out, where the least of society (lepers, "sinners," tax collectors, Samaritans) end up being the heroes. Do we not have the same hope for ourselves?  What do you think?

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Worrisome

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Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? (Matthew 6:27)

This morning we’re going to begin looking at passages that echo the sentiments of our theme verse for the year: “His divine power has given us everything we need.” (2 Peter 1:3). And we’ll start with these words from Jesus that are quoted above.

As I was reading for today, I came across a meditation on worry and thought I would share it with you.

“In some parts of my lawn, the grass is thick and green. In other areas, it's sparse and dry. There are even a few places where the grass is missing entirely. When I mow the lawn, I notice that where the grass is healthy, there are no weeds. Where the lawn is sparse, there are a few. Where there's no grass, the weeds flourish.

Every time I notice the weedy spots, I think, I really need to pull those things. So I do, but within a few weeks they're back—and I'm pulling them again. One day it hit me: I don't have to pull weeds where the grass is thick. Instead of spending all my time pulling weeds, maybe I [need] to invest time making the grass as healthy as possible. The more grass I had, the fewer weeds I'd have to pull.

The same applies to worry. Worry is like the weeds. God's peace is the grass. Instead of just focusing on eliminating my worries, I [need] to cultivate God's peace.” (Mike Bechtle, in an article for Discipleship Journal; quoted in the October 21, 2008, entry of Men of Integrity)

Bechtle gets to the heart of the real problem with worry. The problem is that, like the weeds, worry can consume so much time and energy that would be better spent elsewhere. As you’ll see, Jesus says the same thing in the passage from Matthew 6. Both would say that worrying is the opposite of doing something. Worrying is stationary, not active. Worrying puts us in a position of helplessness. I’ve found that, when I’m worrying, I’m usually not focusing on the true problem at hand.

This morning we’re going to be focusing on the weeds of worry. But my hope is that you will leave here wanting to pay more attention to the lawn of your life. I hope you will want to concern yourself, not with what might happen in the future, but what is happening in the present.

Perhaps the serenity prayer is in order here: “God grant us the courage to change the things that we can, the serenity to accept the things that we cannot, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Worry is what happens when we fail to know the difference. May God grant us the courage to stop worrying and to turn to him today.

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Keep Celebrating

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I hope that Easter has stayed with you this week.  I wish that I was one of those who could say that they celebrate Easter every week.  But I can't.  Perhaps I will grow closer to that ideal.  But for now, I am blessed to have reminders.  Church signs that declare: "He is risen."  Crosses draped in white or covered in flowers.  It is good to celebrate.  I'm reminded of NT Wright's suggestion that, for the week of Easter, morning prayers should be preceded by champagne. Here's a celebration poem by John Updike called "Seven Stanzas at Easter," from his collection, Telephone Poles and Other Poems.  Updike takes on our tendency to make a parable or myth out of Jesus' resurrection.  His point is that the strength of the Easter story is that Jesus was raised bodily from the dead-hence the warning, "Let us not mock God with metaphor." He is at his most powerful in reminding us that our deaths are not a metaphor (stanza 5).  They are all too real.  And they require a real resurrection.  Like the one that God performed for Jesus and will perform for us. So if your Easter hope has faded some.  I hope it will be renewed today.  Happy Easter everyone.

Seven Stanzas at Easter

Make no mistake: if He rose at all it was as His body; if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules reknit, the amino acids rekindle, the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers, each soft Spring recurrent; it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the eleven apostles; it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes, the same valved heart that - pierced - died, withered, paused, and then regathered out of enduring Might new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor, analogy, sidestepping transcendence; making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded credulity of earlier ages: let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache, not a stone in a story, but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of time will eclipse for each of us the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb, make it a real angel, weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous, for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty, lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed by the miracle, and crushed by remonstrance.

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Christos Anesti

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--May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…(Galatians 6:14) --"Jesus, keep me near the Cross...let me live from day to day with it shadow 'oer me." (Traditional hymn) I've been seeing increasing reports of the theft of metals like steel, aluminum and copper. In a market like ours it's a good way to make some quick money. That's must be what was going through the minds of the thieves who stole a cross from Calvary Cemetery in Little Rock, Arkansas several years back. They cut the cross off at its base and hauled it away in a truck. Then they cut it into manageable pieces and sold the metal off for scrap. Police later discovered that the thieves probably made a total of $450 on the 900 pounds of metal that they got from the cross. It's hard to know what the true value of the cross was. But it had been installed in 1930 at a cost of $10,000. These thieves got less than 5% of the original price of the cross. But then, I suppose that's $450 more than what they had spent on it. I think there are some striking parallels at work here, especially in the value that we place on the cross. How precious is the cross to us? How much value do we place on it? It's often easy for me to undervalue it. Why? Perhaps because it has become too commonplace. There are crosses everywhere. To put it in economic terms, our market is saturated with crosses, so it becomes hard to appreciate the value of one. Or maybe it's that I forget the price that was paid at the cross. The thieves were willing to take $450 dollars for their cross, because they hadn't really sacrificed a great deal to get it. It's easy for us to forget that, in order for the cross to be a symbol of hope worthy of boasting, a great price had to be paid. An innocent man was wrongly executed. The Son of God experienced separation from the Father. Had this great price never been paid, the cross would have no more value to us than the guillotine or the electric chair. This morning, Easter Sunday, we'll remember the value of the cross. Not because of what it was, but because the person who was placed upon it. And because of what God did for him (and for us) through it. I hope you'll celebrate with me today. Christ has been raised!

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Ritual

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Growing up in the CofC, most people would tell you that we don’t have a lot of ritual in our services. I think that’s kind of true. More likely, we should say that we don’t call it ritual. But really, from the way we prayed, to the way that we sang, to the way that the preacher talked. There was plenty of ritual. The fancy word for what I’m talking about is liturgy. It’s the way that “church” was (is) done. And we have our own liturgy at NCOC, we just might not say it that way.

And yet two rituals have stood out in the life of our church in this last week. The first was the “installation” of Mike Dossett as an elder. What a strange turn of phrase it is to say that we are “installing” someone. It’s like we were expecting a crew from Best Buy to show up and permanently fasten Mike to the wall like a set of speakers. Do we say that because we don’t want to say that he was “ordained”?

Anyhow. I heard more than one person comment (all in a positive way) on the reading that was used. The language was formal and kind of high-falutin’. It was a lot like a wedding ceremony. But it fit the occasion didn’t it? This is an important moment in the life of the church and (to borrow more nuptial language) “not to be entered into lightly.”

The other was last night’s Passover ceremony. [Thanks, BTW, to everyone who took care of business so we could participate in the ceremony. I hope that, if we do it again next year, we can make sure that those who were teaching our kids last night will be able to participate.] While last night could have been much more formal (I omitted the responsive readings) it was still a very ritualized event with all of the eating together and prayer and remembering.

Not something we typically “low church” informal CofC’ers do. But I think that both rituals were appropriate. Both provided a chance to experience something as a group.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on either of these events. Can anyone guess where the script for Mike’s ordination (There! I said it!) came from? Did you like it? Was it strange? How do you respond to formal ritual in a worship service? What about the Passover service last night? What was it like to take part in such a choreographed event?

I’d like to hear from those of you who grew up in the CoC and those of you who didn’t. Or maybe I should say those who grew up in High Church and Low Church traditions. My guess is that you’ll bring different perspectives.

Where else (if anywhere) might rituals like that be beneficial to the church?

On another note, for those of you who are into the whole “religious calendar” thing, let me remind you that tomorrow is Good Friday. I hope you’ll be aware of that throughout your day. We will celebrate on Sunday, but our celebration does not come cheaply.

Perhaps I could spend some time with this reflection on Good Friday from last year.

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This Is a Test

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Given the current state of things, who knows what Google’s current hiring practices are? But back in the heady days of 2004, this millionaire-making tech company was aggressively searching for the best tech minds around. And it was employing some very “Google-like” ingenuity in finding them. They placed ads with publications such as Mensa, MIT’s Technology Review and Physics Today. In these ads they included questions designed to separate the wheat from the chaff. Questions such as, “How many different ways can you color an icosahedron with one of three colors on each face?” and “On an infinite, two-dimensional rectangular lattice of 1-ohm resistors, what is the resistance between two nodes that are a knight’s move away?” Some of their questions were more creative: “Write a haiku describing possible methods for predicting search traffic seasonality. Other than the haiku one, if any of you can even explain these questions to me, I’d love to hear from you after church, because I have no idea what they’re talking about. Perhaps their most creative ploy was to place billboards around Silicone Valley and Harvard Square that simply read: “(first 10-digit prime found in consecutive digits of e).com.” Whoever solved the math problem was taken to a Google recruiting site. Of course, as a “for-profit” company, Google’s goal is to get the cream to float to the top. Their hope is to have only the smartest and best working for them, hence the rigorous elimination process. Fortunately for me, this is not the case in the Kingdom of God. Jesus repeatedly offers his invitation to anyone who will hear and respond–anyone who will answer the door when he knocks. It is not hard to get into God’s Kingdom. This morning we’re going to be looking at a verse that tells us to keep testing ourselves to make sure that our salvation is sure–keep administering exams. But don’t be afraid, the entrance exams aren’t hard. They don’t require Spiritual Geniuses. They just require that we pay a little bit of attention. I hope you’re ready to pay attention to your walk with God today. He stands by, ready to help.

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Dirty Jobs: Classical Edition

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"...and he was transfigured before them. 3And his raiment became shining, exceeding white as snow; so as no fuller on earth can white them." (Mark 9:2-3, KJV) File this under “random gross Bible trivia.” A while back, during one of our dinners at LIFEgroup, someone made the mistake of wondering out loud how ancient people cleaned their clothes. Then I made the mistake of telling them…at the dinner table. While I don’t know how the ancient Israelites cleaned their clothes, I do know how the Romans went about it. There’s a particularly interesting description of the process in a book I got for Christmas called Working IX to V: Orgy Planners, Funeral Clowns, and Other Prized Professions of the Ancient World by Vicki León. One of the “prized professions” that León describes is that of fuller—the classical equivalent to our dry cleaners. Fullers cleaned garments by soaking them in a giant vat of cleaning solution and then transferring them to another container to stomp them clean. They would then ring out the clothes—a job that might take two people, depending on the size of the garment. Perhaps you’re wondering why this should make for less than germane dinner conversation. I haven’t told you about the cleaning solution. The Romans hadn’t yet adopted the use of soap. Ironically, the German “barbarians” of the day were using it, but not the Romans. Instead, the Romans used a mixture of potash and urine. Yes, urine. Since it is rich in ammonia, it actually has cleaning properties. According to León, the fuller would place chamber pots at various street corners. (Although I guess it’s not really a “chamber” pot if it’s not in a chamber--more of an extremely portable potty.) Throughout the day, various citizens would provide the vital ingredient, and the fuller would then retrieve the pots. The stomping process was called the saltus fullonicus, or “fuller’s dance.” It’s believed that managers even kept their fullers moving with live music. Yup. Just another reason to be glad that we live in 21st Century America. I trust you’ll breath a sigh of relief the next time you load up a dishwasher and add a cap full of something that’s not urine. I wonder if Mike Rowe would take this job.

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