A dark, worthy parable

I was on vacation in May of last year and I picked Cormac McCarthy’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel entitled The Road. It is a wonderful story written by a man who is, according to one reviewer, “our greatest living author.”

The Road is a dark story. I recommended it to my brother and he said, “That is the most depressing book I ever read. I can’t believe you liked it.” In a sense it is a depressing book, but it makes a wonderful point that our society desperately needs to hear.

At the center of the story are a father and son trying to survive in the dark world that exists after an apparent nuclear holocaust. The father is fixated on keeping his son alive in a very dangerous and ugly world. From time to time they have opportunities to aid others along the road and the boy always wants for his father to extend a helping hand. The father never wants to. He avoids human contact fearing that others might be dangerous and they often are. The father sometimes allows limited contact with those in an obvious weaker position who do not represent a threat. The son always wants the father to help the weaker ones, but the father resists. Sometimes he does help a little, but not much. Often the father does not help others at all.

For much of the book I identified with the father and I understood his reluctance to help others. The others might be dangerous to himself and to his son. The can of food they share might be all that stands between themselves and starvation in a few days.

But as they continued down the road I realized that the strict path of self-preservation followed by the father reduces his life and that of his son to, literally, an animal existence. Those little chances that they have to help others, risky as they are, offer their only chances to experience a little light in a dark world.

Finally the son has an opportunity to take a tiny step of faith and he does. In that tiny step of faith, dangerous though it was, he has a chance to experience a different way than that revealed to him by his father. He got a chance to speak with someone who would talk to him about God instead of talking to him only about how to get by in the world.

The Road is a dark story, and it is supposed to be. In the tradition of the dark biblical book of Ecclesiastes, Cormac McCarthy reveals the way the world looks when goodness, faith and the spiritual are stripped away. The disturbing thing is that the life of the father and son in The Road is the life of many in our society. Indeed, too often the goals of that father are very much like our goals in life.

By stripping away all the extras McCarthy hopes to show us the ugliness and emptiness of the road that many walk. Because of all the stuff we have, because of all the distractions we enjoy, we cannot easily see that our lives often follow the same repulsive road that the father in the story tried to teach to his son.

One person who read the story told me that I was too hard on the father. After all, he was only trying to protect his son. My response was that the father went too far to try to protect his son. Look how far Jesus’ Father went to protect his Son. While he possessed the power to stop it, Jesus’ Father let him die a horrible, unfair death. But revealing a path of goodness and love and forgiveness and grace was more important than saving the life of his Son.

The parable that is Cormac McCarthy’s The Road helped me to see the ugliness of the ways we often cling to desperately and reminded me afresh of the superior path offered by Jesus: “Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father has been pleased to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions and give to the poor” (Luke 12:32-33, TNIV).

Experiencing peace

Last week it was reported that a minister in Duesseldorf, Germany had what he thought was a great idea to bring church folks more peace of mind. Thorsten Nolting invited parishioners, one at a time, to lie in open graves which he then covered up with boards. This was meant to be an exercise in meditation. Nolting said, “I wanted people to think about what weighs on them down in the darkness and gather the energy to resist it.”

It did not work very well at all. Nolting said the exercise went “horribly wrong” because reporters did not allow silence. Journalists kept bothering the participants with questions ruining the whole meditative atmosphere. Nolting implored the reporters to be quiet or go away, but they would not.

Whether it was the noisy reporters or the disconcerting feeling generated by lying in a grave, Nolting’s attempt to improve peace of mind appeared to have the reverse effect in at least one case. One man was still trembling 20-minutes after spending a mere seven minutes laid to rest in the grave.

While it is admirable that this German minister sought a deeper experience of peace among church folks in Duesseldorf, I just don’t think that’s the way Jesus intended for us to experience his peace in this world. In the gospel reading for the second Sunday of Easter, the risen Jesus twice pronounced peace upon his followers and then he said, "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you” (John 20:21, TNIV).

Certainly meditation has an often overlooked place in the practice of our faith. But we should not miss the fact that Jesus, on the evening of the first Easter, connected the experience of peace to his mission of love and grace. Jesus never said that his peace would be with us in our own selfish pursuit of the pervasive consumerism of our culture. The wholeness we long for is linked to the Lord's way of sacrificial service.

"Jesus said, 'Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you'" (John 20:21, TNIV).

Easter in the desert

Next year I propose that we all take a trip at Easter time. A long trip. Let’s go further south. A lot further south. Let’s go way down south of the equator to the Southern Hemisphere. Why go down there at Easter? Because it’s not springtime.

I confess that I borrowed this idea from similar one offered by Martin Marty in a sermon that I remember reading. Marty thinks that our perspective on Easter may be affected in an unfortunate way by springtime. Have you heard the sermons about Easter being about reawakening and rebirth? Chirping birds and awakening plants tell us life returns where there had been apparent death. Many preachers in this part of the world say that it is the same with the resurrection of Jesus.

But Marty says that we should forget that sort of perspective. He thinks believers in the Southern Hemisphere have it better. They have to ponder the resurrection in the midst of scenes of grass turning brown and trees turning gray. With dead leaves and dead flowers on the ground they must celebrate the living, resurrected Jesus.

So I have a place picked out for an Easter pilgrimage next year. How about we go to the Atacama Desert that runs from the southern border of Peru into northern Chile in South America? That’s in the Southern Hemisphere, and the Atacama Desert will definitely give us a very different setting to celebrate the resurrection.

At its center, climatologists describe the Atacama as absolute desert. It is known as the driest place on earth. There has been no rainfall in portions of the Atacama Desert as long as humans have kept records of it. Now that’s a long dry spell.

We will see no plants at all in the deepest part of the Atacama—not even a stump of a cactus. We will see no animals, not even a lizard, not even a gnat or any other sort of bug. There is essentially no life in the deepest part of the Atacama. The landscape is moon-like. I read that it was chosen as a testing ground for a lunar rover.

While we will find no evidence of life in the Atacama Desert, we may find evidence of death. Because there is no moisture in the Atacama, nothing rots. One visitor to the region reported seeing seemingly petrified human remains on the dessert floor—even those of children.

What would it be like to go to such a desolate place of no life and ample evidence of death to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus? No birds singing. No trees budding. No flowers blooming. No birds, trees, or flowers, period. Only a ghostly wind amid the remains of the dead.

Sounds great, huh? Are y’all ready to go?

While the Atacama Desert is not the sort of Easter setting that we are used to, let me tell you something: The power of the resurrection is no less real there than it is here. Whether your life is full of sunny joy like springtime, or whether it is full of dark and lonely despair like the Atacama Desert, Jesus is alive. He died in a cruel and unjust way on Good Friday, but he was raised to life again on Easter Sunday.

The Easter story does not offer us an easy formula for joy. Indeed, were we to try to establish a formula out of this story, many in our society might not like it a whole lot.

Jesus prayed earnestly and repeatedly for the heavenly Father to stop his impending suffering, but the answer was no. Jesus’ perfect obedience to the heavenly Father did not cause him to escape sorrow and heartache and physical suffering. As Dorothy Sayers wrote, “God did not abolish the fact of evil: He transformed it . . . He did not stop the crucifixion: He rose from the dead.”

The Easter story is not a quick fix, simple formula of joy. If you think it is, then you have it all wrong. But when we choose begin and nurture a relationship with the one named Jesus who was crucified and then was raised to life, then we have the chance to give in to what Philip Yancey described as “a long, slow undertow of joy.”

The brightness of Easter in springtime is beautiful. But the undertow of joy offered by the resurrection of Jesus is just as real in the dead of winter. Maybe celebrating Easter in a barren desert would give us a new sense of resurrection joy.

I wonder if my local travel agent has a last minute Easter package to the Atacama Desert available?

Not worth comparing

"I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Rom. 8:18, TNIV).

That phrase "not worth comparing" always gets me. The difficulties we endure now are "not worth comparing" to the glory that awaits the followers of Christ. If this is true, what does it mean for us today?

Years ago I read an article on Richard Baxter who has been called "the most prominent English churchman of the 1600s." Baxter suffered from a physical ailment that caused him nearly constant pain from the time he was a teenager until he died. Because of his efforts to reform the Church of England he was persecuted fiercely. He was imprisoned at one point and his property was confiscated. On one occasion the bed on which he was lying sick was taken from him by the state church authorities.

Even with all his suffering Baxter accomplished a great deal. He sought to find common ground among squabbling Christian factions of his time. Baxter is probably best known for his prolific writing. He wrote hundreds of books some of which are still widely read today, over 300 years later.

How was Baxter able to accomplish so much in service to the Lord while suffering constant physical pain and enduring intense persecution? For one thing Baxter said that it was his practice to meditate upon heaven for at least a half-hour every day.

How could a guy who produced over 200 written works, many of which are very long, find time to meditate on heaven for a half-hour every day? Could it be that such meditation is more productive than we may tend to believe today? Could it be that Baxter's discipline of thinking of heaven helped him to remember that his trails, though they were fierce, were "not worth comparing" to the glory to come?

C. S. Lewis once wrote to his friend Malcolm, "The hills and valleys of Heaven will be to those you now experience not as a copy is to an original, nor as a substitute to the genuine article, but as the flower to the root, or the diamond to the coal."

I have heard the saying that one can be so heavenly minded that he or she is no earthly good. It could be that the reverse is more accurate. Maybe the more heavenly minded we are the more earthly good we accomplish.

"Essence of union of church and state"

There is a quote concerning the separation of church and state that I am going to relay in a moment. But first, I noticed that the Faith-Based Initiative is back in the news in recent weeks. On January 29 President Bush celebrated the seventh anniversary of this program which channels federal funds to religious organizations that provide certain services. Last Thursday Christianitytoday.com featured a Q&A with John Dilulio, the first director of the Faith-Based Initiative, on the future of the program after Bush leaves office. On January 29 Dilulio along with David Kuo, former deputy director of the Faith-Based Initiative, wrote a New York Times Op-Ed in which they were critical of Bush's efforts in this area but they voiced support for the concept. Then, on February 3, Jay Hein, current director of the Faith-Based Initiative, responded to Kuo and Dilulio's Op-Ed with a defense of this Bush legacy at this point.

All three editions of the Baptist Faith and Message (1925, 1963 and 2000) thankfully contain this simple but profound sentence: "Church and state should be separate." This brings me to that quote I mentioned above. Baptist hero E. Y. Mullins in his book entitled The Axioms of Religion said, "Direct gifts of money to religious bodies by the general government is of the essence of union of church and state."

Advocacy in action

I did something new for me earlier this week: I lobbied a couple of members of congress.

I was privileged to participate in Advocacy in Action, sponsored by the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) and Bread for the World (BFW). The Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina (CBFNC) invited me to this event and took care of my travel to and from Washington, DC where the meeting was held. Numerous pastors and curriculum writers of the CBF attended Advocacy in Action. There is a lot I could say about this trip but, for now at least, I will limit myself to my lobbying efforts.

In 2000 the United States was one of 189 nations to adopt the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of the United Nations (UN) which are eight objectives designed to improve the quality of life of millions of poor people around the world by the year 2015. In a speech delivered in September of 2005 at UN headquarters, President George W. Bush stated, "To spread a vision of hope, the United States is determined to help nations that are struggling with poverty. We are committed to the Millennium Development Goals." So, under two different administrations, one Democratic and one Republican, this nation has affirmed its commitment to the MDGs.

The Coordinating Council of the CBF endorsed the MDGs in October of 2007. In the church I serve we included the efforts of Baptist World Aid to achieve the MDGs in our World Hunger Offering of 2007.

Certainly the MDG's are worthy objectives for Christians. Jesus said that we should see his face in the faces of the poor and the sick and to help them accordingly (Mat. 25:31-46). However, as stated in an article in the Texas Baptist Standard last month, helping the poor effectively "requires response from both congregations and government." Jimmy Dorrell, executive director of Mission Waco, pointed to research suggesting that "each church, synagogue and mosque in America would have to contribute $300,000 each year to fund the basic poverty-relief programs provided by the government." No wonder Dorrell said that "people who say only the church, and not the government, should care for the needs of poor people aren’t thinking clearly."

So, as a Christian, I must help the poor generouly. As a pastor I must lead a congregation to help the poor generously. And, as a citizen, I must encourage the government to help the poor generously. It is the last of these duties that received some attention earlier this week.

On Tuesday morning Advocacy in Action participants assembled at the headquarters of BFW. It was there that I learned that the U.S. is not on track to do its part in achieving the MDGs. We currently devote less that one-half of one percent of the federal budget to poverty-focused development assistance. A recent study reveals that this nation needs to add $25 billion to poverty relief efforts in order meet our commitments. I was asked to speak to a couple of members of congress about adding only a portion of this amount, $5 billion, to the budget for fiscal year 2009.

Armed with talking points we struck out for Capitol Hill. First I, along with five other pastors, met with a staffer of Senator Elizabeth Dole. In addition to the budget request already mentioned, we were asked to chat with senators about the Global Poverty Act which is currently before that body.

The Global Poverty Act (GPA) would make the first MDG a part of officail U.S. policy and require the development of a coordinated strategy to achieve this through aid, debt relief, and trade policies. The first MDG is to cut in half the number of people who are hungry and living on less than $1 a day. The GPA passed the House in September of 2007. We were to ask Sen. Dole to become a co-sponsor to this legislation and, of course, to otherwise support it.

I was designated the leader of the delegation visiting Sen. Dole's office, but all of us got to speak with the aide. She was very attentive to our concerns. At one point she mentioned how gratifying it was to listen to evangelicals that have a passion for helping those in poverty. We were told that our message would be delivered to Sen. Dole. I asked the aide if she would relay to me Sen. Dole's response and she said that she would.

Then I was off to the office of Congressman Mike McIntyre where I met with one of his staffers. I was accompanied by a lady from BFW as was the case with the delegation that visited Sen. Dole. Once again I experienced a warm and attentive reception. I was told that my request would be given to Rep. McIntyre. Again I asked that the response be relayed to me and I was told that it would be.

I believe very strongly in the separation of church and state. However, this safeguard to our liberty does not mean that Christians have no voice in the public square. The government should in no way endorse any religion and I should not ask it to. Yet, as a citizen of this country and a follower of Jesus, I have a responsibility to speak up where Christain duty and governmental duty intersect.

The MDGs line up well with the teachings of Jesus. They have been affirmed by a mission body that I support and by the government of the nation in which I live. The church I serve should do more to reach these goals and so should the government of the nation in which I live. As a church we will consider ways that we can do more to achieve these Christ-like objectives. I am thankful to the CBF and BFW for helping me to ask the government to do more as well. I learned a lot and I had fun too.

Next steps for the New Baptist Covenant

I know, I'm talking about the next steps for the participants in the New Baptist Covenant Celebration (NBCC) when I never really blogged about the meeting itself. But here's the thing . . . One of the main objectives of the NBCC was and is forming new relationships. I didn't want to miss my chance at the meeting to connect with new people and to re-connect with old friends by being holed up somewhere staring at my laptop. Then, when I got back home, there were pressing pastoral matters to handle, so there wasn't time. Read the great blogs on the NBCC of Tony Cartledge and John Pierce to get a report on the gathering itself.

On the meeting, I will only agree with Walter Shurden that the origin, nature, purpose and mission of the NBCC along with the opportunity for racial reconciliation and gender recognition make the gathering a most significant event in Baptist history. I cannot recall ever going to a convention-style Baptist event and coming away feeling so good about being Baptist.

While I have not had time or made time to seriously blog on the New Baptist Covenant (NBC) until now, I did, at nearly midnight last Sunday night, compose an email that I sent to the organizers of the gathering. Besides thanking them for their efforts, I responded to Jimmy Allen's request for suggestions on where we go from here found on page 60 of the NBCC program.

At the Mainstream Baptist breakfast held in conjunction with the Atlanta meeting, Walter "Buddy" Shurden did a little comparing and contrasting of the NBCC to the Triennial Convention of 1814. In that discussion he mentioned that there will be no "super convention" to come out of the NBCC. Shurden noted that there was no national Baptist body before 1814, only regional associations. Now there are plenty of national Baptist bodies so we really do not need another one. This comment started me thinking that perhaps we need a little bit of the reverse of the Triennial Convention.

It was so great to sit in meetings with Baptists whose skin is a different color than mine. I made some effort in Atlanta to strike up conversations with Baptists of other races. These conversations were wonderful, but altogether too brief and too superficial. Between sessions I often ran into fellow Baptists of the same denominational grouping and same skin color that I had not seen in a while and spent time with them. It was nice to talk with these old friends, but I sense that perhaps an opportunity was missed to reach across some old lines in a more profound way.

What if the NBC could spawn regional connections that cross old lines among Baptists? I am a white Baptist. Wouldn't it be great if I could reach out to African-American Baptists in this region who attended the NBC or who might be interested in attending a future convocation? We could get to know one another and maybe facilitate cooperation on local mission projects. Perhaps there could be joint worship and fellowship events.

Then, maybe in three years, there would be another national convocation. Maybe I would then travel to that event with a new African-American Baptist friend. Maybe instead of renewing only old acquaintances with only my fellow white friends of the same denominational group I would start running into black Baptists with whom I connected through regional NBC efforts to work together and get to know each other.

At the breakfast meeting mentioned above Shurden said that the NBC, rather than being about forming some new denominational structure, is "an effort to say something together about what we should be doing together." I think he's right and what happened in Atlanta was nothing short of miraculous in that regard. Is there a way for us to move beyond "saying" to "doing" more together through regional connections?

I assume, through the registration process, there is a data base of names and addresses of NBCC attendees. Is it possible to identify regional groupings of NBCC participants? Can potential facilitators be contacted to investigate bringing these Baptists together to discuss the possibilities of fellowship and cooperation across old Baptist lines in keeping with the spirit of the NBCC?

Maybe in a particular locale the only participants are all white or all black. Could those Baptists get together and discuss ways to deliberately reach across racial lines to share the message of the NBC with a view toward local fellowship and cooperation and perhaps participation in a convocation in 2011?

I am not suggesting any formal regional structure for the NBC. Let the area connections evolve as they will. In some cases there may be only one white Baptist pastor and one black Baptist pastor who didn't know each other before and they will form a relationship and explore ways for their two congregations to get together. In other cases perhaps the grouping will be larger and it may, on its own, decide to elect a leader and develop more structure for working together.

I know that what I suggest is no small task, but it may be possible and it may be the only way for us to try to really get to know one another in a more profound way. If the NBCC can lead to regional connections that tear down old walls that may be crumbling already then a moment in Atlanta will certainly become a powerful movement.