Years ago, right after I was married, I went to work for my father. My dad was, at that time, the charcoal man of Memphis. A day when Memphis BBQ was king, and there were more BBQ places than hamburger joints. When Teri and I got married, I sat out of seminary for a year before I went back, so I sold charcoal. I remember seeing a new BBQ place opening up and went in to see if I could interest him in some real charcoal. We talked for a few minutes, and then he stopped me and said, “What did you say your name was?” I told him, and he grinned and said, “Oh, I know your daddy, he’s good people, if it’s his charcoal it must be good.” And just like that, he placed his order. I learned years ago, living in the Deep South, that the first question upon meeting a stranger was not, “What do you do?” But rather, “Who is your father?” The logic was sort of, if I know who your father is, I know a lot about you. Right or wrong, that was just the way of things. 

We have something similar in our text this week, the real question Jesus will tell his audience is simple: " Who is your father?” It is a long passage that moves from a fickle belief in Jesus, to first insults and then stones. It reminds me of something C. S. Lewis said in one of his essays, “[Jesus] produced mainly three effects—Hatred—Terror—Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.” Our text certainly bears that out. We will talk about it on Sunday.

They say mantis shrimp have the most complex color vision of all animals. Their 12 to 16 individual color photoreceptors enable them to receive a staggeringly broad range of electromagnetic signals. These are things that humans with our 3 puny photoreceptors build state of the art instruments to detect. But that doesn’t mean mantis shrimp see better than us: their brains aren’t complex enough to distinguish and discern meaning in all that matter. They’re only using that data to decide what the food is. It would be like using the Artemis II rocket to check your email. A lot of wasted potential there. So, were a mantis shrimp to drive a car, it would no doubt run red lights. Not because it can’t see the different colors, but because it doesn’t understand what red, yellow, and green mean.

In the reverse, if you took away all the colors and brushes from a young painter and gave him just a black crayon and a white piece of paper, he would still draw his lover. A medium can limit the message’s complexity, but not its meaning. The painter knows what his heart longs for and delights in, and he expresses that no matter what he’s working with. In a materialistic world, we can get really fixated on the mechanics of things in a way that blinds us to their purposes. So often the question is not “what can it do?,” but “what is it for?”

Likewise, there’s a kind of spirituality that says there’s some secret extra knowledge you need in order to be “enlightened.” We think we need more information, a wider education, as though there’s a mantis shrimp-level of Bible-decoding insight just outside our field of vision. But the Bible shows us that what the light reveals isn’t a doctrine. It’s an attachment. An affection far more powerful than insight, which even the most illiterate or undeveloped humans are hardwired to detect and receive. When Jesus says, “I am the light of the world,” he’s not just giving us more information to process. He’s saying, “I’m the One by which you see what and who you really love, and who really loves you.” 

For the Life of the World

I’ve spent this past week coming down off the high of Holy Week at an annual retreat with a group of close pastor friends. We’ve spent years doing this, contemplating things like the spiritual significance of bread and wine, friendship and hospitality. This year, we decided to open the invitation to other pastors in the EPC, to share a taste of what we’ve been so blessed to receive through our own close friendship. It was risky in some ways. We are scattered across the country and don’t get to do this often, so we were all jealous for more dedicated time with each other. But we also just couldn’t unsee the lonely faces of our colleagues, and we felt compelled to try something new for their sake. It could have been a colossal failure, but, as my friend Tanner says, “Maybe you can’t make a horse drink, but you can salt the oats.”

Beginning this new series with Jesus’ self-revelation as the Bread of Life, I keep thinking about the things we’re all hungry for. Another friend, Brandon, is completing a doctorate on the neuroscience of discipleship. He threw out a great line in his talk on that topic that I’ll be stealing forever. He said that the core of the “fight or flight” instinct in animals and humans alike can be boiled down to answering the question, “Are you the food… or am I?” Humans are certainly more than animals, but we’re not less. Remember Paul’s warning in Galatians, “be careful, lest you devour one another.”

That’s what makes Jesus’ very first I AM statement so inconceivable. We’re in this impossible situation where we need not to be devoured, and we need not to devour one another, and we’re starving. And he says, I am the food. It’s a staggering statement that elicits one of two responses: “That’s hard to swallow and I’m going to survey my other options,” and “That’s hard to swallow and I know there are no other options.” I’m looking forward to exploring it all with you this first Eastertide Sunday!

Life is mostly lived in the mundane. It finds satisfaction in the rhythms and rituals that both give life and nourish life—duties of love and the love of those duties. At least most of humanity saw it that way until we decided that we had to have a constant dopamine high and started stimulating ourselves with a steady stream of stimuli, which had rendered an ordinary life wanting. 

But even in a life well lived, there are moments that take your breath away, that leave you gasping and longing—and you never forget it. It might be a sporting event when the sublime happens, and someone makes an improbable shot, or gets a hit in the ninth inning to score the final run. It might be at a concert, and the performer at the crescendo of a show nails the final performance, or when you stand before a breathtaking beauty. When it happens, you say something like this to whoever is close, “Did you see that?” Or, "I can’t believe what I just saw?” Or, “I have never seen anything like that!” What we are doing is we are making an evaluation, a comparative statement or question to say, of all the things I have seen, that might be the wildest or best thing I have ever seen. 

On this Easter Sunday, we have a statement. Micah, God’s prophet, is pondering all that he knows of God’s character, faithfulness, kindness, and mercy, and as he surveys the gods around him, which are legion! He exclaims in wonder, “Who is a God like you!”

This Easter Morning—this glorious day when we celebrate the singular event in history, when Jesus got out of the grave, we are invited to ponder the ineffable, the impossible, the thing that gives all life meaning. I hope you will join us, and be sure to invite a friend. The things that really move and melt us, we have to share. It just takes the joy to greater heights! 

Remember a couple of things. We have an Easter Vigil, Saturday night, 7:00 PM. With music, art, sacred text, candles, hammers, nails, bells, and champagne, we will as a community walk through redemptive history, our story—the whole story of God—from grief to glory. Also, remember our services on Easter Morning are at 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM

Glory!

This upcoming week I’ll have the opportunity to present and defend my Doctor of Ministry dissertation before a panel of professors at Houston Theological Seminary. It’s the final step for me in what has been a long and fruitful process. I’m very grateful to all those who have prayed and wrestled with me as I’ve explored the central role of the imagination in spiritual formation. 

I say it’s been fruitful, which is another way of saying that at first it was quite painful. There was the diligent collecting of seeds, the watering, waiting, and watching. Tilling and cultivating with the blood, sweat, and yes, many tears, that accompany labor in a vineyard. Moments when I thought it might be more efficient to just bury myself instead. And then, the thrill of hope: signs of life bursting from the seedbed of scholarship. 

As many of you know, I’ve focused my research on the work of C.S. Lewis, whose approach to fiction was the result of his robust academic understanding of the way human souls are shaped by image and story. It was Lewis who highlighted for me the central significance of Jesus’ words, that “unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.” He said that this principle lies at the very heart of creation for a reason: the Creator makes after his own image. God in his very nature is one who descends in order to ascend, and he has given us a world that sings this glorious song over and over again in myriad ways, so that we might be formed to recognize him by the works of his hands. 

This week, we see Micah making use of the image for Israel’s sake. They feel fruitless and forsaken. The prophet points to the core idea of creation, reminding these farmers of the hope of the harvest before they are scattered like seeds into exile. It’s a great text to consider as we turn our own faces to the events of Holy Week. The King enters triumphantly because he knows he’s being planted in order to rise. He descends in order to ascend. So, we can follow him with faith. 

A man went to his doctor for his annual physical. He was not looking forward to it. Scales don’t lie. Sure enough, the doctor told him that if you don’t change your diet and start getting some physical exercise you are going to have serious heart issues. The doctor waited for an acknowledgement that the gentleman understood what he was saying. The man shook his head and said, “I get it, I have to eat better and move more.” The doctor reassured him that these two things would change his life for the better, and he didn’t need any costly prescriptions, just some tennis shoes, gym shorts, and a lot more vegetables and lean meat.

On the way home, he drove through Krystal's and ordered a four-pack meal with a shake as an upgrade. He knew in his heart it was not the thing he was supposed to do, but appetite won out over wisdom. 

There seems to be a great disconnection between what we know and what we do in many parts of our lives; diet is just one of them. In our Christian lives, there seems to be a disconnect that is systemic with being human. Every age and generation wrestles with it. Micah the prophet, along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, Amos, etc, point out this disconnect to God’s people. When the true King came, he sounded almost like Micah in his assessment of the religious community he walked into. James likewise devotes a whole book dealing with this disconnect. 

What Micah has to say is that there are some things that all our religion and ritual will not cover, and some things that God, in his love for his people, will ignore. It is a hopeful word, strangely, because as a good parent knows, there are things that we will do with and for our children that they do not like and we do not either, but love is so jealous for their future glory, hard things are demanded. That or something like that is where we find ourselves on Sunday, and God raises his voice to his beloved people.

I don’t know what started it, but ever since I was young, and I saw my parents watching Perry Mason on TV, I've always had an interest in lawyers getting justice for all. These cases usually end in a dramatic final argument that snatches victory from the jaws of defeat and brings about the justice we all knew was due. Heaven knows John Grisham has made a fortune spinning yarns about southern lawyers in seersucker suits, dazzling courtrooms with devastating rhetoric. 

You want courtroom drama? Join me Sunday as we get to the heart of the book of Micah, maybe of all of Revelation. We all know the verse which is the theme of our series on Micah, “doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly with our God.” But what you might not know is that it is the concluding verdict in a cosmic trial. There is a prosecutor, a plaintiff, a witness, an argument, a judge, and a verdict. God brings suit against his people and, in doing so, really gives us the heart of what it means to walk humbly with our God.

Hope to see you Sunday, for those of us who are not going out of town. There is no Sunday school this Sunday for that reason, so I’ll see you at 10:30!

What a week! We cooked for all the contractors who worked to make our Big Back Yard such a place of beauty. Just a small way of saying thank-you and letting them know—all good work is like worship and to be honored. It was a great moment, even if I did get lectured on the glories of a Traeger pellet grill by a guy who had grease and barbecue sauce on his lips and beard!

We interviewed children who just completed the Communicants Class and will make a profession of faith this Sunday, and it was, as always, beautiful and wild. I had a ten-year-old boy tell me he wanted to be a General Manager for an NFL team when he grew up. I told him I had heard of kids who wanted to play or coach in the NFL, but never a GM. I asked him how he came to that conviction. Without hesitation, he said, “Playing Fantasy Football.” He said, “Yeah, I started doing trades and figuring out how to build a team.” I asked him if he was any good. Again, without hesitation, he said, “I have won the league the last three years.” His dad told me his buddies call him for advice. I told him I would be calling him when we draft next season. 

Addy and I went to the last Memphis Basketball game of the year, Thursday night, sitting with good friends as we have done for years, and though Memphis lost, it was a night of glory. Anna Kate Henson danced and cheered her last game, and we basked in her glory. Then Addison had a night of glory. She was “Fan of the Game" and was on the Jumbotron with Sydney for all to see—beaming as she was presented with what she always dreamed of, a Memphis jersey with all the players' signatures on it. She then got another t-shirt and another feature on the Jumbotron, cheering wildly—what a night.

My life is a constant mystery to me and often not what I expect. We all find ourselves there this week as we ponder God’s workings with his people. A life with God will never be what you expected; it certainly wasn’t for Israel, it wasn’t what the disciples expected, or for St. Paul, for that matter, and thus we must pay attention, because God might not give you what you expected, but he will give you more. 

We’ll talk about it this Sunday as we worship and gaze upon His fair beauty and see many of our children profess faith in Him. That is way, way better than we could dare dream. 

In the 90’s, two poets supplied my imagination with cages. The first came from Billy Corgan of The Smashing Pumpkins, who lamented, “Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.” It’s the image of despair, and it resonated with a whole generation of those who felt hopeless in the face of a rapidly changing world filled with injustice and merciless rule. I was too young to grasp the social implications of course, but old enough to resonate with the emotional import. I held onto the image loosely, trying it on occasionally, rarely identifying with it fully. 

The second came from Maya Angelou, whose Presidential Inaugural recitation renewed interest in her poetry and memoirs, the first of which was, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” It was an autobiographical account of her own childhood experiences leading up to the Civil Rights Movement. Her later poem, “Caged Bird,” made the rounds in grade school classrooms, imparting to children an image of hope in a similar situation. Injustice and merciless rule were no less real, but the nature of those captured made a great difference. 

For us, the image is making another round this week thanks to much older source material. The Assyrian King Sennacherib boasted to the nations that his siege of Jerusalem in 701 BC had left King Hezekiah “like a caged bird.” Maybe it would have worked out better for him if he had caged a rat instead. But the caged bird sang of freedom and that song reached the ears of God himself. What does it sound like to hope against hope in an impossible situation? A little less like Seattle grunge and a little more like prayer, perhaps. We’ll talk about it this week together. 

People love rescue stories, we might even say it is built into our DNA. Every culture carries a rescue narrative of some sort. Rescue stories sell millions in movies and books because they tap into our deepest fears and deepest hopes. The tension, the drama, will they make it on time? Is it too late? The greater the danger, the sweeter the deliverance. We fear being abandoned, and we hope to be found. So, for instance, when a story, any story; fairytale or the story of a daring deliverance of someone held in bondage, it speaks to us at a gut level. 

The Bible, of course, is the ultimate rescue story. The first example is Israel out of slavery, but then ultimately, Jesus who rescues us from sin and death. But all throughout scripture, God’s people seem to continually step into it, usually by their own sin, but sometimes, like Jesus, just by being righteous. How do we process that? How do we find hope in it? 

This week, we see God rescue his people in different ways, once dramatically, and the other time through suffering. Of course, all these stories are telling a better story of how God, at great cost to himself, ultimately rescues us and the whole world. That or something like that is what we will talk about. This Sunday, as rescued people, we come to celebrate King Jesus together. Speaking of celebration, we have several new members joining, and that is always a time of great thanksgiving and joy.