Light Reading

For my fellow bibliophiles here is a quick rundown of my current reads and what's on deck.


First And Second Samuel, Walter Brueggemann - I've come to really enjoy reading a commentary all the way through. Brueggemann has a scholar's mind and a poet's eye.


Lake Wobegon Days, Garrison Keillor - A masterful storyteller and down-right funny


Evil and the Justice of God, N. T. Wright - I am becoming a student of Wright's work and can't wait to wrestle with the hardest question of our time with him: "what to do with evil?"


Setting the Table, Danny Meyer - A restaurant entrepreneur's memoir focusing on the art of hospitality


Tell it Slant, Eugene Peterson - My reading for Lent, Peterson is quickly becoming my favorite author, similar to Brueggemann but also with a pastor's heart


Kindle- I know, why have all these actual books if I have a Kindle? I just can't give them up! On deck in the ebook world: Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton and The Importance of Being Foolish by Brennen Manning.


Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe - My all-time favorite work of fiction


Mystery and Manners, Flannery O'Conner - A collection of essays on faith, writing, and the south from another of my favorite fiction authors. What a storyteller!


Classic Colorado Summit - Gearing up for mountaineering this summer


Life With God, Richard Foster - Foster's work on the discipline of spiritual reading and study. I've been putting this one off too long.


Father, Son, and Spirit, Andreas Kostenberger and Scott R. Swain -A biblical theology study of the Gospel of John's portrayal of the Trinity, really enjoyed Professor Blomberg's additions to this series.


Bird by Bird, Anne Lamont - The humility and honesty with which Lamont writes comes through even stronger in this work on writing. What a valuable resource, it was the primary inspiration for me to write 3 blogs a week.


A Grief Observed, C.S. Lewis - I have enjoyed Lewis so far and look forward to reading this personal book about the loss of his wife, I have much to learn in the realm of grief.

The Great Omission, Dallas Willard - A modern William Carey, Willard here is calling us to the heart of the Great Commission: to make disciples not merely converts.

Secrets in the Dark, Frederick Buechner - A collection of sermons, most of which I've read, that I want to finish this year. Buechner inspired the name of this blog and has been my greatest influence in the art of preaching.

Sermons from Duke Chapel, edited by William Willimon - Over 50 years of diverse sermons each prefaced by Willimon, this is a treasure.

So what are you reading? Share a picture like mine perhaps, but let us know. Enjoy Palm Sunday.

Peace.

Overflow of the Heart

As we approach Holy Week, I find myself reflective upon this season of Lent. Part of me wonders if I even tried at all to engage with Jesus as our local church has defined Lent. I at least set up a goal for myself, to study and practice the speech ethics of Jesus. To aid me in this I have been reading Eugene Peterson's book Tell it Slant, a study of Jesus' parables as he travels through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem and to the cross. In many ways, this season of Lent has mirrored that journey, as I've walked with Jesus through a foreign land. I wish that I had the same flare for the dramatic as Jesus, that I could interpret people's spiritual situations into well-crafted metaphors that people would be repeating two thousand years later, that I could set aside my agenda to be well-liked and to merely speak words that give life. Yet in my quest to see my tongue changed, I found God working on a very different part of me, my heart. Its often like this, I think, with God, we simply want to change our behaviors but He seems to care far more about who we are at our core. I found that to speak like Jesus did not mean learning smooth rhetoric but to be changed by his words.

And so as Jesus is preparing for his Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem he tells a story about the life he is bringing us into. He tells of a master who entrusts ten servants with some investments, talents. When the master returns a King, he surveys how his tenants spent their talents. One especially daring servant risked his in high-stakes investments and doubled the King's returns. Another held tightly to his, afraid of losing it and is scolded by the master who subsequently takes the servant's little and gives it to the daring one. In this story Jesus is illustrating what it means to live in and move in his coming Kingdom. We are to throw caution to the wind and risk all.  He has given us tools to use and what he most desires is for us to go to work, without fear and with great hope.

So often I find myself like the last servant, keeping my talents to myself out of fear. I am so often afraid of failure that I fail to act at all, a failure in and of itself. Yet I see Jesus telling me that anything worth anything is going to take risk. He knew this keenly as he rode that donkey into the death trap that was Jerusalem. He knew what was on the line and he risked it all, even his life for his dream, for our dreams. He died and in that act of bravery he freed us all to do likewise. This season of Lent has challenged my heart at the basic level: I am coward, yet Jesus looks deep into my eyes and sees far beneath and proclaims that my name is "Courageous" and "Victorious." He bids me, and perhaps us all, to follow in his steps of daring even if it costs me my life, for the reward is doubly, even infinitely, greater.

Questions of Silence

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt. -Abraham Lincoln

I was born to talk. 

My dad, when he had enough of my rambling, would say to me, "you could talk the ears off a brass monkey." I'm not sure I knew exactly what that meant but I knew it was his way of telling me to shut up. I spent so much time in the principal's office for talking in class that the principal from the local high school where my mom taught thought I was the office assistant at the elementary. As I've grown older, I have learned that I am a verbal processor, that I have to talk things out to understand them better. This often looks like a spew of unrelated mutterings and apologizes as I chase rabbits only to realize that everything I was trying to say made no sense at all. See, processing.  And yet, it is in the act of speaking that I find myself most fully connected with others and even with God. This deep connection has forced me to contemplate how I use my words, to dig into the meaning and power of speech. One of the scriptures primary lessons on on how to speak is to not do it. The Teacher in Ecclesiastes warns that we are human and thus our words before God must be few. Jesus' brother James also commands us to be slow to utter a word, but instead to speed to listen. Jesus himself warns that merely calling someone a fool can bring fiery judgment upon us. But, as one born to talk, learning to be silent is rather hard. 

Jesus showed excellent skill in public speaking. His proclamation of ministry intent at the synagogue, the sermon on the mount, the sermon on the plain, the pronouncement of woes against hypocrisy, and his various parables all exemplify a person who not only had something rather valuable to say but also wielded the power to say it well. Yet there are these times when Jesus is oddly silent, especially before the Sanhedrin. With his life on the line, he offers no great rhetoric to prove his divinity or even his innocence but merely remains silent, save a few choice words. Even though I know the ending, that He must die, I still read that story and just want him to stand up and tell them off, but he remains silent. He had the wisdom to know that no matter what he said, the end would remain the same and so he used his silence as a witness.

But this scenario is not likely for my daily encounters. How did Jesus speak in his day-to-day conversations? One great example is found in Luke 10:

Just then a religion scholar stood up with a question to test Jesus. "Teacher, what do I need to do to get eternal life? 

He answered, "What's written in God's Law? How do you interpret it?" 

He said, "That you love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and muscle and intelligence-and that you love your neighbor as well as you do yourself." 

"Good answer!" said Jesus. "Do it and you'll live." 

Looking for a loophole, he asked, "And just how would you define 'neighbor'?" 

Jesus answered by telling a story. "There was once a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. On the way he was attacked by robbers. They took his clothes, beat him up, and went off leaving him half-dead.Luckily, a priest was on his way down the same road, but when he saw him he angled across to the other side.Then a Levite religious man showed up; he also avoided the injured man."A Samaritan traveling the road came on him. When he saw the man's condition, his heart went out to him.He gave him first aid, disinfecting and bandaging his wounds. Then he lifted him onto his donkey, led him to an inn, and made him comfortable.In the morning he took out two silver coins and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, 'Take good care of him. If it costs any more, put it on my bill-I'll pay you on my way back.' 

"What do you think? Which of the three became a neighbor to the man attacked by robbers?" 

"The one who treated him kindly," the religion scholar responded. Jesus said, "Go and do the same."

Here we see a conversation dominated by questions. These are not integrating questions but ways of opening up, disarming one another. I recently watched a movie in which a teenage boy and girl try to get to know each other better and they play a game where they can only ask questions. The interesting thing is that it works, the questions spoke of a desire to not promote oneself but to know the other. Jesus here knows that the religious scholar wants to know what he's about and Jesus turns the question right back. Jesus seems less concerned about "preaching" the truth here as he is about connecting with this man. Even though Jesus speaks the most in this encounter, He never makes any commands other than supporting the conclusions the religious leader makes himself.  Jesus could have simply explained all this without the use of leading questions and story, but by doing so, He let himself be silent and listened to the answer that was already inside this man, and inside us all. 

In our conversations we should be quick to listen and slow to speak. And in so doing we may find less and less need to defend ourselves and our beliefs but to nurture the truth that is already in those around us. And just maybe, the act of listening will nurture the truth within us as well. The religious scholar challenged Jesus to find justification for how he treated his neighbor but in listening to Jesus' story he finds no defense of his definition of who his neighbor is, only a plea to be a neighbor. He finds not the answer to his question but the answer to a much more important one. And perhaps, he finds what he asked about in the beginning, eternal life.

What, I wonder, will we find?

Fat Tuesday 2011-Tell it Slant

As the festivities on Bourbon street come to a halt in the wee hours of the morning, the few faithful will file into their local church to receive an ash cross upon their forehead as they enter the season of Lent. Although my Fat Tuesday lacks any of the pageantry of Mardis Gras, I still have a sense of excitement for this season in my life. Last year Michala and I were encouraged and challenged as we experimented with this thing called Lent. This year, I have bought into the idea of my local church to view this season not as a time of denial but of embrace. Instead of denying some random thing like chocolate in hopes that this will somehow deepen my connection to Jesus, I have decided to simply feast upon Him. This season I will not try to put out little fires of things I should not do, but to focus instead on the fire of God.

One of the primary ways that I hope to embrace God this season will be through a reading of Jesus' words, specifically his parables and prayers. I have enlisted Eugene Peterson's Tell it Slant to help me soak in the language of God, to listen to how the Living Word spoke. So each Thursday during Lent, I will post some insights, reflections, struggles, prayers, or stories that have been influenced by this time of embracing. I hope to honor God's words with my own words. The power of life and death reside in the tongue and I hope to align my words in a pattern of life-giving. Peterson senses the power of our words, especially in telling the Truth but that in the pattern of Jesus we see a truth-telling that was often gracious and gradual, a truth telling that embodied the idea behind this Emily Dickinson poem:

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant---

Success in Circuit lies

Too bright for our infirm Delight

The Truth's superb surprise

As Lightening to the Children eased

With explanation kind

The Truth must dazzle gradually

Or every man be blind---

I look forward to this season of embrace and I hope to engage you as well.