Craddock Speaks

An amazing sermon by Fred Craddock:

http://edge.baylor.edu/media/69133/69133.mp3

A Children's Message: Good Names

One of the joys of being a parent is teaching your children about animals. With Mary Grace, this has been a lot of fun. She sometimes gets lions and tigers mixed up, but she has her farm animals down. She will sit in my lap as we flip through a book of animals, pointing out all the ducks, geese, horses, cows, and bunnies. Her new favorite game is for me to ask her if her animal friend, Jack-Jack, who is a cat, is some other kind of animal. She'll sheepishly grin and moan a long "no" that implies that her daddy is silly. It is so funny to her to hear us give the wrong name to Jack-Jack. She like most little kids loves animal names.But how did all these animals get their names?

A long time ago the very first person, Adam, had the huge honor of naming the animals. One can imagine the line of creatures miles long waiting with anticipation to hear Adam pronounce, "woodpecker" or "duck-billed platypus." Adam sure was creative, I would never of thought to call a black-and-white striped horse a Zebra, I would just call him "confused." But I also imagine that this was a lot of fun for Adam and that it meant a lot to him to name the animals. I have had the honor to name some things in my life and those too have been fun and meaningful.

My dog's name is Brandy, I gave her this name because her parents names were Belle and Buddy. I wanted her to have a "B" name too so that she was connected to her parents. Michala and I name our cars too. My old, beat-up white truck was called possum. We named him that because he was white, fast, and ratty. But best of all, I was privileged to name my daughter. She is named after her great-great grandmother, her great grandmother, her grandmother, and her mom. In her name is line of women who loved Jesus and we wanted to her to be connected to these beautiful women before her. Our names mean a lot, they give us our identity.

Long before I named possum and brandy, long before we were named, even before Adam named the animals, God named everything. He gave everything, the sky, the stars, the oceans and the mountains, and especially us our first name. He looked at all he made and he named us "Good." Before we are Michael or Sally, or any other name, our first name, our most important name is the one God gives us: Good. 

"God looked over everything he had made; it was so good, so very good!" Genesis 1:31

A Dream Deferred

This is a sermon I wrote and delivered almost two years ago to a class of other aspiring preachers.  Even though the application is specific to that group, I beleive the work can stand on its own.  I was blessed to come across this once again and I hope you too enjoy it. -Michael

What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

            This poem, “Dream Deferred,” by Langston Hughes, is perhaps the accomplished poet’s most cherished work.  It can be found in nearly every American poetry anthology, it is taught on all levels of school, and it has continued to inspire people eighty years after it was born.  All of this accolade and endurance raises the simple question of “why?”  I believe that Hughes has captured the essence of what poetry is all about.  It pleads the hearer to simply enjoy its subtle beauty, to hear its cadence and meter, its rhythm and rhyme, to hear the words dance together, to see deep truths of one’s soul expressed in new colors and images, in heart wrenchingly new ways.  That first time you hear it, you may not even have the slightest clue what it means and yet it still teaches you, it still inspires you.  However, this poem is not enduring just because of mere surface-deep beauty, but rather it is layered like an onion, it holds a great depth underneath its initial attraction.  This is a poem that one is not easily bored with, not a puzzle that is easily solved.  It begs us to look a little closer, to hear it again and again. 

As we begin to mine it we begin to discover just how choice some of the poet’s word selections are, “sags,” “fester,” “raisin in the sun.”  These are just so imaginative; you can almost begin to taste the poem, to smell it, to hold it.  You also begin to notice subtle shifts in meter and rhyme.  The final line disrupts the rhyming pattern by pairing load with explode without an added line between them.  As you chew on this oddity, you see that it is intentional, that the ending is meant for abruptness, that it emphasizes the dramatic shift from dream to dynamite, “or does it explode?”  And at this discovery you cannot help but feel this poem, you know what its like to set ones dreams aside and to find them dead one day.  You step back and read the poem anew, and the beauty you once saw pails to the freshness that is now present. So you dig some more.  Perhaps you study Hughes’ life and the context that this poem was created in.  You find out he was an African-American during the Harlem Renaissance, you learn that he was a product of racism and segregation.  You start to see that Martin Luther King Jr. was not the first to dream of radical equality.  You understand that many of Hughes’ contemporaries abandoned their quest to accept their second-class citizenship and you can only imagine how this heart Hughes’ heart.  What does happen to a dream deferred?  And all of the sudden the poem is far heavier than you could have imagined.  The closer you look at the details, the clearer the whole picture becomes.  And the process continues because this is a poem with not only great breadth, but also great depth.  So, in turn, is the poetry of God.

 Line after line is filled with both awe and intrigue.  In many ways, each genre of the Bible holds a poetic quality, a beautifully simple message of love, of sin and redemption, yet it is dripping with a depth of richness unsearchable yet pleading to be searched.  This book is, perhaps over-simplisticly, an epic poem of a relationship between a God whose name is synonymous with love and His creation whose name is synonymous with dirt.  Yet beneath the surface there is a mine of immense wealth that many of us have sold all to explore.

  

In the midst of this epic poem we find the third chapter of Ephesians; A passage that speaks of the wealth of this story of relationship between Love and dirt.  Writing under the pen-name, Paul of Tarsus, God encourages and challenges His followers to search the unsearchable riches of His love.  Obedience to this paradoxal command is rewarded with being filled with the fullness of God.  If you are like me, at first you may not even now what that is, but it still teaches, it still inspires.  Our author who sees his mission as to bring news to the nations of the boundless riches of Christ prays this prayer in verse 14 through 21:

¹⁴For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. ²⁰Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, ²¹to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.

This prayer found in the midst of a Greco-roman letter is without a doubt poetry.  The initial hearing produces a sense of wonder and an invite to explore.  While there is much to explore with this passage, I want us to narrow our focus on two verses, 18 and 19 and even more narrowly two words, breadth and depth. 

Here Paul is asking us to do the impossible- to comprehend the incomprehendable, to search the unsearchable, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses all knowledge.  And in this we will be filled with fullness of God!  While many would look at such a plea as futile, some of us possess a flare for the unknown, a trace of an adventurer’s spirit left over from second grade that has a heart for the hopeless cause.  Paul appeals to that spirit and is compelled that his brothers and sisters throw logic to the wind and attempt the impossible.  Yet we must know that it is not impossible.  This is a prayer as it only could be.  Paul is not asking us to do the impossible but asking God to empower us to do the impossible, a word not found in his dictionary.  So in God’s hands, with the Spirit’s empowerment, how are we to start, where are we to begin this quest of lunacy?  Remember those two words, breadth and depth. 

Paul in a desperate plea, asks God for the power to enable each of us to explore the unknowable mystery of God.  Yet he asks us it to do it in a rather specific way.  While yes, you may argue that Paul is merely using poetic language to insinuate how we might know God’s love fully, the Spirit does not flippantly inspire.  We were given Breadth and Depth for a reason.  I believe that in each of these words we see aspects of how we can approach our understanding of God; we see our pilgrimage to knowing the unknowable.  Much like the enduring qualities of Hughes’ poem, the love God initially speaks to our hearts, effects us in ways we lack the vocabulary to express.  I believe that each and every one of us at some point has heard what they believe was the voice of God saying something along the lines of “I love you.”  And that message changed everything.  It became our dream.  Judging by your attendance here today, you like me have felt a call to explore the profoundness of that simple “I love you.”  We like Paul seek to tell the nations of the boundless riches of Christ’s love.  And through diligent (and sometimes not-so-diligent) study we have begun to learn how to express that initial moment of grace, that initial dream, words like atonement, election, propitiation, resurrection, and crucifixion.  Yet somewhere along the way, we have fallen so in love with the dig that you have forgotten why we ever began in the first place and then the infatuation with depth slowly fades, till the impossible again seems, well, impossible.  What does happen to a dream deferred?

We must remember that our quest involves not just the digestion of the depth but must be balanced with an appreciation of the breadth.  That reality is intrinsic in Paul’s prayer, the two go hand-in-hand.  (read the text again)  This is not an either-or statement, you cannot have one without the other.  Yet what does that really mean- the breadth of God’s love? I believe that in a way it is the largeness of His mercy, it is an observation that leaves us speechless, that can only be described as awe and wonder.  Our God is an awesome God indeed, and in those moments of revelation where we stop learning merely about God but actually experience Him, those are the moments where we explore the breadth of His love.  I believe that these moments of God’s presence provide the fuel that keeps us digging in the libraries and the classrooms, that keeps us laboring in the pulpit and conversely the depth acquired there gives a greater sense of God’s grandeur.  In a sense the dream drives the mission and vice versa.

Travel with me, if you will, perhaps close your eyes and imagine or remember the most brilliant night sky you can picture.  It is filled with glory, countless stars more than your eyes can hope to take in.  Your breath is stifled, you neck is hurting as you crane it back in hopes to take in perhaps just a little more.  You are simply stunned at its sheer vastness.  Yet as you continue to stare you begin to notice something, your eyes are adjusting to the light and detail that was previously hidden begins to appear and it becomes all the more grand.  As you continue to gaze, you focus in on perhaps one particular star and you imagination takes over.  This star is a hundred times bigger than the sun surrounded by other stars each with there own planet system each with their own story, there own history, own wars, own rulers, their own dreams, and their own missions or maybe even a system of life unlike anything our imaginations could possibly construct; each one a syllable in the epic poem of the universe, each one a thread in the tapestry of the heavens.  After being lost in you fantasies you remember reading somewhere that there are approximately 70 sextillion stars.  You do not even know what that means, but it still teaches, it still inspires.  You know it is a lot and that this twinkling little star up above the world tonight which you have wondered what it is, is just one of those 70 sextillion stars each with their own name, their own epic story and you are swept back again to you initial reaction; this is indeed a vast universe.  The closer you look the more you see.  The deeper you search the wider the mine. As I stated early, we too have looked on the night sky of God’s love and feel in love, prompting our current mission.  We must remember our dream, that intial moment of Grace and realize that is still there more pungent than when we first began. C.S. Lewis’ sums up eternity in the Last Battle, as a constant journey further up and further in.  Oh how boundless are the riches of God in Christ!  May we know the unknowable love of Christ!

Paul points out in verse 19 that the result of a balanced approach is to be filled with the fullness of God.  This is the goal of our endeavors. I cannot escape the haunting reality that when we deny either the searching of breadth or of depth we deny the fullness of who we are in Christ. We deny our dream.  Yet that is precisely what so many of us have done in the effort to acquire knowledge.  Yet, knowledge without awe and without wonder and without mystery is really no knowledge at all. We have all the answers to all the questions except the most important one.  The depth that we experience often causes us to forget why we ever began.  What does happen to a dream deferred? We forget the cosmic tapestry that we are a part of because we focus so much on the individual thread that we can never know where it is going, where we are going, till we stop diving so deep for a moment and just look around and realize that God is the Grand Weaver, that this is all His, all of this is His masterpiece, His epic poem, His tapestry, His love.  Then and only then can we face the difficulties of following Christ.  How can we stand without the power of the Spirit reminding us of the broad statement of God’s character, which can be summed up in three words, “I love you.”  How are we to continue a mission that has no purpose? 

Perhaps you know what it is like to have all the answers and get completely stumped by something so simple, I know I have.  I have seen an eight year-old boy lose his dad to suicide and as I prepared to preach to funeral, I felt like giving up.  But I heard God say, “I love him, do not give up.”  I have seen my own father abuse alcohol and his very life, and yet I hear my God say, “I love him, do not give up.”  I have bared my heart and soul before congregations, proclaiming the very words of life, the great truths of all creation only to find them yawn, and snore, and ignore, and walk out and I wonder why I ever answered that call to preach and I hear my God say, “I love them, do not give up.”  And then I wonder why I ever doubted my call.  I have looked in the mirror and saw nothing but filth, fed up with myself, unable to believe that I had indeed done the very thing that I swore never to do again and you know what I hear, I hear my God say, “I love you, do not give up.”  And so I look to you and I wonder, what do you hear?

Be Still- Sermon from Dr. Gore's Sermon Prep Class March 3, 2009

Psalm 46

God is our refuge and strength,

An ever present help in trouble.

There fore we will not fear, though the earth gives way

And the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,

Though its waters roar and foam

And the mountains quake with their surging

Selah

There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,

The holy place where the Most High dwells.

God is within her, she will not fall;

God will help her at the break of day.

Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;

He lifts His voice, the earth melts.

The Lord Almighty is with us;

The God of Jacob is our fortress.

Selah

Come and see the works of the Lord,

The desolations he has brought on the earth.

He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;

He breaks the bow and shatters the spear,

He burns the shields with fire

“Be still, and know that I am God;

I will be exalted among the nations,

I will be exalted in the earth.”

The Lord Almighty is with us;

The God of Jacob is our fortress;

Selah and Amen         

           February 16 was like any Monday, busy.  I woke up late and skipped quiet-time in favor of finishing my homework for Greek class and studying for our daily vocabulary quiz.  I did well on it and then went to Adolescent Literature after that where I had another quiz.  I was in class till eleven and then I was off to take care of some pressing matters.  After scarfing down my lunch, I rushed over to the Moody room to get fitted for graduation. I then squeezed in a visit to the Administration building to take care of some business matters before my one o’clock.  After that class I had a handful of meetings to address and then I began to work on the next day’s assignments before going home.  On my way home, I snuck into the Maddox to check out the art exhibit, but I did not linger long; I had a lot of work to do.  As I left the Maddox, I attempted to cover the fifty yards between the door and my truck as quickly as possible.  Yet, in the midst of my dash, I felt an inner plea of divine grace, a spark of mercy begging me to look up. So, I obliged and I was stunned at what I saw-God’s glory spelled out in the stars.  How often had I passed-by such awesome exhibitions of God’s grandeur?  In this moment I was reminded that God was indeed with us, that He is huge and the He is beautiful. Something deep within me begged me to stop and stare.  However, I agreed to merely slow down my stride; I had more important things to do. 

            Later that evening, I continued the busyness of the morning.  Yet in the midst of my work load, I encountered something marvelously ironic and hauntingly challenging, a verse from Psalm 46, “Be still and know that I am God.”  Be still. These simple words hit me like a ton of bricks.  I had read this verse of Hebrew Poetry hundreds of times and it had produced similar effects in me as a witty bumper sticker or a Hallmark greeting card might.  And yet, as I read them again for the first time, that same spark of mercy that pleaded for me to enjoy the view of the Milky Way, lit fire within my heart and I knew that these words were just for me, just as they had been for countless other saints and sinners before me.  In the thick of the insanity of life nothing could quench my thirsty soul more than these words.  I needed them like I have ever needed anything.  “Be still and know that I am God.”

Be still.

            This is perhaps the loveliest yet most difficult of all God’s commands.  In it, I hear my Father yearn for me to enjoy Him in the silence, to be a part of the mystery of Easter, to have a relationship the maker of heaven and earth.  Despite these benefits, I find myself like so many within my culture, afraid of the silence.  I’m not sure why exactly but I am; maybe my culture has conditioned me this way.  We find ways to fill our lives with noise and crowds; we buy ipods so that in between things on our to-do list, we don’t have to suffer the condemnation of silence.  We fill every gap in our lives with meaningless chatter: television, cell phones, facebook, texting, twitter, music, and the like.  We constantly bombard our minds with noise.  Our culture has lost the art of silence and consequently has lost the art of the presence of God.  T.S. Elliot notes, “Where shall the world be found, where will the word resound?  Not here, there is not enough silence.”[1]  Maybe this conditioning is why I am afraid of the silence or maybe I am simply afraid that I might actually hear God.  So instead of preparing an inner sanctuary, I fill my schedule with thing after event after meeting after thing.

  I am always telling myself the lie, “I simply don’t have the time to be still.”  Right now, I need to focus on these other commandments: don’t judge, don’t be proud, don’t lust, feed the hungry, be holy, be perfect.  Yet the Merciful Spark will not let me go; in the background of all of this I hear a small still voice saying, “Be still…” and the voice fades into the darkness and my to-do list lengthens until it rivals Santa’s naughty or nice list in length.  There is just too much to do.  I don’t have enough time.  Yet right smack dab in the middle of “Sermon Preparation time” as I have it engraved in the stone that is my schedule, God with a THUNDEROUS WHISPER says-“be still.”  And I am humbly reminded like Elijah that He is not in the fire, He is not in the raging wing, He is not in the earthquake, He is not in the tempest of finals week, He is not in the deadlines, He is not in the burdens of a world that looks on my body of work and demands, “More! Give me more!”  No, He is in the mundane, just underneath the surface, waiting for me cease striving and listen.  Yes, He is in the deep silence of the soul crying out for our thirsty hearts to come to the water’s edge and drink.

Be still.

            This verse is found in the midst of something strange to us, Hebrew poetry.  This poetry is not concerned with rhyme but with structure.  It is full of parallels and chiasms, full of acrostics and musical instructions, full of Selahs.  Hebrew scholars have encountered much difficulty translating this term which litters the Psalms. There is no consensus as to what is meant by this ancient Hebrew term, yet some have believed Selah suggests a pause or break in the poetry; a time to stop and reflect on the glory of Yahweh revealed in the verses.  If you apply that approach, it can offer much color and depth to your reading of the Psalms. We encounter words such as “Who is he, this King of glory?  The Lord Almighty-he is the King of glory. Selah” And as we chew on this audacious statement, awe and wonder begin to immerse us.  He is the King of glory indeed.  However, due to the questions surrounding Selah, some translations and many readers simply skip over or remove this word.  A word which in essence says, “Be still and know that I am God.”  Maybe our culture hasn’t the patience to reflect anymore.  We want our scripture, our God, like we want our food: fast, instant, microwaved.  Just as Hebrew has become foreign to our culture so has reflection and consequently so has awe and wonder.  Yet in a foreign tongue which we can miraculously understand, the Merciful Spark pleads for reflection, pleads the ‘Selah’, and pleads for the ‘be still.’

Be still.

            As a youngster, I would avoid my chores like the plague, even though they were not so difficult. I would rather do anything other than unload the dishwasher.   I can hear my mother say, “Michael, will you unload the dishwasher?”

            “I will Mom.” And I would change the channel.

            “Michael, did you unload the dishwasher yet?”

            “I said ‘I would’ didn’t I, Mom?” And I read another comic book.

            “Michael Alan Gallup, unload the dishwasher right now!”

            “I WILL!” And yet, I often never did and in the miraculous event that I did, I missed the joy of serving one who had given her life for me.  I missed the joy of obedience.  God calls to us, “Be still” and we reply with, “I will.”  And yet we often never do.  When we do find time to be silent it is often spent thinking over what we didn’t get accomplished that day or what we have to do next and we miss out on the joy of listening to the One who gave His life for us.  We miss the joy obedience.  God wants us to do more than to simply follow an order, to do more the merely sit still; He desires that we quiet our entire beings and let Him fill us up.  However, we often see this as a colossal waste of time; our list of duties is just too overwhelming to add another time consuming task such as being still.  Clothes need washing, bills need paying, papers need writing, calls need to making, books need reading, dinner needs cooking and if there is time, perhaps we might read a scripture or two so we don’t feel so bad about ourselves when we lay down at night.  Carl Jung said that “Hurry is not of the devil; it is the devil.[2]”  I read these words and a shocking revelation comes over me, I have become a friend of the devil. My disobedience has produced a lifeless life, one that is rapidly being choked out by busyness, yet in the midst of that stranglehold of darkness, light breaks in and the Spark of Mercy demands for me to be still.

And I am shown that this is not just another part of my schedule but it is something that penetrates deeply into the cracks of my life.  I stop filling in the moments with noise and distraction and I begin filling them with God. 

Be still.

            I cannot express my gratitude that for that Monday night.  God reached into the hurry of my life and reminded me He is in fact still there.  I was reminded that the Word of God is indeed alive.  I was reminded that apart from Him I can do no good thing.  I was reminded the blessedness of silence and reflection.  I was reminded of the joy of obedience.  I was graciously reminded just how desperately I needed to be still.  There is a laundry list of reasons why we should be still: guidance, motivation, comfort, correction, creativity, insight, hope, joy, peace, and the like. However none of these reasons fully addresses why I should be still. Perhaps the easy answer to the question is that God says so.  Yet, easy answers to deep questions are an affront to the merciful spark that calls us to stillness, to ponder the deep mysteries of God.  I find that each time I seek stillness there was something unique and wonderful waiting for me.  Sometimes I need to crawl into Abba’s lap and just know that He is there.  Sometimes I need to hear the echo of Calvary as Jesus proclaims that I am the one He loves.  Other times, I need to wrestle with the heart-wrenching question of why and hear silence instead of an answer.  And sometimes I just need to know that I am still His, despite myself.  But I do not know what your reason is.  I only know, no I only believe, that it is right.  That deep within us all, there is that merciful spark begging us to stop and listen, to stop striving and to be still.  I pray each of you discover the divine silence of God.  I pray that in the midst of the world falling apart all around us, that we would find the cosmic importance of this simple command.  I pray that a spark of mercy would awaken you to the living words of the Almighty, “Be still and know that I am God.”

---

[1] As quoted in Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline. (San Francisco: Harper, 1978), 96.

[2] Ibid., 15.

Sermon For Class on Romans 12:9-16- Genuine Love is the Foundation of Genuine Relationships

A feather fluidly descends upon an Alabama bus stop, resting beside the well-worn Nike tennis shoe of a slender, flat-topped man.  As he awaits his bus with a box of half-eaten chocolates across his lap, he introduces himself to his neighbor and begins to tell his story.  He has met Elvis, overcome a crippling disability, played football for Bear Bryant, met the president, gained and lost the best friend of his life in Vietnam, survived a hurricane, ran across America numerous times, lost his momma, and of course he tells us about Jenny.  We find ourselves like Mr. Gump’s neighbors captivated by his stories, by his life.  This is a fascination that goes beyond Forrest and speaks to each of us; we are all lovers of story.  Billions of dollars are spent each year in the consumption of various forms of stories, be it movies, television, or books.  Take for instance the millions of young people, who despite their Attention Deficit Disorder, spend numerous, consecutive hours thumbing through 800 pages of a vampire love-story.  The desire for story begins in us early as we climb into our parent’s lap and with acute determination and cunning innocence ask, “Daddy, will you tell me a story?”  This fascination grips us early and really never lets us go.  I love holidays at Grandma’s in Arkansas.  No matter where you go, stories are in the air, stories of fishing, cars, childhood mischief, and of family members no longer with us.  We gather around our memories and in the retelling, we relive them.  From birth to death, something inside of us longs for a good story.  But why?  What is it about stories that intrigue us so?

            We could define story like the textbooks do, defining the component parts such as narrative hook, conflict, climax, and resolution.  However, I believe something else is going on below the surface, something that gets at our love-affair with story, that is they deal the extremes of life, such as joy and pain, hope and despair, winning and losing, fall and redemption.  And it is in these extremes that that life truly happens.  We long for stories because they give definition to our own stories, our own lives.  One of my favorite movies is Walk the Line, the masterfully-told story of the life of Johnny and June Carter Cash.  It shows a deeply talented yet deeply troubled young man.  Johnny, like so many in his field, watches from the sidelines as substance-abuse takes over his life at the loss of everything he loves.  But at the height of his fall June sticks with him, protects him, nurses him, loves him.  Johnny can’t believe her love in the face of his sin, he knows and professes that he’s hurt everybody, he’s nothing.  But June fights back, “You’re not nothing, you’re not nothing.  You’re a good man, and God has given you a second chance to make things right, John.  This is your second chance honey.” Johnny emerges a new man and in some way, as we watch, we do as well.  Stories like that resonate because we all know the depths to which we can fall and we wander if someone will ever love us the way June loved Johnny, we wonder if God will give us a second chance. Stories help to remind us what it means to truly live, that life is more than our jobs, our school, our routines, but that life trips us up but also picks us up.  Life and I mean real, abundant life is seen, perhaps exclusively, in those extremities of pain and joy, hunger and fulfillment, life and even death.

            A couple of years ago I formed a relationship with an 8-year old boy named Chris.  Chris came from a tough family, his dad, his hero, was in jail for murder and his mom was rather poor.  Despite this, Chris was full of life and probably taught me more than I taught him.  A few months after we became friends, I received a phone-call informing me that Chris’s dad had killed himself in jail.  I cannot remember a time in my life when I have ever hurt so badly.  Why did this kid, so alive, have to deal with death so tragic?  I’m not sure I, or any of us, will ever understand why.  But I do know that in those tears, in the pain of questioning God, I was at least in part experiencing what it meant to truly be alive. 

            But there is something else foundational to a good story, something that gives force to these emotions and events, something, in fact the very thing, that makes story so personal for us: relationships.  This is the common thread of all of our stories; June and Johnny, Chris and his Dad, us and God.  Even stories of solitude deal with the absence of relationship.  Because relationship is so foundational to story we find it foundational to life as well.  We were created for the very purpose of relationship.  But the relationships that make good stories are not just average run-of-the-mill relationships, if there is such a thing, but significant ones.  These are genuine relationships, real, fully alive people struggling through life together, learning how to relate to one another and to God. 

            Relationship is core to story and thus core to life.  In his epistle to the Roman church, our dear friend Paul guides us into the abundant life through the context of relationships.  In fact the entire book can be seen through the lens of relationships.  The first 11 chapters deal with the theology of reconciliation, detailing how Jesus had mended the broken relationship between God and man.  In the final five chapters, Paul explains what our lives should look like in response to these mercies of reconciliation; although we are many we become one in God, each gifted for the benefit of others, we must love even our enemies and be subject to authority, that the entire law is summed in love for our neighbors, that we must sacrifice our rights for the welfare of the weaker brother.  Paul ends the letter fittingly: “I’m sending so and so to you, tell so and so I miss them, I can’t wait to see you.”  In his appeal for us to welcome one another, Paul goes to great lengths to welcome all he knows in Rome, he is indeed practicing what he preaches.  But I believe Paul is saying something very specific about our stories, about our relationships in verses 9-16 of chapter 12: 

9 Let love be genuine.Abhor what is evil; hold fast to what is good. 10 Love one another with brotherly affection. Outdo one another in showing honor. 11Do not be slothful in zeal, be fervent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12 Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, be constant in prayer. 13 Contribute to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. 14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. 15 Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. 16 Live in harmony with one another. Do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly. Never be wise in your own sight.

           Paul begins this section by merely saying “Genuine Love.”  In our English translations we have added the “let” and the “be” in order to make sense of it.  But perhaps Paul is simply titling the following imperatives illustrating what genuine love looks like.  He deals with hope and charity, blessing even those who persecute us, and instructs us to weep with ones weeping and rejoice with the ones rejoicing.  We are to participate in life with one another, in the extremes of persecution and hope, weeping and mourning.  For when we cry together, we live and when we laugh together, we live.  Core to a good story are good relationships, which begs the haunting question: “How much of our lives is worth telling?”

            Genuine love is the foundation of genuine relationships.  Yet hypocrisy, pride, and ignorance choke out our love, our relationships, our stories.  So we spend $15 every Friday night to escape for two hours, because instead of risking it all and truly living, we’d rather play it safe and watch someone else live.  O that our lives were even horror stories, but they are simply boring and not really stories at all.  They are not good because our love and thus our relationships are not good, are not genuine.  My story is lacking because I love what is evil, I outdo others in pursuit of honor, because I am not daring in the spirit, I grow impatient in difficult times, and only extend hospitality to the familiar.  I curse those who bless me, mock those who rejoice and ignore those who weep.  I can not live harmoniously because I am the wisest person I know.  My story is not good.  How is yours?