Full Circle

 

 

“He went away again beyond the Jordan to the place where John was first baptizing, and He was staying there” (John 10:40).

 

Well, old friend, here we are again. How long has it been? Three years? Almost three and a half?

 

How well I recall the look on your face as I approached you! Ha! What a surprise for you…or was it? Had you ever suspected that it might be Me? That I might be the One you were called to bear witness to?

 

The Voice from heaven, the Spirit descending like a dove, and your cry, “This is He!”

 

Did you realize what it all meant? I mean, did you realize that one day I would be back here, back here preparing to go to Jerusalem one more time, one more time for an appointment with yet another baptism, a baptism of death.

 

But it must be, must it not? Just as it was decreed that you would meet the executioner in Herod’s prison, so it has been decreed before the foundation of the world that I, the Lamb, would offer Myself for the world.

 

It seems like yesterday that you and I were here, by this river, in this river. I can still feel your hands on Me as you led me into the waters of baptism, as you raised Me up for the Father and Spirit to bear witness to Me, as you bore witness to Me.

 

Would you have leapt in your mother’s womb had you seen Herod’s prison with its executioner ahead of you?

 

Yes, I think you would have.

 

I won’t be here long, for My friend Lazarus is going to take a nap and I will go wake him up.

 

O John, O John, it is hard to wake people up, is it not?

 

Those who claim to see, do not see. Those who profess to hear, do not hear. Those who make a fuss about being alive, are dead.

 

Well, we have come full circle, have we not?

 

I will go to Bethany, then I will go to Jerusalem. There is a hill outside Jerusalem waiting for Me. There is a tree that has been growing, waiting to be transformed into a cross, waiting for Me. There are nails that have been forged that are waiting for Me.

 

Ah John, you waited for Me and I came. So I will come to, and not disappoint, the hill, the tree, the cross, the nails.

 

O John, but there is a joy beyond all of this that I see. The joy of My brothers and sisters returning to our Father, the joy of a glorious reunion of our Family – and so there is a fuller circle yet to come, a consummation in which God, who has ever been All, is seen as the All in All.

 

Well old friend, I’ve got to go now, it is time to head to Bethany.

 

I will see you soon.

Reading the Bible, Knowing Jesus (5)

 

Are you a tourist, a traveler, or a pilgrim?

 

I heard that G. K. Chesterton observed that “Travelers see what they see, tourists see what they came to see.” When you read the Bible, are you a tourist or a traveler? Is the Word of God changing your life and transforming you into the image of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:29), or are you pretty much the same person you were a year ago, five years ago, ten years ago, a lifetime ago?

 

Do we shape Paul’s letter to the Romans into our image, including our image as Baptists, Pentecostals, Lutherans, Roman Catholics, and Presbyterians, or does Romans shape us into the image of Jesus Christ? Do we read our confessions and statements of faith and doctrinal distinctives through the lens and filter of the Bible and the Person of Jesus, or do we form the Bible into our particular mold and “see” the Bible through our lens of doctrine, and tradition and practice?

 

In other words, when we read the Bible do we see what we came to see, or do we see what is actually there? What will always be actually there is Jesus Christ, it will not be our doctrinal traditions, it will not be our modes of expression, it will not be neat and tidy.

 

Our doctrinal statements do not generally encourage questions and allow ambiguity, they are meant to create uniformity in thought and practice; the Word of God keeps us off balance and yet at the same time, in Christ, creates a security and confidence in Jesus Christ that leads us into heavenly places and beckons us into a glorious eternity in Him.

 

One of the beauties of the Nicene Creed, unlike most other confessions of faith, is that if we actually believe it, we walk through a door of endless possibilities in our relationship with the Trinity and with one another. Most confessions confine us. They may not have been intended to imprison us, but they are used to imprison us. That is, their authors may not have intended them to inhibit our relationship with Christ, but in practice that is what they do, that is what they are used for by others.

 

As a Body, we are meant to have unity in diversity and diversity in unity. (1 Corinthians 12; Romans 12; Ephesians 4). The only way this is possible in when Jesus Christ is our Head, when all things flow from Him to us, and from us to Him (Ephesians 4:15 – 16). This means that Jesus Christ must be in control, that we must work and live “without a safety net.” This is not a pleasant thought for us, there are too many things can go wrong, too much mess to clean up – we like tidy theological houses, tidy congregations, we want to be predicable.

 

All of this contributes to our propensity to live as tourists, when we read the Bible we read what we came to see, we do not read what is actually there.

 

Travel writer and tour guide Rick Steeves talks about tourists, travelers, and pilgrims.

 

“The tourist typically seeks relaxation, entertainment, and escape from the routines of daily life through superficiality and, sometimes, frivolity. They prioritize fun over deeper connection and may depend on curated tours or package vacations to see the best beaches, landmarks, and restaurants that get overexposed not just in guidebooks, but on travel blogs and on social media feeds.” Rick Steeves.

 

The Bible-reading tourist enjoys a Sunday school class or a small group and then moves on with life. He may especially enjoy a video series, or perhaps a series on prophecy and the End-times because they can be entertaining and give a sense of being “in the know.” For the tourist, reading the Bible (or material that is supposed to represent the Bibe, like small group or Sunday school studies) is like visiting one tourist spot after another, you never remain long in one place. Looking back you may recall a nice experience here or there, maybe a good meal, some beautiful scenery, or even some people you meant. Over time all the spots tend to blend together, and while you may collect stickers to put on the back of your car indicating all the places you’ve been, you’ve been to them all as a tourist – you are still the same person you were when you took your first trip.

 

Many of our churches are tourist destinations, focused on entertainment, on experience for the sake of experience (and of course for the sake of getting return tourists). In fact, many pastors speak of “the Sunday morning experience.” When one church falls flat, a tourist will visit another church.

 

“Travelers, by contrast, are in search of more thoughtful experiences. Most travelers I know, they're proud to be known as a traveler as opposed to a tourist: 'I'm more thoughtful — I'm not just here to shop and get a selfie’…it is the traveler's goal to become a "temporary local" and experience real people, real food, and real culture.” Rick Steeves.

 

It seems to me that Bible-reading travelers do their homework prior to meeting with the saints, whether in Sunday school, a small group, or in congregational gatherings. They read the Bible text and other material, if the pastor is preaching a series, they read the text of the coming Sunday and ponder it. They read the Bible text, they pray about it, they read it again; they may read it in various translations, they read other Bible passages that relate to the text. They ask themselves questions, they seek to see Jesus, and they seek to know how to respond obediently to the text.

 

These people tend to appreciate working through a book of the Bible rather than hopping, skipping, and jumping all over the Bible. They instinctively know that you can’t bounce around in the Bible and learn much, they know that their lives cannot be molded with such an approach. These people do not want to be entertained; they are usually not in a hurry. They want to meet the people of the Bible, they want to meet the Bible, they want to drink in the Bible, they want to walk with Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, Deborah, Huldah…and of course, most of all, with Jesus.

 

Many of these folks can tell you about a study they participated in years ago, say in Jeremiah or the Gospel of Matthew, or Romans. They can do this because they didn’t go there to see preconceived images or popular destinations, they went there as travelers, they went to live in Romans, Matthew, and Jeremiah – to live in the text, to live with the people, to walk with Jesus through those books. Furthermore, they return again and again to renew their relationships – they return to meet old friends and to make new ones.

 

"A pilgrim learns about themselves, and you learn about yourself by leaving your home and looking at it from a distance, you try to get closer to God through your travels.” Rick Steeves.

 

What do you think a pilgrim looks like when reading the Bible?

 

We’ll reflect on being a pilgrim with our Bible reading in our next reflection in this series…the Lord willing.

 

 

 

 

The Mysterious Seb'n (5)

 

 

So it was that a few weeks ago when we were watching a documentary about Appalachia, that one of the residents of the Blue Ridge Mountains who was being interviewed answered my question of almost 76 years when he said, “It took ‘em ‘bout seb’n years to git it dun.”  

 

When I heard the word “seb’n” my heart jumped. “That’s it!” I thought. “He said, ‘seb’n,’ he said ‘seb’n’!”

 

I picked up my phone, hit the Google app, typed in “seb’n” and got a couple of hits. Sure enough, “seb’n” is part of an Appalachian dialect, and Nelson County is part of Appalachia in the Blue Ridge Mountains.

 

When my Daddy would say, “seb’n” (or seb’m) he was speaking the language of his childhood, he was talking Nelson County talk – talk with roots stretching across the Atlantic into Ulster and from Ulster across the Irish Sea to Scotland and England. To say that “seb’n” is not a word is to say that Bluegrass is not music, music that also traces its roots to peoples surrounding the Irish Sea.

 

Since then, I have read about Appalachian dialects (for Appalachia has many regions) and have been fascinated, realizing that I’ve heard many of the words and expressions and pronunciations over the years but never realized their roots. Some folks think that these dialects may bring us close to the form of English speech practiced in Colonial times. This reminds me of a study I read which concluded that the French spoken in Quebec is closer to the French of 1750 than that of modern France because of Quebec’s relative isolation from the home country after the Seven Years War (what we term the French and Indian War).

 

Whatever the case might be in terms of Colonial English, traditional Nelson County English now has a beauty for me that I never really appreciated nor truly “heard”. I am sorry we now live far away from those mountains and hollows.

 

Are there words or expressions you heard growing up that you’ve wondered about? Are there questions about the people who surrounded you, their language and their ways, while you were growing up? Should there be questions?

 

When we moved from the D.C. - Baltimore area to Richmond in the 1980s, one of the many changes we encountered had to do ways of doing business and of meeting people in general. In Baltimore and D.C. when you first met someone to do business you sat down and got to the point and then you left. In Richmond there was a warm-up conversation, and it nearly always had to do with, “Who are your people? What did your Daddy do? What about your Mamma? Tell me about yourself and your people.”

 

People did not want to know so much about where you were from; they wanted to know about your people. (I should also mention that in Richmond another thing folks often wanted to know was what college you attended. Where you a Hokie or Cavalier? Did you go to VCU or UR? In D.C. and Maryland, as a rule no one cared about that kind of thing.)

 

How might you describe your people? Your family and the families around you? What was your neighborhood or region like? How have things and people changed over the years?

 

I realize we may never make another trip to that honeycombed land of the Blue Ridge – but the land is etched in my heart, I can see it as I write this – and the people, the people I have known and wish I had known – it is a beautiful land, with a beautiful people, with a beautiful language.

 

One, two, three, four, five, six, seb’m, eight, nine, ten.

 

 

 

 

 

The Mysterious Seb’n (4)

 

 

Harvard once had an American dialect assessment you could take online, it was by far the most accurate tool of its type I’ve encountered; it nailed where I grew up as well as other regional ways of speaking that have influenced me. 

My Dad, with his “seb’m”, was from Nelson County, VA, but lived in the Washington D.C. area and in rural Northern Virginia after his father died. My grandmother Withers moved to be closer to her family in Northern Virginia, and as my Dad grew into his teenage years he lived with an older sister and her husband in D.C. When he was 17 years old Daddy joined the Navy during WWII. The childhood memories my Dad shared with me were of the Andersons, his mother’s family in Northern Virginia, not of the Withers family in Nelson County.

 

The population of the post-WWII D.C. area, in which I grew up, reflected the War years in that we had neighbors from many parts of the country whose families had moved to the area during the War to work for the Federal government, in associated organizations, or in the local expanding economy – the influx of people needed to be housed, fed, clothed, educated and entertained. My Dad may have been one of the few adults in our suburban Maryland neighborhood who had attended D.C. area public schools.

 

As a result of the foregoing, I heard many ways of speaking as a child, many accents, and various terms for the same thing. I recall having an argument with a neighbor friend over what meal was “dinner” and what meal was “supper.” Words mattered to me even as a kid. (As I recall, the Harvard dialect assessment dealt with the regional distinction between dinner and supper.)

 

A question on the Harvard assessment had to do with how you pronounce “Washington.” Some of us may be unaware that there is more than one pronunciation of the first syllable. This distinction extends to words like “water” and “washing.” How is “wa” pronounced?

 

Keeping in mind that I grew up in the D.C. area…drum roll please…I was raised with the pronunciation “Warshington.” This means that water was warter, and washing was warshing. I am not suggesting that all Washingtonians did this, but many Warshingtonians did it – it was natural. I’ve not taken the time to track down where this “r” came from, that is, whether it was imported from another region, but it was notable enough to be included in the Harvard dialect assessment – so I am not alone.

 

Which is to say that while my Dad had his “seb’m” that I had my Warshington.

 

Vickie, being from Iowa, was quick to point out what was, for her, my unusual way of pronouncing Washington. As I thought about it, and about the way most of the world says “Washington,” I did something I suppose I might be ashamed of and which I will confess to you, I changed my way of saying Washington, water, and washing.

 

I admit that even though it has been many years since I made the change, I still do not say “Wa-shington” naturally, for I was raised a “War-shington” boy and I’ll always be a Warshington boy; you can take the boy out of Warshington but you can’t take the Warshington out of the boy. People may hear me say “Washington” but I’m thinking “Warshington.”

 

Do you call Pepsi or Coke a soft drink, pop, soda pop, soda, or tonic? Is dinner the midday meal, or is the midday meal lunch? Is dinner the evening meal, or is that supper? Is the paper thing they put your groceries in a bag or a sack or something else? Do you go for a walk in the woods or in the timber?

 

 

 

 

War-sington

Reading the Bible, Knowing Jesus (4)

 

 

“Without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He becomes a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him out” (Hebrews 11:6).

 

When we open the Bible, we can open it in the expectation that we will meet God. When we ponder the Scriptures, we can anticipate the appearing of Jesus Christ; we can look for Him, listen for Him, expect to sense Him; we can be assured that we can touch Him and that He will touch us. Now for sure, all of this will be on His terms, at the pace He sets. While we may have questions for Him, we may find that He has many more questions for us, questions that may take us a lifetime to answer.

 

Just what does He want from us? Actually He wants nothing from us, other than ourselves – this is where it must begin, where it always begins and always concludes – Jesus wants us – heart, soul, mind, and strength. Jesus does not want us to simply love Him, He wants us to love Him will all that we are – “all” means “all,” fancy that (Mark 12:29 – 31).

 

O dear friends, like Martha we can be troubled about many things, our minds may rush about with questions, with tasks to be done, with things we think we need to do for the Lord – we can be sitting in a chair, our bodies still, yet our minds may be zooming through life. There may be many things we wish to know about Jesus, but Jesus says, “I am not interested in you knowing about Me, I want you to know Me. You will not know Me unless you stop and pay attention to me. You cannot fool me, I see your mind racing about, I see the things you have set your heart upon. Quiet child, Be quiet. Let us spend time together.” (Luke 10:38 – 42).

 

What would the world be like if the professing church actually knew Jesus Christ? Why if we knew Jesus we would share Him with others. If we knew Jesus we would be Jesus to others. If we knew Jesus then Jesus would speak for Himself through us, as individuals and as His People. Wouldn’t that be refreshing? Rather novel…yes, I think so. Is not a body to express the head? Ought not the Body of Christ express the Head?

 

Jesus was once asked, “What shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?” That is a fair question. Give us something to do, just tell us what to do. Is this not our way in congregations? Let us find our skill sets, our “gifts,” our aptitudes – let us put everyone to work. Let us be a people in motion, always in motion.

 

Jesus did not respond by handing out a gift assessment. He did not have the apostles do a needs analysis. Jesus did not perform a demographic study. Jesus did not give everyone a job to do.

 

“This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (John 6:28 – 29).

 

Later He will say to His disciples in the Upper Room, “I am the Vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

 

“Nothing?” we ask.

 

This is hard for us to swallow, hard for us to practice. It is so hard to sit still. So hard not to push our agendas! So impossible not to be in control.

 

Well, let us sit in expectation of His appearing as we open the Word, the Bible, the sacred Scriptures. Let us allow the words within the Word to soak our minds and hearts and be planted within our souls (James 1:21). As the words are sown, the Word comes forth, as the Word comes forth, we see Jesus.

 

How do we please God? We are told by faith; we are informed that without faith it is impossible to please Him. What does this faith look like?

 

It is, my friend, pretty simple, basic, and to the point.

 

“He who comes to God must believe that He is.”

 

I knock anticipating that someone on the other side will open the door. I ask, expecting a reply. I seek, in the hope of finding (Matthew 7:7 – 11).

 

How foolish to knock at a house you know is vacant!

 

How delusional to email a defunct address or call a number no longer in service.

 

Why,  O why, seek for something that isn’t there, that doesn’t exist?

 

As I said, this is basic, very basic.

 

We must come to Him believing that He is. Notice that we “come.” In the Bible we have passages in which He comes first and we respond; then we have passages in which we come first and He responds. Perhaps this is like chess, the white side moves first, then the black.

 

My brother Jim and I played chess for many years, first via snail mail and then via the internet. We always played two games at once. I played white in one game, and he played white in the other game. Therefore, when we began two new games they began with me making a white move in the first game, and with Jim making the white move in the second game.

 

Perhaps our Father and Lord Jesus have us playing two games at once; God moves first in one game, and He waits to see if we will move first in the second game. I am too old to worry much about all of this, other than  knowing that we can trust our dear heavenly Father in all things and He is well able to nurture us as His daughters and sons – He is our wise and kind Father and we are the lambs of our Good Shepherd, the Lord Jesus.

 

In our passage “we come to God, believing that He is.”

 

Now, in case you’re wondering, this does not mean that some cannot say, “God, I don’t know about You. I don’t even know if You are real. If You are, please show Yourself to me.”

 

I think our dear God honors honesty and a seeking sincere heart. But our passage is not about this, it is about coming to God believing that He is – our passage is about faith, it is not about where we might be prior to faith. It is wise to engage the passage in front of us.

 

But when we come to God there is more than simply believing that He exists, we come because we also believe that “He becomes a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him.”

 

In other words, we come to God believing that God will respond. We believe that God will meet us, that as we come to Him that He will come to us. We do not come to Him to figure Him out, we do not read the Bible to figure the Bible out – we come to Him to meet Him, we enter the Bible and open ourselves to God’s Word so that the Bible will enter into us…so that we will meet God, encounter Him, know Him – so that we can experience friendship and sonship (and daughterhood) with God, that we might live in the koinonia (fellowship!) of the Trinity (John Chapter 17).

 

As we partake of the Scriptures we partake of the Divine Nature (2 Peter 1:4).  

 

What is it to diligently seek Him?

 

Well, among other things, it means that we open the Book. It means that the Book is our primary source for communion, along with prayer (which entails both listening and speaking). As He sees us open the Book today, tomorrow, and the next day…He watches us…He watches to see if we are looking for Him or are seeking something else – perhaps religious knowledge, perhaps to improve ourselves, maybe to be smarter than we were the day before. He waits to see if we will wait for Him, if we will look for Him out of the window of our soul the way we wait for a dear loved one to return home after a long journey.

 

He waits to see if we will wait.

 

He speaks to see if we are listening.

 

He asks a question to see if we will respond.

 

Unlike us, Jesus is in no hurry, time does not matter to Him – you matter, I matter, we matter.

 

He becomes a Rewarder…and as the Holy Spirit opens the Scriptures to us (John 16:12 – 15) we realize something that can hardly be put into words…we realize that the Rewarder is greater than the reward – that He is our Reward…that He is our heart’s desire, the filling up of life, overflowing with joy and peace…and we cry with the psalmist:

 

“Whom have I in heaven but You? And besides You, I desire nothing on earth” (Psalm 73:25).

 

Let us open the Bible and meet God – He is waiting.

 

A concluding thought:

 

When we lived in Richmond I met friends for coffee in coffee shops throughout the metropolitan area. I came to have my regular places for meeting others; it was like a chain of remote offices. With the Bible, you and I have 66 different coffee shops where we can meet Jesus – it is good to get to know all the shops, you may spend more time in some than in others, and there are some that you may take a particular liking to, but Jesus is there in each one to spend time with you…you may be surprised at what He shows you on the menus.

 

Occasionally I’d show up to a coffee shop to meet a friend and the person failed to make it – it is a sad feeling to look for someone, and look, and look again, and then realize that you’ll be having coffee by yourself, that you won’t have the pleasure of your friend’s company. Rest assured, Jesus will always be there – He will always be there ahead of you, waiting for you. The question is, will you keep Him waiting?

 

 

 

The Mysterious Seb'n (3)

 The Mysterious Seb’n (3)

 

My Daddy had an older (by 10 years) first cousin named Thomas Austin Withers, Jr. Thomas left the University of Virginia in 1941, where he was three years into his degree program, to enlist in the Royal Canadian Air Force. As you know – or as you should know – America didn’t enter the war until it was attacked on December 7, 1941. Until that time most of us, including many of our “leaders”, were content to watch Britain suffer what we thought was a sure process of annihilation. After all, why back a loser? (We also watched Japan destroy China, though destroy is too light a word).

 

Antisemitism was high in the United States, we had Nazi youth groups, Madison Square Garden was the venue for a Nazi rally that began with the American Pledge of Allegiance, our State Department would not (with heroic exceptions) issue visas to Jews facing extermination, and in 1939 we, the Home of the Free and the Land of the Brave, turned away 900 European Jews on the liner St. Louis and sent them back to Europe. You do, of course, remember learning this in your history classes? Of course you do.   

 

In the 1930s our population was about 120 million. It is estimated that about 30 million of us tuned our radios in weekly to hear Father Charles Coughlin spew his antisemitic venom through the airwaves – we haven’t changed, have we? We still love venom. Thank God for Pope Leo, he shows us a better way.

 

When newsreels showed video of Poland being bombed in movie theatres (yes, you could get your news before your movies in those days) some people clapped.

 

Why did this young man from dirt poor Nelson County, VA leave the safety of the University of Virginia to fight for what was surely a losing cause?

 

Not long before his death, in a letter to his parents, he wrote, “If we do not return we will have no regrets.”

 

I wonder what his Nelson County accent sounded like to his Canadian and British mates? I wonder if he pronounced “seven” as “seb’n” or “sem’n”? Or perhaps his UVA environment corrected that for him? I recall reading somewhere that he excelled in English and was considering law school.

 

Why, O why, leave UVA to fight for another people? Why leave the safety of the hills and hollows of Nelson County? Why put aside the aspirations of a degree, the promise of a career, the prospect of home and family, for certain danger and possible death? (Roughly 44% of crew members in Britain’s Bomber Command were killed.) Why not wait and see if America entered the war?

 

What was my second cousin feeling and thinking? How did he arrive at his decision?

 

What do you think?

 

 

The following is from a war memorial:

 

Thomas Austin Withers, Jr. was born on January 5, 1915, in Nelson County, Virginia. He was the son of Thomas Austin Withers Sr and Margaret Scruggs Withers.

 

Thomas served in the 405 Squadron as a Flight Sergeant during World War II. After training in Canada, he was sent to England where he was a tail gunner on a Wellington bomber. On one of the bombing runs over Germany, he was wounded and hospitalized. Upon return to duty, his bombing runs continued until July 27, 1942, when his plane, Halifax W1230, was downed over Germany and crashed into the Elbe River. Withers and two other crewmen were killed.

 

Reading the Bible, Knowing Jesus (3)

 

The first conversation that shocked me occurred at breakfast with another couple. As we were catching up with our friends whom we had not seen since our move a few years ago, they told us about the church they were attending. One of the things that excited them about the church was the way the pastor preached, he taught the Bible verse-by-verse and did “exegesis.” They were quite impressed with exegesis, with a certain way in which to study the Bible and to teach the Bible.

 

Now I’m about to go down a road which you may not understand, but I need to do it. For sure, it is a road that you can understand, but this will be easier for some than for others. And please, remember this, I am writing to myself as well as to you. Believe me when I write that I’d love to go back and do many things over again, I truly would.

 

Over the past few years, I have thought much about what I’m writing in this series, and the clearer it becomes to more, the more angst I have and the more regret wells up within me. The three conversations I’m sharing, and the shock they gave me, have crystalized my vision and thinking, and yet I still have many questions.

 

Our friends at breakfast have been quite active in church for many years – they are not pew warmers. When we first met them, they were leaders in their congregation. They care about people; they care about outreach – both in terms of sharing the Gospel and in terms of helping folks with physical needs.

 

When they spoke of the way the pastor preached it was as if they’d never read the Bible before, it was as if the Bible had been a closed book that only the pastor and his methodology could open – even though they had been Christians for decades, not sit-on-the-bench Christians but a truly engaged husband and wife in the Kingdom of God.

 

That was the first element of my shock.

 

The second element was, “Have I done what this pastor is doing? Have I led people to think that they cannot approach the Bible without doing so in a certain way, with a certain methodology?”

 

Have we so hedged the Biblical text with methodology and tradition and doctrine (which is often imperfect at best) that people can no longer encounter Jesus Christ in the Bible?

 

I think the answer is “Yes.”

 

Have I done so?

 

I know the answer is “Yes.”

 

Now I am not saying that the pastor was doing this deliberately, of course not, anymore than I would have done it deliberately (I hope not). What I am saying is that we can become so enamored with methodology, with the way we approach the Bible, that we make that our focus and forget two things; we forget the Living Jesus Christ, and we forget what the Bible itself says about how we should read it.

 

There is a difference between knowing the Bible and knowing Jesus. There is a difference between believing “the right things,” whatever they may be, and actually knowing Jesus – being in a relationship with Him.

 

I once knew a man who insisted, “Right behavior follows right belief.”  I knew that was a lie because of the way he lived and treated other people – he could be nasty.

 

A dilemma is that if we know the Bible as the revelation of Jesus Christ to our souls, then to know the Bible is indeed to know Jesus and to know Jesus is to know the Bible. If we have “right belief” in the sense that we have entrusted ourselves to Jesus as the Source of our life, then we will live godly lives in Him.

 

Do you see how these things can be difficult to ponder? (At least to me!)

 

Regarding our friends at breakfast; what did their new perspective say about the decades they had been reading the Bible? Was it a waste? How could it have been different? What had other pastors and teachers they had known been doing when they preached and taught? From what I knew of our friends, their previous pastors all believed the Bible to be the Word of God.

 

Was their current perspective healthy? I don’t think so, not if it meant that they were focused on methodology rather than Jesus Christ being revealed by the Holy Spirit in and through Scripture. Not if it meant that they thought there was a superior knowledge required to understand the Bible, a superior intellectual method that required specialized academic training. Not if it meant that they were dependent on “professionals” to teach them the Bible.

 

As with study Bibles, to focus on methodology is to necessarily not focus on the revelation of Jesus Christ because we can only serve one master, only one North Star, we can only have one primary filter. What should be a tool, such as an exegetical approach, can become the alpha and omega, the first and the last – thus replacing Jesus Christ.

 

People talk about what is in their hearts, out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, at least this is what Jesus teaches. When pastors are together, or theologians for that matter, it is not unusual for them not to talk about Jesus. This was a surprise to me as a teenager, today it is a challenge. We can get so caught up in the intellectual side of life, in the business of doing church, in the craft of preaching…in so many things, that it is like a group of KFC franchisees meeting back in the day when Harlan Sanders was still alive; he may have been alive but he was a thousand miles away, he wasn’t in the room with them.

 

If Jesus isn’t in the room with us, we ought to call it a day and go home and play solitaire.

 

I need to wrap this up because this is a blog and you don’t have all day. Before I tell you a story let me say that I am very much thinking out loud in this series. I am saying things I’ve said before, and yet I am also attempting to articulate some things that I haven’t said before – things that are a result of the shock of three conversations over the past year.

 

I hope that you will read and reread and learn two passages of Scripture, John 16:12 – 15 and 1 Corinthians 1:17 – 2:16. These passages, in Christ, can become our center of gravity when we read the Bible, reminding us that in Christ Jesus are “hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Colossians 2:1 – 3).

 

A few years ago, Vickie and I were attending a large church in the Richmond, VA. area. At a church dinner it happened that the pastor sat at our table. My conversation with the pastor turned to his background and academic training, at which point he talked about the seminary he attended. The pastor was in his 50s.

 

The pastor spoke of a particular method of education employed by his alma mater, making a point of saying, “Other seminaries don’t do this, but mine did,” implying that his school is far better than other schools. He was quite proud of his seminary and its methodology.

 

Of course, the pastor did not know my background, and I was amused as he went on and on about how his school was superior to other divinity schools.

 

Now I’m not saying that we shouldn’t have affection for institutions that have been a blessing to us, though we ought to recall the people who blessed us and remember that most (all?) institutions are mythical – often images without substance, and that they change over the years. Also, not everyone experiences an institution the same way. An institution’s “narrative” is often not reality – whether in academia, in business, or within a nation.

 

I am saying that we can become so fixated on things other than Jesus, good things, maybe even “godly” things, that we forget to love Jesus with all that we have and all that we are – and isn’t that our calling? To love Him with all of our heart and soul and mind and strength and to love others as ourselves?

 

And when forget to love Jesus and others, when loving Jesus and others is not our focus, then other things which could be good for us become bad for us – our exegesis, our methodologies, our education and training – all of these things become Nehushtans (Num. 21:9; 2 Kings 18:4).  I have had many Nehushtans in my life, and likely still have them.

 

We are helpless without the Holy Spirit, yes, I think we are helpless.

 

“Knowledge makes arrogant, but love edifies” (1 Cor. 8:1).

 

 

 

 

The Mysterious Seb’n (2)

 

How did my people get to Nelson County? While I’d love to know more of the story, what I do know leads me to believe that my great-grandfather Walter Lemmon Withers fell in love with Elizabeth (Betty) Hamilton and that Walter moved from Gladys in Campbell County, VA to Nelson County to marry and practice medicine.

 

Google Maps tells me that it’s 48 miles from Gladys to Roseland, 52 minutes by car, 6 hours by bike (I assume that’s if you don’t stop for rest), and 20 hours if you walk (and don’t stop?). What it is by horse or horse and buggy I don’t know.

 

After the Civil War, Walter graduated with a medical degree from the University of Virginia (as had his older brother Robert Enoch Withers) and began his medical practice. Their father, Robert Walter Withers, was a physician in Gladys. During the war Walter was what was known as a “medical steward,” what we would call a “medic.” Walter was captured and made prisoner of war during Pickett’s Charge on July 3,1863. Considering the casualty rate at Gettysburg, and the conditions in Civil War POW camps, I guess you could say that I just made here.

 

How did Walter meet Betty? My guess is that he met her through a sister who was married and living in Nelson County. She had married a Massie and was living in Massie’s Mill, VA, not far from Roseland and about 50 miles from Charlottesville and UVA. Maybe Walter stopped at the sister’s home when traveling between Charlottesville and Gladys? Maybe he spent holidays with his sister and her family?

The Library of Virginia has two letters that Robert Walter Withers and his wife, Susan, wrote to the daughter while Gettysburg was raging. They had no idea the battle was happening, and no idea that the life of at least one of their sons was in danger. Holding those letters, with gloves, was a special experience for me a few years ago.

 

As I ponder Walter Lemmon moving to Nelson County to marry Betty, I recall that Robert Walter (my great-great-grandfather) likely moved from Fauquier County to Gladys in Campbell County to marry Susan. Since it is 152 miles from Warrenton in Fauquier County to Gladys in Campbell County, I have no idea how Susan and Robert met. As I mentioned above, Robert was a doctor and received his medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania.

 

If you’ve ever been through Gladys (people seldom go to Gladys, they drive through it), you may wonder how someone living 152 miles away, 200 years ago, would find his way to such a place…I have no idea – it was before, I am assured, social media.

To be continued...

 

 

 

Reading the Bible, Knowing Jesus (2)

 

 

As I ponder the three conversations concerning the Bible that have challenged and shocked me, let me ask; How do you read the Bible? How do you experience the Bible?

 

As you look back over your life, do you read the Bible the same way today as you always have? Has your experience with the Bible changed over the years?

 

Do you read articles, letters, books, cards, and documents the same way? Do you read marketing material the same way you read an email from a friend? Do you deal with spam email the same way you deal with email from a family member or a coworker?

 

If you are in a romantic relationship, do you write and “sound” differently to that special person than you do if you are sending a business email? Is your writing “voice” different when you write to a high school friend of many years than when you email an appliance repair company asking it why it has once again failed to show up for an appointment?

 

In my business career I wrote in many genres. I wrote technical instructions for using software. I wrote advertising copy. I wrote personnel reviews. I wrote contracts. I wrote letters putting parties on notice for contract violations. I wrote letters to government officials. I wrote letters to clients. I wrote thank you notes and letters to vendors and team members. I wrote strategic plans.

 

Each letter or email or contract or procedure I wrote required that I think about who I was writing to, who else might read what I was writing, the purpose of my writing, what I wanted to communicate, how best to communicate…and so many other things.

 

If I was writing a personnel review for someone who had a well – developed vocabulary, I would write one way; if English was a second language I would write another way. If the person needed to receive a strong message that immediate job improvement was critical, I’d write in one voice (at least in part of the review), if the review was more along the lines of continued successful development and coaching, I’d write in another voice.

 

If I am opening mail at home and have five pieces from companies that want to sell me the newest computerized mousetrap, I am going to handle those pieces differently than I will the card from our friends in Munich, Germany. My expectations will be different, my critical thinking will be different, my heart will be different, my defenses are up with mousetrap marketing, they are down with the card from our friends.

 

The way we approach the Bible matters, the way we listen to the Bible matters, the way we communicate the Bible matters, the way we respond to the Bible matters.

 

How do you read and experience the Bible?

 

How would you like to read and experience the Bible?