The King's Speech

My girls and I went to see "The King's Speech" yesterday.  While I must confess I was initially much more interested in watching football than going to see this movie, I am very pleased to report I made the right choice.  Husbands, submit to your wives for this is sometimes very good!

This was a wonderful film!  While it is rated "R" for language, the language is not gratuitous and is pretty essential for the plot line of the film.  Without ruining the story, one of the few speaking abilities of the film's stammering protagonist is his ability to curse when angry.  This profane ability eventually becomes a tool used to help him overcome his stammering.  So the film would be pretty hollow without this language...

This disclaimer aside, the film is a wonderfully intimate, behind the scenes look into the machinations behind one of this world's most important curtains of power at a critically important time in world history.  A young British prince must overcome a terrible stuttering problem (and some difficult family challenges) in order to eventually become the kingly inspiration his nation needs in wartime.  The intimacy of the struggle is utterly gripping - sometimes hilarious and frequently tear-jerking.  There are many memorable moments in this film - some so very moving this film will almost certainly be a strong Oscar contender.

The story is very well told and the acting superb.  This film not only tells a fascinating, entertaining story, but educates along the way.  It prompts many contemporaneous, relevant discussions about decision making in pivotal moments of world history.  It is a triumphal story - a story of persistence and overcoming.  It is a desperation and humility story - we will never overcome our difficult, stammering problems in life until we humbly admit our need of help.  It is a story about duty and responsibility.  And most thought-provoking of all for me, it is a story about the power of words.  Let no one doubt the importance of the spoken word, especially in difficult times.  While military might and good strategy will always be critical, we must first have people able to inspire us to do battle when we prefer to passively shirk our duty. 

This is a great movie.  I've never been infatuated with royalty, but this film shares a royal moment enormously worthy of remembering.  You won't regret taking the time to see it.

Wrapping Christmas (Luke 2:1-7)

Sometimes it’s hard to wrap up Christmas into one, neat, politely singable package, isn’t it? We can dress up real nice and rehearse everything well, but some of our songs go together nicely and some of them sung next to each other just sound goofy. And then there are times when all our best Christmas medleys and traditions just don’t go like we hoped they would.

This has been a strange Christmas season here in Minnesota, hasn’t it? We’ve had not one, but two Sundays cancelled due to bad weather, which not only interrupts our celebrations, but also the balance in our church checkbook. Our lovely Christmas brunch got moved back and, although we still had fun, some folks were unable to come. Our Elim Preschool Christmas choir last Sunday was nice, but much smaller because of the weather postponement. Because of the way the preaching schedule was set and the weather changed, I ended up not preaching for a month. That was weird and strangely disappointing for me! And after spending a good chunk of money fixing leaks in our roof here at church, Christmas week arrived accompanied by the sound of water dripping into buckets again around here. And all this is only stuff going on around here at Elim. Just outside these walls, we all got reminded what a pain 15 inches of snow can be during the Christmas season. Our aging Metrodome fell in on itself, our favorite football team imploded (although actually that is sort of a Minnesota Christmas tradition!), and the world went right on arguing viciously about almost everything about which it is possible to argue. Politics and world events never seem to take much of a breath, even at Christmas time.

So how do we meaningfully wrap up Christmas in a year like this one? How in the world can we possibly put this mixed up season to music? What do you suppose God is saying here?

The Christmas Journey - A Christmas Eve Reflection

In one of the single most understated verses in the Bible, in Luke 2:6-7, we are told that “the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

The time came for the baby to be born. La, de, dah…, oh, by the way, people of the earth, the time came for the Baby to be born! The BABY! The One!

Shouldn’t there be a great rolling tympani drumming at the sound of those few, quiet words? Shouldn’t there be spontaneous, loud, joyous, completely overwhelming Handel music reverberating around the globe and not simply a tune overheard by a few loser shepherds and assorted riff-raff around town? Like many of you this month, I’ve watched the viral video of a group of chorale singers spontaneously jumping up at a mall food court, singing the Hallelujah Chorus to the delight of everyone eating lunch. It was wonderful! Shouldn’t that have been sort of the way Jesus was announced? A grand, spontaneous, utterly infectious burst of God music loudly overwhelming the food court, completely drowning out the sounds of commerce? Beautiful music suddenly arriving from all four corners of the room? Something so utterly beautiful and breath-taking even the cynics and unbelievers put down their forks to enjoy it?

The time came for the baby to be born. Centuries ago, when Adam and Eve blew it in the Garden and Almighty God was explaining the awful, creation wrecking consequences, God said a time would come when the snake would bruise his heel, but that the great and coming He would crush its head. Head crushing time is here! The time came for the baby to be born.

Our Father Jacob once prophetically said the scepter of power would not depart from Judah “until He comes to whom it belongs.” Folks, the time has finally come for the scepter to rest in its rightful place. The time came for the baby to be born.

The time of Daniel’s great, mysterious seventy-sevens has come and is still coming. The time of Isaiah’s crazy promise of a virgin giving birth has come. The time for Micah’s strange promise of eternal fame and honor for a sleepy, little town named Bethlehem has arrived.

The time came for the baby to be born!

The long prophesied time came for our great, Christmas journey to begin. Our great, longed for Christmas journey has now fully begun. The time came and is now continuing to come for all of us to kneel in worship at the humble, holy baby in a manger, so that we might one day be found already kneeling and ready at the great and terrible coming of our LORD later. I hope we all know that tonight is but one side of the journey. This is just the Lamb side of God’s great Lamb and Lion journey of celebration. This is a moment of time, a window we have all been given in the Christmas journey in which we must choose now and choose well.

The time came for the baby to be born. Folks, this great time asks us lots of questions.

This moment in time asks us if we’re willing to accept a humble and humiliating Savior. Are we willing to accept a Savior who might take us with Him into a smelly stable someday? Are we willing to accept a Savior whose sweetest songs, most glorious music, are quite often sung to the smelly shepherds before they are sung to the saints? Are we willing to accept a Savior not only born humbly, living lowly but also killed horribly? It is time to accept humility.

The time came for the baby to be born. This birthday time also asks us if we’re willing to accept a challenging and sometimes confusing Savior. Are we willing to accept a Savior who comes to us in His own way and in His own completely inevitable timing? Are we willing to accept a Savior who calls us to a lifestyle frequently confusing and foolish to the world around us? Are we willing to accept a Savior who makes constant demands of us, blowing like the wind through our lives however He wishes? It is time to take up His challenges.

The time came for the baby to be born. This sacred moment in time asks us if we’re willing to follow a perfect Savior – someone not simply pursuing holiness, but personifying it. Can we stand to be in the constant, exposing presence of that sort of perfection? Are we willing to have all we are, however bad or good it might be, completely exposed that it might be fully excised from our lives? Can we follow someone perfect enough to be born in such a putrid place and yet remain utterly untainted by it? It is time to fully embrace His perfection.

The time came for the baby to be born. This precious time asks us if we’re willing to follow a powerful Savior. Are we willing to believe this quiet, little stable Baby is capable of calming our seas and feeding our multitudes? Even more ridiculously, are we willing to believe this Baby capable of channeling that sort of mountain-moving power through us into the world around us? Are we willing to believe in the earth-shattering power this tiny manger moment in time, this precious birthday moment always intended to give us? Are we willing to accept the power, authority and responsibility this birthday truly offers us? It is time to accept His power.

The time came for the baby to be born. Perhaps most importantly of all, this sacred moment in time asks us to believe in an utterly, ludicrously loving Savior. This great moment in time asks us to believe there is a God in heaven who, in spite of all the ways we constantly fail Him, still loves us enough to come in this humble way, to risk and suffer His own Son in this way, to ask all these crazy things of us and then, at the end and truly beginning of it all, to come again as He said he would. Do we see the lavishly loving declarations in this birthday?

The time came for the prophesied and perfectly loving Baby to be born. The epic time has come for all of us to answer each one of the myriad, challenging questions this utterly tiny, yet utterly enormous birthday moment in time asks of each one of us. This is a moment of time; a window in which we must choose now and choose well. Embrace this moment so we might be ready and waiting to be gloriously embraced in that great and terrible final moment to come. Love this precious Lamb that you might be found ready, listening for the coming Lion!

This day a Savior has been born to you. He is Christ the LORD! The time has come for this Baby to be fully born in you! Our Christmas journey has already begun and will soon end.

A very merry Christmas to each and every one of you! Choose well this day! Amen.

The Unbroken Life of Louie

I find it difficult to know where to begin discussing Laura Hillenbrand's wonderful new book, Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption.

Since good writing never "buries the lead," I suppose I should begin by saying this is yet another book that should absolutely be required reading for all of us, especially the young among us.  This is yet another story reminding us of the way things actually are in the world.  Reading this book is an important, patriotic part of our national education.  It is a gripping slice of history we must read and understand.  Any chance any of us have to learn from those who experienced these things personally must be seized before the opportunity to do so is lost forever.

And completely aside from the educational and historical value of the book, it is also an utterly riveting story.  This is a story that, were it not so demonstrably and obviously true, would be almost impossible to believe. Louie Zamperini has led a fascinating life.

This is both an important book and a fascinating story.

But I also find it a personally troubling book.  Even as I know and claim to embrace the great Christian truths of forgiveness and redemption in this story, this book still makes me powerfully angry.  I have to be honest.  The most horrible of these events took place twenty years before I was born, and yet reading these things leaves me truly furious.  I quite literally fantasize about climbing  into the pages of this book and beating some of the bad guys to a bloody pulp, especially the horrible Japanese prison guards.  I know that probably isn't a very attractive, Christian or pastoral perspective, but it is my perspective.  I don't honestly care much about the damaged, deprived norms of brutality into which these soldiers were trained; I simply want them stopped.  I'm not interested in contexts and complexities; I want consequences!  Nations must not be soon forgiven for the atrocities we all witnessed in World War II.  While our own nation has had its share of shameful moments for which we still pay justifiably high penalties, I find it difficult to forgive these prison guard monsters.  Even though I know how important it is to forgive as we have been and hope to be forgiven, I find it difficult to forgive and make nice.  Even as Hillebrand takes great pains to remind us all of the good things we know to be true in the deep, healing lessons of Zamperini's long life, I find it difficult to embrace the lovely forgiveness truths Zamperini so beautifully embraces.  I know I should forgive.  I know I must for my own sake, but I find it very hard.  The more I learn in books like these about the true horrors of WWII, what our parents endured in both the European and especially the Pacific theaters, the more critically important I believe it is to never, ever forget, even as we must struggle to forgive and redeem these awful historical moments.

But perhaps there is some redeeming value in people like me being at least a little angry.  Perhaps if people like me stay at least a little bit enraged and wary, we'll all have a better chance to avoid awful stories like this in the future.  In a political atmosphere such as ours, where many do not seem to understand or properly cherish the positive, protective values of strength, power and national discipline, perhaps it is more important than ever that some of us more intensely and intentionally do.  While people like me must not ever allow bitterness and unforgiveness to consume us, we must also not entirely devalue vigilance, strength, duty and national security either.  While we must never place our "trust in kings and chariots," nobody ever said it was an entirely bad idea to keep a few good chariots ready to go.

May God help us as we struggle with the utterly gory ugliness of our sin!  May God help us be the first to joyously forgive, yet also the first into the fight when He rings the bell!

But whatever you might think of my babbling thoughts and prayers, may all of you make time this month to read this book!  It is well worth your time.

Candy Cane Bullying

I am really hoping there is much, much, much more to the story...

Perhaps they are being punished for utterly awful haircuts.  If I were a public school teacher walking around school, forced to endure 50-100 Justin Bieber wannabes all day, I suspect I might get testy too. 

If these guys are harassing other students or teachers, openly disrespecting the beliefs of others, then deal with them accordingly.  But punishing a bunch of happy goofs wearing silly Christmas sweaters, tossing cheap candy canes around and having some laughs?  Call me rebellious, but I have a hard time getting concerned about that.  Personally, they sound like a fun group of kids to hang around.

But then again, there is always the danger of sharpened candy canes floating willy nilly around the school.

Oh the horror!

Of Flutes & Futures

“Now listen, you who say, "Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money." Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.  Instead, you ought to say, "If it is the Lord's will, we will live and do this or that." 

~ James 4:13-15

So here we go again, folks! Time for another lap around the mountain…

There are two scripture passages that come to mind as I think about beginning my fourth year here at Elim Church. The first passage is utterly obvious and almost cliché to think about at this time of year. It is the passage from James above about our plans and God’s sovereignty over life. It is a good reminder to all of us that, unless we are scrupulously careful to include God in our plans, unless we trust God with our plans, our plans are pretty pointless and misty.

The last month here at Elim has served as a wonderful reminder of that. We had wonderful weekend events planned and the weather stepped in and shut them down. Between ice storms and blizzards, we found ourselves in the strange and discombobulating position of cancelling Sunday activities not once, but twice in the same month. Did these Sundays without a worship service feel as utterly odd to all of you as they did to me?

I guess we aren’t as in charge as we thought, huh? Perhaps it would be good to more intentionally remember that as we begin another year together. How might it affect our life together if we allowed each moment to be just a bit more uncertain, undetermined and uncontrolled? How might it be good for us to more intentionally add “if it is the Lord’s will” to every planning session we undertake? I’m going to be thinking about that this year.

The second scripture passage hanging in my thoughts this morning is a bit of a strange one. It is found in Matthew 11:16-17. As Jesus was talking about John the Baptist, he made a harsh comment about the people of this generation.  He said, “To what can I compare this generation? They are like children sitting in the marketplaces and calling out to others: 'We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not mourn.’” This generation is just never satisfied – they are whining children sitting in the marketplace. We played happy songs for you and you didn’t dance. We sang sad songs to comfort you and you didn’t mourn.

There are lots of ways to interpret and apply this passage, but I happen to believe Jesus was talking about the selfish petulance and capricious childishness of people in their interactions with God and His messengers. John the Baptist came neither eating or drinking and people said he had a demon. Jesus came eating and drinking and people said he was a glutton and too friendly with sinners. No matter what we do, no matter how God and we as His representatives present ourselves and His truth to the world, there will be those who won’t accept it.

There will always be whiners at the Walmart; wondering why there aren’t 15 brands of laundry soap instead of just 10!

I have a wonderful preaching and teaching plan for Elim Church for the coming year. I’m pretty excited about it. We have very dedicated people leading us in worship every Sunday. We have all sorts of people working hard to ensure that the homeless are loved, warmed, clothed and fed, the children are taught, the elderly and infirm are cared for, the young people are energized and the rock that is Elim Church is further strengthened against the onslaught of the enemy.

But we aren’t in the people pleasing business. We aren’t chasing rich young rulers. We aren’t whining children playing flutes and singing dirges and hoping against hope that somebody somewhere will notice us and take us to the dance.

We’re in the holiness business. We’re in the surgery and healing business. We’re in the spiritual warfare business. We’re in the humility and worship business. We’re in the body business. We are in the resurrection and rescue business. We’re in the fall on your face and adore the LORD of the Universe who still loves even you business!

This thing we’re doing here together isn’t about me and it isn’t about you. It is about knowing Almighty God and making Him known – savoring the One who alone controls all the weather of our lives. It is about drinking deeply of whatever cool water God chooses to provide for us here in this oasis.

May God help me remember all this in the coming year! May His will be the first consideration in all my thinking! May we experience a joy together this year that only Almighty God can give us!

Amen.

Kayaker Killed By Crocodile

I read a tragic bit of news just now.  It seems a South African adventurer was killed in the Congo when he was snatched and presumably killed by a crocodile from the kayak he was paddling.  Apparently, this young man had a long history of wilderness exploration, testing the boundaries of safety in pursuit of new adventures.  His stories were shared on his blog, along with thoughtful insights about the troubled life of Africa and other places he explored.  By all accounts, while he took many risks in life and eventually paid the ultimate price for doing so, he was a thoughtful, sensitive, socially conscious guy who loved life to the fullest.  In reading a few of his blog posts this morning, I was impressed by his conversations about the terrible plight of women in Africa (and other important issues) as much as any of his adventure discussions. 

And so I was stunned to read some of the utterly flippant, insensitive and uniformly lame cracks posted by people at the close of the news piece.  Many people apparently felt entitled to judge him and crack jokes about his death because, since this kayaker was taking big (i.e. foolish) risks, he got what he deserved.  How utterly sad!

Personally, I suspect I would have thoroughly enjoyed knowing this adventurous guy.  I've never kayaked the Congo or had my picture taken in the jungle with a baby monkey perched on my shoulder.  I'm not really the adventurous type in a lot of ways.  But I'll bet this guy was an awful lot of fun!

Let's face it - life is filled with all sorts of crocodiles and angry hippos in the river.  But are we honestly supposed to leave the world unexplored just because to do so is risky?  I doubt it.  I have a sneaking suspicion we were created for far greater adventures than most of us enjoy.

So rest in peace, my kayaking friend.  May God grant you adventures now beyond even your wildest dreams!

Amen.

Magnificat Blessings (Luke 1:46-50)

Last Sunday morning, before everything iced over and we canceled worship, I was thinking about the first chapter of Luke, where a young girl, a humble virgin named Mary was told by an angel that she would bring the Messiah into the world. She was told her old, childless cousin Elizabeth would also bear a child. All of this must have sounded like sheer nonsense to young Mary – more than a bit frightening considering that she could very well be stoned to death for adultery according to the laws of the land should her fiancé and family choose to do so. So young Mary ran off to visit her pregnant cousin Elizabeth, probably more to confirm the angelic vision (and her own sanity!) than anything else.

But before she could even broach the subject, before she could even share her dramatic angel vision, the mere sound of Mary’s voice in greeting caused the baby in Elizabeth’s womb to leap in some way, happily startling Elizabeth into blessing Mary before Mary could even explain her visit. As one commentator put it, God gave both pregnant Mary and Elizabeth a wonderful meeting of the miracle mothers – blessing and confirmation to both of them! And, as any of us who have ever truly had any sort of these “God moments” can attest, Mary’s joy overwhelmed her; she had a God moment. She burst into what went on to become one of the three most famous songs of the early Christian church – something we now call “the Magnificat,” a word which comes from the first word of the Latin Vulgate translation of this passage. In verses 46-50 of the first chapter of Luke, we are treated to a glimpse of Mary’s heart…as she said:

My soul glorifies [magnifies] the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of [he has noticed] the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation.

As I think of this precious, miracle mother’s utterly grateful, joy moment of blessing, I hear it gently pushing us all to embrace it as our own Christmas blessing. I find a lovely fourfold, magnificat Christmas blessing welling up in my heart as I think about these words.