Scared by the Sacred

         

     The Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris inspired many people who had never heard of the magazine to look online and see for themselves just what had inflamed Muslim jihadists to resort to such violence.  A quick perusal of the magazine's back issues would be enough to offend the sentiments of any person of faith. No one and nothing was off-limits to the irreverent pens of the targeted cartoonists.  I think it natural that Christians are appalled at their relentless mockery of God, Jesus, scriptures and other people's faith even as we condemn their brutal murders in the name of religion. In the aftermath of the carnage, as heightened emotions give way to more objective analysis, we are left to wonder if there is nothing sacred any more, no place our culture's media and artists won't go. The very existence of  boundary lines are interpreted as an invitation to cross them and the most shocking of extremes beg to be explored to their fullest extent.

     And yet people of faith should stop and look in the mirror to ask ourselves if we have escaped crossing sacred lines only because we have conveniently moved them.  Our precious faith handed down to us is constantly subjected to the barrage of profane culture where freedom is worshiped to the point of callousness to the sentiments of God and everyone else. Growing up, I always thought my Dad was a bit harsh when he enforced a no running or chewing gum policy in church. But now I realize it was just one of the ways he fought in his generation to guard the ever-encroached line, as he saw it, between the sacred and profane. Blasphemy today hides behind the smiling mask of comedy and satire. When society stops only to value one thing at the expense of all others, such as freedom of expression, it becomes imbalanced to the point of spinning out of control. Lack of control eventually leads to a great crash, the only question being how much and how many will become damaged or injured along the wild trajectory. France will be dealing with the fallout for years to come.

     When believers reject limits on their own thoughts, what language they use or listen to or what movie they will sit through, all in the name of rejecting "legalism", we are guilty of the same crime of Charlie Hebdo, just of a lesser charge. The keeper of the boundary of profane territory is neither pop culture nor pew culture. God somehow remains unaffected by the ratings of Netflix, Playstation or iTunes as well as the entertainment habits of the majority of today's parishoners. The fact that the Assemblies of God denomination even felt compelled to publish a stance for its adherents on 50 Shades of Grey should be commentary enough on the sad state of affairs at your average seeker friendly church. Prudish has been rejected, yet sadly replaced by permissive. In our zeal to lighten things up, we've rejected myopic Victorian but rushed headlong into Miami Vice. The sacred can often be unpopular and inconvenient. Rearrange the letters and you have what a lot of 21st century Christians are by any mention of accountability and standards - scared.

     Liberty and accountability must always remain close friends, otherwise society is doomed to a slow death by moral decay. Charlie Hebdo taught us that absolute, no-holds barred freedom leads to extreme self-absorption and calloused offensiveness. Followers of Christ, even American ones, do not worship freedom. We bow at the throne of our Liberator while responsibly and gratefully enjoying the freedoms He allows and honoring the limits that He imposes knowing that otherwise we end up forfeiting the hard-won spiritual freedom we enjoy today. Freedom as god is a masquerading, cruel despot who promises beauty but eventually delivers only bondage. And the absence of boundaries produces perpetual wanderers who forget their origins while never finding home. As for me, I am content to not color outside the borders and declare to my Master, as David did, "You are my portion and the boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places."

A Great Host For Christmas

Reading the Christmas story this year, I was reminded of Sister Sellers. Unlike what it might seem, this is not a sinister operation helping boys get rid of their pesky female siblings. Neither is it older Girl Scout alumni still peddling cookies, nor another installment of a popular Whoopi Goldberg film.  Clara Sellers was my Sunday School teacher for a number of years growing up. I never knew older people had first names until much later, because we always had to address them as Brother or Sister instead of Mr. or Mrs. I didn’t understand how that communicated respect, because I don’t think that is what I felt most for my brother or sister. But why the Christmas story made me think of this dear saint who somehow loved smelly, rambunctious boys enough to want to spend every Sunday morning telling them to sit down and color, has to do with how I picture the angels in the shepherd story. The best part of the Sunday lesson - because in those days we couldn’t imagine having snack, of all things - was the flannel graph.  And when Sister Sellers would come to the part of the angels praising God, she would place them on the flannel board high in the sky. After all, if angels have wings, they surely ought to use them.

I think our tendency to think of flying angels comes from several sources. It may make us think of Jacob’s dream of angels ascending and descending a giant ladder to heaven. Or maybe we are influenced by Isaiah’s vision of the throne room with winged seraphs flying as they praised God. And certainly our imagination has been shaped by films,art and animation that we have seen depicting the scene. But this year when I read Luke 2:13 I wasn’t reminded of flying angels on a flannel graph: “Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace to men.” The phrase translated as “great company of the heavenly host” here literally means several troops of heavens armies, with the connotation that they are as numerous as the stars. These angels are different than the flying seraphs or the fiery cherubim, who are always mentioned being around the throne of God. Throughout the Bible, when angels appeared to people on earth, they never flew and they always had their feet firmly on the ground. So what must have the shepherds seen that evening? 

The image I now get is more similar to the appearance of the elvish armies in the movie The Hobbit 3. The people of Laketown turn around and suddenly there are thousands of formidable tall, armored soldiers in formation, surrounding them and ready for battle. Revelation tells us that Jesus will one day lead heaven’s armies against the Antichrist. Also, the sword wielding commander of the Lord’s armies who appears to Joshua is considered by many scholars to be a theophany, or an Old Testament pre-incarnational appearance of Jesus. Since Jesus is the captain of heaven’s armies, I imagine his troops were pretty concerned that their commander-in-chief was going to make his entrance into the world as a helpless baby. So it is in this atmosphere where Herod’s soldiers wanted to kill Him, as the Roman soldiers who filled the land would later also do, that heaven’s armies wanted to make a pretty impressive show of force.  One minute the shepherds are spoken to by a lone angel, and impacting as that may have been, the next moment they are suddenly overwhelmed by thousands of imposing, shining heavenly soldiers thundering a chant of praise and exaltation to their Lord and Commander, daring any force of hell or earth to endanger the vulnerable baby just born in a rickety cowshed nearby. No wonder the shepherds felt compelled to go and find Him and tell everyone about Him. And it is no wonder that their story was told with enough conviction and force to convince all that heard their tale. They still had the glow and authority of witnessing the forces of heaven on their face and in their voice.

For us this Christmas, this baby has grown into a Savior, died and rose a King, and still commands this great army of heaven. But now, our Lord leads His celestial soldiers to protect us and  battle on our behalf. We may sometimes feel as marginalized and uninfluential as the shepherds. But with a fresh vision of the armies of heaven that surround us, we too can be as bold and convincing as the shepherds that fateful evening to spread the word about Jesus, causing others to be convinced and amazed. 

Sister Sellers went to heaven a while back. So I am sure she knows now that most angels don’t fly. But she still has my respect. This little boy grew up to believe her stories and, like Mary, I still ponder them in my heart.

Rough Diamond

He was a diamond

Set deep within a prison

The wall of stone for years

keeping hidden

the innate value stamped there by the Creator.

The sparkling sheen

of unrealised treasure

yet to be seen

by searching eyes, who see better

see deeper, farther, clearer, later

He was cut out

from the bosom of granite,

the tools going deep,

the painful emerging, and it

left him with jagged edges.

Being cut, now he himself cutting

any who would want to touch

the stone still valued, precious.

But the cost to bring out the seeming

value, who could ever pay so much?

One who pursuing and redeeming,

His eye that of a buyer, so refined

saw in the future such 

a gem, there unhewn and undeveloped,

a jewel having only just been mined

So he bought it

from those hardened hands.

A shrewd purchase, costing everything

The distant, rather bigger, purpose

only He could understand.

To carve of this piece from the rock,

something to be highly appraised;

the process begun, the work ongoing

the hammer and chisel

sometimes hurting, sometimes testing

this work of the master Craftsman

done day after day.

And for what? Only for pain,

or just to make life hard?

O in His purposeful grasp to remain

is to one day display the brilliance

of eternal light’s beauty.

To stay and be sharpened

with patience and resilience

Beneath the crushing

and held to the light

means becoming that diamond seen long before

A piece of the earth,

great potential once encrusted

with the accumulation of life,
now revealed, a prized possession

and valued treasure;

now entrusted

to be the unhindered reflection

Of His glory and His pleasure