Monday Morning Music Ministry

1-21-23

In this weekly blog I have been writing for almost 14 years I occasionally feel presumptuous on your attention as I attempt to share His messages. Eavesdropping, I consider it, on words that the Lord whispers and sometimes shouts to His children.

Today I will be more personal than I sometimes am. One more “share,” but with a lesson for others, I pray.

It was 10 years ago, January 21, 2013, that my wife Nancy died. She led a remarkable life, touching many people while she lived as she reflected joy, through her manifold sufferings; and since her death.

I had come home after college graduation and was promptly volunteered to be Sunday School Superintendent at my little church; I was introduced to Nancy the nursery-school teacher. She immediately struck me as the most beautiful girl I could ever meet, and that was a prophecy fulfilled – also her outward beauty.

Her nature can be illustrated by the first Sunday morning I visited her classroom. Utter chaos prevailed, kids screeching and climbing and doing everything possible. In their midst was gentle Nancy, urging, “Simon says sit down…”

Our first date was one month later to the day (a George Jones and Tammy Wynette concert) and one year later to the day I proposed. After we left the Chinatown restaurant Nancy called her family from a phone booth (kids, ask your grandparents what that is), and then I called a disk jockey I knew at WHN, the New York City radio station, and asked if he could maybe announce our news on the air. He did better, to our surprise. He invited us to the station. It was after midnight, and he instructed the guard in the lobby to let us enter, and he interviewed us on the air!

Fast-forward, another “to the day” anniversary.

A lot happened, of course, in between. We had a three-week European honeymoon. We had three wonderful children – Heather, Ted, and Emily – proud of them all; and four grandchildren. We lived in Weston, Connecticut; suburban Chicago; suburban Philadelphia; San Diego; and Michigan. We visited many national parks, had family vacations in Florida, Palm Springs, Europe, and points between. Many ups and a few downs.

Among the “downs” was her health. Diabetes had hit her at 13, and was the direct cause of eye troubles (virtually losing her sight twice), kidney failure, amputation of toes, and several strokes and heart attacks. She had heart and kidney transplants. She also endured celiac disease, was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and when her new kidney was failing, early signs of dementia. Nevertheless she lived 16 years subsequent to the transplants, after being told she had “gained” possibly three to five years of extended life.

Nancy was not defined by her afflictions, however. She had a strong faith in God, and Jesus became her best Friend. Congenitally shy, she had a spiritual-heart transplant, so to speak, and became bold about sharing her faith. She started a family ministry at the hospital, all five of us holding services, visiting and praying with patients.

It is not true, nor fair to others with ailments, to say that she was never discouraged; eventually she grew sick and tired of being sick and tired. But, mostly, 15/16ths was a good record of defiance against defeat. She said, rather, that she would not choose to go through again what she had… but she wouldn’t trade her “walk” for anything. She inspired uncountable people.

Her Bible – well worn, full of highlights, notes, margin comments – has, underscored, Romans 14:8: “For if we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord.”

I have claimed as a personal anthem of ours the words of the Gospel song The Far Side Banks of Jordan:

I believe my steps are growing wearier each day;
Still I’ve got a journey on my mind.
Lures of this old world have ceased to make me want to stay,
And my one regret is leaving you behind.

But if it proves to be His will that I am first to go,
And somehow I’ve a feeling it will be,
When it comes your time to travel likewise, don’t feel lost
For I will be the first one that you’ll see.

Through this life we’ve labored hard to earn our meager fare,
It’s brought us trembling hands and failing eyes.
So I’ll just rest here on the shore and turn my eyes away
Until you come, then we’ll see Paradise!

And I’ll be waiting on the far side banks of Jordan;
I’ll be sitting, drawing pictures in the sand.
And when I see you coming, I will rise up with a shout
And come running through the shallow waters, reaching for your hand.

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Click: Far Side Banks of Jordan

10-21-19

Recently I have visited churches, worshiping away from home, and have been reminded of when I lived in California. What rang bells in my personal belfry is not exclusive to the Golden State. (And Larry Gatlin had it right about all the gold in California, but that’s for another time…)

There is a “trendency” in the American church that probably began in California, probably with the “Jesus Movement” of the late 1960s and early ‘70s. It is the stranger side of the welcoming “Seeker” type of worship. Come as you are… God does not require three-piece suits and long dresses and heels (for women and men, respectively… although we do have the California context)… dress codes can be intimidating… God is interested in your heart, not your wardrobe.

You have heard these things; maybe even believe them or have been persuaded; or, of course, might bristle at the non-rules. The other extreme is formalism that makes formality a form of Godliness, more extreme than dress codes. I have been in churches where women (in head coverings) are segregated from male worshipers; where my son and I were forbidden Communion because we had not first met with the church’s pastor (our actual denomination, but a different synod).

As I say, God knows our hearts after all. But in the church I visited last Sunday, the pastor who introduced himself already stood out… as the person in the dirtiest flannel shirt; in the jeans with the most rips in them; in the most beat-up work boots. In many churches today, leaders nor worshipers dress formally, despite perhaps clean T-shirts or jeans. Many pastors perch on stools, wear Hawaiian shirts and cargo shorts. “Worship leaders” seem required to wear uniforms of grunge.

Is all this a reaction against a generation of pastors and televangelists who wrapped themselves in three-piece suits and blow-dried hair? Perhaps. Is it legitimate to resist formalism? I say yes… as long as it is not confused with formality.

Taking that further, there are differences between formalism, as I say, and formality… a difference between rules and the law, and legalism… a difference between liberty and license… a difference between unity and uniformity… a difference between reverence and rudeness… a difference between respect and dirty jeans when worshiping Almighty God.

The fact that God does not require you to wear ties and jackets, or modest dresses or slacks, does not mean that you have to dress in your cleanest dirty shirt, to quote Kris Kristofferson
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Will these things keep you out of Heaven? Of course not. But I just wonder at the level of respect – I despair at the disappearance of reverence – when we have lost the impulse to approach God, and God’s people, in a little different manner than we do people in the supermarket, ball field, or work weekend.

Does the Bible have a suggestion for a dress code? As with everything else… yes. Stick with me:

Take up the full armor of God so that you may be able to stand your ground on the evil day, and having done everything, to stand. Stand firm therefore, by fastening the belt of truth around your waist, by putting on the breastplate of righteousness, by fitting your feet with the preparation that comes from the good news of peace, and in all of this, by taking up the shield of faith with which you can extinguish all the flaming arrows of the evil one. And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.

These are well-known words from the sixth chapter of Ephesians, and only partly are dispositive here. The advice is for a spiritual wardrobe, not how you would show up to church, clanging breastplates and swords. Metaphorically, what a well-dressed Christian will wear the remainder of the week.

However, there is one more item whose preparation is important to how we present ourselves before others… and before God.

How about your heart? Is it right with God? As Bennie Tripplet wrote in that great Gospel song,

People often see you
As you are outside;
Jesus really knows you,
For He looks inside.

Those are the rules for the Believer’s fashion show.
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Click: How About Your Heart

8-10-15

It has been said that Jesus, by the evidence of Bible accounts, displayed more mercy and forgiveness, certainly more compassion, to sinners He encountered, than to Pharisees, Scribes, and members of the religious establishment of the time.

Post-modernists often run with that scorecard and flame the embers of anti-clericism still glowing from at least the glory days of the French Revolution. But the angels are in the details. Just as Christ called the love of money, not money itself, the root of all evil, so must we notice that Jesus scorned the corrupt and empty religionists in His midst – the whited sepulchers. Their corruption, not their robes.

A tendency in the church since the start has been pick-and-choose Christianity. Believers and skeptics alike often are readier to say “Aha!” than “Amen.” Quick to say, “Gotcha!” and slow to pray, “God bless…”

The post-modern church, if a church it be, and the “emergent” movement, tend to seize upon half of Jesus’s teachings… indeed half of His messages, parables, and even simple sentences. I quickly confess that traditionalists like I am, and orthodox friends, are often guilty of these sins too. We all must constantly check our thoughts, words, and deeds against scripture.

But the contemporary church, and many theological writers amongst us, often discard the traditional views of sin, of heaven and hell, of the need for forgiveness, of the efficacy of evangelism… even personal salvation, Absolute Truth, and the Divinity of Christ. We don’t sin, we humans, they say: we make bad choices. These people are Enablers, but call themselves Christians.

Actually, many of them insist on identifying themselves instead as “Christ followers.” Whatever. They play more words games than you’d find at a Scrabble convention, intoning about “relational truth” and claiming to know that if Jesus returned to earth now, He would be more concerned with “community” and being “welcoming” than about those old biblical injunctions to believe in Him and seek eternal life.

These folks stick their thumbs in Jesus’s eye, no more – and no less – than their ancestors, the heretics of the ages. In the Apostolic Days and the first centuries of the Church, disciples and bishops were obliged to combat error and heretics. Seeking to adhere to Jesus’s teachings, and the inspired texts, delivered by and tested against the invocation of the Holy Spirit, Christian leaders convened Councils and wrote the basic creeds that define our faith (and often preemptively answer false doctrines). We need the guidance of the Holy Ghost, and the truths of the orthodox creeds, no less today than in past crises in church history.

Those who would distort the gospel – and the very lessons inherent in the gospel accounts – point to the criticism, Jesus’s visceral anger, with the religious leaders. So should we all be vigilant against corruption in the church, not just those attacking from outside. Of course. More so, in fact, than against secular leaders and the laity. Leaders must be held to higher standards.

But I have sat with, discussed, and hotly debated contemporary “Christian” writers and celebrities who insist that Jesus’s mercy, His frequent lack of condemnation, toward sinners, adulterers, prostitutes, meant that He “met people where they lived.” Indeed He did. He did not avoid, and often sought, their company. And as He did not condemn, neither should we, these new popes say.

But there we have the Half-Gospel that is overtaking the church in America.

Jesus usually did not condemn sinners in these Bible accounts. But He never endorsed anyone’s sin. In fact He would always tell the person to “go and sin no more.” He loved sinners so much that He desired that they turn from sin. Today? Jesus might go to a biker bar, say, or a gay rights parade. And I don’t believe He would overturn tables or bring out the lash. But He WOULD discern their sinful ways, and He would lovingly forgive, coupled with His invariable injunction to “sin no more.”

Jesus came to be the Savior of sinful humankind, not its Holy Enabler. Otherwise Bible prophecy, His ministry, His suffering and sacrificial death, the Atonement, His resurrection, is insulted – a useless charade designed by God Almighty. Heaven forbid.

A friend of mine, Harvey Corbitt, recently shared the thought: If Jesus DID return right now and preached the messages that many of our pastors and priests preach, He likely would not be perceived as an opponent of the corrupt world system… nor seized, nor put to death. Sad. True.

Enablers do not save people. But the Savior enables people to know forgiveness, to be redeemed, and to have the hope of eternal life.

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Kris Kristofferson tells the story behind his salvation experience and the writing of the iconic “Why Me, Lord.”

Click: Why Me, Lord

3-11-13

This is the Christian story: The Lord of the universe was pleased to create the earth and populate it with human beings. An aspect of His love was to imbue His children with free will, which no mortal has ever failed to use toward rebellion and sin. God delivered laws and commands to His Chosen People, called so because in His plan, when the Law would be recognized as insufficient for a rebellious humanity to be reconciled to Him; that from them, a Messiah would arise who would provide the means of that salvation.

These basics are widely known, even if non-Christians shrug their mental shoulders; even if Christians cease to be in awe of God’s plan, even taking for granted their astonishing inheritance. It has been calculated that the odds of all the Old Testament prophecies fulfilled in the birth, life, locations, miracles, and other circumstances surrounding Jesus (most not disputed, even by enemies of His and His disciples at the time) exceed a hundred million to one.

I sometimes wonder, given all this, why the Christian population of the world is approximately 3-billion; more than one-third of humanity. History, threads of religious traditions, logic, the personal testimonies of those who lives have been supernaturally touched – I wonder why 95 per cent of people do not claim Christ.

An answer has come to me. A very 21st-century outlook might be a matter of packaging, or “branding.” Just as, to me, the upcoming end of Lent will feature too much Bunny and not enough Easter, it might be that the church insufficiently communicates the reality of Holy Week as we look ahead.

Most of us know the stories, and the pictures, of Jesus humbly entering Jerusalem on a donkey, amidst adoring crowds. We know He was falsely accused; He was betrayed by one follower, and denied by another; He was chased down and arrested; He was tortured and abused; He was humiliated perhaps as no man ever has been; He died on a rough cross between two criminals; He was carried to a borrowed tomb; on the third day He rose, conquering sin and death.

As scripture prophesied, He was led like a lamb to slaughter.

But can it be that we place too much of our attention on His submission? Jesus could have called down ten thousand angels to lift Him from the cross, to strike His accusers dumb, to spare Himself the pain, humiliation, and (worst, in my book) the abandonment of His friends and disciples.

We must understand that Jesus was born to die. And to overcome death. He knew the Father’s plan to become the sacrificial lamb, to take the sins of the world – our sins, through history to you and me – upon Himself. From the wrath of God, everything we deserve for our rejection and rebellion, He spares us.

So in this view, I have another image. I know it is VIRTUAL, not the way the Bible describes it. Nevertheless it is true. I ask you to see Jesus, not ambling on a donkey into Jerusalem, but galloping full speed. I remind you that Jesus, at the Passover seder, did not stop Judas from ratting Him out, but hurried him on his way. I suggest to you that Jesus, silent before accusers in the temple and before Pontius Pilate, was virtually shouting, “Come on! Do your worst!” That, until He collapsed, a Man of sorrows and a man painfully bleeding, on the via Dolorosa, He carried His cross as if to say, “Let’s do this! For this I came to earth!”

… and that, instead of being stretched and nailed to a cross, it is spiritually the case that Jesus virtually scrambled up that cross. For us. “Forgive them; they know not what they do.” But Jesus knew what He was doing, and despite the portion of humanity with which we can identify (“if it be possible, let this cup pass…”) He was there for us. He was there. For us.

And then, looking forward to what we call Easter Sunday, we read the accounts of the risen Jesus appearing quietly to Mary, to pedestrians on the road, to His old disciples, to many hundreds of others – accounts recorded by the Jewish historian of the era, Josephus, and by the historians Origen and Eusebius. He quietly appeared and witnessed to people. But let us realize that Jesus metaphorically burst forth from that tomb. In that sense he ran out, shouting to everybody, “I’m Alive!!!” In words of Anthony Burger’s little son, ad libbing in a Sunday School pageant, “Here I come, ready or not!”

Then, and now, Jesus runs up to every person and says, “I live so that you may live also! Believe on me, and you shall have life for eternity!”

Let us return from the virtual and metaphorical. These truths, no matter what the details of their playing out, cannot leave us unchanged. We can make the life-changing decision to ignore Him, or the life-changing decision to accept Him. There simply is no middle ground.

If we see Jesus in this different way – that He was Savior not just willing to die for our sins, but EAGER, such is God’s love for us, and that He excitedly confronts us daily – then we might see Lent in another light. And the rest of the year. And the Lord Himself. And the condition of our souls.

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Humanity’s response to God’s plan, and the sacrifice of His Son so that we might be reconciled by the acceptance of Jesus’ substitutionary death, has taken myriad forms through the centuries. Indifference, sadly; to revelation about the availability of a personal relationship with our Savior; to expressions in art and music. The awesome mystery of this salvation plan often is met by the question, “Why Me, Lord?” We know the answer is “Because I love you,” yet our souls scarcely can comprehend the enormity of God’s love. A contemporary song is Kris Kristofferson’s classic plaint, “Why Me, Lord?” Here he explains to some friends how he came to write it, after he had a life-changing experience.

Click: Why Me, Lord?