Pastors' Blog

The tragic headline this week out of Honduras triggered a collective gasp from the world community. Authorities are not sure if the prison fire in Comayagua was sparked by an electrical short-circuit or whether inmate rioting might have been the cause. The grim reality is that fire broke out, and before prisoners could be unlocked from their cells at least 300 of them perished in the inferno. The nation of Honduras mourns. And we grieve their loss. The Scripture repeatedly likens our fallen civilization to a prison house. Thus Jesus himself described His own messianic mission, “To proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound” (Isaiah 61:1; cf Luke 4:18). Then surely it is the mission of Christ’s church—that community of liberated prisoners who have been set free in Him—to expend our greatest energies and our most valuable resources to join our Master in seeking to rescue every entrapped life we can for Him. Our “iPerceive: A Future You Can Count On” public lecture series in St. Joseph these past nine nights (concluding tonight) has had as its mission Jesus’ call to “proclaim liberty”—the freedom of the everlasting gospel—to men, women and young adults seeking that life-changing release. But nine nights are hardly the parameters for this university congregation’s “opening of the prison” mission for the Savior. Join me in earnestly praying that the Spirit of Jesus will open our eyes, collectively as well as individually, to those in our immediate worlds who still long for His release from the entrapment of guilt, from enchaining practices, from weary and lifeless, repetitive traditions. “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor . . . to heal the brokenhearted” (Luke 4:18). May that same Spirit anoint us, too, for that same mission—before the prison house of this civilization goes up in flames and it is too late.

The headline on page 1 of the sports section caught my eye. A piece written by Jim Litke, Associated Press columnist, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the firing of legendary Penn State Nittany Lions football coach Joe Paterno last November. With Paterno’s death from lung cancer this Sunday, the wounds the university has suffered since the child molestation charges against Jerry Sandusky, one of Paterno’s assistant coaches, and the subsequent Paterno firing have broken open all over again. According to Litke, on the night of Paterno’s firing an assistant athletic director knocked on the door of the Paterno home and “wordlessly” handed him a note with the name and phone number of John Surma, vice chairman for Penn State Board of Trustees. Paterno dialed the number, asked for Surma and in that ‘mercilessly brief call, [he] was told that after nearly a half-century as head coach of the Nittany Lions, he was being fired ‘effective immediately’” (South Bend Tribune 1-23-12). When Paterno hung up from the short phone call, his wife Sue picked up that slip of paper, dialed the same number, and told the voice on the other end, “‘After 61 years he deserved better,’” and hung up. And who would disagree? No matter the magnitude of the legal charges against his assistant, no matter how complicit Joe Paterno was or wasn’t in responding to the reported incident years earlier, wouldn’t he still deserve, at the least, a personal visit from somebody “higher up” with word of the Trustees’ decision? How swift their decision—but how sad that “they couldn’t muster enough courage or decency to fire Paterno in person” (ibid). “After 61 years he deserved better.” But while I brooded over this story, I began to wonder about my own modus operandi. Have there been times when I’ve chosen to summarily dismiss someone (in my mind, if not in person) as being “guilty as charged,” without ever extending the common decency of allowing that person to explain his or her stance or behavior or choice? Do I find it easier to avoid Jesus’ Matthew 18 interpersonal relations admonition: “‘If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you’” (Matthew 18:15 NIV)? Do I avoid personal confrontation by hiding behind a board or committee action? In short, I wonder, does the Golden Rule (“Do to others what you would have them do to you”) get shelved, when I don’t have (take, really) the time to put myself in that other person’s place? “After 61  years he deserved better.” Sue Paterno was right. And so is Jesus: “‘By this all will know that you are My disciples [people], if you have love for one another’” (John 13:35). Because never mind Penn State. What counts for the Kingdom are the friends of the King. And it is that headline that lasts long past page one.

On this weekend when the nation recalls the life and mission of Martin Luther King, Jr.—frail like every life, but focused like a laser on a mission towards the equality of all—it is appropriate for this community of faith to ponder that mission in the light of our own. Were Dr. King to join us around our communal table, what would be the conversation? In fact, let’s pull up another chair to the table and invite President Barack Obama to join in this table talk. Would the conversation change that much? If our chatting drifted toward the judicatory organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America, and these two African-American leaders (one deceased, the other very much alive) began to question us as to why we are organized the way we are, how would we respond? What would be the line of reasoning we would put forth to defend regions of this nation divided racially (essentially) into “separate but equal” conferences or ecclesiastical units of administration? How would we justify the organization of separate (but equal) black and white congregations in the same city based upon the prevailing racially distinct conferences? Would recounting the history of our faith movement in this nation and our own accommodation to the prevailing social norms a few generations ago be helpful in defending our present course? Would the suggestion that our ecclesiastical division is a provision so that “all” might enjoy the prerogatives of administrative leadership be persuasive? Would Dr. King and President Obama find our logic strong and our rationale convincing? But never mind those two leaders—let’s ask it another way. Would society today—does society today, the American public at large, lend much credence to “the way we’ve always done it” defense in matters of racial equality? The truth is—history may be our mother, but it doesn’t have to be our master. We yield allegiance to another Master, which was precisely Paul’s stunning point to the church in Galatia two millennia ago: “For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:26-28 NRSV). Paul’s declaration did not minimize the massive challenge that preexisting walls were to the church of Christ. But his assertion means that the community founded upon Calvary can never peacefully coexist with such dividing walls—no matter how difficult their disassembling may turn out to be. Besides, if “revival and reformation” are the watchwords of our third millennial community of faith, then would it not follow that as a prerequisite to such a revival we would join together in tearing down any walls, all the walls that divide us, whether on paper or in the heart? For how can the Holy Spirit possibly be poured out, when a wall blocks the way? And so I am praying that God will raise up a new generation, passionate for the unity of Christ and willing to do the hard work to rewrite a future without walls.  Not for the sake of Martin Luther King, Jr.—but for the sake of Christ Jesus our Lord, who upon the eve of His own death, prayed for us all: “Holy Father, that they may be one as We are” (John 17:11).

The world in the West awakened on Monday to the news that while we slept the 69 year old recluse and quixotic leader of North Korea had succumbed to a heart attack. Kim Jong II was dead. The North Korean press dutifully reported that the “dear leader” died of “overwork” and “great mental and physical pain” accumulated from “dedicating his life to the people.” And I could not help but wonder how it will be with the North Korean people Kim Jong II left behind. Their publicized expressions of grief and dismay over their “great leader’s” demise notwithstanding,  how shall they survive? The notorious lack of food production in that hermit (and hermetically sealed) nation reportedly has produced a half-starved citizenry, eking out an impoverished existence. The nation’s ruling philosophy—that there is no God—has meant that there is no divine Responder to the human plight, no Creator to whom the struggling might appeal. And, God forbid, no Christmas story to offer even a glimmer of hope for a downtrodden people. So what Christmas shall the North Koreans enjoy? Oh, you say, if only we could tell them the truth about the first Christmas long, long ago—if only they could taste the elixir of hope embedded in that manger box of feed—if only they might come to know the Christ Child grown up and crucified and buried and risen—then surely, like their dominantly Christian cousins to the south, they too could be resurrected into western prosperity and Christian faith (perhaps not in that order). And yet I look at the American experiment in “believing” the now ancient Christmas story. Where has it gotten us? Last month the Associated Press reported: “The ranks of America’s poorest poor have climbed to a record high—1 in 15 people—spread widely across metropolitan areas as the housing bust pushed many inner-city poor into suburbs and other outlying places and shriveled jobs and income. New census data paint a stark portrait of the nation’s haves and have-nots at a time when unemployment remains persistently high. It comes a week before the government releases first-ever economic data that will show more Hispanics, elderly and working-age poor have fallen into poverty. In all, the numbers underscore the breadth and scope by which the downturn has reached further into mainstream America” (SBTribune 11-3-11). It is a baleful harvest when you embrace only one of the two Advents Scripture has promised. For what good is all the singing about once-upon-a-time, when the here-and-now is left woefully unaffected, pitifully unchanged? The Apostle Paul correctly protested: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied” (I Corinthians 15:9). Unless we radically embrace both the First and Second Advents, all the societal commotion over the First Advent is meaningless, hopeless—is it not? Are those Americans, who are as unmindful of the Advent yet to come as the North Koreans, any better off in terms of eternity? This Christmas what if we who call ourselves “Advent-ists” (we who are passionate about both Comings of Jesus) pushed our passion to action? What if we discovered a “North Korean” closer to home—someone, some family eking out an impoverished existence in this land of plenty? Not to assuage our guilt, but rather to manifest our hope, by helping another not of our tribe. What if we celebrated a North Korean Christmas here at home? Don’t you suppose someone’s New Year might yet bring reason to believe, to hope—if we really cared?