Pastors' Blog

What do Alex Rodriguez and Roland Burris have in common? They’re both in the headlines. Rodriguez—the superstar, multi-millionaire third baseman for the New York Yankees—is the youngest player to ever hit 500 homeruns and is considered one of the all time greats of baseball. Burris is the junior senator, appointed by disgraced former Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich to fill Barak Obama’s senate seat. But both have made the headlines because of mounting charges of dishonesty—for Alex, lying about illegal injections of performance-enhancing drugs; for Roland, lying about fundraising contacts as quid pro quo for his appointment to the senate. Guilty? The courts will render that decision. But the fishy smell in our collective nostrils is a somber lesson regarding integrity.

In his celebrated Sermon on the Mount, Jesus put it plainly: “‘But let your “Yes” be “Yes,” and your “No,” “No.” For whatever is more than these is from the evil one’” (Matthew 5:37). I.e., equivocating, hedging, nuancing—“it depends on what you mean by ‘is’”—is contrary to the life Christ calls his followers to live. When you’re asked, let your simple, honest response be “Yes” or “No”—for anything else (how did Jesus put it?) is from the devil, who “‘when he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies’” (John 8:44 NIV).

Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing, that little classic on the Sermon on the Mount, observes: “Everything that Christians do should be as transparent as the sunlight” (68). No cloudy obfuscation or shadowy truth-bending for the man, the woman who follows Jesus—rather an integrity and honesty “as transparent as the sunlight.” But what a refreshing burst of light such transparency is in our age of white-lied denials.

But is it easy to live such radical honesty? Read on: “Yet it is not a light or an easy thing to speak the exact truth.” Then what hope of honesty is there for the likes of shady you and me? “We cannot speak the truth unless our minds are continually guided by Him who is truth” (Ibid, emphasis supplied). No wonder the last generation of Christ’s followers on earth are described in two ways: “These are the ones that follow the Lamb wherever He goes . . . . and in their mouths was found no deceit” (Revelation 14:4, 5). Clearly, living a life without deceit is the fruit of a life that follows after Jesus. Every early morning, alone with the Savior, brooding over another gospel story, meditating on Him whose transparency and integrity can become ours, as “by beholding we become changed” we trust him to provide the divine power to change us from the inside out—isn’t that what it means to follow the Lamb in the third millennium?

Truth is, in a world hungry for new headlines and a new transparency, your friendship with Christ will be a welcome burst of sunlight.

How important is getting the words exactly right? On Tuesday in front of over a million witnesses on the National Mall (and tens of millions of observers nationally and globally) Chief Justice John Roberts of the United States Supreme Court administered the Constitution-mandated thirty-five word presidential oath of office to Barack Obama. The sun beamed down in all its glory in the chilled air. The tiered dignitaries and guests of state, along with the nation, held our collective breath for that carefully choreographed and historic moment.

The oath of office is: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States and will to the best of my ability preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." But when the Chief Justice recited the oath for Obama to repeat, Roberts inadvertently transferred the word “faithfully” to the end of the clause and substituted the word “to” in “of the United States.” Who doesn’t understand the nervous energy that would be flowing mightily at that moment? “Constitutional law experts agree that the flub is insignificant. Yet two previous presidents—Calvin Coolidge and Chester Arthur—repeated the oath privately because of similar issues” (South Bend Tribune 1-21-09). If that were the case this time, then the public never witnessed the actual constitutionally-correct swearing in on Tuesday!

But really, two little words—what’s the big deal! In the grand scheme of things, those transpositions won’t make an iota of difference, to be sure. But in the great and cosmic war described by Holy Scripture, words make all the difference in the world. All he did—“that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan” (Revelation 12:9)—was insert a single word, twisting God’s warning, “you shall surely die” (Genesis 2:17), into Satan’s deception, “you will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). One small word—but its injection has reaped a baleful harvest of deception and woe, as the ensuing deaths of Eve and Adam and an entire human race have more than proven.

Words matter. But none more than the three words of the promise: “Whoever has the Son has life” (I John 5:12). “Has the Son”—do you? We’ve cheered a new leader into office this week. But it is the divine Leader who alone can save the human race. Having the Son means choosing the Lifegiver—and choosing Christ daily is daily choosing eternal life as our destiny. Yes, we’ll all die one day. But as “The Truth about Death” (the podcast miniseries at this website) makes dramatically clear, for the one who “has the Son” death is but a momentary sleep from which we’ll be awakened at the resurrection. And that’s a word worth getting right, right now!

Can a picture of death grace the cover of anything? The latest Newsweek magazine (January 12, 2009) ran two two-page spreads back to back before the title page of its cover story on the war between Israel and the Hamas. Both spreads are pictures of death. Both innocent victims. In the first you gaze down as a worker gently lowers the body of four-year-old Lama Hardan, who’d been taking out the trash beside her home in Gaza “when an Israeli air raid struck.” Little Lama is wrapped in a yellow shroud up to her neck, her dark curly hair and peaceful, slumbering face belying the tragedy. In the second two-page spread mourners are gathered around a body shrouded by the flag of Israel. Irit Sheetrit, 39, from Ashdod was with her sister “driving home from the gym when a Hamas rocket hit.” Bent over her body is a sobbing man with tissue clutched in hand. Two portraits of death—and both can break your heart. Because whether you’re four-years-old or thirty-nine or 85 . . . it doesn’t matter, does it? Death is the cold, heart-breaking reality every inhabitant of this planet must live with 24/7—victim or survivor. Obviously, you and I are still survivors. But our day will come, too. Only there will be no two-page spread announcing our demise. The fact is we live in a culture mesmerized by death. But movie plots, talking heads, late night comedians and MTV singers notwithstanding, nobody stares at our common mortal enemy long enough to find an answer. What happens when a child or a woman or a man dies? What does death feel like? Where does death lead? How can I live, how can I die without fearing death? Every religion on earth has struggled for the answers, but stunningly nearly every one of them has stumbled short of the truth. But the truth can be discovered. That’s why I’d like to invite you to join me in a frank and candid, but hopefully hope-filled exploration (expose, perhaps, is too strong a word) of death. Right here at this website. For the next few weeks. Click on to a new twin miniseries, “The Truth about Death” and then “The Truth about Hell.” Please tell your friends about the podcasts, email the link to those who need to know. Because without the truth, fear is our default. And nothing buries hope faster than fear. Just ask the God who’s had to live and die himself.

They’ll go down as the most watched and talked about flying shoes in history! And from them we learn a lesson about Christmas. By now you’ve seen the replays a hundred times—that press conference moment in Baghdad Sunday with President Bush and Prime Minister al-Malaki standing side by side at the podium. The president had just begun his opening statement, when a 28-year-old Iraqi TV reporter, Muntadhar al-Zeidi, jumped to his feet and exploded with some unsavory shouting, as one by one he hurled his shoes at the president. Bush instinctively and remarkably ducked both flying shoes, before security guards pounced on the reporter and hauled him away. Why the shoes? You may remember that in the culture of the Middle East nothing is more derogatory or demeaning than to strike an individual with your shoe. For the shoe is considered a symbol of the lowliest and the lowest. When crowds gathered around Saddam Hussein’s toppled statue and struck it repeatedly with their shoes, their point was obvious. What could be more disdaining and lowlier? And in the same region when on that starry, starry night the God of the universe squeezed out of a teenage womb and entered our race, his welcome was the equivalent of a hurled shoe—for what could be lowlier or more demeaning than to offer the Divine One a malodorous backyard cave for his birthplace? Scum of the ground, refuse of the earth—any other leader than God would have been highly affronted. To that room full of reporters President Bush joked away the size 10 shoes that flew past his head. There were no reporters, however, when the Eternal squalled from his make-shift manger cradle. Just a travel worn peasant couple and some brute beasts. They say, “if the shoe fits, wear it.” And he did, the God born in Bethlehem. For on the eve of his death, he returned to his primordial roots, as one by one he removed his followers’ dirty shoes and bathed their soiled and smelly feet. No reporters were there either. Just the wide-eyed and smitten disciples who in muted shame watched the most powerful and humble God in the universe become the lowest and the lowliest. Again. “He made himself nothing, by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:7 TNIV). “‘Herein is love.’ Wonder, O heavens! and be astonished, O earth!” (Desire of Ages 49). Dallas Willard is right: “When we see Jesus as he is, we must turn away or else shamelessly adore him” (The Divine Conspiracy 19). “O come, let us adore him!”