Pastors' Blog

It’s like the Grinch who stole Christmas.  That was the observation of Sheriff Kent Harris in explaining the actions of a thief who struck Danny Tipton’s Christmas tree farm in eastern Tennessee a few days ago.  Tipton specializes in taller Fraser firs preferred by businesses and churches and homes with higher ceilings, Christmas trees usually ten to twelve feet tall.  Tipton sells his firs for $100 each.  But a thief or band of thieves raided the Tipton farm sometime between Thanksgiving and last week and lopped off the top six feet of two dozen of his prize Fraser firs,  leaving behind rows of “beheaded” evergreens.   No doubt the new “six footers” were hauled away to be sold to customers shopping for a shorter Christmas tree.  Remarked deputy sheriff Ronnie Adkins, “It’s a very low person who commits a crime like this at Christmastime.”  (SBT 12-05-07) So much for “peace on earth, good will to all.”  But then again hasn’t that “Christmastime crime” been on the police books for decades, even centuries now?  Not the misdemeanor of pilfered firs.   But the lopping off the top of the towering tree planted on that Bethlehem midnight long ago. Somebody in that dark and starry night resolved to hack off the top of God’s planted tree, so that whenever the birth of the Christ Child would be celebrated, it would be forgotten or neglected, the tree Christmas really is all about.  Oh it’s true—over the two millennia since there have been ornamental trees aplenty—decked with blinking lights and spinning baubles and twisting ribbon.  But who remembers any more that old rugged tree that was first planted at Bethlehem but that grew up to Calvary?  In the midst of Santa Clauses and reindeer and stockings and presents, how many of earth’s children remember the cross at Christmas any more? “Behold, this Child is destined for the fall and rising of many . . . and a sword will pierce your own soul” (Luke 2:24, 25).  The Christ Child is not only about the birthing of Heaven’s Baby; he is also the truth about the piercing of God’s heart.  Born so that he might die—a manger for the sake of a cross.  When the twin realities of God’s sacrificial Gift are separated, their union is sundered.  And we forget.  In the midst of all the gaiety and tinsel, we forget. This year, this time, shall we not guard against that “Christmastime crime” and protect the top of Calvary’s tree from being lopped off and stolen away . . . by remembering Christ’s death that remains Love’s most resplendent reason for his birth long, long ago?

I'm reading Nathaniel Philbrick’s award-winning new book, Mayflower, an “electrifying new history” of America’s “most sacred national myth”—the voyage of the Mayflower and the settlement of the Plymouth Colony. Blending the dispassion of an historian with the dramatic flair of a story-teller, this account is the most detailed and gripping Pilgrim chronicle I have read. After their torturous voyage across the gale-whipped Atlantic on the “tween” deck (the space between the topside deck above and the cargo hold below), the Mayflower’s human cargo of 102 passengers, half of them Puritan the other half adventurers and crew, landed on Cape Cod in frigid November weather (the “small ice age” of North America still gripping the continent). Philbrick’s account of their ill-prepared splashing ashore the mainland in wet and frozen clothing on December 23, the subsequent two harrowing weeks to construct their first building (a twenty-foot square “common house),” the deadly onslaught of a winter even more bitter with so many falling ill or dying that only six of the decimated colony were strong enough to care for the sick, the late night and unmarked burials to hide from any native spies the dwindling of the Pilgrim band—you cannot help but read this narrative with an almost sacred awe. By spring fifty-two of the 102 Mayflower passengers were dead. “We think of the Pilgrims as resilient adventurers upheld by unwavering religious faith, but they were also human beings in the midst of what was, and continues to be, one of the most difficult emotional challenges a person can face: immigration and exile” (p 76). Three hundred eighty-seven years later, here we are, sons and daughters of immigrants from the world-over, ourselves on a voyage this Thanksgiving weekend, occupying the “tween” deck between the past and the future, exiles in a foreign land, “strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Hebrews 11:13). And what shall be our spirit? Gratitude and thanksgiving have been the lessons perennially drawn from the Pilgrim story (even though, in fact, the “first” harvest celebration the autumn of 1621 was more akin to an English fall festival than an Anglican or Separatist worship service). But as I read their story again what strikes me most is the dogged determination to be faithful to the vision that launched their movement. No matter the contrary odds, the devastating price, these were a people not unlike the heroes of Hebrews 11, who “having seen [the promises] from afar off were assured of them.” They did not turn back. And neither must we. “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith” (Hebrews 12:1 NIV). For in Christ the Promised Land is assured. The Pilgrims lived with that sense of “the chosen.” Three hundred eighty-seven years later, so must we. After all, it may not be long now to “crossing over.”

Was this some sort of Halloween joke?  The headline caught my eye:  “Hunter shot by his dog.”  You’ve got to be kidding!  No, the Des Moines, Iowa, story turns out to be very true, painfully true.  Jim Harris, 39, was out hunting last weekend on the opening day of pheasant season.  As he and his canine buddy were moving through the brush, Harris stopped, laid down his shot gun, and you can guess the rest.  “Man’s best friend” accidentally stepped on the shotgun, tripped the trigger, and at close range pumped 100-120 pellets into Harris’ calf.  The good news is that Jim is recovering from surgery in good condition, except for a very sore four-inch circle on his calf. “Hunter shot by his dog.”  Some things in life are just plain backwards at times, aren’t they? Take this headline from the upper room the night before Jesus was crucified.  There in the orange glow of those flickering torches, Jesus turns to his closest companions and friends on earth and declares, “’You did not choose Me, but I chose you’” (John 15:16). But we get that headline backwards sometimes, don’t we?  It’s easy to get to thinking that all this talk about “the chosen” must mean that people with enough spiritual smarts will make the right choice and settle in with the right God and the right theology and the right lifestyle.  If only everybody else would just do the same (so the subliminal thinking goes).  But Jesus’ quiet assertion that night is that such thinking is backwards.  The choice that matters most isn’t my choice or your choice—it’s clearly his choice.  “I chose you.” Oswald Chambers, in his classic My Utmost for His Highest, drives home the point:  “Keep that note of greatness in your creed.  It is not that you have got God, but that He has got you” (299). Good news for all the times you and I mess up our choices, foul up our resolutions and just plain get it all backwards.  “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.”  Which means that you’ve been chosen by the only One in the universe who knows how to make a perfect choice.  Which, of course, doesn’t make you or me perfect.  But it does reverse the headline of salvation’s focus from imperfect us to perfect Him. And in anybody’s book, that would surely make God, not dog, our “very best friend.”

One out of every eight people on earth lives on the continent of Africa.  But the mystique of that ancient continent—with its stunning natural beauty and its enchanting native lore—has been bowed by the twin epidemics of poverty and HIV/AIDS.  The World Bank identifies Africa as the greatest aid challenge on earth, reporting that more than 314 million Africans—nearly twice as many as in 1981—live on less than $1 a day. Thirty-four of the world’s 48 poorest countries, and 24 of the 32 countries ranked lowest on the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index, are in Africa. Moreover, more than 3 million Africans are killed each year by HIV/AIDS and malaria, diseases that, combined, are estimated to cost more than 1 percentage point of Africa’s per capita growth each year.  (http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/AFRICAEXT/0)

Interface these statistics with headline reports of explosive growth in the Seventh-day Adventist church in Africa (the fastest growing segment of our global spiritual family), and the rationale for a Pan-African church leadership summit here at Andrews University this weekend is more than obvious.  How shall the global church join with the churches of Africa in strategically bringing the everlasting gospel to bear on the endemic challenges of poverty and AIDS?  And how shall we effectively nurture and disciple the millions of new Adventist Christians that throng the church in Africa?

Here on campus for that summit, our pulpit guest today is a friend of mine, since I had the opportunity of ministering with him in Johannesburg, South Africa, in March, 2005.  He was president at that time of the Southern Africa-Indian Ocean Division of the Seventh-day Adventist Church.  But later that year he was elected general vice-president of our world church.  And I’m grateful Dr. Pardon Mwansa joins us today in worship.

I have invited this church leader to the pulpit, not only because of his influence in the church’s strategic mission to Africa and to Islam, but also because this campus parish represents the Adventist Church’s western challenge—the mobilization of a new generation of young professionals in the mission of Christ in Africa and on all the other continents of earth.  The staggering statistics of global poverty, disease, and political and religious instability notwithstanding, this must become our “finest hour” in the mobilization of new leaders, new missionaries, new servants of humanity.  And who better to go for Christ than the young of this movement?  And who better to articulate that call today than our guest preacher?

But then, the commission of Jesus belongs to all of us:  “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15 NRSV).  Irrespective of our disciplines, our majors and our professions, it remains our highest calling, does it not?