Author Archives: Maxie Dunnam

Maxie Dunnam ~ Recovering Our First Language

Somewhere along the way I read of one who was reflecting on the language introduced by this computer age. He said,

“I remember when… a program was a TV show, an application was for employment, ram was the cousin of a goat, a gig was a job for the night, a keyboard was a piano, memory was something you lost with age, a CD was a bank account, a hard drive was a long trip on the road, a mouse pad was where a mouse lived, a web was a spider’s home and a virus was the flu.”

We have a whole new technological vocabulary. I’m trying to be technologically literate, but my big concern is that in this kind of technological world, and a world lost in moral and ethical relativism, language may be more important than ever. As Christians, and especially as those whose primary vocation is to communicate the Gospel, we need to pay attention to our “first language.”

There is a dark and powerful passage in Morris West’s book The Devil’s Advocate that challenges us here. Monsignor Meredith has grown weary in the church; his life has become institutionalized, his faith reduced to an “intellectual conception, an arid assent of the will.” Yet now his words have struck a responsive chord in the Bishop; they have borne out his own feelings about the difficulty of true communication, here specifically between the church and the laity. The Bishop speaks:

“The root of …[the problem], I think, is this: [as priests] we …have a rhetoric of our own, which, like the rhetoric of the politician says much and conveys little. But we are not politicians. We are teachers – teachers of truth which we claim to be essential to man’s salvation. Yet how do we preach it? We talk roundly of faith and hope as if we were making a fetishist’s incantation. What is faith? A blind leap into the hands of God. An inspired act of will which is our only answer to the terrible mystery of where we came from and where we are going. What is hope? A child’s trust in the hand that will lead it out of the terrors that reach from the dark. We preach love and fidelity, as if these were teacup tales – and not bodies writhing on a bed and hot words in dark places, and souls tormented by loneliness and driven to the momentary communion of a kiss. We preach charity and compassion but rarely say what they mean – hands dabbling in sick room messes, wiping infection from syphilitic sores. We talk to the people every Sunday, but our words do not reach them, because we have forgotten our mother tongue.”

 Let that sink in: “We talk to the people… but our words do not reach them because we have forgotten our mother tongue.”

The mother tongue, our “first language,”  is a language of confidence in the presence of the Holy Spirit; a language of certainty about the power of the gospel to transform.

 When will we learn that academic rigor alone will not win the world for Christ? Proclamation and teaching are not enough. Correct doctrine will not do it. The old language, which we need to make new, is the language lived and preached in the power of the Holy Spirit. In the Confessing Movement in the United Methodist Church, we are seeking a renewal of our confession of Orthodox Christianity, a reinvigoration of doctrine. We are contending for the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. I believe we are struggling for the soul of the church. But I know it’s not just a doctrinal struggle.

Recently in my reading in Revelation, it hit me hard: only two of the seven churches of Revelation (Pergamum and Thyatira) were scolded for false doctrine. They had lost their first love. But the glorified Christ talked most about fervency, about closeness to the Lord, about overcoming, about having ears to hear, about watching and praying, about repentance, about his triumphant return, about the new Jerusalem, about our sitting with him on the throne of his glory.

 So the mother tongue, our “first language”, is a language of confidence in the presence of the Holy Spirit, and a language of certainty about the power of the gospel to transform. And overarching it all is a language of relationship that has its beginning, its substance, and its ending in love. The incarnation did not cease with Jesus when the word became flesh. The incarnation must go on and on with us. What Christ has been and done for us we must be and do for others.

Maxie Dunnam ~ Prayer and Fasting: Embracing Voluntary Weakness

Never in over 50 years of ministry have I felt as helpless about the state of our United Methodist Church. Talk of separation is rampant. I love our United Methodist Church and am committed to the Wesleyan faith and way. I get knots in my stomach when I think of the possibility of division.

Our bishops have recognized the critical nature of our situation and have written a book “seeking a way forward.” Numerous others have proposed institutional or structural plans that might save us from division. I’m afraid the common feeling is that the divide is so pronounced that staying together as “one” denomination is impossible. Honestly, that is where I have been in my feelings and thinking.

I’m afraid we are cursed with a sense of the impossible.

The Holy Spirit has intervened and challenged me through Scripture.

Matthew and Mark tell a story of the disciples of Jesus being cursed in the same way. Jesus had been with Peter, James and John upon the mountain alone for spiritual renewal and rest. There on the mountain He was transfigured in their presence, and Elijah and Moses came to visit with them. Peter wanted to stay there and build three tabernacles – one for Jesus, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. But Jesus wouldn’t allow that. We all have to leave that mountain place of excitement, joy, exhilaration and spiritual high and return to the valley. So Jesus and the three disciples did just that.

On coming down from the mountain, they were greeted with confusion, conflict and confrontation. But more crucially, they met a man in desperate need. His son was possessed by spirits that took his breath away, made him unable to talk, caused him to go into convulsions and to foam at the mouth and grind his teeth. The young fellow would not eat, and he was wasting away. In desperation, the father had brought his son to the disciples, asking them to heal him and to cast out the demons, but they could not.

After his sharp word of disappointment – “O faithless generation! How long am I to be with you?” – Jesus asked that the little boy be brought to Him.

In this father we have a picture of near despair, yet a burning hope — a picture of faith that struggles with reality. He can’t help but rehearse the awful, dreadful, condition of his son. “He’s been like that since he was a child,” he said. “He often throws himself into the fire or into the water and tries to destroy himself.” Still painting that awful picture, the faith and the hope of this father comes to the surface: “if you can,” he says, “let your heart be moved with pity and help us.”

Jesus probably interrupted him, saying, “you say, ‘If you can.’” Then He gives us that bold affirmation, “all things are possible to him who believes.”

Note a universal truth. “To approach anything in the spirit of hopelessness is to make it hopeless. To approach anything in the spirit of faith is to make it a possibility.” The tension within us is the sense of the possible struggling with the curse of the impossible. William Barclay, in his commentary on this story says, “most of us are cursed with a sense of the impossible, and that is precisely why miracles do not happen.” (The Daily Bible Study, p. 224)

That leads to the truth I want to underscore as it relates to the present state of the church. We discover it in the attitude of the father of the afflicted child. Originally he had come seeking Jesus Himself. Jesus was on the mountain top and only the disciples were available. His faith was badly shaken when the disciples seemed totally helpless, so badly shaken that when he came to Jesus all he could say was, “help me, if you can.” Then it happened: face to face with Jesus, suddenly his faith blazed up again. “I believe,” he cried.

Everybody thought the little boy was dead, but Jesus healed him. Later when he was alone with the disciples, they asked him privately, “why were we not able to cast out the demon?” Jesus responded to them, “this kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer and fasting” (verse 29). I believe here is the distinctive Christian truth for where we are in our seeming hopeless impasse:  a sense of the possible empowered by the Living Christ, activated by prayer and fasting.

A lot of folks, including me, have been calling for prayers for the unity of the church. I want to be bolder.  Believing that we are in a desperate situation, as desperate as that father with his son, according to Jesus, the answer now to our situation is prayer and fasting.

For too many of us, fasting is a strange thought, not something we have seriously considered. Wesley, our father in the faith, strongly urged the early Methodists to practice fasting, but he also sounded a warning about extremes: “some have exalted this beyond all Scripture and reason; and others utterly disregarded it.” Some speak of it “as if it were all,” he said; others “as if it were nothing, as if it were a fruitless labor.” He concluded, “fasting is not the end, but it is a precious means thereto; a means which God himself has ordained, and in which therefore, when it is duly used, he will surely give his blessing” (“Upon Our Lord’s Sermon On the Mount”: Discourse Seven).

We need good and expansive teaching on this neglected spiritual discipline. I lodge one significant claim in this call. Fasting is more than denying ourselves food. It is choosing to act out, by temporarily denying ourselves food, that we do not live by bread alone. We are completely dependent upon God, and we deliberately choose voluntary weakness. We become identifiably humble in the face of the problems with which we are dealing. We admit to each other, and primarily to God: only you can get us through this “mess.” We cease trying to define the unity we seek, believing that God will provide the unity God desires for God’s church. We become less clamorous in seeking our own way, and more receptive to what God may intend for us.

We must see fasting as an invitation. Scripture is full of this invitation.  God invites us to fast because God wants us to desire more of God’s presence, intention, and will. If we say yes to God’s call to prayer and fasting, God will honor God’s promise to heal and restore God’s people.

David spoke about fasting as one way he humbled himself before God (Ps. 35:13; 69:10). I want to humble myself before God. I am tired of the struggle.  I am confused in mind, and pained in heart. I have been reasonably successful and affirmed in much of what I have attempted in ministry, but with the division that is obvious and ominous,  I urge us to become humble and recognize that this is one of those situations that can be resolved only “by prayer and fasting.”

Let’s heed Mr. Wesley’s word about in what manner we are to fast. “Let it be done unto the Lord, with our eye singly fixed on Him. Let our intention herein be this, and this alone, to glorify our Father; to express our sorrow and shame for our manifold transgressions of his holy law; to wait for an increase of purifying grace, drawing our affections to things above; to add seriousness and earnestness to our prayers; to avert the wrath of God, and to obtain all the great and precious promises which he hath made to us in Jesus Christ…Let us always join fervent prayer, pouring out our whole souls before God, confessing our sins with all their aggravations, humbling ourselves under his mighty hand, laying open before him all our wants, all our guiltiness and helplessness” (ibid.).

How then shall we pursue it?

Wesley suggested a pattern for those in  Methodist classes and societies.  After the midday meal, refrain from solid foods until tea time the following afternoon. World Evangelism of the World Methodist Council has been calling people to make Thursday to Friday the fast time. The Confessing Movement is calling the entire United Methodist Church to join us in prayer and fasting using this method. Of course we urge prayer and fasting in whatever way is possible for you, but we believe it will be powerful and redemptive for our entire connection to pray and fast together for the unity of our church….unity in Christ, which he wishes us to experience. Let’s do it together on Thursday and Friday.

Immediately after Paul’s Damascus road conversion, he fasted for three days, waiting to receive clear direction from the Lord (Acts 9:9). That was a pattern throughout the New Testament…the Church fasting for supernatural wisdom and direction. While in Antioch, Paul and his team fasted and prayed for prophetic direction. They were given a strategic mission assignment to reach the Gentiles (Acts 13:1-2). This mission tour changed history.  Paul and his team again prayed with fasting when they needed to select and commission the elders of the new churches that were born out of their missionary journey (Acts 14:23). Can we follow in that pattern?

The spirit of hopelessness is rampant, the calls for division are being sounded, plans that might give us unity are being presented, and frustration and confusion are pervasive. The time is ripe for embracing voluntary weakness through prayer and fasting. Christ cannot give us unity if we are not willing to receive his grace and the unity that is his gift to the church. Could it be that this can come only through prayer and fasting?

Maxie Dunnam ~ Repent But Do Not Whimper

In 1992, distinguished New Testament scholar, Leander E. Keck, delivered the Lyman Beecher Lectures at Yale Divinity School on the theme, “Toward the Renewal of Mainline Protestantism.” He expanded those lectures into a very helpful book, The Church Confident. On the cover of that book was a challenging word. It was not a subtitle—but a sort of personal admonition from the author: “Christianity can repent, but it must not whimper.”

I’ve been thinking about that admonition a great deal lately. Frustration and confusion are crippling us in United Methodism. The possibility of separation dominates the conversation where two or three Methodists (particularly clergy) are gathered together. Though schismatic action has been going on for a long time, that word and the word “division” have become more commonly heard now. The truth is, we are a divided denomination. Thankfully some of our bishops are acknowledging that fact and are fostering helpful conversation about it. Bishop Michael Lowry focuses on the issue in one of the chapters of the book, Finding our Way.

We United Methodists are not alone in the Mainline in this matter of separation. The Episcopal, Presbyterian and Lutheran Churches have already experienced formal division. Keck did not specifically address the dynamics that have led to division in these denominations, but he acknowledged the malaise and impotence of the Mainline, and expressed hope that the British historian Paul Johnson would be proven right in his suggestion that “the current crises of the mainliners is actually the birth pains of the Fourth Great Awakening.”

My prayer is that Johnson is right. The setting is ripe for revival. And the essential response to that possibility is for God’s people not to whimper. Acknowledge our sin, and repent, yes, but not whimper. When we look at the Great Awakenings in our country, with the great Methodist Revival on the heels of them, two things were dominant: one, strong, clear proclamation and teaching of Biblical doctrine and two, passionate, earnest prayer.

Could it be that we are mistakenly centered on institutional unity, when a prior issue is crying for attention: unity in the Gospel. We can have institutional unity without revival, but we can’t have revival without Gospel unity that will come through repentance and the presence and power of the Holy Spirit.

At the close of His ministry, Jesus commissioned us for Kingdom work:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.

(Matt. 28:18-20)

In response to this commission, the American church in the 20th Century tended toward two distinctly opposite poles. One branch (the Mainline, sometimes called liberal) championed an optimistic commitment to social transformation as the central mission of the Church. Unfortunately, the salvation of souls diminished in priority, thus giving way to what was known as the social gospel. The other branch (often labeled evangelical, sometimes fundamentalist) responded in opposite fashion by stressing personal conversion, the dangers of the world, the centrality of evangelism, and an expectation of a promised place in heaven. One group made converts without making disciples; the other group sought to make disciples without conversion.

The crisis of our time can be the occasion for Gospel revival, where personal conversion and discipleship are integrated. One without the other is not the whole Gospel.

Those last words of Jesus to His disciples represent the marching orders that are to be followed until He returns. There is no more powerful motivational text for Christian mission and evangelistic zeal. And yet, this text is not shaping the ministry and mission of mainline churches. Could that be the primary cause for the crises of our mainline churches, and particularly our United Methodism? If it is so, Keck’s admonition needs to be heeded: we can repent, but we don’t need to whimper.

Maxie Dunnam ~ Memphis Teacher Residency: A Bold Mission

I believe urban public education is the civil rights issue of the 21st century. A person’s zip code should not determine the quality of a child’s educational opportunity. In our urban areas, especially, educational injustice exists along economic and racial lines.

This problem has reached epidemic proportions. Too many children are condemned to substandard educational opportunities based solely on where they live. Justice demands more.

On May 29, I spoke at a welcome dinner for 64 young men and women who have come to Memphis for one of the boldest, most creative responses to this crisis in education and justice. They have come from all over the nation to participate in Memphis Teacher Residency. They will spend a year in “on the front line” education and training, earning a Master’s Degree in Urban Teaching. Upon receiving their degrees, these young men and women will commit to teach in the Memphis public schools for at least three years. Here’s a testimonial video on the residency program:

[vimeo id=”66179350″]

The program is receiving attention and accolades from everywhere. I don’t know anything quite like it in our country. I urge you, check out the website, share the information with young people you know, and challenge them to join us in Memphis to help solve the greatest social justice and civil rights issue in America today. Wouldn’t it be just like God to use Memphis as a proving witness that education for all is possible?

 

Maxie Dunnam ~ Public Confession and Repentance

March 22 was a day of huge importance for my city of Memphis. Like many significant events, I’m afraid it went unnoticed by most. Two churches, Second and Independent Presbyterian, held a public service of confession and repentance.

Few of us would not recognize our need for individual repentance. None of us are without the mark of Adam; what we would do, we do not, and what we would not do, we do. We need repentance and forgiveness.

But this was public, corporate repentance.

Fifty years earlier to the day two young men – Joe Purdy and Jim Bullock – had visited Second Presbyterian together as part of a church visit campaign, called kneel-ins. Before the young men could reach the entrance, a church representative asked Joe, “Are you African?” When he said, “No, I’m American,” he and his white friend were refused entrance. They returned the following Sunday (and the six Sundays after that) with a growing number of friends of both races who stood outside the church in silent protest of the church’s refusal to welcome them. Though few knew it at the time, the men responsible for repelling the visitors were enforcing an explicit policy of segregation adopted by the church’s session in 1957.

In The Last Segregated Hour, Stephen Haynes, a Religious Studies professor at Rhodes College, does a great job of telling the story, including how it is remembered and the ongoing implications.

Independent Presbyterian Church was founded because Second Presbyterian reversed its position denying the Kneel-in Protesters’ presence in the church, and allowed them entrance. Numerous people opposed that decision, left, and founded a separate church (Independent Presbyterian), which had in its constitution the commitment to preserve racial segregation in the church.

Fifty years later, the pastors and leaders of both congregations felt a need to make a corporate response.

Thank God for pastors and lay leaders who recognized that history is important, and when unrecognized and unconfessed, sin poisons the body. We don’t keep secrets, our secrets keep us.

Jim Bullock, one of the students turned away from Second Presbyterian Church fifty years ago, and one of the speakers at the 50th anniversary commemoration service, has written about the event on March 22 for the Presbyterian News Service:

March 22, 2014 is a day I shall not soon forget. When I woke up my stomach was already churning. The rainy weather seemed to bode ill. I made my customary stop at Starbuck’s where I had my customary grande chai latte. But I could not get my stomach to settle down. Hope and fear were churning away in my gut and the words of a colleague – “you know, this thing could go really badly” – echoed in my ears. I arrived half-an-hour early at the location where the day’s events were to take place (typically, I’m at least five minutes late everywhere I go). I walked inside the church and looked around until I found the room where I was to meet several other men for a time of prayer. The prayer time had been my idea, and I was glad I had suggested it. Inside the room were representatives of three local churches – Idlewild, Second and Independent – which have little in common beyond the name “Presbyterian.” In fact, the churches represent different denominations that define themselves largely in opposition to one another. But there we were, praying for reconciliation – among us, and among the people who would come to Second Presbyterian Church that morning to commemorate the traumatic events that had split the church fifty years earlier.

As the prayer time went on, I found myself crying tears of joy. A day we had hoped for, imagined, and dreamed of was finally here. The Spirit seemed to be honoring our vision of a service of truth-telling and reconciliation at the site of one of the South’s most notorious acts of racial exclusion.

Interestingly, the public confession of particular, individual sins has ballooned in the past three or four decades in the plethora of “confessional” self-help groups that have emerged (for alcoholics, over-eaters, drug abusers, sex addicts). Yet, our ability to acknowledge the existence of large-scale, all-permeating corporate sin has dramatically decreased. We have our time of corporate confession in our worship services, but that has become so perfunctory that its purpose and power is blurred. Maybe corporate confession is dulled in meaning because in our preaching and teaching we have dramatized glaring private sins readily recognized and named, while the “hidden” sins of attitude and omission get no attention.

Scripture is full of God’s call for corporate confession and repentance…the recognition of the sins of the nation, the sins of “the whole people of God.” So what happened in that service on March 22 was not only good and redemptive for the soul of those two congregations, it was good for the whole church…perhaps a model for all.

I may be making too much of it, but I think it is also significant that this public service of confession and repentance for racism took place two weeks before our remodeled and expanded Civil Rights Museum is to be reopened in Memphis (April 4). We are dull indeed if we can visit the museum without feeling we are a “people of unclean lips and we live among a people of unclean lips.” (Isaiah 6:5) We need to repent, not only privately, but corporately.

Maxie Dunnam ~ God Outwits Us

These reflections were given in honor of Asbury Theological Seminary’s 90th anniversary celebration.

The whole of my ministry life has involved my being called to places and positions of ministry for which I was woefully inadequate. Who I am today, and whatever I have accomplished for the Kingdom, flow from those occasions when I have responded to God’s call with fear and trembling, knowing that unless I lived in his presence and received his power I would fail. Connected with my personal commitment has been Jerry’s journey, and her willingness to follow God’s call for us as partners in ministry…often discerning God’s call more specifically than I.

My coming to the presidency of Asbury is a perfect illustration. I was totally inadequate for this task, and I wrestled with the call of the Trustees for months. They were so sure; I was so uncertain. I don’t have time to recall the dynamics of the struggle, but I did become convinced that the Trustee’s call was  God’s call. And I came, though on the inside I was kicking and screaming because I was blissfully happy and fulfilled in ministry, and felt God was demanding too much.

In keeping with my ministry-long spiritual discipline, I turned to the “saints” for support and guidance. Brother Lawrence spoke the charging word. Most of you know that name, Brother Lawrence. If you have not read his book The Practice of the Presence of God you have probably heard a preacher or teacher speak of him. He served in the kitchen of his monastery and said he experienced the presence of God as clearly in washing pots and pans as in the Blessed Sacrament of Holy Communion.

I love that story, but it was another claim and story that got my attention. Like many others, Brother Lawrence entered a monastic order believing that he was giving up this world’s happiness to become a monk. He discovered a much deeper happiness than he had ever imagined. One day when he was praying and reflecting on the dramatic turn of events in his life, he shouted out to God: “God, You have outwitted me!”

Isn’t that a delightful phrase? “You have outwitted me.”

What a testimony to the providence of God, the working of God’s grace in our lives. I believe that’s the story line of my life, especially the storyline of my relationship to Asbury Theological Seminary.  In fact, I believe that is the story line of the history of Asbury.

God outwitted me. I came reluctantly, thinking God was being unfair, calling me out of such a fulfilling ministry; but our ten years here were laced with God’s grace and presence and the sense of knowing I was at the heart of one of God’s great Kingdom enterprises.

That’s my personal story and I believe it is the storyline of our history. Through 90 years, since Dr. Morrison walked across the street from Asbury College believing that what America needed at that time was a seminary that would offer the whole Bible for the whole world, God has outwitted us. When graduation takes place in a couple of weeks, there will be over 10,000 living alumni. God has outwitted us as thousands have gone from here to the ends of the earth, and are serving today in all 50 U.S. States, 65 countries, 22 time zones. And what started out as a rather narrow, focused school of Wesleyan/Holiness folks has served at least 144 denominations.

When much of the Methodist/Wesleyan establishment looked down their noses at a humble holiness education center in a Kentucky village, God outwitted us…that little school, often scorned, now provides more ordinands for the largest of the Methodist denominations, the United Methodist Church, than any of her 13 official seminaries.

God has outwitted us. Because of the University and Seminary, this little town has become the missional education crossroads of the Wesleyan movement.

God has outwitted us…the Seminary has become such a technology model that The Association for Theological Schools and The University Senate affirm it as the measure for excellence. And we have a campus in Orlando that is already larger than 90% of all seminaries.

Oh, how God outwits us! The large denomination that once did everything to discredit what Asbury was doing now sends recruiting teams to attract our graduates to their areas. Our professors are respected across the world as outstanding scholars who have not allowed scholarship to be disconnected from vital piety.

And on and on we could go. As God has outwitted us during the past 90 years, let’s claim it to be so in the future as we continue to be faithful in shaping and reshaping ourselves in a way that will most effectively equip persons to serve this present age. And that means, I believe, at least this.

One, we must recognize that too many ministers are well-educated, but are not equipped to make disciples or lead Christian communities. We must become more humble and lay aside the snobbish notion that if we study the Bible enough, read enough Christian books, learn enough doctrine, we can be good disciples and good ministers.

We need knowledge, but what we need most is Kingdom character and competence.

Therefore, we must connect study and knowledge to practice. Professors and others who train folks for ministry must “know God” and also be able to mentor people in knowing God.

Somewhere along the way we strayed from the core purpose of seminaries as servants of the church, equipping persons for ministry. Seminaries became almost entirely the same as secular graduate education institutions. This resulted in making theological education largely theoretical, and training for ministry was abstracted from the actual practice of ministry.

In light of this, I believe our biggest challenge is to find ways to train men and women “in” ministry, not “for” ministry. While we hallow places and community, places alone do not make community…community flows from mutual commitment and mutual sharing in ministry.

Secondly, to serve the population of our country, we must pay attention to the large urban centers. Might God be calling Asbury to find a way to establish a dozen urban training centers? Places where theological education and equipping for ministry takes place – with the trainees being involved in ministry – with mentor and professors not only providing the content of the faith, but using reflection as the primary pedagogical dynamic. A short-term ministry sojourn during a student’s three or four year MDiv journey is simply not doing the job. We must find ways to train people in ministry not for ministry.

If we dare entertain a challenge like this, I pray we will go to some of the most secular sections of our nation, where the notion of called, spirit-filled, sanctified, evangelistic ministry is almost non-existent, and the language of holiness is foreign.

During this next period of our history let’s be open to God outwitting us. Let’s prove to the world who we are, and what we believe, and provide ministry preparation fit for the Kingdom.

Maxie Dunnam ~ When Are We Most Like God?

There was a man who worked downtown in one of our large cities. Each day he rode the commuter train from his lovely suburban home to the inner-city. The train went through the impoverished areas of the city, past decaying tenements, dilapidated public housing, and dingy streets. When the train slowed down, the fellow could see into the bleak apartments, and when it was especially slow, he could look into the even bleaker faces of those who lived in those drab apartments. He could see the unemployed gathered around a fire on a vacant lot, waiting for someone to come by and pick them up for day labor. He could see the children playing on dusty basketball courts, laying out of school, and he wondered who cared about them.

At work, he would often catch himself staring into space, thinking about all those people in that desperate environment. It became increasingly difficult for him to fall asleep at night. When he would close his eyes all he could see were those depressing scenes and those desperate people. He determined that he had to do something about it. So he did. Now, when he rides the commuter train, he pulls down the blind so he doesn’t have to look at the depressing environment around him. He now is at peace … or is he? If he does have peace, what price has he paid for it? And how long will it last?

Keep that picture in your mind, as we return to our scripture lesson for today. The lesson climaxes with a description of God that defines God’s character and brings us to the heart of one of the world’s richest energy sources – compassion. Let that word about God become the soil in your mind in which we plant our thoughts today. Look at it again.

In the course of those many days the king of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God. And God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. And God saw the people of Israel, and God knew their condition. (Exodus 2:23-25).

Is there a more descriptive word about the character of God in the whole of the Bible? Look at it. In four action words, we have a clear picture of God who loves and cares and intervenes in the lives of his people.

God hears – “God heard their groaning”.
God remembers – “God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.”
God sees – “God saw the people of Israel.”
And God knows – “God knew their condition.”

Now that puts us squarely on the question which is the theme of our sermon today: When are we most like God?

Now the obvious answer to that is when we act as God acts. Doesn’t that make sense? We are most like God when we act as God acts. I could stop there. But it would make for a very short sermon. So let me do a bit more than that … Let’s move in our minds with the question, “When are we most like God?”

We will find our answer, at least the beginning of it, in our scripture lesson today. A powerful leading hint comes from looking at Moses. In the scripture, there is a giant gap in Moses’ biography – from the time he was about three years old when he went into the palace to live with Pharaoh’s daughter and that’s noted  in verse ten, until “one day when Moses had grown up” in verse 11. Now there’s our hint.

What does “grown up” mean, as a description of Moses here? It’s more than chronological and physical, I believe. Listen to verse 11: “When Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.” Had he not looked on their burdens before? Had his ease and comfort in the palace blinded him to the suffering of his people? Had he pulled the shade down in his mind in order that his heart would not be touched by their oppression?

It’s easy to do that, isn’t it? Easy to pull the shade of our mind so that we will not feel with our heart the oppression and suffering that’s going on around us. It is even easy to be a part of the oppressive system, and not let it get to us.

I’ve been reading a book that has pronounced its judgment upon me in a searing way. It’s a deeply moving and beautiful autobiography of a talented black woman, Maya Angelou. She calls her story, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She tells about growing up as a Black person in our country. One sentence captures the pathos and tragedy of it all. Listen to her: “If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.” Isn’t that descriptive and powerful?

Consciously for some; unconsciously for most of us, we have been part of a system that held a rusty razor to thousands of people like Maya Angelou. But, for so many years, we pulled the shade of our mind in order that our hearts would not sense and feel the pain of it.

But Moses was “grown up” now and when he looked upon the burdens of his people, he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Isn’t there a connection here with being like God? Listen to verse 23: “In the course of those many days, the king of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned under their bondage, and cried out for help, and their cry under bondage came up to God.”

Moses was “grown up now;” he looked upon his people’s burdens. That’s the beginning of being like God; to look and see the suffering of others. Now when he saw the Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian, he murdered the Egyptian.

That was a crazy thing to do – an act of undisciplined anger. We applaud Moses’ awareness of his peoples’ suffering, but there’s no justification for murder. Violence and killing, even for a good cause, is unjustifiable. The pages of history are stained with the blood of those killed in the name of “good causes,” and of religion, even the Christian religion. Minds capable of virtue produce vice also.

But that’s a sidetrack, and we can’t go down that path if we’re going to pursue our theme. Come back to Moses.

There’s an interesting twist of irony in the record of this incident. The day following the murder, which Moses thought was a secret, he intervened in a fight between two Hebrews. But he was impotent in the solution. He had no influence; but worse than that, he was scornfully challenged: “Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”

It was that response of his own kinsman that made Moses afraid, afraid that the Pharaoh was going to find out about his sin, so Moses fled from the Pharaoh. And that brings us to a second incident in Moses’ life, which pushes us toward an answer to the question, when are we most like God?

Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. When he arrived there, he sat down at a well and the daughters of the priest of Midian came to draw water. Shepherds in the vicinity came and drove the women away and used the water that they had drawn to water their own flocks.

Again, Moses looked and saw oppression. He came to the aid of the women, and delivered them out of the hands of the shepherds, then drew water for them. There was no killing here, but there was action on the part of Moses – he is becoming more “grown up” as he looks on the oppression of people.

When are we most like God? “God heard their groaning” – Moses looked on the burdens of his people. We are most like God when we look upon and see the suffering of others.

Let’s press our question further by looking at another person who plays a significant role in the drama – the daughter of Pharaoh. We’re moving backward in our Scripture. Look at verses 5 and 6.

“Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked beside the river; she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to fetch it. When she opened it she saw the child; and lo, the babe was crying. She took pity on him and said, ‘This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” (Exodus 2:5-6 RSV).

Focus on a very human dimension of the story that is captured in the sixth verse. When she opened the little ark, she saw the child. The baby was crying, and she had pity on him. That’s what I want to underscore. She had pity on him. Curiosity was changed to compassion and her compassion overrode pride of race and station. She recognized the child as a Hebrew, and she knew that her father wanted all Hebrew baby boys killed. But as soon as the infant cried, her heart was touched and she entered empathetically into the Hebrew experience.

That’s the point I want to make. Nothing is more needed in our day than empathy. To be able to identify with others to share their experience, to laugh with those who laugh and weep with those who weep.

So now I say it boldly: We are most like God when we have compassion. It is not enough to have pity. Our pity must become compassion. We are most like God when we have compassion. Pity is a feeling, an emotion; compassion is rooted in the same feelings, but goes deep and issues in action.

That’s what happened when we raised over $200,000 to dig 30 wells in Zambia. It’s not hard to make the point. Pity for prisoners and their families must issue in compassion as we follow through in a specific Prison Ministry that we have initiated. Pity for people living in hovels for houses must become compassion that gives money, and drives nails, and paints to secure a Habitat for Humanity house for a needy family. Pity for those who are poor and cold and don’t have the money to pay their light and gas bills must become compassion that allows Memphis Light Gas and Water to add a dollar per month to your own bill to pay heating bill in emergency situations.

You see, compassion comes from a deliberate identification with another person until we see things as he sees them, and feel things as she feels them. That’s the place to which God seeks to bring all of us, as he brought the Egyptian Princess.

But most of us want God – but not what God wants of us.

Look at one other action of God which we guide us to determine when we are most like God. God “heard their groaning.”

There are times when we cannot speak. Our pain and grief cannot be expressed in words. So in our anguished silence we lay our lives before God. Everything we are—the riveting pain that tears at our hearts; the foreboding anxiety that renders us impotent; the sorrow for our loved ones who are sick and dying, some of them lost and without God; the emptiness of death. God hears the voice of  groaning, even when the groaning that does not issue in a sound.

That’s good news for us … more than good news, it is life giving. But in this sermon conversation, it is a challenge. We are most like God when we pay attention to others the way God pays attention to us. F.B. Meyer suggested that tears have a voice and God interprets it.  If we look closely we will see the tears of a lot of folks. Will we interpret those the way God would, and respond?

When are we most like God? Rehearse and reflect on those four action words that give us a clear picture of a God who loves and cares and intervenes in the lives of God’s people. God hears. God remembers. God sees. God knows.

Go thou and do likewise!

Grow in the New Year: Sitting on the Bottom Rung on the Ladder of Sanctity

“Fear not little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32) What a great passage as we anticipate a new year! Another is one of the most tender words spoken by Jesus:

Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat, nor about your body, what you shall put on. For life is more than food and the body more than clothing. Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have neither storehouse nor barn, and yet God feeds them. Of how much more value are you than the birds! (Luke 12:22-24)

A teenager sent his girlfriend her first orchid with this note: “With all my love and most of my allowance.” This is Jesus’ word to us, “With all my love and with all my resources.” Knowing this, we Christians can make two bold assertions at the dawn of the new year. First, Christ knows me and loves me just as I am. But that isn’t all, nor is it enough. The second assertion is that Christ nurtures me; he changes me; I am to grow.

To stop with the first assertion – that Christ knows me and loves me just as I am – is to enter a static state that will become stale, boring, uncreative, unattractive. That isn’t the goal of Jesus for our lives. In To Pray and to Grow, Flora Wuellner affirms:

This living Jesus Christ not only sees me as I am, in loving forgiveness, but he also releases me from that which makes me unfree. He changes me. In him, we are not only reborn – we grow!

It is not enough to be made clean through Good Friday. We are to grow in power through Pentecost!

It was not enough for the prodigal son in Jesus’ parable to leave the pigs. The pigs have not yet left him! Safe now in his father’s house, he still has bad habits to master and new attitudes to culti­vate.

The disciples sitting expectantly in the upper room after Jesus had gone from their sight to the Father, knew they did not yet have what it took to change the world. They knew Jesus loved them, but they needed to grow in his power to heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out the demonic, and reconcile the hostile.

“Beloved,” it was written many years later to the churches, “we are God’s children now [security and acceptance]; it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he appears we shall be like him [expectancy and growth].” (1 John 3:2)

I like what Agnes Sanford said so gloriously. We Christians are to “sit down on the bottom rung of the ladder of sanctity and yell for Jesus Christ.”

He will come. He will come to nurture and change us.

The year 2014 will begin in just a few days time. As we close one year and begin the next, many of us will be in a mood to reflect, remember and reevaluate. In the midst of this season of resolutions it’s important to recall Jesus’ comparison: “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10: 10)

Featured image courtesy Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.

Maxie Dunnam ~ Be of Sin the Double Cure

Familiarity sometimes breeds dullness. It’s true in the whole of life; it is especially true in the way we hear things and reflect on what we hear. The hymns we sing are a great example of this. If we have sung them often, we are so familiar with the tunes that we sing the words by rote. Not only do we not reflect on the meaning of the words, the words don’t even register in our minds.

An example is one of our most familiar hymns, Rock of Ages, Cleft for Me. In the very first stanza of the hymn, one of the great themes of the Christian faith is stated in such a unique way that it should lodge firmly in our minds.

Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
let me hide myself in thee;
let the water and the blood,
from thy wounded side which flowed,
be of sin the double cure;
save from wrath and make me pure.

The image is a powerful one: Rock of Ages. This was a favorite metaphor for the Psalmists.

The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer;
      my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge.
     He is my shield and the horn of mu salvation, my stronghold.
I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise,
     And I am saved from my enemies.” (Psalm 18:2-3 NIV)

Hear my cry, O God; listen to my prayer.
From the ends of the earth I call on you,
    I call as my heart grows faint;
Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
For you have been a refuge,
    a strong tower against the foe. (Psalm 61:1-3 NIV)

In the little country Baptist Church where I was converted, we sang a gospel song based on this Psalm/Prayer. Ray Steven made it popular later on.

Why don’t you lead me to the rock that is higher than I?
Oh lead me to the rock, yes lead me to the rock.
Why don’t you lead me to the rock that is higher than I?
Thou hast been a shelter for me.

Our minds are swirling around the notion of God as our rock, and finding the shelter of a mighty rock as we come to the petition, “be of sin the double cure.” If we stop to think about it, we may be so puzzled by the language that we don’t stay with it long enough to ponder what the poet is talking about. Yet, it is a clear expression of what salvation is all about.

Too many think of salvation in a limited way: the forgiveness of sin and nullifying guilt. It is far more than that, and this verse of the hymn expresses it so solidly: “Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure.”

Salvation is pardon, yes; but it is also power … power over sin. We are saved from the guilt of sin by the forgiveness of Christ, but we are also saved from the ongoing power of continuing sin. Salvation is a double cure. Another hymn writer expressed it this way,

My sin—not in part but in whole,
Is nailed to the cross and I bear it not more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!    (H.G. Spafford, It Is Well With My Soul)

Not in part but in whole … nothing partial; “saved to the uttermost” as Wesley would say. Wesley believed that the Bible clearly taught that God had wedded holy living and salvation by faith alone into one inseparable whole. The dual emphasis on what God does “for us” through Christ, and what Christ does “in us” through the Holy Spirit is one of Wesley’s greatest contribution to the Christian Church.

Even before God revealed himself so clearly in Jesus Christ, the Psalmist knew there had to be a “double cure.”

Praise the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits—
who forgives all your sins and heals all your diseases,
who redeems your life from the pit and crowns you with love and compassion,
who satisfies your desires with good things
    so that your youth is renewed like the eagle. (Psalm 103:2-5 NIV)

So the hymn writer is on target when he talks about the Rock of Ages providing a double cure. We can “hide” ourselves in him because he forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases; he saves from wrath and makes us pure. This is as it should be, and as it must be. Charles H. Spurgeon made the case in this fashion,

“To be washed, and yet to lie in the mire; to be pronounced clean, and yet to have the leprosy white on one’s brow, would be the veriest mockery of mercy. What is it to bring the man out of his sepulcher if you leave him dead? Why lead him into the light if he is still blind?” (All of Grace, p. 95)

So we pray, “Be of sin the double cure, save from wrath and make me pure”

 

 

 

NOTE: We Methodist/Wesleyans like to say, “We sing our faith.” And we do. Ellsworth Kalas is a person who has reflected a great deal on the richness of our Wesleyan Accent in song. This week, we will begin a regular posting of Kalas’ reflections on a Wesleyan hymn. Don’t miss it.

Maxie Dunnam ~ Deliverance through Thanksgiving

One of our big failures as Christians is our continual refusal to discipline ourselves in living with the word of God. We need to study the Bible. It is the shaping  source of our Christian faith and way. In it we find the revelation of God which God provided through God’s Son, Jesus. It is food for our souls, direction and strength for our journey.

But not only do we need to study the Bible, we need to read the Bible devotionally, and there is a difference. The sermon today comes out of my devotional reading of the Bible a few weeks ago. But before I get into the sermon, let me share with you the way I read the Bible devotionally. Perhaps this might be helpful.

In a time of quietness, reflection and prayer, I simply begin reading a pre-selected passage of scripture. With an open mind and heart I read until some word grabs my attention. I stay with that word, allowing it to tumble around in my mind. I seek to taste the word by reflecting upon it in my mind and heart. I ask the word questions and I allow the word to ask me questions, and then out of that reflection, in that moment I form the prayer that I want to offer to God in response to his word.

I was doing this with the Psalms when I came to this 50th Psalm – a portion of which is our scripture lesson today. I came upon that 15th verse, “And call upon me in your time of trouble and I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.”  Now I don’t even know what was going on in my life at that particular time that caused that verse of scripture to be so significant, except that I am like most people… trouble is often my lot. Maybe I was concerned about one of our children; maybe I was wrestling with some problem; maybe I felt that someone or something was after me, and I was being tested. I know it wasn’t a huge earth-shaking thing or I would remember it. Nevertheless there it was, God’s word for me in that particular situation and I needed it. “And call upon me in your time of trouble and I will deliver you and you shall glorify my name.”

What a promise. Deliverance. None of us will pass through too much of our life without needing to lay hold upon that promise, because none of us will pass through too much of our life without being confronted with trouble. But as I reflected upon this staggering promise, I became aware of the fact that it was not a complete within itself. Though it’s a separate verse in the Bible, it begins with the word and. So I went back to read the entire sentence. If you have your Bible before you, look back at the 14th verse and you’ll find the beginning of the sentence. “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving and pay your vows to the most high.” Then comes the promise: “and call upon me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.”  That set me to thinking all over again. And the word of the Lord came to me in a powerful way. There are conditions that we are to meet if we’re going to appropriate the promise of the Lord to deliver us.

Got that? There are conditions that we are to meet if we’re going to appropriate the promise if the Lord to deliver us. God is not making a wholesale promise here. You can’t lift this verse out of its context and use it as a kind of certified check in God’s bank. Well then, since this promise is so astounding and since none of us are going to pass through too much of life without needing to lay hold of it, what are the conditions that we need to meet in order to appropriate this promise of deliverance that God gives us?

The first condition is, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving.

Another translation says, “make thanksgiving your offering.” Now that has a specially beautiful meaning if you see it in its entire context. If you go back to the tenth verse of that reading, you’ll see God talking about all that he is and all that he has, and then in that beautiful twelfth verse he says, “if I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world and all that is in it is mine.” What does a God like this, an omnipotent God who created and owns the whole universe – what does a God like this want? What does a God like this require of us? There it is. Offer to God a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving. Listen. God’s hunger; God’s deepest longing is satisfied by our love and gratitude. Does that make you stand at attention inside? I mean, does that make you feel tall inside? That the God of the universe, the one who created and owns the world is satisfied, God’s deepest longings are satisfied by your praise and thanksgiving?

What a way to think and live during this thanksgiving season, we need to learn that lesson. It’s so easy to forget. It’s so easy to lose touch with the source of life…how we got to where we are; all the blessing that have been poured out upon us. It’s easy to think that we are where we are today because of our own efforts. We’re like that man who was being honored at a banquet for things he had done. He stood to receive the award, but got his tongue twisted, and said, “I don’t appreciate this, but I certainly deserve it.” Well we put that sort of twist to the facts of our life. We interpret our success, our achievements and accomplishments, as the result of our own doing.

Now this came home to me in a powerful way, as I followed the devastating famine tragedy in Africa. I cut a picture off the front page of our local paper and kept it on my desk. It’s a picture of an old man, who looks to be about 100, but I have an idea he’s about 50. And on his back is the stereotypical emaciated little starving child, probably his grandchild. Three generations starving to death. Now I would feel better if I didn’t look at that picture, but I wouldn’t be better. One of the things I think about when I look at that picture is, I could have been born in anywhere in the world. Has that thought crossed your mind during the past two or three weeks? I could have been born in a place of famine, or a place ravaged by war. I could have been born in a place where people earn less than $2.00 a day. And when I think of that, it makes it easy for me to count my blessings – though I was born in rather severe poverty in Mississippi, in context of our world situation, that poverty in Mississippi would be considered rich.

Then I go from there. I did not earn – I simply received the gift of parents who loved me, who sacrificed for me, who encouraged me and supported me. I did not earn – I simply received the gift of a public school education. I didn’t earn – I simply received the right of citizenship in this great country, where I have the freedom to vote, and the freedom to speak out, and the freedom to enter into the political process that shapes the destiny of this nation. But I could have been born anywhere else. You see, it’s gift.

They say that Darwin kept a notebook to jot down the contradictions that he came across, contradictions against his theories, because he knew that if he didn’t jot those contradictions down, he was so committed to his theories that he would forget them. Maybe we need to keep a notebook and record those things that we have received, things that have been given to us, things that have been done for us, blessings that we had absolutely nothing to do with them coming to us. I have an idea that that would change our lives.

Now there’s a facet to this truth that we need to look at in a particular way; and it’s suggested in the particular reading from the Revised Standard Version: the word is offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. Now those two words don’t seem to go together. Sacrifice and thanksgiving. I don’t know all that that means, but it means at least this – even when we are not in the mood for thanksgiving, even when we have not recorded in our notebooks that for which we need to be grateful, we need to express gratitude. I’m telling you that gratitude can transform your life. I don’t care in what condition you find yourself; I don’t care in what depression you might be; I don’t care what’s going on in your life at this moment, if you can get in touch with the God of the universe who says to you, “offer a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving,” and do that, your life will be transformed. A sacrifice of thanksgiving means that the surface circumstances of life don’t have to merit it. Still we do it. Whatever the circumstances – our lives are to be an offering of gratitude.

But there’s more here. Another condition that we are to meet if we are going to appropriate the deliverance of the Lord, and it’s there in our text. Pay your vows to the most-high God. Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving. That’s the first condition to meet if we’re going to appropriate God’s deliverance. And the second is – pay your vows to the most-high God.

Not long ago, I sat with a man who was on the verge of death; cancer was ravaging his body, and he was anguishing in what seemed to be a hopeless situation. I spent about 30 minutes with him in the hospital room. His despair was punctuated with prayerful pleas that he might live a bit longer. In fact, he said, if he could make it just another year. He kept saying that he needed more time. There were things he wanted to do. Promises he wanted to keep. He wanted to pay back debts he owed; he wanted to make up for some failures that he had experienced. Here was a desperate man who wanted to pay his vows to the most-high God.

Alas, he was too late. But it isn’t too late for us. Are there commitments that you made which you haven’t kept? Are there vows to the Lord that you have not followed through on? This is what the Lord is saying to us today – listen – Do the things you promised when you received my love and forgiveness. Keep the vows you made when you accepted my salvation. That’s the word of the Lord for us today.

It’s one of the most fantastic promises in scripture: call upon me in your day of trouble, and I will deliver you. But that promise is based upon two conditions – One, offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving; and two, pay your vows to the most-high God. We can keep both of those promises today. The question is, will we. It’s the only way we are going to know deliverance.