RSS

Tag Archives: Philip Yancey

Who is God’s Neighbor?

18 Nov

“A few days later the university team gathers for a prayer meeting, as we do every Wednesday. We follow a consistent pattern: Joe prays, Craig prays, Chris prays, then all three pause politely, waiting for me. I never pray, and after a brief silence we open our eyes and return to our dorm rooms.

With the essay deadline looming, I join the team grudgingly for the requisite meeting. Joe prays, Craig prays, Chris prays, and they wait the usual few seconds. To everyone’s surprise—most of all my own—I begin to pray aloud.

“God…” I say, and the room crackles with tension. A door slams down the hall, interrupting me. I start again.

“God, here we are, supposed to be concerned about those ten thousand students at the university who are going to Hell. Well, you know that I don’t care if they all go to Hell, if there is one. I don’t care if I go to Hell.”

I might as well be invoking witchcraft or offering child sacrifices. Even so, these are my friends, and no one moves. My mouth goes dry. I swallow hard and continue. For some reason I start talking about the parable of the Good Samaritan, which one of my classes has just been studying. “We’re supposed to feel the same concern for university students as the Samaritan felt for the bloodied Jew lying in the ditch,” I pray. “I feel no such concern. I feel nothing.”

And then it happens. In the middle of my prayer, as I am admitting my lack of care for our designated targets of compassion, the parable comes to me in a new light. I have been visualizing the scene as I speak: a swarthy Middle Eastern man, dressed in robes and a turban, bending over a dirty, blood-stained form in a ditch. Without warning, those two figures now morph on the internal screen of my mind. The Samaritan takes on the face of Jesus. The Jew, pitiable victim of a highway robbery, also takes on another face—one I recognize with a start as my own.

In slow motion, I watch Jesus reach down with a moistened rag to clean my wounds and stanch the flow of blood. As he bends toward me, I see myself, the wounded victim of a crime, open my eyes and spit on him, full in the face. Just that. The image unnerves me—the apostate who doesn’t believe in visions or in biblical parables. I am rendered speechless. Abruptly, I stop praying, rise, and leave the room.

All that evening I brood over what took place. It wasn’t exactly a vision—more like a vivid daydream or an epiphany. Regardless, I can’t put the scene out of mind. In a single stroke my cockiness has been shattered. I have always found security in my outsider status, which at a Bible college means an outsider to belief. Now I have caught a new and humbling glimpse of myself. In my arrogance and mocking condescension, maybe I’m the neediest one of all.

A feeling of shame overwhelms me. Shame that my façade of self-control has been unmasked. And also shame that I might end up as one more cookie-cutter Christian on this campus.”

Philip Yancey from Where the Light Fell

Dear God, I was praying this morning about what I will preach about tomorrow. Nothing was coming to me. My wife was surprised I didn’t have football on and I told her I didn’t want the distraction. I wanted my mind to still be seeking you. Finally, I decided to lie in bed and read the memoir I’ve been reading by Philip Yancey, Where the Light Fell. That’s when I came across this story, about 80% of the way into the book.

The set up is that Yancey lost his father to polio when he was one year old, and his mother raised him and his older brother in an ultra conservative version of being Baptist. Fringe enough that Southern Baptists in the 50s and 60s thought they were weird. His parents intended to be foreign missionaries, and his mother put enormous amounts of pressure on her two boys to fulfill their father’s ambition in life. It’s a long story that takes 240 pages to tell up to this point, but by the time we arrive at the scene above, Yancey is a sophomore at a Bible college he disdains, he is in a romantic relationship for the first time in his life, his older brother has left the college and experienced serious mental breakdowns, and he cynically realizes that he’s had enough of you, Bible college, and everything else. I don’t think he would put it this way, necessarily, but reading it makes me think he’s just completely burned out on structured religion and the games religious Christians play. Now he’s going to be smarter than everyone.

Then you show up. A professor he actually respects assigns his class to “write an essay about a time when God spoke to you through a passage of the Bible.” It’s the rolling around of this assignment in his mind that set the context for what I copied above. It’s almost like Job 38 when you’ve had enough of Job going on and on and you decide it’s time to set him straight. In fact, Yancey references Job in the report he gives to his class as a result of his experience: “In the words of Job, ‘I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear. But now mine eye seeth thee: wherefore I abhor myself and repent in dust and ashes.‘”

So I think this will be the core of my sermon tomorrow. When Jesus is describing the Samaritan who shows boundless compassion in his story, he isn’t only asking us to rise up and be better people. He is challenging us to be more like you.

Like me, Yancey made professions of faith and accepted Jesus as his Lord and Savior several times as a child, thinking maybe he hadn’t done it right. For Yancey, this experience above was new. He describes it as follows:

Part of me–a rather large part–expects this, too, to pass. How many times have I gone forward to accept Jesus into my heart, only later to find him missing? I feel a kind of sheepish horror at regaining faith. But I also feel obliged to admit what has taken me unawares, a gift of grace neither sought nor desired [emphasis mine].

I think one of the things that frustrates me so much about the current American Evangelical church is that it is selling the wrong thing. It is selling some sort of puritanical life that, if achieved, will enable you to claim victory and then stand in self-righteous judgment over those around you. But that’s not what Jesus told us. Yes, he was harsh when he described how there would be a sorting that comes at the end of the age. Yes, he was harsh when he talked about separating parents and children and all kinds of people over himself. But he never called us to be judgmental or mean. He never called us to be unloving. He called us to love you with everything we have and then love our neighbor as ourself? Who is our neighbor? Well, that’s when he gave us this story of a man of a certain nationality beaten. The nationality is only important to set up that this man would have natural alliances and enemies. Two people who should have helped him didn’t, but a natural enemy did. A natural enemy cared for him extravagantly. Are you my natural enemy? Yes, I suppose you are since I am so insufficient in my sin. But–and I can’t believe I’ve never seen this in this story before–you chose to be extravagant with me, your natural enemy.

One unique thing about Jesus is that he didn’t see enemies in the usual way. He didn’t see a Roman centurion as an enemy. He didn’t see Caesar as his enemy. He saw anyone who misrepresented you as the real problem. And the stories he told about you are amazing.

So I am going to try to put an outline for tomorrow morning here.

  • I. I think I am going to read the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)
  • II. Set up Yancey biography and background
  • III. Read Yancey’s telling of his story
  • IV. Expound on this different way of looking at the Samaritan in the story as representing you and the beaten man representing me
  • V. So we have to ask ourselves: in coming to church, reading our Bible, being on committees, etc. why are we doing it?
  • VI. In honest self-reflection, how do we feel about envisioning ourselves as being the beaten man/woman and accepting God’s help
  • VII. Is there anyone in our lives who God wants to use us to reach on his behalf, not by accomplishing righteousness so we can use it as a weapon against the unrighteous, but so we can be the Samaritan in their life?
  • VIII. Read the CS Lewis quote by Yancey: “God sometimes show grace by drawing us to himself while we kick and scream and pummel him with our fists.” Is there anyone today who needs to stop resisting God, kicking and scream. Is there anyone here who would like to let go and accept the gift of Jesus?

Father, I consecrate this sermon to you. Holy Spirit, please use me. Love through me. Through my flawed delivery and possibly even flawed theology, reach those who need you and draw them to yourself. Oh, Lord, be merciful to us all.

I pray it in the name of Jesus, my Lord,

Amen

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on November 18, 2023 in Luke, Miscellaneous, Musings and Stories

 

Tags: , , ,

Who do I have to thank but you?

16 Nov

As G.K. Chesterton put it, “The worst moment for the athiest is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.”

Nature teaches me nothing about Incarnation or the Victorious Christian Life. It does, though, awaken my desire to meet whoever is responsible for the monarch butterfly.

Philip Yancey, Where the Light Fell

Dear God, I was reading Philip Yancey’s memoir, Where the Light Fell, last night and I ran across this quote. He was describing himself as an 18-year-old at Bible college. As one would expect, the Bible college was very myopic as it focused on studying you, your Word, and living the Victorious Christian Life. But there wasn’t a depth to the experience. Yancey was looking for something more to his experience of you. Were there parts of you he was missing. As he started to explore nature he realized that you were surrounding him more than he really knew. Beyond thanking you for the things in his life that materially benefitted him in some way, his eyes were opening to just how all-encompassing you are.

He used this quote from G.K. Chesterton and I liked it so much I highlighted it and then came back to it this morning when I started to pray to you. What would my life be like if I didn’t know I have you to thank for so much? And I’m including it all. The traditional things like my wife and children, my family, my job and my home. You get the idea. But there is so much more for which I’m grateful that Yancey encouraged me to remember last night. I walked out and saw a beautiful waxing new moon last night. I commented to another man in the meeting how beautiful it was. Thank you, Father, for such a beautiful thing as our moon that orbits our little planet. Thank you for the consciousness that brings me to life. Thank you that I truly feel chosen by you. And not chosen to do great work or accomplish anything important. Just chosen to live at all. Thank you for the struggles that break me. Thank you for taking my broken pieces, melting them together, molding them again, and then filling me. Thank you for beauty in nature and monarch butterflies.

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, I am grateful I have you to thank. I am grateful to know you. I am grateful for the fact that Jesus did what he did. I am grateful that you are a good God who chooses to love us–love me. I am grateful that you cannot see the f-you list you have for me through Jesus’s blood. I am grateful for the Holy Spirit, being by my side even in this moment. There is much for which I am grateful. Thank you.

I pray all of this in your holy, Trinitarian name,

Amen

 
2 Comments

Posted by on November 16, 2023 in Miscellaneous, Musings and Stories

 

Tags: , ,

Parable of the Growing Seed (Mark 4:26-29)

19 Oct

26 Jesus also said, “The Kingdom of God is like a farmer who scatters seed on the ground. 27 Night and day, while he’s asleep or awake, the seed sprouts and grows, but he does not understand how it happens. 28 The earth produces the crops on its own. First a leaf blade pushes through, then the heads of wheat are formed, and finally the grain ripens. 29 And as soon as the grain is ready, the farmer comes and harvests it with a sickle, for the harvest time has come.”

Mark 4:26-29

Dear God, I was watching a Christianity Today interview this afternoon with Beth Moore. Then I watched another one with Philip Yancey. This parable ties in nicely with some of my thoughts while I was watching the interviews. The biggest tie-in is Jesus’s line for the farmer, “…but he does not understand how it happens.” We can be oh so clever and try to figure out how things are working out, but the truth is that we have no idea. Whether it be in our families, our personal lives, our churches, our denominations, our governments, or the world in general. We do not know what you are doing. We do not know how the Kingdom of God works. We do not understand you. We do not understand your ways. I do not understand your ways.

So what are you like? Well, you are mysterious. You work behind the scenes. You are doing things we cannot see. But the a leaf blade pushes through. Head of wheat are formed. Grain ripens. And you give us two jobs in all of this: two plant seeds and then harvest the grain. So what kind of seed planter am I?

This morning, I was starting to feel a little down and overwhelmed about what awaits me when I get back from vacation. There is a lot of hard work to do. I don’t know how all of it is going to work out. I don’t know if I might fail at some of it. I started to get scared and overwhelmed. Then, I just happened upon these interviews. It’s still a mystery to me how they came up, but I was so blessed by them. The Beth Moore one really helped me as she talked about some of the struggles she has recently had and how you were with her through them. When it comes to Philip Yancey, I have been reading his memoir, Where the Light Fell, and his whole life and the work he has done regarding exploring different aspects of your nature were born out of his childhood experiences with your church and his family, including the loss of his father before he was old enough to know him. You were working in both of their lives. You are still working in both of their lives.

So you used these two interviews to encourage me. To buoy me. Your Holy Spirit spoke to me and inspired me for the work that lies ahead. It has also encouraged me to not let the joy and opportunity of these last few days of rest be wasted. To let them be rest. And this is where the parable comes in: even though it looks like nothing is happening in the rest, the blade is growing and preparing to be fruit.

Father, Jesus, Holy Spirit, first, thank you for being my paraclete today. Thank you for being my comforter, advisor, and counselor. Thank you for the healing you have done in the friends I’ve prayed for. Thank you for the healing you are continuing to do. I have some friends right now who are facing a particularly scary situation in the health of the wife. Oh, Lord, be a healer for them. And use this to do something we cannot imagine. But this couple is dear. They are wonderful. Help them, oh, Lord. And continue to be with the others (I can think of five right now in my head) we are praying for as well.

I pray all of this with great joy to be able to call you; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; my God,

Amen

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 19, 2023 in Jesus's Parables, Mark, Parables of the Bible

 

Tags: , , ,

The Gift of Pain

03 Oct

“[Dr. Paul Brand] was the one, really, who established that [leprosy], which is the oldest recorded disease, and a greatly feared disease. When you say leprosy people think of movies they’ve seen where patients are missing fingers and maybe even a whole hand, amputations, they are blind. And all of those are common manifestations of the disease. But Dr. Brand proved decisively that all of that abuse came simply because those with leprosy lacked pain. So they lacked that warning system that keeps you from reaching your hand into a fire, that forces you to blink every few seconds. And if you just keep your eyes open all day long, forcing them to stay open, they’ll eventually dry out and you’ll go blind. So millions of leprosy patients have gone blind simply because they don’t blink anymore. They lack the signal that says, ‘Blink, blink.’

“And he was the first person I met who said, ‘Thank God for pain. If I had one gift to give to my leprosy patients it would be the gift of pain. And I had spent my life trying to figure out suffering. I couldn’t think of anything good about it. I read lot of books on the problem of pain, the problem of suffering, but never one called, ‘The Gift of Pain.’ And ultimately, the two of us together ended up writing one. And it shifted my focus from, ‘Why do these things happen?’ Which I don’t think the Bible gives us much wisdom about. Job wanted that wisdom very badly, and he never got it from God. God just said, ‘No, that’s not your job. That’s my job. Your job is, ‘Now that they have happened, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to respond? Are you going to trust me or reject me? Is there something redemptive that can come out of this suffering?”

Dr. Philip Yancey – The Holy Post Podcast, Episode 476. 9/29/2021. Time Stamp 1:13:40

Dear God, I heard this podcast a few days ago, and I’ve been noodling with it in my head ever since. In fact, I probably let it distract me from actually spending much time simply worshipping you. I used my thinking time as a substitute for worship. I’m sorry about that. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth my time. It’s an interesting concept.

So what would the world look like if there were no pain? I suppose it would be easier to ask what my own life would be like if there were no pain. Prosperity gospel preachers would tell me, I think, that no pain is the goal for life. If we are doing it right with you then you will eliminate my pain. You will make it all sunshine and roses. I recently spoke with a woman whose husband died a few years ago. He had a terminal illness with almost no hope for survival. Yet, she expected him to be healed until the moment he died. She still carries the pain of his loss. She still carries, I believe, some anger towards you for letting her down.

As for me, I’ve certainly been disappointed with you over the years. I’ve had things happen, especially with my children, that have caused me tremendous pain. How could you let this happen? Wasn’t I supposed to get some amount of protection from these bad things if I prayed to you regularly, prayed for them, invested in them, etc.? What gives?

But I’ve learned over the last few years that you are doing things I cannot see. It’s in the Bible over and over again. Some of the stories are obvious to us now (although they were not obvious to the people who experienced them). Joseph, Jacob’s son, could not see how his imprisonment by Uncle Ishmael’s descendants would lead to your glory. But there are other stories that are more subtle. Like Naomi. She lost a husband and two sons, but you ultimately redeemed that to give David his great-grandmother, Ruth. As Yancy said above, ours is not to understand why something happened, but to decide how we are going to respond to the situation or circumstance. Will we trust and hope in you, or will we sink into despair?

My wife and I were talking about Steven Curtis and Mary Beth Chapman’s story of when they lost their young daughter in an accident. They really struggled with both the loss and in dealing with each other and how they were processing the loss. Ultimately, they had to learn to both give freedom to the other as to how they needed to walk through and experience the pain, while still experiencing the pain themselves. And they needed to see how they could support the other in their own walk. It’s complicated, but it’s also essential. Right now, my wife and I are experiencing a painful situation, and we are responding differently. Thankfully, this is not our first rodeo with each other, and we are much better at both communicating what we need and also giving each other the freedom and support to go through the situation the way each of us needs to.

But to go back to the first question because I am way off topic. What would it be like to not experience any of this? What would emotional leprosy (as opposed to physical leprosy) look like? I suppose an emotional leper would be completely insensitive to other people. The parts of my that should contain sympathy and empathy would be gone. I would have no tolerance for others. I also wouldn’t have any motivation to do anything. Without the knowledge that even lethargy will cause me harm, I would totally embrace lethargy and laziness. I would be completely irresponsible because there would be no consequences for my irresponsibility.

I was talking recently with someone about the difficulty of parenting because, as adults we know that we only learn and grow through struggle and trials, but as parents our temptation is to protect our children from struggles as much as possible. I have another friend right now who is struggling to know what to do with his 20-year-old son who is living at home and dropped out of college. Does he kick him out? Does he give him space to figure his life out? Where does he draw the line? And what does he do about his wife’s perspective, which is different than his own? And taking a step further back from the situation, what is it that you are doing for him and his wife through this pain? How are you using it to shape them?

Father, I think it is right that pain is good for us, although it is probably still hard for me to label it as a gift. I’d just call it essential to our development as humans. Right now, the only thing that has restored some of the relationships in my life that were broken was pain and hitting bottom. Alcoholics often have to “hit bottom” to decide that they are powerless over alcohol, their lives have become unmanageable, and they need you to restore them to sanity. It doesn’t happen while they are at the bar. It happens the next morning. So I submit myself to whatever you need me to experience. For repentance. For growth. For love. For empathy and sympathy. For knowing what actions to take. For everything. I give it all to you, Father. I don’t need to know why something is the way it is in my life. I just need to know you are in your heaven and all is right in my world, whether I can see it with my eyes or not.

In Jesus’s name I pray,

Amen

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on October 3, 2021 in Miscellaneous, Musings and Stories

 

Tags: , , ,