Illustration-a-day: If making babies were all the world needed . . .

I know you’ve seen them, those Johnson & Johnson ads – the black and white ones with the cutest of babies and the voiceovers. One has the chubbiest little boy you’ve ever seen sitting in the sink taking a bath grinning a large toothless grin. He splashes around as a voice ponders, “You always went for the tall, dark, handsome types. So who’d have ever thought the love of your life would be short and bald?” And then after a brief pause to build effect, says, “Having a baby changes everything.”

The birth of a baby is one of those sacred moments that takes our concrete, no nonsense world and in a moment transforms it into a place that’s at once mysterious and magical and at the same time perplexing and full of terror. You can’t get over how small his fingers are. You giggle at the recognition that he has that funny little flap on his ears like his mother. You wonder in delighted expectation at what this newest of lives might become.

But along with all the new found joy you can’t help but recognize new fears. You find yourself looking intently at his miniscule lips asking yourself again and again, “Is he still breathing?” You eye every guest who holds him with suspicion, “Have they been sick recently? Did they wash their hands?” He seems so fragile, so helpless, so small. Your can barely watch the evening news with its stories of senseless death, its reports of disease and famine, its images of war without wondering, “What kind of world have I brought this child into?”

Because the greater truth is, while my baby’s birth has changed my world, his birth hasn’t changed the world. It’s really quite remarkable. On the one hand my immediate world pauses for a glimpse at LIFE – new life – life full of promise and possibility – complete strangers pause and wish you congratulations. It seems as if the world is at peace – but then you see the headlines and realize that the world continues to fall apart. Oh, we long for a day when there could be an end to war, or pollution, or rape, or kidnapping, or drug use – we look at our new born child and think – surely for our children we would change – we have to change – and then we don’t. We keep on sinning. I keep on sinning. The world keeps on sinning. We keep on polluting and robbing and hurting one another. And sometimes we even do so to our own families. If making babies was all the world needed to reverse its course then the world would have righted its ship long ago.

Illustration-a-day: Masterpiece from our Mess

Have you ever had something you were working on become messed up? It’s a horrible feeling. I can remember a time as a child I was working on a painting. I had been taking art classes, and whether or not my talent warranted it, I took the whole endeavor rather seriously. Just weeks before the county fair (where I hoped to enter my painting and maybe win a prize) I was putting the finishing touches upon a dramatic landscape filled with billowing clouds and mighty evergreens. I was cleaning some brushes when I turned in time to see a classmate bump up against my painting creating an ugly streak right across the face of the clouds. “AHHHH! It’s ruined,” I exclaimed. My third grade heart with its over sized ambitions was devastated. My teacher came over to see what the commotion was about. She tried to calm me and assured me, that sometimes, what are initially mistakes, can become the workings of a masterpiece. And with skill and grace, she took brush in hand and worked magic on that canvas, redeeming the scar and making it an integral part of a glorious sky.

When I think about the grand story of the Bible, I see God at much the same work. Again and again, through our sins, we mar the work of God. Cain took Abel’s life. Lamech took revenge on a young man who had injured him by killing him and then took delight in having done so. Evil became so great that God attempted a new start with Noah after the flood, but even then, our fallen humanity failed to receive the new start with open hands. With the ground still moist, Canaan took some potshots at his drunk, naked father. Noah then took Canaan’s folly as a chance to curse his own flesh and blood. And then in chapter 11, the whole world, it says, took on heaven, building a tower to the skies that they might make a name for themselves.

The first eleven chapters of the Bible are enough of a mess that it’s a wonder God allowed there to be a twelfth. But as is his nature, we find God giving once more. His gift in chapter 12 is a simple but lasting promise. God gives Abram a promise that serves as the initial brush strokes in his great work of salvation history. For the rest of the Bible, the painting unfolds, stroke by stroke, color by color until God redeems our errors for his glory by painting the picture that culminates in Jesus Christ and the redemption of our souls – God’s masterpiece from our mess.

Illustration-a-day: The Bible is offensive

This week, I was ironing some clothes, not something I do all that often, which led me to do something else I don’t do very often, channel surf. The reason I don’t channel surf very often is because we don’t have very many channels – twenty-two to be exact – the most basic cable package you can order. But, there I was ironing, flipping through my less than two dozen channels and nothing was on. I can tell you nothing was on because I landed for a few minutes on a reality show called Wife Swap. That was my best option. The premise is simple, two very different families trade moms for two weeks to see what conflict can ensue. In this episode a farmer’s wife, I believe from the panhandle, switched places with a rock and roll mom from California.

They let the moms scout out the houses so they can judge how much better of a mom they are than the other one. Anyway, Rock and Roll mom moving through the house, notices how clean it is, how cutesy - notices that Jesus is in every room. When she comes into the room she’ll be staying in she immediately affixes her gaze onto a Bible that’s been placed at the end of the bed. She looks into the camera and says, “You know, that offends me. It’s like they’re saying I need saving or something – like I’m not a good person already.” I don’t exactly know what the farmer’s family was saying by leaving the Bible on the bed (I didn’t watch any more of the show), but I do know what the Bible says – none of us are good people. We all need saving. The Bible goes so far as to call our righteousness “filthy rags.”

Is that offensive? You bet. The gospel is offensive.  But offending is what we need, if that’s what it takes for us to recognize our state before a Holy God. We all need saving. Not from the things we think we need saving from. No doubt Rock and Roll mom had probably been judged by Christians about her tattoos and her taste in music and all manner of other things – those aren’t the things she needs saving from. And Christians who think that are judgmental folks who misrepresent the kingdom of God. But don’t let us think for a moment that because some people misjudge us that judgment isn’t real. God will judge us. His judgments are real, accurate, and fair. We are a broken, sinful people. None of us are ok - whether we’re farmer’s wives from Texas or Rock and Roll moms from LA.

Illustration-a-day: Counterfeit Liberty

St. Augustine, in his autobiography, Confessions, tells a story that we can probably all relate to. As a boy, he and some friends where walking down the road, when they came upon a neighbor’s pear tree. Now, he says, there was nothing particularly appealing about this tree. The fruit was no better than that of their own orchards. And yet, he says, he and his friends almost could not help but “shake and rob” this tree. They carried off a large load of pears, most of which they either threw at each other or fed to the hogs. At the time, he admits of his thievery, “It was foul, and I loved it. . . I did not desire to enjoy what I stole, but only the theft and the sin itself.” There was an excitement in it, a rush, a sense of power and freedom.

He pondered, later in life, why such sins were so enjoyable. Why he could not simply receive the gift of life, but instead, insisted upon taking that which he neither needed nor even especially wanted. He concludes, that in rebelling against God’s prohibitions, even in the face of God’s permissions, he sought “by gesture, to rebel against Thy law, even though I had no power to do so actually – so that even as a captive, I might produce a sort of counterfeit liberty, by doing with impunity deeds that were forbidden, in a deluded sense of omnipotence.”

Illustration-a-day: Doubts that Shout

Frank Schaeffer recently wrote an article for the Huffington Post entitled, "Franklin Graham, Religious Extremism, Dad, God and Me (Confessions of a Former Religious Nut Leader)". His basic argument is that people with the most doubts tend to shout more loudly and more harshly than others. Actually, that's not quite his point. He has plenty of doubts and doesn't seem to be prone to shouting anymore. More accurately, perhaps, is the idea that people with repressed doubts shout with a ferocity that leads to extremism.

Another insightful point in the article is Schaeffer's assertion that all Christian leaders suffer from the temptation to be relevant. This temptation leads them to use a rhetoric of certainty that often goes beyond the reality of their own beliefs. Whether we should paint all Christian leaders with as broad a brush as Schaeffer does, the article raises some challenging thoughts that might work their way into a sermon.

• What do the struggles of the children of celebrity Christians (who have seen their fathers' feet of clay) teach us about the tendency of Christians to treat their leaders as infallible? Do just the children of the leaders suffer or do we all suffer in some way?


• What is the role of uncertainty and doubt in faith? Is uncertainty the same thing as being humble? The Pharisees in John 9 had lots of certainty, but they didn't have faith, nor were they very humble.


• What is the role of being relevant in the proclamation of the gospel? In what ways does attempting to be relevant, important, significant create problems for the church?

A Sunday Prayer

Almighty Father, maker of heaven and earth,
To you we owe our very lives.

Remind us that we are but the dust of the earth,
Dead as dirt without the breath of your Spirit.

Remind us that we are dead in our sins,
Without the redeeming power of your grace.

Breathe on us, breathe on us, that we may live once more.

In the name of the Feather who made us,
In the name of the Son who saved us,
In the name of the Spirit who guides us still,

Amen.