Posts - The Electric Gospel

Mar

2020

Fragile – Handle with Care

by David Sellnow

It was one of the first days that panic buying had begun. At a local store, the bread loaves were gone from the shelves. There were some higher-priced specialty items still available—dessert breads, breakfast bagels, spinach and herb wraps—but no regular bread. As I stood there, my mind went to the famous words Marie Antoinette never actually said: “Let them eat cake.” French law in the 18^th century required bakeries to sell fancy breads at regular bread prices if supplies of ordinary loaves ran out. But in the days leading up to the French Revolution, such a law made little difference. There was no bread of any kind available to the common people. Harvests had failed and famine conditions prevailed.

In our present moment, basic commodities are scarce in store aisles because of fears of what tomorrow may bring. The spread of disease, COVID-19, has crushed our confidence in the systems of government and healthcare and economics that we have set up. We are riddled with worries and questions. Will more businesses be forced to close? Will our own jobs and income be interrupted? Will we be told to shelter in place and avoid all interactions with others? Some locations have experienced such contractions and restrictions already. We’ve been shown that a microscopic virus has the power to intimidate a whole planet.

When all is well (or at least mostly so) in our own corner of the world, we easily forget how fragile life is. Perhaps if more of us experienced what the 500,000 homeless persons in this country deal with on a daily basis, we’d be less likely to think of food and drink (and toilet paper!) as things we can expect always to have on hand. We know what the Bible has taught us about the frailty and impermanence of this life—“how fleeting life is” (Psalm 39:4)—but we easily get comfortable and complacent. We expect prosperity and plenty to continue routinely. We forget the Word’s warning:

Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a town and spend a year there, doing business and making money.” Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes (James 4:13,14).

Now our routines and comfort level have been abruptly interrupted. So what hope do we have? We need a bigger source of hope than a weekly paycheck. We need a bigger source of hope than a stable stock market portfolio. We need bigger hope than having health insurance and accident insurance and unemployment insurance and life insurance—all of which only insure financially, to a limited degree, against risks and losses in this life. Having health insurance doesn’t keep you healthy. Accident insurance doesn’t prevent accidents from happening. Unemployment insurance doesn’t guarantee jobs won’t be lost. Life insurance doesn’t keep people alive.

We need a higher power. Our hope is in One who is bigger than earthly limits. David, poet and king of Israel (who knew firsthand about life’s ups and downs), wrote:

Some take pride in chariots, and some in horses,
but our pride is in the name of the Lord our God.
They will collapse and fall,
but we shall rise and stand upright (Psalm 20:7,8).

That doesn’t mean we get through this life unscathed. David’s own history was scarred by problems and losses (cf. 2 Samuel chapters 11-12 and 15-18, for example). But hope in God’s presence with us continues even through the worst of times. At another point in the history of God’s people, when a foreign invasion was looming and everything looked bleak, Habakkuk expressed the kind of hope we hope to have:

Even though the fig trees have no blossoms,
and there are no grapes on the vines;
even though the olive crop fails,
and the fields lie empty and barren;
even though the flocks die in the fields,
and the cattle barns are empty,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord!
I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
The Sovereign Lord is my strength! (Habakkuk 3:17-19)

It’s hard to be hopeful and rejoice when the shelves are bare, when employment ends, when infection and illness are spreading, when there is uncertainty everywhere around us. But perhaps at such times we are made more ready to trust in God rather than just what this world has to offer. Christ’s apostle, Paul, urged us: “If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15:19-20)—and that is what gives us hope. Peter echoed the same theme: “ Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you” (1 Peter 1:3,4). Life with God is not primarily about trusting in someone who can put bread on our tables (or onto store shelves). Jesus invites us to trust him not because we have eaten our fill of bread or fish or other earthly things (cf. John 6:26). “Do not work for the food that perishes,” Jesus said, “but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6:27).

A friend of mine shared a bit of social media encouragement with me the other day. It said, “Today I choose faith, trust, prayer, worship, hope and joy instead of worry.” Believers like David, Habbakuk, Peter and Paul offered similar sentiments. Christ Jesus calls us to just such a hope. Life is fragile, but our Savior handles our hearts with care—especially in life’s most challenging times.

———-

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Mar

2020

Politics divide; Jesus unites

by David Sellnow

At the outset of this year’s State of the Union Address, the President of the United States rejected a handshake from the Speaker of the House of Representatives. When his speech was over, the Speaker tore up her copy of the President’s speech. There is deep division between the parties leading our politics.

There’s deep division among people too. A few months ago, a poll by the Pew Research Center showed that between two-thirds and three-fourths of Americans think persons on the other side of the political aisle are closed-minded. Half of the members of each party believe the members of the other party are immoral. More than a third of the members of each party are convinced that those who vote with the other party are lacking in intelligence.

The political landscape is so full of divisions that even when you listen to a debate by members of the same political party, much of the time is spent yelling at each other and talking over each other. With Super Tuesday primary elections approaching, there is little clarity about who should lead or what direction leadership should take.

We are not the first society to experience polarization in its politics. In first century Judea, the Roman Empire had taken over control. They occupied the region with a military presence and assorted governmental authorities. There were members of Jewish society who saw no point in trying to resist Rome. Some found it advantageous to go to work for Rome as tax collectors, gathering revenue for the empire (and for themselves) within their own communities. Tax collectors typically are not popular figures anywhere, but tax collectors were especially disliked in Jewish society. They were seen as aiding and abetting a foreign oppressor–and lining their own pockets in the process. At the opposite extreme, far from the tax collectors who served the Roman empire, there were radicals committed to fighting back against Rome. By the middle of the first century, there would be an organized group known as the Zealots, dedicated to the cause of ending Roman rule. During Jesus’ ministry years a couple decades before that, the anti-Roman sentiment was growing among the Jewish people. As Kenneth Yates of the Grace Evangelical Society has noted about views that became associated with the Zealot movement, “They hated the fact that Rome was ruling over Israel. The Romans were pagans and idolaters. The Zealots saw the situation as one that dishonored God.”

When Jesus called together his inner circle of disciples–those he would train to be his apostles–he did not discriminate on the basis of politics. One of the men Jesus called was Matthew, also called Levi, who was a tax collector for the Roman Empire (cf. Matthew 9:9-13, Luke 5:27-32). Another of Jesus’ chosen leaders-in-training was a man named Simon, “who was called the Zealot” (Luke 6:15). We don’t know for sure if this Simon was aligned with the political radicals that would become the Zealot party, devoted to opposing the Romans. The implication is there, though. And quite certainly, a revenue-collector for the occupying armies (such as Matthew) wouldn’t be a popular political choice with any of the others among the Twelve when Jesus gathered them. But that didn’t deter Jesus from making his choices. Jesus called them all to walk together as brothers and to work together for a cause higher than just earthly, social, political concerns. Jesus calls us all to walk together as his disciples, serving him and bringing his love to all persons in the world.

Too easily we make judgments about people who think differently than we do, whose ideas about society are at odds with our own views. Some like to think that Jesus is on their side and theirs alone, looking for the Lord to cast down their opponents and champion their personal crusades. Jesus is bigger than that. His kingdom is bigger than that. The company of his followers was large enough to include imperial tax collectors as well as anti-imperial Zealots. As the Christian church grew in the first century, it included Roman soldiers as well as persons from places that Roman armies occupied. Christ’s followers included people from the highest economic standing down to those of the lowest. Christ’s family bridged across social, political, and ethnic divides. There are no “barbarians” or “savages” or persons unworthy of Christ’s love. Christ’s kingdom is expansive enough and inclusive enough to welcome all persons. And that means persons of different backgrounds and different politics are called to put Christ and his love first in their lives.

Let me close these thoughts with words from one of Christ’s apostles. Before Jesus stopped him in his tracks and made him rethink everything, Saul of Tarsus (whom we know as Paul the apostle) had stridently persecuted persons who didn’t see the world in the same way he did. But after seeing the light in Jesus, here is how he spoke to the church:

Get rid of … anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth. Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal[e] there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!
As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.

(Colossians 3:8-15 NRSV)

If you’re a Super Tuesday voter, feel free to vote for a “Medicare for all” candidate … or not. Or to vote in one party’s primary … or the other. It’s not my place to tell you which political cause or platform you should support. Simply remember the words of God’s prophet that rulers (leaders) should be people who know justice, and that they should not be power-hungry types who “hate the good and love the evil,” who abuse and take advantage of the people over whom they have authority (cf. Micah chapter 3). And let us come together in the family of God, called together by Christ, and conduct ourselves with “compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience” toward all others, as he calls us to do.

Feb

2020

We Aim to Proclaim

“We Aim to Proclaim” was one of the original Electric Gospel devotions distributed by email in the late 1990s. It was picked up and published in the June 1999 edition of The Northwestern Lutheran. Since the page on the new website about The Electric Gospel’s origins and purpose mentions a devotion about Tinky Winky, I thought I might share a version of that message with you here, twenty years down the road.

We Aim to Proclaim

by David Sellnow

In early 1999, the ministry of Rev. Jerry Falwell made news by protesting the program,Teletubbies. A Falwell ministry publication, National Liberty Journal, contained an article claiming that Tinky Winky (one of the Teletubbies) may be a subliminal gay role model because

he’s purple;
his antenna is shaped like a triangle;
he carries a purse.

Falwell’s crusade against the Tinky Winky (who actually carried a “magic bag”) generated much controversy. I had to agree with a Lubbock radio listener. When the controversy was being discussed on local radio, one mom commented: “Anybody who would get that from watching Teletubbies is too old to be watching the show!” Elsewhere, Michael Linnemann, coordinator of Baltimore’s Gay and Lesbian Community Center, said, “It’s news to the gay community. We didn’t realize we had a doll. Is Barney gay too, because he’s purple?” (The Baltimore Sun, February 11, 1999).

I’m not writing about this because I feel it is my calling to be a defender of purple (or other-colored) children’s TV characters. To me, it’s simply another example of how too many religious leaders focus their efforts in the wrong direction. They speak against things more than they speak for the truth. They seek to enforce law more than they understand or offer gospel.

Christianity is not essentially about protesting against certain people or things. It is about proclaiming peace. What did Jesus say? “Go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation” (Mark 16:15). Jesus did not command us to go out and protest whatever we might think is wrong with our neighbors. Instead, he calls us to “conduct yourselves honorably among the Gentiles, so that, though they malign you as evildoers, they may see your honorable deeds and glorify God when he comes to judge” (1 Peter 2:12). Our calling is to show forth the goodness and truth of God by our lives and by our witness. That’s a positive message of hope, not an exercise in negative finger-pointing. Our main mission is to proclaim Christ, who brings grace and healing to this world.

By the way, I am writing this during the season of Lent. The altar in our church is covered in purple. It’s a color that associated with royalty, as well as with the bruises and suffering of our Lord Jesus on our behalf. Thus, for us, it’s a penitential color; we recognize our need for redemption. Christ’s ordeal of suffering, known as The Passion, was endured for every one of us.

So when one of the kids brings a Teletubby doll to church, we don’t cast the doll—or the child—out.

Jan

2020

Encourage one another

With this post, I am launching the new and improved version of The Electric Gospel. For Christmas, one of my daughters set up this new site (with expanded possibilities), upgrading from my previous blog. I credit her with site design and with doing much of the work of moving over archives of past devotional writings. The Christmas gift, a labor of love, was my daughter’s way of encouraging me to keep writing, to keep working at offering spiritual encouragement to others. I invite you to enter your email to subscribe for receiving new posts as this blog continues in this new form.

In launching the new site, I had thought about re-posting an updated version of something from the archives, such as a New Year’s post (from 2015) or a Martin Luther King Jr. Day post (from 2019). But you can get at those posts in the archives (follow those links).

A better way to begin the new version of The Electric Gospel is to post something new. Thinking of my daughter’s much-appreciated encouragement to me–as well as the intention of the blog site–it seems appropriate to speak about encouraging one another in faith and hope. If you wish to post a reply, please do!

Encourage one another

by David Sellnow

When I was doing college teaching, I made a habit of offering encouragement to students individually. Sometimes it was about a spark of spiritual energy I saw evident in them. Some I urged onward in their writing or other forms of creative expression, because they had talents to be explored. In many cases, I encountered young adults who felt out of place, who had questions or doubts, who weren’t sure the answers they were being told were consistent and true. Perhaps they were willing to share their doubts and wonderings with me because I was one who wondered along with them, a fellow learner, not someone who seemed to know all already.

On one occasion, I sent an email to a freshman student who had been offering novel insights in a history course. I encouraged her to continue sharing her thoughts, which were elevating the level of discourse in our classroom. Not long after receiving the email, the student came to my office, in tears. She was overcome with emotion, she said, because this was the first time in her life that a teacher had praised her work. I thought perhaps she was exaggerating, but her story was compelling. She had been raised in church schools where errors were duly noted and corrections expected. Perfect papers got praise. Her assignments mostly got marked up with red ink, pointing out every imperfection. She felt dismissed and disregarded by teachers, labeled as an underperformer. Her confidence and desire to do well diminished year by year due to the lack of positive attention.

We’d like to think of church settings as places where seldom is heard a discouraging word. Sadly, often much discouragement occurs. This is at odds with God’s gospel imperative to provide ongoing spiritual support. “Encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing,” Paul wrote to the Thessalonians (1 Thess. 5:11). It’s good that the Christians at Thessalonica were in the habit of encouraging one another. We do well when we follow their lead. In a similar vein, a writer to early Jewish believers urged them, “Let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds … encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching” (Hebrews 10:24,25). Those Christians were enduring difficult times. But they held onto each other in faith and looked ahead to Christ’s return. The letter writer reminded them how they had “endured in a great conflict full of suffering. Sometimes you were publicly exposed to insult and persecution; at other times you stood side by side with those who were so treated. You suffered along with those in prison and joyfully accepted the confiscation of your property, because you knew that you yourselves had better and lasting possessions” (Hebrews 10:32-34).

Mutual encouragement is especially important when enduring hard times, injustices, or oppression. In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (April 1963), Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., decried the lack of support from mainline churches for African Americans who were being deprived of their rights. How could this be, in a nation founded on the principle that all persons “are created equal … endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” (Declaration of Independence)? King wrote: “The contemporary church is so often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s often vocal sanction of things as they are.” Establishment churches were good at supporting and encouraging themselves within the circle of privilege and prosperity. They were ignoring the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, the despised. King pointed to the people on the front lines of the civil rights movement who supported one another faithfully as they struggled to achieve liberty and justice for all. One day the country will know, King said, “that when these disinherited children of God sat down at lunch counters they were in reality standing up for the best in the American dream and the most sacred values in our Judeo-Christian heritage.”

If you are someone enduring struggles or suffering, I pray The Electric Gospel blog can become a source of encouragement to you. Fill out the “Contact Us” form if there’s a specific concern on your heart that might be addressed here.

If you know someone in need of spiritual encouragement, by all means, reach out, speak out, help out. Let that person know they have a friend on their side and by their side. Don’t let anyone continue to be starved of needed praise and support in a world full of criticism and judgment. We are called to be there for one another. As the proverb reminds us: “Two are better than one …. If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up” (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10).

Dear God, help us to help one another and lift each other up, in Jesus’ name.

———

Jan

2020

God came to a world in need

Originally posted on The Electric Gospel on December 29, 2019.

God came to a world which needed him

by David Sellnow

It was a time when international power dwarfed the day to day lives of everyday people. The world managed to avoid an all-engrossing global war; there was a general peace, of a sort. But that peace was maintained only by fear of what giant military might could do. Meanwhile, outbreaks of violence and suppression of revolution regularly dotted the map.

It was a time when political rulers made promises to appeal to the masses, while at the same time doing what was most advantageous for maintaining their own rank and position. The most brutal leaders would go as far as using imprisonment or death to eliminate threats to their power.

It was a time when a fraction of the world’s population controlled the bulk of the worlds’ wealth, and the poor and working classes struggled to maintain their existence.

It was a time when women were dominated by men and had to navigate societal institutions in which men held sway, and when dominant peoples and groups subjugated minority populations and disadvantaged groups.

It was a time when differing religious and philosophical systems competed for people’s loyalties. Some beliefs were accepted in society; others were ostracized. Persons could be persecuted for following beliefs that went against accepted norms, and attacks by one religious group on another were not uncommon.

It was the world of the Roman Empire at the beginning of the Common Era. Augustus ruled as Caesar, maintaining the Roman peace by the force of Roman armies. Augustus famously would bemoan the loss of some of his legions in battle vs. Germanic tribes in the Teutoberg Forest, but in most places, Rome ruled with an iron fist. They also granted leeway to local rulers that served their purposes, such as Herod in the province of Judea. Herod was the kind of man willing to slaughter even babies in order to protect his own position (cf. Matthew chapter 2). In the Roman world in those days, the top 1½% of the population controlled 20% of all existing wealth, according to Walter Schiedel and Steven Friesen, writing in The Journal of Roman Studies (Volume 99, November 2009). The majority of individuals eked out a living, and as many as one in five persons across the empire were held in slavery (Ancient History Encyclopedia). Religions and philosophies varied across the empire, while at the same time a cult of religious reverence for the emperor himself was beginning to take shape.

It was into this sort of world that God intervened with his incarnational presence. Jesus was born, God in the flesh, as God’s response to all that was (and is) wrong with the world. In response to brute power, God displays his power in love through the gift of Christ. In response to an economy of inequality, God establishes mercy and charity as the way for persons to interact with one another. In response to religious division and confusion and worship of persons and things of this world, God offers a Savior who answers all persons’ religious hopes.

The descriptions at the beginning of this message about what the world was like in those days may well have reminded you of what the world is like in our time today. That’s not surprising. “There is nothing new under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 1:9). The good news is that the Savior, Jesus Christ—who entered our world in those days when “Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world” (Luke 2:1) and when Herod ordered the death of all baby boys in Bethlehem because it was said the King of the Jews had been born there (Matthew 2:2-8, 16)—Jesus remains God’s gift to the world today and always.

It is not with perishable things such as silver or gold (or any material things) that we are redeemed from the empty way of life that is otherwise common to the human race. Our redemption is in Christ, who was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for our sake. Through him we believe in God, and so our faith and hope are in God (1 Peter 1:18-21).

Jan

2020

Faith cries out

Originally posted on the Electric Gospel on November 10, 2019.

Faith cries out

by David Sellnow

What happens inside your soul when crisis or disaster strikes your life? How do you feel? What do you say? Let me share with you words of pain from someone whose faith was put to the test by devastating losses. When life hurts, have you ever screamed thoughts like this?

“Why didn’t I die at birth, my first breath out of the womb my last? … I could be resting in peace right now, asleep forever, feeling no pain.”
“I hate this life! Who needs any more of this?”
“God, how does this fit into what you once called ‘good’? … Can’t you let up, and let me smile just once …before I’m nailed into my coffin, sealed in the ground, and banished for good to the land of the dead?”
“Please, God … address me directly so I can answer you, or let me speak and then you answer me. How many sins have been charged against me? Show me the list—how bad is it? Why do you stay hidden and silent? Why treat me like I’m your enemy?”
“My spirit is broken, my days used up. … I can hardly see from crying so much. … My life’s about over. All my plans are smashed, all my hopes are snuffed out.”
“Why do the wicked have it so good, live to a ripe old age and get rich? … Their homes are peaceful and free from fear; they never experience God’s disciplining rod.”
“God has no right to treat me like this—it isn’t fair! If I knew where on earth to find him, I’d go straight to him. [But wherever I go, he’s not there.]”
“People are dying right and left, groaning in torment. The wretched cry out for help, and God does nothing, acts like nothing’s wrong!”
“I shout for help, God, and get nothing, no answer! I stand to face you in protest, God, and you give me a blank stare! … What did I do to deserve this? … Haven’t I wept for those who live a hard life, been heartsick over the lot of the poor? But where did it get me? I expected good but evil showed up. I looked for light but darkness fell. My stomach’s in a constant churning, never settles down. Each day confronts me with more suffering. I walk under a black cloud. The sun is gone.”

Have you ever had thoughts like that in the midst of trouble? If you have, does that mean you aren’t a good Christian? If you scream at God when you feel like God has disappeared from your world, have you failed the test of faith? Should you be more like Job, famous for his faith when afflicted with suffering? He lost his family (his adult children were killed). He lost his wealth. He lost his health. And yet he spoke with rock-solid conviction. Job’s famous words were written down and inscribed in a book forever: “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:25-27 NRSV).

Perhaps you are more like Job than you realize. All of the words I quoted to you at first — words of complaint, of accusation against God, of desperation and wanting to be dead — those all were words of Job. (Bible quotations were from The Message, copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Referenced verses – Job 3:11,13; 7:16; 10:3,20-22; 13:20-24; 17:1,7,11; 21:7,9; 23:2-3,8-9; 24:11-12; 30:20-28.)

Job’s words of resurrection confidence are surrounded in Scripture by many words of grief and doubt and heartache. People speak of “the patience of Job” — and yes, the patience of a faithful heart remained alive in Job. But that patience of faith existed in the midst of the frayed nerves and tortured soul of a life under horrible strain. Job’s wife is often criticized for telling her husband to “curse God and die” (Job 2:9) when everything fell apart for them. But I’m sympathetic toward Job’s wife. She was a mother who lost her children and could not be comforted. Her heart was overwhelmed with pain. And Job, too, struggled with that pain. Job wrestled with God in his heart, and went back and forth in his thoughts. The same person who expressed all the anger and hurt I shared with you a few moments ago also said:

“Even if God killed me, I’d keep on hoping.” (Job 13:15 The Message)
“All through these difficult days I keep hoping, waiting for the final change—for resurrection!” (Job 14:14 The Message)
“Where then does wisdom come from? And where is the place of understanding? … God understands the way to it, and he knows its place. … Truly, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding.” (Job 28:20,23,28 NRSV)

Isn’t that the way that faith is in our lives? We go back and forth in our thoughts, between hurt and hope. We cry out to the Lord, “I believe; help my unbelief!” (Mark 9:24) If you read the Psalms, you’ll hear words of joy and praise as well as words of anguish and questioning. If you listen to Jesus himself, hanging on the cross, you’ll hear him scream, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) as well as, “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46 NRSV). You’ve likely seen this same thing in the lives of Christians you have known, or in your own hearts as God’s people fighting the good fight of faith. I’ve sat with a woman outside the intensive care unit, where her husband was going through organ failure after diabetes had done decades worth of damage to his body. I’ve sat with the family of an Air Force colonel who died in a tragic plane crash — not in battle, but while assigned to supervise younger pilots practicing for an air show. Things happen that seem senseless, merciless, unfair, intolerable. We cry out in distress and anguish, and at the same time call out to God in hope. When God seems to have abandoned us, that’s when we cling most urgently to his promise that he never will leave us, never will forsake us (Deuteronomy 31:6, Hebrews 13:5).

Martin Luther spoke often about how God reveals himself to us in hidden ways, in the midst of pain and suffering and the cross. We tend to want God to show himself by big and bold and obvious blessings happening in our lives. But more often, God’s deepest work on our hearts happens through difficult things we don’t want to endure. In his Heidelberg theses (which he composed when under pressure to defend his teachings), Martin Luther said this:

“Now it is not sufficient for anyone and does no good to recognize God in his glory and majesty, unless he recognizes him in the humility and shame of the cross. Thus God destroys the wisdom of the wise, as Isaiah 45:15 says, ‘Truly, you are a God who hides himself.’”

God’s greatest work in this world was accomplished when God seemed to be absent from the scene, when Jesus was hanging on a cross, dying in shame, with people shouting obscenities at him. That’s not where people thought they’d find God. Yet that was how God had chosen to show himself and to save the world, through Jesus’ suffering. And in our own lives too, we are drawn closer to God, made more dependent on God, when facing life’s agonies and, ultimately, death. So when the difficult days come, yes, we will cry, we will scream, we will hurt. But we also will trust God is working in his own mysterious ways to draw us closer to himself and to draw us on in the direction of heaven. Because ultimately, “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1 NRSV).

The fact that we have faith doesn’t make us immune to hurt. Sometimes we forget that. I’ve known some Christians who’ve undergone a great loss or catastrophe, and they paste on a smile because they think a Christian should never be sad. They don’t allow themselves to grieve because they think grieving would mean they weren’t expressing hope. They may shed a tear at the funeral, but the day after they expect themselves to be putting all the sadness behind them. That’s an artificial understanding of our Christian hope. We don’t pretend we aren’t hurting. We acknowledge the full reality of pain and suffering, of sin and death, of the grave and loss. And at the same time, we cling to hope in the power of the resurrection. Think of Jesus, who broke down in tears when his friend Lazarus died – even while he knew he was going to raise Lazarus back out of his grave. Jesus felt death’s pain even when he had the power to overturn death. We need not gloss over the ugliness and bitterness of awful things that happen to us in this world. In the midst of that ugliness, we still seek God’s face (Psalm 105:4) and believe in his mercy.

When you’re facing loss, hardship, heartache, tragedy, it’s normal for you to cry out in pain. The great patriarch Job cried out again and again, begging God for answers. God remained silent for a time, but he did hear Job and he did finally answer him. And God hears you when you cry too. God is helping you even when you have a hard time feeling his support. He reminds you of his promises. His Spirit helps you hang on and have hope. Maybe you don’t have the patience of Job. Then again, even Job didn’t have the patience of Job! But all of us, as God’s people, will join with Job in confessing our faith. We say:

“I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, and not another” (Job 19:25-27 NRSV).

That is our confidence, our cry of faith, even when this life is so often so full of so much pain. We cry with hurt, but we also cry with hope. How our hearts yearn within us!

Jan

2020

Held together by our work

Originally published on the Electric Gospel on September 24, 2019.

Held together by our work

by David Sellnow

Earlier this month, over the Labor Day weekend, I enjoyed some time away from work. In doing so, I was mindful of the work done by others that made my holiday possible. Mechanics had oiled and lubricated my vehicle. Road crews had built and maintained the highways that I traveled. Police patrolled and kept roadways safe. Convenience store clerks made the journey more convenient. Hotel staff members provided a clean, comfortable place to spend the night. Cooks and servers put delicious meals on the table in front of me.

That brief travelogue represents just a small part of our economy – our interwoven fabric of persons working for and with one another cooperatively. We typically think of the term “economy” in purely monetary terms. The word, however, comes from ancient roots meaning “management of the household.” Our shared economy is not merely money changing hands and profit being made. We live together in an arrangement, in a society, in a large “household” as a human family. And in that interdependent arrangement, each worker is valuable and every job is important.

The Bible describes the church as a body of adjoined parts, all needing each other (1 Corinthians 12:12-17). Something similar could be said of our relationships in human society as a whole. Every member of society has a role of service and importance on behalf of others. If the supposedly least or lowest jobs aren’t being performed, everybody would feel it and be hurt by it. Imagine your next road trip with no gas stations open for business. Or imagine your neighborhood with no garbage collection week after week. The most basic of jobs are, in many ways, the most essential for keeping society functioning.

A money-minded economy tends to elevate and virtually worship those at the top of the money pile—whose wealth may stem from inheritance or investments more than from income from work. But it is work itself—laboring to meet the needs of others—that truly keeps the human household well-ordered as an “economy.” Work is dignified and meaningful, a gift of God for us in our lives on earth. From the beginning, God gave us work to do as managers of the created world. And God describes work—all persons’ work—as noble and worthwhile. “There is nothing better than that all should enjoy their work, for that is their lot” (Ecclesiastes 3:22 NRSV).

Say a prayer of thanks for all the work that others do which benefits you. And offer thanks, too, for any job that you have—whatever that job may be. “Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might” (Ecclesiastes 9:10 NIV). Every job is a blessing and an opportunity. And each person’s work is vital to the life of well-being of one another. We are held together by the many forms of work that people do. We rely on one another and live together as a community.

Jan

2020

No room for racism among God’s people

Originally published on the Electric Gospel on August 6, 2019.

No room for racism among God’s people

by David Sellnow

Last week, an old recording was revealed. Ronald Reagan (then the governor of California) described people in African nations as “monkeys” and added: “Damn them—they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” We might want to dismiss such statements as outdated ideas from decades ago, but racial and ethnic slurs are still heard in our cultural climate today. And now there’s more than a war of words. Ugly violence and murder has occurred. Over the weekend, a young man posted a hateful manifesto online, complaining of a “Hispanic invasion of Texas.” He then went to a Walmart in El Paso, where he killed twenty-two people and wounded many more.

As people who live by God’s grace and under his direction, our attitudes are guided by his Word. This seems a fitting time to review Bible lessons on race relations—on how we relate to all of our fellow human beings.

Episode one: “Miriam and Aaron spoke against Moses because of the Cushite woman whom he had married; for he had married a Cushite woman” (Numbers 12:1). “Cushite” means Ethiopian. Miriam instigated the animosity against this woman from a different ethnic background. Miriam’s prejudice did not please the Lord. In response, the Lord afflicted Miriam with a visible and painful leprosy for a period of seven days. That was a real case of being “unclean” or unhealthy. Skin color differences are not problems or impurities.

Episode two: A proud religious man asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus responded with a parable: A Jewish traveler was robbed and beaten and left half-dead by the side of the road. Two prominent Jewish men came along … and each of them walked by without helping the man. Then a Samaritan man came along, and “he was moved with compassion” (Luke 10:33). He helped the man, bandaged his wounds, and took him to a place where he could recuperate. Jesus asked, “Which of these three do you think seemed to be a neighbor to him who fell among the robbers?” (Luke 10:36). The proud teacher of Jewish law had to admit it was the man who showed mercy. Bear in mind, Jews of that era typically despised the people across the border, the Samaritans. Jesus’ story illustrated that true human compassion knows no boundaries.

Episodes three and four: Christ’s apostle Peter was called to the home of an Italian Regiment commander. Prior to the request from the Roman centurion, Peter had been given a vision to show him that “God doesn’t show favoritism” (Acts 10:34). God accepts people from every nation. And yet, on a later occasion, Peter didn’t show that same attitude. He didn’t stand up to Jewish purists in a congregation where there were many Gentile members. The apostle Paul challenged what was going on and called it hypocrisy to favor one group over another in the church (cf. Galatians 2:11-14).

Episode five: The scene opens in heaven, and we see the countless multitude of the family of God. Where did they come from? “Out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages” (Revelation 7:9). There is no racial tension or discrimination in heaven.

There is also no room for racism in a godly heart on this earth. There is no room for disdain toward others, of any race or culture. If someone says, “’I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar. For he who doesn’t love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen” (1 John 4:20)? Our brothers, our sisters, our neighbors, our friends are the other members of our common human family.

The children’s song written by Rev. Clarence Herbert Woolston (1856–1927) states the simple truth:

Jesus loves the little children,
All the children of the world.
Red and yellow, black and white,
They are precious in his sight,
Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Jan

2020

Jesus turns and looks at us

Originally published on the Electric Gospel on April 14, 2019.

Luke 22:54-62:

He denied Jesus, saying, “Woman, I don’t know him.” They seized him [Jesus], and led him away, and brought him into the high priest’s house. But Peter followed from a distance. When they had kindled a fire in the middle of the courtyard, and had sat down together, Peter sat among them. A certain servant girl saw him as he sat in the light, and looking intently at him, said, “This man also was with him.”

After a little while someone else saw him, and said, “You also are one of them!”

But Peter answered, “Man, I am not!”

After about one hour passed, another confidently affirmed, saying, “Truly this man also was with him, for he is a Galilean!”

But Peter said, “Man, I don’t know what you are talking about!” Immediately, while he was still speaking, a rooster crowed. The Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the Lord’s word, how he said to him, “Before the rooster crows you will deny me three times.” He went out, and wept bitterly.

Jesus turns and looks at us

by David Sellnow

That look of Jesus when Peter denied him – what did that look look like? Luke only tells us that Jesus looked at Peter, he doesn’t specify how he looked at him. But from what has been revealed to us about Jesus, we can know something about that look.

It could not have been a look of shock or outrage. Jesus had known exactly what Peter was going to do that night. He had told Peter in advance about how he would deny his Lord three times. Everything was playing out just as Jesus had said it would go. So Jesus was not taken aback by what Peter was doing. His look at Peter was a reminder. His eyes said what he had already told Peter in words earlier that night: “You will deny me three times.” Jesus didn’t have to say anything further. Peter knew Jesus had spoken the truth. Peter was reminded that Jesus is the Truth.

It could not have been a look of spite or hatred. Jesus was not doing what he was doing because he hated Peter or anyone involved in what was happening. Jesus came into this world because God so loved the world. Jesus “loved his own who were in the world; he loved them to the end” (John 13:1). And he demonstrated his love for us in that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). While Peter was sinning against him, denying him with curses, Jesus still loved Peter and was reaching out to him. When Jesus looked at Peter, it could not have been a look of indignation.

It could not have been a look of rejection or condemnation. “For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him” (John 3:17). And specifically toward Peter, Jesus had shown his constant love and care. Earlier that night, before telling Peter the prophecy about how he would fall into denial, Jesus had said to him: “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has asked to have all of you, that he might sift you as wheat, but I have prayed for you, that your faith wouldn’t fail. You, when you have turned again, establish your brothers” (Luke 22:31-32). Jesus did not desire to condemn Peter. His overriding concern was to preserve Peter, to save him. Even if we are faithless in our actions, Jesus “remains faithful; for he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13). So says the promise of Scripture. And Jesus made good on that promise to Peter. Satan sifted him like wheat, that’s for sure. But Jesus held on to Peter. With just one look, through the doorway, out into the dim light of the outer court, Jesus grabbed hold of Peter’s eyes and his heart. And Peter ran out and wept bitterly. He was ashamed. He was acutely aware of his failure of faith. But he had hope. He had a Savior who had told him he was going to fail but that he would be brought back. He had a Savior who led him to hear the rooster’s crow as a warning. He had a Savior who in the darkest moment looked at his friend with a look that showed that he knew Peter, that he loved Peter, that he was seeking Peter’s soul.

Like Peter, we also have our failures, our cowardice, our weakness of faith. But as with Peter, our Lord does not look at us with outrage or hatred or condemnation. The look in Jesus’ eyes is the look of the eternal God who stooped down from heaven to stand trial in our place, the look of someone who was willing to suffer unimaginable pain and horror for our sake, the look of a Savior who was willing to give himself up completely in order to win us back to our Father in heaven. We have been turned back to Jesus by his redeeming look at us, again and again. So with renewed strength, we can strengthen our brothers and sisters.

All Bible quotations from the World English Bible (WEB).

Jan

2020

Still Standing

Originally published on the Electric Gospel on March 31, 2019.

Still standing

by David Sellnow

***************

Don’t you know I’m still standing better than I ever did
Looking like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid
… I’m still standing – yeah yeah yeah

“I’m Still Standing” – Elton John / Bernie Taupin

Too Low for Zero (1983) – Rocket Record Company (UK) / Geffen Records (USA)

***************

It’s customary to begin a devotional thought with verses from the Bible. So I suppose starting with a Bernie Taupin lyric from an Elton John song is rather unconventional. But the chorus of that song has been running through my head a lot lately. The theme started a couple weeks ago. As I was exiting the post office, I held the door for an older gentleman, somewhat hobbled, who was on his way in. “Have a good day,” I said to him.

“I always have a good day – I’m still standing up!” he replied, with a big, broad smile.

Not many days later, a sermon I heard mentioned the same sentiment. “I’m up and I’m moving – I’m okay!” The pastor had heard that thought expressed by a person of faith during life’s hard times. It is the way that faith looks at life, constantly trusting a God whose everlasting arms are underneath us, holding us up (cf. Deuteronomy 33:27).

To be honest, though, thoughts of faith like that are unnatural for us. We tend to have in mind an ideal image of life, of what we want life to be. More accurately, we concoct an idol of how we expect life should be. We worship that idol; we yearn for that ideal. But even a non-biblical thinker such as Plato, the Greek philosopher, recognized the flaw in such thinking. There is no “ideal” in the earthly realm. Life in this world is imperfect, mortal, characterized by struggle. Plato envisioned that perfect things could exist only in a higher realm. He wasn’t wrong. Through the testimony of Scripture, we know that “the whole world lies in the power of the evil one” (1 John 5:19). But we also know “that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding, that we know him who is true, and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life” (1 John 5:20). And the true God calls upon us to keep ourselves from idols (1 John 5:21) – idols such as imagining that life on this earth should always be full of easiness for us.

The truth is that “through many afflictions we must enter into God’s Kingdom” (Acts 14:22).

The truth is that if we’re so much as standing up, it is because the Lord has given us the strength to be on our feet. It is he who brings us up out of the pit, out of the miry clay. He sets our feet on a rock and gives us a firm place to stand (cf. Psalm 40:2).

So our confession of faith will always be this: “Some trust in chariots, and some in horses, but we trust the name of Yahweh our God. They are bowed down and fallen, but we rise up, and stand upright” (Psalm 20:7-8).

If you’re still standing—or even if you’re flat on your back, but still partaking in life—rejoice and be glad in that day. As Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase of Ecclesiastes reminds us: “Relish life … each and every day of your precarious life. Each day is God’s gift. It’s all you get in exchange for the hard work of staying alive” (Ecclesiastes 9:7-9, The Message). Our God took away the sin of the world in a single day by giving his One and Only, Jesus Christ, into death for us. And then Christ stood up again after giving himself over to death. Christ’s victorious standing up again (resurrection) gives us reason to stay standing even in life’s darkest days … and gives us promise that even after we have been laid low, we will stand with our Lord again in eternity.

I’m still standing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bible quotations from World English Bible (WEB) except where indicated.

We Aim to Proclaim

Encourage one another

God came to a world which needed him

Faith cries out

Held together by our work

No room for racism among God’s people

Jesus turns and looks at us

Still standing

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