Back to School

As a parent, this time of year is always fraught with the thoughts of “Back to School.” With the start of a new school year, our world of daily routines suddenly comes crashing to a halt, while a whole new schedule and timetable emerges. I know we ought to prepare for it, but sadly, in our house, it just kind of arrives in ‘shock and awe.’

In my devotional time this week, I was reading and meditating on a few of the Psalms. Psalm 78 caught my attention and I reflected upon it for awhile (with 72 verses, there is a lot to reflect upon!). The author of this psalm is known as a “teacher,” and he or she is taking Israel “back to school.” This psalm is known as one of the “historical psalms” in scholarly circles. These psalms recount in narrative form deeds of God in the history of the people. The people are to hear the story or “parable” (v. 2) and then contemplate the lessons that should apply to their lives today. As Biblical scholar, James Mays, comments, “Each recital of these psalms is composed to elicit a lesson from the tradition… they are not simply concerned with the past, but concerned with the lessons of the past and their bearing upon the present and future.”

The psalm retells the stories of Israel’s journey from Egypt through the wilderness and into the promised land. God did mighty deeds and nurtured and protected the people. The problem, however, was that the people relished the blessings and basked in their benefits, but then began to forget the “Author of the blessings.” God blessed the people so that they might be a blessing to others, and become ambassadors or teachers themselves, so that others would come to know and lean on the Lord. Instead, the people “leaned on the blessings of God” thank you very much, and began to live as though they had earned them or deserved them.

Hear these words: “The Lord commanded our ancestors to teach to their children; that the next generation might know… the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep his commandments; and that they should not be like their ancestors, a stubborn and rebellious generation… whose heart was not steadfast, whose spirit was not faithful to the Lord” (vv. 5-8). Scholars say that this psalm continues to underscore the call of the people of God to “remember and tell… remember and tell… remember and tell…” Instead, Israel had chosen to “receive and keep.”

In some ways, this psalm reminds us that we are all called to continually go “back to school,” to learn and equip ourselves with a great story, God’s Story, to remember and tell to others. Jesus said something similar on the Mount of Olives after the resurrection when he gave the Great Commission to his disciples (that word meaning literally “students” or “apprentices”). They were to go and make other “disciples / students / apprentices” by “teaching them everything that I have taught you” (Matthew 28:19-20).

Therefore, I hope you will go “back to school” or “stay in school” with us in worship and study this fall. That way we can all be great “apprentice-teachers” to a world full of prospective students!

We Gather Together

One of the stories from scripture that I have always been intrigued by is the period of “exile” ofIsrael that you can find referred to in Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Ezra, Nehemiah and others. In short, after Babylon destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BCE, it was their policy of imperialism to deport citizens of that country into foreign lands. By so doing, Babylon felt that their occupied countries would be more manageable and less susceptible to uprising or insurrection. The incredible pain that this deportation and displacement caused, has led many scholars to stand amazed that the religion of Judaism and the worship of Yahweh even survived this long exile! When Persiaeventually conquers Babylon, the people of Israel in some places of exile are permitted to return to their land.

I have long felt that there is much for us to learn from this time of exile in our own contemporary church. We have so many people and people-groups who are so cut off and estranged from God, that the case could be made that millions are living in exile today. To witness European countries such as Great Britain and France who have roughly 7% of their nation in church is astounding. InAmerica, estimates range from 28-33%. I believe that people are living in exile here in our own country and community… cut off from the Lord of Life, and wrapped up and consumed in a world of issues, circumstances and catastrophes. Sadly, they have no faith basis nor hope from which to make any sense of it all. It is no wonder that anxiety, depression, stress, grief and suicidal despair are at all time highs.

In exile, Lamentations cries out, “Gone is my glory, and all that I had hoped for from the Lord” (Lam. 3:18). The world as we have known it seems to have disappeared. As one scholar observes, “all the conventional, homegrown props of established society are now largely gone.Old institutions scarcely perform their tasks anymore, and that reality of loss generates enormous anxiety among us.” That reality leads this scholar to assert that the Church has now become “God’s agent for gathering exiles.”[1]

The end of Isaiah depicts a real clash in this ministry moment when exilic Jews return fromBabylon to Jerusalem and encounter communities formed by those “left behind.” One scholar notes that the prevailing issue suddenly becomes “who is in and who must be excluded?”Compounding things was the existence of what historians refer to as “urban elites” among the body who “monopolized power… and thereby had the capacity to define the community and its constituents.” Into this quagmire, the LORD speaks: “Thus says the Lord God, who gathersthe outcasts… I will gather others to them besides those already gathered” (Is. 56:8). The great Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggemann, states that this verse depicts a “God who gathers.” It depicts that “some are already gathered home that some are not yet gathered home; and that all will, by the mercy of God, be gathered home.”

One need simply listen to Jesus teaching the religious leaders of his day in the 15^th chapter of Luke, saying that God is like a restless shepherd unable to sleep at night because he must go and pursue the one sheep out of the hundred that has strayed off… that God is like an agitated woman who combs through all the house for the one lost coin… that God is like a heartbroken father scanning the horizon yearning for the son who has run off, to come home. God is truly a God who “gathers!”

At the end of August through the end of October, we are launching a media campaign for “exiles.” You will see advertisements on TV that satires the perception of a church that asks that terrible exilic question, “Who gets in and who is excluded?” Our message is that GarfieldMemorial Church is a place of grace that does not exclude, but seeks to join in God’s work of gathering. There will be a trailer highlighting our Odyssey service as Cleveland needs to visually see that this new offering exists in a local church. These ads will depict a body of believers who graciously and lovingly receive “exiles,” as we know that on any given day, we ourselves are exiles.

Walter Brueggemann, Mandate to Difference: An Invitation to the Contemporary Church (Louisville: John Knox Press, 2007), 51 {Later references to Brueggemann in this article, are also found here}.

Rock...and Roll

“Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the LORD. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham, your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many” (Isaiah 51:1-2)

I have always been a nutty history buff. A great historian once stated “Remembering our history does not mean we won’t make the same mistakes. Forgetting our history, however, assures that we will make the same mistakes.” God is a God of moving forward; yet, once in awhile God calls on the people to “remember” from whence they came. God invites us to look over our shoulder and remember our spiritual ancestors and the legacy of faith that they left behind. The writer of Hebrews does a wonderful roll call of faith in the eleventh chapter and then encourages us to “lift our drooping hands and strengthen our weak knees” (Heb. 12:12). It is as if the Holy Spirit is saying, “When you look back upon these spiritual giants, take courage and get back in the race of faith!”

A week ago, our worship leader Nancy Snell uncovered a precious document in the Garfield Memorial church safe. (I will let you ask her what she was doing digging around in there :). It was the minutes of a Post-Depression Conference held in September of 1929, which recorded a pivotal moment in the life of this church. The 96th session of the Pittsburgh Conference of the Methodist Protestant Church (which was our home conference at the time...And yes, I can't believe it was Pittsburgh either!)… records that “Orange Church” was in dire straights. At the time, the church had dwindled down to 30 or 40 “nominal members” with an active constituency of 8! However, at this conference a momentous happening was being recorded. Here are the exact words from their official minutes: “Orange Church, which has been without a pastor for several years and had become almost extinct, has through the faithfulness of the few left to ‘carry on’ suddenly come to a new day” (Sept. 4, 1929).

What had occurred is that a developer (the Van Swergan Company) had undertaken an extensive real estate development in the area, and a new county road was being completed “passing so close to the church property that the county commissioners were about to condemn it” (with only 8 folks in attendance, who could blame them?). Yet, these faithful few caught a vision. If a road was coming through, that meant that there would be people travelling on that road. What if they cut a deal with the developer and moved the church off to the side of where the road would be? Thus, they worked out a deal with enough money to move the facility and to hire a new pastor. The minutes of the conference record that the Methodist Church suddenly had a “splendid new plant, entirely free from debt, with which to begin anew.” Apparently there was another Methodist Church at Orange Center (at Kinsman and SOM Center Roads) that chose to give up the ghost and the minutes say was “sold for a small amount and did disappear in this way.” Our spiritual ancestors chose the fight of faith, however, even if that meant moving out of the way (literally!) and making way for human traffic.

What a legacy! When I read this, I literally cried. With all of our Strategic Mapping, launching of new services and ministries, etc… we are only marching to the beat of these faithful drummers. People who saw the gospel as something greater than themselves, and were ready and willing to do and give “whatever it takes” to see that gospel shared! That’s a history that I am proud to be sharing in, and a heritage that should weigh heavy on all of our shoulders. Let’s remember that “rock from which we were hewn,” and keep it rolling!