The whole Israelite community set out from the Desert of Sin, traveling from place to place as the LORD commanded. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. So they quarreled with Moses and said, "Give us water to drink." Moses replied, "Why do you quarrel with me? Why do you put the LORD to the test?" But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?" Then Moses cried out to the LORD, "What am I to do with these people? They are almost ready to stone me." The LORD answered Moses, "Walk on ahead of the people. Take with you some of the elders of Israel and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. I will stand there before you by the rock at Horeb. Strike the rock, and water will come out of it for the people to drink." So Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. – Exodus 17:1-6
How could people like the Israelites fall prey to ordinary concerns like being thirsty? They have seen God’s power displayed in Egypt – boils, frogs, gnats, the angel of death. They have left their bondage and headed to a Promised Land, only to be pursued to shores … where they saw the sea open for them to pass and then close on their enemies. They have come to a place, called Marah, where the water was too bitter to drink; there they saw Moses – at God’s direction – throw an ordinary piece of wood into the water, and miraculously the water became sweet and drinkable. Then, they saw God provide quail and manna for their daily food.
The Hebrews have short memories. They grumbled about their taskmasters in Egypt, and God delivered them. They grumbled when they reached the shores of the Red Sea, and God delivered them. They grumbled from thirst in Marah and from hunger in the Desert. Their past deliverances were not enough to convince them that the current drudgery would not do them in. Their present struggle, their ordinary life as wanderers through wilderness guided by God’s promise, seemed overwhelming. I do not mean to suggest that this is a minor problem – scholars agree that there may have been more than two million Israelites in the desert, so food and water were a real issue. But, the Hebrews’ experience has been that God is more overwhelming. Yet, they grumble.
Now, they thirst again. The recent events at Marah – the last time they were thirsty – apparently mean nothing to these people. They have come to a campground that does not have a nearby spring, and they once again sink to the lowest common denominator. Their life becomes about the most ordinary, the most mundane: They are thirsty. "Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?" This time, there is not wood to throw in the bitter pool; instead, there is the staff of Moses to strike an ordinary rock. And the water pours out. An extraordinary God works to solve an ordinary problem.
You may not be familiar with the traditional church calendar, but many churches, including mine, follow it, even if we do not use all the terminology. The time between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday, and again between Pentecost and Advent, has a particular name in the traditions of the church. Do you know what it is? It is Ordinary Time.
You can see why we Protestants don’t use that term much. What could be more boring than “Ordinary Time?” What could possibly be less important, less sexy, less enthralling then forty-two weeks of “Ordinary Time?”
The famous French monk Brother Lawrence embraced his ordinary times. His work “The Practice of the Presence of God” grows out of years of working in a monastery kitchen until he was finally promoted all the way up to fixing sandals. The ordinary became, for Brother Lawrence, the time and place best to meet God. He wrote:
The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer. In the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Supper.
I have written before (here and here) about how we experience the ordinary. We can see it as the “dog days” or perceive it as the silence of God. The doldrums strike and the temptation is to say, “I am thirsty. Why didn’t you just leave me back in Egypt?”
It is an entirely natural phenomenon. Perhaps the church fathers knew what they were doing when they built some Ordinary Time into the calendar.
So, then, how should we approach Ordinary Time? If the dog days are to be expected … if the silence of God is not a reason to pull the alarm … if the doldrums are natural, then how should we live our lives?
The scripture with which I started this blog is the story of Meribah, of the place where God made water come from the rock. I cannot think of a better illustration of our struggles with Ordinary Time than a people wandering in wilderness who are thirsty. They grumble. They forget what God has done. These chosen people have had a front row seat for God’s recent history, from plagues to Passover to the parting of the sea; but it all seems to have vanished from their collective memory. All they know is that their lives in slavery look a lot better in glorified retrospect than this current situation appears going forward.
And that brings me back to the question: How should we live our lives in Ordinary Time?
One of the really interesting reads of the last few years is The Shack. I remember first hearing about this novel in which God says this:
Many folks try to grasp some sense of who I am by taking the best version of themselves, projecting that to the nth degree, factoring in all the goodness they can perceive, which often isn't much, and then call that 'God'. And while it may seem like a noble effort, the truth is that it falls pitifully short of who I really am. I'm not merely the best version of you that you can think of. I am far more than that, above and beyond all that you can ask or think.
That is critical to our understanding of what a daily relationship with God provides us. Paul tells us God can do more than we can imagine. The presence of Jesus transforms the ordinary to the extraordinary. He is what we need. God tells us to take the rod He has given us and strike the rock. And behold, water comes out.
I was teaching a Sunday School lesson on the great 35th chapter of Isaiah, where the prophet interrupts his oracles of doom and exile to talk about the joyous expectations of the redeemed. Isaiah tells us that the children of God will have a new sense of the glory of God as though the desert were blooming. He tells us that the coming of the Lord brings strength to our feeble knees. Then follows the image of healing, of blind eyes seeing and mute tongues singing.
As I taught, one of the women in my class made a brilliant observation – this scripture is about transformation. It is not just that God helps us along a little bit but rather that God changes us, that what was once a desert is now a garden, that what was once feeble is now mighty, what was once lame is now nimble. She said this, “This is all about something new, where it was not there before.”
That is exactly right. It is what new mercies every morning are all about. I want you to see to how Isaiah puts it:
The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom. Like the crocus, it will burst into bloom; it will rejoice greatly and shout for joy. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon; they will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God. Strengthen the feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you." Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then will the lame leap like a deer and the mute tongue shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the wilderness and streams in the desert. - Isaiah 35:1-6
You may know the following words of Fanny J. Crosby form the 19th century hymn or the 21st century Chris Tomlin version:
All the way my savior leads me, what have I to ask beside? Can I doubt his tender mercy, who through life has been my guide? … Though my weary steps may falter, and my soul athirst may be, gushing from the rock before me, lo a spring of joy I see.
It is the story of Meribah, of streams in the desert, of water from the rock. It does not just trickle, it gushes. What was not there before is there now. The ordinary has become extraordinary. We are transformed.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
Saul
There is a relatively contemporary piece of choral literature called "Saul," by Norwegian composer Egil Hovland. The text, delivered both by narration and by singing, is taken from the eighth and ninth chapters of the Book of Acts. The story is of pre-conversion Saul, who, after witnessing the murder of Stephen, began "breathing threats and murder against the diciples of the Lord." It follows Saul's story through his persecution of the church up until his fateful meeting with Jesus on the Damascus Road. The piece ends with Jesus's question: "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?"
Our choir director asked me to help the choir understand the context of this piece. When he asked, I eagerly grabbed the folio, anticipating the chance to draw something of great inspiration.
Some of you will remember a radio spot that Paul Harvey presented for years called “The Rest of the Story.” Typically, he would tell an interesting tale about someone, and then, in a grand climax, would reveal the name of the famous person he was describing, finishing by saying, “and now you know the rest of the story.”
This piece, "Saul," is backwards. We already know the rest of the story. We know Paul, writer of thirteen epistles now canonized in our New Testament, leader of three famous missionary journeys, preacher on the Acropolis, the main developer of Christian theology and its principal proselytizer, and ranked by at least some pop authors and pseudo-historians as more influential than even Jesus Christ. But this piece is not concerned with that.
We already know the rest of the story. The Damascus Road story. Whether your pop music tastes run toward “I Saw the Light” or “Blinded by the Light,” you know it. On the way to Damascus, the young Pharisee Saul is confronted with a light, out of which Jesus Himself speaks and changes his name to Paul. Facing accusations and testifying in his own behalf, Paul tells the story himself, concluding, “I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God.” But this piece is not concerned with that.
Yes, I was hoping to find great inspiration. But this piece is not, at first glance, concerned with that either; however, it is profound.
The climactic finish of the song presents the echoing question, the actual words of Christ to Saul on the Damascus Road – “Why are you persecuting me?”
It is a haunting reminder of the question that God asks us all. Before we come to throne of grace, we come to the bench of conviction. Over and over again, we see versions of the same question asked: Adam, where are you? Eve, who told you that you were naked? Cain, where is your brother? Sarah, why did you laugh? Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Elijah, why are you hiding here? Moses, what do you have in your hand? Isaiah, whom shall I send, and who will go for me? Son of man, can these bones live? Peter, why did you doubt? Pharisees, why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? Church at Thyatira, why do you tolerate the woman Jezebel? Disciples, why are you talking about having no bread – do you still not understand? Blind man, what do you want me to do for you?
Saul, why are you persecuting me? Why?
That is the obvious textual analysis of the piece, but this piece is something else. Taking its text directly from scripture, this work is the story of villainy.
We don’t think of Paul as a villain, but we must think of Saul that way. Saul was not merely a half-innocent bystander at the stoning of Deacon Stephen, although that is how scripture introduces him to us. No, Saul was the leader of the attempted destruction of Christianity itself. Ever the good Pharisee, Saul masterminded the task forces of storm troopers whose aim was nothing short of rooting out the nascent church. Going from house to house, Saul dragged women as well men to prison solely for being a follower of the Way. The Bible describes him as “murderous.” Contemporary church historians have called him a terrorist.
And now you know the rest of the story.
As I say, that is not particularly inspirational, so long as you don’t let it get personal. But when it gets personal, there is something to speak to all of us, for there is nothing that any of us knows so well as our own villainy.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is a great play, but the young heroine is wrong when she says she still believes that people are good at heart. Because (at the risk of being too personal)… we are not good. We have gone astray like untamed, stupid sheep. We are, all of us, villains. To spend four or five minutes, as this piece does, focusing on pre-conversion Saul is inspirational if you know your New Testament. If someone like Saul can turn into someone like Paul, what can God have in store for us? If this villain can become the apostle to the Gentiles, the planter of myriad churches, and the one who penned “Rejoice in the Lord always. … And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – yes, even the writer of those words - then there is hope for villains everywhere, for Iago and Sauron, for Shere Khan and Long John Silver, for Moriarty and Grendel’s mother, for Mr. Hyde and the talented Mr. Ripley and the Joker, for Voldemort and Cruella de Vil, for Amin and Pol Pot, for whichever current political candidate you have written off as untenable, for your boss who does not understand and your neighbor who won’t return your hydraulic log splitter, for the play director who refused to cast you child, for the abusive husband and the unloving wife, for you, and for you, and for you, and for me.
And that, thank God, is the rest of the story.
Our choir director asked me to help the choir understand the context of this piece. When he asked, I eagerly grabbed the folio, anticipating the chance to draw something of great inspiration.
Some of you will remember a radio spot that Paul Harvey presented for years called “The Rest of the Story.” Typically, he would tell an interesting tale about someone, and then, in a grand climax, would reveal the name of the famous person he was describing, finishing by saying, “and now you know the rest of the story.”
This piece, "Saul," is backwards. We already know the rest of the story. We know Paul, writer of thirteen epistles now canonized in our New Testament, leader of three famous missionary journeys, preacher on the Acropolis, the main developer of Christian theology and its principal proselytizer, and ranked by at least some pop authors and pseudo-historians as more influential than even Jesus Christ. But this piece is not concerned with that.
We already know the rest of the story. The Damascus Road story. Whether your pop music tastes run toward “I Saw the Light” or “Blinded by the Light,” you know it. On the way to Damascus, the young Pharisee Saul is confronted with a light, out of which Jesus Himself speaks and changes his name to Paul. Facing accusations and testifying in his own behalf, Paul tells the story himself, concluding, “I was not disobedient to the vision from heaven. First to those in Damascus, then to those in Jerusalem, and in all Judea, and to the Gentiles also, I preached that they should repent and turn to God.” But this piece is not concerned with that.
Yes, I was hoping to find great inspiration. But this piece is not, at first glance, concerned with that either; however, it is profound.
The climactic finish of the song presents the echoing question, the actual words of Christ to Saul on the Damascus Road – “Why are you persecuting me?”
It is a haunting reminder of the question that God asks us all. Before we come to throne of grace, we come to the bench of conviction. Over and over again, we see versions of the same question asked: Adam, where are you? Eve, who told you that you were naked? Cain, where is your brother? Sarah, why did you laugh? Job, where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Elijah, why are you hiding here? Moses, what do you have in your hand? Isaiah, whom shall I send, and who will go for me? Son of man, can these bones live? Peter, why did you doubt? Pharisees, why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? Church at Thyatira, why do you tolerate the woman Jezebel? Disciples, why are you talking about having no bread – do you still not understand? Blind man, what do you want me to do for you?
Saul, why are you persecuting me? Why?
That is the obvious textual analysis of the piece, but this piece is something else. Taking its text directly from scripture, this work is the story of villainy.
We don’t think of Paul as a villain, but we must think of Saul that way. Saul was not merely a half-innocent bystander at the stoning of Deacon Stephen, although that is how scripture introduces him to us. No, Saul was the leader of the attempted destruction of Christianity itself. Ever the good Pharisee, Saul masterminded the task forces of storm troopers whose aim was nothing short of rooting out the nascent church. Going from house to house, Saul dragged women as well men to prison solely for being a follower of the Way. The Bible describes him as “murderous.” Contemporary church historians have called him a terrorist.
And now you know the rest of the story.
As I say, that is not particularly inspirational, so long as you don’t let it get personal. But when it gets personal, there is something to speak to all of us, for there is nothing that any of us knows so well as our own villainy.
“The Diary of Anne Frank” is a great play, but the young heroine is wrong when she says she still believes that people are good at heart. Because (at the risk of being too personal)… we are not good. We have gone astray like untamed, stupid sheep. We are, all of us, villains. To spend four or five minutes, as this piece does, focusing on pre-conversion Saul is inspirational if you know your New Testament. If someone like Saul can turn into someone like Paul, what can God have in store for us? If this villain can become the apostle to the Gentiles, the planter of myriad churches, and the one who penned “Rejoice in the Lord always. … And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” – yes, even the writer of those words - then there is hope for villains everywhere, for Iago and Sauron, for Shere Khan and Long John Silver, for Moriarty and Grendel’s mother, for Mr. Hyde and the talented Mr. Ripley and the Joker, for Voldemort and Cruella de Vil, for Amin and Pol Pot, for whichever current political candidate you have written off as untenable, for your boss who does not understand and your neighbor who won’t return your hydraulic log splitter, for the play director who refused to cast you child, for the abusive husband and the unloving wife, for you, and for you, and for you, and for me.
And that, thank God, is the rest of the story.
Saturday, January 14, 2012
Hospital Church
It is a wonderful metaphor - the church as hospital.
Jesus used it, or a version of it, Himself when He responded to those who criticized Him for dining with tax collecters and other "sinners." He said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."
This image is popular in today's church. We preach inclusiveness, welcome, open doors. One of my former churches invested a lot in the slogan "Come as you are." It is a critical message to get the word out that our churches are open to all folks and that nobody has to "clean up their act" before they can come into the sanctuary. Jesus stands with open arms, much as a waiting doctor.
There is a poem that is hot on YouTube and Facebook right now called "Jesus>Religion." Like many commentators I have seen, I like a lot of it and am put off by part of it, primarily by the use of the word "religion" as a synonym for false religion, hypocrisy, and abuse. Of course Jesus is against those things, and of course those things exist; but to assert or imply that all religion is false and abusive and/or that all churches are pharisaical and hypocritical is, despite the (well-meaning) stated intent of the poet, the height of judgmentalism. All religion is not the same, and all churches are not the same. Even churches with some of the problems isolated by the poet are largely good, doing great work, and trying hard to follow Jesus.
While I do not often quote many reformed theologians in this blog, Kevin DeYoung's analysis of the poem (which includes a link to the poem, in case you want to watch the video) is very well-taken, and I recommend it to you. You can find it here.
I want to focus on just one little part of what DeYoung says: the part about hospital church. The poet, Jefferson Bethke, has a line that says this: "Because if grace is water, then the church should be an ocean. It’s not a museum for good people, it’s a hospital for the broken." Pastor DeYoung comments on this line: "[W]e have to remember that the purpose of a hospital is to help sick people get better. I’m sure Bethke would agree with that. But there is no indication in this poem that the grace that forgives is also the grace that transforms."
I think DeYoung is right on, and I think his point is one where many churches fall down. "Come as you are" is the invitation, but if it not coupled with "but don't leave the same way," then the church is not doing its job. Jesus explained the doctor metaphor by immediately shifting to more familiar church words: "I have not come to call the righeous, but sinners." He surely came to sinners not so they could continue the same but instead so they would "go their way and sin no more."
Grace accepts and forgives, but as DeYoung so astutely puts it, grace also transforms. Those who have truly been with Jesus are different, immediately.
Skeptical Thomas said that he would not believe that Christ had risen unless Jesus would agree to jump through some hoops, to allow Thomas to touch the nail holes and put his hand into the wounded side. When Thomas soon saw Jesus, Jesus even offered to let Thomas do that, but those silly rules and cynical requirements melted. The gospel says nothing about Thomas' actually touching Jesus; being in His presence was enough. He saw Jesus, and he responded with those words of the healed: "My Lord and My God."
Jacob became Israel and walked differently. Saul became Paul and lived differently. Grace came to them as they were but did not leave them that way.
Sandy Patty and Larnelle Harris sang, "I've just seen Jesus, and I'll never be the same again."
Church can and must be a hospital, a place where sick people get better. We are all sick, and we all need to get better, for we all fall short of the glory of God.
Let's welcome everyone. Let's open our doors as wide as possible. Let's buy some more billboards that say "Come as you are." But for God's sake, let's let Doctor Jesus work on those who take us up on the invitation. Let's be the nurses and the orderlies and the technicians. Let's help people change, get better, be healed, be transformed.
Let's expect the gospel to be true.
Jesus used it, or a version of it, Himself when He responded to those who criticized Him for dining with tax collecters and other "sinners." He said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick."
This image is popular in today's church. We preach inclusiveness, welcome, open doors. One of my former churches invested a lot in the slogan "Come as you are." It is a critical message to get the word out that our churches are open to all folks and that nobody has to "clean up their act" before they can come into the sanctuary. Jesus stands with open arms, much as a waiting doctor.
There is a poem that is hot on YouTube and Facebook right now called "Jesus>Religion." Like many commentators I have seen, I like a lot of it and am put off by part of it, primarily by the use of the word "religion" as a synonym for false religion, hypocrisy, and abuse. Of course Jesus is against those things, and of course those things exist; but to assert or imply that all religion is false and abusive and/or that all churches are pharisaical and hypocritical is, despite the (well-meaning) stated intent of the poet, the height of judgmentalism. All religion is not the same, and all churches are not the same. Even churches with some of the problems isolated by the poet are largely good, doing great work, and trying hard to follow Jesus.
While I do not often quote many reformed theologians in this blog, Kevin DeYoung's analysis of the poem (which includes a link to the poem, in case you want to watch the video) is very well-taken, and I recommend it to you. You can find it here.
I want to focus on just one little part of what DeYoung says: the part about hospital church. The poet, Jefferson Bethke, has a line that says this: "Because if grace is water, then the church should be an ocean. It’s not a museum for good people, it’s a hospital for the broken." Pastor DeYoung comments on this line: "[W]e have to remember that the purpose of a hospital is to help sick people get better. I’m sure Bethke would agree with that. But there is no indication in this poem that the grace that forgives is also the grace that transforms."
I think DeYoung is right on, and I think his point is one where many churches fall down. "Come as you are" is the invitation, but if it not coupled with "but don't leave the same way," then the church is not doing its job. Jesus explained the doctor metaphor by immediately shifting to more familiar church words: "I have not come to call the righeous, but sinners." He surely came to sinners not so they could continue the same but instead so they would "go their way and sin no more."
Grace accepts and forgives, but as DeYoung so astutely puts it, grace also transforms. Those who have truly been with Jesus are different, immediately.
Skeptical Thomas said that he would not believe that Christ had risen unless Jesus would agree to jump through some hoops, to allow Thomas to touch the nail holes and put his hand into the wounded side. When Thomas soon saw Jesus, Jesus even offered to let Thomas do that, but those silly rules and cynical requirements melted. The gospel says nothing about Thomas' actually touching Jesus; being in His presence was enough. He saw Jesus, and he responded with those words of the healed: "My Lord and My God."
Jacob became Israel and walked differently. Saul became Paul and lived differently. Grace came to them as they were but did not leave them that way.
Sandy Patty and Larnelle Harris sang, "I've just seen Jesus, and I'll never be the same again."
Church can and must be a hospital, a place where sick people get better. We are all sick, and we all need to get better, for we all fall short of the glory of God.
Let's welcome everyone. Let's open our doors as wide as possible. Let's buy some more billboards that say "Come as you are." But for God's sake, let's let Doctor Jesus work on those who take us up on the invitation. Let's be the nurses and the orderlies and the technicians. Let's help people change, get better, be healed, be transformed.
Let's expect the gospel to be true.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Seasons of My Life
Perhaps it is the new year, or perhaps it is this morning's sermon topic. Either way, I am struck by how my life has gone through three distinct seasons, each of between 12 and 13 years in length, and how I am now in the midst of Season #4.
The first season, Feb 1965 - Aug 1977: Birth through the end of sixth grade. Nine houses, five towns (two of them twice), seven schools. For an only child, Season #1 was built on finding myself without the aid of long-term friends. I don't regret much of it, but it clearly was unique.
The second season, August 1977 - July 1990: Seventh grade through law school. One house in Nashville; two dorm rooms, two apartments, and one house in Waco; one diploma and two degrees. The years of my education and forging my Christian identity and early discipleship. The years of learning who and what I am. The years of developing friendships and love.
The third season, August 1990 - June 2003: The first job. Marriage. Three kids. One apartment. Building one house. Becoming who I am as a lawyer, Sunday School teacher, deacon, man. Seeing how adulthood springs, how some dreams die, how others are born. Deeper friendships. Stronger discipleship.
The fourth season, July 2003 - ???: The second job. New house, new town, new church. Raising my kids in a new place - they do not consider Tennessee to be home. Now starting them off in college. Seeing more dreams die. Feeling the effects of age. Writing. Finding more security in who I am. Wondering if that is all there is. Honing my discipleship. Cherishing friendships made in the first three seasons. Finding new friendships much harder to make.
I know this season will end. If my life continues in the pattern in which I have so far found myself, I can look for Season 4 to end in the summer of 2016 or so, about the time my youngest child graduates from high school. Will that be time for another move? Will this season last longer than the others? Will the next season call for me to stay in the same place?
For everything, there is a season. So far, these have been my seasons.
The first season, Feb 1965 - Aug 1977: Birth through the end of sixth grade. Nine houses, five towns (two of them twice), seven schools. For an only child, Season #1 was built on finding myself without the aid of long-term friends. I don't regret much of it, but it clearly was unique.
The second season, August 1977 - July 1990: Seventh grade through law school. One house in Nashville; two dorm rooms, two apartments, and one house in Waco; one diploma and two degrees. The years of my education and forging my Christian identity and early discipleship. The years of learning who and what I am. The years of developing friendships and love.
The third season, August 1990 - June 2003: The first job. Marriage. Three kids. One apartment. Building one house. Becoming who I am as a lawyer, Sunday School teacher, deacon, man. Seeing how adulthood springs, how some dreams die, how others are born. Deeper friendships. Stronger discipleship.
The fourth season, July 2003 - ???: The second job. New house, new town, new church. Raising my kids in a new place - they do not consider Tennessee to be home. Now starting them off in college. Seeing more dreams die. Feeling the effects of age. Writing. Finding more security in who I am. Wondering if that is all there is. Honing my discipleship. Cherishing friendships made in the first three seasons. Finding new friendships much harder to make.
I know this season will end. If my life continues in the pattern in which I have so far found myself, I can look for Season 4 to end in the summer of 2016 or so, about the time my youngest child graduates from high school. Will that be time for another move? Will this season last longer than the others? Will the next season call for me to stay in the same place?
For everything, there is a season. So far, these have been my seasons.
Thursday, December 22, 2011
Missing Christmas - What Are We Waiting For?
Like many churches, my church is just about to finish a four+ week time of celebrating Advent, a time often described as one of waiting. There have been times this year when that waiting theme has puzzled me.
I recognize the importance of remembering and reliving the waiting that the people of Israel did for the coming Messiah. The meaning of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is of critical importance in understanding God's plan. For a people whose faith centered around prophecy and the promises yet to come, the idea of waiting with expectancy is a vital lesson.
The problem is this - I don't have to wait. Christ has come, both in the bodily sense of His incarnation at Christmas and in the spiritual sense of His having come to live in my life. I can "wait" in a historical re-creation kind of way and ponder what it would have been like to have to wait for the Messiah, but I need not actually wait.
This thought about Advent waiting has led me to think that those who are still waiting for Christmas may well have have missed it. In discussing Missing Christmas, I do not mean Skipping Christmas, like the hero of Grisham's novel of that same name who desperately wants to avoid wrapping one more gift and decorating his house one more year. I can understand being fed up with the commercialization and the hoop-de-do of our Christmas schedule.
No, I am talking about those who miss Christmas, who don't get it, who are still waiting because they have never understood - never received - the coming of Messiah/Christ in the first place.
If we look back on the first century folks, we often ask ourselves how and why they missed Him. After all, they were supposed to be looking for Him. They were students of prophecy and knew their scripture. They could recite Isaiah and Micah, Zechariah and Jeremiah. They knew Messiah was coming. And then He came, and they missed Him, and they kept looking.
Our common Sunday School answer is that they missed Him because they were looking for a military/political king. They wanted the victories and the white stallions and the public homage. They were not ready for a suffering servant, much less for a baby born to an unmarried virgin in a feeding trough. They were not interested in what caught the attention of shepherds, the lowest of the low.
I think that explanation is right, up to a point, but I do not believe it goes far enough. I believe they missed Christmas for the same reason many people today miss Christmas. That reason is largely political, although not in the stallions-and-banners sense. It is not that we want military victories, necessarily; but it is that we want what is immediate, what is tangible, what is seemingly most important to our survival. To first century Israel, that meant escape from the suffocating occupation of Rome. To them, then, Messiah would be recognized in the way He threw off the Caesars. To twenty-first century Americans, it means escape from unemployment and war and inequality and unendurable political discourse. It means more money and better health and more vacation time. It means the right person in office and enough food on the table for everyone.
And, of course, there is nothing wrong with any of that. As I have written numerous times, I believe that we must be about helping the poor and feeding the hungry (here and here, for example), and I maintain that we must participate in the political process (here and here, for example). I think that seeking success is a natural goal for all of us.
Jesus, though, did not and does not come primarily to meet our political aspirations. Jesus' role was and is spiritual. To the first century people He saw, He came primarily to solve their soul's overwhelming problem. He said that He came "to seek and to save that which is lost." The angel told Joseph to name Him Jesus because "He will save His people from their sins." To the twenty-first century people He now sees, Jesus comes for exactly the same reason. We have a sin problem, a soul problem, a spiritual issue that pretermits and underlies all our other ills.
There is a new popular holiday song that you have probably heard on the radio - it plays on both religious and secular stations - called "Christmas Shoes." It tells the touching story of a poor boy who wants to buy a new pair of shoes for his dying mother. He cannot afford to pay for the shoes, and the singer/narrator tells of giving the boy the money so he can buy the shoes. The singer says that in doing so, he has learned "what Christmas is all about."
Of course Jesus is concerned with the poor and the hungry, and as His people, we must be about His work, including giving shoes to kids and sick mothers who need them. But those kind of political and social issues are not the reason He came. They are not what Christmas is all about. The visitors to Jesus' birth brought gifts to Him; they did not come looking for gifts from Him. That metaphorical Little Drummer Boy, who had no gift to bring, did not come to the manger looking for a handout.
And I think that is why people miss Christmas. When a baby is born in an out of the way hamlet and does nothing to depose the emperor, sabotage the invading armies, eliminate all poverty, change the course of elections, or add to our bank accounts, we all too often miss Him. It is not that we are unconcerned with spiritual things; it is just that we are far more concerned with the political and the social and the financial. Like our predecessors twenty centuries before, we miss Messiah because we refuse to look beyond what we have decided are the pressing issues. We think we understand the world and that we know best how to solve its problems. Buying a poor boy a pair of shoes for his mother is surely a byproduct of Christ's coming, but it is not, despite the song, "what Christmas is all about." When Jesus comes with a different perspective and a radical program - faith in the living God - too many don't or can't or won't get it. And they end up missing Christmas. They come to and leave another Advent still waiting, whether they know it or not.
Jesus is not now, nor was He ever, bound by (or really concerned about) our political agenda. Jesus is not tied to what we want or expect Him to do. He comes to be God with us. He comes to shepherd His people. He comes to reign as King, not a military victor or a source of welfare, but as Lord.
Christmas is about a Savior. You have been waiting a long time. Don't miss Him.
I recognize the importance of remembering and reliving the waiting that the people of Israel did for the coming Messiah. The meaning of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" is of critical importance in understanding God's plan. For a people whose faith centered around prophecy and the promises yet to come, the idea of waiting with expectancy is a vital lesson.
The problem is this - I don't have to wait. Christ has come, both in the bodily sense of His incarnation at Christmas and in the spiritual sense of His having come to live in my life. I can "wait" in a historical re-creation kind of way and ponder what it would have been like to have to wait for the Messiah, but I need not actually wait.
This thought about Advent waiting has led me to think that those who are still waiting for Christmas may well have have missed it. In discussing Missing Christmas, I do not mean Skipping Christmas, like the hero of Grisham's novel of that same name who desperately wants to avoid wrapping one more gift and decorating his house one more year. I can understand being fed up with the commercialization and the hoop-de-do of our Christmas schedule.
No, I am talking about those who miss Christmas, who don't get it, who are still waiting because they have never understood - never received - the coming of Messiah/Christ in the first place.
If we look back on the first century folks, we often ask ourselves how and why they missed Him. After all, they were supposed to be looking for Him. They were students of prophecy and knew their scripture. They could recite Isaiah and Micah, Zechariah and Jeremiah. They knew Messiah was coming. And then He came, and they missed Him, and they kept looking.
Our common Sunday School answer is that they missed Him because they were looking for a military/political king. They wanted the victories and the white stallions and the public homage. They were not ready for a suffering servant, much less for a baby born to an unmarried virgin in a feeding trough. They were not interested in what caught the attention of shepherds, the lowest of the low.
I think that explanation is right, up to a point, but I do not believe it goes far enough. I believe they missed Christmas for the same reason many people today miss Christmas. That reason is largely political, although not in the stallions-and-banners sense. It is not that we want military victories, necessarily; but it is that we want what is immediate, what is tangible, what is seemingly most important to our survival. To first century Israel, that meant escape from the suffocating occupation of Rome. To them, then, Messiah would be recognized in the way He threw off the Caesars. To twenty-first century Americans, it means escape from unemployment and war and inequality and unendurable political discourse. It means more money and better health and more vacation time. It means the right person in office and enough food on the table for everyone.
And, of course, there is nothing wrong with any of that. As I have written numerous times, I believe that we must be about helping the poor and feeding the hungry (here and here, for example), and I maintain that we must participate in the political process (here and here, for example). I think that seeking success is a natural goal for all of us.
Jesus, though, did not and does not come primarily to meet our political aspirations. Jesus' role was and is spiritual. To the first century people He saw, He came primarily to solve their soul's overwhelming problem. He said that He came "to seek and to save that which is lost." The angel told Joseph to name Him Jesus because "He will save His people from their sins." To the twenty-first century people He now sees, Jesus comes for exactly the same reason. We have a sin problem, a soul problem, a spiritual issue that pretermits and underlies all our other ills.
There is a new popular holiday song that you have probably heard on the radio - it plays on both religious and secular stations - called "Christmas Shoes." It tells the touching story of a poor boy who wants to buy a new pair of shoes for his dying mother. He cannot afford to pay for the shoes, and the singer/narrator tells of giving the boy the money so he can buy the shoes. The singer says that in doing so, he has learned "what Christmas is all about."
Of course Jesus is concerned with the poor and the hungry, and as His people, we must be about His work, including giving shoes to kids and sick mothers who need them. But those kind of political and social issues are not the reason He came. They are not what Christmas is all about. The visitors to Jesus' birth brought gifts to Him; they did not come looking for gifts from Him. That metaphorical Little Drummer Boy, who had no gift to bring, did not come to the manger looking for a handout.
And I think that is why people miss Christmas. When a baby is born in an out of the way hamlet and does nothing to depose the emperor, sabotage the invading armies, eliminate all poverty, change the course of elections, or add to our bank accounts, we all too often miss Him. It is not that we are unconcerned with spiritual things; it is just that we are far more concerned with the political and the social and the financial. Like our predecessors twenty centuries before, we miss Messiah because we refuse to look beyond what we have decided are the pressing issues. We think we understand the world and that we know best how to solve its problems. Buying a poor boy a pair of shoes for his mother is surely a byproduct of Christ's coming, but it is not, despite the song, "what Christmas is all about." When Jesus comes with a different perspective and a radical program - faith in the living God - too many don't or can't or won't get it. And they end up missing Christmas. They come to and leave another Advent still waiting, whether they know it or not.
Jesus is not now, nor was He ever, bound by (or really concerned about) our political agenda. Jesus is not tied to what we want or expect Him to do. He comes to be God with us. He comes to shepherd His people. He comes to reign as King, not a military victor or a source of welfare, but as Lord.
Christmas is about a Savior. You have been waiting a long time. Don't miss Him.
Sunday, November 20, 2011
The Rhetorical Divide: Lawyers and Love
This week, I was privileged to be asked to speak to the Dallas chapter of the Christian Legal Society. This blog is the text of my speech.
In First Thessalonians 4, Paul writes this: “Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers. . . . Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.”
I want to start with something that will surprise you. I want to read to you part of a letter I wrote about a month ago that was published in The Battalion, the Texas A&M school newspaper, the week after the Aggies demolished my Baylor Bears. (At this point, I quoted from the letter to the editor that I reprinted in full here.)
I have a unique job. I am proudly a lawyer, trying cases and showing up in appellate courts. But I also wear the hat of client. With a case load of between 2500 and 3200 cases in at least 28 states, I work regularly with fifty or more outside firms. These dual roles give me a fairly unique perspective on our law practice.
I want to talk about an important topic today, a problem that I think is perhaps the most significant issue we deal with on a day to day basis, and what we lawyers can do about it … although none of us had a class dedicated to it in law school.
I want to start by talking about the substantial level of incivility and unpleasant talk, what I call the rhetorical divide, that colors – or fouls – way too many conversations that surround us. You all know what I am talking about.
It pervades our politics of course. I cannot go a week without receiving, on one hand, emails that talk about the godless, socialist, Dem-Libs and, on the other, polemics bewailing the idiocy of the backwards mouth-breathers in the flyover states. One side angrily screams “class warfare;” the other side is incensed that their opponents would dare accuse them of “class warfare.” And on it goes.
(The next three paragraphs will be familiar to you if you are loyal reader of Blogarithmic Expressions, as they are lifted from a previous blog.)
I have a friend who goes all the way back to elementary school. We were in the same church youth group. We have not seen each other since high school, but through the magic of Facebook, we are once again “friends.” She has spent her adult life in politics, now writing for news magazines that you have heard of and advising candidates of a certain political persuasion. She feels compelled to post editorials – some by her and some by others – on Facebook. I try hard not to take the bait… but one time I was weak, and I asked a question about a position she had taken. I got a response that started with “with all due respect.” You know to brace yourself when you see that, because you are about to get clobbered.
Anyway, she proceeded to write for about seven paragraphs, ending by proclaiming … I kid you not … that anyone who would ask the question I had asked was, and I quote, “proven to be not only an abject failure” but also “immoral.”
This is where our political dialog has gone. In what should have been a light-hearted exchange between two old friends, I was called both an "abject failure" and "immoral." If a semi-public forum where a politico is responding to a "friend" produces this type of name-calling and insensitive rhetoric, it is not hard to understand how bad the hard-core political debate has become. Too many of us want everyone else to shut up so that we can speak. We simply cannot tolerate opposition. We no longer try to get along in what our grandparents would have called the required fashion.
I believe that there are some obvious things to blame. Our emphasis on freedom of speech has – rightfully in my view – strengthened in recent years, and with it has come burgeoning courage to speak our minds. Understanding our rights has led people to feel free to express themselves. And I guess that is the point, but the exercise of freedom without accompanying it with some common sense is often a mistake. The deregulation of the airwaves has led to talk radio of every stripe. Married to all of that, of course, is technology and its great and terrible gift inflicted on us, the internet, which has given a microphone to everyone and access to just enough political information to make us all think we know everything. Too many think they should be on talk radio, and when they can’t get through, they take to cyberspace.
With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 a couple of months ago, we heard a lot of hand-wringing about “why can’t the nation just come together like it did a decade ago?” I understand this – after all, we were, in a way, united. Less than a year after Bush v. Gore and the circus atmosphere that surrounded the 2000 election, we shared momentous times of tears, patriotism, and resolve. What we forget is the hatred that was immediately registered towards certain Americans based on their religion. What we don’t recall is the debate that ensued about the role of God in flying those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. While we were united under the red, white, and blue, much of our political rhetoric was divisive and cruel. And, of course, any such solidarity was short-lived. Fast forward to the emails you all remember getting about candidate Obama on one hand and candidate Palin on the other and you will readily admit that 21st century American dialog has sunk further.
The same issue has infected our practice of law. We all know what it is like to deal with lawyers whose strategy in the courtroom is trial by ad hominem: the attempt to convince the jury that either we or our clients (or both) are inherently objectionable and therefore whatever we say must be discounted. In our sound bite world, too many lawyers have bought into the idea that jurors expect Rambo litigation filtered through Howard Stern. Courts by and large exercise their discretion not to intervene with even a curative instruction, so the lawyers who practice this way feel encouraged to continue. Our temptation to fight fire with fire and turn up the sarcasm and vitriol is palpable.
The rhetorical divide also shows up, ironically and disastrously, in our religious life. My own denomination has been riddled for over thirty years with accusations, name-calling, rejection, and abandonment. I do not believe I am going out on a limb to suppose that most of you can point to the same kinds of history in your own church – whether the issues are related to gender, sexuality, abuse, biblical interpretation, social justice, or politics.
But maybe the full affront of this divide did not really come home to me until I was … wait for it … playing internet spades the other night. Let me just say, the world of internet spades is full of crude, rude, and downright mean people. I fancy myself a pretty good player, and I routinely get cussed out, called R-rated names, and generally denounced as subhuman. These comments are directly related not necessarily to how well I am playing but instead to how closely I agree with or track the pattern of the person doing the talking. I am not the only victim – even when my play is deemed up to snuff, I watch the conversation among the other players. It is demeaning and, to me, a little frightening.
Among the many benefits of my competitive debate career – learning about a vast array of topics and public speaking and organization and thinking quickly on your feet among them – the most important thing I got out of it was the recognition that there are at least two sides to every question. It was not unusual to argue against a certain case in a negative round and then turn around in the next debate and argue in favor of precisely the same policy. I do not suggest that this translates perfectly into the real world – no doubt many arguments and positions we hear and read are not well thought out and are made mainly to harass. Still, the ability to understand the thought processes and rationale of those with whom we disagree is a skill that should be displayed more often than it is. It was Aristotle who said that the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Please don’t think I am just throwing stones at everybody else. It is not just everybody else. I suffer from the same disease. I try not to send the snarky emails, and I assure you that I am overwhelmingly polite when I play internet spades. But I can snap at my wife and be unreasonable with my kids. Somehow, at work, when I think I am just being direct and to the point, I can come across to others as being rude. Unpleasant, even.
The First Amendment and talk radio and the internet and our inability to see both sides of the question and bad spades etiquette are all causes of this problem that you can read about in Psychology Today or hear about on the Today Show. To say that is not news.
So, after recognizing what we all see and hear, it is time to address what I think is the problem that underlies all of this, a difficulty that is far more threatening than an insufferable talk radio host or a malicious email.
The problem is this: We don’t love each other enough.
Jesus commanded us to love one another and told us that the way people would know that we are His disciples is by our love.
We don’t love each other enough. We don’t like each other. We are unwilling and apparently unable to put up with our differences. We feel compelled to correct each other. We distrust each other’s motives. If someone disagrees with us about a point of policy, we decide that their entire ism runs contrary to ours, and we then decide that they cannot be trusted.
We don’t love each other enough.
Love is not a feeling. Love is not a reaction. The love of God, fully revealed in the love of Christ, is expected of us. Christian love is modeled on the love of Christ for us. 1 John 4:8 tells us that God is agape, a term best defined in first Corinthians 13. We read that scripture and understand that love is patient, and kind; it does not envy or boast or seek its own. Love is not rude or easily angered. It is not self-seeking, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love is a serious of choices, of actions, and of intentional concessions; but it is not a feeling.
We are not kind to each other. The exercise of patience with the opposition is a lost art. Boastfulness abounds. Seeking our own way is the new normal.
What do lawyers have to do with all of this? It is not our fault, right? We don’t cause the problems; we just zealously speak for and on behalf of the people who are fighting with each other. We do what we are told – that is the essence of representing clients, right?
Right?
We all know the command of Christ and the language of 1 Corinthians 13, but we do the lawyerly mental gymnastics that result in exceptions. The result is that we deem certain others as unworthy of our love – offensive opposing counsel, abusive judges, uncivil members of the public (whether they are serving us at the drive through window or cutting us off in traffic), ungodly co-workers, and apparently just about anyone who strongly disagrees with us.
(Again, the next four paragraphs are lifted from a previous blog of mine.)
What compels lawyers to make these exceptions? What makes us feel able - even bound - to change the rules when they apply to us? Could it be said that we are playing God? After all, that is the first and greatest temptation, found in the third chapter of Genesis: “Don’t you want to be like God?” The forbidden fruit story is about the lie that the serpent offers: if we eat the fruit, we can be like God. We lawyers are not like a four-year-old who does not know better when we are tempted to disobey; no, the temptation is all about what we do intentionally. The lie is that we can know good and evil just like God does. This is what speaks to us – the chance to make more of ourselves than is intended, than is good for us, than we can really be.
In the end, while the fruit may have been lovely to look at, its taste would not have compelled Adam and Eve to break the rules. What made the difference was that they wanted to know what God knows, to see what God sees. The temptation was to go beyond their limited human view and to become godlike.
That is, always has been, and always will be Temptation #1. We do not like natural limitation. We chafe under the idea that there is something out there that is better, stronger, faster, smarter than we are. That is why “The Six Million Dollar Man” was a hit TV show. It is why movies like “Transformers” and “Superman” and “The Incredibles” tickle our fancy – the idea that we can transform into something more godlike holds great sway. The ubiquitous nature of WWJD bracelets and bumper stickers adds to the temptation, because the truth is that we are not Jesus and cannot do what Jesus did in every situation – our call is to do what Jesus called us to do. We can almost never walk on water or raise the dead, and we don’t get to make the rules. That is the province of God.
To let go of this temptation is to accept that we are only what we are. We can achieve, we can grow, and we can learn; and indeed, we can often do what Jesus would do. Still, there is only so far we can go. That acceptance – which is ultimately the key to reliance on God – is difficult for most of us lawyers. We can’t accept that there are things we do not understand, that we cannot do. Ultimately, it plays out in our making exceptions. We play God. We choose not to love.
What are you doing to demonstrate the love of Christ in your work?
About six weeks ago, I was leading a retreat for a church in San Antonio based on Brother Lawrence’s work “The Practice of the Presence of God.” Lawrence was a famous French monk who spent his life working in the kitchen and fixing sandals. In my sermon on Sunday morning of the retreat, I quoted these words of his:
Do you remember when you Christians decided to become lawyers? Do you remember the excitement about actually helping people and those long nights pondering how you could make the law work within a biblical construct? Do you remember asking yourself questions about how you could reconcile everything that you were learning in law school with what you were learning in Sunday School?
Sure you do - we all wrestled with questions in law school about how could we square our Christianity with the practice of law - how could filing a claim be consistent with forgiveness, how could cross-examination and praise flow out of the same mouth, how can we defend rapists, how can we help big corporations shamelessly pursue the almighty dollar – and we reached a place of comfort.
We learned that we can be forgiving and praising and comfortable with the choices of our profession and actually help people. We stepped up to a profession where we could be trusted. We wanted – rest assured we felt righteous about wanting – to be the one in whom the world puts its trust, because we are Christians and we can make a difference. We were ready to be Brother Lawrence in the courtroom and the board room.
What does love mean to a lawyer? Does loving require us to be weak? I don’t think any of us would describe Jesus as weak.
Does love mean we must always agree to requested extensions? I don’t think so. I don’t think love means we abandon zealous representation of our clients. I do think we will be easier to work with than lawyers who are not practicing in love, and I do believe that we will likely extend courtesies more often than others.
How can we turn the other cheek and stay in practice? Can we be aggressive while being faithful? Is it possible to disagree passionately while still loving?
I believe the way I was treated at a football game by some A&M students begins to answer some of these questions. We introduce ourselves and have a relationship before a conflict starts. We understand and address the potential for dispute before we start sniping at each other. We love each other.
I am not going to give you a laundry list of pointers on how to practice law in love today – I could no more do that than I could give you an instruction manual on how to raise your children in love or deal with your spouse in love or be loving while attending a Cowboys game. Love comes from our relationship with the One who is love. The solution comes not so much from having an instruction manual as it does from recognizing that we must love at all times, even in our workplace, even when we disagree, even in the midst of a discovery dispute.
That said, I can give you some broad ideas. I believe that there are at least three areas that we have to recognize as our domain for addressing the rhetorical divide, three places where we lawyers can love enough.
First, there is our conversation. Let me quote Robert Redford’s lawyer character from that mediocre 80s movie “Legal Eagles:” “well-chosen words are the tools of our profession.” We can – we must – take ownership of our words. Some of us have been so close to our profession for so long that we have lost sight of the power of our words. The rest of the world looks to lawyers to pick the words by which we live. We are the wordsmiths, the models, the writers. It has to start with us.
You litigators in the room – let me say that better – we litigators in the room have choices to make. Without in any way weakening our positions or diluting our rhetoric, we can radically affect the tone of our dialog with one another. Some motions simply need not be made. Many others can be made honestly and directly – and persuasively, I might add – without lowering ourselves to our baser impulses.
You non-litigators are not exempt here. You make the phone calls, and you posture, too. Perhaps more directly, you draw the lines and set the wheels in motion that can run afoul of the rule of love.
We lawyers are the users of words, the masters of the lexicon. The term “silver-tongued” does not have to be followed by the word “devil.” We ought to retake ownership of our language and our turn of phrase to start the rhetorical world spinning in a different direction.
Perhaps something as simple as being the one to seek reconciliation is the right first step. I once had an assistant who wondered why I was the one always writing the “I’m sorry we have gotten crosswise” letter or email. The answer, of course, is that being right is rarely as important as loving one another.
No, we will not change the politics and the entertainment and even the email world very quickly. But we hold the key. We are the lawyers.
Second, we need to love better in the decisions that we make, the advice we offer, and the judgment we exercise. We lawyers are the guiders of decisions. When I started my law practice in Nashville, the very wise senior partner of my firm pointed to all the books in our law library – remember the days when law firms still used books? – and said, “Lyn, anybody can learn how to look something up in a book if he knows where to look. Our job is to know where to look. Nobody can know all the law, but good lawyers know where to find it. We are hired, not for our knowledge, but for our judgment.” You can blame choices on your clients all you want to, but every one of us knows that the world looks to our judgment at crunch time. The question then becomes – for us, for the Christian lawyers – how our faith informs our judgment.
How can that matter? We have to pursue our clients’ best interests. We are not in the business of changing our clients’ minds, are we? Well, remember that I am a client as well as a lawyer. There are many times that the railroad will make a decision based, at least in part, on the advice and judgment of our outside counsel. In my mixed client/lawyer role, I often find myself suggesting that we take an appropriately aggressive course that will not do as much personal damage as an alternative. We don’t have to make the motion for sanctions at the same time we ask for evidence to be excluded. It is a choice.
Now, I am not suggesting that as Christian lawyers we should advise our clients to abandon their best interests. I am not suggesting we leave the law books behind in favor of Sunday School quarterlies. But I do challenge you, the Christian lawyers, to ask yourselves if, in the exercise of your professional judgment, you can make a difference. I ask you to measure your judgment to see if it includes justice, mercy, kindness, patience, and love.
Third, and most important, we are depositories of trust. We have a model here, since our faith is all about placing our trust in Jesus Christ. You all know that, as lawyers, we are in positions of trust. To do our job, we have to have the trust of our clients. We want it. We seek it. As Christians, we have to be worthy of that trust.
Do you deserve it?
Those of you in the room who are parents, think about what you do to make yourself worthy of the trust of your children. Imagine being less than your absolute best, most loving parent when your child is counting on you most.
I know that lawyering and parenting are different. I know that our kids are more important than our clients. But the position of trust is analogous. The law calls it a fiduciary responsibility – for you and me and all of us Christian lawyers, it means walking worthy, having the mind of Christ, loving enough, whether we feel like it or not.
We can look around this room to see lawyers who deserve to have this trust because they operate on the basis of love. Famously, lawyers like Abraham Lincoln inspired this trust because of their choices growing out of their lives of faith and love. I think of my own grandfather, C.F. Wellborn, city attorney in Gladewater, Texas, who made countless choices that many other lawyers – his own wealthier and more famous lawyer brother among them – would not have made because they were the right and loving thing to do. He probably left some dollars and some elections on the table, but when the chips were down, people trusted him first.
We don’t love each other enough.
That has to change. The rhetorical divide has to be bridged. We have to love each other more.
And I say, let the lawyers lead the way. Let’s model love. Let’s be kind. Let’s choose words that don’t injure. Let’s don’t keep a record of wrongs. Let’s start bearing all things and hoping all things and believing all things. As hard as it is for this Bear to say, let’s start emulating some young Aggies I met at Kyle Field a month or so ago.
It is cliché to say “why can’t we all get along.” And it is cliché, in 2011, to answer that question with excuses about the internet and our freedom of speech and talk radio. It is not even enough to blame it on internet spades.
Let’s start loving each other more. And let it begin with us lawyers.
In First Thessalonians 4, Paul writes this: “Now about brotherly love we do not need to write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other. And in fact, you do love all the brothers. . . . Yet we urge you, brothers, to do so more and more.”
I want to start with something that will surprise you. I want to read to you part of a letter I wrote about a month ago that was published in The Battalion, the Texas A&M school newspaper, the week after the Aggies demolished my Baylor Bears. (At this point, I quoted from the letter to the editor that I reprinted in full here.)
I have a unique job. I am proudly a lawyer, trying cases and showing up in appellate courts. But I also wear the hat of client. With a case load of between 2500 and 3200 cases in at least 28 states, I work regularly with fifty or more outside firms. These dual roles give me a fairly unique perspective on our law practice.
I want to talk about an important topic today, a problem that I think is perhaps the most significant issue we deal with on a day to day basis, and what we lawyers can do about it … although none of us had a class dedicated to it in law school.
I want to start by talking about the substantial level of incivility and unpleasant talk, what I call the rhetorical divide, that colors – or fouls – way too many conversations that surround us. You all know what I am talking about.
It pervades our politics of course. I cannot go a week without receiving, on one hand, emails that talk about the godless, socialist, Dem-Libs and, on the other, polemics bewailing the idiocy of the backwards mouth-breathers in the flyover states. One side angrily screams “class warfare;” the other side is incensed that their opponents would dare accuse them of “class warfare.” And on it goes.
(The next three paragraphs will be familiar to you if you are loyal reader of Blogarithmic Expressions, as they are lifted from a previous blog.)
I have a friend who goes all the way back to elementary school. We were in the same church youth group. We have not seen each other since high school, but through the magic of Facebook, we are once again “friends.” She has spent her adult life in politics, now writing for news magazines that you have heard of and advising candidates of a certain political persuasion. She feels compelled to post editorials – some by her and some by others – on Facebook. I try hard not to take the bait… but one time I was weak, and I asked a question about a position she had taken. I got a response that started with “with all due respect.” You know to brace yourself when you see that, because you are about to get clobbered.
Anyway, she proceeded to write for about seven paragraphs, ending by proclaiming … I kid you not … that anyone who would ask the question I had asked was, and I quote, “proven to be not only an abject failure” but also “immoral.”
This is where our political dialog has gone. In what should have been a light-hearted exchange between two old friends, I was called both an "abject failure" and "immoral." If a semi-public forum where a politico is responding to a "friend" produces this type of name-calling and insensitive rhetoric, it is not hard to understand how bad the hard-core political debate has become. Too many of us want everyone else to shut up so that we can speak. We simply cannot tolerate opposition. We no longer try to get along in what our grandparents would have called the required fashion.
I believe that there are some obvious things to blame. Our emphasis on freedom of speech has – rightfully in my view – strengthened in recent years, and with it has come burgeoning courage to speak our minds. Understanding our rights has led people to feel free to express themselves. And I guess that is the point, but the exercise of freedom without accompanying it with some common sense is often a mistake. The deregulation of the airwaves has led to talk radio of every stripe. Married to all of that, of course, is technology and its great and terrible gift inflicted on us, the internet, which has given a microphone to everyone and access to just enough political information to make us all think we know everything. Too many think they should be on talk radio, and when they can’t get through, they take to cyberspace.
With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 a couple of months ago, we heard a lot of hand-wringing about “why can’t the nation just come together like it did a decade ago?” I understand this – after all, we were, in a way, united. Less than a year after Bush v. Gore and the circus atmosphere that surrounded the 2000 election, we shared momentous times of tears, patriotism, and resolve. What we forget is the hatred that was immediately registered towards certain Americans based on their religion. What we don’t recall is the debate that ensued about the role of God in flying those planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. While we were united under the red, white, and blue, much of our political rhetoric was divisive and cruel. And, of course, any such solidarity was short-lived. Fast forward to the emails you all remember getting about candidate Obama on one hand and candidate Palin on the other and you will readily admit that 21st century American dialog has sunk further.
The same issue has infected our practice of law. We all know what it is like to deal with lawyers whose strategy in the courtroom is trial by ad hominem: the attempt to convince the jury that either we or our clients (or both) are inherently objectionable and therefore whatever we say must be discounted. In our sound bite world, too many lawyers have bought into the idea that jurors expect Rambo litigation filtered through Howard Stern. Courts by and large exercise their discretion not to intervene with even a curative instruction, so the lawyers who practice this way feel encouraged to continue. Our temptation to fight fire with fire and turn up the sarcasm and vitriol is palpable.
The rhetorical divide also shows up, ironically and disastrously, in our religious life. My own denomination has been riddled for over thirty years with accusations, name-calling, rejection, and abandonment. I do not believe I am going out on a limb to suppose that most of you can point to the same kinds of history in your own church – whether the issues are related to gender, sexuality, abuse, biblical interpretation, social justice, or politics.
But maybe the full affront of this divide did not really come home to me until I was … wait for it … playing internet spades the other night. Let me just say, the world of internet spades is full of crude, rude, and downright mean people. I fancy myself a pretty good player, and I routinely get cussed out, called R-rated names, and generally denounced as subhuman. These comments are directly related not necessarily to how well I am playing but instead to how closely I agree with or track the pattern of the person doing the talking. I am not the only victim – even when my play is deemed up to snuff, I watch the conversation among the other players. It is demeaning and, to me, a little frightening.
Among the many benefits of my competitive debate career – learning about a vast array of topics and public speaking and organization and thinking quickly on your feet among them – the most important thing I got out of it was the recognition that there are at least two sides to every question. It was not unusual to argue against a certain case in a negative round and then turn around in the next debate and argue in favor of precisely the same policy. I do not suggest that this translates perfectly into the real world – no doubt many arguments and positions we hear and read are not well thought out and are made mainly to harass. Still, the ability to understand the thought processes and rationale of those with whom we disagree is a skill that should be displayed more often than it is. It was Aristotle who said that the mark of an educated mind is to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Please don’t think I am just throwing stones at everybody else. It is not just everybody else. I suffer from the same disease. I try not to send the snarky emails, and I assure you that I am overwhelmingly polite when I play internet spades. But I can snap at my wife and be unreasonable with my kids. Somehow, at work, when I think I am just being direct and to the point, I can come across to others as being rude. Unpleasant, even.
The First Amendment and talk radio and the internet and our inability to see both sides of the question and bad spades etiquette are all causes of this problem that you can read about in Psychology Today or hear about on the Today Show. To say that is not news.
So, after recognizing what we all see and hear, it is time to address what I think is the problem that underlies all of this, a difficulty that is far more threatening than an insufferable talk radio host or a malicious email.
The problem is this: We don’t love each other enough.
Jesus commanded us to love one another and told us that the way people would know that we are His disciples is by our love.
We don’t love each other enough. We don’t like each other. We are unwilling and apparently unable to put up with our differences. We feel compelled to correct each other. We distrust each other’s motives. If someone disagrees with us about a point of policy, we decide that their entire ism runs contrary to ours, and we then decide that they cannot be trusted.
We don’t love each other enough.
Love is not a feeling. Love is not a reaction. The love of God, fully revealed in the love of Christ, is expected of us. Christian love is modeled on the love of Christ for us. 1 John 4:8 tells us that God is agape, a term best defined in first Corinthians 13. We read that scripture and understand that love is patient, and kind; it does not envy or boast or seek its own. Love is not rude or easily angered. It is not self-seeking, and it keeps no record of wrongs. Love is a serious of choices, of actions, and of intentional concessions; but it is not a feeling.
We are not kind to each other. The exercise of patience with the opposition is a lost art. Boastfulness abounds. Seeking our own way is the new normal.
What do lawyers have to do with all of this? It is not our fault, right? We don’t cause the problems; we just zealously speak for and on behalf of the people who are fighting with each other. We do what we are told – that is the essence of representing clients, right?
Right?
We all know the command of Christ and the language of 1 Corinthians 13, but we do the lawyerly mental gymnastics that result in exceptions. The result is that we deem certain others as unworthy of our love – offensive opposing counsel, abusive judges, uncivil members of the public (whether they are serving us at the drive through window or cutting us off in traffic), ungodly co-workers, and apparently just about anyone who strongly disagrees with us.
(Again, the next four paragraphs are lifted from a previous blog of mine.)
What compels lawyers to make these exceptions? What makes us feel able - even bound - to change the rules when they apply to us? Could it be said that we are playing God? After all, that is the first and greatest temptation, found in the third chapter of Genesis: “Don’t you want to be like God?” The forbidden fruit story is about the lie that the serpent offers: if we eat the fruit, we can be like God. We lawyers are not like a four-year-old who does not know better when we are tempted to disobey; no, the temptation is all about what we do intentionally. The lie is that we can know good and evil just like God does. This is what speaks to us – the chance to make more of ourselves than is intended, than is good for us, than we can really be.
In the end, while the fruit may have been lovely to look at, its taste would not have compelled Adam and Eve to break the rules. What made the difference was that they wanted to know what God knows, to see what God sees. The temptation was to go beyond their limited human view and to become godlike.
That is, always has been, and always will be Temptation #1. We do not like natural limitation. We chafe under the idea that there is something out there that is better, stronger, faster, smarter than we are. That is why “The Six Million Dollar Man” was a hit TV show. It is why movies like “Transformers” and “Superman” and “The Incredibles” tickle our fancy – the idea that we can transform into something more godlike holds great sway. The ubiquitous nature of WWJD bracelets and bumper stickers adds to the temptation, because the truth is that we are not Jesus and cannot do what Jesus did in every situation – our call is to do what Jesus called us to do. We can almost never walk on water or raise the dead, and we don’t get to make the rules. That is the province of God.
To let go of this temptation is to accept that we are only what we are. We can achieve, we can grow, and we can learn; and indeed, we can often do what Jesus would do. Still, there is only so far we can go. That acceptance – which is ultimately the key to reliance on God – is difficult for most of us lawyers. We can’t accept that there are things we do not understand, that we cannot do. Ultimately, it plays out in our making exceptions. We play God. We choose not to love.
What are you doing to demonstrate the love of Christ in your work?
About six weeks ago, I was leading a retreat for a church in San Antonio based on Brother Lawrence’s work “The Practice of the Presence of God.” Lawrence was a famous French monk who spent his life working in the kitchen and fixing sandals. In my sermon on Sunday morning of the retreat, I quoted these words of his:
The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer. In the noise and clutter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the Blessed Supper.
Do you remember when you Christians decided to become lawyers? Do you remember the excitement about actually helping people and those long nights pondering how you could make the law work within a biblical construct? Do you remember asking yourself questions about how you could reconcile everything that you were learning in law school with what you were learning in Sunday School?
Sure you do - we all wrestled with questions in law school about how could we square our Christianity with the practice of law - how could filing a claim be consistent with forgiveness, how could cross-examination and praise flow out of the same mouth, how can we defend rapists, how can we help big corporations shamelessly pursue the almighty dollar – and we reached a place of comfort.
We learned that we can be forgiving and praising and comfortable with the choices of our profession and actually help people. We stepped up to a profession where we could be trusted. We wanted – rest assured we felt righteous about wanting – to be the one in whom the world puts its trust, because we are Christians and we can make a difference. We were ready to be Brother Lawrence in the courtroom and the board room.
What does love mean to a lawyer? Does loving require us to be weak? I don’t think any of us would describe Jesus as weak.
Does love mean we must always agree to requested extensions? I don’t think so. I don’t think love means we abandon zealous representation of our clients. I do think we will be easier to work with than lawyers who are not practicing in love, and I do believe that we will likely extend courtesies more often than others.
How can we turn the other cheek and stay in practice? Can we be aggressive while being faithful? Is it possible to disagree passionately while still loving?
I believe the way I was treated at a football game by some A&M students begins to answer some of these questions. We introduce ourselves and have a relationship before a conflict starts. We understand and address the potential for dispute before we start sniping at each other. We love each other.
I am not going to give you a laundry list of pointers on how to practice law in love today – I could no more do that than I could give you an instruction manual on how to raise your children in love or deal with your spouse in love or be loving while attending a Cowboys game. Love comes from our relationship with the One who is love. The solution comes not so much from having an instruction manual as it does from recognizing that we must love at all times, even in our workplace, even when we disagree, even in the midst of a discovery dispute.
That said, I can give you some broad ideas. I believe that there are at least three areas that we have to recognize as our domain for addressing the rhetorical divide, three places where we lawyers can love enough.
First, there is our conversation. Let me quote Robert Redford’s lawyer character from that mediocre 80s movie “Legal Eagles:” “well-chosen words are the tools of our profession.” We can – we must – take ownership of our words. Some of us have been so close to our profession for so long that we have lost sight of the power of our words. The rest of the world looks to lawyers to pick the words by which we live. We are the wordsmiths, the models, the writers. It has to start with us.
You litigators in the room – let me say that better – we litigators in the room have choices to make. Without in any way weakening our positions or diluting our rhetoric, we can radically affect the tone of our dialog with one another. Some motions simply need not be made. Many others can be made honestly and directly – and persuasively, I might add – without lowering ourselves to our baser impulses.
You non-litigators are not exempt here. You make the phone calls, and you posture, too. Perhaps more directly, you draw the lines and set the wheels in motion that can run afoul of the rule of love.
We lawyers are the users of words, the masters of the lexicon. The term “silver-tongued” does not have to be followed by the word “devil.” We ought to retake ownership of our language and our turn of phrase to start the rhetorical world spinning in a different direction.
Perhaps something as simple as being the one to seek reconciliation is the right first step. I once had an assistant who wondered why I was the one always writing the “I’m sorry we have gotten crosswise” letter or email. The answer, of course, is that being right is rarely as important as loving one another.
No, we will not change the politics and the entertainment and even the email world very quickly. But we hold the key. We are the lawyers.
Second, we need to love better in the decisions that we make, the advice we offer, and the judgment we exercise. We lawyers are the guiders of decisions. When I started my law practice in Nashville, the very wise senior partner of my firm pointed to all the books in our law library – remember the days when law firms still used books? – and said, “Lyn, anybody can learn how to look something up in a book if he knows where to look. Our job is to know where to look. Nobody can know all the law, but good lawyers know where to find it. We are hired, not for our knowledge, but for our judgment.” You can blame choices on your clients all you want to, but every one of us knows that the world looks to our judgment at crunch time. The question then becomes – for us, for the Christian lawyers – how our faith informs our judgment.
How can that matter? We have to pursue our clients’ best interests. We are not in the business of changing our clients’ minds, are we? Well, remember that I am a client as well as a lawyer. There are many times that the railroad will make a decision based, at least in part, on the advice and judgment of our outside counsel. In my mixed client/lawyer role, I often find myself suggesting that we take an appropriately aggressive course that will not do as much personal damage as an alternative. We don’t have to make the motion for sanctions at the same time we ask for evidence to be excluded. It is a choice.
Now, I am not suggesting that as Christian lawyers we should advise our clients to abandon their best interests. I am not suggesting we leave the law books behind in favor of Sunday School quarterlies. But I do challenge you, the Christian lawyers, to ask yourselves if, in the exercise of your professional judgment, you can make a difference. I ask you to measure your judgment to see if it includes justice, mercy, kindness, patience, and love.
Third, and most important, we are depositories of trust. We have a model here, since our faith is all about placing our trust in Jesus Christ. You all know that, as lawyers, we are in positions of trust. To do our job, we have to have the trust of our clients. We want it. We seek it. As Christians, we have to be worthy of that trust.
Do you deserve it?
Those of you in the room who are parents, think about what you do to make yourself worthy of the trust of your children. Imagine being less than your absolute best, most loving parent when your child is counting on you most.
I know that lawyering and parenting are different. I know that our kids are more important than our clients. But the position of trust is analogous. The law calls it a fiduciary responsibility – for you and me and all of us Christian lawyers, it means walking worthy, having the mind of Christ, loving enough, whether we feel like it or not.
We can look around this room to see lawyers who deserve to have this trust because they operate on the basis of love. Famously, lawyers like Abraham Lincoln inspired this trust because of their choices growing out of their lives of faith and love. I think of my own grandfather, C.F. Wellborn, city attorney in Gladewater, Texas, who made countless choices that many other lawyers – his own wealthier and more famous lawyer brother among them – would not have made because they were the right and loving thing to do. He probably left some dollars and some elections on the table, but when the chips were down, people trusted him first.
We don’t love each other enough.
That has to change. The rhetorical divide has to be bridged. We have to love each other more.
And I say, let the lawyers lead the way. Let’s model love. Let’s be kind. Let’s choose words that don’t injure. Let’s don’t keep a record of wrongs. Let’s start bearing all things and hoping all things and believing all things. As hard as it is for this Bear to say, let’s start emulating some young Aggies I met at Kyle Field a month or so ago.
It is cliché to say “why can’t we all get along.” And it is cliché, in 2011, to answer that question with excuses about the internet and our freedom of speech and talk radio. It is not even enough to blame it on internet spades.
Let’s start loving each other more. And let it begin with us lawyers.
Monday, October 31, 2011
The Meaning of Fifty Years
Below are comments I made at the celebration of my parents' Golden Wedding Anniversary.
What does this celebration represent? What is The Meaning of Fifth Years?
According to the National Family Growth Survey and the National Center for Health Statistics, only 65% of American marriages manage to make it ten years. Census Bureau statistics show that no more than 5% of marriages in this country make it to fifty years. That makes this event we celebrate tonight a statistically significant achievement. Then, when you think about the times in which we live, and in which Mom and Dad have lived as a married couple – the sixties, the seventies, the Me decade, postmodernism, Generations X and Y and whatever we are in now, the so-called post-Christian America - you realize what American society has decided about marriage over these past fifty years. When Mom and Dad married, more than 85% of American adults were married; now, that number hovers just over 50%, and just over a quarter of American adults under the age of 30 have chosen to tie the knot. Pew Research’s latest survey shows that nearly 40% of survey respondents say that marriage is becoming obsolete.
That can make this anniversary sound pretty impressive, but we all know that statistics can lie. So let’s move beyond statistics. Basic psychology teaches us that the most common stressors we face, in marriage and in life, include money issues, health issues, deaths of loved ones, moves, job changes, and kids. This marriage has survived by my count at least twenty-four different jobs, eleven moves, cancer in each spouse, deaths of parents and siblings, the bursting of the internet stock bubble, miscarriages, church splits, and me.
As an only child, I have had a unique perspective – the best view in the house - to watch this marriage. In thinking about what I wanted to say tonight, I have decided to focus on what I have learned from watching Mom and Dad be married. There are, of course, a plethora of things I (and most of you) could say about both Mom and Dad individually. These are two of the smartest, most involved, most varied, and most dearly loved people around. They have more degrees, life experiences, and friends than anybody else I know. Each of them is a teacher, an example, a writer, a speaker, a role model, a witness, and a leader.
But I want to focus on what I have learned from the two of them together, because, after all, tonight is a celebration of what they have done together, what they have made together. If you noticed, every single picture you have seen up on this screen has included both of them. I have lots of great and funny and candid pictures of each of them, but tonight is about the two of them together.
So, what have I, the only child with the ringside seat, learned from the fifty-year-old marriage? In the best Baptist tradition, I have three points to make.
1. Having a lot in common is overrated; having the right things in common is essential.
I did not know Wayne and Faye Robbins in 1961, but here is what I know about them. One was from Covington, Tennessee, the son of a farmer, who had grown up chopping cotton until he found baseball as a way out, a way to college, a way to being something more. The other was the child of a Texas school principal who became an attorney, the valedictorian who was ABD on a doctor’s degree from Vanderbilt. One had worked on church staffs and for Baptist Student Unions, as well as for more than one denominational college; the other had been a military policeman, a radio announcer, a private detective, a high school teacher, and a professional baseball player. One had been engaged – or nearly engaged – multiple times; the other never had. One had a brother who was a nationally known preacher; the other one had a brother who was a 16-year-old kid. One was at home as a native Texan; the other was a stranger in a strange land. One was nearly eight years older than the other.
Still, and despite these myriad differences, they shared critical things – faith in Jesus Christ; an experience in the church and parachurch groups like BSU that inexorably shaped their souls, minds, and hearts; dreams about family; a love of books and movies and history; a sense of calling.
When Gena and I married, we were very, very different people. We still are. There were those – and sometimes we ourselves were in this camp – who felt we were too different from each other to make a good marriage last. It was Gena who saw the fallacy in this line of thinking long before I did, but in retrospect, Gena’s understanding of how our differences would fit together and support each other made sense to me because of the model I had seen growing up. Gena and I, like Mom and Dad, share the critical things in common, and we are well into the twenty-second year of our marriage.
What all this tells me is that having the right things in common is far more important to marriage than having a bunch of random things in common. Being quote-unquote happy with your life or with each other every second is not really the right measure. Whether or not you both enjoy the Beatles or shellfish or taking walks in the rain or the other things that internet dating services ask about (so I’m told) pale in comparison to sharing the critical directions and convictions. Mom and Dad’s fifty years have taught me that.
2. Success is measured in terms that have little to do with what you will see on the news.
Every one of you knows Mom and Dad, and I know that you would all call them successes. My 46+ years of watching them has taught me a number of things about success:
a.First, we live in this world, and pursuing things that this world says are important – things like career and education and recognition - is not bad. It is how gifted people function in the world.
b.Second, when you pursue those goals honestly, you don’t always become rich and famous. Mom and Dad are comfortable, but they are by no means wealthy. They are, both individually and together, well known in a variety of spheres, but neither approaches celebrity status.
c.Third, pursuit of those goals – career, education, recognition – has to give way to more fundamental ideals. We could spend all night listing those ideals, but I am thinking about things like seeking and then following God’s call on your life; loving your family; loving those who are not your family; serving your church, even when your church is not serving you. I am talking about being available to coach your kid’s team and direct his play, developing yourself to know right answers so that you have right answers to give when the opportunity presents itself, going to visit car wreck victims who are friends of your son a thousand miles away but whose accidents happened in your home town (that happened twice, by the way), having the ability to write newspaper articles and poems and Sunday School lessons and military biographies and devotionals and sermons and letters and internet chat posts that actually mean something.
Mom and Dad are successes not because of the house in which they live or the numbers in their bank account. They are successes not because of the number of times their names have been in the paper. They are not even successes because fifty people showed up here from eighteen different cities as far away as California and Kentucky just to congratulate them on this occasion.
No. Mom and Dad are successes for entirely different reasons. I hope you think they are successes at parenting. They certainly are successes at grandparenting. They are successes at traveling. Far more importantly, they are successes at making and keeping freinds.
Mom and Dad are successes because they have heard the divine call on their lives – both individually and as a couple, a family – and have followed it. They are successes because they have both made themselves better and smarter than either had any right to expect to be. They are successes because everyone around them looks to them for modeling and advice. They are successes because they have loved people they did not know who still needed loving and loved when they did not feel like loving and loved when they did not even understand how to love. A Golden Wedding Anniversary is not just a lifetime achievement award. In this case, it is a clear mark of success. I have learned much about success from Mom and Dad.
3. A life spent in pursuit of and celebration of a relationship with Jesus Christ is a life well-lived.
This is not news to most of you, and I don’t intend for this to turn into a sermon. I want to make this last point instead to focus on how Mom and Dad have demonstrated the interrelation between their loving marriage and their lives as two disciples.
Mom and Dad do not agree on all religious topics. That is ok. Remember my first point – it is not necessary that they have everything in common. What they do agree on is the critical nature of their understanding of God’s will for their lives. What they do agree on is that their lives and our lives should revolve around a relationship with Jesus.
Mom says that I first asked her to explain the Trinity to me when I was three years old. That may say something about me, and it may say something about how God speaks to children, but it doubtless says something about the focus of our home life as I was growing up. It was the nature of things for us to discuss complex issues, and it was the nature of things for us to discuss issues of faith; so a complex issue of faith was, of course, second nature. To say that we had religious debates is really to misunderstand the nature of this family. It took Gena a while to understand that our intense discussions, often peppered with disagreement, were not heated disputes but rather were, and still are, thoughtful and penetrating examinations of concepts of passionate importance to us. As I grew up, the most important thing for us to discuss was the spiritual issue of the moment. This was never put on, artificial, or difficult – it was simply the way things were. It still is.
Please do not understand me to be putting Mom and Dad up on some sort of religious pedestal. That is not what I am doing. I don’t believe their intense focus on the things of God is anything different from what is demanded of all of us. Perhaps Mom and Dad are better read on these issues than many, and doubtless they can both articulate these concepts better than most; but I maintain that all Christian life is, or should be, centered on the faith, its questions and issues, and the discussions that naturally flow from it. Mom and Dad demonstrate the centrality of faith that should characterize all of us. That does not mean you have to be a stick in the mud who is unable to talk about baseball or popular music or politics or “The Andy Griffith Show;” I believe our family can go toe-to-toe with anybody on any of those things. It means that life starts and ends with our relationship with God and His call on us.
One of my best friends is a pastor in San Antonio. I listen to his sermons on the internet when I cannot hear him in person, which is most of the time. A month or so ago, he preached a sermon on First Corinthians 7, the passage where Paul instructs husbands and wives how to give themselves to each other. In his sermon, Bryan talked about God’s intention for marriage: how it is good and right for us to be married to someone who is radically different from us, as men and women inherently are and as Mom and Dad – and Gena and I – are. My friend’s sermon discussed marriage as a kind of workshop for being God’s people in the world. As we learn to live with and love and forgive and make allowances for someone so different under our own roof, we practice the love of God; we then are more ready to display the love that is just as necessary with others outside our living room who are also quite different from us. My own pastor preached just last Sunday on the connection between love of God and love of neighbor, reminding us that we often best experience the former by practicing the latter.
Mom and Dad’s married life has in turn been a workshop for me. I have seen two people who approach faith very differently, who think of church differently, who teach Sunday School differently, who pray differently, who love God’s children differently. But despite those differences, they have taught me the importance of approaching faith, thinking of church, teaching the scripture, prayer, and the love of God. None of you who knows them has any doubt of their faith and their relationship with Jesus Christ.
A marriage of fifty years deserves a party, a round of applause, and some time to reflect on what those years really mean.
What does this celebration represent? What is The Meaning of Fifth Years?
According to the National Family Growth Survey and the National Center for Health Statistics, only 65% of American marriages manage to make it ten years. Census Bureau statistics show that no more than 5% of marriages in this country make it to fifty years. That makes this event we celebrate tonight a statistically significant achievement. Then, when you think about the times in which we live, and in which Mom and Dad have lived as a married couple – the sixties, the seventies, the Me decade, postmodernism, Generations X and Y and whatever we are in now, the so-called post-Christian America - you realize what American society has decided about marriage over these past fifty years. When Mom and Dad married, more than 85% of American adults were married; now, that number hovers just over 50%, and just over a quarter of American adults under the age of 30 have chosen to tie the knot. Pew Research’s latest survey shows that nearly 40% of survey respondents say that marriage is becoming obsolete.
That can make this anniversary sound pretty impressive, but we all know that statistics can lie. So let’s move beyond statistics. Basic psychology teaches us that the most common stressors we face, in marriage and in life, include money issues, health issues, deaths of loved ones, moves, job changes, and kids. This marriage has survived by my count at least twenty-four different jobs, eleven moves, cancer in each spouse, deaths of parents and siblings, the bursting of the internet stock bubble, miscarriages, church splits, and me.
As an only child, I have had a unique perspective – the best view in the house - to watch this marriage. In thinking about what I wanted to say tonight, I have decided to focus on what I have learned from watching Mom and Dad be married. There are, of course, a plethora of things I (and most of you) could say about both Mom and Dad individually. These are two of the smartest, most involved, most varied, and most dearly loved people around. They have more degrees, life experiences, and friends than anybody else I know. Each of them is a teacher, an example, a writer, a speaker, a role model, a witness, and a leader.
But I want to focus on what I have learned from the two of them together, because, after all, tonight is a celebration of what they have done together, what they have made together. If you noticed, every single picture you have seen up on this screen has included both of them. I have lots of great and funny and candid pictures of each of them, but tonight is about the two of them together.
So, what have I, the only child with the ringside seat, learned from the fifty-year-old marriage? In the best Baptist tradition, I have three points to make.
1. Having a lot in common is overrated; having the right things in common is essential.
I did not know Wayne and Faye Robbins in 1961, but here is what I know about them. One was from Covington, Tennessee, the son of a farmer, who had grown up chopping cotton until he found baseball as a way out, a way to college, a way to being something more. The other was the child of a Texas school principal who became an attorney, the valedictorian who was ABD on a doctor’s degree from Vanderbilt. One had worked on church staffs and for Baptist Student Unions, as well as for more than one denominational college; the other had been a military policeman, a radio announcer, a private detective, a high school teacher, and a professional baseball player. One had been engaged – or nearly engaged – multiple times; the other never had. One had a brother who was a nationally known preacher; the other one had a brother who was a 16-year-old kid. One was at home as a native Texan; the other was a stranger in a strange land. One was nearly eight years older than the other.
Still, and despite these myriad differences, they shared critical things – faith in Jesus Christ; an experience in the church and parachurch groups like BSU that inexorably shaped their souls, minds, and hearts; dreams about family; a love of books and movies and history; a sense of calling.
When Gena and I married, we were very, very different people. We still are. There were those – and sometimes we ourselves were in this camp – who felt we were too different from each other to make a good marriage last. It was Gena who saw the fallacy in this line of thinking long before I did, but in retrospect, Gena’s understanding of how our differences would fit together and support each other made sense to me because of the model I had seen growing up. Gena and I, like Mom and Dad, share the critical things in common, and we are well into the twenty-second year of our marriage.
What all this tells me is that having the right things in common is far more important to marriage than having a bunch of random things in common. Being quote-unquote happy with your life or with each other every second is not really the right measure. Whether or not you both enjoy the Beatles or shellfish or taking walks in the rain or the other things that internet dating services ask about (so I’m told) pale in comparison to sharing the critical directions and convictions. Mom and Dad’s fifty years have taught me that.
2. Success is measured in terms that have little to do with what you will see on the news.
Every one of you knows Mom and Dad, and I know that you would all call them successes. My 46+ years of watching them has taught me a number of things about success:
a.First, we live in this world, and pursuing things that this world says are important – things like career and education and recognition - is not bad. It is how gifted people function in the world.
b.Second, when you pursue those goals honestly, you don’t always become rich and famous. Mom and Dad are comfortable, but they are by no means wealthy. They are, both individually and together, well known in a variety of spheres, but neither approaches celebrity status.
c.Third, pursuit of those goals – career, education, recognition – has to give way to more fundamental ideals. We could spend all night listing those ideals, but I am thinking about things like seeking and then following God’s call on your life; loving your family; loving those who are not your family; serving your church, even when your church is not serving you. I am talking about being available to coach your kid’s team and direct his play, developing yourself to know right answers so that you have right answers to give when the opportunity presents itself, going to visit car wreck victims who are friends of your son a thousand miles away but whose accidents happened in your home town (that happened twice, by the way), having the ability to write newspaper articles and poems and Sunday School lessons and military biographies and devotionals and sermons and letters and internet chat posts that actually mean something.
Mom and Dad are successes not because of the house in which they live or the numbers in their bank account. They are successes not because of the number of times their names have been in the paper. They are not even successes because fifty people showed up here from eighteen different cities as far away as California and Kentucky just to congratulate them on this occasion.
No. Mom and Dad are successes for entirely different reasons. I hope you think they are successes at parenting. They certainly are successes at grandparenting. They are successes at traveling. Far more importantly, they are successes at making and keeping freinds.
Mom and Dad are successes because they have heard the divine call on their lives – both individually and as a couple, a family – and have followed it. They are successes because they have both made themselves better and smarter than either had any right to expect to be. They are successes because everyone around them looks to them for modeling and advice. They are successes because they have loved people they did not know who still needed loving and loved when they did not feel like loving and loved when they did not even understand how to love. A Golden Wedding Anniversary is not just a lifetime achievement award. In this case, it is a clear mark of success. I have learned much about success from Mom and Dad.
3. A life spent in pursuit of and celebration of a relationship with Jesus Christ is a life well-lived.
This is not news to most of you, and I don’t intend for this to turn into a sermon. I want to make this last point instead to focus on how Mom and Dad have demonstrated the interrelation between their loving marriage and their lives as two disciples.
Mom and Dad do not agree on all religious topics. That is ok. Remember my first point – it is not necessary that they have everything in common. What they do agree on is the critical nature of their understanding of God’s will for their lives. What they do agree on is that their lives and our lives should revolve around a relationship with Jesus.
Mom says that I first asked her to explain the Trinity to me when I was three years old. That may say something about me, and it may say something about how God speaks to children, but it doubtless says something about the focus of our home life as I was growing up. It was the nature of things for us to discuss complex issues, and it was the nature of things for us to discuss issues of faith; so a complex issue of faith was, of course, second nature. To say that we had religious debates is really to misunderstand the nature of this family. It took Gena a while to understand that our intense discussions, often peppered with disagreement, were not heated disputes but rather were, and still are, thoughtful and penetrating examinations of concepts of passionate importance to us. As I grew up, the most important thing for us to discuss was the spiritual issue of the moment. This was never put on, artificial, or difficult – it was simply the way things were. It still is.
Please do not understand me to be putting Mom and Dad up on some sort of religious pedestal. That is not what I am doing. I don’t believe their intense focus on the things of God is anything different from what is demanded of all of us. Perhaps Mom and Dad are better read on these issues than many, and doubtless they can both articulate these concepts better than most; but I maintain that all Christian life is, or should be, centered on the faith, its questions and issues, and the discussions that naturally flow from it. Mom and Dad demonstrate the centrality of faith that should characterize all of us. That does not mean you have to be a stick in the mud who is unable to talk about baseball or popular music or politics or “The Andy Griffith Show;” I believe our family can go toe-to-toe with anybody on any of those things. It means that life starts and ends with our relationship with God and His call on us.
One of my best friends is a pastor in San Antonio. I listen to his sermons on the internet when I cannot hear him in person, which is most of the time. A month or so ago, he preached a sermon on First Corinthians 7, the passage where Paul instructs husbands and wives how to give themselves to each other. In his sermon, Bryan talked about God’s intention for marriage: how it is good and right for us to be married to someone who is radically different from us, as men and women inherently are and as Mom and Dad – and Gena and I – are. My friend’s sermon discussed marriage as a kind of workshop for being God’s people in the world. As we learn to live with and love and forgive and make allowances for someone so different under our own roof, we practice the love of God; we then are more ready to display the love that is just as necessary with others outside our living room who are also quite different from us. My own pastor preached just last Sunday on the connection between love of God and love of neighbor, reminding us that we often best experience the former by practicing the latter.
Mom and Dad’s married life has in turn been a workshop for me. I have seen two people who approach faith very differently, who think of church differently, who teach Sunday School differently, who pray differently, who love God’s children differently. But despite those differences, they have taught me the importance of approaching faith, thinking of church, teaching the scripture, prayer, and the love of God. None of you who knows them has any doubt of their faith and their relationship with Jesus Christ.
A marriage of fifty years deserves a party, a round of applause, and some time to reflect on what those years really mean.
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