chappelltemple

His father Elyada is said to have been the first Israeli Jew to move back into the Jewish quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem following its restoration to Israel in the fabled 1967 Six Day War.  And reflecting the resilience of beauty even in times of war, just a few days after that, Elyada opened an art gallery there on the old Roman Cardo, the original north-south street in ancient towns, now sunken well below the current landscape of the modern city.

 It’s no surprise thus that Udi Merioz, Elyada’s son, became an artist as well, with his talents recognized not just in Israel but worldwide.  For in addition to becoming the curator of the Israeli Prime Minister’s Art Collection, Udi created artwork for the bicentennial Independence Celebration in the United States which still hangs today in the White House.

What is striking about his artwork, however, is the manner in which it is almost a “communicative language” in itself, as one has called it, embodying both the hope and courage that is a part of the Israeli national spirit.  His depiction of four young soldiers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem, for instance, shows them not only huddled fervently in prayer together, but with both their weapons and a prayer shawl.  And the point is that at times we are called not just to pray but to fight as well, not for personal motivations or gain, but rather for goals that go beyond our own lives.  

It reminds us, as well, of the passage from Zechariah 4.6 that Udi Merioz has attached to the print, “Not by might nor by power, but by My Spirit, says the LORD Almighty.”  For it is in that sense that the people of Israel are now combatting not simply the forces of another nation, but those who embody Evil and the ancient enemy of us all, the prince of this world, as well.

Such is not to say that the Palestinian people do not deserve our support and attention, for they do.  They have suffered long, and much and humanitarian efforts are desperately needed.  And it is noteworthy to add that though it is greatly underreported, the Israelis themselves are providing much of that even now.

But the terrorists who have overtaken Gaza are nothing short of satanic in their brutality and singular desire not just to establish a Palestinian homeland, but to utterly obliterate the nation of Israel—“from the River to the Sea”—and indiscriminately kill all those who are Jewish.  There is no moral equivalency involved in that equation, and those who argue for such do so out of either ignorance, misinformed bigotry, or pure malevolence.  

All of which is why the ancient admonition of Psalm 122 to “pray for the peace of Jerusalem” has never been more appropriate.  For the city whose name literally means “peaceful” is anything but that right now.  But God has a long history of faithfulness with Jerusalem and one day we are told that Christ will return to that very city to reign.

Until then, it is a time for faith and courage indeed, for “brave hearts again and strong arms,” as the hymnist once said.  For the Lord is looking for “watchmen on the walls” to call upon Him until God establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth. (Isaiah 62.6)

And in that respect—if only with our prayers—perhaps all of us indeed have been called to be “Soldiers at the Wall.”

(Photo used by the kind permission of the artist. Copies of Udi Merioz’ work, “Soldiers at the Wall,” Artwork Serial Number 271, the most famous hand-signed print in Israel, are available through the gallery website at  www.BlueAndWhiteArt.com. )

It’s been quite a week in my hometown of Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, so they call it.  Got some Greek words in the name, I guess, the kind that preachers like to use in sermons, you know.  Not sure just how much brotherly love there has been over at the State House, though.  For ever since that Virginia boy, Richard Henry Lee, read his resolution on June 7, things have been heating up.  Quite literally, I bet, for they’ve kept the windows closed so you can’t make out what they are saying.  But I bet it’s downright sweltering in that hall in more ways than one.  In fact, according to what I managed to find out, Lee resolved that—get this– “these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states, that they are absolved of all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved.”  Can you imagine that—independence!  

Oh, everybody knows it’s been coming for a while.  For King George has not exactly been responding to all of the list of grievances we’ve been sending over the Atlantic to him.  That’s why just over a year ago, in June 1775, that the Continental Congress established an army, put General Washington in charge of it—he’s a good man, though I think he’d rather be a farmer than a soldier sometimes.  But as he has said: “whenever my country calls upon me, I am ready to take my musket on my shoulder.”  

The king came back, of course, with a proclamation that we Americans were engaged in “open and avowed rebellion,” as he called it, and the Parliament even passed an act making all American vessels and cargoes subject to being seized by the Crown.  What’s more, just this past May we found out that King George has hired Germans to come fight here in America.  Germans!  Guess we shouldn’t be surprised—those Hanover kings were Germans to begin with.  But it’s just going to make things worse, I think.  For nobody likes a mercenary, a gun for hire.

Of course, to be fair, earlier this year, Tom Paine also stirred it up a bit with his little book, Common Sense—it sold by the thousands.  And Patrick Henry—he gave a speech last year in Virginia that was an appeal to God and an appeal to arms.  “Three million people,” he said, “armed in the holy cause of liberty and in such a country, are invincible by any force which our enemy sends against us.  For we shall not fight alone.  God presides over the destinies of nations and will raise up friends for us.  The battle is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, and the brave.” And then he summed it all up by asking, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?  Forbid it, almighty God!  I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

And with words like those, well, maybe that’s why eight colonies decided to support independence.  Only right after old Richard Henry Lee came riding back from Virginia with his motion, which John Adams was quick to second, the Congress postponed the vote and then took three weeks in recess so that everybody could go home and sound out the will of their neighbors.

And in the meantime, they appointed a Committee of Five to work on a draft to tell the whole world what our case for independence really is.  John Adams of Massachusetts, of course, was one of the five—that man does love to talk.  Roger Sherman of Connecticut was also from New England.  Then there were two from the middle colonies, old Ben Franklin from Pennsylvania—God bless ‘em; he really is old—70, I think, the oldest man in the room, that’s for sure—and Robert Livingston from New York.  Then they wanted to appoint Richard Henry Lee from the South, but he was already working on the Articles of Confederation and thought it was too much to try to do both; plus, his wife fell ill and he had to go home prematurely.  So, they picked another young Virginian to take his place, a fellow named Thomas Jefferson.

Only here was the thing:  Jefferson didn’t want to do it—he wanted John Adams to write it.  Said he wouldn’t do it, in fact.  And when Adams said he had to, Jefferson answered saying, “give me some solid reasons why.”  To which Adams said, “first off, you’re from Virginia and a Virginian ought to be at the head of this.”  “Second,” Adams said, “I am obnoxious, suspected and unpopular.  You are very much otherwise.”  “Then third, you can write ten times better than I can.”  So, Jefferson finally agreed and did most of the writing, with Franklin and Adams making the corrections.  Took 17 days to hammer it out but I have to say that Jefferson does indeed have a way with words.  For listen to how he started, in fact: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” he wrote, “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”  Did you catch that?  “All men (and women, too, for that matter) are created equal.  Nobody in the world has ever actually believed that, but we do.  For there are some rights that people ought to have not because somebody has granted them those rights, but because God Himself did when He lovingly and intentionally created us all to reflect His glory on this earth.

The Congress came back just a few days ago on July 1 and on July 2, they adopted Lee’s resolution for independence by a vote of 12 to 0 to 1—New York abstained—they tend to do that a lot in the Congress.  And immediately afterwards, they started to consider the Declaration that the writing committee put forth.  I hear that General Washington sent a letter to his wife on the 3^rd that said that “in a few days you will see a Declaration setting forth the causes which have impelled us to this mighty revolution, and the reasons which will justify it in the sight of God.  I am fully aware of the toil and blood and treasure what it will cost to maintain this declaration and support and defend these states; [but], through all the gloom, I can see the rays of ravishing light and glory.”

And in the end, I think the General was right about the light and glory.  For even though I’m not sure how much Christianity Thomas Jefferson has in him, it’s pretty clear that the premise on which his Declaration stands–or falls, I suppose–is a religious appeal.  Because again, there’s only one authority that actually matters and can give it validity and truth, and that’s an appeal to “the Supreme Judge of the world,” words that the Congress insisted Jefferson add to his document.  Because who else do you suppose could have made those self-evident truths so evident?  Only the Lord who already put them in His Word.  And who are we going to have to depend on when things really begin to heat up?  Only Divine Providence, friends.  For, you see, this nation really was founded as a city on a hill, a great experiment if you will.  And without God, it’s just nonsense to think that we’ll ever really be free at all.  

They debated it for a good while.  John Dickinson of Pennsylvania spoke eloquently against it.  Adams waited for someone else, someone less obnoxious than himself, to rise to answer, but no one did and so Adams got up and he spoke with such power and conviction that it stunned everyone.  “Before God, I believe the hour has come,” he said. “My judgment approves this measure, and my whole heart is in it.  All that I have, and all that I am, and all that I hope in this life, I am now ready to stake upon it.  And I leave off as I began, that live or die, survive or perish, I am for the Declaration.  It is my living sentiment and by the blessing of God it shall be my dying sentiment.  Independence now, and independence forever!”  Nobody spoke after that, until the door swung open and in came the Reverend John Witherspoon—a Presbyterian, I think, you know, God’s Chosen Frozen—he’s the head of the New Jersey delegation, and he announced that his state was ready to vote for independence.  Only Pennsylvania and South Carolina still voted no; New York abstained, and Delaware was split, one delegate for and one against.  

It had to be unanimous, so they decided to come back the next day and try again.  To resolve the Delaware deadlock, they sent word to Dover, the capital of that colony, to fetch their third delegate, Caesar Rodney.  Rodney had had to go home on urgent business, but when he got the word at two in the morning that debate would resume in less than seven hours, he got on his horse and galloped off in a pitch-black stormy night, 89 miles to get here to Philadelphia in horrible conditions, with roads flooded out and no change of horses until dawn.  He arrived just as the final vote was being taken, barely able to speak.  They had to practically carry the man into the room. But he voted for independence, breaking the Delaware deadlock, and the other delegations followed suite, all except for New York, which abstained.  So, they passed that Declaration twelve to nothing, and after announcing the vote, everybody was quiet as the magnitude of what they had just down fell over them.  Some wept.  Some, like Reverend Witherspoon, said a prayer.  And then John Hancock, the president of the Congress, broke the silence by saying, “Gentlemen, the price on my head has just been doubled!”  Ben Franklin likewise told the others that they must “all hang together now, or, most assuredly, they will all hang separately.”Everybody laughed a little and then Samuel Adams stood up and this is what he said: “We have this day restored the Sovereign, to Whom alone men out to be obedient.  He reigns in Heaven and… from the rising to the setting sun, may His Kingdom come.”  No king but Jesus, my friends, no king but Jesus.

I hear John Hancock plans to be the first one to sign it when they get it back from the printers in a couple of weeks.  He says he going to put his name in big letters just below the center, large enough so that old King George can “read it without his glasses.”  Everybody then will sign it in geographical order, putting their names on that parchment in the same arrangement as their states are, with New Hampshire, the northernmost state, on the top, and Georgia, the southernmost, down below.  

But, you know, in the end that Declaration was not really written just for the 13 American colonies.  For if you read it closely, what you will discover is that it was written for the world.  Because I have to think our country has been given a mission by God, to carry freedom everywhere.  Indeed, we will never be truly or safely be free until all people on earth enjoy that same freedom.  It’s a pretty big task.  But then we have a pretty big God, as well. Maybe that’s why the good book tells us that “blessed is the nation, the people, the goyim in Hebrew, whose God is the LORD, that is, YHWH.” Matthew Henry once put it this way.  He said that the hearts of such a people, as well as their times, are all in God’s hand.  All the powers we have depend on Him, and they’re of no account, of no avail at all without Him.  But if we make God’s favor sure towards us, then we need not fear whatever is against us, for God’s watchful eye is over all those who have a believing hope in his mercy.  And then Henry said this, that “there is no flying from God but by flying to Him.”

I guess in the end, therefore, our job is just to depend upon God and look to Him as a nation, and then step up and do what we can to keep this democracy working.  In fact, it might help if everybody simply said the same words that those who signed the Declaration over at the statehouse agreed to.  You can say them with me right now if you like: “Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, for the rectitude of our intentions, with firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

My, what a difference that can make if we truly believe it. For as Benjamin Franklin said, “the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men.  And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”  That’s the news from Philly on this Independence weekend, where there’s no king but Jesus, and all of God’s children are strong and brave. May it be the word from wherever you are as well.

(Adopted from the message shared on July 3, 2022, at Christ Church Sugar Land. To see the entire service, done in the style of a radio program, visit the sermon archives at christchurchsl.org/videos/)

The fierce storms that rolled through our Houston area neighborhood last night, with more thunder and lightning than I can ever remember hearing and seeing, made me think of him.  For it was on a hot summer’s day in 1505 that a twenty-one-year-old university student in Germany found himself unexpectedly caught in a similar storm while on the open road from his home back to school.  And, as his classical biographer, Roland Bainton, long ago wrote, in a single flash of sudden lightning his life was changed forever:

“There was God the all-terrible, Christ the inexorable, and all the leering fiends springing from their lurking places in pond and wood that with sardonic cachinnations they might seize his shock of curly hair and bolt him into hell,” as Bainton so colorfully expressed it.  And in response, that student cried out to the patron saint of miners, saying, “Saint Anne, help me!  I will become a monk.”

To be sure, given the circumstances, he probably could have been absolved of that hasty vow.  His father, in fact, was deeply angry about the decision, having planned a different and far more lucrative career for his brilliant son.  But Martin Luther believed himself to be under divine constraint and so within two weeks he arrived at the door of an Augustinian monastery to “take the cowl” and present himself as a novice.  

And true to form, Luther plunged into his new vocation vociferously.  For it is said that he positively wore out his confessor by appearing so frequently before him–sometimes multiple visits in one day– to seek absolution from almost everything he either thought or did.  But Luther was simply looking for an answer to the hunger in his heart that his encounter along his own road to Damascus had awakened, namely, how to be justified in the eyes of a righteous God.

We know now, of course, that the answer for him came not in a confessional booth but in a conscious study of God’s Word that led him to understand for the first time the meaning of God’s grace.  It was not penitence that was needed, but repentance, and when he discovered that idea of justification by faith—sola fide–he began a revolution that was to change the world.

Nothing quite so dramatic came out of the Texas storms last night, I suspect.  But they too were a reminder that whenever we may write off God in deference to all of our human wisdom, or even artificial intelligence, the Creator of the Universe has a way of rumbling back into our lives and reminding us of just how powerful He really is.

It’s no wonder that centuries after Luther, the largely self-taught son of a slave and captivating preacher, Charles Tindley, summed it up in one of his best known hymns by writing simply these words:  “when the storms of life are raging, stand by me…in the midst of tribulation, stand by me… when the hosts of hell assail, and my strength begins to fail, Thou who never lost a battle, stand by me.”

Words worth remembering perhaps the next time an unexpected storm or sudden bolt of lightning may strike in your own life, too.

He was only twenty-four when he wrote the words, so we can forgive him if he got it a little wrong.  For while beautifully extolling the virtues of “old friends,” Paul Simon posed the question, “can you imagine us years from today, sharing a park bench quietly?” and then he added, “how terribly strange to be seventy.”

Reaching that milestone marker today myself, however, I have to think that being seventy may feel a little odd, but it’s not “terribly strange” at all.  Rather, it’s “wonderfully blessed.”  For looking back over the first seven decades of my life I am enormously grateful for every age and stage and how I have seen God work in them.

My childhood years (or at least what I can remember of them) were on the whole happy ones and when I became a teenager, I received a gift that I still cherish:  a Honda 50 motorcycle, a moving metaphor for independence, long before that company began making cars as well.  In my twenties, I not only had the privilege of sitting and learning from incredible teachers at Gordon-Conwell Seminary, but of discovering for myself as a missionary in what was then Communist Eastern Europe that I really could trust God in everything.  And when I came back, most significantly at the age of 24, God gifted me with an incredible help-mate for life, a beautiful woman in a yellow dress that captured my heart and still holds it.

In my thirties, two incredible children came into our lives, and we’ve been laughing and loving with them ever since.  And entering the next decade I had the joy of turning forty while working on a college campus surrounded by eighteen-year-olds whose youthful enthusiasm was fortunately contagious. 

The fifties brought the arrival of grandchildren into our lives, which eventually blossomed into a matched set of three rather remarkable kids on each side of the Atlantic Ocean.  And in the decade just completed, I not only discovered a new-found love for the land of Israel, but I was privileged to work in helping to birth a new Methodist church as well.

And all along the way, in good days and in bad, what I’ve discovered is that God has been constant in both His character and His caring.  As enormously talented as Paul Simon was, in fact, it’s Jenn Johnson who got it right, I think.  For it was while driving on a long country road during the adoption process of their son that Jenn began to think about the faithfulness and kindness of God.  And so, she recorded a song into her phone with words that find a special resonance with me on this day:  

“All my life You have been faithful, all my life You have been so, so good, with every breath that I am able, I will sing of the goodness of God.”

I’m thankful indeed for my “winter companions” as Paul Simon called them.  But we are not just “lost in our overcoats waiting for the sunset.”  We’re lost in wonder, love, and praise, waiting for the Son.

(For many years it has been my practice to write a new poem each Advent.  Here’s my offering for 2022.)

Amidst the changes bold and deep

That sometimes steal away my sleep

Your promises You always keep

Emmanuel

And when the ebb and flow of life

Brings sometimes gladness, sometimes strife

Your Word cuts through all like a knife

Emmanuel

For long ago and far away

Within a manger on the hay

You burst into this world that day

Emmanuel

What prophets longed to one day see

What others thought could never be

The joy of Your nativity

Emmanuel

Despite our doubts and all our sin

Our pride and will to always win

To each heart You will enter in

Emmanuel

For in these days of ordered mirth,

The meaning of Your humble birth

Is that You came down to this earth

Emmanuel

 “God with Us” is Your sweet Name

And You still heal the sick and lame

Our lives need never be the same

Emmanuel

When they dropped me off at my dorm in Dallas, I’m fairly sure than neither my parents nor I had any idea of what was actually happening that day.  For though I went home for holidays many times after I moved away to college, it was never quite the same.  

At the seasoned age of nineteen, I began my first church job, working as a summer youth director in Baytown where I lived in a rather rickety garage apartment on stilts behind the associate pastor’s parsonage. And the following year, I moved further down the bay to do the same in Texas City.  Two years later I was ordained as a deacon, just days before heading to Europe to work in Slavic missions behind the Iron Curtain.

Thus began a half century of ministry within The United Methodist Church that has included pastoring nine churches, administering a church-owned college, working on a national church newspaper, as well as teaching in both denominational and ecumenical seminaries.  Ministry has taken me across the world, not just to Europe but to the Caribbean, Africa, Southeast Asia, and even Siberia, as well as to more church conferences than I’m sure the Geneva Convention allows.  I even hold the record for the shortest tenure on the cabinet ever within our conference, going to serve my present church before I actually moved into my new office in the conference building.

More significantly, my wife and I were married in her United Methodist church in Arkansas and both of our children were baptized in UM churches where I was serving when they were born.  We’ve lived in eleven parsonages, as well as two or three apartment complexes and even the Ronald McDonald House in Houston in which we served as the founding managers just to help make ends meet.  All until we bought the first house of our own at the age of sixty, much to the amusement of our realtor who quickly discovered we knew nothing about home ownership.  But in every place, it has been the church which has provided for that roof over our heads, one way or the other.

Across the years we have also met many incredible church folks whose faith and love not only inspired us, but also carried us through challenges and hard times. They’ve loved on us in immeasurable ways and we in turn have both celebrated and cried with them.  All of which is why it is difficult indeed to walk away from this denomination around which most of our lives have revolved for the last five decades.

But I also know it is time.  For though Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, the church I joined long ago is sadly not.  After fifty-four years of a bold experiment in theological pluralism, in fact, it is now clear that the grand notion of a big tent when it comes to defining our beliefs did not work, as those embracing differing views on “essentials” (to use a Wesleyan term) have slowly but surely drifted further and further apart.  And so, for an evangelical Wesleyan such as myself, it now feels as though I no longer have a home in The United Methodist Church.

After preaching my last sermon as a United Methodist pastor thus on Christmas Day, on December 31 I will no longer be a part of the denomination to which I have belonged since the age of 15 when the UMC itself was formed.  And despite my sometimes lover’s quarrel with that body, I’m certain it will be a poignant goodbye indeed. For like that day in Dallas five decades ago, I’m leaving home once more, and I know it will never be quite the same again.   

Blessedly, however, on the following day, I will begin a new chapter as an elder in the Global Methodist Church, a fresh expression of the Wesleyan witness which I believe to be a better fit for my own biblical and theological understandings. And since I can’t actually find the word “retirement” anywhere in the Bible, I hope to keep on serving in the GMC however I can, albeit at a slightly less frantic pace.

As we stand at this crossroads, thus, I wish my friends in The United Methodist Church only the best in their journey.  And following the admonition in Jeremiah 6.16, my prayer is that all of us may do our best to ask for the ancient paths, to discover where the good way is, and to walk in it, finding rest for our souls indeed. 

For sometimes you really do have to leave home in order to find it.

It felt a little like watching the odometer turn over in my car.  For when my watch hit “1,461 days” this morning it seemed momentous to me indeed.  Because for four years now—through hurricanes, heat waves, and hotel parking lots—I’ve not missed a single day walking at least five miles, usually six or seven.  And hitting that four-year mark on my streak, going almost 9,000 miles or so now, has been a little like finishing college and earning a bachelor’s degree in walking.

To be sure, it’s only been by the grace of God.  For those that know me well will probably agree that I’m not the most athletic person around and getting up early to walk before the heat comes on does not exactly come naturally to me.  But then the streak too has had a way of self-perpetuating itself, joined by my smart—sometimes smart-aleck–watch, which has taunted me with messages like “You’re usually farther along by now…”

In the end, however, it’s all been a reminder about the power of a habit.  And in that regard, it’s not just our physical health that needs consistency, but it’s our mental, relational and spiritual conditions, as well.  The pandemic, for instance, broke the pattern of physically coming to church for some folks, and they’ve never quite gotten it back.  And others have unfortunately abandoned such spiritual disciplines as spending time in the scriptures with God each day.

Some twenty years ago, however, Eugene Peterson found a time-tested tonic for staying strong in our faith in what he called an “old dog-eared songbook,” that portion of the Psalms, chapters 120-134, known as the Songs of Ascents.  For it’s believed that these fifteen psalms were sung by pilgrims as they ascended the road to Jerusalem to attend the festivals that were held there some three times a year, and similarly, they may have been chanted by the Levite priests who climbed the sacred steps to serve at the Temple itself.

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains,” one of them begins, “where does my help come from?”  And another starts simply by saying, “I rejoiced with those who said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the LORD.’” And still a third reminds us that “those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion which cannot be shaken but endures forever.” They are short passages, to be sure, but all of them are hopeful.  And all of them remind us that we too have been called to be pilgrims in this world, whether we ever actually go up to Jerusalem ourselves or not.

Maybe that’s why Peterson entitled his classic book simply, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.  For that’s what it takes to faithfully follow the Lord in a frightfully fickle time indeed.  It’s not about running like a graceful gazelle, in fact, but simply about putting one foot in front of the other and plodding on, even when you don’t particularly feel inspired to do so.

Tomorrow morning, thus, I’ll hit the pavement again, though I’m also going to think about some new routines as well for the year ahead.  For though keeping a streak going can be a powerful motivator in itself, remembering just where you are headed can similarly put us on the right track.  And in that respect, a long obedience is not really for just four years… it’s for a lifetime.