I have confidence – I believe – that God will bring something good from this. He is God, the God who brings good from evil, not once, but continually. But for now, I have to go through a terrible and difficult time, and I hate it.

I hate what I’ve done. I hate what I’m putting my family through. I hate my life at the moment.

It’s so hard for me to trust God, even though I know I should be able to.

Father,
Please remind me of your presence and your love.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.

I hate waiting. I’m not good at being patient, and it’s not very fun. I want things to be right now, and I want something to occupy me all the time. I’ll work on the computer and read and play a card game all at once. I hate just waiting.

That’s what I’m doing now. Hating the waiting. (Which would make a good band name.)

I messed up. Bad. Really bad. I’m probably going to lose my job. Which I like, and which I’m (mostly) good at.

However, no determination has been made, as far as I know. So I’m waiting.

I’m praying, too. But it’s hard to pray right now, with so much to worry about, with so much to think about. Also, I don’t know how many times I can cry out, “Father, please take care of me and my family!”

Waiting.

Waiting.

I understand salvation by works; it makes sense to me. Weigh my deeds, and if the good outweigh the bad then everything’s cool. i can live with that. I can even live with the more common evangelical version of grace, which goes something like this:

God: Hmm, looks like poor Brother Adso there has really messed up his life. He is all tangled up in sin, so I’ll provide a way out. [SFX: harp strings] There. Now he can be saved.

Brother Adso: Thank you Lord! Truly you are gracious to give Your son so that I may be saved!

God: You’re welcome, for I am truly gracious. Now here’s the list of rules you need to follow to deserve My grace.

Brother Adso: O Lord, I will obey Your law!

God: That’s all I ask. That, and that you be truly miserable when you fail.

Brother Adso: [sighs sadly and makes a note to never ever fail, especially where anyone can see him.]

I don’t know where I absorbed that, or if it just comes naturally to all of us. Legalism is certainly “the knowledge of good and evil” – perhaps we have all taken it in, written in our genetics, as a consequence of the fall.

“If it says TGGTCGAAC
Then you might get the cancer
If it says GTCACGACAGG
Then you shouldn’t eat shrimp or nuts
If it says TATACACATATCCTCGT
Then you’ll probably wish that you didn’t know”

as Jonathan Coulton might put it.

I’ve been reading Robert Capon’s Between Noon and Three, and it’s really making me nervous. I keep finding myself thinking, “Wait, that can’t be right,” and then realizing that it is. Grace scares me, because of how open it is. I want some boundaries. I want some rules. Not necessarily to control my own behavior (I’ve been me long enough that I pretty well know what I’m going to do, including how I’ll fail, in any given situation) but to constrain others. And, even more importantly, because if there are limits on God’s grace, then perhaps mine can be limited as well.

I’m not good at showing grace to others. When I read a response like Wade Burleson’s to an attack on his family, I don’t know how he does it. I don’t think I could in his place. In fact, just reading about it made me mad enough to want to try and track down the email sender and explain to him or her the error of his or her ways. And I don’t even know Wade or his children.

How can I understand God’s grace, when even human grace is so foreign to me? I keep running across examples of grace, and situations that show me how ungraceful I am. I’m certain that this is God moving in my life, and I’m so afraid I’ll miss it. I want to see His kingdom come to pass in my life, the kingdom of grace. I just wish I had some idea of what I was wishing for.

From Chaplain Mike, who has been overseeing Michael’s blog as Michael grew unable to update it:

“I received word tonight that Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk, our friend, passed away in his home in Oneida, KY, in the presence of his family.

With them, we mourn his passing.
With them, our tears fall.
With them, we express gratitude that Michael is at peace and no longer suffering.
With them, we cry out to God in pain because our suffering has just increased.
With them and with all creation, we groan, awaiting the day when this sad world will be put to rights.
With them and with all the saints, we put our trust in Christ alone, crucified, buried, risen, ascended, and coming again.

Words are hard to come by at this moment. At a more appropriate time tomorrow, I will say more.
Thank you for praying.”

Michael was a good friend of mine, even though I never met him in real life. I found his blog back in the 1990s [EDIT: I remembered it as the late 90's based on where I was working, but was wrong; Michael actually started blogging in November of 2000. I found his site sometiome between then and the end of 2001.] sometime – I don’t even recall what I was looking for – and was hooked. Through reading his stuff there and through participating in the Boar’s Head Tavern collaborative site, I got to know how he thought. At the time he was a Calvinist, and I disagreed with him; but through engaging with him, I learned a great deal about what I believed and why I believed it. Michael’s thinking shaped mine in many ways; his well-thought writings required that I also think well. His RSS feed was one of my first subscriptions, and I eagerly clicked the links when they popped up, knowing that what I was about to read might be funny, touching, moving, inspiring, and certain that I would grow from it.

I’ve sent out links to the Internet Monk site to more people than I can think of; so often, when a question arose, Michael had considered it already and had written something worthwhile on it. The youth pastor at our church told me one day, “I love it when I get an email from you with a link to Michael Spencer; I know it’s going to be good.”

Please be in prayer for Michael’s family, his wife Denise and his children. He loved them dearly, a fact that was often apparent in his writings, and I know that they loved him as well. Pray for them now at the time of his passing.

I’ve written a bit here about being saddened by our church. We’re a small-town Oklahoma church, and a bit behind the times. For example, we’ve managed to put off the worship wars until last year. Now, we’re fully in the throes of them. We’ve had a very active music program at church; when I started attending, back in 1995 or so, the choir put on both a Christmas and Easter musical or cantata every year, as well as singing every Sunday, with a special song every 3-4 weeks. There was also an active children’s choir. Sunday morning would involve several hymns, a special and an offertory. Being a small country church, our offertory sometimes featured harmonica or fingerpicked guitar; and, because there was also a very active school band, frequently one or more of the band members would play. I remember flutes and clarinets, and occasionally a saxophone or trumpet.

A few years later, we added in an orchestra, such as it was. With so many people who were either currently in band or who had been (many of the adults had played during their school days) it was easy enough to do. We got orchestration for the hymnal and a couple of books of praise choruses arranged for band. We had piano, organ, trumpets, flutes, clarinets, saxophones, tuba, trombone, French horn, drums, and keyboards. It sounded great, and many of the older people commented that for the first time in many years, they could hear the hymn music. (Three trumpets playing melody will do that for you.) We played about the same mix of music as before, mostly hymns with some choruses added in. It seemed as though we would bypass the worship wars. At a time when many churches were splitting over whether to sing hymns or have a rockin’ band in worship, we seemed to have the best of both worlds.

Sadly, it wasn’t the case.

We had several people, mostly from Pentecostal backgrounds, who were unhappy with the music. They wanted all praise choruses, all the time. They wanted to raise their hands during worship and felt uncomfortable doing so. They felt that the music we had didn’t appeal to kids enough, specifically their kids. (The fact that their kids showed no interest in anything spiritual at all was clearly the fault of the music.) And they began to agitate for a change. More choruses. More freedom to raise hands. And these were not bad things, per se. Raising hands in worship is pretty clearly enjoined in Scripture, and I do think that (within the limits of Scripture and the regulative principle) people should be free to express their worship with their bodies. We are creatures of flesh and blood, and it is unnatural to expect that we would not show our worship physically, by raising hands, by kneeling, by bowing our heads. Some people got quite offended about this, however, and proclaimed that we were becoming Pentecostal, that soon we’d be leaping pews and falling down laughing, and who knew where that might lead? It might come to speaking in tongues, healing services or even dancing.

Very quickly, the two camps began to spiritualize their preferences. (And preferences were, and are, what they are, despite protestations to the contrary.) The hymnal group argued that the new songs “weren’t Christian” (interesting, since our music leader shows a strong preference among new choruses for those which are drawn directly from Scripture), or weren’t traditional enough, or were simply Pentecostal and hence evil. It certainly wasn’t just that they liked a different style of music; no, the praise and worship stuff was simply wrong, and the quicker we got back to the hymns the better. Of course, the P&W fanatics did exactly the same, only in reverse. They claimed that only if we started doing all P&W music could we have any church growth, because that’s what would draw people in, and keep them there. In fact, any worship that wasn’t done to the strains of the latest P&W hit was simply false worship and didn’t count. Those people who didn’t jump on board were told that they were holding back the work of the Lord, that if they would just sit down and shut up, then we’d see what God can do. I still recall our pastor telling us how he’d had a revelation that we needed to do things differently in order to attract people to our church (“differently” apparently being equal to “throw out all hymns and put a band on stage”). He told us that when he’d told his wife this (his wife played in the orchestra), she asked him “So, does this mean we just tell all the people in the orchestra ‘thanks, now shut up?’” He couldn’t come up with an answer for that, because, of course, it was exactly what he meant, so he hemmed and hawed a bit and then moved on. He had just gotten back from a trip and was very tired, or I think he wouldn’t have told that particular anecdote.

So we immediately went to all P&W, all the time, and the congregation exploded. We went from around 200 to almost 500 in the morning service immediately. No, wait, that wasn’t what happened at all. Instead, we began to see people leave the church, as the music they loved was replaced with shallow pop drivel. The pastor left a few months later, after a conflict with some other church members. (A bad situation for all; he was a good pastor and a good man, although he had tendencies towards arrogance and high-handedness. This set some other members to trying to undermine him behind his back, which led him to resign.)

The music situation is still bad, and we’re still without a pastor. We have an interim which is a good thing, and he preached a good Easter message. (It wasn’t one of his best messages, though.) In the meantime, both sides of the worship debate are still busy being selfish, still certain that everyone needs to do what they like or else get out. This kind of divisiveness strikes at the heart of the church; it’s easy to see that we don’t attract people. Not, I think, because of our music, but because we are far too busy sniping at one another to do anything meaningful for God. His love DOES NOT shine through us. His grace is nowhere to be seen much of the time. On Easter Sunday, we had far too much available seating. In our church, at least, His body is still broken.

Father, forgive us for our selfishness
Help us to love each other
To hold each other up as more important
To set aside our own desires
And to truly love You.

(Lights up. A coffee shop table is center stage. A man enters and sits down.)

You can call me Kim. That’s not my name, but when I tell people my real name, it leads to all sorts of awkward questions. “Where are you from? How long have you been here? How old are you?” I can’t really answer them, and it’s … difficult to lie. The fact of the matter is that I spend a certain amount of time undercover, looking like this. To stay disguised, I can’t just walk in, sit down, and say “My name is Lochemiel, and I am one of the numberless soldiers in the hosts of the Most High.”

That felt good.

As I was saying, I don’t always look like this. As we’re sent out on His work, some of us go in brightness, clothed in His glory, and some of us walk in dark places, disguised in rags for the journey. Ah, but you should have seen us on that night, the night we sang of His birth, the greatest and most shining one of Heaven, born in a stable in Bethlehem. Why was He there? We didn’t know. We sang of peace between God and men, we sang for joy, we sang glory to our mighty King. We didn’t know exactly why we sang, only that it was part of the Plan. So we sang, because it is our fiercest joy to obey Him, to do His will, to serve Him in every fiber of our beings. We sang, and our audience was a ragged bunch of shepherds; but our true audience was (and always will be) our King, the eternal one whose glory floods the universe – and we reflected that glory.

Certainly, the shepherds were properly amazed.

For a time, many of us wore the disguise, keeping an eye on Him and watching Him grow. I walked near Him many times myself; I may have looked like a trader from Syria, but He knew who I was, even as a lad. The best disguise I’ve ever pulled off, and He saw right through it – I should have known. Never mind, it wasn’t Him we were trying to fool. As he grew older, some of us were always around Him, watching Him do things that amazed the humans, turning water into wine, feeding a crowd with a few loaves and fish; you know how it went. They should have been amazed at how little He did; if they could only have seen the amazing power in their midst, always under the tightest control …

And then one day the call went out, and we gathered as we have rarely gathered before, in our companies and hosts, the mighty armies of heaven spread out as far as eye could see. Light glinted from our blades as we prepared to ride forth to save Him, waiting for His call. At our head was Michael, the great captain, dangerous beyond belief as he walked behind the stars, ready to bring justice to the Betrayer.

In our ranks, we waited for the word, one word from His lips, ready to descend with fire and sword, and the very sight of our host would have exploded the hearts of His captors had they seen us. We waited and watched as they scourged Him, as they mocked Him (Him, who had made the very molecules of their beings!), as they whipped him through the streets towards the hill. We waited and watched as they nailed Him to the tree. We waited and watched as His Father left Him alone, and we waited – oh, we waited! – as He died.

And then he was there. The Betrayer, the rebel, the usurper – and he mocked us, calling us foolish slaves and weaklings, mindless sheep who could do nothing without orders. He laughed in Michael’s face, secure in his victory, and Michael could do nothing. (pause) None of us could do a thing.

On Earth, three days passed, as some men reckon it. And on the third, I received a summons from the Most High. “Go down to Jerusalem,” He ordered, “and roll away the stone.” I didn’t know what He had planned, but I am a member of the hosts, and my joy is in obedience. I descended, veiling myself from the eyes of the human guards, and I came into the garden by the tomb. I walked to the stone – and I let my disguise slip away, standing before the guards in my true form, shining with His glory. They fell down in fear as the earth shook, and I rolled the stone away and sat on it, waiting.

How can I say it? There are no words, other than the most bare description. He came forth. The power of death which entered the world so long ago broke and fell shivering at His feet. He came forth. The Betrayer felt that coming, and his fear and anger flashed across space so strongly I could taste it. He came forth, and in that instant, the Plan was made clear to us, and we – my brothers and I – we sang as we had not sung since that night over Bethlehem. “Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, to receive power, and honor, and glory forever!”

That song is the song we will always sing now. But now – right now – I have things to do. It’s time for me to go back to being Kim, to carrying out His missions in the dark places. Keep your eyes open – perhaps you’ll see me around sometime, although you probably won’t recognize me. Just an ordinary man, doing ordinary things in an ordinary way.

But in my heart, I’m singing.

(He gathers his things and leaves the stage as the lights go down.)

A painting by German Expressionist Emil Nolde

The day when we mark the death of Jesus. On the Friday of Passover week, sometime between 26 and 36 AD, the Roman governor of Judea had him executed for crimes against the Roman government. We celebrate his death in many ways; prayer, special church services, processions, Passion plays, fasting …. In the Roman Catholic church, no Mass will be celebrated today, except for special exceptions, such as a funeral. The altars will remain bare, with nothing on them to show joy or happiness. As Tony Campolo said

“It’s Friday. See Him walking to Calvary, the blood dripping from His body. See the cross crashing down on His back as He stumbles beneath the load. It’s Friday; but Sunday’s a coming.

It’s Friday. See those Roman soldiers driving the nails into the feet and hands of my Lord. Hear my Jesus cry, “Father, forgive them.” It’s Friday; but Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. Jesus is hanging on the cross, bloody and dying. But Sunday’s coming.

It’s Friday. The sky grows dark, the earth begins to tremble, and He who knew no sin became sin for us. Holy God who will not abide with sin pours out His wrath on that perfect sacrificial lamb who cries out, “My God, My God. Why hast thou forsaken me?” What a horrible cry. But Sunday’s coming.”

It’s Friday, and we should remember that day. Part of the Passover observation is for Jews to identify themselves with the ancient Israelites, once captive in Egypt, now freed by the mighty arm of God. Each person is supposed to put themselves in the place of a slave who has been liberated, who has been set free to journey to the promised land.

It’s Friday, and my sins weigh me down, but they are being lifted by the One who knew no sin. It’s Friday, and I am among those who cry out “Crucify Him! Let his blood be on my head!” It’s Friday, and I must remember how lost I was before I knew Him. Because, on Sunday, I can once again be found. On Sunday, I can be one of His children, raised by the power of His resurrection. On Sunday, His blood will be on my head, not as a punishment but as a payment for all my sin, all the darkness that I have so eagerly embraced and allowed to fill my soul.

But for now, it’s Friday.

These are my prayer beads. (Which I think means that I have to hand in my official Southern Baptist Badge and Secret Decoder Ring. The horror, the horror.) They’re Franciscan, which I like simply because I admire Francis, and wish that I had his faith. I’m sure that these are for praying the Rosary, although I haven’t done that with them.

I got prayer beads to use as a focus, because I find that it’s hard for me to stay focused in long prayer times. (My wife often tells me that she thinks that I have ADD. I look at her and say “Are you still talking about that?” And then we laugh and laugh. Or some of us do, anyway.) I find them very helpful to keep my prayers in tune; as I go through the beads, praying for the person/issue that I’ve assigned to each one, it’s easier for me to stay on track and to keep my thoughts on my Lord.

Why did we (protestants/evangelicals) ever give these up?

I remember one section, which featured a couple of earnest teens talking about The Concert for Bangladesh, and how it was great because you bought the album and were really helping people who were hungry. One of the teens mentioned that “we” had fasted for Bangladesh, at least from third hour until lunch. The other said something to the effect of “Fasting is so cosmic” or something equally hippy-dippy. It was a perfect picture of the smug self-righteousness that ultimately doomed the hippy movement, two rich Western kids congratulating themselves for fasting (from third hour until lunch!) as though their going without food had accomplished something. It’s an easy pitfall to fall into; make a symbolic gesture and think that it has an actual effect.The trouble is that symbolic gestures rarely have any real-world effects.

I see a lot of this sort of thing now, the idea of “raising awareness” by getting people to experience something – or more usually a facsimile of something. The fraternities and sororities at the university love to camp out to raise awareness of the homeless. So they get their tents, their refrigerator cartons, their sleeping bags, pillows, mp3 players, laptops, coolers and so on and build a replica shantytown on the library lawn where they can demonstrate how deeply they care about the plight of the homeless. This ‘raises awareness”, as though the rest of us will be walking across campus, blithely happy with our lives, and will suddenly see the shantytown and think, “My God! There are people (Sig Eps, by the T-shirts) who don’t have homes! I should immediately dedicate my life to solving the problem!”

Of course there’s always a quote in the school paper from some frat kid talking about how he had no idea what it was like to be on the street until he camped out on the nice safe library lawn in the warm weather with all his stuff, and now he totally gets what the homeless go through.

The last couple of weeks I’ve been seeing a bunch of Facebook status updates about people who are attending “One Day Without Shoes” sponsored by TOMS Shoes. I’m not opposed to TOMS; they do some good things, including donating a pair of shoes to those who need them for every pair sold (although the cynic in me wonders if the price of a pair of shoes just happens to be twice what it normally would be). However, the point of this event is not something tangible, like giving a pair of shoes; it’s the ever-nebulous “raising awareness”.

“ON APRIL 8th, 2010, TOMS Shoes asks YOU to walk for ONE DAY without shoes, like most children do everyday in developing countries. SHOW YOUR SUPPORT, go barefoot. ”

Now it’s possible that this will actually change someone’s life; they’ll have an epiphany and will dedicate their life to giving shoes to everyone in the world. But it strikes me as far more likely that this will have no effect at all. Actually, it will probably have a negative effect, because people will feel like they’ve done something by going shoeless.

I think that’s the real problem I have with these kind of things; they actively stop people from helping others, because they make it easy to get a sense of accomplishment without doing a single thing. On the FB page for the group, one user posted how amazing sacrifice is. The level of sacrifice required can be seen from other posts: ” ilovebarefoot(heart)”, “will be doing it 100% not that I wear footwear much in public” and ” i have to wear shoes in school lol but once i get home im taking them off!” (and we fasted from third hour until lunch!).

This is not a sacrifice – but these people will think it is, will go through their barefoot day and go on their way, filled with the warm glow of knowing that they helped and (best of all) it didn’t cost them a thing.

Meanwhile, in the Third World, some shoeless man, woman or child will continue to be shoeless – but perhaps they can console themselves with the thought that, for one day, they made some wealthy Americans feel good about themselves.

And after all, isn’t that what’s important?

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

I’ve been listening to this song a lot lately. I must have heard it somewhere, because I started hearing it in my head, over and over again. So, like any good digital consumer, I bought it from Amazon. (I don’t do iTunes; don’t like their DRM.) In fact, I bought four versions: Leonard Cohen’s original, Jeff Buckley’s from Grace, Rufus Wainwright’s and Popa Chubby’s amazing live version.

I want to start by saying that I have no idea what the song is about; there are some things in the lyrics that speak to me, so I’m going to talk about those. The interpretation – right or wrong – is mine, and I don’t really care what Cohen intended, I only care what resonates in my heart.

Central to the song is the idea that “the Hallelujah” can be many different things. I’m hearing it as the word was originally meant, a cry of praise and affirmation to God, and so I love the line about “the holy, or the broken Hallelujah”. I think I mainly know the broken Hallelujah; the Hallelujah that isn’t holy because it can only be expressed from broken lips, from a broken heart, from a life of broken dreams. The Hallelujah that doesn’t proceed, perfectly, from the mouth of God, but imperfectly from the unclean lips of a man. Incomplete, unholy, imperfect and broken, and yet a call to God. A call that says, “I still believe. I still want to know you. I still want to follow. But the path that seemed so clear and straight is all tangled in thorns and mud, and I have no more strength. So I’ll lie here in the mud for a while, and whisper, not the holy, but the broken Hallelujah.”

One day, I’d like to sing the holy one, but for now the broken one will have to do. And I’m kind of okay with that.