"Trust not in Princes" (Psalm 146)

A sermon preached 15 months ago, struck me as relevant today.

Audio Link: (skip to 1:15 for start of recording)

Fall Conference 2012, Session #3: "Is God Disappointed in Me?"

Audio Link: "Is God Disappointed?" - DoverBaptistChurch.org

Fall Conference 2012, Session #2: "Is God Powerless... Or Cruel?"

Audio Link: "Is God Powerless?" - DoverBaptistChurch.org

Fall Conference 2012, Session #1: Is God Distant?

Audio Link: "Is God Distant?" - DoverBaptistChurch.org

The Veil is Thin (adapted from sermon preached on 6/17/2012)

I am convinced that, for the most part, the Church has left the riches of Heaven sitting in the bank, thinking that we only get them when we die and go there. The belief that Heaven is entirely a future reality has reduced far too many of God’s declarations in Scripture about the believer’s identity and calling to “positional” truths that are acknowledged but never experienced. It is time for that to change.” - Jon Tyson

There are two common mistakes we make in thinking about Heaven. The first is the mistake of disbelief: the personal conviction that heaven - that realm of existence where the will and glory of the sovereign creator God hold ultimate sway and directive power - is a lie, a dream, or a myth. Or perhaps simply that even if such a place should exist in any form or fashion, it would still remain utterly inconsequential to our human experience. In either case Heaven is essentially a lie, a pipe dream: this is the mistake of disbelief, and there are a great many who hold to this conviction.

Now, for those of us who have stepped beyond willful disbelief of this sort and have opened ourselves to the possibility of a God like the God of Scripture and the vision of eternity afforded us therein, there still remain potential pitfalls when it comes to how we think about Heaven. The second most common mistake we make, after outright disbelief, is a belief in a Heaven that is real (to a point), but distant. If the first mistake is disbelief, then the second is distance: the belief that heaven, the dwelling place of God, is far away - somewhere past the edge of the observable universe, placed in some cloudy, ethereal locality off the edge of the map - hidden, unsearchable, mysterious… distant.

The funny thing about these two mistakes is that, though one involves willful disbelief and the other is held by many people who would call themselves believers, followers of Jesus, the end result is largely the same. In both cases we end up with a Heaven – a vision of eternity - that has little to no bearing on the lives we live here and now. And is this not the most crushing indictment of a church, called out as we are to be a vehicle of worship and witness? That, in spite of what beliefs or creeds we might utter with our mouths or post on our Facebook profiles, or preach in our services on a Sunday morning, the lives we actually live are otherwise practically indiscernible from the world of disbelief that surrounds us? Because whether Heaven is a lie, or just too far away to make a difference, the end result is the same: we just end up living our lives the best we know how with whatever resources we can muster, and hope it turns out alright in the end. These are different mistakes; which nonetheless yield very similar results.

Against both these mistakes, we find the invitation of Jesus – the invitation of the Gospel – which is to a life that is much richer and deeper and truer than either of these errors can lead us to. The vision of reality that scripture opens before us is one in which Heaven – the realm and rule of God – is both very real and very near: where Heaven and the world we know stand in the shadow of one another, touch one another, bear upon one another. Ours is the world into which Jesus – God himself - came, and ours is the world into which he could proclaim “The Kingdom of God is at hand”. Ours is the same world in which the creator God walked in the midst of His creation: where burning bushes have spoken and seas have parted, where the sick have been healed and the dead have been raised, where Jacob could stumble across the doorway to the throne room of heaven itself and wrestle with God. Ours is the same world where life itself, as well as every miraculous, heavenly thing and occurrence – from the days of Adam to our own – is made possible because the fully expressed realm and rule of our creator God is simply not as far away as we might tend to think.

In truth, there is but a veil – a thin curtain – that separates heaven and earth: a veil that at this moment both blinds us to and protects us from the nearness of Heaven. It is a veil that will one day be drawn back to bring the full force of the glory of God to bear upon the earth as both ultimate joy and ultimate judgment, and in the meantime we live in a world of glimpses and revelations. Glimpses that are possible because Heaven is near, and the veil is thin. Ours is a world in tension: tension between what Jesus has already accomplished and what yet remains to be completed, between Heaven’s nearness and the veil which blinds us to that nearness.

Followers of Jesus, too, are a people in process and in tension; in a daily struggle between the “old man” and the new birth, between the old fruit and the imperishable seed. And, if we are being honest, oftentimes we can use the reality of this tension as a justification for our own mediocrity. We know that we will struggle, and it is an easy move for us to then simply become comfortable in that struggle, with no real expectation of victory. No real expectation that the work of God will yield genuine, measureable transformative changes in our day-to-day lives. But this is not a life lived in the understanding of the nearness of heaven. That is a mediocrity only made possible by an eternity, a Heaven and a God somewhere on the other side if the universe, which and who is not near, not close to us in the midst of our struggle and tension. That is a complacency that lives in the conviction that we are somehow hidden from God, not laid bare before him in all our beauty and brokenness, in every moment of both tension and triumph. God is near, and the veil is thin, and as such we can never be content to simply cultivate a longing for the eternal, we must see our LONGING become LIFE.

There’s a classic Christian book written by a Catholic monk by the name of Brother Lawrence called “Practicing the Presence of God” which, in actuality, is a great description of both the Christian life in general, as well as the spiritual disciplines that he encourages in that book. As followers of Jesus, the invitation at hand is not to merely LONG for the life of eternity, but to practice living it: To taste of it, to invite the Holy Spirit to teach us how to walk in it here and now.

For many people Jesus Christ is simply seen as a religious oddity, a frustration: a new moral law or puzzle for us. Perhaps we see him as something that we might try and ‘bolt on’ to the life we were in the middle of living apart from him, anyway. But in reality, Jesus can never be that. And whether we reject him outright or attempt to co-opt Jesus into the service of our own ends, he will ultimately become a stumbling block for us. Because Jesus is either the invitation and the doorway into a new kind of life altogether – that life beyond the veil – or he is nothing at all. And it is through the discipline of discipleship that we daily offer ourselves to Jesus as building materials in his hands to be built together into a work and dwelling place of God, both in our own lives and in our lives together. As disciples and as a church, we need to learn how to practice the presence of God, to tune our hearts to perceive the nearness of Heaven, and to begin to live as a people of that eternal life now.

That Old Red Truck

To: Chip Foose
Re: Overhaulin' Submission: 1968 GMC Pickup

This truck really embodies a personal story. A family story. Bought new by my great uncle Desmond, a lifelong commercial fisherman on Narragansett Bay, this truck was his daily driver for decades. A devoted husband and model of the blue collar American work ethic, he and his wife Ann never had children; only one another. Both lived into their nineties, and passed on within months of each other. I can still remember the strength in that old man's handshake. Even in relatively brief glimpses, he taught me a lot about genuine manhood.

One of their nephews, my uncle Dave, became in many ways the son they never had. As Ann and Dez advanced in years, my uncle Dave took it upon himself to look after and care for them as they continued to live together, independently, until the day they died. Sometime in the mid-nineties, uncle Dave took notice of the old, tired, GMC pickup parked on the property, having fallen into disrepair and disuse sometime ago. He offered to take it off Dez's hands, and my great uncle agreed.

A career firefighter and casual car enthusiast, uncle Dave took it upon himself to restore the old GMC to what extent he was able, swapping in a salvaged drivetrain, shoring up the body, and shooting it fire engine red. When Dave pulled up to Dez's house in the resurrected truck, Dez of course feigned horror that Dave had ruined "his" truck; grinning the whole time. From that time on, that 1968 GMC became a picture of the relationship between these two men; a physical embodiment of the love and mutual admiration they shared. This became especially significant after 2001, as Ann and Dez passed on, willing the care of their very modest estate to my Uncle Dave. To Dave, that GMC became all that he had left of Dez in this world, and caring for it became a way for him to continue to express his care for his uncle, even after his passing.

In addition to being a genuinely selfless public servant, the other thing one needs to know about my Uncle Dave, however, is that he is one of the automotively unluckiest people I have ever met. Between car accidents and mechanical mishaps, for a car enthusiast, his story has all the makings of an ongoing tragedy. And, for all its personal value, the GMC has never managed to escape entirely unscathed.

Moving to RI for college in 1999, I would visit my uncle, and was always drawn to the fire engine red antique truck in his driveway. It always seemed that there was some project, some part, some need for repair that we could spend the hours chatting about during my visits. Indeed, it was almost always the center of our conversations. In the spring of 2000, I convinced Dave to let me take the truck with me up to NH for my then-girlfriend's senior prom. My excitement at being set loose for the weekend with this treasured vehicle was short-lived, however, as about five miles down the road, that salvaged V8 blew a rod and ground to a halt. Needless to say, I was a bit late to the prom.

A 'new' motor was eventually salvaged and installed, and the GMC limped along for a number of years more. During this time, I was able to redeem that prom debacle by borrowing the truck again - this time successfully - for another weekend: In the spring of 2005, the old GMC was the 'getaway' vehicle for my wife and I at our wedding. That remains a precious memory.

Eventually, though, the truck came to sit for a year or more with some mechanical issue or another, which was costly for the body. Time and disuse were again taking their toll. A few years back, my uncle once again rallied around the cause of Dez's memory, and had the body of that truck completely gone through and reasonably restored. Still working off some variety of salvaged drivetrain, it was running, however, and looked as good as it had in years. As the ongoing vehicular tragedy would have it, though, not two months after that restoration, someone tried, unsuccessfully, to steal the rims off the truck while it was parked in public, unbeknownst to my uncle. He was lucky to have escaped harm when the front wheels spun off at 45mph, mangling the newly restored front end. Back to the body shop it went.

That was a few years back. Now, the truck again sits in my uncle's garage, this time with a blown transmission. I asked him recently if he wanted me to take it off his hands: I just figured he might have been tired of dumping money into it and willing to give someone else a turn. He told me then, though, that for him it was still a powerful reminder of his uncle Dez, and he wasn't ready to part with it just yet. And, he said, for all the thousands upon thousands of dollars that he has invested over the years, he feels like he's never actually had the chance to simply enjoy it; there's just always been something that has managed to crop up and get in the way. For a man that has given so much - for his family and community - it would be such a blessing to be given the gift of that old GMC, done up the way it ought to be done, and ready for him to just… drive.

Some years from now, when Uncle Dave is done enjoying it to his satisfaction, it's understood that that old GMC will find it's way to my garage. And, on top of that, my younger brother and his wife just gave birth to their second child earlier this year - a son. They named him Desmond, in honor of my great uncle. If I have my way - and with a little help? - that old GMC pickup will live to see its fourth generation. I'm a bit biased, of course, but that just strikes my as a story worth telling, and a vehicle worth "Overhaulin'". I hope that you might share the sentiment.