Excuse Me, You're Sitting in My Chair

Church people are notorious for claiming ownership of their preferred seats in a church building. Maybe you’ve heard someone say to a fellow worshipper, “That’s my seat” as he hovered over the intruder.

Once, I witnessed one worshipper huff and puff out of the building, mumbling and stomping toward the parking lot because his seat was occupied. There is a measure of humor in the scene if you can get pass the lunacy, I mean, fleshliness. You drove to the building expecting to worship God and found someone sitting in YOUR seat. Instead of greeting the brother and his family warmly and amending your routine by simply finding a different seat, you walked out. I wonder how that car ride home was when the Mrs. turned on the local Christian radio station only to hear, “Years I spent in vanity and pride…”

The problem of church pews was so significant in 1844 that lawyer John Coke Fowler published Church Pews, Their Origin and Legal Incidents as a resource for how the Church of England might address their troubles. Did you snicker at the title, especially the Legal Incidents part? I guess the churches in Britain during the Victorian Era missed that part of the Bible where Paul told other Christians not to take each other to court (1 Corinthians 6:6-7).

How do you determine where you sit in worship? Does it even matter? From my perspective as a pastor, it matters more than you might think. Off the top of our heads, I’d suspect most pastors in churches less than 500 can easily pass a quiz on who sits where for worship. I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

With the normal disclaimers for medical issues, expectant moms or pragmatic matters like having to excuse yourself because you are the on call employee this weekend, here is one idea you might consider when you choose where to sit when you gather with God’s people: choose to sit WITH other worshippers.

It’s seems so obvious, doesn’t it. But for many, sitting with people stopped in high school. The normative behavior now is to sit in isolation in the same spot occupied week after week. That’s a wasted opportunity both to receive a blessing and to give one.

On any given Sunday morning, multiple hurting people enter a church auditorium. The childless couple sits by themselves. They give and receive friendly greetings, but who sits next to them as they watch family after family pour in the room wondering if God will give them one?

Middle age men, single again because of divorce or death, leave their empty homes and lonely apartments where they enter a church building and sit alone because no one chooses to sit with them or invite them to occupy an open seat with their family.

Too many in their 20s and 30s have never heard the crusty voice of a 73-year-old man sing historic songs of the church and new hymns because they’ve never sat close enough to him to receive the blessing of hearing him make a joyful noise to the Lord. I’m telling you, you’re missing out if you’ve never heard that.

New attendees to the worship of the church might know the wonder of the church’s love for others if the members of the church would choose to sit with them. Young professional singles might find it far less awkward to be in a church of married people if the married people would stop sitting in the exact same seats week after week and choose to sit with someone not like them.

What might it do for your young children to sit next to an older or even elderly Christian and watch that Christian receive God’s Word?

“Mom, did you see Mr. Jim’s Bible? He has writing all over it.”

“Well, son, Mr. Jim has been a faithful follower of Jesus for a long time. He loves Jesus, and he loves the Bible. We are blessed to have him in our church.”

What would it do for a person or family of color if you sat your lily white family next to theirs or invited their family to sit with you?

How much more likely might you be to engage actively in every aspect of worship if you sat next to someone different next week? Would you sing more joyfully? Would you stay awake during the sermon?

I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got it all wrong, but it seems to me that a simple act like choosing to sit with another Christian during worship has potential to do much good.

As always I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

I Wish I Could Help Everyone, but I Cannot - a Response to the Refugee and Immigrant Problem

Long ago city planners figured out a way to make moving around the downtown blocks of Minneapolis / St. Paul in the dead of winter. Between many of the office buildings, hotels, parking garages, and entertainment venues is a maze of bridges and walkways where gloveless, coatless, hatless pedestrians walk from heated car to heated cubicles and heated retail stores.

Those same skyways provide a mobile home for many of the cities’ homeless. In the last week, I opened the door to the stairwell on the top floor of a parking garage and pushed the door into a woman squatting on the floor bundled head to toe. I apologized, we exchanged greetings, and I walked past her, wishing her well. When I left the stairwell, a man in his 30s hobbled toward me on his crutches. “Sir, can I have a minute of your time,” he said to the man and son who walked behind me. The dad declined. I didn’t have to say anything; the man on crutches didn’t speak to me. In return I said nothing to him

Over the last sixteen years living in Minnesota, I can count on one hand the number of times I have given money to someone on a street corner or in a skyway. There have been many opportunities, and I routinely feel bad each time I move past someone with an outstretched hand. Simply, I don’t have the resources to help every person who asks of me or every person I encounter. My time in the Minneapolis / St. Paul skyways is limited to a few stints a month. I suspect those who travel them daily can tell of similar encounters on a more regular basis.

Rarely does a week go by that I do not receive an email or phone call from a missionary looking for financial support. These are good people doing unenviable but necessary tasks, making contact with persons they often do not know asking for money to do kingdom work. The emails tell of orphanages and wells, seminaries and church plants, medical clinics and potential Bible translations. In the phone calls I hear passionate voices hoping to bring the gospel to locations where the people of the land may never hear the good news of Jesus Christ. I want to take on financial support of every missionary who contacts our church, but we simply do not have the resources to do so. I really don’t like those phones call that end with, “Sorry, I wish we could.”

Office phone rings.

Caller: Is the pastor in?

Me: This is one of them. How can I help you?

Caller: I have four kids and I am looking for some help…

I listen and ask questions trying to determine the need. Our church has been very generous to the people of our community through its benevolent fund. Our church family gives to our deacons and pastors the privilege to help as we become aware of needs. But that benevolent fund is not the widow’s oil jar. It runs dry. Some of the phone calls come from those who abuse the system. I don’t like putting the voice on the other end of the line through an interrogation to determine the need, but what choice do I have? If we give away to the scammer, what will we have for the genuine? As of today, a few hundred dollars remain in our benevolent fund. I suspect it will be empty by the end of February, and then I will tell all the callers, “I’m sorry. I don’t have anything to offer.”

Twenty years ago a group from our church in Michigan ministered in the mountains outside of Manilla in the Philippines. Like people I’ve met in villages in India where cattle dung is the fuel for cooking, these folks in the jungles possess little. The suffering moves even the hardest hearts. Early in the morning a beautiful dark hair, dark eyed girl latched on to me. She could not have been older than two. She was an orphan. I held her as morning passed to afternoon and cried over her as I her put her down when we left the remote village. I wanted to take her home with me. I knew Brenda, Michael, Jennifer, and Emily would love her. I knew our church would embrace her. But bringing her to our home was not an option for reasons both legal and logistical. If alive, she’s in her early 20s now. She, of course, has no memory of me, but I remember her. I trust the Lord has cared for the orphan because I could not.

As a Christian, I want to help people. I want to “give a cup of cold water in Jesus’s name.” I want to obey God when he says, “Therefore, as we have opportunity, we must work for the good of all, especially for those who belong to the household of faith (Galatians 6:10).” But sometimes circumstances, concerns for safety, and limited resources do not allow me to do what my heart wants me to do.Where I do have opportunity because of the resources and burden God has put before, I hope I act consistent with my claim of Christianity.

All of this brings me to the recent order from President Trump initiating a temporary immigration ban from places where jihadist conflict has torn countries apart or where jihadist ideology is the position of the ruling government.

I wish every little girl in a Filipino jungle village had the joys and opportunities of my two twenty-something girls. I wish every woman in a Minneapolis stairwell slept in a warm bed like my wife does. I wish every refugee could experience religious freedom, economic security, and political sanctuary. But my hopes are not realistic. The United States cannot help every refugee or hopeful immigrant. Security and resources do not allow for it. The executive branch led by the president must direct resources where they can be most effective and must exercise due diligence to insure the safety of the citizens they are charged to protect.

Because the American way of life provides amazing opportunities to the weakest, the poorest, and the least to become so much more than what some call “life’s lottery” has delivered to them, America remains a destination filled with hope for those outside our borders. Where the citizenry can help, the citizenry must help. However, the citizenry will not be able to help in every circumstance, a regrettable reality in a sinful world. Where our elected government can wisely help refugees and the oppressed across the world, we citizens should promote the help. However, I see nothing in the Scriptures that requires the US government to act beyond its resources or its national security. Nothing.

The role of the government is different from the role of the local church and the individual Christian. We are not charged with the protection of the citizenry (Romans 13). We are charged with the delivery of the gospel and the offering of good works. From refugees to the homeless, I hope we will take the resources God has given us through our labors, “doing honest work…so that (we) may have something to share with anyone in need (Ephesians 4:28).”

If the President’s order bothers you at some deep level, then do something about it, but do something more than write a letter to your congressman or post your rant on social media. Search the internet for a refugee organization you can support. Skip the coffee shop for the next three months and send them the proceeds. Walk the skyways and sit next to the panhandler and share lunch with her. Talk about life and talk about the gospel. Initiate an ESL class at our church building for a handful of the thousands of non-native English speakers that live within miles of our church building. Let the president do his job while he leaves us alone to do ours.

So why should I get involved in this discussion? Two reasons: (1) I want to help the sheep not to bite each other. I saw that over the weekend, and I genuinely wonder how members of the same church can greet each other on Sunday morning, let alone worship together or serve alongside each other; and (2) I hope to call us to wrestle with the Bible on the subject at hand. Like a grappler, sweat and struggle with what God says and what God doesn’t say. Embrace as our own the mandates he has placed on us and resist the penchant to mandate what might feel right to us but is not mandated by God. May God give us grace to know the difference.

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

Remembering

One year. 365 days. So many memories. So many curiosities. One year ago today my mom, Bonnie VerWay, finished her race having kept the faith (2 Timothy 4:7).

The year without her has provided brief moments of thought and long periods of deep reflection. A song, a signpost, a cartoon, or a current event often brings her to mind, providing a nearly always happy moment. Yard work, shoveling snow, long drives, hours awake in the darkness, or alone on a boat allow for solitude to consider the fullness of her life and the expanse of God’s grace. I will need many more years to grasp his grace to her and, by extension, to me.

My own life seems so much shorter now. In a little more than seventeen years, I will be as old as she was when she left this earth and entered into the presence of her savior and mine. How long before my heart fails like hers did? How long before my eyes dim and my voice weakens? I am much more aware of my own mortality now that both my dad and mom have put on immortality (1 Corinthians 15:53) leaving me the oldest in the family.

As a child, some mocked me as a “momma’s boy.” They were right, of course, but they didn’t know why. They knew nothing of her unplanned pregnancy, nothing of her teenage motherhood, nothing of her impoverished and abusive shotgun marriage. They just saw her fight for a young boy to give me every opportunity both eternal and temporal.

She was over protective. Many adventures my friends with older parents were allowed to pursue I could not. She meant well but didn’t understand her acts only contributed to my reputation. I was rarely in trouble with other young boys or teenage guys because I was rarely out of her sight.

When Brenda and I married before she was forty-years-old, she cried so much every time we left Chicago to return to our ministry home. I understand her tears now that Brenda and I say goodbye after only a few days with our all grown up kids.

There is much to tell of God’s grace in her life - from unwed, expectant mother to faithful wife to mature Christian woman to lonely widow. Moment by moment, day by day, pain after pain, God’s grace carried her, provided for her, protected her, filled her with joy, strengthened her for labor and sustained her faith until the end.

Still, her most intimate moments revealed a penchant to fear what lay ahead. She hid her fright behind a hard shell and a wide smile. Later, she would lament her lack of confidence in God’s care for her citing a psalm or a text from one of the prophets where God’s provision was on display. I miss the hand written letters exhibiting the careful and beautiful strokes of a seasoned teacher. Inside the envelope was a specific reference to one of God’s limitless characteristics she found so comforting on a given day. Grace.

So, the year has passed as it has for all who have escorted someone loved beyond description to heaven’s gate. We look around and wonder how long until he opens paradise to us. How long, Lord? How long?

Until then we wait expectantly, serve joyfully, live faithfully resting peacefully in God’s grace.

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

Note: I wrote this LM on Monday, January 23, the anniversary of my mom's death.

 

From 44 to 45

Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.

I’m guessing you never thought you’d hear those words the first time you watched “The Apprentice.” Yet, this Friday Mr. Trump will take the oath of office to defend our constitution and become the 45th man to ascend to the highest position in our country and, arguably, the whole of the free world. With great power comes great responsibility. I trust Mr. Trump will embrace the latter and wisely use the former.

Nobody really knows what Mr. Trump will deliver as president. I am neither a politician nor a businessman, but I have enough sense to know that one is not the other. We’ve seen Mr. Trump’s business acumen. By all accounts, he is highly successful in his world, though his success has come at a price both in relationships and reputation.

Significant questions remain. Will his successes carry over to the political realm? When the machinery of politics moves into high gear, will he govern any differently than those before him or those who sought the same position he will soon hold? Will he keep his campaign promises? These questions and more will have answers in due time.

As Mr. Trump moves to Pennsylvania Avenue, President Obama’s eight years in office come to a close. His supporters will cite multiple achievments inlcuding how he and the country overcame race by his double win on the national stage, his health care initiative, and the strength of the economy as he leaves office compared with the economy of 2008. His detractors will declare the growing hostility in race relations, the failure of Obamacare, and the deterioration of the culture with the advancement of so-called same-sex marriage and the aggressive promotion by the White House for the LGBTQ agenda. To his credit, neither he nor the country have been sidetracked by foolish behavior while he was in office, see Monica Lewinsky.

For many political, philosophical, and positional reasons, I am no fan of President Obama, but last Sunday morning as I led us in prayer during worship, I thanked God for him. In the same prayer, I thanked God for Donald Trump, our next president. Prior to the campaign season, I was no fan of his, and it remains to be seen whether or not I will become one. He has four years to determine my opinion.

I led our church in prayer for both of them because the Bible commands it. Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, 2 for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence (1 Timothy 2:1-2).

I led our church in prayer for both of them as opportunities to praise God. Around the world, human beings live in chaotic environments where governments come and go based upon the passions and aggression of a few. Around the world, national currencies devalue so rapidly that they have the same purchasing power as confederate money post-Civil War in the United States. Around the world, governments dismiss inalienable rights without regard to the immediate or future consequences.

While these United States have serious challenges, we experience so little of what so many in the world face on a regular basis. We can and should thank God for a government that diminishes chaos and lawlessness. Government is a gift from God to a nation (Romans 13:1-4). The routine transition of power we know as normal in the United States is God’s kindness poured out on this nation. Every inauguration is an occasion to praise God.

I led our church in prayer for us that we would be God-honoring citizens without regard to personalities and powers who come and go. Our standard is higher than the general population. We are Christians, called by God to express honor to the authorities he promotes and to submit to the ordinances they decree (Romans 13:5-7).

I led our church in affirmation of our true allegiance to our Lord, Jesus Christ. We are first and foremost citizens of the Kingdom of God, ruled by a righteous king, whose love for us never wanes and to whom we joyfully give all our lives. By his grace, we will obey and honor King Jesus in part by our model citizenship in the country we love.

Finally, Mr. Obama, I thank you for your years of service to our country. While I maintain strong disagreement with too many of your positions and a great deal of your rhetoric, I commend you for any lasting good you brought to the people. I suspect history will better inform us of what was truly good. May your post-presidential years be fulfilling to you and joyful to your wife and daughters.

Mr. Trump, you have achieved what few thought you could attain, the presidency of the United States. May the power you now possess allow you to satisfy the responsibilities you promise to fulfill. May your years in office be marked by peace both home and abroad. I will pray toward this end.

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.

Safely Home

t snows in Minnesota like it does all across the upper Midwest. We northerners like to think we handle it so much better than those in southern states who run for cover at the forecast of a dusting, and to some extent we do. But we are not exempt for fender benders in a parking lot or multicar pileups on our interstates. Sadly, some of these events are more than nuisances or cause for insurance premium spikes. Some result in severe bodily injury, others in death.

In 2015 across the United States 35,092 otherwise healthy human beings died as a result of a moving vehicle. Single vehicle events accounted for a whopping 55% of all deaths, the kind of event that happens on a snowy road when simply driving from one destination to another.

Shortly after we moved from Michigan to Minnesota, all six of us were headed home in our full-size conversion van in the early morning hours along snowy Interstate 94 in southern Wisconsin. I hit an icy patch at 45 mph, slid off the road down into a wooded ravine where the van hit a massive oak as it rolled on its roof leaving us suspended by our seatbelts. Scary doesn’t describe the moments. By God’s grace we all walked away without a scratch. The van was totaled, but so what.

Yesterday, others around Minneapolis / St. Paul were not so fortunate. A light snow event during rush hour snarled traffic all across the metro. Nearly all made it home, but not everyone. Some suffered severe injuries requiring hospitalization, and others died. Of course, a snowstorm is not necessary to cause a vehicular death. There were 94 such deaths in Hawaii in 2015. I suspect nor more than a few were snow related.

John Newton of Amazing Grace fame wrote many texts set to tune. In a hymn that rejoices at the church gathering on the Lord’s Day, Newton pens, Safely through another week God has brought us on way and celebrates with the church God’s providence to gather the church together once again. Other writers have used the phrase “safely home” anticipating the arrival of God’s people to hearth and home. Some in mariner villages sang of God's grace in bringing the ships to “the harbor safe at home.” Safe arrival under God’s care must never be taken for granted and should always be a cause for thanksgiving.

Our family experienced this again last night as one of us slid off a glazed highway at highway speeds. When the tow truck dropped the vehicle in our driveway and we huddled in the kitchen, we held hands and thanked God that the damage was to sheet metal and not bones, muscles, and organs.

Our family’s usual practice is to pray when we arrive almost anywhere after a drive. At the end of the day, one of us often thanks God for his care of us during the day. 99.9% of those days we know nothing of the “what ifs” and “might have beens.”

We simply thank God for his protection not really realizing how often we were under God’s guard throughout the day. During the summer and around the holidays, I will welcome back to our worship those who have been away on road trips to the cabin, the Mountain West, or a distant wedding celebration. During pastoral prayer, we pray for those away from us, asking God for their safe return. When we see them again, we thank the Lord for his care along the way. In a world dominated by sin and cursed by death, that God directs our steps, covers our mistakes, and prevents calamities prompts in us praise each time we embrace after the briefest of absences.

When God brings you together again after a day away at work or school, when God brings you home again after a short trip to the grocery store, when God gathers us together again on the Lord’s Day, make that gathering a time to look upward in praise for God’s goodness to bring you safely home.

As always, I welcome your feedback and any suggestions you might have for an upcoming Lunchtime Musing.