Archive for June, 2006

Field of Dreams

Published
by
Mike
on June 30, 2006
in Baseball and General
. 21 Comments

With Kevin Costner, it was just a movie.

But not John Grisham. He did build his field (seven baseball and softball fields, actually) on his property in Virginian ten years ago and they have come.

Now in the middle of coaching all-star baseball, I’m drawn again to the story of Cove Creek Park.

It’s his land and his fields. So guess who the commissioner of the league is. Right: Grisham. He’s often been the one cutting the grass and lining the field.

And the kids play by his rules: profanity, arguing with the ump, and poor sportsmanship aren’t tolerated. No throwing of bats, no tossing of helmets, no slamming of caps.

The parents? They’re comfortably seated beyond the center field fence so they don’t ruin the game for the kids.

Now THAT is a field of dreams!

The Kingdom of God

Published
by
Mike
on June 29, 2006
in faith and scripture
. 32 Comments

The primary message of Jesus of Nazareth was the kingdom of God. It lies right at the heart of what his life and his message were about, according to the gospels. As his public ministry was launched he said, “The time has come. The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!” Many of the stories he told were introduced with these words: “The kingdom of God is like . . . .”

Those words undoubtedly got the attention of his listeners. Most of the Jewish sects were eagerly awaiting the kingdom of God, though they were conceiving of it in very different ways. They anticipated the day when God would break in, defeat the hated Romans, and restore the land to his people.

The framework for this teaching goes back to the Old Testament, of course. There we learn that God is the King of the universe.

For the Lord Most High is awesome,
the great King over all the earth. . . .
God is the King of all the earth;
sing to him a psalm of praise.
(Psalm 47:2, 7)

For the Lord is the great God,
the great King above all gods.
In his hand are the depths of the earth,
and the mountain peaks belong to him.
The sea is his, for he made it,
and his hands formed the dry land.
Come, let us bow down in worship,
let us kneel before the Lord our Maker.
(Psalm 95:3-6)

The Lord has established his throne in heaven,
and his kingdom rules over all.
(Psalm 103:19)

This God who created everything is the King of kings. No wonder so many of the prophetic visions anticipate a day when his rule will extend throughout the world. (See, e.g., Isaiah 11:6-9; Micah 4:1-4; Isaiah 65:17-25; and Daniel 7:13-14.)

What hope! A day is coming when the wolf and lamb will feed together, when infants will not die, when weeping and crying will be heard no more. The Shalom of God in its fulness!

Then John the Baptist comes announcing the nearness of the kingdom (Matthew 3:2 - “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”). And Jesus builds his teaching around that conviction.

The kingdom, we learn, isn’t what many of the Jews thought. It isn’t a political kingdom (John 18:36). Rather, it is the dynamic presence of God in Jesus Christ. “Kingdom” refers to the rule of God, to his sovereign reign in this world.

And in Jesus this kingdom was (is) present. He healed the sick, saved the lost, gave sight to the blind, and invited the poor. The reign of God was breaking in. The future had arrived to reverse the curse and to set the world right as God had intended it through the life and ministry of Jesus.

His stories and teaching pointed to a very different kind of kingdom than most of the Jews expected — a kingdom that was inverted, where the poor are blessed, the sinners are received, the dead are made alive, and the last will be first.

They shouldn’t look for armies and thrones and political borders, he told them. “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst” (Luke 17:21).

He came reversing the curse and taking the world back to the way God intended in creation. That’s the kingdom, or rule of God. So he taught his disciples to live with the perspective of the kingdom. That’s what the Sermon on the Mount is: living in light of the inbreaking reign of God. Living in harmony with God and with others and with the world God created and blessed.

He taught them (and us) to pray: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” It’s been widely recognized that these are parallel requests. He’s praying for the kingdom to come — or in other words, for God’s will to be done in this realm called earth just as it is in God’s realm called heaven. We’re praying for the rule of God to come more and more and, in essence, we’re reporting for duty to be a part of this. We’re offering our lives in confession, repentence, faith, and mission.

Some have thought we should no longer pray the Lord’s Prayer because the church has been established. But to reduce the dynamic concept of kingdom to the church is a serious mistake. The church enters the kingdom of God; the church receives the kingdom of God; and the church announces the kingdom of God. But the church doesn’t exhaust the kingdom of God! So we continue praying as Jesus taught us for the kingdom to come, for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. As long as there is evidence of the curse, as long as the wolf and lamb aren’t feeding together, as long as infants are still dying, as long as there is weeping and crying, as long as there is war, as long as there is hatred, bitterness, and resentment — it’s still safe to pray this prayer.

The future reign of God has broken in through the presence of Jesus. And yet . . . it hasn’t arrived in its fullness. We are living “between the times” — between the incarnation/death/resurrection of Jesus and the coming consummation that we await.

Paul’s writings carry that important tension concerning the rule of God. Sometimes when he refers to the kingdom he’s talking about a present reality (Romans 14:17; 1 Corinthians 4:20), while at other times he’s referring to a future hope (1 Thessalonians 2:12; 2 Thessalonians 1:5; 1 Corinthians 15:24, 50).

Meanwhile, we continue to yield our lives to the reign of God. We seek to be used by him as lights in the world. We wait, hope, long, groan, pray, and work. We keep one eye on the task before us, knowing that the reign of God is present in Jesus Christ, and we keep one eye peeled for the future act of God when the dead will be raised, all tears will be wiped away, and God himself will be in our midst (Revelation 21-22).

Finally, these words from William Willimon and Stanley Hauerwas’s book Lord Teach Us: The Lord’s Prayer & the Christian Life:

The kingdom of God that is coming, here, not here, present, not fully present, is a banquet, a great party thrown for outsiders who, before Jesus, had no place in the promises of God to Israel. By an amazing act of generosity, Jesus has made possible a party to which even Gentiles like us have been invited. The kingdom of God is a party to which all of the good people refused the invitation so the host went out and invited all of the bad people. The kingdom of God is a party for a bunch of people with whom we wouldn’t be caught dead spending a Saturday night, had we not also been invited.

This is one of the reasons why being in the church can be a real pain, considering the sort of reprobates Jesus has invited to the party, the party that is called kingdom of God.

We are able to live hopefully in a fallen-yet-being-redeemed world because of the One who has taught us to pray “this way.” As Christians, to us has been given the grace to know that we live between the times, having seen the fullness of God in Jesus Christ, yet also knowing that all the world is not yet fulfilled as God’s world. That tension, stretched as we are between what is ours now in Christ and that which is yet promised, is our role as God’s people. We, you and I, are living, breathing evidence that God has not abandoned the world. We are able continually and fervently to pray that God’s kingdom come because we know that God’s will has been done. We are able to be honest about all the ways in which this world is not the kingdom of God in its fullness and to hope for more because we know that God’s will has yet to be done, God’s kingdom has yet to come. We are able to live without despair in the world’s present situation because, even in us, God has claimed a bit of enemy territory, has wrestled something from the forces of evil and death. That reclaimed, renovated territory is us.

Suffering Servants

Published
by
Mike
on June 28, 2006
in Books and Salt and Light
. 13 Comments

In one section of Following Jesus, N. T. Wright explores the meaning of discipleship in Mark’s gospel. Working from the story of James and John in Mark 10, he points to the two options we usually choose from when facing a hostile world:

Option One consists of imperialistic dreams. It means matching power with power, using revolt and crusade. Wright says that this is “like firemen who had become arsonists.”

Option Two consists of passive noninvolvement. Just retreat. Wander away, protecting ourselves and letting the world destroy itself.

But Jesus (in Mark) forges a third way: in the dangerous arena of the world, he is a suffering servant. He takes on the evil of the world without bringing more violence.

“What would it take for the Church in England to embrace this vision of following Jesus? I long to see Christians in this country standing up to the government on the issues of education, of the arms industry, of Third World debt. I long to see the Church standing up to the radical opposition parties on issues like abortion. I long to see the Church lovingly but firmly confronting the media barons who destroy people’s lives and reputations for the sake of a sensational story. But it must be done in the right way. We live in a world of Jameses and Johns, of projected guilt and fear and anger. There’s no point in the Church simply keeping all of that in circulation. We don’t need any more Jameses and Johns, Christians who project their own insecurities out on to the world and call it preaching the gospel. We need — and it’s a scary thought — Christians who will do for the world what Jesus was doing.

“The Church must be prepared to stand between the warring factions, and, like a boxing referee, risk being knocked out by both simultaneously. The Church must be prepared to act symbolically, like Jesus, to show that there is a different way of living. The Church must be prepared to be the agent of healing even for those, like AIDS victims, who are the lepers of modern society. Taking up the cross is not a merely passive operation. It comes about as the Church attempts, in the power of the Spirit, to be for the world what Jesus was for the world — announcing the kingdom, healing the wounds of the world, challenging the power structures that keep anger and pain in circulation. We need to pray that we will have the courage, as a Church and as Christian persons, to follow the Servant King wherever he leads. That, after all, is why we come to his table. WE have seen in our century what happens when people dream wild dreams of world domination, and use the normal methods of force and power to implement them. We have not yet seen what might happen if those who worship the Servant King, now enthroned as Lord of the world, were to take him seriously enough to take up our cross and follow him. But that, as Mark reminds us, is precisely what the Servant King calls us to do.”

- - - -

Here’s my piece on unity in the current issue of Lookout, a journal of the Christian Church.

- - - -

A wonderful new ministry has been launched by a Highland couple, seeking to support a children’s home in India. You can read about it at this website.

The NACC

Published
by
Mike
on June 27, 2006
in Baseball, Church and family
. 47 Comments

Tonight is the beginning of the North American Christian Convention, the annual gathering of members of the Christian Church. This year they have invited several of us from Churches of Christ to teach and preach as we seek greater unity 100 years after the formal split of Churches of Christ and Christian Churches.

I am supposed to leave at 7:29 for Louisville this morning in plenty of time to speak tomorrow.

But . . . I’m not going. When I agreed to go, I was thinking that the baseball season was over. I didn’t factor in all-stars. (Chris is 13 in a 13-14-year-old league, so I thought he might have to wait until next year to be on the team.) But he’s on the team, and I was asked to help coach. And this is the week!

So, thanks to Ben Merold and Brian Jones, my co-presenters, who are willing to cover for me. (By the way, Ben Merold is a legend. I believe he’s in his 70s, but he’s the senior minister for a multi-campus church in the St. Louis area.)

It’ll be a great event. Wish I was going to be there tonight to hear David Faust, president of Cincinnati Christian University.

But I feel pretty confident that I’m supposed to be in the dugout. There are lots of preachers from Churches of Christ. My son has only one dad.

- - - -

On the subject of baseball, did you see the meltdown of Joe Mikulik, the minor league manager of the Asheville Tourists? It’s what my grandma used to call a hissy fit. A temper tantrum. Earl Weaver must have been proud to have someone carry on his legacy.

This outburst involved screaming, stomping, ripping up second base and throwing it into right field, tossing a resin bag from the mount, throwing bats, and covering home plate with dirt (which he then poured water on).

Two thoughts:

1. Must have been a really, really bad call at second.

2. Aren’t you glad your worst moment isn’t captured on video and played over and over on national television? (I am.)

Home

Published
by
Mike
on June 25, 2006
in General
. 38 Comments

We’re home. Oh, yes. Home. It’s not Boston. It isn’t Vermont. But it’s home. It’s where our church, our house, our dogs, and our friends are. It’s where Chris’s school (Lincoln Middle School) and buddies are; it’s where Diane (Sam Thomas Elementary) and I (Abilene Christian University) teach. It’s where Chris was born; where Matt met Jenna and graduated from high school (Abilene High) and college (ACU); and where Megan is buried. For 15 years, it’s been home.

It was late when we got into DFW last night, so we stayed in Ft. Worth. As often happens, we think about some of the churches we’d like to visit that we’ve never been to. Then we go to Richland Hills, eager to hear Rick preach.

One of the serendipities of our trip was having an evening with Andre Resner, whom we hadn’t seen since 1999. Andre was a good friend while the Resners lived here; we were all in covenant group together; and he helped with Megan’s funeral. But, remarkably, we hadn’t seen him since they left. He’s now teaching homiletics at Hood Theological Seminary in North Carolina. (Bit of trivia: anyone out there remember the creative, wonderful article “Christmas At Matthew’s House” that Andre wrote for one of our Christmas issues of Wineskins? It received, ummm, a good bit of attention.)

ON LEADERSHIP: “It is not enough for the priests and ministers of the future to be moral people, well trained, eager to help their fellow humans, and able to respond creatively to the burning issues of this time. All of that is very valuable and important, but it is not the heart of Christian leadership. The central question is, are the leaders of the future truly men and women of God, people with an ardent desire to dwell in God’s presence, to listen to God’s voice, to look at God’s beauty, to touch God’s incarnate Word and to taste fully God’s infinite goodness?” (Henri Nouwen, In the Name of Jesus : Reflections on Christian Leadership)

The Appalachian Trail

Published
by
Mike
on June 24, 2006
in faith, sports and travel
. 33 Comments

Yesterday we went on two hikes in New Hampshire. Both were on the Appalachian Trail. A part of me wishes I could do it — take a few months off and go from Georgia to Maine. But would it still be fun after that first month? Would the twenty miles a day — sometimes with heat and sometimes with bugs — get old? I like the idea of doing it a week or two at a time over many years.

Here are some things I picked up about hiking from reading Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods : Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail.

First the joy is in the journey. You can’t just hold your breath waiting for Mt. Katadin at the end of the trail in Maine. It has its own thrill — and there really is a goal for the trip! — but the deepest joy comes every day. It’s the people you meet; it’s the shelter you find; it’s the trees, wildlife, hills, and streams. Bryson mentions once finding an old paperback novel in one of the shelters and the great delight he found in having something to read.

Second, weight matters. He made fun before his trip of the people who walked into hiking stores willing to pay exorbitant prices just for “better,” lighter gear. But on the trail, he realized that over the long haul it made a lot of difference. It was indeed worth paying for the lighter tent and the lighter backpack. (Now, check out Heb. 12:1: “let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles.”)

Third, you don’t walk alone. There may be times of solitude, but you find encouragement by traveling with others. There are those you hook up with for a few miles, those you come across at the shelters, and those who sit around in the local pubs to visit before pressing on. Plus, there are all those who’ve come before you to actually make the path. The goal isn’t to find your own way. You have to trust the wisdom of those who’ve preceded you.

And fourth, you must endure. If you’re going to finish the Trail, you have to press on. Past bugs, past exhaustion, past blisters, past boredom.

- - - -

Today, that counter hits a million. Leave me a note with your real e-mail address (that doesn’t get published in the comment). I’ll get back with you in a day or two. (We’ll be traveling today.) Good luck!

Published
by
Mike
on June 22, 2006
in family and travel
. 36 Comments

There are so many things I have to pay for that I don’t even like.

And then, these things are free:

Having my kids spend a couple hours with Landon Saunders. Move over Garrison Keillor. The greatest voice and the greatest storyteller in America is LS.

Sitting beside a stream with the kind of peaceful noise that people actually pay for on relaxation CDs.

Watching the World Cup with my boys (even though I still don’t love soccer), cheering on the USA — even while being excited for the possibility of Africa having a team move on.

Hiking up hills and down hills. Talking and listening. Hoping against hope for a glimpse of a moose or bear (from a GREAT distance).

Having the five of us together.

I remember at Christmastime when Megan was still alive. No matter how expensive the gifts were, she preferred the boxes and wrapping paper. It felt good in her busy hands.

Haven’t some of you found that? There are things money can buy — e.g., the long, slow, memorable meal — that are certainly worth it. But so many of things that you really remember years later are (almost) free. Jumping on an inner tube to float down the river. Going out for a walk or a bike ride. Packing a picnic. Playing a game of Monopoly late into the evening. Hoops in the driveway. A little league game. Homemade ice cream.

Well, either tomorrow (Friday) or the next day or two, someone will be #1,000,000 since I dropped on the counter. Let me know who you are!

Greetings to all from a beautiful cabin on a God-sent river in the luscious state of VT.

Vermont

Published
by
Mike
on June 21, 2006
in family and travel
. 39 Comments

The five of us had a great day in one of my favorite places, Vermont.

We started off at the granite quarries of Barre, home of Rock of Ages granite and the Hope Cemetery. Then we hit Ben & Jerry’s, taking the tour and then supporting their business through consumption. (It was great, but I’m not much of an ice cream eater. Any able to tell us what the best kind of Ben & Jerry’s is?)

From there we turned south to the Robert Frost Interpretive Trail — a spectacular 1-mile hike with several of his most famous poems posted overlooking the very scenes near his Vermont home that inspired them.

Finally, we took a three-hour hike up Mount Abraham on the Long Trail. And now back to the beautiful cabin on a river where we’re staying.

A couple of our favorite from Frost (along with, of course, “Birches” and “Mending Wall”):

STOPPING BY THE WOODS ON A SNOWY EVENING

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

Nature’s first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf’s a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Cars

Published
by
Mike
on June 20, 2006
in Baseball, family and movies
. 32 Comments

We caught “Cars” last Friday evening. While I’ve read some really bad reviews, it worked for us.

Maybe not quite “Toy Story” or “The Incredibles.” Maybe not even “Bug’s Life.” But Pixar is still creative and still knows how to add heart. The nostalgic longing for the Route-66 world, the emptiness of fame and success, and the deep joy of friends — that’s enough to carry this one for me.

If you go, be sure you don’t leave too early. The spoof on earlier Pixar films is worth the price of admission.

Great fun at Fenway last night (well, except for the three obscene, aggressive drunks behind us who had to be hauled off by security in the 8th inning while five rows of people sang “nah-nah-nah-nah, hey-hey, goodbye!”). Except for the luxury boxes, it looked like every single seat must have been taken. We thought we’d heard the crowd really loud until Manny hit one out — way out . . . probably on the roof of the Cask and Flagon — in the 8th.

Boston

Published
by
Mike
on June 19, 2006
in General
. 22 Comments

Thank goodness the Mavs are coming back to Dallas. It didn’t go so well in Miami. Too much humidity and too much Wade!

I had a great Father’s Day yesterday. After preaching at Highland, I drove back to Dallas to rejoin one son (along with Diane), who was there for a soccer tournament, and then we flew to Boston, meeting the other son. The big question today: Does anyone know how to score tickets for a sold-out Red Sox game? We’ll be outside Fenway nice and early with cash in hand. Surely someone has some seats!

Here’s the grand prize for the millionth hit: one free registration to either the Nashville or Fresno Zoe conference and a one year free subscription to wineskins.org. If you can’t make it to the conference, we’ll go with a signed copy of Darryl Tippens’s Pilgrim Heart. Unless Greg shows me how to track down the address of the person, we’ll have to do the honor system. It worked for 500,000. Just look at the counter when it gets close, and if you see 1,000,000, put a note in the comments.

Have a great day. Now . . . out to see Boston, one of my favorite cities.