sjmcclure

a few words about nothing…

caveat emptor: what follows here are just my thoughts.  throw them against the wall of orthodoxy and see what sticks.  if nothing sticks, next time you see me, stone me. that having been settled, may i submit…

there may come a moment in your life, or perhaps a series of moments, when what God wants you to do is nothing.  the evangelical machine in our country thrives on movement, motion, and manufacturing.  (this might explain why this particular brand of christianity has blossomed in the free market economy, but that’s another conversation for someone smarter than me) nearly every book you read, every pastor/teacher/preacher on TV is talking about what we can do, how we can do it, when we can do it, whom we should tell about what we’re doing, and so on, all tied to the deliverance of some promise, some product, from the hands of God. isn’t it possible that God could have something for you, direction, provision, guidance, peace, joy, that he wants to impart no matter what you’re doing?  is our view of God’s love so narrow that he only smiles on us when we’re getting it all right?  is he only willing to dance with us once, and if, we’ve mastered the steps?

nearly every time i pray for something, i begin almost immediately to think of what God might want me to do so that he could then answer my prayer.  it strikes me that this could develop into a decidedly unhealthy way to view God, and the way he views me, the way he views his care for me.

if God has made you a promise, he’s made you a promise, and he is not a man that he should lie. and we know that God has made certain promised to all of his children, promises of love and of presence and of never being abandoned to this world or to ourselves.

God’s life call for us is less about doing or not doing, and more about being.  as the westminster shorter catechism reminds us, the chief end of man is to “glorify God, and enjoy him forever…”

sometimes doing nothing glorifies God, because in the nothing lies a confession, a declaration.  there are moments when what’s next, what’s right, what’s necessary, is bigger than us, outside of us somehow.  there are snapshots in our lives when the thing that has to be done has to be done by God or not at all, because it’s more than we can handle.  these aren’t times from which we should shy or cower, these are times when we can have peace that we serve a God who is not outdone by anything.

i’m not proposing a life ethos.  scriptures are rife with calls to action; yet if you find yourself stuck, flummoxed in the face of life or your future or the next step, it might be okay if the best thing to do is nothing.  and if you absolutely have to be doing something, then be busy enjoying God forever.

peace - s.

my two cents…

i’ve followed the most recent marc driscoll kerfuffle with some interest over the past 10 days or so.  initially, i kept trying to think of witty/snarky tweets i could send in response to some of his inanity*, both published and anecdotal, but to use churchspeak for a moment, something caught in my spirit. in what i would attribute to a work of his Spirit, God helped me to shelve my desire to be funny for a moment and think first of how i would want others to react to me if i began to act as if i had 1) lost every shred of reason and sanity i had been born with or 2) got the big head.  i realized that i would want - indeed i would need - someone to speak the truth, to declare ways in which i had misspoken, misstepped, and misappropriated God’s word and God’s call.  to that end, i salute those who have thoughtfully and straightforwardly addressed a lot of the nonsense that driscoll has apparently included in his latest book.  additionally, though, i realize i would need someone close to me to tell me that they love me even when i’m a jackhole, that i’m still God’s child even when i’m obstreperous and bombastic in his name.  on this front i actually worry for driscoll a bit.  i don’t think a person gets as defiantly ridiculous as driscoll is without first being surrounded by accommodating, mealy-mouthed sycophants.  i don’t mean that to be ugly to anybody, it just seems obvious. how else could someone feel so emboldened to say such hurtful and divisive things, except that there’s nobody in the ‘inner circle’ who has the guts to say, “you’re wrong, and wrong in a big way”.  God loves marc driscoll, no matter how bananas some of his ideas/sermons/books are.  and in his love, God will be faithful to bring driscoll back to his senses.  hopefully sooner than later…

*to settle an in-house debate, please let me know if you were either 1) put off by or 2) didn’t know the meaning of this word

the dignity of bologna…

when i was in college, i took a greyhound bus home on one of my breaks.  i don’t remember why, exactly, except that it was probably cheaper than flying, and maybe my parents thought a 14-hour ride through the most God-forsaken parts of the southeast would be good for me.  anyhoo…

on one of our many - and by many, i mean here to say, approximately 65 - stops en route to our destination, i remember the bus driver getting out, going into a convenience store, for yes, we were parked in the parking lot of a convenience store, and coming back to the bus with a package of lunch meat.  i’m not entirely sure, but i think it was bologna, only because i remember the way he folded the lunch meat in half as he ate it.  right there.  on the spot.  the greyhound bus driver, in the parking lot of a convenience store, in the middle of the night, somewhere in pleasedontshootmesville, georgia, opened a pack of bologna and ate it.

at the time i remember feeling bad for the bus driver, that his life was made up of moments wherein he had to eat lunch meat, without even the luxury of bread or miracle whip or cheese, whilst sitting behind the wheel of a commercial passenger bus.

and then today i went to wal-mart.  and while i was at wal-mart, i realised i was hungry.  really hungry.  gnaw on the flesh of another living human hungry.  so i got some bologna, because i like bologna, particularly on bread, with miracle whip and american cheese.

i paid for my bologna.

i went to my car.

and before i started the car, before i did anything else, i opened the pack of bologna and ate three slices.  three wonderful, salty, processed slices of pig and chicken parts.  it was so good.  and as i enjoyed my bologna (not a sentence i get to say or write nearly enough, by the by) i thought of that bus driver from over 15 years ago now, and i thought of how i pitied him.  and in that moment i realised how wrong it was of me to pity him, to project onto him my expectations of how one’s life should be, should look.  i also realised how inherently wrong my expectations on that night had been.  

if you’re hungry, and you want bologna, eat it.  you don’t need bread or mayonnaise or mustard or miracle whip or cheese or onions or a frying pan or a southern accent or a low IQ or, and especially this, my or anyone else’s permission. we are so much more than what we eat or when.

if you’re out there, bus driver, i’m sorry. and more than that, thank you.  thank you for having the courage to eat whatever the hell you wanted, exactly when you wanted it.  you were then, and i might wager to say that you still are today, a better man than me. 

but i’m getting better.

one slice of bologna at a time…

the art of sitting.

a friend of mine recommended that i read a wee little book - more a booklet, really - by watchman nee.  i don’t have it in front of me, and i can’t even at the moment remember the title, but a line from the first section has haunted me for nearly a week now.  

“he’s waiting for you to despair…”

the he, of course, is God, and the you, in this case, i believe, is me.  this line occurs in the context of nee discussing the absolute need of the believer to sit with God before anything else.  in the sitting we recognise and acknowledge that we are and can do nothing.  as Christ found us when we were dead, and made us by his Spirit to be alive, we must needs remember that we can’t begin to think of moving or doing until we have first sat.  we have no strength in him until we confront our abject weakness.  we have no vision until we confess our blindness.  we cannot do except that he - as he has already - does for us first.

i love this and i hate this all at the same time.  i find myself in a season of life wherein i feel a very strong need to be doing something.  i’m unemployed, and having spent nearly a decade in vocational ministry, i fear i am not as employable in the secular sector as i perhaps would like.  and so my days, my thoughts, indeed the sum of all that i am, are filled with notions of doing, fixing, finding.  into the midst of this storm of stress and strife comes the reminder to sit.  before i can do anything, i have to remember that i can do nothing.  this is, to put it mildly, challenging.

how do i do nothing, how do i show Christ that i understand my spiritual poverty, without sending my family deeper into physical, tangible poverty?  and, if i’m perfectly honest, how am i to sit in the bosom of a God who of late has seen fit to show himself in shadow and wind, if he shows himself at all?  (and as an aside here, does anybody else in the church complain anymore?  everybody i see on TV, or coming out of or going into churches where i live are always smiling and happy and hopeful and contentedly chatty.  where are the whiners?  where are the malcontents, the dissatisfied, the frustrated, the pissed-off-at-God? )

from somewhere deep within my soul i hear the faint echo of a call to heed the exhortation to first sit, and then do.  but it scares me.  it scares the actual, living hell out of me.  what will the wife and the friends and the family think when they ask me how the job hunt is going and the best i can do is, “well today, i actually sat for a bit…”?  yet i do believe that i, and maybe we, have lost sight of the notion that we really cannot begin without first beginning in the emptiness of ourselves and the completeness of who he is in us.  as one who is sick, i can not be made well by talking about how well i hope to be.  i must first visit a doctor.  i must first admit that i cannot of my own volition, nor through the sheer force of my will, make myself better.  for me, for us, amelioration comes not through determination, but through resignation.  here in our country of boot-strappers and dream chasers we have lost sight of what it means to be completely and utterly helpless.  

yet that is where all the good stuff begins.  i believe this still, though it is a tough and bitter pill to swallow.  and so i end with a prayer.

Father, teach me to sit, but be to me a gentle and kind teacher.  i am slow to learn and obstinate of heart, yet i want to want to be yours, to be found in you, to be helpless and weak in the presence of your strength and promise.  save me God, for i am drowning, wave upon wave crashing upon my head as the shore. my heart grows weary of the struggle to believe, to hope, to encourage.  are my tears precious to you?  if this be so, hide me under your wings, and fight for me and my family today, my Lord and my God.  be my salvation, ere i fall.

teach me to sit, to recline, to surrender.  teach me to despair…

amen.

out of the spotlight

we* want things to be ours, because we want all of the credit.  look what i’ve done feels a lot better than look what we’ve done.  being part of something is only prized in our society if we’re able to play a vital - or leading, that’s even better - role in the process.  it’s not nearly enough to simply lend a hand to a cause or purpose we either like or think merits assistance.

being counted with the nameless masses isn’t sexy.  there is little about genuine Christ-following that is attractive, appealing.  the seeker-sensitive movement has taken off because it provides churches a means of taking people’s attention off of the homely simplicity of living and loving like Christ did.  coffee and good lighting are so much easier to handle than dealing with lepers and orphans.

we do well to remember what it means to be found in Christ.  we are not special, or needed, because of what we bring to the table.  we are special because the love of God has been bestowed upon us.  in this way, we are free to do what we want, in the best sense, because we don’t retain value for ourselves, based on the actions in which we engage.  in other words, the man or woman who cleans the church in relative obscurity is just as ‘special’ and ‘needed’ as the teaching pastor.  this is not sentimentality.  it’s the absolute theological reality of our standing in Christ.  to use a different metaphor, justification has been reckoned to us, deposited to our account, all the same.    this being so, and since we understand that our ‘goodness’ doesn’t pad the account, we’re all equally - and gloriously, inestimably - rich, so we can relax and do what we want.

we can do what we want.  i don’t mean to promote antinomianism here.  i simply mean to say that we are free to serve God and others in the way that best suits our talents and tastes.  we don’t need recognition, nor do we require a great, recognisable cause.

feed the hungry.  clothe the naked.  God sees it all, and that is absolutely enough.

*by “we” i here - and almost always - mean “me”

beef

i’m the dancing outlaw

don’t start none, won’t be none

see my moves: weep, wail

‘cause you ain’t got none.

i’m the deal, fool

the shit on a stick

you better back up

before you feel the brick

slammin’ it down,

breaking it off

drop that beat, DJ

i can’t keep these moves

to myself

strengthen your immune system like OJ

i’m out, see, so much more to do

i’ve spent too much time already

trying to school you

dancing.

outlaw.

out.