Randy Greenwald

Concerning Life as It Is Supposed to Be

The Extraordinary Privilege of the Ordinary

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On January 3, 2011

In Church

This past Sunday morning, I went to church.

That in itself is not so unusual. After all, I am a pastor, and going to church is my job. What was unusual is that I went to church as an ordinary guy. Not as pastor, but as worshiper. And I was reminded of how great a privilege and how important a component of life is worship.

Sunday for a pastor is normally a work day. My mind is filled from the moment I rise – usually very early – with thoughts about the details of the service and particularly the sermon I’m to preach. Right or wrong, this preoccupation rarely disappears even after worship has begun. And though I benefit from worship and truly do celebrate the Lord’s kindness in the communion we share, there is still a distraction that comes from having such a public role to play.

But this past Sunday was different. It was ordinary. I was on vacation and had no responsibilities. In fact, I could have stayed home. I could have judged that I ‘needed a break’, or that I was tired, or any one of the myriad of reasons that I have heard as a pastor over the years for placing a low priority on public worship.

But I went, with no responsibilities, and I was blessed.

We showed up later than planned because we went together as a family. My visiting son and his wife have an infant son whose presence slowed us down. But that was okay. We arrived as worship was beginning and we took our seats as would anyone else. We listened, we spoke, we sang, we prayed.

When the time came for the sermon to be preached, I reached for my note pad. The one preaching in my place was my intern and I knew he would be interested in my critical reflections upon his preaching. I started to take notes to share with him, and then stopped. More than he needed my reflections, I needed to be fed God’s Word. I needed to be preached to, and he did such a solid job of that that it was a blessing just to listen.

And then I had the rare experience (for me) of being served communion. I am normally the one serving. The sacrament served to remind me of my place in the people of God and the privilege that is. It was such a warm and encouraging reminder.

I left having been blessed by the ordinary service of God’s ordinary people in the ordinary rhythm of the church.

And I left wondering why anyone would ever voluntarily pass on the extraordinary privilege of gathering for worship with God’s people. It is not something that we merely should do. It is something that we are regularly privileged to do.

Perhaps it is only we who rarely have that privilege who can see that so well.

Reflecting on the Incarnation

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On January 2, 2011

In Christian Life

I read this morning this thoughtful and reflective sermon by B. B. Warfield, Imitating the Incarnation. I rarely find it easy to read sermons. This one is different. Not only does it heighten our awe for the Christ who became man, but it challenges our thinking about the goal of Christian living. Very warm, pastoral, and moving, this.

Warfield is preaching on Philippians 2:5-8.

“The one subject of the whole passage is Christ’s marvelous self-sacrifice. Its one exhortation is, ‘Let it be this mind that is also in you.’ As we read through the passage we may, by contact with the full mind and heart of the apostle, learn much more than this. But let us not fail to grasp this, his chief message to us here,—that Christ Jesus, though He was God, yet cared less for His equality with God, cared less for Himself and His own things, than He did for us, and therefore gave Himself for us.”

From this, Warfield concludes

1) that we have a God who is capable of self-sacrifice for us.

2) a life of self-sacrificing unselfishness is the most divinely beautiful life that man can lead

3) that it is difficult to set a limit to the self-sacrifice which the example of Christ calls upon us to be ready to undergo for the good of our brethren.

This is worthy of multiple reads and deep reflection.

Bible Reading Schedules

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On December 27, 2010

In Disciplines

“It’s beginning to feel a lot like Christmas.”

No, Christmas is past, actually. That feeling you have is the realization that the New Year is upon you. Christians occasionally respond to this realization determined to commit to some ‘spiritual endeavor’, such as reading the whole Bible from beginning to end.

I am not going to tell you whether to do that or not. But if you have determined to take that step, I would like to help. To that end, I have prepared three differently paced but similar reading schedules.

These are not seven day a week schedules. Most of us are human, and to be human means we will miss a day or two here and there in our reading. I have found it better to ASSUME this and to build into the schedule an extra day or two each week to allow for catching up.

Secondly, following these schedules you will not hop around. Rather, you will read one book until it is complete, and then you will move on to another book. New Testament and Old Testament books are intermingled to introduce variety through the year, but you are never required to read, for example, a chapter in Matthew and one in Genesis on the same day.

Beyond these similarities, the schedules differ in pace. For the highly motivated, there is a schedule that covers all of the Old Testament once, and the New Testament and Psalms twice in the course of the year.

Yeah, right. Okay, fun to think about. But for the rest of us, there is schedule that takes one through the whole Bible once in the course of the year. Pretty straightforward, that.

But that can still be daunting for those who have never attempted it. Miss a week, as you might during vacation or while bogged down in Leviticus, and you feel sunk. You give up, patting yourself on the back for having tried, and then feeling like a ‘cotton headed ninny muggins‘ for having failed.

But, Buddy, you’re NOT a cotton headed ninny muggins. You just need a slower pace. For this case, we provide a schedule that paces you through the Bible in TWO years. The goal is moved farther off, but you are less likely buckle under under the stress that usually comes with these programs.

If any reading this have found these schedules helpful in the past, I’d appreciate a comment to that effect. Helps me know that my labor is not in vain and encourages others in their efforts. Thanks!

+ + + + +

Each of these can be downloaded from my Dropbox site. (Let me know if there is any trouble.)

And each is available in two formats: .pdf for printing and .epub for reading on your iPhone (just import the file into iTunes). Right click on the desired file, and select ‘download”. Enjoy!

Two years:
.pdf
.epub

One year:
.pdf
.epub

One year (NT and Psalms twice):
.pdf
.epub

+ + + + +

Also, if you want to say ‘thank you’, sign up for your own DropBox account using this link. We’ll BOTH get extra space. Yeah for extra space!

The Christmas Story. Sort of.

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On December 23, 2010

In Sports

My son put this together in a burst of inspiration this morning. I present it here unedited and without comment. Enjoy. I think.

The Christmas Story

For Baseball Addicts

Here is a Halladay story for you. Some shepherds were sitting on the field one night. They were there to protect the sheep from Cubs, Diamondbacks, and wild Tigers. Stuff like that. You probably didn’t know this, but the shepherds were actually Twins. They were sitting there, minding their own business. One was leaning against some Rockies while the other tugged on his White Sox.

All of a sudden there was an Angel standing in front of them, with Rays shining all over the place. The shepherds were terrified. The Angel spoke. “Don’t be afraid, be Braves! I have great news. This isn’t just of Nationals importance, but it is for the World! I want you to o-Pena ears and Lee-sin well. Howard you like to know that you are no Longoria waiting for a savior, but he is here? He has come to pay the Price for the world’s sin and will be a Shields for you from the wrath of God. So stop laying around! God’s Victorino is sure! Get Upton go into town. You will find a baby in a dugout stable. That’s him!” Then an entire team of Angels were there, singing an anthem and re-Joyce-ing.

When they had gone the shepherds jumped up and said “F-Orioles?? Awesome!!” and ran off, feeling as big as Giants. They broke the Cardinal rule of shepherding, leaving their sheep to their own defense. The shepherds were a couple of Athletics, because they ran all the way to the stable without stopping, and there they found the baby, with his mother and his Padre, just as the Angel and told them they would.

Meanwhile, a long way to the East, a group of Royals were meeting. “I was sure I knew All Stars, but there is a new one! Let there be no more divisions between us, and let’s go see what’s happening. What are those Brewers up to?” So, like a group of Rangers, they packed their camels and headed out. They were really committed, because it was a two year contract that they signed up for! When they finally found him, they said it was well worth it, and he was the best person they had ever Mets.

This little baby grew up to be a man who changed the world. He gathered to him a group of Dodgers, Pirates, and Mariners, and taught them the truth. Eventually he made a surprise sacrifice play, and by it won the game.

Merry Christmas, everyone, and Phillies Navidad!

He Took Damnation Lovingly

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On December 21, 2010

In Uncategorized

There are few books of theology that I have ever read that handle their subject matter as well as Donald Macleod’s work of Christology The Person of Christ. Thoroughly walking his readers through the controversies and exegesis critical to the study, he takes them to where a ‘study of Christ’ most certainly must go if it is paying attention to its subject: worship and adoration and wonder.

In developing for us the reality of ‘the Word’ becoming flesh, he notes that possessing a ‘reasonable soul’, that is, a completely human personality, he faced, as any true human would, fear. And the fear he faced was the darkness of the abandonment of God.

(If you are not a Christian, understand that here is the absolute passionate heart of Christianity.)

“When Moses saw the glory of God on Mount Sinai so terrifying was the sight that he trembled with fear (Heb. 12:21). But that was God in covenant: God in grace. What Christ saw in Gethsemane was God with the sword raised. (Zc. 13:7; Mt. 26:31). The sight was unbearable. In a few short hours, he, the Last Adam, would stand before that God answering for the sin of the world: indeed, identified with the sin of the world (2 Cor. 5:21). He became, as Luther said, ‘the greatest sinner that ever was’ (cf. Gal. 3:13). Consequently, to quote Luther again, ‘No one ever feared death so much as this man.’ He feared it because for him it was no sleep (1 Thess. 4:13), but the wages of sin: death with the sting; death unmodified and unmitigated; death as involving all that sin deserved. He, alone, would face it without a hilasmos, or ‘covering’, providing by his very dying the only covering for the world, but doing so as a holocaust, totally exposed to God’s abhorrence of sin. And he would face death without God, … deprived of the one solace and the one resource which had always been there.

“The wonder of the love of Christ for his people is not that for their sake he faced death without fear, but that for their sake he faced it, terrified. Terrified by what he knew, and terrified by what he did not know, he took damnation lovingly.” [Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ, pages 174-175]

Read it. Weep. And then sigh the relief of one loved beyond what one can imagine.

Sin: Read All About It

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On December 17, 2010

In Books

Why would anyone read, much less recommend, a book on sin? Perhaps the following, from the introduction to Cornelius Plantinga’s accessible and enthralling book, Not the Way It’s Supposed to Be : A Breviary of Sin,
 will sufficiently intrigue you that you will put this one on your reading list for 2011.

“Slippage in our consciousness of sin, like most fashionable follies, may be pleasant, but it is also devastating. Self-deception about our sin is a narcotic, a tranquilizing and disorienting suppression of our spiritual central nervous system. What’s devastating about it is that when we lack an ear for wrong notes in our lives, we cannot play right ones or even recognize them in the performances of others. Eventually we make ourselves religiously so unmusical that we miss both the exposition and the recapitulation of the main themes God plays in human life. The music of creation and the still greater music of grace whistle right through our skulls, causing no catch of breath and leaving no residue. Moral beauty begins to bore us. The idea that the human race needs a Savior sounds quaint.

“So the broader goal of this study is to renew our memory of the integrity of creation and to sharpen our eye for the beauty of grace.” (xiii)

Dealing with Those Who Differ

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On December 16, 2010

In Biography

Newly moved to Oviedo, Florida, and to the neighborhood of Reformed Theological Seminary, I find the name of Roger Nicole prominent. Only recently have I learned much about him, in the wake of his recent death at age 95. Better words can be found here and here.

Reading his paper, “Polemic Theology: How to Deal with Those Who Differ from Us“, though, has made me wish I had met him.

Dr. Nicole here notes that Christians can be ornery. There is gentleness in that assessment. Pugnacious might better describe it. And while affirming the need to confront our differences, he lays out admirable ground rules for doing so. He says that we MUST ask these three questions in this order:

1. What do I owe the person who differs from me?
2. What can I learn from those who differ from me?
3. How can I cope with those who differ from me?

Terribly helpful insights for dealing with conflict in theology for sure. But I see that an argument in a marriage disciplined by this approach will result in peace and growth. These are really important principles.

A Christian who carries on discussions with those who differ should not be subject to the psychology of the boxing ring where the contestants are bent upon demolishing one another. Rather “The Lord’s servant must not quarrel: instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses . . . ” (2 Tim. 2:24-26).

Admirable.

True Gritty Presbyterian Ethic

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On December 15, 2010

In Movies

The new release of True Grit is a movie I will see. The Coen brothers have redefined Homer for me as well as wood chippers and now they will redefine John Wayne. Though I sometimes don’t understand them, I still have to watch.

I expect, though, to learn something fresh from their new work. In this interview, they talk about the 14 year old girl who plays such a pivotal role in this story. Pay special attention to the last sentence:

They made “True Grit” not as corrective to the movie featuring an eye-patched Duke wheeling around as Rooster Cogburn but because both brothers loved the book by Charles Portis that it was based on. The novel is narrated by Mattie Ross, a spinster who tells the story of her quest many years earlier to avenge her father’s murder by a no-account by the name of Tom Chaney. Her younger self stomps into the frame of the Coens’ film with a gift for language and figures, a vision of pigtailed precocity.

“She is a pill,” Ethan said, “but there is something deeply admirable about her in the book that we were drawn to.” Joel continued the thought: “We didn’t think we should mess around with what we thought was a very compelling story and character.” Ethan stepped in: “The whole Presbyterian-Protestant ethic in a 14-year-old girl was interesting to us and sounded fun.”

The whole what?

“Their Faith in God Is Strong”

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On December 14, 2010

In Christian Life

This from the front page of yesterday’s NY Times:

More Christians Flee Iraq After New Violence

(If you click through, you may be asked to sign in. I don’t believe there is a charge to create an account.)

And this from that story:

“Their faith in God is strong,” said the Rev. Gabriele Tooma, who heads the Monastery of the Virgin Mary, part of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Qosh, which opened its monastic rooms to 25 families in recent weeks. “It is their faith in the government that has weakened.”

For many of us, the opposite is true. We trust government more than we trust God.

What would we be willing to endure to switch that around? I thank God that I live under a stable government. But I don’t want my faith to rest in it.

Pray for these Christians in Iraq and other places from whom we have so much to learn.

“I Might Have Been Boring”

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On December 7, 2010

In Preaching

I introduced Sunday’s sermon with a reflection on the difficulty that Steve Martin had connecting with an audience in New York last Monday. The article which spawned this is here.

Being interviewed by a NY Times writer, Deborah Solomon, the audience grew impatient with their discussion of art, and wanted, apparently, Mr. Martin to talk about his career. So,

“Midway through the conversation, a Y representative handed Ms. Solomon a note asking her to talk more about Mr. Martin’s career and, implicitly, less about the art world, the subject of his latest novel, An Object of Beauty.”

Fitting that story into the sermon was probably a stretch, but I am impressed by Steve Martin’s breadth and depth and found the incident interesting. My mention of it did inspire one creative attendee to plot the delivery of a note to me mid-sermon to encourage me to shift focus, a plot that he never got the gumption to effect.

To bring this full circle, readers might enjoy Mr. Martin’s response to the whole matter, which is printed here. The comedian and the preacher share a common concern that we not lose our audience. Mr. Martin says this:

“Now let me try to answer the question you might be asking yourself at this point: was I boring? Yes, I might have been.”

No one wants to lose an audience and for this reason the comedian and the preacher struggle to NOT be boring. And both, apparently, occasionally fee that they are. But Martin goes on to say that when he is boring, he KNOWS it. So do I.

“I have been performing a long time, and I can tell when the audience’s attention is straying. I do not need a note.”

There is not as much difference between performing and preaching as some might like to think.

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