Testimonium

“I will lift up mine eyes unto the pills…” -Malcolm Muggeridge 1962

Anyone who is familiar with the Book of Psalms understands what Muggeridge was implying in his commentary on our dependence upon medicine. The reference is to Psalm 121 in which the Psalmist recorded a song of assents sung by Israel’s pilgrims while climbing the hills to Jerusalem to attend the festivals. These hills are steep and the paths which the ancient pilgrims would have taken were rocky and slippery. Looking up at the dangers lying ahead of them, it is speculated that the pilgrims would begin their journey with this Psalm:

I lift mine eyes up to the hills. From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from the LORD , which made heaven and earth. He will not suffer thy foot to be moved.

The rhetorical question is, “who will come to my rescue?”. This answer is sung back to the  questioner in an affirmation that that God alone will keep their feet from slipping.

When Muggeridge alluded to this passage he was criticising our culture for our reliance upon pills to save us from our afflictions rather than upon God. While not intrinsically evil, these things have the potential to become evil when we allow them to take God’s rightful place as the one who rescues us from our troubles.

A few months ago while in the morning worship service at church, we sang a song which exalts God to his rightful place as our deliverer. This song quickly become one of my favorites because it speaks of God being my strength and my deliverer- two things which I desperately need. I was starting to get into that worship zone in which everything around me is blocked out and it’s just me and God when something terrible happened. I realized that while I was singing about  God being my very present help in time of need, my actions weren’t really matching up to my words very well. My mind started recalling time after time in which I needed to be rescued from the pain of my disease, but I didn’t even give God an opportunity to do that for me. Sure, I had drawn close to God through my suffering, but I only allowed him to deliver me from the emotional side of pain and from the mental loneliness which accompanies it. I realized at that moment that God never intended for me to separate the mental from the physical suffering. If I were truly allowing God to be my shelter and my deliverer, then I would allow him to deliver me from my physical needs as well as my emotional needs. Yes, Christ meets me in the loneliness of my suffering, but he also wants to meet me in the anguish of my physical pain. I couldn’t sing the rest of the song. I sat down and buried my face in my hands, feeling like an exposed hypocrite with nowhere to hide.

After church that day, for the first time, I purposefully skipped my afternoon dosage of baclofen. It was pretty rough and the evening prayer service was difficult, but I had started my journey up the mountain to Jerusalem and was looking up at God to be the one from whence my help cometh.

The next morning I left for a week long business trip.  I took my medications with me because I knew that my body would have a very difficult time transitioning  from the cool Oregon weather to the heat and humidity of the Florida skies. I had already been in a good amount of pain from decreasing my normal dosage and the pain was only getting worse. I continued to take my medication, but at a lower dosage than prescribed. After the first day I was really feeling like a hypocrite. I felt like I was picking and choosing which parts of God’s character I was going to allow myself to know. Yes, Christ can comfort my soul because he is our divine brother in our suffering-but he can also comfort my body because he is my divine deliverer and sustainer. He not only offers his friendship through the pain, he offers physical deliverance from it. To grant him one and not the other would be much like allowing Jami to be my lover but not my companion (foolish). A god who I can customize like a new car is a designer god fashioned into my own image- he is in idol and is not god at all. Knowing God means accepting all of him in all of his goodness. In an act of  foolish faith, I tossed my meds into the nearest dumpster and went to meet with God in the silence of my hotel room. I no longer had a choice- I must now face the rest of the week without pills. I had no choice but to put my faith in God as my deliverer.

Back at the hotel room, I spent some time praying and meditating on the Psalms. I had notified some faithful friends back home and Jami that I was in a great deal of pain and needed their prayers. I didn’t tell them the entire story, but I knew that I could count on them to pray for me. What I discovered through this experience is that God will meet me in my suffering. Through the prayers of my friends back home, and by the grace of God, my symptoms were relieved the very next day. The most amazing thing to me is that the relief that I received was not any less than the relief that I received from taking my medication. Perhaps it is nothing more than a placebo effect, but I don’t think that it is. I was fully expecting to be in pain the rest of the week. I did not think that God would take the pain away, but that he would give me the grace needed to endure the pain. The power of a placebo is in being entirely convinced of its effectual properties. While I was fully convinced that God would give me endurance, I did not suspect for a moment that he would grant relief. That was a gift.

When I shared my experience with my friend John, he told me (with the good insight which is typical of John) that my decision to not use medication puts a burden on other people to pray for me. He didn’t say this as if putting this burden on others is a bad thing. He called it a privilege that he and others have to help carry my burden. He saw it as an opportunity for the church to step up and be the church. So it is with both selfishness and grace that I ask for your prayers. Overall, my pain has increased, but without being on medication I am finding that I am able to think more clearly. My mind is no longer asleep and I have regained some clarity in my thoughts and mental processes. More importantly, I am starting to allow myself to know God in ways which I had previously denied.

I will bless the Lord forever
I will trust Him at all times
He has delivered me from all fear
He has set my feet upon a rock
I will not be moved
And I’ll say of the Lord

You are my shield, my strength
My portion, deliverer
My shelter, strong tower
My very present help in time of need

Whom have I in heaven but You
There’s none I desire beside You
You have made me glad
And I’ll say of the Lord

You are my shield, my strength
My portion, deliverer
My shelter, strong tower
My very present help in time of need

A gift fit for the king

On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and of incense and of myrrh. – Matthew 2.11

 

The exchanging of gifts on Christmas day has become one of the most revered and sacred traditions of the western calendar year. There are many stories surrounding the origin of this practice, but in the end they are just myths shrouded in controversy and empowered by economic forces well beyond our control. The tradition as we know it is controversial in that nobody can seem to agree on its origins. Through all of the chaos of unraveling the true origin of this practice one thing has become clearly obvious- the tradition itself does not have biblical origins.

As you read through the biblical account of the Christmas story today, pay particular attention to the text’s use of gifts (hint: you will need to read St. Matthew’s account). What you will discover is that, although gifts are an important theme in the story, the gifts were not given to us, but to Christ .  Now I’m not saying anything particularly profound here. We all know the story. However, we should pause to consider how a story about bringing gifts to the Incarnate Deity has become, in our own times, a story about giving gifts to ourselves. An event intended to worship the King of Kings, has been flipped upside down to worship our own hedonistic desires to satisfy our desire for possessions. The longing once felt by the Magi for the Christ has been replaced by a longing to be entertained. I’m not condemning the practice of exchanging gifts. I believe that there is a lot of value in learning to give gifts. However, let’s not deceive ourselves into thinking that it is a practice associated with the sacred celebration of “God with us”.

So what then is an appropriate gift to give to God? We can’t bring him the luxurious gifts of the Magi- what would he do with it? What is it that God longs for on this Christmas day? For the answer to this question, let’s turn to the words of a man who was a shadow of Christ himself, King David.

You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it.
You do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. 
Psalm 51.16-17

This Christmas morning, as we are bringing gifts to one another, let’s take the time to consider that the one gift which matters most is a broken and contrite heart before the Lord. The one gift which we can confidently bring to God knowing that he will be pleased is to mourn the sin which separates us from his holy presence. This is the true gift of Chirstmas. Not one intended for us, but a gift, like that of the Magi, intended to satisfy the longing of the creator of all things.

O Come Emmanuel

This Christmas, more so than in years past, we have made a conscious effort to honor Christ in our Christmas celebration. Perhaps we just assumed that being a Christian family, our Christmas activities would automatically honor Christ. We are Christian therefore, ex vi termini, we celebrate Christ. At least this is what we assumed.

It was early in the advent season while gathered around the dinner table when I realized the folly of my reasoning. We had already been thinking of ways in which we could free Christmas from the bondage of secularism, but I was still convinced in my mind that we had done a pretty good job at teaching our children about the wonder of the incarnation and the promises contained therein.  To put this to the test, I decided to ask a very simple question.

“What is it about Christmas that you like the most”?

 At this point, allow me to pause and explain that I was fully expecting to hear at least one of the children, perhaps our oldest, give a proper Christian response.  I wasn’t so naive as to expect it to be the first answer, but I did expect it to receive (if nothing else) an honorable mention.  As you have probably guessed by now, my inquiry was met with a resounding affirmation of the time honored tradition of receiving gifts. This was followed by the giving of gifts, being together with family and, of course, food. It wasn’t until our eldest caught a glimpse of my furrowed brow that she remembered to throw in, as if an afterthought . . .

“ . . . and  Jesus”.

Did I hear that right?  “. . .  and . . . Jesus”?

How is it that the firstborn over all creation has come to find himself behind the lowly “and”? He who was before all things and in whom all things consist has become the antepenult, the penult and the ultima of our Christmas narrative.  He is the “Alpha and the Omega” and as such there is no place for “and”, neither before him nor after him- and yet there he was trailing right behind the conjunction which joins together a list of equals; not in his place of primacy, but at the very end of the list.

What we discovered in our children was a disconnect between their orthodoxy and their orthopraxy; their belief and their actions. This is the dreaded sacred/secular split which has plagued the western mind since the Enlightenment. Instead of seeing all of life through a sacred lens, we begin to bifurcate everything into that which we believe intellectually and that which we believe in our heart. But where did our children learn to split the sacred from the secular? They certainly didn’t learn it from Hume or from Kant- at least I suspect not. The only reasonable conclusion is that they have learned it from us. As their parents, we have not done the best job teaching them that all narrative is under God’s sovereign truth. We have done a pretty good job at teaching them to subject their beliefs to the sacred narrative but have allowed the secular narrative to dominate their desires.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. I see this same split in my own thinking from time to time. I have a deep conviction that God is my every present help in time of need and that he is my sustainer, and yet they see me relying on medication to help and sustain me through my PLS (which I have recently stopped taking… but we’ll save this for another post).  I teach my children that Christ is the divine Logos through whom all things are created, and yet I talk about us deciding to have another baby as if it were us who granted life and not the divine giver of life.

And so (getting back on topic) this year we have done things a bit different. In an effort to minimize the secular themes of consumerism and hedonism we have limited the children to just one gift from us; but this change alone does not have the power to merge their intellect with their heart when it comes to their celebration of the advent season. To do that we have changed the way in which we speak of Christmas and the way in which we celebrate the advent of Emmanuel.

One of the most notable changes that we have made is to celebrate a season of advent rather than just celebrating on Christmas day. This “season” begins well in advance of December 25th and will continue past it- possibly into Easter or longer.  For our guide we are using a few liturgies which we have found online and making some changes here and there. This expanded time allows for us to focus on the hope and expectation of Messiah that Israel had while waiting in exile.  The advent season which we have been celebrating highlights the tension that existed in Israel’s iniquity and their salvation, their hope and their despair and their joy and sorrow.  The children have been swept into the narrative by participating in Israel’s exile through certain elements which are used each night (candles, tasting vinegar & sand, tiny morsels of chocolate representing the hope of Emmanuel and empty wine glasses). The glasses are to be filled on Christmas day along with good chocolate or (some other complete treat) which represent the fulfillment of the hope which was incomplete until the incarnation. Throughout all of this are parallel themes of our exile from Eden and hopeful expectation of Emmanuel’s future advent. This is played out to the singing of “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” to a slow methodical pounding of wooden dowels which represent the dry bones of Ezekiel 37 longing to be filled with life.

I can’t say that our children have fully integrated the sacred into their understanding of Christmas, but I am hopeful that by continuing the themes of exile and hope throughout the year, our children will grow to know Christ as the “God with us” in our daily joy and our daily suffering. They have a pretty good grasp on the historical Emmanuel who came to Earth as a man, but have much to learn of the contemporary Emmanuel who dwells within us and offers us hope during our own exile from Eden as we await the final “God with us” of eternity. They, like their father, often fail to recognize their exile, their bondage to sin and their need to have God condescend down to us in order to save us. Yes, we do rejoice in the incarnation of Christmas, but we still mourn our sin which is always with us until that glorious day in which he descends from  heaven or we ascend to him.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appear
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Rod of Jesse, free
Thine own from Satan’s tyranny
From depths of Hell Thy people save
And give them victory o’er the grave
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Day-Spring, come and cheer
Our spirits by Thine advent here
Disperse the gloomy clouds of night
And death’s dark shadows put to flight.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, Thou Key of David, come,
And open wide our heavenly home;
Make safe the way that leads on high,
And close the path to misery.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

O come, O come, Thou Lord of might,
Who to Thy tribes, on Sinai’s height,
In ancient times did’st give the Law,
In cloud, and majesty and awe.
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel.

Thanks to God

Thanks to God for my Redeemer,
Thanks for all Thou dost provide!
Thanks for times now but a memory,
Thanks for Jesus by my side!
Thanks for pleasant, balmy springtime,
Thanks for dark and stormy fall!
Thanks for tears by now forgotten,
Thanks for peace within my soul!

Thanks for prayers that Thou hast answered,
Thanks for what Thou dost deny!
Thanks for storms that I have weathered,
Thanks for all Thou dost supply!
Thanks for pain, and thanks for pleasure,
Thanks for comfort in despair!
Thanks for grace that none can measure,
Thanks for love beyond compare!

Thanks for roses by the wayside,
Thanks for thorns their stems contain!
Thanks for home and thanks for fireside,
Thanks for hope, that sweet refrain!
Thanks for joy and thanks for sorrow,
Thanks for heav’nly peace with Thee!
Thanks for hope in the tomorrow,
Thanks through all eternity!

August L. Storm

Sychar

You who are called the Christ and
the giver of living water,
lead me to the well
which springs up to life eternal.
Supplant my earthly appetites
with heavenly ones.
Cause me to drink from your well.
Quench my worldly thirsts.
Set my affections upon the cross,
and my hunger
upon the will of the Father.

Invocation

Only begotton son of God
come and cleanse this wicked heart
so that you might be pleased to dwell within me.
Come not as the gentle Lamb of God
but as the fierce Lion of Judah;
who with great zeal and passion cleansed the temple.
With your whip of cords
drive out the impurity with me.
Purify and refine that which corrupts this temple.
Transform this corrupt den of thieves
into a pleasing house of prayer
so that I might finally worship in spirit and in truth.