Oh the blessing of haverim!

And when Araunah looked down, he saw the king and his servants coming on toward him. And Araunah went out and paid homage to the king with his face to the ground. And Araunah said, “Why has my lord the king come to his servant?” David said, “To buy the threshing floor from you, in order to build an altar to the LORD, that the plague may be averted from the people.” Then Araunah said to David, “Let my lord the king take and offer up what seems good to him. Here are the oxen for the burnt offering and the threshing sledges and the yokes of the oxen for the wood. All this, O king, Araunah gives to the king.” And Araunah said to the king, “May the LORD your God accept you.” But the king said to Araunah, “No, but I will buy it from you for a price. I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing.” So David bought the threshing floor and the oxen for fifty shekels of silver. (2 Samuel 24:20-24 ESV)

Some nice havering yesterday in our Sunday discussion.

Examining David’s motives in refusing to accept Araunah’s gift of this threshing floor…doesn’t he know how to receive a gift? Was it his own pride – he made a mess and by golly was going to pay to “clean it up”? Or was something else at work here? And does worship have to personally cost us something for it to truly be worship?

The whole discussion was for me a reminder of why reading the Bible is supposed to be a community event. Too many of us are solo reapers swinging our hermeneutical sickle into the text and “harvesting” our implications and applications very nicely on our own, thank you very much.

But the fact is we are never truly solo.

Our hermeneutical sickle has a handle shaped by others more than we realize, swung over a field we didn’t even sow along a path that has been travelled countless times before us. Our self-sufficient, American individualistic mindframe simply has to go. When we enter the Bible we are entering a community library with many volumes that have passed through many hands – authors, editors, copyists, translators, scholars. And it is meant to be received and processed through many hands joined together in a common faith and passion to hear and enter the text, to enter the story. I have met plenty of proud, self-made Bible “scholars” who have just “read the word” on their own (used to be one too!) – because, after all, that’s all it takes, right? Just me and my Bible.

But hearing the Word is a community endeavor, involving hearing and discussing, sifting and sorting, give and take. And hopefully some honest calling each other out when there’s far too much personal conjecture and say so and far too little immersion in the text and story itself.

And so back to our wee circle yesterday, with David “on the couch” as it were. What does this story say about his motives? What lessons are here about worship? After exploring various paths and suppositions, each with valid points along the way, we ended up observing together that there may be nothing more at work here than cultural conventions. Araunah may well be bargaining with David the way Ephron the Hittite bargained with Abraham over the cave of Machpelah in Genesis 23 – offering to give it freely (showing his generosity) and then proposing a fair price after the free offer was appropriately turned down. Maybe that’s what’s driving this exchange. Or maybe it’s what I have always heard “harvested” from this story: that worship and obedience are only truly worship and obedience when there’s sacrifice, only when it hurts (at least a little).

Nothing earthshattering in imporantance here, I suppose, either way.

The blessing for me – the blessing of my wonderful little Sunday morning band of haverim – is that the group discussion opened up some legitimate options based on the wider text of Scripture and it blessed me. I fell in love a little more with the Lord, with the Word, with my wee group.

Which is why we all so desperately need this kind of honest, thought- provoking, life-stimulating, face-to-face havering.

Oh the blessing of haverim…

half-a**ed grace

Then the king said to Joab, “Behold now, I grant this; go, bring back the young man Absalom.” And Joab fell on his face to the ground and paid homage and blessed the king. And Joab said, “Today your servant knows that I have found favor in your sight, my lord the king, in that the king has granted the request of his servant.” So Joab arose and went to Geshur and brought Absalom to Jerusalem. And the king said, “Let him dwell apart in his own house; he is not to come into my presence.” So Absalom lived apart in his own house and did not come into the king's presence. (2 Samuel 14:21-24 ESV)

Half-assed grace.

That’s what I’d really like to call this story (what a sermon title!).

I would like to see it as the heading over this story in a Bible someday.

I know such a label may offend the sensibilities of some, even keeping some from reading this post (which is, of course, why I employed assterisks).

Would that we were all as deeply offended at its practice.

Absalom’s story is certainly a sordid one, and most would dare say that in the end he got what he deserved (which is generally and naturally what we want for everyone else). But setting aside his calculating, manipulative, fratricidal and patricidal ways (we all have our flaws, after all), you can’t help but sympathize with his frustration at being summoned back from exile by his father only to still be held at arm’s length. So he’s back, but not. Bad kingdom mojo.

It is as if the prodigal son’s father, rather than seeing him while still far off and running to greet him, sent a servant to summon him home, and then another to escort him upon his return to a rented room on another man’s estate without ever even making eye contact. For two years. No ring, no robe, no sandals, no feast. And I just bet the older brother would have loved to carry out the assignment.

We are all quite good at half-assed grace, aren’t we? Perhaps because, deep down, this is what we really think we're getting from our Father. On a good day.

And so such "grace" comes quite naturally. And it even feels, well, right. After all, make this business of grace and forgiveness too easy and we only enable others, only make it easier for them to repeat the same patterns, right? This will help teach them or at least appropriately punish them. It’s their just desserts – in fact they deserve far worse. They should be glad we even thought to summon them.

But the reality is that in practicing such “grace” we only make ourselves feel better (“I am so magnanimous!”) while at the same time protecting ourselves and holding ourselves over others.

If only David had been able to show “God’s kindness” to his own exiled son as he did to Jonathan’s son Mephibosheth. How then might this story have ended? Note the similarities. Both in exile, clouded in shame. Both summoned by the king. One comes right before his throne, sees his face, protests his unworthiness, and is given a place at David’s table. Such full orbed, scandalous, extreme grace! But David’s own son who shared that table with Mephibosheth is kept outside the gates. So which son are you? Which Father do you really believe is yours? And which scenario do you find yourself reenacting?

Yes, there are seasons when “tough love” is in order. “As many as I love I rebuke and chasten.” But half-assed grace is always out of season and a betrayal of God’s heart – and our own.

puppeteering

After this David inquired of the LORD, “Shall I go up into any of the cities of Judah?” And the LORD said to him, “Go up.” David said, “To which shall I go up?” And he said, “To Hebron.” So David went up there, and his two wives also, Ahinoam of Jezreel and Abigail the widow of Nabal of Carmel. 2 Samuel 2:1-2

David inquired of the Lord.

Six times we are told that David “inquired of the Lord” – three times in 1 Samuel and three times in 2 Samuel. And while that’s not an avalanche of inquiry, the close grouping of the occasions on which David inquires and God answers impresses me…and makes pronounced the absence of that inquiry in the second half of 2 Samuel.

Intriguing that when it comes to battle, David inquires of the Lord before he moves. When it comes to navigating his home life, nothing. He seems to move through the increasing wreckage of his life by his own wits. In the latter half of his life he is surrounded by puppeteers who counsel this or scheme that. His son Amnon lusts and schemes and though David seems to suspect what’s up, he doesn’t press it. And he doesn’t inquire. Absalom is banished, David mourns and a status quo of unresolved loss and grief sets in that is only broken by the maneouverings of Joab, Nathan-like, and the plotted sly pretensions of a woman disguised. She says, “My lord the king has wisdom like the angel of God to know all things that are on earth.” But David seems to me clueless and impotent, a man who is carried along, passively moved by strings wielded by others.

And he never inquires.

Absalom returns, but not. Absalom pulls Joab’s strings, Joab motions to David, and then vain and pretentious Absalom (he weighed his hair!) steals the hearts of Israel. Rebellion is afoot, David on the run again. And there is no inquiry. Though he does seem to awaken. Several appeals to God. “Confound the counsel of Absalom.” “Perhaps the Lord will see my grief and take pity.” And he takes the strings and moves his pieces around the board as Absalom sleeps with his women in an improvised rooftop brothel. And when it comes time to muster his forces against his own son, he doesn’t inquire. “I myself will go out with you.” “No you won’t,” retort his men. “Whatever seems best to you I will do,” says the king.

And he does not inquire.

It is a blatant famine of inquiry that seems only broken later by a three year famine in the land that finally produces the notice again that “David sought the face of the Lord.”

It just makes me reflect a bit on the all too frequent sparseness of real inquiry in my own life and experience. We pray, but so often not with serious expectation of response. Prayer as polite gesture, as a wave of the hand towards an invisible god whose favor We would humbly beseech as We do whatever makes sense to Us, whatever seems to sync with the expectations of people or with what we’ve always done or feel like we should do. On the whole, I’ve witnessed far more puppeteering over my three decades in this church business, of motions from meetings and calculations from committees.

Not that I have this inquiring business down. I’ve seen plenty of wanna-be inquirers over the years who strike me more as pagan priests and priestesses looking at livers. Guess I would just like a bit more of that wonderful naivete I see in David’s inquiries; longing for release from the inescapable puppeteering and calculations of life. Still hungry for the give and take of Tevye’s walk, with eyes up and hands in motion, complaining and questioning and laughing, feeling His rhythms, or savoring the memory of them when prayer seems unrequited.

And David inquired of the Lord…

swordplay

Abner the son of Ner, and the servants of Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, went out from Mahanaim to Gibeon. And Joab the son of Zeruiah and the servants of David went out and met them at the pool of Gibeon. And they sat down, the one on the one side of the pool, and the other on the other side of the pool. And Abner said to Joab, “Let the young men arise and compete before us.” And Joab said, “Let them arise.” Then they arose and passed over by number, twelve for Benjamin and Ish-bosheth the son of Saul, and twelve of the servants of David. And each caught his opponent by the head and thrust his sword in his opponent's side, so they fell down together. Therefore that place was called Helkath-hazzurim, which is at Gibeon. And the battle was very fierce that day. And Abner and the men of Israel were beaten before the servants of David. (2 Samuel 2:12-17 ESV)

This story has always intrigued me.

Twenty-four guys facing off with each other, simultaneously taking each other by the head and then each stabbing the other in the side in some sort of twisted choreography. The image of choreography is further underlined by the Abner’s challenge to Joab to have the young men rise up and “compete.” The Hebrew is literally “have a laugh, jest, play” (the KJV translates it “play”).

It was a deadly game that ended up spreading through the countryside in the decisive battle of Gibeon.

Looking at this through a “havering lens,” I can’t help but notice some points of instruction for havers as we grapple with truth together.

First off, it is perfectly appropriate for havers to grab each other by the head. This is, in fact, the whole point of havering. To grab each other by the head is to engage in a lively exchange of thoughts. It is passionately thinking together, with word swords flashing and clashing and sparks flying. “Iron on iron,” says the proverb, “and so a man the face of his friend.” It is in such sparring – such “playing” – that we are prepared to fight the real enemy, who is never the person standing opposite you.

We desperately need such tactile, thoughtful engagement with each other. Unfortunately, all too often we rip off ourselves and each other by refusing to do it. We settle for making mincemeat out of each other while absent. We shadow box, thrust and parry, with a missing partner, often in the safe company of sympathizers who with us imagine each crucial blow as we grapple with an invisible man’s head. But true havers don’t box shadows, they lay hands on each other.

Which leads to the second observation: grabbing each other by the head, havers don’t then thrust their swords into each other’s sides – or worse, into each other’s backs. Havers don’t assassinate each other. They don’t turn their discussion forums into sword fields. “Field of Swords” is actually the literal meaning of the name attached to that bloody place by the pool of Gibeon: Helkath-Hazzurim. Peterson calls it “Slaughter Park.” There have been far too many such parks littering the roadside of church history.

Havers, play hard. Lay hands on each other. Grab your fellow haver by the head – and keep your dagger out of his side.

have you hugged a heretic today?

Heresies and How to Avoid Them will probably never make it on anyone’s bestseller list.

Doesn’t the cover artwork just pull you in? Who can resist that?

The title had been sequestered on my “to read” shelf for at least 18 months. I think I kept waiting to be depressed enough to dig into it and see what was there. I expected something a bit on the harsh side, a bit judgmental, a nice revisiting of the hard bottom line, the narrow way that all but a few miss, and so forth. It just didn’t sound like nourishing devotional reading. But having been in several discussion and email exchanges about modern day heresy and heretics, it seemed like a good time to pick it up and see what the authors (a diverse group across the Christian religious spectrum) had to say.

And I was very pleasantly surprised.

What greeted me was a rather instructive (dare I say devotional) tour through the first four centuries of Christian thought. It’s ground in church history I’ve traversed on many occasions before, but this time through it provided a real synthesis of the thoughts and workings of the Christian mind in those early years.

Stanley Hauerwas penned the prologue, which not only managed to get my attention but to keep me going through the book’s relatively brief 141 pages with an undiminished appetite. The whole work provided a tour de force in the art of havering – an interesting look at how the church has done it well and done it very poorly at times, and the challenge for us all to haver better.

I had never thought about how orthodoxy, rather than being boring and unimaginative, is actly the stuff of wonder and risk and the unexplainable; that heresy is usually the easy path – because, very simply, it cannot accept the seeming impossibilities and contradictions of what orthodoxy gazes upon with wonder. And so the heretic (daring to think more fully, to explain more definitively and more explicitly what has “always been believed”) defines and challenges and provokes the orthodox, and thereby forces the orthodox to actually grapple with what it is they believe, forming something of a simbiotic relationship between the orthodox and the heretic.

Is Christ God or man? Yes, said orthodoxy (who of course was heretical to the heretic). How? retorted the heretic (actually quite orthodox in their own mind, thank you very much). Impossible. And so the havering commenced. Two natures or one? Two minds or one? Like God or of the same substance? Fully human, or just appearing to be so? And so the debate went on for nearly 200 years – havering that too often led to heretic witch hunts (complete with angry townspeople with pitchforks) against a backdrop of political maneouverings and intrigue. Simultaneous with the Heresies book I was reading Philip Jenkin’s book Jesus Wars. The two books dovetailed perfectly, Heresies with the theological meat, Jesus Wars with the full account of the historical spectacle.

And while I really can’t urge you “Go and read these books!” (particularly Jesus Wars – the history is tedious, the melodramatics of church history and councils redundant and frankly nauseating after awhile), I would commend to you these two thoughts, the first from the Heresies book and the pen of Hauerwas, the second quote actually the final sentence of Jesus Wars:

The language of orthodoxy, as of piety, can be used thoughtlessly when faced with difficult questions, as a stock way to answer, neutralize or suppress them. Perhaps this is evidence of a sort of laziness. Or perhaps the instinct at work is to offset a perceived danger (the danger of being unsettled in one’s faith, or lured from the right path). But the killing of lively thought is a much greater danger. In the end a thoughtless recycling of “what the Church says” will make the narratives and doctrines of orthodoxy stale. As Rowan Williams suggests, “perhaps theology…needs excursions into the mirror-world of what it is not saying in order to find out what it is about.” Things that are vaguely taken for granted need to be made strange – to be made “something of a question” – in order that full-blooded orthodoxy may retrieve itself again. Mere incorporation in the orthodox Christian fold will not neutralize all the dangers, or make the question go away. This book aims to contribute to such liveliness of thought, to assist the avoidance of heresy not just through strategies of denial and censure, but through adventurous detours through the “what-ifs” proposed by orthodoxy’s ancient debating partners, so that the pitfalls and limitations of heresies can be better appreciated, and orthodoxy more wholeheartedly embraced.

Liveliness of thought – what a splendid definition/description of havering! And perhaps it also captures what is the ultimate heresy to avoid – that of killing thought, mortifying real questions as thought is replaced with the parrot, inquiry with the latest inquisition.

And now, Philip Jenkin’s final line from Jesus Wars:

A religion that is not constantly spawning alternatives and heresies has ceased to think and has achieved only the peace of the grave.

Yes, thank God for heretics! They are a sure sign that we are alive and breathing and thinking and growing. Only the dead stay lined up in perfect rows, after all.

And so, how about it? Have you hugged a heretic today?

hebrew rhythms

From Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles (just too good not to post):

The Hebrew evening/morning sequence conditions us to the rhythms of grace. We go to sleep, and God begins his work. As we sleep he develops his covenant. We wake and are called out to participate in God's creative action. We respond in faith, in work. But always grace is previous. Grace is primary. We wake into a world we didn't make, into a salvation we didn't earn. Evening: God begins, without our help, his creative day. Morning: God calls us to enjoy and share and develop the work he initiated. Creation and covenant are sheer grace and there to greet us every morning. George MacDonald once wrote that sleep is God's contrivance for giving us the help he cannot get into us when we are awake.

We read and reread these opening pages of Genesis, along with certain sequences of Psalms, and recover these deep, elemental rhythms, internalizing the reality in which the strong, initial pulse is God's creating/saving word, God's providential/sustaining presence, God's grace.

As this biblical genesis rhythm works in me, I also discover something else: when I quit my day's work, nothing essential stops. I prepare for sleep not with a feeling of exhausted frustration because there is so much yet undone and unfinished, but with expectancy. The day is about to begin! God's genesis words are about to be spoken again...

staying with the baggage

Warm-up: 1 Samuel 30:1-25

Then David came to the two hundred men who had been too exhausted to follow David, and who had been left at the brook Besor. And they went out to meet David and to meet the people who were with him. And when David came near to the people he greeted them. Then all the wicked and worthless fellows among the men who had gone with David said, “Because they did not go with us, we will not give them any of the spoil that we have recovered, except that each man may lead away his wife and children, and depart.” But David said, “You shall not do so, my brothers, with what the Lord has given us. He has preserved us and given into our hand the band that came against us. Who would listen to you in this matter? For as his share is who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall share alike.” And he made it a statute and a rule for Israel from that day forward to this day. (1 Samuel 30:21-25 ESV)

Battle or baggage.

Glory or mundane.

Adventure or backwater.

This story reminds me that we don’t give the Medal of Honor to the guy who drives the rig or the guard at the crossing or the clerk at the supply depot…unless they somehow end up on the front line and do something spectacular. We live for the stories from the front lines, don’t we? The ones from the cutting edge of the fight. We showcase the heroics, we celebrate the daring do’s where the fight is the hottest.

And then Jesus points to the widow and the clinking of her two mites which made a louder noise in his ears than all the other shekels dropped in combined. He highlights the cup of cold water quietly shared, the bearer “by no means losing his reward.” He celebrates those who pray and fast quietly in the closet over those clamoring for the photo op, the press conference, or the feature spot on the evening news.
And David honors the baggage keepers.

“’As his share who goes down into the battle, so shall his share be who stays by the baggage. They shall all share alike.’ And he made it a statute and a rule for Israel from that day forward to this day.”

It is fitting to acknowledge the sacrifice and sufferings and achievements of those who slug it out on the front line. But we have a gentle reminder here not to forget or slight or patronize the one who makes the front line possible – and also not to feel called to the latest trumpeted “front line” ministry/service/calling/opportunity et al if that means abandoning the place that God has already called us – or if we we go there because “that’s where the action is.”

In God’s kingdom, there are no little places.

There are no insignificant tasks.

And his VIPs are usually emptying trash cans before an audience of One, after the “heroes” are long gone home.

But God told me...

When Saul returned from following the Philistines, he was told, “Behold, David is in the wilderness of Engedi.” Then Saul took three thousand chosen men out of all Israel and went to seek David and his men in front of the Wildgoats' Rocks. And he came to the sheepfolds by the way, where there was a cave, and Saul went in to relieve himself. Now David and his men were sitting in the innermost parts of the cave. And the men of David said to him, “Here is the day of which the Lord said to you, ‘Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand, and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.’” Then David arose and stealthily cut off a corner of Saul's robe. And afterward David's heart struck him, because he had cut off a corner of Saul's robe. He said to his men, “The Lord forbid that I should do this thing to my lord, the Lord's anointed, to put out my hand against him, seeing he is the Lord's anointed.” So David persuaded his men with these words and did not permit them to attack Saul. And Saul rose up and left the cave and went on his way. 1 Samuel 24:1-7 ESV

There’s a proverb that says, “The lot causeth contentions to cease, and parteth between the mighty” (or if you prefer something more modern, “Flipping a coin can end arguments; it settles disputes between powerful opponents.”)

The word “contentions” takes us to a courtroom setting with arguments going this way and that, until (drum roll, please) someone throws a “lot.” And whether the lot was drawing straws or throwing them, or literally throwing their version of “holy dice” (urim and thummin style), casting lots was a simple appeal to the divine – since God’s sovereign presence is in everything and thus the lot’s “every decision is from the Lord.” In other words, it’s a divine trump card that settles the arguments and stops all debate.

It strikes me that that is often how “words” function in our havering. A position can be stated and defended, and then someone pulls out their own divine trump card in the form of “Well, God told me __________.” As if no further thought need be applied, no discernment attempted. Of course, if my “God told me” is countered by your “Yeah, but God told me,” we’re still left in the pickle. It’s like we’re both casting our own lots and getting different results. Too often havering de-evolves into my say so and your say so covered with a coating of “God speak” to try to win the point.

Poor havering.

This is what I hear in David’s men as they try to persuade David to take Saul out as he finishes up his business in the cave (and by the way, the Bible contains few scenes as wildly funny as this one). As Saul has his bowel movement, they want out (just what had he been eating, anyway?), they want to put an end to their time of trial, it all only makes sense. But they coat it with, “This is what God was talking about when he said, ‘Behold, I will give your enemy into your hand and you shall do to him as it shall seem good to you.’” Not trying to be legalistic or anything, but I simply can’t locate that statement anywhere. When did God say that? And when did these ruffians suddenly become such God-fearing men of the Word? It’s amazing how quickly we can wrap ourselves in the flag of whatever cause or authority when we need it to prop up our agendas.

David was convinced enough to at least crawl up to the defecating king and cut off the corner of his robe. But then he thought better of it. His conscience smote him because of a deeper realized truth (“You don’t lift up your hand against the Lord’s anointed”) that later is confirmed with an ancient proverb (“From wicked men come wicked deeds”).

It’s a good havering lesson.

It’s good to listen for God’s voice, to expect to hear from the Lord. “Despise not prophesying,” says Paul, “and don’t quench the Spirit.” But there’s more. “Test everything. Hold on to what’s good, keep away from everything that doesn’t wash (my paraphrase).” In another place he says, “You may all prophesy one by one, and let the rest discern.” In other words, in the best havering to offer “This is what I hear God saying” doesn’t end discussion, it only starts it – or restarts it. “God told me” is not a slam dunk terminating all exchange. It invites discernment, dipping into the mutually shared truth of Scripture and experience in the believing community, the contemplation of ancient proverbs – into the mix of which your “word” either adds or detracts, confirms or contradicts.

And true havers, rather than caving, will respectfully say so.

Havering in Adullam

David departed from there and escaped to the cave of Adullam. And when his brothers and all his father’s house heard it, they went down there to him. And everyone who was in distress, and everyone who was in debt, and everyone who was bitter in soul, gathered to him. And he became captain over them. And there were with him about four hundred men. 1 Samuel 22:1-4 ESV

David’s recipe for “church” planting:

Be labeled as a rebel.

Dodge several lethal spear chucks.

Run hard (and don’t forget the holy bread).

Develop sound “spittling” and “scrabbling” skills (know how to “go around the bend”)

Find a nice, dank cave and hide.

And just watch all the bitter, hurting malcontents flow right in!



I love this description of David’s haverim.



Would you choose a group like this? A “church” like this? Friends like this? Or would you keep looking in neighboring caves for something brighter, something more opptimistic and cheery?

David did not choose them. Ready or not, they came to him. And from these rough and hurting units no doubt arose many of David’s “mighty men” in later years. It just strikes me how backwards we can be in our search for churches, clubs, groups, and even just friendships with “beautiful people” whom we can dig and who can dig us…until it’s their nails digging into us, and then off we go. How many fights did David have to break up in that cave? How many swords were crossed, noses broken, mouths bloodied? Yet these became David’s men, and he owned them.

Perhaps the first challenge I would suggest for us in being people “after God’s heart” like David is our robust embrace of some hearty malcontents with messed up hair and messed up lives; to find our own Adullam.

What do you think?

What I can do in my dreams...

Don't remember where I saw this, but...how I do like it...this, my friends, was Saul of Tarsus

Cancer and the Kingdom: Embracing Exile, a Future and a Hope

Came across this article I wrote back in 2006 about Hannah in the immediate aftermath of her brain surgery. With her graduating this past week and the fourth anniversary of her surgery coming up in just a few weeks, this just seems timely...

The essential meaning of exile is that we are where we don’t want to be. We are separated from home. We are not permitted to reside in the place we comprehend and appreciate our surroundings. We are forced to be away from that which is most congenial to us. It is an experience of dislocation – everything is out of joint; nothing fits together. The thousand details that have been built up through the years that give a sense of at-homeness – gestures, customs, rituals, phrases – are all gone. Life is ripped out of the familiar soil...and dropped unceremoniously into some unfamiliar spot of earth. The place of exile may boast a higher standard of living. It may be more pleasant in its weather. That doesn’t matter. It isn’t home.  Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses

She lay unresponsive on the bed, eyes open but vacant, paralyzed. An MRI had been scheduled to hopefully find some answers to the ongoing headaches that doctors only wanted to medicate, the increasing difficulty in movement, the steady weight loss and nausea.  I carried her to the car and rushed her to the emergency room – little realizing that she would not return home for another sixty-six days. Scans were performed, tests were run, a large, malignant brain tumor was found; surgery was scheduled within the hour. New vocabulary for our family: medulla blastoma. It was Tuesday, June 27th, and we thought it fortunate that we had the fourth of July weekend coming up – hopefully she’d be ready to come home soon afterwards. All uncharted territory, filled with uncertainties, fears, doubts. No grid, no maps, no prospectus, no words.

That is how our journey started with Hannah’s cancer ordeal. Now, some seventy days later, she is just about through with her radiation treatments and her first cycle of chemotherapy. And she is home. The hospital staff uses words like “amazing” and “miraculous” to describe her – grace and fortitude evident in and upon her physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Initially we looked for a crack in some exterior façade of cheerfulness, but gave that up long ago. The girl just beams as she carries a load that we imagine would cripple us. It’s coming from something planted deep within. Divine life emerging, breaking through like green growth through cracks in steamrolled asphalt. The outlook for Hannah, we are told, is excellent – no further signs of cancer having spread anywhere; an 85% cure rate with no further recurrence; a cancer highly treatable and susceptible to radiation and chemotherapy. But, although home now, it will be a long haul with ongoing rehabilitation and chemotherapy. As it was put to Hannah rather directly as she was holding out for winter camp come February: “Your life will be on hold for at least a year.” With that same smile, she says what all of her RNs and CNAs have grown accustomed to hearing: “Okey dokey.” Her eyes show not resignation, but almost a playful, “We’ll see about that.”

As the numbness wore off, as a dad observing and experiencing all this with his fifteen-year-old daughter, I struggled for words – for the map, the grid, terra firma on which to stand, footing from which to move through the mire of cancer. The first word was given to me while with her on her first day pass. She chose to go see the new Pirates movie (obsessed Johnny Depp fan that she is). As Jack Sparrow faced off with the sea beast with its massive tentacles and gaping jaws, he said defiantly, “Hello, beastie!” and then pitched into it, allowing himself to be consumed by it, but with sword in hand. A divine image, framed even, just for me. “You can do that!” I heard in my heart. I have found myself saying, “Hello, beastie” many times since. In his faithfulness and mercy, God does give us footing, he gives us vocabulary for whatever it is that we are facing.

“Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile.” Throw yourselves into the place in which you find yourself, but not on its terms, on God’s terms. Pray. Search for that center in which God’s will is being worked out and work from that center…The aim of the person of faith is not be as comfortable as possible but to live as deeply and thoroughly as possible – to deal with the reality of life, discover truth, create beauty, act out love…You are in Babylon for a long time. You better make the best of it. Don’t just get along, waiting for some miraculous intervention. Build houses, plant gardens, marry husbands, marry wives, have children, pray for the wholeness of Babylon, and do everything you can to develop that wholeness. The only place you have to be human is where you are right now. The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given, the weather conditions that prevail at this moment. Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses

The second word came a few weeks later. “Exile.” Not a very cheery word. But a very apt word for what we were in the midst of. It was towards the end of Run with the Horses – Eugene Peterson’s ruminations on the life of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. “Exile,” he said, “is being where you would rather not be.” It is the experience of dislocation, disjointedness. Much of Israel had just entered into exile in Babylon. They were confused, lost, uprooted, adrift on a sea of hopelessness. Prophets appeared with good news: “Don’t unpack your bags. God promises your best life now! You’re going home soon! Deliverance is at hand!” The prophet Jeremiah, still in Israel, sent a message to the captives: “Don’t be deceived by smooth talking prophets promising you the world. Settle down where you are. Dig in. Build houses and live in them. Plant vineyards and eat their fruit. Marry, have children. Seek shalom in the place where the Lord has exiled you – for the peace of that place is your peace. And when seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will bring you back home. For I know the plans that I have for you, plans to prosper you, to give you a future and a hope.” Many times we quote Jeremiah 29:11 with its “prosper” and “future” and “hope” – and it’s a good verse. I had just never appreciated the context of the promise as I did at that moment.

I would pull into the hospital parking lot muttering “I hate this place.” I would walk its halls murmuring, “One day we’ll be out of here.” The Lord stopped me in my tracks with Jeremiah. It was as if the Lord had penned a personal note to me, reading “Seek my shalom, my restful, wholesome peace here. Settle in these halls. Kiss the ground of this parking lot. Embrace exile here. For it is in the context of embracing exile here that a future and a hope is ultimately received and trust for it nurtured. It certainly isn’t natural. It doesn’t get much more upside down. It seems more logical to assume that kingdom theology means release from thorns, from tumors, from hospital beds and bedside commodes. And, I suppose, ultimately, it is such release. The kingdom of God is the radical breaking in of the effective reign of God in the midst of a fallen, corrupt and groaning creation. The form of such breaking in can be reversal and restoration of what is broken – cancers are healed, thorns removed, tumors dissolved, bodies restored whether by event or by process or by combination of both. The kingdom also comes, perhaps less dramatically in our estimation, in bestowing divine grace that is sufficient for us, even in “exile.”

Exile is the worst that reveals the best. “It’s hard believing,” says Faulkner, “but disaster seems to be good for people.” When the superfluous is stripped away, we find the essential – and the essential is God. Normal life is full of distractions and irrelevancies. Then catastrophe: Dislocation. Exile. Illness. Accident. Job loss. Divorce. Death. The reality of our lives is rearranged without anyone consulting us or waiting for our permission. We are no longer at home. All of us are given moments, days, months, years of exile. What will we do with them? Wish we were someplace else? Complain? Escape into fantasies? Drug ourselves into oblivion? Or build and plant and marry and seek the shalom of the place we inhabit and the people we are with? Exile reveals what really matters, which is to seek the Lord with all our hearts.” Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses

Is the story true?

So Joshua took all that land, the hill country and all the Negeb and all the land of Goshen and the lowland and the Arabah and the hill country of Israel and its lowland from Mount Halak, which rises toward Seir, as far as Baal-gad in the Valley of Lebanon below Mount Hermon. And he captured all their kings and struck them and put them to death. Joshua made war a long time with all those kings. There was not a city that made peace with the people of Israel except the Hivites, the inhabitants of Gibeon. They took them all in battle. For it was the LORD’s doing to harden their hearts that they should come against Israel in battle, in order that they should be devoted to destruction and should receive no mercy but be destroyed, just as the LORD commanded Moses. Joshua 11:16-20 ESV

“Those stories about Africa, about you, they’re true aren’t they?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does too. Around my mom all I hear is lies…I don’t know what to believe.”

“Damn, if you want to believe in something, believe in it. Just because something’s not true doesn’t mean you can’t believe in it. There’s a long speech I give to young men, sounds like you need to hear a piece of it. Just a piece. Sometimes the things that may or may not be true may be the things that a man needs to believe in the most…that people are basically good…that honor, courage and virtue mean everything…that money and power, power and money, mean nothing…that good always triumphs over evil…and, I want you to remember this, that love, true love, never dies…you remember that, boy, you remember that…it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, you see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in…got that?”

“That was a good speech.”

This is a key exchange in Secondhand Lions between Uncle Hub and his young nephew Walter. The film revolves around some rather spectacular tales of adventure and daring-do, as well as a romantic love won and lost. Other opinions had circulated about Hub and his brother Garth, and the tales they tell simply seem impossible to believe. Yet Walter holds the picture of the heroine, Jasmine, which captures his imagination. Finally he just has to know: Is the story true?

Reading Joshua, and then reading about Joshua this past week, I was confronted with the same question.

Is the story true?

One of the books I’m occasionally dipping into on this journey just for a different perspective, is How to Read the Bible by James Kugel. It’s a book I would have been far too insecure to read in my college days or in my early days of ministry, just from the questions it asks and the possibilities it isn’t afraid to explore.

Reading his chapter on Joshua and the Conquest of Canaan brought me face to face with questions I knew about but had never actually waded through. But into the stream I went (I’m finding that books are the one place in which I can truly be adventurous). And so I waded into Kugel’s explorations about Joshua with such observations as this:

The book of Joshua clearly relates that the Israelites replaced the native Canaanites, but it presents no clear picture of what happened to that earlier population. There are no reports of massive emigration at the time of the emergence of Israel (and no evidence of such emigration elsewhere); there is little reason, scholars say, to believe that the native populations were simply slaughtered and buried somewhere. Indeed, the book of Judges itself mentions the numerous places in Canaan where “the Canaanites continued to live” among the Israelites or – equally surprising – where the Israelites lived “in the midst of the Canaanites” (Judges 1:27-35; 3:5-6). To this point most archaeologists add that during the whole period when Israel might have emerged (that is, between 1300 and 1000 BCE), there is in fact no evidence of any sizeable influx of people into the region, save for that of the coast-dwelling Philistines. Kugel, p. 382

Kugel goes on to relate the absence of evidence for the violent destruction of cities during this period (there is evidence, he says, of destruction earlier and later, but not in the chronology the Bible seems to present). The absence of corroborating evidence leads him to explore alternative theories concerning Israel’s origin. There’s the one about them coming from peaceful, nomadic tribes that gradually emigrated into the area we now know as Israel (ala Abraham’s story in Genesis) with the story of dramatic conquest then being a cultural invention to give these scattered tribes a national and religious identity. Then there’s the theory that the Israelites were themselves Canaanite revolutionaries known as the ‘apiru who were dissatisfied with the Egyptian hegemony that operated in Canaan through a network of puppets and vassals. “The disgruntled ‘apiru and other disgruntled elements eventually overthrew these entrenched powers and took over,” Kugel says. The Amarna Letters (actually 382 stone tablets of Egyptian records discovered towards the end of the 19th century at El Amarna in Egypt), he relates, “frequently mention the danger of people being joined to the ‘apiru, suggesting that there was some grassroots movement afoot. In one of the passages, the trembling ruler confesses, ‘Look, I am afraid the peasantry will strike me down.’ This too might suggest some sort of popular revolt.”

In conjunction with this, Kugel states that “Archaeologists have found that the central highlands of Canaan were settled relatively sparsely in the Late Bronze Age. Thereafter, however, the region experienced a sudden boost in population: starting around 1200 BCE, the number and density of permanent settlements in the Canaanite highlands increased dramatically. In just a generation or two, a network of roughly 250 highland settlements sprang up. Settlements continued to increase for a time thereafter. Interestingly, this spurt in highland settlements seems to have accompanied the depopulation of previously thriving Canaanite urban centers: just as suddenly, it seems, the cities in this same period dropped to less than half the number of their former inhabitants.”

So how do I reconcile all this? Some things seem to harmonize with available evidence while others clearly don’t. How do I sync the Joshua story with what the archaeologist’s spade hasn’t found – at least not yet? And if we can’t sync it are we sunk – and the Bible with us?

Just how much does my believing depend on my seeing?

Do I have to find (or rather read the reports of someone else finding) the ark to believe Genesis 6-8?

Do I have to find evidence of toppled walls that can with surety be dated to the period 1300-1000 BC to believe Joshua 6?

Do I have to find a scientific rationale or corroborating empirical evidence for the sun and moon stopping in the sky for a full day to believe and embrace Joshua 10?

In our inerrancy debates we fight with proverbial might and main to justify and prove the Bible and its truth empirically, putting it into the test tube of modern scientific and critical thought. In doing so have we in fact followed our “educated and enlightened” culture up the wrong, modern western culture tree – or into postmodern shrubbery? Am I converted in the scientist’s laboratory, in the archaeologist’s latest dig, in the historian’s accredited chair?

Do I only eat the entire scroll after it’s veracity has been empirically demonstrated to my reason’s satisfaction?

Do I vomit up the scroll, or those portions of it, when someone’s latest discovery or cultural innovation invalidates it – only to lick up my own vomit when the next discovery or innovation re-validates it?

Or does believing, in fact, run much deeper than that? Does truth run much deeper than that?

“Blessed are those who do not see, and yet believe.”

What I realized – again – is that I have chosen to eat the entire scroll, and I’m not going to selectively vomit portions up that seem disagreeable to me or unverifiable to others. After reading Kugel I looked into some other sources like the NIV Archaeological Bible which essentially confirms that we have no idea when anything happened, for sure, when it comes to the Exodus or the conquest, because of the absence of clear corroborating evidence that pinpoints anything. So we simply don’t know. We can’t put the conquest into a test tube and verify it. And I realized that simply isn’t necessary for me – that in fact it would be disappointing to me on some levels if we did find the ark on Ararat or the fallen walls around Jericho. I believe and love a God who hides himself, so I would expect him to hide his tracks.

And yet, in the midst of all these proffered theories about Joshua and Israelite origin, here stands Kugel’s summation of the scholars’ conclusions: “Most scholars today would probably admit (some grudgingly) that we will probably never know exactly where the people of Israel came from or how they got started on their separate existence. There is some merit to all of the theories mentioned, they say, but none of them alone can decisively account for all the biblical and extrabiblical data. One thing is clear, however: something must have happened.”

Which brings me back full circle to Uncle Hub and his “long speech that I give to young men.”

“You remember that, boy, you remember that…it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, you see, a man should believe in those things because those are the things worth believing in…got that?”

That fact is that despite Hub’s somewhat obtuse answer to the question, “Is the story true?”, at the film's end real, tangible corroborating evidence literally lands from the sky and verifies the entire story to a now much older Walter. But the fact is, Walter was only told what he already knew.

They really lived.

on finding havers

Just a bit more from Ann Spangler (from Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus) on being a haver…

There’s more to being a haver than just being a Christian friend. A haver is a fellow disciple who earnestly desires to grapple with others over issues of faith – someone who wants to delve into God’s Word, to be challenged and refined. A haver is like a spiritual “jogging partner” – someone for whom you’ll crawl out of bed on a rainy morning, putting on your running shoes instead of hitting the snooze button. Once you’re up and running together, your pace is a little faster, you keep going a little longer. You are pushed intellectually and spiritually. If we really want to mature in faith and as disciples, we need to develop relationships that force us to grow, by getting ourselves some haverim…

Becoming each other’s haverim is an effective way to fulfill Jesus’ command to raise up disciples. Rather than viewing ourselves as the “rabbi” and others as our “disciples,” becoming haverim allows us to take on the role of “co-disciples.” We can help others grow by learning right alongside them.

Finding, choosing haverim…

It strikes me that Jesus chose the twelve, he handpicked his talmidim (talmid = disciple) which instantly made them havers to one another. What strikes me is that they didn’t pick their havers, Jesus did by putting them together. Even when they were paired two by two and sent out, I doubt they got to choose their partner. Perhaps this is where we go off right from the start. We go through life handpicking our haverim, and whom do we generally pick? Well, people just like us, of course! Do we gravitate towards those who challenge us, our thinking, our theology, our politics? Or do we busily, with that “like” thumbs up, “friend” those who confirm our leanings, reinforce our prejudices, and pile on in our rantings while “unfriending” those that actually think differently? I suppose that’s only natural. We all do it.

This is what we do in our offices, in our politics (what a lovely party system we have developed!), and in our churches. Charismatics cluster with Charismatics, Pentecostals with Pentecostals, Reformed people with other Reformed people, unreformed people with other unreformed people, singles with singles, youth with youth, Jews with Jews, Gentiles with Gentiles, etc etc etc. The problem is when we selectively choose the members of our own havering body, we always end up with Frankenstein (or his wonderful bride). Because left to ourselves we will always choose toadies. “Yes, tell me again how perceptive I am…tell me how wrong they are…isn’t this a wonderful little club we share..” Knave. Stayne.

Havers challenge us, annoy us, bug us, make us think, make us better. They drag us out of bed when we’d rather hit the snooze just one more time. They pull off our facades even as they call forth our muchiness. And we cannot pick these people. They find us. He brings them to us, constantly. You know who they are – they’re the ones you wish would leave.

havering through 1189

Okay, so I just got tired of waiting.

This is now the home of the blog formerly known as “Project 1189” – at least until the technical difficulties are straightened out at the WordPress site on our server. I had just gotten into Joshua when the site hiccupped and left me feeling like John the Baptist’s dad – but only mute for 6 weeks or so rather than 9 months. I actually stopped the reading and writing at that point, waiting for the site to come back. One day hopefully they’ll sort it out, but in the meantime, I’ll haver here.

As you can see from the blog header, haver has at least two layers of meaning depending on whether we’re talking about English or Hebrew – but both meanings are, I think, curiously related. The best theologian on his best day is still only hemming and hawing when compared with the vastness of God. At best, we fingerpaint when we delve into the things of God. It’s when we become impressed with our own supposed profundity that we become the most dangerous and doltish. But when we see ourselves invited to fingerpaint, to get our hands covered and messy with the things of God, we can end up creating some striking – not to mention fun – portraits.

Who would have thought that theology could be fun. If only there weren’t so many of us who in doing it end up sucking the life out of others and ourselves.

So let’s hem and haw, babble and maunder (now there’s another good word!). Friends can do that with friends; God invites us to haver with him. It was reading Ann Spangler in her book, Sitting at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, discuss the Jewish word haver (plural haverim) as the word for “friends” or fellow students in a Jewish school (a Yeshiva). She says a haver in ordinary usage can simply mean a companion or a close friend, but in the context of seminary or school life, it is “someone who is willing to partner with you in grappling with Scripture and with the rabbinic texts.” She contrasts university libraries (or any libraries) in America with a Yeshiva library filled with havers. Our libraries are, of course, quiet. Students sit in separate cubicles or study silently at shared tables. In a Yeshiva, you are met with loud voices and gesticulations (I had to use that word!) as haverim argue and debate and, well, haver. I don’t think we know how to haver like that, at least not without our havering becoming hateful. I would suggest that to a large degree that’s because we forget we are all in the final analysis hemming and hawing and maundering with each other. It’s what Job realized about all his words when he finally encountered God – and God said he had spoken well. It was his pompous friends with all the sure answers that received the divine frowns. And then Job maundered some prayers for them.

So it is in this spirit that I once again deign to finger paint in a blog. Don’t ask me for a schedule for Project 1189 – I’m just going to move on through the Bible, picking back up in Joshua, at a leisurely pace. Hemming and hawing as opposed to a beeline. The goal isn’t the Bible in one year or two or three, but simply to read, to think, to write – to haver, to fingerpaint – however long it takes. And they’ll be other things I’ll haver about here as well. The occasional book review or excerpts, random observations and thoughts from whatever I happen to be reading, listening to, or watching.

And if I haver, yeah I know I’m gonna be / I’m gonna be the man who’s havering to you…