swoosh!

Whoever believes will not be in haste.
Isaiah 28:16


As I grew up in the sixties, I watched it every week for three years.

Every week the starship Enterprise swooshed by in the opening credits of a series we simply wouldn’t miss for anything. I remember trying to guess which spot of light would become the ship blasting by at warp speed. And now I can’t think of a more appropriate image for the accelerating pace of our daily lives. It’s the first image that came to mind as I stumbled across this old friend in Isaiah 28:16 – “Whoever believes will not be in haste.”

Hama’amim lo yachish.

At least that’s something like how the Hebrew would sound. And it’s not only foreign in sound but it’s foreign in concept for us culturally.

The Hebrew verb translated “be in haste” or “make haste” is chush, with the “ch” pronounced like the “ch” in “Bach” (a guttural “h”) and the “u” long, so it’s choosh. And I go to all that trouble just because it’s an onomatopoetic word – a word whose sound imitates that which it represents, which is approximately the sound of an arrow or bullet or any other object flying fast right past your ear. Choosh. Swoosh.

Okay, so what?

Well, what strikes me yet again is the settled, peaceful, calm stance of the one who trusts in the Lord. The Lord has laid the foundation in Zion, a stone, a tested stone, a precious cornerstone, of a sure foundation. And when we truly trust in him, we are settled there. No panic, no rushing about, no running after this or that, no racing. No swooshing.

Reading Isaiah 18-28 in one setting this past week, my mind immediately connected “whoever believes will not be in haste” with this description of a panicked Jerusalem facing catastrophe and looking to the armory, to the walls, at the infrastructure and supplies, but not finally seeing what matters most:

In that day you looked to the weapons of the House of the Forest, and you saw that the breaches of the city of David were many. You collected the waters of the lower pool, and you counted the houses of Jerusalem, and you broke down the houses to fortify the wall. You made a reservoir between the two walls for the water of the old pool. But you did not look to him who did it, or see him who planned it long ago. Isaiah 22:9-11

There certainly is a balance between prayer and action, but in my experience we put the premium on action backed by prayer (when we have time) rather than the reverse. The result is that rather than offering a different speed, a different way of doing life as the people of God, we end up swooshing just like the rest of the culture. People in a frenzy. Government in a tizzy. Church in a whirlwind of the latest Herculean effort.

Phil Vischer in his book, Me, Myself, and Bob, in describing the rise of Big Idea Ministries and VeggieTales, says that it was a Herculean effort to start his ministry/business. That was understandable. The trouble was, everything became a Herculean effort. It became a way of life. Soon he found himself in the hospital with pericarditis. The year after that he contracted strep throat. The year after that, shingles. He writes, “All stress related, the results of an increasingly maniacal schedule that had me bouncing between press interviews, speaking engagements, and endless meetings with animators, marketers, licensors, architects, and designers. My days were now scheduled down to fifteen-minute increments. Even the tasks I should have enjoyed – the creative writing projects or strategy sessions – were no longer fun. Big Idea was now creating toys, books, greeting cards – you name it. Exactly what I had wanted. But my time was so stretched now that the only projects I could handle personally were the videos themselves, and even those I only did by locking myself away in a nearby hotel for intense two-day writing marathons characterized more by stress than joy. And the strategy sessions with my executive team, sessions that sounded so fun going in, were routinely devolving into extended and unresolved arguments.”

I think the point here is simple.

Stop swooshing as a way of life.

Don’t even think about demolishing your home to fill the breaches in the wall.

And before you start counting arms or gathering pools…stop.

Breathe.

Remember that he holds everything together by the word of his power – not by the strength or skill or persistence of our Herculean efforts.

And then spend some time watching birds that don’t sow or reap, and wildflowers that don’t hustle through the mall looking for the latest fashions. Somehow, they end up doing just fine. The Father feeds and clothes – somehow.

Sitting with a gal this past week as she talked about frantically trying to get a hold of herself and find out where God really is in her life, I suggested she stop struggling so, and picture herself already in the flow of the river that is God – what we call the kingdom of God. She immediately remembered an incident when she was twelve and on the diving team. She tried a new highly convoluted dive that left her disoriented when she entered the water. She always found her bearings by finding the bottom and then knowing which way to go up. But she couldn’t find the bottom. She panicked and thrashed until she remembered a basic lesson in swimming: if you don’t know where you are, stop, and your lungs will carry you to the surface. So she did just that. She stopped. And she rose.

I told her that was a mighty fine sermon she just preached for herself.

Mighty fine one for us too.

be not afraid

God spoke strongly to me, grabbed me with both hands and warned me not to go along with this people. He said:

"Don't be like this people,
   always afraid somebody is plotting against them.
Don't fear what they fear.
Don't take on their worries.
If you're going to worry,
   worry about The Holy. Fear God-of-the-Angel-Armies.
The Holy can be either a Hiding Place
   or a Boulder blocking your way…
Gather up the testimony,
   preserve the teaching for my followers,
While I wait for God as long as he remains in hiding,
   while I wait and hope for him.
I stand my ground and hope,
I and the children God gave me as signs to Israel,
Warning signs and hope signs from God-of-the-Angel-Armies,
   who makes his home in Mount Zion.     Isaiah 8

King Ahaz was between the proverbial rock and a hard place – caught between King Rezin of Damascus and King Pekah of Israel. Both were conspiring and plotting. Both were on the verge of attempting to overrun Jerusalem and install their own puppet king in their great political chess game with the ruling and rising powers both north and south.

Ahaz was panicked and fearful. His fear infected his entire court – and amplified the fears already resident in the general population.

As Isaiah reports it, “When the house of David was told, ‘Syria is in league with Ephraim,’ the heart of Ahaz and the heart of his people shook as the trees of the forest shake before the wind.” Just think of our recent wind “microbursts,” power outages and downed trees, and you get the picture.

Isaiah called for a meeting in “Washerman Field” outside of Jersualem.

What does Isaiah say to the trembling king?

“Be careful, be quiet, do not fear, and do not let your heart be faint because of these two smoldering stumps of firebrands, at the fierce anger of Rezin and Syria and the son of Remaliah.”

“Be not afraid.”

It’s one of the most oft repeated phrases in the Bible.

That’s probably because we all so naturally gravitate towards fear. Quiet trust doesn’t come naturally, for the simple reason that there is really so very little that we can control. Our fear ultimately betrays us. It betrays our lack of heart and soul. It betrays a pragmatic mind that doesn’t really believe God is sovereign and in control, and if he’s not, we better be, but ultimately we're faced with the fact that we can’t be, and so, well, we live in fear. We make decisions in the shadows of fearful calculations and prognostications. And like Ahaz we grasp at Assyrian straws while turning away from virgin signs of Immanuel. We figure it out. We break alliances, we make alliances, we trade alliances, we push the pieces around the board of home and work and church, and in so doing earn the same epitaph as Ahaz: “If you do not stand by faith, you will not stand at all.”

While reading and pondering all this in Isaiah 7 and 8, I came across this statement by Richard Rohr in his book Everything Belongs:

I believe faith might be precisely that ability to trust the river, to trust the flow and the lover. It is a process that we don’t have to change, coerce, or improve. We need to allow it to flow. That takes immense confidence in God, especially when we’re hurting. Usually, I can feel myself getting panicky. I want to make things right, quickly. I lose my ability to be present and I go up into my head and start obsessing. I tend to get overfocused, and I hate it because then I’m not really feeling anymore. I’m into goal-orientation, trying to push or even create the river – the river that is already flowing through me.

Faith does not need to push the river precisely because it is able to trust that there is a river. The river is flowing; we are in it. The river is God’s providential love – so do not be afraid…Some say that FEAR is merely an acronym for “false evidence appearing real.”

Ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” “Does it matter?” “Will it be there anyway in the end?” “Is it worth holding on to?” We have to ask whether it is fear that keeps us from loving. I promise you, grace will lead us into those fears and voids, and grace alone will fill them up, if we are willing to stay in the void. We mustn’t engineer an answer too quickly. We must not get too settled too fast. For it is so easy to manufacture an answer to take away the anxiety. To stay in God’s hands, to trust, means that to a certain degree I have to stop taking hold of myself. I have to hold, instead, a degree of uncertainty, fear, and tension…

What must be sacrificed, and it will feel like a sacrifice, is the strange satisfaction that problem-solving gives us. Don’t you feel good when you’ve solved problems at the end of the day? We say to ourselves, “I’m an effective, productive, efficient human being. I’ve earned my right to existence today because I’ve solved ten problems.” I do want us to solve problems; certainly there are plenty out there to solve. But not too quickly. We mustn’t lead with our judgments and fears. We shouldn’t lead with our need to fix and solve problems. This is the agenda-filled calculating mind that cannot see things through God’s eyes. We must not get rid of the anxiety until we have learned what it wants to teach us.

There must be Someone to trust, there must be a prior experience of the river flowing through us or we will surely take control. Why wouldn’t we? If there’s not someone else in control, why wouldn’t we be pre-occupied with taking control? There’s really not much alternative in a secular culture. No wonder we have an entire country of control freaks. And it gets worse as we get older. It gets harder because we get used to the way we like things. We start organizing and shoving other people around to fit into our agendas.

Ouch. Rohr doesn’t even know me, but yet he very clearly sees who I too often have been.

Just how driven am I by my own Ahaz ways, rather than entering the flow of Immanuel?

How often still do I activate my own cleverly devised Assyrian gambits – my latest plans to rescue myself or this person or that situation?

How naturally do I still fester in a culture of fear rather than fostering a path of deepening, quieting faith and trust?

How often do I still wish to fix my story or eject it, rather than stopping long enough to hear what God is already saying in the midst of it? Will I again resume work on the latest verison of my “wave machine,” or will I stop long enough to once again feel the River?

As I stand alongside Ahaz in Fuller’s Field, will I choose to stand my ground and hope and wait upon sign and wonder mysterious and hidden…or will I yet again yield to the so easily prevailing winds of fear carrying the latest cries of “conspiracy!” "trouble!" "calamity!" "doom!" and drive and be driven…

prophetic rhythms

Hear, you peoples, all of you; pay attention, O earth, and all that is in it,
and let the Lord GOD be a witness against you,
           the Lord from his holy temple.
For behold, the LORD is coming out of his place,
    and will come down and tread upon the high places of the earth.
And the mountains will melt under him,
    and the valleys will split open,
like wax before the fire,
     like waters poured down a steep place.

Immersed in reading the prophets now for the third week.

Jonah. Amos. Hosea. Micah.

And now the somewhat winding journey through Isaiah.

I am struck anew with just how foreign this all is, whether in Hebrew or English.

Rhythm and rhyme and passion pouring out
A prophetic fountain bursting off the page
Drenching me in metaphor and color and hyperbole
Valleys and hilltops, deep rifts and jagged peaks
Mad prophets carried about by the Spirit
Wildly slinging words like a crazed painter missing more than an ear
Unlike Baal’s prophets, no bloody gashes on themselves do they cut
No, rather, they fling out an endless supply of divine tears
Pain and anguish, desperation and heartbreak
A divine romance collapsing in a heap
The prophet finally falling, exhausted, voice fading, reddened eyes pleading
Does anyone even hear?
Does any care?

Why is our preaching so lame, so limp, so flaccid by compare? Spock-like we mount our pulpits and dissect our texts – and each other, for that matter. Flatlander words. Greekish, analytical, or, for those daring a different flavor, comedic and brash and loud like a bad salesmen with that noxious cologne, confusing volume with veracity as we push our product line.

Some say people are tired of talk, that people want deeds and not words (this of course does not keep us from offering our sermons still). But perhaps they are merely done with meager fare, with the retreaded and tired old sermons of our endless regurgitations.

But prophetic passion, unaffected, unabashed…to see it walk off these pages and into our streets…would we risk it? Would I risk it?

Would I risk the stones?

crossing the Rubicon

Like a stubborn heifer,
     Israel is stubborn;
can the LORD now feed them
    like a lamb in a broad pasture?

Ephraim is joined to idols;
   leave him alone.
When their drink is gone, they give themselves to whoring;
   their rulers dearly love shame.

A wind has wrapped them in its wings.   Hosea 4:16-19

Warm-up: read Mark 3:20-35

The Rubicon.

The Rubicon is a shallow river in northeastern Italy that marked the boundary between the province of Cisalpine Gaul to the north and Italy proper to the south. In order to protect the republic from internal military threat, Roman law forbade any Roman general to cross the Rubicon southward with his army. In fact, any Roman soldier south of the Rubicon by law automatically became a civilian with no obligation to obey any military orders. To cross the river without disbanding your army was considered an act of high treason and even sacrilege — and was an offense punishable by death.

The Roman historian Suetonius tells the tale of Julius Caesar and his decisive move in his quest for power in
49 BC crossing the Rubicon on January 10th, breaking that law, and making armed conflict with his rivals inevitable. Caesar’s swift and bold move forced his key rival, Pompey, the lawful consul, along with a large part of the Roman senate, to flee Rome in fear.

According to Suetonius, Caesar was undecided as he approached the river, but after a supernatural apparition, he plunged across, uttering the phrase alea iacta est— “the die is cast.” Ever since, whenever any individual or group commits itself irrevocably to a risky or revolutionary cause, we say they have “crossed the Rubicon.” They have passed the point of no return.

The Pharisees in their growing opposition to Jesus clearly seem to have crossed their own Rubicon. It started off with questions. “Who is this that would forgive sins?” But the questions were unexpressed whispers in their own minds. Then came the verbal challenges to those around Jesus. “Why does he eat with tax-collectors and sinners like that?” Next came the direct challenge to Jesus himself. “Why do your disciples feast and not fast like the rest of us?” “Why do your disciples do what is not lawful on the Sabbath?” Finally came the plotting and scheming that led them to go out the door and plot secretly how to destroy Jesus.

This distance in Mark is covered in only a few paragraphs, but it reflects a momentous internal crossing in which they spill out of the river on the other side, dripping with snide insinuation of satanic possession.

We aren’t talking about something done or said carelessly or some technical violation of divine protocols. Blaspheming the Spirit is not something bad you say about or to God in anger or frustration or even under the influence. It is simply Rubicon water pouring out from our hearts revealing eyes that no longer see and ears that no longer hear. The mind is set. The die is cast.

It’s difficult to know looking at others — or even at ourselves — when this line has been crossed. I would have surmised that a certain Saul of Tarsus had crossed that line and would have written him off as “sinning unto death.” But Jesus knows. Such a chilling pronouncement is perhaps best left in his mouth.

For us it remains that we are all in the process of becoming something. We all have questions and stirrings and leanings that are propelling us forward. They may be questions shared and openly discussed and prayed, or held with increasingly closed hands and minds and hearts.

All of us in this life ultimately cross the river.

The question is which way.