Author: Bro. Joel Tucker

Bro. Joel Tucker, Ordained by the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in 2017, has been in ministry since 2001. He recently retired from Senior Pastor at Guyton (GA) Christian Church, where he served for 7 years, after 17 at Tropical Sands Christian Church, Palm Beach Gardens, FL. He holds a bachelor's degree in Journalism from Auburn University and a certificate of pastoral ministry from Lexington Theological Seminary. He entered ministry after 20 years in corporate communications and five years of computer programming. You can support Bro Tucker at http://PayPal.Me/JoelTucker or Venmo: @Joel-Tucker-20.

A Walk in the Spirit

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.

–Romans 8:1-2

What is this law of the Spirit? It is the Golden Rule, but it is also something more. Paul came from a rigorous religious background; he was well versed in Law — in the laws of his sect and the Roman laws of the land. He knew what it meant to live by the law — it meant attention to detail, and a focus on avoiding unclean things and illegal activities.

The law of the Spirit, on the other hand, does more than to merely follow the commandments of Christ. Paul said this Spirit — capital S — is the Spirit of God, which raised Christ from the dead, and the Spirit of Christ that dwells within us.

Paul spends much of the book of Romans contrasting life in the Spirit vs. life in the flesh. The flesh, he said, is where the struggle is, and it is also where we fail. Paul said, “the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God.

But aren’t we all in the flesh? The answer is in part, yes, and in the same part, we cannot please God. God gave humanity a law for the flesh, and the flesh broke that law; now, all flesh suffers the consequences.

Paul would say that no good thing dwells in the flesh, and that the flesh has no hope of doing good. That’s where he said, “O, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.”

No, Paul was not endorsing sinful behavior. His body serves the law of sin in its imperfection, demonstrating the wages of sin, both his own and those that are heaped on all of us through the accumulated sins of humanity. His body serves the law of sin and death, and it will die.

But notice how he serves the law of God — with his MIND. He is consciously serving that law, intentionally, with his will.

I went to this scripture in search of something that isn’t there. I wanted to find a message about the value of motive, as in when we get “in the spirit.” I was looking for a message of “love is all you need.” That isn’t what I found.

To Paul, this Spirit is the literal indwelling spirit of God and Christ and of Christ in us. “The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God.” Paul’s obedience to the law of the Spirit comes from a communion with that indwelling Spirit, from an awareness of the Spirit of God in Christ that dwells within him.

To Paul, his obedience is to a Spirit that is his very Creator and constant companion. And, it is a spirit that he serves with his Mind — that is, with intent, planning and forethought.

This is the Spirit of God Himself. The Law of God, or the Law of the Spirit, is not a the former set of rules to be followed. Rather, it is a life to be led, a life in which the Spirit leads the flesh, and not vice versa. It is living with heightened awareness of the very presence of God, and of His Spirit within us. It is trusting that Spirit to dwell within us and striving to give the Spirit complete control.

I can’t give you a formula for this walk in the Spirit. It is not a matter of maintaining an attitude, or following a set of rules. It is a spirit to Spirit relationship, our spirit to God’s Spirit, and it is a conscious, mindful relationship. It is what Jesus was illustrating when a disciple asked, “Show us the way,” and He replied, “I AM the Way.”

Some of us resist the concept of a “personal” relationship with God, but I think that’s what this walk in the Spirit is. If we get personal with God, setting personal goals to know Him and to serve Him, it will impact us at the very core of our beings, from the inside out.

The Novel: A Novel: The Editor

It’s just how his brain works. Pictures get blurry, numbers get scrambled, but words just make sense. They are the building blocks of thought, each containing a rich history, each a metaphor taking on new meaning as its foundations fade in the collective conscious, treasures revealed only to the dedicated sleuth. He thinks in words and rejoices to read his own mind, fascinated to see where the next plot twist unfold.

In earliest memory are conversations. He’s a child in a crib. We’re talking here, son. Okay, have a balloon. Daddy can I have a pencil? Sure. Daddy didn’t see it coming; do you? It looked so easy when Mamma drew the dog on the rubbery surface with a ballpoint pen, but pens are for adults; children get crayons and pencils. If only he had asked for a crayon. The balloon explodes, as does the child, the pent-up fears of medical procedures, mystery visitors and this strange environment bursting to the surface in a torrent of tears and screams.

He remembers conversations. Words are written in the neurons, anchoring pictures and defining the timeline. He has been editing this story for half a century, and now it’s all laid out, organized, chapter and verse. He has a sense of scanning the story every day: Now where is that memory? Did that really happen? Is there a more efficient way to say that, to free up memory? Is this pertinent to the story, or should it be cut? His brain holds a reference volume called “Know”, a first draft called “Used to Think”, a tickle file called “Maybe I Should”, and for entertainment, a skinny pulp fiction called “What If”.

Somebody said people think in pictures. He believes it only when comparing their sketches to his own, stunted little scrawls as likely to be scrawled 40 years ago as today. Where others doodle, he takes notes and writes limericks. Some people, he read it somewhere, actually think in numbers, proportions and measures. He gets geometry and algebra, but trigonometry is a mystery and calculus? Forget it! College is a breeze if you skip the math courses and double-down on philosophy. Otherwise, we’re toast.

Sometimes he thinks it must be delightful to hear the birds sing to mark their turf, watch the leaves as the air settles in to its cooler temperature, ready to grow still in the consistency of darkness. It must be nice to envision yellow fading to orange and ragged gray as horizon, sun and cloud enjoy their last dance of the day. For him, it’s a single word: “sunset”. There was one that day, one this, likely one tomorrow. Can you picture it? Not really. But there’s an essay on file here somewhere.

He’s a good student, quick with the essay. He’s a reporter, no, too much controversy, so now he’s a PR hack. What’s this, the internet? Oh, joy! How many words does this thing hold? Let’s see. Now he’s a webmaster, a low-grade pioneer in a strange new world. What makes it tick? There’s a rabbit hole in the rabbit hole, and now he’s a programmer, making up words and metaphors that talk not to people, but to a database and browsers. Language meets logic and pays the bills in wonderful ways.

Finally, words that don’t have to actually say anything, but literally do things. Grab datapoint A-7 from table 473, and if user X has clearance Y, let the user change A-7; else, just let the user see it. He revels to be the man behind the curtain, pushing the buttons and changing the world and earning the paycheck with very little human interface.

How wonderful, he thinks, this world where words talk to things and things respond! No misunderstandings, nothing open to interpretation, I mean what I say because I write the definitions. It’s an easy life. But it gets a little lonely in here. And even here, he gets tangled up in his words, eventually spending as much time untangling old connections as making new ones. Other people peer behind the curtain and mash the buttons, too, so he has to carefully label each one, dumb it down for those other socially awkward geeks.

Been there, done that; what now? He’s built an elaborate house of cards; better move out before it comes tumbling down. Let others shore up the tower. Time to move on.

The Novel: A Novel: Notions & Potions

She said that John the Baptist was Elijah reincarnated. He believed her. She was, after all, an aged, sage woman, a venerated teacher, and Mama always said listen to your teachers. He already knew that the shortest path to a grade went not through the heart of the subject, but through the heart of the instructor — and that was witchcraft of a sort, wasn’t it?

And, she had scripture on her side. “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the Lord: And he shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse.” It’s how the Hebrew Bible ends and the Greek Extension begins. And all that curse stuff — Coincidence?

He always loved Jesus, but he also loved candles. His favorite holidays? Christmas and Halloween. Jean Dixon and Edgar Cayce were professing Christians. Oral Roberts and Ernest Angley sold prayer cloths to drive out demons and cast spells with the widow’s mite. Grandma praised the Lord and threw salt over her shoulder. Magic words were common in his world, some so magical they could be spoken only in church.

And then there were potions. Cherry-flavored syrups to drive out congestion. Vinegar & honey at Grandma’s table; for persistent demons, add a dash of whiskey. Steamy, deep woods Kabalahs where grizzled men danced with shotguns and tended the fire, cooking up miserable prosperity in a sweet stew of mash, copper and floating possum. Grape soda on Sunday morning to purify the soul and wash down bits of cracker. Black-eyed peas, hog jowls and greens to kick off the New Year. Corned beef and cabbage on shamrock day.

With God, all things are possible, especially if you say the right prayer, sniff the right incense, bury a statue in the corner of your yard and know the secret handshake. The truth must be somewhere between the lines, or in the fine print of Egyptian footnotes censored out of the King’s translation for peasants. It must be in the story behind the story, hidden in plain sight, revealed only to those who understand the parable, who see the literal as symbolic and the symbolic as literal. It takes a special person to see the straight and narrow truth — and Mamma always said he was special.

And if God speaks in these pages, perhaps God speaks in other books as well. Maybe God speaks in tea leaves, lines on the palm, in the subtle nuance of the Anatolian bump — and wasn’t that a sign of Gypsy blood, anyway? If God controls the deal of the cards, then a prayer should be enough to purify the Tarot. God controls the shuffle, the cut, the interpretation and the tintination.

With imagination, discipline, practice and pure motives, he learned soar the Astral plane, slip harmlessly through the vacuum of space, and find his soul mate on a distant planet. As they discussed the similarities of Earth and Neptopolis, watched one moon set as another rose, sipped the juice of paisley fruit, saw their lives unfold in the oily clouds, he considered pinching the Silver Cord, watching it snap back to earth like a rubber band, burning the bridge to loneliness and mundane trouble. There were scheduled to meet with God-in-ecktoplasm next time; perhaps he would wait until then. Little did he know that the portal would shift, and this would be his last visit. He never even said goodbye.

Red candles, salt circles, scarab beetles, colored silk to could filter out raw emotions and store them in amber bottles; Jesus and Krishna and Gautama, Moses and Mahatma and Martin and Maharishi; Late night seances this weekend, teenage pentecostal prayer on tap for later. All roads lead to Rome, he heard, and if you’d rather see Venice, find another map. Childlike faith was an accident of birth, mature faith the product of archeology and research.

This is the soup in which he swam, eyes wide open, pretending to see. He sat on a pocket Blble, that Protestant rosary in imitation leather, and hummed a silent chant from the pew in the back. And in this whirlwind of notions and potions, he found no peace, no answers, nothing of note that he would dare to pass along. He remembers that time, those teenage years, as aimless wandering worthwhile only by the process of elimination. What did it all mean? This many words, and that’s about it.

The Novel: A Novel: He Walks the Line

He lives a life peopled with persons swearing to know this embodied God. He marvels to hear it, for many of those peopling persons follow a path quite different from the Way, seeming to exist not to serve, but to be served, to receive and take and gather into barns.

He beats his breast and cries, “Have mercy on me, a sinner!” They scowl and scoff and say, “Yes, you are!” He says, “I am but an unworthy servant, barely worth my wages.” They laugh and murmur, “You can say that again!” He says, “Here, you take the seat of honor,” and they say, “I’m glad you know your place!” “Those who exalt themselves will be humbled,” he reads. “But I’m a perfectionist!” they say.

They are not all of us, but sometimes, each of us is one of them. Sometimes, even he is one of them. We are children straddling the boundaries of a playground as we walk, reveling to be disobedient with every other step.

He lives a life peopled with persons beloved by this embodied God, and to that disembodied God as well. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The disembodied God shows God’s love by their very lives. The embodied God shows God’s love by giving His life for them.

But he is not God. The embodied God is only incidentally He. The disembodied God is neither He nor She. To insist on either is idolatry. The embodied God is incidentally He; it’s idolatrous to think the embodied God is necessarily He. Even so, the embodied God was necessarily Him, at the crossroads of history and humanity.

So having been told by God-enfleshed to love the other, love the enemy, treat each of them as he would want to be treated, he caters to his weak, sinful, needy, greedy self indirectly, vicariously, by instead catering to the weaknesses, sins, needs and greeds of them. He struggles to get this right, that seeming so wrong. He once thought he was casting his pearls before swine, but they are not swine and his gifts are not pearls. It dawns on him that what he’s actually doing is serving bacon to herbivores. Feed my sheep, but watch what you feed them.

Yes, he did see the motes in their eyes, but he struggles to remove the plank from his own. Don’t shoot till you see the motes in their eyes! Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. No commas there, and good thing. Let him, who is without sin, cast the first stone. Let him, who is without, sin cast the first stone. Let him who is, without sin, cast the first stone.

Do they understand? Chances are slim. Does he? Odds are even slimmer.

The Novel: A Novel: And So It Begins

His problem was that he actually believed it, this bizarre tale in which a virgin gave birth to a miracle worker who died a gory death and came back to life. He just couldn’t buy a version that said the prophesies had been misread and that the virgin was not so pure as her biographers claimed. He couldn’t fathom that the prophet’s body had been eaten by dogs, or that the rabbi had survived Roman execution to cement his reputation, then steal away to raise children in the south of France. Least of all could he accept that perhaps it was all a ruse to begin with, Babylonian mythology rewritten in Jewish terminology for an Ancient Greek audience.

He could see that these alternate renditions were feasible. He was no fool, though even a fool could find a dozen rational explanations for this legend and its impact on history. He knew that the version he bought was the pop culture favorite, and perhaps less believable than those alternate explanations. In ordinary thought it would take a great leap of faith to accept it. This was not an act of faith, for he could not bring himself to pretend to know anything. Belief, he determined, is an involuntary act, like trust, an opinion forced upon people by the circumstances of their lives. Ordinary thought would never bring anyone to accept it, but his was no ordinary thought.

If he could be said to have any faith at all, his seed faith was not in God, but in the Novel. He was reared on Creationism, weaned on Evolution, and fattened on a cosmology that had to posit something constant, like an Aristotelian Steady State in which patterns repeat and matter flows, or Saganesque Bang Bust cycle in which creation is sparked again and again as the Big Bang decays and gravity resets everything to center. These were comforting views, patterns of Newtonian Natural Law in which the Divine is not required, where strength is Darwinism and variety Marxism, a universe that was not Novel, but ordinary and repetitive, universal and ultimately uniform.

Sadly, a bit of dime-store research revealed that objects in the universe are being hurled away from the center at an ever-increasing rate of speed, the extremes growing farther apart more rapidly now than moments ago, no matter which now and ago one chooses or how close now and ago might be. There would be no Big Bust to follow the Big Bang, else objects would have to be coasting to a stop in preparation for the collapse. Judgment Day, if any, would come only once, just as Creation happened in the beginning and never again, each a one-of-a-kind event with no pattern to follow, no prototype. His faith in the ordinary was shaken; his faith in the Novel was beginning to emerge. What logic and intelligence rejected, factual observation forced upon him.

What could all this mean? It could only mean that all things came into being suddenly, in a flash of light, in a phenomenon that need not and indeed could not be repeated for this particular wad of stuff. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, and the very next scene is not of that God ordering the universe, but rather bringing order to the chaos of a fiery ball of smoky mud on which life as we know it is as we know it. The plot thickens; the Novel proceeds.

And so, he decided, if this Novel universe could come into being once and for all, and if scripture could perfectly describe the cooling of a planet, the evolution of its life, and its observable simultaneous decay in completely non-scientific terms, then the once-and-for-all incarnation of God via virgin birth, God’s death and God’s resurrection in human form were not so far-fetched after all. He didn’t want to believe it; he spent most of his life running from it. But daring to embrace it as obvious seemed the easy way out — and a Way that held profound consequences.

For instance, if he believed that this God-in-flesh had actually existed, then it was relatively easy to accept its most documented rendition. Given that, he was forced to deal with the teachings of this God-in-flesh, meaning that self-preservation became an exercise in counter-intuition. To save his life, he had to lose it. To gain his freedom, he had to become a bond servant. The Novel became more novel by the minute as his life cascaded into a new order of behavior and motivation.

In the beginning was the Word. In the beginning and at the ending. Alpha and Omega. His life became an imperfect reading of that Word-filled Novel. It was not an ordinary life, nor an easy life, nor a particularly successful life by most measures. But it was a Novel life. Was … and is, for it is a life in progress, unfolding, twisting, turning, like a good read.

God’s Will vs. Our Decisions

There is not one instance in scripture where God wills the death or failure of a church. Revelation has seven letters warning seven churches to shape up or perish.

If you don’t read the Disciples bloggers, don’t start now. Some of them seem to think that church death is good. By some theologies, everything that happens is therefore God’s will, God being all-powerful and all-knowing. Why, then, would God advise anyone in any direction whatsoever? No, God does not will the damnation of souls or the demise of congregations. At worst, God permits us to choose between life and death.

The choice, however, is ours alone. God clearly prefers we choose life. God told the children of Israel how to survive as a nation, but let them choose to survive or perish.

If you believe Que Sera, Sera — what will be, will be — then you rest secure in your own salvation and write off every failure as God’s will. If that’s true, then it must be God’s will that I work with dreamers, because I want ministry partners who are willing to work for the kingdom of God!

Some pastors move from church to church, leaving each one in worse shape than before. Some people, given free rein, would move from committee to committee, ministry to ministry, job to job, confident that God wills success or failure, thereby relieving them of any responsibility.

At a General Assembly — the national gathering of Disciples of Christ — in Ft. Worth a few years ago, I overheard a minister at lunch say, “The last two churches I served are dead, and they deserved to die!” There’s a man of great faith — in the wrong theology!

2 Peter 3:9 says God is “not wanting any to perish, but all to come to repentance.” Isn’t God powerful enough to get what God wants? So why do any perish? Because we decide to repent or not, to struggle or surrender, to be generous or greedy.

Generally speaking, Disciples are not Calvinists. But you wouldn’t know it to hear them talk of the inevitable demise of traditional church. Where traditional church is deemed too unholy to survive, the traditional church that actually survives and thrives becomes demonized as something unnatural, or essentially unChristian.

I’m not saying that church success requires a big-steeple church — but a big-steeple church building can certainly be useful real estate. I’m not saying that Elders must be old — but elderly people just might remember some essential element of church success from days gone by. I’m not saying that a 500-seat auditorium is a good fit for a 50-member congregation — but both can be excellent springboards for going forward as church!

I pray that pastors who decide that a church should fail will instead realize that they have failed to inspire the congregation. Instead of giving troubled churches an interim pastor, perhaps we should give troubled pastors an interim career, where they can shake their faith in inevitable death and regain the notion that with God, nothing is impossible.

Brass bending for squeeky faith

It looks like I spend a fortune on saxophones, but I only buy cheap, undervalued horns. New and collectible saxes cost thousands of dollars. I buy horns for $100 or less. But with trial and error, a tiny screwdriver, rubber bands and a few scraps of cork, I can make a cheap horn sound like its $1,000 cousin. I’ve sold at cost or given away most of these horns to promising young students, saving their parents a bundle! It’s a hobby that almost pays for itself.

These saxes sell cheap because they are common, damaged or out-of-adjustment. Like a good used car, they lose that showroom premium price when the first student opens the case. Some are abused, others neglected, but seldom is the problem over-use. More often, they are carelessly stored, played or transported by someone who doesn’t understand their value.

An old sax squeaks because it leaks. As you play, you stop the leaks by pressing the keys harder, which in turn bends the keys and seals the pads until the leaks and squeaks go away.

I’ve found my faith walk a lot like those old saxophones. At first, I squeak my way through counseling, teaching and preaching. My faith is weak, but I press on, bending the keys and sealing the pads, getting it better until I get it right. Eventually, it all seems effortless.

That’s the beauty of practice and soft brass that bends just enough when you press hard enough to sound the note.

The disciples said, “Lord, increase our faith!” Buy us a better sax, Lord. He said, “If you have faith as small as a mustard seed,” you have faith enough.

The student ponders expensive instruments, mouthpieces and reeds and asks, “What part is most important to the sound?” The Old Master replies, “That fleshy part hanging off the end of the mouthpiece.” It’s not the horn; it’s the player. It’s not the faith; it’s the “faith-er”.

You don’t need a better Bible, a bigger church or a different set of talents. What you need is on-the-job training! Use your faith in service to God. Press on until the squeaks go away and listen as your melody of faith grows strong and certain.


Watching Souls Depart

I drove past the Hospice unit with my blinker flashing, planning to turn in and check on a congregant. It’s funny how quickly a habit becomes ingrained; he had only been there a week. Perhaps it was a hangover from so many other occasions when I’d touch base with a family holding vigil in the unit.

Then, I remembered. He passed this morning. It was a blessing for him and the family. The wait was over, the questions of pain and discomfort off the table. Gratefully, in this case, his salvation is assured by every measure a church can apply (behavior, charity, profession, baptism, etc.).

I did not wish that vigil on the family, or my friend. As breathing slows, the room is reduced to counting breaths, enduring painful seconds after each waiting for the next, when hope pinballs among lofty goals — I pray for the end; I pray for another; I pray for a miracle.

That body is the touchstone to a particular soul, like a pile of oil-stained rocks made sacred as an altar in Bethel. At the bedside, we can express appreciation, extol the goodness of God, share fond memories, and pray fervently for spiritual peace. Uncertain though we may be whether the soul hears any particular word, we are absolutely certain that we are in physical earshot, and maybe, just maybe, our words can bring the soul some comfort and assurance for the journey.

The stones at Bethel are lost among the stones, the oil washed away and the sacred spot profaned. My friend is gone, his room cleaned and set in order for the next vigil. The air, once heavy with pain and soaring faith, has been cleared, sanitized and freshened. I’m happy for my friend. I miss our time together, even the time we shared in this borrowed sacred space.

I look back on dozens of times when the cycle was repeated. Another opportunity to serve has ended. Nowhere else are prayers delivered with such boldness. Nowhere else is salvation so certain or grace so amazing. But the altar, that physical place where we meet with the spiritual, has lost its power. The body is laid to rest.

I serve an elderly congregation, so I’m no stranger to this cycle. Too often I am called to address the spiritual at earthly temples far younger, though just as worn. It’s a different dynamic than a case of sudden loss, where words must reach beyond the empty remnant of what used to be a temple.

I’m familiar with pastoral counseling to persons nearly or totally unresponsive. Too often, I’m called upon to convince a soul that it’s time to abandon this earthly shell. I’m called upon to use what is visibly fading away to point to the invisible certain and eternal.

Church, consider your pastors. You’ve lost parents, children, friends. Decide for yourselves what your pastors have lost — not parents or children, but if not friends at the beginning of that cycle, then certainly that, or something, at its end. We invest sacred time and words, we see the soul, and we see it struggle to stay or depart. We beg God to heal a spirit whose body is beyond repair. As the years pile up, we do this not just several times, but score after score, losing mental track when the number approaches a hundred or so.

It is wonderful. It is a glorious opportunity to touch the Divine. Anyone who has served this duty without trauma will profess that it is humbling, and an honor. But it comes wrapped in sadness and frustration. And when it’s over, we move on to funerals, eulogies, and bereavement counseling not just for families, but also for friends you never knew your loved one had.

Is your pastor distracted? Frustrated? Ineffective? Aloof? Perhaps her mind is on the magnificent pain of watching soul after soul fighting to stay or be free. Perhaps it’s on the anticipated next event, on what to say to the dying, their families, or to God. Perhaps the pastor’s thinking about how to isolate from yet another painful goodbye, or struggling with the guilt of even having such a thought.

The family is entitled to mourn, publicly and privately. The pastor does so as proxy for those who aren’t as free to express pain, doubt and faith. But the pastor is not similarly entitled.

It’s all just part of the job, right? But it’s a part of the job that we dare not dismiss as just another fact of life. This is not just another anything. It is a person, a beloved one, a unique creation of God. We see the sacred. We feel at least some of the pain. We address the uncertainty. We share a sense of loss.

How glorious it is to watch a soul soar from the temple to the Creator. How tragic it is to lose another friend. Only a peace that passes understanding can enable us to mourn with those who mourn. But try as we might to rest on that peace, there may be more comfort in knowing that Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus, thus giving us permission to weep as well.

Shouting Hosannah

I can’t believe I’m losing my voice! Here comes Holy Week, Palm Sunday and Easter, two Sundays of high attendance where peak performance in preaching is the order of the day. I can’t believe I’m losing my voice!

My voice is reduced to a whispering croak. If you know me, you know I’m a shouting preacher, a stump-standing, Bible-thumping screamer of a preacher. It’s what the congregation has come to expect, some drawn to it and the rest resigned to live with it. You bring your friends and relatives to hear that crazy preacher, especially on Easter, and you know that even the hard of hearing will get the message from this guy. I can’t believe I’m losing my voice!

What was it? The shouting an acoustic sermon or full-bellied singing on Saturday night? Was it all the hours on the telephone or those two-hour counseling sessions? Was it those private shouts of frustrated wailing to God for relief from the conflict of a growing, changing congregation? Maybe it was shouting across the table at the board meeting, or across the parking lot to greet departing worshippers. Maybe I picked up a bug in the hospital as I prayed for the sick and dying. Maybe. Maybe.

Here it comes: Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, Easter, and maybe a funeral thrown in. I’ve virtually given up singing, mouthing the words to the doxology as I wait for the offering plates to be delivered down the aisle for yet another shouted prayer of blessing. I’d give up talking for a few days, but a good friend is dying, and he couldn’t hear well when he was wide awake. I’ll be loudly praying and recounting his story of salvation, giving his testimony to family and friends from out-of-town, leading prayer circles with the verve it takes to express my confidence in his eternal reward.

Then, I’ll shout to the glory of God on Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday and Easter — if I have a voice left. I can’t believe I’m losing my voice!

My mind takes me back to that Palm Sunday parade, a disciple shouting “Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosannah in the highest heaven!” We scream at the top of our lungs, reveling as our rebellious shouts launched from the hillside bounce back off the walls of Jerusalem. “This is the prophet Jesus from Nazareth in Galilee,” we shout to the curious, then return to our accolades, trying to convince the city, and perhaps ourselves, that THIS is the Chosen One!

We’ll spend a week arguing with Temple authorities, trying to control the crowds around our beloved Rabbi, debating with Pharisees and loudly rebuking our Lord. “This will not happen to you, Lord!” “Who would dare betray you, Lord?” “Surely not I, Lord?”

We’ll sing a rousing hymn and follow Jesus to the Garden, where we’ll nap, then wake our sleep-stilled voices trying to shout down the soldiers who come with Judas to the garden at night. When the crowd yells, “Give us Barabbas! Release Barabbas!” our rattled cries of “No, Jesus! Set him free!” will barely be heard. When the crowd yells, “Jesus? Let him be crucified!” Our shreaks of objection will be barely audible.

We’ll lose the last vestige of voice sobbing at the sight of our dying Rabbi, weaping in shame and beating our breasts in remorse. By the time sun sets and the body is laid to rest, we’ll have no words left.

I can’t believe I’m losing my voice!

There will be no need for words until the third day, when we will be too amazed and bewildered to shout. Perhaps that’s the plan, to let us rest from our misery so that we can rejoice again when the truth sets in, until at last at Pentecost we find our voices and proclaim the glorious story to all the world.

Yes, I’m losing my voice, just in time for Palm Sunday. It will be appropriately pained for Maundy Thursday. I can only pray it will be adequately restored as befits the excitement of Easter, when we will baptize seven and likely bring many more into the church.

If salvation depends on the ranting of one shouting preacher, we’re in trouble. Fortunately, it doesn’t. Sometimes the gentle conversation of a church is all it takes. Perhaps it takes nothing beyond a pained, “Father, forgive them! They know not what they do.” from a lofty perch on Calvary hill.

I want the church to hear my voice this Easter, but that’s just ego talking. What they need to hear is God’s voice in the life that shouts across the ages the love of God and the lengths to which God was willing to go to restore the family.

I can’t believe I’m losing my voice! Fortunately, God found a voice two thousand years ago in the outskirts of Jerusalem. Even as my words fade this Easter, I pray that the Word of God rings more loudly than ever in the hearts of the church.

A Modern Christmas Miracle

This is a true saying, to be completely accepted and believed: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. I am the worst of them, but God was merciful to me in order that Christ Jesus might show his full patience in dealing with me, the worst of sinners, as an example for all those who would later believe in him and receive eternal life.

— 1 Timothy 1:15-17 (GNV)

If Jesus came into the world to claim chosen people of proper lineage, selected before birth and preserved holy for His glorious kingdom, then I am without hope.

I’m not one to boast about past sinfulness. Some folks say I was a lightweight, anyway. But I am still jealous, prideful, greedy, hot-headed and lazy — that’s a partial list. As Paul says, I AM the worst! If it isn’t true, then it’s another example of pride and arrogance, and that’s bad enough.

Some people like a little earthiness in their pastor, but those who think I’m too worldly are correct. As Paul also said in the book of Romans, “O wretched man that I am!” Yes, we’re sinners, and it isn’t OK, and we ought to do better to honor our Lord. But here we are, imperfect and error-proned. Now what? Now God steps in.

We celebrate the Christmas miracle, a virgin birth and a guiding star to fulfill ancient prophecy. We celebrate a miraculous life of healing, interrupted by shameful death on the cross and culminating in resurrection and ascension to glory. We celebrate a cloud of witnesses martyred for the faith or dedicated to lives of selfless service.

I celebrate another Christmas miracle. I celebrate how Christ lives today through imperfect people like us, overcoming and sometimes using our imperfections to share His love.

As you light a Christmas candle this year, let it remind you that YOU are the light of the world. Thanks be to God!