from www.ethicsdaily.com Posted: Thursday, December 29, 2011 6:43 am
Many people regard New Year’s resolutions with the same disdain they attribute to the fruitcake. I am a proponent of both. For several years now, I have made the same New Year’s resolution, and I ask God to help me to keep it: I will take no bitterness into the new year. Whatever has happened during the past 12 months that tends to sour my disposition, cause me pain and create separation, I resolve to let go. Whatever offenses I have suffered will not be dragged into the new year. Forgiveness is not as easy as it might sound. Partly it requires developing a thicker skin and realizing that I take far too many things personally. I need to lighten up. This is one of the concepts my friend, Monty Knight, discusses in his book “Balanced Living: Don’t Let Your Strengths Become Your Weakness.” Continuing with Monty’s philosophy, I don’t have to go to every fight to which I am invited. That is a major concept: Let it go. Tom Newboult, a minister of religious education, once told me that sin is giving more importance to the moment than it is worth. In other words, don’t dwell in the negative. I think Tom hit the nail on the head. Turning a negative into a positive is another methodology for dealing with difficult situations. Since I administered a not-for-profit agency for most of my career, I would often be attacked with, “Well, Mitch, you are just an idealist.” My reply became, “Thank you. I hope so.” The main thing Christians must remember about forgiveness is that we are able to forgive because we have been forgiven. Susan Sparks in “Laugh Your Way to Grace” suggests that we rediscover the power of humor. She maintains that we take ourselves far too seriously. We need to repackage some of the comments that cause us pain. Bitterness is a terrible taskmaster. It will ruin your life and suck all the goodness you receive into a dark hole. I recommend a proactive approach. Go on an active campaign to make those around you glad that you are there. Build them up by helping them feel good about themselves. Say something nice. Compliment him or her in a genuine way. Call the person by name. Offer a specific compliment about a real accomplishment. On the other hand, when you receive a compliment, acknowledge it graciously with a simple “thank you.” In my book, “Christian Civility in an Uncivil World,” I discuss the power of words, but I am by no means the first to come to that conclusion. The psalmist said, “Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable unto thee, oh God, my strength and my redeemer.” Arthur Caliandro gets right to the heart of the matter with a three-word solution. “Life is now.” That statement is stunning in its simplicity. Live in the present. Don’t drag past hurts into today. I was part of a vivid demonstration of this principle. We were planning one of the annual John Hamrick Lectures while Hamrick was still living. A potential speaker was being considered. I called the speaker to extend an invitation. He told me that because he and Hamrick had been involved on opposite sides of a controversy, he would only come if Hamrick approved. When I told Hamrick of my conversation, he didn’t hesitate. “That was then. This is now.” Wow. I make no claim that getting rid of bitterness is an easy task. You and I have experienced great hurts. Unfortunately we have also inflicted great hurts. I know that I am in the process of becoming and that God is not finished with me. Practicing my resolution of taking no bitterness into the new year has helped me live a more productive, less stressful life. I believe you will experience the same happy results if you give it a try. MitchCarnell is a consultant specializing in interpersonal and organizational communication. He is the editor of “Christian Civility in an Uncivil World.” He and his wife are active lay members of First Baptist Church of Charleston, S.C. Mitch blogs at MitchCarnell.com. |
Archive for category The Book
Mark 13: 32-37, November 27, 2011
The day after Thanksgiving is Black Friday, considered the busiest shopping day of the year and traditionally the beginning of the Christmas shopping season. Its name, Black Friday, indicates the point at which retailers begin to turn a profit, as in being “in the black.”
Now there is a new significance to the day after Thanksgiving. The National Day of Listening is a day when Americans are asked to set aside time to listen to the stories of families and friends. It originated in 2008 by the national oral history project called StoryCorps. Few things are more encouraging than to have someone really listen to you.
We all have our stories to tell, and many of us can remember times of sitting on the porch listening to family stories, or hearing stories told by family members after Thanksgiving dinner, or discovering stories about a family member at a funeral. From the time we were children and begged our parents to “Tell me a story,” to adulthood when we love good storytellers like Garrison Keiller, we are filled with stories.
Mitch Carnell, a communications specialist and teacher of speech, reminds us that the Bible is basically a storybook and that Jesus was remembered as a storyteller. We still tell the stories of Jesus after all these years, and we still argue about what they mean. Mitch Carnell speaks of multiple interpretations of the Prodigal Son story to illustrate his point![2]
One way of thinking about the experience of being the church is that it is a merging of stories. You have a story and I have a story. They were once separate stories, but in being church together, our stories begin to merge. Soon our private life stories begin to be OUR life story—not just MY story and YOUR story. I can always tell when the merger takes place in church: it is when someone stops using the term “your church” and begins to use the term “our church.”
I can say to the newcomers to this church community that this congregation is an alliance of faithful friends and colleagues seriously trying to follow the way of Christ. That does not mean that we are all in agreement over every issue. It simply means that we have concluded that following the way of Christ is more important than any other issue.
If you are looking for a church home, a place that will gather you in and accept you as you are, a place that will nurture you along your own spiritual journey and call out your best gifts, then you are in the right place! There is no such thing as a perfect church, just as there is no perfect job or perfect person. I think it was Charles Spurgeon who quipped that “the day we find a perfect church, it becomes imperfect the moment we join it!”
Now what about this gospel text for this first Sunday of Advent? Keep awake! it urges. Has it ever seemed odd to you that on the first Sunday of Advent each year, when we begin looking toward the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the lectionary text used all over the Christian world is about the Second Coming of Jesus? Just when we are beginning to focus on the first coming, we get a text focused on the Second Coming!
Most of us aren’t even sure what we believe or want to believe about such things, especially since we have heard so many wild-eyed abuses of such texts. But here it is nevertheless, and the church all over the world is reading this text urging us to stay alert.
Just a few reminders in reading a text like this: apocalyptic language is always picture-talk. We don’t have to turn this text over to the literalists. Sometimes Jesus used picture-talk, metaphorical language. We have to use picture-talk when we speak of ultimate things. We have no other language for it. Here we are talking about the end of time as we know it. We certainly can’t be confined to rational logic when we speak of such things.
Another reminder about apocalyptic language: it always arises during times of crisis. No wonder we hear more of it these days! The text we read today comes out of the first great crisis in the life of the early church. When the gospel of Mark was compiled, the first great wave of persecution of Christians had begun, and the little congregations that had been meeting in relative safety suddenly had to flee to the hills to survive. Out of that despair and crisis of faith came this gospel.
The author of the gospel of Mark gathered together all the authentic sayings of Jesus he or she could find, and placed them in some coherent order to compile what we believe to be the first of the four gospels to be written. (Please do not be thrown when I say “he or she.” The gospel of Mark is anonymous. We really don’t know who wrote it.) In the midst of a crisis of faith, this gospel stood as a witness to a faithful God whose presence is made known even in the midst of crisis.
So this unique, sometimes even strange apocalyptic language, is always a language of hope. The gospel of Mark was reminding those Christians who had almost lost hope, that in spite of all, God was, God is, and God will be. That is to say, apocalyptic language is a language of encouragement.
III
An editorial in one paper this week described Americans as “glum and gloomy.”[3] Apocalyptic language is written to those who are tempted to be glum and gloomy. It is written as a work of encouragement, not fear. It has reminded readers from the 1st century to the 21st century that our ultimate hope does not lie in the Dow index; it does not lie in the military; it does not rest on the results of political elections; it does not rely on housing prices or budgets or the economic crisis in Greece or Italy. All of these measures reflect daily levels of hopefulness at times, but are not the ultimate source of hope.
Our ultimate hope does not come from these things. In the most difficult of times, Jesus said not only to watch for signs of hope, but to be especially watchful when it is the darkest of times. Here is how he put it: Therefore, keep awake—for you do not know when the master of the house will come, in the evening, or at midnight, or at cockcrow, or at dawn. Surely his language was deliberately chosen. The Roman military divided the night into four watches. The evening watch was 6:00 – 9:00 PM; the midnight watch was 9:00 – midnight. The cockcrow watch was from midnight to 3:00 AM. And the morning or “dawn” watch was from 3:00 – 6:00 AM. Those were the darkest times, times when there is no sign of a bright future. That is when we are warned to keep alert.
Jesus was saying that there is a future even in the darkest of times, and at the conclusion of that future, there is God—the same God who was with us in the past and is with us now. Christian faith is realistic; it sees the world situation as clearly as anyone else. But we do not and we will not participate in the “glum and gloomy” atmosphere described in the editorial. We are a people of hope, even in the most challenging times, because our ultimate hope is not dependent on that list of issues that normally comprises the content of the evening news.
IV
It is quite a journey we are taking together as a church. We are at the dawn of a third century, and the future is encouraging. Some of us will stumble and fall along the way. Some of us may lag behind or bolt ahead, but we are taking this journey together because we need each other, and because we are a people of hope. It is a journey toward hope and with hope.
At the entrance to Dante’s Inferno was the sign, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here!” At the entrance to this church is a more encouraging word: “All hope claim and celebrate, ye who enter here!” We journey under the banner of faith, hope, and love. Here we sing “O God, Our Help in Ages Past, our hope for years to come.” Here we declare a word of encouragement for the present and a word of hope that will never die.
*Dr. Thomas R. McKibbens is pastor of First Baptist Church of Worcester, Massachusetts.
Rev. Dr. Jim Somerville
Here are some suggestions inspired by Gordon D. Fee and Douglas Stuart’s book, How to Read the Bible for All Its Worth (Zondervan Press, 1981).
- Start with a good translation of the Bible. My personal preference is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV), which strives to be as inclusive as possible while maintaining a faithfulness to the original Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic languages. The HarperCollins Study Bible has almost as many notes as it has text, providing ready answers to most of my questions. Fee and Stuart also recommend Today’s New International Version (TNIV).
- Get ready to read. Sit at a desk or table where you can spread out a little, where you can open the Bible and also take notes. Make sure you have adequate lighting and reading glasses if you need them (I seem to need them more and more). Let’s say you’re working on Luke 4:14-30 (just as an example): take some time to read the introduction to Luke in your study Bible; find out who Luke was, when he wrote, and what he was trying to accomplish; find out how a Gospel is different from other kinds of literature in the Bible (history, poetry, prophecy, epistles, etc.) and think about why it makes a difference.
- Say a prayer for illumination. If it was the Holy Spirit who inspired the biblical authors to write (and it was), it will be the Holy Spirit who helps us understand what they wrote. Ask the Spirit to open your mind, heart, and soul to the truth of God’s word, and to teach you through the words of the text. The meaning of a passage is often found not in the words themselves, but in that space between the words and the reader where the Spirit does its best work.
- Read the text. Read it several times, slowly. Let it sink in. Make sure you don’t add anything that isn’t there or subtract anything that is. I talked to someone recently who said he was amazed at how Jesus just “disappeared” at the end of this reading from Luke 4. “Disappeared?” I asked. “Yeah! He just–poof!–disappeared!” Fortunately I had my Bible with me, and when we looked at the text it said that Jesus “passed through the midst of them and went on his way” (Luke 4:30). That’s not really the same thing as “disappearing,” is it?
- Write down your questions. If you are reading for understanding (and not just inspiration) you will have questions: What was that synagogue in Nazareth like? Did they have other scrolls, or just the scroll of Isaiah? Why did Jesus sit down to teach? Where was his mother when all this happened? Why did the people try to throw him off a cliff? Write down all the questions you have. Don’t hold back. The Bible can take it (smile).
- Look up the answers. This is when you consult a good Bible dictionary or a commentary. Not before you’ve written down your questions—after. Otherwise you will read answers to questions you have never asked, and yawn your way through the commentaries. If you are looking for answers to your own questions, however, it can be like going on a treasure hunt—exciting! I keep the Mercer Dictionary of the Bible on my shelves and try to keep a commentary on each book of the Bible written by the foremost scholar on that book. Bible dictionaries and commentaries are always available in your church library, and many of them are excellent. I would recommend the New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible as one of the best commentary sets.
Only when you have done this kind of careful exegesis are you ready to do hermeneutics: to bring the meaning of the text from “then and there” to “here and now.” One of the real problems with so much “interpretation” of scripture is that people try to do hermeneutics before they’ve done exegesis. They try to apply a text to the here and now without ever knowing what it meant there and then. Fee and Stuart warn us that, “A text can never mean what it never meant.” That’s another way of saying you have to do your homework. You have to know what a text meant in its original context before you can understand what it might mean for us today.
This is a different way to read the Bible than the devotional reading I do during my “quiet time.” This is serious study. But if you read the Bible in this way from time to time I think you will find it richly rewarding. Like the people in Nehemiah 8, you may go your way “to eat and drink…and make great rejoicing,” because you have understood the words of the Bible.
Dr. James Green Somerville is the 16th Senior Pastor in the 228-year history of First Baptist Church of Richmond, VA. I am grateful to Dr. Somerville for permission to use this article. I read it first at, “Talk with the Preacher,” the blog of Rev. Amy Butler, pastor of Calvary Baptist Church in Washington, DC.
If You Have Words
Aug 17
If you have roses to give, give now.
If you have love to give, love now.
If you have praise to give, praise now.
If you have words of joy to offer, speak now.
If you have comfort to give, comfort now.
If you have encouragement to give, encourage now.
If you have sympathy to give, sympathize now.
If you have words that will heal, heal now.
If you have words that build up, build now.
If you criticism to give, keep silent.