Where Jesus Went

42 days ago, my wife and I found out that our fourth child would never see the light of day. He or She died in the womb. We went in for a sonogram, and there was no heartbeat.

This was a shock of course, and I have had 1001 thoughts since then but here's the main one I wanted to share:

The first Sunday after we lost the baby was Pentecost. This particular Pentecost, our pastor, a wonderful man, decided to mobilize the church to unity by having everyone dress in red and gather for a "family picture" and a big BBQ out on the church lawn. It was a great day, and everyone turned out to worship in one service (instead of the 5 services we normally have every weekend).

The only trouble for me was that I didn't feel much like celebrating. The morning before, during the cool of the day, we took the remains of our littlest one, our dear, dear child and buried our baby under the Japanese maple in our front yard. I used a very abbreviated version of the burial service in the Book of Common Prayer... and I was grateful for the words... the words printed on the page for me to say and live and breathe in, and not have to think of prayers of my own... I HAD no prayers of my own. I was just heart-broken.

So, I was standing in the service, singing, praying, etc. I found I was able to worship. God was my foundation, and without him, I wouldn't have been able to do anything, but still, I had nothing. Nothing to say. Some songs, I just stood there.

The sermon came and went. I'm sure it was fine. I don't really remember.

Then came the Great Thanksgiving (i.e. Eucharist or Communion). And that Sunday, we used the form where the whole congregation says together:

Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks:

My baby has not gone anywhere where Jesus has not already gone.

And I was comforted.

Christ has died. And so has my baby.
Christ is risen. And so will my baby.
Christ will come again. And on that day, my baby will come again to me.

I can't tell you the comfort. The smile that slowly, tearfully, silently-weepingly crept across my face.

When the world, and even kind-meaning friends, had nothing they could give me, my Lord left me witness.
But he didn't just leave me words, he left me actions. It's the things he did that bring me solace.

And nothing else. Really. Nothing else.

Where Jesus Went, My Baby Has Gone/Will Go,...
And one day,
I, too, will follow.

Deep in the Heart of My Son

As a parent, I often wonder what kind of Spiritual Formation my children (5,4, and 1) are actually experiencing. Their words often don't tell me much. Many of their words are spent experimenting with their world; trying out phrases for the sound of them, or trying out their effects on others around them. The kind of deep reflections and truths-from-the-heart that a parent longs to hear feel hard to come by.

Last night, I had a glimpse.

Lately, at night, my 5-yr-old, who is very extroverted and has ALWAYS hated going to bed, has been saying how he doesn't like to sleep because he is scared. I have been someone skeptical of this though never outright calling it false. Instead, I have tried to minimally comfort him. I figured he was saying that because he knew it stopped me in my tracks and made me stick around and do more things for him before leaving his room.

Last night he wasn't complaining about fear, but I know he was dealing with it.

I was laying at the end of his bed as he tried to go to sleep when I heard (very faintly, whispered):

"God is with me."

He rolled over, eyes open, sucking his thumb.... Then, a minute later, I heard:

"God is stronger than anything."

I was stunned. These were things I had taught him to pray if he ever felt afraid, but I had no idea he actually prayed them. Another minute went by, when he thrust his hand in the air from the laying-down position and whispered forcefully:

"In the name of Jesus, I will not be afraid!"

I was so proud of him and so glad to see him living his faith out with his own heart.

As a parent, I really want to ask him about this, but as an amateur spiritual director, I know these are precious words. Words spoken in private (forgetting I was in the room) between him and his heavenly Father. He needs those words to stay warm in the oven of his heart. The private verification of faith and prayers met by the holy presence of God.

The desert fathers talked of "keeping the oven doors of your heart shut," and not letting them open for everyone around. We need these moments so that our rich and living faith can grow with God privately, dearly, nearly to us.

I'm so glad my son is getting that even now. Praise the Lord.

An Interesting Conversation on Emerging Church-meets-Anglicanism

As a result of posting this website to my Facebook, I got this interesting conversation with my friends. I re-post it here to see if it might "stir the pot" for others who might read this website/are coming to the conference. Here it is (feel free to comment further!):

Friend #1: Interesting, I wonder what they mean by "rule of faith"
Friend #2: Rule of faith: a communal and historic perimeter delimiting private interpretation of Scripture. But that's just my anglo-catholic self...
Friend #1: So, the Anglican church is going to form an evangelical teaching magesterium?
Me: Friend #1, I agree with Friend #2's definition. (I actually don't find it a very "anglo-catholic" statement.) As far as Anglican church "magisterium"... I'm not totally sure what you are asking, but here are couple of answers. (1) This movement toward a rule of faith is primarily an evangelical one. Anglicans already affirm this (ostensibly). (2) No one is talking about a "big M" magisterium (official doctrine of The Church). The point is that without even a "small m" magisterium (the agreed-upon doctrine of the early church) or rule of faith, then we are all subject to a magisterium of our culture/age/hermeneutical position in history with or without our realizing it. Good questions! Thanks! Feel free to ask more.
Friend #1: The biggest issue they face is the question of authority. They say faith alone, but that faith is not alone. Now they will say scripture alone, but that scripture is not alone? I don't argue against this personally, but think it is going to be a hard sell.
//Most evangelicals ignore Christian history to their own detriment or squabble over where it went wrong. Calvin in his Institutes admitted that the historical evidence for the real presence was very strong, but rejected the doctrine. What doctrine will they agree upon, and who will they choose to decide which doctrines these are? Again it is an appeal to an authority... which our individualistic culture struggles with accepting.
Me: Yes, ultimately, Friend #1, it is a question of authority and who is the arbiter of that authority and on what basis. Anglicans claim (for better or worse) that that authority rests in the rule of faith as passed down by the apostles through the apostolic succession. This is why the "adherence to doctrine" is such an important part of the bishop's job ... Read Moreand why the Episcopal Church in America is such a mess (because bishops have not been executing this authority as they should).
There is also the problem of trying to identify the *right* doctrines to hold. Not too few and not too many, i.e. (from my view) not lax on homosexuality, but not policing transsubstantiation, either.
Stephen Sykes argues that what makes Anglicanism unique is it's ecclesiological stance-- to call the whole Anglican Church (this breadth is also critical as it needs to be in place to keep fellow bishops doing the job described above) to a "mere" ecclesiology/doctrines, i.e. the first four councils.

Father, Into Thy Hands (A Good Friday Sermon)

I posted this latest sermon of mine on Facebook and got some favorable remarks, so I thought I'd post it here as well. I hope it blesses you. -jdp

Luke 23:46 -- “Father, into thy hands, I commit my spirit.”

By the time we come to this moment in the story of Jesus’ death, the sky has gone dark for three hours. Jesus has suffered spiritually, emotionally, and physically, and the end of his suffering is nearly complete. He is at the point of death.

Our first instinct when we come to this passage might very well be to consider it simply as a verbal declaration of something happening physically. Maybe, Luke just wants to accent for us that this is the point of Jesus death, so instead of writing “and Jesus died,” maybe he writes something more dramatic, and more true to the accounting of what really happened: that Jesus made this loud declaration, “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit,” and then dies. This is all certainly true, but as usual with the Bible, there is a lot more going on as well. I want to offer one insight as to what Jesus might have had in mind as he spoke these words and then one implication of these insights for our lives today.

The first thing we discover when we come to study this verse is that Jesus is not merely speaking his own feelings at this moment. He is actually quoting the Old Testament, the Hebrew Scriptures. The quotation is from Psalm 31.5:

• Into thy hand I commit my spirit; thou hast redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God.

Why does he do this?

The insight I want to offer is a little outside what we would normally think about, but still very important for us. It’s very important for the integrity of God’s character and his work in the world. I believe Jesus is quoting this verse because he is signaling to us that he is fulfilling the destiny of Israel. We should remember that God didn’t start working on what my favorite children’s bible calls, “the secret rescue plan of God,” just when we get to Jesus. For thousands of years, for centuries upon centuries, since right after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God has been working his plan to save humanity from eternal death. All along God has said he would bring Salvation for the whole world through his people, the Jews. And yet, they haven’t been able to do the very thing this verse talks about which is to entrust God with their spirits. You see this verse in the Hebrew doesn’t just communicate “commit” as in “handing over” (his spirit to God the Father at the point of death), but also “commit” as to “entrust yourself to another” to lean into and believe in God.

The Israelites could never really do this for long. They often entrusted themselves to other gods. They worshipped the gods of their land. They did this, not because they were blindly superstitious but because they didn’t they didn’t like just trusting the Lord God for their crops to come in. They wanted to do something about it. They want to act out their own control over their destinies. The parallel for us today is those who know that God says not to hoard or cheat or steal, and yet they do it anyway, because entrusting God to come through with their needs is just too hard. Why trust in God to bring you the right wealth at the right time when we can work the laws of the stock market to our advantage?

Sometimes, Israel tried to worship other gods and the Lord God. At the time of the end of the reign of Solomon, for instance, we read that Solomon set up little chapels to the foreign gods of his 700 foreign wives. 1 Kings 11.7 tells us:

• Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem.

God responded to this attempt to worship other gods and Him, as a properly jealous wife. Israel wanted to be able to say, “Oh, I trust you honey, Lord, to supply my needs for companionship, but I’m just going to have this other woman on the side, too!” This was not trust.

Israel even entrusted themselves to themselves, and their own ability to basically follow the Lord’s laws and thereby maintain their eternal security rather than admit their failure and need for a Messiah, a savior, a Christ to deliver them. Romans 10.3 says,

• For, being ignorant of the righteousness that comes from God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness.

Of course, this entrusting of themselves to themselves is of no use either. Who can save themselves from death or set the parameters of their relationship with God? On the occasion of his mother’s death, my own father-in-law told my wife very clearly: “You don’t have to talk about God with me anymore. God and I have a deal worked out.” This is not how it works with God. Trying to say, “God, I’ll be a good person, and you don’t send me to Hell, how about that?” is not trust. This is essentially what Israel was trying to do with God. But Jesus is not that guy.

So, in part, what is happening here at the death of Jesus is that Jesus is ONE. He’s the one Israelite who is doing it right. He is doing it right on behalf of all of the rest of Israel, who, just like us, could never get it right. He’s the elect. He’s Israel’s representative hero figure. Like his super-great-grandfather, David, who generations before went to face the giant Goliath, and whatever happened to Him that’s what would happen to his people… If he lost, Israel would become the Philistines’ slaves. If he won, they agreed to be Israel’s slaves. That kind of battle is being waged here. On the battlefield of eternity, how Jesus does it here will be the thing that sets us free or keeps us bound forever.

We take for granted that Jesus did it right. We take for granted that he didn’t come as the second person of the Trinity and then take his divine power in his own hands and make himself king and live forever. Jesus could have done that. He could have. Hebrews 4.15 tells us:

• For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Jesus was tempted, but he didn’t sin. He didn’t trust in other gods, or in other gods plus the Lord, or probably the most tempting, in himself. Instead, he entrusted himself - he committed his spirit - to the Father. This is a profoundly Trinitarian moment, where the intentions of God to save the world are being acted out in all three persons: The Son giving up the Spirit to the Father. As mysterious as that all is, it’s awe inspiring. Jesus gave up his very soul and trusted that God the Father would take care of him. And it was through this conscious act of surrender that God saved the whole world.

So, what does this have to do with us? Two things:

One: Receive it. In light of Jesus’ giving up o his own life for us, we should try with our hearts, as best as we can, to get in touch with the emotional love of God here, and just receive it. Not many of us have, in our physical lives, had someone actually save our lives at the cost of their own, and yet every time one of us hears of a story where that has happened: a mother who dies in childbirth, a soldier who takes death instead of his comrades, a police officer who takes the bullet of a lunatic to keep him off our streets, we can’t help but be touched. Each of those stories is a shadow of our story. We are touched because it’s the guts of what is true for every one of us. And the proper response is to humbly receive it.

Two: Once we’ve received Christ’s death for us, we can enter death as he did. Completely without fear. In his book, The Divine Conspiracy, Dallas Willard points out that death is completely dismissed for those who believe in Jesus. He references Jesus own declarations that those who believe in him will never see death nor will they ever touch death. He reminds us of a story from “Peter Marshall some years ago. It is the picture of a child playing in the evening with her toys. Gradually she grows weary and lays her head down for a moment of rest, lazily continuing to play. The next thing she experiences or “tastes” is the morning light of a new day flooding her bed and the room where her mother or father took her. Interestingly, we never remember falling asleep. We do not ‘see’ it, ‘taste’ it.”

This is the way we see Jesus facing death. He has no fears about it. He has no real, final inclination to grab on to the things of this world and entrust himself to the life of this earth. Instead, he knows. He knows who he is speaking to: Father, he says, into thy hands I commit my spirit.

I will close with this image from my own life. My son Graham is 18 months old. He has sort of figured out how to do stairs. He likes to do them backwards. When he reaches the stairs he turns around backward and slides on his tummy. Lately, he’s been experimenting with trying to go down them forwards. He grabs a rail and tries to put his foot down to the next level. But that’s not his favorite way to do it. Anytime I am nearby, rather than practicing his hand-rail descent, he just steps off… Into thin air. He just walks into nothing. Why? Because he knows. He knows his daddy. He knows his daddy is big enough and trust-worthy enough that I will launch out my hands and catch him. And he smiles.

We might fear death because we fear nothingness or the experience of death, and from this fear we may in this life sin by holding on to the rails of life. Jesus shows us the better way. The creator God who made life out of nothing is more than capable of receiving our trust, to step off and into his arms. The loving God we know, because Jesus went before us. We can say with him “Into thy hands I commit my spirit.” Amen.

Daddy, How Did the Devil Get to Be Bad?

Second, in a series...

I think I may have mentioned this before, but I teach the Kids' Chapel at our church. During the Sunday School hour between the two services, the preschoolers (ages 2-5) get to have some play time and then they follow me upstairs to our special kid-sized chapel... with a wooden screen marking off a little narthex, little wooden benches, a small rail, a raised table, cross, and candles. The kids always ask to get to be the crucifer. (It's a real privilege.) Anyway, we sing some songs, I give a little lesson, then they offer their prayer requests, we say the Lord's Prayer together then sing and I bless them as they leave to go back down stairs.

Anyway, some weeks ago, after my little lesson on the miracle at Pentecost, I asked for comments or questions. Usually, one of the kids tries to tell me about their friend or their grandma or they want to repeat back to me about something they heard in the lesson. In this case, my own son, Ewan, raised his hand and asked (completely off-topic), "Daddy, how did the Devil get to be bad?" I have no idea where he got this question. But I was pleasantly surprised to answer it. It's a lot better than a question which doesn't matter. So, here's what I said:

"Wow, buddy, that's a good question! Actually, the Bible doesn't really tell us. But we have hints that maybe he was full of pride - that he thought he was better than God. He was created by God, but he decided he wasn't going to listen to God anymore. But the Bible doesn't tell us why he started thinking that way. BUT, for us, the thing to remember is that WE shouldn't think we're better than God. AND, that God is bigger than Devil. We don't have to be afraid of him. We know that God's going to send him to Hell. No question."

I'm not sure how we transitioned from there, but I'm thinking it wasn't very hard as non sequiter as kids are at that age. But I was glad we talked about it. Again, it was a chance to form their spiritual imagination. And I was really proud of my son for thinking up such a good question. Thanks be to God!

Daddy, Where is Heaven?

Recently, I've had a few conversations with the kids about spiritual things that I thought might be worth recording and sharing so here they are, in no particular order. The first one goes like this:
Ewan (5) and I were playing one morning with his space toys. We were making different space stations and playsets and pretending to fly off to various places and have problems that needed solving.
Somewhere in the middle of this, probably tangentially related to the Kids' Chapel 'sermon' I had given the preschoolers the day before on the Ascension, Ewan says, "Dad, is space outside of the sky or is it part of the sky?"
Awesome question. I explained about how the sky is called the atmosphere and how it turns into space several dozen miles up.
Then he asked, "Dad, is heaven outside of space or part of space?"
Whoa! This turns out to be kind of a tough question to answer. Thankfully, I had just had a conversation with the Dean President of my seminary (who used to teach Physics and has a PhD in systematic theology) about this.
I said, "Wow, that's a great question! It's probably best to think of it as being outside of space. I used to think it was straight up a long way, but Daddy's teacher at school pointed out that God can't live only in a "place" because then something would be outside of him. So, heaven is where we can't see, but some day when Jesus comes back, we'll be able to see it and heaven and earth will be one again."
"Yah," he replied, "It'll be awesome."
We went on from there to talk about the Voyager space program, and how we know about the planets.

It was a fun little conversation. It's very interesting raising my kids with a slightly different cosmology than the one I was brought up in, i.e. Like the Bible, I don't refer to "going to heaven" after we die. I talk about sleeping and/or being present with Jesus until he comes back and heaven and earth are brought together again and we get our bodies back.
We had just such a conversation yesterday. We were talking about my grandmother who is 94, and how close she is to 100. And I said something about how I hope that she gets to live that long before she dies.
This mention of death was quickly added to by hopes of the resurrection, and Ewan wanted to know if his great-grandmother would "have the same skin" when she gets her body back (cf. 2 Cor. 5.1-8). I told him she would have her same body but different. He new one won't wear out (cf. 1 Cor 15).
I'm not sure why I feel so excited by all this, but I like not passing on the gnostic influences that have seeped into our Christianity. I want the cosmology they learn now to suit them well into the future. Certainly they can't understand it all, and I don't expect them to. But I can try to explain things as truthfully and simply as possible.
I wonder what other parents tell their kids and how informed these answers are by just whatever their parents told them without ever talking to a pastor or theologian about them.
Well, for better or worse, my kids have a pastor-theologian in the house and proper cosmology is par for the course! =)

Bishop Duncan Interview

In honor of this awesome man of God, I post this interview here. I was walking out of our church about 10 days ago after a meeting that Bishop Duncan helped lead there, and instead of just letting me walk by with a smile (which would have been more than kind to me), Bishop Duncan (who doesn't know me) bent down and smiled at my boys and asked how they were doing and gave off this great grandfatherly glow. What a guy! May I ever be as holy as that before I die!

Praying and Grateful for Bishop Duncan...



Thanks to AnglicanTV, you can find the original video here: http://www.anglicantv.org/blog/index.cfm/2008/9/18/Bishop-Duncans-Final-TEC-Interview