Why Have You Forsaken Me?

I've seen lots of people try to explain away this verse. Very few recognize that Jesus is actually quoting Psalm 22 (written a millenia before the crucifixion). Read this and tell me if it sounds like a man defeated.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from my cries of anguish? My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, by night, but I find no rest.

Yet you are enthroned as the Holy One; you are the one Israel praises. In you our ancestors put their trust; they trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were saved; in you they trusted and were not put to shame.

But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me; they hurl insults, shaking their heads. “He trusts in the LORD,” they say, “let the LORD rescue him. Let him deliver him, since he delights in him.”

Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.

Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help. Many bulls surround me; strong bulls of Bashan encircle me. Roaring lions that tear their prey open their mouths wide against me. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart has turned to wax; it has melted within me. My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; you lay me in the dust of death.

Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet. All my bones are on display; people stare and gloat over me. me. They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.

But you, LORD, do not be far from me. You are my strength; come quickly to help me. Deliver me from the sword, my precious life from the power of the dogs. Rescue me from the mouth of the lions; save me from the horns of the wild oxen.

I will declare your name to my people; in the assembly I will praise you. You who fear the LORD, praise him! All you descendants of Jacob, honor him! Revere him, all you descendants of Israel! For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help.

From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly; before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows. The poor will eat and be satisfied; those who seek the LORD will praise him— may your hearts live forever!

All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD, and all the families of the nations will bow down before him, for dominion belongs to the LORD and he rules over the nations.

All the rich of the earth will feast and worship; all who go down to the dust will kneel before him—those who cannot keep themselves alive. Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord. They will proclaim his righteousness, declaring to a people yet unborn: He has done it!

Why is this night different from all other nights? Because one thousand, nine hundred and eighty three years ago tonight, Jesus the Nazarene died on a cross.

Thank God It's Good Friday.

My New Favorite Groups Book

I led my first small group almost 19 years ago, and I've been leading small groups and small group leaders almost non-stop ever since. In that time, I've read almost every book that's been published on 'em, either for school, work, or pleasure.

I occasionally get asked what my one-book recommendation would be, and I've never really had an answer I was thrilled with. That changed this week, when I read Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups at a friend's house.


It's a good book, with one major caveat: the title is a complete lie. There's literally not a single new thought in the entire book. Not one. Calling anything in the book "entirely new" is pure marketing, and I blame the publisher more than the authors (who certainly must know how much they've borrowed).

But it doesn't matter. The book is a fantastic synthesis of the best small groups thinking of the past ten years. Without ever naming names, they seamlessly blend the best from Donahue, Frazee, Osborne, Stanley, and Eastman.

It's not really a book I'd give a small group leader (I'm still buying used copies of Em Griffin for that) and it has a very narrow definition of small group (service and recovery groups aren't even mentioned). But if you're a point leader for small groups at your church and you want to build a groups program, this is the one book you should have on your shelf. I've always argued that a groups program should only be one part of your overall groups strategy, but for that one part, this is the best book I've read yet.

NOTE: I didn't get any compensation for this post. I don't even have a copy of the book, since I borrowed a copy from a friend.

Public Service Announcement: Why does Easter change its date every year?

Little-known fact: Easter does not actually change its date from year to year. It's always on the very same day... of the Jewish (not Gregorian) calendar.

Short version: Because the traditional Hebrew calendar is based heavily on the lunar cycle, it will drift, over time, away from the Gregorian (solar) calendar that we use. It doesn't drift too far, though, because every few years a leap MONTH is added. Forget the occasional extra day in February or the arguments over the leap second, we're talking about an entire extra month.

I was going through old notes while doing some Easter planning and found this old link. If this interests you, click here for a much better explanation than I can give.

Wrestling the Pig: "Masculine" Christianity

Like one who grabs a wild dog by the ears, so is the person passing by who becomes furious over a quarrel not his own. (Proverbs 26:17)

Never wrestle with a pig--You both get dirty, and the pig likes it. (Various)

In general, I try to stay out of the culture wars. I spent several of my younger years (I'd say "less mature" but that might be overestimating my present self) taking forceful sides on all kinds of issues, among which was the "complementarian" and "egalitarian" view of gender and ministry. Then, over time, the reality of Titus 3:9 sank in, and I've tried to move away from argument and towards actually producing something. Sometimes I do well at this, sometimes less so.

With that in mind, I'm going to (mostly) avoid getting sucked into Piper's most recent silliness. I'm grateful for John, and I've benefited tremendously from some of his writings. I think he's dangerously wrong when he writes on men and women, though, and thanks to some prompting from Rachel, I'll make a couple observations. Specifically, my thoughts on this statement:

A masculine ministry seizes on full-orbed, biblical doctrine with a view to teaching it to the church and pressing it with courage into the lives of the people.

I'm part of a great church that pays me to work on both the spiritual formation of the congregation and the church's global participation in the Great Commission. There's a funny thing about Paul's description of those two tasks, though. When Paul refers to what we'd call "missions" or "evangelism," he tends to use masculine metaphors. Planting a field, fighting a war, running a race: women can do these things, sure, but in the Greco-Roman world they're strictly the domain of men. When speaking of spiritual formation, thought, Paul's metaphors take a decided turn towards the feminine.

"I fed you milk, not solid food" (1 Corinthians 3:1-3)? "I am undergoing birth pains until Christ is formed in you" (Galatians 4:19)? Paul is "like a nursing mother caring for her children" (1 Thessalonians 2:7-8)?

I'm all about pursuing "full-orbed, biblical doctrine with a view to teaching it to the church and pressing it with courage into the lives of the people." But if we're working from Paul's own metaphors, I don't really think that "masculine" is the term I'd use. And it's even more awkward when Piper says that a masculine ministry "models for the church the protection, nourishing, and cherishing of a wife and children as part of the high calling of leadership."

I've got one other thing to say about this, but I'll leave it for its own post. For those interested in more on Paul's feminine metaphors, I'm told that the book "Our Mother Saint Paul" is quite good, although I myself haven't read it.

VINN: Exodus 14

This year I've gotten back on a reading plan to work through the Bible in a year. Last year I tried the "Bible-In-A-Year Chronological Bible" but got bogged down in February (when I started my 60-minute-a-day commute to Richmond) and I never got back on track. This year I'm hoping to do better.

I know for a fact I've read the Bible through cover to cover, and I've read every passage multiple times. And yet every time I read, I find verses that I've apparently never read before. I'm sure nobody snuck in and added them, so it's just that they made no impression on me until now. This may be a one-time thing, or it may become a recurring segment: Verses I've Never Noticed.

Last week I read Exodus 14, and this popped out at me:

Moses answered the people, “Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still.”

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Why are you crying out to me? Tell the Israelites to move on.

How wild is that? God's people are frightened and helpless, and Moses starts talking up what God will do for them. "Be still! Stand Firm! The LORD will fight for you, you need only be still!" There's a certain logic to this. God can do what His people cannot, and when compared to the power of God ours is insignificant. So it makes sense to passively let him handle the problem for us. And yet God's response to Moses is priceless: "Why are you crying out to me? Get moving!"

God indeed accomplishes what His people cannot: he opens up a way for them through the sea. No amount of work on their part would have gotten that done. But neither does God let them off the hook: if they want to break free from their captors, they need to do some of the movement themselves. To steal the relational wisdom of Hitch for a moment, God goes 90% of the way and waits for his people to go the other 10.



There's some obvious salvation implications here (Paul makes a baptism comparison in 1 Corinthians 10), but I'm more interested in the spiritual formation implications. How does this play out in demonstrating the fruit of the Spirit? In pursuing holiness? In breaking free of addictions?

Right now they're only questions, no answers. But it's fascinating what we miss when we only hit the bullet points of the Bible, instead of actually reading the text.

Back in the Habit

So as most of you know, I'm officially back in the saddle. December 22nd was my last day at the old job, and on January 1st I started as an Associate Pastor at Vineyard Community Church in Lexington, KY. That's fun.

I've got two primary areas of focus: spiritual formation and outward focus. My two favorite things! That's fun too.

As of yesterday, a new piece has been added to my job description: staff point of contact for our (excellent) volunteer IT team. Also fun.

I have a new schedule: Mondays off, work Tuesday through Friday, and then half days on Saturday and Sunday. Since I was already taking the kids to church Saturday nights (to give Judi time for homework) and Sunday mornings (all of us as a family) I basically get one free day a week, while not really losing any time. More fun.

I'm getting paid to do the stuff I would naturally do (and have actually done) for free. I'm getting to flex muscles that have gotten weak. There's clearly some significant workouts needed in the future to get back into game shape, but I'm already seeing the improvements. Fun.

In case I'm not being clear, life is currently fun. I know a part of that is that I enjoy novelty, and what's fun now may not be fun in 3 or 5 years. But right now I feel really blessed to be in the role I'm in. It's not always rainbows and butterflies, of course. Our budget's a little tighter than it was two months ago. I felt like God used the time off in extremely formative ways, and I didn't feel like I was necessarily done with that formation. And for all that I wrote this, it's hard to say that I lived that as well as I could have this year.

Still and all, it feels pretty darn good to be back to doing what I love. I leave you with this video of Whoopi doing her thing:

Leaving Las Vegas

True story: on my 21st birthday, I was living with my parents in Las Vegas. I'd just graduated from college, and came out to Vegas for what was supposed to be a 2-week vacation (I stayed until I was 25).

So I'm turning 21 in Sin City. Mid-afternoon, my dad comes home and says "get your shoes on, we're going downtown." We drive to a casino, and he hands me a roll of quarters and points towards the slot machines.



I lost the whole roll in ten minutes.

When I finished, he said "You get the point?"

"Yes sir."

"Alright, let's go home. Your mom's got cake."

======

I've been in town for an emergency management trade show, and it's been shocking how little I've emotionally connected with visiting a place I love. Other than a fantastic dinner with my aunt and uncle, I might have been anywhere. A big part of it is that we're staying at one of the seedier casinos (the Rio, best known for hosting the Chippendales), and I've had no transportation or time to visit my old haunts. Some of it is my Vegas-local disdain for mingling with the tourists. And a lot of it is that at this point I'd much rather be home with my family.

But as we drove to the airport this morning at 3:30am, I started getting nostalgic for the first time. I've not flown out of this airport on a return trip before... This was always the launching point for new travel. I flew out of this airport to propose to Judi, and again to marry her. I flew out for friends' weddings, for family reunions, and to visit Cincinnati to interview for grad school.

Arriving at McCarren is "coming home," but leaving is "starting a new adventure."

I'm ready for the next adventure.