In 2013 my parents passed away within months of each other.  Being an only child (which was wonderful, by the way) I had the task of going through things when my Mom passed and I moved my Dad back here with me to Indiana for the few months prior to his passing.

I had the singular joy (sarcasm emoji here) of going through photos, documents, memories, and deciding what to take with me and what to sell in the “Estate Sale” (a pretentious word for items contained in a rented ranch house).  Most things were items I had grown up with, things that brought back some good memories, things I had forgotten about, things I hadn’t realized my folks had saved, things that carried good and true memories of the wonderful life I had with my parents.

When I finally got to Mom & Dad’s personal things; wallets, stuff they kept in the top drawer of their bedroom dresser, etc. I discovered things I didn’t know about.  There were the wedding rings and wallet photos, etc. but there were other surprising things.

In context: both of my parents worked for the U.S. Government, in a town that was owned and run by the government until 1960 when it became the independent town of Richland, Washington.  Dad was an Army MP at Camp Hanford, the guardians of “Area 300” which held the secret “Button Factory” (that’s what the public was told) which made plutonium buttons for “the bomb”.  My mother, after graduating from business school, was hired as a secretary for the government-sub-contracted, General Electric Company, and then the Atomic Energy Commission (eventually re-named the D.O.E.).  I tell you all of this because I knew they began their lives together working for secret things, in a secret town.

So, I wasn’t surprised to find my Dad’s army dog tags among the personal items, but I was surprised to find that Mom had dog tags also…issued to her, not because she was married to Dad, but because she worked for the government, sometimes in secret, to ensure the safety of the U.S. during the cold war.

Dog tags’ purpose is to identify the “wearer” when they become a casualty of war.  To wear a dog tag means that you have committed to “give over your life” and you wear that commitment around your neck.

Also, in my Mom’s wallet, was the ragged card she had carried around since 1950.  It is the government-issue directive to any agents of the government, post-war and during the cold war.  It is printed bullet point directions for surviving an atomic attack, an artillery attack, and a chemical attack.  One was to carry it with them all the time…just in case.  In each scenario the last bullet point said, “Continue with your mission.”

I recently ran across these dog tags again.  I thought about the commitment my Mom & Dad made – which they really never spoke about to me – to live out to the point of death for service to their country.  Would I be willing to do the same, to “put on the dog tags” making a commitment to not only live, but die, for something?

And yet…

That is exactly how Jesus describes the type of LIFE and LOVE offered to us, and expected from us, when we agree to live in the Kingdom.

 “No one has greater love (agape) than this, that someone would lay down (tithemi) his life (psyche) for his friends.” John 15:13

This too-familiar verse speaks exactly to this concept.  I say “too familiar” because we sometimes misinterpret, or assume, it’s meaning from having heard it so often.   AGAPE is the “love that is given despite feeling”.  It is, in effect, “love by choice” to those who cannot or will not love back.  TITHEMI is translated to “lay down”, but also means “to present” or “to commit”.  But the key word here is PSYCHE, which is simply translated to the English, “life”.  This isn’t the “full life in Jesus”. That word is ZOE.  It isn’t our “physical” life/body, that word is BIOS.  No, this word could be translated as “life force/mind/heart/soul”; OR everything that a person truly is.

In other words, the verse may be more accurately translated to: “No one chooses a greater love toward others than this, that they live out their entire lives, even to the point of pouring it out completely in death, for their friends, neighbors, circles of influence.”

It’s about choosing to “put on the dog tags”; committing to not ONLY die physically, but to SERVE while living.  To “put on the dog tags” is to say good-bye to one’s physical life even before death.  It is a commitment to serve the “country” of THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

There is no half-way.  To BELIEVE Jesus is the Son of God, who died, rose, and is coming back…but not FOLLOW Him, is not much of a commitment.  To FOLLOW Him, ignorant of the price, or unwilling to “put on the dog tags” is something that Jesus Himself teaches against many times – “count the cost” He says again and again.  And so we must BOTH BELIEVE AND FOLLOW if we are to have any life at all.

Mom & Dad’s dog tags contain their identities, their birthdates…and their “religion” (so they could be buried appropriately, when their bodies were found…after they “completed their missions”).

 MY prayer is that my “friends” will know…without having to SEE my dog tags…that I am committed to “live out my very life-force, to the point of physical death” for them.  If I have to advertise it, I’m not doing it very well.

What about you?  Are you willing to put on the dog tags?

When people think of my “home state”, Washington, (especially those NOT from Washington) more than likely the iconic image of tall evergreen trees, mountains, the Puget Sound and the bustle of Seattle are the first things that come to mind.  However, I grew up on the other side of the state, the east side, east of the cascade mountain range that traps clouds and separates the lush green coastal forest from the fertile high plateau that covers the rest of the state.  Where I grew up is dry, filled with sage brush and low-lying, wind-blown bluffs (or what some Hoosiers call, “mountains”).  So, you see, to define Washington as “Seattle” is a little one-sided…Seattle is one city, a small part of a state, which is twice the size as Indiana.

When I used to travel to Washington to visit my now-deceased parents, it always took a little time to adjust to the inevitable fact that we all had aged.  One time I arrived, my Dad was standing in the airport as I walked right up to him…he didn’t recognize me until I spoke.  As for them, I had a certain picture in my mind as to who my parents were and what they looked like…that picture in my mind didn’t change at the same rate they did…so there was always a period of adjustment for me, at each visit, to realize that they were the same people.  They were still the fine, deeply-faithed, salt-of-the-earth characters they had always been…but more.  To have only known them in their 40’s or 50’s would be the same as meeting them in their 80’s…they were more than they were then, and (as they would admit) a little less.  In the same way, I, even as their son, didn’t really know them wholly…I didn’t know them like their congregation knew them, or like their friends knew them, or the young couple of neighbors who would come over every-once-in-a-while and fix, visit, keep in touch.

STATES and PEOPLE are simple concepts compared to God, they are finite entities compared to the infinite, they are “local” compared to omnipresent…so why do any of us arrogantly claim to have exclusive, and total, knowledge of Him?

Is the majestic Mt. Rainier the definition of Washington State, or the life of a retired Postman the definition of Tom Vale?  Of course not, but those definitions are sometimes the limit of person’s perception and knowledge.  YOU may see the Space Needle as Washington and I see the Columbia River…we are BOTH wrong if we think those things totally define the great state.  You may have known my mother as a good cook, and known her as my Mom…we are BOTH right, yet neither of those things really and truly define her.

God is beyond human definition, and to complicate matters even more, He deals with each of us individually, specifically and without prejudice.  To the blind who came to Jesus, He is the Healer…although He healed one through touch alone and another by spitting in the dirt and putting mud in his eye.  They both saw a different part of Jesus, but to divide the believers by claiming that Jesus ONLY heals through mud or ONLY heals through touch is to make God smaller than He is and to deny His greatness.

Unfortunately, much of the time THE CHURCH appears to make God “small”: one congregation claiming that the God who does “this or that” is the ONLY God, and any other definition is heresy.  If people and places are complex enough that one-hundred people might describe an individual one-hundred ways, then isn’t it just possible all of us only have a glimpse of what we try so desperately to define?  AND when we do try to define God it is often NOT so that we will KNOW God (our one purpose on this earth) but so that we can claim to be RIGHT.  In doing so, we offend our Heavenly Father.

But the best part is this: when we open minds and hearts to the possibility that someone else might have discovered a part of God we have not seen, our hunger and thirst to know Him and be known by Him grows.  We are satisfied and stretched at the same time.  To narrow the personality of God is to narrow life to only the “possible”.  To judge another person according to their perception of how God works is to dismember the ONE Body of Christ.

There is one body and one Spirit – just as you were called to one hope when you were called – one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.  EPHESIANS 4:4-6

Singing at a wedding this last weekend, I was reminded of this story from years back – one I’ve told before (several times, perhaps) – but a good lesson for me to remember.

She was a petite, beautiful, blonde girl who fell in love with a college linebacker while in school.  Back at home, in my home church, she asked me (still a high school student) to sing THE LORD’S PRAYER at her wedding.  Although I had done a few weddings already, this was still early on in my “sing for/playing for/presiding over” wedding career, and I was honored.

None of us had met or even seen her fiancé until the day he arrived for the wedding, from his home state.  It was a Saturday in July, on the desert side of my home state.  It was a sunny one-hundred-and-three degrees…but it was a DRY heat.  The old home sanctuary’s ancient cooling system (I’m not even sure they CALLED it air-conditioning at that point) was not keeping up.  But the sanctuary was beautiful; filled with hundreds upon hundreds of pink and cream roses.

The bride was beautiful, and the groom?  Well, he can be best described as “the largest object in the room” and easily the biggest man I have ever seen.  The presiding minister was five-ten and had to stand on one of the boxes the youth of the church used for one of their “musicals”, just to be seen by the congregation.

The groom was probably as uncomfortable with his suit, as his suit was with him.  And did I say it was hot?

The time came.  The vows and rings had been said and exchanged, and it was time for the prayer.  The Pastor nodded to me and the pianist began the familiar arpeggio intro to THE LORD’S PRAYER.  I began singing.  Now, this is a song I knew so I could kind of watch the proceedings (which was supposed to be prayer and communion for the couple) while I sang.  What I saw was a groom who started swaying, and then…to the horror of all present…started slowly falling forward, threatening to crush the Pastor.  The bride threw down her bouquet and grabbed her future husband’s tree-trunk arm to keep him up; as effectively as a squirt gun in a forest fire.

The Pastor yelled (yes, actually more like screamed) “Somebody help!”, while indicating me to keep singing.  BOTH fathers jumped up and ran to intervene, as they got closer they frantically indicated to the assembly for MORE MEN!

Meanwhile, I’m singing THE LORD’S PRAYER.  Is anyone praying?  It was the strangest underscore to the scene before me that I could imagine.  In the end it took ten average-sized men to gently lower the groom to a sitting position until he came to.

The wedding reception was held (as always, back in the day) in the church’s next-door fellowship hall.  I meandered back for cake, mints, nuts and pink punch.  The first person I saw was the bride’s mother, who came directly to me and said,

“She wants you to go get him out of the kitchen, he won’t come out.  She figured you’d be the best one to talk to him.”

Because…? And what?  Remember, I was a MUSICIAN (read: scrawny, non-jock) and this was a southern states linebacker.  Guys like that snap guys like me in tiny pieces, just as a light workout.  I also didn’t know him.  But, with a little prayer and naivete I entered the kitchen.  There I found a man, a few years older than me, as big as the house I grew up in, sitting in the corner…crying.

I went over and said hi, sat by him and introduced myself.

“Nice singing.” He said, “I can’t go out there…I ruined her wedding…everybody’s laughing.”

And this big guy suddenly became a small boy.  I didn’t (and still don’t) have the wisdom of Solomon, Ghandi or Dr. Phil at that point, so I probably said some stupid things.  Thankfully I don’t remember.  What I do remember is that he exited the kitchen to a loving crowd of people, I exited a hero, and I became friends with a really great guy.

Aside from the obvious life lesson: “If you’re going to get married on the hottest day of the year in an un-airconditioned church, be sure to ask the groom if he’s allergic to roses”…

…there is also the lesson: “You don’t know someone until you GET TO KNOW them.”

Humans look on the outside, but God looks on the heart. (I SAMUEL 16:7)  I’m prone to label and judge, and my guess is that some of you are also.  This early lesson to me was that the outsides don’t always advertise what’s inside.  And if you label too quickly, you might miss something wonderful.

One day, when I was out for a neighborhood walk, I noticed two boys and an adult walking along the street.  One of the young boys had a bike which he was “walking” behind the other young boy, who was slightly ahead.  The boy with the bike accidently (as it looked to me) ran into the boy who was walking, just a bump, nothing major.  Immediately the boy in front turned around and without so much as a word hit the other boy in the shoulder.  The boy with the bike threw it down and started to pound on the other boy…the adult immediately jumped in and broke up what had started.  Now I don’t know the “back story” I only know what I saw…but these boys were young, very young, and I wondered at what age we all learn to hit back when we are hurt.  Because it IS a “learned” behavior…and not the way we were created…and not the way of the Kingdom we “Followers” call Home.

At whatever age we’ve learned to hit back harder, or repay an equal amount of pain, we also learn to apply that principle to every part of our lives.  We learn the subtle ways of “getting back” or “getting even” and call it “fairness”.  We learn it, and we practice it.  It becomes a part of our politics: whatever happened to simply stating your platform and being polite, without attacking your opponent?  It becomes war: how long have countries fought, simply stating that they are paying back for the attack on them?  It all seems so natural…after all, I have the right to defend myself, don’t I?  I have the right to say that if you hurt me, you deserve pain also…isn’t that the case?

Some people who identify as “Christian” do the same thing, without a second thought, even though “fighting back”, “getting even”, “causing pain”, “an eye-for-an-eye” is completely, irrevocably, and undeniably against ALL that Jesus, the King, teaches in that black book they hold up while screaming curses at those who are different than them.

When our soldiers across the sea are killed, mutilated, their bodies dragged through the streets…I am not surprised, I am horrified that any human could do that to another, but am not surprised.  That is the kind of behavior I expect from the ignorant and ungodly.  I would hope that is never the kind of behavior any American citizen would engage in…but I know that I’m wishing for something that is probably not to be.

However, we who follow Jesus (and if you’re going to call yourself a “follower of Jesus” you actually DO need to “follow Jesus”…otherwise, you’re just a “fan”) should be behaving in a manner that HE teaches us.  No matter what country we live in, no matter if our bodies live in the USA or somewhere else, we are citizens of the KINGDOM OF GOD, and we simply don’t behave that way.
Not because we haven’t been hurt, we have.
Not because we haven’t been slandered, we have.
Not because we haven’t been humiliated, we have.
But because we simply don’t behave that way…no matter what they do to us.  The minute we hit them back, we become them, we ignore our citizenship in the Kingdom, and we cause God grief.  

If we are going to “follow” Jesus, then we have no other choice but to do as He commands: walk the extra mile, turn the other cheek, love (LOVE) our enemies and pray for them…and be IN the world…but, unlike “them”, not OF the world. 

My prayer is that there will come a time, soon, when others will know we are Christians by our love, and not just because our Facebook status says so.