Ahhh, Christmas Parties; one of the best things about the season, as far as I’m concerned.  Any excuse to get together with friends simply to get together.  Alright, there’s the food and drink, and that’s nice too, but really, how often do we take the time simply to BE with our friends?  Not often enough, so it seems.

I’m looking forward to a few get-togethers during the next few weeks, various hosts and various types of parties and dinners, and various “gigs”, but in each case I was invited, and accepted the invitation.  It was simple.  I didn’t have to fill out a form, join a club, recite an incantation, it was simply an invitation from a friend.  Some parties I’ve attended over the years have been popular and sometimes people have worked hard at getting invitations.  Some parties have been quiet, improvised and spontaneous, some elaborate and well-planned months in advance.  But in all cases the people who attended were asked by the host and accepted the invitation.  They were invited because the host wanted them there.  They were invited because they were family.  And they attended because they accepted the invitation.

The chaos and tension between denominations and between believers is often about the discussion as to who is a part of the Kingdom of God, and who will “go to heaven”.  It is often a contentious debate which requires PERSON A to do what they are commanded NOT to do (according to the scripture), which is to pronounce judgment about PERSON B’s heart and behavior.  It is, for some, the bottom-line discussion which separates the sacred from the profane.  If PERSON A feels that another doesn’t fulfill the requirements (as THEY see them) it doesn’t matter how good and fine PERSON B is, they are obviously NOT “going to Heaven” so do not deserve the love of other self-identified Christians.  Now, I’m not talking about harmful and destructive behavior, I’m talking about theological differences and people seeing God from a different angle.  I’m talking about people who made read the same Bible but come to different conclusions than another.  To pass judgment on those types of things requires a knowledge that no human has: the ability to read hearts.  All of this requires an authority that is not given to humans: the authority to judge, which is God’s place alone.

And yet it is so simple.  Who is a part of the Kingdom?  Who will be allowed to walk on the streets of gold?  God’s friends, who are given the invitation and accept.  It requires one to be a friend of God, not necessarily a friend of yours or mine.  It requires one to accept the invitation, given by God, not necessarily given by you or me.

It does Not require one to make a decision about attending, based on who else will be there.

There IS going to be a party.  WHO will be there?  Those who are friends of God, those who have been invited by God…those who have accepted the invitation.  This season, let us assume that ALL have been invited; sinners, seekers and saints…and treat them accordingly.  

After all, there are probably some who don’t believe you will be there either.

It all began as I watched her create her art, outside on my porch.  I was fascinated at her steady and strong work to create something both practical and beautiful.  To watch her delicate movements was like watching a dance…it was beautiful enough that I couldn’t take my eyes off her.

This was strange, because I had once been afraid of her.  That fear turned to fascination, then admiration, and then a mutual understanding and friendship.  Because I had never seen her as an individual, nor had I ever taken the time to notice her distinct gifts, personality and beauty.

In our imagined conversation I asked her for her name.  She told me it was Emily.  I expressed my thanks for allowing me to watch her.  She graciously, and somewhat blushingly allowed me within the confines of her workspace, but not too far.  I frightened her, she said.

“I frighten YOU?”, I asked.

She seemed shocked at my response and asked me to take a moment and look at myself from her point of view.  I was much larger, unknown, and she has children to protect and feed.  My presence alone is a threat not just to her, but to her entire family.  Having that “epiphany” I said that I understood, and kept my ground…a comfortable distance between us.

“But I’ve always been afraid of YOU.”, I said.

She smiled and looked at me as if I were a small child.  How could I fear her, she wondered?

“Because I didn’t know you”, I said.  “You are foreign to me, being even a different species”.

Her movements were furtive sometimes, and seemingly aggressive other times…she startled me.  AND I had heard she loved and lived in the dark spaces, poison was her weapon…to say nothing of her startling appearance, which strangely, as we spoke together, began to work on me as more exotic beauty than ugliness.

She smiled again, pausing in her work.  She asked if I didn’t see any sort of aggression I might feel from her was merely an instinct to be aware of something that could, without even realizing it, kill her?

And once again I had an epiphany.  My fear and distance were based on untruth.  My hate was based on tradition and misinformation.

Had I but taken the time to know a single spider, I would have had different feelings about all spiders.

Emily weaves a silken stained-glass window each evening; it is a wonder to behold.  Practical (not only food for her family, but keeps a certain amount of bugs away from the house) and beautiful; new each night.  We not only now live in peace, we live in harmony…she has become a friend.

How many faces, seen through the years, have I written off because I didn’t take the time to see what they created, or to ask why they behaved with fear or aggression toward me?  How many people have I written off because not only did they not look or behave like me.  How many have I ignored because I did not understand them, I didn’t WANT to understand them.  How many people have I seen as different, and therefore inferior to me.  God forgive me. And God forgive us all.

“Emily” has taught me a great lesson in God’s charge to love even my enemies.  She has taught me that loving even the least significant (from OUR perspectives) you love God.

I let Emily know that I’d still be wary of her, if she were in my house…she said the feeling was mutual.

“For you were all baptized into The King, and have put on Himself.  So now there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male nor female…you are all unified with The King, Jesus.  And if you belong to The King, then you are also Abraham’s descendants; heirs to the promise God gave to him.  GALATIANS 3:27-29

It’s that time of year again, when I think about this poem (which someone also used as their audition monologue for our Alley Theatre this last weekend):

WHEN the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,
And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,
And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it’s then the time a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,
With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock…”

My mom used to quote this poem, by local Hoosier James Whitcomb Riley, to me when I was young.  I never dreamed that I’d live in Riley’s part of the country, and experience the color of his words in this poem.   Not only that, but I’m kind of surprised that many people here in Anderson don’t know that he lived here (yes, here in Anderson) and was a reporter/writer for the ANDERSON DEMOCRAT (the 1877 Anderson newspaper).

Riley was despondent over the fact that he could not get his poems published.  And so this unknown poet wrote a poem, entitled “LEONAINIE” and signed it with the letters E.A.P.  Another reporter from a rival newspaper in Kokomo linked the poem to the poet, EDGAR ALLEN POE and it was immediately and widely circulated as a “long-lost Poe poem”.  This proved Riley’s point that only famous, published writers EVER got published, and those with just as much talent, but of no fame NEVER got published.

Riley announced the hoax after much national acclaim for “LEONAINIE” and was promptly fired from the ANDERSON DEMOCRAT, not because of the hoax, but because the Kokomo paper got all of the notoriety that Anderson thought it deserved.  Someone, however, noticed the brilliance of Riley’s writing style, and gave him a chance…the rest is history.

Things have a way of working out.  And although James Whitcomb Riley gave no claim to being a believer or follower of Christ, this story does remind me that Jesus also has a way of working through tangles that He Himself did not cause; through our own deception and convoluted lives to bring out something of worth, beauty, and quality.

When I look at the path we at CENTRAL CHRISTIAN took to get to the place we are now, I am astounded.  I have no doubts that I “all things work together for good, for those and with those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.”, but sometimes, in the middle of dark times, and frustrating times (as was the case with James W. Riley) when one KNOWS that they’re not doing what they were MADE to do…God seems somewhat distant.

I’m here to tell you that God has better things in mind for you then you could possibly realize, His plans are always perfect, His dreams are bigger than YOUR dreams, and it’s always darkest just before sunrise.

James Whitcomb Riley made his own plans to gain fame, to achieve the recognition that he thought he deserved.  Sometimes I think like that also and rely on my own limited wisdom to move forward.  But in the Kingdom of God, we should always realize that God has ALL the answers where we have few, God sees ALL things where we see but a little, God’s plan is perfect for EVERYONE involved, not just us.

So today, as you experience the “frost on the pumpkin”, think of Anderson’s own James Whitcomb Riley (who is rumored to have visited Central Christian Church with a local friend) and remember that you have a destiny, God knows your gifts, let HIM decide when the world should notice…

…and it will be perfect for everyone!

In my office at church I have a wall filed with crosses.  Some are big, some are small, some metal and some wood.  Some are hand-made, others a little more industrial.

When I moved into my office (2007) I had 5 crosses that I wanted to display, but that was too few to really know what to do with…so I went to HOBBY LOBBY, where there was a sale on “wall décor” (including crosses) and got the idea for a “wall of crosses” from their display…the beauty was in the way each item was a cross, but each significantly individual and unique…I purchased another 5 crosses to add to my collection.

Soon after, my Dad sent me 2 crosses that he had carved upon the occasion of me stepping into the pulpit at Central, I received a couple of “gift crosses” upon my installation and since then have received several more from weddings, etc.  I’ve also started collecting a cross when I travel, if I see an interesting one.  All that to say, my wall now is covered a bit and I’ll need to start moving crosses around to the next wall.  It looks like I’m trying to keep vampires out of the office, at this point.

As I write, I can look up and directly at the “cross wall” and see some beautiful crosses, some crosses that have a meaning because of who gave them, or where I purchased them…but they all have an “intrinsic” value because of their own beauty.

On one hand…The cross: an implement of torturous death.  Even the symbol of a cross could strike a deep and unfathomable fear in the people of Jesus’ day.  This method of execution was devised as to cause as much suffering as possible, while displaying the suffering as a warning to anyone else who might think of crossing the Roman government of the time.  The cross: a symbol, not only of state-sanctioned death, but state-sanctioned inhuman torture…an horrific symbol, one that Believers and Followers since have stared at daily without, perhaps, knowing the implications of such a symbol, or feeling the depth of terror that symbol would strike in all of our Believing and Following forebears.  To think that such a symbol would be carved with such love, worn as jewelry, and decorating a Pastor’s wall is almost morbidly-idiotic.

On the other hand…God, the “Spiritual Rumplestiltskin”…as I like to call Him sometimes, since He “turns straw into gold”…has taken the cross and actually re-created it as a thing of beauty, goodness and truth.  The mere fact that this instrument of torture and death, used on His own Son, has become a symbol for a beautiful gift of freedom and love is also unfathomable.  God, who takes the chaos and makes order, takes garbage and makes jewels, takes the broken things and makes them new…God, who currently is restoring the entire world to newness and prepping it for the Age to Come has done a wonderful thing with this cross.

We often hear, “Everything happens for a reason.”  Which, and I hate to burst anyone’s bubble, is NOT truth…well not the whole truth.  Bad things are generally not something that God plans, in fact the “reason” much, if not all, of the bad things in the world happen because we’re stupid and make BAD choices…THAT’s the “reason”.  What God does is take the bad and make it good.  God takes the tangle that we’ve created, and at our request, creates a tapestry. Wasn’t the evilness of the cross part of God’s “plan”? The sacrifice that needed to be made by His Son was necessary.  Were the evil plans and thoughts of those who eventually led Jesus through the streets and to Golgotha all a part of God’s will?  Of course not, and neither were any of those people involved mere robots or puppets without a choice…but God knew, because He exists “out of time” and could see what was GOING to happen (from our perspective of time) before it actually happened to us…and the evil became beautiful.  It is God to make “all things new”.  It is in His nature (and ours, for that matter) to “re-create”.

And so, I display my wall of crosses proudly.  This evil thing, this wicked idea to make another human suffer the pain and humility of inhuman death has been turned…as all things that are imperfect, wicked, twisted and evil will also turn.

When I look at my wall now, I try to remember the “journey” this cross made, from something designed to tortuously kill to something that is, for me, a gate to the garden.