Psalm 44 is a prayer that doesn’t easily mold into our typical categories. There is no resolution, no confession, just a confused plea in the face of both relentless enemies and the seeming absence of God. The psalm is an exercise in contrasts that only serves to further indict God. The psalmist remembers God’s mighty acts in the past (v. 1, 20) but it’s the Lord who has forgotten. The people have not turned away from God (vv. 17-18) but it’s the Lord who has abandoned the people (v. 19). The peoples bless God and boast in his name (v8), the enemies meanwhile mock and deride them (vv.13-16) and all the while, God is sleeping (v. 23). God’s people are reduced to dust (v. 25)—unless—unless, God will arise (v. 26).

But that’s the thing. At least from the vantage point of Psalm 44, he doesn’t. There is no alternative heavenly perspective showing us how God is not really absent or sleeping, there is no response from heaven to suddenly change the situation, there’s not even a final resolve on the part of the psalmist to remain steadfast in trust and praise. Only one final desperate, perhaps resigned, plea- “rise up, come to our help. Redeem us for the sake of your steadfast love.”

Many of us have probably etched our names into the cell wall of this sort of dark night of despair, searching our innermost thoughts and motivations and concluding, like Job, “I haven’t turned away, I haven’t done anything wrong!” And then in the same breath, given voice to the accusatory question, “Where are you?” But whether we know this kind of despair well or simply bear the memory in our bones, Psalm 44 is a witness.

It is a witness that in the sacred record of the salvation of God, there is a place for this sort of protest. It sounds almost hubristic to dare that we have done it right, we have stayed the course, and God has forgotten, God has dozed off. Theologically, we know this is not the case. Paul picks up the phrasing from this very psalm echoing the charge against God—“you have made us like sheep for slaughter”—in Romans 8 where he famously finishes with his final flourish: there is nothing that can separate us from the love of God in Christ. Nothing. Not what’s happening in Psalm 44, not life, not death. And yet, without systematic theologizing, explanation, or easy resolution, Psalm 44 is right there in the middle of the Bible as an invitation to bear witness. Psalm 44 may be one of the most human-centered prayers in the scriptures. God and his perceived absence serves as a foil for the asserted faithfulness of the one offering the prayer. It’s truly stunning the depths of honesty that God encourages in us.

But as much as Psalm 44 is a witness to our own individual experiences, in the hands of the church, Psalm 44 is a witness to the plight of our sisters and brothers whose daily life often reflects the tension of Psalm 44. I think about the church in places like Nigeria, Ukraine, Cambodia, and so many others. Gatherings of faithful people, dedicated to the Lord surrounded by violence and oppression, crying out to God. And yet their situation is not resolved, it does not change. Psalm 44 is a witness to their cries and it demands that we not forget them in our prayers.

Psalm 44 is a gift of grace, a witness to the love of God even when that love seems distant.

Raving. Sobbing. Longing. Remembering better days. Questioning it all. Psalm 42 weaves some of the most beautiful phrases and images of the whole Psalter with the haunting questions:

Where is your God?

Why are you downcast, o my soul?

The psalmist is a man undone. He will settle for nothing less than God in all of his fullness. But his is no epicurean calculus—Qohelet of Ecclesiastes fame says, “look, I’ve tried it all, none of it works”— nor is it pious sloganeering, bending the ear of the divine with platitudes. No, this is desperation.

The psalmist has been lost in the wilderness, through his thirst for relief, his sandpaper throat and his pounding head, he only had one source of water: his tears (v. 3). Every now and then he would see the mirage of a memory, a flashback to the time where he led the procession of God’s people into the Temple, praising and feasting. The psalmist can envision a waterfall, cascading with refreshment and goodness, and it beckons to the deepest longings within him (v.7) But like all the water in this barren land, the image of fleeting joy would evaporate.

why are you downcast, o my soul?

It’s no reminder to self, to “cheer up! Be happy!” The psalmist asks the question, whether it’s rhetorical or taking an honest inventory we don’t know. But he simply and starkly concludes, “My soul is downcast within me” (v. 6). It’s the prologue to the other, far more disquieting question:

where is your God?

Seriously, where is he? As the deer moves traverses terrain filled with thorns, slippery slopes, and predators all for a sip of water, so the psalmist’s very existence hinges upon a drop from the fountain of living water. And yet, searching frantically, losing consciousness and sanity, the psalmist still lacks the one thing he needs:

I say to God, my rock,

“Why have you forgotten me?

Why must I walk about mournfully

because the enemy oppresses me?”

As with a deadly wound in my body,

my adversaries taunt me,

while they say to me continually,

“Where is your God?”

Psalm 42 is a stunning testament to the human spirit and to the lingering power of an encounter with God. We are given no discernible change in circumstance for the psalmist, no quick resolution. The question “where is your God?” Rings like a haunting, dissonant chorus. But the psalmist holds on to the love that God has sworn. The psalmist makes beauty, from the suffering.

Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God.

Perhaps you’ve found yourself in this place. You know that you’re down, you know why you’re down, and you know only God to his presence and promise can fix it—but nothing seems to be happening, and nothing is working, and God seems so very distant and aloof. Our forefathers and mothers in the faith called this the dark night of the soul, the purifying furnace of God’s perceived absence. Where is God? It’s not the whole picture, but in this brief glimpse, he’s only in the hope, only in the longing that refuses to settle for anything than less than God. Psalm 42 is God’s meeting us to wrestle and struggle through the dark night. On the other side of the dark is a blessing, a new name, and a new way of walking in the world.

Hope in God. You shall again praise him.

The scriptural stories and prayers offer no spectators’ vista, no safe seats in the back from which we can quietly slip out just before the show wraps up. Instead, they immerse us in the drama of salvation, improvising with God and our neighbors the plot twists of being human. Our obsession with ourselves, in our modern western world, has sought to subdue story, to make it subservient to self—to self-help and self-actualization. But herein lies the genius of the library of the scriptures, stories that are true, resist our domesticating and dominating impulses. The individual psalms are not ahistorical prayers, each “applicable” or “relevant’ to every experience or feeling. Rather, are a call to receive the gift of salvation, renewal of our selves through recognizing and relinquishing our selves—that which the scriptures call repentance.

Because the stories in the Bible refuse to serve us, they refuse to valorize us as the hero and so we have to assume other roles—we play the villain, the victim, those who don’t see the whole picture. Psalm 41 is a good exercise in reading the Bible well. There will be times that call for us to read it at face value, to read it from the vantage point of the narrator, to echo his prayers, and to receive his word as witness. And there will be times, likely more frequent, that call for us to soberly acknowledge that we are the one’s who have done harm. We have looked on others in malice wishing ill upon them (v. 5). We have hearts that gather slander (v. 6) soaking it in so that we can gleefully spread gossip (v. 6, 8). We have hated those who have placed feasts before us (v. 9).

David ends with a plea for mercy so that he can enact vengeance (v. 10). But God is far too merciful for that. Instead of giving into our demands for retribution, God will send revelation. Jesus reveals both God and humanity fully. Jesus unveils God brimming with beauty and grace and how to be human in a light so fierce. And at the same time how readily we lift up our heels against the one who handed us the bread of his body, broken for us.

Jesus’ integrity upholds him in the crossfire of our treacheries because he draws from the everlasting well of God’s good pleasure (v. 11)—this is my son with whom I am well-pleased (Matthew 3v17). Jesus’ enemies cannot triumph over him (v.11) because he refuses to hate them—forgive them father for they know not what they do (Luke 23v34). Jesus will be kept in the presence of God forever (v. 12) because he is the eternal word of doxology—it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him (Acts 2v24).

To read the story well is to be honest about our part in it. Jesus assumes our role of brokenness and blasphemy so that we can assume his role of blessedness and blessing. This story will not serve us but it will set us free.

Psalm 40 is a dissenting voice against the prevailing cultural mythology. To a world vacillating between the poles of bootstrap theology and abandoned helplessness, Psalm 40 offers testimony and exhortation: wait on the Lord. David was in quicksand, sinking, slowly swallowed by the soil (v. 2). The hard thing about quicksand is that every impulse urges us to struggle, to scrape our way out but that only results in falling deeper into the mire. When our circumstances start to spiral out of control we clamor and grasp for any sort of foothold. We hear the assured self-help wisdom of those who captained their own fate, we look for quick fixes, handmade gods, remedies that swear that they will take away the pain (just don’t look too closely at the side effects).

If that doesn’t work we start negotiating with the divine, we regard the cosmos as a marketplace… “help me and I’ll do this for you…” “get me out of this and I’ll never do that again.” We offer our promises, hoping that heaven will hear and help. We say anything we can. Jesus warned us, “when you pray don’t heap up empty phrases” as some desperate attempt to secure the ear of God. Jesus didn’t say that because there’s something inherently wrong with clamoring for help, with crying out with our words; but rather because Jesus was inviting us into a much less anxious approach, to pray simply trusting that God loves us, he hears us, and he will never leave us.

Psalm 40 declares “sacrifice and offering you did not desire” (v. 6a), life is not defined by how much we can do or give for God, life is a gift, expressed in what God has done for us. David writes, “Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you”(v. 5a). Rather than climbing our way out of our quicksand by our many declarations of fidelity and empty promises, God wants to carve out listening ears, a waiting heart. He wants to fill our lives to overflowing in awe of wonders “too many to declare”“ with grateful hearts pouring forth “a new song” “a hymn of praise.”

David knows well the game of trying to play personal messiah and he’s offering us not simply wisdom of a better path, but salvation, a salvation not achieved, but received. 

Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false Gods (v. 4).

In the quicksand of life there is a God who lifts us out, not just saving us from our peril but blessing us in the midst of it. Wait on the Lord. 

About five years into my life as a pastor, I was ready to quit and apply for law school. And then I picked up Eugene Peterson’s book on pastoral faithfulness “Working The Angles.” I have since learned that my story is not all that uncommon. Reading that book not only nourished my aching soul but gave me a vision for becoming the kind of pastor I could live with being. I have since read every word that I could find that Eugene has written. It feels like I knew him (Eugene Peterson passed away in 2018, I wrote some reflections upon his passing here) and have become acquainted with many people who did know him and spent time with him and his wife, Jan, at their house in Montana. I have so enjoyed hearing their stories that paint, in even more vivid resolution, this man who has had such a profound impact on me. 

Winn Collier’s biography of Eugene’s life, A Burning In My Bones, is the closest most of us will get to hearing the man speak in his gentle, raspy voice but it is a work of profound care and insight. Collier writes with a sermonic eye for words and pastoral intuition offering not only a recounting of events but insights into the man whose life touched, among countless others, the  likes of Phil Jackson, Pat Robertson, and Bono. Collier doesn’t write specifically for pastors but he honors Eugene’s lifelong goals of inspiring and restoring the pastoral imagination of American pastors. Collier frames his recounting of Eugene’s life centrifugally from his pastoral vocation. A prayer in Eugene’s journal illuminates Eugene’s how Eugene’s greatest ambition aligned with his daily work in the parish.

All I want to do is become a saint—but secretly, so no one knows it—a saint without any trappings…Every detail of routine and imagination, every letter I write, phone call made, gesture and encounter—gathered and placed on the altar and bound—every day another trek to Moriah (Kindle location 2985)

Eugene lived chasing congruence, secret sainthood and Collier traces that journey masterfully, allowing the seemingly mundane events of Eugene’s life to add up to something much holier, much more glorious than than they appear at first glimpse. William Stafford, in his poem Bi-Focal writes, 

“So, the world happens twice—
once what we see it as;
second it legends itself
deep, the way it is. 

Collier invites us into the legend, into the depths, into the weight of the way things really are in the life of a man who lived a life before the Lord. And he does so by highlighting the furnace that forged Eugene’s sainthood: the local congregation, the community “of sinners gathered before God” where “one of the sinners is called pastor” (Working The Angles). 

Collier achingly draws out the sense that all pastors have from time to time that we are under-appreciated and alone. Collier tells the story surrounding the introduction to “Working The Angles” where Eugene would “level some of the sharpest words Eugene ever wrote about the conflict between people’s expectations and the work of a pastor” (Kindle Location 2491). Eugene and Jan were about to head off for a sabbatical, they had joined a friend for a tour of the Holy Land. They walked the streets that Jesus, Jacob, and Jeremiah walked sharing the same views that the biblical writers had gazed upon as they pondered the inspiration from the Spirit. It was a rich trip. But, as it goes for leaders, the moment Jan and Eugene touched down back in Baltimore, Eugene received a phone call from a person in the church: people were talking (there’s always a phantom mob), criticizing Eugene, thinking that he was using his upcoming sabbatical as a cover for leaving the church. Collier includes a journal entry of Eugene’s following this contentious meeting with leaders in his church. Eugene writes:

I was furious after Tuesday night’s session meeting… On Wednesday I got through my visits a little early and stopped at the church: from 5:30 to 6 o’ clock I locked myself in the sanctuary and yelled/shouted/prayed for half an hour. Got all the tensions out of my stomach…Haven’t done this for a long time, but it was wonderful, even though temporary. (Kindle location 2492)

Eugene’s insights and observations shared in his books about pastoring were not from the idyllic setting of a “successful church,” rather they were the product of trying experiences from churches just like the one’s we all attend and many of us lead.

Collier gives us insight into the tensions Eugene often felt internally, rarely feeling like he belonged, like Moses in Midian. Collier includes the journal entry from Eugene:

Maybe I need to explore and examine exactly what this Bel Air “exile” means: the cultural depravation, the absence of friends, the separation from mountains and wilderness, the constant fight/struggle for pastor/writer identity (nobody asking me to do what I do best —and what at least a few people across the country affirm is my best). Does this add up to suffering? I feel that it does. (Kindle location 2608).

And perhaps most relatable of all, for every pastor who pastors in the Peterson-sense of the word, is this sense of not measuring up as a leader and at the same time wanting more for the people that we lead than they often want for themselves. Collier relays Eugene’s own sense of the all-too-familiar post-Sunday letdown, where the sense of possibility meets reality where there just aren’t enough people or enough money. Again, Collier expertly lifts Eugene’s voice to the fore as Eugene writes:

And now I reflect back on yesterday—the bittersweetness of each Sunday— the energy and sense of reality; and the hurt of so many absences. Why isn’t everyone there? Why isn’t that sanctuary full on Sunday morning? If worship is as good as people say it is, if I preach this well, if the community is flourishing— why aren’t more people pulled in, more people faithful? This is a deepening hurt and sorrow. I feel the personal rejection, but also the God-rejection—it is not me they are being so feckless with, but God. Do they have any idea what they are missing? What a poor trade they are making.(Kindle location 2618)

A pastoral prayer if there ever was one. 

Collier is not shy about the tensions and shortcomings in Eugene’s life. He features candid conversations with his son Eric, who tells of both glorious long car rides across Eastern Washington and “Timothy’ meetings with his father probing the pastoral vocation and, yet, feeling as if their was always an emotional chasm where he always wanted more from his dad ^[1]A book released this past year, Letters To A Young Pastor, features letters from Eugene to his son, Eric, discussing the pastoral vocation. It fills out this tension nicely and is itself a beautiful … Continue reading. Collier describes Eugene’s battles with alcohol and the very real struggles that Eugene and Jan endured in their overall, quite happy marriage. Again Collier lets Eugene’s voice shine through as Eugene writes, “I think I have not so much been fulfilled in marriage as deepened, chastened, honed, and simplified” (Kindle location 2660).

I wish I could have shared that space, heard Eugene’s whispery voice over the stillness of that mountain air for myself. But for all of us who have been blessed by Eugene’s life and never had the chance to meet him, Winn Collier’s biography, is a beautiful and honest narration of Eugene’s beautiful and honest life.  It’s been said of pastors that we really only get one sermon, we just preach that one over and over again in different ways. The best sermons have compelling stories, practical applications, a good bit of mystery and tension, and focus all of our attention on the grace of God in Christ. Through Collier’s pen we hear Eugene’s life as enacted sermon, a life of congruence. A Burning In My Bones is a work worthy of the man, and worthy of its title as the book is sure to inspire Christian leaders to see how a holy life whether widely known or lived in obscurity “legends itself” and is an invitation for us to fix our eyes upon Jesus and join Eugene in the unwavering quest for congruence. 

In our little corner of New Jersey, it’s been a year since the world shut down (ha, remember “Two weeks to stop the spread?”Alas.) At the beginning of March our church plant was not yet 11 months old— a baby church with all of the hope, potential, energy, and, of course, growing pains of a young child. On March 8, 2020 we held our last in-person gathering. And though the shadow of the pandemic loomed larger than we knew at the time, it was a beautiful celebration— and to think how we would have sung had we known it would be our last chance? That week, I went back and forth in my own mind about what was the wise course of action. Wasn’t the early church known for their steadfastness in the face of deadly plagues? Doesn’t Hebrews tell us to not stop meeting together? But doesn’t this virus seem to uniquely designed to spread in church settings? How do I hold all of this together?

On March 13th, I sent a letter to our congregation detailing why we would not be gathering for the foreseeable future. We are still waiting to behold that unknown date when we can gather again, the hour which, it seems, only the Father knows. I have found myself reflecting quite a bit on the past year, what it means to be the church and what it means to be a pastor. I wanted to get some of my thoughts down as a way of processing and also, I hope, as a way of inviting others to offer their insights.

Through the duration of the pandemic, we as a church, my family, and me personally have all seen God’s hand of provision, correction, and encouragement. We’ve also shared great anguish at the way the pandemic has affected different segments of our already fragmented and unjust society. We’ve sent people out with blessing who have been with us since the very beginning of the life of our church not with a hug and laying on of hands but with the awkward Zoom goodbye. We’ve had seasons of collective malaise, where the thought of one more Zoom call, one more digital church service (an oxymoron if there ever was one), one more sermon preached to an audience of one (the lens of the camera not God), one more Sunday morning with no hugs, no songs, no table was too much to bear.

I see so much of this past year through the lens of John 6. I wanted to offer a summary and some thoughts on this passage but if you’re just here for the bulletpoint reading, you can scroll down to the next section:

John 6

Most of Jesus’ miracles involve an incredible reversal in the life of a small few. In John 6, Jesus performs an astonishing miracle, but this time he does it at scale. At least 5,000 people are with Jesus and his closest followers far from the city center. Jesus, turns to Philip, and says, “Where are we to buy bread for all these people to eat?” Philip is stunned at even the question. He responds to Jesus, “If we had six months wages we couldn’t feed all of these people!” But one of Jesus’ other disciples chimes in, “One of the boys here has some fish and bread.” You know those ideas you have that sort of escape your mouth before you realize how dumb they are? The fish and the bread the boy are carrying are enough to feed the boy and maybe two-three members of his family. The math is still decidedly not in their favor.

But the arithmetic of the Kingdom of God has its own intractable rules: an abundance quotient, the constant of God’s love, pouring himself out into the world. Jesus doesn’t think Andrew’s suggestion is foolish at all, his eyes light up and he says, “tell the people to sit down in groups.” Jesus takes the meager lunch, lifts it towards the heavens and pronounces blessing over it. And then they start passing it out. And, amazingly, everyone has not only just enough, but eats until they are filled.

John 6vv12-13 says:

John 6:12 When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.”

This is the kind of miracle people don’t just witness, they participate in it, they receive from it, they are nourished by it. And, well, they look at what has transpired and they say, “This is the prophet! This Jesus will be our king! We’ll never go hungry again!” They saw Jesus as a meal ticket. You can’t blame them, really. Most of them were peasants, living a largely subsistence life, burdened by taxes from the Roman Empire and trying to provide for their families. They tried to make him king by force, but Jesus in John’s gospel is not subjected to anybody else’s whims, he simply withdraws from the crowd.

During the night, Jesus casually takes a stroll on the water, joins his disciples in a boat and they sail to the other side of the sea. The crowds wake up the next morning, realize that Jesus is gone and set out in pursuit. They come to Jesus at the other side of the sea. They say to Jesus, “Hey we came here after you, we want you to be our king, but we need some more of that bread.” Jesus, though, does not oblige them. He says to them, “You’re here because you want something to eat but there’s something deeper going on here.

John 6v35
Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.

And then he says, to the crowds:

“Very truly, I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. (John 6v53)

This understandably perplexes the crowds and as they continue to talk, they grow more and more agitated with Jesus and they realize that he’s not going to do what they want him to do, not going to be king on their terms.

Because of this many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him. (John 6vv66)

Then, in a moment I’ve always found incredibly moving, Jesus turns to the twelve disciples and says, “Are you going to go too?” I think we read this, and thus Jesus, poorly if we hear any callousness or indifference in this question. As the crowds walk away disappointed in Jesus, he turns to his closest companions wondering if they are leaving now as well. But Peter, with his ever-present un-beguiled erudition responds:

Simon Peter answered him, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.
We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God. (John 6vv68-69)

Where else would we go? Peter asks.

Through the ongoing pandemic, in tracing back the moments in my life as a pastor and in our life as a church this past year, I see the following:

1. The Church Is Incarnate Or Nothing

Karl Rahner once remarked that the Christian of the future was mystical or wouldn’t exist at all. The crisis of the pandemic has reinforced to me the notion that the church of the future is physical, embodied, incarnate presence or non-existent. I have heard the term “phygital” used on several occasions and it offends just about every one of my sensibilities—most notably my love for the English language and my disdain for cliches. I know many have theorized that the pandemic marks a crisis accelerant towards digital everything— even church— but I’m just not so sure. Even as people are hailing the triumph of the work from home experiment (and, in my house we benefit from this shift greatly), I am just not so sure that the lesson that we are learning is that everything can, or should, be done digitally. In John 6, the message Jesus is telling to the people is not that there’s physical bread and spiritual bread and you need spiritual bread. No, Jesus literally tells them to feed on his flesh and blood (which of course is never not a weird thing to say). But Jesus is not telling us to become vampires or cannibals he is re-orienting the focus of the people. They are focused on the bread, Jesus is saying turn your attention towards me, no less physical, seek me first.

A related note, in John’s gospel Jesus is the word made flesh (John 1v14). Paul describes the church as the body of Jesus (1 Cor. 12). I have been very reluctant to call what I have been doing in giving talks during the pandemic as preaching sermons. A sermon is an embodied word, a sacrament shared where the preacher, much like the boy in John 6, offers our pittance of loaves and fish, Jesus takes our work and offerings and blesses it, and through his power it nourishes the world. On the other side of the absence of presence that this pandemic has necessarily created, I feel strongly that we are going to see a revival of the preached word and people’s response to it.

2. We Are A Loaves and Fish People

Being 11 months old when all of this really erupted, I had my share of worries about what the pandemic would mean for the viability of our church. Planting a church is hard in the best of times (most don’t make it). Planting a church whose core values all revolved around being present with one another seemed impossible. And though we’ve had to say goodbye to so many dear friends who have finished their time in Princeton, I have seen God take our small offerings and multiply them.

I have seen our church continue to pour out, to give to feed hungry families in our community who were affected by the shutdowns. I have seen the resilient folks in our church continue to show up on the Zoom calls, to offer that small boxed version of themselves through awkward interruptions and the longing to be near. I have seen worship leaders recording songs on their phones without all the compression, reverb, and grace of live sound (and still sound stunningly clear and beautiful, no less).

Many churches have closed throughout this time, many more will follow. I don’t know what the future holds for Ecclesia (right now, I think it’s nothing but bright and a servant in our community) and really, there’s this weird triumphalism that often is implied when churches talk about what they have accomplished as if it were their own strategy or brand that succeeded as opposed to factors like God’s grace, the privilege of different segments of society, or just dumb luck. But what I do know, is that Jesus offers himself to bless, to multiply, to take what’s placed in his careful hands and bring us our daily bread.

3. We Only Get Fed In Community

Jesus when he enacts his profound miracle in John 6 has the people sit down in groups. There’s such a beautiful pace and dignity to this picture. Jesus providing this profound blessing and people sharing in it together, seated. Can you imagine the laughter and wonder present in this scene?

In the slogan machine that is the modern evangelical industrial complex, the notion of “getting smaller” is nothing new. Pastors of huge churches, in medium-sized arenas, from high-tech stages lit by tens of thousands of dollars worth of theater lighting are always trying to tell us to get smaller. I really have no inherent reaction to the setting nor do I presume bad motives on the part of those saying these things, but the juxtapositions are always a bit ironic.

But through the course of the pandemic, whether due to crowd size limitations or just the practical difficulties having too many boxes trying to converse on a zoom call, the church has had to really embrace what it means to get smaller. I sure I am like many pastors when I think about the fierce love and leadership our Ecclesia Community Leaders (our version of small groups) have demonstrated. These leaders have been endlessly creative hosting game nights and watching movies together over Zoom, having bonfires outside in the frigid cold of winter, bringing groceries to the front door when one of their group has contracted covid. These communities and the leaders have been the lifeblood of our church and I think we can see from John 6 a principal emerging: we only get fed in community.

For my part, the faithful work of the pastoral visit has become front and center again. Without the front door on a Sunday morning for those casual check-in’s and “I see you’s,” I’ve had to make a concerted effort with more phone calls and messages. The emphasis on the local and the relational has only been further impressed on me and what it means to be a pastor and for us to be a church.

4. Jesus Loves You Enough To Tell You To Drink His Blood

The people, as we saw in John 6 have designs on Jesus and what he can do for them. What they get in response is Jesus’ cryptic, “eat my flesh, drink my blood?” What on earth? When the pandemic shut everything down, our church was starting to see that ever-elusive momentum really present in our community. New people were coming each week, many students from the local university were wandering through our doors for the first time, our kids leaders and volunteers had come to an incredibly hard-won equilibrium that is providing a space for honoring children in a church that only has one gathering. Stuff was happening.

And then, over night (literally), the campus shut down, the world stopped and much of that up and to the right energy was just gone. As the leader, I was looking at things and just feeling a bit like “really?” And then as the pandemic dragged ever on, the gradual feeling of dread: “We just got this thing off the ground, are we going to have to start all over?”

I had my expectations and my hopes and many of them were turning out to be dreams deferred or all out destroyed. But in the midst of this shaking of my vision of the future, what I found was Jesus. Jesus telling the people in John 6 to “drink his blood” is not some hopelessly evasive, intentionally enigmatic statement, it’s Jesus’ genuine offer of himself, his life. C. S. Lewis says in the face of grieving his beloved wife, “I need Christ not something that resembles him.”

The pandemic has deepened the notion in me that I need Christ not something successful I can do for him. I need Christ not my best-laid projections of what I want God to be like and do for me. I need Christ more than food, more than water.

Also instructive here is the way that Jesus’ response functions as one of differentiation. Jesus is marked by the desire to do the will of the father, he will not receive any extraneous identity to that one. The crowds in their anxiety try to project an identity upon Jesus. Ironically, they have the right title, but the fact that Jesus is king can never be separated from the way that Jesus is king. Jesus rejects the projections of the mob. As a pastor, this year it has been tempting, especially with everything being online, to adopt a different persona, to grasp, rather than receive. The crowd wants to “take Jesus” and make him king by force. Jesus will later tell Pilate, who is reveling in his perceived authority over Jesus that Pilate would have no power were it not given to him from above. Jesus’ example here is one that empowers us as leaders, to not grasp, to not allow our vocations to be seized by the crowd and used for their own ends, but to receive our designation as beloved of God.

John artfully juxtaposes Peter’s response with that of the crowds. Remember who has the food in this story? It’s not the disciples who say to Jesus, “look in our collective purse, we have some food.” It’s a random boy. Peter and the rest of the disciples don’t have much to eat either. But when Jesus turns to them and asks them, “Are you leaving too?” Peter answers lucidly: where else would we go, you alone have the words of life. Peter’s answer is an invitation to us all, when all is not going the way we want it to, when it doesn’t seem like God’s responding to our agenda, when we’re hungry, tired, and want to stop, we find Jesus. Dallas Willard says “God’s address is at the end of your rope.”

I know it sounds like a small comfort, or like a pat spiritual answer to urgent, here-and-now issues. But the pandemic has taught me anew, Jesus is not just enough, not just a scraping out a subsistence life. He is extravagant, lavishing upon us an abundance not just found in the smallness of the blessings I seek from his hands but in the world-creating power of the words of his mouth and the radiant bliss of the joy of his face. Even in the face of disappointment, perplexity, uncertainty he alone has the words of life, and his words bring forth a life without lack.

5. Nothing Will Be Wasted

After the miracle moment has passed and everybody has eaten their fill, Jesus instructs the disciples, “Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.” Though in John 6, the fragments are the afterglow of God’s provision, we see throughout the scriptures, this God who makes the ruins come to life, who makes a forest grow from a field of tree stumps, who tells the dead bones to live. This past year has been filled with fragments, shards of sorrow, ache, and fear. We’ve all suffered to one degree or another. And yes some of us have suffered more.

For those of us who hearts are broken or are visions for our lives seem like they are forever altered, Jesus is gathering up the pieces.

For those who have felt completely abandoned, Jesus is gathering up the pieces.

For those pastors who have tried to hold it all together who have asked themselves, “what’s the point?” Jesus is gathering up the pieces.

For those who saw glimpses of a real reckoning around the racial past of America only to be disappointed again by churches who rushed into the fray, hosting “conversations” and have now, just as quickly, moved on with the news cycle, Jesus is gathering up the pieces.

This past year feels like a lost year in so many ways. Time with family and church, jobs, perhaps even a loved one, lost. For some, a whole year of school, gone. Such a strange paradoxical time where time is at once moving so quickly yet seems to be standing still. But this last lesson, for me, is the most crucial.

Nothing will be lost. Nothing will be wasted.

Jesus in his careful hands of blessing will gather up the fragments of the past year with all of its joy and sorrow and, through his resurrection life, will craft a work of kintsugi, of something unforeseen, something new— something beautiful— in our midst.

I have been praying that I’m learning the “right” lessons. These are some of the things I’m processing. I’d love to hear what you’ve been thinking about. Grace and peace to you.

I had just stepped away from a job that I’d held for ten years. Ten years with a place to sit that was yours, a group of friendly colleagues to say hello to and shoot the breeze with, and for the pastor the unique understanding of a parish—a defined people that you have been tasked to walk alongside through the triumphs and the tragedies and all the sacred mundane in between. And now, I was venturing to start a church from scratch with no building, little resources, and only a few people. And one of the first questions that I faced as I set out to work in early January of 2018 was: where am I going to go? Not where is this organization going to go and how I am going to lead it there, but literally, where am I going to sit and do my work? Who are my colleagues? Where is my parish?

So I went to the only place that I knew I could find a seat and an exceptional cup of single origin coffee, where I knew some of the friendly staff, and where there might just be some people: I went to Sourland Coffee.

Sourland publicly announced it’s permanent closure yesterday due to the ongoing hardships of the pandemic. In a year where I’m no stranger to larger losses, I found myself deeply saddened by the news. Listen, I understand, especially given the events of the past year, to mourn the loss of a specialty coffee shop may seem like the height of bourgeoisie banality. “Really?” you may be asking, “300,000 people have lost their lives, several millions have lost their jobs, and bread lines look like parking lots after major sporting events, and you’re worried about your precious 3.50 cup of coffee? Marie Antoinette called she thinks you’re being tone-def.

I get it. But I also reject the notion that our laments are limited. Lament flows from the well-spring of love. There is no scarcity in love. “Love never ends” says St. Paul (1 Cor. 13v8). Love is inexhaustible, eternal, extravagant. Annie Dillard reflects on this profligate and prodigal abundance:

After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down aeons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world (A Pilgrim At Tinker Creek).

Love, because it reflects the extravagant giving of God, is an unquenchable fire. To grieve well then, to express love even in loss, does not need to be limited to the larger tragedies of our time. Perhaps to grieve these small losses is to place small pieces of brush and tinder on the fire that is already blazing, to tend the fire, to feel its heat. Wendell Berry wrote of the extravagance of love:

It is not a terrible thing to love the world, knowing that the world is always passing and irrecoverable, to be known only in loss. To love anything good, at any cost, is a bargain.

Sourland was a joy and treat for our kids. Every day after school, they would ask, “Can we go to the coffee shop?” It was part of the scenery of our lives, a fixture of our place. And it was world-class, Jon’s taste and acumen for brewing coffee and pulling espresso shots is on par with any of the best shops in New York and Philadelphia. And its cast of characters from the neighborhood were of the highest quality–just the right amount of kind, personable, and quirky.

Over the years, Sourland became for me a parish of sorts. Of course not everybody who walked through the doors was interested in God, much less knew who I was, that’s not my point. But it immersed me in humanity, the small-town conversations, the way you look at a stranger trying to honor their story with compassion and curiosity.

But even more than a parish, Sourland became for me a kind of second seminary. An apprenticeship in the art of pastoring in the real world. A place to learn what it means to be as shepherd not just to people who are showing up to church and asking about Jesus, but to people who (at least at this point in their lives) would not darken the doors of a church and generally just know Christians from their infamous political exploits (and the way cunning politicians exploit them). Sourland taught me to trust God, to bless, to simply extend the goodness of God to people I saw every day, who may not have known I was praying for them and I may not have known exactly what to pray for them.“Perhaps all the good that ever has come here has come because people prayed it into the world” (Berry). At Sourland, I learned to listen, to ask good questions, to be unhurried and to attend to the person in front of me. And one of the best, hardest, and most important lessons I learned through my days at Sourland was so vital to my life as a church planter: stop seeing people as potential participants in my thing, and rather, seek to participate in what God might be already doing in their lives. Sourland gave me the lens to see the grace of God that abounds in every heart and the words to try to point that out in their lives.

It’s not that I ever “figured out” how to get this start-up church off the ground. But eventually, this church that was only the dream in the minds of a few began to be formed into a people, a people with a shared vision to live in the Jesus way and to bless our neighbors out of the joy of that life. And so many people that were to become a part of that people, I met through Sourland: our first employee, our first launch team members, one of the first people that we baptized. At Sourland with its warm natural light, I conducted staff meetings, counseling sessions, I prayed for people, and helped them explore the gifts “where their great gladness” meets “with the world’s great hunger” (Buechner).

And personally, one of the things I’m most grateful to Sourland for, as I think back to those first terrifying days of trying to start something new and having no idea what I’m doing—Sourland gave me a sense of security, a people and a place that were steady in a disorienting and anxious time for me. As so much felt untethered in my life and vocation, I could pull up a chair in the corner, open my laptop, and try to figure it out, often being interrupted in the middle of it, much to my delight. Little did I know at the time, but that, perhaps more than anything else, was exactly what I needed.

So to Sourland Coffee, to Jon, to Kristin, to Bambi, to Lucy, and to the many other staff members that proceeded them, I simply want to offer my heartfelt thank you. Thank you for the rituals of coffee, of conversation, of having a place where I was known. You have been a gift to me and I know you have been a gift to this community. And at least from my own vantage point, the seeds that you have sown, by showing up and doing something beautiful have changed destinies, changed eternities. And you’ve certainly changed me.

But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time…of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here…It is in the world, but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here. (Berry, Jayber Crow)

We are out of time and our rhythms will change. So I lament the little things. Because to grieve well is to defiantly hope in an unforeseen future, to love against all scarcity and closure. And to love anything good, at any cost is a bargain.

Psalm 39 is a psalm for a digital age, the context that Alan Hirsch calls an “un-civil war.” For many of us, we’ve been knee-deep in the comments section or in a discussion on a social media thread and felt our face getting hot, our blood beginning to boil, and our fingers set the cursor into motion with words that (hopefully) would soon be deleted or filed in a drafts folder never to see the light of day. The Psalmist writes:

“I will guard my ways that I may not sin with my tongue;
I will keep a muzzle on mouth as long as the wicked are in my presence.” I was silent and still; I held my peace to no avail; my distress grew worse, my heart became hot within me. When I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: (vv.1-3)

David is clearly in no emotional state to be responding to his neighbors. Any words that he offers are going to be from the dizzying frenzy of fight or flight and if his words are any indicator, flight is not on the menu. But notice, David doesn’t internalize all this strife and absurdity and then finally boil over, spewing hot lava on anyone who happens to be in the vicinity. Rather, David’s words are directed towards God:

Lord, let me know my end, and what is the measure of my days;
Let me know know how fleeting my life is.
You have made my days a few handbreadths, and my lifetime is nothing in your sight.
Surely everyone stands as a mere breath. Selah
Surely everyone goes about like a shadow. Surely for nothing they are in turmoil; they heap up, and do not know who will gather. (vv. 4-6)

David’s frustrations, his agony, his anger are all due to the people he faces every day. Yet his words turn a different direction, looking past the veil of flesh and blood to the unseen world of the divine. David channels his angst into a plea not for vengeance or vindication, but an awareness of just how fleeting his life is. Ultimately, David knows that it is God with whom he must deal.

In the presence of real wickedness (v. 2) and real indignation, David is undone not by his own righteousness but by the weight of the hand of God pressing at the places of vitriol within his own heart.

“You chastise morals in punishment for sin, consuming like a month what is dear to them; surely everyone is a mere breath” (v. 11)

Somehow in the throes of this moment, David finds himself in the court but he is not simply the plaintiff, the victim, he is in the docket himself. The judge has reserved his questioning not for his opponents but for him. And David begs God to turn away his piercing gaze:

Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; do not hold peace at my tears. For I am your passing guest, an alien, like all my forebears. Turn your gaze way from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more.” (vv. `12-13)

It may seem strange. A psalm which begins with David confidently strolling into the courtroom ends with him pleading for just a moment’s reprieve of mercy. But this is often where God meets us in our anger, at the cutting edge of justified rage and the desire to belittle, to treat others with contempt, and—as Jesus will later make explicit—to kill. God is not blind to the the injustice that David endures but he is also not blinded to the reactions of David’s heart.

It’s often the moments where are most right that we are most vulnerable. God will not leave us to wallow in our vitriol, even towards the wicked, because our hearts are too valuable for him to ever look away from. Psalm 39 beckons us back to ultimate reality, it is God that we must face. Even in judgment, the Lord turning his face to us is a blessing of unrelenting commitment. He will not leave us as a passing guest but comes and makes his home with us. Selah.

“Enough.” David cries out in Psalm 38. As he puts pen to paper he finds himself completely and overwhelmingly destitute. David feels the weight of shame in the light of the God who knows him thoroughly:

There is no soundness in my flesh
because of your indignation;
there is no health in my bones
because of my sin.
For my iniquities have gone over my head;
they weigh like a burden too heavy for me. (vv. 3-4)

Moreover, he is ostracized by friend and neighbor alike:

My friends and companions stand aloof from my affliction,
and my neighbors stand far off. (v.11)

And enemies, like predators who always seek out the weakest and most isolated smell blood:

Those who seek my life lay their snares;
those who seek to hurt me speak of ruin,
and meditate treachery all day long.
 
But I am like the deaf, I do not hear;
like the mute, who cannot speak.
Truly, I am like one who does not hear,
and in whose mouth is no retort. (vv. 12-14).

Nothing is sound, the center isn’t just failing to hold, it has been ripped to shreds. Perhaps you know this darkness well. This place where everything in your life seems as if it is conspiring to snuff out your very life. And what’s worse, you know some of your wounds are self-inflicted but you feel as if even God is standing at a distance tsk-tsking saying, “See I told you so.”

David, mired in the midnight zone where no light enters, utterly crushed and spent in the tumult of his heart (v. 8). He is terminally sick in his body and yet the more pressing question for David is will this sickness of his soul be denied medical care by the great physician? If this shame will be chronic, he is ready to give in, to let go. In David’s cries many of us can see a mirror held up to our own depression and anxiety. The feeling that it will never end. The obsession with relief, David says:

O Lord, all my longing is known to you;
my sighing is not hidden from you.
My heart throbs, my strength fails me;
as for the light of my eyes—it also has gone from me. (vv.9-10).

Yet as the wheel turns on this cruel carousel, David’s one concern, his only resolve is to know that he is not forever forgotten by God. With the last ounces of fight in his lungs, he cries out to God.

Do not forsake me, O LORD;
O my God, do not be far from me;
make haste to help me,
O Lord, my salvation. (vv. 21-22)

We only see this psalm from one side, the side of David’s pain and internal anxiety. But dear reader, we have a whole Bible to listen in on this conversation from God’s side of the line and I want to offer you this word of hope today.

Even if you don’t have any fight left, God is fighting for you.

Even if you feel utterly destitute, God is healing you.

Even if you feel that your shame will ever define you, God is drawing near to you.

Even if you feel forsaken, God is with you.

In the midst of a global pandemic, racial reckoning (maybe), polarized politics (and all the guns), and an impending housing crisis (oh, gosh, I hope not). Psalm 37 is a word in season. Our culture is not built for the long view. Eugene Peterson, nearly thirty years ago, labeled the American world “an instant society” and things have only accelerated since then. Now our culture moves at the speed of the 5G refresh. What’s worse, not only do our minds encounter informational hurdles at a rate far too swift for our consciousness to clear, we also receive earth-shaking, and often shattering, news updates sandwiched in between banal gossip and sweet updates about our friends’ kids and vacations. It all conspires like a torture technique, wearing us down, robbing us of sleep or soundness and mind, and whispering all along: you’re not going to make it.

Psalm 37 is the biblical equivalent of Julian of Norwich’s famous, and often trivialized dictum, “All is well and the manner of all things shall be well.” David, now advanced in years, writes out of the rich wealth of his life with God saying:

I have been young, and now am old, yet I have not seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread. They are ever giving liberally and lending, and their children become a blessing (v. 25).

David reassures, not only does God take care of those who put him and his ways first, their lives are a fountain of the blessings of God both for neighbors in the present and generations in the future. The constant presence of the wicked in this psalm helps us to see, David’s day is just as gilded as our own, evil manifesting itself in the only tired tropes it knows: money, power, etc. etc. But David, from the opening line of the psalm, frames his vision with his patient wisdom: “do not fret” (vv. 1, 7, 8). Do not fret over the actions of vindictive politicians, do not fret over self-serving leaders, do not fret over the designs of those who delight in chaos. Do not allow yourself to be mired in the quicksand of anger and wrath. It only leads you to become like that which you despise.

Instead of spinning your wheels trying to reverse course on the spinning of the news cycles, David invites us to the subversive disciplines of trust (v. 3a), doing good (v. 3b), delight (v. 4), giving in the face of shortage (v.25) and perhaps the most counterintuitive of all—stillness (v. 7). Now, lest this be seen as escapist religion, happily hanging our heads in the clouds while the world burns, David reminds us, this wild earth is the theater of action, but where are often mistaken is it’s not primarily us who act. It is God:

Commit your way to the Lord, trust in him, and he will act. He will make your vindication shine like the light, and the justice of your cause like the noonday (v. 6)… for the arms of the the wicked shall be broken, but the Lord upholds the righteous (v. 17). For the Lord loves justice, he will not forsake his faithful ones (v. 25).

In troubled times, it is tempting to find scapegoats or to play the savior but our first call is to stillness. Salvation is always received. Ours is a day that calls for courage, the courage of trust, doing good, delight, giving and stillness. Courage to act starts with courage to remain:

The salvation of the the righteous is from the Lord; he is their refuge in the time of trouble. The Lord helps them and rescues them from the wicked, and saves them, because they take refuge in him (vv. 39-40).