8.22.2020 - week 68 — luke macdonald

but like i won’t actually

did you ever do any of those weird promising things when you were a kid?

cross my heart and hope to die, stick a needle in my eye?
or
pinky swear
or
that weird boy one where you spit on the palm of your hand and then shake?

somehow even as kids, we became accustomed to the reality of people not following through and developed systems of describing when we are really really serious about promises we make.

—

so i was finishing a pastoral call. i do 10 like it every week. someone has a problem or a report and i try to listen, share a verse, and offer a next step. they take all different lengths and shapes, but i always to point to god and suggest something practical. this young woman was dealing with some frustrating dynamics while being stuck in her parents house during the pandemic and had come to the conclusion that it wasn’t a healthy place for her due to some childhood trauma. i offered an introduction to the church’s counseling department to perhaps get a depth of help i am not expertly trained for. she paused for a few moments and replied

‘pastor luke, i’m trying to stop flaking on things, so can i just tell you now i’m going to think about it, instead of you going to some trouble and then i just ghost, feel bad, and then eventually ghost you because i feel bad?’

i started to laugh a little and replied, ‘of course, i will call and check in next week.’

this level of self-insight blew me away, but more than that she revealed something so unrelenting in modern society we might miss it: we live in a culture of passive commitment. the easiest way out of most social moments or situations is to agree to something whether we intend to do it or not

i will pray for you
i will plan to attend
i will check it out for sure.

this isn’t a newsletter opening of epic profundity, simply a gentle push towards being reliable and honest even when it would be easier not to be. jesus frames it so simply in the sermon on the mount, cautioning us against unnecessary layering of oaths and promises.

let what you say be simply ‘yes’ or ‘no’;
anything more than this comes from evil.
matthew 5:37

KG Korner

(a few wise words from lady kristen macdonald)

I remember being in a hotel in downtown Nashville during August of 2015, saying that there was NO WAY that Donald Trump would make it all the way to elections as the Repulican candidate. He hadn’t been in politics, he certainly didn’t have the illusion of character and everyone seemed to think it was a shot in the dark. If nothing else, I would say he was a very ‘unlikely candidate.’

Do you ever have that feeling? Have you ever questioned why God positioned you where you are? Maybe it’s your job and the in-over-your-head pace you find yourself in on a daily basis, or the single mom life you never planned on, or your prodigal who’s always on your mind and navigating your relationship with them. I don’t know what your specific scenario is but what part of your life makes you look like the unlikely candidate?

It’s that moment in the mirror, when you’re not talking out loud but you’re talking to yourself. You take a second look and you say, “me, really God?!” He says, “uh, huh.” And you rattle off all the reasons why you have convinced yourself you are the most unlikely candidate for X in the world. And you tell the Lord that he should have chosen someone smarter, with more energy, creativity, courage, strength or patience.

As I contemplated this in my own life this week I thought about all the stories in the Bible of ‘unlikely candidates,’ in all honesty that’s one of the things God is famous for. As I read through the story of David and Goliath a few things came to mind. Goliath is decked out in the best gear and has a history as a champion; he has confidence not only that he will win but his fellow Philistines aren’t worried about the battle at hand. David on the other hand had been faithful to tending sheep, he tried someone else’s gear that didn’t end up working so he was left with a staff, stones & his slingshot. He was ridiculed about his age and his unpreparedness and while he knew he had saved sheep from lion’s mouths his confidence for this battle was solely on the Lord.

1 Samuel 17:45 says, “Then David said to the Philistine, “You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied.” Verse 47 says, “and that this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hand.”

Hindsight is 20/20 and we can read the whole story and say “Yay God! Yea you did!” But the truth is if we were looking at the facts we might have been shaking our heads at David too! There’s no reason to doubt his confidence in the Lord was pure and that if he went in giving the glory to God that he would have taken it for himself after. You aren’t David, but maybe you feel like you have a Goliath-sized mountain ahead of you and somehow you’re in the battlefield with what seems like the wrong tools and people criticizing your age, your potential, your ________.

I seem to think that God loves when we realize we are the ‘unlikely candidates’ not only of his grace and love and mercy but of his presence in our day to day no matter what your Goliath is. When God has you laughing because you’re like, “me?!!” And he’s like. “Uh, huh.” He has you positioned in this battle that isn’t yours anyway. Your willingness to listen to him and step up in obedience makes way for Him to shine brightly through you. Write that on your mirror, on your kitchen window, or maybe on a notecard on your dashboard - the battle is the Lord’s, I can trust confidently in Him. No matter how unlikely of a candidate you look like to everyone else, God’s got this.

book review

if ever a book was written to the right moment in history it’s this. rather than the bombastic aggression so common today, sauls walks us through the sermon on the mount towards the backwards upside-down way of jesus applied to modern life. rather than seeing gentleness as spiritualized weakness, we are encouraged to see it as disciplined strength. if you are frustrated by the tonality of the christian world around you, this book gives a new way.

of the 25+ books on race i have read this year, this one was the most difficult. by synthesizing the african-american experience down to a reflection on the similarities between lynching + jesus death, the rich symbolism is too loud not to be piercing. cone rights with vivid precision about the most heinous of humiliating deaths and by pairing it with the death of our savior, we have no choice but to see it with new eyes.