I Baptized My Daughter Last Night

I told her - and her gathered friends and family - it was the moment that every Christian parent prays about for their child from the moment of birth ... or adoption.

Still ... it wasn't quite the way I had pictured it; or quite the way I had hoped.

You see, I began picturing it and hoping it a long time ago, as I said. Continuously! And back among those years of picturing, hoping and praying were three years in Abilene, Texas at a church where our friends Randy and Jackie immersed their teen-aged daughter, together, and spoke words of blessing over her. So, of course, as nothing about that strikes me as the least bit unscriptural, I could not help but picture that moment shared with Angi right there in the water with our children and me.

No one in that pool of baptismal water would be "lording it over" anyone about anything - least of all authority, which belongs to Christ in totality (Mathew 28:18) but sharing a mile-marker moment, a privilege of ongoing instruction, a blessing made possible only by the Lord.

But that's not the way it happened. Laura could have just as easily asked a minister at our church ... a counselor at Bible camp ... a teacher from her Christian school ... all kinds of people! ... to immerse her into Christ. She chose Daddy, and I'll always be grateful and honored that she did.

Her sweet nature and generosity are already more example than I deserve or can live up to. (As if that weren't enough, I also have her brother Matt and mom Angi to look up to!)

As more years pass, if we can all mature in Christ together, feeling free to speak and do and live for Him, all the time and in every place, it will be more than enough for this old soul.

Somewhere Back We Jumped the Track

The title of the post is a line from a song by Bread, "This Isn't What the Governmeant."

But the post has nothing to do with the state.

It has to do with the church.

For those of us in the Restoration Movement fellowship, we can look back at a time when our track diverged from the Presbyterian Church. From there, we sprouted a three-way switch throwing folks onto Christian Church, Disciples of Christ and Church of Christ sidings.

Sidings? dare I say. Yes, sidings. We are not the main track, and we are not the only ones going to heaven, and in fact, going to heaven is not the whole point anyway. But that's a different post for a different time. (So please don't start singing "I'm Goin' Home on the Morning Train.")

I don't know church history well enough to know when we first jumped the track. But we did. Oh, I know, we weren't alive then; we've just been following the track laid down by others.

Well, guess what? The track dead-ends. All but the Main Line.

When we got off track, I don't know.

But I do know where.

We left the main line when we started being more concerned about church than Christ. You know it. I know it. We started fretting about this doctrine and that doctrine; works vs. grace; choice vs. election; what name is on the door; who's got the authority; who's in and who's out; what must we do to be saved instead of what He has done and is doing.

We invented a new religion, Christianity. It was kinda like Christ. Kinda. On Sundays, anyway. Between the hours of 8:00 and noon, generally. As long as we were in the right building, doing the right things, and living lives that were self-deceiving enough that we didn't feel motivated to confess our sins to one another while gathered. We would graciously part with a few minutes of our lives to remember Him, at least ceremonially, if not soul-deep in our hearts.

And we decided it was all about church.

Getting church right.

We thought: If we could just get church right, we'd be right. So we'll figure out how to do it right. We'll solve all those clues buried deep in the scriptures under ancient languages and customs and history about what God wants us to know and do, and we'll know them and do them, and earn our way right back into His heart.

At least us Restoration folks concentrated on it to pretty much the exclusion of everything else, everything that matters. For the most part, we still do. We still want to restore the church of century one. Not the heart of Christ, or His Spirit living in us, or God working through us. Not the Way that early followers followed. Or the Truth. Or the Life.

Not the Main Line.

Somehow, soul-deep in my heart, I am persuaded that Satan could not have been happier when we built each switch and laid each set of tracks and followed them faithfully ... because our eyes were no longer on the Main Line and where He leads, but on us, on each other, on our guilt and on failure and on imperfection and oh-what-the-bloody-blue-blazes-why-bother.

"Exactly," Satan says; "got those bloody blue blazes right here for ya.

"Come on down the tracks.

"And build some more switches and sidings to accommodate all the others, willya?"

The Hiatus

I could use lots of excuses: Summer. Travel. Workload. Posting a lot of back issues of New Wineskins to its site.

All of them have contributed to my delay in posting here.

But behind all of them is the problem of where to go next. You see, in the table meditations I've been trying to write in an order roughly following the timeline of scripture, we've come to that part of the Story of God and us in which we've sinned, heinously, and God has again put us into exile from His house ... and His presence and despite our pleas and penitence, His response is pretty much silence.

For four hundred years.

That means "where to go next" is to the gospels, and to begin the story of the new covenant and the promises and prophecies coming true at last. It's daunting. It's the challenge of telling the Story of God and us in present tense, and first person - and He now has a name: Jesus.

It's everything that the first part of the Story has been building toward.

He is the answer after the silence; the answer to the pleas and penitence; the response to the heinous sins.

Give me a little more time to prepare, and we'll put our heads down and launch forward into the next part of the Story.

Isaiah 53:8-12; Luke 22:35-38

52 Weeks at the Table - Week 30

Moments before His arrest, Jesus quoted a snippet of Isaiah to the remaining eleven, and told them that it was a prophecy about to be fulfilled in Him (Luke 22:35-38): "It is written: 'And he was numbered with the transgressors'; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment."

If those disciples remembered their scripture as well, they would have recalled that Isaiah (53:8-12) also foretold the arrest, the judgments at trial, the suffering, the taking of His life, and - above all - the reason for it: He was to be "a guilt offering" ... to "justify many" and "bear their iniquities." And the prophecy also hinted at His victory, both with the question "Who can speak of his descendants?" as well as the triumphant answer: "He will see the light of life and be satisfied" ... "I will give him a portion among the great, and he will divide the spoils with the strong."

All praise and honor are due You, Father God, for You have revealed Yourself - Your justice, Your mercy - to us through Your Son. You have willed that He should serve to intercede on our behalf. And, sharing Your very nature, He has poured out His life unto death for our sins. Through this bread we see the body of Jesus, pierced for our transgressions; crushed for our iniquities. Forgive us, O God, through the power of this, Your promise. Amen.

We can only continue our praise and thanksgiving, Almighty God, for the giving of Your Son, Jesus, the Christ. As He poured out His life unto death, may we see His life poured out in this cup. May we dedicate ourselves to the imitation of His selflessness in pouring out our lives in gratitude and living sacrifice that honors You through Him. May we find strength in His strength, and be counted among His portion. Amen.