One of the prayers of Jesus that Peterson examines in Tell It Slant is found in John 12:28 and consists of four words: “Father, glorify your name” (ESV). Commenting upon that prayer, Peterson says some things that I suspect Luther would have viewed approvingly. He writes:

The glory with which Jesus is glorified is not inspirational. It does not promote emulation. It is not conspicuous. It is not glamorous. It is not the sort of glory that is featured in glossy magazines and travel posters advertising sun and sand on the Greek islands. You can’t take a picture of it.

We pray in the company of Jesus in order to learn this, to re-learn the meaning of words that have been corrupted by our culture and debased by our sin. Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meaning of words. We look up “glory” and what do we find? Obscurity, rejection, a sacrificial life, an obedient death. And through and in and around all of that, the bright presence of God backlights what the world despises and ignores–what we so often despise and ignore. Jesus’ life and death come to focus in this prayer and illuminate life–all of life–so convincingly that we drop to our knees and say, “Glory–that is the kind of life I want. Father, glorify you name.”

So true. And a compelling case for why I absolutely need to spend time praying in the company of Jesus. The desire for such glory doesn’t come naturally.

Such has been the case with his exposition of the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:9-13). Summarizing his understanding of the first three petitions (vv. 9b, 10a, and 10b), he writes:

God is in heaven. Heaven is where everything gets started. Jesus starts there. In company with Jesus, we start there. We are not used to this. We have a lifelong habit of starting with a “want list” developed while we are preoccupied with just getting across the street. Indirectly, but implicitly, the three petitions renounce want lists: wanting to be “like God,” wanting to use God as an assistant as we take control of “our” kingdom, wanting to get access to the so-called secrets of prayer (the blueprints) in order to pursue our own wills, our willfulness.

At the heart of what it means to be Christian is that we start with heaven. We start with God, our Father, and not with our own agenda. That’s a wonderful articulation of what it means to have Jesus as Lord. United to Christ, our priorities in life are set by God our Father and not by the natural default, our flesh. Our Father is good, and He cares for us with perfect love and in perfect wisdom. We entrust our lives to Him.

But Peterson also does a masterful job of showing how prayer, and the Lord’s prayer in particular, trains us in such a life. It shapes us into those who renounce our sinful desire to be like God (the temptation of Adam and Eve). It trains us to renounce the desire to use God as a tool to get what we really want. And it trains us to avoid the temptation to view prayer as magic. It refuses to allow us to consider prayer as an incantation that, if performed correctly, will give us what we want. Through prayer what we want becomes what God wants. In the process, we don’t miss out on anything good!

First I should say that I haven’t yet finished this book. I’ve only made it through the first of two sections, which is about the stories Jesus told while in Samaria, as reported in the gospel of Luke. The second section covers the prayers of Jesus. Peterson says it’s a book about the spirituality of language. More particularly, he’s concerned with the way in which we use words in the Christian community. A worthy topic.

I don’t always know quite what to do with Peterson when it comes to his interpretation of Scripture. Honestly, I’m not exactly sure what he understands the Bible to be. I’m pretty sure he views it differently from me. Still, he seems to treat it as authoritative. Once in a while, I find his exegesis to be way out there. But usually I find him to be very insightful, and he regularly makes connections between various portions of Scripture that I find very helpful. This book was no exception in that regard.

I read Peterson because I think I can learn a lot from him about pastoral ministry. He obviously has a great deal of experience in that arena. I respect what he has to say. He has thought carefully about caring for souls. And I believe his thinking has been saturated by the Scriptures. Oh, and I also read him because he’s a good writer. In these respects, I haven’t been disappointed by this book. Whether or not postmodernism has had it’s day and is expiring, it remains that there is a great deal of uncertainty about the importance of words. Peterson doesn’t buy it. In the Christian community, how we use words matters deeply. And it matters not just for us, but also for the world.

To establish how we as followers of Christ ought to use words, Peterson examines the words of our Master. Its hard to quibble with that. He picks these stories in Samaria because he considers them quite relevant to the church in the United States. There are plenty of religious types around. But the setting is nonreligious all the same. Samaria was not Israel. As he introduces the parable of the talents (he doesn’t call it that), Peterson provides what seems to me to be a helpful summary of his understanding of Jesus’ use of these stories. He writes:

With the exception of one story (“The Sinners”), the stories take place in nonreligious settings, with the word “God” occurring only tangentially. These stories are not illustrations of a truth or moral. They are oblique. They come to the hearer on the “slant,” slipping past defenses, misunderstandings, hostile preconceptions.

I have no reason to doubt that this principle is generally valuable in the church. As a pastor, as a preacher, its something with which I’m constantly wrestling. There are defenses. There are misunderstandings and hostile preconceptions. Jesus knew it. We all have them (including me, I assure you).

At any given time as a preacher you know that you have a certain number of people listening who have read the passage upon which you are preaching many, perhaps even hundreds of times. Maybe they’ve even heard several sermons on the same passage. At the same time, you may also be speaking (hopefully you are) to people who haven’t been in the church all their lives, but who have a completely different set of (what can only be called) hostile preconceptions.

But these things aren’t new. Jesus faced the same sorts of challenges. He was a master at slipping words past the defenses, misunderstandings, and hostile preconceptions. In this book Peterson wants us to learn from Him, and he believes that we can. I think he helps us to do just that. Pastors, elders, and parents who especially want to be more deliberate in their “informal” conversations–whether in the church, in the family, or across the fence–will benefit from this book. Really I’d recommend it to anyone who wrestles with slipping words past the various kinds of barriers to language that exist in each of us.

As a church we have a growing sense of calling to see God use us to draw people to Himself. We’re earnestly praying and seeking Him in that regard. We realize, I think, that we have a lot to learn. An added challenge (at least from certain perspectives) is that we remain firmly committed to the confessional tradition in which we exist as a church. Hopefully we aren’t just being stubbornly tribal; we actually believe these things are true. So how does a Reformed church effectively reach people around us who are highly unchurched? We’re wrestling with that question.

For that reason I found compelling a discussion from D.A. Carson concerning the relationship between “becoming and belonging” in the church. Some have advocated that the church must include everyone from the outset, that it should erase boundary lines entirely. By welcoming everyone, in this manner, the hope is that many will become believers. Belonging, in other words, should take precedent over becoming. The advocates argue such an approach is necessary to effectively reach people in our current context.

Carson argues that the church should maintain both priorities, and that they don’t have to be in antithesis. He illustrates his argument with an anecdote from a friend’s church in a major metropolitan area. The anecdote concerns a recently retired Harvard professor who found himself unexpectedly converted to Christianity in the context of this church’s ministry. Carson writes:

But what drew him, he said, was that these Christians knew him more thoroughly and transparently than his lifelong friends and colleagues. These Christians knew his name, of course, and his like and dislikes and went out of their way to get to know him, but more importantly, they knew him deeply–they genuinely understood what made him tick, what made him a human being, what moved him, and what he cherished, even though they made a clear distinction between who was a Christian and who wasn’t.

Not only does this example illustrate that churches can uphold both the priorities of becoming and belonging at the same time, but it seems to me it also reflects an element that ought to be a part of faithful outreach. We believe that God draws people to Himself. Whether or not that happens in individual cases, it is still right and good for us to know people for who they are–as people made in the image of God. We are free to genuinely love and care about people, without any strings attached. It is our belief in the truth of Scripture, in fact, that should compel us to such a genuine concern for people.

The picture at the left, however, is neither Sweet nor Viola, but Reinhold Niebuhr. In their chapter, “A Collision of Two Empires” Sweet and Viola show that the church is alarmingly prone to confuse the kingdom of God with the kingdom of this world. In that regard, they quote Niebuhr:

Christ is crucified by the priests of the purest religion of his day and by the minions of the justest, the Roman Law. The fanaticism of the priests is the fanaticism of all good men, who do not know that they are not as good as they esteem themselves. The complacence of Pilate represents the moral mediocrity of all communities, however just.

Perhaps I’m writing this post to provide some balance to the previous one. I still think that post is right as far as it goes; but even moral clarity is a long way from actual righteousness. Many people assume that if they had been in Joe Paterno’s position, they would have done the right thing. Maybe. But they weren’t in his position. They don’t really know what they would have done. And Niebuhr is devastatingly correct when he exposes the, “…fanaticism of all good men, who do not know that they are not as good as they esteem themselves.” That’s why we all need a Savior who is truly righteous, and who has delivered us from our unrighteousness–offensive as that may be.

Whether you like Mohler or not, I think he is spot on when it comes to this blog post about what churches must learn from the Penn State scandal. He writes that educational institutions everywhere have entered a world forever changed when it comes to moral responsibility.

But churches have an even higher responsibility when it comes to child abuse. Mohler issues a call to decisive action. He’s sympathetic to the questions that leaders inevitably face when it comes to accusations like the ones against Sandusky. For that very reason leaders must decide what they will do in advance.

This scandal has provided the kind of moral clarity that should lead to immediate and resolute action. The top priority of leaders must be to act in the interest of the children where abuse is alleged. He argues that churches must never become safe places for abusers. I would suggest that this is a post anyone will benefit reading, and especially anyone who is in church or educational leadership.

The Aquila Report recently linked an article by Skye Jethani exploring the future of megachurches. Jethani does not write as an adversary of megachurches. But he does provide some fascinating information about the rise of megachurches in the United States. He notes that they have been dramatically tethered to particular demographic trends for their growth. And those demographics are rapidly changing. He wonders aloud how they will respond to these shifts. It will be interesting to see. In the mean time, I remain thankful for the small church of which I’m part.

O Lord, whose spirit is so good and gracious in all things, and who art so merciful that not only the prosperities, but also the distresses which happen to Thine elect are the effects of Thy mercy, grant me grace not to act like a heathen in the state to which Thy justice has brought me; but that, like a true Christian, I may acknowledge Thee for my Father and my God, in whatsoever circumstances I am placed….

Thou gavest me health to be spent in serving Thee; and I perverted it to a use altogether profane. Now Thou has sent me a sickness for my correction: O suffer me not to use this likewise to provoke Thee by my impatience. If my heart has been filled with the love of the world, while I was in possession of strength, destroy my vigor to promote my salvation….

O Lord, as at the instant of death I shall find myself separated from the world, stripped of all things, and standing alone in Thy presence, to consider myself, in this disease, as in a kind of death, separated from the world, stripped of all the objects of my affections, placed alone in Thy presence, to implore Thy mercy the conversion of my heart; and that thus I may enjoy great consolation in knowing that Thou art now sending me a sort of death, for the display of Thy mercy, before Thou sendest me death in reality, for the display of Thy justice.

…Grant me grace, O Lord, to join Thy consolations to my sufferings, that I may suffer like a Christian. I pray not to be exempted from pain…but I pray that I may not be abandoned to the pains of nature without the comforts of Thy Spirit. Grant, O Lord, that…I may conform myself to Thy will; and that being sick as I now am, I may glorify Thee in my sufferings….Unite me to Thyself, fill me Thyself, and with Thy Holy Spirit. So that, being filled by Thee, it may be no longer I who live or suffer, but Thou, O my Savior, who livest and sufferest in me; that having thus been a small partaker of Thy sufferings, Thou mayest fill me completely with…glory…Amen.

Pascal was tormented with poor health until his death at the age of thirty-nine. Though he struggled often with illness during his short life, he met his suffering with a faithful desire to glorify God. His prayer provides a moving model for how believers ought to respond to serious illness.

In this blog post, Carl Trueman explores the the meaning of “confessional.” He argues that, while it may be in vogue in certain circles to claim the moniker “confessional,” it is an inescapably ecclesiastical idea. If you separate the term from the church, it becomes rather useless. The article is helpful for anyone seeking to understand better what it means to be confessional. As the inertia of American Christianity is ever pushing toward a churchless faith, Trueman’s article provides more reasons to resist that momentum.