I Can Already Taste the Relaxation

Hey, the big stores have the Christmas Crap on display already, so I thought it would be ok to talk about Thanksgiving in September. So why the talk about thanksgiving? I'm preaching about the 10th leper this Sunday (see the "At Second Sight" post below), so I'm working on counting the things for which I'm thankful.

One of the things I'm thankful for is the holiday of Thanksgiving. It's my favorite holiday. Things are calm at church, the kids are out of school, the wife is relaxed. On top of that, there is no gift-giving to distract us from a great feast, giving thanks, and taking note of people we love. It's a perfectly relaxing time and the UNC basketball season is just getting underway, who could ask for more?

Add to it the family that comes to see us, like this guy:

That's "Uncle Jack" who is always asking good questions like "Does life imitate art, or art imitate life?" He'll be here for T-giving with his wife, "Aunt Debbie, the house-elf" and we're all looking forward to it.

I'm also thankful for meaning in my life and work, healthy kids, great friends.

How about you?

Bad News

It's just about lunch time...

Smooth Operator

I’m not sure if the news is big nation-wide, but Priscilla Slade’s trial here in Houston is certainly a hot topic these days. She is the former president of Texas Southern University and is being tried on “two counts of misapplication of fiduciary property of more than $200,000.” Prosecutors allege that she used more than $500,000 of the public university’s funds for personal expenses, including a bar tab over $140,000.

Allegedly, Dr. Slade entertained staff and friends on TSU’s dime, throwing extravagant parties in her 17,000 square foot home that featured, among other things, a sofa paid for out of university funds and worth more than my two cars put together. There is more: manicures for the staff, extravagant trips, center court seats for Houston Rockets games. All purchased with money that came from the Texas taxpayers’ pockets.

The details about her “mis-expenditures” are readily available on the web and in the news, but the highlights alone are enough to cause some serious head-scratching. A public university president is a fiduciary for the state’s money – meaning basically that we trusted her to handle it well. Just how did this happen? And what was she thinking? Dr. Slade is a trained CPA, did she really think her gross abuse of public money would not come to light eventually?

Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t. Or maybe she picked up her methods from the Bible.

Take a good look at one of the hardest parables Jesus ever told and you’ll see what I mean. In Luke 16.1-13 we read the story about a mid-level manager who knew the boss’s axe was going to be swinging at his feet soon. So he invited in all the people who owed his boss and cut their debts substantially. Misapplication of fiduciary property, I think it was. Cut a few hundred gallons of olive oil here, a few hundred bushels of wheat there. He was thinking if he cut the debts of those who owed his master that when he got fired, those people would take care of him. Pretty crafty.

And Jesus praises this dishonesty, as does the manager’s boss. It makes no sense to me. What can Jesus be thinking? I’m not saying Dr. Slade deserves praise, in fact I’m angry at her. But the fact that Jesus tells the story tells me that the children of light should probably borrow some methods from the culture, as well as be willing to take some initiative and dramatic action for the sake of the Kingdom.

Luke 16.1-14
The Parable of the Shrewd Manager
1Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
3"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg— 4I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'
5"So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'
6" 'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied. "The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'
7"Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?' " 'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied. "He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'
8"The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
10"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?
13"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
14The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. 15He said to them, "You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God's sight.

At Second Sight

Not a Sermon - Just a Thought for 9.28.07
On Friday mornings I usually give you some type of illustrative “just a thought” to get you thinking about the sermon for the coming Sunday. Today, I want to challenge you to think more deeply with me than usual. Hang with me – deep thought may hurt on a Friday but it will give you a new way of thinking about life, faith, and the things that matters most to you.

Take a sip of coffee and read on.

Paul Ricoeur was a French philosopher who combined high-brow philosophy with hermeneutics - a fancy word for “how we interpret meaning from things.” His lifetime of teaching and writing helped a lot of preachers understand how to interpret things to their congregations, especially the Bible. One of his greatest concepts is how we come to accept or reject ideas. If you over simplify his concept, it works like this (advance apologies, Dr. Ricoeur):

1. When we encounter a new thing or idea, we are naïve about it and must work to understand it. Makes sense, ay?
2. Then we think about the idea, we test it against what we already know, against history, science, and so forth. Still making sense?
3. Finally we come to appropriate the idea for ourselves and something happens at the end of that – we come to hold the thing or idea not based on factuality but on its very existence. That state is what Ricoeur calls “second naïveté,” meaning that we accept an idea because it just is.

I thought of “second naïveté” in preparing for this week’s sermon about the tenth leper who returned to thank Jesus for being healed. You’ll find the story starting in Luke 17. 11-19 (copied below). It is a story of healing but, more importantly, it’s a story about seeing. The first sighting in this story is done by Jesus. He sees the lepers – really sees them – and gives them instruction to go to the priests.

Then the second “seeing” occurs: “… and as they went, they were cleansed. One of them, when he saw that he was healed, came back, praising God…”

It’s a story about Jesus seeing the human condition of the lepers and the one leper truly seeing his condition as a healed man and returning to give thanks. I imagine that the leper went through all three of Ricoeur’s stages of appropriation of the idea healing and came back with excitement and gratitude because his healing didn’t need to be proven by history or science or fact. In his mind, the healing just was. The existence of healing was all that mattered and reveling in the fact fashioned him into a remnant of “thanks.”

Oh that we would be that thankful remnant, too.

We have all been “seen” by our God in our human condition. We have also “seen” all that God has done for us. But for “seasoned” Christians it is possible to lose sight of the grace and restoration that has changed us and we do well to go back to that place of “second naïveté” and take a second look at how much we’ve received. That’s where the seed of gratefulness in all of life is planted, tended, and blossoming.

I’ll be preaching a sermon called At Second Sight this Sunday at 9:00 a.m. worship gathering called Jubliate! We’ll gather also at 11:10 a.m. for Overflow where we’ll be wrapping up the sermon series Desperate Sex Lives by talking about marriage and forgiveness. If you’re in Houston this weekend, I hope you’ll join us.

Grace and Peace,
The Tenth Leper Leaping

Not a Sermon – Just a Thought is a weekly column written by me, Gary Long. I’m the pastor of Willow Meadows Baptist Church in Houston, Texas. You can find former editions of this column at http://www.thefellowship.info/resources/for_you/notasermon.icm, that’s the website for the good folk at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship.

Luke 17.11-19

11Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"
14When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed.
15One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16He threw himself at Jesus' feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.
17Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" 19Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well."

The Best Spanish Words

I feel like I should tell you the outcome of an earlier post entitled Lo siento. I followed through on the offering of an apology. And I'm glad I did it.

My wife helped me cobble together a few words of Spanish that I hoped, along with a forlorn look, would convey to some of our subcontractors my heartfelt regrets for blowing my cool last week.

I had been going to the house once or twice a day to check on progress, usually early in the morning on on my lunch break. But after my blow up I didn't go to the new house for two full days while the workers were there because I dreaded seeing those guys. I felt like a third grader on the school bus taking home an "F" on a spelling test. When finally I could put it off no longer, I went to the house and sought them out one by one.

My tongue tangled as I offered the Spanish apology, and my hands were hot with shame as I offered it out for a handshake. All three of the men shook my hand and smiled. One said, "De nada."

I found the last one quietly sanding the base board on the stair well. After my "speech" he said in broken English something to the effect of, "No problem, it happen to all person."

Latching on to his response, I tried to explain that I was tired, I was stressed, and so forth. He smiled and nodded like he understood, but he didn't. It was all lost in translation, but not from English to Spanish. It was lost in the translation from one economic strata to another. It was lost in the translation from my stress about a the color of my floor to his stress about making ends meet. It was lost in translation because there was no real reason for me to behave like a horse's ass.

I knew it was lost in translation so I gave up, and went back to the phrase I'd learned. Lo siento. I am to blame. Mea culpa.

He shrugged and went back to what he knew. "De nada." His eyes and slight smile told me that he got the message, so I quit.

The taste of grace and regret mixed in my mouth on the way home, oddly enough like new paint and the dust of wood being sanded. The words "de nada" are all at once bitter and sweet and they are the best Spanish words I know.

Start Me Up

The day we are born, argues Rob Bell*, we newborns cry because we sense that we are disconnected. We travel through life and discover that we are disconnected in a thousand ways from each other, from God, from ourselves, and from our world.

Is it possible then, that there is a spiritual side of our sexuality that is about reconnecting with our humanity and the humanity of others? Is it possible that the temptation to sex outside of the covenant context is really about our deep spiritual hunger not to be lonely, not to be isolated, not to be disconnected?

If I’m right then it’s easy to see why sex sells so well. It is physically gratifying and has the potential – in the right context – of being spiritually sating. It’s also easy to see why we struggle with addiction to sex and its commercial substitutes like pornography, prostitution, and strip clubs. Ultimately, sexual temptation is the temptation to trade God for a God-substitute. The illusion of intimacy is at once convincing and appealing in a disparate existence.

The haunting Kris Kristofferson tune Help Me Make It Through the Night sums up the longing for connection that I’m talking about:

Take the ribbon from your hair,
Shake it loose and let it fall,
Layin' soft upon my skin.
Like the shadows on the wall.
Come and lay down by my side till the early morning light
All I'm takin' is your time.
Help me make it through the night.
I don't care what's right or wrong,
I wont try to understand.
Let the devil take tomorrow.
Lord, tonight I need a friend.
Yesterday is dead and gone and tomorrow's out of sight.
And it's sad to be alone.
Help me make it through the night.

The challenge for Christians, if we’re honest, is that we want something we can see, taste, or feel and God’s presence in our lives doesn’t always provide that in the way we’d like. Sexual temptation is all around us and to deny we struggle with this is one of the best ways to give such temptation power.

So if you’re in Houston this weekend, join us on Sunday at 11:10 am for worship. I’ll be preaching a sermon entitled Start Me Up and I’ll toss out some ideas for how you and I can deal with our all-too-human sexual temptations. It’s part of a four part series called Desperate Sex Lives and will continue through the end of September.

Directions to my church can be found in the link on the sidebar.

Tempted like you,
Pastor Gary

*Rob Bell is the author of Sex God – Exploring the Endless Connections Between Sexuality and Spirituality. The idea I mention is found in chapter 2, “Sexy on the Inside.”

Lo siento

If you don't want to see the human side of a pastor, stop reading now.

Ok, you've been warned.

So I finished prepping the concrete floors for stain about 2am on Wednesday morning. If you've been keeping up, you'll remember that I was set back on the project because I injured my thumb on Monday and couldn't work with the concrete grinder very well.

On Wednesday at 8am I walked through the house with one of the subcontractors, pointing out to him the freshly prepped areas and stressing the importance of keeing them clean and free of paint, sheetrock mud, debris, and so forth. Apparently some things were lost in translation with my Spanish-speaking friend.

I worked at the church all day Monday and checked in on the house about 5pm. A quick walk-through revealed that the shower pan in the master bath was installed and that tile work was proceeding well. It also revealed that the carefully prepped floor in the master bath had not been so carefully treated - sheetrock mud was splattered everywhere in the room.

And I lost it.

I literally came unglued in an old-style red-neck hissy-fit that would've made the dysfunctional side of my family proud. I did a quick check and could count on one hand all the times I've lost it like this in my entire life. I just don't normally blow it like this.

I cursed. I yelled. I chewed out every worker in the house. Fortunately, none of them spoke enough English to really get what I was saying. They basically got this message: patron es loco.

I was so angry I even through one of my very best UNC hats on the floor. If you know me personally, that should be your biggest sign that there was a huge vergence in the force. Then I stormed out.

I'm going to learn from this, I know it.

First, I know that, in the words of Rob Bell, "This is really about that." "This" was not really about the mess. The mess could be cleaned up easily in a half hour or less. No one had committed an injustice against me, no one was sabatoging me, no one was trying to cause me more work intentionally. I was really angry about the whole process, the delays, the fact that we're in a rental house and have to move twice, and that I can't deliver a sleep-over party promised to the Brother who turns 10 today.

"This" was about "that" and the presenting issue was only a symptom, not the cause.

Second, I know that I have to apologize, probably in Spanish, to the people I blew it with yesterday. I'm dreading it. I woke up this morning nauseated by my memory of the blow up, literally sick to my stomach with remorse and contrition.

As readily as I can own my failure to myself (and ironically on a blog to God-knows-whoever-reader-you-are), I'm having trouble with the fact that I have to go to real people and say I'm sorry. A real apology has to be offered to real people, and I'm saddened at me because I'm discovering that deep down I have a dangerous hubris. I know that a reluctant apology is not truly an apology, so I'm praying that I get my heart behind my practical theology on this one.

Maybe you could pray, if you do such things, that I would do the right thing with the right motivation.

Sweet Dreams and Concrete Machines in Pieces All Around

I've not been posting much lately because the Longs are moving to a new house. We've nearly finished remodeling a large old home in Southwest Houston, but we sold our old house and had to be out the day after Labor Day. Alas, a double-move.

I've done a few small parts of the renovation myself and I'm about to tackle the flooring. Flooring is one of the last things to be done and I'm resurfacing some of the concrete floors in preparation for staining them. So I rented a couple of big concrete grinders, the heaviest of which landed on my right thumb while loading it up yesterday. It made my flesh "flap" and dripped blood steady for the better part of two hours.

Needless to say it still hurts and I didn't get finished with the floors. Hopefully I'll finish tonight!

Thanks for continuing to read this blog. Please be patient, I'll be back in full swing soon.

Reversing Course When You’re Wrong.

Eric Brinker had to reverse course on a major issue last year – snack mix.

He is the director of brand management and customer experience for Jet Blue airline. He had switched the usual snack, Munchie Mix, to a healthier alternative in response to the request of some passengers. Little did he know he would incite a near riot.

Customers complained vociferously, writing things like, “[Munchie Mix] is the only reason I flew Jet Blue!”

So he back-tracked with a “Save the Munchie Mix” campaign that read, “Some pinhead in marketing tried to get rid of the Munchie Mix.”**

Brinker is not the first corporate guy to lead a change that later necessitated a reversal. Remember “New Coke?” Or “Pepsi Clear?”

The granddaddy of product flops was the Edsel. Never heard of the Edsel?

The Edsel was rolled out by Ford as a mid-priced luxury car. For weeks before it hit the market on September 4, 1957, Ford promoted “E-Day” in newspapers, magazines, and all three television channels nationwide. Folk stormed dealerships on E-Day, but rolled right back out as soon as they saw the Edsel.

The reasons for rejection were many. For example, the push buttons for the automatic transmission were placed right in the center of the steering wheel – right where’d you reach to blow the horn. Some said it looked like “a Mercury sucking a lemon.” What’s worse, a lot of the cars were delivered with a list of missing parts taped to the steering wheel. Mix in an economy that was fading into recession and the fact that the Edsel was made for richer times and you can predict what happened even if you weren’t alive then.

Within three years the Edsel limped into the scrap yard on the two wheels of bad design and bad timing.

Bad timing and designs aren’t limited to the business world. Just ask the prophet Jeremiah. He had a front row seat for one of the great “Edsel” moments of Israel’s history. Idolatry and apostasy had diverted Israel away from Yahweh, the covenant, and the law. The people didn’t see that their hopes, ambitions, and dreams had been completely misplaced as they’d whored out their trust in God to other gods “who are not even gods.” Jeremiah urged them to turn back to the ways they knew before it was too late, before their failure became epic in scale.

What are the “Edsel’s” of our own lives? What are the dramatic or not-so-dramatic failues you need to reverse course on and put in the past? I hope you can find ways to lean from your “Edsel’s" and have the courage to make the necessary changes.

This piece was based on Jeremiah 2.4-13.