Trying versus Training

At some point—hopefully soon—MLB and the MLB Players Association will finalize a new collective bargaining agreement, Spring Training will commence, and baseball will return.

Spring Training and Lent—which begins Ash Wednesday—share an important thing in common beyond happening at the same time of year. It’s a time players ramp up their training so that when the heat is on they do exactly what needs to be done when it needs to be done as a matter of habit. For thousands of years disciples of Jesus have focused on the same thing at Lent.

Because whether it’s effortlessly and habitually turning a double play, or obeying everything Jesus commanded, it takes more than just trying…it requires training.

One has to try, of course, but we seriously overestimate what we can do solely by trying, and grossly underestimate what we can do by training. This is why MLB players don’t just show up on Opening Day with their bat and glove ready to try really, really hard. So, similar to the pre-season in baseball, Lent is a time when disciples of Jesus pay particular attention to training.

Trying versus training this Sunday. See you then.

Steve+

Chip Off the Old Block

Many of you know I grew up in Southern California. My father died in March, 1993, but I still get out to CA for two or three days several times a year to visit my dear elderly mother. And I can almost guarantee two things will happen within the first hour or so of my arrival in San Diego: 1) I will eat an In-N-Out Burger Double Double, and; 2) she will hold my face in her hands and through tears tell me, “You’re so much like dad.”

And she’s right. Physical size notwithstanding (my father was 5’7” and before I started shrinking, I was 6’3”), I’m an awful lot like him. Same givenness to crying, same dry cough, same eye-roll-inducing sense of humor, same pathological tendency to peacemaking, same fungussy toenails (I know, gross)… I could go on because the list is long (and actually includes one or two admirable things, too).

The thing is, none of those characteristics remotely make me Bill Wishart’s son, but they do show to the world that I’m a chip off the old block.

Humor aside, that’s a bit of the backdrop for this week’s Gospel reading from Jesus’s “Sermon on the Plain” in Luke 6. Characteristics of living that don’t make us God’s daughters and sons, but do show to the world that we’re chips off the old block.

See you Sunday.

Steve+

You Keep Using That Word…

Maybe the best schtick in the cult classic The Princess Bride, besides “Stop that rhyming now, I mean it!” “Does anybody want a peanut?” Oh yeah, and “Wuv. Twue wuv…”, has to be Inigo Montoya’s retort on about the forty-ninth time Vizzig exclaims, “Inconceivable!”

“You keep using that word,” he says, “but I do not think it means what you think it means.”

It’s unfortunate that the word “righteousness” has been flattened today to primarily, if not exclusively, connote some kind of (usually off-putting) personal piety. It’s a word we keep using, but I do not think it means what we think it means. Because the ancient biblical conception of righteousness is far more robust, expansive, and good for our neighbors. In fact, Proverbs 11:22 says, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.” Why?

The Psalm appointed for Sunday talks about the vital importance of this kind of righteousness and suggests three accessible ways to reclaim it.

Oh, also, “As you wiiiiiiiiiiisssh.”

See you Sunday.

Steve+

The Presentation of Christ

We recently visited close family friends of ours with a four-year old son. As soon as we walked in the door, he could hardly wait to show us his room and his special toys which we brought out with great fanfare. "Look at this!" What a privilege to delight in his joy and be amazed at his treasures.

Little kids love to show their special people things that matter to them. So do adults. When our special people acknowledge the things that matter to us, we feel loved, we feel like we belong.

Imagine what it must have felt like for Mary and Joseph to present Jesus in the temple and have him taken into the arms of Simeon and Anna. I wonder if it's a taste of what we'll share with Jesus when he presents us "blameless before the presence" of his Father "with great joy" when we are welcomed into the New World (Jude 1:24).

I look forward to experiencing that joy together on Sunday morning!

In Messiah,
Steve Engstrom+

Thinking “We”

In this week’s Gospel reading when Jesus visited his hometown and attended synagogue on Sabbath day—yes, Jesus went to church—he was asked to read from the scroll of the Prophet Isaiah. After reading from chapter 61:1-2 and applying it to himself, the other members were thrilled because they saw themselves, under Roman rule, as the oppressed. Finally, some good news for us. Maybe now they’ll get their comeuppance.

Then the mood radically changed to the point that they tried to throw him off a cliff.

Why? He followed up with two stories that rocked their us/them paradigm.

God thinks “we”...and has since the beginning.

See you Sunday.

Steve+

Just One Thing

In the 1991 comedy City Slickers, Mitch (Billy Crystal) asks Curly (Jack Palance), in a moment of vulnerability, about the secret…the secret of life. “One thing,” Curly says, “just one thing. You stick to that and everything don’t mean nothin’”

Well, Curly doesn’t say it exactly that way, but that’s the gist (for you church history buffs, he uses Martin Luther’s favorite scatalogical word).

That, however, is not the point. Just One Thing is.

Because, the confession and practice of ‘just one thing’ is exactly what St. Paul told the Corinthian church in 1 Corinthians 12 was the “secret” to a healthy and robust spiritual life and community.

See you Sunday,

Steve+

Sing a New Song

Psalm 96 is primarily a quotation from King David's song of triumph upon the return of the Ark to Jerusalem from Philistine captivity. The Psalmist, writing hundreds of years later, introduces the Psalm with an exhortation to "sing a new song!" Written most likely from exile, the Psalmist's call to sing a new song raises interesting questions. What's the old song that we aren't singing anymore? And what's new about the new song?

I wonder what happened in the Psalmist and his people to inspire such a passionate exhortation, such an urgent invitation to worship. Some of us will find a new song on the tips of our tongues; others will search in vain for a tune. Either way, God is inviting us to see things the way He does and discover how much we're a part of His plan.

I look forward to exploring this Psalm with you on Sunday!

And I also look forward to gathering with you in small groups during the 8 weeks of Lent where we can discover and sing a new song together. We're sending out a survey to ask whether you're interested in gathering together in a home-based small group. I encourage you to respond so that we can plan accordingly.

In Messiah,

+Steve Engstrom

What Do You Want?

In the George Bernard Shaw play, Man and Superman, one of the characters says something that can at first seem contradictory, “There are two great tragedies in life; one is to not get your heart’s desire, and the other is to get it.”

It requires some thought, but I think what he’s driving at is that when it comes to your heart’s deepest desires—what you really, really want—getting and not getting can bear identical fruit, leaving you disappointed, frustrated, and unfulfilled.

So, guard your heart.

This is why philosopher Jamie Smith calls “what do you want?” the “first, last, and most fundamental question of Christian discipleship.”

This week’s Psalm leans hard into that question, and this week, so will we.

See you Sunday.

Steve+