John Fischer The Catch

Scrooge awoke in his bedchamber in the middle of a snore to find the clock once again at the stroke of one, and thinking he had the upper hand on Ghost number two, he thought he was ready for anything. What he got was something totally unfamiliar to him – a feast! He got extravagance. He got a belly laugh. He got participation. He got a tour of the town, and as they looked in on various homes, from rich to poor, he got joy unleashed. The joy was infectious, and it drew Ebenezer in, to where he was no longer an observer but a participant.

Life in the Spirit is engaged, and engaging. It is all about entering in. There is no Spirit in the observance of a thing, but in the partaking. Weighing… judging… assessing… discriminating… these are activities of a Pharisee bent on remaining aloof to the situation. “Come in, and know me better, man,” was the invitation of Christmas Present, and that, in itself, was an invitation to partake.

How much of my life is standing around on the outside? I prefer the outside like many prefer the back row. From there you are an observer, a judge, a critic. But the extent to which I am watching is the extent that life is passing me by.

In 2 Corinthians 2:17, Paul says that we are being lead in a triumphal procession in Christ. That means we are in the parade, not watching it.

Arise, partake, my friend. “Come in, and know me better, man.”

There is joy in the Spirit – an innocence – a forgetfulness of self… an abandonment. You will witness it below as you share in a brief Christmas message from my son, Christopher and new daughter, Elizabeth. (I hate the term “in-law.”) These two are participating in their love — still reveling in the joy of being found. We would think them and us ill-used to only talk about it.

It was a clever trick of Charles Dickens to allow us, as observers of the story to catch the miserly Ebenezer losing himself in a dance, a game, or a lusty laugh. We know he is only participating in the shadows of things – that he can see, but not be seen – yet he is so desirous of taking part that doesn’t matter to him.

It makes his conversion more believable because he has already done this in his imagination and his dreams. We are thinking the joke is on him when it’s really on us. We are the ones observing. We are the ones doing nothing. Our test comes when we walk out of the theater, put the book down, close the computer, or turn off our phone. Will the Spirit have us? Are we being lead in the parade or merely watching it? Only you and I can answer that. “Come in, and know me better, man.”

Please enjoy Christopher and Beth’s personal Christmas greeting to you (see below), and please consider your gift to the Catch at this time of year. We are seeking the funding now to kick us into increased influence for the kingdom of God in 2013. There are 70 million people who use the Internet at any given time. They are our audience. Let’s do this together.

“Marley was dead: to begin with… dead as a door-nail.” So begins the Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. The success of the story of Ebenezer Scrooge depends on a very dead Jacob Marley in order to introduce the three ghosts of Christmas whose visits will give Scrooge the opportunity to shun the selfish, miserly path he treads. Likewise, the hope of a transformed husband in the Fischer household begins with a very dead John Fischer so that the new one can rise again, and so far, that death is not anything we can prove.

Indeed, the old John Fischer seems to be very much alive as evidenced by his propensity to:

Dig his heels in when confronted with joy, mirth and overall gladness;
Cringe at the expenditure of any funds for whatever reason;
Think of himself first and foremost and lovingly embrace any obstacle that renders him helpless;
Write and inspire anyone but himself;
Prefer smallness and the limited solutions fear presents to the openhearted solution-oriented magnanimous efforts created by following the path of faith, hope and love;
Refuse participation in the joy of giving, preferring to focus on the belief that there is nothing to give, when he knows that more comes from giving than holding back.

Yes, the old John Fischer is forging a long chain of selfishness and ingratitude. He built it link by link, yard by yard and it grows longer still whenever he refuses to step into the new John Fischer made possible by the Spirit of God. Here’s the truth (and it is true for you as much as it is true for me): the old John Fischer will always be doing these things. He will not now or ever get any better, only better at hiding the ugliness so he doesn’t have to look at it while making everyone around him miserable because they do.

The old way is comfortable. It’s easy. It is fraught with excuses, rationalizations and denials. But it is not mandatory. It is not all I have to work with. At all times, because of Christ, there is a choice. There is a new way. It is the way of the Spirit. It is always available to me by faith. However, it is not automatic. We have to shift gears. Like shedding a comfortable old coat, we have to step out of the old one and into the new by faith.

The roll of the past is to take a good look, as I have done here, at the person you are when, as the Bible puts it, you are “in the flesh,” and ask yourself, “Do I really want to be that person?” Then think of a time when you were “in the Spirit.” What were you like? Did you like that person? Do you remember how you got there? What did it take to step out of your old self? What did it feel like to be in the new? And then ask yourself: “What would that new person do in this situation?” The past is valuable in establishing a choice. Remember, the new guy is going to take some effort by the sheer fact that the old one takes nothing. Fortunately the Spirit takes over, but only when we are vulnerable. If you are feeling as comfortable as an old shoe, you are probably not in the Spirit. But more on that tomorrow when we look into the roll of the present.

One of the characteristics of my former self is denial and the tendency to give a false impression that everything is fine when it is most decidedly not. I can actually block out pain by forgetting and avoiding. Thus I have not kept you abreast on the shape of our home mortgage even though many of you have requested a report. Your incredible support this year has enabled us to still be here. We have successfully fended off the first attack, though we remain in foreclosure with the bank. Your continued gifts will increase our options. We are building a fund in our Catch account to enable us to negotiate from a point of strength.

And so as we come to the end of the year, we ask that you consider giving generously to The Catch that we might be able to continue in our home and position ourselves to implement some exciting new programs for 2013 in reaching a wider Internet audience. More about that in the next few days. I know this is a busy time as Christmas approaches, but we have some special things scheduled for next week; you won’t want to miss a Catch!

In the meantime, you will be visited by three video links in three emails. Expect the first today when the bell tolls one.

God became man.

When it comes to manmade religion, nothing could be more remotely possible. Who could have thought up this?

God became man.

It’s preposterous. It’s a scandal if it’s not the truth. That the Son of God would also be son of man (that God would even have a Son) is beyond human invention. It’s enough to make you fall down and worship right there.

God became man.

It shows that we are in God’s image. How else could God do this – become like us and stay that way? It shows His deep desire not only to love us, but to know us, to become intimate with us, to become one with us.

God became man.

That’s big. That’s big enough to make something of it — big enough to shout from the rooftops – big enough to celebrate without any further information.

God became man.

It’s the ultimate form of standing in someone else’s shoes – the ultimate form of living for someone else. He not only got in our shoes, He got in our skin. He set His own glory aside for this. Imagine walking around knowing you are God and not telling anyone. That’s why the star and the angels… the glory of this had to slip out somewhere. The universe could not be completely silent about this. It was a glory leak.

God became man.

And He did it for a reason. He did it to purchase our redemption. Wonder of wonders, He did it to die in our place. There is no bigger news. They call it the gospel (“good news”) and there’s nothing better. It is good. It is very good.

God became man.

…and we’re having ourselves a merry little Christmas? There’s nothing little about this. Never will be.

Welcome, all Wonders in one sight!
    Eternity shut in a span.
 Summer to winter, day in night,
    Heaven in earth, and God in man.
 Great little One! Whose all-embracing birth
 Lifts earth to heaven, stoops heaven to earth.
– Richard Crashaw (1613-1649)

My fondest memories of Christmas as a child was a Christmas Eve service my brother, my sister and I would design, set up and perform every year in our living room.

There were ordinary things around the house that turned into sacred objects that night. Like the drop-leaf table which, with stacked books covered by a sheet, served as our austere pulpit. On the top of the stack we placed an open Bible, and on either side of it, a candelabra – the only light coming from those candles and the Christmas tree.  My sister would play the piano for a carol sing, and perform one solo number. My brother would play along on his trumpet and do a solo as well. I was much younger than they were so I got the job of reading the Christmas story from Luke chapter 2: “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night…”

Each year we would plan the service and type up a program complete with Christmassy drawings that my dad had mimeographed for our audience of two (my parents). He was the choir director at our church at the time, so putting on programs and events like this was second nature to us as a family. Only this time it was our chance as kids to do it entirely on our own. We prided ourselves in getting no help with this. I honestly think I looked forward to this more than Christmas morning.

It was all a big deal because it was all so magical. The candlelight, the music, and the holy nature of the moment made it more liturgical than church. Simple everyday things became holy, and what was holy became simple. This was indeed “high church,” before I knew what high church was – our best offering in return for the best gift given to us on that first Christmas. It was better than church because it was our church. We owned it from start to finish. It was far from perfect, but I believe God received it as the most perfect gift possible. Just like He receives our worship today in our thoughts, our memories, our giving and receiving, and our gratitude.

One of our readers commented that yesterday’s Catch is going to be helpful in forming his thoughts for a teaching he’s about to do on communion, or the evangelical word for the commemoration of the Last Supper – what Jesus asked His followers to do to remember His death in the common elements of bread and wine. I wrote him back, “Fabulous. I know it will go well. Think of it as if you were there on that night. Imagine what’s going through the disciples’ minds. Imagine the sounds, smells, tastes, feelings. Make it human.” And I was reminded again of why we miss so much of the reality of God’s coming to us in Jesus. Christ came down, and we keep trying to send Him back. If we have lost the human significance of Christ’s coming, we have missed the whole point.

The theological word for it is incarnation; the practical word for it is Jesus. There is theology and then there is Jesus. Jesus is the stuff of it. Jesus is the final word. Jesus is not a concept; He is a human being. He has been, and always will be a human being. Christmas celebrates when He was born into our time and space, but He is human right now, seated next to the Father in heaven. He didn’t just take on our form for a while; He is us. He came to be us – to touch us, to redeem us, to gather us together and bring us with Him to the Father. Jesus is God’s idea for us realized. He is the firstborn of God’s new creation – the human idea reclaimed. And in being the first born, He is leading the rest of us, through our own death and resurrection, into our rightful place with Him in eternity.

And in doing so Jesus says “Yes” to all that we are. The only thing that changes is to rid us of sin, but our humanity is fully redeemed in Christ. We don’t become ghosts, we don’t become Martians, we become fully human – God’s idea reclaimed.

Christ’s physical dimensions may be different after His resurrection (He can appear and disappear), but His physical presence is the same. He has hair, two eyes, a nose and a mouth. He has a right and a left hand by which He does things. He walks; He doesn’t float. He is fully recognizable as one of us. In His new body He walked and talked with his disciples. He ate with them, and let them touch Him. He even retained His wounds (rather important wounds, indeed). He didn’t go back to being whatever form He took before Bethlehem, He is who He is, and He is human. And I would like to add that outside of time and space (where God exists and has always existed) He has always been human.

Because of Jesus, we don’t get out of being human; we get into being human. We finally discover what our humanness is all about. Yes, Christmas celebrates Christ’s coming, but it also affirms you and me. What a great thing it is to be you.

So celebrate Christ this Christmas, but also, celebrate each other. I think that’s what He would want us to do.

Blood and skin.

I like skin. I like it better than flesh. Flesh is the biblical term that escapes us. We think we know what it means but we have built-in buffers from overuse without knowledge. We nod knowingly, but the power of the concept slips by. Skin is more accessible. We can scratch it… pinch it… rub it… prick it and it bleeds. “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us” is one thing. “The Word came in skin” is another. One is theological; the other is visceral. John says they heard the Word with their ears, saw it with their eyes and handled it with their hands. That’s because it came in skin.

At my ordination three years ago, a few witnesses were asked to express their encouragement and insight into my life and ministry through word pictures, and Chandler, who was ten-years-old at the time, surprised us all by volunteering his own contribution in two words: blood and skin. What could be more profound?

Blood and skin. Wine and bread. These are the elements that Jesus sanctified and turned into sacraments: Do this as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup. Remember His death.

And this is unequivocally the most mysterious and amazing thing about Christmas, because our Christmases celebrate the fact that God took on blood and skin – broke one for our sin, poured out the other to give us the ability to live a new life based on a new covenant or new arrangement by which His Spirit would now be made available to us in uniting with our spirits and indwelling us – His Spirit now inside our skin. None of this would have been possible without Christ’s blood and skin. And none of that would have been possible without Christ’s birth in Bethlehem, a real town on the real earth in real time.

See Him laugh
See Him plead
Slit His side
See Him bleed
Rejoice!

The skin I’m in is likened to the skin around the Son of God
He bruised and bled just like me
He sweat great drops to set me free
He walked and talked
Loved and lost
In skin like mine He met the cost

The skin I’m in is like the bread
Broken now to be my food
The only one to be called good
Pressed into a chunk of wood
By nails that passed through blood and skin
Not unlike the skin I’m in
 
It had to be this way
Though I know not why
The Son of God came to die
He did
 
He hurt
He ate
He slept and wept
From town to town
Unwashed, unkept
He laughed
He drank
He sighed
He spent
Homeless nights
Without a cent
He dreamt
He was exempt
Of nothing but the sorry sin
That lives inside this skin I’m in
 
But that is why He came one night
Announced by stars and candlelight
In straw and earth wet with dung
The life of God has now begun
In Bethlehem to claim my sin
All wrapped in swaddling clothes
And skin.