Chris Howlett

What Is the Meaning of Life?

 
My message Road of Intellect: Christmas Road Trip, part 3 was about affirming people who have been on an intellectual journey, asking questions about faith. God does not ask that you turn off your brain when you walk into the doors of the sanctuary. To the contrary, as the architect of our amazing intellect, God's desire is that we avail ourselves of the amazing capacity we have for reason and scientific inquiry.

Charles Wesley was a gifted poet and hymn writer. Some question whether the Methodist Revival in England in the 18th century would have gone anywhere without Charles' music. In the quote above he longs for the time when knowledge, the expanding field of human intellect, would join forces with a thriving piety, a people dedicated wholly to serving God's purposes. Basically, he wanted Christians to use their brains!

I don't want to rehash the issues raised in the message, you can go online and listen or download when it gets posted. What I want to do is explore another question. Questions are good. The first action the magi took upon observing the star must have been to ask a question: "What does this mean?" Questions sometimes lead to answers which often lead to more questions. The most fundamental of all questions is the existential one: Why do I exist?

Libraries are full of volumes dedicated to this question and even dedicated to the question of why we ask questions. Philosophy is one of those disciplines that continues to grow in volume and complexity with each passing generation. In our post-modern times, philosophy has become a kind of king of disciplines in which all questions lead back to fundamental questions philosophy is asking. But there is no more fundamental question than that of existence. Why am I here? What is the meaning of life if there is any meaning at all?

Immediately I am thinking of what the response of some of my good friends might be to this question. They might say something like, "Oh, boy, you ask too many questions." Or, "That's the problem with education, you get a little and then you're basically useless!" These are well-meaning friends, and at the end of the day, they may be right!

But it doesn't stop me from wondering.

For one who is committed to Jesus Christ as the Savior and Lord of the universe entire, this is an important question. For if God was willing to sacrifice his Son for human life, then human life must have meaning, a meaning that is far beyond simply existence as a random conglomeration of nucleic acids.

The authors of the Westminster Catechism gave a relatively simple answer to this most complex and confusing of questions: "The chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy him forever." I really like this, however, it is not a logical answer. The question reads: "What is the chief end of man?" The question assumes one answer. Their response, however, posits two answers: glorify God AND enjoy God. Now, it might very well be that to glorify God implies that I will enjoy God, or that enjoyment of God will ensue, but that wasn't the question. The question was about what the singular goal, end, or purpose of man (humanity) is.

I do not have the time to write, nor do you probably the time to read, a full blown argument about what I believe to be the meaning of life, but I do want to summarize my thoughts based on a bunch of the reading I have been doing for my dissertation, particularly, the theological reading.

The meaning of life is simple. It is, to say in one word, love. Humans were created to be loved and to love. Period. That sums up the entirety of the Old and New Testaments. It also is a very nice and neat restatement of all the theological reading I have ever done. God is love. This is what makes up God's very being and personhood. God is Trinity. The community of relations between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is being extended to include all of God's creatures and it is in this relating, to God and thus to one another, that life finds it's highest meaning.

Love. This is what gives life meaning. This is meaning. We are in relationship with God whether we realize it or not. The goal of evangelism ought to be to help people awaken to the reality of their true selves and to discover the joy and hope found in knowing they are loved.

Maybe John Lennon had it right after all, even if he didn't understand the implications: "All you need is love."

Happy Relationships

The quality of our relationships determines a big part of the quality of our lives. Of all the contributors to personal happiness, relationships may be the most important one. Happiness is more than a fleeting feeling or a simple emotional high. Happiness is a deep sense of life satisfaction, fulfillment, and joy. Happiness is what God designed us to experience.

The message from this Sunday, Wired to Connect, we focused on the fact that part of being a human being, part of being a person created in the image of God is to be a person with a tremendous capacity for relationship. Our very being is expressed through the relationships in our lives. The first and most important relationship, the one that gives energy and meaning to all my other relationships is my relationship with God. Jesus Christ gave himself to extend the relational love he enjoys with the Father and the Spirit to us. We want to live out the love of God in our love of one another.

So, how can my relationships be improved? How can I move the center of myself off of me and stop isolating myself from others, and instead, focus on how I can share love with people, and to serve the purpose of God in my life? I want to share some brief relationship pointers:

1. Receive love, yourself.

    The Bible teaches you to love your neighbor as you love yourself. If you don't love yourself, you're not going to have any love to give to your neighbor. Know that you are a child of God, worthy of the love of God, and worthy of love from yourself. You are a person of value and worth and you have much to offer others.

2. Ask every day, "How can you encourage those around you?"

    If I begin the day moving the central focus off of me and onto others, I will be more prepared to see people as individual persons worthy of my love and care, and I will be more willing to encourage them. You would be surprised, first, of how much others need your encouragement, and how well they respond when you offer an encouraging word.

3. Watch your categories.

    It is the human condition to categorize persons according to socioeconomic level, race, gender, education, job status, etc. We pigeonhole people into a certain category so it simplifies our lives and informs how we treat people. A guy in a nice business suit will almost always be better receieved and treated than someone who is unshaven wearing worn-out old clothes. God's love is expansive and knows no limits. Seeing all persons as worthy of love because they are created in the image of God will radically change how we treat others.

4. Let go of past hurts.

    Life hurts sometimes. If you give yourself in relationships, you will be hurt eventually, and most of us have already experienced the pain of broken relationships. Forgiveness is costly, but incredibly freeing. Oftentimes, most of the time, the main person we hurt by our lack of forgiveness is ourselves. The greatest cost of unforgiveness can be the lack of intimacy and joy we experience in future relationships due to our lack of freedom relating to others. Giving God our hurts enables us to experience healthier, life-giving relationships.

5. Make your relationship with God your priority.

    There is one person who you can count on absolutely. God. Everyone else can and will disappoint you from time to time. God is absolutely dependable. God also enables and empowers you to live a life of grace and service for others. If I am in a strong relationship with God, it frees my to give myself more fully to my spouse, to my children, and to my friends. Knowing the love of God empowers me to share freely my love with others. Jesus Christ is the perfect example of a humble, generous, and loving person. he is our example for relationships.

Life really is all about relationships. God created us so that he could be in relationship with us, extending the love of Father, Son, and Spirit to all people. Unfortunately, some people reject this love and isolate themselves from the ultimate source of happiness and peace. Don't be that kind of person. Receive the love of God so you can give your love freely to others.

Toward a Theology of Worship

I'm on vacation with my family in Panama City Beach, Florida. It's really, really nice to get away and relax and have some time to reflect. On Sunday morning, we attended worship at Woodlawn United Methodist Church. Later, I discovered that this is the church my aunt and uncle, Sue & Butch Kitterman, attend when they're staying here in the winter. It's a great church with a tremendous outreach mentality that is infectious. We attended "9 Forty," their contemporary worship service held at the Arnold High School  Auditorium (theater) across the street from the church. They hold worship at the school because this service has outgrown their Christian Life Center. This past Sunday there were over 300 people in attendance and one of their associates was preaching. The praise band did a very good job, though their worship leader was gone on a mission trip with their young adult ministry.

So, whenever I am on vacation, I enjoy worship at other churches. It does a couple of things: 

1. It's Sunday, the Lord's Day. When it's Sunday I want to be in worship because it's one of the basic purposes of my life, to give glory to God. 

2. It's nice to worship in an atmosphere where I am only responsible for my own personal worship in a community that is led by another shepherd/pastor. I can relax much more than on Sundays when I am the pastor, leading our community in worship. Although I certainly worship every Sunday, when I am not involved in the planning and the message, it is a much simpler experience.

Being in this environment, I usually am a little more able to step back and examine what is the theology of worship evident in this experience? I usually learn something. I am able to reflect on what we do at Christ Church more because I'm not in that Sunday to Sunday cycle. So, this time, I really was drawn to reflect on worship and the meaning of worship. I came up with a few thoughts I want to share.

Worship is Christ-Centered.

The audience is not the congregation. The audience is God. When a community of faith gathers to worship, the focus is on bringing glory to the Lord. This is simple, but often overlooked.

Worship Order Matters

The design of the worship service itself matters because the order of the service says something about what you believe about God and about yourself. Where is the offering? Is there a time of greeting other members of the community? Where does the sermon or message come? How is the reading of the Scripture presented? The ordering of the different elements of worship is important.

Worship is Seeker-Sensitive

Paul's instructions to the Corinthians, ancient Jewish practices, and the testimony of the early church all confirm the reality that it is incumbent on a community of faith to take into account the presence of spiritual seekers in worship. This is undeniable. It has much less to do with music style than it does with other aspects of keeping the uninformed informed about what is happening and why it is happening.

Worship and Communion Go Together

I have been reflecting on this for a long time. Word & Sacrament go together. The only reason we don't celebrate Communion every Sunday in the UM tradition is because of a lack of Elders (priests) in early American Methodism. There were so few to go around, churches usually celebrated Communion only quarterly. It certainly was not a result of any theological reflection on frequent communion. The founder of the Methodist Revival, John Wesley encouraged frequent communion. Monthly communion has become the norm, but is this norm in alignment with the Scripture and historical Christian practice? Not really. This is something to think about.

These thoughts are simply a beginning. I would be interested in hearing your thoughts. What do you think is important? Why? How can Christ Church's worship be more God-glorifying and people-inspiring?

Suffering Considered

This morning in my quiet time I read Colossians 1:24, a verse that has always seemed a bit confusing to me:

"Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church" (ESV).

The most straight forward and simple reading of this verse implies there is something lacking in the suffering of Christ. That Christ's suffering on the cross was in some way, shape, or form, insufficient for the gathering of his people called the church. Feel free to check the context, when reading this verse, this is the initial impression. Christians, for centuries, have struggled because of this common sense reading.

I believe the Bible was written so an educated person (if you can read, you are educated), should be able to understand the basic meaning of a translated text without the aid of persons with Ph.D.s in Biblical languages, aside from the translation (which is truly a form of interpretation, but if the translator is honest, his or her interpretation, over the long haul, will be sufficient). It's the Bible. It is not a manual for rocket science.

This is not to say that learning Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic aren't good. To the contrary, the more educated a person is in Biblical languages, the richer the experience can be in grasping the original hearers' perspective and the original author's meaning. It is a richer experience, not necessarily a more accurate experience. One can never discount the operation of the Holy Spirit in the reading and understanding of the Scripture. No level of education has a corner on the Holy Spirit market.

Back to Colossians. This verse is simply confusing. It seems to suggest that when Jesus suffered and died for the sins of the world, he didn't do a thorough enough job. Paul's suffering, which is great - he's writing this letter from prison - is "filling up what is lacking."

Is Paul's suffering atoining for sins? It's as if Paul is equating his suffering for the spread of the Gospel with Christ's suffering on the cross. Certainly, Jesus did instruct us to take up our cross and follow him. This command implies suffering. To follow Jesus is to suffer. Crosses are instruments of suffering. There's really no way around it. Paul is suffering. He is suffering because of his obedience to the call of God on his life. His suffering is great. He seems to bear it willingly, though, because of the glory of his ultimate end: the Kingdom of God. However, is Paul's suffering salvific? for Paul? for the church? for anyone?

It seems to me that, even in light of Jesus' call for us to take up our crosses... ready now, get in line, your cross is coming... it seems even in light of this reality, the suffering of Paul, or anyone for that matter, in service of seeing the Kingdom of God come upon the earth is not the same category of suffering.

Paul suffered physically, emotionally, and perhaps spiritually, but his suffering cannot be understood to be of the same quality of Jesus' suffering. [By this I mean that Jesus' suffering was much more intense and of a different character or category]. Not only being crucified, which is humanity's greatest torture technique, but the reality that on the cross Jesus was bearing the sins of the world... Paul's sins, your sins, my sins, all sins. Certainly, Paul couldn't have meant that his suffering was in some way moving the ball forward with respect to atonement. The work of the cross is finished. So much of what is taught in the Scripture is completely clear. The curtain of the Temple is torn, our access is sure, because of the blood of Jesus we are granted entrance, boldly, to the Throne of Grace. Paul's suffering, though real, cannot be understood as being salvific.

If not, then what is he talking about? My commitment to a belief in the truth of the written text of the Scripture will not allow me to follow Thomas Jefferson's example and simply excise portions with which I don't agree or understand. I must deal with the whole counsel of God. Even this odd little verse.

I believe what Paul was getting at is that Christ's suffering is not over. He is still suffering. The pain of the cross is complete, but suffering still exists as the church lives in a world that continues to reject the message of love Jesus teaches. The world continues to live according to values and goals of self-centerdness and violence. If I am going to be a Christ-follower in this world... this world... I will suffer. I will be forced to make decisions that will cost me temporally, but will be rewarded eternally. The eternal reward does not remove the temporal suffering, but it does make it bearable.

The kind of suffering I am talking about is not the suffering of physical illness or relational pain. There's plenty of that suffering to go around, though. Right now my back hurts... not because I've been shouldering my cross, but because I awkwardly picked up my backpack out of the back seat of my car last week and tweeked it. My sore back has nothing to do with the sufferings of Christ lacking anything.

Paul suffered as a result of his commitment to Christ and Christ's ministry to seek and save the lost. I have suffered because of a similar commitment, although not to the degree of Paul. Not even close. Never been stoned. Never been imprisoned. Held up to Paul's my suffering has been a walk in the park. Suffering is suffering, though. Whether it means someone in your office despises you because you read The Upper Room at lunch time or you invited them to an early morning Bible Study, or simply because you refused to join in an inappropriate, hurtful joke at the expense of another. Living as a follower of Jesus does get us into trouble from time to time.

When his followers suffer, Jesus suffers. His suffering is not finished. People all over the world continue to be imprisoned, their personal property confiscated or destroyed, their standing in the community diminished, their lives and the lives of their families threatened and sometimes martyred because of Christ. Jesus isn't done, yet.

The Christian hope is that he will be some day. He will return and make all things right. He has already been vindicated by the power of his Resurrection. When he returns the martyrs of the church will be vindicated and righteousness, peace, and love will reign forever.

Low In the Grave He Lay

There's an old hymn that we sing on Easter Sundays, "Up From the Grave He Arose," actually I believe we're singing it at our 8:30 a.m. service this Sunday! Anyway, the opening verse starts in a very slow cadence, almost like a funeral dirge:

Low in the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior,
Waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!

Then it breaks into the upbeat, happy chorus announcing that Jesus has risen from the grave, victorious over death. That's Easter!

Today is Good Friday. On Good Friday they laid him in the grave. It was a funeral dirge. It was depressing. Imagine, this man in whom you put all your hopes and dreams is dead and those hopes and dreams are dashed against the stone of cold hard reality. None of the disciples thought there was any hope left. They scattered, scared that their appointment with death was coming soon.

But, they were wrong. They were all wrong. Jesus is exactly who he says he is. He is the Son of the Living God. He is the Savior who takes away the sin of the world. He is the Great Shepherd of the Sheep. He did get up on Sunday morning!

It's good, though, that we celebrate... (is that the right word?), that we celebrate Good Friday. For, while it wasn't very good for Jesus, and it wasn't particularly exciting for the disciples, it is tremendously good for us! Yes, Jesus suffered and died, voluntarily laying down his life so that we could experience a life-changing relationship with God, so that our sins are forgiven, and we are able to walk in the newness of life. Victory from defeat. Glory from tragedy. Life from death.

A Choice to Make

“Jesus went to Jerusalem to announce the good news to the people of that city. And Jesus knew that he was going to put a choice before them: Will you be my disciple, or will you be my executioner? There is no middle ground here. Jesus went to Jerusalem to put people in a situation where they had to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No.’ That is the great drama of Jesus' Passion: he had to wait upon how people were going to respond. How would they come? To betray him or to follow him? In a way, his agony is not simply the agony of approaching death. It is also the agony of having to wait.” – Henri Nouwen

I’m not sure I can add much to Nouwen’s quote. He is certainly challenging. Of course, the events of Jesus’ last week prior to his resurrection were challenging. For that matter, the weeks that followed Jesus’ resurrection were challenging. Jesus is challenging.

Betray or follow. The choice really is ours. It’s the beauty of being created in the image of God: freedom of choice. It’s also the bane. And we make the choice every day. Will I follow Jesus today or will I follow my perceived self-interests? I say perceived because my true self-interests are served by following Jesus. That is the way of joy, hope, fulfillment, and happiness. The way of love is the way of life.

Yet, we, like the crowds, can be a fickle bunch. When following Jesus looks fun and popular and acceptable, well we jump on the bandwagon. When following Jesus means giving up long held prejudices and false beliefs, then things get dicey. When following Jesus means giving up comforting religion and taking up paradigm-altering revolution, well, I think I might just hold on to religion, thank you very much. Everyone else is.

Jesus forces a choice. Betray or follow. Self-preservation or crucifixion. Limited life or resurrection life.

How will you respond? Jesus is patiently waiting.

Have a Happy Lent!

“What do you do when it comes home to you that the field of dry bones is yourself? That the abomination of desolation is you? That Lazarus, three days dead in the tomb and stinking is not Lazarus at all, but a man with your name? What do you do, in other words, when you learn you are not real, and that the relation between you and the place you live in and the clothes you wear and the things you do, is no relation at all? When it suddenly dawns on you: I am a resident of Desolation Row? What do you do?? Why, you thank God and you sing out for joy that liberation has come, that the day of redemption is at hand!” – Matthew Kelty, monk of Gethsemani

Have a Happy Lent!

That’s an oxymoron, isn’t it? I mean, wishing someone to have a Happy Lent is like wishing they enjoy their wisdom tooth extraction, or hoping their divorce is fun, or their stint in traffic school is pleasant. Just doesn’t seem right.

But Lent can be happy, indeed. Lent is a season of self-examination, originating in the early church as a period of preparation for those nearing the time of baptism. Baptism was a sacrament, but it was also a political act, declaring in a public way that Jesus is Lord, not the temporal powers of the world, and this act could be quite costly, so early church leaders wanted to make sure people were serious and ready. Self-examination meant being honest about one’s sinfulness and rebellion against God.

Well, that does seem a bit dismal, on the surface. But as we gaze a little bit deeper, as Matthew Kelty does in his sermon entitled Desolation Row, we learn that self-examination is a truly joyful experience. Desolation Row is the title of a Bob Dylan song written in the mid 1960s, which Kelty used as a metaphor for sinful human existence in a sermon of the same name. The above quote is taken from that sermon.

We are all pretenders, hoping no one will discover the real us, so we build up a false self to present to the world, to God, and really, even to ourselves. We become deluded by the amazing efforts of the false self to be when it is merely a figment of our imagination. We want to believe we’re good enough, we hope our fellow church members don’t know who we really are, we especially hope God doesn’t find out!

Lent is about liberation. So it is happy! Lent reminds us that the false self we’ve been propping up isn’t real at all. We’re not nearly as good as we’ve been trying to convince others and ourselves we are. We can stop pretending and start trusting in the grace of God.

Have a happy Lent! You live on Desolation Row. That’s a good thing, because people who live on Desolation Row are the target audience of Jesus’ ministry.

Forgiveness

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all hostility.” – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A big part of Lent is self-examination. We need to examine ourselves to uncover those sins we have committed and are committing that we tend to hide from others and, even more, that we hide from ourselves. One of those sins that seems to hang on, beneath the surface and undetected, is unforgiveness.

Unforgiveness is like a cancer. It starts small, but grows and metastasizes, infecting more and more of our lives. Unforgiveness does not necessarily hurt the one whom we refuse to forgive, though it can, it always hurts us. Unforgiveness rears it’s ugly head in many ways: a critical spirit, depression, and the lack of an ability for intimacy, among others. It eats away at our joy and even interferes with our relationship with God.

The first step to forgiveness is seeking forgiveness from God. The second is to ask God to help you develop a sense of empathy for the one who hurt you. You need to be able to see them from God’s perspective. Believe it or not, God loves them, and you, in spite of sin. His heart is a heart of forgiveness. Oftentimes the motives we attribute to those who have hurt us are not the actual motives. They acted out of ignorance or out of their own brokenness and pain. Now, this is not making excuses, but it is gaining a healthier perspective from which you can choose to say, “I forgive. I release you from responsibility. I am turning over my pain to our Lord, who suffered for us all.”

Is there hidden brokenness in you? Have you been hurt by someone? Do you need to cross the great divide of forgiveness? Turn to the Lord. Forgiveness is his business.

Ash Wednesday: The Journey of Lent

Today is Ash Wednesday. It is the first day of the season of the Christian Year called Lent. Lent is a time of preparation for Easter and the waters of baptism and new life.

What can you do this year differently during Lent?

I was reading another blog the other day by someone in the "emergent" crowd talking about Lent:

"A couple of years ago, after the 10th person told me they were giving up chocolate for Lent I became extremely frustrated and decided to produce a Lenten guide that encouraged people to make some meaningful sacrifices during this season."

Lent is not about "giving something up" it's not even about making "some meaningful sacrifices." Lent is about penitence. Period. That's what it is. Penitence.

Originally, Lent was a time of preparation for candidates for baptism. The baptisms were being held exclusively on Easter, and the period of time prior to Easter became associated with a season of self-examination and penitence for the candidates for baptism, called catechumens.  Fairly soon after this became widespread, other Christians recognized that an extended period of penitence and focussed prayer was spiritually beneficial to anyone, not only the catechumens, and so the observation was extended to include all the faithful.

Need to be careful. Anything related to the Christian Year can easily become religion. Religious people were the ONLY people to whom Jesus had anything negative to say. To be religious is to miss the mark. There is no way around this truth. I am not advocating for a low-church, anti-Church Year view, I am arguing for a via media, a middle way. Methodism has long been associated with the middle way that was prevalent in the Church of England, from which Methodism rose as a renewal movement. 

The purpose of Lent is self-examination. Jesus went to the cross for a simple reason: sin. Sin separates people from God. Sin includes actions and attitudes which deceitfully encourage our independence from God. We are not independent from God, though, so sin is falsehood. Jesus referred to Satan as the 'Father of Lies." Appropriate. So, Lent is a journey to the truth: the truth that my sin is a barrier between me and God; the truth that my sin is my fault; the truth that God's love is undaunted by my sin; the truth that in the Cross of Jesus Christ, my sin is forgiven.

I have been forgiven, but... there remains in me a "bent to sinning." When, with the Holy Spirit's help, I overcome some sinful habit or deceitful way of thinking, another layer of the onion is uncovered, another manner in which I have been and am sinful, but am only now seeing it for what it is. The process begins again: confession, forgiveness, cleansing, and new creation. Ooops, there's something more, another layer!

So Lent is not for seekers and new believers alone. Lent is a journey for all followers of Christ. As a matter of fact, the closer I grow to God in spiritual maturity, the more aware I become of my own brokenness and sin. So, I need repentance. I need a time of self-examination. I need a renewal of my prayer life. God is love. He's waiting for me to turn to him, to turn to the truth, to receive his help, his comfort, and his peace. May Christ and his peace be your companion during this season of Lent.

One last thing: The word, "Lent" simply means "spring." Nothing at all spiritually important about the word, it just describes the time of year it is observed.