The Phil Files

What? Yep, they are called the eleven!

Doesn’t sound right does it? We’ve heard of a baker’s dozen (13) and we’ve heard of the twelve (apostles), but what in the world we do with the eleven?

Twice in Luke 24, as he is sharing the story of Jesus resurrection, Luke refers to the apostles as the eleven (Luke 24:9 & Luke 24:33). Ouch! We feel the deep wound in even saying the number 11. This number is a reminder of the night of failure –  the night that Jesus’ closest three friends couldn’t stay awake with him in prayer (Peter, James, & John in Gethsemane), and  Judas betrayed him, and Peter denied the him three times, and the rest of the twelve abandoned him to die alone. It is most clearly a reminder of Judas, the betrayal for thirty pieces of silver and the suicide in sorry for what he had done and how the apostles were left incomplete after the horrors of it all.

The term 11 reminds us of the flawed nature of our best intentions to never forsake the Lord. The number 11 is a reminder of our brokenness and incompleteness and failure. Even the mere thought of the number 11 is the jarring number reminder to us of the wounds in Jesus’ side and even deeper wounds in his heart. And, 11 reminds us that the account of Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection does not sugar coat the unfaithfulness of the early church’s greatest heroes. So 11 reminds us to be humble about our biggest promises to the Lord.

The Bible is filled with all sorts of great numbers:

• 3 for divinity
• 4 for creation
• 7 for perfection
• 10 for greatness
• 12 for the twelve tribes of Israel, the people of God, and the apostles
• 40 years for the lifetime of a generation
• 1,000 for an exceedingly long time or large amount of something

But 11 is the perfect number for us.

• Flawed people , but remade by God’s grace
• Disciples carrying the scars of our own failures, but made whole by Jesus’ sacrifice
• Followers who are broken, but forgiven and called back to service
• Worshipers who are wounded, but being healed by the Savior’s touch
• People who can be crushed on their darkest Fridays, but for whom Sunday is coming

11!

You study and prepare, thinking you have done all you can do and think all that you can think, and then you are surprised! It can be a question at a presentation or a question during a test or a question in the doc’s office. Or, you can get up each week and try to speak God’s message to folks seeking to be God’s people and you get surprised by what comes out of your own mouth – stuff that isn’t in your notes.

Sometimes, unfortunately, you think, “Ouch! I wish I hadn’t said that, somebody is going to pulverize me over lunch for it!”

Other times, with great joy and surprise, you think, “Wow! I wish I had thought of what I just said. That’s so good I’d like to stop and take notes.”

This past Sunday, I had a bit of both. It would be stupid (yes, I know I am not supposed to use that word around kids, but sometimes is the perfect sounding word) to repeat any of the “Ouch!” comments. But I’d like to share — if with no one but myself — the “Wow!” comments. These latter comments are not things I’m not smart enough to think up. I hope they were the product of trying to deliver God’s message, listening to the Spirit, faithful preparation, and the hearts of the people hearing that message and helping shape it as it is delivered.

While the first statement felt like an “Ouch!” when I said it, the more I thought about it, the more true I believe it is. I said something like, “I know a lot of folks are very nervous about all of this post-modern stuff, but I would like to confess, as one who has grown up a modernist, that our era killed God. We bought into the scientific method, we depended upon what we called ‘rational thought’ and we broke the tie between the earthly and the spiritual. You younger folks, you post-modern folks, have reminded us that we have to account for the spiritual world.”

I know some folks probably didn’t agree with that, or even like it, but the more I’ve pondered it, the more I believe it’s true. Our modernism has split the world into secular and sacred, flesh and spirit. Heresies among followers of Jesus repeatedly have tried to do it. But a whole wave of human culture, now firmly entrenched since the 18th century, has enforced it and chosen the rational over mystery, proof over prayer, and lived in the world of the secular because we felt we could manage it better – because, we claimed, the secular world is tangible, empirical, touchable, solvable, provable, demonstratable, and real.

Bottom line reality is this: we are right earthy folks. We’re made of dirt. One of these days – and I’m not being insensitive here, just honest – all of us are going to be the main attraction at a funeral. People will hopefully say nice things about us. Then they will haul us out to a pretty place with grass, flowers, and trees, drop us in the ground, throw some dirt in our face, and go back to the church house and eat chicken. Some of those folks will hurt like crazy, but the world will go on and part of us will go back to dirt.

But, every part of the living, dying, crying, eating, and all that goes with this earthy existence is spiritual – even the dirt. It is a reminder that God made us out of this stuff and our rebellion broke our world – it’s all broken dirt. And just as we cry out for deliverance, so does the broken creation (read Romans 8:18-25). So every time we are sick or someone dies or there is a natural disaster we are reminded that everything, everything around us is part of the spiritual world in which we live. All of it begs us to seek after God and find Him in our earthiness (Acts 17:24-28).

The amazing thing is that God chose to live in a house of dirt, to wear skin, just like us. That is who Jesus is! And no matter how much folks want to separate the earthy from the spiritual, the secular from the sacred, the matter-of-fact from the mystery, Jesus is the great reminder it goes together. He spoke peace to the winds and the waves and to the woman with an uncontrollable menstrual flow. He made mud out of dirt and spit and put it on a blind guys eyes. He lived in the world of fish, storms, green grass, leprous skin, dry deserts, and rugged mountains. He got hungry, tired, thirsty, and cried – cried real tears for Lazarus, Jerusalem, and the impending Cross. And He did as God – the One who is Spirit!

Which brings me to the other “Wow!” – the other thing I wish I was smart enough to think up before I preached.We prayed the Lord’s prayer and were reminded that the way we deal with our brokenness is to be dependent upon and love God with all that we are and love our neighbor enough to be reconciled through forgiveness. Just as the Lord’s prayer anchors us to God and to our neighbor (Matthew 6:9-13), and just as Jesus taught us the two great commands are loving God and our neighbor (Matthew 22:37-39) , Paul taught the same thing. He said that God was at work in every circumstance to bring about His good in our lives if we love Him and are called according to His purpose – loving others for him (Romans 8:28-29).

I think we all live between the “Ouch!” and the “Wow!” I am so thankful that Jesus came as a God’s great gift of grace and grit, the divine in dirt, to show us the way of grace is not an escape from earthiness, but through it.

“I only appear to be dead.”

Today is the birthday of Hans Christian Andersen — you already know that if you are a fan of The Writer’s Almanac from which this thought comes. Having lived a hard life, losing his father at only 11 years of age, Andersen had some unusual quirks that made his short stories and fairy tales interesting. They also made for some interesting twists in his life.

One of the quirky twists involved Andersen’s fear of being buried alive. To settle his nerves and reassure himself in the face of his fears, he left a note beside his bed each evening that read, “I only appear to be dead.”

As I looked over the responses to my last two posts, and as I wrestled with the harsh difficulties of some of my friends to whom I have tried to minister, I realized how deep the hurt and how grievous the wounds of many ordinary people. Now I know some of you are thinking, “There is no such thing as an ordinary person. We are all special in God’s sight! Jesus died for ALL of us and EACH of us at the same time.”

Who can quarrel with such a statement? So then, how to do explain to ordinary folks who are broken why they are neglected in their hurt, forgotten with their wounds, and even avoided because of their brokenness? They don’t feel like the extraordinary person who has fallen from grace in a public way. so why should they be shunned? They don’t feel weird or out of the ordinary, so why should their struggles be somehow more odd than others.? My only answer is that God’s people, the folks who are called to be living the good news of the Kingdom, only appear to be dead. We’re not dead, we’re just sleeping.

An old line from Graham Green’s challenging little novel called The Power and The Glory comes to mind at a time like this: “The church sat there like a block of ice melting away in the heat.”

Some of the criticisms pointed at Jesus’ followers are overly harsh and unfair. Even Jesus himself acknowledged that only 1 out of 4 seeds would be focused and fruitful. The Lord said that in the fields where God’s good seed grows there are also those who look the part, but are really only weeds. Our Savior reminded his closest friends that while he cast his net of grace wide and far, that net came back with some fish that needed to be thrown back because they were false. (See each of these stories in Matthew 13). So we should not be surprised when we face — and sometimes when we are reason for — the criticism of those who see our imperfections and contradictions.

However, if we were not the habitat of hypocrites, where could flawed people go? If we didn’t have folks who were weak and sometimes slipped back into their old and broken ways, where could broken people find companionship for the journey of transformation?

Seems to be the test is pretty simple. Do we love God and love people? If we love God, we are dissatisfied with our lack of our own progress and turn with renewed commitment to Jesus for grace AND power. Transformation doesn’t happen without both. In addition, we love others. So we do not pretend to them that we are something that we are not — we are honest about ourselves and our struggles — and we invite them to share our journey. Redemption in real life doesn’t happen for us or others if we do not.

Sounds so simple. Unfortunately, it seems, we fall asleep. So maybe we need to add a line to Andersen’s adapted statement: “We only appear to be dead. So please pray that the Holy Spirit will rouse us to live with the heart of Jesus.”

No wonder the apostle Paul reminded church folks a long time ago about the words of one of their hyms:

Wake up, you who are sleeping! Rise from death, and Christ will shine on you.” (Ephesians 5:14)