pastore: mea sententia (in my opinion)

I was going to say it but I never got around to it because I did have it phrased right.  And then he said it much better than I would have so here it is.

At a recent retreat Bishop Hicks explained that because the Church has always understood the Psalms to speak of Jesus the New Covenant Church has claimed the Psalms as their own.  And because the Psalms are to be understood in terms of the Triune God as revealed in the New Testament, that is why the doxology is sung or said after a psalter reading.

“These things has thou done, and I held my tongue and thou thoughtest wickedly, that I am even such as one as thyself.”  Psalm 50:21

Imagine the following scenario.  A dad gets tickets to a Sunday football game.  He is a God fearing, church going man but sees the tickets as an opportunity that doesn’t come along very often.  He decides that it is “OK” to miss worship of the Savior for that Sunday in order to attend the football game.  No big deal, right?  People compromise like this all of the time.  So he attends the game, has a great time and all is good.  Nothing “bad” happens.  What he does not see, however, is the erosion that has started.  He has compromised and his friends and more importantly his children have seen it.  There are, of course, other opportunities to skip the formal worship of the Savior and because he did so before and nothing “bad” happened he is comfortable doing it again.  There are special family gatherings, special guests from out of town, late nights on Saturday and long weekends that conflict with worship and it is all understandable and justifiable in the man’s mind.  But there is an erosion going on.  And the man might not see it in his life, at least not obviously.  And he might think he doesn’t see it in his children, but it is there.  His compromising becomes more frequent and more obvious in the lives of his children.  And their compromising becomes hypocritical in the eyes of his grandchildren.  The hypocrisy they witnessed is fuel for them to reject the faith all together and this requires God to start over again by regenerating the generations in the family that follow.  And it all starts with an opportunity to compromise.  Be not fooled by God’s silence.

http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/us/2011/December/Anglican-Fever-Youth-Flock-to-New-Denomination-/

Anglican Fever

Death had the last say over Christopher Hitchens.  The devil had the last laugh.  Not God, but the devil.  God finds no joy in the death of sinners, even the death of those that are destined to serve as vessels for dishonor.   I suspect God finds no joy because each person is made in His image.  Each person has the fingerprints of God on him.  We might ask, “Why would God allow to happen what he doesn’t enjoy?”  Like questions pertaining to the “problem of evil” we can’t answer to complete satisfaction.  It is not for us to concern ourselves for how it all came to be but to do with it what God has commanded.   And He has commanded us to love Him.  He has commanded us to believe that Jesus is His Son.  He has commanded us to have faith that Jesus’ death and resurrection allow us to be forgiven of our sins and have the hope of eternal life.  Hitchens was told these things from the time of his youth but he didn’t believe them.  Perhaps more would come to know God from the death of Hitchens than the number he scared away while he lived.  That is how I will pray.  For Christopher Hitchens with great sincerity, “Lord Have Mercy, Christ Have Mercy, Lord Have Mercy!”

“This headship, then, is most fully embodied not in the husband we should all wish to be but in him whose marriage is most like a crucifixion; whose wife receives most and gives least, is not unworthy of him, is –in her own mere nature–least lovable.  For the Church has no beauty but what the Bride-groom gives her; he does not find, but makes her, lovely.  The chrism of this terrible coronation is to be seen not in the joys of any man’s marriage but in its sorrows, in the sickness and sufferings of a good wife or the faults of a bad one, in his unwearying (never paraded) care of his inexhaustible forgiveness: forgiveness, not acquiescence.  As Christ sees in the flawed, proud, fanatical or lukewarm Church on earth that Bride who will one day be without spot or wrinkle, and laboours to produce the latter, so the husband whose headship is Christ-like (and he is allowed no other sort) never despairs.  He is a King Cophetua who after twenty years still hopes that the beggar-girl will one day learn to speak the truth and wash behind her ears.” C.S. Lewis

Lewis captures the attitude to be set in the mind of a man who says “I do.”  Although there is no one perfect recipe for every marriage, there is a perfect ingredient.  A man who can love in the manner described above will indeed make his bride lovely.

I’ll let you google King Cophetua, I had to.

We committed my Dad to the ground and to the Lord yesterday.  It was a pleasure to see his family and to hear how they loved him.  Below is the eulogy.

Eulogy for Ronald R. Williams

“What is man that thou are mindful of him?”  When King David asks that question in Psalm 8 he has just considered the vastness of God.  To understand that God would consider man in comparison to Him is almost absurd.  And then when we take into account mankind’s sinfulness it defines absurdity.  And yet, God is mindful of man.

This is all rather humbling.  This gathering is humbling.  God has been mindful of us, all of us here.  He was mindful of us when a young man tried to catch the attention of a girl from Washington State who happened to be living in the Philadelphia area for a short time.  From the way I remember them telling the story it was like something out of an episode from the “Happy Days” sitcom where a Fonzi like character impresses a blonde young girl with his “rebel without a cause” attitude.  God was mindful of us when the young couple moved back West instead of staying in the state where they met and fell in love.  God was mindful of us when after a tragic plane accident took our parents the Holy Spirit moved upon the heart of a newly married young man to say, “We’ll take them.  We’ll raise them.”   God was mindful of us over the many years the young and highly inexperienced couple raised four “adopted” children and then one of their own.  I wish, truly wish I had the time to tell you all of the crazy, unfortunate, hilarious in hindsight moments we shared, experienced and caused in those years growing up in the Williams household.  One of my favorite stories of Dad was when we were playing baseball in the back yard and we talked mom into taking a turn at bat.  She had no athletic ability to remotely describe.   I was the catcher and on the first pitch mother swung the bat all the way around and accidently stuck me with it in the back of the head.  Blood was everywhere.  My Dad and I spent a lot of time in the hospital together as I was very injury prone and he was as calm that day as he always was in such moments.  When we arrived at the hospital and the nurse asked how the accident occurred, Dad said with a rye smile on his face, “Oh, his mother hit him in the head with a baseball bat.”  He loved the expression on the nurse’s face.

Even though we had many moments where we needed Divine intervention in our household God was always an afterthought.  We vaguely acknowledged Him on holidays, but all the while God was mindful of us.

God was mindful of us when the Williams household was not happy.  Dad’s drinking took a toll.  Although he was always there for us he obviously drank to escape.  We started to lose him around the time I graduated from high school.  He was still there but rarely sober.  Alcohol was drowning a good, descent, well meaning man.  And still, while Dad wrestled with demons, God was mindful of us children.  He revealed Himself to our family as each of the children came to an understanding of who Jesus Christ was and what he had done for us so that we would be forgiven of our sins.   We tried to share our faith with Dad and Mom but there was too much troubling them at the time for them to understand.

When Dad moved back to the East coast after the marriage ended I did not know if I would see him again.  But God was still mindful of us as he called my family and I to move east as well.  About 11 years ago was able to get in touch with Dad and we met for lunch.  He had been sober for a while and he told me he was nervous to meet with me for he wondered if all of his children hated him.  I assured him we not only did not hate him but wanted to have him in our lives.  His struggles with alcohol continued so we rarely heard from him.  Still, God was mindful of us.  Some of us saw Dad shortly before mom’s death but after that, for over five years we never heard from him.  We thought he was likely dead.  Still, God was mindful of us.  God, the creator of all that is and ever will be, the sustainer of the universe, thought about us.  He cared about us.  He caused a social worker to make some phone calls to track down any relatives that Ron Williams might have.  Because God was mindful of us each of his children were able to see him before he died.  Each of us was able to say “Thank You” to him for taking us in, raising us and allowing us to have a dad.  God did that and the only reason I know He did it is because He loves us and makes all things work together for the good.

In my last few conversations with Dad I wanted him to understand the hope of heaven in Jesus Christ.  Dad had his Roman understanding about death and heaven so he trusted in his baptism and the fact that he tried to do the right thing most of the time.  I attempted to focus him on the grace of God and the evidence of that grace by the fact that God was mindful of him so that he could be surrounded by those who loved him during the last days of his life.  I am not positive regarding what Dad actually believed but I am positive of God’s mercy.

I began by saying that God was mindful of us and by us I meant everyone in this room who get to hear how God would care for specific human beings who are like vapor.  We are here and then we are no more.   That God would be mindful of us so that we could know of His amazing love, His amazing grace deserves nothing less than our sole devotion to Him.

In the epistle to the Hebrews Psalm 8 is quoted and the preacher points out that when David asks “What is man that though art mindful of him, the Son of man that you would care for him? “ that he is describing Jesus.  Jesus is the answer as to how and why God is mindful of us.  God so loved the world that he sent his only son that whosoever would believe in him would not perish but have everlasting life.  God has humbled us through the life and death of Ronald R. Williams because He was mindful of us.  Let us in all humility confess Jesus as Lord and Savior. Amen

For those of you who do not pay attention to news in sports you should know that something more than a sport’s story has broken.  A very popular and influential college football coach has been arrested and will be tried for molesting young men.  Included in the heinousness of the charges is evidence that others in the athletic department of Penn State likely knew about the substantiated charges and did not report them to the the proper authorities.  The coaches name is Jerry Sandusky.  He was responsible for Penn State being referred to as “Linebacker U” because of the great defensive linebackers the program sent to the pros.  Sandusky worked under legendary coach Joe Paterno.  While many sports writers and commentators lament over the likely demise of Coach Paterno who has been the head coach of Penn State since they wore leather helmets, I am grieved over the lives of the young men (boys) who suffered at the hands of this perverted defensive coach.

Jay and I grew up together.  His mother met with my mother when we moved into the neighborhood and we became friends when I was just 3 and he was 2.  We walked to school and back home every school day for six years.  We went on vacations together.  We spent holidays together.  We did what we were not supposed to do together.  When I went off to Jr. High things were different because Jay had to wait a year to join me.  It wasn’t right and it was never right again.  The school district changed the zones and Jay had to go to a different Jr. High while my positioning was grandfathered in.  It wasn’t until Jay was in 8th grade that I noticed how truly different our relationship was.  I wasn’t his best friend anymore.  He was into heavy metal music and smoking “weed.”  Even though we continued to spend a time together it was very different.  We ended up going to the same high school together and we played football together but something was always missing.  We grew apart as adults.  I embraced the Christian faith and he embraced nothing virtuous.  He wandered.  Finally, I learned why.  He shared with me his story.  A story you can find here http://jayfrankward.wordpress.com/testimony/my-story-so-far/ .  After witnessing what molestation does to a person first hand I can be nothing but grieved.  To imagine young men being lured into a relationship with a man who was selling himself as a person who was giving them a second chance makes it all the more deplorable and heinous (the molestations did not occur with players but with foster kids).

Personally I will never lament what this does for Joe Paterno’s reputation regardless of how many years he lead a stellar life.  I will use my energy to pray for the young men who were victims to find what Jay did, God’s grace.

What kind of man was he?  He was the kind of man who would, in his early twenties and newly married, volunteer to raise four children, ages 3 to 7, whom he barely knew, because he did not want them to be split up after a tragic plane accident took the lives of their parents.  He was the kind of man that casually practiced his Catholic faith but disciplined himself to take the children to mass and CCD because that is what their parents would have wanted.  He was the kind of man that would volunteer to be a catcher for his sons in the back yard to work on their pitching even though he never played organized baseball.  He was the kind of man who would play soccer with his sons and daughters in his work boots, not caring that he looked rather silly.  He was the kind of man who went to every game, rain or shine, win or lose and afterward would always say, “good game” even if he didn’t quite recognize all of the ebbs and flows and heroes of the contest.  He was the kind of man that could make any tool an engineer or designer at Boeing could conceive. He was the kind of man who could fix any engine.  I never remember him taking any car to a “shop.” He was the kind of man who was patient in most every situation.  He was the kind of man who was, well, “kind.”  He was also the kind of man who let alcohol control him.  He was also the kind of man that survived on nicotine.  He was also the kind of man that became ashamed of what he had become after his marriage ended and so he moved back east, away from his children.  He was also the kind of man who would have died alone, but God.  God intervened and a social worker contacted one person and then another.  In two months time each of his “adopted” children saw his face.  He spoke to his only son by birth several times.  We had the privilege of talking with him, laughing with him, reading Holy Scripture and praying with him.  He died yesterday.  He died with his oldest daughter, son-in-law and oldest son by his bed.  He died just ten minutes after hearing his son Ron’s voice over the phone.  What kind of man was he?  He was the kind of man that God had mercy upon.  He was the kind of man that God used to show mercy to orphaned children.  He was the kind of man that I was privileged to call “Dad.”  RIP Rondald R. Williams.  May God have mercy on your soul!

Tradition is the echo of the teaching and leading of the Holy Spirit.  ~ said by me