Back to Hope

People keep saying that we are in uncharted waters, that we live in a political era that is unprecedented, that these are dangerous times.

I don’t know about all that; if we knew our history a little better, we might realize that there have been contentious elections before, even some tinged with the threat of violence. America has faced a civil war, world wars, a great depression, not to mention racist and xenophobic tendencies. Presidents have been assassinated, and riots have rocked our cities in the past.

Every generation gets sucked into the lie that their generation is the harbinger of the Apocalypse, that the end of the world is right around the corner, or that the next election determines the future of everything that exists and has ever been and ever will be.

I’m skeptical of all the doom-saying, the dire predictions, the gloom. However, I also can’t help but notice that things are “darker.” There is a mean streak that runs through our country. Something is out-of-kilter.

And then there’s us — the Church. People who love Jesus and claim his name. People who call themselves “Christian.”

Something seems a little out-of-kilter with us, too. We seem to reflect the same mean streak; we appear to have the same fault lines running through us. We are just as torn, ragged, depressed.

This is not a good sign, brothers and sisters. Because at the core of our faith and religious claims, there exists a divine thing called “hope.” To be a Christian means to have a hope deep down inside us which sustains and drives us. We don’t succumb to despair that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, because we know it isn’t. We know — I mean, we truly know with all our mind and strength — that the world belongs to God, and that God is working to bring shalom to this earth.

I’m reminded of Paul’s pointed question to the Corinthians as he observed their loss of hope and faith: “Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (II Cor. 13:5)

Jesus Christ IN you? That sounds kind of weird, a little mystical and supernatural. Did Paul mean to say that?

Yes, I think so. It’s not the first time he makes this reference. In Galatians 2:20, Paul claims, “It is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” In Ephesians 3:17, Paul says that he is praying “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.” And in Colossians 1:27, Paul speaks of a mystery which he has been commissioned to proclaim; he describes the mystery itself as “Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

This means the point of being a Christian is NOT that we must try harder at being like Jesus, or that we have to adhere to a rigid code of ethics and behavior; rather, the Christian life is one of being filled by Christ’s own presence. We have Jesus within us, closer to us than our breath, closer than our thoughts and prayers. We have God’s own power within, coursing through our veins.

And so in these difficult times, when lies and deception run rampant through all parts of our culture, and there is a thinly-veiled suspicion of violent anger, the people who are called by Jesus’ name will also act and look like Jesus.

So let me echo Paul’s question to all of you:

Do you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?

Dylan's 7 Greatest Gospel Songs

I’m not a child of the 60s; my formative years were the early 80s. But in 1978 a certain well-known rock icon became a born-again Christian and started writing gospel songs. For a period of five years, Bob Dylan was an all-out, full-bore Jesus freak.

I was introduced to Dylan’s music by the three albums of gospel music that he released during that period (Slow Train Coming, Saved, Property of Jesus), then quickly began devouring his back catalog, and became an enthusiastic follower of all the music he’s made since. I don’t think much of his gospel music ranks up there with his best work, but it certainly made its mark on me.

In honor of today’s news that Dylan has received the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature, I’d like to point you all to the seven best songs on those gospel albums, and encourage you to take a listen.

7. Slow Train Coming: Even before his conversion, Dylan often played the role of Old Testament prophet, but he’s at his best in this brooding, rambling bluesy song about approaching judgment. He addresses “foreign oil controlling American soil,” “people starving and thirsting,” and “false healers and women haters,” while warning that “there’s a slow, slow train comin’ up round the bend.”

6. The Groom’s Still Waiting at the Altar: Dylan borrows a New Testament metaphor of Christ as the groom, and the church as the bride, for this rollicking, scathing criticism of “the madness of becoming what one was never meant to be.” It’s typical Dylan — is the song about the church, or about this woman named Claudette, or about war in the Middle East? Who knows and who cares when it sounds this good?

5. Precious Angel: This is a love song, pure and simple, but the woman Dylan pines for is also a spiritual companion. Dylan warns that “the enemy is subtle, how be it we are so deceived when the truth’s in our hearts and we still don’t believe?” The song is rife with Scriptural references, some easy to decipher, others more obscure.

4. Property of Jesus: In this song, Dylan describes what it’s like to become a Christian in public, perhaps drawing from personal experience. He sings the chorus with a note of scorn: “He’s the property of Jesus, resent him to the bone; you got something better, you got a heart of stone.” Ironically, after this album was released, Dylan appeared to drop his born-again views and return to his Jewish faith.

3. I Believe in You: Most of Dylan’s gospel music is confident and righteous, but this tune is darker and filled with doubt. The song depicts the believer who begins to feel alone and abandoned; it’s similar to one of the Psalms of lament. “I believe in you even through the tears and the laughter, I believe in you even though we be apart, I believe in you even on the morning after.”

2. Gotta Serve Somebody: This is the first song on the first gospel album, and it sent shockwaves through the music world when it was released in 1978. The song is vintage American blues with a simple message: “You’re gonna have to serve somebody; it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

1. Every Grain of Sand: This is the pearl of great price in Dylan’s Christian “phase.” The lyrics alone stand as a powerful testament to faith in the face of suffering and evil.

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there’s someone there, other times it’s only me
I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.

Congratulations, Bob! Thanks for the beauty.

 

From Arab Spring to Stormy Winter

On Tuesday of this week, I had the extraordinary privilege of hearing Dr. Mary Mikhael speak at a community gathering in Dallas. Dr. Mikhael is a representative of the National Evangelical Synod of Syria & Lebanon, based in Beirut, Lebanon, and was the first woman head of a seminary in the Middle East. She is currently in the US speaking to churches about the Syrian tragedy, as well as the refugee crisis. I recorded her address, and would like to share some excerpts:

In 2011 when the Arab Spring began, it really seemed to many of us as a promising beginning, a promising sign that there would be change, there would be reform in all the Arab countries.

When the Spring came to Syria, it began in Deraa by the Jordanian border. It was in a school. There was a slogan in those days in all the countries — “The people demand a change of the regime.” So the students had written it on the walls of the school. Unfortunately the authorities in this town were very unwise and bad — they treated the students very badly. That triggered the parents and the people of the town to go into the streets and demand a change in the regime. Demonstrations in the thousands came out, not only in one city but in all cities,demanding a change in the regime. But soon other demonstrations came in support of the regime … Unfortunately, the violence broke out after two months. Everybody blames the other, but violence broke out and moved from one city to another … This tragedy is now in the sixth year.

Syria used to be the only Arab country that was considered a secular state, with a wide variety of ethnic and religious groups, all of which practiced their traditions without any restrictions. What the Syrian Spring has brought to the community in Syria is death, destruction, suffering, and pain for millions. Syria has 23 million population. Syria has 32 entities of ethnic and religious groups, and all have lived side by side as neighbors — we go to school together, we work together, we go to university together, — and religion is not talked about in that sense. We say that religion belongs to God and the country belongs to all.

The Syrian Spring is the longest spring we have known. Every time we see an end to this tragedy that was brought by the Spring maybe coming to an end, something happens and kills that little hope we have that it may end soon.

In fact, we don’t call it Arab Spring anymore. It has turned into a stormy, deadly winter …

Human tragedy in Syria has many faces … It’s estimated that 5.5 million children in Syria have been affected in a variety of ways, beginning with mental trauma, being denied normal schooling, living without parents, crossing the borders on their own and getting lost in other countries, recruited by rebels even as young as the age of seven … They recruit children and use them for different tasks and eventually train them to carry arms and become fighters.

You can imagine what the people are suffering so when we speak about refugees, they have not become refugees out of luxury, they ran for their lives. A Syrian woman in Europe was asked, “What do you hope for the future?” She said, “We left our hope in Syria. We don’t know how to hope anymore.”

No Syrian wants to become a refugee. Because despite all the need for change and reform — Syrian never claimed to be a perfect democracy, no, we all knew we needed lots of reform and change -- but people lived with total security doing what they wanted as long as they didn't mingle with politics so they had relative freedom but perfect security, and now they have lost it all. And when you see the refugees in Lebanon you can not but cry.

There are groups that fight in Syria from 93 countries, 93 different countries. Mostly in the name of religion, brainwashed; some are paid money, you can rightly call them mercenaries, yet they fight in the name of religion … But what they do has nothing to do with any religion in the world.

The other side of the tragedy Syria is facing is the enormous destruction. Syria is a country with thousands of years of civilization. Damascus is the oldest city in the world of continuous inhabitance. Every historical power in the world passed through Syria and left sites. So archaeology in Syria is humanity’s heritage. Those groups who come to fight — they don’t know freedom, don’t care about history or culture or heritage, they broke everything. They went to churches and broke crosses and icons. But not only churches and cathedrals have been attacked, but also mosques. In Aleppo, there is a library with 60,000 manuscripts not found in the world except there, of Islamic history. They have been looted — we don’t know if they are burnt, looted, destroyed.

What does the church do? The church has a ministry, has a witness, is commissioned to spread the good news. What can the church do in such a situation? … All the churches (in Syria and Lebanon) are deeply concerned and all the churches have gotten themselves involved in the relief work. In the beginning, because so many churches andcathedrals were destroyed, each church tried to take care of its own people but then we had to open up our relief work and said we want to be a church for all, so our relief work in Syria began among all, and 25% of the people we have helped are not Christians, but that is not the point at all. Our relief work is open to anybody who is in need.

If the church does not rush to help the needy, then the church is not the church.