The Little Drummer Boy

This was presented before Communion on Sunday, December 18, 2005.

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Come, they told me,
A newborn King to see.
Our finest gifts we bring
To lay before the King,
So to honor Him
When we come.

The Little Drummer Boy is absolutely my very favorite Christmas song. It’s a song about worship, worship as it was meant to be: pure, simple, and genuine.

In my own fantasies about the birth of Christ, the little drummer boy so perfectly represents the part I would want to play in that original nativity scene. I imagine the older shepherds, recently dazzled by the angelic chorus, frantically searching their meager possessions for a gift worthy of the Messiah, worried and embarrassed that their gift cannot possibly be worthy enough, rushing off to the little stable in Bethlehem, nervously wondering along the way what they are going to say and what they are going to do when they get there. What could a simple shepherd possibly do or say in the presence of the Salvation of Israel that would be worthy of the occasion?

You see, something I’ve learned in the few years that I’ve been one is that grown-ups worry a lot. Probably about a lot of things that are silly to worry about in the grand scheme of things. So, when I see those Jewish shepherds in the nativity scene of my mind, I see “anxious anticipation”. When I see that little drummer boy, I see awe-struck wonder on his face, like Lucy in Narnia. I see him wading through the sea of legs, carefully making his way to the newborn in the manger to present to Him the simple gift that he is so excited to give.

“Little baby,” says the drummer boy, personally addressing the Creator of the universe as if no one else is present.
“I am a poor boy, too,” he says, unafraid to state the obvious and quick to empathize with this newborn child who seems to belong to a family very much like his own.
“I have no gift to bring that’s fit to give a King. Shall I play for you on my drum?”

At this point there might be snickers among the onlookers.
“Did he say he’s going to bang on his little drum for the Messiah?”
“He’s embarrassing us. Why did we bring him along.”
“Awww. Come on now, give the kid a break. I think it’s kind of cute, and what’s it going to hurt.”

But the little drummer boy is not concerned with the snickers; I’m sure he doesn’t even hear them. He is sharing an intimate moment with his Savior, and nothing else matters to him. Mary nods her approval to the boy, possibly with a suppressed chuckle, but her approval in the matter is only a technicality. He hadn’t actually asked her. And as he pulls out his drum and begins playing with all his heart, it isn’t Mary that he is playing for. And it certainly isn’t the ox and lamb he is playing for (though, for some reason, they find it necessary to keep time).

He is playing for His Lord, lying in the manger, offering Him all that he has to give, his worship. He isn’t playing because he thinks it sounds goods. He isn’t playing because he finds it inspiring. He isn’t playing for his own spiritual edification. He is playing because worship is the natural response when one finds himself in the presence of a Holy God.

The boy and his Creator share an intimate moment while he finishes his hymn to his God.
Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum Rum-pum-pum-pum Rum-pum-pum-pum…

And then, of course, we come to the most charming line of this Christmas song. As we imagine the boy’s eyes locked with the eyes of his Savior, the little drummer boy is granted a beautiful gift that only a handful of people in the history of the world have ever experienced:

Then He smiled at me
Pa-rum-pum-pum-pum

And the boy’s soul must be beaming because he knows what that means, and we understand what the smile means when we hear the song. We understand immediately because in that smile Jesus says something to the boy that we have longed to hear our entire lives. We may have heard him speak it to our souls, but surely nothing compares with being face to face, eye to eye with our Savior and seeing in His smile the words we so very much want to hear: “Your worship pleases me.”

The story touches us so deeply because it vividly describes a moment of precious intimacy between our God and his child centered on a simple and genuine act of worship.

I know the Little Drummer Boy is just a story, but throughout Jesus’ life he continually shared precious moments of intimacy with the children of God. He looked into the eyes of the thief on the cross and said “Today you will be with me in paradise”. He looked into the eyes of sinners thirsty for mercy and said “Your sins are forgiven”. He sat at the table with his closest friends on the night before His death and said “Drink this, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you in my Father's kingdom.”

This is a spiritual feast we share, not just with each other, but with our Savior Himself. It is an intimate moment of worship where we look into the eyes of our Lord and say “I remember your sacrifice. I love you, and I thank you.” And then He smiles at us.

Defending Marriage by Voting "No" (Part 2)

My opposition to the same-sex marriage amendment has very little to do with homosexuality. I really don’t think adding this amendment to the Texas constitution is going to amount to much with respect to whether or not homosexuals are given the right to marry in Texas. Because Texas judges are popularly elected, it really isn’t possible for Texas judges to overturn state legislation against the will of the majority. If they do, the voters will throw them out and elect judges who will rule as they would have them rule.

My previous post on this issue shows that my concern about the amendment lies primarily with the fact that it leaves the spiritual institution of marriage in the hands of the State by forbidding the creation of civil unions. The creation of civil unions is our only hope for returning the administration of marriage to the Church, leaving the State to administer a godless legal union between any pair of people. While there is plenty of popular support for keeping marriage between a man and a woman, there is significantly less popular support for limiting the role of the government in our lives by getting the State out of the marriage business, and this amendment extinguishes all hope of that development.

Does anyone else find it odd that this issue is even being addressed at the polls? Why should the definition of marriage depend upon a popular vote at the ballot box? The reason is that the State is, for some odd reason, the institution that gets to be in charge of keeping track of who pledges (or pretends to pledge) life-long faithfulness to whom. This is just silly. Why should a secular institution be charged with the administration of a spiritual rite? History should have taught us that secular institutions tend to be poor guardians of spiritual rites, and the State has already shown itself to be a poor guardian of marriage. It freely endorses marriages between people who refuse to make a vow of life-long commitment at the wedding, and it freely administers divorces on the grounds of simple incompatibility.

The only reason it doesn’t seem odd to us that the State would administer a spiritual rite is that it has always been that way, and there hasn’t seemed to be much of a problem with it until the past few decades. Recently, though, the popular conception of marriage has been diverging from its Biblical design, and that has been causing concern among Christian believers.

However, the Christian response to the State’s mishandling of marriage has been odd. Rather than reducing the power of the State over the institution of marriage, Christians have been quick to place even more faith in their government’s ability to administer the sacrament as God intended. In fact, this particular constitutional amendment is about reinforcing the State’s monopoly on marriage, strengthening the State’s grasp on marriage by expressly forbidding the creation of any benign legal unions that might take its place.

What would happen if the State were given the responsibility of administering baptism and gave legal benefits to people who had been baptized? Would we fret over the increasing number of people who pretend to commit their lives to Christ just to obtain the legal benefits? Would we worry about new statistics showing that more and more baptized “believers” were “falling away” from the faith? Would we pass constitutional amendments about who could and who could not be baptized, trusting in our government’s ability to faithfully administer the rite as God intended as long as the Christian community just made enough noise about the matter?

The answers are obvious. We should not trust the State to administer baptism, and we should not trust the State to administer marriage. If people want the legal privileges of being considered jointly in the eyes of the State, that has nothing to do with marriage and should be of no concern to followers of Christ. But as long as civil unions are illegal the State will continue to misuse the spiritual institution of marriage to obtain its secular ends.

The State must do its job of protecting the liberty of its citizens, and the Church must do its job of showing Christ to the world. Any confusion of the two roles is detrimental to both. Civil unions give the State the power to provide legal benefits to any pair of people who choose to be recognized jointly, appropriately making no assumptions about whether or not those people are sexually active. The Church, then, continues in its age-old function of performing the sacrament of marriage, uniting man and wife in a life-long commitment of love and faithfulness. The civil union safely removes the institution of marriage from the secular hands of the State, restoring it to its rightful place.

In order to keep this possibility alive, though, we need to vote “No” on the same-sex marriage ban amendment at the ballot box.

Defending Marriage by Voting "No"

I have received several emails from friends recently reminding me of the upcoming special election on November 8, 2005 in which Texans will be voting on whether or not to add a prohibition against same-sex marriage to the Texas constitution. Americans have recently been scared by the 2003 decision of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to legalize same-sex marriages against the will of the Massachusetts legislature and the people of Massachusetts.

The purpose of this amendment to the Texas constitution is to prevent the same thing from happening in Texas. Judges must look to their constitution as the highest law in the land, and if they feel that any law passed by the legislature is contrary to their constitution, they can (and should) overturn the law. So, even though Texas already has laws on the books that ban same-sex marriages, the fear is that some judges might someday decide that those laws violate the "equal protection" clause of the Texas constitution. By demonstrating that denying homosexuals the right to marriage denies them the equal protection of the law, some Texas judges in the future could legally overturn our existing laws against same-sex marriage in Texas. If the new Texas constitutional amendment passes on November 8th, no future judge will be able to overturn the laws against same-sex marriage because those laws will be expressly permitted by the Texas constitution.

For those who respect the sanctity of marriage it seems obvious that any attempt to strengthen the bulwark against same-sex marriages can only be good, and many Texans will turn out to vote "Yes" on this constitutional amendment thinking that they are helping to defend the institution of marriage against those who wish to violate it.

It is my opinion, though, that this knee-jerk response on the issue turns out to be the incorrect one. A "No" vote on this constitutional amendment will actually be more likely to preserve the Biblical institution of marriage in Texas' future. Please follow my reasoning carefully; if the citizens of a democratic society do not carefully consider their constitutional amendments, the highest law of the land, there is no higher institution that can correct any mistakes. We have to get this right.

Marriage is a spiritual union. A wedding is similar to a baptism in that it is a physical act with spiritual significance. In this spiritual act of marriage, one man and one woman pledge to love, honor, and remain faithful to one another as long as they both shall live. Regardless of what the State of Texas, the US Congress, the Supreme Court, or the US Constitution has to say about the matter, this will always be the definition of marriage as God ordained it in the Garden.

Because the concept of marriage is so firmly ingrained in our culture, though, it has also become institutionalized in our laws. The problem is that there are legal benefits that encourage people to participate in this act called marriage even if they have no intention of life-long faithfulness and if the marriage has no spiritual significance. People, regardless of their spiritual beliefs, still like to share insurance benefits and retirement benefits. They like to have hospital visitation rights and inheritance rights and the right to make burial decisions. There are close to 1500 special legal privileges given to people with a marriage license that people without a marriage license do not have, so it’s no wonder that people will drop a few bucks at the local courthouse for a marriage of convenience.

Christians have spent a lot of time worrying about the high divorce rate in America. It disturbs us to see so many marriages ending in divorce because we view the act of divorce as an act of rebellion against God, tearing apart by our own will what He has joined together. We also see it as tarnishing a sacrament we hold to be sacred and holy. And when we consider broken Christian marriages we certainly have reason for concern, but does it really tarnish the spiritual institution of marriage when a couple who promises to stay together only "as long as I love you" decides to divorce? I would argue that these marriages of convenience were never really marriages in the first place, at least not in the sacred sense of the word. Their divorce, similarly, is nothing more than the termination of a legal contract. Their divorce has no more spiritual significance than their marriage had to begin with.

Maybe the problem is not that we have a high divorce rate, but that we have a high marriage rate. If the only people who married were those who were seriously committed to remaining faithful to each other for life, the divorce rate would be significantly lower and marriage would have significantly more meaning and value in our culture. But this is not going to happen as long as there continue to be significant legal benefits to marriage that encourage marriages of convenience.

The way to preserve the sanctity of marriage, then, is to separate the concept of the legal union from the concept of the spiritual union. The goal should be to completely remove the institution of marriage from the authority of the State and to return to the Church the practice of uniting a man and woman as one flesh.

In order for this to happen, though, we must create a new type of legal union, separate and apart from marriage, for people who desire the secular, legal benefits currently available to married couples, but who have no desire to be married in the eyes of God. A good name for this is a “civil union”. The civil union is administered by the State and has absolutely no spiritual significance; it is simply a legal construct that allows any two people to be considered jointly in the eyes of the State.

In order to best preserve the holiness of the concept of marriage, it is important that the society make a clear dinstinction between the two concepts. These civil unions should be as far removed from the traditional concept of marriage as possible. Civil unions should be available for any pair of people who would like their shared life to be legally recognized by the State. So, groups of people who would benefit from these civil unions would be elderly siblings who live together, or young singles who share a house together, or a pair of widows supporting each other in their old age. Paul and Barnabas would have been good candidates for a civil union as well.

The civil union has nothing to do with sexuality or physical intimacy, it is simply a legal recognition of a shared life, and as such it poses no threat to the spiritual institution of marriage separately administered by the Church. The civil union only creates “partners”; marriage creates “spouses”. A civil union means “we do our taxes together and share our insurance and retirement benefits”; a marriage means “we have been united by God as one flesh”. Newly married Christian couples would probably want to file for a civil union at the courthouse like everyone else so that they would receive the legal benefits of doing so, but they would recognize that it is their publicly expressed vows of lifelong love and faithfulness and being united in the sight of God that actually makes them man and wife.

It seems to me that if marriage is left in the hands of the State, it will eventually lose all spiritual relevance as more and more people, seeking only its legal benefits, claim its sacred title. The only hope is for the Church to reclaim the spiritual sacrament of marriage, leaving the State to administer a Godless civil union. The complaint of homosexuals is that they are being denied the same legal privileges as heterosexual couples. The response of the Church should be that homosexuals (and anyone else who wants to) may take whatever legal privileges they like as long as they don’t try to redefine the millennia-old concept of marriage as a spiritual union between a man and a woman.

It has been my hope for years that civil unions would one day rescue the institution of marriage from its inevitable decline, but this Texas constitutional amendment will make that impossible. According to the wording of the amendment,

This state or a political subdivision of this state may not create or recognize any legal status identical or similar to marriage.

So, the amendment expressly forbids the creation of civil unions which are so necessary for preserving the sanctity of marriage.

I think that if Texas voters think about it a little bit, they will realize that this amendment on the ballot is more of an ideological battle than it is a wise addition to the law. The emphasis is really more on "winning" than on meaningfully affecting marriage in Texas. We already have laws on the books that ensure that marriage is between a man and a woman, and, unlike Massachusetts, Texas judges are popularly elected and will pay dearly at the ballot box for any attempt to overturn those laws. So, there is not even a clear political gain if the amendment passes. Voting "No" to the amendment is not going to legalize homosexual marriage, but voting "Yes" pretty much guarantees that the spiritual institution of marriage will be forever left in the hands of the State, and the past half century should have taught us that God and the State don't share well.

The upcoming vote is seen as an ideological battle between the forces of family values and the forces of moral decay, and the main point of the vote is just to make a statement to the world that there are more of “us” than there are of “them”. But constitutional amendments make poor pulpits for ideological statements. If the amendment passes it may very well be a Pyrrhic victory in which we win the battle but ultimately lose the war. Texans interested in preserving the sanctity of marriage should consider voting “No” to the amendment.

The Body of Christ

The Church is the Body of Christ. It is a living, breathing manifestation of His presence on Earth. When the unbelieving people of the world look at the Church, it is essential that they clearly see our living Savior. Through the Church, they must experience His love, His peace, and His joy. They must be touched by His healing hands and convicted by His living truth.

During His time on earth, there was nothing in Jesus’ physical appearance that attracted people to Him. His followers were attracted by His absolute devotion to His Father, by His selfless compassion for God’s children, and by His courage to speak God’s truth boldly and without reservation. If the Church is to be a light to the world we must shine like Jesus shines. It must be obvious to the world that the Church represents absolute devotion to God, selfless compassion for others, and boldness to speak God’s truth.

It is tempting to think of the Church as a social club rather than as Christ’s presence on Earth, and it is tempting to judge the “success” of the Church in the same way we judge the success of worldly institutions. To the world, a club exists for the benefit of its members. Successful clubs are large and unsuccessful ones are small; successful clubs have aesthetically pleasing facilities and unsuccessful clubs have shabby facilities; successful clubs present a professional and polished appearance and unsuccessful clubs look like amateur productions. The trick to building a successful club is no secret: identify the desirable members and then market to them, providing services and programs that will induce them to join the organization.

The Church so often falls prey to this worldly pattern of thinking. We design our worship services to be pleasing to ourselves and to those members we are trying to attract because successful clubs are member-oriented. We build ornate Church buildings, plush auditoriums and well-decorated educational wings because aesthetically pleasing structures are appealing to members and visitors and are the marks of a successful institution. We hire trained people to plan and lead our worship services and we purchase expensive audio/visual equipment because polished and professional performances are expected of successful institutions.

Congregations, like individuals, can be guilty of materialism, an ungodly focus on physical appearances and on worldly standards of success. For the most part, large congregations have been guiltier of this than small churches, and it is usually possible for Christians who tire of the growing materialism in the Church to escape to a simpler, smaller, “less successful” congregation somewhere else in town. However, even small congregations often succumb to the same temptations as their larger sisters.

The temptation begins when the small congregation’s members and leaders accept the world’s lie and equate their small size and relatively shabby appearance with failure. They reason that their congregation is small or shrinking because they have not provided enough member services to meet the needs of the members who chose to leave and because they have not done enough to make the congregation appealing to visitors. They look at the “success” of the large congregations with a veiled envy and make attempts to emulate the services and programs of the larger congregations in an effort to swell their own ranks. They hire more local ministers, try to make the worship service more polished and more appealing to the members, and give the old church building a little more curb appeal.

The drive to correct the perceived failure is certainly carried out with the best of intentions. The leaders and members of the small congregation want with all their hearts to glorify God and to expand His kingdom here on Earth, and they put their best efforts into doing so. And often their efforts are rewarded. The membership begins to grow, the grounds become more visually appealing, and the activities of the congregation develop a more polished appearance. The congregation can then give themselves a pat on the back for doing the Lord’s work by expanding God’s kingdom. For certainly, they reason, if there are more people in the pews on Sunday then the Lord’s work is being done.

What is sometimes overlooked is the fact that physical and aesthetic changes to the grounds and to the worship service do little more than attract Christian believers who are just looking for a new Church home. They are the religious equivalent of increasing the congregation’s market share of the existing pool of Christian believers in the area, but offer nothing in the way of showing Christ to the world or reaching out to the lost.

Surely such superficial changes can play no role in an unbeliever’s decision to commit his life to Christ, and if so, he is being misled about what a life in Christ is really all about. If the Church expects unbelievers to be drawn to her pews by an attractive building or by a flashy, polished, multi-media worship experience, then the Church is selling the wrong product. The fact that congregations selling this product are overflowing their multi-million dollar facilities is irrelevant. Any local social club that appeals to the desires of its members is going to draw a crowd, and that crowd is going to continue demanding more and more member-oriented amenities because that is why they came in the first place. But just because a congregation is large and “successful” in the eyes of the world does not mean that it is doing the will of the Lord or even expanding his kingdom.

The Church does not need the world to tell her how to reach out to the lost; Christ has already made that perfectly clear. The Church is the body of Christ, and as such she must display His love, His peace, His joy, and His glory just as Christ did during his time on earth. If a congregation is really exemplifying the person of Christ in everything it does, then unbelievers will be drawn by the love of Christ. To attempt to draw people into the body of Christ by an appeal to aesthetics is to deny the attractiveness of the person of Christ himself. If unbelievers are not attracted to the Church, it is not because our auditoriums are drab or our song leaders are uninspiring; it is because the Church is failing in its primary purpose of showing Christ to the world. Just as Christ did, so we must also demonstrate to the world an absolute devotion to our Father, a selfless compassion for God’s children, and the courage to boldly answer the materialism of the world with a radical, living profession of the Lordship of Christ.

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The Church as Host

This is an article I wrote for "The White Rose", a periodical published by Old St. Paul's Scottish Episcopal Church in Edinburgh, Scotland. Shortly after returning to the States after spending a year in Edinburgh, I received a request from Nick Clark, one of our Scottish friends, to write an article about "the Church as Host".



In the American South, especially in the rural areas, we have a tradition that over the years has come to be known as “Southern hospitality”. It is still seen in some parts of the South in the friendly wave people give when they pass each other on a lightly travelled stretch of a farm-to-market road. It is characterised by the way strangers are greeted and welcomed in the home, and popularised by the Beverly Hillbillies’ famous “set a spell…kick your shoes off…y’all come back now, ya’ hear.” Of course, as the world gets busier, engrained traditions of hospitality seem to quietly fade into memories. But my Dad still tells me stories about the good ole’ days when people offered a stranger at the door not only a cold drink but a bite to eat as well. Truly hospitable folks would not only open their door to strangers, but would open their table as well. So, to my mind, an enduring symbol of hospitality will always be an open table.

One of my favourite worship songs begins: “Lay your burden down, every care you carry, and come to the table of grace for there is mercy. Come just as you are; we are all unworthy to enter the presence of God, for He is holy.” It is a beautiful call to worship to be reminded that Christ’s table is open to sinners, and that the Host of the universe turns no one away from His spiritual feast. Our Creator, who first sets the table with his own precious body, offers Himself freely to all who believe in Him. In the flesh, He hosted the first meal, and in the flesh He continues to host it as long as this world endures, for the Church is the Body of Christ.

Unfortunately, as the Church has struggled through the centuries with factions and divisions, the universal welcome of Christ’s table has become much more difficult to hear. Now we tend to share Christ’s table with people who think like us and speak like us and hold the same beliefs as us. The visiting stranger is often consigned to a chair in the corner while the “family” sits down at the table. Sure, the stranger might be graciously offered doughnuts and coffee when the service is over, but doughnuts and coffee won’t satisfy his spiritual hunger. Any secular club in town would gladly bribe a new visitor with doughnuts and coffee, but the Church has a higher calling than that. The Church has a divine mandate to open Christ’s table to all of God’s children, serving as host in this spiritual meal.

So, as I think back over our recent experiences in Edinburgh churches and ponder what it means for a congregation to fulfil its role as “host”, I find that a good host is a one of which I can say this:

“We were strangers, and you invited us in…to kneel with you in the presence of the same God, to eat of the same bread and to drink of the same cup and to commune with you in sharing the body of Christ. We came as sinners and you did not condemn us but acknowledged your sin in return. You knelt beside us as our brothers and sisters in Christ, accepted us as members of your spiritual family, and shared with us your spiritual feast.”

Our year in Edinburgh could best be described as spiritually invigorating, because we have this new awareness of the vastness of the body of the Christ. When I imagine Christ’s Church meeting together on the Lord’s Day to share in His feast, I envision an enormous rectangular table. There is a place with my name, so I pull out my chair and sit down at the table. I look across the table and see my friends in Abilene, Texas sitting just across from me. Then I look off to the East and see Christ’s table, lined with Christians, stretching like a ribbon across the flat West Texas plains and disappearing over the horizon. And I know that somewhere along that table there is a group of people that we love very much sitting down at the same meal, sharing the same bread, drinking of the same cup, and worshipping the same Lord. I know their names and I can recall their faces even though I am unable to see them, and I am consciously aware of our communion with one another. Then, if I listen very closely, my spiritual senses veiled by earthly flesh can barely detect the sound of the Lord of the feast pulling out His chair and taking His place at the head of the table, pouring out His blessings on His children and reminding them to continue in love and unity until He comes again in glory.

Lay Your Burden Down

This is a call to worship I presented back in 2004.


I am sure you understand the feeling…walking through the doors of that building you have entered week after week for so many years, to which you attach so many fond memories…being greeted with warm smiles, hugs, and handshakes…everywhere you look there are the warm, smiling faces of old friends and new acquaintances. You can hardly make it to your seat there are so many people interested in asking you how are doing and how your week has gone, most of them genuinely interested. An old familiar face stands up at the podium and seems to have to work rather hard to gain the attention of so many people who just can’t seem to get enough of the fellowshipping. After everyone settles down a bit he finally begins to speak. With a grin from ear to ear and excitement in his voice, he says “Welcome, everyone, to the weekly meeting of the Kiwanis Club!”

You look around at those sitting near you and beside you…You notice your buddy Charles who helped you move into your new home a few months ago, and over there are Andy and Joan who came to visit you in the hospital after that minor surgery a few months back. As you glance around from face to face, your attention is distracted by the speaker who seems to be trying to say something important, but it’s nothing you haven’t already heard. He’s just repeating the 6 objects of the Kiwanis club:

1) To give primacy to the human and spiritual rather than to the material values of life.
2) To encourage the daily living of the Golden Rule in all human relationships.
3) To promote the adoption and the application of higher social, business, and professional standards.
4) To develop, by precept and example, a more intelligent, aggressive, and serviceable citizenship.
5) To provide, through Kiwanis clubs, a practical means to form enduring friendships, to render altruistic service, and to build better communities.
6) To cooperate in creating and maintaining that sound public opinion and high idealism which make possible the increase of righteousness, justice, patriotism, and goodwill.

And you think, wow, this is a really wonderful club; it has everything I need in a community. Fellowship and friendship, a commitment to righteousness and ethical behavior, an emphasis on valuing loving relationships, plenty of opportunities to give to charitable causes and perform acts of service to make the world a better place. What more could you want in a club?

Then as the speaker drones on, your mind drifts into a thought experiment. What’s the difference between the Kiwanis club and the Church? I mean, it seems like the Kiwanis club is already pretty close, so we wouldn’t have to change a lot about it to make it look like a church service. I guess first we would need to move our weekly meetings to Sundays rather than a week day; that one’s pretty obvious. We already say a prayer at the Kiwanis club, so we’re covered there. We do need to add a song or two, though. We could probably get away with something like “God Bless America” or “Kum Bah Yah”. To handle the communion requirement, we could serve crackers and grape juice for breakfast instead of ham and eggs…and I think that about covers all the bases.

So, it seems the Church and the Kiwanis club really aren’t so different after all. They’re both about good, righteous people coming together in a community to extend the warmth of fellowship to one another and to reach out to people in need. Chess clubs are clubs focused on chess. Investment clubs are clubs focused on investing. So, maybe the Church is just a club focused on God. Or is it?

Is the Church a club? And if it is not a club, then what is it? Is there anything that makes the Church different from every other club in the world? Is there anything that makes her special, or is the Church just one more organization; one more community of people passionately united by a common belief or cause?

Well, if we were in class right now, this would be a good time to discuss those questions, and I hope we all take advantage of the opportunity to do just that when we dismiss for classes. But I’ll go ahead and start us off with my answer just to provide a framework for our worship this morning.

The Church is the Body of Christ, the literal Body of Christ. The Church is not simply a collection of like-minded people; it is a living, spiritual organism with Christ at its head. Two thousand years ago, Christ’s physical hands healed wounded people and that healing did not stop at His ascension. Christ’s Body, His Church, continues to heal wounded people by His divine power. Through His Body, His outpouring of infinite love continues. Through His Body, suffering and oppressed people find hope. Through His Body, the world continues to experience the physical presence of God on earth. Through His Body, sinners find forgiveness by the Grace of God.

What is it that we expect to happen we when pray to God? By what means do we expect Him to answer our prayers? When we cry out to God “May the lost people of Abilene come to know you” or “Please, Lord, provide shelter for the homeless and food for the hungry” or even “Lord, please stop the genocide in Sudan.” What is it that we are expecting to happen? What does it look like when God steps in to heal a broken world? Shouldn’t we expect a decision made by Christ, the head of the Church, to initiate some kind of meaningful action in the Body? The head decides to heal, but hands do the touching. The head decides to encourage, but the lips do the speaking. The head decides to reach out to the lost, but the feet do the walking. The head decides to bless the world with God’s infinite love, but it’s the Body of Christ, the Church, that does the loving.

The Church is not a club for like-minded people who are looking for friendship; the Church is God’s means of showing His friendship to the people of the world. The Church is not a loose collection of independent, local congregations each lamenting their own weakness when their memberships decline; Christ’s Body, His Church, timeless and universal is the single most powerful force this planet has ever known and the gates of Hell will not overcome it. The Church, unlike a club, is not united by the common interests and beliefs of its members and it is not divided when individuals disagree. The Body of Christ is united by blood. It is not a community, and it is not a club; it is a body, and as it is Christ’s Body, the Church is united by the blood of Christ.

We are all here today only because we have been saved by the blood the Jesus. We have nothing to boast about. It is not our own power, our own abilities, or our own righteousness that makes Christ’s Church the most powerful force on the planet. It is God’s divine strength working through weak and imperfect people. In fact, it is only in our acknowledgement of our weakness that His power is made perfect. Maybe that is something else that sets the Church apart from the clubs. Clubs find their strength and power in the abilities their members. The Church finds its strength and power in our own humility and willingness to surrender completely to God’s will. We are only powerful when we recognize our powerlessness. We are only made perfect once we recognize our imperfections and our need for God’s grace.

Well, after all this club-bashing, there is one club I can think of that it probably wouldn’t hurt us to emulate. I’m thinking of Alcoholics Anonymous. If we are going to look like a club, I only pray that we will look like that one, people who find strength in admitting weakness and find fellowship in a shared brokenness. It’s tragic that the Body of Christ has seemed to gain a reputation for being judgmental when we all know that none of us are righteous before God. We all stand condemned as sinners except by the grace of God. Or maybe we don’t know it, or just like to forget that we really are sinful people saved only by God’s grace. Maybe, like the members of AA, we just need to remind ourselves once in a while. “Hi, I’m Jeff and I live a sinful life. I am here this morning because I have been saved by God’s grace.” Whatever you have done, however bad you think you’ve been, you are not alone in this crowd. We are all imperfect, fallen, sinners, every one of us. We come together this morning not proclaiming our own righteousness but declaring God’s grace for sinners like us. The Church is a place for sinners. Christ did not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance. If you don’t think you’re a sinner, then what need do you have for God’s grace and why would want to waste a Sunday morning praising God for a gift you obviously don’t need?

Today we will participate in imperfect worship to a perfect and holy God. The worship will may appear poorly planned; the song leaders may miss some notes or lead the songs too fast or too slow. The preacher may ramble a little. The communion thoughts may be completely off-the-wall. And all of us may be continually distracted by the cares of the world. But, even in spite of all of our imperfections, one thing is certain; we will worship in the presence of the Creator of the universe. He is here among us, right now, in this place. You may feel unworthy to enter the presence of a holy God, but you are no more unworthy than anyone here. Come to worship just as you are and lay the burden of your guilt at the foot of the cross where there is mercy.

In the Image of the Creator

For Software Developers
(This essay draws much inspiration from Fred Brooks.)


We are created in the image of God, and being created in His image we naturally exhibit His divine qualities in miniature. I believe that the aspect of God’s nature we call Love is exactly the same multifaceted, spiritual phenomenon as the love we share with our friends, our spouses, and our children but that, in our case, that divine quality is simply scaled down to human proportions.

It is no new revelation that through certain human activities we can obtain a clearer understanding of God’s nature and his character. People have always known that the joys and trials of parenting are Christian object lessons, giving parents a unique insight into the joys and trials God himself experiences in relating to us. In the book of Hosea, particularly, God uses human marriage as an object lesson to attempt to convey to his children Israel how deeply they were hurting Him with their idolatry.

Love, joy, peace, hope, jealousy, beauty, patience, kindness, and so many other aspects of God’s nature are reflected in miniature in our own human lives, and by experiencing and exhibiting these qualities on the human level we grow in our practical understanding of who God is. Our preachers could preach every Sunday for a decade on God’s patience and we might gain a surface level understanding of the concept, but after caring for an elderly relative with Alzheimer’s we might suddenly feel like we understand God’s patience so much more fully. So, in our continual pursuit of a closer relationship with our Savior, we often use our daily, human experiences as object lessons that teach us on an intimate level who God really is.

One aspect of God’s nature, that is simple to understand on the surface but very difficult to personally experience, is God’s role as creator of the universe. That one doesn’t scale down to the human level quite as easily as some of God’s other divine qualities, or does it? Painters and sculptors have always claimed that their respective arts are reflections of God’s artistic genius in the creation of the heavens and the earth. The artist’s eye for beauty must be due to his being made in the image of the One who sculpted the first landscapes and painted the first sunsets.

But the claim of the fine artists is only partially accurate; a landscape is not just a sculpture on a grand scale, but a dynamic, living ecosystem. A sunset is not just an aesthetically pleasing phenomenon on the horizon; it’s the result of an intricate and carefully planned system to power all life on earth. The God of creation is not playing the role of fine artist; he is fundamentally concerned with more than aesthetics. He is a designer of complex systems that work together for a useful purpose.

So, who can claim to reflect this creative nature of God? What occupations involve designing and building complex systems that do something useful, striking a balance between form and function, creating systems that serve a useful purpose and do so in a way that is elegant and beautiful?

I will venture to claim that the occupation that most clearly reflects God’s creative nature is that of the software developer. I make this claim from personal experience because I see so many similarities between what I do in my daily work as a software developer and what our God did at the beginning of time. Of course I realize that my creative acts are only a meager shadow of God’s creative power in the same way that our love for our children is only a meager shadow of God’s divine love for us, but the joys and trials I experience as a software developer continually give me a deeper appreciation and respect for God’s creative genius. Let me provide a few specific examples.

First of all, software developers, like the Creator, build our creations out of pure thought. There is never any need to struggle with some intractable physical medium like clay or steel. We simply speak the words (well, type them on a keyboard) and the thoughts of our minds spring into existence out of nothing. Even a sculptor cannot really claim to make anything. He must at least start with stone or clay and then whittle or shape it. But, the software developer says “Let there be a binary search tree” (in rather more words than that, of course), and there is a binary search tree. There are no limits to what he can produce. He is constrained only by the feebleness of his mind and the vague boundaries of Turing computability. But his creations of pure thought are not confined to the realm of thought like those of a fiction writer; his creations can move images on a display or direct a robot and otherwise interact with the real world. He can then look at the real effects of his creation and “see that it is good”.

Secondly, software developers, like the Creator, cope with the complexity of intricate systems by using layers of abstraction. Basic functions and general tools reside in the lower layers of a software system while higher layers in the system use those lower-level tools as building blocks for more complex functionality. The point is to hide the complexity of the lower layers from the higher layers in the application. In the same way, the universe is constructed in layers; the incredible complexity evident at the quantum level is neatly invisible to us humans who are primarily concerned with the universe at the molecular level. We can live our entire lives in a world of wood and plastics and soil and, thanks to the layered design of the universe, never once concern ourselves with the odd behavior of quarks. So, because the concept of abstraction is such a key tool in the work of a software developer, we can readily recognize it and appreciate it when we notice it being used elegantly in God’s created world.

Thirdly, software developers can appreciate the subtle design decisions involved in the creation of any functioning system. So often people will look at a beautifully designed piece of software and not appreciate the numerous design decisions that guided its development, each decision often requiring many hours of agonizing over the various design possibilities. But, oddly, the user’s lack of appreciation for the software’s complexity is the mark of a beautiful system. If the developer has done his job correctly, even an inherently complex software system will appear simple and obvious to the user. The highest compliment a software user can give is: “Well of course it works this way. How else would it work?” So, we have the unique opportunity to sympathize with our Creator when people, blinded by the elegant simplicity of life and the cosmos, fail to appreciate or even acknowledge the genius involved in its design and creation.

Finally, software developers have a unique perspective on the interrelatedness of command and creation. People often wonder why God needed to rest on the seventh day of creation. After all, he only spoke a few sentences; what could have been so hard about that? The creation account in Genesis appears to most people to cast God in a management role. He doesn’t really seem to be doing any creating; he just sits there and gives orders. “Let there be light,” he says, and they assume that due to his divine authority the uncreated light just leaps into existence at His command. This is a disturbing view of creation because it casts God as a passive actor and allows no place for Him to pour His genius into the created things. We want to be able to attribute the beautiful and clever aspects of the created world to design decisions made by God Himself. We don’t want to picture Him chanting some magical incantation like “Let there be fish” while some lower spiritual being faithfully follows the order and painstakingly designs the anatomy of marine life.

Software developers have an answer for this dilemma because we recognize that the command itself can be a creative act. The source code we write is technically a set of commands to the computer, but it is important to realize that all of the intelligent design decisions are encapsulated in the command. The computer doesn’t get to make any decisions. It is only an automaton executing its orders according to a set of predetermined rules. No one would claim that the programmer is playing a managerial role by simply giving commands to the computer which does the real work. Knowing that the acts of command and creation are one and the same, we can read Genesis in a different light. We must assume that the scripture “Let there be light” is a rough and simplified translation of what God really said which was to utter a precise encoding of the physical properties of light in the machine language of the universe. (In case you missed it, God already built the hardware in Genesis 1:1.) This understanding of creation preserves God’s full participation in the creative act, reassuring us that the intricate design of our bodies, our ecosystems, and our galaxies are the result of God’s careful planning and creative genius.

A common question among Christians is: how does your occupation harmonize with your Christian faith? This has been a difficult one for software developers to answer. We don’t have an easy answer like ministers and teachers and other Christians whose jobs involve working directly with people. But our occupation does serve as a perfect object lesson in getting to know God intimately as “Creator”. It’s as if we are three-year olds, happily banging away with our little Fisher-Price tool sets, and looking up to find that we sit at the feet of our Father who also is toiling at His workbench. Although what we do is only a meager reflection of God’s creative power, we can feel the same satisfaction as a child who feels like he is, in some small way, following in his Father’s footsteps.

“Dad and I, we make stuff.”

Social Security's Sales Pitch

SALESMAN: Hello, may I please speak to Mr. John…Pooblick?

JOHN: That’s me, but actually it’s John Public.

SALESMAN: I’m so sorry. How are you today, Mr. Public?

JOHN: Fine, thanks.

SALESMAN: Great. I’m calling on behalf of SSA Incorporated to tell you about a new program we are offering called social insurance. It’s an insurance plan which will pay you a monthly disability benefit if you ever become disabled. It will also pay you a monthly retirement benefit when you reach retirement age, and if you were to pass away it would provide financial support for your surviving wife and children.

JOHN: Hmm…That sounds like something I might be interested in. Why don’t you give me some more details? How much will it cost me, and what benefits does it pay?

SALESMAN: Well, the plan does vary somewhat depending upon your income level. If you could just tell me your annual income, I could give you an accurate quote on a policy right now over the phone.

JOHN: Um….well, okay. I make about $20,000 a year. I just graduated from high school, and I’m working in the landscaping department at Home Depot making $10 an hour. I’m married and have a one-year old son.

SALESMAN: That’s great, John. I have some good news for you today. Our insurance plan actually caters to people in your income bracket. I can offer you a plan with some very favorable terms.

JOHN: Wonderful. Show me the money.

SALESMAN: Well, for starters, we can give you a disability benefit of $619 per month if you were somehow injured and unable to continue your employment. That represents over 37% of your monthly income that could help you pay your bills and your rent while you are disabled.

JOHN: Now, I’ve already got some disability insurance that costs me about $25 a month and pays a little bit better benefits than you’re talking about. Can you beat the price of my existing coverage?

SALESMAN: Well, it’s difficult to say because the price of the disability insurance is kind of rolled into price of the whole package.

JOHN: Okay, we’ll come back to that. Can you tell me about the other benefits?

SALESMAN: Of course. Let’s move on to the most exciting part of the social insurance plan, the retirement benefit. Based upon what you have told me about your income, upon reaching the age of 67 the plan will pay you $5116 every month for the rest of your life.

JOHN: Wow. That sounds like a lot of money. After adjusting for inflation, how much will that be worth when I retire?

SALESMAN: About $918 per month.

JOHN: Cool. That’s a little over half of what I’m making now. That’s a pretty hefty addition to my retirement savings. I’m already saving for my retirement, you know. My financial advisor told me that if I start now investing about 10% of each paycheck in a mutual fund, I’ll have over a million dollars when I retire, even if I keep working at Home Depot my whole life. He said that if I retire at age 67 I should be able to put all my savings in an inflation-adjusted annuity at about 6.5% and get a check worth about $1150 in today’s dollars every month until I die. I listened to him, too. I’ve been taking $167 per month out of my paycheck before I even see it. It goes straight to my retirement plan to earn interest and make me a millionaire.

So, I’m pretty much set for retirement. Even so, if your social insurance plan is reasonable, I certainly wouldn’t mind having a little extra income when I retire. I could see the world or something.

SALESMAN: You certainly could.

JOHN: Okay, so what’s the bad news? How much is all this going to cost me?

SALESMAN: Well, let me run the numbers here… Based on your income level, you’re looking at $207 per month.

JOHN: Two hundred seven dollars a month! What on earth? Am I missing something here? I already told you I’m putting away just $167 per month for retirement right now and another $25 for disability insurance, and my expected return at retirement is $1150 per month. Now you’re telling me I can pay $207 to your social insurance program and you’ll only give me $918 per month when I retire. That’s significantly less than what I could get with my current retirement plan. I don’t get it. Either I don’t have all the information, or your plan sounds down-right stupid.

SALESMAN: Whoa, settle down there, John. I think you’re trying to compare apples and oranges here. Let me remind you that this is not a retirement account I’m offering you; it’s a social insurance program. The point is not to make you wealthy; the point is to make sure you don’t spend your retirement years in poverty.

JOHN: You can call it whatever you like. I’m still paying more money for fewer benefits with your plan than I am with my existing plans.

SALESMAN: You’re forgetting the survivor benefit, though. Sure, you already pay a combined total of about $192 for your retirement plan and your disability insurance, but what if you suddenly lost your life? Who would care for your surviving wife and kids? This plan I’m offering you has a survivor benefit. In the event of your death, the plan will pay up to $664 per month to your surviving children or $866 to your retired spouse.

JOHN: Oooohhh… Big whooping deal. I have a $250,000 term-life policy that costs me about $15 per month, and it will provide for my wife and kids much better than your plan. And even when I’m old I can still get an annuity that continues making payments to my wife after I die. So, if you think about, after pooling together my retirement plan, my disability insurance, and my life insurance policy, I’ve got my own “social insurance” plan that provides a better disability benefit, a better death benefit, and a retirement benefit about 25% higher than what your plan offers, and it all costs me $207 per month which is exactly the same price as your plan. Now, if that’s not comparing apples to apples I don’t know what is.

SALESMAN: Well, now, let’s talk about that retirement plan of yours. I think you are being misled by someone who stands to gain financially by selling you risky investments instruments. Now, I don’t know what your financial advisor has been telling you, but the kind of return on your investment you are expecting requires substantial risk. If you want to play the stock market with your life savings, that’s your prerogative. But I want you to know that this plan we are offering you is a no-risk plan, so, one should expect that it should offer a somewhat lower return.

JOHN: Playing the stock market? You make it sound like I’m shooting dice or something. I know how the rich folks get rich. It’s by investing what they’ve got, and I’m not talking about little savings accounts, either. If you really want to accumulate wealth, you’ve got to invest it in the stock market. Now, I know that when I get to close to retirement age, I’m going to need to start putting more of my money in bonds just in case there is a big stock market crash right before I retire. My financial advisor has already taken that into consideration. I know the stock market can be scary for short-term investing, but in the long term, the stock market has never had a negative return over a 20 year period, even during the Great Depression. The tiny return your plan pays might make sense over a very short period, but over a 45 year time period, it’s just a stupid investment.

The $1150 monthly check I was telling you about just assumes that my stocks make a real return of about 4% a year, and the stock market has never even had a 45 year return that low in its entire history, but my financial advisor just likes to be conservative with his numbers. It’s more likely that I’ll end up averaging a 6 or 7 percent real return on my retirement savings, and that means I’ll get a monthly check that’s more than twice what you’re offering. And even in the worst case scenario where my portfolio only yields about 3% a year over inflation, my existing plan would just about break even with yours.

SALESMAN: Well, play with fire if you want to, but I’m telling you: risk-free is the way to go.

JOHN: I’m curious. Just what do you mean by risk-free? Surely SSA Incorporated can’t withstand a total meltdown of the US economy. If the US economy takes a nose dive, how will your company be able to continue making payments to its customers? How do you guarantee your stated distributions?

SALESMAN: SSA Incorporated has….ummm….very deep pockets. But, actually, we don’t really guarantee your distributions. The amounts of your monthly distributions are changed periodically by a vote of our…ummmm… board members, so we can’t really guarantee anything. I can reassure you, though, that our finances look really good right now. We are going to have to make a 23% cut in distributions sometime down the road in order to remain solvent, but that won’t happen until at least 2042.

JOHN: 2042? Do you know I retire in 2052?

SALESMAN: I do recall you saying that. Yes.

JOHN: So, even though you told me earlier that I can expect $912 per month in retirement benefits, it’s really only going to end up being about 3/4 of that?

SALESMAN: Well, unless we find new sources of funding.

JOHN: Like increasing my monthly contributions?

SALESMAN: That’s one way.

JOHN: Well, I hate to have wasted so much of your time, but I really don’t think I’m interested in your social insurance plan. And, honestly, I can’t really see why anyone else would want it either.

SALESMAN: Well, that’s easy for you to say. But not everyone out there is as well-to-do as you are. Some people have trouble making ends meet and can’t afford to save for retirement like you can. The least you could do is have a little compassion and support this program that benefits people who have never been given the chance to achieve all that you have in life.

JOHN: Dude. I’m a high-school graduate. I work at Home Depot for $10 an hour. I know I’m not, like, living on the streets and stuff, but I certainly wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. If this plan doesn’t benefit me, I can’t really see how it would benefit anyone.

SALESMAN: Well, I hope you realize just what you’re doing. I hope you understand the blank check you are writing to those Wall Street tycoons managing your money. Don’t you dare complain about the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, because it’s your aching back those billionaire bankers are standing on. Every time you deposit your $167, it just fuels their unquenchable greed and insatiable lust for power. If you spend your money on our plan, I can promise you that not a dime of it will be invested with those fat cats.

JOHN: Ummm….Did any of what you just said somehow sweeten the terms of your plan, because I’m afraid I missed it? Or were you just trying to tell me to give up my dreams of retiring a millionaire in exchange for the thrill of depriving some investment brokerage of the 0.5% fees on my meager assets?

SALESMAN: THEY GOT TO YOU DIDN’T THEY! THEY TOLD YOU THE PLAN WAS GOING BROKE! THEY TOLD YOU IT WAS A PONZI SCHEME AND WOULD BE INSOLVENT IN TEN YEARS. WELL, THEY’RE WRONG! THIS IS THE MOST SUCCESSFUL PROGRAM IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND! ONLY A FOOL WOULD THROW IT AWAY, OR THE LACKEYS OF THOSE BILLIONAIRE BANKERS WHO ARE ONLY OUT FOR PROFIT AT YOUR EXPENSE! DON’T LISTEN TO THEM, JOHN. DON’T LISTEN TO THEIR TRASH!

JOHN: ????

SALESMAN: So, what’s it going to be, John? Can I interest you in a social insurance plan through SSA Incorporated?

JOHN: I’m pretty sure I already answered that question five minutes ago. No, I don’t want your plan, and I can’t see why anyone would, regardless of how little they make. Everything you have offered me in your plan is already available through other providers and at a much lower cost. Your plan is of no value to me, and my meager earnings are better spent elsewhere.

SALESMAN: Ha! Ha! Ha! Gotcha. I was just yanking your chain about that whole SSA Incorporated thing and you having a choice in the matter and all. I’m really calling on behalf of the US government to let you know that you have just been enrolled in the Social Security Plan. Your approval in the matter is irrelevant. We will begin confiscating the monthly payments directly from your paycheck. Like you said, it’s so much better to set it aside for retirement before you have a chance to see it.

JOHN: What!!! You can’t just steal my money like that!

SALESMAN: Um…. Actually, we can. But we’re the US government, so it’s not really called stealing. After all, don’t forget that we’re working for you. Don’t let it worry you too much, though. We only take half the $207 from your paycheck. The other half is paid by your employer.

JOHN: Why on earth does that matter? That just means it’s more expensive for him to employ me now. He’ll just reduce my other benefits to compensate, or it will be an eternity before I see a raise.

SALESMAN: Yeah, I know that, and you know that, but there is no need to make it common knowledge. It just makes people feel so much better if we keep the visible deductions relatively small. You know how it is; appearance is everything. And what they don’t know won’t hurt them, now will it?

JOHN: But I needed that money for my own retirement savings! How am I going to be able to afford my $167 retirement contribution now that you’re stealing $207 a month from me? How am I going to retire a millionaire?

SALESMAN: John, John. It was a pretty lame dream in the first place. You don’t really want to be a millionaire, though, do you? No, what you really want is security. You want someone to take care of you, to manage your finances for you, to care for you when you are too old to care for yourself. That’s what we’re doing. Sure there are some people who are millionaires, but you just weren’t meant to be one of them. You were born to be a poor person, and that’s okay. It’s okay to be poor. You know why? Because you have a compassionate government whose always going to look out for you. Now, you have a good day, John Public.