Apprenticeship 201: Trust the Process

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Some dude has a cooler tattoo than you. I haven’t met the dude myself, but I saw a pic of his tat lately, and it’s cooler than yours.

     “Judas ate too.”

     Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him (John 13:1-5).

     How many feet did Jesus wash? Twenty-four: the text leads us to understand Jesus washed the feet of all twelve disciples, including Judas, the betrayer. Doesn’t it stink that Jesus got snookered into washing the feet of the very one who would turn him over to his enemies? No, it doesn’t stink, because Jesus didn’t get snookered: For he knew who was to betray him… (verse 11).

     How many mouths did Jesus fill at the Last Supper? One: though all the disciples shared in the Passover meal, one was singled out for special treatment. So when he had dipped the morsel, he gave it to Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot (verse 26). What Jesus did was as close to spoon-feeding as one can get with the materials on hand. Why would he do such a thing?

     This is now the second installment in the “Apprenticeship” series of letters. Bad stuff happens really fast when we strike out on our own and make up a bunch of hacks as we go. Far better to serve an apprenticeship with someone who knows the way. And when the skill to be acquired is forgiveness, there is no better study than with the Master of forgiveness.

     Trust the process, Church. Jesus says forgiveness works. Watch what he does in the Gospels, what he says from the cross. He forgives on purpose. He forgives with purpose, to show us how and why. He picks the very last thing our fallen nature wants to do, and says to do that very thing. He even taught us to pray about forgiveness: in particular, to ask the Father to forgive our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.

     The hardest lessons I’ve had from the Lord have been on forgiveness. The best lessons I’ve had from the Lord… same subject. It’s been a long and arduous apprenticeship. If I can save some of you a few twists and fruitless turns in your journey, I will. I can pray for relief from any malady; I can plead for deliverance from any dilemma; but when I practice actual forgiveness, it’s like the Lord puts the hammer and chisel in my hands, I pound through the shackles, and I am free.

     If this letter were embedded in a self-help book, this is the paragraph that would begin to lay out all the necessary steps for accomplishing forgiveness. Not today. Not ever. Wasted time, wasted words. I could three-point it, alliterate it, give it a clever acronym, but your flesh would still struggle, your mind protest, and you would invent a thousand reasons why anything but forgiveness is called for. Been there, done that. The best I can tell you is: Make forgiveness happen, in the power of the Holy Spirit. 

     Knowing who would betray him – knowing it as surely as if it had already happened – Jesus still invited Judas to the table, washed his feet. Judas ate too.

     Watch the Master. Study him, copy him. Make his ways your own. You might even ask him what your next tat should be.

 

Grace and Peace (to break every chain),

 

John

Apprenticeship 101: From Whence

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Take a fresh look, please, at this familiar Bible passage:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
    in the image of God he created him;
    male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Genesis 1:26-28).

     What do you make of it? Did anything new and exciting leap at you from this reading? No? That’s OK; most of your fellow readers will not have been amazed either. Familiarity is perhaps this passage’s worst enemy. Let’s draw from it, then, two essential phrases – “let us make” and “let them have” – and see if we can find some amazement.

     Let us make: Who’s doing the making? Did Adam’s consciousness loom out of the dust of the ground and make the making happen? Did he first form a finger, with which he tapped God on the shoulder to call attention to the unfinished project? Was it Adam’s idea to fall into a deep sleep and have a rib extracted… by whom… for what reason? Of course not. Mankind has no plausible explanation for his existence aside from God’s thoughtful and utterly precise action in creation.

     Let them have: God, in absolute sovereignty, conferred authority on mankind. If he hadn’t given it, we wouldn’t have it. From the first two humans onward, the collective imago Dei were to exercise dominion over creation on behalf of Dei. All the while, The earth is the Lord’s, and the fullness thereof (Psalm 24:1). Though man claims ownership, he has never proven it outright in the court of the universe.

     Those two phrases – let us make and let them have – establish a Master/apprentice relationship, a fact as unassailable on earth as it is in heaven. Grit your teeth and strain real hard, trying to make this planet spend twenty-five hours per revolution instead of twenty-four: not gonna happen. The old song goes, “Stop the world and let me off”: good luck with that. The opening verse of Psalm 2 asks, Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? Beats me. And yet, being subject to anyone, even the Almighty, is precisely what imago Dei of every tribe and tongue simply cannot abide.

    Smack in the middle of our “Real Life” teaching series, the looming giant we’re facing is the idea that mankind is master rather than apprentice, answerable to no one but himself. As long as the giant persists, conversations on gender, marriage, sexuality, stewardship – pretty much anything that involves humans interacting with one another and with creation – will be wonky. We can’t get it right if we don’t know who is Master and who is not. I’m calling us together to slay the giant.

     If anyone should be able to rightly understand the Master/apprentice arrangement, it would be we who have regenerate souls and the mind of Christ. Ours is the secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory… these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit (1Corinthians 2:7, 10). Own it; it’s yours, Christian. And with that secret and hidden wisdom, please do this: faithfully serve your apprenticeship to the Master.

     The unsaved world doesn’t need to see you as special, only different. The difference will draw in the unsaved. Our willingness to acknowledge the Master as Higher and Other will bring peace to a world all a-jitter with the illusion of self-importance. “Peace I leave with you,” Jesus said, “my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid” (John 14:27). As saved people, you and I are peace merchants on behalf of the supplier, distributors of a commodity much in need.

     I want to write more to you on this topic, Church, next week. The basic concept of apprenticeship is all but lost in this age in which the individual reigns (except he doesn’t, and neither does she). It may take a few tries to get it back. Meanwhile, I’ll leave you with a simple prayer exercise: Upon waking tomorrow, say to the Lord,

     “It’s all yours, Papa. What would you like me to do with it?” Then listen for the next bit of secret and hidden wisdom.

 

Grace and Peace (for all the Master’s apprentices),

 

John

 

Abba, Part 5: I Knew You

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Perhaps you know someone who consistently tries to solve too many problems at once. Perhaps that someone is you. Or me. Nothing can be simple because simplifying one box complicates the one next to it. Every situation is shoulders and elbows, hard parts. Whatever heals one relationship harms another. Having all things reconciled seems attainable, but only like the carrot hanging from that long, long stick.

     This morning, I’ve been asking the Father what else he wants you and me to know about him as I wrap up this series of “Abba” letters. His answer: “I knew you.”

     In the press and crush to solve all problems at once, a weed, a lie, entangles us: Nobody knows. Nobody knows how convoluted my relationships are. Nobody knows how far my responsibilities outrun my capabilities. Nobody knows how desperate I really am. And our adversary, the father of lies, propagates this one to the max, giving us full permission to believe it.

     Meanwhile, Abba has spoken truth:

    Now the word of the Lord came to me, saying,

    “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
    and before you were born I consecrated you;
    I appointed you a prophet to the nations.”

    Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Behold, I do not know how to speak, for I am only a youth.” 

    But the Lord said to me,

    “Do not say, ‘I am only a youth’;
    for to all to whom I send you, you shall go,
    and whatever I command you, you shall speak.
    Do not be afraid of them,
    for I am with you to deliver you,
    declares the Lord.”

    Then the Lord put out his hand and touched my mouth. And the Lord said to me,

    “Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.
    See, I have set you this day over nations and over kingdoms,
    to pluck up and to break down,
    to destroy and to overthrow,
    to build and to plant.” (Jeremiah 1:4-10)

     Before you and I object, saying, “Oh, but that was Jeremiah, the prophet,” know this: Jeremiah himself tried to claim insignificance and insufficiency… “I do not know how to speak… I am only a youth.” But it didn’t stick. He pointed out his littleness, and God wasn’t bothered at all.

     The Father picks up our stories at the point of “I do not know…” and “I am only…” and takes it from there. How is he able to do that? He already knew the story.

     The first words of the Lord to Jeremiah were not marching orders or job description. He didn’t lead with where, precisely, or to whom Jeremiah would be sent or exactly what to say. “Before I formed you in the womb,” he said, “I knew you.”  

     On any given day, and some days more than once, I’ll get the feeling that I’ve burst headlong into a dim, empty room – devoid of ideas, bereft of wisdom, without help. It takes a little while to remember: the room is never empty. Abba was here before I arrived. And he knows that, even before receiving instruction or counsel, I need to know he already knew me.

     One more little weed is trying to emerge, though, isn’t it? “Jeremiah was more important to God than I am.” Pluck the weed and flick it on the burn pile. Good fathers don’t play favorites; the Everlasting Father least of all. His plans for you and me are no less a part of his will than his plans for the prophets and apostles. Though we may imagine an order of importance, he does not.

     Before he formed you in the womb, Abba knew you. “I am with you to deliver you” he declares over his daughters and sons. Whatever nation, kingdom, cubicle or garden patch he sets you over, yours is to pluck up and break down, destroy and overthrow, build and plant – in the power of Abba, Father.

     Grace and Peace (for one thing at a time and all things at once),

 

John

 

Abba, Part 4: Your Spotter

 

Hey, Cobblestone,

     Who’s your spotter? Oh… been a minute since you did any gymnastics, has it? Perhaps we should review the role of the spotter.

     The spotter gives targeted support as you transition from one skill level to the next. The spotter gives encouragement, and coaches on form and technique. The spotter urges you to do what you’re pretty sure you can’t. The spotter doesn’t catch you – but when you’ve missed your grip and come tumbling toward earth, the spotter makes the fall survivable. Probably offers pointers on how to keep it from happening again.  

     One of my favorite child-raising rules goes like so: Most times, kids don’t need to be told No; they just need a good spotter. It’s not an original notion on my part. From sheer observation, it sure looks as if our Father in heaven raises his kids according to the same paradigm. One of his children has written:

    Nevertheless, I am continually with you;
        you hold my right hand.
    You guide me with your counsel,
        and afterward you will receive me to glory.
    Whom have I in heaven but you?
        And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.
    My flesh and my heart may fail,
        but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever (Psalm 73:23-26).

     The psalm-writer, in this case Asaph, expresses supreme confidence in his Spotter. He’s picking up counsel now, even as his heart is set on afterward. He doesn’t expect to never fail, and yet his forever is secure. This, right here, is the only workable pattern in this walk-around world. The Father makes a way; we walk in it; we are with him now, whatever-the-heck now looks like, and will be with him forever. There’s no other valid offer being made. Nothing else is necessary.

     My youngest grandchild made her first trip up and down the stairs in my house this week – bottom floor to second floor and back again. Big deal, huh? She’s sixteen months old. Too soon? Apparently not. Those stairs have been calling her name since she first started crawling. Up until about 8pm Tuesday, the answer had been No(!), which had been wise. But then came 8:01pm. Go Time. It took the better part of an hour, but she experimented with different tactics and polished her technique. She whimpered (just a little) when fearful, but figured it out anyway. All the while, she had a spotter. The one truly scary part (from an adult perspective) was on the second-to-last step coming down, when a squirrel bounded through the dining room, and I looked away for a split-second. Naturally, this was the same split-second she tried a totally new and unworkable tactic. But the next split-second was sufficient for a restraining hand to intervene. And you guessed it: there was no squirrel.

     What father wouldn’t want his children to take risks for the purpose of learning new skills? That would be a faithless dad. What father wouldn’t think his children would pick up a few cuts and bruises along the way? That’s a delusional dad. But our Father in heaven is neither faithless nor delusional. His faithfulness continues through all generations and he sees his children clearly. Best of all, he holds afterward and forever firmly in hand.

     There’s a set of stairs calling your name, right now. Don’t give me that sideways look. You know what I’m talking about. We could argue, but it wouldn’t make the stairs go away, or release you from the compulsion to climb them. Talk to your Father. The one scary half-moment on the stairs with my granddaughter served to illustrate: As close as Papaw was, Abba is closer.

 Grace and Peace (from God our Spotter and the Lord Jesus Christ),

 

John