Living Reality At Seventy One

I’m finding it much easier now, after the last two years, the down loading and reading of books from the Kindle.  When it was suggested to me, I fought the very idea. I had began building a personal library of “I can hold them in my hands, keep them on my shelf,” books, during my early twenties, growing it proudly over the next forty years. But in my sixties and now early seventies - the years of down-sizing, I find it a blessing to have a Kindle and grateful heart in still having the desire of returning to reread some of those “old” books, remembering how inspiration, creativity, desire and challenge leaped upon my thoughts and imaginations from their pages.  Books like The Hiding Place written by Corrie ten Boom.  As I was rereading it, awhile back, I thought suddenly and alarmingly something I can’t remember giving intentional thought too at previous readings. That being; there is a “fleshiness” to the faith I profess. That the glory of God has a Body, and it is within the reality of my body.  In my flesh. The body of Christ on earth finds its identity in me.

It  was in the words of Mr. ten Boom, "The master of this house demands that we open the door to anyone that knocks," that I saw this identity was both living and active. Fittingly, he was referring to himself, even as he was referring to the Master who first alluded to the image.  This line he offered to the many who objected to his behavior.  To Jews in danger, he simply opened the door.

As I placed the reading in my lap, put my chair in the prone position, and closed my eyes, I once again visioned and referenced the words of the Master as if I were standing with those surrounding him that day, in Matthew 25:35-36: "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me." Today, I am as convinced, as on that morning,  that I am his hands, his touch, his house. I am also convinced, that at this stage of my life, it is more important than ever to be Christ’s body, and realize I live among neighbors who God sees as Christ himself.

Thus, I would argue that the biblical vision of my neighbor is imperative to Christian ethics and apologetics, to the call of Christ to go and make disciples, and to the telling of my personal story and the story of the God who saves.   When Mr. ten Boom decided to wear a Jewish star after it was ordered that all Jews must thereby distinguish themselves, he made the decision to live among neighbors, to see fellow human beings, not people with differences, not people beneath him, nor men and women facing an adversity that had nothing to do with him.  "If we all wear them," he said to a man standing in line for his star, "they won't be able to tell any difference."  For me, the greatest task is not arguing, reasoning, defending, or preaching, but living as Christ's Body, living the words I profess, every day, every way, with a love for both Word and neighbor, and a clear vision of the God who spoke them both into existence. Now, I pray that I'll demonstrate it today when I’m in heavy traffic in the left lane and desperately need to turn right. 

A friend of many years told me the other day that he was praying that I would  be convicted to "pursue pulpit ministry," as I have such a powerful gift of preaching.  Frankly, heeding the call of loving my neighbor is quite different than living as if I must have a listening congregation (and that's where I may have got sidetracked, somewhat, on my journey past) in order to further the words and mission of Christ.  Corrie and Betsie's witness in the concentration camp was made audible not because of their words but specifically because they lived with an ethic quite different than the cruelty the camp fostered.  When life itself was stripped of dignity and hope, their way of living eventually built trust among those around them and earned them a hearing.  John Stackhouse notes the harder, yet vital task of living apologetically, in his book: Humble Apologetics: Defending the Faith Today, when he writes "It may be, in fact, that it is precisely for lack of sufficient 'corollary apologetics,' as I sometimes call them, that so many people in our communities today generally are not deeply interested in what Christians have to say theologically and philosophically." To me that means being a neighbor who is living the words I hope one day to offer aloud.

In fact, the wide-ranging ministries of the disciples after the resurrection of Christ also reminds me that I am to live in such a way as to make disciples as I go along.  Even at my age, in the mountains, at the doctors, on the shore, in the store or clearing the table after dinner. It also reminds me that this means being the church, being who I am, and living what I profess, even when it would be far easier to follow another ethic and identity entirely.  Before their arrest and subsequent sentencing to the concentration camp, the ten Boom's pastor pled with them to follow an easier ethic:  "It is the law," he said referring to illegality of harboring Jews.  "And Christians must obey the law.  Think of what you are risking for one Jewish baby."  But Mr. ten Boom knew there was yet a higher law, "We are meant to obey the law of the state—if it does not go against our higher law of God."

Like the ten Booms, the confessing church that stood up to Hitler's regime was not trying to being relevant or contemporary, liberal, conservative, or rebellious; they were simply trying to be confessional.  Saying no to Hitler, they were being who they claimed to be.  They were living the reality of gospel they professed with their mouths.

Bill, you believe that Christ has risen from the dead!  Are you then not to live as a man who has found the "really real"?   In the words of a dying Bestie ten Boom, "There is no pit so deep that Christ is not deeper still."