Apocalypse Now

“Rock of Ages” is a plea that God would not stop revealing us to ourselves until the truth is out there… and that he would be our comfort in this sometimes painful unveiling.

Apocalypse Now

Until we gather again as a community, CTK will release a daily devotional each morning. Each devotional will include a song to sing, a short devotional (to be read alone or with your family), questions for discussion or reflection, and a prayer. See the rest of our series on our blog.

Devotional
The word "apocalypse" has some strange associations. For some of us, "apocalypse" was a terrifying story told when we were children, to frighten us into behaving. For others of us, the impact is more corny than terrifying. But one thing that is true (or, was true, until a week ago) for all of us- apocalypse seems extraordinary, fantastical; something that happens in fiction.

The biblical usage of this genre of literature is very different from our modern American conception. The term "apocalyptic" actually means "unveiling, or revealing." Apocalypse is what happens circumstances in our lives reveal who we are, and what we are made of. An apocalypse pulls back the curtain to reveal the men and women underneath. No more hiding, no more pretending: in apocalypse we are exposed. Its not that we have a choice to make; it's more like the reality of the choices we have been making our whole lives is made plain to us ("you've been putting it up your whole life").

In this way of using the term, apocalypse doesn't happen out there, to somebody else. It happens to all of us, in little moments, every day. Moments where who we are and what we are becoming is revealed to us in a flash, in the way we respond to our situations- a jolt of anger, an unexpected kindness, a flash of shame. Sometimes these apocalypses pass in microseconds.

What has the recent version of apocalypse revealed about you? Your community? Your church? About who and what you love? About where you find security? About how you schedule your time?

What if apocalypse is both a tragedy, and an aid to devotion? God is calling us to take stock of our lives by exposing to us some pretty hard truths... and some pretty beautiful ones. Don't let this apocalypse go to waste- seek Jesus in the revealing.

For discussion:
1. What are some fears that have been exposed in you in recent days?
2. What are some hopes that have been exposed in you in recent days?
3. Take some time to sit with your family, or on a phone call, and tell one another some glory and some tragedy that has been revealed in one another over the past week.

A prayer for God's presence in apocalypse, from Psalm 139:

    [1] O LORD, you have searched me and known me!
    [2] You know when I sit down and when I rise up;
        you discern my thoughts from afar.
    [3] You search out my path and my lying down
        and are acquainted with all my ways.
    [4] Even before a word is on my tongue,
        behold, O LORD, you know it altogether.
    [5] You hem me in, behind and before,
        and lay your hand upon me.
    [6] Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;
        it is high; I cannot attain it.

    [7] Where shall I go from your Spirit?
        Or where shall I flee from your presence?
    [8] If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
        If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!
    [9] If I take the wings of the morning
        and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
    [10] even there your hand shall lead me,
        and your right hand shall hold me.
    [11] If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
        and the light about me be night,”
    [12] even the darkness is not dark to you;
        the night is bright as the day,
        for darkness is as light with you.

    [13] For you formed my inward parts;
        you knitted me together in my mother's womb.
    [14] I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
    Wonderful are your works;
        my soul knows it very well.
    [15] My frame was not hidden from you,
    when I was being made in secret,
        intricately woven in the depths of the earth.
    [16] Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
    in your book were written, every one of them,
        the days that were formed for me,
        when as yet there was none of them.

    [17] How precious to me are your thoughts, O God!
        How vast is the sum of them!
    [18] If I would count them, they are more than the sand.
        I awake, and I am still with you.
    
    [19] Oh that you would slay the wicked, O God!
        O men of blood, depart from me!
    [20] They speak against you with malicious intent;
        your enemies take your name in vain.
    [21] Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD?
        And do I not loathe those who rise up against you?
    [22] I hate them with complete hatred;
        I count them my enemies.

    [23] Search me, O God, and know my heart!
        Try me and know my thoughts!
    [24] And see if there be any grievous way in me,
        and lead me in the way everlasting! (ESV)

The News Became Flesh

Devotional
Have you been watching the News recently? Not just in the context of the current pandemic, but before that. As the capabilities of information technology increased, from the written word to the telegraph, telephone to the Internet, the News has become a bigger facet of our everyday lives.

I don't mean the News that happens around us every day, in our immediate relationships: weather, sports, local government reporting, etc. A central facet of the News is that it happens far away; its shocking in some way, and it incites in us a feeling of obligation to do something about it, even though, because of the boundaries of space, time, and our own creatureliness, nothing can be done. The News is wars and rumors of wars, as Jesus once said. It calls our imaginations away from the present, away from the places where we CAN have an impact... or could have, if our imaginations, hearts, and muscles had been devoted to loving that place. Which is what makes it so shocking when the News changes your daily life. Is this why we are so resistant to taking action which might spare our neighbors and ourselves? Because we know (or at least we have been trained to believe) that the News is something that happens somewhere else. The coronavirus is as much an outbreak of the News as it is a virus.

COVID-19: and the News became flesh, and dwelt among us.

The Way of Jesus is not the way of the News. Though Jesus transcended all boundaries in his power, sitting enthroned in the heavens, he gave that selfsame power up. "And though he was in the form of God, he did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the form of a servant." Let that sink in: to save the world, Jesus could have snapped his fingers; instead, he poured himself into a particular time, into a particular place, and loved with a life-giving, self-sacrificing love the people who were six inches in front of his face. 

And the Logos became flesh, and dwelt among us.

To be a Christian in the time of coronavirus is to follow the pattern of our savior: to voluntarily limit ourselves for the sake of others. As we have been saved, so now we save. 

A quote:
“But love, sooner or later, forces us out of time...of all that we feel and do, all the virtues and all the sins, love alone crowds us at last over the edge of the world. For love is always more than a little strange here...It is in the world, but is not altogether of it. It is of eternity. It takes us there when it most holds us here.” - Wendell Berry, Jayber Crow

For discussion:
1. What are some steps you can take to limit yourself for the sake of the vulnerable among us?
2. Before this epidemic happened, how did your lack of limitation harm others? Can you think of ways in which pouring yourself into the particularities of the present actually served somebody?
3. Think of some ways to pray- not for the epidemic as a whole, but for your immediate neighbors and family in the midst of it. 

A prayer for God's presence, from Psalm 144:
    [1] Blessed be the LORD, my rock,
        who trains my hands for war,
        and my fingers for battle;
    [2] he is my steadfast love and my fortress,
        my stronghold and my deliverer,
    my shield and he in whom I take refuge,
        who subdues peoples under me.
    [3] O LORD, what is man that you regard him,
        or the son of man that you think of him?
    [4] Man is like a breath;
        his days are like a passing shadow.
    [5] Bow your heavens, O LORD, and come down!
        Touch the mountains so that they smoke!
    [6] Flash forth the lightning and scatter them;
        send out your arrows and rout them!
    [7] Stretch out your hand from on high;
        rescue me and deliver me from the many waters.

Sabbath and Sickness


Until we gather again as a community, CTK will release a daily devotional each morning. Each devotional will include a song to sing, a short devotional (to be read alone or with your family), questions for discussion or reflection, and a prayer. This is the first in our series.

Devotional:
Anytime we are faced with a situation that is dangerous, uncertain, or out of our control, we feel afraid. Our responses to that fear vary widely. Some of us paradoxically love that feeling of fear, and we search for it like adrenaline junkies at an amusement park. Others of us long to escape the discomfort of new surroundings, where our old routines and habits don't provide the comfort we sought, and where our carefully manicured image of calm control might be exposed to be the flimsy charade that we know deep down that it is. And in the midst of these various responses. there is always a cacophony of voices telling us to not be afraid. Some of them masquerade as voices of faith ("fear is a lack of faith!"), some of them as voices of reason ("Live your life, don't let fear guide you!"), all of them seeming tinny and hollow. If they are so unafraid, why are they shouting so loud?

But rarely do we ask the deeper, more spiritual question, "Why, exactly, are we afraid?" That would demand that we sit with our fear, question it, get to know it a little bit. But this is no prison-cell interrogation, with our fear safely locked in handcuffs on the other side of the class. To interrogate our fear is to recognize our weakness.

There are many legitimate reasons to be afraid of COVID-19, or sickness at all: they physical symptoms, consequences for loved ones, social and economic disruption. I don't mean to minimize these at all. But when I interrogate my fear a little, when I sit across from my own personal Hannibal Lecter, I find something else, right alongside these other fears.

I find the fear of rest. 

Experts are agreed that the best way to combat the spread of this outbreak is to stop what we are doing: stop our work, stop our commerce, stop our play, stop our gathering. To stop and rest. And if we are honest, stopping is not something we are good at. Our restless relentlessness as human beings, our drive to transcend all barriers, to maximize productivity, to hustle and grind and produce and make something out of ourselves... this is a good desire gone haywire; the sixth day of creation ("fill the earth and have dominion") without the seventh ("and God rested from all that he had done"). To rest forces us to engage with the voices inside of us, the people and neighbors immediately around us- the people who don't but our charade. We are restless, not because home is boring, but because it is far too dangerous. This restlessness gave us a world where physical and geographic boundaries were transcended, where production continued day and night, where people went everywhere always in pursuit of the objective, building restless roads that a plague could walk on.

When I was a campus minister with RUF at SCAD, I would work furiously all through the academic year- nights, weekends, whatever it took. Then Christmas break or summer would come, and my body would collapse, and I would get sick. Sick from lack of rest. Jesus was trying to tell me something.

JRR Tolkien once wrote, "What punishments of God are not gifts?" Maybe, maybe, maybe in some small way, the fact that rest is, at present. the only vaccine for COVID-19 should cause us to stop. To stop and think. Why are we so unable to rest? What are we afraid we might find, if we stopped are were alone with ourselves?

A quote:
"You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." - St. Augustine

For discussion:
1. What is it like being alone/with just your family? What tensions and anxieties do you feel between one another? What joys are there?
2. What patterns can you cultivate in your house to make this a restful time? What do you need to stop doing? What do you need to start doing?
3. What or who do you notice about your room/house/family/street that you did not notice before rest?

A prayer for rest:
Click here to read a prayer from Scotty Smith.

CTK And Coronavirus (I know I know. Just hear me out).

Love God. Love Neighbor. Love Savannah

That's why we are here (Jer. 29:4-7). What does that mean for our church during the time of coronavirus? It's not a simple question to answer- most of us exist along a continuum between EVERYBODY CALM DOWN and PANIC! I'd like to offer a couple thoughts, as well as deal with some practical matters as it will affect our community. 

1) What will we do?
A. We will obey all government instructions and restrictions about meetings, if such a thing occurs.
B. Until that time, we will continue to meet for worship and a meal, with appropriate hygienic considerations for the meal and communion as the situation calls for. Those preparations have already been made.
C. I have contacted the Chatham Emergency Managament Authority (CEMA), volunteering our congregation to help in case we are needed in the Edgemere, Ardsley, or Parkside area. I will be in touch about what that may mean for us when I hear back from them.

2) How should we feel?
At the beginning of the Second War World, CS Lewis gave an address to young scholars who were attending university at the beginning of a world- and epoch-defining event. He argues that the war (or in our case, the pandemic) is not an abnormal event; instead, it is an event which pulls us closer to the truly normal which we are prone to forget. The speech is worth quoting at length (simply substitute "war" for pandemic):
"The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure the search would never have begun. We are mistaken when we compare war with "normal life". Life has never been normal."
Because of this, Lewis argues that we should fight our own tendencies to excitement (thinking about pandemic when we should be thinking about our daily lives), frustration (anger that we will not be able to finish what we have started because of our lives being disrupted- this is what it means to live in a community!), and fear ("The Christians of the past thought it was a great blessing to be aware of your mortality... That is one of the pandemics great blessings. I am inclined to think they were right."). Read the whole thing if you want.

3) What examples shape our imagination?
We must both live as people who are confident in the promises of God, and willing to love our neighbors in costly ways. There are numerous examples in church history of Christians who, motivated by faith in God and love towards neighbor, served and sacrificed for their community in various ways. Here are examples from the early church and its response to Roman plagues, and here is the personal story of Martin Luther during the Black Death. Here is the example of some Christians from the modern Ebola outbreak. Let their examples inspire and give you confidence, even as we recognize that the impact of coronavirus will be much smaller than these examples.

4) What is our spiritual response?
Here is a prayer from the 8th century which many Christians have found helpful to pray in times of sickness:

Almighty God,
you know that we are surrounded by many great dangers,
and because of our human frailty
we cannot withstand them.
Give us health of mind and body
so that we who suffer under sin
may overcome and win the victory in you;
Give us courage to be a healing people
in our place and time.
Through your Son, Jesus Christ our Lord,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and forever.
Amen.
 

Please feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions, needs for help, or suggestions. See you Sunday!

What To Do When Being Kicked In The Head

“When I was nine, some kid beat me up for amusement, and when I came home crying to my father, his answer- Fight that boy or fight me- was godless, because it told me that there was no justice in the world, save the justice we dish out with our own hands. When I was twelve, six boys jumped off the number 28 bus headed to Mondawin Mall, threw me to the ground, and stomped on my head. But what struck me most that afternoon was not those boys but the godless, heathen adults walking by. Down there on the ground, my head literally being kicked in, I understood: no one, not my father, not the cops, and certainly not anyone’s God, was coming to save me.”

  • Ta-Nehisi Coates, We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy.

James KA Smith calls this “a respectable atheism.” There is no pretense of cool detachment or objectivity; only the visceral emotional objection to an unjust world. What does Jesus say to people getting kicked in the head? Or better, what does he do when he is getting kicked in the head? Check out our sermon on revenge and love below!

The Dying Church

“I ain’t afraid to die anymore. I done it already.” - Hugh Glass, The Revenant

What kind of church is ready to plant a church? What kind of people are ready to be a part of a church plant? Its simple: the kind that are ready to die. Because death in Christ is life forever.

Our pastor had the opportunity to speak on this topic this past Sunday to our brothers and sisters at Reformation Presbyterian Church in Hendersonville, NC. Listen here!