Hesed: A Place at the King's Table

Hesed. Loyalty, loving-kindness, faithfulness, unfailing commitment; all English words used in an attempt to capture the meaning of hesed. It's got to be one of the most important words in the Old Testament. 2 Samuel 9 is a story about hesed.

Long before David had become king, he had made a promise to his close friend Jonathan. David promised Jonathan that he would always show hesed to Jonathan's descendants (1 Samuel 20:15). This was no small promise because as David was making this promise, he was in competition for the throne with Jonathan's father, Saul, the current king of Israel. To put it simply, despite Jonathan and David's friendship, David and Jonathan's descendants were bound to be political rivals as competing claimants of the throne of Israel. Nevertheless, David binds himself to Jonathan with this promise.

In 2 Samuel 9, David has completed his rise to power as the king of all Israel and Judah. While the narrator of 2 Samuel makes it clear that David was not responsible for the deaths of his political enemies, David's rise to power has still been a violent and bloody affair in which all others with a claim to the throne have been killed. Now David wants to know if there are any descendants of Jonathan to whom he might show hesed as he had promised.

It turns out there is one. He is lame in both feet. His name is Mephibosheth.

It is worth noting the order of Ziba's (David's servant) description of Mephibosheth here. We come to know Mephibosheth's disability before we even know his name. Is this because we always tend to see someone's handicap before we see them as a person? Or is it to assure David that Mephibosheth is not a real military or political threat? Or are we to hear an echo of David's own story in the description of Mephibosheth? When David is first introduced in 1 Samuel 16, like Mephibosheth, he is regarded as a "left-over" of a boy, too young to be considered important, whose name is not even mentioned until he has been anointed by Samuel. Perhaps, we are to hear some mixture of all three of these story lines intertwined together in a complicated mess of good and less honorable intentions as so often happens in real life.

In the end, David keeps his promise to Jonathan and summons Mephibosheth to his royal court. Mephibosheth must have thought this was a summons to his death. As the last living relative of David's political opponents, surely the only reason he would be summoned by the king would be for his execution. But David's covenant with Jonathan completely reverses the parameters of David's relationship to Mephibosheth. Instead of being executed, Mephibosheth is given land and servants and a place at the king's table. This is hesed: a loyalty and faithfulness so great that it relativizes all the other conditions of a relationship.

Of course, David's hesed to Jonathan through Mephibosheth is just a faint image of God's hesed to us. Like Mephibosheth before David, we come before God broken and powerless. We have no claim on this king. He owes us nothing. There is no reason that he should be generous to us... except that he has bound himself to us. And that simple fact changes everything. God has covenanted with us, he has promised us redemption and he is a God who keeps his promises no matter the costs. He is a God of hesed.

My General Assembly Top 10 Moments

The 27th General Assembly of the International Church of the Nazarene, the major legislative body of our denomination which meets every four years, was held last week in Orlando, Fl. I had the tremendous privilege of attending thanks to the generosity of the church where I pastor. Here were some of the highlights of the event from my perspective.

10. Lack of "Concerned Nazarenes". There is a group that calls themselves "concerned nazarenes" whose concern is over what they consider to be the heresies of the emergent church movement influencing the Church of the Nazarene. If you are not familiar with the emergent movement, I've written a little bit about it here and you can learn more about it at emergent village. Leading up to General Assembly, it sounded as if there might be a significant group of concerned Nazarenes who would make their voices heard at General Assembly. There were indeed "concerned nazarenes" present, easily identified by the polo shirts they had embroidered with the name of their group. However, it became quickly apparent that they were a very small minority among those present at assembly. While I still consider these concerned individuals to be my brothers and sisters in Christ and do not in anyway wish to exclude them from the fellowship of our denomination, I am glad to know that their voice is not the dominant one in our denomination. The emergent movement raises some valid criticisms of the modern day Church in North America and those of us in the Church of the Nazarene would do well to take those criticisms seriously as we follow Jesus.

9. Dr. Middendorf's Sermon. On our first night at assembly, Dr. Middendorf preached a relatively simple and straightforward message from Philippians 3:7-11. While there was nothing radical or surprising about his message, it was good to hear one of our General Superintendents affirm that one of our highest expressions of Christ's resurrection power at work within us is when we as a church practice solidarity with the suffering and broken in our world.

8. Workshops. There was a vast array of workshops about a variety of topics to choose from in the week leading up to assembly. It was encouraging to participate with fellow Nazarenes from around the world in considering how we can better live out our calling as the Church. I wrote in detail about one of those workshops here.

7. Cocoa Beach. Ok, so it would be dishonest if I didn't list going to the beach as one of my favorite activities of the past week and a half. On the very last day of our stay in Orlando, after all the business was concluded we were able to take a trip to Cocoa beach and had a great time there. There are some pictures here as well as some other pictures of Hannah throughout the time we were in Orlando.

6. Seeing Friends. One of the great things about going to the biggest event in our denomination is that we got to see a lot of friends from seminary and college and the churches we grew up in. It was great to catch up with some friends and colleagues in ministry that we hadn't seen in a while.

5. Dr. Diehl's honesty and transparency. Dr. Diehl spoke about healing in his sermon on Saturday night and had a time for people to come forward to be anointed for healing at the end of the service. So often messages about healing are completely unrealistic and disingenious in that they focus solely on miraculous stories of physical healing without acknowledging the real pain and suffering that continue to exist in our world. Dr. Diehl spoke confidently about God's ability to heal us in all kinds of ways, not just physically. But this confidence was given an uncommon depth and grace when he also spoke of the loss of his son to cancer just a year ago. Dr. Diehl was inspiringly honest about his hopes for his son when God began to speak to him about having a healing service at General Assembly. He believed that he would be able to call his son up on stage in that service at assembly as a powerful witness to the fact that God heals. Instead, Dr. Diehl's son lost his battle with cancer. Dr. Diehl's openness before a crowd of thousands was a powerful reminder that often we have to trust that God's healing power extends even beyond the grave.

4. The Revision of Article X. For the past two years, the Board of General Superintends had been working on a significant revision of our tenth article of faith on Entire Sanctification, an important part of our identity as Nazarenes. Unfortunately, I was not able to see the whole revision since the resolution was submitted too late to be printed for guests and therefore only the delegates got to see it in its fullness. However, what I did see of it looks very promising. It seemed to articulate a more wholistic understanding of holiness and entire sanctification. I hope to see the revised article in its entirety in just a few weeks at District Assembly since two thirds of the districts in the church must now ratify the change after having been adopted by the General Assembly.

3. International Church Committee Resolution. The ICC proposed major revisions to our Manual to help our church become more truly global in its mission and polity. Due to the fact that the Church of the Nazarene began primarily as a North America denomination, our organizational structures and modes of thought are still very North American in many ways despite our reality of being a global church. Allowing large sections of the manual to be regionalized will aid our church in becoming a more truly international denomination on every level. Nazarene Communications Network has a good summary of the ICC resolution here.

2. Sharing Communion with thousands of fellow Nazarenes. Sunday morning was by far the largest worship service during our time in Orlando. I haven't seen officials numbers for attendance but the enormous room of the convention center we were in was packed. It was a unique experience to have the opportunity to share in the Lord's Supper with that many brothers and sisters in Christ in one place at one time.

1. The Election of Eugenio Duarte to the office of General Superintendent. Easily the most exciting experience of this General Assembly was being present on Tuesday morning for the election of our first General Superintent from outside the United States. When the ballot was read and everyone realized that Eugenio had recieved enough votesto be elected, the enitre room exploded with cheers and applause. Fellow delegates from his home region of Africa immediately swarmed him and began to lift him up on their shoulders. Some were even running to him with the flag of his homeland of Cape Verde. This was a moment when the Church refused to be held captive by the constraints of its past and took a bold step forward into a new and hopeful future as a truly global denomination.

We also elected David Graves and Stan Toler to the Board of General Superintendents along with Duarte. These three join the three remaining generals; Jesse Middenorf, Jerry Porter, and J.K. Warrick. Other notable events of this General Assembly included the opening service Wednesday night when delegates from around the world entered carrying the flags of their nations, the announcement that Nazarene Youth Congress 2011 will be in Louisville, KY, the election of our first Nazarene Missions International President from outside the U.S. (Jennifer Brown of Jamaica), and the participation of international delegates in the Nazarene Youth International Convention via videoconferencing.

You can view a complete list of actions taken by the assembly on various resolutions at this link.

General Assembly Update

I thought this update might be too long for a facebook status.

As of Monday night, we haven't elected any new General Superintendents yet but we are getting close to electing the first new one of this assembly and more importantly there seems to be a good chance we will elect our first GS from outside of the U.S. As I stated in my earlier status, 64% of our members live outside the U.S. but our leadership has been slow in reflecting this reality with less than half our GA delegates coming from outside the U.S. and no general from outside the U.S. It is extremely important that our church elect leaders from other parts of the world who understand their own culture where God is moving in new and exciting ways.

At the conclusion of business tonight, Eugenio Duarte was the leading vote getter. I found a short article in Holiness Today about him here. He already has 400+ votes and only needs about 250 more to be elected.

The second most votes went to Gustavo Crocker. Read about him here.

John Bowling, the president of Olivet Nazarene University, received the third most votes. It was a significant drop off from there.

There will have to be many more ballots cast before we have three new GS's but things are looking promising.

Perhaps even more importantly, the assembly passed the resolutions of the International Church Committee. This was a committee designed to help the Church of the Nazarene consider how it's church polity and organizational structures need to adapt to our international constintuency. The committee concluded that minor revisions to our organization and polity were no longer sufficient to adequately address the needs of our global denomination. The assembly adopted the committee resolution that Manual sections 100 - 384 be reviewed and re-written so that we can be a truly global denomination and no longer built around a North American framework. Some are saying that this is the most significant legislation of the assembly and it's adoption alone makes this GA an enormous success. I urge you to read more about the work of the ICC here.

Good things are happening here in Orlando. It makes me excited and hopeful for the future of our church. Hopefully, I'll be able to share with you tomorrow that we have elected our first General Superintendent from one of the international delegations.

Shepherd of Sheep to Shepherd of a People

In 2 Samuel 5, the elders of Israel come to David asking him to be their king. Up to this point, David has only been king over Judah but now Abner and Ish-bosheth, the two most likely kings of Israel, have both been killed. Now David is the most reasonable option for Israel and they covenant with him to be their king.

This passage describing the coronation of David as king over all Israel and Judah is widely recognized as the end of one phase of David's story; namely, the story of his rise to power. This story began back in 1 Samuel 16 when Samuel anointed David to be king even though he was a young boy. However, as the many chapters between that story and this story show, Samuel's anointing of David did not mean an immediate rise to power. After all, David was unknown and Saul was still king. In those chapters are story after story of David trusting God and refusing to force his own schedule or agenda. For example, David more than once has an opportunity to kill Saul, his political opponent, but he refuses to do so leaving it up to God to make him king as he promised. In fact, the story clears David of any culpability in the death of any of his enemies. While this certainly does not remove the blood and violence from the story of David's rise, it does show that David did not take his anointing into his own hands. He trusts God to fulfill his promises and this chapter of 2 Samuel records that God was faithful to those promises.

This is a continous struggle for us as the Church. God has promised us many things and we take those promises to heart and are passionate about seeing them fulfilled. But often we forget that they are God's promises to keep, not an agenda given to us to put in place. God calls us to be obedient and to trust him, not to make his plans happen for him. Does God want his Church to grow? Of course! But he wants it to grow through the work of his Spirit and the faithful Christ-likeness of his Church, not through some marketing gimmick. Does God want justice in our world? Yes, painfully so! But not by traditional means of power and might but by his Spirit and the mercy of his people. David's rise to power as king is a reminder to us that God does not need us to make his kingdom come; he only needs us to live faithfully in anticipation of it.

Postmodernism and Wesleyanism

"If you died tonight and found yourself at the gate of heaven and Jesus asked you 'Why should I let you into my heaven?'what would your answer be?"

If you've been aroud the Church for a while then you've probably heard this question or one like it before. While it is difficult to nail down the exact differences between modernity and postmodernity in this major cultural shift that is taking place in our culture, this question does a pretty good job of summing up the modern approach to evangelism in particular and Christianity in general. It is designed to encourage someone to think about their eternal destination and thereby lead them to a decision for Jesus. It represents a form of Christianity in which the central question is "How do I get to heaven?"

I attended a workshop here at General Assembly today entitled "Postmodern and Wesleyan?" in which the presenters discussed what Christianity in our Wesleyan heritage as Nazarenes might look like in a postmodern age. I found the most insightful part of this workshop to be when the presenters offered postmodern alternatives to the opening question above. A question like:

"If you were to live for another 40 years, what kind of legacy would you want to leave behind?"

or even better...

"If you believed in a God who was working and active in our world, wouldn't you want to be a part of that redepmtive work?"

These questions represent a Christianity that is not solely focused on heaven or hell but what God is doing now, in this life. As a result, they resonate much more closely with a postmodern generation and, in my opinion are much closer to Jesus' proclamation of the kingdom of God come to earth. Its not that heaven isn't important. It's just that Christianity shouldn't be boiled down to a ticket to heaven. We believe in a lot more that that. Our hope runs much deeper and wider than that.

In fact, thinking about the way that God works in our world (i.e. inhabiting our flesh through Jesus and continuing to inhabit our lives through the Holy Spirit) should remind us that while certain evangelism techniques might help us present the gospel more concisely, those techniques should never be about a gimmicky, used-car-salesman, kind of offer designed to get someone to agree with our cognitive beliefs about Jesus despite their better judgment. As the Church, we've got to stop looking for short cuts, easy answers, and magic bullets. We've got to stop trying to find the formula that will automatically turn everyone we meet into a Christian and start actually speanding time with people, loving people, building long-lasting relationships, and showing others what it means to be a community centered around the crucified and risen Lord and shaped by his Spirit. After all, that's the example that Jesus himself gave us.

More than an Underdog

Who sends a kid into a war zone with a sling shot?

The story of David and Goliath is one of the most well known stories of the Bible. And like many biblical stories that become absorbed into the mindset of our larger culture, it's popularity causes it to become trivialized to a certain degree. A reference to the story of David and Goliath has become short-hand for refering to a victorious underdog. I hear it often in sports when a small market team comes out of nowhere to challenge the perennial champions for the title. Commentators quikcly pose the question "Will David take down the mighty Goliath?" Usually, this means that the "David" team will have to out-hustle and out-smart their more talented "Goliath" of an opponent.

While I was personally dissapointed last night when a certain sports Goliath (the L.A. Lakers) wasn't defeated, as Christians and regular readers of scripture we should recognize that the story of David really has nothing to do with him being an underdog, at least not in the way we normally use that term. Yes, David is undersized, too young and inexperienced, and seemingly helpless with his sling and a lack of proper weaponry. But the point of the story is not that David conjurs up some inner drive to succeed by which he out-works or out-smarts the more powerful Goliath. The point is that David puts his trust in God and not in himself.

Of course, this trust appears naive and idealistic to those whose perceptions of reality have been shaped by the rigors and horrors of "the real world." So Saul attempts to conform David's view of reality to his own by dressing him up in respectable armor and weapons, the things in which Saul trusts. After trying on the king's armor David refuses, knowing that it is God who will decide this battle.

And so, a boy armed with trust, five stones, and a sling goes where a whole army of seasoned warriors dared not go. One stone is all it takes. The battle has barely begun and it is over. The giant is taken down by one well placed stone.

There are so many battlefields in our world; all kinds of metaphorical ones and sadly too many literal ones as well. Often its seems that the Church feels like it only has two choices in these battles; either to cower from the things that threaten us as the Israelite army did or to go into the battle with the weapons of the world as Saul wanted David to. Both of those options fail because they fail to account for God's presence. But there is a third option; stepping onto the battlefield with trust in God as our only real weapon.

Of course, that's risky. It leaves us vulnerable to the giant enemy standing in front of us and backed by an army that is supposed to be on our side but doesn't exactly have a lot faith in the odds of our success. But, of course, this is the path that Jesus walked; publicly challenging the God-mocking giants of his day while even his closest followers wondered why he hadn't taken up the more conventional weapons of revolution. And for a time it appeared that his trust had been too naive and idealistic and that the giant had won but even after death his trust was vindicated because God has the power to raise those who trust in him to new life.

In a world of tanks and nuclear weapons, a world of injustice and political games, a world where so many lines have been drawn deeply in the sand, what would it mean for us to be a people who stand between opposing armies and challenge the giants of our world, armed with only our trust in God and a sling?

Youth Revolution

Sedition. Treason. Revolution. An unknown, unimportant, left-over of a boy.

By the beginning of the 16th chapter of 1 Samuel, God himself and Samuel both regret having made Saul king over Israel. Saul has failed as the shepherd of this people. But God speaks to Samuel, indicating to him that the time of morning for Saul is over because God is about to do something new. God tells Samuel to prepare to anoint one of the sons of Jesse the Bethlemite as Israel's next king. Samuel response to God's command (When Saul hears of it, he will kill me! v.2) takes seriously the dangerous political implications of what God is asking him to do. There is already a king in Israel; to anoint another one while Saul is still alive is nothing short of open rebellion against the powers that be. God doesn't discount this reality, recognizing the danger of what he is asking Samuel to do. But God does give Samuel an "out", telling Samuel to go to Bethlehem under the guise of offering a sacrifice. (Is God encouraging an act of deception here in order to bring about the revolution he desires?)

Samuel arrives in Bethlehem and the elders of the town know something is up. They ask Samuel if he comes in peace. They figure that the presence of a big shot like Samuel in a small town like theirs can only mean trouble; either he is there working for Saul or he is there in opposition to Saul. Either way, the elders figure it can't be good for Bethlehem. But Samuel reassures them by repeating the line God gave him about being there to offer sacrifice sees to it that Jesse and his family are in attendance. Immediately upon their entrance, Samuel sees Jesse's son Eliab and thinks that his work is done; surely this must be the next king of Israel. But God tells Samuel to pass over Eliab and Abinadab and Shammah and all seven of Jesse's sons who are present. Has Samuel got the wrong house? Did he misunderstand God's instructions? Are there no other sons?

It turns out there is one son remaining but he is the youngest, the runt of the litter. You could even translate Jesse's description of this son as a "left-over". His own father considered him so unimportant that he didn't even bother to bring him before Samuel the king-maker. Samuel instructs Jesse to go get his left-over boy and he says that they will all wait while he retrieves him. And so the mighty Samuel, the town elders, and the older brothers come to a stand still because of this young boy who has yet to even be named in the story. The power and influential are made to wait for the young, lowly shepherd to come in from the field. Such is the kingdom of God.

Upon this young boy's entrance into the story, it seems that even the narrator can not contain his excitment over his main character. He says that the boy had beautiful eyes and a handsome appearance, even though it has already been stated that this was not God's criteria for choosing his annointed. His good looks are only a sort of added bonus to the kind of heart that God desires which this boy also possesses. Immediately upon seeing the boy, God tells Samuel to get up and anoint him and he does so. Right there in front of all those who should be more powerful than he is, David is anointed as king of Israel and filled with the Holy Spirit and it is only then that he is finally named within the story.

In the life of an unknown, left-over, nearly nameless, young boy the seeds of God's revolution and a new kingdom are planted. There are none too young or unimportant for the kingdom of God. The Church today finds itself in a situation similar to Samuel's. We can mourn over the failures of past or current leaders. We can accept a dim future because seeking new leaders is too dangerous and risky. Or we can be obedient to God and begin looking for those that God has already chosen among the younger generations to lead the way into a new future.