Vocation and Eschatology

For two weeks I was a mentor at the Duke Youth Academy for Christian Formation at Duke Divinity School http://www.divinity.duke.edu/programs/youth/.
It was an amazing ride. I am just now getting my feet back under me. We worshipped each night. Prayed each morning. Studied every day. Reflected in most spare moments. Worked late. Ate often. Bathed when necessary.

On the last day of lectures, Friday, I was given the task of writing about the lecture. Here are my notes:

Vocation and Eschatology

In our final plenary gathering Dr. Warren Smith taught us to merge our thinking about Vocation (God's call on our life now) and Eschatology (the end-times that await us). He merged the two in the claim that we are to live hopefully. As Christians who remember and participate in Christ's Incarnation, Crucifixion, and Resurrection we are called to live lives that are a present witness to the hope of the coming kingdom of God.

What is hope? Our hope is the object of our calling that points to God's final purposes for the world. We need to live in such a way that we are prepared for future lives in the resurrection. We don't live just for now. We live with an eye for the future. In terms of our vocation we must think less of a job which we choose, but a job for which we are chosen. Further, vocation is not necessarily something that you are seeking out, but something that God seeks out for you.

Dr. Smith conveyed that the most important dogma that we must agree on regarding Eschatology is that Christ was raised bodily from the dead and we will be raised bodily. Though we hear so often about Rapture, how Christ will come again, and the Millenium, these issues are surrounded by questions where the Church has not had full agreement. We should always turn our attention first to the cental issues of Resurrection--Christ's and our own.

What does bodily resurrection mean for us? Jesus' resurrection becomes the prototype for our resurrection. His resurrection inaugurates the period of resurrection. This doctrine means that in light of Jesus having been raised from the dead, Christian's grieve death with hope--the hope that looks forward to when we will all be redeemed.

Finally, Dr. Smith offered some wonderful and heartfelt comments regarding marriage and sex and reminded us the neither are acts that will be included as part of our final redemption. Therefore, we are given the gift of patience when considering either in our own lives. Not all are called to marriage and sex and a culture that says otherwise is a culture that Christians must stand over and against. Both are a reminder that God has made us in God's own image, and that neither will part of our final redemption when we are equal to the angels as sons and daughters of the resurrection (Lk 20:36).



Possible Quotes:

"Your hearts are the eyes of your soul." Warren Smith (inspired by Eph 1).

"This is a pregnant passage and I am going to try to help Paul give birth." Warren Smith walking us through Romans 8:18-25

When we look at Jesus resurrected on Easter morning, we don't just see one man raised from the dead, (we could have looked to Lazarus for the raising of just one man), but in Jesus we see the entire humanity raised from the dead." Warren Smith

Kayaking

Yesterday I went kayaking at the US National Whitewater Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. I dragged my mother, wife, and three children away from the basement, the holy land of my parent's home, as holy as the catacombs in Rome. Usually they play down there the majority of the time whenever we visit Charlotte. I don't know if my mother actually has relics or the remains of any saints, but their must be something down there, at least an ark or a bush that burns and is not consumed. I've been down there and its cool and all, but the kids see things I clearly do not. My children beg for the adventures presented in the basement at Grammy Charlotte's house. They have forts, and numerous Halloween costumes, music, free space to run, books, and of greatest importance--Grammy Charlotte. So dragging these five basement worshippers away from their sanctuary was a long shot. Somehow, they took the bait and we traveled the 20 miles Southeast towards the Catawba River where thousands of horses power six turbines creating whitewater where lack of elevation change would say there could not be rapids.

It was the first time in almost a year that I had been in a kayak and the first time in more than a year that my children had seen me in a kayak. Usually kayaking is a fairly quiet and reflective activity for me. I go and surf on the artificial waves in Charlotte. I talk to a few people, but most I keep to myself. Sharing the experience with my children as they looked on from the side was an altogether different kind of experience. They wanted to know when they could go kayaking. I imagined converting an old Mr. Clean C-1 into a little C-2 or OC-2 for Kathryn and George. I would teach them a few paddle strokes. They both need to become more proficient swimmers before they get any canoeing lessons, but it could be a year or two away.

Paddling was life changing for me when I first encountered it as an 11 year old at Eagle's Nest Camp. I was never the same after that first trip on the lower Green River. I wonder if it will transform my children. It is certainly okay if it does not, but they at least deserve an opportunity and I could provide it them a few years earlier in life.

Saints on the Chattooga

I just finished Saints at the River by Ron Rash and it is an excellent book that conjured up vivid memories from my childhood and early adulthood. I picked it up by sheer luck (it was on sale and I liked the sound of the title), at the Gothic Bookstore at Duke University a few days ago while I was waiting to meet with a ministry colleague and only a few pages in and I knew all the hidden names of my most favorite river in all the world--the Chattooga. The book centers around Raven Chute Rapid in all its transcendental glory with a 200 foot outcropping in the background. This image of this rapid held the book together for me like a tapestry, a backdrop of beauty, power, and possible death. The book took me through a host of emotions and memories from the terror of possibly losing a child, memories and my own understanding of baptism and death and how water is an element so common to both, and the host of the book--the Chattooga River.

When I was a little boy, I grew up at Eagle's Nest Camp in Brevard. I discovered whitewater canoeing and never looked back. By my second summer of paddling I was a part of an overnight trip to Section Three of the Chattooga. Someone took a picture of me taking a solo shot at Second Ledge and there I was with a sixteen foot Bluehole canoe beneath me, and a goofy pink helmet, and a plastic Carlisle paddle, and my gangly 80 pound body trying to muscle my way over those forgiving falls. Second Ledge looked big, but the pool at the bottom, unlike other rapids on the river, makes for a soft landing should one capsize. That memory and all the rest over the next few years would end with a look at the tricky double drop at Bull Sluice, but no camper was allowed to paddle it. I remember finally becoming a counselor at age 18 and as I stood scouting on the river right bank, I thought, "Now, there is no one to stop me from doing this." The power of the river and I had come face to face and I knew I would try to gather my fears and turn them to focus as I maneuvered the first of many class 4-5 rapids that would drive my activities over the next seven years and take me to the Gauley, and the middle Green, and creeks and rivers in Colorado.

Memories of Section Three of the Chattooga pale in comparison to points downstream--Woodall Shoals, and Seven Foot Falls, Raven Chute Falls, and Five Falls. Their grandeur is too great to put to words for now, but I will think on it for later.

This article at the link below gives a description of the drowning that is clearly the loose basis for the book.

http://www.chattoogariver.org/Articles/1999SF/Recovery.htm

As tormented as I would be by the death of any of my own children, and as important as I think physical bodies are in the human experience, I would not want a fight to be the overwhelming story of a child's death. The bottom of a river as beautiful as the the Chattooga--there are worse graves.

Here I Am

Last night our church conducted the fourth of five nights of our annual Vacation Church School. The week's theme is "We Want a King," and last night we learned about Samuel and how God called him out of a slumber and how Samuel had a special purpose in anointing Israel's first king--Saul. In 1 Samuel 3, Samuel answers God with three simple words, "Here I am." This peculiar call and response happens in three's as so many important "God-talks" occur in scripture. "Here I Am"--these are the same words uttered by Moses before the burning bush(Exodus 3:4) and Isaiah at his call to prophecy (Isaiah 6:8). The words are so utterly different than the way in which Adam cowers from God who comes to find him when all Adam can say is "When I heard your voice, God, I was afraid and I hid" (Genesis 3:10). "Here I Am"--these three simple words, which give a location and then the simplest of subject-verb clauses, these three words are so similar to the words God uses for God's self in Exodus 3:14 when he tells Moses his proper and mysterious name. God says, "Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh" or "I Am Who I Am." At least in part, it is as if Samuel, Moses, and Isaiah answer God in the affirmative by the simple utterance of God's name.

When God calls you, will you have the courage, despite your greatest fears, to say, "Here I Am. Send Me"?

Prerogative

You are a good God
of that I feel sure.
You kept saying that we were
good, in the Creation.
You keep making concessions,
Flood, Manna, Cross.

Though none of it comes on our terms.
You will be what you will be
You are gracious on your terms
You will be merciful on your terms
If I see your face, or I do not,
your prerogative.

Criminals ask for a crumb of your memory,
and you say to felons,
today you will be with me in Paradise.
Can this be?

Some pick grapes for only 60 minutes,
they too, get the usual?
All your grace? Same as me?
This can’t be.

An old Cherokee word,
Hante, means, “I went away and learned.”
Tells of a sojourner with tales of a distant land.
but you raise up a boy who went away
and slept in filth.
Squandered
Wastrel
When do I get mine for staying?
More importantly,
when does he get his for leaving?

So this is what it looks like to follow a good God.
Hard work.
Difficult to comprehend.
Seemingly unfair
But, you did raise the dead, so I guess you could show mercy
to bums like these and me.

*Biblical references include: Gen 1, 6. Ex 16, 3, 33. Lk 23, Matt 20, Lk 15.
**This was written with the help of a sermon by TEK (9/21/08) and the Holy Family book club (9/22/08).

June 1, 2010, preached and taught this poem at the Durham County Detention Center by reading the poem once, then reading the scriptures that were referenced and finally, reading the poem a second time. Roughly 15 men joined for worship and it was a joy to bless the Lord with them. I was inspired to use this poem and method by David Whyte who spoke at Duke on May 21 regarding The Power and Place of Poetry as part of a conference called, Lifelines: Poetry for Our Patients, Our Communities, Our Selves.

Nostalgia

This is my oldest child, George IV, at age two in the basement of my parent's home in Charlotte, North Carolina. I know...he's so cute. The image is making me feel very nostalgic. This picture could easily have been me, 31 years earlier at the same chalkboard, different basement, in Fredericksburg, Virginia at the home of my mother's parents, William and Ruby Lee Johnson, my beloved grandparents. My sister and I used to play down there for hours at that chalkboard and with games like Chinese Checkers. In the winter the furnace was always blazing hot. I remember watching A Christmas Carol, the George C. Scott version, one X-mas Eve, and thinking how the setting was perfect--smoky smelling and cozy with that black knit blanket, or bundled up in that green sleeping bag/blanket that had bottons that mummified the wearer. That chalkboard was always at the foot of the basement steps. To see my children draw on it now takes me back to my earliest memories, mostly the smells of that old homeplace on William Street.

I'm about to turn 33. George IV is nearing his 5th birthday. The years are floating by now as quickly as days, even minutes sometimes.

A week ago I was ordained as a minister in Christ's Church at the Myers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC. It was one of the greatest days of my seemingly short life. Friends sharing in blessings and prayers. The same friends heard my promises to God about how things would be the same, but different. Ministry will somehow become more focused, more guided, it would seem. Getting it right matters. Formal schooling is over, at least for now. Mentors preached and prayed and gifted me with embraces. Parishoners who have watched over me since I was young enough to first scribble on a chalkboard prayed in my ear that I would be a faithful servant to God.

Present at the ordination service, to my shock and surprise, was my 93 year old grandmother, Ruby Lee Johnson. Our youngest, William, is named after her husband, William Scott Johnson, dead now 15 years of cancer. He was as honest and loving as any person I have ever known. As I wept during the Laying on of Hands by each of the 100 people present at my ordination, I felt his old weepy self crying right along with me.

Looking at this picture is a way back into the story of my life and an ordination last week that was as culminating an event of God's work in my life as my birth, baptism, marriage to Kristen, or the birth of any or all of our three children. I have not been able to write too much about the ordination yet, at least not anything of significance. I feel anxious to get it all down, but I am praying for patience. I don't think the weight of that Sunday afternoon will depart me anytime soon.

Peace.

P.S. Here is another picture from that weekend. Our son sure was a cutie! He still is--just taller.

Doors closed for good

Doors closed for good. Joseph says these words to his brothers after they tried to kill him and after a life in Egypt for which he had not planned. "Although you intended me harm, God intended if for good." Has this ever been true for you? Bad stuff is happening all the time--missed planes, injured legs, criticisms we did not want, things we wish we had not said. Sometimes though, the seemingly bad turns out to be for the good. Look for that today.