Pastors' Blog

The sign read, “We’re grounded [sic] 4 stealing & sneaking out—HONK if you agree with grounding.” And there they stood, in the front page picture of the South Bend Tribune this week, with a truly forlorn expression on both their young faces—April, 12, and Patrick Kraniak, 13, grounded by their mother for the above-mentioned offenses for the rest of the summer. Grounded, in this case, meaning sitting at a picnic table in their front yard in Mishawaka, Indiana—with a neon poster board inscribed with their “HONK if you agree with our sentencing” sign. (Both children admitted to the reporter that they had indeed committed the infractions.) No running off to play, no television breaks—just a day-after-day sentence at that front yard table, with maternal permission to go inside the house for bathroom breaks or when it rains. Whazzup with all of this? Child abuse by an angry parent? Their mother, Rita Strang, explains her punishment (which, by the way, her husband is firmly supporting): “‘I have nine kids, my oldest (two) are in prison, and I don’t want to see any of the others go in. Having them in prison has torn up the family and it breaks everybody’s heart.” And so Mother Strang “is determined to keep her other children out of trouble, even if she has to get a little creative” (SBT 6-23-10). Will it work? Stay tuned for an end-of-summer report. Nothing like a little remorse and public shaming to get you to amend your ways, right? For my morning worships I’ve been reading the new paperback edition of that classic on the life of Christ, Desire of Ages, now updated with the NKJV—and I’ve been immensely blessed. But just this week I came to the heart-breaking story of Peter’s vehement three-fold denial that he never knew the abused Prisoner inside. And your heart always tears up, doesn’t it, when you come to that sentence in Luke’s account, “And the Lord turned and looked at Peter” (Luke 22:61 NKJV). “While the degrading oaths were fresh upon Peter's lips, and the shrill crowing of the cock was still ringing in his ears, the Saviour turned from the frowning judges, and looked full upon His poor disciple. At the same time Peter's eyes were drawn to his Master. In that gentle countenance he read deep pity and sorrow, but there was no anger there. The sight of that pale, suffering face, those quivering lips, that look of compassion and forgiveness, pierced his heart like an arrow” (DA 712, 713). No justly-deserved shaming, no public condemnation, nothing but the forgiving grace of the Savior’s unrelenting love and mercy that broke the big fisherman’s heart. “So Peter went out and wept bitterly [“and cried and cried and cried”—The Message]” (v 62). The tears are ours, too, are they not? Today—both here at Pioneer Memorial Church and in Atlanta for the 59th General Conference session of the Seventh-day Adventist Church—grace will be front and center. Here as we celebrate the sacred, joyous communion with the Lord of Calvary. And there as we celebrate the nine-day theme, “Proclaiming God’s Grace.” Because whether here, there or anywhere, the truth the world is dying to hear is the truth of the God who was grounded in our place at Calvary—suffering for our shame, dying for our sins, rising again for our salvation. If only the world could know our Savior—think of the billions who would be freed from their honking guilt and shame. No wonder we must still pray for the outpouring of “the Spirit of grace and supplication” (Zech 12:10) upon both church and world for such a time as this!

Perhaps the game was perfect after all. How can I let the hottest story in sports a week ago get by without at least a comment? If you’re not a baseball aficionado, let me set the story up first. The great American (and now international—I grew up in Japan playing it with Nipponese fervor) pastime of baseball is a game played over 9 innings, in which each team comes to bat once each inning and can remain at bat (swinging, hitting, missing the 90+ mph balls thrown at or near each batter by the pitcher) until the team accumulates three outs (a strikeout [three swings that missed], a hit that is caught or thrown to first base before the batter can race to the bag, or being forced out as a runner by a teammate’s hit ). Whew—this explanation business is more difficult than I thought—we should’ve gone into cricket instead (just kidding—really)! Anyway, the team that scores the most runs (one point per runner who circles the three bases and returns to home plate before the inning is over) wins. Still want to play?

Last week a young Detroit Tigers (that’s a team name) Venezuelan pitcher, Armando Galarraga, was on his way to the unthinkable. Pitching against the Cleveland Indians, Galarraga was pitching an absolutely perfect game—meaning, every Cleveland batter that stepped beside home plate to swing at his pitches struck out or hit into an out (on the ground or in the air). For nine innings Galarraga ruled the game! Not a single opposing batter was able to hit against him. Period. If he continued on that phenomenal streak, he would end up pitching a “perfect game”—27 batters up, 27 batters down (out) with no hits, no walks, no errors. A perfect game in baseball is so rare that it has only happened 20 times in baseball history, or on the average of once every 19,595 games! I.e., 28-year-old pitcher Galarraga was on his way to making history, very major baseball history. In fact, it all came down to the 27th batter—get him out—and Galarraga has his perfect game. And sure enough, the batter hits a fast groundball between first and second base, the first baseman runs to snag the hit, Galarraga instinctively races to first base to catch the first baseman’s throw—for an easy out—and a perfect game—and history forever! When suddenly first base umpire Jim Joyce threw his arms sideways, indicating that the runner was safe. The stunned Detroit stadium erupted in boos, Detroit manager Jim Leyland raced across the field to protest the call, all the while TV screens across the nation replayed the throw, showing clearly that the runner was out and the perfect game was in fact perfect. But all to no avail. Umpire Joyce wouldn’t budge.

Until after the game when the umpire was shown a television replay of his botched call. The runner truly had been out—Joyce had made the wrong call, costing the young pitcher a place in immortalized baseball lore. And then it was that this story took a most unfamiliar turn. While the cameras are running, with tears and quivering lip the umpire sought out Galarraga and—can you believe it?—apologized to the pitcher for having made the wrong call. And wonder of wonders—with the cameras and microphones still running—instead of recrimination and blame, Galarraga graciously forgives the umpire and waves it off as an honest mistake. AP writer Ben Walker later opined: “Bad calls are part of the mix in sports . . . . But something about this one—the chance to right a wrong, the heartfelt emotions of everyone involved—reached way past the lines. ‘I’ve got to say we’ll never see it again in our lifetime,’ New York Yankees manager Joe Girardi said.” Maybe not.

Look—I’m not a softy, but I’ll confess to eyes welled up as I listened to the heartbroken confession and the compassionate forgiveness of these two grown men. In a world so devoid of such transparency, what a gift. Maybe it really was a perfect game after all. For what could be a grander reflection of a grace divine than this display near the pitcher’s mound in baseball? When the God of heaven—who probably isn’t a baseball fan at all—moves upon the hearts of his earth children and for a fleeting moment we see grace divine lived out in lives utterly human, there is something akin to perfection for while, isn’t there? May the poet W. H. Auden was right: “I know nothing, except what everyone knows—if there when Grace dances, I should dance.”

He lost seven teeth! I don’t know about you, but it was traumatic enough as a kid losing one tooth at a time. But seven? Though he’s really not to blame. Because when Duncan Keith saw the puck coming, there simply wasn’t enough time to turn his head. And so his mouth took the full brunt of that speeding ice hockey puck Sunday evening. Owww! And sure enough, when Keith put his hand up to his mouth, he spat out seven of his favorite teeth. Gone! Why then was Duncan Keith all smiles afterwards? Because his team, the Chicago Blackhawks, won on Sunday and are now headed to the Stanley Cup finals next week. And what are seven broken teeth in comparison to a dream chance to win the Super Bowl of ice hockey? Asked by reporters if he’d be replacing those seven teeth this week before the finals, Keith grinned and shook his head. No sense risking losing seven new teeth all over again. He plans to wait until the finals are over. Smart move, Duncan!

So what are you willing to risk for the sake of dream? Let’s face it—the bigger the dream, the higher the risk. Which is true for both the Andrews Academy graduates this weekend, as well as the “Mad About Marriage” seminar attendees. Brooding over a dream career? Dreaming of high octane joy in a lifelong marriage? It doesn’t matter the life goal you’re pursuing, the truth of the matter is you’ve got to be willing to take the Duncan Keith kind of risk. Which, of course, was precisely Jesus’ point to all of us: “‘If any of you wants to be my follower, you must put aside your selfish ambition, shoulder your cross, and follow me. If you try to keep your life for yourself, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will find true life’” (Mark 8:34, 35 NLT).

Come to think of it, that’s what our Day of Fasting and Prayer (Sabbath, June 5) is about as well, isn’t it? Why would anybody fast about anything? Because if the stakes are high enough, you’re willing to sacrifice about anything to go for the “win.” And could the stakes for the church be higher on this planet than right now? The two Koreas at it again. Afghanistan and Iraq. The Euro and the European Union, and the UK and the US—all gripped (just this side of strangled) by crippling debt. And somewhere on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico we have opened a Pandora’s Box of ill. In three weeks world leaders and delegates of our community of faith meet in Atlanta to elect leaders and conduct the business of the church. Shouldn’t we be going to the mat before God on behalf of our world, our nation and our church? Join us next Sabbath, won’t you, for that sort of praying? Have questions about this idea of fasting? Go to our website, www.pmchurch.tv, and click on to the Day of Fasting and Prayer special banner—read the PDF paper—and invite your friends and family to join you. “‘If you give up your life for my sake and for the sake of the Good News, you will find true life.’” Because some prayers, some dreams, some hopes are worth sacrificing for, aren’t they?

Look, I’m not an oil company executive or engineer, OK? But three weeks into the on-going BP oil well blowout fiasco (or crisis, if you prefer) in the Gulf of Mexico, does it trouble you at all that nobody seems to know for sure what we’re supposed to be doing next? With over 4 million gallons of crude oil already spewed into the Gulf since the well blowout on April 20, what if the leak (at a rate federal officials now estimate to be 210,000 gallons/day) can’t be capped? I.e., what if a million gallons of crude a week keep gushing out of the broken well head into the Gulf of Mexico and eventually the oceans beyond?

I hadn’t even contemplated such a disastrous “worst case scenario” until two friends put me in touch with the Pure Energy Systems Network website (www.pesn.com) that carries the reflective analysis of software engineer and oil industry analyst Paul Noel. Noel observes that while BP officials are not commenting, the oil and natural gas deposit they were drilling into when the fatal blowout occurred may be either the largest or second largest such deposit in the world—easily topping 500,000 barrels of production a day for ten to fifteen years! The deposit covers up to 25,000 square miles and lies thirty thousand feet into the earth’s crust beneath the five-thousand-foot deep floor of the Gulf of Mexico. (You get the picture—it’s huge!) Drilling for that “deep oil,” BP punched a hole into this super-charged high-pressure (70,000 psi) pocket, and the rest is the unfolding story of a potential crisis, the magnitude of which nobody yet dares to predict. What if in all the efforts to plug the leak/hole, a much larger hole is blown open? What then? “Stunning dangerous” is how Noel described it. Another panicked writer bluntly predicted, “We are seeing a major historical and economic event taking place that could change the world as we have known it.”

What’s that have to do with you and me? Simple. The unfolding saga in the Gulf is an apocalyptic-like reminder that whether it be a volcano or an earthquake or hurricane (all acts of nature), or whether it be a BP-like disaster or a Greece-like economic meltdown (all acts of man), life on this terrestrial ball can suddenly, literally over-night be irrevocably changed.

Which is why the call to collective prayer sounded in today’s story (“The Santayana Factor—Tales of the Kings”—II) is so earnestly essential. In five weeks leaders and delegates from my own community of faith will gather in Atlanta, Georgia, for a week of prayerful deliberations. Shall it be once again business as usual? Or should the hearts of God’s people be stirred to their depths with the compelling sense of our utter need for his intervention at this critical time in earth’s history? I believe it is the latter that must awaken us to corporate prayer as never before.  As the narrative of this ancient king reminds us, it is the moral duty of spiritual leaders to call the people of God to prayer. Then shall we not unite in this common prayer? “‘O our God—we do not know what to do, but our eyes are upon you’” (II Chronicles 20:12).