Grace In The Tall Weeds

Ever feel like you're stuck? Like you're struggling to walk through tall weeds that hinder your progress and obscure the path forward?

Sometimes, those tall weeds mark the very place where we meet God. I'll let my dad explain: 

"You know, of course, that the Peanuts gang loves to play baseball. In one Peanuts cartoon, Linus the outfielder is shown standing in tall weeds beyond center field, looking frustrated. 'I can't find the ball!' he shouts to the other players. 'How do you expect anyone to find a ball in weeds like these? What did you hit it out here for?' Linus goes on: 'It's impossible! Of course I'm looking! This is hopeless! Nobody could find anything out here! You couldn't find a battle ship in these weeds if it ... Wait ... I found it.'

Linus has just experienced what all of us are privileged to experience and are so apt to take for granted and perhaps even miss - an undeserved moment of grace in the tall weeds of life. What are the tall weeds in your life - the things that get you down and make you feel hopeless before you even get started? Do you ever react as Linus did - virtually paralyzed by frustration and defeatism as the tall weeds engulf you? When Linus happened to glance down at his feet and spied that ball, it was a moment of pure grace. He had done nothing to deserve this find, in fact, quite the opposite. His negative attitude would seem to keep him from ever being able to find the ball. He couldn't focus on the ball; all he could see were the tall weeds. 

It is true that negative thinking prevents us from capturing the victory, and yet it is not true that positive thinking alone brings us the victory. My point is not that we will prevail over the tall weeds if we just believe strongly enough that we can. That is a popular modern gospel, but it is not the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Just believing that he would find the ball might help Linus find it and it might not. No matter what he believed, the weeds might just be too dense. Sometimes no matter how much we believe in ourselves and in the rightness of our cause, the challenges and problems are too great for us to manage. But as Christians we are supposed to be hopeful people. If positive thinking and believing in ourselves is not the basis for our hope, then what is?     

Our hope is based upon those moments of grace that break in upon us, unexpectedly, through no effort of our own, courtesy of God himself. They are like finding the ball in the tall weeds. They are those moments of reprieve, no matter how small, no matter how brief, that remind us that this is still God's world, and we are still his children, and he has not taken his eyes off of us. The Gospel of John puts it this way: 'The Light shone in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.' It's pretty dark, but there is still a light - God's light.

The way to experience a moment of grace from the Lord is to stop all the frustrated and frantic flailing about in the tall weeds. Just be still; wait and watch for the Lord to act. ... The message of the Gospel is that in all situations of life, no matter how desperate, God sends his salvation - maybe not the salvation we expect or want - but God's salvation, by God's grace and not because of our efforts. How important it is to remember that. In his letter to the Philippians, Paul says, 'I can do all things if I just put my mind to it and try hard enough.' No, he doesn't say that at all! Paul says, 'I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.' This is the key to experiencing grace in the tall weeds. Remember it is Christ who created us; it is Christ who saves us; it is Christ who will bring us with him to glory."

From "Grace in the Tall Weeds"

Scripture: Philippians 4:8-13

Preached at Paoli United Methodist Church

December, 1984       

The Profound Mystery of Marriage (Part 2)

Today is Independence Day, and it also would have been my dad's 76th birthday. Thinking of him today made me wonder what advice he would have given my daughter Adrienne and her new husband Earl on the occasion of their wedding last Saturday. It didn't take me long to find a clue in one of his sermons. I suspect that Grandpa Bill might have told Adri and EJ about the "profound mystery" of marriage - that spouses feel most fulfilled and empowered not when they are focused on meeting their own needs, but when each of them is focused on the needs of the other in "mutual subjection" to one another. Dad called this mutual subjection the "binding agent" of a successful marriage union.

EJ & Adri @ Tyler Gardens, Bucks Co. C. College

"What is it about being subject to one another, out of reverence for Christ, that creates such a union?

We must be careful about how we talk about this because subjection is not a welcome word in our society. Today the by-words are freedom, liberty, doing your own thing, self-actualization. Many modern marriages fail because this is the dominant philosophy of both parties. 

There is nothing wrong per se with this modern drive to discover self, find fulfillment, and get the most out of life. The only problem is that in the plan of God, the way to life is not going directly after it. You remember the words of Jesus: 'For whoever would save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.'

It is really hard to describe, but no less true, that in serving the needs of another one discovers and strengthens oneself. And if this is true in general for all relationships, it is doubly true for marriage, the most intimate of all relationships. Here a wonderful cycle of giving and receiving is set in motion. The more I give to my partner the stronger her self-esteem grows, and the more she is able to give to me, and on and on the cycle goes.

The conventional wisdom is that subjection is galling and demeaning to the subject. But in the context of mutual subjection in marriage, nothing could be further from the truth. It's true that if you have a low self-image, subjection galls you because it seems to speak to your inferiority. A person with a weak ego is threatened by the servant role. But in the case of the mutual subjection of marriage, at the same time you are being a servant to your partner, she is being a servant to you. In serving you she is affirming that you are worthy and lovable. Thus, feeling good about yourself, you are able to serve her needs without feeling demeaned by this subjection.

It is truly a profound mystery, but it works! It really does, and it gives one of the deepest satisfactions and provides one of the greatest sources of strength available this side of heaven." 

So there is Grandpa Bill's marriage advice for you, Adrienne and EJ. May it serve you well, as you each serve the other.  I love you both. -Dad

From: "Christian Marriage - A Profound Mystery"
Scripture: Ephesians 5:21-33
Preached August 21, 1988 at
Paoli United Methodist Church 

The Profound Mystery of Marriage (Part 1)

Several people have asked me why I hadn't posted anything new on this blog of late. Truth is, I've been busier than usual. Last weekend was my daughter Adrienne's wedding. She married a wonderful young man named Earl, who I'm proud to call my son-in-law now. Here's a look at the bride and her groom:

Earl & Adrienne

When Adrienne and Earl chose a passage of scripture to be read at their wedding ceremony, they passed over Paul's famous instructions for wives and husbands set out in Chapter 5 of Ephesians:

"Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives, submit yourselves to your husbands as you do to the Lord. For the husband is head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church. ... Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her[.] ... This is a profound mystery[.]" Ephesians 5:21-23, 25, 32 (NIV).

I'm not surprised that Adrienne and Earl didn't select this passage for their wedding ceremony. My daughter definitely views marriage as a partnership of equals, not as a chain of command - with the husband at the top no less. Let's be honest: plenty of bad "Christian" marriage advice has flowed from Paul's admonition that wives should "submit" to their husbands. But I wonder if Adri and EJ might have reconsidered these verses if they had heard what Grandpa Bill had to say about them in a sermon he preached about marriage. My dad wrote:

"This passage is like a seed that holds the promise of what marriage later became in the Christian tradition. Of course, in Paul's day, wives were subject to their husbands in both the Jewish and Greek communities. If you were to suggest the equality of the sexes to anyone in the first century, even in the church, you would have been laughed out of the room. Women were property, not persons.

With this in mind, a passage that said, 'Wives, be subject to your husbands,' came as a breath of fresh air to its readers because of what it also said, because of all the qualifiers it added. It said that husbands should love their wives to the point of self-sacrifice. It said that marriage is a true union of husband and wife, so that the way a man treats his wife is ultimately the way he treats himself. 

All of this was a 'profound mystery' says Ephesians. Now, marriage was not a profound mystery to first century men living in a man's world. It was a matter of comfort and convenience; it was a matter of economic necessity; it was a matter of ensuring one's own posterity; but it was not a profound mystery! 

Paul, and other first century Christians, began to liberate marriage from this bondage. They didn't yet realize all of the ramifications of this, but they did know that men and women had to sit together at the Lord's Table, and that Paul had said some startling things like 'in Christ there is nether male nor female.' This didn't automatically result in a full-blown doctrine of Christian marriage. Nevertheless, considering the cultural and historical context, these verses were revolutionary! The seed was sown for the unfolding of the profound mystery of Christian marriage.

Verse 21 is that seed in its essence. The writer could have stopped here and said it all. This is the Word of God on Christian marriage: 'Be subject to one another out of reverence for Christ.' This is the timeless foundation on which believers build their marriage unions. Did the old writer know what he was saying? In an age of  male dominance and female subservience, did he know he was espousing 'mutual subjection,' wife to husband and husband to wife? Was this a slip of the pen, or was it the Spirit giving us the Word?

Time has told, and continuing revelation has given us the answer: what holds a Christian marriage together and makes it work is not romance, not good sex, not a legal marriage contract, not psychological compatibility - but mutual subjection. Mutual subjection is at the heart of the profound mystery of the marriage union. It is the binding agent." In the words of Ephesians, it is how "the two will become one flesh."  Ephesians 5:31 (NIV).

From: "Christian Marriage - A Profound Mystery"

Scripture: Ephesians 5:21-33

Preached: August 21, 1988

Paoli United Methodist Church