To Canaan's Fair and Happy Land; Where My Possesion Lies

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of leading worship at a beautiful camp on top of Sand Mountain near the town of Pisgah in Northeast Alabama. The unique, place-out-of-time feel I got from this land made me finally pick up and read Salvation on Sand Mountain, Dennis Covington's brilliant account of snake-handling churches from the old Holiness tradition that can still be found on top of the mountain. Little did I know what I was in for as Covington took me on a journey to and through all aspects of the Southern American experience (something tells me I'm gonna be learning from this book for a LONG time).
Maybe the most fascinating element in the affair was Covington's account (borrowed from David Hackett Fischer's book Albion's Seed) of how white European people wound up in the Smoky Mountains and Deep South in the first place:
"Fischer says that most of the immigrants who settled the Appalachians arrived in waves from North Britain during the middle of the 18th century...But unlike some eariler immigrants to America the Scotch-Irish were not fleeing religious persecution. Instead, their motives were primarily economic, a reaction to high rents, low wages, and scarcity of food. Their flight to America, though, suggested Biblical themes. On Jordan's Stormy Banks i Stand, and cast a wishful eye they would sing to Canaan's fair and happy land, where my possessions lie. I am bound for the promised land. I am bound for the promised land, oh who will come and go with me? I am bound for the promised land." (Salvation on Sand Mountain p. 84).
Upon reading this I nearly fell over in my chair. As a worship musician I have played that hymn literally hundreds of times. I often make the point to say while leading it that I want this hymn played at my funeral. Further, a few years ago I started doing this song with only a mandolin playing on the first verse and the rest of the instruments coming in later. There was just something about the tune that fit the mandolin so well. Now I see why! What perfect synergy that the hymn my ancestors sang as they worked their way through the crags and hollers of the Great Smoky Mountains particularly lends itself to one of THE instruments of the mountains; the personal instrument of Bill Monroe (the man who invented bluegrass music).
Quite honestly this struck a deep chord within me. These people are my ancestors (My mother's people came down from the mountains around Asheville, North Carolina; my father's from the cotton fields of West Alabama)! We were not well-to-do folks, we were drunks, headstrong renegades, fighters, misfits. In other words exactly the sort of people Jesus spent His time around. And now I know that they were singing as they came down those mountains. The same song I love to sing today. We are bound for the promised land.

the Lenten Retreat approaches

I went to Ash Wednesday Mass at the big fancy Catholic Cathedral in Memphis last year and during the homily the priest referred to the coming 40 days as "the Lenten Retreat". For the second year in a row I am entering the Lenten Retreat by chucking the booze out the window. We'll see what God wants to teach me (may I be so bold as to say us?) this time around. Also, if any of you want to grab a beer tonight or tomorrow night (pre Lent) I am MORE than game. Shalom and Cheers

Hard Promises

This is one of those mornings I find myself listening to a particular song on endless repeat as if I'm gonna find some secret new meaning on listen number thirty. The song happens to be a little-known Tom Petty-Stevie Nicks duet from 1981 called Insider. It seems what captivates me most about this tune today is a line in the chorus where Tom and Stevie sing "I've had to live with some hard promises".
It's not often we think of promises as hard but we most certainly live in a world where promises can be very very hard (Ever had to promise not to talk to somebody you care about?). I want to suggest to you that some of the hardest promises with which we have to live this side of heaven are God's promises.
In a story most of us know well God came to a 75-yr-old man named Abram and told him not only would his long-barren, equally-elderly wife bear a child, but that God would "make of him a great nation". Abram took God at His word, uprooted his family from the only home they'd ever known, and followed God east. 25 years and hundreds of miles later Sarai had yet to bear Abram a son. It was only in the 100th year of his life that Abram and Sarai conceived Issac, the child of God's promise.
The reality of this story is hard to ignore. God made a promise to Abram and He kept that promise, but how differently must Abram have imagined his future when God told him he would have a son? How many nights in that quarter century of sojourning must Abram have rended his garments and begged God to make Sarai pregnant?
One of the hardest truths for "Christian" people is that we have no say in the way God brings about that which He promises (look at how God's own chosen nation reacted to the means by which God brought about salvation and atonement in the person of Christ). Further, our sin renders us blind to reality in such a way that we misinterpret God's promises and expect temporal, earthly goods and blessings as opposed to blessings in heaven.
What does that mean for you and me? Let me (as closely as I can remember) quote Dr. Richard Pratt: "God doesn't owe you good health; and He's not cheating you if you're health is not good. God doesn't owe you a good marriage and He's not cheating you if you don't get one. God doesn't owe you well-behaved Christian children and He's not cheating you if you don't have them"
We are promised eternity and felicity as children of God but that felicity is not happening right now; it is to come. Here, we are faced with hard promises, trials and troubles. May God give us grace to endure and believe

Thoughts on where we're headed

I’ve been privileged not once but twice in my life to be a part of what I’d consider to be remarkably open and loving groups of people. The first time came during the fall of my senior year of high school (1996). I was hanging out with my friend Andrew after a Friday Night Football game (I capitalize that because Football is always capitalized in Alabama) and he invited me to meet some people with him at a restaurant called Moneer’s. Moneer, as it turned out, was the good ol’boy pronunciation of one Munir Accawi’s first name. Munir had imported his family and his cooking from Lebanon to Alabama in the 70s. The later served to pay for the former, and soon Munir had set up a 24 hour open air patio restaurant serving the delicacies of the Mediterranean to the hungry folks of Homewood. What better name for the restaurant than the odd way people in the South kept mispronouncing Munir’s name? I had been somewhat familiar with this restaurant through my friendship with Kevin Accawi (Munir’s son and a fellow senior at Homewood High) but I was not prepared for what I encountered that night. Here, in the courtyard of the restaurant on a warm fall night were nearly forty kids from my high school and neighboring schools. What’s more, they seemed like one group, all getting along and enjoying each other. This was quite different from what I was used to at school; where football players and wrestlers hung out with cheerleaders and spangles (that’s The Star Spangled Girls, our amazing school dance line and a breeding ground for eating disorders….but that’s another story), potheads and other recreational drug users made fun of everybody else (when they bothered to show up), and dorks like me didn’t hang out with anybody. I decided immediately that I was coming back to Moneer’s.

Over the next four (or so) years I probably spent more time at that restaurant than I did at home. Those people became the people I laughed and cried with; the people I dated and watched breakup; the people who were constantly around every part of my life. I stood with them when we buried Munir and I stood with them as a groomsman at (my dear friend) Davy’s wedding. Moneer’s closed around 2000 and we’ve since scattered across the country (Andrew’s in law school at Alabama, Dallas went to film school in Iowa and now lives in LA, Davy went to law school at Syracuse and now practices in Huntsville) but we still regularly talk and see each other every chance we get. Why? Because we have deep, rich, full community.

I want to suggest that we as group came pretty dang close to nailing the Gospel idea of community. This idea comes out of verses like John 15:9 “As the Father has loved Me so have I loved you, now remain in My love.” The key to this passage (as with similar passages) is the comparison between the way God loves and the way we are instructed to love. God is in effect saying “You’ve seen how I loved you, now go out and love others the same way”. How did God love us? The prophet Joel can help us with that one. At the beginning of his third chapter, Joel describes the future judgment of the nations “In those days and at that time, when I restore the fortunes of Judah and Jerusalem I will gather all nations and bring them down to the valley of jeshosphat. There I will enter into judgment against them concerning My inheritance, my people Israel, for they scattered My people among the nations and divided up the land.” Notice in the midst of that statement the two little words that precede “my people Israel”: My inheritance. What does that mean? Well, we learn in academic study of scripture that often when the name “Israel” is used in Old Testament prophecy it’s referring to the Church (as the Church is the spiritual or true Israel and thus heir the promises made to Israel). When you connect the dots on this one you realize that God is saying something pretty remarkable with Joel’s pen; The Church, the people of God (every believer that’s ever been, in other words), are God’s very inheritance! We are His reward! We are the motivation for every single thing He did! All His perfect obedience and His horrible death on the cross were done cheerfully and willingly by the Lord Jesus with an eye towards securing us for Himself. We, who deserve torment and damnation; who kick and scream and run from anything that smacks of holiness, who spit on the very cross that saves us, are loved. Loved so deeply that all our fears, our insecurities, our neuroses go away. Loved in a way that says “I chose to not be able to live without you.” Loved in such a way that says “though I could choose any other way, the way I will bring glory to Myself is by loving you”. That, in a nutshell, is how God loved us and how He tells us to love each other. Recklessly, completely, and without boundary.

Hanging out at Moneer’s was as close as I’ve come to loving and being loved the way the Bible tells me I’m supposed to love. I can honestly say that that was a place where it didn’t matter what you looked like, who your friends were, or where you were from. If you wanted to come hang out, we wanted you to come hang out and we were gonna love on you like you were family. That kind of love is my great hope for our ministry to young adults. More than that, however, it is the way we are commanded to love (2 Corinthians 5:18-21, Galatians 6:1-3, etc.). Thus, the barometer for the success or failure of our ministry is found in whether or not we’re building and maintaining Gospel community. Are we opening our arms to anyone that walks through the doors? Are we encouraging the “us” and “them” mentality that kept so many otherwise solid churches out the cities and the mercy ministries until recently? Are we teaching kids that the only thing they’ll ever have that’s worth anything is Jesus Christ; and encouraging them to build relationships based on that? The first moment we look at someone as funny or different is the first moment we fail as a ministry. For us to be faithful to the Gospel, the doors of Covenant have to be a border where all the artificial boundaries and judgment of this wretched, depraved world fall by the wayside and the love of Christ reigns. Moneer’s was a place like that once. I hope by God’s grace Covenant will be as well.