Fasting

Fasting is probably the most neglected spiritual discipline in the church today. John Wesley wrote: “Some have exalted religious fasting beyond all Scripture and reason; and others have utterly disregarded it.” I think it is time to get back to the practice of regular fasting that doesn't go over the top. Fasting reminds us that many people in this world do not have enough to eat. It also shows us just how much our spirits and bodies are created to work together. (There is a reason why we get grumpy after missing a meal.)

Lent is coming up in a few weeks, beginning on Ash Wednesday, March 5. Consider fasting from some food for those 40 days until Easter. (Note: Sundays in Lent are not a part of the fast. You can enjoy those goodies on the Lord's Day!)

Or you may want to start fasting from food altogether on specific days of the week. Some writings from the early church show that many fasted on Wednesdays (the day that Judas made a deal to betray Jesus) and Fridays (the day Jesus was crucified). If you want to start fasting, keep these guidelines in mind:

• Consult with your physician before you fast at all. You may have conditions, or be on a medication, that requires you to eat on a regular basis.
• Start small. Fast from one meal on one day and see how it goes. If you can do that on a regular basis, move to two consecutive meals.
• Don't abstain from water. In fact, you should probably drink more water when you fast. Drinking fruit juice or broth is also a good practice.
• If you cannot give up a food, then cut out some kind of activity like watching TV or listening to the radio.

The main point is that fasting should provide more time to concentrate on God through prayer  (see previous post) and worship. Fasting is not about losing weight (sorry, it just doesn't work) or cramming more activities into your schedule.

You can listen to a sermon I preached about fasting last October. (Click here)

How to Pray

Prayer is a central activity of worship, and Christians are urged to pray all the time (1 Thessalonians 5:17). However, I have found that many people are frequently at a loss for knowing just how to pray. Jesus' disciples asked how to go about it (Luke 11:1), and I think that remains an important question for us today. In order to give some guidance about how to pray, I led a session for our churches on that topic. You can click on these links to read the handout and listen to the 30-minute recording.

Why the Psalms are Beautiful

The Scriptures contain different styles of writing. It's not all full of historical narrative that moves a plot along, like the way that the book of Exodus tells about Moses leading the people out of Egypt. Indeed, much of the Old Testament consists of poetry, which needs to be read and understood in its own way. When reading the Psalms in particular we realize that much of the language is very beautiful. Why is that?

Any kind of art, such as poetry, communicates through a "surplus of meaning." Jeremy Begbie writes in Resounding Truth that this happens whenever we make comparisons between two things. One common way of making comparisons in poetry is through metaphors, which the Psalms are full of:

But you, O LORD, are a shield around me.  Psalm 3:3a (NLT)

Of course the Lord does not take the physical form of a shield when protecting us. But considering how the Lord is like a shield allows us to bring many images -- both intimately personal memories and shared collective experiences -- to understand this truth. Comparing these two things allows these images and memories to create a "snowball" effect, in which a host of ideas comes together into a meaningful and beautiful understanding of God. And to make things more interesting, each reader brings her own experiences, beliefs, memories, and understandings to each verse. This is the essence of beauty. "Straight" writing is in some ways the opposite of beautiful. When we write something in which we want to be very clear -- think of contracts and instruction manuals -- there should not be a surplus of meaning. No imaginative interpretations are desired for a real-estate deed! These kinds of documents are not beautiful precisely because they use words that cannot contain a surplus of meaning.

The structure of most Psalms adds another level of comparison. In addition to the metaphors and images like Psalm 3:3, almost every verse in the Psalms is composed using parallelism. This means that statements are restated in a slightly different manner. At first this structure may seem very repetitive. However, by bringing two similar thoughts together, the psalmist draws us into the beauty that arises out of comparisons:

He made us, and we are his. 

We are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

                                                                                     Psalm 100:3b (NLT)

In a very few words, we are invited to reconcile the ideas of a God who is both our creator and our shepherd. These two roles are not unrelated, but they are not exactly alike. A creator-shepherd is an image that we could have much fun expressing through music, sculpture, literature, and painting. The possibilities of human creativity that could arise from this one simple comparison are almost endless.

How does this apply to our corporate worship? Many churches read the Psalms aloud. Speaking them in unison takes longer than reading them privately. By slowing down, worshippers are forced to take the time necessary to contemplate the beauty of the scriptures. You wouldn't walk through an art gallery at the same pace that you rush through the grocery store. In the same way, the Psalms should be read deliberately and slowly. Saying the Psalms is one way we can worship in meaningful ways.

The Power of the First Language

Many assume that to get a "leg up" in school that a child should learn to read in the language of power. In the Philippines that language is English, and many families are bypassing their mother tongues in order to teach their children to read using that (often) foreign language.

One counterpoint to this (mis)use of language is Mother-tongue-first Education, where educators recognize that is easier to learn to read in one's most familiar language. SIL International has been pioneering these kinds of field programs, including an important one in Lubuagan, Kalinga -- a place I referenced in a previous post.

It isn't just the languages of these reading materials that should be culturally appropriate: even the content of these books should contain activities and objects that the readers know. In the video below, author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie describes how she learned to read as a child in Nigeria by means of British books. In her tropical home she did not eat apples, play in the snow, or talk about the weather. But the books she had access to in English were full of children having these experiences. Stories that teach children to read are best understood if the people, houses, animals, and food look like those seen every day.

If the gospel of Jesus Christ is really going to take root across the world, it will need to be deeply embedded in the cultures and languages of those who believe it. Christianity in Nigeria (or the Philippines or Argentina) cannot (should not) look and sound the same as it does in the USA, UK, or Germany. Yet many of the world's churches are learning about the Trinitarian God from foreigners -- singing foreign songs, reading imported books, and imitating Western (usually megachurch-like) liturgies. What will it take for Christians to claim the power of their own stories and sing the truth of our God in their mother tongues?

Baptism of the Lord

From parish.churchinwales.org.uk

Following the liturgical calendar is an important way to mark time as a community. The annual cycle of feasts and fasts prevents our days from running together and keeps other sets of events (e.g., sports seasons, school year) from dictating what we anticipate and celebrate. Observing these special days is one way that our churches make worship meaningful.

Monday (Jan 6) was Epiphany, which began a season of ordinary time that lasts until Ash Wednesday - the first day of Lent (March 5). This season after Epiphany begins and ends with special Sundays, and tomorrow kicks things off with the Baptism of the Lord. The lectionary reading from the gospels is Matthew 3:13-17.

Why did Jesus ask John to baptize him? It certainly wasn't to wash away sins. The only thing Jesus says in response to John's inquiry was that it would "fulfill all righteousness." John accepts this cryptic answer and baptizes the Lord in the Jordan River. Perhaps this passage teaches us that baptism is more about God's demonstration of grace and less about the baptized person making a decision to turn from sin. Repentance, and a person's decision to turn from sin, is indeed important. But in baptism we don't celebrate that decision. Instead we worship the God who created a way for us to be reconciled with both God and humanity -- an effort made on our behalf that we don't deserve. Jesus was baptized so that we would follow his example, and Christians have practiced this ancient rite ever since.

Read the Bible Straight through this Year?

At the start of a new year many of us attempt to start new good habits (or rekindle dormant ones). Reading more of the Bible is a common one, and lots of people jump in hoping to read the entire Old and New Testaments in 12 months. This Christianity Today article surveys several church leaders about their opinions on tackling all 66 books of the Bible this year. I tend to agree with the thoughts near the bottom of the page: Reading the entire Bible straight through in one year is usually a recipe for frustration -- after a few weeks it is easy to fall behind and get discouraged.

At my churches we have a weekly reading plan in each Sunday's bulletin, and the church websites are updated with it each week. These readings lead up to each Sunday's message based on the Revised Common Lectionary and are designed to take about 5 minutes per day.

Other reading plans are abound. Let me just offer a small sampling of other options:

• Daily Office Readings from the Book of Common Prayer. This is a personal favorite. It follows a two-year cycle and includes daily readings from the Psalms, Old Testament, New Testament epistles, and the gospels. Time commitment: about 15 minutes per day.
• Forty-Day Getting Started Plan. This one is new to me, but I really like the concept. In 40 days you hit the major concepts of God's plan in the Old and New Testaments. Time commitment: 5-10 min.
• Chronological Survey. Similar to the plan above, this one takes you through major portions of the scriptures in 2 months.
• New Testament in One Year. This is much more manageable than doing the entire Bible. Major disadvantage: no Old Testament Readings. Time Commitment: about 5 minutes. 

In addition to reading plans, daily devotionals are good ways to stay on track with a daily scripture reading. They usually have a smaller portion of scripture and include a comment or challenge. There are many of these available. Let me just list two:

• The Upper Room. A ministry of the Global Board of Discipleship of the United Methodist Church. This also comes in print or in the form of a daily email.
• My Utmost for His Highest. These compiled thoughts from Oswald Chambers' writings and messages are still challenging, even though they come from an earlier generation.

The Lubuagan Kalinga New Testament

Landscape in Lubuagan

My first administrative job as a missionary was to supervise the translation projects in the province of Kalinga in the Northern Philippines. Lubuagan was one of those projects, and I fell in love with the translators working on it -- Fidel, Vicky, and Lito in the Philippines and Bruce from Australia. Any time a scripture translation project has more than one translator, the final revision stage is especially challenging. Just like each of the biblical authors wrote in the original languages using their own styles, so too the modern-day translators translate in their own ways. (And that's not to mention the different styles of the (usually) English translations those folks are reading to understand the original.) Syncing all those translation styles into one coherent text can take a long time and require each translator to compromise their own convictions about certain key terms and verses.

Performing a newly-composed worship song

That's why I was so thrilled to read on Wycliffe's prayer blog this week that the Lubuagan team is typesetting the New Testament -- the last stage of the process before sending the book to the printer. There are few tasks more difficult than translating the Bible, and doing so from a remote area in a developing country makes the achievement even more special.

Besides my role as a supervisor over the Lubuagan project, I had the privilege of leading a song-writing workshop there several years ago. Here is one of the songs that was composed that week: Michayaw Ka Apo Dios (We Worship You, Lord God). That link should download an mp3 file of the song. Sorry that I don't have the full translation of the lyrics.

Typhoon Haiyan

One of the worst natural disasters of 2013 was Typhoon Haiyan, which killed thousands of people in the central Philippines. (The Philippines has its own naming system for tropical storms and typhoons. This storm was known locally as Yolanda.)

Photo from Reuters

Every year the Philippines gets around 20 storms, but in the 12 years that we lived there none was as bad as this one.

Although I used to work in the Philippines as a missionary, I did not serve with a relief organization. For anyone who is interested in giving in response to the needs there, let me recommend the United Methodist Committee on Relief (UMCOR). Just visit the website, click on the red Donate button, and select the option for "Disaster Response, International." When you give to UMCOR, 100% of donations go to relief. (An annual special offering in UM churches covers all the administrative expenses for the organization.)

If you haven't followed the latest news after the storm, you may want to check out these sites:

• A recent article from The Economist outlines the challenges for rebuilding in the hardest-hit city of Tacloban. On the bright side, the disaster response has been well-managed. Amazingly, the city has been spared from major outbreaks of disease that often follow natural disasters like this. Also, reports of malnutrition are rare.

• This video from the New York Times features a young girl who lost her mother in the storm. The interview was recorded in her old neighborhood, with scenes of the devastation.