The Theology of Grammar by Lorraine Triggs

As a child, I had a concrete grasp of a story’s viewpoint. First person – that’s me, second person is you, and third person are those other people over there. Obviously, a first-person story was more entertaining and superior to a second- or third-person story, because of its subject matter.

Fortunately, my understanding of viewpoint matured as I gained experience in writing and editing and in reading my trusty bibles—The Chicago Manual of Style and The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style. I highlight sections in the style and usage section. I memorize rules about time constructions and capitalization and hyphenation. (Including this capitalization rule from The Christian Writer’s Manual of Style: “Capitalize the word Bible except for those instances when it is used metaphorically, as in The Audubon guide is the bird lover’s bible.")

At least I think I’ve matured in my child's understanding of viewpoint, and then I open the Bible, which is no metaphorical bible, but God-breathed words that reveal the Word made flesh, not a metaphor but very God of very God.

The fourth stanza of American writer John Updike’s poem “Seven Stanzas at Easter,” reads:
Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

Gospel writer John defines the door in John 10:9, where Jesus said, “I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture.” The resurrection is not a metaphor; it really happened. Jesus is the real door; I get that.

What trips me up is the word anyone. Those third person others standing over there may enter the same door that you and I do, be saved, and go in and out and find pasture. And through my myopic first-person lens, I already have the pasture picked out for them, the grass might not be as verdant as mine, but no bother, it's still a pasture.

But I have walked through the door, and that egocentric first-person viewpoint should bother me. A lot. Jesus’ invitations to come, to go in and out and find pasture, to rise up and walk are for me, you, and the others over there. Jesus preached peace to the far off and to those who were near, and reconciled both to God, eliminating the distinctions between our human viewpoints.

After all, there is only one first-person viewpoint.

God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” (Exodus 3:14)

What Happens to Nate Saint? By Wil Triggs

“Have you understood all these things?” They said to him, “Yes.” (Matthew 13:51)
 
In Kindergarten Bible school this weekend, the kids will find out what happened to Nate Saint. I’m doing a two-week missionary story on him. Last Sunday they heard about his life growing up, his love for planes, his invention to drop cargo from large canisters on the wings of the small planes he flew. And then the tentative and cautious contacts with the Auca people. Last week’s story ends in joy, as some of the Aucas receive gifts that kids could relate to—yo-yos, balloons and other toys. Relations between the small band of missionaries and the native tribe seem to be moving forward toward friendship.
 
The children wanted to know what happened next. I think some of them think they know—the Aucas will one by one trust Jesus and the missionaries and the Aucas will live together happily ever after.
 
I know what happens next and they’re about to find out. The end of the story isn’t just that Nate Saint dies, but that afterwards people come to faith. Many others, inspired by the sacrifice of these missionaries, enter missionary service themselves. What happens next is that Nate Saint is killed.
 
I am hesitant, though, and don’t want to tell the kids about the dying part. They seemed content with the story going well. They seemed happy to hear the good stuff. What happens next is sad and scary and wrong. I want to shield them, somehow, from the hard section of the story that seems not right.
 
This is not unlike Jesus dying on the cross. It’s terrible. The disciples go into hiding. Imagine all that was going on in Peter’s mind with his betrayal and Jesus’ arrest and death, and Jesus’ words about resurrection and life running through his mind along with images of Lazarus walking out of a tomb. Peter and the other disciples didn’t reassure each other with “Sunday’s coming,” I don’t think. They had to be besides themselves in grief and shock and wondering what to do next. Death and atonement had to come before resurrection and the Spirit to overcome sin.
 
I have been a Bible school teacher for most of my adult life. I’ve seen that shielding impulse repeated in a lot of curricula through the years. We easily skip over the hard parts. Most of the time it’s not the end of the story, but somewhere in the middle where things move into the shadows.
 
Joseph sold into slavery. The famines that drove his brothers to Egypt to ask for help. Elijah running for his life after he defeated the prophets of Baal. The prophets spoke to people who wouldn’t listen. Four hundred years of silence. Simeon waiting almost his whole life for that one day. The slaughter of the innocents. The martyrdom of Stephen, which is the end of him but the beginning of the church. The apostles sharing the good news and Christ using them in amazing ways before most faced deaths like what Jesus faced.
 
Being a Christian isn’t for wimps, but oftentimes, I feel like a wimp. I am not always ready to face that hard stuff or to tell little ones about it. And there’s something there, too, about perseverance—staying true to him on Wednesday, the traditional hump day of the week, or the errands of Saturday, Sunday after church and before the real first day of the week. Our small group is reading a book where the author says his family has “Tongue-Torched Thursdays,” when their not-so-tamed tongues lash out at one another. Our lives are filled with ordinary days where not much happens. Those are the days where the rubber meets the road. Probably for most of us, today is one of those days. This is the middle of the story, too. Not much is happening and yet everything is happening.
 
The story needs to get hard to be a good story, and we are in the midst of the best story ever. We are part of it. No, we don’t hide the hard stuff. It’s difficult for us to do it justice for our kids or for ourselves. We were wandering around the wilderness with our Kindergarteners for what seems like an eternity, it was really just a few weeks—not even a year, let alone forty, with an entire generation of people dying off before they could cross the Jordan River.
 
God is more patient and long-suffering than we are in the middle our own series of stories. He’s always faithful—with us in the middle days of ordinary life and ever-present with us in the hardest days ever.
 
We look back, but we also look ahead. As we celebrate the Lord’s Table this Sunday, let’s examine ourselves and consider the cup that Jesus drank for us. Let us also look ahead to the day when we are all together celebrating at the marriage table, the end of the story as the beginning of something altogether new.

Death to Clichés by Lorraine Triggs

“What do you mean Paul Bunyan didn’t carve out the Great Lakes?” I shouted at a science show on the Smithsonian Channel we were watching the other day. “I can’t believe it. Everyone knows he did.” The show asserted some other method that had to do with time and ice. Just like everyone knows that Johnny Appleseed planted all the apple trees in America, and George Washington never told a lie.

My thoughtful husband replied, “Calm down. We all know it’s true, but the Smithsonian has its reputation to think about.”

As a child who believed in Santa long past the acceptable age, I still have that tendency to hang on to stories and myths—now morphed into clichés and truisms—as a way of explaining the unexplainable, that Paul Bunyan thing notwithstanding. Folklore can be a beautiful thing.

Christianity has its own folklore in the form of heroic truths of the past repeated so many times that we begin to think these little proverbs (not from Proverbs) are actually Christian truths. Matt Smethurst (guest speaker at the Community Sunday of the Fall Missions Festival) posted an article on The Gospel Coalition site back in 2017 titled, “5 Christian Clichés that Need to Die.” Here are Matt's top five:

• When God closes a door, he opens a window.

• You’re never more safe than when you’re in God’s will.

• Let go and let God.

• God will not give you more than you can handle.

• God helps those who help themselves.

Apparently, these clichés are experiencing a slow death. But not slow enough for Matt or for me.

Take the first cliché. I don't think God is running around closing doors and opening windows when we pray. I’d rather share “open window” answers to prayer than, sigh, no, God hasn't answered that prayer. But God hears the sighs of how long, Lord, how long, and he answers, don't be anxious. Look out that open window to the birds of the air. Seek me.

The third cliché on Matt's list is the opposite of what God wants us to do. Instead of letting go, we are to hold fast and cling to him. Run to him for refuge and hide under his wings. Trust him and do good no matter what. Perseverance is not letting go.

The second and fourth clichés go together for me. Never more safe than when you’re in God’s will? That one would be a hard sell for believers in Nigeria, North Korea, Indonesia, Somalia or Myanmar. And, sorry to disappoint, but God will give you more than you can handle. “Dear friends,” wrote The Apostle Peter, “don’t be surprised at the fiery trials you are going through, as if something strange were happening to you.” (1 Peter 4:12, NLT)

That last cliché? Help comes from Jesus for the utterly helpless and hopeless. Consider one Scripture passage: Romans 5:6-8. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die—but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Like legends, these Christian clichés try to explain the unexplainable whether it’s unanswered prayer or suffering or God himself. We want to be in the know, the ones in charge, but we're not. Once we stop trying to explain how we think God should work, we will be awestruck that the Lord, seated on high, looks far down on earth, and “raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.” (Psalm 113:6-7) 

I once researched Johnny Appleseed for an article I wrote for a children’s magazine. The real Johnny Appleseed was a man named John Chapman, who planted apple orchards as he traveled from Pennsylvania to Indiana. He was also a businessman and missionary who helped make peace between native Americans and white settlers.

Sometimes the real person is better than the legend. And the one true God is better than all we can think or imagine or squeeze into a cliché.

From A Pastor Prays for His People by Wendell C. Hawley

Almighty and everlasting God,
Who numbers the stars in order and turns darkness into light,
you have set eternity within the heart of man.
We think about eternity and trust you.
Your promises are written in our hearts . . . we believe them.
What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
And what has not entered into the heart of man . . . 
You have prepared for those who love you.
The credo of others may be,
Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die!
But for us of the transformed heart,
We seek a city whose builder and maker is God.

Thanks be to God . . . 
You are light to the wanderer,
joy of the pilgrim,
refuge of the brokenhearted,
deliverer of the oppressed,
strength of the perishing,
hope of the dying,
Savior of sinners.
We long to hear that voice from heaven saying,
"The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord, and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever."
Praise be unto God.

Father God, the world presses in upon us every waking hour.
We are squeezed and pulled and rudely affected by a system contrary to the way of the Cross.
Consequently, we are shocked to realize how subtly the world's approval,
language,
conduct,
attitude
seeps into our life.
Help us remember that Vanity Fair is not our home; we are just passing through.
We are soujourners. . . just a breath away from our eternal home.

Keep us unencumbered lest our goods become our gods, and our cares, cankers.

And now, Father God, give ear to each penitential prayer as we ask for forgiveness and grace.

Thank you for clean hearts and revived spirits.

A Collection of Nests

Marr Miller’s photographs capture different perspectives of “nest.”

This Guy by Wil Triggs

We were on a charter boat traveling all night to get to the place where we could all catch a mess load of fish. Problem was, the swells got so bad, we were going up and down, over and over, and we all started to feel really small, like this boat we were on was nothing compared with the big ocean we were in. The ocean was rolling, and it seemed that surely our boat would roll right over. The rain got really bad. You could see the sheets of it falling through the moonlight. People started to get sick, throwing up off the side of the boat, all of us. Some of us headed below deck to get out of the rain and there was this guy sleeping through the whole thing.
 
He woke up. He looked kind of annoyed (not sure with us or the weather) as he went up on deck. He looked away from the boat up at the storm and said, “Knock it off.”
 
Somehow, the water went all still and calm.
 
What? I mean, was that some kind of freak coincidence?
 
Imagine hearing about a group of people stuck in the middle of nowhere with no food. No phone service for UberEats or GrubHub. This guy with them says to sit down, so they do. After they sit, he says a prayer and opens one kid's lunchbox and starts passing food around like he has a truckload of catered sandwiches from Jason’s Deli. Everyone eats. Those sandwiches tasted like some incredible artisanal delight, more than good, the best deli ever.
 
OK, so, that’s just weird. Made up, right? Some kind of magic trick. The Amazing Kreskin or David Copperfield or David Blaine, just not on stage.
 
Did you hear the news about your neighbor or your co-worker and what happened? Her brother died. He was sick for just a few days. Or maybe it just hit him all at once. Maybe it was COVID. Maybe it was cancer. Maybe it was getting hit one too many times at a sports event. Or a heart attack just out of nowhere. Like the worst kind of defensive tackle. There was nothing the ambulance could do. He was gone. Off to the morgue they take him. People are just in shock.
 
Then this guy comes in from out of town. He looks at the corpse, the dead man, and this guy just says, “Get up.”
 
Imagine the unimaginable. Your co-worker’s brother sits up. He comes back from the dead. He is alive.
 
People are starting to get excited about this guy who seems so different from the rest of us. What he’s doing, well, it can’t all be some sleight of hand magic. I mean, there has to be something special about him, something amazing.
 
Yet, when you do at last see him, he looks, well, just like any other person, any other guy. There’s no halo, no heavenly voices, nothing crazy like that. This guy is not part of the marvel universe. He’s not bigger than us or stronger, he’s just one of us.
 
Some people want to make him president. Or more, whatever more might be. I mean, they’ve never been energized like this. They really think he needs to fix government, because if he can bring someone back from the dead and feed all those people and take care of the cataclysmic weather, he can surely take care of the border crisis and the financial debacle and the unbridled reach for power to people from the left and the right and the up and down, not to mention taxes, tsunamis, melting glaciers, corruption in government, fires, economic downturns and earthquakes and 1984-style Big Government and Pharma and, oh yeah, my sin.
 
He's wanted in another way, too; wanted like a criminal. Afghanistan’s most wanted. Post-modern Marxist classrooms. LGBTQ+ whatever. Mainland China, North Korea’s most wanted, or maybe hated would be a better word. Weird thing is, this guy doesn’t move away from it all. He runs toward the disaster, not away - he goes where he’s not wanted. He cannot leave the world and its people untouched.
 
He’s got a photographic memory. There are things and people he cannot forget. Those people, “remember me,” that’s where he is, right next to the man in jail, hanging there next to the thief, the woman beaten, the man who beat her, the shooting victim, the shooter, the homeless mental patient, the child orphaned. The wife cast out of her home, the broken mother, the desperate father, the pastor imprisoned, the prison warden, the blind man, the old man with no hope, the student denied entrance to university, the prosecutor and the defense, the crippled man on the stretcher who can’t fit through the door of the church, the lady who can’t remember her own name, the family swept away by a mudslide, the cancer patient, the hemophiliac reaching to touch his jacket or even just his shadow cast on the ground by the Mediterranean sun, a student swept out to sea in a riptide she can’t swim out of and all she can say is one word, one name, his. . .
 
We all long for a new heaven and a new earth. In the meantime, we get to make do with this guy.

Celebrity Sightings by Lorraine Triggs

I was in the gift shop at the Art Institute of Chicago when I spotted the film star. I grabbed some random Monet note cards and made my way to the register for a closer look. Okay, maybe shorter than he was in his films, older, too, but it had to be him.

I stepped out of line to find my husband—any good Californian would know a film star when he saw one. My husband glanced at the man. “No, it’s not him.”

Seriously? You could tell from one look? I forced him to walk around the register a couple more times to be sure. “No, it’s not him.”

Another occasion, we were outside a theater in London, trying to decide which performance of Shakespeare’sThe Winter’s Taleto attend. With neither watch nor device, we asked a man standing near us for the time. We chatted about the play—one of my husband’s favorites—and then brought our tickets.

Talk about a celebrity sighting that evening. The man we had talked to turned out to be one of the major characters in the play, and we were totally clueless that we had spoken with a real live celebrity.

Wil told me of a time when he was in college. At a park in Los Angeles, a family on vacation, probably from the midwest, sheepishly approached him. and asked for an autograph. 

"What?" he asked. 

"We know who you are," the mother said, her voice trembling slightly. Wil asked her who they thought he was and she said, "You're Kenny Loggins." [a popular singer at the time.]

He told the family that he wasn't Kenny Loggins. They lingered. The children looked at him, awestruck. They followed him. They approached him again. The mother broke away from the family and came up to him. "We understand that you want your privacy," she said. "We respect that, but we're just thrilled that we got to see a real celebrity. So thank you."

We live in a celebrity culture--Hollywood, Capitol Hill, the church. Merriam-Webster defines a celebrity as a famous or celebrated person.

So no one has ever confused my husband with Jesus, but one family was sure that he was Kenny Loggins.

As Christians, though more conscientious about morals and values than Hollywood and Capitol Hill, we celebrate trendy pastors, authors, speakers, musicians, athletes, actors turned Christian. And when they prove true the blunt assessment of the Apostle Paul in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” we find it easier to ignore Paul and coddle the celebrated ones who really didn’t mean to mess up.

When the prophet Nathan confronted David about his sin, David clearly stated, “I have sinned against the Lord.” That was it. He didn’t step down as king for a season of retreat and reflection, but he did write a prayer of contrition. “For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight.”  (Psalm 51:3, 4). When he confessed, David wasn’t looking for a standing ovation from God’s people. He had his eyes on something, no, someone who was abundant in mercy and steadfast love. Someone worth celebrating.

Perhaps that’s my problem with our Christian celebrity culture. We so easily look at each other and see oversized versions of ourselves. I think of the most lauded preacher, the best-selling author, people I admire in one way or another. But honestly, none of us are really that special. We need to be more like Job when he said to God, "Behold, I am of small account. . . " (Job 40:4, ASV) As my small account self takes in the Savior, the worthy Lamb, my soul increases in its love and awe of Jesus, who exceeds our expectations, meets our every need and never lets us down.

Let's shake the "star"dust from our eyes, and gaze on the beauty, grace and light of Jesus. May people see more of him and less of us in 2023.

New Year's Resolution: See More Theater by Wil Triggs

In the land of Narnia, at the beginning of the Chronicles, the creatures and the land faced a situation described as always winter, but never Christmas. A cold and dark world it was.
 
But what about when it’s winter and then it’s Christmas and then it’s . . . what?
 
When I was a kid, the week after Christmas and before New Year’s was pretty great. No school, new toys, flannel pajamas, fudge and See’s candy and other good foods lingering from Christmas.
 
All seemed well. People headed home for where they gathered with family and friends. It might have been across town or across the country or even some other part of the world. The newborn King was safe and sound in the manger. The family goes back to Nazareth, and everybody lives happily ever after. For us, New Year’s follows Christmas. The tree comes down. We pack up our ornaments and lights and put them in the basement or the garage for another year. Think football games, and parades and finger foods. Life begins again with resolutions and resolves to live a better life in the year to come than in the year just ended.
 
But after Christmas in the Gospels, that’s not the way it worked out.
 
The Magi had told Herod of the good news of the birth from the line of David, and he encouraged them on their way. Eventually the Magi show up with their gifts—that’s where the 12 days of Christmas come from, so they got to see Jesus. I think it probably took them a lot longer than 12 days. Afterwards, the dreams and warnings came, and they opted to avoid the Herod expressway and take back roads back home for fear of Herod’s wrath.
 
They weren’t the only ones with a king-sized problem. Mary and Joseph didn’t just leave Bethlehem and head home to Nazareth like I imagined. Instead, Herod began killing babies to make sure his reign was safe from whatever kind of king he feared had come. Instead of going back to their home, Joseph, Mary and Jesus opted to go to Egypt. Mothers started to wail tears of grief. It was brutal. Did Herod think he had succeeded in killing Jesus when all those boys died?
 
The people who lost their sons, grandsons, nephews, is it any wonder that they were looking for some kind of release from the rule under which they lived? I’m sure that kind of grief didn’t just fade away. The government could do anything it wanted to them and did.
 
The brutal tyranny of man at war with the humble way of God’s love. In hymn speak, “This is My Father’s World” was having a little tussle with “This World is Not My Home.” Roman rule did not just go away. But there is a different world at work. Then and now, and not only the present and the past, but also future.
 
In his book The Heart in Pilgrimage, in the chapter “The World as Theater of God’s Glory,” Lee Ryken writes of John Calvin and the wonders of the created world. “God’s glory is on display,” he writes. “We are spectators of it. It is in the nature of a theatrical performance that a dynamic interaction exists between the audience and the performers.”
 
This is a celebration of faith observing the natural world and all its creative wonder. But I can’t help but misapply it. First to see more theater and more nature in 2023 and second to think of Calvin’s words not in relation to the natural world, but the fallen world and its connection or disconnection to the world to come. As things seem to be in decline, we know who will prevail and rule and make new. This is the ultimate theater where Satan is vanquished and a new acts begins.
 
I can see Nigerian people of the church emerging from their hiding places in the bush to go back to their villages, the church that was burned down in Nigeria rebuilt, and I can hear the beautiful African voices singing of the love better than all other loves combined.
 
The Christian man in another country whose work partners were martyred finding new office space in a different town, working with them together on a new project, a magazine celebrating the peace of God in every language of the universe.
 
The men who used to kidnap, torture, even kill, now serving those they once held captive, their eyes open to the loving and forgiving God who became the object of their repentance and worship. There they sit, side by side, in joy and fraternal fellowship.
 
The lion lies down with the lamb. Happy new year.