The Census Taker in a Church Pew
Our fate is to die and be forgotten. Tying ourselves to one another and to life can diminish that trouble’s force, but kingdoms and cultures and homes rise and fall. Being willingly bound in devotion to the Creator redeems that trouble forever, for that kingdom and that culture and that home know no end.
Remember now thy Creator.
Princeton, WV. The two diligent old ladies sat low in their church pew. One lady’s figure—blond hair, tanned skin, and upright shoulders—evoked the Academy Awards. The other woman’s figure had softer shoulders curved slightly forward; her hair, still brown, was worn close to her head. My wife, Rebecca, knew both ladies for more years than I knew them, but by the time I became their pew-neighbor, I’d been an active member of our congregation for more than a decade and knew almost nothing about either one of the women, except for their names. The bulk of our exchanges entailed generic expressions such as “Good morning” or “Hello.” Given my poor engagement with them, the likelihood that the two elderly ladies would fade from my memory seemed inevitable.
My reliance on rudimentary phrases stemmed not from ill-will but from uncertainty. I didn’t know what to say to them. Because uncertainty breeds anxiety, I limited my interactions. Yet the life of safety, especially within a local assembly of believers, is not the life of human flourishing.
Of course solitude and quiet foster contemplation, the highest form being communion with God. To talk to everyone all the time keeps one away from contemplation and, worse, from communion with God. However, though Jesus kept solitary and quiet spaces to commune with God, the Son of Man dwelt among us mortals; he indwelled our flesh and broke bread with us. The example demonstrated by Jesus, which aligned with the greatest commandments–to love God and love our neighbor–caused me to realize my recalcitrant excuses for not talking with my pew-neighbors Jackie or Frances could no longer be given quarter.
Communion comes at a price. Rather than taking time among better known friends and acquaintances during our church’s mid-service reprieve, I brought my coffee back to the auditorium and sat on my pew, immediately behind the pew occupied by Jackie and Frances.
The ladies might have taken to the fellowship hall a few times once our church instituted the mid-service break, but they mostly remained at their pew where they talked with each other and ate the snacks they brought themselves to church. Could they have continued to use the fellowship hall with almost everyone else? Yes. But during the mid-service reprieve, the auditorium held a calmness not afforded in the fellowship hall because a good number of toddlers and young kids played during that break, as they should, under the watchful eyes of their parents. It was also evident that neither Jackie nor Frances stayed in the auditorium out of protest to the volume of the fellowship hall. They did not murmur against or scowl at those who used the fellowship hall for mid-service reprieve. In fact, given the amount of room available in the entire church building, several church members found other quiet places to sit in-between services. Jackie and Frances favored the auditorium.
When I first joined them for the mid-service break, I noticed their snack collection was like a boutique grocery. The ladies offered me samples of each snack and included their encouragement-as-a-command to “take as much as you want.”
Once food was shared, Jackie and Frances proved to be good talkers: they listened and responded freely. In other words, they knew how to converse. They delivered no monologues until prompted. Eventually, prompting monologues from the elderly women turned out to be a far richer endeavor than deliberating over what I might say. A good question or two provoked each lady to speak from the deep cisterns carved out in her soul from a long life. Sometimes their responses dovetailed, so Jackie wove into France’s remarks, or Frances wove into something Jackie said. It was like a tutorial delivered by two voices in harmony. By way of their words, the ladies crafted what felt like a thick quilt, gleaming with colors and giving off warmth I could feel in my face and chest. Perhaps it was friendship taking form among us. On my part, it certainly included much admiration.
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Dealing with Death and Disease
Admit your fears to God and others. I don’t know all the reasons why the Lord allows us to suffer. I do know that He uses our pain to conform us to Christ. Confessing our fears gives people the opportunity to pray for us and encourage us to keep our eyes on Jesus, not our suffering. It allows us to bear one another’s burdens and fulfill the law of Christ (Gal. 6:2).
“I see a spot we need to keep an eye on.” Cancer. It wasn’t a diagnosis that I ever expected to hear as a young man about to start a family. Immediately, my mind filled with questions: How will I tell my wife? How will she manage if I die? What will the treatment cost? Am I ready to die?
There were no words in the immediate aftermath. It helped that the cancer with which I’d been diagnosed has a 95 percent cure rate, but I’d be lying if I said that eliminated my worries. A 95 percent cure rate isn’t a 100 percent cure rate. Would I be part of the “unlucky” few? How would it be possible to maintain a straight face and tell my wife that “everything’s going to be all right” when I had no control over that? Sometimes things don’t turn out all right—at least in the short term.
As scary as that moment was, it pales in comparison to what I felt when I heard the news my wife and I received just after our fourth child was born a little over two years ago. “Your son has Pfeiffer syndrome, a rare genetic disease that affects one in one hundred thousand people. We don’t know what this means for him yet. He will certainly have developmental delays, but his prognosis could be anything from a normal life to severe mental and physical limitations to death.” I’m paraphrasing a bit here, for the doctors did not say things so matter-of-factly. But it was the most frightening moment of my life. How were we ever going to handle this?
People die every day. Babies, teenagers, young mothers, middle-age fathers, the elderly—death is no respecter of persons. It’s not exactly true that the only sure things in life are death and taxes. You can avoid taxes. If you’re willing to put up with jail time, you need not pay the tax man. Death, on the other hand, is certain. Apart from those who are living when the Savior returns to consummate His kingdom, no one gets out of this world alive. And long before we breathe our last, all of us are going to face disease and watch friends and family suffer, or even suffer ourselves. Right now, as I am updating this article, the whole world is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Death and disease are very much on everyone’s mind.
Why do we fear death so much? For non-Christians, the answer is easy. No matter how they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, whether by atheism, agnosticism, or false religion, they can’t escape their God-given awareness that they’ve broken His law and deserve hell.
Christians also fear death and disease. Of course, we know that we’re not supposed to, and we’d never tell anyone that we harbor such fears. Certainly, we know all the right things to say about death: God is sovereign. He has a good purpose in my pain.
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Preaching and Prayer
Making preaching and teaching a priority doesn’t mean devoting hours and hours to the study, it will mean some of that, but it also means meeting with the people, knowing them, knowing the pressures that they face, the temptations and pressures they feel and their spiritual temperature, so that preaching can be done well and relevantly and applicably to those God has called me to preach to, It’s not being an academic, it’s not being hidden behind a towering pile of commentaries. It is working hard to exegete both the word of God and the people of God.
I try to use the summer time to stop and take stock of where I am and where we are. As I do it’s always helpful to return to first things. Specifically what need to be the first things in my diary on a week to week basis, what are the priorities that we determine the reality of day to day ministry.
There is always lots to do and the good is often the enemy of the best. And so it’s been helpful to sit and try to weigh up this week does my diary reflect what ought to be my priorities in ministry. Acts 6 gives us a bit of a template when we look at the Apostles priorities when faced with the danger of distraction with good ministry but not the most necessary ministry.
There twin priorities were prayer and the teaching of the word. And they acted wisely in engaging others to take on the serving of tables – a good and necessary outworking of the gospel.
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The Work of Demons
When I was baptized in the Lutheran church, the minister asked my parents, “Do you renounce all the forces of evil, the devil, and all his empty promises?”
The devil and demonic activity are significant realities of life in this world, so it is not inappropriate that the Lutheran baptismal rite (and others) include an explicit rejection of the devil. But do we rightly understand the work of demons in this world?
In my experience we tend to give the devil either too much credit or too little attention.
When we yield to temptation, it’s far too easy to proffer a slightly more refined version of the child’s excuse (“the devil made me do it!”). Do you ever find yourself responding to sinful choices by asserting, “I’m under severe demonic attack!” when the reality is you simply haven’t been partaking deeply in the means of grace for some time? Or perhaps I am the only one who has experienced that?
We know Satan and his interns (i.e. demons) don’t often have to work very hard to get us to yield to temptation:
But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death. (Jas. 1:14–15)
More likely, it wasn’t the devil who made you do anything; it was your own wicked desire. It’s not as though any of us are like Eve or Adam with wholly pure desires.
Three Goals of Demonic Activity
I do not at all mean to suggest the devil is not active in the world now that sin has entered into our race and corrupted our desires. The Belgic Confession (Article 12) summarizes ongoing demonic activity in this way:
The devils and evil spirits are so corrupt that they are enemies of God and of everything good. They lie in wait for the church and every member of it like thieves, with all their power, to destroy and spoil everything by their deceptions.
I will not be giving a thorough treatise on the origin and activity of Satan and his minions in this world. Nonetheless, as I see it there are three primary categories of satanic activity in Scripture.
A. Discredit the Church
The Scripture gives numerous instances in which Satan (whose name simply means adversary or accuser) brings charges against the Church of the Living God. For example Satan insists Job loves His Creator for mercenary reasons:
Then Satan answered the LORD and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” (Job 1:9–11)
Much later Satan returns to accuse the Church – represented by the High Priest in filthy garments – but God refuses to allow Satan even to make his accusations:
And the LORD said to Satan, “The LORD rebuke you, O Satan! The LORD who has chosen Jerusalem rebuke you! Is not this a brand plucked from the fire?” Now Joshua was standing before the angel, clothed with filthy garments. And the angel said to those who were standing before him, “Remove the filthy garments from him.” And to him he said, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.” (Zechariah 3:2–4)
In that instance, Satan had many scandalous and glaring charges to bring against the Church; he wouldn’t even have to make anything up. But God refuses even to give Satan a hearing.
It’s not that God doesn’t want to hear how bad His people are (the prophets brought ample indictments throughout the history of the Kingdom of God), but rather God will not tolerate anyone to speak ill of His bride:
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (Romans 8:31–35)
B. Destroy the Church
Time and again the agents of the devil attempt to wipe out God’s people in order to scuttle God’s promise: Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Esau and Jacob, Pharaoh and Israel, Herod and Jesus.
At one point in the history of the Church, the line of promise seemed to rest entirely upon one little baby hidden in a linen closet as the wicked scion of Jezebel and Ahab, Queen Athaliah, conspired to murder all the line of David (cf. 2 Kings 11).
