John Tillman - The Park Forum

May 14, 2020May 13, 2020

Wrongly Placed Fear

Scripture Focus: 1 Peter 1.17
Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.

Reflection: Wrongly Placed Fear
By John Tillman

Christians have been taught that we are “living out our time as foreigners.” But in western culture, that was built on Christianity, it has been too easy to forget and too easy to feel at home right here in the world. But for the first time, some Christians are beginning to feel unwelcome.

This cannot be called persecution. It is at worst a loss of status.

Persecution of Christians around the world is more than murder, rape, and torture. In the countries in which Christians suffer the most, persecution is social and systemic.

It is this type of persecution—a systemic loss of legal rights and status—that scares Christians in the west more than facing down a knife attack, a rampaging truck, or a bullet.

This fear has made American Christians a paranoid and unpredictable group. Liable to believe fake news, liable to vote for candidates and support policies that two decades ago would have been inconceivable, and liable to turn on each other.

Nothing demonstrates our paranoia better than the increasingly divisive nature of religious dialogue. Progressive Christians blame conservative Christians for being dogmatic and mean-spirited. Conservatives blame progressives for abandoning central Christian teachings.

This is how people act when they are living in fear. But this is not the reverent fear of the Lord that Peter speaks of. That reverence is born out of love and leads to loving one another deeply, from the heart.

We live in fear that the Lord will let us suffer rather than rejoicing in that suffering as Peter instructs. We are living in fear that soon we will be considered the extremists—cast out from society.

The believers Peter was writing to were the losers and outcasts. They had literally been scattered from their homeland and cast out to the margins.

Christian thought has always been extremist thought. It is a revolutionary rejection of the world’s power structure. Jesus was crucified for extremist thought. It was Christian extremist thought that brought down slavery.

We need not fear being marginalized if we properly fear God. Christianity has done much of its best work from the margins.

It was from the margins that first-century Christians won more than converts, they won the culture. Not by winning court cases or electing the right officials, but by demonstrating the extremity of God’s love that comes from the Gospel.

May God give us grace to follow their example.

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 13 (Listen – 3:11)
1 Peter 1 (Listen 3:53)

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Fear is natural and one shouldn’t be ashamed of being afraid. However, the response of a Christian must be supernatural.

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May 13, 2020May 11, 2020

Praise from a Stump :: A Guided Prayer

Scripture Focus: Isaiah 12.1-3
1 In that day you will say:
“I will praise you, LORD.
Although you were angry with me,
your anger has turned away
and you have comforted me.
2 Surely God is my salvation;
I will trust and not be afraid.
The LORD, the LORD himself, is my strength and my defense;
he has become my salvation.”
3 With joy you will draw water
from the wells of salvation.

Reflection: Praise from a Stump :: A Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

Israel is compared to trees many times in scripture including grapevines, fig trees, and olive trees. Isaiah’s image of the stump goes along with his image of the unfruitful vineyard. It is a purposely destroyed tree. It is not just trimmed or pruned but ground down to a stump.

In Isaiah chapter 11, we see this shamed, humbled tree being miraculously restored. Instead of being uprooted and completely destroyed, the “shoot from the stump of Jesse” is supernaturally blessed to grow and become fruitful in ways the tree never had been before.

Prophecies are often multi-layered and this one is no different. The shoot has often been compared to Jesus himself. Layered over that meaning, it also represents the nation of Israel as a whole, the church which is Christ’s body, and it pre-envisions the tree of healing that will grow in the city of God.

We, in Christ, can see ourselves in both the unworthy and shamed stump, and in the new supernatural growth of the remnant. Pray this prayer, based partially on Isaiah 12, that offers praise from the remnant to God our salvation who forgives and blesses us to reach the nations.

The Praise of the Remnant
How can we stand on the Day of the Lord?
Our lips are unclean, our hearts are hard.
The weak and outcast suffer from our indifference.
Blood sinks into the ground from our injustices.
We are a ground down, burning stump of a fruitless tree!

In ashes, we repent.
Burning our idols of self-reliance
In sorrow, we lament.
Trusting your promise and your character
In humility, we place our face
in the dust to which we will return.
Our longing, Lord, is to see your face.

We will praise you, Lord.
Although you are angry with us,
Turn your anger away
Comfort us and be our salvation.

You, our strength and our defense.
You, our source and our supply
You, our bread of life
You, our living water from the rock

Only you redeem and save, punish and forgive.
Only you make a highway through our desert
Leading your children and the nations to your presence.

We shout aloud praises to you!
We proclaim to the nations your greatness!
We praise your name and your righteousness!

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. — Psalm 86.4

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 11-12 (Listen – 3:39)
James 5 (Listen 3:01)

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Through the power of the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives we are able to produce fruit in supernatural abundance and beyond our natural abilities.

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May 12, 2020May 11, 2020

To Whom We Draw Near

Scripture Focus:
James 4.7-8
7…Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. 8 Come near to God and he will come near to you…

Reflection: To Whom We Draw Near
By John Tillman

The writing in James is tight, terse, and tense. It is full of short, pithy quotables that, at first glance, seem disconnected from one another. But most of the time (just like in the book of Proverbs it is sometimes compared to) larger thoughts are developing and each thought shines light on the next.

James copies the style of Proverbs often—writing a balanced statement of a good on one side, contrasted with its opposite. In James 4, his balanced statements help to contrast living as a “friend of the world” rather than a “friend of God.”

We want to be a friend of God and of the world too but James reminds us that is impossible. We are called to have a single love and to be faithful to God alone, satisfying ourselves in God and clinging to him to the exclusion of all others. If we maintain a polyamorous relationship that includes our worldly, fleshly desires, God, in response, will distance himself from us.

James calls this being double-minded rather than single-minded. Our conflicts, struggles, anger, and rage come from attempts to achieve our worldly desires—seeking wealth, seeking power, seeking pleasures. We want God’s blessings to spend on devilish pursuits. When we choose this, we are choosing enmity rather than friendship with God, war rather than peace.

We live on Earth which rightfully belongs to God, but “the world” is the powers, systems, and spiritual forces that usurp God’s rule and authority. We are aliens and strangers in the world, not citizens. God does not acknowledge dual citizenship with a rebellious world. We cannot keep one foot in two kingdoms which are at war.

James recommends that we choose our enemies carefully, for when we choose our enemies, we are also choosing our friends. Choosing to be near to the world is choosing to be far from God. Resisting the devil will cause him to flee from us. Coming near to God will cause him to come near to us. The distance of the devil and the nearness of God are affected by our responses.

We must choose whom to resist and whom to draw close to. May we draw close to God and be safely kept in his hand. We need not fear having the world as an enemy when we have God as a friend.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Show us the light of your countenance, O God, and come to us. — Psalm 67.1

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 10:5-34 (Listen – 5:14)
James 4 (Listen 2:25)

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Do we feel that God is distant from us? It is we who have moved. Draw near in prayer.

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Wherever and however we draw near to God, he will draw near to us.

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May 11, 2020May 10, 2020

Much Demanded

Scripture Focus: Isaiah 9.14-16
14 So the Lord will cut off from Israel both head and tail,
both palm branch and reed in a single day;
15 the elders and dignitaries are the head,
the prophets who teach lies are the tail.
16 Those who guide this people mislead them,
and those who are guided are led astray.

James 3.1
Not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly.

Reflection: Much Demanded
By John Tillman

There is an often repeated biblical principle—the more you are given, the more will be expected of you.

We see its implications in Isaiah’s prophecy against the leaders. (Isaiah 9.14-16) James echoes it in his warning to “teachers.” (James 3.1) Christ worded it, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.” (Luke 12.48)

Part of God’s righteousness, his justice, is not holding those with little accountable for their poverty. Whether a poverty of finances, of knowledge, of access, or of power, God judges those with little lightly and those with much heavily.

This should be sobering to us who are greatly privileged.

We live in an age of unprecedented availability of knowledge. We are more accountable to God for what we say and teach than ever before. We have an unprecedented ability to access the Bible at any time and on any device imaginable. We are more accountable to God for our ignorance of his scriptures than ever before. We have an unprecedented ability to reach around the world (or across the street) to know and befriend people of all races, backgrounds, and beliefs. We are more accountable to God for holding on to racial prejudice, divisions, and resentments than ever before. We are living in the most prosperous time in history with financial resources available to the majority of people that were unimaginable in prior ages of history. We are more accountable to God for abandoning and abusing those in poverty than ever before.

It is to our shame with such wealth that there are starving children.
It is to our shame with such connectedness that we cause divisiveness.
It is to our shame with such availability of the Bible that we do not avail ourselves of reading it.
It is to our shame with such access to expert knowledge that we scrape the basements of the Internet to find conspiracies that we like better than the facts. (Isaiah 8.12-13)

May we confess and repent, before God comes to settle accounts with us.

Much has been given to us. May we praise God in thankfulness for it.
Much has been given to us. May we serve our neighbor in humbleness with it.
Much has been given to us. May we challenge every form of oppression with it.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
O God, you have taught me since I was young, and to this day I tell of your wonderful works. — Psalm 71.17

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 9:8-10:4 (Listen – 3:36)
James 3 (Listen 2:38)

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May 6, 2020May 4, 2020

Hope Amidst Destruction

Scripture Focus: Isaiah 4.2-3, 5-6
2 In that day the Branch of the LORD will be beautiful and glorious, and the fruit of the land will be the pride and glory of the survivors in Israel. 3 Those who are left in Zion, who remain in Jerusalem, will be called holy…5 Then the LORD will create over all of Mount Zion and over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy. 6 It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain.

Reflection: Hope Amidst Destruction
By John Tillman

Even among the destruction of what is coming to Judah in Isaiah’s prophecies, there is hope. God promises to place his glory over the remnant, like a tent or shelter.

The image Isaiah paints in verse five, a “cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night” has a double meaning. It realistically depicts the smoke that would be seen when the city was burned, and the glow of the fires that would smolder for weeks after the destruction of the Temple and the city by the Babylonian army. But it also is an image of God’s presence, his glory returning. It is a reference to the form of God’s presence with the Israelites on their sojourn in the desert after being freed from oppression in Egypt.

The people will be on the move again, this time moving into exile and suffering instead of away from it. But God will still go with them. The people will be enslaved again with a yoke of bondage. But they will be bonded to God and learn to live as exiles, serving God in spite of, rather than at the direction of a king. They will be purified by fire. This time, not the fire of a desert wilderness, but one of exile and cultural isolation.

They will be the bush in the wilderness—burning but not consumed.
They will be the rock in the desert—hard and hot, yet bursting with cooling springs of living water at God’s command. They will be God’s homeless sojourners again—learning that anywhere is home when they can serve God there. They will be a tree chopped down and burned, from which a tiny green shoot springs up.

For God’s people amidst destruction there is always hope. Amidst collapsing kingdoms there are always a core of survivors. Amidst crumbling moral foundations and corrupt spiritual leadership the Lord always reserves a remnant.

May we be among them. The hopeful. The faithful. The remnant.
May we be a spring, a shoot, a branch reaching up through destruction to the sky.
May we be those who hope not in princes but in our God.
Those who will stand when ten thousand fall at their side.
Those who will not flinch at the terror that stalks at night.
May we be lanterns of light, shining in a darkened land.
May God purify us and spread his glory over us.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse
The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light; on those who live in a land of deep shadow a light has shone. — Isaiah 9.1

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 3-4 (Listen – 4:34)
Hebrews 11 (Listen 6:22)

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The king we hope for brings the glory of Heaven to earth in our hearts and expresses his love through our lives.

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