The Park Forum

Scripture: Hebrews 6.11-12
We want each of you to show this same diligence to the very end, so that what you hope for may be fully realized. We do not want you to become lazy, but to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit what has been promised.

Reflection: The Long Journey to Maturity
By Jon Polk

“Now I know my ABCs. Next time won’t you sing with me?”

Letters of the alphabet are the elementary building blocks of language. The learner must comprehend the sounds of letters before combining letters to make works, before combining words to make sentences, and so on.

Once the student has mastered a language, it would be foolish and useless to continue to rehearse the very basic ABCs.

Like language learning, there are no shortcuts to spiritual maturity, but how will we know when we have arrived? We must move past merely knowing the basic teachings about Christ’s life, death and resurrection and beyond simply acknowledging our need for faith and repentance.

To be sure, no one but our sinless high priest Jesus will ever be fully spiritually mature in this lifetime, but there are some indicators to help us know we are headed in the right direction.

As rain-soaked land is expected to produce a bountiful crop, the mature Christian should produce what Paul describes to the Galatians as the fruits of the spirit, i.e. God-honoring, selfless character traits. As land that produces thorns instead of crops is worthless, James declares that faith that does not produce actions is dead, useless.

Marks of spiritual maturity include character growing in likeness to God and actions that demonstrate our love for God and care for his people. In reality, we can never truly arrive; this is a never-ending process.

In his book, A Long Obedience in the Same Direction, Eugene Peterson describes discipleship—the process by which we mature spiritually—as a lifelong journey:

For recognizing and resisting the stream of the world’s ways there are two biblical designations for people of faith that seem useful: disciple and pilgrim. Disciple says we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master, Jesus Christ. Pilgrim tells us that we are people who spend our lives going someplace, going to God, and whose path for getting there is the way, Jesus Christ.

Indeed, the journey of spiritual maturity is a one-way trip. We are warned of the dangers of falling away after tasting the goodness of God. Our calling is to diligently work until the end of our lives, moving forward ever onwards towards maturity.

As the writer of the anonymous hymn succinctly stated, “I have decided to follow Jesus, no turning back, no turning back.”

Prayer: A Reading
Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in your; let those who love your salvation say forever, “Great is the Lord!” — Psalm 70.4

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 6 (Listen – 1:48)
Hebrews 6 (Listen – 2:58)

Scripture: Hebrews 5.2
He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness.

Reflection: Milk of the Word, A Precedent to Growth
By John Tillman

Hebrews chapter 5 begins with an exhortation to deal gently with the ignorant and those who are straying. Yet a few short paragraphs later, the writer rebukes the readers, telling them that it is difficult to teach them when they don’t even try to understand.

The author wishes to discuss complicated topics of Christ’s transcendental priesthood, the Trinity, and the incarnation. But how can the writer go on when the readers are not ready for such theological complexity?

Just like the chastised readers, the maturity of western Christianity is in question.

Our world needs a gospel-driven worldview, yet half of those raised in church can’t identify the Great Commision. What is it? Who said it? What does it mean? Where is it in the Bible? One out of two don’t know.

This is not just an indictment of our lack of biblical knowledge. More knowledge isn’t the answer. Jesus didn’t call Peter to build a biblical trivia team. Peter, and by extension every Christian, is called to feed a flock, starting with the young. Starting with milk. Milk changes a lamb to a ram.

However, even the simplest of disciplines, church attendance, has been in decline since 1959. We can’t, therefore, blame millennials for it. It’s not that we are still drinking milk when we should have been weaned, but that we’ve never drunk it consistently.

The reason for that may be that our culture disdains milk and small beginnings too much. We desire something for nothing. We want spiritual marathon ribbons without putting in the hard miles.

Perhaps we should redefine milk—not as a marker of immaturity and shame but of growth. The purpose of milk is to progress toward consuming and digesting the more complex proteins of scripture.

Babies physically grow faster in their early years than at any time in their life. But the growth of the visible is nowhere close to as impressive as the cognitive growth that is happening in their brains. The growth we can experience by the simple application of spiritual practices to our lives can be similarly exponential.

Prioritizing the basics of faith—Bible reading, reflection, prayer, and corporate worship—is a spiritual intake process that matures with us, leading deeper into scripture as we repetitively read and absorb God’s Word.

If we expect to effect change in our complex and demanding world, we don’t need to beat up ourselves or others. We just need to consistently drink our milk.

Prayer: A Reading
Jesus said to us: “Everything now covered up will be uncovered, and everything now hidden will be made clear. What I say in the dark, tell in the daylight; what you hear in whispers, proclaim from the housetops.” — Matthew 10.26-27

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 5 (Listen – 2:43)
Hebrews 5 (Listen – 1:57)

Scripture: Hebrews 2.11
Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.

Reflection: The Internet as Babel
By John Tillman

In many ways the ideals of the Internet’s creators are similar to those of Babel’s builders. We will succeed by our own strength and ingenuity. We will be united across the entire earth. We will not be forgotten. We will advance knowledge.

But today, most agree that the Internet has allowed ingenuity to weaken us rather than strengthen us, to divide us rather than unite us. It has made us forgetful rather than observant of the past, and has advanced falsehoods rather than knowledge.

Writing for New York Magazine, Max Read and David Wallace-Wells discuss the recent confessions and apologies for technology from tech insiders.

If the tech industry likes to assume the trappings of a religion, complete with a quasi-messianic story of progress, the Church of Tech is now giving rise to a new sect of apostates, feverishly confessing their own sins. And the internet’s original sin, as these programmers and investors and CEOs make clear, was its business model.

There is no one more fanatically, evangelistically creative than a content marketing company looking for a higher click-thru rate. Read and Wallace-Wells continue:

The technological elite needed something to attract billions of users to the ads they were selling. And that something, it turns out, was outrage.

Whatever you might say about broadcast advertising, it drew you into a kind of community, even if it was a community of consumers. The culture of the social-media era, by contrast, doesn’t draw you anywhere.

It meets you exactly where you are, with your preferences and prejudices — at least as best as an algorithm can intuit them. “Microtargeting” is nothing more than a fancy term for social atomization—a business logic that promises community while promoting its opposite.

Silicon Valley, it turns out, won’t save the world.

The false community we cling to in our divisive battles is not actually community but tribalism similar to that recently defined by Ed Stetzer.

Tribalism says, “This is us. We’ve got to take this back” or, as it often sounds, “We’ve got to take our country back.”

The last people who should be surprised by the failure of an idol to save, are the people of God. But we often are. Usually because we don’t yet realize that what we are clinging to is an idol.

When you are worshiping them, idols don’t seem religious. They seem immensely practical. Technology hasn’t tricked us any more than wooden and gold idols tricked the ancients. We deceive ourselves.

Babel’s redemption began at Pentecost and Jesus pointed his disciples toward this gift during the time between his resurrection and his ascension.

The power we need to connect rather than reject others comes from the Holy Spirit. It is in regular spiritual rhythms of Bible reading, reflection, prayer, and community that we will find the only source of love that breaks down tribal barriers and forces us to unselfishly engage the world.

What idols of tribalism do we fear putting down?
What idols of technology do we fear disconnecting from?
How can we humbly approach technology with redemption, not manipulation, in mind?

Prayer: The Greeting
O God, you know my foolishness, and my faults are not hidden from you. — Psalm 69.6

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 2 (Listen – 2:15)
Hebrews 2 (Listen – 2:47)

This Weekend’s Readings
Song of Songs 3 (Listen – 1:48) Hebrews 3 (Listen – 2:25)
Song of Songs 4 (Listen – 2:46) Hebrews 4 (Listen – 2:43)

Scripture: Hebrews 1.3
The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven.

Reflection: Rise Heart :: Throwback Thursday
By George Herbert — 1633

Easter
Rise heart; thy Lord is risen.
Sing his praise without delays,
Who takes thee by the hand,
that thou likewise with him may’st rise;
That, as his death calcined thee to dust,
His life may make thee gold, and much more, just.

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part with all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name, who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is the best to celebrate this most high day.

Consort both heart and lute, and twist a song pleasant and long;
Or since all musick is but three parts vied and multiplied.
O let thy blessed Spirit bear a part,
And make up our defects with his sweet art.

I got me flowers to straw thy way:
I got me boughs off many a tree:
But thou wast up by break of day,
And brought’st thy sweets along with thee.

The Sun arising in the East,
Though he give light, and th’East perfume;
If they should offer to contest
With thy arising, they presume.

Can there be any day but this,
Though many suns to shine endeavour?
We count three hundred, but we miss:
There is but one, and that one ever.

May we, each day, stretch ourselves out on the cross like strings on a violin for the continuation of Christ’s loving song to the world.
May we celebrate each daybreak as a symbol of the day of Christ’s resurrection and the day that he will finally take each of us by the hand, raising us anew. — John

Music: George Herbert’s poems set to music by Ralph Vaughan Williams: “Easter,” and “I Got Me Flowers.”

Prayer: The Request for Presence
For God alone my soul in silence waits; truly, my hope is in him. — Psalm 62.6

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 1 (Listen – 2:15)
Hebrews 1 (Listen – 2:15)