The Rickman Family is Reading!
Exciting times in the Rickman household lately. For much of my life, reading has been a great blessing. It is generally agreed in society that reading is a good thing to do, which is strange because from a certain point of view it is not at all practical. As Katie Oldham pointed out, it is the practice at looking at processed and marked slices of tree for hours, hallucinating vividly. It is engaging fully in the life of the mind. There are more- and less-worthy books to read, but the process of reading itself is of great benefit.
Higher literacy correlates with higher income, better critical thinking skills, more social mobility, better health outcomes, crime reduction, and it has many other salutary benefits. If a man wants his children to do well in life, one of the best things he can do for his children is ensure that they can read and enjoy doing it.
This wasn’t ever a problem for Susanna. Before she was two years old, she wanted to understand how those symbols corresponded with sounds. May I never forget when she drew the link between the ‘M’ on the Methodist Church sign outside this church building and the ‘m’ sound for “mama.” She put that together on her own and grew from there. Today she will disappear for a day at a time, fully invested in the world of a book.
Jesse was a different creature entirely. He has been a genius with rocks and sticks and blocks. Abstract stuff hasn’t had as much immediate allure for him. In fact, when dealing directly with ideas, abstractions, the world of values and beliefs, he has largely been insecure and reluctant to engage. We realized early on that we couldn’t push him to read with the same aggressiveness that we used with Susie. It was a gentle and inconsistent approach that eventually led to him learning his letters, but he learned them.
Clementine, for some reason, couldn’t even see the difference between the letters. She would gladly sit down to work with me on learning them, but she couldn’t retain anything. Anything. We would work on the same five letters for 15 minutes, and she wouldn’t know a single one of them. She would insist that she knew her letters, then we would sit down and start going through the flash cards. She would just guess. So confident, so clueless. Very sweet, but also quite sad. I worried that she was dyslexic. Then I just put it down. Sara Beth eventually picked it up with her, using a book that Melinda Bellatti gifted us, which didn’t focus on the names of the letters at all, but only the sounds they made. The two sat down and did close to 50 lessons out of the 100 offered by the book. After those many weeks, Clementine eventually started being able to string these things together. We rejoiced. The lessons ended.
Even after Jesse learned his letters, reading was still hard work. We got him started on the Dick and Jane books, which I also read when beginning. Rather than getting excited about being able to piece it together, the arduous work turned him off. We had to cajole him to engage. He insisted on reading, instead, the Bible. But that is at such a high reading level that he easily got tired and discouraged. Eventually we quit pushing for a season. Then a few months later, something changed. He picked up an easy book, read it midday, and finally enjoyed it. Now he is devouring the original Boxcar Children book series. He and his older sister ruminate together on developments in the storyline.
The really fun development of late is that Clementine is now plodding through the Dick and Jane books. She isn’t the natural that Susanna was, and she’s not resisting the way Jesse did. She’s just slowly doing the work. I sit with her for a few minutes to help her, but then Josiah or someone else needs me, so I call on Susanna or Jesse to sit next to her and help her.
Helping a child read isn’t as simple as just giving them the word they are struggling with. You can’t do that. They won’t learn. Rather, you are teaching them how to do it. How the letters generally behave in reference to one another. They have to sound it out. Then repeat and do it again. Put the words they have rendered in dialogue with the images shown on the page. Make sure they comprehend it.
Finally, after several years, the Rickman family has a reading machine built in, where an increasing number of members of the family are able to educate the newer ones in the practice. Each one of us who knows how to read can patiently and lovingly come alongside the younger ones and lead them to the next step. As each reads more refined materials, the older ones of us have now established a culture in which we engage and encourage one another forward. May the Lord bless this effort and use it for his glory!
The Household of God
The household of God, the Church, is much like this. There is a skill that we are collectively pursuing, which also has salutary impacts on the lives of those who learn. Namely, the skill, lifestyle, worldview of salvation. Christ has sent us his Spirit to guide us in the ways of righteousness. It is much bigger and more beautiful than the practice of reading. Wonderfully, it includes reading the Bible as an invaluable facet of the larger project.
Walking in the ways of Christ is very much like reading. It requires a large front-end investment. A great deal of time spent just familiarizing ourselves with very basic things. Stuff like prayer and fasting, stuff like learning what is in the Bible, how to talk about faith, how to practice hospitality, mindfulness, care of others. These are basic skills that are often quite boring and intimidating. But then, once one masters these different basic acts, one can then weave them together in a beautiful tapestry, a life of faith, that is a great love song to God. The task of sanctification before us was indeed accomplished in a single event on the cross in Christ, but in our lives it takes places gradually and continually until we die:
The Rub: Refusal to Work
Yet there have always been folks in the church who struggle to learn to practice the faith very well. From the beginning, the scriptures have warned us of the insufficiency of a stagnated spiritual life:
11 We have much to say about this, but it is hard to make it clear to you because you no longer try to understand. 12 In fact, though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you the elementary truths of God’s word all over again. You need milk, not solid food! 13 Anyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is not acquainted with the teaching about righteousness. 14 But solid food is for the mature, who by constant use have trained themselves to distinguish good from evil.
- Hebrews 5:11-14
The reality is that a person will never read Shakespeare, Moby Dick, the Odyssey, any of the classics, or any of the greatest thinkers, poets, writers of our day unless they first spend the time to learn their letters and then plod through simple and boring content like Dick and Jane. Paul wanted to write to his people about the life of faith, but he despaired that they just simply weren’t going to be able to go very far with him because they hadn’t put in the basic work.
One cannot build a house unless he learns carpentry. One cannot make a meal until he learns how to cook. One cannot run a marathon unless she has trained. This concept applies in any worthy field. One doesn’t just magically pick something up and instantly know how to do it. It takes painstaking practice, much time and energy spent in the pursuit of excellence.
Yet many don’t want to work. For many Christians today, it is like when Clementine would insist that she knew her letters, but we would sit down and get out the flashcards, and she knew nothing. She was surrounded by letters everywhere she went, but she didn’t know them for what they were. Similarly, many Christians come to the Christian place, they sing the Christian songs, they hear the hired Christian get up and talk, but they cannot really articulate much of anything serious about the faith. They know little more about it than someone who isn’t even a Christian. They cannot navigate their Bibles or tell you what they say. They cannot pray in their personal lives much less train others to do so. They cannot comprehend fasting, self-denial, self-control, or any practices that significantly depart from the culture around us in a profound way. They believe they are Christians every bit as much as Clementine believed she knew her letters, but they do not show basic competency with the fundamental units of the life. There are churches filled with people like this. And it isn’t just newer members, people recently converted. Sometimes adults go their entire lives, into old age, without mastering these basic skills and learning to build a life around them. I would actually say that this sort of dissonance is the norm in American churches today.
Paul expressed this frustration more than once. Not just in Hebrews, but also in his letters to Corinth, he is regularly frustrated at their reluctance to grow in maturity:
1 Brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the Spirit but as people who are still worldly—mere infants in Christ. 2 I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for it. Indeed, you are still not ready. 3 You are still worldly.
- 1 Corinthians 3:1-3a
Discerning Maturity
That last phrase there is pretty key in distinguishing whether or not a person you’re dealing with is a mature Christian or not: Can they distinguish in any way a difference between the ways of the world and the way of Christ? They are not the same. They are opposed to one another. Fine, a person can sit in a pew and attend worship somewhat regularly. All that means is that they can be somewhat punctual and they can endure an hour or so of Christian sights and sounds. A Christian that does not make. Can a man explain and model for you something different from what the world has to offer? That is what Paul highlights in these excerpts I have read through here.
When he uses the metaphor of milk and meat, this is dealing with basic human development. It is entirely appropriate for a baby to drink milk. In fact, it is good for the baby. There’s nothing better than mother’s milk. But if that is the only nutrition that a person gets as they grow up, then it becomes, not only odd, but warped in some sense. This image of an older boy breastfeeding from his mother disturbed us a few years ago when TIME Magazine reported on people who were keeping their children in this arrested development. It is unsettling isn’t it?":
Yet that is what is often found as the general standard of Christian discipleship in American churches. To build on the metaphor from Paul, a modern Christian isn’t just keeping that steady diet of beginner milk, they are also supplementing, not with meat, but with processed junk food. Many believers cannot distinguish between true biblical doctrine and the junk that false teachers often spew that feels good but is divorced from the gospel. They cannot distinguish between the voice of the Good Shepherd and the voice of the false shepherds. Their diet of junk food has rendered their stomachs unable to digest good doctrine, opting instead for the stuff that tastes good but has no true nourishment. As a person who only eats junk would get indigestion at actually eating something healthy, so many today, claiming to be Christians, take offense at Christian teaching. Entire local churches are to be found filled with people who will take offense at a message about sin and damnation, the lostness of our world, the essential nature of biblical holiness.
False Comfort
Churches should not comfort themselves at the simple fact that people show up to listen. That should give no comfort at all, as our scriptures also tell us of an individual who loved to listen even though he was reprobate:
17 For Herod himself had given orders to have John arrested, and he had him bound and put in prison. He did this because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, whom he had married. 18 For John had been saying to Herod, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.” 19 So Herodias nursed a grudge against John and wanted to kill him. But she was not able to, 20 because Herod feared John and protected him, knowing him to be a righteous and holy man. When Herod heard John, he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.
- Mark 6:17-20
Clementine enjoyed sitting down with me to talk about letters even when she could not conceive of them or hold onto them. She enjoyed the time with her father. But it was not time well-spent. She wasn’t learning to read, which was the whole point. Moreover, this practice fostered frustration, and even resentment, between us. It was a good thing for her to learn another way. Now we can share in genuine intimacy around a book. What was wrong has now been made right! But that isn’t because I changed. It is because she did. Her mind was opened, she put in the work, and now she is connecting the dots. Because she changed, I can show her how to do this.
Judas was in the presence of Christ every day for three years, yet the scriptures tell us he was a wicked son of perdition. Remember that satan was in the presence of God in the garden before he rebelled. His presence was tolerated by God even though he was a rebel, even long after that in the time of Job. We are told in James that the demons believe in God, and that belief causes them to tremble. Even so, their knowledge does not save them. All that to say that we should take no comfort from people being in the right place bodily if their spirits are still foreign to God. If people are not establishing Christ as the center point of their lives, joyfully submitting all things to him, then we are failing at our fundamental task.
Think of learning a new language. If I were to go to China today, I would need to spend a massive amount of time and energy learning to speak Chinese, not to mention the cultural norms and laws of that area. Think of learning a musical instrument. Thousands of hours have to be spent in order to be able to produce anything very enjoyable. The Christian faith is very much like this. Yet even all the thousands of hours of worship and praise in the church building can do very little for a person if he or she is not engaged in the work of discipleship. It isn’t a matter only of time spent, but of one’s posture towards this great tradition. One has to actually take it into herself and be transformed by it.
The church is very much like the Rickman household. Or it is supposed to be, in the sense I have been talking about today. When a new believer comes in and needs to learn how to connect all the different elements of the Christian faith, yes, the pastor should be instructing them in that way, but also each person who is practiced in the faith should be able to step in and pick up wherever they are. Just as I can get up while Clementine is reading and have Susie or Jesse step in and lead her, so you should be able to step in and model how to pray, how to navigate the scriptures, how to minister to one’s neighbors, how to sing and make melody to the Lord, how to control your desire for sex, how to deny greed and envy, how to love and care for your family.
The concerning thing about many churches today is that many are full of people who will never learn to take a student’s posture. My children would have never learned to read from me if they had never even chosen to submit to me, to believe that I knew how to read, to trust that I was leading them to a better place. Likewise, many people in the pews, though they listen to a pastor, though they see an example of the pursuit of holiness, still choose to believe that the pastor doesn’t know know what he’s talking about, that he’s not leading them to a better place. They refuse to submit and follow, insisting on doing things their own way. And that is sad, because it means they are in arrested development. They have failed to launch.
Week by week, I am available to you, not just in my office hours, but with midweek opportunities for bible study, prayer and worship. A few of you let me instruct and equip you. Most of you do not. Now, if you were engaged in the work of equipping others in the faith in similar ways in dialogue with me, that would be one thing. But is that what is going on? Rather, how many of you have tried to convince yourselves, and sometimes convince me, that you just cannot be expected to grow in the faith? Some of you claim to be too busy. You aren’t. Some of you claim that my hopes are unrealistic. They aren’t. A few have told me that you are too old. You aren’t.
We Are Ambassadors
The Lord expects for every single one of you as members of his household to be able to lead others to him. As a foreign emissary is expected to be able to perfectly represent the goals and agenda of his nation, so has the Lord established you as an ambassador of his ways, his Kingdom:
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
- 2 Corinthians 5:16-21
It isn’t just the pastor who is an ambassador of Christ. It’s all of us. We are ambassadors. That means we repent of our sin and walk in newness of life. We have reconciliation with God, then we practice that reconciliation with men. We model what a reconciled life looks like among family, friends, neighbors, and enemies. We refuse to participate in the deeds of wickedness. We make no room for the desires of the flesh.
Pretend you are about to sit down and be quizzed on your Christian maturity as I once lovingly did with my daughter Clementine. The flashcards are not letters, but practices. You are asked to find a scripture in your Bible without using the index and tell the instructor what it means. You are asked to facilitate a time of prayer, lifting up others’ concerns to the Lord. You are asked to fast with a group of Christians to seek the Lord’s face. How many of you could pass such a test? Before any of that, how many of you could even stand to be quizzed? How many of you, were such an opportunity to come, would not rather take it as an insult to be examined? How many would freeze in horror at being put to the test?
The church of Christ has been established on earth to make Christians, people who are striving for excellence in all things pertaining to salvation. We are to be a peculiar people, a nation of priests and kings, reconciling the world to God. Like the reading metaphor I began my sermon with, it should be the culture of this body to strive for holiness in all our ways, against a worldly culture of mundane mediocrity. It is not an acceptable thing to excuse ourselves from such a task, claiming to be too busy, claiming that the demands of Christ are unrealistic. The only way to the green pastures and still waters is to follow the Good Shepherd through the valley of the shadow of death. That requires submission and obedience. It requires being a student learner, doing the hard work of integrating basics of the faith, and then actually growing in one’s faith.
Other Ways?
There is nothing else for a church to do. There are indeed many other churches engaged in other projects, but they have left the main thing behind. They are like fitness centers that have moved out the exercise equipment and started selling pastries for income. Likewise, there are a great many churches that worry about keeping the doors open and do whatever it takes to attract new butts to sit in the pews. But what is the point of getting new people if the people we have aren’t doing the basic work that we have been put on earth to do?
Remember, now, that Jesus spoke harshly to the Pharisees who, in his words, would travel land and sea to make a single convert, but would make them a child of hell (Matt. 23:15). There is no virtue just in getting new people, just in keeping the doors open. The job of the church is not just to pack the building with bodies. It is to make mature disciples who can then make mature disciples.
We can host all kinds of events in order to get people in here, and we will continue to do so. We can give all kinds of incentives, as of course there are many secondary benefits to joining a church. We can connect with people over all kinds of things that have little or nothing to do with Jesus and then try to work Jesus into it. I’m pessimistic about that being a good long term strategy, but that is indeed the strategy of many churches today.
Or, as I have been indicating throughout today’s message, we could engage in the work of earnest discipleship, get to know our neighbors, learn to articulate our faith, and one-by-one bring people to Jesus. This is how the early church did things. That approach never lost its faithfulness. As Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.” We just started running out of people who are willing to do the work.
What does Jesus save us from, after all? Sin and death. Do we know people who sin and are going to die? Are we warning them? Are we showing them a different way of life? Or are we ourselves persisting in sin, saying we love Jesus but persisting in rebellion? This is the concern that any American pastor needs to have today, after many decades of confusion in our churches.
The Way Forward
We need to reestablish holy discipleship as the central task of the church. We need to continually insist that the church is here, not to cater to consumers, but to serve the Lord on his terms, established in our scriptures. We need to continually focus on God being sufficient for us even if many people outside this place seem to be uninterested.
Coming back to the opening metaphor for today’s sermon, how many of you compare with Susanna in your faith as she was to reading?: You heard about Jesus and you just ran towards him, training in the basics and then building integrated, holy lives. If a new person is won to Christ, you can capably sit down with them and show them the basics. Your lives reflect the transformed nature of the New Birth, so they can look to you to see a model of holy living.
How many of you are like Jesse was, unsure of yourselves, unstable and insecure in receiving instruction? You want to do things your own way, but you haven’t submitted yet to do the hard work. You are too prideful to ask for help, to stubborn to think seriously about changing, too insecure to look at me or other mature believers for guidance.
How many of you are like Clementine was, eager to do the Christian things but seemingly unable to actually even start at the basics for some reason? You like to come to worship and sing the songs and get along with all the nice people, but you lack the discipline or resolve to do what needs to be done to grow in maturity.
The temptation of a conflict-averse pastor is to just focus on other people outside the church and to hope you get your walk sorted out. But that isn’t how I treated my own children. That isn’t loving. While I gave them space for short periods of time, we always came back to the task at hand. Likewise, my job as pastor is to make sure you are never comfortable while you are failing to grow. I need to constantly be driving you to move from milk to meat. Any pastor worth his salt is going to continually push his people into lives of authentic, constant, happy discipleship.
To that end, despite very low attendance at Bible study, I’m going to continue to host a Bible study for you. Despite very little interest in morning worship, I’m going to continue to host it. For you. Despite irregular and low attendance, I’m going to continue to be solid on Sunday morning worship, for you. Despite the fact that nobody seems to be very interested in noticing, I’m going to continue loving my family, honoring my wife, building up my children. Despite the fact that very few come into the church building to pray or receive encouragement, I will continue to be present at all hours. For you. Out of love and reference for Christ.
And my prayer is that many of you who seem uninterested and defensive will someday be excited to learn and grow. And when you do, and I hope it is before you die, I’ll aim to be here, ready to build you up. Today, Jesse and Clementine wouldn’t be able to read if they hadn’t eventually chosen to put in the time and effort, to listen to their parents, to be instructed. My prayer for many of you for years has been that you will likewise choose to submit to instruction. May the Lord continue to work on all of our hearts, drawing us more closely to him and one another, such that we rejoice to submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
