I often have this fear that I am on the road to Emmaus.

And I don’t recognize Jesus for who He is.

Because I am running right past Him.

He wants to walk with me, and I am going at a dead run, mourning Him all the way, but too anxious to get there and share the news that He’s gone when He’s already back – alive and well and willing to comfort, strengthen and counsel.

I need to slow down.

I need to look under the shade of each hooded stranger to see if His face is there.

I need to dine with Him each week, with my heart burning within me.

I need a walking Companion.

I’m as guilty of brewing the stuff as anyone else I’ve ever read.

You know, the recipe where you mix a cup of this psalm and that gospel and water it down with a convenient diluting explanation and then add a dash of your favorite proof text for spice. (Or spite.)

And it’s stew.

It’s isn’t soup, which usually has just one dominant flavor: Think potato. Tomato. Celery. Onion. Not vegetable, which is just stew on a superhydrating diet.

The danger is, if you mix indiscriminately, you may get clam-apricot-jalapeno bisque. And even if you’re a pretty good chef, you’ll get a heady combination of luscious flavors flowing together and tasting pretty good together.

Stew, all the same.

Neither milk, nor meat.

Neither a mess of pottage, nor a pot of message.

Just something to stew about.

Please, God … help me to wean myself from the comfortable, the controversial, the combinational stewing of scripture; to hunger after the meat of righteousness and plain truth and Christlikeness. Even when it’s hard to swallow. Even when it’s hard to digest. I need a more mature appetite. Amen.

If you have missed the irascible and generally dead-on observations of New Wineskins contributing writer Fred Peatross … if you somehow failed to sign up for his Abductive Columns e-letter … you will be delighted to know that his Abductive Columns blog is back, with a new face and the same attitude.

Commenting to me by e-mail briefly on an article in NW by Larry Chouinard, Fred just said that he and Larry were on the same page.

I could only respond to Fred with something like: “Many would say Larry’s words are harsh and uncompromising. Many would say your words are harsh and uncompromising. Many would say Jesus’ words were harsh and uncompromising. What can I say?”

Give him a read again. If he doesn’t rile your spirit within you at least a little bit every once in a while, you should call a mortician and make a pre-planning appointment.

Did you know that the word “authority” is not used in close proximity to the words for “elder,” “bishop,” “pastor,” “overseer” or “shepherd” in the New Testament?

The closest you can come is a couple of scriptures; first Hebrews 13:17, where at the close of the letter and a long list of advice, the writer concludes:

Obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give an account. Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you.

And while elders certainly are leaders within the church, they are by no means the only leaders. The word for “leaders” is more general in its inclusion; other translations read it as “those who lead” or “(obey) them who lead you.”

Then there’s Acts 16:4, where messengers deliver to the far-flung churches a decision by the elders and apostles regarding circumcision – which are to be obeyed.

To conclude from these passages alone that elders are to have supreme or exclusive authority requires some skinchwise logic.

Yet it is abundantly clear from a multiplicity of passages that elders are to be

• Committed to the Lord, in whom they put their trust (Acts 14:23)
• Welcoming; eager to hear reports of what God has done (Acts 15:4)
• Willing to meet together and consider questions which affect the flock (Acts 15:6)
• Love their evangelists; miss them like family (Acts 20)
• Direct the affairs of the church – even to the point of being paid to do so – and some to preach and teach (I Timothy 5:17)
• Pray over the sick and anoint them with oil (James 5:14)
• Willing and eager to serve, not lording it over the flock, but being examples (I Peter 5:1-3)

Throughout my 51 years, I have had the privilege to be shepherded by several sets of elders at several churches, virtually all of whom I’ve known personally to exemplify – and even personify – these qualities. I don’t believe it’s mathematically probably that I have agreed 100% with any of them on even some important points of doctrine and interpretation. And none of them has ever been perfect, of course, but they all have good hearts that seek God through His Son and His Spirit. None of them has sought the office for the sake of exercising authority; to “lord it over” anyone else.

And that has made it exceptionally easy to submit to them and to obey them.

Which brings me to my confessional. (Come on; you’ve learned to expect one from me by now.)

Friday and Saturday our church staff and elders took a few hours to retreat from the other pressing concerns of life and to get better acquainted. After a while, it became obvious that there was some tension between the two groups and the reason behind it escaped all of us.

Finally, I said that at my first elders’ meeting as a staff member a few weeks before we’d been short a few copies of a document we were discussing – one which sort of impinges on personnel matters which elders are always free to discuss in closed session, and I didn’t see any staff members with copies. When copies of the revised document were passed out Friday, only elders received the available copies. That made it, again, a little difficult for me as a staff person to participate in the discussion.

It turned out that the documents were just copied late before the meetings on a pokey old copier. They were happy to share them, and did.

But I had to confess to the assembled group: “I was afraid to ask for one. I was new to staff and didn’t know where the potholes might be, if there were potholes. Is that stupid, or what? You’re my shepherds.

“When you’re walking in the dark,” I added, “You either walk by faith or you walk very gingerly to avoid the potholes. I was not walking by faith.”

I think the retreat gave us an opportunity to be real with each other in a healthy and uniting way.

And I don’t believe anyone, even once, used the word “authority.”

Just because two parties disagree with each other doesn’t automatically make one right.

Take the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

They disagreed with each other about angels, the afterlife, etc.

Jesus disagreed with the Sadducees’ beliefs.

And with the Pharisees’ practices.

Who was right?

He was.

But He really took on the Pharisees. And I think I understand why.

If, like the Saducees, you really don’t believe in an afterlife … you don’t believe in consequences for your actions … well, it would at least make sense if you acted the way you believe. You would live for now, and live for yourself.

But if, like the Pharisees, you believe and profess that right and wrong matter because God will judge … it doesn’t make a lick of sense for you to

• Shut the doors of the kingdom in peoples’ faces.
• Make it harder and harder for them to enter.
• Travel extensively to win converts, then make them even more judgmental than yourself.
• Tithe the tiniest herbs and spices but fail to show justice, mercy or faithfulness.
• Be finicky about washing the outside of a cup yet let your inner self become filthy.
• Judge others by your interpretations and standards.
• Complain that a healing on the Sabbath is more than the allowable amount of work.
• Recoil from the touch of a sinner bearing perfume, without recognizing oneself as a sinner, too.
• Have the audacity to thank God that you are not like someone else that He has made in His image.

Insist that only a friend to demons would be responsible for casting them out and for giving sight to the blind.

Oh, I could go on and on.

But I just did.

The Sadducees didn’t believe, and – as one of my astute Bible instructors helpfully pointed out in college – “That made them sad, you see.”

However, the Pharisees didn’t practice what they believed and taught.

That means they weren’t fair, I see.

And I think I see why, at a ratio of about six to one in Scripture, He was so much more frequently ticked off at the Pharisees than the Sadducees.

I prayed and prayed and prayed.

That’s right, I prayed three times about it. It was important to me. You’d have thought it’d be important to God, since it’s interfering with my ministry!

And He had the gall to say “No.”

Not just “no,” but “No; I’m enough for you.”

Like He’s got a whole world to run that’s more important than helping me, His number one guy, reach all of the Mediterranean coastal cities with the message of His Son!

Like it’s not really a thorn in the flesh! Like it doesn’t hurt, and I mean all the time!

Look, I know other people are hurting too. I’ve seen it. I’ve seen them healed. Do they go off preaching all over the known world?

Don’t quote me that stuff about Elisha dying of some disease he couldn’t heal after he raised a boy from the dead and fed a good-sized crowd from a snack. Don’t remind me about those folks making fun of the Savior, saying “He can’t save Himself!” I don’t want to hear it. I hurt. And do I get any sympathy?

No; He says “I’m enough for you.”

Of all the cheek.

Who does He think He is?

God?

~ the apostle Paul – after accidentally missing a daily dose of grace – in the apocryphal book The Gospel According to Me

Don’t misunderstand me: I think it’s great that President Bush finally spoke to the NAACP. I think it’s wonderful that he spoke in support of renewing the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

But can someone please explain to why in the very name of sanity itself the 1965 Voting Rights Act has to be renewed?

Is a certain segment of America’s citizenry on probation, and if they behave well, they’ll retain their constitutional privilege to vote?

Why was it written to be reviewed, adjusted, tweaked and renewed periodically?

Why couldn’t they get it right the first time?

I don’t understand politics.