19 months ago, I officiated at my doctor’s funeral. Technically he was not my primary care doctor at the time of his death, since he had retired a few years earlier. But I could not meet him anywhere without considering him my doctor.

He was the best doctor I ever had. I have been blessed with good medical care all my life. But Dr. V. was notches above the rest. He knew his stuff, and he cared. Most of the time we walked in parallel worlds together. When I was in his doctor’s office, he was my physician. When we met in church or other social events, we were equals and friends, and he called me pastor. Once in a while, however, the lines were crossed. At a moment when we had a sudden medical emergency, I knew that he was on a particular committee meeting in our church building, and I burst into the room, startling everyone except him, with my quick demand for his help. Another time, when he shook my hand on a Sunday morning, he leaned in and suggested that I make an appointment to see him the next day. His ear had caught a slight cough that I tried to cover, and his eye had noticed a change in skin color he thought needed medical attention.

What made Dr. V. extraordinary was the easy way he practiced his profound skills. Like a professional skier who glides down mountains with ease and delight, like a dancer who moves a hundred muscles simultaneously in a graceful body arc, like a seasoned farmer whose fields shimmer with significance and whose herds exude health and well-being, so Dr. V. paired his encyclopedic medical depth with graceful human touches and caring words.

I miss him.

Graceful Craft

Thinking about him makes me ache in my throat and waters my eyes in a manner that happens too seldom, but always powerfully. It occurs, sometimes, when a choir and orchestra and congregation combine to overwhelm me with hymns, old or new, that link with the waves of worship wafting out of Revelation 4. It happens, now and again, when I watch as our three wonderful daughters reconnect excitedly, and conversations blossom intertangled with laughter and care and hope and mutual admiration. It happens, once in a while, when I sit stunned as I am engulfed by a truly great movie, or even, sometimes, in the presence of a gifted preacher. A preacher, who like Dr. V., takes the transcendent and the human and welds them deftly together in simplicity and joy.

The Perils of Preaching

Preaching is not easy. I know that from 50 years of trying to do it passably or better. But one thing I have noticed in the times that I have experienced great preaching from others, is how simplicity and profundity seem to merge in a stream of muted passion, and trembling but chaste emotion. And it is often delivered in stories that draw me in until I am one with the characters, or I sob with longing that I wish I was.

Preaching, like doctoring, is a much-practiced discipline in the muddling middle, where both life and faith are sustained without much grace. The best of preaching, though, like exceptional doctoring, seems to use fewer but more potent words, coupled with pauses and gestures that speak even more in significant silence.

An Attempt At Graceful Elegance

Here is where I link this article with my previous one, where I promised a 6 words summary of the Bible. Obviously, I use many words in my teaching and preaching. And I have truly read zillions of words in my theological and other studies. And even the Bible itself, in most English versions, has around 750,000 words. So how can I summarize it in just 6?

Well, here they are:

1. Mission
2. Method
3. Managers
4. Miracle
5. Mutation

Okay, so you need a few more words to understand what I am trying to communicate. Here are those additional descriptors:

Mission:

The Bible is essentially about our Creator’s desire to bring home, at the end of the day, all the “Children of the Heavenly Father.” Made in the image of God, we seem to run away from home with abandon, and forget, to our own grief and pain, who we are and whose we are. But God never forgets his children, as Jesus reminded us, and the Bible is a long story of love and challenges, of discouragement and hope, of broken promises and the call of eternity’s harbor lights.

Method:

While God might well have a dozen game plans in reserve, God chose to honor both the responsibility and the dignity of God’s children, neither coercing our behaviors or abandoning us to self-destruction. Instead, God sidled up to one modest-sized family with a unique language and a privileged but tortured history, and partnered with Abraham’s descendants in a promotional campaign like never elsewhere experienced in history. Moving in with these people and shaping them with a covenanted culture that reflected the best of human existence, God planted the nation on one of the worst of earth’s pieces of property except for one thing: in a world before planes, trains and automobiles, it was the migratory bridge between Africa, Asia, and Europe, where most of God’s children lived and roved at the time. Eventually all of God’s children on earth would pass through the “Promised Land,” or hear about its unusual residents, and seek to know more. And maybe find their way back home to Papa’s house.

Managers: Every good endeavor needs to be guided. Although God was never an absentee landlord, God employed exceptional leaders to assist in the unfolding drama. There were six in Israel’s world, either persons or groups: (1) Moses; (2) Joshua; (3) the Elders; (4) the Judges; (5) the Kings; (6) the Prophets. When one departed (or, in the case of the Kings, failed), the next took up the challenge. The earliest Judges were Elders. The last Judge was Samuel, who anointed the first Kings. The first Prophets were advisors to the Kings, while the later Prophets were the Kings’ opponents and rivals. The last of the Prophets was John the Baptist.

Meltdown:

This “Come on Home!” story started so well, but limped to a near disastrous conclusion in the waning pages of the Old Testament. By the time the last Prophets were preaching to a greatly diminished congregation, their theme was unanimous: the “Day of the Lord” is near! What was that “Day of the Lord”? It was a kind of repeat of the first “Day of the Lord,” when God decisively intervened in humanity’s dark history in order to rescue Abraham’s family from near extinction under the Egyptian Pharaoh. The “Day of the Lord” involved three things: (1) Judgment; (2) Remnant; and (3) the beginning of the New Age. So it would be again soon, said the Prophets. And that’s where the Old Testament ends, after just 4 “M” words out of 6. But then came the other two, creating the New Testament age:

Miracle:

What none of us were able to do on our own, God did in person, coming in the miracle of the Incarnation. Jesus was the “Day of the Lord,” as Peter preached so powerfully from Joel’s prophecy at Pentecost, and Paul and John and Peter declared in their letters and writings that became the New Testament. Jesus vicariously experienced the Judgment. Jesus gathered a Remnant community. Jesus began the Messianic Age with miracles of healing and restoration and resurrection. But then Jesus did something nobody saw coming: he left! And that triggered the final M word.

Mutation:

What the Old Testament prophets perceived of as God’s culminating redemptive act was suddenly split in two. The “Day of the Lord” that everyone thought was a once-for-all transitional climax was fulfilled completely in Jesus, but not in the world. As an act of grace, God chose not to rain down the final judgment on everyone, providing a lingering split in time. Jesus accomplished all that was necessary for salvation and transformation and bringing home the full gathering of God’s children, but he did not force some in and some out in immediate eternal division. So, as an act of kindness, God sent an extra measure of God’s presence (the Holy Spirit), and gave those who knew the Story well a missional push outward from the old “Promised Land.” And so we live in these witnessing times, seeking to nurture communities of influence that mirror heaven’s grace, and call all of God’s children home by the time the other end of the split “Day of the Lord” approaches.

There it is: the Bible in 6 words.

Like my good doctor’s practice of his healing craft, there is so much more under it and behind it and to it. But in simple grace and elegance, that is the deft move of God in scripture.