ABC Messenger

December 26, 2006 / January 2, 2007

What Are Your Odds For 2007?
Pastor George Van Alstine

A new year, coming up big! 2007! It’s going to be a good one. How do I know? Because I always “know�? the new year will be better than the old one. That is, I believe it will be. Or rather, I hope it will be. Maybe I should say, I’m down on my knees begging it will be.

The fact is I have only limited control over what the year ahead will bring to my life, and that makes the celebrative optimism of New Year’s Eve a bit like whistling in the dark. At midnight, we’re all cheering and singing together, and that togetherness makes us feel more upbeat about the year’s prospects, but there’s still that lingering doubt.

Of course, this time the new year is 2007, and everyone knows that seven is the luckiest number. Just think of these significant facts:
�? There are seven days in a week.
�? There are seven notes in a (Western) musical scale.
�? There were seven Wonders of the Ancient World.
�? According to Islam, there are seven heavens.
�? In Judaism, every seventh year is a sabbatical year to rest the land.
�? The Apostle John wrote to the seven churches of Asia.
�? James Bond is Agent 007.
�? If people are asked to choose a number from one to ten, seven is the number most often selected.
�? There are seven black spots on the back of a ladybug.
So, you’ve got to believe the year 2007 will bring nothing but good.

Of course, there are other sevens that tell a different story, like the Seven Deadly Sins, and the Seven Seals of Judgment in the Book of Revelation. Even though we want to emphasize the positive symbolism of the number seven, the truth is it brings no guarantees. You could say, as some Las Vegas cynic might, “Life is a crap-shoot!�?

Which brings me to another “seven�? phrase: “Seven Come Eleven.�? This saying has been with me all my life, but until now, I haven’t thought about where it comes from. I consulted with my Las Vegas gambling expert, and he informed me that this is a phrase a craps player might use as a wish (almost a prayer) expressed just before rolling the dice. Seven and eleven are the two luckiest numbers, and either would mean an instant payoff. So “Seven Come Eleven�? is a pretty popular way of approaching the new year. Let’s throw the dice and hope for the best!

But for some of us, 2007 might bring serious problems, business reversals, relationship conflicts, health issues. Okay, what’s the worst that can happen? Death! For some of us, 2007 may be the year when THE END is written on the last page of our life.

Is “Seven Come Eleven�? any comfort in the face of this reality? Fortunately, we who have a living faith in God have something better. We can exchange the crap shoot “Seven Come Eleven�? for the promise of Jesus: “Seven Come Heaven�?! That’s not a gamble, but a promise from the Son of God.

So when you think of all the things “seven�? rhymes with—eleven, Devin, leaven—make sure you emphasize the one that gives you by far the best odds, “heaven.�? For you, 2007 may be your last year on earth, and “Seven Come Heaven�? can be your winning slogan.

December 18, 2006

The Message of Mistletoe
Pastor George Van Alstine

I once was a Christmas purist. As a young pastor, I thought it was important for us to remove all the pagan and commercial elements from our celebration of Jesus’ birthday so the truth of the gospel could be seen clearly.

Of course, all the modern Christmas fables would have to go, like Rudolph and Frosty and the Grinch. Santa, his elves and reindeer were a tradition formed out of numerous pre-Christmas pagan elements, even though the old guy had been “baptized�? with the name of an obscure medieval saint. The Christmas Tree was adopted from northern European tree-worship cults, some of them even involving human sacrifices. The very date of Christmas, December 25, was originally a pagan Roman holiday. One by one, some of my favorite Christmas impressions became suspect and finally fell to my puritanical axe.

Finally, even the authentic Christmas story itself had to be carefully examined. Were there three wise men? The Bible gives no number. In our Christmas pageants, how can we have them stand next to the Bethlehem manger alongside of the shepherds, when they actually visited Jesus up to two years later, probably in Nazareth? When Martin Luther wrote the familiar carol “Away in a Manger,�? why did he say of the Baby Jesus, “no crying he makes�?? Did Luther think it is sinful for a baby to cry and that the sinless Jesus could never cry? The Christmas purist must be theologically accurate.

I had been on this purifying-Christmas journey for only about two years when I realized that it was a dead-end approach. Rather than making Christmas more wonderful, I was robbing it of its glory. Over the years since, I have come to realize that the true meaning of Christmas is not so puny that all these other seasonal legends and traditions can obscure it. Instead, the true meaning of Christmas is so powerful and robust that it can infuse even pagan and commercial elements with spiritual meaning. So now I see the Baby Jesus as “infecting�? Rudolph, Santa, Christmas Trees and old pagan traditions, rather than the other way around.

Mistletoe is the final test case. This plant, that lives off the branches of other trees, was considered holy by the Druids long before Christianity came to England. The Scandinavians and Germans also included it in their pagan worship. Its magical/medicinal properties were believed to be effective with everything from epilepsy to fertility. The mistletoe plant is parasitic, living by sucking the juices out of a hardwood tree, sometimes killing its host. Where does the name “mistletoe�? come from? “Mist�? means dung, excrement, and “toe�? is short for “twig.�? The plant’s seed looks like a bird-dropping on a branch, and later a twig grows from it into an entire parasitic plant. So those who named it saw it as the bird-poop plant.

All this kissing-under-the-mistletoe stuff is based on a legend of the Norse god Baldur’s tragic death by a sharpened sprig of mistletoe. The love of the other gods was enough to renew his life, and the kissing symbolizes this. A number of northern European tribes built from this the use of mistletoe as an excuse for a bit of naughty flirting.

Most old pagan traditions that are part of Christmas have subsequently been given Christian meaning. The Christmas Tree is an evergreen, so it reminds us of everlasting life. The holly adds red berries to the evergreen leaves, and this speaks of the blood of Jesus. The ancient human fascination with astrology gave way to the Star of Bethlehem, and now all the decorative stars we see at Christmas remind us of Jesus, the Light of the World.

But mistletoe is hopeless. I have not been able to discover any tradition that has been able to Christianize this plant in any way. It just hangs there at Christmas as a stubborn pagan leftover.

And yet, I’m ready today to claim even mistletoe for Christmas. This life-sucking parasite reminds me that I am totally dependant on the grace and love of Jesus, having no spiritual life without him. The fact that mistletoe is named after bird-droppings reminds me of Paul’s description of his human accomplishments without Jesus as “rubbish�? (Philippians 3:8). That’s the polite English translation; Martin Luther put it more graphically in his German translation: ein haufen mist (“a pile of manure�?—“mist�?/“mistletoe�?; get it?)

Even the kissing fits in. Jesus came in the flesh—in the real flesh. This is how the Savior pours his life into the needy parasite. He redeems the praying part of me, but he also redeems the kissing part of me. He renews me, body and soul.

So mistletoe has its place in the Nativity scene, maybe hanging from the eaves of the stable roof. It represents me, the parasitic fleshly me whom the Baby Jesus came to save.

December 11, 2006

“Where the Rose Blooms�?
by Pastor George Van Alstine

Isaiah ’twas foretold it,
The Rose I have in mind,
With Mary we behold it,
The Virgin Mother kind.
To show God’s love aright,
She bore to men a Saviour,
When half spent was the night.

This haunting song in celebration of the deep mysteries hidden in the birth of the Baby Jesus was first published in 1600 in the German language. It captures something of the awe that must have been felt by the shepherds, the wise men, Mary and Joseph in the presence of the tiny Person who drove them to their knees.

Like the event itself, this song is pregnant with meaning. Think of the combination of Old Testament ideas that are packed together in two brief stanzas.

First, there is the prophecy by Isaiah that the Redeemer will come as “a shoot from the stump of Jesse, a branch growing out of his roots�? (Isaiah 11:1). Jesse was the father of King David, so this was a promise that God would restore the throne of Israel that had been chopped down because of his people’s rebellion. The new King would come as Messiah, the Anointed One. It’s because of promises like this that the shepherds became so excited when the angel announced that the Savior had been born in Bethlehem, “the city of David�? (Luke 2:11).

Strangely, the song writer sees this shoot from the stump of Jesse as “a Rose e’er blooming.�? A rose from the stump of a tree? This seems even more peculiar when we learn that the Hebrew word translated “rose�? in the key Old Testament passage really refers to a tulip or a narcissus, certainly to a bulb-produced flower, and not one normally associated with a tree.

The passage behind the “rose�? image is found in Song of Solomon 2:1:
“I am a rose of Sharon,
a lily of the valleys.
As a lily among brambles,
so is my love among maidens.�?

Sharon was a long valley next to the Mediterranean Sea, where the conditions were just right for an annual spring bloom of these beautiful “roses.�?

The Song of Solomon is a poem about intimate love. In fact, it’s so romantic (even erotic in spots) that most Bible interpreters over more than two thousand years have believed it must have some other, more spiritual meaning. And so, Jewish rabbis before Jesus’ time saw it as an allegory of God’s love for his people Israel. It did not take long after Jesus left this earth for Christian scholars and preachers to follow suit, developing out of it elaborate worshipful meditations on Jesus’ love for his church.

Somehow, Jesus became identified as the “Rose of Sharon�? in Song of Solomon 2:1. This happened in spite of the fact that any casual reading seems to lead to the conclusion that verse 1 refers to the maiden and verse 2 to her bridegroom. Over time, the phrase “Rose of Sharon�? became attached to Jesus in popular Christian thought.

All this history went into the writing of these poetic lines in 1600. Out of the mix came a striking image—a rose blooming where you wouldn’t expect it, from the stump of an apparently dead tree. The poet adds some other incongruities. The blooming occurred in the “cold of winter�? and when “half spent was the night.�? This beautiful flower was in the wrong place and at the wrong time.

And finally, the ultimate surprise—the fact that Jesus was born from “Mary, the Virgin Mother kind.�? A Baby Savior from a Virgin Mother! As likely as a rose from a tree stump blooming on a dark winter’s night.

There’s one other little gem in the lyrics of this song: this Rose that isn’t a rose, and is in the wrong place at the wrong time is “e’er blooming.�? “E’er�? is a contraction for “ever.�? So this floral evidence of God’s love, grace and salvation is still blooming today, sending the aroma of God’s forgiveness to us.

There is a more modern song that was popular among Christians a generation ago. Written in 1922 by Ida Guirey, it begins with these words:
“Jesus, Rose of Sharon
Bloom within my heart . . . .�?
Another unlikely place!

December 4, 2006

Matriarchs of Missions
by Pastor George Van Alstine

Two members of the ABC family recently passed away, and their memorial services were both held last weekend. Phyllis Berry’s service was at Scripps Home last Saturday, and Jodie Van Loon’s was at the U.S. Center for World Mission on Sunday. Both services were very well attended, and both were full of memorable personal reflections.

For me, these two women symbolized a chapter in the history of world missions that was full of optimism and adventure. Right after World War II, missionaries from churches in the U.S. saw open doors throughout the world and did all they could to run through those doors with the gospel. Jodie and Phyllis were born within six months of each other, and they both had their origins in the mid-western part of the country. Both of them were trained in evangelical Bible Colleges and felt a call to missionary service early in their lives. From there, their paths diverged, but they followed the same goal: to help fulfill Jesus’ Great Commission, to “go into all the world and preach the gospel.�?

Phyllis met her husband Don when they were students at Wheaton College. He had been in the Air Force during the War, and he saw the opportunity to use his flying skills in service to the Lord. In 1948 he joined the new Mission Aviation Fellowship, becoming their fourth pilot. The daring and dangerous work he did can be seen from the recent Hollywood movie “End of the Spear,�? which retells the story of the 1956 killing of an MAF pilot and four other missionaries in Ecuador.

Phyllis herself was a missionary pioneer. She raised six children while serving in Mexico, Honduras, the Philippines and Laos, home schooling them and caring for their health needs. She also housed countless missionary families as they were traveling to or from remote fields of service.

After 1966, Phyllis and Don served in the MAF home office, making Redlands CA their home. During these years Don stayed in Southern California, but Phyllis became a world traveler, supporting various missionary causes. Her special passion was for Albania. For over twenty years, she prayed that country’s doors would open to evangelism. When they finally did, Phyllis was able to travel there herself as a short-term missionary.

Meanwhile, Jodie’s journey emerged in Southern California, where her parents had moved when she was young. Believing that God was calling her to the mission field, she attended Biola College, and then Simpson Bible Institute, where she met a man with a similar vision, Howard Van Loon. The two of them married and continued their preparation for a career as missionaries.

But Howard had tuberculosis, and this reality dominated Jodie’s life for decades to come. Instead of going overseas, they ministered in two California churches, where Howard was the pastor and Jodie was the youth director. She never lost her missionary vision, and she supported worldwide evangelism in every way she could. She and Howard spent some years working at Instituto Evangelico in La Puente, where many Mexican young people were trained for ministry. It was there that they met Dan Donovan, a young (35) man preparing himself for ministry in Latin America.

Howard’s tuberculosis got worse and worse. For the last twelve years of his life, while he was dependent on an iron lung and a tracheotomy, Jodie cared for him in their Pasadena home. After Howard’s death, Jodie finally got to travel. She visited Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Brazil and Mexico. But the international experience that most greatly impacted her was her short-term missionary experience in India, whose people and culture seemed to touch a special spot in her soul.

It was after this that Jodie found her unique missionary niche at the U.S. Center for World Mission. During her twenty-seven years working there, she served in many capacities. Her most memorable roles were as the Center’s official hostess, facilitating the transition of people coming from every culture of the world, and as the curator of the Center’s cultural artifacts from many nations and peoples.

We at ABC have been blessed to know these two great women during the last chapter of their lives. They have shared their missionary passion with us and have helped revive our commitment to the worldwide vision that dominated their years of Christian ministry.

* * * * *

Thanks to all who donated to the very generous birthday gift I received at last Sunday’s service. I feel loved. Pastor George Van Alstine

November 27, 2006

Bounty Rationing
by Pastor George Van Alstine

It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving, and I just enjoyed my third rerun of a great turkey dinner. All the elements are still available at our house in refrigerated plastic containers—light and dark meat, stuffing, gravy, vegetables, cranberry sauce and two kinds of pies. I’ll bet some of you guys whose wives are culinarily-challenged are jealous!

I’ve found that the secret to enjoying Thanksgiving, or for that matter, any of life’s good things, is what I call “bounty-rationing.�? When we have plenty, we tend to overindulge. But we always pay for this with an overstuffed feeling, lethargy, guilt, and maybe with an added inch around the waistline. What started as enjoyment, if we’re not careful, can easily end in regret.

But if we eat our Thanksgiving Day feast in a moderate, controlled way, we leave enough for several sequels. Some of us are convinced stuffing and gravy actually improve with age.

If I’m right, the same is true of our enjoyment of other kinds of pleasures: they’re best enjoyed in modest, measured amounts. I think this applies to hobbies, listening to music, watching TV and (can I mention it?) sex. If you have a bounty available, overindulgence is always a threat to enjoyment.

A friend of mine fell in love with powerboating. He would use any excuse to get away for a weekend, rent a boat, and spend as much time as possible cruising around.

He often talked to me about buying his own boat, and finally he did. From then on, it was a powerboating orgy—every spare minute he was on the lake. His wife and kids hardly saw him any more.

About a year later, I was having lunch with him, when he sighed and said, “I have to go out on my boat this weekend.�? I asked, “Have to? What do you mean?�? He answered, “I don’t really feel like it, but I’ve invested all that money in the boat—storage, repairs, gas—I feel like I have to use it as much as possible. I’d really rather go to the kids’ football game, but I can’t.�?

The boat-bounty had created an addiction. This was because of his overindulgence; he hadn’t learned how to ration his bounty.

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Philippian Church:
“In all circumstances I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in need.�? (Philippians 4:12)
This knowledge, how to ration our bounty, doesn’t come naturally. It has to be learned. And the Lord is our best Teacher, as Paul points out in the next verse:“I can do all things through him who strengthens me.�? (verse 13)

If you think you’ve learned enough about bounty-rationing (at least regarding food), come on over and we’ll share a Thanksgiving meal from our refrigerator. It will be the fourth sequel and probably even better than the other three.