As Kingfishers Catch Fire: A Conversation on the Ways of God Formed by the Words of God

by Eugene H. Peterson

so many important things to do, urgent voices telling me what had to be done. There was no one thing needful. There were many things needful, all clamoring for my attention.

the nurturing of souls.

I was using the place of worship as a bully pulpit. I had become very American in all matters of ways and means.

In the lecture that day in Baltimore, he was the same man as in his books written in Switzerland. A life of congruence, with no slippage between what he was saying and the way he was living. Congruence.

The Christian life is the lifelong practice of attending to the details of congruence—congruence between ends and means, congruence between what we do and the way we do it, congruence between what is written in Scripture and our living out what is written, congruence between a ship and its prow, congruence between preaching and living, congruence between the sermon and what is lived in both preacher and congregation, the congruence of the Word made flesh in Jesus with what is lived in our flesh.

Christ as both the means and the end playing through our limbs and eyes to the Father through the features of our faces so that we find ourselves living, almost in spite of ourselves, the Christ life in the Christ way.

preaching is the weekly verbal witness to this essential congruence of what Christ is with his work that “plays” in us.

Not just the preaching but prayers at a hospital bed, conversations with the elderly, small talk on a street corner—all the circumstances and relationships that make up the pastor’s life.

Not ideas, not goals, not principles, nothing abstract or disembodied, but the good news of the “Word...

at least now I was being a pastor and not staying awake at night laying out a strate...

I soon realized our common worship on Sundays was also developing tendrils that reached into homes and workplaces, casual conversations and chance meetings on the street.

I was discovering an imagination for developing a sense of narrative that kept our lives relationally together in something deeper and wider than anything we were individually.

When I prepare and preach a sermon, I need constant reminding that I am part of a company that has a rich and varied genealogy. I do not start from scratch. I do not make up something new. I want to develop a coherent and connected biblical imagination with my congregation, not live out of a suitcase full of cast-off items from various yard sales and secondhand stores.

Preaching requires that we develop a Moses imagination, with stories and signposts.

Preaching in the company of Moses develops precisely this storytelling imagination that keeps our sermons grounded in the everyday realities of the people to whom we are preaching.

“Read the book!” The meaning is in the book, not in the information about the book.

I set aside what I had been so vehemently arguing in my ignorant adolescent certainties and let God speak his presence and reality to me. I was gradually learning to let God tell me who he is and the way he works.

Remember. One day a week stop what you are doing and pay attention to what God has been doing and is doing. Be reverent and worshipful and grateful for the Genesis world we are placed in. Remember in gratitude and worshipful adoration. Hallow this day. Keep this day holy.

Create is a word used in the Bible exclusively with God as the subject.

As it turns out, and using Abraham as a template, the term friend is going to be the key in understanding what it means “to be me.”

Being a friend is the opposite of being an enemy. That simple contrast stands out above all else in Abraham. Abraham was on such terms with his God that he responded without suspicion and without fear. Abraham somehow knew that God was on his side, that God was for him and with him, a friend.

He responded as God’s friend. He believed that God was on his side, and he lived like it.

One of my favorite proverbs is “Faithful are the wounds of a friend” (Proverbs 27:6). A friend, if honest and true, will tell you things you don’t want to hear. A friend, if deeply serious about you, will do things that feel painful. Friends do that because they respect our dignity and honor our uniqueness.

God’s friendship didn’t install Abraham on an oasis where he slept on a hammock strung between date palms, refreshing himself with a swim in the pool between naps. God’s friendship meant leaving home, long journeys, dangerous ventures, doubt-filled actions, difficult obedience.

Friend is totally about a relationship, not a function.

Abraham was not in love with a dream or aspiring after an ideal. He was God’s friend, period. The evidence? The relationship was worked out on journeys and at water holes.

Things don’t have to get done in a friendship. Friendship is not a way of accomplishing something but a way of being with another in which we become more authentically ourselves.

As we get a feel for the qualities of friendship, I think this also is important: Abraham’s life seems curiously empty of accomplishment.

With persons we talk of response, growth, listening, and acting. Abraham did all of that in relation with God, whom he was convinced was determined to be a good friend to him.

The core message of the gospel is that God invades us with new life, but the setting for this is most often in the ordinariness of our lives. The new life takes place in the place and person of our present. It is not a means by which God solves problems. God creates new life. He is not a problem solver but a person creator.

We are always drifting off into the impersonal. It is easier and less demanding. But it is also demeaning and estranging. Always and everywhere in Scripture our attention is brought back to the central fact: God is a person; God makes persons; God remakes persons. A person like you. A person like me.

The great thing about living in faith with God is what we can’t anticipate, can’t predict. Sooner or later in the Christian way, we are going to laugh.

It is promise and proof that we can live a different life than what

is given to us biologically and environmentally and economically.

When God dominated their lives, they lived free. When man dominated their lives, they lived enslaved. I think

from the

a living community of faith.

Moses climbed back up the mountain to receive instructions dealing with the day-to-day routines that would support and develop a life responsive to God’s love and salvation, instructions regarding the routines of worship and relationship and community growth.

What they had yet to realize was that emptiness was a prerequisite to getting filled.

There are some people who are always looking for a religion that makes no demands and offers only rewards, a religion that dazzles and entertains, a religion in which there is no waiting and no emptiness. And they can usually find someone like Aaron who will help them make it up, some sort of golden calf religion.

We abandon the awesome silence of worship and fill the air with third-rate jingles. We get tired of participating in the strenuous but invigorating life of freedom and faith, and we regress to the old slave religion that reduces God to a decoration or amulet.

In Moses we see what is finally accomplished wholly and wondrously in Jesus Christ—that eternal act of atonement in which we are saved from the consequences of our sins and experience the marvels of mercy and grace.

when men and women of the Christian community are given responsibility for telling one another that God loves them, that he commanded every one of us to love one another—“as yourself”!—and when we assume responsibility for giving guidance and instruction in the life of love, we know we have no easy task. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a more formidable, seemingly impossible task. Because of the enormous importance love has for the way we live, it is important to get it right. We need to listen attentively to every conversation, read discerningly every book, if we hope ever to discern the truth and implications of the love word.

If love could be imposed on a community, it would at least be manageable. But the love that is first commanded in Leviticus has to be unforced, personal, and freely given by the members of the community. Ours must be lifetimes of accumulated acts of love—likely flawed, imperfect, juvenile, sputtery—but still love despite ourselves, loyal love.

Is it credible that God would put all these matters of eternal significance into the hands of such as we? Many, having taken a good look at what they see, shake their heads and think not. But this is the perpetual difficulty of living a life of love in the community of the beloved. We had better get used to it.

Every sentence in this elaborate pastoral exposition of the five-word command in Leviticus comes out more or less the same: God loves you. Christ shows you how love works. Now you love. Love, love, love, love. Just do it.

The dumb donkey was more alert to God than the famous prophet. Balaam, for all his fame as a spiritual powerhouse, was dumber than his donkey, his heart so full of himself and his plans that he couldn’t see the most obvious signs of God’s presence.

Balaam had a great reputation as a spiritual giant. He was suave and knowledgeable. But it was all external. His oratory was all in his mouth, not his heart. He had nothing inside. There was no substance to him, a hollow man.

Hilarity is integral to Christian pilgrimage. There is no question that being a Christian involves us in many sorrows, many struggles, sober hours of repentance and meditation. But there isn’t the slightest suggestion in Scripture that grim resignation is characteristic of Christian character.

suddenly knew why preaching is important. It develops an imagination adequate to embrace revolution.