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| Testiphony Philip Berg, Narkis Street Congregation January 3, 2004 Good Morning, I am going to read this, and my prayer is that I can make the words breathe. Putting away the paper and just talking is always the best. But I would tend to ramble. I trust that the reading is not stilted. I am going to share my life with you and my hope is that it will touch at least one other life here this morning. At the risk of alienating at least half of you I have to admit that I have never really liked church. I’m a pretty likable guy and I get along with most everyone in church but I have never liked the structure of church. Lots of people in a closed place make me somewhat uncomfortable. Now that I have small children, I am having even a harder time enjoying it. It is difficult to concentrate on anything except on trying to keep some semblance of quiet. The Parasha [Narkis Street Congregation’s weekly Hebrew reading from the Bible] has become my favorite time of the service, since I know that the kids will be dismissed soon after and I will be able to sit back and relax a bit. I don’t know how to pinpoint the exact reasons why I have this negative attitude towards church. Perhaps it began very early. My parents were from a Plymouth Brethren background. Growing up, there was nothing more boring or dead than a Plymouth Brethren meeting. If you don’t know anything about the Plymouth Brethren you could compare them to something like a Quaker church. There is total silence until the Spirit moves for a short period and then it becomes very quiet again. Today, as an adult, I can appreciate a lot of the distinctives of the Plymouth Brethren assemblies, but as a child it was not an exciting place to be. As I got older, I still had a bit of a difficult time in church. Socializing has never been my forte, so staying at home and listening to a worship tape followed by a sermon on tape would have been something more to my liking. John Eldredge in his book, Wild at Heart, talks about “posers”. Perhaps you will recognize yourself or someone you know as he describes this phenomenon. Dave runs into Bob in the church lobby. Both are wearing their happy faces, though neither is happy at all. “Hey, Bob, how are ya?” Bob is actually furious at his wife and ready to leave her but he says, “Great, just great, Dave. The Lord is good!!” Dave on the other hand, hasn’t believed in the goodness of God for years, ever since his daughter was killed. “Yep- God is good, all the time. I’m just so glad to be here, praising the Lord.” “Me too. Well I’ll be praying for you!!” (I would love to see a tally of the number of prayers actually prayed against the number of prayers promised. I bet it is about one in a thousand.) “And I will be praying for you too. Well, gotta go- You take care.” “Take care” is our way of saying, “I am done with this conversation and I want to get out of here but I don’t want to appear rude so I’ll say something that sounds meaningful and caring.” But in truth Dave doesn’t give a rip about Bob. You know this is a bit embarrassing to admit, but Martha and I sometimes have our worse verbal fights on the way from HaNeviim Street to Narkis on Saturday mornings. Getting ready for church has always been a pressured time for any family with lots of kids. Or least as far back as when I was a kid a half of a century ago. My Dad is the ultimate control freak. Everything from his desk to his family was to be decent and in order. How he got us six kids to church each Sunday without losing it is a mystery. Martha has a great childhood memory of her family getting ready for church. Martha’s Mom would be in the house trying to get her five little girls ready and Dad would be out in the family car beeping the horn every 15 seconds over and over and over. But let me make this a bit more personal. Martha and I leave the house feeling kind of good—it looks like we got everyone ready early and we may even make it to church on time. Somewhere around Zion Square there is a small difference of opinion on some matter. For the life of me I can’t figure out how these things start, but by the time we get to King George the small difference of opinion has grown into something of life and death proportions. I would like to call it “a disagreement”—it sounds more civilized, but actually things are getting a bit ugly. Now we have from King George St. until we get to the top of Narkis to get our act together. Because when I walk through the door of the church I want to be able to say “Hey Bob, how ya doing—Praise the Lord!” Well, with this amount of church baggage, it seems a bit ironic that I am even standing at this pulpit this morning. Having said all the above, I want to make it clear that I am eternally grateful for the way the church functions outside the walls of the church building. The church family here at Narkis has been an unbelievable support to us over the years. There are lots of incidences, but the latest is the support we received after the birth of our daughter Sara three months ago. Without the kindnesses and practical support we received from so many of you here, Martha and I do not see how we would have survived. So thank you, all of you, very much. Now back to the sermon. I was trying to calculate how many sermons I have heard in my life time. I am 53 years old. I was hearing sermons beginning in my mother’s womb. I was from the old school of Christian families that went to church Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night. Add to that the summer camps and conferences where you hear several speakers every day and I think that I can safely say that I have heard over 3,000 sermons. How many can I remember? That is an interesting question, because I usually can’t remember last week’s sermon let alone ones from years gone by. But you know I have been thinking for some time now, that perhaps it is not so important what will be said in the next half hour but rather what went on in my life for the past 144 hours- since last Shabbat. I have thought for some time now that what would be a truly memorable sermon would be for me to come up to the pulpit, turn down the lights and start up a videotape presentation of my life for the past six days. A totally, impromptu film with no editing. That would be the truest message that Philip Berg could bring you this morning. That would be me with all my strengths, weaknesses and absolute failures exposed. Instead, what you are getting is carefully chosen words on the printed page, carefully edited to portray myself in the best possible light. This is only natural. But the true picture of the lives behind the words being preached from pulpits all around the globe this morning and tomorrow morning would be pretty ugly. And actually would be a pretty sad commentary on the state of the church. Speaking from personal experience over the last several days,
I can say that the picture is rather grim. You know when I was
single (and I was single for a long time), I had a much higher
estimation of myself. There is nothing like getting married and
having children to blow your cover as one who saw himself as a
quiet and self-controlled individual. Oh, by the way, here is some advice for you younger single guys. As much as possible keep the words to a minimum. Not all, but many women are impressed and attracted to quiet guys. There is a certain mystique to being quiet. The woman wonders what you are thinking about. It may be absolutely nothing but they do not know that and it adds to the wonder. I was honestly clueless to this phenomenon while in high school and till much later on. In fact, I was pretty much clueless about girls in general until quite late. But believe me here—being a man of few words will always stand you in good stead. You will be thought of as a wise person whether you are or not. In high school I was elected class president year after year on the platform of quietness. As a junior I even took my name off the ballot but still won. Anyway, back to my being married and having children and having my cover being blown. This is scary stuff. Before being married and having children I thought that I had things pretty much together. I was a 45 years old. I considered myself a mature 3rd culture kid. Leaving home to go to boarding school for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade had toughened me up. I had served in Vietnam. I had traveled the world for many years gaining an education not to be found in books. Then at the age of 45, I was thrown for a loop, because ugly things were being exposed for the first time in my life. Let me be clear here. This is not the classic testimony that says, “I used to be a rotten person many years ago but then the Lord changed my life and I lived happily ever after. The truth is, that yes, the Lord did change my life in a powerful way when I was 18 years old, but I am still struggling with this issue of being exposed as well as this thing called boredom. John Eldredge talks about walking into churches today and what one sees are men who look bored and women who look tired. Please resist the temptation to start looking right and left to see if this is true. This of course is not meant to be true all across the church spectrum. Maybe it does not apply to you, but I can certainly relate to it. I am bored. There is something very wrong here. I am claiming to serve the living God of the universe and I am bored. There is definitely a disconnect here. I can testify this morning that there have been periods in my life where I was genuinely excited about being a small part of God’s magnificent plan for the world. But then I get lazy and spend no time in the Word—the only way to keep focused on how big my God is. I have gotten to the point of thinking that my life is so boring, that I would begin to make up stories to make my life look more exciting and dramatic than it really was. I have traveled a lot over the years—probably through 70-80 countries. When I would tell people this, they were usually quite impressed. After awhile, I started to think that if they were impressed with 70-80 countries, then they would be even more impressed with 90-100. I stopped there because I was getting close to the total number of countries in the entire world. Another thing that I tried to beef up was my weak sounding testimony. When I was dating Martha, I shared my testimony with her and pretty much on the spot I embellished it beyond recognition. She of course did not know that. I mean I really laid it on thick. I talked about how I had committed my life to the Lord at 18 years of age but after many years of wandering the Lord met me in a miraculous way on a hillside outside of Tiberias overlooking the Sea of Galilee. I told her I had taken my lunch up there and then I had fallen asleep for a period of time. I then was awakened to see a hand being extended to me, and I saw a nail print and then I heard a voice saying “Philip, I have engraved you on the palm of my hand, I have bought you with a price, and you are mine.” Martha was quite amazed with this testimony. When her father came to visit us in Israel to check out a possible future son-in-law, Martha asked me to share my “amazing” story with him. I told it once again adding a few more twists. Martha’s Dad was also impressed with my testimony, and I think that he saw me as a great spiritual leader who would be a fine match for his daughter. I returned to the US a few years later and married Martha. By this time all of Martha’s sisters and their husbands knew my testimony and they were all quite impressed. A short time later, Martha’s Dad asked me to share my testimony at their church. It was only at this point that something started to knock on the door of my conscience. I battled with the question in my mind back and forth. Could I get up in front of this whole church and continue the lie? I finally called my father-in-law and confessed to him that my testimony was a total fabrication. The only problem was that it had been announced the previous Sunday that “Philip from Israel” was going to share an amazing testimony of how God met him in a powerful way in the Galilee. Well, it was obvious to me that it was pay up time. That Sunday, I got up and told the whole congregation that the testimony that my father-in-law wanted me to share was in fact, a total lie. It never happened. There was total silence in the sanctuary and I went to sit down. Afterwards, different ones came up to me and told me that what I had done was a brave thing. On the other hand, Martha’s sisters have never let me live it down. To this day they refer to my testimony as a “testiphony”. It keeps me in my place and is a good reminder. At this point in time, Martha knows me all too well for me to try and tell tall-tales. After seven years she can tell by even the most subtle body language what emotion I am feeling even before I know it. This used to be a bit intimidating, but now, I actually feel secure to be known this well. Actually, it is a secure feeling because I am known this well and I am still loved. Unconditional love is a beautiful thing—from the Lord, from your spouse, from anyone. To back up for a minute, that walk from my seat in the church to the pulpit to confess my “testiphony” was one of the more difficult things that I have done. Why? Because I was going to expose myself in front of a very large group of people just how much of a loser I was. John Eldredge says that a man’s greatest fear is that of being exposed, to be discovered as an imposter and not really a man. I don’t know if this rings true with any of you men out there, but this fear of exposure is the exact thing that kept me from getting married until quite late. I was positive that no matter who I married that after a few months I would be exposed. Not as a particular bad person or a jerk, but as a boring person. I was sure that my wife would find me boring, and then because we were Christians and we would not even consider divorce, we would be doomed to a life of mutual boredom. Thankfully, I broke through that mindset. Marrying Martha has been the very best thing that has happened to me. I said that seven and a half years ago and I tell her that often. This fear of exposure can impact every area of one’s life. I remember coming back to the US from Vietnam and feeling superior to my peers in a strange sort of way. I had gone off to war as a 19 year-old kid, and I was coming home a man. Very soon, however, it became clear that being a Vietnam vet was not a particularly honorable thing. So very quickly I learned never to volunteer that information. It was something I did not like to be exposed because I would receive strange looks out of the corner of people’s eyes. For years I lived in fear that my academic abilities would be exposed for being less than they appeared on the surface. My three older brothers had gone on before me and received their BA and MA degrees. I had never seen myself as a particularly good student. But it was a given that I would follow in my brothers footsteps. Well, it took me 20 years to get my BA and then another seven years to get my MA. It is not that I studied all those years it is just that I had a difficult time focusing on any one thing. My oldest brother writes poetry and short stories and he is very talented. Once many years ago my brother sent me a poem that he had written, and he asked me to critique it. I wanted to appear intelligent in my brother’s eyes, so I went to a friend who was in the English Department at the University of Washington and passed the poem off as mine. I asked this friend if he would give me some feedback on the poem. I then brought it to my brother who was thankful and impressed with my insight. I guess what the Lord is convicting me of this morning is that I am not a man of truth. I want to change that. I don’t want to be an imposter. I don’t want to be a “poser”. “Hey how’s it going bro!!!” I would like to be one of those of whom it is said “what you see is what you get.” No pretence, no façade. A quick look through a concordance shows Jesus saying over and over hundreds of times “I tell you the truth.” I want to be one who tells the truth. The truth is so refreshing. I love one of Bob Dylan’s quotes shortly after he was born again. He was getting into some serious bible study and learning of Christ’s second coming in judgment. He was relating some of the things he was learning to a friend and he said, “You know, Jesus is coming back and he is pissed.” Certainly sacrilegious to most of evangelical Christianity but these are the truest of words spoken from the mouth of a new believer who didn’t have the polite language worked into his daily life quite yet. Just a side note here. I think that there is something about
being raised in a very conservative evangelical home, school and
church that makes one kind of like to hear someone swear on occasion.
I am not saying that that is a good thing; it is just a fact.
I want to be free of the ugliness of talking behind someone’s back. Early on in my life I didn’t talk much, so I didn’t talk about others at all. Now, I talk more and in many words there is transgression. So I have this to be set free of. I want to be set free of trying to be more than I am or conversely denigrating myself. I want to be set free of impatience in dealing with my children. During these very important formative years while I am still their hero I want to give them my best. I want to be set free from selfishness in my relationship with my wife Martha. Selfishness causes a break in relationship more than anything I know. May we all leave this place this morning desiring the truth in every corner of our lives. Thank you for the opportunity to share. |
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