The First Fact of Christian Spirituality

When our youngest was in seventh grade at Buena Vista Adventist School, Karin got a phone call. “Mom, there’s this dog here at school that I think somebody must have dumped. It’s been sitting outside under a bush near the driveway entrance. It watches all the cars that come it. It doesn’t act afraid of people. It lets students pet it, but it’s not really interested in them. Instead it just watches the cars. I think we should take it home.”

So Karin put a dog crate in the back of her car when she went to pick Shelley up from school. The dog was still under the same bush. It did not protest as Karin checked her over but it showed no interest in her. No collar. No tags. And every time a car approached it perked up.

Karin and Shelley got the dog into the car and brought her home. They put up posters and advertised on Craig’s list. Watched the lost and found ads in the newspaper. Nothing.

It was clear the dog had lived in an abusive environment. If I spoke to her the least sharply, she would cower and pee on the floor. If I picked up the broom she would hide.

That was seven years ago. Now she owns the place. Sleeps in the bedroom. Naps on the couch when no one is looking. And when I speak to her sharply, she looks at me with fearless confidence. Saved.

Three years ago Karin and Bonnie and a neighbor decided to walk through the horse yard at the Enumclaw horse auction. Bonnie spotted two matching Halflinger horses. They had no business being there. This an end of the road auction. But these were not end of the road horses. Bonnie went and found the owner and asked why on earth she had brought the horses here. The lady explained she had tried to sell them but had not found any buyers. She couldn’t keep the horses, so in desperation, she brought them here. Bonnie explained there were much better ways to find a good home for these horses and went with her to the office to try to retrieve the horses. But since the woman had already signed the contract there was nothing to be done.

So Bonnie went to the auction. Bid on the horses and bought them.

They were untrained. Unsafe to ride. Bonnie trained Bert and sold him. She paid a professional trainer to work with AJ.

A few months after she sold Bert she got a call from his new owner. The woman didn’t know what to do with the horse. She couldn’t keep him any more. Bonnie bought the horse back even though she had no legal obligation to do so. Brought him home and retrained him.

Today two Halflingers live at our house, eating good hay. Going for rides in the forest east of Enumclaw, basking in the love that all animals enjoy at Berry Creek Farm. Saved.

These first two stories are not all that surprising. Karin and Bonnie are official, certified animal lovers. They are famous for their love and skill with animals.


A few weeks ago we had some really cold weather. Single digits. For western Washington, that’s cold. One morning I was outside early. I heard a dog barking. It lives in a chain link kennel in the backyard of a house that borders our neighbor’s pasture.

The dog does not get much attention as far as we can tell. And sometimes it barks more than I like, but on this day it was barking with more intensity and duration than usual. Because the weather was so cold, I thought maybe it needed some extra food. So I took a scoop of our dog food walked across the neighbors pasture and tossed the food piece by piece over the fence into its kennel. It cowered in the corner while I was throwing the food. After tossing the food into its pen I left so it could eat in peace.

For about half an hour the dog was quiet. I congratulated myself.

Then the dog started barking again. Urgently. Insistently.

Now what? Something was wrong. Karin and Bonnie were asleep. Probably the neighbor was asleep. It was very early Sunday morning. Somebody had to do something.

I walked back across our neighbor’s pasture to see what I could see. When the temperatures are in the teens and single digits it’s a constant struggle to keep the animals supplied with liquid water. Horse and cow troughs, dog and cat dishes, chicken waterers–everything freezes. All I could see in this dog’s kennel was a frozen-over three gallon tub. I tried to break the ice by poking a steel fence post through the two fences. The tub was frozen solid.

Back to our barn. I found a beat-up old bucket. Filled another bucket with warm water and headed back to my barking neighbor. I tossed the old bucket over the fence. Used a stick to get it upright. Then threaded a short length of hose through the two fences and poured a gallon or two of warm water through the hose into the bucket inside his kennel.

No more barking the rest of the day. Salvation.



In today’s sermon I want to lay the foundation for a series on the fundamentals of Christian spiritual life. These animal stories illustrate the most important of all spiritual principles: Salvation is first of all a divine activity, a divine intention. It is not primarily a human accomplishment or even a human experience.

Gypsy, the dog, Bert and AJ, the horses and the neighbor’s pit bull came at salvation by very different approaches.

Gypsy did not bark. In fact, she lived at our house for months before she was comfortable enough to bark. She just sat under the bush and looked lost and worried.

Burt and AJ just stood in their pens at the auction looking out of place.

The neighbor’s dog barked its head off (which I do not recommend to dogs that are trying to awaken my sympathetic interest).

The common thread in these stories is the commitment to animal salvation that characterizes Berry Creek Farm. This commitment to animal salvation is so strong that when Karin and Bonnie are not around, I do it!!!!

It something like that with God and human salvation. When you listen to people tell their stories there is a lot of variety. What is common is the ultimate realization of God’s love, God’s care, God’s good intentions.

The collection of stories in Luke 15 that illustrates this.

To help us understand the setting of these stories let’s first notice the beginning of Luke 14. “One Sabbath, Jesus went to eat in the house of a prominent Pharisee . . .” Jesus spent time hanging out with good people, with people of high religious and social standing.

The next chapter also features Jesus going to dinner. This time he’s eating with the owner of a local adult bookstore and some of the owner’s hard-smoking, hard-drinking friends. Before that he had had lunch with the head of a local chapter of a national gay rights organization and the owner of an abortion clinic.

The Pharisees cannot believe this. How can Jesus treat these people with same courtesy that he shows to the religious leaders? How can he hang out with them as though they are normal people? What gives?

Jesus answers their challenge with three stories.

First. There was a shepherd who had 100 sheep. One night when he brings his flock into the pen, he discovers one is missing. He shuts the 99 into the pen then heads off into the hills to find the lost sheep. When he finally finds the sheep at 2 a.m., he hoists it onto his shoulders and carries it home. When he gets home he wakes up the neighbors with his shouting. “I found it! I found it!” He insists they all come over and celebrate with him.


Second story. A woman has ten coins. These coins are her dowry. The treasure her father gave her when she got married. This is her sole wealth. When she loses one, it’s a big deal.

I don’t know of anything in our culture that quite compares to this so we have to use our imaginations and step into her culture to appreciate the story. She has no way of replacing the coin. She has no income. And, as a woman in that society, no right to any income. These coins were a financial treasure and more than that, they symbolized the wealth and dignity of her father’s family.

One coin is lost. She empties her house to find it. After carrying everything in the small house outside, she sweeps the place. Finally she finds it. She’s ecstatic. She throws a party, insists her neighbors and friends help her celebrate her good fortune.

Third story.

There is a father and two sons. The younger son says to his dad. “Look you’re going to die some day and leave me an inheritance. What about giving to me now?”

It was a shocking insult, but surprisingly the dad hands over the money. It’s not the entire estate. It’s not even half the estate. The majority of the estate is kept for the older son. Still it is enough for the younger son to get out of town, make to a distant city and set himself up in a fine apartment with fine friends and all the other things that surplus cash can provide.

The money runs out. His luck runs out. There is a famine. The younger son finds himself–a Jew–feeding pigs, so hungry he’s tempted to eat the pig feed.

Eventually, he thinks. Wait a minute, the servants in my dad’s house are a lot better off than I am here. I’ll go home and see if Dad will hire me.

He heads home. Before he reaches the front door, his dad is out the door running down the driveway.

Dad embraces the son. Brushes aside his stammered apologies and weak attempts to present himself as a job applicant.

He calls for the servants to bring a robe to cover his son’s rags. Then he sends word to his neighbors and friends, come rejoice with me, my son has come home.

The older son is miffed. “My whole life, I’ve slaved away for you. And you never gave me so much as a birthday party. Here this scoundrel, this sorry excuse of a man comes home after wasting his entire inheritance and you throw a party! What’s up with that?”

The story ends with two statements by the Father to the dutiful older son. First the father assures his annoyed, aggrieved older son, “Look, everything I have is yours. You can party any time you want.”

Then he says, “Your brother was lost and is found. He was dead. Now he’s alive. How could I help but celebrate. Come join the party.”

Will the dutiful son enter the Father’s joy? The story doesn’t say. And in the largest sense it doesn’t matter.

In each of these stories, the main character is the searcher, not the lost one. It is the shepherd, the wife, the father. There is no question, no ambiguity about the protagonist’s intention.

In the first two stories it is only the will of the main character that matters. The sheep is not going to find its way home. When the shepherd finds the sheep he is not going to ask the sheep if it wants to come home. He’s simply going to grab it, hoist it on his shoulder and traipse off toward home.

The same with the coin. The coin does nothing in the story. This story is about the housewife and her determined searching and finding. It is her will that matters. And it is resolute, unswerving. She is going to find that coin. Period. No matter what it takes.

In these two stories there is no question, none at all, about the outcome. The shepherd finds. The wife finds.

In the final story the main character is not omnipotent. We don’t know how the story is going to turn out because the sons are free. However, the story is absolutely clear about what the Father wants: He wants his sons home--both of them.

This is the first, most important spiritual fact. It is more fundamental than any questions about the nature of faith, the role of obedience, the call to love. The first fact, the first principle of Christian spiritual life is this: The Father himself loves you.

If that metaphor doesn’t work for you, the Bible offers multiple others:

The mother herself loves you.
The groom himself loves you.
The hen is calling her chicks.
Your friend is inviting you to share dinner with him.
The teacher is inviting himself to your house.

All of these metaphors attempt to communicate the same truth: God loves you. God wants your company. God has sweet intentions for you.



When Shelley brought a stray cat home last spring for Mom to take care of, Karin complained. Karin has been complaining about this cat for six months. She did not want another cat in the house. We have enough already.

But what did Karin do? Took the cat to the vet. Spent money and time on the cat. What did Bonnie do? Trained the cat so it would more easily fit into someone else’s home.

I don’t mean to be sacrilegious. It’s only an illustration. But let me put it this way. God can’t help it. Even if his house was full of rescued sinners, even if all the rooms were taken, even if all the cat boxes were in use, God would make room. God would welcome you. And God’s intention to do humans is so powerful it permeates the lives of all the celestial beings. Angels spend their time helping people in a way that is indistinguishable from God’s own activities.

You don’t have to come up with some strategy to persuade God to take you in. Do what comes naturally. Bark your fool head off. Sit under a bush and look desperate and worried. Stand in the pen at the auction and look out of place. God is passing by. He will notice. He will save you.

Because that’s who he is.

That is the first fact of Christian spirituality.