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Antiques One of the longest running shows on PBS is Antiques Roadshow. In the U.S. it’s been running for more than 20 years straight; in the U.K., it’s been on the air for 42 years. People love it. A few items brought to these shows have been valued at more than a million dollars. Some were later purchased by museums. Some guests get exciting news. They gasp, they can’t believe, they say they had no idea. Some guests get their hopes dashed. The expert appraiser has to tell them their item is a genuine fake.
I remember one interview. A guest presented a tall chest which had been in his family, he said, for generations. The owner believed it had been made in the 1700’s. “Yes,” the appraiser said, “this is old. It was made by hand in Boston before the Revolutionary War.” The appraiser could name the workshop where it was made. All of the wood and the brass pulls were original. All good news. Then the ap- praiser asked this question: “Did you refinish this piece?”
“Yes,” came the reply. “It had scratches and marks and so we scraped off the old finish and put on a new finish.” Then came the bad news: “This would have been worth….” And the appraiser named a very high price, tens of thousands of dollars. “The marks you removed were part of the authenticity and history of the piece.” Because the owner had refinished it, had put on a shiny new finish, it was worth thousands less! Refinishing the piece diminished its value.
In contrast, on another episode, a woman presented a carved wood- en head of a horse, a remnant of an old carousel horse. She told the story: she had spotted it in a second hand store. It was covered in dark brown paint. Because she loved the lines of the piece, she bought it and very carefully, very slowly, inch by inch, removed that artificial layer of brown paint. The expert praised her. What was now visible was the original painted surface, crackles and all, just as the original artist had made it. She had not refinished but had restored the piece, removing what didn’t belong, preserving what was origi- nal. The appraiser asked her, “How long did it take you?” “Oh, it was slow,” she said, “done one inch at a time.” She took care, took her time, and she thought it was beautiful. Her restoration process did not diminish the value, but restored the value, because she had returned it to what the creator of the piece had made it to be.
Refinishing and Restoring There is a difference between refinishing and restoring. So what does God ask of us—a do-it-yourself refinish? Sometimes we think so. We imagine that to be part of the family of God, to be close to the Lord, we have to quickly cover up the scratches, the dents that have marked our years of living. Clean up your past, clean up your lan- guage, clean up your story—then God will accept you. I’ve refin- ished furniture. It can be in an attic one day and with some furious hours of hard work, it’s in my front hallway in just a few days. In other words, do a re-finish, scraping off the top layer and brushing on a shiny new one.
Charles Dickens once created a couple who were like that. They were ordinary people, but they wanted to fit into a higher social stra- ta. So they pretended. They presented themselves differently than they really were. They adopted manners and a way of speaking that they hoped would allow them into better society. Dickens named them Mr. and Mrs. Veneering. Their social manners were only a veneer, a thin artificially shiny layer, a do-it-yourself effort.
But this is not the gospel, not the good news. We are not required to re-finish ourselves. We all of us need more than a quick surface re- finish. We need a true, painstaking, deep-in-the-soul restoration.
2 And restoration has to be done by another. The glorious creation of Michelangelo, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, was restored in re- cent years. The work took years of purposeful planning, of expert knowledge. Then the work actually began and it took 14 years. It was slow, careful, inch-by-inch labor. The goal was not to make the dulled colors of the ceiling look prettier. The goal was to restore it to what the artist created, to remove what centuries of smoke and grime and damp had done. What would be found underneath? What did the artist create all those years ago?
Our Souls Need Restoring Our souls need restoring. Life is good but life is hard, the culture is demanding, toxic messages float through the air and stick to us, and we end up, like Michelangelo’s masterpiece, faded and flawed. Who would we be if we were again as God created us and intended us to be? A psalm all of us know talks about this: Psalm 23. “He restores my soul.”
he Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want; T 2he makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters; 3he restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. 4Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. 5Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies; thou anointest my head with oil, my cup overflows. 6Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
3 Psalm 23 is personal. There are no references to “we” or “us” or “they,” but only “me” and “my” and “You” and “I.” Restoration is personal, individual, one personal relationship with God at a time. I think of the woman who loved the carved wooden horse. How lov- ingly and carefully she worked. How intimately she knew every line and crevice of it as she restored it with love and care.
The “As Is“ Tag How much restoration do we need? I think of something else I’ve seen in antique stores and gift shops: The “AS IS” tag, a label placed on things that don’t work quite right, or have something missing or broken. We all come wearing an AS IS tag. The gospel does not ask us to quickly refinish ourselves, to clean up our act or our past or our presentation. It asks us to understand that we stand before God “as is” with our need, our recognition that we need restoring. And here’s what we find. Jesus came not to condemn the world but to save the world. John 3:17
As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his chil- dren, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. Psalm 103:12-14
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus Romans 8:1
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ… he chose us… before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. Ephesians 1:3-4
Recently I came across something I wrote several years ago as I was preparing for a weekend with prisoners in a state women’s prison:
4 Accused… Condemned… As I write this I am considering these words as theological language—abstract terms describing existen- tial realities and emotional states. But then I remember where I’ll be next weekend—at a state prison. For the women I’ll meet there, these terms will be far more actual. They stand accused; they are condemned. What is it like to live with these terms describing you? Do these words define them? Accused, condemned… Is that who they think they are? All they are? What do the scriptures we read today mean to them? Is it possible for them to believe, really be- lieve, that they can stand before God with no condemnation upon them? That Jesus came to the world NOT to condemn them, but to save them? Do they hear Jesus say to them, “Neither do I condemn you…”? Can they possibly believe such good news? Can I? “Holy and blameless in his sight.” How does that happen? Is this a Do-It-Yourself job? Is God offering us a self-help program? A self- improvement plan? Is this a refinishing job? Could anyone imagine refinishing themselves enough to be “holy and blameless” in the sight of God? Those women prisoners knew they needed more than to present a better finish to the world. They need a deep-down resto- ration, from the soul outward, and so do we.
How does God restore our souls? How does God change us, renew us, strip away what is false and artificial? Psalm 23 shows us. He leads me in green pastures, he leads beside still waters. I love this part. It’s peace. It’s provision. It’s beauty. It’s rest.
Is that what it means for God to restore my soul? Green pastures, still waters? Like you, I’ve known this psalm forever. But as I read it now, here’s what strikes me. Yes, God leads me into green pastures. Yes, into still waters. And, yes, into what is right and good in God’s eyes. But what about the dark valley? Does God lead me there too?
He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death …
5 Is the path through the valley one of the paths of righteousness in which God leads? I am not here by accident. If I’m in this hard place, frightening place, God is here with me and perhaps has led me here that he might restore my soul.
There are people today paying a high price to do the right thing, fac- ing a dark valley because they stand by their convictions. It’s true all over the world today, where being a Christian is downright danger- ous. Perhaps for you there is a dark valley of stress or struggle. Per- haps there is a dark valley of worry that asks you whether you truly can trust the Shepherd. What if part of restoring your soul is taking you through this dark valley so that at the end of it you know with deepening conviction that God is God, that God is good, that you belong to Him, that He will never leave you. What if the valley is necessary for your deepening trust. What if the hard time you face right now is one of His paths of righteousness. Why would a shep- herd lead a sheep into a valley filled with danger and death threats? Isn’t the only possible answer, “To get to some better place”?
In the first part of Psalm 23, the writer, King David, refers to God in the third person: “The Lord is my Shepherd. He makes me lie down... He leads me... He restores my soul.” Then it changes, and the Lord becomes not He but You. “I will fear no evil, for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me... You anoint my head with oil.” Why this change? Because David is facing the crucible of crisis.
The Crucible of Crisis Why this change? Why not say, ‘Even though I walk through the val- ley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for He is with me; His rod and His staff, they comfort me’? Why the more personal lan- guage of “you”? You are with me… Your rod and your staff…
The crises of life draw us closer to God. We are more prone to talk about God when we are in the green pasture, and more prone to cry out to God when we enter a shadowy valley.
6 Though you do not know the reasons for this valley in your journey, know that God is leading you, taking you to high country, where the sun is warm and the grass is lush. And Paul says in Romans 8, “We know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.” The valley isn’t good, but the Shepherd is. The dark valley has a purpose and its pur- pose is to restore your soul, to restore you.
God gives us a restored spirit. So we pray “renew a right spirit with- in me.” Restored from cynicism and hopelessness. He gives us re- stored thinking, so that despite the fog of confusion all about us, we can be confident about what good and evil, right and wrong look like, what are truthful words and which are lying words. God gives us restored hope in a cynical environment. He gives us confidence in God’s character and plans and purposes, and might and strength and wisdom and that he has all this planned. Nothing is out of his control. He will have the final say. All will be right, all with be right- ed, the bright lights of truth will shine and what is false and toxic and destructive will be revealed as such. He gives us restored cour- age to live our own lives and to engage the world; restored faith in a God who can be trusted; restored humility when the false edifice of pride and self-justification shows itself for what it is, a flimsy wall propped up; restored truth, when the thinking and rationalizations of the culture have gotten all over, us, like brown paint covering the beautiful carved carousel horse. Restored truth reminds us that we look higher and our view is longer.
Jesus came to restore us. It’s why he came. Here we are on the first Sunday of Advent, waiting together again to comprehend what the coming of Jesus was, what it means, what it is. The gospel writer Luke recorded one moment for us. Jesus walked into a local syna- gogue and then this happened:
… 7and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: 18“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim
7 freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” 20Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the syna- gogue were fastened on him. 21He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” Luke 4:17-21 (NIV)
The good news is that God is searching for us, calling us, choosing us. Now and then, in moments of honesty, we know our own condi- tion. We know we haven’t made it this many years without some dings and dents and defects. The culture we’ve moved through has covered us in brown paint. We need more than a quick re-finish. We need more than a cleaned-up, shiny new finish laid down on top. We need the loving, careful, patient restoration of a craftsman, someone who knows who we were truly created to be. We need someone to choose us, even though we are in AS IS condition. It’s a deeply per- sonal process, unique to each of us, just the way an art restorer has to approach each masterpiece with a unique plan for restoration.
The Antiques Roadshow. No matter what they present, no matter what condition it is in, every guest has the same question: “What is it worth?” Over the years, a few objects have been valued at more than a million dollars. A handful of them were purchased by museums. I can’t personally relate to those rare pieces. But I do relate to the carved wooden horse. There it sat on a dusty shelf of a second-hand store, covered in brown paint. Someone noticed it, saw its value, paid a price for it, took it home, and began the slow work of restoring it to the beauty the artist had intended. The Bible says this to us: “You were bought with a price…” You are a treasure found, a treasure la- beled “as is,” needing work to restore it. That is God’s work in me and in you. He is restoring you with green pastures, with still waters, and through dark valleys, too. The Restorer is at work.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. The Lord is my shepherd—and that’s all I want.
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