As I listen to a sermon, my thoughts will sometimes lead me to think about myself. A memory will be stirred, and I will spend some time in the place and time that has come to center stage again. Other times, I'll be led deeper into one of the Scriptures. "Wow", I'll think, "that piece of text from the Bible is just like something I experienced the other day!" OK, I'll admit it - I suppose my attention drifts to something else pretty often! But whether I'm led by the Lord or not, whether I am directed or whether I am drifting, something begins to happen when I hear a sermon. It is good to pay attention to what is happening while we listen to sermons.
This is particularly the case for a sermon about how God speaks to us through difficult people. Not only those who make our lives difficult at their own fault, but those who criticize us and are correct in doing so! Ouch! As Kevin spoke about these people, I began to think of memories that I instinctively "run" from. That is, my mind gets as far away from there as possible!
But the sermon was not intended to leave me there with those voices and reliving the pain. It was intended to help me hear God's word of grace in them so I could grow. Kevin's example of Abraham Lincoln and his adversary-turned-advisor Edwin Stanton was a great encouragement to me. Throughout Stanton's life, as a leader and as Lincoln's secretary of war, he was a critic of Lincoln. But Lincoln respected him. He didn't "run" from him. He thought he could benefit from such criticism. As such, we remember Lincoln, a man who among many other strengths, had the gift of being able to receive criticism well.
How was this gracious to me? It was gracious because the worst thing that can happen is that I would run from pain, difficult questions, the truth, and criticism in search of God. This is because I won't find God there. God has come to me in Jesus Christ through his cross. It is there that I meet God. And the cross is the place where my sin is paid for, the place where God's son died for me, the place where my idea that I can save myself, be admirable, noble, and great all by myself is exposed as a big, fat lie. Dorothy Sayers wrote, "God was executed by people painfully like us, in a society very similar to our own - in the over-ripeness of the most splendid and sophisticated Empire the world has ever seen." The cross is so much worse than criticism. Even if we begin to think about what Jesus went through on the cross, we can't help but admit how repugnant and unpleasant it would be. If I can't even face criticism - good, godly, soul-refining criticism, as from a loving parent - how on earth can I face the cross? And here's the grace. God already faced it. Instead of the cross that would finally punish sin and death in me, I freely receive the reputation and character of Jesus given to me. Instead of the curse, we receive glory. Instead of condemnation, we are lifted up into eternal favor.
What a stunning honor we have received from God! This is what gives Christians the courage to face their toughest criticism with humility, grace, and humor. It is because they have been given Christ's eternal life in spite of even worse things only they know about themselves!
Reflection Questions:
1) Did any painful memories of criticism surface during the sermon?
2) What gives these memories their painful edge - the person who said it? the way it was said? or perhaps you desperately hoped it wasn't true?
3) When we become Christians, we are "born again", made new in Christ. This means we receive Christ's unblemished character, totally undeserved on our part. How might this give you strength to face criticism with courage?
Monday, March 18, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Reflection on "A Dishonest Manager" (March 10 Message)
As Kevin has preached these past several weeks, the texts don't seem to get any easier. We looked at how God comes to us in pain last week - "Don't Waste Your Suffering". And two days ago, we read Jesus' parable of the dishonest manager, in which Jesus tells a story of a master who fires his dishonest manager, but then professes admiration of him after the manager cuts several deals which cheat the master out of up to half of what people actually owe him. He praises the guy. He praises him for being shrewd, but what about his dishonesty? Did Jesus really tell that story?...
I find it interesting to look back at the series title - "How God Comes to Us". Truth, Suffering, Shrewdness. It is interesting because I bet if I asked the average person how God comes to them, they would tell me about the beach, their kids, the mountains, acts of random kindness - you know, things everybody likes. I believe God comes to me in those things too. But it challenges me to think how God comes to me in these other ways.
I feel delight in a kind person, and I think "Surely if I feel this way, then how does God feel?" I magnify my own emotions and feelings and think, "That must be what God is like." I watch a sunrise out my window early in the morning or I look at a flower with perfect symmetry and dazzling purple splashed across it and I think, "God made that!" I think these wonderful things make me feel close to God. But if someone asked God, "when did you feel close to Chris?", I somehow doubt that my nice thoughts would be able to compete with meaningful action. "I felt close to Chris when he faced the truth...and then when he called out to me and relied on me entirely when he saw how people suffer around the world and in his town...and when he took steps to pursue excellence in what he does so that people would think of me when they see him." I think God would feel close to me in these ways.
Sometimes, my wife and I ask each other, "When did you feel close to God" or "What was the best part of your day?" before we go to sleep. Often, I get to tell her that something she did or said made me feel close to God. If it really was some other moment, sometimes I'll cheat and use two so she knows I was thankful for her...just being honest! But I sometimes feel as though I honestly was closest to God when something really difficult happened that made me turn to him. That always surprises me a little. Shouldn't I feel closest to God in the good times?
But God didn't come into the world to congratulate us on how well we were doing. He came to save us from eternal peril and to make a way to new life. That way is a person. Through Jesus Christ, we know that God loves us because he gave his Son to give his life for us. To know him is pure joy, but it is also humbling because he becomes our Lord, and this means we aren't Lord. We may be most in key with the Lord when we feel closest to him in the hardest parts of our day.
Reflection Questions:
1) What was the highlight of your day?
2) Now, when did you feel closest to God today? And when do you think God felt closest to you?
I find it interesting to look back at the series title - "How God Comes to Us". Truth, Suffering, Shrewdness. It is interesting because I bet if I asked the average person how God comes to them, they would tell me about the beach, their kids, the mountains, acts of random kindness - you know, things everybody likes. I believe God comes to me in those things too. But it challenges me to think how God comes to me in these other ways.
I feel delight in a kind person, and I think "Surely if I feel this way, then how does God feel?" I magnify my own emotions and feelings and think, "That must be what God is like." I watch a sunrise out my window early in the morning or I look at a flower with perfect symmetry and dazzling purple splashed across it and I think, "God made that!" I think these wonderful things make me feel close to God. But if someone asked God, "when did you feel close to Chris?", I somehow doubt that my nice thoughts would be able to compete with meaningful action. "I felt close to Chris when he faced the truth...and then when he called out to me and relied on me entirely when he saw how people suffer around the world and in his town...and when he took steps to pursue excellence in what he does so that people would think of me when they see him." I think God would feel close to me in these ways.
Sometimes, my wife and I ask each other, "When did you feel close to God" or "What was the best part of your day?" before we go to sleep. Often, I get to tell her that something she did or said made me feel close to God. If it really was some other moment, sometimes I'll cheat and use two so she knows I was thankful for her...just being honest! But I sometimes feel as though I honestly was closest to God when something really difficult happened that made me turn to him. That always surprises me a little. Shouldn't I feel closest to God in the good times?
But God didn't come into the world to congratulate us on how well we were doing. He came to save us from eternal peril and to make a way to new life. That way is a person. Through Jesus Christ, we know that God loves us because he gave his Son to give his life for us. To know him is pure joy, but it is also humbling because he becomes our Lord, and this means we aren't Lord. We may be most in key with the Lord when we feel closest to him in the hardest parts of our day.
Reflection Questions:
1) What was the highlight of your day?
2) Now, when did you feel closest to God today? And when do you think God felt closest to you?
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Reflection on "Can You Handle the Truth?" (February 24 message)
"You can't handle the truth!" The colonel in A Few Good Men yells this line as though the truth could absolutely squash this pesky prosecuting attorney. But the truth he unveils - about his compliance in the wrongful death of two young men - squashes him instead. I wonder what he was thinking. Did he confuse his own high ranking with that of the judge? Did he think that higher rank and more experience make us more qualified to handle condemning truth? Either way, for all he claimed to know about truth, it proved to be way more than even he could handle. Poor Jack.
Poor us too. The bad news for him is hardly any better for us. Truth is one of those imposing words. It will show me what I'm made of, but not in a way that will make me better. R.R. Reno is a rock-climber and a theology professor. In an essay about rock climbing, he shares about climbing down a steep rock face. The great terror facing him and his friend is described as the bergschrund, a yawning crevasse at the base of a mountain. "The glacier below moaned like a despairing prisoner kept in the deepest dungeon of a distant fortress. A quite real chunk of ice broke free a couple hundred feet to our right and dropped with a roar into the gaping moat below...as I leaned out and went over the edge I could see into the dark depths of the bergschrund. It was filled with the debris of ice blocks that had avalanched from above." (75) Truth seems to me like bergschrund. Merciless. You fall into its arms and it will not catch you. In fact, the faster you fall into it, the more messed up you'll be. Shattered on the rocks of the truth.
Who can handle truth? Who is good enough to deal it out to the rest of us? In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, a list was made of prominent political men for whom the pursuit of truth and right and wrong in politics did not protect them from failures of truth within their own marriages. It was a long list. Various reports surrounding abuse scandals in general and specifically with the Scottish cardinal's resignation this week remind us that people are good at keeping one another's secrets. It is no wonder that Pilate in bewilderment asked Jesus, "what is truth?" What else is it, indeed, than a yawning pit we try our best to avoid?
Of course, this is no secret to the Scriptures. "If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?" (Psalm 130:3) But there is a humility here that is not terrified of being broken by the truth. What if we didn't hate the truth and try our best to avoid it, but delighted to make it known? Jesus says, "Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." I'll be the first to admit that I'm scared to face the truth. OK, actually that's a lie. Maybe I'd be the third or fourth person to admit that. I'd much prefer a few people to admit that before I step forward to admit it. But if Christians pretend they are anything other than wretched sinners saved only by the mercy and grace of God, the true love of God is not being shown. What is being communicated is still a works-based, "try and pull it together" confidence in ourselves, and not in God. Instead, we can pray, "Tell me the truth, God. Tell me the truth about my sin, how deep and wide it is. Don't hide any of it from me. But show me how enormous the gospel is, how it swallows up evil and death and makes all things new. Tell me the truth about both."
Frankly, it isn't an easy prayer to pray, is it? Truth hurts. But the good news is that Christ knows it hurts. He was in the garden the night before he died, praying that there might be some other way humanity could be redeemed other than the cross. And he gladly went and finished it all, claiming God's victory over all sin and evil. He handled the truth that we couldn't. He fell into the yawning crevasse - the bergschrund - that would have broken us instead. And if we love Jesus for doing this for us, he will lead us beyond whatever hard truths we have to face in this world - whether it is about our health, relationships, manners, habits, or anything else. They don't have to cripple us anymore. The truth has been handled. The judge himself has taken our sentence for us. Nothing remains but to pledge our love and devotion to Christ - and in doing so we leap high over every dark bergschrund that remains beneath us.
1) When was a time that the truth made you so happy you could rejoice? When was a time when you wished the truth wasn't really true?
2) Blaise Pascal once said, "unless we love the truth, we cannot know it." How do you think loving the truth helps us to actually know it?
3) What is something 'true' you could tell somebody that would absolutely make their day?
Poor us too. The bad news for him is hardly any better for us. Truth is one of those imposing words. It will show me what I'm made of, but not in a way that will make me better. R.R. Reno is a rock-climber and a theology professor. In an essay about rock climbing, he shares about climbing down a steep rock face. The great terror facing him and his friend is described as the bergschrund, a yawning crevasse at the base of a mountain. "The glacier below moaned like a despairing prisoner kept in the deepest dungeon of a distant fortress. A quite real chunk of ice broke free a couple hundred feet to our right and dropped with a roar into the gaping moat below...as I leaned out and went over the edge I could see into the dark depths of the bergschrund. It was filled with the debris of ice blocks that had avalanched from above." (75) Truth seems to me like bergschrund. Merciless. You fall into its arms and it will not catch you. In fact, the faster you fall into it, the more messed up you'll be. Shattered on the rocks of the truth.
Who can handle truth? Who is good enough to deal it out to the rest of us? In an op-ed piece in the New York Times, a list was made of prominent political men for whom the pursuit of truth and right and wrong in politics did not protect them from failures of truth within their own marriages. It was a long list. Various reports surrounding abuse scandals in general and specifically with the Scottish cardinal's resignation this week remind us that people are good at keeping one another's secrets. It is no wonder that Pilate in bewilderment asked Jesus, "what is truth?" What else is it, indeed, than a yawning pit we try our best to avoid?
Of course, this is no secret to the Scriptures. "If you, O Lord, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?" (Psalm 130:3) But there is a humility here that is not terrified of being broken by the truth. What if we didn't hate the truth and try our best to avoid it, but delighted to make it known? Jesus says, "Everyone on the side of truth listens to me." I'll be the first to admit that I'm scared to face the truth. OK, actually that's a lie. Maybe I'd be the third or fourth person to admit that. I'd much prefer a few people to admit that before I step forward to admit it. But if Christians pretend they are anything other than wretched sinners saved only by the mercy and grace of God, the true love of God is not being shown. What is being communicated is still a works-based, "try and pull it together" confidence in ourselves, and not in God. Instead, we can pray, "Tell me the truth, God. Tell me the truth about my sin, how deep and wide it is. Don't hide any of it from me. But show me how enormous the gospel is, how it swallows up evil and death and makes all things new. Tell me the truth about both."
Frankly, it isn't an easy prayer to pray, is it? Truth hurts. But the good news is that Christ knows it hurts. He was in the garden the night before he died, praying that there might be some other way humanity could be redeemed other than the cross. And he gladly went and finished it all, claiming God's victory over all sin and evil. He handled the truth that we couldn't. He fell into the yawning crevasse - the bergschrund - that would have broken us instead. And if we love Jesus for doing this for us, he will lead us beyond whatever hard truths we have to face in this world - whether it is about our health, relationships, manners, habits, or anything else. They don't have to cripple us anymore. The truth has been handled. The judge himself has taken our sentence for us. Nothing remains but to pledge our love and devotion to Christ - and in doing so we leap high over every dark bergschrund that remains beneath us.
1) When was a time that the truth made you so happy you could rejoice? When was a time when you wished the truth wasn't really true?
2) Blaise Pascal once said, "unless we love the truth, we cannot know it." How do you think loving the truth helps us to actually know it?
3) What is something 'true' you could tell somebody that would absolutely make their day?
Thursday, February 21, 2013
"How God Comes to Us" (Reflection on 2/17 Message)
Joy in the midst of sorrow. Hope in the midst of despair. Remembering the mountain-top in the midst of the valley. To be mindful and expectant of supernatural realities in the midst of everyday life. A woman saying, "I want to give all the glory to God" as she emerges from the cruiseline disaster. Isn't this "glass half full" perspective what we're looking for in the Christian life?
After Peter, John, and James experienced the glory of Jesus Christ, and they were returning down the mountain, Jesus told them not to tell about this until after he was raised from the dead. (Matthew 17:9). In Luke, the disciples simply don't tell anyone. In Matthew and also in Mark, it's at Jesus' request.
In Mark, as in the other gospels, the Father himself speaks and tells the disciples to listen to Jesus. This was a peak moment for me during Kevin's sermon - to ponder a holy, almighty God's pleasure in this man Jesus, his Son - and to imagine a thing so wonderful as that. And the Father says, "Listen to him!" The NIV translates this phrase in Matthew and Mark with an exclamation point! In the whole Bible, what do you think are the urgent, exclamation point moments for God? This is one of them: "listen to him!"
God says listen to Jesus, but the first thing Jesus says is, "Don't tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead." It is the first thing he says, and already, I bet the disciples didn't want to listen to this. I would want to tell everybody about it, the way Peter eventually does in 2 Peter 1:12! I can imagine having an amazing experience and wanting to give the glory to God, and I don't think I'd understand if Jesus then said, "The time isn't right. Don't tell anybody yet. People will get the wrong idea."
Joy in the midst of sorrow. We want our Christian life to express this. And Jesus knows this will only be a reality for us through his cross. He says don't talk about this until I'm raised from the dead. He's telling us not to leave the ingredient of suffering and death out of the recipe of our rejoicing. They go together. The cross is where Jesus makes us like himself. Without it, the transfiguration would have been a nice experience but nothing more. Through the cross, Jesus makes us like himself - dead to sin, raised to new life. And God the Father speaks over us, "This is my beloved child!" Over us. Without the cross, we are just observers of an amazing mountain-top scene. Through the cross, we become participants in it. And we don't leave it behind. It goes with us everywhere.
People gave glory to God even though they were in a terrible situation on a cruise ship. Unless they were psychic, I don't think they knew this was going to happen. And we don't know what's going to happen to us today. Kevin said that the news world loves bad news. I agree. But the world is also aching and longing to know that people can go through hellish experiences and that even though the body suffers, the soul can still thrive. As Christians, we know what this is like because we know about the cross.
1) Is there anyone you admire for the way they've endured something difficult?
2) What is a difficult struggle you've been through? How did you get through it?
3) How is Jesus' cross a comfort to you in your hardships?
After Peter, John, and James experienced the glory of Jesus Christ, and they were returning down the mountain, Jesus told them not to tell about this until after he was raised from the dead. (Matthew 17:9). In Luke, the disciples simply don't tell anyone. In Matthew and also in Mark, it's at Jesus' request.
In Mark, as in the other gospels, the Father himself speaks and tells the disciples to listen to Jesus. This was a peak moment for me during Kevin's sermon - to ponder a holy, almighty God's pleasure in this man Jesus, his Son - and to imagine a thing so wonderful as that. And the Father says, "Listen to him!" The NIV translates this phrase in Matthew and Mark with an exclamation point! In the whole Bible, what do you think are the urgent, exclamation point moments for God? This is one of them: "listen to him!"
God says listen to Jesus, but the first thing Jesus says is, "Don't tell anyone what you have seen, until the Son of Man has been raised from the dead." It is the first thing he says, and already, I bet the disciples didn't want to listen to this. I would want to tell everybody about it, the way Peter eventually does in 2 Peter 1:12! I can imagine having an amazing experience and wanting to give the glory to God, and I don't think I'd understand if Jesus then said, "The time isn't right. Don't tell anybody yet. People will get the wrong idea."
Joy in the midst of sorrow. We want our Christian life to express this. And Jesus knows this will only be a reality for us through his cross. He says don't talk about this until I'm raised from the dead. He's telling us not to leave the ingredient of suffering and death out of the recipe of our rejoicing. They go together. The cross is where Jesus makes us like himself. Without it, the transfiguration would have been a nice experience but nothing more. Through the cross, Jesus makes us like himself - dead to sin, raised to new life. And God the Father speaks over us, "This is my beloved child!" Over us. Without the cross, we are just observers of an amazing mountain-top scene. Through the cross, we become participants in it. And we don't leave it behind. It goes with us everywhere.
People gave glory to God even though they were in a terrible situation on a cruise ship. Unless they were psychic, I don't think they knew this was going to happen. And we don't know what's going to happen to us today. Kevin said that the news world loves bad news. I agree. But the world is also aching and longing to know that people can go through hellish experiences and that even though the body suffers, the soul can still thrive. As Christians, we know what this is like because we know about the cross.
1) Is there anyone you admire for the way they've endured something difficult?
2) What is a difficult struggle you've been through? How did you get through it?
3) How is Jesus' cross a comfort to you in your hardships?
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Reflection on "A Familiar Story" (February 7 message)
Checklists. Do you make them? Do you like to cross off the tasks that you've completed? A checklist points me in the direction of a day well-lived.
But do you ever keep checklists for people? Me neither. But sometimes I suspect I have a hidden checklist in my heart that helps me to keep track of people I will help and people I won't help. It gets worse. I suspect that the list keeps me from helping anybody.
Jeff read from Luke 10:25-37 - the story of the Good Samaritan. The story is of a man who wants to know if Jesus really takes the Jewish law seriously. What Jesus understands is that this man - this "expert in the law" thinks himself competent not only to know the law but to accomplish it. "Loving God and loving neighbor is just a matter of will power! Set your mind to it, stay focused, and we can all do it." So Jesus tells him what he'd like to hear. "You are correct." But then he adds "Do this and you will live." This makes the man think a little. "Who is my neighbor?" He asks Jesus. The text says he is trying to justify himself.
He's makes checklists too. Some people make the list and are counted as "neighbors". Others aren't. And aren't we like this too? This checklist matched up very well with mine.
1) I'm not bound to help the needy; only the destitute. I meet poor people with nice TV's. Surely they are doing well enough and don't need my help.
2) I barely have enough for my own needs and for my family's needs. I really don't have anything to spare.
3) So many people are just ill-tempered and ungrateful, no matter what you give them!
4) I'm not going to help people who are in poverty by their own foolishness; worse, many are violent and I could be opening myself to harm in providing meaningful help.
This isn't my checklist. This is a list that 18th century pastor Jonathan Edwards compiled from discussions with his parishioners' struggles with the Good Samaritan scripture. I read about it in Tim Keller's book, Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just. He describes everything I'm writing here in more detail. Seriously. The whole next paragraph is 100% from his 4th chapter. So it isn't mine, but I realize I have one just like it.
Could God have made a list like this one? Sure. He might have picked those among us more in need of grace - but as sinners we all need it. He might not have wasted his wealth on us and kept it for himself - but he was rich in love toward us instead. Ill-tempered, ungrateful, foolish, selfish, and violent. Guilty, guilty, guilty, etc. Jesus used the example of a Samaritan because Jews hated Samaritans back then. But when the expert hears the story he can't help but acknowledge that even if he didn't like Samaritans, he would be grateful for the mercy the Samaritan provided in the story. So it is with God. We are sinners. We loathe God. We don't like it when he meddles. We don't like his authority. We don't like to give him credit that we can take ourselves. We don't love him, and we don't love our neighbors. But he found us on the roadside half-dead, and he didn't keep walking. Though the Good Samaritan gave his time, energy, resources, Jesus is the Great Samaritan who gives his whole life. Rather than make a list of ways to ignore, exclude, and leave us to our own devices, he gives us his own goodness at no cost to us but at total cost to himself - his own life.
Don't misunderstand me. We need guidelines to know how to give meaningful aid to people. But as for me, I have a hard heart. I deliberately walked away from someone near me in the Walmart parking lot yesterday because I thought he might ask me for money. Even as I walked away, I could hear what I expect was the Holy Spirit speaking to my hard, but not totally deaf heart - "Who do you think you are, Chris? Have I not given you way more than the little you are afraid this man will ask of you? Have I not made you rich in love - just like myself?"
Join me in identifying your checklist and then getting rid of it. If we think it is the way to real neighbor love, we are kidding ourselves. C.S. Lewis once compared us to "an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." The answer isn't in our list, because we don't have what it takes for real neighbor love. Jesus does and gives it to us - real joy, real grace...and real neighborly love.
...it almost makes me want to hop in my car and drive to Walmart!
But do you ever keep checklists for people? Me neither. But sometimes I suspect I have a hidden checklist in my heart that helps me to keep track of people I will help and people I won't help. It gets worse. I suspect that the list keeps me from helping anybody.
Jeff read from Luke 10:25-37 - the story of the Good Samaritan. The story is of a man who wants to know if Jesus really takes the Jewish law seriously. What Jesus understands is that this man - this "expert in the law" thinks himself competent not only to know the law but to accomplish it. "Loving God and loving neighbor is just a matter of will power! Set your mind to it, stay focused, and we can all do it." So Jesus tells him what he'd like to hear. "You are correct." But then he adds "Do this and you will live." This makes the man think a little. "Who is my neighbor?" He asks Jesus. The text says he is trying to justify himself.
He's makes checklists too. Some people make the list and are counted as "neighbors". Others aren't. And aren't we like this too? This checklist matched up very well with mine.
1) I'm not bound to help the needy; only the destitute. I meet poor people with nice TV's. Surely they are doing well enough and don't need my help.
2) I barely have enough for my own needs and for my family's needs. I really don't have anything to spare.
3) So many people are just ill-tempered and ungrateful, no matter what you give them!
4) I'm not going to help people who are in poverty by their own foolishness; worse, many are violent and I could be opening myself to harm in providing meaningful help.
This isn't my checklist. This is a list that 18th century pastor Jonathan Edwards compiled from discussions with his parishioners' struggles with the Good Samaritan scripture. I read about it in Tim Keller's book, Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just. He describes everything I'm writing here in more detail. Seriously. The whole next paragraph is 100% from his 4th chapter. So it isn't mine, but I realize I have one just like it.
Could God have made a list like this one? Sure. He might have picked those among us more in need of grace - but as sinners we all need it. He might not have wasted his wealth on us and kept it for himself - but he was rich in love toward us instead. Ill-tempered, ungrateful, foolish, selfish, and violent. Guilty, guilty, guilty, etc. Jesus used the example of a Samaritan because Jews hated Samaritans back then. But when the expert hears the story he can't help but acknowledge that even if he didn't like Samaritans, he would be grateful for the mercy the Samaritan provided in the story. So it is with God. We are sinners. We loathe God. We don't like it when he meddles. We don't like his authority. We don't like to give him credit that we can take ourselves. We don't love him, and we don't love our neighbors. But he found us on the roadside half-dead, and he didn't keep walking. Though the Good Samaritan gave his time, energy, resources, Jesus is the Great Samaritan who gives his whole life. Rather than make a list of ways to ignore, exclude, and leave us to our own devices, he gives us his own goodness at no cost to us but at total cost to himself - his own life.
Don't misunderstand me. We need guidelines to know how to give meaningful aid to people. But as for me, I have a hard heart. I deliberately walked away from someone near me in the Walmart parking lot yesterday because I thought he might ask me for money. Even as I walked away, I could hear what I expect was the Holy Spirit speaking to my hard, but not totally deaf heart - "Who do you think you are, Chris? Have I not given you way more than the little you are afraid this man will ask of you? Have I not made you rich in love - just like myself?"
Join me in identifying your checklist and then getting rid of it. If we think it is the way to real neighbor love, we are kidding ourselves. C.S. Lewis once compared us to "an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea." The answer isn't in our list, because we don't have what it takes for real neighbor love. Jesus does and gives it to us - real joy, real grace...and real neighborly love.
...it almost makes me want to hop in my car and drive to Walmart!
Thursday, January 17, 2013
Something Greater...
As I read through Matthew 12, I am amazed at the authority with which Jesus speaks. His authority, which is noted by the people at the end of Jesus' Great Sermon (Matt. 5-7), is the reason they follow him. It's part of what gives Jesus his wow-factor. But it isn't as though he just walks up to people, whoever they are, and just says, "Hey! I'm great." Not at all. On the contrary, there is almost a hiddenness to his glory. He heals people of all their diseases, and then orders them "not to make him known." (12:16) We are told this is to fulfill Isaiah's prophecy of God's true servant, who "will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets" (12:19; Isaiah 42:1-4)
Matthew 12 gives us a picture of the greatness of Jesus as he explained it to people on a daily basis.
In conversation with Pharisees, he tells them a story about temple priests who break the sabbath and punctuates his point - "I tell you, something greater than the temple is here." As they belly-ache about how he doesn't toe the line on their particular sabbath observances, he tells them a story about David taking bread, and closes with "the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath." Later, they ask Jesus for a sign of who he is. He warns them that the Ninevites received Jonah, and now the Pharisees are in trouble because "see, something greater than Jonah is here." Likewise, he warns them that the queen of the South, or Sheba (Yemen in today's map) visited Solomon and was amazed at his wisdom. She will stand in judgment over this generation, Jesus says, because "see, something greater than Solomon is here!" (12:42)
The intensity of the back-and-forth exchanges between Jesus and these people captures our attention. It is easy to overlook what Jesus is saying about himself. Greater than Jonah, Solomon, the temple, the Sabbath? How much greater? How "great" are you? No wonder these strict monotheists wanted to "destroy him" (12:14)
I think of something Scottish pastor and theologian P.T. Forsyth wrote in 1909. "All the great Christian teachers impress us with the fact that their teaching is far ahead of their experience, and that they built better than they knew. Even Paul preached a Gospel greater than anything he attained in his own soul...whereas our impression of Christ is just the converse...He received from none the Gospel he spoke. He found it in himself. Indeed it was himself. He only preached the true relation between God and man because he incarnated it, and because he established it."
Christ is something greater. To Jonah, Solomon, the temple, P.T. Forsyth would add the Apostle Paul and every Christian teacher. What can we add to this list today? Because here is what this means today:
First, everything good in this world, I mean that is truly good, is shaped by the Word of God. Jesus himself is the Word of God. Even you and me, to the extent that we are "good trees" that bear "good fruit" (12:33) it is because Jesus created us anew in his death and resurrection. So let's give thanks and speak to him face to face - our God in the flesh, greater than all he has created.
Secondly, know that he is God. It is common to read something like this: "Jesus is humble, so he would never say that we was greater than the gods of other religions." This would be a far different Jesus than we are seeing in Matthew 12 or any other part of the Bible. Yes, Jesus was humble - the humble servant who "will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets." He was humble in that he was really human, just like each of us. Not God merely masquerading as a human. But also "something greater than..." He is also God, the only God. The same Jesus who claims to be "something greater" in Matthew 12 claims to have "power over everything in heaven and on earth by Matthew 28. With his Father and his Spirit who lives within us, Jesus is God - not like us at all - who came down and became like us in every way so he could bring us to himself. We are greater, because something greater than us is here. Very good news, because all that he is, anything that he claims to be - this is the gift he gives to us. For he gives us himself.
Matthew 12 gives us a picture of the greatness of Jesus as he explained it to people on a daily basis.
In conversation with Pharisees, he tells them a story about temple priests who break the sabbath and punctuates his point - "I tell you, something greater than the temple is here." As they belly-ache about how he doesn't toe the line on their particular sabbath observances, he tells them a story about David taking bread, and closes with "the Son of Man is lord of the sabbath." Later, they ask Jesus for a sign of who he is. He warns them that the Ninevites received Jonah, and now the Pharisees are in trouble because "see, something greater than Jonah is here." Likewise, he warns them that the queen of the South, or Sheba (Yemen in today's map) visited Solomon and was amazed at his wisdom. She will stand in judgment over this generation, Jesus says, because "see, something greater than Solomon is here!" (12:42)
The intensity of the back-and-forth exchanges between Jesus and these people captures our attention. It is easy to overlook what Jesus is saying about himself. Greater than Jonah, Solomon, the temple, the Sabbath? How much greater? How "great" are you? No wonder these strict monotheists wanted to "destroy him" (12:14)
I think of something Scottish pastor and theologian P.T. Forsyth wrote in 1909. "All the great Christian teachers impress us with the fact that their teaching is far ahead of their experience, and that they built better than they knew. Even Paul preached a Gospel greater than anything he attained in his own soul...whereas our impression of Christ is just the converse...He received from none the Gospel he spoke. He found it in himself. Indeed it was himself. He only preached the true relation between God and man because he incarnated it, and because he established it."
Christ is something greater. To Jonah, Solomon, the temple, P.T. Forsyth would add the Apostle Paul and every Christian teacher. What can we add to this list today? Because here is what this means today:
First, everything good in this world, I mean that is truly good, is shaped by the Word of God. Jesus himself is the Word of God. Even you and me, to the extent that we are "good trees" that bear "good fruit" (12:33) it is because Jesus created us anew in his death and resurrection. So let's give thanks and speak to him face to face - our God in the flesh, greater than all he has created.
Secondly, know that he is God. It is common to read something like this: "Jesus is humble, so he would never say that we was greater than the gods of other religions." This would be a far different Jesus than we are seeing in Matthew 12 or any other part of the Bible. Yes, Jesus was humble - the humble servant who "will not wrangle or cry aloud, nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets." He was humble in that he was really human, just like each of us. Not God merely masquerading as a human. But also "something greater than..." He is also God, the only God. The same Jesus who claims to be "something greater" in Matthew 12 claims to have "power over everything in heaven and on earth by Matthew 28. With his Father and his Spirit who lives within us, Jesus is God - not like us at all - who came down and became like us in every way so he could bring us to himself. We are greater, because something greater than us is here. Very good news, because all that he is, anything that he claims to be - this is the gift he gives to us. For he gives us himself.
Wednesday, January 16, 2013
A Miracle Hidden Within Us
The coffee pot is sputtering. The scent fills the air. I sit in our family room and pray. I am doing next to nothing, but trying to be present to the one who made all things. He cares about who and what I do today. He has given gifts of new life and a new heart. I want to understand what they are, what they mean for me, and what use they might have in the world today.
God is my Father. He has orchestrated all things - sent his Son to become human, sent his Spirit to bind me to him, and acts mightily in and through every moment of my life to bind me closer in relationship to his fullness.
Jesus is my brother, my friend, my God. He is the one who meets me in the pit of my own sin when I confess to him. He is there everytime - at the cross. When I can't even remember all that I might possibly have to leave at the cross, I am still comforted, because he has already removed all of it. Through baptism, I am buried with him. I have died in him. Everything I fear the most has already been faced by Jesus on my behalf - death, yes, but also sin-death - the one that comes as payment for sin, for Paul writes, "the wages of sin is death." This, too, has come to pass.
The sun hasn't even risen yet today. But my Lord has. Jesus rose from the grave. Through faith, I rise with him to a new day, a new life, that I can't even begin to comprehend. The new life I imagine in heaven - this is real right now.
I can't quite believe it! Its too wonderful. In a few hours, the world will be so normal, so ordinary. Could it really be true? Only in him. Only in Christ. I have to figure out a way to keep my eyes on him today, not out of fear. I am convinced at least of this - that God is merciful beyond what I can imagine. But I have to figure out a way because I love him, because I want to be with him.
Do you ever wonder why it is that your brain is so powerful, so amazing in all that it does - and yet it doesn't seem to understand itself? Or that your heart, which sends vital, nutrient-rich blood all over your body, doesn't send a message to your brain each day of how important its work is? These are hidden miracles within us. So it is, I think, with the new heart and the new mind through the Holy Spirit's presence in us. Hidden, alive, working - God lives within you. Where will we be led today?
Too much for us to handle on a Wednesday morning in January? Perhaps! But it is still early. The day has not quite begun yet. I have a fighting chance of being like King David - "The Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?" (Psalm 27:1)
God, it is written in 1 Peter 1:12 that angels long to understand what it is you have done in crucifying us in the death of your Son and raising us to life in him. Angels long to know and feel what it is that is taking place in our lives. Give us eyes to see each other today as children of the Father, dearly loved and treasured - to live a peaceful but busy day, content with you.
God is my Father. He has orchestrated all things - sent his Son to become human, sent his Spirit to bind me to him, and acts mightily in and through every moment of my life to bind me closer in relationship to his fullness.
Jesus is my brother, my friend, my God. He is the one who meets me in the pit of my own sin when I confess to him. He is there everytime - at the cross. When I can't even remember all that I might possibly have to leave at the cross, I am still comforted, because he has already removed all of it. Through baptism, I am buried with him. I have died in him. Everything I fear the most has already been faced by Jesus on my behalf - death, yes, but also sin-death - the one that comes as payment for sin, for Paul writes, "the wages of sin is death." This, too, has come to pass.
The sun hasn't even risen yet today. But my Lord has. Jesus rose from the grave. Through faith, I rise with him to a new day, a new life, that I can't even begin to comprehend. The new life I imagine in heaven - this is real right now.
I can't quite believe it! Its too wonderful. In a few hours, the world will be so normal, so ordinary. Could it really be true? Only in him. Only in Christ. I have to figure out a way to keep my eyes on him today, not out of fear. I am convinced at least of this - that God is merciful beyond what I can imagine. But I have to figure out a way because I love him, because I want to be with him.
Do you ever wonder why it is that your brain is so powerful, so amazing in all that it does - and yet it doesn't seem to understand itself? Or that your heart, which sends vital, nutrient-rich blood all over your body, doesn't send a message to your brain each day of how important its work is? These are hidden miracles within us. So it is, I think, with the new heart and the new mind through the Holy Spirit's presence in us. Hidden, alive, working - God lives within you. Where will we be led today?
Too much for us to handle on a Wednesday morning in January? Perhaps! But it is still early. The day has not quite begun yet. I have a fighting chance of being like King David - "The Lord is my light and my salvation - whom shall I fear?" (Psalm 27:1)
God, it is written in 1 Peter 1:12 that angels long to understand what it is you have done in crucifying us in the death of your Son and raising us to life in him. Angels long to know and feel what it is that is taking place in our lives. Give us eyes to see each other today as children of the Father, dearly loved and treasured - to live a peaceful but busy day, content with you.
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