tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-286422522024-02-20T01:24:36.177-06:00FlatlandsFriarFriarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.comBlogger315125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-14076814330817873452022-07-24T11:00:00.001-05:002022-07-24T11:00:00.178-05:00Smart Guy (First Kings 3:5-12)<p> "Wisdom of Solomon" is a phrase we sometimes hear in everyday conversation, in situations that have nothing to do with the Bible or religious matters. It's just well-known. It's also a phrase you might recall if you read comics featuring the original Captain Marvel character (now known as Shazam). It was something that Cap gained when he spoke his magic word and was transformed into the World's Mightiest Mortal, represented by the "S" in said magic word, "Shazam."</p><p>Conventional wisdom suggests Solomon gained his wisdom during this encounter with God in his dream. After all, that's what Solomon's own language suggests when he says he does not even know how to go out or come in. This convention overlooks a couple of key elements, though. One is the lavish hyperbole common in ancient Near Eastern formal language. In the same way that we might value informality and plain speaking, they valued flattery and self-effacement -- and not in some sort of kiss-up fashion, either. Solomon of course knew how to go in and out of a building -- but when he compared his knowledge to that needed in order to be a good and successful king of God's people, it was woefully inadequate.</p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">The second key element links to the first: If you know you need to ask for wisdom, there is an excellent chance you already possess that quality. The book of Proverbs is a genre called "wisdom literature," or advice for someone on how to live life in a good and successful way. In it, we find the idea I just expressed, in Proverbs 12:15: "Fools think their own way is right, but the wise listen to advice."</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">Solomon's request demonstrates to God that he not only knows enough to ask for advice, he knows <i>who</i> he should ask. Anyone can consult ancient thinkers and philosophers whose ideas have been tested by time and shown to be accurate, and anyone can be guided by those ideas no matter their source. But God's people should be ready first of all to rely on God for advice and wisdom -- and the king of God's people even more so. Solomon tells God the only way for him to be a fitting king of God's people is to ask for God's wisdom.</span></p><p><span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit;">I think God often works in us in this way -- of course he can instill in us qualities we have never before demonstrated. But most often I think he magnifies what he already finds -- because he is the one who installed that quality in the original factory model when it came off the floor.</span></p><p>This is not a blanket policy, of course. If I am, say, staggeringly handsome, God will not make me <i>dangerously</i> handsome simply at my request. Not every quality need be magnified, nor need it be magnified for any reason. God is much more strategic and purposeful.</p><p>Solomon's wisdom was magnified because it would help him be a better king of God's people. Perhaps you are a good listener. Then you might pray that God helps you be an even better one so that people will know that they can talk with you and be truly heard -- and that you will know more precisely what you might pray for in response to what they have said. The key is not to just ask for more of a quality. It's to ask to be better able to employ that quality for the work of God's kingdom, and for God to develop it in you to better serve him and his people.</p><p>In the parable of the talents, Jesus told of a master who gave some servants authority over different amounts of money while he was gone. We remember how angry the master was with the servant who buried the talent he was given and gave him back no more than he started with. God may not be angry with us if we do not seek the growth and strengthening of the characteristics he's given us for his purpose -- but we might become sad angry with ourselves when we see what we <i>could </i>have been doing for the kingdom.</p><p>Fortunately, God offers us another chance when we realize how much more we could have been doing for him. All he wants is for us to ask for it, and you don't have to be all that smart to do that.</p>Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-39605785269081671052022-06-26T11:00:00.001-05:002022-06-26T11:00:00.171-05:00Echoes (Psalm 77:1-2, 11-20)You might now and again hear someone who's not a believer -- or who's a believer with a strong streak of irreverence -- point out that a lot of stories of God's grace at work in people's lives sound the same. A person is in a hard situation or is dealing with hard things. Perhaps even impossible things. And then through God's grace, either a previously unforeseen solution is found or the strength necessary to bear the burden is revealed.<div><br /></div><div>The non-believer may suggest this similarity comes from people deluding themselves into all believing the same illusion. The stories are all the same, such a person suggests, because people expect the same thing to happen and they change their recollections to match what they believe happened. Of course, that can happen. Over many years of working at church youth camps, I have heard people give testimony that's clearly dressed up or molded in order to fit a preconceived framework. Some of the people are sincere: They believe this is what a testimony should sound like, so they will revise some details and lose some others so it fits. Others may want attention. And others may have no clear reason: I love them, but sometimes teenagers are nuts.</div><div><br /></div><div>But the repetition can serve a purpose. It can remind a person in the midst of trouble that they can call upon the Lord for help in time of trouble. And although he may not respond in the way they want him to, history proves he does respond. In Psalm 77, Asaph demonstrates what this can look like. He opens with a statement of the problem, and then verses 3-10 elaborate on it. True to the non-believer's complaint, the lament in those verses sounds like that in quite a few other psalms, both by Asaph and by David himself.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then in verse 11, Asaph starts to give reasons why he turns to God for help. God has helped in the past, therefore God will help now. And only the shallowest understanding believes that the God of the universe will do exactly what is asked. He knows that repeating the history of God's assistance is much more a means of self-reassurance than it is a list of reasons why God needs to get off his duff and get to work now.</div><div><br /></div><div>But in this case, Asaph doesn't just talk about ordinary help God might have provided. He goes for the big one. He recaps <i>Exodus</i>. In verse 13, he asks what God is so great as God -- the God who demonstrated clear superiority over whatever deities the Egyptians worshiped and whose supremacy every practicing Jew recited daily in the <i>shema</i>. In verses 14 and 15, he sums up all of the protection, rescue and empowerment God provided the Hebrews from the day they walked out of Egypt.</div><div><br /></div><div>This story is the big story. This story is the foundational history of the people of Israel, the one that has kept them together for almost five thousand years. Asaph brings out a sledgehammer -- which might make us wonder what problem he's dealing with. Some scholars suggest the exile to Babylon, since they believe Asaph wrote his Psalms much later than King David. </div><div><br /></div><div>I think that's entirely possible, but my mind is also drawn to another possibility. Perhaps Asaph recalls this version of the Exodus story for its own sake and not because of the size of the issue he faced. Perhaps he understands that God's presence with the people is the same always, and <i>every</i> story somehow reflects back on the Exodus story. The threat could be existential, like bringing a sheep to a chariot fight when your back's up against the Red Sea. It could be less so. But either way, God's salvation comes to the one who calls on him. Again, it's <i>God</i>'s salvation, so it might not look like what we say we want, but it is salvation.</div><div><br /></div><div>A cynical look at those redemption stories sees intentional or unintentional editing in order to make them sound the same. But the believer sees the similarity as evidence of God at work. Large or small, every salvation echoes the great salvation, brought to us on Calvary. Are many of them similar? Sure.</div><div><br /></div><div>But so are sunsets and we rarely get tired of them.</div>Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-81340286136610660512022-06-19T11:00:00.003-05:002022-06-22T17:37:23.708-05:00Cast Out (Luke 8:26-39)I've always found myself almost as fascinated by the response to Jesus' miracles as I am by the miracles themselves. And I've often found the responses more instructive. After all, the miracles come as God directs them and whether miracles follow my prayers doesn't say anything about me. It <i>should </i>say something that points to God.<div><br /></div><div>The story of the man freed from many demons offers a great illustration. This same incident is described in both Matthew and Mark as well as Luke, with the same basic events. Jesus and the disciples land on the shore of an area called the Decapolis ("Ten Cities") and are immediately confronted by a man who shows all the signs of demonic possession. We the reader learn some back story about the man and his destructive and dangerous nature -- information Jesus probably had but which his disciples did not.</div><div><br /></div><div>We should pause for a moment and note that a lot of what ancient writings describe as possession by evil spirits resembles observed symptoms of mental illness. Many people diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia report hearing voices and seeing delusions that their brains interpret as real input, which in turn spark behavior that they would never have considered had they not been ill. In this case the reported conversation between Jesus and the demonic spirits suggests something more like actual possession, but in the end Jesus is the victor over whatever has tormented this man and that is probably the best takeaway.</div><div><br /></div><div>The possessed man falls at Jesus' feet and cries out for mercy. We learn that the man is driven by a multitude of evil spirits, who leave him no peace and make it impossible to live in society. When asked for a name they give the answer "Legion," indicating their number. They do not wish to be cast into "the abyss," which seems to be some kind of oblivion awaiting failed or defeated evil spirits and they ask Jesus if he would let them possess the nearby heard of pigs. He allows it -- no upright, Torah-abiding Jewish person cares about what happens to pigs, after all. And as readers familiar with the story know, the now demon-ridden pigs go berserk and rush into the sea, where they drown.</div><div><br /></div><div>A herd of swine is watched by swineherds, and these hightail it back to the city to report. If they're hired hands, they want to make sure their version of events hits their employers' ears first, after all. The city folks head back out to the tombs, where they see the (formerly) possessed man sitting and talking with Jesus and clearly in his right mind. Luke tells us they're afraid.</div><div><br /></div><div>Why? We can theorize, even if we don't know. Perhaps they feared someone with power over demons might just call a few up and turn them loose among the townsfolk for fun. If so, that's silly: The demons didn't sound like this guy was their friend and he didn't say anything that indicated he had and fondness for them, either. Maybe they were afraid that the (formerly) possessed man would return to his wacky ways once the new guy had left -- also pretty silly, since they'd demonstrated they could live with <i>that</i> problem although it was a great inconvenience.</div><div><br /></div><div>My own guess is that, when confronted with the reality that the worst guy around town was no longer the worst guy around town, they also had to confront that they had some baggage of their own. Self-excusing whataboutism is one of humanity's most-practiced skills as each one of us becomes expert at trying to deflect attention from our flaws by pointing out equal or worse flaws in someone else. And as long as there was a naked possessed guy running around the tombs, <i>everyone</i> had someone else they could point to for comparison: "Yeah, I fibbed a little on our deal, but at least I'm wearing clothes and not howling at the moon!"</div><div><br /></div><div>Sure, realizing that Jesus healing the (formerly) possessed man could mean he might heal them as well -- but it would mean admitting they might have some things to be healed and for many people that's a very big step to take. </div><div><br /></div><div>In any event, the people responded to Jesus casting out the demons by casting out Jesus: They asked him to leave. He agreed. Although the (formerly) possessed man begged to come along, Jesus told him no, that he should stay here and tell everyone what had happened to him. And, Luke says, that's what he did. Jesus left, and he started talking.</div><div><br /></div><div>To what impact, we may wonder. Well, Mark tells us. He adds the return visit that Jesus made to the area sometime later, in which we find that the (formerly) possessed man's testimony has had some impact. This time, some people are willing and eager to hear Jesus, instead of being afraid and asking him to leave. How many? How many people listened to the man say what Jesus had done for him? We don't know, exactly, although the name we give this story -- the feeding of the 4,000 -- might give a round number.</div><div><br /></div><div>You know, the harder you throw the boomerang away...</div>Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-89701751411920686982020-07-19T16:31:00.000-05:002020-07-22T17:23:56.281-05:00The Spirit of Adoption (Romans 8:12-17)At first glace we might wonder why these two different spirits are being compared, since they seem so obviously different. We "juxtapose" things because they have enough similarities that we need them side-by-side to see the differences. But a spirit of slavery or a spirit of fear does not seem at all close to a spirit of adoption.<div><br /></div><div>Fear is an emotion and a response to a perceived threat. It may be that the threat proves to be something harmless, like the shadowy shape in the dark room that's actually a chair with a coat thrown on top of it. Or it may be a genuine threat and the fear is a good response for survival -- in spite of what Yoda says, sometimes fear is beneficial for us.</div><div><br /></div><div>Adoption, on the other hand, is the way something or someone is brought into an already-existing group. The most common picture of it for us is the legal process that a family uses to bring in a child who was born to other parents, but we also use it to talk about how we might begin a new practice or accept a new idea.</div><div><br /></div><div>I think Paul may be comparing them here in the context of obedience. Obedience out of fear of the consequences of disobedience is the most basic level, the one we learn as kids when we don't really understand the concepts. I'm told not to touch the stove because it's hot, I touch it, I get burned and now I obey when I'm told not to touch something hot.</div><div><br /></div><div>But obedience from fear is not ideal. For one, there can come a point when the consequences of disobedience seem less of a burden than continuing to obey. This is the thought behind revolutions and rebellions: If we defy authority, bad things may happen. But we can no longer continue to live under this authority, whatever it is. And so the threat the authority makes no longer has power, and a man will stand in front of a column of tanks and make them stop.</div><div><br /></div><div>And from the point of view of those kept in check by fear, there is no peace in that way of living. We may have a list of rules we have to follow in order to make sure we stay in line, but what happens when we run into something the rules don't cover? If we act, we may act the wrong way and suffer the consequences. A faith life based in fear offers no peace and no rest either. We worry that God is just waiting for us to take one step wrong so he can get his Zeus on and thunderbolt us to oblivion.</div><div><br /></div><div>This way of thinking makes obedience the prerequisite for a relationship with God, and yet when we read the gospel and what Paul says about it we see pretty clearly spelled out that we can never "obey our way" into the kingdom of God.</div><div><br /></div><div>A spirit of adoption, though, brings a whole new dimension to our understanding of obedience and even a whole new level of power to help us live as God asks us to live. With this spirit, the Godly life comes as a show of praise and thanksgiving to the one who saved and healed us of the consequences of our sin. Obedience itself is a consequence of God's actions in our lives and a desire to live according to our new family and community. In the same way that a child adopted when he or she is older has to unlearn old family systems and learn new ones, we now want to unlearn our old ways of life in exchange for God's ways.</div><div><br /></div><div>We have become a part of a new family and we want to make sure that there is a strong family resemblance.</div>Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-48908284833962590772020-07-12T09:30:00.002-05:002020-07-12T09:30:03.845-05:00Amid the Thorns (Matthew 13:18-23)<div>One of the conventional lessons from this parable involves identifying what kind of people we are in response to the good news of the gospel. Are we the hard-packed path that ignores it, the stony soil with no depth to let it take root, the patch of thorny plants that never lets it fully grow or the good soil that receives and nurtures it?</div><div><br /></div><div>Once we consider it a little more deeply, of course, we can realize that we match <i>all</i> those kinds of soil at different times in our lives. Even once a relationship with Jesus begins, we might still resist the full life-changing implications of the gospel in favor of familiar ways of seeing things and carrying on with our lives. And we realize that different areas of our lives might be different kinds of soil at the same time. Perhaps my heart has become fertile ground for the message of seeing everyone as a child of God, as my brother or sister. But I've yet to deepen it and clear it of hidden obstacles when it comes to how I view finances and money. I am not fully willing to trust my future to God and I insist on keeping the reins of this part of my life. In that area, any progress I make in following Jesus doesn't last long because am too ready to revert to old ways of doing and seeing things.</div><div><br /></div><div>I don't know if you've thought of the parable in this way, but each of these kinds of soil can represent a stage of spiritual maturity or growth in our relationship with Jesus. The more we mature, the more the seed of the gospel can take root and grow in us. We exchange being the hard-packed path of ground shaped by the world's impact on us for the fertile soil that produces many times over. Our trust grows as our experience teaches us that following Jesus leads to the best life we can live in <i>every</i> area, and we are more and more open to receive the seed of the good news.</div><div><br /></div><div>One of the reasons I think of the different soils as representing maturity is that each of them allows a greater growth of the seed once planted -- it gets closer to maturity. It doesn't even start to grow on the path and it doesn't do much beyond getting started in the stony soil. It does grow among the thorns, but it never produces fruit. Finally, the seed in the fertile soil completes its life cycle and brings forth grain. We sometimes overlook that part of that life cycle, since our goal for a plant is that it make grain or something else we can eat. We focus on the production, but the plant is actually designed for <i>re</i>production. The "yielding in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty." is the goal, but not, from the plant's point of view, so we can have more grain to make our bread. In fact, a farmer might sell the lower-yield grain or grind it for food but keep the high-yield to plant next year and increase his crop.</div><div><br /></div><div>The goal of the good news is similar: to be reproduced in the lives of others when we share it with them as it was shared with us. We join the great Sower in his work. Not in the sense that we measure how many people come to Jesus because we share the gospel with them, counting a hundred, sixty or thirty or some other number. Rather, the flourishing and flowering of the good news in our hearts and lives can become the seed scattered to another, and we hope and pray that when it comes to them it meets the good fertile soil so it can take root and begin to transform them as well.</div><div><br /></div><div>(We also might give some thought as to how the Holy Spirit might use us to till and soften the soil in the lives of those around us, but that's probably best left to another sermon).</div><div><br /></div><div>Because our goal is maturing in the faith and allowing it to reproduce in and beyond our own lives, I personally think that the ground with the thorny plants presents the greatest problem for us. I noticed something the last time I read this passage. As Jesus explains what happens to the good news among the thorny plants he never says that the plants which grow up die. He just says they yield nothing. They never mature and complete their full cycle, but they aren't snatched away like the seed on the path and they don't wither like the seed in stony soil. They grow just enough to be there, and then they stop.</div><div><br /></div><div>A similar circumstance in our faith is, I think, a recipe for a very hard life journey. We might say it's like facing in the right direction but never taking a step. Yes, we needed to turn from our previous path because it was leading us away from God and away from the lives to which God called us. Stopping was not enough -- we were headed the wrong way and facing the wrong way even though we stand still isn't going to get us on the right path.</div><div><br /></div><div>But facing the right way and standing still is little better. The good news of the gospel never produces fruit in our lives. We say the words of Scripture but they are not planted in us. We bow our heads and close our eyes but we open neither our ears or our hearts. We praise and we give but we do not reach up to our Savior or down to those in need. We've let the gospel take root but we let the cares and concerns of the world have just as much of our soul's soil as they ever did and so that which grows up in us doesn't seem to matter to us any more than do they.</div><div><br /></div><div>We may not be the thorny plants. But we look just like them, so who would ever notice?<br /></div>Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-85248856393197924532020-07-05T09:30:00.000-05:002020-07-07T10:24:01.251-05:00Deeds of Power (Mark 6:1-13)One of the most interesting sentences in this story happens just before halfway, after Mark describes the Nazarenes' dismissal of their former neighbor as being anything special. Apparently, had Nathanel asked them the question he asks Philip in John 1:46 -- "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" -- their answer would have been, "Nope, not really."<br />
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Because of this response, Mark tells us, Jesus "could do no deed of power there, other than he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them." I've sometimes heard this explained as Jesus refusing to do any deeds of power or miracles in Nazareth, punishing the Nazarenes for their dismissal. Of course that's possible, but the text says "<i>could</i> do no deed," meaning to me that Jesus was not able to do such a deed of power or miracle.<br />
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That idea surprises us, given that we know Jesus is like his Father and all-powerful. What in the world could actually <i>prevent</i> him from doing deeds of power?<br />
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According to one viewpoint, the Nazarenes' unbelief itself limited Jesus' ability to work miracles. Their unbelief was somehow stronger than his power. I can understand why folks might approach it that way but it seems a little more like a comic book situation than a description of the power of God. Like Superman robbed of his powers by the rays of a red sun, we see Jesus -- who almost certainly had powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men -- robbed of his ability to work miracles.<br />
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And this way of thinking doesn't seem to hold anyplace else that Jesus encounters unbelief and does some deed of power anyway. Nobody at Lazarus' tomb thought he could do anything to help his late friend. Even the dead man's sister Martha, one of Jesus' friends, demurred at the idea of opening the tomb, suggesting it would be unpleasant -- as the King James version puts it, "Lord, by this time he stinketh." And yet Jesus called Lazarus forth from his tomb alive. Jesus' own resurrection happened in the face of unbelief. Not just from those who mocked him while he was on the cross, but from his own followers. For all of the times that he had told them he would die and be raised, for all of the metaphors he had used about the temple being destroyed and rebuilt in three days, for all of the times he had explained to them what being the Messiah meant, Easter morning still saw them hiding in the upper room instead of out among the people telling them, "Oh, get ready, he's coming! Today's the day! You all are gonna see something <i>amazing</i>!"<br />
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The only limits on Jesus' power come from Jesus' own choice. He could with the symbolic snap of his fingers convert each and every human being into a committed follower who would never sin again. But that would mean he had no followers who loved him, just puppets and robots who obeyed their programming, so he has limited his power. I just don't see how the unbelief of a group of Nazarenes could accomplish what no other force in the universe could manage.<br />
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As I reflect on the many places where we see Jesus heal people, which is something that he apparently was able to do in Nazareth, we see multiple methods, lessons, occasions and so on. But there is a common factor in almost all of them -- the people being healed either come to Jesus or are brought to him, or they ask for that healing. The woman with the issue of blood comes to him knowing that just touching his robe will be enough. The paralytic's friends chop a hole in a roof to lower him into Jesus' presence. The centurion sends messengers to ask for the healing of his servant. The blind beggar at Jericho calls out for the son of David to have mercy on him. The man at the pool of Bethesda <i>finally </i>agreed that yes, he would like to be made well. Whether on their own or with the help of friends, these people all come to Jesus.<br />
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What if Jesus only healed a few people at Nazareth because they were the only people who came to him seeking it? What if they were the only people faithful enough or desperate enough or otherwise moved to give him a shot? Why would they have been so? Why would they be the only ones who thought he might heal them?<br />
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Because everyone else <i>already made up their minds</i> that Jesus was nothing special and there was no point to seeking him out. They had already decided they knew everything that they needed to know about Jesus, like his family and his history among them and so forth, and there wasn't anything else to know worth knowing. Certainly nothing supernatural.<br />
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Now, you and I and other Christians of the 21st century don't know Jesus the way the first century Nazarenes did, but we can still be guilty of deciding we already know who Jesus is and thus limiting what he will do. Perhaps we key on the overwhelming love of others, the kindness and mercy Jesus shows throughout the gospels, especially for those the rest of the world seems prone to forget. But we ignore the clear promise of judgment and the call to repentance it demands. Or we hold those things up as the "real Jesus" and ignore the love, mercy and kindness. Either way we insist that Jesus is this way but not that way, so he won't do that. Turns out that often, he won't, but the limits aren't on his end, they're on <i>ours</i>.<br />
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And because the limits are on our end, Jesus will complete his whole work and accomplish his entire glorious purpose. He won't skip anything he intends to do or leave one bit of it out. It'll happen without us. And that doesn't sound like very good news at all.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-26524366172955814502020-06-28T09:30:00.000-05:002020-06-28T09:30:04.637-05:00Free for All (Romans 6:12-23)Although we may not phrase it this way today, the question of sin in believers is one that we still wrestle with in the church. We may cast it in other terms, by pointing out how often the world looks at those of us who follow Jesus and maybe finds us wanting in displaying any characteristics of that. Their view of Christians -- people who say they're perfect and good and better than anyone else -- is wrong, but they'll still apply it to us and expect us to live up to it.<br />
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And there's still an important question buried under the simplistic misunderstanding the world has of us, one that we need to think about and try to find a path through: Why do we who follow Jesus, who orient our lives around his reality as <i>the</i> reality, still sin? If Paul's right that sin has no dominion over us, why do we find ourselves mixed up with it again and again?<br />
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Different views of our Christian reality influence how we talk about this. If we believe, for example, that salvation is something that matters to us only after we've died -- that Jesus' only purpose in coming to us and offering his life is to prevent us from spending eternity in hell -- then the only thing hurt by believers who sin is our witness. If I talk about a God of love, justice and righteousness but I practice none of those things then why should anyone who hears me talk care?But we can <br />
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But we can guard our witness pretty well and still "present our members to sin." John Wesley liked to use the example of people "reviling him." If he learned about that he might resent those people and become angry and hateful towards them. Aware of his responsibility to witness to his faith he wouldn't display that publicly. Inside, though, would still be feelings of hate. And as Jesus makes clear, while there's a difference between hating someone and harming them as far as <i>they're</i> concerned, there's none where <i>we're</i> concerned: "I tell you, those who hate another person have already committed murder against them in their heart."<br />
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Instead, in v. 19 Paul urges the Romans to "present their members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification." Now when he says "righteousness" he means being right in relationship to God much more than he means the kind of legalistic self-righteousness we too often picture when we hear that word. He acknowledges that it's hard, because the tendency to sin remains in us.<br />
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This comes from seeing salvation as something that indeed happens after we die but also goes on right now. That eternal impact works its way backwards into our lives so that we start to change <i>now</i>, even if we won't finish in this lifetime. If that way of seeing salvation holds, we clearly need to "present our members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification." And we all know how easy that is, right?<br />
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Why is it hard for those who were slaves to sin to become slaves to righteousness? I suppose part of the problem comes from the different expectations righteousness presents us. We're expected to act and speak differently. Getting used to the change and a completely new set of actions and priorities is no picnic. But is that the only problem? Learned behavior is exactly that, <i>learned.</i> What can be learned can be unlearned. It takes work -- generally behavioral psychologists say we need a minimum of 21 days of intentional effort to make a new habit -- but it can be done. Except it very often isn't. I can't speak about your experience, but I'm working on about a half-century of more or less intentional effort and I have yet to lose the habits of sin.<br />
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I think the real stumbling block comes because slavery to sin rarely presents itself as such. It almost always characterizes itself instead as freedom. It's freedom from rules, freedom from restrictions, freedom from authority, the opportunity to do what you want and be the master of your fate and the captain of your soul. We don't necessarily rebel against the change in masters because we've been under the illusion we've never had a master and we rebel against the idea of having one now.<br />
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We have no experience with this kind of master so we reject him. A Master whose goal is <i>our</i> growth and flourishing? Gotta be a catch. A Master who will actually let us do what we want even when he knows better? Sure, right. A Master who is first a servant? A Master who will wash our feet? Yeah, pull the other one, buddy. And yet it's true. That Master exists. But so does the other, and we will follow one or the other no matter what we think about the power of our own autonomy.<br />
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Even though my writerly character rebels against the idea of clichés I'm about to commit a big one by being a middle-aged dude who quotes Bob Dylan: "You're gonna serve somebody."Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-42412783345941902082020-06-22T16:16:00.000-05:002020-06-22T17:38:58.691-05:00Division! (Matthew 10:34-39)Every now and again we run across a word from Jesus that just clanks when we compare it to what the rest of what he says sounds like. It jars not because it runs counter to what the world tells us, but because it seems to run counter to what Jesus says and to what scripture tells us about Jesus. We have one of those here today.<br />
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"I have come not to bring peace, but a sword," Jesus says, outlining the way his words will divide household members from each other to the point of making those under the same roof actual foes of each other. Is this the man Isaiah prophesied as the "Prince of Peace?" Is this the man to whose body Paul will compare the church as a model for understanding its unity in the midst of difference? James will tell us that if we say we love God but we don't love each other we're liars, but here Jesus says his coming will produce enmity even in our own housholds!<br />
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When I try to suss this out I come up with a couple of possibilities. One is that Jesus comes with this kind of division as a goal of his ministry and mission. It's on the checklist: Feed the hungry, heal the sick, start fights between family members. In favor of that idea we have this passage from Matthew. It's not one of those where the Greek is wonky, either, and we have to be open to other possible translations.<br />
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But against it we have the things I mentioned earlier. And as well, we have the passages where both Jesus and Paul tell us to love our enemies. Not to mention a good-sized handful of other New Testament mentions of Jesus that emphasize his desire for unity among the believers. <i>If</i> Jesus intended to bring division instead of peace I'm left pretty confused.<br />
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Of course, it's also possible that this kind of division happens not because Jesus causes it, but because he's come here to do other things and opposition like he describes happens as a result of it. I can make some more sense of things by seeing them in this light. If there is one thing for certain about Jesus' mission it's that he comes to bring truth -- both by teaching it <i>and</i> embodying it. In John he will even say he is the truth, along with the way and the life. As for his teaching, how often does he begin one of his lessons or parables by saying, "Truly, truly I say unto you...?" Both bringing truth and being truth are essential elements of Jesus mission during his time on Earth.<br />
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And humans being what we are, claims of truth are one of the most certain ways to create division between people. In fact, most adult disagreements root in different understandings about what is true. Other disagreements, of course, root in whether or not she's touching me, he's sitting on my side, or she got the bigger cookie and so on. It's not that adults can't act that childishly, but we generally expect them not to.<br />
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We expect them to disagree about what is true. Let's take politics, since we can't apparently disagree about that without being ugly to each other. People who support President Trump think that, on balance, his term in office has benefited the country. They're not happy with everything he does or says and they may even dislike some of it pretty strongly. But on the whole they think he's a net positive.<br />
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Detractors, on the other hand, may like this or that policy goal or outcome but think that overall his term has been a net negative for the nation. This is what they hold to be true. As these things go, we could say that the supporters are wrong or the detractors are wrong or maybe even that both of them are wrong. But since they make oppositional claims about the truth, at least one of them has to be wrong.<br />
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The truth about Jesus creates the same kind of division. But at the same time, it creates the responsibility for disagreeing <i>without</i> disagreeability, which I do not know is a real word or not but is still a real responsibility. Jesus is clear that he will come with claims about truth, both in what he teaches and in who he is. That can't happen without disagreement. Jesus says he is the way, the truth and the life. There are people who believe otherwise, meaning our claims about the truth differ from theirs and can't be reconciled away without weakening the truth we claim to hold.<br />
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But do you and I, Christian, need to win an argument about the truth or do we need to open a door for Christ to win the person with whom we disagree? Do we need devastating comebacks and invulnerable logic, or do we need the heart of the Savior who washed Judas' feet? Will we speak the truth, or will we speak the truth in love?<br />
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Jesus said he came to bring a sword. He never said we had to pick it up and use it.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-12152011891071936002020-06-07T09:30:00.000-05:002020-06-07T09:30:14.703-05:00Go! (Matthew 28:16-20)The lectionary does a funny thing with this incident in the life of the church. Even though Pentecost will come several days after the Ascension, we are reading this passage, which we call the Great Commission, <i>after</i> we've read the story of Pentecost.<br />
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We don't always see the U-turn because for us, both events are part of history. <i>We</i> know that Jesus' leaving opens the door for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believers. <i>We</i> know that this outline of the mission of the church will be made possible by the coming of the Spirit. But they didn't know that. And from our perspective two millennia later, the events of those amazing days seem pretty much like they happened all at once -- but they didn't to the people living them. We last worshipped in person on March 15, 84 days ago. From the point of view of someone hearing this story in, say, 2040, that will seem like not much time. For those who hear it in 2120, the gap between the two will look almost as small as the gap between the Resurrection and Pentecost does to us. But for those of us who have lived it, it's 84 long days.<br />
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Even though the lectionary gives them to us out of order, when we reflect on these words of Jesus we see how necessary Pentecost is to understanding and fulfilling them. "You shall be my witnesses," Jesus says to a group of simple fishermen, peasant women and laborers. "In Judea, Samaria and the ends of the Earth!" he says to people who probably haven't been more than ten miles from their villages in their lives, except for a Passover now and again. "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!" They know who the Father is and they've come to realize who's the Son, but Holy Spirit? "I am with you always, even to the end of the age!" Just how long will he be gone then? That sounds like a long way off.<br />
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In the calendar of the church year, we call today Trinity Sunday. It marks one of the greatest doctrines -- and greatest mysteries -- of Christianity, that of the Trinity. We say that God is Three in One, or sometimes Three and One. We mean that we worship one God, not three. But that one God is expressed in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.<br />
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Sometimes people will try to explain the three persons based on their spheres of activity. We do this when we label them Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. God the Father is the Creator. Jesus, through his actions on the cross, redeemed fallen humanity. And the Holy Spirit sustains believers as they try to follow Jesus. But the gospel of John makes clear that the work of the Word, the second person of the Trinity we call the Son, is essential to creation. And during their time of exile and before that, in the wilderness, the Israelites were sustained by God as the person we call the Father. And so on.<br />
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What we know is that all three persons are present in any work called the work of God. It's why we say God is Three in One -- any work of <i>one</i> of the Trinity is the work of <i>all</i> of the Trinity.<br />
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Here in Galilee, the Son tells the disciples of the work they are called to do, saying he has the authority to do so because it has been given to him -- by the Father. Even though the disciples do not yet know about the Holy Spirit or what the Spirit's presence will mean to them, they can sense something is missing. Some of them have doubts about what they see and hear and about what it means.<br />
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Something <i>is</i> missing, and that something is the presence of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost empowers the disciples to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gives them.<br />
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And the presence of the Holy Spirit empowers us to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gives us. Of course we have to carry it out with wisdom and common sense, with perception and awareness of our context -- but carry it out we are to do. The Commission worries a lot of us and we sometimes, as the joke goes, think the translation is wrong and the original Greek talked about a Great Suggestion. How could we share the gospel? We're not eloquent, knowledgeable, courageous, holy, whatever enough. But that's wrong. We're much <i>less</i> qualified than that. We think we'd do a mediocre job but the truth is we'd be lucky to get to mediocre.<br />
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Which is where the Holy Spirit comes in. Always, and forever. To the ends of the earth and the end of time, and beyond.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-81285778051072691252020-05-24T09:54:00.000-05:002020-05-24T09:54:36.585-05:00A New Way (Acts 1:6-14)It's hard to blame the disciples for standing around looking up at the sky. They're being given their third completely different paradigm to guide them as followers of Jesus -- their second major worldview shift in under two months. I'd be standing around staring a little bit myself.<br />
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The first paradigm they knew -- they weren't the first group of people to follow a charismatic teacher to learn from him and listen to him speak. While this teacher, Jesus, was clearly different from many others in terms of what and how he taught, the general idea was the same. If we read histories of that place and time we learn that such leaders were common. The great teacher Gamaliel himself will point this out when he counsels the Sanhedrin in Acts 5.<br />
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But then came his arrest, crucifixion and resurrection and a whole new way of following their teacher, because that teacher was now known to them as savior and Lord. This, quite clearly, had <i>not</i> happened before and they did not exactly know how they should do it. Fortunately, Jesus' plan for his time following his resurrection seems primarily to be teaching them about what they are to do as his disciples. It's generally held that he remained with them about 40 days post-resurrection -- we don't know the exact figure because we don't know if the 40 days mentioned in the gospels starts on Easter Sunday or sometime later. But we know the main activity was him teaching and them learning.<br />
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And here we see the second major "paradigm shift" and the third completely different worldview the disciples needed to accept as a part of following Jesus of Nazareth -- how to follow him without him actually being around!<br />
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Although we don't have any actual accounts of what Jesus taught the disciples during his post-resurrection time with them, I imagine that whenever he touched on this part of the plan he got a lot of blank looks. Can you imagine Thomas being told about the Holy Spirit<i> without</i> asking a metric ton of questions? And can you imagine him being satisfied with being told, "Well, you'll know it when it happens" when he asked? This is not doubt as a lack of faith, it's a lack of understanding.<br />
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When we're living under one paradigm or worldview, it's really hard to understand the things that go on inside a different worldview. One of my favorite kinds of videos to watch on YouTube are called "reaction videos." People record themselves watching some show or another and we can see their reactions to major plot developments. Some of the best are kids watching <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i> Star Wars movie with their parents when they learn something very surprising about the relationship between Darth Vader, the main villain, and Luke Skywalker, the main hero. <i>Empire</i> is the second Star Wars movie, so the kids know who Luke is and who Darth Vader is, and you can see as they watch they know how things are between the good guy and the bad guy. Then comes the reveal, and the huge eyes, and the questions of their parents. The parents already know the new, paradigm-shifting information and as the kids learn it their whole understanding of the movie changes<br />
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For the disciples, the new paradigm doesn't mean they don't follow Jesus anymore. Now they follow him whether he is there with them or not and they have an omnipresent guide, comforter and encourager, the Holy Spirit. This new paradigm is the one which will spread the gospel to parts of the world the earliest church didn't even know existed, so even as uncomfortable and uncertain as it might prove to be it's the one they needed to get to.<br />
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We're about to enter our third paradigm of worship. There's the way we've worshiped for years, which ended on March 15. After that date we were asked not to meet in person but to try to "meet" with our community via streaming and watching the service. We were together in spirit but separate in body -- which is OK for awhile, but a faith that says God called his creation -- us -- "good" can't accept forever a path that feeds the spirit while neglecting the body.<br />
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In a couple of weeks we will return to in-person worship, but it will look different. Especially at first, as our new paradigm has to include steps to reduce as much as we can the risk of people getting sick. We've not usually had to consider that factor when we plan worship or set up for being together, but now we do. As we move forward and see how the disease progresses, we will decide how much closer we can get to our older way of worshiping.<br />
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But it would be a mistake to look at this third paradigm of worship as just a time to wait for things to get back to the way we want them. That would be like the disciples -- then or today -- treating the time in between the Ascension and the Second Coming as just a period of waiting around for Jesus to come back and not an opportunity to share their great good news with people who needed to hear it. And if they'd done that, where would we be today?Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-71521423615403331832020-05-17T09:30:00.000-05:002020-05-17T11:35:54.431-05:00Unknown No Longer (Acts 17:22-31)One of the things we sometimes misunderstand about the Greek people at the time when Paul meets them here is that not very many of them believe in that famous Olympian pantheon we learned about in school. The work of major philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates had influenced Greek theology as well as philosophy in more monotheistic -- or even atheistic -- directions. Especially among educated men like those talking with Paul, the whole list of deities was considered something that was for rubes. Even if it wasn't, those gods spent most of their time putting on disguises and chasing human women; they weren't exactly fit objects of worship.<br />
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That was the major reason behind the "unknown god" altar that Paul found. Although some people might have seen it as the catchall altar put up in order to make sure some god or another wasn't missed, for the big thinkers of the city it was the altar to what some called the "uncaused cause" or "prime mover." They believed in a divine force that had created the universe and set it into motion, but that force was completely unknowable and many philosophers also believed it was completely impersonal and uninterested in human affairs.<br />
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As you might imagine, that kind of god isn't a very useful tool in trying to figure out the questions people like to ask about life -- like what makes a good person, what gives life meaning, why are we here and so on. It's been a long time since I've read the history of first-century Greek philosophy so I don't know how exactly they were trying to grapple with this issue, but I imagine that there would have been several who would have liked a god that was a bit more interactive and open to conversation.<br />
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Does Paul know that? We can't be certain, but we do know his habit seems to be observing things a bit before he begins his work and if he has done that here in Athens he certainly knows what kinds of things the philosophers were talking about. Either way, he opens up with an idea that strikes at the root of the kinds of questions that would seem to worry people with an unknown and unknowable god.<br />
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First he tells them they're on the right track with such an idea, even if they haven't finished it out yet as it should be. If a god <i>made</i> the world, the idea that stone, metal or wood could in any way represent it can be ruled out. So can the idea that such a god would require the service of human efforts. Discarding the idols of the past is the right thing to do.<br />
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But if they go beyond those basic steps they will find their deeper questions answered as well. They won't just have to discard the inadequate gods -- they can find the real God. Just as they anticipated, the God who made the universe is completely other than creation, holy and almost unknowable. But <i>unlike</i> they believe, that God is not impersonal and has chosen to make himself known to us in his creation. Knowing we could not bridge the gap between human and divine, he chose to, in the person of his Son, a man named Jesus of Nazareth who was both fully human and fully divine.<br />
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Did Paul succeed? Well, some of the Athenians sniffed at him as a "proclaimer of foreign divinities," but some others wanted to talk with him some more later.<br />
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I think one of the messages that we can take from this when we go out into our world, right now filled with uncertainty, anxiety and a major league mess of monumental proportions, is that <i>Jesus answers the questions people have</i>. Yes, we joke about how the "Sunday school" answer is always "Jesus" no matter what the question is, but he's the answer to real questions of existence as well.<br />
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You and I, Christian, must learn <i>how</i> to answer those questions. Which means we have to listen to them and to the people asking them. I don't know that we do. I don't know that a lot of us, in Paul's place, wouldn't have mocked the multiple idols and the empty altar -- I'd like to hope I wouldn't but unless I was letting the Holy Spirit lead me I wouldn't bet on me.<br />
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And if we don't take their questions seriously, why should they take our answer seriously? I don't know what changes will happen in our nation and society as a result of all of this weirdness, but I know that people are going to come out of it with a lot of questions. Let's listen to them, let's listen to the Spirit tell us how to reach them and then let's share with them the answer we've already been given.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-61213542101565008252020-05-10T09:30:00.000-05:002020-05-10T09:30:06.110-05:00Cornerstone (1 Peter 2:2-10)Usually when you and I think of a house today we think of a wood or wood frame building, but people in Jesus' part of the world who lived at the same time he did would have been much more likely to think of buildings made from stone. Woods -- especally the kinds of hard woods used to support buildings -- were scarce. Stone was plentiful.<br />
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The most basic kinds of homes were actually caves. Limestone caves are common in the region, and the limestone itself was soft enough it could be carved with the tools available at the time. Rooms could be enlarged and new rooms hewn into the caves relatively easily.<br />
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Some structures used what's sometimes called "rubble masonry." Stones would be piled together without necessarily being matched for size or shape. A more planned version might start with large stones placed together and then the gaps filled with smaller ones before some kind of mortar was added, but in a hurry rubble masonry walls might be made without mortar. If the city wall had been breached by invaders but they had been driven back, the gap might be filled with rubble before they could attack again.<br />
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As the Israelites knew from their own ancestral history, buildings could be made with bricks sized and cut for the work. The bricks could also be quarried and brought to the site.<br />
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A related but more elaborate kind of stone construction is sometimes called "ashlar masonry." Although ashlar may sound like an ancient Hebrew word, it's actually Middle English. Ashlar walls or buildings are made of stone cut and worked to match the size of the others. The rough ashlars are taken from a quarry and then "dressed" to have a regular surface and similar sizes. Ashlar walls and buildings could be joined with mortar but were also sometimes made without. A lot of ancient Inca architecture in South America is so-called "dry ashlar."<br />
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The dressing of the cornerstone in an ashlar structure was incredibly important. If the angle was just a small bit off, then the long walls that rested on it would not be at the right angles for the others. Construction would be much harder, if it was possible at all. A whole project might have to be knocked down and started over. So the cornerstone had to be as close to perfect as the stonemasons could make it, and unsuitable ones were rejected. They might later be used as ordinary stones in the wall, but they couldn't be cornerstones.<br />
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Peter, quoting Psalm 118, identifies Jesus with a rejected cornerstone. The religious leadership opposed him and judged that nothing worthwhile could be built from his words and actions. He didn't fit their design specifications. But, Peter says, though earthly authorities rejected him God selected him. In fact, God had long ago selected him and knew what he would build with his Son as the cornerstone: What we today call the church.<br />
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The work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers shapes them for their place in this great construction project. We come to Jesus rough-hewn at best and in our own minds completely unsuitable for any kind of work in his name. Surely he could build nothing worthwhile with <i>me</i>, we say. Ah, but I can, he replies. Allow me to shape you and use the circumstances of your life and world to form something more wonderful than you could have possibly imagined.<br />
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Or we might come feeling ourselves already prepared for a role in his project -- in fact, we know exactly <i>what</i> role we would like and we helpfully inform the Lord just how he should use us. More often than not, though, we find we do not fit the role we sought. Will we haughtily turn our backs, saying we will come to Jesus on our own terms or not at all, or will we humble ourselves and allow the Spirit to shape us according to his plans instead of our own?<br />
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Because the metaphor of the cornerstone has another layer. Jesus is the cornerstone of the church, which is built upon him and when it is what it is supposed to be it is completely shaped and directed by the way that cornerstone is laid. But he also desires to be the cornerstone of our lives, giving shape and purpose to who and what we do. Not only does he shape us for our place in the church he shapes our everyday characteristics with an eye towards what he will build <i>us</i> as.<br />
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A lifetime of following Jesus means a lifetime of being fitted out by him as he patiently smooths and shapes what is in us so that we match that image of God in which we were created. It means a lifetime of being fitted for our role in his greatest work, the salvation of humanity. Our role is to humble ourselves and allow him to work.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-41476560366343924662020-05-03T09:30:00.000-05:002020-05-03T09:30:02.973-05:00Learning His VoiceThis illustration of Jesus as shepherd and also as a gate for the sheepfold is about the only time John emphasizes a parable from Jesus' teaching; he mostly focuses on how Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah and on his work for God.<br />
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Like the parables related in the other three gospels, this one turns on an idea that would have been pretty familiar to most of people listening. We tend to think of shepherds as having large flocks of dozens or even hundreds of animals, but most shepherds at the time would not have had so many. They would take their small flock out during the day to graze and drink, then bring it inside an enclosure for the night to protect it from predators and keep strays from wandering off. Often several would join to build the enclosure and use their greater numbers to offer greater protection. In the morning, each shepherd would call his own sheep to lead them out for the day's business and although they were not trained to respond to commands the way a dog is they usually did recognize the voice of their own particular shepherd. The ones who got confused could be sorted out by the shepherds.<br />
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Jesus' suggestion is that his own followers will continue to follow him because they know his voice like the sheep know the voice of their own particular shepherd.<br />
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A lot of interesting ideas grow from this image. One is that the sheep are not born knowing the voice of their shepherd. As lambs, they follow the adult sheep and only learn it as they get older. If we translate the image into our own modern context as a representation of the church, then we see the importance of teaching younger members about the voice of our shepherd, Jesus. The idea that we won't influence them and we'll let them decide for themselves when they're old enough doesn't make much sense if Jesus' image of the shepherd and his sheep relates to the modern church in any way.<br />
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This idea doesn't just apply to young church people -- we <i>all</i> have to learn the voice of the shepherd in order to know how to follow him. Remember, the image Jesus uses in John is of sheep called forth from the fold to follow the shepherd, who walks in front of him. But unlike sheep, we have the opportunity to <i>not</i> follow him. We can identify ourselves with some other shepherd-figure we'd like to follow. We might choose to follow a path of satisfying desires and enjoying ourselves. We might choose to follow one of wealth or political power, or something else entirely.<br />
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There are plenty of other shepherds who'd call us to be in their flocks. And unlike a sheep that won't answer a stranger's voice, we can and often do so. But experience will teach us that these other paths, no matter what they may promise, don't lead to the fulfilling life we really want. The promises of meaning, purpose, direction and satisfaction are false in the mouths of every shepherd but the good one -- our Savior.<br />
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Perhaps we begin following him by tagging along behind other sheep that are already with him. And since we're not talking about sheep but people, we can see this path opened for us by invitation. No sheep ever says to another, "Well, this guy's really good to us. Give it a try." But because our following Jesus is an act of will rather than mindless instinct, we're better led by invitation. I've mentioned to you before that a lot of studies show what draws people into a church and while studies can have a lot of variables in them they agree enough on this that I believe it. It's not music, programming, excitement or superstars behind the pulpit: It's an invitation from someone they know.<br />
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Then, once we tag along, we start to learn the voice of the shepherd. It's different from the other voices that call to us. It doesn't promise easy street or the best of everything or the satisfaction of every wish. But the more we hear it and the more we listen to it we begin to believe that what it does promise -- that this shepherd will always be with us and will never abandon us -- is a true promise. It has a weight the other promises claimed to have but couldn't match. This shepherd calls us and the more we tune our ears to what he says more meaningless the noise from the others becomes.<br />
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Listen for our shepherd. In the voices of others, in the quiet times of early morning or late night, in the word he gives us, in the testimonies of those who followed him before, in the acts he gave us to remember him and his work, in more ways than we can count he will speak to us. And the more we listen, the more we will hear him, the only one who calls us by nameFriarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-30181572128984698002020-04-26T09:30:00.000-05:002020-04-26T19:15:03.619-05:00Known in His Breaking (Luke 24:13-35)A lot of Jesus' resurrection appearances have something in common: People don't seem to know who he is. Sometimes they do, but in several of them the people who see him don't recognize him. Christians through history have wondered why that is -- why would these people, who had been traveling with him and listening to him teach for the better part of three years, not know him when they saw him?<br />
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I don't know if there's one answer that fits all of them. Today's story, that of the walk to Emmaus Jesus takes with two of his disciples, offers what might be one of the stranger versions because the two disciples in question spend most of the day with Jesus but don't know him until the very end of their time together. When they later tell the rest of the disciples about it they say that he was made known to them "in the breaking of the bread." Why was that act the one that made the difference?<br />
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Let's look first at all the times they didn't recognize him during the day and see if something makes the breaking of the bread different from them.<br />
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They don't recognize him when he joins them on the road. We don't know if he caught up to them, they caught up to him, he joined them from a side road or what, but it's clear that just seeing him wasn't enough to truly know him for who he really was. And it also wasn't enough to just hear his voice once they started conversing. Here we see one answer people give as to why Jesus wasn't known to these disciples. Their eyes, it says, were kept from recognizing him. But really all that does is push the question back one layer. What's the point of keeping him from being recognized? We're still left with not knowing why they don't know him.<br />
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After the pair explain their situation to Jesus, he comments that they've missed the boat on things, and then begins to explain how the words of Moses -- the Law or Torah -- and the prophets point to him. If these two disciples had followed Jesus any length of time, they must have heard things they had heard before -- maybe even in the same exact words! But those aren't enough to clue them in on who they're talking with, even though both of them later note they were singularly affected by the experience. So far, neither the evidence of the senses, direct interaction through conversation or gaining wisdom and knowledge from Jesus' words and teaching have been enough to make it plain who Jesus is.<br />
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When they all get to Emmaus, Jesus makes as if he's heading on down the road but the two disciples invite him to stay with them. This may sound strange to us but would have been perfectly understandable to the people of the time. Even though Jesus was a stranger to the disciples -- or so they thought -- the hospitality culture of that part of the world made it clear that decent people would invite the stranger as a guest. In chapter 14, Luke records Jesus telling his listeners to invite the poor and the strangers to their table. The pair are obeying Jesus' own words and commands -- but this is not enough for them to identify him as Jesus. Seeing and hearing Jesus, listening to his teaching, even <i>following</i> his teaching have not been enough to help the disciples know who their roadside companion has been.<br />
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As the guest, Jesus is given the place of honor as the host of the meal, so he begins by blessing the bread and distributing it to those at the table. And <i>then</i> they know him. The breaking of the bread breaks the veil of perception and they know him, which they then run back to tell the others. Then they also learn that Jesus had appeared to some of them as well, including Simon Peter.<br />
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Why does the bread-breaking do it? We could say the familiarity of the act jogs their memory, but remember they've been walking and talking with him for a good chunk of the day. It stretches things to think this is the first familiar act or word Jesus does during that time.<br />
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Here's what I think. The bread-breaking is the first thing that Jesus has done all day that is completely and only him. When they see and hear them they're using <i>their</i> senses. When they listen to his teaching they're using their intellect to comprehend them. When they obey his teaching they've decided they will do so.<br />
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But when he breaks the bread Jesus does something that only he can do. He has been made the honored guest and the meal and it will not begin until <i>he</i> takes action. Only he can do this, and it is when the disciples no longer participate that Jesus can be seen for who he really is.<br />
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I really like thinking this way about this story. I like it because it shows us that while perceiving Jesus and learning about Jesus and even obeying Jesus are all important and vital parts of following him, we do not see the real Jesus until <i>he</i> performs the act <i>only</i> he can perform.<br />
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Methodist founder John Wesley called communion a "means of grace," or a way by which God communicates the grace of his love to human beings. That God communicates with us at all is an act of grace, because he's surely not required to do it. He chose to. Today we do not have the experience of seeing and hearing Jesus in the flesh the way the disciples of his time did. We can of course learn of him from the scriptures and we can obey what he teaches us to do, but just like then those things by themselves are not enough to know him for who he is. Only he can show us that, and he has chosen the breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup as special representations of his acts to help us truly see and know him. His messiah-ship was made real when he offered himself on the cross and in his own words the bread is his body, broken for us. He was made known in his breaking.<br />
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It's not automatic. We can go through these motions just as easily as we can any others with which we become familiar. But if we will let him, he will make himself known to us in his breaking.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-33362453427213980352020-04-19T09:31:00.000-05:002020-04-19T10:47:04.334-05:00Hard Times (1 Peter 1:3-9)In line at the store this week I was talking with someone I know about the way he's doing his job very differently than he did before the COVID-19 virus shutdown. He mentioned how the huge amounts of time at home had made a difference for his family. "We were doing OK before," he said. "But this let us build some things together and do things we wouldn't have known to do otherwise." The viral shutdown and the widespread illness were not good things, but he believed that he and his family had let God bring some good things from them.<br />
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When we read Peter about how the "various trials" we undergo are a part of testing the genuineness of our faith, we're ready to ask right away if God causes the hard times we endure in order to build our faith or achieve some other purpose. That question, of course, is like a theological hand grenade with the pin pulled -- if you don't keep a tight and precise grip on it you will learn why Mr. Hand Grenade is no longer your friend. Some people have no real issue asserting that God brings hard times on people in order to teach them or strengthen them, or serve some other purpose. But some people -- who may have dealt with some serious hard times of their own or known people who did -- aren't willing to accept that. With a literal infinite list of ways he can bring things about, it seems to them very strange at best to say that God might bring cancer or disease or harm into people's lives.<br />
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Now one reason we ask this question about why did hard times come to us is because most of the time we don't have to deal with them. Most of us, especially in the nations of the developed world like the United States, live lives that have few hard times when we compare them to the way people have lived for most of human existence and the way many people around the world live today.<br />
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For most of human history and for developing nations today, the goal of the work people do is survival. They don't work to build a nest egg or save up for a new car. They work, sometimes pretty dadgum hard, in order to make sure that they can live through that day and maybe a little bit of the next. "Hard times" are the norm.<br />
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So they don't ask why hard times come. Hard times are how they live. Peter recognizes this -- remember he was a fisherman before Jesus called him, so he knows what earning your bread by the sweat of your brow means. The new perspective he brings is that the hard times can actually be redeemed by God into a stronger faith that will bring glory to God when Jesus comes and the world changed.<br />
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Many religions in Peter's time promised success and prosperity in return for devotion to a particular god or goddess. It's not an unknown idea in our time, either. But the gospel Peter heard, saw and later preached himself made no such promises. With his own eyes he had seen the arrest of his Teacher and he was probably among the crowds watching from a distance as Jesus died. But then came the glory of Easter and he saw Jesus transform the obvious defeat of his crucifixion into the tools God would use to redeem humanity.<br />
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Maybe one of the clearest examples of the difference is the way some people pray. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but comfortable people in pretty good circumstances tend to pray for protection from hard times, or that the hard times miraculously halt. Nothing wrong with that, but we often forget to add the part of the prayer that people in less comfortable circumstances fall back on more often: To ask for God's presence and for the strength to endure the hard times that have come. Peter's readers lived hard times most of their lives and the idea that they would end before death came to them would have been a little odd.<br />
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I like to think of it this way; I've used this example a lot in my preaching. Let's say it rains, because after all Jesus promised that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Yes, farmers and ranchers are glad of it, and we like it when it ends a drought. But I'm talking about when we get caught out in the rain ourselves. If you were certain that you could pray and God would immediately give you what you asked him for, how would you pray? Would you pray for an umbrella, for protection from the rain and a way to keep it from getting you wet and affecting your life?<br />
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Or would you pray for shampoo? If I've read Peter right, he was encouraging his readers to perform the lifestyle equivalent of praying for shampoo. Passages like this aren't much use to folks who want to say that following Jesus means blessings, benefits and bounty in this life. But they can lead us to be people who say along with the Christians who listened to and believed Peter, "Life is hard. But God is good."<br />
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And that has the distinct advantage of being true.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-54266623372518257902020-04-12T10:00:00.000-05:002020-04-12T10:00:07.458-05:00Hidden (Colossians 3:1-4)On Easter I usually preach from what one of the gospels tells us happened on Easter morning. And although this Sunday is Easter Sunday by the calendar it will not seem much like it, as only a handful of people will hear this sermon in person in the church sanctuary. The health guidelines put in place to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus mean that most people will hear it online in some way or read this blog entry. I think I'll save an Easter morning story for the day we all get to worship together in person.<br />
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But the Lord has risen, and Easter is the day we mark that. It's the foundation event for Christian reality -- Paul says in fact says if the Lord hasn't risen we're not only wrong we're pitiful. And maybe this strange Easter will give us a chance to look at some things about it that don't always get the attention. In this passage from Colossians, we're told there is a difference between "things above" and "things that are on Earth."<br />
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We have to be careful when we consider Bible passages about the difference between this world and the life to come, because it is waaay too easy to talk ourselves into the idea that since the "things above" are the things that matter most, we don't have to pay attention to things going on around us. And that does <i>not</i> mesh with what Jesus tells us to do for each other and for the poor and powerless we may meet.<br />
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Usually passages that draw this distinction are trying to get us to see what we might call a universal reality or maybe a <i>real</i> reality that's underneath the world around us.<br />
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<i>Here</i> we see someone who has made a host of bad choices and gotten themselves stuck at the bottom of the ladder, but the <i>real </i>reality of God says, "This is my child, too." <i>Here</i> we see an innocent man falsely accused, convicted and executed -- as complete a defeat as could be imagined. But the <i>real </i>reality of God says, "This is my greatest victory."<br />
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<i>Here </i>we see empty sanctuaries across the country and across the world, trying to prevent the transmission of a virus that is particularly harmful to weaker, older and sicker people but can harm others as well. But the <i>real</i> reality of God says these sanctuaries are filled with a great cloud of witnesses, and that every place Christians seek his face and praise his name <i>becomes</i> a sanctuary.<br />
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Do they look like that to us? Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes people say that as we grow in our relationships with God we begin to see things as God wants us to see them, and so these mundane things in the world are transformed. There's probably something to that, but it seems to me it only goes so far. Even though it's filled with heavenly witnesses, this place still looks like a mostly empty sanctuary. Even though the guy who acted like a jerk at work is a child of God, he still acts like a jerk. It goes both ways, of course. If we're the jerk we may be children of God but we are still a class one pain in everybody's rear.<br />
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Differentiating between things above and things that are on Earth doesn't mean developing a kind of heavenly squint that lets us see things the way God sees them. It means seeing them as they appear to us and accepting the real reality of God anyway. Faith, as you recall, is evidence of things <i>not </i>seen. The wonder of the resurrection didn't erase the pain of the crucifixion -- the risen Jesus bears scars for a reason. But faith that God keeps his promise to never abandon us shows us that the worst the world can do can't touch what makes us who we are. The <i>real</i> reality of you and me is hidden with Christ in God, and it will be revealed in glory when Christ is himself revealed in truth.<br />
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The Christian faith doesn't try to pretend bad things aren't bad things or that hard things aren't hard. So I'll paraphrase Frederick Buechner to close. The worst thing may very well be the worst thing. But Jesus says it's never the last thing, and he invites us to say it with him.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-32275483941853186602020-04-05T10:00:00.000-05:002020-04-05T10:00:02.087-05:00Blessed Is the King! (Luke 19:28-44)Generally the Pharisees who meet Jesus are irritated with him or maybe a little smug about how a Nazareth carpenter doesn't have their extensive education, no matter how many of the rabble show up to hear him teach. But in this passage, they give the impression of being a little scared, don't they?<br />
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Well, they probably were scared, but not of Jesus or his followers. They were scared of the Romans, who took a dim view of groups that went around proclaiming this or that random dude was a king. Some local yokel hot-shot in the back end of the Empire thinks he's king instead of Caesar? Eh, Romans don't care. But he might cause unrest, and unrest would disrupt business, and disrupted business stalls tax revenue. And now Romans care. So they tended to stamp those kinds of things out and they weren't careful who else might get stamped while they did so. That concerns the Pharisees, who worry they might get roped into the "who else" group.<br />
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Either way, they want Jesus to get his people to pipe down and maybe ix-nay on the ing-kay alk-tay. I can see Jesus laughing at the absurdity of their demands when he tells them, "If I shut these people up the <i>rocks</i> are going to proclaim I'm king!" The people aren't proclaiming what they wish to be true or what they hope to be true. Their words don't outline a reality they intend to bring about. They state a reality that <i>already exists</i>. Their praise just acknowledges an established truth: Jesus is Lord. So if the people quiet down, the rest of creation will pick up the slack, even parts of it not generally known to vocalize -- like rocks.<br />
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In a culture where we used to selecting our own leaders, even if the choices are often between Absolutely Awful and Even More Awful, the idea of someone who is Lord just because he shows up strikes us oddly. In fact, we may be working with the idea that Jesus is Lord because the people proclaim him a king, even though the reality is the other way around.<br />
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But those who follow him know Jesus is indeed Lord. At some point in our lives, circumstances prompted us to face his question to us: "Am I Lord?" In seminary, I learned this is called an "existential question" because the answer determines how we live our lives and shapes our existence. Unlike most of the lords and kings who ruled during Jesus' time and indeed still today, this Lord will not threaten or demand. He will let us say, "No." To do so is to deny reality just as surely as we would if we denied that gravity worked, but he will let us do it.<br />
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Of course, he will be back and ask again. He won't coerce us, but he will persist. And most of us who follow him have realized that leading a life that continues to answer, "No" to his question leaves us wanting something more even if we don't understand what that more might be. So we have answered, "Yes."<br />
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And once we've done so, we find we have yet a second chance to turn away from having Jesus as our Lord because he will ask a follow-up question. We answer "Am I Lord?" with "Yes," and now he asks, "Am I <i>your</i> Lord?" See, whether or not he's Lord is not really in question. The only uncertainty is how long we want to live in denial of that fact.<br />
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But is he <i>your</i> Lord? Is he <i>my</i> Lord? Those questions are still open. Our Lord knows that a relationship of obedience from fear is completely inferior to one of obedience from love. The Lord of love will not force himself into our lives -- if you remember that famous figure of speech from Revelation, you'll remember that he stands at the door and <i>knocks</i>. He doesn't kick the door down or pick the lock or deceive us that he's a candygram delivery or something. He waits on us to let him in, to acknowledge his rightful place and <i>if</i> we open the door, he will come in.<br />
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Joining the crowd on Palm Sunday, waving branches and shouting "Hosanna!" is a great acknowledgment of the lordship of Christ. Following him, though, only <i>starts</i> there and following as a willing disciple is what he truly desires us to do, for our own benefit and flourishing. As he makes clear to the Pharisees, if all he wanted was acknowledgment of his lordship, he could get that from rocks.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-10061249861186923682020-03-29T10:00:00.000-05:002020-03-29T10:00:02.190-05:00Give It Up! (Luke 18:18-30)I guarantee the most common question every pastor hears after this passage gets read is, "So is Jesus telling <i>me</i> to sell everything I have and give the money to the poor?" In fairness, most of the time the question comes not from avarice and greed but from concern about how to survive without money for food or a home to stay in, but it does seem to the first thought in everyone's mind when they listen to Jesus say it to this young wealthy man.<br />
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Earlier in my career, I would often try to explain things in the passage like its context and listening with intent and stuff like that. Now I just say, "I don't know what Jesus is asking you to do. What do you think?"<br />
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Jesus met a lot of wealthy people during his ministry and some of those meetings are described in the gospels. He doesn't tell all of them to sell their goods and give the money to the poor, so we don't even know what he wanted all the rich people he met to do, let alone what he wants <i>us </i>to do. All we know is that he wants this young man, who has asked what he must do to have eternal life above and beyond full and faithful obedience to the commandments, to do.<br />
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That's not a cop out. You've probably heard people say, "Well, I'm not what you call rich so I don't really need to pay attention to this one." In 2015 people making <i>minimum </i>wage in the United States made twice the <i>highest </i>average wage of any nation on the entire continent of Africa. The <i>average </i>annual wage in the US ($29,930) is four times as high as that figure, $7,750 in Botswana. "I'm not really rich" is a cop out. "I don't know what Jesus would like you to give up" isn't.<br />
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We can see why Jesus selected wealth as the thing that this young man needed to consider giving away when we see his response. He is sad, because he has many possessions. Jesus perceives this about him and that's probably why he directs him to do what he does. He accepts the man at face value, as a sincere seeker of the truth and gives him what he needs to know.<br />
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When we sincerely seek Jesus, he does the same for us. Even though we may not be directed to divest ourselves of possessions and wealth, there is something -- probably a <i>bunch </i>of somethings -- we hold that come between us and full commitment to following Jesus. If we listen to him, we can learn what they are.<br />
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Because that's how we find them out. The wealthy young man didn't know what he lacked but the fact that he questioned Jesus meant that he knew he lacked <i>something</i>. When we rely on our own understanding to figure out what holds us back from the path of Jesus we can find ourselves in the middle of extravagantly detailed systems of legalisms that do everything but light our way to the Lord. We create joy-sapping jumbles of rules that produce worry and anxiety but absolutely <span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>no </i><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;">love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. </span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;">And we do it because we think this is what makes Jesus happy, but we never ask Jesus if it's what we ought to do! "Lord, I've given up watching football on Sunday afternoon because I think my enjoyment of it gets in the way of following you. I really liked watching Patrick Mahomes bring his team back from three touchdowns down, but since I am sure this is what you want..."<br /><br />And Jesus replies, "Actually, I'm kind of partial to big comebacks. When did I tell you to do that?"</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box;">"Um, you didn't. I just assumed..."</span></span><br />
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Our perspectives and understanding are limited. We, as Paul says, know in part and see in part. Our limitations keep us from seeing ourselves as God sees us, and it is only God's vision that can reveal to us what holds us back. From our point of view, the obstacle created by the young man's wealth seems clear -- but it didn't to him, and our own obstacles are not clear to us. The only way we can know what holds us back from answering Jesus' call and following him is to ask.<br />
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And then listen to him.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-12946213454659712422020-03-22T10:30:00.000-05:002020-03-22T10:30:00.139-05:00Son or Servant? (Luke 15:20-32)Getting our heads around one of the features of the first century's patriarchal culture can help us clarify one of the key questions this part of the parable of the Prodigal asks us. <i>They</i> limited the idea of inheritance to sons, more specifically the eldest. We don't -- and as we read the parable we can see how Jesus didn't either. Both men <i>and</i> women are given this question to answer: Do we wish to live as servants, or do we wish to live as heirs of the Father?<br />
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Both of the sons in the story have to deal with this question, although they approach it from different directions. The youngest son, having first insulted his father by demanding his inheritance while the father was still living, further distances himself from his family and household literally as well as figuratively. He runs away to live in a far country, apparently because the partying is better there. There he busies himself in spending his inheritance as fast as he and his new friends can manage it, having the bad luck of running out of money at the same time his new homeland runs out of food. Though he gets work to survive, it's the ultimate humiliation of not only feeding pigs but realizing they eat better than he does.<br />
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Then, Jesus says, he "came to himself." He remembers who he's supposed to be, and even more importantly, he remembers who he's the son of. His father's <i>servants</i> do better than he's doing right now! Finally realizing what he's done to separate himself from his rightful place as an heir -- even if a junior one -- he resolves to return to his father and earn back that place he spurned so carelessly.<br />
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When he gets home, he doesn't even make it to the gate before dad sees him coming and runs to meet him. This might worry him at first -- patriarchs don't run to meet people, other people run to meet them and so he may figure he's fixin' to get beat. But his father welcomes him and cuts him off mid-speech. There'll be none of this servant nonsense, not for his son! He was dead and is alive, lost but now found!<br />
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The younger son realized that he deserved to be a servant rather than a son and confessed that to his father; his father rejoiced at his return and restored him to being an heir as he was before.<br />
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But the older son, when he heard the party and found out what it was about, refused to enter his father's house. Though his father also came out to welcome him, he rejected the welcome and reminder of his family inheritance. He insisted he deserved better than he was getting because of all his hard work and his slavish devotion to his duty. <i>He</i> deserved a party for never going astray and pulling a Van Halen throughout the ancient Near East, but his father had never given him anything.<br />
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No, the father says, you were always with me and so everything I have was <i>already</i> yours. It was yours before you did a single chore and would be yours if you never did another one. You are my child, not my slave!<br />
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You and I are confronted with that choice and we may have approached it from each way at different times in our lives. There are times when we recognize how we have separated ourselves from our Heavenly Father and insisted we could not be his children. The only proper thing we could do would be to earn our way back into his grace and his family. Nope, he says. You are fully welcome whenever you return; settling accounts doesn't apply between a father and his heirs.<br />
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But there are also times when we, considering all of our great and wondrous righteousness by which we have lived, believe we have earned what the Father has given us. Therefore we sometimes scoff at the way the wanderers are welcomed home, and sometimes it makes us angry. We <i>earned</i> our status! We <i>deserve</i> our position, and rejoicing at the return of those who <i>don't</i> deserve it makes a mockery of all our hard work.<br />
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There are a lot of differences between the two sons, but one that I'll single out is who they'll let define the relationship between themselves and their father. The younger son will come back to his father on whatever terms the father sets, although he believes he's not worthy of being considered a son. But the older son insists that his father receive him as <i>he</i> wishes, and his self-regard blinds him to the reality that his father has always considered him a beloved child and always will, no matter what he does.<br />
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So he stays outside, and won't come in. Will we?Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-57892700779479756722018-01-22T17:45:00.001-06:002018-01-22T17:45:39.437-06:00Doers of the Word (James 1:22-27)<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">My part of this message was mostly an extended introduction to our guest speaker, who talked about some of the programs our church has to help young people who don't have a lot of help move into a better place in life economically as well as spiritually. Hence the brevity and curious ending.</span></i><br />
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">James gives us a very interesting metaphor to describe
people who are only hearers of the word and not “doers of the word.” They’re
like people who forget what they look like as soon as they walk away from the
mirror.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Now I know – there are some things about what the mirror
shows us that we would rather forget. The amount of gray in the hair – or the
amount of hair that’s not there. The exercise that should still be done. Or the
unhappy results of what genetics has stuck you with. And that metaphorical
mirror, the one that we talk about looking at when we talk about whether or not
we can live with what we’ve done, that one shows us things we would rather
forget as well. How we treated this person, or what we said in that situation.
I would much rather those things had been done by someone else, but the mirror
shows me that the one who did them was me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Still, the way James talks about it the idea of
forgetting what we look like is not recommended. He seems to think it’s pretty
foolish and the sign of a shallow kind of person. If he were 12 he might be
saying, “You’re so dumb that when you walk away from the mirror, you forget
what you look like.”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">There aren’t a lot of things that are more “us” than the
way we look. When we’re born people scrutinize our new faces, hunting for signs
of this parent, that grandparent or some other relative, when the truth is all
babies look like Winston Churchill. One of the signs we’re starting to grow up
is when we choose our own clothes to wear instead of being dressed in what our
parents lay out for us. Cowboy outfits, princess dresses, superhero T-shirts –
all of these become important parts of our lives as we get into our elementary
years and we begin to have some interest in what we look like to other people.
Middle school is invested with having the same clothes as everyone else does in
order to establish that we are our own person. It makes no sense to me either,
but it probably did then.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And then there’s high school, where we probably use some
of our own money to buy things that we want to make us “look older.” We tell
everyone how cool our music is by our T-shirts (and also how cool <i>we</i> are for listening to them). It’s not
just girls – boys too will want to copy a certain look in haircuts or
appearance. Our clothes help show other people we like this video game, that
movie or TV show or that we support a particular cause.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Don’t get me started on what happens in college.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The upshot is that even healthy, well-adjusted people pay
attention to what they look like because it’s a part of their identity. So
James is suggesting more than just people who aren’t bright enough to remember
their own faces after they walk away from the mirror. He’s suggesting that
people who only hear the word but don’t do it have forgotten something even
more important: They have forgotten who they are.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We can hear the gospel message of God’s love all we want
to and even believe it truly describes us and our relationship with God. But
until we live it out, it does not define us. It does not tell us who we are.
Something else does.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Maybe it’s the words of someone else in our lives, some
authority figure who we’re always trying to please. Maybe it’s the crowd of
people to which we want to belong, dictating to us how we will act and look and
speak if we want to be accepted. Maybe it’s our culture at large, imposing
values about what’s important and what’s not, what needs to be pursued and how
it needs to be pursued in order to arrive at our true selves. Maybe it’s the
circumstances in which we live – you’re in a trailer, you’re a nobody with no future
but if you’re in a mansion you’ve got the world on a string.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For many people, one of those things or something else
entirely defines them, and you can tell what it is, what word they have heard,
by what word they spend time doing. Show me your checkbook and I’ll tell you
what matters to you. Show me your calendar and I’ll tell you what you think is
important. The word you <i>hear</i> is not
what defines you, it is the word you <i>do</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">James saw the same things, expressed of course in terms
of his own culture instead of ours. He knew that the fundamental problem with
all of those other words was that they were inadequate <i>and</i> they were inaccurate. It’s why doing them rarely if ever leads
to real, full satisfaction and a life with meaning. There is only one truly
defining word and it it’s the gospel message, the word that speaks to the image
of God in every one of us. It tells us that we do not need to perform the
tricks that all of these other words demand, because before we ever drew breath
we were loved by the God who made the universe and everyone in it. That is the
truth of our worth and value, and nothing else. That is our identity. And it’s
a very good word indeed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">If we do not <i>do</i>
it, though, if we do not love the Lord with all of our heart, soul, mind and
strength and if we do not love our neighbors as ourselves as the Holy Spirit
leads and helps us to do, well, then we will never know who we really are.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But if we do it? If we do the Word as well as hear it?
Not only will we learn who we really are, others will learn who they are
because of those words and actions. Let’s listen to someone who can tell us
about that.</span><span style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-47221630782757603002018-01-13T21:54:00.002-06:002018-01-13T21:54:31.209-06:00Is Your Servant Listening? (1 Samuel 3:1-10)Ordinarily when I preach from this text I include the second part of the chapter, where God tells Samuel the bad news about what's in store for Eli and how Samuel only tells the old man reluctantly. I think it's important for us to remember that when God sends a message to the people it's not always a sunshine rainbow-gram; sometimes it's a warning of consequences for actions taken.<br />
<br />
But this time I felt drawn to one of the themes of the story that's set up in its first few verses, and that's the idea of vision, sight and understanding. "Visions were not widespread," we're told, and when we see God describe the leadership of Eli we can understand why. Remember when Hannah was first praying for a son Eli saw her and thought she was drunk. He's watched his sons use their priestly positions to enrich themselves and done nothing. Whatever you may think his role as chief priest was supposed to be, he wasn't doing it, and "the word of the Lord was rare in those days."<br />
<br />
We can see this play out even more clearly when we see why Samuel didn't know who was calling him. In verse 7, we learn "Now Samuel did not yet know the LORD, and the word of the LORD had not yet been revealed to him." We might gloss past this by thinking that Samuel was still a young boy, but let's step back and look more closely. The Hebrew people didn't have their Temple yet, but the shrine at Shiloh was the religious headquarters of the nation. The Ark of the Covenant was kept there. <i>And that's where Samuel was working</i>. He doesn't know the Lord, even though he's working in the midst of what's basically Yahweh Central!<br />
<br />
Yes, he is just a boy, but how many children do you know in church who have <i>some</i> understanding of what's going on there, even if it's only on a childish level? I would wager it's more than a few, and remember, he's hanging around the major religious center of his people and watching its activity every day.<br />
<br />
Lest you think I am blaming Samuel, I am not. I do recognize that he is a child, and I will point out something that you've probably already guessed about the kind of kids I've mentioned. Yes, there are children today who have some understanding of God and of their relationship with him, because they have adults who have taught them. If Samuel doesn't know God and the word has not yet been revealed to him, then the culprits if they exist are the adults who have failed to teach him while he is in the midst of a swirl of religious activity.<br />
<br />
Now I admit you have to read between the lines, so to speak, to come up with this idea. It's also possible that he didn't yet know the word of God because God had not yet revealed himself to Samuel. That's a plain reading of the scripture and could very well be true. But when we look at those context-setting verses that we get in the beginning of the chapter and the stories about the corrupt sons of Eli in earlier chapters, we have to wonder if it's something more than that. Because the truth is that we adults are the ones who will help children know the voice of the Lord when it comes to them. And to his credit, Eli does eventually recognize what's going on with Samuel and gives him good instructions.<br />
<br />
If we don't help young people know that God calls them to himself, they will still hear a call but they won't know who it's from. They'll think it's from the culture around them or from some other source and they will run to it as Samuel ran to Eli. They'll look to answer it but find no satisifaction or peace in doing so. It will be an empty call in the end, and they'll find out what they've pursued is empty of meaning or purpose.<br />
<br />
Sure, letting them know about the call of God in their lives doesn't guarantee they will answer him. But <i>not</i> knowing about it is a great indicator that they <i>won't</i> know to answer him.<br />
<br />
It works the same for those of us more advanced in years as well. The older I've gotten the more I'm convinced that almost every desire I have in life somehow represents something that God wants me to do or wants me to listen for. But when I see those desires in the context of the world and of the culture around me I get that call messed up and I pursue it in a direction God didn't want me to take. I too need to keep myself invested in the word of God so that when God calls me, I can recognize it and say "Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening."Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-14235072617785045502017-10-18T14:37:00.004-05:002017-10-18T14:37:54.775-05:00Sightings (Exodus 33:12-23)One of the things Christians often ask God is to understand his will or his plan for us. We know the ultimate destination, which is union with God for all eternity. But we don't know the in-between steps, so to speak, about what will go on between now and then.<br />
<br />
This conversation between God and Moses demonstrates we are not the first ones to face this issue.<br />
<br />
Moses knows that God's ultimate plan is that his people Israel will live in the land he promised to their ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When he first called Moses to lead the people for him, he told Moses that they would come to this mountain -- the very same one where God was now talking to him in the burning bush -- and receive God's teaching and law. So now they're there, and Moses understandably would like to know what's next. Obviously they have to travel to the promised land, and Moses knows that since the Hebrew people left more than 400 years earlier, some new folks have moved in. Some kind of arrangement will have to be made with them. Preparations have to be made for these and probably at least a dozen other matters, so Moses asks God what will come next when he says, "Show me your ways."<br />
<br />
God gives Moses the answer he has given to many of Moses' questions going back to that first meeting: He will be with them, they can depend on him. His exact words, of course, are "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest." He does not outline his specific plans for the Israelites or the things that will have to happen to get them to the promised land or anything about the future steps they will take. But he does promise to be with the people and to take care of their needs.<br />
<br />
We can see how much Moses has grown since the first meeting. Of course, he says! You have to go with us, or we won't get <i>anywhere</i>. We won't survive the first obstacle! Anything I achieve or anything the people achieve will be the direct result if you going with us! I kind of get the impression Moses asked already knowing the answer but wanted to hear God confirm it, drawing reassurance from the statement.<br />
<br />
The conversation continues: Moses asks to see God's glory. Here we get into some deeper weeds because of the Hebrew words involved. "Glory" translates <i>kabod</i>, which comes from a Hebrew root word often used to describe weight. Not just physical weight, but impact, as in, "Her words carry a lot of weight for me." Chicago newspaper columnist Mike Royko used to talk about how someone who interceded for you with, say, police interested in your financial dealings with an alderman was "clouting" for you. They could do this because they had weight. Although <i>kabod</i> calls to mind images of light and shining glory, it would also make the ancient Hebrews think of weight and impact. Moses wants to see who God really is, not just have these encounters with him. God promises his presence, so Moses wants to see that presence.<br />
<br />
God tells Moses that's impossible. No one can see his face and live. "Face" translates <i>panim</i>, and implies the real person represented by the physical face they wear. When you hear one friend tell another "I miss your face," it carries the same meaning. God's direct presence, his real self manifested in his full glory, power and impact would destroy Moses.<br />
<br />
So he tells Moses he will tuck him in a cleft in the rocks and hold his hand over as he passes by, so Moses can get a hint of God's glory. Think of what a flashlight looks like when it shines through a covering hand. And then after God has passed by, Moses can see his back. This is a metaphor, of course. God does not mean he will manifest some gigantic physical body with an actual hand and back Moses could see. He means that he will reveal as much of his true self to Moses as Moses can stand to encounter, and then show him the impact of that presence.<br />
<br />
It's an interesting parallel with Moses' first request. Show me the way we're going, Moses asks, but God doesn't. Show me your glory, Moses says to God, but God won't because Moses couldn't survive it. When you consider all of the things that actually happen to the Israelites and Moses before they get to the promised land, you could make a good case that Moses' leadership wouldn't survive the knowledge. He's just dealt with the griping people at Meribeh, what would he do if he learned that griping Israelites are going to be the norm rather than the exception? I'd quit, myself.<br />
<br />
What would he do if he knew what the people were going to need in order to become people who could actually govern themselves and handle their own affairs to any degree? They've been slaves for <i>twenty generations</i> -- it will take at least another whole one to mature them into a free people. They outnumbered the Egyptian chariots by tens or hundreds to one and they panicked -- what will it take to make them into folks who can settle a new land?<br />
<br />
I'm speculating, but I think that knowledge would have destroyed at least Moses' ability to lead if not wrecked him completely. When we look back at some of the hard choices and hard things we have had to handle after we decided we would follow Jesus, don't we wonder a little if we would have done it if we'd known about them beforehand? I do. I trusted God would be present when I was going through them and I look back now and see how he helped me, but would my faith in that presence have been strong enough if I had known before all of those things happened? I would like to think so, but I'm not sure.<br />
<br />
So maybe it is better not to know all things before they happen. Maybe it is better to be in the dark a little about the next chapters or next pages. Perhaps not, but I think it is. And I think either way, it'll just be one big mess if we don't know the Author helping us write the words.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-40462987780640617242017-10-13T10:52:00.002-05:002017-10-13T10:52:22.029-05:00Outward Focus (Luke 18:9-14)One of the problems that familiarity brings when it comes to Jesus' parables is the tendency to reduce them to their simplest terms. The story goes from A to B to C, or this person is a hero and that person is a villain, and so forth. But in this parable, maybe even more than most others, we need to avoid doing that.<br />
<br />
In those simplest terms, the tax collector is the hero and the Pharisee is the villain. Pharisees usually are the villains anyway, or at least Jesus' most frequent opponents, and he calls them out on their hypocrisy more than once. So it's pretty natural to see this one that way too, especially when Jesus tells us that the tax collector is the one who went home justified in God's sight.<br />
<br />
But let's look at the guy a little bit before dismissing him so quickly. He starts his prayer by thanking God -- which is a good thing and ought to be a part of our own prayers, shouldn't it? His prayer is not a list of things he wants God to do, like some prayers become too quickly. And although his phrasing isn't very genteel, the substance of his thanksgiving is actually not so bad either. He's thankful that he doesn't steal things or commit adultery -- do we always give God the credit when we do well or obey the commandments he gives us, or do we too often pat ourselves on the back? Don't answer -- I'm embarrassed enough when I think about how that one plays out for me.<br />
<br />
And what about his actions? The guy tithes, a full tenth of his income. That means he contributes to the Temple's work with the poor who come seeking help! He fasts twice a week, not eating between sunup and sundown as a sign of his religious devotion! My denomination doesn't make you fill out an application to join but if we did and this guy offered this résumé I'd be signing him up before some other church got him.<br />
<br />
Now, none of this makes Jesus wrong about him. The reality is the Pharisee's attitude in his prayers shows his flaws. Jesus tells us he "prays to himself," which may mean more than just speaking in too low a tone of voice for anyone else to hear. It may mean that despite his words he really does think he's achieved all of this on his own merits and God ought to be grateful to have such a guy as him. His tone when he mentions all of the bad people he's <i>not</i> supports that idea.<br />
<br />
But noting the upside of this Pharisee does remind us that he's not a villain -- he's a regular guy, pretty seriously devoted to his faith even if he thinks a little too much of himself. It's important to see this because otherwise we wind up dismissing him and diminishing the lesson Jesus wants to teach us.<br />
<br />
"Well of course the tax collector was justified," we say too easily. "He was the hero and the Pharisee was just a rotten no-good so-and-so." And it's way too few steps from that idea to thinking that we're not so bad ourselves, since we're obviously not villains like that Pharisee is...<br />
<br />
You see it, of course. When we make the Pharisee a villain instead of recognizing he's much more of an ordinary or even in some ways exemplary person, we can very quickly <i>do the exact thing he's doing</i>. Which, if you read the whole parable, is what Jesus wants us not to do.<br />
<br />
The tax collector was justified because he knew God alone could make him so. The Pharisee wasn't because he didn't acknowledge that. But if the tax collector had elevated his own righteousness and the Pharisee had acknowledged God's role in justifying him it all would have been flipped over the other way.<br />
<br />
Which is a good thing for Pharisees and tax collectors <i>both</i> to remember.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-55350324534270324402017-09-19T22:03:00.002-05:002017-09-19T22:03:31.659-05:00Spoiled Rotten? (Jonah 3:10-4:11) <i>A repeat of a sermon from several years ago as the same verse comes up in the lectionary and I work with the same ideas. Apparently God still has something to say to me in this passage.</i><br /><br />The trendy word <i>schadenfreude </i>refers to the pleasure someone
takes in someone else’s misery. It’s German. In English, we call it
"epicaricacy," or one of the <i>Real Housewives</i> shows.<br />
<br />
It’s also what powers Jonah’s speech here as we get to the end of his story. We know a little bit about him, but let’s recap:<br />
<br />
Jonah
the prophet hears God’s call to warn wicked Nineveh of its impending
destruction. He responds by boarding a boat for Tarshish. It would be
like a modern-day prophet who lived in New York City being told to warn
Las Vegas and taking a boat to Australia that leaves from Miami. In
other words, Jonah plans to get as much out there between him and
Nineveh as he can.<br />
<br />
During the voyage, a severe storm
comes up which the ship won’t survive. Nobody seems to know what to do –
well, nobody but Jonah, who might have an explanation as to the storm’s
cause but doesn’t share it with anyone. The sailors cast lots to find
out what the problem is and eventually the lot lands with Jonah.<br />
<br />
“Oh,
yeah, funny story!” the prophet says and explains he’s running away
from God’s call. If you thought a prophet might say, “OK, God, I give,”
or maybe, “Lord, if you will spare these innocent folks I will head for
Nineveh the moment we reach the shore,” then you’ve never met Jonah. He
lets the sailors make another try for land, but they can’t overpower
this divinely-powered storm. Now Jonah does have an idea. “Toss me
over,” he says. The sailors do and the sea calms.<br />
<br />
A
giant fish swallows Jonah. He sits in the fish’s stomach for three days –
and if you think about it, the only kind of air anyplace inside the
alimentary canal is what we take Pepto-Bismol for, which means Jonah
spends three days inside a giant fish burp. After three days of this, it
occurs to him to pray. Like many of us, he prays quoting some of the
prayers and songs he knows. My Old Testament professor in seminary
pointed out the different psalms and songs Jonah quoted, weaving them
together in a lament about how bad he had it.<br />
<br />
When Jonah finished, my professor said, the fish threw up. His sympathies were with the fish.<br />
<br />
Jonah
now finds himself near Nineveh, and when God calls again he decides
he’ll answer. Nineveh the city stretches so far a person takes three
days to walk across it, which makes the hotel chains like it very much.
Jonah ambles in about a third of the way and says five words in Hebrew.
He did raise his voice, and that may have been because nobody would get
near him since, as far as the story we have says, he hasn’t taken a bath
since leaving the fish.<br />
<br />
The Ninevites speak a language
close to Hebrew but not exactly, but in any event, this five-word
warning – “In forty days Nineveh will be wiped out” – sparks an amazing
revival among people who the day before this wouldn’t have given two
figs for what the God of some no-account wide spot in the road nation
down south said. Everybody repents of their sins. Everybody, from the
king on down to the livestock, vows to change their ways in the hope God
will not destroy them.<br />
<br />
God decides exactly that and it
ticks Jonah off mightily. Here we learn he didn’t run away because he
was scared. He knew that if he warned the people and they listened God
wouldn’t destroy them. Remember Ezekiel being unsure if the people would
listen to his harsh message? Jonah fumes because he knew the people
would listen to what God said through him and it would work.<br />
<br />
After all of this mess, his one hope was that he would at <i>least </i>get to see the wicked get what’s coming to them. He could at <i>least </i>enjoy a good ol’ Sodom-and-Gomorrah, fire-from-the-sky style hiney-whuppin’.<br />
<br />
But
noooooo, God has to go and be all Mr. Lovingkindness Mercy Forgiveness
and now Jonah can’t even enjoy that. To top it off, his shade tree got
eaten by a worm.<br />
<br />
“You’re mad?” God asks.<br />
<br />
“You bet I am! Mad enough to die right now!” Tops the list of dumb things to say to God, I believe.<br />
<br />
“You’re
mad because this bush died, and you don’t think I should pay attention
to this huge city and all its people and let them off the hook when they
turn to me?” The conversation kind of grinds to a halt, which is
probably good for Jonah.<br />
<br />
Who’s Jonah today? Well, we
probably all know some people in our churches who just don’t seem happy
unless they or someone is talking about someone else going to hell. <br />
<br />
Let
’em have it, Lord! Give ’em what they got comin’! Bring up the idea
that God may forgive those people and be met with some shock or some
dismay. I can’t say I’ve never done it; I’ve made the joke that if I get
to the heavenly city and meet this or that famous criminal or
ne’er-do-well of history, the first words out of my mouth will be,
“Well, there goes the neighborhood.”<br />
<br />
But what Jonah
needed to understand and what we all probably need to understand is that
God’s in the business of spoiling us, where “spoiling” means giving us
way, way more than we ought to get. In fact, giving us the exact
opposite of what we’ve earned, what we’ve <i>all </i>“earned,” to use
the word, by our sin. We’re all separated from God, and the degree of
separation is unimportant. That separation means death, but a loving God
decided on life, and decided to give that to us instead.<br />
<br />
We’re spoiled, all right. Spoiled un-rotten.<br />
<br />
Good news.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-28642252.post-24203621511133699382017-09-10T11:00:00.000-05:002017-09-08T12:19:11.948-05:00Just One Commandment (Romans 13:8-14)Our tendency in Christianity is to set the two parts of the Bible -- the Old and the New Testaments -- in tension if not outright pitting one against the other. Usually when we do this we cast it as something along these lines: The Old Testament is a book of law and the New Testament is a book of grace. In the OT our relationship is dominated by obedience to the law or lack thereof. In the NT we're relieved of the burden of the law through the grace of God, given in Jesus.<br />
<br />
But when we read Romans, we find that this idea might have surprised Paul a little. We know that he wrote Romans to the Christians of that city, most of whom he had never met and who wouldn't have known a lot about him. Instead of corresponding back and forth with a church, like he did with the Corinthians, and answering their questions, Romans is Paul introducing himself and his theology to people who didn't know him. So he spends a little time on the relationship between the law and grace, and it doesn't seem to be as clear cut as the way I described it above.<br />
<br />
For one, Paul's understanding of grace comes from Scripture, which for him would have been the Old Testament. He's <i>writing</i> what will become the New Testament, so it's not available to him beyond maybe some lists of things Jesus said and copies of stories he told. That means we find grace written into the OT books <i>in addition to</i> the law.<br />
<br />
For another, Romans and several other of his letters stress the importance of obeying what God called us to do. Jesus himself says that following him means obeying his commandments. Mixed in with the dominant message of grace through Christ is a call for obedience that's just as serious as the other. Paul doesn't devalue obedience and in this passage ties it to a lifestyle that "puts on Jesus Christ."<br />
<br />
He does reduce several commandments to one simple direction: Love your neighbor. Thanks to his training as a Pharisee, Paul knows the entire Torah by heart and elsewhere says he obeys all of its provisions. He knows, though, that the mostly Gentile Christians of Rome will probably know little of that law -- perhaps some of the Ten Commandments at most. He refers to a couple in describing how the law has just one or two main purposes, and he refers to one of the two great commandments Jesus explained, loving our neighbors. If we obey that commandment, Paul says, we fulfill the law.<br />
<br />
But the only people who think that makes things <i>easier</i> are people who don't have neighbors. Because loving our neighbors is about as big a job as memorizing the entire Torah and, depending on the neighbor in question, might be even <i>harder</i>. Not to mention how hard of a job our neighbors might have in loving us sometimes.<br />
<br />
The single commandment, in Jesus' view, has the same function as the more extensive OT law. He tells us that our loving one another lets people know we're his disciples, just as the OT law was meant to help distinguish the Israelites as God's people, distinct from those around them. And here, if Paul's right, the teaching's not just advisory but as essential to following Jesus as obedience to the OT law was to following the path God laid out for his people. <br />
<br />
And yet we must obey this commandment in order to have any hope of fulfilling the law, something Jesus himself said he came to do. This whole idea that the NT represents some sort of easing up from the mean ol' OT falls apart once we understand that obedience is just as important as it ever was, and that it's no easier now than when there were hundreds of rules.<br />
<br />
So how the heck can we do it? How do we "make no provision for the flesh" but instead "put on Jesus Christ?" Even if we ditch all of the obvious provisions for the flesh like gluttony or adultery we're still left with a long list of things that elevate us and what we want more than they do Christ. Things like gossiping, running people down, insisting that our mean behavior or snappy retort was justified because of what someone else has done... Well, make your own list because you know better than I do where you cross the lines.<br />
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Just when we might think we're in the same boat as we've always been in, though, as unable to meet the demands that following God places on us as the ancient Israelites were, Paul explains the role that grace plays in the situation. We're to obey the law, which even in its simplest form asks more than we're capable of -- but thanks to the grace a loving God offers us, we have the one thing we need to do what we're called to do: Help.<br />
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The key, Paul tells the Romans, is that our relationship with God is as broken as the commandments we can't keep. Jesus, through his life, death and resurrection, restores the <i>possibility</i> of a whole relationship, and the Holy Spirit works within us to restore the <i>ability</i> to make it happen. Jesus' grace restored us to God and the Holy Spirit makes that real in our lives. We <i>can</i> love our neighbors as God requires of us.<br />
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Be hard to find a bigger miracle than that.Friarhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16907204457371629428noreply@blogger.com0