Easter After Tremors
The Truth That Can Change Your Life
John 17:6-19
[Shared with the people of Friendship Church, June 1, 2003]
One of the most inspiring things about being a pastor is the opportunity God gives to me to be with people in times of crisis or difficulty. It’s in these times that a person can most clearly see God at work in people’s lives—helping them, encouraging them. Often when I visit with folks going through hard experiences, I can tell them, “There are a lot of people praying for you.” And usually, they will tell me, “I know that. I can feel their prayers. There is no way I could have gotten this far without people praying for me.”
Our Bible lesson for today indicates that it isn’t just other people who pray for us. Someone has said that maybe the one thing that makes the Church unique is that it’s the only gathering of people for whom Jesus has prayed. As believers in Jesus, you and I are beneficiaries of His prayers for us. That includes all believers in Jesus, whether we feel that we are worthy of His love for us or not.
Some of you have heard me tell of my visit one day with an elderly woman in a nursing home. She was almost eighty, had a strong mind and while somewhat frail, still functioned well. When she knew that I was coming and would be offering Holy Communion, she got into her Sunday best and awaited my arrival. But after I had shared a passage from the Bible and spent a little time visiting with her, she refused to take Holy Communion. I asked her why. She told me that she was unworthy of receiving Jesus’ body and blood. She insisted that she was too horrible a sinner. I tried to explain that whatever her sins might be, if she truly repented—in other words, if she truly wanted to walk away from her sins—she could be sure that she could walk into the welcoming, forgiving arms of Christ.
Though we talked for a long time, she remained convinced that the God could never love or forgive her. But she was wrong. And if this morning, you think that God can’t forgive you, you are wrong.
In today’s Bible lesson, Jesus prays on behalf of all believers. At one point, He says, “I have made Your Name known to those whom You gave Me from the world.” The late, great Lutheran Bible commentator R.C.H. Lenski says that in this part of His prayer, Jesus is saying that, in His very Person—in Who He is and what He does—Jesus has revealed the heart of God. Jesus said as much at another time: “I and the Father are one,” He said. And near the beginning of the book of the Bible from which today’s lesson is drawn—the Gospel of John—we’re told:
“No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, Who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made Him known.”
Martin Luther said that if we truly want to understand Who God is and what God is like, we should look at Jesus on the cross.
In a dog-eat-dog world where we feel that we must always prove ourselves, it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking that we must prove ourselves to God. What’s worse, we might, like the woman in the nursing home, think that our violations are too horrible for God to forgive. It may even be a so-called Christian who gave us this idea. But the Savior Who prays for us makes it’s possible for you and me to be forgiven. It’s possible for us to have a healthy, whole relationship with God. It’s possible for us to be freed from our pasts.
We could spend a lifetime talking about the wonderful things Jesus reveals about the heart of God to us. But I want to focus on just three of them this morning.
First of all: Jesus reveals that God is for us. In His famous encounter with a man named Nicodemus, Jesus said that He had come into the world not to condemn the world, but so the world could be saved from sin and death by Him. This will come as a disappointment to some judgmental people.
A man was bitter about the wife who had left him for another man. He cornered me one night at a party and wanted me to tell him that his ex-wife and her new husband were both headed for hell. “I can’t say that for certain,” I told him. “But they sinned,” he said. “You’ve never sinned?” I asked him. The man allowed as how he had sinned. But he seemed to feel that their sins were worse than his. “Besides,” he said, “they’re still together. So, they’re just committing adultery every day.” I countered by saying that I had known couples who had begun their lives together in just that way. They regretted what they had done. But they were committed to not repeating their sin. They had turned to Christ and received forgiveness and the power to go on living with God in their lives. That man was disappointed because Christ shows us that God is for us. I tell you what: I’m not disappointed by that! I’m grateful for it because I’m a sinner grateful for the forgiveness I receive through Jesus Christ.
Second: Jesus reveals that God understands who we are and how difficult our lives can sometimes be. Once, you remember, Jesus came into the little town of Bethany, where three of his friends—the siblings Mary, Martha, and Lazarus—lived. Lazarus, he was told, had died. Jesus’ response? He wept. He wept for those who mourned without hope for the resurrection. He wept too for the dying his friend had experienced.
The New Testament book of Hebrews says that Jesus has experienced everything that you and I go through in our lives. The cross where He died confirms that. Yet, Jesus promises to be with us always. The Bible also tells us that nothing can separate us from the love God offers us through Jesus. Can Jesus forgive you and me? Of course He can; He understands who we are and how difficult our lives can be.
Third: Jesus reveals that God has compassion for us. Jesus was often surrounded by people hungry for His love and His touch. Once, the Bible says, He looked on the crowds and felt compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Life can sometimes leave all of us feeling that way: harassed and helpless.
Once, a man came to me to talk. He’d been sent by a counselor at a local agency. “Mark,” he told me, “this guy is at the end of his rope. He’s made a lot of mistakes in his life. Our sessions have gone pretty well. But I’ve realized that there’s a spiritual dimension to his problems.” When the man arrived, he looked haggard, disheveled. After awhile, we came to the nub of things. “I can’t believe that God will help me. I’ve screwed up too many times.” We talked for a long while. Eventually, as some of you who know me well will understand, I turned this man’s attention to Romans 8, where the preacher Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”
I’m not exaggerating when I say that as we read those words together, that man’s face lit up. “Would you write that down for me?” he asked. I wrote the passage down on a 3-by-5 card and handed it to him. I urged him to look at the card periodically each day. I don’t know what happened in that man’s life from that point. But I do know that it came as really good news to him to know that God has compassion on us and that while we may walk away from God, the God we know through Jesus Christ will never walk away from us.
Early in my ministry, a woman approached me with a big concern. It was about my preaching; she didn’t like it one bit! Why, she asked, was I always talking about how wonderful God is? Shouldn’t I be bawling people out more for their sin? Sin is serious business. God hates sin. But God hates sin because of what it does to us. It separates us from Him. It brings death. It destroys our relationships with others. It distorts our humanity. God is the loving Father Who wants to welcome us home today and forever. Every time we’re tempted to see God as a cold, distant deity, we need to remember that when God came to earth in the Person of Jesus Christ, He was loving, compassionate, and involved.
There are many mysteries in life—suffering that doesn’t go away, prayers that seem unheard, temptations that dog us, and others. But Jesus demonstrates beyond all doubt that each of us matters to God. Jesus’ resurrection says that in the end, God will act lovingly and decisively on behalf of those who believe in Jesus. The Savior Who prays for us will never walk away from us. We can count on that!
Sunday, June 01, 2003
Sunday, May 25, 2003
Easter After Tremors:
The Call to Love
First John 5:1-6
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 25, 2003)
The whole thing began thirteen months earlier when young John Blanchard, about to ship off for duty with the Army during World War Two, went to a public library in Florida and checked out a book. He liked the book. But even more interesting to him were the notes penciled into its margins. Both the notes and the handwriting suggested a person of insight and thoughtfulness. In the front of the book, he found who had last borrowed the book, a woman named Hollis Maynell.
With determined effort, John Blanchard was able to find Miss Hollis Maynell’s address. She lived in New York City. John sent her a note and asked if she would be interested in corresponding. For thirteen months, they wrote to one another constantly and a romance blossomed. John asked Hollis for a photograph, but she refused. She told him that if he really cared, it wouldn’t matter what she looked like.
For John's return from Europe, they had arranged to meet for the first time at 7:00 one evening in Grand Central Station. “You’ll recognize me,” Hollis had written, “by the red rose I’ll be wearing in my lapel.” At the appointed time, John looked over the throngs of people “for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he’d never seen.”
Soon, he caught sight of a beautiful young woman with blonde hair, wearing a stunning green suit. She was gorgeous and John moved toward her without noticing that she wasn’t wearing a red rose. When they practically stood next to each other, the blonde affected a provocative smile as she asked John, “Going my way, sailor?”
It was then that John saw another woman wearing a red rose in her lapel. She was almost directly behind the girl. She was probably twice John’s age. She wore graying hair tucked under her hat. She was plump, had thick ankles, and looked matronly. John ached as from the corner of his eye, he saw the girl in the green suit walk away.
John did what he needed to do. He walked over to this woman whose words—first in the margins of a book and then in a yearlong correspondence—had so won his heart. “I’m Lieutenant John Blanchard,” he said, “and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad to meet you; may I take you to dinner?”
The woman smiled. “I don’t know what this is about, son,” she said, “but the young lady in the green suit who just went by...begged me to wear a rose on my coat. And she said [that] if you were to ask me about dinner, I should...tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test.”
Jesus was once asked what the greatest of God’s commands are. He said that it’s to love God and to love neighbor [Matthew 10:34-40]. That answer summarizes the meaning and theme of every commandment God has given. We’re called to love as we have been loved, even those we find unlovable [Matthew 5:47; First John 4:11]. I think that Hollis Maynell was a wise young woman because she realized that love isn’t worthy of the name if we aren’t willing to share it with everyone.
Our Bible lesson for today tells us:
“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments...”
You and I have a strained relationship with our heavenly Father when we refuse to love all His other kids. Hollis Maynell tested John Blanchard’s love that day in Grand Central Station. The test of our relationship with God, which we confront every day, is our willingness to obey God by loving others.
I say willingness because none of us is perfect. If you think that you can wake up tomorrow morning and say, “Okay, God, this morning I resolve to be completely loving” and that you’ll be successful, you’re in for a big disappointment. The Bible says that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [Romans 3:23]
But God will take a willing person and lovingly—sometimes painfully—teach us to obey His call to love [Hebrews 12:7]. The closer a person grows to Jesus, the more they find that in sometimes understated ways, Jesus nudges them to obey His call to love.
And when we heed that call, good things happen. Some of you have heard me tell a true story I read a few years ago that came from a letter sent by a young person who had attended a Christian rock concert. She wrote to one of the performers to explain that before some classmates had dragged her to the concert, she had decided that on that very night, she would take her life. “Your concert saved my life,” she wrote. “I decided not only that I would not take my life, but that I would also follow Christ.” What changed that young woman’s life wasn’t anything the artist had said, either in his music or between songs. At some point in the concert, playing his guitar, the artist had looked into the face of that desperate young woman and he had smiled. In that simple, sincere smile, she had seen the kindness of God. She was loved back to life. That’s what Jesus did for us on the cross. Our call is to grow so close to Him that we become conduits for His love to reach others, even in things as simple as a smile.
Jesus’ call for us to love includes those we can’t stand. That isn’t an easy thing. But I have a little secret to share with you. I call it the Pastor’s Silent Prayer. You don’t have to be a pastor to pray it, although I’m sure it was a pastor who first did so.
Before sharing it with you though, I have to make a little confession. It’s this: I am human. I have a full complement of faults. I’m a sinner. I also have my own personality traits and characteristics. While I’m a people person who tends to like most people very well, through the years I’ve also learned that there are some people I like more than others. There are also people who like me and people who don’t like me. Because of my sinful nature, I find that I want to spend time with and love only the people I like and who like me. But Jesus has called us to love all people. So, when I’m put into situations where I have to be with people I don’t like, I say my little silent prayer, “Lord: Love these people through me. Don’t let me get in the way of their experiencing Your love.” I’ve found that Jesus answers that prayer.
Maybe that’s what John, the writer of our Bible lesson for this morning is getting at when he says, after looking at the sin and selfishness that pervades our world:
“...whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”
We may be imperfect. But the powerful love of God, poured into the lives of those with faith in Jesus Christ, trumps and overcomes all our flaws and sins. God patiently works with the willing follower of Jesus to transform them into the loving people they were made to be. God made each of us to be indispensable members of a single human family knit together by His love. His love is so powerful that He can even use the willing Jesus-follower to love people they might find unlovable.
I sometimes get angry with myself. I feel like a spoiled son of God. He has lavished so much love, forgiveness, and grace on me. Yet I find myself forming harsh judgments of others and failing to extend love to others. Jesus commands me to love; but I can be cold and loveless. What I have to remember is that, in the words of the Bible, while we live this life, we only see through a mirror dimly [First Corinthians 13:12]. God isn’t finished with any of us yet. I guess I need to remember how loving my God is. He even loves me when I fail to love. He loves me when He upbraids me and condemns me for my lovelessness.
On his deathbed, the painter Jean Renoir spoke of the use of light and color in his art and then referring to the lessons he’d learned, uttered his last words, spoken as an elderly man. He said, “I think I’m beginning to see...” On earth, we will never fully see what it means to be the loving person Christ died to make it possible for us to become. But I am convinced that the best lives are lived by those who, being born of Christ, spend their lives learning how to love.
[The true story of Hollis Maynell and John Blanchard is re-told by Max Lucado in Stories for the Heart. The true story of the teen who wrote a rock musician is something that I read more than a decade ago and I can’t remember where I read it; I do remember that the artist was Eddie DeGarmo, who went on to become a recording industry executive who developed such artists as dcTalk, among others. The story of Jean Renoir, which in my original message and in the original post of it, I identified as Marc Chagall is cited in Alan Loy McGinnis' book Confidence. I couldn't find the book at the time I was preparing the message and am now able to correctly identify the artist who uttered these words at the time of his death.]
The Call to Love
First John 5:1-6
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 25, 2003)
The whole thing began thirteen months earlier when young John Blanchard, about to ship off for duty with the Army during World War Two, went to a public library in Florida and checked out a book. He liked the book. But even more interesting to him were the notes penciled into its margins. Both the notes and the handwriting suggested a person of insight and thoughtfulness. In the front of the book, he found who had last borrowed the book, a woman named Hollis Maynell.
With determined effort, John Blanchard was able to find Miss Hollis Maynell’s address. She lived in New York City. John sent her a note and asked if she would be interested in corresponding. For thirteen months, they wrote to one another constantly and a romance blossomed. John asked Hollis for a photograph, but she refused. She told him that if he really cared, it wouldn’t matter what she looked like.
For John's return from Europe, they had arranged to meet for the first time at 7:00 one evening in Grand Central Station. “You’ll recognize me,” Hollis had written, “by the red rose I’ll be wearing in my lapel.” At the appointed time, John looked over the throngs of people “for a girl whose heart he loved, but whose face he’d never seen.”
Soon, he caught sight of a beautiful young woman with blonde hair, wearing a stunning green suit. She was gorgeous and John moved toward her without noticing that she wasn’t wearing a red rose. When they practically stood next to each other, the blonde affected a provocative smile as she asked John, “Going my way, sailor?”
It was then that John saw another woman wearing a red rose in her lapel. She was almost directly behind the girl. She was probably twice John’s age. She wore graying hair tucked under her hat. She was plump, had thick ankles, and looked matronly. John ached as from the corner of his eye, he saw the girl in the green suit walk away.
John did what he needed to do. He walked over to this woman whose words—first in the margins of a book and then in a yearlong correspondence—had so won his heart. “I’m Lieutenant John Blanchard,” he said, “and you must be Miss Maynell. I am so glad to meet you; may I take you to dinner?”
The woman smiled. “I don’t know what this is about, son,” she said, “but the young lady in the green suit who just went by...begged me to wear a rose on my coat. And she said [that] if you were to ask me about dinner, I should...tell you that she is waiting for you in the big restaurant across the street. She said it was some kind of test.”
Jesus was once asked what the greatest of God’s commands are. He said that it’s to love God and to love neighbor [Matthew 10:34-40]. That answer summarizes the meaning and theme of every commandment God has given. We’re called to love as we have been loved, even those we find unlovable [Matthew 5:47; First John 4:11]. I think that Hollis Maynell was a wise young woman because she realized that love isn’t worthy of the name if we aren’t willing to share it with everyone.
Our Bible lesson for today tells us:
“Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the parent loves the child. By this we know that we love that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey His commandments...”
You and I have a strained relationship with our heavenly Father when we refuse to love all His other kids. Hollis Maynell tested John Blanchard’s love that day in Grand Central Station. The test of our relationship with God, which we confront every day, is our willingness to obey God by loving others.
I say willingness because none of us is perfect. If you think that you can wake up tomorrow morning and say, “Okay, God, this morning I resolve to be completely loving” and that you’ll be successful, you’re in for a big disappointment. The Bible says that “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” [Romans 3:23]
But God will take a willing person and lovingly—sometimes painfully—teach us to obey His call to love [Hebrews 12:7]. The closer a person grows to Jesus, the more they find that in sometimes understated ways, Jesus nudges them to obey His call to love.
And when we heed that call, good things happen. Some of you have heard me tell a true story I read a few years ago that came from a letter sent by a young person who had attended a Christian rock concert. She wrote to one of the performers to explain that before some classmates had dragged her to the concert, she had decided that on that very night, she would take her life. “Your concert saved my life,” she wrote. “I decided not only that I would not take my life, but that I would also follow Christ.” What changed that young woman’s life wasn’t anything the artist had said, either in his music or between songs. At some point in the concert, playing his guitar, the artist had looked into the face of that desperate young woman and he had smiled. In that simple, sincere smile, she had seen the kindness of God. She was loved back to life. That’s what Jesus did for us on the cross. Our call is to grow so close to Him that we become conduits for His love to reach others, even in things as simple as a smile.
Jesus’ call for us to love includes those we can’t stand. That isn’t an easy thing. But I have a little secret to share with you. I call it the Pastor’s Silent Prayer. You don’t have to be a pastor to pray it, although I’m sure it was a pastor who first did so.
Before sharing it with you though, I have to make a little confession. It’s this: I am human. I have a full complement of faults. I’m a sinner. I also have my own personality traits and characteristics. While I’m a people person who tends to like most people very well, through the years I’ve also learned that there are some people I like more than others. There are also people who like me and people who don’t like me. Because of my sinful nature, I find that I want to spend time with and love only the people I like and who like me. But Jesus has called us to love all people. So, when I’m put into situations where I have to be with people I don’t like, I say my little silent prayer, “Lord: Love these people through me. Don’t let me get in the way of their experiencing Your love.” I’ve found that Jesus answers that prayer.
Maybe that’s what John, the writer of our Bible lesson for this morning is getting at when he says, after looking at the sin and selfishness that pervades our world:
“...whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?”
We may be imperfect. But the powerful love of God, poured into the lives of those with faith in Jesus Christ, trumps and overcomes all our flaws and sins. God patiently works with the willing follower of Jesus to transform them into the loving people they were made to be. God made each of us to be indispensable members of a single human family knit together by His love. His love is so powerful that He can even use the willing Jesus-follower to love people they might find unlovable.
I sometimes get angry with myself. I feel like a spoiled son of God. He has lavished so much love, forgiveness, and grace on me. Yet I find myself forming harsh judgments of others and failing to extend love to others. Jesus commands me to love; but I can be cold and loveless. What I have to remember is that, in the words of the Bible, while we live this life, we only see through a mirror dimly [First Corinthians 13:12]. God isn’t finished with any of us yet. I guess I need to remember how loving my God is. He even loves me when I fail to love. He loves me when He upbraids me and condemns me for my lovelessness.
On his deathbed, the painter Jean Renoir spoke of the use of light and color in his art and then referring to the lessons he’d learned, uttered his last words, spoken as an elderly man. He said, “I think I’m beginning to see...” On earth, we will never fully see what it means to be the loving person Christ died to make it possible for us to become. But I am convinced that the best lives are lived by those who, being born of Christ, spend their lives learning how to love.
[The true story of Hollis Maynell and John Blanchard is re-told by Max Lucado in Stories for the Heart. The true story of the teen who wrote a rock musician is something that I read more than a decade ago and I can’t remember where I read it; I do remember that the artist was Eddie DeGarmo, who went on to become a recording industry executive who developed such artists as dcTalk, among others. The story of Jean Renoir, which in my original message and in the original post of it, I identified as Marc Chagall is cited in Alan Loy McGinnis' book Confidence. I couldn't find the book at the time I was preparing the message and am now able to correctly identify the artist who uttered these words at the time of his death.]
Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Easter After Tremors
Really Living
John 15:1-8
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 18, 2003)
When I was growing up, most of my friends liked horror movies. I could never get into them. One reason was that a recurring plot line in horror movies revolved around corpses being re-animated. And one universal element of the stories is that the moving corpses were never really brought back to life. Oh, they moved and breathed, growled and killed. But theirs was only a sort of a vague half-life. They weren’t really among the living.
I used to think that these movies were works of the purest fiction. Nobody, I thought, could have the appearance of being alive—walking, breathing, and so on—but really be dead. Jesus’ words in our Bible lesson today suggest that you and I live in a world filled with the walking dead. Some might even be part of a church.
A few years ago, a one-time member of this congregation approached me with a concern. Her father, by then in his seventies, was bringing a lawsuit against a woman whose car had brushed his in a mall parking lot, where he sat waiting for his wife. Even though both he and his car were fine, he claimed that he’d suffered physically. The daughter said to me, “Mark, this is the last straw for me! My dad has always gone to church, been on the church council, gone to Sunday School. But he’s also always tried to shaft other people in order to get some advantage. He even pushes people out of the way in order to be first in a check-out line. But I hadn’t realized how horrible he was until he sued this poor young woman who nicked his car. How can he call himself a Christian?”
When she asked me that, I remembered an old saying: Just because the mouse lives in the cookie jar doesn’t mean he’s a cookie. You can take up space in church activities and even be diligent about reading your Bible and praying, doing all the right religious things, and still not have life through Jesus Christ. You can be as far from the Kingdom of God as the mouse in the cookie jar is from being a cookie. That woman’s father was among the walkng dead—a dead man walking—that populate our churches.
Such people contrast vividly with a woman some of us have read about recently as we’ve studied John Ortberg’s book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted. Mabel was a resident of a nursing home, blind, nearly-deaf, and suffering from a cancer that was eating away at her face, hideously disfiguring her. Bedridden for twenty-five years, with no known relatives, Mabel should have been bitter, incommunicative, self-absorbed.
When a student chaplain, Tom Schmidt, decided to militate against his revulsion and try to present this awful-looking woman with a flower, he figured Mabel would be unresponsive. “Here’s a flower,” he said. “Happy Mother’s Day.” Mabel pulled the flower close to her face, attempting to smell it and then, in somewhat slurred speech, said, “Thank you. It’s lovely. But can I give it to someone else? I can’t see it, you know, I’m blind.” So, Schmidt rolled Mabel to another resident and heard her say of the flower, “Here, this is from Jesus.” “That,” said Tom Schmidt, “was when it began to dawn on me that this was not an ordinary human being.”
As Schmidt’s acquaintance with Mabel grew, so did his sense of awe. He felt each time he entered her room that he was walking on holy ground. Often, he would read a Scripture to Mabel and from memory, she would mouth the words along with him. Then, she might break into a song praising God. “I never heard her speak of loneliness or pain except in the stress she placed on certain lines in certain hymns,” Schmidt recalls. The student chaplain began going to Mabel’s room with pen in hand, ready to jot down the amazing things that she would say.
During one week, Schmidt says, he was stressing out, thinking about exams at seminary and a million other things when the question dawned on him, “What does Mabel have to think about—hour after hour, day after day, week after week, not even able to know if it’s day or night?” So, Schmidt decided to ask Mabel the next time he saw her. “Mabel,” he asked, “what do you think about when you lie here?” Listen closely to Schmidt’s recollection:
“...’I think about Jesus...[she said]’ I sat there, and thought for a moment about the difficulty, for me of thinking about Jesus for even five minutes, and I asked, ‘What do you think about Jesus?’ She replied slowly and deliberately as I wrote...’I think about how good He’s been to me. He’s been awfully good to me, you know...I’m one of those kind who’s mostly satisfied...Lots of folks wouldn’t care much for what I think...But I don’t care. I’d rather have Jesus. He’s all the world to me.’
Although Mable was blind, nearly deaf, suffering from cancer, confined to her bed, and living in circumstances that some might consider pure hell, she was more alive and happier and, as she said satisfied, than most of the people that you and I encounter each day at work, at school, in the mall, maybe even when we look in the mirror. She was truly living amid all the walking dead who populate this planet! What was her secret?
In today’s Bible lesson, Jesus uses interesting images to describe Himself, God the Father, and you and me. For those of you who have heard or read these words before, try to listen to them as though you’re hearing them for the first time and let the imagery sink in:
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in Me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit He prunes to make it bear more fruit...Abide in Me [in other words, draw life from Me]. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me...My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become My disciples...”
Life—abundant, everlasting, ever-loving life comes from Jesus Christ. Without Jesus’ life filling us, we are the walking dead, people without hope, joyless machines moving from day to day. But when we stay connected with Jesus, if we abide with Jesus, even when we’re as sick and old as Mabel was, we’ll be filled with life.
Jesus says that we’ll bear fruit. But what on earth does that mean?
Mildred Hondorf was an elementary music teacher in Iowa who also gave private piano lessons. After a long career, she hadn’t produced any musical prodigees, but because she demanded excellence from her students, they usually learned. Once, an eleven year old boy named Robby asked if he could take piano lessons. Although Mildred knew that Robby was tone-deaf and had no rhythm, she relented when he told her, “I want my mom to hear me play well just once.” Robby took lessons from Mrs. Hondorf and things went pretty much as she’d expected. Robby was terrible! There were a few recitals over the course of the year. Robby’s mom would be there, clap for her son’s performances, wave at the piano teacher, and make her exit.
Then, about six weeks before the big end-of-the-year recital, Robby stopped coming for his lessons. Mildred was frankly relieved. On the night before the recital, Robby called her though and announced that he wanted to play. He had to play. “But, Robby,” she said, “you haven’t had a lesson for six weeks.” “I know,” he said, “but I’ve just got to play well for my mom tomorrow!” Against her better judgment, Mildred tacked Robby on at the very end of the recital program. He showed up the next night, his hair a mess, his clothes all wrinkled, and before a virtually-silent auditorium, he sat down at the piano. He played Mozart’s Twenty-First Concerto in C-Major.
People couldn’t believe what they heard! Robby’s playing had every member of the audience listening with rapt attention. When he finished, they stood to applaud and Mildred, tears in her eyes, ran to Robby and said, “You’ve never played like that before! What happened over the past six weeks?” “Well, Mrs. Hondorf,” he explained, “my mother got really sick six weeks ago and I had to stay close to home. She died yesterday. But you see, she was born deaf and today was the first time she ever got to hear me play.”
Robbie’s performance at the piano recital that day was an act of love. Those are the kinds of acts that are the very fabric of life when we remain connected to Jesus.
Do you want to really live—and not be a dead man or dead woman walking? Latch onto Jesus, holding onto Him as your most important friend. Love will be the fruit you bear and even in adversity you’ll know joy. And no matter what, that’s an awesome way to live!
[The "mouse in a cookie jar" quote is something told to the late Corrie ten Boom by her father. Corrie, who along with her family, helped Jews escape from occupied Holland during the Second World War was baffled by her pastor's unwillingness to help with the effort. This was her father's explanation.
[The story of Mabel, as mentioned, comes from John Ortberg's phenomenal book, The Life You've Always Wanted. I highly recommend it! Mabel's is a true story.
[The story of Mildred and Robby was told by Pastor Gerald Mann in a message he gave at Riverbend Church in Austin, Texas. I may have the spelling of Mildred's last name wrong. But it's a true story.]
Really Living
John 15:1-8
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 18, 2003)
When I was growing up, most of my friends liked horror movies. I could never get into them. One reason was that a recurring plot line in horror movies revolved around corpses being re-animated. And one universal element of the stories is that the moving corpses were never really brought back to life. Oh, they moved and breathed, growled and killed. But theirs was only a sort of a vague half-life. They weren’t really among the living.
I used to think that these movies were works of the purest fiction. Nobody, I thought, could have the appearance of being alive—walking, breathing, and so on—but really be dead. Jesus’ words in our Bible lesson today suggest that you and I live in a world filled with the walking dead. Some might even be part of a church.
A few years ago, a one-time member of this congregation approached me with a concern. Her father, by then in his seventies, was bringing a lawsuit against a woman whose car had brushed his in a mall parking lot, where he sat waiting for his wife. Even though both he and his car were fine, he claimed that he’d suffered physically. The daughter said to me, “Mark, this is the last straw for me! My dad has always gone to church, been on the church council, gone to Sunday School. But he’s also always tried to shaft other people in order to get some advantage. He even pushes people out of the way in order to be first in a check-out line. But I hadn’t realized how horrible he was until he sued this poor young woman who nicked his car. How can he call himself a Christian?”
When she asked me that, I remembered an old saying: Just because the mouse lives in the cookie jar doesn’t mean he’s a cookie. You can take up space in church activities and even be diligent about reading your Bible and praying, doing all the right religious things, and still not have life through Jesus Christ. You can be as far from the Kingdom of God as the mouse in the cookie jar is from being a cookie. That woman’s father was among the walkng dead—a dead man walking—that populate our churches.
Such people contrast vividly with a woman some of us have read about recently as we’ve studied John Ortberg’s book, The Life You’ve Always Wanted. Mabel was a resident of a nursing home, blind, nearly-deaf, and suffering from a cancer that was eating away at her face, hideously disfiguring her. Bedridden for twenty-five years, with no known relatives, Mabel should have been bitter, incommunicative, self-absorbed.
When a student chaplain, Tom Schmidt, decided to militate against his revulsion and try to present this awful-looking woman with a flower, he figured Mabel would be unresponsive. “Here’s a flower,” he said. “Happy Mother’s Day.” Mabel pulled the flower close to her face, attempting to smell it and then, in somewhat slurred speech, said, “Thank you. It’s lovely. But can I give it to someone else? I can’t see it, you know, I’m blind.” So, Schmidt rolled Mabel to another resident and heard her say of the flower, “Here, this is from Jesus.” “That,” said Tom Schmidt, “was when it began to dawn on me that this was not an ordinary human being.”
As Schmidt’s acquaintance with Mabel grew, so did his sense of awe. He felt each time he entered her room that he was walking on holy ground. Often, he would read a Scripture to Mabel and from memory, she would mouth the words along with him. Then, she might break into a song praising God. “I never heard her speak of loneliness or pain except in the stress she placed on certain lines in certain hymns,” Schmidt recalls. The student chaplain began going to Mabel’s room with pen in hand, ready to jot down the amazing things that she would say.
During one week, Schmidt says, he was stressing out, thinking about exams at seminary and a million other things when the question dawned on him, “What does Mabel have to think about—hour after hour, day after day, week after week, not even able to know if it’s day or night?” So, Schmidt decided to ask Mabel the next time he saw her. “Mabel,” he asked, “what do you think about when you lie here?” Listen closely to Schmidt’s recollection:
“...’I think about Jesus...[she said]’ I sat there, and thought for a moment about the difficulty, for me of thinking about Jesus for even five minutes, and I asked, ‘What do you think about Jesus?’ She replied slowly and deliberately as I wrote...’I think about how good He’s been to me. He’s been awfully good to me, you know...I’m one of those kind who’s mostly satisfied...Lots of folks wouldn’t care much for what I think...But I don’t care. I’d rather have Jesus. He’s all the world to me.’
Although Mable was blind, nearly deaf, suffering from cancer, confined to her bed, and living in circumstances that some might consider pure hell, she was more alive and happier and, as she said satisfied, than most of the people that you and I encounter each day at work, at school, in the mall, maybe even when we look in the mirror. She was truly living amid all the walking dead who populate this planet! What was her secret?
In today’s Bible lesson, Jesus uses interesting images to describe Himself, God the Father, and you and me. For those of you who have heard or read these words before, try to listen to them as though you’re hearing them for the first time and let the imagery sink in:
“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in Me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit He prunes to make it bear more fruit...Abide in Me [in other words, draw life from Me]. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me...My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become My disciples...”
Life—abundant, everlasting, ever-loving life comes from Jesus Christ. Without Jesus’ life filling us, we are the walking dead, people without hope, joyless machines moving from day to day. But when we stay connected with Jesus, if we abide with Jesus, even when we’re as sick and old as Mabel was, we’ll be filled with life.
Jesus says that we’ll bear fruit. But what on earth does that mean?
Mildred Hondorf was an elementary music teacher in Iowa who also gave private piano lessons. After a long career, she hadn’t produced any musical prodigees, but because she demanded excellence from her students, they usually learned. Once, an eleven year old boy named Robby asked if he could take piano lessons. Although Mildred knew that Robby was tone-deaf and had no rhythm, she relented when he told her, “I want my mom to hear me play well just once.” Robby took lessons from Mrs. Hondorf and things went pretty much as she’d expected. Robby was terrible! There were a few recitals over the course of the year. Robby’s mom would be there, clap for her son’s performances, wave at the piano teacher, and make her exit.
Then, about six weeks before the big end-of-the-year recital, Robby stopped coming for his lessons. Mildred was frankly relieved. On the night before the recital, Robby called her though and announced that he wanted to play. He had to play. “But, Robby,” she said, “you haven’t had a lesson for six weeks.” “I know,” he said, “but I’ve just got to play well for my mom tomorrow!” Against her better judgment, Mildred tacked Robby on at the very end of the recital program. He showed up the next night, his hair a mess, his clothes all wrinkled, and before a virtually-silent auditorium, he sat down at the piano. He played Mozart’s Twenty-First Concerto in C-Major.
People couldn’t believe what they heard! Robby’s playing had every member of the audience listening with rapt attention. When he finished, they stood to applaud and Mildred, tears in her eyes, ran to Robby and said, “You’ve never played like that before! What happened over the past six weeks?” “Well, Mrs. Hondorf,” he explained, “my mother got really sick six weeks ago and I had to stay close to home. She died yesterday. But you see, she was born deaf and today was the first time she ever got to hear me play.”
Robbie’s performance at the piano recital that day was an act of love. Those are the kinds of acts that are the very fabric of life when we remain connected to Jesus.
Do you want to really live—and not be a dead man or dead woman walking? Latch onto Jesus, holding onto Him as your most important friend. Love will be the fruit you bear and even in adversity you’ll know joy. And no matter what, that’s an awesome way to live!
[The "mouse in a cookie jar" quote is something told to the late Corrie ten Boom by her father. Corrie, who along with her family, helped Jews escape from occupied Holland during the Second World War was baffled by her pastor's unwillingness to help with the effort. This was her father's explanation.
[The story of Mabel, as mentioned, comes from John Ortberg's phenomenal book, The Life You've Always Wanted. I highly recommend it! Mabel's is a true story.
[The story of Mildred and Robby was told by Pastor Gerald Mann in a message he gave at Riverbend Church in Austin, Texas. I may have the spelling of Mildred's last name wrong. But it's a true story.]
Wednesday, May 14, 2003
No Other Name
A Thought for Today:
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12, New Testament).
A man named Peter, an early follower of Jesus, spoke those words to religious leaders in Jerusalem after he and another Jesus-follower, John, were ordered not to speak of Jesus again. They had also been beaten.
But Peter said that they couldn't help but speak of Jesus, no matter what the threats. Peter persisted in following Jesus because he had experienced Jesus' tough love and because he knew that Jesus had risen from the dead.
The process of dying will cause any person to fear. That's only natural. But the follower of Jesus has no fear about the time beyond the grave. We know that we belong to God forever!
That's why true Christians have always been in the forefront of fighting for what is right. Wilberforce and Newton fought slavery. Tutu combatted injustice in South Africa. Mother Teresa comforted the dead and stood against abortion as a form of birth control. Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church stood against Hitler and the Nazis. Billy Graham has continued to share Jesus Christ with the world in spite of almost constant death threats and the dismissive condescension of elites, both inside and outside the Church. Movements to establish hospitals and higher education have usually begun among those who confess Christ.
In spite of the hatred and threats heaped upon them, followers of Jesus have the "right stuff" to persist. That right stuff is an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ!
Karl Marx criticized religion as an opiate, insulating people from their own pain, preventing them from doing anything about injustice by focusing the religious on the rewards of a sweet by-and-by. Marx got it precisely wrong. Knowing that our eternities are secure gives followers of Jesus the freedom to live this life to the full.
When Archbishop Desmond Tutu fought against apartheid in South Africa, he received daily death threats. A reporter asked him why he persisted. Tutu replied that he couldn't help it; injustice was wrong and he would fight it. Besides, he added, death isn't the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.
God plants within the hearts of those who surrender themselves to Him through Jesus Christ, a love for the things God loves and a hatred for those things God hates. Although such passions will put them at odds with the prevailing values of the world, Jesus-followers will persist. They will, in that memorable phrase of Bruce Cockburn's, rise like grass through cement. Unafraid of death, appalled by the evil they see, they fight for what's right.
The greatest evil in the world is the imprisonment of sin that afflicts the human race. According to Psalm 51, we are born in sin. The Bible says that proper payment for our sin is death (Romans 6:23).
But God doesn't want us to die. He wants us to live with Him forever. That's why Jesus came into the world, lived a perfect and sinless life, died on a cross in our places, and rose from the dead. The most famous passage in the Bible quotes Jesus as He says, For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16).
Do you want to be free from the fears that hold you back and keep you from being all that God intended you to be--all that you know, deep inside, that you were meant to be?
Do you want to be free of those nagging feelings of inadequacy that dog you?
Do you want to experience peace in spite of the chaos?
Do you want to move toward becoming the loving person you dream of being?
Do you want to be confident about this life and the next?
Give your life to Jesus Christ and you will begin to experience these things. You will find yourself free to lovingly fight for what is right...free to act in loving ways toward others, free to enter the process of becoming the person God had in mind when He made you. And you will be unafraid of what is beyond the grave. You will belong to God. Surrender to Jesus Christ today and start truly living!
There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12, New Testament).
A man named Peter, an early follower of Jesus, spoke those words to religious leaders in Jerusalem after he and another Jesus-follower, John, were ordered not to speak of Jesus again. They had also been beaten.
But Peter said that they couldn't help but speak of Jesus, no matter what the threats. Peter persisted in following Jesus because he had experienced Jesus' tough love and because he knew that Jesus had risen from the dead.
The process of dying will cause any person to fear. That's only natural. But the follower of Jesus has no fear about the time beyond the grave. We know that we belong to God forever!
That's why true Christians have always been in the forefront of fighting for what is right. Wilberforce and Newton fought slavery. Tutu combatted injustice in South Africa. Mother Teresa comforted the dead and stood against abortion as a form of birth control. Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church stood against Hitler and the Nazis. Billy Graham has continued to share Jesus Christ with the world in spite of almost constant death threats and the dismissive condescension of elites, both inside and outside the Church. Movements to establish hospitals and higher education have usually begun among those who confess Christ.
In spite of the hatred and threats heaped upon them, followers of Jesus have the "right stuff" to persist. That right stuff is an eternal relationship with Jesus Christ!
Karl Marx criticized religion as an opiate, insulating people from their own pain, preventing them from doing anything about injustice by focusing the religious on the rewards of a sweet by-and-by. Marx got it precisely wrong. Knowing that our eternities are secure gives followers of Jesus the freedom to live this life to the full.
When Archbishop Desmond Tutu fought against apartheid in South Africa, he received daily death threats. A reporter asked him why he persisted. Tutu replied that he couldn't help it; injustice was wrong and he would fight it. Besides, he added, death isn't the worst thing that can happen to a Christian.
God plants within the hearts of those who surrender themselves to Him through Jesus Christ, a love for the things God loves and a hatred for those things God hates. Although such passions will put them at odds with the prevailing values of the world, Jesus-followers will persist. They will, in that memorable phrase of Bruce Cockburn's, rise like grass through cement. Unafraid of death, appalled by the evil they see, they fight for what's right.
The greatest evil in the world is the imprisonment of sin that afflicts the human race. According to Psalm 51, we are born in sin. The Bible says that proper payment for our sin is death (Romans 6:23).
But God doesn't want us to die. He wants us to live with Him forever. That's why Jesus came into the world, lived a perfect and sinless life, died on a cross in our places, and rose from the dead. The most famous passage in the Bible quotes Jesus as He says, For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life (John 3:16).
Do you want to be free from the fears that hold you back and keep you from being all that God intended you to be--all that you know, deep inside, that you were meant to be?
Do you want to be free of those nagging feelings of inadequacy that dog you?
Do you want to experience peace in spite of the chaos?
Do you want to move toward becoming the loving person you dream of being?
Do you want to be confident about this life and the next?
Give your life to Jesus Christ and you will begin to experience these things. You will find yourself free to lovingly fight for what is right...free to act in loving ways toward others, free to enter the process of becoming the person God had in mind when He made you. And you will be unafraid of what is beyond the grave. You will belong to God. Surrender to Jesus Christ today and start truly living!
Monday, May 12, 2003
Please continue to pray for the people of Iraq and for the US and British military personnel who are there. Pray that God will grant that the occupation of Iraq will benefit the people there. Pray that the military personnel will be safe. Pray also for organizations like CARE and Samaritan's Purse, who are providing relief, asking God to keep them safe and to give their efforts success. Pray also that God will guide the leaders of the US and the UK, along with the leaders of the UN, as Iraq is rebuilt. Ask God also to grant that in the midst of this situation, Americans, Britons, and Iraqis will come to know and follow Jesus Christ, the only hope for our world.
Please keep Pastor Jim Dinkel and his son, Stephen, in your prayers. Jim's wife, Marti, died at 3:45 this morning. Pray that God will comfort Jim, Stephen, and all who mourn with the undying hope that belongs to all who follow Jesus Christ. Pray that God will give them strength, encouragement, guidance, and hope.
Easter After Tremors:
The Shepherd’s Life Style
John 15:1-8
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 11, 2003)
Pastor Gerald Mann tells a true story that happened in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. Each day, details of Allied detainees would dig trenches. At the end of each day, the prisoners returned the shovels they’d been using. For obvious reasons, the shovels were then counted by the Japanese. This camp had 300 shovels. But the count at the end of one day was 299. The camp commander lined up all the POWs and said, “One shovel is missing. If the thief doesn’t step forward by the time I count to ten, every single prisoner will be executed on the spot.” But before the commander could begin counting, one prisoner stepped forward and said, “I’m the one who stole the shovel.” The commander cried out the order, “Shoot!” and the confessing prisoner was killed immediately. A short time later, for whatever reason, the shovels were counted again. It was learned that there had been a miscount. There’d been 300 shovels all along. None had been stolen. That prisoner had volunteered his life to save the lives of the other POWs.
I marvel at such stories of heroism and often wonder if, faced with similar circumstances, I would have the courage to lay down for others. According to the Bible, Jesus had that kind of courage. In today’s Bible lesson, Jesus describes Himself as the “good shepherd” and He says:
“The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep [that’s you and me and the whole human family]...”
Jesus’ voluntary death on a cross for us is really even more remarkable than the voluntary death of that POW. The POW was a mere garden variety human being like you and me. Like you and me, he had his faults. He sinned. According to the Bible, every sin we human beings commit—from lying and gossiping to taking God’s Name in vain and committing adultery in our minds—is a capital crime worthy of a death sentence. All of us—even that heroic POW—deserve death. But Jesus never sinned. Not even Jesus’ most implacable enemies were able to substantiate an evil thing He’d ever done. Jesus was both God in the flesh and a human being and the Bible tells us that He faced every trial you and I face in life, yet He did so without sin. But this perfect Savior volunteered to die in place of us on the cross. In another place in the New Testament, we’re told:
"Christ...presented Himself for [His] sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything [for ourselves]...And even if we hadn’t been so weak [from sin], we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put His love on the line for us by offering His Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to Him." (Romans 5, The Message translation)
Amazingly, inexplicably, wonderfully, compassionately, Jesus lays down His life for us. In our lesson for this morning, Jesus says that He lays it down so that He can pick it back up again (something He did on the first Easter Sunday). Having died in our places, Jesus guarantees that all with faith in Him will live with Him forever!
But that leads to a question: Why? Why does God go to all the bother of becoming human, of experiencing in His own body the very worst of human tragedies, absorbing all the poison of human sin, and dying a horrible death? Why does God give rebellious people like you and me a second chance at living with Him forever?
Some of you know my friend, Pastor Ron Claussen. Ron has preached at Friendship’s worship celebrations several times. Ron is wheelchair-bound. This past week, Ron and his wife Jane took a trip and stayed at two different hotels along the way. One was part of a less expensive chain. The other was a slightly pricier and more popular place. For Ron, going to the bath room away from home can be a major challenge. When he stays at a hotel, he has to make sure that he has a bath room where the toilet can accommodate him.
On the first night of their trip, Ron and Jane stayed at the less expensive hotel. When he went to the rest room, Ron immediately got a shock when the cheap plastic toilet seat collapsed under his weight. When Ron checked out the next morning, he told the desk manager what had happened. On the return trip, the Claussens stayed at the same hotel and in the same room. Ron was surprised to find that the toilet seat had not been repaired: instead, the whole thing had been replaced with a far more expensive and sturdily-built model. For three nights of their trip, Ron and Jane stayed at the pricier place. There was a problem with the toilet there as well: the whole thing literally tipped over every time any weight was put on it. The manager at the hotel was told about the problem three different times and never did anything about it! Ron surmises that the guy at the pricier place with the solid national reputation probably couldn’t be bothered with one bad toilet. His hotel rooms were occupied every night. He could afford to have a few disgruntled customers. The manager at the less popular place though, felt a greater need to make a good impression on his customers. He cared.
In today’s Bible lesson, Jesus contrasts Himself as the good shepherd who lays down His life for us with “the hired hand.” He says:
"The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand [Jesus says] runs away because...[he] does not care for the sheep."
Why does Jesus lay down His life for you and me? Because amazingly, inexplicably, wonderfully, compassionately, Jesus cares about us. He cares and so He offers His life so that sinners like you and me can receive forgiveness, be reunited with our Father, God, and start living with God’s eternal power in our lives right now, today!
But if you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, please realize that while Jesus extends His love to you with no strings attached, He does give love to us with certain daunting, almost frightening, expectations. Today is Mother’s Day, a time to honor moms and I do. I know that the mom living in my house is particularly wonderful, so wonderful in fact that she’s made me a better dad than I possibly could have been without her.
A number of years ago, I don’t remember where, I read the true story of a mom who somehow became stranded in her stalled car in the middle of a raging blizzard. It was some time before the local sheriff’s department found this woman and her two little ones. When they arrived, the mother had died, frozen to death. But she had huddled herself and her clothing over the children to protect them and both lived.
Here’s the point: Jesus calls us to care for others as much as He cares for us. Our call is to love selflessly like Jesus and in many different ways, to lay down our lives for others. We’re called to adopt the life style of the Good Shepherd. In another place in the New Testament, we’re reminded:
"...whoever says, “I abide in [Jesus],” ought to walk just as He walked...[and] We know love by this, that [Jesus] laid down His life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another...[and] We love because He first loved us." (These passages can be found in First John in the New Testament.)
It isn’t easy to walk as Jesus walked, to love as Jesus loved. In fact, I can guarantee that this side of heaven, we will never totally succeed in doing that. But God calls us to receive Jesus and then spend our lives on this earth learning what it means to have Him living at the center of our lives. One day, when we see Jesus face to face, the Bible says, “we will be like Him.” (First John 3:2) Until then, as Jesus’ students—that’s what the word disciple means, by the way, student—we’re to spend our lives learning. God wants us to learn what it means to live, serve, and love like Jesus. Jesus calls us to care. When we let Jesus live in the center of our lives and priorities, God works on transforming us into our best selves.
God loves you, as the women’s choral group reminded us a little while ago. But it’s up to you and me to decide whether we’ll let that monumental fact change our lives and effect how we live from day to day. The New Testament book of Ephesians tells us that “God wants us to grow up...like Christ in everything.” Too often, people who call themselves Christians settle on a “what’s-in-it-for-me” mentality when it comes to their faith and involvement with their church. But we need to adopt a “Jesus-loves-me-so-now-I’ll-live-for-Him” style of life. That’s the Good Shepherd’s life style: a life of giving of oneself to God and others, a life of caring about God and others.
You and I have a choice: Will we let Jesus invade our everyday decision making or will we put Him in a box marked, Open Only on Sundays? Will we let Jesus establish our priorities in life or will we go our own ways? Will our faith life consist of one hour in a nice new building once a week or will we let the living Jesus Christ be our constant companion, God, and shepherd? The people you and I know who are really living are the ones who are living off the power of Jesus and His love. They let Jesus into their lives so that they live the life style of the Good Shepherd. With Jesus’ help, that’s how I want to live my life too. How about you?
The Shepherd’s Life Style
John 15:1-8
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 11, 2003)
Pastor Gerald Mann tells a true story that happened in a Japanese prisoner of war camp during the Second World War. Each day, details of Allied detainees would dig trenches. At the end of each day, the prisoners returned the shovels they’d been using. For obvious reasons, the shovels were then counted by the Japanese. This camp had 300 shovels. But the count at the end of one day was 299. The camp commander lined up all the POWs and said, “One shovel is missing. If the thief doesn’t step forward by the time I count to ten, every single prisoner will be executed on the spot.” But before the commander could begin counting, one prisoner stepped forward and said, “I’m the one who stole the shovel.” The commander cried out the order, “Shoot!” and the confessing prisoner was killed immediately. A short time later, for whatever reason, the shovels were counted again. It was learned that there had been a miscount. There’d been 300 shovels all along. None had been stolen. That prisoner had volunteered his life to save the lives of the other POWs.
I marvel at such stories of heroism and often wonder if, faced with similar circumstances, I would have the courage to lay down for others. According to the Bible, Jesus had that kind of courage. In today’s Bible lesson, Jesus describes Himself as the “good shepherd” and He says:
“The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep [that’s you and me and the whole human family]...”
Jesus’ voluntary death on a cross for us is really even more remarkable than the voluntary death of that POW. The POW was a mere garden variety human being like you and me. Like you and me, he had his faults. He sinned. According to the Bible, every sin we human beings commit—from lying and gossiping to taking God’s Name in vain and committing adultery in our minds—is a capital crime worthy of a death sentence. All of us—even that heroic POW—deserve death. But Jesus never sinned. Not even Jesus’ most implacable enemies were able to substantiate an evil thing He’d ever done. Jesus was both God in the flesh and a human being and the Bible tells us that He faced every trial you and I face in life, yet He did so without sin. But this perfect Savior volunteered to die in place of us on the cross. In another place in the New Testament, we’re told:
"Christ...presented Himself for [His] sacrificial death when we were far too weak and rebellious to do anything [for ourselves]...And even if we hadn’t been so weak [from sin], we wouldn’t have known what to do anyway. We can understand someone dying for a person worth dying for, and we can understand how someone good and noble could inspire us to selfless sacrifice. But God put His love on the line for us by offering His Son in sacrificial death while we were of no use whatever to Him." (Romans 5, The Message translation)
Amazingly, inexplicably, wonderfully, compassionately, Jesus lays down His life for us. In our lesson for this morning, Jesus says that He lays it down so that He can pick it back up again (something He did on the first Easter Sunday). Having died in our places, Jesus guarantees that all with faith in Him will live with Him forever!
But that leads to a question: Why? Why does God go to all the bother of becoming human, of experiencing in His own body the very worst of human tragedies, absorbing all the poison of human sin, and dying a horrible death? Why does God give rebellious people like you and me a second chance at living with Him forever?
Some of you know my friend, Pastor Ron Claussen. Ron has preached at Friendship’s worship celebrations several times. Ron is wheelchair-bound. This past week, Ron and his wife Jane took a trip and stayed at two different hotels along the way. One was part of a less expensive chain. The other was a slightly pricier and more popular place. For Ron, going to the bath room away from home can be a major challenge. When he stays at a hotel, he has to make sure that he has a bath room where the toilet can accommodate him.
On the first night of their trip, Ron and Jane stayed at the less expensive hotel. When he went to the rest room, Ron immediately got a shock when the cheap plastic toilet seat collapsed under his weight. When Ron checked out the next morning, he told the desk manager what had happened. On the return trip, the Claussens stayed at the same hotel and in the same room. Ron was surprised to find that the toilet seat had not been repaired: instead, the whole thing had been replaced with a far more expensive and sturdily-built model. For three nights of their trip, Ron and Jane stayed at the pricier place. There was a problem with the toilet there as well: the whole thing literally tipped over every time any weight was put on it. The manager at the hotel was told about the problem three different times and never did anything about it! Ron surmises that the guy at the pricier place with the solid national reputation probably couldn’t be bothered with one bad toilet. His hotel rooms were occupied every night. He could afford to have a few disgruntled customers. The manager at the less popular place though, felt a greater need to make a good impression on his customers. He cared.
In today’s Bible lesson, Jesus contrasts Himself as the good shepherd who lays down His life for us with “the hired hand.” He says:
"The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand [Jesus says] runs away because...[he] does not care for the sheep."
Why does Jesus lay down His life for you and me? Because amazingly, inexplicably, wonderfully, compassionately, Jesus cares about us. He cares and so He offers His life so that sinners like you and me can receive forgiveness, be reunited with our Father, God, and start living with God’s eternal power in our lives right now, today!
But if you’re feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, please realize that while Jesus extends His love to you with no strings attached, He does give love to us with certain daunting, almost frightening, expectations. Today is Mother’s Day, a time to honor moms and I do. I know that the mom living in my house is particularly wonderful, so wonderful in fact that she’s made me a better dad than I possibly could have been without her.
A number of years ago, I don’t remember where, I read the true story of a mom who somehow became stranded in her stalled car in the middle of a raging blizzard. It was some time before the local sheriff’s department found this woman and her two little ones. When they arrived, the mother had died, frozen to death. But she had huddled herself and her clothing over the children to protect them and both lived.
Here’s the point: Jesus calls us to care for others as much as He cares for us. Our call is to love selflessly like Jesus and in many different ways, to lay down our lives for others. We’re called to adopt the life style of the Good Shepherd. In another place in the New Testament, we’re reminded:
"...whoever says, “I abide in [Jesus],” ought to walk just as He walked...[and] We know love by this, that [Jesus] laid down His life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another...[and] We love because He first loved us." (These passages can be found in First John in the New Testament.)
It isn’t easy to walk as Jesus walked, to love as Jesus loved. In fact, I can guarantee that this side of heaven, we will never totally succeed in doing that. But God calls us to receive Jesus and then spend our lives on this earth learning what it means to have Him living at the center of our lives. One day, when we see Jesus face to face, the Bible says, “we will be like Him.” (First John 3:2) Until then, as Jesus’ students—that’s what the word disciple means, by the way, student—we’re to spend our lives learning. God wants us to learn what it means to live, serve, and love like Jesus. Jesus calls us to care. When we let Jesus live in the center of our lives and priorities, God works on transforming us into our best selves.
God loves you, as the women’s choral group reminded us a little while ago. But it’s up to you and me to decide whether we’ll let that monumental fact change our lives and effect how we live from day to day. The New Testament book of Ephesians tells us that “God wants us to grow up...like Christ in everything.” Too often, people who call themselves Christians settle on a “what’s-in-it-for-me” mentality when it comes to their faith and involvement with their church. But we need to adopt a “Jesus-loves-me-so-now-I’ll-live-for-Him” style of life. That’s the Good Shepherd’s life style: a life of giving of oneself to God and others, a life of caring about God and others.
You and I have a choice: Will we let Jesus invade our everyday decision making or will we put Him in a box marked, Open Only on Sundays? Will we let Jesus establish our priorities in life or will we go our own ways? Will our faith life consist of one hour in a nice new building once a week or will we let the living Jesus Christ be our constant companion, God, and shepherd? The people you and I know who are really living are the ones who are living off the power of Jesus and His love. They let Jesus into their lives so that they live the life style of the Good Shepherd. With Jesus’ help, that’s how I want to live my life too. How about you?
Tuesday, May 06, 2003
When You Have Pain
[column submitted May 6, 2003, written for Community Press newspapers]
Once, when I was working in a steel fabricating plant, I caught my finger in a punch press. The bone was broken and tore through the skin. My father-in-law, an engineer at the same place, took me to the hospital and asked me about what happened.
"When I first looked at my finger," I explained, "I thought it was just a bad cut that wouldn’t stop bleeding. But then, it kept stinging." "Yeah," he said matter-of-factly, "pain is a pretty sure sign that something’s wrong." I laughed at that sage observation.
Ironically, about ten years later, my father-in-law ignored months of constant pain before finally seeing a doctor. By the time he did, it was too late. He had cancer and lived only four more weeks. Pain really is a sign that something’s wrong.
This is as true of emotional, psychological, or relational pain as it is of the physical variety. And just as it’s smart to look for help when we have physical pain, we should also look for help when we confront these other sorts of discomforts. When we have emotional, psychological, or relational pain, we need to do three things. We need to look in, look out, and look up.
We need to look in and see what we're doing to contribute to our own pain in life. People who enroll in Twelve Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous call this taking a "fearless moral inventory" in which they honestly look at themselves, faults and all. Even if the immediate cause of pain is, for example, an insensitive, uncaring spouse, people must look at themselves to see why they become and live with the role of victim. This sort of honesty is a key to healing, just as an accurate diagnosis leads a doctor to make the right prescription.
In Old Testament times, King David had an affair with another man’s wife and then had the man murdered. After a period of dishonest concealment, David was confronted for his sins. He confessed that he was in the wrong. David came to know that failing to look inside oneself causes pain. He writes in Psalm 32, "Happy are those...in whose spirit there is no deceit. While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long...my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer" (Psalm 32:2-4).
We also need to look out. When we have pain, we need advice from trusted people in order to experience healing. That might mean going to a psychotherapist, a pastor, a friend, or better yet, to many different such people. Proverbs 11:14 says, "Without good direction, people lose their way; the more wise counsel you follow, the better your chances."
Finally, we need to look up. A few weeks ago, I was going through a painful time. I was at wit’s end, not knowing what to say or do. This had been going on for several months. It finally dawned on me what I needed to do. I found a quiet place and had a heart-to-heart talk with God. (Some people call that prayer.) I told God everything: I recapped the situation, named what I’d tried to do to remedy things, listed ways I’d contributed to the pain of it all, and told God just how helpless I was feeling. Finally, I said to God, "Lord, I’ve been so incapable of changing things for the better. I just give the situation to You. I can’t handle it any more. You’ll need to fix it."
While the painful situation hasn’t completely turned around, I can say that the very next day, I detected marked improvements.
When God walked the earth in the person of Jesus Christ, He said, "Ask and you will receive..." (John 16:24). Why would we want to carry pain on our own shoulders, when simply for the asking, God is willing to bear it with us?
If you're dealing with pain in your life, it's a pretty sure sign that something's wrong. You need to remember that simple formula: Look in. Look out. Look up. God can use these steps to set you down the path to healing.
[Mark Daniels is pastor of Friendship Church. You’re invited to worship at Friendship any Sunday.]
[column submitted May 6, 2003, written for Community Press newspapers]
Once, when I was working in a steel fabricating plant, I caught my finger in a punch press. The bone was broken and tore through the skin. My father-in-law, an engineer at the same place, took me to the hospital and asked me about what happened.
"When I first looked at my finger," I explained, "I thought it was just a bad cut that wouldn’t stop bleeding. But then, it kept stinging." "Yeah," he said matter-of-factly, "pain is a pretty sure sign that something’s wrong." I laughed at that sage observation.
Ironically, about ten years later, my father-in-law ignored months of constant pain before finally seeing a doctor. By the time he did, it was too late. He had cancer and lived only four more weeks. Pain really is a sign that something’s wrong.
This is as true of emotional, psychological, or relational pain as it is of the physical variety. And just as it’s smart to look for help when we have physical pain, we should also look for help when we confront these other sorts of discomforts. When we have emotional, psychological, or relational pain, we need to do three things. We need to look in, look out, and look up.
We need to look in and see what we're doing to contribute to our own pain in life. People who enroll in Twelve Step programs like Alcoholics Anonymous call this taking a "fearless moral inventory" in which they honestly look at themselves, faults and all. Even if the immediate cause of pain is, for example, an insensitive, uncaring spouse, people must look at themselves to see why they become and live with the role of victim. This sort of honesty is a key to healing, just as an accurate diagnosis leads a doctor to make the right prescription.
In Old Testament times, King David had an affair with another man’s wife and then had the man murdered. After a period of dishonest concealment, David was confronted for his sins. He confessed that he was in the wrong. David came to know that failing to look inside oneself causes pain. He writes in Psalm 32, "Happy are those...in whose spirit there is no deceit. While I kept silence, my body wasted away through my groaning all day long...my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer" (Psalm 32:2-4).
We also need to look out. When we have pain, we need advice from trusted people in order to experience healing. That might mean going to a psychotherapist, a pastor, a friend, or better yet, to many different such people. Proverbs 11:14 says, "Without good direction, people lose their way; the more wise counsel you follow, the better your chances."
Finally, we need to look up. A few weeks ago, I was going through a painful time. I was at wit’s end, not knowing what to say or do. This had been going on for several months. It finally dawned on me what I needed to do. I found a quiet place and had a heart-to-heart talk with God. (Some people call that prayer.) I told God everything: I recapped the situation, named what I’d tried to do to remedy things, listed ways I’d contributed to the pain of it all, and told God just how helpless I was feeling. Finally, I said to God, "Lord, I’ve been so incapable of changing things for the better. I just give the situation to You. I can’t handle it any more. You’ll need to fix it."
While the painful situation hasn’t completely turned around, I can say that the very next day, I detected marked improvements.
When God walked the earth in the person of Jesus Christ, He said, "Ask and you will receive..." (John 16:24). Why would we want to carry pain on our own shoulders, when simply for the asking, God is willing to bear it with us?
If you're dealing with pain in your life, it's a pretty sure sign that something's wrong. You need to remember that simple formula: Look in. Look out. Look up. God can use these steps to set you down the path to healing.
[Mark Daniels is pastor of Friendship Church. You’re invited to worship at Friendship any Sunday.]
Sunday, May 04, 2003
Easter After Tremors:
Seeing the Blessings Jesus Brings
Luke 24:36b-48
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 4, 2003)
Did you hear about the joker who woke his wife up in the middle of the night, yelling, “Honey, I can’t see! I can’t see!” His wife awoke and asked, “Why?” “It must be that I’ve got my eyes closed,” he said. In most jurisdictions that husband’s bad joke would have been the basis for justifiable homicide. But he also makes a good point: You cannot see if you keep your eyes closed.
In our Bible lesson for this morning, the risen Jesus is shown trying to help His disciples see some very important things. Several times in today’s Bible lesson, Jesus tells His disciples to see. It seems to me that there are three major things that Jesus wants you and me to see as we encounter Him today.
First: Jesus wants us to see that His resurrection spells the end of our anxiety. The first thing He tells the disciples as He meets them today is, “Peace be with you.” Knowing and following the risen Jesus brings peace. That doesn’t mean that we might not have times when we confront things life depression or anxiety. But over the long haul, the follower of Jesus Christ lives with peace at the core of their beings. There’s good reason for that.
A few years ago, there was a TV show called First Edition. The premise was simple. Every morning, a guy would receive a newspaper outside his door. But it was the newspaper for the next morning. He had a clear view of the future, a clear idea of what he needed to accomplish. Jesus is our first edition, our clear view of the future. The Bible tells us for example, that while we may not know all the particulars about heaven, people who follow Christ will be like Jesus. Those who follow Jesus know where their futures are headed and He makes clear that our greatest accomplishments come when, just like Him we make love of God and love of neighbor the number one priorities of our lives. Knowing that we belong to God forever puts day to day life in perspective and helps us to move through each day unafraid.
One year ago, this building was little more than a dream and some scratches on paper. We broke ground on May 18. But site work wasn’t really going until July. The arches in this core section weren’t up until the Tuesday after Labor Day. Yet, we had our Boeing 747 Christmas Eve worship—that’s what I call the worship when those CO2 blowers went off, making this place sound like the runway at an international airport. But God has graciously allowed us the use of this facility and is helping us to use it as a tool for reaching out to our community with the Good News of Jesus. God always makes a way for those who surrender their lives to Jesus Christ even when we can’t see it. Jesus’ resurrection spells the end of our anxiety.
Second, Jesus wants us to see that, no matter what setbacks or griefs we may endure, His resurrection shows that God is in control and that God’s good plan for us is right on schedule. That’s why in today’s Bible lesson Jesus says to His terrified followers:
“Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?...These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about Me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled...Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day...”
Last November 21, a gunman killed missionary Bonnie Penner Witherell as she started her work day at a clinic in Sidon, Lebanon. This Christian clinic helps pregnant women and new mothers from low-income households and from Palestinian refugee camps. Today, Bonnie Witherell is still having an impact on many people’s lives. People at her home church in Lynden, Washington sew soft flannel receiving blankets that are distributed in the clinic in Lebanon where Bonnie once worked. Hundreds have been produced! In spite of her grief, Bonnie’s mother, Ann Penner, sees that God is being glorified through her daughter’s life and death. One of Ann’s sources of strength is Psalm 139, which finds King David telling God confidently:
"...it was You Who formed my inward parts, You knit me together in my mother’s womb...[and] In Your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them yet existed."
Nothing catches the God we know through Jesus Christ off guard. When Jesus died on a cross, it was part of God’s plan. So was Easter Sunday morning. The gunman who killed Bonnie Witherell may have thought that he was thwarting God’s good plans. But God will not be thwarted. His love can’t be killed off. No matter what tragedies or challenges may happen in this world, God is unbowed. He keeps loving, keeps helping, and keeps moving all with faith in a heaven-ward direction, empowering us to live lives that reflect His goodness. God is in control and God’s good plan for us is right on schedule. We can be confident of that!
Third, Jesus wants us to see that because He is risen from the dead, we’re to share Christ with the world, beginning with those who are closest to us. In our lesson, He tells His first followers that they are His witnesses starting in the very town they were in, Jerusalem. Jesus says that as His witnesses, we’re to tell others about “repentance and the forgiveness of sins” in His Name.
Sin, you know, is a condition of the heart and mind. It’s separation from God that prevents us from being the people God made us to be and ultimately, results in death. Sin is like static that we get on a radio. It keeps us from being clearly tuned into God, from knowing God’s will for our lives, from loving God and loving neighbor. When we tune into Jesus, we’re in synch with God and with God’s plan for us. Our call as followers of Jesus is not just to follow Jesus; we’re also to tell others and show others by the lives we live how to “tune in” to God. Jesus puts it simply in our lesson this morning: “You are witnesses...”
It’s interesting how Jesus puts that. He doesn’t say, “I’d like you to be witnesses.” Or, “At 10:00 on Sunday mornings, you’re My witnesses.” He says, “You are My witnesses.” And here’s what I’ve observed: Folks out there in the world are watching us. They’ve seen enough of people who claim to be Christians but exhibit the most un-Christian behavior. People see us at work, at play, at the PTO meeting, in the church lobby. But when they see us do they see Jesus in us?
I’ve told the story before of what happened to Walt Kallestad, a Lutheran pastor in Arizona. He stopped into a convenience store and made a purchase. The clerk gave him his change and after he’d cruised down the road a bit, it dawned on him that she had given him too much money back. He decided he needed to go back to the convenience market. “Here,” he told the clerk once he’d arrived, “you gave me too much change.” “I know,” the woman said, “I was at your church for the first time last week and you talked about honesty. I just wanted to know if you meant it.”
Whether we realize it or not, for good and ill, those of us who go to worship and claim to be followers of Christ, are witnesses twenty-four, seven. The person who truly lives securely in the Kingdom of the risen Jesus Christ wants to live authentically. We’re not perfect. But even our imperfect lives can tell the world whether following Jesus really changes a human being from the inside out. We are witnesses.
Chuck Colson, the one-time Watergate conspirator became a follower of Jesus Christ, went into prison ministry, and is a leading voice for Jesus Christ today. Interviewer Larry King once asked Colson how he has been able to avoid so many of the moral pitfalls into which Christian leaders fall. Colson responded, “I tell people, ‘Don’t follow me. Follow Jesus!’”
That’s our call from God! Jesus wants us to see that through Him, the power of anxiety is banished from our lives; that through Him, we know that God is in control and working right on schedule; and that because of His resurrection, we are His witnesses. But before we can see any of these things, we must open the eyes of our hearts and stay focused on Jesus. We need to follow Him, all day, every moment of every day! We need to be completely, totally, unreservedly surrendered to Jesus Christ. That’s what I want to challenge you to do this morning: to make it your life’s work to open the eyes of your hearts and follow the risen Jesus always.
[The true story of missionary Bonnie Penner Witherell is told in the May-June, 2003 issue of Prayer Point, published by Samaritan's Purse. Walt Kallestad tells the story of what happened to him at the convenience store in one of his books; I can't remember which one. The Colson quote comes from a sermon by Robert R. Kopp which appears in The Abingdon Preaching Annual: 1997 Edition. The notion of sin as static, a very good way of illustrating the Biblical concept of sin as seen in Psalm 51, is something that Robert Schuller does in one of his books; again, I can't remember which one.]
Seeing the Blessings Jesus Brings
Luke 24:36b-48
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 4, 2003)
Did you hear about the joker who woke his wife up in the middle of the night, yelling, “Honey, I can’t see! I can’t see!” His wife awoke and asked, “Why?” “It must be that I’ve got my eyes closed,” he said. In most jurisdictions that husband’s bad joke would have been the basis for justifiable homicide. But he also makes a good point: You cannot see if you keep your eyes closed.
In our Bible lesson for this morning, the risen Jesus is shown trying to help His disciples see some very important things. Several times in today’s Bible lesson, Jesus tells His disciples to see. It seems to me that there are three major things that Jesus wants you and me to see as we encounter Him today.
First: Jesus wants us to see that His resurrection spells the end of our anxiety. The first thing He tells the disciples as He meets them today is, “Peace be with you.” Knowing and following the risen Jesus brings peace. That doesn’t mean that we might not have times when we confront things life depression or anxiety. But over the long haul, the follower of Jesus Christ lives with peace at the core of their beings. There’s good reason for that.
A few years ago, there was a TV show called First Edition. The premise was simple. Every morning, a guy would receive a newspaper outside his door. But it was the newspaper for the next morning. He had a clear view of the future, a clear idea of what he needed to accomplish. Jesus is our first edition, our clear view of the future. The Bible tells us for example, that while we may not know all the particulars about heaven, people who follow Christ will be like Jesus. Those who follow Jesus know where their futures are headed and He makes clear that our greatest accomplishments come when, just like Him we make love of God and love of neighbor the number one priorities of our lives. Knowing that we belong to God forever puts day to day life in perspective and helps us to move through each day unafraid.
One year ago, this building was little more than a dream and some scratches on paper. We broke ground on May 18. But site work wasn’t really going until July. The arches in this core section weren’t up until the Tuesday after Labor Day. Yet, we had our Boeing 747 Christmas Eve worship—that’s what I call the worship when those CO2 blowers went off, making this place sound like the runway at an international airport. But God has graciously allowed us the use of this facility and is helping us to use it as a tool for reaching out to our community with the Good News of Jesus. God always makes a way for those who surrender their lives to Jesus Christ even when we can’t see it. Jesus’ resurrection spells the end of our anxiety.
Second, Jesus wants us to see that, no matter what setbacks or griefs we may endure, His resurrection shows that God is in control and that God’s good plan for us is right on schedule. That’s why in today’s Bible lesson Jesus says to His terrified followers:
“Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts?...These are My words that I spoke to you while I was still with you—that everything written about Me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the psalms must be fulfilled...Thus it is written that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day...”
Last November 21, a gunman killed missionary Bonnie Penner Witherell as she started her work day at a clinic in Sidon, Lebanon. This Christian clinic helps pregnant women and new mothers from low-income households and from Palestinian refugee camps. Today, Bonnie Witherell is still having an impact on many people’s lives. People at her home church in Lynden, Washington sew soft flannel receiving blankets that are distributed in the clinic in Lebanon where Bonnie once worked. Hundreds have been produced! In spite of her grief, Bonnie’s mother, Ann Penner, sees that God is being glorified through her daughter’s life and death. One of Ann’s sources of strength is Psalm 139, which finds King David telling God confidently:
"...it was You Who formed my inward parts, You knit me together in my mother’s womb...[and] In Your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them yet existed."
Nothing catches the God we know through Jesus Christ off guard. When Jesus died on a cross, it was part of God’s plan. So was Easter Sunday morning. The gunman who killed Bonnie Witherell may have thought that he was thwarting God’s good plans. But God will not be thwarted. His love can’t be killed off. No matter what tragedies or challenges may happen in this world, God is unbowed. He keeps loving, keeps helping, and keeps moving all with faith in a heaven-ward direction, empowering us to live lives that reflect His goodness. God is in control and God’s good plan for us is right on schedule. We can be confident of that!
Third, Jesus wants us to see that because He is risen from the dead, we’re to share Christ with the world, beginning with those who are closest to us. In our lesson, He tells His first followers that they are His witnesses starting in the very town they were in, Jerusalem. Jesus says that as His witnesses, we’re to tell others about “repentance and the forgiveness of sins” in His Name.
Sin, you know, is a condition of the heart and mind. It’s separation from God that prevents us from being the people God made us to be and ultimately, results in death. Sin is like static that we get on a radio. It keeps us from being clearly tuned into God, from knowing God’s will for our lives, from loving God and loving neighbor. When we tune into Jesus, we’re in synch with God and with God’s plan for us. Our call as followers of Jesus is not just to follow Jesus; we’re also to tell others and show others by the lives we live how to “tune in” to God. Jesus puts it simply in our lesson this morning: “You are witnesses...”
It’s interesting how Jesus puts that. He doesn’t say, “I’d like you to be witnesses.” Or, “At 10:00 on Sunday mornings, you’re My witnesses.” He says, “You are My witnesses.” And here’s what I’ve observed: Folks out there in the world are watching us. They’ve seen enough of people who claim to be Christians but exhibit the most un-Christian behavior. People see us at work, at play, at the PTO meeting, in the church lobby. But when they see us do they see Jesus in us?
I’ve told the story before of what happened to Walt Kallestad, a Lutheran pastor in Arizona. He stopped into a convenience store and made a purchase. The clerk gave him his change and after he’d cruised down the road a bit, it dawned on him that she had given him too much money back. He decided he needed to go back to the convenience market. “Here,” he told the clerk once he’d arrived, “you gave me too much change.” “I know,” the woman said, “I was at your church for the first time last week and you talked about honesty. I just wanted to know if you meant it.”
Whether we realize it or not, for good and ill, those of us who go to worship and claim to be followers of Christ, are witnesses twenty-four, seven. The person who truly lives securely in the Kingdom of the risen Jesus Christ wants to live authentically. We’re not perfect. But even our imperfect lives can tell the world whether following Jesus really changes a human being from the inside out. We are witnesses.
Chuck Colson, the one-time Watergate conspirator became a follower of Jesus Christ, went into prison ministry, and is a leading voice for Jesus Christ today. Interviewer Larry King once asked Colson how he has been able to avoid so many of the moral pitfalls into which Christian leaders fall. Colson responded, “I tell people, ‘Don’t follow me. Follow Jesus!’”
That’s our call from God! Jesus wants us to see that through Him, the power of anxiety is banished from our lives; that through Him, we know that God is in control and working right on schedule; and that because of His resurrection, we are His witnesses. But before we can see any of these things, we must open the eyes of our hearts and stay focused on Jesus. We need to follow Him, all day, every moment of every day! We need to be completely, totally, unreservedly surrendered to Jesus Christ. That’s what I want to challenge you to do this morning: to make it your life’s work to open the eyes of your hearts and follow the risen Jesus always.
[The true story of missionary Bonnie Penner Witherell is told in the May-June, 2003 issue of Prayer Point, published by Samaritan's Purse. Walt Kallestad tells the story of what happened to him at the convenience store in one of his books; I can't remember which one. The Colson quote comes from a sermon by Robert R. Kopp which appears in The Abingdon Preaching Annual: 1997 Edition. The notion of sin as static, a very good way of illustrating the Biblical concept of sin as seen in Psalm 51, is something that Robert Schuller does in one of his books; again, I can't remember which one.]
Wednesday, April 30, 2003
Some books that help me live better:
Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
Prayer Ole Hallesby
The Life You've Always Wanted John Ortberg
any of the seven volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis
The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren
Soul Salsa Leonard Sweet
any book by Laurie Beth Jones
any book by Alan Loy McGinnis
The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis
more in a later post...
Mere Christianity C.S. Lewis
Prayer Ole Hallesby
The Life You've Always Wanted John Ortberg
any of the seven volumes of The Chronicles of Narnia C.S. Lewis
The Purpose Driven Life Rick Warren
Soul Salsa Leonard Sweet
any book by Laurie Beth Jones
any book by Alan Loy McGinnis
The Screwtape Letters C.S. Lewis
more in a later post...
Prayer in Jesus' Name is our point of contact with God. God wants to hear from us and wants to answer our trusting prayers. I would appreciate your prayers for the following:
(1) Pray for Isaac. He's a four-and-a-half year old member of our congregation who needs healing.
(2) Pray for real peace in Iraq, for protection of US military personnel, and of Iraqi civilians.
(3) Pray for wisdom for leaders around the world and for the courage to act on that wisdom.
Thanks for praying with me!
(1) Pray for Isaac. He's a four-and-a-half year old member of our congregation who needs healing.
(2) Pray for real peace in Iraq, for protection of US military personnel, and of Iraqi civilians.
(3) Pray for wisdom for leaders around the world and for the courage to act on that wisdom.
Thanks for praying with me!
Sunday, April 27, 2003
Easter After Tremors:
Seeing Jesus
John 20:19-31
[Shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 27, 2003]
When I was a young man the thing that kept me from following Christ was the Easter story: the Church’s insistent proclamation that Jesus had risen from the dead. I couldn’t believe and I couldn’t understand how any rational human being could believe, that Jesus had been resurrected. I liked Jesus. I thought that what He had to say and the way He loved others was attractive. But I had never seen a human being come back from the grave. So, how could I possibly believe?
After attending worship at what would eventually become my home congregation, Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus with Ann, I started to investigate, reading a number of books that presented evidence to convince readers rationally that Jesus had risen from the dead. Today, you can find lots of books like that. Many of them are very good. But it was my experience that for every piece of evidence one could present supporting Jesus’ resurrection, there was a counter-argument just as compelling.
Nonetheless, something led me to trust not only that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, but also to trust Him as my Lord and God and Savior. That “something” came in all the people whose lives I had seen changed when they followed Jesus Christ: The person who wrestled with mental illness for decades and finally found peace and purpose for life in the arms of Christ. The elderly contractor who cared for his ill wife for decades and provided that care with cheerfulness. The reluctant congregational president who, when forced to make almost impossible decisions, forged ahead with a love and passion that one would have hardly expected to see in someone who seemed so ordinary. The parents of high school classmates who knew what a loser I had been but still accepted me, encouraged me, and to this day, remain my loving boosters. What led me to believe in the risen Jesus was all the people I saw who lived with Him in the center of their lives.
Pinchas Lapide is a Jewish scholar who studies the New Testament, the portion of the Bible which Jews reject because it affirms Jesus’ resurrection and that Jesus is the Savior of the world. But Lapide, after extensive study, concludes that God the Father really did raise Jesus from the dead. Listen to what he writes in his book, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective:
When this scared, frightened band of the apostles which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed Him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.
What ultimately convinced this Jewish scholar that Jesus really rose from the dead was that he observed the risen Jesus living in the people who first claimed they’d seen Jesus resurrected from the dead. He believes in Jesus’ resurrection because of the way the lives of Jesus’ followers—ordinary women and men—changed after the first Easter morning.
Have you seen the risen Jesus living and active in ordinary people like you and me?
Are people able to see the risen Jesus in you and me?
There are times when we can feel confused and upset by the seeming absence of God from our lives. We wonder, “If Jesus is risen and living, why has this happened in my life? Or, why has tragedy befallen someone we care about?” We must remember in times like those, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, that this isn’t heaven. This world is imperfect. Horrible things happen. But if we open our eyes, we can also see that the risen Jesus is alive and at work in the lives of people who follow Him.
Hector Vasquez is a Lutheran pastor who once lived and worked as a missionary in Guatemala. There, he says, he and his wife Mirtha “learned an important lesson—the success of any church is not dependent on great decisions or great wisdom, it depends on the ability and knowledge of [God’s] Holy Spirit [working in] each one of us.”
According to Hector Vasquez, early one morning, he found a group of people standing outside his home. They represented several indigenous communities where he and his wife were starting to do community work. These people had a request:
They said, “Pastor Hector, our communities sent us so that we can ask you to send us pastors and teachers to teach us and our children. We know that what you do is good and, therefore, what you believe must also be good.”
When people observe the risen Jesus living in us, animating our lives, they want the same intimacy with the Savior that you and I enjoy!
The Church is the family of the risen Jesus. When we let the risen Jesus be our Lord and God, the whole world sees Him! When we allow Him to unleash His passionate love in us, we see Him too! "Love God and love neighbor" are more than mottos stitched on a pillow somewhere; they are our way of life when the risen Jesus takes up residence in our lives!
I don’t understand how Jesus’ once-dead tissue and organs were brought back to life on the first Easter Sunday. And it’s only natural for us to wonder how and even if, it all can be possible. That’s certainly how Thomas, one of Jesus’ first followers felt.
According to our Bible lesson for this morning, the risen Jesus had made several appearances to His followers. They had excitedly shared their news with other followers who hadn’t yet seen the resurrected Jesus. One of those who hadn’t yet seen Jesus was Thomas.
“Unless I’m able to see Jesus and touch the scars left behind by His crucifixion and by the sword that pierced His side, I’m not buying this whole story,” Thomas tells the others. On the Sunday following Easter, a Sunday like this one, Thomas gets the shock of his life. Gathered in a locked room, probably listening disbelievingly to his fellow Jesus-followers yammer on about how they had seen the risen Jesus, Thomas looks up and there stands Jesus. Thomas falls down on his face, worshiping Jesus, calling Him, “My Lord and my God.” And then Jesus addresses Thomas:
“Have you believed Me because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Jesus is risen from the dead whether we see Him or not.
Jesus is with and is blessing those who follow Him whether they can point to Him or not.
Jesus is alive and at work even when we don’t know it.
Like a doubting Thomas, I sometimes wonder what good it does, for example, for me to write my columns for the local newspaper. I try to lift Jesus up so that people will know and follow Him. There are times though, when I think that all I do is provide liner for bird cages. But then, I get reminded of how the risen Jesus is at work even in my meager words. A few months ago, a woman approached me and said, “You’re Mark Daniels, aren’t you? I work in this bar and somebody tacked up one of your columns on the bulltein board in the entryway. People talk about it all the time.”
Can you imagine a more unlikely scenario? A yellowed fragment from a bird-cage liner that proclaims the Good News of a Savior Who loves sinners like us, Who turns those sinners into God’s friends through His forgiveness and the power of His resurrection...that piece of newsprint is somehow used by the risen Jesus to give people hope. Somehow, the risen Jesus can even show up on the bulletin board at a bar. He really is risen!
Whether they know it or not, the people of today's world world are desperate for the hope that only the risen Jesus can give. When in our everyday lives, you and I let Jesus take control of who we are, what we do, and what we say, both we and the world around us see the risen Jesus. Then, like Thomas, people will feel compelled to worship at Jesus’ feet and like him and us, to call Jesus, “Lord and God.”
[The Lapide book is cited by Pastor Brian Stoffregen in his weekly e-mailed exegesis. Hector Vasquez recounts the incident here cited in an article appearing in the Spring, 2003 issue of Voices of Congregational Life.]
Seeing Jesus
John 20:19-31
[Shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 27, 2003]
When I was a young man the thing that kept me from following Christ was the Easter story: the Church’s insistent proclamation that Jesus had risen from the dead. I couldn’t believe and I couldn’t understand how any rational human being could believe, that Jesus had been resurrected. I liked Jesus. I thought that what He had to say and the way He loved others was attractive. But I had never seen a human being come back from the grave. So, how could I possibly believe?
After attending worship at what would eventually become my home congregation, Bethlehem Lutheran Church in Columbus with Ann, I started to investigate, reading a number of books that presented evidence to convince readers rationally that Jesus had risen from the dead. Today, you can find lots of books like that. Many of them are very good. But it was my experience that for every piece of evidence one could present supporting Jesus’ resurrection, there was a counter-argument just as compelling.
Nonetheless, something led me to trust not only that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, but also to trust Him as my Lord and God and Savior. That “something” came in all the people whose lives I had seen changed when they followed Jesus Christ: The person who wrestled with mental illness for decades and finally found peace and purpose for life in the arms of Christ. The elderly contractor who cared for his ill wife for decades and provided that care with cheerfulness. The reluctant congregational president who, when forced to make almost impossible decisions, forged ahead with a love and passion that one would have hardly expected to see in someone who seemed so ordinary. The parents of high school classmates who knew what a loser I had been but still accepted me, encouraged me, and to this day, remain my loving boosters. What led me to believe in the risen Jesus was all the people I saw who lived with Him in the center of their lives.
Pinchas Lapide is a Jewish scholar who studies the New Testament, the portion of the Bible which Jews reject because it affirms Jesus’ resurrection and that Jesus is the Savior of the world. But Lapide, after extensive study, concludes that God the Father really did raise Jesus from the dead. Listen to what he writes in his book, The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish Perspective:
When this scared, frightened band of the apostles which was just about to throw away everything in order to flee in despair to Galilee; when these peasants, shepherds, and fishermen, who betrayed and denied their master and then failed Him miserably, suddenly could be changed overnight into a confident mission society, convinced of salvation and able to work with much more success after Easter than before Easter, then no vision or hallucination is sufficient to explain such a revolutionary transformation.
What ultimately convinced this Jewish scholar that Jesus really rose from the dead was that he observed the risen Jesus living in the people who first claimed they’d seen Jesus resurrected from the dead. He believes in Jesus’ resurrection because of the way the lives of Jesus’ followers—ordinary women and men—changed after the first Easter morning.
Have you seen the risen Jesus living and active in ordinary people like you and me?
Are people able to see the risen Jesus in you and me?
There are times when we can feel confused and upset by the seeming absence of God from our lives. We wonder, “If Jesus is risen and living, why has this happened in my life? Or, why has tragedy befallen someone we care about?” We must remember in times like those, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, that this isn’t heaven. This world is imperfect. Horrible things happen. But if we open our eyes, we can also see that the risen Jesus is alive and at work in the lives of people who follow Him.
Hector Vasquez is a Lutheran pastor who once lived and worked as a missionary in Guatemala. There, he says, he and his wife Mirtha “learned an important lesson—the success of any church is not dependent on great decisions or great wisdom, it depends on the ability and knowledge of [God’s] Holy Spirit [working in] each one of us.”
According to Hector Vasquez, early one morning, he found a group of people standing outside his home. They represented several indigenous communities where he and his wife were starting to do community work. These people had a request:
They said, “Pastor Hector, our communities sent us so that we can ask you to send us pastors and teachers to teach us and our children. We know that what you do is good and, therefore, what you believe must also be good.”
When people observe the risen Jesus living in us, animating our lives, they want the same intimacy with the Savior that you and I enjoy!
The Church is the family of the risen Jesus. When we let the risen Jesus be our Lord and God, the whole world sees Him! When we allow Him to unleash His passionate love in us, we see Him too! "Love God and love neighbor" are more than mottos stitched on a pillow somewhere; they are our way of life when the risen Jesus takes up residence in our lives!
I don’t understand how Jesus’ once-dead tissue and organs were brought back to life on the first Easter Sunday. And it’s only natural for us to wonder how and even if, it all can be possible. That’s certainly how Thomas, one of Jesus’ first followers felt.
According to our Bible lesson for this morning, the risen Jesus had made several appearances to His followers. They had excitedly shared their news with other followers who hadn’t yet seen the resurrected Jesus. One of those who hadn’t yet seen Jesus was Thomas.
“Unless I’m able to see Jesus and touch the scars left behind by His crucifixion and by the sword that pierced His side, I’m not buying this whole story,” Thomas tells the others. On the Sunday following Easter, a Sunday like this one, Thomas gets the shock of his life. Gathered in a locked room, probably listening disbelievingly to his fellow Jesus-followers yammer on about how they had seen the risen Jesus, Thomas looks up and there stands Jesus. Thomas falls down on his face, worshiping Jesus, calling Him, “My Lord and my God.” And then Jesus addresses Thomas:
“Have you believed Me because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”
Jesus is risen from the dead whether we see Him or not.
Jesus is with and is blessing those who follow Him whether they can point to Him or not.
Jesus is alive and at work even when we don’t know it.
Like a doubting Thomas, I sometimes wonder what good it does, for example, for me to write my columns for the local newspaper. I try to lift Jesus up so that people will know and follow Him. There are times though, when I think that all I do is provide liner for bird cages. But then, I get reminded of how the risen Jesus is at work even in my meager words. A few months ago, a woman approached me and said, “You’re Mark Daniels, aren’t you? I work in this bar and somebody tacked up one of your columns on the bulltein board in the entryway. People talk about it all the time.”
Can you imagine a more unlikely scenario? A yellowed fragment from a bird-cage liner that proclaims the Good News of a Savior Who loves sinners like us, Who turns those sinners into God’s friends through His forgiveness and the power of His resurrection...that piece of newsprint is somehow used by the risen Jesus to give people hope. Somehow, the risen Jesus can even show up on the bulletin board at a bar. He really is risen!
Whether they know it or not, the people of today's world world are desperate for the hope that only the risen Jesus can give. When in our everyday lives, you and I let Jesus take control of who we are, what we do, and what we say, both we and the world around us see the risen Jesus. Then, like Thomas, people will feel compelled to worship at Jesus’ feet and like him and us, to call Jesus, “Lord and God.”
[The Lapide book is cited by Pastor Brian Stoffregen in his weekly e-mailed exegesis. Hector Vasquez recounts the incident here cited in an article appearing in the Spring, 2003 issue of Voices of Congregational Life.]
Sunday, April 20, 2003
Jesus' Mandate to Love
Maundy Thursday
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
[Shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 17, 2003]
Karl Barth is considered one of the giants of Christian faith in the twentieth century. He was a world-renowned theologian in a time when the words of theologians were covered by the mainstream media. Once, Barth came to America for a lecture tour. A reporter from The New York Times was on hand to cover his appearance and to interview the great man. Barth wrote volumes of theological works, books that would take even the most learned person a long time to wade through. The reporter asked Barth, “In all of your work, sir, what are you trying to say?” Barth thought about if for awhile and then answered, “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.”
As some of you know, that’s one of my favorite stories, because it gets at the essence of the Good News of Jesus Christ. “While we were still sinners,” the New Testament book of Romans says, “Christ died for us.” He did that because of His love for us. God knew that death was the rightful consequence of sin. He was horrified by the notion that He might lose us all forever. So, God made an incredible decision. He decided to become one of us, lead a sinless life, and then make an offering of Himself. He became the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world. Anybody who will simply come to God, confessing their sin and receiving Jesus as their Lord, becomes a beneficiary of the love God gives through Jesus. “Jesus loves me” is absolutely true and the cross is proof of it. The Good News on which this congregation and this building is built is love, the love of God.
But Maundy Thursday stands as a reminder to us all. The love that we followers of Jesus talk about isn’t just about God’s love for us. The word Maundy comes from a Latin word that means “mandate” or “command.” On the Thursday before Jesus was murdered, He celebrated the ancient Jewish meal of Passover with His closest followers. There, He also instituted a new dinner. We call it Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, or from a Greek word meaning thanksgiving, we may call it the Eucharist. But Jesus did something else in that quiet room with the twelve: He gave them a mandate, a new command.
As was often true of Jesus though, He didn’t give that new commandment without first giving them a stunning illustration of it. Like you, maybe, a few weeks ago, I was amazed to watch by satellite from Baghdad, the pictures of Iraqis and US Marines as, together they brought down a large statue of Saddam Hussein. Even more amazing was the image of dozens of Iraqis jumping onto the toppled statue, stomping it with their feet and banging it with their shoes. These Iraqis were showing contempt for a man they regarded as a monstrous dictator.
Like the Iraqis of today, when God came into the world as a human being, He did so as a member of a Semitic race. The Judeans of Jesus’ day, also like the Iraqis of our day, regarded the foot as the filthiest portion of the human anatomy. In first century Judea where Jesus lived, it was common whenever a guest had traveled dusty roads by foot, that a servant would wash the feet of the traveler before dinner was served. But as Jesus prepared to give His disciples the mandate to love as He loved them, He did something that no self-respecting Lord or teacher would ever do, something that only a slave would do. Jesus stripped off His only garment, wrapped a towel around His waist, and began to wash the disciples’ dirty feet.
Simon Peter—the man we call simply Peter—was appalled. “Lord,” he tells Jesus, “You are never going to wash my feet. I won’t hear of it. It’s beneath the Savior of the world.” (It’s funny how Peter was always trying to teach Jesus the “right” way to be the Savior, as though he knew better than Jesus!) But Jesus tells Peter, “If you don’t let Me serve you in this way, you really don’t have anything to do with Me.” On hearing that, Peter, always impetuous, says, “Lord, not just my feet then, but also my hands and my head.”
After Jesus finished cleaning each foot, even the feet of the man He knew would soon betray Him and turn Him over to the authorities who would kill Him, Jesus took His place at the head of the table and said:
“Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet...I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The love of Jesus isn’t a pretty ornament that you pull out and gaze at. Jesus’ love is like a million pulsating nuclear power plants living inside of us. Jesus’ love is meant to power us in loving and serving others just as Jesus has loved and served us.
Jesus’ Maundy Thursday mandate is that we dare not horde His love; it’s meant to be passed on. When I was a boy, I remember an assembly at our elementary school at which we welcomed a local TV show host, a sort of prototype of Bill Nye, the Science Guy. His name was Mr. Perkins. At one point in the assembly, Mr. Perkins had a large group of us stand holding hands in a circle around the perimeter of the multipurpose room. One person in the front laid the palm of his hand against the surface of a large metal ball that was connected to a small, hand-cranked electric generator. Mr. Perkins began cranking the generator and within seconds, everyone of us felt a small but noticeable jolt. Mr. Perkins explained that each of us had acted as conductors of electricity. We felt it and so did the person we touched next to us.
Jesus is saying that for the follower of Jesus, it isn’t good enough to be the passive recipients of His love. And there are some people, stuck in a perpetual spiritual adolescence whose entire thinking about Christ and the Church is composed of the question, “What’s in it for me?” For people like that, Christian faith is nothing but a selfish pursuit of goose bumps and jolts. They engage in constant hopping from one experience or church to another because the “high” they got before wore off. But Jesus says that if we want to keep His love alive in our lives, we need to move from being mere consumers of His love and become reproducers of His love. We need to love the imperfect people with whom we go to church and the imperfect people in our world, just like He loves us in spite of our imperfections.
Facing certain death, Jesus still served His unworthy disciples. He could do that because the love He knew the Father had for Him gave Him confidence to keep on loving in spite of His circumstances. Jesus wants us to live and love and serve with the same confidence! A few days ago, I was having a conversation on the fly with one of my neighbors. For some time now, I’ve been praying for him and his wife, people I really like a lot. I decided that now was the time. So, in my head, I said another quick prayer and I invited this guy and his wife to worship with us this coming Sunday. Without a second’s hesitation, he said, “Yes.” Soon, I was in my car heading for dinner with friends. But I tell you, that felt so good! Jesus had made a connection of love with my neighbor. By taking the risk of passing Jesus’ love onto someone else, I could feel Jesus stoking the fires of my faith and making it grow. Our faith in Christ always grows when we give it away!
In the few days before Easter, God may give you and me opportunities to make such a connection. We can invite people who need Jesus in their lives to be with us for Easter worship. And in a few weeks, you’ll have new opportunities to serve our neighbors in Jesus’ Name through our renewed outreach program under Carol Barrett’s leadership.
You and I can sing with confidence that, “Jesus loves me” and that’s an awesome and life-transforming thing. But when we show others through our loving, serving, giving, and living that Jesus loves them, that’s when you and are most alive!
[The Karl Barth story, one of my favorites, was retold in a recent message by Pastor Mike Foss. I appreciate the reminder.]
Maundy Thursday
John 13:1-17, 31b-35
[Shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 17, 2003]
Karl Barth is considered one of the giants of Christian faith in the twentieth century. He was a world-renowned theologian in a time when the words of theologians were covered by the mainstream media. Once, Barth came to America for a lecture tour. A reporter from The New York Times was on hand to cover his appearance and to interview the great man. Barth wrote volumes of theological works, books that would take even the most learned person a long time to wade through. The reporter asked Barth, “In all of your work, sir, what are you trying to say?” Barth thought about if for awhile and then answered, “Jesus loves me, this I know. For the Bible tells me so.”
As some of you know, that’s one of my favorite stories, because it gets at the essence of the Good News of Jesus Christ. “While we were still sinners,” the New Testament book of Romans says, “Christ died for us.” He did that because of His love for us. God knew that death was the rightful consequence of sin. He was horrified by the notion that He might lose us all forever. So, God made an incredible decision. He decided to become one of us, lead a sinless life, and then make an offering of Himself. He became the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world. Anybody who will simply come to God, confessing their sin and receiving Jesus as their Lord, becomes a beneficiary of the love God gives through Jesus. “Jesus loves me” is absolutely true and the cross is proof of it. The Good News on which this congregation and this building is built is love, the love of God.
But Maundy Thursday stands as a reminder to us all. The love that we followers of Jesus talk about isn’t just about God’s love for us. The word Maundy comes from a Latin word that means “mandate” or “command.” On the Thursday before Jesus was murdered, He celebrated the ancient Jewish meal of Passover with His closest followers. There, He also instituted a new dinner. We call it Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper, or from a Greek word meaning thanksgiving, we may call it the Eucharist. But Jesus did something else in that quiet room with the twelve: He gave them a mandate, a new command.
As was often true of Jesus though, He didn’t give that new commandment without first giving them a stunning illustration of it. Like you, maybe, a few weeks ago, I was amazed to watch by satellite from Baghdad, the pictures of Iraqis and US Marines as, together they brought down a large statue of Saddam Hussein. Even more amazing was the image of dozens of Iraqis jumping onto the toppled statue, stomping it with their feet and banging it with their shoes. These Iraqis were showing contempt for a man they regarded as a monstrous dictator.
Like the Iraqis of today, when God came into the world as a human being, He did so as a member of a Semitic race. The Judeans of Jesus’ day, also like the Iraqis of our day, regarded the foot as the filthiest portion of the human anatomy. In first century Judea where Jesus lived, it was common whenever a guest had traveled dusty roads by foot, that a servant would wash the feet of the traveler before dinner was served. But as Jesus prepared to give His disciples the mandate to love as He loved them, He did something that no self-respecting Lord or teacher would ever do, something that only a slave would do. Jesus stripped off His only garment, wrapped a towel around His waist, and began to wash the disciples’ dirty feet.
Simon Peter—the man we call simply Peter—was appalled. “Lord,” he tells Jesus, “You are never going to wash my feet. I won’t hear of it. It’s beneath the Savior of the world.” (It’s funny how Peter was always trying to teach Jesus the “right” way to be the Savior, as though he knew better than Jesus!) But Jesus tells Peter, “If you don’t let Me serve you in this way, you really don’t have anything to do with Me.” On hearing that, Peter, always impetuous, says, “Lord, not just my feet then, but also my hands and my head.”
After Jesus finished cleaning each foot, even the feet of the man He knew would soon betray Him and turn Him over to the authorities who would kill Him, Jesus took His place at the head of the table and said:
“Do you know what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet...I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
The love of Jesus isn’t a pretty ornament that you pull out and gaze at. Jesus’ love is like a million pulsating nuclear power plants living inside of us. Jesus’ love is meant to power us in loving and serving others just as Jesus has loved and served us.
Jesus’ Maundy Thursday mandate is that we dare not horde His love; it’s meant to be passed on. When I was a boy, I remember an assembly at our elementary school at which we welcomed a local TV show host, a sort of prototype of Bill Nye, the Science Guy. His name was Mr. Perkins. At one point in the assembly, Mr. Perkins had a large group of us stand holding hands in a circle around the perimeter of the multipurpose room. One person in the front laid the palm of his hand against the surface of a large metal ball that was connected to a small, hand-cranked electric generator. Mr. Perkins began cranking the generator and within seconds, everyone of us felt a small but noticeable jolt. Mr. Perkins explained that each of us had acted as conductors of electricity. We felt it and so did the person we touched next to us.
Jesus is saying that for the follower of Jesus, it isn’t good enough to be the passive recipients of His love. And there are some people, stuck in a perpetual spiritual adolescence whose entire thinking about Christ and the Church is composed of the question, “What’s in it for me?” For people like that, Christian faith is nothing but a selfish pursuit of goose bumps and jolts. They engage in constant hopping from one experience or church to another because the “high” they got before wore off. But Jesus says that if we want to keep His love alive in our lives, we need to move from being mere consumers of His love and become reproducers of His love. We need to love the imperfect people with whom we go to church and the imperfect people in our world, just like He loves us in spite of our imperfections.
Facing certain death, Jesus still served His unworthy disciples. He could do that because the love He knew the Father had for Him gave Him confidence to keep on loving in spite of His circumstances. Jesus wants us to live and love and serve with the same confidence! A few days ago, I was having a conversation on the fly with one of my neighbors. For some time now, I’ve been praying for him and his wife, people I really like a lot. I decided that now was the time. So, in my head, I said another quick prayer and I invited this guy and his wife to worship with us this coming Sunday. Without a second’s hesitation, he said, “Yes.” Soon, I was in my car heading for dinner with friends. But I tell you, that felt so good! Jesus had made a connection of love with my neighbor. By taking the risk of passing Jesus’ love onto someone else, I could feel Jesus stoking the fires of my faith and making it grow. Our faith in Christ always grows when we give it away!
In the few days before Easter, God may give you and me opportunities to make such a connection. We can invite people who need Jesus in their lives to be with us for Easter worship. And in a few weeks, you’ll have new opportunities to serve our neighbors in Jesus’ Name through our renewed outreach program under Carol Barrett’s leadership.
You and I can sing with confidence that, “Jesus loves me” and that’s an awesome and life-transforming thing. But when we show others through our loving, serving, giving, and living that Jesus loves them, that’s when you and are most alive!
[The Karl Barth story, one of my favorites, was retold in a recent message by Pastor Mike Foss. I appreciate the reminder.]
Shocked by God's Powerful Reach
Easter Sunday
April 20, 2003
Mark 16:1-8
[Message shared with the people of Friendship Church]
Back in the day when doctors made house calls, a dying man expressed fear of death to his doctor. This man couldn’t shake his feelings even though he, like his doctor, was a Christian. The doctor heard his patient out, not sure exactly what to say. Just then a whining and scratching was heard at the door. When the doctor opened it, in bounded his dog, who had been waiting outside for its master. While the dog wagged his tail happily, the doctor sensed an opportunity to comfort his patient. “My dog has never been in this room. So, he had no way of knowing what it’s like. But he knew that I was in here and that was good enough for him. In the same way, in spite of our fears, we can look forward to heaven. I don’t know a lot about it. But I know that Jesus is there. And that’s good enough for me!”
On this Easter Sunday morning, I can tell you that there are many mysteries about this life and the one beyond the grave. There are things we don’t know and that we won’t know until after we die, like what things look like on the other side of death. But all who entrust their lives to Jesus Christ can face life and death without fear. Jesus, the One Who died and then rose again, is waiting for us!
In the Bible, there are four major accounts of the first Easter Sunday. They come in the four first books of the New Testament, books we call gospels. Our Bible lesson today is the account given in the book written by a man named Mark. Mark, as many of you know, uses an almost breathless, journalistic style in telling about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. If you’ve ever seen the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, you have a pretty good idea of Mark’s manner of writing. Like Wolf as he gives the news, Mark barely comes up for air. He moves rapidly from scene to scene in Jesus’ ministry, with little explanation. Mark seems to do this in order to challenge us to draw our own conclusions.
In His account of Jesus’ resurrection, Mark uses just eight verses! That’s a pretty sparse narration of the most stunning event in all human history. In fact, in the original Greek in which the lesson was written, the final verse is so breathlessly rendered that it’s an incomplete sentence. Many Bible scholars in fact, think that Mark ended his entire book with this dangling sentence, that someone else added twenty-two verses just to tidy things up.
Be that as it may, our Bible lesson for this morning ends with three women who had gone to Jesus’ tomb to anoint His body terrified into silence by what they were told in the tomb. They couldn’t fathom the notion that the Savior they had watched die and helped to bury was alive again. Mark says:
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Mark’s ending forces us into the same position those women were in when they first heard that Jesus had been raised and looked at His empty tomb. We must choose whether we believe or not. The other three Gospel writers in the New Testament— Matthew, Luke, and John—make it clear what choice the women make. They run to the other disciples and tell them that Jesus has risen from the dead. Several of them actually see Jesus. (Ultimately more than 500 of Jesus’ first followers would see Him after He rose from the dead.) But I think that Mark is right in telling us that in those first moments after being told of Jesus’ resurrection, the women were terrified. They needed to decide whether the God we know in Jesus Christ is powerful enough to retrieve life and then reach us even after going through death on a cross! They needed to decide whether they could trust that after they died, Jesus would be waiting for them. Have you let God reach you through the risen Jesus? Do you believe in the good news of Easter? Do you trust Jesus Christ with your life? Those are questions that the resurrection of Jesus forces us all to answer.
She always believed in God; it was just that when she joined the faculty at Stanford University, she was so busy traveling that she didn't attend church regularly. She was a specialist in international affairs, diplomacy. So she often found herself in another time zone, not just out of town. One Sunday, she was in the Lucky's Supermarket near her home, among the spices, when an African-American man walked up to her and said he was buying some things for his church picnic. Then he asked her, a perfect stranger, "Do you play piano by any chance?" She said that she did. They were looking for someone to play the piano at church. It was a little African-American Church, a Baptist church right in the center of Palo Alto. So she started playing for that church, and that brought her back regularly to worship.
She says that she doesn't play gospel music well; she plays Brahms. And disconcertingly, in Black Baptist churches, ministers will just start a song and the musicians will pick it up. She had no idea how to play like that. So she called her mother and said, "Mother, they just start. How am I supposed to do this?" Her mother laughed and said, "Honey, play in C. People will figure out how to join in."
Condoleeza Rice, President Bush’s national security advisor, tells this story because when all of this happened in her life and she found herself playing piano on Sunday mornings, she thought to herself, "My goodness, God has a long reach. All the way into the Lucky's Supermarket on a Sunday morning."
Easter tells us that God has a long reach. He can immerse Himself in death and still pull out life, for Himself and for all who follow Him. That came as a shock to the three women who had gone to anoint His lifeless body on the first Easter Sunday. Easter has become old hat to us, I’m afraid. I wish that we could recover some of the shock the women felt as they fled Jesus’ empty tomb. Jesus rose from the dead and He’s reaching out to you and me again today to give us life. And that is still stunning, life-changing news if you let yourself really think about it!
As many of you know, during my time in seminary, my life was blessed by my connection with a professor and mentor named Bruce Schein. Not long after I graduated, Pastor Schein’s health began to deteriorate, the result of Parkinson’s Disease. Before dying about two years later, he had been clinically dead and revived several times. After one such siege, I met him for the last time. He looked emaciated, could barely walk, and his hands trembled constantly. But there was a radiant smile on his face. I can still hear his words almost as if he were speaking them to me right now. “Mr. Daniels,” he said, “I have been to the throne room. It was beautiful.” And then he added, with a wink, “I put in a good word for you.”
None of us knows for certain what lies on the other side of death. But Jesus rose from the dead to give all with faith in Him a beautiful eternity. Easter tells us that the risen Jesus is reaching out for us even now and that if we let Him have us, He will never let us go! That’s shocking news, mysterious news, that forces us to draw our own conclusions and make our own choices. Will we be stunned into following Jesus now and in eternity? Or will we go on with our lives as though nothing has happened? The choice is ours.
[The notion of Jesus reaching out to us comes from a message by Pastor Mike Foss. He also shares the story of Condoleeza Rice, which comes from the April, 2003 issue of Homiletics magazine. A different version of the story of the dog and his doctor was shared by Pastor Glen VanderKloot in his e-mailed devotional, OnLine with Faith. However, the version I cite is taken from Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, edited by Michael P.Green.]
Easter Sunday
April 20, 2003
Mark 16:1-8
[Message shared with the people of Friendship Church]
Back in the day when doctors made house calls, a dying man expressed fear of death to his doctor. This man couldn’t shake his feelings even though he, like his doctor, was a Christian. The doctor heard his patient out, not sure exactly what to say. Just then a whining and scratching was heard at the door. When the doctor opened it, in bounded his dog, who had been waiting outside for its master. While the dog wagged his tail happily, the doctor sensed an opportunity to comfort his patient. “My dog has never been in this room. So, he had no way of knowing what it’s like. But he knew that I was in here and that was good enough for him. In the same way, in spite of our fears, we can look forward to heaven. I don’t know a lot about it. But I know that Jesus is there. And that’s good enough for me!”
On this Easter Sunday morning, I can tell you that there are many mysteries about this life and the one beyond the grave. There are things we don’t know and that we won’t know until after we die, like what things look like on the other side of death. But all who entrust their lives to Jesus Christ can face life and death without fear. Jesus, the One Who died and then rose again, is waiting for us!
In the Bible, there are four major accounts of the first Easter Sunday. They come in the four first books of the New Testament, books we call gospels. Our Bible lesson today is the account given in the book written by a man named Mark. Mark, as many of you know, uses an almost breathless, journalistic style in telling about the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. If you’ve ever seen the CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer, you have a pretty good idea of Mark’s manner of writing. Like Wolf as he gives the news, Mark barely comes up for air. He moves rapidly from scene to scene in Jesus’ ministry, with little explanation. Mark seems to do this in order to challenge us to draw our own conclusions.
In His account of Jesus’ resurrection, Mark uses just eight verses! That’s a pretty sparse narration of the most stunning event in all human history. In fact, in the original Greek in which the lesson was written, the final verse is so breathlessly rendered that it’s an incomplete sentence. Many Bible scholars in fact, think that Mark ended his entire book with this dangling sentence, that someone else added twenty-two verses just to tidy things up.
Be that as it may, our Bible lesson for this morning ends with three women who had gone to Jesus’ tomb to anoint His body terrified into silence by what they were told in the tomb. They couldn’t fathom the notion that the Savior they had watched die and helped to bury was alive again. Mark says:
So they went out and fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them; and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.
Mark’s ending forces us into the same position those women were in when they first heard that Jesus had been raised and looked at His empty tomb. We must choose whether we believe or not. The other three Gospel writers in the New Testament— Matthew, Luke, and John—make it clear what choice the women make. They run to the other disciples and tell them that Jesus has risen from the dead. Several of them actually see Jesus. (Ultimately more than 500 of Jesus’ first followers would see Him after He rose from the dead.) But I think that Mark is right in telling us that in those first moments after being told of Jesus’ resurrection, the women were terrified. They needed to decide whether the God we know in Jesus Christ is powerful enough to retrieve life and then reach us even after going through death on a cross! They needed to decide whether they could trust that after they died, Jesus would be waiting for them. Have you let God reach you through the risen Jesus? Do you believe in the good news of Easter? Do you trust Jesus Christ with your life? Those are questions that the resurrection of Jesus forces us all to answer.
She always believed in God; it was just that when she joined the faculty at Stanford University, she was so busy traveling that she didn't attend church regularly. She was a specialist in international affairs, diplomacy. So she often found herself in another time zone, not just out of town. One Sunday, she was in the Lucky's Supermarket near her home, among the spices, when an African-American man walked up to her and said he was buying some things for his church picnic. Then he asked her, a perfect stranger, "Do you play piano by any chance?" She said that she did. They were looking for someone to play the piano at church. It was a little African-American Church, a Baptist church right in the center of Palo Alto. So she started playing for that church, and that brought her back regularly to worship.
She says that she doesn't play gospel music well; she plays Brahms. And disconcertingly, in Black Baptist churches, ministers will just start a song and the musicians will pick it up. She had no idea how to play like that. So she called her mother and said, "Mother, they just start. How am I supposed to do this?" Her mother laughed and said, "Honey, play in C. People will figure out how to join in."
Condoleeza Rice, President Bush’s national security advisor, tells this story because when all of this happened in her life and she found herself playing piano on Sunday mornings, she thought to herself, "My goodness, God has a long reach. All the way into the Lucky's Supermarket on a Sunday morning."
Easter tells us that God has a long reach. He can immerse Himself in death and still pull out life, for Himself and for all who follow Him. That came as a shock to the three women who had gone to anoint His lifeless body on the first Easter Sunday. Easter has become old hat to us, I’m afraid. I wish that we could recover some of the shock the women felt as they fled Jesus’ empty tomb. Jesus rose from the dead and He’s reaching out to you and me again today to give us life. And that is still stunning, life-changing news if you let yourself really think about it!
As many of you know, during my time in seminary, my life was blessed by my connection with a professor and mentor named Bruce Schein. Not long after I graduated, Pastor Schein’s health began to deteriorate, the result of Parkinson’s Disease. Before dying about two years later, he had been clinically dead and revived several times. After one such siege, I met him for the last time. He looked emaciated, could barely walk, and his hands trembled constantly. But there was a radiant smile on his face. I can still hear his words almost as if he were speaking them to me right now. “Mr. Daniels,” he said, “I have been to the throne room. It was beautiful.” And then he added, with a wink, “I put in a good word for you.”
None of us knows for certain what lies on the other side of death. But Jesus rose from the dead to give all with faith in Him a beautiful eternity. Easter tells us that the risen Jesus is reaching out for us even now and that if we let Him have us, He will never let us go! That’s shocking news, mysterious news, that forces us to draw our own conclusions and make our own choices. Will we be stunned into following Jesus now and in eternity? Or will we go on with our lives as though nothing has happened? The choice is ours.
[The notion of Jesus reaching out to us comes from a message by Pastor Mike Foss. He also shares the story of Condoleeza Rice, which comes from the April, 2003 issue of Homiletics magazine. A different version of the story of the dog and his doctor was shared by Pastor Glen VanderKloot in his e-mailed devotional, OnLine with Faith. However, the version I cite is taken from Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, edited by Michael P.Green.]
Friday, April 18, 2003
TGIF: Thank God, it's Friday. On Good Friday, God opened up the possibility for all to receive the free gift of eternal life! What an awesome thing God's love for all people is! "While we were yet sinners, Christ died for us," the book of Romans says. The greatest act of love the world has ever seen was done for you and me. If that doesn't make this a good Friday, I don't know what does.
Sunday, April 13, 2003
Knowing Who You Are
Palm Sunday, April 13, 2003
[Message shared with the people of Friendship Church]
Some of you have heard me tell the story before of a colleague’s memory from his teen age years. Several different times, when this guy had hot dates, he needed to get the car keys from his dad. Each time, as his dad flung the keys across the room to him, he told his boy, “Never forget who you are, son.”
That was my colleague’s dad’s gentle way of reminding his boy that, even if he didn’t think so, his life had significance. He was a child of God whose actions and words mattered, for good and bad. If he would always remember who he was and what his values were, this dad was saying, he wouldn’t go wrong.
Each of us wants our lives to have significance. But each of us must decide what that means. Each of us must decide what the true measure of a good life is. Is it possessions, power, influence, sexual conquest? Or is it faithfulness to God’s call of love of God and love of neighbor over the long and sometimes rocky haul of life?
As we meet Jesus in our Bible lesson for this morning, it’s clear what Jesus regarded as the true measure of a life. For months, in the face of opposition and death threats, Jesus had pursued His mission of bringing God’s kingdom to all people. Jesus was more than just a human being, of course. Jesus was also God—all-powerful, all-knowing. He knew full well how dangerous it was for Him to pursue His mission. He also knew what fate awaited Him in Jerusalem. He knew that He would be betrayed or abandoned by His closest followers, that He would be arrested, that He would be whipped and beaten brutally, that He would die a horrible death on a cross.
But Jesus also knew Who He was: the Suffering Servant Who had come to take our rightful punishment for sin. And He knew what He valued. He valued obedience to the will of God the Father. He valued our lives. So, He kept on being true to His mission. And He went to Jerusalem, the place where His values and His mission came face to face with a world bent on rejecting Him and killing Him.
This past Friday night, our exchange student Sarah, was telling me about the elaborate schemes for cheating on tests she’s seen from her classmates back in Germany. Girls who usually wear pants to school will wear skirts on days of major tests, writing information on the insides of their hems and flipping them over to find answers. Leather pencil bags are popular; students have found that they can use erasable pens to jot down answers that can only be seen when held under the light just right. The green desks in their class rooms make it easy for students to conceal crib notes they’ve put on them in pencil. Some kids conceal answers in emptied Chap-Stick containers. As I listened to all of this, I couldn’t help but thinking, “During all the time it takes for these kids to cheat—the seeming easy way, they could have actually learned the material, the way they think is too difficult.” When our measure of what makes our lives successful or happy or fulfilling are wrong, we always look for the easy way. Not so with Jesus.
Back at the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, you may remember, He was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. The devil told Jesus repeatedly, “Look, I can do whatever I want on planet earth right now. If you’ll just follow me, you won’t have to go to a cross. You won’t have to die. You won’t have to suffer. You won’t have to take the difficult path. You can take the easy one.” After Jesus refused the devil every time, the New Testament book of Luke tells us that the devil left Jesus, waiting for a more opportune time to lure Jesus away from the difficult path—the right path—toward the easy path, the wrong one. The events of Palm Sunday brought six days of intense temptation to Jesus. Everywhere He turned, He was tempted to take the easy path, to avoid the cross, to forego suffering in our place. But Jesus always remembered Who He was and what He was about.
Jesus entered Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday so that He could enter the lives of those who will welcome Him. And over the centuries, those who, like the first Palm Sunday crowd, welcome Jesus into their lives have found that Jesus takes the difficult path of loving us and sticking by us in order to change our lives for the better forever. If we will choose the difficult path of following Jesus, He will bring blessings to us here and give us eternity with God!
Writer Vicki Schad tells about a conversation she had with a friend whom she had known for more than ten years. The conversation though, amazed Vicki:
As they were talking, their chat turned to family histories. Vicki listened as her friend told her--for the first time--the horrifying story of child abuse, suicide, and alcoholism in her family. As [Vicki] listened, she couldn't help but compare her friend's family history with her life as Vicki knew it [now]...[She thought of] her friend's strong love for her husband, the solid home environment they had provided for their children, and the faith she had in God. Vicki remembers her growing amazement at the contrast between the dreadful background into which her friend had been born and the reality of her present life. When her friend had finished, and after a moment of silent reflection, Vicki asked, "What has made the difference? How were you able to move away from that background?" Her friend set down her coffee cup and smiled. "It sounds almost too simple, but when Jesus entered my life He broke the pattern."
It isn’t easy to break old patterns of thinking and living. This morning though, I want to tell you that If we will let Jesus in, He can break those old patterns. He can help us to fulfill our life’s promise.
But don’t misunderstand. Welcoming Jesus into our lives won’t set us down an easy path. Becoming the people God made us to be is a difficult journey that will only be finally completed after Jesus has welcomed us into heaven. Often, welcoming Jesus into our lives now will only make our lives more difficult. But whenever we dare to invite Jesus in, good things happen.
This time of year always makes me think of a man that Ann and I met when I was on our seminary internship. His name was Dan [not his real name] and he was a member of the Michigan congregation where I interned. Back in those days, I was in the habit of reading the whole story of Jesus’ death on the cross—what we call the Passion of Jesus—on Palm Sunday morning. On Palm Sunday, 1983, I read the passion story and Dan sat in the front row. When I came to the part of the story where Jesus was being whipped by Roman soldiers, I caught a glimpse of Dan. Tears were filling his eyes. When I described the pounding of nails into Jesus’ flesh, I saw Dan again; tears were streaming down his face. And when I read of Jesus’ last breath, of His surrender to death, Dan had no choice but to wipe away the tears and bury his head in his hands. But I knew that Dan was crying tears of joy, not sadness.
In many ways, Dan had a tough life. After service in World War Two, Dan came home, fell in love, got married, started a family, and established himself in a career in law enforcement and private investigation. He had a series of health problems which, ultimately required surgery. After the operation, he became addicted to pain medicine. When doctors no longer prescribed that, Dan began to drink. He drank a lot. For years he drank. Although his wife and kids loved him, Dan's drinking—which originally only happened when he sat alone at night and never while he worked—gradually took over his life and was poisoning his every relationship, preventing him from making a living. His wife prayed for guidance. She went to her pastor, who prayed for guidance. Ultimately, they formed an intervention team that confronted Dan. “Dan,” they told him, “you need help. You need to admit you have a problem. You need to dry out. You need to learn to depend on God to help you get free of your addiction.” At first, he was resistant. It’s hard to break old patterns. But Dan came to realize that unless he took the difficult path his family and pastor wanted him to take, he might keep existing, but he would never live. It was Dan’s turn to pray. He surrendered his alcoholism to Jesus Christ and entered an alcohol treatment program. Dan wept on Palm Sunday because he knew that Jesus, Who had called him to walk the difficult path, had saved his life. Dan only lived a few more years after that. His body had been too damaged by years of alcoholism. I’m sure he’s in heaven today because he trusted Jesus with his life. If you talk with his widow, she will tell you that though they had been difficulty, his last years were the best years of Dan’s life and the best years of their marriage.
What is the measure of your life’s significance? It doesn’t reside in grabbing what you can to make this life easy. It’s in taking the difficult path of following Jesus and letting God lead us toward becoming our true selves! That’s the path Jesus took on Palm Sunday. It’s the path He invites us to take today and every day.
[The theme of significance for today's message was suggested by a great sermon given Pastor Michael Foss. In that sermon, he recounted the story of Vicki Schad and her friend; it was taken from Daily Guideposts, 1989, pp.167-168. It is a true story. So are the stories of my colleague's father (which my colleague shared with me) and of Dan, a man I really knew. The elaborate test-cheating schemes from Germany are also true.]
Palm Sunday, April 13, 2003
[Message shared with the people of Friendship Church]
Some of you have heard me tell the story before of a colleague’s memory from his teen age years. Several different times, when this guy had hot dates, he needed to get the car keys from his dad. Each time, as his dad flung the keys across the room to him, he told his boy, “Never forget who you are, son.”
That was my colleague’s dad’s gentle way of reminding his boy that, even if he didn’t think so, his life had significance. He was a child of God whose actions and words mattered, for good and bad. If he would always remember who he was and what his values were, this dad was saying, he wouldn’t go wrong.
Each of us wants our lives to have significance. But each of us must decide what that means. Each of us must decide what the true measure of a good life is. Is it possessions, power, influence, sexual conquest? Or is it faithfulness to God’s call of love of God and love of neighbor over the long and sometimes rocky haul of life?
As we meet Jesus in our Bible lesson for this morning, it’s clear what Jesus regarded as the true measure of a life. For months, in the face of opposition and death threats, Jesus had pursued His mission of bringing God’s kingdom to all people. Jesus was more than just a human being, of course. Jesus was also God—all-powerful, all-knowing. He knew full well how dangerous it was for Him to pursue His mission. He also knew what fate awaited Him in Jerusalem. He knew that He would be betrayed or abandoned by His closest followers, that He would be arrested, that He would be whipped and beaten brutally, that He would die a horrible death on a cross.
But Jesus also knew Who He was: the Suffering Servant Who had come to take our rightful punishment for sin. And He knew what He valued. He valued obedience to the will of God the Father. He valued our lives. So, He kept on being true to His mission. And He went to Jerusalem, the place where His values and His mission came face to face with a world bent on rejecting Him and killing Him.
This past Friday night, our exchange student Sarah, was telling me about the elaborate schemes for cheating on tests she’s seen from her classmates back in Germany. Girls who usually wear pants to school will wear skirts on days of major tests, writing information on the insides of their hems and flipping them over to find answers. Leather pencil bags are popular; students have found that they can use erasable pens to jot down answers that can only be seen when held under the light just right. The green desks in their class rooms make it easy for students to conceal crib notes they’ve put on them in pencil. Some kids conceal answers in emptied Chap-Stick containers. As I listened to all of this, I couldn’t help but thinking, “During all the time it takes for these kids to cheat—the seeming easy way, they could have actually learned the material, the way they think is too difficult.” When our measure of what makes our lives successful or happy or fulfilling are wrong, we always look for the easy way. Not so with Jesus.
Back at the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, you may remember, He was tempted by the devil in the wilderness. The devil told Jesus repeatedly, “Look, I can do whatever I want on planet earth right now. If you’ll just follow me, you won’t have to go to a cross. You won’t have to die. You won’t have to suffer. You won’t have to take the difficult path. You can take the easy one.” After Jesus refused the devil every time, the New Testament book of Luke tells us that the devil left Jesus, waiting for a more opportune time to lure Jesus away from the difficult path—the right path—toward the easy path, the wrong one. The events of Palm Sunday brought six days of intense temptation to Jesus. Everywhere He turned, He was tempted to take the easy path, to avoid the cross, to forego suffering in our place. But Jesus always remembered Who He was and what He was about.
Jesus entered Jerusalem that first Palm Sunday so that He could enter the lives of those who will welcome Him. And over the centuries, those who, like the first Palm Sunday crowd, welcome Jesus into their lives have found that Jesus takes the difficult path of loving us and sticking by us in order to change our lives for the better forever. If we will choose the difficult path of following Jesus, He will bring blessings to us here and give us eternity with God!
Writer Vicki Schad tells about a conversation she had with a friend whom she had known for more than ten years. The conversation though, amazed Vicki:
As they were talking, their chat turned to family histories. Vicki listened as her friend told her--for the first time--the horrifying story of child abuse, suicide, and alcoholism in her family. As [Vicki] listened, she couldn't help but compare her friend's family history with her life as Vicki knew it [now]...[She thought of] her friend's strong love for her husband, the solid home environment they had provided for their children, and the faith she had in God. Vicki remembers her growing amazement at the contrast between the dreadful background into which her friend had been born and the reality of her present life. When her friend had finished, and after a moment of silent reflection, Vicki asked, "What has made the difference? How were you able to move away from that background?" Her friend set down her coffee cup and smiled. "It sounds almost too simple, but when Jesus entered my life He broke the pattern."
It isn’t easy to break old patterns of thinking and living. This morning though, I want to tell you that If we will let Jesus in, He can break those old patterns. He can help us to fulfill our life’s promise.
But don’t misunderstand. Welcoming Jesus into our lives won’t set us down an easy path. Becoming the people God made us to be is a difficult journey that will only be finally completed after Jesus has welcomed us into heaven. Often, welcoming Jesus into our lives now will only make our lives more difficult. But whenever we dare to invite Jesus in, good things happen.
This time of year always makes me think of a man that Ann and I met when I was on our seminary internship. His name was Dan [not his real name] and he was a member of the Michigan congregation where I interned. Back in those days, I was in the habit of reading the whole story of Jesus’ death on the cross—what we call the Passion of Jesus—on Palm Sunday morning. On Palm Sunday, 1983, I read the passion story and Dan sat in the front row. When I came to the part of the story where Jesus was being whipped by Roman soldiers, I caught a glimpse of Dan. Tears were filling his eyes. When I described the pounding of nails into Jesus’ flesh, I saw Dan again; tears were streaming down his face. And when I read of Jesus’ last breath, of His surrender to death, Dan had no choice but to wipe away the tears and bury his head in his hands. But I knew that Dan was crying tears of joy, not sadness.
In many ways, Dan had a tough life. After service in World War Two, Dan came home, fell in love, got married, started a family, and established himself in a career in law enforcement and private investigation. He had a series of health problems which, ultimately required surgery. After the operation, he became addicted to pain medicine. When doctors no longer prescribed that, Dan began to drink. He drank a lot. For years he drank. Although his wife and kids loved him, Dan's drinking—which originally only happened when he sat alone at night and never while he worked—gradually took over his life and was poisoning his every relationship, preventing him from making a living. His wife prayed for guidance. She went to her pastor, who prayed for guidance. Ultimately, they formed an intervention team that confronted Dan. “Dan,” they told him, “you need help. You need to admit you have a problem. You need to dry out. You need to learn to depend on God to help you get free of your addiction.” At first, he was resistant. It’s hard to break old patterns. But Dan came to realize that unless he took the difficult path his family and pastor wanted him to take, he might keep existing, but he would never live. It was Dan’s turn to pray. He surrendered his alcoholism to Jesus Christ and entered an alcohol treatment program. Dan wept on Palm Sunday because he knew that Jesus, Who had called him to walk the difficult path, had saved his life. Dan only lived a few more years after that. His body had been too damaged by years of alcoholism. I’m sure he’s in heaven today because he trusted Jesus with his life. If you talk with his widow, she will tell you that though they had been difficulty, his last years were the best years of Dan’s life and the best years of their marriage.
What is the measure of your life’s significance? It doesn’t reside in grabbing what you can to make this life easy. It’s in taking the difficult path of following Jesus and letting God lead us toward becoming our true selves! That’s the path Jesus took on Palm Sunday. It’s the path He invites us to take today and every day.
[The theme of significance for today's message was suggested by a great sermon given Pastor Michael Foss. In that sermon, he recounted the story of Vicki Schad and her friend; it was taken from Daily Guideposts, 1989, pp.167-168. It is a true story. So are the stories of my colleague's father (which my colleague shared with me) and of Dan, a man I really knew. The elaborate test-cheating schemes from Germany are also true.]
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Can We Talk...About a Taboo Subject?
[Better Living column for Community Press newspapers]
My brother is a stand-up comic named Marty Daniels. Recently, the owner of a comedy club booked Marty for an evening performance.
"I see from your web site that you're a Christian," the owner commented when she and Marty met.
"Yeah, I am," he confirmed.
"I'm not into it myself," she told him, "and don’t ever mention it to me."
"You mean like you just mentioned it to me?" Marty asked.
Why is it that people are free to talk with others about any subject under the sun--from lyposuction to hemorrhoids, from sex to breast implants--but can't broach the subject of faith in Jesus Christ?
One reason for it is obvious: Some so-called Christians beat others over the head with their beliefs about Jesus.
I used to be an atheist in part because every time I turned around, I met "Christians" who seemed more interested in proving they were right and I was wrong than in sharing Christ's love. Or, they cared less about me as a person than they did about me as a trophy. (I could picture them at the next meeting of their "Christian hunting club," bragging, "Yep, I bagged me another one of them atheists yesterday!") Christians often make any genuine discussion about Jesus Christ both insufferable and impossible.
But I also fail to see why those who are motivated by love for God and others shouldn't be allowed to share Christ with others. Followers of Jesus know all about their human imperfections. But they revel in the love of a God Who accepts them in spite of their imperfections and is committed to helping them become all that God made them to be. We're excited about how Jesus has changed our lives and about how, if people let Him, Jesus can change every human life for the better.
In fact, it's the mission of every follower of Jesus to share the better living He offers to everyone. Before the risen Jesus went to heaven, He told us to, "Go and make disciples [that means, followers or students of Jesus]" in the whole world. (Matthew 28:16-20) My personal mission statement says, "Using the communication gifts God has given to me, my mission is to personally inspire and lead people to follow and live for Jesus Christ." With a few slight revisions, that probably is the mission statement of every follower of Jesus. "Using my gifts as an auto mechanic," someone might say. Or, "Using my gifts as a lawyer, as a philosopher, as a homemaker, a computer programmer, a teacher..." or as a whatever, "I want to share Christ with others."
The New Testament book of First Peter encourages followers of Christ to always be ready to share the reason they have hope for this life and the next. Jesus, Who died as the perfect sacrifice for our sin and has opened eternity up to all who follow Him, is the reason for our hope. Peter says that as we share the hope of Jesus we’re to be, "...agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble." He also says that when we share the hope Jesus gives to us, we're to do it "with the utmost courtesy." (First Peter 2:8-16)
I personally think that we're also to share Christ with humor. A man named Paul was brought in chains before a king named Agrippa. Paul explained what it means to have a relationship with Christ. Agrippa asked Paul if that in a short amount of time Paul thought he could make Agrippa a follower of Christ too. Paul said, "Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am--except for these chains." (Acts 26:29)
I'll bet that King Agrippa had to stifle a belly laugh at that. How could you help but love a prisoner who could make jokes about his chains? I'll bet too, that if followers of Jesus displayed Paul's kind of courtesy, love, and good humor, even people like the comedy club owner who wasn't into Jesus and didn't want to hear His Name mentioned would want to find out more about what it means to have Jesus for one's God and best friend!
[Better Living column for Community Press newspapers]
My brother is a stand-up comic named Marty Daniels. Recently, the owner of a comedy club booked Marty for an evening performance.
"I see from your web site that you're a Christian," the owner commented when she and Marty met.
"Yeah, I am," he confirmed.
"I'm not into it myself," she told him, "and don’t ever mention it to me."
"You mean like you just mentioned it to me?" Marty asked.
Why is it that people are free to talk with others about any subject under the sun--from lyposuction to hemorrhoids, from sex to breast implants--but can't broach the subject of faith in Jesus Christ?
One reason for it is obvious: Some so-called Christians beat others over the head with their beliefs about Jesus.
I used to be an atheist in part because every time I turned around, I met "Christians" who seemed more interested in proving they were right and I was wrong than in sharing Christ's love. Or, they cared less about me as a person than they did about me as a trophy. (I could picture them at the next meeting of their "Christian hunting club," bragging, "Yep, I bagged me another one of them atheists yesterday!") Christians often make any genuine discussion about Jesus Christ both insufferable and impossible.
But I also fail to see why those who are motivated by love for God and others shouldn't be allowed to share Christ with others. Followers of Jesus know all about their human imperfections. But they revel in the love of a God Who accepts them in spite of their imperfections and is committed to helping them become all that God made them to be. We're excited about how Jesus has changed our lives and about how, if people let Him, Jesus can change every human life for the better.
In fact, it's the mission of every follower of Jesus to share the better living He offers to everyone. Before the risen Jesus went to heaven, He told us to, "Go and make disciples [that means, followers or students of Jesus]" in the whole world. (Matthew 28:16-20) My personal mission statement says, "Using the communication gifts God has given to me, my mission is to personally inspire and lead people to follow and live for Jesus Christ." With a few slight revisions, that probably is the mission statement of every follower of Jesus. "Using my gifts as an auto mechanic," someone might say. Or, "Using my gifts as a lawyer, as a philosopher, as a homemaker, a computer programmer, a teacher..." or as a whatever, "I want to share Christ with others."
The New Testament book of First Peter encourages followers of Christ to always be ready to share the reason they have hope for this life and the next. Jesus, Who died as the perfect sacrifice for our sin and has opened eternity up to all who follow Him, is the reason for our hope. Peter says that as we share the hope of Jesus we’re to be, "...agreeable, be sympathetic, be loving, be compassionate, be humble." He also says that when we share the hope Jesus gives to us, we're to do it "with the utmost courtesy." (First Peter 2:8-16)
I personally think that we're also to share Christ with humor. A man named Paul was brought in chains before a king named Agrippa. Paul explained what it means to have a relationship with Christ. Agrippa asked Paul if that in a short amount of time Paul thought he could make Agrippa a follower of Christ too. Paul said, "Whether quickly or not, I pray to God that not only you but also all who are listening to me today might become such as I am--except for these chains." (Acts 26:29)
I'll bet that King Agrippa had to stifle a belly laugh at that. How could you help but love a prisoner who could make jokes about his chains? I'll bet too, that if followers of Jesus displayed Paul's kind of courtesy, love, and good humor, even people like the comedy club owner who wasn't into Jesus and didn't want to hear His Name mentioned would want to find out more about what it means to have Jesus for one's God and best friend!
Why Do the Innocent Suffer?
[Better Living column for Community Press newspapers]
Why do bad things happen to innocent people?
Like almost everyone, I guess, I have seen really good people, believing people, and children subjected to crushing difficulties, afflicted by illness, or taken far too early by death. Maybe you’re one of those good or believing people or children who have been hit by undeserved suffering or grief. You may be inclined to wonder, “Where is God now? Why am I left to fend for myself in the face of this overwhelming pain?”
I’m not sure that I have any answers. But I do have a few responses.
My first response is that you’re not alone.
When God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, He underwent suffering. The New Testament book of Hebrews describes Jesus as humanity’s “high priest,” the bridge between God and us. Through Jesus, we have access to God’s help, even in tough times. Hebrews assures us that in Jesus, “we don’t have a high priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)
When we’re knocked down by suffering, the God we meet in Jesus Christ “gets it.” God understands our pain. And He promises to be with those who see Him as their Lord “to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
The second thing I want to tell you is to ignore those who try to say that every bad thing that happens to you is your fault. It isn’t!
There are times when bad things do happen to us as the result of our bad decisions. There are times when God, as a loving Father, disciplines us. But don’t let anyone tell you that the loving God of the universe is waiting to wallop you with a cosmic sledge hammer for every mistake you make. God is no monster!
Jesus’ followers—disciples—once pointed a blind man out to Jesus and asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus said neither the guy’s parents or he were guilty of a sin that caused his blindness. Instead, Jesus said that God allowed the man to be blind so that God’s glory could be seen in the man. Jesus proceeded to give the man sight. (John 9)
Sometimes, God allows us to keep suffering even after we’ve prayed. But God’s motive is the same as Jesus’ motive for healing the blind man: to let us see Him at work in our lives. One of Jesus’ followers in Bible times was a man named Paul. We don’t know exactly what it was, but Paul suffered from what he called a “thorn in the flesh.” In the New Testament, he says that he asked God to remove it three times. God refused. As Paul explains it, “...[God] told me, ‘My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.’” (Second Corinthians 12:1-10)
God makes our suffering count for something when we go through it with Jesus Christ: He teaches how we can rely on Him and He shows His goodness and power to others through us. On this latter point, it’s been my observation that it’s in those who suffer with Jesus that we most clearly see the presence and power of God.
Only heaven can be described as “paradise” (Luke 23:43). That’s the ultimate destination of all who follow Jesus Christ. This temporary home we call earth and the life we live here will never be totally free of suffering. But it is a place where we can know God intimately, experience fulfillment, love and encourage each other, and go through every high and low with God beside us. Suffering may never make sense. But God’s love is always there.
[Better Living column for Community Press newspapers]
Why do bad things happen to innocent people?
Like almost everyone, I guess, I have seen really good people, believing people, and children subjected to crushing difficulties, afflicted by illness, or taken far too early by death. Maybe you’re one of those good or believing people or children who have been hit by undeserved suffering or grief. You may be inclined to wonder, “Where is God now? Why am I left to fend for myself in the face of this overwhelming pain?”
I’m not sure that I have any answers. But I do have a few responses.
My first response is that you’re not alone.
When God came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ, He underwent suffering. The New Testament book of Hebrews describes Jesus as humanity’s “high priest,” the bridge between God and us. Through Jesus, we have access to God’s help, even in tough times. Hebrews assures us that in Jesus, “we don’t have a high priest who is out of touch with our reality. He’s been through weakness and testing, experienced it all—all but the sin.” (Hebrews 4:15)
When we’re knocked down by suffering, the God we meet in Jesus Christ “gets it.” God understands our pain. And He promises to be with those who see Him as their Lord “to the close of the age” (Matthew 28:20).
The second thing I want to tell you is to ignore those who try to say that every bad thing that happens to you is your fault. It isn’t!
There are times when bad things do happen to us as the result of our bad decisions. There are times when God, as a loving Father, disciplines us. But don’t let anyone tell you that the loving God of the universe is waiting to wallop you with a cosmic sledge hammer for every mistake you make. God is no monster!
Jesus’ followers—disciples—once pointed a blind man out to Jesus and asked, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus said neither the guy’s parents or he were guilty of a sin that caused his blindness. Instead, Jesus said that God allowed the man to be blind so that God’s glory could be seen in the man. Jesus proceeded to give the man sight. (John 9)
Sometimes, God allows us to keep suffering even after we’ve prayed. But God’s motive is the same as Jesus’ motive for healing the blind man: to let us see Him at work in our lives. One of Jesus’ followers in Bible times was a man named Paul. We don’t know exactly what it was, but Paul suffered from what he called a “thorn in the flesh.” In the New Testament, he says that he asked God to remove it three times. God refused. As Paul explains it, “...[God] told me, ‘My grace is enough; it’s all you need. My strength comes into its own in your weakness.’” (Second Corinthians 12:1-10)
God makes our suffering count for something when we go through it with Jesus Christ: He teaches how we can rely on Him and He shows His goodness and power to others through us. On this latter point, it’s been my observation that it’s in those who suffer with Jesus that we most clearly see the presence and power of God.
Only heaven can be described as “paradise” (Luke 23:43). That’s the ultimate destination of all who follow Jesus Christ. This temporary home we call earth and the life we live here will never be totally free of suffering. But it is a place where we can know God intimately, experience fulfillment, love and encourage each other, and go through every high and low with God beside us. Suffering may never make sense. But God’s love is always there.
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