Friend Day:
Be All You Can Be
John 3:1-17
(shared with the people and friends of Friendship Church, November 2, 2003)
Ben Carson’s life could have gone just the way many of his classmates’ and neighbors’ lives had gone in inner city Detroit where he grew up. An African-American with what his teachers thought was a learning disability, Ben and his brother were raised alone by their mom after their father had run off with another woman to who-knows-where. Many of the kids Ben went to school with thought that learning and education were for other people and taunted any classmate who tried to perform well in school.
But Ben had something going for him. In spite of her experiences and surroundings, Ben’s mother was a joyful follower of Jesus Christ. Jesus was her best friend and she made certain that she introduced her children to Him. She knew that, no matter what the world might say, her boys had great God-given potential. She knew that Jesus Christ could help them become all that they were meant to be.
She worked long hours. But when she came home from work each night, she required her sons to give an accounting of all their home work for that day. And, once a week, the boys each had to present her with a written book report, which she would then sit down and discuss with them before tucking them in for the night. It was only years later that Ben learned that one reason his mother had the boys discuss the book reports was that she herself didn’t know how to read. By that time, Ben Carson had become a world-renowned pediatric neurosurgeon working on the staff of Johns Hopkins University Hospital. You’ve probably seen Dr. Ben Carson on network TV, being interviewed following his latest trail-blazing surgical procedure or read one of his best-selling books.
Jesus Christ, God in human flesh, wants to be our best friend. He wants to help us, just as he helped Ben Carson, to become all that God made us to be, in this life and in the next!
I once worked with a woman, I’ll call her Rosa. When I first met Rosa, she was fifty-six, and lived with her parents, as did her older brother. Neither of them had ever dated. Rosa had never learned to drive. She had never even considered exploring life outside her parents’ home in a wealthy Columbus suburb. Her world consisted of the bus line that took her to and from work each day.
Some days, a childlike grin would cross Rosa’s face as she admitted to me, “I’m so excited. I feel like something wonderful is going to happen today. I feel like I did when I was a little girl just before Christmas.” But the next day, Rosa climbed back onto the same bus-line she’d ridden for over thirty years, wearing the same rain bonnet and the same blank expression she wore most days. I remember thinking that those days must have been excruciating for Rosa, days when she came face-to-face with the hard reality of her life: that she was little more than a mass of unmet potential. She’d never loved as she might have loved, never lived as she might have lived. She never felt good about herself, never failed while trying to do something bigger than herself, never achieved more than she was capable of achieving.
There are lots of Rosa’s in the world. A man named Nicodemus, a first-century Judean, was one of them. A prominent religious teacher, Nicodemus still hadn’t found what he was looking for. His religion was all about rules and rites and “thou shalt nots,” to which he strictly adhered. But there was a restlessness in his soul. He knew that his life was not what it could be and he seems to have almost given up hope of finding the meaning of his life until he first heard and observed Jesus. Although Jesus was so unpopular among the leading classes of which Nicodemus was a part that eventually, they would arrange for Jesus to be murdered, Nicodemus found himself drawn to Jesus.
One night, Nicodemus went to visit Jesus. He wanted to warn Jesus that powerful men were trying to find ways to kill Jesus. But Jesus saw into Nicodemus’ soul. He could see that while Nicodemus may have had great wealth and power and been kept busy by seemingly important work, there was an ache in Nicodemus. Like Rosa, he knew that there must be something more to life than simply being a mass of unmet God-given potential. He’d tried all the things that his society said would give life meaning– power, wealth, religious propriety, rubbing shoulders with other prominent people–and none of it took away his ache!
Not long into their conversation, recorded in our Bible lesson for this morning, Jesus tells Nicodemus, “You must be born anew.” Nicodemus was at first puzzled by Jesus’ statement. We can find it puzzling ourselves.
But when you consider it, it makes perfect sense. Back when I was in elementary school and doing long division, I found that I often got the answer wrong. Whenever my father or grandfather would tell me that my answer was incorrect, my first impulse was to simply erase the figure and put down some shot-in-the-dark guess. What I finally learned though, is that when the answers we come up with are wrong, it’s best to go back to the beginning.
That’s what being born anew, or born again, is all about. It’s going back to the beginning, to the Source of life and hope. Being born again means leaving behind all the wrong answers and the wrong paths we’ve followed in order to let God empower us in becoming all that we can be. It means letting God scoop us up in His great Father’s arms and assure us that no matter what wrong turns we may have taken in our lives, no matter what our sins, no matter what our personal deficiencies, we do matter...we are loved...that when we live with Jesus Christ as our guide, there is always a light in the darkness for us, a light that can’t even be extinguished by death.
During the reign of Queen Victoria in England, a London doctor visited a seventy-two year old woman named Maria Vincent. Her husband had abandoned her many years before. She was poor and she lived in wretched surroundings. Although it was late in the fall of the year, this undernourished woman had neither warm clothes or wood for a fire. The doctor couldn’t believe that this woman’s friends would let her live like this. He asked her if she didn’t have friends who could help, Maria Vincent at first said no. But a moment later, she told him, “There might be one. But, sir, [I’m sure that] she has forgotten about...me” The doctor pressed Maria as to the identity of her friend. He was surprised to hear her say that it was the queen herself, Victoria. The two had been childhood friends, Maria said.
The doctor was skeptical about Maria’s story, to say the least. But back at home, he decided to write a letter to the Queen. A few days later, a letter arrived from Balmoral, the Queen’s residence. The story Maria told to the doctor turned out to be absolutely true. The Queen had not forgotten her old friend. From that moment for the rest of her life, Maria had warm clothes, wood for a fire, and adequate medical care. Someone great and powerful cared enough about Maria to befriend her and to help her life take a positive turn.
Listen: Someone infinitely greater and more powerful than all the rulers and presidents, celebrities and athletic superstars, wants to befriend you and me. He wants to give us fresh starts. Old mistakes and sins can be forgiven and we’ll be given new power to find new answers in our lives. We’ll also be given the power to live with unanswered questions, knowing that Someone is bigger than all the questions and all the answers! He specializes in giving us second chances, third chances...however many it requires for us to get on the right track.
And His friendship for us won’t end at the grave. Jesus, the God of the fresh start, will even meet all who follow Him at their graves and give us the sinless eternity He gained for us by His death on a cross and His resurrection from the dead and give us the power to fulfill the potential for goodness and greatness and joy that God has implanted in every one of us!
We can go back to the beginning. We can have a fresh start. We can be born anew. How does that happen? You can find the answer in the stands of virtually every NFL stadium where a football game will be held this afternoon. There, you’re likely to find a banner that cites the words from John 3:16 that Jesus speaks to Nicodemus–and to us–this morning:
“For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son [Jesus], so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.”
Our lives begin when we trust Jesus Christ as our best friend. That’s when we start to become all that we were made to be. And in Jesus, the exciting thing is that the becoming never ends!
Sunday, November 02, 2003
Friday, October 31, 2003
I loved this edition of OnLine with Faith, presented by my colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot. If you'd like to subscribe to this series of e-mailed inspirations, contact Glen at pastor@faithlutheran.com.
*****************************************************
A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
We are not citizens of this world trying to make our way into heaven,
we are citizens of heaven trying to make our way through this world...
We are not to live so as to earn God's love, inherit heaven and purchase
our salvation. All those are given to us a gifts; gifts bought
by Jesus on the cross and handed over to us. We are to live as God's redeemed.
The Landisfarna The Anglican Digest
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Bible Verse
Ephesians 2:8-9
You were saved by faith in God, who treats us much better than
we deserve. This is God's gift to you, and not anything you have
done on your own. It isn't something you have earned,
so there is nothing you can brag about.
Prayer
Lord, help me to live in your free gifts of love, forgiveness and salvation.
Help me to live as your redeemed child. Amen
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
*****************************************************
A THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
We are not citizens of this world trying to make our way into heaven,
we are citizens of heaven trying to make our way through this world...
We are not to live so as to earn God's love, inherit heaven and purchase
our salvation. All those are given to us a gifts; gifts bought
by Jesus on the cross and handed over to us. We are to live as God's redeemed.
The Landisfarna The Anglican Digest
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Bible Verse
Ephesians 2:8-9
You were saved by faith in God, who treats us much better than
we deserve. This is God's gift to you, and not anything you have
done on your own. It isn't something you have earned,
so there is nothing you can brag about.
Prayer
Lord, help me to live in your free gifts of love, forgiveness and salvation.
Help me to live as your redeemed child. Amen
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
The Curtain is Torn
Matthew 27:51
[message shared with Friendship Church's Women's Renewal Weekend, October 25, 2003]
I don’t usually remember my dreams. But I had a frustrating one not long ago that I do remember.
In it, I’ve gone to the house of a friend. After I walk in, the place is packed with people, almost none of whom I know. I look and look all over my friend’s house, but can’t find him anywhere.
The closest I get to seeing him is when I spy his silhouette behind a rather sheer curtain. I can barely discern him as he works at pouring people drinks and pulling things out of the oven in his kitchen.But before I can get to him, some people come up to me and move me in a different direction.
After that, unable to find my friend, I leave the house, feeling frustrated.
Weird! And yet when I think about it, that’s sort of how many people see God: distant, unapproachable, covered by a curtain of mystery.
Others, frustrated by God’s seeming distance and maybe, just a little bit full of themselves, dismiss the whole idea of God. They say God is like the wizard of Oz, hiding behind scary displays of power and threatening words, but impotent to really do anything to help us in this often painful and confusing world.
But when we pay attention to the God we meet through Jesus Christ, we realize that God is neither a distant figure or a helpless wizard trying to intimidate us while begging, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
The Bible says that God came into our world through Jesus Christ. He did this, as you know well, to die as the perfect, sinless sacrifice for our sin. Jesus gave up His body and blood in order to pay the price we owed to God for our sin. The New Testament writer Paul says, “...the wages of sin is death, but the free gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God came to earth as a baby who soils his diapers, a boy who experiences adolescence, a man who works hard at a trade, and a condemned criminal in order to give His life so that sinners like you and me can live with God forever. That isn’t a distant God. That’s God up-close and personal!
And God didn’t suddenly become the wizard behind the curtain after Jesus rose from the dead and went to heaven either!
For one thing, He instituted this meal–bread and wine, His body and blood–so that we could be re-membered to Him, re-united with Him, a sweet preview of the forever feast we’re going to enjoy with Him in heaven.
We have God’s love letter to us, the Bible, that we can read each day and sense God’s presence.
Jesus also commanded us to pray to God the Father in His Name and promised that our prayers would be heard.
And He filled the Church with His Holy Spirit so that ordinary people like you and me could be living reminders to each other and to all the world that God is close, that God wants to be one with us, that God wants to be reconciled to all His children.
The Jesus-filled people you and I can find in the Church may be the most wonderful reminders of Jesus' presence and love that we can find! There have been many times when I have been discouraged or overwhelmed and somebody in Jesus’ family, the Church, has said something to me or made a simple gesture of love and I knew that no matter how alone I may have been feeling before, that God really was and is there!
Our son Philip had an experience of this a few weeks ago. Phil is twenty-two now, a senior in college. He thought and we thought that he would be graduating this spring for sure. He still might do so. But for some reason, a problem was discovered just a few weeks ago: not all of his credits from Capital University, where he had attended his first year, were accepted at Asbury. On a normal pace, he would be two credits shy at the end of spring semester.
Ann and I weren’t exactly pleased, especially because this problem was discovered so late in the game. I told Philip that while he would be paying for any additional course work he might do beyond spring semester, he should move heaven and earth to see if he either could take the additional classes needed in the spring or get credit for the disputed courses. Phil felt badly that he hadn’t paid close enough attention to things to have realized there was a problem earlier. He felt badly that in some way, he had wasted money because of this oversight. And he didn’t want to go to his academic advisor, a guy he had never liked and who, he thought, didn’t like him either. But I pressed him and said, “You must talk to him.”
He did so and felt entirely differently about his advisor than he had before. He sensed a genuine love and concern coming from this man, even though he was telling Philip that they might not be able to get him graduated at the end of the academic year.
As Philip started to walk out of the advisor’s office, he turned to him and asked, “I feel like I really messed up. Would you please pray for me?” His advisor said, “Well, come on back in here. We’ll do it right now.”
Philip learned again the reality that God is not distant. God isn’t inaccessibly hiding behind a curtain. God is available to us in prayer. And God has His agents everywhere to remind us that He cares and He wants to be reconciled to us. God wants to be one with us.
Maybe the best proof of how much God wants to be in our lives is what happened to a curtain one day two-thousand years ago. In the temple in Jerusalem where the Jews worshiped, there was a place called the Holy of Holies. It was the place where it was thought, the very presence of God dwelt. It was covered with a curtain. Just once a year, the high priest was allowed to go behind the curtain in order to present God with a sacrifice of an unblemished lamb. There, the priest would ask that every Jew’s sin would be forgiven. But he and the people had to go through an elaborate ceremony, which included the worshipers being sprinkled with the blood of this lamb, before the priest could even be worthy of approaching God.
On the Friday when Jesus died on a cross two-thousand years ago, strange things happened. But the Gospel of Matthew tells us about the strangest...and most wonderful. It says:
"Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed His last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom..."
The Savior, Who gave His body and blood as a loving sacrifice, has torn the curtain that once kept us from knowing or seeing or being one with God. And He invites us to follow Him in a life of constant fellowship with God. Whatever burdens you have, whatever sins with which you may be wrestling, whatever personal inadequacies you may feel, the invitation is the same. The curtain has been torn. God is on your side.
God is willing to take your weaknesses and give You His strength. If there are any walls between you and God, they don’t need to be there. The way is open to oneness with God. Walk on in; the curtain is gone and God is waiting for you...and He’s got a smile on His face.
Matthew 27:51
[message shared with Friendship Church's Women's Renewal Weekend, October 25, 2003]
I don’t usually remember my dreams. But I had a frustrating one not long ago that I do remember.
In it, I’ve gone to the house of a friend. After I walk in, the place is packed with people, almost none of whom I know. I look and look all over my friend’s house, but can’t find him anywhere.
The closest I get to seeing him is when I spy his silhouette behind a rather sheer curtain. I can barely discern him as he works at pouring people drinks and pulling things out of the oven in his kitchen.But before I can get to him, some people come up to me and move me in a different direction.
After that, unable to find my friend, I leave the house, feeling frustrated.
Weird! And yet when I think about it, that’s sort of how many people see God: distant, unapproachable, covered by a curtain of mystery.
Others, frustrated by God’s seeming distance and maybe, just a little bit full of themselves, dismiss the whole idea of God. They say God is like the wizard of Oz, hiding behind scary displays of power and threatening words, but impotent to really do anything to help us in this often painful and confusing world.
But when we pay attention to the God we meet through Jesus Christ, we realize that God is neither a distant figure or a helpless wizard trying to intimidate us while begging, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!”
The Bible says that God came into our world through Jesus Christ. He did this, as you know well, to die as the perfect, sinless sacrifice for our sin. Jesus gave up His body and blood in order to pay the price we owed to God for our sin. The New Testament writer Paul says, “...the wages of sin is death, but the free gift is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
God came to earth as a baby who soils his diapers, a boy who experiences adolescence, a man who works hard at a trade, and a condemned criminal in order to give His life so that sinners like you and me can live with God forever. That isn’t a distant God. That’s God up-close and personal!
And God didn’t suddenly become the wizard behind the curtain after Jesus rose from the dead and went to heaven either!
For one thing, He instituted this meal–bread and wine, His body and blood–so that we could be re-membered to Him, re-united with Him, a sweet preview of the forever feast we’re going to enjoy with Him in heaven.
We have God’s love letter to us, the Bible, that we can read each day and sense God’s presence.
Jesus also commanded us to pray to God the Father in His Name and promised that our prayers would be heard.
And He filled the Church with His Holy Spirit so that ordinary people like you and me could be living reminders to each other and to all the world that God is close, that God wants to be one with us, that God wants to be reconciled to all His children.
The Jesus-filled people you and I can find in the Church may be the most wonderful reminders of Jesus' presence and love that we can find! There have been many times when I have been discouraged or overwhelmed and somebody in Jesus’ family, the Church, has said something to me or made a simple gesture of love and I knew that no matter how alone I may have been feeling before, that God really was and is there!
Our son Philip had an experience of this a few weeks ago. Phil is twenty-two now, a senior in college. He thought and we thought that he would be graduating this spring for sure. He still might do so. But for some reason, a problem was discovered just a few weeks ago: not all of his credits from Capital University, where he had attended his first year, were accepted at Asbury. On a normal pace, he would be two credits shy at the end of spring semester.
Ann and I weren’t exactly pleased, especially because this problem was discovered so late in the game. I told Philip that while he would be paying for any additional course work he might do beyond spring semester, he should move heaven and earth to see if he either could take the additional classes needed in the spring or get credit for the disputed courses. Phil felt badly that he hadn’t paid close enough attention to things to have realized there was a problem earlier. He felt badly that in some way, he had wasted money because of this oversight. And he didn’t want to go to his academic advisor, a guy he had never liked and who, he thought, didn’t like him either. But I pressed him and said, “You must talk to him.”
He did so and felt entirely differently about his advisor than he had before. He sensed a genuine love and concern coming from this man, even though he was telling Philip that they might not be able to get him graduated at the end of the academic year.
As Philip started to walk out of the advisor’s office, he turned to him and asked, “I feel like I really messed up. Would you please pray for me?” His advisor said, “Well, come on back in here. We’ll do it right now.”
Philip learned again the reality that God is not distant. God isn’t inaccessibly hiding behind a curtain. God is available to us in prayer. And God has His agents everywhere to remind us that He cares and He wants to be reconciled to us. God wants to be one with us.
Maybe the best proof of how much God wants to be in our lives is what happened to a curtain one day two-thousand years ago. In the temple in Jerusalem where the Jews worshiped, there was a place called the Holy of Holies. It was the place where it was thought, the very presence of God dwelt. It was covered with a curtain. Just once a year, the high priest was allowed to go behind the curtain in order to present God with a sacrifice of an unblemished lamb. There, the priest would ask that every Jew’s sin would be forgiven. But he and the people had to go through an elaborate ceremony, which included the worshipers being sprinkled with the blood of this lamb, before the priest could even be worthy of approaching God.
On the Friday when Jesus died on a cross two-thousand years ago, strange things happened. But the Gospel of Matthew tells us about the strangest...and most wonderful. It says:
"Then Jesus cried again with a loud voice and breathed His last. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom..."
The Savior, Who gave His body and blood as a loving sacrifice, has torn the curtain that once kept us from knowing or seeing or being one with God. And He invites us to follow Him in a life of constant fellowship with God. Whatever burdens you have, whatever sins with which you may be wrestling, whatever personal inadequacies you may feel, the invitation is the same. The curtain has been torn. God is on your side.
God is willing to take your weaknesses and give You His strength. If there are any walls between you and God, they don’t need to be there. The way is open to oneness with God. Walk on in; the curtain is gone and God is waiting for you...and He’s got a smile on His face.
Monday, October 27, 2003
QUOTE FOR TODAY: "As long as you keep a person down, some part of you has to be down there to hold him down, so it means you cannot soar as you otherwise might." (Marian Anderson, 1902-1993, Opera Singer)
AND A THOUGHT FROM THE SCRIPTURE TO GO WITH IT:
Jesus, God in the flesh, said: "In everything do to others as you have them do to you; for this is the law of the prophets." (Matthew 7:12) [This is called The Golden Rule.]
AND A THOUGHT FROM THE SCRIPTURE TO GO WITH IT:
Jesus, God in the flesh, said: "In everything do to others as you have them do to you; for this is the law of the prophets." (Matthew 7:12) [This is called The Golden Rule.]
Sunday, October 26, 2003
God, Money, and Sex
Part Two: God and Sex
Proverbs 5:15-23
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, October 26, 2003)
True story I’ve told before. I heard it from an intensive care unit nurse twenty-one years ago and it’s stuck with me. An elderly retired pastor named Henry was under this nurse’s care. He’d had a long stay in the unit. Henry was one of those brave followers of Christ who endured adversity and dying with cheerfulness and was always grateful for any kindness the hospital staff showed him. His condition had declined sharply and now it was clear that he could die at any time. For several hours, he had been in a somewhat comatose state. Nobody was sure if he could hear them when they spoke to him. But they kept talking to him, trying to tell him how much they loved him.
The hours in an intensive care unit, at the bedside of a loved one can be excruciatingly long, you know. Henry’s wife and children had stepped out for a few moments and the nurse decided to go to Henry’s side. She remembered how much Henry loved to sing. She also knew his favorite song. And so softly, she began to sing to Henry: “Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.”
At that, the nurse was shocked to see Henry open his eyes, lift his head off his pillow, look into her face, and tell her, “And don’t you ever forget it, either!” And with that, Henry fell back onto the bed and died.
As we look at this subject of God and the powerful force of our sexuality, like Henry we need to never forget that the God we know through Jesus Christ loves us.
That’s because there are times when we may chafe under God’s will on this subject.
And there may be other times when we feel burdened by guilt for the things we feel, think, do, or have done with our sexuality.
But God, the God Who first thought up and created sex, does love us. He wants what’s best for us. He wants to forgive us when we go wrong and He wants to help us to enjoy this gift. And don’t you ever forget that!
Last week, my wife, some friends, and I went down at the Tall Stacks Festival on the Ohio River. We spent a long time on the Purple People Bridge, looking at the paddlewheel boats and at the river itself. A river is a terrific thing, another invention of God. A river can provide people with drinking water, with a means of transportation, with recreation.
But, as theologian Richard Foster points out, when a river overflows, trouble happens. Houses and businesses can be damaged or destroyed. Crops can be wiped out. A river doesn’t seem so wonderful when it moves past its banks, its proscribed boundaries.
According to the Bible, which deals with the subject of sex a lot and more frankly than most Christians even know, sex is like a river. When we use our sexuality within the boundaries created for it by God, sex also is a good and beautiful thing. But when misused, sex can hurt and destroy and disrupt people’s lives. That’s why our Bible lesson from Proverbs today tells husbands:
Paraphrasing an observation once made by C.S. Lewis, if an alien from another planet came to earth and spent one hour watching our TV shows, including the commercials, that alien would conclude that something had gone seriously wrong with the human appetite for sex.
It’s this overwrought appetite for things sexual that makes God’s guidance on this subject so important. So what does God tell us are the ways for sex to remain within its boundaries and be the good thing it was meant to be?
First: We need to remember that sex is a good thing, created by God.
If you look at the first of two creation accounts that appear in the Old Testament book of Genesis, you’ll find God creating new things for each of six days. At the end of each of the first five days, God looks at His creation and says, “That’s good.”
But then on the sixth day, God creates human beings in His image. The Bible also makes a point of saying that God created the first humans “male and female.” At the end of that day, God declared that everything was “very good.” God made men and women to complement each other, to have the potential for becoming, both physically and emotionally, “one flesh.” That's a very good thing!
Second: According to the Bible, God didn’t just create sexuality so that we humans could make babies.
While the Bible does make clear that sex is only to happen between a man and a woman committed to one another in lifelong marriage, it isn’t meant to be used just to populate the planet. Some historians tell us that the notion that our sexuality was only to be about making babies first started in the Church with a man named Augustine. Augustine was a wonderful theologian and preacher and Christian example in many ways. But when it comes to sex, he may have felt so guilty about his past sexual philandering--regretful over how sex had once been in control of his life--that he just decided that sex was a bad thing.
One of my favorite Biblical passages on this subject comes from the story of Abraham and Sarah. That couple, you remember, were chosen by God to be the ancestors of the Israelite people. Into the nation of Israel the Savior Jesus was to be born. But there couldn’t be a nation of Israel if Abraham and Sarah didn’t have kids. Sarah had gone through menopause years before. When she hears God promise Abraham that she will still have a baby, she laughs, and asks, “After all these years, my husband and I old, am I going to have pleasure with my husband.”
Intrigued by that passage, I asked a Hebrew scholar about it. He confirmed my suspicions: The pleasure to which Sarah referred wasn’t just the pleasure of having a child. She was also talking about the pleasure of being sexually united with her husband. (I’m not making this stuff up! The Bible is full of not just good counsel about our sexuality, but appreciative celebrations of it.) God made us sexual beings for our enjoyment.
By the way, the pleasure of our sexuality doesn't derive only from having sexual intimacy with a husband or wife. Genesis says that we have been created as sexual beings. There are things that are unique to men and women. Each are different in many ways. From these differences, there comes a certain energy that doesn't exist in relationships with persons of our own gender. With the French I say, "Vive la difference!"
In his book, The Friendship Factor, Alan Loy McGinnis describes a relationship he enjoyed with a female friend of his. McGinnis was in his forties at the time and his friend was in her eighties. They had dinner together periodically. He talked about the fact that while there was no chance that the two of them would be sexually intimate, the presence of sexual energy between them was undeniable.
I remember talking with a young pastor, then in his thirties. He said that he was headed for the Bible study he did with the seventy-something women of his congregation. "They flirt with me, Mark," he told me. "They tease me about being a young man who enjoys an intimate relationship with a beautiful wife. It's all very innocent and chaste. But they flirt with me. And they love it when I flirt back."
Because God has made us male and female, there can be a wonderful and innocent complemantarity that happens between men and women even when there is nothing sexual in their relationship. God just made us that way. It's like the old saying, "God made us Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." To ignore that reality would be naive! As long as people are careful about not allowing things to rush over the river banks, it's okay to appreciate our differences.
Third: God created sexual intimacy as the sign and seal of a married couple’s love for each other. In his book, Struggling with Sex, Arthur Rouner tells the story of a married couple who had come to him for counseling. They reported being intensely frustrated with their sexual relationship. In fact, their sexual relationship had ground to a halt. They were even beginning to wonder if they would remain married.
As Rouner talked with the couple, he learned that before they were married, they both had numerous partners. Sex wasn’t a sign of commitment and love; it had no real significance to them. It was something you might do with a virtual stranger after you watched a movie.
They had drained their sexuality of its meaning before they were married and so once they were married, there was no romance, no commitment, no fun, no passion, no love in their intimacy. Fortunately, over time, Rouner was able to help this couple put their lives–their whole lives under the Lordship of Jesus. They learned to appreciate that sexual intimacy is only for married couples. And they found the excitement and joy that belongs to married couples who have made their sexual intimacy a sign and a seal of their commitment to one another.
Fourth: No matter what mistakes we have made with our sexuality in the past, God can forgive us.
This, in fact, may be the most important point that I make today.
In his book, The Pursuit of Holiness, author Jerry Bridges tells about something that he has often said when speaking with college audiences. Imagine, he tells them, that we could somehow display all of the thoughts you’ve had for the last twenty-four hours on this big screen up here. As the audience members begin to think about some of the things they’ve thought, they begin to laugh nervously.
Fact is, all of us are sinners. And Jesus says that to even look upon a person lustfully, because sexual sin begins in our minds, is the same as physically misusing sex. When you consider that, you realize it's true. Adultery doesn't begin with a physical act. Rivers overflow their banks gradually. The water rises until at last, it encroaches on the land around it.
Adultery begins with a more-than-admiring glance. An inappropriate comment. A far too intimate secret shared. A lingering touch. Obsessive thoughts. Each of those things may seem harmless enough in themselves. But unless we put our minds and bodies under God's control, taken together, the flood will begin and so will the destruction to marriages, relationships, and our very souls!
Because adultery begins in our minds, Jesus tells us, we’re all guilty. Yet, there is something else we need to realize...the very fact with which I began this message: the God we know through Jesus Christ loves us. No matter what our sins, we can turn to God and receive forgiveness and the ability to say no to future sin and yes to God’s way of living life!
Just the other day, I saw a commercial on TV. The product being sold was whole-house heating, furnaces. How did they try to sell their furnaces? Sex.
A mantra of the advertising industry is, "Sex sells." If sex can be used to sell something as mundane as furnaces, it must be powerful.
But powerful as it may be, sex is only good when, like money which we talked about last week, we let God be in charge of our sexuality.
So, four things I hope you’ll remember from today:
Part Two: God and Sex
Proverbs 5:15-23
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, October 26, 2003)
True story I’ve told before. I heard it from an intensive care unit nurse twenty-one years ago and it’s stuck with me. An elderly retired pastor named Henry was under this nurse’s care. He’d had a long stay in the unit. Henry was one of those brave followers of Christ who endured adversity and dying with cheerfulness and was always grateful for any kindness the hospital staff showed him. His condition had declined sharply and now it was clear that he could die at any time. For several hours, he had been in a somewhat comatose state. Nobody was sure if he could hear them when they spoke to him. But they kept talking to him, trying to tell him how much they loved him.
The hours in an intensive care unit, at the bedside of a loved one can be excruciatingly long, you know. Henry’s wife and children had stepped out for a few moments and the nurse decided to go to Henry’s side. She remembered how much Henry loved to sing. She also knew his favorite song. And so softly, she began to sing to Henry: “Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. Yes, Jesus loves me. The Bible tells me so.”
At that, the nurse was shocked to see Henry open his eyes, lift his head off his pillow, look into her face, and tell her, “And don’t you ever forget it, either!” And with that, Henry fell back onto the bed and died.
As we look at this subject of God and the powerful force of our sexuality, like Henry we need to never forget that the God we know through Jesus Christ loves us.
That’s because there are times when we may chafe under God’s will on this subject.
And there may be other times when we feel burdened by guilt for the things we feel, think, do, or have done with our sexuality.
But God, the God Who first thought up and created sex, does love us. He wants what’s best for us. He wants to forgive us when we go wrong and He wants to help us to enjoy this gift. And don’t you ever forget that!
Last week, my wife, some friends, and I went down at the Tall Stacks Festival on the Ohio River. We spent a long time on the Purple People Bridge, looking at the paddlewheel boats and at the river itself. A river is a terrific thing, another invention of God. A river can provide people with drinking water, with a means of transportation, with recreation.
But, as theologian Richard Foster points out, when a river overflows, trouble happens. Houses and businesses can be damaged or destroyed. Crops can be wiped out. A river doesn’t seem so wonderful when it moves past its banks, its proscribed boundaries.
According to the Bible, which deals with the subject of sex a lot and more frankly than most Christians even know, sex is like a river. When we use our sexuality within the boundaries created for it by God, sex also is a good and beautiful thing. But when misused, sex can hurt and destroy and disrupt people’s lives. That’s why our Bible lesson from Proverbs today tells husbands:
"Drink water from your own cistern, flowing water from your own well. Should your springs be scattered abroad, streams of water in the streets?..."We live in a culture in which sex is pouring over its banks constantly. Recently, my wife, daughter, and I started working out at Gold’s Gym. I like it a lot. But one of the things I find a little tiresome is the constant diet of music videos showing on most of the TVs there. I wish I could tell all the producers, directors, artists, and composers who create music videos that there is more to life–and more even to our sexuality–than the middle regions of the human body.
Paraphrasing an observation once made by C.S. Lewis, if an alien from another planet came to earth and spent one hour watching our TV shows, including the commercials, that alien would conclude that something had gone seriously wrong with the human appetite for sex.
It’s this overwrought appetite for things sexual that makes God’s guidance on this subject so important. So what does God tell us are the ways for sex to remain within its boundaries and be the good thing it was meant to be?
First: We need to remember that sex is a good thing, created by God.
If you look at the first of two creation accounts that appear in the Old Testament book of Genesis, you’ll find God creating new things for each of six days. At the end of each of the first five days, God looks at His creation and says, “That’s good.”
But then on the sixth day, God creates human beings in His image. The Bible also makes a point of saying that God created the first humans “male and female.” At the end of that day, God declared that everything was “very good.” God made men and women to complement each other, to have the potential for becoming, both physically and emotionally, “one flesh.” That's a very good thing!
Second: According to the Bible, God didn’t just create sexuality so that we humans could make babies.
While the Bible does make clear that sex is only to happen between a man and a woman committed to one another in lifelong marriage, it isn’t meant to be used just to populate the planet. Some historians tell us that the notion that our sexuality was only to be about making babies first started in the Church with a man named Augustine. Augustine was a wonderful theologian and preacher and Christian example in many ways. But when it comes to sex, he may have felt so guilty about his past sexual philandering--regretful over how sex had once been in control of his life--that he just decided that sex was a bad thing.
One of my favorite Biblical passages on this subject comes from the story of Abraham and Sarah. That couple, you remember, were chosen by God to be the ancestors of the Israelite people. Into the nation of Israel the Savior Jesus was to be born. But there couldn’t be a nation of Israel if Abraham and Sarah didn’t have kids. Sarah had gone through menopause years before. When she hears God promise Abraham that she will still have a baby, she laughs, and asks, “After all these years, my husband and I old, am I going to have pleasure with my husband.”
Intrigued by that passage, I asked a Hebrew scholar about it. He confirmed my suspicions: The pleasure to which Sarah referred wasn’t just the pleasure of having a child. She was also talking about the pleasure of being sexually united with her husband. (I’m not making this stuff up! The Bible is full of not just good counsel about our sexuality, but appreciative celebrations of it.) God made us sexual beings for our enjoyment.
By the way, the pleasure of our sexuality doesn't derive only from having sexual intimacy with a husband or wife. Genesis says that we have been created as sexual beings. There are things that are unique to men and women. Each are different in many ways. From these differences, there comes a certain energy that doesn't exist in relationships with persons of our own gender. With the French I say, "Vive la difference!"
In his book, The Friendship Factor, Alan Loy McGinnis describes a relationship he enjoyed with a female friend of his. McGinnis was in his forties at the time and his friend was in her eighties. They had dinner together periodically. He talked about the fact that while there was no chance that the two of them would be sexually intimate, the presence of sexual energy between them was undeniable.
I remember talking with a young pastor, then in his thirties. He said that he was headed for the Bible study he did with the seventy-something women of his congregation. "They flirt with me, Mark," he told me. "They tease me about being a young man who enjoys an intimate relationship with a beautiful wife. It's all very innocent and chaste. But they flirt with me. And they love it when I flirt back."
Because God has made us male and female, there can be a wonderful and innocent complemantarity that happens between men and women even when there is nothing sexual in their relationship. God just made us that way. It's like the old saying, "God made us Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve." To ignore that reality would be naive! As long as people are careful about not allowing things to rush over the river banks, it's okay to appreciate our differences.
Third: God created sexual intimacy as the sign and seal of a married couple’s love for each other. In his book, Struggling with Sex, Arthur Rouner tells the story of a married couple who had come to him for counseling. They reported being intensely frustrated with their sexual relationship. In fact, their sexual relationship had ground to a halt. They were even beginning to wonder if they would remain married.
As Rouner talked with the couple, he learned that before they were married, they both had numerous partners. Sex wasn’t a sign of commitment and love; it had no real significance to them. It was something you might do with a virtual stranger after you watched a movie.
They had drained their sexuality of its meaning before they were married and so once they were married, there was no romance, no commitment, no fun, no passion, no love in their intimacy. Fortunately, over time, Rouner was able to help this couple put their lives–their whole lives under the Lordship of Jesus. They learned to appreciate that sexual intimacy is only for married couples. And they found the excitement and joy that belongs to married couples who have made their sexual intimacy a sign and a seal of their commitment to one another.
Fourth: No matter what mistakes we have made with our sexuality in the past, God can forgive us.
This, in fact, may be the most important point that I make today.
In his book, The Pursuit of Holiness, author Jerry Bridges tells about something that he has often said when speaking with college audiences. Imagine, he tells them, that we could somehow display all of the thoughts you’ve had for the last twenty-four hours on this big screen up here. As the audience members begin to think about some of the things they’ve thought, they begin to laugh nervously.
Fact is, all of us are sinners. And Jesus says that to even look upon a person lustfully, because sexual sin begins in our minds, is the same as physically misusing sex. When you consider that, you realize it's true. Adultery doesn't begin with a physical act. Rivers overflow their banks gradually. The water rises until at last, it encroaches on the land around it.
Adultery begins with a more-than-admiring glance. An inappropriate comment. A far too intimate secret shared. A lingering touch. Obsessive thoughts. Each of those things may seem harmless enough in themselves. But unless we put our minds and bodies under God's control, taken together, the flood will begin and so will the destruction to marriages, relationships, and our very souls!
Because adultery begins in our minds, Jesus tells us, we’re all guilty. Yet, there is something else we need to realize...the very fact with which I began this message: the God we know through Jesus Christ loves us. No matter what our sins, we can turn to God and receive forgiveness and the ability to say no to future sin and yes to God’s way of living life!
Just the other day, I saw a commercial on TV. The product being sold was whole-house heating, furnaces. How did they try to sell their furnaces? Sex.
A mantra of the advertising industry is, "Sex sells." If sex can be used to sell something as mundane as furnaces, it must be powerful.
But powerful as it may be, sex is only good when, like money which we talked about last week, we let God be in charge of our sexuality.
So, four things I hope you’ll remember from today:
- Sex is a good thing created by God.
- God created sex not just so married couples could have children, but so they could bring one another pleasure.
- God made sex to be a sign and seal of lifelong marital commitment.
- And, when we violate God’s will–whether in thought, word, or deed–we need to remember that God loves us and through Jesus Christ, He can forgive us and help us to rededicate our whole lives to following Him.
Tuesday, October 21, 2003
The daily OnLine with Faith e-mailed inspiration from Pastor Glen VanderKloot had this offering today. I think that you'll enjoy it. (If you'd like to subscribe to OnLine with Faith, e-mail Glen at pastor@faithlutheran.com.
*****************************************************
A Thought for the Day
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road
ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I
really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your
will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the
desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that
desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart
from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the
right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you
always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will
not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face
my perils alone.
Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Bible Verse
Matthew 26:42
Again Jesus went to pray and said...I will still do what you want.
Prayer
Lord, help me to follow wherever you lead me. Amen.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
*****************************************************
A Thought for the Day
MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road
ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I
really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your
will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the
desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope I have that
desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart
from that desire. And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the
right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust you
always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will
not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face
my perils alone.
Thomas Merton, "Thoughts in Solitude"
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Bible Verse
Matthew 26:42
Again Jesus went to pray and said...I will still do what you want.
Prayer
Lord, help me to follow wherever you lead me. Amen.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
A Protestant Looks at John Paul II
[The other day, I wrote a "spontaneous blog" about Pope John Paul II and it appears on this site. I edited it a little bit and submitted it as another installment of the column I write for the Community Press newspapers in metropolitan Cincinnati. Below is that edited version.]
In October, celebrations commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II's elevation to the papacy took place in Rome.
Upon his election by the College of Cardinals in 1978 and for several years thereafter, John Paul was an ecclesiastical wunderkind: poet, playwright, skier, hiker, multiple-linguist, resister of Nazis and Communists, peripatetic world traveler. Even after surviving an assassination attempt in 1981, there seemed little that this pope wouldn't or couldn't do.
And today, aging and suffering from Parkinson's Disease, he drives on with his work!
He also manages to drive many of my Roman Catholic friends crazy, mostly owing to his intransigence on the issues of priestly celibacy and the ordination of women.
Belonging to a denomination which allows the ordained to be married and which also ordains women, I have a slightly different perspective on John Paul, I suppose. Not engaged in controversy with him, but observing him from afar, I may be a bit more charitable and detached.
When considering this pope, I think it's worthy to note that John Paul tends to drive both conservatives and liberals--whether of the religious or political varieties--equally crazy. The moment you think you have him pegged as either conservative or liberal, he does or says something to defy your label.
The implacable foe of the communist system that once enslaved his native Poland has also opposed the materialist excesses of market capitalism. This "conservative," it turns out is a socialist who wants everyone to share the wealth.
Pleasing conservatives, he has ardently opposed abortion. (As did Mother Teresa, who was beatified by the pope during the celebrations for the anniversary of his papacy.) But displeasing those same conservatives, John Paul has also opposed the death penalty.
He pleases traditionalists of his own faith when upholding conventional Roman Catholic practices, whether it's the so-called "rhythm method" for birth control or the subordination of women to men in the hierarchy of the Church.
But he raises those same traditionalists' eyebrows when he repents for the Church's past treatment of Jews and reaches out to Protestants and Muslims.
As a Protestant, I believe that authority in the Church is not ultimately expressed in priests, bishops, or popes.
As a Lutheran, I reject the very notion of church authority residing in bishops and believe, as the confessions of my church hold, that the Bible is the authoritative source and norm of the Church's life, faith, and practice. The Bible, I believe, commends no hierarchy in Christ's Church. In fact, a passage of the New Testament written by the very man Roman Catholic tradition says was the first pope, the apostle Peter, pointedly rejects hierachical thinking. In First Peter 2:9-10, Peter writes that all followers of Jesus are part of a priesthood of all believers. Followers of Jesus, I believe, differ only in function, not status.
But for all these differences in theology and misgivings I have about the propriety of the very office of pope, I agree with evangelist Billy Graham, who has described John Paul II as the greatest pope of his lifetime.
Gerard Baker, in a recent edition of the "Financial Times," points out that behind all of John Paul's dizzying activity and stubborn intransigence is a consistently-held and consistently-pursued principle, the principle of life over against our current worldwide culture of death.
In many respects, John Paul II has been a Christian countercultural figure, standing against the warped values of a dying world, proclaiming what the Bible calls "a still more excellent way," the path of following Jesus Christ.
For his constant loyalty to life's sanctity in the midst of bloody, violent times, John Paul II deserves the appreciation and applause of all the world.
Tonight, before this Protestant goes to bed, I'll say a little prayer of thanksgiving to God for the pope from Poland who has driven us all a little crazy and who has given us all important things to think about, to pray about, to act upon.
[The other day, I wrote a "spontaneous blog" about Pope John Paul II and it appears on this site. I edited it a little bit and submitted it as another installment of the column I write for the Community Press newspapers in metropolitan Cincinnati. Below is that edited version.]
In October, celebrations commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II's elevation to the papacy took place in Rome.
Upon his election by the College of Cardinals in 1978 and for several years thereafter, John Paul was an ecclesiastical wunderkind: poet, playwright, skier, hiker, multiple-linguist, resister of Nazis and Communists, peripatetic world traveler. Even after surviving an assassination attempt in 1981, there seemed little that this pope wouldn't or couldn't do.
And today, aging and suffering from Parkinson's Disease, he drives on with his work!
He also manages to drive many of my Roman Catholic friends crazy, mostly owing to his intransigence on the issues of priestly celibacy and the ordination of women.
Belonging to a denomination which allows the ordained to be married and which also ordains women, I have a slightly different perspective on John Paul, I suppose. Not engaged in controversy with him, but observing him from afar, I may be a bit more charitable and detached.
When considering this pope, I think it's worthy to note that John Paul tends to drive both conservatives and liberals--whether of the religious or political varieties--equally crazy. The moment you think you have him pegged as either conservative or liberal, he does or says something to defy your label.
The implacable foe of the communist system that once enslaved his native Poland has also opposed the materialist excesses of market capitalism. This "conservative," it turns out is a socialist who wants everyone to share the wealth.
Pleasing conservatives, he has ardently opposed abortion. (As did Mother Teresa, who was beatified by the pope during the celebrations for the anniversary of his papacy.) But displeasing those same conservatives, John Paul has also opposed the death penalty.
He pleases traditionalists of his own faith when upholding conventional Roman Catholic practices, whether it's the so-called "rhythm method" for birth control or the subordination of women to men in the hierarchy of the Church.
But he raises those same traditionalists' eyebrows when he repents for the Church's past treatment of Jews and reaches out to Protestants and Muslims.
As a Protestant, I believe that authority in the Church is not ultimately expressed in priests, bishops, or popes.
As a Lutheran, I reject the very notion of church authority residing in bishops and believe, as the confessions of my church hold, that the Bible is the authoritative source and norm of the Church's life, faith, and practice. The Bible, I believe, commends no hierarchy in Christ's Church. In fact, a passage of the New Testament written by the very man Roman Catholic tradition says was the first pope, the apostle Peter, pointedly rejects hierachical thinking. In First Peter 2:9-10, Peter writes that all followers of Jesus are part of a priesthood of all believers. Followers of Jesus, I believe, differ only in function, not status.
But for all these differences in theology and misgivings I have about the propriety of the very office of pope, I agree with evangelist Billy Graham, who has described John Paul II as the greatest pope of his lifetime.
Gerard Baker, in a recent edition of the "Financial Times," points out that behind all of John Paul's dizzying activity and stubborn intransigence is a consistently-held and consistently-pursued principle, the principle of life over against our current worldwide culture of death.
In many respects, John Paul II has been a Christian countercultural figure, standing against the warped values of a dying world, proclaiming what the Bible calls "a still more excellent way," the path of following Jesus Christ.
For his constant loyalty to life's sanctity in the midst of bloody, violent times, John Paul II deserves the appreciation and applause of all the world.
Tonight, before this Protestant goes to bed, I'll say a little prayer of thanksgiving to God for the pope from Poland who has driven us all a little crazy and who has given us all important things to think about, to pray about, to act upon.
Monday, October 20, 2003
God, Money, and Sex:
God and Money
Luke 18:18-30
[shared with the people of Friendship Church, October 19, 2003]
Wyvetta Bullock is a second-career pastor in the Lutheran Church. Back when she was in her early twenties, trying to get to her feet financially, starting her first career, and paying off college debts, she was speaking with her father on the telephone. “Wyvetta,” he asked, “are you tithing?” (Tithing, you know, is the Biblical idea of giving the first ten per cent of our income to God, whether through the Church or through charities that are doing God’s work, and then living off of the remaining 90%.) Bullock couldn’t believe that her father would ask her such a question. He knew that she didn’t have two pennies to rub together. How could she possibly give away 10% of practically nothing? And so she told her father, “Dad, you know that I can’t afford to do that.” To which her father said, “Wyvetta, you can’t afford not to.”
Wyvetta Bullock’s father understood a truth that Jesus tried to convey to a wealthy man who approached him one day. The story of their conversation is part of our Bible lesson for this morning. The man, described by the Bible as a “ruler” comes to Jesus with an apparently sincere question. He wants to know about Jesus’ opinion of what constitutes a righteous life, a life that will allow him entry into heaven. Jesus points him to the ten commandments. When the young man heard this, he probably smiled. He told Jesus–maybe with false confidence–“I’ve done all of these things since I was a little boy!”
But Jesus, as able to peer into this ruler’s heart as surely as He can peer into yours and mine, sees that for all of the man’s industrious keeping of God’s laws, something is wrong. There is a wall between him and God. Jesus tells the man:
“There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and follow Me.”
The man can’t believe it! He thought that he had a deal with God. He thought that if he conformed to God’s commandments, he would be in like Flynn in heaven. Now, here's Jesus telling him that eternity could only be his if he parted with his wealth and followed Him.
The Bible tells us that when the man heard this, he became sad because he was wealthy. He walked away from following Jesus because money was more important to him than God.
You see, if we really want to be with God forever, it doesn’t come down to what we do, it comes down to whether we follow Jesus or not. And one of the great powers in our world that can prevent us from following Jesus and so, prevent us from living forever in heaven with God, is money.
Now, let’s be clear. There is nothing wrong with being wealthy. There is nothing wrong with having money. The problem happens when money becomes the center of our lives. When money becomes our highest priority–and it happens both to people who have great wealth and to those who don’t–we make money our god and we erect a wall between God and His mercy on the one side and ourselves on the other.
That’s why Wyvetta Bullock’s father told her that she needed to tithe. He saw it as the best way to drive a stake into the heart of the god of money, a god Jesus even called by a name, Mammon. Bullock's dad knew that Wyvetta needed to commit to giving in order to let Mammon know that money wouldn’t control her. Instead, with God’s help, she would control her money.
In our Bible lesson, Jesus told the ruler that he needed to get rid of all of his wealth because Jesus could see that the ruler was addicted to being rich. Jesus’ prescription for the man’s money problem was so severe because the man's dependence on money was so complete. As with any addiction, the best course of action for getting free is to depend on God completely and to stay away from the addiction that has a person in its clutches.
We shouldn’t underestimate the power of money. When harnessed for good and put under Christ’s Lordship, money can do amazingly wonderful things. I think of all the money that people give to charities, schools and colleges, churches, and ministry organizations and I think what a tremendous legacy for good those who give are creating. I think of how many of God's children they're helping!
Once, in my former parish, I was visiting with a woman suddenly widowed by the tragic death of her young husband. There was a knock at the door. A neighbor had come with food. Dozens of people had spent their money and time to prepare dishes the grieving family could put on the stove or pop into the microwave or the oven and have good meals. Between her tears, the widow, thinking of the expense and the effort people had expended on these dishes, smiled and said to me, "There's an awful lot of love in that refrigerator." We can do good things with money.
But when we see money as being just for us, bad things always happen. On my dad’s eighteenth birthday, he walked home from school and found all his clothes on the front porch. His dad was throwing him out of the house. Frank Marion Daniels was no longer financially obligated to do anything for my dad and he had decided that he wasn’t going to spend one more penny.
No matter how poor or rich we are, when we’re hesitant to give to God, to our families, or to others, there is something wrong. We may in fact be worshiping at the altar of money rather than the altar of God. And God has not rescinded the first commandment: if we put anything before God Himself, if we fail to trustingly follow Jesus and instead put our trust in powers like money, we lose the everlasting life that God wants to give to us.
So, what’s the take-away for you and me from today's Bible lesson? What does Jesus want us to know about money?
First: We need to know that money is a power in our world. The first murder in Biblical history occurred when Cain, one son of Adam and Eve, killed his brother, Abel. Abel was a shepherd. Cain was a farmer. When the very first baby lambs were born to the ewe lambs in Abel's flock, he wanted to demonstrate his gratitude to God for his blessings. So, he took those very first lambs and gave them as an offering to God. This was an act of risky faith on Abel's part. Like you and me, he had no way of predicting the future. He had no idea if he would get any more lambs. But he trusted God enough to offer the first ones he got to God.
Cain, on the other hand, harvested his crops and as an afterthought, gave God his leftovers.
God was pleased with Abel's offering, because it was given with faith and absolute trust in God. God was displeased with Cain's offering because Cain gave God his leftovers. Cain didn't trust God enough to give God the first of his "income" for fear that there wouldn't be anything left for him.
When Cain noticed God's differing reactions to the offerings made by Abel and himself, he got surly. God asked him what was wrong. Then God gave Cain a warning, "You've got to be careful, Cain. Sin is always lurking at the doorway of your heart. You can't let it take control of you. You must master it!" [This is my paraphrase of Genesis 4:1-7]
In modern terms, Cain had money worries. He was worried that if he gave to God first, he wouldn't have enough for himself. So, he became selfish...so selfish, that eventually, he killed his brother.
Satan wants you and me to think that if we keep all our money to ourselves, we’ll be in control of our lives. But God wants us to know that greed and selfishness are always lurking in the shadows of our hearts. When they take over, we won't be controlling our money or our actions or our wills. We need to remember that we will either master our money–no matter how much or little we have–or it will master us.
Second: We need to put our ultimate trust in God, not in money. If we put our ultimate trust in anything or anyone besides the God we know through Jesus Christ, we lose our life with God forever. It turns out that God pays better dividends than money!
Fran and Chuck, a couple who lived in Columbus, Indiana, had done well in their lives. Throughout their working years, they had given to God, their family, and their friends. But in their retirement years, they decided that they needed less money. So, they instituted a “reverse tithe,” giving away the first 90% of their monthly income and living off of the remaining 10%. Leonard Sweet, one-time president of United Seminary in Dayton, used to visit Fran and Chuck twice a year and at the end of those afternoon visits, walk away with checks of five, fifteen, and twenty-thousand dollars for the seminary. And United was one of their smaller beneficiaries. Fran and Chuck told Leonard Sweet many times that in their eighties, they were having the times of their lives giving to universities, charities, and ministries that helped people all over the world.
None of us may ever be in the position to be as giving as Fran and Chuck. But we can be what the Bible calls “generous” people who have put their trust in God and not their wallets.
Finally: The best way to handle money is both responsibly and loosely. Whatever God gives to us, He expects us to handle responsibly. That's called good stewardship.
But we also need to be loose in our handling of money. That means we need to be ready to give to God and to others. And we need to do that for a simple reason: It’s not our money; it’s God’s money!
I started working when I was about seven or eight years old. Back when I was a little guy, I saw the prizes and money you could earn by going door-to-door, selling Christmas cards. So, I did that. When Christmas season was over, I was sort of bored and started going door-to-door again, this time selling return address labels. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid and observing that I liked selling things, my mom made up some sample potholders and sent me out door-to-door again in order to take orders for them. I sold a bunch of potholders and got a commission from my mom. Then, I became a newspaper carrier. After that, I mowed lawns. From high school, through college and seminary, I did all sorts of part-time and full-time jobs: I cooked at a fast food restaurant, fixed guardrail for the highway department, worked on two different factory assembly lines, did inventories in little stores all over southern Ohio, worked in retail at three different department stores and a paint store, took care of the copiers and office supply needs of a corporate headquarters, schlepped stock on a loading dock, worked as a janitor, hand-processed property tax payments at the county treasurer’s office in Columbus. And of course, I’ve worked as a campaign manager, a charity fund raiser, a supervisor for the Ohio House of Representatives, and for the past nineteen years, I’ve been a pastor. But let me tell you something: In all of that work, I don’t believe that I ever deserved a penny I earned. It has all been God’s gift to me.
That’s because my body, my mind, my health, the capacity to create, and the support and encouragement of family and friends that have made it possible for me to work, to get an education, and to live a life I love, have all come from God.
The same is true for all of you. Everything we have comes from God. So too, does the hope that we have for an eternity with God, a gift that God secured for us when Jesus died and rose again.
It’s not our money. God has put this power into our hands not just so that we can take care of ourselves and our families, but also to let the whole world know about Jesus, to share His love, and to give others the hope that only Jesus gives.
However much money God has placed at your disposal, His call on you and me remains the same: We need to understand money’s power for good and evil; we need to put our ultimate trust in Christ, not cash; and we need to handle all that God gives us both responsibly and loosely.
The mark of the person truly freed from sin and death is their willingness to share their blessings from God with others. I pray each day that I will be a person who shares my blessings. And I pray that same thing for all of you.
[The personal reminiscence of Wyvetta Bullock appeared, I believe. in the video teaching series on the basics of Christian faith once done by the former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutherab Church in America, Hebert Chilstrom. The story of Fran and Chuck appears in Leonard Sweet's wonderful book, SoulSalsa. Some of the ideas in this message were inspired by and culled from another wonderful book, Money, Sex, and Power by Richard Foster.]
God and Money
Luke 18:18-30
[shared with the people of Friendship Church, October 19, 2003]
Wyvetta Bullock is a second-career pastor in the Lutheran Church. Back when she was in her early twenties, trying to get to her feet financially, starting her first career, and paying off college debts, she was speaking with her father on the telephone. “Wyvetta,” he asked, “are you tithing?” (Tithing, you know, is the Biblical idea of giving the first ten per cent of our income to God, whether through the Church or through charities that are doing God’s work, and then living off of the remaining 90%.) Bullock couldn’t believe that her father would ask her such a question. He knew that she didn’t have two pennies to rub together. How could she possibly give away 10% of practically nothing? And so she told her father, “Dad, you know that I can’t afford to do that.” To which her father said, “Wyvetta, you can’t afford not to.”
Wyvetta Bullock’s father understood a truth that Jesus tried to convey to a wealthy man who approached him one day. The story of their conversation is part of our Bible lesson for this morning. The man, described by the Bible as a “ruler” comes to Jesus with an apparently sincere question. He wants to know about Jesus’ opinion of what constitutes a righteous life, a life that will allow him entry into heaven. Jesus points him to the ten commandments. When the young man heard this, he probably smiled. He told Jesus–maybe with false confidence–“I’ve done all of these things since I was a little boy!”
But Jesus, as able to peer into this ruler’s heart as surely as He can peer into yours and mine, sees that for all of the man’s industrious keeping of God’s laws, something is wrong. There is a wall between him and God. Jesus tells the man:
“There is still one thing lacking. Sell all that you own and follow Me.”
The man can’t believe it! He thought that he had a deal with God. He thought that if he conformed to God’s commandments, he would be in like Flynn in heaven. Now, here's Jesus telling him that eternity could only be his if he parted with his wealth and followed Him.
The Bible tells us that when the man heard this, he became sad because he was wealthy. He walked away from following Jesus because money was more important to him than God.
You see, if we really want to be with God forever, it doesn’t come down to what we do, it comes down to whether we follow Jesus or not. And one of the great powers in our world that can prevent us from following Jesus and so, prevent us from living forever in heaven with God, is money.
Now, let’s be clear. There is nothing wrong with being wealthy. There is nothing wrong with having money. The problem happens when money becomes the center of our lives. When money becomes our highest priority–and it happens both to people who have great wealth and to those who don’t–we make money our god and we erect a wall between God and His mercy on the one side and ourselves on the other.
That’s why Wyvetta Bullock’s father told her that she needed to tithe. He saw it as the best way to drive a stake into the heart of the god of money, a god Jesus even called by a name, Mammon. Bullock's dad knew that Wyvetta needed to commit to giving in order to let Mammon know that money wouldn’t control her. Instead, with God’s help, she would control her money.
In our Bible lesson, Jesus told the ruler that he needed to get rid of all of his wealth because Jesus could see that the ruler was addicted to being rich. Jesus’ prescription for the man’s money problem was so severe because the man's dependence on money was so complete. As with any addiction, the best course of action for getting free is to depend on God completely and to stay away from the addiction that has a person in its clutches.
We shouldn’t underestimate the power of money. When harnessed for good and put under Christ’s Lordship, money can do amazingly wonderful things. I think of all the money that people give to charities, schools and colleges, churches, and ministry organizations and I think what a tremendous legacy for good those who give are creating. I think of how many of God's children they're helping!
Once, in my former parish, I was visiting with a woman suddenly widowed by the tragic death of her young husband. There was a knock at the door. A neighbor had come with food. Dozens of people had spent their money and time to prepare dishes the grieving family could put on the stove or pop into the microwave or the oven and have good meals. Between her tears, the widow, thinking of the expense and the effort people had expended on these dishes, smiled and said to me, "There's an awful lot of love in that refrigerator." We can do good things with money.
But when we see money as being just for us, bad things always happen. On my dad’s eighteenth birthday, he walked home from school and found all his clothes on the front porch. His dad was throwing him out of the house. Frank Marion Daniels was no longer financially obligated to do anything for my dad and he had decided that he wasn’t going to spend one more penny.
No matter how poor or rich we are, when we’re hesitant to give to God, to our families, or to others, there is something wrong. We may in fact be worshiping at the altar of money rather than the altar of God. And God has not rescinded the first commandment: if we put anything before God Himself, if we fail to trustingly follow Jesus and instead put our trust in powers like money, we lose the everlasting life that God wants to give to us.
So, what’s the take-away for you and me from today's Bible lesson? What does Jesus want us to know about money?
First: We need to know that money is a power in our world. The first murder in Biblical history occurred when Cain, one son of Adam and Eve, killed his brother, Abel. Abel was a shepherd. Cain was a farmer. When the very first baby lambs were born to the ewe lambs in Abel's flock, he wanted to demonstrate his gratitude to God for his blessings. So, he took those very first lambs and gave them as an offering to God. This was an act of risky faith on Abel's part. Like you and me, he had no way of predicting the future. He had no idea if he would get any more lambs. But he trusted God enough to offer the first ones he got to God.
Cain, on the other hand, harvested his crops and as an afterthought, gave God his leftovers.
God was pleased with Abel's offering, because it was given with faith and absolute trust in God. God was displeased with Cain's offering because Cain gave God his leftovers. Cain didn't trust God enough to give God the first of his "income" for fear that there wouldn't be anything left for him.
When Cain noticed God's differing reactions to the offerings made by Abel and himself, he got surly. God asked him what was wrong. Then God gave Cain a warning, "You've got to be careful, Cain. Sin is always lurking at the doorway of your heart. You can't let it take control of you. You must master it!" [This is my paraphrase of Genesis 4:1-7]
In modern terms, Cain had money worries. He was worried that if he gave to God first, he wouldn't have enough for himself. So, he became selfish...so selfish, that eventually, he killed his brother.
Satan wants you and me to think that if we keep all our money to ourselves, we’ll be in control of our lives. But God wants us to know that greed and selfishness are always lurking in the shadows of our hearts. When they take over, we won't be controlling our money or our actions or our wills. We need to remember that we will either master our money–no matter how much or little we have–or it will master us.
Second: We need to put our ultimate trust in God, not in money. If we put our ultimate trust in anything or anyone besides the God we know through Jesus Christ, we lose our life with God forever. It turns out that God pays better dividends than money!
Fran and Chuck, a couple who lived in Columbus, Indiana, had done well in their lives. Throughout their working years, they had given to God, their family, and their friends. But in their retirement years, they decided that they needed less money. So, they instituted a “reverse tithe,” giving away the first 90% of their monthly income and living off of the remaining 10%. Leonard Sweet, one-time president of United Seminary in Dayton, used to visit Fran and Chuck twice a year and at the end of those afternoon visits, walk away with checks of five, fifteen, and twenty-thousand dollars for the seminary. And United was one of their smaller beneficiaries. Fran and Chuck told Leonard Sweet many times that in their eighties, they were having the times of their lives giving to universities, charities, and ministries that helped people all over the world.
None of us may ever be in the position to be as giving as Fran and Chuck. But we can be what the Bible calls “generous” people who have put their trust in God and not their wallets.
Finally: The best way to handle money is both responsibly and loosely. Whatever God gives to us, He expects us to handle responsibly. That's called good stewardship.
But we also need to be loose in our handling of money. That means we need to be ready to give to God and to others. And we need to do that for a simple reason: It’s not our money; it’s God’s money!
I started working when I was about seven or eight years old. Back when I was a little guy, I saw the prizes and money you could earn by going door-to-door, selling Christmas cards. So, I did that. When Christmas season was over, I was sort of bored and started going door-to-door again, this time selling return address labels. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was a kid and observing that I liked selling things, my mom made up some sample potholders and sent me out door-to-door again in order to take orders for them. I sold a bunch of potholders and got a commission from my mom. Then, I became a newspaper carrier. After that, I mowed lawns. From high school, through college and seminary, I did all sorts of part-time and full-time jobs: I cooked at a fast food restaurant, fixed guardrail for the highway department, worked on two different factory assembly lines, did inventories in little stores all over southern Ohio, worked in retail at three different department stores and a paint store, took care of the copiers and office supply needs of a corporate headquarters, schlepped stock on a loading dock, worked as a janitor, hand-processed property tax payments at the county treasurer’s office in Columbus. And of course, I’ve worked as a campaign manager, a charity fund raiser, a supervisor for the Ohio House of Representatives, and for the past nineteen years, I’ve been a pastor. But let me tell you something: In all of that work, I don’t believe that I ever deserved a penny I earned. It has all been God’s gift to me.
That’s because my body, my mind, my health, the capacity to create, and the support and encouragement of family and friends that have made it possible for me to work, to get an education, and to live a life I love, have all come from God.
The same is true for all of you. Everything we have comes from God. So too, does the hope that we have for an eternity with God, a gift that God secured for us when Jesus died and rose again.
It’s not our money. God has put this power into our hands not just so that we can take care of ourselves and our families, but also to let the whole world know about Jesus, to share His love, and to give others the hope that only Jesus gives.
However much money God has placed at your disposal, His call on you and me remains the same: We need to understand money’s power for good and evil; we need to put our ultimate trust in Christ, not cash; and we need to handle all that God gives us both responsibly and loosely.
The mark of the person truly freed from sin and death is their willingness to share their blessings from God with others. I pray each day that I will be a person who shares my blessings. And I pray that same thing for all of you.
[The personal reminiscence of Wyvetta Bullock appeared, I believe. in the video teaching series on the basics of Christian faith once done by the former presiding bishop of the Evangelical Lutherab Church in America, Hebert Chilstrom. The story of Fran and Chuck appears in Leonard Sweet's wonderful book, SoulSalsa. Some of the ideas in this message were inspired by and culled from another wonderful book, Money, Sex, and Power by Richard Foster.]
Saturday, October 18, 2003
A Ride and An Example
Don Gilmore died on Wednesday. That might not mean much to people who have never heard of him. But it has some significance to me.
Gilmore, a former cop and deputy sheriff, served in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1979 to 1991, representing the Columbus neighborhood where I grew up and spent my early adult years. I was the supervisor of the House's pages back in those days, a politically-disconnected employee who served at the pleasure of the powerful Democratic speaker, Vern Riffe.
Gilmore was a freshman Republican member of the House, dealing with budget matters in a rare late-night session. Like the representatives and other House staffers, I had to stay until the House adjourned. Gilmore knew that my wife Ann and I usually shared a ride to our downtown Columbus offices each day and that with her already home, I would be riding the bus late that night, maybe not walking through the door of our apartment until one in the morning. In the back of the House chamber, Gilmore approached me and asked, "Need a ride?"
As silly as it may seem, I felt a little like the Samaritan woman at the well in Sychar felt when Jesus spoke to her one day. Knowing of the taboos against fraternization between Jews and Samaritans, not to mention those against men speaking to women in public in first century Palestine, she asked Jesus why he would do such a thing. Back when I worked for the State House of Representatives, no self-respecting Republican representative would have had much to do with an underling Democrat staffer. But Don Gilmore didn't care about all that.
We had an enjoyable chat during the half-hour ride home and occasionally thereafter, we had other such chats. What I learned and respected about Don Gilmore was that he was a down-to-earth guy whose overriding principle was that government ought to do its best to give people opportunities to live good lives.
In the Associated Press article I read recounting Don Gilmore's death, another former state representative who I knew better than Gilmore in those days--Mike Stinziano, a Democrat who came from the neighborhood next to mine--commented, "Don was an extremely independent guy. He always fought hard for his constituents, much to the dismay of the party leaders."
These days, I'm a Republican making my own bid for the state House of Representatives in the area where I live now. (I'll remain as a pastor serving Friendship Church, no matter if I'm elected or not.) But if I am elected to serve in Columbus, I won't emulate the fire-breathing ideologues who grab headlines and create gridlock. I'll try to be a principled guy who works hard for my constituents.
Don Gilmore always seemed to remember that a better word for "constituents" is "people." He remembered that those people were the ones who paid his salary and whether they said it or not, depended on him to do a good job.
Thanks for the ride, Don, and thanks for the good example.
Don Gilmore died on Wednesday. That might not mean much to people who have never heard of him. But it has some significance to me.
Gilmore, a former cop and deputy sheriff, served in the Ohio House of Representatives from 1979 to 1991, representing the Columbus neighborhood where I grew up and spent my early adult years. I was the supervisor of the House's pages back in those days, a politically-disconnected employee who served at the pleasure of the powerful Democratic speaker, Vern Riffe.
Gilmore was a freshman Republican member of the House, dealing with budget matters in a rare late-night session. Like the representatives and other House staffers, I had to stay until the House adjourned. Gilmore knew that my wife Ann and I usually shared a ride to our downtown Columbus offices each day and that with her already home, I would be riding the bus late that night, maybe not walking through the door of our apartment until one in the morning. In the back of the House chamber, Gilmore approached me and asked, "Need a ride?"
As silly as it may seem, I felt a little like the Samaritan woman at the well in Sychar felt when Jesus spoke to her one day. Knowing of the taboos against fraternization between Jews and Samaritans, not to mention those against men speaking to women in public in first century Palestine, she asked Jesus why he would do such a thing. Back when I worked for the State House of Representatives, no self-respecting Republican representative would have had much to do with an underling Democrat staffer. But Don Gilmore didn't care about all that.
We had an enjoyable chat during the half-hour ride home and occasionally thereafter, we had other such chats. What I learned and respected about Don Gilmore was that he was a down-to-earth guy whose overriding principle was that government ought to do its best to give people opportunities to live good lives.
In the Associated Press article I read recounting Don Gilmore's death, another former state representative who I knew better than Gilmore in those days--Mike Stinziano, a Democrat who came from the neighborhood next to mine--commented, "Don was an extremely independent guy. He always fought hard for his constituents, much to the dismay of the party leaders."
These days, I'm a Republican making my own bid for the state House of Representatives in the area where I live now. (I'll remain as a pastor serving Friendship Church, no matter if I'm elected or not.) But if I am elected to serve in Columbus, I won't emulate the fire-breathing ideologues who grab headlines and create gridlock. I'll try to be a principled guy who works hard for my constituents.
Don Gilmore always seemed to remember that a better word for "constituents" is "people." He remembered that those people were the ones who paid his salary and whether they said it or not, depended on him to do a good job.
Thanks for the ride, Don, and thanks for the good example.
Friday, October 17, 2003
Thoughts on John Paul
Throughout this past week, celebrations commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II's pontificate have been happening in Rome. It's a bit weird being old enough to remember when a man now routinely described as failing and frail was hardy and jock-like. It makes me feel old and understand that one day perhaps, senior citizen status will descend on me.
Upon his election by the College of Cardinals in 1978 and for several years thereafter, John Paul seemed to be an ecclesiastical wunderkind: poet, playwright, skier, hiker, multiple-linguist, resister of Nazis and Communists, peripatetic world traveler. Even after surviving an assassination attempt in 1981, there seemed little that this pope wouldn't or couldn't do.
Even now, suffering from Parkinson's Disease, he drives on with his work!
In that driving, he also manages to drive many of my Roman Catholic friends crazy, mostly owing to his intransigence on priestly celibacy and the ordination of women.
Belonging to a denomination which allows the ordained to be married and which also ordains women, I have a slightly different perspective on John Paul, I suppose. Not engaged in controversy with him, I may be a bit more charitable and detached.
For one thing, I note that he tends to drive both conservatives and liberals--whether of the religious or political varieties--equally crazy. The implacable foe of the communist system that once enslaved his native Poland has also opposed the materialist excesses of market capitalism. (This "conservative" it turns out, is a socialist.)
Pleasing conservatives, he has ardently opposed abortion. (As did Mother Teresa, who was beatified by the pope earlier today.) But displeasing those same conservatives, John Paul has also opposes the death penalty.
He pleases traditionalists of his own faith when adhering to convential Roman Catholic practice. But he raises those same traditionalists' eyebrows when he repents for the Church's past treatment of the Jews and reaches out to Protestants and Muslims.
As a Protestant, I believe that authority in the Church is not ultimately expressed in priests, bishops, or popes. As a Lutheran, I reject the very notion of an episcopal succession and believe, as the confessions of my church hold, that the Bible is the authoritative source and norm of the Church's life, faith, and practice. The Bible, I believe--based most explicitly on a passage authored by the man that Roman Catholic tradition holds served as the first pope, First Peter 2:9-10--commends no hierarchy in Christ's Church. Instead, all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord are part of a "priesthood of all believers." Followers of Jesus differ only in function, not status.
But for all these differences in theology and misgivings I have about the propriety of the very office of pope, I agree with evangelist Billy Graham, who has described John Paul as the greatest pope of his lifetime.
Gerard Baker, in yesterday's Financial Times, points out that behind all of John Paul's dizzying activity and stubborn intransigence is a consistently-held and consistently-pursued principle, the principle of life over against the culture of death. John Paul II has been a truly Christian countercultural figure, standing against the warped values of a dying world, proclaiming a still more excellent way that begins by following Jesus Christ.
For his constant loyalty to life's sanctity in the midst of bloody, violent times, John Paul deserves the appreciation and applause of all the world. Tonight, before this Protestant goes to bed, I'll say a little prayer, thanking God for the pope from Poland who drove us all a little nuts and gave us all important things to think about, to pray about, to act upon.
Throughout this past week, celebrations commemorating the twenty-fifth anniversary of Pope John Paul II's pontificate have been happening in Rome. It's a bit weird being old enough to remember when a man now routinely described as failing and frail was hardy and jock-like. It makes me feel old and understand that one day perhaps, senior citizen status will descend on me.
Upon his election by the College of Cardinals in 1978 and for several years thereafter, John Paul seemed to be an ecclesiastical wunderkind: poet, playwright, skier, hiker, multiple-linguist, resister of Nazis and Communists, peripatetic world traveler. Even after surviving an assassination attempt in 1981, there seemed little that this pope wouldn't or couldn't do.
Even now, suffering from Parkinson's Disease, he drives on with his work!
In that driving, he also manages to drive many of my Roman Catholic friends crazy, mostly owing to his intransigence on priestly celibacy and the ordination of women.
Belonging to a denomination which allows the ordained to be married and which also ordains women, I have a slightly different perspective on John Paul, I suppose. Not engaged in controversy with him, I may be a bit more charitable and detached.
For one thing, I note that he tends to drive both conservatives and liberals--whether of the religious or political varieties--equally crazy. The implacable foe of the communist system that once enslaved his native Poland has also opposed the materialist excesses of market capitalism. (This "conservative" it turns out, is a socialist.)
Pleasing conservatives, he has ardently opposed abortion. (As did Mother Teresa, who was beatified by the pope earlier today.) But displeasing those same conservatives, John Paul has also opposes the death penalty.
He pleases traditionalists of his own faith when adhering to convential Roman Catholic practice. But he raises those same traditionalists' eyebrows when he repents for the Church's past treatment of the Jews and reaches out to Protestants and Muslims.
As a Protestant, I believe that authority in the Church is not ultimately expressed in priests, bishops, or popes. As a Lutheran, I reject the very notion of an episcopal succession and believe, as the confessions of my church hold, that the Bible is the authoritative source and norm of the Church's life, faith, and practice. The Bible, I believe--based most explicitly on a passage authored by the man that Roman Catholic tradition holds served as the first pope, First Peter 2:9-10--commends no hierarchy in Christ's Church. Instead, all who confess Jesus Christ as Lord are part of a "priesthood of all believers." Followers of Jesus differ only in function, not status.
But for all these differences in theology and misgivings I have about the propriety of the very office of pope, I agree with evangelist Billy Graham, who has described John Paul as the greatest pope of his lifetime.
Gerard Baker, in yesterday's Financial Times, points out that behind all of John Paul's dizzying activity and stubborn intransigence is a consistently-held and consistently-pursued principle, the principle of life over against the culture of death. John Paul II has been a truly Christian countercultural figure, standing against the warped values of a dying world, proclaiming a still more excellent way that begins by following Jesus Christ.
For his constant loyalty to life's sanctity in the midst of bloody, violent times, John Paul deserves the appreciation and applause of all the world. Tonight, before this Protestant goes to bed, I'll say a little prayer, thanking God for the pope from Poland who drove us all a little nuts and gave us all important things to think about, to pray about, to act upon.
Sunday, October 12, 2003
Purpose Driven Living:
Your Mission, Sharing Christ with Others
Acts 20:17-24
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, October 12, 2003)
Today, we’ve come to the final installment of messages on Purpose Driven Living. So far, we’ve talked about four of God’s major purposes for our living:
loving God all the time;
being loving participants in the life of Christ’s family, the Church;
opening ourselves to God’s discipline and guidance to become more like Jesus;
and serving others in Jesus’ Name.
The first three purposes for our lives are the tools by which God makes positive change in us.
The last two–ministry and the purpose on which we’re focusing today–are the means by which God uses us to positively change the lives those we touch.
God’s fifth major purpose for us is sharing Jesus Christ with others so that, like us, they can turn from sin and receive Him as the God and Boss of their lives and because of Him, live with God forever. The one word summary of this is mission.
Time and time again, Jesus and the writers of the New Testament make it clear that you and I are to be His witnesses. Dotted throughout the footnotes for today’s worship celebration program, you’ll find references to many of these passages. Because of the importance of our mission as followers of Jesus, Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, saves his most provocative sentences for the section of his book that deals with sharing Jesus Christ with others. Listen to two of them:
“This commission [to tell others about Jesus] was given to every follower of Jesus, not to pastors and missionaries alone.” [p.283]
“The church that doesn’t want to grow [by inviting others to know and follow Christ] is saying to the world, ‘You can go to hell.’” [[295]
But being a witness for Jesus isn’t just, or even mostly, something that God commands of us. Being a witness for Jesus is also a privilege for us. We're God's co-workers. And we're God's agents. A passage in the New Testament portion of the Bible says:
"So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making His appeal through us..." (Second Corinthians 5:20)
The fifth purpose for all of our lives is to share Christ.
But how do we do that?
Our Bible lesson comes from the New Testament book of Acts. Acts, as Amy mentioned in the introduction to the lesson, is the story of the first century church from the time of the risen Jesus’ ascension to heaven. Our lesson records a meeting between the preacher and evangelist Paul, who faces the probability of being killed for his faith in Jesus, and the people of a church he started in the city of Ephesus. In it, we find five helpful hints for sharing Christ with others. Please turn to the Bible lesson in the bulletin and get ready to read the verses I mention out loud with me. Five hints for sharing Christ with others...
Read Paul’s words from verses 18 and 19 with me:
“You yourselves know how I lived among you the entire time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears, enduring the trials that came to me through the plots of the Jews..."
The key watchwords here are: Be open. Paul, like you, had a day job. He worked as a tentmaker. He lived like other people and was open about it. He didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. But unlike many Christians these days who try to blend in with the woodwork, he also didn’t pretend that Jesus wasn’t his savior. More than that, he didn’t pretend that as a person of faith, he didn’t confront adversity or the reality of his own sins. He let people see his tears and personal faults. One of my favorite writings of Paul appears in Romans 7, where he openly talks about being a sinner who resolves to do right, but often does wrong. Paul knew that he was a recovering sinner who still struggled with sin. I can identify with that and I'll bet that you can too. Jesus Christ is a real Savior Who died for real people. Jesus doesn’t need holier-than-thou witnesses who pretend to be perfect. If we want people to pay attention to the God Who gets us through the good and bad times of life, we need to be open.
Read verse 20:
"I did not shrink from doing anything helpful, proclaiming the message to you and teaching you publicly from house to house..."
The key words here: Be helpful. As you know, my brother Marty is a fledgling comedian. He does a regular gig at a Columbus restaurant. Recently, a man told him, “You know, Marty, I’m not a Christian. But I really respect the way you live your faith.” The man recalled an incident from several weeks before in which Marty stepped in and defended an atheist who was being condemned by some so-called Christians. Marty was helpful and because of that, there’s a good chance that the man who approached him–as well as that atheist he defended–might become open to hearing more about Jesus.
Next, verse 21:
"...as I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus."
If you and I are going to fulfill our God-given call to share Jesus with others, we need to heed these key words: Be prepared.
A woman named Marnie prayed to be sensitive to people who needed Jesus Christ. She later visited an elderly friend named Jim in the hospital. She was tongue tied and simply told Jim that God loved him. Jim wanted to hear more, but Marnie simply didn’t know what to say. A few weeks later, Jim was feeling better and at the end of a telephone conversation with Marnie, said, “Tell God, hi.” Marnie could see that Jim felt far from God and she knew that God wants to have a close relationship with everyone. How could she give that gift to him? Well, simply, we can’t give away what we don’t have. Marnie realized that to be prepared for her God-given mission, she needed to get to know God intimately herself. So, she began to pray and read God’s Word each day. Just like us, Marnie didn’t get to know all the answers. But she did get to know the One Who does know all the answers and so was able to share Christ with others.
Verse 21 also points out another principle. If we’re to fulfill our mission from God, we need to: Befriend non-believers and people you may not even personally like. Paul reached out to Greeks, a first century Judean word for non-Jews or Gentiles, as well as the people he would more readily like and identify with, his fellow Jews.
A member of this congregation recently revealed that he had decided to invite some guy he never liked to do something with him. Our member is militating against his own emotions in order to embrace Christ’s mission of sharing Christ even with someone he doesn’t like.
One thing I always think about is this: If God loves me in spite of my many sins and faults and annoying habits, I can lay aside my prejudices and impatience with people in order to love them a little bit as I’m loved by God.
Read verse 24 with me:
"But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the Good News of God’s grace."
The key words here: Be perseverant. It’s always too early to give up on helping people move from hell to heaven.
Bill Fay owned one of the largest houses of prostitution in America. One day, he saw a man that he thought looked Jewish in the locker room of the health club where they both were members. It was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and Fay asked the man sarcastically why he wasn’t doing his religious duty. Paul Grant, a physician, explained that he was in fact ethnically Jewish, but he was a follower of Jesus Christ and that because of his faith in Christ, he knew that all his sins had been atoned for. Fay dismissed Grant’s words. For months after that, Fay, a man with ties to the mob, would pepper Paul Grant with sarcasm and putdowns.
A year-and-a-half after their first encounter, Fay’s “business” was shut down. The only telephone calls he got were from men concerned that in the investigations, their names would be discovered. That is, all except for one person who was calling him regularly: Paul Grant. Each time he called, he asked Bill Fay, “Are you OK?” Some weeks later, Grant and his wife invited Fay to their home. Fay got the shock of his life when Grant’s wife, Kathie, a woman who seemed as innocent and wholesome as June Cleaver told him about how Christ had turned her from His enemy to His friend. He never would have guessed that she had been abused as a child or had once been an Indonesian oil baron’s mistress.
You might imagine that with that dramatic testimony, Bill Fay would have given his life to Jesus Christ right that moment. But it wasn’t until another year-and-a-half later, that he came to faith in Christ. We need to not give up on our mission of changing people’s lives by sharing Jesus with them!
No matter what our jobs, God has given us five major purposes for living. None of them is more important than sharing Christ with people who will be separated from God forever unless they receive Jesus Christ. In our missions, we aren’t guaranteed success. Not everyone will follow Christ. But unless we do share Christ, failure is guaranteed. So, let’s commit ourselves to God’s purposes for our lives, including telling others the most wonderful news any of us can ever know: the Good News of new life that belongs to all who follow Jesus!
[The true stories of Marnie and of Bill Fay appear in Bill Fay's book, Share Jesus Without Fear, co-authored with Linda Evans Shepherd. This series of messages was inspired by the book, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. While I don't agree with everything Warren says in his book, it is great.]
Your Mission, Sharing Christ with Others
Acts 20:17-24
(Shared with the people of Friendship Church, October 12, 2003)
Today, we’ve come to the final installment of messages on Purpose Driven Living. So far, we’ve talked about four of God’s major purposes for our living:
loving God all the time;
being loving participants in the life of Christ’s family, the Church;
opening ourselves to God’s discipline and guidance to become more like Jesus;
and serving others in Jesus’ Name.
The first three purposes for our lives are the tools by which God makes positive change in us.
The last two–ministry and the purpose on which we’re focusing today–are the means by which God uses us to positively change the lives those we touch.
God’s fifth major purpose for us is sharing Jesus Christ with others so that, like us, they can turn from sin and receive Him as the God and Boss of their lives and because of Him, live with God forever. The one word summary of this is mission.
Time and time again, Jesus and the writers of the New Testament make it clear that you and I are to be His witnesses. Dotted throughout the footnotes for today’s worship celebration program, you’ll find references to many of these passages. Because of the importance of our mission as followers of Jesus, Rick Warren, author of The Purpose Driven Life, saves his most provocative sentences for the section of his book that deals with sharing Jesus Christ with others. Listen to two of them:
“This commission [to tell others about Jesus] was given to every follower of Jesus, not to pastors and missionaries alone.” [p.283]
“The church that doesn’t want to grow [by inviting others to know and follow Christ] is saying to the world, ‘You can go to hell.’” [[295]
But being a witness for Jesus isn’t just, or even mostly, something that God commands of us. Being a witness for Jesus is also a privilege for us. We're God's co-workers. And we're God's agents. A passage in the New Testament portion of the Bible says:
"So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making His appeal through us..." (Second Corinthians 5:20)
The fifth purpose for all of our lives is to share Christ.
But how do we do that?
Our Bible lesson comes from the New Testament book of Acts. Acts, as Amy mentioned in the introduction to the lesson, is the story of the first century church from the time of the risen Jesus’ ascension to heaven. Our lesson records a meeting between the preacher and evangelist Paul, who faces the probability of being killed for his faith in Jesus, and the people of a church he started in the city of Ephesus. In it, we find five helpful hints for sharing Christ with others. Please turn to the Bible lesson in the bulletin and get ready to read the verses I mention out loud with me. Five hints for sharing Christ with others...
Read Paul’s words from verses 18 and 19 with me:
“You yourselves know how I lived among you the entire time from the first day that I set foot in Asia, serving the Lord with all humility and with tears, enduring the trials that came to me through the plots of the Jews..."
The key watchwords here are: Be open. Paul, like you, had a day job. He worked as a tentmaker. He lived like other people and was open about it. He didn’t pretend to be anything he wasn’t. But unlike many Christians these days who try to blend in with the woodwork, he also didn’t pretend that Jesus wasn’t his savior. More than that, he didn’t pretend that as a person of faith, he didn’t confront adversity or the reality of his own sins. He let people see his tears and personal faults. One of my favorite writings of Paul appears in Romans 7, where he openly talks about being a sinner who resolves to do right, but often does wrong. Paul knew that he was a recovering sinner who still struggled with sin. I can identify with that and I'll bet that you can too. Jesus Christ is a real Savior Who died for real people. Jesus doesn’t need holier-than-thou witnesses who pretend to be perfect. If we want people to pay attention to the God Who gets us through the good and bad times of life, we need to be open.
Read verse 20:
"I did not shrink from doing anything helpful, proclaiming the message to you and teaching you publicly from house to house..."
The key words here: Be helpful. As you know, my brother Marty is a fledgling comedian. He does a regular gig at a Columbus restaurant. Recently, a man told him, “You know, Marty, I’m not a Christian. But I really respect the way you live your faith.” The man recalled an incident from several weeks before in which Marty stepped in and defended an atheist who was being condemned by some so-called Christians. Marty was helpful and because of that, there’s a good chance that the man who approached him–as well as that atheist he defended–might become open to hearing more about Jesus.
Next, verse 21:
"...as I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus."
If you and I are going to fulfill our God-given call to share Jesus with others, we need to heed these key words: Be prepared.
A woman named Marnie prayed to be sensitive to people who needed Jesus Christ. She later visited an elderly friend named Jim in the hospital. She was tongue tied and simply told Jim that God loved him. Jim wanted to hear more, but Marnie simply didn’t know what to say. A few weeks later, Jim was feeling better and at the end of a telephone conversation with Marnie, said, “Tell God, hi.” Marnie could see that Jim felt far from God and she knew that God wants to have a close relationship with everyone. How could she give that gift to him? Well, simply, we can’t give away what we don’t have. Marnie realized that to be prepared for her God-given mission, she needed to get to know God intimately herself. So, she began to pray and read God’s Word each day. Just like us, Marnie didn’t get to know all the answers. But she did get to know the One Who does know all the answers and so was able to share Christ with others.
Verse 21 also points out another principle. If we’re to fulfill our mission from God, we need to: Befriend non-believers and people you may not even personally like. Paul reached out to Greeks, a first century Judean word for non-Jews or Gentiles, as well as the people he would more readily like and identify with, his fellow Jews.
A member of this congregation recently revealed that he had decided to invite some guy he never liked to do something with him. Our member is militating against his own emotions in order to embrace Christ’s mission of sharing Christ even with someone he doesn’t like.
One thing I always think about is this: If God loves me in spite of my many sins and faults and annoying habits, I can lay aside my prejudices and impatience with people in order to love them a little bit as I’m loved by God.
Read verse 24 with me:
"But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the Good News of God’s grace."
The key words here: Be perseverant. It’s always too early to give up on helping people move from hell to heaven.
Bill Fay owned one of the largest houses of prostitution in America. One day, he saw a man that he thought looked Jewish in the locker room of the health club where they both were members. It was Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement, and Fay asked the man sarcastically why he wasn’t doing his religious duty. Paul Grant, a physician, explained that he was in fact ethnically Jewish, but he was a follower of Jesus Christ and that because of his faith in Christ, he knew that all his sins had been atoned for. Fay dismissed Grant’s words. For months after that, Fay, a man with ties to the mob, would pepper Paul Grant with sarcasm and putdowns.
A year-and-a-half after their first encounter, Fay’s “business” was shut down. The only telephone calls he got were from men concerned that in the investigations, their names would be discovered. That is, all except for one person who was calling him regularly: Paul Grant. Each time he called, he asked Bill Fay, “Are you OK?” Some weeks later, Grant and his wife invited Fay to their home. Fay got the shock of his life when Grant’s wife, Kathie, a woman who seemed as innocent and wholesome as June Cleaver told him about how Christ had turned her from His enemy to His friend. He never would have guessed that she had been abused as a child or had once been an Indonesian oil baron’s mistress.
You might imagine that with that dramatic testimony, Bill Fay would have given his life to Jesus Christ right that moment. But it wasn’t until another year-and-a-half later, that he came to faith in Christ. We need to not give up on our mission of changing people’s lives by sharing Jesus with them!
No matter what our jobs, God has given us five major purposes for living. None of them is more important than sharing Christ with people who will be separated from God forever unless they receive Jesus Christ. In our missions, we aren’t guaranteed success. Not everyone will follow Christ. But unless we do share Christ, failure is guaranteed. So, let’s commit ourselves to God’s purposes for our lives, including telling others the most wonderful news any of us can ever know: the Good News of new life that belongs to all who follow Jesus!
[The true stories of Marnie and of Bill Fay appear in Bill Fay's book, Share Jesus Without Fear, co-authored with Linda Evans Shepherd. This series of messages was inspired by the book, The Purpose Driven Life by Rick Warren. While I don't agree with everything Warren says in his book, it is great.]
Friday, October 10, 2003
Are You Foolish Enough for Faith?
[This the latest installment of a column called Better Living, which I write for our local community newspaper.]
God is looking for a few fools. Are you willing to be one of them?
My wife, our two kids, and I arrived in Clermont County, where we still live, thirteen years ago. We came to start a new congregation. We'd been called to do that by our denomination and we thought it was what God wanted us to do. The denomination provided us with a house–later purchased by the congregation we started, Friendship Church, and later still, purchased by Ann and me. For a few years, our denomination also gave some financial support.
We knew a total of six people in the area. There was no congregation. There was no church building. There was no church bank account.
Often, in those early days, people spoke to me in tones usually reserved for those whose minds have been clouded by dementia. People thought I was crazy to have left a secure and fulfilling pastorate of a thriving congregation in northwestern Ohio in order to start a new church with no certainty of success.
The ones most convinced of my craziness were other pastors. Most seemed convinced that there was no way a new church could be started in Amelia or Clermont County. They either thought that there were too many churches already, not enough people, or that nobody would want a Lutheran church around. "It'll never get off the ground," one told me, "but I guess you should be credited for trying."
All these people were right. I was crazy and with God's help, I'll always stay a little crazy. The God made known to the world through Jesus Christ gets things done through people who are crazy enough to follow Him. The first century preacher and evangelist Paul told a church he'd started that he and his colleagues, "...are fools for the sake of Christ" (First Corinthians 4:10).
But here's where people were wrong about my sanity. They all assumed that there are places where God is absent, situations in which God is impotent or incapable or unwilling to bless us. But as long as we're "crazy" enough to follow God, God can reach us with His blessings.
In the Bible, ancient King David writes, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol [the place of the dead in Hebrew thought], You are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me..." (Psalm 139:7-10).
And Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, spectacularly promises all who dare to follow Him: "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).
Do you have any places or circumstances in your life that could be improved with God's presence?
A marriage that isn't working?
A child you can't seem to reach?
A dream that neither goes away or seems within your grasping?
Whatever the circumstance, be crazy enough to believe that God can be with you and cares about you and will help you. Call on God in the Name of Jesus Christ for His help and presence. Promise that you'll be faithful to God and then find a church home where you can be encouraged in your faith. God will always answer those kinds of prayers.
God doesn't promise that we'll be successful in every thing we try to do with his help. Our prayers won't always be answered in the ways we envision. But we can know that God is for us, no matter what happens. I believe, for example, that God still would have been with me and loved me even if He hadn't caused Friendship Church to grow and to thrive.
But no matter how personally strong we may be, no matter how resourceful, intelligent, or physically durable, until we're crazy enough to lean on God, we'll never experience all that this life has to offer. And until we ask the God Who comes to us in Jesus Christ into our lives, we'll never experience how great it is to live each day knowing that forever and always, we belong to an eternal God!
[This the latest installment of a column called Better Living, which I write for our local community newspaper.]
God is looking for a few fools. Are you willing to be one of them?
My wife, our two kids, and I arrived in Clermont County, where we still live, thirteen years ago. We came to start a new congregation. We'd been called to do that by our denomination and we thought it was what God wanted us to do. The denomination provided us with a house–later purchased by the congregation we started, Friendship Church, and later still, purchased by Ann and me. For a few years, our denomination also gave some financial support.
We knew a total of six people in the area. There was no congregation. There was no church building. There was no church bank account.
Often, in those early days, people spoke to me in tones usually reserved for those whose minds have been clouded by dementia. People thought I was crazy to have left a secure and fulfilling pastorate of a thriving congregation in northwestern Ohio in order to start a new church with no certainty of success.
The ones most convinced of my craziness were other pastors. Most seemed convinced that there was no way a new church could be started in Amelia or Clermont County. They either thought that there were too many churches already, not enough people, or that nobody would want a Lutheran church around. "It'll never get off the ground," one told me, "but I guess you should be credited for trying."
All these people were right. I was crazy and with God's help, I'll always stay a little crazy. The God made known to the world through Jesus Christ gets things done through people who are crazy enough to follow Him. The first century preacher and evangelist Paul told a church he'd started that he and his colleagues, "...are fools for the sake of Christ" (First Corinthians 4:10).
But here's where people were wrong about my sanity. They all assumed that there are places where God is absent, situations in which God is impotent or incapable or unwilling to bless us. But as long as we're "crazy" enough to follow God, God can reach us with His blessings.
In the Bible, ancient King David writes, "Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there; if I make my bed in Sheol [the place of the dead in Hebrew thought], You are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me..." (Psalm 139:7-10).
And Jesus, God-in-the-flesh, spectacularly promises all who dare to follow Him: "I am with you always, to the end of the age" (Matthew 28:20).
Do you have any places or circumstances in your life that could be improved with God's presence?
A marriage that isn't working?
A child you can't seem to reach?
A dream that neither goes away or seems within your grasping?
Whatever the circumstance, be crazy enough to believe that God can be with you and cares about you and will help you. Call on God in the Name of Jesus Christ for His help and presence. Promise that you'll be faithful to God and then find a church home where you can be encouraged in your faith. God will always answer those kinds of prayers.
God doesn't promise that we'll be successful in every thing we try to do with his help. Our prayers won't always be answered in the ways we envision. But we can know that God is for us, no matter what happens. I believe, for example, that God still would have been with me and loved me even if He hadn't caused Friendship Church to grow and to thrive.
But no matter how personally strong we may be, no matter how resourceful, intelligent, or physically durable, until we're crazy enough to lean on God, we'll never experience all that this life has to offer. And until we ask the God Who comes to us in Jesus Christ into our lives, we'll never experience how great it is to live each day knowing that forever and always, we belong to an eternal God!
Sunday, October 05, 2003
Purpose Driven Living:
Service to God and Neighbor,
Put on Earth to Make a Contribution
Matthew 20:17-28
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, October 5, 2003)
A young woman was doing her college application when she read this question: “Are you a leader?” She felt she needed to be honest and so she answered, “No.” When she dropped her application into the mailbox, she was certain that her answer would result in her being rejected by the college. But a short time later, she got a reply that said, “We have reviewed numerous applications and, to date, there will be some 1, 452 new leaders attending school next year. We have decided to accept your application because we felt it was imperative that they have at least one follower.”
Everybody wants to be a leader. But few want to be followers. Everybody wants to bark out orders. But few want to serve.
Ever since sin infected the whole human race, that’s been true. One day during His time on earth, Jesus pulled His closest followers–the twelve we call apostles–aside. He had something He needed to share with them, a private tutorial. One can only imagine the intense emotion that the God-Man Jesus was going through as He told His closest friends on earth what was going to happen.
“We’re going to Jerusalem,” Jesus says. “There, I’m going to be rejected by the religious leaders and the people. The Roman government will go along with their sentiments and kill me, exacting My life on a cross. On the third day, I’ll rise again, offering life and hope to a human race that, without faith in Me, lives under an eternal death sentence. But through Me, people can live forever with God!”
That’s a dramatic announcement! But the disciples, caught up in their own selfish personal agendas, are oblivious to the tortures and death that Jesus says He will undergo. They’re even oblivious to the incredible promise of a resurrection for all with faith in Him. Instead, two of Jesus’ followers–James and John, grown men–send their mommy to make a request of Jesus. Apparently viewing Jesus as some rising superstar, she says, “When you pull off your beer hall putsch, Jesus...when you win this recall by overwhelming numbers...when you’ve scored the top box office smash... become the number one requested hit on TRL...when all the power, cash, and popularity are yours, could you see to it that my boys are your Cheney and Rumsfeld, one on your right and one on your left?” This woman may have been the prototypical tennis mom, vicariously climbing the ladder of success and fame through her boys. But Jesus looks past her and right at James and John. “You two are clueless!” Jesus tells them. Then He asks, “Do you have the capacity to drink the same bitter cup I’m going to swallow?” By this, Jesus meant, “Can you take the hatred of the masses, the beating, the tortures of the cross, the denial of the self for the love of God and others?” Oblivious still, James and John breezily say, “No problem.”
Jesus lets that pass except to say that as they follow Him, they will taste the same cup. Following Jesus means parting with our own agendas and timetables...it means letting God call the shots in our lives...it means letting go of all those sins that are so fun to commit...it means dying to ourselves and putting the God we know through Jesus in first place. It means moving from God is My Co-Pilot to God is My Pilot, My Plane, My Flight Plan, My Control Tower, My FAA, My Master, My Boss, My Dictator, My King. And even after we’ve dared to make ourselves completely subservient to Jesus, He doesn’t promise us front row seats on the fifty yard line of heaven. To James and John He says, “I can’t promise you two that you will be right next to Me in the Kingdom. That’s up to God the Father.”
And then Jesus speaks words that every one who would follow Him should have emblazoned on their memories:
"...whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man [that’s Jesus] came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at living our lives according to God’s purposes. Up until now, we’ve talked about three major purposes God has for every human being.
First, we’re to worship God with our whole lives.
Second, we’re to cultivate our capacity for loving others by living in deep fellowship and mutual support with the people of the Church.
Third, we’re to put our lives at God’s disposal and let Him work on making us more like Christ.
God’s fourth purpose for us finds us moving from a strong foundation of faith and relationship with God out into the world. Like Jesus, Who came, He says in today’s lesson, to serve and to give, God calls us to do the same. God’s fourth purpose is for us is to serve and to give to others in Jesus’ Name. We’re to be servants.
Giving of ourselves is so contrary to the world’s value system that it scares us. It scares me. It seems unsafe. If I give too much of myself, will there be anything left for me? Author Steve Smith tells about a man who decided to live a safe life. He didn’t love too much because love cost too much and when you love intensely, you may be hurt. He didn’t dream too much because dreaming can bring disappointment. He didn’t serve too much because when you serve, you can get your hands dirty and you can get involved in other people’s troubles. When he died, he showed his life to God—“undiminished, unmarred, and unsoiled by the messiness of a fallen world.” He told God, “Here’s my life, Lord!” And God said, “Life? What life?”
Rick Warren, in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, cites a Danish proverb that tells us, “What you are is God’s gift to you; what you do with your life is your gift to God.” The first three purposes for living that we’ve looked at these past few weeks are all about God helping us to become our best selves. Think of them as the tools by which God turns Jesus-followers into sparkling Ferraris. A Ferrari is a high-toned, first-class vehicle that looks good and can do incredible things on the open road. But if you never slip the key into a Ferrari’s ignition and step on the accelerator, it is as worthless as an engineless AMC Pacer resting on concrete blocks. Warren says, “We are saved to serve.” Christ died and rose for us so that with our lives changed, we can serve God and our neighbor now and in eternity. For the person who has received Jesus Christ as their God and King, this world is not like Bill Knapp’s Restaurant; it isn’t heaven’s waiting room. We have things to do. Followers of Jesus are called to serve and to give!
The president of Trinity Lutheran Seminary when I was there was a man named Fred Meuser. He once told us, “As you grow older and the kids leave the house, you’ll probably find yourselves saving a little more money. But promise yourselves that you won’t leave everything to your kids. Parents who do that don’t do their children any favors. I’ve seen it ruin many people’s lives. Instead, give as much of it away as you possibly can.” Fred obviously believes that the call to give and serve applies to more than just our money. Recently, I saw a picture of him and his wife, now a decade-and-a-half into their retirement, in front of the Florida elementary school where they do volunteer tutoring.
Shortly before she died, columnist Erma Bombeck wrote a column entitled, “What’s saved is often lost.” Other than our relationships with God and with others, there is nothing that we own. Our minds, our health, our abilities, our money, our possessions, our positions—all of these have been put into our hands by God and God expects us certainly, to take care of ourselves and our families with them. But more than that, God expects us to use all of His gifts to us to serve and to give to others. If you’re waiting for the right time to serve and to give, be assured that right now is the right time for a life of service because right now is all that any of us is guaranteed. Andrew Carnegie, one of the wealthiest men who ever lived, made it his goal to give away all of his money before he died. “The man who dies rich,” he said, “dies disgraced.” The same can be said of any of us who haven’t spent our lives serving and giving in the Name of Jesus. We who know Jesus are blessed to live each day in the certainty that, whether we live or die, our sins are forgiven, God is with us through good and bad times, and we are going to live with God forever.
That changes our perspective. I was struck a few years ago when I thanked Debbie Snoke for something that she’d done for the congregation. She told me that she appreciated my thanks and reminded me that she hadn’t done it for me; she’d done it for the Lord.
A poet named David Whyte has written, “I don’t want to have written on my tombstone, when people finally struggle through the weeds, pull back the moss, and read the inscription there, ‘He made his car payments.’” There is so much more to living than shuffling through each day like joyless automatons. All who follow Jesus have been pulled from the pit of death and sin. We’re called to live just like our Lord, to serve and give so that the people around us begin to see the Jesus in us and want Jesus too. We’re called to serve and give so that we live according to God’s purposes and start to live like people made in God’s image are meant to live–in real-life, gut-level love for others. Why would any of us choose to be totaled Pacers when we could be Ferraris roaring down the open road? Today, tell God that you want to be a Ferrari. You want to live a life like Jesus, a life of serving and of giving...the kind of life that matters for all eternity!
[The quotes from David Whyte, Andrew Carnegie, Erma Bombeck, and Steve Smith come from Leonard Sweet's wonderful book, SoulSalsa. The story of the young woman applying to college comes from the e-mailed inspirations authored by Steve Goodier. All other quotes are cited in the body of the message.]
Service to God and Neighbor,
Put on Earth to Make a Contribution
Matthew 20:17-28
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, October 5, 2003)
A young woman was doing her college application when she read this question: “Are you a leader?” She felt she needed to be honest and so she answered, “No.” When she dropped her application into the mailbox, she was certain that her answer would result in her being rejected by the college. But a short time later, she got a reply that said, “We have reviewed numerous applications and, to date, there will be some 1, 452 new leaders attending school next year. We have decided to accept your application because we felt it was imperative that they have at least one follower.”
Everybody wants to be a leader. But few want to be followers. Everybody wants to bark out orders. But few want to serve.
Ever since sin infected the whole human race, that’s been true. One day during His time on earth, Jesus pulled His closest followers–the twelve we call apostles–aside. He had something He needed to share with them, a private tutorial. One can only imagine the intense emotion that the God-Man Jesus was going through as He told His closest friends on earth what was going to happen.
“We’re going to Jerusalem,” Jesus says. “There, I’m going to be rejected by the religious leaders and the people. The Roman government will go along with their sentiments and kill me, exacting My life on a cross. On the third day, I’ll rise again, offering life and hope to a human race that, without faith in Me, lives under an eternal death sentence. But through Me, people can live forever with God!”
That’s a dramatic announcement! But the disciples, caught up in their own selfish personal agendas, are oblivious to the tortures and death that Jesus says He will undergo. They’re even oblivious to the incredible promise of a resurrection for all with faith in Him. Instead, two of Jesus’ followers–James and John, grown men–send their mommy to make a request of Jesus. Apparently viewing Jesus as some rising superstar, she says, “When you pull off your beer hall putsch, Jesus...when you win this recall by overwhelming numbers...when you’ve scored the top box office smash... become the number one requested hit on TRL...when all the power, cash, and popularity are yours, could you see to it that my boys are your Cheney and Rumsfeld, one on your right and one on your left?” This woman may have been the prototypical tennis mom, vicariously climbing the ladder of success and fame through her boys. But Jesus looks past her and right at James and John. “You two are clueless!” Jesus tells them. Then He asks, “Do you have the capacity to drink the same bitter cup I’m going to swallow?” By this, Jesus meant, “Can you take the hatred of the masses, the beating, the tortures of the cross, the denial of the self for the love of God and others?” Oblivious still, James and John breezily say, “No problem.”
Jesus lets that pass except to say that as they follow Him, they will taste the same cup. Following Jesus means parting with our own agendas and timetables...it means letting God call the shots in our lives...it means letting go of all those sins that are so fun to commit...it means dying to ourselves and putting the God we know through Jesus in first place. It means moving from God is My Co-Pilot to God is My Pilot, My Plane, My Flight Plan, My Control Tower, My FAA, My Master, My Boss, My Dictator, My King. And even after we’ve dared to make ourselves completely subservient to Jesus, He doesn’t promise us front row seats on the fifty yard line of heaven. To James and John He says, “I can’t promise you two that you will be right next to Me in the Kingdom. That’s up to God the Father.”
And then Jesus speaks words that every one who would follow Him should have emblazoned on their memories:
"...whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave; just as the Son of Man [that’s Jesus] came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many."
Over the past several weeks, we’ve been looking at living our lives according to God’s purposes. Up until now, we’ve talked about three major purposes God has for every human being.
First, we’re to worship God with our whole lives.
Second, we’re to cultivate our capacity for loving others by living in deep fellowship and mutual support with the people of the Church.
Third, we’re to put our lives at God’s disposal and let Him work on making us more like Christ.
God’s fourth purpose for us finds us moving from a strong foundation of faith and relationship with God out into the world. Like Jesus, Who came, He says in today’s lesson, to serve and to give, God calls us to do the same. God’s fourth purpose is for us is to serve and to give to others in Jesus’ Name. We’re to be servants.
Giving of ourselves is so contrary to the world’s value system that it scares us. It scares me. It seems unsafe. If I give too much of myself, will there be anything left for me? Author Steve Smith tells about a man who decided to live a safe life. He didn’t love too much because love cost too much and when you love intensely, you may be hurt. He didn’t dream too much because dreaming can bring disappointment. He didn’t serve too much because when you serve, you can get your hands dirty and you can get involved in other people’s troubles. When he died, he showed his life to God—“undiminished, unmarred, and unsoiled by the messiness of a fallen world.” He told God, “Here’s my life, Lord!” And God said, “Life? What life?”
Rick Warren, in his book, The Purpose Driven Life, cites a Danish proverb that tells us, “What you are is God’s gift to you; what you do with your life is your gift to God.” The first three purposes for living that we’ve looked at these past few weeks are all about God helping us to become our best selves. Think of them as the tools by which God turns Jesus-followers into sparkling Ferraris. A Ferrari is a high-toned, first-class vehicle that looks good and can do incredible things on the open road. But if you never slip the key into a Ferrari’s ignition and step on the accelerator, it is as worthless as an engineless AMC Pacer resting on concrete blocks. Warren says, “We are saved to serve.” Christ died and rose for us so that with our lives changed, we can serve God and our neighbor now and in eternity. For the person who has received Jesus Christ as their God and King, this world is not like Bill Knapp’s Restaurant; it isn’t heaven’s waiting room. We have things to do. Followers of Jesus are called to serve and to give!
The president of Trinity Lutheran Seminary when I was there was a man named Fred Meuser. He once told us, “As you grow older and the kids leave the house, you’ll probably find yourselves saving a little more money. But promise yourselves that you won’t leave everything to your kids. Parents who do that don’t do their children any favors. I’ve seen it ruin many people’s lives. Instead, give as much of it away as you possibly can.” Fred obviously believes that the call to give and serve applies to more than just our money. Recently, I saw a picture of him and his wife, now a decade-and-a-half into their retirement, in front of the Florida elementary school where they do volunteer tutoring.
Shortly before she died, columnist Erma Bombeck wrote a column entitled, “What’s saved is often lost.” Other than our relationships with God and with others, there is nothing that we own. Our minds, our health, our abilities, our money, our possessions, our positions—all of these have been put into our hands by God and God expects us certainly, to take care of ourselves and our families with them. But more than that, God expects us to use all of His gifts to us to serve and to give to others. If you’re waiting for the right time to serve and to give, be assured that right now is the right time for a life of service because right now is all that any of us is guaranteed. Andrew Carnegie, one of the wealthiest men who ever lived, made it his goal to give away all of his money before he died. “The man who dies rich,” he said, “dies disgraced.” The same can be said of any of us who haven’t spent our lives serving and giving in the Name of Jesus. We who know Jesus are blessed to live each day in the certainty that, whether we live or die, our sins are forgiven, God is with us through good and bad times, and we are going to live with God forever.
That changes our perspective. I was struck a few years ago when I thanked Debbie Snoke for something that she’d done for the congregation. She told me that she appreciated my thanks and reminded me that she hadn’t done it for me; she’d done it for the Lord.
A poet named David Whyte has written, “I don’t want to have written on my tombstone, when people finally struggle through the weeds, pull back the moss, and read the inscription there, ‘He made his car payments.’” There is so much more to living than shuffling through each day like joyless automatons. All who follow Jesus have been pulled from the pit of death and sin. We’re called to live just like our Lord, to serve and give so that the people around us begin to see the Jesus in us and want Jesus too. We’re called to serve and give so that we live according to God’s purposes and start to live like people made in God’s image are meant to live–in real-life, gut-level love for others. Why would any of us choose to be totaled Pacers when we could be Ferraris roaring down the open road? Today, tell God that you want to be a Ferrari. You want to live a life like Jesus, a life of serving and of giving...the kind of life that matters for all eternity!
[The quotes from David Whyte, Andrew Carnegie, Erma Bombeck, and Steve Smith come from Leonard Sweet's wonderful book, SoulSalsa. The story of the young woman applying to college comes from the e-mailed inspirations authored by Steve Goodier. All other quotes are cited in the body of the message.]
Saturday, October 04, 2003
Looking for an inspiring speaker who tackles many life issues in a compelling, down-to-earth style? Looking for a motivator who can challenge your organization to be its best? Looking for an evangelist to cap your ministry group's outreach efforts? Consider inviting Mark Daniels to fill one of these roles for you. Contact Mark at FriendCh@aol.com.
This is another inspiration from Pastor Glen VanderKloot of Faith Lutheran Church in Springfield, Illinois. If you'd like to become a regular subscriber to his daily OnLine with Faith, contact him at: pastor@faithlutheran.com.
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A Thought for the Day
"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start,
any one can start from now and make a brand new ending."
- Author Unknown -
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Bible Verse
Lamentations 5:21
Bring us back to you! Give us a fresh start.
Contemporary English Version
Prayer
Lord, help me to make some new endings by starting fresh now. Amen.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
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A Thought for the Day
"Though no one can go back and make a brand new start,
any one can start from now and make a brand new ending."
- Author Unknown -
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Bible Verse
Lamentations 5:21
Bring us back to you! Give us a fresh start.
Contemporary English Version
Prayer
Lord, help me to make some new endings by starting fresh now. Amen.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Friday, October 03, 2003
The Perseverant God
[This is another installment of a column I write for the Community Press newspapers in Cincinnati.]
My family and I recently joined a local gym. Following my workouts each day, it seems that a different body part is sore. The only thing that keeps me going is my goal of being healthier and stronger, taking care of my body as a gift from God.
In the Bible’s New Testament, a man named Paul notes the self-discipline required of athletes and says that as a follower of Jesus Christ, he tries to “run” his life with the same sort of self-control. “I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others [the Good News of an eternally changed life through the crucified and risen Jesus] I myself should not be disqualified,” he says. (First Corinthians 9:27).
Followers of Jesus disqualify themselves from life with God when they tune God out, self-indulgently living only for themselves, refusing to turn back to God for forgiveness and the power to live the high-quality lives God wants to give all people.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” the Bible says. (Romans 8:1) Forgiveness and everlasting life are God’s gifts to all who follow Jesus. But in a world full of little gods vying for our time and our allegiance, it’s easy to wander away from Christ (James 5:19-20). Like athletes who remember their real goal in life, Jesus-followers need perseverant self-control: doing things that help them in their goal of living with God, avoiding things that distract them from that goal.
In commending perseverance to us, God doesn’t ask us to do anything that He isn’t willing to do Himself. In fact, “perseverant” is one of many words that aptly describes God.
God never gives up on us! And God displays incredible discipline, focus, and supreme self-control in pursuing His mission of living forever with the children He’s made in His own image. The whole Bible is the story of how God has focused His attention and energy on winning us back so that we can live with Him forever.
Most incredibly, God became a human being in the Person of Jesus just so He could take our rightful death sentence for sin. Although on the night before His execution on a cross Jesus understandably wished that there could be some other way of accomplishing this mission, He persevered. He went to the cross. As a result, the Bible says, Jesus has “the Name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).
When I think of God’s perseverant love for a sinner like me, I’m overwhelmed. I know that whether by thought, word, action, or all three, I have violated every one of God’s commandments. I am a sinner. But God has never given up on me or on you!
The perseverant God we know through Jesus Christ wants a relationship with you. If you’ve never done so before, you can talk to God right now and tell God, “Lord, I want to turn away from sin and everlasting separation from You and receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and God. Because of what Jesus has done for me on the cross, I ask Your forgiveness and I ask You to give me a new life. I also ask You to live inside of me so that I have the power to persevere in following You my whole life and into eternity.” Then to help you persevere in following Jesus–even after you sin–find a church home where you can serve God and others and where you can be encouraged to keep following the God Who loves you completely.
[Mark Daniels is pastor of Friendship Church, 1300 White Oak Road in Pierce Township.]
[This is another installment of a column I write for the Community Press newspapers in Cincinnati.]
My family and I recently joined a local gym. Following my workouts each day, it seems that a different body part is sore. The only thing that keeps me going is my goal of being healthier and stronger, taking care of my body as a gift from God.
In the Bible’s New Testament, a man named Paul notes the self-discipline required of athletes and says that as a follower of Jesus Christ, he tries to “run” his life with the same sort of self-control. “I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others [the Good News of an eternally changed life through the crucified and risen Jesus] I myself should not be disqualified,” he says. (First Corinthians 9:27).
Followers of Jesus disqualify themselves from life with God when they tune God out, self-indulgently living only for themselves, refusing to turn back to God for forgiveness and the power to live the high-quality lives God wants to give all people.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” the Bible says. (Romans 8:1) Forgiveness and everlasting life are God’s gifts to all who follow Jesus. But in a world full of little gods vying for our time and our allegiance, it’s easy to wander away from Christ (James 5:19-20). Like athletes who remember their real goal in life, Jesus-followers need perseverant self-control: doing things that help them in their goal of living with God, avoiding things that distract them from that goal.
In commending perseverance to us, God doesn’t ask us to do anything that He isn’t willing to do Himself. In fact, “perseverant” is one of many words that aptly describes God.
God never gives up on us! And God displays incredible discipline, focus, and supreme self-control in pursuing His mission of living forever with the children He’s made in His own image. The whole Bible is the story of how God has focused His attention and energy on winning us back so that we can live with Him forever.
Most incredibly, God became a human being in the Person of Jesus just so He could take our rightful death sentence for sin. Although on the night before His execution on a cross Jesus understandably wished that there could be some other way of accomplishing this mission, He persevered. He went to the cross. As a result, the Bible says, Jesus has “the Name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).
When I think of God’s perseverant love for a sinner like me, I’m overwhelmed. I know that whether by thought, word, action, or all three, I have violated every one of God’s commandments. I am a sinner. But God has never given up on me or on you!
The perseverant God we know through Jesus Christ wants a relationship with you. If you’ve never done so before, you can talk to God right now and tell God, “Lord, I want to turn away from sin and everlasting separation from You and receive Jesus Christ as my Lord and God. Because of what Jesus has done for me on the cross, I ask Your forgiveness and I ask You to give me a new life. I also ask You to live inside of me so that I have the power to persevere in following You my whole life and into eternity.” Then to help you persevere in following Jesus–even after you sin–find a church home where you can serve God and others and where you can be encouraged to keep following the God Who loves you completely.
[Mark Daniels is pastor of Friendship Church, 1300 White Oak Road in Pierce Township.]
The following is an e-mailed inspiration that came to me recently from my colleague, Pastor Glen VanderKloot. His daily OnLine with Faith is something I highly recommend. You can make sure that you receive these inspirational readings every day by contacting Glen at: pastor@faithlutheran.com.
*****************************************************
A Thought for the Day
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch,
a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment,
or the smallest act of caring,
all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
- Leo Buscaglia -
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Bible Verse
Mark 10:16
Then Jesus took the children in his arms
and blessed them by placing his hands on them.
Contemporary English Version
Prayer
Lord, help me to touch the lives of others with a simple touch, or smile. Amen.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
*****************************************************
A Thought for the Day
"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch,
a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment,
or the smallest act of caring,
all of which have the potential to turn a life around."
- Leo Buscaglia -
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Bible Verse
Mark 10:16
Then Jesus took the children in his arms
and blessed them by placing his hands on them.
Contemporary English Version
Prayer
Lord, help me to touch the lives of others with a simple touch, or smile. Amen.
+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
Tuesday, September 30, 2003
QUOTE FOR TODAY: "The Lord of the Rings is a fundamentally religious and Catholic work; unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. It was my desire to stay theologically orthodox that led me to avoid being too specific, despite the biblical parallels in the creation story...That is why I have not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like 'religion,' to cults or practices, in the imaginary world...For the religious element is absorbed into the story and into the symbolism." J.R.R. Tolkien, in a 1953 letter to friend, Father Robert Murray, just before book one was published, cited on one of the coolest web sites around, www.thunderstruck.com.
The Ten Commandments Controversy
[This is my most recent column, written for the Community Press newspapers of suburban Cincinnati]
Recently, news outlets have been full of controversy over the removal of a monument commemorating the Ten Commandments at an Alabama court house. Some Christians, exercised over this event, went to Alabama to protest. They seem to have thought that in doing so, they were being witnesses for their faith in Christ, helping others to know and follow Him. If that was their aim, I believe that they missed their target completely.
In fact, I believe that by their protest, they gave more harm to the cause of Jesus than help.
Those of us who follow Jesus Christ believe that He was not simply a man; Jesus was also God, the same God Who gave the Ten Commandments. And nowhere in the New Testament, which records Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, can you find a place where Jesus demanded that the government under which He lived erect a monument to His particular religious beliefs.
Jesus never used the levers of governmental power to gain followers. Coercing others into acquiescence to Him just wasn't His way. Once, Jesus and His closest followers came upon a town whose residents refused to let them in. They didn't like Jesus at all. Jesus' followers had just returned from successful mission trips in which the power of God had worked in their favor. The times after such successes can be spiritually dangerous periods for Christians. That's because we're often prone to thinking that the good we accomplish comes from us rather than from God. That was apparently the problem of two of Jesus' followers, James and John, who had an idea. They asked Jesus, "How'd you like us to call fire down from heaven on this town?" Jesus rejected their offer.
Jesus was too busy loving, preaching, teaching, praying, giving, worshiping, healing, and serving to get caught up in needless controversies or to force Himself on others. He knew that you can't win people's allegiances or their hearts by forcing them to acknowledge your religion. He knew that people can only be truly won to His cause through the power of God's tough and tender love.
Jesus has given all His followers a simple mission. We're to help others come to trust Him with their lives so that through faith in Jesus, they can live forever with God. If a Christian's aim is to fulfill that mission, then forcing our fellow citizens to erect and maintain monuments to our faith is not the way to go.
We only win others to Christ in the same way Jesus won us over. Confident in God's powerful love, we rely on God to use our collective loving, preaching, teaching, praying, giving, worshiping, healing, and serving to work the miracle of faith in people's hearts. Such gentle strategies may not be as flashy as carrying placards or spouting self-righteous slogans that put us on the nightly news.
But in the end, it's those strategies that change hearts, change minds, change lives, and change where people spend eternity.
[This is my most recent column, written for the Community Press newspapers of suburban Cincinnati]
Recently, news outlets have been full of controversy over the removal of a monument commemorating the Ten Commandments at an Alabama court house. Some Christians, exercised over this event, went to Alabama to protest. They seem to have thought that in doing so, they were being witnesses for their faith in Christ, helping others to know and follow Him. If that was their aim, I believe that they missed their target completely.
In fact, I believe that by their protest, they gave more harm to the cause of Jesus than help.
Those of us who follow Jesus Christ believe that He was not simply a man; Jesus was also God, the same God Who gave the Ten Commandments. And nowhere in the New Testament, which records Jesus' life, death, and resurrection, can you find a place where Jesus demanded that the government under which He lived erect a monument to His particular religious beliefs.
Jesus never used the levers of governmental power to gain followers. Coercing others into acquiescence to Him just wasn't His way. Once, Jesus and His closest followers came upon a town whose residents refused to let them in. They didn't like Jesus at all. Jesus' followers had just returned from successful mission trips in which the power of God had worked in their favor. The times after such successes can be spiritually dangerous periods for Christians. That's because we're often prone to thinking that the good we accomplish comes from us rather than from God. That was apparently the problem of two of Jesus' followers, James and John, who had an idea. They asked Jesus, "How'd you like us to call fire down from heaven on this town?" Jesus rejected their offer.
Jesus was too busy loving, preaching, teaching, praying, giving, worshiping, healing, and serving to get caught up in needless controversies or to force Himself on others. He knew that you can't win people's allegiances or their hearts by forcing them to acknowledge your religion. He knew that people can only be truly won to His cause through the power of God's tough and tender love.
Jesus has given all His followers a simple mission. We're to help others come to trust Him with their lives so that through faith in Jesus, they can live forever with God. If a Christian's aim is to fulfill that mission, then forcing our fellow citizens to erect and maintain monuments to our faith is not the way to go.
We only win others to Christ in the same way Jesus won us over. Confident in God's powerful love, we rely on God to use our collective loving, preaching, teaching, praying, giving, worshiping, healing, and serving to work the miracle of faith in people's hearts. Such gentle strategies may not be as flashy as carrying placards or spouting self-righteous slogans that put us on the nightly news.
But in the end, it's those strategies that change hearts, change minds, change lives, and change where people spend eternity.
Sunday, September 28, 2003
Purpose Driven Living:
Sanctification, Growing Up to Be Like Christ
Ephesians 4:22-24
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, September 28, 2003)
Our son Philip will be graduating from college this coming spring. Because of that, he’s confronted with the same question all of us have faced on the brink of graduation: Now that I have this education, what’s next? So, Phil has decided to be proactive. He’s taking advantage of the free career counseling services offered by his college. In a real sense, he’s decided to take the next step in the process of growing as a human being.
All followers of Jesus Christ confront a similar issue in their lives. Through Jesus Christ, God has given us new lives. Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead so that all who surrender their lives and wills to Jesus can have forgiveness of sin, unshakeable joy, and everlasting life with God. But Jesus followers need to ask ourselves this question: Now that I have this salvation, what’s next?
The answer to that question in the New Testament is answered in many places, in many different phrases. But the New Testament book of Ephesians says that we’re to “grow up in every way into [Christ]” [Ephesians 4:15].
Right now at Friendship, we’re looking at God’s purpose for us as human beings.
The first purpose for all of us to worship God with our whole lives.
The second is to live and grow in loving relationships with our fellow Jesus followers.
The third purpose for us is to submit to the process the Bible calls sanctification. That means to become holy, to be more like Jesus.
Our purpose and our call from God is to keep growing up with Jesus as our model for living.
Sometimes though, I have the feeling that most church folks want just enough of Jesus to avoid going to hell, but not so much of Jesus that it actually changes anything in their lives. These folks seem to view Jesus as eternal fire insurance. What I have learned though, is that followers of Jesus are like diapers: if they don’t get changed regularly, they start to stink. If we’re to fulfill our purpose for living and know the joy that goes with a vital relationship with Christ, we need to grow up.
Growing up in any area of our lives can be a painful, demanding process. So much so that often, people decide that they just will not grow up. I know a man about my age who grew up in a household in which his parents did everything for him. I mean everything. When he got married, he hitched up with a woman who doesn’t mind telling him exactly what he should do and when. She micromanages his calendar, decides what jobs he’ll take, tells him where they’re going to live, has him on a money allowance. At one level, you could say that this guy is doing okay. He and his wife have a decent house. He eats three meals a day. But at nearly age fifty, he is a baby. And this all happened because in some way and at some level of personal consciousness, he made a decision long ago. He decided not to grow up. It was just easier.
The same can be true for us as followers of Christ. We can choose not to grow up. It's easier to make that choice. That's because it’s a daunting thing to say, "With God’s help, I will grow to be more like Jesus."
But today, I want to encourage you not to be afraid of making that commitment! You won’t succeed 100% on this side of your grave. But the struggle to become more like Jesus, to serve Jesus, to move in Jesus’ direction, and according to Jesus’ will is a much better way of living than just going through the motions of life.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the third volume in C.S. Lewis' wonderful Chronicles of Narnia. The whole series is a metaphorical telling of God's salvation of the human race. A lion named Aslan is a Christ-figure who dies for the sins of the people who inhabit an alternative place called Narnia. He's the "son of the Emperor Over the Sea," the emperor being a representation of God the Father.
In this third book, a particularly loathesome boy named Eustace accompanies two of his cousins, who have been to Narnia before, in traveling to that magic land. For many weeks after his arrival, Eustace is selfish and hurtful and petulant. At one point, he goes off by himself and ends up in the seemingly-abandoned lair of a dragon. There, he covetously ogles jewelry and other treasures. He puts one bracelet on his arm and he is turned into a dragon. In this form, he's lonely and miserable and he begins to realize how horrible he has been toward others. In this state of regret, the lion Aslan comes to him and urges Eustace to rid himself of his dragon skin. Eustace takes off several layers. But he doesn't make much progress, representing the futility of our own efforts to improve ourselves on our own steam. Finally, Eustace submits to allowing the lion to tear away his dragon skin, representing our submission to letting Christ take away our sin. It's painful for Eustace at first. But in the end, he is freed to become his new and better self, precisely the process of forgiveness and growth God wants all of us to undergo through Jesus! When we allow Jesus to help us become more like him, our lives are better.
But there’s another good reason you and I should decide to grow up as followers of Jesus. You’ve heard the story before of the man who came upon a construction site and stuck around to watch some brick masons do their job. He called out to one and asked, “What are you doing?” This guy, nose in the mortar, grunted, “I’m laying this row of bricks.” The man asked the next brick mason the same question, “What are you doing?” This second guy looked up and with a smile on his face, “I’m helping to build a great cathedral! Just think of it, for as long as God wants it to be here, this will be a place where people will come to worship and praise God, get His comfort, enjoy being with other believers, commit their marriages to Christ. It’s so neat!” When we decide to become more like Jesus, you and I are doing more than just laying bricks, we’re building for the future! We’re getting ourselves ready for whatever exciting assignments God may have for us in eternity.
So, what exactly does it mean to grow up into Christ? Our Bible lesson for today seems to say that it consists primarily of three things. First, we’re to put away our old sinful ways. We’re to daily turn away from sin and embrace living God’s way. Second, we’re to let Christ renew our minds, our ways of thinking. We need to change our priorities, moving from our me-centered universe to a Christ-centered life. Third, we’re to clothe ourselves in the new identities God gives to followers of Jesus. We’re to let the forgiveness and morality of Jesus cover every part of our lives.
Fine, we might think. But how do I do all that? Rick Warren, in his book The Purpose Driven Life reminds us that there are three ways God routinely helps those who have decided to grow up as Christians to do just that.
First: God uses His Word, the Bible. Last Sunday afternoon, I went to spend some time with my Aunt Betty and cousin Susie, who are living in Cincinnati for a few months. Susie is a very intelligent person. She’s a neonatal intensive care nurse certified in twenty-eight states and she contracts to work in various hospitals for several months at a time. But in the course of our conversation, she told me that she had just bought a new VCR-DVD combo and couldn’t figure out how to install it. As we pulled out the box, I asked her, “Did you read the instructions?” She laughed and said, “Of course not!” I told her that may have been her first mistake.
God has given us an instruction manual for life. Everything we need to know for living our lives at their optimal levels can be found in the Bible. Let me say this bluntly. If you aren’t taking the time to read God’s Word each and every day, there is no way you will ever grow up as a follower of Jesus. There is no way you’ll be able to rightly interpret the challenges you confront in life. Temptations and tragedies will blindside you.
You may say, “I don’t have the time.” I sometimes say the same thing myself. But you know what that is? It’s an excuse. A young mother in our congregation who also works has a demanding schedule. But she takes the time she has–in the parking lot of her place of employment fifteen minutes before everyone else arrives–to read what God has to say to her that day. God wants to bless you through the Bible and we need to make the time for that to happen!
Second: God uses people to help us grow. Sometimes they confront. Sometimes they comfort. Sometimes they do both. One night in my seminary days, I was really angry at a group of people who I felt had taken advantage of me. My mentor, Pastor Schein, happened to see me in this mood. When he asked me what was wrong, I was at first going to say nothing. But he wouldn’t put up with my evasiveness. “Are you going to let that stuff stay inside you and poison you?” he asked. He pushed me to deal with the issue, to speak with the people who had offended me and hold them accountable, and then to forgive them. God used Pastor Schein to help me grow up as a Christian.
Third: God uses circumstances to help us become more like Jesus. In his book, The Pursuit of Holiness, author Jerry Bridges talks about moving to a new community. While doing his taxes at the end of the year he moved, he discovered that he had neglected to pay the taxes he’d owed in his former community. For a second, he was tempted to just forget about that tax liability. He was sure that the people in his former community wouldn’t find out. But he realized that he had to do the right thing. Christ had always paid his taxes, even though the government of his time was oppressive and dictatorial. So, Bridges calculated what he owed in the old community, wrote a check, and dropped it in the mail. The New Testament book of James reminds us that God is not a monster...God will never tempt us to sin. But God will use the circumstances of our lives to build our characters, to help us become more like Christ.
Every time we read God’s Word, have a perplexing or enjoyable encounter with people, or confront circumstances that demand decisions of us, Rick Warren reminds us that we need to ask some simple questions: What is God trying to teach me here? How is God challenging me to grow? And then, ask God to give you the faith and the character to pursue God’s third purpose for you and me: to grow to become more like Jesus!
Sanctification, Growing Up to Be Like Christ
Ephesians 4:22-24
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, September 28, 2003)
Our son Philip will be graduating from college this coming spring. Because of that, he’s confronted with the same question all of us have faced on the brink of graduation: Now that I have this education, what’s next? So, Phil has decided to be proactive. He’s taking advantage of the free career counseling services offered by his college. In a real sense, he’s decided to take the next step in the process of growing as a human being.
All followers of Jesus Christ confront a similar issue in their lives. Through Jesus Christ, God has given us new lives. Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead so that all who surrender their lives and wills to Jesus can have forgiveness of sin, unshakeable joy, and everlasting life with God. But Jesus followers need to ask ourselves this question: Now that I have this salvation, what’s next?
The answer to that question in the New Testament is answered in many places, in many different phrases. But the New Testament book of Ephesians says that we’re to “grow up in every way into [Christ]” [Ephesians 4:15].
Right now at Friendship, we’re looking at God’s purpose for us as human beings.
The first purpose for all of us to worship God with our whole lives.
The second is to live and grow in loving relationships with our fellow Jesus followers.
The third purpose for us is to submit to the process the Bible calls sanctification. That means to become holy, to be more like Jesus.
Our purpose and our call from God is to keep growing up with Jesus as our model for living.
Sometimes though, I have the feeling that most church folks want just enough of Jesus to avoid going to hell, but not so much of Jesus that it actually changes anything in their lives. These folks seem to view Jesus as eternal fire insurance. What I have learned though, is that followers of Jesus are like diapers: if they don’t get changed regularly, they start to stink. If we’re to fulfill our purpose for living and know the joy that goes with a vital relationship with Christ, we need to grow up.
Growing up in any area of our lives can be a painful, demanding process. So much so that often, people decide that they just will not grow up. I know a man about my age who grew up in a household in which his parents did everything for him. I mean everything. When he got married, he hitched up with a woman who doesn’t mind telling him exactly what he should do and when. She micromanages his calendar, decides what jobs he’ll take, tells him where they’re going to live, has him on a money allowance. At one level, you could say that this guy is doing okay. He and his wife have a decent house. He eats three meals a day. But at nearly age fifty, he is a baby. And this all happened because in some way and at some level of personal consciousness, he made a decision long ago. He decided not to grow up. It was just easier.
The same can be true for us as followers of Christ. We can choose not to grow up. It's easier to make that choice. That's because it’s a daunting thing to say, "With God’s help, I will grow to be more like Jesus."
But today, I want to encourage you not to be afraid of making that commitment! You won’t succeed 100% on this side of your grave. But the struggle to become more like Jesus, to serve Jesus, to move in Jesus’ direction, and according to Jesus’ will is a much better way of living than just going through the motions of life.
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is the third volume in C.S. Lewis' wonderful Chronicles of Narnia. The whole series is a metaphorical telling of God's salvation of the human race. A lion named Aslan is a Christ-figure who dies for the sins of the people who inhabit an alternative place called Narnia. He's the "son of the Emperor Over the Sea," the emperor being a representation of God the Father.
In this third book, a particularly loathesome boy named Eustace accompanies two of his cousins, who have been to Narnia before, in traveling to that magic land. For many weeks after his arrival, Eustace is selfish and hurtful and petulant. At one point, he goes off by himself and ends up in the seemingly-abandoned lair of a dragon. There, he covetously ogles jewelry and other treasures. He puts one bracelet on his arm and he is turned into a dragon. In this form, he's lonely and miserable and he begins to realize how horrible he has been toward others. In this state of regret, the lion Aslan comes to him and urges Eustace to rid himself of his dragon skin. Eustace takes off several layers. But he doesn't make much progress, representing the futility of our own efforts to improve ourselves on our own steam. Finally, Eustace submits to allowing the lion to tear away his dragon skin, representing our submission to letting Christ take away our sin. It's painful for Eustace at first. But in the end, he is freed to become his new and better self, precisely the process of forgiveness and growth God wants all of us to undergo through Jesus! When we allow Jesus to help us become more like him, our lives are better.
But there’s another good reason you and I should decide to grow up as followers of Jesus. You’ve heard the story before of the man who came upon a construction site and stuck around to watch some brick masons do their job. He called out to one and asked, “What are you doing?” This guy, nose in the mortar, grunted, “I’m laying this row of bricks.” The man asked the next brick mason the same question, “What are you doing?” This second guy looked up and with a smile on his face, “I’m helping to build a great cathedral! Just think of it, for as long as God wants it to be here, this will be a place where people will come to worship and praise God, get His comfort, enjoy being with other believers, commit their marriages to Christ. It’s so neat!” When we decide to become more like Jesus, you and I are doing more than just laying bricks, we’re building for the future! We’re getting ourselves ready for whatever exciting assignments God may have for us in eternity.
So, what exactly does it mean to grow up into Christ? Our Bible lesson for today seems to say that it consists primarily of three things. First, we’re to put away our old sinful ways. We’re to daily turn away from sin and embrace living God’s way. Second, we’re to let Christ renew our minds, our ways of thinking. We need to change our priorities, moving from our me-centered universe to a Christ-centered life. Third, we’re to clothe ourselves in the new identities God gives to followers of Jesus. We’re to let the forgiveness and morality of Jesus cover every part of our lives.
Fine, we might think. But how do I do all that? Rick Warren, in his book The Purpose Driven Life reminds us that there are three ways God routinely helps those who have decided to grow up as Christians to do just that.
First: God uses His Word, the Bible. Last Sunday afternoon, I went to spend some time with my Aunt Betty and cousin Susie, who are living in Cincinnati for a few months. Susie is a very intelligent person. She’s a neonatal intensive care nurse certified in twenty-eight states and she contracts to work in various hospitals for several months at a time. But in the course of our conversation, she told me that she had just bought a new VCR-DVD combo and couldn’t figure out how to install it. As we pulled out the box, I asked her, “Did you read the instructions?” She laughed and said, “Of course not!” I told her that may have been her first mistake.
God has given us an instruction manual for life. Everything we need to know for living our lives at their optimal levels can be found in the Bible. Let me say this bluntly. If you aren’t taking the time to read God’s Word each and every day, there is no way you will ever grow up as a follower of Jesus. There is no way you’ll be able to rightly interpret the challenges you confront in life. Temptations and tragedies will blindside you.
You may say, “I don’t have the time.” I sometimes say the same thing myself. But you know what that is? It’s an excuse. A young mother in our congregation who also works has a demanding schedule. But she takes the time she has–in the parking lot of her place of employment fifteen minutes before everyone else arrives–to read what God has to say to her that day. God wants to bless you through the Bible and we need to make the time for that to happen!
Second: God uses people to help us grow. Sometimes they confront. Sometimes they comfort. Sometimes they do both. One night in my seminary days, I was really angry at a group of people who I felt had taken advantage of me. My mentor, Pastor Schein, happened to see me in this mood. When he asked me what was wrong, I was at first going to say nothing. But he wouldn’t put up with my evasiveness. “Are you going to let that stuff stay inside you and poison you?” he asked. He pushed me to deal with the issue, to speak with the people who had offended me and hold them accountable, and then to forgive them. God used Pastor Schein to help me grow up as a Christian.
Third: God uses circumstances to help us become more like Jesus. In his book, The Pursuit of Holiness, author Jerry Bridges talks about moving to a new community. While doing his taxes at the end of the year he moved, he discovered that he had neglected to pay the taxes he’d owed in his former community. For a second, he was tempted to just forget about that tax liability. He was sure that the people in his former community wouldn’t find out. But he realized that he had to do the right thing. Christ had always paid his taxes, even though the government of his time was oppressive and dictatorial. So, Bridges calculated what he owed in the old community, wrote a check, and dropped it in the mail. The New Testament book of James reminds us that God is not a monster...God will never tempt us to sin. But God will use the circumstances of our lives to build our characters, to help us become more like Christ.
Every time we read God’s Word, have a perplexing or enjoyable encounter with people, or confront circumstances that demand decisions of us, Rick Warren reminds us that we need to ask some simple questions: What is God trying to teach me here? How is God challenging me to grow? And then, ask God to give you the faith and the character to pursue God’s third purpose for you and me: to grow to become more like Jesus!
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