[Below are two versions of a column I've just written for the Community Press newspaper chain. The first is the original version, the second is the edited version submitted to the editor. Such editing was necessary in order to keep the article within a usable word count for the paper. Think of the first as the album version and the second as the radio play single.]
A Farewell to Kings
In the old Mel Brooks movie, A History of the World, Part I, a goofy ruler played by Brooks repeats the line, "It's good to be the king."
Most of us probably would agree. And some who achieve even what would be considered small successes in life may see themselves as kings of a sort. Tom Wolfe's 1987 novel, The Bonfire of the Vanities, deals with the pitfalls of Wall Street hubris. Its central character, taking his cue from a popular line of toys from the 80s, fancies himself as "Master of the universe."
It may be though, that we not only want to be kings, but also want to have kings...and queens. As an old-fashioned American who believes in the idea of the republic, that leaders ought to emerge from the people by merit and not by heredity, and that our forebears were wise to cut the chain that once shackled us to King George III, I'm appalled and mystified by our country's fascination with the British royal family. To me, the Windsors are a self-indulgent and undistinguished lot, the world's foremost and least worthy welfare recipients.
In his most recent book, conservative commentator Kevin Phillips points with alarm not only to the western world's obsession with royalty, but also its increasing penchant for enthroning and re-enthroning royals in varying fields of endeavor.
In Europe, once-deposed royals are being invited back to their countries, part of an effort to re-establish aristocracy, it seems.
In America, we have hereditary royal families in motion pictures with names like Douglas, Hawn-Winslet, Barrymore, Huston, Bridges, and Coppola (which includes Nicholas Cage).
We have royals like the Kennedy, Bush, Gore, Taft, and Clinton families in politics.
In music, the one-time "king of pop" married the daughter of "the King" in hopes of establishing a royal line.
And in what is arguably the A-list of American royalty, sports, names like Bonds, Winslow, Griffey, Manning, and Boone recur.
We also applaud and are fascinated by the sons and daughters of the rich and famous, not because they do anything, except behave badly. Witness, the Hilton girls.
None of this is to say that the heirs of great success are unworthy of the opportunity to cultivate their native gifts in the same fields in which their parents and grandparents excelled. Jeff Bridges is a great actor, Bobby Bonds is a tremendous baseball player, and George W. Bush is a more facile politician than his father, grandfather, or great-grandfather.
But we clearly give more opportunity to the heirs of American royalty than we do to other people.
And, I think that we derive a certain security and comfort from our royalty. They give us a sense of stability. We speak appreciatively of the "good genes," a supposed intrinsic talent for playing a scene, hitting a baseball, or governing a country.
Apart from the fact that such notions are all rot, we need to be careful about the amount of acclaim or power we give to other human beings.
In the Old Testament portion of the Bible, God's people the Israelites, craved an earthly king to rule over them. All the other countries in the neighborhood had kings and the Israelites thought it would make them powerful and important to have one too. God didn't want to name a king for them. "I am your king!" God insisted. The people repented for a time, but soon started whining again. Finally, as if to show the people how misguided they were, God gave them a king, a man named Saul.
Saul had movie star good looks and a Mr. Universe build. But he soon started believing he was every bit as wonderful as the sycophants around him said he was. He became disastrously self-indulgent and his rule ended in disappointment and tragedy.
Of course, we need leaders. Somebody has to direct every human endeavor, from keeping our roads paved to guarding our homeland.
But our "kings" would do well to remember that whatever their areas of leadership, they're on temporary assignments. And they might also remember that the best leader is, above all, a servant.
Of course, the absolute master of service is God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. He came into the world, He said, to serve. And He did that, all the way to a cross where He bore the punishment for our sins, even though He didn't deserve it. He also said that if we were going to follow Him in this life and into the eternity He opens to all with faith in Him, we had to spurn the world's love for kingship. He said that in the end, the last will be first and the first will be last.
We don't need kings and we don't need to be kings. The world already has a king. He's a humble servant who only wants what's best for us and when we trust Him, grants it to us. He's the God we know through Jesus and if we all volunteered to live under His reign, the world and our personal lives would be the better for it.
A Farewell to Kings, the Column Version
In a movie comedy, a goofy ruler repeatedly delivers a signature line: "It's good to be king."
Most of us probably agree. But it seems to me that we want to have kings as much as we want to be kings.
Throughout the world, there is a mystifying fascination with the wealthy and severely dysfunctional British royal family, for example.
In Europe, once-deposed royals are being invited back to their countries.
In America, royal families reign in various fields. Succeeding generations seem to effortlessly fall heir to the power, influence, and acclaim wielded by their forebears. It happens in such diverse fields as the movies, sports, and politics, where the same names crop up repeatedly.
It may be that every member of these royal lines has been worthy of the opportunities given to them. But we clearly give more opportunities to the heirs of American royalty than we do to other people.
We also seem to derive a certain comfort from our royal families. It makes us feel good to see familiar faces with familiar gestures and intonations of voice. We even speak appreciatively of our royals' "good genes," imagining that they are automatically predisposed to play a scene, hit a baseball, or govern a country.
Such notions are all rot. They come close to advocating the permanent class systems from which the west broke during the Renaissance. Worse yet, they smell suspiciously like Hitler's notions of a master race.
We may inherit talents, but talents grow in the hothouse of work and struggle, not in the air conditioned comfort of a speeding limo.
We need to be careful about who we enthrone as kings. In the Old Testament portion of the Bible, God's people the Israelites, craved an earthly king to rule over them. Other countries had kings. The Israelites thought it would make them powerful and important to have one too.
But God didn't want to name a king for them. "I am your king!" God insisted. The people repented for a time, but started whining again. Finally, as if to show the people how misguided they were, God gave them a king, a man named Saul.
Saul had movie star good looks and a Mr. Universe build. But he soon started believing he was as wonderful as the suck-ups around him said he was. He became self-indulgent and his rule ended in disappointment and tragedy.
Of course, we need leaders. Somebody has to direct every human endeavor.
But all "kings" in positions of leadership need to remember that they're on temporary assignments. And they might also remember that the best leader is, above all, a servant, not a royal.
Of course, the master of servant leadership is God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. He came into the world, He said, to serve. And He served all the way to a cross where He bore the punishment for our sins, even though He didn't deserve punishment.
Jesus says that if we are going to follow Him in this life and into the eternity He opens to all with faith in Him, we must spurn the world's love for kingship and become servants too.
We don't need more kings and we don't need to be kings. The world already has a king. He's the God we know through Jesus and if we all volunteered to live under His reign, the world and our personal lives would be the better for it.
Wednesday, May 05, 2004
Sunday, May 02, 2004
The Proof is in the People
John 10:22-30
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 2, 2004)
The flight was running late and the passengers, which included many children, were becoming restive as they waited on the runway tarmac. The pilot thought about what he could do to make the wait easier, especially for the families involved, and remembered one of his airline’s corporate values: Break all the rules and don’t wait for permission to do it. So, the pilot contacted the McDonald’s in the terminal and ordered Happy Meals that were brought out to the plane for all the kids. Needless to say, that pilot became a hero to everyone on board the delayed flight. But he also has become a hero in the company for which he works, Jet Blue.
You know, it does no good for a company to have a value statement, or a family to have values they promote, or for churches to have creeds, doctrines, and statements of belief, if those values and beliefs aren’t lived out. What we’re really about is seen and heard less in our words than in our actions. The proof is in the people.
Jesus was once confronted by a surly group of His fellow Jews. It happened at a section of the temple in Jerusalem known as Solomon’s Portico or Porch. It was named after one of Israel’s kings, David’s son Solomon. It was a sensible place for Jesus to walk on a winter’s day just before Hanukkah because the way it was situated, Solomon’s Portico protected Him from the cold prevailing wind of the season. But it afforded Him no protection from nasty questions.
Our translation of the New Testament’s original Greek tells us that Jesus was asked, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” But there is good reason, based on examples from both the ancient Greek and the modern Greek language that the question was couched in an everyday phrase that really meant, “How long are you going to keep annoying us? Who do you think you are, the Messiah?”
Of course, Jesus had and would state plainly Who He was. He was and is the Messiah, God’s anointed Savior of the world. He was and is God in human flesh Who came to save everyone who follows Him from sin and death and pointless living, giving us forgiveness, life, and purpose. But Jesus doesn’t bother with words at this moment. He tells this bunch:
“I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s Name testify to Me; but you do not believe...”
They didn’t believe, Jesus said, even though it was as plain as the noses on their faces Who He was. They didn’t believe because they were unwilling to see themselves as sheep who had wandered far from God. They were unwilling to be sheep who listened and heeded the Good Shepherd’s voice.
The proof was in the people. Anyone who bothered to look at Jesus and what He did day in and day out, understood Who He was. And anyone who looked at the lives of His skeptical tormentors could see who they were as well.
But if people can see Who Jesus is by His actions—His life, His acts of compassion and miracles, His death, His resurrection, the question I constantly must ask myself is this: Can people see Jesus in me? Does my life give evidence that Jesus is alive and real and working in the life of one who professes to follow Him?
Now, as good Lutherans, we all know that there is nothing that we can do to earn God’s love or forgiveness. No work, no matter how wonderful, will allow us to buy our ways into the Kingdom of God.
But we also know, as Jesus’ earthly brother James said, that faith without works is dead. Faith that isn’t seen in the ways we live our lives, the choices that we make, the priorities we choose, the service we render, and the love we share isn’t faith. Faith in Jesus begins in complete surrender to Christ, daily repentance and renewal in His Name, and a commitment to be precisely what the New Testament calls the Church: the very body of Christ, working in the world. Faith makes us, in Martin Luther’s phrase, little Christs, who live, love, and die for the world.
Our faith in Christ will be visible to the world in at least three ways which I want to talk about this morning. First: It will be seen in our acts of love done in Jesus’ Name. Steve Sjogren, the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church in the tri-county area, is the person who re-invented and then popularized kindness outreaches in the contemporary church. In one of his books, Steve talks about an outreach the congregation did back in the 80s. A gathering of New Agers was happening in downtown Cincinnati at the convention center. Steve convinced folks from his church to go down there and give away cold cans of Coca Cola just outside the doors. These people, many of whom had long ago repudiated faith in Christ, were stunned to see these Christians reaching out to them without judgment or harshness or Bible tracts. The Vineyard folks even showed good humor as they did so. They’d say things like, “I’m channeling into the fact that you want diet instead of regular.” Jesus could be harsh and confrontational toward those who were part of His religious community. But He always demonstrated the greatest degree of flexible love toward those who stood outside the Kingdom and needed Him in their lives: the tax collector who watched longingly as Jesus walked into town, the woman caught in adultery, the hated foreigner. When Christ has come to live in our hearts, Christ’s love will be seen in us.
Another way in which our faith will be visible is in our service. This past week, Ann and I watched the new Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. God’s Name was never mentioned in the movie, so it really wasn’t meant to be “Christian.” Yet, it showed a community of people who were kind to each other as each dealt with adversities in their lives. A woman cared for her father, suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. A father, his marriage falling apart, looks out for his boys. An old woman, feeling alone and useless, reaches out to those same boys as they deliver her daily paper; she teaches them how to bake. Two confirmed bachelor ranchers take in a seventeen year old girl who is pregnant and rejected by her mother.
The title for this story was Plainsong. That’s a term borrowed from the worship music of the Church. A plainsong was the genre of simple chants used in worship that began with the Gregorian Chants. I liked this name for the movie because, over and over again the New Testament tells us that when we serve others, we really serve the God we know in Jesus Christ. Jesus said that whenever we serve the least important and most despised people in our world, we really serve Him. What we do here on Sundays is more a pep rally than worship. The service we render to others in Jesus' Name in our daily lives is our real worship. It is our plainsong. And it’s a sign to the world that Jesus is living in us.
Finally, it should be said that faith evidenced in our lives will gain us the right to tell others about Jesus. From my experience, whenever we love or serve others, eventually they will want to know why. Peter in the New Testament tells us that we need to be ready for such questions. “Be prepared always to give an account for the hope that is in you, but do it with gentleness and reverence.” I guarantee that whenever we serve and love others genuinely, not for our gain, but for their gain and Christ’s glory, we will be ready to tell them about Jesus. He will have come to live inside us and with us and He will give us the right words when they need to be uttered.
By the time she died (within days of Princess Diana), Mother Teresa was known around the world for her acts of love and service in Jesus’ Name. Everyone wanted to know what made this follower of Jesus tick. Once, she appeared at a Harvard University chapel service. Her love for all people allowed her to share the hope of Jesus...and even some uncomfortable counsel from God.
“I understand,” she said "there are lots of you students in this school who are doing things that displease God. You are harming yourselves and offending God. Some of you are drinking alcohol and taking drugs. Others of you are engaged in sexual sin of many sorts. I have a message for you from God: Repent, turn away from what you are doing.”
Probably not the smooth message that a PR guru would have told her to deliver! But the response of everyone there was amazing. The entire crowd rose to its feet and gave her thunderous applause for several minutes. Her life of authentic love and service in Jesus’ Name gave her the credibility to confront the sins that bedeviled that campus community and get applauded for it!
Today, all across America, there are churches that booming and offering all sorts of services. Friendship is growing. Christian books climb to the tops of mainstream best seller lists. Everyone was buzzing about Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. But it troubles me that for all the popularity accorded Christian books, music, and movies, there seems to be no corresponding change in our society.
Our materialism, with its reliance on things rather than God, keeps getting worse.
Our culture of violence grows more pronounced.
Crassness and nastiness are on the upswing.
We watch an endless outpouring of so-called "reality TV" in part, so that we can watch others be humiliated and hurt.
I fear sometimes that we Christians are all blow and no show. I know that I can be that way! Who Jesus was could be seen in His actions of love and service. None of us is perfect and none of us will ever perfectly reflect Jesus’ goodness and power.
But I believe that if we will let Jesus be the Messiah Lord of every part of our lives, something amazing will happen. People will see something they have rarely glimpsed before: a real-life, genuine follower of Jesus. They’ll see Jesus working in us, even with our self-acknowledged imperfections, and like that crowd in the Harvard Chapel in their response to Mother Teresa, their defenses will be disarmed and maybe, just maybe, they’ll let Jesus take control of their lives too.
The proof is in the people and we are Christ’s people. Let’s live that and let the world in on all the blessings, forgiveness, hope, and power that comes from Christ!
[The source of the true story about the Jet Blue pilot is told in the latest issue of the business magazine, Fast Company.
[Steve Sjogren tells the story of his church's New Age outreach in his book, Conspiracy of Kindness. That book also is the source of the true story told about Mother Teresa. It originally appeared in a book by Tony Campolo.
[Hallmark has indicated that the DVD of Plainsong will soon be available.]
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, May 2, 2004)
The flight was running late and the passengers, which included many children, were becoming restive as they waited on the runway tarmac. The pilot thought about what he could do to make the wait easier, especially for the families involved, and remembered one of his airline’s corporate values: Break all the rules and don’t wait for permission to do it. So, the pilot contacted the McDonald’s in the terminal and ordered Happy Meals that were brought out to the plane for all the kids. Needless to say, that pilot became a hero to everyone on board the delayed flight. But he also has become a hero in the company for which he works, Jet Blue.
You know, it does no good for a company to have a value statement, or a family to have values they promote, or for churches to have creeds, doctrines, and statements of belief, if those values and beliefs aren’t lived out. What we’re really about is seen and heard less in our words than in our actions. The proof is in the people.
Jesus was once confronted by a surly group of His fellow Jews. It happened at a section of the temple in Jerusalem known as Solomon’s Portico or Porch. It was named after one of Israel’s kings, David’s son Solomon. It was a sensible place for Jesus to walk on a winter’s day just before Hanukkah because the way it was situated, Solomon’s Portico protected Him from the cold prevailing wind of the season. But it afforded Him no protection from nasty questions.
Our translation of the New Testament’s original Greek tells us that Jesus was asked, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” But there is good reason, based on examples from both the ancient Greek and the modern Greek language that the question was couched in an everyday phrase that really meant, “How long are you going to keep annoying us? Who do you think you are, the Messiah?”
Of course, Jesus had and would state plainly Who He was. He was and is the Messiah, God’s anointed Savior of the world. He was and is God in human flesh Who came to save everyone who follows Him from sin and death and pointless living, giving us forgiveness, life, and purpose. But Jesus doesn’t bother with words at this moment. He tells this bunch:
“I have told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father’s Name testify to Me; but you do not believe...”
They didn’t believe, Jesus said, even though it was as plain as the noses on their faces Who He was. They didn’t believe because they were unwilling to see themselves as sheep who had wandered far from God. They were unwilling to be sheep who listened and heeded the Good Shepherd’s voice.
The proof was in the people. Anyone who bothered to look at Jesus and what He did day in and day out, understood Who He was. And anyone who looked at the lives of His skeptical tormentors could see who they were as well.
But if people can see Who Jesus is by His actions—His life, His acts of compassion and miracles, His death, His resurrection, the question I constantly must ask myself is this: Can people see Jesus in me? Does my life give evidence that Jesus is alive and real and working in the life of one who professes to follow Him?
Now, as good Lutherans, we all know that there is nothing that we can do to earn God’s love or forgiveness. No work, no matter how wonderful, will allow us to buy our ways into the Kingdom of God.
But we also know, as Jesus’ earthly brother James said, that faith without works is dead. Faith that isn’t seen in the ways we live our lives, the choices that we make, the priorities we choose, the service we render, and the love we share isn’t faith. Faith in Jesus begins in complete surrender to Christ, daily repentance and renewal in His Name, and a commitment to be precisely what the New Testament calls the Church: the very body of Christ, working in the world. Faith makes us, in Martin Luther’s phrase, little Christs, who live, love, and die for the world.
Our faith in Christ will be visible to the world in at least three ways which I want to talk about this morning. First: It will be seen in our acts of love done in Jesus’ Name. Steve Sjogren, the senior pastor of the Vineyard Church in the tri-county area, is the person who re-invented and then popularized kindness outreaches in the contemporary church. In one of his books, Steve talks about an outreach the congregation did back in the 80s. A gathering of New Agers was happening in downtown Cincinnati at the convention center. Steve convinced folks from his church to go down there and give away cold cans of Coca Cola just outside the doors. These people, many of whom had long ago repudiated faith in Christ, were stunned to see these Christians reaching out to them without judgment or harshness or Bible tracts. The Vineyard folks even showed good humor as they did so. They’d say things like, “I’m channeling into the fact that you want diet instead of regular.” Jesus could be harsh and confrontational toward those who were part of His religious community. But He always demonstrated the greatest degree of flexible love toward those who stood outside the Kingdom and needed Him in their lives: the tax collector who watched longingly as Jesus walked into town, the woman caught in adultery, the hated foreigner. When Christ has come to live in our hearts, Christ’s love will be seen in us.
Another way in which our faith will be visible is in our service. This past week, Ann and I watched the new Hallmark Hall of Fame movie. God’s Name was never mentioned in the movie, so it really wasn’t meant to be “Christian.” Yet, it showed a community of people who were kind to each other as each dealt with adversities in their lives. A woman cared for her father, suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. A father, his marriage falling apart, looks out for his boys. An old woman, feeling alone and useless, reaches out to those same boys as they deliver her daily paper; she teaches them how to bake. Two confirmed bachelor ranchers take in a seventeen year old girl who is pregnant and rejected by her mother.
The title for this story was Plainsong. That’s a term borrowed from the worship music of the Church. A plainsong was the genre of simple chants used in worship that began with the Gregorian Chants. I liked this name for the movie because, over and over again the New Testament tells us that when we serve others, we really serve the God we know in Jesus Christ. Jesus said that whenever we serve the least important and most despised people in our world, we really serve Him. What we do here on Sundays is more a pep rally than worship. The service we render to others in Jesus' Name in our daily lives is our real worship. It is our plainsong. And it’s a sign to the world that Jesus is living in us.
Finally, it should be said that faith evidenced in our lives will gain us the right to tell others about Jesus. From my experience, whenever we love or serve others, eventually they will want to know why. Peter in the New Testament tells us that we need to be ready for such questions. “Be prepared always to give an account for the hope that is in you, but do it with gentleness and reverence.” I guarantee that whenever we serve and love others genuinely, not for our gain, but for their gain and Christ’s glory, we will be ready to tell them about Jesus. He will have come to live inside us and with us and He will give us the right words when they need to be uttered.
By the time she died (within days of Princess Diana), Mother Teresa was known around the world for her acts of love and service in Jesus’ Name. Everyone wanted to know what made this follower of Jesus tick. Once, she appeared at a Harvard University chapel service. Her love for all people allowed her to share the hope of Jesus...and even some uncomfortable counsel from God.
“I understand,” she said "there are lots of you students in this school who are doing things that displease God. You are harming yourselves and offending God. Some of you are drinking alcohol and taking drugs. Others of you are engaged in sexual sin of many sorts. I have a message for you from God: Repent, turn away from what you are doing.”
Probably not the smooth message that a PR guru would have told her to deliver! But the response of everyone there was amazing. The entire crowd rose to its feet and gave her thunderous applause for several minutes. Her life of authentic love and service in Jesus’ Name gave her the credibility to confront the sins that bedeviled that campus community and get applauded for it!
Today, all across America, there are churches that booming and offering all sorts of services. Friendship is growing. Christian books climb to the tops of mainstream best seller lists. Everyone was buzzing about Mel Gibson’s movie, The Passion of the Christ. But it troubles me that for all the popularity accorded Christian books, music, and movies, there seems to be no corresponding change in our society.
Our materialism, with its reliance on things rather than God, keeps getting worse.
Our culture of violence grows more pronounced.
Crassness and nastiness are on the upswing.
We watch an endless outpouring of so-called "reality TV" in part, so that we can watch others be humiliated and hurt.
I fear sometimes that we Christians are all blow and no show. I know that I can be that way! Who Jesus was could be seen in His actions of love and service. None of us is perfect and none of us will ever perfectly reflect Jesus’ goodness and power.
But I believe that if we will let Jesus be the Messiah Lord of every part of our lives, something amazing will happen. People will see something they have rarely glimpsed before: a real-life, genuine follower of Jesus. They’ll see Jesus working in us, even with our self-acknowledged imperfections, and like that crowd in the Harvard Chapel in their response to Mother Teresa, their defenses will be disarmed and maybe, just maybe, they’ll let Jesus take control of their lives too.
The proof is in the people and we are Christ’s people. Let’s live that and let the world in on all the blessings, forgiveness, hope, and power that comes from Christ!
[The source of the true story about the Jet Blue pilot is told in the latest issue of the business magazine, Fast Company.
[Steve Sjogren tells the story of his church's New Age outreach in his book, Conspiracy of Kindness. That book also is the source of the true story told about Mother Teresa. It originally appeared in a book by Tony Campolo.
[Hallmark has indicated that the DVD of Plainsong will soon be available.]
After Easter, What?
John 21:1-19
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 25, 2004)
A man woke up one morning with a feeling. He just knew that something special was going to happen that day. He looked at his clock and it had stopped at 3:00. He went downstairs and glanced out his kitchen window to look at the thermometer and found that the outside temperature was 33 degrees. He grabbed the morning paper and it was dated March 3, the third day of the third month. On a hunch, he turned to the third page of the third section of the paper and just as he thought, it was the racing news. In the third race, one of the horses was called Trio. The guy ran to the bank, withdrew his life-savings, and bet it all on Trio to win that race. He shouldn’t have been surprised by the outcome, but he was. Trio came in third.
I’ve seen people look for all sorts of signs—whether from God or elsewhere—for how to live their lives, be successful, avoid calamity, find a job, find a mate. But just as often as not, we seem to avoid clear guidance that’s staring us right in the face. Recently, I’ve been undergoing physical therapy with a neck problem. I go three times a week. For several weeks now, the physical therapist has given me the same basic instructions: four times a day, I’m to lie down on my back and get the weight of my head off of my neck; throughout the day, I’m to gently do retractions with my neck to help realign things. What’s amazing to me is that even though the physical therapist's instructions are clear and simple and redundant, I find ways to forget them or muff them, all the time.
This past week, things improved so markedly that I went into overdrive. I’m a man and as a man, I sometimes use “man logic.” If a few retractions, helped a little, a lot of retractions, would help a lot! I figured that by exercising aggressively, I would get over the hump and back in the gym to lose my flab. Instead, I set myself back, causing me headaches. So, during my visits this past week, with a smile, the physical therapist reminded me again of my simple instructions. I wondered if she was gritting her teeth as though she were teaching a frustratingly thick-headed student: “Four times a day, lie on your back and after the inflammation you’ve caused your neck and head muscles dies down, gently do retractions with your neck to realign things.” I think I get it now. We’ll see.
Our Bible lesson for this morning is the epilogue of John the Evangelist’s telling of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In it, we find that Jesus is forced—like my physical therapist—to review some things with seven of His disciples that He’s shared with them many times before. This is critical though, because He has gone through His cross and His resurrection. Soon, He will no longer be physically present with them. Through Jesus’ encounter with the disciples in today’s lesson, He shows that neither they—or we—need any signs to tell us what our lives should be about on this side of Easter morning. We already know what to do. And it’s crystal clear!
The lesson begins very strangely. It’s just days after Jesus had risen from the dead. Easter is the most exciting thing that has ever happened in human history and the disciples had been given ringside seats! That in itself should have clued the disciples to the fact that their lives were to be different than they had been before.
Besides all of that, over the preceding few years, Jesus had spent hours and hours with these men. He had made clear that He was God, that He had come to die and rise so that sinners like them—and us—could be forgiven, have new lives, and live with God forever. Jesus had already told them that they would be going out into the world to tell others about Jesus so that they too, could turn from sin, entrust themselves to Jesus’ leadership, and live forever with God. Jesus had even told those who were engaged in the fishing profession that their fishing days were over. Instead, they would be fishing for people, gently calling them back to the God Who made them, loves them, and wants to live with them forever.
So, what exciting plans and great risks are the disciples preparing to make as our lesson begins? What kindness outreaches are they going to do? What sorts of bold prayers are they bringing to God, asking Him to help them share Jesus with their neighbors? They weren’t doing any of that!
Like children on a rainy Saturday, they seem to be bored and listless. Finally, Peter says, “I think I’ll go fishing.” The other six disciples say, “We’ll go with you.” They turn their backs on Easter and Jesus’ clear instructions. But habits are powerful things, you know. They’re hard for us to break. They make it difficult for us to try new things. Habits wear ruts into our souls. The husband and wife who constantly squabble out of habit, keep driving their relationships over the same old cliffs. Alcoholics make the mistake of ordering what they tell themselves is “just one drink.” The student who needs to get an important paper done says that just like last night, she needs to call a friend or play a video game and before you know it, just like the night before, the evening is gone, the important paper undone. Someone has said that one sign of insanity may be believing that if you keep doing the same things in the same ways you always have, eventually you’ll get different results than you’ve gotten before.
Jesus came to bring us the joy of heaven. But first, He came to annoy us by calling us out of our ruts and comfort zones and into His Kingdom instead. There, we’re called to love and serve as we’ve been loved and served.
Peter and the rest forgot that. They went back to old habits. They went fishing. And like a night on which several of them had gone fishing a few years before, they didn’t catch a thing. They shouldn’t have been surprised. They didn’t need any new signs or flashes of intuition. Jesus had already told them that for the rest of their lives, they’d be fishing for people. He’d also told them, “Without Me, you can do nothing.” If Jesus isn’t in the center of our lives, our lives can never be what God made them to be.
So, the disciples come back from a night of futility, their nets empty. A stranger is frying up fish over a charcoal fire on the shore. “Children,” He calls out, “you didn’t catch anything, did you?” (Of course, they hadn’t.) He tells them to throw their nets over the right side of the boat and soon their nets are full, just as happened in that incident of a few years before when Jesus had given them a similar command. Now, they know Who the stranger is. It’s the risen Jesus!
Soon, they’re sitting around a charcoal fire and having dinner with Jesus. A painful memory may have crossed Peter’s mind at that moment. It had been while he was standing around another charcoal fire, in the high priest’s courtyard, warming himself against the cool Judean night, that within sight of Jesus, Who been arrested and bound, Peter denied knowing Jesus three times.
As if to assure Peter that all is forgiven and that he can go on with his new life, Jesus asks Peter three questions, each a chance to erase his earlier denials. “Simon Peter, do you love Me...?...do you love Me?...do you love Me?” And each time Peter says, “Yes,” Jesus reminds Peter of his mission in life: Feed My lambs. Tend My sheep. Feed My sheep. In other words: Take care of your neighbor in My Name, love the unlovable, tell others about Me, pray for those who are hated, give to the poor, help others to be My followers too, be a servant. Jesus summarizes it all even more succinctly when He says, “Follow Me.”
On Easter Sunday morning, this place was filled. Everybody loves Easter! But after Easter, what? Do we grow bored? Are we looking for some sign about what to do next? We don’t need to! Our mission is clear. No more business as usual. No more religion. Instead, we’re to follow Jesus. Period. We’re to do that by feeding His lambs, loving the world for whom He died and rose.
For each of us, that may look a little different. Some will teach Sunday School or volunteer occasionally for Children’s Church. Some will clean up the building, volunteer to man the mixer board for our new audiovisual system, take care of the sign on Route 125, mow the lawn. Others will help with mailings, or youth work, or Catechism, or play in a musical group, or participate in skits, or become a hospital visitor. Some will lead small group Bible studies, after school programs. I hope some day soon, the people of Friendship will be running a coffee shop, a Christian book store, an auto repair shop, and a hair salon right on our campus—using the income generated to provide services to those who can’t afford them and giving employment opportunities in a wholesome environment, especially to young people.
If you don’t believe those things can happen, look around you and see how far God has brought us so far and realize that other churches in other communities are doing these same kinds of things and more. When Jesus is at the center of our lives, we can do lots of things! And of course, no matter what we do, all of us will be involved in serving our neighbors, inviting them to worship with us, and helping them to know Jesus.
After Easter, new life comes! It’s a life filled with blessings and challenges and heavenly power. After Easter, we’re to follow Jesus. We’re to fish for people, bringing them to Jesus. We’re to take care of others, loving as we’ve been loved. There are sign-up sheets for some ministries in the lobby and when it comes to new ministries of love in Jesus’ Name for which you may have an idea, I am always all-ears. We don’t need to wait for a sign. We already have Jesus. Let’s get to work!
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 25, 2004)
A man woke up one morning with a feeling. He just knew that something special was going to happen that day. He looked at his clock and it had stopped at 3:00. He went downstairs and glanced out his kitchen window to look at the thermometer and found that the outside temperature was 33 degrees. He grabbed the morning paper and it was dated March 3, the third day of the third month. On a hunch, he turned to the third page of the third section of the paper and just as he thought, it was the racing news. In the third race, one of the horses was called Trio. The guy ran to the bank, withdrew his life-savings, and bet it all on Trio to win that race. He shouldn’t have been surprised by the outcome, but he was. Trio came in third.
I’ve seen people look for all sorts of signs—whether from God or elsewhere—for how to live their lives, be successful, avoid calamity, find a job, find a mate. But just as often as not, we seem to avoid clear guidance that’s staring us right in the face. Recently, I’ve been undergoing physical therapy with a neck problem. I go three times a week. For several weeks now, the physical therapist has given me the same basic instructions: four times a day, I’m to lie down on my back and get the weight of my head off of my neck; throughout the day, I’m to gently do retractions with my neck to help realign things. What’s amazing to me is that even though the physical therapist's instructions are clear and simple and redundant, I find ways to forget them or muff them, all the time.
This past week, things improved so markedly that I went into overdrive. I’m a man and as a man, I sometimes use “man logic.” If a few retractions, helped a little, a lot of retractions, would help a lot! I figured that by exercising aggressively, I would get over the hump and back in the gym to lose my flab. Instead, I set myself back, causing me headaches. So, during my visits this past week, with a smile, the physical therapist reminded me again of my simple instructions. I wondered if she was gritting her teeth as though she were teaching a frustratingly thick-headed student: “Four times a day, lie on your back and after the inflammation you’ve caused your neck and head muscles dies down, gently do retractions with your neck to realign things.” I think I get it now. We’ll see.
Our Bible lesson for this morning is the epilogue of John the Evangelist’s telling of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. In it, we find that Jesus is forced—like my physical therapist—to review some things with seven of His disciples that He’s shared with them many times before. This is critical though, because He has gone through His cross and His resurrection. Soon, He will no longer be physically present with them. Through Jesus’ encounter with the disciples in today’s lesson, He shows that neither they—or we—need any signs to tell us what our lives should be about on this side of Easter morning. We already know what to do. And it’s crystal clear!
The lesson begins very strangely. It’s just days after Jesus had risen from the dead. Easter is the most exciting thing that has ever happened in human history and the disciples had been given ringside seats! That in itself should have clued the disciples to the fact that their lives were to be different than they had been before.
Besides all of that, over the preceding few years, Jesus had spent hours and hours with these men. He had made clear that He was God, that He had come to die and rise so that sinners like them—and us—could be forgiven, have new lives, and live with God forever. Jesus had already told them that they would be going out into the world to tell others about Jesus so that they too, could turn from sin, entrust themselves to Jesus’ leadership, and live forever with God. Jesus had even told those who were engaged in the fishing profession that their fishing days were over. Instead, they would be fishing for people, gently calling them back to the God Who made them, loves them, and wants to live with them forever.
So, what exciting plans and great risks are the disciples preparing to make as our lesson begins? What kindness outreaches are they going to do? What sorts of bold prayers are they bringing to God, asking Him to help them share Jesus with their neighbors? They weren’t doing any of that!
Like children on a rainy Saturday, they seem to be bored and listless. Finally, Peter says, “I think I’ll go fishing.” The other six disciples say, “We’ll go with you.” They turn their backs on Easter and Jesus’ clear instructions. But habits are powerful things, you know. They’re hard for us to break. They make it difficult for us to try new things. Habits wear ruts into our souls. The husband and wife who constantly squabble out of habit, keep driving their relationships over the same old cliffs. Alcoholics make the mistake of ordering what they tell themselves is “just one drink.” The student who needs to get an important paper done says that just like last night, she needs to call a friend or play a video game and before you know it, just like the night before, the evening is gone, the important paper undone. Someone has said that one sign of insanity may be believing that if you keep doing the same things in the same ways you always have, eventually you’ll get different results than you’ve gotten before.
Jesus came to bring us the joy of heaven. But first, He came to annoy us by calling us out of our ruts and comfort zones and into His Kingdom instead. There, we’re called to love and serve as we’ve been loved and served.
Peter and the rest forgot that. They went back to old habits. They went fishing. And like a night on which several of them had gone fishing a few years before, they didn’t catch a thing. They shouldn’t have been surprised. They didn’t need any new signs or flashes of intuition. Jesus had already told them that for the rest of their lives, they’d be fishing for people. He’d also told them, “Without Me, you can do nothing.” If Jesus isn’t in the center of our lives, our lives can never be what God made them to be.
So, the disciples come back from a night of futility, their nets empty. A stranger is frying up fish over a charcoal fire on the shore. “Children,” He calls out, “you didn’t catch anything, did you?” (Of course, they hadn’t.) He tells them to throw their nets over the right side of the boat and soon their nets are full, just as happened in that incident of a few years before when Jesus had given them a similar command. Now, they know Who the stranger is. It’s the risen Jesus!
Soon, they’re sitting around a charcoal fire and having dinner with Jesus. A painful memory may have crossed Peter’s mind at that moment. It had been while he was standing around another charcoal fire, in the high priest’s courtyard, warming himself against the cool Judean night, that within sight of Jesus, Who been arrested and bound, Peter denied knowing Jesus three times.
As if to assure Peter that all is forgiven and that he can go on with his new life, Jesus asks Peter three questions, each a chance to erase his earlier denials. “Simon Peter, do you love Me...?...do you love Me?...do you love Me?” And each time Peter says, “Yes,” Jesus reminds Peter of his mission in life: Feed My lambs. Tend My sheep. Feed My sheep. In other words: Take care of your neighbor in My Name, love the unlovable, tell others about Me, pray for those who are hated, give to the poor, help others to be My followers too, be a servant. Jesus summarizes it all even more succinctly when He says, “Follow Me.”
On Easter Sunday morning, this place was filled. Everybody loves Easter! But after Easter, what? Do we grow bored? Are we looking for some sign about what to do next? We don’t need to! Our mission is clear. No more business as usual. No more religion. Instead, we’re to follow Jesus. Period. We’re to do that by feeding His lambs, loving the world for whom He died and rose.
For each of us, that may look a little different. Some will teach Sunday School or volunteer occasionally for Children’s Church. Some will clean up the building, volunteer to man the mixer board for our new audiovisual system, take care of the sign on Route 125, mow the lawn. Others will help with mailings, or youth work, or Catechism, or play in a musical group, or participate in skits, or become a hospital visitor. Some will lead small group Bible studies, after school programs. I hope some day soon, the people of Friendship will be running a coffee shop, a Christian book store, an auto repair shop, and a hair salon right on our campus—using the income generated to provide services to those who can’t afford them and giving employment opportunities in a wholesome environment, especially to young people.
If you don’t believe those things can happen, look around you and see how far God has brought us so far and realize that other churches in other communities are doing these same kinds of things and more. When Jesus is at the center of our lives, we can do lots of things! And of course, no matter what we do, all of us will be involved in serving our neighbors, inviting them to worship with us, and helping them to know Jesus.
After Easter, new life comes! It’s a life filled with blessings and challenges and heavenly power. After Easter, we’re to follow Jesus. We’re to fish for people, bringing them to Jesus. We’re to take care of others, loving as we’ve been loved. There are sign-up sheets for some ministries in the lobby and when it comes to new ministries of love in Jesus’ Name for which you may have an idea, I am always all-ears. We don’t need to wait for a sign. We already have Jesus. Let’s get to work!
Sunday, April 18, 2004
The Strange Peace of Christ
John 20:19-23
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 18, 2004)
Some of you have heard me speak before of William Wilberforce. He is one of the great heroes of History. Wilberforce spent his life pursuing two great goals: abolishing slavery in his country of Great Britain and reforming the nation’s manners, making the country gentler and kinder. He approached these goals with utter tenacity, in spite of setbacks and difficulties. On his death bed, Wilberforce learned that slavery had been abolished throughout the British Empire. (This came some twenty years after a battle he'd led the previous two decades to bring an end to the slave trade within Britain itself.)
Wilberforce's years of fighting for right paid off just as he breathed his last. The source of Wilberforce’s fierce, tough tenacity was Jesus Christ. Wilberforce was an ardent, passionate follower of Jesus. Once, a smug young believer, evidently thinking that there was something missing in Wilberforce’s faith asked him, “Have you found peace?” Wilberforce replied, “No, I have found war.”
Anybody who has ever let Jesus Christ take control of their lives knows exactly what Wilberforce meant. When we accept the fact that we are sinners who live under penalty of death and that only Jesus Christ can set us free to be God’s people for all eternity, we do have peace. We have peace with God. [Romans 5:1] But it’s a strange peace. We see this in today’s Bible lesson.
Set the scene. It’s evening of the very first Easter. Jesus’ first followers are quaking in fear behind locked doors. Now that the Passover has passed, they wonder whether the Roman and Jewish authorities will come after them the way they went after Jesus. Mary Magdalene has come to them with the unbelievable report that Jesus has risen from the dead. Suddenly, Jesus appears among them. His words are interesting. Twice, our translation quotes Jesus as saying, “Peace be with you.” But that isn’t completely accurate. You see in the original Greek in which it’s written, there is no verb in Jesus’ greeting. When that happens, the Greek language usually is making a declarative statement. Jesus would be declaring a fact: You have peace or Peace is yours.
The disciples might have wondered whether Jesus’ recent experiences with death and resurrection had caused Him to take leave of His senses. There was a reason that they were behind closed doors, after all. The Romans and Jewish leaders had executed Jesus and weren’t likely to take too kindly to them either. They were learning what Wilberforce learned nineteen centuries later—and what you and I can sometimes learn: dare to follow Jesus Christ and it just might put you at war with the world!
Jesus Himself had warned those who follow Him that this would happen. He said that He had come with a sword, one that would tear families apart between those who loyally followed Him and those who went their own ways apart from God. Just the night before His own execution, He told the disciples, “In this world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world.” [John 16:33]
The moment you and I try to follow Jesus in our every day lives, some sort of war will be round the corner. A manager in a large corporation once told me, “Mark, if I try to enact my faith at work, I won’t be able to provide for my family. Every single day, I’m ordered to do things that I know are unethical. I’m not even talking about sharing my faith in Christ. I can’t even live it.”
A political office-holder confided to me, “Every politician gives lip service to God and loving our neighbor as God teaches. But if you don’t look out for yourself, you’ll get destroyed.”
More than one teenager has told me, “If you don’t act hard, everybody will dump on you.”
None of that may seem very peaceful to us. And yet, Jesus’ words are right there in our Bibles. He says to all who follow Him: Peace is yours, You have peace. What do we make of that?
First of all, I think we need to redefine peace. We tend to see peace as a trouble-free existence. No problems. No strife. No traffic jams. No unpleasant disagreements. We should know better.
Scientific experiments often create perfect, stress-free environments for lab animals and you know what the result is. Without some external challenge to lift them outside of themselves, they start picking fights with each other. This is true for we human beings, too. One of the books I’ve been reading lately is the second volume of Winston Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People. I was interested in reading about an era of British history I really didn’t know about: the reign of Charles I back in the 1600s. When Charles came to the throne, people were questioning the need for a king and how the people themselves might have a say in national decisions. Charles decided that this would be a good time to lay low, to virtually do away with taxes and disband the Army. Charles thought that if he placed no demands on the people, he could win them over. But it backfired on him. A civil war happened and in the end, Charles was beheaded. Churchill, considering how Charles never challenged his people and tried to create this low-stress, no-hassle environment writes very insightfully:
"In later years..., all England looked back to these placid [times] as an age of ease and tranquility. But man has never sought tranquility alone. His nature drives him forward to fortunes which, for better or for worse, are different from those which it is in his power to pause and enjoy."
In fact, trouble is underrated as a force for good. We need a certain amount of trouble in our lives. Pastor Gerald Mann tells of presiding at the wedding ceremony of a young woman from a wealthy family. On the night of the rehearsal, the dad asked if Mann would like to go to the local airport with him. The enormous wedding cake was arriving from a distant city via private jet. So, Mann tagged along for the ride and watched as this cake was carefully taken from the jet and placed in a waiting car.
Piling out of the jet and supervising the operation was a slight woman who obviously knew exactly what she was doing. Mann later asked her how she got into this business. She said that as a young wife and mom of three girls, in her early thirties, her husband died. She didn’t have an advanced education and had no idea what she would do. In the midst of thrashing and praying about this, she was invited to a wedding reception. She probably hadn’t wanted to go, but did. The cake was beautiful to look at, but tasted awful. She knew that she couldn’t do much. But she could make beautiful cakes that tasted good.
That was the beginning of a business she enjoyed and that provided for her family. Her success began in a time of trouble that set her to praying. She learned the truth of what Saint Paul writes in the Bible, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” You see, when we’re weak we go to God for strength, insight, wisdom, forgiveness, and the power to go on. That’s why the woman with the successful wedding cake business told Gerald Mann something we should all remember: Trouble is a trigger.
I think that woman was right! Trouble can set you to doing things you never realized that you could do. I believe that even in heaven, God will give us perplexing assignments that will cause us to grow. It’s possible to have trouble and still be at peace!
Peace is not the absence of trouble. Peace is having Jesus at the center of your life, fortifying you to face life’s troubles and to share Jesus’ love with others even in the midst of trouble. One of the songs we sang earlier, It is Well, was inspired by the experience of a Christian missionary in Africa. He and his family had worked for many years to serve the people there and to share Jesus’ love with them in whatever way they could. But there was an uprising and he and his family were threatened. He made arrangements to send his wife and children back to their native country while he remained behind, continuing to serve folks and share Jesus. As his family boarded the ship, someone asked if he might not reconsider and go back home as well. “No,” he said, “it is well with my soul.” That man had peace. He was in the center of God’s will for his life. He was showing Jesus to others and no matter what happened, he had peace.
I don’t understand The Lord of the Rings very well. I do know that J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the books on which the movies are based, described them as “Catholic,” conveying central truths of Christian faith. This was powerfully portrayed for me in one scene from The Two Towers. Gandulf, a sort of priestly wizard, comes face to face with a king Theoden, who has come under a sort of demonic spell. Gandulf, who has already come through what seems like hell and back, wants to free Theoden. Theoden resists at first and you can see Gandulf’s pain in this contest. But ultimately, Theoden is set free and he becomes once more, the man he was made to be. My son Philip tells me that in the book, Gandulf simply takes Theoden into the sunlight and that revives him.
When we cast the light of Jesus into people’s lives, some will reject Jesus and us. But others will soak it up. A few years ago, some of you will remember, I sat with a Muslim acquaintance at a funeral home. His brother-in-law died and he asked me what I believed happened to people when they die. I did the only thing I know how to do: I told him about Jesus. I said that Jesus died and rose, that He gives new lives and peace with God to everyone who follow Him, and on our deaths, waits to usher us into God’s presence forever. As I left, my acquaintance shook my hand and said, “Thanks, Mark. I don’t know what it was, but when you were talking earlier, it made me feel better.”
The Gospel of John particularly emphasizes that our mission as followers of Jesus is to simply bring people into the presence of Jesus—whether in our words, or deeds, or living. Exposed to the light of Jesus’ love and goodness, they’ll cast one of two judgments on themselves.
They may run from letting God, the world, or themselves see that they’re faulty human beings in need of a Savior and so condemn themselves to life without God.
Or, they’ll run to Jesus and let Him lighten their ways through life all the way to eternity. Our call is simply to be faithful to Christ, irrespective of others’ reactions. [See John 3:16-18 for more on this.]
Peace is not the absence of trouble. Peace is having Jesus at the center of your life, fortifying you to face life’s troubles and to share Jesus’ love with others even in the midst of trouble. Maybe that’s why, just after telling His disciples, Peace is yours, Jesus breathes on them and tells them:
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
This past week, you know, my wife flew to Florida to visit our daughter. The flight down and even the landing were a bit turbulent. But she and our friend Pat arrived and had a good visit. Our rides through life may get bumpy. But even then, we have peace. Even then, we can share the peace of Christ with others as we live for Christ, serve in Christ’s Name, and invite others to know Christ too. Today, ask Christ to fill you with His peace and then, filled with His Spirit, invite a spiritually-disconnected person to know Jesus. They may say no...but like you, they just might also say Yes! And whatever they say, Jesus says, “Peace is yours! You have peace!”
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 18, 2004)
Some of you have heard me speak before of William Wilberforce. He is one of the great heroes of History. Wilberforce spent his life pursuing two great goals: abolishing slavery in his country of Great Britain and reforming the nation’s manners, making the country gentler and kinder. He approached these goals with utter tenacity, in spite of setbacks and difficulties. On his death bed, Wilberforce learned that slavery had been abolished throughout the British Empire. (This came some twenty years after a battle he'd led the previous two decades to bring an end to the slave trade within Britain itself.)
Wilberforce's years of fighting for right paid off just as he breathed his last. The source of Wilberforce’s fierce, tough tenacity was Jesus Christ. Wilberforce was an ardent, passionate follower of Jesus. Once, a smug young believer, evidently thinking that there was something missing in Wilberforce’s faith asked him, “Have you found peace?” Wilberforce replied, “No, I have found war.”
Anybody who has ever let Jesus Christ take control of their lives knows exactly what Wilberforce meant. When we accept the fact that we are sinners who live under penalty of death and that only Jesus Christ can set us free to be God’s people for all eternity, we do have peace. We have peace with God. [Romans 5:1] But it’s a strange peace. We see this in today’s Bible lesson.
Set the scene. It’s evening of the very first Easter. Jesus’ first followers are quaking in fear behind locked doors. Now that the Passover has passed, they wonder whether the Roman and Jewish authorities will come after them the way they went after Jesus. Mary Magdalene has come to them with the unbelievable report that Jesus has risen from the dead. Suddenly, Jesus appears among them. His words are interesting. Twice, our translation quotes Jesus as saying, “Peace be with you.” But that isn’t completely accurate. You see in the original Greek in which it’s written, there is no verb in Jesus’ greeting. When that happens, the Greek language usually is making a declarative statement. Jesus would be declaring a fact: You have peace or Peace is yours.
The disciples might have wondered whether Jesus’ recent experiences with death and resurrection had caused Him to take leave of His senses. There was a reason that they were behind closed doors, after all. The Romans and Jewish leaders had executed Jesus and weren’t likely to take too kindly to them either. They were learning what Wilberforce learned nineteen centuries later—and what you and I can sometimes learn: dare to follow Jesus Christ and it just might put you at war with the world!
Jesus Himself had warned those who follow Him that this would happen. He said that He had come with a sword, one that would tear families apart between those who loyally followed Him and those who went their own ways apart from God. Just the night before His own execution, He told the disciples, “In this world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world.” [John 16:33]
The moment you and I try to follow Jesus in our every day lives, some sort of war will be round the corner. A manager in a large corporation once told me, “Mark, if I try to enact my faith at work, I won’t be able to provide for my family. Every single day, I’m ordered to do things that I know are unethical. I’m not even talking about sharing my faith in Christ. I can’t even live it.”
A political office-holder confided to me, “Every politician gives lip service to God and loving our neighbor as God teaches. But if you don’t look out for yourself, you’ll get destroyed.”
More than one teenager has told me, “If you don’t act hard, everybody will dump on you.”
None of that may seem very peaceful to us. And yet, Jesus’ words are right there in our Bibles. He says to all who follow Him: Peace is yours, You have peace. What do we make of that?
First of all, I think we need to redefine peace. We tend to see peace as a trouble-free existence. No problems. No strife. No traffic jams. No unpleasant disagreements. We should know better.
Scientific experiments often create perfect, stress-free environments for lab animals and you know what the result is. Without some external challenge to lift them outside of themselves, they start picking fights with each other. This is true for we human beings, too. One of the books I’ve been reading lately is the second volume of Winston Churchill’s History of the English Speaking People. I was interested in reading about an era of British history I really didn’t know about: the reign of Charles I back in the 1600s. When Charles came to the throne, people were questioning the need for a king and how the people themselves might have a say in national decisions. Charles decided that this would be a good time to lay low, to virtually do away with taxes and disband the Army. Charles thought that if he placed no demands on the people, he could win them over. But it backfired on him. A civil war happened and in the end, Charles was beheaded. Churchill, considering how Charles never challenged his people and tried to create this low-stress, no-hassle environment writes very insightfully:
"In later years..., all England looked back to these placid [times] as an age of ease and tranquility. But man has never sought tranquility alone. His nature drives him forward to fortunes which, for better or for worse, are different from those which it is in his power to pause and enjoy."
In fact, trouble is underrated as a force for good. We need a certain amount of trouble in our lives. Pastor Gerald Mann tells of presiding at the wedding ceremony of a young woman from a wealthy family. On the night of the rehearsal, the dad asked if Mann would like to go to the local airport with him. The enormous wedding cake was arriving from a distant city via private jet. So, Mann tagged along for the ride and watched as this cake was carefully taken from the jet and placed in a waiting car.
Piling out of the jet and supervising the operation was a slight woman who obviously knew exactly what she was doing. Mann later asked her how she got into this business. She said that as a young wife and mom of three girls, in her early thirties, her husband died. She didn’t have an advanced education and had no idea what she would do. In the midst of thrashing and praying about this, she was invited to a wedding reception. She probably hadn’t wanted to go, but did. The cake was beautiful to look at, but tasted awful. She knew that she couldn’t do much. But she could make beautiful cakes that tasted good.
That was the beginning of a business she enjoyed and that provided for her family. Her success began in a time of trouble that set her to praying. She learned the truth of what Saint Paul writes in the Bible, “When I am weak, then I am strong.” You see, when we’re weak we go to God for strength, insight, wisdom, forgiveness, and the power to go on. That’s why the woman with the successful wedding cake business told Gerald Mann something we should all remember: Trouble is a trigger.
I think that woman was right! Trouble can set you to doing things you never realized that you could do. I believe that even in heaven, God will give us perplexing assignments that will cause us to grow. It’s possible to have trouble and still be at peace!
Peace is not the absence of trouble. Peace is having Jesus at the center of your life, fortifying you to face life’s troubles and to share Jesus’ love with others even in the midst of trouble. One of the songs we sang earlier, It is Well, was inspired by the experience of a Christian missionary in Africa. He and his family had worked for many years to serve the people there and to share Jesus’ love with them in whatever way they could. But there was an uprising and he and his family were threatened. He made arrangements to send his wife and children back to their native country while he remained behind, continuing to serve folks and share Jesus. As his family boarded the ship, someone asked if he might not reconsider and go back home as well. “No,” he said, “it is well with my soul.” That man had peace. He was in the center of God’s will for his life. He was showing Jesus to others and no matter what happened, he had peace.
I don’t understand The Lord of the Rings very well. I do know that J.R.R. Tolkien, who wrote the books on which the movies are based, described them as “Catholic,” conveying central truths of Christian faith. This was powerfully portrayed for me in one scene from The Two Towers. Gandulf, a sort of priestly wizard, comes face to face with a king Theoden, who has come under a sort of demonic spell. Gandulf, who has already come through what seems like hell and back, wants to free Theoden. Theoden resists at first and you can see Gandulf’s pain in this contest. But ultimately, Theoden is set free and he becomes once more, the man he was made to be. My son Philip tells me that in the book, Gandulf simply takes Theoden into the sunlight and that revives him.
When we cast the light of Jesus into people’s lives, some will reject Jesus and us. But others will soak it up. A few years ago, some of you will remember, I sat with a Muslim acquaintance at a funeral home. His brother-in-law died and he asked me what I believed happened to people when they die. I did the only thing I know how to do: I told him about Jesus. I said that Jesus died and rose, that He gives new lives and peace with God to everyone who follow Him, and on our deaths, waits to usher us into God’s presence forever. As I left, my acquaintance shook my hand and said, “Thanks, Mark. I don’t know what it was, but when you were talking earlier, it made me feel better.”
The Gospel of John particularly emphasizes that our mission as followers of Jesus is to simply bring people into the presence of Jesus—whether in our words, or deeds, or living. Exposed to the light of Jesus’ love and goodness, they’ll cast one of two judgments on themselves.
They may run from letting God, the world, or themselves see that they’re faulty human beings in need of a Savior and so condemn themselves to life without God.
Or, they’ll run to Jesus and let Him lighten their ways through life all the way to eternity. Our call is simply to be faithful to Christ, irrespective of others’ reactions. [See John 3:16-18 for more on this.]
Peace is not the absence of trouble. Peace is having Jesus at the center of your life, fortifying you to face life’s troubles and to share Jesus’ love with others even in the midst of trouble. Maybe that’s why, just after telling His disciples, Peace is yours, Jesus breathes on them and tells them:
“Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained."
This past week, you know, my wife flew to Florida to visit our daughter. The flight down and even the landing were a bit turbulent. But she and our friend Pat arrived and had a good visit. Our rides through life may get bumpy. But even then, we have peace. Even then, we can share the peace of Christ with others as we live for Christ, serve in Christ’s Name, and invite others to know Christ too. Today, ask Christ to fill you with His peace and then, filled with His Spirit, invite a spiritually-disconnected person to know Jesus. They may say no...but like you, they just might also say Yes! And whatever they say, Jesus says, “Peace is yours! You have peace!”
Monday, April 12, 2004
How Easter Can Be a Wow! for Us
Luke 24:1-12
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 11, 2004, Easter Sunday)
An expectant couple, anxious to confirm their suspicions about the gender of their baby, arranged to have an ultrasound done at the doctor’s office. So, they arrived for the appointment, the pregnant mom got onto the table, and the doctor began the procedure. Suddenly, the doctor let out a, “Wow!” “What is it?,” the couple wondered, “Is it a boy?” “Well,” the doctor replied slowly, “the middle one is.”
Sometimes life surprises us and the only appropriate response from us is, “Wow!” Easter records the greatest event in human history. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rose from the dead. And yet, we manages somehow not to be stunned or amazed by it. How is it that you and I can “acquire the fire,” gaining or regaining our sense of wonder at the most wonderful thing that has ever happened? Maybe the answer lies in going back to the original Easter and following what happened according to one of the Biblical writers on the first Easter Sunday. I want to do that by considering Luke’s telling of the Easter story, doing so from three different perspectives.
First, there is the perspective of the women who came to the tomb at sunrise that Sunday morning. They’d come to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. Ordinarily this task would have been done before Jesus’ body was buried. But back in those times in Judea, a new day was thought to begin at sundown. Jesus had died shortly before sundown, on the cusp of the Sabbath during the Passover celebration. Had Jesus’ fellow Jews spent the time to anoint His corpse then, they wouldn’t have had time to become ritually clean and able to participate in the holiday. So, on Jesus’ death, He was wrapped in linen cloths and placed in the tomb.
But the women got a surprise. The stone had been rolled away. Jesus’ body was gone. Luke says, with probable understatement that they were “perplexed.”
I’ve seen that sort of perplexity in people’s reactions to our Kindness Outreaches. Our congregation has touched literally thousands of people with our acts of kindness—cold water or pop on hot days, free coupons for discounts at restaurants and filling stations. Most people react like the women at the tomb. What’s going on?, they wonder. Why would somebody do something so nice for us? The questions are like those the women may have had: If Jesus had such power over death, why would He have bothered dying for us? Has someone stolen His body and if so, why?
You see, most people have small expectations of life. But on Easter, God shouted that He reserves the right to surprise us! He reserves the right to replace our shortsightedness with an awareness of eternity!
The second perspective on the first Easter is that of the other disciples, the other followers of Jesus with whom the women at the tomb shared the news of Jesus’ resurrection that day. In the midst of their perplexity at the tomb, the women had encountered two figures in dazzling white—I think it’s safe to call them angels—who had reminded them that Jesus had said He had to die on a cross, bearing our punishment for sin although He didn’t deserve it, and then would rise again, opening up eternity to all who follow Him. And so, they told the other disciples about Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus is alive!, they said.
The other disciples didn’t believe them. Why? Some scholars think that the women were disbelieved because they were women. It may be. In those days, a woman’s testimony was never deemed valid. Women were thought to be frivolous and unreliable. But Jesus had never shared the sexist attitude of first-century Judean culture. Unlike other pious men of that time, He spoke with women in public. And I think it’s especially delicious that God chose women to be the first ones to preach the Easter message!
But there may be another reason the disciples didn’t believe the women. A few years ago, a prominent preacher told the true story of a friend and his son when the boy was small. The little guy had two heroes: Captain Kangaroo and MisterRogers, back when both of those children’s show hosts were on TV. The father and son would sit and watch these two stars every day. Then an announcement was made that one day, MisterRogers was going to visit Captain Kangaroo’s show. The boy was so excited he could hardly stand it. Day in and day out, he would ask his father, “Is this the day? Is this the day?” Finally, the day came and the two of them sat in front of the TV to watch this magic. Captain Kangaroo’s show began and after a few moments, MisterRogers was introduced. The boy watched this for a few moments and then, left the room. Mystified, his dad found him in another part of the house. “What’s wrong?” the dad asked.” The son replied, “It’s just too good. It’s just too good!” The women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection may have been dismissed because it was simply too good to be true.
The third perspective on the first Easter comes from Peter. Peter, you know sometimes gets a bad press because like us, he’s proud, impetuous, and prone to snap judgments. But when Peter heard the women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection, he reacted differently from the other disciples.
Maybe that’s because Peter had a track record with Jesus, memories that came flooding back to him now. Maybe he remembered the early morning when he and his crew returned from a night of futility when they’d been unable to catch any fish. They found the preacher Jesus, from landlocked Nazareth, waiting on the shore. He suggested that they put back out and lower the nets. You can almost hear the smirk in Peter’s voice when he tells Jesus that, like generations of Galilean fishermen, they’d been out trolling the waters all night long. He knew what he was doing, Peter seemed to say. He was a professional fisherman. But then, he said, as if to prove Jesus wrong, he would go out again. They’d gone just a few feet from shore and lowered the nets. They became so full that the catch nearly sank the boat. Peter was overwhelmed. He collapsed before Jesus and begged the Lord to go away. Peter was aware in a sudden, dramatic way of how great the distance between him and the sinless Lord Jesus.
He may have also remembered the events of just a few days before. Jesus had told Peter that when the going got rough and the world turned against Jesus, Peter would deny knowing Jesus three times. Peter told Jesus that would never happen. But it did.
Peter had been the first to confess that Jesus was the “son of the Blessed,” a Semitic phrase signaling Peter’s belief that Jesus was God Himself.
That flood of memories may have incited Peter to not walk, but run, to the tomb and investigate for himself. There, he saw all the evidence he needed: the tomb empty and the linen burial cloths laying there. Our Bible lesson says that Peter went back home “amazed.”
Peter, I think, holds the key to our believing and greeting the good news of Easter with a Wow! And not just on Easter Day, but every day of our lives. For Easter to have meaning for us, it won’t be the result of our gaining knowledge through say, the reading of Scripture. (Although anyone who follows Jesus will want to read Scripture in order to know Him better!) And it won’t be the result of emotions. (Although the better we know Jesus, the more our emotions—like love and gratitude and even others like anger with injustice—will be roused. The wonder of Easter will come to us in another way, Peter’s way.
Psychologist James Dobson once told the story of being alone with his then-toddler son, Ryan, shortly after they’d moved into a developing neighborhood. Dobson was busy preparing dinner when he became aware of silence in the house. He called for Ryan...no answer. He looked all over the house and couldn’t find the boy. He then ran outside and saw, to his horror, some distance away that Ryan had crawled into the back of a large dump truck. How this little guy had climbed up there, Dobson didn’t know. He wanted to avoid startling his son, so Ryan approached him quietly. The closer he got to Ryan, the more he could hear that Ryan was sort of talking to himself. At one point, Ryan decided he wanted to get out of the dump truck bed. So backing up toward the edge of the truck, he began to probe with his feet for a place where he could land. Try as he might though, he couldn’t find it. Dobson heard his son saying quietly, “Somebody help the boy.” Ryan finally decided that he would just back off the bed and see where he would land. He did so and fell...right into the waiting arms of his dad.
In the end, we will only know the truth and the life-changing power of Jesus’ resurrection when we stop trying to get through this life on our own steam. The WOW! of Easter will be ours when after remembering at Jesus’ track record as Peter did, we surrender and fall into Jesus’ waiting arms. On this Easter Sunday, that’s what I invite you to do today and every day!
[The joke about the expectant parents is a variation of a story appearing in Philip Longfellow Anderson's book, The Gospel in Disney.
[The true story of the little boy and his dad as they watched Captain Kangaroo and MisterRogers in a joint TV appearance is told by Thomas G. Long in a sermon appearing in the April 4, 2001 issue of Christian Century magazine.
[James Dobson tells the true story of his son, Ryan, in a presentation that appears on his famous Focus on the Family lectures on film (now on VHS and DVD).]
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 11, 2004, Easter Sunday)
An expectant couple, anxious to confirm their suspicions about the gender of their baby, arranged to have an ultrasound done at the doctor’s office. So, they arrived for the appointment, the pregnant mom got onto the table, and the doctor began the procedure. Suddenly, the doctor let out a, “Wow!” “What is it?,” the couple wondered, “Is it a boy?” “Well,” the doctor replied slowly, “the middle one is.”
Sometimes life surprises us and the only appropriate response from us is, “Wow!” Easter records the greatest event in human history. Jesus Christ, true God and true man, rose from the dead. And yet, we manages somehow not to be stunned or amazed by it. How is it that you and I can “acquire the fire,” gaining or regaining our sense of wonder at the most wonderful thing that has ever happened? Maybe the answer lies in going back to the original Easter and following what happened according to one of the Biblical writers on the first Easter Sunday. I want to do that by considering Luke’s telling of the Easter story, doing so from three different perspectives.
First, there is the perspective of the women who came to the tomb at sunrise that Sunday morning. They’d come to anoint Jesus’ body with spices. Ordinarily this task would have been done before Jesus’ body was buried. But back in those times in Judea, a new day was thought to begin at sundown. Jesus had died shortly before sundown, on the cusp of the Sabbath during the Passover celebration. Had Jesus’ fellow Jews spent the time to anoint His corpse then, they wouldn’t have had time to become ritually clean and able to participate in the holiday. So, on Jesus’ death, He was wrapped in linen cloths and placed in the tomb.
But the women got a surprise. The stone had been rolled away. Jesus’ body was gone. Luke says, with probable understatement that they were “perplexed.”
I’ve seen that sort of perplexity in people’s reactions to our Kindness Outreaches. Our congregation has touched literally thousands of people with our acts of kindness—cold water or pop on hot days, free coupons for discounts at restaurants and filling stations. Most people react like the women at the tomb. What’s going on?, they wonder. Why would somebody do something so nice for us? The questions are like those the women may have had: If Jesus had such power over death, why would He have bothered dying for us? Has someone stolen His body and if so, why?
You see, most people have small expectations of life. But on Easter, God shouted that He reserves the right to surprise us! He reserves the right to replace our shortsightedness with an awareness of eternity!
The second perspective on the first Easter is that of the other disciples, the other followers of Jesus with whom the women at the tomb shared the news of Jesus’ resurrection that day. In the midst of their perplexity at the tomb, the women had encountered two figures in dazzling white—I think it’s safe to call them angels—who had reminded them that Jesus had said He had to die on a cross, bearing our punishment for sin although He didn’t deserve it, and then would rise again, opening up eternity to all who follow Him. And so, they told the other disciples about Jesus’ resurrection. Jesus is alive!, they said.
The other disciples didn’t believe them. Why? Some scholars think that the women were disbelieved because they were women. It may be. In those days, a woman’s testimony was never deemed valid. Women were thought to be frivolous and unreliable. But Jesus had never shared the sexist attitude of first-century Judean culture. Unlike other pious men of that time, He spoke with women in public. And I think it’s especially delicious that God chose women to be the first ones to preach the Easter message!
But there may be another reason the disciples didn’t believe the women. A few years ago, a prominent preacher told the true story of a friend and his son when the boy was small. The little guy had two heroes: Captain Kangaroo and MisterRogers, back when both of those children’s show hosts were on TV. The father and son would sit and watch these two stars every day. Then an announcement was made that one day, MisterRogers was going to visit Captain Kangaroo’s show. The boy was so excited he could hardly stand it. Day in and day out, he would ask his father, “Is this the day? Is this the day?” Finally, the day came and the two of them sat in front of the TV to watch this magic. Captain Kangaroo’s show began and after a few moments, MisterRogers was introduced. The boy watched this for a few moments and then, left the room. Mystified, his dad found him in another part of the house. “What’s wrong?” the dad asked.” The son replied, “It’s just too good. It’s just too good!” The women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection may have been dismissed because it was simply too good to be true.
The third perspective on the first Easter comes from Peter. Peter, you know sometimes gets a bad press because like us, he’s proud, impetuous, and prone to snap judgments. But when Peter heard the women’s story of Jesus’ resurrection, he reacted differently from the other disciples.
Maybe that’s because Peter had a track record with Jesus, memories that came flooding back to him now. Maybe he remembered the early morning when he and his crew returned from a night of futility when they’d been unable to catch any fish. They found the preacher Jesus, from landlocked Nazareth, waiting on the shore. He suggested that they put back out and lower the nets. You can almost hear the smirk in Peter’s voice when he tells Jesus that, like generations of Galilean fishermen, they’d been out trolling the waters all night long. He knew what he was doing, Peter seemed to say. He was a professional fisherman. But then, he said, as if to prove Jesus wrong, he would go out again. They’d gone just a few feet from shore and lowered the nets. They became so full that the catch nearly sank the boat. Peter was overwhelmed. He collapsed before Jesus and begged the Lord to go away. Peter was aware in a sudden, dramatic way of how great the distance between him and the sinless Lord Jesus.
He may have also remembered the events of just a few days before. Jesus had told Peter that when the going got rough and the world turned against Jesus, Peter would deny knowing Jesus three times. Peter told Jesus that would never happen. But it did.
Peter had been the first to confess that Jesus was the “son of the Blessed,” a Semitic phrase signaling Peter’s belief that Jesus was God Himself.
That flood of memories may have incited Peter to not walk, but run, to the tomb and investigate for himself. There, he saw all the evidence he needed: the tomb empty and the linen burial cloths laying there. Our Bible lesson says that Peter went back home “amazed.”
Peter, I think, holds the key to our believing and greeting the good news of Easter with a Wow! And not just on Easter Day, but every day of our lives. For Easter to have meaning for us, it won’t be the result of our gaining knowledge through say, the reading of Scripture. (Although anyone who follows Jesus will want to read Scripture in order to know Him better!) And it won’t be the result of emotions. (Although the better we know Jesus, the more our emotions—like love and gratitude and even others like anger with injustice—will be roused. The wonder of Easter will come to us in another way, Peter’s way.
Psychologist James Dobson once told the story of being alone with his then-toddler son, Ryan, shortly after they’d moved into a developing neighborhood. Dobson was busy preparing dinner when he became aware of silence in the house. He called for Ryan...no answer. He looked all over the house and couldn’t find the boy. He then ran outside and saw, to his horror, some distance away that Ryan had crawled into the back of a large dump truck. How this little guy had climbed up there, Dobson didn’t know. He wanted to avoid startling his son, so Ryan approached him quietly. The closer he got to Ryan, the more he could hear that Ryan was sort of talking to himself. At one point, Ryan decided he wanted to get out of the dump truck bed. So backing up toward the edge of the truck, he began to probe with his feet for a place where he could land. Try as he might though, he couldn’t find it. Dobson heard his son saying quietly, “Somebody help the boy.” Ryan finally decided that he would just back off the bed and see where he would land. He did so and fell...right into the waiting arms of his dad.
In the end, we will only know the truth and the life-changing power of Jesus’ resurrection when we stop trying to get through this life on our own steam. The WOW! of Easter will be ours when after remembering at Jesus’ track record as Peter did, we surrender and fall into Jesus’ waiting arms. On this Easter Sunday, that’s what I invite you to do today and every day!
[The joke about the expectant parents is a variation of a story appearing in Philip Longfellow Anderson's book, The Gospel in Disney.
[The true story of the little boy and his dad as they watched Captain Kangaroo and MisterRogers in a joint TV appearance is told by Thomas G. Long in a sermon appearing in the April 4, 2001 issue of Christian Century magazine.
[James Dobson tells the true story of his son, Ryan, in a presentation that appears on his famous Focus on the Family lectures on film (now on VHS and DVD).]
Sunday, April 04, 2004
The Journey, Through Lent...Through Life, April 4, 2004
John 12:12-16
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 4, 2004)
About a year ago, I was working at home and decided to take a lunch break. I turned on the TV and tuned into one of the news channels. What I saw was a sight I’ll wager many of you have seen many times in the intervening year: videotape of grateful, excited Iraqis cheering as US military personnel used a tank to pull down an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. Do you remember what happened after the statue was toppled? Many startled and grateful Iraqis shook the Americans’ hands, thumped them on the backs, and cheered them. It was a moment of celebration and victory!
Contrast those images to the ones we saw this past week from Fallujah in Iraq. American engineers, civilian workers, in that city to help rebuild the country, were ambushed and killed. A mob then gleefully desecrated their bodies. While that mob and that city don’t represent all of Iraq, one couldn’t help but wonder, “What happened this past year?”
The events we celebrate this Holy Week—the period between today, Palm Sunday, and Easter Sunday—teach us how quickly things can change in life. The events we remember this morning, everything associated with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as He prepared to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover, are well-known to you. Back in the first-century and for eons before, Jews from all over the known world would travel to Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate important religious festivals. Passover was one of those festivals. So, Jerusalem was packed with crowds of people as Jesus arrived.
Ever since Jesus’ dinner in the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, which we talked about last week, there had been a buzz about the possibility of Jesus coming into town. Everybody knew that if Jesus did show up for these holy days, He would provoke a confrontation. The Roman occupiers wouldn’t like it. And the Jewish religious authorities, who had already plotted to murder Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, wouldn’t like it either.
The crowds though, ate it up! They were fed up with their religious leaders, who laid stern demands on them and told them that the only way they could live with God and avoid His punishment was by obeying a lot of human laws. They were fed up with religion! They were also fed up with these Roman outsiders running the show in the land God had given to them. But Jesus aroused a hope within them. Maybe, they probably thought, Jesus would lead the charge and throw the Romans out and bring down the religious elite and let them all do what they wanted to do.
Even the way the crowd chose to welcome Jesus indicated that they completely misunderstood Him. They waved palm leaves, something which in ancient times, Jews had used to welcome conquering military heroes. At the moment of Jesus’ arrival, the crowd didn’t think of the fact that Jesus didn’t speak in “Us vs. Them” terms. Jesus said that everybody was a sinner, everybody needed a Savior, and everybody—Jew, Roman, Iraqi, American—could follow Him and live forever with God. They certainly were ignoring Jesus’ words that their old sinful selves needed to die so that Jesus could help them become people on their way to being just like Jesus: loving servants who put the interests and needs of God and neighbor ahead of their own. As they shouted, “Hosanna!,” a word that means, “Lord, save” or “Lord, mercy!,” what they really meant was, “Give us what we want, Jesus. Treat us like kings!”
But if that’s the way they felt, events of that week would quickly leave them disappointed. The text of a Valentine’s card I recently found on the web said, “To my love. You've taken care of me when I was sick, cheered me up when I was sad, comforted me when I was in trouble. But what have you done for me lately?” Within days of their conquering hero’s welcome for Jesus, the crowd’s feelings about Him would be similar. Jesus had given them a feel-good celebration on Palm Sunday. Jesus had brought them healing and hope and the good news that God’s forgiveness and new life were free gifts for all with faith in Him. But as Sunday gave way to Monday and drifted onto become Tuesday and Wednesday, they became impatient and angry with Him. Jesus was offering them the most precious gift in the universe—life forever with God, but they weren’t interested. By Thursday, the crowd had turned completely from Jesus and wanted Him dead. Things can change quickly!
But if people are fickle, Jesus is faithful. Of all the thousands of people on the streets of Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, Jesus alone knew what was going to happen. While He wished—and even prayed—that He wouldn’t have to go through the agony of the cross, He forged ahead.
That really is the wonder of Palm Sunday: Jesus was obedient to His mission. He didn’t let the crowd, His desire for safety or popularity, or His instinct for self-preservation prevent Him from going to the cross for us. He didn’t whine about how His suffering and death were unfair. He knew that if He remained faithful to God’s plan for Him, the payoff would be enormous. And it was. At the end of the first Holy Week, Jesus Who had endured death rose again and through that miracle, opened the possibility of everlasting life to all who follow Him!
Some of you have read the phenomenal Rick Warren book, The Purpose Driven Life. Do you remember the book’s very first sentence? Warren writes, “It’s not about you.” I don’t know for certain why the people of Iraq who oppose American occupation there feel the way they do, but I have a pretty good idea why the crowds in Jerusalem turned on Jesus. I have a pretty fair idea why people turn on Him even today. I have a good idea as to why I turn on Jesus myself sometimes.
I’ll never forget a lecture given by one of my seminary professors when I was preparing to become a pastor. He had been through a lot in his life, tragedies and challenges. So, I felt that he had the right to say what he did. He talked about how difficult it was for him, after all he’d been through, to be with people who, confronting challenges in life, would ask, “Why is this happening to me?” The professor said that while he would never be so insensitive, he often wanted to shake these people and ask them, “Why shouldn’t this be happening to you?” This is not heaven. Yes, God has invaded our world and our lives through Jesus Christ. And He promises to be with us. But Jesus’ reason for coming into this world wasn’t to make this life easy. He came to change us from the inside out.
There’s a good reason for Jesus not making everything easy for us in this life. When I was growing up, my family spent time with two other families. In one of these families, the dad was a tyrant. On occasion, when the kids misbehaved, I watched him grab his kids by the throats and smack them on the ears until he thought he had control. All of those children ended up getting into lots of trouble as adolescents and adults. In the other family, the parents doted on the kids, let them have temper tantrums, and never told their children, “No.” Those kids also had grave problems as adolescents and adults. God is neither a dictator or a doormat. He so wants what is best for us that He sometimes says No and He loves us even in life’s tough times. God isn’t monster. God doesn’t bring tragedy or pain to us. But the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that God does use the circumstances of our lives to discipline us, to help us, and fit us for the work God has for us in eternity. The Jerusalem crowd—and I suppose, you and I—would rather that God made this life a trouble-free existence. When life throws us difficulties, it’s easy for us to join the crowd and complain that God isn’t bowing down to serve us. But life isn’t about us!
Listen: Don’t pay attention to the changeable crowd! Don’t listen to the fickle interior voices of our own selfishness! Listen instead to God and the powerful message He’s sent to us through Jesus the Christ. Let God love you into a life made new by Jesus. Let Him love you into a life of boldness and risk, of hope and fulfillment, of eternity with Him! In the foreword for the book accompanying his new movie, The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson talks about why he made this movie about Jesus in Holy Week:
“This had its genesis during a time when I found myself feeling trapped with feelings of terrible, isolated emptiness...during...[a] time period of meditation and prayer...I first conceived the idea of making a film about The Passion. The idea took root very gradually...I wanted the effort to be a testament to infinite love of Jesus the Christ, which has saved, and continues to save, many the world over. It seems that in our modern secular existence we tend to forget...I wanted to remember to unforget...the Passion of Christ which cannot be articulated, only experienced..."
Jesus came into this world to die and to rise for you. You don’t have to earn that love. It’s God’s gift to you. Through all the seasons of life, whether it’s popular or convenient to follow Jesus or not, whether we feel like following Jesus or not, Jesus is still the Savior Who gave His life for you. As long as you and I still have breath, we can still decide to follow Him. The question of Holy Week—the question for each day of our lives is, “Will we follow Jesus?” All of heaven for all of eternity is waiting to hear our answers.
[The quote from Mel Gibson is cited in a sermon by Michael Foss.
[I highly recommend Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life. While I don't agree with everything Warren says in his book (ie, I disagree with his understanding of Holy Baptism for one thing), I nonetheless love the book and think that it can contribute mightily to one's spiritual growth, as it has to mine.]
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, April 4, 2004)
About a year ago, I was working at home and decided to take a lunch break. I turned on the TV and tuned into one of the news channels. What I saw was a sight I’ll wager many of you have seen many times in the intervening year: videotape of grateful, excited Iraqis cheering as US military personnel used a tank to pull down an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. Do you remember what happened after the statue was toppled? Many startled and grateful Iraqis shook the Americans’ hands, thumped them on the backs, and cheered them. It was a moment of celebration and victory!
Contrast those images to the ones we saw this past week from Fallujah in Iraq. American engineers, civilian workers, in that city to help rebuild the country, were ambushed and killed. A mob then gleefully desecrated their bodies. While that mob and that city don’t represent all of Iraq, one couldn’t help but wonder, “What happened this past year?”
The events we celebrate this Holy Week—the period between today, Palm Sunday, and Easter Sunday—teach us how quickly things can change in life. The events we remember this morning, everything associated with Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem as He prepared to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover, are well-known to you. Back in the first-century and for eons before, Jews from all over the known world would travel to Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate important religious festivals. Passover was one of those festivals. So, Jerusalem was packed with crowds of people as Jesus arrived.
Ever since Jesus’ dinner in the Jerusalem suburb of Bethany with Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, which we talked about last week, there had been a buzz about the possibility of Jesus coming into town. Everybody knew that if Jesus did show up for these holy days, He would provoke a confrontation. The Roman occupiers wouldn’t like it. And the Jewish religious authorities, who had already plotted to murder Jesus’ friend, Lazarus, wouldn’t like it either.
The crowds though, ate it up! They were fed up with their religious leaders, who laid stern demands on them and told them that the only way they could live with God and avoid His punishment was by obeying a lot of human laws. They were fed up with religion! They were also fed up with these Roman outsiders running the show in the land God had given to them. But Jesus aroused a hope within them. Maybe, they probably thought, Jesus would lead the charge and throw the Romans out and bring down the religious elite and let them all do what they wanted to do.
Even the way the crowd chose to welcome Jesus indicated that they completely misunderstood Him. They waved palm leaves, something which in ancient times, Jews had used to welcome conquering military heroes. At the moment of Jesus’ arrival, the crowd didn’t think of the fact that Jesus didn’t speak in “Us vs. Them” terms. Jesus said that everybody was a sinner, everybody needed a Savior, and everybody—Jew, Roman, Iraqi, American—could follow Him and live forever with God. They certainly were ignoring Jesus’ words that their old sinful selves needed to die so that Jesus could help them become people on their way to being just like Jesus: loving servants who put the interests and needs of God and neighbor ahead of their own. As they shouted, “Hosanna!,” a word that means, “Lord, save” or “Lord, mercy!,” what they really meant was, “Give us what we want, Jesus. Treat us like kings!”
But if that’s the way they felt, events of that week would quickly leave them disappointed. The text of a Valentine’s card I recently found on the web said, “To my love. You've taken care of me when I was sick, cheered me up when I was sad, comforted me when I was in trouble. But what have you done for me lately?” Within days of their conquering hero’s welcome for Jesus, the crowd’s feelings about Him would be similar. Jesus had given them a feel-good celebration on Palm Sunday. Jesus had brought them healing and hope and the good news that God’s forgiveness and new life were free gifts for all with faith in Him. But as Sunday gave way to Monday and drifted onto become Tuesday and Wednesday, they became impatient and angry with Him. Jesus was offering them the most precious gift in the universe—life forever with God, but they weren’t interested. By Thursday, the crowd had turned completely from Jesus and wanted Him dead. Things can change quickly!
But if people are fickle, Jesus is faithful. Of all the thousands of people on the streets of Jerusalem that Palm Sunday, Jesus alone knew what was going to happen. While He wished—and even prayed—that He wouldn’t have to go through the agony of the cross, He forged ahead.
That really is the wonder of Palm Sunday: Jesus was obedient to His mission. He didn’t let the crowd, His desire for safety or popularity, or His instinct for self-preservation prevent Him from going to the cross for us. He didn’t whine about how His suffering and death were unfair. He knew that if He remained faithful to God’s plan for Him, the payoff would be enormous. And it was. At the end of the first Holy Week, Jesus Who had endured death rose again and through that miracle, opened the possibility of everlasting life to all who follow Him!
Some of you have read the phenomenal Rick Warren book, The Purpose Driven Life. Do you remember the book’s very first sentence? Warren writes, “It’s not about you.” I don’t know for certain why the people of Iraq who oppose American occupation there feel the way they do, but I have a pretty good idea why the crowds in Jerusalem turned on Jesus. I have a pretty fair idea why people turn on Him even today. I have a good idea as to why I turn on Jesus myself sometimes.
I’ll never forget a lecture given by one of my seminary professors when I was preparing to become a pastor. He had been through a lot in his life, tragedies and challenges. So, I felt that he had the right to say what he did. He talked about how difficult it was for him, after all he’d been through, to be with people who, confronting challenges in life, would ask, “Why is this happening to me?” The professor said that while he would never be so insensitive, he often wanted to shake these people and ask them, “Why shouldn’t this be happening to you?” This is not heaven. Yes, God has invaded our world and our lives through Jesus Christ. And He promises to be with us. But Jesus’ reason for coming into this world wasn’t to make this life easy. He came to change us from the inside out.
There’s a good reason for Jesus not making everything easy for us in this life. When I was growing up, my family spent time with two other families. In one of these families, the dad was a tyrant. On occasion, when the kids misbehaved, I watched him grab his kids by the throats and smack them on the ears until he thought he had control. All of those children ended up getting into lots of trouble as adolescents and adults. In the other family, the parents doted on the kids, let them have temper tantrums, and never told their children, “No.” Those kids also had grave problems as adolescents and adults. God is neither a dictator or a doormat. He so wants what is best for us that He sometimes says No and He loves us even in life’s tough times. God isn’t monster. God doesn’t bring tragedy or pain to us. But the New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that God does use the circumstances of our lives to discipline us, to help us, and fit us for the work God has for us in eternity. The Jerusalem crowd—and I suppose, you and I—would rather that God made this life a trouble-free existence. When life throws us difficulties, it’s easy for us to join the crowd and complain that God isn’t bowing down to serve us. But life isn’t about us!
Listen: Don’t pay attention to the changeable crowd! Don’t listen to the fickle interior voices of our own selfishness! Listen instead to God and the powerful message He’s sent to us through Jesus the Christ. Let God love you into a life made new by Jesus. Let Him love you into a life of boldness and risk, of hope and fulfillment, of eternity with Him! In the foreword for the book accompanying his new movie, The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson talks about why he made this movie about Jesus in Holy Week:
“This had its genesis during a time when I found myself feeling trapped with feelings of terrible, isolated emptiness...during...[a] time period of meditation and prayer...I first conceived the idea of making a film about The Passion. The idea took root very gradually...I wanted the effort to be a testament to infinite love of Jesus the Christ, which has saved, and continues to save, many the world over. It seems that in our modern secular existence we tend to forget...I wanted to remember to unforget...the Passion of Christ which cannot be articulated, only experienced..."
Jesus came into this world to die and to rise for you. You don’t have to earn that love. It’s God’s gift to you. Through all the seasons of life, whether it’s popular or convenient to follow Jesus or not, whether we feel like following Jesus or not, Jesus is still the Savior Who gave His life for you. As long as you and I still have breath, we can still decide to follow Him. The question of Holy Week—the question for each day of our lives is, “Will we follow Jesus?” All of heaven for all of eternity is waiting to hear our answers.
[The quote from Mel Gibson is cited in a sermon by Michael Foss.
[I highly recommend Rick Warren's book, The Purpose Driven Life. While I don't agree with everything Warren says in his book (ie, I disagree with his understanding of Holy Baptism for one thing), I nonetheless love the book and think that it can contribute mightily to one's spiritual growth, as it has to mine.]
Sunday, March 28, 2004
The Journey, Through Lent...Through Life, March 28, 2004
The Best Time to Follow Jesus
John 12:1-8
[shared with the people of Friendship Church, March 28, 2004]
Some of you have heard me speak before of the TV interview that happened in Chicago when a replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall had gone to that town. A reporter asked one man why he was there. “Because,” the man replied, running his fingers across a particular name, “when I was in Vietnam, that man saved my life.”
As followers of Jesus Christ, you and I can readily understand that man’s emotions. We know Someone Who sacrificed His own life to save ours. Jesus Christ, God-on-the-earth and perfect, sinless human being, died on a cross. Jesus accepted our punishment so that all who believe in Him can live with God forever.
But let me ask you some questions, ones that I ask myself from time to time. I'm not always proud of my answers.
How much does Jesus’ death for you mean to you?
How grateful are you for what Jesus has done for you?
How does your gratitude to Jesus show in your everyday life?
Our Bible lesson records an almost bizarre incident that occurred just six days before the Passover Feast that would see Jesus’ arrest and execution. At the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, his friends in Bethany, Jesus is having dinner. In the midst of it all, Mary walks over to Jesus and pours a costly ointment, imported from India, on Jesus’ feet. She dabs the liquid with her hair.
If this scene is strange to us, it would have been downright offensive to the people of first-century Judea where Jesus lived.
For one thing, washing or anointing feet was slave’s work.
For another, a woman was never to let her hair down in public as Mary does here.
And of course, there is the cost of the ointment, the equivalent of about one year’s wages. Judas, Jesus’ treasurer who will soon betray Jesus, says the money that’s being "wasted" at that moment could be given to the poor. But Jesus upbraids Judas. You see, Mary is grateful for what Jesus has done for her family: in the preceding chapter of John's Gospel you can read about Jesus bringing her brother, Lazarus, back to life.
I believe that this incident has valuable things to teach you and me and I’d like to talk about them this morning. The lessons can be summed up in this way: In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can, whenever we can, for whomever we can. And for God’s sake, we should never worry about either what it costs us or about our ability. Let’s consider that.
In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can. Donald Berwick is a pediatrician and speaker. Once, he was speaking to a convention in Boston. During his presentation, he shared that he and some friends had started a medical clinic to help the poor in his community. During a Q-and-A session afterwards, one man challenged Berwick. “Don’t you realize how many poor people there are in New England? What good do you think that you’re accomplishing with your clinic?” Berwick said that he understood what the man was getting at and then said, “You want me to boil the ocean. I can’t. I can boil a pot for tea. So, I’ll boil my pot for tea and, if enough of us boil a pot of water, the ocean will boil.”
Mary and her family were people of modest means. We know this because servants weren’t preparing the meal that Jesus was enjoying. Mary’s sister Martha was the one in the kitchen. Yet they had this expensive ointment, something for which they’d probably scrimped and saved for eons. Putting it on Jesus’ feet was an extravagant, unnecessary, and altogether loving thing to do. Mary did what she could do. That’s our call too.
In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do good whenever we can. Bishop Thomas Clary tells the story of a conversation that happened after the meeting of a board on which he served. They were telling stories about their most embarrassing moments. One man, Frank, talked about his dad, a fisherman who loved the sea and was devoted to his entire extended family. As the Bishop tells it:
“[Frank said,] 'When the weather was bad he would drive me to school. He had this old truck that he used in his fishing business...[It made lots of noise, announcing its presence wherever it went.]...As [Dad] would drive toward the school, I would shrink down into the seat hoping to disappear...[so I wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of my schoolmates]...He would drive right up in front [of the school], and it seemed like everybody would be standing around and watching. Then he would lean over and give me a big kiss on the cheek and tell me to be a good boy. It was so embarrassing...Here I was twelve years old, and my dad would lean over and kiss me goodbye!
“'I remember the day I decided I was too old for a goodbye kiss. When we got to school and came to a stop, he had his usual big smile. He started to lean toward me, but I put my hand up and said, "No, Dad."
"[Frank explained that he was too old to be kissed by his father. His dad’s eyes teared up.] 'He turned and looked out the windshield. "You’re right...You are a big boy, a man. I won’t kiss you any more."'
"Frank got a funny look on his face and the tears began to well up in his eyes as he spoke. ‘It wasn’t long after that when my dad went to sea and never came back. It was a day when most of the fleet stayed in, but not Dad. He had a big family to feed. They found his boat adrift with its nets half in and half out...'
"Frank spoke again, ‘Guys, you don’t know what I’d give to have my Dad give me just one more kiss on the cheek, to feel his rough old face, to smell the ocean in him, to feel his arm around my neck. I wish I had been a man then. If I had been a man, I would never have told my Dad I was too old for a goodbye kiss.'"
In response to Jesus’ love, like Mary, we’re to do good whenever we can. That includes giving and receiving genuine love.
Third: In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do good for whomever we can. Max Lucado tells the story of a friend’s visit to Disney World. This friend had been at Cinderella’s Castle in the Magic Kingdom. There was a huge crowd and a beautiful girl was playing the part of Cinderella. In a corner opposite from where this young woman stood in the castle was a boy of about seven, holding onto the hand of his older brother. The younger boy was small for his age, his face terribly deformed. He watched as “Cinderella” showered attention on all the other children around her. But then something wonderful happened! Cinderella saw this little boy just standing there watching wistfully. She politely but resolutely walked through the crowd of adoring children right up to the little boy. She knelt down next to him with a smile on her face and then leaned forward and kissed him. The joy that overtook that little guy bespoke his gratitude. When we do good even for the unlovely, the joy of heaven enters our world!
In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can, whenever we can, for whomever we can. And for God’s sake, we shouldn’t worry about the cost. Mary didn’t worry about the cost when she poured that expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet! ! A few years ago, a man in New York City was kidnapped. In a telephone call, the kidnappers demanded a $100,000.00 ransom from the man’s wife. She thought about that and negotiated them down to $30,000.00! The man was ultimately freed. But I wonder how he felt after he got home and learned that his wife seemingly decided that he was worth $30,000.00, but not $100,000.00!
Jesus went to a cross knowing that in order to save us, it would cost Him His earthly life. He tells us that those who lose their lives—those who give up their own priorities and preferences and let Him be our highest priorities—will in the end, save their lives. When we truly value Jesus and what He has done for us, no cost is too great. Whatever it costs us in time, effort, money is worth it in order to tell Jesus thank You!
And we shouldn’t worry about our ability either. A man happened to walk by a building that was on fire before firefighters arrived. A woman on the second floor called out to him and asked, “Will you save me?” The man said that he would and proceeded to walk away. “Where are you going?” the woman asked hysterically. “I’m going to get life-saving training. I’ll be back as soon as I graduate.”
That’s what lots of people do when it comes to Jesus’ call in their lives. They don’t participate in or teach Sunday School, help with the church youth, do a Kindness Outreach, ask a friend to worship, clean up the building, lead or get involved with a small group, or read a lesson on Sunday morning because they don’t feel qualified. Mary, in our Bible lesson today, apparently wasn’t much of a cook. But grateful for Jesus’ love, she soothed his aching feet at the dinner. There’s no reason for us to worry about what we can’t do. That’s because God can do everything through the hearts, hands, and lives of people who put themselves at His disposal. Paul writes in the New Testament, "I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me!" I've said it before and I'll say it again, "The most important ability that Jesus is seeking in us is availability."
As people grateful for what Jesus has done for us, our call is clear. We’re to do whatever good we can, whenever we can, for whomever we can. And for God’s sake, we should never worry about either what it costs us or about our ability. God has so much He wants to do in our lives and through our lives. Now is the time to let Him live in us. This is the place. Amen!
[The true story of the Chicagolander at the replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall has been told by Bill Hybels in messages and in at least one of his books.
[The true story of Donald Berwick was recently shared by Pastor Michael Foss in the latest issue of The Toolkit: Equipping Disciple Making Ministries.
[The true story of Frank from Bishop Clary was recently recounted by Steve Goodier in his fantastic emailed inspiration, LifeSupport. To subscribe, contact Steve at LifeSupport-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .
[The true story of 'Cinderella' at Disney World comes from a book by Max Lucado. I found it however, in a wonderful book of sermons by the late Philip Longfellow Anderson. The book is The Gospel in Disney: Christian Values in the Early Animated Classics (Minneapolis: Augsburg Books, 2004).
[The true story of the kidnapped man is from e-sermons.com.]
John 12:1-8
[shared with the people of Friendship Church, March 28, 2004]
Some of you have heard me speak before of the TV interview that happened in Chicago when a replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall had gone to that town. A reporter asked one man why he was there. “Because,” the man replied, running his fingers across a particular name, “when I was in Vietnam, that man saved my life.”
As followers of Jesus Christ, you and I can readily understand that man’s emotions. We know Someone Who sacrificed His own life to save ours. Jesus Christ, God-on-the-earth and perfect, sinless human being, died on a cross. Jesus accepted our punishment so that all who believe in Him can live with God forever.
But let me ask you some questions, ones that I ask myself from time to time. I'm not always proud of my answers.
How much does Jesus’ death for you mean to you?
How grateful are you for what Jesus has done for you?
How does your gratitude to Jesus show in your everyday life?
Our Bible lesson records an almost bizarre incident that occurred just six days before the Passover Feast that would see Jesus’ arrest and execution. At the home of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, his friends in Bethany, Jesus is having dinner. In the midst of it all, Mary walks over to Jesus and pours a costly ointment, imported from India, on Jesus’ feet. She dabs the liquid with her hair.
If this scene is strange to us, it would have been downright offensive to the people of first-century Judea where Jesus lived.
For one thing, washing or anointing feet was slave’s work.
For another, a woman was never to let her hair down in public as Mary does here.
And of course, there is the cost of the ointment, the equivalent of about one year’s wages. Judas, Jesus’ treasurer who will soon betray Jesus, says the money that’s being "wasted" at that moment could be given to the poor. But Jesus upbraids Judas. You see, Mary is grateful for what Jesus has done for her family: in the preceding chapter of John's Gospel you can read about Jesus bringing her brother, Lazarus, back to life.
I believe that this incident has valuable things to teach you and me and I’d like to talk about them this morning. The lessons can be summed up in this way: In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can, whenever we can, for whomever we can. And for God’s sake, we should never worry about either what it costs us or about our ability. Let’s consider that.
In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can. Donald Berwick is a pediatrician and speaker. Once, he was speaking to a convention in Boston. During his presentation, he shared that he and some friends had started a medical clinic to help the poor in his community. During a Q-and-A session afterwards, one man challenged Berwick. “Don’t you realize how many poor people there are in New England? What good do you think that you’re accomplishing with your clinic?” Berwick said that he understood what the man was getting at and then said, “You want me to boil the ocean. I can’t. I can boil a pot for tea. So, I’ll boil my pot for tea and, if enough of us boil a pot of water, the ocean will boil.”
Mary and her family were people of modest means. We know this because servants weren’t preparing the meal that Jesus was enjoying. Mary’s sister Martha was the one in the kitchen. Yet they had this expensive ointment, something for which they’d probably scrimped and saved for eons. Putting it on Jesus’ feet was an extravagant, unnecessary, and altogether loving thing to do. Mary did what she could do. That’s our call too.
In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do good whenever we can. Bishop Thomas Clary tells the story of a conversation that happened after the meeting of a board on which he served. They were telling stories about their most embarrassing moments. One man, Frank, talked about his dad, a fisherman who loved the sea and was devoted to his entire extended family. As the Bishop tells it:
“[Frank said,] 'When the weather was bad he would drive me to school. He had this old truck that he used in his fishing business...[It made lots of noise, announcing its presence wherever it went.]...As [Dad] would drive toward the school, I would shrink down into the seat hoping to disappear...[so I wouldn’t be embarrassed in front of my schoolmates]...He would drive right up in front [of the school], and it seemed like everybody would be standing around and watching. Then he would lean over and give me a big kiss on the cheek and tell me to be a good boy. It was so embarrassing...Here I was twelve years old, and my dad would lean over and kiss me goodbye!
“'I remember the day I decided I was too old for a goodbye kiss. When we got to school and came to a stop, he had his usual big smile. He started to lean toward me, but I put my hand up and said, "No, Dad."
"[Frank explained that he was too old to be kissed by his father. His dad’s eyes teared up.] 'He turned and looked out the windshield. "You’re right...You are a big boy, a man. I won’t kiss you any more."'
"Frank got a funny look on his face and the tears began to well up in his eyes as he spoke. ‘It wasn’t long after that when my dad went to sea and never came back. It was a day when most of the fleet stayed in, but not Dad. He had a big family to feed. They found his boat adrift with its nets half in and half out...'
"Frank spoke again, ‘Guys, you don’t know what I’d give to have my Dad give me just one more kiss on the cheek, to feel his rough old face, to smell the ocean in him, to feel his arm around my neck. I wish I had been a man then. If I had been a man, I would never have told my Dad I was too old for a goodbye kiss.'"
In response to Jesus’ love, like Mary, we’re to do good whenever we can. That includes giving and receiving genuine love.
Third: In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do good for whomever we can. Max Lucado tells the story of a friend’s visit to Disney World. This friend had been at Cinderella’s Castle in the Magic Kingdom. There was a huge crowd and a beautiful girl was playing the part of Cinderella. In a corner opposite from where this young woman stood in the castle was a boy of about seven, holding onto the hand of his older brother. The younger boy was small for his age, his face terribly deformed. He watched as “Cinderella” showered attention on all the other children around her. But then something wonderful happened! Cinderella saw this little boy just standing there watching wistfully. She politely but resolutely walked through the crowd of adoring children right up to the little boy. She knelt down next to him with a smile on her face and then leaned forward and kissed him. The joy that overtook that little guy bespoke his gratitude. When we do good even for the unlovely, the joy of heaven enters our world!
In response to Jesus’ love, we’re to do whatever good we can, whenever we can, for whomever we can. And for God’s sake, we shouldn’t worry about the cost. Mary didn’t worry about the cost when she poured that expensive ointment on Jesus’ feet! ! A few years ago, a man in New York City was kidnapped. In a telephone call, the kidnappers demanded a $100,000.00 ransom from the man’s wife. She thought about that and negotiated them down to $30,000.00! The man was ultimately freed. But I wonder how he felt after he got home and learned that his wife seemingly decided that he was worth $30,000.00, but not $100,000.00!
Jesus went to a cross knowing that in order to save us, it would cost Him His earthly life. He tells us that those who lose their lives—those who give up their own priorities and preferences and let Him be our highest priorities—will in the end, save their lives. When we truly value Jesus and what He has done for us, no cost is too great. Whatever it costs us in time, effort, money is worth it in order to tell Jesus thank You!
And we shouldn’t worry about our ability either. A man happened to walk by a building that was on fire before firefighters arrived. A woman on the second floor called out to him and asked, “Will you save me?” The man said that he would and proceeded to walk away. “Where are you going?” the woman asked hysterically. “I’m going to get life-saving training. I’ll be back as soon as I graduate.”
That’s what lots of people do when it comes to Jesus’ call in their lives. They don’t participate in or teach Sunday School, help with the church youth, do a Kindness Outreach, ask a friend to worship, clean up the building, lead or get involved with a small group, or read a lesson on Sunday morning because they don’t feel qualified. Mary, in our Bible lesson today, apparently wasn’t much of a cook. But grateful for Jesus’ love, she soothed his aching feet at the dinner. There’s no reason for us to worry about what we can’t do. That’s because God can do everything through the hearts, hands, and lives of people who put themselves at His disposal. Paul writes in the New Testament, "I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me!" I've said it before and I'll say it again, "The most important ability that Jesus is seeking in us is availability."
As people grateful for what Jesus has done for us, our call is clear. We’re to do whatever good we can, whenever we can, for whomever we can. And for God’s sake, we should never worry about either what it costs us or about our ability. God has so much He wants to do in our lives and through our lives. Now is the time to let Him live in us. This is the place. Amen!
[The true story of the Chicagolander at the replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall has been told by Bill Hybels in messages and in at least one of his books.
[The true story of Donald Berwick was recently shared by Pastor Michael Foss in the latest issue of The Toolkit: Equipping Disciple Making Ministries.
[The true story of Frank from Bishop Clary was recently recounted by Steve Goodier in his fantastic emailed inspiration, LifeSupport. To subscribe, contact Steve at LifeSupport-subscribe@yahoogroups.com .
[The true story of 'Cinderella' at Disney World comes from a book by Max Lucado. I found it however, in a wonderful book of sermons by the late Philip Longfellow Anderson. The book is The Gospel in Disney: Christian Values in the Early Animated Classics (Minneapolis: Augsburg Books, 2004).
[The true story of the kidnapped man is from e-sermons.com.]
Sunday, March 21, 2004
The Journey, Through Lent...Through Life, March 21, 2004
Welcome Home!
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
[shared with the people of Friendship Church, March 21, 2004]
The story that Jesus tells in our Bible lesson for this morning is well-known. A young son, anxious to get his hands on the fortune his father has amassed, demands his inheritance before his father has died. The money burning a hole in his pocket and infantile notions of freedom calling him, the boy takes off for a distant country. He wastes every penny on parties and prostitutes when a famine hits. Penniless, the boy takes a low-paying job with a pig-farmer. Realizing how badly he's wasted everything that he's been given and remembering how well his dad treated the hired help, the boy decides to tell his dad how sorry he is and ask if he could have a job. He wouldn't even claim the privileges of family membership. Jesus says that even before the boy walks up to his father's house, dad charges down the road and locks the boy in a bear hug of forgiveness, acceptance, and love. Grateful for the restoration of this son who was lost and had been found, who was dead and had come back to life, his father threw a tremendous welcome home celebration. Jesus says this is what it's like when anyone turns from the sins that erect walls between God and us, between God and others, and humbly comes home to God. Like the father in Jesus' parable, God gives us freedom. So long as we use it in constructive ways, expressing love for God and love for neighbor, good things come from the freedom God gives to each of us to make decisions about our lives. Through Jesus Christ, God runs to those who, like the son, understand that living alienated from God and others, our lives are messes. When we "come home" to God, God gives us the freedom to become our best selves! For a prodigal sinner like me, a person prone to want to do and say and be things with no concern for God or others, the fact that God loves me like the father in Jesus' story loved his son, comes as very good news. It gives me hope that even I can have a place in God's Kingdom. That's why I love this story so!
But there's also something about this story that is disturbing. Speaker and writer Glenna Salsbury tells another story, a true one, about a tribe in South Africa and of how they deal with wrong-doers in their villages. They apprehend the person who has committed a crime and place him, unshackled at the center of the village. All the villagers form a large circle around the person. Then, one by one, every single villager begins to recount all the good points of the person who has done wrong. They tell stories applauding the person's kindnesses, his positive contributions to community life, and his good character traits. Amid a village-wide party, this festival devoted to complimenting a person we would describe as a criminal and a gross sinner goes on sometimes for two days. At the end of it all, like the prodigal son in Jesus' parable, the wrong-doer is forgiven, restored to the community, and able to resume his life and work.
It is a happy ending and yet, it may bother us a little. In our righteous indignation, it doesn't seem fair that a sinner should get off so easily. This is the very concern that throbs in the mind of the other son in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son, the older son. He comes upon the noisy party happening in his father's house and asks one of the servants what exactly is going on. The servant tells the older son the happy news. His younger brother has returned. The older son is furious with resentment and envy. It doesn't seem fair! Refusing to even go into his father's house, he calls his dad to come outside. What gives?, he wonders. Here he had already abided by the rules, done everything that his father wanted him to do, and yet, not once, did the old man offer to throw a party for him and his friends. But when "your son"—the older boy won't even refer to his younger sibling as "my brother"—comes back home, having wasted everything on parties and prostitutes, you treat him like the returning hero. The father says, "Son, everything I have is yours. If you'd wanted to have a party, you could have any old time. But your brother is back and we need to celebrate!" The older son though, refused to listen to his father.
Fess up now. Don't you feel a bit of the older son's resentment? If you were him, wouldn't you resent your dad welcoming the rebel home when you yourself had never once rebelled? The father in Jesus' story of course, is a figure of God the Father, always willing to welcome His rebel children home. And sometimes, God's willingness to forgive people bothers us! We love God's forgiveness when it comes to us. We love being the prodigals welcomed into the Father's loving arms. But we're not always so keen on how forgiving God is toward others.
This is a dangerous attitude for us to even flirt with. An old saying tells us, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." If forgiveness is good for us, it must certainly be good for all the other sinners of the world who need God. Jesus tells us that we block God's forgiveness from our lives when we are unwilling to forgive others. In his model for prayer, called the Lord's Prayer or the Our Father, Jesus teaches us to pray, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."
Jesus teaches us this, I think, for an important reason. Steve Goodier is a Methodist pastor and writer who serves a church in Utah. Recently, I read his account of a lesson he learned from his father. Writes Goodier:
"His own father was a mining engineer and his family lived in the Philippines prior to World War II. They were captured by the Japanese and incarcerated there during World War II. He, his mother and sisters were sent to a prison camp at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila where they remained until the Philippine Islands were freed at the end of the war. His father, an enlisted man, was separated from the family and imprisoned with captured military personnel.
"My dad was a teenager at the time. He, like other prisoners, struggled to survive. To keep from starving, he learned to eat his small, daily rations of rice without first removing the carcasses of worms in the bowl. But he ate better than most prisoners - he worked as an orderly in the prison hospital and, on occasion, was able to finish leftover food from patients. Though almost six feet tall, when he was finally freed he weighed only 95 pounds.
"Life was difficult there by any standards. Numerous prisoners became ill and many died. Anger and bitterness toward their captors abounded. For years, even decades, after their eventual release from the prison camp, the men and women of Santo Tomas (like other prisoners of war)
felt a smoldering bitterness toward the people who incarcerated them. My father lost almost everything. His family lost their home. They lost their possessions. And harder still, they lost their freedom. But he also lost his father. My grandfather did not survive his captivity. Yet I never heard my dad express any anger or resentment toward the Japanese soldiers or the Japanese people. Just the opposite. He taught me to regard ALL people with respect. He taught me to honor people of
all races, nationalities and religions. He knew that bitterness only kept his wounds open and infected. Like a disease, his festering resentments could even infect others. And they could kill."
When we fail to forgive others as God has forgiven us through Jesus Christ, we prevent not only God's forgiveness, but also all the other blessings God wants to give to us, from entering our lives. The older son in Jesus' parable refused to join the big forgiveness party his dad threw for his younger brother, even when his father begged him to come inside.
And that's how I end this message this morning. Jesus Christ died on a cross and rose from the dead so that the walls that our sin and selfishness builds between God and us, as well as between us and others, can be brought crashing down. God wants to throw a forgiveness party for each of us and live with us every day in order to free us become our God-designed selves. He wants us to help others experience His freeing, forgiving love, too.
And I'm begging you: If you haven't ever let God welcome you home to His Kingdom, let Him do it now. Like the prodigal, turn from the sin and selfishness that prevent you from experiencing life with God and come back to your Father.
I beg you: If there are people against whom you've been holding grudges, don't let that failure to forgive poison your life and destroy your relationship with God any longer.
And I beg you: If there are folks who you know are in need of God in their lives, invite them to experience the warm embrace God extends to all through Jesus Christ—maybe you could even invite them to be in worship with us on Easter Sunday morning.
The Father is patient and loving. He wants to free all of us from sin and death to become our God-designed selves. God wants to welcome everyone of us home right here, right now, and always!
[The story of the tribe in South Africa appears on Glenna Salsbury's CD, Something to Think About.
[Steve Goodier told the story in his emailed inspiration, called Life Support. To receive this from Steve, contact him at lss_publishing@yahoo.com.]
Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
[shared with the people of Friendship Church, March 21, 2004]
The story that Jesus tells in our Bible lesson for this morning is well-known. A young son, anxious to get his hands on the fortune his father has amassed, demands his inheritance before his father has died. The money burning a hole in his pocket and infantile notions of freedom calling him, the boy takes off for a distant country. He wastes every penny on parties and prostitutes when a famine hits. Penniless, the boy takes a low-paying job with a pig-farmer. Realizing how badly he's wasted everything that he's been given and remembering how well his dad treated the hired help, the boy decides to tell his dad how sorry he is and ask if he could have a job. He wouldn't even claim the privileges of family membership. Jesus says that even before the boy walks up to his father's house, dad charges down the road and locks the boy in a bear hug of forgiveness, acceptance, and love. Grateful for the restoration of this son who was lost and had been found, who was dead and had come back to life, his father threw a tremendous welcome home celebration. Jesus says this is what it's like when anyone turns from the sins that erect walls between God and us, between God and others, and humbly comes home to God. Like the father in Jesus' parable, God gives us freedom. So long as we use it in constructive ways, expressing love for God and love for neighbor, good things come from the freedom God gives to each of us to make decisions about our lives. Through Jesus Christ, God runs to those who, like the son, understand that living alienated from God and others, our lives are messes. When we "come home" to God, God gives us the freedom to become our best selves! For a prodigal sinner like me, a person prone to want to do and say and be things with no concern for God or others, the fact that God loves me like the father in Jesus' story loved his son, comes as very good news. It gives me hope that even I can have a place in God's Kingdom. That's why I love this story so!
But there's also something about this story that is disturbing. Speaker and writer Glenna Salsbury tells another story, a true one, about a tribe in South Africa and of how they deal with wrong-doers in their villages. They apprehend the person who has committed a crime and place him, unshackled at the center of the village. All the villagers form a large circle around the person. Then, one by one, every single villager begins to recount all the good points of the person who has done wrong. They tell stories applauding the person's kindnesses, his positive contributions to community life, and his good character traits. Amid a village-wide party, this festival devoted to complimenting a person we would describe as a criminal and a gross sinner goes on sometimes for two days. At the end of it all, like the prodigal son in Jesus' parable, the wrong-doer is forgiven, restored to the community, and able to resume his life and work.
It is a happy ending and yet, it may bother us a little. In our righteous indignation, it doesn't seem fair that a sinner should get off so easily. This is the very concern that throbs in the mind of the other son in Jesus' parable of the prodigal son, the older son. He comes upon the noisy party happening in his father's house and asks one of the servants what exactly is going on. The servant tells the older son the happy news. His younger brother has returned. The older son is furious with resentment and envy. It doesn't seem fair! Refusing to even go into his father's house, he calls his dad to come outside. What gives?, he wonders. Here he had already abided by the rules, done everything that his father wanted him to do, and yet, not once, did the old man offer to throw a party for him and his friends. But when "your son"—the older boy won't even refer to his younger sibling as "my brother"—comes back home, having wasted everything on parties and prostitutes, you treat him like the returning hero. The father says, "Son, everything I have is yours. If you'd wanted to have a party, you could have any old time. But your brother is back and we need to celebrate!" The older son though, refused to listen to his father.
Fess up now. Don't you feel a bit of the older son's resentment? If you were him, wouldn't you resent your dad welcoming the rebel home when you yourself had never once rebelled? The father in Jesus' story of course, is a figure of God the Father, always willing to welcome His rebel children home. And sometimes, God's willingness to forgive people bothers us! We love God's forgiveness when it comes to us. We love being the prodigals welcomed into the Father's loving arms. But we're not always so keen on how forgiving God is toward others.
This is a dangerous attitude for us to even flirt with. An old saying tells us, "What's good for the goose is good for the gander." If forgiveness is good for us, it must certainly be good for all the other sinners of the world who need God. Jesus tells us that we block God's forgiveness from our lives when we are unwilling to forgive others. In his model for prayer, called the Lord's Prayer or the Our Father, Jesus teaches us to pray, "Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us."
Jesus teaches us this, I think, for an important reason. Steve Goodier is a Methodist pastor and writer who serves a church in Utah. Recently, I read his account of a lesson he learned from his father. Writes Goodier:
"His own father was a mining engineer and his family lived in the Philippines prior to World War II. They were captured by the Japanese and incarcerated there during World War II. He, his mother and sisters were sent to a prison camp at the University of Santo Tomas in Manila where they remained until the Philippine Islands were freed at the end of the war. His father, an enlisted man, was separated from the family and imprisoned with captured military personnel.
"My dad was a teenager at the time. He, like other prisoners, struggled to survive. To keep from starving, he learned to eat his small, daily rations of rice without first removing the carcasses of worms in the bowl. But he ate better than most prisoners - he worked as an orderly in the prison hospital and, on occasion, was able to finish leftover food from patients. Though almost six feet tall, when he was finally freed he weighed only 95 pounds.
"Life was difficult there by any standards. Numerous prisoners became ill and many died. Anger and bitterness toward their captors abounded. For years, even decades, after their eventual release from the prison camp, the men and women of Santo Tomas (like other prisoners of war)
felt a smoldering bitterness toward the people who incarcerated them. My father lost almost everything. His family lost their home. They lost their possessions. And harder still, they lost their freedom. But he also lost his father. My grandfather did not survive his captivity. Yet I never heard my dad express any anger or resentment toward the Japanese soldiers or the Japanese people. Just the opposite. He taught me to regard ALL people with respect. He taught me to honor people of
all races, nationalities and religions. He knew that bitterness only kept his wounds open and infected. Like a disease, his festering resentments could even infect others. And they could kill."
When we fail to forgive others as God has forgiven us through Jesus Christ, we prevent not only God's forgiveness, but also all the other blessings God wants to give to us, from entering our lives. The older son in Jesus' parable refused to join the big forgiveness party his dad threw for his younger brother, even when his father begged him to come inside.
And that's how I end this message this morning. Jesus Christ died on a cross and rose from the dead so that the walls that our sin and selfishness builds between God and us, as well as between us and others, can be brought crashing down. God wants to throw a forgiveness party for each of us and live with us every day in order to free us become our God-designed selves. He wants us to help others experience His freeing, forgiving love, too.
And I'm begging you: If you haven't ever let God welcome you home to His Kingdom, let Him do it now. Like the prodigal, turn from the sin and selfishness that prevent you from experiencing life with God and come back to your Father.
I beg you: If there are people against whom you've been holding grudges, don't let that failure to forgive poison your life and destroy your relationship with God any longer.
And I beg you: If there are folks who you know are in need of God in their lives, invite them to experience the warm embrace God extends to all through Jesus Christ—maybe you could even invite them to be in worship with us on Easter Sunday morning.
The Father is patient and loving. He wants to free all of us from sin and death to become our God-designed selves. God wants to welcome everyone of us home right here, right now, and always!
[The story of the tribe in South Africa appears on Glenna Salsbury's CD, Something to Think About.
[Steve Goodier told the story in his emailed inspiration, called Life Support. To receive this from Steve, contact him at lss_publishing@yahoo.com.]
Wednesday, March 17, 2004
Funeral Message for Diane, Member of Our Congregation,
March is a month that can be many things. This March began with sunny, shirt-sleeve weather. Today, it seems that winter has returned. Much of the natural world is still asleep, awaiting rebirth and renewal. Yet for now, the cold remains and in truth, this morning, it's also winter in our souls.
To varying degrees, everybody here today suffers from a sense of loss. Nobody of course, suffers from that loss more greatly than Eric, Sean, Adam, Betty, and Diane's family. But Diane's life and her tough-as-nails fight with leukemia over these past two years have touched us all. As we prepare to take Diane's earthly body to its resting place, I can tell you that my family and I personally feel a sense of loss too. Diane came into our lives, along with the rest of the family, nearly ten years ago. Our son had invited Sean to worship with us at Friendship Church and the whole Binder brood came along. Through the years, our sons graduated together and played softball together. For several years, Diane and my wife held a garage sale at our place, with Eric and I acting as official go-fers. Through the years, we came to appreciate and love Diane's unshakable commitment to her family and her wonderfully silly sense of humor.
And so this morning, in the winter of our souls, our minds and hearts are a tangle of unanswered questions, dashed hopes, and fractured dreams. We wonder why all our prayers for Diane seem to have gone unanswered. We wonder why she had to suffer so long. We can't understand why she lost her life at such a young age, before she was able to see her boys married, before she was able to see any grandchildren. We ask why, so soon after Diane had found work that stirred her soul, she was taken from us and from the children she was committed to helping on the job. We're human and we can't help but ask, Where is God?
Though every death and loss are unique tragedies, we aren't the first to ask such questions. Back in the Old Testament portion of the Bible, you can find the true story of a man named Job. Job was a man who loved God and loved his family with passion and devotion. He was also a man with many friends. In a short amount of time though, Job lost everything. His ten children, who had been celebrating, were wiped out in an instant. So, too were all of his property and holdings. Job was without his children and living in poverty. Grief-stricken, the winter of his soul was compounded when his own body began to rebel against him, breaking out in painful sores all over. All Job had left now was his wife and she was no help. Observing everything and apparently intent on finding a different life, she told Job, "Why don't you just curse God and die?"
Job did question God. Like Diane on occasion, Job wondered what God was allowing to happen to him. He wondered what God was doing. Job even shook an angry fist at God and asked, "What did I ever do to You, Lord, that all of this has befallen me?" I admire the honesty of the Bible that it includes the prayers of saints who questioned God or were angry at God. But as I pointed out to Diane many times, when she had her Job-like questions, only those who believe in God bother asking Him questions or getting angry with Him. Like Job, Diane believed. And she wondered.
Yet like Job, I believe that if Diane could speak to you today, she would make an incredible affirmation of God's love and care for us when winter hits and an affirmation of the hope with which all of us should live each day. Job said, even as he grieved and suffered:
"For I know that my Redeemer [God] lives, and that at the last He will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, not another."
Thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, Job was pointing to the hope that the New Testament tells us belongs to all who will turn from sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ. Death doesn't have the final say in the life of the person who follows Jesus Christ. Jesus, truly God and truly Man, died and rose so that death doesn't have the last word in the lives of His followers.
In Christian tradition, Jesus has been pictured as a butterfly. After He died an excruciating death on a cross, He was laid in a tomb that became His cocoon. On the third day, He rose again. Jesus is God's answer to all our wonderings and questionings today. He doesn't erase the mysteries that we can't comprehend. He doesn't reveal why Diane suffered so or was taken from us at such a young age or any of the rest. But He does make a promise:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life."
Like butterflies, if we follow Him by faith, Jesus Christ will allow us to emerge from our cocoons and from our souls' winter to live new and an everlasting lives with God. And in the meantime—through winter and all the seasons of goodness and laughter, along with those of hardship and tears, Jesus makes another promise: that He will be with us always. God, Who learned personally all about suffering and loss and feeling alone in grief when Jesus went to the cross, is on our side! He also knows the wonderful tomorrow He has waiting for all who believe in Him!
The Bible says that nothing can separate us from the love of God, given to us through Jesus Christ. If that's not true today, it simply isn't true. But it is true, a truth affirmed by hundreds of people who saw Jesus risen from the dead and by the changed lives of millions who have come to believe in Jesus through the centuries.
This morning I don't have all the answers to your questions. But I can offer you Jesus Christ and I can beg you to follow Him. Jesus gives the promise that God stands with you in your grief and the certainty that through His forgiving love and power over death, winter will give way to spring...death will yield to life...tears will all be dried...and pain will be a thing of the past.
To varying degrees, everybody here today suffers from a sense of loss. Nobody of course, suffers from that loss more greatly than Eric, Sean, Adam, Betty, and Diane's family. But Diane's life and her tough-as-nails fight with leukemia over these past two years have touched us all. As we prepare to take Diane's earthly body to its resting place, I can tell you that my family and I personally feel a sense of loss too. Diane came into our lives, along with the rest of the family, nearly ten years ago. Our son had invited Sean to worship with us at Friendship Church and the whole Binder brood came along. Through the years, our sons graduated together and played softball together. For several years, Diane and my wife held a garage sale at our place, with Eric and I acting as official go-fers. Through the years, we came to appreciate and love Diane's unshakable commitment to her family and her wonderfully silly sense of humor.
And so this morning, in the winter of our souls, our minds and hearts are a tangle of unanswered questions, dashed hopes, and fractured dreams. We wonder why all our prayers for Diane seem to have gone unanswered. We wonder why she had to suffer so long. We can't understand why she lost her life at such a young age, before she was able to see her boys married, before she was able to see any grandchildren. We ask why, so soon after Diane had found work that stirred her soul, she was taken from us and from the children she was committed to helping on the job. We're human and we can't help but ask, Where is God?
Though every death and loss are unique tragedies, we aren't the first to ask such questions. Back in the Old Testament portion of the Bible, you can find the true story of a man named Job. Job was a man who loved God and loved his family with passion and devotion. He was also a man with many friends. In a short amount of time though, Job lost everything. His ten children, who had been celebrating, were wiped out in an instant. So, too were all of his property and holdings. Job was without his children and living in poverty. Grief-stricken, the winter of his soul was compounded when his own body began to rebel against him, breaking out in painful sores all over. All Job had left now was his wife and she was no help. Observing everything and apparently intent on finding a different life, she told Job, "Why don't you just curse God and die?"
Job did question God. Like Diane on occasion, Job wondered what God was allowing to happen to him. He wondered what God was doing. Job even shook an angry fist at God and asked, "What did I ever do to You, Lord, that all of this has befallen me?" I admire the honesty of the Bible that it includes the prayers of saints who questioned God or were angry at God. But as I pointed out to Diane many times, when she had her Job-like questions, only those who believe in God bother asking Him questions or getting angry with Him. Like Job, Diane believed. And she wondered.
Yet like Job, I believe that if Diane could speak to you today, she would make an incredible affirmation of God's love and care for us when winter hits and an affirmation of the hope with which all of us should live each day. Job said, even as he grieved and suffered:
"For I know that my Redeemer [God] lives, and that at the last He will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see on my side, and my eyes shall behold, not another."
Thousands of years before the birth of Jesus, Job was pointing to the hope that the New Testament tells us belongs to all who will turn from sin and entrust their lives to Jesus Christ. Death doesn't have the final say in the life of the person who follows Jesus Christ. Jesus, truly God and truly Man, died and rose so that death doesn't have the last word in the lives of His followers.
In Christian tradition, Jesus has been pictured as a butterfly. After He died an excruciating death on a cross, He was laid in a tomb that became His cocoon. On the third day, He rose again. Jesus is God's answer to all our wonderings and questionings today. He doesn't erase the mysteries that we can't comprehend. He doesn't reveal why Diane suffered so or was taken from us at such a young age or any of the rest. But He does make a promise:
"For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life."
Like butterflies, if we follow Him by faith, Jesus Christ will allow us to emerge from our cocoons and from our souls' winter to live new and an everlasting lives with God. And in the meantime—through winter and all the seasons of goodness and laughter, along with those of hardship and tears, Jesus makes another promise: that He will be with us always. God, Who learned personally all about suffering and loss and feeling alone in grief when Jesus went to the cross, is on our side! He also knows the wonderful tomorrow He has waiting for all who believe in Him!
The Bible says that nothing can separate us from the love of God, given to us through Jesus Christ. If that's not true today, it simply isn't true. But it is true, a truth affirmed by hundreds of people who saw Jesus risen from the dead and by the changed lives of millions who have come to believe in Jesus through the centuries.
This morning I don't have all the answers to your questions. But I can offer you Jesus Christ and I can beg you to follow Him. Jesus gives the promise that God stands with you in your grief and the certainty that through His forgiving love and power over death, winter will give way to spring...death will yield to life...tears will all be dried...and pain will be a thing of the past.
Sunday, March 14, 2004
The Journey, Through Lent...Through Life, March 14, 2004
Facing Life, Bearing Fruit
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, March 14, 2004)
Back in the day when farm folks didn’t get to big cities very often, a young boy went on such an excursion with his grandparents. After stopping at a few places, grandma could tell that her husband and grandson were less interested in shopping than they were in exploring. So, she arranged to meet them later at a particular landmark and let them go. Soon, they came to a large skyscraper. They eyed it up and down and decided to have a closer look. As they approached the building, they saw something they’d never seen before: a revolving door. They couldn’t quite figure it out when they saw a stunning thing. An old haggard woman, stooped over, with a cane, walked through the revolving door and out came a young, shapely, attractive girl. Hardly daring to believe the miracle he’d just witnessed, the grandfather became agitated, turned to the boy, and said, “Tell your grandma to get over here right away. I’ve got a door I want her to walk through!”
We have to be careful about jumping to conclusions too quickly in life. The easy answers that seem so obviously true can be dead wrong. One day, Jesus met people who were abuzz about a recent event. People from Jesus’ native region of Galilee had been massacred by the Roman governor Pilate. Their blood, the people told Jesus, was mingled with the blood of the sacrificial animals at the temple in Jerusalem. Evidently, these people had been murdered in the very act of worshiping God. From Jesus’ words to them, we glean that this crowd had jumped to a conclusion about people who would have died such untimely and tragic deaths. Jesus asks them:
“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did."
It’s amazing to consider how quickly we condemn people for the tragedies that befall them. Desperate to make sense of life’s senseless suffering, wanting to believe that there is something about us that will give us a pass when it comes to the possibility of tragedy, we adopt easy answers.
Sometimes we offer such explanations of tragedy to make ourselves feel superior. When AIDS first hit the radar screens of our consciousness, those who engage in the homosexual life style were the hardest hit. I remember a woman approaching me at the time and saying that God was giving those people a message. She was shocked when I disagreed with her. I told her that like her, I thought that homosexual behavior is contrary to the will of God. But if God passed a death sentence on every human being who did things that are contrary to the will of God, the population of Planet Earth would be erased in a second! The Bible makes it clear that we all fall short of God’s minimal expectations for human beings. We all sin. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus–an act God did for us–proves that God loves sinners and isn’t out to get anyone.
Jesus drives this point home in our lesson for today when He mentions another event which must have recently happened in Judea. He asks the crowd so quick to offer easy answers for others’ misfortune, “How about those eighteen people killed when the tower of Siloam crashed down on them? Do you think that they were worse sinners than everybody else and that God targeted them that day to die?” To this explanation, Jesus gives a resounding NO!
We live in an untidy world where bad things happen and there are no tidy explanations for when they do. Part of growing up as followers of Jesus, Jesus Himself seems to be telling us today, is accepting the ambiguities of life on this planet where sin and death still have their say. We don’t live in a perfect place and this side of heaven, we won't.
Some people observe these realities and fall apart or adopt the ethic of ‘eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’
Still others slump into despair or cynicism.
But for the follower of Jesus Christ, none of these reactions will do. That’s because unlike any other group of people in the world, the follower of Jesus Christ always has hope!
After confronting the crowd–and us–with the sobering fact that suffering happens in this life, Jesus tells one of His parables, a story. In it, a man plants a fig tree. Apparently, you don’t even look for a fig tree to bear fruit until three years after you plant it. So, six years after planting the tree and three years after he began looking regularly for fruit to show up on it, the man who planted it has had enough. He says to his hired hand, “Cut the thing down! It’s wasting soil!” But the hired hand–the gardener–begs the owner to hold off on his decision for just a little while. He asks for permission to lavish the tree with some TLC for another year. Then, he says, if it sprouts figs next year, great! If it doesn’t, then he’ll happily cut it down.
What exactly does this little story mean? God lavishes one blessing after another on us. The greatest blessing of all, of course, is His offer of forgiveness and life forever with Him which He gives to us through Jesus Christ. Followers of Jesus have no reason to be paralyzed by fear or indifference or laziness in our lives. Jesus, the great God-Man went to a cross, taking the penalty for sin that you and I deserve. On the third day following His death, He rose again. Like the gardener in the story, for as long as we live on this earth, Jesus, the Risen King, gives us everything we need to “bear fruit,” everything we need to live meaningful, purposeful lives. That’s why, just before telling the story of the fruitless fig tree, Jesus says, “...unless you repent, you will all perish...” Literally, Jesus says, “...unless you are repenting, you will all perish.”
Jesus isn’t saying that in order for us to live, we have to go around with glum faces feeling sorry all the time. This is what He’s saying...
Yesterday, during Catechism class, Cori volunteered to be an object lesson. Tim asked her if she liked snacks. She said yes and he handed her a bag of chips to hold. He asked if she liked to sleep. Yes, she answered; so, Tim threw her a pillow to hold. Cori said she also liked soccer. So, she got a soccer ball to hold. She also said yes to reading for school and reading for pleasure and got books to hold symbolizing those loves. As you can imagine, after a few moments, Cori’s arms got pretty full. Then, standing here with all this stuff, Tim pulled out a rope and said, “Cori, you’re in the middle of a flood. The waters are rising. You need to catch this rope in order to be pulled to safety. What do you have to do?” The answer is obvious: to live, Cori had to be willing to empty her arms of everything but that rope.
That’s what Jesus means when He tells us to be repenting. You see, there are two parts to repentance. There is sorrow for past sins, to be sure. But there’s also opening ourselves to go where God sends us, do what God wants us to do, be who God wants us to be. To be repentant means to hold on for dear life to Jesus Christ no matter what fake comforts and joys the world may offer to us. When we live each day with a life style of repentance, God sets us loose to live with all the passion and power we were made to have as human beings! That’s what the Bible and Jesus mean when they talk about you and me “bearing fruit.”
Ever since I lost the primary election on March 2, I’ve had people trying to console me. I never needed consoling. I did what I did because I knew that Jesus Christ has set me free, not to succeed, but to try...to live...to risk...to do my best in all aspects of my life. This includes the political arena, an area in which I felt I could in practical ways, love my God and love my neighbor. That’s bearing fruit and that’s what I want to do with my fleeting time on earth.
When we make living a repentatn life style our aim, win or lose, you and I can’t do anything but succeed because win or lose, seeking to love God and neighbor, we know that God is with us!
The novelist Herman Wouk, who wrote The Winds of War and The Caine Mutiny, once visited David Ben-Gurion, the first president of modern Israel. Ben Gurion kept telling Wouk, that as a Jew, he should move to Israel. “Here,” Ben-Gurion told him, “you will be free.” Wouk could hardly believe his ears. “Free?” he wondered. Israel was surrounded by enemies and some roads in the country were impassable after sundown because of sniper fire. What did the old man mean by saying he would be free? “I did not say safe,” Ben-Gurion replied, “I said free.”
Many of you are familiar with the series of novels called, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. In these novels, children from our world keep having encounters with another universe in a land called Narnia, most memorably with a Christ-like figure named Aslan. In the book called, The Silver Chair, two children are joined by a strange creature from that land in liberating a prince named Rilian from the enchantments of a devil-like witch. But they find Rilian in an undeworld city whose inhabitants they feel certain will fight their escape with tooth-and-tong. No longer under any spell, Rilian and the others were all free, even if they weren’t safe. That’s why Rilian tells the others, “Let us descend into the city and take the adventure that is sent us.”
As long as you and I live here on this earth, God makes no guarantees about our being safe from the tragedies and losses that may be sent to us. Jesus says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Cancer, bankruptcies, tragedies, defeats, mishaps, and even death come to Christians and non-Christians alike.
But only followers of Jesus Christ, absolutely certain that we will live with God forever, are free to live life to the maximum, loving God and loving neighbor with passion, seeking to be and do our best no matter how hard the devil, the world, and our sinful selves may oppose us...to take whatever adventure is sent to us.
For the follower of Jesus, the key issue isn’t how many days to our lives; it’s how much life in our days.
This morning, Jesus’ message for us is simple: “Be free, be fearless, and live like people who, through Jesus Christ, have been given eternity!" Because through Christ, we have been given eternity!
[The inspiration for this message came from the work of the pastors and staff of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church of Burnsville, Minnesota.
[The true story of Herman Wouk's encounter with David Ben-Gurion comes from Perfect Illustrations For Every Topic and Occasion, edited by the folks of PreachingToday.com and published by Tyndale.
[The joke about the grandparents and their grandson was told by Pastor Gerald Mann in one of his audiotaped messages.
[I heartily recommend The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis to children of every age. I have read the series several times. ]
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, March 14, 2004)
Back in the day when farm folks didn’t get to big cities very often, a young boy went on such an excursion with his grandparents. After stopping at a few places, grandma could tell that her husband and grandson were less interested in shopping than they were in exploring. So, she arranged to meet them later at a particular landmark and let them go. Soon, they came to a large skyscraper. They eyed it up and down and decided to have a closer look. As they approached the building, they saw something they’d never seen before: a revolving door. They couldn’t quite figure it out when they saw a stunning thing. An old haggard woman, stooped over, with a cane, walked through the revolving door and out came a young, shapely, attractive girl. Hardly daring to believe the miracle he’d just witnessed, the grandfather became agitated, turned to the boy, and said, “Tell your grandma to get over here right away. I’ve got a door I want her to walk through!”
We have to be careful about jumping to conclusions too quickly in life. The easy answers that seem so obviously true can be dead wrong. One day, Jesus met people who were abuzz about a recent event. People from Jesus’ native region of Galilee had been massacred by the Roman governor Pilate. Their blood, the people told Jesus, was mingled with the blood of the sacrificial animals at the temple in Jerusalem. Evidently, these people had been murdered in the very act of worshiping God. From Jesus’ words to them, we glean that this crowd had jumped to a conclusion about people who would have died such untimely and tragic deaths. Jesus asks them:
“Do you think that because these Galileans suffered in this way they were worse sinners than all other Galileans? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all perish as they did."
It’s amazing to consider how quickly we condemn people for the tragedies that befall them. Desperate to make sense of life’s senseless suffering, wanting to believe that there is something about us that will give us a pass when it comes to the possibility of tragedy, we adopt easy answers.
Sometimes we offer such explanations of tragedy to make ourselves feel superior. When AIDS first hit the radar screens of our consciousness, those who engage in the homosexual life style were the hardest hit. I remember a woman approaching me at the time and saying that God was giving those people a message. She was shocked when I disagreed with her. I told her that like her, I thought that homosexual behavior is contrary to the will of God. But if God passed a death sentence on every human being who did things that are contrary to the will of God, the population of Planet Earth would be erased in a second! The Bible makes it clear that we all fall short of God’s minimal expectations for human beings. We all sin. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus–an act God did for us–proves that God loves sinners and isn’t out to get anyone.
Jesus drives this point home in our lesson for today when He mentions another event which must have recently happened in Judea. He asks the crowd so quick to offer easy answers for others’ misfortune, “How about those eighteen people killed when the tower of Siloam crashed down on them? Do you think that they were worse sinners than everybody else and that God targeted them that day to die?” To this explanation, Jesus gives a resounding NO!
We live in an untidy world where bad things happen and there are no tidy explanations for when they do. Part of growing up as followers of Jesus, Jesus Himself seems to be telling us today, is accepting the ambiguities of life on this planet where sin and death still have their say. We don’t live in a perfect place and this side of heaven, we won't.
Some people observe these realities and fall apart or adopt the ethic of ‘eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.’
Still others slump into despair or cynicism.
But for the follower of Jesus Christ, none of these reactions will do. That’s because unlike any other group of people in the world, the follower of Jesus Christ always has hope!
After confronting the crowd–and us–with the sobering fact that suffering happens in this life, Jesus tells one of His parables, a story. In it, a man plants a fig tree. Apparently, you don’t even look for a fig tree to bear fruit until three years after you plant it. So, six years after planting the tree and three years after he began looking regularly for fruit to show up on it, the man who planted it has had enough. He says to his hired hand, “Cut the thing down! It’s wasting soil!” But the hired hand–the gardener–begs the owner to hold off on his decision for just a little while. He asks for permission to lavish the tree with some TLC for another year. Then, he says, if it sprouts figs next year, great! If it doesn’t, then he’ll happily cut it down.
What exactly does this little story mean? God lavishes one blessing after another on us. The greatest blessing of all, of course, is His offer of forgiveness and life forever with Him which He gives to us through Jesus Christ. Followers of Jesus have no reason to be paralyzed by fear or indifference or laziness in our lives. Jesus, the great God-Man went to a cross, taking the penalty for sin that you and I deserve. On the third day following His death, He rose again. Like the gardener in the story, for as long as we live on this earth, Jesus, the Risen King, gives us everything we need to “bear fruit,” everything we need to live meaningful, purposeful lives. That’s why, just before telling the story of the fruitless fig tree, Jesus says, “...unless you repent, you will all perish...” Literally, Jesus says, “...unless you are repenting, you will all perish.”
Jesus isn’t saying that in order for us to live, we have to go around with glum faces feeling sorry all the time. This is what He’s saying...
Yesterday, during Catechism class, Cori volunteered to be an object lesson. Tim asked her if she liked snacks. She said yes and he handed her a bag of chips to hold. He asked if she liked to sleep. Yes, she answered; so, Tim threw her a pillow to hold. Cori said she also liked soccer. So, she got a soccer ball to hold. She also said yes to reading for school and reading for pleasure and got books to hold symbolizing those loves. As you can imagine, after a few moments, Cori’s arms got pretty full. Then, standing here with all this stuff, Tim pulled out a rope and said, “Cori, you’re in the middle of a flood. The waters are rising. You need to catch this rope in order to be pulled to safety. What do you have to do?” The answer is obvious: to live, Cori had to be willing to empty her arms of everything but that rope.
That’s what Jesus means when He tells us to be repenting. You see, there are two parts to repentance. There is sorrow for past sins, to be sure. But there’s also opening ourselves to go where God sends us, do what God wants us to do, be who God wants us to be. To be repentant means to hold on for dear life to Jesus Christ no matter what fake comforts and joys the world may offer to us. When we live each day with a life style of repentance, God sets us loose to live with all the passion and power we were made to have as human beings! That’s what the Bible and Jesus mean when they talk about you and me “bearing fruit.”
Ever since I lost the primary election on March 2, I’ve had people trying to console me. I never needed consoling. I did what I did because I knew that Jesus Christ has set me free, not to succeed, but to try...to live...to risk...to do my best in all aspects of my life. This includes the political arena, an area in which I felt I could in practical ways, love my God and love my neighbor. That’s bearing fruit and that’s what I want to do with my fleeting time on earth.
When we make living a repentatn life style our aim, win or lose, you and I can’t do anything but succeed because win or lose, seeking to love God and neighbor, we know that God is with us!
The novelist Herman Wouk, who wrote The Winds of War and The Caine Mutiny, once visited David Ben-Gurion, the first president of modern Israel. Ben Gurion kept telling Wouk, that as a Jew, he should move to Israel. “Here,” Ben-Gurion told him, “you will be free.” Wouk could hardly believe his ears. “Free?” he wondered. Israel was surrounded by enemies and some roads in the country were impassable after sundown because of sniper fire. What did the old man mean by saying he would be free? “I did not say safe,” Ben-Gurion replied, “I said free.”
Many of you are familiar with the series of novels called, The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis. In these novels, children from our world keep having encounters with another universe in a land called Narnia, most memorably with a Christ-like figure named Aslan. In the book called, The Silver Chair, two children are joined by a strange creature from that land in liberating a prince named Rilian from the enchantments of a devil-like witch. But they find Rilian in an undeworld city whose inhabitants they feel certain will fight their escape with tooth-and-tong. No longer under any spell, Rilian and the others were all free, even if they weren’t safe. That’s why Rilian tells the others, “Let us descend into the city and take the adventure that is sent us.”
As long as you and I live here on this earth, God makes no guarantees about our being safe from the tragedies and losses that may be sent to us. Jesus says that the rain falls on the just and the unjust alike. Cancer, bankruptcies, tragedies, defeats, mishaps, and even death come to Christians and non-Christians alike.
But only followers of Jesus Christ, absolutely certain that we will live with God forever, are free to live life to the maximum, loving God and loving neighbor with passion, seeking to be and do our best no matter how hard the devil, the world, and our sinful selves may oppose us...to take whatever adventure is sent to us.
For the follower of Jesus, the key issue isn’t how many days to our lives; it’s how much life in our days.
This morning, Jesus’ message for us is simple: “Be free, be fearless, and live like people who, through Jesus Christ, have been given eternity!" Because through Christ, we have been given eternity!
[The inspiration for this message came from the work of the pastors and staff of Prince of Peace Lutheran Church of Burnsville, Minnesota.
[The true story of Herman Wouk's encounter with David Ben-Gurion comes from Perfect Illustrations For Every Topic and Occasion, edited by the folks of PreachingToday.com and published by Tyndale.
[The joke about the grandparents and their grandson was told by Pastor Gerald Mann in one of his audiotaped messages.
[I heartily recommend The Chronicles of Narnia series by C.S. Lewis to children of every age. I have read the series several times. ]
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