Friday, July 30, 2004

Neither Do I Condemn You

The teachers of law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

The teacher bent down and, when they continued to question him, said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first one to throw a stone at her.” At this they began to drop their stones on the ground.

The teacher picked up one of the fallen stones. “We may not be without sin,” he said, “but if we only allow perfect people to enforce the law then the law will soon be dead.” And he lifted the stone over his head and drove it into her skull.



The teachers of law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?”

The teacher bent down and whispered to the woman, “The man you were with is a friend of mine. This will all work out.” He then stood up and said, “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first one to throw a stone at her.” At this, they began to drop their stones on the ground. The teacher continued, “None of us is perfect and all make mistakes. We cannot expect perfection from one another, but must accept each other the way we are.”



Do you see yourself in either of these stories? “The law must be preserved at all costs!” Crunch. “My friendships must be preserved at all costs!” Shrug. If I’m not careful, I can see both of these stories in myself. One place you won’t see these stories is in the Bible. John's gospel tells a different story.



If you want to get to the heart of Jesus’ mission, John 8:11 isn’t a bad place to start. The heart of the gospel revealed through these words of Jesus –“Neither do I condemn you.”



Imagine the power of these words. To do that, you have to put yourself in this woman’s situation. Put yourself in the position of someone living a life of secret sin and suddenly having that sin exposed.



We have all fallen victim to sin. We have all known the struggle of temptation and the sorrow of giving into it. Many of us have also lived with the fear that this woman was living with –the fear of being found out.



Why is the confidentiality of a priest or a therapist so sacred? Well, there are many reasons, but a main one is simply the fear that if others knew what we thought about or did in our darker moments they wouldn’t want to know us anymore. The Christian band Pedro the Lion has a song that exposes this fear. Its title is “When They Really Get to Know You They Will Run.” This is the fear that many of us live with every day.



That is the fear that the woman in this story is now forced to deal with. Her sin has been exposed for all to see. Look at verse 3 –“They made her stand before the group.” Imagine the humiliation. Imagine her anxiety. Some part of her must have hope that, if they were going to kill her they would do it quickly.



If that is her hope, then these teachers of the law are only too happy to oblige. The law is on their side and says that she must be killed. They ask Jesus, this great teacher, what he thinks they should do. Prepared for the answer that will hasten her death, imagine how surprised she must have been at his response.



“Let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.” It must take a second to register, but she begins to see that the spotlight has suddenly shifted. These teachers are forced to deal with their own sinfulness. Who among them has never sinned? The answer is obvious, and those stones which were meant to destroy her drop to the ground instead. One by one, the men walk away.



But the story doesn’t end there. There is still Jesus. There is still one man she has to answer to. The one man who IS without sin. The only man in a position to cast that first stone. Perhaps in an effort to help her take in what has transpired, perhaps a little tongue in cheek, Jesus turns to her and asks, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” “No one, sir,” she answers.



Now hear these words from Jesus. These marvelous words. Ask yourself if you have ever had a time when you feared you might be found out. Look into your own heart to see if you have been hiding out, putting on a good face, terrified that your own life might be laid bare for all to see. You stand face to face with the perfect son of God, the one man who can still bring about your destruction, the one man who can still despise you for your sin and turn on you because of your worthlessness. Hear the words that he speaks to you in that moment. “Neither do I condemn you.”



“YES!” Your heart cries out. You are going to live. You are going to be OK, more than OK. You have not been condemned. This is the Christ that stands before you, the one who said he did not come to condemn the world, but to save it. The one who came not to destroy, but came so that we might have life and have it more abundantly. “Neither do I condemn you,” he says, and sweeter words were never spoken.



The fact is that we are all looking to be found out by someone who will still love us. Any of us who have ever lived with secret sin or struggle have also experienced the burden that can be. Part of us fears that we will be found out, but our true fear is that those who find us out will no longer love us. My grandfather, who is a policeman, has said of most people who commit crimes “most of the time they want to confess, they want to be found out. I just have to help them.”



Christian author GK Chesterton says something similar:

“[Christ is the only one who] ever attempted by system to pursue and discover crimes, not in order to avenge, but in order to forgive them…[his] specialty…was this merciless mercy; the unrelenting sleuthhound who seeks to save and not to slay”



Most of us who live with sin are sick of living with it. We want to be exposed, but we fear what exposure might mean. So we take part in a cover up, unwilling to have our true selves exposed. But Christ knows all. He has found us out. And the good news is that he does not condemn us.



But that isn’t the end of the good news. While Jesus’ isn’t willing to condemn us for our life of sin, he isn’t willing to condemn us to a life of sin either. His forgiveness isn’t simply a “we all make mistakes” shrug of the shoulders. Christ knows that would only condemn us in a different way. If Jesus’ makes light of our sin and allows us to “be ourselves” then he condemns us to a life lived in sin, a life as destructive as a rock to the head, just a lot slower process. If he were simply to let us go our way, he might as well take a rock to our heads and get it over with.



But Christ has come that we might have abundant life, and life can only be abundant when it is lived according to his will and purpose. So, his last words to this woman are just another way of saying “neither do I condemn you.” His final words are a challenge to her –“Go and sin no more.”



Does he mean that this woman can’t ever make another mistake? Obviously not. None of us could pull that off. But he has called her to repent, to change directions, to start taking a different path. A difficult path, but one that leads to abundant and eternal life.



Christ’s words to us today are as powerful as when they were first spoken to that woman around 2000 years ago. “Neither do I condemn you, now go and sin no more.” They are words meant to reveal to us Jesus’ unconditional love and his desire for us to live with him and like him. They are words of freedom –the truth is exposed, but it has set us free. If you are someone who is tired of hiding, tired of pretending, if you have never lived life abundantly, but would like to begin, if you have never heard Jesus words “Neither do I condemn you” but are willing to accept them today, if you want to turn from old ways and start in a new direction, Christ invites you to do just that.

For My Wife, On the Eve of Our 6th Wedding Anniversary

How Sweet The Sound



They sang Amazing Grace

The day that she was born

With eyes as green as clovers and hair like silk of corn

Her parents must have wondered then,

But God could surely see

That she would be the blessing that she is to me



They sang Amazing Grace

The day that she was saved

An old soul given new life

An old life in its grave

Her family was to thank for the faith which she was from

But only God could know the blessing she’d become



They sang Amazing Grace

They day that we first met

I’d known my share of friendly girls

But had not known love yet

It didn’t take me long to see the grace that was inside

And only slightly longer to know that she would be my bride



They sang Amazing Grace

The day that we were wed

She vowed to share my life with me,

My faith, my fun, my bed

She became my mate and lover, my partner and my friend

And promised that our days together would not reach an end



I sing Amazing Grace

That saved a wretch like me

I give thanks for the Savior’s love and know it’s all I need

And so I stand in wonder that He’d also give me her

To make the people we’d become better than the ones we were



I see it in her service and I see it in her smile

I hear it in her voice, all goodness and no guile

I’ll thank the Lord in heaven ‘til He puts me in the ground

And every time I hear Him speak through her I’ll think “how sweet the sound”

Thursday, July 22, 2004

A Certain Uncertainty

I launch today's little nugget on something from Oswald Chambers' April 29th entry from "My Upmost For His Highest". He comments that "certainty is the mark of the common-sense life: gracious uncertainty is the mark of the spiritual life." For guys like me, this is not always good news.



I was talking recently with a newfound friend about our mutual control freak tendencies. About the fear that comes with a lack of ability to control. Think about the things you fear the most, and they almost always hearken back to some kind of lack of control. Death itself (what most people most fear) is the ultimate example of a lack of control. Its a scary proposition. Or it would be if God weren't involved.



In C.S. Lewis' "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe", Lewis uses the character Aslan, a lion, to represent God. There is a moment toward the end of the book when two human characters, Susan and Lucy, are wrestling playfully with Aslan; him tossing them about in his enormous paws. The picture is a pleasant one until you think about the fact that these girls are wrestling WITH A LION! Earlier in the story, when the humans first hear of Aslan one asks "Is he safe?" to which a talking beaver (read the story, it makes sense) responds "Heavens no he isn't safe. But he's good."



And so is the news of this uncertainty. While we are uncertain of our next step, we are certain of the one who goes on ahead of us, the one in whose footsteps we are following. This should bring with it a sense of awe and a breathless expectation. We are on a journey with God. And with God, all that we might fear disappears (although, we're human, so it will return along the way) and our life becomes an exciting adventure. We take the hand of God like a child would a parent and are, as Chambers states, "certain in our uncertainty"; confident that we don't know the way, but that God does. Jesus calls us not to simply believe in things about him, but to believe in him in such a way that we would put our whole life, and all our control, in his hands.

Wednesday, July 21, 2004

Thoughts on Forgiveness

Well, I was visiting my half.com account today (for those of you who aren't familiar, this is a part of ebay where people buy and sell movies, music, etc.) to make sure that my rating (given by other customers) was still good. I also happened to be checking on the rating of someone I had purchased from. He had made an unfortunate mistake with his catalogue and so had a long listing of complaints (some very cleverly worded). One of these complaints read "To err is human, but to err constantly is NOT!"



If only it were so. And yet, I find that my humanness (at least one side of it) has me erring on a fairly regular basis (for example, I'm not sure that is the correct spelling or erring, or if erring is even a word). This is not to say that we must "go on sinning so that grace may abound"; a flawed logic and a sickness of the heart, but it does mean that we rely on a forgiveness that goes for 70 times seven and forever and ever amen. I wouldn't want to encourage people to make mistakes or to feel OK about making them, but I would say that to err, even constantly, is something we do. Praise God for His infinite grace. Not a cheap grace that simply allows us to get away with sin, but a convicting and costly grace that teaches us to get it right in an entirely new way. The world offers us the extremes of unapologetic sinning on the one hand and a casting of stones in the other. Christ's alternative was to offer forgiveness...and a call to sin no more.



Anne Lamott has a great quote which goes, "Not forgiving someone is like drinking rat poison and then waiting for the rat to die." So easy to say and yet so hard to comprehend, let alone practice.A bit of a confessional here. My brother and I have not always gotten along. In fact, our relationship got so volatile that, at one point, we stopped speaking for 8 years. Not a pretty place to be, but such was our reality. About four years into this 8 year hiatus I was studying as a theology student in college. On one particular day I received back an ungraded essay with only one remark left by my professor; "you are more cynical at age 20 than I have ever been in my life." I thought that was a bit unfair, so I went to see my professor. We talked for quite awhile and I discovered that maybe he was right, and that maybe there was a solution to my problem. And that, like most Biblical answers, it would be ridiculously simple and incredibly complex. I would have to forgive.



God says that we cannot love Him and hate our brother. For a long time I thought of this as an arbitrary rule. My sophomore year of college, I discovered that is less a rule and more a reality. Its not that God won't allow it, it simply can't be done. Trust me, I've tried it. The more I harbored hate for my brother, the less room there was to love God. I clung to the rules that God had given, but without the relationship, I came up empty.



I hate to admit it, but when I made this discovery I almost gave up on being a Christian. I was willing to concede that I couldn't be a God lover and a brother hater, but I wasn't sure I could let go of the hate I had. If there was even a chance my brother might end up in heaven, I wasn't sure I wanted to go there.Getting over this was not an easy process. The first step was the hardest and the most important. It wasn't a step like in a 12 step program, it was simply the first step towards home. I assumed that I had been "slaving for God all these years" but I didn't realize that until I joined the party I wasn't any closer to home than my brother was. So I took that first step.



I began to pray for my brother. This was an amazing experience in the power of prayer. I had always believed that prayer that isn't pure cannot be heard. My initial prayers were perfunctory, I didn't love my brother any more than I ever had and I didn't want to see him change or believe he could. Of course, it wasn't him who changed. Little by little, through nothing more than daily prayer (to use the words "nothing more" is almost blasphemous) I began to have a change of heart. The actual phrase "change of heart" took on new meaning. It was like a surgery, my old heart pried out and replaced with a new heart, Christ's heart. With his heart pumping I could see with his eyes, hear with his ears, move with his spirit. It was a powerful transformation.



It was also a long and slow one. This wasn't overnight. It wasn't over weeks. This was at least a year, and it was bits at a time. Patience was just one of the fruits of the spirit that grew in me. God's love and kindness brought me joy and peace. One led to another and I became a new man.And patience begat patience as I forgave my brother but discovered that our lost contact meant lost addresses and lost phone numbers. I was ready to forgive my brother, but couldn't find him.



What I didn't know was that he was undergoing a similar transformation and was not yet ready to forgive or be forgiven. But within a few years, we were put in touch through a random meeting between a mutual friend that the world would call coincidence.



My brother and I speak on a weekly basis now. We still have things we work through with each other and in our own separate lives. But we don't carry around the burden of hate and resentment and life is easier because of it. When Christ says that his yoke is easy and burden is light, he isn't kidding. The cross he would have us take up every day is a relief compared to the sinfulness we might try to possess and find ourselves possessed by.



I read Anne Lamott's quote this week and thought "this lady speaks from experience, she understands that forgiveness is work but to not forgive brings death." When you swallow poison, the purge can be painful, but its a welcome substitute to holding it in. If you find yourself far from God and have someone you need to forgive, swallow your pride and upchuck your poison and see if you don't feel better when you're done. Christ has come that we might have life, and have it more abundantly. Why would we choose to stay sick instead? Given the choice between what's human and what's divine, go with what's divine. That is, after all, what we're created to be.

Monday, July 12, 2004

The World Has Made A Monkey Out of Me

“Enoch found himself facing a life size four color picture of a gorilla. Over the gorilla’s head, written in red letters was “GONGA! Giant Jungle Monarch and a Great Star!! Here in person!!” At the level of the gorilla’s knee, there was more that said “Gonga will appear in person in front of this theatre at 12 a.m. today! A free pass to the first ten brave enough to step up and shake his hand!”

Enoch turned and asked the nearest child what time it was. The child said it was 12:10 and that Gonga was already ten minutes late. Another child said that maybe the rain had delayed him. Another said, no not the rain, his director was taking a plane from Hollywood. Enoch gritted his teeth. The first child said that if he wanted to shake the star’s hand, he would have to get in line like the rest of them and wait his turn. Enoch got in line.

In spite of himself, Enoch couldn’t get over the expectation that something was going to happen to him. It operated on him all the rest of the day. He had only a vague idea what he wanted, but he was not a boy without ambition: he wanted to become something. He wanted to better his condition. He wanted, someday, to see a line of people waiting to shake his hand.”



This is an excerpt from a short story by famed southern writer Flannery O’Connor. It draws from events in the fictional life of a young man named Enoch. Enoch is impressionable and ambitious. He is wants to be appreciated, longs to be accepted, and is desperate to be loved. When he realizes that crowds will gather to shake the hand of a man in a monkey suit, he hatches a bizarre plan; to kill the man and steal his suit, so that people will shake his hand.

Enoch’s story is familiar even if the circumstances are extreme. All of us long for some kind of acceptance, all of us want to be appreciated, all of us need to be loved. We may not be willing to kill to get it, but all of us have been tempted to put on the monkey suit.

We live in a world that is based on image. As a college student who minored in communications, I spent a year taking a couple of advertising classes and I can testify to this. But you don’t have to take advertising classes to know that the world wants to sell us something. Just open your mailbox (real or computerized) and look at the junk. The world promises us love and acceptance if we will simply be willing to buy its product, take its image, put on the latest version of the monkey suit. This world that is based on image, longs to make us in its image. It promises a look, a talk, a walk, an attitude, a lifestyle that will set us apart and elevate us.

The monkey suit has been altered over time, but the basic struggle remains the same. Thousands of years ago, Hebrew men sought after the same status and respect that we desire today. Hebrew women may have too, but they had so little place in society, their wants and desires hardly mattered. In fact, a common prayer among Hebrew men went this way:

“Blessed are you, Lord, our God, ruler of the universe who has created me a human and not beast, a man and not a woman, an Israelite and not a gentile, free and not slave.”

Galatians 3 responds to this prayer. To those who sought status based on being a man, a Jew, or free God has spoken a scandalous truth; there is no longer any male or female, Jew or Gentile, slave or free. Not for those who have clothed themselves with Christ. Those things that were separate have been brought together. Those who were lowly have been raised up. Those who were raised up have been laid low.

Of course, we aren’t a society separated by slave or free or Jew or Gentile. As I said, our monkey suit has been altered; but we are still defined by our image. In a modern context, this passage might read “no rich or poor, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, American or Iraqi.” For those whose labels aren’t so definitive, it may simply be a matter of “cool or uncool, acceptable or unacceptable, churched or unchurched.”

I don’t know how you define yourself, I don’t know what image or persona you have chosen to take on. You might be wrapped up in wearing the right clothes, driving the right car, going to the right school, and getting the right job. It might be economic status or geographic location. It might be skin color or gender. God says enough of that. God’s only concerned with one image. His image. The image he created us in. He is only concerned with one persona, and that is the person of Christ.

Romans 12:2 states that we should “no longer be conformed to the likeness of this world.” 2 Corinthians 3:18 promises that we who are in Christ are “being transformed into the same image.” God’s call is not to be conformed, but transformed. It’s time to take off the monkey suit and clothe ourselves with Christ. As a people who are defined by the image they put on, God calls us to put on His. God can demand this because His acceptance is all that matters; His love is all that fulfills.

The world will promise love if you will try this drug, drink this beer, drive this car and you can get this girl. But this house and the neighbors will envy. Wear this suit and the people will line up to shake your hand. The only problem is that, in the end, the world can’t deliver on its promise. The world will promise greatness and then turn its back. Only Jesus promises never to reject you as long as you follow him and put him on.

So what happens when a person clothes themselves with Christ in the way that Paul talks about? What does that look like? I recently had an opportunity to work with a group of ministers and their youth groups at a camp in Virginia. One of the ministers working there was obviously not someone concerned with how he clothed himself every day. He sported a mustache that was popular in the 70’s, glasses that were chic in the 80’s, and the kind of salmon colored polo shirts that peaked somewhere in between. To complete the look, he was never without a cap that read in bold letters “WORLD’S GREATEST DAD!” And yet the teenagers he worked with, an age group that advertisers know to be notoriously obsessed with what is “cool”, followed him around like he was the Pied Piper. They laughed at his jokes, listened to his stories, asked him for advice, and generally enjoyed his company. Now what was it that had these teens defying social norms to be around this man?

The answer is simple. This was a man who got up every morning and clothed himself with Christ. When teens spent time with him, Christ was who they saw; someone who cared for them, accepted them, and loved them unconditionally. This was a man who had turned in his monkey suit and put on the image of Christ. And these kids were lined up to shake his hand.

The call of Christ is a challenge and an invitation. First of all, many of us have put on church, but never really put on Christ. Others of us see ourselves as a “good” person and don’t realize that this is just another kind of monkey suit. It isn’t wrong to be good, it isn’t bad to be “churched”, it just isn’t the way we should define ourselves. Others of us think we can wear the monkey suit at work and the Jesus suit at church; the Jesus suit at home and the monkey suit with friends. It's time to pick a suit and wear it. Let Christians be those who have put on Christ and not just people who have sewn the label onto another outfit. To do otherwise isn't just silly, it is sin.

People living in a monkey suit look in the mirror and don’t like what they see. Jesus is offering another way, a better way. Christ invites us to take off the monkey suit and put him on in baptism, become a new person and begin a new life.