Well, if it isn't one extreme its another. I think it was Martin Luther who used the analogy of a drunk on a horse. He falls into the left ditch and vows that next time he'll fall in the right one. It never occurs to him to try and stay on the horse.
Last night we had a class discussion on Sabbath. The meaning of Sabbath. The importance of Sabbath. The command of Sabbath. It was incredible to hear how naturally we kick against this command. We immediately went to work trying to find an out ("we don't work as much as they did back then", "we don't need more free time"), hoping against hope that we wouldn't be forced to take a day and dedicate it to God. Arguement after arguement failed until the point was made that a strict observance of Sabbath was "legalistic".
Legalism. How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. Of course, I am as against legalism as the next guy, but I am sick of the legalism of being against legalism. We want to know what the rules are, we find out they're hard, and we cry legalism in order to get out of them. And we become as legalistic as the worst of Pharisees.
GK Chesterton is famous for stating that "Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried." Let us all cry guilty. But many members of the church have discovered a solution. Don't like to read your Bible? Shout about how the memorization of scripture is legalistic. Don't pray enough? Anyone who tries to make you feel guilty for that is a legalist. Can't seem to pause from your busyness (even when we aren't working, few of us ever pause)? No need. Those 10 Commandments? Those are Old Testament law. And anyone with half a brain will tell you, the law is legalistic.
No doubt it can be and has been. Jesus himself refused to bend to a legalistic approach to Sabbath which would keep him from healing someone. But this same Jesus often went off by himself to practice Sabbath. To not do so, to ask "do I have to?" is as legalistic as you can get.
Imagine if on my wedding day I had interrupted the vows to ask "Do I really have to honor her? Do I have to be faithful? Do I really have to love her as Christ loved the church?" Imagine if I refused to get married if marriage was going to have "legalistic rules" like "you can't cheat on your spouse".
Freedom from legalism means that we move from rules to relationship, it doesn't mean the rules cease to be important. Freedom from legalism means we move from "have to do" to "get to do", it doesn't mean there isn't still something "to do". I heard a guy say once "If I talked to my wife as much as I talk to God, she'd leave me." I'm not suggesting a legalistic approach that has you comparing time spent with wife to time spent with God, but I think its time to remind ourselves of the importance of this time. Sabbath is more than a principle, it is a practice, a practice that makes us perfect. It is a time to rest, reflect, remember and rely. Let's get back to doing the things Christians are called to do and stop avoiding them by crying "legalism".
Thursday, June 3, 2004
Monday, May 31, 2004
A Mighty Wind
Today marks a holiday celebrated 50 days after Passover (For us 50 days after Easter). The name of the holiday is Pentecost - meaning 50th. From the time of Moses, this day was one of the high holy days of the Jewish faith. It later became a holiday uniting the Jewish world after the exile, for people would come to Jerusalem from east and west and north and south to worship and celebrate this feast. But when the people gathered to celebrate after Christ’s resurrection, no one could have guessed what it would become.
In preparation for this day, I googled the word “Pentecost” hoping to find what others in the faith had to say about this epic day. I discovered a sermon that had been preached by the head of an association committed to non-violence. Disturbed by the imagery of a mighty or violent wind, he spent most of the sermon down playing the violence and succeeded in taking the wind out of God’s spirit. At one point he assured his listeners that “the sudden rush of the Spirit strikes witnesses as violent, yet it does not violate consciences and lives.”
So begins our effort to domesticate Pentecost. It was only a matter of time I guess. Christmas has become a rather benign image of a sleeping baby, not a God who invades the world. Easter has more to do with bunnies than it does with an empty tomb. And the violent wind of Pentecost isn’t something we need concern ourselves with, it will not “violate consciences or lives”. It’s hardly an image that shakes us up or should give us cause for concern.
Until we look to the Bible. Since the time of Abraham, God’s involvement with His people has caused upheaval in their lives. Abraham is called to uproot a comfortable existence for a life that he cannot imagine. All that he had is swept away and God creates a new people.
Since that time, God’s people have expected upheaval and known that it might even be unpleasant. The prophet Jeremiah complains in chapter 20 that “you have overpowered me”. Another way this can be translated is “you have violated me”. So much for a Spirit that won’t “violate consciences or lives”. When God gets involved with His people He doesn’t just involve He invades.
This does not mean that our God is a mean and angry God. Just because something is invasive does not mean it isn’t good for you. If you have a tumor, an invasive surgery can save your life. This violent wind that moves as Christ’s spirit is the same breath of life that God breathed into us in the beginning. So, only a new act of creation can create us anew. Jesus, the new Adam, gives us his Holy Spirit; the mighty wind that created the world is, at Pentecost, creating Christ’s church. And creation isn’t a gentle process. Anyone who has witnessed the birth of a baby can testify to this. In creation there is strain and upheaval. So it is when Christ creates his church. We are reshaped and reborn and forever changed.
As the Holy Spirit moves through Acts we continue to see this dramatic change. And the change is dramatic and physical. Paul is blinded when he encounters Christ. The Philippian jailor finds God in the midst of an earthquake.
In fact, earthquakes abound when God shows up. The church in Acts prays for boldness and the building is shaken. Christ’s resurrection causes an earthquake. And the Hebrew writer speaks of a time when all will be shaken apart and only that which is of God will remain. When God is at work, things get shaken up. The Holy Spirit makes a clean sweep –we try to cling to certain things, but God sweeps it all away.
Wind can be awesome when it is out of control. Imagine the power of a hurricane. It can destroy everything in its path. We hide from the wind because it can destroy us. And yet, in a single day, a hurricane can release the amount of energy necessary to supply all of the United States' electrical needs for about six months.
Only God can harness the power of the wind, the power of His spirit. So, to try and gain access to this power apart from God is futile and dangerous. We cannot harness this wind or bend it to our purpose. We cannot use this wind to go where we want to go. We can only be blown away by it, caught up in it, and trust that it will take us where we most need to go.
That is not to say that God’s Spirit is out of control, it is simply out of our control. Only through relationship with Christ are we able to see some control of the wind. Remember, Christ is the one who calms the storm when the wind seems out of control. God, who controls the wind, can harness its power and use it to supply our need.
God takes everything from us so that we can receive back from Him what it is we truly need. But that doesn’t mean that we get to pick and choose what gets taken away. Think of how the Jews have to rethink their approach to the Gentiles. Their entire way of thinking about “chosen people” is shaken. In a more modern context, think of our own prejudices and preferences. Or the relationships we might try to cling to. Think of the son who goes off to college only to find Christ. What will his unbelieving girlfriend or parents think when he returns home for the holidays? Or, one that hits all of us close to home, our schedules. We are caught up in a whirlwind of activities and find no time for God. God comes in like a whirlwind and makes us make time. When God gets involved in our lives His spirit sweeps everything away, not just our sin, but our very lives.
Pentecost is meant to be the day that blows us away. Out of this chaos, the God of all creation begins a new creation, not by destroying but by transforming, by the changing wind of the Holy Spirit.
Because of its power, God's wind changes everything. It is up to us to choose our response. We can open our hearts and celebrate this amazing gift or in our fear we can work to control it.
If we do open our hearts to it and allow this mighty wind to sweep away all that we might give devotion to, it is amazing to see what remains. As we see in the end of Acts 2, at the end of Pentecost “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” By allowing God’s Spirit to be at work within His church, these people discover an entirely new way to be and they are made into a new creation. We can participate with them as members of Christ’s church. And when we do, we will see God work in amazing ways, adding to our numbers every day those who are being saved.
In preparation for this day, I googled the word “Pentecost” hoping to find what others in the faith had to say about this epic day. I discovered a sermon that had been preached by the head of an association committed to non-violence. Disturbed by the imagery of a mighty or violent wind, he spent most of the sermon down playing the violence and succeeded in taking the wind out of God’s spirit. At one point he assured his listeners that “the sudden rush of the Spirit strikes witnesses as violent, yet it does not violate consciences and lives.”
So begins our effort to domesticate Pentecost. It was only a matter of time I guess. Christmas has become a rather benign image of a sleeping baby, not a God who invades the world. Easter has more to do with bunnies than it does with an empty tomb. And the violent wind of Pentecost isn’t something we need concern ourselves with, it will not “violate consciences or lives”. It’s hardly an image that shakes us up or should give us cause for concern.
Until we look to the Bible. Since the time of Abraham, God’s involvement with His people has caused upheaval in their lives. Abraham is called to uproot a comfortable existence for a life that he cannot imagine. All that he had is swept away and God creates a new people.
Since that time, God’s people have expected upheaval and known that it might even be unpleasant. The prophet Jeremiah complains in chapter 20 that “you have overpowered me”. Another way this can be translated is “you have violated me”. So much for a Spirit that won’t “violate consciences or lives”. When God gets involved with His people He doesn’t just involve He invades.
This does not mean that our God is a mean and angry God. Just because something is invasive does not mean it isn’t good for you. If you have a tumor, an invasive surgery can save your life. This violent wind that moves as Christ’s spirit is the same breath of life that God breathed into us in the beginning. So, only a new act of creation can create us anew. Jesus, the new Adam, gives us his Holy Spirit; the mighty wind that created the world is, at Pentecost, creating Christ’s church. And creation isn’t a gentle process. Anyone who has witnessed the birth of a baby can testify to this. In creation there is strain and upheaval. So it is when Christ creates his church. We are reshaped and reborn and forever changed.
As the Holy Spirit moves through Acts we continue to see this dramatic change. And the change is dramatic and physical. Paul is blinded when he encounters Christ. The Philippian jailor finds God in the midst of an earthquake.
In fact, earthquakes abound when God shows up. The church in Acts prays for boldness and the building is shaken. Christ’s resurrection causes an earthquake. And the Hebrew writer speaks of a time when all will be shaken apart and only that which is of God will remain. When God is at work, things get shaken up. The Holy Spirit makes a clean sweep –we try to cling to certain things, but God sweeps it all away.
Wind can be awesome when it is out of control. Imagine the power of a hurricane. It can destroy everything in its path. We hide from the wind because it can destroy us. And yet, in a single day, a hurricane can release the amount of energy necessary to supply all of the United States' electrical needs for about six months.
Only God can harness the power of the wind, the power of His spirit. So, to try and gain access to this power apart from God is futile and dangerous. We cannot harness this wind or bend it to our purpose. We cannot use this wind to go where we want to go. We can only be blown away by it, caught up in it, and trust that it will take us where we most need to go.
That is not to say that God’s Spirit is out of control, it is simply out of our control. Only through relationship with Christ are we able to see some control of the wind. Remember, Christ is the one who calms the storm when the wind seems out of control. God, who controls the wind, can harness its power and use it to supply our need.
God takes everything from us so that we can receive back from Him what it is we truly need. But that doesn’t mean that we get to pick and choose what gets taken away. Think of how the Jews have to rethink their approach to the Gentiles. Their entire way of thinking about “chosen people” is shaken. In a more modern context, think of our own prejudices and preferences. Or the relationships we might try to cling to. Think of the son who goes off to college only to find Christ. What will his unbelieving girlfriend or parents think when he returns home for the holidays? Or, one that hits all of us close to home, our schedules. We are caught up in a whirlwind of activities and find no time for God. God comes in like a whirlwind and makes us make time. When God gets involved in our lives His spirit sweeps everything away, not just our sin, but our very lives.
Pentecost is meant to be the day that blows us away. Out of this chaos, the God of all creation begins a new creation, not by destroying but by transforming, by the changing wind of the Holy Spirit.
Because of its power, God's wind changes everything. It is up to us to choose our response. We can open our hearts and celebrate this amazing gift or in our fear we can work to control it.
If we do open our hearts to it and allow this mighty wind to sweep away all that we might give devotion to, it is amazing to see what remains. As we see in the end of Acts 2, at the end of Pentecost “they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer.” By allowing God’s Spirit to be at work within His church, these people discover an entirely new way to be and they are made into a new creation. We can participate with them as members of Christ’s church. And when we do, we will see God work in amazing ways, adding to our numbers every day those who are being saved.
Thursday, May 27, 2004
A Brief Sports Analogy
Anyone who knows me well would be surprised to find the words "sports analogy" attached to anything I might write. There is a simple explanation for their surprise, I know next to nothing about sports. I can play sports (basketball and football for a bref stint in middle and high school) but I don't follow specific teams or players, I can't quote statistics, I don't watch ESPN. It isn't that I am anti-sports, it's that no one has ever taken the time to explain to me why they love the games (teams, players) they love and why I should. I'm a guy who loves to have stuff explained to me, I love to get sold on something, I like to know why others like what they like even if they don't sell me. But no one has ever attempted to explain their love of sports to me. Most folks want someone who is already a fan, someone who already speaks the language, not somebody they have to explain things to like a five year old.
I don't bring this up as an angst ridden rant (I am, in fact, content to remain clueless about sports until someone takes me on as a project) but as an analogy to how many of the "churched" approach discussions on faith. Too many of us are looking for someone who already knows the lingo, someone who is already sold on the game. We don't want to have to take someone through the process if it means getting down on their level.
I don't mean that we should condescend or approach people like projects, but we should be more ready to explain why it is we're so sold on this Christianity thing. Hopefully (and this is step one) our non-Christian friends can see that it is important to us, we need to be ready to explain to them why. That means having some understanding ourselves and a genuine and sincere love for what we're sharing. Then it means going back to the basics and patiently explaining what they mean. Like the sports fanatic who takes time to teach his son to throw a ball, this practice can often bring us back to why we fell in love in the first place.
I don't bring this up as an angst ridden rant (I am, in fact, content to remain clueless about sports until someone takes me on as a project) but as an analogy to how many of the "churched" approach discussions on faith. Too many of us are looking for someone who already knows the lingo, someone who is already sold on the game. We don't want to have to take someone through the process if it means getting down on their level.
I don't mean that we should condescend or approach people like projects, but we should be more ready to explain why it is we're so sold on this Christianity thing. Hopefully (and this is step one) our non-Christian friends can see that it is important to us, we need to be ready to explain to them why. That means having some understanding ourselves and a genuine and sincere love for what we're sharing. Then it means going back to the basics and patiently explaining what they mean. Like the sports fanatic who takes time to teach his son to throw a ball, this practice can often bring us back to why we fell in love in the first place.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
The Crutch of Christ
A few years back, when my wife and I were living in Abilene, Texas, we were a part of a young adults group made up of singles, marrieds, and those with young children. On Sunday mornings, members of the class took turns teaching. One of these Sunday mornings the focus was on the story in Luke 18 of Christ and the little children. Our teacher started the class by asking us to describe traits that we associate with children. The singles and marrieds volunteered words like “innocent” and “precious” and “honest”. Then one of the members of the class who actually had children raised his hand and said “stupid”. Our teacher was a bit taken aback, but he recovered and said “Well, maybe, but for the purposes of this class, let’s focus on the good qualities.”
That’s the temptation that faces all of us, isn’t it? To focus on our good qualities and try and pretend that the bad ones don’t exist. After all, if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. Where’s the harm in putting on a good face and “faking it ‘til you’re making it”?
There was a group a few years back who were working to get the wording changed in one of the hymns we sang this morning, Amazing Grace. All they wanted to change was one word so that the first verse would be: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved someone like me.” Not so bad, right? Someone like me. I’m not some wretch; I’m just someone. Much better. I can work with that.
As a college student, I took a class entitled Counseling Adolescents. During one of the classes, the professor asked us to think back on what life was like during our middle school and high school years. Now, this may surprise you, but I was not the incredible physical specimen you see here before you when I was in junior high school. I was what was then called a nerd, which may be an outdated term. I was not surprised to discover that many of my college classmates had shared a similar fate.
What did surprise me was a guy in the class named Kyle. Kyle was the kind of guy who had picked on guys like me. But the story he shared was very similar to mine, he talked about being lonely and anxious and out of place and pressured. He ended his thoughts by asking something that I will never forget; “Why did we all feel the need to put on such a show in school? Why didn’t we all just come clean?”
The problem is that this is the last thing the world tells us to do. The world functions on keeping up appearances, the TV ads tell us to “never let them see you sweat” and we as a church have slowly bought into Satan’s lie. We’re going to pretend like everything is OK, and the last thing we’re going to do is come clean.
Why? Well, if I can play with phrase a bit, it probably has something to do with the fact that no one comes clean. We come broken, and dirty, and dead. Our lives don’t make sense, our mistakes are catching up with us, and even the best things in our lives, our families, our friends, cannot fulfill us. And coming into the presence of God doesn’t make us less aware of that fact, but more aware of it. Many of us have set ourselves apart from relationship with God and when we find ourselves in His presence we join Isaiah in shouting “woe is me.”
So, what can be done? We suck, now what? For a long time in our churches, the message ended there. But the Bible’s message does not. It only begins there. The Bible speaks to us like a doctor might, “there’s bad news and there’s good news.” We got the bad news first, and it is bad. We are dead in sin. But now comes good news and it is the only good news that can boldly claim to be THE good news, the gospel.
The good news is that while we do not come clean, through Christ, we can BEcome clean.
Comedian Dennis Miller states that his problem with Christians is their insistence on being “born again”. His comment is this; “excuse me for getting it right the first time.” We are here today to proclaim that no one gets it right the first time.
Going back to the story in Luke 18, Jesus says that we must come like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. The teacher from my young adult class wanted to focus on the good stuff, because he thought that is what Christ was focusing on. Except it wasn’t. The way in which we are meant to model children is not in their innocence, which we lost a long time ago, but in their incompetence. In their flat out, can’t tie their own shoes, can’t feed themselves, neediness. We must come to Christ that way, or not at all.
There are those, like Dennis Miller, who will look down on the idea of being “born again”. There are those who will refer to Christianity as a crutch. There was a time when that would have offended me, but I have come to a stunning realization in recent years. Christianity IS a crutch. What I had missed was that I was a man in need of a crutch. We are a world full of broken people and when Christ offers us a crutch we should take it.
In Matthew 9:1-7, we see Christ tie these two things together. In the same instant that the paralytic’s sins are forgiven he is also given the strength to walk. The one who has come to save us from sin has provided a crutch so we can walk again. Jesus reinforces this in verse 12 when he states that “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” We don’t have to come clean to Jesus, in fact we cannot. Jesus looks at our brokeness and our neediness and our incompetence and says, “I can work with that.”
Thomas Merton once said that “A saint is not someone who is good, but someone who has experienced the grace of God.” We aren’t any good folks, none of us are. We are wretches. But because of God’s grace we don’t have to be. Only with God’s grace can we avoid it.
My first job in youth ministry, I worked with a kid named Travis. He had lived a pretty hard life for a high school student and when he decided to give his life to Christ, he still had some habits he wanted to break. He came to me before being baptized and said that maybe he should wait until he had quit smoking to get baptized. What Travis had trouble understanding was that we don’t become Christians because we’re good enough to be, but because we’re too bad not to be. As his dad dunked him in the water, his mom looked at me and said “remember what creep that kid was?” I did indeed, and I also knew that he would still be a creep, but was being made perfect everyday from that day forward.
What is offered to us in Christ’s death and resurrection is justification by grace through faith. Justification is to be in right relationship with God again, not to suddenly be without flaw. During my growing up, the relationship between my brother and I was fairly hostile, bordering on volatile. So much so that for 8 years we lost all contact and didn’t speak to each other. 4 years ago, by the grace of God, we were able to set things right, and reestablish our relationship. Does that mean that there aren’t still times when I forget to return a phone call? Absolutely not. Can I do harm to the relationship if I go a month without speaking to my brother? Definitely. Do I need to worry that I could lose the relationship I have reestablished with my brother? Never. The same goes with our relationship with God. If you go a week without praying or cracking open a Bible, don’t be surprised if God seems distant; but please don’t think that your salvation is in jeopardy. Christ’s blood has justified you, and no amount of getting it right on earth is getting you into heaven.
But what about those who have received the call of salvation and obeyed it? What about those who continue to take up our cross daily, who continue to wrestle with God and, like Jacob, wind up with a limp for our trouble. The answer is that the cross is not what burdens you, but what props you up. The cross was Christ’s burden, but it is our salvation. The crutch that is offered to us in salvation is not taken away as we continue the journey. The crutch of Christ continues to hold us up as we walk through life and it will not be taken away until he has taken us home.
What this means is that the church has a responsibility to outsiders, to our children, to each other to lean on the cross when we find ourselves in trouble. Not on our connections, not on our education, not on our money, none of these can save us. It means that prayer must be our first inclination and not our last resort.
At the age of 82, near death, John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace” spoke these words; “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things. I am a great sinner and Christ is a great savior.”
We are great sinners in need of a great savior, and we have been invited to leave behind our old life, to take up the crutch of Christ, and to be washed clean in the waters of baptism.
That’s the temptation that faces all of us, isn’t it? To focus on our good qualities and try and pretend that the bad ones don’t exist. After all, if you can’t say something nice don’t say anything at all. Where’s the harm in putting on a good face and “faking it ‘til you’re making it”?
There was a group a few years back who were working to get the wording changed in one of the hymns we sang this morning, Amazing Grace. All they wanted to change was one word so that the first verse would be: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved someone like me.” Not so bad, right? Someone like me. I’m not some wretch; I’m just someone. Much better. I can work with that.
As a college student, I took a class entitled Counseling Adolescents. During one of the classes, the professor asked us to think back on what life was like during our middle school and high school years. Now, this may surprise you, but I was not the incredible physical specimen you see here before you when I was in junior high school. I was what was then called a nerd, which may be an outdated term. I was not surprised to discover that many of my college classmates had shared a similar fate.
What did surprise me was a guy in the class named Kyle. Kyle was the kind of guy who had picked on guys like me. But the story he shared was very similar to mine, he talked about being lonely and anxious and out of place and pressured. He ended his thoughts by asking something that I will never forget; “Why did we all feel the need to put on such a show in school? Why didn’t we all just come clean?”
The problem is that this is the last thing the world tells us to do. The world functions on keeping up appearances, the TV ads tell us to “never let them see you sweat” and we as a church have slowly bought into Satan’s lie. We’re going to pretend like everything is OK, and the last thing we’re going to do is come clean.
Why? Well, if I can play with phrase a bit, it probably has something to do with the fact that no one comes clean. We come broken, and dirty, and dead. Our lives don’t make sense, our mistakes are catching up with us, and even the best things in our lives, our families, our friends, cannot fulfill us. And coming into the presence of God doesn’t make us less aware of that fact, but more aware of it. Many of us have set ourselves apart from relationship with God and when we find ourselves in His presence we join Isaiah in shouting “woe is me.”
So, what can be done? We suck, now what? For a long time in our churches, the message ended there. But the Bible’s message does not. It only begins there. The Bible speaks to us like a doctor might, “there’s bad news and there’s good news.” We got the bad news first, and it is bad. We are dead in sin. But now comes good news and it is the only good news that can boldly claim to be THE good news, the gospel.
The good news is that while we do not come clean, through Christ, we can BEcome clean.
Comedian Dennis Miller states that his problem with Christians is their insistence on being “born again”. His comment is this; “excuse me for getting it right the first time.” We are here today to proclaim that no one gets it right the first time.
Going back to the story in Luke 18, Jesus says that we must come like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. The teacher from my young adult class wanted to focus on the good stuff, because he thought that is what Christ was focusing on. Except it wasn’t. The way in which we are meant to model children is not in their innocence, which we lost a long time ago, but in their incompetence. In their flat out, can’t tie their own shoes, can’t feed themselves, neediness. We must come to Christ that way, or not at all.
There are those, like Dennis Miller, who will look down on the idea of being “born again”. There are those who will refer to Christianity as a crutch. There was a time when that would have offended me, but I have come to a stunning realization in recent years. Christianity IS a crutch. What I had missed was that I was a man in need of a crutch. We are a world full of broken people and when Christ offers us a crutch we should take it.
In Matthew 9:1-7, we see Christ tie these two things together. In the same instant that the paralytic’s sins are forgiven he is also given the strength to walk. The one who has come to save us from sin has provided a crutch so we can walk again. Jesus reinforces this in verse 12 when he states that “it is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.” We don’t have to come clean to Jesus, in fact we cannot. Jesus looks at our brokeness and our neediness and our incompetence and says, “I can work with that.”
Thomas Merton once said that “A saint is not someone who is good, but someone who has experienced the grace of God.” We aren’t any good folks, none of us are. We are wretches. But because of God’s grace we don’t have to be. Only with God’s grace can we avoid it.
My first job in youth ministry, I worked with a kid named Travis. He had lived a pretty hard life for a high school student and when he decided to give his life to Christ, he still had some habits he wanted to break. He came to me before being baptized and said that maybe he should wait until he had quit smoking to get baptized. What Travis had trouble understanding was that we don’t become Christians because we’re good enough to be, but because we’re too bad not to be. As his dad dunked him in the water, his mom looked at me and said “remember what creep that kid was?” I did indeed, and I also knew that he would still be a creep, but was being made perfect everyday from that day forward.
What is offered to us in Christ’s death and resurrection is justification by grace through faith. Justification is to be in right relationship with God again, not to suddenly be without flaw. During my growing up, the relationship between my brother and I was fairly hostile, bordering on volatile. So much so that for 8 years we lost all contact and didn’t speak to each other. 4 years ago, by the grace of God, we were able to set things right, and reestablish our relationship. Does that mean that there aren’t still times when I forget to return a phone call? Absolutely not. Can I do harm to the relationship if I go a month without speaking to my brother? Definitely. Do I need to worry that I could lose the relationship I have reestablished with my brother? Never. The same goes with our relationship with God. If you go a week without praying or cracking open a Bible, don’t be surprised if God seems distant; but please don’t think that your salvation is in jeopardy. Christ’s blood has justified you, and no amount of getting it right on earth is getting you into heaven.
But what about those who have received the call of salvation and obeyed it? What about those who continue to take up our cross daily, who continue to wrestle with God and, like Jacob, wind up with a limp for our trouble. The answer is that the cross is not what burdens you, but what props you up. The cross was Christ’s burden, but it is our salvation. The crutch that is offered to us in salvation is not taken away as we continue the journey. The crutch of Christ continues to hold us up as we walk through life and it will not be taken away until he has taken us home.
What this means is that the church has a responsibility to outsiders, to our children, to each other to lean on the cross when we find ourselves in trouble. Not on our connections, not on our education, not on our money, none of these can save us. It means that prayer must be our first inclination and not our last resort.
At the age of 82, near death, John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace” spoke these words; “My memory is nearly gone, but I remember two things. I am a great sinner and Christ is a great savior.”
We are great sinners in need of a great savior, and we have been invited to leave behind our old life, to take up the crutch of Christ, and to be washed clean in the waters of baptism.
Tuesday, May 18, 2004
Every Pooper Needs A Party
In my fourth grade year of elementary school there was this annoying kid in my class. You’ve probably met someone like him. Always does what he’s told, and loves to point out when others don’t. This is the kid who reminds the teacher about the homework assignment, the kid who complains that his class project partners never contribute enough and that he could get more done on his own. But there is one thing this kid does that he enjoys more than anything else. When the teacher has to leave the room, she will ask a student to take down the names of anyone who misbehaves. In my fourth grade year of school, there was only one kid my teacher ever called take on this responsibility. That kid was me.
I am an older brother. Technically, I have a brother who is 9 years my senior, but he would be the first to say that, for all intents and purposes, I was the older one. The responsible one. When it came to the mistakes of my siblings, my parents’ didn’t even need to ask, I was taking names. Without anyone having assigned me the job, I took it upon myself to lay down the law. And while a lot has changed since we were growing up at home, old habits still die hard.
This last weekend I went to Chicago to see my brother, Scott. It was the first time for me to see him in a few years and the first time he and Rachel had ever met. At one point during the weekend, he mentioned that he and a high school friend of his had been discussing my visit. His friend had said “You better be on your best behavior, you don’t want him calling mom and dad.” It was a painful reminder.
The Gospel of Luke 15:11-32 is best known as The Parable of the Lost Son or Prodigal Son. But I would suggest that it is a story of two lost sons. One who left home and one who never felt at home. I believe that all of us have felt like at least one of these brothers at some point in our lives.
The younger brother is the main focus of the story, and us older brothers sigh in frustration. Once again, the bad kids get all the attention. The younger brother asks his father for his share of the inheritance, in a sense saying to his father, “I wish you were already dead.” His relationship with his father is all about what he can get from him. The younger son takes his father’s money, moves far away, and goes on the bender to end all benders. What he wants most is that life be one big party. And, for awhile, it is.
Many of us have been this younger brother. Seeing relationships as a means to an end, we squander all that we are blessed with and keep asking mom and dad to send another check. Eventually, the well runs dry and the party ends.
This is what happens to the prodigal son. Not only does the party end, but the people who he partied with are nowhere to be found. The younger brother experiences firsthand what the old blues song meant when it said “nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” The prodigal takes the most miserable of jobs and it is while he is working that he has a sudden epiphany. He knows that his father would never let him come home, but perhaps he would give him a job. The son decides to head home and ask for just that.
In Galatians 3:24 we read “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified through faith.” The prodigal son is ready to submit himself to the law. But he finds that his father has other ideas.
The son explains to his father what he hopes is a fair deal, but the father isn’t hearing it. His son is home! This is a time to rejoice, to celebrate, to party! The law served its purpose in getting the son home, now the relationship can begin again.
This is as good a time as any to say that I have seen this story play out. As I have said, my brother was the trouble maker. He looked in a lot of places trying to keep the party going. But what I remember is one party in particular. The welcome home party that my parents threw after my brother returned from the Army.
What a bitter memory. Everyone seemed so happy for him to be coming home. Didn’t anyone remember how much trouble he had been? Didn’t they know that some things never change!? Well, I did and I wasn’t going to celebrate.
My mother used to have a saying for times that one of us (oftentimes me) would sulk at a party. “Every party needs a pooper, that’s why we’ve invited you.” It’s a theme song for older brothers. The older brother in this story is no exception.
Here comes the older brother after a hard day’s work. He is tired, he is achy, but its all good, because he understands that life is about hard work. He may be tired, but he is also responsible. He is good. He may be basking in just this thought when he hears the sounds of a party.
I have to wonder what he thought as he realized that a party was going on. Was he so much like me that he thought maybe his father had finally decided to recognize all the hard work he had done? Did dome part of him think “finally I am going to get the recognition I deserve”? Whatever he may have been thinking or hoping, those hopes were soon dashed. The party wasn’t for him. The prodigal son was home.
Now we know exactly what the older brother was thinking. He expresses it angrily. And one phrase in particular stands out. “All these years I have slaved for you”. I don’t know how you see this moment, but I always imagine Steve Martin’s character in Parenthood when he shouts at his wife “My whole life is have to!”
His father pleads with him not to be a party pooper. He begs his son to join in the celebration, but the son folds his arms and sulks. And misses the party.
Returning to the end of Galatians 3 and the beginning of chapter 4, we see a discussion on slaves and sons. Those who are slaves to the law only until they have clothed themselves with Christ in baptism. Then they take their place as sons and come into a full inheritance. This is a story of slaves and sons and inheritance. One son squanders his inheritance and is willing to become a slave, but finds himself reinstated as a son. Another chooses to slave for his father rather than be his son, and so ends up squandering his inheritance as well. Both sons come dangerously close to missing out on the party. The prodigal goes in search of a party only to discover one waiting for him at home. The other son longs for a party, only to discover he could have had one at anytime.
The gospel for the prodigal son is one that has been preached many times and one that I would echo. For those of you who have seen God only as a means to an end, but never as one to be in relationship with, for those who have experienced the emptiness that comes when the well runs dry, you are invited to take on Christ in baptism, to gain access to a well that never runs dry and to claim your proper place as children in Christ’s kingdom.
But there is grace for the older brother as well. For those of us who never had a “drunk in the gutter” story. For those of us who have always made faith about how well we behaved ourselves, for those of us who never left home but have never really felt at home, there is gospel for us as well. We have fooled ourselves into believing that we show maturity when we live by the law. But Galatians says just the opposite. The law is for those who are still children. We show maturity when we are willing to lay down the law. Christ has already taken our burden, why are we still trying to carry it? Christ says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. That doesn’t mean that there won’t still be work to do for all of us who put on Christ. It simply means that the work can be done as a part of a relationship, and work that is done as sons is far easier than work that is done as slaves. And that those God calls to work hard, He allows to play hard too. Its time to join the party. Every pooper needs a party, that's why He invited you.
One last thing. It has been said that the job of a good prophet is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I’m going to do just a little bit of that right now. We as the church will always have people among us who have made mistakes. I should say that we have all made mistakes, but some mistakes are less easily hidden. When I was working my first job in ministry, there was a girl in the youth group who got pregnant at the age of 15. And when she did, there was a woman at the church who had long stated that we should not have baby showers for babies born out of wedlock. She changed her mind when this baby was born, because the baby was her great-granddaughter. What changed was that it became about a relationship and not a rule. Too many of us are still taking down names for the teacher, thinking that when God gets back He’ll want us to give an accounting of everybody who misbehaved. But scripture teaches that love keeps no record of wrongs. We’re not trying to say sin isn’t important, if it wasn’t then Jesus wouldn’t have died. But he did die, and when he did so did the power of sin. If Christ has lifted that burden from us, he has lifted it from all of us. We older brothers need allow ourselves some grace, but we need to extend that grace to others as well.
I am an older brother. Technically, I have a brother who is 9 years my senior, but he would be the first to say that, for all intents and purposes, I was the older one. The responsible one. When it came to the mistakes of my siblings, my parents’ didn’t even need to ask, I was taking names. Without anyone having assigned me the job, I took it upon myself to lay down the law. And while a lot has changed since we were growing up at home, old habits still die hard.
This last weekend I went to Chicago to see my brother, Scott. It was the first time for me to see him in a few years and the first time he and Rachel had ever met. At one point during the weekend, he mentioned that he and a high school friend of his had been discussing my visit. His friend had said “You better be on your best behavior, you don’t want him calling mom and dad.” It was a painful reminder.
The Gospel of Luke 15:11-32 is best known as The Parable of the Lost Son or Prodigal Son. But I would suggest that it is a story of two lost sons. One who left home and one who never felt at home. I believe that all of us have felt like at least one of these brothers at some point in our lives.
The younger brother is the main focus of the story, and us older brothers sigh in frustration. Once again, the bad kids get all the attention. The younger brother asks his father for his share of the inheritance, in a sense saying to his father, “I wish you were already dead.” His relationship with his father is all about what he can get from him. The younger son takes his father’s money, moves far away, and goes on the bender to end all benders. What he wants most is that life be one big party. And, for awhile, it is.
Many of us have been this younger brother. Seeing relationships as a means to an end, we squander all that we are blessed with and keep asking mom and dad to send another check. Eventually, the well runs dry and the party ends.
This is what happens to the prodigal son. Not only does the party end, but the people who he partied with are nowhere to be found. The younger brother experiences firsthand what the old blues song meant when it said “nobody knows you when you’re down and out.” The prodigal takes the most miserable of jobs and it is while he is working that he has a sudden epiphany. He knows that his father would never let him come home, but perhaps he would give him a job. The son decides to head home and ask for just that.
In Galatians 3:24 we read “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ, that we might be justified through faith.” The prodigal son is ready to submit himself to the law. But he finds that his father has other ideas.
The son explains to his father what he hopes is a fair deal, but the father isn’t hearing it. His son is home! This is a time to rejoice, to celebrate, to party! The law served its purpose in getting the son home, now the relationship can begin again.
This is as good a time as any to say that I have seen this story play out. As I have said, my brother was the trouble maker. He looked in a lot of places trying to keep the party going. But what I remember is one party in particular. The welcome home party that my parents threw after my brother returned from the Army.
What a bitter memory. Everyone seemed so happy for him to be coming home. Didn’t anyone remember how much trouble he had been? Didn’t they know that some things never change!? Well, I did and I wasn’t going to celebrate.
My mother used to have a saying for times that one of us (oftentimes me) would sulk at a party. “Every party needs a pooper, that’s why we’ve invited you.” It’s a theme song for older brothers. The older brother in this story is no exception.
Here comes the older brother after a hard day’s work. He is tired, he is achy, but its all good, because he understands that life is about hard work. He may be tired, but he is also responsible. He is good. He may be basking in just this thought when he hears the sounds of a party.
I have to wonder what he thought as he realized that a party was going on. Was he so much like me that he thought maybe his father had finally decided to recognize all the hard work he had done? Did dome part of him think “finally I am going to get the recognition I deserve”? Whatever he may have been thinking or hoping, those hopes were soon dashed. The party wasn’t for him. The prodigal son was home.
Now we know exactly what the older brother was thinking. He expresses it angrily. And one phrase in particular stands out. “All these years I have slaved for you”. I don’t know how you see this moment, but I always imagine Steve Martin’s character in Parenthood when he shouts at his wife “My whole life is have to!”
His father pleads with him not to be a party pooper. He begs his son to join in the celebration, but the son folds his arms and sulks. And misses the party.
Returning to the end of Galatians 3 and the beginning of chapter 4, we see a discussion on slaves and sons. Those who are slaves to the law only until they have clothed themselves with Christ in baptism. Then they take their place as sons and come into a full inheritance. This is a story of slaves and sons and inheritance. One son squanders his inheritance and is willing to become a slave, but finds himself reinstated as a son. Another chooses to slave for his father rather than be his son, and so ends up squandering his inheritance as well. Both sons come dangerously close to missing out on the party. The prodigal goes in search of a party only to discover one waiting for him at home. The other son longs for a party, only to discover he could have had one at anytime.
The gospel for the prodigal son is one that has been preached many times and one that I would echo. For those of you who have seen God only as a means to an end, but never as one to be in relationship with, for those who have experienced the emptiness that comes when the well runs dry, you are invited to take on Christ in baptism, to gain access to a well that never runs dry and to claim your proper place as children in Christ’s kingdom.
But there is grace for the older brother as well. For those of us who never had a “drunk in the gutter” story. For those of us who have always made faith about how well we behaved ourselves, for those of us who never left home but have never really felt at home, there is gospel for us as well. We have fooled ourselves into believing that we show maturity when we live by the law. But Galatians says just the opposite. The law is for those who are still children. We show maturity when we are willing to lay down the law. Christ has already taken our burden, why are we still trying to carry it? Christ says that his yoke is easy and his burden is light. That doesn’t mean that there won’t still be work to do for all of us who put on Christ. It simply means that the work can be done as a part of a relationship, and work that is done as sons is far easier than work that is done as slaves. And that those God calls to work hard, He allows to play hard too. Its time to join the party. Every pooper needs a party, that's why He invited you.
One last thing. It has been said that the job of a good prophet is to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. I’m going to do just a little bit of that right now. We as the church will always have people among us who have made mistakes. I should say that we have all made mistakes, but some mistakes are less easily hidden. When I was working my first job in ministry, there was a girl in the youth group who got pregnant at the age of 15. And when she did, there was a woman at the church who had long stated that we should not have baby showers for babies born out of wedlock. She changed her mind when this baby was born, because the baby was her great-granddaughter. What changed was that it became about a relationship and not a rule. Too many of us are still taking down names for the teacher, thinking that when God gets back He’ll want us to give an accounting of everybody who misbehaved. But scripture teaches that love keeps no record of wrongs. We’re not trying to say sin isn’t important, if it wasn’t then Jesus wouldn’t have died. But he did die, and when he did so did the power of sin. If Christ has lifted that burden from us, he has lifted it from all of us. We older brothers need allow ourselves some grace, but we need to extend that grace to others as well.
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