Monday, January 30, 2006

"...a wall that was ready to fall by its own weight."

From James Houston's book, "Prayer: the transforming friendship":

Leo Tolstoy, the Russian novelist, once told the story of two brothers who met for a weekend after a long time apart. On the first night, the older brother was fascinated to see that his younger brother knelt and prayed by his bedside. 'Huh, you still do that?' he said. The younger brother did not reply, but from that time he never prayed again.

Tolstoy remarked:

'This is not because he knows his brother's convictions and has joined him in them, nor because he has decided anything in his own soul, but simply because the word spoken by his brother was like the push of a finger on a wall that was ready to fall by its own weight.'"

Oh, Watcher on the Wall, how solid are your foundations?

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

my Father's house

Reading John 2:12-25 (The Cleansing of the Temple)
"Get these out of here! How dare you turn my Father's house into a market!"

With this story John continues to lay out his themes for the rest of the gospel. The story points to the identity of Jesus as the Messiah, addresses the question of his authority, links him to Old Testament Scriptures, presents him as the watershed between belief and unbelief, illustrates the religious stagnation that had infected the Temple worship, and foreshadows his death, burial, and resurrection while presenting him as the true Temple of God.

Why was Jesus so angry about what was going on in the Temple courts? The animals that were being sold were to be used for the prescribed ritual sacrifices. The money changers were there to ensure that the Temple tax could be paid in the proper currency. I think that the reason for the cleansing goes beyond the suggestion that these merchants were overcharging for their services. I believe that Jesus would have cleansed the Temple courts even if they had been conducting this business at cost or as a non-profit service. The Temple and its courts were to be a place for worship and prayer alone. All preparations were to be made outside the gates and the worshippers were to take nothing in but their own readiness to present themselves to God.

Jesus' disciples remembered "that it is written:'Zeal for your house will consume me.'" We are the new Temple of God. We are that Temple both individually and collectively. In his zeal for God's house what would Jesus overturn and chase out of the Temple courts of our lives? There is a space that should not be cluttered, even with the accompaniments of our religious faith, and into which we are to bring only ourselves. Yet so often every space in our lives is filled with "things," religious and otherwise. Is there a time and place in my life that represents the Temple and it's courts, where nothing enters but my prepared heart and the sacrifices that I bring to God? Have I allowed that place to become slowly filled with clutter and activity? Take a look at the geography of your life today. Find the temple courts and look honestly at what has been going on there.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

"The one who comes from above is above all..."

Reading John 3:31-36
"The one who comes from above is above all; the one who is from the earth belongs to the earth, and speaks as one from the earth. The one who comes from heaven is above all. He testifies to what he has seen and heard, but no one accepts his testimony. The man who has accepted it has certified that God is truthful. For the one whom God has sent speaks the words of God, for God gives the Spirit without limit. The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands. Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life, but whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God's wrath remains on him."

This is John the Baptist's testimony concerning Jesus. John met Jesus as a man, as he met every other human being that came to him to be baptized. There is no human explanation for how John saw Jesus as distinct from everyone else that had ever lived. Nothing short of an aboslute and clear revelation from heaven could have given him the perspective that he shares here.

John begins by contrasting Jesus with himself. This is a good starting point because John was accepted as a great prophet by the people. As many as two million people came to him to be baptized. John was the central figure of the greatest revival that Israel had ever seen. John is referred to as the greatest of all the prophets. So to start by comparing Jesus to himself was to take a very high point of comparison. John does not simply say that Jesus is an even greater prophet than he is. John tells us that the origin of Jesus, the roots of Jesus being, are located in a radically different place than his own. John is a man, a great man, an influential man, God's man, but JUST a man, he is "from the earth" and "belongs to the earth." Jesus, on the other hand, is also a man, but not JUST a man. Jesus is "the one who comes from above," "the one who comes from heaven." This removes Jesus from the lists of the "one hundred greatest people that ever lived" category, and places him in a category of his own, a category that John repeats twice for emphasis. Jesus is "above all."

Everyone else "belongs to the earth." Jesus belongs to heaven.
Everyone else "speaks as one from the earth." Jesus speaks as someone from another place.
Everyone else speaks what they have received second hand. Jesus "testifies to what he has seen and heard."
Everyone else speaks words from God. Jesus "speaks the words of God."
Everyone else has a given measure of the Spirit. Jesus has "the Spirit without limit."

"The Father loves the Son and has placed everything in his hands."

The fate of every human being that has ever lived and that ever will live turns on whether they accept or reject Jesus. "Whoever rejects the Son will not see life."

This is the Jesus that you can talk to today. The Father has placed everything you could ever need in his hands. The same hands that received the nails because of our sin, now offer us everything. He has forgiven and has paid the full price for all of our sin. John knew that there was no one else like him. Do you?

Friday, January 20, 2006

"What does it profit a man...?"

Reading Mark 8:36
"What good is it (does it profit a man) for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit (lose) his soul?"

Its all here: profit, gain, and loss. Yes, thats pretty much everything in a material world.

The North American church is well on its way to "gaining the whole world." Congratulations on a very successful enterprise! The person in the pew, however, seems well on the way to "losing her own soul." The Christians that I know have never been hungrier for spiritual things, have never been more discontent, have never questioned the usefulness of the church, as much as they do now. Very little of what is being done is being done for "the soul." The church has never been busier, while the souls of its members atrophy and waste away.

The church hears this warning of Jesus as a word against the worldly person but it is not. It is a warning to the religious, who build efficient organizations and put up beautiful structures, and raise large sums of money, and get headlines in the newspapers, and get listed as the "fifty most influential...", and can even find their faces on the cover of Time magazine. These things are irrelevant to me, they are incidentals. The purpose of Jesus' condemnation was not to set himself against material things or organizational progress. The purpose of Jesus was to warn that the incidentals can easily become the whole heart and soul of our lives. What is happening to the Christian soul in the midst of all of this?

You have a nice church, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You have programs for every age group and interest, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You have more money than ever, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You have a prime location for your facilities, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You can draw more people than the church down the street, but "what does it profit a man...?"

You can influence the outcome of an election, but "what does it profit a man...?"

Have you pinched the sheep lately? Do you know if under all that wool they are tired, weak, discouraged, empty, malnourished? Have the disciplines of the spiritual life all but dried up amongst the members of the church? Do you know that the leadership of the church must someday "give an account" (Hebrews 13:17) for the "souls" of its people?

Sunday, January 15, 2006

"the wind blows wherever it pleases..."

Reading John 3:6-8
"Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit...The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit."

The flesh, the physical in general and the sinful in particular, is subject to a certain kind of explanation. There is a certain logic to what the natural man does. The way of the flesh makes sense to the flesh, is defensable by the flesh. The Spirit, on the other hand, is confusing to the flesh: "It blows wherever it pleases..." It does not allow the flesh to set its own course anymore. This is one of the reasons that the Spiritual life is so difficult. The call to live it comes from beyond everything that we have understood, everything that we are familiar with. This is why so many of the things that Jesus spoke strike us as being unrealistically radical. We are dumbfounded by them. We view them as optional or at least as accesible only to "saints." We take these sayings with a grain of salt, as Spiritual hyperbole, as literary exageration to have a certain disorienting effect on us. What we don't do is take them seriously, as if they were really intended to be applied to our day to day life.

However, should the church begin to follow the Spirit and live by his logic then it becomes a spectacle, a novelty, something to take notice of. This is what is intended by:

1. "By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." John 13:35

2. "If we are out of our mind it is for the sake of God" II Cor. 5:13

3. "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." I Cor. 2:14

4. "Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?" I Cor. 1:20

5. "For we are to God the aroma of Christ (we have the smell of something from another world) among those who are being saved and those who are perishing: to the one we are the smell of death; to the other, the fragrance of life...AND WHO IS EQUAL TO SUCH A TASK?"
II Cor. 15-16

Here is the recognition that it is not a human task, at least not a task for the flesh. Are our lives explainable entirely on the basis of the flesh? Is there any smell of the other world on us?

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

A horrifying truth

I have discovered a horrifying truth. Stated simply, it is this: If I do not love my enemy I cannot love anyone.

I have learned this the hard way. I have learned it through pain and hurt, received and inflicted. Have you ever wondered why Jesus would force on us such a radically counter-intuitive demand as this: "Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you..." (Mat. 5:44), "Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you..." (Luke 6:37-28), "love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back..." (Luke 6:35)?

Jesus understood that all of my love is at risk if I refuse to love (defined as praying for, doing good to, lending to, etc...) my enemy. I am genuinely horrified at this realization. I have good reason to be. There are things we will never understand about ourselves, about God, about the people around us until we can stand before our enemy with love and compassion.

This is not an option reserved for saints. We cannot afford to wait until we achieve sainthood to test the waters on this. There have been few insights that have shaken me as much as this one has.

Saturday, January 07, 2006

"Can anything good come from there?"

Reading John 1:43-46
"Philip found Nathanael and told him, 'We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote - Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.' 'Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?' Nathanael asked."

Prejudice (pre-judgement) can blind us to so many good things. Nathanael didn't need to meet Jesus to know that he could not be a source of good. Nathanael knew the town where Jesus grew up and what could be expected from a start like that. Luckily Nathanael was introduced to Jesus and was able to see past his prejudice to the person who stood before him. The point, however, is that he nearly missed God because he had a pre-conceived idea about the way in which God should show himself. How many times do we miss God because we think we know how God would speak, act, react in some particular circumstance?

Jesus was conceived before Mary and Joseph were married. Can anything good come from that?

Jesus "came eating and drinking, and they say, 'here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and 'sinners.'" Can anything good come from that?

Jesus had no job, home, or family, and accumulated no material possessions. Can anything good come from that?

Jesus broke the Jewish sabbath laws time after time and offended the leaders of his own religious upbringing. Can anything good come from that?

Jesus shamed religious leaders but forgave a woman who was caught in the act of cheating on her husband. Can anything good come from that?

Jesus lived only thirty three years, his ministry lasted only about three years, and he was executed before he had a chance to create any kind of organizational structure to his movement. Can anything good come from that?

Jonah had the same problem with God. God wanted to show kindness to Israel's worst enemy and spare them from destruction. Could anything good come from that?

Elijah had the same problem with God. God had allowed the forces of evil to grow so strong that Elijah thought he was the only one who was left who had been faithful to God. Elijah was reduced to the point of despair and suicide. Can anything good come from that?

Eve had the same problem with God. Here was all this wonderful fruit that was "good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom..." Yet God was withholding this treasure from her. Could anything good come from that?

Saul had the same problem with God. All those wonderful possessions that they had captured in battle could surely be used for some good purpose. Yet God had ordered them all destroyed. Could anything good come from that?

I have the same problem with God. His ways are just not my ways and his thoughts are just not my thoughts. God has allowed so much evil in the world. Can anything good come from that? God has taken me through so many dark places. Can anything good come from that? God has allowed people that I love to be hurt or to hurt themselves through so many foolish choices. Can anthing good come from that?

I know better than God what would be good for me. I'll just go my own way and do what I think is best. But can anything good come from that?

For those who walked with Jesus and trusted him through his life, death, burial, and into his resurrection: everything good came from that!

Thursday, January 05, 2006

Pat Robertson

"Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested Thursday that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's stroke was divine punishment for dividing God's land." (Sonja Barisic, Associated Press)

Is there no one close enough to Pat Robertson to share the gospel with him? This man needs Christ.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Follow me

Reading John 1:43
"Follow me"

A call to follow is both a call to embrace something new and to release or leave behind something old. The more radical the call, the more deeply felt the gains and losses will be. I have never found the call of Jesus to be comfortable or to feel safe. It is a call away from all that is familiar and reasonable.

I can love people who love me. I just can't feel comfortable with loving my enemy, with blessing those who curse me and doing good to those who despitefully use me and persecute me. I saw what happened to Martin Luther King. It just doesn't seem fair. Being a Christian offends my sense of justice. To love my enemy, I just can't follow that.
(But if I don't follow will I ever find out who God is? If I don't follow won't God always seem as boring and shallow as myself? I don't need God to help me be like me but I sure need him to help me be like him.)

I can forgive people who hurt me, within reason and up to a certain limit. I just can't keep forgiving them over and over again. You have to keep some kind of accounting of wrongs done, after which you call down fire from heaven. After all, many of my favorite movies are based on the revenge theme. It feels good to finally have a day of reckoning. To give up that "right," I just can't follow that.
(But if I don't follow will I ever find out who God is? If I don't follow won't God always seem as boring and shallow as myself? I don't need God to help me be like me but I sure need him to help me be like him.)

I can extend myself to help others, if I have the time and it doesn't conflict with my plans. My right to myself and to all that I own is not something that I can just let slip away. To "consider others better than myself," to "take the very nature of a servant," this is going way too far. I just can't follow that.
(But if I don't follow will I ever find out who God is? If I don't follow won't God always seem as boring and shallow as myself? I don't need God to help me be like me but I sure need him to help me be like him.)

Believe me, the list goes on and on.

How could Jesus just walk up to me, in the midst of my comfortable life and say: "follow me?"

What am I to do?

I learned quickly how to be a good Baptist but how can I learn to be a good Christian? You say, "follow me," but how can I possibly keep up to you? Perhaps, after starting with good intention, I've lost sight of you already. Help me to "follow hard after you."

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

What do you want?

Are you a follower of Jesus? What are you following him for? What do you want from him? After John had baptized Jesus he saw Jesus passing by the next day and pointed him out, saying, "Look, the Lamb of God!" At this point two of John's followers left him to follow Jesus. Jesus, aware that they were following, turned around and asked them: "What do you want?" (John 1:38).

What makes a person want to follow Jesus? What makes a person leave what was previously important to him and take after this very unusual man? These two people had been a part of the revival movement that John had instituted and yet at the sight of Jesus they were prepared to leave John and start over with Jesus. How do they answer Jesus' question? They respond by asking him where he is staying. They cannot articulate their reasons. Does this make them irrational and unstable? I don't think so. I think that they have sensed something about the uniqueness of the person of Jesus. They are not now following any program, revolution, philosophy, political pathway, or specific teaching. Jesus himself is the attraction and they want to know where he is staying because they want to be with him. This is fundamentally what it is to have an encounter with God. We come under the influence of his person, his authority, his greatness, his way with people, his immense love and his undeniable intention to be with us (Immanuel). Throughout the gospel story we learn much of what it means to follow Jesus but the draw of Jesus is nothing less than the weight of his personality. Here is a most remarkable person who invites us to "Come...and see" (John 1:39).

Sunday, January 01, 2006

"grace and truth...through Jesus Christ"

Reading John 1:17
"For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."

John continues to draw out the contrasting themes that he will develop throughout his gospel. The contrast here is between law and grace. On this reading of the text the thing that stood out to me most forcefully was the contrast between law and truth. The law and grace comparison seems more intuitively easy to make. In what way, however, are law and truth set over against each other?

Truth is a subject of considerable interest to John. John uses the word as many times in his gospel and letters as Paul does in all of his 13 letters combined. John's is the only Gospel that records Pilate's question: "What is truth?".

From the verse we are thinking about it is clear that truth is something other than, even over against, law, and truth is something other than, even alongside of, grace. Truth is something particularly New Testament, something particularly associated with the coming of Jesus, something located in the era of the Spirit.

In John chapter three we find Jesus in conversation with Nicodemus, a "teacher of the law." Jesus says to Nicodemus three times: "I tell you the truth." Jesus says to Nicodemus "you are Israel's teacher...and do not understand..." (v10). Nicodemus has the law but doesn't have the truth. Jesus comes to him three times with this concept. The law tells us right from wrong but does not tell us the truth (in this special sense). Truth appears to be a bigger or fuller category than law. Truth is a corrective to Nicodemus' understanding of the law. Truth is a deeper principle than just "right and wrong." Truth is not in opposition to the law but it understands what the law does not. It is possible to understand exactly what the law says (as Nicodemus does) and yet to know nothing of the truth (as Jesus shows is the case with Nicodemus). The law says: "sin and die,"; the truth says: "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world."

It is easy for the Christian to become more like Nicodemus than like Jesus. Truth is not about knowing right and wrong (which the law graciously and wisely teaches us). Truth is about the more powerful law that Jesus came to institute: "because the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death" (Romans 8:2). The law reveals sin, bondage, and condemnation. The truth shows the way to righteousness, freedom, and forgiveness. Jesus shows Nicodemus that his greatest need cannot be met by the law. The law leaves a person in a very uncomfortable position. We have to get past our fixation with right and wrong. This will only lead us to resentments, self-righteousness, self-condemnation, and more bondage to sin.

Do I think that truth is telling people that what they are doing is right or wrong? Do I think that truth is afflicting myself with my sin, guilt and shame? John puts truth on the side of grace and freedom and reveals it as the answer to problems raised in our lives by the law. This is why Jesus says: "you will know the truth and the truth will set you free." He never says that the law can do anything like that for us.