Down the Straightway

Mark isn’t one to waste time in his telling of the story of Jesus. In fact, his favorite word is “straightway” (in the KJV). Newer translations use different words that mean the same thing- “just as” or “immediately” or “at once” or “just then” or “as soon as.” All of those are used in the NIV in once chapter (Mark 1) to translate the Greek phrase kai euthus. Mark uses that phrase (by my very quick count) 42 times in his 16 chapters (it only appears 18 other times in the NT). Mark is plowing through the story of Jesus at breakneck speed- Jesus did this and immediately He did that and as soon as that was over, He did this other thing. Mark doesn't have long teaching sections; Jesus is too busy on the straightway!

But Mark can’t bring this story to an end without a final confrontation between Jesus and his enemies, the Jewish leaders (scribes, Pharisees and priests). He is headed down the straightway to the cross but there are some spiritual swords that have to be crossed first. Mark has been showing conflict all through the book (for examples, go back and skim over Mark 2:1-3:5 and Mark 7:1-3). The confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish leaders is constant. They have already decided to kill Him (Mark 3:6)...and Jesus knows that they are going to kill Him (Mark 8:31, 10:33).

As Mark races down his straightway toward his conclusion, he sets up one final conflict in Mark 11:27-33. While Jesus is teaching in the Temple courts following his triumphant entry in Jerusalem, the Jewish leaders come to him and demand to know, “By what authority are you doing these things? And who gave you authority to do this?” OK, they had seen Jesus' miracles, and none of them had denied the power those  miracles demonstrated. But they were so sure they were right that they didn't stop to think about that. But when you are hot-headed and dead-certain you are right, you miss the obvious.

Tony Campolo tells about cutting his grass on a Saturday. His neighbor was a Seventh Day Adventist and believed it was wrong to cut grass on the Sabbath. Campolo said, “Jesus healed people on the Sabbath.” Without thinking about what he was saying, the neighbor shot back, “Oh Yeah? Well, two wrongs don't make right!” Two wrongs? When you are hot-headed and dead-certain, you aren't open to seeing the truth. Is there a lesson here?

The Jewish leaders are hot-headed and dead certain and they aren't really open to truth. They have already decided (again) that Jesus has to die (11:18). They aren't here really looking for authority; they are looking for an excuse! Jesus clearing the Temple (11:15-17) was the last straw. He has to go, and they start looking for a way to trump up a charge against Him. So Mark 12 is a series of trick questions that try “to catch him in his words” (12:13) so they can charge him and move this story toward a conclusion (but not the conclusion they imagine).

But that’s tomorrow's reading.

So Who Wants to Fiddle on the Roof?

Our reading today from Mark 7 ends with people being blown away by Jesus healing a man, and they exclaim, “He has done everything well” (Mark 7:37). That was a ringing endorsement from the common folk, but the chapter begins with a little less enthusiasm from the Jewish leaders who had opposed Jesus from the very beginning. In fact, Mark starts his “Jesus vs. the Pharisees” theme back in Mark 2 with three different opposition stories, all having to do with Jesus’ lack of attention their religious traditions. And as it turns out, the Jewish leaders weren't a very patient bunch; they decide to kill Jesus by Mark 3:6!

The debate over tradition continues in Mark 7 where the subject now is hand-washing. Mark explains this tradition for us a bit, and that is a good thing because it would be confusing if we went to the Old Testament for background—it isn't there! The priests washed their hands before serving at the Tabernacle (Exo 30:19). And one who touched anything ceremonially unclean was required to wash their hands as part of the purification ritual (Lev 15:11). But that is about it on the subject—the Jews were never required to wash before meals. That was just a tradition. But for the Jewish leaders, violating that tradition was the same as breaking the Law of God. And Jesus responds to their charge in two very different and important ways

• First, he condemns their tradition as hypocrisy (Mark 7:6-7). This quotation from Isaiah draws a distinction from their outward religious profession and hearts that were far from God. Their religion had become vain (“a farce” NLT) because it was based on the rules of man and not the heart of God. They were good at washing the cup on the outside but not the inside (Matt 23:25). In fact, their focus on tradition caused them to nullify the Law (Mark 7:8), and Jesus illustrates that with their tradition of Coban (Mark 7:9-13).
  
• Second, Jesus says that holiness arises from within, not from without (Mk 7:14-16). Ritual and tradition are by their very nature external and symbolic; they are helpful only when they are a means to a spiritual end. But what tradition cannot be is an end in itself! Jesus neither defends the non-hand washing of his disciples nor attacks the practice of washing itself. But what Jesus does condemn the use of tradition as a way to judge faithfulness— either yours or that of someone else.

This was pretty heady stuff, and the disciples were  confused. And it is easy to see why-- they had been taught that ritual was the center of religion and the most religious people were those who were best at cataloging and keeping tradition. Jesus swept all that aside; he put the focus of true holiness and genuine response to God in our hearts and in the actions that result.

Between me you and the fence post, this teaching of Jesus is as radical and uncomfortable for the church today as it was for the Jews of Jesus’ day. We are still comfortable judging faithfulness based on external doctrinal formulas and received religious practices. We are still likely to give a lot of weight to "We've never done it that way before."  Traditions are inevitable; any time we do the same thing in the same way twice, we have a tradition.  But Jesus reminds us here of something else about traditions--  they are also dangerous!

Well, I Never!

“Well, I never!” That’s an old phrase you don’t hear much anymore… except in old movies. It is a dated exclamation of surprise, usually at something shocking. You know the scenes from the old Three Stooges movies where Curly flirts with an attraction woman, and she turns and harrumphs, “Well, I never!” The British variant is “Well, I never did” as in, “I never did hear of such a thing!” It’s more than just an expression of surprise; it is an expression of disgust and perhaps even anger. And maybe it’s an expression of Jesus in our reading today from Mark 1. Maybe.

In Mark 1:40, a leper comes to Jesus with the simple expression of faith, “If you will, you can make me clean” (ESV). Of course, Jesus was willing. The story probably would not have been recorded if Jesus would have said, “Not today; I’m on vacation.” OK, maybe that WOULD have been recorded because that would have been a VERY unusual story! But here is what really happens (again from ESV), “Moved with pity, he stretched out his hand and touched him and said to him, “I will; be clean.” The leper says, “If you will…” and Jesus says, “I will.” And he does.  Because he was “moved with pity” (ESV). In the NET, he is “moved with compassion.” In the Message, he is just “Deeply moved.” But in the NIV (2011) from which I read, the story takes on a different flavor—

Jesus was indignant. He reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!” Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

Jesus was indignant? Really?  Jesus looks at the leper and says, “Well I never!” Well, I never! How does that make sense? Why does the NIV here translate this so differently? Well, there is a textual variant here that is a bit confusing. There are so many different Greek texts and they do sometimes have slight variations caused by scribal slips.  But because there are so many texts, scholars can usually determine quite easily how the variants happened and what the original text said. In this text, some older manuscripts and Latin versions have “moved with anger” while others have “moved with pity.” So which is the most likely reading? Well,  it could have been either. Most scholars choose the “pity” reading because it makes the most sense; others choose the “anger” reading because it is harder to explain how “pity” would be changed to “anger” rather than the other way around. But BOTH readings make sense and neither change the meaning of the story (usually the case in textual variants)

• Jesus is moved with pity or compassion, and that is His motivation for healing the leper. You can read similar stories in Matt 9:36, Mark 6:34 and others where this is the case. Jesus doesn't heal just to make a big splash publicly; sometimes he heals in private just because he is compassionate.
  
• Jesus would have also been moved with anger or indignation because sickness and suffering was not the way things were supposed to be. Jesus heals a deaf man in Mark 7:34 only after heaving a deep sigh. The world was not supposed to be broken; that’s why Jesus came. (See also Mark 3:5, 10:14)

OK, if you've waded through all this with me this far, then you’re probably wondering if there’s a point. Here it is. When we are confronted by the brokenness of the world we live in—sin, suffering, sickness—there are two appropriate reactions that we can have both emulating Jesus

• We can respond with compassion and pity for the person caught up in the sin, sickness and suffering… and be moved to help as we can.
  
• We can respond with anger at the brokenness of a world that allows such sin, sickness and suffering… and be moved to help as we can.

What we are not to do is to become angry at the person caught up in sin, sickness and suffering and turn away from them and refuse to help as we can. That was the reaction that we will see in Mark from the Pharisees to the sin, sickness and suffering of the world. And their response to the compassionate and healing Christ was also an emphatic, “Well, I never.” We need to make sure we respond like Jesus and not like the Pharisees.

Taxes and the Second Coming

I received a little postcard from the IRS a couple of days ago informing me that they once again expect me to pay my taxes this year. I was hoping that with all the hoopla in Washington over the past election, the fiscal cliff, and the gun-control debate that they would be distracted and  forget all about sending me my tax bill. I’m sure that happens all the time! So I guess I’m going to do my taxes again this year, and I assume my timetable will be the same. At some point in March, I’ll go to Sam’s and buy a copy of TurboTax. On April 14, I’ll finally get around to tearing the shrink wrap off of TurboTax and install it on the computer. On April 15, I poke around in the software long enough to figure out how to print an extension from.  Then I'll put off doing my taxes until August 15.

My natural tendency to procrastinate when it comes to doing taxes is actually a matter of theology. On the one hand, there is a Biblical example of catching a fish and looking in its mouth for the money to pay taxes (see Matt 17:27). So God wants us to go fishing rather than pay taxes, right?  Also, the Bible clearly says that Jesus could come back unexpectedly at any money, and who wants to go to heaven paying taxes that they could have put off?  Actually, the real reason that I put off doing my taxes is because I am by nature a procrastinator… but I put off admitting that!

This human tendency to procrastination is likely one of the reasons why God did not share with us the time of Jesus' return. We know when tax returns are due, and we put them off until the last minute. So if we could read the tea leaves and figure out the exact time of Jesus’ return, what would we do? You know what we would do-- we would put off doing what we need to do in order to get ready for his return.

In our reading today from Matthew 24, Jesus makes an almost offhand comment to the disciples about the coming destruction of the Temple (Matt 24:2). They asked, "When will this happen, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?" (Matt 24:3). Jesus gave them some signs that clue them in on the coming fall of the Temple (and Jerusalem). Most of what is said in this chapter applies to the destruction of Jerusalem under Vespasian and Titus in AD 70. In fact, Jesus assures his audience that many of them would still be hanging around when all of those things took place (Matt 24:34).

But then Jesus makes a transition, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away” (Matt 24:35). And then he discusses the time when heaven and earth would indeed pass away, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father” (Matt 24:36). He goes on to say that the end time will come upon us just like the flood came in the days of Noah. There will be no sign to clue us in on the return of Jesus; it will come suddenly and without any warning. There will be no reading the newspaper or the tea leaves that will give a clue as to the fact that Jesus is about to come back to end things. So then how can we be ready? That is precisely Jesus’ point—

42 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know on what day your Lord will come. 43 But understand this: If the owner of the house had known at what time of night the thief was coming, he would have kept watch and would not have let his house be broken into. 44 So you also must be ready, because the Son of Man will come at an hour when you do not expect him. (Matthew 24:42-44)

Well, this is bad news for us last minute procrastinators, right? There will be no putting off getting ready for Jesus’ coming until the last minute because we have no idea when that last minute will be. Jesus might return in a million years, but then He might return before I can hit the send button on this blog. We don’t know, except that He will come at the time when we least expect Him. So the only way for us to be ready for the coming of our Lord is to live ready every day.  And that's the point-- we have to be ready all the time because he might come at any time.

So... are you ready?

Whoa or Woe

Matthew 23 is at the same time a very familiar and a very strange text where Jesus pronounces a series of “woes” on the toxic religion of the Pharisees. We know the Pharisees as the “heavies” in the story of Jesus who opposed His ministry at every turn. But our view of the Pharisees has been tainted through these condemnations to the point where we don’t fully appreciate how radical these condemnations by Jesus really were.  The Pharisees were the most respected religious teachers of the Jews. They took the Old Testament very seriously and they followed the traditions of the elders passed down to them religiously. Jesus begins this section by acknowledging that then people should listen to the Pharisees as the interpret and explain Moses—“the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.” They problems was in their exegesis; their problem was in their application and in their life. Notice the kinds of things Jesus says in this text as he gets wound up warning against the influence of the very teachers who knew Moses best—

• Their traditions make it harder for people to see God, and they do nothing to help people serve God. They are more interested in their status as seen by others than in their service of others (23:5-7)

• This services to slam heaven door in the faces of the very people who most desire to God, The Pharisees will circumnavigate the globe to make a single convert to their party, but when they do, they make that convert theirs and not God’s (23:13-15)

• They are so locked into their legalistic interpretations and when it’s OK to swear and not keep an oath and when an oath is totally binding that they don’t realize that this entire system is one of their own making and has nothing to do with God and truth. (23:16-22)

• They are so focused on getting the letter of the law correct in all of its excruciating detail (making sure every little herb in their garden gets tithed) that they leave undone the :more important matters of the law” like justice, mercy and faithfulness, those things which are at the very heart of God. (23:23-24)

• They are so concerned about their religious image that commands the respect of others, that they aren’t aware that their hearts are quite far from God and that before the One who sees hearts, they are whitewashed tombs and unwashed cups (23:25-28).

• They take such pride in their heritage as follows of the prophets that they don’t realize that their hard hearts and haughty pride is exactly what led their ancestors to murder the very prophets they now venerate… and would lead them to kill the very Messiah who stood before them (23:33-36)

If you do more than just give Matthew 23 a cursory reading, this becomes a very scary text. When you take the time to really look at it and make all the requisite historical and cultural updates in order to apply this to the church today, one thing is clear. Jesus is talking to us. We tend to trust in the very same things in which the Pharisees trusted—our use of the Bible, our traditional church practices, our insistence on traditional morality and ethics, our success in projecting a holy image. The Pharisees would point and say, “Yeah, had all of that and more.” Jesus says, “That’s not what I’m looking for; in fact, all that just gets in the way and confuses people who are diligently seeking me.” And Jesus says “Whoa!” If we don’t listen to that “Whoa” then we just might get a “Woe!”

The One Thing

We had a neighbor who came from a Methodist background who liked to tell the story of a Methodist and Baptist arguing over the mode of baptism. The Baptist argued that you had to immerse someone all the way under the water for baptism to be right; the Methodist was arguing for pouring water on someone’s head.

The Methodist asked, “Are you going to tell me that if a man being baptized was in water so that everything except the top of his head was covered, that's not enough? 

The Baptist said, “Right! That part counts! The top of the head has to be baptized.”

The Methodist replied, “Great! That's the one thing that we baptize!”

OK, that's likely not a true story; no one ever argues over something like the exact procedure for baptism! Right? But the story does illustrate how often we look for the “one thing” we need to get right in order to be right with God. The rich young ruler that we ran into last week wanted to know “what good thing must I do.” He had already gotten the law down pat; he wanted to know the one thing that he had left undone.

Most religious denominations, movements, groups or tribes got started because someone discovered “the one thing” in the Bible that wasn't being done correctly by other believers. Usually, the discoverers of this “one thing” start their own church or movement that does that one thing right. And it is a rather natural step from believing that you do that one thing right to believing that you are the one who are right. Right?

In our reading for today from Matthew 22, Jesus was asked, “What is the greatest commandment of the Law?” Sure this was a trick question asked within a context of other trick questions. But Jesus answered it, and thus in essence he is telling us the one thing (actually the two things) that we have to get right--

“You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments. (Matthew 22:37-40, NLT)

The greatest commandment of the law flows directly from the Shema in Deut. 6:4-5, the statement that God is one. While Matthew omits this first part of the quotation, Mark includes it (see Mk 12:29). Because God is the one true God and created us out of love, then our greatest command for us to follow is to love God in return. Everything flows from that! And Jesus throws in a second great commandment that also flows from the first—to love others as we love ourselves. The two greatest commands are the greatest command because they sum up the rest of the law.

The one thing we have to do in order to please God—love God and love others. There is no one doctrine or practice or ritual that if we get right ensures that we are favored by God. At the same time, there is no one doctrine or practice or ritual that if we get wrong will automatically invalidate our relationship with God. The one great command of scripture is to pursue the love of God and to show that love by loving all those people that are loved by God (which is everyone). We can never get finished doing that. It turns out that "the one thing" is pretty much everything.

Never Forget to Forgive

Our reading today from Matthew 18 contains what I think is one of the most ignored commands of Jesus. I’m going to ignore too... except to mention it in passing to set up the parable I want to discuss. By the way, I think we largely ignore the force of the parable as well.  First the ignored statement, “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you” (Matt 18:15). There is a bit of a textual issue as to whether Jesus really says “if you brother or sister sins” of “if they sin against you.” It really doesn't matter; we ignore both. Generally whether a brother or sister hurts us directly with a sin or just sins in a more general way, we tend to talk to everyone except the brother or sister, right? Jesus wants us to go and resolve the issue so that we reclaim the relationship.

That teaching on reconciliation and forgiveness led Peter to ask, “Lord, how many times do I have to do that?” Peter rightly sees that this "make-things-right-and-forgive-the-offender" thing would take a lot of time and effort.  So he wants to get this straight.  He magnanimously and generously offers to forgive someone seven times for an offense. Jesus says to make that number seventy-seven times.  Or maybe seventy times seven times.  In other words, forgive them every time they sincerely ask! Perhaps it was the blank look on the faces of the apostles that led Jesus to tell a parable about our forgiveness.

The story begins with a servant who is brought before the king who owes ten thousands talents of gold. A talent of gold was worth about 20 years of a normal servant's wages, so this guy owes a LOT!  We are  immediately curious about HOW someone could run up that kind of a tab! Well, he couldn't have; Jesus is using hyperbole to make His point . The guy can’t pay his bill and he could never pay his bill, so both he and his family were to be sold as slaves to recoup part of the debt. The servant begs for mercy and promises to work to pay off what he owes (which, of course, he would never be able to do). But the king decides to forgive the entire staggering debt, which is a staggering act of mercy and grace

• MERCY because servant did not get what he deserved... to be sold as a slave
• GRACE because he did get what he did not deserve... forgiveness of the debt

So the servant skips out of the king's throne free and clear, but he doesn't skip far.  He immediately finds another servant who owes him some pocket change. OK, it's really more than pocket change; a hundred denarii would be about a three month paycheck. That is a significant amount of money, but it is a manageable debt that could be repaid. But that didn't matter to our forgiven-but-unforgiving servant. He refuses to listen to his own “give me more time” speech and has the servant arrested and thrown into prison.

There is absolutely nothing wrong legally and technically with this servant's actions here. He was justified in expecting that this fellow-servant would pay off his debt. (If you don’t think he was justified in wanting to be repaid, then… can I borrow $100?).   He was justified having the man thrown into debtor's prison; that was what the law dictated. So if he was legally justified, then why is he referred as a “wicked servant?” Because he failed to show forgiveness after he had received greater forgiveness.

• Because he experienced grace, he was expected to show grace to others.  
• Because he received mercy, he could no longer follow the letter of law! 
• Because he was forgiven by the king, he needed to act more like the king.

The parable ends with the revocation of the king’s forgiveness and the imprisonment of the servant (Matt 18:32-34). The problem is when you insist on justice for others rather than giving grace, you get justice instead of grace for yourself. Jesus concludes with this “moral of the story” statement on forgiveness-- "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." (Matt 18:35)

Jesus begins by telling us that we are to forgive those who ask our forgiveness each and every time they ask us.  Our willingness to forgive others or our unwillingness to do so directly speaks to how well we understand the debt that we owe to God

• When we fail to forgive another, we tell God that we have taken His mercy and grace for granted. 
• When we stress the debt that someone owes to us, we forget the huge debt that we owe to God. 
• When we demand justice and repayment of the pennies others owe us, we forget that we have been pardoned of gazillion dollar debt that we can never repay. 

Before we treat others with a legalistic and unforgiving heart, Jesus wants us to ask ourselves if this is really how we want God to treat us. If we want grace and forgiveness (and we do), then we’d better get quite practiced in extending grace and forgiveness  to others!  If we don't forgive, then we had better not sin... ever!

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins. (Matthew 6:14–15)

Leaving the World of Worms

In Romans 12, Paul tells us that we are not to conformed to the world but "be transformed by the renewing of your mind" (Rom 12:2). The Greek word translated "transformed" here sounds a bit familiar because it sounds like the English word that comes from it. The Greek word is metamorphoo, the word from which we get "metamorphosis." When a caterpillar crawls out of its cocoon, it is no longer a caterpillar but a butterfly. What was once a homely worm-like critter that ate leaves and crawled around in the dirt is now a beautiful, colorful creature that sips nectar and soars through the sky. The transformation from caterpillar to butterfly is called metamorphosis. That’s the word Paul uses here.

 That is also the word that appears in our reading this morning from Matthew 17 (and its parallel in Mark 9) in a familiar though decidedly strange story--

1 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. 2 There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light. 3 Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah, talking with Jesus. (Matthew 17:1-3) 

We call this pericope “the Transfiguration of Christ.” One minute, Jesus was standing there with the apostles in his incarnated, flesh and blood body; they next minute Jesus was changed completely into something other than flesh and blood and was chatting with Moses and Elijah! I've always wondered how Peter, James and John immediately knew that these other two people were Moses and Elijah. Did Jesus introduce them and they all shook hands like captains before a football game? Did Moses and Elijah wear “Hello, My Name Is…” name badges? OK, that’s not the main point, but those are the kinds of things I sometimes wonder about.

My point is that the word "transfigured" that Matthew uses in verse 2 is the same Greek word metamorphoo that Paul uses in Romans 12:2, “be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” In fact, that’s how the NLT translates Matthew 17:2, “Jesus’ appearance was transformed…” So Paul says that just as Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, so you and I are to be transfigured, transformed or changed by Him. Paul in 2 Corinthians 3:17-18 sounds like he is drawing from the imagery of transfiguration-- "Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed [metamorphoo] into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

Just as Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, we are being daily transfigured into His likeness. We cannot continue to look and act like the world around us; we must rather look more and more like Jesus Himself. The grace that saved us also transformed us, and we must live out that transformation daily. We can get so wrapped up in the world of worms, crawling around in the dust of this world and transfixed by its cares and concerns that we forget that we've gone through the metamorphosis of the gospel and have been transfigured and transformed into something very different. We have been changed… so let’s live like it!

The Gospel of the Group

Yesterday'd sermon pointed to the deep and tender relationship that Paul enjoyed with the church at Thessalonica, “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown….Is it not you? Indeed, you are our glory and joy” (1 Thess 2:19–20). This relationship was all the more surprising because it had developed in the mere 2-3 weeks Paul had in Thessalonica before being forced out.  We contrasted that relationship with the view of many Christians have of the church as simply a place to “go to worship” rather than a group of people with whom to develop relationships. We suggested that too many of us see church in the same way we might see a movie theater—

When you go to a theater, you just want to just sit and focus on the show down front. It makes the experience more enjoyable if the theater is full of people-- when they clap and cheer and boo and boo-woo at the appropriate times, it makes the experience better. But the last thing most of us want at a theater is for some stranger to start talking to us.  No, that would distract us from the show down front.

Isn't that the way many see church? The point of going to church is to worship God...period.  Sure, we need other people to be there to worship (or else the singing would sound terrible), but the point of being there is to give praises to God. To get too involved with the people around you just might distract you from the worship. Some people absolutely freak out if someone leads a song or reads a scripture during communion (both communal acts) because that distracts them from their me and God time. The point of going to church is to focus on God, not to interact with people.

The only problem with that is it’s totally wrong. It’s more than just wrong; it’s totally unbiblical. The New Testament never really gives a lot of detail about exactly what the church did when they came together. Paul has some things to say about the chaos that was going on at Corinth, but his point is that whatever they did in worship (and however they did it), it was to “be done so that the church may be built up” (1 Cor 14:26). The Hebrew writer in telling believers not to give up meeting together said that their meeting together was to “spur one another on toward love and good deeds” and was to be “encouraging one another” (Heb 10:24-25). We aren't told exactly how to conduct the service—high church, low church or somewhere-in-between-church. We certainly aren't told that worship is to be a "me-and-God" private and personal experience. What we are told is that whatever we do, it is to encourage and build up each other.

In a way, today’s reading from Matthew 16 stresses this corporate importance of the church. Jesus in this text forces the apostles to deal with His identity. He asks them, "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"  The apostles respond with a variety of answers. Jesus then asks, "Who do you say that I am?"  Peter gives his famous response in Matthew 16:16-18,

Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven. And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it.

Peter here makes the confession that will become the basis of the Christian faith. But Jesus does not congratulate him and send him off to Peoria meditate privately on the meaning and significance of this confession. No, Jesus immediately begins to talk about his group, his church. This eternal church will be the kingdom into which He gathers His believers into a confessing community. The reality of what it meant for Jesus to be “the Christ, the Son of the living God” was that all who believe in him would be drawn into a community, a gospel group, a congregation, a church. The point of worshiping God together is not just the worship—it is also the together!

A Fish Story

Everyone who goes fishing has a favorite story about the “big one that got away.” Most of my fishing stories involve me watching other people catch fish, but my favorite fishing story is about someone else (my Dad) NOT catching a fish. We were fishing on Lake Maury years ago, trolling up and down the lake off of a favorite point where we’d often catch crappie and white bass. The problem is that fish often hide around sunken tree or other cover and the trick is to drag a lure just above without getting caught on the snag. And catch a snag is what Dad did… or so we thought. As we went back to get untangled, Dad thought he felt something on line; the closer we got to the snag, the harder the snag started pulling. And then it was really was pulling, so hard that (I kid you not) the boat began moving backwards! We tried to work the boat over into the shallows to we could land the beast, but the line started spinning in feverish circles and then it snapped before we ever saw it. Giant catfish? Snapping turtle? Trophy bass? Bigfoot? Whatever it was, I don’t want to meet it in a dark alley!

 In Matthew 13 (our reading for today), Jesus ends a series of mostly agricultural parables with a fish story. All of the parables in Matthew 13 are old to tell what “the kingdom of heaven is like.” The word kingdom (basileia) refers to God’s domain, reign and rule over our lives. He isn’t really talking about the church, although that is the visible manifestation of God’s rule on earth. And Jesus isn’t talking about heaven, although heaven is the result of God reigning in us. The kingdom of heaven is what happens when God rules over our lives on earth the way that he rules in heaven (Matt 6:10). He ends this series of kingdom parables with one that not about farming; it’s about fishing (Peter, Andrew, James and John would have liked this one, don’t you think?)

47 “Again, the Kingdom of Heaven is like a fishing net that was thrown into the water and caught fish of every kind. 48 When the net was full, they dragged it up onto the shore, sat down, and sorted the good fish into crates, but threw the bad ones away. 49 That is the way it will be at the end of the world. The angels will come and separate the wicked people from the righteous, 50 throwing the wicked into the fiery furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 13:47-50, NLT)

Several things pop out here. First, the kingdom of heaven is a net mixed with both good and bad fish. Forrest Gump might say, “Fishing is like box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get.” When you fish with a dragnet (the Greek word used here means dragnet), you never know what kind of fish will be caught. So the dragnet of God’s rule has been cast wide and all kinds of people get caught up in it.

There are two types of people in the world—those who divide people into two types and those who don’t. Most of us like working with neat categories— the IN’s and the OUT’s. We want God’s kingdom as we see it in the church to work that way. We want a neat roll of the saved and the lost, and we not only want the differences to be neat and obvious.  And we want to manage the list. If I can clearly know who the bad fish are, then I feel more secure I’m one of the good fish! But see, this is the kingdom of God, and He is in sole control of the roll!

Second, the job of sorting the good and the bad fish belongs only to God. We need to be clear that salvation belongs to our God (Rev 7:10-12). We often sing that text as a praise song; do we really believe it? God is the Judge of all the earth, and He needs no help from us. God knows those who are His (2 Tim 2:19). Jesus knows His own sheep (John 10:14, 27-28). As stinky as some of God’s fish may seem to me, I need to accept that only God gets to sort through them. As long as we are in this life, then we swim in God’s big net with all kinds of different fish

Third, God’s will eventually judge all his fish. We are to be fishers of men, but this parable is not about our fishing. Here the fishing is over, and there is a sorting of the good fish from the bad fish by the angels (see 2 Thess 1:7-9). So the kingdom rule of God is a present reality that also points to a future certainly.

• God’s kingdom is NOW—it’s like a net with all kinds of fish. 
• God’s kingdom is THEN—the fish are sorted and some are thrown out. 

I once heard someone once classify themselves as a “hopeful universalist.” I can relate to that. I do hope God has a “Plan B” by which all can be saved by Jesus even if they don’t accept him in this life. I do hope that God’s sovereign love can somehow trump our stubborn human rebellion in such a way that ultimately "love wins."  But Jesus says so much about eternal judgment and destruction that it is pretty hard to be too hopeful of a hopeful universalist.

• Sheep are blessed of the Father; goats are for eternal fire (Matt 25:34,41) 
• Lazarus was by Abraham’s side; rich man was in torment (Luke 16:23) 
• Those who overcome inherit God; sinner go to a lake of fire (Rev 21:7-8) 
• Saints enter the holy city; sinner are cast outside gates (Rev 22:14-15) 

We need to be reminded that this world is hurtling toward a conclusion, and at the end God is going to sort things out. Literally. So we are to live this life to the fullest, but always with an end in view! We can live confidently, because we know that our Father is Judge. But we also live carefully because we know that we will be judged! (see Hebrews 4:13)

By far the most popular fish harvested for human consumption is tuna; it is also the most controversial.Why? It seems that yellowfin tuna like to swim along with dolphins, and so the nets used to catch tuna also catch lots of dolphins (which drown in the process). After a lot of outcry and publish pressure, tuna nets had “escape hatches” built into them to allow Flipper to be spared. And now most of the tuna you buy for your tuna fish sandwiches have a label that says “dolphin safe.”

The net that Jesus uses as a metaphor for the kingdom of heaven is definitely not dolphin safe! All of us get caught in that net. The question is, “What kind of fish are we going to be?”

Forceful People

Jesus says some very surprising things in our reading today in Matthew 11.  He says that John the Baptist was greatest of those born of women.  OK, maybe that not so surprising, but then he adds “whoever is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” But it what Jesus says next in verse 12 about that is the most surprising and perplexing.  It is also translated very differently in our English translation—

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been subjected to violence, and violent people have been raiding it. (NIV)

From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it. (NIV85)

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and the violent take it by force. (ESV)

From the days of John the Baptist until now the kingdom of heaven has suffered violence, and forceful people lay hold of it. (NET)

We can understand how the kingdom had been rapidly advancing since John began his preaching. After all, John’s message was, “The kingdom of heaven is at hand.” But what does it mean that the forceful or violent were “laying hold of” or “forcing their way into” the kingdom of God?

Jesus is here commenting on the totally different reactions to this message of the kingdom. If we expand the context here a little further in this chapter, it becomes obvious that Jesus is referring to two different groups of people and their response to Him:

• First, some rejected him. They had rejected both John the Baptist and Christ (v. 18-19), and they had even refused to believe the testimony of the miracles Jesus had performed (vs 20-24). It’s obvious, is it not, that those he discusses here were the Pharisees and religious leaders of the Jews. They had been the ones to reject John and denounce Jesus, and they explained away the miracles as Jesus being demon possessed. They considered themselves the children of the kingdom, but they had rejected the king and would miss kingdom of God.
  
• Second, there were others who were listening to Jesus and John and were taking hold of the kingdom. These were the so-called “sinners” rejected by the Pharisees. They are “desperate men” and “desperate women” whose desperateness came from the fact that they knew their own sinfulness. When they heard the good news of the kingdom, they were ready to act. In Jesus' imagery, these were forceful men who storm the walls of heaven in an effort to get in.

No matter how the verses is translated or understood, Jesus is talking about these two groups. He could be saying that the people of violence who were trying to seize the kingdom were the Pharisees and religious leaders who were trying to manage, twist and control the kingdom for their own purposes. The kingdom was forcefully advancing despite the effort of the religious traditionalist to keep it controlled and manageable.

Or it also could that the forceful people taking hold of the kingdom were those willing to believe and seek God despite the roadblocks created by their religious leaders. In Matthew 23, Jesus pronounces a series of woes on the Pharisees and teachers of the law that include these two—

“They tie up heavy loads and put them on men's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to lift a finger to move them.” (Matthew 23:4)

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the kingdom of heaven in men's faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.” (Matthew 23:13)

Even though religious leaders were putting heavy burdens in their way and shutting the door of heaven in their faces, Jesus says that there were forceful men and women who fought their way into the kingdom anyway. They wanted God so desperately they took the kingdom by force!

Either way, there were some who were trying to control and manage the kingdom of God for their own purposes and there were others who were taking hold of the kingdom even though it meant fighting their way in despite the other group.  It seems like we have to be ion one group or the other-- those desperately fighting to enter the kingdom or those who are standing in the way.

A Great Crash

On a cold, miserable January afternoon in 1982, Air Florida Flight 90 was waiting for clearance to take off from Washing National Airport to fly back to sunny Tampa. Twice the plane had been de-iced according to FCC regulations, and the copilot noticed that the wings were icing up yet again. He said, "This is a losing battle trying to de-ice those things." He wasn't really all that convinced that the procedure did much good, and the pilot agreed that it only "satisfied the Feds." Neither were alarmed that the idle plane was accumulating more and more ice. And they didn't de-ice a third time.

This brief conversation is history. It is available on tape. That tape was fished out the Potomac River into which the plane plunged after hitting a Washington bridge. As the plane began to take off, the ice that the pilots had chosen to ignore cost them their lives and the lives of 74 of their passengers and 3 other crew members. The pilots didn't mean to kill anyone, but they had become just too comfortable with the "routine" of de-icing procedure. And they had failed to put their knowledge into practice.

In our reading for today from Matthew 7, Jesus ends His "Sermon on the Mount" with a stern warning about hearing and doing.

24 “Therefore everyone who hears these words of mine and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house on the rock. 25 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock. 26 But everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand. 27 The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell with a great crash.” (Matthew 7:24–27)

It is not enough to simply appreciate Jesus teachings or come to believe them as true. It's not enough to accept the wisdom of what he said about turning the other cheek, letting your "Yes" be "Yes," not judging other people harshly and treating others the way that you would want to be treated.  We must be willing to put those words into practice in our lives.  A ritual "going-through-the-motions" won't move us any closer to the heart of God; we must live out that which we have come to know is true from God's word.  "Lip-service" religion that does not touch our heart will only lead us to "a great crash." May God give us the faith and courage to seek to live out the things that we learn from His word.

A Voice Still Calling in the Wildnerness

John the Baptist was one of the most significant Bible characters. To begin with, he is mentioned more often in the gospels than any other character except Jesus and his inner circle (Peter, James and John). OK, I grant the point that he isn't mentioned much (or at all) after the gospels. But then he does receive a rather ringing endorsement from Jesus, "Among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist" (Matt 11:11). John was the "voice crying in the wilderness" who prepared the way of the Lord (Matt 3:3), essentially developing a large following who would then become followers of Jesus (John 3:30). But we learned in in our reading today from Matthew 3, John was not ONLY concerned with gathering a following:

7 But when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to where he was baptizing, he said to them: “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the coming wrath? 8 Produce fruit in keeping with repentance. 9 And do not think you can say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our father.’ I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children for Abraham.” (Matthew 3:7-9)

That seems harsh, doesn’t it? John is finally ready to hit the big time and attract a following among the religious leaders who have the influence to put his ministry on the map. The problem was that these religious leaders were coming to John either simply out of curiosity or to participate in the outward ritual of his baptism. They were more concerned about their status ("Abraham as our father") than they were with humbling themselves before God. So John lets them have it with both barrels.  He calls them a "brood of vipers" and he then demands that they produce the fruits of repentance before they are baptized. John's message had been summarized as "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near" (Matt 3:2). Before these religious leaders could participate in the kingdom of heaven, they had to humble themselves and repent.

So why didn't they? Why was repentance such a problem for the Pharisees and Sadducees that John blasts them like this? Simple: they didn't think they needed to repent! After all, they were the holy and chosen ones who carried the traditions of the fathers. They weren't perfect-- only God is perfect-- but they were the faithful ones with the right morals, the right religion and the right rite. No shaggy-bearded, camel-hair-wearing bug eater was going to tell them that they had to repent!

Rule of Thumb: Any time you hear Jesus (or in this case John the Baptist) talking to the Pharisees, pay attention— he is talking to you! Like the Pharisees and Sadducees, we come with a received religious tradition that assures us that we have the truth, are accepted by God and are the children of God (which trumps being the children of Abraham any day of the week and twice on Sunday). It is that tradition and that identity that can make it hard for us to realize when we need to repent and change. For example, why were so many white churches so slow on the uptake to realize their need for change during the civil rights movement? Well, it never dawned on them that racism and segregation was something that they needed to repent of and change. Some still don’t realize that and a lot of other things as well. It’s not that we aren't willing to repent—we haven’t gotten nearly that far. We haven't realized that we are even being called to repent!  Just like the Pharisees and Sadducees.

God is calling us to the kingdom of heaven today, but that invitation still comes with the challenge to “produce fruit in keeping with repentance.” We cannot be pen to the voice of God unless we are willing to repent and then live repented.

On Gypsies and Magic Men

This is Day #2 of our Daily Bible Reading plan for 2013— a chapter by chapter reading of the New Testament. One chapter a day (except that because we started late, 1 Cor 8-9 and 2 Cor 8-9 had to be doubled up to get the whole New Testament in by the end of the year).  Of course that means that we’re right back where we were a couple of weeks ago before the Christmas season—reading the birth narrative in Matthew. In a previous blog, I suggested that while it doesn't matter how you observe or don't observe our traditional holiday season, it does matter very much whether you believe the story of God coming in the flesh in the person of Jesus. And the way that Jesus came in the flesh is told in Matthew and Luke (and also in Revelation 12, though it has a bit of harder edge there). So we can’t read this story too much, and today we read it once again.

Matthew 2 tells of the visit of the wise men or “magi” to see and worship the one born king of the Jews. The word “magi” is from a Persian word for “priest,” and it is the root of our word “magic.” Most of what we think we know about the magi actually is from church tradition. We think of their being three (based on the gifts of gold frankincense and myrrh) though Eastern church tradition has twelve (they went in together on the three gifts). By the 3rd century, the magi were see as kings, and thus the carol is “We Three Kings” and not “We Three Priests.” Daniel would have been a magi in his role as “chief of magicians, enchanters, astrologers” (Dan 5:11). Jeremiah refers to “Rab-Mag” or “Chief Magi” (Jer 39:3).

So the magi were a well-known class of ancient wise men. They saw the Bethlehem star in east because that is what they did-- they looked at the sky. They saw the star as a divine sign because that is also what they did— they looked for signs in the stars. And they reported their findings to King Herod because that is also what the Magi did—they advised kings. Think.  Why was Herod and all of Jerusalem disturbed by Magi’s visit (Matt 2:3)? Well, Kings and their court took the reports of magi seriously-- that is what they did. If Magi were Persian (as is generally thought), they travelled over 1000 miles and it took them more than a year to get to the holy family (that’s why Herod killed all the boy babies under two years old). They took the sign and their quest very seriously.

The question is, “Why?” Not why did they take the sign so seriously. Why did God announce the birth of Jesus to Persian astrologers 1000 miles removed from Bethlehem? For that matter, why did God choose to announce the birth of Jesus to shepherds out in their fields watching sheep? Shepherds in the first century were very much social outcasts, seen as dirty, smelly, low-class gypsies who would rob you blind if had chance. In other words, the shepherds were the kind of social outcasts that Jesus would hang out with during his ministry. So I guess it makes senses that they’d get an invite to Jesus’ baby shower. But what the magic men from Persia?

The birth of the Messiah was too big to limit the size of His baby shower! Israel and Israel’s Messiah would be God’s light to the nations (Isaiah 42:6). God was not intending for Jesus to have a message only for the chosen people; the light would shine too brightly for that. Luke tells a little side story of Mary and Joseph going to the Temple with baby Jesus for the sacrifice of purification. There they met a man named Simeon who was waiting for the Messiah and who praises and prophesies over baby Jesus (Luke 2:29-32)

29 “Sovereign Lord, as you have promised, you may now dismiss your servant in peace. 30 For my eyes have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared in the sight of all nations: 32 a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and the glory of your people Israel.”

Joseph and Mary heard Simeon speaking of their son Jesus as God’s light to Gentiles and then sometime later these foreign magic-men show up following a star and worshiping their boy? I’m sure that made perfect sense to Joseph and Mary (Luke 2:19).

It seems that we learn something about Jesus from the story of his birth. Right from the beginning, the people Jesus attracts— the shepherds and the Magi—are not the people that you would expect to be interested in a Jewish Messiah. The established authorities want nothing to do with Jesus-- Herod tries to kill him, and the priests would later pull that off. But it was Jewish gypsies (who were not accepted in polite company) and pagan magi (who weren't accepted in any company) who are the ones who hear about Jesus and come running to see him.

I wonder if Jesus’ church has every really come to grips with the fact that those outside of polite company are more likely to be attracted to the story of Jesus?  And I wonder if we have missed that fact because we have been too busy trying to be polite company?

Happy New Year 2013

There is this old joke about a man who asks God (this is not a true story), “Is it true that with you one day is like 1000 years?” God says, “Yes.” The man then asks, “So would mean that one dollar to you is like a billion?” God says, “Well, with inflation and this fiscal cliff thing, it’s more like a trillion.” The man pauses and then asks, “So… can I borrow a dollar?” God answers, “Tomorrow.” I said it that it was an old joke; I didn't say it was particularly funny. But it does point to a fundamental problem that we have when dealing with God. Time.

Everything we do is regulated and controlled by time. We eat, sleep, go to work, and come home based on a timed schedule. One of the crazy things about this time of year is that we get off schedule— I'm not sure exactly when they will pick up my trash this week because they are on their "holiday schedule" (which means they come when they get around to it). We define everything by the past, present and future. Time. We can’t understand life without thinking in terms of time.

That’s our problem when thinking about God. God is timeless and eternal; He is at the same time the first and the last (Rev 21:6). God is “from everlasting to everlasting” (Psalm 41:13). That means that he goes forever back backwards and forwards. But that’s not even right, because that still describes God in terms of time, and that is concession to our time limitation. God is timeless.

I remember Lou Holtz talking about an opposing team’s star player, “He’s so fast that when he turns out the light at night, he’s in bed before it gets dark.” Obviously, Holtz was trying to be funny, but that in a sense is true about God. God is not only everywhere; He is everywhere at the same time. We know that the light we see from the stars at night has traveled thousands of years to reach us... when we see their light, we are looking at the past. And yet God is there and here at the same time. He is in the past and the present simultaneously. God is both before the beginning of time and after the end of time... at the same time.

That’s really important for us, because that assures us that God doesn't change. We can count on God always being God because He is timeless. God told Malachi, “I, the Lord, do not change” (Mal 3:6). Jesus is same "yesterday, today and forever" (Heb 13:7-8). We can count on God because God doesn't change "like shifting shadows" (Jam 1:17). We don’t have to worry about God changing, because He doesn't. Sure, God makes concessions to our brokenness and sometimes changes how He relates to us-- animal sacrifices and a special priesthood show a change in the law (Heb 7:12).  But the nature of the God behind the law and requirements hasn't changed. God is timeless.

But then God deals with us in time. God seeks a relationship with us in the present, in our now. The God who cannot be limited by time deals with His creation as if He were. The Bible is filled with stories that suggest that the immutable God changes in relationship with his children.

• There was a time when God “regretted he had made human beings” (Gen 6:6). The word “regretted” means “repented” or “changed his mind,” and he decided that he will destroy the world that he had created. But then because of the righteous Noah, He changes His mind about that.
  
• When Israel breaks the second commandment even before Moses makes it off the mountain, God is so angry He is ready to again destroy his people and start all over with Moses (Exo 32:9-10). But then Moses intercedes and God changes His mind.
  
• God later decides that He will send Moses and Israel to the Promised Land but that God Himself will not go with them. Why? He thinks that He may change His mind and destroy the rebellious nation (Exo 33:1-3). But then he changes his mind about that and goes with them.
  
• The prophets had a job because God was willing to change His mind. For example, Jonah brief message to Nineveh was “Forty more days and Nineveh will be overthrown.” (Jonah 3:4). That message is pretty clear, right? But Nineveh repents and God changes his mind and spares the city.

Is God really changing his mind here? Is this (as some suggest) simply symbolic, accommodative, anthropomorphic language to help us understand what we can't understand?  Maybe.  Or is this (as some suggest) God choosing to limit His knowledge of our future choices and destiny in order to be in relationship with us in the present?  Could be?  The point is that God is presented in scripture as One who changes His mind in keeping with the choices and actions of those with whom His has relationship because that is how relationships work!   God is immutable-- He keeps his promises and His word doesn't change. God is loving-- He lives with us in our present in a real relationship with us.

This change from 2012 to 2013 is a big deal for us. We read or watch the year end retrospectives to remember the events of 2012; we also read watch the “what will be big in 2013” predictions to get us ready for the coming year. We’re now trying to get used to the new normal schedule after all the changes during the holidays. I’m trying to get used to the idea that it's really 2013, which just seems to be an awkward number.  The fact that no one sent us a free wall calendar this year and it’s still December 2012 on our kitchen cabinet isn't making things easier. But as we face this new year, we can know two important things--

• First, God is God and God is always in control. That never changes because God never changes. He is enthroned on high even as it seems that we're plummeting off edge of the fiscal cliff. God is God and God is timeless.
  
• Second, God is reaching out to us in the present to live in relationship to us. He is not distant or remote nor is He removed from the struggles and trials of our present lives. God is God and God is with us.

Have a happy 2013.  Hold to God's unchanging hand... and seize the day!

Massacre of the Innocents

It was just over a week ago that a madman with a gun entered Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT. Most of us watched in shocked disbelief as details of the tragedy were revealed. There is a lot about this tragedy that remains unclear. What is clear is that twenty precious 6 and 7 year old were murdered that day. What is also clear is that six brave women died trying to protect those children. It is also clear that the police responded so quickly that many other children were spared. We will likely never know the real reason the killer targeted Sandy Hook Elementary School. And if we ever do know motive, it wouldn’t make any sense— you can’t make sense of the senseless!

The ultimate reason for the tragedy is that we live in an evil, fallen, and broken world. It’s a world so evil that people think they need to stockpile guns in order to protect themselves. It’s is world so fallen that those guns are sometimes used against their owners or other innocent people. It is a world so broken that too often the mentally ill cannot get the help they desperately need. We are hearing calls for outlawing the type of assault weapon used by this killer, for armed guards in our schools that could have stopped this killer, and more ways to address the mental illness that drove this killer. Let’s try everything, but let’s know one thing-- evil and darkness will never be totally prevented because we live in a dark and evil world.

Several have suggested that this shooting just feels worse than some of the other tragedies—like Columbine, Aurora and even 9-11. It was worse because it was innocent little children. It was worse because it was right before Christmas. Josh Graves wrote a great blog right after the shooting—

 Now, we come to the end of words. And we wait-- in Silence and Anger and Total Confusion. The end of words, the worst place to be—but the most honest. The only choice is really no choice at all. There are no words.

This would have been a horrific tragedy at any time, but its timing right before Christmas seems to have made it worse. One of the children huddled in a tiny bathroom with his teacher and his whole class and listening to the gunshots said, “I don't want to die; I want to have Christmas.” There are twenty families that have stockings hung and trees trimmed, but who won’t have Christmas this year; they feel like they will never have it again. We live in a broken world, but how could there be such a slaughter of innocents right before Christmas.

But sadly, that’s in the original Christmas story, isn’t it? When the Magi followed their star to find the newborn “King of the Jews,” it made sense that they would stop in Jerusalem to ask Herod, who was the current “King of the Jews.” OK, these supposed “wise guys” were from out of town, so they didn’t know Herod or his methods. Herod was “King of the Jews” because he successfully eliminated all of his rivals. He had executed his first wife (without the messiness of a trial) and had executed two of his sons 2-3 years before the Magi’s visit. Herod was very interested about this newborn king, but not out of a desire to worship him (Matt 2:7-8).

The Magi do worship the child, but they don’t report back to Herod. It is right here that our the story of the “first Christmas” starts to sound recent headlines and our present Christmas (Matt 2:13-16). Herod can’t find the child, so he decides in his madness to kill all the male under two years old. Bethlehem was a small village, so how many families would have had baby boys of that age? Ten? Twenty? Can we imagine twenty families losing their child to a murderous madman? OK, we can imagine. Matthew captures Bethlehem’s anguish with a quote from Jeremiah (Matt 2:17-18). Jeremiah’s laments is originally over the Babylonian captivity; Matthew sees a dual-fulfillment lament over the dead children of Bethlehem. Maybe we can as well; maybe we can see in these words the laments of families in Newtown grieving over their dead children.

The world into which Jesus was born was a world of darkness and evil… and it still is. And both the light of promise and the darkness of death are seen in the story of the birth of Jesus

• Light: Angelic announcement of angles and bright shining star to the Magi 
• Darkness: It was also announced in the slaughter of the babies of Bethlehem. 

It shouldn't surprise that darkness is part of Christmas. Darkness was why Jesus came! The Babe of Bethlehem was born to be the Christ of the cross. He came to face our evil. It should not surprise us that this evil rose up and tried to kill Him as a baby. And when it missed Him, it killed many other innocent babies. And evil is still killing innocent babies.

Peace on earth and good will toward men? That has become the “true meaning of Christmas” for many of us.  We are more joyous, jovial and jolly this time of the year.  We are more giving and forgiving.  Peace on earth is supposed to be that Christmas is about, right?  Well, Jesus did come to give us peace (see John 14:27, Phil 4:6-7), but this is a peace with God that leads to a peace within. But Jesus never promised to make the world a safe place for us where we all just get along. In fact, we can take in on authority that Jesus never promised to bring peace on earth, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword” (Matt 10:34). In this world, there will always be wars and rumors of war (Matt 24:6). And sometimes not only will we suffer despite our faith; we will suffer because of our faith (1 Pet. 4:12). The peace we have is a peace that comes from God despite the conflict, suffering and evil that we experience in our broken world. Jesus promises peace, but he also promises trouble, “I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

The true meaning of Christmas is not that evil will never happen but that it will never reign. Immanuel. God with us. Through Him, we can have peace despite the darkness of our world. That darkness was seen in the massacre of the innocents after the birth of Jesus.  That darkness was seen a week ago Friday in another massacre of the innocents.  All we can do is repeat Jeremiah's lament as we look to the God who reigns despite the darkness.  Max Lucado offered this Christmas prayer a few days after the shooting.

The world seems a bit darker this Christmas, but then you were born in the dark, right? You came at night. The shepherds were nightshift workers. The Wise Men followed a star. Your first cries were heard in the shadows. It was dark. Lord Jesus, you entered the dark world of your day. Won't you enter ours? We are weary of bloodshed. We are looking for a star. We are kneeling at a manger. This Christmas, we ask you, heal us, help us, be born anew in us.

What Difference Does It Make?

Think about this question, “What if there was no Christmas?” I'm not trying to be the Grinch or Ebenezar Scrooge, although "Bah, humbug" has flashed through my mind a couple of times recently.  What I mean by that is, “What would we really miss if there was no Christmas holiday season?” Would people really stop visiting family? Would we really never give gifts to one another? Would places like Wal-Mart and Target really close down? Would school last all year round without any breaks? What would we really miss without Christmas?

• We'd miss eggnog and fruit cake 
• We'd miss risking life-and-limb on Black Friday
• We'd miss untangling strands of holiday lights
• We'd miss watching It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story for the umpteenth time 

So maybe we really wouldn't miss all that much without all the holiday hoopla we call Christmas. OK, I would miss eggnog… or at least the eggnog shakes McDonald’s has only during this time of the year.

But what about the story behind the holiday?  What about the so called “true meaning of Christmas?” OK, I know that Jesus wasn't really born in December 25.  I know that the  Bible never mentions a special festival of Christ's birth. But what if Jesus had never been born? What if the angels, the magi, the manger and the virgin birth never happened at all?  Wouldn't they still make a good story even if they never happened historically?  Like George Washington cutting down the cherry tree? Like most of the stuff that gets reposted on Facebook?

For example, there were these philosopher-teachers in the church beginning at the end of the first century who were stressing Christ as spiritual reality, but they denied that He ever came to earth in the flesh. There were really trying to honor Christ with this doctrine-- Christ is too great, majestic and holy to dirty his hands with flesh and blood hands.  What difference did it make? John seemed to think in makes a very big difference (2 John 7-8, NCV)

7 Many false teachers are in the world now who do not confess that Jesus Christ came to earth as a human. Anyone who does not confess this is a false teacher and an enemy of Christ. 8 Be careful yourselves that you do not lose everything you have worked for, but that you receive your full reward. 

John thinks that without the story of the Jesus coming in the flesh, you don't just lose part of the trappings of the gospel story—you lose everything. He thought that believing that Jesus actually and literally came in the flesh as a human being was the absolute essence of the gospel. That why be began his gospel with a dramatic declaration of the incarnation (John 1:14). That why he begins his first epistle with a different but just as  dramatic testimony to Christ’s coming (1 John 1:1-2). That why he sees faith in the incarnation as the basic test of one's orthodoxy (1 Jonn 4:1-3).

What difference does Christmas make? Well it doesn't really make any difference how you choose to celebrate or not celebrate the holiday we call Christmas. But believing the basic story of God coming in the flesh in the person of Jesus? Well, that makes all the difference in the world…  and between heaven and hell!

Don't Be a Wise Guy!

When Jesus was born, the three wise men came to the stable bearing gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. Well, except we don’t know there were three wise men; there could have been a dozen Magi who all went in together to buy a gold-frankincense-and-myrrh gift pack at Sam’s. And we absolutely know that the Magi never made it to the stable; by the time the Magi arrived, Jesus and his family were already in a house (Luke 2:20). So you should dismiss any nativity scene that depicts the Magi (or Santa for that matter) kneeling before the manger. But the Magi did come bearing gifts to the baby Jesus, and that is the only part of the Christmas story that we seem to care about. So the sounds that sum up the Christmas season is not jingle bells or silver bells or the pa-rum-pum-pum-pum of the little drummer boy—it’s the cha-ching of the cash register.

According to National Retail Federation predictions, retail sales during the 2012 holiday shopping season sales will total $586 billion. And that figure would have been a lot higher had not Hurricane Sandy had the bad manners to show up much later and in more high-dollar real estate than better mannered hurricanes, dropping the holiday shopping season receipts by about 1.1% (according to consultant firm Strategic Resource Group). The average American will spend according to projections about $854 for Christmas gifts this season, up a whopping 32% from last year. Is that because the economy is 32% more solid or that people have socked about 32% more in savings? No, it’s likely because many of us are 32% stupider than we were one year ago!

This time of year we talk about “the True Meaning of Christmas.” OK, I know that Christmas isn’t mentioned in the Bible; Jesus nowhere tells us to observe His birthday. But the fact that Jesus was born into this world to live among us as one of us is indeed at the very center of the gospel. It was “when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law” (Gal 4:4). We must believe that Jesus was born as a real flesh and blood baby in order to accept that He gave His body and shed His blood on the cross (1 John 1:1-2). Jesus became flesh and blood like us in order to redeem us (Heb 2:14). Jesus was Immanuel, “God with us.” (Matt 1:23). Because we connect this time of the year to the story of the birth of Jesus, there really is a “True Meaning of Christmas.”

And I suggest to you that “The True Meaning of Christ” is not spending money that we don’t have to buy things we don’t need to give to people who already have everything! But we act like we think that is precisely the reason for the season. People go into debt to buy gifts that are already old and unappreciated by the time the credit card bill comes due in January. We know that, and yet every year we buy more and more stuff that few of us need because of this tradition of the wise men who brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to honor the baby Jesus. Well, don’t be a wise guy! Reign in the spending. Focus on giving to people not only who don’t give you a gift, but can’t give you a gift (Luke 14:13-14). Find a good Christian charity (like hhi.org) and make a donation to them in the name of the person on your Christmas list. Rather than giving people gifts, invite them over for a dinner and fellowship… along with some people that, well, just need a dinner!

It does us little good to complain about the over-commercialization of the holiday season if we are right there in the middle of the mob elbowing others away from our Christmas deals. We don’t have to buy into the need to buy into the holidays. We don’t have to be a wise guy!

A Safe Place

Because of the same court decision that is the background of the movie Remember the Titans, I was “forced” to attend Menchville High School after a couple of years at Denbigh High (where my wife and oldest daughter now teach). I say forced... Menchville was a brand new school with state of the art equipment and a lot of things we didn't have at Denbigh... like the winning football team that provided me with my best sports memories. We were down 7-6 to Warwick High (where my youngest daughter now teaches) with just seconds left in the game. Our quarterback Rick Patrick threw a hail Mary pass (before it was called that) that bounced off two Warwick defenders before it was caught by Mike Haggins who took it 70 yards for the game winning touchdown. I went crazy! I was jumping up and down, screaming at the top of my lungs and hugging some guy behind me that I didn't even know. It was pure unadulterated wonderment and joy!  There is no script for something like that-- especially if you came from Denbigh and never experienced a win let alone a last second one). We just had to celebrate! We were losing but now we had won!

The last thing I would do is compare a church service to a football game. (There are too many differences; for example, everyone is excited when a football game goes into overtime). We're doing something much more important in church.  It is dishonest to turn a worship service into a pep rally where emotions are manipulated to give the appearance of a “spiritual” experience. And that’s not what I’m talking about. But does it say something when week-after-week, we preach, meditate, sing, and pray about the most important spiritual realities of our lives and our emotions are rarely ever engaged and never ever expressed?  Sure, some of us (like me) are by nature pretty reserved emotionally and might not be given to outward expressions of emotion.  So then why did I go nuts and jump up and down screaming when Haggins scored that touchdown? Maybe it had to do with the people around me giving their permission?

This past Sunday, a brother came forward with the most unusual prayer request that I've ever heard. He said that sometimes in church he is just overcome with joy, surprise and wonderment at what we sing or say and he just feels like he needs to shout or clap or throw his hands in the air. He knows that we generally don't do much of that, so he tries to keep himself in check from responding outwardly. He doesn't want to offend anyone and he doesn't want anyone to think he is trying to draw attention to himself or is making some kind of statement. But at the same time, he is growing weary of spending so much of his energy making sure he does not express his honest emotion that wells up in his heart because God is so good. He asked his brothers and sisters for—not so much forgiveness—but rather patience and tolerance as he struggled with how it was that he is supposed to express his emotions in our worship.

Earlier that same Sunday, another brother asked for the forgiveness of the church. This wasn't during the invitation; it was during our communion service as he was making our table talk. He was so moved by what he was saying that there were tears welling up in his eyes... and twice he stopped to apologize for those tears. So once again, here was a brother who somehow felt he was letting the church down by the expression of honest, heartfelt emotion during church.

What I told our church Sunday was “This is a safe place.” I assured them that if they truly felt the need to shout or clap or cheer, that this was a safe place to do so. No one would be judged for NOT clapping or cheering or shouting  “Amen!” or raising their hands in prayer or in song. And no one would be judged for doing those things either. This is a safe place. It is dishonest to manipulate emotions and fake being carried away when you are not; it is also wrong to deny emotions and discourage the expression of them when you are just so thrilled that God is so good. We are not going to do either of those. This is a safe place.

My Political Platform

I’ll be gone next Sunday to spend most of a week in Arkansas with my parents. I leave the Thursday after Election Day, and I can assure you that date was chosen with care. I didn't want to be gone on Tuesday because I want to vote (yes, I know I could have voted early, but I kinda enjoy the whole go to the polls thing). And I surely didn't want to go BEFORE the election because I want to enjoy a nice visit with my parents without having to wrangle over politics. My folks are both Tea Party conservatives who have always suspected that Ronald Reagan was a bit liberal. And I tend to be a moderate Contrapublicrate— I tend to take the other side in political debates and believe that most political issues are far more complex and nuanced than most people in our two-party system would be willing to admit. So what are my political views on universal health care, job creation, legalization of drugs, gun control, the war in Afghanistan, and the like? Well, that depends on what you think-- I probably think the other.  I'm kidding, mostly, but this political ideology does view fit my personality!

My real political ideology is one of SUSPICION. Politics is ultimately about POWER. I suspect that most politicians, not matter why they may have entered public service, pretty much get addicted to the acquisition and wielding of power. I believe both current candidates for president are more committed to power than to any real ideological agenda and have changed their views enough to warrant such a conclusion. We do need to have a political leader, and since we get to participate choosing that leader, we need to do the best job we can.  But I think the rise of a political leader, whether by election or coronation, always carries with it the warning Samuel gave to Israel when they insisted in having a king—

“The king will draft your sons and assign them to his chariots and his charioteers, making them run before his chariots…. He will take away the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his own officials. He will take a tenth of your grain and your grape harvest and distribute it among his officers and attendants… He will demand a tenth of your flocks, and you will be his slaves. When that day comes, you will beg for relief from this king you are demanding, but then the Lord will not help you.” (1 Samuel 8:11-18, NLT) 

Politics is about power.  There will be consequences anytime you give that power to anyone, no matter how benign or beneficent they may claim to be.

Jesus commands us to serve one another in humility, and this requires that we avoid the use of power (see Matt 20:25-28). The exercising of authority over others is part of the kingdom of man, but Jesus expressly says that it is not part of the kingdom of God. We are to be last and the servant of others (and thus follow Jesus), and that means we should be skeptical of power and therefore of politics. The only participation in the government of man that is specifically mentioned in the New Testament is that of respecting our political leaders, praying for them and paying our taxes. Our democratic form of government gives us the right to participate in the choosing our leader: our Christian faith gives us the responsibility to respect and pray for them. Perhaps if we did more of the latter, the former would not be so divisive for us.

Will I vote in this upcoming election? Sure, I always do. Do I think my vote will make as big a difference in the world as will my prayers? Not a chance. Personally, I’d feel a whole lot better if we received calls during dinner from urging us to pray rather than from people telling us how to vote. But that's just me; I'm a committed Contrapublicrate.