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SermonsRemember Me?Sunday, September 05, 2010
Labor Day
2x4 Emphasis – INTERCEDE
The English language is as fluid a phenomenon as you will ever find. That is to say that the words we use in our everyday conversations are constantly changing. New words get introduced; other words drop out. Somewhere I read where the Oxford English Dictionary, which is the “industry standard” among English dictionaries today, has on average around 4,000 words each year that either are put into the dictionary or taken out of it. That’s a lot of change, not all of which is good.
For example, one expression that used to be a part of our everyday discourse that you don’t hear much anymore is the expression “to be remembered.” “I’d like to be remembered to your family.” Someone making such a statement would want a person’s family to know that he was thinking about them, which would be another way of saying that those persons were of value to the one making the statement and that he was hopeful that the family might value him enough to do likewise.
Such language can be found in almost all of the letters of Paul in the New Testament. Paul was an apostle of Jesus, sent to proclaim the good news to the Gentiles, and the New Testament is comprised primarily of correspondence he wrote to the churches he established.
But there are some letters that Paul wrote to individuals, like this one to Philemon. Philemon is a one-chapter letter that Paul wrote to a fellow Christian who had lost the services of a valued servant named Onesimus, whose name in the Greek meant “Useful.” Indeed, at one point, Onesimus had been “useful” to Philemon, but then Onesimus fled Philemon’s service so that a rift had developed between the two. Philemon was uncertain that he would ever be able to trust Onesimus again.
Paul was in prison when he wrote this letter to Philemon, which is where he wrote many of his letters. In this one, Paul is pleading with Philemon to take Onesimus back, no longer as a servant, but now as a brother in Christ. Onesimus had been “useful” to Paul in prison, and now, Paul was vouching for his trustworthiness. In other words, Paul’s aim was to bring these two parties together.
And notice how he began this objective. He began it with prayer. “I always thank my God,” he wrote to Philemon, “as I remember you in my prayers.” Philemon was important to Paul. Onesimus was equally important to Paul. And he wanted these two important parties to be reconciled to one another as an indication of how the gospel of Jesus Christ might heal hurts and bridge divides.
This morning, we’re beginning a four-Sunday emphasis on connecting people we know to the Jesus we know. Think of it as bringing together two parties that mean so much to us.
On one hand, you have these people who have come into our life and for various reasons have left an indelible impression. We like them. We enjoy their company. We see potential in them. We recognize them to be special in a certain respect. But there is one thing we see lacking in them. We don’t see them as having a relationship with Jesus.
You see, on the other hand, there is Jesus. He is the Author of Salvation. He is the Pioneer and Perfector of our Faith. He is the One who gives life in all its abundance. If we could get the special people in our life to know the Most Special Person in our life, the Lord Jesus, we would be introducing them to a source of blessing that would make their life complete.
But how do we do that? Paul is our model. We pray. We pray for God to give us wisdom. We pray for God to give us courage. Most of all, we pray for God to give us the perfect opportunity to live and speak the good news so that such a meeting of hearts might happen.
How much of our prayer life is dedicated to our desire to see others come to know Jesus? If we are honest with ourselves, we might have to admit that the bulk of our prayer time is focused on self. And certainly, it is important that we pray for ourselves. Prayer is the best way of making sure that our wills are in line with the will of God.
But faithful prayer does not stop with self. It cannot stop with self, not if it is faithful prayer. At some point, our thoughts turn to others whom we know are in need of God’s touch and by lifting them up in prayer we trust God to use us in some way that will help them experience His transforming touch. This is how the good news of Jesus gets extended to where it is most needed.
One of the challenges we face as a church is finding new ways to be more effective in helping others to experience the difference that faith in Jesus can make. But the best way may not be a “new” way, a “new” approach, a “new” methodology. The best way may be what enabled those first Christians to be such an effective force for good, the way of intercession.
You look at the book of Acts and you find those first believers meeting for prayer that God might honor their efforts at bearing witness to their faith in Jesus Christ. You read all of Paul’s epistles, such as this one to Philemon, and you see Paul focusing the efforts of those fledgling churches on what they could do to make a transforming impact on their communities for the cause of Jesus Christ. You read the last book o the Bible, the book of Revelation, and you see images of the saints in glory offering their prayers as incense before the throne of heaven so that God’s purposes might come to pass through the faithfulness of those upon whom His grace falls. Prayer is the means by which God draws people into His family, and if we wish to be a part of that work, then we must commit ourselves to “remembering” one another to Him.
As we begin this two-year emphasis on reaching others for Jesus, would you make a commitment to be praying for someone and for God to use you in some way to reach that someone for Christ? Would you make a commitment to praying in that way for two people?
If so, I’d like you to write down those two names and every day, spend a moment or two in prayer for those persons. Pray that God would help you to understand their need better. Pray that God would help you to be sensitive to ways in which you might offer them a word of witness. Pray that your witness would be received and that a conversation might ensue that would bless both you and them with a deeper understanding of God’s love in Jesus Christ.
Who might you pray for? Pray for a family member. Pray for a neighbor. Pray for a colleague or a classmate. Pray for people you may not yet know but whom God will put in your path for you to bear witness to.
Jim Cymbala is pastor of Brooklyn Tabernacle, probably the most prayerful church in America today. The prayer meeting at Brooklyn Tabernacle takes place on a Tuesday night, and it is exactly that – a prayer meeting. They don’t do Bible Study on Tuesday nights. They don’t do business meeting on Tuesday night. Most of their time is spent in intercessory prayer.
Some time ago, Christianity Today magazine did a story on their Tuesday night meeting and Cymbala was interviewed over dinner afterward. When asked about their commitment to prayer at Brooklyn Tabernacle, Cymbala replied, “Do you know what the number one sin of the church in America today is?” he asked the interviewer. “It’s not the plague of Internet pornography. It’s not that the divorce rate among Christians is roughly the same as society at large.” He named two or three other candidates, all of which he dismissed. “The number one sin of the church in America is that its people are not on their knees crying out to God for others.”
There may be a lot that we as followers of Jesus might do with respect to others that they might find offensive and patronizing. But I don’t think anyone would mind being “remembered” to God. I don’t think anyone would mind being the focus of a prayer for God to touch them with His grace.
So, pray for those whom God has placed on your heart, and know as you pray that those very persons are on God’s heart as well. Just “remember” them to God, and be certain that in His time, God will honor that prayer and do something amazing in both their life and yours – something good, something gracious, something that neither you nor they will ever be able to forget.
Spiritual AngioplastySunday, August 29, 2010
One of the most exciting and significant advances in medicine took place just 30 or so years ago with the development of a procedure known as “catheter-based angioplasty.” I was a young pastor when that procedure began to be introduced in the late 70’s and early 80’s. I’ll never forget that day I was in a room with a church member who had been admitted with cardiac distress and hearing his cardiologist explain how he would be inserting a small balloon into the patient’s blocked artery and by blowing up the balloon, would be able to relieve that blockage. “And the best news of all,” beamed the doctor, “you’ll be awake the whole time!” I don’t know who was more shocked by that pronouncement, the patient or me. I was shocked because I was thinking I was about to have a good man’s funeral. And of course, the patient was shocked because he was thinking that he was about to become the focus of that funeral.
Needless to say, the doctor was true to his word. My good member came through just fine, and since that time, I couldn’t begin to tell you the number of other members I’ve had who have gone through the same procedure and emerged with a new lease on life. In fact, when you stop and think about it, it’s amazing how that one procedure has revolutionized the quality of life for countless individuals with a history of heart disease.
Would that we could come up with some similar procedure that might deal with the spiritual distress that occurs when people allow their hearts to become hardened to the things of God.
That’s certainly what was needed in the case of Pharaoh’s heart, as Moses continued to approach him at God’s bidding for the release of the Israelites from their Egyptian bondage. The book of Exodus goes into great detail on the back-and-forth conversations between Moses, God’s representative on behalf of the Israelites, and Pharaoh, king of Egypt. At first, Pharaoh flatly refused Moses’ request that he let God’s people go. Truth be told, Pharaoh was actually offended that Moses would ask such a thing. “Who is the LORD that I should obey him? You’re keeping the people from their labor. I want them to get back to their work of making bricks” (Exodus 5:1-5).
If it had been up to Moses, that would have been the end of the conversation. But it wasn’t up to Moses. God had a plan for His people, and a hard-hearted Pharaoh, as powerful as Pharaoh was, wasn’t going to be a blockage in God’s intentions. And that is when the story got interesting. At God’s direction, Moses began to send plagues upon Pharaoh’s land – first a plague of blood, then a plague of frogs, next a plague of gnats and then flies. But did Pharaoh pay attention to what God was trying to teach him? Not at first he didn’t. But when it became apparent that these plagues were of an order that neither he nor his counselors could control, Pharaoh offered his consent if Moses would take away the plague. But then, when Moses did, Pharaoh changed his mind; except that the Bible phrases that change of mind in a unique way – as verse 32 in out text for the day says, “But this time also Pharaoh hardened his heart and would not let the people go.”
If you’re like most Christians, you read this text and think, “That mean, old Pharaoh. He should have known better. He should have listened to God. He should have done what God was telling him to do.” But do we do that? Do we listen to God, really? Do we do what God tells us to do, really? Do we follow through on the commitments we make to others when they serve God’s purposes, but perhaps not our own, really?
William Ginsburg is an attorney who, ironically, cut his teeth in the field of medical malpractice about the time that the angioplasty procedure was being developed. Most people know him as the original attorney for Monica Lewinsky, because of his relationship with her family. You may also remember that it was during that whole episode that the concept of truth got parsed in ways that only a “Philadelphia lawyer” could understand. When Ginsburg was interviewed after one of the depositions, he was asked about contradictions that his client supposedly made during her testimony. “Did she lie?” the reporter asked. And Ginsburg’s answer has become something of a commentary on 21st century American culture: “No one ever lies,” said Ginsburg. “People often do what they have to do to make their story sound right.”
I’m certain that if Pharaoh himself had been summoned to the witness stand to come up with an explanation for why he continued to go back on his word to Moses, that’s something of what he might have said. But the Bible tells the truth. The problem was with his heart, for what he said was simply the outward expression of his inward refusal to embrace God’s will.
It’s easy for us to look down our noses at people like Pharaoh and William Ginsburg, who in fairness to the latter was merely representing his client in the court of public opinion. It’s easy for us to belittle those persons who in our estimation display a woeful lack of integrity. But when the dye is injected and the probe is directed on the connection between what we say and what we do, how do our hearts appear to be? Are there any spiritual blockages that need to be addressed so that our hearts might be better aligned with the heart of God?
Some years ago, a survey was conducted of 20,000 middle school and high school students by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, a California non-profit group dedicated to character education. The survey had to do with their expressions of compliance, honesty, and integrity. 92% of the students admitted on the survey to having lied to their parents the previous year, and 73% even characterized themselves as “serial liars,” meaning that they admitted to telling lies on a weekly basis to parents and friends. But what was surprising to the surveyors was how, despite these admissions, 91% of all the respondents said that they were “satisfied” with their own ethics and character (Randy Fitzgerald, “The Real Truth About Lies,” Readers Digest, 11/99, pp.81-82). The point is, we have become so accustomed to deceit in our culture and, some would argue, in our churches, that the truth astonishes us when we hear it.
John Buchanan is a Presbyterian minister and editor-at-large at Christian Century magazine. In one of his editorials, he noted how all ministers have a collection of what he called “at-the-door stories.” (I certainly have mine.) One of his favorites was of a time that he was the guest preacher at an installation service for a friend of his in North Carolina. As Buchanan, a Chicagoan explained, “One of the great things about preaching in the South is that people there are so nice.” “It’s not that northerners aren’t nice; it’s just that southerners are more inclined to exude graciousness.” And he should have added, “Even when they’re doing what they have to do to make their story sound straight.”
He goes on to say that after the service, he was down at the front of the church enjoying the compliments on his installation sermon, when a well-dressed woman shook his hand and said, “Mr. Buchanan, thank you so much. It was so wonderful of you to come all the way down here to be with us this morning. I just hated your sermon.” He explained that she said it with such sweetness that he thanked her and only later fully realized what she had actually said (“Good Sermon, Reverend,” Christian Century, 4/8/08, p.2).
We expect people to say nice things, but only the truth is what serves God’s purposes, even when the truth hurts.
Perhaps this morning, you realize that there is something blocking the power of God from doing what God needs to be doing in your life, and there is no one to blame but yourself. Your heart is out of line with what God really wills for you, and you realize that you’ve spent hours upon hours “doing what you have to do to make your story sound straight.” “I’m not that bad of a person.” “My heart is in the right place?” Is it, really? Is your heart in the right place, really?
If you have questions about that state of your heart relative to the state of God’s heart, let me offer you three brief steps you can take to experience the release of whatever blockages might exist through the wind of the Spirit at work in your life.
In the first place, tell yourself the truth. Quit deceiving yourself. Be honest about where you allow your will to get in the way of God’s will and seek God’s forgiveness for those times when you’ve not gone along with His plan. Tell yourself the truth. As Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31-32).
In the second place, commit to being centered on God’s plan for your life. By being centered, I mean being focused. Don’t allow anything to divert your attention or divide your loyalties. The book of James warns believers not to be “double-minded, unstable” in all that we do (James 1:7).
And lastly, keep whatever commitments you make to God and others. Don’t be a “Pharaoh.” Don’t say one thing while all the while intending to do something else. Pray for God’s help to keep your commitment even when the circumstances when you made that commitment have changed. Jesus called people who do that “hypocrites, play-actors,” a term he borrowed from the stage world of his day and introduced it into the moral vocabulary of both his time and ours. People like that, said Jesus, will never enter the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 6:5). They will never be able to experience the bliss of trading in our burdensome bondage for the peace and joy of the Promised Land.
I think Jesus would have appreciated the story of the first grader whose teacher asked the class the color of apples. Most of the children answered, “Red.” Some of the children answered, “Green.” But this one boy raised his hand and answered, “White.” The teacher explained that apples can be red and green, and sometimes golden, but never white. To which the boy answered, “Look inside; look inside.”
That may be what God is inviting you to do today, to look inside your own heart. After all, He knows what’s there. He knows what’s keeping His power from doing what He wills for you. And He makes available to you the life-giving power of His grace, which you receive through faith in Christ, to heal you and to help you and to give you a hope that will make your heart sing.
There’s no need to be afraid. You’ll be awake the whole time. And when it’s over, you’ll have a heart that God can mold, God can shape, and most importantly, God can bless. It may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. For nothing else could ever possibly make your life’s story not just sound right, but go right. And what could anyone possibly ask for more than that?
The Promise of an Open DoorSunday, August 22, 2010
You may have heard the story about the man who went to see his therapist about a recurring dream that was driving him bonkers. In the man’s dream, he was pushing against a heavy door, a heavy door with a big sign in the front. Every night he dreamed of pushing on the door with the sign, feverishly working to get it open but night after night with no success.
“What does it mean?” he asked his therapist. His therapist gave no explanation, preferring instead to probe the man’s past mistakes, his present relationships, and his future hopes. But when their sessions were becoming less and less fruitful, the therapist decided to go back to square one. “Tell me about your dream again,” said the therapist, whereupon the man recounted detail by detail what now had become for him a nightmare. “Every night I push against the door. I push with all my might. I push for all I am worth even as my face is pressed against that big sign in the front.” Suddenly, a light went off in the therapist’s brain. “The sign,” he said excitedly. “Tell me about the sign that stares you in the face as you push against the door.” “Oh, that,” the man answered unimpressed. “The sign says, ‘Pull.’”
There are a lot of ways to go with that story (not repeating it being one). But another way might be to consider how frustrating it is not to be able to get through an open door. Why is that the case? Is it not because of how open doors suggest possibility and adventure? Is it not because they invite us to forsake our safe and settled places for rewards that far outweigh the risks? Is it not because they serve as critical passageways into a future we know is in our best interests?
The frustration comes in when in the face of such an enticement, we find ourselves unable to take advantage of a present opportunity, or, even worse, we find ourselves prepared to go through the door only to have it slammed in our face.
This is a tough time, as you know. Doors are closing all around us, literally and figuratively. People don’t know whether to push or pull or try to kick the door in. Opportunities seem to be shrinking by the day. For some of you here this morning, that’s a nightmarish reality. You can’t find fulfillment in your work, while others of you can’t find any work at all. Some of you have robbed Peter to pay Paul and now you’re looking for a way to work out some kind of loan from Mary. Some of you are turned upside down and twisted inside out. And it seems at times as if someone has locked the door and thrown away the key.
In all honesty, the situation is not as bad as it seems. I remember an old quote by Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, which was the device that everyone once used to talk with one another before the I-phone. Bell, who as an inventor had experienced more than his share of failed efforts, maintained his enthusiasm for invention with this saying: “When one door closes, another one opens; but we often look so long and regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the door which has opened for us” (as quoted in Leadership, Vol. 10, no. 1). No matter how many doors have refused to open on your behalf, there is one door that can never be shut, the most important door of all – the door of God’s life-giving future thrown open wide to all who will go through it by faith in Jesus Christ.
The book of Revelation is a perplexing book for many, and understandably so, considering the nightmarish interpretations that have been made popular in recent years. But for people of faith, the book of Revelation is a dream come true. It is a book that opens up for us the certainty of Jesus’ triumph over every expression of evil and injustice and how that triumph extends to those who will trust in Jesus to the end. Parenthetically, the next time someone asks you, “How can you believe in a good and loving God when there’s so much pain and suffering in the world?,” tell that person, “Read the book of Revelation.” “He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Rev. 21:4).
But you don’t have to get to the end of the book to hear that promise. It comes also at the very beginning, at a number of places, such as here in chapter 3, where the Spirit speaks to the church at Philadelphia, a city of commercial importance in the heart of Asia Minor: “These are the words of him who is holy and true (pure and trustworthy), who holds the key of David (the authority of the Messiah). What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open. I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door” (Rev. 3:7-8a).
In this section of Revelation, John is given seven different images of the triumphant Jesus that he is inspired to give to the church. This one shows Jesus to be the controller of redemptive possibilities – the one who invites believers to embrace a future that can never be tarnished, tampered with, or taken away.
Remember that this word was directed to a people who felt as if they were doormats to a cruel and oppressive culture. They had no political or economic power. They had no real voice in the decision-making process of the first century world. They had only their witness to Jesus. But here, Jesus tells them that it is precisely their witness that will enable them to seize all manner of possibility that they never dreamed might be open to them. “Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. He who overcomes I will make a pillar in the temple of my God. Never again will he leave it” (vv. 11-12).
Everyone knows the name Billy Graham. He is the model of faithfulness when it comes to proclaiming the good news of Jesus. Every door open to him Graham took advantage of. Some years ago, he was speaking to the National Association of Evangelicals at their 50th anniversary convention. It was at a time when some questioned the effectiveness of working toward the conversion of those with no saving knowledge of Jesus. Some were contending that the better way might be simply to seek common ground with the larger culture instead of attempting to change it in the power of the Risen Jesus. As he spoke to the group that was longing for a rallying cry to proclaim Jesus, Graham said, “Today’s world is said to be multiplying crises all around us. But we must never forget that, for the gospel, every crisis is an opportunity.” Every crisis is an open door.
This is a tough time, and no Christian should ever minimize any of the challenges of the present hour. But at the same time, it is also an hour where unbelievable opportunities exist to advance the cause of Christ, and Jesus is inviting us to seize them in order that we and those to whom we go might experience his triumph through trusting in him every step of the way. Every challenge could be seen as an open door to a greater tomorrow, if only we will allow Jesus to lead the way.
Some of you have walked this way before, and you know that what I’m saying is true. For example, some of you can think back to when you started a new school. You were as scared as you could be, but you were also excited about the promise that new school held. Think about the first time you moved out of your parent’s house. Again, you sensed anxiety and yet great release. Think about when you graduated from high school or college. Think about when you got married. Think about when your first child was born. Think about when your first child was married. Were those sorts of transitions easy? Of course they weren’t. And yet, if you had not mustered the courage to go through them, how much in life would you have missed?
Some of you are walking that path right now, and you can’t get through those doors fast enough. “I can’t wait to get out of this school.” “I can’t wait to get out of this house.” “I can’t wait to get married.” “I can’t wait to be a parent or a grandparent.” “I can’t wait to get a job.” “I can’t wait to get out of this job.” But you must wait. You must wait. You must wait upon Jesus to guide you from one place to the next, and you must trust that when he does, whatever challenges you may face in those new places are no match for his resurrection power at work in you. I don’t know of another truth that will sustain you better in a day when nights seem to get longer and people seem to be more restless.
This week I came across an interesting artistic expression that has developed of late, known as “disaster art.” That’s not a description of the efforts of grossly untalented people like me. Anything I did art-wise would classify as a disaster. No, “disaster art” has to do with works created by artists in regions hard hit by a hurricane, tornado, or other natural disaster. The artists go out amidst the ruins and grab splintered fence posts, shingles, or window panes. Then they take these various forms of debris and use them as artistic media in creating a piece of art that you would actually hang on a wall or stand in a corner of a room. Just recently, there was a story about artists in the New Orleans area who have taken remnants of Katrina and have turned them into pieces of art to be sold, of which some of the proceeds have been used to restore the Louisiana coastline after the recent oil spill. Where most people saw doom and despair, these artists saw possibility, opportunity, and hope.
This is a tough time; there’s no question about it. But the Risen Jesus calls us as his disciples to ponder the possibilities of how in the power of his resurrection we might be able to turn the ugliness all around us into something of beauty, inspiration, and joy.
Open your eyes, your ears, and most importantly, your heart. Refuse to give up in the face of life’s challenges. Be bold in bearing witness to the difference that Jesus can make in the face of those challenges so that when one door closes or refuses to open, you can trust Jesus to open another; Jesus will make for you a way. “What he opens no one can shut, and what he shuts no one can open.”
Guarding Against GreedSunday, August 15, 2010
The greatest threats that most of us have to worry about are those threats that we pose to ourselves. I don’t know that we appreciate that truth as much as we should. So much our concern goes toward the things others might potentially do to us, but the most serious perils we face in the course of life are those that are self-imposed. They are made up of the things we do to ourselves. We are too often our own worst enemies.
Perhaps that is why Jesus spent so much of his time teaching his disciples how to focus on their own hearts. Beginning with his words to not worry about the “splinter” in our neighbor’s eye but to focus on the “beam” in our own, he continued to press home the point that true righteousness begins at home – that as the old saying goes, we really do well to “sweep around our own front door” before picking up our brooms to clean up someone else’s.
And this story before us this morning is a prime example of that type of teaching. Here, Jesus is in the midst of an instruction on how one might live each day with purpose and fulfillment. Suddenly, he is interrupted by an anonymous person who asks Jesus to render a legal judgment against his brother regarding an inheritance the two of them shared.
A bit of background is in order here. According to the Mosaic Law ( Deut. 21:17), an elder son should receive a double portion of an inheritance, given his superior standing in ancient family structures. When, as in this case, a dispute arose between brothers, the matter was often taken to a rabbi for resolution. This particular man was obviously concerned that his elder brother was about to defraud him of his fair share, and he turned to Jesus for some rabbinical support in order to set the record straight.
He clearly picked the wrong rabbi, because Jesus was not sympathetic in the least to his concern. “Man,” Jesus answered, “who appointed me a judge or an arbiter between your brother and you?” We must speculate as to the reason for Jesus’ rebuke. Perhaps this man had not been paying attention to what Jesus had been teaching regarding relying upon God for that which we need. Perhaps it was because the man saw Jesus only as someone who could help him with his legal issues, but not his soul issues. Most likely it was because Jesus could see that the man was blinded by dollar signs and failed to grasp the greater significance of the loss of a relationship that he was willing to toss aside for material gain. It probably wasn’t the first family to have been divided over money, and it surely would not be the last.
Whatever it was about the question provoked Jesus, it caused him to shift gears somewhat in his teaching toward a word about materialism in general and greed in particular. “Watch out!” he told his disciples. “Be on guard against all kinds of greed; a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” Whereupon, Jesus launched into a story about a rich farmer who does so well with his crop that he runs out of barns to store them in. And instead of using his bounty as a chance to serve others, he hoards it for himself, not realizing that he will die unexpectedly with nothing of eternal value to show for his callous and stingy ways. “This is how it will be,” says Jesus, “with anyone who stores up things for himself but is not rich toward God.”
That phrase – “rich toward God” – has been echoing in my soul of late. What does it mean to be “rich toward God?” How much of a concern do I have about being “rich toward God?” What steps do I need to take to become “rich toward God?”
That’s a lot to unpack in a twenty-minute sermon. Suffice it to say that of all that could be said in response to those questions, the best way to move in the direction of becoming “rich toward God” is to pursue generosity. Because our God is a generous God who holds nothing back from us in giving us what we really need, so do we best bear witness to His Presence in our lives when we learn to do the same for others.
You say, “But I’m not a wealthy man. Unlike the man in the story, my barns are pretty empty.” Don’t you see? Generosity is not a matter of how much you have in your bank account; generosity is a matter of how much you have in your “soul account.” Generosity is about offering what you do have to convey God’s help to others, whatever it may be and however much it may be.
There is a story in the book of Acts that gives us perspective on this approach to life. Peter and John are making their way to the temple for afternoon prayer. Along the way, they encounter a crippled man who sits at the gate called Beautiful begging from those who are going into the temple courts. The beggar sees Peter and John, who do not look away from the man as so many others must have done. When he asks them for money, Peter responds in this way: “Silver or gold have I none, but what I do have I give unto you. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up and walk” (Acts 3:6). And the man does – walking, and jumping, and praising God.
I don’t offer that story as an excuse you might use for refusing panhandlers on Tallahassee streets. I offer it instead as a reminder of the power that is at your disposal as you offer to others what you have “in Jesus’ name.” In other words, think about what you could do if you were more generous with your time. I know that everyone of us has only 24 hours in a day and that most of us are busy people. But what might it mean if you could give just a moment or two to someone who was lonely or burdened or helpless or afraid? Think about what you could do if you were more generous with your knowledge or your experience. Think about what you could do if you were more generous with your encouragement and praise. Think about what you could do if you were more generous with your money or your possessions.
Somehow we must find a way to rid ourselves of the chains that have become wrapped around our souls that have caused us to lose compassion toward our neighbor. Somehow we must loosen our grip on the parts of our life that we hold for ourselves in order to make them available to those persons God places in our lives.
How might we do that? Let me offer some suggestions.
First, simplify your life. Get rid of the clutter that is mucking up your ability to live more effectively for God. I think it’s interesting to note that in this present day of economic recession, the one industry that has flourished is the mini-warehouse. I wonder what Jesus would have to say about that? As someone has noted, “It is a principle of physics that the greater the mass, the greater the hold that mass exerts on us” (Randy Alcorn, The Treasure Principle, Sisters, OR: Multnomah Books, 2005). If you feel your soul closing in on you because of the stuff you have in your life, give some of it to people who could use it. By the way, the local ECHO ministry that our church supports is a great way to do that, as they give away what’s donated to them instead of selling it.
Secondly, analyze your level of giving. How much of yourself do you really make available for kingdom purposes? How invested are you in the cause of Christ. What percentage of what God has provided are you really giving back in order to further His will? In other words, just be honest with yourself about where you stand in terms of being generous. After all, God sure knows where you are, and if I hear this parable of Jesus correctly, so do you and I need to know before it’s too late.
And lastly, make a commitment to God to do something more in becoming rich toward Him. Can you reorder your life in order to be able to give another hour or a portion of an hour to someone in need? Can you share a bit of your knowledge or experience with someone who could honestly benefit from it? Can you give another percentage of your income to God’s work in this world; or in the case of some of us, can you give something? Everything you can give to God’s work is an eternal investment that will enable you to experience so much more of His goodness and mercy in your life.
As I look more closely at this parable that Jesus told of the “Rich Fool,” I see that it doesn’t have a conclusion. It really doesn’t. Look at it. Sure, God calls the man foolish for have hoarded his plenty without thought of others, and He even says, “This very night your life will be demanded of you!” But the night doesn’t come in the story. It is still the “eleventh hour.” There was time for the rich man to change his ways.
Did he? We’ll never know, and that really wasn’t the point of the parable anyway, was it (though I do think it telling that Jesus ends with a question about who will get the man’s plenty, suggesting a potential inheritance dispute, much as the story began)?
The point of the parable is the question of what we will do with that which God has given us. How will we show our faithfulness? That is a matter still to be decided. Don’t let it be decided on the basis of your greed; let it be decided on the basis of your generosity, and the wisdom of your becoming “rich toward God” and the blessing of His favor, which nothing in heaven or on earth can ever take away.
Why You Can't Get What You WantSunday, August 08, 2010
Most of us are familiar with the old Middle Eastern folk tale of Aladdin and his magical lamp. For those of you who aren’t, Aladdin is a young man who finds this enchanted lamp, rubs it, and encounters a genie who astounds Aladdin with this promise: “Your wish is my command.”
I think all of us dream about what finding a lamp like that would be like – to have a genie at your beck and call. What would you do with such a “blank check?” I would imagine most of us would answer in some kind of material way – a new house, a new car, a new wardrobe. Others of us might answer in a regenerating sort of way – a new job, a new relationship, a new start. But however we answer the question, most of us would most likely answer it in a self-centered sort of way. “It’s my wish; it’s my life.”
Amazingly, the very process I just described is precariously close to the definition many people give to prayer. Prayer, according to many, is about petitioning God with the “desires of our heart.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people use that phrase from the Psalmist to justify their self-centered petitions before God. “God, you’ve promised that you would give me the ‘desires of my heart.’ So, here they are!” And we wonder why God doesn’t answer.
Evidently, that’s been a problem for believers from the very beginning. This morning’s text comes from the book of James, which is the most practical book in the Bible. The theme of the book of James is how faith works; that is to say, how faith functions in everyday experience.
In this section of his letter, James is responding to concerns from believers as to why they aren’t getting from God the things they desire. And he uses strong language to describe their earnest efforts. “You kill and you covet,” he says, “but you cannot have what you want.”
Chances are that James was using that language metaphorically. However, there are instances in the Scripture where some people actually went to those extremes in order to get their way. From the dark side, I think of Ahab, the evil king of Israel, the man married to Jezebel, who put to death lowly Naboth, because Ahab wanted Naboth’s vineyard to use as a vegetable garden (1 Kings 21:1-16). But on light side of the continuum, I think of David, who had Uriah the Hittite put to death in order that he might be able to have Uriah’s wife Bathsheba for his own (2 Samuel 11:1-27). The point is, all of us have within us the ability to go to ungodly lengths to get our own way. We may not literally consider murder as an option, but there are times when we actually give thought to the possibility of destroying someone’s name or reputation if that’s what it takes to satisfy our souls.
It’s a losing proposition according to James, who pulls no punches in his rebuke of the tendency to cloak one’s selfish desires in the garb of prayer. “When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives.”
Think about it this way. Would you honestly give someone something that you knew was not in his best interests? Would you give a drink to an alcoholic, a fudge brownie to diabetic, a loaded gun to a playful toddler? Of course you wouldn’t. Then why would we even entertain the thought that our God, who is all-Knowing and all-Merciful, would ever grant us anything that might not be to our advantage? Why would we expect God to do anything that would not good for us? And that is why, later in this very chapter, James directs his readers to “submit themselves to God.” James understands that the prayer that God always answers is the prayer one prays for His will to be done in one’s life, and to mean it.
And yet, I’ve even seen people who use that language as a way of hoodwinking God into giving them their own way. “Lord, if it be your will,” they pray, as if once we get the formula right, unlimited blessing is bound to follow. It’s just a matter of touching all the right buttons.
What we have to remember is that prayer is a byproduct of the relationship we enjoy with God. It is a means by which we align our desires with His. In prayer, we put things in perspective. We come to see situations and circumstances as God does. In prayer, we invite God to use us and to change us in ways that we never thought to be possible. Such an approach to prayer takes it out of the realm of the transactional (where we offer something and God offers something in return) and puts it in the realm of the transformational (where we open our lives to God and invite Him to use in whatever ways might best serve His good purposes). And that is precisely why too many people are reluctant to pray as God intended prayer to go – they don’t want to be transformed, not really.
It’s like the cartoon I heard about of two turtles in conversation with one another. One turtle says to the other, “Sometimes I’d like to ask why God allows poverty, famine, and injustice when He could do something about it.” To which the other turtle responds, “Me too, but I’m afraid God might ask me the same question.”
In other words, prayer was never intended to absolve us of the responsibility of following hard after Jesus. Instead, God intended prayer to awaken us to that work He is about in this world and how we might fit our little lives into it.
Think about how Jesus prayed. How blessed we are to have so many stories in the Gospels where we are told how Jesus prayed, where Jesus prayed, and most importantly, what Jesus prayed. He prayed honestly. He prayed daringly. He prayed in times of celebration and he prayed in times of distressed. He prayed confidently that God would hear his prayers, but he was careful always to pray, “Not my will, but thy will be done.”
Look at your prayer life this morning. Into which category does it fall, the transactional or the transformational? The answer to that question comes in your ability to bear witness to the ways in which your prayer life has changed you. Does your prayer life cause you to move out of your comfort zone to attempt something for God? Does it alter your perspective on some issue or a practice? Does it make you more considerate of others, especially of those who are less fortunate than you? Or does it seem at times as if you’re talking to the air…that your prayers are never getting past the ceiling…that you feel as if you’re begging and pleading for something to happen that in your heart you know will never happen?
If it’s the latter, then it’s too much about you and what you want instead of God. And if you don’t change the way you pray, then you’ll get frustrated that your prayers are never answered, and before long, you’ll quit praying, because from your vantage point it’s nothing more than an exercise in futility.
But if it’s the former, if your prayer life is transformational, then the changes God brings about in you will make prayer an experience of which you can never get enough.
I love the story of the man who was sharing with his friend a concern in his life. To which his friend suggested, “You ought to pray about it.” “I will,” the man said. He prayed and he prayed and he prayed and he prayed. He prayed sincerely. He prayed fervently. Most of all, he prayed openly.
Some days passed and his friend and he were together again for the first time since the friend had suggested prayer for his concern. “Did you pray about the situation?” the friend asked. “Yes, I did,” the man answered most excitedly. “And did God answer your prayer?” the friend said. “Yes, most definitely,” the man he replied. “Oh, so God gave you what you wanted,” the friend assumed. “No,” the man answered. “Not really. God didn’t really give me what I wanted.” “But I thought you said that God answered your prayer.” “He did,” the man answered. “He made me not want what I wanted anymore.”
“When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with the wrong motives.” God, help us to want what you want so that the desires of our heart become the desires of your heart. That way, our prayers will always be pleasing in Your sight and the answers You give will be more than we deserve.
Looking for a Better DaySunday, July 11, 2010
Lord’s Supper
If there’s one thing I could point to that people everywhere need to be able to get through the rigors of everyday life, it would be a sense of anticipation. Unless we have within us a reason to look forward to the days ahead, our present existence will become empty and hollow. I’ve seen it played out a hundred times before, and so have you.
I remember some months ago, I wandered into a shop that was “going out of business.” I had seen the people on the street corner with the elongated signs, advertising deals at 60, 70, and 80% off, and figured that I ought to go check out the deals. And when I did, I remember having the sensation come over me that I had been to funerals that had a more upbeat atmosphere than this store that was closing its doors. As I looked over the merchandise, I felt like a vulture picking at a carcass, not a pleasant thought I know for those of you who’ll be eating a little later, but it sure captures how the whole experience felt to me. The skeleton staff looked as if they were trying their best to live up to their description. They looked sunken and lifeless, and when they spoke, there was no spirit in their voice. And, thinking back, why should there have been? If all sales are “final,” then why work to create the possibility of making a future sale, because there is no “future?”
I think you get the point. Everyone wants to believe that tomorrow always has the possibility of being better than today.
That is precisely one of the messages conveyed in our observance of the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper conveys several messages. It conveys remembrance. It conveys gratitude. It conveys solidarity and fellowship. But the meaning I’d like to focus on this morning is that of anticipation. As the Apostle Paul addressed the significance of the Lord’s Supper to the church at Corinth, he reminded the believers that, “For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (v.26). In other words, the Lord’s Supper is our testimony that the grace that comes to us in the presence of the crucified and risen Jesus is a grace that gives us, as the hymn suggests, “strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.”
That is why the Lord’s Supper is more than just a periodic way that we recall the fact that Jesus died for our sins. It is along with that a powerful reminder that Jesus was raised from the dead and that he is present when his people gather, and in the power of his risen Presence we can be certain that our victory over the evil that we must contend with on a daily basis has been secured and we have so much to look forward to.
Ray Bakke is a sociologist who has been dubbed by many as the “father of urban ministry.” He certainly has been on the cutting edge of calling churches to give more attention to mediating the presence of Christ in metropolitan areas. In an article he wrote several years ago, he talked about an old professor of his, who along with a Scottish chaplain, had been forced to bail out of a British airplane behind German lines during the Second World War. They were captured and placed in a German prison camp. Within the camp, a large wire fence separated the American prisoners from the British prisoners so that it was next to impossible for the two sides to communicate. Bakke’s professor was put on the American side and his Scottish compatriot was put on the British side.
Every day the two men would meet at the fence and exchange a greeting. Unknown to the guards, the Americans had a little homemade radio and were able to get news from the outside, which was something more precious than food in a prison camp. Every day, Bakke’s professor would take a headline or two to the fence and share it with the chaplain in the ancient Gaelic language, which both of them know and which was indecipherable to the Germans.
One day, news came over the little radio that the German High Command had surrendered and that the war was over. Bakke’s professor took the news to his chaplain friend, then stood and watched him disappear into the British barracks. A moment later, a roar of celebration came thundering from those barracks.
From that moment on, life in that camp for the prisoners was transformed. Men walked around singing and shouting, waving at the guards, even laughing at the guard dogs. And when the guards finally heard the news three nights later, they fled into the dark, leaving the gates completely unlocked. The next morning, the Brits and Americans walked out as free men. But of course, they had actually already been set free when they heard the news three days earlier that the war was finally over.
When we partake of this bread and drink of this cup, we are doing more than engaging in a ritual that believers in Jesus have practiced for over 2,000 years. We are making a bold statement in the face of the “slings and arrows” of our human existence that the battle for all intents and purposes is over. No, we cannot say that the Kingdom of God has come to fulfillment. But we can say that our Crucified Savior is also a Risen Lord, and he will come again as a Reigning Lord, and because he is, we have something to look forward to. “Whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
This is why this Supper has such meaning for those who find themselves in a place of weakness and exposure. They have no real hope outside of the hope that they have in Jesus.
Tom Long is a preaching professor at Candler, which is associated with Emory. He tells the story of how some time ago he had returned as guest preacher to a church where years before he had served as a student pastor. After the service, he struck up a conversation with a woman he had not seen in many years. He asked about her dad, whom he remembered as one of his favorite people.
“I lost my dad last summer,” she said sadly. “Cancer,” she explained. “But he lived a long and good life, and in many ways he died a peaceful death. The last few moments of his life were amazing.”
“My sister, my brother, and I were with him when he died. He had suffered a stroke a few days before and had lost his speech. You can imagine how hard that was on my father.” Long said that he remembered that her father did love to tell a good story.
“About an hour before he died, he began to struggle. He was using his last bit of energy to try to speak. He seemed to have something he really wanted to communicate. It was terribly frustrating for him and painful for us to watch.”
“Finally, he pointed at my brother and motioned toward the sink in the room. My sister said, ‘He wants some water,’ and my brother went over to the sink and poured out a glass. He brought it over to my father, but Dad refused it and made a gesture toward my brother as if to say, ‘No, you drink it.’ My brother hesitated for a moment and then took a sip from the glass. My father then motioned with his hand, as if to say, ‘Pass it to your sister.” My brother handed me the glass, and my father repeated the gesture.”
“It was then that it dawned on my sister. ‘He’s serving communion,’ she said quietly” (Thomas G. Long, “Gospel Sound Track,” Christian Century, 3/14/01, p.11).
What made that father muster up the energy to turn that hospital room into a chapel? I think you know why. He did it because he had something to look forward to. He had a faith that enabled him to anticipate a better day. And what better way to proclaim it than to celebrate it with his family in glad communion?
God help us to hold up these signs of bread and cup that we might say to the world, “God is still in business and Christ forever on the throne.” And if they will hear our proclamation and open their lives to the same grace that we receive, then they too will have the hope of a better day. Then, they too will know the promise and the peace that comes from having victory in Jesus.
God's Liberating AnswerSunday, July 04, 2010
One of today’s great puzzles is how so many of the people who live “in the land of the free and the home of the brave” can feel so repressed and constrained. How can so many in American feel so restrained? Because unless one is literally in prison or on probation, that person is able to go and do pretty much whatever he or she wants. And yet, there are many today who feel anything but free.
A part of the answer to that puzzle lies in the fact that so many of us are afraid of what the future holds. It’s hard for us to get excited about the present when we’re not sure how much longer the good times are going to last. Think about it. First, there was the decline in the economy and everything that resulted from that decline – the loss of jobs and income and investment. Then there came the catastrophe in the Gulf, which has created the very real threat of the loss of a way of life that has sustained people in this area for many a generation. Add to both of those things the sheer instability that exists in our world today and it makes you wonder if those doomsday scenarios that have become popular in recent years might have something going for them.
Suffice it to say that this isn’t the first time that a people have been confronted with seemingly insurmountable challenges. In fact, when you read the Bible, you see that much of what the Bible has to say is in response to the dread and anxiety that had caused people in those days to lose all hope of a good future, such as in this verse from the Psalms that I’ve read for you this morning.
The book of Psalms was, of course, the worship book of both ancient Israel and the church. It contains a host of songs that expressed the emotions of God’s people in both good times and bad. Some of the Psalms are upbeat; others are melancholy. Some express joy and thanksgiving; others convey anger and revenge. But all of the Psalms have this one thing in common – they all yield any and all emotion to God in order that God’s people might be strengthened and encouraged for whatever the future might hold.
Take this 118th Psalm, for example. Most Old Testament scholars associate this psalm with the Festival of Tabernacles, which was a celebration of God’s guidance of Israel during her wilderness wanderings from Egypt into the land of Canaan. You talk about an anxious time. The children of Israel had no idea what lay before her, except for the assurance that God was also ahead of her there to prepare the way. And for most of them, that was enough. For most of them, knowing that God was ever before them was all that they needed.
And so, this psalm picks up on that promise and urges the people singing it to hold fast to it. Notice that when you look at the psalm in its entirety there is a fourfold declaration of how God’s love “endures forever.” That word for “love” refers to a special kind of love – God’s covenant love, where God pledges to maintain faithfulness to His people come what may. God binds Himself to them in dedication and devotion, so that whatever challenges come their way, they can be certain that God will be present to help meet them. This is why the Psalmist could say, “In my anguish (which is to say, my fear, my anxiety, my uncertainty) I cried to the LORD, and He answered by setting me free.”
I don’t think there is any question but that the fears that overwhelm us are the very things that keep us from living at the level of abundance to which Jesus calls us – fear of failure, fear of insignificance and irrelevance, fear of loss, fear of rejection. All of those fears immobilize us and cause us to depend on things that cannot sustain us, which is the root cause of idolatry. When we find ourselves defeated by situations or circumstances that are more than we can handle, the temptation is to look beyond ourselves for some source help that we can touch and handle – a possession, a partnership, a political power – but the truth is that in order for us to have our deepest fears answered, we must look to the LORD, for only He alone is capable of setting us truly free. Only the presence of God in our lives can convince us that we are not failures, even when we are less than perfect, and that we are not insignificant or irrelevant, even though we are weak and not always a part of the “in” crowd, and that we are always loved, even when we don’t act so lovely.
Anne Robertson is the Executive Director of the Massachusetts Bible Society. A few years ago, she was in a church teaching a Lay Speaking class. During a morning session she got pulled out of the class because a woman had walked in off the street and needed to talk to a pastor. Leaving the class, she spent about 45 minutes with this woman whose life had hit rock bottom.
The woman’s sister told her she should go to a church. She had tried three churches before she found a door that was open. Robertson listened to her story, but knew that there was nothing in her situation that she could fix. The woman’s life was that much of a wreck because of choices she had made. So, Robertson listened and then she had prayer with the woman. The woman went home and Robertson returned to the class.
About two weeks later she got a phone call from the woman. She told Robertson that after they had met that she had not been home for 20 minutes before things began to change for the better. A friend who would not speak to her called and their relationship was now restored. Moreover, she had been able to stay away from some addictive behaviors that had been her undoing on so many previous occasions. She told Robertson, “I had always believed in God, but this was the first time in my life that God actually did anything.” She confessed that maybe she was crazy because she felt so different, so liberated, and as a result she could not stop crying tears of joy for the changes that God had brought about in her life. “What’s happening to me?” she asked Robertson. “Before I was only concerned about what others could do for me. Now, all I can think about is what I can do for others” (Anne Robertson, “Contest on Mt. Carmel,” www.annerobertson.com). “In my anguish I cried to the LORD, and He answered me by setting me free.”
Is there something in your life this morning that is broken and in need of repair? Is your life, or at least some part of it, a miserable wreck? Have you had something fall apart, or has everything just become out of focus? Then, what you need is a fresh encounter with God’s steadfast love poured out in the person of Jesus Christ. What you need is a clearer understanding of how God is ever present to help you in your hour of need. What you need is some assurance that the power of the Risen Jesus is at your disposal and that you have no reason whatsoever to be bound by your fears and anxieties.
Some years ago, Brennan Manning was interviewed by Christianity Today magazine. Manning is a former Marine and Korean War vet, who after his military service, returned to the States, enrolled in a Catholic seminary and became a Franciscan monk. In the interview, he was responding to the way so many people in America are constrained by their refusal to embrace God’s love for them in Jesus Christ. “I believe,” he explained to the interviewer, “that the real difference in the American church today is not between conservatives and liberals, fundamentalists and charismatics, nor between Republicans and Democrats.” “The real difference,” he went on to explain, “is between the aware and the unaware. When somebody is aware of the (fact) that the same love that the Father has for Jesus (he has for you), that person is spontaneously grateful…. (And) the byproduct of gratitude is joy” (Brennan Manning, “The Dick Staub Interview: Brennan Manning on Ruthless Trust,” Christianity Today, 12/10/02).
Later today, there will be fireworks and celebration and all manner of expression of gratitude and joy, as there should be. We live in a wonderful country with remarkable freedoms. But even more remarkable is the fact in spite of all the merriment and festivities, scores of people will be bound in their spirit and constrained in their souls. This day will only provide momentary relief from the fears that tomorrow will weigh them down even more.
But that doesn’t have to be your story. This world can get wild, and in our wandering through it there is often much cause to be afraid. But you can give your fears to God and in His power that raised Jesus, you too can be grateful and know the same joy that sustained the Psalmist: “In my anguish I cried to the LORD, and He answered by setting me free.”
Mercy MeSunday, June 27, 2010
You may have caught the news story that broke last month out of Northampton, MA when a female driver hit a man who was walking across a local street. It turns out the man’s legal name is “Lord Jesus Christ.” You can imagine what a field day the press had with that story. Anyway, after the accident, Christ was taken to a local hospital where he was treated for minor injuries and released. When pressed for a comment, Christ said that everything about the accident was “a part of God’s plan.” And though he never thought for a moment that the accident was intentional, he’s decided to hire a lawyer anyway (Patrick Johnson, The Republican, May 11, 2010).
Whatever happened to forgiving someone, especially if your name is “Lord Jesus Christ?”
It’s hard for any of us to answer that question, especially when you consider how difficult forgiveness comes for most of us, in spite of the fact that we call ourselves “Christian.” When I forgive someone, I am saying that I am willing to put up with an uneven score in my relationship with that person. I am willing to allow others to get by with something that cost me in a significant way. I am willing to allow them to have the last word or, as the case may be, the last laugh. And who in his right mind would ever be OK with that?
That is a more serious question today than you might imagine. According to a recent report, there are now more than 1200 published studies in the field of clinical psychology on the topic of forgiveness and there is even a non-profit foundation that has been started for further study, called “A Campaign for Forgiveness Research” (www.forgiving.org) (Newsweek, September 27, 2004). It seems that more and more people have become acutely aware of the ill effects of lugging around enormous amounts of resentment and bitterness, and are looking for a way to be rid of that emotional and spiritual burden.
And what better source is there to go to but the Lord Jesus Christ – the “real” Lord Jesus Christ, who himself prayed for his persecutors in this way: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34).
Our text this morning comes from conversations Jesus was having with his disciples over the topic how one lives out the reign of God in everyday experience. It’s one thing to talk about spiritual matters in a distant and detached way. It’s another thing to apply God’s truth to the nitty-gritty details of life – like when people have wronged us for no good reason. Evidently that was the question on Simon Peter’s mind when he asked Jesus how many times it would be necessary for him to forgive his brother. And before Jesus could answer, Peter offered a guess, “Seven times?”
It wasn’t really that bad of a guess. Most of the rabbis in Jesus’ day said that it was only necessary to forgive someone three times, perhaps working that number out from the condemnations that are leveled against the nations in the book of Amos upon the fourth transgression. By more than doubling that number, Simon Peter probably thought that he was on safe ground, until Jesus answered, “Seven? How about seventy times seven!” And then he told a parable to bring his main point home – a parable we know as “the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant,” though it might be better understood as the parable of “Don’t Forgive and See What Happens.”
The story line is pretty simple and straightforward. A king goes to collect an enormous debt from one of his subjects, who doesn’t have the money, who will never have the money, and is therefore sentenced by the king to be sold into slavery, along with his wife and children, to settle the debt – a practice which kings in the ancient world often did. The man begged and pleaded with the king, and the king was touched and forgave him every penny of his debt, enormous as it was. But no sooner was the man released that he went to another man who owed him a paltry amount of money and tried to beat the debt out of his fellow servant. Word got back to the king about what had happened, and the king was none too pleased. “You wicked servant! I canceled all your debt because I was moved with compassion. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” And in his anger he sent the servant who owed him the enormous sum back to jail to be tortured and kept locked up until he could pay what technically could never be repaid. And if that story was not enough, then Jesus delivered the application: “And this is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
What is Jesus saying? He’s saying that forgiveness is a choice we make out of our own experience with God’s forgiveness toward us. Outside of God’s grace toward us in Jesus Christ, one can never absolve someone else of personal injury or insult. No matter how much a person might see the value in doing so or even desire to do so, it simply cannot happen. It’s only when we realize how much we’ve been forgiven that we can discover the power to relieve others of the damage they have done to us, even when they haven’t asked us to.
It’s like the grandmother who was celebrating her golden wedding anniversary and was approached by her granddaughter, who was about to get married herself, for the secret to a long and happy marriage. “Oh,” she said to her granddaughter, “it goes back to my wedding day, when I decided to make a list of ten of my husband’s faults that for the sake of the marriage I would be willing to overlook.” “What were some of those faults?” the granddaughter asked. “To tell you the truth,” answered the grandmother, “I never got around to making that list. But whenever my husband did something that made me hopping mad, I would say to myself, ‘Lucky for you that’s one of the ten.’”
Some of you are here this morning and you’ve got a list made up, but it’s not of things that you are willing to overlook in others. It’s rather a list of things that you can never forget, and it is complete with the names of the people who have done those things to you. The thought of forgiving someone for the pain they may have put you through is more than you can imagine. That is, at least until you begin to understand the tremendous burden of guilt and shame that Jesus shouldered to the cross on your behalf and how by means of his shed blood, your debt has been canceled and your soul has been set free. As someone has said, “The concept of forgiveness is not so much grounded in the logic of the second chance as it is in the logic of crucifixion and resurrection” (Samuel Wells, Christian Century, 2/6/07, p.24).
If you’re a baseball fan, then what a great time of the year this is for you. The College World Series is going on. Major League Baseball has hit its stride. And if you have children or grandchildren playing ball, then you know that they’re in the midst of all-star competition.
I have known some who have contended that baseball is a game of grace. For example, a batter gets three strikes before he or she is called out. But if that is grace, there’s certainly a limit to it. You get three and only three strikes. It’s the rules of the game and there’s no way to get around it.
Anyone who has played the game knows what it’s like to get that first strike and then to know in the back of you mind that you’ve got two more chances to get on base before you have to sit down. And even if you get that second strike, the pressure goes up, but you’ve still got that one more chance. But when you get that third strike; that is the most sickening feeling a player can ever know. I still remember my last official at bat, where I struck out. 38 years ago, and I can still remember it as if it happened this morning. What I would have given for a fourth strike? I just have to put it out of my mind.
You say, “That’s silly,” and I know it is. But I don’t know that it’s as silly as the things we hold against others, especially when God has relieved us of the responsibility of having to answer for the things that we have done against Him. After all, what’s the alternative? Isn’t it to have to lug around all that negative emotion for the rest of your life? Why would you want to do that to yourself? It would be like taking poison and then waiting for the other person to die. It makes no sense at all.
Many years ago (1950), there was a movie titled, “Stars in My Crown.” It told of an elderly black man who owned a little farm outside a sleepy, southern town. Some very precious metal was discovered in the vicinity of his property, and suddenly there was pressure on him from many people in the town to sell his land, but he wouldn’t have it. The land had been in his family for many a generation.
But the people in that town wouldn’t take “no” for an answer. So, they did everything they could to make him move off his property where they could seize it. They burned down his barn. They shot through his house. They eventually threatened to hang him by sundown the next day if he would not agree to sell.
When they came the next day to receive his answer, the old man came out on the porch to meet them wearing his best clothes. He explained that he was ready to die and that he had asked the local preacher draw up for him his Last Will and Testament, which he wanted to have read the mob at that time.
The minister read the will and it soon became apparent that the man was giving everything to the people who had come to hang him. He willed the farm to the banker who was dead set on having it. He gave his rifle to another, who actually had grown up learning to hunt with it. He gave his fishing pole to another. In fact, he gave everything he owned to the people who had gathered to kill him.
The impact of the man’s heart was incredible. Seeing goodness in the face of such animosity was more than they could tolerate. One by one, in shame and humiliation, they turned away, until the entire lynch mob soon disappeared. The only people who were left were the minister and his grandson, the grandson having watched everything from a distance.
When everyone was gone, the grandson came up to his grandfather and asked, “What kind of will was that, Granddaddy?” To which the old minister answered, with a gleam in his eye, “That there, my son, was the will of God.” God wills that we forgive in the same spirit with which He in Christ forgave us.
Mercy me, you and I have a choice to make this morning – to forgive or to demand what we think we deserve. If you choose the latter, then be careful about what you are asking for. I’m not sure that you can handle what you deserve; I know I can’t. Besides, there’s a better way to live, a freer way, a more joyful way. It is the way of God, the way of grace, the way of living openheartedly toward one another, of being willing to forgive one another, which is the only way any of us can be certain of being in the center of His will.
That’s where I sure want to be. I want to be in the center of God’s will; don’t you? If so, then you know what you must do. With God’s help and by God’s grace – the same grace that saved you – you must take the risk and be willing to forgive.
Even Dads Get This RightSunday, June 20, 2010
Father’s Day
Back when I was planning sermon texts for this summer, I scoured Scripture looking for a good one for Father’s Day. And as I was doing so, a not so pleasant thought hit me – the Bible doesn’t contain many passages that put fathers in a good light; really, it doesn’t.
For those of you who have been going through Genesis with me on Wednesday nights, consider the dysfunctional behavior of all the patriarchs and their offspring – Abraham taking Isaac with him up Mount Moriah to offer him up as a sacrifice to God, Isaac being duped, “Homer Simpson-like,” out of blessing his first born by his “Bart-like” son Jacob, and then Jacob playing favorites among his twelve sons, which cost him Joseph and almost cost him Benjamin as well.
The point is that you’d be hard pressed to find any earthly father in the Bible who comes off as a paragon of virtue. Even David, a “man after God’s own heart,” finds himself having to run for his life from one of his sons, the overly ambitious Absalom.
So, where does that leave me for a Father’s Day text? What father am I to point to in order to inspire all fathers to aspire to?
Maybe the Bible’s silence on examples of godly fathers is intended to move us past human models to the one Father who always gets it right. Maybe the Bible doesn’t intend for us to glorify our earthly fathers so that we might reserve that adoration for the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. I’m not suggesting that we shouldn’t be grateful for our earthly fathers or that we should dismiss the need to show them our respect. I’m saying that the ancestor worship that has pervaded so many cultures throughout history has never been a part of the Bible’s culture. According to the Bible, everything and everyone should be careful always to point us in the direction of God.
Consider this text from Luke’s gospel. Jesus is emphasizing the importance of hanging with God in prayer and not giving up when things don’t go our way. He uses a couple of examples to encourage prayerful perseverance, one of which has to do with fathers. “Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
In other words, God is gracious beyond expectation and there is every reason for us to believe that He will hear our prayers and answer them in a way that is in our best interest. His goodness outstrips even the best of human fathers.
Annie Dillard is a Pulitzer Prize winning American author, best known for her work in narrative non-fiction. In one of her works, she writes of one Sunday when she was in attendance at a small New England church with some 20 other people. “The minister,” she writes, “is a Congregationalist and wears a white shirt. The man knows God. Once, in the middle of the long pastoral prayer of intercession for the whole world – for the gift of wisdom to its leaders, for hope and mercy to the grieving and pained, for succor to the oppressed, and for God’s grace for all – in the middle of the prayer, he stopped and burst out, ‘Lord, we bring you these same petitions every week.’ And after a shocked pause,” she says, “he continued on with his prayer. Because of this,” she goes on to conclude, “I like him very much” (Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm, Harper Collins, 1999, p.58). How amazing, when you think about it, that God graciously and patiently attends to our recurrent pleas!
I’m reminded of what William Temple, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, once said, “If your concept of God is radically false…then the worse it will be for you…. In terms of your practical life, it would be better for you to be an atheist.” The point Temple was making is that most people carry around a concept of God that portrays Him to be punitive and vengeful, a God who is always looking for His human creation to get out of line so that He can punish them. But is that what Jesus taught regarding God? I think not. Jesus transformed the conventional understanding of God from one of a remote and harsh deity to one marked by intimacy and compassion, and in particular, he spoke of the Fatherhood of God not just as a theological concept but as an intense and immediate experience that every person could know. “If you (fathers) who are evil (that is, far from consistently good), know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
In other words, God is so perfect in every expression of His love that He can be counted on not to play bad tricks on His children. God will not deceive us or disappoint us. God will not do anything to cause us to despair. It is against the nature of His Being to do so. And as a result, Jesus is teaching, God is worthy of our absolute trust, and Jesus offers us this understanding without any qualification whatsoever. Most of us here this morning know this to be true on an intellectual level, but until we come to embrace it on a relational level, then we will continually be falling short in our prayer life and giving up on God before God in His perfect timing gives us what we need most.
Eugene Peterson is a name I have mentioned before. Peterson has as good an understanding of what it means to be formed through prayer by God’s love, poured out in Jesus Christ, as any person I have read. His book, Tell It Slant, the title of which is taken from a line from an Emily Dickinson poem, (“Tell all the truth but tell it slant.”) focuses on those teachings of Jesus that relate to concrete, practical experience. In that book, he tells the story of the time he and his wife were in a Frankfurt airport waiting on their flight to Israel. Passengers from an arriving flight, most of whom were Palestinian, were coming into the reception area. A little boy, maybe four or five years of age, suddenly jumped up and ran across the large room shouting, “Abba! Abba! Abba!” – whereupon he was swept up into the receiving arms of his father.
Peterson writes, “It was the first time I had ever heard ‘Abba’ in living speech. I had read the word in the Bible. I knew that in Jesus’ mother tongue, Aramaic, it was the affectionate word for father, which would be common in family settings. I had read Mark’s account of Jesus praying in agony in Gethsemane, naming God “Abba….” I had heard the word used in sermons by pastors and explained in classrooms by professors. I had heard the word all my life, but always in a ‘religious’ setting.”
“And now,” he concluded, “I was hearing it in this depersonalized, technology-dominated airline terminal in Germany, spoken by a child I didn’t know to a man I didn’t know. The word didn’t tell me anything about the child or the father – but it told me everything I needed to know about their relationship – its immediacy, its intimacy, its joy.”
And I would say that as beautiful as the relationship obviously was between that father and that son, their relationship cannot hold a candle to the relationship Jesus invites you to have with God. God wills to be present in your life to strengthen you and encourage you. God wills to walk with you on a daily basis to guide and direct you. God wills to hear your heart’s cry and to respond to it with a grace that is sufficient for your every need, if only you will allow him to. “If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!”
On this Father’s Day weekend, please understand that I have nothing against fathers, and if you are one, I have certainly not intended to minimize your place in your family; after all, I am one as well. If you are a father who is here this morning, I would hope that you might take comfort, as I do, in the fact that some of the most important fathers in the Bible were at times less than stellar and that you might commit yourself to being the kind of father who points your family closer to Christ in terms of both your speech and your example. No, I have nothing against fathers; I am simply concerned for those scores of people who seem to have a concept of God that is vastly different from the one that Jesus offered. And on this Father’s Day Sunday, I felt led to use this opportunity to set the record straight.
So, let me try to bring everything together with a closing story, courtesy of Mike Yaconelli, a satirist I came across years ago who spent a good bit of his ministry in youth ministry. In one of his works, he talks about a game that he used to play with his two young sons. It was hide-and-seek, and the way Yaconelli would play it with his sons was that he would hide somewhere in the house and the boys would go looking for him. But the twist was that just before they would find him, he would jump out from his hiding place with a loud shout. Naturally, the boys would go running off in the opposite direction.
But one time, the boys turned the tables on their father. Just as he popped out of his hiding place, the older boy announced to the younger, “Hey! He isn’t a monster. It’s our dad!” Whereupon the boys would pounce on their father with giggles and hugs (Michael Yaconelli, Dangerous Wonder, NavPress, 1998, pp.109-10).
How do you see God? There are many ways to answer that question, but one in particular that you should be careful to avoid. He is not a monster. He is your Heavenly Father, and His desire is to have you draw near to Him and pray to Him that He might grant you His Holy Spirit so that regardless of where life takes you or how many in this world might turn against you, you will never be alone.
Knowing When to Hold 'EmSunday, June 13, 2010
In every person’s life there comes a time when you wake up to the reality that a new day has dawned. You become aware of the fact that things are no longer as they used to be; that, to paraphrase Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, “we don’t live in Kansas any more.” The playing field of life has been altered. The landscape has shifted. Certainties that you once counted on no longer hold true, and in order to remain effective, you have to learn how to adjust, and sometimes to do so “on the fly.”
I’m sure you’ve had such an experience in your personal or professional life. The map by which you had been charting your course suddenly became as useless as six-month old bread.
This is certainly been true for me with respect to my experience of how one does church. When I graduated from seminary twenty-five years ago, I had a clear sense of direction as to how to lead a church as pastor. And then, almost immediately, everything got turned upside down. Whereas the church could count on being one of the more cherished institutions in American life, and whereas the pastorate had been one of the most respected professions, almost overnight both moved to being among the most distrusted and questioned of institutions and professions.
The challenge became one of how to break through a cynical and suspicious culture with the transforming message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How do we make Christianity relevant in a time when more and more people view it as being old fashioned and out of touch?
One approach is to act as if nothing has changed and to carry on with the strategies and approaches that may have served a church well for the past thirty to fifty years. “If people are unable to appreciate the truths of Christian faith, then so be it; it’s their loss. After all, what did Jesus say? ‘Don’t give dogs what is sacred, and don’t throw pearls to swine?’” Some people are simply incapable of grasping the profundity of the Gospel message either by their own willful neglect or, as a Calvinist would contend, by God’s sovereign design.
I don’t subscribe to that approach. For one reason, it embodies a not so subtle arrogance that falls far short of the spirit of Christ, who seemed far more respectful and open to even the most marginalized and dispossessed people. And for another reason, it contradicts the larger teaching of which it is a part on being cautious about passing judgment on others.
How then do we interpret this teaching on not giving to “dogs” what is sacred and not throwing our “pearls” to “pigs?” How do we live out this instruction on knowing when to hold our faith to ourselves, particularly in a day when people don’t seem to want to hear it anyway?
I don’t think what Jesus is encouraging is any sort of reluctance to share our faith. Everywhere else in the Gospels Jesus seems to be emphasizing and even exemplifying how the good news of God’s unconditional love is something for everyone to enjoy – even the people we might classify as “dogs” and “pigs.”
I think where Jesus is going has to do with the helpfulness of our message. It’s not the worthiness of the people to whom we go that is in question. Such an interpretation would clearly be at odds with what Jesus has just said regarding judging others. I think it has to do with how we might be the most help to those who stand in need and how we might be more effective in getting them to receive what we have to say instead of having them reject it and in turn, rejecting us.
One of my favorite stories is the one about the young mother who was trying to get her young son to take some liquid medicine. The boy was being about as stubborn as a little boy can. He would close his mouth, shake his head, and even hit at the spoon containing the medicine. He had just made up his mind that he was not taking that medicine. The young mother tried everything. She pleaded, she begged, she threatened – all to no avail. Meanwhile, her mother, the boy’s grandmother, was sitting at the kitchen table watching this titanic struggle of wills.
Finally, the young mom surrendered to her son. She couldn’t take it any longer. She threw down the spoon herself and marched out of the kitchen to the bedroom, where she flung herself across the bed and broke down in tears of frustration and helplessness.
In a few minutes she heard the sound of laughter coming from the kitchen. Curious, she wiped the tears from her eyes and made her way in the direction of the laughter, only to discover that her mother, the boy’s grandmother, had amazingly solved the problem. Grandma had mixed orange juice with the medicine, put the concoction into a water pistol, and was squirting it into the mouth of her delighted grandson (James Moore, Seizing the Moments, Nashville: Dimensions for Living, 2001, p.47).
“Don’t give dogs what is sacred; don’t throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under your feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces.” Might there be another way to go about the task, particularly in a day when people seem to be recoiling from our witness?
I think there is. For one thing, I believe it’s important that today, more than at any other time in history, we listen to what people are concerned about before we share the good news of Jesus. In the “old days,” the thinking was that if you simply got out the message of Christ crucified and resurrected, that people would sign up on the spot. And that often happened because of the respect that most people had for things of faith even when they didn’t hold to them. But in this new day, another approach is called for – one that is grounded in the example of Jesus, who amazingly attracted all kinds of people who seemed to have no religious inkling whatsoever: tax collectors and prostitutes, gluttons and wine-bibbers – precisely the kind of people that Christians today might think to be beyond the pale of salvation.
But if we would but listen to them, we would find that they possess the same spiritual needs that the rest of us do – a need for purpose, a desire to belong to something greater than just themselves, a longing to be forgiven and made whole – precisely the kinds of need that Jesus by his death and resurrection came to fulfill. But in order for us to be a party to such salvation we must approach this unbelieving world with an open, non-judgmental attitude that is borne out of our own understanding that we ourselves are simply sinners saved by grace. We have our own issues that in the power of His Holy Spirit, God is working mercifully to resolve. D.T. Niles, the great Methodist evangelist of the last century, was way ahead of his time when he characterized the task of evangelism as “one beggar telling another beggar where he found bread.” How might your witness for Christ change if you began approaching others in that spirit?
For me, this teaching of Jesus plays out in today’s critical and skeptical world in two ways. One, I feel like it’s important that I count conversations as much as I count conversions. I don’t say that to minimize the importance of conversion. To be sure, that’s where we aim to get in terms of our witness. But it is to say that because people today don’t have a context for understanding the Gospel as they once did, it makes no sense to them when we press them for a decision or a commitment. It is much better for us simply to keep a conversation going so that as others begin to see how seriously the good news of Jesus addresses their deepest needs, the Spirit does a work in them that brings about a change that our most persuasive presentations could never make happen.
Which leads to the second conclusion – I would do well to recognize that the task of evangelism today is not so much about “selling” Jesus, but “showing” Jesus. It’s not just telling others about Jesus as much as it is seeking to be the presence of Jesus by the power of His presence living in me. Because the good news of Jesus is not a commodity that one “spins” and “markets,” but is much more a way of life that one pursues and seeks to mature in, we will be much more effective in our efforts for advancing the cause of Christ if we honestly and humbly reflect the difference he is making in us.
Several years ago, a major car company had their sales staff wear a button that read, “I am not a salesman!” It seems that sales surveys showed that the one thing the average potential car shopper dreaded the most about buying a new car was dealing with pushy sales people. They had come to associate the experience of buying a car with high pressure tactics and low ethical practices. And so the car company decided to emphasize a good experience over getting the customer’s name on a sales contract.
I believe that more than ever people today need Jesus. But what they don’t need is you and me standing in the way. If we’re going to look at nonbelievers as “dogs” and “pigs,” then it’s probably better that we just hold our pearls and sacred things to ourselves – at least until we begin to see those persons as God sees them. And then we can start a serious conversation about the fullness of life Jesus came to help everyone enjoy: a life of purpose, a life of wholeness, a life of unlimited and inexhaustible help, which are precisely the things that every one of us on this planet so desperately needs.
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