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Ash Wednesday—Next Wednesday, Feb. 13. The service will be at 7 in the Sanctuary.

Mardi Gras—The young adult group will gather next Tuesday, Feb. 12, for a Mardi Gras pancake breakfast. Let me know if you need details.

New Hope News

Sunday School—This Sunday, the adult class will study Acts.

At Work on Purpose—Starting February 21, there will be an evening seminar about how best to be Christians at work. If you want to learn more about the organization behind the curriculum, click here.

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Keith's Random Thoughts

There are oceans of ink spilled over the problems of the modern church in America. If we invested the same amount of energy and money in mission work that we do in studying ourselves, we'd probably have fed the world several times over.

I believe, at the end of the day, the heart of the problem with mainstream Christianity in America is that we're simply not working to fall more deeply in love with Christ each and every day of our lives. Satan has worked up a gamut of distractions for each and every one of us, and somehow we fall into these potholes day after day, and pretty soon we're so caught up with avoiding or escaping the potholes that we've lost sight of the overall vision for navigating the road of Christian life.

I'm just as guilty of this as anyone else. It's always easier to do something else, to chase some distraction or fulfill some duty, than it is to work on deepening my relationship with Christ. I fail to see that all of life is an opportunity to serve Christ while I'm working, while I'm resting or playing or doing whatever. I lose my focus, and the more often I lose my focus, the easier it is to stay unfocused.

Discipleship takes work. Faith is a gift of God, but the extent to which that faith takes hold in every aspect of life is largely determined by our willingness to let Jesus be Lord of all of life. It's easy for us to try and be in charge, and it's really difficult to let Christ be, especially when he might ask things of us that we're not willing or ready to give.

So I pray. I pray for myself and for the church, that we might focus our eyes on Christ, that our lives might be caught up in the story God is telling through us, that we might spend our hours and our days and our lives falling more deeply in love with God. I pray that this love might take hold of our hearts and minds, that we might be passionately in love with Christ, letting him use us in whatever do for his glory alone.

Text for this Sunday

John 13:34-35

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

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Luke 7:11-17

Dear Luke,

I respect the dedication with which you tackle these questions of faith.  But I believe you are putting the proverbial cart before the horse in some respects.  Not that I want to discard your curiosities about how difficult faith must be, but you’re thinking through this in such a cerebral manner that you’re forgetting that what Jesus asks of his followers is a conversion of the heart; this change then leads the Christian out into the world and transforms their actions.  What Jesus takes the Pharisees to task for is the fact that they have the actions without the heartfelt passion for God.  What you are wrestling with (rightly, I believe) is the enormity of the life of the disciple—but I have found that those who choose to follow Jesus find many of these actions easier because their hearts have been transformed by a love of God, and once that transformation happens, it’s easier to undertake actions that might otherwise not make sense.

Perhaps I’m not wording this well, but your motivations in life change when you make the decision to follow Christ.  The way I see the world is different because I have chosen to be a disciple, and in so doing many of the things you are struggling with are not as much of a struggle because I believe that my life has been changed by selfless love, and I should therefore share selfless love.  I’m not saying that it’s easy to love my enemies, and it’s often a tremendous challenge to follow the commands of Christ, but I’m not often in a position of rationalizing it according to the standards of the world and the life I used to know; I often just do it, knowing that it’s the loving thing to do and trusting that it’s what Christ would have me do, even if it doesn’t always make complete sense to the outsider.

I hope this clarifies some of the questions you are asking.  I know that it may not, but I want you to understand that once your heart has been transformed by the incredible love of God, it will change the way you see the world and the way you act towards your family, your friends and even your enemies.  It changes us, Luke, and just because you can’t necessarily make sense of it now doesn’t mean you’ll always struggle with it, and just because it seems daunting now doesn’t mean that it will always intimidate you so.

New life is given to those who choose to follow Jesus, and throughout Jesus’ ministry he proved himself capable of reviving life within those who have passed away.  It’s an amazing miracle that surely astounded the masses, but I find it just as incredible as the times that he restored life to a heart that was dead in faith—for I believe that such a gift provides everlasting benefits, while the revival of life will only sustain the individual until death comes near once more. 

Such an event happened in the town of Nain.  With all the miracles Jesus performed, there wasn’t much chance of Jesus going anywhere without an entourage.  The disciples and a large crowd accompanied him there, and near the town gate a dead man was being carried out.  They soon learned that it was the only son of a widow, meaning that this widow would have no worldly support now.  Her situation was desperate, and the large crowd from the town must have had an extra dose of sorrow as they grieved the loss of her son. 

Jesus, moved by compassion for such a situation as this, went to the widow and said a strange thing to her:  Don’t weep.  It’s not the type of thing we would expect to say to a woman deep in mourning, but Jesus has a way of providing hope when there appears to be none.  Just as he gives any believer hope in the face of death, he offers this woman hope, even though it is not apparent that there is any for her. 

From this he went and touched the bier, a strange thing for any Jewish man to do, for such an act would make him unclean and surely brought a hushed silence to the crowd.  Those who knew of Jesus’ acts may have been expecting a miracle while others probably assumed that the man was just crazy.  They didn’t have much time to draw their conclusions because Jesus soon spoke directly to the bier, saying, “Rise, young man.”

Jaws must have dropped at the sound of Jesus speaking such words to a dead man, and I wonder if even those who knew the incredible power of Jesus dared to believe that such a thing could happen.  The woman must have been confused, wondering if the charade existed merely to deepen her pain, but amazingly enough, the young man sat up and began to speak.

His words were lost, drowned in the wave of noise that enveloped the town. I believe that some fainted, while the widow somehow managed to maintain her balance—but she did not find words to describe her great joy.  Her life, too, had been restored, and when Jesus handed the boy to her there was not a dry eye in the crowd as they watched her wrap that boy in an embrace.  Jesus could not help but beam in joy as he watched restoration unfold before him, and people could scarcely believe what they had just witnessed.

Before long the crowd’s emotions turned to fear, for the amazing power of Jesus was apparent to all.  They began to glorify God for rising a prophet up in their midst, and they cried out with joy that God’s favor shined down on his people.   Reports about Jesus continued to spread throughout Judea and everywhere else—you can’t expect people to keep quiet about a scene, and so often the conversation was focused on Jesus rather than the scene that took place.  There were more opinions about him than anyone could have counted, because so many struggled to understand just who he was.

You and I are in the same place today, Luke.  We have the reports of the amazing things Jesus has done.  We have heard about the incredible restoration that has gripped the hearts and minds of believers throughout history and in our world today—we have seen people so gripped by the power of Jesus they were scarcely able to speak.  We have seen people come back from situations that were like death, from addictions and other imprisoning situations.  They come back to the amazement of all, thanks to the restoring power of Jesus.  While my story is not as dramatic, I can say with confidence that I am restored to life, that I have found abundant and rich and everlasting life in Jesus, and my heart beats with joy at the thought of his name.  But there are many different opinions, and each must decide for themselves whether they will choose to be a disciple.  They must choose or not to fall in love with him, and let Jesus raise them to new life.  May your own decision become clear as we continue.

Sincerely,

Theophilus

Luke 7:1-10

Dear Theophilus,

I’ve read your last three letters time and time again, and to say that I feel completely overwhelmed would be an understatement.  I feel like a child watching it snow for the first time—the landscape around me is dramatically changing into something unrecognizable, something beautiful, but it’s hard to make sense of it all.  It’s the same world, yet Jesus is urging the crowd to see it differently.  I can’t think of the last time I’ve heard teaching so radical; this sounds like the kind of teaching a leader would do if he wanted the crowd to throw their hands up in frustration and walk away, secure in the knowledge that they could never live up to this standard.  Other religious leaders in our day will often teach a watered-down religion to make it easy for outsiders to believe, but Jesus begins with a high bar and continues to raise it.  As one of those outsiders, I am intimidated and yet impressed with Jesus.  He expects the lives of those who follow him to be dramatically different than the lives of others in the community.  I don’t always see that with his followers today, but I can understand how Christians might inch away from the strictness of these demands—they are nearly impossible to follow.  Making a commitment to follow Christ with integrity is a lifetime’s worth of work and should challenge and believer each and every day to grow.  I don’t know how you do it, Theophilus.

I have news of a story that you will find interesting.  It’s a rather curious story, and it continues to challenge what I presume to know about Jesus.  His life seems to be about reaching out to people whom we might not consider worthy of religious attention, and time and time again he demonstrates that he has come to bring everyone together as his disciples.  Every act on earth serves a singular purpose—to gather people in, to bring them together, so they might follow him.  I have a hard time thinking of another individual who acted with such clarity while upsetting the expectations that many of the leaders of the day had for him.  The Pharisees would surely shudder at individuals Jesus spent time with, but that may teach us more about the Pharisees than it does about Jesus.

Upon completion of this sermon, which you have summarized well in three letters but could occupy the remainder of our lives if we decided to parse it and determine how it might guide our lives in today’s world, Jesus went to Capernaum and was met by some Jewish elders whom a centurion, an officer in the Roman army, had sent for the purpose of requesting Jesus to come heal a highly valued slave who was ill and near death.  It’s curious to think of these Jewish elders doing this for this centurion, but they asked Jesus to do this deed, offering proof of his worthiness by telling Jesus about his love for the people and how he built the synagogue for them.  You can imagine them surrounding Jesus, beseeching them to heal this slave, and Jesus assenting to the request.

Before we leap to the imagined conclusion of the story, the centurion sent friends out to see Jesus, intercepting him before he made it to the house.  These friends, too, had a message for Jesus.  They interceded on behalf of the centurion, who implored Jesus not to trouble himself to come to the centurion’s house, for he felt unworthy of having Jesus under his roof.  This, too, was the reason he never came to see Jesus.  The friends relayed the centurion’s request to have Jesus merely speak the word and have the slave be healed, for he understood authority.  The centurion could send his soldiers here and there and they went at his command, and he believed that Jesus had the same power. 

While this all may make sense to us, and we may marvel at the humility of the centurion, a man of power and authority who probably didn’t defer to many people like this, it’s what Jesus says next that makes the story stick with me.  Jesus has so many of these sentences that are not what I expect and force me to turn them this way and that to make sense of them, to try and grasp what the man is saying.  Here, Jesus turns to the crowd that is following him, to those who have not given up despite the difficult commands of the previous sermon, and tells them that he has not found such faith even in Israel! 

At that, I bet the disciples were pretty hot!  Can you picture what it would be like to follow Jesus for years, to give up everything to learn at the man’s knee, and then to hear that some centurion who has his friends come and ask for a slave to be healed has greater faith?  It would be quite a blow to my ego, for sure! 

But I think Jesus is addressing the man’s complete trust in Jesus’ power.  He believes that Jesus has authority over heaven and earth in the same way that he has authority over those under his military command.   There is a trust implied in the way the centurion has gone about all of this, and I think Jesus wants this trust to be instructive for those listening.  We’ve already found that Jesus isn’t willing to coddle those who choose to listen, in the hopes that they might also choose to follow, and Jesus doesn’t want those following him to make half-hearted commitments.  He wants complete and total trust, abandonment to the things that hold individuals back from faith.

You can see how daunting this is for me, Theophilus.  The more I learn of Jesus, the more I realize just how big a commitment to him is.  I don’t want to make a half-hearted effort, and I don’t want to be like the Pharisees, religious people who have hearts that are far from Jesus.  Jesus wants his followers to have a deep, transformative faith, and it’s difficult for me to look at my life and imagine it changing.  I’m comfortable, and yet I will readily admit a spiritual hunger dwells within me.  I just don’t know if I want this hunger to change my life so drastically.  Once I sit down to eat at the table with Jesus, it doesn’t sound like I can get up and wander away freely to pursue many of the things I want to do with my life, and that intimidates me.  I have always believed that faith is not easy, that Christianity is not a decision to be made lightly, but until this exchange I don’t think I realized just how difficult it would be.

Any illumination on the issue would be appreciated!

Sincerely,

Luke

Luke 6:43-49

Dear Luke,

I hope that my last two letters have not overwhelmed you with material to consider.  I believe that Jesus Christ is the Messiah and every word of his is worthy of a lifetime of consideration—and yet, in my last two letters I have given you so much to chew on that you may well be exhausted.  I hope you have room for more, because with Jesus, we can always go farther, deeper, in our explorations of his teachings and his life.  There is no end of the incredible riches of God, and I pray that my letters point you in that direction.

To conclude his sermon on the plain, Jesus has two sections that make sense to anyone, even people who have little or no faith.  I don’t find this nearly as challenging as the part about loving your enemies, but I find it hard to put into practice, especially in a world that constantly demands our attention be focused on new products, new opportunities, and at times insults those of us who choose another path.

Jesus begins the first section discussing fruit trees.  I have never grown fruit trees, and while I know little about them, I know much about the product!  Jesus teaches that bad fruit cannot come from good trees, just as a bad tree will not produce good fruit.  It makes sense, and for those of us who do not know trees, we can judge the health of the tree based upon the product—if it is good fruit, then the tree must be good.  Jesus talked about how figs and grapes aren’t gathered from thorns or brambles, and he wants us to understand that good people do good things because their hearts are good, just as bad people produce evil because of the condition of their hearts.  In other words, however our hearts are tuned, that will directly affect what kind of produce our lives emit—our hearts overflow into our actions.  People can judge the condition of our hearts based upon our actions.

This may seem like common sense to you, but remember that Jesus was teaching to a crowd of people who had a religion based primarily on sacrifices and other actions that made them right with God.  It wasn’t necessarily a religion of the heart, and Jesus was trying to shift their thinking to understand that they needed to be in love with God first, and then that love would overflow into the rest of their lives.  I think those who decide to follow Jesus have to be willing to make the same heartfelt commitment.  It can’t just be about saying the right prayer and showing up at the right time for a service; it needs to be a commitment that swallows up one’s life and one’s heart so that every single action testifies to the condition of one’s heart.

Jesus continues to describe his true followers, mostly because he is frustrated at those who call him Lord but do not do his bidding.  I’m sure that you, too, would be frustrated if people claimed to follow you and then went out and betrayed you by their actions.  As an illustration of someone who acts upon the teachings of Jesus, he lifts up a man who digs a deep foundation for his house and sets it upon the rock, so that when the storms rage and the floods rise and burst against the house, the house does not tremor because of the quality of its foundation.  In contrast, the one who builds a home with no foundation will be ruined when his house falls because the river bursts against it. 

A life of faith is about making a big commitment and following Jesus with your whole heart.  Those who do the minimum, who cut corners and refuse to hand over the keys to their heart will falter in times of trial and fail to testify to the Lordship of Jesus.  Those who truly follow him will offer up everything to God, and as a result each corner of their life will tell God’s story of love and salvation, so that others may then learn about God.

Think about it, Luke—if you were going to build a house, and you watched this flood rise against these two houses, which man would you go to for construction tips?

In the same way, we look to those with strong faith and model our own faith after that.  God’s glory is spread by those who have committed everything to doing God’s will.

I believe this is a good way to end this sermon.  Jesus wraps up everything with two images that make sense to the listener.  You and I can hear them many years later and still grasp exactly what he was talking about—that any decision of faith needs to be made not simply with the hands or the feet but with the heart, so that the whole life is offered.  A follower of Jesus needs to be passionately in love with God and radically dependent upon him, so that the whole story of life is told through the lens of faith.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this series of letters, and I pray that it has given you plenty to consider in your exploration of Jesus’ life and work.

Sincerely,

Theophilus