Hmmmmmmmmmmmm....

  Looks like things are going to get a bit more interesting at the Jones household on or about September 10!

  Here's the thing that amazes us--when we had the ultrasound done a few weeks back, Rachel was 6.5 weeks pregnant.  Now, they start counting from the end of the last menstrual cycle, meaning that the egg and sperm hadn't started their construction project more than 4.5 weeks before the scan.  In that time, God managed to put together something the size of a grain of rice, and that little grain of rice has a heart that beats 126 times every minute.

  I cannot contemplate that without getting lost in wonder and awe.  How tiny and intricate that all must be.  How wondrous it all is.  It simply amazes me.

  There are all sorts of things to ponder--such as introducing Caleb to the idea that he will not longer have complete control over his parents and everyone else in his world, houses and minivans, etc., but right now, we're good with just wonder.  The rest will come in time.

Luke 6:27-42

Dear Luke,

I hope that my last letter has kept your mind (and your heart) occupied until now.  I will now continue relating to you the things that Jesus taught in his lesson from the plain.  The teachings of Jesus don’t get any easier—if anything, they only get more difficult.  Unfortunately, for those of us who chose to follow him, we cannot discard the ones we find objectionable or too difficult.  These, too, must be considered as instructional for life as a Christian, whether they are easy or not.  For those who seek to paint Christianity as a simple decision or a prayer, these teachings of Jesus contradict that simplicity and challenge the disciple to a lifetime’s worth of work.

After Jesus finished his teaching about the blessing of those the world regards with pity, if the world regards them at all, and the woe that will be poured upon those who are typically envied by society, Jesus transitions to quite possibly the most challenging thing I have ever heard from a teacher:  he instructs all those who listen to love their enemies, to do good things to those filled with hate for you, to offer blessings in reply to curses and to pray for those who abuse you.  (I am making the assumption that the prayer is supposed to contain something more than a prayer for a swift and sudden end for enemies, like you or I might pray!)

There is no simple way around this, Luke.  It’s not a teaching that we can discard or torture another meaning out of, and it’s not from a man who didn’t have any enemies, either.  This is, plain and straightforward, difficult teaching.  This world, from time immemorial, has taught that the way to get ahead is to defeat one’s enemies.  There should be no mercy, no thought given to those that oppose us.  Even to those who choose not to be the aggressor, there is little thought given to what happens when one is attacked—there should be reprisal.  It doesn’t have to be extreme, but there needs to be no defense given when one repels an attack with violence to match violence—this is common sense in the eyes of the world. 

But in the eyes of Jesus, even this is too much.  We are to meet hatred with good, vile actions with love.  Jesus is leading us into a completely alternative way of life, and if we’re to follow him seriously, we have to begin imagining what life looks like under Jesus’ reign, for it isn’t just a holier version of this life.  It’s something different, something bigger, something dramatically alternative to how we do things here.  Our witness as Christians is to be complete, highlighted by the way we treat those who oppose us.  Imagine what kind of witness this would be to the world—people would certainly talk about us if we matched hatred with love.  It would show that our hearts are tuned differently and march to a different drumbeat. 

It’s crazy, but Jesus goes on to say that anyone who strikes you on one cheek should be offered the other, and if someone takes a coat the shirt underneath should be offered as well.  A man should give to anyone who begs, and if things are taken, we shouldn’t even ask for them back!  Jesus instructs us to treat others as we would want to be treated.

It’s madness, Luke, but yet at the heart of it, it makes sense.  It’s a test of how true our hearts are, of how attached we are to this world.  It’s easy to love those who love us, and even the vilest people we know can do that.  But if our hearts are truly focused on Christ, then we will love our enemies, do good deeds and lend to those even from whom we expect nothing in return.  It makes a statement, Luke, you have to admit this—anyone, even the nastiest sinner, will lend to someone whom they expect to pay them back richly.  There is no credit given to someone who does good to those who do good in return.  But those who treat their enemies like beloved brothers, those who give freely even when they expect nothing back, they’re displaying a different ethic and modeling a depth of love that you or I can only fathom.  It shows off God’s love, Luke—for God gives us love even though we often give nothing in return, and God gives us gifts when we often deserve destruction.  We can turn our backs on God, but God never does the same to us.  For this we should rejoice, and it’s a fair question to ask whether we should display the same type of selfless love that is given to us by God.  In our selflessness, we will be rewarded, Jesus says, and that we will be children of God, for God is kind to those who don’t deserve it, even the wicked and those who are ungrateful.  We should display the same mercy that God does, whether or not it makes sense to the world. 

Luke, this is difficult teaching.  We are in deep water now, and there is no going back.  I know you are weighing the matter carefully, but you cannot exclude this or pretend that the decision to follow Jesus does not include these sayings of Jesus, no matter how much the heart may struggle with them.  If you are to make a decision to follow Christ, it must be one that invades every corner of the heart and changes the way we live and see the world. 

Jesus instructs us not to judge, for we will not be judged, and we who are often so quick to condemn should restrain, for we will not be condemned.  It is so easy to pick out the worst, the dregs of society and cast them out, but even they should be considered worthy of our love.  We who are free to forgive will be forgiven, and those who give generously will receive.  Imagine a reward, a cup running over, placed into your lap—for if you live a life that gives freely, this same reward will find its way back to you.

This part at least makes sense, for it includes parts about us receiving gifts, and in our society we love to give so that we’ll receive in return, but Jesus isn’t trying to motivate us with a carrot held before us.  He’s trying to teach us about God’s love, and helping us see that we who pledge to follow God must be willing to pour out the type of love that is poured into us if we are truly going to be disciples.  This decision is not one to be taken lightly, Luke, and it will change life forever.  How can you promise to adhere to such teachings and then disregard them later?  And yet, many do.

Jesus painted an image with his words to help us see—imagine a blind person, leading another blind person.  Both would fall into the pit, right?  The idea is absurd, and yet if we are not leading a life of discipleship, we can’t expect to help others find their way to Christ.  Those who are truly following will be able to aid the disciples—we will never be above Christ, but we can live like him if we listen and obey. 

Instead, we often get so wrapped up in the problems of others.  We’re so busy correcting them that we fail to watch out for our own behavior.  It’s like trying to take out a speck of dust in a neighbor’s eye while a branch is blocking our own vision, only we fail to notice the obstruction in our own eye.  Only when we first stop and examine ourselves so that we may live correctly are we free to aid our neighbor. 

Luke, I am not yet finished with this teaching from the plain, yet I feel as though I have given you more than enough for one letter.  If we examined each sentence there would not be enough paper to contain all the wisdom Jesus conveyed, and yet we must press onward, that the story may move forward and your own investigation may find the truth within.  Look forward to another letter soon.

Sincerely,

Theophilus

Sermon for 2-3-13

Jeremiah 31:31-34
  The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
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How many of you want more mature faith?  Stronger faith?  More faith?

We all do, right?  We want our faith to grow, to take over our lives, so that the love of God is coursing through our veins at all times.  We want to be tuned in to the reality of Christ’s love and grace.  We want our every waking moment to be wrapped in the love of God.

And, being Americans, being take charge people, we want to know how to do this, how to get there.  We want clear steps, concise directions.  We know the destination, and we want the book or the guidance on how to get there.  We want 40 days of purpose or 10 steps to grace or whatever the path is… we want to obtain this.

Today, I’m going to tell you how to get there.  I’m going to tell you how to do this.  And you may not be happy about it.

Yesterday, Rachel and I got into an airplane in Miami, where it was much warmer than it is here.  We spent a lovely week in the Florida Keys, but home beckoned, and so north we traveled. 

Flying is an extraordinary thing.  Humans have been trying to fly ever since we’ve noticed that birds can soar on the air.  Artwork from centuries ago indicate that humans came up with various contraptions to aid in flight, some of them more successful than others.  We eventually devised a machine capable of aiding us in our flight, but even though the plan can fly, humans cannot.  Were I to have jumped out of the airplane yesterday, it might appear as though I was flying, but in fact I would just be falling.  With style, hopefully, but we cannot escape the clutches of gravity without machinery.

Now, I do believe it’s possible for God to make humans fly.  We have record that the Holy Spirit spent some time in Acts snatching people up and whisking them from one place to another.  We know that Jesus ascends into the heavens, and both Enoch and Elijah ascended directly into heaven.  Without God’s help, however, humans cannot fly.

This doesn’t stop us from assembling the appropriate mechanical devices, however, to get us around by flying.  But we’re not doing the flying.

This isn’t so different than our faith.  Faith is a gift of the Holy Spirit.  We cannot manufacture it by our own accord.  We can’t create faith any more than we can flap our wings and fly.  Only God can create faith in the heart—it is a gift of God, given freely, that we cannot make. 

What humans tend to do, however, is convince ourselves that faith is our own work.  Just as we create airplanes that make us think we’re doing the flying, we often create a faith that fools us into believing it is something we have done.  We think we’ve built our faith.  We think faith depends on us.  We think we have to earn it, have to lead the proper life so that God will love us.  We get anxious because then we believe that it all depends on us.  We worry because when we mess up, as we inevitably do, that God then takes away our faith.  We talk about backsliding and falling away from God, as though we could ever be separated from the God who promises us that even death itself shall not separate us from him.

So we make faith about ourselves, rather than God.

Faith, my friends, is a work of the Holy Spirit.  It is a gift of God.  You cannot build it.  You cannot create it.  You cannot think it into being, and you cannot take a 10 step program to obtain it.  You can only accept it.

Three weeks ago, we talked all about God’s kindness.  We concluded with the idea that God pours his kindness out upon us not to make much of us, but rather to lead us to repentance, to help us see that we should be living for God.  Two weeks ago we focused on repentance, on the idea that our lives should be about turning back to God and turning away from our sins.  Today, we’re talking about what happens after we repent. 

After we’ve turned back to God, then it’s about trusting God to do a work in us.  This is the work of the Holy Spirit within us, and it’s a work that takes our whole lives.  Now, I’m not going to stand here and say that we don’t have a part to play in this—but I am going to stand here and say that this is primarily the work that God does in us.  God leads us through our lives, transforming us into a certain kind of people if we will let him do his work. 

This is the key—we have to be willing to trust God enough to let him do a work in us.  We have to be willing to get out of the way, to stop trying to do everything ourselves, and to let his grace and his love flow in us and through us.  It’s about letting God mold us into the type of people God wants us to be.  To do this properly, we need to let go of our preconceived ideas, to let go of our assumptions about how life should go, and to let God be in control.  To do otherwise is like hiring a guide to lead you through the wilderness and then storming off on your own, insisting that your expert guide ought to follow your advice.  It’s like taking a magic marker to the Bible and telling God that he could learn a few things from you.  When have to be willing to turn everything over to God, to let him mold us and shape us, to trust him enough to lead us in the direction that he wants us to go.  This is God’s work, not our own.  We can cooperate or not—that is our choice, but it is primarily God’s work first.

God talks about this in Jeremiah—God talks about writing the covenant on the hearts of the people.  He says that he’ll write the covenant there, and they’ll all know him.  He’ll forgive all their sins, and they won’t remember their sins—not because of what they have done, but because of what he has done.  In Hosea, God talks about how he’ll be the dew, and he’ll shower his delight and life upon the people, and they will blossom in beauty.  In Revelation, Jesus says that he stands at the door and knocks, and those who invite him in will dine with the Lord and Savior.  It is God who approaches the door.  It is God who writes upon our hearts.  It is God who transforms.

Friends, our faith is a work of God.  We have a role to play, but we cannot be in control.  We must trust God enough to let him lead.  We must accept that we cannot make our own faith, we cannot create it, and we cannot make ourselves mature in faith.  Only God can do this. 

So let us cast ourselves entirely upon the mercy of God.  Let us accept our limitations, trust in his mercy and grace, and let him do a work in our lives.  God wants a beautiful future for us, but we must let him grow us into it.  We are not in control, and that is a wonderful thing.  We are in far better hands than our own!

Let us pray 

Luke 6:20-26

Dear Luke,

You raised an interesting question in your letter about how I might spend a night in prayer.  To be honest, I’m not sure I could do it.  I’d like to do it—but I know myself well enough to know that I’d be asleep by eleven pm, and my mind would have spent the previous hour wandering all over the world, everywhere but where I intended it to rest.  I would like to be in love with God, to have the type of relationship with God that was life-giving and energizing.  I’d love to wake up every morning refreshed and excited to spend another day with God—but a life of faith is difficult.  Some days it’s easier than others.  I’m not going to pretend that I have it all together every day, or that it will be any easier for you, Luke, but I do believe that I grow a little each day, and that the struggle is worthwhile.  I am being formed as a disciple, and while I still have a long way to go, God is at work in me.  I think I am one of the disciples in the crowds to which Jesus addressed so much teaching.  He acknowledges their desire but continues to challenge them to grow.  None of us have it completely figured out, and while some hearts may be purer than others, we are each growing in faith. 

In so much of Jesus’ teaching, he is calling the disciples to a higher level of discipleship than we could have imagined.  He paints the kingdom of God as a place very different than this world.  It’s hard for us to imagine what that is like, even when Jesus brings his palette and brushes and paints us a picture.  We’re so accustomed to this world that we have trouble adjusting our vision to make room for such an outlandish view of life.  I think Jesus is describing heaven, but I also believe he’s encouraging us to live in such a way that makes earth similar to heaven.  I don’t think he expects us to do it perfectly, but we’re supposed to strive to live out his vision of life now, not simply sit back and wait for God to come and make all things right.  I think God is at work now, and we’re supposed to join in and help in everything we do.   Again, though—this takes a heart focused on Christ alone, and not many people have that.  The church does alright sometimes, but often we get wrapped up in things that don’t matter as much as loving others does.

I am glad to report that I have some of Jesus’ teachings from the plain that you were missing.  I will not promise that they are easy to deal with—they challenge much of what we would claim to be societal wisdom.  While this life seems to be about getting ahead, Jesus is busy teaching us that we need to be concerned with things of a different flavor.  He’s calling us to think completely differently about how we approach life, and I wonder how many wandered off not long after this sermon began, believing that the vision Jesus cast of society was impossible to fulfill.

For example, Jesus begins with telling the disciples that the poor are blessed, for theirs is the Kingdom of God.  Now, you or I would wonder what it is that makes the poor blessed.  We often look down on the poor and pass them by without giving them a second thought.  Even if we believed them to be blessed, we certainly wouldn’t be handing over the keys to God’s Kingdom to them.  We’d reserve that for those who live religiously exemplary lives, and perhaps those wealthy donors who make much of the church possible.  We’d wonder what the poor have done to earn their share!

But Jesus seems to continue to turn things upside-down, to challenge our conventional wisdom and make us examine the way that we are living.  Jesus doesn’t want us to wander into the church and close the door on the world—he wants the church to make us examine our lives and go out into the world and lead a life that proclaims a different type of ethics. 

For example, Jesus teaches that the ones who are hungry now are blessed, for they will be filled.  Jesus doesn’t explain exactly what this means, but he offers this piece of wisdom that goes completely against the grain.  We usually have a set of ideas about the hungry, if we bother to take the time to think about them at all, and it’s not necessarily a sympathetic one.  Often, we lay the blame at their feet, but Jesus doesn’t address root causes and blame; he merely offers the nugget that they will be filled, and leaves us to figure out how to live in light of that truth.

He does the same for people who are weeping, explaining that they will laugh later, just as people who are hated, excluded and reviled because of the Son of Man, will have a reward in heaven, just as the prophets who were hated did; there will be leaping for joy in their future.

You and I and all of society may say that this doesn’t make sense, but I think it does, Luke.  It makes sense to God and explains the way God sees the world.  God doesn’t look for the wealthiest and the highest in society to reward further, but rather rewards those with the purest hearts.  God judges the poor and the outcast based on the quality of riches in their hearts, rather than the quantity of money in their pocketbooks.  We should rejoice that God is so generous, but there is an element of warning in Jesus’ teaching, too, and I think many probably recoiled at the thought!

Just imagine what the rich, believing that all of life’s problems were fixable with enough money, though when Jesus promised them woe, for their consolation had already come to them.  Or picture the faces of the full, who are promised that they will be hungry.  Jesus said that those who laugh will one day weep, and those who have good reputations will suffer the fate of false prophets.  It’s not a pretty picture, Luke, but Jesus paints it for a reason—I believe it’s because God wants us to value different things than society does.  Jesus wants us to measure people by their heart, to know whether they are living a life that seeks Jesus in everything, rather than just judging one another by profits and wealth.  I won’t pretend to say that the church always does this in exemplary fashion, but we should strive to do so.  We should live by these standards that God elevates, rather than simply going along with what the world tells us is important.

I am sure this sermon of Jesus’ gives you plenty to think about for the moment, Luke.  The good news is that I am much more of this sermon in various sources, and I will be glad to relay it to you.  None of it is easy, honey for the ears, but I think it’s necessary for you to understand that Jesus didn’t come for himself.  If he’d come to lay claim to a role of power, he would have spoken very differently, but he has come to challenge the hearts and minds of people, and that is part of the reason I believe he is the Son of God and worship him as such—because he wasn’t in this for fame and renown, but rather to correct and guide the people for eternal life, life that begins not just after death, but rather starts now.

Look forward to my next letter, for it will follow this one soon.  I do not doubt this will give you plenty to think of between now and then.

Sincerely,

Theophilus