Luke 14 :: We Follow Someone

Luke 14

In Chapter 14, Luke recounts 4 stories from Jesus' travels.  Jesus would mix in parables, stories with meaning behind the obvious, as he taught those around him  He would use parables get something through the thick skulls of those who he was teaching.

He starts with his fourth teaching about the importance of people over the Sabbath - the holy day for the Jews, where they were to do no work at all.  He then tells two stories about meals, or banquets.  In the first story, Jesus is actually at a meal, while the second is a parable about a great banquet.  The point is clear in both stories, Jesus holds a special place in his heart for those who are misfits that have been humbled in their lives.  The ones who fight their way to the place of honor have no place in this new kingdom he is inviting us into.  The fourth story is a story of commitment - the story itself contains Jesus' use of two parables.  A man building a house, first counts the cost of the house, or he will not be able to finish it and people will laugh at him.  The same goes for king going into battle, he will first count the cost of the battle before going to war.  Our commitment to the Father, our following Jesus, is not something that we lightly venture into.  We cannot flippantly enter into this life because the life is bigger than just an accoutrement to our own version of our lives.  Following Jesus is a holistic life-change that requires our total attention and total devotion.

What do these stories say about this man, Jesus, whom we are following?  What things do we see are important to him, and therefore should be important to us?  Remember, we are not simply following a system of beliefs, but a person.  First century Christians were not called Christians, but were referred to as "people of the way."  If we are to follow Jesus, we will be known as people who have adopted a certain way of living that is counter-cultural to our me-centered world we live in today.  We follow Someone who valued helping people over observing religious ritual.  Someone who valued humility over prestige or accomplishment.  Someone who cherished the poor over the prominent.  Someone who valued the mission more than the material.  Someone who wants his house full and will stop at nothing to see that happen, even if he has to amend his guest list.  Someone who values giving without getting.  Someone who understands the value of careful consideration, rather than flippant following of others.  Are you listening to this?  Really listening? (34)

We follow Someone.

Acts 27 :: Shipwreck

Acts 27 in the Message and TNIV translations

Two things strike me in this chapter, so I want to mention them both today...

Leading Up
Although Paul is a prisoner on the ship, he still sounds authoritative every time Luke quotes him.  He's giving advice to his captors, warning them, encouraging them, expressing confidence in God--not the kind of behavior one would expect from a prisoner.  And apparently his captors listen.  In fact, for the last several chapters, Paul has spent most of his time with people in authority over him.  Yet he has their attention. He is subject to them, but is still influential.

How are you at "leading up"?  Do you live a life before those in authority over you that earns their attention and respect, and encourages them to consider your God?

God's Will as a Closed Door
By Paul's own testimony, this trip to Rome was God's plan for him.  He was supposed to go there.  Why, then, was the trip so difficult and dangerous?  The weather won't cooperate, the centurion won't cooperate, the crew tries to abandon ship, the crew considers killing the prisoners...good grief, what a list.  When I think about the times I'm trying to discover God's plan for my life, I often look for "open doors" and "closed doors."  Open doors are opportunities or directions in which it seems the obstacles have been removed, and I conclude God is leading me in that direction.  If I apply that strategy to Paul's journey, the whole thing is one giant closed door.  Yet, Paul continues with certainty that God is leading him.  He wasn't looking at the closed door, but the size of the opportunity.  God was giving him audiences with the most powerful people in the world.  This perilous journey will bring the gospel to Rome, the power center of the world.  I think Paul was willing to beat the door down to follow God's will.

Per Aspera, Ad Astra. "Over rough paths to the stars."  Sometimes the very best and very greatest opportunities of our lives lie on the other end of very paths, filled with obstacles.  Only those with the core virtue of Faithfulness endure those paths, or are even willing to walk them.  Sometimes God calls us to attack the closed door, take the rough path, and steel our resolve to follow His will.

Acts 12 :: Showdown

Acts 12 in the Message and TNIV translations

Why do the nations rage

and the peoples plot in vain?

The kings of the earth rise up

and the rulers band together

against the Lord

and against his anointed one.

Psalm 2:1-2

Back in Acts 4, the church prayed these words from Psalm 2 as they celebrated the release of Peter and John.  You could see the showdown coming.  Finally, in chapter 12, Herod went too far, and God demonstrated that you don't want to get into a duel with him.

This chapter paints some vivid word pictures.  Peter's secret-agent angel who makes chains fall off and locked doors open by themselves, and walks Peter right past the guards without them noticing -- the original Jedi mind trick!  Rhoda the servant who, in her excitement, leaves Peter standing outside the door.  Even in the midst of life-and-death situations, there is some comic relief!  Then comes the dark comedy: Herod, sitting on his throne, wearing his royal garb and basking in his own glory, struck down by God for accepting praise reserved for God alone (ironically, the very thing for which Jesus was crucified).  I'm just speculating here, but maybe he had worms and that was the physical cause of death.  It's poetic justice, and Eugene Peterson does a great job of drawing it out in the Message translation of the text: "Rotten to the core, a maggoty old man if there ever was one, he died."  As his heart and soul became increasingly corrupt, his physical body was literally being eaten out from the inside, and in God's timing he falls apart.  No purple robe or king's throne would ultimately hide the truth.  He tried to save his "life"--his power, his influence and affluence--and he lost it all.

True Christianity has never been a political movement.  Jesus himself was emphatic about this despite a lot of pressure to the contrary and the persistent misconceptions of his own disciples.  However, Christianity by its very nature is a threat to rulers and authorities who want to hold God's place in the hearts and lives of people.  They have always attacked Christ and Christians, even to this day, and they have always lost.  Christianity brought down Herod, then the Roman Empire, then a whole list of tyrants and governments over 2,000 years of human history--not militarily or politically, but by capturing the hearts and souls of men and women.  Christianity still advances today in countries where it is illegal to be a follower of Christ, maybe even punishable by death.

I had to pause today and pray for brothers and sisters around the world who are paying a heavy price for their faith.  And I pray that I have even a fraction of the courage and conviction they have.  Always remember who wins the showdown.

Mark Chapter 10

"Who then can be saved?" -verse 26

Jesus establishes an impossible standard. Divorce is the same as adultery. Sell everything you own. These teachings are in line with others found in the other gospels, where Jesus equates lust with adultery and hate with murder. The question the disciples inevitably ask is the one we all ask when faced with Jesus' standard: who then can be saved? We know human nature too well. Not even the best among us can achieve it.

If you recall Jesus' encounter with the Greek woman in Mark 7:24-30, I think you can start to see a pattern in Jesus' teaching. He openly offended her--not from malice, but as a method of moving her heart and mind to a place where he could perform a miracle in her life. His words to her reminded her of her utter helplessness and dependence upon him. When she accepted it, he healed her daughter. I see the same thing in these teachings in chapter 10. Jesus delivers impossibly difficult teachings that, if accepted, render us helpless. Yes, we resent them. Yes, they are offensive. And they leave us only two choices: to reject them and walk away, as the man did in verse 22, or to stand in Jesus' presence and utter our own helplessness, as the disciples did in verse 26. And at that moment, just as he did with the Greek woman, Jesus delivered hope: "With human beings this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."

I think about how close the wealthy young man was to life. If he had stayed only minutes longer, he would have heard those words. He didn't have to achieve the standard Jesus set for him, he only had to acknowledge that he couldn't reach it.

How many times do our efforts to justify ourselves prevent us from experiencing life? How often do we walk away sad, when all we have to do is acknowledge our dependence on God? It's one of the great paradoxes of following Christ. The impossible becomes possible at the moment we let go, the moment we humble ourselves, the moment we admit we're powerless. Little if anything is possible on our own strength, but all things are possible with God.

Mark Chapter 6

"He could not do any miracles there, except lay his hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith."
verses 5-6

Jesus hit a wall in his hometown. We know little about his life from age 12 to 30, and can safely assume that he kept a low profile through these years. In verse 3, the townspeople refer to him as the carpenter, not the carpenter's son, giving us a clue that he had taken up his stepfather's trade in early adulthood. Did he perform miracles during this time? Did he engage his own family and friends with amazing teaching? Perhaps, but this story indicates that his life wasn't too far from average. His brothers were not convinced of his divinity until after his resurrection.

So imagine the townspeople's surprise when, at around 30 years of age, Jesus comes home and announces he is the Messiah. His teachings and miracles are no less amazing, but they are received differently here because these people have a history with Jesus, and it doesn't include him being the Son of God. They can't get past the years of preconditioning that tells them he is just a carpenter, one of 5 brothers who grew up in the area.

I am thankful for the Christian upbringing I received. I was introduced to Jesus at an early age, and I avoided many painful experiences because of it. At the same time, I recognize that because I have been immersed in Christianity and church life since toddlerhood, I have developed what author Philip Yancey calls "immunity to the gospel." I don't expect the ground to move beneath my feet when I hear or read about Jesus, simply because I've heard about him so many times. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of times in my life (40 Sundays a year for 30 years = 1200 church services), I've watched rooms full of people hear the gospel and not be moved. My years of preconditioning have made me calloused to the greatest message and the greatest person in the history or the world--and I count myself among his followers.

Perhaps for this reason, some of the Christ-followers I admire most came to faith in Jesus as adults, and many of them had little or no connection to the church earlier in life. One who stands out is John Tinsley, who became a Christian in middle age. He had never read the Bible before. His first Bible study was the book of Acts, which tells the story of the dramatic spread of Christianity throughout the world. John did not know, as most Christians do, that you are supposed to read Acts merely as an historical document and not actually do what the first Christians did. He kept asking why Christians did not live today like those in Acts did, and his group had no answer for him. So John and his wife Gretchen packed their bags and moved to Romania, where I found him planting churches in that formerly communist country. He did so, in part, because he hadn't been preconditioned not to. He was not immune to the gospel, and neither were the people in the Romanian towns and villages who were hearing about Jesus for the first time.

Thankfully, there are antidotes to gospel immunity. God answers the prayer to be re-awakened to the wonder of Jesus. Reading Mark can chip the crust off of our hearts as we're re-introduced to him. As you read of his miracles, his radical life, his unique teaching, and perhaps most of all his relationships and his intense love for people, guard yourself from being unaffected or unmoved. Jesus is still amazing, and familiarity doesn't change that.

Mark Chapter 5

Then the people began to plead with Jesus to leave their region.

-verse 17

How do you picture Jesus?

To some, Jesus is their homeboy. To others, Jesus is their co-pilot. Maybe Jesus is just alright. What if he was just one of us, just a stranger on a bus, trying to make his way home? 2,000 years after his life, and armed only with some sketchy information about him, imaginations and personal desires take over and Jesus becomes someone different to each of us. Today, Jesus is apparently whatever we want him to be, whatever image brings the most comfort. He's your own personal Jesus.

One of the great theologians of our time, Cal Naughton Jr. from the movie Talladega Nights, captures this sentiment:

• "I like to picture Jesus in a tuxedo T-Shirt because it says I want to be formal, but I'm here to party. "
• "I like to think of Jesus like with giant eagles wings, and singin' lead vocals for Lynyrd Skynyrd with like an angel band and I'm in the front row and I'm hammered drunk!"
• "I like to think of Jesus as a mischievous badger."
• "I like to picture Jesus as a figure skater. He wears like a white outfit, and He does interpretive ice dances of my life's journey."
  

I think Jesus has a sense of humor, and I hope he's laughing (because I am). If you've seen the movie, you probably remember the family prayer scene where Ricky and Carley Bobby have an argument over which Jesus to pray to; Bobby prefers the "Christmas Jesus," as he calls him, the baby Jesus. I think most people do. Babies are cute, and innocent, and represent life and promise and possibilities. They also happen to be helpless, harmless, and powerless. They can't get in your grill. They haven't learned how to say "no." They don't intimidate, and they're perfect when they're sleeping.

This is one of the reasons why reading Mark is so important. Reading Mark and the other gospels puts us in touch with the real, actual Jesus, who is not a picture and did not remain a baby. And while it's true that his love for people has always been beyond comprehension, he can also be intimidating. He's beyond us, more powerful than we are. He can't be controlled or manipulated. He can even be scary. If we're honest, none of us wants him around all the time.

So we shouldn't be surprised that a group of people, privileged to be eye-witnesses to one of Jesus' miracles, begged him to leave town. He cost them money. He was a powerful force they could not understand. He could not be controlled. How could you just go on with your life as usual with someone like that around?

During his ministry, people were constantly trying to make Jesus what they wanted him to be: a political leader, a criminal, a tool to obtain power for themselves, a crazy person or perhaps even demon-possessed. But Jesus always defied definition and could not be suppressed, even in death! He came to people as they were, but those same people had to follow him on his terms. Those who did were changed forever.

Don't settle for a picture. In the pages of Mark, wrestle with Jesus as he actually was and is. Jesus isn't everything you or I want him to be. He is so much more than that.

Mark Chapter 4

He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything.

-verse 34

I wonder how this must have felt to the disciples. At times they must have felt stupid when Jesus said things like, "don't you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable?" (verse 13). But on balance they must have felt privileged to be among the select few who received a more detailed explanation. How did they process this privileged status? Surely Jesus wanted the whole world to understand his message. Why, then, wouldn't he do whatever it took to make sure everyone understood?

Jesus explains this to the disciples in verses 11-12. While doing so, he quotes Isaiah 6, the prophet Isaiah's famous vision of heaven in which God sends him out with a prophetic message. Take a look at Isaiah 6:9-13, and note the points of God's message to Isaiah:

• Most people will be hardened to God's message and unable to understand or accept it, even though they hear it and have opportunity (verses 9-10);
• Such people will not avoid the catastrophe that comes from being alienated from God (verses 11-12)'
• A small percentage, however, of faithful people will remain, hear, understand, and respond to God. Not only will they be preserved, but God's people and His movement will be rebuilt from this group.

Jesus seems to be likening his disciples to the last group, and implying that although everyone has an opportunity to hear, most are too calloused to his message to receive it. He may even imply that when confronted with his message, listeners are often hardened by being forced to respond to it. The Parable of the Sower in Mark 4 has a similar message. If Jesus is the farmer, he is spreading the seed everywhere, but he recognizes some soils are going to be especially productive, and he cultivates there.

In these parables Jesus stresses the point that he doesn't force his way on anyone. If you or I choose not to allow the seed of his message to take root, we have that prerogative. But where his message is germinating and growing, he's going to work the soil and make it flourish.

Just like the first disciples, we can take this idea too far and think of ourselves more highly than we should, as if we have somehow merited extra attention by God. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything we, like the disciples, have been given extra responsibility as carriers of his message. Nor does the story imply that some people are too far gone to respond to Christ. In Romans 11:7-12, the apostle Paul references the same passage in Isaiah 6 and emphatically states that no one is "beyond recovery" (v. 11), not even those who have previously rejected Christ.

Jesus loves everyone, but he's also strategic. He cultivates where it's going to be productive. He doesn't just throw everything on the wall to see what sticks. We should be the same: loving everyone but investing strategically. Who benefits from your strategic investments? Who is ready to be cultivated in your life?

Ask And You Shall Receive

If you missed Sunday, go to the link on the left and listen to the service mp3.

Well, as is the case so often, as we begin to be more intentional about engaging with our neighbors, opportunities start popping up and God definitely lobbed me a softball yesterday. My newest neighbor, came home yesterday and had apparently had some type of procedure done at the doctor or hospital. I saw them drive up and walk slowly into their front door. Then, after dinner, Rhonda made a batch of her incredible chocolate chip cookies and I took them over last night with a post-it note with all of our phone numbers in case he needed some help. It really was that simple.

I didn't spend a lot of time...in fact, I only spoke with his wife on their front porch. I walked back across the street thinking, "Man, I can't wait to get to know them better." Yesterday, we dove a little deeper into loving our neighbors and what that could and should look like for us. Does it surprise you that when asked to describe Christians, twenty-somethings end up using words that seem to be "unChristian." Antihomosexual, judgmental, hypocritical, too political, unloving, uncaring, etc. are some of the words used to describe them. For a detailed look at the Barna Study I referenced visit unChristian.com. I don't know about you, but I want to be part of the change of our friends' perceptions of us.

Our neighborhoods don't need more people who act like good Christians...they need more people who will act like Jesus. People who will reach across racial barriers and make friends. People who will slow down and listen to others. People who sit across the table from neighbors no matter what their religion. People to love when it doesn't look like they should. People to care when it appears no one else does. These are the people we believe God is calling The Springs to become. We can show our neighbors that we are Christ-followers who do not have to be judgmental. We are Christ-followers who will love you in spite of our differences. We are Christ-followers who will admit we don't have it all together, and we don't expect them to, either. We are Christ-followers who aren't just looking to "save" our neighbors, but actually get to know them. We are Christ-followers from both sides of the isle - from red and blue states.

I want to be part of the movement that earns back the right to be called "Christians" because we actually do "act like Christ." Do you believe it is possible? How bad do you want it?