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Oh, You Guys Were Serious About That?

The real story of the universe is fundamentally different from the story we’ve been told.  In acknowledging the poor itinerant non-violent rabbi, we are declaring that the story of life is not one of survival or the fittest, or kill or be killed.  In proclaiming the name of Jesus, we defiantly declare that life is ruled, not by Richard Dawkins’ “Selfish Gene,” but by God’s unselfish love.  Furthermore, that love is not just a good idea or interpretive framework we put on the universe.  It’s not just a nice story we use to cope with life’s uncertainties or to get people to cooperate with one another.  Acknowledging Jesus before people is declaring that such love is a reality, as substantial and real as any law of physics or biology.

 Pam and I have a friend named Kathy who pastors a very special church out west.  Kathy’s church focuses on being a place for people on the margins.  Attracted by that vision, when the church began, a lot of people came.  They all wanted to be a part of this cool new church. It was the hot new thing in town. Those who were already concerned about social issues like poverty and injustice were naturally attracted.  Those who weren’t, were excited to learn about this new model of being a missional church.  For others, it was simply the appeal of breaking the rules and shattering expectations of what a church should be.

However, as the church invited hurting people to come through its doors, things changed. Some of the people who came were struggling in recovery, or very sick, or mentally ill.  Eventually some of those who were so initially enthused about the church stopped coming.  They loved the idea of a cool church that had a mission of reaching broken people, but when that actually started happening their response was, “Oh.  You guys were serious about that?”  Many of them left Kathy’s church and went on to find other faith communities; ones that were casual, but less demanding.  Churches with bigger children’s ministries.  Churches where one could just keep a seat warm and not really have to rethink their life or change anything about themselves.

When we get serious about following Jesus, really following Jesus, life gets hard.  Friendship with hurt and broken people is not always pleasant.  Re-prioritizing our life, rethinking what we do with our money, giving the words of Christ final say in our decisions, doesn’t always feel good.  It leads not only to giving away our money or possessions, but giving away our very selves.  We are not wired that way.  Millions of years of biology have programmed us to preserve, not deny, the self.  When Jesus comes into our lives, his call turns our world upside down.  He turns our priority list upside down so that the self is no longer number one with a bullet.  That’s a frightening thought and many of us are cowards about it.

Is it any wonder that Peter, one of the original followers of Jesus, also resisted the call to deny his self?  When examining Peter’s confession at Caesarea-Phillipi , we tend to focus on the positive.  We hear it as the point at which one of Jesus’ previously dense disciples (and they could be quite dense), finally gets it.  While others label Jesus as a prophet or reincarnation of one, Peter is the smart one who uncovers his secret identity, as if Jesus is some superhero.  Not quite.  In Mark’s version of the story, Peter is not praised as if he figured out a puzzle.  Instead, the remainder of the story is one of angry rebuke between Peter and Jesus.  

The Heart of Hypocrisy

A few years ago, one of our daughters came home from school upset about an incident that occurred on the bus that day.  One of the children got in a lot of trouble for cursing at another child.  Fortunately, our daughter wasn’t involved, but she was confused. She wanted to know why the boy got in so much trouble just for saying a word. 

 As a father, I figured I would use it as a teaching opportunity.  This was a great opportunity to be a wise father, and explain to my daughter that they are ways we should talk, and ways we shouldn’t talk.  I pictured myself as being like Bob Saget at the end of an episode of “Full House,” sitting on the end of the bed and being all gentle and understanding, with soft music playing in the background.

“Tell me what happened on the bus, honey.”

My daughter recounted how a boy starting teasing another boy and used a bad word.

“Well, sweetie, that was wrong of him.  There some words we shouldn’t use because they hurt people and make them feel bad.”

She explained how she understood that.

“Remember honey, Daddy doesn’t want you using bad words, even if the other kids do.  I want to make sure you understand, what word did the little boy say?”

My daughter looked at me for a moment, somewhat puzzled.  “You know Dad. It’s that word you always say to your computer.”

In moments like that, we fathers are always tempted to pull out the old “do as I say, not as I do” speech.  Except that in this case, I didn’t want her doing as I did or saying what I said. 

Nothing undermines one’s credibility or authority more than saying one thing while doing another.  Few of us bat an eye, when a Hollywood star is discovered to be cheating on his wife.  We may think he’s a jerk, but we’ve grown to expect such behavior since we seldom hear movie stars preaching the value of marital fidelity anyway. However, when a family values politician is arrested for indecent behavior in a public restroom, or a preacher is caught with a prostitute, we react with disgust.

As well we should.  It’s bad enough when a person commits adultery, lies or steals.  But the offense is magnified when it’s a person who has spent their life condemning  those things, or worse, passing judgment on those who do them.  We sometimes even react with glee to see a judgmental person knocked down a few pegs. Personally, my day just gets a little brighter whenever a homophobic preacher whose made a career out of degrading people gets caught in a sex scandal.  I know those sorts of incidents weaken many people’s faith but for me it’s like, “Wow, there really is a God.”

In Defense of Angry Religion

Has anyone ever accused you of being angry?  Notice I didn’t ask you if you ever are angry, but I specifically used the word “accused.”  Accused implies there is something necessarily bad about anger.  Many people mistakenly make anger synonymous with inappropriate behavior or abuse.  To be angry is often presented as tantamount to a moral failure on par with lying or cheating.  Consequently, we fall into the trap of not acknowledging when we are angry, or feeling that we need to confess our anger and apologize for it.

 A few years ago, I was angry with a guy named Fred, a friend who had dealt very dishonestly with me and hurt me. So, I confronted Fred about it.  Rather than deal with what Fred had done to me, he responded by being hurt.  I hadn’t said or done anything inappropriate in my confrontation with Fred.  Nevertheless, he was hurt because I was angry and people shouldn’t be angry with Fred.  Therefore the whole conversation became about Fred’s feeling hurt, rather than his dishonesty.  It was as if, my being angry negated wrong Fred had done to me.

Unfortunately, I bought into Fred’s mindset and felt guilty about being angry with him.  Consequently, when telling the story to my friends, I kept denying that I was angry with Fred.  Finally, a friend confronted me and said, “Why can’t you just admit you’re angry with Fred.  So what? What’s wrong with that?”

I replied, “Well apparently, it’s a big deal to Fred.”

The more I though about it, the more I realized that there was nothing wrong with me being angry at Fred.  I had every right to be angry with him.  I hadn’t done or said anything inappropriate to Fred.  I was justifiably angry. 

In the years since, I realize that Fred’s reaction was really just designed to manipulate and control me.  I have learned the hard way that, consciously or unconsciously, many people use this technique.  When confronted with their own bad behavior, they respond, not by addressing the issue, but by being hurt by the anger their own behavior induces in others.  You may have someone in your life who does that to you.  Or you may be the person who does that in another’s life (and if you’re both here today, you’re not going to be able to do that anymore).  Either way, it stems from the idea that anger is always a bad thing.

For me, somewhere in my upbringing was this deep-seated notion that getting angry was wrong - even a sin.  I had been socialized to believe that good people never got angry.  I was indoctrinated to think that Christians especially, never got angry.  We are always supposed to be nice, pleasant and dispassionate.  Somehow we get this misguided notion that followers of Jesus are never supposed to get angry because Jesus never got angry.

In reality, Jesus got angry often.  Perhaps, you’re thinking, “Sure I know about that whole turning over the tables in the Temple incident, but that was just one time.”  For some Christians, that story let’s them have a briefly macho Jesus to make up for the wimpy Jesus who let’s himself get killed a few days later  without fighting back.

Visiting Invisible People

Recently someone in our church asked if I would visit a friend of theirs in a nursing home.  It was a gentleman who went to another church, but had few friends or family to stop by and see him.  One afternoon, I dropped in.

He was going through a tough and depressing time.  Moving into this facility, he had lost the life to which he was accustomed. He spoke at length about God, and how focusing on particular Bible verses was helping him get through it all.  To say his theology was different from mine would be an understatement.  There was much talk of demons and spirits, leaving me at a loss for words.  I felt awkward and doubted if I could say anything that would help.

Then he quoted the well-known passage in Matthew 25, where Jesus tells us that when we visit the sick, we are really visiting him.  Well, that's more in line with my view of Christianity, so my ears perked up.  Yet nothing prepared me for what he said next.

"You know," he said, "If I were Jesus sitting here in this room, there would be a line of people out the door to see me, but there isn't."

His words hit me hard.  If Christians really believed it was Jesus we encountered when we visited the sick, hungry or imprisoned, we would visit them more often.  No matter what one's spiritual beliefs, if we all really believed that we were encountering the sacred or transcendent when we visiting the invisible people in our society, we would visit much more often.

So why aren't we and why have we made so many people invisible?  If there is an invisible or forgotten person in your life, visit them today.  You will be blessed far more than you can imagine.  It doesn't matter if we don't know what to say when we get there.  Sometimes we just need to listen.

Reconstructing Faith

In case you've been wondering where my messages have been this past month, wonder no longer.  We did things a little differently at Vision in May.  Rather than create my sermons from a manuscript, I worked with a freer format, sometimes interactive conversations, sometimes an outline.  As such, there is no text of these messages, just our regular podcast.  You can listen to them on Vision's sermon page or subscribe to the podcast.

Here's a preview of the podcasts:

In Ruins

Have you ever had an experience of losing your faith?  Were you ever sure about something, only to have it crumble and lay in ruins?  Have you looked around at the pieces of your faith with no idea how to put it back together again?  We enter the story of Nehemiah and discover how God invites us into the experience of reconstruction.

Critical Reconstruction

When we respond to God’s call in our lives, when reconstruct our faith, we will encounter criticism.  In fact, the closer we get to where God wants us to be, the more  resistance we will encounter.  We explore how to overcome criticism and resistance in the midst of reconstruction.

Ambidextrous Faith

Nehemiah tells the story of the rebuilding of the wall around Jerusalem.  He says the people worked with one hand and held a weapon with the other.  Some of us are comfortable building our faith, always questioning and exploring.  Some of us are more comfortable defending our faith.  God calls us to do both – at the same time.

Pure Danger

The Bible tells the story of Nehemiah rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem.  Afterwards, the people purified their religion and relationships.  But is building a wall always a good idea?  Sometimes, nothing is as dangerous as purified faith.