I Got This

"Are you so foolish? After beginning with the Spirit, are you now trying to attain your goal by human effort?"

Galatians 3:3

Grace is like the guy who excuses himself from the table pretending to go the restroom. He times his strides carefully and slips the waiter his visa as they cross paths. When dinners over, we realize what has been done and the battle to compensate begins. Some students in the table exhale with a sigh of relief as they put their feather weight wallets back in their pockets. Others continue the tug o'war threatening to walk out the door leaving some bills on the table. Being a recipient of a free meal can feel a little uncomfortable at times. You wonder whether you raised up the white flag too soon. You feel somewhat vulnerable and indebted to the giver.

In a way, we're trained to refrain from being the beneficiary. You work for what you have, and what you don't have, you simply work harder for. Anything you possess that was not earned puts you at unease, it seems unaccounted for and not necessarily yours yet. In fact, your bases would have been covered if you took care of the tab. You wouldn't have a care in the world. Everyone owes you and no one can say that they got the bad end of the bargain.

This is why grace is so difficult for people to receive. Before Jesus, the law gave us some kind of framework to show us whether we're on track or not. It gave us the opportunity to cover the tab if we could afford it. The law is simply a whole lot cleaner. It's a clear system where we are able to check off items from a list. Don't eat this stuff... Check! Stay away from sexual immorality... Check! Get circumcised.... ouch, but Check! Grace on the other hand is pretty messy! Think about it, how is our response to grace measured? How do I calculate my rate of success? We default back to the law after entering freely by grace because it's familiar and in our control.

Grace is about God going before us and paying the price. We can choose to leave money on the table when the tabs been covered or we can put our wallets back in our pockets and just accept the free meal. In fact we'd be better off if we just looked into our wallets before the scramble and saw for ourselves that we didn't even have enough to pay our own share. God knows we don't have enough and he's kind enough to save us the embarrassment.

How many times have we thought that a good deed rectifies a bad action? How easy it is to think that our generous or righteous actions are tipping the heavenly scales. Our purity is not dependent on how little we watch inappropriate movies, nor is our righteousness determined by how many homeless people we feed. Our freedom is not warranted by our worship and God's love for us does not increase when we become more lovable. We are pure because of his blood, righteous because God sees Jesus when he looks at us, free because Jesus conquered death and loved because we are his children. Our payment was taken care of at the cross and it only devalues and cheapens the sacrifice when we think our efforts, money or deeds can make a dent in compensating God for what he has given us.

"It was for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burden again by a yoke of slavery."

Gal. 5:1

Audio Version:

Below is a message I preached a few weeks ago on Acts 10. My preparation for this message is the inspiration for this blog post.

http://www.fenwaychurch.org/podcast/audio/acts10jesse.mp3

A Call for Courage

"All around you, people will be tiptoeing through life, just to arrive at death safely. But dear children, do not tiptoe. Run, hop, skip, or dance, just don't tiptoe."

Anonymous 

"What is, therefore, our task today? Shall I answer: "Faith, hope, and love"? That sounds beautiful. But I would say - courage. No, even that is not challenging enough to be the whole truth Out task today is recklessness. For what we Christians lack is not psychology of literature... we lack a holy rage - the recklessness which comes from the knowledge of God and humanity. The ability to rage when justice lies prostrate on the streets and when the lie rages across the face of the earth... a holy anger about the things that are wrong in the world. To rage against the ravaging of God's earth, and the destruction of God's world. To rage when little children must die of hunger, when the tables of the rich are sagging with food. To rage at the senseless killing of so many, and against the madness of militaries. To rage at the lie that calls the threat of death and the strategy of destruction peace. To rage against complacency. To restlessly seek that recklessness that will challenge and seek to change human history until in conforms to the norms of the kingdom of God. And remember the signs of the Christian Church have been the Lion, the Lamb, the Dove, and the Fish... but never the chameleon."

Kaj Munk 

(an old prayer of a Danish pastor)

"We are not to simply bandage the wounds of victims beneath the wheels of injustice, we are to drive a spoke into the wheel itself."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Perfect in Weakness

“God’s emphasis in the Bible is opposite from ours: a few loaves and fishes, a pinch of salt or leaven, tiny mustard seeds, Gideon sending soldiers home, Jehoshaphat opening his city gates to the enemy, Jesus telling Peter to put away his sword. “My Strength”, he said, “is perfected in weakness.” God wants us to admit that we are a minority – and act like one – so he will be the source of our power. Instead, we think weakness is a scandal. We seek to force our way like a majority. We appear to be compensating for God’s limitations...... How can he bless that?”

Roger Dewey

First good revelation I've received in a long time.

"...where thoughts has its birth in conflict and concern..."

"By the Balcony, I do not mean the gallery of a church or theater. I mean that little platform in wood or stone that protrudes from the upper window of a Spanish home. There the family may gather of an evening to gaze spectator-wise upon the street beneath, or at the sunset or the stars beyond. The Balcony thus conceived is a classical standpoint, and so the symbol of the perfect spectator, for whom life and the universe are permanent objects of study and contemplation.... By the Road I mean the place where life is intensely lived, where thoughts has its birth in conflict and concern, where choices are made and decisions are carried out. It is a the place of action, of pilgrimage.... where concern is never absent from the wayfarer's heart."

John Mackay, Footprints of God

"God may well be with us in our mansions on the hill. I hope so. He may -- may well be with us in all manner of controversial stuff. Maybe, maybe not. But the one thing we can all agree -- all faiths, all ideologies -- is that God is with the vulnerable and poor.

God is in the slums, in the cardboard boxes where the poor play house. God is in the silence of a mother who has infected her child with a virus that will end both their lives. God is in the cries heard under the rubble of war. God is in the debris of wasted opportunity and lives, and God is with us if we are with them."

Bono, Prayer Breakfast

"...whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'"

The King, Matthew 25:40

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It's amazing how easy it is to let the study of problems and solutions distant us from actively engaging in problems and implementing solutions. It has been my ongoing pursuit to never let my my mind drift too far from my body. It is extremely tempting to remain in a theoretical state where we dwell in concepts and analogies. In fact, many including myself, often assume that gaining ground theoretically can justify our physical paralysis. So we carry on in assessing cases and constructing models only to find ourselves living a life that requires no courage or faith. We sit around in our study groups, interpreting scripture, analyzing intriguing facts about biblical history, watching documentaries on genocide and poverty abroad only to sit back down to dig deeper, with no end in sight, into the issues once again. While some believe that we must be informed before taking action, I've come to think that information is grasped and embarassed most in the midst of an act.

Infinitely Aloof

"That God can be known by the soul in tender personal experience while remaining infinitely aloof from the curious eyes of reason constitutes a paradox best described as

Darkness to the intellect
But sunshine to the heart.

(Federick W. Faber)"

Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy

Self-righteous about the Self-righteous

For many of us who feel they have awakened from the matrix of institutionalized religion, there appears to be a deeper issue that has been drowned out by our loud protests for authentic, back to the roots spirituality. Yes we've made it clear time and time again that it's not religion but relationship, not buildings but people, not members but family, but I've come to realize that somewhere along the road to restoring "real", "just like the early church", "relevant" Christianity, we have ironically taken on a self-righteous legalistic attitude towards the very self-righteous legalist's we preach against. Tim Keller's book had me do a double take on a simple line "[Jesus] is not a pharisee about Pharisees...".

The root of the issue is what I would call the one up factor. Once there is an asset one receives that produces a sense of supremacy, be it a piece of good or bad, new or old philosophy, revelation or method, there is great temptation to pier down at those who have yet to attain such knowledge. This new wave of organic, simple, relevant or emerging approaches to church and theology are revolutionary and important for the mission, but if it carries with it a sense of supremacy and pride to the more traditional or reform approaches, it actually surfaces the same problems of the past. What the world needs is not a better strategy for church growth or a radical new perspective on theology, the world needs a church of humility and grace. The kind of humility which imitates that of Christ. The kind that would be willing to die for another.

Philippians 2 shows Jesus as one who was perfect, flawless, supreme and all knowing (like many of us seem to think we are), but it goes further to point out that he gave up his position of authority to be a servant, his pure beauty for the appearance of man, and traded his right to command to be one who obeys. If you ask me, there is no instant productivity or immediate advancing of the kingdom with this kind of restraint, but I guess that is what is so beautiful about the cross. It is a picture that explains how weak is strong and how poor can be rich. It signifies to us all that humility is what works, that death is what lasts.

Although I am completely behind the evolution (or rather deconstruction) of church methodology, I feel like we all need to beware of pride. It really does come before the fall.

One side note...this weekend rocked! I went to Vegas for a church planting training on the UNLV campus and received so much from those I met. I never knew I could have so much fun in Vegas without being on the strip :)