Accept-ion IS the rule.
Ok, seriously, it’s almost goofy. Every day of this week I have been in a different conversation in which the other participate was completely unaware but God was using the conversation to get my attention.
First, it was interesting, then coincidence, then weird, then confirmation. God was speaking to me through his word…and through the words of others. It is refreshing…that God is doing new work in me once again. Not to say that he took time off…but this is a fresh wind of the Spirit blowing through the dusty chaff in my life. Praise be to God.
I find the Spirit speaking to me again in the words of Romans…specifically today from Romans 14-15. The theme: acceptance.
“Accept one another, just as Christ has accepted us.” Romans 15:7
Easy words to read with a cup of coffee in one hand and the Bible in the other, but wait, what does that say again? Accept one another just like Jesus accepts you?
Well now…that makes me need to step in front of the Jesus-mirror and examine the me who Jesus has accepted. The me who has trampled on grace more than a few times in my life. The me whose pride can easily jump into the judgement game at a moments notice. And yet, Jesus accepts me…and I am supposed to accept others in the same way?
But what about those who insist in their rightness…what about when people are showing off their spiritual arrogance and ignorance…oh, yea, Jesus has accepted my pride. But what about when people are spewing out hurtful and untrue words about us…um, yep, Jesus has accepted ours. But what about….um, yep.
Look at the context: Often we are tempted to read these scriptures through the lens of positioning ourselves in the place of the “strong” and others in the place of “weak faith.” We all tend to read scripture this way…it makes us feel better about ourselves. But what if we take away the jockeying for position…and just hear the Spirit speak these words, “accept others just as Christ accepts you.”
Today’s church is full of jews and gentiles (ok, I know I am stretching the context here a bit…wait, actually I’m not that much). We are a people labeled and divided by the have’s and have nots, insiders and the outsiders, republicans and democrats, upper-class and middle-class, conservative and liberal, cool and not-so-cool, the pre’s and the post’s, and the us and them.
Our divisive language does exactly what the evil one hopes it will do…it divides us. It separates the body, keeps us from discerning God’s leading and distracts us from fully participating in God’s mission in God’s world. We too are a people living inside temples but yet living outside the message of Jesus. We see ourselves as a circumcised people (part of the right family) who hold the rights to the Kingdom all to ourselves. But wait…aren’t we the gentiles? Of all people…shouldn’t we remember to hold loosely the “right” of being right?
Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you will abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Do you get it? God is a God of hope…of hope. Hope that fills us with joy and peace….so that…we may be filled with the power of God.
Do you see it? Hope..hope that is from God…fills us with joy and peace…so that we may GO into the “not hope” and bring hope.
Lord Jesus, as you continue to mold us into your image, help us accept others as you accept us. Keep us from judgement. Mold our thinking and give us hope that enables us to accept others as you have accepted us.
Confession
It seems the frequency of posts here is a good reflection of where I find myself living today…silent. This is supposed to be a space for me to pencil my thoughts or tell stories of what God is doing and offer them as a testimony to the Kingdom of God at work in this world. But for the past several months my thoughts/stories have been imprisoned within my mind. I have allowed fear and circumstances to take captive my calling. I have allowed evil to use the voices of a few to bind up the kingdom stories of the many around me. So…let this be my confession:
I confess that I am His…and His kingdom is my vocation. I do not live for the approval of man…but I serve the living God through whom all things are accomplished. I live and seek to encourage others to live as the image of God in the world…living as incarnational (in living flesh) examples of Jesus. I confess that I am leery of the oh-so-prevalent conversations of how to “do” church in this world…instead, I am passionately striving to lead others into “being” the people of God (the Church) in this world. I confess that in spite of the pressure to act differently, I want to take Jesus seriously…to love my enemies, give riches away, take up my cross, seek mercy, act right, and walk humbly. I confess that I want to pursue a life that promotes the small, poor, and least of these…not the large and important. I confess that I am tired of seeing those in the church behave more “of the world” and not living “in the world.” I confess that I am tired of the organization we call church ignoring Jesus’ teaching about the ways that we treat one another, speak about one another, spend money, build buildings, and choose our locations to live. I confess that I desire to hear more proclamation of the present Kingdom and less promotion of our own identities.
I confess that Jesus is how we should “do” church. And when and if we fail to embody Jesus…the world is left to believe the pseudo-gods we are presenting to them. The only antidote to this is a people whose lives and values take on a clear resemblance to the Jesus who showed us exactly who and what God looked like.
I confess it is not easily done…but it can be done. Or Jesus wouldn’t have trusted us to do it.
The “Lent” in your…life.
The only “lent” I knew about growing up was the lint found in my belly button or in the dryer. I actually enjoyed scooping out the lint in the dryer basket and balling it up to throw away (I always wondered how clothes could last when there was so much left behind in the dryer).
But now I enjoy the real “lent” perhaps more than any other time of the year. I love the exaimination of the inner life and the chance to “crucify” the sins that have crept back into our lives. Lent is a season of crucifix…putting to death things choking the life out of us. It is a 40 day microcosm (preparing for Easter) of how we should be living our lives (preparing for the arrival of our King).
We are to live in preparation to receive our King. This preparation is much broader than just a confession and a prayer…it is an activity, a life lived, a determined focus to live in a way that honors the One whom we await (this is another important recognition…that we await the ruling King…not that we await a rescue from earth. Here is a great summery of this huge thought/implication).
As we approach this Easter season…may we first live in the Lent…the preparation. What needs to die in you so that Christ may more fully live in you?
Our Lent journey together at New Beginnings Church begins one week from today…Ash Wednesday. We will gather at 7PM for a preparation for the preparation.
The best is yet to come…
I am enjoying the warm sunshine today as it melts away the cold piles of snow…and I love seeing the hint of green in the grass and trees around me. They, like me, are eager for the death of winter to be over, ready for the life of spring to reveal itself once again.
Spring is a great reminder of what God does in life, or perhaps better said, what God does in death…he restores it to life. It is also a great reminder of our final hope…that what God once declared as “very good” (Gen. 1:31) he has committed himself to restore.
I am again reminded of the way Joseph Coleson concludes his chapter on “creation as missional paradigm” in the newly released book, Missio Dei; A Wesleyan Understanding (pg. 38-39).
We have but begun. God’s restoration of God’s good creation is integral to the gospel, the good news, partly because we are integral to the creation. Our existence as physical creatures teaches us how to encounter, interact, love, play, work – in short, to be the spiritual-physical beings God created us to be. The present earth is our nursery, playground, laboratory, apprenticeship, and schoolroom for what lies beyond. What that is, we cannot now begin to imagine, Paul tells us (1 Cor. 2:9), but it will not be completely other than the here and now. It will be a continuation, the continuation of the stalk of golden grain from the single seed fallen into the ground. It will be the continuation between the lips of a mother on her infant’s cheek, and the lips of lovers on their wedding night. In their places, both ar valid, valuable, delightful, holy. But the wedding night requires two mature persons, and maturity requires time, practice, experience, learning. Humans learn maturity by living in God’s good creation.
Dream Shattering of the Missio Dei
This week, along with attending M11 (our Nazarene Mission Conference), I am reading two books: Missio Dei; A Wesleyan Understanding and The Church Jesus Builds; A Dialogue on the Church in the 21st Century.
I would recommend these two books to every pastor (they were recommended to me from a local pastor/friend). In a day when rhetoric and rebellion are two of the active ingredients in most transitioning churches (and by “transitioning” I mean moving toward a re-centering of our teaching and practices in the Missio Dei), we need to have concise and coherent resources to offer those living in the tension. It seems that most disgruntled churched people have arrived at their conclusions as a result of lacking shared definitions and an off-balance reliance on a local-church-narrative holding more weight of influence than a story-of-God-narrative.
Too often, I too, have allowed my own thoughts of Christ’s Church to be taken hostage by ego, pride of performance, or confidence in comfort. As a pastor, I am often tempted to wish for the dreams of success and notoriety (most times determined by the size and strength of the church I pastor). And the same is true for others who identify themselves with the local church gathering because of its particular cool-factor or recognition in the community.
These days in our local community called New Beginnings Church, we are seeking to focus ourselves on the Missio Dei (mission of God). We are seeking to re-center ourselves on God’s vision for His Church. It is a strange feeling sometimes…different from what we are comfortable with, requiring much more of us than before and often leading to a “dream shattering” for some who hold their own dreams more dearly than God’s truth.
Perhaps these words from Bonhoeffer best describe the reality of our story over the last several months:
“Innumerable times a whole Christian community has broken down because it had sprung from a wish dream. The serious Christian, set down for the first time in a Christian community, is likely to bring with him a very definite idea of what Christian life together should be and to try to realize it. But God’s grace speedily shatters such dreams. Just as surely as God desires to lead us to a knowledge of genuine Christian fellowship, so surely must we be overwhelmed by a great disillusionment with others, with Christians in general, and if we are fortunate, with ourselves.
By sheer grace, God will not permit us to live even for a brief period in a dream world. He does not abandon us to those rapturous experiences and lofty moods that come over us like a dream. God is not a God of the emotions but the God of truth. Only that fellowship which faces such disillusionment, with all its unhappy and ugly aspects, begins to be what it should be in God’s sight, begins to grasp in faith the promise that is given to it. The sooner this shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both. A community which cannot bear and cannot survive such a crisis, if it insists upon keeping its illusion when it should be shattered, permanently loses in that moment the promise of Christian community. Sooner or later it will collapse. Every human wish dream that is injected into the Christian community is a hindrance to genuine community and must be banished if genuine community is to survive. He who loves his dream of a community more than the Christian community itself becomes a destroyer of the latter, even though his personal intentions may be ever so honest and earnest and sacrificial.” – Bonhoeffer, Life Together, p 26-28
in conclusion…
We are often so in love with our human ability to reason that we miss the reasoning of God. We proudly boast in our thinking that if premise 1 and premise 2 are factual, then conclusion A is always right. But what happens when every fact is right but the conclusion is wrong?
In Luke 24 we find the disciples stating the facts…but their conclusion couldn’t have been more wrong.
Fact 1 – “he was a prophet…”
Fact 2 – “He was…powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.”
Fact 3 – “…he was the one who was going to redeem Israel.”
Fact 4 – “this is the third day since this took place.”
Fact 5 – “Some women…went to the tomb this morning but didn’t find his body.”
Conclusion = we were disappointed once again by another person claiming to be the messiah…he died, so we are walking back to our homes.
Looking back, we can chuckle at the irony of a very-alive-Jesus standing before these two as they tell their depressing story. But all too often, we live the same story. Our premises are different, but our reasoning is the same.
Our “disappointments” in life…whether in ourselves, others, our health, our wealth, or our opportunities…often lead us to pleading with God to deliver us, to change our circumstances, or to give us a sign to point us in a new direction.
Whenever we are focused on God needing to answer our prayers, we are already off track. The purpose of prayer is that we might align our will to God, not that God might bend to our will.
If we are constantly looking for signs from God (and our dejection during disappointing circumstances proves that we are), and we never open our eyes to what is already in front of us…we will miss the conclusion that God is already present and already accomplishing his purposes.
If we will simply open our dejected selves to the common things and people who are the nearest to us, then we shall see Him. The right conclusion to our life premises is almost always the same…God is near, He will not leave you, He does not fail his purposes. So, don’t give up, don’t stop believing, don’t lose hope and focus…God is still at work.
“He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”
Called unto what?
Our primary calling in life is not to be holy people, but faithful proclaimers of the Gospel. This important distinction is vital in the proper understanding of what we are called to live for. Our calling is not found in human goodness, holiness, or heaven; our calling is found in God’s on-going redemption of the entire world (the Gospel). Personal holiness is not a cause to live for, personal holiness is an effect of a life being poured into the cause of Christ. Jesus Christ and his redemptive mission of the whole world is a cause worth living for.
If our preaching and thinking defaults to “us being saved” as the primary focus of the Gospel, then we have trampled on the work of Christ. We have lessened his goal of redeeming the whole world…to see it once again unimpaired and rehabilitated as the splendor of God’s creation.
It is not God’s goal for us to simply preach “be saved.” The fact that salvation can be experienced by us is an example of the incredible power and mission of God’s big picture of redemption, but it is not the primary goal.
Often we wear thin God’s energies with our constant plea for attention for ourselves. We pray, “God keep me from this, God, please deliver me from that…”. We beg for his attention and demand his efforts in our lives. But if we ever get in touch with the total reality of God’s redemptive mission, we would never bother God again with our personal complaints.
Like the Apostle Paul we would welcome the pains, heart-breaks, and disappointments because these things keep us reliant on the power of God. These things point us too and remind us of the work there is yet to do in this world.
When God’s mission becomes a reality in our thinking, our calling is clear. We are called to join him in the big picture of redeeming the beauty and goodness of the created order. Our mission is to do more than focus on problems of individual sin and guilt as though God’s mission is primarily focused on “saving us” from being eternally punished for our individual sins. God’s mission is much larger than us…but thanks be to God that it includes us!
“Let us praise him that he hath given us to see the deplorable state of all that are round about us; to see the wickedness which overflows the earth, and yet not be borne away by the torrent! We see the general, the almost universal contagion; and yet it cannot approach to hurt us! . . . God will arise and maintain his own cause. And the whole creation shall then be delivered both from moral and natural corruption. Sin, and its consequence, pain, shall be no more; holiness and happiness will cover the earth. Then shall all the ends of the world see the salvation of our God. And the whole race of mankind shall know and love and serve God, and reign with him forever and ever!” -The Mystery of Iniquity, The Bicentennial Edition of the Works of John Wesley.
- Some of these thoughts are paraphrased from Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest, pg 21, 23-24.
