Fanatical Followers

 It's frequently suggested that most of the world's problems stem from fanaticism.  Is it true?  Is the world coming apart at the seems because there's too much religious fanaticism?  

The answer I would give is no.  Fanaticism isn't the problem; it's the object of your fanaticism that creates the problem.  As I stated in my sermon, Have you ever met an Amish terrorist?  Of course not.  Yet the Amish are some of the most fanatical people in the world; they're just fanatical about following Jesus, specifically, letting Christ's love and grace shape the way they relate to others.  

With that in mind, I call everyone to be a fanatical follower of Jesus.  Listen carefully to that sentence.  I don't want you to be fanatical about a principle, or a doctrine, or an agenda, or a particular church, or a particular way of worship.  These little "issues" that each person holds dear in his or her heart are annoying at best and divisive at worst.  All of these things are necessary, but they are necessary for only one purpose--helping us learn to live and love like Jesus lived and love.  Giving yourself to love, to be loved and to love, is the best thing you can do with your life.  Anything less than that is not worth our devotion.  

Again, please think about what I'm saying.  I'm saying, let's allow Christ to inhabit us--his love and grace.  Is there any better way to live?  I can't think of one.  I'm ready to fanatically follow this one who has fanatically followed me.   

May God raise up an army of grace-filled, love inspired Christians.  

  

Peace.

 

Resurrection--Matter Matters

It is resurrection Sunday.  No doubt, it's the cornerstone of our faith.  

But it is often misunderstood.  We need to remember that resurrection is not merely the reversal of death; it is not resuscitation.  Nor is it the release of the soul from the body.  It is a recreation of the human person.  Jesus was raised bodily but a unique body, recognizable but different (cf. John 20, 1 Corinthians 15).  

One implication of this belief is the affirmation of creation.  Too often, Christianity has implied that the body is a burden--creation, a mere shell.  The essence of life is the soul or the spirit, many have taught.  Christianity is more holistic than this.  Matter matters to God.  He created the world in love.  He redeemed the world in love.  The Bible doesn't say God so loved your soul but rather the world, cosmos in Greek, the original language of the New Testament (John 3.16).  Nowhere is the affirmation of creation more pronounced than in the resurrection.  The resurrection is the dawn of God's new creation.  It's the down payment, the first installment (first fruit in Paul's writings) of many more to come.  And this, of course, is connected to the redemption of all creation.  Remember, Paul links these two concepts together in Romans 8, announcing that all of creation is waiting for our redemption. 

How we live in light of this truth is really exciting.  We don't have to pursue endless retreats in the recesses of the soul.  Nor do we sit around and wait for heaven.  Instead, we must affirm all that is an affirmation of life.  That's why I always say, pursue truth, justice, goodness, and peace. 

I need to say more . . . but my brain is fried . . . And I'm leaving for vacation now. 

Peace,

Comedy or Tragedy

I'm a little behind--six days after the sermon.  Nonetheless the question remains, Are we living in a comedy or a tragedy?  At times it feels like a tragedy; nothing seems to work right: children rebel, the economy contracts, hatred abounds, conflicts grow.  Is there any hope?  Is what we see all there is?  Do you remember the movie "Stranger than Fiction"?  Will Ferrell starred a character whose life was being written by a novelist.  Will Ferrell's character, Harold Crick, is stuck in a meaningless job where nothing seems to go his way and in a life that is lonely at best.  He confesses in one scene his belief that he's actually living out a tragedy.  We can probably identify.  We've been there; life often feels like it's one big tragedy.

But we know better.  Christians are not living in a tragedy but a comedy.  Everything will come together in the end to the praise of God.  Our God is the creator of comedies.  Sarah testifies to this with her statement in chapter 21:  God has made laughter for me.  What an amazing ending to a long and tiring journey.  Finally, it all came together.  The hurt, the pain, the stress, the sorrow, the doubt was all answered by God's amazing ability to come through and bring new life out of the deadness.  Read Romans 4:18-25.  There we see the connection between Abraham's life and the resurrection of the dead.  So it shall be for us.  We're not on the losing side of history.  God will come through.  The promise-maker is a promise-keeper.  Keep going.  Don't give up.  Don't grow weary.  We will all laugh with joy again.  Peace.   

Judgment

Yesterday, we talked a bit about God's judgment.  It's  a theme that many people find difficult to comprehend.  Many wonder how can a God of love judge his creation.  Others scoff, stating, "God has no right to judge."  Both seem to assume that love and judgment are diametrically opposed to each other.  

I could not disagree more.  Love and judgment go together.  In order for God to save, he must also judge.  He can't pretend as if the world is whole when anyone with half a brain can readily seen that it isn't.  Furthermore, God can't merely cover up the evil that has defaced his good creation and has made a mockery of his noble intentions.  If God ignores evil, then he's neither loving nor good.  If God does not stand against oppression, hatred, racism, injustice, and sexual perversity, then he does not love.  But because he does love, he also judges.  

I believe this will probably work in at least two ways.  First, there will be a judgment at the end of time when evil will be eliminated.  Everything that can't be redeemed will be destroyed.  Revelation 20, along with many other chapters, describe this well.  But there is a also a judgment for those who can be ultimately redeemed but who also need a little cleaning up.  Paul talks about workers who labored for God but with shoddy workmanship; their desires and intentions weren't always noble.  Paul says, they will be saved but as through a fire (1 Cor. 3.15).

Again, both of these examples speak of God's love.  Because of God's love for creation, evil must be dealt with.  Doctors will often have to use invasive measures to heal a patient.  They do this out of compassion.  So it is with God.  

All of this should help us understand better the work of the cross.  In Romans we learn the "wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of those who by their wickedness suppress the truth" (Romans 1.18).  But there is hope:  "they [Jew and Gentile] are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith" (Romans 3.25).   In the cross, love and judgment come together.  God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself (2 Cor. 5).  God absorbed the evil of the world in order to defeat it.  The judge submitted to his own judgment to release us from the bondage of sin and death--God embraced his own wrath in Christ through the cross. For it is in the cross that God judged sin and wickedness, and he also set the sinner free.    

Our response?  It's simple:  Receive his grace and walk in the light as he is in the light (1 John 1); become a participant in God's new creation made available to you through Christ (2 Cor. 5).   

Peace.   

Reformation of Our Desires

I'm still thinking about the previous post, in part, because I've been living out of the book James.  In my last reflection, I talked about Evagrius Ponticus.  I find his teaching very helpful and challenging and something that fits well with the book of James.  

In speaking about wisdom, for instance, James states wisdom produces a good life with works done "with gentleness born of wisdom" (James 3.13).  This is the wisdom that comes from above--it is "Pure, then peacable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without an trace of partiality or hypocrisy"  (3.17).  No surprise here, except for the religious blinded by their own principles:  James in the tradition of the prophets and Jesus, believes that wisdom has everything to with how treat others.    

Then James goes on the offensive by asking, What about those conflicts among you, where do they come from?  His answer is not easy to swallow.  James does not go into a lengthy sociological or psychological explanation.  Instead he says, they come from "your cravings that are at war within you."  The problem is . . . say it with me . . . malformed desires.  We want what we cannot have.  We ask with the wrong motives.  We are friends with the world. "Adulterers!" James thunders, "Do you not know that friendship with world is enmity toward god.  Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God" (vs. 4).  As I've said before, it's what we love more than God that makes us so violent.  It's what we place above God that needs to be defended and fought over--our pride, our security, our success, etc. etc.  So you see it's not that we want a conflict, but it's what we want that makes a conflict inevitable.  

Ouch!  We're in some hot water today.  Where do we turn now?  

The answer is simple, at least according to James:  Get right with God.  He states, "Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.  Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you.  Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded."  

Now we come full circle.  If we respond to God by drawing near to him, we will discover the wisdom that produces peace and gentleness and justice, the wisdom that comes from above.  We will have new set of desires.  Our hearts will be directed toward God and not toward the things that make fights inevitable.   

Peace! 

Faith and Generosity

Recently, I have been intrigued with a relatively unknown Christian writer, Evagrius Ponticus (A.D. 345-399).  What he teaches applies to the theme I was trying--operative word--to communicate this morning.  Evagrius argues that agape love (self-sacrificial and forgiving love) is the progeny of apatheia (rightly ordered passions and emotions).  

It sounds strange, in part, because it's not the way we think about things.  We usually assume that love comes to us without much work or effort.  Evagrius believes that agape love will be present mostly in people whose passions and desires are properly ordered. 

It's something to consider, even if you're not ready to agree with him.  If our desires are disordered, our love will be stunted.  If we're focused on the wrong things--money, comfort, or sensuality--above all else, we will be controlled by other forces that we can't manage.  Love of pleasure often leads to anger.  Love of pride often leads to hostility.  Love of money often leads to neglect--of our loved ones and of our soul.  Lust, in all of its forms, objectifies others, believing, like a consummate consumer, that everyone exists for my own pleasure.  Our malformed desires and passions will make it very difficult to love.   

But for the person with an active faith in God everything changes.  With faith, we start to want the right things rightly.  Trusting now in God, we believe he will provide for us.  We no longer have to grasp and pursue things unrighteously.  We can rest and witness.  

We can be peacemakers, in other words, like Abraham.  In Genesis 13, Abraham did not grasp.  He trusted that the Promise-maker would be a Promise-keeper.  It's out of Abraham's daring faith that peace, between family members, is maintained.  

Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me . . . by learning to want the right things rightly.

David S.

Leaving and Following

Today (1-18), we started our journey with Abraham by considering his call (12.1-9).  It's a call to which all of us can relate.  

Like Abraham, we're called to be a blessing.  God has a mission, therefore, there is a church.  God has a mission to heal the world that he loves, so he calls together communities to be witnesses.  (I need to be careful with that sentence: I don't mean everyone is called to evangelize, but we're called to reflect the character of God, together).   This is what God is frequently up to--he's calling people together to be witnesses, to be a blessing.  It's our call as well.  

But to get there, God will frequently call us to leave the familiar.  God will call us to leave what we find so comfortable so that we can embrace the new.  It's a critical step that should not even need much comment.  However, this is where many struggle.  Isn't this where New Year's resolutions fail?  People make a commitment, forgetting that every commitment requires a renunciation.  If you want to read 100 books this year, you'll have to unplug the TV.  So it is for our spiritual lives.  God calls us to follow him and join him in a new adventure.  But to do that, we often--not always--are called to leave the familiar.  We must leave the sin that so easily entangles.  Or perhaps we're being called to a ministry, and we must leave the TV shows we really enjoy--moving away from the trite toward a treasure.  

Now please hear me:  I'm not trying to paint dramatic pictures of leaving the Tri-Valley area.  I'm envisioning a renunciation of a self focussed solely on comfort (or on some other idol) for a self centered on God and His will.   I'm also envisioning several tiny renunciations that keep us from getting stuck in a habit or a way of thinking which keeps us from loving others.  In short, most of us will not have to go anywhere in order to leave.  

The next part of the formula is that we're called to journey with God.  Abraham is not given a map or timeline--just a call to go with God, and God will show him the land.  It's truly a journey.

The same is true for us.  We're not called to follow some rules but to follow our savior.  It will be different for all of us.  But still we follow together.  Each person must decide whether or not he or she will respond and follow Jesus.  You won't know what it looks like.  It's a journey, but a journey well worth it.  

I pray God will continue to show the way you should go.  

Peace.