A New Thing

Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I will do a new thing…I will even make a a road in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.    

- The Prophet Isaiah, 43:18-19

Is there anything more frightening than the prospect of something unknown, something new, unfolding before us?    Or maybe not.  Perhaps it is only frightening for those who have successfully been able to keep the status quo, who have life pretty well figured out and wish not to have the boat rocked.  But to a people in exile, to a people on the margins, to a people long considered unwanted, unloved, and unholy, hearing that God is doing a new thing can sound like very good news indeed.   To hear that a road will be made in the wild and uncharted wilderness, or in our vernacular, the other side of the tracks,and that a river will run through a parched and lifeless desert, or that place we dare not go for fear of becoming thirsty ourselves, is good news to those living on the other side of the tracks or in camps perceived by us holy folk as leprous.   Yes, God doing a new thing does what the gospel so often does:  comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comforted.  

Truth be told I get scared to think of God doing something new.   How will I know it?  In the words of Isaiah I quoted above I left out a question asked by God:  Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth; Do you not perceive it?  It would seem that my fears of not perceiving what God is doing is a mere echo of anxieties expressed thousands of years ago.   I still don’t get it.  I still require eyes to see it.    How might I discern if the “new thing” happening is of God or not?   

God seems to anticipate these questions from us because he is quick to answer.   Within the same verse he declares, “There it is!  I’m making a road through the desert, rivers in the badlands”  (from the Message).   It would seem that the way to see the new thing God is doing is to look to the margins- to look to the other side of the tracks - and see where grace might flow where it is currently being withered, parched, or strangled.  Our God is a generous God, one who is constantly reaching out to the nations, to all peoples, to the least of these.   Where are the  wildernesses or deserts in our day and age that the God of this prophet wishes to pave new roads and pour out life-giving water?   Who are the people that we who are comfortable consider as being in the wilderness?   Who do I imagine that God’s tributaries of grace cannot or would not reach? 

I repent of limiting God’s grace to only those who in some way resemble me.  I repent of depriving the people in the wilderness, those on the other side of the tracks from me, of a God who is bigger than myself.  I repent of denying water to those in the deserts of this world who I would rather walk around and not make eye contact with.   I repent of thinking the new thing God is doing will always look like the last thing, my thing, or the thing of those who think, act, look and talk like me.  I repent for turning the road God paves or the river God makes into a line that divides.  I repent for not allowing God to be bigger than my own prejudices. 

grace and peace.

A Great AH HA!

I was listening to Brian McLaren talk about a lesson he did some 25 years ago for his youth group and liked it so much I decided to steal it.   Our youth group is going on our summer retreat this coming Sunday through Tuesday and I will be leading the devotionals - so this nugget of wisdom by McLaren fell in my lap at a great time.  It is a message I think the church needs to hear today.

He said he asked his youth what problems the church was facing, what issues they are discussing and arguing amongst themselves.  As they answered he wrote them up on one side of a board.   Remember this is 25 years ago but the problems they named are not so uncommon today.   The list went something like this:  speaking in tongues, are women allowed to preach, whether or not to let drums and guitars in worship services, etc. 

He then asked them to name the problems the world faces and as they discussed this and called them out he wrote them on the board next to the church problems.  The list went something like this:  Overpopulation, pollution, hunger, famine, nuclear war, etc.  

After putting these two lists side by side McLaren says the group looked at them and they all noticed, to their surprise, perhaps, that there was no overlap between the two lists.  The things the church was worried about and arguing over (what McLaren calls “intramural sports”) had little if nothing to do with the challenges the world is facing.   Why is that?

I thought I would test this out on my adult Sunday school class this past Sunday before taking it (sticking it?) to the youth next week.   Here is a sampling of the problems the church is facing that my group came up with:   lack of faith, competition amongst other churches, competition amongst secular entertainment (sports, scouts, vacations, etc), decrease in membership, low attendance, ignorance over what we believe, lack of money, program conflicts, and several more along the same line.

I then asked them what problems the world at large is facing and began writing their responses next to the first list.   My group came up with these:  Global warming, starvation, famine, drought, war, evil, genocide, HIV/Aids, orphans, breakdown of the family, divorce, lack of education, overpopulation, lack of clean water, disease, and more.  

After the lists were complete I stepped back and we looked at our work.  I asked the question:  What do you see that is different between the two lists?   One lady in our class said almost immediately, “It seems the church doesn’t care about the same things the world cares about.”  

There are moments in pastoral ministry; wonderful moments, when you get the thrill of seeing lights come on and truth click into place- a great AH HA!   That was one of those moments for me and for our class.   What do you think?  Do you think the church is too absorbed with intramural sports and have forgotten all about the world beyond our four walls?

You Don’t Have To Live This Way

Last night I finally got to watch Rob Bell’s The God’s Aren’t Angry.  Wow!  What a refreshing word to a world that has made religion into little more than appeasing the same gods of our ancient ancestors yet with different names. 

How true it is that many Christians feed off of fear and guilt as a way to convert people to God.  This God, like the gods of the ancients, is angry over something and the only way to appease this God is if you do something, like believe this or believe that or repent or say a certain prayer, etc.    These somethings are really sacrifices dressed up in new words.  For many, Christianity is no different than what the ancients did when presenting their fatted calf on the altar as a way to say to the gods, “I’m sorry, please forgive me, give me peace.”   

In Jesus Christ was all the failed systems of appeasement along with our striving to rid our fears and guilt.  He cleared the Temple in dramatic fashion to show that this system, the system that says you need to offer something to God in order to get right with God, is broken and is no longer sustainable.   In fact, if you destroy this temple (referring to himself), Jesus said, “I will rebuild it in 3 days.”   God, in Jesus, was doing a brand new thing.  The old way of dealing with human fear and guilt is being destroyed, nailed to a cross, and a new way will rise from the grave.   A brand new day is dawning. 

The writers of the New Testament realize this and begin talking about how God, through Christ has reconciled all things unto himself and has made peace with them.    We no longer have to live in fear and guilt.  We no longer have to try and appease the gods.  We no longer have to offer sacrifices, whatever we name them.  We have been freed.  We have been saved.  God has acted on our behalf when we could not act for ourselves. 

So what about repentance?   Isn’t that important?  Of course it is!   John Calvin once said that the proper order of the gospel message is this:  You have been saved, therefore, repent!  When we awaken to the truth that is about us, that God has already made peace with the world through Jesus Christ and that we are loved even when we are unlovable, Bell says we cannot help but to reorder our lifestyle and priorities and the way we think and act (in a nutshell, that is repentance).   St. Paul told the church in Corinth that we have been reconciled to God and as such we are to be ministers of reconciliation.   This means that the peace God has made with us is the peace we are to spread to the world - a world that does not yet know the truth about themselves.   Could it be that this is what Jesus meant when he told his disciples that compared with what he has done the past 3 years of his ministry, when he leaves we will “do even greater things than these”?   I was convicted over how little I am an instrument of peace in this world by the simple stories Bell told of a woman lending her car keys to a lady trying to move, a couple buying groceries for a hungry family, another couple buying a home for a single mother being evicted.  These gestures of love and trust to stangers and neighbors alike are ways we live the gospel and announce with our lives that our God has made peace with us. 

I loved how Bell concluded his message with several personal, real life stories of people hurting and trying to  appease someone or something to rid themselves of their guilt and shame and fear.  In stirring rhetorical fashion he scanned the auditorium announcing over and over and over again the Good News that Jesus came to give:  You don’t have to live this way.  You don’t have to live this way.  You don’t have to live this way. You don’t have to live this way…

 grace and peace.

The Leap

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Driving home from the beach I was listening to some lectures and sermons on my Ipod (don’t we all?) and one by Donald Miller really spoke to me.  It is titled “The Gospel of Jesus: More Like Marriage, Less Like Formula” and can be downloaded for free at itunes. 

Donald shared that while teaching a class of young theologians, all of whom had been raised in Christian homes, he asked them what it takes to be a Christian.  What are the things one must believe to be called a Christian?  Over 20-30 minutes they started naming things off - Jesus, the cross, the resurrection, the virgin birth, etc. etc. etc.   They soon had roughly 26 things on the board of what a Christian should believe.  He then shared with his class that he was talking with a good friend of his late into the night about things of faith and his friend confessed that he believes all of that stuff.  He believes that God did something in the world by sending his Son to save us by dying on a cross and rising again.  He believes all of the “stuff” but he also confesses that he is not a Christian because he is not ready to “take the leap.”   

The Leap?  That wasn’t on the whiteboard of things which make a Christian.  And yet, is it not the most vital part?   I can believe a lot of things that have no affect on how I live my life.  I used to smoke.  I knew that smoking could kill me and was bad for my health even as I lit up.   I believe that the 3rd piece of cheesecake I just ate is not the best thing for me even while chasing it down with a cold beer.  I can believe that excercise is good for my health and will help me enjoy life more even while I sit in front of the TV eating a bag of chips.   We can believe many things that do not really change our lives…that don’t really require us to make a LEAP into something mysterious, unknown…relational. 

In the gospels the word “believe” is the same as faith or trust.   If any of the apostles heard me say I believe that smoking will kill me even as I smoked they would call me a liar and say I do not believe that at all.   Belief, in the context of the New Testament, requires repentance - a change of lifestyle, heart, mind, etc.   We cannot say we beleive in the Son of God simply because we can check off a set of doctrines and claim mental assent to a creed.   To say we believe in the Son of God who came to save the world (John 3:16-19) is to say we are ready to take the LEAP and live as though we are not our own, but God’s.

No Excuses

We are home from our vacation and I am not sure if I am more relaxed than when I left.   I think I need a vacation from my vacation :)    Really, we had a great time but it is nice to be back after being recharged a bit.

Something happened while we were away that I have been debating over whether I should share or not.  It is of a personal nature yet at the same time something Amy and I are very passionate about.   So, I decided to share this for this reason alone:  It is my prayer that it might encourage somebody or some family feeling God tugging on their heart to adopt. 

Monday last week I got a call from Kathy at Shaohannah’s Hope, which is a foundation begun by Steven Curtis Chapman to assist families who wish to adopt.   We had applied for a grant from their foundation and were waiting to hear whether or not we would be getting one.   Kathy called and began by saying she had some good news for us - the committee that reviewed our application decided to award us with a $6,000 grant!   This is twice the normal amount awarded, she informed me, but she thought they felt that since we adopted 2 children we could probably use the additional help (she had no idea!)   As I stood there on the other end of the line listening to Kathy share this news I just wept.   Tears flooded my eyes and I couldn’t say anything but, praise God…praise God.  Kathy told me that the only condition was that we send her some pictures of us with the kids so that they can show them to others to give them hope.  I promised her I’d send 6000 pictures!

I decided to share this news because, first, it testifies to the goodness and greatness of our God who provides for us in so many ways, some seen and unseen, when we step out in faith and do what God is calling us to do.  Second, it testifies to God’s heart for orphans and the oppressed, something scripture speaks to again and again.  For references to this please read my sermon titled Fields of the Fatherless.   And lastly, I wanted to share this because I know the pressures of adoption (not all of them, but many of them) and one of them is the financial mountain that at first seems impossible to climb.  Adoptions are not cheap and I hear many people confess that they feel led to adopt but they simply cannot afford it.   It is to this reason I want say just a few things…

If you ever found yourself thinking that adoption is out of reach because of the funds required than you are no different from Amy and I.  When we began this process we were and still are a family like any other trying to make ends meet.   Being a full time seminary student and pastor while Amy stays at home with our kids (by choice) does not exactly bring in the big bucks and so when we decided to add 2 more children to our home we were taking on quite a bit.  Not to mention the fact that when we began this journey we had no money in the bank and had no clue how we might raise the nearly $20,000 needed to adopt Sophie and Eli.  When we said yes to God on this journey we were quite literally stepping out into mystery - into faith - and depending entirely on God to get us from where we presently were to where He needed us to be. 

I can’t say it has all been easy.  There were let-downs and disappointments.   But they were always overshadowed by the victories, small and great, where God seemed to confirm our decision to adopt every step of the way just where we needed it most.   This last gift of $6000 couldn’t have come at a better time and was one more reminder from God to us that He will never leave nor forsake His children. 

To those of you debating whether you can really afford to adopt yet sense God is calling you into this all the same, take heart.  There is something wildly exciting about stepping off a precipice and into the unknown but I have learned this:  It is there we most often find God with arms outstretched.   God promises that he will bless the work of those who care for the orphans.   I needed to share that God has shown himself to be true to his word and I believe will continue to do so for you.   There really are no excuses God cannot overcome. 

grace and peace,

Chad

Pope Benedict Urges Unity

Pope Benedict XVI is in Australia and announced to a packed audience of many faiths that we must unite together to combat religion’s role in violence around the world. 

While not unprecedented it is a great thing to see the head of the Roman Catholic Church call upon leaders of all faiths (even Protestants!) to work together for the common good of all peoples.   I believe this bent towards unity more closely resembles the teachings of Jesus, especially as it has to do with easing the suffering of the world.

Speaking to Christians, the Pope had this to say:

“I think you would agree that the ecumenical movement has reached a critical juncture,” he told the Christian representatives. “We must guard against any temptation to view doctrine as divisive and hence an impediment to the seemingly more pressing and immediate task of improving the world in which we live.”

Amen.  How many Protestant churches, however, will insist that doctrine is everything?   Is it really meant to impede the unity we can achieve and the pain we can allieviate under the Lordship of Jesus Christ?   I fear that too many Chrisitans have made doctrine into just one more idol.   We worship our ideas about what worshipping God is like more than the God who transcends even our best ideas. 

The Pope gets my Colbert “Tip of the Hat” vote!

peace,
Chad

Rob Bell’s New Book: Jesus Wants To Save Christians

Thanks to another blogger, Daniel Decker, I stumbled on some info about Rob Bell’s upcoming book, Jesus Wants to Save Christians: A Manifesto for the Church in Exile, due to be released October 2008.   This promises to be a great read, as both of his previous books have been but this one is especially interesting because he has done a sermon series on this a few years ago that was captivating.   I wonder if he will be expounding on that series.

 Here is a brief description of the book that can be found on Zondervan’s website:

There is a church not too far from us that recently added a $25 million addition to their building.

Our local newspaper ran a front-page story not too long ago about a study revealing that one in five people in our city lives in poverty.

This is a book about those two numbers.

It’s a book about faith and fear, wealth and war, poverty, power, safety, terror, Bibles, bombs, and homeland insecurity. It’s about empty empires and the truth that everybody’s a priest, it’s about oppression, occupation, and what happens when Christians support, animate and participate in the very things Jesus came to set people free from.

It’s about what it means to be a part of the church of Jesus in a world where some people fly planes into buildings while others pick up groceries in Hummers.

I look forward to reading this.

grace and peace.

What Would Jesus Do?

We have all heard this if not asked it ourselves.  Some of us might even have a bracelet with the acronym WWJD engraved on it to serve as a constant reminder through the day…of something.   For many of us that reminder might be more along the lines of I am not divine rather than what the marketers of that bracelet porbably intended.  The truth is we are not Jesus.  Since I am not Jesus I do not always have a clue what Jesus would do in this or that situation.  Chances are good that Jesus would have done something quite different from what I end up doing.   I can be very good, however, at convincing myself and others that Jesus would have done exactly what I did.   I think there is a better question.

Peter Gomes offers a new formulation:

The dilemma about what Jesus would do is avoided, or at least compromised, if the question is put differently and, in my view, as Jesus himself put it in the Gospels.  The question should not be “What would Jesus do?” but rather, and more dangerously, “What would Jesus have me do?”  The onus is not on Jesus but on us, for Jesus did not come to ask simidivine human beings to do impossible things.  He came to ask human beings to live up to their full humanity; he wants us to live in the full implications of our human gifts, and that is far more demanding.  Anyone can evade responsibility by attempting the impossible and failing; what Jesus asks is that we do what is possible, and that is the challenge that makes life interesting.  Jesus does not ask us to behave as he did; he asks us to behave as we ought - which is why asking, “What would Jesus have me do?” is far riskier than asking what Jesus himself would do.  It might very well be as Thomas Merton writes: “It seems to me that I have greater peace and am closer to God when I am not ‘trying to be a contemplative,’ or trying to be anything special, but simply orienting my life fully and completely towards what seems to be required of a man like me at a time like this.” 

What would Jesus have me, have you, do today?

Why Christians Suck

Tom Davis, author of books like Fields of the Fatherless, Red Letters: Living a Faith that Bleeds, and others, has an article featured on Beliefnet.com today titled, “Why Christians Suck” that you should read HERE. 

Tom is not one to mince words.  Bringing the vernacular of Jesus’ day to the present he opts for the adjective “sucks” over words such as “whitewashed tombs” or “brood of vipers” used to describe the religious of Jesus’ day.  While millions of children are starving and/or orphaned every day many self professed followers of Jesus Christ do nothing.    Instead of living the gospel and actually doing what we are called to do as disciples of Christ (i.e. carring for the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the widow, the orphan, the homeless, etc) we spend more time caring about our “political views, what sexual preference someone has, or [our] bank account.”

Tom has some strong words for the church today that I think need to be heard.   While there is no doubt that many, many Christians around the world do not suck and are doing precisely the sort of things Jesus calls us all to do there are countless more who do not.  There are far too many of us who confess Christ as Lord on Sunday and Monday we bow to the altar of our careers, our hobbies, our families, our money, or anything else that will not challenge us to live out the scandalous gospel of Jesus Christ.  

You can read more about Tom Davis and his ministries at his blog, HERE.    Great article, Tom. Thank you for challenging me to do less talking and more acting.

grace and peace.

There’s A Wideness in God’s Mercy

 

 

Lately I have been discussing on this blog and elsewhere the expansiveness of God’s love and mercy and how I believe that at Calvary and on Easter Sunday something so phenomenal occurred that the first witnesses could not help but to call it Good News.    This is not good news for some but for all the world.  The first people who were to be called Christians (not a name they gave to themselves but a pejoritive name given them by pagans) were called such because on the authority of witnesses to the resurrection they claimed Jesus is Lord and not Caesar.   To be a Christian meant that you believed Jesus is Lord of heavens and earth and will one day return to establish his earthly kingdom. 

What does it mean today?  Peter Gomes says in The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus that in the early 20thcentury, some Christians who would later be described as fundamentalists, “imposed a series of fundamental beliefs essential to being a Christian, including a belief in the literal truth of scripture, the virgin birth, the second coming, and substitionary atonement.  Those who affirmed those things were Christians; those who did not, were not” (pg. 60-61).

The effects of expanding the requirements to be called a Christian (as opposed to expanding the attributes of God), are far reaching.    One of the most damaging in my opinion is how impotent it has left the Church.  The proclamation that Jesus is Lord led those who were maligned with the name “Christian” to stop at nothing, including death, to spread the Good News that death has lost its sting in Christ Jesus and because of this Rome can no longer carve up the world with their greatest weapon - fear of the sword.   Now, free to live fully in the present (the Kingdom of God being at hand),  we can reach out to the poor, the homeless, the oppressed, the widow, the orphan and the marginalized, and even we lowly Gentiles, to announce that Justice will be served - but until that day we strive as fellow workers with God and pray thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.     But this is not happening.  Why?  Because within the Church, the vessel God instituted to share this Good News to a dying world, is too busy trying to determine who among them are worthy to be called Christians (note how it is now a description of notoriety rather than scandal) and of those who they can work alongside without smearing their own good reputation or legitimatizing the other’s ”mistaken” doctrinal positions.  And as we point fingers and divide the family of God we have the audacity to claim Christ’s words, “Do not think I have come to bring peace but a sword” as our marching orders.  

Rather than reveling in how narrow we have made the path to get to God l hope we can recall the words of hymn writer F.W. Faber when he wrote, “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy,” singing:

For the love of God is broader,

Than the measure of our mind;

And the heart of the Eternal

Is most wonderfully kind.

grace and peace,
Chad