Father, forgive us

In this life we all make the choices that seem prudent to us in our daily lives. Each of us is the product of innumerable decisions and influences, some forced upon us and others discovered for ourselves over the long and wavering course of our lives. We are all travelers in a long, trail-less wilderness, carving for ourselves a path based on instincts and hunches and following the ways laid before us by others. That is our life, and few, if any of us, know where we are heading or have any idea what we are doing.

            That is the truth wrapped up in Jesus’ words as they raised him on the cross at Golgotha. “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” If those were only words for a people long ago and completely unaware of the Savior of the world living in their midst it would be one thing, but a part of us knows better than that. They are timeless words whose edge cuts through the annals of history to this day. Father, forgive us, because we don’t know what we are doing. In the midst of a world debating complex issues of life and death, love and hate, freedom and temperance: Father, forgive us for we don’t know what we are doing. When faced with criticism; when we are no longer open to debate; when our faith is tired and waning, Father, forgive us.

The order of operations matter: The Last Supper and the betrayal

Luke 22:14-27

The order of operations are important.

            This is something we learned back in middle school math class. Maybe you remember getting a problem like 1 + 3 x 7 x (17 – 4) ^ 2. Maybe if you have a really good memory you might even recall something about “permdas”: Parentheses, exponents, roots, multiplication, division, addition, subtraction—the order of how you are to rightly do a problem. If you just do it from left to right it’s not going to turn out so well.

Apparently roots have disappeared since the days I was in school...

            The Last Supper is not a math problem, but the order of operations are still important. The stars of the show are Jesus and Judas, but the way the action plays out is very important for the moral that we take away from the story. We start with a simple assumption: anybody who betrayed Jesus is a person whose actions are beyond grace. After all, even when Judas Iscariot is first listed in the names of the disciples earlier in Luke’s Gospel he is given the epitaph, “traitor.” We know from the beginning of the story who the ultimate “bad guy” is. Judas Iscariot: the man who betrayed Jesus.

            But the order of operations matter.

Back to basics: A look at homosexuality and Christianity

This is tough thing to write, because I know people will care. There are so few subjects I write on that many people care about, which is strange when you think about it, because my primary areas of interest are salvation and Jesus and all things that are very close to the heart of Christianity. Yet, as much as I hear positive things in my day-to-day life from loving members of the churches I serve I know that this piece is much nearer to where peoples' emotions live. To be honest, that concerns me, but the locus of the culture wars are always somewhere. What's important to admit firstly is that these are matters secondary to the faith. I think that's sometimes hard to hear for those who see the stance toward gays in America as cruel and oppressive; and I think that's hard to hear for those who see the acceptance of gays as undermining the biblical principles on which their faith is founded. But I believe it nonetheless to be entirely secondary to the primary message of the Gospel, which is something like: you are saved by grace through faith apart from works of law (because of Christ dying on the cross and rising again).

With that said, I am cautious to add another opinion to this mess, though I do so because too few have brought us back to the basic presuppositions we bring to the gay marriage debate. One side wants to make it all about love and acceptance, which is unfair, because one can certainly love a person while believing their actions to be unhealthy or sinful. The other side wants to make it all about God's law, which is unfair, because scripture only gives us a partial--and hardly timeless--view of what the law demands.

Why trying to accommodate our youth is killing the church...and what to do about it

In the world of the internet the way to get something across is with snazzy enumeration. The simpler the better. It's hard to make a well-rounded argument when the average reader will click away by the end of this sentence if they're not already interested. In this environment it's impossible not to oversimplify incredibly complex issues by suggesting that entire movements can be fixed if only we realize these simple 3, 5 or 10 steps. It's hardly ever that simple.

Case and point: the decline of young people in the church. I just read a thoughtful blog post on the Top 10 Reasons our Kids Leave Church. I mean it when I say that this was well-written and I agree with just about all of it. Many churches try too hard to be relevant (#10), make church about entertainment (#9), dumb down the message and never allow kids to ask questions (#8 and #7 and #3), elevate feelings above faith (#6 and #4), water down the purpose of church to something like "community" (#5), suggest morality is our primary mission  (#2) and create a pragmatic, self-serving gospel (#1). All of this is good to point out, and I bet the casual Christian would never have realized that part of what makes church attractive in the short-term are things that also make it unappealing in the long run.

The Hero We Need, Not the Hero We Deserve: Jesus and the Dark Knight

Text: Luke 19:41-48

          One of the great things about reading the Bible in an orderly fashion, as we’ve been doing now for almost a year, is that you begin to see how stories connect in ways you may never have realized. For instance, you’re probably all pretty familiar with the Palm Sunday story. Jesus comes to Jerusalem, people wave palm branches and shout praises at him. That is the yearly ritual. It’s our intro-to-Holy-Week-Jesus-party. Everybody’s going to be there: Jesus, the donkey, some disciples, people waving Palm branches; it’s going to be a blast. However, I should warn you that since we’re reading more than just the Hosannas and the branches, this party might not turn out quite like you would want. You see, Jesus isn’t doing anything particularly royal in Jerusalem. He’s not making some nice gesture for his big supporters, and he’s not having a campaign fundraiser with $10,000 plates. Instead, Jesus is going to do what Jesus does. He foretells the destruction of Jerusalem (just wait about forty years) and then he heads over to the temple to throw some of the wealthy out. You can imagine, that was unexpected for the gathering throngs of supporters. His speech was heavy on the judgment and his actions didn’t seem to curry any favor with the wealthy elite. What kind of politician was this Jesus anyway?

Eternal Salvation, Present Salvation

Luke 19:1-10

Zacchaeus got me wondering this week: if Jesus were alive and walking around today, whose house would he stay at? It certainly wouldn’t be the pastor, nor would it be any of you who frequent the church; it wouldn’t be the well-liked people in town or the people who work respectable jobs. If Jesus sticks to the formula of finding a tax collector or other sinner he would come into town and find the person who was defrauding the most from others in the community; he would find the person that nobody likes; the person universally despised, and that is where Jesus would stay.

            Now, do you understand why people thought this was crazy? We’re not going to name names here, but you probably all have an image in your head of a kind of person (or even a specific person) in town. It’s almost impossible to imagine Jesus seeking out that person to stay with him or her. Further, Zacchaeus seems like he got off with a relatively light sentence here. I mean, earlier in Luke a rich man comes to Jesus and Jesus tells him he must go and sell everything. But here is Zacchaeus apparently acquiring salvation for the small price of half of what he owns and four times what he has defrauded. Last I checked half and all are very different amounts.

            Has Luke forgotten the story he just told?

The Courage to be Humble

From the Hallock ecumenical men's breakfast. Theme: Courageous men in scripture 

 

            I begin just about every one of the sermons I preach with our reading for this morning from Psalm 19:14: “Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.” Well, that might not seem like a verse that has much to do with courage, but courage in the Bible is a lot more than picking up a rock and killing a giant. It’s more than going before Pharaoh and saying “Let my people go;” it’s more than following Jesus out on to the water and more than a night in a lion’s den. Those are our primary images of courageous men in scripture. We don’t have biblical sports stars, but we do have King David, Moses, Daniel, Abraham, Solomon—religious and political leaders.

            And then there’s Jesus. Of course, it’s easy to talk about courage and Jesus. Savior of the world, died on a cross for us, gave the ultimate sacrifice; courageous, no doubt. But the way that Jesus was courageous was not the same as David or Moses. Jesus was courageous in denying the need to so desperately hold on to life, humbling himself to the point of death. It takes profound courage to be humble, especially when you are on the right side of a question, especially—one would assume—when you are the God of the world.

10 or 12 out of 1700: The false arithmetic of salvation

Luke 16:19-31

Well, today is my chance to go fire and brimstone on you… but I’m not going to do it. There’s a problem with trying to make the story of Lazarus and the rich man into a fire and brimstone Gospel: there’s nothing about repentance in this story—nothing. It doesn’t say repent or burn, as we can imagine any number of preachers and prophets saying. Furthermore, the fire and brimstone message seems inconsistent with the Gospel of Luke. In this very same Gospel, Jesus has said A) you are rich and you can never give enough away, and B) rich people are tormented for eternity in hell. Doesn’t it suddenly seem like a long time since we were singing “What a fellowship, what a joy divine?”

The Prodigal Son and God's Economics

Text: Luke 15:1-32

            Inside of us we all have an idea of what is fair. Now, we may not always listen to that inner referee, and we all may have somewhat different conceptions of fairness, but most of us know what fair looks and smells like. And this time of the year it seems like every story from the Gospels sets off our unfair detectors. Jesus does not seem to have the same innate sense of fairness that we do, which is strange when you think about it. What can we say when the Savior of the world doesn’t think like we do? We like to craft gods into our own image, but in Jesus we have a Savior who does not think or act like us at all. It’s a little strange.

            Part of our problem is that we live life as if it is one big budget sheet. Those of you who handle money are going to know exactly what I’m talking about, but even if you can’t make or follow a budget if your life depended on it you actually live like this too most of the time. When it comes down to it we make most choices in life by assessing cost versus benefit. Why do we choose to exercise rather than sit on the couch? Because the immediate discomfort of exercise will make us fitter and feel better in the long-term. Why do we choose to go bowling on a weekend? Because the cost of taking the family bowling is worth the enjoyment. Why do we choose not to steal somebody’s wallet or drive off with one of those vehicles that are running outside the Farmer’s Store? Because the benefit of the wallet or the car is not worth the potential cost of getting caught and harming our neighbors. Why do we go to church in the morning? Well, maybe we won’t get into that.