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Category: Jesus (Page 42 of 61)

Take Courage! It is I!

October 19, 2011 / / 0 Comments

I’m teaching some of the broad themes of the Gospel of Mark in our Wednesday night class. You can find our outlines and articles and, eventually, the audio from the classes by jumping to the Central Church of Christ website here. Tonight we’re focusing on the great contrast between fear and faith.

(It’s appropriate to be considering this together on the same night the Rangers open the World Series. Rangers fans know all too well the mighty struggle between fear and faith, between despair and belief.)

Everybody in Mark is afraid. Everybody. Jesus calms the storm, delivers his apostles from the sea, and he turns to them and asks, “Why are you so afraid?” Jesus delivers the demon-possessed man from the devils that have enslaved him and the townspeople react in fear. The bleeding woman trembles in fear. Jesus tells Jairus not to be afraid. The apostles are terrified when Jesus walks on the water. They’re afraid to ask the Lord what he means when he predicts his death. Those following Jesus “on the way” are said to be afraid. The religious leaders in Mark are afraid: they fear Jesus, they fear the people, and they’re afraid of the crowds.

Everybody’s afraid in Mark. They’re terrified by Jesus’ power over nature, by his power over hell; they’re frightened by the images of persecution and suffering and death he predicts; they’re scared by what it means to follow him. And Mark does not want us to miss this. In fact, this fear factor as a theme is so important to Mark it’s the very last thought, the last word literally, in his Gospel. In Chapter 16 the angel at the empty tomb commands the women, “Go, tell his disciples and Peter.” But “they were afraid.”

If fear is the opposite of faith — and I’m convinced it is — fear paralyzes us while faith liberates us. Fear looks at me and the world while faith sees me and God. And Jesus longs for us to have faith. His desire is to drive away our fears. So he comes to us. He reveals himself to us. He shows us who he is and what he’s all about.

He comes to us, walking on the uncertain waters of the storms all around us. He comes as the One who is sovereign over those waters that threaten to do us in. He controls them. He does what only God, the divine Creator of heaven and earth can do. He walks on the water to us and says, “Take Courage! It is I! Don’t be afraid.”

To all the people in Mark who are afraid, the message from our Lord is the same: Don’t be. He tells the disciples to have faith. He informs the woman that her faith has healed her. He tells Jairus to believe. He teaches them (us) in patience and love. He leads them (us) by his perfect example. And he rescues them (us) and delivers them (us) again and again and again.

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I feel a million miles away from my Rangers. Saturday’s pennant clincher was thrilling, but there was no mad late-night dash to Academy to celebrate with the throngs and purchase the official T-shirt like last year. I had called the Academy Saturday afternoon just to see if they might, by some chance, have the shirts stashed away in boxes, ready to be unveiled and made available as soon as Feliz recorded the last out. Alas, the poor young man on the other end of the line had no idea what I was talking about.

Oi.

The shirts just made it to Academy up here yesterday. Whitney and I quietly and anticlimactically got our shirts after school. We’re wearing them today. But I haven’t seen them on anybody else.

The Amarillo Globe-News only had two stories about the Rangers in their whole newspaper today: an AP wire story about C. J.’s freeze chamber (boring) and a local column about long-suffering Rangers fans (already lived it).

Oi, vey.

For big regular season games and every single postseason game, I have my text conversations with my die-hard Rangers friends. From Fort Worth and Amarillo to Arkansas and East Texas, we watch the games “together” and make “interesting comments” (as George Costanza says) and wise cracks about team strategy, booth announcing, and critical plays. Not tonight, though. It’s a church night. It’s also an elders meeting night. And I’ve left my DVR in North Richland Hills. If I’m lucky, I’ll get home in time to catch the last inning or two.

Hopefully, Chris Carpenter will be long gone by then. And Alexi will be dealing with a lead.

Let’s Go Rangers! (clap, clap, clap, clap, clap)
Let’s Go Rangers! (clap, clap, clap, clap, clap)

Allan

It’s A Problem, Right?

October 13, 2011 / / 1 Comment

“Cruz Control!”

Nellie is dealing, man! His perfect strike from right field in the 8th and his three-run jimmy jack to put it away in the 11th have given the Rangers complete command of this ALCS. Young finally drove in a run and appears to be slowly returning to form. Kinsler’s running the bases like a seasoned veteran. Mike Napoli’s still red-hot; his throw to nail Jackson, coupled with his catch and block at the plate on Cabrera, were things of sheer beauty and grace. And watching Wash running in place in the dugout as Hamilton rounded third made everything seem just as fun as last year.

And: Is it a cobra or a sitting duck? What is that thing? Whatever it is, it’s not as cool as the claw and antlers.

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Jesus and the Church today don’t attract the same people. That’s a problem, right? While he was ministering on this earth in our flesh, Jesus seemed to attract a certain kind of people. But his Church today seems to repel those kinds of people and attract others.

In just about every Gospel account, anytime Jesus met up with a religious leader or a well-respected pillar of the community, they were offended by the Son of God. They were repulsed by Jesus. Threatened, even. But those who were on the margins of society, those who had no power or status or wealth, were intrigued by Jesus. They were attracted to him. The outcast is always the one who connects with Jesus. Those are the ones coming to Christ. The city rulers and “church” leaders were the ones trying to put Jesus down, trying to kill him.

Our experience today seems to be just the opposite.

Timothy Keller, in his little book The Prodigal God, speaks to this as he compares and contrasts the two lost sons in the Luke 15 account of Jesus’ most well-known parable. (What? You’ve never read Timothy Keller? Oh, my. Look, as soon as you’re finished reading and commenting on this blog post, the very moment you’re done, click here and buy Keller’s The Reason For God. And when it arrives, read it!) The younger son types were always attracted to Jesus while the older brother types were cynical and suspicious. But that’s not the way things are in our American churches today:

“Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today do not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to our contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones. We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or the broken and marginal avoid church. That can only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.”

What kind of  a message are we sending when we relegate the poor of our community to a back room downstairs? What are we saying when the Hispanic church can meet in our building, but only after we’re finished with it? What do we communicate when the outcast feels more warmly welcomed at Wal-Mart and McDonald’s than he does at church? What’s the “gospel” we proclaim when we’re quick to hand a guy a five dollar bill for lunch but avoid like the plague the thought of ever actually inviting that guy to our homes for dinner?

That’s a problem, right?

If we ever came to the conclusion that acting like our Lord — doing Christ-like things in Christ-like ways — was the way to go and acting the opposite of our Lord was wrong, then things might change. But none of this will ever change a long as we think it’s OK the way it is. That’s a problem, right?

Peace,

Allan

Do You See Anything?

October 12, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Yesterday’s Skip-shot in this space has started something. I received a text from Byrnes very early this morning that said:

 “Rangers Subdued by Iron Fister.”

I countered with:

“Colby Serves Up the Cheese in Rangers Loss.”

If you’d like to add a corny headline about last night’s game before this afternoon’s begins, jump in.

~~~~~~~~~

We’re conditioned by our world — actually it’s in our nature and then reinforced by the world — to see the things we want to see and hear the things we want to hear. Anybody with a spouse or any children know this first hand. I’ll tell the girls “maybe” and they run to Carrie-Anne and say, “Dad said we could!” As a preacher, sometimes this works in my favor. Somebody will tell me how wonderful it was when I said such-and-such and I have no idea what she’s talking about. What this lady heard is nowhere near what I was preaching. But it meant something to her. And I still take credit for it. Of course, it certainly can work the other way, too.

In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus keeps asking people if they’re seeing correctly. Jesus asks the blind guy in Mark 8, “Do you see anything?” Same chapter, in the boat before Jesus and his apostles reach Bethsaida, he asks them, “Do you still not see?”

The blind guy in Mark 8 whose vision is blurry, whose eyesight is not perfectly clear, who sees something but not everything, represents everybody in the Gospel. And most everybody we encounter today. We see Jesus. But we don’t see all of him. We only see what we want. We embrace the Jesus who heals and forgives and feeds and loves and accepts and saves. We want to follow Jesus and live like that Jesus. But a Jesus who suffers and dies? Peter refused to see it. Most everybody did. Sometimes we don’t see it. And our picture of the Messiah is woefully incomplete. The Savior we teach is less than whole. The Gospel we preach is only partial truth.

We don’t see Jesus completely until we see his suffering and death. To see Jesus die is to understand who he really is and what he really came to do.

There are only two people in the entire Gospel of Mark who are said to “see.” One is Bartimaeus, the only other blind guy in the whole book, in Mark 10. This is Jesus’ final miracle, his last healing, as he enters Jerusalem to die. Bartimaeus calls out to Jesus, “Son of David!” That’s the Messianic title. The blind guy is the only one who sees. Jesus asks him, “What do you want me to do for you?” And Bartimaeus answers, “I want to see.” And the text tells us that “immediately he received his sight and followed Jesus.” To the cross. To his death.

The other one is the Roman Centurion. At the cross. At Jesus’ death. The crowds were shouting, “Come down from the cross that we may see and believe!” When the soldier “saw how he died,” he confessed Jesus as the Son of God.

If you tell Jesus “I want to see,” what you’ll see is a commitment to trials and ridicule and persecution and suffering. You’ll see a road, a way, that leads to your death. What you’re promised is the same exaltation and glory that he now has as the resurrected Lord reigning at the right hand of the Father in heaven.

Peace,

Allan

Faithful Among the Stumps

October 1, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Of all the really cool stuff in Isaiah — the servant songs, the allusions to Christ, the prophesies about the Messiah, the comfort passages — the words at the end of chapter six about preaching to people who refuse to listen are the most quoted in the New Testament.

Jesus uses Isaiah’s words in Matthew 13 after telling the parable of the four soils. Same thing in Mark 4 and Luke 8. Jesus says, man, this is how Isaiah must have felt.

In John 12, right after Jesus predicts his death, God’s voice thunders down from heaven for the benefit of the people in the crowds. But they’re not listening. They don’t understand. They refuse to change. And, again, Jesus uses the Isaiah 6 passage to account for the blind eyes and stubborn hearts.

Paul’s near the end of his life in Acts 28, under house arrest in Rome. And he’s failed to make a dent in the sight or the hearing or the hearts of the religious leaders who’ve come to hear him preach. Nothing. And he quotes the Isaiah 6 passage. Same thing in Romans 11. “It’s still happening!” Paul says, “To this very day!” Paul’s a failed preacher in pretty good company.

The point of the last half of Isaiah 6, and the reason the passage is repeated so many times in the early history of God’s Church, is that we are called to be faithful to our Father and to his mission, regardless of where it takes us. No matter how bad it gets, no matter how many people reject the truth, we are called to keep preaching the truth.

The point of Isaiah 6:8-13 is that if we trust God, if we’ll remain faithful to him, he’ll do something with those closed eyes and plugged up ears. Those stumps (Isaiah 6:13). Isaiah and Jesus and the apostles are reminding us that God does his best work in the middle of a desolate field of worthless stumps.

God created the universe out of nothing. He raised a mighty nation out of a 90-year-old barren womb. He pulled a young boy from the bottom of a well and made him a powerful ruler of the most important nation in the world. He uses the death of a preacher and the persecution of his Church to spread the Good News of salvation from Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. He delivered forgiveness and righteousness to all mankind through a cruel wooden cross.

There’s more happening in horrible situations than we ever realize. These awful circumstances are holy. God does holy things with faithful people in a field full of stumps.

“The holy seed is its stump.” ~Isaiah 6:13

Peace,

Allan

The Face of God

September 15, 2011 / / 1 Comment

We’ve just begun a Sunday morning adult Bible class series on the book of Exodus, the great foundational story of God’s rescuing a desperate band of nameless slaves and shaping them into a nation of his holy people for the salvation of the world. Wow. That’s quite a lot to consider.

The first couple of chapters in Exodus deal with God’s concern for the dignity of his created people. They have names and families and hurts and needs. All of them. Even these poor slaves who have no power, no resources, no status; they have dignity and beauty and great value as God’s created sons and daughters. They have names.

And we’re trying at Central to restore that same dignity to and recognize the value in the powerless marginalized of downtown Amarillo. Sunday mornings at the Upreach Center, Wednesday nights at Martha’s home, and Thursdays at Loaves and Fishes are special times each week when we make faithful attempts to show the love and grace of Jesus to those who need it most. For the past three Thursdays I’ve been blessed to share the good news of salvation from God in Christ to 140-150 people who are desperate for food and shelter. And grace. And hope.

I preach to them. (Or, I should say, I preach ‘with’ them. They talk to me and with me throughout my time down there. Lots of ‘amens’ and ‘thank you, Jesus.’) I visit with them about segregation and old BBQ joints and grandkids and illnesses. Actually, I mostly listen. I hug them. We laugh together. And we always wind up marveling together about the faithfulness of our God. And his great goodness.

Oh, yeah. Some of them are grouchy, too. Just like church people, some of them complain and wonder aloud why they aren’t being properly treated.

But the whole scene reminds me of something Robert Coles wrote in The Spiritual Life of Children:

Sometimes, as I sit and watch a child struggle to draw a picture of God — to do just the right job of representing God’s face, his features, the shape of his head, the cast of his countenance — I think back to my days of working in Dorothy Day’s Catholic Worker soup kitchen. One afternoon, after several of us had struggled with a “wino,” an angry, cursing, truculent man of fifty or so, with long gray hair, a full, scraggly beard, a huge scar on his right cheek, a mouth with virtually no teeth, and bloodshot eyes, one of which had a terrible tic, Dorothy told us, “For all we know he might be God himself come here to test us, so let us treat him as an honored guest and look at his face as if it is the most beautiful one we can imagine.”

Meeting needs and serving others and restoring dignity to God’s children is like heaven. It really is the Kingdom of God. It’s God’s will being done in Amarillo just as it is in heaven. And jumping in to join our Father in this kind of work is so very rewarding. Of course, the good feelings we recieve and the satisfaction of partnering with God is just a foretaste. Our Lord promises those who feed the hungry and thirsty, clothe the cold, shelter the homeless, care for the sick, and visit the prisoners actually participate in feeding, clothing, sheltering, caring for, and visiting Jesus himself. We inherit the “Kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.” But we also get a glimpse of God. God reveals himself to us on Thursday mornings.

Today I saw the face of God in David, sitting there in his wheelchair, singing with Amber a song he didn’t even know. I saw the face of God in Willie’s gold tooth with the diamond “W.” I saw the face of God in Christy’s grief today. I saw the face of God in Louise’s gratitude. In Carla’s huge smile. In Doug’s enthusiasm. In the telling and re-telling of Debra’s healing and recovery.

I don’t see the face of God when I look in the mirror. Maybe I should. He definitely reveals it to me every Thursday. It’s unmistakable. And I praise him for that regular and glorious revelation.

Peace,

Allan

“A Fork in the Road”

July 22, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Lord, I don’t want to be a mile-marker on the road of life, that as people pass me by, maybe they notice, maybe they don’t. It doesn’t matter. They continue on in the same direction as before.

But I want to be a fork in the road.

So that when people meet me they must decide which way to go. Because when they meet me, they don’t just meet me. They meet the Christ who lives in me.

~Jim Eliot, from The Shadow of the Almighty, 1956

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