The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Category: Jesus (Page 42 of 60)

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.

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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

Everybody a Preacher

July 8, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Day of Pentecost. Acts 2. There’s this mob in the street demanding an explanation for what’s happening in the upper room with the noise and the tongues of fire and the different languages. And Peter starts preaching from a passage in Joel:

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your young men will see visions,
your old men will dream dreams.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days,
and they will prophesy.
~Acts 2:17-18 (from Joel 2:28-29)

Through most of our history with God, Holy Spirit empowered talk (preaching) has been limited to a few select prophets. But when Christ comes, when the day of the Messiah and the coming of the Kingdom of God arrives, God’s Holy Spirit will be poured out on everybody! Young and old, men and women, rich and poor, educated and not, people who’ve never stood up to speak before, people who’ve never even looked at a microphone before, all God’s people will speak up and speak out. Everyone will preach the truth. Everybody’s a preacher! We are living right now today in the age of this promised free speech.

That’s why Jesus’ people are always big talkers. Have you noticed? We’ll talk to anybody. We love to talk. And we won’t shut up. No matter what our neighbors say. No matter what the government says.

Jesus was a preacher. And he sends his disciples out to preach. Faith comes from what is heard. That’s why when we get together on Sundays we mostly talk and shout and sing and read and speak. The most difficult part of my Sunday morning is standing before the crowd at Legacy at 10:00 and trying to get everybody quiet. We love to talk. And we won’t shut up. About Jesus. Because we’re all preachers, filled with the Spirit of Christ, re-created to proclaim the Gospel of salvation in all its eternal glory.

One of my favorite parables of Jesus, the preacher, is about the sower who went forth to sow. What’s the Kingdom of God like? A farmer goes out and just starts slinging seed. Hey, it’s the Kingdom of God! And he’s just throwing seed everywhere. Wasting lots of good seed with a reckless abandon.

That sounds like a really lousy way to grow a crop of wheat. But Jesus says it’s the best way to spread the good news. May our God bless us as we refuse to shut up.

Peace,

Allan

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