tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17129996317467245362024-03-04T22:29:47.689-06:00KubernesisSETTING COURSE FOR MAKING DISCIPLES IN A NEW DAYDavid R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.comBlogger111125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-20957611350638785192017-09-08T14:39:00.003-05:002017-09-08T14:39:51.727-05:00The New SanhedrinAt Caesarea-Philippi Jesus introduced the concept of his new Church:<br />
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“Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven (Matthew 16:17-19).”</blockquote>
Back home in Capernaum, after the transfiguration experience, the question of greatness in the kingdom came up. Though it came up several times as a matter of pride and establishing pecking order, this time it may have been a legitimate question of how things would work. Jesus had spoken of Peter, the rock, and keys, and binding and loosing, but had not given detail. So maybe the disciples brought this up as a matter of clarification. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt this time, anyway.<br />
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Jesus responded by calling a child to him. He cautioned the disciples that in all things they would follow the gentle, humble example of children. They were to make sure they did not become a stumbling block to others, especially children. Making them lose their faith and lessen their devotion to God would be bad.<br />
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Then Jesus described how to handle offenses within the community of believers with a process that was very familiar to them. He described going to offenders alone first to work things out. That rules out grumbling to others. If that didn’t work, the process leads to taking two or three witnesses to make note of the exchange. Two or three witnesses were what was required to establish testimony in court. The gesture of bringing witnesses indicated what to expect next if the offended did not achieve reconciliation. Finally the plaintiff could make his case before the church, the gathering.<br />
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The Jews practiced this already except that instead of the church they appealed to the Sanhedrin, which is Hebrew for people who sit together. The Hebrews established a system of Sanhedrin councils going back to Moses and his 70 elders (Numbers 11). Each town organized a Sanhedrin of at least 23 men, consisting of the heads of extended local families. In Jerusalem the Great Sanhedrin of 71 priests, elders, and scribes heard national cases. In local and national cases the respective court ruled on cases brought before them. Their rulings, taken by simple vote, were final, and considered God’s will in the matter.<br />
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In other words, Jesus clarified that the Church establish a system of justice similar to what they had experienced in Hebrew life.<br />
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The word church is rare in the gospels, occurring only in Matthew -- twice. The Greek text renders εκκλησια (ekklesia), or called-out ones. But more likely Jesus had the Hebrew word <span style="font-family: "Linux Libertine"; font-size: 13pt;">קחל</span> (qahal) in mind. It literally means gathering the sheep to the shepherd. It is used to describe community, assembly, and congregation.<br />
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I doubt Jesus had in mind everyone airing their personal disputes before the entire church. More likely he was describing a Sanhedrin, a group of elders within the assembly who would adjudicate and pass judgment. Their word would settle the matter. The likely first Sanhedrin of the Church would be the initial bishops, the disciples-turned-apostles.<br />
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Here are some Hebraisms that clarify. Binding and loosing were legal terms for prohibiting and permitting. Pronouncing legal judgment. Jesus used the phrase at Caesarea-Philippi, and spoke it here again. Later on in John 20, in his Resurrection Day visit to frightened disciples, he said something similar. “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.” Jesus granted authority to the new Sanhedrin to govern the church, and they could be sure their careful deliberations resulted in God’s will. Deep humility and attention to spiritual matters is the key.<br />
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Paul echoed this idea to the church at Galatia.<br />
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“If a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks himself to be something, when he is nothing, he deceives himself. But let each one examine his own work, and then he will have rejoicing in himself alone, and not in another. For each one shall bear his own load (Galatians 6:1-5).”</blockquote>
The other Hebraism is the mention of Jesus present with two or three. In Hebrew life it took ten men to form a local synagogue (congregation). But absent ten men, when two or three gathered to pray or study the Torah they could count on God’s presence with them.<br />
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Sometimes we find ourselves in a place of authority in a local church. That should humble us by driving us to pray and seek the Scriptures for God’s will, so that we can make God’s decisions or carry out our own agenda.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Matthew 18:15-20 (Proper 18 A)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-56282527025056030032017-08-17T15:28:00.003-05:002017-09-08T12:23:12.271-05:00Even the Dogs Get CrumbsJesus had about enough of nitpicky Pharisees, who complained that the disciples didn’t wash their hands the right way. So he left town and traveled north into the area of Tyre and Sidon, in what is now Lebanon. Surely the Pharisees wouldn’t follow him into the land of the unclean.<br />
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What he didn’t count on was a loud, obnoxious woman screaming at him for mercy. Matthew identifies her as “a Canaanite woman” whose daughter suffered terribly from demonization. We do not know exactly how it affected her, but we can be sure it was severe enough to deeply trouble this desperate mother.<br />
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Jesus’ response was to completely ignore her.<br />
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The woman’s continual shouts were extremely annoying. The pagan religious practice of the area called for obnoxious continual loud shrieks and calls. The woman’s persistent repetition and loud volume got on the disciples’ nerves. “Send her away, she keeps shouting after us!”<br />
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“I’ve been sent only to the lost sheep, the people of Israel,” Jesus said.<br />
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Then the woman knelt before Jesus. “Please help me.”<br />
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Jesus’ response is surprising to our Western sensitivities. “It is not right to take the children’s food and toss it to dogs.” That was a huge insult, because in Hebrew thought dogs were nasty, unclean, and deplorable. Jesus implied the woman was a filthy dog because she wasn’t Hebrew. Worse than that, she was descended from Israel’s worst long-time enemies, the Canaanites.<br />
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But the woman’s quick wit turned the entire situation around. “Even the dogs get the crumbs that fall off the table!” Jesus commended her great faith and granted her desire. Her daughter was healed.<br />
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What do dogs under the table have to do with faith?<br />
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The Hebrew word for faith is <span style="font-size: large;">אמןנה</span> (emunah), meaning that which is established, firm, and certain. When we express faith in God we understand that he is firm and sure. It is safe to base our lives on him. When we apply the word to people we say we are firmly fixed and therefore faithful.<br />
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Jesus posed a few barriers to discern her faith.<br />
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First, when she approached Jesus she addressed him as “O Lord, Son of David.” Apparently she had knowledge of the coming Hebrew Messiah and believed that to be him. That was far greater than the critical Pharisees who had nitpicked about unwashed hands amid spectacular signs that only the Messiah could perform.<br />
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But Jesus ignored her. That was normal practice. Jewish men did not have conversation with women in public, especially women they did not know, and even more especially with Gentile women. Jesus disregarded that convention with the woman at the well, be here he observed it. She would have expected as much.<br />
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Then, when the disciples grew tired of her noisy petitions they implored, essentially, “Please! Give her what she wants so she will go away! She’s driving us all nuts!” Jesus said, “Nope. My mission now is to the lost sheep of Israel, not these people.”<br />
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Despite being first ignored and then rebuffed, the woman came close to worship him. That is, she knelt so that her knees and her face were to the ground. And she said, “Lord, help me.” This was a deep and profound act of worship and acknowledgment that Jesus was Messiah.<br />
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But he rebuffed her again, this time to her face. “It’s not right to take the children’s food and toss it to dogs.” It was normal for Jews to refer to Gentiles as dogs, and those living as close to Jews as this woman did knew that.She was not put off by that.<br />
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Fair enough, she said. Even the dogs eat the food the children waste.<br />
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The “children” had just wasted the food he was giving them in Galilee because they were worried more about the hand-washing ceremony. Jesus may as well allow her to benefit from the cast-offs. Even dogs get crumbs.<br />
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Sure of her faith, Jesus granted her desire. Her daughter was relieved of her oppressive spirits.<br />
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She was certain Jesus was the promised Son of David. She was convinced he could grant her request. She was determined she was in line for the blessings intended for but wasted by her neighbors the Jews. And she was willing to persist and persevere until she got it.<br />
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And that is faith.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+15%3A21-28&version=CEB&interface=print" target="_blank">Matthew 15:21-28</a> (Proper 15 A)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-44499328663383449962015-02-22T04:36:00.003-06:002015-02-22T04:36:52.591-06:00Into the wildernessAbout three years ago two of my sons and I went for an overnight camp in the Sypsy wilderness. We walked about ten miles, I think, and set up camp at the end of the day. The next day we walked another ten miles back to the car. We were truly in the wilderness for there were no amenities of any kind. Everything we needed we carried on our backs. At night it was cold and very dark, and we could hear animals all around. Though it was good to be with my sons on that adventure it was also a challenge. I was glad it lasted only two days and one night.<br />
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So I can’t imagine how it must have been for Jesus, forced into the wilderness, to be tested by Satan, for forty days. We don’t know what Jesus carried with him, but we know he had traveled from Galilee to the Judean wilderness to catch up with John the baptizer, and he probably had his travel gear with him. He may have begun his journey back to Galilee through the wilderness along the river.<br />
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I am intrigued by the word forced. Mark says the Spirit forced him into the wilderness. The Greek word is the same used to describe casting out demons and it means to drive out or expel. The related Hebrew word also means to drive out and it is used to describe Adam and Eve being evicted from the garden of Eden, and the banishment of Cain to wander the countryside as a homeless man. It also describes divorce.<br />
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One minute God says Jesus is the son God “dearly loves” and in whom he finds happiness. The next he drives Jesus away, banished, evicted, and relegated to the wilderness away from people and civilization. There he will be “tempted by Satan” and exposed to danger from wild animals.<br />
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Why exactly did God do this? Why would Jesus have to go to the wilderness after such an affirmation of approval? My guess is that Jesus had to go to the wilderness to discover exactly who he was and what he was called to do. He was lured from the carpenter shop to walk the 70-mile journey to find John, and then driven into the wilderness after submitting to John’s baptism.<br />
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Mark mentions angels caring for Jesus. Did Jesus even realize they were there? I have my doubts. He exposed himself to what seemed to him to be great discomfort and huge risks, even though angels were with him the entire time. They took care of him.<br />
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So it is, I believe, with us. When we answer God’s call we don’t know all the details. We move a step at a time, first leaving the familiar and comfortable, finding affirmation along the way, and then being ejected into a wilderness of sorts we didn’t bargain for. Our meager resources give out, and we are left to depend on God alone for protection and provision. Angels attend, but we often can’t realize it through the ordeal.<br />
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All the while the adversary is causing us to second guess everything with unrelenting arguments and accusations. He will point to our temporary as proof we missed God, that we have sinned, and that we are done for. Or he will tell us God does not care, he does not answer prayer, and that we have wasted our time. All the while we are not aware of the angels around caring for us as needed.<br />
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It is times like this we work through the temptations, motives, and desires. We question, repent, and resolve. We decide we will follow no matter what. We must come to the place, like Job, where we can say, “He will slay me; I’m without hope; I will surely trust him.”<br />
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Have you ever felt God forced you into something risky and unwanted? Did you ponder the purpose? Maybe God was preparing you to follow him no matter what.<br />
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We have begun a forty-day experience the early church called Lent. It is given to us as a gift and tool, to enable us to walk through a wilderness by setting aside certain things that distract so that we can find God on the back side of the wilderness. We can sort through what is important and what is not. And we can gather the strength to withstand trials, temptations, and accusations leveled at us. We can decide to follow Jesus no matter what.<br />
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Jesus’ ordeal in the wilderness brings to mind the forty days and nights Moses went to the wilderness to meet God and receive the law. It also calls to mind the forty-day journey Elijah took after he humiliated the prophets of Baal. Israel went to their land of promise through a forty-year wilderness journey.<br />
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Mark tells us that when Jesus’ time in the wilderness was over he went back to Galilee to begin his ministry. “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Change your hearts and lives, and trust this good news!” Luke adds that he did so in the power of the Spirit. The same Spirit that drove him away to begin with.<br />
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The wilderness is the preparation staging area for the great work of the kingdom. Embrace the wilderness, and learn what you can from it. Then go forth in the power of the Spirit.<br />
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Almighty God, whose blessed Son was led by the Spirit to be tempted by Satan: Come quickly to help us who are assaulted by many temptations; and, as you know the weaknesses of each of us, let each one find you mighty to save; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP)</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1%3A9-15&version=CEB" target="_blank">Mark 1:9-15</a> (1 Lent B)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-38714665669876676072015-02-15T05:48:00.001-06:002015-02-15T05:48:16.258-06:00Listen to him!The online dictionary describes stubbornness as “having or showing dogged determination not to change one’s attitude or position on something, especially in spite of good arguments or reasons to do so.” It uses synonyms like pig-headed, strong-willed, and contrary to describe it.<br />
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I resemble that remark. I have been known to be unbending at times when I was convinced I was right. I would simply not listen to voices I didn’t want to hear.<br />
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Sometimes I guess that is good. When overwhelming popular opinion is leading in a direction we know is not right we need to be able to stand. We need to be willing to stand against the grain and to face whatever consequences come from that. It is like following Jesus to the cross.<br />
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But sometimes the stand we take is just plain wrong. It may be built on selfish pride, or love of the way we’ve always done it, or ambition. That is when we cross over into being stubborn. When we come to the place when we won’t listen to the voices God sends to correct and guide, we are just plain stubborn.<br />
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We need to learn to listen to him.<br />
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Peter had problems with stubbornness. When he was right he was right. The Holy Spirit revealed to him before the others that Jesus was no ordinary prophet but the Messiah of God. But at the same time Peter could be just plain stubborn.<br />
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When Jesus began to tell his disciples that he would go to Jerusalem, be rejected by the officials, and killed by them it did not compute in Peter’s worldview. He couldn’t listen. So he began to correct Jesus. He couldn’t let that happen because it didn’t fit the radical zealot scenario of his upbringing.<br />
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Jesus likened him to Satan, rudely put him in his place, and told all of them if they were going to be his followers they all would have to accept a Roman cross. Then he gave them a week to stew over it.<br />
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After an awkward six days Jesus took Peter, James, and John to the summit of Mount Hermon for an overnight prayer retreat. It was cold and snowy in the early spring. And very dark.<br />
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Mark tells of the cold dark night being interrupted with blazing light emanating from Jesus himself. His garments were glowing white, and God’s glory filled the night sky, bouncing off the low clouds and the snow cover. Jesus looked different.<br />
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Moses and Elijah were there, and it is interesting the normally clueless disciples picked up on that. They were talking to Jesus, the gospel writers say, about what would happen with Jesus at Jerusalem. The same things Jesus had told the hard-heads the week before.<br />
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Peter, caught up in the moment, and not knowing what to say, prattled on about building makeshift tents. He still didn’t get it, and avoided the obvious by running his mouth. It took God himself, with a voice of thunder, to say “This is my beloved son. Listen to him!”<br />
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Listening means more than hearing words. It means seriously considering them, making them a part of one’s life. Words have power and have an intended result. They accomplish what is intended. When the Bible tells us to “hear the word of the Lord” it means to take them to heart and obey them. Blessed are those who not only hear the word, James says, but do the word. That is listening.<br />
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And it helps a lot if we are not stubborn.<br />
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God doesn’t want to interrupt the night with bright light and loud voices to get through to us. He’d rather speak to us with the still small voice he used with Elijah. He’d rather that we understand and apply the Scriptures. He’d rather us pay heed to the authorities God places in our lives – our parents, our pastors, our teachers, our leaders. Those with wisdom and experience and relationship with God.<br />
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Jesus tried to tell his disciples something they didn’t want to hear. It was hard to hear about submitting to death so readily when all their lives they had been told it would be a fight to the end. What Jesus described sounded too much like humiliating defeat and more of the same oppression they wanted to throw off. So they wouldn’t listen.<br />
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Don’t let it be so among us. God has many things to tell us that we may not want to hear. We can’t let the stubbornness of our pride get in the way. There is a way that seems right to us, Solomon says, that is after all a way of death. Let’s not go that way.<br />
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Listen to him.<br />
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O God, who before the passion of your only-begotten Son revealed his glory upon the holy mountain: Grant to us that we, beholding by faith the light of his countenance, may be strengthened to bear our cross, and be changed into his likeness from glory to glory; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP)</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+9%3A2-9&version=CEB" target="_blank">Mark 9:2-9</a> (Transfiguration B)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-14554318274779676562015-01-18T05:45:00.000-06:002015-01-18T05:45:13.732-06:00Decently and in orderI am one of those people who have a keen sense for order. Everything done in the proper sequence; everything in order and in its place (except my office at home).<br />
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It could be my distinct INTJ personality, or that maybe I am OCD (although some may think I am just ODD, but that’s another story). Whatever it is, order – proper sequence, organization, and procedure – is important to me. Very important.<br />
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That observed, it is fair to say that I get out of sorts when everything else is. Disorder and chaos make me tense and uneasy and unable to rest.<br />
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It’s safe to say we live in a world of chaos. A quick glance at your favorite news website will yield news of confusion and disorder. Terrorists forcing a religion of violence through intimidation, same-sex couples changing the way we have always understood marriage, and upheavals in healthcare, government, and world events. The past year we have seen a deadly disease practically decimate three nations, and send the rest of the world into panic. We are nervous over the Islamic state and North Korea. We are overwhelmed with the flood of people who no longer want to wait for the bureaucrats to stamp their green card. We are, as described in one of my favorite bedtime prayers, “wearied by the changes and chances of this life” and we need grace to rest in God’s “eternal changelessness.”<br />
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We live in a world where we really don’t know what to believe or expect anymore. Oncoming generations don’t like the way their forebears do things, so they, on the fly, recreate the rules of life and morality. They make bold fashion statements. They don’t want to conform to anyone’s norm but in the process create a new norm to which to conform. It seems that order is lost and no one knows how to find it.<br />
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Yet Paul the apostle rises this morning to remind us along with the Corinthians that God wants everything done “with dignity and in the proper order.” In the immediate context he speaks of certain practices in worship, but from the forgoing we know he is addressing other issues that had gotten out of hand.<br />
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The church in Corinth, like the city in which it was located, was in a state of chaos. Corinth the city was a crossroads of trade and a clash of culture. People from all over the known world brought their business, their religions, and their values to Corinth. All this brought great pressure on the believers in the fledgling church to conform. Made up of a handful of Jews and God-fearers from the synagogue, combined with converts from pagan fertility cults, the church was a train wreck of idea and practice.<br />
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The issues Paul addresses, which we will look at in subsequent weeks, makes it clear they had lost their way. There was no common history, no tradition, no clear guidance. Most of them were new to the faith and were not grounded in it. In short, they were in chaos.<br />
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God is not a God of disorder but of peace, Paul reminds. At creation he brooded over the chaos and brought order in six sequential steps that resulted in a creation he ultimately pronounced good.<br />
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So what exactly is order? The Greek word means decree, sequence, and arrangement. It suggests a certain way to do things based on a higher authority. The biblical Hebrew understanding runs deeper. The Bible understands order as the way God intended it, the way it was at the beginning. At the beginning God presided over chaos and brought it into order.<br />
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Then he turned things over to us and we promptly created chaos. James tells us disorder comes from jealousy and selfish ambition, and that is exactly what happened in the garden when the serpent enticed Eve to eat forbidden fruit and turn things upside down. It all boils down to their rebellion against established authority.<br />
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Through Jesus Christ God is seeking to restore order. Jesus lived to show us order, and then died to make it possible.<br />
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A group of Pharisees wanted to reinterpret the law of marriage and quickie-divorce and asked Jesus for help. Jesus noted the hardness of their heart (jealousy and selfish ambition) and referred them to God’s original intention. From the beginning.<br />
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To find and reestablish order we must look to the beginning, to what God originally intended when he brooded over the chaos and through six successive events spoke order into existence and stepped back to call it good. We need somehow to find what God calls good. We need to come under God’s authority instead of creating our own.<br />
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In other words, we need to work as God’s agents to establish the kingdom here on earth. The kingdom of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. The kingdom not of power but Spirit. The kingdom that is everlasting and transcendent above all kingdoms. Jesus points us back to God’s design with the good news of God’s kingdom.<br />
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To do that we must be willing to set aside our preferences, our opinions, and our agendas. It is God’s kingdom, not ours. We must be willing to search out the truth, and apply it no matter the sacrifice. We must choose to live under his authority. We must be willing, committed followers of Jesus Christ, crucified with him that we may live for him.<br />
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Let everything be done in proper order.<br />
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<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1+Corinthians+14%3A40&version=CEB" target="_blank"><span style="font-size: x-small;">1 Corinthians 14:40</span></a>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-68192787387637883342015-01-11T05:19:00.001-06:002015-01-11T05:19:22.961-06:00The voiceHave you ever heard God speak? Have you ever had an experience where you know beyond any shadow of a doubt God has spoken?<br />
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For me it is an emphatic knowing that God means business about something. I remember hearing God speak to my objections to answering the call. “What will I do with a degree in communications in the ministry?” I objected. “You will communicate the gospel,” God answered.<br />
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Then there was the time when I wanted to do something and God said no. It was clear and unmistakable. God did not want me to make that choice, even though I wanted it badly.<br />
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There are times I thought I heard God’s voice when I was fooling myself. We can do that too. I have made many life-altering mistakes and blamed them on God. Mistakes where I have found forgiveness but continue to experience regrettable consequences.<br />
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We need to hear from God on occasion. There are times when we are overwhelmed with choices or facing crossroads and we need his direction. There are times when we have responded to what we believed God said and need to hear him affirm. We need to know it.<br />
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No one knows for sure how long Jesus struggled with the realization that he was Messiah. He grew up in Nazareth and inherited his dad’s carpenter business. He went to synagogue school and took care of his mother.<br />
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We know that as a child, just before his bar mitzvah, Jesus stole away and went to the temple. When his parents found him he was holding his own against accomplished scholars and declared to his frantic mom that he had to be about the Father’s business.<br />
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But how much did the human side of Jesus know and when? How long did he struggle? When did he come to the realization that he was the lamb of God, sent from the foundation of the world? Did it come all at once or gradually?<br />
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We do know that something possessed him to leave the carpenter shop and walk 70 miles into Judea to seek out his distant cousin, the eccentric prophet named John who was preaching a baptism of repentance. We know that he associated himself with John for a while. Was he seeking affirmation?<br />
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John was offering a baptism for repentance. It was signifying life-change and commitment to the coming kingdom. Baptism as practiced by the Jews was an initiation covenant into Judaism: leaving the old, being born anew. John applied it to the kingdom and announced a coming king.<br />
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Jesus came for that baptism. He stood in line, walked into the water, and received the sacrament. For him it was a transition away from the carpenter shop into something new. The event itself was uneventful. Water poured over the head as words were said.<br />
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But as Jesus came out of the water he saw the heavens part and the Spirit of God, in the form of a dove, come and rest upon him. Then he heard the voice of God. “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”<br />
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I’m not sure Jesus knew all he needed to know then. The evangelists say Jesus left from there and went into the wilderness to be tempted. To sort out what he was to do. To deal with all sorts of temptations and objections and finally determine whether to accept the mission for which he was born.<br />
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Baptism is for us a sign of following Jesus. It is an initiation into committed, covenantal discipleship. Like Jesus, most of the work comes after baptism. The wilderness, the setting aside, the embracing new. It all comes in a lifetime of being set apart for service to Jesus.<br />
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Families bring little ones to include them in their covenantal journey and ask us to help them in that. They bring them again later, when they can respond to the covenant on their own, to reaffirm the promise made for them.<br />
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Baptism is not an emotional response but a conscious decision to follow Jesus despite the cost. It is not an experience but an act of commitment. It is the beginning of a life of listening for God’s voice. And God is present every time, saying “You are my beloved child. I am very pleased.”<br />
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As we baptize one and reaffirm the baptism of another this morning, I ask you to remember your baptism and be thankful.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Father in heaven, who at the baptism of Jesus in the River Jordan proclaimed him your beloved Son and anointed him with the Holy Spirit: Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. (BCP)</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+1%3A4-11&version=CEB" target="_blank">Mark 1:4-11</a> (Baptism B)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-47771579229142398792015-01-03T09:20:00.002-06:002015-01-03T09:20:45.894-06:00The QuestThe dictionary defines quest as a pursuit, a search. It is an obsession or a passion.<br />
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Ever become preoccupied with a quest? For me it has been a simple definition of the kingdom of God. For the past thirty or so years, since I was confronted with what used to be called the “Kingdom Now” movement, I have sought to understand and live in what is the kingdom. It is a life search, a passion.<br />
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All of us at one time or another become intrigued with something for a while, and go to extraordinary lengths to discover it. It may be a cause, a hobby, or a profession. This time of year the quest leads some of us to the woods to get the big buck. Others will use a pretty day to head to the golf course or drag the boat to the lake.<br />
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But a quest is different. A quest is a life pursuit, prompted by a curiosity or a question or a desire that, ultimately discovered, will change one’s life. The journey or process brings change, but the eventual discovery of that which was pursued also brings lasting change.<br />
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We call that an epiphany, a profound life changing discovery. The early church gave us a season called Epiphany to challenge the life-changing pursuit of Jesus the king of the Jews. We are encouraged to seek out the one born king of the Jews and allow him to change our lives.<br />
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That challenge begins with a quest of the magoi, the “wise men” from the east who sought the one born king of the Jews. While modern lore has reduced them to images on a Christmas card and cliches like “wise men still seek him,” the reality is that these were real men with a real passion to discover the object of ancient prophesies now declared before them in the night sky.<br />
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We don’t know much about them from Scripture, other than they came from “the east,” inquired of Herod the whereabouts of the newborn king, and brought three prophetic gifts.<br />
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We can, however, from the tradition of the church and what we know from about magoi of the day, piece together enough to know they were on a real quest of major significance. The tradition identifies three men based on three gifts, named Melchior, Gaspar, and Balthasar. They were probably based in what is now Kurdistan in Iraq and were somehow connected to the remnant Hebrew community that had at one time years before been held captive there. They are familiar with the prophecies of Daniel the seer, who had served as a magoi. They were not kings, but worked for kings as astrologers and fortune tellers.<br />
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Because they scanned the night sky for indications of major events, they became aware of something going on in the constellation they associated with Israel. A conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn moving among the fixed stars captured their attention. They made charts, dug out old prophecies, and made calculations. They may have spoken to rabbis of remaining expatriated Jews in their area. They came to the conclusion that the king of the Jews, the Messiah long awaited, had arrived, and they had to seek him out. It was a quest.<br />
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But that’s not all. There was preparation for a lengthy journey with a large entourage to serve the proud, showy astrologers. Gathering supplies, mapping out a route, making preparations.<br />
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Then there was a long journey of over a thousand miles through desert and wilderness. A caravan of camels would make that journey in several months. It was not a quick trip.<br />
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A venture like this is more than a hobby or diversion. It is a quest. An obsession. A passion. They had to go at whatever cost to seek out the one born king of the Jews and to worship him. When they did they were forever changed.<br />
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This is the kind of passion we need to seek out Jesus for our own lives. This is the obsession, zeal, and determination we need. These men set aside everything and researched to the smallest of details and then made a huge effort to find the object of their search. It was a major quest.<br />
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I am afraid that too often we graft in a little of Jesus into our lives and call it good. We call upon him when we are having a hard time and ask him to bless us. We let the culture shape us, and make our life with Jesus convenient and relevant to the life we really want to live.<br />
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The Epiphany of the wise men shows us the opposite. The nations were attracted to Jesus, went to great effort to seek him out.<br />
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Just before he was crucified, Jesus was sought out by some Greeks who had come to Jerusalem for Passover. When he heard about that he said, “If I am lifted up [crucified] I will draw all people to me.”<br />
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When we truly seek out Jesus, and come to him, we come to him on his terms, not ours. We don’t somehow blend him into our lives, but we change anything and everything in our lives that does not fully accommodate him. That is called repentance.<br />
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This Epiphany season I challenge you to go on a quest. Passionately, obsessively, seek out the king and let him change your life.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
O God, by the leading of a star you manifested your only Son to the peoples of the earth: Lead us, who know you now by faith, to your presence, where we may see your glory face to face; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. (BCP)</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+2%3A1-12&version=CEB" target="_blank">Matthew 2:1-12</a> (Epiphany ABC)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-44156850904922407172014-12-27T17:43:00.002-06:002014-12-27T17:43:43.155-06:00Look past the futureSome time in the last couple of years it dawned on me that I have more past than future. I’m not sure when I crossed that line or when I realized it. But when it happened it was an unsettling revelation.<br />
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Since then I have caught myself thinking more in terms of what I did at a certain time than in terms of where I am headed or what I am working toward. I realized when I indulged that I became stagnant and nostalgic. That is not productive for the kingdom. Sentimental, nostalgic thinking may give us warm fuzzies but it does not move the kingdom forward. In the kingdom when you have more past than future you need to discipline yourself to look past your future.<br />
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I have served churches where the majority of the congregants were in this part of life. They had much more past than future and viewed everything in terms of that past. They usually revered a specific period of time and tried to recreate the feelings and nostalgia of that time. Good people, to be sure. But they just couldn’t get past the past. Their past. They couldn’t conceive of a future of which they would not be present to complete. So they preserved the past. And they were dying because they weren’t doing kingdom work.<br />
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I am not saying that the past is all bad. Our experience is valid and it informs our wisdom and helps explain who we are. The distant past, the tradition of the church that extends beyond our lifetime, is authoritative because its wisdom is transcendent. The past should be a foundation, not a ball and chain. That is a difficult discipline, especially when you have more past than future and you need to look past your future.<br />
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Today we meet two people, nearing the end of their lives, who knew how to look past their future. They were prayerfully and patiently awaiting the promise of God that would be fully realized beyond their natural lives.<br />
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Young Joseph and Mary brought their 40-day-old infant to the temple to be presented to the Lord. This was pursuant to the requirements of Exodus 13 and Leviticus 12. Mary would be purified from the defilement of childbirth by offering two doves as sacrifices.<br />
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As they arrived they caught the attention of elderly Simeon, who had spent years in and around the temple fasting and praying for the promise of the Messiah. The Holy Spirit led him to the court of the Gentiles where the young couple and child were. He spoke prophetic verse from passages in Isaiah and the Psalms. His utterance is now called the Nunc dimittus and is used in night prayers in many churches. Here is the version I use from <i>The Book of Common Prayer:</i><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Lord, you now have set your servant free *<br /> to go in peace as you have promised;<br />For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *<br /> whom you have prepared for all the world to see:<br />A Light to enlighten the nations, *<br /> and the glory of your people Israel.</blockquote>
Simeon also told the amazed young couple that their child would be the cause of much conflict as people had to deal with his claims and act on them. He would expose their inner thoughts. And he warned they they would suffer grief because of it.<br />
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As this was going on Anna walked up. She was in her eighties, and had been a regular at the temple for years, fasting and praying, and waiting for Messiah. To everyone interested she proclaimed the infant would be the redemption of Israel.<br />
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Instead of living in his past, Simeon was living for the realization of Messiah and was rewarded by recognizing him in the child. And Anna was able to look well beyond her expected years to see God’s reconciliation in the infant Jesus. Though they had much more past than future they were able to look past their future to see God’s future. They saw the kingdom.<br />
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I think God wants his people to have a discipline for looking past the future. The Bible describes patriarchs who were multi-generational, building for generations to come. Abraham, it is said, walked the length and breadth of the land he inherited looking for the city whose founder and maker is God. He never found it, but left a heritage for generations to come to occupy and enjoy the land. David assembled the materials and readied plans to build a temple, but because of bloodied hands never got to actually build the temple he so wanted to build. He left that for his son Solomon.<br />
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And so it is with the kingdom. We work with an eye to the future, anticipating the day when Jesus will complete and perfect the work we begin now, building on the work of generations past and adding foundations for generations yet to come.<br />
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This does not allow for much sentimental nostalgia. We celebrate our past and keep building, anticipating hoping. We look past the future.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+2%3A22-40&version=CEB" target="_blank">Luke 2:22-40</a> (1 Christmas B)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-82943010284275194372014-12-21T05:06:00.000-06:002014-12-21T05:06:05.107-06:00Step Up!I can still remember as it was yesterday when God made it clear to me that I had a call to ministry. I was 25, in my final year of college, completing a degree in mass communication. I had plans to be a journalist beginning in newspapers and going from there. Television and radio were possibilities, but I had experience writing for newspapers and I loved it.<br />
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That all changed when I became aware God was calling me to ministry. I protested. “What am I going to do in ministry with a degree in communication?” The Lord responded to me almost immediately, “You are going to communicate the Gospel.”<br />
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And so it began. What I wound up doing was not what I had planned to do.<br />
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We like to think we are in control of our destinies. We like to map out well thought-out plans, and boldly do so without much regard for the changes and chances life throws in our way. If we are believers we like to think (sometimes kid ourselves) that God is somehow directing our planning processes.<br />
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Then life happens. A crisis occurs that altars the course of life, changes everything forever. Or, the kingdom intrudes with demands and expectations on us that we did not foresee when mapping out the perfect career.<br />
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We wind up doing something entirely different from what we had planned.<br />
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That happened to Mary, the peasant girl from Nazareth. She was in her betrothal year. That means, she was contracted to be married and in the time of preparation before the final ceremony and moving in with her husband.<br />
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Mary was betrothed to a young man with an interesting claim. He was directly descended from King David and, but for the Roman occupation, would be king of Israel. Interesting for conversation, but of little practical value to him. He was a carpenter in Nazareth, making a good living from building homes.<br />
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They no doubt, like most engaged couples, laid out careful plans for a happy life. In the betrothal year he was preparing, too. Building their home, establishing a means of caring for his bride, planning for children.<br />
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But one day an angel of the Lord, identified to us as Gabriel, appeared to her.<br />
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“Rejoice, favored one! The Lord is with you!” She was troubled by that, and rightly so.<br />
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He went on to describe how she would conceive and bear a son, and that she would call him Jesus. The child would be great, called the Son of the Most High, assuming the throne of David.<br />
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Sounded great except for one thing. She was not yet married. It was physically impossible.<br />
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Beyond that, there were the personal and social implications. She was betrothed. To come up pregnant would mean she had been unfaithful to her husband, and destroyed here fond dreams and careful plans. She would be branded an adulteress in the community and eschewed at best, possibly stoned. It would be scandalous and she would never live it down.<br />
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I would say that the kingdom intruded. Yet young Mary decided to step up to the intrusion and accept it as God’s plan for her. Matthew, in telling Joseph’s side of the story, describes how Joseph stepped up to the challenge, too, and joined Mary in the scandalous situation. When he agreed to take her as wife, he publicly admitted he was the one, and thus legally adopted Jesus as his son.<br />
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Needless to say their lives took a huge turn, their plans were laid aside. They wound up doing something entirely different from what they had planned to do.<br />
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The favor the angel made over in Mary was actually the grace of God in her life. She was highly favored, meaning that God has granted a huge amount of grace to take on the task at hand. Grace means we are bestowed with power through the Holy Spirit to accomplish things we never imagined we could or would do. Grace would infuse her by the Holy Spirit and she would conceive as a virgin to have this child. We call it immaculate conception.<br />
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When God approaches us with life-changing demands that reroute everything he also provides the grace to do it, even when, as with Mary, it seems completely impossible. In fact, I think God likes to challenge us with impossible tasks so that we are forced to rely on him and his grace. Our job is to accept the challenge, to step up. Grace is the power to step up. Grace is the power to abandon cherished plans to do what God calls us to do. After all, what we wind up doing is not what we planned to do.<br />
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What does that mean to us? My role calls me to speak in two contexts.<br />
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As a congregation, I believe God is calling us to a new direction, a new approach that will change, again, carefully laid plans in the not-so-distant past. The kingdom has intruded and we have been troubled, but it has been a divine intervention. God will lead us to great things if we will abandon our agendas and listen to him. Obey him. Follow him.<br />
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As individuals, I want to remind us that we all face life-changing crises and situations. Life happens. God calls. We cannot stop it. Realize that the grace of God is in play and embrace the challenge, step up to the opportunities. Clinging to the past and crying over change will only lead to disobedience and subsequent decline. Do not go there.<br />
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In either situation step up. Embrace the challenge. Seek out the opportunities. Because what we wind up doing is not what we planned to do.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+1%3A26-38&version=CEB" target="_blank">Luke 1:26-38</a> (4 Advent B)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-25241239414774430072014-12-14T04:00:00.000-06:002014-12-14T04:00:04.716-06:00Fess up!They say that confession is good for the soul. Hidden sins weigh us down and hinder our relationships with God and others. Confession involves admitting our sins before God and seeking his forgiveness. It also involves thanking and praising him for his undeserved mercy.<br />
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Solomon wrote that if we cover our sins we will not prosper, but if we confess and forsake them we will find mercy (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Proverbs+28%3A13&version=CEB" target="_blank">Proverbs 28:13</a>). James advises us to confess our faults to each other and pray for each other that we may be healed (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=James+5%3A16&version=CEB" target="_blank">James 5:16</a>).<br />
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Yet the idea of confession leaves us feeling like we are exposed and vulnerable. If we reveal the deep secret within us we are open to scrutiny, ridicule, or judgment. We may even be punished.<br />
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That is only one side of confession. The lexicons describe confession as admitting, affirming, or proclaiming something. It is making a public stand. We may still reveal something of ourselves, and we may face ridicule or judgment, but we are taking a stand nonetheless.<br />
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Confession may be good for the soul, but apparently it is good for our witness, too.<br />
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John the baptizer was a confessor … a witness to the truth. The son of Zechariah the priest, John left the cushy life of temple service to retreat to the wilderness to confess the coming of the kingdom and its anointed one.<br />
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People came in droves to confess their sins and to hear John’s confession. Because confession is good for the soul and it is good for our witness.<br />
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The important folks from Jerusalem, fellow priests of John’s father, came to ask questions. “Who are you?” they interrogated. So John confessed to them.<br />
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The language of John’s response is interesting. “John confessed (he didn’t deny but confessed), “I am not the Christ.” He then confessed he was neither Elijah nor the Prophet (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Deuteronomy+18%3A15-22&version=CEB" target="_blank">Deuteronomy 18:15-22</a>). That is, John didn’t try to conceal anything or refuse to talk to them. He fessed up.<br />
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John went on to describe himself as Isaiah’s “voice of one crying in the wilderness” (Isaiah 40:3). He said he baptized with water in anticipation of one coming, arising, coming to the forefront. He would be so great that John confessed he would not be worthy even to take the place of least of servants by untying the anointed one’s shoes.<br />
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I guess John was in a confessing mood that day because confession is good for one’s soul as well as one’s witness. He wanted to be a faithful witness.<br />
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We can gain a lot from John’s Advent witness. He headed for the wilderness to live against the grain of culture and call attention to the kingdom. It was his passion, his obsession. He called people to repentance or change of heart and life in preparation for the kingdom. He baptized people into the kingdom. He spoke of one coming after, the anointed one, who would bring the kingdom.<br />
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To confess Christ, I think, involves a certain amount of this. It involves retreating from the world to live and act differently, and then to call attention to the kingdom and the one who comes.<br />
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Jesus said something similar. “Whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God.” There is something about putting all your cards on the table and coming clean with where you stand with Jesus that pleases him. That is true especially if it means confession leads to scrutiny, adversity, and the bad opinion of others. It costs to follow Jesus, and we need to be willing to pay the price. Jesus himself is the apostle and high priest of our confession (<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Hebrews+3%3A1&version=CEB" target="_blank">Hebrews 3:1</a>).<br />
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Confession is good for the soul and it is necessary for our witness.<br />
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So what do with do with this? As the embassy of God’s kingdom I think it means we speak and live a confession that honors Jesus Christ. We engage the world, but we resemble the kingdom.<br />
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We confess to God all our sins and seek his forgiveness. Sins that keep others from being able to tell we are Jesus’ disciples, such as our bitterness and unloving attitudes. We ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit to heal and to walk in love. Then we confess the sins of worldliness and the things that have kept us from accurately portraying the kingdom. We reorder priorities, get rid of baggage and garbage, and we walk together in holiness and righteousness.<br />
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So, fess up!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Stir up your power, O Lord, and with great might come among us; and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory, now and for ever. Amen.</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1%3A6-8%2C+19-29&version=CEB" target="_blank">John 1:6-8, 19-29</a> (3 Advent B)</span><br />
<br />David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-32347666702225912012014-11-30T05:29:00.001-06:002017-09-08T12:26:33.205-05:00Shakeup!I got to thinking this week about our uncertain times this week. Thinking of things to be thankful for also reminded me of those things I’m not so sure about. I guess, because of the way my mind works, trying to think of thank-worthy things required a conscious effort to not think about things for which I am not thankful, thus bringing them to mind (if that makes sense).<br />
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I thought of times of shakeup like I have experienced the past couple of years. Times of moving, changes in family, and personal crises. Times that challenge me to rethink who I am (or am supposed to be) and what I am supposed to do.<br />
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Internet dictionaries, if they can be trusted, define shakeup as a change that reorganize or reorder everything, and change life forever. It is applied to situations where a new leader comes into a group and changes things, letting some people go and moving others to new places. It can also be applied to events that change history.<br />
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I thought of a particular Scripture in Hebrews (that I don’t particularly like, by the way) that warns doubtful Jews-turned-believers of “removal of what is shaken—the things that are part of this creation—so that what isn’t shaken will remain.” It goes on to speak of inheriting a kingdom that cannot be shaken.<br />
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We have lived in times of shakeup the past several years. Economic down-turns shook up countless businesses and the lives depending on them for jobs and financial security. The terror attacks of 2001 have brought about shakeups in travel and our personal lives.<br />
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In the past year alone we have seen Russia restart the cold war. For better or worse “Obamacare” has fundamentally changed healthcare and how we pay for it, to the point that now the team that pushed it through have regrets. A new faction known as the Islamic state came out of nowhere to change the climate in the middle east and set everyone on edge by publicly executing westerners in a brutal way. Ebola has people running scared.<br />
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Individually we experience shakeup when a spouse unexpectedly becomes seriously ill or dies, when divorce ravages our relationships, or when a traffic accident yields life-altering injuries that change our quality of life. We are shaken when our children make poor choices, our companies are downsized, or public policy shifts and we have to adjust our lives accordingly.<br />
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God shakes everything that can be shaken, so that only that which cannot be shaken will remain.<br />
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Jesus spoke of such a shaking in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+13%3A24-37&version=CEB" target="_blank">Mark 13</a>. He prophesied the destruction of the temple and the Jewish way of life and the coming together of a new kingdom expression in the church. He used deep metaphor which the disciples would understand as deep change. A darkened sun, a moon that refuses to shine, and stars falling from the sky, refers to a change so dramatic it altars the course of history and changes life forever. A true shakeup. The destruction of Jerusalem and the temple was such an event.<br />
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Jesus referred to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Daniel+7%3A13-14&version=CEB" target="_blank">Daniel 7</a>, where the Son of Man is seen passing through the crowds to the Ancient One to receive a kingdom that is indestructible and everlasting, that would rule in glory over all nations. Jesus also spoke of angels gathering the elect from all over the earth. Jesus spoke of that as his “coming” and referred to it as a day of the Lord. Talk about shakeup.<br />
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In the forty years between the day Jesus prophesied this until it actually occurred the church was formed by the Holy Spirit and sent all over the world. During that time the church organized its leadership, formulated its liturgy, and determined its doctrine. The Scriptures began to be recognized and come together. So when the Romans shook things up by destroying Jerusalem the church was ready to accept the change.<br />
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God indeed removes all that can be shaken, so that what is not shaken will remain.<br />
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Shakeups are times to redirect our lives, bring us back to priorities, and force us to focus on the important things. Things that distract or take too much time away from things important to the kingdom are shaken away. Shakeups happen in our individual or family lives, in our nation, and in our church. Anywhere God has a stake in what happens. In those times Jesus “comes.” It is a “day of the Lord.”<br />
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The shakeups I experienced these past two years have certainly brought me to my knees, seeking the unshakable security of the kingdom. I have seen things I held dear shake loose and go away, so that what is not shaken remains.<br />
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What does this say for us? God has been doing some shaking and will no doubt do more, so that what cannot be shaken will remain. When this happens what are we supposed to do? Jesus told us. Watch and pray. Be aware when Jesus is doing the shaking, and be ready to respond in obedience.<br />
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Advent begins today with the reminder that Jesus comes. He comes to order his kingdom and to shake loose anything that does not resemble it. Watch and pray. Call out to the Lord. Jesus comes!<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen. <a href="http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Advent/BAdv1_RCL.html" target="_blank">(BCP)</a></blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Mark+13%3A24-37&version=CEB" target="_blank">Mark 13:24-37</a> (1 Advent B)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-48644243682013832712014-11-23T04:00:00.000-06:002014-11-23T04:43:33.549-06:00Here comes the judgeEver watch any of those television judge shows? You know, the reality show where a “judge” hears a case and renders a verdict, usually in a small claims court situation. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_show" target="_blank">According to Wikipedia</a> these TV court shows have been aired on and off since the 1930s, but have been especially popular since the 1990s.<br />
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The earliest court show I remember is “The People’s Court” with Judge Wapner. More recently the popular judges on these shows have been Judge Judy and Judge Joe Brown. The TV judges I’ve seen are usually tough, no-nonsense people who don’t take anything off anyone.<br />
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Generally I think we have a fear of judges. We view them as looking for ways to render punishment for something we did wrong. We also don’t like anything related to judgment. I think it’s because we associate it with punishment. And when somebody gets a little too close to the truth for comfort when observing our lives the popular retort is, “Don’t judge me!”<br />
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When we think of God as judge too often we think punishment and damnation. God is waiting for us to misstep so he can judge.<br />
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Actually judgment has little to do with punishment. The word simply means to distinguish, separate, or divide. With respect to the law it means to hear facts in a case and apply the law, to make a decision.<br />
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I think that’s what Jesus had in mind when he told the disciples in <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A31-46&version=CEB" target="_blank">Matthew 25</a> he would return as king to judge. He meant he would separate “sheep” from “goats.”<br />
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It all began when Jesus left the temple in a huff after telling the Sadducees he was taking the kingdom from them and giving it to a nation that would bear the fruits of it. He went to the Mount of Olives where he told the disciples the glorious temple would be completely destroyed within their lifetimes.<br />
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Of course the astonished disciples asked for more information. Jesus told of the turn of events at the “end of the age” that would lead to the temple’s destruction as a catastrophic history-changing event. He gave them signs to look for, and then warned them to be prepared and to make profitable use of the time until that happened.<br />
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Like Old Testament prophets Jesus spoke of the upcoming destruction of the temple as “the day of the Lord” and his “return.” He would come in glory and the unfolding events would be the sign of his return. History would be altered as the kingdom would be removed from the Jewish state and given to a new nation. The disciples’ work would be the making of that nation.<br />
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Then, as he returned as the temple fell, Jesus would gather the elect from among the nations, that is, the people groups of the world apart from the Jewish nation. He would separate them as a shepherd separates sheep and goats. The “sheep” on his right would inherit the kingdom prepared from the foundation of the world, and the “goats” would not.<br />
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The criteria? They had received Jesus in receiving the “least of these brothers and sisters of mine.” The scenario hearkens back to <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+10&version=CEB" target="_blank">Matthew 10,</a> where Jesus had sent the disciples in groups of two to herald the coming of God’s kingdom within Israel. They would perform signs and they would be subject to the hospitality of those to whom they went. If they were received they should stay there and minister. If they were not received they were to shake the dust, and punishment eventually would come.<br />
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Jesus referred to a similar mission to be now expanded to the world. They would go into all the world to make disciples. At Jesus’ “return” at the fall of the temple the transition to the world would be complete and the church would be off the ground. Believers who had received the kingdom message and its messengers would be the new embassy of God’s kingdom in the world.<br />
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It happened just that way. After the fall of Jerusalem the Jewish religious system collapsed. There remained the Pharisee rabbis who kept the faith alive, but the real action shifted to the church. Faithful disciples carried the church throughout the known world, so that by the the fall of the temple in <span style="font-size: x-small;">AD</span> 70 the church had reached the British Isles to the north, Africa to the south, Spain to the west, and India to the east. The church was chosen from among the nations as Jesus had prophesied. The church thought of themselves as “catholic” (universal) and “the new Israel.”<br />
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Here’s what that means to us. We are the continuation of that great movement, charged with taking the message of God’s kingdom to those around us who have not heard it. We represent its message and perform its signs. We are its embassy. We infiltrate, influence, and infuse. We preach, pray, and prophesy. We love, lift burdens, and liberate. All in the name of Jesus.<br />
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And we leave the judging to Jesus. We invite him to be among us, separating from among the world the “sheep” who will join us in inheriting the kingdom of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A31-46&version=CEB" target="_blank">Matthew 25:31-46</a> (Christ the King A)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-32002546583077734252014-11-16T05:19:00.002-06:002014-11-16T05:19:24.958-06:00Don’t sit on your assets!Several years ago my family and I went to the <a href="http://catalystconference.com/" target="_blank">Catalyst Conference</a> where representatives of <a href="http://www.hopeinternational.org/" target="_blank">Hope International</a> gave everyone in attendance $10 and asked each one to invest it and return it and the earnings to them by a certain time. Hope International would use the money to invest in micro-finance in developing nations. Since there were about 12,000 people in the room that was an amazing investment.<br />
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On the way home we talked about what we each could do to turn our $10 into something worthwhile to send to Hope International. But what could one do with $10? Then we started asking what we could do if we pooled our resources and worked together on one big project. Suddenly the possibilities became clear. We would invest in the ingredients for baked goods and have an auction and concert for the church the weekend before Thanksgiving. We raised about $800 to send to Hope International.<br />
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We learned lessons about teamwork and pooling assets. But we also lived a principle of the kingdom Jesus taught. That is, don’t sit on your assets!<br />
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An asset is something you have that can be used or invested to make money. We usually think in terms of money or equipment, but an asset is anything we can use for growth and improvement of some kind. An asset is invested.<br />
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God has invested grace in us. He has given us gifts and abilities, and creativity. And he has given us an incredibly productive field in which to invest.<br />
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A couple of examples from Scripture help us to see we don’t need much to be powerful. A widow, about to lose her two sons to indentured slavery because she can’t pay her bills, takes her last oil and sees it multiply into enough to sell to pay all her debts. The disciples coughed up five loaves of bread and two fish, and saw Jesus multiply it to feed a multitude.<br />
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With these little things that make a huge difference God also gives us responsibility. He will hold us accountable for what we have done with what he has given, so don’t sit on your assets!<br />
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Jesus told a story to illustrate that. The kingdom, he said, is like a man entrusting valuable coins to his servants as he traveled. They were entrusted with varying amounts according to their skills and abilities. One servant had five coins, another two, and the third one.<br />
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Two of the men thought of what they had as an asset. Using skill and creativity each invested what he had and each doubled his money. The third servant, however, thought of his trust as a liability. He wanted to minimize risk of loss and buried it in the ground for safekeeping. There was no creativity or skill, only fear that it may be lost. He sat on his assets.<br />
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Upon his return the boss was pleased two of his servants had been so industrious. “Excellent!” he exclaimed. “You are a good and faithful servant! You’ve been faithful over a little. I’ll put you in charge of much. Come, celebrate with me.”<br />
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But the boss was not happy with the one who sat on his assets. “You evil and lazy servant!” He went on to say that if the good-for-nothing knew the boss expected investment and growth he should have at least opened an interest-bearing account. The boss took away what he was managing and gave it to the five-coin guy to invest. Moral of the story: Don’t sit on your assets!<br />
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Jesus finished that story with a summary that makes me a little unsettled. “Those who have much will receive much more, and they will have more than they need. But as for those who don’t have much, even the little bit they have will be taken away from them.”<br />
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That is directed toward anyone God has given anything to in the kingdom. We are about his business, and entrusted with money, skill, and creativity. We have assets at hand that can be invested into the work of the kingdom. And growth is expected.<br />
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We are the embassy of God’s kingdom, and that means we work for him. We look into this field ripe unto harvest, full of opportunity, and look for the most productive ways to invest our assets. We have a great building and financial capacity. We have people living in all the major subdivisions, and we have gathered on any given Sunday the skills and creativity to amazing things. We have financial people, media people, and business people. We have people who can design things, make things, and fix things. We have access to the schools and to city government. These are all powerful assets. How can we put this to work for the kingdom?<br />
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To be a member in our church we promise to remain faithful with our prayers, our presence, our gifts, our service, and our witness. We promised to invest what we have into the work of the kingdom. That is, we promised to not sit on our assets.<br />
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How can we not sit on our assets? First, give. Invest financially in the life of the church. Second, serve. There is something you can do, so get involved. Third, witness. Witness by coming to church regularly, becoming active in a small group, and by inviting others to join. Use your social media – they can be incredibly powerful for much more than showing vacation photos.<br />
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Think kingdom. We represent it to this community. We have things in hand now to do that well. Identify them, use them. Don’t sit on your assets.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+25%3A14-30&version=CEB" target="_blank">Matthew 25:14-30</a> (Proper 28 A)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-72161091526500672772014-11-09T04:00:00.000-06:002014-11-09T04:00:05.174-06:00Emula virusLike many people I have been watching the news to track the status of the ebola virus outbreak. Originating in bats in West Africa, the disease has spread through three African nations, where the death toll is approaching 5,000. Ebola has reached into other nations including the U.S. through travelers carrying the disease with them.<br />
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The virus organisms invade cells and use them to replicate themselves. They then explode into the blood stream, hijacking the immune system. This causes flu-like symptoms that worsen into total meltdown of body function. Blood breaks down and loses its clotting properties, causing free bleeding. Bodily fluids are expelled through vomiting, diarrhea, and bleeding. Internal organs are overwhelmed from stress and begin to shut down. Within days the victim is dead. There is no vaccination, and the only successful treatment is isolating the patient and pouring on the fluids and blood transfusions to keep the organs operating until the virus runs its course.<br />
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The Ebola virus invades, corrupts, and causes death.<br />
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Today at church I am talking about another virus. A spiritual virus. A potentially deadly virus that invades, corrupts, and causes spiritual death. According to the ancient fathers it is one of the seven deadly spiritual viruses because it eats away at the inner being.<br />
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I’m talking about a virus I’ll call the Emula virus. Greed. The love of money, root of all evil. Emula incubates in human hearts and most often affects victims in wealthy Western cultures like the U.S. A climate of materialism and discretionary income are ideal for it to spread, and agents for its transmission include lots of advertising and discontentment.<br />
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Emula invades the heart and produces two identifiable symptoms. The first is the insatiable desire for more stuff. The second is the ongoing fear that we may not get it. The virus works by using the identifiable symptoms to change the heart, making it more materialistic and self-centered. Everything changes. Relationships are altered, interests are changed, and pursuit of God is diminished. Spiritual reserves are depleted and eventually loss of soul occurs.<br />
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The Emula virus invades, corrupts, and causes death.<br />
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Jesus spoke of this. One day he was teaching when a man in the crowd asked him to referee a family dispute. “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.” The symptoms were present and the disease was doing its damage.<br />
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Jesus bluntly refused, and then proceeded to humiliate the poor guy in front of the entire gathering. “Watch out!” he said. “Guard yourself against all kinds of greed. After all, one’s life isn’t determined by one’s possessions, even when someone is very wealthy.”<br />
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Then he told a story about a man whose farm did especially well. He decided to build bigger barns and relax. “Fool,” the Lord said, “tonight you die. Who will get your stuff?”<br />
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He then told the disciples not to worry about getting stuff, even the necessary stuff. Don’t chase after this stuff. Stop worrying. Don’t be afraid.<br />
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The virus of greed, with its symptoms of wanting more stuff and the fear of not getting it, invades, corrupts, and causes death.<br />
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Then Jesus prescribed the treatment. Get rid of the stuff and give to those in need.<br />
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The quickest way to affect a change of focus financially is to give, and the Bible repeatedly teaches regular, proportional giving. Simplicity and generosity counter the two symptoms by making the desire for stuff and the fear of not getting it less important.<br />
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Jesus said, “The Father delights to give you the kingdom.” <i>The kingdom.</i> When simplicity and generosity are practiced within the context of kingdom the heart is repaired and refocused with the right priorities.<br />
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Today I am challenging our congregation to rethink the use and importance of money in their lives, and to begin a practice of regular, proportional giving by applying simplicity and generosity. How can we simplify our lives and reduce the amount of stuff? How can we live generously and bless the needs of others through the kingdom? How can we become a better more effective embassy of God’s kingdom in our community and around the world?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=luke+12%3A13-33&version=CEB" target="_blank">Luke 12:13-33</a></span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-44750022442531630632014-11-02T04:00:00.000-06:002014-11-02T04:00:08.805-06:00Desire first God's kingdomFor a stewardship emphasis a few years ago I wanted to see what Jesus had to say on the subject of money and its use. After all, if we are his church, we need to pay attention first to what Jesus says.<br />
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I was amazed to find that what Jesus says about money bears little resemblance to what Dave Ramsey and the name-it-and-claim-it prosperity crowd have to say. Read through the Gospels and it becomes obvious Jesus did not die on the cross to make us rich and self-indulgent.<br />
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We can’t get too far from money and the hold it has on our lives. Economics unfortunately drives most of our decisions, including spiritual ones. We order our lives, plan our families, and serve in our churches based primarily on economic factors.<br />
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<a href="http://www.cokesbury.com/forms/ProductDetail.aspx?pid=1052806&rank=0&txtSearchQuery=enough%20by%20adam%20hamilton" target="_blank">Adam Hamilton</a> says that in American culture we suffer from two diseases. The first is <i>affluenza,</i> the constant drive for bigger and better stuff. The second is <i>credititis,</i> the ability to buy now and pay later. The desire for stuff and the ability to get it now and pay later shape our values, our families, and our relationship with God.<br />
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I get the impression that Jesus is not as concerned about our stuff as we are. In fact, he warns us about it. The quest for stuff, even the essential stuff, distorts our priorities and gets us out of sync with the kingdom before we know it. Jesus makes it clear we can’t serve God and consumerism at the same time. It simply doesn’t work. There will always be conflict of interest if you try it.<br />
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In introducing his kingdom to the disciples, Jesus said not to collect stuff that will only be stolen or depreciated. It only takes your heart away from important things. You can’t serve two masters, Jesus said.<br />
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He even said don’t become overly concerned about the essentials, like food and clothing. This was especially appalling in a time when it took all day one day just to make sure there would be food on the table the next.<br />
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The solution? “Desire first and foremost God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness, and all these things will be given you as well.” Aligning priorities so that God’s kingdom is first seems to put everything else into order.<br />
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That is important because the pursuit of stuff, even the essential stuff, is a debilitating condition the Bible calls “the love of money,” better known as greed. The ancients regarded greed as one of the seven deadly sins because it eats away at the heart and destroys God’s image within. Jesus pointed out that it causes broken relationships and keeps us from loving others the way God loves them. Like thorns in the field, deceitfulness of riches and the cares of this life choke out any effectiveness and fruitfulness for God’s kingdom. We can gain the whole world, but as Jesus pointed out, what good is that if we lose our own soul?<br />
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So, how do we seek first the kingdom financially speaking? The Bible teaches proportional giving at regular intervals as the means of keeping the heart in check when it comes to finances and funding the kingdom. Abraham gave a tenth of his bounty from rescuing Lot to Melchizedek the high priest. That was before the law, so tithing is not just a “law” thing. Of course, God prescribed tithing to support the priesthood and promised blessing for keeping it. And Jesus commended the Pharisees’ tithing of mint and cumin. Paul encourages regular giving when the worshiping community come together. Gifts were received to support Paul’s ministry and to help the poor and to provide disaster relief.<br />
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Regular, systematic, proportional giving is a means of spiritual discipline that has the dual benefit of guarding our hearts from greed and funding the kingdom. Its frequency should be based on when we are paid, and the amount should be a proportion of what we make. The Bible encourages ten percent, but any percentage on a regular basis is helpful. Proportional, regular giving is a great way to desire the kingdom first.<br />
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This month we are praying about our financial participation to the life and ministry of our church. I’d like to encourage a regular, proportional giving discipline as a means of desiring first God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP)</blockquote>
<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+6%3A19-34&version=CEB" target="_blank">Matthew 6:19-34</a></span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-74726289289406275772014-10-26T05:20:00.001-05:002017-09-08T12:25:10.742-05:00How do we love God?A couple of days ago I took the <a href="http://www.5lovelanguages.com/" target="_blank">Five Love Languages</a> survey. I wanted to see which which of Gary Chapman’s five love languages I appreciate most. According to the survey, of the five, I value physical touch the most. A close second is verbal affirmation. Now I like it when someone gives me a gift, does something for me, or wants to spend time with me, but the first two, according to the survey, really ring my bell.<br />
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The premise is this: If you love me, show me. In a way that I appreciate.<br />
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I suppose we are all like this. We all have certain things that are meaningful to us, and when someone uses that to communicate affection it touches us. In times of celebration or sadness, appropriate gestures which touch the heart mean a lot.<br />
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But here is the catch. If we don’t watch it we’ll limit our expression of love to ways we like to be loved, and fail to get the point across. We turn it to focus on ourselves, our need to love in some way, and leave it to the other person to say, “Well, she means well.” In that case it’s not really an expression of love, its doing what we like to do.<br />
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Remember that if you love someone, you will show it in truly meaningful and touching ways. It takes work and knowing the person.<br />
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It got me thinking about loving God and <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+22%3A34-40&version=CEB" target="_blank">today’s lectionary reading</a>.<br />
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A lawyer of the Pharisees asked Jesus a question intended to trip him up. That wasn’t loving, was it? “What is the greatest commandment?” The Pharisees loved ranking the commandments and then arguing over it.<br />
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Jesus responded by quoting from Deuteronomy 6:5. “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your being, and all your strength.” Then he slipped in another one from Leviticus 19:18. “You must love your neighbor as yourself.”<br />
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I think Jesus’ point is that the way we show God we love him, the way that touches his heart most, is by loving others. Not by expressions we dream up, not things that please or bless us, but by doing what gratifies God the most.<br />
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It makes sense. If we love God we’ll do what is most meaningful to him.<br />
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The verse from Deuteronomy is part of what the Jewish people call the <i>Schema.</i> From biblical times they continue to recite it twice each day. It is their basic creed. There is one God and we are to love him with all we have in us.<br />
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I suppose we could offer sacrifices. We could show up on Sunday to sing and clap to our favorite songs. We could talk about how God has blessed us with this thing or that. We could do all that makes us feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.<br />
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But it wouldn’t do us much good when it comes to loving God. He told Isaiah the prophet, “these people turn toward me with their mouths and honor me with lip service while their heart is distant from me, and their fear of me is just a human command that has been memorized” (Isaiah 29:13). So our worship and our blessings don’t exactly set God’s heart to racing.<br />
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After all, if we love God, we’ll express it in a way that touches him.<br />
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Maybe that’s why Jesus tacked Leviticus 19:18 on to Deuteronomy 6:5. Maybe that’s why he talked to his disciples so much about love. God’s love of the world, God’s love for them, and how they should love each other – and their enemies.<br />
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God loves this world he created and all the people blinded by the dark shadows cast by the original sin. More than anything he wants to restore the world and redeem the people, and he provides Jesus to make the way. That way is through a cross that atones for our sin and provides guidance for selfless living.<br />
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It really causes God’s heart to skip a beat when we take up his concerns and make them our own. He redeemed us for a purpose beyond bragging about going to heaven one day. If he loves, he wants us to love.<br />
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And it begins among ourselves. Jesus said his disciples are known for loving each other, giving themselves for each other. There is no place to hold grudges and keep distance over petty things.<br />
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Then it reaches out into the community where our embassy is located. We love the community because Jesus loves it. We do what Jesus wants done, because we love him so much we’ll do anything to please him. We take the focus off getting a blessing and we become the blessing.<br />
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That means we research the community, to find out how it needs to be loved. We have a means to do that, and we are discovering how the community needs to experience God’s love. Then we do things to reach out to the community in ways that touches their heart.<br />
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All because if we love the community as God does, we’ll represent him in ways that touch the community, thereby touching God’s heart. That is how we love God.<br />
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So my challenge today is two-fold:<br />
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First, love each other. Get over whatever has caused dissension and strife.<br />
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Second, love this community. Work with me in finding out how the community is reached and then join in the effort to reach it.<br />
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In other words, let’s be the embassy of God.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+22%3A34-40&version=CEB" target="_blank">Matthew 22:34-46</a> (<a href="http://www.gbod.org/worship/lectionary-calendar/twentieth-sunday-after-pentecost3#planning" target="_blank">Proper 25 A</a>)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-89521031277350500822014-10-05T03:00:00.000-05:002017-09-08T12:22:52.698-05:00You’re fired!I’m not talking individually today, but corporately. A group being fired.<br />
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I’ve done it. When I discontinued a service, left a church, or quit going to a store I fired the company. It could have been because they didn’t do the job, they charged too much, or they focused more on collecting money than serving. So I fired them. The whole lot of them. They didn’t produce the goods I wanted, so I fired them. After all if you don’t produce the fruit you get the boot, right?<br />
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We all make decisions every day whether we’ll continue to buy a product, use a service, or send our kids to a particular school. If they don’t live up to expectations we let them go. We fire them, all of them. We give them the boot if they don’t produce the fruit.<br />
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That’s what Jesus did. God had expectations for Israel. Big expectations. The children of Abraham were expected to be a blessing to the whole world, to live as a kingdom of priests and serve as lights to the Gentiles. They were agents of God’s kingdom.<br />
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But in time they, through their leaders, they became more interested in themselves than in managing God’s interests. By Jesus’ time the primary leaders, the Pharisees, were busy making and keeping rules for an elite few and looking down their sanctified noses at everyone else. And the keepers of things liturgical, the Sadducees, were feathering their nests through an exclusive contract to run the temple. No one was interested in being light or blessing to hated Gentiles.<br />
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So Jesus came to town to fire them. As Matthew tells it, Jesus made a spectacular appearance in what we call the “triumphal entry” and went straight to the temple to run off the money changers and sacrifice vendors. He fired them. The next day he came back to town and fired the religious leaders. They weren’t bearing fruit. So he gave them the boot.<br />
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One could tell things were not getting off to a good start that morning when Jesus stopped for a quick breakfast to go at a fig tree on the way. It was in leaf, advertising figs, but it was fruitless. He cursed it and it dried up from the roots.<br />
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He then proceeded to the fruitless keepers of things religious and fired them too.<br />
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I love the way Jesus did it. He told a story of a landowner with a vineyard. Landowner went to a lot of trouble to set it up, and then hired folks to tend it before going away. At harvest he sent messengers to collect the goods. They were supposed to have produced fruit. The tenants abused the messengers. Landowner sent more. Tenants abused them too. Landowner then sent his own son, and they tortured and killed him and threw him out of the vineyard, with the assumption they would then own the vineyard. “What should the landowner do?” Jesus asked.<br />
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“He should get rid of those rascals and hire someone else to tend the vineyard,” Sadducees replied.<br />
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Then Jesus handed them the pink slip. “The kingdom is taken from you,” he declared, “and given to a nation who will bear the fruits thereof.” The whole lot were fired. Because they didn’t produce the fruit he gave them the boot.<br />
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Sure enough, forty years later the temple was destroyed by the very Gentiles to whom the Sadducees were supposed to be light. And the phony priests went into oblivion. Forever. The kingdom was handed over to the church to be managed, and we manage it to this day.<br />
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God has divided the church into smaller units called congregations generally assigned to metropolitan areas and charged with a specific mission. The mission is applied based on the local situation, and the local unit had better produce the fruit.<br />
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While it is certain the church will never go away, I am convinced local congregations are held accountable for the fruit they produce. Are they congregations of priests? Do they shine light into the darkness? Or are they, like the Sadducees, interested in preservation of the status quo?<br />
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I am also convinced that fruitless congregations are fired for not being fruitful. That is, they lose their passion for the kingdom and become inward focused and obsessed with being blessed instead of being a blessing to others. They are allowed to die. In other words they get the boot because they cannot produce the fruit.<br />
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What does that mean for us? I think it means we become serious about being ambassadors for Jesus in this community. It means we make sure we are healthy and equipped to serve, and we become students of this community and its dark places where light is needed most.<br />
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Three dark places needing light that have come to my attention through statistical information readily available to us indicate needs for<br />
<ul>
<li>family support and intervention</li>
<li>Bible study and prayer</li>
<li>opportunities to volunteer in the community </li>
</ul>
Over all, our community is reporting a serious desire for opportunities to worship God in time-honored ways. These are areas where we easily can bear fruit.<br />
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So what do you think God would have us to do? For what do you think Jesus will hold us accountable? How could we bear fruit in the vineyard to which we have been assigned? How could we bear fruit so we don’t get the boot?<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+21%3A33-46&version=CEB">Matthew 21:33-46</a> <a href="http://www.gbod.org/worship/lectionary-calendar/seventeenth-sunday-after-pentecost-world-communion-sunday">(Proper 22 A)</a></span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-54879614424684342682014-09-28T07:32:00.001-05:002017-09-08T12:22:04.024-05:00Don’t shoot the messengerEver miss an important message because you didn’t care for the messenger?<br />
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It could have been that the messenger wasn’t “authoritative” enough for you. That is, the messenger didn’t fit the picture in your mind as qualified to bring you important news and information. You couldn’t take the messenger seriously. Things like appearance, lifestyle, gender, and ethnicity all come into play. I know I have been tempted to size up a messenger before listening to the message.<br />
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May be you simply didn’t like the messenger. Whether it was based on bad experience or prejudice there was something about the messenger you didn’t like, and therefore regarded the message as suspect. I’ve been tempted in that way too.<br />
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Or it may be that the messenger brought unwelcome news. When you heard it you became so upset you wanted to shoot the messenger. I’ve been there too.<br />
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However, God speaks to us through the most unlikely people. Don’t miss the message because you dismiss the messenger.<br />
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We all love good news. And we like to hear how much God loves us and wants the best for us. We love messengers who are profound and humorous. We like it when we can “connect” with them because they are like one of us, or struggling with the same issues. We like it when they fit our idea of one who has something worthwhile to say, who can invoke our trust and awaken our hopes. If messenger and message line up with a positive experience we’re good.<br />
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When it’s not like that we’re not so good. Our notions of what or who is credible, our prejudices, or our predisposition to good news may be barriers to hearing the message.<br />
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God likes to challenge us by sending unlikely prophets. It is important to make sure we don’t dismiss the messenger and miss the message.<br />
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The Sadducees of Jesus’ time were that way. Keepers of the temple, the chief priests and elders were in charge of Israel’s religious life. For them it was a surface religion of keeping certain liturgical rules found only in the books of Moses. There personal lives were very Roman.<br />
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So when Jesus came to town and shut down the temple exchange on the busiest day of the year, and followed that the next day by making himself at home the teaching chair, they became upset. “Who told you you could do these things?” they demanded.<br />
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“Not telling,” Jesus replied, “unless you tell me whether you think John’s baptism was authorized by God or not.”<br />
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That was touchy. John was a messenger they didn’t want to hear. John’s dad had been one of them – a priest in the most prestigious aristocracy in Israel. John would have been, too, but he left and exchanged it all for a rough life in the wilderness bellowing something about the kingdom of God.<br />
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The Sadducees didn’t like John. They didn’t like his defection, his appearance, his lifestyle, or his message. When they went to the wilderness to see what he was up to John called them a “brood of vipers.” So they discounted John and his message. But they didn’t want to tell Jesus that.<br />
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Jesus told a story to make his point. A father asked two sons to go to the vineyard to work. The first said, “Nope. Too busy. Catch you later, dad.” Later he thought the better of it and went to work. The second said, “Sure, dad,” but never got around to it.<br />
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“Which one actually did what his dad wanted,” Jesus asked.<br />
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“The first one,” the priests responded.<br />
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“Well, tax collectors and prostitutes will enter the kingdom before you,” Jesus said. “John came in righteousness and you wouldn’t listen to him or change your ways. Even when you saw tax collectors and prostitutes change you still didn’t change.”<br />
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You see, the Sadducees, keepers of things religious, dismissed the messenger out of hand, and thus wouldn’t consider the message. They missed it. John was one of them, but because he had defected and drastically changed his appearance, and because he was blunt and coarse in his delivery, they ignored him. They marginalized him. And they missed the kingdom of God.<br />
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God will bring challenges to us through messengers that do not match our preconceived notions of what a prophet should be. They may be coarse, blunt, and unpleasant. They may make us uncomfortable and call into question things we hold dear. They may be offensive. They may look different, be of a different race or gender, and seem completely unqualified to speak.<br />
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Our entertainment-driven world has deceived us into thinking God wants us to have nothing but pleasant experiences as he speaks to us. So when someone who makes us uncomfortable challenges us and calls us to a deeper life of sacrifice and commitment we are tempted to dismiss messenger and miss the message. Sometimes we want to shoot the messenger.<br />
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The genuine message of the kingdom calls us to be a part of the embassy of God’s kingdom, and join the work of renovating the world ravaged by Adam’s sin in anticipation of a glorious resurrection to come. We are to make disciples of Jesus, who saves but also challenges us to grow and mature, to “go and sin no more.”<br />
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At the embassy we are concerned with what Jesus says. That is our curriculum. And we are concerned with what Jesus does. That is our ministry. Then we are to reflect that in our lives to a darkened world. That is our testimony.<br />
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In other words, in the embassy we are sold-out, committed followers of Jesus. We heed the unlikely messengers God sends our way. And we become the unlikely messengers ourselves, taking God’s message to the world around us.<br />
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So don’t shoot the messenger. You are called to be one.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?st=1&utm_expid=13466113-11.5w1LoPJgSfySJpp2u36etw.1&search=mat+21%3A23-32&version=CEB&utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.biblegateway.com%2F">Matthew 21:23-32</a> <a href="http://www.gbod.org/worship/lectionary-calendar/sixteenth-sunday-after-pentecost4">(Proper 21 A)</a></span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-72502317435978907552014-09-21T07:44:00.003-05:002017-09-08T12:25:44.164-05:00That's not fair!How many times have you heard someone say, “That’s not fair!” It could have been a kid who didn’t get as much dessert as a sibling, or another who felt the punishment didn’t match the crime.<br />
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But it’s not just children that complain about things not being fair. Adults are adept at comparing their lives with others and complaining about life not being fair. Someone is passed over for promotion and complains the boss is not fair. Someone else wants to marry, attends the weddings of many friends, but never finds the right one, and laments that life is not fair. I think we have the idea that life should be fair, and that God should manage things so that we are treated fair.<br />
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We want what’s fair when it seems right to us, but really fair is what is right to God.<br />
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What is fair? Webster lists 17 definitions for fair. Among them, open, frank, honest, equal, just, equitable.”<br />
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But what if the situation calls for something different? What if fair is not really fair? Who is to decide what is fair?<br />
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In today’s Scripture text Jesus turned our idea of fair on its head. After an exchange with the “rich young ruler” Jesus told his disciples, “Many who are first will be last. And many who are last will be first” (Matthew 19:30 CEB).<br />
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He then explained with a story about a man who early one morning went to hire laborers to work in his vineyard. He went to the place at the market where day laborers gather in the morning hoping to get a job for the day. These were men at the lower end of the social and economic spectrum, with no steady employment, hoping for work for the day. They lived a day at a time in a miserable hand-to-mouth existence.<br />
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The guy hired a few for the day, promising the standard minimum wage for day laborers. For frame of reference let’s say that amounts to about $50. He would settle with them at the end of the day. When he left the market others were still standing there, probably thinking “that’s not fair.”<br />
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Our vineyard owner returned to the market several times that day. At nine, at noon, at three, and at five he found men standing there who had not found work for the day. Each time he sent a few into the vineyard, promising to pay them what was “fair.”<br />
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At quitting time, around six, he ordered the men paid “the wage,” the $50 minimum payment for day laborers. He specifically directed that the last ones hired should be paid first. They were each paid the standard $50. Then those hired at three, at noon, and at nine. The men who had worked a full day saw all this before they too were paid the promised $50.<br />
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“That’s not fair!” they grumble. They thought they should get more because they had worked all day.<br />
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“What’s the problem,” the boss asked. “Didn’t I pay you what I promised? Are you resentful because I am generous?”<br />
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We want what is fair when it benefits us, but fair is what seems right to God.<br />
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Life is not fair. Things happen that favor one and disadvantage another. Some are wealthy, others impoverished. Some get all the breaks, others never get a break. Some enjoy wonderful health, others are chronically ill. Some succeed and live their dreams, others languish in a debilitating nightmare. It’s not fair.<br />
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But the emphasis in this story is on the master who returned repeatedly to the market to find more laborers. He didn’t send the overseer as was customary, he went himself. And each time he hired others in a move of compassion for those poor guys caught in the endless grind of hopelessness, still hoping to earn a little money to take home that evening.<br />
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Our boss paid everyone a day’s wage because he thought it was fair that the poor guys who had no other job would have something to take home that night.<br />
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What is fair in the kingdom is not necessarily our idea of what is fair. We want what is fair when it benefits us, but fair is what seems right to God.<br />
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Our embassy of the kingdom, called the church, is here to extend God’s brand of fair to the world around us. To those caught in endless despair and hopelessness we are called to bring the mercy and grace of God to them, to embody the compassionate Jesus, to return to the marketplace again and again to find those who need God.<br />
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In other words, we don’t exist for ourselves. We are not here to pat ourselves on the back, bless ourselves, or entertain ourselves. We are here to head to the marketplace to find the hopeless and offer them the hope only Jesus Christ can bring. Because in the kingdom the last are first, and the first are last.<br />
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That’s fair.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mat+20%3A1-16&version=CEB&interface=print">Matthew 20:1-16</a> (Proper 20 A)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-18043405240454288182014-09-14T04:00:00.000-05:002014-09-14T05:43:40.169-05:00Mind the gapWhen my wife and I went to London in 2011 we made good use of the London Underground – the system of subway trains that traverse the city. The “tube” makes it possible to travel that great city without a car. Just walk to the nearest station, buy a ticket, and hop a train to wherever you want to go.<br />
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At the platform where you board the train you will see and hear the warnings to “mind the gap.” That is, the gap between the platform and the train door. The train is usually a little higher than platform level, and a few inches a way. That’s why it’s important to mind the gap, so you won’t trip up.<br />
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As we look today at the relationships between the generations I see another warning to “mind the gap.” We make much of the so-called generation gap, or the differences between parents and their children. Parents are baffled and sometimes perplexed by the choices their children make as they approach adult life. Their offspring, feeling entitled to a life on their own, complain of being hassled by parents who “just don’t understand.” Sound familiar?<br />
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There has always been a generation gap, but I think as time goes on the gap becomes more and more pronounced. Oncoming generations increasingly want to break ties to the past. Peers become more important than parents. Dad and Mom just aren’t cool. The pressure to self-differentiate, to be one’s self and seek one’s own way, hinders looking to previous generations.<br />
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Today our young carry in the palms of their hands powerful devices that connect them to a world of information and influence unparalleled in previous generations. The information and influence are not always helpful. “Dad and Mom don’t understand” is code for “I want to do it my way.” Solomon opined, “Pride comes before disaster, and arrogance before a fall” (Proverbs 16:18 CEB). That makes it all the more important to mind the gap.<br />
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The young adult we identify as “the rich young ruler” approached Jesus for the secret of eternal life. Jesus told him to keep the commandments. “Which ones?” he asked.<br />
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Jesus replied, “Don’t commit murder. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t steal. Don’t give false testimony. Honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Matthew 19:18-19 CEB, <i>quoting</i> Exodus 20:12-16, Deuteronomy 5:16-20, Leviticus 19:18). Attention to these, Jesus said, gains one eternal life.<br />
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I take special note that the Fifth Commandment is included. Honor your father and mother. This is, as Paul points out, the first commandment with a promise. Honoring parents promises a good life where things go well.<br />
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The ancient rabbis observed the commandment to honor and obey parents follows the first four dealing with honoring God. They said the order of the commands was important and that, after honoring God and keeping the law, honoring one’s parents was of supreme importance. Quality of life depends on it. I guess that means dishonoring parents means all will not go well.<br />
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We like to recite this to little children but in fact it is intended for adult children capable of making their own choices. Make your own choices, but make them in a way that honors parents.<br />
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I’ve seen two interpretations. One says that parents are responsible to teach the law to their children and children must be diligent to listen and incorporate that teaching into their adult lives. The tradition is thus handed down and preserved, and the blessing of the Lord continues on the nation. Where there is a breakdown there are detrimental consequences.<br />
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Another interpretation teaches that children (of any age) should do nothing to distress their parents, even at great personal sacrifice. The distress could be something as little as waking dad up from his nap. To distress is to dishonor. Parents are due respect at any cost. So much for the “self-differentiation” cult of modern psychology. When Christian teachers and counselors advise youth to make their own decisions and be independent irrespective of their parents’ wishes they are advising them to deliberately disobey the Fifth Commandment.<br />
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The prodigal son comes to mind. The second son of a wealthy man saw no future for himself respecting dad so he asked for his inheritance early to strike out on his own. In the process he gravely violated the Fifth Commandment. He dishonored, disrespected, and humiliated his father. Essentially he said, “Dad, I wish you were dead. I’m entitled to live my own life so give me my money and I’m out of here.” Dad wrote the check but his heart was broken I am sure. It was a deep and bitter insult. The prodigal had great fun while the money lasted, but wound up wasted. It did not go well for him.<br />
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In the family passage of <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ephesians+5%3A22-6%3A4&version=CEB&interface=print" target="_blank">Ephesians 5 and 6</a> Paul admonishes children to obey their parents that they may receive the promise of a long life. Later he warns Timothy to beware of dangerous times where self-centered people will be, among other things, disobedient to parents (<i>see</i> <a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=2+tim+3%3A1-9&version=CEB&interface=print" target="_blank">2 Timothy 3:1-9</a>). Avoid those people, he warned. Important reasons to mind the gap.<br />
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It occurs to me that the oncoming generation is the one with the responsibility to mind the gap. We look to the generations before to listen, honor, and respect. Parents are responsible to teach, and their children are responsible to listen and to not cause their parents grief. That is because the oncoming generation comes to a point where they feel that can do this themselves, the past and its traditions are irrelevant, and they don’t need parents anymore. That’s exactly where it becomes important to mind the gap.<br />
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Malachi the prophet foretold the coming of the day of the Lord and the judgment it would bring. He summed it up this way:<br />
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Turn the hearts of the parents to the children<br />
and the hearts of the children to their parents.<br />
Otherwise, I will come and strike the land with a curse. </blockquote>
Mind the gap.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matt+19%3A16-19&version=CEB&interface=print" target="_blank">Matthew 19:16-19</a></span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-29761812257538644142014-08-31T05:56:00.001-05:002014-08-31T05:56:55.497-05:00Turn your eyes upon JesusThe dictionary defines crisis as the decisive state of things. It is a place in the sequence of events at which the direction of all future events is determined. Usually the situation calls for a decision, but most often something unexpected happens that changes everything. Crises affect individuals or groups, and often have the result of aligning priorities and how we interact with others.<br />
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I remember the day of terrorist attacks in 2001. An event, out of the blue, caught us all off guard, drew the nation together, setting aside political differences, and changed the world forever. It was a crisis.<br />
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I can think of personal and family crises through the years that changed our direction and brought us to our knees to pray and seek God’s guidance.<br />
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In times like these I am reminded to look first to Jesus. There is a song by Helen Lemmel, written in 1922, that always comes to mind. It always brings comfort and guidance.<br />
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Turn your eyes upon Jesus,<br />look full in his wonderful face,<br />and the things of earth will grow strangely dim,<br />in the light of his glory and grace.</blockquote>
We have all faced crises in our lives. Both individually and collectively. We have experienced events that changed our direction and made it impossible to ever go back to the way things were. It has happened in our families. It has happened in our church. We are facing one of those times now.<br />
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Crises have a way of bringing the important things into focus, and setting aside the things that are not so important. Suddenly opinions or plans or preferences don’t matter so much. They are willingly set aside to concentrate on the more important things – drawing near to others, drawing near to God.<br />
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Crises have a way of making us turn our eyes on Jesus, where everything else pales in comparison.<br />
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The text today calls attention to two crisis. The first is a personal crisis Jesus encountered when he heard his cousin and baptizer John was beheaded. He went away to grieve but needy crowds followed him to his lonely retreat. Having compassion he ministered to them.<br />
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But they wanted to redirect Jesus’ mission, and the conversation apparently confused the disciples. Jesus sent the disciples across the lake in the boat, and sent the crowds away. He then resumed his personal retreat to grieve and to focus.<br />
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Meanwhile the disciples encountered another crisis. They sailed into the most dangerous storm they had ever seen in a lifetime of fishing on the lake. They were terrified. They thought all was lost. For hours they fought the storm, hanging on for dear life. I have the impression Jesus deliberately sent them into the storm to get them to refocus.<br />
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As morning approached the disciples saw a figure walking toward them on the water in the darkness. They were even more terrified. Peter recognized Jesus and asked if he could come out. Peter walked on the troubled waters toward Jesus. As long as he focused on Jesus he was fine. But he got to noticing the wind and waves and began to sink. “Why did you doubt?” Jesus demanded as he pulled Peter up.<br />
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When you face a crisis Jesus will ask, “Why do you doubt? Turn your eyes toward Jesus!”<br />
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A crisis is a time to examine one’s life, to reorder priorities, and to look to Jesus for grace and help. I am reminded of the letter to the Hebrews, a group of Jewish Christians facing crisis because of Roman persecution. They were ready to give up, ready to go back because being Jewish was far easier than being a follower of Jesus. “Approach the throne of grace to find grace to help in time of need,” the writer admonished. Look to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. “He endured the cross, ignoring its shame, for the sake of the joy that was laid out in front of him, and sat down at the right side of God’s throne” (Hebrews 12:2 CEB). Turn your eyes upon Jesus.<br />
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In this time of crisis, I encourage you to look deep within to examine priorities and do away with anything that takes the focus off Jesus and the reasons we are here. One of our families is hurting deeply, and we must come to their side. Through God’s grace, will come together to mourn, grieve, and find comfort. We together will draw strength in the moment of intense pain and unspeakable weakness. We together will rally around and minister to Joy and her family. We together will discover that God is indeed present and working in and through all things, no matter how tragic or incomprehensible.<br />
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<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnX1hRZi0-w">Turn your eyes upon Jesus.</a><br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew+14%3A23-33&version=CEB&interface=print">Matthew 14:23-33</a></span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-29575060077508204842014-08-17T04:00:00.000-05:002014-08-17T04:00:00.366-05:00Father knows best?This week’s contribution to the “In the Family Way” series is probably the most difficult for me. That is due to two things. First, Jesus didn’t say a whole lot about the role of husbands and fathers in the family circle. Since I am convinced that as a preacher I must begin and end with what Jesus said, I am challenged by the lack of Jesus’ direction on the matter.<br />
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Second, my own failure, discouragement, and deep disappointment as a dad make me feel unqualified to tread these grounds. In 2009 I searched out the matter and wrote extensively of my search and discovery in a blog I called “Patriarch’s Journal.” Now in great bewilderment I second-guess everything I thought I knew. I admit at the outset that I am searching as much as ever before and wonder if father really does know best.<br />
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I am not alone in my confusion. Today men struggle to find their place or simply give up in dysfunction and frustration. Our culture provides no real guidance.<br />
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The 1950s television series “Father Knows Best” portrayed dad as a lovable but slightly irrelevant guy. So did “Leave it to Beaver.” As time went on TV dads become more and more irrelevant and even the object of ridicule.<br />
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In real life feminism regards traditional fatherhood as “male dominance.” Our institutions (even the church) have become more feminized and men are being conditioned to be more like women – gentle, feeling, and in touch with the “inner self.” Expressions of true masculinity are looked down on. Gender roles are muddled and confused. And father doesn’t really know anything at all. Sit down, shut up, and write the check.<br />
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I mentioned that Jesus didn’t say much on the subject. In fact, at times he appears to be anti-family. He warned that he came to bring a sword which could divide families along generational lines. He told a young man who expressed interest in following him but also had reservations about leaving his father, “Let the dead bury their dead.” The kingdom takes precedence in Jesus’ mind, and as with everything else seeking the kingdom first brings other things into balance.<br />
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Lest we come to the conclusion that Jesus is anti-family let us remember our series text from last week, where Jesus referred certain Pharisees to the creation account for guidance on marriage and family. He quoted from Genesis chapters one and two and made it clear God created the genders for family and that he wanted them to join in matrimony to reproduce their kind. Societal order for the home arose from that. It is clear Jesus did not want Pharisees to disrupt that to suit their own lusts.<br />
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It is also instructive that when the “rich young ruler” approached Jesus for instruction on gaining eternal life Jesus quoted the Fifth Commandment among others. Honoring father and mother is important to the kingdom. More on this week after next.<br />
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I’m wondering if Jesus didn’t say much on the matter because he really didn’t have to. “Family values” were deeply ingrained in his first century Jewish culture and he needed only to address its excesses. Leadership of the husband and father was given and considered necessary to provide order and stability. This wasn’t in a context of male domination as many assume. It was in a context where most of the world regarded women as possessions. God’s people were to regard them as human beings to be cherished and protected.<br />
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Paul the apostle had more to say of these things because he was in the mixed up pagan world. My favorite of his writings on the matter come from Ephesians chapter 5 where husbands are told to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and gave his life for it. Self-sacrifice, unconditional love, and attention to nurture and health are part of that responsibility.<br />
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Perhaps the most instructive of Jesus’ teachings on the matter comes from the parable of the two sons, one a prodigal and the other loyal but ungrateful. We tend to make the prodigal the focal point, but I want to direct our attention to the loving father who did not flinch when the younger son offended him so greatly by asking prematurely for his share of inheritance.<br />
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While others would have written off the ne’er-do-well, dad watched every day for no telling how long for the prodigal to come to his senses and come home. Dad was there ready to welcome him home unconditionally. Though the boy would be fortunate to be hired on as a servant, when he did come home dad restored him to family.<br />
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There is enough here to restore faith in the fact that led by the Holy Spirit and informed by Scripture, maybe God intends that father know best.<br />
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I am again convinced that God has a design for the family. Paul explains that because man became first he is the head of the family, as Jesus is the head of the church. Not more important, but first in order, first in responsibility.<br />
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We men must overcome our age-old battle with passivity, which causes us to shrink away from responsibility. Adam suffered from it, and so do we. Especially in the face of continual challenges to our masculinity. We are first in responsibility, charged with giving our lives and sacrificing our possessions so that we can provide, love, and nurture our families.<br />
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It turns out God the Father knows best, because he created us, and he designed us from the beginning to emulate him, just as the father in Jesus’ story of the prodigal emulates him.<br />
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The challenge for us men is to be the men and fathers God made us to be. To do that we must know God, love like Jesus, and be led by the Holy Spirit. Put the kingdom first, and see how other things come into place.David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-7178158637979622832014-08-10T05:35:00.001-05:002017-07-08T10:33:54.658-05:00Designer familiesI have come to face the reality that I am not much of a designer. I’ve designed a sermon or two but that’s about it. There no are hot fashion items with my name printed, stamped, or embroidered on them.<br />
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My daughter Carrie is pretty good at it though. She designs works of art, from gifts to decorations to gourmet meals. She works hard at it. She conceptualizes what she wants to create. She searches for ideas. She makes a plan. She sometimes sketches or makes a template or model. Then she creates. It is amazing to see her finished work. She is a designer.<br />
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Design, whether it is a mass-produced consumer good or a work of art or a solution to a problem is an act of creativity. It begins with something in mind, a well thought out concept or idea. It moves to plan and process and finally to the end product.<br />
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I think we all like to design something or other. We like to create things and we like to change things, to improve on the design. The Japanese, it is said, are expert at that. Improving on design. I guess that is okay sometimes, but if we don’t have a clue what the original designer had in mind we can really mess it up. Some things are really best left to the original design. When it comes to God’s designs for life we mess up more than we improve because we don’t completely understand what God had in mind when he designed and created. When God designed the world he had something in mind, deliberated and carried out the plan, and created. We thought we were improving things when we did our own thing in the garden, but only made things worse. A lot worse.<br />
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The Pharisees in today’s Scripture text thought they were improving on God’s design for marriage and family. They wanted quickie divorces. They even had an endorsement from Moses, they thought. Surely uncontested divorces would improve the design.<br />
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When they asked Jesus about it he referred to the design. “Haven’t you read that at the beginning God made them male and female? Did you notice that man leaves father and mother and joins together with wife and they become one?”<br />
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Then he said, “Humans must not pull apart what God has put together.” We cannot go tinkering with the original design because we cannot improve on it. We can only complicate it. We can only make things difficult. That is because God had something definite in mind when he created us the way he did, and he gave more thought and effort to creating us than anything else in the creation. He created us in his image and he created us to live in families. From the beginning.<br />
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Families today are in trouble because we found it too easy to tinker with the design not knowing why it was designed that way to begin with. Like the Pharisees we thought we could improve on the design. We’ve only made things complicated and painful.<br />
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Jesus pointed to Genesis chapter 1 to note that God made us male and female to live in committed married relationships. This alone should answer all challenges about “gay” relationships and marriage. Jesus pointed to Genesis chapter 2 to describe the process God used in carrying out his design and his purpose for doing so. The emphasis on life-long committed partnership between man and woman to bear children to populate the earth is clear. If we don’t study, follow, and appreciate God’s design it will cause trouble because we cannot improve it. God had something in mind, made a plan and processed it, and created something beautiful.<br />
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Our series “In the Family Way” the next few weeks will begin to look at the design God has for family, beginning with marriage. The number one threat to our society and a number one problem in our community comes from ignoring or trying to improve on God’s design. That is because we were created, hard-wired, to live in family with a specific structure and a specific order.<br />
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In our made-to-order world we are accustomed to having things made just for us. We want it customized, tailored to our specifications. We want it our way. That is unfortunate, especially when we, like those hard-hearted Pharisees, want to customize family. We cannot improve on God’s design. Our attempts to do so have only created heartbreak and misery for our children and ourselves.<br />
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So what do we do? The first thing to do is repent. Quit trying to customize what God has created. Then seek out and discover God’s design and make the changes necessary to live that way. Find out what God had in mind, what he planned for us, and restore what he created.<br />
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<a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mt+19%3A1-6&version=CEB&interface=print"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Matthew 19:1-6</span></a>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-21442351043287300362014-07-20T04:00:00.000-05:002014-07-20T04:00:04.264-05:00Knockoffs or the real deal?Not long ago I got to noticing one of the members of my church wearing <a href="http://www.sanuk.com/mens-sidewalk-surfers/hemp/SMF1010.html?dwvar_SMF1010_color=NAT#start=2&cgid=mens" target="_blank">Sanuk</a> shoes, the casual shoes that declare they are not shoes but sandals. I decided I wanted a pair to wear around the house and on quick trips to the store. When I got to looking I discovered they were $60 a pair, so decided to look for alternatives.<br />
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One day I was in <a href="http://www.walmart.com/ip/31004822?wmlspartner=wlpa&adid=22222222227023343482&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=c&wl3=36551417701&wl4=&wl5=pla&wl6=66210114181&veh=sem" target="_blank">Walmart and noticed a knockoff</a> for only $14. They are even called surfers like the Sanuks. I was really tempted to buy a pair of those. In fact, more than once I took them to the check-out line but decided not to buy them. They just weren’t the same. I decided I didn’t want the knockoffs, I wanted the real deal. So that’s what I ended up buying.<br />
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A knockoff is an item made to look like a popular designer or name-brand item that costs more than it’s worth because it is popular with a designer or name-brand label. There are counterfeits, made to deceptively replicate the real deal, and there are lookalikes, made to be similar but not intended to copy. The Walmart lookalikes were not counterfeits.<br />
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Apparently there is a huge industry dedicated to making knockoffs. We buy knockoffs in just about every kind of consumer goods. Things like shoes, clothes, and jewelry. We even buy or make knockoff food. I remember one time finding a website that showed me how to make a knockoff Frappuccino drink like Starbucks makes.<br />
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We buy knockoffs because we want to have a look that is “in” without having to pay full price. The idea is to have the appearance of a certain style without having to invest in having the style. But when it is truly important to be in style, it is better to pass over the knockoff and instead buy the real deal.<br />
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Jesus said the kingdom has knockoffs and the real deal. After a tussle with Pharisees he complained to a group of people about knockoffs and his preference for the real deal. To vent he used a story of a farmer planting good wheat seed in his fields. One evening an enemy, a rival farmer, planted weeds or darnel seed in his fields. It was a case of agricultural sabotage intended to destroy the farmer’s yield at harvest and his profits at market. At the worst the bad seeds will contaminate the farmer’s wheat and may come up as volunteers to pollute the crop next year. At best the darnel will increase the work of the harvest.<br />
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Darnel is a knockoff of wheat. Jews considered it a corrupt form of wheat. In every way it looks like wheat until the heads begin to form and the fruit begins to develop. Then it becomes obvious but by then it is too late to do much about it. When the field hands asked the farmer what to do about it he told them to let them continue to grow side by side until harvest. Then collect the good wheat and cut down the weeds with their seeds and burn them. Care would be taken to separate the good seeds from the bad at harvest. The bad would be dealt with later. Knockoffs will be set aside and burned in favor of the real deal.<br />
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Jesus’ disciples later asked Jesus to interpret his story. Apparently it had gone over their heads. The good seeds, he said, are sincere and dedicated followers of the kingdom. The real deal. They are the ones who listen carefully and bear fruit. The bad seeds, he said, are planted by the enemy to sabotage and complicate the kingdom. They look a lot like the real deal until it comes time to bear fruit. They come to church and sit on committees. They do some good things. But eventually it becomes obvious they are not really committed to the kingdom and are really more interested in themselves. I wonder if these are the “hypocrites” the unchurched point to for excuses not to come to church.<br />
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John Wesley spoke of these as “almost Christians” having the form of godliness but denying the power thereof. They appear to be Christians but deep inside do not really love God or neighbor. Paul warned Timothy of people who would be selfish and love money; braggers and proud, slanderous and disobedient to parents, ungrateful, unholy, and unloving; contrary and without self control; disloyal, reckless, and conceited; loving pleasure more than God. Somehow they would appear to be Christians but not permit God’s power. Knockoffs. Jude also warns of “godless people who have slipped in among you” turning God’s grace into unrestrained immorality. He describes similar traits. Knockoffs are to be avoided as we seek to be the real deal.<br />
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The lesson for us is two-fold. First, Jesus warns that among us there will always be knockoffs. There will always be the “almost Christians” who talk a good game and put on a good show. They will sit on committees and lead classes and groups. They will advance agendas and give money. They will come to church. But eventually a test of some kind will come that determines the kind of fruit they bear in their lives. Then it becomes obvious they have come to sabotage the harvest.<br />
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The second part of the lesson is that we do not need to be distracted by the presence of knockoffs. They will be there until the harvest removes them. Instead, the real deal continue to grow and bear the good fruit of the kingdom.<br />
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The knockoffs will be separated out and the real deal will remain to continue the work of the kingdom.<br />
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Knockoffs or the real deal? I am enjoying my new Sanuk shoes. I am glad I chose the real deal.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;">Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43 (Proper 11 A)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1712999631746724536.post-22553256400766720162014-07-06T04:00:00.000-05:002014-07-06T06:04:55.208-05:00Easy peasyIn the last few years I have begun hearing the phrase, “easy peasy.” My kids use it. My wife uses it. It describes things that are easy to do. Things like home school curricula or Linux operating systems or recipes or things posted on Pinterest.<br />
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I got to checking about how that phrase came about. Internet lore, if you can believe it, says that it came from a 1970s British television commercial about dish washing detergent, of all things. In the commercial a little girl was given the job of washing a stack of dirty dishes. As she looked at what seemed like an overwhelming task her kind mother gave her a bottle of Lemon Squeezy dish detergent, and the two began work. Before long they were done, because Lemon Squeezy made the job easy. The girl exclaimed, “Easy peasy, Lemon Squeezy!” I can’t actually find the commercial on YouTube, so I guess there’s nothing to it.<br />
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We want things to be easy. Our world is complicated enough. Some would say over complicated. So if things can be easy that is good. Easy peasy. But it dawns on me that whenever something is easy it is because somebody did something to make something complicated become something easy. The folks who supposedly made Lemon Squeezy did the hard work of formulating a dish detergent to make washing dishes easy. Easy peasy.<br />
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Jesus seems to make following him look easy peasy. He told the crowds, “My yoke is easy to bear, and my burdens light.” Easy peasy? Something is easy because someone did the hard work of making something complicated into something easy.<br />
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Jesus had just been complaining about how complicated things had gotten. “To what will I compare this generation,” he asked. He described children in the market, calling to their peers to play with them and whining that their friends wouldn’t play the way they wanted. Sound familiar?<br />
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Jesus spoke of John, the consecrated Nazirite, who had practiced old-time reclusive self-denial as he prophesied and baptized. Religious leaders said John was demonized. Then Jesus described his own mission to be with people, to meet them where they are. Religious leaders accused him of being a glutton and a drunk, friend of tax collectors. They had complicated rules for piety that no one could follow.<br />
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But wisdom, Jesus said, is proven by what it accomplished. It seems God delights in hiding wisdom from those who are supposed to be smart, and revealing mysteries to those who are not supposed to know them. “Nobody knows the Father,” Jesus said, “except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wants to reveal him.”<br />
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Jesus issued the invitation: Anyone who struggles and is weighed down with the complication of trying to discover the Father should come to him. Become a disciple, learn from him. His yoke is easy, his burden is light. Easy peasy. But remember, something is easy peasy because someone did something to make something complicated into something easy. Finding the way to God is still complicated, but it has been made easy.<br />
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It turns out that Jesus’ easy peasy way is also a hard way. To follow Jesus, to take his easy yoke of instruction is to give your life entirely to him. To take up a cross, die to self, and live completely and totally for him. That’s all there is to it. Easy peasy.<br />
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Jesus did something complicated. He came among us, took on our appearance, lived our life, suffered our sufferings, and then died our deaths. He died on a cross with shame and injustice and abject torture. He asks us to follow him there in something equally complicated yet profoundly simple. That’s all there is to it. Easy peasy.<br />
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Pharisees had made everything complicated with their burdensome dos and don’ts. People were confused. Jesus said, “No, it’s really easy. Give up your agenda and follow me. I’ll get you to the Father. I’ll show you some really cool stuff that God is not showing the other guys.” Easy peasy.<br />
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It is very important for us to understand that following Jesus means living as sold-out, dead-to-self believers who will do anything, give anything, or sacrifice anything for Jesus. This would be very hard except for the fact that Jesus has done the complicated work to make it easy peasy. Live for him. Serve him. Follow him.<br />
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What I believe that looks like for us is that we have a church of committed believers in Jesus that are convinced that Jesus is more important than anything else. It has been very complicated getting a sense of things lately with different people and groups advancing a particular agenda or paying too much attention to the scorecard.<br />
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Church is embassy. We represent Jesus and the kingdom he reigns. Church is gathering, where we become part of a greater whole – the body of Christ, to live and work for him. Church is a nation of prophets and priests, proclaiming the word and living the faith by celebrating the mysteries of the faith made alive and new each time we celebrate them. Church is a cloud of witnesses who live and die for Jesus by rehearsing the good news in worship and repeating the good news in witness. Church is where we lose the self, check the ego, and get lost through baptism into the greatness of God’s re-creation taking place in the earth.<br />
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Sounds complicated, doesn’t it? It’s not, really. It’s easy peasy. The hard part has already been done. Just dive in, plug in, and dig in. Live for Jesus, become part of the whole body of Christ. And let Jesus change your complicated life into something easy peasy.<br />
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<span style="font-size: x-small;"><a href="https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=mt+11%3A16-19%2C+25-30&version=CEB" target="_blank">Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30</a> (4 Kingdomtide Proper 9 A)</span>David R. Allisonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16847804201343862267noreply@blogger.com0