Accountable

Accountability is one of those things we like to talk about … for others. Let religious leaders or politicians get into some kind of trouble and you will hear calls to hold them accountable. Rightly so.

Yet we don’t always want to talk about accountability for ourselves. Accountability is inconvenient and difficult. It restricts our freedom and makes us less able to keep secrets. But because at the tree in the garden we inherited the inclination to make consumer choices instead of the correct moral ones it is necessary, even if we don’t like it. Whether we are young, single, and courting; in a position of leadership and trust; or managing a business for someone else; we need reliable structures of accountability to reduce the temptation of forbidden fruit. There will always be a tree in our garden. We will always struggle with choices. We will always be tempted to turn moral choices into consumer ones.

The Pharisees of Jesus’ time liked to hold others accountable. They had strict standards of conduct, and when people didn’t measure up the Pharisees quickly labeled them “sinners.” More than once they measured Jesus against their code. Jesus grew weary and disgusted with their flawed rules about hanging out with “sinners” and turned the tables on them with a series of rabbinic stories to let them know just what he thought of them. First he told them God loves and pursues those people the Pharisees loved to hate. 

Then Jesus held the Pharisees accountable. In today’s Lectionary text  Jesus told a story about a manager, with a trusted position and responsibility to run the estate, who abused his stewardship. He wasted the boss’s goods on himself. Apparently there was no accountability structure, but someone told the boss about the manager’s mis-management. Immediately the boss called the embezzler in and told him to hand over the books and get out.

Put off by the prospect of manual labor or begging, and realizing that no one would hire him for his preferred type of employment with this on his resume, the disgraced CEO hatched a scheme to manipulate others into hiring him once he left the master’s employ. To pull it off he had to rely on the master’s good nature.

He urgently called for the master’s chief tenants, the farmers in town who leased land from the master and paid rent with a portion of the harvest. After confirming previously agreed-upon rents, he offered to cut each bill in half.

Here is how the manipulation worked: Each farmer called to the steward’s office would be able to sense something was up. It was very uncommon for rents to be adjusted downward in the middle of a growing season. They knew a shady deal was being offered. However, if they asked no questions they could reap the benefit of lower rent and greater profits from the yielded crop. That is, the consumer choice (lower rent, higher profit) overshadowed the moral choice (doing the right thing). There was no accountability and they couldn’t resist.

Publicly they would be able to say what a generous landowner the master was, lowering rents that way. In the honor-based society the master would not come back and complain. He would honor the changed contracts, take the hit, and enjoy his enhanced reputation for being so generous. Privately, because the farmers knew they were in on a shady deal, they would hire the manager to keep him quiet, and put his manipulative skills to work for them. Of course, in the new situation, they would hold him accountable to keep him from embezzling from them.

The cheated master said, “I have to hand it to you …”

Jesus finished the story by implying that the Pharisees were just as unaccountable but not as smart. “The children of this world,” he said, “are more shrewd in their generation than the children of light.” He went on to emphasize the Pharisees’ unfaithfulness and disloyalty to the God who set them in place as managers of the kingdom and stewards of his word. In other words, he held them accountable. Their conflict of interest hindered their stewardship, which was being pulled from them. The discredited Pharisees sneered at Jesus, knowing they were caught. But unlike the “unjust steward” they didn’t have sense enough to use their position to win favor with those who might receive them.

Together, as the Church, we have the stewardship of God’s kingdom. That stewardship entails a significant responsibility to manage the grace of God on behalf of the kingdom. That is, we join God in the chase for them and we stand ready to receive them when they return. 

The resources at our disposal are not for us to spend on ourselves, or to waste in pointless efforts. These would be consumer choices, measuring benefits to ourselves. Rather, our resources are for increasing the work of the kingdom. The Discipline of The United Methodist Church describes our mission as “making disciples for the transformation of the world.” We may dream of more people in our worship services and classes, but like the Pharisees and Sadducees of Jesus’ time, we are accountable to the mission to transform the lives of “sinners” by the love of Jesus Christ. That is what Jesus will hold us accountable to.

What if we were to ask about every proposed activity or program, “How will this transform hearts and lives?” What if we were to hold ourselves accountable to benchmarks that actually measure the level of transformation of lives? What if we were to hold ourselves accountable to higher authorities? Wouldn’t that influence the type of things we do at church?

Because I am aware of the constant presence of that menacing tree in the garden, with its tempting fruit of self-benefit and good feelings, I am pleased to have accountability structures in my life: as a husband and father, and as a pastor. Are you accountable? Do you have someone to help you avoid the deceitful tree?

I am pleased to be part of an ecclesiastical body like The United Methodist Church which, in the Wesleyan spirit, holds us accountable for ministry and outcomes. Members of our congregation today will go to an annual accountability group called a charge conference where we will hold ourselves accountable for our work. We will be reminded of ways we can do our work better, to transform more lives for God’s kingdom.

Grant to us, Lord, we pray, the spirit to think and do always those things that are right, that we, who cannot exist without you, may by you be enabled to live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (BCP)

Luke 16:1-14 (Proper 20 C)

Chase

It seems God puts a lot of energy into chasing after us. Since we turned a moral choice into a consumer one God has been after us, pursuing us, chasing us down, so that he can restore us to right standing with him. It started in the garden, when, after we ate forbidden fruit, God came looking for us. He found us hidden in the bushes, trying to conceal our newly discovered shame. It continued when Jesus came to live among us, to chase us into his kingdom.

Webster defined chase as “pursuit with the ardent desire to obtain; earnest seeking.” The verb is equally active and passionate: “to drive, urge, press forward with vehemence; pursue with the purpose of taking.” That is exactly what Jesus is doing, and we are the objects of the chase.

The concept is lost on the Pharisees, both of Jesus’ time and ours. Pharisees boast the attainment of self-righteousness and look down their noses at those who haven’t made it. In Jesus’ time they made clear distinctions between themselves and those whom they labeled “sinners.” They couldn’t understand why Jesus would want to keep company with “sinners.”

When Jesus invited Matthew into discipleship Matthew threw a party and invited his tax collector friends to meet the new rabbi. Pharisees complained. “Why do you eat with tax collectors and sinners?” Jesus responded, “Those who are well don’t need the physician. Those who are sick do.”

Later, as Jesus passed through Perea en route to Jerusalem he again spent time with the common folk. And again Pharisees criticized him. “This man receives sinners, and eats with them!”

By this time Jesus could take no more of the self-righteous arrogance of the Pharisees. He unloaded on them with a series of parables that left no doubt what he thought of them. He berated their hypocrisy and decried their disloyalty. He revealed their greed and pride. But with the first two Jesus made it clear God is all about chasing after the “sinners” they loved to look down upon.

First story. A shepherd (low-life sinner, according to the Pharisees) has one hundred sheep. One goes missing. He leaves the 99, presumably with fellow low-life sinning shepherds, to chase after the one that is lost. Because he is regarded a low-life sinner, he knows he must recover that sheep or be accused of stealing it. He searches high and low, and when he finds the sheep he returns to the sheepcote. He calls friends together and they celebrate the recovery of the one that was lost. His friends know all too well how important that one sheep is. The kingdom is like that, Jesus said.

Second story. A woman (low-class peasant woman, not too important to Pharisaical eyes) has a cherished ketuba, or dowry, worth ten days wages for the average day laborer. In our money at current minimum wage it amounts to just under $600. That money is all she truly owns and is intended to be her life insurance policy if her husband dies. She loses one of those treasured coins and turns the house upside-down in the chase to recover it. The extra housework pays off, and she calls her friends to celebrate. Her friends know all too well how important that coin is. The kingdom is like that, Jesus said.

In each case the seeker experienced loss of something important and saw the need to drop everything to chase, that is, search diligently for the lost item. Each did not rest until the lost item was recovered, and each rejoiced in celebration in the recovery of something important and precious. The kingdom is like that, Jesus said.

God’s heartfelt loss is relationship with us. The tragedy of sin is broken relationship, not broken law, and God in his mercy desperately wants to repair that. So he chases us down to offer the means of restoration.

The psalmist was aware of the chase. “Where can I go from your Spirit,” he asks. “Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in hell, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me.” You can’t get away from God’s chase.

The chase is Jesus Christ himself through what we call the incarnation. God comes to us in human form, the second Adam. Paul the apostle, describing his pursuit of the higher calling in Christ, wrote “I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me” (Philippians 3:12, emphasis added). Jesus had chased Paul, and caught up with him on the Damascus road. His life was forever changed.

When Jesus catches up to us our lives are forever changed. Over time grace repairs the broken image on the inside, gradually restoring us to the image of God intended from the beginning. And as that happens all of heaven celebrates, because cherished relationship was restored and renewed.

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the saving knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your name. Amen. (BCP)

Fishers of men

When Jesus began his earthly ministry he attracted a lot of attention fast. His first stop back in Galilee after his baptism and 40-day temptation in the wilderness was at his home town of Nazareth, where he spoke in the local synagogue and announced that he was the Messiah. The home town folks couldn’t get past their nostalgic memories of Jesus the son of Joseph the carpenter. They could not accept that he could be the Messiah foretold by the prophets, and they tried to stone him.

Evading the angry crowd Jesus moved on to Capernaum, a bustling lakeside community with lots of opportunity for preaching the Gospel. Dr. Luke implies that Jesus taught regularly in the synagogue there and quickly gained a large following of people who were “astonished at his doctrine.” My impression is that Jesus served at least a short time as one of the elders of the synagogue, which would have given him regular access to the pulpit and regular audience with the people.

As a popular speaker Jesus probably encountered a number of people who wanted to become his disciples. In Jesus’ time, a popular rabbi would be approached by would-be students asking to follow the master and learn from him. Rabbis almost never sought out students–the students always came to them. No doubt a few people had approached Jesus about this while he was at Capernaum.

The Greek word translated “disciple” literally means “one who directs his mind to something.” It referred to the special relationship between a teacher and student. In the Jewish context it always referred to someone who sought out and joined himself to a given teacher for some kind of training. The training could be in the form of a trade, where the student would serve as apprentice. It could also be in the study of the Scriptures, where the student aspired to become a rabbi. In either case the student would leave behind his family and livelihood for a period of time to learn from the master.

So when Jesus was ready to begin his itinerant ministry candidates for discipleship were already qualified and ready for the commission. Matthew records the day Jesus began taking on disciples: “And Jesus, walking by the sea of Galilee, saw two brethren, Simon called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishers. And he saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men. And they straightway left their nets, and followed him” (Matthew 4:18-20).

Simon Peter and Andrew might seem to be unlikely candidates for discipleship. As fishermen they were rough around the edges, both in appearance and manners. Galilean fishermen were known for crude behavior and foul language. There is no doubt they would have been turned away from the rabbinical schools in Jerusalem.

Yet Jesus saw in these rough fishermen qualities valuable for the ministry of the kingdom. Fishermen were middle class entrepreneurs who made a good living catching and selling fish from the lake. Their hard way of life taught them to be diligent workers, patiently and persistently toiling in hopes of making the big catch. And if a night’s work turned up nothing they would go at it again the next night, undaunted and undiscouraged. Rough and unpredictable weather on the lake made them fearless and hardy. They were ready for anything.

As Jesus walked by on this particular day the brothers were apparently stalking a school of talapia hovering above one of the warm springs that fed the Sea of Galilee. The strategy involved throwing a weighted cast net over the shoal. The net would sink to the bottom, trapping the fish inside. The net would then be pulled ashore and the fish salted down and readied for market.

“Time to become fishers of men,” Jesus said. Could it be that the two men had already discussed the matter with Jesus? They immediately left the net–and their lucrative fishing business–to follow Jesus in Christian discipleship. Both would devote the rest of their lives to the work of the kingdom, and both would be crucified because of it.

Discipleship involves more than going to church on Sundays. It has little to do with graded classes and family life centers. Splintered programs that divide families and create pointless busywork or provide “Christianized” worldly entertainment do not count as true discipleship.

Genuine discipleship requires commitment to the Master. It encompasses learning the principles of life that must be applied to one’s own life and then passed on to others. In a secular world it means a willingness to learn God’s ways and live against the grain of modern society. It also involves activities of genuine service that touch lives and point to the kingdom.

Jesus’ doctrine was radical in his time. He rocked the boat of those who had succumbed to the secular Greek lifestyle of the day. He shook the foundations of the stale religious tradition of the Pharisees and the foolish fundamentalism of the Sadducees. He taught God’s word as it was intended and expected life-changing application.

Today it is no different. The call to Scriptural living goes equally to those who live worldly lives and those who are trapped in religious bondage. Discipleship means we seek out and attach ourselves to Jesus and his words, diligently applying them to our lives. We then become fishers of people, looking for those who will commit their hearts and their ways to serving the Master.

The Holy Name of Jesus

This eighth day of Christmas we head back to Bethlehem, to the humble dwelling where Joseph and Mary took up temporary residence during the Roman taxation. Dr. Luke tells the story of excitement eight days before, among temple shepherds, who barged in uninvited into the tender moments following childbirth. The loud and precocious pre-teens came to check out a story of miraculous childbirth told them by a multitude of angels lighting up the night sky. Then they noisily went about telling others about their angelic visit. If they were around today they might describe it as “awesome” or even “epic.” I get the feeling they may have been more impressed with the messengers than the subject of the message.

Mary, on the other hand, quietly pondered the entire experience, keeping her thoughts close to her heart. All this pondering has my wife convinced Mary is a true introvert. For the previous eight days Mary has been quiet, pondering, and receiving the guests who would customarily visit every day until the traditional circumcision and naming ceremony. She has been on her child-bed, receiving constant attention from the midwife and women in the family. Her newborn has been picked up at the slightest whimper, passed around from one to the other, adored as the cutest baby ever seen, and kissed until his skin is raw.

On this eighth day Jewish custom permits Mary to get out of bed, to go into the mikveh bath for ritual cleansing, and to get ready for the circumcision and naming ceremony. As Jewish custom requires, the rabbi will be by today to circumcise the child into communion with the Jewish people, and inquire of the name he shall be called.

Circumcision was an initiation rite into Judaism going back to Genesis chapter 17. Since that time every male born to Jewish parents had to have the foreskin removed precisely on the eighth day. It could not be rescheduled at convenience. It was a sign of covenant with God, and a visible reminder of that covenant. Our time-honored Christian practice of infant baptism is inherited from this ancient rite of extending covenant to the newborn.

By the first century the official naming of a newborn was put off until circumcision eight days after birth. The rabbi would ask what the child would be called, and that statement, made in front of a house-full of guests, would be the birth certificate and legal record of the child’s name as he entered into covenant with the greater community. Normally first-born males were named after their father or grandfather. The infant’s father, as head of the house, had the final say and would pronounce the name. When the question was asked, Joseph did as the angel instructed. He told the rabbi, “He is to be called JESUS.”

From this the church gives us January 1, the eighth day of Christmas, to observe the Feast of the Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We are to think about significance of the name of Jesus. It must be important if God himself wanted to ensure the circumcising rabbi recorded that he would be called Jesus. So he directed Joseph to name him accordingly.

Of course, the name Jesus is the Greek form of the Hebrew Yeshua, which means “Jehovah saves.” The very name Jesus means salvation and restoration, and he is named for what he will accomplish. The angel told Joseph he would save his people from their sins. His naming ceremony, full of joy and celebration at the time, is in reality a death sentence. He will become, as Paul explained, “obedient to death, even the death of the cross” (Philippians 2:8).

But the Holy Name of Jesus means much more. Paul goes on to triumphantly declare, “Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11).

Now, as we carry out the work of God’s kingdom through the community called church, we are said to pray, preach, and work in Jesus’ name. That means we are diligent to discern what Jesus is doing among us, and to follow him in that work. Our words and deeds must always reflect him, honor him, promote him. We, like John the baptizer, learn to decrease so he can increase.

Following Christ as his disciples we are baptized into his name, forsaking the past and pressing forward into the kingdom. We join others in worship and thanksgiving through the name of Christ, remembering that as we gather in his name he is with us. We draw strength from Jesus’ name, knowing that everything we ask in his name and for his purpose is granted. We serve in his name, showing his love and pointing to his kingdom through acts of love and service to the world around us. The apostle Paul reminds us, “Whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through Him” (Colossians 3:17).

The Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ, predestined at the foundation of the world, prophesied by angels and pronounced at his birth by Joseph among us. It was rejoiced and recorded by witnesses in that tiny home with little clue of what it all meant, except for Mary, who had pondered its meaning in hear heart. The Holy Name of our Lord Jesus Christ has been preached and proclaimed by the church is the means of salvation and restoration to God’s love. As the psalmist declared, “O LORD, our Lord, how excellent is Your name in all the earth!” (Psalm 8:1, 9).

Eternal Father, you gave to your incarnate Son the holy name of Jesus to be the sign of our salvation: Plant in every heart, we pray, the love of him who is the Savior of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. (BCP)

By your patience possess your souls

Before he died Rabbi Edwin Friedman described the American social system as in regression and in need of mature leadership. He described societal regression as “gridlock” and “anxiety,” evidenced by reactivity, herding, blame displacement, and looking for a quick-fix. In A Failure of Nerve: A Society in Regression Friedman explained that the only way a leader can survive and lead is to remain self-regulated and calm despite the pressures. Non-anxious, self-differentiated presence is essential for making it through the chaos.

Self-differentiated, non-anxious leadership is not new to Rabbi Friedman. Two thousand years ago another rabbi told his followers about the same thing, after warning them of seriously traumatic times to come. Speaking to folks marveling over the grandeur of Herod’s temple, Jesus foretold its utter destruction, accurately described the events, and then said, “By your patience possess your souls” (Luke 21:19).

Prophesying of catastrophic turmoil Jesus instructed his disciples to keep the presence of mind to not be deceived when troubling reports come, and to not be afraid when chronic anxiety of changing times involved them. We may not be able to control events, but we can control how we respond to them.

In no uncertain terms Jesus told horrified disciples . . .

• You will be arrested and persecuted,
• You will be brought before tribunals, both religious and civil,
• You will be betrayed by loved ones,
• You will be hated because of me.

Jesus vividly described days of great tribulation as the Roman armies advanced to utterly destroy Jerusalem and end the Jewish nation as they knew it.

Historians tell us the prophecies came to pass just as Jesus described them. Beginning in AD 63 a prophet named Jesus, son of Ananias, prophesied impending doom to a Jerusalem enjoying peace and prosperity. The next year conflict began in both religious and civil circles. For seven years the people experienced conflict, infighting, rapid changes in leadership, abuse from government authorities, civil war, insurrections, and lawless plunderers. A great tribulation. Caesar Nero sent armies to beseige the city. After his death emperor Vespasian finished the war, and totally destroyed the city and the temple in AD 70.

Keeping a cool head in anxious situations, Jesus reminded, would allow him to give his followers words to say to refute and diffuse baseless charges leveled by adversaries. “By your patience possess your souls” Unlocking the essence of meaning in these words will help us understand what non-anxious, self-differentiation means.

Patience means perseverance and endurance. In Hebrew thought it means “wait upon the Lord” and helps us to understand that God gives us grace and strength to exercise great faith and remain focused on God’s promised deliverance. It is a vision beyond the present circumstance and a hope of a better day. It is faith in the promises of God.

Possess means obtain, buy, or control. Self-regulation. Here Jesus uses it in the aorist imperative, indicating “from this time forward control.” Control what? Your soul, your inner being, your spirit. Your self.

Our disciple-making enterprise will be conducted in anxious times and situations. Those who need Jesus many times will not be open to him until they reach crisis points in their lives. That is when we need to be able to act decisively with great leadership.

The perplexities of our times have us stagnated and afraid, and non-anxious thoughtful leadership is necessary in helping us move decisively into bold new solutions.

That is all a part of our mission. Our conference challenges us to grow more disciples by “taking risks and changing lives.” So get a grip. It is by your determined, expectant hope and unwavering faith that you exercise the self-control to rise above the confusion and lead.

Children of the resurrection

The object of our disciple-making enterprise is to beget “children of the resurrection,” people “worthy to attain that age” (Luke 20:35). The mission of the gathering we call the Church is to advance against strongholds of death and release the captive to new life, both in the present time and in eternity. Like the kingdom of God, we have to view resurrection as both present reality and future hope.

This was a point missed by the short-sighted Sadducees. These rigid keepers of the temple and all things liturgical did not believe in a resurrection hope. Their narrow-minded fundamentalism restricted thier view to their version of the Torah, the books of Moses. Since they could not find a mention of life-after-death in Moses it didn’t exist, and they were not open to conversation. And don’t bother mentioning texts in Daniel chapter 12 and Isaiah chapters 26 and 65. No Moses, no cigar.

So when the self-assured Sadducees wanted to try to discredit Jesus as he taught in their temple, they trotted out their favorite old hypothetical about the one wife for seven brothers. It was designed to make Jesus look foolish. He used it to turn the tables on them.

“You deceive yourselves, not knowing the Scriptures.” He then described how the resurrection will make us different. We will never die again, and because of that there will be no need to reproduce through the marriage relationship. Our familial relationships of the present time will not extend to eternity. I know that flies in the face of most of the Southern Gospel songs we sing about going to heaven to see Mama one day, but that is what Jesus said.

As for the resurrection itself, Jesus made fools of the Sadducees using their precious Torah. Apparently no one else had ever done this, because it made the scribes sit up and declare, “Well done, rabbi!” It is also recorded that the Sadducees did not have a comeback. They were silenced; their oft-used tactic backfired. Badly.

Jesus’ argument? God is known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God is not the God of the dead but of the living. The patriarchs continue to live in a resurrection state beyond their physical death. As do all the righteous dead. Even the Sadducees could not argue with that.

The important thing to remember is that in biblical thought resurrection means restoration. It means change. The metaphor is not restricted to life-after-death. Paul relates that when we become a follower of Jesus and submit to water baptism we die to the old and are resurrected, with Christ, to the new. The Hebrew Scriptures spoke of the return of the Jews from captivity as a “resurrection” of Israel.

With promised restoration and change comes hope. Hope makes living through difficult times possible because we have the reasonable expectation that we will be vindicated, restored, renewed, and justified by the grace of God through the saving acts of Jesus Christ. That happens now as well as in the age to come.

Our committment to mission means that we boldly and with confident hope assault strongholds of darkness, decay, and death to retreive any who will follow to a new life of hope and resurrection from the death. Both now and in the age to come. Let us be faithful in begetting children of the resurrection.

When Jesus barges in

Disciple-making sometimes requires intruding on other people’s plans. Jesus didn’t mind in the least barging in when it suited his cause.

Take for example Zacchaeus, the tax collector of the rich and famous in Jericho. Tax contractors in his time made a commission as they collected revenue for the Roman government, and if they could get away with charging more by false accusation it was even better. Zacchaeus took full advantage of the opportunity in the affluent “city of palms” built by Herod and winter home to the who’s who of Jerusalem. So much so that he was hated and reviled as “that sinner.” His name meant “righteous one” but he was anything but. Everyone thought of him as a greedy, powerful, ruthless traitor, a sort-of mafia don who didn’t really care what poeple thought of him.

Jesus passed through one day on the way to Jerusalem from Caesarea-Philippi, and barged into Zacchaeus’ life. Jericho was the last of a long list of whistle-stops before reaching Jerusalem. The road was busy with travelers enroute to Jerusalem for Passover celebrations, and Jericho was abuzz with excitement about the famous rabbi traveling through.

The streets in and around town were crowded with people. Crowds pressed on every side as people hoped to get a glimpse of the miracle-working prophet from Galilee. Zacchaeus, short in stature, wanted to see. So he decided to climb a tree along the street he thought Jesus would travel. In modern terms picture a powerful businessman in a $1,000 designer suit climbing a tree to see a celebrity. Lets you understand how interested Zacchaeus was.

Jesus wasn’t usually impressed by the rich and powerful, but he stopped right under Zacchaeus’ perch, called him by name, and invited himself over for lunch. “Hurry Zach, and get down from there! I want to go home with you for lunch!” Jesus barged in for the day, without invitation and without advance warning. What nerve!

I think the crowd was a little jealous. Someone said, “He’s going home with that sinner!” Most of them wouldn’t dare go into the home of a tax collector. They would be afraid of [gasp] eating food that had not been tithed! Heaven forbid!

Despite the criticism of the church folks, Jesus went home with Zacchaeus. He barged in, intruded, and changed his life. We don’t know what transpired between them, or what they talked about. But we do know that some time into the conversation Zacchaeus stood and said, “Look, Lord, I will give half my goods to the poor; and if I have taken anything from anyone by false accusation, I will restore four-fold.”

Zacchaeus’ life was changed. Transformed. He repented and vowed restitution in a manner that was beyond what both the law and the legalistic Pharisees would require. His center moved from gathering wealth to affecting restoration. Which is what Jesus’ kingdom is all about.

For his part Jesus was elated. “Today salvation has come to this house,” he said. “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”

Jesus often comes to us at unexpected and unplanned times. It is seldom convenient for us to meet the risen Savior. Claiming, “Today is the day of salvation,” Jesus barges in and intrudes on our plans. He confronts us with his agenda.

How do we know when we have had an encounter with the living Jesus? He finds us where we are well-hidden, intrudes into our plans, and changes our lives. Abruptly. Our values change. Our lives change. Our motives change. Our relationships change. Our work changes from gathering for self-fulfillment to affecting restoration. The business of the kingdom.

Has Jesus barged in on you lately?

Suffering from a superiority complex

According to the famous psychologist Alfred Adler, a superiority complex occurs in one who has an unrealistic and exaggerated belief that he is better than others. It is manifested by persistent attempts to correct others, discredit their opinions, and dominate them. It results in pride, over-sentimetality, snobbishness, arrogance, and narcissism (extreme self-centeredness).

This is how Jesus pegged the Pharisee in the story he told in Luke chapter 18. Two men, a Pharisee and a tax collector, went to the temple to pray. The description indicates the daily prayer for forgiveness, where a priest offered a sin offering, a sacrificed lamb, in front of the congregation, and then went into the holy place to light the altar of incense. As the incense burned people outside in the congregation were to offer prayers of repentance, asking God for forgiveness of sin. The service was designed as a means of grace, a means of returning to right relationship with God.

The superior-minded Pharisee thought he had nothing to be sorry for. As he stood to himself, avoiding contact with the unwashed masses for fear of risking being defiled, he thanked God for his piety (a common practice among Pharisees), and that he was not like others. In general terms he lists extortioners, unjust, adulterers. Then he comes out and says what is on his mind. “Thank you that I am not like that tax collector!” In his mind there can be none worse than he who stoops so low as to earn a living from the occupying Roman government, collecting taxes for them.

Then Mr. Pious backed up his claim to piety by listing his better qualities: fasting more than required and tithing more than required. In his mind he was really something. He went further than the law with actions, visible to all, that prove his piety and imagined right standing with God.

Herein is his presumed superiority. He attacked and tore down others in general, and the tax collector standing nearby in particular, in a prayer that made pretence of thanking God for his grace. All when he was supposed to be asking to apply the blood of the just-sacrificed lamb to his miserable condition.

In all their religious living, the Pharisees forgot that in God’s eyes the worse thing about sin is the broken relationship, not the broken law. They kept laws, even the ones they made up for themselves, and looked down their noses on everyone else who couldn’t measure up.

We get that way in church sometimes. We have a superiority complex when we look down our noses on the sin, living arrangements, ethnic origin, lifestyle, or economic status of those around us. Like the Pharisee we thank God we are not like “them.” Like the Pharisees we live according to rules of our own making, criticizing those who don’t. All the while we are totally unaware of the gaping breach in our relationship with God.

No one is fooled by our alleged superiority. In fact, many people say they don’t like church because they can’t abide the hypocrites. Younger generations are telling us they like Jesus, but can’t stand Christians. So they avoid church to avoid Christians. Oh, and by the way, telling folks there’s room for one more hypocrite doesn’t help. At all.

The tax collector, on the other hand, backed away from the altar, beat his chest in a gesture of great anguish, and asked God to atone for his sin. To somehow let the shed blood of the slain lamb cover for his sin. Jesus said the penitent tax collector went home justified and made right with God. Unthinkable to a Pharisee, but necessary to a mission-oriented God.

The Church preserves for our use in its prayer books the prayer offered by this tax collector. Known as the Jesus Prayer it goes, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”

A good place for us all to start.

Jesus, Patriot

Today we observe the Fourth of July and the birth of our nation. Sometimes we remember the historical significance and we might read the Declaration of Independence. We speak of patriotism and sing patriotic songs. Playing Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever” on the stereo is an annual Fourth of July ritual at my house.

Webster defined patriotism as love of one’s country, and the passion with which one aims to serve his country, either in defending it from enemies, protecting its rights, or maintaining its laws and institutions.

Someone forgot to tell that to Jesus. I looked for a passage in the Gospels speaking of Jesus’ patriotism and I drew a blank. In fact, Jesus said very little about nationalism and civil government and our role in it.

The closest thing I could come to was a passage in Mark chapter 12. The Pharisees tried to trap Jesus with a trick question about taxation. “Do we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus’ response was brilliant. After looking at Caesar’s likeness on the coin they would use for paying taxes, he replied, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.”

Jesus was not the kind of patriot the Pharisees were looking for. They wanted someone who would organize an insurrection and rid territorial Israel of its hated Roman oppressors so they could establish their idea of God’s country. They were most displeased that Jesus did not even so much as criticize the Caesar, much less organize a rebellion. Jesus was not very passionate about restoring Israel’s fortunes.

Jesus had bigger things on his mind. The vast Roman empire, most powerful civil government ever known, was small potatoes to Jesus. He wanted to establish a new nation without political borders or tribal boundaries or ethnic distinctions. He wanted to establish a government that went far beyond powerful empires. He wanted to bring his kinsmen the Israelites into it, but they were distracted by the little institution they wanted to build. He wants to bring us into that wonderful kingdom, too.

To that end Jesus is a true patriot. He was so passionate about his kingdom that he promoted its laws and ideals. He defended it from the adversary, the devil. He gave his very life that it might advance forcefully in the hearts of men.

Today I hope you we remember our Christian heritage and the significant sacrifices our forbears made to establish a God-fearing nation. But more importantly, I hope we will see beyond the red, white, and blue to the eternal kingdom Jesus seeks to found in our hearts. I pray we will be most passionate about loving, advancing, and establishing Jesus’ kingdom. That is the patriotism of Jesus.

Jesus did not go to youth group

The Lectionary text for Sunday gives us the only snapshot of Jesus as a young person. There Jesus joined his family and others on the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. As the family returned home, mom and dad assumed young Jesus was following along with the other young people, and did’t really miss him until evening. They were horrified when they couldn’t find him and rushed back to Jerusalem for a frantic three-day search.

When Joseph finally caught up with young Jesus he was in the temple, holding his own in serious debate with doctors of the law. All were amazed that this 12-year-old demonstrated such knowledge and spiritual depth. “Why did you do this to us?” Dad asked in a voice filled with both fright and anger. The precocious youngster quipped back, “Didn’t you know I had to be about my Father’s business?”

It is apparent Jesus did not go to one of those fun and games youth ministries I described in August. He didn’t demand a gym or softball field and wi-fi internet connection at church. He didn’t have repetitive motion injuries in his thumbs. He didn’t have body piercings and tatoos. He did not allow the culture to influence how he lived his life, even as a young person.

Modern youth ministry, as we like to do it, is terribly flawed. We are doing our kids a disservice when we have it, even if they enjoy it at the time. We are not training disciples we are creating consumers who need entertainment to stay with it. We are teaching them to let the culture drive the way they live.

Modern youth ministry rests squarely on the humanistic assumption, inherited from Darwin’s theory of evolution, that young people are under-developed, sub-humans. As such they don’t have the ability to be mature and responsible, and have to have an “age-appropriate” education delivery system. It is assumed they will be irresponsible, act like children, and not be interested in significant and meaningful study and application. I happen to believe that children and teenagers are not under-developed animals and would rather not treat them that way.

My experience as a home school father, now validated by empirical research, indicates that for proper spiritual development and maturity young people do not need to be isolated into groups their own age but they need regular interaction with mature adults, and they need to be included into the ongoing life of the church. They actually want this! Young people who attend public or private school already spend their entire week shunted away from the real world and isolated into artificial same-age peer groups. They don’t need more of it when they come to church! They need an intentional family life and they need interaction with responsible adults so they can learn to be adult. They need to be adequately socialized to live in a multi-generational world. They need to be challenged to do hard things.

Young Jesus could have tagged with the kids on the way home to Nazareth that day. It was expected that he would, and that is why he wasn’t missed until evening. But Jesus did not want to hang with the youth, playing games. He was fascinated with the things of God, and wanted to talk with the best biblical scholars of his time. More than a good time with friends, young Jesus wanted to be about the Father’s business.

Since we have them at church only a short time each week, shouldn’t we be more serious about ministry to young people. Shouldn’t we encourage them to be about the Father’s business?

Jesus comes

Advent reminds us of the ways Jesus comes into our lives. Actually, the ways Jesus intrudes into our lives. He calls us from comfortable situations and leads us into the uncomfortable and uncertain. He expects us to live in both expectation and uncertainty, taking risks and knowing that life forever changes. Someone has said Jesus comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

The text for the first Sunday of Advent Nov. 29 took us to the Mount of Olives, where the country-boy disciples looked down with awe on the indescribably magnificent temple complex. Jesus said, in effect, “Don’t get too attached to it. The day is coming, in your lifetimes, when it will be completely destroyed and no stone will be left on top of the other!”

Of course the young men, now in their early 20s, were shocked out of their minds. The center of their religious universe was to be leveled and never restored. Jesus used strong, colorful language to describe the significance. Sun darkened, moon not shining, stars falling from the sky. In Hebraic metaphor he means the event will change their lives forever. Drastic, catastrophic.

Jesus told them that in the midst of that upheaval he would “come.” It would be the “day of the Lord.” He had already told the arrogant Sadducees, priests, elders, and keepers of the temple, “Today the kingdom of God is taken from you and given to a nation who will bear the fruit thereof” (Matt. 21:43).

Yanking stewardship of God’s kingdom from the Jewish temple hierarchy meant doing away with the Jewish temple. It would no longer be needed. The once-for-all sacrifice Jesus made of himself at the cross did away with the need for ongoing animal sacrifice. God would now dwell in a new kind of temple, a temple not made with hands (Acts 7:48; 17:24). The temple made up of those who follow Christ Jesus.

While we no longer worship with animal sacrifice, sacrifice as the center-piece of worship continues. Paul reminds us to present ourselves living sacrifice, untainted from the world (Rom. 12:1, 2). Through our baptismal covenant we follow Jesus into sacrifice by taking up our own cross and following him in discipleship (Matt. 16:24). We remind ourselves of his sacrifice -- and ours -- through frequent observance of Holy Communion.

While some are content to redefine discipleship as gathering a large number of people into a service they enjoy, discipleship described by Jesus involves forsaking personal enjoyments and living a life of total sacrifice, a continual expression of worship. Baptism and Holy Communion, sacraments of the church, remind us of these commitments.

Advent is a great discipleship tool because it gives us cause to hold back on excessive celebration we often see during the holidays. It calls on us to pause to reflect on how Jesus abruptly comes into our lives, changes our entire world, and sets us on the path of genuine worship through sacrifice and life-commitment.

A disciple-making church will keep this in mind as it seeks to win the world to Jesus.

A kingdom not of this world

Sunday we observed Christ the King Sunday, the end of the long season after Pentecost and transition into Advent. Christ the King is recent in origin, and lesser known of the feasts of the church. Yet its lessons are powerful to us in the work of making disciples. It asks us to pause and consider the lordship of Jesus Christ and the advance of his kingdom. It teaches us that God’s kingdom transcends the secular, civil, and circumstantial.

This is illustrated by the text in John chapter 18. Jesus was haled before Pilate under the trumped up charges of sedition against the Roman government. I think Pilate was incredulous that the Jews would actually be concerned that someone was plotting an attempt at overthrowing the Romans.

The real concern of the Sadducees was that Jesus had blasphemed their idol, the temple. They wanted Jesus dead, and since they couldn’t do it themselves, they had to manipulate the Roman government into doing it for them. A charge of sedition was the best way to get the government’s attention.

As Pilate interrogated Jesus he asked the question, “Are you king of the Jews?” Jesus replied that his kingdom is “not of this world.” and that is why no resistance was being offered. He went on to say that he was born for only one reason, and that is to “bear witness to the truth.”

Two things jump out of the situation that inform our disciple-making effort. First, the kingdom we advance is not of this world. It is not political, geographic, or national. It is not as interested in governmental affairs as it is hearts and lives. It realizes that we cannot force or legislate the kingdom agenda, but we influence it by letting its message change the hearts and lives of people. Discipleship does that for us.

A second thing I see is that its single purpose is to convey the truth. If we are the church of the Lord Jesus Christ we are the visible and unmistakable extension of the ministry of Jesus Christ. We take up where he left off, and do his good work as his ambassadors. The truth is not always popular or well received. It is not always pleasant and it does not always tickle our ears. But it must be told, and the apostle Paul tells us to speak the truth in love.

I fear that when we wave our American flags too much in church and shift the focus of attention from worshiping God to celebrating things national we forget we are not of this world. Veterans Day and the Fourth of July are real temptations to do this. When we allow the commercial Christmas season intrude and override the Church’s traditional emphasis on Advent and anticipation and hope we forget we are not of this world. When we are politically and legislatively involved but do not commit matters of national life to prayer we forget we are not of this world. When we let Hallmark Cards set our patterns and themes for worship at church we forget we are not of this world.

Jesus said his kingdom is not of this world. He offered no defense or argument to Pilate as to why he should not be executed. He did not complain against his accusers. He merely accepted the fact he was there to be executed and in the process turned the Roman symbol of torture, shame, and consequence for rebellion into a doorway through which we enter God’s kingdom. That is why we pick up our cross to follow Jesus, into a life of death to self and living unto God -- a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God.

The people around us cannot see the other-worldliness of God’s kingdom. They just see that they are sick or unemployed or worried about the future. They are disillusioned and doubtful and deeply in debt. It is for us, through acts of kindness and invitations to discipleship, to show them the transcendent kingdom, only observed through faith, by practical ways of making God’s love tangible and real. That is why we feed the hungry, minister to the sick, and clothe the naked. We want them to be able to look up from pitiful circumstance to see a kingdom not of this world.

Keep the main thing the main thing

When Jesus went to Jerusalem the last time he spent almost a week in the temple, teaching and contending for the faith. Mostly contending for the faith, because arrogant Pharisees and insolent Sadducees opposed him at every turn.

One particular day the Pharisees hit him with a trick question about Roman taxation. “Do we pay taxes to Caesar or not?” Jesus asked to see the coin with which they would pay the tax and caught them in their hypocrisy. They had the filthy pagan currency on them in the holy temple! Jesus’ response revealed their foolishness: “Render to Caesar the things of Caesar, and render to God the things of God.” Jesus refused to be caught up in their petty arguments.

Next up were the Sadducees, keepers of the temple. Arrogant in their ignorance they refused to consider the likelihood of a resurrection because they couldn’t find specific reference to it in their version of the Torah. So they also posed the same foolish question they always used to trip up people who dared argue with them about it. In the resurrection, whose wife would the woman be who had been married to seven brothers through levirate marriages? Jesus wasted no time calling them errant, explained to them that marriage would not exist in the future resurrection, and let them know Abraham is living because God would never associate himself with the dead. Thus there is a resurrection! He shut them up.

But then a scribe, a lawyer for the Sanhedrin, filed an amicus brief. That is, he asked a friendly question. “What is the greatest commandment in the law?” I don’t think the man was trying to put Jesus on the spot; I think he was trying to let Jesus explain himself, and bring some order to the feeding frenzy going on at Jesus’ expense.

Of the 613 Jewish laws Jesus immediately turned to Deuteronomy chapter 6:

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.

He then said there is a second like it, and referred to Leviticus chapter 19:

. . . you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

The lawyer readily agreed and Jesus affirmed that he was not far from God’s kingdom.

I think the lawyer’s amicus brief brought the conversation from insignificant argument back to the main thing. The main thing is to love God with all within us, and then to live it out by expressing it to our neighbors.

When I researched how we might actually express love for God, the Scriptures repeatedly linked knowing and living his word with actually loving God. It seems to me this is the goal of discipleship, to sufficiently know God’s word enough to apply it as a matter of course in life situations. It is lived out by continuing to do the things Jesus said he came to do when he announced the coming of the kingdom.

Jesus spoke of things like proclaiming economic equity, healing the brokenhearted, releasing the oppressed from disadvantage, and restoring life in a manner of the anticipated resurrection. He spoke of them as current reality and indicated his church would be about that work, bringing glimpses of the hereafter into present reality while anticipating its arrival.

Discipleship is following Jesus into that work. It is sufficiently internalizing the Scriptures and living them out in practical ways so that the world is improved and God is glorified. The apostle James wrote of this and reminded us that faith without works is dead.

I am convinced the discipleship programs in our churches need to have more than an academic element. They must touch our hearts and transform them to love God with every ounce of our being, and then move us to live out our faith in tangible ways that give glimpses of heaven on earth. That seems to me to be the main thing. So let’s work to keep the main thing the main thing.

Discipleship is spiritual formation

As a Methodist pastor I am attracted to the account of Wesley and his disciple-making machine in the 18th century. It is said that Wesley, through his system of small groups and itinerant preachers, helped England address its cultural ills and avoid a massive revolt on the order of the bloody French revolution. He had a passion for discipling the people the organized church missed.

It is more than coincidence that Wesley’s London headquarters was an abandoned foundry. The industrial revolution in Britain and the huge cultural shifts it generated greatly contributed to the societal ills Wesley addressed. It is interesting that he based in a facility that had contributed to the problem to begin with.

But more important to me is the symbolism. A foundry takes a raw element like iron or steel and reduces it, through heat, into liquid form. That element is then poured into molds where it is left to solidify into the desired shape. Once the general shape is formed, the product is taken from the mold and perfected by having all the rough edges and imperfections chipped and sanded off.

It occurs to me that disciple-making is spiritual formation in the same way a foundry forms raw materials into useful products. The church or discipling body is the form into which God pours heated raw material for shaping. Over time the discipled people take shape. Then they are perfected by chipping here, sanding there, taking off all that doesn’t look like the intended shape. And what is that intended shape?

Read it from Ephesians chapter 4: “And He Himself gave some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ, till we all come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; . . .”

The primary spiritual formation tool we have used in the American church is Sunday school. It began as an educational outreach program, teaching uneducated children employed 18th century British sweatshops how to read and write, using the Scriptures. It evolved into an evangelistic outreach for the unchurched, and finally as a means of spiritually educating children of the churched. Countless children and adults have learned the Bible in these Sunday schools, including me! But the downside is two-fold: (1) its stress is educational, or assimilation of facts over touching the heart; and (2) it has had the unfortunate and unintended consequence of excusing parents from their responsibility to train their own children.

I am wondering if we need something else to supplement this old reliable tool. If we begin thinking in terms of formation, of setting up our own spiritual “foundry,” then I am wondering if we need to add components not addressed well by Sunday school. Things like community between persons in a variety of settings outside the classroom. Or service, where we actually put the biblical texts to work in practical ministry where we are shaped simply by thinking of and serving others. Or contemplation, were we revive and employ ancient practices like daily office and fixed prayers, meditation, fasting, lectio-divina, and living the church year. I’m also wondering if we don’t need to help parents regain their role as primary formation agent of their children, and allow church efforts to come alongside what parents already do as they obey the Lord.

While Wesley was an ardent supporter of Sunday school, the fact is that he helped shaped the lives of tens of thousands (and ultimately millions, I think) through informal groups meeting in homes and public places. That was his primary tool. Faith and practice go hand-in-hand and are part of our Methodist DNA. It was also the way of the early church.

In my churches I am advocating that we think in terms of spiritual formation instead of Christian education. I am also suggesting that we call our overall strategy for spiritual formation the Foundry. May God pour us all into the mold of Christ, that we might be shaped, formed, and perfected to resemble him.

An army of disciple-makers

Some folks don’t like military imagery applied to the church. They tried to remove “Onward Christian Soldiers” from the hymnbook. They overlook the countless references to armed conflict in the Hebrew Scriptures. They try to make the case that Jesus never talked about or endorsed warfare of any kind. Straining a gnats and swallowing camels, indeed.

The fact is, that is precisely the language Jesus used. At Caesarea-Philippi he asked his young disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

Peter responded, “You are the Messiah, Son of the living God!” That was a military declaration in itself. In the mind of these young Hebrew men, enslaved all their lives by brutal Roman overlords, the anticipated Messiah would be a military leader who would rally the militia and lead them to defeat the Romans and remove them from the country so that David’s kingdom could be re-established.

Jesus seems to encourage these lifetime dreams with his response. “You are right, Simon, son of Jonah! The Holy Spirit revealed this to you. Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it!”

The word church is a military term, but we miss it because we look at it with Western eyes. In Greek thought it referred to calling people together for debate and decision in a town council. But in Hebrew thought it means calling people together for war. Its Old Testament usage is indisputably military. This is why the young disciples heard mixed signals and could not understand why Jesus would go to Jerusalem to die when Messiah and warfare meant glorious victory. The reference to the gates of Hades to them meant the defences of Rome.

However, Jesus is using strong metaphor. He doesn’t mean for us to take up weapons and make disciples to Christianity by force. Far from it. Hades, hiding behind those strong fortresses, meant death and lifelessness and insignificance; decay and unproductivity and inaction. Hebrew life is active and vibrant, lived to the full with meaning and purpose. To go to Hades (Sheol, death) is abhorrent to the Hebrew mind.

Jesus uses Hades to describe the manner of life people get themselves into when they become enslaved by the devil. Self-defeating behaviors, habits, belief-systems, ways of living. Things like ignorance, grinding poverty, substance addictions, and chronic immorality. Dysfunctional family life and generations of living off the system. These are formidable strongholds holding people in bondage.

Jesus wants to gather a militant, well-armed, well-trained army of disciple-makers and send them to knock down these strongholds and set the captives therein free through relationship-based discipleship. We are to deliver them from the captivity of the death that ensnares them and introduce them to lives of meaning and purpose and accomplishment and contribution to others.

This should inform our disciple-making endeavors. Instead of trotting out another Bible study and trying to twist enough arms to get a respectable turnout, maybe we should look around at our community and identify the strongholds of Hades, and bring out weapons to tear down those walls and release those inside. If we listen closely enough, we’ll hear the captain of the Lord’s host dispatch us to take one of those strongholds, for the glory of the kingdom.

Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war . . .

If not a democracy, then what?

My last entry opined that the church is not a democracy. That is, it is not to be governed by a majority vote of the people. A hard concept for people who believe themselves to live in a “democratic society” and think they just have to have a say.

So it is a fair question to ask, “If the church is not a democracy, then what is it? And how do you govern it?” Let me stab at answering these queries.

Obviously the church is Jesus’ church and should be considered a “Christocracy,” governed by Christ. He told the disciples he would build his church. Paul tells us Jesus is head of all things, including the church. Everything we do, everything, must be done not for our own benefit but because Jesus wants us to do it.

Luke chapter 4 gives us the what. Jesus said he was anointed and appointed to preach good news, to set captives free, to heal the brokenhearted and bring recovery of sight to the blind. This was the language of a conquering king who was setting up a new administration and setting right the corruption of the previous dictator. This is the stuff of kingdom business, bringing these qualities of resurrection life into the present, working by faith to materialize the kingdom.

Matthew chapter 28 gives us the how. Jesus told us that as we go we are to make disciples. We are to gather around ourselves people who will commit themselves to learning the ways of the kingdom and doing its work. Growing them in faith and maturity and Christ-like character so that they can join in the kingdom work described in Luke chapter 4. I have a feeling doing the stuff of Luke chapter 4 helps us attract folks so we can do Matthew chapter 28.

Let me emphasize to you that if we are not doing the what according to the how, we are not obedient to Christ. Period. It does not matter what we have always done, or what others are doing, or how well intentioned we are.

As for governing the church, for taking it in the direction Jesus wants it to go, I hearken back to a previous entry for the mechanics. What if we were to adopt the mindset that allows the pastor to lead, a board to govern, a staff to manage, and a congregation to minister? What if decision-making was streamlined and permission-giving so that more emphasis and resource could be placed on ministry? Perhaps I will deal with this in the next entry.

The Lectionary texts for the coming Sunday allude to this. In Mark chapter 9 Jesus’ disciples became alarmed when they noticed someone they didn’t know casting out demons in Jesus’ name. He said, “Let them alone! If they are not against us they are for us. If they do miracles they can’t soon criticize us.”

In Numbers chapter 11 Moses cried out to God for help. At God’s instruction he set aside 70 elders to be recognized before the people. The Holy Spirit fell, and they began to prophesy, always a sign that God is present. However, Joshua became alarmed that two men in the congregation were also prophesying, and warned Moses to make them stop. Moses said, “Are you worried about me? I wish everyone had God’s spirit and could prophesy!”

Democracy in the church is not in the deciding but in the doing. The Holy Spirit falls on some to give them direction for making decisions, and we call them elders. We owe them our respect and our cooperation. But the Holy Spirit falls on all of us to make us ministers, to anoint us to join into the kingdom work Jesus described in Luke chapter 4.

Making disciples by telling the Good News

While our mission is to make disciples, the method we use involves telling the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who don’t already know him. Evangelism is the activity of telling Good News by word, deed, and sign, so that unbelievers can become aquainted with Jesus and want to seek Christian discipleship.

But what exactly is the Good News? It is the story of God’ loving interaction with mankind. Eddie Fox and George Morris have developed an effective system for witnessing in a postmodern day with Faith Sharing. They offer practical guidance for both message and method for witness.

For one thing, we need to work our our thumbnail sketch of the Good News that can be related quickly and clearly in a brief encounter. Here is a brief synopsis:

God created us in his image to have a relationship with him. He designed us with the spiritual capacity to know him and love him and serve him.

We rebelled against God through disobedience and corrupted our ability to relate to him. That caused us to pursue beliefs and lifestyles that grieve God and bring harm and imbalance to God’s creation.

God initiated restoration of our severed relationship and damaged creation through a covenant with Abraham and his descendants, the Hebrews. Eventually God expressed himself in human form through Jesus Christ. Jesus prevailed where we failed and assumed the guilt of our rebellion by his death on the cross. Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection completely restored our ability to relate to God.

The Holy Spirit brings grace from God to draw us into restored relationship by showing us our need and facilitating our entry into the kingdom through faith. The result of the Spirit’s continuing work in our lives is a renewed relationship with God and the restoration of peace and balance in our lives.

The Good News is that simple. We needn’t make it complicated with the unbiblical methods of supposed “evangelism” we invented in the 19th and 20th centuries. We don’t make disciples in the same manner that we sell cars. The Good News is sufficiently capable of producing disciples on its own and without our enhancement. All we have to do is tell it.

Dr. Luke records in Acts chapter 2 that Peter told this simple story to thousands of religious Jews amazed by the power of the Holy Spirit. The result was phenominal. Two thousand people asked, “What must we do?”

Peter replied, “Change your manner of thinking and living (i.e., repent), and be initiated into the kingdom of God through baptism.” There were no booklets, no altar calls, and no canned “sinner’s prayers.” They didn’t even sing “Just As I Am.” The people just came to be baptized into a new life in the kingdom of God. They became disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Telling the Good News is not as complicated as we have made it out to be. It doesn’t take a “trained professional” whom we “pay to do that” It merely takes our faithfulness to tell the story. Now that is good news!

Mindful of the things of God

Today’s Gospel lectionary text follows Jesus to the region of Caesarea Philippi, at the north end of Israel, and home of several pagan shrines. With him are the twelve disciples and other unidentified people, possibly the 120 relatives and friends who followed Jesus around and identified themselves also as disciples.

Jesus asked the twelve, “Who do men say that I am?” They respond by reporting local gossip. They’ve heard him referred to as John the Baptist, as Elijah the prophet, and as one of the other prophets of old.

“Okay,” Jesus said. “Who do you say I am?” Peter answers that he believes Jesus is the Messiah.

Jesus then begins to tell them how he will go to Jerusalem, be rejected by the priests and scribes (the Sadducees), suffer shame and torture, and be put to death. The graphic description refers to death by crucifixion. He also tells them that after three days he will rise again.

Peter is aghast. How can the Messiah be treated that way? Can’t be! Apparently he didn’t hear the “rise again” part because he was so upset about the suffering death part. So he pulled Jesus aside to help him out, to rebuke him.

“Get behind me, Satan!” Jesus returns. “You are not mindful of the things of God, but of the things of men.”

Peter was concerned because Jesus’ description of what would happen to him when he went to Jerusalem did not match with popular desire for the Messiah. The rabbis taught, and everybody believed, that Messiah would surely come into Jerusalem, probably one Passover, and run out the Romans and replace their brutal regime with the glorious kingdom of David. The temple and priesthood were in place, and all it would take would be the right man, anointed of God, to do the job.

Wrong. Jesus said these ideas, grand as they were, were the things of men. Things of God included sacrifice and death before resurrection. They meant suffering and being put to death on the most brutal form of torture ever devised, after carrying it through the streets naked, while organized mobs gathered to jeer and spit and hurl objects and insults. Those were the things of God.

We use the phrase things of God loosely these days. Usually it refers to something vague and is many times associated with things that give us warm fuzzies, just as Peter’s vision of Messianic victory over the Romans help him feel all warm inside.

But in this case Jesus gave specific examples. After rebuking Peter loudly and in full hearing of the other eleven, he called the people around to further humiliate Peter by making him a public example. “If you want to follow me,” Jesus said, “ you have to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” The application is clear. Following Jesus as disciple means self-denial and sacrifice, along with the willingness to take up the instrument of torture and death, and be paraded through the streets in utter shame.

To find life you have to lose it, to be buried with Christ so that you can live in the hope of the resurrection. Disciple-making means bringing people, through committed learning relationships, into a life-commitment of selfless service to Jesus. Christian baptism is the entry point in this kingdom commitment of eternal life, beginning now and extending into the hereafter in the resurrection.

I am afraid that, for the sake of counting nickels and noses, we are attracting people to a “cheap grace” as Bonhoffer called it, where we deceive ourselves in finding glory when in reality we are being mindful of the things of men. Numbers of back-pew believers consuming “ministries” do not make disciples. They are not following Jesus to the cross of crucifixion of the flesh. They are gratifying the desires of their hearts with a “Christian” rubber stamp. We have sold our soul to make friends with the culture, but in the end what will we have accomplished?

I believe Jesus is calling us to be counter-cultural. He is calling us to build the resurrection kingdom of God in the present by making disciples and changing lives. We knowingly and willingly risk ridicule, resistance, and our own convenience to do God’s good work. It is a calculated risk. Disciple-making means calling others to work alongside us, allowing Jesus to rub off onto them until they are ready to take the plunge through baptism into a life of death to self, new life in Christ.

Discipleship of hope

We live in times when people are losing hope. I am reading that the postmodern generation, generally the twenty-somethings in college and beginning adulthood, is a generation without hope. They look at the state of the world, with chronic anxiety, economic unrest, and world conflict, with little hope for a bright future.

Many of these people emerging into adulthood come from troubled homes. They have become all to accustomed to dysfunctional relationships, broken promises, and putting on a false front. They are used to a life where things are not what they seem. They note how the great institutions, including the church, the modern generations created in the 20th century have failed to keep promises and deliver the goods.

They view the world as not what it seems, and if they ever open up, will tell you they carry a lot of pain. They are discouraged. They are without hope.

That is not unlike Jesus’ time. By the time Messiah was supposed to come people were losing hope. Upon release from captivity the Hebrews experienced maybe 20 years out of 400 in complete freedom and safety. The rest of the time they suffered under one brutal world regime after another. By the time of Jesus there had been a cultural invasion of the Greeks followed by a military invasion of the Romans. The Hebrew way of life was all but gone.

Then came an obscure and eccentric prophet named John, who kept to himself in the wilderness and bellowed incessantly about the need for repentance before the Messiah came. In his own way he sparked hope. People began checking the prophecies, particularly in Daniel, and counted the days it said would lapse before Messiah’s coming. They were nearly complete! Prophecies and psalms were read, proclaimed, and prayed. Hope arose.

Hope was manifested in Jesus, a rabbi and prophet from Galilee. He seemed to pick up where John left off, speaking of a new kingdom spoken of by the prophets of old. His kingdom would be different from the Jewish nation. It would include anyone who would come. It would begin in the present but not be fully in place until after the resurrection. It would replace the religious and social institution that had been so carefully built in Jerusalem.

The method Jesus used to foster hope was to gather disciples to train for and rally around his message. Apparently there were several levels, from the greater following of multitudes who came to here him, to the 120 or so who followed him everywhere, to the twelve he specifically recruited, to the three he spent a good deal of time with. These circles had varying levels of commitment, and it was the most committed who were used to change the world with the message of hope.

During the 20th century we so institutionalized the church that it became more like a school and a club than the church Jesus described. It fit well into the industrially driven, institution-building culture of the last 100 years, reaching its peak in the 1950s and 1960s.

Now, at a major hinge or turning of history, industrialization and institutionalization are giving way to more relationship-oriented economies. We have shifted to a service-based economy and we are seeing more importance placed on relationships. Postmoderns emerging into today’s world crave relationships.

It seems like a great time to revive the relationship-based system of making disciples that Jesus used. Perhaps we need to think less in terms of institutionalized settings, like classes and clubs, and think more in less formal ways of making relationships and gaining the trust of skeptical people so they will open up and say what’s on their hearts, and so that we can speak into their lives. So that we can say something about hope.

It seems to me that if we can do what Jesus did . . . if we can somehow attract attention to the awe and majesty and mystery of God . . . we might could gain the trust and commitment of a few who will learn by example and precept, and be charged with the hope of changing this hopeless world, in the same way Jesus’ disciples, all barely twenty-somethings, bravely left Jerusalem to fan out into a hostile pagan world, and changed the world.

The search for true spirituality

I have read that today’s unchurched twenty-agers are looking for a dimension of spirituality for their lives. They know there is something beyond the material world, but they do not know what it is. They may describe it as a power or a mystery. They may try different ways to discover true spirituality, and they may conclude that “all paths lead to God.”

Why the interest in spiritual things? It really should come as no surprise. God created us in his image and likeness. This means we have a spiritual component within us that can only be fulfilled in relationship with God. When we disobeyed God in the garden we cut off that relationship and severely damaged the God-image on the inside. Now distorted, it seeks fulfillment in all the wrong places. That’s what causes the sense of guilt, restlessness, and hopelessness. All paths do not lead to God, after all.

What, then, is true spirituality? The apostle Paul testifies of his pursuit of spirituality through prestigious social connections, good education, and religious zealousness. But one day he met the crucified and risen Jesus, and his life forever changed. He wrote to his Philippian friends, “I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ has laid hold of me” (Phil. 3:12). Robert Webber described Christian spirituality as “God’s passionate embrace of us; our passionate embrace of God.”

In Luke chapter 7 the unnamed woman, passionately seeking the divine embrace, interrupts the dinner party given for Jesus. We are told she is a “sinner” and that she honors Jesus in a very crude way. She pours on Jesus’ feet two very precious things -- her bottle of tears (representing her prayers poured out before God) and her expensive funeral ointment. Obviously Jesus’ religious hosts are annoyed, and indignantly wonder why Jesus puts up with her outrageous behavior.

The woman is so intent in her spiritual quest that she ignores the Pharisees’ intimidating resistence. Another time she might back away from their glares, but not today. The spiritual vacuum within has driven her to her shameful behaviors. But now, within Jesus, she recognizes the incarnation of God himself, there to restore wholeness and reach out for divine embrace. Jesus does not disappoint. All those misdirected efforts to find fulfillment, he says, are forgiven.

Misguided twenty-somethings seeking spiritual fulfillment in the wrong places need to hear this story. They need to hear that the void within is filled, not with drugs or Yoga or philosophy, but with the real Jesus who became flesh and blood and now lives within our flesh and blood. Jesus is indeed the only path to God.

It seems our discipleship efforts need to include ways to help people fulfill the spiritual hunger within which point to the saving embrace of Jesus Christ. Our system of providing committed learning relationships needs to go beyond educating the mind (classes) and touch the heart.

I love this collect from the Book of Common Prayer. It helps me focus on what I need to do to extend spirituality to others through discipleship. It is my prayer for today.

Lord Jesus Christ, you stretched out your arms of love on the hard wood of the cross that everyone might come within the reach of your saving embrace: So clothe us in your Spirit that we, reaching forth our hands in love, may bring those who do not know you to the knowledge and love of you; for the honor of your Name. Amen.