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Take Up Your Cross and Follow Him

9/4/2013

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What does it mean to "take up our cross?"

When he described this choice, Jesus had a decision that only he recognized.  On one hand was a path that other people wanted for him, to make him king of the Israelites.  They could have deposed Herod, put Jesus in the place David once held, therein fulfilling their limited, social understanding of who their Messiah would be.

Or as Jesus knew, he could give himself over to the people in a different way, to torture and death, sacrificed because humanity is too broken and sinful to honor goodness and truth when it stands in our midst.

Only Jesus knew that through death on the cross, he would become the ultimate King of all nations, the Savior and the mighty Lamb.  Only Jesus valued that path more than becoming the king of a small, impoverished nation, fully under Roman occupation.   See almost ever time, we humans will choose a lesser victory rather than the challenge and pain of acquiring God's purpose for our lives.  Let me reiterate that - EVERYONE else wanted Jesus to aspire to being king of the Jewish nation at that time... not King of kings for all time.

Only Jesus pursued his calling, his purpose from God.  No one else understood. 

And only Jesus had to literally carry the cross to become Savior of the universe.  For the rest of us our cross is not literal, but a description of our burden, our pain, that stands between us now, and the life God calls us towards.  

The choice is always ours.  We can live a lesser path.  We can become kings of our own broken country.  Or we can pursue God's will alone, and live the triumph only He knows is ours to claim.  

It won't be easy.  
We will have to let go of our false hopes.  
We will have to deal in truth.  
It will likely hurt sometimes.  
It will take great courage.  
It will require trust in God - the One who sees what we cannot yet see.

Yet it will be greater than any other possibility for our lives.

"Take up your cross, and follow Him."

In Christ!
 
-M4
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Is Anger Always Wrong?

11/13/2012

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“I AM MOVING THEM,” I barked!   I yelled loud...  in the front yard...  at 7 AM ... on a Sunday morning.   

     I would love my neighbors to come to church.  Our church is a friendly and encouraging place with kind and sincere leaders.  But that morning you couldn’t tell by how I acted.  I got angry over literally nothing.   

     All I had to do was move the speakers as we were loading up for worship early one Sunday morning.  All I had to offer was a strong back and an ounce of humility.  But instead, I wanted to do it my way, and even the fact that I had no knowledge of what the right way was did not keep me from getting angry. 

     Anger is everywhere.  Anger is hollering from the bleachers at youth sports.  It’s on cable news.  It’s inside the walls of our nice homes.  It is always stuck in traffic.  And it is filling up the local law enforcement and court system.  Anger comes out of people like us, almost everywhere we go. 

     Anger is an emotional response to not getting our way.  When we snap, rant, or  unload, we are responding to not getting our way.  

     Anger always reveals what we value, what we desire, and the way we want the world to be.  Anger, like our calendar, and like our bank statements, communicates what we value, and who we really are.  That Sunday morning my anger revealed that I have a hard time accepting the simplest instructions, that I want to do things my way, even when it is obvious I don’t know what that is.  So apparently, I value being a know it all.  My anger revealed a dark, stubborn side in me.    

     Often, in the name of religion, we are told to stifle our anger.  Some traditions speak of anger as one of the “seven deadly sins.”  While I agree that we can, and often do, respond emotionally to some of the most petty things, I also know that anger can be the most righteous response to a situation.  Anger is not always wrong.

     I know this because Jesus got angry.  One day he walked into the temple courtyard and completely blew his top.  The public gathering area to enter worship had been run over by con artists who sold sin-removing sacrificial animals and “clean” monetary offerings at ridiculously inflated prices.  Jesus hated seeing the people swindled as they tried to move towards God.  

     So Jesus got angry.  He created a whip of cords, and he drove out the money changers and let the sacrificial animals run free. Jesus‘ anger revealed what he valued; he valued people being able to access a relationship with God. (For a great video of this story go to YOUTUBE and search Jesus and Money Changers.  It is the first video to pop up; it is two minutes long.)    

     Take 30 seconds, and reflect on the last time you got angry (chances are you won’t have to think back too far).  Was it something petty or something life defining?  How did you not get your way?  What does your anger say that you value?  Does what you value need to be reconsidered?  Do not hide behind empty statements like “I can’t help it” or “I don’t know where that came from.”  Allow God to dig below the surface. 

     Anger is not always wrong, but anger does always reveal what we really value.     



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Words Matter in Times of Tragedy

6/6/2012

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Monday in Oswego three teenagers were killed in a fatal car crash on 126.  In a moment, everything changed for them, everything changed for their families, and everything changed for the man driving the truck who survives.  I have spent my life as a minister trying to muster up words of comfort in situations where there are no good words.  I officiated my first funeral back when 21 years old; the service was for a 34 year old mother of four who died of cancer one year after I met her.  I have spent my life trying to reconcile Who I know to be a God of Love with the pain and grief of a motherless 5 year old and her sisters and brothers.  Anything I have ever said that was helpful in accomplishing this is only a gift from God.  Me?  I never know what to say.

But let me be clear, I do know what not to say.

Do not say, “this was God’s will.”  For all the traffic this phrase generates you would think it would have a central place in scripture.  This phrase is often referenced as though random tragedy is divinely ordained, but no such example of God’s will exists in the life and teaching of Jesus...or in the entire New Testament for that matter.  So I can say with no reservation, it is never the will of God to kill three teenagers in car wreck.  I do not assume my readers are Christians, but for those who are, please remember ours is a faith of resurrection.  God has destroyed death as the final answer and is forever on the side of life and love - in fact, God IS life and love.  And that love is stronger than anything else in this world.       

Do not say, “this could have been avoided if...”  Humans like me and like you make mistakes all the time.  I admit, I have texted while I 

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Adultery, Judgement, Death and Truth

4/13/2012

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The religious leaders thought they had set the perfect trap.  They had found a woman in the ACT of adultery, and brought her to Jesus.  The Jewish law was explicit - the penalty was death (Deut 22:22).  (Although the law called for both parties to be put to death - where was the man who had perpetrated the same?)  But the Roman law was looming in tension to the Jewish law; no death sentences could be carried out by the Jews upon penalty of death from the Roman occupiers.  If Jesus chose to follow the law of Moses, he would be accused by the Romans and likely killed.  He had already stated He had not come to abolish even a portion of the Jewish Law, but to fulfill it.  The religious leaders had failed repeatedly to arrest Him themselves, now they could just let this situation play out and let the Romans take over the dirty work of killing Jesus.

But when confronted, Jesus assumed a submissive posture, going low, bending to the ground.  Then He does the unthinkable; He inverts the situation to make it about the heart of each and every individual.  He asks the crowd a simple question, that only they can answer internally, giving them the green light to kill the woman as their law allows IF they admit the impossible - true perfection - that they have never sinned themselves.  And none can.  In the flash of a moment, He requires them to achieve introspective repentance, acknowledgement of sin, and in that truth, grace prevails.   In fact, it is only in fullness of truth that grace for each is acknowledged honestly as necessary.

After the crowd disperses, in their final conversation, the woman and Jesus reveal much.   Everyone misses the mark, says Jesus:  "Is there no one here to judge you?"   She replies, "No one, Master" using the Greek, kyrie, translated throughout the New Testament as "Lord", a term that denotes that she has completely devoted herself to him, a full confession of faith and belonging.  Acknowledging her statement of faith He replies, "Then I do not judge you either." He says,  "Go your way, but do not sin again."  Grace...surrender...freedom...truth.  He offers no threat, no judgement, and no condemnation.  She has sinned, everyone has sinned, He has intervened, she has believed.  He has forgiven her, and He has asked her to live better.

As believers we must proceed humbly, to serve the broken, out of the knowledge that we too have been broken and still are broken.   Jesus is as available for each person to approach personally, internally, as He is for us who have already appealed to Him.  And we can follow his example to offer opportunities to encourage people to pursue truth and grace - not through statements of judgement - but through gentle and honest examining of their own experience, their own heart:
   
"Is your life where you want it to be?"  

"Are you teaching your kids what love is?"   

"Are you good with your relationship with God?"
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The religion of None.

3/13/2012

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What is the fastest growing religious group in America?  It might surprise you.  It is not the explosion of the polished mega church, though they are here to stay.  It is not Islam, though there are more Muslims in America than there are Presbyterians.  There fastest growing category is what researchers simple call 'None'.

Thom Rainer, President of Lifeway, recently wrote about the expanding segment of our country that describe themselves as 'None'.  When asked by researches if they are Catholic, Protestant, Jewish or Muslim, one in five said they are 'None'.  While there are Nones who have rejected theism for intellectual reasons, many more have rejected the structures of traditional religion.  

Nones, as a group, are big and only getting bigger.  If you also lump into this category the large and growing number of people who will give a nod to God on a survey or show up in their grandmothers church on an occasional Easter, the Nones + the apathetic offer a blistering critique of American faith. 

For those who are looking for solid research on the Nones I would point you to "UnChristian" by Gabe Lyons and David Kinnaman.  Speaking as born and bred Evangelical Christians, they confront the hard data regarding the perception of the church through the eyes of those not involved.   Their answers are not surprising but still painful.  The Nones perceive that the church is too political, too homophobic, and anti-women.  But I also have a few thoughts that press to the core of what the church is doing to multiply the 

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Fair or Right?

3/12/2012

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Remember school food?  Rectangle pieces of pizza, mystery tenderloins, and mixed fruit with one cherry?  I hated school food, with one exception: the cookies.  The elementary school I attended growing up in Iowa had the best cookies.  Oatmeal cookies with some government milk made for a good dessert. 

At the end of the serving line always stood an older woman, wearing plastic gloves, handing out one cookie per student.  I would beg her- beg her - to let me have two cookies.  There were always extras, always students who for some reason didn’t want a cookie.  I would explain, rationalize, and insist that giving me two cookies would not end the world.  Yet she would always say the same thing,  "If I do it for you, I have to do it for everyone." 

We all know that is not true.  She could have just done it for me and me alone.  She could have just given an extra cookie to the kids who asked politely.  But she fell back on what so many people say - I can’t do it for everyone, so I won’t do it for you.  While that might work handing out cookies, it is a terrible philosophy of life. 

We know that life is not fair.  So do not strive to be fair.  Strive to do what is right, in the moment you are in.  If a neighbor is hungry, don’t tell them that since you can't feed the whole world you won’t feed them.  Feed them.  If a friend needs a place to crash for a day to work through his marriage don't tell him he can’t because if you did it for him you would have to do it for everyone.  Be compassionate to the person in front of you.  Just because I cannot share my faith with the world does not mean I ought not witness to some Good News to the person I see everyone morning at Starbucks. 

I think of Jesus healing the blind and raising the dead.  He did not let the endless mass of human need prevent him from ministry to the person in front of him.  And He did not do what was fair.  He did what was right.  And so should we.  

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Walking in Circles

3/7/2012

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A few months ago I caught an absolutely hilarious MythBusters episode where they tested the theory that  it is IMPOSSIBLE to walk in a straight line blindfolded.  They took it to the extreme, sight canceling goggles, earplugs, etc.  so that no outside influence could affect their ability to find a direction.  And this picture is roughly like how their trajectories moved. 

When they interviewed the walkers, they each described in detail how good they felt they were doing, how straight they seemed to be moving, how on target they thought they were.  Wow, were they wrong!   Without the point of reference in focus, guiding, they could not stay on course.

And that, my friends, is what life is like.  Without an external point of reference we flounder and spin.  I believe we each want what is best for ourselves and our families, but I know that people feel at best uncertain about what that actually looks like.  The human tragedy aspect of it is that regardless of how we feel we are on target, our lives end up looking like the picture.  And who wants to reflect on a life shaped like that at the end of their days.  "I worked too much.  I didn't really know my kids.  I never forgave my father.  I should have spend more time with my wife."

The Good News, is that there is a simple and accessible guiding standard, Jesus.  Jesus taught a paradigm-busting set of truths, establishing himself as a model of living that no one in the history of humanity has undone or superseded:  
1. Love God (keep your eyes on the target) 
2. Love One Another (serve and welcome and give more than you get)
3. Do Not Judge (because nobody's perfect - least of all you and me)

For 2000 years, no one has articulated human excellence better than this.  No one has defined right living more clearly or succinctly, and no one has established a better paradigm.

Ultimately, it is up to you.  You are free to roam, free to circle, free to meander.  But for me, I am gonna stay as close to the Way as I possibly can.

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What is Communion?

2/27/2012

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It began with a meal among friends.  No, they were more than friends; they were newly adopted siblings of the most powerful man in the known world.  As they ate together, this man dealt them some bad news; it was time for him to die.  His teachings were too volatile, too big, too challenging.  He had broken too many barriers for their society to accept his message and his very existence any longer.  He was simply too much for the world to contain.  

So he told them this as they finished what would be their final meal together:

"My time has come.  I am going to my death.  My body is going to be broken - yes.  But I am doing it for you, willingly, freely, because I love you so much.  And you are worth it.  I am like this bread, torn apart, broken, but I am broken for the best reasons - you.
And my blood is going to be poured out just like this wine, but I let it flow openly as a new promise for you.  I am promising that nothing can separate us anymore, not any part of life, no matter how bad, and not death either. 
When you eat and drink, think of me and what I have taught you, and know how much you are worth to me, and how far I am willing to go to prove it.
I love you."    

And he did it.  He was taken, suffered, and died, and three days later was not found dead, but appearing alive, repeatedly, to these sisters and brothers in faith, still full of the love and encouragement they had learned to expect from him.
 
And so to this very day, we remember Jesus, his life, teaching, death and his promise of love & life everlasting every time we eat and drink together.  That is Communion.








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How does God look at you?

1/27/2012

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God sees you as a little child. Innocent, curious, love-hungry.


And God sees you as a powerful individual, chock-full of largely untapped talent & skill & energy & relationships.

God looks at you with intense and hopeful love.


What does God not see in you?  


All the bad decisions.


Why?  


Honestly, I don't have a clue.  I keep track of all the stupid things I and everyone else around me has ever done.  They call this God-quality "grace."  It is simultaneously one of the most cliche terms in "Christian-speak" while being one of the hardest concepts to understand.  All I know is I like it.  It's Jesus. 
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What's the Big Deal About Jesus?

1/25/2012

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