Essentials, Part 3

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, July 25, 2010.  The text for this week's message is Luke 11:1-4.

We are in our third and final week of the Essentials series.  During this series, we have been looking at a few things that are essential for us as followers of Jesus Christ.  Without these things in our life, we have to seriously examine ourselves and determine if we are truly living out our call as Christians.  If we aren’t doing these things, it is entirely possible that we are living a good life, but that doesn’t mean that we are following Christ.

I think it is also important to point out that this series is not about developing a list of “do’s and do not’s.”  Like the lawyer in the story of the Good Samaritan, we often want to know what it is that we can get away with and still consider ourselves followers of Christ.  He knew that to inherit the kingdom of heaven, one must love God and love neighbor, but he wanted to further define neighbor so that he could know, by extension, not only who he was to love, but who he didn’t have to love.  That desire to create a list of “do’s and do not’s” is better known as legalism.

There is a difference between knowing what we should do in response to the work of Christ in our lives and wanting to know where the boundaries are.  In some sense, legalism isn’t a bad thing because it helps us respond appropriately to the grace of God in our lives.  We have some guidelines to follow because being a follower Christ is not something that comes naturally in our fallen state.  But when those guidelines control us and we use them to set up limitations in our life of faith, then we have crossed a line.  

It boils down to a matter of the heart.  Are our hearts in the right place?  Do we want to know these essentials so that we know the boundaries, so that we know what outward actions we should take?  Or do we want to know these essentials so that we can response to the grace of God in appropriate ways?

Do we love our neighbor because it is what we “should” do, or do we love our neighbor as a response to the love that God has shown us?  Do we prioritize Jesus because that’s what we are “supposed” to do, or do we prioritize Jesus because of the difference that he has made in our lives?  The truth is, we can fake our love of neighbor.  We can act like Jesus is our priority in life.  But, eventually, we cannot hold up the ruse any longer.  We may be able to fool every single person in our lives, but in the end, we cannot fool God.

I think one of the dangers that we face is that so much of our faith becomes routine.  Now, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.  If you make it part of your routine to come to worship, or if you make it part of your routine to spend time in Scripture every day, or if you make it part of your routine to pray, that’s not necessarily bad.  In fact, I would encourage it, but I would also encourage you to examine your heart from time to time so that you know it’s not just something you do, but it is something that shapes your life.

It’s easy to go through the motions; it’s not easy to have a meaningful routine that helps you in your walk with Christ.  Perhaps this is seen most in the Scripture that we are talking about today – the Lord’s Prayer.  When we come to familiar passages, I always want to warn you to avoid going on autopilot because when something is familiar, we don’t pay attention to it as much.  And, perhaps, there is nothing quite as familiar for people who attend worship regularly than the Lord’s Prayer.

We sing different songs each week.  Our Psalm reading is different each week.  The Scripture and the sermon are different each week, but the Lord’s Prayer is the same week after week after week.  If you’ve come to worship every week this year, you’ve said the Lord’s Prayer thirty times already this year.  If that’s not routine, I’m not sure what is.  But do we think about the prayer as we are praying it, or do we just go through the motions?  I think if we are being perfectly honest, it’s a little bit of both throughout the year.  

Our third and final essential in this series is prayer, and to approach the subject of prayer, I want to do it through the lens of the Lord’s Prayer.  To do this, I want to use what we read in Luke, but I’m also going to be referring to Matthew quite a bit, for reasons that will become clear as we go through it.  The Lord’s Prayer will serve as a framework for how we can pray.  Prayer is essential for our lives as followers of Jesus Christ.  Prayer serves not only as a way for us to communicate with God, but also as a way to invite God into our lives so that we may be forever changed.

The passage starts off simply enough.  Jesus is praying in a certain place.  Not only are we taught prayer, but we see it in action before we even begin learning about it.  Let this be our first lesson.  If we want to pass on the importance of prayer in our lives, then we need to set an example for those who may be watching us.  Your first step to learning how to pray – do it.  As Nike used to say, “Just do it.”  We see Jesus praying throughout the Gospels.  The disciples saw it too.  They probably saw it a whole lot more than we read about.  Through Jesus’ example of continually praying, the disciples become more and more interested in prayer.

The disciples come to Jesus with a very simple request, “Lord, teach us to pray.”  The disciples, waiting until Jesus was done praying, want to know how they should pray.  It’s not like they’ve never prayed before.  Prayer was certainly part of their worship in the synagogue and at the Temple.  But there was something different about the way that Jesus prayed that piqued their interest, and they asked him to teach them how to pray.

Matthew and Luke are a little different in how they approach the Lord’s Prayer.  Luke begins simply with address, “Father,” and goes from there.  Matthew is more specific and begins the Lord’s Prayer by saying, “Our Father.”  By saying, “Our Father” Matthew is reminding us of the communal nature of our faith.  God is the Father of all.  God is not “My Father”; God is not “Your Father”; God is not “His or Her Father.”  God is “Our Father”.  We think of our faith as a personal thing, and on some level, it is, but on a much broader level, faith is not just about the individual.  We must love God and love our neighbor.  It’s not just about me.  When we pray to “Our Father,” we remember that.

By referring to God as Father, we aren’t making some kind of statement about the gender of God.  A lot of people get caught up in the gender issue.  God is neither male nor female.  When we refer to God as Father, we are emphasizing the personal relationship.  While our faith is not just about the individual, it is personal.  Just as we can’t overemphasize our personal relationship, we can overemphasize our communal one as well.  You don’t have eternal life through Jesus Christ by riding on the coattails of somebody else.

Husbands, you can’t say, “Well, my wife goes to church, so I’m covered.”  Wives, you can’t say, “Well, my husband is a pretty strong man of God, so I’m covered.”  No one can say, “Well, I grew up in the church, so I’m covered.”  The only thing that covers you as far as eternal life is concerned is the blood of Jesus, and that certainly is a personal decision.  It’s personal because you are entering into a relationship with the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit.  Nobody can do it for you.  “Our Father.”  It’s both communal and personal.

“In heaven” is another phrase that we see in Matthew, but not in Luke.  It reminds us that while our relationship with God is personal, it is unlike any relationship that we have here on earth.  God is in heaven.  We have to remember that.  God transcends anything that we can possibly imagine.  God is above and beyond the things of this world.  We have to remember that when we approach God in prayer, we are not asking our buddy for a favor.  We are speaking to the transcendent Creator of the universe.  That should give us some perspective.

The next phrase is “hallowed be your name.”  What in the world does “hallowed” mean?  Does anybody here use that word in their daily life?  Does anybody have a clue as to what that means in the first place?  Personally, when I first studied the Lord’s Prayer, I had no idea what “hallowed” meant.  So, I did what any reasonable person would do.  I looked it up in the original Greek, which is so much easier than opening a dictionary.

The Greek word is hagiazo, which means “hallowed.”  Okay, I’m just kidding.  It means “to sanctify,” or “to be holy.”  In other words, when we pray, “hallowed be your name,” we are saying that we want God’s name to be holy.  Old Testament law prohibited the wrongful use of the name of God.  Because there is something so special about the name of God that it is holy.  It is separate from the things of this world.  And it’s important for us to remember that as children of the Father, it is possible for us to detract from the holiness of God.

We aren’t praying that God’s name be holy because it is not.  We are praying that God’s name be holy because we are not.  If we remember that God is holy, we should also remember that we need to be holy in how we conduct our lives.  Because for some people, we are the only representation of God that they will ever see.  When we pray that God’s name be holy, it should serve as a reminder to us about the type of life we should be living.  As we learn from Leviticus 11, we are to be holy because God is holy.

Perhaps the next phrase is one of the most radical things that we could pray, and we don’t even realize it.  Luke stops simply with “your kingdom come,” but Matthew continues, “your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”  God’s kingdom is the place where God has total reign.  What we are praying for here is that God’s will be done.  Do we really want that?  Do we really want God to reign fully in our lives?  We say we do because we have some kind of romantic idea that God’s will fully lines up with our will, but the truth is that our will does not always line up with God’s will.  Do you see the difference?

When we line up our lives with God’s will, there may be some things that we need to change about our lives.  I’m not going to go into the details on that.  You know what areas of your life don’t match up with God’s will, and you know that some of those areas you don’t really want God to touch.  Because God doesn’t leave us in our sins.  And we like some of our sin.  God changes us from within, and the things in our lives that separate us from God need to be removed, even if we don’t really want them to be.

If we want God’s will to line up with our lives, we are going to be sorely mistaken about what is going to happen when God’s kingdom comes and His will is done.  And for those who think I’ve gone from preaching to meddling at this point, you know that there’s something in your life that needs to be changed.  We all need to stop and examine our lives to make sure that we are in the center of God’s will.  This petition in the prayer should remind us to do some self-reflection from time to time.

At this point in the prayer, we recognize our need to rely on God each and every day.  “Give us this day our daily bread” is not just about making sure we have enough to eat.  For the people of Jesus’ day bread was a staple food.  It wasn’t just something else on the dinner table.  For some people, it was all they had.  This phrase would have brought to mind the reliance that the people of Israel had to have on God’s provision while they were in the wilderness after the exodus from Egypt.

Every morning, the Israelites would wake up and there would be enough manna on the ground to feed the entire nation, but they only got it one day at a time.  The only exception to that rule was the day before the Sabbath when they would get a two-day supply.  Anything beyond what they could eat for the allotted time would be ruined the next morning.  They had to rely on God’s provision to get them from one day to the next.

When we pray, “give us this day our daily bread,” we are praying that God would provide for us for another day.  Additionally, we need to realize that this petition is not a way of convincing God to give us what we need.  It’s a way to remind us that all we have is from God.  Our society teaches us to have a sense of entitlement.  We have certain rights; we have things that we deserve.  But that’s not how it works with God.  We are not entitled to anything that God would give us.  All that we have from God is from His grace.  When we pray for our daily bread, we need to remember our position before God.

The next phrase is somewhat challenging if we stop to think about it.  “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are indebted against us.”  There are a few different ways to say this petition.  Some use debts; some use trespasses; essentially, we are praying that God would forgive us of our sins.  But it doesn’t stop there.  We are praying that our sins would be forgiven in the same way that we forgive those who have sinned against us.

How forgiving are we?  Do we hold grudges over time?  Are we willing to forgive those who have sinned against us?  If we take the Lord’s Prayer at its word, we need to be willing to forgive others because if we are not willing to forgive others, we will find that there is no forgiveness for us.  We cannot learn and embody God’s forgiveness in our own lives, if we aren’t willing to forgive others.  That falls under the category of “easier said than done,” doesn’t it?  Yet when we do forgive those who have sinned against us, we are modeling God’s forgiveness for them.  That is a powerful example to set.

The final petition of the Lord’s prayer is a plea to not lead us into temptation, or to not bring us to a time of trial.  When you consider the life of Jesus, this is a very interesting plea.  Jesus’ ministry began with his temptation in the wilderness.  Jesus faced many trials and persecutions throughout his ministry.  Trials and temptation will be a part of the Christian life, so why would we bother praying that they not?

By praying against trials and temptations in our lives, we become more aware of them.  We begin to see situations and discern that maybe those aren’t the right places for us to be.  This is a petition that increases our awareness of the things that we should avoid in life.  We aren’t going to be able to avoid all temptations, but there are certainly a lot that we could miss out on if we simply make good decisions.  Good decisions come from good information, and good information comes from awareness.

There really is a whole lot more that we can learn from the Lord’s Prayer, but we simply don’t have time this morning to go into it all.  It’s amazing how something so simple that we take for granted on a weekly basis can speak to us in so many ways that we never could have imagined.  The next time we say the Lord’s Prayer together, remember that it is not just a ritual that we do every Sunday, but it is a meaningful, even radical, commentary on what our faith should look like.  Pray it with the expectation that you will be changed, and it won’t take long for God to work in your life in some pretty powerful ways.

Essentials, Part 2

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, July 18, 2010.  The text for this week's message is Luke 10:38-42.

We are in our second week of the Essentials series.  During this series our goal is to look at a few things that are extremely important in our Christian faith.  Without these things in our lives, we have to stop and seriously examine if we truly following Christ or if we are simply living life as a good person, and those are two very different things.  Being a follower of Christ is about more than being a good person and getting into heaven.  Being a follower of Christ is about proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and recognizing that by his life, death and resurrection, we can have a restored relationship with our Creator.  And as a result of this new life, there are things that should flow from us so that we may be light to a world surrounded by darkness.

Last week, we looked at the story of the Good Samaritan and saw that one essential of the Christian faith is the need to help others.  The lawyer who is talking with Jesus in the passage correctly understands the need to love God and neighbor, but what he doesn’t understand is that our neighbor is not just those who we like, those who are deserving of our help, and those who are just like us.  

According to what Jesus says, our neighbor is anybody who is in need.  If we start to differentiate between those who are deserving of our help and those who are not, then we are missing the point of the parable.  We need to stop focusing on the false fences that we have built and starting looking at everyone we come across as our neighbor.

This week we move into a second essential.  Our passage comes right after the parable of the Good Samaritan.  There is some kind of flow between these two passages.  There is a connection between the two that provides us with an important contrast in the Christian faith.  In fact, if we aren’t careful, we are going to think that these two contradict each other instead of work together in harmony.  While the passage is very short, the message is one that we can’t miss.  

It’s a very simple story.  Jesus is traveling and stops at a village to see Mary and Martha.  Now Luke doesn’t tell us this, but Mary and Martha are the sisters of Jesus’ friend Lazarus.  They live in the village of Bethany, which is a couple miles outside of Jerusalem.  Martha welcomes Jesus into the house and then sets off taking care of things around the house.  It likely that the disciples were going to come back and they were all going to have supper together, watch the game on TV, play a little Yahtzee.  You know, just a relaxing evening at home.

Martha is worried because her house isn’t all that presentable, and now she has to make dinner for this party.  So she is rushing around trying to vacuum, do the dishes and prepare supper.  Mary, meanwhile, is just sitting listening to Jesus.  Surely, she’s picking up her feet when Martha comes around with the vacuum cleaner, but other than that, she’s just sitting around, doing nothing to help get the house ready.  And Martha is not happy about her lack of help.

So, Martha does what any mature adult would do.  She tells on Mary.  She goes up to Jesus and says, “Don’t you care that I’m doing all the work around here?  Tell Mary to get up and help me with this.”  So, Jesus looks at Mary and tells her to stop loafing and get to work.  Wait a minute, no, that’s not what happened.  Jesus tells Martha to calm down, and maybe take a little lesson from Mary.  You see, what’s going on here is that Martha is so concerned with the doing that she’s neglecting the being.  What we see in this passage is the need to prioritize and to balance the being and the doing in our Christian faith.

That may sound contradictory coming on the heels of a story all about, you guessed it, doing because the Good Samaritan is about doing good for those in need who are all around us.  At the end of the story, Jesus even says, “Go and do likewise.”  Aren’t we supposed to assume, then, that our faith is about doing things for others?  No, we shouldn’t assume that because in order for our faith to be more holistic, we can’t be so caught up in the doing that we forget to just be in the presence of Christ.

Luke tells us that Mary is sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to his teaching.  This would be a very odd, counter-cultural thing for Mary to be doing.  Essentially, she has taken the posture of a disciple in this story, a role traditionally reserved for men.  It would have been unheard of for a rabbi to have a female disciple, but that is exactly what Mary is in this passage.

Being a disciple of Jesus Christ goes against our cultural norms.  When I think about some of the values that are taught by our society, I can’t help but think that individualism is highly regarded.  We like to say that we are able to do things on our own.  We are proud of our accomplishments.  We celebrate the individual.  

I remember a few years back when the Pistons and the Spurs were playing in the NBA Finals, people complained because both teams were really all about team play.  Tim Duncan was probably the biggest star in that series, but he is a very unassuming star, especially in a league where we have a one hour special centered around where one guy is going to play next season.  People said that the series between the Pistons and the Spurs was boring; that there was no interest in these two teams precisely because there were no flashy stars on the court.  This is the type of society that we live in.  This is not the type of society that values discipleship.

Discipleship is about being a part of something far greater than ourselves.  Discipleship is about laying aside our wants and preferences.  Discipleship is about submission to another.  We are called to be and to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  We become disciples by learning from Jesus through the reading of the Word, through time in prayer, through fellowship with other believers.  There’s no MVD award – Most Valuable Disciple – because we are all on equal ground at the foot of the cross.

For Mary to take the position of a disciple was a huge deal in the culture of the time.  For us to take the position of a disciple is also a huge step.  When we submit ourselves to following Christ, we begin to realize that it is no longer about us.  We do not fall into the trap of individualism in our lives.  We begin to focus on others.  We see things differently in this life because we aren’t looking through the same lens as the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, Martha was, to use Luke’s words, “distracted by many tasks,” playing up the traditional female role.  Martha was playing into what society said she should be doing at the time.  People were coming over.  She had to get the house ready and prepare to entertain them.  And she was missing out on what was really important.  Look again at what Luke says here.  Martha was “distracted.”  What is a distraction, but something that prevents us from doing what we should be doing in the first place?  A distraction is a diversion of one’s attention.

Do you ever feel distracted?  Do you ever feel like you can’t focus on one particular thing at a time?  Are there always 43 things running through your mind, and you can’t even just sit down and take a breather?  In our society, that’s called, “being productive” or “multitasking.”  I’m not saying that people can’t do a couple of things at the same time, and do them well.  But when we are multitasking, are we really giving anything our full attention, or are we going through life distracted and making excuses for it?

I think we are all distracted from time to time.  Our distractions come both from within and from without.  We have things going through our minds that distract us, and we have things going on around us that distract us.  In the end, it all comes down to priorities.  What are the things that have priority in your life?  Because those are the things that ultimately need your undivided attention.

If we were to sit down right now and talk about all the different things going on in your life, could I see what your priorities were in life, and could you articulate what they are?  If you say that one of your priorities in life is family, but you work 80 hours every week and ignore the kids when they are around, is your family really a priority?  If you say that one of your priorities is your faith, but you never spend time in the Word of God and you rarely come to worship, is your faith really a priority?  Or are you just distracted?  Are you making excuses, or are you making priorities?

When Jesus comes into the house, we automatically see the tension between being and doing.  Martha starts running all over the place.  Mary sits at the feet of Jesus.  Martha busies herself with all sorts of work.  Mary listens to Jesus’ teaching.  Martha gets upset with Mary, but Mary is doing the right thing, according to Jesus.  Does this mean that the work didn’t need to be done?  Not necessarily.  It means that sometimes there is something more important than work that needs to be done.

When we set our priorities, we know when we need to do and when we need to be.  Martha is working like crazy, trying to get everything done.  And there’s nothing wrong with the work that Martha is doing.  It was a matter of hospitality.  She was playing the host and she was doing her responsibilities well.  But at that time, the priority should have been to stop and listen to Jesus, which is exactly what Mary was doing.  

And here’s the kicker in all of this.  Did you notice what Martha said and who she said it to?  She says to Jesus, “Don’t you care that my sister is making me do all the work?  Tell her to help me.”  That’s kind of demanding isn’t it?  Kind of presumptuous?  Martha assumes that Jesus would be on her side, and then takes the next step and tells Jesus what to do!  Now, before we get all in a dither about what Martha did, let’s stop to examine our own lives for a second.

Don’t we tell God how we think things should be going sometimes?  Don’t we presume that God is on our side and that He will do whatever we ask?  Those who attended the Bible study last fall may remember this, but too often our prayer life boils down to “Give me, give me, give me, bless me, bless me, bless me.  If you do this, I promise I won’t do that anymore.  Amen.”  That’s no different than what Martha is doing here.  We presume that God is around to do our bidding.  That is a totally pagan approach to our relationship with God.

The pagans believed that there were specific gods for every aspect of life, and that if you did things a certain way and prayed a certain way, then they were bound to do whatever it was that you asked them to do.  Some would call on as many gods as possible just hoping that they’d get the right one to do their bidding.  We would acknowledge that as a ridiculous approach to faith, and yet, we are guilty of it more often than we would like to admit.  We share a lot in common with Martha in this passage, when we should look a lot like Mary instead.

And now the question that y’all have been dreading all morning: Where do you find yourself?  On your normal, average, run of the mill day, are you more like Martha, or are you more like Mary?  Do you make sitting at the feet of Jesus and listening to his teaching a priority, or do you busy yourself with work that, legitimately, needs to be done, but at the expense of your time with God?

You may be thinking, “Preacher, that’s easy for you to say.  It’s your job.”  Let me tell you, it’s not my job.  My job is to lead this congregation, share the word of God, and perform the duties of a pastor within this community.  My job is not to cultivate my personal spiritual life; that’s something else entirely.  Of course, the ironic thing is, if I don’t cultivate my spiritual life, I will not only fail in my relationship with God, I will fail in my job.  But the same is true for you.  If you don’t cultivate your spiritual life, if you don’t make it a priority, and nobody else can do it for you, you will fail at your relationship with God.  And in light of that failure, any other success in your life is for worthless.

When we look at the story of Mary and Martha, we are looking at a story that helps us shape our priorities.  Yes, there are things that need to be done in this life, but to do them at the expense of listening to Jesus is detrimental to our spiritual health.  If we don’t prioritize Jesus over everything else, then we are setting ourselves up for failure.

Essentials, Part 1

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, July 11, 2010.  The text for this week's message is Luke 10:25-37.

We are starting a new series this week, entitled “Essentials.”  We are going to be in the Gospel of Luke for the next three weeks.  During this series, we are going to look at a few basics that we need to nail down as followers of Christ.  If we can’t get these three things right, we are going to have a hard time being faithful and obedient followers of Christ.  To do that, we are going to look at three stories that are relatively familiar.  This week, we are going to look at the story of the Good Samaritan.  Next week, we’ll be exploring Jesus’ visit to Mary and Martha.  And in our final week, we’ll look at Luke’s passage on the Lord’s Prayer.

The story of the Good Samaritan is one that people hear all the time, and because of that, we have to be careful that we don’t tune it out when we come to the story again.  No matter how many times we hear or read a story from Scripture, we have to remember that it is the living Word of God.  What we hear from one reading may be totally different from what we hear from another reading.  God speaks to us in different ways at different times in our lives.

There’s an old saying that you can never step into the same river twice.  You can step in the same spot of the same river, but the waters are different each time.  In the same way, we never approach Scripture the same way twice.  Time and our experience change us, the words may be the same, but how it speaks to us at this particular time in our lives will be different because we are different.  And so it is with today’s passage.  It doesn’t matter how many times we’ve heard the story of the Good Samaritan, we are different people now than we were then, and God may have something new to teach us.

The story of the Good Samaritan begins with a simple question.  That question is, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?”  We are told that the source of this question is a lawyer, who is testing Jesus.  A little bit gets lost in translation here, so let’s clarify a couple of things.  When Luke says that a lawyer asked the question, we need to get out of our minds the image of a lawyer, as we understand them.  This was not a prosecutor, or a criminal defense lawyer, or anybody of that sort.  A lawyer in the first century was somebody who was an expert in the Torah, or the Law, the first five books of the Old Testament.  Lawyers spent their lives asking and answering questions about the Torah.  They would pass the time by debating certain points of the law.  This guy is probably pretty happy that there’s a new rabbi in town, so he can test his knowledge of the Torah.

The question itself is also an unusual one.  An inheritance is in the control of the giver, not the recipient.  An inheritance is a gift.  It is entirely possible for a person to lose an inheritance by offending the benefactor.  Likewise, it is possible for a person to gain an inheritance by making an impression on the benefactor.  Essentially, what is going on here is that the lawyer is asking what it is that he needs to do to impress God and gain eternal life.

It sounds kind of crazy to look at the question that way, but in reality, we do it all the time.  We want to know all the “do’s and do not’s” to the Christian faith so that we know what it is we need to do in order to get into heaven.  But let me ask you something that may shake your foundations.  What if being a follower of Christ isn’t about getting into heaven?

Being a follower of Christ isn’t about the final destination; it’s about what we do along the way.  It’s about what we do in the here and now.  It’s about living our lives in relationship with the Father through Jesus Christ, empowered by the Holy Spirit.  

Heaven is real.  Our eternity spent in the presence of God is definitely something we can look forward to, but if we do it at the expense of fulfilling the call God has for us right now, I have a feeling that we are going to be pretty disappointed.  We read in Scripture about Jesus saying, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”  We don’t read about him saying, “You’re finally done with that mess; welcome to your real life.”  “How do we live out our faith?” is the real question that we need to be asking.

There are a couple of other times in the New Testament when someone asks what must they do to inherit eternal life, and the answer is always, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.”  But that’s not the answer that Jesus gives.  His answer is actually much more involved, and it goes right to the heart of what was behind the lawyer’s question.

Jesus flips the question on the lawyer.  The lawyer was an expert on the Torah, he knew what it was that the Torah said, so why was he asking Jesus?  The only explanation that really hold ups is that the lawyer wasn’t looking for an answer; he was looking for a debate, and we see that on display when the discussion continues after Jesus responds to his answer.

Often, when we are sharing our faith with people who don’t believe, we get put on the spot with a handful of questions.  Questions like: “If God is good, why is there suffering in the world?  Where did the Bible come from?  Why aren’t dinosaurs mentioned in the Bible?  What about the Da Vinci Code?”  Sometimes, these questions are legitimate.  People honestly want to know the answers.  But, sometimes, they are just a smokescreen to get out of the conversation.  Their experience has been that if they can frustrate us with peripheral questions, then we get thrown off of the main topic, and the conversation goes nowhere.  Both parties end up leaving no better off from the conversation.

Eventually, after this happens so many times, we start to buy into the lie that we have to know the answers to all the potential questions that people could come up with.  But, brace yourselves, we don’t have to know all the answers.  What we have to know is that Jesus Christ is Lord, and through his life, death and resurrection we have the opportunity to restore our relationship with God.  The other questions don’t matter as much.  When we put our faith in Jesus, the peripheral questions suddenly become less important.  I’m not saying that we don’t have them, but they become less of a priority and less of a barrier to faith.

Our faith is not about intellectual debate.  I have never heard of anybody ever being “reasoned” into the kingdom of God.  Our faith is about how we live it out in the real world, and that’s why the parable of the Good Samaritan is so important in the broader scope to what Jesus is saying to the lawyer here.

The lawyer correctly answers that in order to inherit eternal life, you must “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, strength and mind and your neighbor as yourself.”  Both of these are commands that are found in the Torah, so it is no surprise that the lawyer got the answer right, but notice Jesus’ response to him.  “Do this, and you will live.”  You see, it’s not just enough to know what it takes to inherit eternal life.  One must be willing to live it out in practical ways as well.  Just like how we aren’t going to reason people into the kingdom, we can’t get in ourselves if we are simply concerned about “cramming for the final,” if you will.  It’s not about knowing the right answers.  It’s about living a right life, a life dependent on the grace of God.

You would think at this point that the conversation would be over.  The man asked the question, and Jesus confirmed that he was on the right track.  It should be a done deal, right?  Wrong.  It’s not over because the lawyer wasn’t satisfied with the answer.  It was too broad.  He wanted to narrow it down so he could know exactly what it was that he was supposed to do.  So, he asks Jesus another question: “Who is my neighbor?”  Once again, there is more to this question that just what is on the surface.

In asking, “who is my neighbor?” the lawyer is not just asking so that he’ll know who it is that he is supposed to love, but he is also asking so that he knows who he doesn’t have to love.  By knowing who is his neighbor, he will also know who is not his neighbor.  Throughout the Old Testament, there is a clear separation between the people of Israel and the people of the other nations, at least there was supposed to be.  But, in the middle of all this separation, there were also commands to love those who lived among the people, even if they were foreigners.

Instead of simply answering, “Everyone,” Jesus uses the occasion to dig deeper into the concept of what it means to be a neighbor in the first place.  He tells a parable that gets us to stop focusing on the fences that divide us from our neighbors and causes us to focus on the person that is our neighbor instead.

The story begins with a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho.  It is a seemingly harmless statement until we start looking at the geography.  The road from Jerusalem to Jericho winds through mostly rocky terrain, and there is approximately an elevation drop of 3,000 feet on the 17-mile trip.  This area gave thieves plenty of opportunities for ambush and easy escape routes.  Most travelers would not make this journey alone because it was pretty dangerous.

The man ends up getting beaten, stripped and left for dead.  Notice another important detail.  Jesus doesn’t tell us where this man is from.  Is he an Israelite?  Is he a Samaritan?  Is he a foreigner traveling from distant lands?  We don’t know.  And, once he is beaten and stripped, his appearance would not give any indication as to where he was from either.  He wouldn’t be wearing the clothes of his homeland because he wasn’t wearing anything at this point.

While this man is laying on the road, three people pass by.  The first is a priest, a member of the clergy, a member of the tribe of Levi and a descendant of Moses’ brother Aaron.  Priests served as the mediators between humans and God.  They performed the sacrifices in the Temple, among other rituals for the people.  But the priest doesn’t do anything.  He sees the man laying there, crosses the road and walks away.

The next person that comes along is a Levite.  Like priests, Levites were from the tribe of Levi, but they were not direct descendants of Aaron.  They assisted the priests in carrying out their duties at the Temple.  This Levite, like the priest before him, crosses the road and walks away.

In the storytelling progression of the day, the third person that should have come along would have broken the pattern established by the first two.  The expectation is that the third person would help the man on the road.  It was also expected that the third person would have been an Israelite.  As you know, that was not the case.  The third person did stop to help the man, just like the people would have expected, but what they didn’t expect is that he was a Samaritan.  This would have shocked the people listen to Jesus teach.

Jews and Samaritans did not get along at all.  In 722 B.C. when the Assyrians conquered the northern kingdom of Israel, they had a policy of exiling people from the lands and intermingling them with people from all over the empire.  Samaritans were descendants of this policy.  They were Jews who intermarried with other cultures that were brought into the region by the Assyrians.  Centuries later, Jews considered Samaritans to be half-breeds; people of the promise who failed to maintain a pure bloodline.  The Jews avoided contact with the Samaritans as much as they possibly could.  But here, in Jesus’ story, the most hated of social outcasts is the good guy; the one in the story that does the right thing.

The Samaritan, unlike the priest and Levite before him, sees the man on the side of the road and has pity on him.  He then dresses the man’s wounds and takes him to an inn to care for him.  He then leaves the man there with the money to take care of him, and promises to come back in a couple of days.  He saw a man in need and helped him.  We don’t see any kind of debate within the Samaritan, just a desire to care for somebody in need.

In some sense, the man in this story was not doing a very smart thing in making the journey by himself in the first place.  Some people would even say that he brought it upon himself by making the journey alone.  The Samaritan, however, doesn’t ask him why he needed help.  He doesn’t say anything about the victim bringing the trouble upon himself.  He simply helps the man.

We have a tendency to have two categories when it comes to people in need.  We have the people that deserve our help, and those who don’t deserve our help.  There are people who are just in a bad spot, and there are people that put themselves in a bad spot.  The problem is, and we see it here, it doesn’t really matter whether they deserve it or not.  The man who was beaten put himself in a bad position, but he still needed help, and that is what is most important.  There’s a definite analogy to our faith here.  

Christianity is not about just helping those who deserve our help.  It’s about helping those who don’t deserve anything.  Who among us gathered here this morning deserves, or has earned, the grace of God in our lives?  We don’t want what we deserve from God, so why would we separate those around us into categories of deserving and undeserving?  The story of the Good Samaritan shows us that everyone is deserving of our love.

Our faith is shown by the love that we have for those who are least deserving of it.  Our neighbors include the very people that we would place in the “undeserving” category.  When Jesus is done with the story, he asks the lawyer a simple question, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?”  And notice the lawyer’s response.  “The one who showed him mercy.”  He can’t even bring himself to say that the Samaritan was the man’s neighbor.  He didn’t want to admit that even a Samaritan was his neighbor.  He simply says, “the one who showed him mercy.”

In some sense, it is kind of a sad story.  Not the parable itself, but the reaction of the lawyer.  It is clear from his response that he is faced with a reality that he is not ready to embrace.  A world with divisions is a lot easier for us to handle because we can put people into boxes.  We try to compartmentalize our lives, and in the same way, we try to compartmentalize the people we come across each day.  The truth is, we can’t do either.  To love God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength is to love God with every part of our selves.  And to love our neighbor as ourselves crosses all the boundaries that we put up.  

The lawyer is still trying to look at the fence, but Jesus is saying that there are no fences.  Look around you this week; the people that you see, the ones who are in need, those are your neighbors.  We may not think they deserve our help.  We may think that they brought it on themselves, but regardless, they are still our neighbors.  Jesus’ command to “go and do likewise” applies to us today just as much as it applied to that lawyer so long ago.

My Thoughts on Lebron... Because You Care

Last week, LeBron James took part in one of the most self-aggrandizing, egotistical television "specials" of all time.  I think it was absolutely ridiculous the way things went down last week.  I can't necessarily blame ESPN because they did it for the ratings, and they were approached by LeBron's people to do the show.  I'm fairly certain the people involved felt used... I know I did, and I only watched 15 minutes of it.  However, after saying all of that, there are a few things that have been on my mind, and I just want to throw them out there.

1. This is the first time in his career that LeBron has really been able to decide where he wanted to play.  Yes, he did sign an extension with the Cavs that kept him there a couple more years, but this is really the first time he was courted by other teams and able to really take in what his options were.
2. LeBron played seven season in Cleveland.  He didn't bail at the first opportunity.  He was the best player on the best regular season team for the last two years, and each year, the team failed miserably in the postseason.  Did he fail the team?  I don't think so, he just came up against better teams.  An individual doesn't make a team.
3. LeBron didn't owe Cleveland anything.  Cleveland was not entitled to have LeBron for his entire career.  Cleveland was entitled to have him from the time he was drafted until now, but beyond that, there was no obligation on either side of the relationship.
4. People are saying that LeBron will hurt his legacy by playing with Wade and Bosh.  What will hurt his legacy more - winning 4 championships in Miami, or not winning any championships in Cleveland?  If it is about winning championships, then LeBron made the move that gives him the best chance to win multiple championships, and you can't fault him for that decision.  
5. The first thing people talk about when discussing the best of the best is the number of championships they've won; fair or not.  How many championships did Jordan win without Pippen?  None.  How many championships has Kobe won without either Shaq or Gasol?  None.  You don't win championships without a top-tier #2 guy.  One guy alone cannot win a championship in the NBA.  LeBron's decision was about winning a championship.
6. He simply took good advice.  Kevin Garnett, who played for the Timberwolves for a number of years, picked Minnesota over free agency and spent his best seasons in frustration.  Then he was traded to Boston and won a championship with Ray Allen and Paul Pierce.  After Boston beat Cleveland in the playoffs, Garnett basically said that there's a lot to be said for loyalty, but if it holds you back from winning the championship, then maybe you need to rethink what you are doing.

All right.  That's all I have to say about that.

The Future of Lego Video Games

Lego Star Wars, Lego Batman, Lego Indiana Jones, Lego Harry Potter, Lego Rock Band.... what will they think of next.  If only it was Lego Modern Warfare....

Prophet Margin, Part 4

The following was preached at Veedersburg and Hillsboro UMC on Sunday, July 4, 2010.  The text for this week's message is 2 Kings 5:1-14.

Today is our fourth and final week looking at the stories of two significant Old Testament prophets, Elijah and Elisha.  We have had quite a time looking at the lessons that we can learn from these two prophets.  From our reliance on God’s provision to the need to ask ourselves the question, “What are we doing here?” to the journey and transition we saw last week, there are numerous things that we can learn from Elijah and Elisha.  And perhaps what is important for us to realize that these stories aren’t just accounts of something that happened centuries ago.  They are part of the living Word of God, and if we allow ourselves to listen to these stories and apply them to our lives, by the grace of God, we will be changed.  And change isn’t always a bad thing.

What we see today is a story about a Syrian commander, and if we just listen to the story, we are going to miss something significant.  This is more than just a story about a miracle that God performed through Elisha.  This is a story that makes some important claims in our own lives, as long as we are willing to listen.

Right from the very beginning, we find out quite a bit about the main character in this story.  Surprisingly, it’s not Elisha, but it’s a man named Naaman.  We are told several things about Naaman in just the first verse.  He was a great man, high in favor with the king of Syria, and he was the commander of the Syrian army.  His name, Naaman, actually means “fair, gracious, pleasant.”  When we are introduced to him, there is no doubt that Naaman only answers to the king of Syria.  But we also see, and this is not an unimportant detail, that Naaman was a great man.

He was a man of character.  His name didn’t just mean “fair and gracious;” he was fair and gracious.  And remember the source here.  This chapter of 2 Kings wasn’t written by somebody that favors Syria.  It was written by an Israelite.  There is something special about this man that even one of his enemies would speak fondly of him. 

Naaman wasn’t just any guy; he was a great man in a high-ranking position.  Regardless of your political persuasion, how many high-ranking officials can we say that about?  There is a need for great people to be in positions of influence.  And that need is in every sector of our lives.  We need great people in our government.  We need great people in our schools.  We need great people in our churches.

This is a fantastic leadership lesson here.  Sometimes people want to be in charge because they want to be in charge, but sometimes people need to be in charge because they are great people.  Naaman was a great person, and it could have only helped his position as the commander of the Syrian army.  People will not always listen to somebody because they are technically in charge, but people will rally behind a great leader and a great person.  We will see some of the characteristics that helped make Naaman a great man in a little bit.

There is one more fact that is mentioned in the first verse that is crucial for us to understand this passage.  The writer says that one of the reasons he was in high favor with the king of Syria was because by him, by Naaman, the Lord had given victory to Syria.  This is very important here, don’t miss this.  The word that is translated “the Lord,” and usually in your translations, you’ll see it in all capital letters, that word is “Yahweh.”  Yahweh was the name of God revealed to Moses at the burning bush.  It is the name of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the one true God.

So, why is this important?  If you asked Naaman at this point in the story why he was so successful in battle, he would say that it was because of the gods of Syria.  You see, the thought in ancient times was that the reason why Country A was able to be victorious over Country B was because the gods of Country A were stronger and they defeated the gods of Country B.  But here is an Israelite author working with the knowledge that there is only one God, and that God is Yahweh.  Naaman couldn’t be victorious because of the gods of Syria, because they weren’t real.  They were nothing but stone, wood and metal objects that the people worshiped.  They were false idols.  Naaman couldn’t have victory because of these; he could only have victory because the Lord, Yahweh, the sovereign God of the entire universe, allowed him to have victory.

The writer of 2 Kings is making a significant statement here.  The Lord is God, and it is by his sovereign will that things are accomplished, even if that means His will is accomplished by a Gentile.  I’ve said it before from this very same spot; God’s sovereign will will be done whether we take part in it or not.  We can be in the game, and be a part of what God is doing.  Or we can sit and watch and regret that we never were obedient to God’s will.  God’s will will be done, even if it is by a Gentile.

Oh, and did I forget to mention, Naaman was a leper.  Now for those who managed to make it through Leviticus in our Bible in a Year Challenge, you know that the Levitical Law is a bit concerned with skin diseases and the healing of these diseases.  When it says that Naaman was a leper, it doesn’t necessarily mean that he had leprosy, as we know it.  It means that he had some kind of skin disease.  For the Israelites, it was a skin disease that would have ostracized him from the community.  This was not necessarily the case for the Syrians. 

Clearly he was a part of the community because he was the commander of the army.  It was very difficult to lead an army in these days and not be in contact with the men.  They didn’t exactly have telecommunications at the time.  Regardless, being a leper was clearly something that bothered Naaman because he gets word that there just might be somebody in Israel that can cure him.

During one of his raids, Naaman’s men carried off a little girl from Israel.  Of course, the unspoken assumption here is that this raid was into Israelite territory.  The little girl was put into the service of Naaman’s wife.  And one day, she said something about there being a prophet in Samaria, the capital of Israel, who could cure Naaman of his disease.  Naaman hears of this and tells the king of Syria that there might be somebody who can cure him.  As a result, the king of Syria writes a letter for Naaman to take to the king of Israel.

There would have been a couple of reasons why Naaman went to the king of Syria.  First, as the top military advisor, Naaman would have needed to be prepared to talk to the king at all times, so he couldn’t just leave.  He had to get permission.  The second reason why Naaman went was so that he could get a letter to the king of Israel.  This letter would have explained why Naaman was in Israel, and was supposed to reassure the king of Israel that Naaman was not there to wage war.  It did not have that effect on the king of Israel.

When the king of Israel reads this letter from the king of Syria, he becomes distressed.  He is so worked up that he tears his clothes and cries out, “Am I God?  Can I do this?  He is just looking for an excuse to start a quarrel with me!”  He thinks that the king of Syria is asking him to do the impossible so that there would be an excuse to declare war on Israel.  He tears his clothes in anguish, forgetting that Yahweh, the Lord, the God of Israel is the one true God for whom nothing is impossible.

When we are faced with what we think is impossible, do we forget as well?  Do we forget that the God we worship is the Lord, the Creator, the Triune God, the Almighty?  I have to tell you, more often than we would like to admit, we forget.  Intellectually, we may not forget it, but in the practical ways that we live out our lives, we do.  We lose hope with our situations in life instead of pressing on in God’s strength.  We get discouraged, and, for all intents and purposes, we forget who we worship.  Our biggest problems are not issues for God, but we, like the king of Israel here, wallow in our anguish.

Elisha hears about what is going on, and instead of being distraught he basically says to the king, “What’s your problem?  Send him to me, and let him see the power of the Lord.”  The king of Israel saw no hope and expected a terrible outcome.  Elisha sees an opportunity to bring glory to God.  Same situation, two different perspectives.  Trust in the power of God is a game changer.  So, Naaman goes to see Elisha, the prophet who the little girl was talking about in the first place.

This part of the passage is my absolute favorite part.  Naaman comes to Elisha’s house with all his horses and with all his chariots, both of which are significant signs of military might.  They go thundering down the road.  Men, women and children are terrified by their approach, scrambling to get out of the way.  And the procession stops in front of Elisha’s house.  And what does Elisha do?  He sends out his messenger.  Elisha is not impressed and cannot be bothered to go out and greet this great military leader of the Syrian army.  He sends out his messenger with some very simple instructions – go wash yourself seven times in the Jordan River.  That’s it.  That’s the message.

For all of Naaman’s pomp and circumstance, the thundering entrance, the military might, and not to mention the ridiculous amount of money that he is bringing (the rough equivalent of the annual wages of a common laborer… if that laborer could work for 600 years), for all of this, Elisha cannot be bothered to come out and give the directions himself.  And Naaman wasn’t happy.

In fact, he is so upset that he is about to just go home.  He wanted Elisha to make a big show out of it all, to make it be a production.  He says, “I thought for sure he would come out, call upon the name of the Lord and wave his hand in the air, and I would be cured.”  He’s mad that Elisha didn’t make a bigger deal out of this visit, and he’s even mad about the instructions to begin with.  He thinks the waters of Syria are vastly superior to the waters of the Jordan River.  Why in the world did he waste his time coming to Israel if all he had to do was take a bath?  He turns to go back to Syria, but he does something that may just be unexpected.  He listens to his servants.

His servants come up to him and say, “What’s the harm?  If he asked you to do some complicated thing, you would’ve done it, so why not just try to follow his directions and wash in the Jordan River?  It’s worth the risk.”  Sometimes, in our own lives, we are too proud to stop and listen to the advice of other people.  Not all advice is good advice, and, sometimes, free advice is worth every penny, but in this case, it was a good thing that Naaman listened.

He relents of his anger and does as the prophet says.  Naaman goes to the Jordan River, washes seven times and his skin is like the skin of a child.  It is healed and restored.  Naaman wasn’t too proud to listen to his servants.  Naaman wasn’t too proud to listen to the stories of a little girl.  And Naaman was a great man.

Greatness comes in our willingness to listen to people that we don’t have to listen to.  Greatness comes when we set aside our pride for the greater good.  Greatness comes when we realize that we are not the center of the universe.

Perhaps one of the biggest things that can hold us back in this life is our pride.  We are too proud to listen to others.  We think we have all the answers and we know what is best.  But we don’t have all the answers.  There is a deep need for us to listen to other people who have been placed in our lives.  Greatness doesn’t come from knowing all the answers.  Greatness comes from listening and carefully weighing what others have to say as well.

As we close out our series on Elijah and Elisha, we are walking away with a lot of good lessons, not only for each one of us as individuals, but there is a lot of stuff that can apply to us as a congregation as well.  I want to encourage you to go back over this series on the website, and really start thinking about how the lessons that we’ve learned along the way can apply to us as individuals and as a congregation.  My prayer through this whole series is that the lessons we learn from the prophets will stick with us, that we would have the awareness and wisdom to listen.  I believe that we can be great, but it is going to come from a lot of hard work, from listening to one another and above all, remembering that the Lord is God, and His will will be done.