Luke 21:1-4
The Widow’s Offering
21He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; 2he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. 3He said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; 4for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.’
It’s about going all in, like in Texas Hold ‘Em poker. Other people may have more than you, but you are going all in, staying alive in the final showdown. It makes for great televised poker, when the celebrities and the famous, who can afford to lose large amounts, are playing for charity or for the glory of the game. But the all in the Scripture is talking about is more. Imagine going ‘all in’ with the grocery money for the week, or the mortgage money for the month, or the year, putting up everything you have on one bet.
The woman Jesus singles out is going all in. There are others who have contributed much more than she has to the temple treasury, but she’s gone all in, putting everything into the collection plate. And Jesus praises her faith, “out of her poverty she has put in all she has to live on.”
The worldly wisdom about this story is that the woman was stupid. Two pennies were not going to change the balance of the temple budget and they would have allowed her to eat, to continue to live. Yes, she made a grand gesture in giving all to the temple, but you can’t eat gestures. Worldly wisdom would condemn Jesus. He was there to save the world, he should have gone over to that woman and told her to take the money back. God would have understood. God would have preferred she eat.
But no, she was praised highly for going ‘all in’ on the Lord’s work. And we should not think to condemn her for going all in, but learn from her.
She placed everything she had into the Lord’s hands, depending on the Lord to support her. Everything else in her life took a back seat to that most basic relationship. Maybe she had family to support, we don’t know. Maybe she had debts to pay, we don’t know. Maybe she was a homeless person, we just don’t know. All we know is that she went ‘all in’.
I am not going to talk this morning about going financially ‘all in’. That is a stewardship sermon, and that time is passed. I am talking about something more personal. I am talking about our willingness as a congregation to go ‘all in’ on our faith in Jesus Christ. I am talking about risking our personal comfort zones, risking our personal images, risking our personal preferences to go ‘all in’ with Jesus Christ.
It is a deliberate church growth strategy, and one that is guaranteed to work, because we can expect nothing less when we go ‘all in’.
It involves two steps.
The first is to change our faith patterns, is to change how we relate to our Lord Jesus Christ. It involves going from talking about our Lord Jesus Christ, answering ‘what’ questions, filling in information about Jesus, to answering ‘why’ questions, to sharing why Jesus is so fundamentally important to us. It is being able to say, “I love Jesus because . . .” or “My Lord has done this for me, and through me . . .”.
Then we must move to the second step. Taking those personal moments of testimony, those personal journeys we have in the Lord, and sharing them with our neighbors. It is going door to door, learning about our neighbors, desiring to pray for them, listening to their stories with love and faith in our hearts, and responding to them as loving sisters and brothers of Jesus Christ.
That’s going ‘all in’. It involves getting our relationship with Jesus straight in our own lives. We know what the bible says that relationship is supposed to be. Each Sunday, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is proclaimed, forgiveness is proclaimed, a new life and a new way of living is proclaimed for us to seize upon, and this Sunday is no different. But to go ‘all in’ with Jesus, we need to be straight with ourselves as to who we really think he is and where we really place him in our lives.
Only when we have embraced the love of Jesus and made it real in our lives can we dare to attempt to sow the seeds to make it real in lives of others.
So how do we get to that point? Two simple steps to start: By going ‘all in’ with prayer. By praying with the faith that it really changes the world. Get a journal, record your prayers, record the results, dare to get bigger in your requests from the almighty, get in groups to share collective prayers. Go ‘all in’ on Scripture. We issue a daily reading lectionary. Use it, or find your own method. Read and study and journal about what you find in the bible. If you have questions, ask someone, like me. And I can go on and on with a dozen other disciplines that are designed to bring us closer to our God.
But notice something from our Scripture passage today. It’s not about giving from our abundance. It is not about waiting for God to take care of all our other problems so that we can have time to do God’s work. That’s fine, but it isn’t all in. We are holding back, in case it doesn’t work out. We have some of our own treasures stored up down here, just in case there aren’t so many in heaven.
How uncomfortable does this sound? I have to be able to articulate why I love Jesus and how that love has changed my life. I need to talk about my feelings. Jesus loved me so much that he died a horrible death on my account. What does that really mean to me, in my gut, on that innermost level? He rose again and has lifted me from my sin filled life, full of the muck and refuse of the evils that we live, to forgiveness and healing and new life. How do I take that out of simple intellectual assent and dare to cry in joy over a miserable life replaced with one of glory?
And, God in heaven, how am I going to talk about those things to people I know, people in my neighborhood? Well, brothers and sisters, I am not sure how I am going to do that either, but I say we must do it together. We are God’s church, we are Jesus’ congregation.
Are we ready to go ‘all in’? Let us pray.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Falling Away
It happens to every Christian, falling away in some way or other. I don't mean necessarily from the whole church, but from some piece of our Christian life. It has been five months since I have posted, and that's because I've slipped away from the relevance of the faith on the web.
It doesn't mean faith hasn't been active, or that I haven't been active as a pastor in my church, far from it. But it means, for those months, the question of Why Bother has been fringing my blogging. Is anybody out there? If they are, do they care? Is this an exercise in personal aggrandizement (spelt right first time out!)?
That has been part of a deeper struggle, a deeper question of Why Bother in the faith itself. Important things are going on of which I am a part. The work of Jesus is going in new and interesting directions. But it was like it was outside of me. The question has been of Jesus and I, hand in hand, when it has felt like I've been back in the line, while Jesus was out in front.
But things are are back, and better, more fun. And there are a few places I can shamelessly plug this theological diatribe.
So here we go!
It doesn't mean faith hasn't been active, or that I haven't been active as a pastor in my church, far from it. But it means, for those months, the question of Why Bother has been fringing my blogging. Is anybody out there? If they are, do they care? Is this an exercise in personal aggrandizement (spelt right first time out!)?
That has been part of a deeper struggle, a deeper question of Why Bother in the faith itself. Important things are going on of which I am a part. The work of Jesus is going in new and interesting directions. But it was like it was outside of me. The question has been of Jesus and I, hand in hand, when it has felt like I've been back in the line, while Jesus was out in front.
But things are are back, and better, more fun. And there are a few places I can shamelessly plug this theological diatribe.
So here we go!
Thursday, February 12, 2009
It is more than the Order of Salvation
A few weeks ago a 23 year old boy was killed. Last week, I participated rather lamely in a discussion on the deaths of six million people and how that informs the psyche of the Jewish religion. And it sits in my gut, what is the answer to suffering in my faith?
An atheist anthropology professor in college said that any good religion has an answer to the question of suffering. For some reason, these threads and actions, and a bunch more stuff, in my life have coalesced into a very strange vortex.
What does Christ have to do with suffering? What does a theology of the Cross have to do with suffering? Why has there not been a systematic theological consideration of the question of pain in the lives of people as addressed from Scripture? There are certainly enough references to pain and suffering across the bible. The hours leading up to the death of Jesus are filled with anguish, with shame, with disgust, with torture, culminating in a horrible death.
Does it sound like a fixation?
Only a little. I know that the glory of the Lord is made manifest in the resurrection of Jesus. But the greater the pain, the greater the glory that follows.
I guess I am tired of theology being so much in the intellectual, the academic realm. It needs to be there, don’t get me wrong. The best and the brightest need to be using the gifts God has given to them to push the edge of what we know about God, about our salvation, about our interpretation of Scripture, about how the Holy Spirit knits together the message of Christ to meet the challenges of a changing world.
But right now, I am in one place, pulling on one thread. Coming to a salvation knowledge of Jesus as Lord and Savior does what to the suffering we endure? The Scripture seems clear that if we are in the faith, we are to endure suffering. Which leads to a sidebar question, if we are not suffering in the faith, are we really pursuing it?
I know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I need to know more completely how that is a benefit for me as pastor and as man when there are times of crisis and pain.
This is not going to be polished prose. This is going to be rough and tumble, explore the bible, pull at the edges of my own heart, hope it gets noticed and pulls in real discussion.
An atheist anthropology professor in college said that any good religion has an answer to the question of suffering. For some reason, these threads and actions, and a bunch more stuff, in my life have coalesced into a very strange vortex.
What does Christ have to do with suffering? What does a theology of the Cross have to do with suffering? Why has there not been a systematic theological consideration of the question of pain in the lives of people as addressed from Scripture? There are certainly enough references to pain and suffering across the bible. The hours leading up to the death of Jesus are filled with anguish, with shame, with disgust, with torture, culminating in a horrible death.
Does it sound like a fixation?
Only a little. I know that the glory of the Lord is made manifest in the resurrection of Jesus. But the greater the pain, the greater the glory that follows.
I guess I am tired of theology being so much in the intellectual, the academic realm. It needs to be there, don’t get me wrong. The best and the brightest need to be using the gifts God has given to them to push the edge of what we know about God, about our salvation, about our interpretation of Scripture, about how the Holy Spirit knits together the message of Christ to meet the challenges of a changing world.
But right now, I am in one place, pulling on one thread. Coming to a salvation knowledge of Jesus as Lord and Savior does what to the suffering we endure? The Scripture seems clear that if we are in the faith, we are to endure suffering. Which leads to a sidebar question, if we are not suffering in the faith, are we really pursuing it?
I know Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I need to know more completely how that is a benefit for me as pastor and as man when there are times of crisis and pain.
This is not going to be polished prose. This is going to be rough and tumble, explore the bible, pull at the edges of my own heart, hope it gets noticed and pulls in real discussion.
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
The Defining Moment of Christianity
The defining moment of Christianity is the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. I choose this moment instead of the resurrection for a couple of reasons. First, to everyone who has ever claimed that God is dead, in that moment, they were proved right. Jesus, fully God, fully human, succumbed to the final moment of all our earthly existences, death.
Without the resurrection, Christianity is a sham. At best, it is a collection of moral platitudes and clichés built around the Golden Rule. The promise of Scripture was that Jesus would rise again. So, without a resurrection, we have definitive proof of the error of Holy Scripture.
But for the resurrection to occur, Jesus showed the ultimate love for us. He loved us so much that he died for us, and died horribly. Jesus, as human, would find death inevitable as someone who lived fully as human on this earth. But Jesus as God, as Deity, as the Creator, someone fully separated from the Creation, he died too.
Now death could not hold him, and Jesus knew that death could not hold him, but that promise did not prevent his anguished cry, “My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?” It did not prevent him from sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying that the cup of wrath be passed from him. But he was obedient, he was loving, even to the moment of his passing.
Theologies of the Cross explain the death of Jesus judicially, as atonement, morally, as the ultimate example of faith, cosmically, as the victor over the forces of Satan, but I feel a hole in those understandings.
Biblical interpretation is marvelous at logical and intuitive assemblages of God’s Word to show us the marvelous nature of our faith. And for that I am so very proud to be a Christian.
But I also know that I have been called upon to pastor people who have experienced pain and death and loss in ways I can only imagine. The Spirit gives me utterance, but I have this terrible feeling that I do not have the ‘chops’ to really speak to their situation. But the language of suffering and pain permeates Scripture, as does the language of its healing. I don’t have the ‘chops’, but my Lord Jesus does. I want to explore that, to develop the theology of the Cross to include a real exposition of the suffering of Jesus, how that suffering can truly allow us, as the followers of Jesus, to speak more completely to people who could use the healing we have experienced.
Without the resurrection, Christianity is a sham. At best, it is a collection of moral platitudes and clichés built around the Golden Rule. The promise of Scripture was that Jesus would rise again. So, without a resurrection, we have definitive proof of the error of Holy Scripture.
But for the resurrection to occur, Jesus showed the ultimate love for us. He loved us so much that he died for us, and died horribly. Jesus, as human, would find death inevitable as someone who lived fully as human on this earth. But Jesus as God, as Deity, as the Creator, someone fully separated from the Creation, he died too.
Now death could not hold him, and Jesus knew that death could not hold him, but that promise did not prevent his anguished cry, “My God, my God, why hast though forsaken me?” It did not prevent him from sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, praying that the cup of wrath be passed from him. But he was obedient, he was loving, even to the moment of his passing.
Theologies of the Cross explain the death of Jesus judicially, as atonement, morally, as the ultimate example of faith, cosmically, as the victor over the forces of Satan, but I feel a hole in those understandings.
Biblical interpretation is marvelous at logical and intuitive assemblages of God’s Word to show us the marvelous nature of our faith. And for that I am so very proud to be a Christian.
But I also know that I have been called upon to pastor people who have experienced pain and death and loss in ways I can only imagine. The Spirit gives me utterance, but I have this terrible feeling that I do not have the ‘chops’ to really speak to their situation. But the language of suffering and pain permeates Scripture, as does the language of its healing. I don’t have the ‘chops’, but my Lord Jesus does. I want to explore that, to develop the theology of the Cross to include a real exposition of the suffering of Jesus, how that suffering can truly allow us, as the followers of Jesus, to speak more completely to people who could use the healing we have experienced.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
"I Am Legend"
Will Smith is immune to a disease that wiped out humanity. He is trying to find a cure-he was an army doctor before the disease, now a survivor and still working.
A couple more survivors show up. One claims to have been guided by God. Will Smith comments that God didn't do this, man did. Later, in a fit of anger, his true feelings surface, he doesn't believe God exists. But then he finds redemption.
The movie was dark (wiping out humanity movies usually are). But this was higher budget, more thoughtful, and much better acted then the fare I usually watch on Sci-Fi. And I thought they treated the theological aspect pretty well.
It made me think, how much of the population of the earth really needs to survive some human-made disaster and still exist as the children of God? Will Christ come back to the 6 or 7 or 8 billion of us, or to 1% who survive a plague, some 12 million? Or will it be even less?
We are supposed to be the stewards of the earth. Here is one image of what could happen if we do it really badly!
A couple more survivors show up. One claims to have been guided by God. Will Smith comments that God didn't do this, man did. Later, in a fit of anger, his true feelings surface, he doesn't believe God exists. But then he finds redemption.
The movie was dark (wiping out humanity movies usually are). But this was higher budget, more thoughtful, and much better acted then the fare I usually watch on Sci-Fi. And I thought they treated the theological aspect pretty well.
It made me think, how much of the population of the earth really needs to survive some human-made disaster and still exist as the children of God? Will Christ come back to the 6 or 7 or 8 billion of us, or to 1% who survive a plague, some 12 million? Or will it be even less?
We are supposed to be the stewards of the earth. Here is one image of what could happen if we do it really badly!
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Nonviolence
In anticipation of Martin Luther King Day in January (I need something to keep my frustrations rising from all the Christmas hoopla), I have been reading a collection of his essential works. And one thing that absolutely fascinates me about his work comes from a museum display I saw in Lancaster County, PA.
The local School Boards were trying to impose manditory schooling on the children of the Amish. But the Amish refused. The men gathered and were arrested and held in prison for a time, embarassing the local authorities, until they finally struck a compromise, the eighth grade for men and I don't remember how little education for the women.
As a man with a couple of Masters degrees, married to a teacher, I find the level of education among the Amish relative to 'secular' standards to be too low. But I am also envious at times of how they have truly lived the Christian life as few others.
But I was amazed at the connection between a truly nonviolent Christian community embodying the nonviolent protests that were advocated and broke down the walls of segregation that shamefully divided our country.
The local School Boards were trying to impose manditory schooling on the children of the Amish. But the Amish refused. The men gathered and were arrested and held in prison for a time, embarassing the local authorities, until they finally struck a compromise, the eighth grade for men and I don't remember how little education for the women.
As a man with a couple of Masters degrees, married to a teacher, I find the level of education among the Amish relative to 'secular' standards to be too low. But I am also envious at times of how they have truly lived the Christian life as few others.
But I was amazed at the connection between a truly nonviolent Christian community embodying the nonviolent protests that were advocated and broke down the walls of segregation that shamefully divided our country.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
What is the greater sin?
I spent a very refreshing couple of days back at my alma mater, Westminster Seminary. Its biblical rigor grounds me. Each year, there is a preaching conference. I have had the privilege of attending the last two, and both have bolstered me. But this one was also very tough.
Dr. Bryan Chappell of Covenant Theological Seminary delivered the message home so powerfully that God loves me, no matter what, no matter what I have done. This truth is there for all Christians, that God has chosen them, that there is no abandonment. Sometimes, when it feels like I am out there by myself, I can lose that center.
But then we had the alumni dinner. It was another powerful occasion, sharing the successes of the Seminary, catching up, looking forward. But one of the things the Seminary participated in was a mass mailing to I think it was over 57,000 congregations in California and the other states with the ballot initiative of defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
In a stroke, the tyranny of the majority was going to undo, especially in California, the public committments that two people in love had made to one another to be exclusive to one another until death did part them. And this was celebrated as a triumph in the Seminary that is so central to my grounding in God's Word.
And it makes me sad. The mercy of God is from everlasting to everlasting, but there was no mercy in that moment. I am only one voice, standing on the other side of the line in the sand they have drawn on the issue of interpreting Scripture and homosexuality. I am not sure I am worthy, or even have the words to preach to them, they are so dear to my heart.
This was a similar fight I had when I attended. It was the reason I could not pursue ordination in the Presbyterian denominations they train pastors for. The issue was the ordination of women. There was a very intense biblical interpretive construct of why that could not be. And I do not question their scholarship. But I attended and was nurtured in a mainline Presbyterian Church with a woman pastor embodying the best in ministry.
What God revealed in the practice of God's people and what God's people saw God revealing in God's word were at odds in that moment. I chose what I saw in God's people. I chose to understand and interpret Scripture from a wider perspective, using broad themes of freedom and considering the more restrictive historic circumstances in which Paul and other authors of Scripture wrote from.
I am there again. There are people, committed Christians, for whom their sexuality is not a choice. But they are marginalized as either lying or too messed up in their sexuality to know what is 'right' by good and loving people who, I believe, have taken the interpretation of Scripture in a wrong direction.
God is good, God is love, God does not marginalize or exclude those God loves. And I accept the authority of the inspired canon of Scripture. So there is a problem in the interpretation, somewhere. Are we willing to prayerfully find where we have fallen and correct our mistakes?
Dr. Bryan Chappell of Covenant Theological Seminary delivered the message home so powerfully that God loves me, no matter what, no matter what I have done. This truth is there for all Christians, that God has chosen them, that there is no abandonment. Sometimes, when it feels like I am out there by myself, I can lose that center.
But then we had the alumni dinner. It was another powerful occasion, sharing the successes of the Seminary, catching up, looking forward. But one of the things the Seminary participated in was a mass mailing to I think it was over 57,000 congregations in California and the other states with the ballot initiative of defining marriage as between a man and a woman.
In a stroke, the tyranny of the majority was going to undo, especially in California, the public committments that two people in love had made to one another to be exclusive to one another until death did part them. And this was celebrated as a triumph in the Seminary that is so central to my grounding in God's Word.
And it makes me sad. The mercy of God is from everlasting to everlasting, but there was no mercy in that moment. I am only one voice, standing on the other side of the line in the sand they have drawn on the issue of interpreting Scripture and homosexuality. I am not sure I am worthy, or even have the words to preach to them, they are so dear to my heart.
This was a similar fight I had when I attended. It was the reason I could not pursue ordination in the Presbyterian denominations they train pastors for. The issue was the ordination of women. There was a very intense biblical interpretive construct of why that could not be. And I do not question their scholarship. But I attended and was nurtured in a mainline Presbyterian Church with a woman pastor embodying the best in ministry.
What God revealed in the practice of God's people and what God's people saw God revealing in God's word were at odds in that moment. I chose what I saw in God's people. I chose to understand and interpret Scripture from a wider perspective, using broad themes of freedom and considering the more restrictive historic circumstances in which Paul and other authors of Scripture wrote from.
I am there again. There are people, committed Christians, for whom their sexuality is not a choice. But they are marginalized as either lying or too messed up in their sexuality to know what is 'right' by good and loving people who, I believe, have taken the interpretation of Scripture in a wrong direction.
God is good, God is love, God does not marginalize or exclude those God loves. And I accept the authority of the inspired canon of Scripture. So there is a problem in the interpretation, somewhere. Are we willing to prayerfully find where we have fallen and correct our mistakes?
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