Jesus and Shock Value

We go to great lengths to attract attention. Whether we own a business and we stand outside of it with a funny costume to gain customers or when I tell my kids the bus is leaving without them to get them out of bed quicker. And with millions of things fighting for our attention sometimes we push the envelop to make sure our message is heard. Do you think Jesus did the same thing?

I have had some questions following my sermon on Sunday that I will try to answer here. Nearly all of these questions are in response to the verse we talked about on Sunday where Jesus says unless one hates their family they cannot be one of his disciples. I had hoped that once I explained the next statement that Jesus said about picking up ones cross and following him we would be blown away by that challenge and forget about hating family. Apparently that was not the case and I guess I can't question that. Hate is a strong word and it seems to go against the 4th commandment, honor your father and your mother. So why did Jesus say it?

We can talk about how challenging it was to be a disciple and back that up with verse after verse of Jesus clearly spelling out what discipleship looks like and how difficult it is. Jesus was never concerned about being popular and he rocked the boat with seismic magnitude on a regular basis and from time to time I think he used shock value to get his point across. Let me say clearly, and I hope a thunderstorm doesn't move in over my head, that I don't think Jesus was encouraging his followers to go home and give their parents the finger. I don't think he was saying that. I don't think he was telling them to tell their kids off and walk the other way. I don't think he was saying that either. I do think he was trying to get their attention and like we do today, I think he wanted to make sure his point was made and his call was heard.

If we look at the account of Jesus driving the money changers out of the temple according to John's gospel it says that Jesus made a whip of cords and drove them out of the temple. John paints an almost violent picture here. Now certainly Jesus could have asked them politely to leave but I think he wanted to make his point. I think he is doing the same thing by telling his followers that they must hate their family if they want to be his disciples.

What does this mean for us? God is still fighting for our attention and there may be times when he has to shock us to get it. I am not suggesting he accomplishes this with natural disasters or diseases but he is trying to get our attention. When we are confronted with raw statistics about the number of children who die every day due to malnutrition this should shock us. When we hear about children being sold into prostitution this should shock us. It is too easy to live in a bubble and pretend that these things are not happening but once in a while we need to be shocked. We need to see a picture of a child who is dying of starvation or covered in flies because this should not happen,not on our watch. There is enough food in this world that no one should starve but instead we return to our bubbles. Once in a while we need to hear about genocide in Darfur. We need to hear about women and children being murdered because this should not happen and as disciples of Jesus we are called to expose evil and shine light into darkness. Every year we need to sit with a pit in our stomach from Friday night until Easter morning because through the cross God was trying to get our attention. We can't return to our bubbles, not on this one. Good Friday is bloody, it is painful but it gets our attention. It slows us down and reminds us what is important and how much God loves us.

There are millions of things fighting for your attention, who is winning?

Chris

"If you build it they will come..."

A while back I read an article about a pastor who served a different type of congregation. He didn't have a building and he didn't have a staff, he felt his calling was to minister to OTR drivers (individuals who drove cross country and were on the road more than they were at home). He went from truck stop to truck stop and gas station to gas station bringing church to them. Decades ago, maybe even centuries, we simply built a church building and the neighborhood flocked to it. This is seldom the case anymore and as I think about this I can't help but think about the truck-stop preacher and I can't help but ask the question, are we bringing church to those who need it or are we expecting them to come to us?

Now this is a tricky one because it has been done poorly so many times. I am not talking about standing on the street corner with a sign that says the end is near and screaming at folks to repent. I am not talking about going door to door handing out pamphlets that ask the question "if you die tonight, do you know where you will go?" I am simply wondering do we bring church, and hopefully just the good parts of church, to those who need it or are we sitting on our hands waiting for them to come to us?

What does it look like when this is done well? I think bringing the church to those who need the church looks like a group of individuals who get in a van and drive to a community that was ravaged by a tornado and helps total strangers put their lives back together. I think bringing the church to those who need the church looks like an individual who spends time with an elderly person who may sit by themselves all day long and reminds them that they aren't alone and there is a community out there that cares for them. I think bringing the church to those who need the church looks like an individual who takes the time to talk to the person who is checking their groceries and sincerely ask them how their day is going and then thanks them for the work they do.

Are we bring the church out in to the world or are we waiting for the world to come to us? There is a lot of hurt out there and I believe the church can bring the power of this community into their lives, where they are at right now, and in doing so reveals God's love to them.

Its time to step out of the church "building" and build the church where it is most needed.

See you in church,

Chris

Breaking News: God and Lady Gaga working together!

I am not sure what is more shocking, the title of this blog or using Lady Gaga and Harvard in the same sentence. Regardless, the latter was reported in the news today. Lady Gaga was on Harvard's campus to launch a foundation for youth that is intended to challenge meanness and cruelty.

Now to the title; can God and "The Lady" work together? Gaga is a far cry from a church spokesperson but is she some how doing God's work? Gaga says the goal of the foundation is to call an awareness to bullying and simply encourage people to be nice to each other. She didn't promise answers but encouraged others to do simple things, simple acts that make the world a better place. That sounds like God's work to me.

I believe that Lady Gaga is doing God's work even if she is not aware of it. I believe God can use her (or anyone for that matter) whether they are aware of it or not. I believe God can work in the lives of those who go to church and those who do not. I believe God is working all around us and it is our job to name it and claim it.

At some point someone had the idea of creating a Christian line; Christian music, Christian books, Christian movies, etc. and at some point I wonder if we somehow got the idea that God was here but he wasn't there? That unless it had the title "Christian" in front of it God wasn't a part of it? I know it sounds silly but I hope you get the point. Isn't God everywhere?

Instead of limiting where God is we need to confirm and reaffirm that God is everywhere and as believers it is our job to reveal that to people. God is in the sunrise, God is in the children playing on the playground, God is in your cubicle and God is in the hospital room when someone takes their last breath.

God is everywhere even if we don't see it. God is working in Lady Gaga even if she isn't aware of it and God is in you and God is in me. Name it, claim it and reveal it to others.

See you in church,

Chris

Why Ashes?

Christmas has been hijacked by Walmart and the Easter Bunny has hijacked the resurrection but no one seems too eager to hijack Ash Wednesday. There is something about being reminded that you are going to die. It is hard to market that one (but at the off chance that Walmart starts selling coffins remember you heard it here first!) but at its core Ash Wednesday is a reminder that we will at some point die.

For most of us this is not a fact that we celebrate but instead we run from, ignore and do everything we can to avoid death. This is why we need Ash Wednesday. The first thing that Ash Wednesday does is it connects us to the life of Jesus. Ash Wednesday begins the church season of Lent and during this season of Lent we journey with Jesus to the cross. It is not a pleasant journey and it is not supposed to be. The challenge here is if we do not understand what Jesus went through to get to Easter morning can we fully appreciate his sacrifice? Can we fully appreciate the gift of the resurrection? So we sing some songs that aren't as upbeat, we go to church a little more frequently (or at least a hand full of you do) and we either deprive ourselves of something we like or add something that we should be doing to help us understand the significance of this season. The more we understand the struggle the more we understand the victory.

Ash Wednesday also reminds us that there is something more. It is oh too easy for us to become connected to this world and we have every right to be. We have made life pretty good for ourselves down here. We can get pretty much anything we want whenever we want it and when we become too comfortable, we forget that there is something more waiting for us when we do die. As great as this world is it is not even a fraction of what Heaven is, but we have allowed ourselves to become distracted. Ash Wednesday reminds us that one day we will die but instead of hearing this as condemnation we should welcome this fact, because our death here leads to life eternal. A life greater than anything we could ever imagine, a life with God forever.

So why ashes? Because we need them. We need to be reminded of the difficult things that Jesus did for us even if they are a little bloody and messy. We need ashes because we need to be reminded that there is something more, there is something better and one day we will find it.

See you in church,

Chris

Walking the Talk

I recently heard from a former college classmate of mine, who works at a church in the Indianapolis area, that the Westoboro Baptist Church (WBC) has decided to protest their congregation this (Sunday) morning. Apparently WBC is in the area to protest the Super Bowl and they decided to use the free time, on Sunday morning, to rail against this particular congregation because they preach that "God loves everyone." Now this is where it gets weird, what my friend is asking for more than anything else are prayers. Obviously prayers for the congregation but also prayers for the protestors! Now I am not going to use the "H" word (that rhymes with eight) but I REALLY don't like these guys. If you are not familiar with WBC these are the individuals who protest military funerals because they believe the death of the soldier is God's punishment on this country due to our tolerance of homosexuality. Regardless of your stance on this controversial issue, to protest someone's funeral, especially the funeral of someone who lost their life serving in the military, who died far too young, is simply unacceptable. I REALLY don't like these guys. But here is my friend, face to face with their hate, and he is asking us to pray for those who hate.

Being a follower of Jesus was never meant to be easy. Jesus said a lot of challenging things and too often we soften those commands. We choose to focus on the side of Jesus that best fits the comfortable spot that we are in, instead of wrestling with the challenges that Jesus laid before us. Jesus told us to "love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us." How many times have we heard this? How many times have we not lived up to it? Conceptually we get it. We can put this verse back into the context of the "Sermon on the Mount" but when the rubber hits the road and we have been wronged and we are face to face with our enemies and those who hate us, is praying for them the first thing that comes to mind or is it something else? Are we walking the talk? Martin Luther King Jr once said that only love can drive out hate. What is our response to hate? Is it more evil or is it love? Being a follower of Jesus was never meant to be easy, it is a challenge, but it is also how we know we should live. I will leave you with the last line from what my friend wrote as he and his congregation prepared to pray for those who hate:

"We've been working hard for the past two weeks since we learned of the protest to craft our responses to the matter in such a way that God's love would shine in everything we say and do."

Who are you praying for?

See you in church.

Chris

Helpless.

For the most part we like to be in control, or at least think we are in control. We like to call the shots, make the decisions and have a pretty good idea of how everything will turn out. But when that control is out of our hands and we feel helpless, that is a feeling we seldom welcome.

In a very simple form I have been forced to deal with feelings of helplessness. Seven weeks ago I injured my knee in a basketball game and for six of those seven weeks I have tried to pretend that I am in control. I visited the doctor a couple of times but I was pretty sure I could do something, anything to fix my knee. Whether it was ice, or rest or the right exercise I really thought I could fix this one. An MRI destroyed all of those thoughts. A torn ACL is not something I can fix on my own and I am in the hands of the doctor and his staff to make this one right.

When it comes to our faith are we in control? Do we like to be in charge, call the shots and have a pretty good idea how everything will work out? When we talk about faith and salvation those are things that are entirely and completely out of our control. It is nothing that we do, can do or will do, it is what has been done for us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. It is completely out of our control. And as hard as it is we need to let go, trust God, and allow him to fix this one for us.

I am going to do my best to take my own advice and trust that I am in good hands and that this one can and will be fixed without me. For my knee but also for my soul.

See you in church,

Chris

Someone You Can Relate too

The other night my family and I watched the new film "Dolphin Tale." It is a movie based on the true story of Winter, a dolphin who lost her tail at two months old after it became entangled with a crab trap. Now as you can imagine, or if you have seen the trailer, this movie is a tear jerker, (my kids and I have a contest to see how many times my wife will cry in such a movie-I think Dolphin Tale is the new leader) and more than a few tears were shed as we watched the film. One of the things that I enjoyed most about the movie was how this dolphin was an inspiration for others, especially children, who had lost legs or weren't able to run, jump, etc like the other kids. At one point this girl who had lost one leg (we never know how it happened) drives a long way to see Winter and when she does she says, "she is just like me." Winter was an inspiration to this girl and many others because they could relate to her.

There is a parallel here with the Christian faith, God is someone that we can relate to through Jesus Christ. When we read the Gospels we see that Jesus' life was anything but easy. He is dismissed by his hometown, his own family calls him crazy, and the few friends he has abandon him when he faces his most difficult challenges. And then he experiences death. Whatever you have been through God has been there too.

Are you able to relate to God? Do you believe that when you struggle you don't struggle alone? That whatever you are going through God has experienced before and he experiences it again with you? Are you able to relate to God? Too often we think of God as this distant deity that rules from afar, deeply removed from us and our experiences. If we feel that way we need to remind ourselves of the 30+ years that God spent on this earth in the form of his son. God can say, with complete certainty and confidence, "I know what its like, I have been there too, you are not alone" because he has been there before and he is there with you now.

God IS someone we can relate to. I hope you feel that way too.

See you in church,

Chris