The Resurrection Worldview (John 11:1-53)

Sunday, April 6, 2014 – 5^th Sunday of Lent

John 11

11 ^1-2 A man by the name of Lazarus was sick in the village of Bethany. He had two sisters, Mary and Martha. This was the same Mary who later poured perfume on the Lord’s head and wiped his feet with her hair. ³ The sisters sent a message to the Lord and told him that his good friend Lazarus was sick.

⁴ When Jesus heard this, he said, “His sickness won’t end in death. It will bring glory to God and his Son.”

⁵ Jesus loved Martha and her sister and brother. ⁶ But he stayed where he was for two more days.⁷ Then he said to his disciples, “Now we will go back to Judea.”

⁸ “Teacher,” they said, “the people there want to stone you to death! Why do you want to go back?”

⁹ Jesus answered, “Aren’t there twelve hours in each day? If you walk during the day, you will have light from the sun, and you won’t stumble. ¹⁰ But if you walk during the night, you will stumble, because you don’t have any light.” ¹¹ Then he told them, “Our friend Lazarus is asleep, and I am going there to wake him up.”

¹² They replied, “Lord, if he is asleep, he will get better.” ¹³ Jesus really meant that Lazarus was dead, but they thought he was talking only about sleep.

¹⁴ Then Jesus told them plainly, “Lazarus is dead! ¹⁵ I am glad that I wasn’t there, because now you will have a chance to put your faith in me. Let’s go to him.”

¹⁶ Thomas, whose nickname was “Twin,” said to the other disciples, “Come on. Let’s go, so we can die with him.”

¹⁷ When Jesus got to Bethany, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.¹⁸ Bethany was only about two miles from Jerusalem, ¹⁹ and many people had come from the city to comfort Martha and Mary because their brother had died.

²⁰ When Martha heard that Jesus had arrived, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed in the house. ²¹ Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. ²² Yet even now I know that God will do anything you ask.”

²³ Jesus told her, “Your brother will live again!”

²⁴ Martha answered, “I know that he will be raised to life on the last day,^[a] when all the dead are raised.”

²⁵ Jesus then said, “I am the one who raises the dead to life! Everyone who has faith in me will live, even if they die. ²⁶ And everyone who lives because of faith in me will never really die. Do you believe this?”

²⁷ “Yes, Lord!” she replied. “I believe that you are Christ, the Son of God. You are the one we hoped would come into the world.”

²⁸ After Martha said this, she went and privately said to her sister Mary, “The Teacher is here, and he wants to see you.” ²⁹ As soon as Mary heard this, she got up and went out to Jesus. ³⁰ He was still outside the village where Martha had gone to meet him. ³¹ Many people had come to comfort Mary, and when they saw her quickly leave the house, they thought she was going out to the tomb to cry. So they followed her.

³² Mary went to where Jesus was. Then as soon as she saw him, she knelt at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

³³ When Jesus saw that Mary and the people with her were crying, he was terribly upset ³⁴ and asked, “Where have you put his body?”

They replied, “Lord, come and you will see.”

³⁵ Jesus started crying, ³⁶ and the people said, “See how much he loved Lazarus.”

³⁷ Some of them said, “He gives sight to the blind. Why couldn’t he have kept Lazarus from dying?”

³⁸ Jesus was still terribly upset. So he went to the tomb, which was a cave with a stone rolled against the entrance. ³⁹ Then he told the people to roll the stone away. But Martha said, “Lord, you know that Lazarus has been dead four days, and there will be a bad smell.”

⁴⁰ Jesus replied, “Didn’t I tell you that if you had faith, you would see the glory of God?”

⁴¹ After the stone had been rolled aside, Jesus looked up toward heaven and prayed, “Father, I thank you for answering my prayer. ⁴² I know that you always answer my prayers. But I said this, so that the people here would believe that you sent me.”

⁴³ When Jesus had finished praying, he shouted, “Lazarus, come out!” ⁴⁴ The man who had been dead came out. His hands and feet were wrapped with strips of burial cloth, and a cloth covered his face.

Jesus then told the people, “Untie him and let him go.”

            How do you die? 

            Please note, when I say ‘you,’ I am not asking, ‘how does one die?’  This is more pointed.  It is not a general sort of pondering question, how does a person die?  This is an invasion of your personal space.  I have wrestled with it all week because I am not sure how to answer it myself.  I am counted when I say ‘you.’  We sit with a story glaring at us, the story of Jesus raising Lazarus.  This is more than just an amazing miracle story.  The story confronts us and we must answer.  How do I die?  How do you die?

            I grant the absurdity.  Living people by definition have not died.  So how could we talk about how to die?  Every human life comes to an end, but we live like that end is in a far off future, one we’d rather not discuss.  We will all die and we all know that; yet none of accepts it and each of us tries to put it off as long as possible.  We are not interested, thank you, in the question, how do you die? 

If we believe the Bible, we should be.  Paul tells us in Romans 6, ‘the wage of sin is death’ (v.23).  We sin every day.  So we are paid with death every day.  But, what does that even mean?

            In a blog post, Australian pastor, Andrew Prior  writes, “Our things and our doings blind us to new opportunities of being human; indeed, they prevent us from becoming truly human.  They prevent us from finding that already present dimension of reality that the Gospel of John calls ‘eternal life.’”[i]  I think what he means, and I think what Jesus means when he tells Martha that he is the “Resurrection and the life” (v. 25) is that eternal life begins right now, today for those who are in Christ. 

In Christ all sins are forgiven and removed.  In Christ, we do not receive sin’s wage, death, because sin is no longer counted against us.  Those not in Christ carry the weight of sin every day.  In little ways, they die every day.  Our things and our doings, the possessions and activities that dominate the life of middle class people, blind us. 

            We like stuff.  We like thrills.  We build our lives on possessions we acquire, materials and things of which there is a limited number.  Competition is inherent.  New cars, expensive TV’s, fancy phones, designer clothes – exploitation is involved in creating these things and only a few people of the billions on earth end up having them.  Dating back to the industrial revolution, our society has 100 years creating and striving to own more and better possessions.  We have exported our ethos all over the world.  Consumerism has become our dominant cultural value.  Christianity gets fit in around our consumption.  Christianity is defined by middle class Americans rather than middle class American being shaped by Christianity.

            Consumerism leads to all manners of sin – exploitation, jealousy, envy, greed, theft, hoarding of goods, violence (both to attain goods and to hold on to them and avoid sharing them); these sins kill us every day, even we who are Christians.  We would never admit it, but we are the experts who ought to know how to die because we die daily.  “You can’t take it with you,” but secretly, we try. 

            Lord if you had been here, my brother would not have died (v.21). Jesus’ response, I am the resurrection, is intended to get her to see everything differently in light of who he is.  He wants her to think about life and death in a new way.  Because she knows him her understanding of mortality can change.  And John wants us to read his gospel and in reading know Jesus and in knowing think about life and death in a whole new way. 

             

            Nothing is particularly evil about a phone or a trip to the movies or a new TV.  You can serve God through the use of the phone.  I can establish a relationship with someone and eventually share Christ with him.  Maybe he won’t go to church, but he’ll go to the movies.  We can host video parties where we watch the big game on our giant flat screen and in that context form relationships in which we give witness to the gospel.  These things can be used to glorify God.  But for the last century the culture around us has evolved into a worldview.  In this worldview, joy and happiness come with new things and thrilling activities.  This worldview is now entrenched.  We are part of it. 

            I see many Christians getting their energy and joy and excitement in purchases, in salary increases, in new gadgets, big or small.  They don’t realize how much better Jesus is because they can’t see him.  How they live in the now, by the worldview of consuming/owning/hoarding materials (the best of all goods and services), shapes how they think about life, death, and eternity. 

It should be the exact opposite.  The reality of eternal life with Jesus, as a son or daughter of God, should be what defines how we live now.  But we can’t really see that eternal life with God.  As Prior says, “Our things and our doings blind us to new opportunities of being human.”  The new humanity he refers to is the redeemed humanity, the humanity that has discovered Jesus and been made new.  This is the humanity of 1 Corinthians 15, people with bodies that are incorruptible, that cannot become sick or die.  This is the humanity of Genesis 1-2 that God created as “very good.”  We cannot imagine it.

             

            How did Jesus say it?  “I am the one who raises the dead to life! Everyone who has faith in me will live, even if they die. ²⁶ And everyone who lives because of faith in me will never really die” (v.25b-26).  One commentator writes that life in Jesus is life of another order, a new order.  The great blessing is not that Jesus raised Lazarus.  Lazarus would die again.  In fact in the very next chapter, the religious leaders plot the death of Lazarus as part of their plan to stop Jesus. He’s just been raised and he’s on an officially sanctioned hit list (12:10). 

The great blessing of this story is what Lazarus’ raising means: it is a sign of Jesus as the resurrection and the life.  He is the life.  Does Martha believe it?  Do we?  If we say yes, then what does it mean for how we live and how we view death?  From the point of view of the Gospel of John, everlasting life in Jesus is the same on both sides of the grave – now and after we are resurrected.  When we live in Christ we begin eternity now.[ii] 

This all comes down to worldview.  Do we see Jesus?  Or are we seeing as the world in which we have grown up has conditioned us to see?  If we keep the worldview that has been imposed on us, a world view of materialistic consumerism, one in which joy comes from acquisition, then we are driven to buy and own.  We have to train ourselves to share and be generous because we’re conditioned to greed, hoarding, envy, coveting, and eventually violence, direct or indirect.  These sin-soaked mentalities bring death.  That’s one worldview.

Another comes when by God’s grace we are freed from the destructive worldview we’ve always known.  By the Holy Spirit we are changed and we take on a resurrection worldview.  It comes as we see Jesus, fix our view on Him, and live with the Spirit in us.

Martha lived many centuries before the industrial revolution, so her worldview was different than ours, but for different reasons it was just as stuck in death as ours is.    Jesus told her to roll away the stone.  “But Lord,” Martha said, “you know that Lazarus has been dead four days, and there will be a bad smell” (v.39).  She had a death mentality.  She had just professed faith that Jesus is the Messiah to his face.  That was not enough to help her think differently.  She believed in death and lived toward just as we do.  Avoid it while living toward it.

Jesus rejects the smell of death literally and in the sense that death whether it comes from the sins of a materialistic worldview or another sin-filled worldview stinks.  The rot of death reeks and Christ won’t have it.  Death is the opposite of what God has in store for us.  In Jesus, God is with us.  He is Immanuel – ‘God with us.’ Thus, when we are seeing Jesus and with Jesus and his Holy Spirit, we get the opposite of death. 

The resurrection view is not only for Lazarus that special day in 30AD.  He did not get a bonus by being lucky enough to live in the days of Jesus walking the earth in the Incarnation.  That miracle of Jesus raising him was a sign of a new way of seeing and living – the way of Jesus.  Similarly, today, there are indicators of the resurrection worldview.  Think of coming alongside of and helping “the poor, the sick, the lonely, the depressed, the slaves, the refugees, the hungry, the homeless, the abused, … the despairing, [the orphan and widow, and the confused];” working on behalf of the ‘least of these’ … is a sign of the presence of Jesus today. When we bring healing and love, community and family, truth and hope, we are playing a vital part in the mission of Jesus and his church.  Jesus brought hope in the first century; he continues in the 21^st as he works through the deeds of his church to rescue people from the stink of corruption and death.[iii]  Our work of loving anyone and everyone and doing is proactively and sacrificially is a sign that our vision is colored by the Eternal Kingdom.  Our now is built by our sense of eternity.  When we see Him and see as he sees and work for healing and truth, motivated by Jesus-love, we are living eternity now.  It is then that we have the resurrection worldview. 

            How do you die?  The best answer is ‘I don’t know how I die because I am living forever with Jesus.  My body will die and then be raised.  I am already living eternally.  I cannot say how I die because I have a resurrection worldview.’  That’s the best answer.  We can give that answer with Jesus’ help.  From now until Easter, ask Him to push all distractions to the background and help you see as He sees.

            AMEN

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[i].http://onemansweb.org/don-t-cave-in-to-the-death-people-john-11-lent-5.html

[ii] G. Sloyan (1988). Interpretation: A Commentary for Teaching and Preaching: John.  John Knox Press, Atlanta, p.150-151.

[iii] N.T. Wright (2008).  Surprised by Hope.  HarperOne, New York, p, 191-192.

Jesus-Made People

Jesus Made People (Luke 12:13-21)

Sunday, August 15, 2010

          Last week I visited my parents’ church, the church where I spent my high school years.  I saw a lot of people I knew, but it has changed over 25 years.  Most of the people I saw were unfamiliar.  Many knew me, but I did not recognize them.  Or, I forget their names.  Time marches on for people and for churches.

          I sat in on the class my dad teaches.  Candy and I were the first ones there and then Jerry arrived.  I did not know Jerry while in high school.  My only relationship with him is one that has formed on those occasions when we chit-chat while I am in town visiting. 

          Jerry is retired, I think. 

          What does retirement mean?  Free time?  Aches and pains.  Grand children?  Rising bills to be paid on a shrinking income?

          Candy, Jerry, and I made small talk until others arrived.  “Jerry,” someone asked, “are you still volunteering at the rescue mission?”

Aha.  Is this what retirement means?  Roanoke has facilities downtown, a non-profit, the Roanoke Rescue Mission.  Mothers who have fled abusive husbands, people of all ages who live on the streets enslaved by addictions, and others who are without home for any number of reasons – they all gather at the Rescue mission for a bed and a hot meal.

For Jerry, retirement means giving his time away – giving it to the Rescue Mission that, in the name of Jesus, serves the needs of the Homeless.  “Jerry,” one of his Sunday school friends asked, “what do you do at the rescue mission.”

“Transport,” he said.  “I drive people to doctor’s appointments; job interviews; Alcoholics Anonymous meetings; appointments with probation officers; anything you can think of.  I drive them.”

I wonder if Jerry envisioned himself retired, back in his hometown of Roanoke after years away, taxiing homeless people around?  I wonder if he imagined he would leave Roanoke?  Or, when he left, did he believe he’d be back?  What was Jerry’s vision for his life? 

What’s your vision for your life?

            Consider the guy who works on computers.  After wild-living in his 20’s he earned a 2-year degree in computer repair and now at 32, he’s finally got a good job and a great wife.  They’re nearly done paying off the debts he ran up in his rougher days.  They have a 3-year-old and a baby on the way.  Ask him, “What’s your vision for life?”  He says he hopes that by the time he’s 40, when their children will be in school and the bad debt nearly gone, then his wife can go back to work full-time.  At that point, they’ll be able to stop renting, buy a house, and starting saving for retirement. 

          That would not be a bad life, not bad at all.  I have no criticism of it.  I only hope to expand that story and any story we might write on our own because Jesus calls us to a bigger vision, one that is more significant, lasting, and purposeful.  There are things – experience, possessions, relationships – that people want, and they envision these wants as the life they will have in the future if they work hard enough. There’s nothing wrong with that.  God calls us to more.

          The central verse of Luke 12 is verse 15.  Jesus said, “Take care!  Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”  The life of a disciple is different; possessions exist to serve the purposes of the Kingdom of God.  In the Kingdom of God, homeless people find homes, hungry people find bread, disciples of Jesus who have time volunteer to drive those who don’t have cars to the places they need to go.  In the Kingdom of God, disciples live out God’s story by giving of themselves.    

Jesus tells the parable of the barn builder in the midst of a drama in which he’s living out a grand story – the story of the salvation of the world.  Jesus wants you and me to be players in the story too.  He wants us to step beyond the routine cares of life and into the kingdom of God.  Life in the kingdom, life with God – that’s the bigger story. 

          In Luke 12, we read that the crowds gathered by the thousands to hear Jesus, so much so, that they were trampling one another (v.1).  His fame had achieved rock-star levels.  John Lennon was wrong – he and the Beatles were never bigger than Jesus Christ.  They trampled over each other to hear him teach. 

          To that throng, hungry for a word of salvation, Jesus said, “Everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God; but, whoever denies me before others will be denied before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8-9).  He had, at this point, had enough confrontations with authorities and Pharisees, that people knew to speak for Jesus, to acknowledge him, was to take a side.  Many wanted to stay anonymous in the crowd, but Jesus said that would not do.  If someone was taken into custody and charged with being a follower of Jesus, they should admit it gladly, no matter the cost.  If someone out of fear of the consequences denied Jesus, he would deny knowing them at the judgment. 

Of course we know he gave Peter a second chance.  Jesus was a giver of multiple chances.  Still he wanted everyone to know something was at stake and everyone has to choose.  There is no hiding anonymously in the crowd, then or now.  There is no private faith.  He calls us to boldly stand and declare our loyalty. 

He also calls us to make the day-to-day stuff of life secondary.  Jesus wants our faith to be what we live for.  Houses, careers, relationships – all those things are carried out in service of and defined by our Christianity.  We aren’t professors, janitors, teachers, bankers, doctors who happen to be Christians.  We are passionately devoted followers of Jesus who reject small, safe little lives and instead step courageously onto the disciple path.  We clean houses, teach students, handle investments, operate on patients, and live as husbands and wives, sons and daughters, and all of it is done in such a way that it is an expression of Jesus in our lives. 

Jesus is teaching this captivated crowd, calling them to a world-changing faith.  He says,

“¹¹When they bring you before the synagogues, the rulers, and the authorities, do not worry about how^* you are to defend yourselves or what you are to say; ¹²for the Holy Spirit will teach you at that very hour what you ought to say.’ 

          Then someone in the crowd stands up and says, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the family inheritance with me” (v.13).  What?  Has this guy heard anything?  Jesus just talked about being arrested and dragged before authorities to testify to the truth knowing one could die.  Everything he says here plays out in the book of Acts.  The Apostle James was beheaded living a bigger story, answering the call to a bigger vision.  The Apostles were imprisoned – Peter and John, Paul and Silas; the bigger vision is a risk-taking vision, a countercultural vision, a see-from-God’s-not-man’s-perspective. 

          It’s a wonder Jesus even answered the man, but he did because many then and now have such small vision.  He paused in the midst of his speech with its audacious claims and sweeping ideas to address something small because often we choose small lives and reject the grand life God calls us to.  We just want our share of the inheritance and then, leave us alone.   We don’t want to testify before courts and kings, neighbors and people in the public.  We don’t want to make a big deal of our faith.  We just want to be unassuming and we don’t want the Spirit of God imposing anything on our lives. 

          This will not in discipleship.  To be a disciple is to follow Jesus – in everything.  Discipleship requires that Jesus be lord of every part of life.

          Jesus promises us abundant life, a life only realized when we experience the joy of walking in step with God and living in love relationships with one another.  Jesus would not give the man a verdict in the inheritance dispute.  Instead, he gave a story.

‘The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” ¹⁸Then he said, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ²⁰But God said to him, “You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” ²¹So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich towards God.’

            The man in the parable worked for what he had.  Jesus did not paint the picture of a criminal.  He was a success.  He worked hard, earned a lot, saved what he earned, and planned to retire in ease and enjoy his old age.  It’s not what he did that was wrong.  It was his failure to (1) acknowledge God in his success, and (2) he failed to understand his wealth in relationship to other people.  This is not a rejection of retirement accounts or saving money or wise handling of finances.  It is a declaration that the Jesus-made life is bigger than retirement.  Jesus is not a part of our retirement or our careers or our parenting or our pleasures.  Our pleasures, our parenting, our careers, and our retirement are part of our life in Christ.  In all those things we serve the Lord.  In all those things we live out our discipleship. 

          The man in the story said “I” a lot.  What should I do?  For I have no place to story my crops.  In all the “I’s” and “my’s” the man never saw anyone else.  His vision was so small, his story was limited; there was only room for one person – himself.  His was a type of idolatry with himself as the object of worship.  He made his own destiny the end all and be all; his own happiness was the standard by which he lived.  He was a self-made man.  There is no place for the self-made man in the kingdom of Heaven.  Only Jesus-made men and Jesus-made women are admitted. 

Jesus-made people are gentler than they are tough, but tough when they need to be, just not a Rambo-type of toughness.  Jesus-made people sacrifice themselves; they don’t smack down the enemy, they love the enemy.  Jesus made people don’t go out of their way to rub elbows with big wigs and superstars; Jesus-made people are on the street with the addict, driving him to his appointments helping him turn his life around and doing because they are following Jesus and Jesus led them to this work of mercy.    

Are we living Jesus-made lives?  The parable could have played out differently.  Are we living the grand story he would write for us?  Are we answering the call to a bigger vision?  Listen to the parable if it were told of a rich man who was also a passionate, devoted Christ-follower.  Jesus might say,

The land of a rich man produced abundantly. ¹⁷And he thought to himself, “What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?” ¹⁸Then he said, “I see there are many in the land who are hungry, even starving.  God has blessed me with health and has blessed the land with great produce.  I will do this: I will pull out half of my stores of wheat and oats and other grains.  I will load it into wagons and drive throughout the country.  In each town, I’ll go to the synagogue and then invite all the hungry of the land – Jew and Gentile alike.  Everyone will be fed.  Then, I will come home and see what is left.  ¹⁹And I will say to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; are there more people you can help?  Are there more you can feed?  ” ²⁰But God said to him, “My child.  You have done your part.  This very night your life on earth is over and you are being called home.  Well done my good and faithful servant.  Enter into the joy of your master, for you have stored up ²¹much treasure in Heaven.’

            Do you suppose the guy who asked Jesus to arbitrate in the inheritance dispute got the message?  Luke doesn’t tell us.  Luke’s real concern is do we get what Jesus is saying?

          Imagine the computer tech, the guy we discussed earlier.  Imagine him as a disciple doing what disciples do – living a Jesus-made life.  First, turning his life over to Jesus was a key in his recovery and his victory over addiction.  Now, with a Christian wife, they go forward together.  They raise their children to love Jesus.  They do their jobs with excellence and build their marriage on Christ.  They will buy that dream home, and it will be a place where his old friends, from the party life, can come for short stays and piece their life back together.  They will together set as their part in the grand story of the Kingdom a role of encouragers as they help people leave addiction behind and walk forward into the disciple life. 

          Pastor and author John Piper has the best illustration for living the big vision verses accepting a small, godless, insignificant life.  He tells about a husband and wife.  They are retirees.  Like the barn builder, they enjoyed prosperity and were able to retire with financial means.  They then bought an RV and traveled throughout the country.  They especially liked coastal towns.  In visiting the ocean often, they built up a collection of sea-shells.  And when they die and meet God, God will say to them, “I gave you 20 years of healthy retirement, 20 years unencumbered with other responsibilities.  What did you do with what I gave you?  Who did you help?  How did you work to make the world a better place?”  And they will say, “Look God.  Look at all the pretty sea shells.” 

          Not Jerry, the guy from my Dad’s Sunday school class.  I would guess when he was 20 “volunteer at the Roanoke Rescue Mission” would not have been one of his life’s top five ambitions.  But you should have seen the twinkle in his eye and the color fill his face when someone asked, “Jerry, what do you do at the rescue mission?”

          That same animation came over the Apostle Thomas when he met the resurrected Jesus face-to-face and declared, “My Lord and my God!”  In that moment, when we realize following Jesus may not be the life for ourselves but is in fact immeasurably more than we could have hope or imagined, in that moment we know the Jesus-made life.  And we would live know other.  We know God will fill our barns as we follow the path he sets before us.

AMEN

NCAA Basketball Championship, Ethiopia, and What Matters Most

I am an avid fan of the University of Michigan's men's basketball team.  Go Wolverines!  Naturally with them in the national championship game, I am very excited.  To get to that point, they had to win last night, and they did, a 61-56 victory over Syracuse.  People at my church, a UNC hotbed, know how much I love the Wolverines.  Many wanted to talk basketball with me this morning and we did.

But then the worship service happened.  And by the time it was over, I had no interest in talking basketball at all.  As people were leaving, some, bearing big smiles, were ready to pick up the basketball talk again, and I just couldn't.

Recall my blog of almost three weeks ago - http://honesttalkwithgod.blogspot.com/2013/03/following-ncaa-tournament-from-africa.html.  We had just returned from our mission trip to Ethiopia and Holy Week was about to start.  My focus was on God and on the materially impoverished but spiritually rich children we had spent a week loving.  I call them "spiritually rich" because they know how needy they are and they know the best thing they can receive from me is a smile and a hug and a kiss.  And they can offer that to me in as much abundance as I can give it.  Their knowledge of their own need and their ability to openly, shamelessly love makes them spiritually rich.

Thinking about them, I did not care too much about basketball even though I thought Michigan had a great shot to win the whole thing.  Now, Michigan is in the championship game and I have loved the ride.  It has been fun.  But this morning in church our team reported on the Ethiopia trip.  Every member shared their perspective and it was brilliant.  Emily Bailey did a magnificent job making a slide-show of images that filled my heart with joy and raw emotion.  The awareness of need the children have was conveyed to me.  As we told the church about the trip, I longed to love them and receive love from them.  And in that  reality, I couldn't care less if Michigan wins or loses.

Tomorrow night of course, I will watch every minute of the game.  I will be overjoyed with a Wolverine victory and grumpy if the lose.  But I am thankful that really, it his just basketball.   I am thankful I know how important it is.  I am thankful God has shown me what is truly important.  I am thankful I get to travel to Ethiopia and to love children.  I immensely thankful.  Hearing my teammates - Sarah, Matthew, Les, Brett, Heidi, and Emily - inspired me.  

Some things truly matter.  I want my life to be about what truly matters.

I recently heard a story of someone who retired wealthy and has now bought a yacht.  His plan is to spend his retirement sailing around the Caribbean.  It sounds fun and maybe exciting and maybe wonderful.  I want no part of it - ever.  OK, I'd enjoy a week or so on a yacht as a little vacation.  But for my life, I want to be involved in things that matter; things that matter to God.  Whether it is in Ethiopia or North Carolina, loving children matters to God.  Helping people who are materially poor get food and get education so they can jobs and be independent and help others - doing that matters to God.  Taking a group of Christians out of their comfort zone so they can discover who Jesus is; that matters to God.  Friendships that develop in the midst of mission work; that matters to God.  I have not achieved any of this.  God has graciously allowed me a role.  I am thankful.

Following the NCAA Tournament from Africa

My heart just is not in the NCAA tournament this year.  Usually, I love men's college basketball and especially the tournament.  This year, my favorite team, the Michigan Wolverines, have had a good season.  They were even ranked #1 one week.  Yet, I cannot get myself up for the tournament.  

Every year, I invite my church members to turn in their brackets.  It is not gambling because no one turns in money.  Whoever gets the highest score (scoring is based on picking correctly and in the later rounds, you get more points for correct picks) gets a free lunch, courtesy of the pastor (me).  Last year, I won the pool and treated myself to Mexican food.

I am doing the pool again this year, but with very little zeal.  Like my overall interest, my energy in the church bracket pool is low.  Why?  Why am I so apathetic about this?

There are two reasons.  First, I just returned from 9 days in Ethiopia.  We made our second annual trip to the Children's Hope Chest care point (http://www.hopechest.org/) and spent 4 days with the kids at that care point.  Without going into details, I will say it was immensely frustrating and rewarding all at the same time.  The frustrations included just a small bit of tension within the team (I emphasize, this was small, but present) and lost bags.  The usually reliable Ethiopian Airlines failed to deliver 10 of our bags, many of which were filled with items we needed for the Bible camp we were going to run for the kids.  Those bags finally came, but by then I was into hour 72 of the same outfit (same underwear, socks, etc).  

Then the care point itself, which is undergoing transition, was also frustrating.  We probably should not have come until the children had been at the new site for another month and the transition was farther along.  But we did not know the transition schedule when we set the trips dates a year ago.  So, we ended bringing a group of Americans at a particularly bad time for the care point.

Still the week went well and new friendships were formed (both among team members who hail from 7 different states and with people in Kombolcha, Ethiopia).  The children were beautiful, loved seeing us, and we enjoyed them right up to the teary-eyed goodbyes last Friday (3/15).  On the flight back to the U.S., all our bags made it!

But, adding to the (very minor) team-tensions, lost bags, and on site frustrations, I picked up  an annoying cold on the return flight that is exacerbating my jetlag.  I know I am whining here, but isn't that what blogs are for?  My heart is not into basketball or preaching or reading or studying.  I want to lay down and sleep.  But when I try, all the Ethiopian coffee I have consumed keeps me awake.  I feel I am walking in an emotionless fog.

There is emotion though and much of it relates to those kids (about 80% of whom are Muslim, probably 75% undernourished, and 100% below any poverty line we might draw).  Will the sticky issues at the care point be resolved?  Can we actually take a team from here and not have unresolved issues clouding our purposes next year?  Are we doing any good?  With these questions on the mind, it is very hard to care about basketball.

And did I mention preaching?  Yes, next week is Holy Week.  As a Christ-follower, I am acutely aware of the importance of the crucifixion and resurrection.  My attentions to this is heightened as I ponder how the resurrection informs evangelism and apologetics.  When I think of Jesus on the cross and then the empty tomb, and I think of what that means for the world, and I think of intelligently, persuasively making the case for Jesus in conversation with Muslims and with atheists, it becomes hard to care about basketball.

Don't misread any of this.  I love basketball.  I love, love, love the NCAA tournament.  If Michigan wins the whole thing, I will enjoy that.  But then again, this year, I might sleep through the whole thing.  Or, I might be wide awake but with my attention elsewhere.  I just have weightier matters on my mind and I don't think basketball merits that much of me right now.

Review of David Platt's Radical

Simple to Understand, More Involved to Practice – A Review of David Platt’s Radical

I went into Radical sure that I would scoff at it because my impression of extremely conservative evangelical perspectives is that they are dogmatic in assuming their own views are absolutely right, and thus they present their views at “the Biblical view.” Based on people I have talked to who have visited Platt’s church, and based on Platt’s comments on Youtube in response to Rob Bell’s book, I think it’s safe to include him among conservative evangelicals.

That said, my negative disposition going into the book was gone by the end of the first chapter. There, Platt writes, “I am convinced that we as Christ followers in American Churches have embraced values and ideas that are not only unbiblical, but that actually contradict the gospel we claim to believe” (p. 3). I knew after this sentence I would want to read this entire book because whatever else Platt might say or do, he was onto something I have thought for a long time. He connected the ‘American’ descriptor in “American Christianity” with problems that exist in American churches.

By conforming Christianity to middle class white suburban American subculture, Christians are making Jesus who they want him to be. As Platt says it, “We are molding Jesus into our image” (p.13). It’s supposed to be the other way around, but to present ourselves to Jesus that he might mold us demands that we be moldable, pliable in His hands. It absolutely requires us to change and we don’t want to do that. Platt fills the book with stories of churches that emphasize big budgets and big buildings, but de-emphasize sacrificial giving (of time and of money) for the sake of helping the poor and spreading the gospel. Some of his examples should bring Christians and especially pastors to shame.

For me, chapter three was particularly poignant. There Platt deals with the importance of relying on the Holy Spirit for success in our lives as disciples of Jesus. Platt considered the financial strength and the abundance of talent in his church and began imagining the great things they could accomplish for God. Wrong! And I, a pastor, have done the exact same fantasizing. Look who comes to our church! Just think of what God can do! I really appreciate Platt’s honesty in his own journey for moving from imagination based on human gifts to prayerfully seeking the Holy Spirit. In reading Radical I was prompted to reroute my own prayer and my own thoughts. I need to spend less time imagining how to spend my church members’ money and more time praying for the Spirit to fill me and fill our church.

My one main critique of radical comes in chapter seven, “There is no plan B.” In reviewing the basics of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ and to be one who believes in the Gospel, Platt says that if the church fails to evangelize the world, then the world is lost (p.156-159). He presents salvation as a plan – a plan that will fail if American churches don’t take the Gospel to the world.

Platt’s presentation here puts inordinate responsibility for the success of salvation on the shoulders of American Christians. I appreciate his intent. He’s completely right in pointing out that American Christians have increasingly shirked the call to disciple-making. He’s right and it should be pointed out and condemned. But, where I think he is wrong is in his glaring implication that the success of the plan depends on us. God cannot save people in other parts of the world if we don’t go. History has shown that is not true. Furthermore, Platt holds an extremely high view of God. But then he claims that salvation will fail if people, not God, fail.

A second problem with the scheme of salvation Platt lays out in chapter seven is the deafness to the extraordinary evangelistic efforts of people from other parts of the world. Far more conversions to Christ are happening in conjunction with the efforts of evangelical Christians from the Philippines, Australia, South Korea, and China, than the work of American Christians on mission trips. Yes, we should go. No, evangelizing the world doesn’t depend on our response.

In spite of these critical comments, I give credit to Platt for his unyielding efforts to motivate the American church. In the end, that’s his goal, and he achieves it with force, clarity, and effectiveness. He is not trying to assess world-wide evangelism. He is trying to show that American Christians are staying within their own safe zones and comfort zones, and when they do that, they miss the Gospel. Bravo to David Platt for this observation. And bravo to him for putting this message out in an easy-to-read, supported-by-scripture form. I am a pastor and I hope the members of my church will read David Platt’s Radical. What he presents is very involved for person, but it isn’t from him. It from God’s word, and all who claim to follow Christ should listen and obey.

Disclaimer: I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review."