I actually went to Church

September 25, 2011

 

 Becky and I visited a church today where a good looking, entertaining pastor began his sermon. I sat back in my chair and thought this is going to be fun! He was gregarious, personable, tweeking individual members of the audience with inside jokes.

The text was the beginning of the apostle  Paul's letter to His son in the faith Timothy. Timothy, the preacher explained, was a young guy charged with a big ministry job and Paul was basically telling him to hang in and fan the fire within himself and don't be put off by His critics.

The entertaining preacher used this text to get the congregation to look at their own spiritual state, be honest about their spiritual life and take action if its flagging. I slumped in my chair. But I thought no..give it a chance, what makes you so smart Scott?  Whats wrong with looking at your own life and seeing if your in the faith.

 

 

So the preacher asked our congregation "hows your bible reading?" I did think to myself that the early church didn't have a bible for at least a few hundred years and they did ok. Next he asked "hows your prayer life?" I thought well..mine is sketchy, but I definetely pray. Then he asked if we sing along in Church, that that's a sign of spiritual vitality.  I thought well..sometimes. I must admit though the long hip church guitar dirges with 40 choruses moaning the same thing do wear me out.

 

Next he asked if we had joy. Well sometime I do..but certainly not all the time. Anyway you get the point. I go to church..have a great time at the entrance seeing my friends, and then I get inside and have to start thinking about what a wobbly, weak, watered down christian I am. By the way the last sentence is an accurate description of me.

 

I asked my wife at our post service breakfast if that sermon did anything for her. I got the look..like don't start; and honestly I don't blame her.

 

I guess what bugged me is that I left questioning myself and my efforts. I am 59 years old and I have heard probably a thousand sermons like that. Sermons that point out where I am missing something and what I have to do to get things right. The sad part is not once has one of those sermons moved me any farther along in my faith; not even once.

 

I tried to think what was missing in the sermon. Well the obvious screaming fact for me was Jesus. By that I mean..not just the name (although it was pretty absent), but a sense that I have been given a free lease on life in Jesus. I want to hear that yes I am a rat..we all are in various degrees..but Jesus has made me well.

 

What I just said is a hard thing to say well and in a fresh way..that Jesus has made the whole human race well completely. He has forgiven each and every human on the planet alive or dead for every fault and sin and dereliction of duty they ever have or will commit  free and for nothin!!

 

He has taken their broken down lives and broken down bodies and made them new..and hasn't asked a thing in return. I want someone to tell me that in a new way..in their own unique way. That's good news. Do you want to know what bad news is? Bad news is that you are failing spiritually  ( wow thats big news) and you better get your act together. Thats bad news because it ain't gonna happen. You might get your crooked nose straightened out but you still will walk croooked. You might slow down the drinking, but your incessant worrying over finances runs unabated. You might finally stop eating too much but continue to run your neighbor down behind His back..you get the idea. We are NOT IMPROVING..we need total saving from outside ourselves.

 

You know what's easy to preach and will make you popular? It goes something like this:  Improve your self for God so He will like you and so you will like you. Everybody gets, undertands and approves of that kind of preaching.

 

You know whats hard to preach? It's this: That God loves you and has saved you despite your best efforts to run him off. He is not remembering your broken promises, your family failures, your cowardice.. He has flat out given you a deal you don't deserve..His undying love, acceptance and friendship in Jesus. Thats a little dull and doesn't leave you a lot to do. Well if you feel really ambitious you could try to practice that same attitude of love and friendship and forgiveness to the other poor travellers on the bus..theres a task for all you gogetters.

Old Age

Well I am approaching 60. I can't believe its here already. King David told us that’s about our life allotment..unless by strength we get 70 years. Well modern medicine has extended that a decade or so, but for most people in that age group quality of life is at best spotty. My Dad has survived into his mid eighties but it has been year after year of chemo and recoveries and new diagnoses and worry.

I am not trying to be depressing here. Ageism is so prevalent in our country and world. Everybody talks about the new 60 and all the magazines are full of diet and exercise and cosmetic tricks to turn back the clock. There is no doubt its better to eat right and get exercise...but the decline and end is inevitable.

So what are we left with in old age? The world pretty much starts to hide us and weed us out of its operations. It's hard to find us in the movies and hard to find us rising the corporate ladder. We are more to be made fun of than listened to for wisdom.

In my opinion we are right in the sweet spot. Jesus message isn't really that interesting for the beautiful and the young. The young are  full of their own dreams and promise and that's as it should be. They don't really understand finitude or setbacks yet; and again that’s good.

But Jesus is a realist and His message is about reality. Reality is we all die. Our bones get brittle, our brains fade and our organs get weak. John, His best buddy said "do not love the world and the things in it" .  I used to misinterpret this. I thought I am not supposed to love sunsets and oceans and girls and motorcycles and nice houses??

Well of course it’s ok to love the world and the things in it.  The worlds a beautiful exciting place and God made it. What John is saying is this; don't fall in love with this finite world. Your little light is going to be on for a while and then it’s going to go out no matter how much you jog and starve yourself. And guess what? No one will give you a thought or mention you two generations after you die. You will be lucky if the next generation remembers and mentions you at all!

So what’s left with such a chilling scenario? Well what occurs to me is that the love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. Jesus had a friend named Mary. Her brother died. She lamely said "I know He will rise from the dead....someday".  Jesus rebuked her and said, right now Mary, I AM the resurrection and the life! To me and probably to Mary this sounded like nonsense.  She probably thought to herself  “ so what if you’re the resurrection, my brother is still dead”.  So what did Jesus mean and how is it helpful?  It means we live in this world with two lives. One is plodding along, hanging with our families (or not) trying to earn a living etc.  Our other life, our real life, is in this resurrected one Jesus. It means that though our outer person is fading away (literally) our inner person is being renewed daily in the Resurrected One. It means though you may be falling apart in many ways; financially, physically and mentally, you are fully alive and well and most importantly SAFE in Christ.

This message is meaningless and ho hum for most of the living.  Who do I mean when I say the living?   The living  (in my meaning) are those who don't really stop and realize the fact that they will be gone ever so quickly.  They think the life they have is the real and only life there is and they think it is lasting.  But facts are facts and they really aren't so bad. We will die and are in the process of doing that as we speak.  Jesus Christ is eternal life right now; not someday after your gone. He is eternal life right now..its yours, drink of it.

Labor day

Well a cheap post might be lifting that old verse from the book of Hebrews, that God has ceased from His labors...and the person who has ceased from His own labors has entered into His rest.

Let me be more clear..scripture says that the person who has ceased from his own efforts has entered Gods rest. Scripture goes over that endlessly. So what are these efforts we are to cease from? Well according to Paul its our ceasless effort to establish our own identity and/or our own standing with God. Why are we all so touchy when someone accuses us of wrongdoing? Its because we all have this unwritten standard we compare ourselves and each other to. We all stand in judgement of ourselves and others according to this unwritten law.

Well God is semingly an anarchist and dangerous libertarian. He has simply abolished that unwritten standard that condemns us all and flatly accepted the human race..warts and all in Jesus Christ. Now this is admittedly a dangerous thing to do.

Anybody who just comes out and says the standards are over and out is labelled a heretic and dangerous. Lets name some of the the culprits; Paul and Luther pretty much head the list. Jesus said the same thing only more tongue in cheek. "Do you want to make a big deal about adultery (an admittedly sad event)? Ok since you want to live according to this standard..try this: if you lust in your heart your an adulterer!" Forget it..most of us who are  not in a vegetative state are eliminated. Yet we sadly still hold that law mirror up to ourselves and others hoping against hope we can win this losing game.

There is a reason they killed Jesus. They accused Him of sedition and it was. He turned the whole religious outlook on its head and introduced the void. Whats the void? Well if the law or unwritten standard is no longer operative..we are faced with our own God awful freedom to contend with. If we are no longer to be judged (or to judge) by this bitchin condemning law..and we are free men; what the hell do we do with this freedom. What does it mean to grow up.

Jesus has set us free. He has promised us that there is absolutely no condemnation now or never. Guess what? He does not tell us what to do with this freedom.

I'll be honest. Most of us don't want to grow up. We would rather pretend we are living sucessfully in this safe house of rules and regulations. We love to bitch with our friends about all the evil doers who don't live in the house of rules successfully. You know the ones; the gays, the aborters, the welfare cheaters, the lazy parents, the alcoholics, the dopers,. Thank God we don't live like them. If we just stay in our safe  house of rules and regulations and quickly punish or kick out the violators all is well..we are safe.

However the safe house is a house of cards.  We all secretly know, if we are honest, we probably are not upstanding members of the household ourselves. The older I get the more I see that behind all the fine houses in the neighborhoods I have lived in there is a lot of cracked furniture. There may be a fine SUV in the driveway but a dilapitated wreck in the garage. Is it alcoholism or depression or abuse or a suicidal brother inlaw or a financial mess behind closed doors? Whatever it is the most joyous thing in the world is to drop the standard and judgment because God has dropped the whole game himself.

We can come out of our houses and be ourselves because God has told us its safe. He won't judge us and He absolutely won't put up with us judging others!

So on labor day maybe we can take a chance and cease from our self justifying labors and enter into his rest. What does that look like? Maybe its stepping outside our safe house and meeting some of the other inhabitants of our neighborhood in the mutual grace in which we stand. Maybe its just this one time giving ourselves a break when we secretly want to condemn ourselves for a percieved failing. Maybe its doing the same for another. That's refreshing and a warm bath in this cruel world. Maybe its just the ability to take a break and relax for a second and inviting a weary one to relax with you.

You see we are all safe in this love of the lamb (what a word to describe our God!). It is safe..test it. Yes its like the ice in the spring..we step gingerly seeing if it will support our weight. I'll tell you it will every time. We can begin to breathe and maybe even enjoy and care about the others around us. We don't have to guard and protect ourselves and this gives us more space for the other travellers around us.

Happy labor day

God has OCD

God Has OCD

God has OCD

Do we really understand the enormity of what God has done in Christ? Without the human race lifting a finger..God has simply dropped all the rules and regulations and laws and requirements we always thought were necessary to get God to accept us. God has just flatly ended the whole game in Jesus and niftily blanket pardoned the human race. This is audacious and is outside our understanding of what a proper God would do. Robert Farrar Capon (from whom I have lifted these ideas almost verbatim) calls this God a crook. Why? Because He really operates outside the normal range of human values. He did not wait for us to straighten out our ways, in fact, in some ways our brutality toward each other seems to be increasing (Khmer Rouge,Rhwanda). . He didn't give us a "You do this and I'll do that for you" task. No; while we were completely ignoring the Creator (or uncaused cause), He simply made us His blameless children. He dropped all the accusations against us, all of our sordid Historys, all of our empty promises down the great hole of Jesus's death. Then as a sign of this blanket pardon, this new day for the human race, He entered History and let us kill Him!

When we killed Him He didn't lift a finger to stop us. We whipped Him, beat Him, stripped Him, mocked Him and He simply said "Father forgive them" (and He did ). This was the flagpole that God planted on the earth for all generations to see. This unforgettable mysterious story stands in history to confound

Who is this guy? Remember the great line from the 70's movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, when Butch asks Cassidy about the guys who keep relentlessly chasing them and never give up? He said "WHO ARE THESE GUYS?? "



Who is this person who chases the human race and never gives up? Jesus used to tell these little cartoon stories that are often misunderstood, that give us insight into this strange person. One of my favorites is about a poor little old lady ( what a strange God figure!) who lives alone and loses a coin. She relentlessly turns the house upside down looking for this lost coin. She sweeps everywhere looking for it till she fimds it. God basically has an OCD personality to seek His lost coin(s); us.


Another even stranger story Jesus told was of a lonely shepard who tends a flock of 100 sheep and notices one is missing. He immedietly leaves the 99 (to the wolves?) to find the one. I think this again is OCD behavior. This creator being simply cannot get us out of His system and acts against His own best intersts to find us.



Now if I was a normal Christian this is the part where I would say "OK now that you know all this, get your act together and straighten up and get right with this God. But the fact of the matter is you don't have to lift a finger. I hope that bothers you. It bothers me. Surely there is something I can contribute to this relationship of acceptance. Surely I can con this fella into liking me.



But the fact of the matter is if we ignore this good news, its still true. He has accepted you and made you His child. He will never stop looking for you, Like the Butch Cassidy movie, if you climb a mountain, hide behind a rock, or even jump in the sea, He is right there holding you.

New Start

Well this is a new start to my blog, formally known as GraceJunky. For some reason I simply cannot access my old blog to compose new posts, so I am using this new blog to essentially edit and clean out the old blog. Its saturday morning, labor day weekend. Saturday mornings are some of my favorite times. I usually take a morning swim (I live in California), load up on heavy duty coffee and peanut butter toast and turn on the computer. This morning there is an added benefit, as the US Open tennis tournament is on, and watching tennis is a passion for me. I am a unrepentant multitasker. Playing tennis is a passion also, but my 59 year old knees have almost put me out of that business.

The best part of Saturday mornings is just the sheer gratefulness for life. I like to go to bible gateway (an internet site) and just read a few Psalms. There is just something about the psalms. David (who wrote the psalms) for an ancient religious man, has a pretty good bead on a crucial universal fact. There is a friendly supreme being who cares about him and and who wants to relate to David. David is real passionate about this fact and can't get over it.

 I think I love David because I see myself in him. David makes some selfish bad decisions in His life  that hurt Himself and the people around Him, but he keeps on keeping on. He keeps trusting his God to bail him out and to not turn against him.

Davids passions are not always such a bad thing. He wears his heart on His sleeve and He is not afraid to eloquently express his love for God and His friends and family. He makes questionable decisions to fight giants with slingshots (in the name of his God), but seems to squeeze through.

There are times David gets it completely wrong, in my opinion, when he begs God to destroy his enemies. His direct genetic decendant Jesus ( a decendant from His fling with Bethsheeba), 1000 years later, tells His Father to forgive his crucifiers..they don't know what they are doing.

David also gets it wrong when he claims he is being rewarded by God for the cleanliness of His heart and His righteous ways. People just can't give up that religious outlook! The amazing thing about Grace is that we are blessed despite the uncleanliness of our hearts and our foolish selfish ways.

So thats this mornings thoughts.

He jumped in the pool!

He jumped in the pool!

Jesus became a Human being, what more can be said about this? This is the most covered event in the history of the planet. He for better and mostly for worst joined Himself to the human race. That human race He joined would include Hitler, Mother Theresa, and Ted Bundy, Gandhi and You and I. You see he wasn’t choosey and He wasn’t leaving anybody out. We will get to the Hitler and Bundy part in a bit (it’s not the most important part!).



He chose you and me as we are. He chose us not on our best days, nor our worst days. He chose the muddled mass of who we really in total are, the good and bad, and the mostly in between. Jesus Christ loves the gritty human race. He is not stuck on the overachievers who manage to get their acts together sort of. He is not stuck on the disciplined and the noble. He is stuck on YOU.



He is stuck on you who have thoughts you wouldn’t want anybody to know. He is stuck on you who chooses X box game boy over prayer, or me who chooses NBA playoffs over bible reading. He is weirdly, completely stuck on us. I can’t stress His commitment level to the Human race enough. He chose us on our worst days, not our best days. He didn’t just sit on his big chair in the sky and pick the few the brave and the courageous. He jumped in the crowded soiled kiddy pool with the bullies, the cowards, the splashers and all the rest. When he got in the pool he didn’t blow His lifeguard whistle and make everybody behave. He just swam around the pool loving each one; including the one who held Him under till He expired. That’s Jesus. He is completely approachable, completely forgiving, tirelessly swimming toward us, His one love.



This commitment level is unexplainable and like nothing we have ever seen or experienced. We simply do not believe there is a love like this. The only thing we know to do is fear a being like this and distance ourselves a little. We distance ourselves a little so we can start our little efforts to control him. This usually boils down to religion.



Religion is the human races constant struggle to control God through some kind of ritual, behavior or creed. We find it way too scary to just walk unprotected into His presence, which Jesus (who tells us to call God Our Father) and Paul (enter his presence boldly says Paul) insists is freely given to us.



This love precludes any of our efforts because he chose us before we had done anything good or bad and made us blameless. He took care of all your sin problems, your laziness, my selfishness, my betrayals, before during and after we did these things.



This is crazy! He loved the world, the real Auschwitz, Chernobyl, Sistine chapel world to the point of death on a cross. He would do anything to rescue this world and show its citizens that He is not scary and not judging us! What are his last words as the bully held his head under water in the pool? “Father forgive them; they really don’t know what they are doing.”



Before I sign off let me say this about Mr. Bundy and Mr. Hitler. He loves them too. They may not choose to be a part of this forgiveness party; but they are invited. It’s important they are invited because it’s one more proof that those of us who aren’t mass murderers might get a free pass also.



Oh one last thing. I too struggle to get comfortable with this love. It’s hard to take. So when I am choosing to ignore this love and living in the dark; I am really in the Light of His love as he waits patiently for me to enjoy Him. That’s our Jesus, the Light and savior of the world!