Then there are the window candles.  We didn’t do this until we moved to Kenbridge, but it’s become one of our favorite decorations – candles in the window, symbolically inviting the Holy Family to find shelter here:  “There may not be room in the inn, but I have room for you!”  Every tucked-away electrical outlet finds its annual purpose, and our windows shine with welcoming light throughout the night.  I can see and feel their warmth as I’m coming home in the evening, or during my morning walk before the sun rises.

There are times, though, when the light gets out of hand.  What is warm and welcoming outside becomes an uncomfortable burden inside.  Like when we notice the bright new addition to our monthly power bill.  Or when we have to make an unexpected trip to the store to get those tiny (but expensive) light bulbs.  Or when it’s time to leave for a trip, and we have to find all those tucked-away outlets again to unplug the lights.  For someone like me, who sometimes has a hard time falling asleep, the extra bright lights in our normally-darkened bedroom windows make it difficult to tune out the world.  For someone like Tanya, who loves a clean and tidy house, the extra lights at nighttime take away one of the merits of nighttime – the short-lived illusion that everything’s as tidy as it should be.

Sometimes it’s enough to make you want to pull the plugs on the things!

We welcome the warm glow of the Light of Christ at Christmas time.  How special this season is, how nostalgic and moving!  But when it comes to letting the Light of Christ into our lives – into all the parts of our lives – things get a little more complicated.  And why?  Because the light that started off as a warm glow from the darkness of a stable, became an almost unbearable brilliance from the darkness of a tomb.

The light can be costly at times, asking us to give things up.  In some strange way, the Light requires that we keep opening doors and windows into new and painful areas.  Like a floodlight, that Light finds its way into even the darkest rooms of our hearts, and shows us things we’d rather not be reminded of.  Sometimes its brightness keeps us awake, spurring us to thought or action at times we’d rather be resting.

“There may not be room in the inn, but I have room for you!” we say.  “Once Christmas is over, though, you’ll need to leave – or at least you’ll need to move into the back bedroom before you get too bright.”

But no matter the cost, the Light heals and frees us, the Light makes us whole.

Oh Jesus, Light of the World, bring your Light into my heart this day.  Let the Light find me out, in spite of myself.  Let it show me the things that need fixing, remind me that things are not as tidy as they should be, spur me to action at times when I’d rather be resting.  And let its brightness consume all the darkness that is in me, until all that’s left is the Light.

©2010 Notes From Jon. All Rights Reserved.

How can a Christian respond faithfully in times like this?  The answer might surprise you!

Desperate Times and Desperate Measures
A Christian’s Response to Economic Uncertainty

1 Kings 17:1-16, Mark 12:41-44
(also Matthew 6:19-34)

Intro: Letting Go

I had chances growing up to see all kinds of things.  We went on vacations once a year to places as far north as DC, and as far west as the Grand Canyon.  Strangely, though, I have only vague memories of some of these places.  I remember, for instance, the powerful feeling I had standing at the edge of the South Rim, but I don’t really remember any specific vistas, nor do I remember much of the long trip out west.

Strangely enough, one clear memory I have of growing up is going to the circus.  I remember cotton candy, silly toys that cost a lot and broke before I got home.  I remember animals and clowns – I even remember where we sat one time we went.

And one of my favorite things to watch was the trapeze artists.  What amazing skill they had, to fly through the air from bar to bar, flipping and twirling and ending up in just the right place at the right time.  I wasn’t the most adventurous child, but I could sure dream.  And I often imagined myself as a trapeze artist, flying gracefully through the air to the cheers of thousands.

That dream was shattered sometime in my teenage years, when I visited a particular ropes course on a youth trip.  A popular activity during the 80’s and 90’s, ropes courses were usually located at camps or in wooded areas.  Ropes or wires were strung between trees, and strategically linked together to make obstacle courses in the sky.  You might have to “walk” a shaky rope bridge with little help, negotiate a rope ladder, or slide down a zip line.  The courses were designed to build teamwork (you often had to work together to overcome an obstacle), and to give young people an esteem boost as they overcame their fears and achieved something difficult.

I had always been pretty good with heights, so I loved ropes courses.  It became something of a competition within a group – who could go through the fastest?  I thought I was fearless, until I encountered the largest ropes course I’ve ever been on.  It had multiple levels in the trees, and took even the fastest person 20 minutes or so to finish.  It had all the classic elements put together, plus a few I’d never seen.  And in one of those new challenges I met my match.

It was something like a Tarzan swing – two ropes hanging down, and you swung from one to grasp the other in order to move to the next challenge.  I came to the obstacle with confidence, thinking I would simply swing, grab the other rope, and get myself steady as I held onto both ropes before I went on.  But there was a problem – the ropes were too far apart for me to hold them both.  In order to make it, I’d have to let go of one completely, and jump to the next – just like a trapeze artist.

I made my initial swing, and as I realized I would have to let go, I froze.  I held on tight to the rope as it swung back and forth and eventually came almost to a halt.  I just couldn’t imagine that moment in the air when there was nothing to hold onto.  Sure, I was harnessed and someone on the ground held the rope that would keep me from falling.  But then I discovered the extents of my fearlessness – I had to face the new challenge of letting go of one thing completely so that I could grasp the other.

We’re going to talk about “desperate times and desperate measures” this morning, and I was facing that in a very real way!

Tough Choices

Today’s stories are about two widows who had to make similar choices.  They could choose either to hold onto their material things, or to trust in God… but they couldn’t do both.

1 Kings 17:1-16 (NET Bible)

(1) Elijah the Tishbite, from Tishbe in Gilead, said to Ahab, “As certainly as the LORD God of Israel lives (whom I serve), there will be no dew or rain in the years ahead unless I give the command.”

(2)  The LORD told him:  (3)  “Leave here and travel eastward. Hide out in the Kerith Valley near the Jordan.  (4)  Drink from the stream; I have already told the ravens to bring you food there.”

(5)  So he did as the LORD told him; he went and lived in the Kerith Valley near the Jordan.  (6)  The ravens would bring him bread and meat each morning and evening, and he would drink from the stream.

(7)  After a while, the stream dried up because there had been no rain in the land.  (8)  The LORD told him,  (9)  “Get up, go to Zarephath in Sidonian territory, and live there. I have already told a widow who lives there to provide for you.”  (10)  So he got up and went to Zarephath. When he went through the city gate, there was a widow gathering wood. He called out to her, “Please give me a cup of water, so I can take a drink.”  (11)  As she went to get it, he called out to her, “Please bring me a piece of bread.”

(12)  She said, “As certainly as the LORD your God lives, I have no food, except for a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. Right now I am gathering a couple of sticks for a fire. Then I’m going home to make one final meal for my son and myself. After we have eaten that, we will die of starvation.”

(13)  Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go and do as you planned. But first make a small cake for me and bring it to me; then make something for yourself and your son.  (14)  For this is what the LORD God of Israel says, ‘The jar of flour will not be empty and the jug of oil will not run out until the day the LORD makes it rain on the surface of the ground.’ ”

(15)  She went and did as Elijah told her; there was always enough food for Elijah and for her and her family.  (16)  The jar of flour was never empty and the jug of oil never ran out, just as the LORD had promised through Elijah.

Mark 12:41-44 (NET Bible)

Then he sat down opposite the offering box, and watched the crowd putting coins into it. Many rich people were throwing in large amounts.  (42)  And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, worth less than a penny.  (43)  He called his disciples and said to them, “I tell you the truth, this poor widow has put more into the offering box than all the others.  (44)  For they all gave out of their wealth. But she, out of her poverty, put in what she had to live on, everything she had.”

You and I face hard times.  The economy is in awful shape, and getting worse every day it seems.  Gas prices are going up and down like a roller coaster.  The financial future is uncertain, for our world, our nation, and our own families.

But we don’t face anything like these two women did.  They both lived in hard times – even desperate times.  What would you do in their places?  What kinds of desperate measures might we take?

The widow in Zarephath faced hard times along with everyone else in the land: in the ancient world, a drought could be a devastating thing, and they had no resources to get water from hundreds of miles away.  Crops and livestock died, leaving few resources for food – especially for widows, who had no husband to take care of their material needs.  You’re down to your last little bit of stuff to make bread, and all you can imagine is that this will be your last meal before you starve.

So what do you do, when a man comes to you and asks for food?  Do you grasp tightly, and say, “Sorry, this is my last meal and I’m going to make the most of it”?  Is that the kind of desperate measure that’s called for?

The other widow that Jesus observed faced her own personal crisis.  Who knows what desperate circumstances had taken her down to her last two pennies?  Perhaps her husband and her sons had all died, and she had scrimped and saved until a few meager pennies were all that was left of the small family fortune.

So what do you do when the time comes to give your offering?  “Sorry, God, but you can see how tough times are right now.  I’ll give you something later when I’m able.”  After all, she would wait in the long line of people putting money in the temple offering box, and many of the wealthier ones would stand and make a show out of putting their large piles of money in.  Everyone could hear as the coins left a waterfall of “clinks” as they fell in the box.  How embarrassing might it be to come behind someone like that, and to hear the measly sound of your two coins: “clink… clink.”

We can learn a lot from these widows who faced similar times as we do.  They both had choices to make – desperate times mean desperate measures.  But when we think of desperate measures, we probably don’t think of the response that these two women made!   And their desperate measures said a lot about the God they worshiped and trusted.

Changing the Rules

Have you ever played games with a preschooler?  I’m finding more chances to do that lately, as Abigail is getting into games these days.  She’s got a few card games, computer games, and even board games like Candy Land and Hi-ho-Cheerio.  And I’ve noticed, as most of you, that preschoolers don’t always have the respect for rules that most of us adults do.  The point of a game is to win, after all.  So if the rules get in the way of that, then let’s just do something about it!  And as a daddy, I just laugh and go along with it – squelching that part of me that screams, “You can’t change the rules in the middle of the game!”

We laugh when children do it.  But I think that you and I change the rules of faith sometimes when it comes to money and material things, as well.

We usually tend to hold on more tightly to God in times of trouble – when we’re sick, for example, or when someone we love is sick or in danger.  We reach out in faith because we realize we don’t have any control over our situation.  That’s normal.  As the old saying goes, “there are no atheists in foxholes.”

But for some reason, things are often reversed when it comes to money and material things.  We may hold on tightly to God in times when our well-being is threatened.  But we are a people of the material – and when our material goods are threatened, we tend to hold on tightly to the things we have.

“I’ll just wait on the tithe this month,” we say, “Let’s just see how things look at the end of the month.”

Or, “I know those folks need help, but I just don’t know if the money will be there.”

And it’s not just about the money or lack thereof – it’s the uncertainty.  We don’t like the unknown, the uncertain.  We like to know what’s ahead, to be sure our retirement funds and checking accounts will always have a nice pad.  If that certainty is not there, it will affect the way we choose to use that money – including the ways we use our resources to help others

Like the trapeze artist, we’re getting ready to swing out in mid-air.  On one side is our material things, and on the other is the God we claim faith in – the God who has told us to store up treasures in heaven, not on earth.  We can’t hold onto both at the same time.   As Jesus said in our earlier passage, “you can’t serve both God and money.”

It’s easy to trust God and to give and help freely when things are good.  But what about in the difficult times?  Times like this are the true test of our faith – a chance to see just how much we really trust God to take care of us.

Desperate Times

When we think of the phrase “desperate times call for desperate measures,” we might turn our eyes to the current financial crisis.  Times are tough – it’s time to get desperate and start looking out for Number One.  The budget’s getting tight?  Let’s cut back our benevolences and tithe.  We can always boost them again later when things are good.

Even if we don’t consciously think this, it’s something we’re tempted to think.  We don’t want to let go of that rope, because secretly we trust God with a lot of things – but not our money.

But the two widows in today’s passages teach us a powerful lesson.  Desperate times DO call for desperate measures.  But not in the way we think of it.  Desperate times mean we should be even MORE desperate to give and to help.  In desperate times, we shouldn’t give LESS, we should give MORE.

This is a hard concept for us to face, but in light of these two stories we’ve heard, and in light of Jesus’ words from the passage we read earlier, I don’t think we have any other choice but to see it this way.

This truth is practical, both materially and spiritually:

First, on the material plane.  We might want to dump ourselves in the category with the widows in our stories, in really “desperate times” financially.  But I don’t think any of us in this room can do that.  Let’s face it – probably all of us in this room are on the upper scale of things in this area.  We might not be close to Bill Gates or Warren Buffett in our income, but if we put things on a local scale, most of us in this room would probably be in the top 10-15% of income in our county and in Southside.

And if things are bad for us, how bad are they for those who are in REALLY desperate times?  When you have to face the choice between buying gas to get to work and buying food for your family?  Most of us don’t have to make that choice yet.

And even if we do have to make those choices, we’re never exempted from giving.  God never says, “Only give your tithe when you can afford to.”  He doesn’t say, “Only help others when you’re comfortable doing it.”  He simply tells us to give, and to help.

In times like this, it makes practical sense for us as the people of God to give MORE, not LESS.

And spiritually, it’s practical as well.  It helps us keep the rules consistent – we’re not switching rules mid-game.  We’re declaring that we have as much faith in God with our material things as we do with the rest of our lives.  And when we do that, we step to a whole new level of faith and our walk with God.

And just like Jesus said, we aren’t going to go hungry.  God will provide for us – more that we might imagine, in fact.  Tanya and I have found in our giving lives that God blesses us more the more we give.  There’s no formula to work out exactly how, and God’s not bound to it like a law – though he has promised that it’s more blessed to give than to receive.  And I think that all of you could provide examples as well.

Making it Work

So how do we work this out?  It’s not going to be the same for each of us.  All of us are in different places, financially and spiritually.  So each of us will have to think of what it means for us.

And to do that, we have to remember it’s not only a matter of material things – it’s a spiritual statement.  What do you and I need to do to fully let go of one rope and grasp on to the other?  We don’t have to give away every penny we have… we just have to be willing to if God asks.

In this way, there is a response for ALL OF US to make – every single one of us.

Our response might be financial and material.  Maybe we need to give more – and if we’re at all tempted to give less in these uncertain times, it’s a sign that we need to give MORE.  We’re in desperate times, so we need to take desperate measures.

I’m not asking you all to give more to the church – though if you want to, that’s fine with me!  But we do need to give even more in these uncertain times to people who can make things happen.  Pick up more food at the store for the food pantry, pick up things for Madeline’s House.

And if we’re already giving a lot, maybe we need to think of other ways to take desperate measures.  Maybe now would be a good time for you to volunteer at the shelter or the food pantry.  Maybe it’s time to check in on your neighbors – no matter what their color or what language they speak – and see if there’s anything you can do for them.

If there’s any time when we can make a radical statement about the God we believe in, it’s NOW.  Let’s be willing to let go of our things, and hold tightly instead to the God who has saved us, the God who has always provided for our needs, the who will bring us home to an unimaginable treasure someday.

These are desperate times.  Let’s take desperate measures, and show the world just how big our God really is.

©2010 Notes From Jon. All Rights Reserved.

Romans 5:1-8
“Rejoicing in Suffering?”

Last week we talked about the plotline of the story Paul is telling.  The exposition, the narrative hook, the rising action, the climax, and the falling action.  We also talked about how this is not just a novel or some story we’re reading – but that at the climax, each of our stories begin.  We hear the good news, we are confronted with the power and truth of the Gospel.  The rising action asks the question: How will we respond?  Paul assumes we will respond in true faith that changes our lives.

So Paul continues in chapter 5:

Rom 5:1-2 Therefore, since we have been declared righteous by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,  (2)  through whom we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in the hope of God’s glory.

This sounds good so far, right?  But Paul never leaves well-enough alone.

Rom 5:3-8 Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  (4)  and endurance, character, and character, hope.  (5)  And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

And why do we have hope?

(6) For while we were still helpless, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  (7)  (For rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good person perhaps someone might possibly dare to die.)  (8)  But God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Woah, Paul.  Why’d you have to go there?  Rejoicing in “the hope of God’s glory” from verse 2, that’s good.  Why don’t we skip a few verses?  There’s no need to talk about suffering, is there?

But this is not the only place this is mentioned.  Paul talks like this at least 11 times in his writing; James mentions suffering with Christ;  In Revelation, in the letters to the churches, it seems as if those early Christians must suffer for Jesus’ name.

Even Jesus himself hints at it a couple of times:

Mat 5:11 “Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things about you falsely on account of me.

And when Jesus talked about “taking up your cross,” people didn’t look at that as some symbol like we do.  The cross was a real, ugly and awful thing to them.  It would be like Jesus saying to us, “sit in the electric chair and follow me.”  There’s no mistaking what he meant.  For more on this idea, see 2 Cor. 4:11-12, Philippians 1:29-30, Phil 3:10-11; Colossians 1:24; 1 Peter 4:13-14.

What’s this about?  Why can’t we just stick with hope and not have to work through the whole theology of suffering?

First, it’s important to realize that Paul’s talking about REAL suffering.  He’s not talking about not being able to pray in school.  He’s not talking about being sad that the stores now use the word “holiday” instead of “Christmas.”  He’s not talking about seeing the Ten Commandments removed from a courthouse.

He’s talking about agony.  Betrayal.  Physical and mental suffering, like Jesus experienced.

And we don’t just ENDURE the suffering.  We aren’t just CONTENT with it… we REJOICE in the suffering.  How on earth could this be?  Why would anyone but a sadist want people to “rejoice” in their suffering and pain?

Other Reactions to Suffering

We don’t like to think this way – actually, we don’t like to think about suffering and pain much at all.  And it’s mostly because of who we are and where we live.  We’re so blessed to live in a place that’s relatively free of suffering and persecution.  It’s difficult for most of us to imagine actual “suffering” like Paul describes, because many of us have no idea what it’s really like.

Some Christians here in America have developed a different kind of theology that says we SHOULDN’T suffer.  It’s called “Prosperity Theology.”  They take passages from the scripture that talk about God’s blessings, and they translate that into everyday life.

“Are you suffering?  Are you poor or hungry?  It’s probably because you don’t have enough faith,” they would tell you.  God is placed as the middle-man in a greater system, whereby we receive blessings as long as we do things in just the right way.  We have to pray specific prayers, and we have to ask in faith.  We have to sacrifice in order for these blessings to come – especially if it means giving money to a certain person’s ministry.

To be fair, this is a caricature of these popular speakers and preachers.  Not all who teach the so-called “Prosperity Gospel” are this way.  But the root of their theology says that God doesn’t want you to be unhappy or to have to suffer.

To talk like this ignores all the teachings of the scripture about suffering.  And ironically, in the same way that it was necessary for Jesus to suffer and die in order for us to be saved, it seems that in some way we must also suffer and die in order to accept that salvation.

Another extreme is called “asceticism.”  If you read the book or saw the movie “The Da Vinci Code,” you probably remember the character of Silas – the albino assassin monk.  Whenever Silas committed a sin, he would whip himself, and would wear a collar with spikes that drove into his thigh.  One of the ideas behind practices like this is that if we are to “rejoice” in our sufferings, then we ought to spend our lives seeking out suffering.

The truth lies somewhere in between these two opposites.  I don’t think God ever promises us that life will be rosy if we act just the right way.  In fact, the amount of persecution and confusion we stir up seems to be the best judge of how well we’re living out the message of Jesus.  And if the Prosperity Gospel is true, there are a lot of wonderful Christian people out there who obviously have it all wrong – people who live in poor countries, or who have terrible diseases they cannot get rid of.

Neither do I think we’re called to inflict pain and suffering on ourselves.  We’ll get plenty of that if we truly act in Christ’s name.

Both of these extremes take God’s tools and put them in our hands.  We’re using these things as an end in themselves, when God sees them as a MEANS to an end.  When God gives material blessing in the scriptures, it’s usually for one of HIS OWN purposes.  When suffering occurs in the scriptures, it’s not just to make people feel bad.  God’s using it for something.

But WE are never called to use these things.  These are God’s tools, not ours.

Putting it Together

So how in the world can we make sense of this passage?  Psychologically, it actually makes sense, and Paul has given us the clues to understand it.

Rom 5:3-8 Not only this, but we also rejoice in sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,  (4)  and endurance, character, and character, hope.  (5)  And hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

Paul shows us a progression:  Suffering   ->   Endurance   ->   Character   ->   HOPE

I learned a lot about my body when we were trained for our first marathon last year – a lot about what my body needed for different tasks.  For a marathon, my body didn’t need extra strength.  I also didn’t really need extra speed – It wouldn’t matter if I could win a 400-yard sprint.  I could have the strongest and fastest body in the world, but I wouldn’t have been able to run 26 miles.  What I needed was ENDURANCE.

And you don’t buy endurance in a sports drink.  You don’t get it by sitting at home and thinking about it.  In order to get the endurance, you have to practice those LONG runs.  You have to do longer sprints and get your body used to the hard work.  And while I’m not calling it suffering, it certainly was not pleasant at times…

This is what Paul’s talking about with endurance.  Life is not a sprint.  We don’t just sit back and run our little bit and then hang it up.  We’re in it for the long haul.  And in order to develop the endurance to deal with the difficulties of life, we have to EXPERIENCE those difficulties and learn how to deal with them.

And this endurance is what produces CHARACTER.  We are the sum of our life’s experiences, and true character is not something that’s taught or gained by reading a lot of good books.  Character is developed as we deal with life’s difficulties and learn to overcome them.

And finally, character is what produces HOPE.  And HOPE is one of the most important things we have.

Paul’s saying, “You want to have the mind of Christ?  You want to be transformed into the image of Christ, just as God wants you to be?”  You want to live with the hope of God burning so brightly inside you that others can see it?  You want to be able to weather the storms of life, to bend but not be broken?

You can’t skip the first step – suffering.  There are no shortcuts.

This is why we rejoice in our sufferings, Paul tells us:  Not because we enjoy the pain, but because of what that pain will eventually produce – endurance, character, and hope.

©2010 Notes From Jon. All Rights Reserved.

Did you think I’d given up on Romans?  I’ve been sorely tempted.  But many of my church folks have told me that these are some of the best sermons I’ve done since I’ve been here.  So I’m continuing.

I think the popularity of these sermons is because they are basic and systematic.  They are basic in that they are designed to speak to the average person with no background in Christianity, but with enough depth that we can all learn or be reminded by studying them.  They are also basic in that they deal with very foundational tenets of the faith.  And they are more systematic than I usually am – my series generally do not last longer than three or four sermons.  Of course, I haven’t (until now) tackled a book more than four chapters.

You may have noticed that I went back and renamed the first few sermons – I renamed the posts by the scripture passage instead of just numbering them “Romans Part 1, Part 2″ and so on.  That’s mostly because I’m finding that as I get deeper into the book, I’m taking more and more time on smaller passages.  Before you know it, I’ll be on “Romans Part 26,” and that seems ridiculous.

Also, between the last post on Romans and this one, I did a very brief sermon on a communion Sunday on the first few verses on Chapter 4 – basically talking about the difference between grace and mercy – grace being what God chooses to give us that we don’t deserve, and mercy being what God chooses NOT to give us that we DO deserve.  It was more of a devotional thought than anything else, and I didn’t type it up.

So, all this to say – here’s the next part in the continuing series on Romans, and Paul’s basic outline of the faith.  As always, remember that this is not a full transcript – only the notes I typed up to get my thoughts together.  So sorry if they’re rough around the edges!

—————————

Just to catch up on where we’ve been, here is a summary of Paul’s argument thus far:

• God has every right to judge us and find us unworthy
  • Every human being has some inkling that a Higher Power exists.
  • So our sins are not ignorant disobedience, but WILLING disobedience. Even those of us who know God’s love and grace do not always do what he asks!
• We have all turned against God in our own ways, every single one of us.
  • And at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter who did what. Sin is not a matter of quality, but of quantity – and if we have any sin at all, we are guilty. The ground is level at the foot of the cross.
• Therefore, nothing WE can do will save us.
  • No matter how well we keep our religion, no matter how good our actions, none of these can make us righteous.
  • Only an act of GOD can make us righteous. We have to place our FAITH and TRUST in him to do what we cannot do.
• So God intervened – he offered us GRACE and MERCY.
  • His only Son as a sacrifice, so that we could be saved by our faith. This is GRACE – receiving what we do not deserve.
  • With Jesus’ sacrifice, God cancelled out the eternal punishment for our sin, making it possible for us to live in his presence. This is MERCY – or NOT receiving what we DO deserve.
• The act required on our part is not something hard – some gigantic feat of self-control or will. Rather, it is FAITH – simple trust that God can do what God says he will do… but a trust that’s strong enough to change the way we live our lives.

The Grand Story

Remember the basic plot line from English 101?

Well, Paul has defined the GRAND STORY for us.  He’s set up the arc of history so that we see what’s going on – what we’re a part of.

• Exposition – God created us to know him and live in relationship with him.
• Initial incident (conflict) – We sinned – that is, we turned to our own ways instead of maintaining that relationship with God.
• Rising Action and conflict – Our sin and unrighteousness drive us from God, and we realize that our actions – no matter how good – are not enough to make things right.
• Climax – God intervenes. Jesus lives, dies and is resurrected, making it possible for us to be made right with God again.
• Falling Action – What is our response?

This is where the story arc ramps back up.  Ever read a story or seen a movie when you thought things were about to be over, and then the plot took a new and unexpected turn?  That’s what we’re dealing with here.  The story’s not simply over when Jesus ascends back into heaven.  If it was, we wouldn’t still be here.  Obviously, the plot has thickened.  The first conflict is resolved, but now we come to the second conflict.

The first story arc was the whole of humanity.  The second story arc that branches from it is replayed in the life of every human being that has ever lived.

The first arc was OUR story arc.  Now this one is YOUR story arc and MINE.  The climax of the first arc – the death of Jesus that makes it possible to make things right – becomes the conflict incident of the next arc.  What will you and I choose to do now that we know?  How will we choose to live?

We have God’s promises:

• That we will live in a glorious new home with God.
• We will be made new.
• God will bless all the world through us.
• We are being changed even now.
• We can accomplish amazing things through the power of God.

All these promises are wonderful… maybe even TOO wonderful.  In our world, it’s easy to be cynical and to think that God’s promises are too good to be true.

God’s asking us to live in faith – to change the way we live to match what he’s promising us.  These promises are good, but can we really believe them?  We have a good chance at being happy here if we could ignore all this – “A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush,” right?

We have a pretty certain chance of happiness here if we’ll just let ourselves pursue it.  We wouldn’t have to worry about who we hurt, or what kinds of things we did.  We could follow our whims and desires to their very end!  We could be as happy as humanly possible on this earth, then die and take our chances with whatever comes next… if anything.  Is it worth giving all that up, in order to gain something that’s invisible – give up something tangible for something that we can’t prove?

This is why Paul tells us the story Abraham.  How can a man, who was born and died 2000 years before Jesus, be an example of Christian faith?

Abraham the Example

As he does in other places, Paul holds up Abraham is as the primary example of faith.  Abraham exhibits a kind of faith that might seem questionable, even reckless.

He’s grown up in one of the most fertile and cultivated areas of the ancient world – Mesopotamia, at the head of the Persian Gulf.  His father was a well-known and highly-respected merchant, with plenty of wealth to keep a family going for a long time… in other words, an inheritance that was hard to pass up.  Abram had it made.

And then God comes to him and asks him to leave his home behind – all his riches and his inheritance and the security of family.  It was no small thing to leave your family in those days.  You couldn’t just call home, or make a quick trip back to catch up with the parents at Christmas.  Abram knew when he left that he might never see his family ever again.

And all of this when God had asked him to simply leave, with no directions, no map, no GPS… not even a cryptic riddle that would give him some clues about his destination.

Talk about giving up a “bird in the hand!”

God made a promise that seemed almost too good to be true:  Abraham would be the ancestor of a great nation, and all the people of the world would be blessed because of him.  Hard to believe, as Abraham was getting on in age, and it seemed like he and Sarah were unable to have children.  But it was a wonderful promise all the same, and backed up with God’s covenant guarantee.

But circumstances and experience gave Abraham every reason to forget God’s promise and move on.  Abraham remains childless for many years. He has walked where God has asked him to, and instead of blessing, he’s found struggle.

• He has a family quarrel with his nephew Lot, and as a result Abraham is forced to make his home in the harsher parts of Palestine.  Though Lot chose the selfish path, he ends up in trouble and Abraham has to rescue him – twice.
• Still no children.
• Abraham goes to Egypt, lies to protect himself, nearly dies and returns back to Canaan in worse shape than he started.
• Still no children.
• He tells others about his God, and no one wants to listen.  For decades, no one listens or cares – probably because they have second thoughts about a God who treats his followers this way.
• Oh yeah… still no children.

Abraham had family and flocks back home.  Seems like he should have given up the birds in the bush, and gone back to what was stable and sure.  Forget God’s promise – obviously it was impossible!

But he didn’t.  He stayed the course, trusted God.  And he was rewarded.

Faith That Moves

It’s one of my favorite themes for a reason, and one I’ll continue to harp on.  We think of “faith in Christ” as simply a set of beliefs we have to hold – for instance, you simply have to remember in your head that Jesus is the Son of God, and a certain set of facts and ideas.

But time and time again, the scriptures show us – and Paul here reinforces – that FAITH, the kind of faith that saves us, is an ACTION.  If our “belief system” doesn’t lead us to change the way we live, to do something that would make no sense if God didn’t exist, then we don’t really “get” faith.  Abraham’s faith in God wasn’t just his trust that God was going to do something special.  Abraham’s whole life was changed because he believed – and ours will be, too.

This is what I meant about the storyline branching out here.  At the climax of the Big Story – where Jesus is crucified and rasied – each of us finds the beginning of our own plot line.  We’re born sinful and we know it.  We’re confronted with the truth of our nature and with the claims and promises of God.  The rising action asks the question: “What then shall we do?”  Will we simply say with our mouths that these things are true, and leave it at that?  Or will we allow this Truth to shape and change our lives?

©2010 Notes From Jon. All Rights Reserved.

These past couple of weeks, the news channels have followed a kind of story they don’t focus on very often:  the U.S. Space Program.  Occasional updates have followed the attachment of a new module to the International Space Station, and tests of the shuttle’s heat shield to make sure there won’t be another accident on reentry.  These stories about space are a rarity these days.  It seems like there are so many things to worry about here on the ground that we left behind the idea of space exploration a long time ago.  Occasional stories have caught our attention – the losses of the astronauts of Challenger and Columbia for instance.  But for the most part, save a tragedy, the eyes of the nation toward space discovery are either indifferent, unknowing, or outright hostile.

The hostility is understandable.  In a society that values things and money so highly, and where people and items are usually judged by the amount of their output, it’s easy to understand why people would see spaceflight as a waste of the government’s money.  And in a time of war, the crunch is even tighter.  And so manned spaceflight is rapidly becoming a private venture – taken on either by a few cloistered government workers, or by billionaires enamored of a new hobby.

What does the space program contribute to our world?  Lots, if you’re willing to look into it.  All kinds of inventions – plastics, medicines, new technologies – would not have been possible were it not for the work of scientists in the zero-gravity atmosphere of space.  And we don’t have to look hard to see that we’re going to need help on this planet before too long; New energy sources, modes of transportation, and places to live are all problems that space scientists around the world are working on.

Truth be told, our indifference and hostility toward space are a lack of imagination.  Much like the many naysayers who ridiculed or ignored Columbus’ crazy venture around to this side of the world, we simply can’t imagine (realistically) a world outside our own.  And yet, men and women around the world continue to put their lives on the line, year after year, to continue the slow crawl of progress in spaceflight.  Decades from now, when we’re celebrating our first colony on Mars, when the world has come together to push past Mars because Earth has become crowded and used-up… it’s likely in those days that we won’t pause long to remember the folks who, like Columbus, could imagine what those days would look like and were courageous enough to keep acting on it.

So what does all this have to do with God?  This column is called Speaking of Faith, after all.

Like the men and women involved in space exploration today – wrapped up in the “useless” waste of time and money – we are called on a similarly “foolish” mission.  Here we are, placed in a world that’s not really our home… but one in which it’s sadly too easy to feel comfortable.  And when we start looking at things from a “normal” point of view, we might see our mission as foolish.  Talk about good news in a world filled with all this mess?  Help out the poor when there are too many to count?  Work for justice for people who don’t speak our language?  Live as if God were real and made a difference in our lives?  That just sounds crazy!  And it’s close to impossible!

“For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” writes Paul in 1 Corinthians 1:18.  And not just to them – sometimes it’s foolish to us, too.  But fortunately, “the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom” (v. 25), and this foolishness is the very power that saves us… and that will one day make our world brand new.

Why stick with this foolish Gospel?  Why keep risking our lives in space?  Why sail around the other side of the world?  Let’s live with holy imagination, like explorers who can see things that others can’t see.  We might just turn out to be right after all.

©2010 Notes From Jon. All Rights Reserved.

K-V Dispatch

March 14 2007 Edition

Hold on to your hats: Yet another startling new discovery threatens to rock the foundations of Christianity! How many times have we heard this in the last five years? From the questions posed by Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code and the scandalous Gospel of Judas, to the recent discovery of the James ossuary (which, incidentally, was proven a hoax), it seems there is no shortage of revelations these days that strike fear in the hearts of millions of Christians worldwide! The foundations of the Church are crumbling, and Christianity is cowering in the shadow of science and truth…

Or at least, that’s what someone wants you to think.

In 1980, a group of archaeologists discovered a tomb with several ossuaries, boxes containing the bones of the deceased. Names on those boxes include “Jesus, son of Joseph,” Mary, and even “Mariamene,” a name that was reportedly used to refer to Mary Magdalene. The discovery was picked up by Hollywood director James Cameron (of Titanic fame), who has made a “documentary” on the subject. The implications are serious, they claim: Jesus was no more than a normal human being, who was married to Mary Magdalene, and who had children. No cross and resurrection, no ascent into heaven.

It seems everyone’s expecting Christians to shudder in fright. The world watches for some kind of vicious reaction from the Church, like cornered animals who realize their time is up. Sadly, some of us have given it to them.

I could go on for several weeks of columns, talking about the problems in their research, the evidence that disputes their claims. But you’ll see all of that on TV. I think what’s more important is not the story itself, but why we react to it the way we do.

We (as Christians) should not be surprised by this kind of thing at all. The rest of the world is looking through lenses of “un-faith,” and they will always see what they want to see. And they’ll keep looking… and they’ll still be looking years, decades, centuries from now (if Jesus hasn’t returned), trying to find that final straw that will break the Church’s back. And I believe the Church will still be as strong then as it is now, if not stronger.

What does it say about our “faith” when we allow it to be threatened or shattered by scientific discoveries, no matter how well-grounded they may be? What does it say about our God when we allow him to be judged by the whims of scientists and atheists who will read the evidence in their own favor? Is our “faith” based scientific proof and archaeological evidence? Or is our faith based on belief, on the Truths that God has revealed to us?

If you’re looking for scientific proof of God, I’m sorry to inform you that I don’t think you’ll find it. God wants us to have a faith that’s based on him, not on proof. As long as we are here on earth, the struggle will continue – between those who want to prove God, and those who think he’s just baloney. And in the middle will be those of us who just know – not because it was proven to us, but because we choose to believe that it’s true.

Instead of cowering in the corner and lashing out, maybe we’re better off looking seriously at these things and letting them inform – and challenge – our own faith. It’s no sin to ask questions – just ask Job. Rather than allowing our faith to be defined by the latest sensational news story, let’s look first through the lenses of faith and see the truth we need to be reminded of: That no matter what may come our way, God is still there, and he still has the final word.

©2010 Notes From Jon. All Rights Reserved.