TILL HE COMES Blog

It was not the way a king was supposed to be born. Kings are born in riches and glory, surrounded by silk, servants, and soft music. All the people in the entire kingdom wait with bated breath to hear the birth announcement.

Jesus was born with none of this. At least, not as expected. Yes, there was music, angelic, heavenly music. But it was sung out in the countryside, at night, to a few, poor shepherds. Yes, there were attendants at the birth, but they most likely consisted of a few relatives, and maybe a donkey or a cow. There was no silk, but instead, swaddling cloth, which was also used for burials. And only one person eagerly waited to hear of the Messiah’s birth, but that’s because he wanted to kill Jesus.

God could have done it a different way, but I believe that one of the reasons He did it this way was to show that the Kingdom of God is based on a different set of standards: Humility, lowliness, and simplicity instead of glamor, glitz, and glory.

So I can’t help asking, “What has happened?” Christianity seems to be chasing glamor, glitz, and glory, not humble service and simplicity. How did we go from a hay-lined manger to stained glass and marble floors? When did swaddling clothes become tailored suits? When did kings stop threatening us, and start courting us?

I can hear the objections now: “But this is what people want! This is what people expect! They want quality! This is one way we attract people to our church!”

Yes, that’s all true. But my question is, “How has any of this changed since the days of Jesus?” People have always wanted to join with the powerful, rich, glorious, and famous. That’s why kings and armies of the world have always operated the way they do. But that is not how God operates. That is not how Jesus came. That is not the kind of Kingdom Jesus brought.

So as we look at our churches, our structures, our clothing, our programs, and our budgets, it begs the question: “What Kingdom is this anyway?”

This post was based on the commentary for Luke 2:1-7 at www.gracecommentary.com.

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Did you know that the US Government cannot be sued? It has immunity.

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t intend on suing the government. I just found it fascinating that our government is, in a sense, “above the law.”

However, at various times, people have won lawsuits against the US government! How? At various times and in certain circumstances, the government waives it’s right to immunity. It’s called the Federal Tort Claims Act.

This Act declares that when a government employee makes a mistake, while acting within the scope of their employment, which causes them to personally get sued, the government will take the lawsuit “on their own back” thereby granting immunity to the employee instead.

In other words, if the employee makes a mistake while doing his or her job, and gets sued, the government waives its right to immunity and takes the heat.

Does any of this sound familiar?

How about this:

God made him [Jesus] who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed (2 Pet 2:24).

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I recently read reJesus by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch.

Like everything by Frost and Hirsch, this is a great book, and well worth reading. However, it was not what I expected the book to be. I judged the book by it’s cover…actually, by the subtitle on the cover.

The subtitle of the book is “A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church.” This led me to believe that the book would show the wild side of Jesus in the Gospels, and how we, as followers of Jesus, can live more like Him in our world.

The book did a great job explaining why we should study the gospels and learn to live like Jesus, but didn’t do a great job explaining how Jesus was wild, or how we could study the gospels to discover the wild Jesus.

Glimpses of the wild Jesus did come through. On pages 109-110, for example, they retold the story of Jesus confronting the demoniac near Gadara. It got my blood racing as I realized how wild Jesus really was in that situation! This is what I thought the book was going to contain. 

Once I realized that the book was little more than just a call for the church to return to the Jesus of the Gospels, I really enjoyed the book. The message it contains is sorely needed in Christianity today.

And who knows? Maybe Frost and Hirsch will come out with another volume entitled “ReJesus: reReading the Gospels for a Missional Church.”

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One of the blogs I read is De-Conversion, which is a blog for and by people who struggle with many of the elements of religion–especially Christianity. If you want your faith to be challenged, or you want to know what many people in the world think of your beliefs, this is the blog for you!

One of the contributors, Quester, recently made a post about hell. He concluded this post with the following retelling of Luke 10:25-37, the Parable of the Good Samaritan. This retelling struck me, because it reflects my own journey over the past 4-5 years in my understanding of Jesus, grace, and missions.

Here is what he wrote:

One day, a theologian decided to challenge a street preacher. “Preacher,” he asked, “what must we do to be saved?”

“What is written in the Gospels?” the preacher replied. “What do you read there?”

The theologian answered answered: “It is through Jesus that we are saved. We must believe in Him.”

“You have answered correctly,” the preacher replied. “Do this and you will live.”

But the theologian wanted to justify himself, so he asked the preacher, “And who is this Jesus that we must believe in?”

In reply, the preacher said: “A man was walking downtown, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stole everything, even his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him to die. After he died, Jesus came to him, wearing a frayed loincloth and a crown of thorns. Blood dripped from his hands, feet, brow and side. He was beaten but not broken, and there was a fanatic gleam in his eyes when he raised his head to snarl,

“Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.” (Mt. 25:41b-43)

Again, Jesus came to him, blond and blue-eyed with a sad smile and a pure white robe. He sat in the midst of quiet children and clean sheep and gently told the man,

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will say to me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?’ Then I will tell them plainly, ‘I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!’” (Mt. 7:21-23)

A third time, Jesus came to him, almost unrecognizably: a young, Jewish man with traces of sawdust on his faded blue jeans. When he saw the man he took pity on him. He went to him and healed his wounds, tears of compassion falling down his face. Then he took the man up in his arms, and carried him to our Heavenly Father. “Look after him,” he said, “I have paid for any debt he may owe.”

“Which of these three do you think was a saviour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”

The theologian replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”

The street preacher smiled, “Go and do likewise.”

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I found the following article last year, and am posting it here. I have no idea who wrote it, or when. It appears to be written by a non-Christian, but for all I know, it could have been written by a disenfranchised Christian. But whoever wrote it, it says a lot of things that I think and feel, and so I am posting it. Whether you like what is written below or not, please recognize that there are millions of people out there (both believers in Jesus and religious people) who empathize with what this person wrote. So here it is:

I went to church this Sunday; it was the first time in over a year and I was reminded once again why I will never be able to call myself a Christian. The people there were quite handsome, I’ll give them that. The building was beautiful, a masterpiece of architecture with a marble foyer and picturesque stained glass. There was greenery in every corner, which was about the only indication of life in the whole place. I sat on a very comfortable bench next to well-dressed people with plastic smiles full of bright white teeth.

The man in charge of music made us sing the same chorus over and over until everyone seemed to have convinced themselves that God was pleased, and then we all were told to greet one another. While an organ played some little diddy, a man extended his hand and asked me how I was, to which I replied, “Fine.” This happened three more times before I decided to tell the truth. “How are you this morning?” asked a perfect specimen of a young lady. “Horrible. Awful.” I replied. Her answer to my answer? “Well, praise God.” She never even heard me.

A few moments later a man approached the podium and talked about the great financial need of the church – apparently God was broke this weekend – and then he told us to give an offering as the Spirit led us. The Spirit didn’t say nothing to me so I didn’t give a dime when they passed the buckets – yes, an actual bucket – my way.

At this point it struck me that I had heard about the church, about money, about pastor so-and-so, but nobody had mentioned anything about Jesus. Seriously, not one word about their Christ. Oh, well, what did I care? I mean, after all, they were the Christians, not me.

Still holding out hope that the day would not be a wash, I listened to their preacher as he asked us to turn to the book called Matthew. He read about Jesus telling the disciples to not worry about anything because God would feed and clothe them. Nothing wrong with that in my book. For the next fifteen minutes he told me and the other 500 plus people that everything was good, and not only good, but getting better. He told me not to judge anyone because they weren’t to judge me.

His big thought of the day was that we ought to take a meal to whoever was our next door neighbor and tell them that Jesus cares for them and so does the church. Hmmmmm. My neighbor’s name is Russ and he is heavily tattooed, curses like a sailor, and beats his wife every other weekend after sucking down a bottle of Jack Daniels. Somehow I didn’t think that fried chicken, apple pie, and a hugs-and-kisses message from Jesus was really going to impact him so I chose not to take the preacher’s advice.

At the end of his little chat, we all bowed our heads and reminded ourselves of how good God is, how good we are, and how good it is to be good. Funny…in spit of being reminded how grand is my state of being, I left feeling rather bad.

Actually, it didn’t even rise to level of bad, it was the saturation of nothingness… irrelevance… and needlessness. I wondered if anyone else had caught this bug during the last hour or waste. What would have made the difference? I’m really not sure. Maybe a tear, maybe a glitch in the flow of the ultra-smooth program, maybe a torn page in the hymn book to let me know that imperfections were allowed in this church. I mean, the babies didn’t even cry, for goodness sake. Maybe a preacher with less of an ego and more of a soul might have helped.

I don’t know; I honestly went there hoping to find this Jesus that my friend tells me I so desperately need. All I found was a group of mannequins who resemble a Hollywood cast party more than a group of people with an in-road to God. I’ll take Jesus any day that I can find him, but you can keep your Christianity. I mean, I can find insignificance in life without God and His polished posse.

I may not be a Christian, but I can tell you one thing, the only time I know of that Jesus went to a place of worship like the one I attended last Sunday, it is my understanding that he turned over their tables, called them thieves, and ran them all out so that they could think about what the house of God was really supposed to be. Maybe if I had seen that from someone this past Sunday, Christianity would be more appealing.

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A while back I read Dan Kimball’s They Like Jesus, but Not the Church. I highly recommend this book since it does reflect the thinking of a lot of people in our communities. However, I ran into a whole group of people today who don’t think much about Jesus either. They don’t like Jesus OR the church!

My family and I attended the Scarborough Renaissance Faire today in Waxahachie, TX. We went last year, and loved it so much, we bought a season pass this year. Today was opening day.

One of the things that amazed me last year, and was impressed upon me again today, is the amazing community of this place. I have never, in my entire life, witnessed such a close-knit and fun-loving community as I have seen at this Faire. I ache to find a group of believers that can even come close to such a sense of community as this. They are an odd bunch of people, with strange clothing, behaviours, and language, but they all love each other and welcome everybody, even those who are very different from them with wide open arms. The church has a lot to learn in this area.

Anyway, as we were strolling around, taking it all in, we came upon a certain vendor booth where they were selling those little twirling sticks (I don’t know what else to call them). I have always been amazed by this, so stood there watching. One of the stick twirlers (Lance), came over and offered to teach my whole family how to do it. As we learned, we talked.

He soon found out I was a pastor, and immediately began calling me “Pastor Jeremy.” As we talked, it turned out that he has a pretty pessimistic view of the future of humanity. I said, “I don’t know, I’m pretty hopeful.”

He said, “Why? What is your hope in?”

You can’t ask for a better opening than that, so I said, “My hope is in Jesus.”

He looked at me like I was crazy. “Jesus!? Yeshua the Carpenter? That Jesus? You hope in Him? How can a dead guy help us today?”

I decided to not get into the resurrection yet, and so said, “Well, as people believe in Him for eternal life, and live their lives according to His example and teachings, their lives are changed, and whole communities and even countries can be changed for the better.”

He said, “Who sold you that lie? I have never met a single person whose life was significantly changed for the better because they followed the teachings of Jesus. Jesus was a fraud, and so is the Bible, and so are his followers.”

I was astonished. He has been living in the United States his entire life, and has never met anybody who he thought had been positively influenced by Jesus! So I asked him what his hope was in, and we talked for about another 20 minutes or so about his lifelong search for truth which culminated in discovering the Mayan seven-fold spirit agreement and how, like trees, we can dig our spirits deep into the earth, and throw the energy up into the atmosphere. I really didn’t understand most of what he was talking about. He said he learned all this from his spiritual advisor/babysitter named Merril. I also met Merril, who hasn’t cut his hair in 38 years, is missing most of his teeth, and talks a lot about Mayan calendars and spiritual auras.

Lance gave me the name of a free online movie to watch which he said would open my eyes. I have already watched the first 15 minutes and am excited to watch the rest. After I watch it, I’ll make a blog post about it and tell you what what movie it is. I hope that by respecting him and his beliefs, and by watching this movie, he might be open to talking more about Jesus next week when we go back to the Faire.

As I think over my conversation with him today, and after watching only 15 minutes of the movie, I have two questions I want to ask him. First, I want to ask him why he dislikes Jesus. I imagine that the Jesus he dislikes is the Jesus of religion, not Jesus of Scripture. There is a vast difference between the two.

If this turns out to be the case (that he has a skewed view of Jesus), then I want to ask him if, in his lifelong quest for truth, he has ever read about Jesus from Scripture, rather than just hearing about Jesus from others.

Anyway, I hope to build a friendship with him over the next six weeks, which I hope will last for many years, and maybe allow our family to become friends with others at the Faire. These people are some of the most amazing people I’ve ever met in my life! I wonder if they need a Faire Friar…

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I think that one of the best ways to reach people for Jesus today is not to try to persuade or convince them through rational arguments and persuasive reasoning. Certainly, some will respond to this, and so there is a place for it, but the majority of people today are relational in their approach to truth. Most people are not asking, “Do I want to believe like you do?” but instead are asking, “Do I want to live like you do? Do I want to be like you?”

Whether you agree or not, most people today believe that beliefs result in behavior. So if your behavior stinks, they assume your beliefs stink too, without even knowing what it is you believe.  

If you want to convince people of the truths of Christianity, the best way to “argue” it today is not through reason and and rational propositions, but by becoming more and more like Jesus is everything we do. Since Truth is a person (John 14:6), truth is best learned through knowing that person, Jesus Christ, and truth is best shown by living like Him. (And be careful! I am convinced that most of us Christians and many of our churches have a very skewed idea of who Jesus was, so while we think we are living like Jesus, we are actually living like Judas.)

If you want to reach our culture for Jesus, the best (and most biblical) thing you can do is show people Jesus and invite them to follow Jesus with you.

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I remember when I thought that the most important thing about Good Friday is that it actually happened on a Thursday. Yes, I was one of the freaks of Christianity who got his kicks studying, debating, and teaching the finer points of theology that few people even knew existed, and fewer cared about. (For example, did you know Peter actually denied Christ SIX times? I can prove it!)

So I laughed when I recently read in Vince Antonucci’s new book, I Became a Christian, and All I Got was this Lousy T-Shirt, that one reason he started to investigate Christianity was because of some old guy teaching on television about how research had proven that something actually occurred on Wednesday rather than Tuesday (pp. 11-12). Vince doesn’t remember what the event was, but I bet it had something to do with the Passion week. Scholars are always debating about the order of the events of this week, and what happened on which days. You will even hear some talking about the “missing day” of Jesus’ final week. I used to be one of those people. Of course, I didn’t have a “missing day” in my order of events, because for me, Good Friday happened on Thursday. I think I preached a sermon about this once. These are the things I cared about most.

More than the people in my church. More than my wife or kids.

Recently, I have begun to realize that a change has occurred in me. Much of what I once thought was so important, I now consider to be almost completely irrelevant. I have also found myself crying a lot. Yes, there, I said it. I am a man, and I cry. A lot. Maybe I’m emotionally imbalanced. Maybe I need some testosterone boosters. I don’t know.

These crying bouts have confused and concerned my wife. Three nights ago, as I was crying about something, she tenderly asked, “What is going through your head right now?” Blowing my nose, I sniffled, “I don’t know. This is all so confusing to me as well. I don’t understand it either. I’m not really thinking anything except, ‘Why in the world am I crying?’”

So I started to think more about it, and observed the times when I start to cry, then talk about it with my wife. I noticed I cry when I read or hear stories about people who have experienced great personal pain in life. I cry when I learn about people who lost a loved one, boys who were beaten or neglected by their father, girls who were molested or raped, women who were abandoned by their husband. Last night, when I shared this with Wendy, she said, “I think that while you used to love theology, you now love people.”

I think my wife may be right. I’ve even noticed changes in my reading patterns. It used to be that when I read books, I would underline and scribble all over the theology sections, and skip over or get annoyed at the stories the authors would include as illustrations. I saw such stories as a needless waste of words. Now, as I flip through books I’ve read over the past six months or so, I see that I have underlined and scribbled all over the stories, and left the “theology” portions nearly untouched. I want more stories. I find myself reading and re-reading them. I share them with my wife. I ask myself how I would respond (besides crying) to people who have such pain in their lives. I want to get to know these people whose lives are so full of pain. If possible, I want to soak up some of their pain, and share with them some of the love they so desperately need and which I have been given in abundance.

And I realized today, on Good Friday, that this is why Jesus died. Did He die for the “propitiation for the sins of the world”? Of course. Was it an “unlimited and substitutionary atonement”? Yes. But I believe that more than any of these theological truths, Jesus died to associate with us in our suffering, to understand our loneliness, and to soak up our pain.

His death was not primarily a theological event. It was the greatest act of love that ever occured in the history of the universe. Jesus died because He loves you.  

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I wish I’d had the courage when I was pastor to walk across the street. Oh sure, I walked across it every day back and forth to the church parsonage. But a bit further down the road was an atheist who had never set foot in our church, and probably never would. I wish I had gone over there and asked him out for lunch. It’s one of the great regrets of my years as a pastor. I thought about it every week, but I never had the courage.

Today I started reading Jim & Casper Go To Church. Jim is a Christian who makes a regular habit of befriending atheists. Casper is an atheist. Together, they attend churches and then write about what they heard and experienced. If you want to know what unbelievers think about you and your church, you should go ask them. But if you want to read about it instead (since it’s so much safer and easy), you can be like me and just read Jim and Casper’s book, and others like it (e.g., They Like Jesus, But Not the Church by Dan Kimball).

Jim has a ministry called Off the Map devoted to helping “Christians learn to communicate better with non-Christians, or as some of my more outspoken ‘lost’ friends prefer to put it, Off the Map helps Christians learn how to not be jerks” (p. xxii). It’s true. We can be real jerks. I’m sure it makes Jesus proud.

Anyway, I’m not even to the first chapter yet, but here are a few quotes from Jim with comments by me:

Humanity is divided into two groups: (1) people who follow Jesus, and (2) everybody else. It doesn’t matter to me whether you call yourself a Christian, a Buddhist, a humanist, an agnostic, or an atheist. If you aren’t following Jesus, you’re in group two (p. xxiv).

I could be wrong, but I don’t think he means that there can be Buddhists, agnostics, and atheists who follow Jesus. Sure, some may claim to follow the teachings of Jesus, but they would have to reject some of them. Just like many of us Christians do as well. And that’s his point. Just because you call yourself a Christian doesn’t mean you are following Jesus. I wholeheartedly agree with that. He goes on to say that “some professed Christians are not actually following Jesus but are instead following religion” (p. xxv). So true. I’m one such person in many ways.

He goes on to say that authors of a generation ago (and even many today):

…Provided Christians a way to defend the faith-the expectation being that if we provide a biblical response to the arguments of atheists of doubters and essentially prove them wrong, they will be forced to admit the error of their ways and join us. (Short of that, we will at least experience the pleasure of intellectually humiliating them.) (p. xxxii).

I’ve been in “witnessing” encounters like this. The only results that I could discern were increased blood pressure, as evidenced by red faces and bulging neck veins. Jim says, “Ordinary Christians like me know that when you start defending the faith, you also start losing your friends” (p. xxxiii).

The solution, Jim says, is to actually make friends with non-Christians, and live out the teachings of Jesus among them:

Jesus didn’t just teach principles; he taught practices. He gave people something to do. He didn’t just teach them about forgiveness; he told them to forgive their debtors. He didn’t just talk about love as a concept; he told people to love their enemies. He didn’t just tell people to think about changing their behaviors; he told them to repent. Sure it’s challenging, but it doesn’t take a weekend seminary to understand what he means (p. xxxiii).

I’m looking forward to reading the rest of this book.

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A critic paid me quite a compliment today when he accused me of befriending and conversing with atheists and people who use the “F-word.” If only he knew the truth…

…but I’ve got nothing to hide, so I’ll share it: My wife invited a lesbian couple over to dinner a while back. They haven’t accepted yet, but we are hoping they will. Wendy says that if I ever meet some prostitutes or strippers, I can invite them over too. I have not met any yet (and I’m not going to the places they tend to hang out), but maybe one day I will. I gave a $50 Burger King card to a drunk on the street a month ago. If I had the time, I would have gone and eaten with him. I keep looking for him at his corner but haven’t seen him yet. Before coming to seminary, we let an alleged murderer stay in our house for six weeks while he was on house-arrest. All of his friends and family members abandoned him when it looked like he was guilty, so we took him in. It was one of the best six weeks of my life.

So not only am I trying to make friends with Atheists, Agnostics, and people who use rough language, I am also trying to befriend homosexuals, prostitutes, strippers, drunks, and murderers.

And to tell you the truth, I’ve never felt closer to Jesus. I believe that if Jesus were walking the earth today, he would befriend and converse with these people too. Of course, the Pharisees and religious hypocrites would get upset at him today, just as they did 2000 years ago: “Gasp! Jesus is eating with tax collectors and sinners! Doesn’t he know what they’ve done?” (Read Matt 9:11; 11:19; Mark 2:15-16).

Yes, he does know. That’s why he eats with them. That’s why I eat with them too…. Not because I’m “holy like Jesus,” but because I’m one of those “sinners.” I hope that if Jesus were walking around today, he would come up to me and say, “Hey! I’m having a BBQ over at my place for sinners. Want to come?”

If he were to ask you that question, what would you say?

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