TILL HE COMES Blog

Luke 4:16-19 may be my favorite passage in the entire Bible. It is certainly a key text in Luke, and, I would argue, a key text for understanding Scripture.

In it, Jesus explains His mission. He explains what He intends to do in His ministry. If you and I are followers of Jesus, we need to soak our lives in these verses so we can follow these same principles.

Many churches, Christians, and religious leaders “spiritualize” these verses so that they only deal with realities of the Spirit and the afterlife. I believe this is wrong. Jesus was not concerned only with the spiritual side of people, and neither should we. While He did help meet the deep spiritual needs of people, He was also concerned with their physical, psychological, and emotional needs. Luke 4:16-19 deals with all of these.

If we are His followers, we will focus on such things as well.

But it doesn’t mean you have to do exactly the same things Jesus did in exactly the same way. He performed supernatural miracles, whereas, we may perform the same miracles, but through science or technology. We can work to accomplish the same things Jesus accomplished – healing the sick, setting captives free, giving sight to the blind, giving liberty to the captives – but using different methods.

Most Christians are quite uncreative when it comes to “living as Jesus lived.” We see him feed 5000 people and so if we want to “follow Jesus” we think that we have to get five loaves and two fishes, and pray over them until a miracle happens. But that’s not true at all. We can still feed 5000 people, or 50,000, or 500,000 people, simply by living less selfish lives, and being more generous with our money.

For example, let’s say you spend $5 per day on Starbucks coffee and $2 for a scone. Right there you have your five loaves and two fish.

That $7 a day doesn’t seem like much. But over a work week, it comes to $35. Through an organization like Compassion International, you can feed and teach a child in a third world country for $35 per month. So with the money you save, you could give three meals a day (and a biblical education) to four children every month. Over the course of just one year, that is 4320 meals. Jesus fed 5000 people, and we call it a miracle. Each one of us can do almost the same miracle every year for the rest of our lives, simply by giving up our five loaves and two fish (coffee and a danish).

This is just one example. With a little bit of creative thinking and self-sacrifice, we could come up with similar miracles in health, finances, and education. We can accomplish the same things as Jesus did, or even greater things (John 14:12)!

This post is based on the Grace Commentary for Luke 4:16-19.

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Today on Easter, someone probably said to you, “Happy Sex Goddess Day!”

No? That didn’t happen? It probably did, and you just didn’t know it. The word “Easter” is the English equivalent to the Babylonian “Ishtar” who was the goddess of fertility, love, war, and sex. On Ishtar Day, worshippers would rise early in the morning and go the temple for a Sunrise service. Later in the day, they would feast on an Ishtar ham, and the children would go outside and hunt for decorated Ishtar eggs. The eggs were supposed to have come from divine Ishtar bunnies, which were revered for their ability to rapidly reproduce. Ishtar was, after all, a fertility goddess.

The reason the church adapted some of the symbolism and practices is an interesting study, but the simplest explanation is found in our own culture. How many of you have t-shirts that say “God’s Gym” or “Abreadcrumb & Fish”? I’ve seen t-shirts with the Guitar Hero design, but on closer inspection, it says “God is my Hero.” Similarly, “Amazing Grace” t-shirts that look like “American Idol,” or a shirt with the superman logo, but instead of a big “S” it has “JC.” I’ve seen a Staple’s “Easy” button with the word “Jesus” on it instead. Is all this silly, commercialized, “Jesus Junk”? Maybe. But the reason people make this stuff is because it sells. People buy $4.6 billion of this stuff every year. And one reason Christians buy it is because such things help them bring Christ into culture. I would argue that there may be better ways of doing this, but that’s a different subject.

The point is that, 2000 years ago, some Christians decided to combine some of the Ishtar traditions with the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. Why? For some of the same reasons we have “iPray” hats and “Got Jesus?” bumper stickers. It’s an attempt (a lame attempt maybe) to be contextual.

Some Christians are aware of all this, and thinking of passages like Jeremiah 10:2 (Do not adopt the ways of the Gentiles…) refuse to say “Happy Easter!” Instead, they say “He is Risen!” Or “Happy Resurrection Day!” Those are good things to say today, because, of course, this is the day that Jesus rose from the grave. But I’m also fine with saying “Happy Easter.” Is that because I worship Ishtar? Far from it. Have I adopted the ways of Ishtar? No. Instead, calling today “Easter” reminds me of my redemption. How?

Well, the simple fact that most people don’t know the origins of the word “Easter” shows that a shift has happened over the past 2000 years. The day has been redeemed. Though Easter is a commercialized holiday, most still associate it with Jesus and His resurrection from the grave. Few know that it was not always this way.

Easter reminds me of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11. Though his readers used to be adulterers, fornicators, slanderers, thieves, drunkards, idolaters, and swindlers, they are not this way any longer. They have been washed. They have been cleansed. They have been purified, sanctified, justified. They are no longer who they used to be. In a word, they have been redeemed.

Similarly, we can talk about the way Ishtar Day used to be. But it is not that way any longer. It has been redeemed, just like you and me.

So, Happy Easter! He is risen! He is risen, indeed!

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Every once in a while I read a book that puts into words what I have been thinking, but couldn’t quite express. These are not so much “Aha!” moments as “Yes! Someone who understands!” moments. This last month, I happened to read two such books. Both put into words what I have been thinking and feeling for two-three years now.

Previously, I wrote about how the average reader can only read about 4000 books in a lifetime. These are two books I am glad are on my list. Both books might have made it into my Top Ten List. Definitely my top twenty.

The first book, Church Without Walls by Jim Petersen, is a book I’ve owned for about ten years, but never got around to reading. It’s probably a good thing I didn’t read it ten years ago, because it wouldn’t have meant much to me back then. Ten years ago, I thought I had church all figured out. I even wrote a book about it (I thank God it never got published…). Jim Petersen bases his book off of some church planting work he did in Brazil in the 1960s. He found that to really reach people who wouldn’t step foot in the typical church, he had to radically change the way the church looked and functioned. In the rest of the book, he summarizes the historical, theological, and biblical insights he came to as he struggled with how to allow this new church of Brazilian Christians be the church in their culture. (I recently learned that this this story is further developed in a new release, Will this Rock in Rio? by Ken Lottis.)

Jim Petersen then takes the lessons he learned in Brazil and applies them to our own time and culture. His basic conclusion is that various traditions have locked us into doing church a certain way, and have ceased to be helpful for many of the people we are trying to reach with the gospel (cf. p. 208). By abandoning some of these traditions, we actually liberate the church to live the gospel in our culture and communities. I’m looking forward to reading this book again.

The second book which got my heart racing is Repenting of Religion by Greg Boyd. Most Christians love to say they have a “relationship” not a “religion.” But the truth is that most of us just have another religion. I see this first hand every day at my job where I get to interact with people of seventeen different religions. Whatever differences they all may have, one thread runs through them all (Christianity included) — judgment and condemnation.

As Christians, we judge gays, lesbians, the rich, the homeless, people of other religions, atheists, heretics, criminals, drunks, drug addicts, prostitutes, pimps, politicians, and anybody else we can think of to point our finger at. Greg Boyd points out that Scripturally, these are not really the sins that God is most concerned about.  God is more concerned with other sins, which happen to be found in the lives of most Christians, especially those of us here in the United States.

But even this not Boyd’s point. He doesn’t just want us to shift our finger pointing from one target to another. He wants us to stop the pointing altogether. Finger pointing – judgmentalism – is a symptom of religion. “But wait!” you say, “Jesus judged. Paul judged. We are even told to judge each other! What about those texts?” Boyd is not ignorant of these texts and deals with all of them. His basic conclusion is that the only judging Jesus and Paul do is to judge the self-righteous, hypocritical, legalistic religious people for committing the sin of judging others.

As with everything Boyd writes, this book challenges your thinking and causes you to see certain Scriptures in a new light. If you want to learn to live out the love of Jesus within this world, you must read this book.

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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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