stories

Remember Paul Harvey? “And now you know . . . the rest of the story.” I think of him every time I finish reading through the Gospel of John.

Here’s how John ends, in John 21:25 “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” It always makes me wish more of them had been written down.

I imagine a whole shelf full of books about Jesus life, and everything he experienced, and all the things he did. And, more importantly, all the things he said. I can’t imagine what all those other things are, but I want to know.

The fact is, I know everything about Jesus I need to know. I could have a library full of more eyewitness accounts, but they wouldn’t add a single word that would increase my chances of salvation, or improve my work toward my sanctification. The revelation of God as found in scripture is complete; it contains everything God wants me to know about him. And everything I need to know to live right.

So it’s enough for now to know that Jesus did a lot more than we know about. Some day maybe I’ll know more. More likely, I’ll meet Jesus face to face and I won’t care anymore. Just being with him will be enough.

names and titles

Isn’t it interesting that Jesus seemed a king to Pilate but not to his own people? Isn’t it interesting that the Jews were quick to proclaim allegiance to Caesar but even quicker to disclaim Jesus?

Look at this excerpt from John 19, starting at verse 14: “’Here is your king,’ Pilate said to the Jews. But they shouted, ‘Take him away! Take him away! Crucify him!’ ‘Shall I crucify your king?’ Pilate asked. ‘We have no king but Caesar,’ the chief priests answered. Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified. . . . Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of Nazareth, the king of the Jews. Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek. The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, ‘Do not write “The King of the Jews,” but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.’ Pilate answered, ‘What I have written, I have written.’”

Of course it didn’t matter a bit what Pilate or the Jews called Jesus. The fact is, he is God and he is our Messiah. He is Lord of this universe, king of every one of us. He was on that cross doing what he came to do, and the petty squabbling, name-calling and denials going on around him couldn’t affect things one little bit.

These days Jesus and Christians are called a lot of things. It’s good to remember that all the lies in the world can’t affect what’s coming. Jesus reigns, and one day every knee will bow.

what is truth?

I thought relativism – that idea that there are different truths out depending on a person's context and perspective – was a kind of a new thing. Relativism is what lets people decide human gender is not binary, that biological race is a human construct, and torture is acceptable if you do it to bad people. All kinds of choices, like lying, cheating, and violence become situational rather than moral if you believe truth is relative.

I should have known better, though, because eroding our confidence that there is fixed truth out there is Satan's way of attacking our belief in Jesus, who called himself the Truth and is the absolute standard for all our moral behaviors.

There was a perfect example of that in my Bible reading this morning, in John 18:37-38. Jesus is on trial before Pilate when this exchange happened. In response to a statement Jesus made about who he is and where he came from, this followed: “'You are a king, then!' said Pilate.
Jesus answered, 'You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.'
'What is truth?' retorted Pilate."

The next thing Pilate did was to turn Jesus over for crucifixion. His legal and moral position? "What is truth?"

One of the things we Christians are attacked for is our belief that Jesus defined a singular truth in his life and his teaching. Because we believe the truth of Jesus, we're called superstitious and intolerant and hateful. We're called that because Jesus promised the truth will set us free, but those blind to their own sin, the ones who buy Satan's lies about what life and fun is, are threatened by that freedom. Like junkies living for their next fix, the world is too invested in their own behaviors to accept that they are based on lies.

Because relative truth is another way of saying there is no truth at all. And anything that isn't truth is a lie.

This morning I'm praying for the courage to speak and defend truth. I need to find a loving, respectful to do that, but I have to do it. Anything less is, at a minimum, encouraging the lies.

love and obedience

Sometimes I can see why people don’t want to engage in true discipleship of Jesus. His words can be really hard to live out.

This morning I read this short excerpt from Jesus’ teaching to his disciples right before he was crucified. Jesus was trying to prepare them to carry on his mission without him, and one of the things he said was this, from John 14:23-24: “Jesus replied, ‘Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching. These words you hear are not my own; they belong to the Father who sent me.’”

What a simple, even stark message. The litmus test for love is obedience, nothing more or less. Those who obey Jesus will be loved by the Father and will enjoy the close company of God in all his persons. People who don’t obey by definition don’t love Jesus. And, Jesus points out, this was a specific message to Jesus followers from God the Father.

What makes this so hard are all the times when I don’t obey. I want to love Jesus and I feel like I do, but the sad fact is that some days I can really struggle with obedience. Not that I have some big besetting sin that I wrestle with like some big monster, but I can sure be diverted by leisure and pop culture and chasing the good life. I struggle with letting everything go in order to follow.

That makes me uneasy. I know I miss out on some level of blessing when I do that, but do I risk more than that? These words from Jesus suggest that I could.

I think it’s one of the big issues for American Christians, this attraction to the life that is supposedly our national dream. This morning I feel urgently that I need to pray for all of us not to be seduced away from all those things that show up in red letters in our New Testaments.

prophecy

This morning, continuing through the book of John, I noticed something fascinating. It played out this way.

Here’s what happened immediately after Jesus brought Lazarus from the dead, as told in John 11:45-48: “Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.
‘What are we accomplishing?” they asked. ‘Here is this man performing many signs. If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our temple and our nation.’”

That church council meeting captures the story of Jesus’ life in three simple sentences. The Jewish leaders were so focused on guarding the political right of the people to worship, so intent not to do anything to provoke the Roman occupiers, that they were willing to ignore all the miracles and messages that proclaimed Jesus as Messiah.

But here’s how the meeting went from there: “Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, ‘You know nothing at all! You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish.’”

That part I remembered, but if I’ve ever noticed what followed, I’ve forgotten in. Look at the hand of God, moving Caiaphas but yet keeping his unbelieving eyes blind. “He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. So from that day on they plotted to take his life.”

God sent Caiaphas a prophecy, a glimpse into his plan, but Caiaphas, unable to see with spiritual eyes or hear with spiritual ears, misunderstood God to say, “Jesus the rabbi must be killed in order to save the nation from Rome.” Caiaphas, with a front-row seat to the greatest moment in human history, completely missed all of God’s glory in his anxiety about worldly things.

It’s a warning to me to be careful what shapes my desires. It’s easy to get too attached to this temporary life and stop watching for eternity.

disciples

There’s a story in John 9 that I think is funny. It’s the aftermath of one of Jesus’ healings, the one where he healed a blind man by putting mud on his eyes. Afterward, the religious leaders interrogated him, then called him back for more questions.

Here’s the part that amuses me, in verses 26-34: “Then they asked him, ‘What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?’ He answered, ‘I have told you already and you did not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you want to become his disciples too?’ Then they hurled insults at him and said, ‘You are this fellow’s disciple! We are disciples of Moses! We know that God spoke to Moses, but as for this fellow, we don’t even know where he comes from.’ The man answered, ‘Now that is remarkable! You don’t know where he comes from, yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners. He listens to the godly person who does his will. Nobody has ever heard of opening the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.’ To this they replied, ‘You were steeped in sin at birth; how dare you lecture us!’ And they threw him out.”

The whole thing started unwinding as soon as the healed man asked, “Do you want to be his disciples too?” The religious leaders get prickly and defensive, the man gets a little snarky (“Now that is remarkable!”) and it all ends up with the religious leaders calling him names and booting him from the temple. You get the sense that the formerly blind man got the better of the exchange.

It’s funny, but it’s sad, too. These leaders were trying to do their best to defend their theology and keep the Jews on the right track. The problem was, they didn’t understand that they weren’t on the right track.

Imagine if they knew that they were sneering at being disciples of the long-awaited Messiah, the one true Savior. Imagine if they realized that they were so proudly claiming their discipleship to long-dead Moses to a man who had actually encountered God.

I wonder if I’m ever like that. Do I get so confident that I have things right that I close my eyes to the actual revelation of Jesus, in scripture and in people’s lives? Do I ever reject a brother or sister’s experience because it doesn’t conform to my theology?
I think I’ve done that. I hope I haven’t done it very often. I’m going to try not to do it again.

language barrier

I admit, sometimes scripture doesn’t make sense to me. I struggle to understand when Jesus says he came not to abolish the law, but to fulfill it, yet Paul says the old law of judgment has been replaced by the new law of grace. That’s just one example; I also have a hard time comprehending the Trinity and election and what God revealed about my life after death.

For that reason, Jesus’ words in John 8 hit me like a slap across the face. Jesus was responding to Jews who couldn’t understand that sin had enslaved them, and that while they put a lot of faith in their biological ancestry from Moses, they should really be putting their hope in Jesus and his Father.

Here’s what Jesus finally said in verses 43-47, the thing that jolted me (not for the first time, either): “Why is my language not clear to you? Because you are unable to hear what I say. You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don't you believe me? Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God."

Paul put it this way: things of the Spirit can only be understood by people who have the Spirit.

It’s a remarkably clear description by Jesus of a very common problem. When I start thinking with the world’s logic, basing my judgment on the world’s values, trying to make things align with my worldly goals, then nothing in the Bible makes sense. When I’m like that, I’m accepting Satan’s lies about who I am and what I should want.

But when I believe in the truth of Jesus, who said he is the Truth, then my values and goals and logic are consistent with his and it all gets a lot clearer.

The natural language of this world is the native language of Satan: lies. How can I ever hope to know the truth when I’m speaking and listening to lies? How can I ever hope to know the Truth?

hard words

I read this morning of the time when most of Jesus’ followers quit following. As a person who is required by my job and often asked by my church to lead, I was interested to see why.

The passage was this one, from John 6:66-68 “From this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him.
“’You do not want to leave too, do you?’ Jesus asked the Twelve.
“Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God.’”

Here’s what was going on: Jesus had just had a run-in with the religious leaders for healing on the Sabbath. During that debate he made the case that he had dual authority to do God’s work on the Sabbath, authority that superseded Jewish religious law: he was God’s son, and he was sent by God to act as his agent here on earth. Then Jesus made the startling claim that the only way to be saved was to partake of Jesus’ flesh and blood.

One or maybe all of these things were finally too much for most of Jesus’ followers. Was it the charge of blasphemy that he faced? His claim to be God’s son? This weird thing of eating his flesh?

Followers can leave when their leader runs into opposition, or when he challenges their long-held beliefs, or when he says or does something they don’t understand. Most of Jesus’ disciples did. I confess that the temptation has occasionally been there for me to question my loyalty to Jesus for one of these reasons as well.

But I always end up at the same place the Twelve did: “Lord, who else could I turn to? You have the words of eternal life.” In the end I trust Jesus because he saves, and he saved me.

choosing darkness

One of the saddest verses in the Bible comes in John 3, right after the story of Jesus teaching Nicodemus that if he wants true life he’ll have to be born again. Jesus goes on to explain God’s purpose in sending him to earth; this is one of the first times when Jesus pulls the curtain back a little bit on God’s master plan.

But that sad verse is this one, John 3:19: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.”

It’s our nature to love the darkness. It seems crazy when there’s life in the light, but in the darkness we can do what we want and no one will see. The darkness is a comfortable place for sinners.

This passage comes just a few verses after maybe the most famous passage in all the Bible, John 3:16. That verse, and the two in between, read like this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.”

God loved the whole world, sinners included. God sent his son because of that great love – that’s why we just celebrated Easter. God did it to save us, and all we have to do is believe in the name of Jesus.

So all those darkness lovers are self-condemned, not God-condemned. They love the darkness when they could love the light.

I have to be careful to judge, because I still have my secrets too. I still have those times when I’m drawn to a dark corner to do a thing I know I shouldn’t. But by the grace of God, that happens less and less. I’m becoming a person who lives with all the drapes and blinds pulled back. Both literally and figuratively, I’m a lover of the light. Praise God! And may he use me to help others become the same.

light

My Dad used to say, “Nothing good happens after midnight.” It was his way of trying to teach me that a whole different kind of people are out and about in the dark of the night, doing a whole different kind of things. That was a world where it would be easy for a teen-aged boy to find trouble.

I often think of that as I read scripture about light and darkness. All that is good and right, especially the divine influence of God in this world, is described as light.

My favorite such passage is John 1:1-5:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

This passage, beginning a Gospel that will tell of the life of Jesus, also goes back to the time of Genesis. In the book of John, the birth of Jesus isn’t described so much as the birth of the world – for John, they were linked.

This weekend we passed through the darkness of Good Friday to the glorious light of Easter. It reminds me that darkness flees from light, and that where the Light of the World is, darkness cannot be. If there’s darkness where I am, then I’m in the wrong place.

hope

Matthew 27:50-52 “And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit. At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook, the rocks split and the tombs broke open. The bodies of many holy people who had died were raised to life.”

It’s Good Friday. This is the day we remember when it seemed evil had won.

Evil seems so powerful. Evil aborts unborn babies, gases children, commits mass murder in our schools, sacrifices families and marriage, destroys civility and challenges even the most basic facts of how we were created. Evil, our evil, does all these things. And evil (our sin) crucified Jesus.

Evil seems so powerful, but in that moment when it seemed to have won, there was a message for Satan, a curtain-tearing, earth-shaking, rock-splitting, tomb-opening, dead-raising message of hope.

These are dark days.

But Sunday’s coming.

honest answer

I’ve been observing Easter all of my life, for as long as I can remember. I’ve used the scriptures to walk with Jesus through Holy Week more times than I can imagine. After all that, it still boggles my mind that Jesus was tried and executed for, well, being himself.

Look at Matthew 26:63-64: “The high priest said to him, ‘I charge you under oath by the living God: Tell us if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.’
‘You have said so,’ Jesus replied. ‘But I say to all of you: From now on you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.’”

Isn’t it astounding? Jesus makes one of the most beautiful statements –“You will see me seated at God’s right hand, coming to set everything right in the world” – as an honest answer to the question, “Are you the Messiah.” Of course he is. Asked and answered.

And for that hope-giving answer, which enraged the religious establishment of his day, Jesus was humiliated, tormented, and killed. Jesus was killed for being the only thing that could save me.

But then, Jesus being killed was the only thing that could save me. The horror of Jesus ordeal was the final master stroke against Satan.

Holy Week never fails to touch me.

faithful servant

As a manager, I know that I change people’s behavior just by walking into the room. I wish it wasn’t that way – I wish people felt they could be genuine around me. Some do, but most aren’t nearly as relaxed when I’m there as when I’m not.

That’s human nature, though. A co-worker has a saying he uses when our boss leaves town: “When the cat’s away, the mice will play.” I think everyone relaxes a little without supervision.

There’s danger in that attitude, though. In Matthew 24:45-47 it says: “’Who then is the faithful and wise servant, whom the master has put in charge of the servants in his household to give them their food at the proper time? It will be good for that servant whose master finds him doing so when he returns. Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of all his possessions.’”

As a good a faithful servant, am I diligent as I await Christ’s return? Or do I join so many who have the attitude, “While Jesus is away, we can play?” Not that Jesus isn’t always present, but his return is that day when judgment comes. In the meantime, it’s easy to let a day go by without really feeling his presence in the room.

I need to be careful of that. Most days that isn’t me, but sometimes it is. Sometimes it’s to think God’s kingdom isn’t a priority today – Judgment Day is a long way off and I can always catch up on my service work or relationship with God later on.

That’s a pretty poor response to the hard thing Jesus did for me when he was here the first time. Maybe if I can remember that, I can remember the rest too.

indignant

I don’t really think of myself as a church leader, but maybe I am one. I’ve been an elder a couple of times, I chair a committee, I lead worship. I’m at the right age. It’s possible that others in the church might see me that way.

At a minimum, I’m pretty invested in our current way of doing things. I understand how church works, and for the most part I think it works well.

But I began to wonder a little this morning as I was reading in Matthew. I read this passage, from Matthew 21:14-15: “The blind and the lame came to him at the temple, and he healed them. But when the chief priests and the teachers of the law saw the wonderful things he did and the children shouting in the temple courts, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David,’ they were indignant.”

At first I was incredulous. Merriam-Webster defines indignant as feeling or showing anger because of something that is unfair or wrong; what about healing and children singing praises could possibly make these leaders indignant.

But then I imagined the disruption to the normal routine. Not only did Jesus break up the buying and selling, but now the temple was overrun with disabled people. On top of that, there were those noisy kids with all their shouting. How can anyone bring offerings and worship with all that hubbub going on?

Except that this was Jesus, right in their midst doing ministry and pastoral care. Certainly anything Jesus wanted to in the temple was appropriate.

Certainly anything Jesus wants to do in my church is appropriate. Do I believe that? Even if it’s something new?

What if Jesus brings to our church the marginalized in our community, especially the ones who don’t have much to put in the collection plate? What if someone becomes so on fire that he starts praising out loud during the sermon? What if some kids started dancing to the praise songs?

In my church, we have a regulating document that states that everything must be done in good order. I wonder if sometimes we use the good order clause to squelch things we just don’t like. I wonder how often the spirit has moved and leaders in my church, maybe even me, have counter-moved.

It’s easy to condemn the chief priests and teachers in this passage, but I probably wouldn’t react well to shouting kids either.

sign of Jonah

I think I’m not unlike most people in that I have sometimes wished God would give me a hint about what I should do. That’s human nature, I think; we hate uncertainty.

So I might get why the Jewish leaders would ask Jesus for a sign, except they did it as a trap. Here’s the passage, in Matthew 16: 1-4 “The Pharisees and Sadducees came to Jesus and tested him by asking him to show them a sign from heaven. He replied, ‘When evening comes, you say, “It will be fair weather, for the sky is red,” and in the morning, “Today it will be stormy, for the sky is red and overcast.” You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times. A wicked and adulterous generation looks for a sign, but none will be given it except the sign of Jonah.’ Jesus then left them and went away.”

These days, that would be considered an awesome burn. First, Jesus says the sign they ask for should be as obvious as the signs of tomorrow’s weather they read in the sky, but they’re too clueless to sit it. Second, he calls them a wicked and adulterous generation.

And then, in effect, he says he’s already given them their sign. It’s like a parent saying to a child, “I’m not telling you again.” Generations ago, God sent Jonah to another wicked and adulterous people telling them to repent or burn – the same message John the Bapist brought to these Jews not too long ago.

I wonder over the ages how often God has given that same message, has called his people to repent?

This sign of Jonah came with two other signs: a storm and a big fish that meant “You can’t run or hide,” and a worm-eaten shade bush that said, “I will decide who lives and dies, according to my values and not yours.”

Take it all together and this reference to Jonah says one thing to me: Like everyone, I have to face God, hear his message, and either get with the program or prepare for an unhappy end.

I think I’m doing better at the moment than Pharisees, but that doesn’t mean I can take God’s grace for granted. Especially in this Holy Week, when I’m reminded of what it cost Jesus.

weeds, worry and wealth

I once preached a sermon on the parable of the sower, which I read again this morning. Then, as now, I was drawn especially to what Jesus says about the third seed.

Matthew 23:22 “The seed falling among the thorns refers to someone who hears the word, but the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth choke the word, making it unfruitful.”

Unlike the first and second seeds, the third seed could become good plants. The soil is OK, and the birds didn’t snatch it up. This potentially health faith was choked out by some pervasive weeds: worry and wealth.

Worry whispers “what if” in my ear, but what it really says is “what if God can’t handle this” or “what if God leaves you in the lurch?” For a Christian, worry always has an element of doubt in God, because we know we rely on his providence. If we trust, we don’t worry.

And when we worry, it’s often about money. Note that Jesus doesn’t say money is a weed, he specifically says the deceitfulness of wealth. I think this means the opposite of worry, this means finding security but in the wrong thing. Money could make me think I don’t need God; when the money is flowing I’m doing it myself, and I’m not doing without. I don’t need anything else, including God.

I’m always fascinated by this third seed because I think it captures the faith challenges of many Christians. I’m already past the stage where the first two seeds failed, but being side-tracked by worry or wealth is still very possible.

It’s a reminder to me that whether I have everything I want or I can’t see how I’m going to get by, my answer should be the same: to thank God for his providence, and rely only on it.

sheep

Sometimes I come up against something I’ve known for a long time, but it seems like a new truth. That happened to me this morning as I continued my reading through Matthew.

I was prompted by this excerpt from the first six verses of Matthew 10: “Jesus called his twelve disciples to him and gave them authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness. . . . These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: ‘Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans. Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel.’”

I doubt of any of those lost sheep thought of themselves that way. Jesus sent his disciples to the towns where God’s law was read in the temples by rabbis who were trying to help the people live faithful lives. But until these devout people stopped looking for a someday Messiah and recognized Jesus in their midst, they were among the lost.

A number of years ago I attended a conference on church ministry and outreach, and something the presenter said has stayed with me ever since. He said that, as a generalization, you can divide your ministries into four areas by drawing a quadrant. The vertical line divides the people who go to church and the ones who don’t, while the horizontal line divides people with a saving faith from those who don’t have one. As a result, you end up with four quadrants: church people with a saving faith, non-church people with a saving faith, non-church people without a saving faith, and . . . people in my church who don’t have a saving faith.

His point was this: we do most ministry to support and encourage people of faith. The rest we call outreach, and it’s focused on the quadrant of non-church-going unbelievers. But what about “inreach?” Shouldn’t we have something for the people in our pews who haven’t recognized Jesus yet? They might be what we call seekers, but they can also be life-long attenders who are in church for other reasons than that they want to worship.

There are probably lost sheep in my church every Sunday morning. They may be meeting all the expectations they learned in Sunday School and Christian day schools, they may even have made profession of faith, but their hope is really somewhere else than on Jesus. Like the lost sheep of Israel in Jesus’ day, they could have all kinds of head knowledge of the Messiah but haven’t seen him show up in their lives.

He’s there, though. How can I help them see him? My church is named Immanuel, which means “God with us.” I’m serving on a committee where we talk about seeing where Jesus is among us, doing his transforming work, so I’ve privately started thinking of Immanuel as meaning “Jesus among us.” He is, in my church and every church, but can we see him working? And if we can’t, how will those lost sheep?

If they can’t see Jesus changing me, and hear me tell of it, how will they find him?

leper

Matthew 8:1-2: When Jesus came down from the mountainside, large crowds followed him. 2 A man with leprosy came and knelt before him and said, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean."

When I read this story again this morning, I thought as I usually do that the leper’s words are really words sinners should use – sinners like me. “Lord Jesus, if you are willing, you can make me clean.” Of course, Jesus is as willing to purify me from sin as he was to cleanse the leper.

The leper said “If you are willing” because he knew by any conventional idea there was no reason for Jesus to care about him and every reason for Jesus to send him packing. But he came anyway because of the depth of his need.

By contrast, I’ve been told from childhood how much Jesus loves me, and how much he longs for me to come to him. I learned to pray for forgiveness, certainly, but I also learned to expect forgiveness. I find that I may have grown to think I can count on it. Does that make me value it less?

I don’t know, but I do know that desire for forgiveness sometimes isn’t very strong – I’m not driven like the leper was. He took a risk because he was desperate; I don’t always even take the riskless step of asking to be forgiven. Sometimes my prayers focus on my blessings and my petitions and skip over (or skip completely) confession.

I think that’s because I forget what the leper never could: that my condition will eventually kill me, and the only hope I have is Jesus. My sins don’t seem very serious; in fact, I often explain them away. They don’t seem as dangerous as, say, boating in a lightning storm or walking on the Interstate.

And even if they were, I can count on being made clean, can’t I? Jesus will always forgive. Even though I know better, I find myself sometimes holding God’s promises like a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. I can play it whenever I need it.

So I guess what I’m figuring out about myself is that I’m so accustomed to my sin that I no longer see it as life-threatening, but even if I did I see God as bound by his word to forgive me anyway. I know better, of course, but when I examine my life, that’s what I see.

That’s the heresy of cheap grace. When I think that way, I’m guilty of taking Jesus death too lightly, of minimizing the cross. That’s shameful, maybe even horrible.

What defines the truth about me – the things I believe or the things I do? If I don’t do them, do I really believe them? Is it possible that I don’t really think I need Jesus as much as the leper thought he did? Or maybe I need him but I already have him in my pocket?

I don’t like these questions, because I don’t like how they make me feel about myself. I think most of the time I’m a more faithful follower than that, but I see enough in my life to know that sometimes I’m not. It’s good today that this leper shows me something of myself; now to find the will to change what I see.

bread

I haven’t heard much from them lately, but there used to be a group called Red Letter Christians. These were Jesus-followers who focused on the words of Jesus as quoted in the scriptures – the ones that sometimes are printed in red letters in our Bibles.

I was intrigued by that, and since then I try to pay special attention to what Jesus said as I read through the Gospels. What if, as the Red Letter Christians did, I tried to live out those sayings of our Lord.

I was challenged again by that idea this morning as I read a few chapters of Matthew. First, in Matthew 4:1-2, was this from the account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness: “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, ‘If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.’
“Jesus answered, ‘It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.’”

That’s what got me thinking about Red Letter Christians, that idea that we need all the words of God as much as we need our daily food. What if I really believed that? I mean, I believe it in my head, but if I believed it in my heart wouldn’t I do it?

The I got to the Sermon on the Mount. That sermon is full of hard things, things like this from Matthew 5:44 “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.”

I don’t want to do that, so most of the time I don’t. I also sometimes don’t want to let my light shine, or many of the other things Jesus admonishes me to do in this part of Matthew. It seems to hard, or unfair, or just unreasonable. People will take advantage of me, or laugh at me.

That’s why following Jesus is truly a counter-cultural act – because the culture I live in pressures me against doing anything Jesus commands. I want to get along and do well in this culture, so much so that I’m often willing to live my faith passively instead of actively.

Being a Red Letter Christian would be hard. So is being a black letter Christian. None of it’s easy as long as my values are aligned with the world’s instead of God’s.

Ok, I finally got to the root of this particular problem – ouch! If I shared Jesus’ values, then living them out would be a lot easier. But I need to do that to live, just as much as I need to eat to live.

inclusiveness

Matthew 1:5-6 “Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab,
Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth,
Obed the father of Jesse,
and Jesse the father of King David.
David was the father of Solomon, whose mother had been Uriah’s wife . . . .”

Confession: For most of my life, I kind of skipped over the genealogy of Jesus at the start of Matthew. I didn’t recognize most of the names, so it wasn’t very interesting. Now, I read it every time, because to me it speaks volumes of the grace of Jesus.

I used to expect Jesus’ family tree to contain heroes and upstanding citizens, and it does. I’ve learned that Jewish genealogies were a formal legal description of a family that was used for business and ceremonial purposes. They had a certain form, and tended to put the family in the best possible light.

But the genealogy in first verses of Matthew breaks from Jewish tradition in a couple of ways that can only be meant to make a statement. For one thing, it includes four women: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth and Bathsheba. Jewish bloodlines and inheritances were patrilineal, meaning they went through the men. But the first part of Matthew lists these women.

Second, the women it lists represent a kind of airing of the family dirty linen. These could be considered skeletons in the closet. Tamar seduced her father-in-law Judah because he failed to protect her place in society according to Jewish law. Rahab was a fallen woman in Jericho. Ruth was a foreigner, a Moabite woman.

And Bathsheba isn’t named, except as the ex-wife of Uriah. The lust- and guilt-induce murder of Uriah was probably King David’s worst moment, and King David was probably the best of all the men and women listed in Jesus’ genealogy. You’d think that at least would be too embarrassing to mention, but it wasn’t.

The few verses above are representative of the whole in that they contain leading citizens (Boaz) and kings (David) along with unknowns and several women. Some of the kings after Solomon led Israel into idolatry. There is a mix of humanity that covers the whole spectrum of good and evil, men and women, Jews and Gentiles.

For that reason, Jesus’ family tells me of the inclusiveness of his covenant. You don’t have to be Jewish or male or even all that good to become a brother or sister of Jesus. You just have to believe in what he did on the cross.

This very first passage in Matthew tells me a lot about Jesus and what he thought was important. It makes me want to know more about everyone in it. It makes me want to know more about my brothers and sisters of the covenant too.