Category: grace

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Table As Goodness

In our fellowship, three of the things we emphasize are goodness, beauty, and truth. In this series, I want to look at table fellowship using these three ideas. This first post will focus on the table as goodness.

In the beginning chapters of Genesis, the statement was made that it was not good for Adam to be alone. Yes, he had fellowship with his Creator, but there was something missing. God brought Eve to Adam. They were put together for fellowship, for sharing life, and for caring for creation together.

All through Scripture, the theme of the goodness of fellowship is continued. The Hebrew word hesed carries the idea of both kindness and goodness, and many times is used in the context of relationships. Many times this fellowship is around the table. Hospitality was an important part of the Israelites’ faith. When God delivered them from bondage in Egypt, he began their journey with a meal. In Deuteronomy 14:22-26, the people were told to take the tithe of their crops for the year and have a family feast at the Tabernacle. If they lived too far away, they were to exchange the tithe for silver and spend it on the makings of a feast at a closer location.

In the New Testament, Jesus came eating and drinking. His first miracle took place at a wedding feast, and he spent enough time at dinner parties that his critics called him a glutton and a drunk. Jesus spoke of the feast to be celebrated in the kingdom of God. The early church was known for many things. Two of these were a devotion to fellowship and a devotion to eating together. What we call the Lord’s Supper today was just a part of a full meal the church ate together. In the epistles, we are told to practice hospitality. No matter what the enemies of the early church said, they had to admit that the followers of Jesus loved others. One of the ways they loved was by welcoming others to the table.

God said that it was not good for us to be alone. It’s good for us to have fellowship with others, to share our lives with others, and to help and encourage others. One of the best places to do these things is the table. Whether it’s a cup of coffee and dessert, a pint in a pub, or a full meal, spending time with people around a table is a good thing.

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Come As You Are, Bring What You Can

A few weeks ago a friend was talking with us about how she felt a little self conscious about bringing food to dinners and other gatherings because she didn’t cook, and because she didn’t shop at the same grocery stores as a lot of the other people. It’s an understandable feeling. In today’s culture we are bombarded with the message that what you wear, what car you drive, where you shop, and what you eat determines your worth. Unfortunately, this can even be the case within the church. In his first letter to the church in Corinth, Paul addresses the problem of some eating the food that they had brought without sharing with those who had none, and getting drunk while others had nothing to drink. There were evidently wealthy individuals in the church who refused to share with those who were less well off. James writes about Christians who were showing favoritism to rich folks (possibly to get their tithes? 🙂 ), while treating the poor among them like dirt.

Apparently, the early church hadn’t moved far from the attitude of the Pharisees and those who gave and attended dinners to enhance their social standing. Of course, we here in the enlightened 21st century have moved beyond such attitudes, right? Right? *crickets* In a post titled, Accepting a Seat At the Table, Craig at Throwing Bricks writes this:

 It’s strange but I often find Christians who are hesitant to fellowship with other followers of Christ who don’t share their particular set of doctrinal beliefs, political affiliations, worship preferences, social / economic status, race, age or perceived level of maturity.  They are more concerned with being proved right than being with Jesus.  It’s as though we are still abiding by the old rules of table fellowship.  I have some old friends that border on fundamentalism and though we all believe in Jesus and strive to follow his teachings we remain distant due to certain interpretations of scripture.  What gets me is that I have no problem calling them brother and sister but I’m not sure they would reciprocate that sentiment and it sucks.

Evidently, accepting others is an ongoing problem in the church. Sometimes we reject others due to different interpretations of Scripture, sometimes because of social standing. We still seem to have a hard time accepting those whom Jesus has already accepted. Craig also writes:

Jesus didn’t discriminate based on any of these factors but rather invited anyone to come.  To respond to Jesus’ invitation and accept a seat at the table is to accept Jesus himself and everyone else at the table regardless of personal differences.

Our Rabbi, the one we are called to follow, invited everyone to come and accepted all who came. Should we do less. 

To finish the story, I assured our friend that I knew that the folks in her group wouldn’t care where her food came from, who had cooked it, or what bag she carried it in. She is fortunate because she is part of a community of faith that loves her for who she is, not for any standard of “worth” the culture might try to put on her.   

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Peace

Today is International Peace Day. All over the world, people are thinking about peace, talking about peace, and working for peace. One of the goals of the day is that there be a day where there is no fighting anywhere in the world. Sort of a global cease fire. In the school where I work, students and teachers were asked what “peace” meant to them. Most of the answers including things like not fighting, no conflict, or treating others kindly. It is all of those things, but peace is also so much more. There is something which underlies all of those ideas. It is the idea of shalom.

The Hebrew word shalom means peace. It is also used as a greeting and a farewell. Shalom means more than just “peace,” more than just the absences of conflict. The word means wholeness, health, completeness, rest, and harmony. It is a concept that most don’t really understand because there is so little wholeness, health, rest or harmony in the world. Every day there is news of conflict somewhere in the world, or crimes committed against property or persons. Much of what passes for political speech is nothing more than arguing and trying to prove how evil the other side is. Even in churches, there is not the shalom  that should be there.

Jesus is described in Scripture as the Sar shalom, Prince of Peace. It is in Jesus that true shalom is found. He is the one who brings wholeness, who gives health. It is Jesus who completes us, who gives us rest. Only Jesus brings harmony as he reconciles us with God, and reconciles us with each other. Unfortunately, the world looks at those who claim to follow the Prince of Peace and sees division, arguing and fighting, and sometimes hatred. This should not be. We are told in 1 Peter 3:15 to be always ready to give an answer to those who want to know about the hope we have in us. I believe that means more than just telling people how they can go to heaven when they die. A large part of that hope is the shalom that we have in Jesus. We have something that the world is desperate for. Our problem is that we don’t realize what we have. We don’t realize that in Christ we are whole, we are complete, we are at rest, we are reconciled. If we can grasp that truth and let the Spirit form Christ in us, we can live in shalom. We can live in a way that is truly counter-cultural. We can exhibit the kind of hope that causes others to ask.

“May the Lord bless you and protect you. May the Lord smile on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord show you his favor and give you his peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26 NLT)

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Repost: Be Blessed?

This was originally posted on August 27, 2008.

The sign guy has another one up. This one reads, “Be blessed. Stay in his favor.”

I grew up hearing messages along that line. If you want God to bless you, you had to make sure that you did things that would keep you on his good side. I remember making sure I had confessed any and all sins that I could think of before I would pray for something really big that I wanted from God. I always “searched my heart” before Communion to make sure I was “right with God” so I wouldn’t get sick or die. I lived in a carrot and stick relationship with God. The carrot was his blessing if I lived right, and the stick was missing blessings or being punished if I didn’t. Even through my teen years when I got involved in things that I shouldn’t have, I still held on to the idea of getting “things squared away with God” before I wanted him to bless me in some way.

One of the biggest things the Father has taught me over the years is that he loves and blesses me because he wants to, because I am his child. I am in God’s favor because I am in Christ. I did nothing to earn his favor, and I can do nothing to lessen it either. I sin, but my Abba Father loves me far beyond what I can understand. My performance doesn’t cause God to love me more or less. I am accepted as a son by the One who is over all, and therefore I want to do those things that are compatible with my standing. I want to do those things that bring glory to my Father and that advance his Kingdom. I don’t do those things because I think that doing them will keep me in God’s favor and bring his blessing down.

I am through with a performance based religion that keeps its followers in fear that they might knowingly or unknowingly do something that is going to cause God to take his hand off them. I am through with a religion that acts as if God can be manipulated to give favor by man’s actions.

I embrace a grace that loves me no matter what, that has already given me God’s favor, and that is forming me into the image of Jesus Christ.

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Repost: Hummingbirds II

Originally posted on July 10, 2008.

A while back, I wrote about the hummingbirds that come to our feeder. A couple of days ago, I was sitting on the back porch and a hummingbird came to the feeder. It was interesting to watch because it spent all the time looking around to see if another bird was going to come chase it away. The poor thing never did get any nectar because it was afraid of the other hummingbird.

I got to thinking how often we are like that hummingbird. We are afraid to really follow Jesus because we are afraid of being attacked, by non-Christians and by Christians. Those of us who grew up in more conservative circles know what it’s like to always worry about doing something that will “harm your testimony” or “offend another Christian”. When I first began to realize that many of the things I was taught when I was younger were more in line with the culture that grew around the American Church in the past century than with what the Bible teaches, I still had times of looking over my shoulder in fear of what people might think or say.

That is not a Christ-honoring way of thinking. Jesus has set us free from the expectations and opinions of others. He has called us to follow him, not any system or philosophy concocted by human beings. A quick glance at the history of Christ followers shows the diversity in the ways we are called to follow. Beyond what we find in the New Testament, Jesus did not give us an exhaustive list of how to live our lives. Yes, there are certain principles that inform our lives, the most important being love God and love others. But there is a lot of life that is not as cut and dried as some would like to think.

Galations 5:1 Paul tells us that it is for freedom that Christ set us free. Galations 5:13 does tell us that we are not use our freedom as an excuse to sin, but much of the time that verse is misused as a weapon to get people to do what a particular group or person wants them to do.

We are free. Free to follow Christ in the way that he calls us, without worrying about what other people think. What can they do? Take our things? It all belongs to God anyway. Will they refuse fellowship? We have fellowship with the Father. Will they try to damage our reputation? What reputation? We’re all broken people in need of God’s grace and none of us is better than another. Will they take away our position? That frees us up to pursue another avenue of service. The worst they can do is kill us. If they do that, then we are with Christ. If we realize that all we are is because of God’s grace and that Jesus loves us no matter what, we can then be free to live our lives as the Holy Spirit leads us and become more like Jesus according to his schedule, not ours or any body else’s.

Don’t be like the hummingbird. Spend time drinking the nectar of God’s amazing grace instead of looking around to see who might attack you.

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Repost: Learning

This is something I wrote a few years ago. I’m putting it up today with the thought that someone may need some encouragement and possibly this will help a bit.

I was there
I knew the truth
Then you decided I had more to learn
At first it was easy
The new things were “positive” and encouraging
Then you decided I had still more to learn
Then it was hard
The new things were “negative” and discouraging
Hours of solitude and inactivity
Silence from heaven
I was in the desert
Waiting and waiting. Waiting and wondering
When will it end?
How long will I be out here?
Faith had been mine
But faith was misplaced
My faith was in what you would do
And you didn’t do
What is going on here?
Why isn’t this working?
You finally spoke
You told me to be patient
You sent me teachers
Those who had traveled the same path
I finally learned
To trust in you
Not in what you might do
But in you as you are
I departed the desert
But I left some things there
Just in case

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Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given Part 4

In Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen writes about the four words that helped him identify the movements of the Spirit in his life. Those words are, taken, blessed, broken, and given. In previous posts I have looked at the first three. Today, I want to look at the fourth word.

As followers of Jesus, we are to be bread for the world. As such, we are taken (chosen) to be blessed. We are blessed so that we may be broken. We are broken so that we may then be given. The chosenness, blessedness, and brokenness are not just for our benefit, although we do gain from it. Theses things happen to us so that we might be a blessing to others. The communion bread is given for the benefit of others. It is to be the same with us. We do not live for ourselves, we live for others.

Jesus commanded us to love others as he loved us. That means we are to lay down our lives for others. We are to live lives of sacrificial love. Ephesians 5:1 & 2 calls us to imitate our Father by living a life that is characterized by the same love that he showed to us. The Father’s love for us is a giving love. Abba loves us simply because he loves us. He gives us his grace regardless of what we do. We are his beloved children and he is pleased with us. Therefore, he loves us.

We are called to the same love that gives. If I do something for someone with an expectation of something in return, I am not showing love. That is a lesson that can be very difficult to learn, but it is necessary. Nouwen states that we find our greatest fulfillment in giving our self to others. I think he is right. After the fulfillment we find only in God, our greatest sense of worth comes when we are able to show God’s love to another individual. We can see this sense of fulfillment in those who don’t know Christ yet give to others.

This giving must be a conscious, deliberate thing. It is not going to happen automatically. We must determine day by day to give ourselves away. We can do this as we embrace being chosen by the Father, being blessed by him, experiencing brokenness, and realizing that all of this is so that God can give us to others. Paul writes that it is Christ who lives in us. It is Jesus who empowers us to give ourselves.

The giving can take many forms. It can be helping someone move, or repairing something around their house. It can be having them over for a meal. It can be something as simple as just spending time with someone and really listening to them without judging or trying to “fix” things (That’s hard for some of us). It doesn’t matter what form the giving takes as long as it is done for the good of another without expecting anything in return, simply because we love the other person. Being in community with other believers and sharing our lives with them will teach us to give, and to receive, as we interact as brothers and sisters.

As we live a life of sacrificial love, we can even give to others in our death. Our legacy can inspire others to give themselves as they remember the love that God showed them through us. A few years ago, a commercial for a pizza brand asked, “What do you want on your Tombstone?” A good thing for a Christian to be able to have on their tombstone when they die would be, “He showed us Jesus.” That would sum up a life lived as one taken, blessed, broken, and given.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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Repost: Hummingbirds

This was first posted on February 28, 2008.

We have a hummingbird feeder outside our back porch and it’s fun to watch them hover and drink the sugar water. It’s interesting that they have to come back often to drink because of the amount of energy they expend flapping their wings at such a fast rate.

Another thing I’ve noticed about hummingbirds is that they are very territorial. An aggressive hummingbird will chase others away from the feeder and will actually sit in a nearby tree watching for an interloper. In fact, a beautiful ruby throated hummingbird that was the first to come to the feeder was driven away completely by a brown one. It seems to me that an amazing amount of energy is wasted defending something that never belonged to them. The feeder is there because of the good graces of my wife and me. So instead of sharing the bounty with the other birds, one bird wastes his energy to defend something that is a gift and not his to keep.

How often are we, the Church, like that. We take the grace that has been freely given us and jealously guard it from those who don’t agree with us in everything. We think that God’s grace, like the sugar water, was given to us alone. We put God in a little box and try to interpret everything by the limits of that box. We waste an awful lot of energy defending things that either are indefensible, or are not vital. Then, we don’t have the time or energy to spend on the real work that Jesus gave us to do – making disciples who follow the Christ.

I’m not saying that Biblical truth doesn’t matter or that we should adopt an “I’m okay, you’re okay” philosophy. I am saying that we need to take a hard look at what we believe and make sure that we believe it because it matches up with what God says rather than because “it’s the way we’ve always been taught”. Is our Christianity Biblical or cultural? Did the faith we hold begin in the 1st century or in the 19th and 20th centuries?

Are we disciples of Jesus? Or, are we hummingbirds?

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Taken, Blessed, Broken, Given Part 2

This is the second post in a four part series. Part 1 is here.

In Life of the Beloved, Henri Nouwen writes of four words that helped him identify the movements of the Spirit in his life. In the first post I looked at the idea that we are taken by the Father. Today, we’ll look at the concept of being blessed.

As those who are beloved of the Father and chosen by him, we are blessed. We are not only blessed in the sense of having our sins forgiven and being at peace with God, but we are also blessed in the sense that God says good, true things about us. Our Father tells us that we are his beloved children, that we are adopted into his family and have all the benefits of heirs. We are in Christ, therefore we are co-heirs with Jesus. God tells us that he will always take care of us, that we can trust him to do nothing but good. While that good may not look wonderful to our eyes, we can know that it is truly good.

In a world that is full of curses and lies, we need to hear the truth that we are blessed. First, we need to hear from our Father. We do this by prayer. Not just talking to God, but also listening to him. It is hard to tune out the noise of the world around us and the lies whispered to us by our Enemy. Sometimes it is hard to distinguish between the voice of the thief who can disguise himself as an angel of light, and the true Shepherd who gave his life that we might live life to the full. Being still and learning to hear the Shepherd’s voice is vital in our walk with him. Whether it’s a few minutes here and there, an hour or a day, we need to carve out time where we simply are still so we can know that he is God.

Another way we can hear the blessing from the Father is to cultivate presence. We normally go through our day-to-day with tunnel vision and miss the many blessings Abba brings our way. Some of those come directly from heaven, some come through other people. When we realize those blessings, we need to receive them and show gratitude. Sometimes receiving blessing from another is humbling. It forces us to recognize that we really do need each other. Unfortunately, this is as true in the church as in the outside world. We want to appear strong and able, so we tend to pooh pooh times that someone has met our needs and forget that we have been truly blessed. Many times, the simple presence of someone in our lives is a blessing that we miss.

Through these two ways we recognize and claim our blessedness. We are not blessed just for our sake though. The Father blesses us so that we will bless others. Claiming our blessing will give us a desire to bless those we come in contact with each day, from the brother or sister who needs help, to the cashier at the grocery store who is tired at the end of the shift. In a world that is full of curses and lies, people hunger for blessing whether we realize it or not. Jesus commanded us to love others as he loved us. As we are forgiven, we are to forgive. As we are shown grace, we are to show grace. As we are blessed, we are to bless.

We can only bless others as we tune out the noise of the darkness and listen to the voice of our Father and claim our blessedness. Then, as Nouwen states,

“…we can face our own and others’ brokenness with open eyes.”

That’s a topic for another time.

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Repost: Giving It All Up

This was first posted on February 15, 2008.

In A Renegade’s Guide to God, David Foster tells a story of a wealthy man who built a large art collection with his son. The son goes off to war and is killed. Later a soldier shows up at the man’s door with a portrait that he had painted of the man’s son, saying that the son had saved his life. The portrait is given an honored place in the man’s art collection.

The wealthy man dies and his entire estate is put up for auction. The first item is the portrait of the son. The crowd is waiting for the “good stuff” i.e. the Picassos, Rembrandts, and other great works. No one bids on the portrait. Finally a man bids ten dollars. It is the one who painted it and ten dollars is all he has to give. Because no one else bids he is the highest bidder. The auctioneer then says that the auction is closed. There was a clause in the will that states that the son’s portrait was to be the only thing auctioned and that whoever bought the picture would get the entire estate. So the soldier, who gave everything he had to get the son’s picture, also got everything else.

That’s what being a Christian is all about. You give up everything you have to “get the Son”, and you get everything else that the Father has. It’s all about a relationship with Jesus. It’s not about a bunch of rules, how you dress, what kind of Bible you carry, how you vote, what kind of music you listen to, whether you smoke or drink, or any other external things. It’s about whether you realize that you can not save yourself and that Jesus Christ loves you and has died for you so you don’t have to die. It’s about having a relationship of love with the Creator. It’s about following Jesus and letting his Spirit guide you and form you into his image.
Jesus said he came to give us a life that is abundant and full. That’s the way Christians should be. Are we?