Category: unity

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Lonely or Broken?

Back in the 80s, the group Yes put out a single titled “Owner of a Lonely Heart.” One line in the song reads, “Owner of a lonely heart, much better than the owner of a broken heart.” There are a lot of people who would agree with that sentiment, along with that expressed in Simon and Garfunkel’s song, “I Am a Rock.” I can understand the feeling. Many have had their hearts broken by friends, family, lovers. Abuse, violence, and death is a common part of the human experience.

While I can understand wanting to withdraw from intimate contact with other people, thinking that hiding the heart will make life better, I would disagree with the sentiment that being lonely is better than being broken hearted. I agree with C.S. Lewis, who wrote: There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one , not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies, and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside of Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of perturbations of love is hell.

I believe a large part of the problem is our culture’s definition of love as something that will make the one loved happy and make the lover happy. It is a very self-centered thing. Because we can never make another person completely happy, and no one can ever make us completely happy, going into any kind of relationship with another person will be no safe investment. If you try to love others, whether as a spouse or friend, they may hurt you and you may hurt them.

As a follower of Jesus, I am commanded to love others. Not necessarily to seek to make them happy, and certainly not to make myself happy, although both of those things can and will happen at times. I am called to love others in a sacrificial way that seeks their good, even if that good may make them unhappy for a time. I am also called to love everyone, those who are like me and those who are different. This is where the rubber meets the road. Can I love my brothers and sisters in my local fellowship when we don’t see eye to eye? Can I love those who follow Jesus differently? If those whom I fellowship with aren’t “as far along in their walk with God as I am” can I love them?

In A Fellowship of Differents, Scot McKnight writes that to love others we must be committed. We must commit to be with those we seek to love. We must spend time with them, being a faithful presence. We must commit to be for them, to be on their side and let them know that we are for them. We must also commit to love them unto the person God has created them to be. As God’s faithful presence in us and his commitment for us transforms us unto the likeness of Jesus, so our loving relationships can transform those we love. It is in that loving unto that we run into difficulties. We don’t always take well to correction or teaching. We must be careful that we don’t hurry the unto before we have loved with and for. By our presence and support, our unconditional love, the Spirit can work in the hearts of those we love.

As someone who likes to be the one who fixes things, often with not so good results, I can tell you that what we need to do in our relationships is be faithful in our presence and support, and then trust the Spirit to do the work of changing hearts the way God wants, not the way we want. This is not easy because our love for others leads us to want them to be Christlike, and it can be heart breaking when it doesn’t happen. But, the results are not up to us. We are simply called to love as Jesus loves us. Period.

Let us show the world around us that we belong to Jesus by our love for others, especially our brothers and sisters.

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A Challenge and an Opportunity

Conservative writer George Will, in an interview on CNN, said that he believes that President Trump’s effect on the civil discourse in this country will be more damaging than Richard Nixon’s activities during the Watergate scandal. Whether or not you agree with him, I think it’s safe to say that the public climate in the United States is not good.

Take a look at campaign advertising the past few years. Almost all of it is aimed at painting an ugly picture of the opposing candidate. If you do a bit of digging you can find out that much of the advertising is at best half truths, and at worst bald faced lies. There is usually very little talk about the issues. Actually, this kind of thing has been going on during most of our history as a nation. It’s more widespread today because media is more advanced and covers a broader area. It does seem though, that the amount of vitriol in the public square is quickly reaching toxic levels.

Honestly, I don’t expect folks whose lives are all wrapped up in the kingdom of this world, who believe that human government will solve all our problems to act much differently. If you believe that your favored form of government is the only form of government it’s natural to see the other party as a threat to your way of life. From there it’s a short step to seeing individuals who disagree with you as evil. Don’t even try to tell me that is not happening.

What saddens me is seeing people who claim to belong to Jesus acting like those who don’t. Christians on both sides of the political divide attack other Christians, each side claiming that their views are the only ones influenced by Scripture, and that the other side is of the devil. Take a look at any of the social media sites and you see posts, from people who call themselves Christians, that are filled with hatred and misinformation.

This toxic climate presents followers of Jesus with a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is to begin to treat those who are our brothers and sisters with the sacrificial love Jesus commanded. Pagans in the first century recognized the love Christians had for each other as something unusual. Christians were also known for showing love to the pagans. When unbelieving citizens of a city fled an outbreak of disease, it was the Christians who remained, taking care of the sick. We here in 21st Century America are still called to show love to fellow Christians. We are not told to love those who agree with us and show hatred to those who disagree. Loving each other is a challenge because we have bought into the idea that government can be used to advance the kingdom of God. Whether on the right or on the left, we forget that the United States, as great as it is, is still a kingdom of this world. We need to remember that we are citizens of a greater kingdom, with a greater agenda.

The opportunity is great. As the civic discourse grows more vitriolic and the world around us grows darker, we have the opportunity to show a better way. The first century church showed the Roman Empire that the sacrificial way of the cross was the only true way to be human. Through simply living out their faith, they turned the world upside down. Imagine what it would look like if followers of Jesus decided they were going to show love to others, in person and online. What would it look like if Christians were known for their civility in discourse and their willingness to listen, not just “own” the other side? How about if, instead of shouting at people, we showed them the truth, goodness, and beauty of the Gospel?

May those who we deal with see, not partisans, but Jesus.

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Right Wing, Left Wing, Or…

A few years ago the eminent political philosopher Pat Paulsen said, “I’m not right wing or left wing. I’m more middle of the bird. If you have only one wing you tend to fly in concentric circles.”

As much as folks laughed at Paulsen’s statement, I think he was closer to the truth than many would think. For the past few years the government has seemed to flip from one wing to the other, and the country is dizzy from flying around in concentric circles. Signs of this dizziness are abundant. Congress is divided into two hostile camps and they all seem to be more interested in promoting their side’s agenda than in what is best for the country. The rhetoric from the politicians and their mouthpieces in the media is getting more divisive and hateful, filtering down to ordinary folks. If you can handle it, scroll through social media and see the garbage that passes for discourse these days. There are some who believe the system is about to implode. They may be right.

Hopefully, we will see some leaders arise who are willing to come to the table with those who disagree with them, who are willing to look for common ground and spend more time doing the hard work of governing than standing in front of the cameras vilifying the other side. Hopefully enough folks will realize that a lot of emperors are strutting about without a stitch of clothing. I believe that the country can not go much longer down the path we are traveling. Hopefully we will wake up and start flying with both wings.

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My Prayer

Abba Father, let your name be glorified in us, in our work and play, in what we say and do, in our relationships with our brothers and sisters.

Your kingdom is a kingdom of love, forgiveness, and reconciliation, a kingdom of healing and wholeness. Let that kingdom come to our relationships as it is in heaven. Your will is that your children be one. Let that will be done in us as in heaven.

Give us each day what we need. Give us sustenance, grace, and faith.

Forgive us our sins, against you and against others. Help us to forgive those who sin against us, as many times as is necessary.

Don’t let us give in to the temptation to build ourselves up at the expense of others, to prove that we are right and others are wrong, to hold grudges. Deliver us from evil.

Help us to remember that it is your kingdom, your power, and your glory forever and ever.

Amen.

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Blast From the Past: All For One, One For All

This was first posted on February 14, 2011.

“All for one, one for all” was the motto of the Three Musketeers. It could very easily be the motto of the church. As a people who follow Jesus Christ, you could say that we are all for One, and that One is for all of us. At least, that’s the way it should be. Sometimes though, it seems that the church has become more “all for us.”

I think that Jesus had the same idea as Alexandre Dumas when he established his Church, his Body. Scripture records Jesus teaching the importance of our relationships within a community of his followers. In Matthew 5:21-22, he says that treating others with anger or contempt puts us in danger of judgement. In verses 23-24 of the same chapter, Jesus tells us to get our relationships put right before we come to worship him (Hmmm, I wonder how many places would be empty on Sunday mornings if we really believed that). I think it is interesting that in those verses Jesus tells us to go and be reconciled with our brother or sister if they have anything against us. He doesn’t put that responsibility on the one who has been offended, and he doesn’t tell us to go if we think we are responsible for offending someone. In Matthew 18, Jesus does direct us to go to those who sin, but again, the goal is reconciliation. And, let’s face it, almost all of our problems within a community are due to things other than direct sin (although sin can result because of those things).
In 1 Corinthians 12, Paul describes the church as a body. To me, this chapter contains a perfect picture of what a community of faith is. It’s a body. Think about your body. Does your hand deliberately form a fist and hit your nose with it? Of course not! If your hand accidentally moves in a way that causes it to strike your nose and cause it to bleed, does your hand say, “Oh, well. I didn’t mean it, so I don’t need to do anything.” No, your hand is involved in getting tissues and holding them to your nose and trying to stop the bleeding. Every part of the body is important, no matter how small or weak. If any part of the body is hurt, the rest of the body feels that pain. A bad headache can cause the stomach to feel sick. An imbalance in the feet can cause damage to the knees, or a misalignment of the spine. The body is designed by the Creator to function as one, and when it does we see the glory of a great athlete or a prima ballerina.
Christ’s body is also designed to function as one. In John 17:11, Jesus asks the Father to make us one, just as he and the Father are one. When the body of Jesus functions as one, we see the glory of grace, the beauty of love, and the Kingdom of God is built up. When that body stubs it’s toe, or when a hand accidentally flies up and causes hurt to another part, that damage must be repaired. If it is not, the result is a deformed caricature of a body that is ugly and repulsive. The result is a body that does not bring glory to its Creator.
All for one, one for all. What would things be like if Christ’s body on this earth lived by that motto?
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Lessons From The Man Who Ate New Orleans Part 3

This is the third post in the series. In the first two posts, I wrote about the cardinal virtues of community, generosity, and resiliency. Today, I want to consider the virtues of diversity and openness to outsiders. New Orleans is a very diverse city. You will find folks from all different walks of life and from all corners of the globe. You can find any kind of food you can imagine, listen to whatever music strikes your fancy, and hear any of a multitude of languages, dialects, and accents. There are many styles of worship, from high church liturgical to storefront.

The body of Christ is similar. People from all over the world follow Jesus. In Revelation we read of people from every tribe and nation gathered around the throne. Christianity is not the possession of any single nation, ethnic group, or language. There are a multitude of ways in which people worship God. A local gathering of the church may be very diverse as well. There may be rich and poor, professional and blue collar.There may be folks who are quiet and reflective alongside those who are more boisterous and outgoing. Young singles may be next to married couples with children, who are next to older empty nesters. Ideally, the church is a body where different sorts of people are accepted and loved. Unfortunately, this is not always the case.

One of the reasons for the diversity of New Orleans is the openness of the people to outsiders. New Orleans is a welcoming city to tourists, and to those who choose to stay. Diversity is encouraged and celebrated. No one is told they must be a certain way to visit or live there. This openness brings a unity within the diversity. When Katrina devastated the city, the people there banded together to rebuild it. They see themselves as one and have a mutual love for their city. While there is still much to be done in the rebuilding effort, the unity of the people has brought New Orleans back to vibrancy.

Those of us who follow Jesus should be the most welcoming and open of all people. We are commanded to love others, to do good to others, to show hospitality, to accept others because we have been been accepted. Too many times, that acceptance is not there. Local gatherings of the church tend to be fairly uniform. The natural tendency is to gather with folks who look like us, think like us, worship like us, and are in the same social class as we are. While that may be the natural tendency, the church is a supernatural body. We are the children of a God who has called folks from all walks of life and every nation. Along with the differences, we have some major thing in common. Each of us has been redeemed by the work of Christ, adopted by God, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. We are not only fellow believers, we are family!

The early church turned the world upside down because they loved each other and those around them. They were one in their diversity. They were open to their neighbors. They lived the Gospel out in their day-to-day and showed the world the truth of the Kingdom of God. The church in America has largely become impotent because we have become more concerned with proving we are more correct than our brothers and sisters, and by waging “war” on those outside who don’t come up to our standards. While there is diversity, there is very little unity and very little openness to outsiders.

May we accept and love our fellow Christians, and be open and hospitable to those in our communities in order to show them the grace of the One who accepts us and who gave his very life for us.  

Part 1
Part 2

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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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Working At Cross Purposes

Last week, there was a somewhat comical scene on the shuttle bus. There were two brothers sitting in the seat just to the right of my seat. A parent brought a snow cone machine for me to take to camp, so I asked the boys to move to another seat. That’s when the fun started. The younger brother, who was sitting on the inside, decided he was going to go first. As he headed into the aisle, his lunchbox became hung up on his older brother’s leg. The older brother could not move his leg because it was blocked by the younger brother’s backpack. The younger brother couldn’t move either, because he was hung up on the older brother’s backpack. All the while, I’m standing there with the base to a snow cone machine in my hands hoping for a place to put it down quickly. As I surveyed the situation, I came up with a solution. I began to direct the brothers on what to do, but they simply tried again to get out of the seat at the same time. Of course, the results were the same. After a couple of minutes of directing them, they finally extricated themselves and moved to another seat. My comic relief for the day had come early.

As I thought about it later in the day, I realized that the problems the brothers had were a good picture of what happens so often in our lives. It can happen in the workplace, in the home, in relationships, or in churches. Sometimes it seems that we are just working at cross purposes with other people. We think we know what needs to be accomplished and how it needs to be done, but we just can’t seem to get the other folks to see things the same way we do. We also can’t see past our narrow perspective. Fortunately, the brothers on the bus didn’t do what we so often do. They didn’t get mad at each other, start hitting each other or flinging cross words. Neither of them walked away from the other and refused to sit with him. The rest of the week they got along great with each other. Unfortunately, we often do those very things, even in the church.

The brothers just needed someone to direct them and tell them what to do. Of course, they also needed to listen to the directions, or the results would have the same old same old. We have One who has given us directions to follow when our purposes and those of others end up getting tangled. Jesus gave us a few things to keep in mind that I believe will help us keep peace at the very least, and will allow us to do what is really important. Our Master told us to love one another as he loves us, to lay down our lives for others. That may include giving up our plans and trying to see another’s perspective. We are told to seek the Kingdom of God and his righteousness first. I’ve found that tends to radically change my way of looking at things. We are called to consider others better than ourselves, and to have the same humble, sacrificial attitude that Jesus had. Paul also tells us that what really counts is faith working itself out in love.

An attitude of sacrificial love will enable us to work together with others to solve problems that come up. I believe that this can work in every area of our day-to-day. I especially believe that it is a mandate for the church. Those outside the church don’t have the same command or motivation to love, but those of us who call ourselves followers of Jesus must seek to settle differences and try to work together for the good of the Kingdom. To do otherwise is to give the world a reason to wonder if we really belong to Christ.

God help us to submit our purposes to our King, for his glory

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Runners and Soldiers

Scripture portrays life as a follower of Jesus as running a race. In 1 Corinthians 9:24, Galatians 2:2, Galatians 5:7, and Hebrews 12:1, we are told to run a good race with discipline and perseverance. Alan Knox has a post on his blog titled, “It’s a long, hard road, but we’re running together,” in which he writes about a group he is a part of that runs trails together. In this post, Alan tells how each member of the group watches out for each other member as they navigate the hazards of running trails. There are roots and rocks that can trip an unsuspecting runner, and the results can be painful or catastrophic. Since trail running can be so dangerous when done alone, running in a group is a necessity. Alan writes of a runner in their group who had knee problems and at one point needed to walk. The entire group walked with her rather than leave her behind.

We are also given the picture in the Bible of being a soldier. Philippians 2:25, 2 Timothy 2:3 & 4, and Philemon 1:2 speak of being a soldier and Romans 13:12 and Ephesians 6:10-13 exhort us to put on our armor. A characteristic of a good army is that they do not leave any of their number behind. Men will risk their own lives to rescue a fallen comrade and bring him back to their lines. When soldiers go to war, they have to know that the person fighting alongside them will give up their lives for them if need be. On the flip side of this, the Church has been called the only army that shoots its own wounded. This should never be.

In our fellowships, we need to remember that God brings people into our lives for a reason. They are there for us to serve them and be a blessing to them, or for us to be served and blessed by them. We are in this race, this war together. We are all at different stages in our spiritual journey. All of us are wounded, some more than others. Some can run a long time at a sprint, while others tire easily and have to walk a lot. Sometimes those who can run faster and longer must adjust their pace to stay with the walkers. Sometimes we may be called on to sacrifice ourselves in order to rescue a fallen brother or sister. Jesus said that the greatest love we could have is the love that causes us to lay down our lives.

We must walk this walk, run this race, fight this war together. If we don’t we give our enemy a foothold to steal, kill, and destroy, and we fail to show the world what God’s love is truly like. God help us to live in love for each other.