Her act reminds us that soldiers returning from service rarely receive the recognition they deserve. What she did shows reminds us that gratitude needs to be expressed, at a minimum, in words.  What is better is to go beyond words with actions that express our gratefulness.

The gospel is all about gratitude.  Why? Because when we receive grace, it is always undeserved.  This is the nature of grace.  God loves us freely and not because of anything we have done or any virtue he sees in us. His mercy is a free gift of love.  We also receive God’s grace freely, and his grace teaches us that all of life is a gift. This leaves no room for pride or boasting on our part, only gratitude.  Everything we do in response is just that.  We don’t serve and worship to receive anything from God.  God has already given us all things in Christ.  All we do for God is to thank him.

Anytime I am not grateful, God leads me back to the cross.  Again, I am amazed at God’s love for me, his patience with me, and his faithfulness to me.  I find myself rewinding the tapes of my life.  When I do so, I see so many reasons to be thankful.  That’s what all of us have the chance to do this thanksgiving.  Let this time prompt us to thank God and also to extend our thanks to the others in our lives who have loved and encouraged and supported us along the way.

Happy thanksgiving!

Of course, Jesus’ goal was not to stir up trouble. Instead, he came to show forth the grace that he would die to secure. Being welcomed at a table for the purpose of eating food with another person is a ceremony richly symbolic of friendship, intimacy, and unity.  Tax collectors, whores, and Pharisees were among the people he dined with.  He didn’t exclude anyone.Can you imagine a better way to show forth the truth of the gospel?  The message is clear: Jesus opens the way to life and for you to walk with the Father.  You can’t make this happen by being good or following he law.  You certainly can’t make it so by keeping good company.  And, who do you think you are anyway?  Who deserves to eat and drink with Jesus?  Who is worthy?  No one is.

But, none of this stops Jesus. He’s determined to go to Zaccheus’ house.  He accepts Levi’s invitation to a party with his tax collector cronies. He allows a notoriously sinful woman to anoint his feet at Simon the Pharisee’s dinner party.  How dare he? Of course, this was all according to his plan.  And why not? This is why he came.

The question for us is: do we get it?  Can we see that we can’t get home on our own?  That for Jesus to eat with us is for him to eat with sinners and broken people?  That who we share table fellowship with shows our theology about as good as anything else we might do?  The gospel says: The Son of Man came eating and drinking... Should we do less?

If we are to follow Jesus, we must be eating and drinking as well.  And, we must also come to see table fellowship as the way we share our lives, and his grace, and also the way we enjoy and spread his community.  This is why Christians have always practiced hospitality and opened their homes and tables to the world.  Do we get it?  Are we practicing loving hospitality that shows how high and wide and long and deep the love of Jesus is?

Discipleship is at its core imitation.  Today students want to know what their teacher knows.  In Jesus’ day, disciples wanted to become what their teacher was.  So disciples watch every move.  They follow every step afraid that they might miss a moment of insight or understanding.  Soon they speak with the same words as the Rabbi. They learn his mannerisms. They want to be like him in every way.  This is what Jesus was calling his disciples to when he said: Come, follow me.

This weekend our church begins a new eight-week study and community group cycle called Resonate. The concept of resonance is that sounds send forth vibrations that reverberate.  Indeed, objects with sympathetic resonance pick up the vibrations and so magnify the original sound.  We chose this image, as difficult as it might be to understand, because Jesus did not give his disciples a to-do list.  He didn’t burden them with exercises to become holy.  He said, I want you to learn me. “Become as I am.” Pick up who I am and become as I am.  The Apostle John captured this very clearly and simply when he said:

Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. 1 John 2:6

As one writer said: Discipleship is not about half measures. It involves perseverance, practice, dedication, and the readiness to learn.  It means investing our passion, our talents, and our whole selves.  But the rewards are beyond price.  And the resultant journey is the most thrilling adventure we will ever experience.

Will you come along for the journey?

Sonia coming out of surgery

Yesterday, Sonia’s heart was repaired at Miami Children’s Hospital in Miami. Our community is graced with one of the preeminent pediatric facilities in the world. The hospital has demonstrated the best characteristics of service and has provided exemplary care. The surgery was performed by Dr. Redmond Burke, who took an interest in Sonia and advocated for her treatment. Of course, many other people have come together to make this possible: The staff at God’s Little Angels orphanage in Haiti as well as families and friends in Miami, and elsewhere who have prayed for Sonia. By all accounts, Sonia has responded well to the surgery and is on track for recovery. Standing over her bed in CICU, I couldn’t help but marvel at all that has happened to love this six month-old baby girl. I thank God for our community and those who work to make this such a place of grace and care. I thank God for opening the door for Sonia to receive the love she needs to thrive. Please pray for her in the days ahead.

I saw myself as a comfort-worshipping idolater.  I did those things, even things for God, that kept or made me comfortable.  My false gods were comfort and peace.

Bob Baldwin’s words resonated with me when I read them in Alan Hirsch’s and Michael Frost’s new book entitled The Faith of Leap: Embracing a Theology of Risk, Adventure & Courage.  Please don’t misunderstand, Hirsch and Frost are not calling Christians to take up extreme sports such as cliff diving or base jumping. Instead, it is joining Jesus in his mission of mercy and grace for the world.  They demonstrate that the call to follow Jesus is the call to adventure that doesn’t sit well with our American-Pursuit-of-Happiness-and-Comfort theology.  When we trace the ministry of Jesus and look at how he trained and equipped his disciples, we see an astonishing push toward risk that requires courage and faith.  He seemed determined to get the disciples into boats where they would be brought to the end of themselves and where they could discover their deep need of him.  He pushed them into missional assignments that placed them in danger and tested their spiritual mettle.

Indeed, this seems to be God’s way from the very beginning.  He commanded Abram to leave everything familiar behind and go to the place he would show him. God sent Paul out as a missionary adventurer to places where he would be whipped and jailed and stoned and shipwrecked.  God gave Jeremiah a message that would get him thrown in prison and would cause his own family to ditch him.  And, think about Israel.  Their experience was one adventure after another: trusting God to provide food in the desert, to bring water from a rock, and to defeat an opposing army when they had no weapons to defend themselves.

Now these are things that the easy-chair-seeking-American in me does not want to hear.  I feel more Hobbit than Christian.  Do you?  Of course, Hobbits have no use for adventures.  Perhaps, just perhaps, this is why so many Christians become disillusioned and walk away from the church.  We have taken the life out of what it means to follow Jesus, to be on adventure with him.  Frodo Baggins learned that it is a dangerous thing to step outside your door.  Who knows where the path may lead.  Indeed, who knows where Jesus’ path may lead?

Bob Baldwin was shaken out of his spiritual lazyboy when God pushed him and his wife Carol into the adventure of their lives.  God got him involved loving his poor neighbors, risking his reputation, and courageously facing the needs of people not at all like him.  In the process he was pushed to a level of discipleship that Jesus wants all of us to experience.

Now with the whole idea of adventure dancing in my head, I think of going to Africa or some place else very far away.  But, Jesus’ mission begins with your neighborhood and the community in which you live. It begins with listening to the needs of your neighborhood, saying “yes” to opportunities to converge your life with that of your neighbors, and sharing God’s grace in word and deed.

One moment during this walk will forever stay with me.  As I told him about Jesus’ arrest and trial and crucifixion, the cold night silence was broken by the sounds of his sobs.  He had never heard about Jesus’ cross before that night.  The sheer brutality laid across the backdrop of Jesus’ love and innocence proved too much for him.  Of course, I knew all too well that from his culture men did not often cry in front of other men.  His response resulted from his shock at Jesus’ sacrifice and the human evil that intersected at the cross.

Years ago novelist Dorothy Sayers was asked by the BBC to write a series of plays for radio about the life of Jesus.  They asked her with no small amount of concern about how she would describe the crucifixion because she had a reputation for the scandalous.   In her letter to the BBC she said:

It is an ugly, tear-stained, sweat-stained, blood-stained story, and the thing was done by callous, conceited, and cruel people.  Shocked? We damn well ought to be shocked.  If nobody is going to be shocked, we might as well not tell them about it.

My new friend from Taiwan reminded me, who should have known so well, just how shocking Jesus’ death is.  It is his willing sacrifice, his loving sacrifice, his determined sacrifice, that shocks us to our senses.  It trumpets God’s determination to love his people despite what it costs and the fact that we do not deserve it, not even one little bit.  As theologian Beldon Lane has said:

Divine love is incessantly restless until it turns all woundedness into health, all deformity into beauty, and all embarrassment into laughter.

Let us remember this as we approach the celebration of Easter. O how great is the love the Father has for us!

First, looking at the Old Testament we see a picture of the covenant blessings of God.  It seems that the gifts of the covenant are conferred through marriage and family.  Abraham was told his offspring would be numerous, like the sand on the seashore.  Israelite men knew that they would not have a lasting name unless they had children.  As a result, there was no place in Israel for single adults.  Indeed, God commanded the prophet Jeremiah not to marry to show the people their spiritual condition.  Without children they would be cut off from the land.  Having a spouse and children was often the image God chose to explain the blessings his people would receive. Add to this the fact that your family’s land and inheritance could only be kept in the family if there was an heir.  In short, there was no conception of God’s covenant benefits outside of marriage and family.

Jesus’ coming changed everything.  He not only remained single, which was itself scandalous, but he taught about being single.  Here was the inheritor of all the promises of God, yet he never married.  Indeed, Jesus took the teaching of the Old Testament and applied it to those married and single.  No doubt marriage is a powerful covenant sign.  But in Jesus we learn that singleness is a covenant sign as well.

First, in Jesus people are joined to the covenant not by physical birth and bloodlines but by spiritual birth and the work of the Spirit.

Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. John 1:12-13

It is not natural descent that matters but God’s will and God’s grace.  This means that singleness becomes a covenant sign pointing to the fact that the blessings of the covenant come by grace as a gift of God, not through natural descent.  Furthermore, Jesus also redefined the family.  In Israel nothing was more important than your family.  But, Jesus revealed a new family, not a blood-family, but a new spiritual family.

Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.”

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.

Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” Mark 3:31-35

Jesus’ words would be astonishing for his Jewish listeners.  Indeed, Jesus is redefining family for the people of God.  What we see Jesus doing is deconstructing the “natural” view of the kingdom of God and erecting a spiritual view.  His followers are not born.  They are born from above or born again.

The result of this is a new conception of the place of the family and singleness.  Indeed, Jesus redeemed singleness.  As a result we should not be shocked by an emergence of singleness as a calling from God and as blessed condition for God’s people.  The history of the early church makes it clear that Jesus’ followers got the message. Whereas in Israel singleness was considered freakish, among Christians singleness was much more common and also often praised.

Of course today the church continues to struggle with singleness because there is always a collision of the natural, characterized by family and children, and the spiritual, characterized by spiritual children and a living inheritance unrelated to blood family.  We need the presence of single Christians to remind us of the revolutionary way of Jesus, and what the kingdom of God is all about.

Note: Barry Danylak’s work Redeeming Singleness provides an excellent treatment of this topic.

Now as a pastor I read this and it reflects what I have seen anecdotally.  I’m not a social scientist like Brown is, but my experience confirms what she has learned from her research.  I see people hungry for connection but also deathly afraid of rejection.  I see people numbing themselves to the pain in their lives and as a result feeling more disconnected.  What is the way out?

Her solution to this block is that we need to let go of those things that hinder us from being vulnerable.  We need to let go of what people thing about us, let go of perfectionism, let go of our self-numbing strategies, let go of comparing ourselves to others, and our need to always be “in control.” When I read the gospels I see Jesus living in just this way.  Unlike the Rabbis of his time, he befriended his disciples.  He opened up his life to them.  He freely showed his emotions expressing anger, indignation, and shedding tears publicly.  Often he was moved with compassion in ways that others could see.  He loved freely.  He was no stone faced savior.  He lived vulnerable and free.

I am grateful to Brown for her solid research and helpful books.  My view does differ with hers, and perhaps, where things matter most. We part company in what the source of our cure is. She believes we need to give ourselves compassion and to come to believe that we are worth it and valuable.  I believe this, but I also believe there is a deeper source for personal value and worth, and a deeper source for the kind of compassion that enables to see ourselves as the broken people we are and yet with beauty and value.  I believe that comes from God and is far more powerful that any words of self-affirmation could ever be.  It is to be loved by God and given infinite value in his eyes. His compassion transforms us and gives us a security that opens the way for healthy vulnerability and significant relationships.  Jesus made himself vulnerable, as vulnerable as anyone can be, so that we might have the assurance of God’s love for us and acceptance of us. I believe the more secure we are in who we are through him, the more vulnerable we are able to be.

Brown’s TED talk:  http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/brene_brown_on_vulnerability.html

Philippians 2

¹ If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose. ³ Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. ⁴ Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

⁵ Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, ⁷ but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Rachel, I remember first holding you in my arms, all 10 lbs 2 and ½ ounces of you. We were delighted at the sight of you.  God gave us a bundle of joy.  I cherish the memories of those early days holding you. Being your Daddy. We laughed together. We Wrestled.  Do you remember me singing to you?  Do you remember the songs of your childhood? Your mom and I learned early on how you loved music.  When you were a toddler, when you didn’t want to go to bed, we wrote the going to bed song.  You loved singing it with me. For some reason, you believed if you were singing the words, you should be going to bed.

My little girl has become a woman.  You have grown in beauty, in character, in faith. We marvel at the unique mixture of strength and compassion God has given you, a determination and tenderness that makes you such a loving servant.  But, your life journey has not been all easy.  All of us remember with tears the year when our family moved to Miami.  You wept for months.  We wondered if you would ever be happy again.  The only world you had ever known was stripped away from you.

But there in such a dark place, God did not leave you alone. He literally put a song in your heart.  As you sang with the chorus at Westminster Christian School we saw God’s healing grace flow into your life.  Indeed, he gave you a new song.  God pierced your veil of tears and drew you out with his love.  He transformed your tears into songs of joy.  As one of the prophets said:

The LORD your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.

God sang over you as I had so many years before.  God didn’t allow those days to be wasted, but I believe He worked in you to develop a deep compassion for those who are hurting through which he has given you your calling in life.

As the Apostle Paul said: ¹ If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, ² then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.

Rachel you know this encouragement from God; you know his comfort and his love; you know his tenderness and compassion.  Now as you are married to Joseph, what you have learned from Jesus is to be seen in your love for your husband.  In your unity with him.  In like-mindedness and love.  In service and in sacrifice.

Then Joe, you show up.  I knew this day would come.  I wasn’t looking forward to it.  Rachel is our treasure.  By the time Rachel became old enough for boys, my feeling was, all boys are predators. Rachel told you from the start it was going to be hard for any man to get our approval to take her off into the sunset.  But we watched how God brought the two of you together.  Sharing a love for Jesus and for each other, and desiring to live for God.  During one of the first visits to our home, you picked up Andrew’s guitar and began to sing.  You weren’t trying to impress us, you were taking up the song.  Many a night Sandy and I reveled in songs of praise and songs—well, at times we didn’t know what you were singing.  Sometimes Nate joined with his fiddle, Rachel played piano.  Andrew grabbed another guitar or played the jembe.  You shared our family song; you took up Rachel’s song.

This is the power of the gospel message.  God doesn’t come to us and force us to follow him.  He doesn’t coerce. He sings over us.  We know his love, and one day, we take up his song.  He captures us with the melody-line of his truth and he calls us to join in with the harmony of his purpose for the world. We don’t join up, we love him and his song becomes the song of our heart and our reason for living.  This is why it is so beautiful.

Okay, Joe, one day to my deep dismay, you posted a facebook message about loving Rachel.  By that time, Sandy and I had spent enough time with you that we could see God’s wisdom in bringing you together.  Rachel flourished in your love. I posted a comment on your post saying, “Rachel’s father approves of this message.”  Did I approve of you?  What was I saying?

The answer is yes.  You have my support and you have my little girl. Joe, you and Rachel are an amazing match. We also love you and receive you into our family.  We rejoice in the wisdom God has given to you, we thank God for your deep faith.   Today the call to you both is to follow Jesus.  As the Apostle Paul calls us to love and unity he says:

⁴ Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.

God has called you to each other not for what you can get but for what he calls you to give. In marriage you really are giving yourself away to another person.  Saying, I am yours.  I will be with you and for you.  We will joined as closely as two human beings can be. Then we are told how this is possible:

⁵ Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:

⁶ Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, ⁷ but made himself nothing,
taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
⁸ And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to death—
even death on a cross!
⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

It will happen as you follow the way of Jesus.  Self-emptying.  Servanthood.  Humble obedience.   As you live in his unconditional love for you.

Our problem is that we live under the delusion that it is our responsibility to make God happy with us. But, we can’t do it.  And, we know it.  This frustrates us, and distances us from God because. Why?

We come wrapped in imperfections.

If we’re really honest, we can see how broken our lives really are.

We’ve made poor choices in life.

We live aware of how much we fall short.

Because of this… we feel that if there is a God, he couldn’t be interested in me.  Maybe somebody else, but not me.  This is why the message of Christianity, and the plan of Jesus is such good news.  Jesus came to show us that God knows you completely and loves and delights in you.

He loves each of us despite the mess in our lives.

How can we know this?

God sent Jesus.  He is the source of all of God’s good gifts. In Jesus God gives us the gift of peace with him.  The forgiveness of our sins.  He gives us hope for a future with him.  Hope that our own lives will be filled with his presence and with his power.  Joy in forgiveness and acceptance and a changed life.

But, the greatest of these gifts is the gift of His love.  Why would God want to take on human flesh?  Why share in all the things that we struggle with?  Why face pain and rejection and uncertainty?  Why enter a world of brokenness if you don’t have to?

Because Jesus loves you.  He is not willing to leave you alone. He wants to share his life with you. This is the unconditional love he wants you to have toward each other.  In doing so, he invites you to join his great love song.  Sing to each other.  Share his melody with the world as you live for him.

Scotty's Book

Now of course, it is nice to talk about grace.  We may belief it in concept, but find that we still live by our performance rather than enjoying God’s love for us.

The world in which I have grown up is a world so full of grades, scores, and statistics that, consciously or unconsciously, I always try to make my measure against all the others.  Much sadness and gladness in my life flows directly from comparing, and most, if not all, of this comparing is useless and a terrible waste of time and energy. –Henri Nouwen

This measuring is so pervasive and starts so early in our childhood that by the time we are adults, it is bone deep. I remember growing up the middle of three boys. It was an unending competition for the attention and interest of my parents.  At times I felt deep sadness when I was excluded or did not get the spotlight. Of course, this pushes us toward self-sufficiency.  As adults we desire the competence that allows us to be as independent as possible. I want to be able to take care of myself, to need no one.  We push our way through life on our own.  In all of this, we exclude grace.  I love the way Frederick Buechner explains:

To do for yourself the best that you have it in you to do — to grit your teeth and clench your fists in order to survive the world at its harshest and worst — is by that very act, to be unable to let something be done for you and in you that is more wonderful still. The trouble with steeling yourself against the harshness of reality is that the same steel that secures your life against being destroyed secures your life also against being opened up and transformed by the holy power that life itself comes from.

I find Buechner’s words challenging.  He explains that the problem is not that God does not give grace, but that we have developed an “on my own” strategy to take care of ourselves and run our own lives.  God is so willing to love us and heal us.  What Jesus has done, giving up himself on our behalf, proves that.  We are the ones blocking the way with our damned independence and self-sufficiency.  (Yes, I used that word.)  It is tragic that God loves us so much and that we shut ourselves off from his grace.  It is as if we are dying of thirst standing next to God’s eternal spring.  All we must do acknowledge our thirst and drink.

The good news is that this does not deter God.  The spring keeps flowing.  We are the ones that miss out.

See to it that no one misses the grace of God... Hebrews 12:15