The Peaceable Kingdom

As I work through the readings for the Second Sunday of Advent, the themes seem to be that Jesus comes to save all, Jews and Gentiles alike, and that his reign (romanticized in modern thought as “the peaceable kingdom”) will be marked by peace and harmony.  In other words, it will be radically different from the world as we know it.

I’ve just finished reading Dallas Willard’s The Spirit of the Disciplines, which is about how the spiritual disciplines (prayer, solitude, service, etc.) help us live out our faith.  The vision of the peaceable kingdom isn’t a major theme in Willard’s book, but he does discuss it as the logical next step in our growth as followers of Jesus.  If we follow Jesus and adopt his values as our own, the world will change radically for the better.  Instead of a society which resorts almost automatically to violence and coercion, society will look more like heaven.

Willard also says that it’s not logical for us to expect anything other than more of the same in our world until we do this.  It’s a jarring reminder that things aren’t going to get better until people get better.  Simple idea, but easy to forget in our dreams of a better day.  That day won’t come from better government policy, more able leaders, better weather, advances in scientific knowledge, economic growth, or superficial trends in human interaction.  It will come from the surrender to God that John the Baptist calls for on the banks of the Jordan when he says, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”  (Matthew 3:2)

Obedience

In this Sunday’s Gospel lesson (John 13:31-35), Jesus gives us what’s often called the Eleventh Commandment: love one another as I have loved you.  The commandment is given on the eve of his crucifixion.  One of the key ideas working here, in Jesus and the disciples, is obedience.  Jesus obeys the will of his father, even to a painful death.  The disciples, for their part, will learn to obey.

For us, obedience does not come naturally.  We live in a cultural context that stresses the value of self-actualization.  To obey is to subjugate the self, and that goes against the cultural narrative.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s The Cost of Discipleship works through the importance of obedience better than any Christian work I have read.

This command from Jesus that his disciples put selfless love before all other considerations in their common lives makes us wonder how they did at obeying this command, how they worked it out in their daily lives.  I think we all long for selfless love to be practiced in our circles, but we also know that it isn’t.  Perhaps the most effective thing that could be done to revitalize the church in our culture is for us to obey this command.  I frankly can’t even imagine what life would be like if we did.

Hearing Aids

In my preparation for the April 17, 2016 sermon I found myself pondering the deep question of how we are able to “hear” Jesus.  Our Gospel lesson today (John 10:22-30) is about the Good Shepherd and how we hear his voice, and more particularly about how some of Jesus’ challengers were unable to hear.  Why were they unable?

One possibility is that they were predestined by God to be deaf to Jesus.  I am not a proponent of predestination, and I found myself resisting this idea, which is commonly associated with Calvin.  I’m more of an Erasmus guy; we hear if we choose to, and then by willingly opening our ears (figuratively speaking).

But my guess is most people aren’t too excited by the arguments of Reformation-era theologians, as important as they are.  Let’s consider it on a simpler level: we hear by trial and error.  I expect we often “overspiritualize” events in our lives.  I know I’ve caught myself justifying this or that endeavor by telling myself that I am responding to Jesus’ call, only to determine later that it wasn’t so.  I’m left with the conclusion that it takes practice to hear Him accurately, and that part of that practice is to get out of our own way.

Money and Me

I think I have had every false idea there is to have about money:  that it would make me happy, that I am above it and don’t care about it, that I don’t need to be careful with it, that how much I have determines how I’m viewed by others, etc.

We must deal with it.  Money isn’t needed in heaven but it’s quite useful here — even though, as the title of this blog indicates, this is eternal life too.  I suppose the hardest thing about coming to grips with our relationship with money is that it’s frightening.  What will happen if we don’t have enough?  And here is the crux of the problem.  Will we trust God, or will we rely on money instead?  Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and money.”  To me this says, you must not turn to money for your security.  Turn to me instead.  In a money-driven world, that will always feel very risky.  It’s good for us to be honest with ourselves on this subject, face our fears and shortcomings, and embrace the opportunities to break the grip of money on our souls and psyches.

It helped me to start small, not at the tithe, but with a proportion, and to hear the cries of the selfish me with each check written to the work of Jesus.  Each person’s circumstances will be unique but the principle will be the same.  Each dollar given is like a little key that unlocks the chains around my heart.  Give until it hurts, and know that the pain brings healing.

A Day in the Global Village

Today my parish put on a fundraising barbecue as part of a community event.  I took my wife’s advice to wear my clerical collar, so as to identify myself as a pastor.  It worked.  One man in particular was moved to engage me.  He asked whether I believed — and whether my denomination taught — that one must come to God through Jesus.  Before I could answer, he asked another question:  Why can’t a “good Buddhist” or any person who sincerely practices religious principles thereby “have Christ in their heart” and be saved?  He indicated a concern for the spiritual well-being and ultimate disposition of the souls of non-Christians (even while he was obviously grinding another axe), and in the first part of my answer I told him I shared that concern, and that I was sure that God loved all of his people.  So far so good.  But soon it became clear that this man did not accept the uniqueness of Jesus as the way to God and to salvation.  I tried to put it in a positive light, but he was determined to pin me down and expose me as narrow-minded and unfair.  When he asked whether a “good Buddhist” who never heard the Gospel was doomed, I replied that I believe God will be fair to good Buddhists and to others who have never heard the Gospel, because God is always fair, but ultimately I couldn’t say what would happen.

He wasn’t satisfied.  He was “disappointed” with my affirmation of Jesus’ uniqueness, and also with my explanation that I could not fully understand how God works to draw His people to Jesus.  He ended up criticizing me for being too vague, even when his original intention obviously was to criticize me for being too specific.  I wished I had explained things better, but I don’t think it would have made much difference.  Jesus’ claim of uniqueness is just too much for some people to get their heart around.  My prayer is that he will be motivated to study — something that he had obviously not done.

We live in an extraordinary time.  An enormous amount of information is available to us, including the work of theologians and Christians through twenty centuries.  And we are thrown more closely — through advancements in technology and transportation — with a world of people who have not shared that experience.  What an incredible opportunity, and how well equipped we are, whether we know it or not.

Loving the Now

As we plan and dream about how we would like for our lives to be, it’s an easy thing to become swept up into a mythical existence.  In plainer terms, my plan isn’t my life.  It’s just a plan, or a dream, or a preference.  My plans may mean a lot to me, but they aren’t real, and chances are they won’t ever be — at least not in the form I envisioned.  But they’re powerful, and they can come to replace the reality of my daily life.  That can distance me from God and from what God may be trying to do in my life today.

If you’re as old as I am, you may remember a song by Stephen Stills called “Love the One You’re With.”  What I like about the message of that song — if I can morph it a little into a message about the spiritual life — is that if we appreciate where we are, what we’re doing, who we’re with, etc., then we will be a lot more disposed to see God’s hand in our lives today, which means that we’ll be ready to take the opportunity to touch others.  I catch myself at times living so fully into my dreams and plans that I fail to appreciate the richness of today.  Who knows — what’s going on today may be so good that I’ll plan to experience it again.

Sounds Like a Plan

I’ve just finished a very good book, The Education of a Lifetime, by Robert Khayat, who was Chancellor of the University of Mississippi from 1995-2009.  He led Ole Miss through a re-evaluation of its painful past and into a new era of hope and accomplishment.  I do not know him, and had no idea to whom or what he would attribute his success, but I was pleasantly surprised by this answer:

“I knew that I could never understand the mystery of my relationship with God — or his hand in guiding me.  But in remembering the extraordinary people with whom I’ve crossed paths, my belief in a master plan was affirmed.  I felt, without any doubt, that my successes and failures, wins and losses, loves and heartaches, adulation and humiliation, good health and bad, led me to this place.  I am a person of faith, and even when I strayed or behaved in ways that I regret, I never doubted God’s quiet, careful presence along the way.”

Two great truths here: God does have a master plan for us, and it is bigger and more wonderful than we can imagine.  Our part is to live into it as best we can, counting upon His presence and guidance.

What will we do today to bring ourselves closer to Him and to live out His plan for us?

Nearer my God to Thee

I’m reading a new book — listening to it read to me, to be more precise — it’s an audio book and I’m listening during my commutes and errands.  It’s Dallas Willard’s The Divine Conspiracy.

I’m glad I picked it up.  Willard has a thesis that is startling in its simplicity, and one which I think can benefit many Christians.  He teaches that we have unwittingly put God further away from us as a consequence of intellectual trends in Western culture since the 1700s.  Not a new idea, but it is striking me in a new way.  Willard explains that in our ideas about heaven, we tend to either postpone our opportunity to experience God until our death, or we see him only as a standard of goodness that is impossible for us to meet, so we don’t much bother trying.

Willard makes a good case that we really don’t believe that God is present and accessible to us, either in the risen Jesus or in any manifestation common to that of ancient Israel.  We simply don’t believe anymore in anything we can’t see.  However, as Willard argues in a careful explanation of the meaning of the “kingdom of God” in the Gospels, Jesus meant what he said: the kingdom of God has come near, and is near, and is not relegated to some faraway afterlife.  We’re meant to enter it now.

Do we dare believe again in a God who is present and active?

Unless You Repent

As I prepared the sermon for March 3, I was struck by the absolute and stark choice presented by Jesus to his hearers and followers.  “Unless you repent, you will all perish as they did.”  Luke 13:3, 5.  He was referring to physical death, not spiritual, but the deeper point is that their choice was either to embrace God’s ways and reject the ways of the world, or face national disaster.  They didn’t heed his warning, but rather continued to pursue their own agenda, especially as regarded their desire to throw off Roman rule.  Consequently the Romans crushed them in AD 70.

Much of our devotion, I’m afraid, is superficial.  We are called not to just tweak our values but to make a radical turn for God.  This will affect everything we do.  The idea makes me uncomfortable, but that’s logical.  We don’t like absolute choices like this one — repent or die — because we’re 21st Century Westerners, and we’ve embraced moral ambiguity, complexity and subtlety.  Sometimes Jesus sweeps this away.  I wonder if you were struck by this stark choice as I was.

Giving and Taking

Today I had a conversation with a friend about worship.  He said he was struggling mightily with several issues, that consequently he was also finding it hard to worship, and that even when he did the worship seemed dry and rote.

I told him I thought that this was normal.  Worship is primarily an act of giving.  We give to God all that we have.  In times that we feel like we have nothing, then it’s logical that we would feel that our worship is flat.  I invited him to consider that coming before God and admitting that we have nothing to offer but ourselves is actually something that pleases God.  When we admit we have nothing, then perhaps we can finally have an honest conversation with God.

Dry times can be times of growth.  What have yours been like?