Evil Believer

What do you do when religious folk call you evil?

1. Become a fan of Darth Vader on Facebook.
2. Watch Austin Powers as many times as possible so you can learn from Dr. Evil.
3. Read the book of I John.

I choose option three.

I John 2: 9-11: "Whoever says, 'I am in the light,' while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness."

I John 4:20-21: "Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also."

I will let the letter speak for itself. (Read the whole letter and it has something to say to those within the community of faith who feel they have the authority to call some evil - something about not being in the Spirit - They got a spirit just not the right Spirit.)

Jesus was called evil by the religious folk in his day. So if you are ever called evil by other religious folk just remember you are keeping good company.

Distorted Christianity

A distorted Christianity is clear when our longing for God on Sunday morning doesn’t match up with our lifestyle on Monday. Religion, in the best sense, is about relationships – our relationship with God and our relationships with each other. A distorted Christianity is evident when it is void of relationships. Distorted Christianity ignores the cry of the other.

We pick up our newspaper and read about a three-year-old boy who is whipped with a belt for three hours because he wet his pants. We read about his cries and pleadings as his little body squirms under the foot of his stepfather. We read about this beating, which is his last in a year long series of frequent beatings; his last because he died in his bed a half hour later. We read about how the boy’s body is found months later, buried in a creek, with a tiny cross clutched in his hands. We read about this brutal murder of a defenseless child, and we feel sick. Then we turn to the financial section and read about how the economy is improving. We turn to the sports section and read about last night’s game. Soon the sickness leaves us. We forget about the little boy.

Isaiah would say to us, “Your hands are full of blood.” We gather in church to worship while we continue to allow injustice to exist in the world. We sing and pray all the while our hands are full of blood. Are we better people for all the time we spend in church? Imagine God coming to you today, stripping you of all your religious piety and all that is left is the person you see in the mirror, what would God find?

The Year for Figs

There is a guy down in Miami who thinks he is Jesus. His followers call him the Messiah. They also call him daddy or God. He claims to be Jesus of Nazareth reincarnated. Jesus showing up in Miami now that is funny. Sometimes I get confused about who is really God. Especially when I feel that I have to have all the answers. I don’t like living with ambiguity. I don’t like uncertainty. So, I answer for God. I put words in the mouth of God. I know how God would conduct a worship service. I know which songs God would sing. I know which color carpet God likes best. I know that God would never approve of that situation. I know that God likes me better than God likes you. Sound familiar.

We do the same thing when it comes to tragedy. It is easier to attribute a cause and effect to every situation. We don’t have a reason why certain things happen the way they do so we just give them one. I preached a funeral with another minister a few years back. The person who died fought a horrific battle with cancer. The minister that I was working with stood up first and basically said that one thing I can’t stand to hear in funeral sermons, “God needed another rose for his garden!” He went on and on about how death is a part of God’s will. I felt that the minister was reaching for words or something and the most religious word he could find was “it is God’s will.”

It’s hard to let God be God. We long to make sense of senseless tragedies. We search our religious vocabulary for the right words when sometimes there is none. Sometimes life doesn’t make sense. Bad things do happen to good people. Towers fall on the innocent. Ruthless rulers do kill those who don’t deserve death. People get sick. Tornadoes take out one home and leave others. In Luke 13: 1 - 9 (read it) Jesus doesn’t say it was God’s will. That’s what the people believed. For them and for us life only makes sense when we can have answers for every effect. Jesus implies that however sometimes there is no answer. Let God be God and quit trying to make sense out of the senseless.

Because I get confused about whom God is I am afraid that I would answer the crowd differently. I would have read between the lines and said you are exactly right these people didn’t deserve death. It is the government’s fault. They took innocent lives. They committed a tragedy among our people. They must be held accountable. We must judge. We must destroy. Or I might have said they deserve what they got. They knew the hostility that was going on around there. They put themselves in that position. They had it coming to them. I am really glad I am not God and I am really glad you are not God.

Jesus is saying in Luke 13 don’t worry so much about things you don’t understand, focus on what you do know – your own life! He says, “Unless you repent, you will all perish.” We are not to speculate about others. What about your life? Where do you stand? Quit playing God and giving answers about what went wrong in the lives of others and start looking at the real issue: your life before God.

Jesus Will Travel Any Road

In the Gospel of John, Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman. In 2 Kings we are told the story of Assyria resettling Samaria with people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. The writer says, “So these nations worshipped the Lord, but also served their carved images; to this day their children and their children’s children continue to do as their ancestor’s did” (2 Kings 17:41).

The Jews in Jesus day would assert the same thing. The Samaritans and Jews had similar beliefs starting with the Pentateuch. However, the Samaritans had their own priesthood, their own unique worship practices and rituals, and religious teachings. In John 4, Jesus approaches the Samaritan women and starts a conversation. He takes the initiative and breaks down barriers. He guides the conversation into a discussion of spirituality. He also is contextual by making reference to “living water” which is found in Samaritan Wisdom literature. Jesus meets the Samaritan women at her point of need and teaches her truth. At the end of the story we are told that she left her water and ran back to the city. As a result, many Samaritans believed in him [Jesus] because of the woman’s testimony” (John 4: 39). When the Samaritans asked Jesus to stay with them, he stayed for two days. Jesus will travel any road to find those in need of grace.

In the novel The Shack, a character is confronted by Jesus. The following is a dialogue between Jesus and Mack. “Christian? Who said anything about being a Christian? I’m not a Christian.” The idea struck Mack as odd and unexpected and he couldn’t keep from grinning. “No,” he said. “I suppose you aren’t.” They arrived at the door of the workshop. Again, Jesus stopped. “Those who love me,” He looked at Mack, “Come from every system that exists. They were Buddhists or Mormons, Baptists or Muslims, Democrats, Republicans and many who don’t vote or are not part of any Sunday morning or religious institutions. I have followers who were murderers and many who were self-righteous. Some are bankers and bookies, Americans and Iraqis, Jews and Palestinians. I have no desire to make them Christian, but I do want to join them in their transformation into sons and daughters of my Papa, into my brothers and sisters, into my Beloved.” “Does that mean,” asked Mack, “that all roads lead to you?” “Not all,” smiled Jesus as he reached for the door handle to the shop. “What it means is that I will travel any road to find you.”

Graceful Ministry

Grace is realizing that God is for us. God is not some angry beast ready to devour us at every mistake. God is passionate for us. God is longing for us. God is calling us into a relationship. God wants us to experience his heart. Brennan Manning declares, “Jesus Christ did not come to make us nicer people with better morals. He came to transform people into better lovers. He came to make brand new people alive with the fire of God.” Only God loves us the way we long to be loved. Only Jesus can change our heart. Only the Spirit can fill our soul with joy and peace and love.
Grace is the favor shown by God to sinners. It is the divine goodwill offered to those who neither deserve nor ever can hope to earn it. Grace is the divine disposition to work in our hearts, wills, and actions, so as actively to communicate God’s self-giving love for humanity. As Paul says in Ephesians, “Even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Ephesians 2:5ff).

God’s gracious presence in our lives assures us of forgiving love and empowers us for reconciliation in our brokenness. Everyone is broken. God’s power is never stronger than in our brokenness. The theology of the cross teaches us that God’s glory shines brightest when it shines through brokenness. The central focus of our faith is glory through brokenness – from the cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky. Henri Nouwen reminds us that, like the Christ we serve, we are all wounded healers. Ministry has taught me that we are called precisely through our brokenness. If we deny the brokenness then we also deny the possibility of God’s grace to meet us in our brokenness. As a minister of God I have been charged with the ministry of reconciliation. I am committed to helping people discover the source of their brokenness and the possibility of their reconciliation through the grace of God. Because I believe in God’s grace in the midst of brokenness, I will stand before the people, sit beside beds in ICU, and speak into the lives of people “the Body of Christ broken for you.”

Sin and Grace

Two years ago I was called to visit a young lady who attempted suicide on Easter Sunday. As I visited with her in the Intensive Care Unit it was clear that she was broken. I shared with her the peace that Christ can bring into our lives. I invited her to tell her story. Afterwards, I told her how God desires to be a part of that story and bring redemption to move forward. We had prayer together. I left broken. She was not a part of our church community or any church community for that matter. On the way home from the hospital I asked myself, “What difference would grace make in her life?”

Ministry reveals the brokenness of our lives. One does not have to serve long in the ministry to have the Apostle Paul’s point proven: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The shattered pieces of life are a result of sin. The human condition is one of brokenness because of original sin. Randy Maddox reminds us that, from a Wesleyan perspective, the result of our corrupted nature is “our understanding is darkened, our will is seized by wrong tempers, our liberty is lost, and our conscience is left without a standard.” From the spiritual corruption spring our actual sins, which result in the brokenness of creation. Sin is a broken relationship. The effects of sin leave us incapable of a relationship with God, neighbor, and creation. It also leaves us with the inability to restore those relationships on our own.

Wesley lays out his argument for Original Sin not from the story of Adam and Eve but from the story of Noah. He points to Genesis 6:5: “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” For Wesley and his contemporaries that condition has remained unchanged. Sin is a malignant disease which results in a fallen and broken world. The only cure for our brokenness is the grace of God. God’s grace is sufficient. As the Apostle Paul says, “Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20).

Uncontainable: Part Two

The uncontainable nature of God can be overwhelming when considering all we have to rely on is finite language to express an infinite nature. The incomprehensibility of God implies that if we are to know anything about God then it must be revealed to us. My role as a minister is not to prove God’s existence. I am called to reveal God and I can do that only through the way in which God has revealed God self. We understand God best by looking to Jesus. God is made known to us through Jesus. He (Jesus) says, “All things have been handed over to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son expect the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him” (Matthew 11: 27). As Karl Barth says, “God is unknown as our Father, as the Creator, to the degree that he is not made known by Jesus.” My responsibility is to point people to Jesus as they ask, “What is God like?”

God’s limitless possibility can be pushed to the point of God being disinterested in God’s world. Jesus does not allow this. Jesus teaches that God suffers with us in our suffering and rejoices with us in our joys. Two years ago I sat with an elderly lady who experienced major loss: a child, a husband, and intense surgery of another child. She was not concerned with God’s limitless possibility, but with the reality of God identifying with her suffering.

Even though we cannot know God exhaustively, we can know God personally. Some people say that we cannot know God personally, but that we can only know facts about God or know what God does. Others have said that we can only know God as he relates to us. I John 5: 20 says, “We know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ.” The richness of the Christian life is that we can have a personal relationship with God. We have far greater privileges than knowing facts (nature, characteristics, etc) regarding God. We speak to God in prayer. God speaks through the Word. We are aware that God dwells among us and within us to bless us. I am reminded of this when the temptation comes for ministry to become routine, mundane, or less personal.

Uncontainable God in a Containable Ministry

Uncontainable. A few years ago, I preached before a group of seminarians in Venezuela. I challenged the students not to be restrictive in their views of God. In my sermon I used the phrase, “Do not put God in a box.” My interpreter translated the phrase and the response was priceless. All the students looked totally confused. Apparently, “Do not put God in a box,” is not a common phrase in Venezuela.
I realized that, in my attempt to speak on the limitless possibility of God, I was “putting God in a box.” Psalm 145:3 says, “Great is the Lord, and greatly to be praised; his greatness is unsearchable.” God’s greatness is beyond our discovering. Because God is infinite and we are finite, we can never fully understand God. As the psalmist says, “Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure” (Psalm 147: 5). In chapter 11 of the book of Romans, the Apostle Paul goes to great lengths to speak on the history of God’s plan of redemption. As a way of conclusion he says, “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable his ways” (Romans 11: 33)! Many times at the end of a sermon, bible study, or sharing of personal testimony, I often declare the same.
Ministry has taught me that God overreaches my comprehension. The first article in The Articles of Religion of The Methodist Church declares, “There is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body or parts, of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness; the make and preserver of all things, both visible and invisible.” Ministry is an attempt to communicate the infinite power, wisdom, and goodness to those entrusted to our care. As ministers of this uncontainable God we will never run out of things to say or truths to declare on the nature of God. We will never be able to know too much about God. God is a subject we will never master. Ministry as a calling can be viewed as a lifelong pursuit of growing in our knowledge of God and God’s relationship to us and the world. This truth will keep us from the danger of intellectual pride. It will keep us from remaining complacent in our study of Scripture. It also reminds us of the importance of intellectual openness in our profession.

Accepting No Substitute

In a commentary Andy Rooney talks about how we have substituted the original with other things. He says, “They take perfectly good water and louse it up with kiwi and strawberry. I’d have to be dying of thirst on a desert island. Sour cream and onion potato chips. I guess the sour cream and onions aren’t even real. It says its ‘artificially flavored.’ A can of raspberry-flavored tea says ‘more tea taste.’ So what’s the raspberry all about, if they want it to taste like tea?” He goes on, “Honey is very big in everything now. Honey Nut Cheerios, Planters Honey Roasted Peanuts, Honey Mustard Pretzel Dip. Honey doesn’t go with either peanuts or mustard. But I have an idea that honey is cheap because the bees are making it faster than we’re eating it.” “You know,” Rooney says, “maybe I’ll retire and go into business. I’d make artificially flavored, fat-free, honey-coated hazelnut hot dog. You could have it with no-cal French vanilla or chocolate-flavored mustard.” Sometimes there is no substituting for the real thing.

God’s complaint against Israel is that they have substituted their relationship with Him for something else. They traded their worth as the people of God for worthless idols. This is easy when we stop asking the right questions. When our lives get so secure that we stop seeking God’s protection and provision we stop asking the questions that are important. We forget who we are as a people. The question the people of Judah forgot to ask and we forget to ask is “Where is the Lord?” “Where is God in my life?” If you were to list the priorities of your life right now and then apply this question to each of those priorities would it make any difference? When we stop asking God “What are you doing in my life?” We start substituting the role of God with something or someone else.

Read Jeremiah 2:4-13.