Surprise Ending

John 21:21 NIV

When Peter saw him, he asked, "Lord, what about him?"

Are You Surprised By How Things Have Gone?

I like a story with surprising twists and turns.  Whether it is a book or a movie, I want it to have some unpredictability to it. I have recently been reading To Kill A Mockingbird.  It has been fifty years since I read it the first time and I had forgotten enough of the storyline to be caught off guard by parts of the book.  Yet based on popularity alone, it seems that most Americans want their stories to go as predicted.  The cute couple eventually gets together, the villain is caught, the aliens are destroyed, the good guys survive and win in the end.  Every once in a while a La La Land comes along that catches me by surprise but generally like most, I want stories to end the way I expect them to end.  There is comfort in predictability.  I get Campbell’s Tomato Soup because I know how it will taste and it is good enough for me.  That is why I choose Gala apples and vanilla ice cream.  I know what I will find when I bite into it.

When I was young and studying chemistry I was surprised to discover that electrons did not revolve around the nucleus in simple and predictable orbitals.  New information threw the old pictures of atomic structures out of whack.  It turned out that electrons move about chaotically.  One can never predict where a given electron will be.  It might be within a certain area but its action is irrational and chaotic and you cannot even know where it is when you try to find it.  Many philosophers describe the universe in a similar way.  There is chaos and unpredictability to it.  “The universe is irrational without any intelligence behind it”, they contend.    Some people are comfortable with that notion.  They like the idea that nothing is certain or trustworthy.

When it comes to Christianity, the majority of church people believe there is one place of certainty and predictability.  It is God.  They speak of Him in ways that a mathematician speaks of her field.   We want our God to be predictable, mathematically determinable.  If we do this, God does that.  When this happens, it is because God has this in mind.  God is stable.  He goes this way or that but always in a logical and understandable process.   We want God to be reasonable and sensible to us.  There must be formulas that he follows, certain equations that determine His actions.  No one would design a god who can’t be counted on to run smoothly, to make His payments and provide His dividends.  The world has its eye on a mathematical God.  Do you?

Job and his friends were certain that God was bound up in rules and obligations…that there were formulas they could use to predict his actions.  What makes the book of Job so disorienting is that all the main characters discovered the Lord was not programmable.  He did not give Job an easy life because Job was honest, moral and generous.  Job’s friends knew God had to behave in certain ways and when He didn’t, they decided something must have been wrong with Job.  Like the jurists in To Kill A Mockingbird who could not recalibrate when the evidence went against their determinations, Job’s friends could not comprehend that God would put Job through so much pain and suffering it Job was not a bad man.  They thought God was mathematical when He isn’t.

Jonah had the same problem.  He had in mind a mathematical God when he heard God tell him to go to Nineveh and preach judgment to the people there.  Jonah did not expect that kind of job.  The Lord was predictable to him.  A terrible and cruel people like the Assyrians would be burnt to a crisp by God.  They didn’t need any warnings…just fire from heaven.  Yet that was not what happened.  God gave the Ninevites a chance to repent, they took it and God mercifully gave the Assyrians the opportunity to try again.  That did not fit Jonah’s God formula and he fell into a deep depression over his miscalculations.

Consider the strange case of Josiah, one of the last kings of Judah.  He was young when he became king, just eight years old.  His grandfather was perhaps the cruelest and most ungodly king Judah ever had.  Moreover, Manasseh also shed so much innocent blood that he filled Jerusalem from end to end — besides the sin that he had caused Judah to commit, so that they did evil in the eyes of the Lord.   As for the other events of Manasseh's reign, and all he did, including the sin he committed, are they not written in the book of the annals of the kings of Judah?   (2 Kings 21:16-18 NIV)  His father was no better a king and after two years of reigning, the people were so fed up with him that he was assassinated.  That left Josiah as next in line.  After eighteen years being king, Josiah ordered that the Temple of God be cleaned and restored.  For nearly sixty years it had been a center of pagan worship and it fell into ruin.  Josiah though loved the Lord and when a book of the Law was found in the wreckage, Josiah turned his life over to God and dedicated himself to following Him wholeheartedly.  Then the king called together all the elders of Judah and Jerusalem.  He went up to the temple of the Lord with the men of Judah, the people of Jerusalem, the priests and the prophets — all the people from the least to the greatest. He read in their hearing all the words of the Book of the Covenant, which had been found in the temple of the Lord.  The king stood by the pillar and renewed the covenant in the presence of the Lord-to follow the Lord and keep his commands, regulations and decrees with all his heart and all his soul, thus confirming the words of the covenant written in this book. Then all the people pledged themselves to the covenant.  (2 Kings 23:1-3 NIV)

How would God treat such a man as this, let alone a king like him?  It would seem that God would do with him as he did with Josiah’s great-grandfather who also was faithful to the Lord.  When faced with a great international threat and insurmountable odds, the Lord intervened on Hezekiah’s behalf and wrecked the army that came against him and the people.  That night the angel of the Lord went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning — there were all the dead bodies!  (2 Kings 19:35 NIV)  Plug in the variables, use your God formula and you have your answer for how things will go.  When the Egyptians formed a great army and posed a threat to Josiah’s kingdom, Josiah pulled together all his fighting forces and went up against the Egyptians in battle.  Everything would turn out fine he probably told his wife and kids as he left to go battle the Egyptians.  His generals he reassured that if they fought hard, the Lord would bring them victory.  Everything fit the God formula.  Good king.  Growing faith among the people!  What could go wrong?

While Josiah was king, Pharaoh Neco king of Egypt went up to the Euphrates River to help the king of Assyria. King Josiah marched out to meet him in battle, but Neco faced him and killed him at Megiddo.  (2 Kings 23:29 NIV)  So what do you make of that?  What should any good Christian brother or sister just trying to follow Jesus faithfully make of it?  How does that fit into the mathematics of God?   Even the Apostle Peter wanted to know what algebraic equation to use when trying to calculate the Lord’s plans for him.  As he and the other apostles were meeting with Jesus on the shore of Galilee after Christ rose from the dead following His crucifixion, the Lord revealed to Peter what would come of him.  “I tell you the truth, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go."  (John 21:18 NIV)

This  was in fact Jesus’ way of telling Peter how Peter would die.  That certainly didn’t fit into the equation Peter had of how God would deal with him and it must have thrown him.  It would have thrown you.  He then asked the Lord about the Apostle John, "Lord, what about him?"  (John 21:21 NIV)  He wanted to recalculate God with a better equation.  He thought He knew and understood God but now He realized he didn’t.  Christ’s reply took it all out of the realm of mathematics.  Jesus answered, "If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? You must follow me."(John 21:22 NIV)  In other words, “Don’t try to predict what I will do.”  “Don’t think I can be understood with a calculator.”  The Lord is not bound by the rules of physics or logic.  His actions are not determined by what you think is best.  He does as He pleases whenever He wants.  He is absolutely free. 

There is only one way to think along God’s lines.  There is only this law through which He operates.  It is the Law of Love.  Not your love.  Not my love.  Pure, undefiled love is how you see into God.  John the Apostle, who knew Jesus as well as anyone has made this clear when He stated,  Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God.  Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.  (1 John 4:7-8 NIV)  The only way to get into God’s mind is to love His people.  You are as confused about Him as a rock in a creek bed if you do not love.  Love is the map to His personality, it is the glasses through which we understand His actions.  The lowest of minds can think along the lines of Jesus if love is at play but the great intellects of the world are at a complete loss to comprehend even the smallest thing of God without love.  How can you understand God and know what He is doing with you?  Stare with fixed attention upon Jesus crucified, His hands riveted to the horizontal beam with rough iron nails, His feet fixed to the vertical wooden beam with another nail and the blood drops oozing down from his head.  That is how you understand what He is doing with you.  Watch Him as He dies to take from you your sin.  Gaze upon Him as He dies to give you a new and perfect life.  That is how you figure Him out.  It is love through and through that decides for Christ what He will do at any moment.  It is love that determines His actions.  Take heed to this.  The only ones who get a grasp on God and understand His ways are those who love and invest with love in the lives of others.  Let this be the way you think about all you see of God and hear about Him.  Let it be your rule of thumb whenever you look for what the Lord may be doing with you.  And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. (1 John 4:16 NIV)  It may be a surprise ending when it comes to what happens next for you but you can be certain of this.  It will be because God loves you and died to save you from your sin.

Snapshot of Life Together

1 John 1:7 NIV

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

How Well Do You Get Along With Others?

When I was in Seminary, studying to be a pastor, I did not really think much about what made a church a church.  I was well aware of the various models of church that were practiced around the world and I did ponder which church model I would like to join.  There are mega-churches with theatrical productions, charismatic churches, traditional churches with older forms of worship, house churches and cell group churches along with multi-site churches that use videos to present the preaching of the pastor.  Of course ethnicity brings even more diversity to how churches function.  It was not until I was confronted by the deacons of the first church where I was a pastor that I gave serious thought as to what made a church a church.  I had made an announcement that the following Sunday during the morning worship service we were going to celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  This was a major alteration in protocol for this church because always before they conducted the Lord’s Supper on Sunday evenings.  The change in scheduling brought great consternation to the deacons and at first I did not grasp just what bothered them so much.  It turned out that the church did not believe casual attenders of the church services should receive the Lord’s Supper with them, only members of the church were to participate.  It thus was convenient that the service on Sunday night was poorly attended and there almost never were visitors or non-members present.  That was for the deacons a perfect time to serve the Lord’s Supper because it saved them the embarrassment or stress of having to refuse to serve non-members.  Being forced to defend my actions in providing the Supper to non-members, I had to come up with a clear and articulate view of what the Church is and how it is to operate.

One critical term we use to describe the life of the church is “fellowship” or to be more precise, the Greek word “koinonia”.  Koinonia is by definition “communion”, “close relationships” or “participation and sharing”.  Fellowship might be defined as “life together”.  It is oneness brought about by a bond that keeps everyone together.  In 1 John 1: 7, the union is the result of our “walk in the light” or to put it another way, being in union with the wishes of God the Father.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.  The Christian community, or the Church, is put together into a union by staying in step with what the Father wants and by the purifying work of Christ’s blood as it cleanses the people of the church of Sin.  In other words, it is the relation to the Father and the Son that determines the fellowship or union that exists between the people of the church.

Let’s look at a few snapshots of the Church found in the New Testament.  The first is seen in Matthew 4 where is recorded the invitation Jesus offered to two sets of brothers to come follow Him.  "Come, follow me," Jesus said, "and I will make you fishers of men." (Matthew 4:19 NIV)  This was not a call to salvation but rather a call to adventure, a call to absolute surrender.  Each of the four fishermen faced a critical fork in the road. 
Do I go with Him in union with the Father or do I stay and keep doing as I am with sporadic moments of faith and devotion.  They chose of course to go with Christ wherever He led.  At once they left their nets and followed him. (Matthew 4:20 NIV)  Union with the directing of Christ is what puts Christian people together and really together.

A second snapshot of the Church is seen beautifully in Matthew 14.  The Disciples were sent out by Jesus in a boat to go to the other side of the Sea of Galilee.  By obeying Christ though, the disciples found themselves in deep peril.  After he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but the boat was already a considerable distance from land, buffeted by the waves because the wind was against it. (Matthew 14:23-24 NIV)  This is so typical of what happens with the Church in fellowship.  They face some difficult and perhaps even terrifying event together.  In this case, as the Disciples fretted over the growing storm, Jesus came to them, walking on the water and that frightened them even more.  When the disciples saw him walking on the lake, they were terrified. "It's a ghost," they said, and cried out in fear. (Matthew 14:26 NIV)  Is that not often the case?  In the midst of unity within the Church, sometimes there is a period of collective chaos when God is not trusted and His ways frightening.  But then God gets ahold of one or more in the fellowship and they have real courage and faith.  "Lord, if it's you," Peter replied, "tell me to come to you on the water."  "Come," he said. Then Peter got down out of the boat, walked on the water and came toward Jesus. (Matthew 14:28-29 NIV)  When a Church is in fellowship, God always provides someone in the group with clarity and faith enough to see the way.  This is a miracle, a mighty work of God.

There is one more snapshot of the Church that is almost mesmerizing in its sublime rendering of the Church at its finest and most obtuse.  After James, the brother of John, was arrested by King Herod and executed, Peter also was imprisoned.  The church however quickly went to work.  So Peter was kept in prison, but the church was earnestly praying to God for him.  (Acts 12:5 NIV)  Amazingly, the Lord intervened in a new way.  He sent an angel to the prison who opened the prison doors and led Peter out of the jail.   Suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared and a light shone in the cell. He struck Peter on the side and woke him up. "Quick, get up!" he said, and the chains fell off Peter's wrists…Peter followed him out of the prison, but he had no idea that what the angel was doing was really happening; he thought he was seeing a vision.  They passed the first and second guards and came to the iron gate leading to the city. It opened for them by itself, and they went through it. When they had walked the length of one street, suddenly the angel left him. (Acts 12:7, 9-10 NIV)

The account turns somewhat humorous when Peter heads off to the home where the group from the church is praying for Peter’s release.  However after hearing knocking on the door, a servant girl named Rhoda came to see who it was.  When she recognized Peter's voice, she was so overjoyed she ran back without opening it and exclaimed, "Peter is at the door!"  "You're out of your mind," they told her. When she kept insisting that it was so, they said, "It must be his angel."  But Peter kept on knocking, and when they opened the door and saw him, they were astonished. (Acts 12:14-16 NIV)  So here you have a group of believers praying for the release of one of their own but not really believing God would answer their prayers.  How else would you explain the questioning Rhoda’s sanity when she returns to them with the announcement that Peter himself was at the door?

Let us though not miss the main point.  Fellowship is Christian when the group gathers together to pray.  That is what a Christian group has as its most spectacular possession.  It can pray and change the world.  When fellowship gives up on praying, it loses its soul.  Prayer is the most fundamental characteristic of Christian oneness and if it is cut short or eliminated altogether, it is no different than the unity members of a union possess or the board members of a corporation.  Praying together makes a church a church and gives it the supernatural quality that no other group of people in the world possesses.

There are four specific behaviors that mark Christian fellowship and determine its quality.  We shall simply list these without having the time to give each its proper attention.  Whether the fellowship exists in a small group of three or four or in a large body of several thousand, these patterns of relationship are critical to determining whether or not a church has a healthy fellowship.  These are not listed in any sort of order of importance; each can make or break the life together of a church.  In a truly Christian fellowship there is unlimited forgiveness.  Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. (Colossians 3:13 NIV)  The second pattern of relationship is unrelenting encouragement. Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing. (1 Thessalonians 5:11 NIV)  Along with these two must be a stubborn refusal to judge those in fellowship.  You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will all stand before God's judgment seat…Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. (Romans 14:10, 13 NIV)  The fourth pattern of relationship in every healthy Christian fellowship is difficult to quantify…perhaps even impossible to measure but it is just as critical as the others in determining whether or not a church lives together in true fellowship.  Each person sees Christ in all the others and with deep reverence for God respects what Christ is doing in them.  …the mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the saints. To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. (Colossians 1:26-27 NIV)

How important is it that you are a part of a Christian fellowship?  Is it important enough that you will help create an environment that can make fellowship flourish?  Are you willing to change your own attitudes about life together so that God can use you to transform the church and make it the “Kingdom of God”?  What sacrifices are you willing to make that Christ can live through you and make His people better because you are a part of their lives?

Christian Community

If a collection of Christians have to argue and fight over what they must do, then

they have stopped living as Christian community.  They have lost their way and become corrupted by Satan's schemes.  There are only two alternatives to get out of such a mess.  Fold and move to some other endeavor or repent and apologize to one another for each one's part in the rebellion against the Holy Spirit.  When votes have to be accumulated and forceful arguments made to gain what is needed, then God has left the building and the people are on their own to work out matters.  The Prince of Peace will not fight His way to a solution; He will wait for us to come to Him in humble submission and only then will we find the Lord in our midst.  If a house divided against itself cannot stand, why would we think God tolerates division within His Body!  We might continue to succeed in what we are doing if we leave Him out of the work but it will not be the Kingdom of God we are building.  We will have made ourselves engineers and architects and construction workers in the Kingdom of Mankind.  It could be that we accomplish very little if we give ourselves to unity and brotherly love but at least we will still be loyal to our Savior and that is the master plan of God's Church.  His command is to love one another and that can never be accomplished if our top priority is to "get our way".  It is better to lose all you have and be a "failure" in your efforts than to break the bond of peace within the Lord's community.  James declares that the antithesis of Christian living is quarreling as it is an atheistic behavior pattern that disregards the one way we are to live out our Christianity; going to God in prayer and seeking His help in every matter.  In fact, he labels infighting spiritual "adultery" and "friendship with the world".  If real love marked by submission to one another in humble confidence in God and His guidance does not reflect our Christian community, then we ought to just "call a spade a spade" and admit we no longer want Christ with us when we meet.  Nothing comes easy when we live in God; there is a sort of crucifixion that always transpires but what a marvelous and wonderful day it is when believers "live together in unity!"  (Psalm 133:1 NIV)

You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God...You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.      James 4:2, 4 NIV

Them-ing to Us-ing

Are we still caught up in parochial feuds, national boundaries and the rub of ethnocentric thinking?  If there is one outcome of the Cross, it is that sin is universal and there is only "us" needing salvation.  "Them" gets smashed within the scope of Calvary and it must be demolished in our Christianity.  To imply there is a "them" that is worse than "us" makes a mockery of Jesus' scathing rebuke of the Pharisees who saw everything as "us" and "them".  It took the Church a bit of time before it realized the "us" and "them" theology they held was a relic of a religion without salvation.  Forgiveness crosses all lines of demarcation and makes us one in Christ and really one.  This is not Christian rhetoric; it is the really real outcome of being born again.  There is neither Jew nor Greek at every level of the Church and when we get on our high horse of making a "them" out of someone, we have approached the abyss where everyone is a "them" and no one an "us".  Sin brought the division between peoples and it is what keeps it going.  The Cross makes us one even as God is One.  Jesus' great prayer established the unity of the Body of Christ in which all Christians are united in love and faith and good works.  When we find ourselves despising a "them" because of that one's "themness" we must confess it as sin and believe that God will make us one too.  Love has not ethnic, political or gender boundaries and the Love of Christ cannot be kept to one side or another.  It must "leap the fence" again and again until we truly are one.

Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name — the name you gave me — so that they may be one as we are one.     John 17:11b NIV

Community in Christ

The Christian Community is much too quick to snip at one another and go after the jugular of faults.  Do we think it was toward the Pharisees only that Jesus aimed his barbed arrow in the Sermon on the Mount?  It pricks us too and more truly stabs us all the way in the heart.  How can we ever hope to progress in joy if we are captivated by the splinters in the eyes of our fellow servants?  Evangelism is simply pious platitudes if we are not loving one another unconditionally.   It is laughable to hope that we can build the Kingdom if internally we are squabbling and mocking one another, critiquing and evaluating each other's works and motives.  The crisis in the Church has never been without but for two millennia within.    Much more damage has come to us at the hands of our fellow believers than any non-Christian has ever caused.  Love does not begin with some lavish pronouncement but with a single determination to overlook an offence or keep to ourselves our criticism.  We can do this with Christ living through us but without Him, we are hopelessly entangled by our grievances and dissatisfactions.  As we look to Christ in the heat of our acrimony, the Lord will grant us His love and kindness to come out of us at the very moment we need it.   Our Lord has a great deal of grace for those who "love too much" or "overlook too much" it seems and if we should err, it would be best to err on the side of mercy and compassion rather than take up with the older brother in his complaints.  Job's friends look all too familiar to us  and we must be careful we don't sit in their camp when Job comes our way.  We might find ourselves begging the Job God has given us for mercy when the Lord "catches up with us."

"Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."   Matthew 7:1-2 NIV

What Do You Want?

It was such a seemingly harmless request of James and John.  “Teacher,” they said, “we want you to do for us whatever we ask.”  We too have this way of going about our business.  It is in fact the essence of much Christianity.  God is the god of doing for us what we ask.  Whether it be honor, achievement, affection or some sort of toy, we expect God to give us something so that we can have a good religion, a comfortable religion.  The Christian world leans into stuff as much as the sensible unbeliever.  We have seen it; much of the Christian world grabs and gathers just like all the good neighbors who never open Bibles.  When Jesus asked the brothers if they could drink the cup He was drinking and be baptized with His same baptism, James and John hardly blinked.  “Of course they could”, they insisted.  It turns out they were going to drink from the same cup and be baptized with the same baptism but they were as dumb as doorknobs when it came to realizing what that meant.  And fortunately for us, so are we generally when we enter into real discipleship.  This is when many good Christian people start to fade into the shadows.  They slip away into the night.  Are they willing to take rejection, loss, painful ministries or isolation?  Will they absorb as Christ did the damage brought by world sin?  A famous missionary once wrote, “He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.”  How many Christians believe that?  Is there much real sacrifice and painful holiness in the Church or are most of our claims of following Christ lip service.  Many name Christ as a giver of good things but stop short of taking up the cross.  How many of us will drink the cup He drank and not squirm out of His baptism?  Will you be His disciple and not a caricature of what one is?  The call is clear.  Come follow me!  To do so means that you must take the path through Gethsemane and into Golgotha before you will ever make much progress with Christ as Lord.

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. Mark 10: 45 NIV

Today See God

Is it a crazy assumption that God will do now as has been described of Him doing in the past?  Nothing unsettles our sensibilities quite like the long wait for God to act today as we have heard He did before.  Every rational thought argues against willful  anticipation of supernatural entries into our fussy world.  It seems absurd to the common mind that the Lord still operates within the same paradigm as records indicate He once did.  And yet that is precisely what we are expected to believe when we take even the most casual glance at the Scriptures.  The" Fairy Tale" motif swirls about within the interpretive dance steps of  the normal Christian's take on life lived out daily.  In fact what is "Christian" today is generally not what once was Christian when everything said about God in Scripture was believed.  The Church assumed rightly God acted in their today as He had during the today of Moses or Elijah.  They realized the Lord would grip them relentlessly "now" even when they went through the fire, even when they fell into the water.  It did not come easily.  Peter had to first get wet and Silas had to wait in twitching pain for his prison midnight but eventually they came around.  Personal experience made the difference for them just as it does here for us.  The prayer had to be uttered, the cry bellowed, the worship to the God of heaven offered.  It was only then that Elijah saw things just as Moses had, Peter saw things as Elijah had and Paul saw things as Peter had.  The skeptic does not die peacefully but in fits and starts and with loud moans and lusty screams.  The man without God is a hollow shell.  But add the Lord Jesus Christ to him and He lives vivaciously, vividly, like a bright beam of sunlight piercing the night sky.  You, joined with the Lord will see all that Elijah did, all that James did and not feebly either but decidedly, firmly.    We stumble over little unseen miracles because we live with meager faith; we grip the majesty of God with the loosest of holds because we are  more content to hear about God than we are to know Him.  "Taste and see that the Lord is good", implies that you must do something about your hunger and thirst if you are ever to gain the smallest sense of God.  The historical documents have been given us not that we might dream of days gone by but that we might do the very things the saints of the past did.  Stay in the shallows of common faith and you will merely read the tales of God; go out of the harbor where storms threaten to dump you in the sea and the Majesty of the Almighty will find you .  You will no longer make your way through the shadow lands of legendary ghosts;  you will instead enter the actual world where Christ reigns and you join with Him in His Glory.  Stop making so much of the God of ancient times if you don't intend on taking hold of the Christ who today stands before you and whispers, "Come".

Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked, "You of little faith, why are you talking among yourselves about having no bread?  Matthew 16: 8 NIV

Vision

Last Sunday our worship service attendance was forty. But...this past week as I was praying I was unprepared for the vision that came to me. I suddenly saw our church sanctuary full and overflowing. At first I thought I had fallen asleep and was dreaming but I immediately got up and walked into our sanctuary. The vision stayed with me as I looked out across the empty seats. The sanctuary was full and people were everywhere. Then just as suddenly it all was gone and I was left with the shocking and even a bit spooky sense that God had spoken to me in a completely new way. I am not given to visions or for that matter prophetic dreams so this was overwhelming and disconcerting. I wasn't sure what to do with what I experienced; whether I should believe it was from God or not. I went back to pray and was given a great peace about it all.

Lord, you establish peace for us; all that we have accomplished you have done for us. Isaiah 26: 12

Talking Points Conclusion

We are so accustomed to splits and divisions and spin-offs that we have a most difficult time taking this passage at face value. We seem to have an inherent need to find out what was wrong with the factions. What were they doing that caused the split(s)? Where had they drifted from right doctrine? Now we know from church history that there were plenty of theological rifts that nearly tore the church asunder. From the Palagians to the Gnostics, there were a slew of cultic teachings infiltrating the church. Paul himself fought against the Judaizers and their effort to destroy the work of Grace. But this furious reprimand of Paul had nothing to do with setting straight bad doctrine. It was an attack against the church way of life. Paul had absolutely nothing bad or good to say about whatever arguments and counter arguments were being cast about for the various factions. He just despised the splits.

Now there is a fascinating choice of phrasing Paul uses that explains the splits. He notes that each one separately is making his or her own decision about which group to join. The emphasis is on individuality, it is on personal choice, it is on independent thinking. Not that everyone was in some group or another but every person sectioned off in a group made the decision on his own. He did it. Now we have no idea what the criterion was for making these choices. It could have been quite logical and well thought. In fact probably every move into any of the groups was easily justified and explained. No lame explanations for these folk. They split off for a myriad of good reasons. This is the power behind the Me-Church. It makes perfect sense and always fits my needs.

The Me-Church is theologically built upon the premise that God is secondary to my values and concerns. Regardless of your talking points, every shism is a butchering of Jesus. Every split over a doctrine, every party faction vote that cuts apart the church is the severing apart of Christ. Now we can with quite lucid logic argue that there are divisions that can be justified. What if a pastor is teaching false doctrine, a business decision of the church is unethical or even not Christian, a rampant plague of immorality is running through the membership. Aren’t any of these problems a good reason for splitting off?

Just this week I was speaking with someone who was one of thirty pastors of a mega church that split apart. Half the staff were let go because of the financial difficulties the church faced as a result. He himself started a church when he was one of the pastors let go. Now I do not know what caused the split and I am certain that those on both sides of it felt justified in their actions. There very well could have been horrible and despicable goings on that infuriated members but for Paul, it still became a matter of cutting up Christ and sending His body parts across the land.

Paul feels so strongly about this that he even makes what seems an almost silly declaration that he was glad he hadn’t baptized hardly any of them. Now it is not that Paul thought little of baptisms, he just had no interest in anyone using him as their figurehead for a new split. It is silly of course to waste much time decrying the multitude of churches out there. And it is almost ridiculous to think than many, if any will retrace their steps and rejoin with churches they originally made a break. But we can begin to think seriously about what we can do to keep this plague of Me-Church from making headway among us.
Now I realize that conventional thought is that churches are comprised of ideologues that do not think much on their own and walk in lock step to some promoted value or cause. In other words, there is not much room for individuality within a church culture. Even believers in the church seem to fearfully guard against being trapped by some heaping tide of conformity. Christians too cheer for the boy who bucks the ethos of his church and attends dance parties and applaud the young girl who quits her constricting church choir and in opposition to the church leaders sings at jazz clubs. The ideal believer is one who isn’t afraid to walk away from his church if he doesn’t like how a vote goes or isn’t pleased with the style of worship. At least that is what it seems. Yet Paul, in his assessment of splits within the church could not accept any form of groupism, justified or otherwise, let alone a traipsing here and there between congregations.

The last verse in our section is not so much a formula for creating unity in the church but rather a reaffirmation of what must be our talking point. For Christ did not send me to baptize but to evangelize without wise words in order that the Cross of Christ might not be emptied. It is not about formulating alliances and building allies in your causes, the main part of our life together is doing nothing as a group that would empty the cross. I know that the NIV translates this as “empty the cross of its power”, but power is not mentioned by Paul. Paul just keeps sharing the Gospel because he does not want in any way to empty the Cross. The risk of this is not in baptizing though; it is in making do with the “wisdom of a word”. The “wisdom of the word” and living by it is the way the Cross is emptied, and that Paul will not tolerate.

All sorts of things can seem right and logically they may make a great deal of sense but the church is not built on what makes sense to me. There are all sorts of wise words that can be justified and a myriad of actions that are perfectly acceptable but the church is not that. It is the cross of Christ crucifying self and making us His. I live within a bent and wavering Christian community not because it fits but because Christ is fitting me within it. Churches make bad decisions, sing poorly, preach poorly, act inappropriately and generally make fools of themselves endlessly. But the church is the center within which the Cross of Christ makes its home and does its most revolutionary work.

Have you ever wondered why God doesn’t just make us like turtles…drop us down into a hole somewhere and let us hatch alone and then fend for ourselves? God places us in specific families, gives us certain parents and then makes us stay there. We follow this same pattern generation after generation and somehow although at times people breakdown and families bust apart, this is the way it goes again and again. The Church is the believer’s family and for better or worse, where He places you is the spot of your most crucial growth and significant work. It doesn’t make sense to me that God would expect the church to be together and stick together because that seems too stiff a restriction on my freedom. But if the church is not to be Paul-Church or Apollos-Church or Cephas Church or even Christ-Church (now doesn’t that seem odd), then it certainly is a curse upon us if it is Me-Church. Empty your will, empty your opinions, empty your comforts, empty your wallets even but do not empty the Cross. If we divide, it may seem logical, and if we split from one another, it might make sense, but we have grossly miscalculated if we think that by doing so it is not that critical. You cannot empty the cross and hope to make a better life. Unless of course you only want to be a Turtle…