Authority

The gospel text for this coming Sunday is Mark 1:21-28. The story is about the visit Jesus made to the synagogue in Capernaum, including an exorcism. Mark introduces his frequent reminder that Jesus is determined to control His identity by telling us that Jesus told the demon, “Be quiet!”

As interesting as the whole idea of demons, possession, and exorcism is, what interests me even more is the impact Jesus had on people – even people who were not particularly prone to be overly impressed with Him. Before the demon story is ever told, Mark tells us, “they were amazed at His teaching; for He was teaching them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.” (1:22)

In his recently released translation of the New Testament – The Kingdom New Testament – N.T. Wright translates that phrase like this: “They were astonished at his teaching. He wasn’t like the legal teachers; he said things on his own authority.”

So who were these legal teachers or scribes? At least at some level, they were teachers in Israel who were prone to say something like “this text means this, because some rabbi said it means that.” Really good ones might be able to go back a generation or two in noting what others had said about the text.

On the other hand, Jesus just stands up and teaches! And the end result of that is “they were amazed.” The word Mark uses appears only 13 times in the New Testament, primarily in the gospels and primarily to describe the reaction of people to Jesus’ teachings. Gospel writers typically use a different word (see 1:27) to describe the response to His miracles. Mark’s word literally means something like “to strike out of one’s senses.” At some level, it suggests a kind of amazement that overwhelms.

Most often that idea is describing His teaching, not His miracles. (Matthew describes the response to the Sermon on the Mount with the very same word.)
While I recognize that none of us who preach and teach in the kingdom of God are given the same kind of authority as Jesus had, I still think there may be a lesson here for us. The contrast this word often sets up may be as simple as Jesus appeared to know what He was talking about and the scribes knew what others were talking about and made it their own.

The challenge for preachers and teachers in our age is that it is so easy to find what someone else has said about a text and pretend as though it is our own. One can randomly pick about any text he or she wants, do a Google search, and probably find something we’re willing to say. The problem with that is that even if we find something “right,” it isn’t ours and it often sounds like “it isn’t ours.”

Interestingly, this story in Mark comes shortly after Mark’s brief mention of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. (1:12,13) That was a time when, to get to the heart of it all, Jesus had to decide whether or not he would be the kind of Messiah God sent Him to be, or the one religious people wanted – the razzle-dazzle, miracle a day keeps the devil away kind of Messiah.

Could it be that the forty day trial in which Jesus had to determine His commitment to mission was the foundation upon which a kind of authority that overwhelmed His listeners was built?

Obviously there is a place for listening to what others have said about Scripture. But that place, whatever it is, can never replace our own wrestling with the text of Scripture to the point that it becomes a part of who we are. Only then can the Word of God exhibit its authority in our preaching and teaching in a way that overwhelms.

Somehow I don’t think Jesus would have downloaded His sermons from an internet site He found by using Google. When we do that, we sound much more like scribes than Jesus! No wonder the church struggles in our day with its own identity. Wrestling with the text allows us to at least sound like we know what we’re talking about – and that’s not a bad thing.

Come and See

The gospel text for this coming Sunday is John 1:43-51, the story of the call of Philip and Nathanael. Most would appreciate more details about these early calls to be disciples, but all four gospels tend to do what they always do – tell the essentials.

The basics of the story are that Jesus found Philip and simply said, “Follow Me.” One has to assume that there had been other interactions in which Philip had at least come to some understanding that this Jesus person isn’t just another want-to-be rabbi creating a following. Philip then finds Nathanael and tells him that he had found “Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” (1:44)

Perhaps Nathanael is not unlike we are sometimes prone to be, and is looking for an excuse to dismiss this “Jesus of Nazareth” as nothing more than “the son of Joseph.” He quickly responds to Philip by saying, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Reflecting what seems to have been the normal point of view of the day, he is quick to dismiss Jesus as being the unfortunate victim of bad geography – Nazareth. That’s it.

But Philip is equally quick to respond, “Come and see.”

Come and see. That’s a powerful challenge to Nathanael’s dismissal of Jesus. Embedded somewhere in it all Philip is suggesting that Jesus is different. He isn’t what you might expect to come from Nazareth. “Come and see.”

In our modern efforts to tell the Jesus story, we are often victimized by much the same attitude. “Can anything “good come from the church?” One only needs to read research data compiled by people like Dave Kinnaman in UnChristian to realize that we are living in a world filled with Nathanael’s question.

The challenge for us is whether or not we are bold enough to say, “Come and see.” Beyond that, of course, if we dare say that, we have to make sure what a skeptic might see should he or she respond to our “Come and see” truly is the body of Christ! If the skeptic comes and sees, will they see a body of people committed to loving God and loving neighbor, or will they see small minded quibbling over “stuff” that doesn’t amount to a drop of water in a really big ocean? Will they see a body of believers committed to changing the world, or a group of religious people determined to protect the turf they presume to own? To use language reflected later in the gospel of John, will they see believers determined to help outsiders discover the “place” (John 14:1ff) Jesus has prepared for them by His death on the cross, or people determined to make sure outsiders don’t come in and take our “place.” (11:48)

For me, I’m thinking about two questions today. One is personal, the other more corporate. The personal one looks like this, “Am I living the kind of life that would allow me to say to a skeptic, ‘Come and see’?” The corporate one looks like this, “Am I serving and worshiping in a community of faith where we are so determined to be the body of Christ to the world around us that we can say to the skeptics, ‘Come and see’?”

Hard questions – but at the same time, essential ones!

Simply Amazing

I don’t remember exactly what the context was in terms of the issues being discussed, but I do remember saying something like “If you took Jesus semi-seriously . . .” One person in the class was highly offended at my choice of words – “semi-seriously.” I actually wasn’t advocating a “semi-serious” approach to Jesus, but rather that even a “semi-serious” approach to Jesus would lead us to avoid all sorts of human failures. I said that in the spirit of “no telling what would happen if we took Him seriously!”

It really is simply amazing how basic that can be. When asked, perhaps not with the greatest of motives, about life issues, Jesus replied with a simply amazing answer: “Love God and love your neighbor.” When you get those two things worked out, everything else seems to fall into place. Such an approach to life requires some degree of maturity, of course, but it surely ought to be our goal in life revolves around those two principles.

On the other end of the “simply amazing” spectrum, I continue to be astounded by how easy it is to forget what loving God and loving neighbor must mean. Can I, as a believer who claims to love God on the one hand, treat a fellow believer unkindly on the other hand because I disagree over something that is temporal at best?” Or even if the disagreement is over a “matter of faith,” does that somehow trump what Jesus had to say about loving God and loving neighbor?

Can I “love my neighbor” – who at the moment happens to be a fellow believer with whom I disagree about which missionary to support – and treat her rudely over that disagreement? While loving my neighbor doesn’t suggest I have to be best friends with every person I know, it surely means that I intentionally treat my neighbor with kindness – one of the facets of the fruit of the Spirit, at least in Paul’s mind. Honestly, even if I am “right” (and we all tend to think we are) about who would be the better missionary, is that worth being un-Christlike to the person who sees it differently?

Even when the disagreement is over some matter of faith – shouldn’t I take Jesus “seriously” enough to treat my neighbor as a person “I love” instead of rudely dismissing him as “wrong.” It just seems that saying that I love God has implications about every aspect of my life, including learning to be kind to those with whom I disagree, to those whose approach to life is irritating to me, and even to those who haven’t yet found the joy of loving God.

For longer than I can believe, I’ve had the privilege of serving on the board of Woodland Christian Camp in Temple, Georgia. That has always been a blessing for a number of reasons, but among those reasons would be that I was blessed to serve alongside of John Wade, long-time professor at what was then Atlanta Christian College.

I can still remember the rather lengthy board discussion we had about the last piece of property Woodland purchased. We needed the property – for expansion and protection of the camp site – and the owner apparently knew that. He drove a hard bargain and wanted more than the property was worth. Professor Wade, who carefully managed his own resources and those of organizations he served, thought we should not buy the property. “It isn’t worth what he is asking” was a constant refrain he brought to that discussion.

When we finally voted on the matter, we voted nearly unanimously (is that an oxymoron?), there was one dissenting vote. It was Professor Wade’s.

Like most non-profits, we didn’t have the money in the bank to pay for the purchase and quickly developed a capital campaign to fund it. The first contributor to that campaign was Professor Wade, who made a generous gift to help pay for property he thought we paid too much for! And, I might add, not a single board member left that meeting years ago thinking that Professor Wade was anything buy Christ-like. Somehow he managed to seriously disagree with his neighbors in that room that night, but we all thought he loved us.

That’s the kind of “simply amazing” the world of outsiders around us needs to see more of. Such an approach can never happen – until we do the “simply amazing” thing of taking Jesus seriously!

All Things Together

In August, 1999 I spent about ten days in Durres, Albania. Durres is an ancient city, located on the coast of the Adriatic Sea. Albania was among the more oppressed countries of the infamous Eastern Block of nations, and has yet to recover from the decades of abuse brought about by the alternating allegiance of its rulers to either the USSR or China.

But the beaches in Durres – they were filled with potential for reflecting what God must have been thinking when, looking at His creation, declare that it was “very good.” But potential is the key word – for those potentially beautiful expressions of God’s creative power were littered with the fallen remnants of the former oppressors’ military might and garbage. Every kind of garbage you could imagine dotted the sea shore. And, perhaps even worse, every kind of waste was casually pumped into the sea as though doing that would make it disappear.

I can still remember walking down the sea shore with a believer in Albania. We were both drinking water from a plastic bottle – the only safe water to drink – and when he finished his bottle, he just dropped it on the ground. He was casually adding to the litter and the ugliness of what could have been a beautiful place on planet earth. The entire time I was thinking how much those beautiful beaches – if cleaned up and taken care of – could help the people of Albania tap in to the tourist industry and have adequate resources to live more comfortably, eat better meals, and provide an education for their children. I kept thinking “If I could become Secretary of State, in charge of a huge budget for foreign aid, I could . . .”

Earlier this week I started reading Genesis in my personal Bible reading. You can’t help but notice that God considered His creative acts to be “good,” in fact at the end of the first creation narrative He declares it to be “very good.” When the flood has accomplished its purpose, God gives a promise to Noah and his family that never again would He destroy the world with a cataclysmic event like the flood.

Apparently, despite our own abuse of creation, God appears to think it to be “very good.” In Romans 8, Paul reminds his first readers and ultimately us that creation itself groans for the day when God fully renews and restores the universe to its intended purpose.

It makes you wonder why it is that sometimes the loudest voices in our culture about care for planet earth are coming from those who have little or no sense of God as Creator. Where is the voice of those who insist that indeed He is the Creator of heaven and earth? How can we be silent when we are called to be God’s agents in the world to accomplish God’s ultimate plan?

In Colossians 1:15-20, one of the great Christological texts in all of Scripture, Paul declares that Christ is not only “the head of the body, the church,” but He is also “the firstborn of all creation” and “is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” If the phrase “body of Christ” is more than some clever metaphor Paul created and we truly are “Jesus to the world,” then surely a part of our mission from God includes care for what Christ, as firstborn of all creation, sustains – holds together.

It is more than unfortunate that we who hold the truth of the gospel to be absolute and utterly true are so prone to leave out part of the story. Through Jesus Christ God intends to renew and restore the good world He created to its intended purpose. While that obviously has great impact on the lives of individuals who, through faith, choose to become a part of the body of Christ, that isn’t all! We are called to be His agents in bearing witness not only to what we often mean when we say “salvation,” but into all that He came to do – and that includes the work of caring for the world our gracious and loving God created and called good!

When I think about the fact that this coming Sunday is the first day of a new year and most of us will think about how we want to live in the year that is before us, perhaps we could all spend a little effort thinking about how God can use us to renew and restore creation! Who knows, perhaps some believers in Albania will start picking up the litter on those beautiful beaches!

Adversaries

Early this morning while convincing myself to get up and head to a meeting, I grabbed the always nearby iPhone and checked email. There was an email from the chairman of the board at Mount Carmel Christian Church, asking me if I had seen a story on the news and if so, was it the church he thought it was. We had WSB morning news on, and almost as soon as I read his email, I saw the story. It was the church he was thinking it might be.

Kingdom City Church in Stone Mountain, not too far from Mount Carmel, had been vandalized – even beyond the norm for that sort of disgusting behavior. They didn’t just take copper tubing from air conditioning units. They took refrigerators, food, cooking equipment, and apparently whatever else they could get their hands on. Part of the vandalism included something that caused flooding in the building that ruined books, clothes collected for needy people, and whatever else was in the path of about six inches of water on the floor.

Kingdom City Church is not a huge congregation, but it is a church with a huge heart. Led by James and Mona Harper, they are always seeking ways to minister to others. James and Mona, by the way, are parents of Point University graduate Morgan Harper Nichols, and Point University student Jamie-Grace Harper. They are great friends to Point and great leaders of this church.

I responded to the email and sent a text message to Mona. Soon there was a flurry of emails between the elders at Mount Carmel and others with me, the board chair, and the Mount Carmel staff. Mona called me and we had a long conversation where she told me more details of the vandalism and what all had been ruined. I asked her how we could help and we prayed together on the phone.

I couldn’t be prouder (in a healthy, Christian sense of what being proud is all about) of the leadership at Mount Carmel. They are fully engaged in finding out what our congregation can do to help Kingdom City Church. It makes me think of Paul’s comment in 1 Corinthians 12 when he says “when one part of the body hurts, the whole body hurts.” Seeing the comments made by various elders and members of Mount Carmel in response to Rick Moore’s first email is nothing short of gratifying to me.

All day long I’ve been thinking and praying for James, Mona, their congregation, and Mount Carmel. I can’t quit thinking about how depraved a person must be to not only rob a church, but to viciously vandalize it. I go from wishing I could catch them to thinking about how sad their lives must be.

The Scripture that has made its way into my thinking today is one that I memorized as a freshman in college in Denver Sizemore’s class. It is from 1 Peter 5:8 and says, “Be of sober spirit, be on the alert. Your adversary, the devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.” We really shouldn’t be surprised when the presence of evil seeks to prevent good from being done. But Peter goes on and reminds us that we must “resist him, firm in your faith, knowing that the same experiences of suffering are being accomplished by your brethren who are in the world.” (5:9)

Ours is a difficult world. Just today I read of real challenges a couple who are Point alumni and serving in a very difficult country are facing. His message to his friends was something like “don’t pray for our safety, pray that the gospel is shared.” Another Point alumus frequently emails me about some of the challenges his mission faces in another part of the world. A team from Mount Carmel has had an unbelievably difficult time just getting Christmas gifts for children into another country.

The adversary is prowling. It’s time for us to “resist him and stand firm.”
Please join me in praying for James and Mona and Kingdom City Church. Pray for servants of the child of Bethlehem named “Mighty God” all over the world who face danger in this very moment.

Just When

“Just when . . .” If the story of the coming of Christ is looked at with the sense of wonderment it deserves, one has to admit that among the lessons learned is that God apparently is free to interrupt our lives. We like it when the interruption suits our own sense of timing, and when it doesn’t, then that’s another story all together.

Right in the middle of Matthew’s account of the birth of Jesus the Messiah, we find that intriguing reminder – “just when.” In this particular case, it has to do with Joseph, already described by Matthew as about to have Mary quietly put away, is dealing with a difficult moment in his life. Obviously unhappy with the things have worked out and no doubt not all that sure Mary’s story is true, he never-the-less wants to be a gentleman about it all. “Just when . . .”

In his case, an angel of the Lord appeared and told him, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” (Matthew 1:20,21, NRSV)

Joseph has it all figured out. He has evaluated life and all of the circumstances that have come crashing down upon him and has a plan. He will be able to sleep at night knowing that he at least treated Mary decently – even though she had not treated him quite so well. Life will be a little different than he had planned, but at least he had a plan and he can now see how things would work out. “Just when . . .”

It would be pretty difficult to think of a more challenging “just when . . .” than the one Joseph is facing. The interruption brought to his life by the birth of the Son of God certainly qualifies as major change in life. Neither Mary nor Joseph could possibly realize just how big the interruption will eventually become.

But the real story in Matthew 1:18-25 is not simply “just when . . .” Joseph, you see, still has a choice. Among the more courageous words of the Matthew story are those words that tell us that Joseph “did as the angel of the Lord commanded him.” He models a kind of responsive faith that God desires always follows the huge “just when . . .” moments we all face.

Our interruptions in life aren’t likely to be quite as dramatic as were Joseph’s, but we all know that there have been times when, “just when we had life planned out perfectly” God somehow interrupted life with opportunities we never dreamed about, much less included in our plans.

The issue really isn’t the “just whens” of life – but the response to those moments when we determine, as did Joseph, “to do as the Lord commands us.”

Getting Ready

One can hardly think about the season of Advent, which of course began this past Sunday, without thinking about John, the one who came baptizing in the Jordon River as people responded to his message of repentance.

It seems John’s primary mission from God was to stir things up among the religious people of the day as a way of preparing for the coming of Messiah. That idea alone is enough to occupy a considerable spot in our minds. Why was it that “religious people” needed to be stirred up?

We all know that rather impressive birth narrative associated with John’s coming into the world – another of those Hebrew stories of old, childless couples suddenly confronted with the reality of parenthood. That story, as impressive as it is, doesn’t quite match up to the even more impressive birth narrative of the One for whom John’s mission was “prepare the way of the Lord.”

In similar, but not identical, ways to what we know about Jesus, we know about John’s birth and the next thing we know he is this wild man preaching in the wilderness of Judea with a message that can be summarized with one word: repent. He was, to say the least, a bit of an odd character, but then so was Elijah who seems to be his model.

John simply isn’t very impressed with religious people. He calls the most religious of the religious people a “brood of vipers” and is utterly unimpressed with any sense of entitlement based on one’s gene pool. “I tell you that out of these stones God can raise up children of Abraham” was how he indelicately put it to a group of Pharisees and Sadducees.

What Mark so quickly has Jesus saying (Mark 1:15) Matthew tells us of John’s preaching the same message to prepare for the preaching of Jesus. For John, it was all very simple: one greater than He was about the burst on to the scene of human history and there was but one word to say about that: repent!

If we take the season of Advent seriously in our own lives – a time of longing, a time of preparation, a time of anticipation – for the coming of the glorious Lord, then I wonder what our one word should be? How, for example, should we think about our own spiritual disciplines as sometimes very “religious people” in this season of anticipation?

Would that word perhaps be the same word John used? Repent? Seriously – is that the right word for us? Would we, in our desire to do all that we can to get all of us and all of those around us ready for His coming, would we find a way to focus on repentance?

I don’t know if we would, but I’m pretty convinced we should. I keep thinking about how odd it is that on the one hand we are told that Christ came to the world “in the fullness of time,” (Galatians 4:4) yet the very people who should have been most welcoming of God’s Messiah seem to be the most resistant. The biblical scholars who should have been most perceptive about who Messiah would be and what Messiah would be like, pretty much missed the boat on both counts.

Could that possibly be me? Or you? Or the churches with which we worship and serve? Is it possible in all of our efforts to be “religious people” that the one thing we easily miss is the one thing John was so focused on: repent!

I don’t know the answers to those questions – but I think I ought to be thinking about them.