What future societies might say about American Christians in 2016

Imagine people 2000 years from now studying Christianity.  What would they say about us?  What is important to us?  They would have to conclude that buildings are very important to us, and what happens in those buildings on Sunday mornings is also very important to us.  Take away the building and Sunday morning, and some (most?) churches have almost nothing left.  Is that what Jesus wanted?  Did he want our focus, our worship, our system of church to be on a building and what happens in that building for a few hours one day of the week?

No.  In fact, Jesus never mentioned, in all his teaching, anything about building buildings and gathering for worship on Sunday.  In Luke 21, after the disciples comment about the majestic temple in Jerusalem, Jesus says something terrifying to them.  He tells them that the temple would be destroyed!

Reading between the lines a bit, Jesus is saying to the disciples, “Guys, don’t lose your focus on the mission of my Kingdom!”

The mission of God does not change: make disciples.  But the system of church can change and it has numerous times over the centuries.  There are certain components to church that must be included.  Many have looked over the Scriptures, studied them, and believe that Jesus and his disciples taught that any system of church must have at least these four areas:  worship, fellowship, discipleship and outreach.  How we express our faithfulness to that mission is quite open for consideration.

What, then, should we do with our building?  And what system of church should we have?

The answer starts with heart and attitude.  We should not be focused on a building, or a system of church, as these will pass away!  Instead we should be focused on being Jesus’ disciples who make more disciples for his kingdom.  We should be focused on the mission of his Kingdom.

Here’s the amazing thing about the church.  If a church’s buildings are destroyed, it does not affect the church.  The church is not the building.  The church is the people.  We do not need a building to be a church.  My Rt 340 widening story might not be true, but disaster can happen.  In 2009-10 our sister congregation, Kimball Avenue Church in Chicago, had a one of those disasters.  Their boiler exploding sending super-hot water vapor throughout their building, which did serious damage.  Their building was condemned.

But Kimball Ave Church did something amazing.  They decided not to build again.  At least not a building, that is.  Instead they decided to use their property to reach out to their community, by making a prayer garden.

KAC prayer garden

Kimball Avenue Church is still a church.  Because the people are the church!  And what’s more, they kept their focus on the mission of God’s Kingdom when they considered whether or not to rebuild.  (View the entire process of the deconstruction of their building here.)

Is your focus on the mission of God’s Kingdom?  Are you a disciple, a follower of Jesus who is making more disciples for him?

Here are some questions to help you evaluate:  Who is discipling you?  Mentoring you?  Leading you?  Investing in your life?  Helping you to be a follower of Jesus?  I’m not talking about believing.  I’m talking about learning to be, to do, to live, to serve like Jesus did.  And what is the task that Jesus spent most of his time doing?  Making disciples.  Jesus tells us that his disciples will do what he did, make more disciples. So just as we are to be his disciples, we are then to make more disciples.

All of us should have a plan we are following for making disciples, and together as a church we should have a plan as well.   So let’s spend our lives on that mission, let’s use our building for that mission, but let’s not focus on our building, let’s keep our focus on the mission of making disciples.  Then 2000 years from now when a possible future society evaluates us, they’ll be able to see clearly that we stayed focused on the mission of God’s Kingdom.

Could Lancaster County Tourism Destroy our church?*

Imagine this scenario with me: we receive a disturbing letter in the mail.

And by “we”, I mean Faith Church.

Say it is a letter from a joint meeting of the Lancaster County Planning Commission and the East Lampeter Township Supervisors.  The letter details how they have been studying traffic flow on our road, Old Philadelphia Pike (PA Route 340), for the last few years, and the experts have concluded that Old Philadelphia Pike is no longer suitable to handle the amount of traffic in our area, especially during tourist season.  Because of our Lancaster County Amish and Mennonite heritage and residents, thousands of visitors journey to our farmlands every year.  So imagine that there have been surveyors recently studying the stretch of 340 from the Route 30 Junction heading east through Smoketown, Bird-in-Hand and Intercourse.

Rt. 340 was not originally designed for the volume of traffic that currently uses the road.  Traffic is only projected to increase, especially with tourism and as the new housing complex between Greenfield Road and Willow Road is completed, bringing 1400 units to our area in the next few years.

The County Tourism Bureau, in particular, would be driving some of the changes.  What tourist wants to come to Lancaster with dreams of spotting horse and buggies and eating whoopie pies and shoo-fly pie, only to be stuck in traffic?  To keep those tourist dollars flowing, we need wider roads.  Given how many dollars we’re talking about, theirs is a powerful argument.  Put that all together and the plan would be that over the next two years, Route 340 would undergo widening becoming a five-lane road.  It would have two lanes each way, with a turning lane in the middle.

Using eminent domain, the State would take over all of the land needed on the 7.5 mile stretch between Route 30/340 junction and the town of Intercourse to facilitate this expansion.  The result would be that Faith Church’s sanctuary would no longer meet code requirements for distance from a roadway.

The sanctuary will have to be demolished*.

How would you feel?

In our next section of Luke, Jesus pretty much tells the disciples that a scenario like this is going to happen to their church.   Their church?  Did they have a church?  Sorta.  The building that they looked to as the center of their faith in God was the temple building.  It was a magnificent structure that was the heart of their nation’s heritage and identity.  Being from Galilee in northern Israel, the disciples would likely have only seen the temple a few times per year, so it could have held an even greater pull on their hearts and emotions.  In this section of Luke’s story, they are standing in Jerusalem, looking at the temple, enthralled by its beauty.  They say to Jesus something like “Isn’t the temple great, Jesus?”

And what does Jesus say? “It’s all going to be demolished.”

Why would he say this?

If you want to find out, check out Luke 21:5-38, and join us at Faith Church on Sunday 4/24!

*Have no fear for our sanctuary!  The story above is false, created to illustrate what the disciples might have felt like that day.  Lancaster County Tourism won’t demolish our church.  In fact the opposite is true!  By all means, come visit Lancaster County!  I may be biased, but our county is a simply beautiful place to live and visit.  Come discover our incredible PA Dutch food, the fascinating Anabaptist (particularly Amish and Mennonite) heritage, the gorgeous farmlands, our history (did you know Lancaster was capital of the USA for a day?), and our city which has become an arts and music hub. Not to mention that Faith Church, located along one of the busiest tourist routes in Lancaster, LOVES tourists!

Angry about taxes or money? How a widow can help!

Last week we looked at Jesus’ comment “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God was is God’s.”

How many of you gave money unto “Caesar” this week as you filed your taxes?  Michelle and I did.  It is almost always an agonizing process for me. When I work on taxes, I could definitely use a padded cell like the guy in this picture.  What gets me upset is a combination of how complex the forms and instructions can be, as well as saying goodbye to my money.

Our son had opened a bank account in 2015, and the bank ran a promotion where if you deposited money in the count through direct deposit, you would get a $150 bonus.  It was great!  But guess what came in the mail this year?  A form 1099 from the bank calling that $150 bonus as interest income, saying it was reported to the government and was taxable.  So he had to pay $4 to the Commonwealth of PA for that.  It is easy, from a story like that, to quickly get on to a bunny trail about how the government has its fingers picking our pockets.

But we’re not going to do that!  Instead I want to ask about the feelings going on in your heart and mind when you hear a story like that.  Maybe anger, maybe frustration. Where do those feelings come from?

Let me suggest that the feelings come from an unhealthy sense of ownership of our money.

In that one line Jesus addresses something that can be very hard for us.  Giving.  Whether it is giving taxes to the government or giving God an offering, if many of us are honest, we can feel negative about it.  We don’t want anyone telling us what to do with our money.  And not just government, but also God.  Or a preacher.  Too many government officials and preachers have abused their position and profited off of people.  So we can get really jaded about giving, whether to church or state.

Last week we talked a good bit about how to have a healthy attitude when it comes to paying taxes.  This week we’re going to see how some people had a very poor attitude toward giving to God.  It was the religious leaders.  But why?  They had a faulty attitude toward giving, Jesus will tell us, because they had a major error in their theology.  Jesus is about to lay a smack down on those high and mighty leaders again, and he’s going to get help from the unlikeliest of places, especially consider that culture.  He’s going to get help from a widow.

Check it out at Luke 20:41-21:4.  And join us at Faith Church to learn more!

How to handle confrontation

Spies, taxes, a woman with seven husbands, and the most intelligent man in the world.

That pretty much sums up the next story in our ongoing series on Luke’s Gospel, which you can read about in Luke 20:20-40.  In the story, Jesus is in the final days of his life, and he has bunkered down in Jerusalem, spending each day teaching in the temple courts, and each evening in prayer outside the city.  The religious leaders hate that not only is he on their turf, but he is doing their job leading the people, and the people adore him.  They send two groups to try to take him down.

The first group the NIV calls “spies”.  Jesus had wrapped the religious up in a lose-lose situation just before, so now they are hiding in embarrassment, and they hire secret agents to try to do their dirty work.  These secret agents come up to Jesus while he is teaching in the temple courts, and after buttering him up (“You’re such an amazing teacher!”), they try to snag him with a political controversy.  About taxes.

One scholar tells us that “The secret agents are in effect asking, ‘Are God’s people exempt from paying such a tax to a foreign power? Jesus, are you loyal to Israel, looking for its independence, or should we knuckle under to Rome?’”[1]

Though the Romans did bring some benefits, the Jews hated being occupied.  As any people would. So obviously the Jews were no fan of paying taxes to Rome.  Imagine if China invades the USA and occupies our land.  Then they start taxing us.  And our taxes don’t stay here to help improve our land, our taxes go over to China to help improve theirs.  How would you feel?

Paying taxes was as much an issue back then as it is now!  So Jesus is in a really tough spot here. If he agrees with paying taxes, he could be perceived in a very negative light by the people who hated paying taxes (pretty much everyone).  If he disagrees with paying taxes, he could be accused of sedition and charged with inciting insurrection, arrest by the Roman governor, and tried as a criminal.

There seems to be no right answer.  It’s another lose-lose situation.

As we see in verses 23-26, Jesus asks for a coin, then asks them to tell him whose picture is on it.  They say “Caesar” and Jesus responds with genius: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and give to God what is God’s.”

Response by the secret agents?  Astonished silence.

Then Luke tells us that the religious leaders come out of hiding.  This second group, the Sadducees, try to trap him with a theological controversy.  

What was their theological issue?  Theology is the study of God.  So a theological issue is an issue about the Bible or doctrine, in this case, resurrection and marriage.  Luke tells us the Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection.  They create what appears at first glance to be a bizarre case study thinking they could trap Jesus and hopefully discredit him in front of all the people.

Maybe it was a real story, a woman who outlived seven husbands.  The theological issue? In heaven whose wife would she be?

It sounds outrageous, but their example is using something from the Old Testament Law called Levirate marriage.  You can see from this passage in Deuteronomy 25:5-6 that if a husband died, his brother would marry his widowed sister-in-law to preserve his brother’s line.  So the Sadducees ask Jesus to imagine a family with seven brothers.  One gets married first, then dies.  One by one the brothers marry their sister-in-law and one by one they die.  Sound impossible?

My grandma outlived three husbands, which would have been enough to prove their point.

The Sadducees believe they have created a situation that clearly shows the ridiculousness of the doctrine of the resurrection.  A woman in heaven with seven husbands?  Who gets her?  You can see them looking at Jesus saying “There, how are you going to respond to that, smart guy?  Resurrection, which we have heard you talking about, is stupid!  Our situation proves it.”  Basically they are saying that Levirate marriage disproves resurrection.

But Jesus theologically outduels them.  He says “Well gentlemen, you are wrong in many ways.”

  1. This life is not like the afterlife. They are different!
  2. Not everyone goes to heaven. Only those considered worthy.
  3. And what’s more, there is no marriage in heaven.
  4. Resurrection is TRUE. Want proof?  Just open your Torah which you love so much.  What do you read there?  God is the living God, the God of the Living. Disproving your faulty disbelief of resurrection.

See what he does there? Another genius response that silences the religious leaders.

We can learn from Jesus’ Way.  How did he handle people who tried to trap him?

Have you ever been confronted?  I’m sure you have.  The confrontation could be about what you believe.  Could be about choices you’ve made.  Could be about a great many things.  How do you handle it when you are confronted?

Look at how Jesus handles himself:

  1. Remains self-controlled. He’s okay when people disagree with him. He doesn’t get offended, take it personally, or get angry.  He shows us a calm confidence.
  2. Does not cave on the truth just because high-powered people are confronting him.
  3. Knows the Word.
  4. Speaks the truth in love.

In the end Jesus silences both groups.  But not by force.  Not by telling the crowd to attack them.  He doesn’t use aggression or bully tactics.

Let us be people who respond to those who confront us in love.

That is true intelligence. Let us become like the one who was the most intelligent of all.

[1] Darrell L. Bock, Luke: 9:51–24:53, vol. 2, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 1996), 1611.

Spies, Taxes, a woman with 7 husbands & the most intelligent man who ever lived

The most intelligent person who ever lived? 

Albert Einstein?  Marilyn vos Savant? King Solomon?  Leonardo Da Vinci?  Stephen Hawking? Shakespeare? Newton? Mozart? Marie Curie?

I researched a bunch of “Most Intelligent People in the History of the World” lists, and there are plenty more candidates.  There are lots of opinions as to who should be on those lists, not to mention who should be #1.  Furthermore, does intelligence simply refer to IQ?  What about those who have shown astounding ability in the arts?  What about people who don’t have an astronomical IQ, but they have achieved great accomplishments.

While most lists didn’t include him, one of the “Most Intelligent” lists I found put Jesus at #5.  It’s not #1, but considering all the possible names, I thought it was interesting that he even made a list.  I was surprised by that because most people and lists don’t think of Jesus when asked to name the most intelligent person in history.

As we have seen in our study through Luke, Jesus was amazingly intelligent too.  In fact when I started this series over a year ago, I suggested that we would find out that Jesus was the most intelligent man who ever lived.  Now we near the end of the series.  We have only a couple more months, about 10 more sermons.  We have watched Jesus’ way, heard his words, and seen his amazing works.  Now we are in his final days before his arrest.  Each day he is teaching in the temple courts, right in the middle of the religious leaders’ HQ.  Not surprisingly, this has them shaking with jealousy and anger.  Last week, we watched as they had him in what appeared to be a lose-lose situation, and he got out of it with ease, binding the religious leaders in a lose-lose situation in the process.

This week, they are really upset again, and they try to trap him again.  The way he handles himself, intellectually, emotionally, physically, is amazing.  What do you think?  Was Jesus the most intelligent person to ever live?  If you want to preview the story, check out Luke 20:20-40.

Join us at Faith Church and judge for yourself.  (Oh, by the way, there will spies, a discussion about taxes, and a woman who outlived seven husbands.)

 

How Jesus can help you get out of a lose-lose situation – Luke 20:1-18

lose lose situationOne of our Faith Church members who is in the military responded to my Facebook question asking if people have ever been in a lose-lose situation.  She said this: “In 2011 I was finishing my language training with the military. Half way through we take an exam to see our progress. The problem is that it is the same test that we take at the end of the course. Many of the other students decided to copy down all of the questions they could remember and use them to study from for the final exam. This, of course, is not allowed and is considered cheating.  So the dilemma was whether or not to report my fellow classmates. Reporting would most likely lead to them losing their career and not reporting could mean I would lose mine.”

In lose-lose situations, there are no good answers.  Jesus found himself in one of those in Luke 20:1-18.

When you combine Jesus’ authoritative teaching, and the power of the Holy Spirit at work through him, with the adoring response of the crowds of people following him, it seems as though the religious leaders felt their power slipping.

So it is no wonder the religious leaders confront him!  In verse 2 they ask him about the authority by which he is doing this preaching, teaching and cleansing of the table.  With a simple question from these leaders, it seems Jesus is in a lose-lose situation.  Think about his potential answers here.

If he says “My authority is from God” or “I am God, so I have authority”, they will accuse him of blasphemy. If they accused him of blasphemy, they would jail him or worse, and his time was not quite ready for that.  So he doesn’t say that.

Another thing he could say is “I am my own authority. I just decided to do this”, but they would likely respond, “You don’t have authority, and you are acting in disrespect of those whom God has placed in authority.”  In other words, they would be accusing him of not respecting their authority.  And again they would arrest him.

There are probably many other things he could say, but the wild thing is, both of these responses above would be true.  He is God and he does have authority and he did decide to do this. But either answer would get him in trouble.  They have him backed into a lose-lose situation.

So what does Jesus do to get out of the dilemma?  He doesn’t answer!  Rather, without missing a beat, he asks them question! About John the Baptist!  Why would he create a question about John’s baptism?  Is Jesus just being random?  Is he trying to confuse the religious leaders with a riddle?

Luke gives us an insider’s view into their fascinating discussion in verses 5-7.  They are huddled up like a football team, saying “how do we answer this guy?  He’s got us trapped!”

They were trapped.  They are either going to be guilty of not believing a prophet from heaven, or they will be in trouble with the people.

You see what Jesus did there?  He took the lose-lose situation he was in, and he jumped out of it by putting the Pharisees in a lose-lose situation.  Genius!

With the leaders silenced, he takes a hold of the moment and tells them a story.  It’s a simple story of a vineyard owner and tenant farmers who work the land.  The farmers refuse to give the owner his share of the fruit, beating his servants, and ultimately killing his son.  Jesus concludes by saying the owner will step in and deal with those farmers severely.

What is the point of the parable? It’s very similar to the Banquet parable.  God gave the mission of his Kingdom to Israel, telling Israel to be a blessing to the world.  Using the imagery of the parable, Israel was to bear fruit for his Kingdom.  But they didn’t.  They kept it to themselves.  They didn’t do what God wanted them to do.  And when God sent prophets to warn them, they mistreated the prophets.  Now he was sending them his own Son, and Jesus through the parable prophesies what would happen.  They would kill him.  God would bring justice, though, giving the mission of his Kingdom to others, namely the Gentiles.

The people in the crowd respond in verse 16 with “May this never be!”  And Jesus continues by quoting some OT passages from about a stone being rejected.  Just like owner in the parable would kill the tenant farmers, Jesus is saying that this stone would bring judgement on many.  What was the stone?  He was referring to himself.

And what’s more, the religious leaders, we are told in verse 19, knew that he was speaking this parable against them.  Did that ever get under their skin!  Now he was not only on their turf, doing their job, and everybody is loving him to pieces, and not only are they jealous and feeling their power slipping away, but now he is publicly, boldly telling them, right in the middle of their HQ, that God is going to take their authority from them!

So what started as a question from the religious leaders about Jesus’ authority has now turned into Jesus questioning theirs! 

Those religious leaders rejected Jesus’ authority, and now God would reject theirs.  It was a scenario they could not allow into the realm of possibility.  They took for granted that they had authority.   They could never allow Jesus to have authority over them.  Though they talked about the Messiah and believed that the Old Testament prophets foretold of a Messiah, a savior from God who would come, and though Jesus’ miracles and teaching looked a lot like that Messiah, because he challenged them so much, because he rebuked them, because he called them hypocrites, they could not submit to his authority.  So they rejected him, and thus they would be rejected.

In this we see a principle that carries through to our day: We need to be people who give Jesus authority over our lives.

All of us need to consider the authority that Jesus in our lives.  Is it a high level of authority?  A low level of authority?  No authority?

Think about it in the context of bearing fruit.  In the parable, the tenant farmers were to bear fruit for the master. The religious leaders were the tenant farmers, and they were not bearing fruit.

Are we bearing fruit?

If we place ourselves under God’s authority, we will bear fruit for him.  What does that mean, bearing fruit?  This is where we can cycle back to a concept that Jesus himself talked about and that he practiced so diligently during his three ministry years: Making disciples.

He spent the better part of three years working with a group of men and women, helping them become the kind of people who could do what he did, which was making more disciples.  So I will ask a question I’ve asked before, who is discipling you, and who are you discipling?  All of us should be able to answer that question.  And as a church we should be able to answer the question: what is our plan for making disciples?  I am so thankful that at Faith Church our Discipleship Serve Team is working on answering that question, and that discipleship and disciplemaking is happening in our family of faith Church.  What we seek is to increase that, and to be more intentional about it.  Want to learn more? I would love to talk with you.

Second, to give Jesus authority, we see that he was a man of prayer.  In the end of Luke chapter 21, which describes the last week of his life, we learn that he went to be alone to pray every night.  I am convinced that one of the clearest ways we can show that we are giving God authority in our lives is prayer.  What are you doing Wednesdays at 7pm?  Except when we have Family Nights, we have prayer meeting.  Can you join us?  How can you pray more in your personal life?  Do you feel like you need someone to teach you to pray?  Again, please talk with me, I would love to start a discussion about this.

Finally, we give ourselves to his authority when we choose to follow his way of life.  It is a way of hope, joy, peace, obedience, love, and so much more.

Remember the dilemma my friend in the military had about classmates she discovered cheating on the language test?  Want to know what she did?

She says, “I did report the cheating, and several soldiers were discharged from the military. Others that had not cheated but knew about the cheating lost their rank.”

Imagine the repercussions she faced socially from those soldiers.  But she had given herself over to Jesus’ authority long ago.  She chose to follow Jesus’ way of truth.  And here’s the rub.  Remember this was a lose-lose situation.  She says, “Even though I did the right thing by reporting the cheating, my Command tried to punish me for also being part of the class that cheated and isolated me from the rest of my unit. I was involuntarily re-classed out of my primary job because the Commander didn’t believe I was a “good fit” anymore or “could exercise good judgement”.”

I asked her if she would do it over again.

She said “It has changed my trust levels in my leadership, but I wouldn’t change what I did because I know it was the right thing. It has changed my perspective on other situations where ethical dilemmas may arise and I have been able to guide younger soldiers into doing the right thing from the beginning. I know God has been in it the whole way because I feel I am happier now than I ever would have been as a linguist.”

How do you need to give Jesus more authority in your life?

Getting out of a Lose – Lose Situation

Ever been in a lose-lose situation?

They make you feel trapped.  No answer seems good.

Mutually Assured Destruction.  You shoot an arsenal of nuclear bombs at me, and I will shoot my arsenal of nuclear bombs at you.  Boom.  Not a good solution.

What about other lose-lose situations that are more a part of our daily lives?

Maybe a job interview that goes like this:

Employer: “So tell me about your experience in this line of work?”

Applicant: “I don’t have any.  I was hoping to gain experience on the job.”

Employer: “Sorry, you need minimum of three years experience to get the job.”

Applicant: “Well how will I get experience if I can never get a job until I have experience?”

Or it is like the true story I heard of a man who had amassed nearly a million dollars for retirement.  When retirement came he decided to invest some money in stocks.  It was when tech stocks were booming and he sunk $100,000 into what seemed a sure bet.  The tech bubble burst and the price of the stock dropped precipitously.   He was sure it would rebound.  It did not.  Instead it hit new lows.  So he sold the stock for a quarter of his purchase price.  When the stock dropped again, he decided to invest again, thinking the rebound was coming.  It didn’t.  Another $100,000 mostly lost.   But when the stock kept dropping he kept thinking it had finally hit rock bottom, and he would invest with dreams of getting his investment back.  The stock astounded him by dropping every time.  All told he lost $700,000.

There are other ways to describe this:  A no win situation.  A dilemma. A pickle.

Have you ever had to get out of a no-win situation?  Did you have to take a loss?

In our ongoing study of the Life of Jesus through the Gospel of Luke, we have come to his final week. Last week while we fast-forwarded to the resurrection for Easter Sunday, we also rewound to a parable he told of a great banquet.  At that time he was having dinner with a Pharisee and he boldly predicted their demise before God.  The Pharisees didn’t like him for that.  Now back to his final week, and things are coming to a head.  The religious elite, including the Pharisees, are desperate to take him down.  For Jesus it seems like a lose-lose situation.

Check out Luke 20:1-18 and join us at Faith Church on Sunday April 3 to see if Jesus gets out of a lose-lose situation.

How to find fulfillment from that inner empty feeling

empty self 3It is hard to be satisfied deep within.  Psychologists call this the empty self.  There is within most of us a dissatisfaction.  We seek to fill that with consumer goods or with food, hobbies, vacations or thrills.  Sometimes we seek to fill that inner longing with addictive behaviors.

We can also seek fulfillment by accomplishing great tasks, with making money, or with watching a TV show.  How do you seek fulfillment in your life?

No doubt all of those things do fill the empty self for a time.  But only for a time.  What we notice is that the dissatisfaction comes back.  Over and over it comes back.  And we seek to fill it over and over.

My wife, Michelle, and I got new smart phones last year.  Within a couple months the newer model of the phone came out, and all of a sudden my new phone felt old…obsolete. I felt within my heart a desire to get the new one.  I felt upset that I didn’t know the newer one was coming out so soon.  I started to think that maybe I needed to go to the store and ask for a refund, thinking that they should have told me.  I would have waited to get the newer one.  But I decided not to go through all that trouble.  Now almost a year later, guess what?  Another newer model has just been released!  Now my phone is two versions old.  And those feelings of dissatisfaction have started rising up inside me again.

There is an answer to this ongoing sense of empty self.  The banquet of the Lord. How can a banquet answer our deepest longings of our soul?  Let’s talk about that.

Jesus told the Parable of the Banquet while he was at a Pharisee’s house for dinner.  In the parable he says that the first set of guests were too busy to come to the banquet.  They said no.  So the master sends his servant to invite a second, then a third, set of guests, so that he can fill up his banquet hall with rejoicing.  In the parable Jesus is teaching that some people reject God’s invitation, and for a variety of reasons.  But God wants all and invites all to his banquet.  What we learn about God’s invitation will help us answer how God’s banquet can fulfill our deepest longings.

On Easter we remember the resurrection.  It is the clearest invitation from God that there is!  Let me explain.

When Jesus died on the cross, he took upon himself what was keeping us from being invited to the banquet feast.  Our sin, our disobedience of God, was keeping us apart from God and fueling the empty self.  Jesus took that sin on himself because he loves us, because he knew we could never make ourselves right, we could never invite ourselves to the banquet, and he defeated that sin.  On that first Easter morning, in the amazing power of God, he defeated death, he defeated the devil, and when he rose to new life, he opened up the doors to God’s banquet feast for all of us.  His resurrection is an invitation to us all from God saying, “You are invited to my banquet!”

When you look at the invitation God has given you to enter into his banquet, there is only one way to accept the invitation, by faith.

One of Jesus’ earliest followers, Paul, had something to say about the invitation to the banquet, especially because he was one of the ones that was against Jesus.  Paul was the kind of guy who would be going around trying to keep people away from the banquet.

Paul actually was one of those Pharisees.  And in the first couple years after Jesus returned to heaven, and Jesus’ followers were inviting more and more people to God’s Kingdom banquet, Paul stepped in and said “STOP!”  In fact he started rounding them up, sending them to jail, even trying to kill some.

Until Jesus spoke to Paul in a miraculous voice saying “Paul why are hurting me?  I have an invitation for you.  I want you in my banquet.  I also want you to be the servant who goes out all around the world inviting people to my banquet.  My house is nowhere near full.”  From that point on Paul spent his life traveling the Roman Empire inviting people to God’s banquet.

In one of his letters, Paul talks about this.  He reflects on the fact that he was one of the guests who was invited first, but turned down the invitation.  But now he not only accepted the new invitation, he is giving his who life to telling others:

“I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”

Paul would go on to say that this resurrection of Jesus is an amazing thing.  The power the rose Jesus from the dead is available to us.  Talk about an invitation to a banquet!  Paul says in another letter:

“I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe. That power is like the working of his mighty strength, which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead.”

You see what this means?  God’s invites you to his banquet today.  It’s not a banquet of food.  Instead it is an invitation to receive him, to follow him, and allow him to transform your life with his power.  Do you feel the emptiness in you?  The empty self?  Accept God’s invitation and allow his resurrection power to flow into your life.  It’s a banquet to a new life.  Not to a perfect life, not necessarily to a life of earthly blessings, not to a life where it is promised that life will be easy or that life will be as we think it should be.  But when we feast at God’s Banquet table, it is a life loved by God, a life of community with other followers of Christ where we love and care for one another.  Through God’s Banquet, in other words, he meets our deepest longings.

When we accept God’s invitation, we are inviting him to transform our lives. At God’s banquet table we find the only place that our empty selves find fulfillment.

I’d love to talk with you further about how to RSVP to God’s Banquet invitation.

Saying No to invitations

I’ve been invited to a bunch of banquets lately, and interestingly enough they are all great, and they are all on the same weekend, April 21-23.  It is unique that they all ended up at around the same time, but it is not unique to get invited to banquets.  Have you noticed that there are lots of banquets these days.  Maybe you have been invited to them too.  The ones I’m invited to tend to be fundraising banquets.  The organizers bring in a special speaker, or a music group, have a silent auction, live auction, etc., and they give you an update about their charity or ministry, then raise money.  The cool thing is that not only do you get a really good meal, but you hear about so many good causes, and you get a chance to support them!  I love a good banquet, but I can’t say yes to them all.  Frankly, I’m just too busy.

Because I can’t go to this group of banquets coming up, let me invite you to consider them!

First there is the Wenger Foundation Praise Dinner, on April 21, a banquet that raises money for a number of local charities, including Evangelical Seminary, of which I am an alumnus.  The cost of this banquet is $125.  This banquet supports great causes, and Evangelical has amazing educational programs for all kinds of people, but at $125 a plate, I’m not going to be able to swing it.  The invite says the cost of the banquet is entirely underwritten, so all of the $125 goes to the charities.  That’s great, but we’re busy that night…believe it or not, because we’re going to another banquet!  To hear about that other banquet, I invite you to join us for Easter worship on Sunday at Faith Church.

The very next night, April 22, Michelle and I have been invited to the Center for Parent/Youth Understanding annual celebration banquet at Shady Maple.  Michelle and I have gone to that one numerous times, and some of you have joined us.  It is always really great.  Not only do you get a wonderful Shady Maple meal, it is free!  Again, the banquet costs are completely underwritten so how does CPYU raise money that night?  They have tons of silent auction items, and a live auction, and it is fun!   Like the praise dinner, I’m busy and can’t make the CPYU banquet.  If you want to go, you’ll hear an awesome presentation about CPYU’s important ministry to teenagers, parents and youth workers.

Believe it or not, that very same weekend Michelle and I had also signed up to go to the International Justice Mission’s prayer gathering in DC.  It’s not really a banquet, and we’ve heard it is an awesome prayer-filled weekend.  IJM is also doing incredible work rescuing women from trafficking around the world.  We were excited to go, so we paid the registration and booked our hotel.  But after giving it some further thought, we backed out.  With the kids in sports, work, the general busyness of life, and preparations for our big trip to Cambodia in June, we decided it would be best to stay home.

So many great opportunities.  But life is just too busy to go to every banquet.

On Easter at Faith Church you’re going to hear about another banquet invitation.  Shouldn’t Easter focus on the resurrection?  Yes! We’ll talk about that too.  But you’re also going to hear about some people who, like me, are too busy to go to a banquet.  But this is a banquet invitation like no other.  It’s not a fundraiser.  It’s one you won’t want to miss. Will you be too busy?

At the turn of the new year, we skipped a section of our study through Luke, and I promised we would return to it on Easter.  So on Easter we jump back to a very interesting story of a banquet invitation in Luke 14:15-24.  Hope you can join us.

4 Reasons Palm Sunday is Really Weird – Luke 19:28-48

palm sunday is weirdAmid the boisterous singing, palm branch waving, and hosanna shouting, Palm Sunday is actually really strange.  Yesterday we took a look at Luke’s account of Jesus’ Triumphal Entry on the original Palm Sunday, which you can read about in Luke 19:28-48, and we found four odd elements of this famous story: a king riding a donkey, facing jeers, crying, and not taking the throne but confronting his own people.  What gives?

What gives was a missed opportunity.  Let’s take a closer look.

Palm Sunday Oddity #1: He rides a donkey colt

Jesus in verse 30 instructs his disciples to get him a colt.  We hear “colt” and think “horse”, but the particular word here is referring to the colt or foal of a donkey.  Not a stallion.  Not a war horse, tall and grand.  But a colt of a donkey.  A king on a donkey?  Strange, huh?

Some see in Jesus’ choice of a donkey, a purposeful reenactment of the time when David made his son, Solomon, king over Israel, in 1st Kings 1, and in that story Solomon rode a mule.  Jesus triumphal entry has many similarities to Solomon’s.

Some also see in this event the fulfillment of the prophecy from Zech. 9:9.

Rejoice greatly, O Daughter of Zion!

Shout, Daughter of Jerusalem!

See, your king comes to you,

righteous and having salvation,

gentle and riding on a donkey,

on a colt, the foal of a donkey.

The word there in Zech 9:9 is “Gentle.”  Some translations use “humble.”  Probably more likely humble.  Jesus is showing that while he is king, he is humble.  He is righteous.

Also, scholars report that in antiquity, kings would ride out to war on a horse, but would ride on a donkey in peacetime.

Finally, Jesus mentioned to the disciples that the donkey they would find was a colt that had never been ridden.  And we see that righteousness in symbolism of a donkey that had never been ridden.  Why a donkey that was never ridden?  It could symbolize the purity of the Messiah.

It seems the crowd got it!  The crowd praising him was, in verse 37, Luke tells us, was “the whole crowd of disciples”.  Not just the 12.  But a lot of people.  The crowds following Jesus were still big at this point.

Palm Sunday Oddity #2: Pharisees confront Jesus

The second weird moment, is when the Pharisees, ever doubters, tell Jesus to rebuke his disciples!  Can you imagine being in an amazing worship service, and someone negative stands up yelling “stop it!”? Why did the Pharisees have to be so grumpy?  With a large crowd proclaiming him king, shouldn’t they join in?  Was their smug disagreement a stain on Jesus’ big moment?

Jesus didn’t seem to mind.  He responds to the Pharisees by saying that if he told the crowd to be quiet, the stones will cry out.  Was he being symbolic?  This is shaping up to be an atypical coronation.

Palm Sunday Oddity #3: Jesus weeps

The third weird moment is in verse 41 where Luke tells us Jesus wept.  Right in the middle of the praise.  What a scene.  He had previously wept about his buddy Lazarus dying.  He will soon weep before his own death. Those are both difficult situations, though.  Here at his Triumphal entry, he was in of a crowd praising him!  But he is still weeping.  Why?

When a king is about to take the throne, we expect him to be happy, ecstatic, but Jesus is weeping.  Seeing a grown man cry in any situation is something that rarely happens.  I myself have not seen it much.  But there is Jesus feeling something so deeply, he weeps.  Not only does this show us that it is okay for grown men to cry, it tells us that Jesus is feeling something really deep here.  What is he feeling?  Why does he cry?

He goes on to tell us why in verse 42, when he looks at the city and weeps over it saying “If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace–but now it is hidden from your eyes.”  Jesus shares a powerful thought there.  He’s telling us that there was a window of opportunity, and the city, the people, and certainly the religious leaders did not take advantage of it.  It is as if God is saying to them “My beloved city, my people, you so desperately yearned for peace, for freedom from the Romans.  I told you and I told you again and I told you again how to have that peace, and you didn’t listen.”  What was this missed opportunity for peace?

It was Jesus, right there in front of them.  And they should have known.  All the miracles, all his teaching; the people with Jesus had seen it all, lived it all, and yet Jesus says that in the end they missed this amazing opportunity.

The king is entering the royal city, and the royal city is deceived.  The royal city doesn’t know their king has come.  It was a huge missed opportunity.

Do we do the same?  We can look back over the course of our lives and see how God has been at work, but is it possible that today are we deceived? Is he right in front of our eyes, but we are blind, unable to see him?  Are we missing out on a grand opportunity that God has placed before us?

One way I can miss out on an important opportunity is at home.  I’ll admit that I have been wrestling with wasting time on my phone when I get home in the evening.  My goal is to focus on my family.  I’ve been challenged to remove all game apps from my phone.  I haven’t done that.  My kids wouldn’t be too thrilled if I did.  But I have also been challenged to put the phone away until after 9pm.  I haven’t done that either.

What about you?  What is God telling you to do?  Like Nike and Shia LeBouef tell us, “Just do it.”

Palm Sunday Oddity #4

Finally, the king enters the city and does one more thing that is quite strange.  He doesn’t go to the palace, remove the Roman governor, start a battle, and kick the Romans out of the land, all things the Jews would have expected him to do.

No, instead he goes to the temple and kicks the unrighteous Jews out.  If I’m in the crowd that day, I would be scratching my head thinking “Wait…what?  Why isn’t he going to the palace?  The Messiah is supposed to kick out the Romans.  He’s not supposed to remove the Jews from the temple!  What is going on here?”

But Jesus was not the military Messiah they expected.

But people that day missed out.  They had blinders on.  Neither the religious leaders nor the people in the crowd understood who he really was.  It was right for them to praise him, no doubt, but they missed a grand opportunity.

Are you missing an opportunity?  What will it look like for us to pull the blinders off our eyes?  What will it look like for you to follow Jesus where you know he wants you to follow him?