Grace Released, Truth Revealed (Continued)

I’ve tried to put a definition on the dynamic of full grace and full truth that John weaves through his Gospel. Nothing satisfies. Trying to define this kind of thing is like standing underneath a water fall, trying to catch the falling current with your hands. Grab and snatch all you want, you will never be able to confine the flow in your grasp. You don’t define it, nor can you confine it. You can only relinquish yourself to the gush and attempt to describe what it’s like.

What if our communication of truth wasn’t limited to well-placed words, neat formulas, or rational argument? What if our words of truth were clothed with flesh and blood grace? Sometimes I wonder if what we need in our search for and communication of truth is not more teaching, more thinking, more doctrine, more programs, or more rules, but more grace. I wonder what our lives would be like if we let the dynamic combination of full grace and full truth capture our hearts. I wonder what our witness would be if, more than concentrating on great church experiences and programming, we released full grace into the lives of the people we live with, study with, and work with. I wonder what kind of truth would be revealed, what kind of forgiveness would be experienced, what kind of salvation would come, and what kind of Kingdom stories would be told.

Grace Released, Truth Revealed (Continued)

...continued from October 26 and October 30....

The gap between what’s true and what’s not true about God is not bridged by good feelings of church friendships, a system of rational thought, a carefully outlined God-doctrine, or even a well-articulated belief system. God bridged the gap by binding truth to a person—the person of Jesus Christ—who comes full of grace and full of truth. The world of words and concepts becomes a life of flesh and blood. By embodying the fullness of God’s grace and truth, Jesus’ life of grace becomes the catalyst for God’s truth. Releasing the grace of Jesus reveals the truth of Jesus. I’m not suggesting the truth of Jesus is always received, only that until and unless the grace of Jesus is released, the truth of Jesus will not be received.

I’ve seen research that declares a truth crisis spreading like a plague through the value system of American teens. By looking at these polls, you would think all young people are morally adrift in a sea of moral swill, not the least bit interested in anchoring their lives to bedrock, absolute truth. And, I have to say, that anyone who works with young people can easily find some merit in the statistics. But maybe there’s a crisis of truth in our culture because there’s a crisis of grace. I’d like to see a poll on that.

Grace reaches out and grabs truth out of the ethereal world of the propositionally abstract and deeply plants it into the messy world of human living, providing a relational context in which the truth of God becomes visible, touchable, tangible, and even vulnerable. Wherever, whenever, and with whomever God’s grace—his generosity, compassion, forgiveness, mercy, kindness, faithfulness—intersects our lives, defying our conventional expectations of what’s true and not true of God, God’s truth is revealed, and the potential exists for his truth to be received.

More to come...

Our Shared Stories

This past Friday we held our annual Fellowship Dinner... which is a fancy way of saying our annual fund-raiser. Four of our student-interns shared their stories via a video we produced for event. And along with their stories, we introduced our supporters to one of the big reasons we need to raise funds: Big Blue.

I had a lot of fun putting this video together because it offered me the chance to get to know some of our interns a little bit more. We have a great team here. They love God, and they love each other. In the end, that is all we can hope for and all we are called to do.





The music in this video is performed by our friend Matt Maher. The song is called You Know Who I Am from the album The End and the Beginning. You can find Matt here on or on iTunes.

Grace Released, Truth Revealed (Continued)

Between the bookends of John’s prologue (John 1) and Peter’s restoration (John 21), encounters with Jesus weave a tapestry of grace released and truth revealed, bridging the gap between what’s true and not true about God.

When you have some time, read through John to peer into the lives of all the people whom Jesus encountered—four men who discover that Jesus is the one they’ve been waiting for all their lives, the partying guests who enjoyed the choice wine Jesus miraculously provided at a Canaanite wedding, a seeking Nicodemus, a humble John the Baptist, a respected government official who is also a desperate dad, an outcast Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, a helpless invalid of 38 years, the 5,000 poor who filled their stomachs with five loaves and two fish, the desperate disciples who saw Jesus walk on water, a shamed woman caught in the act of adultery, a man blind since birth with the spit of Jesus on his eyes, a dead Lazarus and his broken hearted sisters, Mary and Martha, the worried disciples in the upper room with clean feet and comforted hearts, a surprised and overjoyed Mary Magdalene at the empty tomb, and a doubtful Thomas with his finger in Jesus’ wounds.

See if, in fact, the truth revealed to them about what’s true and not true about God was released by an act of Jesus-grace. If we could ask them, my bet is that they would say it was. They might even say that not only is Jesus the Truth, Jesus is the Grace.

More to come...

Grace Released, Truth Revealed

Henri Nouwen expressed that the only way to know the truth of Jesus Christ is to be transformed by an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ. “Truth does not mean an idea, concept, or doctrine, but the true relationship. To be led into the same relationship that Jesus has with the Father; it is to enter into divine betrothal” (Making All Things New, 54).

John sets the tone to the true relationship Jesus offers by beginning with a prologue of grace and truth, characterized by God taking the first step to bridge the gap between what’s true and what’s not true about God (John 1:1-18).

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, "This was he of whom I said, 'He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.' "From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father's side, has made him known (John 1:14-18, emphasis mine).

John ends his gospel with an event of full grace released and full truth revealed—the restoration of Peter. Peter finds himself in the gap of truth, a gap many of us know. We don’t question the facts of Jesus’ resurrection; we only question whether the forgiveness it brings is really for us. Even witnessing the undeniable reality of the resurrection of Jesus did not break through the deep shame Peter felt for disowning Jesus. Only an after-breakfast, face-to-face conversation with Jesus on a beach, in which Jesus graciously allows Peter to own his love for him, provides the catalyst for the truth Peter seeks. The truth of God is revealed to him because the grace of God is released to him.

More to come...

Is this a love thing?

Bottom line: Love God with all of who you are. Love all others as you love yourself (Matthew 22:34-40).

Sometimes I think I tend to make it too complicated, trying to wrap my head around theological shades and nuances. What if this? What if that? But it’s really pretty simple. Love God, love others. Jesus embodies this whole-hearted devotion and invites us to live in it with him. When we follow him, we follow this relationship of simplicity.

Loving is not about having all my questions answered or having my life all figured out. I can love without all the information and without knowing how the future unfolds. In fact, love requires that I do so. The last thing produced by information and knowledge is love.

Loving is not about feeling like loving. It’s really more of a choice, an act of the will, whether I feel like it or not.

Loving is not selective. I don’t get to choose when I love God. I don’t get to choose whom I love. I don’t get to make judgment on who deserves love. That’s already been decided.

Loving is total. The equation of love: Heart + Mind + Soul + Strength. That’s pretty much all of who I am.

To love God is to love others. I can’t conveniently turn the love switch on and off, depending on the people I’m around. If I don’t love others, I’ve pretty much told you by my behavior that I don’t love God.

Loving others is not always easy. Jesus quotes part of Leviticus 19:18 as the flip-side of the same coin of the love commandment. The entire Leviticus verse says this: “Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against one of your people, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the LORD.” To love is to forgive because God forgives—not always easy.

I wonder what life would like if we laid aside our conjured complexities and simply followed Jesus and followed him simply.

KingdomTide: Mercy & Justice

This past Thursday night our Catalyst speaker, Bill Mefford, challenged us to consider what is mercy and what is justice. His basic breakdown went something like this:

If we are eating at the table, and we know there are starving children in another country, what is mercy and what is justice? Mercy is sending them money or food. Justice is inviting them to our table and working to bring an end to the systems that cause them to starve.

Mercy and justice was at the heart of God’s judgment of his people in the book of Isaiah. They worshiped idols that were all about their own security and prosperity, while all the while forgetting their mandate to be light of mercy and justice to the nations.

Mercy and justice is at the heart of Christ’s incarnation, as we have seen from our readings this past week when Matthew quotes Isaiah 42:

“Look at my Servant, whom I have chosen. He is my Beloved, who pleases me. I will put my Spirit upon him, and he will proclaim justice to the nations. He will not fight or shout or raise his voice in public. He will not crush the weakest reed or put out a flickering candle. Finally he will cause justice to be victorious. And his name will be the hope of all the world.”
Matthew 12:18-21 (NLT)

Mercy and justice is at the heart of the Cross: The death of Christ to fulfill the broken covenant of the sin of humanity was an act of justice. That Christ died in place of and to rescue humanity was an act of mercy.

And now we, like the Israelites in the Old Testament, are called to be the light of Christ’s mercy and justice in the world. The pressing question for us right now is what does that look like where we live and work?

There is a long forgotten season in the Church calendar called Kingdomtide. It arose in the early 20th century as an effort to focus on the mercy and justice aspects of the Gospel, and to embrace the poor and marginalized with mercy and justice in Jesus’ name.

Last year at Asbury Seminary we created this video as a visual prayer for our Kingdomtide Communion service. I invite you to watch it while praying Open the eyes of our hearts…

You can read more about KingdomTide by going here and then clicking the link on the left.

The written text in the beginning is from Isaiah 43, and at the end is from Isaiah 1. The music is Isaiah 61, performed by our friend Matt Maher (which you can find on iTunes). The painting of Jesus is by Kevin Sparks. It's a little trickier with the news footage. We’re claiming educational usage exception to the copyright laws. We're not selling this resource - simply using it to feature the news in a the more hopeful frame of the Kingdom of God

Matthew 11: Great Question

Are you the One we’ve been expecting to come, or should we keep our options open (11:3)?

Asked by John the Baptist’s disciples, who had been actively waiting and preparing themselves to be ready for God’s Messiah, it’s a question pondered by all of us at the depths of our human experience.

We ask it in different ways, but the depth of our longing is the same. God, when are you going to show yourself to me? How long do I have to wait? How do I know that you’re for real? Some of the things I’ve seen in my life look like you, but how can I be sure? Are you really the one who gives us hope? If not, please tell me because I’m getting weary of waiting.

I find it interesting that Jesus didn’t respond to them by giving them some sort of intellectual argument, trying to prove that he in fact was the One. He didn’t placate their expectations by telling them, “I know you’ve been waiting a long time, and I know things aren’t exactly what you expected, and things are hard, but just hold on a little longer and you’ll see.”

Jesus simply said, What do you hear, what do you see? “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor. Blessed is the one who does not fall away on account of me” (11:4-6).

In other words, you see the evidence of God’s kingdom at work. You tell me.

Take a look at Isaiah 35, especially verses 5-6, and you’ll understand that Jesus answered them by referring them to Jewish expectations of the Messiah that they knew, but perhaps had forgotten. Maybe that’s why Jesus says, “Blessed is the one who doesn’t not fall away on account of me.” Some turn away from Jesus because he doesn't meet their expectations.

It’s not just the question we ask— “Are you the One?” It’s having “ears to hear” the answer that God is giving. “Wisdom is proved right by her actions” (11:15, 19).

Matthew 9:35-10:42: Your Turn

I ended my post on Matthew 7 with this question: If we lived in the reality of Jesus with us and his authority (s'mikhah) in us, how would that change the way we live and how we relate to the world around us?

Does 10:1 give us the answer? “He called his twelve disciples and gave them authority to drive out evil spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.”

Matthew 9:35-37 is like a hinge in the story. These three verses swing back to summarize what has happened since 4:17, while opening the story forward, pointing us to the next phase of the story: The Rabbi’s students doing what the Rabbi does. “Your turn,” Jesus says. “Here are the keys to the kingdom. Take it for a test drive.”

Jesus gives the twelve a boatload of instruction in chapter 10, more than I want to detail here. But let me just point out one main idea that sticks out to me. Don’t you find it compelling that there exists such close communion between Jesus and his disciples that their words and actions (their very lives) are seen as if they are Jesus’ words and actions? Jesus instructs them, “He who receives you receives me, and he who receives me receives the one who sent me” (10:40; see also 10:17-20, 24). That’s authority of Jesus transferred to the lives of his disciples.

What does it mean that those who follow Jesus represent Jesus to the world? This is not just some lofty ideal. This is how the kingdom works.

I wonder if there’s a correlation between seeing the power of God and living under the authority of God. Is it possible that we deny the power of God in our world today because we choose to live under an alternative authority?

Would people see more of Jesus in us if we saw ourselves more in Jesus?

Matthew 9:9-13: Was Matthew Listed in the Christian Business Yellow Pages?

What’s up with the Christian Business Yellow Pages? If that thing had been around in Jesus’ day and Jesus only entered the businesses of his followers, do you think he would have ever entered Matthew’s tax office?

If Jesus only hung out with the righteous, we wouldn’t be reading the gospel of Matthew.

If we only engage in conversation with Christians, shop at Christian stores, eat Christian food, listen to Christian music, watch Christian TV, go to Christian schools, read Christian books, work Christian jobs, how in the world does God’s kingdom come, his will done on earth as it is in heaven? Somebody break up this holy huddle!

Bread for the Journey: Our Shared Faith

Often times the words someone else has written say better what you want to say than you could yourself. This past Thursday night I shared with our Catalyst interns a quote from one of my heroes of the faith, Henri Nouwen. This is as close to a "mission statement" as I can think of for who we are at what we are aiming for here at Wesley.

Being a Christian is not a solitary affair. Nevertheless, we often think about the spiritual life in highly individualistic terms. We are trained to have our own ideas, speak our own minds and follow our own ways. European and American education places so much emphasis on the development of an independent personality that we have come to view other people more as potential advisors, guides and friends on the road to self-fulfillment than as fellow members of a community of faith.

In the intimacy of my relationship with God I still find myself thinking more about my faith, my hope and my love than about our faith, our hope and our love. I worry about my individual prayer life, I speculate about my future as an educated man, and I reflect on how much good I have done or will do for others. In all of this, it is my individual spiritual life that receives the most attention.

That God reveals the fullness of divine love first of all in community, and that the proclamation of the good news finds its main source there has radical consequences for our lives. Because now the question is no longer: “How can I best develop my spiritual life and share it with others?” but “Where do we find the community of faith to which the Sprit of God descends and from which God’s message of hope and love can be brought as a light into the world?” Once this question becomes our main concern we can no longer separate the spiritual life from the community, belonging to God from belonging to each other, and seeing Christ from seeing one another in Him.

Henri Nouwen
"Behold the Beauty of the Lord"

Considering what is written above, it is also interesting to note that the Lord's prayer in our readings this past week begins with "Our Father" and not "My father." Let us meditate on the prayer Jesus taught us, and what it means for the communion of saints of which we are a part.

Reading Scripture: Great Expectations (Part One)

As we continue through the Gospel of Matthew, we come across a very interesting statement by Jesus in 10:5: “Don’t go to the Gentiles or the Samaritans, but only to the people of Israel – God’s lost sheep.”

God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus, but now here is Jesus telling his disciples to ignore the rest of the world and focus only on their own people. What are we missing?

Looking back at the last 10 chapters we have read in Matthew, we can see a major theme developing: This book was first written for Jews who were expecting a messiah. That is why there is so much imagery and attention paid to Jewish customs and laws. And if we look closer still, we can see that the gospel is filled with echoes of the Israelite Old Testament story… all with the purpose of showing that Christ is the Messiah and that God keeps his promises to his people.

In the Creation story Adam fails and gives in to temptation, leading to sin and death entering the world. But in Matthew 3 we see Christ resisting the temptation of Satan. In the Exodus story we see God leading his people out of Egypt and across the Jordan River. In the Gospel of Matthew we see Christ coming out of Egypt and being baptized in the Jordan River. The Israelites spent 40 years in the desert. Christ spends 40 days in the wilderness.

So what we see here is that where Adam failed, Christ (the “new Adam”) would not. Just as Israel was called and led, so was Christ. But where Israel failed, Christ would not. Before God could show how much he loved the world, he first had to show Israel that he keeps his promise. How can God be trusted in anything he says if he cannot first keep his promise to his people?

But what is that promise? Maybe it runs deeper than just dieing for our sins.

More to come…

Matthew 8: Bigger, Wider, Deeper

It’s interesting who hears Jesus and how they respond to him. Coming down from the mountain of kindgom teaching (Matt. 5-7), Jesus immediately enters into the heart of human response to the demonstration of his kingdom.

The unclean, isolated, rejected, pagan, godless, sick, possessed, and outcast respond in courage, humility, and trust.

Some Jewish religious elite respond with excuses.

Winds and waves, non-human elements, obey his authority. His disciples worry about their own well-being.

Jesus enters the region of the Gadarenes, a predominantly Gentile-Roman region about 6 miles southeast of the Sea of Galilee where the people religiously practice the worship of Greco-Roman gods and goddesses. Demons flee their well-established residence in two men in obedience to Jesus’ command, and yet the whole town of people begs him to get out of town. Do the demons fear his power more than the people trust his authority?

Jesus busts through any religious boundary constructed to include and exclude. The kingdom of heaven has broken through the paradigms of the stuff of earth (4:17). God’s mission to renew and restore his creation is bigger, wider, and deeper than anyone thinks or imagines.

When I look at the responses to Jesus in chapter 8, I feel compelled to ask some questions. Where do I put limits on God’s work in my life and in the lives of others? Am I open to God breaking in on my world? Where am I missing God’s kingdom mission because my view of him is too narrow or too self-absorbed? What is my response to him?

Reading Scripture: Chapter & Verse

Over the last couple of weeks I’ve had many conversations with many of you over how we should look at Scripture, particularly the first half of the book of Matthew. Today we start reading chapter nine, but I want to look at the texts we have read so far and use them to lay the groundwork for some larger themes and ideas that I hope will help us as we read the Scriptures together.

This past weekend I was watching a preacher on TV say that God had told him to tell me that because God had promised a blessing in Isaiah 58, I was supposed to give $58 a month for a year in order to receive the same blessing. I’ve seen this preacher do this before, with certain chapters being the number of people who are supposed to give, and the verse being the amount they are supposed to give.

Now of course this is an extreme example, but it got me thinking about the concept of chapters and verses in the Bible. In reality, the chapters and verses as we have them today were not there when the original authors wrote the Scriptures. They just wrote long letters or gospels. It wasn’t until centuries later that they were divided up and organized into the chapters and verses that we have today. Of course, the intent was to make the Scriptures easier to reference, but there have been unintended consequences.

Today when we read a passage of Scripture, the editors of the different Bible translations have broken them up by story or topic based on these chapters, and on what they think is a “logical” break. But what if the original author did not mean for the story or thought flow to break there? What if we have missed something all together by boxing in the Scripture so it makes sense?

Here is an example: In Matthew 3:13-17 we have the story of the Baptism of Jesus. The story climaxes with Jesus rising out of the Jordan River, the Holy Spirit descending upon Him, and God declaring out loud for all to hear, “This is my beloved Son, and I am well pleased with Him.” Then the chapter ends, and then Matthew 4 opens with the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. So we tie off one story and open the next… and this story usually ends for us with the lesson that Jesus was able to fight of temptation and so can we.

But look at the first thing that happens when Satan tempts Jesus. He asks Him “are you really the Son of God?” Jesus rebukes him, and tells him that “Humans do not live off of bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.” What does that mean?

But if we look back in the story just a bit, we see that from the mouth of God came the words that Jesus was the Son of God. So what did Jesus “live off of” while he fasted in the desert for 40 days? What was the bread that had come from the mouth of God? The words of the Father at His baptism… "This is my beloved Son, and I am well pleased with him." And so after 40 days with only that as his bread in the wilderness, Christ is able to face the temptation of the Enemy, knowing that his identity is in the Father. And what is even more telling, is that God declares he is well pleased with the Son before he has even done anything publically, rather than waiting until the end and saying, "Well done good and faitful servant." It was not Christ beating back Satan with Scripture that won God's favor... rather it was knowing and feasting on the fact that He had God's favor and was God's beloved Son before he entred the wilderness that enabled Christ to resist temptation.

I don’t know about you, but that helps me look at the story in a different light, and it helps me apply the story to my own life in a somewhat different way. This is no longer just a Bible lesson that simply says, “You can fight off the Enemy with Scripture.” Rather our Baptism, in all reality, becomes the core of who we are and how we are sustained in the wilderness… the beloved sons and daughters of God, regardless of what we have or have not done.

When reading a passage of Scripture, it is of vital importance to not read a verse or set of verses in a vacuum and try to determine what they mean for you life now. Take the time to read what has come before it, and even what comes after. Try to not let the chapters and verses break up the story where it was not intended to be broken. You’ll be able to find where the author intended for a change or a break, but often times it will not be where centuries of editors decided it should be.

So how does this concept change some of the other ways we should read Scripture? More to come…

Matthew 7: S'mikhah

A word pops up at the end of Matthew 7, at the end of the Sermon on the Mount (chapters 5-7), which gives some insight into who Jesus is and how people responded to him. This is the first place the word occurs in Matthew but not the last place. It pops up again in chapters 8, 9, 10, 21, and 28, where Jesus gives to his disciples what has come to be known as the Great Commission.

Matthew concludes this section of Jesus’ teachings (chapters 5-7) by letting us know that Jesus “taught as one who had s’mikhah (authority), and not as their teachers of the law.” A s’mikhah Rabbi was recognized as one who had the authority to make new interpretations of the Torah. In contrast, the teachers of the law could not offer new interpretations of the law. They could only teach what the rabbinic community had already commonly accepted.

You see Jesus exercising his s’mikhah in several places in the Sermon on the Mount. For example,

• When Jesus wraps up all his teaching by sharing the parable of the wise and foolish builder, he communicates that everything he has just said are “words of mine” (7:24, 26).
• When Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said…but I tell you…” (5:21-22; 27-28; 31-32; 33-34; 38-39; 43-44).

The people were amazed at Jesus’ words because he communicated new insight, fresh understandings to what they had been taught all their lives. And not only that. The people were astonished because Jesus’ s’mikhah seemed to come from within his very nature, not necessarily from external learning achieved at the feet of other rabbis. Remember, Jesus communicated that the entire fulfillment of the law and the prophets was to be found in him. “Do not think I have come to abolish the Law or Prophets; I have come not to abolish them, but to fulfill them (Matt. 5:17).

The amazing thing is that no one fulfills all of God's people's hopes and dreams except God. Hmmm…what is Jesus saying?

Spoiler alert: When Jesus commissions his disciples after his resurrection, he says, "All authority [all s’mikhah] in heaven and on earth has been given to me…. Therefore go…. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age” (Matt. 28:18-20). Check it out. If Jesus’ presence constantly and always accompanies his people, wouldn’t that mean that his s’mikhah also comes along with him and with his people?

If we lived in the reality of Jesus with us and his s'mikhah in us, how would that change the way we live and how we relate to the world around us?

Matthew 6: No Word for Worry?

Three words commonly used in our everyday discourse are absent from the language of the Moken people.* For hundreds of years, the Moken have lived on the Andaman Sea around the islands off the Southeast Asian coasts of Thailand and Burma (That’s right, on. They live mostly in their boats, on the sea). Not only does the Moken language exclude these three words from its lexicon, the Moken people have no concept of their meanings.

What are the words? Worry. When. Want. The Mokan don’t ask when. They don’t want. They don’t worry.

It makes sense, I guess, that they don’t worry. Like a never-ending merry-go-round, WHEN and WANT cycle through our lives, producing endless, meaningless WORRY. The things that make us WORRY have to do with WHEN and WANT. If you’re not concerned with WHEN, you don’t WORRY. If you don’t WANT, you don’t WORRY. If you don’t wonder WHEN you’re going to get what you WANT, you don’t WORRY.

In our culture, we are consumed with anxiety. It’s perhaps the number one health concern, leading to depression, ulcers, and even more serious health problems. If we were to take a cue from the Moken, deleting WHEN and WANT from our consciousness, perhaps WORRY would disappear. To delete WHEN would mean to live in the now, unconsumed by fear of the future. To delete WANT would mean to live content, not coveting what we don’t have.

Is it possible not to worry? Well, just look at the Moken.

Look to Jesus. God is good enough to take care of you. What’s Jesus’ answer to the worry that preoccupies us? Make it your number one priority to keep seeking God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness in all that you do (Matt. 6:33). Eugene Peterson, in The Message, puts Jesus’ words like this:

What I'm trying to do here is to get you to relax, to not be so preoccupied with getting, so you can respond to God's giving. People who don't know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep your life in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. Don't worry about missing out. You'll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don't get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes.

*I first heard about the Moken in a 60 Minutes story reported by Bob Simon on June 10, 2007 (originally aired on March 20, 2005). Here’s the link to the full story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/18/60minutes/main681558.shtml)

Matthew 5: Can you give me something to work with here?

What if Jesus took just about everything you’d been taught about God your whole life, everything you thought you knew about him, and every rule you’d ever followed in attempts to make yourself right with him and smashed it into a million pieces? After Jesus obliterates your God-view, he then begins to build for you a new framework of fresh understanding of who God really is and what God really expects.

Tap into those feelings and you’ll tap into the experience of those who heard for the first time Jesus’ words of Matthew 5. Everything is turned upside down.

• What you perceive as a life cursed is a life blessed (5:2-12).
• As God’s people, you don’t hide in a corner, but you penetrate the earth and illuminate God’s kingdom goodness for everyone ((5:13-16).
• The “righteous” example of your religious leaders, people who you think are definitely a part of God’s in-crowd, is insufficient (5:17-20).
• Everything you’ve heard from your religious tradition about what not to do on the outside flips to include even the stuff you think on the inside (5:21-33).
• Your sense of justice is upended and replaced by a practice of grace (5:38-42).
• Your love has to extend even to those who don’t love you (5:43-47).
• God loves even those who don’t love him; people you don't even like (5:43-47)!
• And, to top it all off, with your imperfections fully exposed, you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect (5:48).

Good grief, Jesus! Can anyone do this? I'm more of screw up than I thought! Can you give me something to work with here?

Sounds like Jesus is setting us up for failure. Or is he?

Let me ask a rhetorical question. Could it be that instead of setting us up for failure, Jesus is lifting himself up as our fulfillment (5:17)?

And the call to perfection (probably not the best translation for our perfectionistic, performance-based society) is more accurately a call to be fully alive by loving God with all of who we are and expressing God's love to others without prejudice.

In Jesus, God’s kingdom comes. He is the Father's fulfillment…and ours.

Matthew 4: What are we waiting for?

Immediately. At once. I’m struck by the level of urgent non-resistance Peter and Andrew, John and James had to Jesus' invitation to “Come, follow me.” I like how The Message translates it: “They didn’t ask questions, but simply dropped their nets and followed” (4:20). Not everyone who experienced Jesus had that response. Matthew makes that clear later.

This “come and follow” call was not just a “let’s hang out a little” invitation. It was Rabbi Jesus asking a few guys to become his students, his disciples. He was asking them to see what he saw, hear what he said, listen to what he heard, eat what he ate, do what he did, pray as he prayed, love as he loved, to become like him. Follow after him.

Rob Bell, in Velvet Elvis, gets at the kind of followship-devotion disciples had for their rabbis. “One of the earliest sages of the Mishnah, Yose ben Yoezer, said to his disciples, ‘Cover yourself with the dust of [your rabbi’s] feet.’”

What did they see in Jesus that caused them to drop everything and follow?

What did Jesus see in them?

What does Jesus see in us?

What are we waiting for?

Matthew 3: Repentance

To be honest, whenever I read John the Baptist’s message, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near,” I get the image in my head of the people who travel to college campuses to preach a gospel of condemnation, screaming judgment and denunciation, accusing students of all kinds of things. Some students are mesmerized, some antagonized, few (if any) drawn to Jesus.

The movement of Matthew 3 is interesting. It begins with John’s call to repentance and ends with Jesus’ baptism and blessing from the Father. “At that moment, heaven was opened, and [Jesus] saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and landing on him. And a voice from heaven said, ‘This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.’”

In Jesus, the kingdom of heaven has invaded the stuff of earth. God’s kingdom done on earth as it is in heaven. We don't get there without repentance.

Repentance, technically a change of mind and purpose, is more than turning away from someTHING. It is turning toward someONE. The momentum of life changes direction.

In spite of the initial images in my head, repentance is not negative. True, it is a call to turn from a life direction inconsistent with God’s good intention for us (call that sin), but it’s not an imperative to beat ourselves up. It’s a realization that God is drawing us to himself, and by lowering our resistance to his movement in our lives, we move toward his life for us, in us, and through us.

Repentance is our response to the gracious, magnetic draw of Jesus, the fulfillment of God’s dream for all of us.

Matthew 2: Awe and Awfulness

“He will be called a Nazarene” (Matt. 2:23).

Probably not the most complimentary description, since, in Jesus’ day, to be called a Nazarene was like calling someone despicable or despised (I can think of a lot of other words I won’t write here).

In John 1, when Phillip told Nathanael that they had found the Messiah and that he was from the little town of Nazareth, Nathanael responded with befuddlement that God would send the Messiah from such a place of questionable reputation. “Nazareth!” said Nathanael, trying to wrap his head around the idea. “Can anything good come from there!?” (see John 1:44-46).

Contrast the perceptions that “Nazarene” provoke with the name God told Joseph to give his son—Jesus (Joshua or Yeshua), meaning the LORD saves (1:21).

Or how about the description, Immanuel, meaning “God with us” (1:23)?

How is it that Jesus, the Messiah, stirs up both feelings of blessing and curse, awe and awfulness? I guess it depends on where you’re coming from in your response to him.

King Herod was not thrilled with the news. I wonder if Herod felt his power threatened. At the news of this baby, he was disturbed, conniving, and paranoid. His ultimate response was to search for him to kill him (2:13).

On the other hand, the Magi from the east couldn’t wait to get to Jesus. They were seeking, responsive, humble, overjoyed, and sacrificial. Their ultimate response was to worship him.

Throughout his life, Jesus worked up all sorts of contrasting feelings in people and conflicting responses to him. I guess he still does.

Matthew 1: Gene Pool

The thought of reading someone’s family tree excites me about as much as spending an afternoon watching CSpan. So when Matthew starts off with a genealogy, my natural tendency is to skip it and get to the good parts.

In spite of that, I figured Matthew must have had a good reason for launching his gospel with Jesus’ ancestral line. I might as well pay attention. Here are some things that jumped out at me.

Five women, including a prostitute and adulteress (Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, Uriah’s wife—Bathsheba, Mary). I don’t know much about ancient Jewish genealogies, but I’m pretty sure including women in the list was a major no-no.

What does that say about the mission of Jesus?

A murderer. Yes, David was the beloved king who united the nation of Israel, making it an international superpower, but he was also a murderer and adulterer. Yet in spite of his egregious flaws and sin and because of his repentant heart (see Psalms 32 and 51), God considered him a man after God’s own heart.

A belligerent people so disobedient to God that they were broken apart and deported to Babylon. Three times in this genealogy, Matthew reminds his readers (and us) of the disassembling of God’s people because of their unfaithfulness (1:11, 12, 17). What’s he trying to communicate?

The flow of the genealogy breaks form when it gets to Joseph. Notice it doesn’t say, “Joseph, father of Christ.” It says “Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ” (1:16). This break in form would have stuck out to any Jew. Matthew sends a message that God, not Joseph, is Jesus’ Father.

In addition to all that, I’m struck by the mood of the genealogy. The entire movement and every detail of Jesus’ genealogy have this vibe of fulfillment—God’s promises and purposes for his people culminate in the birth of Jesus, the Messiah. I find the whole thing extremely hope-filled.

On a personal level, I think if God’s Son entered the world through a family line as messed up as this, and if God chose to enflesh himself within a family system with these kinds of problems, there’s plenty of grace and hope for me in spite of my own lineage and, for that matter, for anyone, regardless of the family you come from. God’s grace thrives in brokenness. God’s redemptive goodness is uninhibited by human badness. How’s that for hope?

But it’s even bigger than that. Jesus’ lineage goes all the way through David to Abraham: “Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”

Even though Matthew begins with Abraham, if you take a quick look at Abe’s lineage, beginning with his father, Terah (Genesis 11), his family tree goes all the way back to Adam, all the way back to Genesis 1. Every Jew hearing Matthew’s account would have immediately made that connection. Jesus, as Paul says, is the ultimate Adam (1 Corinthians 15:45), God’s dream come true for what it means to be fully human. God’s creation intent for humanity in Adam becomes God’s creation design fulfilled in his Son, Jesus.

By diving into Jesus’ gene pool, Matthew shows us that the life of Jesus is birthed from within this grand story of God. In spite of numerous set backs, sinful behavior, and questionable characters, God’s trajectory of renewal and restoration for all creation and for every person climaxes in the birth of Jesus, the God-man. In him, Eden returns.

What do you think?

Life Communities: Missional Messiness

My friend, Steve Hambrick at University of Central Florida Wesley, told me the other day that he has been encouraging his students away from a "programmatic" model, toward a more missional mode of campus ministry. If you know me, you that's stuff I'm really passionate about. He used the phrase “missional messiness” with his student leadership to help them understand the rawness of entering into the student culture as God’s people.

I really like that phrase. It’s highly descriptive of an organic approach to “church” for which we have little control, trusting the Holy Spirit to control; an approach we're trying to embrace with our Life Communities.

Missional messiness describes those situations in which we hear stories and encounter people for which there is no playbook to program our response. Missional messiness lets us be okay with dynamic tensions, like Jesus’ redemption in the midst of human rawness.

I think we have to be comfortable with the inherent messiness of missional mode. We have to be comfortable letting go of control, embracing an attitude and lifestyle of response to the never ceasing activity of God.

We have to be comfortable with letting people tell their stories, no matter what the content. We have to be comfortable with the reality that every person’s journey, hopeful or tragic, is intersected by the grace of God.

We have to be comfortable with listening rather than telling—listening to God and to each other.

We have to be comfortable with sharing rather than taking.

With entering the struggle rather than trying to fix the problem.

With serving as the essence of leadership.

With standing under each other in hopes to understand each other.

With eyes to see God showing up in unexpected places—and within unexpected people.

With a God who does not seek our blessing before blessing the lives of others.

With a grace so generous and so untamed.

With moving one another toward Jesus rather than ourselves.

What do you think?

Life Communities: Centers of Light

During Paul’s second missionary journey, his strategy was to establish Christian communities in strategic locations and to nurture them to become beacons of God’s kingdom within the surrounding culture. Roland Allen says Paul’s method was “to establish centres of Christian life in two or three important places from which the knowledge might spread into the country around. This is important…because he intended his congregation to become a centre of light.” He continues by saying that “all the cities, or towns, in which he planted churches were centres of Roman administration, of Greek civilization, of Jewish influence, or of some commercial importance.” (Roland Allen, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962, 12-13).

I wonder what that looks like today, especially here in America and on this campus? Instead of spending boat loads of dollars on brick and mortar, what if we were to strategically establish and nurture “centers of light” in cities and towns, colleges and universities? For example within the university, to establish and nurture kingdom communities in dorms, Greek houses, apartment complexes, duplexes and triplexes--centers of civilization and influence for thousands of students--would produce an incredible multiplying effect on the movement of the gospel from within the culture. Instead of trying to get students out of their culture to come to our place of meeting, these communities would have a foothold within the culture itself, permeating it with the influence of God’s kingdom.

What incredible influence our network of Life Communities can have on this University of Arkansas culture!

What do you think?

We Have Liftoff

Welcome to the all new Spark Plug blog. Our intention with this humble blog is to initiate thought, conversation and prayer - to provide a spark - for our Life Communities. The majority of content you will find here will be written by Gregg and Omar... the campus ministers at Wesley at the University of Arkansas. But we will also have some "guest blogs" written by some of our friends and heroes.

As this semester unfolds, we will be journeying through the texts of the New Testament that were written by those who had a eye-witness account to the life of Jesus Christ. We'll be reflecting on the history and culture of those times, but also on how these texts form who we are and who we are called to be today.

We'll also be exploring issues of spiritual formation, Christian leadership, and mercy & justice... as well as anything else that comes up in our life and time together. We invite you to trek with us, as well as to engage and respond. We believe that in this day and age community is also being formed online. And to this end we offer this blog to the glory of God, that it may be a means of grace which helps form us into a community where His presence can dwell.

Stay tunned. More to come...