Go, Go, and Go

As a pastor, a lot of people want to tell me what a lot of other people are doing wrong. It's so funny how I constantly find myself in the seat of someone who is expected to be peacemaker/cop for folks in our church.

I'm not talking about the people who come to me and ask for me to pray for them for their issues, nor am I talking about the folks who come in and tell me about their personal problems, and want help to resolve them.

I'm talking about the people who are mad at someone else, and want me to go fix things for them. This is why Matthew 18:15-20 is so important in our church. It lays out a plan to take responsibility for ourselves. If someone else is sinning, go talk to them yourself. If they won't listen, take a couple of neutral people, and go talk to them again. If that doesn't work, then involve the church and the leadership. If that doesn't solve it, then it is safe to assume that they are not following God and treat them like a friend who doesn't know Jesus.

It's a simple plan. But it takes courage and humility to do well. What if we all lived by this set of guidelines though? Man, things would run so much better.

So, I really want to push all of us, let's make a habit of dealing with conflict among ourselves the way Jesus lays out His plan. It works. I've seen it work. And it gives Him a chance to bring healing.

Well worth the effort.

Getting Jacked by Jesus is No Fun

I admit it. I don't get Matthew 17:14-21. I thought about skipping it, but that's not honest. I look at this story, and am confused. A kid has seizures, and his dad begs the disciples for help. They can't heal him. The dad comes to Jesus and tells Him, and it seems like He goes postal on them. He calls them an unbelieving and perverse generation, and asks how long He has to put up with them.

I simply can not imagine standing there and taking that from Jesus. It had to be heart breaking. He rails on them for their lack of faith. He heals the kid, and doesn't get on the kid about a lack of faith, or the father about a lack of faith. He just heals the kid. But He is all over the disciples.

In other places He shows frustration with them, but not to this level. Maybe it's because it just followed the Transfiguration. Maybe that's why He is so upset. I don't honestly know.

Lord, do you get that mad with me? Do I frustrate you to this level? Clearly it's not sin to be frustrated at them. They were wrong. Somehow their lack of faith was sin on their part. That is what angers God: sin. Please help me to live in such a way you don't have to look at me with disgust. Please help me, Lord. Please.

It's a Private Party, Right?

I think Matthew 17:1-13 might be some of the most understated story telling ever. You have Jesus taking three of his friends out alone on a camping trip. While they are up on this mountain, Moses and Elijah, who by the way have been dead for hundreds of years, show up. Jesus talks with them, and Peter, James, and John watch. Somehow, Peter recognizes who the dead guys are, maybe Jesus called them by name, and decides to interrupt the conversation. Now, I don't know about you, but if Jesus is talking to dead people, who I can see, I'm not interrupting. But Peter decides to. So he butts in and says to Jesus "I know you haven't thought about this, but we'd like to stay here with you guys. This is WAY cool, and we could build some little buildings and just live here, the six of us. We'll even build shelter for the three of you, since living dead people need shelter."

But Jesus' Dad isn't keen on it. He shows up and tells them that Jesus is His son, He's proud of Him, so be quiet and listen to Him. Well, that freaks out the three, and it's not so fun being there anymore. They hit the deck, terrified. Jesus tells them to get up and quit freaking out, and when they look, the whole little paradise is ruined and its just them and Jesus.

The party's over.

No shelters.

No living dead famous people.

No chance of escaping life and living in a private heaven.

Peter, and probably James and John, missed it. They saw something amazing. They were part of it. It blew their minds. They never felt so close to God. They loved it. They wanted to keep it like that forever. I mean, surely this was the logical result of following Jesus, of working so hard to serve the poor, to study the Scriptures, to take misunderstood abuse from others, to sacrificing so much to become who God wanted them to be. It had all lead to this glorious moment. They were there. They were in it. They wanted to keep it!

And God said no.

Because they missed it. The moment wasn't about them. It was about Jesus. He needed to speak with Moses and Elijah. They got to sit on the front row and see what Jesus was doing. But it wasn't about them. It never was, it never would be. It was about Him. And when they tried to claim ownership, it faded from view and was gone.

Yeah, see where this goes. I do THAT all the time. Jesus is working, its amazing, and I want to freeze life in that moment. I want to stay in that sweet spot, and never leave. God works at camp on a bunch of kids, a family trusts Jesus in a tough time and the blessings and miracles flow, God blesses my family in some crazy way, and I want it to last forever. Surely this was the goal all along. This is where I was trying to get to. I deserve to stay here.

And then it's gone.

It's about Him. I'm just along for the ride.

And He tells me, let's go back down the mountain to the poor, the hurting, the needy, the broken. That's our goal. That's where we are supposed to be.

Listen to me, He says. I'm the beloved Son. I know what I'm doing.

Even Jesus Could Stumble

After Jesus feeds the four thousand in Matthew 16, He is talking to the disciples and begins to explain to them the plan to go to Jerusalem, suffer, and raise from the dead after three days. Peter comes in what looks like love and tells Jesus that they can't let that happen. But Jesus says that it's Satan and its a stumbling block to Him because its worried about human concerns, not God's concerns.

What a blow to Peter this must have been! But what is going on with this? Obviously Peter isn't possessed by Satan. But He is listening to Satan and speaking His words, which are disguised as love. Peter was fooled by it, and became a temptation to Jesus to take the easier way out.

Two things I see here. One, Satan will convince us that his way is the way of love, and God's way is a crazy punishment to be avoided. We have to walk carefully and not just trust our emotions and first impulses to show what we think is "love" to others. It might be an evil plan. God doesn't fear pain. He embraces it and uses it to heal. Don't try to pull people from pain all the time. Peter's reply should have been more along the lines of "I will follow you, even if you leave me". Instead it was "You can't go".

Second, Jesus didn't want to die. It was tempting to tell Peter "Ok, I'll stay". But He is so focused on God's plan verses His fears, it scares Him and angers Him. What am I afraid of obeying in today? Jesus understands. He has stood in the shoes of someone struggling to obey.

Long Distance Miracle

The passage in Matthew 15:21-28 is a tough one. You have this woman who is not a Jew come to Jesus and beg Him to heal her possessed daughter. Jesus doesn't answer her. She keeps after them to the point of driving the disciples nuts, and they want her sent away. When they ask Jesus to get rid of her, His answer is interesting. He says "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel." That answer would have made sense if they were asking Jesus to heal her daughter, but they weren't. They said "Get rid of her." You would think His answer would be like "You send her away" or "Let her follow us, she is doing no harm" or something dealing with whether or not to get rid of her. Instead, He throws out a "theological" answer dealing with whether or not she qualifies for His help. "I was only sent to help lost followers of God" is what He says.

She comes in front of Him and begs for help. His answer again is based on this idea of who He is there to help. "I am here to help those who are seeking God", at which point she proves with her humility that she is a God follower. He then tells her that her daughter is healed, and He doesn't even go see the daughter. He healed the daughter based on the mom's faith.

It's a really different story. It seems that He loves to work with people who aren't Jews, and heal their kids from a distance. He does it with the centurion's servant, and some others as well. So, what's His point?

It's not about the systems we think God cares about. He is focused on who lives out a vibrant faith, not what their background is. Does a person believe that Jesus is God, and do they act on it? Yes? Great! Drop the rest of the requirements, He will bless them.

The challenge is in digging in my own life and rooting out where I am more traditional Jew than I am Canaanite mom. Where am I counting on my understanding of God's system and not really running to Him, begging and trusting for mercy and power? I don't like this question, because it pokes deep in my soul and brings up long ignored sin.

Why does the Bible have to be such a living book, anyway?

With Jesus in the Boat...

Jesus walks on water in Matthew 14. A hundred books and a million sermons have been done on this passage, and all for good reason. It's amazing! I've caught at different times the importance of prayer that Jesus shows by praying through the night. I've read "You Gotta Get Out of the Boat" if you want to make a difference. I've taught on how Peter sank when he quit looking at Jesus, and we do too.

But today, one little detail came up that I personally hadn't registered with before. Jesus gets in the boat with Peter at the end of the story and the wind dies down. Clearly, Jesus has control over the storms. There's the other story where He's asleep and the storm hits and He tells the wind to be quiet, and it is. So what's the deal here. His feet hit the boat and the storm is over. It would have been more impressive for Him to calm the storm while He was in the middle of it, standing on the water. That would have been a great sermon illustration. But He doesn't. He doesn't even speak to it in this story. Why?

I'm not certain, after all He IS God, and His ways are beyond me. But could it be that the storm was all for the disciples? I mean, it says Jesus immediately put them in a boat and sent them out, then He goes to pray, then the storm hits them. They go through all of this fear (storm, it's a ghost, Peter sinking, etc) but then it all just dies away when Jesus hits the boat. It kind of seems like the storm was engineered in a sense for their sakes. Jesus doesn't respond to a storm that happened to hit them. It kind of looks like He created it and put them in the middle of it.

This goes back to something I learned a while back. Jesus isn't afraid of pain like we are. He embraces it here on this planet as part of the good plan for us. He walks into the middle of it and redeems it. The storm wasn't His worry, the disciples faith in Him was His focus.

I wonder what storms around me right now are here so that I might learn better? Which ones will stop the minute Jesus steps in the boat with me? Never a boring moment with Him, that's for sure.

A Tale of Two Kings

John the Baptist is beheaded. Jesus feeds the five thousand. Why are these stories back to back in Matthew 14?

You've got Herod, ruler by force, living in fear. He makes a rash promise in a setting he should never be in to a girl he shouldn't be around. His power and authority have went to his head, and so John loses his. Herod is a hated king who has everything he could want, and is completely unhappy and afraid. He's so paranoid that He claims Jesus is John reincarnated, even though Jesus and John were the same age. His power corrupts.

You've got Jesus, ruler by God's decree, living in compassion. He sees people hurting, and in the midst of His own pain, He serves them and heals them. His disciples show care for the people, and Jesus gives out of His own heart, allows God to use Him, and feeds them all more than they can eat. Jesus is a misunderstood king who gave up everything, to come serve in love and courage. He knows Who He is and Whose He is. His power transforms.

You and I are offered a taste of both powers. We have money, people, and toys that can try to satisfy any desire we have. We can create kingdoms around us that rival Herod's, and we live with so many resources that each of us can truly create our own kingdom. (You don't think you are better off than a king in Biblical times? Did he have air conditioning, running water, a refrigerator, Internet, or a microwave? He would have paid royally for any one of those items. We are living in our own personal kingdoms today.) But if we live for this power, build these kingdoms, we end up in the same place as Herod; delusional, paranoid, and unhappy.

We can also choose the other Kingdom, the other Power. Christ still offers the same compassion and love to us that He offered them. Now, He gets to be King, not us. But the rewards are amazing. We are loved, cared for, healed, and fed.

Which Kingdom will you live in today? It's a daily choice.