being Simon

There is a difference between saying we will follow Jesus and actually following Jesus.

Jesus said that if anyone wanted to be one of his followers, they must deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him down his path to Jerusalem.  In Mark 14, after the first Communion and before Jesus was betrayed by one of his own, Jesus told his followers that they would all desert him when he needed them most.  Simon Peter, surely remembering Jesus’ earlier words about discipleship, replied to Jesus by furiously declaring that even if everybody else fell away, he would never desert Jesus.  He would deny himself.  He would take up the cross.  He would follow Jesus no matter what.

But there is a difference between saying you will follow Jesus and actually following Jesus.  Here’s what I mean: Simon did take up his cross.  But it wasn’t the Simon you’d expect.  A man named Simon from the North African city of Cyrene – a Gentile outsider – carried Jesus’ cross.

Simon Peter, on the other hand, did exactly what Jesus predicted he would do and what Simon Peter said he would never do.  He denied Christ thrice in one night.  The last denial went like this:

“A short time later the bystanders again said to Peter, “You must be one of them, because you are also a Galilean.” Then he began to curse, and he swore with an oath, “I do not know this man you are talking about!” Immediately a rooster crowed a second time. Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said to him: “Before a rooster crows twice, you will deny me three times.” And he broke down and wept.”

There is a difference between talking the walk and walking the talk.

One of the biggest challenge to living in our culture is walking the talk of being a follower of Jesus.  It is just so easy to say that we follow but actually follow something else.  Jesus calls us to a new, paradoxical, radical way of life: to love the lonely and the lost, to bring restoration into hurting and broken people and places, to love our enemies, to be more concerned about loving than being loved, serving than being served, consoling than being consoled, just to name a few.  It is easy to say that we follow but harder to actually live the life.

Are we actually following Jesus or just talking the talk?

This is a hard message.  But here’s the part where I find comfort.  Peter completely abandoned Jesus at that most important moment.  Jesus, from an American point of view, had every right to be angry and hold a grudge.  But he didn’t.  Listen to the next to last sentence of Mark’s Gospel:

“But he [the young man clothed in a white robe] said to them, “Do not be alarmed. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has been raised! He is not here. Look, there is the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples, even Peter, that he is going ahead of you into Galilee. You will see him there, just as he told you.”

The never-failing Jesus never gives up on his always failing disciples.  Mark’s Gospel calls us to live just like Jesus.  Yet, it also tells us that no matter how often we fail, Jesus will never give up on us.  The thing Jesus is looking for is for us to always get up and keep walking when we fail.

1. Will we walk the walk or simply talk about the walk?
2. When we fail to walk the walk, we will remember that Jesus never gives up on us?  Will we have the courage to get back up and keep walking?

Inside is Out & Outside is In

If Jesus came to our city, how would we honestly respond to him?

In Mark’s Gospel, much of Jesus’ activities occur … well … I hate to use this phrase in light of recent SNL mishappenings, but … on a boat.  Six different times in the story, we are told that Jesus crossed over the sea on a boat, each time traveling from the West (Jewish territory) to the East (Gentile territory).  Three times when they go “to the other side” and it is really uneventful.  But every time they travel from Jewish territory into Gentile territory, they run into trouble, confusion, or other embarrassing situations.  I believe Mark’s telling his story in such a way as to communicate something important.  Disciples often encounter confusion when they travel outside of their little safe, religious realm into the “dirty”, “unsafe”, pagan world.  We just get in trouble and end up embarrassing ourselves.

A Jew in Jesus’ day would have fully expected to hear about the Jews being “insiders” about the coming rescuing King.  They would also  expect the pagan, dirty Gentiles to be “outsiders” concerning the coming King.  They would expect the coming King to rescue the Jews, but destroy the Gentiles.

And that’s exactly where Mark throws an ironic twist at us.  The rescuing King keeps traveling into the dirty, pagan territory of the “outsiders”, and, guess what, they accept him.  He doesn’t destroy them.  He heals them.  He feeds them.  He has compassion on them.  And they actually get who he is.  They respond to him correctly.

What’s more is that the Jews, who thought that the King was coming specifically for him, flat out deny, misunderstand, reject, and rebuke him.

Here’s the bottom line: when Jesus showed up, all the wrong people respond rightly to him and all the right people responded wrongly.

So the question bears repeating: if Jesus came to our city, how would we respond to him?  What if this same thing happened among us today?  What if Jesus showed up and came to all the drug dealers, human traffickers, the homeless, the “worthless”, the “dirty”, the “sinful” people and they responded rightly.  What if Jesus showed up and came to all the church people and we didn’t like him because we were hoping for something different and we couldn’t fit him into our box?  What if … just something I’ve been thinking about.  My guess is that we might get so mad that we might even … well … crucify him.

——-

In Mark’s Gospel, the right people responded wrongly because they were too exclusive and Jesus wouldn’t fit in their box.  Are we ever guilty of this?

In Mark’s Gospel, the wrong people responded rightly because they were humble and desperate for healing.  Could we be described this way?

Crazy

Do you ever feel crazy, like what you are trying to accomplish is crazy … maybe even stupid?  My only comfort is this: following Jesus ought to place us in crazy positions.  If it didn’t would I really be following Jesus?  I mean, if I claim to follow a guy who got lynched but I never took a risk, would I really be apprenticing my life after his?  Following a man who was crucified as a threat to the Roman state must mean taking risks that are not safe, taking risks that are scary, taking risks that look a little crazy.

Does that make sense to you, or do I just sound … well … crazy?

Did Jesus Cross The Line?

“After Jesus left there, he went to the region of Tyre. When he went into a house, he did not want anyone to know, but he was not able to escape notice.  Instead, a woman whose young daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him and came and fell at his feet. The woman was a Greek, of Syrophoenician origin. She asked him to cast the demon out of her daughter.  He said to her, “Let the children be satisfied first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and to throw it to the dogs.” She answered, “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “Because you said this, you may go. The demon has left your daughter.” She went home and found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.” - Mark 7.24-30

What in the world is going on with this story?  Does Jesus almost refuse to bring healing to a someone shackled by evil?  Does he call this woman a dog?  Does he cross the line here?

It seems like a lot of female rights activitists might get up in a tizzy over Jesus’ words in this passage.  But let’s take a second and think about what actually happens here and examine whether or not Jesus crossed the line.

First off, Jesus does seem to identify this woman as a dog.  She asks Jesus to heal her daughter and he says, “it is not right to take the children’s bread and to throw it to the dogs.” The implication is that she and her daughter are a part of a group of people that are to be identified as dogs.

Dogs in their culture were not normally thought of as pets.  I had a garage sale today and a lady brought a little dog into my house in her purse.  Cute .. sort of.  Well, that sort of thing would be the furthest thing from the minds of people in Jesus’ day.  Dogs were filthy vermin that fed on trash, feces, and human corpses.  They were nasty little things … not normally pets.

But Jesus doesn’t use the normal word for dog.  The word he uses would be more like puppy.  Kind of like, “Hey there, cute lil’ puppy!”  Not the feces, corpses eatting type, the little cute type.

More importantly, the rabbis of Jesus (which Jesus was considered a rabbi) would compare the nation of Israel to children and the Gentiles to dogs.  They would say things like, “the people of the world of like dogs.”

Jesus isn’t calling her a filthy trash, feces, corpses eatting type of dog.  He is basically calling her a Gentile.  You know how we can tell?  Look at her response.  “Yes, Lord, but even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  She doesn’t say, “Um … excuse me … did you just call me a dog?  How dare you, you arrogant male pig!”  Not at all! She fully accepts her role as a puppy, because she knows that Jesus is simply using that term to refer to her as a Gentile.  She is saying this, “I realize that the kingdom of God must first be offered to Israel, but I believe that when salvation shows up, it will overflow to the ends of the earth .. and the overflow will be more than enough to heal my daughter!”

Quick side note: the location of this miracle is in Tyre.  The proper pronunciation of this place is actually “<read with crazy, scary bad guy accent> TTYYYREEEEEE!”  This was one of the sworn enemies of the Jews.  They hated each other.  Kind of the way we might feel about Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden.  Bad people that we are supposed to hate.  Their is a clear line between us [the good guys] and them [the bad guys].

In this story, Jesus crossed the liine.  No, I don’t mean that he did something offensive to the female gender … not at all!  But he did cross the line.  He willingly crossed the line into enemy territory and brought the overflow of salvation to a broken people.  He brought the kingdom to the bad guys.  He brought salvation to the bad guys.  He crossed the line that a good Jew shouldn’t cross.

Jesus reached out to the world around him, even when the rest of the world said that they should just go to hell and drew a clear line between “us” and “the others”.  Jesus crossed that line.

He is calling his followers to cross the same line.  Will you?  Who is “the other” in your world?  Who is the person that everyone else says it is OK to exclude, leave out, hate, ostrasize, belittle?  How can you bring the kingdom to your doorstep?

Did Jesus cross the line?  Yes. But maybe not in the way you first thought … but cross the line he did.  Now the question is: will you cross the line today?  Will you reach out to the people it is “OK” to hate?  Will you love the people it is “OK” not to love?  Will you cross the line?

Jesus // Fear + Change

The scary thing about Jesus is that he simply refuses to leave the world as it is.  He looks at his broken, rebellious creation and simply won’t leave it alone.

In Mark 5.1-20, Jesus simply refuses to leave this poor tormented man as he was.  He took charge and changed him.  But he also changed other things in that story.  He sent the demons into the pigs, which subsequently ran into the sea and drown.  He changed the economic situation of the herdsman, too.   As a result, they asked him to leave them alone and, guess what, he did!

The great thing about Jesus is that he changes our lives.  The scary thing about Jesus is that he changes our lives.  Are you willing to let Jesus change your life?  When they tell Jesus that they want him to leave, guess what, he does.  How will you respond to Jesus?  It’s scary to think about Jesus changing those areas of your life that you’re really comfortable with, but it is always for our good.  So, how will you respond today?

How will you respond if Jesus changes something that you don’t want to change?  Will you ask him to leave you alone?  Or will you cling wholly to Jesus, trusting that he is always changing things for our good, restoring his broken creation?

He refuses to let you stay the same.  He wants to transform your life.  Some of the things that he wants to change we will welcome.  Some of the things that he wants to change will scare us.  I pray that we become a people who have the guts to cling to him either way.

Stories

Maybe I’m just weird, but I often think about the fact that the Bible, the book we have to tell us who God is and who we are, is basically a one big story or a bunch of little stories, depending upon how you look at it.  That may not seem that weird to you at first but think about it for a second.

So many of us have so many questions about how this whole Christianity thing works:

• Is God good?
• Does God really love me?
• Why does God allow evil in the world?
• How can I break free from sin in my life?
• Can I lose my salvation?

It would seem legit if God just dropped a nicely bound, hardback theology text book, giving us all the answers to questions we have.  But he didn’t do that.  Even though, maybe at times we wish he had, he gave us stories.  Why?

Let me give you an illustration that helps me.

You see a really cute girl who seems like a wonderful person.  You decide to ask her out on date.  She says yes.  You take her out to some fancy restaurant and you both start to get to know each other.

What does that “getting to know each other” phase look like?  Do you take turns going back and forth stating plain facts about yourself, “I am a nice person.”, “I am 5′11″.”, “I am a good person.”, “I am an American.”, etc.?  No, not at all!  Not only would the other person be bored to tears they also wouldn’t really get to know you, would they?

The way we get to know each other is by telling stories about ourselves.  “I once ate my English paper.”, “I was on the Texas A&M football team and one time in practice …”, “I climbed a mountain once and wrestled a bear and a cobra at the same time.”

Relationships grow when we share our stories with one another.  This is the way relationships are built in every culture that I have ever heard of.  It’s the way we humans work.

God gave us stories because He is a person who wants us to know Him in a very real sense.  God is not a system to be figured out.  He is a person who is telling us stories, inviting us to get to know him.  Do you treat like you person?  Think about that for a second.  Do you treat God like a person or an idea?  Like a person or like a good luck charm?  Like a person or ____?

The only better way to get to know someone than hearing their story is by being a part of someone’s story, actually living it with them.  God’s story is Him restoring a broken and rebellious creation through His Son, Jesus Christ … and He is inviting us to join in.  What do you say?  One of the best ways to get to know God today is to share in His redemption story that He is speaking over all of the world.  Wanna join in?  I’m certain some of your neighbors and some people living under the highway don’t know how that Story goes yet …

Thursday Night @ Impact Camp

www.impactyouthcamp.org

The guys who lead this camp are wonderful to work with and clearly have great hearts for God and their students.  What a privilege to get to serve them in this way!

Wednesday Night @ Impact Camp

Tuesday Night @ Impact Camp

NO, Mr. President

Christians, fellow Saints, please stand up. No more of this sideline pacifist toleration. Abortion is wrong.

Children. Life. Human beings.

Lord, have mercy. Put this to right, Father!