Rocky

“Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). And he brought him to Jesus.
Jesus looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated, is Peter).  (John 1:41,42)

I think only God can change someone’s name on the spot like Jesus did to Peter. I looked up the meaning of “Simon”, and I found two meanings, one kinder than the other. One meaning is the Hebrew version, which is “to hear or listen”, and the other is the Greek meaning, which is “snub-nosed”. The Greek meaning of “Peter” is of course “rock”, implying strength and stability.

I also think Jesus wasn’t stating a fact here, but more a promise of what will materialize in Peter’s life in the future. From what I can tell of the Bible’s account of Peter’s life, is that Peter had a type A personality, you know, leadership qualities. But how many of us, like Peter, once hearing a promise from God set out to make it happen in our natural strength.

Peter must have taken this to mean he was going to be the Head Disciple. He probably had always felt while sitting in a boat messing with nets with his fishy hands, that he could do more with his life than what this blue collar job offered. And now was his chance to be the first in his family to make the jump from a job to a position, maybe even with an office, desk and an assistant to bring him coffee.  And he could help Jesus whip the other disciples into shape. Yes, he would be a leader in Christ’s kingdom. He was no longer Snub-nose, but Rocky.

And indeed he eventually became a leader in Christ’s kingdom, but not following the route he imagined. God wanted to fashion him to be a true servant that would feed his sheep with wisdom and humility. In the meantime however, Peter thought God could use his passion and zeal to be the first and only disciple to walk on water, to correct Jesus when he was wrong (Matthew 16:22), to swing his sword at Jesus’ enemies, and to infiltrate the compound of Jesus’ persecutors.  (http://kentonsblog.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/195/)

Peter eventually gave up trying to fulfill the calling Jesus pronounced over him by falling flat on his face, and only after that God was able to mold and shape him into the kind of shepherd God wanted him to be. God’s idea of leadership qualities is quite different from ours.

When Peter became that rock of stability and humility he wrote, “Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers…not lording it over those entrusted to you, but being examples to the flock.” (1Peter 5:2,3)

You see, when Jesus changed Simon’s name to Peter, he wasn’t giving him a title, but a promise of a changed character.

“Where Are You Staying?”

“The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”

When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”
They said, “Rabbi” (which means Teacher), “where are you staying?”

“Come,” he replied, “and you will see.”
So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him. It was about the tenth hour.”  (John 1:35-39)

Have you noticed that Jesus was a man of few words in this account? He hasn’t said anything yet that would make a couple of John the Baptist’s disciples decide to switch mentors, buy that’s exactly what they did. They believed John’s witness of Jesus when he pointed him out to be the Messiah.

So when Jesus asked them “What do you want?”, they simply asked, “Where are you staying?” I think that means, “We want to get to know you.” Jesus then replies, “Come and see.” Jesus welcomes them to come into his private world.

Andrew and the other disciple (most likely John) were privileged  to go to the Messiah’s apartment. It was most likely some hospitable person’s  spare bedroom. They got to see where Jesus parked his sandals at night, and where he hung his towel to dry. I doubt he was the kind of bachelor I was.  I used to think making my bed at night right before I hopped into it made more sense than the standard practice.

They were able to become acquainted with Jesus in his humanity before they knew him in his divinity, before he said anything about who he was or his kingdom. That will take another three years.

For most of us it’s been the opposite. Most of us grew up in church and we heard about Jesus in his exalted state, sitting at the right hand of the Father, and that was good, because that’s where he is. But he’s also with us “until the end of the age”, in our daily world.

About a hundred years ago, some wizards of smart decided that Jesus wasn’t really God, that he was only a good man. So there came a big controversy and a separation in the religious world. The liberals on one side and the fundamentalists on the other. And in the battle to maintain Jesus’ divinity, we failed to give the revelation of Jesus’ humanity equal time in the pulpits. And since that’s the world many of us were raised in, some of us are now just beginning to discover Jesus the Man.

Jesus not only came to die for our sin, but to show us how to live. He lived a sinless live, yet with all the struggles we have. He didn’t try to escape or minimize his humanity, instead he embraced it as something holy, meaningful and good. And he valued time spent with everyday people, like these two fishermen who came to hang with him for the afternoon.

I’m so glad that he came completely to our world, because there’s now nowhere to go to get closer to him.

“The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”  (Matthew 1:23)

Everything

^“The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is the one I meant when I said, ‘A man who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him, but the reason I came baptizing with water was that he might be revealed to Israel.”

Then John gave this testimony: “I saw the Spirit come down from heaven as a dove and remain on him. I would not have known him, except that the one who sent me to baptize with water told me, ‘The man on whom you see the Spirit come down and remain is he who will baptize with the Holy Spirit.’ I have seen and I testify that this is the Son of God.”  (John 1:29-34)

John admits that he didn’t really know him before that day, but we know that John caught the revelation that Jesus is God when he saw the Holy Spirit descend on him. He might have known Jesus as more than his favorite cousin previously, but from then on he knew Jesus as Everything.

Do we know him as Everything? We like to study theology, or at least pay for people to study theology, and sadly much of what we call theology, which means the “study of God”, misses the mark. The apostle John wrote, “No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known.” (v.18) Jesus is Theology. He has shown us exactly who the Father is just by being with us. He has made him known, but our fallen nature likes to stay confused and at a distance, like Adam and Eve hiding in the garden.

So John the Baptist also discovered Jesus to be “the One and Only” that day. When Jesus becomes Everything, our whole perspective changes. He’s no longer a means to an end. He becomes “the Way, the Truth and the Life”. I must admit I’ve done a lot of things I thought were clever for him, but I’ve done very, very little through him. When we do things for him instead of through him, people don’t see Jesus, they see a good cause. Jesus doesn’t need that kind of help. We need to have John’s attitude: “He must become greater; I must become less.”  (John 3:30)

Am I being naive and a little fanatical? Yes I am, thank you very much.

None of the Above

Continuing our study of the Gospel of John, we read,

“Now this was John’s testimony when the Jews of Jerusalem sent priests and Levites to ask him who he was. He did not fail to confess, but confessed freely, “I am not the Christ.”

They asked him, “Then who are you? Are you Elijah?”
He said, “I am not.”
“Are you the Prophet?”
He answered, “No.”

Finally they said, “Who are you? Give us an answer to take back to those who sent us. What do you say about yourself?”

John replied in the words of Isaiah the prophet, “I am the voice of one calling in the desert, ‘Make straight the way for the Lord.’ “

Now some Pharisees who had been sent questioned him, “Why then do you baptize if you are not the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?”

“I baptize with water,” John replied, “but among you stands one you do not know. He is the one who comes after me, the thongs of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie.”

This all happened at Bethany on the other side of the Jordan, where John was baptizing.”  (John 1:19-28)

This passage tells us John’s answer to the grilling he got from the religious leaders’ underlings that were sent from Jerusalem to check out this end-time preacher who was getting so much attention. There had been others in those days who had preached the coming judgment of the world, but they had made claims about themselves that proved to be false.

So when the interviewers went through the checklist, saying, “Are you 1. the Christ; 2. Elijah (who never died, but was instead whisked up in a chariot of fire, and was expected to return and call Israel to repentance in order to avert judgment); or 3. the Prophet (that Moses promised in Deut. 18), John said, “None of the above. I’m just a voice out here in the sticks. I don’t have a title, and I’m not anything great, but I’m simply here to point people to the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.

Jesus later explains to his disciples that John was indeed the “Elijah who was to come” (Mt. 11:14), but John wasn’t about to give himself that distinction. Instead John says that he was unworthy to untie Jesus’ sandals, in other words, he wasn’t worthy to be Jesus’ houseslave.

John the Baptist found his identity in who Jesus was, like Paul who said, “…we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake.” (2 Cor 4:5).

John tried to make himself as ordinary as possible, and then Jesus took ordinariness to a much lower level yet, in order to show God as he is, the Creator and Sustainer of all things, yet the kindest and most humble person in the universe.

So where do you find your identity? Is it in pointing others to Christ? Or is it in gaining recognition and influence by ministry activity? I think one of the most damaging deceptions we have fallen for is the one that says we need to be impressive in order to be effective. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Grace and Truth

“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)

Here is full impact of John’s gospel. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.” God came completely to our side of the vast gulf. He came as a living, breathing visible human being. The problem is the majority didn’t like what they saw. The Jewish people had built their theology around the law given by Moses. It had come from God as a means of bringing order to a new nation of former slaves, and as a means of revealing our fallen ways, like the “schoolmaster” as Paul describes it in Galatians 3:24.

But the law given by Moses had become, by the time of Christ, abused, added to, it’s loopholes exploited, and used as a means of control by men. Their faith had become nothing more than sin management.

Then comes God in the flesh, full of grace and truth. God didn’t suddenly change his nature, because God has always been full of grace and truth. Even shortly after giving the law, God reveals his goodness to Moses, and describes himself as “abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin (the grace part). Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished (the truth part).” (Exodus 34:6).

All through history we’ve always preferred the law to the Lawgiver. Maybe we want to stay in school under a schoolmaster, because then we don’t have to graduate and follow Christ into the unknown. Moses was a middle man, and Jesus came to cut out the middle man and show the face of God to us, and lead us into a real relationship with himself.

Even Peter, on the Mount of Transfiguration, had tried to put Jesus on the same level as Moses and Elijah, who represent the law and the prophets.  http://kentonsblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/09/shrines/

The incarnation has always been the greatest threat to man made religion. Maybe that’s why the real meaning of Christmas has become so buried under all its trappings.

Now that God has appeared in the flesh, it’s not so easy to distort who he is, now that Jesus has made him known by his earthly life as recorded in the gospels, and his words printed in red.  So what does man do next? All he can do now is ignore him by staying in the school of sin management, and never leaving his comfort zone of religion to follow the One and Only, full of grace and truth.

Rejected by Men

“There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning that light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light. The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world.

He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” (John 1:6-13)

John, the cousin of Jesus, the last and greatest of the Old Testament prophets, the “Elijah” of Malachi 4:5 the Jews were waiting for, was sent from God to announce the coming of the Messiah. Yet, even though the world was made through Jesus, the world didn’t recognize him. And even his own people, the Covenant people, didn’t receive him. Jesus was “despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.” (Isaiah 53:3)

If we follow in Christ’s footsteps we too will experience rejection. I think that’s the hardest thing for us to accept. Rejection from the world was a source of sorrow for Jesus, but rejection from his own people was especially hard. The majority of opposition came from the ones who were entrusted by the people to know their scriptures.

Have you noticed how we will do anything to make Jesus less threatening to our culture, whether it’s a worldly culture or religious culture? Some people don’t like the taste of truth no matter how much we try to sweeten it. Jesus doesn’t need that kind of help, because he’s familiar with  rejection, and we also need to get used to it. How did he handle not being received? He simply moved on, and so should we, because there are hearts out there that have been prepared for the coming of the Messiah.

Rejection is always going to be hard to take, but the union we have with Jesus in the midst of it is worth it. ”Blessed are you when men hate you, when they exclude you and insult you and reject your name as evil, because of the Son of Man.”  (Luke 6:22)

But there are a few who will receive him, and will be given the privilege of sharing in the divine life. They share in Jesus’ incarnation, i.e. eternal, supernatural life implanted in flesh and blood, walking day by day in a fallen world, sharing in the joy and the sorrow of the suffering Messiah.

The Light

A friend suggested a while ago that we go through a gospel on this blog, and the thought stuck with me, and so today’s post is the first installment of our journey into the Gospel of John. So here goes:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.

Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.”  (1:1-5)

In these verses John sums up the history of the world and ministry of Jesus in a nutshell. John wrote his gospel late in his life, and his readers were mostly of the Greek culture. The Greek speaking people believed that “logos” (the “word”, meaning reason, rationality, logic) held the universe together. Today we might call it science. The Jews took this to mean wisdom. But here John is telling them that reason has a name, and it’s Jesus.

Paul said pretty much the same thing when he wrote, “For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16,17)

During the three years of Jesus’ ministry on earth, he was gradually revealing, to those who received him, who he was. The disciples first knew him as Rabbi, then Messiah, and then God Himself. And John, who was the most familiar with Jesus, is saying that Jesus created all things and is sustaining all things.

And the other main point he’s making is that Jesus, like the sun,  is the source of all life and has shone his life giving light upon everyone on the earth, but most have not understood it. Thus, the history of the world.

So what does this mean to us on a Thursday in November? I think it means that we need to get rid of our little religious box that we try to keep Jesus in. He made everything and he owns everything, and he came for all people, not just for us. What else exists beside him and what he has made? And he came to us to give us life, not to make our little lives better, like a side dish, but to give us brand new lives, where he is everything to us.

That’s enough to transform us from being good religious people into bona fide Jesus freaks.

The Fab Five

I remember the day when I heard the Beatles broke up. I was devastated. They had been such a unique band because of their blending together of talent. Their great synergy was now gone. What’s synergy? Here’s a definition, “The interaction of two or more agents or forces so that their combined effect is greater than the sum of their individual effects.” In other words, the Beatles were greater than the sum total of John, Paul, George and Ringo added together.

I remember when they first came to America in their Pierre Cardin suits and moppy hair. The British loved them for their American sound, and the Americans loved them for their British sound. The only people who didn’t go nuts over them were parents, preachers and barbers.

So what was the secret to their success? I believe it was their ability to blend in with each other. None of them tried to outshine the others, because they were a team of equals. Their music had no guitar or drum solos, and there was no showing off vocally. They used their talents with restraint for the greater good. They had their internal squabbles, but they were on to something and they made a good run at it for about a decade.

Did you know the first century church also had synergy? There were no dynamic individuals, at least ones that are described positively. (There were the guys called “super apostles” [2 Cor 11:5], who were trying to undermine Paul and preaching a different gospel, all with great eloquence.) There were instead dynamic communities.

Here’s an example of first century synergy:  ”It was he who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11-13)

Maturity and unity! And how to get it! But are we willing to pay the price? Are we willing to “consider others better than ourselves”? (Philippians 2:3) Some call these people in the verses above the “five-fold ministry”. They’re supposed to operate as the five fingers of a hand. A team of equals. Five individual fingers working without each other couldn’t do the work a hand could do. It’s the synergy that makes it powerful.

What’s the result? We all get to grow up together. I don’t know about you, but most of us don’t grow up unless we have to. The problem is we like to keep a comfortable distance between us and God. We prefer to hide out in the garden with Adam and Eve in our fig leaves, trying to cover our guilt and shame.

The exact second the New Covenant took effect the temple curtain that upheld the priesthood system was torn from top to bottom, but as the priests did, we keep stitching it back up so we can stay spiritual infants, and let the pros be the mature ones. That curtain stayed stitched up until God sent the Romans to tear down the temple, “not leaving one stone upon another”.

Synergy needs to happen again, but we’re like a little boy with a splinter in his finger. He knows it needs to come out, but he doesn’t want to go through the painful process of having it extracted, so he puts up a big fight. May our loving Father pin us down and do whatever he needs to do!

Goose Bumps

The last spooky movie I saw was “The Exorcist” way back in 1973. That satisfied my curiosity for heads spinning and green vomit forever.  There are certain things I don’t pay for, and fear is one of them. And here we are again headed for the time of year when we celebrate death and all things creepy. I think it’s just a scheme conjured up by the sugar producers to turn our cute little munchkins into sugar-crazed anarchists while they’re laughing all the way to the bank.

If it’s goose bumps they’re looking for, we Christians can offer some. What? Just listen to this verse: “Now to each one the manifestation of the Spirit is given for the common good.”  (1 Corinthians 12:7) Now to us regular Bible readers, that doesn’t sound all that exciting, unless we read it through the eyes of a modern pagan. A “manifestation of a spirit” means that a spirit has made itself visible to the naked eye and it’s usually through a person. That’s the image that phrase conjures up in the mind of a horror flick fan or a voodoo practitioner in Haiti.

But there’s a huge difference here with this verse. It’s the Spirit, with a capital S. This Spirit is holy, loving and good. And he’s attractive. Another key phrase is “to each one”. All believers have been given spiritual gifts that are to be shared for the common good.

So let’s think about that. For example, your gift could be hospitality, and during prayer one day, you feel the Lord is prompting you to invite your neighbor over for dinner some night. So later you ring the neighbor’s doorbell and simply invite her, and instead of it being a simple dinner invitation, she feels like she’s invited by God to come home to him. Why? Because the invitation was God’s idea and not yours, and to your neighbor it was no coincidence that you rang her doorbell. There’s been an intense longing in her to know God, and she has been wanting to talk to you about your faith for a while, but she hasn’t known how to bring it up.

So instead of you getting all the attention for your generosity, she’s feeling God’s generosity, because the Spirit has just manifested himself through you.

That’s why I think all spiritual gifts are prophetic, no matter what they are. You might think it’s not a big deal, because it’s just a dinner invitation. But your neighbor is now sitting at home with goose bumps all over her, because God has just shown up at her door.

Our Mission

Have you ever felt like a lazy slacker when a missionary at church is telling one amazing story after another until he or she finally says, “Of course, you can be a missionary to the people just across your street.” You can hear a collective sigh of relief in the audience as we all smile and nod our heads.

But do we really think like missionaries? For instance, a couple of years ago as I was driving around doing my usual errands,  I had to drive through the near east side and the near west side of Madison, the parts of town where the anti-capitalists live in their expensive homes. These aren’t your typical radicals, they’re the ones who’ve learned how to work the capitalistic system.

So as usual I’m reading all the brilliant lawn signs and bumper stickers that say, “Give peace a chance”, “War is not the answer” , and “Free Tibet”, and the question comes to me, “Am I a good missionary?” Where did that come from?

Then I asked myself, “What does a good missionary do?” Well, a missionary 1.learns the language. 2.studies the culture. 3.doesn’t reject the natives because of their culture. 4. lives frugally. (That’s another topic.) 5. looks for entry points in the culture to present the good news. I then realized if I was a missionary in another country I’d be sent home.

It hit me like a ton of bricks that Madison is hungry for the kingdom of God, they just don’t know it. So maybe a good bumper sticker on my car could read,

“(Jesus) will judge between the nations
and will settle disputes for many peoples.
They will beat their swords into plowshares
and their spears into pruning hooks.

Nation will not take up sword against nation,
nor will they train for war anymore.”  (Isaiah 2:4)

But I would need an awfully big bumper.

We all want world peace as much as Miss America does, but only the Prince of Peace can deliver it. I think the key here is listening. Listening to the Holy Spirit and to the longing in the hearts of people around us, and why they’re saying what they’re saying.

Do we want to do what John and James, the Sons of Thunder wanted to do, who wanted to call down fire to consume the people in Samaria for being whacked out beyond hope? (Luke 9:54) The truth is they weren’t beyond hope.  On another visit Jesus sat and listened to a Samaritan woman at the well and heard the longing of her heart behind her surface arguments, and gives her living water. Years later, Philip goes to Samaria and the city is turned completely around when preaches Christ there and miracles happen. (Acts 8:5-8)

We’re not good at bringing about change, because only Jesus can do that. We’re called to be so into Jesus that the world can’t help but see who he really is. The problem is, I think, they don’t see him very well, because we as the church just aren’t into him. We’ve been distracted by surface issues and religious tangents, and we’ve been neglecting our mission, which is to show the culture who Jesus is.

If your community wants world peace, Jesus is the answer. If your community wants safe streets, Jesus is the answer. You fill in the blank, Jesus is the answer.

Like Mary who poured a year’s wages of perfume on Jesus’ feet (John 12:3), which made her look so thoughtless toward all the needs around her, let’s also be naively extravagant in the love that we have for Christ, because he’s still the answer to all the world’s problems. That’s our mission.