Category: Jesus

ORDINARY PEOPLE , THE NARROW WAY AND GRACE

george gaffga1 Comment

The MSG version of the Bible says that God has not revealed himself to the sophisticated people but to the little ones, the children, and the ordinary folks. See below in Matthew 11:25-30.

25-26 Abruptly Jesus broke into prayer: “Thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth. You’ve concealed your ways from sophisticates and know-it-alls, but spelled them out clearly to ordinary people. Yes, Father, that’s the way you like to work.” (I have left out some verses that don’t affect the context.)

28-30 “Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly.”

 

‘Know it alls’ need not apply.

 

So what about theology, philosophy and the other ‘sophisticated’ means of understanding God? Well, Jesus himself was wearied by the lack of simple trust on the part of the ‘smart’ people. It’s very simple, this Gospel. Simple enough for a child.

Jesus comes as the very presence and essence of God among us and invites us to place our confidence in him for every aspect of our lives. He says to us that he is humble and being his apprentice, or student is not as difficult as might think. It is surely not as difficult as the religious leaders made it for the first century people with their 613 laws to follow. Jesus will in fact, at some point, say that the two great commandments are to love God with all that we are and to love our neighbor as ourselves. (See Matthew 22) Paul will even break that down for believers in God already when he says the whole law is summed up in ‘love your neighbor as yourself.’ (See Galatians 5:14)

See living with Christ is only difficult when you leave decisions about life till the last moment instead of trust him all the time and practicing that trust. It’s a relationship, a daily connection with Jesus.

Sometimes, though, we read another passage in the Bible and get nervous about this ‘faith’ thing. You might remember in Matthew 7 that Jesus says enter through the narrow gate.

12 “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.

13 “Enter by the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the way is easy that leads to destruction, and those who enter by it are many. 14 For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few.

We westerners misunderstand that verse to mean that the way to salvation is through the narrow gate, like you have to have your life so in order to get into heaven but no, Jesus means something very different.

Jesus is saying that if we want the fullness of life that he offers right here and now then come to him, take that easy yoke and learn from this gentle and humble master how to best live.

When I was in the Coast Guard Academy we had a leader of our platoon who was exemplary for his apprentices. He put us through some rigorous activities and exercises and here’s the thing. He did everyone one of them with us to show us that they could be done and that this training would prepare us for the life for which we signed up.

Jesus will never ask us to do anything or live in any manner that he has not lived or understood. Remember, he is God. He is the full expression of our Father in heaven and we are asked and invited to live as he lives, in love with those nearest to us.

Let me give an example:

Here’s the wide way, the large way to live- someone curses you, gives you the finger or cuts you off on the highway. The world says, cuss ’em out, blow them off, and curse the suckers. That’s ok but…and here’s the thing (again) by doing so you and I will not learn the heart of the Father revealed in Jesus.

The world says that when someone wrongs you get even. That ‘way’ is broad and you can wander it to your delight but Jesus invites us into the Father’s heart by saying ‘forgive’.

Now the wide path is full of reasons, good reasons NOT to forgive. The narrow path along which Jesus walks has one purpose: to have the heart of the Father.

Certainly all of us will graduate to the sky. Not sure of a better phrase. And that’s fine but I for one want to live with Jesus who says to me, ‘Take my hand, I will lead you even when you don’t know where the heck you are going.’ But he has laid out the plans for our lives.

See, anybody can get married and that’s about it for most people. A vow, a ring and a few words and voila. Married. But followers of Jesus want more. They want love, a love that is shared and a love that cares deeply for the ‘other’ first.

Most anybody can build a house (well that’s arguable). Some nails, wood, a hammer and you could put up some kind of structure. But if you want to live in that home you need to follow the teachings of a master builder.

Jesus isn’t laying down a law that says if you don’t do such and such God won’t love you or accept you. No, certainly not. That’s not grace. Jesus is simply stating that living the ‘good’ ‘full’ and even ‘abundant life’ means looking for the best way to working with him, to access God’s grace.

If this life is ‘just’ about being forgiven then we can consider ourselves ‘in’. Scriptures says such in John 1:29 and 2Corinthians 5:19. But if we want LIFE a life that will last forever then here’s the little path through the woods, through the entanglements of life and the temptations for self- sufficiency. Here’s a life of love with the Father, Son and Spirit.

These folks to whom Jesus is speaking are just ordinary folks with no degrees. They are gathered on a hill in Galilee. And they were looking for a Messiah, a purpose, and deliverance. Up to now they were excluded by their world. And Jesus words become a gift to them.

By the way, the narrow way may appear difficult at times. No doubt. But not to worry. Jesus will make sure you get through. All you need is the will to find it.

 

God in our Sufferings

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Martin Luther once suggested that the deepest revelation of the character of God is in the weakness, suffering and death on the cross.

This is the exact opposite of where humanity expected to find God. Even today some Christians expect to find God in the success of economics or the victory over such enemies as the leaders of North Korea.  Such was the expectation of the people of God in the first century. But it was not to be, at least not with Messiah Jesus.

Two verses stand out to me. One is where Paul tells the early church that most importantly he wants them to know “Christ crucified” 1Corinthians 2:2. And I am thinking of the other place where Paul, in the midst of his own suffering, hears from God, “My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in your weakness” 2Corinthians 12:9.

So it got me to thinking. We are looking in all the wrong places for answers to our own suffering, for making sense of our sufferings and even our weaknesses. Christ on the cross is in the sufferings of the world. Look how the prophet writes it, “Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows,” Isaiah 53:4. Stop there. Christ on the cross is literally carrying within himself the sorrows of the world and not only that but also our sins (in the next verse). That whole chapter is filled with the sufferings of the Christ and it’s in those places of weakness that Christ is in most intimate contact with us and we with him.

The prophet even writes at one point that what was seen was a Messiah being despised and rejected, not a victorious King. Even in the book of Revelation when Christ is referred to as the Lion of Judah, John turns and sees not the King of Beasts but rather “a lamb that appeared as though slain” (Revelation 5). This is the Christ who identifies with this suffering world.

And I believe that the Christ who suffered is the Father, Son, and Spirit all uniting with the world in its suffering, even now during these devastating hurricanes and their aftermath. It’s in the pain of the world that our Lord bears with us. We cannot speak of the ‘glory of the Lord’ without the ‘Christ crucified’. Love, the feeling as well as the knowledge, is most manifest in weakness. It’s what unites Christ with us and we with him. Certainly there is love in joy and happiness, and lots of money (just kidding). But look what happened to Christ on the cross as he died. He surrendered his soul, his spirit to his Father. “Father into thy hands I commit my spirit” Luke 23:46. And the Revolution and Restoration of the world began. God working in the rubble of the tragedy of that day in the most loving way our God chooses to work.

The other day I was in what might be called ‘existential despair’. In other words, I was feeling crappy about life, things that were happening or not happening. My wife could tell, probably by the way I walked past her with my head hung down and muttering to myself. Well, the next morning upon awakening I prayed fervently just to surrender to God with the sense that my life was in God’s hands. I got up with a sense of connectedness to God and later got a big hug from my wife and life seemed different, better. C.S. Lewis writes that while God whispers to us in our pleasures, God shouts to us in our pain. I guess that means that we are more open to God’s voice in our sufferings although I think it was Elijah who most clearly heard God through a ‘whisper’. (Elijah was in a dark place in those days.)

It was the quietness on Golgotha that captured the attention of the world, when a ‘slain’ lamb changed our relationship with God. God was in ‘that Christ’ reconciling the world to God’s own being. I am pretty sure that God is reconciling the WHOLE WORLD but blessed are those who know it.

I am not a fan of weakness and sorrow nor is God. Perhaps that’s why Christ takes it into himself, not just once but until there is a new heaven and hearth. He is telling us of his love for us. He could not escape the tragic death of the cross because we cannot escape the sorrows of our own lives.

Pascal once wrote that Jesus would be in agony until the end of the world. That is so that every one of us can know that Jesus won’t rest as long as he is bearing in his own soul, the soul of God, our particular sorrows, sin and sufferings. We are ‘in Christ’ in the most organic and intimate sense.

 

For Skeptics and Believers: What draws me to Christianity

george gaffga2 Comments

At the outset I admit, without being trite, that it’s Jesus who attracts me to the Christian faith. The most attractive quality of Jesus is the way he shows us the character of God that is loving, and forgiving. God, through Jesus, has told me I am loved and God has told that nothing can separate me from God’s love. Not even my own stupidity, negligence or sin. God in Christ pursues me until he brings me back into God’s wonderful embrace. This is for me the essence of Christianity in my being and worked out through my life and the community of faithful believers.

It’s difficult to imagine that Jesus is just an imaginary figure created to satisfy the human need for a god or a crutch in life’s hard times. The character of Jesus is not the sort you would, on your own, invent. I will admit that the church has been guilty over the years of producing a version of Christ that takes the form of power but those powers are hard pressed to find the Jesus they affirm from the scriptures of the New Testament particularly the Gospels.

There we find Jesus, the wisest and most loving teacher who ever lived, instructing his followers to ‘love one another’, to ‘love their enemies and bless those who curse them.’ In Christ we discover a religious master who seeks all who feel lost and left out and find themselves as society’s outcasts. His harshest condemnations are reserved for the proud, the self-confident and judgmental.

Jesus taught his followers to engage the world through ‘weakness’ not ‘strength’. He said they should take up a cross and be willing to die for one another and that behind such ‘foolish’ talk was the love of the Father, God. That kind of teaching goes against the grain of our ego but aligns itself with the Creator. And Jesus not only teaches these principles. He lives them, taking upon him, servant-hood even to the point of death.

I am currently watching all the political posturing of the possible candidates for the office of President and all I witness is self-aggrandizement, judgementalism, pride and power. Maybe I need to look harder and elsewhere.

A skeptical view of Christianity usually addresses the failures of the church, the institutional and individual sins and while it could be made abundantly clear that the church has done more good on this earth than any other institution let’s admit that the church has had its share of failure and sin.

Skepticism does have its place for they wonder if the church didn’t invent this Jesus within the pages of history of the course of the first few centuries C.E. And skeptics do well to question Jesus role today especially in matters of evil, suffering and injustice. These are valid queries into Christianity as long as those asking are willing to do the appropriate searching into the person and work of Jesus. And those of us willing to believe them must be willing to bear a healthy investigation.

To dismiss Christianity because of perceived contradictions in the Bible is not sufficient because most skeptics have seldom read the Bible. And contradictions that might be found are to my mind evidence of the veracity of the witness accounts. Eyewitness accounts rarely find total congruence. We would be even more suspicious if they did.

I think a bigger problem is that Christianity has been around for 2000 years and has been put up on our mental if not physical shelves to be disregarded and a dust collector at best. Many people have simply not tried to place their confidence in everything Jesus did or said. And we are part of a society, which is pretty self-absorbed whereby life, the way we decide to live it, is just fine. THAT would be a religion created in our own image, a religion that we take off the shelf every once in a while, blow the dust off and look for the self-help section.

But not so with Jesus. In every aspect of life Jesus claims Lordship and he calls for our devotion not because he is an egomaniacal dictator but because as God he knows what’s best for his creation.

People say that Christianity is a ‘weak’ religion. I say that dying to self takes more ‘guts’ than to live by any other code. And what is so incredibly reassuring about it is that we don’t have to go it alone.

Grace and Peace

george