People of the Towel

Posted on April 6, 2015 by Joe Chambers

There is a remarkable difference in the way a philanthropist gives money and the way an investor gives away money. A philanthropist gives away from an abundance he or she already has received and they don’t expect a return on their gift. Not so the investor.

When you realized how much God has given you in Jesus, you can spend yourself on others with no thought to whether there will be a return on investment.  You give yourself away like philanthropist and not like an investor. Why? Because you have a limitless wealth of grace from God.

So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, “You also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. John 13:12,14-15

The word “example” in verse 15 is a word in the ancient world used to describe an artist who would create a pattern or template so that other, less talented artisans, could use to recreate what the master had created.wpid-wp-1428275381551.jpeg

Jesus is saying that when we are united to his life; his life-style becomes the pattern or the template for our life. When Jesus washed feet as an act of selfless service he was doing something that slaves did. But when you and I follow Jesus and descend into greatness, when we spend ourselves for other people and put their needs ahead of our own, even if no one notices it, we are doing what our Creator-God did.

You probably won’t realize it at the time. You’ll be too busy thinking of the people you’re working for and with. But, as you look back, you may be startled by the joy of realizing that as you walked into that house, that hospital, that place of pain or love or sorrow or hope, Jesus was walking in, wearing your skin, speaking in your tone of voice. ~ N.T. Wright, John For Everyone Part Two page 49

You and I are how Jesus intends to serve our friends, enemies, and our neighborhoods. As we take up the towel and stoop to serve, we are God’s last best hope for the world.

This is one of the reasons that Churches that I am attracted to are the ones that serve the neediest parts of their neighborhood, region and the world. I want to be a part of a community that has on their heart what Jesus had on his heart.  I want to be a part of a gathering of saints that are willing to stoop and serve the needs of a community and the world.  I want to attach myself to a church who is willing to descend into obscurity in the world’s eyes and greatness in the eyes of God.

Philip Yancey writes in his book Vanishing Grace: What Ever Happened To The Good News?…

John Marks, a producer for television’s 60 Minutes, went on a two-year quest to investigate evangelicals, the group he had grown up among and later rejected. He wrote a book about his findings, Reasons to Believe: One Man’s Journey Among the Evangelicals and the Faith He Left Behind. The church’s response to Hurricane Katrina turned the corner for him and became a strong reason to believe. One Baptist church in Baton Rouge fed sixteen thousand people a day for weeks; another housed seven hundred homeless evacuees. Still another church served as a distribution point for fifty-six churches, and churches in surrounding states sent regular teams to help rebuild homes for years after the hurricane, long after federal assistance had dried up.

Most impressively to Marks, all these church efforts crossed racial lines and barriers in the Deep South. As one worker told him, “We had whites, blacks, Hispanics, Vietnamese, good old Cajun. . . . We just tried to say, hey, let’s help people. This is our state. We’ll let everybody else sort out that other stuff. We’ve got to cook some rice.”

Marks concludes,

I would argue that this was a watershed moment in the history of American Christianity . . . nothing spoke more eloquently to believers, and to nonbelievers who were paying attention, than the success of a population of believing volunteers measured against the massive and near-total collapse of secular government efforts. The storm laid bare an unmistakable truth. More and more Christians have decided that the only way to reconquer America is through service. The faith no longer travels by the word. It moves by the deed. (page 137 Kindle)

Will you serve each other, your community and the world?  Many churches serve each other and that’s about it. It is a healthy, Christlike church that loves God, loves each other and serves the world. There are countless little things that you can do that will teach you humility and bring civility to this hostile world.

towel and baisYou can serve the community for the sake of the community. For if the Gospel is not good news for everybody it is not good news for anybody.

One day the leaders in your community will come to you and say, “I may not agree with your doctrine, but it is better for us that you are here.”  They will be glad that there is a group of people so committed to personal and social restoration.

And the scripture will be true about you that says, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices…” Proverbs 11:10

All because a group of dirty-footed, and sullied-souled believers descended into
greatness by following their Savior as he stooped to serve and knelt to love.

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The Cost of Easter

Posted on April 4, 2015 by Joe Chambers

“…You were bought at a price.”             I Cor. 6:20

One day a little girl was combing her mother’s hair leaned over and said, Momma, you know I love you don’t you?  The mother said yes I know it.

Momma, I love to comb your hair with these little strands of gray but so full and so beautiful.  I love to comb your hair.  Mother, I just love your voice.  Your voice is so sweet.  I love to hear you sing.  As far back as I can remember your lullabies would gently put me to sleep.  I love your voice.

Momma, I just love lookin’ at your eyes as they sparkle and the dance with delight.  I just love lookin’ into your eyes, they mean so much to me.

But Momma why…tell me why…why did you let your hands get so scarred and so rough?  Why didn’t you get you some lotion or some crème?  Why didn’t you take better care of your hands?

There was a long moment of silence.

The mother reached around and caught her little daughter’s hands and pulled her around, picked her up and set her on her lap.  And said, “Mary, I’ve got something to tell you; maybe I should have told you this before now.

“What is it, Momma?”  Mary asked.

She said, “Mary, there was a mother who had prayed to God to give her a baby girl.  And the Lord answered her prayers and gave her this baby girl.  And she got so much joy in doing for this baby girl.  She loved the sewing and the knitting and making clothes for this baby girl.

One day while this mother was ironing remembered that she needed something from the drug store and she looked there and the little baby girl in the crib sleeping.  The mother thought, “I’ll ease off to the drug store and get these articles and get back before her nap is over.”

And, Mary, this mother went to the drug store and on her way back, fire trucks passed her but she didn’t think nothing of it until she got to the corner.  And when she got to the corner and looked the fire trucks were parked in front of her apartment.  And the ladders were up to the third-floor window where she lived.

And all of a sudden, Mary, she remembered that when she was ironing and had decided to go to the drug store she had left the iron on the board.  And it was her apartment that was on fire and that her little girl was in there!

And she began to run and the firemen would pull at her to try to stop her and the policeman reached for her to try to stop her and she pulled out of her coat and ran up the stairs and opened the door to her apartment and Mary as she moved across the floor she looked and flames of fire were reaching out to embrace her little girl so she raced over to the crib grabbed her little girl and pulled her to her bosom…as the flames of fire were reaching for the little girl they burned the mother’s hands.

And, Mary, I want you to know that little girl was you.

Tears began to roll down Mary’s cheeks.  She began to weep and wash those hands with her tears.   She began to kiss them and said, “Oh Momma.  Oh, Momma.  Oh, Momma.  How I love your hands!  Because your hands saved me!”

Why do we worship Jesus?  Because…

wpid-screenshot_2015-04-04-16-46-40-1.png“. . .He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement for our peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.”         Isaiah 53:5

I don’t know about you, but I love Him. I worship Jesus because he took my punishment and because He purchased my salvation with his broken body and shed blood.

The old Puritan prayer reminds us,

If my life is to be a crucible amid burning heat, so be it, but do Thou sit at the furnace mouth to watch the ore that nothing be lost. If I sin wilfully, grievously, tormentedly, in grace take away my mourning and give me music; remove my sackcloth and clothe me with beauty; still my sighs and fill my mouth with song, then give me summer weather as a Christian.

Amen. 

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Kneeling to Love

Posted on March 30, 2015 by Joe Chambers

He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.  John 13:5

Our culture is obsessed with upgrading. How many of us work hard to be less than we were the day before? How many of us strive to have less, be less, look less and use less of everything in our lives? NO, our culture today is all about upward mobility. We strive to upgrade our lifestyles, our gadgets, and games. Some people upgrade relationships. Why do we do this?  Psychologists call this the Virus of Affluenza.

It entails placing a high value on acquiring money and possessions, looking good in the eyes of others and wanting to be famous.

The Saudi Prince, Alwaleed, who is often described as the most influential businessman in the Middle East sued Forbes magazine for getting his information wrong in their list of the richest men in the world. Forbes reported that he had 20 billion where Alwaleed claimed he has 30 billion. That lower amount placed him 26th on the list of the richest men on the planet.

When it comes to Jesus, we find a whole different attitude of thinking, where the world is striving for upward mobility, Jesus calls his disciples to a life that is totally the opposite. Jesus was the most prestigious, wealthy, and powerful person to ever live and yet how does he choose to spend that prestige, wealth and power?

God Serves Us

As Jesus and his friends enter this upper room where they were going to celebrate the Passover together, they are getting comfortable, taking off outer garments like we might take our coats off as we enter a house; and as the conversation begins to pick up and the din of the room begins to rise, you can almost sense a palpable nervousness because whoever owned the house hadn’t arranged for someone to wash the feet.

The disciples, eyes shot from one to the other with the look on their faces that silently ask the question, “Who is going to wash the feet here?” You know Peter, James and John had a look on their faces that said, “We are Jesus’ closest friends so clearly we outrank everyone else and we’re not washing anything.”

All of the disciples are reluctant to do this lowly task because to wash the feet of anyone was to admit that you were the least important person in the room.

wpid-wp-1427681244269.jpegThe nervous conversation grinds to an awkward halt as Jesus, the teacher, the king, rises from his place at the head of the table strips down to his underclothing, picks up a towel and a basin and begins, one foot at a time, to scrub clean the dirty feet of his slack-jawed disciples.

Jesus would have moved slowly around the oval table, washing the feet of Nathaniel, then Andrew, then Thomas, then Philip, then James and John as all of them sit in red-faced silence.

And at some point Jesus takes in his hand the dirty feet of Judas and locked eyes with this man who had witnessed so much of the kingdom in the last three years, knowing that the next time they lock eyes would be when Judas would betray his friend, teacher, and Lord with a kiss.

When we see what is happening here we can only tremble. But if we gaze longer at this scene we see something more than the stunning surprise of Jesus washing his disciple’s feet. Because if you sit with this scene you get the sense that it doubles as a parable of how God humbled himself to condescend into humanity—the incarnation.

Jesus is the living creator of the cosmos and he is willing to stoop all the way down into human life, is willing to humiliate himself to become one of us, is willing to assume our life so that he can heal our lives. God stooped all the way down into human life and then all the way down into suffering and death to restore us with his life.

Jesus cleanses and refreshes us by absorbing our filth and brokenness on the cross so that he can restore us to God. He is a God who serves. It requires a certain amount of humility to receive this from the Lord of the Universe. Peter’s problem was that he was too proud to admit that he needed a washing.

One of the first things we have to do in the With-God life is to learn to receive. Our faith isn’t first and mainly projects, activities, and plans—but receiving. Receiving with empty hands God’s cleansing work on our behalf is the first and main thing about being a Christian.

As a follower of Jesus for 55 years, I can testify that this is one of the very first things that we forget. We forget that the journey of following Jesus is not about doing more or being better so that we need less grace from God, rather it is the journey of receiving, digesting, and metabolizing more of God’s grace into our lives so that He has access to more of our lives.

Peter eventually learned this lesson of humbling receiving:

Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for

“God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble.”

Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time…     1 Peter 5:5-6

Makes you wonder if, when he wrote the phrase “mighty hand of God,” he thought of a calloused carpenter’s hands from Galilee that held his dirty feet many years before where he learned the most important lesson of his life…

Receiving is the first and the main thing in following Jesus.

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Your Bones Are Showing

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Joe Chambers

When my father came over here penniless with $100 sewn into his underwear, thank God some well-meaning liberal didn’t come put his arm around him and say, ‘Let me take care of you.’ ~Senator Ted Cruz

Being a liberal is the best thing on earth you can be. You are welcoming to everyone when you’re a liberal. You do not have a small mind… I’m total, total, total liberal and proud of it. I’m a total Democrat. I’m anti-Republican. And it’s only fair that you know it. I’m liberal… The ‘L’ word!~ Lauren Bacall

Structure is so important to the security of our lives.  We build a solid footing and foundation upon which we build our houses that provide us hearth and home. We establish laws and social norms to give us a sense of order in which we can connect, relate, and respect fellow human beings.  We have fundamental principles that must be understood and adhered to in order to fly through the skies.  There are grammatical rules, mathematic rules, and spiritual rules. Writing stories have structure: Beginning, middle and end.

Structure is vital. Rubble-stone-foundation

I heard a preaching professor say one time that structure and outlines were very important for a strong sermon.  They are the skeleton upon which you will attach ligaments, cartilage, and muscle. A human body without a skeletal system is weak and anemic. A skeletal structure is life-critical to the human body.  Without is we are a blob of mushy flesh, liquid and organs.

But, he went on to say, that while the skeletal structure is essential if you can count the bones it is a sign of a weak and unhealthy body.  Something is amiss.  We don’t want to see the bones, but those bones are essential to a healthy body.  The same is true of a sermon.  If the first thing we see are the “bones”—the outline, if that is the most impressive part of a sermon, then it is a sermon that is devoid of strength and the ability to go anywhere. And, ultimately, it won’t produce life in the hearer.

I’ve not always adhered to that guidance and when I failed to do so, when my outlines were the focus of my sermons or even my essays—they have been emaciated efforts of persuasion.

I wonder if that principle of stealth structure might be wise when it comes to one’s political or theological positions. When a person’s Calvinsim or Dispensationalism is so patently obvious to those who read or listen, perhaps too much attention is being paid to that “ism.” Within the larger community of faith those isms are reduced to preaching to the choir at best and theological propaganda at worst. Their theological skeleton is on full display.

In our increasingly polarizing post-Christian culture I feel the same could be true of our politics.  When I listen to a speaker, or read an author, or even peruse social media and it is patently clear that the author is a liberal or conservative I wonder if they are paying too much attention to an ideology.

This is especially true of those who call themselves Christians. When I see a social media post or read an article from a Christian and I can clearly see the fundamentalism or the socialism throbbing on the page or the screen, I think that the author is letting his or her ideology drive their lives. Their political bones are poking through their thinly stretched Christian skin.

Anne Lamott is an example of a liberal Christian that wears her politics on her sleeve so much that it makes it hard for me to filter out her ideology to read some genuinely profound things from her acerbic pen. I think her “in your face” social liberalism and politics are sticking out so far that she is sometimes hard to take very seriously.

The same is true of James Dobson, Kirk Cameron and Cal Thomas on the fundamentalist side. I can’t hear them because they so shrill in my ear.

Jesus was subversive and ambiguous about politics.

“Are you the king of the Jews?” asked Pilate. “You have said so,” Jesus replied.   Mark 15:2

Before Pilate he is deliberately ambiguous—it sounds even more ambiguous in the original language than the English translation.

Literally:  “You say it.”

Pilate:  “Are you king of the Jews?”

Jesus:  “If you say so.”

What?  What kind of answer is that?  It is not a denial or an affirmation.

Think about what Jesus could have said:  “No.  No. No!  My movement is in no way political.  I am only a spiritual leader.  All I do is give people spiritual peace of mind and happiness in their personal life and what I am trying to do will have no impact on the political order.”

But He doesn’t say that.

Neither does he say, “Yes!  Yes! Yes!  Of course I am a political leader.  We are going to shake up this world.  Power to the people!  We are going to rally the people to join a coffee party and elect only people who pass our litmus test.  After that we are going to go occupy Rome.  We are going to put prayer back in school and legislate that everyone must pray.”

He doesn’t say that.

Ask the Buddha, “Are you a political leader?”  Buddha would quickly answer, “No!”

Ask Mohamed, “Are you a political leader?”  Mohamed would quickly say, “Yes!”

Ask Jesus, “Are you a political leader?”  Jesus would say, “Yes and no.”

If you don’t see the difference, you don’t understand Christianity.

As this national election season approaches I am praying that those of us who say we follow the rabbi from Galilee might feed our souls with more and more of Him so that the propaganda of our theology and politics might not distract from who He is.

The world is aching for a structure.

It’s called a cross.

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A Symbol Divided Should Fall

Posted on March 16, 2015 by Joe Chambers

I’ve asked my good friend Jamie Greening to write a guest blog for me this week. Jamie is a writer, thinker, and a man who is walking a long obedience in the same direction—with Jesus. He wrote a very good book last year which I bought and gave away several copies called The Little Girl Waits. You can click here and learn more about it. He also writes a blog you can find here and I encourage you to check it out.

 

Is the flag of the Confederate States of America a racist symbol?

I bring this up, because racism is the headline that will not go away.  It seemed like things might gently calm down again, but suddenly frat boys were filmed singing a hateful, violent, racist song with great glee and gusto.  Then Ferguson erupted again, and another Racistyoung black man was shot in Wisconsin.  Then my friend sent me a screenshot of the Confederate flag offered at Amazon, along with some of the comments.

Jesus said the poor you will have with you always (Mark 14:7).  I am beginning to wonder if there is some alternate reading of that text that says, ‘the racist you will have with you always.’

The question I ask is not whether or not racism is real, I think that is a given.  The question I ask is whether or not the Confederate flag is an inherently racist, therefore evil, symbol?

Is it the American equivalent to the swastika of Nazi German? 20070728-confederateswastika

It seems to me there are three different views of what the Confederate flag means.  Let’s put them into groups A, B, and C.

For Group A the Confederate flag means Southern culture.  It is a stand in for sweet tea, grits, college football and conservative politics.  As such, it is a viewed as a beloved icon of all that is right in the world.  People who see the Confederate flag in this way do not connect it at all to the past, but to the present.  If they connect it to the past at all, it is to their own personal past, their own experiences of Southern living, of nostalgia.  It is to the South what the Space Needle is to the Northwest or cactus is to the Southwest.

For Group B, which includes many black Americans, the Confederate flag means slavery.  It is a stand in for that evil peculiar institution that eventually drove the grand experiment in democracy to the bloodiest of all political actions:  Civil war.  It is a reminder that once upon a time, not so long ago, in a very near land, their ancestors were denied life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  People of their ethnicity were bought, sold, abused, and murdered at the whims of white people.  For these individuals, the Confederate flag is a racial epithet that is intended to remind people of color what their ‘place’ is.

For Group C the Confederate flag is a symbol of rebellion, foolishness, and backwardness.  People who fly it or promote it are telling the world around them they are not serious people, that they are morons, and are the fringe of the fringe.

As a child of the west, and a native resident of a proud state that loves its own flag, I understand the sympathies of Group A.  However, as a follower of Christ, and as a human being who believes that we are all created in the image of God, I firmly stand in solidarity with Group B.  The Confederate flag does not represent Southern culture, it represents the devilish ideology of slavery and oppression.  For that reason, I believe it has no place in modern American discourse.  Civilized people, from Savannah to Sacramento should abolish it and urge others to do so.

I know that it feels a little odd to put so much attention on a symbol when we have such contentious issues as police shootings, inequality in the application of justice, rampant black poverty, and incredible numbers of black-on-black violence.  I also realize that as a white male, I will never fully appreciate everything about this issue.  However, we must start somewhere, and sometimes the easiest stuff is the best first step.  Racism is a sin against God and man.

Celebrating a racist symbol is too.

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Confession is Good for the Soul

Posted on March 10, 2015 by Joe Chambers

…and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. Revelation 5:8

The Cat in the Hat is a children’s book written and illustrated by Theodor Geisel under the pen name Dr. Seuss and first published in 1957. The story centers on a tall anthropomorphic cat, who wears a red and white-striped hat and a red bow tie. The Cat shows up at the house of Sally and her brother one rainy day when their mother is away. Ignoring repeated objections from the children’s fish, the Cat shows the children a few of his tricks in an attempt to entertain them. In the process, he and his companions, Thing One and Thing Two wreck the house.

As the mother returns and is seen about to enter the house the fish says these words.

This mess is so big

And so deep and so tall,

We can not pick it up.

There is no way at all!

That is the truth of truths when it comes to my life.  I consistently make a mess of my life that I can’t deal with. All you have to do is glance at the headlines to realize that something is dreadfully wrong with this world.

When a newspaper posed the question, ‘What’s Wrong with the World?’ the Catholic thinker G. K. Chesterton reputedly wrote a brief letter in response:

Dear Sirs:

I am.

Sincerely Yours,

G.K. Chesterton

That is the attitude of someone who has grasped the message of Jesus. And the discipline of confession is the process that helps us all understand that the change the world needs begins in our own souls. And that bothers us.

What Sin Does To Our Souls

When we live in patterns that are estranged from God it withers us, it exhausts us, and it parches our souls. The reason we are so spiritually thirsty is that we are drinking from man-made wells. The Bible tells us about a Creator-God that uses his wisdom and intelligence to make a creation that is bursting with beauty, delight, possibility, harmony, goodness, and justice—in a word: Shalom.

As the Jewish people introduced God to the world they told us that God is anti-sin, not because He doesn’t want us to have fun, but because God is for shalom.

God is against greed, for example, not because He makes a world full of beautiful things then decides that He doesn’t want me to enjoy any of them. God is against greed because he has made a world of staggering beauty and placed me in it and wants me to be grateful and appreciative of the beauty of it.  And God is wise enough to know that greed is an addiction and hunger that will eat me alive like a malignancy.

God is anti-greed because God is pro shalom.

Leo Tolstoy tells the story of a greedy man named, Pahom, who was obsessed with amassing more and more land. One day he learned of a wonderful and unusual opportunity to get more land. For only 1,000 rubles he could have the entire area that he could walk around in a day, but he had to make it back to the starting point by the sunset or he would lose everything that he invested.

He arose early and set out. He walked on and on thinking that he could get just a little more land if he kept straining forward for the prize he sought, but he went so far that he realized he must walk very fast if he was going to get back to the starting point and claim the land. As the sun set lower in the sky, he quickened his pace. He began to run. He came within sight of the finishing goal and exerted his last energies plunging over the finish line, falling to the ground, dead.

His servant took a spade and dug a grave. He made it just long enough and just wide enough to match Pahom’s body and buried him. Here’s the title Tolstoy gave his story: “How Much Land Does a Man Need?” He ends this short story with this line: “Six feet from his head to his heels was all that man needed”.

Sin wears us out and does us in every time.

What Grace Does to Our Souls

Confession may be good for the soul, but we don’t like it. We will let malevolent voices convince us there is no need to play that game. We limp towards honest and open confession to God, but He runs to embrace us, heal us, love us and restore us like a father waiting for a returning son. We stutter, stammer, and falter to name what is wrong with our souls, but God trumpets his mercy to us, shouts in celebration about his forgiveness like the widow who has found her last lost penny.

God captures our prayers of confession as if precious drops of libation and then in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed “Father…take this cup away from Me; nevertheless not My will, but Yours, be done” Jesus drank the cup to the dark dregs. And with the bile of our sin and brokenness on his parched tongue, he cried out the next day on the cross ‘It is finished!”

He did that so God can embrace, heal and restore us. Jesus felt the scorn of men and the wrath of God so that we can hear a heavenly voice say, “‘Well done, good and faithful servant…Enter into the joy of your lord.’”

Ancient Practices of Christian Confession:

  • Confess regularly

I’ve found the consistent practice of confessing my sin in private prayer and before I partake of communion to help me create repetitive soul-memory.

  • Confess particularly

I don’t sin in generalities.  I sin in specifics. It is easy to hide the textures, colors, and nastiness of my sin in a general and bland declaration that I am a sinner. I confess as particular as my infraction.

  • Confess joyfully

The joy comes in the restoration of a right relationship with the Father who ran to embrace me even with the stench of my pig-sty-sin all over my clothes. Joy comes from anticipating all of heaven rejoices when one sinner is restored of all sins large and small. Restoration on earth always means a party in heaven.

Of course, there is a hateful voice who has much invested in keeping my sin to myself. He knows the longer I keep silent about the mess piling up in my life the harder it is to come clean before the God who loves me.

There is a painting in which Faust is playing chess with the Devil. Faust has only a few pieces left on the board and seems to be check-mated.  The expression on his face foretells Fausthis doom.  The Devil, who seems to be very much in control, has a sneer of glee.

Through the years people would come to the gallery where the picture was displayed and gaze and ponder the hopelessness of the situation.  As they would leave, most left with the sense that the artist had captured the essence of their own situation.

Then one day, a great chess master came into the gallery.  He stood for hours focused on the painting and specifically the chessboard.  Day after day, he would return to study the portrait.  Finally, with a shout that disturbed everyone in the gallery, “It’s a lie!  You still have a move.”

Tell God what is bothering you. That’s your best move.

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The Jesus Way

Posted on March 2, 2015 by Joe Chambers

In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you … I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.~ Jesus   (John 14:1-2, 6)

Blessed are the sat upon, Spat upon, Ratted on. ~ Paul Simon

After the unexpected death of Michael Jackson in the summer of 2009, the whole world tuned into the Staple Center in Los Angeles to watch his funeral. Towards the end of the service celebrities began to sing the iconic song Michael Jackson wrote entitled We Are the World.

There comes a time when we heed a certain call

When the world must come together as one

There are people dying

And it’s time to lend a hand to life

The greatest gift of all

As those words were being sung, behind the stage on a huge screen, various iconic images Jackson Memorialof the world’s religions were being flashed onto the screen. As the song progressed those images began to spin and dissolved into one image.

That is a snapshot of a lot of popular sentiment present in pop culture.  But, truth be known, that is also the feelings of many who are armchair church goers. There are more than a few church folks that believe deep down inside that belief in a particular God as the only way to life after life is divisive and dangerous. There is doubt that the exclusivity of Jesus’ claims as THE way is healthy at all.

Wouldn’t it be wiser to say something like all religions are the same?  Stephen Prothero is a professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University and the author of numerous books on religion in America who is not a Christian says, “that what all religions hold in common is that something is wrong with the world, but they are radically different in how they diagnose what’s wrong, and in the cure that they prescribe.”

Everyone has definite beliefs. Even if those definite beliefs are no one should have definite beliefs. That’s pretty definite. The question isn’t “Will we or will we not have exclusive beliefs about God. The question is whose exclusive beliefs about life and God will lead you into the most humility in the way that you approach yourself and the most loving and sacrificial service in the way that you approach other people?

Back in the 90’s the Christian Music group Audio Adrenaline had a song that was popular when my boys were small that said:

Come and go with me

To my Father’s house

Come and go with me

To my Father’s house

It’s a big big house

With lots and lots a room

A big big table

With lots and lots of food

A big big yard

Where we can play football

A big big house

Its my Father’s house

Jesus shows us that the Jesus Way is the most inclusive of all the exclusive approaches to God available in the world. How can Jesus make this exclusive claim, “I am THE way to God AND there’s plenty of room?”

Here’s how: The Jesus Way allows not only the strong but the weak access to God; not only the enlightened but the unenlightened.

Most people inside and outside the church believe, at the end of the day, that good people get into heaven and bad people go to hell. But what if I am not that good? Who sets the standard? What if I don’t make that cut?

The good news that our faith holds out to us is that, through Jesus, God accepts the weak, the immoral, the down and out, the losers, the incompetent, the lousy, the lame-brain, and the messes—the hot messes.

I am so bad that Jesus had to die for me to reconcile me to God and at the same time I am so loved by Jesus that He is glad to die for me so that I can be reconciled with God. That is good news that you will not find anywhere else on the earth.

This should cause us to live differently.

Humility

 Wait, what? Maybe you’re thinking of Christians and the last thing you might imagine is a humble person. They often behave as the most judgmental and arrogant and narrow-minded people on the planet. I get that. But that is a perversion of our faith. It is one of the signs that the Gospel hasn’t gone down deep enough in the soul. Because the truth is that the Jesus Way says that acceptance by God does not depend on how wise, strong, or capable I am.  What matters is not my record, but Jesus’ record. Being a Christian is admitting that I need help.  That I need someone from outside my reality to rescue me.

Arrogant, narrow-minded, and judgmental Christians are either not true Christ-followers or they have forgotten that no one performs their way to God. True Christians always look at themselves humbly and look at others highly.

What that means for me is that when I am tempted to compare my ethics, politics, morality, and way of life with those people I disagree with or who I think are beneath me—I remember that I am the worst sinner I know. I suffer from a humility drift. It is so easy for me to forget that God has a relationship with me not because I am quite the catch for God, I have a relationship with God because Jesus took me in.

Flannery O’Connor wrote a short story entitled ‘Revelation’, which is found in her collection Everything That Rises Must Converge. Toward the end of the tale the main character, Mrs. Turpin, a religious person in the Pharisaical sense, is caught up in the whirlwind of emotion as she has a dream or vision of countless hordes of undesirables that are streaming into heaven and God’s presence. Turpin has been cut to the quick by the unsettling realization that, quite unlike herself, God cherishes the weak and foolish things of the world.

Then like a monumental statue coming to life, she bent her head slowly and gazed, as if through the very heart of mystery, down into the pig parlor at the hogs. They had settled all in one corner around the old sow who was grunting softly. A red glow suffused them. They appeared to pant with a secret life.

Until the sun slipped finally behind the tree line, Mrs. Turpin remained there with her gaze bent to them as if she were absorbing some abysmal life-giving knowledge. At last she lifted her head. There was only a purple streak in the sky, cutting through a field of crimson and leading, like an extension of the highway, into the descending dusk. She raised her hands from the side of the pen in a gesture hieratic and profound. A visionary light settled in her eyes.

She saw the streak as a vast swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it a vast horde of souls were tumbling toward heaven. There were whole companies of white trash, clean for the first time in their lives…and battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. And bringing up the end of the procession was a tribe of people whom she recognized at once as those who, like herself and Claude, had always had a little of everything and the God-given wit to use it right.

She leaned forward to observe them closer. They were marching behind the others with great dignity, accountable as they had always been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior. They, alone were on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces even their virtues were being burned away.

An arrogant Christian is a contradiction in terms.

Am I moving towards becoming a person of humility and recognizing that the person in the mirror is more of a mess than he thinks and the people I meet on the street and sit across from at the breakfast table are more loved by God than I can possibly imagine?

For me, this shows up most prominently in my need to be right all the time.  I find myself inwardly sneering at people I think I am better than. Sometimes I think I deserve God’s favor, certainly more than Joel Osteen, Sara Palin, or Barak Obama. I’ve got a long way to go.

Living the Jesus Way is a journey into humility.

Confidence

When a child is first born what can it do for you? Nothing. The essence of the interactions is feeding it and changing its diaper. And yet that little bundle of joy can open up a space inside of you that wasn’t there before.

That child can audition for American Idol and sound like a pig stuck under a gate, but you will think she sings like an angel. It can be an ugly child—as ugly as E.T. on meth— and yet we take thousands of pictures and inflict them on all of our Facebook friends. Why? Because she is your child or grandchild. You love a creature that can do nothing for you but make a mess.

If your employee bursts into your room at 2:30 in the morning crying because they are scared of a monster in their closet—what would you do? Call 911. But when your son or grandson comes into your room crying because they are scared, what do you do? You pull him to your chest, stroke his hair, whisper words of comfort to him and carry him back to his bed and sit with him until he falls back to sleep.  Why? Because you love him.

Jesus says that if you belong to him God is not your boss—- he’s your Father. And for some that means He is the Father they never had.

Ernest Hemingway wrote a short story called The Capital of the World. Published in 1936, it is the story of a young waiter named Paco and his aspiration to be a matador.

In the story, it was clear that Paco’s relationship with his father had broken down. Paco ran away from home to pursue his dreams. In an effort to rebuild their relationship, his father searched all of Spain hoping to reconnect with his son.

After a long and unsuccessful journey to find his son, Paco’s father tried one last time. The father placed an ad in a Madrid newspaper. The ad read:

Dear Paco,

Meet me in the front of the newspaper office tomorrow at noon.

All is forgiven.

I love you

At noon the next day, hundreds of men named Paco arrived at the newspaper office, each looking to rebuild a relationship that had gone bad.

I think there is a Father-hunger and a Father-wound in many souls today.  Souls are longing for a Father.

Is yours?

Come and go with me

To my Father’s housewelcome-mat_210

It’s a big big house

With lots and lots a room

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Averted Vision

Posted on February 21, 2015 by Joe Chambers

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades, or loose the cords of Orion? Job 38:31

For I will show mercy to anyone I choose, and I will show compassion to anyone I choose. But you may not look directly at my face…” Exodus 33:19-20 (NLT)

After a quarrel with my wife, I draped my hand over the steering wheel, let out a long sigh and pouted all the way to the mall. She sat as far from me as she could get and stared out of the truck window at telephone poles that blurred by. It was a dark time in our marriage. After nineteen years of busy, career-building and child-rearing—we sat as strangers in our own life.

That was fifteen years ago.

In the ebb and flow of life since—all of our children moving out, birth of four grandchildren, pastoring a church again, building a successful career as a third grade teacher—we have found our way together. Our dance of love is gentle, steady, and constant.  Sometimes we slow dance in the kitchen now while supper is simmering on the stove.

Gradually, God has given us an intermittent ministry of helping couples in crisis. We have sat with couples in our living room and listened to heart breaking stories of betrayal, pain, neglect and anger. Sometimes they are on the verge of breaking up, sometimes they are just weary in well doing.  We have ministered to single moms in our home and try to speak words of hope into lives where there is nothing but midnight. We sit with hurting couples.  I am the one that talks the most.  I’ve made a life answering questions that no one is asking. I talk, she listens.

Almost inevitably during one of those times someone will ask her a question and she always seems shocked that anyone wants to know what she thinks, but she flits a look at me and then she speaks words of wisdom that can only come from a combat veteran. Her words are few but they carry profound weight.  But more important than the words is her presence sitting there on the couch.  She is fully present and beams love and concern. She reminds me of the shy member of the Trinity—the Holy Spirit.  Not drawing attention to herself, not so much speaking words of comfort, or words of wise counsel—even though words fall from her lips like petals from a rose—but her calming presence in the room is palpable.

I marvel at the quiet, deep and provocative ministry God does through my wife. I’m not sure those sitting on our couches or feel her hugs, realize what she is doing for them.  Sometimes when you are hurting so badly you don’t remember the tender way a nurse or doctor touched your shoulder when you were pain until later, then their face flashes across your mind’s eye and warmth fills your soul.

When I look at how she is with people in our home, I see what the shy member of the Trinity is doing in the lives my wife touches.

When I was a boy living at nine thousand feet in the mountains of Colorado I liked to star gaze. I got a telescope for Christmas one year and a little book that described the constellations.  The stars at nine thousand feet are like holes in the floor of heaven.

I loved picking out the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and the North Star.  I found Mars and the evening star, Venus. There was Orion, Ursa Major, and Leo.

PleadiesBut my personal favorite was the Pleiades or sometimes referred to as the Seven Sisters. As a boy they reminded me a kite with a long tale.  But what was interesting about this open star cluster is that if I looked at them directly the individual stars would blur and dissolve before my eyes. But if I looked to the side just a little, and not look at them directly, I could see and count all seven sisters. The only way to see them with clarity was in my peripheral vision. The technical term for this phenomenon is averted vision in order to pick out a very faint star, you have to let your gaze drift casually to the space just next to it; if you look directly at it, it vanishes. At night, when you look directly at an object, you are using the center part of your eye, or the iris. This part of your eye is packed with cone cells (which see best in bright, strong light). When you look slightly to one side of the star, the starlight strikes that off-the-center part of your eye that has more rod cells (which see better in the dark).

I found that to be true about the inner workings of the soul of the bride of my youth. To gaze at it directly it blurs and vanishes—for it is shy.  But if I listen to how she prays for our sons, daughter-in-law and grandchildren and how she prays for the children in her class; if I watch how she reads stories to our grandchildren, if I watch how she smiles and leans forward while listening to a hurting person’s story, if I look at the faces of brothers and sisters at church when she hugs them—I see more than I can take in.

How did I merit such shining star in my life?

God knew who I needed. He knew of my loud and blustery ways, he knew I needed someone to be the shy, steady and constant constellation in my night sky.

If you look away a little, you can see you need her too.

But I seen her first.

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Mercy Me

Posted on February 3, 2015 by Joe Chambers

Then Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion; for we are many.” Mark 5:9

Ever have an enemy?

When I was in high school I dated the town bully’s ex-girlfriend. How smart was that? She began attending our church and was really cute, so we began dating after she assured me that her relationship with Charlie was over. He had a reputation of dealing drugs, and fighting with knives and clubs. He was a weight-lifter and his muscles had muscles. He struck fear in to the heart of everyone.

One day, on my way out of the high school, my brother met me in the hallway and told me that Charlie N. was outside in the parking lot looking for me. Said he was high and wanted to kill me.  I did something that I had never done in my high school career—I went to the library. I waited there until my father came to pick me up.

1964 Ford Falcon

1964 Ford Falcon

Over the next several weeks and months, as my new girlfriend and I would drive around town or go to school functions, there would always be a fear that Charlie was never very far away. There were several occasions that as we “cruised North Avenue” on a Friday or Saturday night, I could see the ’64 Ford Falcon following us. My mouth would get dry and my palms would get sweaty, but we never had a physical confrontation. He would just follow us and stare at me.

I did my best to look as big as I could, but I was a beanpole at 6’ 4” and a buck eighty. He was 6’ and 210 pounds.  Think of a white and long-haired Mike Tyson. I had nightmares about Charlie.

On the eastern shores of Galilee Jesus encounters a man who had an enemy that was much stronger than he was.

He is a creature you would probably meet only in your worst nightmares, if even there.  He is a man possessed with demons.  They drive him to violence.  They drive him to cry out like a wild dog howling in the night.  They drive him to the solitary places—in the hills, among the tombs.

There he acts like a rabid animal, living on the ragged, outer fringe of humanity.  Luke tells us that it has been a long time since he’s worn clothes or lived in a house.

There are no houses in Palestine for men like him.  No hospitals.  No asylums.  He has no place to go…his only refuge are the holes dug in the hillside, used to bury the dead.

His hair is a matted tangle of filth.  His body is scarred white around his wrists and ankles where manacles once tried to restrain him.  He is covered with scares from self-inflicted wounds.  He barely resembles a human.

How did the image of God become so marred and defaced?  How did he get to where he is now?  How did he end up here—his only home, a tomb; his only companions, demons?

We don’t know…but now his body is a beachhead for Satan.  And it is onto this beachhead that Jesus now lands.

Jesus is so much stronger than our strongest enemy.  He had just calmed the angry sea.  He is about to deal with the evil forces in this man’s soul.  The Scriptures want us to see that nothing in this world is a match for the power of Jesus.

(The community) came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid.  Mark 5:15

Legion

Legion

The mercy of Jesus is more powerful than all the evil and brokenness in this world. Often it surprises us who receives the mercy of God and who is afraid of it. Why would you be afraid of mercy? Because to embrace it will change you.

Much in my life has changed over the past forty years since I last saw my old nemesis, Charlie. And, as God would have it, as I grew to be a very large man physically (I added a hundred pounds to that buck eighty), I also grew into a man who would be far more interested in the soul of my enemy than having a physical encounter with him. That can only be attributed to the transformative power of mercy in the wild places of my life.

About twenty years ago I visited my old hometown and had a coffee with my first girlfriend’s mother and she told me that Charlie was involved in a drug deal that went bad and cut a man’s throat in a knife fight.  Seeing blood shoot out of his neck, he put his hand over the wound, called 911 and held his hand on the wound until the ambulance got there.

He cut his throat—then saved his life—then went to prison.

While Charlie was in prison for living out of his brokenness, I served those years learning to live a life of brokenness.  People matter to me now in ways that I could not imagine fifteen years ago.

Living a life out of brokenness versus living a life of brokenness. It is a not-so-subtle difference. When we live out of our brokenness we allow our wounds to drive us to behave in self-protective ways. And inevitably those ways of self-protection end up hurting others because they are narcissistic.

But when I live a life of brokenness, I embrace my wounds as magnets for God’s mercy to drive me to depend on Him for operational grace. And with that grace flowing into my life I am able to love and give away that mercy to others that he has put in my path. I am broken in all the right places. I become a wounded healer.

I’ve wondered about Charlie over the years.  On my birthday this year another high school friend sent me birthday wishes on social media.  Below is our conversation:

Mike: Happy Birthday hopefully you are over the trauma I provided in the old neighborhood!! There’s always counselling!!!

Joe: Danny M. was my nemesis. Along with Charlie N. But I’ll send you the bill, Mike Z.

Mike: Billing and getting are two different things my friend!  Enjoy your Birthday and my best to you and your family—Danny M. is a drunk and Charlie N. is a born again Christian!! Who saw that coming?

Enemy? What enemy?

Mercy, me.

He’s my brother.

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Born Again, Really?

Posted on January 25, 2015 by Joe Chambers

Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” Nicodemus said to Him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?”  John 3:3-4

A friend told me about a frightening experience he had in college. Seems he took one of those throw away courses that you sometimes need to take to fill up electives and he chose what he thought would be an easy class.  It was called, “Human Growth and Development.” It was a general health course about hygiene, reproduction, birth, adolescence, adulthood and old age.

One day they had a film called “The Miracle of Life” and it was during the days when all films were on the old school technology called VHS. The teacher was rather awkward when it came to machines and technology but fumbled her way through showing the videotape of a birth.  And it was a graphic and full-frontal video of a birth.  You saw everything as the baby came out into the midwife’s hands, cleaned up and handed it to its mother.

That is when the fumbling teacher turned to discuss the scene with the class of red-faced college students. As she turned she thought she hit the stop button on the VHS machine but she hit rewind and to the horror of the class, with her back to the screen explaining what had just occurred, the class sat mouths agape as the tape ran backward and they saw in slow motion the midwife take the newborn baby out of the mothers arms and shove it back where it came from.

You know those students are in therapy to this day.

That shocking image is some of what Nicodemus is going through in this nighttime conversation with Jesus when he says, Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’  (vs. 7)

This image startled Nicodemus. And I think the statement “born again” might startle us as well. For many in our culture when they hear those words “Born Again” inner alarm bells start going off.  It is a great way to get an extra seat on a bus or airplane just start talking about being born again.

What does the phrase born-again Christian mean to the average person in Seattle? What does it mean when it’s used in the media? It means someone who has had an emotional religious experience, usually, something fairly cathartic, maybe a crisis. It also refers to a narrow, dogmatic, and conservative brand of Christianity— cultic, fringe kind of people.

 Why do born-again people so often make you wish they’d never been born the first time? ~ Katharine Whitehorn (British journalist, writer, and columnist)

That is how most people feel in our culture when they hear that metaphor to describe an individual today.

But, in this night-time conversation with Nicodemus when Jesus says to Nicodemus, “You must be born again,” he is not commending to him a particular view of immigration reform legislation or gun control laws. Jesus is using a central image for the transformation that God births in us through Jesus.

 We All Need a New Birth

Jesus is saying that if we want to actually taste life with God; his kingdom, his rescue, presence, mercy, and restoration we will need a transformation that is comprehensive not unlike new birth.

People who belong to Jesus are birthed into a new way of being in which they share in the life of God.  When I was conceived and born into this world some 58 years ago, I passed from a way of life for 9 months that is similar and yet quite different the moment I drew my first breath.  And having been born I carry with me forever the genetic properties of Robert and Earlene Chambers. I have their chromosomes, blood, genes in me as a very part of me.

It is similar when a person is born from above.  They share in the very life of God.

By the phrase born again is expressed not the correction of one part, but the renovation of the whole nature. ~ John Calvin

Jesus does not intend to merely tweak our lives or offer us minor course correction. Jesus intends to completely renovate and restore us to who He intended mankind to be when he dreamed us up before time. He intends to birth us into a new kind of life.  A life from outside this reality. Birth from above where we actually share and are connected to God’s life.

And I believe that it is this that all of us most deeply desire.

There is a photo advertising plastic surgery of Michelangelo’s depiction of God on the Be Born AgainSistine Chapel touching a button to an elevator to his office. The caption at the bottom of the picture is “Be Born Again.”

What is it that you and I are really after?  With our plastic surgery, our resume padding, our fad dieting, our football deflations, and our frantic chasing after more success after more success? What we are after? We want to be born again. We want a new life. We are not convinced that the life we are living is a life worth living.

I wish that I could sit down over coffee, let two minutes of complete silence hang between us so that our spirits are settled, and then ask each of you this question: What’s bothering you?

And as we pull that thread on the sweater surrounding your soul, I wonder what might come unraveled? I think we would see exactly where you would love to have a new birth.

Jesus says that kind of soul-renovation comes, not from a tweak on the outside, but from a restoration of the whole of you that begins on the inside. What you and I need is not a minor alteration, but a new birth.

I wonder where you and I might be looking for a new life right now.  Where is our elevator button? Am I seeking it in the externals of life, or am I seeking it where it can actually be found—from birth that comes from God?

 The New Birth Is a Gift

All of us know, intuitively, that birth is something that happens to us and that we had nothing to do with it in any way. Not a single one of us did anything to bring about our own natural birth.  And Jesus’ point here is that it is the same with birth that comes from above. We can’t grab, earn, or conjure up life with God.  The fact that we have a life with God is not due to any of our doing.

It’s all about that grace, that grace, that grace.

Like the old hymn writer Augustus Toplady said over two hundred years ago:

 Not the labor of my hands

Can fulfill Thy law’s demands;

Could my zeal no respite know,

Could my tears forever flow,

All for sin could not atone;

Thou must save, and Thou alone.

We can’t do anything to merit God’s grace, we can only receive it as a gift.  Because if anyone could have merited favor with God based on achievement it would have been Nicodemus.

The resume is impressive:

A Pharisee—one of the intellectual guardians of the Law.

Member of the Sanhedrin—the esteemed ruling council.

Israel’s teacher—the authority, the one whose opinion could sway the vote, the one whose words were most quoted.

Most impressive. Nicodemus is at the top of the religious ladder, looking down.

But the view from the top is, at best, disappointing. And now, he steps down from that ladder to walk the streets. Searching.

And it is this successful, powerful, at-the-top-of-his-game-guy Jesus says, “You need another birth.”

This is what is hard and beautiful about the Christian faith.  Because our faith, unique from all other religions, says “Nobody is disqualified on the one hand and nobody is good enough on the other.”

Good Friday Gueranger 15Grace is why pimps and prostitutes flocked to Jesus because they understood that their past didn’t keep them from life with God.  But this is also why many of the priests, professors and the pious had a hard time with Jesus because their past didn’t get them any special favors with God. Nobody is disqualified and nobody is good enough for life with God. A new birth can only be given to you.

Nicodemus accepted the gift and moved in the direction of the new birth, I think I will too.

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