Latest Posts

Passion Week Lessons — All at once

April 8, 2020 0 Comments

Passion Week Lessons

Every attempt at writing or creating video about the “lessons” in each day of this Passion Week has so far fallen flat. Neither I nor my products could escape the inner critic. I couldn’t push publish. So I’ll just summarize the “lessons” of Monday – Wednesday and give your Thursday’s as well.

To call these days between Palm Sunday and Good Friday, Passion Week is to emphasize the passion of Jesus — His suffering emerging from who He is and the love permeating all His relationships: with His Heavenly Father, with Himself, with people, and with the stuff of earth. Suffering extends to the depths of soul beyond the flesh and the nerve endings. Jesus was not detached; he was deliberately engaged. So, Jesus loves and His love is what He taught.

The lessons I have been drawn to in His teaching in this week show us the way of Jesus’ love.

May these lessons bear the fruit Jesus intends.

Monday — Impressed with the image of God.
Reading: Matthew 22:15-22

Our obligations to the crown and its coin do not exceed the greater obligation to the image before us in humanity — the image of God. “Give back to Ceasar what is Caesar’s, and to God what is God’s.” What is God’s? What must be given to God? The body and the person meant to flourish there. The bodies of humanity and the communities taking root here. I’m sure the rest of our relationships will follow when our value for giving God what is God’s is moved to the top. The secret of giving and I suspect the secret of loving is to give ourselves first to God.

Tuesday — The greatest commandment
Reading: Matthew 22:34-40

 An expert in the law tests Jesus with a question, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” I’m not sure which options for great commands the expert thought might compete for the top spot. But Jesus chooses the first and second commands and then says “All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” Here you go — let’s organize our lives around these beginning with our closest relationships (starting at “home”).

“‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.” This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’”

Love God with your all.
Love people as yourself.

So much growth required!
So much grace necessary!

Wednesday — Humble service flowing from the inside out
Reading: Matthew 23:1-12

Jesus finds no fault with the Law and the Prophets nor with the teaching that might emerge from their teachers on how to live in relationship to God, to self, to people and to the stuff of earth. But Jesus does find fault with the teachers who do not practice what they preach. He says, “be careful to do everything they tell. But do not do what they do.” Jesus does find fault with teachers who do everything for people to see so as to garner honour and adoration.

Humility among the communities of Jesus is founded on allegiance to Him.

So in the communities of Jesus no one needs to be called “Rabbi;” we are all brothers and sisters and we have one Teacher.

No one needs to be called “Father” because we all have one Father and He is in heaven.

No one needs to be called Instructor because we all have one Instructor, The Messiah.

If anyone needs to be great — become a servant by humbling yourself.

Thursday — The urgency of loving now with integrity
Matthew 23:13-39, Chapters 24 -25

Jesus sees ahead and he sees into the hearts of people who claim the name of God. He knows what has been entrusted to us and he discerns our spiritual complacency and inertia.

Jesus is direct and then he moves to what I call the parables of disturbance. These parables are meant to disrupt our complacency and generate urgency for relationship with God and for responsive living in all our relationships.

Wisdom, stewardship and service flow out of our worship of God as participants in Jesus’ Kingdom.

Wisdom: The urgency of time. The Parable of the Ten Virgins.
“Therefore, keep watch, because you do not know the day or hour.” Matthew 25:3


Stewardship: The urgency of wealth. The Parable of the Bags of God
“For whoever has will be given more, and they will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what they have will be taken from them.” Matthew 25:29


Service: The urgency of people. The Parable of the Sheep and The Goats.
“‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.” Matthew 25-45-46


Quotes

“A common usage of the word neighbour today locates the neighbor as one who lives “next door” or close by. A “next-door” neighbor is one with a special degree of intimacy, in this understanding, and there is something to that. But in this understanding my most important neighbour is overlooked: the one who lives with me—my family, or others taken in by us. They are the ones I am most intimately engaged with in my life. They are the ones who first and foremost I am to love as I love myself. If only this were done, nearly every problem in families would resolved, and the love would spread to others….

“As we go about these exercises it will become increasingly clear how necessary it is to practice a range of what we think of as standard disciplines for the spiritual life (silence, solitude, fasting, prayer, study, and so forth) in order to receive the compassion, grace, and growth required to live a life of neighborly love. We may never feel adequate to such a life, in view of the depth of need that surrounds us. But it is right and good to understand that we aren’t adequate to love as we should and could! Instead we are to stand with others in the fellowship of disciples of Jesus Christ and under the presence and resources of the kingdom of God.”

Dallas Willard, “How to Love Your Neighbor as Yourself,” Renewing the Christian Mind, p. 132, 133-4.

———————————————–

“Freedom is a terrible gift, and the theory behind all dictatorships is that ‘the people’ do not want freedom. They want bread and circuses. They want workman’s compensation and fringe benefits and TV. Give up your free will, give up your freedom to make choices, listen to the expert, and you will have three cars in your garage, steak on the table, and you will no longer have to suffer the agony of choice.

Choice is an essential ingredient of fiction and drama. A protagonist must not simple be acted upon, he must act, by making a choice, a decision to do this rather than that. A series of mistaken choices through the centuries has brought us to a restricted way of life in which we have less freedom than we are meant to have, and so we have a sense of powerlessness and frustration which comes from our inability to change the many terrible things happening on the planet.”

Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art. p. 103

———————————————–

“The walk of Jesus as He lived among people was not an aimless walk. He was more or less constantly touching people, and they were conscious of that touch. Do we need to emphasize again that as Jesus’ followers, our walk, our lives should not be aimless? We who have been brought into union with the resurrected Christ should be so responsive to His touch on our lives that naturally and inevitably we will unconsciously seek to live the kind of life He lived. We will permit Him, more and more, to touch the lives of others through our touch with and on them. Also ‘others’ will be constantly enlarging, including family, friends, neighbors, church members, casual acquaintances, and total strangers.”

T. B. Maston, To Walk As He Walked, p. 129

———————————————–


“When we decide that the weak are not only objects of our charity but also subjects who teach us needed wisdom, it makes new relationships possible. After all, people sense when the time you spend with them is a chore. They might smile and say thank you ‘onstage,’ but you can be sure that the poor will cuss a patronizing church like a sailor as soon as the members are out of earshot. When we enjoy the time we spend with others and honestly value their wisdom, we don’t gain only new knowledge. We gain something far more valuable: a friendship that wasn’t possible before…

The tactic of eternal investments involves learning to entrust our future to God, believing in an economics of providence. The tactic of economic friendship is similar, but it emphasizes this: God’s economy comes to us as a community of friendship. Though Jesus made it clear that miracles happen, it’s not God’s standard operating procedure to rain bread from heaven or provide money from a fish’s mouth. Instead, God invites us into the abundance of eternal life through economic relationships with other people.

Some of us might be slow to call this friendship. Friends, we think are people we connect with on a deep level—people who understand us and with whom we can share our most initiate thoughts. ‘You can’t have many true friends,’ we sometimes say, thinking about the time investment these special relationships require. I have a few intimate relationships like this, and I’m deeply grateful for them, but I don’t think these are the sort of people Jesus is talking about when he tells us to use money to make friends.

Economic friendship is a lot more like being a good neighbor.”

Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, God’s Economy: Redefining the Health and Wealth Gospel, p. 146, 147-8.

Discipleship, Relationships

,

Prayer of The People, 3 April 2020

April 7, 2020 0 Comments

Heavenly Father, We praise you the Creator of the Heavens and the Earth. You have never abandoned your Creation. You have set your plans and purposes in place from the beginning. You have persisted in the revelation of your glory. You are the origin of all life, all truth, and all love. Thank you for the grace that has brought us into your communion — the communion of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.


Thank you for revealing your life and love in Jesus Christ your Son. 

He is before us and so we praise you.
He is after us and so we aim our lives at Him. We know every knee shall bow and every tongue  confess that He is Lord to your glory forever and ever.

You are also present with us: Our good shepherd, the lover of our souls, the author and perfecter of our faith, and the God who saves us.

You are with us in our tears. We have lost the illusion of invincibility.
You are with us in our fears. We have lost the thin promises of our self-designed security.

O Immanuel — God with us. Our only assurance — you are behind us and before us and above and below us all the days of our lives.

Grant your church courage today as are scattered to homes and shelters to meet you in that space and to order our lives according to your grace. Grant us the full-bodied maturity of Jesus  to acknowledge our own weakness, to mourn with those who mourn, and in the moment to also rejoice with those who rejoice. 

We lift up to you places and people ravaged with the Coronavirus and by the constraints of the lockdown:  Italy, Iran, India, Ecuador, Spain and New York City. Grant us perseverance and patience to weather this storm with you.

And so we pray together in Jesus Name as He taught us. 
(Please join me in the Lord’s Prayer)


Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from the evil one;
for yours is the kingdom,
and the power, and the glory, 
forever. 
Amen.

Prepared by Craig O’Brien for the Origin Church Weekend Broadcast

Prayer

What you don’t see

April 6, 2020 3 Comments

To be fair I should tell you what you don’t see in the picture.

What you don’t see in all my beautiful posts from yesterday is that on Sunday, 5 April, something in my soul cracked and my 12 year old told her mother “I’ve never seen daddy cry before.”

My body was wracked by gut-wrenching, breath-stealing sobs that would not be contained.

The dam broke.

I hate covid-19.

I hate the stress of wanting to do better and feeling woefully inadequate for everything that matters because of love:

husbanding-parenting-householding-pastoring-friending-broadcasting-distancing-togethering-financing-interneting-zooming-learning-teachering-homeschooling-discipling-tracking-the-church-that-has-scattered-to-the-four-corners of the globe-goodbying-grocery-shopping-without-getting-sick-and-dying-praying-staying-healthy-securing-the-broken-in-garage-from-more-thieves-teching-wondering-about-parents-who-are-isolating-planning-producing-content-leading-comforting-mobilizing-communicating-partnering-staying-on-mission-serving-my-neighbours-without-making-them-sick-empathizing-and-i’m-supposed-to-do-something-great-in-isolation-right?-comparing-and-knowing-i’m-not-supposed-to-AND-wanting-to-be-an-expert-but-the-only-thing-i’m-an-expert-at-is-being-me-and-i’m-not-doing-that-very-well-right-now-ing.

I’m already sick of all the gurus telling me how to do this. If I get another email from a church specialist telling me or even offering how to do better… Oh wait that’s all I’m getting these days — FROM EVERYBODY! How to do better.

I’m angry about that too.

Enough.

And yet there in the midst of my deluge of grief: hugs from my family; assurances—it’s ok we are all trying; Psalm 46:1 offered by the 12 year old; and “He Will See You Through” from Rhiannon Giddens album ‘There Is No Other’ with Francesco Turrisi. (Listen to it below)

God is good

And. I’m. still. angry.

Change, Relationships, Work

, ,

Journey Through John, #11, John 1.43-51 — I saw you

April 2, 2020 0 Comments

Dear Friend,

One of the most soul-sucking lies creeping into our minds is the idea that God does not see us.   I find the lie at work throughout the Scripture and even in my own life. This lie is particularly damaging when it comes to prayer — the heart of our relationship and conversation with God. The lie must not be allowed to abide. But — have you ever felt that way?

I have and it’s one of the reasons I find encounters like the one in John 1:43-51 so encouraging for our relationship with God.

John 1:43-51

43The next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. Finding Philip, he said to him, “Follow me.”

44Philip, like Andrew and Peter, was from the town of Bethsaida. 45Philip found Nathanael and told him, “We have found the one Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the prophets also wrote—Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”

46“Nazareth! Can anything good come from there?” Nathanael asked.“Come and see,” said Philip.

47When Jesus saw Nathanael approaching, he said of him, “Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.”48“How do you know me?” Nathanael asked.Jesus answered, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

49Then Nathanael declared, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”50Jesus said, “You believe because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.”51He then added, “Very truly I tell you (all) will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

The Snapshot — Nathaniel’s Testimony

This snapshot begins with Jesus getting ready to leave the Jordan and head back to Galilee. The discipleship moves abound! Some of the new friends of Jesus are going to go with him. And Philip looks for Nathanael so he can come too and get to know the Messiah. But Nathanael is a skeptic so he questions — “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”

I love Jesus. You know it’s “to the glory of kings to overlook an offence!” Jesus skips the insult and goes right to the heart.

“Here truly is an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.” Ha! With Nathanael what you see is what you get. If he opens his mouth he is going to let you know what’s in there.

And God He knows what’s in there.

That’s what makes Jesus’ response to Nathanael’s question so dramatic and awe-inspiring. Nathanael asks, “How do you know me?” and Jesus answers, “I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you.”

Now Nathanael had not found a quiet spot under the fig tree just to sleep. He was probably there to pray, to have a conversation with God. And here’s Jesus making the claim — I saw you there. I know you here. And now Nathaniel’s whole view of Jesus is shifting. He declares, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel.”

Jesus affirms Nathanael’s faith saying you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.” And then He added, “Very truly I tell you, you will see ‘heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man.”

Jesus’ words remind me of Jacob’s experience in Bethel. (Genesis 28:10-22) Jacob was on the run to seek security needed because his deceitfulness had enraged his brother Esau. At Bethel God shows up in a dream as he sleeps. A stairway between heaven and earth is shown to Jacob at his head. The messengers of the LORD are going up and down it. The LORD speaks to Jacob right there saying “All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. I am with you and will watch over you where you go, and I will bring you back to this land I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Jacob’s experience tell us “He sees you when you sleep.” Nathaniel’s experience tells us He sees you when you pray.

Let’s put Jacob’s history together with what Jesus just told Nathanael. This is amazing. Jesus is telling Nathanael you are going to see greater things than me just seeing you when you pray because I open up the kingdom of God of earth. Jesus is not just the King of Israel — He is the King in the Kingdom of God through which all nations will be blessed.

I believe the Apostle John is telling us Nathaniel’s testimony because he wants us to know that The King has come and it’s Jesus. Not only that — The King Jesus — He is God — He sees you when you pray. He knows what’s in your heart.

Prayer in the name of Jesus is not a exercise in futility or just self-improvement. Prayer is the participatory prelude to seeing the kingdom of God on earth. He knows us and has grace for us. He sees us and opens heaven to converse with us. No matter where you are praying He is with you. If you are on the Coronavirus frontlines or in the Coronavirus self-isolation He sees you, He is with you.

He sees you when you pray.

Let’s pray!

Our Father in Heaven, hallowed be your name; your kingdom come, your will be done — on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one; for yours is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever. 


In Jesus name we pray,
Amen.

Journey Through John's Gospel

,

Journey Through John, #10, John 1.35-43

March 31, 2020 0 Comments

Hi Friend,

If you are a follower of Jesus, you are a part of the movement Jesus started. If you are new to this movement  you may have heard church people talk about discipleship. 

A disciple is literally a student-follower. When we talk about discipleship we are not talking about life in a classroom. Rather we are talking about a life in relationship with Jesus — in real time and in real life.

The text for today is John 1:35-43  — Pause now and read it.

35The next day John was there again with two of his disciples. 36When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, “Look, the Lamb of God!”37When the two disciples heard him say this, they followed Jesus. 38Turning around, Jesus saw them following and asked, “What do you want?”They said, “Rabbi” (which means “Teacher”), “where are you staying?”39  “Come,”he replied, “and you will see.”So they went and saw where he was staying, and they spent that day with him. It was about four in the afternoon

.40Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus. 41The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, “We have found the Messiah” (that is, the Christ). 42And 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).


This passage has all kinds of discipleship moves:
John has disciples; but he keeps pointing to Jesus: “Look, the Lamb of God!”
The two disciples then leave John and follow Jesus.
Jesus turns around and sees them following and asks, “What do you want?”
The two disciples call him Rabbi and ask, “Where are you staying?”
Jesus says, “Come and you will see.”
Jesus spends the day with them.
One of the disciples, Andrew goes to find his brother, Simon.
Andrew announces the possibility that Jesus is the Messiah they have been expecting.
Andrew brings Simon to see Jesus.
Jesus looks at Simon and says, “You are Simon son of John. You will be called Cephas” (which, when translated is Peter).

So many discipleship moves here. For the Church in the world we keep pointing to Jesus. We are not looking for disciples for ourselves. We are actually discipling people to Jesus. Jesus is The Disciple-Maker. I believe Jesus is still doing what he does in this text and we get to be a part of it.

Three Discipleship Moves we make with Jesus


Jesus keeps asking: “What do you want?”  — This is the first direct word we have from Jesus in the Gospel of John. A question: What do you want? Every disciple of Jesus must answer this question. Do I really want to be with Jesus. What are the desires and affections of my heart?

Jesus keeps spending time with people:  He invites those who wonder about Him and what He is up to in the world, to “Come and see.” — Every disciple of Jesus must settle into being with Jesus and being where Jesus is taking them in the world.

Jesus keeps changing lives: Every disciple of Jesus must be in relationship with the One who can change their character from shifting sand (this is what the name “Simon” portrays) to being a person with a rock-solid and well defined core (this is what the name “Cephas” or “Peter” portrays). 

As friends of Jesus we keep pointing people to him. Sometimes they must “leave us” to follow Jesus for themselves. We may experience some grief in that. But, we can rejoice because we are together in the Fellowship of the Lamb. That’s what its like to really be the church. We must always anticipate and rejoice in the allegiance of each disciple to Jesus. It’s this freedom in discipleship that calls the church back from being cultish, controlling and toxic. It’s this movement in discipleship that spreads the Gospel around the world and in each generation.


Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, We come to the fellowship of Jesus the Lamb by your invitation. Thank you for this grace. Transform our lives and make us solid people who are able to join you in the life-changing movement of redemption and love. We want to be with you! Grant us the courage and the capacity that John the Baptist had to treat people as friends who belong to Jesus.

In Jesus’ Name,
Amen.

Take time now to write your own prayer and response to God from this text.

Our next reading will be from John 1:43-51.

Change, Discipleship, Journey Through John's Gospel

, ,