Tag Archive: Friends

Journey Through John, #4, John 1.11-13, Born by the Will of God

March 23, 2020 0 Comments

Dear Friends,

This past Sunday was the second Sunday since our congregation got swept up in the storm called Covid-19. For two weeks now we have not gathered and that’s how it will be for the foreseeable future. I hate it.

I think I’m supposed to be excited about seeing you all online and connecting with you from a distance. But I’m grieving the loss of seeing you, just running into you on campus, gathering with you, seeing you in the city– and now of not even saying proper goodbyes. This storm has swept us up and scattered us across the globe.

I’m realizing that I can’t do this Journey Through John as if I’m just expositing the Word of God in a timeless vacuum. So, I’m going to write to my Dear Friends. That’s what you are to me. Yes I know I have served as a pastor to you under the guidance of Jesus our Great Shepherd. But even there I have sought to treat you as friends. 

My salvation testimony has its “event” prompted by the Holy Spirit when my my Sunday School teacher, Molly McCracken read from John 15:12-17. Even at 9, and even still, I am astonished that Jesus would call me a friend. It’s what I wanted at 9 and it’s what I enjoy now. 

As friends transformed by Jesus, I wish I was better at friendship with you and with Him. But I hope that’s the yearning of the Spirit in me for the communion of God and with His saints. 

I am eternally grateful to Jesus for choosing me. I pray often that He would choose you and that you would receive Him fully. There is tension in life for the friends of Jesus.

I believe John the Apostle was deeply aware of these tensions: the desire to treat all as friends of Jesus being stretched by the desire of God to transform all people through friendship with Him, and the reality that some people even though they have been granted the grace of God’s dignity towards them will not change their minds about HIm. Thus John writes that although Jesus came to those He created (the world) and those He had formed as His own (Israel) they did not recognize Him or receive Him. Yet…

12Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— 13children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.

John 1:11-13, NIV

I’m so grateful for this super work of God. To be born of God, by His will and not my own. To be born as a friend of God when I’m not all that great at friendship — amazing! This friends is our lot in Christ: we have been born of Him through the Holy Spirit-activated-act of seeing Jesus for who He is, and receiving Him for who He is. This is the will of our Heavenly Father — that we would be born of His will, not just our families’ will, but of His will!

Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord Oh you friends of Jesus! Come all, come all and receive His friendship!

Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father,

Even in your family you would have us act as friends of Jesus. Even in this world you would have us treat all as if they could be a friend of Jesus — even our enemies. Thank you for the grace of recognizing and receiving Jesus. We have been born of your will, not our own, not of our families’ will, not of our parents’ will, nor of our nation’s will, but of your will. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you! May our spiritual birth into a life with you be full of awe and new mercies.

In Jesus Name,
Amen.


Our next reading will be: John 1:14-15

(Note to those receiving this as an email. Click through to my blog if you would like to view the reading as a video.)

Journey Through John's Gospel, Relationships

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The Stranger Friendly Campus

September 25, 2019 0 Comments

Stranger Friendly Campus: Theological Pressure Points for Christians

Recently I hosted a discussion with the University Multifaith Chaplains Association at UBC. This lively group of people meet twice a month forming a learning and leadership community.

We live in an age that has never had such easy access and opportunity to appreciate and value the differences and commonalities in the world’s ethnē. Yet we also live in an age in which it remains just as easy to demonize the stranger as it has always been. Openness to the stranger is something I believe we want in the commons. Creating a stranger friendly campus is not easy and it will surely be challenged further in the days to come.

As nationalism raises its voice as an expression of xenophobia I have been searching for theological pressure points within the Christian conversation that lead might lead a person toward becoming a raging xenophile.

I chose only six pressure points for our discussion. Each pressure point is accompanied by Scripture. I am not providing the theological work but hopefully you as readers can make the associations. The first pressure point may be the most important one for creating movement and a willingness to encounter a stranger. It requires me to humbly manage the tendency to promote my opinions and quick judgements as truth. This questioning of my own assumptions creates generosity, invites trust, and leaves room for God to show up. The Emmaus Road (Luke 24:13-35) encounter is the account of Jesus, the Resurrected Lord, showing up and being received as a stranger by two disciples on their journey. I believe we will have to train ourselves for this pressure point in an age of manipulated feeds and censured news. This first pressure point is the required posture for every picture and byline we read on the Internet. Pressure point #1 is the growth mindset applied to relationships.

Pressure Point #1. My assumptions about the stranger are probably wrong.

“Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it. Continue to remember those in prison as if you were together with them in prison, and those who are mistreated as if you yourselves were suffering.”  Hebrews 13:1-3, NIV

Pressure Point #2. I am part of a minority story… too.
“Do not oppress a foreigner; you yourselves know how it feels to be foreigners, because you were foreigners in Egypt.” Exodus 23:9, NIV

Pressure Point #3. Perceived weakness is not all about a lack of personal responsibility.
“Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. In those days when the number of disciples was increasing, the Hellenistic Jews among them complained against the Hebraic Jews because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.”
Acts 5:42-Acts 6:1, NIV


Pressure Point #4. The academy is a transactional relationship yet has potential for genuine friendship.
“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. If you keep my  commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this: to lay down on’e life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command. I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. This is my command: Love each other.” John 15:9-17, NIV

Pressure Point #5. The stranger may be the one from whom I receive and share in God’s blessings.

“So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, or all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” Galatians 3:26-29 NIV

Pressure Point #6. Being “sent” requires becoming the stranger who is received.

“Anyone who welcomes you welcomes me, and anyone who welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet as a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward, and whoever welcomes a righteous person as a righteous person will receive a righteous person’s reward. And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones who is my disciple, truly I tell you, that person will certainly not lose their reward.” Matthew 10:40-42, NIV

Extra Thoughts and Music

Unfortunately, some places develop a hostile and pervading ethos of suspicion toward the stranger. These places seem to know and perhaps relish in their stranger-unfriendliness. I grew up with two phrases that treated being the stranger as a common experience and as a spiritual experience. These phrases have been memorialized in songs. “Rank Stranger” tells of leaving a community, coming back and then experiencing “home” and its people as strange, even objectionable. A second song is confessional too. “I’m just a Wayfaring Stranger,” I’m just passing through. These confessions do not guarantee empathy for the stranger or outsider but they do tap into pressure points within my theological stream.

Change

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