The Face of Faith

I wrestle with faith; every follower of Jesus should.  Not because our faith is small, or it’s weak. But because it’s a mystery.

Faith is too often talked about as if it were a personal possession or a character trait.  Your marriage didn’t work because you didn’t have enough faith. Your child died because your faith was weak. Have faith, and everything will be okay.  Then when a spouse leaves the marriage, an innocent chid succoms to an illness or that promotion goes to a less-qualified coworker, the reason seems simple: you didn’t have enough faith.

The solution is equally simple; first beat yourself up for failing God, then grit your teeth and conjure up more faith! We see faith as something that is our responsibility to create, and if we do our job well, God will reward our efforts, “our” faith.

Matt and Bobbye are two of the most faithful Christ followers I’ve ever known.  They love Jesus; they teach Jesus; they live, sleep, eat and breath Jesus; and they exude the peace, love, and joy of those that follow Jesus constantly.  Yet on June 25th, 7000 volts of electricity passed through Matt’s body, nearly killing him. Bobbye was present at the scene to bear witness to the horror.  Matt has endured nearly a dozen surgeries and remains bandaged today, with the prospect of more surgery to come.  He has suffered what has been described as the worst pain a human can endure and literally lives today with his scars on his sleeve for all to see.

Yet the faith of Matt and Bobbye is intact . . . fully intact, flourishing, and growing.  Why? Don’t they understand that if they had more faith this would never have happened? Don’t they know that things like this only happen to those who disappoint God? Shouldn’t they be examining their lives for their shortcomings? If Christianity is based on our personal striving, then the answer to all these questions is, Yes!  If God is capricious, punishing those who fall short and rewarding those who work hard then, Yes! If God measures us, accepting those who earn mercy and punishing those who didn’t do enough, then Yes! They and we should accept our punishment and work hard to do better.

While this might seem a completely reasonably formula, it is is utterly unChristian.

In John 9, Jesus’ disciples asked him an eerily similar question when coming across a blind man on the road. “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that he was born blind?” Jesus answered "Neither this man nor his parents sinned…

Matt and Bobbye spent several hours with our staff last week.  They told story after story of people approaching them, asking what happened, then sharing the hurts of their lives.  The woman who stopped them in the parking lot of the Harley dealer and ended up crying as she confided her pain to this precious young couple, then was comforted and nurtured by Matt and Bobbye!

            ...this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

The jaded firefighters whose hearts were broken by this call.

            ...this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

The medical staff who Matt began praying for almost as soon as he regained consciousness.

            ...this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

The friends and family that have been participating in bible studies and spiritual support groups led by Matt and Bobbye.

...this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

The church that needs to be reminded of the grandeur of God.

...this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

The World Wide Wake Boarding community who love Matt without understanding the God he serves.

...this happened so that the works of God might be displayed in him.”

It would be presumptuous for me to say that this was allowed to happened so that the works of God might be displayed in Matt, so I won’t say it.  But I will tell you that is the Bible passage Matt shared with us last Tuesday.

God does not promise us wealth, or fame, or respect, or accolades, or an escape from pain or hunger or suffering or even death as a reward for our faith or anything else.  In fact, Christ followers can expect all those things and more.  

God, however, offers us the opportunity to share in the work that he has ordained.  He graciously permits us to be his hands and feet to share his love with a hurting woman in the parking lot of a Harley dealership, or the back of an ambulance, or a burn unit . . . or with our neighbors. Faith is the mysterious gift from God that fuels his work.  It flows from God, through us to a world that desperately needs his love, comfort, forgiveness and grace.  And sometimes our pain can give the world a glimpse into God’s grace.

I don’t understand it; I don’t always like it, but I trust the one who is the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2)

Amen

John Monday

Touchstone

I’m more than occasionally afflicted by sentimentalism, and my family recently underwent a group case of the disorder.

In February of 2000, Vickie and I traded her sporty Thunderbird for a practical Ford Explorer.  She was seven months pregnant with Luke, and as awesome as the Thunderbird was, it wasn't a family car.  Two months later, we drove our first baby home in that Explorer.

On Sept 11, 2001, we were on our way to get the tires exchanged due to the Firestone recall when she heard on the radio that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center.  I was following her and will always remember watching her get out of her car at a traffic light and come back to my truck to tell me what was happening.

In March of 2003, our almost three-year-old son and I went to pick up Vickie and our new baby girl, Taylor, in the Explorer.

For almost 15 years we drove that car (Sally) on countless family vacations—from the Florida Keys to Upper Michigan.  It made more than 1500 trips to school. It faithfully took us to doctors appointments, church, the beach, and always to work.  It’s safe to say that we drove our money out of that car.

So in August, it was evident that Vickie needed to trade. Sally squeaked (or talked according to Taylor) at every bump and turn in the road.  The oil stain on the driveway was becoming embarrassing.  The carpet was a series of stains (or memories according to your perspective), and you were reminded of the leak in the back window by the vague musty smell every time you opened the door.

Yet when the time came, it was hard to see the Explorer go. Intellectually, we understood that a car is just an arrangement of steel and plastic, glass and rubber.  It has no soul, no heart, no personality.  Yet we sense an emotional bond, a loss at seeing it go away. Why?

To be human means to experience loss. The older we get, the more acutely we understand our ultimate inability to hold onto anything.  We lose childhood homes. We move from the cities or towns of our youth. We leave one school for another; we get a job and leave a job. We lose friends and relatives to time, space, and eventually to death.  All of these things are the touchstones of our lives, be they a friend, a house, a parent, or a car.

These touchstones trigger the memories that make us who we are. Anyone who has ever revisited an important place from their youth will understand. When you walk into a home or down a school hall that you haven't seen in decades, or when you reconnect with a friend or relative who has been missing from your life, the lost memories flood your mind. When we lose a touchstone, we instinctively realize that we are losing a part of ourselves, a set of memories that we may never recapture.

Loss is death . . . but it’s not supposed to be that way.

God whispers that we were built for life, not for death.  That death and loss are unnatural. That there is a reality of eternal discovery, exploration, and relationship.  The reality that we were made for, the reality that our spirit is testifying to every time we sense the pain of loss.

As Jesus hung on the cross, the thief next to him, being convinced that Jesus was indeed a king who would survive this crucifixion, uttered the words, “Remember me when you come into your Kingdom.” I love those words. He didn’t ask to be saved or spared.  He didn’t seek pity or mercy. He asked to be remembered. So many seek to be remembered, to leave a legacy, to make a lasting impact, but this remembering is different.

Jesus’ response to the request to be remembered was to declare that the thief would be with him in paradise.  Jesus displayed himself as the ultimate touchstone, the cornerstone on which our true reality is founded. To be remembered by Jesus is not to leave a legacy—it’s to be his legacy.

To be remembered by Jesus is to be completed, to be healed, to be restored to the divine intention—to return to the eternal life of discovery, exploration and relationship. To be remembered by Jesus is to never lose or be lost again.

He has sought us, and he has saved us. He has done everything to restore us to the eternal life that’s written in our hearts and declared in his word. He loves us.

So our Explorer is gone.  It’s a little sad, but it’s okay.  After all, it’s just an arrangement of steel and plastic, glass and rubber.  It’s just a small touchstone of loss to remind us of a greater reality.

John Monday

Weeds & Waiting

He told another story.  “God’s kingdom is like a farmer who planted good seed in his field. That night, while his hired men were asleep, his enemy sowed thistles all through the wheat and slipped away before dawn.  When the first green shoots appeared and the grain began to form, the thistles showed up too.”

The farmhands came to the farmer and said, ‘Master, that was clean seed you planted, wasn’t it?  Where did these thistles come from?’

“He answered, ‘Some enemy did this.’

The farmhands asked, ‘Should we weed out the thistles?’

“He said, ‘No, if you weed the thistles, you’ll pull up the wheat too.  Let them grow together until harvest time.  

Matthew 13:24-30 (The Message)

When I think back over my years of pastoring, the most frequent question that people, ask is, “Why doesn’t God do something

• Tragedies happen.
• Horrific accidents devastate lives and families on a DAILY basis.
• Tyrants and bullies force their own plans on people and crush opposition, and they seem to get away with it.  (This happens in church systems as well.)

And again, sensitive souls ask, WHY is God apparently silent?  Why doesn’t he step in and stop it?

Let me be clear, there is probably no direct answer that can be given in this life that will satisfy most people, even believers.  But parables like the one above do show that God’s sovereign rule over the world isn’t quite as straightforward as people sometimes imagine.  

Consider:

• Would we really like it if God were to rule the world directly and immediately, so that our every thought and action were weighed, instantly judged and, if necessary, punished in the scales of his absolute holiness? 
• If the price of God stepping in and stopping a campaign of genocide were that he would also have to rebuke and restrain every other evil impulse, would we be prepared to pay that price?
• If we ask God to act on special occasions, do we really suppose that he could do that simply when we want him to, and then back off again for the rest of the time?

The farmer waits for the harvest time, watching in frustration as the weeds grow alongside the wheat.  Not only the farmer, but also the birds wait for the tiny mustard seed to grow into a large shrub.  And that’s what God’s Kingdom is like.

Jesus’ followers, like us today, didn’t want to wait.  If the kingdom was really present where Jesus was, then they wanted the whole thing at once.  They weren’t interested in God’s timetable.  They had one of their own and expected God to confirm to it.  (Does this sound familiar?)

Notice in particular what the servants say about the weeds.  They want to go out immediately into the field and root out the weeds.  The farmer restrains them, because life is NEVER that simple. In their enthusiasm to eradicate the field of weeds, they are very likely to pull up some wheat as well.

Do you think Jesus had an eye on the revolutionary groups of his day, all too ready to step into God’s field and pull up what they considered to be “weeds”?  There were many groups, including some of the Pharisees, who were far too eager to fight against “pagans” on the one hand and against compromised Jews on the other. The servants may have intended to do God’s will.  They were longing for God to act and were prepared to help him by acting themselves.  But part of Jesus’ whole campaign was to say that the TRUE Kingdom of God does NOT come like that, because God is not like that!

For me, the heart of the story of the weeds and the wheat is PATIENCE—not just the patience of the ‘servants’ who have to wait and watch, but also the patience of God himself.

I do not believe God enjoys the sight of a wheat field with weeds all over the place.  But nor does He relish the thought of declaring “harvest-time” too soon, and eliminating wheat along with weeds.  This is an incredible insight into the heart of the Father. COMPASSION is at the heart of God’s delaying.  We must never forget that.  Delaying his judgment so more people could be saved at the end. 

Somehow I get the feeling that Jesus wanted His followers (and us) to live with the tension of believing that the Kingdom was, indeed, arriving in and through His own work, and that this Kingdom would come, would fully arrive, not all in a bang but through a “process” like the slow growth of a plant.

Saying that God is delaying His final judgment can look, outwardly, like saying that God is inactive or uncaring.  But when we look at Jesus’ own public career, it is impossible to say that God didn’t care.  We who live post- Calvary and Resurrection know that God did indeed act suddenly and dramatically for the whole universe at that moment!  

When today we long for God to act, to put the world to rights, we must remind ourselves that He has already done so, and that what we are now awaiting is the full outworking of those events.  We wait with patience, not like people in a dark room wondering if anyone will ever come and turn the light on, but like people in the early morning who know that the sun has risen and are now waiting for the full brightness of midday. 

Bill Crofton

Earning Heaven

“Will God keep me out of heaven because I don’t take better care of my mother?”  It was an unexpected question that came from a soul that had been tortured for more than fifty years.  The question was followed by a litany of explanations for her behavior and decisions regarding her mother. It seemed important that she be able to justify her behavior and convince me, or perhaps God, that she was a good person despite the way she has treated her mother for the last 50 years.  

Truth be told, after listening to her torment of the last fifty years, I had a hard time finding fault and was not at all sure that I would have done any better.  But the thing that was most concerning was not her behavior or decisions. It was her deep need to justify her actions.

Will God keep me out of Heaven because . . . ?  It’s not such an unusual question.  I’ll bet you’ve asked it yourself, if only silently.  Will God keep me out of heaven because . . .

• I’m divorced
• I can’t stop drinking
• I’m gay
• I abandoned my kids
• I wear jewelry
• I don’t give enough money to church
• I can’t stop looking at porn
• I belong to the wrong denomination
• Of my business practices
• Church people disgust me
• I smoke
• I was born in the wrong country
• My father abused me
• I’m a bad person
• I haven't been baptized
• I quit going to church

Maybe you see a question here that resonates. Maybe yours simply hovers in your conscience.  I expect that, as you look over this list, you may see some things that cause you to say, “Why would anyone even think that’s a problem?” and others for which you might banish people, were you God.

There is much talk inside and outside Christian circles today about “sin”, and we all seem to be trying to nail down exactly what it is and what it is not. We want a good definition, a list, a standard to which we can measure ourselves (or more likely each other) to see if we’re sinners . . . if God finds us acceptable. If we can’t gain sufficient comfort in a list of rules, then we search for reasons why we’re not responsible. “I abuse my kids because my father abused me,” “You have to be shrewd in business to survive,” “The people at church are money grubbers and hypocrites.”

I’ve become tired of the conversations around determining what is and what isn’t sin and how our environment or genetics are the truly responsible agents. I’m tired because these arguments are framed to miss the point.

We have become a society, and all too often a church, that advances two ways in which we can be justified. We convince ourselves that either: there is nothing wrong with what we’re doing, or It’s not our fault.  Either of these conclusions cuts us off from the redemption we find in Jesus.

The truth is that we are all hopeless and helpless sinners mired in our own depravity with no capacity whatsoever to rise above our own sin, AND there is nothing on the above list or any other that can separate us from the love of God through Jesus. We will never develop a list that will keep us from being sinners, and we can never use our human condition to mitigate our responsibility.

To be human is to have shadows on our conscience. What makes all the difference is what we do with them.  We are sinners. Jesus is our friend, our Savior, and our only hope.  When we truly embrace these core truths, perhaps then we can explore all those questions of secondary importance without the need to either condemn or justify ourselves or our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Ultimately, I passed along to this tormented soul one of the few truths of which I’m certain and on which hang all my hopes. “There is absolutely nothing that we can do to get us into heaven and nothing we can do that will keep us out, and that is good news indeed for me.”

John Monday

What I Would Have Said by Tami Cinquemani

I’m writing this blog on United #1028 from Chicago to Orlando.  The red eye left at 10 pm and will arrive in Orlando around 2 am.  That’s a lot of time to think, and right now I’m having one of those “shoulda-woulda-coulda” moments.

The purpose of my visit to Chicago was to spend time with my family and attend a celebration of my father’s life, who died a couple of weeks ago.  This wasn’t your typical bereavement occasion.  There was no time of viewing in a funeral home or service conducted in a church.  We had what is called an “Irish wake” . . . basically a party where everyone eats, drinks, and shares memories of the lost relative.  This is what my family does.

As our guests were arriving, my brother told me that he and my mother planned to say a few words before the meal began.  He asked if I would like to do the same.  Though I appreciated the invitation, I panicked.  You see, I’m a writer—not a speaker.  Don’t get me wrong, I can get up in front of people and talk . . . but never without a great deal of preparation.  Needless to say, in hindsight, my words—though nice—were not sufficient.  As soon as I sat down, I began to think of what I should have said.

One of the reasons my family mourns in this unique way is because of the diversity of belief and unbelief we represent.  Atheist, Agnostic, lifelong believer, cynical ex-believer, curious seeker, or combinations of any of the above.  Faith is not a common topic of conversation, and for the most part we respectfully accept everyone’s personal conviction or lack thereof.

However, I believe my dad’s death, and the reality of what that means opened a door to a conversation I would have liked to begin.  Death can be very frightening if you’re not sure what follows.  Just a few short weeks before my dad died, my uncle passed away.  The death of two very wonderful and very loved men in such a short period of time begs the question, “Is that all there is?” 

As someone who believes there is so much more after this life, I wish I had carefully shared the hope I have in seeing my father and my uncle again.  I don’t want to beat myself up over this, but I now realize that, though my relatives may not share my faith, they may be willing to share my hope.  

Tami Cinquemani