by Elizabeth | Apr 19, 2011 | Learning Story
I found my invitation to the Royal Wedding on Google:)
If this were the last week of your life, how would you spend it? This question always comes to mind as I read in awe the events of the last week of Jesus’ life. Part of it he spent answering malicious questions from people wanting to kill him. Not only did he answer them, he did so with complete and utter perfection, and mostly he used stories to make his point — which was, to sum it up shortly, “God is God, and you are not.”
Prince William of England is marrying Catherine Middleton on April 29, 2011. If you were invited to this royal wedding, would you turn down the invitation? In Matthew 22, Jesus tells the story of the Wedding Banquet, which is utterly befuddling without some understanding of Middle Eastern weddings. Eugene Peterson explains that when a marriage is announced, people stop what they’re doing and go. It would be unfathomable not to go, which is what makes this story so attention-grabbing to its original hearers. NO ONE would NOT go to the wedding feast.
Read this amazing story in Matthew 22:1-14.
Here is the question Peterson asks us to consider about how we respond to God’s invitation:
“We make the judgment on ourselves. God has invited us to come to him and has prepared a feast for us to share. And we take it lightly. We make excuses. Or we’re so far out of touch with reality that we actually scoff at or even destroy the messengers who deliver the invitation. God is the reality with whom we have to deal. Life is the banquet he has prepared. How many of our actions are a refusal to come to him and a rejection of his presence with us?” Eugene Peterson, Conversations
Lord, you invite me to come to you, to quit trying to carry my own burden of sin, to lay it all at your feet as a filthy offering that you have transformed into righteousness through the blood of Jesus Christ, your only son. But the good news is even more amazing…you have invited me to party with you over this ridiculously good news! I’ll admit, Lord, in my worldly way of thinking, this story makes no sense to me. You are an AWE-SUM God, the sum of awe. Forgive me for my waywardness, and keep me close to you, celebrating the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ! In the name of your ever-astonishing son, Jesus Christ, Amen!
by Elizabeth | Apr 17, 2011 | Learning Story
“As they approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage on the Mount of Olives, Jesus sent two disciples, 2 saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and at once you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her. Untie them and bring them to me. 3 If anyone says anything to you, tell him that the Lord needs them, and he will send them right away.”
4 This took place to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet:
5 “Say to the Daughter of Zion,
‘See, your king comes to you,
gentle and riding on a donkey,
on a colt, the foal of a donkey.’ ”
6 The disciples went and did as Jesus had instructed them. 7 They brought the donkey and the colt, placed their cloaks on them, and Jesus sat on them. 8 A very large crowd spread their cloaks on the road, while others cut branches from the trees and spread them on the road. 9 The crowds that went ahead of him and those that followed shouted,
“Hosanna to the Son of David!”
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!”c
“Hosanna in the highest!”
10 When Jesus entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred and asked, “Who is this?”
11 The crowds answered, “This is Jesus, the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” Matthew 21:1-11
It is Holy Week. Let me say it again. Holy. Week. Time to slow down and walk as one in the crowd following Jesus through his last week of life. To think about which character in the story we would be. Would we be crying “Hosanna!” at the beginning of the week and “Crucify him” by the end? What is our cry today?
Yesterday in a sermon about “Who is this Jesus?”, Pastor Ross Lankford mentioned a quote from Karl Barth that I found highly entertaining as well as inviting.
“With horror I read [a] statement that I was the greatest theologian of the century. That really terrified me…. What does the term ‘greatest theologian’ actually mean? …
As a theologian one can never be great, but at best one remains small in one’s own way…. Let me again remind you of the donkey I referred to [earlier]. A real donkey is mentioned in the Bible, or more specifically an ass…. It was permitted to carry Jesus to Jerusalem. If I have done anything in this life of mine, I have done it as a relative of the donkey that went its way carrying an important burden.
The disciples had said to its owner: ‘The Lord has need of it.’ And so it seems to have pleased God to have used me at this time, just as I was, in spite of all the things, the disagreeable things, that quite rightly are and will be said about me. Thus I was used…. I just happened to be on the spot. A theology somewhat different from the current theology was apparently needed in our time, and I was permitted to be the donkey that carried this better theology for part of the way, or tried to carry it as best I could.”
—Karl Barth, “Karl Barth’s Speech on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday Celebrations,” inFragments Grave and Gay (London: Collins, 1971), pp. 112-17.
by Elizabeth | Apr 14, 2011 | Learning Story
John Haskins depicts the joy of a "holiday by the sea."
“12 Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. 13 Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. 14 And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” Col. 3:12-14
A good blogger doesn’t ask people to read more than a paragraph or two. I’m not a good blogger today:).
I’ve been revisiting my tattered copy of John Piper’s Desiring God, in which he calls us to revisit an essential but often left-out part of the Westminster Catechism: “What is the chief end of [humankind]?” “To glorify God and enjoy Him forever.” Piper asks us to reconsider how enjoying God glorifies God, and begins by quoting the following portion of C.S. Lewis’ great sermon, The Weight of Glory. I promise you the challenge here is worth the five minutes it will take you to read it. I even broke one long paragraph up into shorter sections:). Read it and ask yourself — what can I learn about glorying God by enjoying God?
If you asked twenty good men to-day what they thought the highest of the virtues, nineteen of them would reply, Unselfishness. But if you asked almost any of the great Christians of old he would have replied, Love.
You see what has happened? A negative term has been substituted for a positive, and this is of more than philological importance. The negative ideal of Unselfishness carries with it the suggestion not primarily of securing good things for others, but of going without them ourselves, as if our abstinence and not their happiness was the important point.
I do not think this is the Christian virtue of Love. The New Testament has lots to say about self-denial, but not about self-denial as an end in itself. We are told to deny ourselves and to take up our crosses in order that we may follow Christ; and nearly every description of what we shall ultimately find if we do so contains an appeal to desire.
If there lurks in most modern minds the notion that to desire our own good and earnestly to hope for the enjoyment of it is a bad thing, I submit that this notion has crept in from Kant and the Stoics and is no part of the Christian faith.
Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak.
We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory
by Elizabeth | Apr 12, 2011 | Learning Story
We think less and less about the better things that Christ will bring us at his reappearance because our thoughts are increasingly absorbed by the good things we enjoy here. No one would wish persecution or destitution on another, but who can deny that at this point they might do us good?” J.I. Packer, Affirming the Apostle’s Creed
Where does hope grow? In times of hopelessness. When our hope in earthly things fades, our Christian hope swells. Earthly hope is based on limited vision which leads us to dream mild dreams by heavenly standards: a new IPad for our birthday, an A on the bio exam, a much-needed job, or a longed-for spouse.
While there is nothing wrong with hoping for good gifts in this life, Christian hope far exceeds the small story of earthly hope. Focused on resurrection, restoration, and renewal, Christian hope centers on two key chapters in biblical history. The first is the Resurrection; this real story of Christ dying and being raised from the dead invites us to die and live anew with the raised Christ. It is this story that allows us to look at a world rapidly unraveling, and proclaim with confidence, “New life will arise out of this doomed day.”
Christian hope also focuses on the end of the story told in Revelation 21 and 22, an ending that writes a new and eternal beginning. Revelation tells us that in the new heavens and the new earth there will be no more death, disease, disequilibrium, or despoiling. Instead, there will be health and wholeness, work and worship. Knowing that one day no more tears will flow encourages us to work intentionally on restoring this broken world even as we wait expectantly for a day when our Lord will come and complete the process.
And when our Lord comes, I John tells us: “we will be like him, for we will see him as he really and truly is.” (I Jn 3:4, NLT) Whether we know it or not, this is the deep hope our hearts were made for, the hope that brings our stories into focus. Because of Christian hope, N.T. Wright, tells us, we live differently in this world: “Our task in the present …is to live as resurrection people in between Easter and the final day, with our Christian life, corporate and individual, in both worship and mission, as a sign of the first and a foretaste of the second.” Tom Wright,Surprised by Hope, p. 30
by Elizabeth | Apr 11, 2011 | Learning Story
“25 Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and turning to them he said: 26 “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. 27 And anyone who does not carry his cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Luke 14:25-27
Robert (our youngest, 15) is reading Tim Keller’s King’s Cross. He shared these quotes with me. A great way to be re-oriented by the Cross as we begin our weeks:
”If you say, ‘I’ll obey you, Jesus, IF my career thrives, IF my health is good, IF my family is together,’ then the thing that’s on the other side of that IF is your real master, your real goal. If he calls you to follow him, HE must be the goal.” Tim Keller
“[Jesus] is not calling us to hate actively, he’s calling us to hate comparatively. He says ‘I want you to follow me so fully, so intensely, so enduringly that all other attachments in your life look like hate by comparison.'”
by Elizabeth | Apr 8, 2011 | Learning Story
“But he gives more grace; therefore it says, ‘God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.’ Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you men of double mind. Be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning, and your joy to dejection. Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you.” James 4:6-10
Yesterday I mentioned John Stott’s encouraging and insightful words on James 4:6:
John Stott writes:
“What comfort there is in this verse! It tells us that God is tirelessly on our side. He never falters in respect of our needs, he always has more grace at hand for us. He is never less than sufficient, he always has more and yet more to give. Whatever we may forfeit when we put self first, we cannot forfeit our salvation, for there is always more grace. No matter what we do to him, he is never beaten. We may play false to the grace of election, contradict the grace of reconciliation, overlook the grace of indwelling – but he gives more grace. Even we were to turn to him and say, ‘What I have received so far is much less than enough, ‘he would reply, ‘Well, you may have more.’ His resources are never at an end, his patience is never exhausted, his initiative never stops, his generosity knows no limit: he gives more grace.”
“But grace, in God, has a correlative in man. James, having pointed to God’s sufficiency, points on to our responsibility.”
I have to tell myself NOT to hear what Stott or James is NOT saying. The grace is there for us. But it is what it is, a gift based solely in God’s goodness and flowing in our obedience, directed toward a holy humility that makes us like Christ. In other words, we aren’t to boast that we have ‘MORE GRACE,’ nor are we to rest on the soft bed of grace. We are to learn, live, and love in it. LIVE STORY TODAY!:)
