Feb 10 Fasting and Lent and Wilderness and all that Jazz

(Psalm 103:8-19)

Why Lent? (Lent originated in the very earliest days of the Church as a preparatory time for Easter, when the faithful rededicated themselves and when converts were instructed in the faith and prepared for baptism; they believed it to be a commandment from the apostles). So before there was a “Catholic” church or Lutherans or Presbyterians or Brethren or Methodists or Pentecostals, there was the early followers of Jesus, and this was a commitment they made.

Significant of “40” (Think back to the Old Testament. Noah and company in the Ark watched rain fall for 40 days and forty nights. Moses was up on Sinai receiving the 10 commandments for 40 days. The Israelites wandered around the desert for 40 years. So why all these forties? Probably because it is forty weeks that a woman carries her developing baby before a new life can come forth from the womb. All these “forties” are a necessary and not-so-comfortable prelude for something new.

Rooted in the wilderness experience

Wilderness experience rooted in purifying us and simplifying life for the goal of us learning how to trust in God alone

It’s no coincidence that the word “wilderness includes the word ‘wild’”

BBT: Once, when I attended a workshop on teaching religion, a presenter talked about how he took his students on wilderness trips to give them a taste of life nearer the edge. Whether they went hiking or whitewater rafting, the point was to step outside their comfort zones long enough to encounter the untamed holiness of the wild.

“Excuse me,” a member of the audience said, “but are there predators in those places who are above you on the food chain?”

“Well, of course not,” the presenter said. “I wouldn’t put students in danger like that.”

“I wouldn’t either,” the man in the audience said, “but don’t lull them into thinking that they have experienced true wilderness. It’s only wilderness if there’s something other there that can eat you.”

Lent, like the Christian life as a whole, is a journey that requires commitment. This journey is not an adventure for tourists who want little snapshots or soundbites of spiritual insight, as if we can be a Christian without it involving the investment of all that we are, our time and energy. Lent is a yearly commitment, an anticipation and purification time as we prepare for the second pinnacle of the Christian year, which is Easter.

If we decide to honor the worship season of Lent, we should expect to face two important realities. First, we will be led to remember the life of Christ including his ministry, sacrifice, and resurrection. And second, we will be led to face ourselves.

In Lent we are encouraged to care for those things that ultimately matter and to leave behind those things which stand in the way of our full participation in the life of God and the life around us. It involves a separation from the securities and attachments of our life for the sake of discovering a little more of the truth about ourselves and the truth of who God is. As we remember with honesty the way things are- who Christ is and who we are- we will learn to sit still. This is the invitation of Lent- to move through the wilderness of self-deception into the truth of Christ.

Movement into the wilderness
Throughout biblical and church history the people of God are frequently found living in the wilderness. The wilderness is the geographic setting of the Exodus and Jesus’ temptation.

But the term wilderness has also been used to show the reality of the human heart. What does the term desert bring to mind in you when you think of it? “Desert” expresses the barrenness, dryness, and harsh conditions, and maybe the confusion or wildness often felt within us.

Many people have purposefully entered the wilderness in history in order to submit themselves to physical as well as spiritual conditions that expose who they really are. On the other hand, some of us through being abused by others or facing the grief of losing a loved one or facing physical shortcomings find ourselves in spiritual wilderness against our wills.

The effects are the same: the wilderness exposes and lays bare. In it we are tempted and suffer as Jesus was tempted and suffered. Being in the desert, whether we chose to go there or not, is that by it God is able to reveal the true condition of the human heart.

As the first step of Christ’s ministry began in the wilderness, we are called each year through Lent to return to that uncomfortable place. In our willingness to give something up for a time that has brought us security or comfort, we let the Spirit lead us into the wilderness, to bring us face to face with the reality of our temptation and our vulnerability to sin.

The wilderness is a dangerous place. If we’re honest about the evil which lies hidden within ourselves, there is always the risk of trivializing our guilt on one hand or falling into a destructive despair on the other. If we’re completely focused on our sin and fail to keep before us the character of this God we serve in Psalm 103, we will progress no further than despair or depression. On the other hand, if we think God’s grace will allow us to claim his forgiveness without honestly facing the depth of our rebellion and repenting, then, as 1 John 1:8 says, “we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

To know Christ is to know the God who is full of mercy and forgiveness, but in order to know this God of mercy and forgiveness, we must have a deep and constant awareness of our need for mercy and forgiveness in the first place.

When Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert, he is tempted to act outside of the bounds of his relationship to his Father. In the first temptation he is tempted to exercise power for himself rather than to trust himself to the care of his Father. In the second temptation, Jesus is persuaded to use God for his own purposes (the God who is the cosmic vending machine) rather than to serve him. And in the third and last temptation, Jesus is tempted to put himself in the place of God- to commit idolatry, the deepest sin as defined by the Old Testament, the sin that Adam and Eve committed.

In each temptation is the desire to live self-sufficiently; to rely on himself for getting power, pleasure, and position. And each time, when Jesus responds, he roots himself in the experience of the nation of Israel during the Exodus, where they were tested to see if they would trust God fully as their Lord and Provider. (Deut 8, Deut 6, Deut 6) The victory of Jesus’ response came through his faithfulness in relationship with the Father.

Each temptation was an attack on this relationship, and each response of Jesus honored this relationship. Sin, therefore, is a rejection of our relatedness to God and the rest of his creation. We live either obediently in that relationship, or we become alienated from God and from others in the darkness of our own disobedience and selfishness.

If we believe the Bible to be true, and we have eyes to see the disobedience in our society, we will see it all over the place…but that begs a question, If it’s all over the place, how are we (as people, in general, everywhere) not in tune with how broken we really are?

Reality: We medicate ourselves

Now this may be just me speaking out of my own experience here, but I can’t help but think that somehow we are deeply afraid as a culture. I think we are afraid of ourselves, we are afraid of honest relationships with others because we are afraid of ourselves.

I find it incredibly hard when I sit down in my car to not flip the radio on or put a CD in to listen to all the time. I find it incredibly hard when I sit down to do school work on a computer not to go to the Internet to a bunch of my favorite websites, only to look up later and find I’ve spent several hours looking at these things, many of which are relatively unimportant in the long haul.

And I have found when I do sit down by myself for longer than five minutes to pay attention to who I am and to pray, as I focus on letting my mind that’s constantly running on spin cycle slow down, I am confronted with myself. And that confrontation is not always pretty and clean. If I’m honest, I am probably more of a mystery to myself than I am to other people. I often don’t understand why I do the things I do or think the things I think or act the way I act, and when I continue to do those things even when I think I don’t want to, then things get real dicey.

And when I spend time thinking about who I really am and what I really want, I quickly get uncomfortable, because I realize how deeply my selfishness lies within me and how deeply my rebellion against God lies within me. Because I love Jesus, I hate that part within me, but it’s not going away very quickly, so I have to learn to live with that discomfort.

So a lot of the time, to stay away from the reality of who I am, I keep the radio running or the computer on or I stay around people to talk to, and I do all of these things up until the very last second before I fall into bed so I don’t have to pay attention to what’s going on inside me, and I can do this for weeks at a time if I let myself.

I think this discomfort plays out in relationships as well. Persons in dating relationships, married couples, and groups of friends go out of our way to keep ourselves occupied when we’re around one another, we have to “do something”; we can’t just BE with each other. This is the temptation, because if we let this rule our lives, we end up renting movies or watching shows that literally waste our time or end up twisting our desires for the sake of doing something.

Families come home and whip up some food to eat after a day of work, and we’re tempted to flip on the TV as we eat so we can “have something to do” and maybe possibly if we’re focused on the TV, we’re much less likely to have conversations that might bring us to have to face who we are.

We can do this kind of thing for years spending time around friends or family or a husband or a wife; even sleep in the same bed and not ever really know the person…often because we’re uncomfortable with who we are.

William Blake’s simple etching “I Want,” illustrates the point that sin involves us as individuals doing what we want, but is more fundamentally the rejection of identity in relationship. The ladder shows a person climbing away from others. But what it most directly at stake are the relationships affected by this individual’s act. What we see in Blake’s etching is how movements away from our neighbor and toward our own desires “I want! I want!” neglect the impact of our actions on the world around us.

This is why fasting is a part of honoring the Easter holy day. When we recognize that we medicate ourselves with TV, radio, reading, video games, food, or a variety of other things, choosing to give up this thing that is masking who we are and how broken we are brings us face to face with who we are; it brings us into the wilderness where we get honest with ourselves and get honest with God.

(watch Clint Kemp Spiritual Journey Video)

Feb 3 2008 "The Lord's Prayer, a call to discipleship part II:

It is not right to settle for the notion that a person’s life is divided into the time they spend on their work and the time they spend in serving God. They must be able to serve God in their work, and the work itself must be accepted and respected as the medium of divine creation…Every maker and worker is called to serve God in their profession or trade- not outside it. (Dorothy Sayers)

Tony Campolo tells a story from his life sometimes to illustrate a little of what the church is called to. He was in another time zone at a conference and couldn’t sleep after midnight, so he got up and wandered down to a doughnut shop where, it turned out, local hookers also came at the end of a night of turning tricks. There, he overheard a conversation between two of them. One, named Agnes, said, “You know what? Tomorrow’s my birthday. I’m gonna be thirty-nine.” Her friend snapped back, “So whaddaya want from me? A birthday party? Huh? You want me to get a cake and sing happy birthday to you?” The first woman replied, “Aw, come on, why do you have to be so mean? Why do you have to put me down? I’m just sayin’ it’s my birthday. I don’t want anything from you. I mean, why should I have my own birthday party? I’ve never had a birthday party in my whole life. Why should I have one now?”

When they left, Tony got an idea. He asked the shop owner if Agnes came in every night, and when the shop owner said yes, Tony invited him into a surprise birthday party conspiracy. The shop owner’s wife even got involved. Together they arranged for a cake, candles, and party decorations for Agnes, who was, to Tony, a complete stranger. The next night when she came in, they shouted, “Surprise!”- and Agnew couldn’t believe her eyes. The doughnut shop customers sang, and she began to cry so hard she could barely blow out the candles. When the time came to cut the cake, she asked if they’d mind if she didn’t cut it, if she could bring it home- just to keep it for a while and savor the moment. So she left, carrying her cake like a treasure.

Tony led the guests in a prayer for Agnes, and afterwards the shop owner told Tony he didn’t realize Tony was a preacher. He asked what kind of church Tony came from, and Tony said, “I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning.” The shop owner couldn’t believe him, “No, you don’t. There ain’t no church like that. If there was, I’d join it. Yep, I’d join a church like that.”

Summarize last week, build bridge into this week

9 "This, then, is how you should pray: 

" 'Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name,
10 your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
11 Give us today our daily bread. (Ubuntu)

12 And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.

Once again, forgive US OUR debts

Every day, Christ’s followers must be aware of and deeply lament our guilt. And when I say deeply lament, I’m not saying, “Lord, thank you for today. Please forgive my sins. Amen.”, I’m talking about a deep, central, desperate desire to put the darkness of our former thoughts and actions and speech behind us, but in practice our lives are often covered with all kinds of unbelief, lack of prayer, lack of self-discipline, self-indulgence, envy, hatred, and pride.

Basically, the stack of things that confront us as Christians can seem like a mountain we’ll never get over, and so we could be tempted to think that we won’t ever make it up and over that mountain and as a result, we should just settle for the idea that we won’t and that the most we can hope for is to pray for forgiveness. I mentioned that that is a temptation because that sort of mindset is not Godly, but lazy and slothful.

On top of that, I think I can honestly say that I know more about my rebelliousness today than I did five years ago, when I didn’t have the slightest hint of an idea how deeply destructive my mind, my thoughts, and my actions were to the world around me.

And now I see, in some way, the mountain of who I am that stands apart from the purposes of God in a much clearer way now than five years ago, and in some ways every day that mountain can seem more massive. Part of the reason it seems more massive is because I was lying to myself before in always looking at others and establishing how “good” I was relative to them; using Osama bin Laden or Charles Manson or even Ted Haggard as examples. When I got honest, I got blown away. My mountain was MASSIVE. So what do I do about that? What do you do about that? What do we do about that?

We throw ourselves down at the feet of God, sobbing and angry and sad and broken by the depth of our desire to work against his purposes, begging for forgiveness. And it is only when we begin to care about the life God dreams for us to live that we find how deeply rebellious we are. (It is ALLLLLLLLL of this deep reality that is wrapped up in ONE phrase, “Forgive us our debts”) No wonder that we must pray often for God’s forgiveness.

But if you and I are to get up on our feet and face the mountain of our rebellion and destructiveness, we have to have a motivation that is higher than, more lofty than our sins.

Philippians 3:7-11
But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.

The incredible thing about this longing to know Christ is the reality that the more we know about Him, the more we realize how deep and how wide and how incredible He is. We realize how hard it is to follow him, but how gracious Jesus is to forgive us when, as we do the very best we can, we fail along the way, wounding ourselves and others. So we are called to be discontented with where we’re at, disgusted with where we’re at, longing to know Christ more, to seek God’s purposes more, to be filled with the zeal to know God.
So if we think about mountains differently, the Christian who is filled with holy discontentment and holy zeal for more of Christ is like a mountain climber who struggles and strains to reach the top of a mountain peak only to be able to see from that vantage point new and more glorious mountain peaks yet to climb.

Where did Paul's holy discontent come from? It came from the way he looked at himself and the way he looked at Christ. It came from the God-given humility which helped Paul to understand, along with us, the deep debt we owe God as persons who are a part of a race, an inheritance of those in God’s world who have chosen our own way, our own path, lived in opposition to the purposes and dreams of God

But as incredible as this reality is, this life commitment is, the funny thing about God is that He doesn’t let us get off with being satisfied just with this incredible commitment.

Jesus says “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors,”

This includes a whole load of possibilities if we consider it (debtors to us might be those who have wounded us on a face-to-face relational level (persons who have wounded us by something they have said or something they have done), but also those are literally our debtors (they owe us cash money) or, in the most foundational sense, are in a position where they owe us for their very lives.

This plays out in personal relationships, but it also plays out in global relationships. If we allow ourselves to think globally (as we should), we will find fairly quickly that a majority of the world’s wealth is concentrated in what we know as North America and Europe. After a bit more searching, we will find that the most highly advanced areas of industry and technology are these same areas of the world. And it is these places in the world that import mass amounts of raw products to make products that are then exported to be sold around the world.

If we continue to look globally, we’ll find fairly quickly that there are sections of the world that are very poor in relation to the very wealthy sections of the world. And it’s no coincidence that these areas for hundreds of years, some of them up until a decade or so ago, were “owned” by the most wealthy nations of the world as “colonies,” where these “colonies” produced raw products to be sent back to the motherland, where the motherland made different, more complex products, which were then exported back to these other lands for a larger price. These colonies were intentionally kept from developing industrially so that the mother country could have reliable raw products.

In the last few years, many of these colonies became independent, some in bloody revolutions much like the United States in the late 18th century. And these societies now want to be a part of the global economy, so they’ve had to start where they were already at. Now, if you’re exporting raw products to more industrially advanced countries, who then export their products back to you for a larger price, you’ve got a problem on your hands. Why do you think that is? (trade deficit) These societies recognize that this situation can’t keep on the way it is because they have people with mouths to feed, and so they desperately want to industrially advance, and in order to do so, they need to borrow money; LOTS of MONEY. This is where some groups of the wealthiest nations called the World Bank and IMF step in to lend money to these countries. Since then, through the mix of governmental corruption, economic struggle, and these countries trying to do in fifty years what the United States and Europe did in 200 years, we have the situation today that for every $1 the West gives in aid to developing countries, $9 comes back in debt service. So it’s no surprise that through all of these realities, the consequence is extreme poverty.

While most wealthy countries would have no problem with this situation because they’re raking in plenty of cash off the backs of the poor, we as Christians cannot look on this situation and say everything is fine. So what can be done about this situation?

Mershu Debebe. he is a single, 26 year old, male from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He loves country music, especially Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton and he loves to play the keyboard. He is living today because some missionaries decided 25 years ago to make a difference in a broken world. they ran an orphanage for children in addis. this orphanage was different from normal orphanages in a sense that…Mershu’s parents remained his parents. his parents didn’t have any income to raise another child. the orphanage took in Mershu, educated him,fed him,gave him a place to sleep,taught him how to do wood work,and taught him about the love of Christ. when he was 12, and could work for his own money, he went back to live with his mother.

A missionary organization Innovative Missions has started a micro-business loan program there in Ethiopia. They took $5000.00 dollars & split that 5 ways amongst people who had drive & ambition when it came to getting a business started. Mershu was one of those candidates. He was given $500.00 at first to start his wood-working business. This allowed him to rent a building, saw, and other equipment. since he has been running his own business he has paid back the first $500.00, and now employs 3 people. He specializes in anything that uses wood: doors, cabinets, tables, chairs. i asked him what the most difficult thing he made was, and he said “chairs, because of the detail required to make them…but those are also the most that i am proud of.”

Mershu also taught wood-working at his church to students that wanted to learn the trade. When the church closed the program he took his students & made them employees of his business. He did this to continue their training, and also to pour into their lives in a spiritual sense. Mershu was once the recipient of grace from someone who had a vision to make a difference in this broken world. He now has that vision of making a difference, and he is doing it on a daily basis.

13 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

14 For if you forgive others when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. 15 But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

If we ever needed another reminder in a prayer that is completely communal that Christians are not redeemed to hang out by themselves, it’s here in verses 14 and 15. Jesus is clear that forgiveness is not simply individual; if it’s only what God can do for me, it’s not real forgiveness. Real forgiveness is about understanding that my existence is intertwined (inextricably!) with others.

Remember Ubuntu; a word with incredibly RICH meaning that impacts the way we think about a LOT of things; everything ranging from possession of material things to personal relationships to global relationships.

Jan 27 2008 "The Lord's Prayer, a call to discipleship"

5 "And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. 6 But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. 7 And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Jesus teaches his disciples to pray. What does this mean? It means that prayer is not an obvious or natural activity. (we talked about the temptation to use prayer to try to get things from God last Sunday, as if He’s a giant cosmic vending machine; we are tempted to use prayer to manipulate others (give example), we use prayer to change the reality around us to make it look like we want it to look like).

One could say (I think accurately) that human beings engage in a form of prayer naturally. The things we value, we long for, the things that bring us happiness; we’re willing to do whatever necessary to get those things; even go through a significant amount of short-term pain for the long-term benefit of having the thing that we most desire.

And the reality is that in our materially dominated society, we often long for material things. Let’s say I want to become a CEO of a company. If I really want that position, I must be willing to do what is necessary, including working so hard and long that my relationships will likely suffer around me, I must have an ambition that seeks to dominate those who would stand in my way, I must have a focused attitude, etc etc. And you could say that my consistent “prayer” each day is that I would take on more traits of a “successful” persons in order to become a CEO. I order my life and change what is necessary to fit what I want to achieve.

The same would apply if I want to be sure that I’m sure that I’m sure that I will be financially secure in retirement until the day that I die. To achieve that goal, I will be willing to work overtime, or two or even three jobs, and spend less, and focus on achieving more and more cash that I can save, so I can achieve the goal of absolute financial security at some point in the future. I order my life and change what is necessary to fit what I want to achieve.

Genuine prayer, though, is God-centered and humbles ourselves and our wills to say “Change us to reflect what you want and to reflect who you are” before prayer makes the move to ask for God to act on our behalf. Because of this, it should never be about self-display, whether before God, ourselves, or other people. The way we pray shows our growing or diminishing character and maturity. It is the opposite of self-display. When we pray, we are literally wanting to be swallowed up in what God is doing in the world.

And so Jesus says in verse 9 "This, then, is how you should pray: "Our Father in heaven, 

Reminder: Our Father, not My Father. The call of Jesus does not create a bunch of individual Christians, it takes fragmented people and binds them together into a community.

hallowed be your name,

We talked about this last Sunday, but it’s good to review. When we talk about keeping God’s name holy, we’re not centrally talking about whether we say “God” or “Jesus” when we hit our thumb with a hammer (though that does say something about our respect for God).

God’s “name” means “the fullness of who God is,” God’s character, God’s desires, God’s dreams, God’s expectations. Everything God cares about is wrapped up in His name. God chose a people in Israel to display the glory of his name, and today works most directly through his church, expecting us to show the world the strength and honor and beauty of his name. And God is jealous for the purity of his name. (Matthew 7)

To hallow God’s name is at the heart of what it means to be called to holiness. To hallow God’s name is to lead lives that glorify God

10 your kingdom come, 


In Jesus, a disruption of what people thought was “normal life” broke in on earth, a disruption we call the kingdom of God that continues to expand, even in the midst of deep brokenness. We have seen Satan crushed and the powers of this world, sin, and death broken. And yet, the citizens of the kingdom are still walking through suffering and strife. And our prayer is that God’s kingdom would grow among us and spill out into the world.
Jesus teaches us to pray for an end to the kingdoms of this world who rule by sin, by fear, and by death.

your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

I think it’s safe to say that a massive part of the problem with the way things are in this world today is because instead of seeking God’s will for the way things should be, we allow our wills to dominate. Our will, the will of the world, is what nailed Jesus to the cross. He came to teach and exemplify what life as humanity was meant to be, and that life seemed so outrageous that we eliminated him.

But by praying that God’s will be done, and doing our best to lay our wills down, we’re taking a big step toward “reversing the curse,” if you will. (Remember what God said to the Israelites in Deuteronomy 28: blessings follow faithfulness, curses follow willful disobedience)

The problem is that the evil will is still alive in us, it still seeks to cut us off from fellowship with Him, and that is why we must pray that the will of God will prevail more and more in our hearts every day and break down our defiance and fear. God’s name, God’s kingdom, God’s will is the primary object of Christian prayer. It’s a constant commitment to conversion, asking God, “What would you teach me today about how life is meant to be? I bow before you in humility, listening to what you might say.”

11 Give us today our daily bread.

Again, the prayer here is not Give me today my daily bread, but Give US today OUR daily bread.

This section of the prayer should cause a situation from the history of Israel to pop up in our heads (story of the manna in the desert). We do not ask for enough bread for us to freeze it and eat it when we see fit, but are called to be satisfied with what God gives us every day.

Concept of Umbuntu:
Ubuntu is a word from the Bantu language of South Africa and refers to the interconnectedness and interdependence of all people, great or small. Literally it means "humanity towards others," or "I am because we are," or "A person 'becomes human' through other persons," or also, "A person is a person because of other persons." It talks about how we as people are inexorably intertwined with the rest of humanity, and that the well being of the entirity of mankind reflects on our personal humanity. Tutu puts it this way:

…It is the essence of being human. It speaks of the fact that my humanity is caught up and is inextricably bound up in yours. I am human because I belong. It speaks about wholeness, it speaks about compassion. A person with ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share. Such people are open and available to others, willing to be vulnerable, affirming of others, do not feel threatened that others are able and good, for they have a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that they belong in a greater whole. They know that they are diminished when others are humiliated, diminished when others are oppressed, diminished when others are treated as if they were less than who they are. The quality of ubuntu gives people resilience, enabling them to survive and emerge still human despite all efforts to dehumanise them.

And also: You know when ubuntu is there, and it is obvious when it is absent. It has to do with what it means to be truly human, to know that you are bound up with others in the bundle of life.

This is especially relevant for all of us sitting in the room today.

There are massive numbers of people starving to death in the world from lack of food while our culture gets fatter and fatter at a ridiculous pace as we stuff our faces with food. While other cultures are dying to eat, we’re eating so much we’re killing ourselves. People who study such things (we should be sickened by this trend)

4% overweight 1982 | 16% overweight 1994 28% overweight 2001 33% in 2005

Without being transformed by Jesus to look at the world in a completely different way, being transformed to live in community with one another here at Middle River, we are tempted to hoard our possessions, to store up resources for ourselves, to find safety and security in what we can provide for ourselves, and let the community have the scraps we might have left over, whether it be money or time.

We might think living in this way makes sense, and it seems so tough to imagine that it could be different, that we truly could depend on one another, that we would be willing to sacrifice some creature comfort for the sake of a brother or sister having their needs met, that we would sacrifice some of our financial security so others could financially survive, that we would sacrifice our time so others could know they are cared for. But this is exactly what Jesus was talking about. We pray for our daily bread (nothing more, nothing less), and we make steps to live in such a way that we don’t hide from each other or pretend that if we’re in comfort and our brother is not that things are ok.

We are called to invest in deep relationship with one another because in pursuing that goal we tell the world that this is part of God’s original intention for his creation.

Story of Austin Gutwein: Kid in Phoenix, an eighth grader who loves the game of basketball.

One day when he was in fifth grade, this kid, Austin Gutwein, heard Saddleback Valley Community Church pastor Rick Warren preach on Genesis 12, where God tells Abram that he has been “blessed not to keep it to himself, but to be a blessing.” After this sermon, Austin and his father decided to sponsor a child through World Vision. After watching the video that World Vision sends to sponsors that shows the way of life in the society of the child they sponsor, Austin decided he wanted to do something more.

“I heard a few people talk about this growing problem of HIV/AIDS,” Austin said. “It just seemed so distant from me, but at the same time, I realized that these kids aren’t any different from me. They’re just kids who are suffering, and I wanted to do something to help.”

So he got together with a World Vision employee and decided that on World AIDS day 2004, he would shoot 2,057 free throws to represent the 2,057 children who would be orphaned by AIDS in one school day. People sponsored him, sort of like with jogathons and walkathons. The first year he raised 3,000 dollars. Austin started planning for the 2005 event a month after his first event, and one day he announced to his dad that his new goal was to get 1,000 kids to join him in what he now called “Hoops of Hope” – 1,000 kids shooting 1,000 free throws to help thousands of kids orphaned by HIV/AIDS.

“My reaction was ‘okay, that’s a God-size goal,’” his dad shared. “To be honest, I was shocked that people would give almost $3,000 for a kid shooting baskets the year before. I guess [1,000 kids] was a shock, too, but I saw God just blow us away the first year, and you know, why not? Why not see what God can do?” He got 1,000 kids to join, and they raised 30,000 that went directly to AIDS orphans.

As a seventh grader last year, Austin decided he wanted to build a school in Zambia, and they raised over a hundred thousand dollars and built that school. On Dec 1st of this year, this eighth grader took his jump shot and raised almost a 150000 dollars and built a medical clinic in Zambia.

Listen to what his father said; “Kids have a bigger heart than adults – period,” Dan said. “That’s what I found in Austin, and that’s what Austin’s finding in all these other kids, too. If you give them an opportunity, they’re jumping at a chance to help.”

You know, while getting older holds the potential for us to get wiser and more mature (I said potential, mind you), it also can make us cynical about dreaming that things can be different in our world. We see giant issues like “poverty” and “AIDS” and “hunger” and think that things will never change; it’s just flat out scary to see how huge the problems are. And if cynicism is the approach we take, things never will change. But if we give ourselves room to dream, bite off what we can chew, and act with hope and faithfulness in our world, things can change. And that sort of relationship level, small change, is the only lasting change this world has ever seen.

Austin said: “We might not be able to stop the world from coming to an end or anything, but we can turn the tide against AIDS, and that’s what I want to do.” I can imagine that Jesus looks at Austin and says, “You get it! You’re taking your passion, your heart, your dream, and you’re using it to bless others.”

God’s asking people to wonder, “Wouldn’t this world look better if we all had enough to eat? Wouldn’t this world be a little more special if we all had enough bread?”

“The categories of optimism and pessimism don't exist for me...I am a prisoner of hope. I am going to die full of hope."
Cornell West

Aug 5 2007 "Unsavory Family Trees Spell the End, Right?"

Anyone ever had the question; why the heck do we have four stories of Jesus right after one another that say mostly the same thing, but sometimes contradict one another? The meaning of the gospels: written to specific communities first with different emphases…Gospel of Matthew was written to a primarily Jewish audience, and as we progress through the gospel, we’ll have a chance to see why Matthew wrote this way. The Gospel of Luke and Book of Acts were written by the same author to a primarily Gentile crowd. The Gospel of Mark was the first one written, and you can tell through a couple things; the two most important being that the gospel focused on two big things; the complexity and confusing nature of Jesus’ teaching and the inability of the disciples to understand that he was going to die.

Either way, I mentioned this because the gospel writers, because they had different intents with their stories or different audiences at first, emphasized some parts of Jesus’ life and de-emphasized other parts to illustrate their point. That’s why if you take a glance at the geneology of Matthew 1 and the geneology of Luke 3, there are differences between the two. That doesn’t mean the authors were liars, but genealogies were written to establish one’s family lines and prove their standing as one of God’s chosen people, so some generations are left out while others are highlighted to prove a point.

That’s what makes Matthew’s gospel so unique, because either he was a completely clueless idiot or carefully chose his genealogy to prove a shocking point. When I was at Brethren Woods Camp two weeks ago, we spent some time in the book of Ruth, and I emphasized how the story of Ruth might have been handled by the first hearers of the story. Because people weren’t walking around at this time with manuscripts in their hands of complete books of the Bible or multiple translations like we have today, quite often persons would hear stories for the first time from rabbis that would travel around from town to town teaching, and folks from the area would gather in the town center and listen to the rabbi share a story. And I’ll tell you this, the first few times some folks heard the book of Ruth, at certain points either you’d hear a bunch of folks muttering under their breath (give me some muttering), or some rustling and whispering to neighbors, or you might have an outright riot of angry Israelites on your hands. There’s a reason why Jesus accused his own people of persecuting and shedding the blood of their own prophets; because they did. They didn’t like to hear stories that turned what they thought was true about reality upside-down; and we often don’t either. Now, the story of Ruth is for another time and another day, but this genealogy would have gotten much of the same reaction that stories like Ruth got back in the day

(read story, have youth hold up signs)

Matthew writes to make us disciples of this man, Jesus, which means that we must be transformed if we are to live in obedience to this new way of doing things revealed by Jesus. The life of Jesus turned what we consider to be “normal” or “common sense” upside down, or, to put it positively, we only know what “normal” is because of his life.

Therefore, the gospels are not information where we have the option what we will take or leave. It’s not like Coldstone Creamery or Kline’s Dairy Bar where we have options in front of us, and we can decide to pick what we want. Matthew desires that we would have our understanding of the world fully transformed as the result of our reading of his gospel.

And so we recognize that this gospel exists to call attention to the fact that we are called to be disciples of Jesus. Matthew wrote knowing that many of his readers knew, as he knew, that Jesus had been killed and raised from the dead. The problem was that such knowledge did those persons little to no good unless they were trained to see reality in the way that Jesus did and live the way Jesus lived. Matthew understood that most of us will be tempted to be a member of the crowds shown in the gospel. They often impressed by Jesus’ teachings and his miracles, but when push came to shove, they called for his crucifixion. The story is a complex one with many characters, plots, defeats, and victories.

And in the first seventeen verses of his gospel, Matthew manages to tell us a great deal about the background story necessary to understand the story of Jesus. And if we miss some details along the way, we don’t need to fret because Matthew is intentionally repetitive throughout the story so his readers get the point.

The author of the gospel of Matthew, along with all those who have been a part of the people of God over the last several thousand years, want us to recognize that a Biblical perspective of reality reveals to us that the world is storied. What that means is that the people of ancient Israel and members of the church over the last 2,000 years are expected by God to assume that there is no more truthful way to understand human existence than through the story found in scripture. Creation is the first movement in the story, then human disobedience, the loss of relationship with God, the persistent human desire following to BE GOD, and God’s response of calling Abraham, the nation of Israel, kingship, sin, exile, and redemption. For Matthew, Jesus is the “summing up” of the history of Israel so that Jew and Gentile alike can now live as God’s people.

Why is Jesus identified as “the son of David, the son of Abraham?” Traditionally speaking, genealogies began at the person described first and worked backwards, but here Matthew starts with David and Abraham (which is even chronologically out of wack). Jesus is identified as the son of David, son of Abraham, because his meaning is deeply rooted in the history of Israel. Matthew reminds us time and again that “this happened to Jesus” or Jesus did or said this or that so that the scriptures could be fulfilled. “Matthew is not just running around the Bible looking for random Old Testament passages that Jesus might somehow fulfill; rather he is thinking about the shape of Israel’s story and linking Jesus’ life with key passages that root him in the story of Israel.

It is interesting to ask why Matthew names Jesus as the son of David first and the son of Abraham second. The answer may simply be that that’s just the way he wrote it, but no words or ordering of words in Scripture is without significance. David was what? And one of the most famous events in the life of Abraham happened after his one and only son had been born to Him…Matthew knows in telling of Jesus he is telling the story of one who is a king, yet a king to be sacrificed.

So smack dab at the beginning of his gospel Matthew introduces us to the central question that weaves its way all the way through the story he will tell: How can it be that the one long expected, the Messiah, the one Israel believes will free it from being under the thumb of pagan nations, will not triumph as kings do with their armies? To be trained as a disciple is to learn why this Jesus, the son of David, the one true king, must suffer crucifixion. Matthew’s gospel is meant to train us, his readers, just as Jesus had to train his disciples, to recognize that the salvation carried out on the cross is the Father’s refusal to save us according to the world’s understanding of salvation, which is that salvation depends on having more power than my enemies.

The crucial turning point in Matthew’s gospel is Peter’s confession at Caeserea Philippi. Jesus comes up to Peter and asks, “Who do you say I am?” Peter rightly confesses he is “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” Yet Peter rebukes Jesus when he goes on to show the disciples that he must go to Jerusalem to “be killed, and on the third day be raised.” (Matt 16:13-23). Peter cannot imagine that the one to save Israel, the successor to David, should die. Jesus’ prediction of his resurrection does not, however, prevent Peter from rebuking Jesus, for Peter is unable to hear anything other than what he takes to be a prediction of failure. Peter, as well as the other disciples, is not yet prepared to comprehend how God will save not only Israel, but all of God’s creation through a crucifixion.

The crucifixion of Jesus esplains his identification as the son of Abraham. Abraham was told by God to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, the very embodiment of God’s promise to make Abraham the father of a nation. We must confess the story of sacrificing Isaac is terribly offensive to us. Yet it seems that if we are to read Jesus’ struggle in Gethsemane rightly, as well as his trial and crucifixion, a sacrifice must be made so that we might be free from the sacrificial systems that dominate our lives. God restrained Abraham, providing a ram in place of Isaac; but He did not spare his only Son’s becoming for us the sacrifice that frees us from us trying to grasp salvation for ourselves on our own terms.

This human being, Jesus, the Son of God, is a king who puts an end to all the sacrifices the leaders of this world demand to give their rule legitimacy and power. Christ’s sacrifice is the one true sacrifice calling into question all sacrifices asked on behalf of lesser causes or lesser gods. That is why the rulers of this world who spend their lives trying to prove to others that their interests are most important that their citizens should give their lives for them, will finally tremble before the throne of God. One day they will have to answer for why their kingship was obsessed with power and influence and protecting their own interests while Jesus’ kingship was entirely different.

Next week we will see political power exposed in Herod’s response to the news of the birth of one identified by wise men as the “King of the Jews” when Herod does not hesitate to murder in order to secure his power.

The gospel of Matthew places a focus on the whole life of Jesus. That Jesus’ teachings and life have been separated from what some understand to be salvation reflects the accommodation of Christians to the world. As we looked at last week, Jesus does not save by dying so that by praying the “Sinner’s Prayer” a bunch of individuals can go to heaven when they die. (If that’s all that the gospel is, you’ll find that those people watch the same movies, listen to the same music, spend their time and money and have relationships that display little to no difference than their friends around them who aren’t “going to heaven when they die”) He came, lived, die, was resurrected, and sent the Holy Spirit to make us participants in a new community with a different way of living and dying and the name of that community is church.

The genealogy that Matthew provides from Abraham to Jesus is but a commentary on the extraordinary claim that with Jesus we have a new beginning. The genealogy is separated into three series, the first two consisting of fourteen generations and the last of thirteen generations. The last group has only thirteen generations because the church that Jesus calls into existence of Jews and Gentiles is meant to be the fourteenth generation.

The first series of fourteen generations is meant to tell the story of Israel’s triumph as a nation, because it ends with King David, who clearly represents for Mathew the climax of Israel’s history. David, the mighty king, the lover of justice, ruled Israel in fulfillment of the law given to Moses. But the next series of fourteen generations climaxes with the Babylonian captivity, which haunts Israel’s life all the way up to those who listened to or read Matthew’s gospel.

And the last genealogical series is about the restoration of Israel through the birth of Jesus. Now, the scandalous thing, the crazy thing about Matthew’s genealogy is that it not only includes a passel of unfaithful and downright evil kings, but it also includes four women; Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba wife of Uriah the Hittite. That Matthew names these women is unusual because the genealogies of Israel are lists that are male only. So their mention is significant. Some suggest they represent women engaged in sexually doubtful activity (And three of them do). But more likely is Matthew wielding a double-edged sword here by first mentioning women and second that all four of these women were either pagans or married to a pagan and they were grafted into Israel by God. So he means to show from the very beginning that Gentiles were meant to be a part of God’s people.

These women and the genealogy at large represent the undeniable reality that God’s promise to Israel has spread to the Gentiles and that God is not afraid of wading knee-deep into the messiness of our lives. In fact, if we run down and grasp an overview of the folks mentioned in this section, we quickly find that they are anything but an admirable group of folk.

Jacob won his position in this lineup by lying and cheating his blind father; Tamar was a pagan Canaanite woman who masqueraded as a prostitute and seduced her father-in-law so she could have a kid; David was a ruthless and highly successful bandit who hung out with the Philistines before he was king, Rehoboam lost most of David’s gains through arrogance and greed; Ahaz continued his father’s ways as a sadistic mass murderer, Jehoram killed all his brothers when he got the kingship so they wouldn’t conspire against him, Ruth was a pagan woman from Moab, and Rahab was a prostitute who allowed two spies of Israel to “stay with her” while they were in Jericho. Not the most clean lineup of folks you could think of.

Matthew’s genealogy is a stark reminder that God’s plan is not always accomplished through clean-as-a-whistle people, but through disreputable people as well. And it really sets the table for the fact that Jesus did not belong to or spend all his time in the nice clean world of the people with money and prestige and reputations to protect but rather came from a family of imperfect people who did the best they could to follow God, with a generous sprinkling of murderers, cheats, cowards, adulterers, prostitutes, pagans and liars in the mix. And so he wasn’t afraid to get down and messy with the issues of folks’ lives he ministered to. Nobody was too messy for him to spend time with, to love, and to transform. And all of us are those folks deep down, even if we seem clean and together to those around us. He didn’t float down on a cloud in gleaming white clothes and refuse to touch us nasty people, but instead rode on a donkey, grasped the hands and arms of people whose limbs were rotting and falling off, wept when his friends died, and was angry at those who used religion to chain folks down. He belonged to us and came to help us, was murdered because of that commitment, and through his resurrection gave us hope for the future through our circumstances.

And so Matthew’s gospel begins in a surprising way for his hearers and the readers.