We all know that in order to maintain weight, we have to discipline ourselves. I can’t let my body have everything it wants to eat. And sometimes I have to make my body do things it doesn’t want to do. My body hates the treadmill. Yet, after 48 years of living I’ve learned that the way I can remain at about 145 pounds is to eat right and burn roughly 500 calories via a three mile run or some other equivalent exercise.

I was slipping out of shape toward the end of last year. So, when I dragged myself onto the treadmill shortly before the New Year my body was screaming at me, begging me to stop running after about six minutes. During the summer I ran at least three to five miles a day and threw in a couple of seven mile runs each week. Running outside is less boring and therefore less difficult for me. But here I was struggling with one mile on the treadmill.

The only way any of us can veto the wishes of our body is through discipline. We’re composed of parts–thinking, feeling, body, spirit, and soul. If the body is in pain we feel it and our feelings lead to certain thoughts all of which can diminish our spirit.

Spirit is will. It is the power inside all of us. It is the essence of who we are. Long after the body has rotted in the ground, our spirit will live. It is our executive center. It was created to be the CEO of the self, controlling the thinking part, the feelings, the body, and our various social interactions. It’s humbling for us to drag our body onto a treadmill with the will to do something only to find that our body has other ideas. And when we give in to our body and skulk off the treadmill too soon, our spirit is deflated, having given up its own glorious position to mere flesh.

Sometimes our spirit expects too much. In my case, I could have ran the three miles. I simply allowed my body to take charge. But what if I’d wanted to run 15 miles? Regardless of how much I might have wanted to churn out the miles, my body was not and is not, conditioned for more than three or four miles presently. The spirit might be willing but the flesh is weak, and sometimes the flesh simply isn’t prepared.

Eating the wrong stuff and sitting on the couch isn’t the only thing my parts–my members, want to do. My thinking likes to chew on delectable thoughts of my own glory. My eyes like to rest on expensive cars, beautiful women, expensive real estate. My tongue is always dancing around clamoring for attention with biting sarcasm. Sometimes it (my tongue) just likes to pop off angrily about things that don’t matter. It is even known to grovel in expressions of contempt and hatred, manipulation, exaggeration, and all the rest.

As an adopted son of God who has been set free from the dominion of sin, imagine how I feel when with the mind I agree with God and want to do or say or think the right thing, but find my spirit diminished, deflated, skulking away from life’s treadmill while my mere parts fight over who will reign as my executive center.

Being set free from sin only means that Jesus has broken the chains. He doesn’t drag us out of the cell. He gives us His Spirit to aid our spirit in reclaiming our relinquished humanity, but anyone who thinks this is an easy process probably has never stepped foot on a treadmill or said no to a slice of pizza. That is to say, there is no such thing as an undisciplined disciple. If we follow Jesus then we suffer with Him in order that we may be glorified with Him. And the context of those words (Romans 8) echo the Abba Father, a prayer Jesus moaned while suffering–not physically, but alone in the garden as the Enemy tried with all his might to convince Jesus to allow his flesh to take over the executive center of his self. Jesus’ thinking part, his feeling part, his body, the social context–it was all fighting against his spirit, his will, but he stayed on the treadmill.

How? He was prepared. He’d been disciplining himself his entire life. Forty days in the wilderness was just the beginning of a public life that required Him to constantly bolster his spirit as CEO over his flesh. And we are called to suffer with Him. Unfortunately we tend to read that as a response to Christian persecution. However that wasn’t Paul’s point in Romans 8. His point was that Jesus didn’t do it all. Jesus did his part. He died for us, became the second Adam, did for us what the law couldn’t do for us, clearing the path for us to follow him as disciples who are called to put to death the deeds of the body by the Spirit.

We can’t flop down on the couch of life and suppose the Spirit is going to whip our floppy selves into spiritual shape. That’s not the way it works contrary to what the majority seem to think (based on religious words and “church” action–or inaction). If I want to run 15 miles or 25 miles in the spring, then I have to start with 3 or 4 miles today. If I want to tame my tongue, my thoughts, my eyes and ears, my body in various social situations, then that takes little acts of discipline, allowing my spirit (led by His Spirit) to build strength through discipline.

If my body likes to take charge in certain social situations then maybe I need to fast so that I learn to say no to my body. Building upon that discipline my spirit will develop the necessary muscle. If my thoughts prove to be a chaotic force with an apparent life of their own, then maybe I need to memorize scripture, learning to be still and stay with one thought for a long time, saying no to all the other thoughts that try to barge in. Then perhaps when I need to control my thoughts, I will have developed the discipline to do so.

To reign in life, as Paul put it, is to allow the spirit–the will, to be the king. We are made in God’s image. We develop his likeness when we, like Jesus, suffer the pain of crucifying the flesh so that it becomes dead to us, no longer having dominion over our spirit.

If you want to follow Jesus, pull out the hammer of hard work and the nails that create extended pain. It will not be easy. You and I have been deformed by the world, individual and structural evil. The difference between being set free and living in freedom in Christ is discipleship, or discipline.

Beware of the passive, sweet sounding rhetoric being belched out of too many pulpits which leaves the impression that all you need to do is sign a membership card, give 10 percent of your income, and join a church ministry.

That may be boring but I don’t think boredom counts as suffering. Get on the treadmill and stay on a little longer each day. The only way to eventually do what seems impossible is to push yourself up to the limit of what is possible. And then go a little further each day. It will hurt and your parts will not like it, but your spirit will enjoy the Christ-promised conditions of love, joy, and peace in Him.

Ben O.

t’s all holy—everything that God has created is holy. We see it in Torah; especially spelled out in seven of the Ten Commandments—Time is holy. Family is holy. Life is holy. Sex and sexuality is holy. Things/creation are/is holy. Words are holy. And your neighbor is holy.

But all of us have been raised on a steady diet of dualism that sees only the church building as something of a holy space. Do you think this is an over statement? How many of us will watch things on TV that we’d be embarrassed to see on Powerpoint in the church building? How many of us have our holy, sanctified, and carefully edited language which is used in the church building or in the company of church people, but another language that we let loose on the people in our workplace or in the privacy of our homes? There was a fellow in the church where I grew up who had two sets of jokes that he’d tell folks after worship—inside the church building jokes, and then those that he’d only tell if the listener would walk outside.

      The dualism of our world says that the world is ugly and bad and that only religion is lovely and good. Dirt and daisies, prayer and praises—one is temporal and essentially bad, the other eternal and good (or so we’re told). We protect the church from blasphemy, dress a certain way, speak a certain way, and behave a certain way (saying things like, “Don’t run. This is the church building!”); and it’s because in this building we affirm that we are on holy ground—holy because God is present. But if that logic holds up, and I think it does (though there’s obviously nothing unholy about running in or out of the building), then what follows from the fact observed by Solomon at the dedication of the temple where he said, “ “But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Behold, heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you; how much less this house that I have built!” (1Ki 8:27). Paul says the same thing in Acts 17.

      God’s presence spills outside of our assemblies making it impossible to find a place suitable for telling jokes that are otherwise unsuitable for the assembly. The temple was holy because God’s presence was there; but His presence is everywhere, therefore, as the song teaches us, “. . . where He is, is holy!”

     So why is dualism so prevalent in our culture? There’s much that could be said about our history that brings us to where we are today, beginning with Plato through to the Enlightenment, and now to a religious worldview more informed by the Left Behind Series than the Biblical text. But for most of us it’s simply that we see a world that looks terribly unholy and conclude that it must be that God will one day vaporize it so that we can all fly away to a non-physical existence forevermore. And then we enlist songwriters to help us affirm that supposed reality even though it’s not even remotely hinted at in scripture. Apparently, like the Left Behind Series suggests, we expect to one day “Fly away, O, Glory.” It makes for popular fiction and fodder for some old favorites in our hymnals, but it can’t be found in scripture, and that presents a bit of a problem.

     Where are we? Are we on unholy ground our holy ground? Is creation good, very good, or bad, very bad?

     It’s hard for us to accept that life is holy when so many humans act so blasphemously. It’s hard to imagine that words are actually holy given the fact that language has been soiled and desecrated. How can we suppose that the earth is holy when it seems so violent, producing tsunamis and cancer, drought and fires? Who can affirm that sex is holy given the fact that it has been reduced to a commodity bought and sold on the market of immorality? Can sexuality be considered holy given the rise in the cultural acceptance of the homosexual lifestyle? Can family really be considered holy given it is the place where the most violence and abuse occurs? Can our neighbor be holy, the same neighbor who smells bad and looks different, or competes with me for my job?

      Think back to the Lord’s supper. When there was abuse, the appropriate response was to correct the problem, not give up the project. God’s creation has been blasphemed in a thousand ways, but God hasn’t given up on it—He’s redeeming it! Romans 8 teaches at least that much.

• To participate in the kingdom of God doesn’t mean the promotion of a devastating dualism with a God so small that He can’t clean up the graffiti sprayed everywhere by man’s sin.
• To participate in the kingdom of God is to step into vibrant reality, not a weak and flimsy religion.
• To participate in the kingdom of God is to realize that the answer to the question where are we is now and will always be “on holy ground.”
• To participate in the kingdom of God now, in anticipation of what He will do on the last day means that we go out in God’s grace and scrub away the graffiti with the cleansing blood of Jesus, affirming, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. ( Joh 3:16).
• To participate in the spread of God’s reign, His authority, His Empire, requires that we understand that He loved and loves the world, not just the churchy parts or the so-called spiritual parts or the parts with no graffiti.
• The soul of man is composed of two vital elements according to Genesis 2.7; it read, “ then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” Nephesh, or soul, is dirt and breath. Good dirt created by the word of God, and God’s breath blown from the depths of God. That being the case, and along with the fact that Jesus became one of us (he became dirt and breath and then ascended as a resurrected, physical human), how can we but reject the philosophy of men—the platonic, dualistic nonsense that strips life of most of its meaning?

      Where are we? How do you suppose the Darwinist atheist answers, or the humanist, the existentialist, and the nihilist? Let me conclude by illustrating what happens if we don’t know the answer to this important question.

     Friedrich Neitzsche was a German writer and philosopher who lived from 1844 to 1900. He’s adored by many intellectuals and thinkers around the world. He’s best known to us common folk (if we know of him at all) by virtue of his influence over what became the Nazi philosophy. Leaders within the Nazi party studied his work, especially his book The Will to Power and his notions of the unafraid “overman.” One of his more famous quotes is the short statement, “God is dead.” He hated religion, and what he described as a herd mentality. He believed that religion was the rotten child of an escapist, platonic, dualistic, and therefore, meaningless humanity. He saw humans attempting to ascend to something like the light in Plato’s Cave Analogy, and since sooner or later he supposed we learn there really is no light at the end of the tunnel, he concluded that humans invented religion to escape the truth—the truth that life has no meaning, and that the only purpose is accept that bleak reality, with the only measure of man being how well he copes with the dismal futility of it all.

And what sort of light was he getting from Christianity at large? Did he find people rooted in the rich narrative off God’s history, yearning with Paul in Romans 8, for God to act and set all creation free from bondage and decay? No, he found rather light-less people who sang about this world not being their home, just-a-passing through as it were, a people who’d forgotten where they were and that they were made in God’s image to be good stewards over creation, people who were complacent, if not active in the exploitation of creation for the sake of economy or progress or whatever.

What did he see in Christianity? He wrote, “The Christian resolution to find the world ugly and bad has made the world ugly and bad.” Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, section 130. As confused as he was about reality, his observation was not way off the mark.

     He comes to us, in our houses or workplaces, in the woods or on top of a snow covered mountain, and by his striking critique reminds us, not that it’s all meaningless as he supposed, but holy and that we have a responsibility in the kingdom of God to find the world beautiful and good, and by God’s grace and in God’s grace, to help Him make the world beautiful and good.

      Nietzsche’s response to the blasphemy he recognized as ugliness was to reject the project and call it “nothing.” But Nietzsche’s the one who’s dead—God is very much alive, calling us to help restore His glorious creation. It is all holy.

The rest of the work did not go so well. It’s hard to actually throw a strand of 100 Christmas lights with precision. And once thrown in the top of a tree, pulling the lights out is about as easy as freeing a fishing line that’s been thrown onto a bushy bank. If you yank hard enough you will find 100 tiny lights flying at your face in the dark.

Eventually it dawned on me that I should tie a weight to the end of the strand so that I could toss it higher and with accuracy. I used a full water bottle. A miracle happened when I threw the bottle the first time. I aimed dead center of the tree, and the tree shifted 10 feet to the left while the bottle was in flight. I didn’t even graze a single limb. The bottle soared like a Bret Farve pass, long and deep, until it crashed on the concrete driveway.

I spoke to the lights with words that should never be uttered. I cursed the bottle, the throw, and the tree. Whatever Christmas cheer is, that moment was its polar opposite! Assessing the damage, I plugged the lights into a socket and half the strand would not light up. 7 of the bulbs were broken. I took the time to replace the broken bulbs, however, the strand was still only half-lit. (Some might say that’s a metaphor of my life–a “half-lit strand.”)

But I soldiered on until I had manipulated most of the lights onto the tree. Kim arrived from a bit of shopping at which time I told her that the tree looked like something out of Charlie Brown’s Christmas. She insisted it was lovely. I disagreed too emphatically at which time she quite correctly informed me that I took all the joy out of Christmas. I thought about speaking to her as I had the bottle, the lights, and the tree, but came to my senses, remembering that unlike the bottle or the tree, she speaks back. I went back to my work.

Finally, I completed the task and was actually satisfied with the result. I stepped back to admire the creation. 600 lights (less half a strand) brightly shinning. Then I noticed the countless lights in the background, billions of stars hung throughout the cosmos, galaxies, strung on nothing, but each keeping it’s place with mathematical precision.

What sort of God is it that can speak the worlds into existence, needing neither a water bottle or electricity to get the job done? I was exhausted after 600 lights and my universe consisted of one tree. And I broke some stuff in the process.

Who is this God that dazzles us with stars just because He can?

Ben O

t the Renovare.org website, Richard Foster writes about formation through experience, noting, “The most foundational of these character-formation experiences is found in our work. Work places us into the stream of divine action. We are “subcreators,” as J. R. R. Tolkien reminds us. In saying this, I am not referring to sharing our faith at work or praying throughout our work. Both of these are good, to be sure; but I am referring to the sacredness of the work itself. As you and I care for our daily tasks, we are glorifying God in the work itself.”

Much of our lives are spent in what we describe as work.  Often our approach to work is to think of it as a curse that we must endure until we arrive at the golden age of retirement.  But work is no curse.  Adam was working long before the fall.  God’s work in creating the universe wasn’t a reflection of a curse.  Work is the production of value—it’s creative.  And almost every sort of work has some redemptive quality, some redemptive value.  Our work becomes toil only when we lose our connection with God.  Work became toil for Adam when he was banished from the garden.  But being part of the new humanity (that is, the church) means that we are experiencing an end of the long exile–an experience that we’ll know fully when the Lord returns.  Therefore, our attitude toward work should be drastically different from others.  It becomes what Foster describes as a sacrament—a time for us to be with Jesus, honoring Him, bragging on Him, glorifying Him.  As subcreators, the work of our minds and hands is pregnant with possibilities—our creation will either honor God or further highlight the horror of the fall.  So, please, let’s stop categorizing our lives into spiritual and secular.  We need to erase those categories and just see life.  As new humans aligned with the new Adam we are filled with God’s spirit in every segment of our lives.  And given that we do spend so much of our time engaged in our work, it becomes a primary training ground, turf upon which we are tested, and a fundamental, ongoing experience in which the Spirit develops our virtues.  Enjoy your work as you grow in grace!

believe the here and now gets its energy from what happens after death, especially what happens after the resurrection.  This is sometimes clumsily referred to as inaugurated eschatology.   Romans 8 is the central passage for this idea.  We are saved, not just from the guilt of sin, but from the power of sin in our lives (the whole story from Ro. 5-8).  The Spirit works in us in order to shape us into Christ-like people.  But for now we suffer with Him (Jesus).  When we look at that dense passage beginning in vs. 18, we see a creation that is sitting on edge, waiting for God to do what He’s promised He will do–i.e., redeem us and at the same time liberate creation.  As Isaiah told us, the lion and the lamb will lie down together, we’ll be fully spiritualized with a Jesus-like physicality, newly created to do what we were always made to do–exercise dominion over God’s creation (Gn. 1, Re. 22.5).  So, salvation is about life.  It’s about capturing a biblical (not a Platonic or post enlightenment) vision of where the whole project is headed.  Looking to the future, chewing on the images of Re. 21-22, or Ro. 8, or little (yet heavy) bits from Jesus’ teaching about the eschaton, we see a new heaven and new earth.  The two dimensions finally mesh rather than simply over lapping in places (the present day overlap is the kingdom showing up!).  The nations are healed.  Love rules, the Spirit is our life-source (no longer soulized but spiritualized in a physical body which dwells in a physical world).  There’s peace, oneness, goodness.  Salvation today means that I live in that future world in the present (see 2 Co. 4 and 5).  Because there’s continuity between this chapter and the next, we labor with Christ to redeem creation right now.  If we can show people today–through our communities (the things we call churches) what real humanity ought to look like, and share with them the rich narrative from creation to new creation, lots of people are going to want in on it.

How do we say it in a way that insures that folks know we’re talking about salvation today and after death?  It’s not so much what we say, as what we do.  We’ve got to learn to model the new creation.  How?  The answer will come to us in our own context if we pray (maybe even fast) that God pour His spirit into our open hearts at a pace we can stand so that we learn to live off His resources, His grace, His Spirit as a little bit of heaven overlaps with the earth, as Jesus prayed “Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is heaven.”  We’ve flattened a rich and multi-dimensioned story out to little more than getting the right answers to a handful of religious questions.  In a nut shell we need to preach the gospel Jesus preached, and when we talk, we’ll probably have to stop using religious language.  Christianity isn’t a religion.  It’s reality (though much of what’s been brought into Christianity is doing the cause more harm than good; it’s more parody than reality, unfortunately).

he grave sin of some of our teachers is that they present a gospel that leaves people languishing under law.  I’ve been there, done that; therefore it hurts me all the more.  For most of my life, I’ve been in Christ.  However, most of my Christian experience was more like that of the wretched Israelite described in Romans 7.  Part of Paul’s point from Romans 5, through to the first few verses of Romans 8, is that Israel–though in possession of the law–was in Adam.  Israel had an incredible vocation to bare for the rest of the world.  She was given Torah, and according to Romans 5.20, the law (Torah) was given so that the trespass would increase.  Law brings about the knowledge of sin and can do nothing more by itself than condemn (see Ro. 3.19-20).  Part of the dark mystery of Torah is that it was eternally intended that the written code would lure sin in so that it would serve to focus sin’s power upon one people; Torah was intended to have the effect of heaping transgression on the back of God’s chosen people (and, of course, eventually their representative Messiah).  It was part of Israel’s glorious but mysterious vocation that she’d fail miserably so that in her failure and her exile, Christ would come to the rescue and grace would abound.

Are we going to allow the whole system to be reversed?  Are we going to promote a creed, a new Torah etched in stone by the hammer and chisel of religious sectarians who are duped into thinking they are doing God’s business by forcing others to bend beneath the heavy burden of their freshly fashioned tablets?  Do we not understand that if we are under law rather than grace then our only route is to endure the grief of inviting transgression in heaps?  God forbid!  If any of us is teaching a gospel that highlights law and diminishes grace, that extols commandment keeping while giving lip service to faith and grace, then the effect is to (in ignorance) push God’s children out from underneath the safety of His wings and back into the Adamic life of doubt and despair.  The balance of our talking, our teaching, our preaching must be weighted toward Christ and the salvation He offers by grace through faith.  If the scales tip the other direction, if we are spending our energy teaching (or listening to) an elaboration on the minutia of precision obedience while marginalizing the effect and the intent of the death and resurrection of Jesus, then grace will be voided.

Any tinkering with the gospel that exalts law and diminishes grace by constantly glorying in the one to the neglect of the other, any understanding that leads to contempt for other people because they aren’t as “right” as we are, any retelling of the story that promotes a written or unwritten creedal formula as the basis for justification, any religious chatter that pushes the cross into the shadow of some new fangled list of do’s and don’ts is a hazard to spiritual health and will create those who look like the antithesis of the law’s real intent.

The thing Torah was intended to do (it’s righteous requirement as per Ro. 8.3-4) was to develop a people who would love God with all their heart, souls and mind, and love neighbor as self.  But the law was made weak by the sin of Israel, especially her failure to understand the purpose of her vocation in being a light and blessing for the  world (a light not just for the Jews).  Paul says that his understanding of all that God had been up to, from Adam to Christ, allowed him to affirm the law as a good thing; not a thing that we are to be under now, but something once fulfilled could be seen as holy, just and good.  Again, the intent of the law was to form a people in the midst of the nations who, in faith, really loved God with the totality of their being, and who loved other people as they loved themselves.  But the law couldn’t reach its objective . . . until Jesus.  What Jesus did was to take up the mantle that Israel had dropped, showed the way of true humanity in loving God and His fellow man, died to condemn sin, and was raised for our justification.  And when we put our faith in Him, when we are baptized into His death and resurrection, He sends us His Spirit.   By the means of Jesus and His Spirit we are finally in a place (in Christ) and given the resources (the Spirit) whereby we fulfill the righteous requirement of the law, marked out by our absolute trust in God through Christ, and the production of the fruits of the Spirit which enable us to love rather than hate, be at peace rather than fight, to be patient rather than give up, to speak grace rather than anger, to serve rather than demand service, to rejoice rather than grumble, and all the rest.

Because it was my experience, and the experience of so many whom I know, that much of my life in Christ was actually spent with my head and heart still in Adam, I pray that the message of the real gospel will ring throughout our communities and the world.  If the world sees us as bitter, hateful, contemptuous, elitists, and all the rest, it will know that we are not disciples of Christ.  The energy for discipleship is found not in any written code, but in a message etched upon our hearts, a message embraced by faith, a message with a Man at the center, and more than a Man, a God who came to liberate us from the curse of Adam, liberation we can enjoy  if we’ll only listen to Him carefully, if we’ll hear Paul in context, and if we’ll run far and fast from those who are sucking grace from our lungs in their zeal to manage God’s kingdom.

od is community. He’s Three. A perfect circle of sufficiency (Dallas Willard). Each member of the Godhead considering the other more important than self, constantly esteeming the other ahead of self, etc. The Father always gushes over the Son, the Son always deflects to the Father, and Jesus said it was good that He go away so that the disciples could enjoy the presence of the Spirit. That is the bedrock of all reality. Loving, selfless community. Where some religions consider balance (dualism–ying/yang) to be ultimate reality, or monism (unity without diversity) to be the ultimate reality, we know that all reality gets its energy from Three, the Trinity, God–unity with diversity.

So what? We are made in that image, and when we are pulled into Christ by the power of the Spirit, we step into that circle of sufficiency. Paul’s teaching in Ph. 2.1f on this subject isn’t just good doctrine we might or might not follow–it’s a metaphysical statement, the likes of which no philosophy can begin to touch. And all sin is a violation of that selfless, universal circle of unbridled love.

Community, then, isn’t a program, nor can it be nurtured by some program.  Community is a way of being, not doing. We are communal “beings.” Much of what morality/doctrine deals with has to do with “doing” but it flows out of authentic being. And the summation of that “being” is love. God is love and we are His. So, we need love from the Spirit (love is a gift of the Spirit, btw). We need to be reminded who we are dealing with here. Humans made in God’s image, full of innate dignity, made just a little lower than God (not a little lower than angels, as our poor translations state). I fear we too often attempt the “doing” without affecting the “being.” And I think that sort of superficiality is what sends people running from institutional church. We program some “service.” We all go “do” it. But we don’t love any better because of it. I think we need a lot of prayer and fasting in community focused on reminding ourselves about the ultimate reality–the eternal Community and their offspring. We need to watch Them love each other and pray with all our might for much grace and the Spirit’s influence. Until then, I think that maybe all we’re really doing is putting an expensive paint job on a car that has no engine. When we start “being” the community, the things we do will reflect it. For now, the things we do reflect competition, religiosity, smack of manipulation, are self-centered, and glorify the program, not the Programmer.

n my scripture reading I recently got hung up on a Luke passage–chapter 16–sensing that I was missing something important. This blog is a touch of rambling regarding some of my understanding relative to Luke’s gospel and our Lord’s word to us.  If you think I’m missing the point, feel free to critique.

It appears to me that Luke fills his narrative with limited personal comments, perhaps to announce a theme or move the story along, and then just records Jesus’ word on that particular subject.   For instance, at the beginning of ch. 13 the need for repentance is announced, and then several pericopes are provided in support of that theme, including the wrong-headed attitude and direction of those in charge of religion in Jesus’ day, namely the Pharisees.  At the close of the same chapter, after Jesus laments Israel’s refusal to seek refuge under His wings, Luke adds parable and pericope, one after the other showing us just what Jesus was up against.  Without doubt, Jesus is the protagonist in the story as it unfolds, the religious elite are the antagonists, and light is the gift our Lord is attempting to bring to the world.  Jesus shines the light on Israel’s failure to heal the hurting by allowing their misinterpretations of the law to get in the way (beginning of 14), and He shines light on the silliness and temptation of social posturing.  Luke wants us to see Jesus’ call to repentance with reference to, and distaste for, self-centeredness, the sort of “me first” attitude that was allowing multitudes to miss the entire banquet (as he moves along in 14).  We’re then reminded of the cruciformed nature of true discipleship without which, Jesus notes, we’re as useless as tasteless salt.  The antagonists are fed up and complain that Jesus is spending time with the wrong crowd (15).  Jesus destroys that objection with a series of stories about lost sheep, coins, and a prodigal young man.  The elite are pictured as the grotesque, grumbling, big brother who just can’t understand why the father is so excited about his penitent sibling.

We arrive at ch. 16 and a parable about the dishonest yet cunning manager.  And it’s here that Luke helps us see, through Jesus’ words, something important about fallen, human nature.  To be brief, I simply note that when the manager’s job was threatened, he didn’t put the screws to the debtors; in fact, he forgave debts to gain favor with the people.  And the rich master was impressed with the craftiness of his manager!  I know on the surface chapter 16 looks to be mostly about money, but I really think Luke is pushing a deeper point (as with any good writer, Luke presents meaning at different levels in the story).  Second temple Israel wanted God to return to the temple.  He’d been gone since before the the exile.  It looked to them like the “rich master” was punishing Israel for their failed vocation (to be light for the rest of the world as God’s chosen people).  Israel’s reaction, in contrast with the manager of ch. 16, was to make life harder on the debtors.  If one of the sheep was hurting, they wouldn’t offer healing on the Sabbath even though they’d help an ox out of the ditch.  They refused to eat with sinners as they tightened the screws in an effort to be righteous and invite the return of the Lord.  The manager glorified the rich master by forgiving debts–whether he intended to or not, he made his master look good.  The religious elite were making God look bad, by representing Him as unforgiving, oppressive, heartless, more concerned about the plight of an ox than a prodigal publican, and all the rest.

The Pharisees were chiefly concerned with keeping the law, so they ridiculed Jesus for his teaching (which they saw as a threat to the law).  Jesus says, don’t bother yourself; the kingdom is being announced and people are storming into it; and all sorts of dirty, smelly debtors are being forgiven their accounts.  At the same time He assures them that not a single period or comma in the law was going to be voided.  He even gives them an example that would no doubt scrape against their scabby, lustful hearts–frivolous divorce and remarriage.  Then Luke inserts the bit about Lazarus and the rich man, a poignant illustration regarding what happens to people who don’t repent, how things aren’t as they seem (the last will, in fact, be first), how those who look good in this life might miss not only the banquet but receive not even a drop of water for their parched lips, and how few actually walk the narrow path.  In that story the tormented rich man knew that his brothers weren’t far behind.  Misery loves company except in hell, so he wanted Abraham to do something to help his brothers repent before it was too late.  Abraham notes that the rich man’s brothers have the law and the prophets.  What an indictment on the antagonists!  The very law they were abusing, making it nearly impossible to find the kingdom under their poor management, contained the message that could have given them light for their maps.  The rich man speaks for the religious elite when he says, “No, father Abraham . . . .”  He knew right well that the heart of the law was being entirely ignored .  The Torah that the Pharisees “seemed” to esteem, was not actually being obeyed; and ironically, they were always citing the law in opposition to Jesus.  But then Jesus teaches something devastating.  In His story captured by Luke in 16.30-31, He indicates that even a dead man rising will not convince the rich man’s brothers to repent.

And so it is today.  Even in the shadow of the resurrection there is no shortage of God’s people who are taking their position as antagonists rather than protagonists.  Projecting our own fears onto the image of God, we are suspicious of His grace. In response, many tighten the screws on religion, fleeing to the safety of sanctuaries, refusing to search for the lost, controlling the door to the kingdom, posturing, grumbling, and accusing all who disagree of being a threat to authentic Christianity.  The Pharisees had boiled faithfulness down to a handful of externals which made it really easy to manage (poorly) God’s project.  Maybe we’re actually pretty good disciples after all–not disciples of Christ, but of the antagonists of Jesus’ day.  Don’t we tend to boil faithfulness down to a handful of externals so that we can manage God’s project, standing at the door, checking I.D.s in the form of worship style, denominational affiliation, peculiar twists on the “process of salvation,” versions of the Bible, and on and on?

I pray that we hear Jesus, that we read the gospels with prayer-filled trust and obedience.  That’s O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E.  O, did I forget to emphasize, OBEDIENCE?  I heard Dallas Willard remark in a lecture, “Obedience is the organ of knowledge in the spiritual life.”  The religious elite might set at the table today, flouting knowledge about subcategories of a convoluted interpretation of the law which keeps the poor, obedient Lazarus’s looking bad and eating crumbs.  But, again, we learn from Jesus that things aren’t really always as they appear.

f we’re going to be good people, then we have to have some reference point, some concept of goodness. We know what a good apple tree is. It’s a tree that grows, eventually producing edible fruit. The nature of an apple tree is to produce apples and more apple trees. We know what a good rabbit is. It’s basically a furry creature that hops around on its hind legs. I have a vivid memory of a carnivorous rabbit in one of the old Monty Python movies. One knight after another was sent into a cave to kill the rabbit; however, the rabbit would attack, biting the juggler vein, sending the warrior screaming out of the cave. We’d say that was a bad rabbit. It wasn’t acting according to its nature. When I visit the mountains of East Tennessee, I’m slightly bothered by the threat of black bears, but I’ve never worried about a rabbit attack. Never. The nature of a rabbit is timid and harmless therefore we know the difference between a good rabbit (Easter Bunny) and a bad rabbit (Monty Python). We can propose, then, that a thing is good if it acts according to its nature. When it rains you know if you have a good roof or a bad roof. What’s the nature of a roof?

But what about humans; what’s our nature? When is a human acting good, or bad, and how in the world can we tell the difference? If the design of an apple tree is to produce fruit and trees, and the design of a rabbit is to hop around nibbling on grass, then what’s the design of a human? The answer is found in Genesis. We are made in God’s image in order to rule creation. If we’re in God’s image, by our nature, we’re good when we possess His characteristics (at least those within our reach). And, according to that good character we rule creation, beginning with ourselves. You probably remember how Cain struggled with this. God warned him that sin was crouching at his door and its desire was to rule over him. God insisted that Cain was to master sin.

In a few short words within the Genesis account of creation we have a lot to work with in answering the question regarding human nature. A man is good if he is living according to the likeness of God (Christ), is ruling creation, and mastering sin. The nature of the key setting on the table next to me is to start the engine on my truck. If it is broken it cannot do what it was designed to do. If we are broken, if we allow sin to master us, if we fail to rule creation beginning with our own selves, if we aren’t living according to the image of God, then we’re like a killer rabbit, a bent key, a fruitless apple tree, or a leaking roof.

Jesus’ teaching has the potential of taming the bad rabbit, straightening the crooked key; He can restore a dead apple tree so that it blossoms and produces bushel after bushel of fruit. That is to say, Jesus shows us how to be good people, people who live according to our nature. If we’ll trust His word, trust Him, then we can step into His reality—ultimate reality, where we find the potential of living a life that actually fits with our design. We start to look like little Christ’s; we begin to care for creation with balance and wisdom, and we master sin. But since we’re in God’s image, we do none of this alone. God has never acted alone. God is Community, and He creates man to share in His communion. And it is in that divine community that we are given the grace to become new (or renewed) to the glory of God and for the hope of the world around us.

The hope of the world around us is simple. We need to cooperate with God, to help restore humanity by letting the light of the gospel of the kingdom of God radiate in all directions. We don’t need to promote Christianity as if it’s something of a religious option, a collection of spiritual experiences. Christianity isn’t an argument over the right answer to ethereal issues far removed from life’s problems; nor is following Christ supposed to be a marginalized category of otherwise frantic lives, available to those who have roughly an hour each week to consume the religious produce of slick, market driven machinery. If that’s what Christianity has come to mean, then we don’t need it as a word in our vocabulary anymore. Becoming a follower of Christ means returning to our deepest roots, recapturing, by His Spirit and grace, our full potential as human beings—kings and queens created by Him and in His image in order to bare that glorious, wise, and love soaked image before His extraordinary creation.

We’re living in an awful irony. God created the world. Humans ruined themselves and brought a curse upon creation. God immediately went to work reversing the curse beginning with Abraham and reaching the climax in Christ. Christ sends “Christianity” out into the world (as the Father sent Me, so I send you, Jn 20) to be light just as Jesus was light. Christianity is supposed to be God’s healing agent, God’s restorative ambassadors, His image bearers empowered by His Holy Spirit and fueled by His grace. But what happens when Christianity itself is broken? What happens when a church is reduced to rejoicing over the fact that they’ve put a religious glisten on a broken key? A polished, bent key might make a lovely piece of jewelry, but it wasn’t made to look good; its nature is to open the door and ignite the engine on the truck. Gleaming though it may be it is still broke; it’s still incapable of doing what it was designed to do. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that Christianity is about being good, not merely polite, not just nodding at the appropriate point in the sermon, not good in the sense that we manage to avoid a lot of the external sin, but good in the sense that we act according to our design, our nature. And, I’m therefore suggesting that Christianity in its current state of existence is in desperate need of radical revision. A good place to start, in my opinion, would be Genesis 1.

young lady who’s training to become a doctor listens to the experts under whom she’s learning. A glass maker’s apprentice listens intently, learning the art as a result. My son is going for his first job interview today. He listens to me, learning what to expect in the interview. If he gets the part-time job, he’ll listen to his manager, learning how to stock the shelves, interact with customers, and all the rest.

If Jesus is the ultimate human, God in the flesh, and if He established His kingdom 2,000 years ago, and if He knows something about life and eternity, why do we have such a hard time simply listening to Him?

This is not a new problem. Before Jesus’ transfiguration He’d described His vocation to the disciples, detailing the suffering He was destined to endure, suffering that would culminate in His death. Peter rebuked the Lord. Peter wouldn’t listen. Jesus gave His followers a quick lesson on apprenticeship, or discipleship (see Mk. 8.34f). Authentic humans deny the self, take up a killing mechanism (cross, noose, lethal injection) in order to put the old man to death, and follow Jesus.

There was more to be learned by the disciples; Jesus took three of His closest students up a mountain to pray. The “followers” fell into a heavy sleep (Lk 9), but Jesus began to glow (Mk 9 and Lk 9). The disciples awoke to see Moses and Elijah, two Old Testament icons–one for the law, the other for the prophets–engaged in a conversation with Jesus about His departure. Peter thought it would be a good idea to build tents in honor of all three. A cloud overshadowed the group and the Teacher’s Father said, “This is my beloved son; Listen to Him!”

But class was still in session as all four men made their way down the mountain. Thinking about the coming kingdom through the interpretive grid of their day, the disciples wondered aloud about the prophecy concerning Elijah appearing prior to the Messiah and the restoration of Israel. The grid is evident in the way they pose the question to Jesus; “Why do the scribes say . . .?” (see Mk 9.11).

Jesus answers the question as recorded in Mk 9.12-13, but tosses in a question of His own, a question that ought to sober up all of us would-be apprentices. He asks, “And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt?”

The apprentice asks why the scribes say so and so but the Master transcends the grid and asks how it is written. The apprentice is looking at secondary material; the Master is pointing them toward source material. The bigger question had to do with the inauguration of the kingdom and how it would come about. The disciples had expectations they’d inherited from the scribes, expectations which included a very physical kingdom and a military victory over the Romans. They had visions of glory involving their own appointment to great positions in the kingdom (see Mk 9.34). No one expected that the king would appear carrying a cross, suffering humiliation, and finally dying a horrible death. That was the opposite of what the experts thought would happen as they read about the Son of Man in Daniel 7 (for example).

We know how it all played out. The scribes had missed what was written. They failed to do business with Isaiah 53 (and other such scripture) honestly, and nailed God to a tree.

So Jesus, the teacher, pleads with the apprentices to follow Him; His Father commands them to listen to Him (i.e., Jesus). Those were necessary admonitions as a result of the story the scribes had been telling and the hold they had on the interpretive arteries of Israel. And all the scribes aren’t dead. We, would-be apprentices, have to learn to listen to Jesus. He knows His own kingdom, how it ought to look, how it can spread, etc. Some scribes say it has already come and is no longer coming. Other scribes say it hasn’t come, but will come beginning with a rapture. And in the middle of all that, a cloud overshadows and pleads, Listen to Him. Will we really listen to Him? What will it look like if we do? Can we transcend the interpretive grids of our day? Are we apprentices of the King or the religious experts?