Category Archives: commands

starting today

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When you walk into our house you see a framed piece of calligraphy. “Choose you this day whom ye will serve,” it starts in King James English. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

It’s a couple of sentences from a longer speech by Joshua. Near the end of his life, in the last speech he makes to Israel, he invites the people to renew their commitment to God. “You gotta serve somebody,” as Bob Dylan once sang. You can worship the gods of the Egyptians, Joshua says. You can worship the gods of the people who used to live here in Canaan.

But, says Joshua, my family is going to serve the Lord, the one who brought us from Egypt into this land.

The sign hangs on our wall, a wedding present from 27 years ago. The largest print on it is the house part. But as I think about that sign, the word that leaps out right now is “today”. Choose today.

Joshua’s speech was, of course, a final charge. But by including “today”, he offers us a reminder and an opportunity.

The reminder is this: the choice to serve God is a daily choice.

The opportunity is this: the choice to serve God is a daily choice.

Today, Wednesday, November 10, we are looking at a choice. Regardless of what happened yesterday, today we can choose to follow Jesus. Today we can say, “Where is that path again?” We can say, “I’m sorry. I thought I could fix it.” We can love someone, we can be still and listen for the quiet voice of God, we can throw our passion into healing, into caring, into offering hope and home. We can, once more, plunge into loving God and loving others.

Today we can do that.

listen.

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Andrew is letting me use his car. He doesn’t need it.

He has a better stereo than we do, with better meaning that you can play CDs and use MP3 players.  I enjoyed the variety of music, podcasts and news for two months. One day we looked in the car and saw an open glovebox, a bent CD on the seat. Then we didn’t see the faceplate for the stereo.

I left the car unlocked, parked in our driveway. Sometime during the day, the faceplate disappeared.  And with it my travelling companions. What remained were habits.

I discovered that I use noise. I discovered that when I drive and start talking with God, I finish a couple sentences and reach for the radio. I didn’t realize how often I do that until I watched my hand reach for the radio that no longer was there.

What I am learning is that I struggle with conversations. Especially conversations with God. I start by saying something. And then, when it’s my turn to listen, I fill the silence.

Jesus talked one morning about taking the disciples to a quiet place to get some rest. They had been on an internship. They needed time with him to reconnect. People were all around. So Jesus led them to a quiet place.

The irony was that when they got to the place, 15,000 of their closest friends showed up too. But maybe it’s not as ironic as I’ve always thought. Because all those people showed up, the disciples couldn’t talk to Jesus. They had to listen. They had to spend the whole day listening. Sitting. Just part of the crowd. After a season of celebrity, the best thing for them was relative anonymity, listening to Jesus.

Sometimes silence, sometimes anonymity. Listening always requires paring of something.

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My friend Chris talked about paring last weekend, asking “Are there things you could (should?) pare back?” It made me think. This week, I’ve looked at some of the trimming that Jesus talks about.

How to deal with obnoxious Christians

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If you are not a Christian, that’s easy. Do whatever you want.

Throw stuff at them. Tell them to shut up. Give them a cup filled with cool water and say, “I think that Jesus said you were supposed to give this to me.” The guy wanting to burn the Koran? Feel free to remind him that Jesus said to love your enemies, and then He proceeded to pray for the people who were killing him. Or change the station. The gal who tips with a tract instead of money? Run after her and say, “I think you forgot to read the part of this that talks about loving.”

If you are a Christian, this is easy too. Love them.

The person who is boycotting the funerals of veterans? Yes. The guy wanting to burn the Koran? Yep, him too. The person who likes a different kind of music for church services, the person who loves tattoos/hates tattoos, the person who wears long skirts or short skirts or suits or jeans or lots of makeup or no makeup? Love him or her or them.

But that’s impossible, isn’t it?

Absolutely.  And not only is it impossible, it makes no sense. I mean, if I love someone, it will look like I’m condoning what they are doing. And the last thing that I want to do is condone what “that person” is doing.

But here’s the deal. Jesus says “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” If I want to obey what he commands, and I do, I have to love the people who say that they are following Jesus.

Of course, his love for me doesn’t mean he condones everything I do.  He looks for the hole in my heart and offers healing.

That’s how.

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UPDATE: For more on what to do, see  “So I have to love him?” – Part one.

do why I do.

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We look for punishment.  We want to know what the penalty will be if we don’t do something. We want to know where the boundaries are, how far we can go before we get hurt or scolded or destroyed.

I understand that feeling. I get a phone call and think, “Oh no, what did I do now.” Someone says, “Can I talk to you for a minute tomorrow?” and I think, “I wonder what the problem is going to be.”

We look at the story of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and think, “This is going to be another one of those guilt things, isn’t it. I bet Jesus is going to make us miserable if we don’t do this thing, too.” That’s often how we do church. We look for the rules, the limits, the expectations, the penalties. Because it is easy. Because it comes naturally.

But look more closely at what Jesus says to the disciples after he finishes washing their feetand gets dressed. He starts with a should, just like we expect:  “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.”

He piles it on: I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.

Now the kicker:  Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

Wait, what? Not “you will be cursed if you don’t?” Not, “I did this to make you feel guilty?”

Nope. Jesus said that serving blesses the servant. But that shouldn’t be a surprise. After all, he’s not doing it out of guilt-avoidance. He’s doing it for love.

fingers crossed

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For some of us, keeping our fingers crossed means that we hope something happens. For others, however, it is a way to keep something we say from being a promise. If our fingers are crossed behind our back, for some reason, what we say cannot be held to be a promise.

The Pharisees didn’t know about crossing their fingers.

They did, however, know about making promises in such a way that they didn’t count as promises.

That’s what Jesus was accusing them of in Matthew 23:16-22. If a person promised on the altar (“I swear by the temple that I will finish this project by Tuesday”), it wasn’t as enforceable as “I swear by the gold on the temple that I will finish by Tuesday”.

Jesus explains that whether you are talking about the temple or the gold on it, the altar or the sacrifice on it, the earthly objects or the God they are dedicated to, a promise is a promise.

There are two lessons for those who would be followers of Jesus.

1. Don’t build elaborate technicalities of what counts as obedience and what doesn’t. We work so hard on finding the edges, on distinguishing between what is good enough and what isn’t, on where the line is between good and bad. I think that Jesus says not to get caught up in the distinctions but to be looking at God.

2. Don’t make promises you know you will break. This is the apparent content of this part of the lesson. To make a promise with an escape clause is not to make a promise at all. Make it or don’t. Agree to the deadline or don’t. Agree to the deal or not.

But if you do, don’t blame the object for not following through.  It is your (and my) fault.