Stephen was recognized by many for his thoughtfulness, compassion, and ability to build bridges in difficult situations. At the beginning of the church, when choosing to follow Jesus crossed political and cultural divides, he was chosen by reputation to run a feeding program for minority widows. Meeting this need averted a crisis.

In this public role, Stephen started to engage in public conversations about Jesus. He did miracles of some sort, and when people tried to argue with him, he was so articulate and knowledgeable that no one could refute his teaching.

He was enough of a threat that false charges were made and people were paid to commit perjury. After a lengthy statement in court, he accused the people in front of him of murdering Jesus. Though this was accurate, perhaps because this was accurate, the courtroom exploded and Stephen was dragged out and killed.

Everyone who follows Jesus isn’t killed. Many live long lives of following. But it is important that everyone who decides to follow Jesus and obey his teaching understands that it is a risky thing. Leadership means pursuing justice for widows and explaining why. When the why is “Jesus”, it divides.

Not every situation is something to escape. Sometimes sticks and stones are the weapon of choice, not words. Stones kill you. Sometimes the happy ending doesn’t come in our lifetime. And sometimes the prayer that God answers is the one that sounds exactly like Jesus. “Father, forgive them.”

Right before you die.

–

From Acts 6-7

The prize was a free online course about care of the soul. I had read from most of the course materials but, as I said in the email,

“I’m at a point of needing to be “encouraged” to go through the material in a structured way, though I’ve read from several of the contributors in the past. So if you choose me, you’ll get your money’s worth in promotion.”

They didn’t pick me.

As I thought about this “rejection”, I realized that my challenge at the moment is not about content. It’s about commitment, it’s about tiny steps in the right direction. As you can see in my email to them, I didn’t need the course materials. I needed the structure of the course. I needed deadlines. I needed external pressure.

As I was thinking this through, I remembered God’s words to Israel through Micah. God says,

He has showed you, O man, what is good.
And what does the LORD require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy
and to walk humbly with your God.

The essence of this requirement is simple. What I do, what I love, who I follow. Justice, mercy, humility, God.

If I’m honest with myself, I don’t need another course. WIth the deadlines and pressure, the stress on my soul would have been too much now. If I’m honest with myself, it would have been about the coolness of the class and the excuse it gives for six weeks of not doing what I already know.

I’m in favor of courses, of seminars, of workshops, of sermons, of lessons. It’s why I did my Bible course last fall. But often you and I don’t need another course. We need to do the homework already on our desks.

–

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He had never read the book, “Boundaries”, not having created the authors of that book yet. However, he knew that doing everything and being always with everyone was outside his reason for being.

So he went away.

The text at the end of the fourth chapter of Luke suggests that he had pulled a ministry all-nighter. People showed up sick and he sent them away well. It started in the evening and went until daylight. Finally, he went away.

He went to a secluded space. And the crowds came looking.  And he said, “no.” Actually, he said that saying yes to helping them was saying no to every other city and every other synagogue and every other person who needed his words. His reason? He was sent to preach the kingdom of God.

People were seeking him not as a kingdom speaker but as a healer. To be blunt, they wanted what would make them feel better rather than what would make everyone whole.  And so Jesus moves on. He refuses to be the Jesus that they want him to be. He has to be the Jesus he was sent to be. He took his direction not from people but from God.

And in that, he sets a wonderful example.

(From Luke 4:40-44)

***

Here’s part of my reading list for this year: 2011 Books

That’s good, but it’s not the whole picture.

Romans 12:1 And so, dear brothers and sisters, I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you. Let them be a living and holy sacrifice—the kind he will find acceptable. This is truly the way to worship him.

and

1 Corinthians 6:19 Don’t you realize that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, who lives in you and was given to you by God? You do not belong to yourself…

How do we give our bodies as sacrifices? One way is to present it to God in a form that honors God. If we’re sloppy with our bodies, they may not honor God. So exercise, get the sleep you need and eat right.

Those of us who live on the internet think nothing of stretching our minds. That’s necessary to compete in today’s world. But how often do we think of stretching our bodies?

Remember that our bodies do not belong to us. If someone lends you their car, you would probably treat it better than your own. Since our bodies are on temporary loan from God, let’s treat them well.

Two people who are an inspiration to me in this are Allison and Rich. Allison started Team OneVerse, a group whose runs benefit Bible translation. And Rich is riding his bicycle 1,500 miles to benefit kids in developing parts of the world.

What amazing ways to really put some meaning into presenting your body as a sacrifice to God!

(Paul Merrill writes here every First Friday)

Namaan was sick. He was a war hero, he was an army commander, he was the king’s confidant. And he was sick.

There was nothing he could do. There was no one that could help. Because of the contagion, he would be cut off from his work, his family, everyone.

One day, the maid that helped his wife said, “I know what would help. God would help.”

She actually said, “In my home country, there is a prophet. And he could make Namaan well.”

When Naaman got to her country, the prophet didn’t even come to see him. He sent a messenger to say, “Go wash in the Jordan 7 times and you will get well.”

Namaan was ticked. As well he should be. In his community, he deserved respect. He deserved honor. He deserved the presence of this noted healer.

And all he gets is an email with a stupid home remedy.

“There are clean rivers back home,” he said. “The doctors back home show up,” he said. “I want a magic wave and a cry out to God and an instant cure,” he said.

“I want God to work in a way that is in keeping with my status,” is what he meant.

His servants said, “You would have done a huge thing. You would have paid a large fee. You would have fought a big battle, gone on a long pilgrimage. You would have done anything to prove how strong you were.”

His servants said, “But how come you can’t do this simple act of obedience?”

He listened. He washed. He quit giving orders. He started by taking one order.

And his body was healed. Instantly. After the seventh bath that is.

But all other treatments were for symptoms. This one? This foolish one?

It was a cure.

I know. It sounds dumb. Like it’s up to me to figure out massive physical damage, horrible family destruction, ruined infrastructure. Other people are doing lots of things, from texting donations to holding prayer services. The denomination I’m connected to is looking long-term, planning to help people in Haiti help other Haitians.

At this point, I’m still trying to figure out what to do.

Part of the problem is that I don’t want to do the wrong thing. I don’t want to give in a way that is wasted. I don’t want to look at the long-term and not help people have the water that they need to get from now to then.

Part of the problem is that I know that the problems now are about logistics and political structures and how many planes can land on the runway. I can’t do anything about those issues. The decisions that resulted in this airport were made long ago.

And part of the problem, for me, is that as soon as I open my mouth, and heart, to think about the spiritual side of the situation, I will walk into complicated conversations.

• Is this God’s judgment for some deal with the devil?
• How can God allow disasters like this that kill people? I mean, in wars you can blame “man’s inhumanity to man.” But this? This is God, isn’t it?
• Why do things like this happen to poor countries and to poor people in those countries?

I’m pretty sure I need to figure out how to do something. In Proverbs 17:5 we read:

He who mocks the poor shows contempt for their Maker;
whoever gloats over disaster will not go unpunished.

I need to help. I dare not say, “see what happens?”

—

My friend Cheryl Smith writes about one organization that was helping ahead of time. Read Positioning World Help for Haiti.

I talked about the idea of doing something in Something, a post about Matthew 25.

That’s the heart of a “two brothers” story that Jesus tells. Their dad asks them to work in the vineyard. One argues, one agrees. One goes, one doesn’t.

I love this parable. I always have. I love how Jesus understands that people often think change their minds after they have time to think. I love how Jesus understands that people often say “yes” for all the wrong reasons.

There many place to go with this parable, but we  may miss where Jesus went.

The first brother represents tax collectors and prostitutes. More accurately, the tax collectors and prostitutes that have been talking to Jesus and that Jesus has been talking with for the past three years. The second brother represents religious leaders, those who have been arguing with Jesus for the past three years, those who are facing him at this moment.

Often, Jesus says, people will hear what God says and will reject it, will pursue their own way of living. Eventually, however,  many will change their minds and hearts. Often, Jesus says, other people will hear what God says and will accept it, but will then pursue their own way of living. This group will not have as much fun and as much pain, nor will they know the delight of finally obeying.

That part’s pretty obvious. Here’s the hard part.

“Even after you saw tax collectors and prostitutes be forgiven, you didn’t repent,” Jesus says. The religious people were too religious to admit they were as wrong as the irreligious people. Passive disobedience is as bad as active disobedience. “Good Christians” who don’t follow Jesus are worse than forgiven cheaters.

As the guys are leaving, Matthew tells us that this trip to get a donkey was part of a prophecy given to Zechariah, talking about a king and a donkey.

They get back, everything is cool. Jesus and the disciples head for Jerusalem, Jesus riding on the smaller one, the colt.

When we read this, we know the whole story. The two disciples didn’t. They didn’t know about this donkey-snatching until just before Jesus sent them. They had to trust that Jesus knew what he was talking about. Until Matthew wrote his account, they probably didn’t know about the greater prophecy that they were part of.

As they walked to Bethphage, they may have wondered how Jesus knew, why they were going, how the person who owned the donkeys would react, who was going to take them back, whether they would have to leave any money as security, what was going to come next. They may have wondered what everyone wonders when sent on an errand without knowing all the implications.

Most days, I wonder those same things. I wonder why this crisis happened, why I’m being sent to that conversation, why this issue came up now.

I guess wondering is okay. But going is more important. What these two followers discovered, after everything was done, was that they had been part of fulfilling a prophecy made centuries earlier. Just by getting a couple donkeys. Just by doing what Jesus told them to do.

I think it still happens. At least for followers who obey.

We all know Dave and Helen and Ed. We often are Dave and Helen and Ed. We care about them deeply. We want them to be wonderful growing people. We don’t want to do anything to hurt them.

So we harm them.

All the time.

Every time we let Dave think that admiring that waitress is acceptable, we are harming him. Every time we let Helen rip apart the neighbors, we are harming her. Every time we let uncle Ed slander a race or a nationality or a culture, we are harming him.

How?

Because we are telling each of them that Jesus doesn’t really matter.

Jesus spoke specifically about lust and gossip and hate. And he spoke very specifically about talking to family members about those things. Not to everyone, mind you, but to family members.

For the next few days we will look at what Jesus says in Matthew 18:15-20 about sin and relationship and conversation and restoration. It’s a hard topic. It hurts to talk to other people about sin, theirs and ours.

However, our calling as followers is to follow better, closer, more completely, more freely. Helping each other in this calling is pretty important. It’s worth thinking through.

And so we will. Starting tomorrow.

Sometimes it didn’t exactly work.

—-

Jesus and the disciples were heading to the other side. They kept crossing the lake, moving from crowd to crowd, need to need, person to person. This time, in the process of packing for the trip, no one remembered to grab the bread.

And Jesus says, “”Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

They decided he was talking about forgetting the bread.

I’m not sure why they thought that answer made sense. Maybe there was a brand of special bread: Holysum. It was endorsed by leaders of both spiritual/political parties. In order to follow Jesus, you should boycott this bread.

Jesus stopped them.

“If you are short of bread, you should know by now that I can feed thirteen as easily as 5,000 (20,000 counting families).”

What Jesus wanted them to understand was that who you follow matters more than food. Jesus can provide food, easily, miraculously. But when people drift away from following him to following others, even to following religion, it’s much harder to fix that problem.

What you listen to, what you think about, what you take in, works its way all the way through your life. If you allow the teaching of the religious to work its way through your heart, you will end up creating false tests for Jesus. You will end up being more religious than God.

They finally understood, the disciples did. At least they understood that Jesus was talking about teaching rather than bread. And they offer a lesson.

Don’t be more concerned with supper than with what you watch while you eat: one is bad for the body, the other for the soul.