Author Archives: Carolyn Moore

I have great respect for many colleagues in ministry who espouse a reformed or Calvinist view of the world. That said, it should be no surprise to those who read and listen to me regularly that I am enthusiastically and unapologetically Arminian. I am far too deeply committed to the notion of God’s pure love exercised in his gift of human free will to appreciate most of what reformed theologians teach us. I can manage about two and a half letters of the TULIP; the rest of it does not convince me.

I suspect that at least some of our theological differences are just a matter of how our brains work but there are concepts that cross a line into dangerous territory. Here are three Calvinist ideas I’ve heard voiced in real conversations that cause real damage when spoken into a secular culture:

Misconception #1: God has my days numbered and nothing I do can change that. This line was shared (verbatim) while someone I love was animatedly sharing his participation in some fun but risky behavior. He said, “Listen, I know where I’m going when I die and God knows exactly when that is going to happen and nothing I do can change that.” His point was that since God has already ordained the day of his death, his choices have no power to change his future.

What?

Calvin not only taught that God’s grace is irresistible but that a true believer in Christ cannot possibly fall from grace. And in fact, he took this idea a step further. He believed every detail happens according to the will of God, that even evil people are operating under God’s power so that no matter what a person does, God has caused it.

Maybe on my weak days, I wish this were true. I sometimes wish God would just override my will. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been with people who struggle to believe; in those moments I’d give anything if God would just save them from themselves.

Make them believe, Jesus! Because they’re killing me!

But that isn’t how it works. People come to Christ every day and every day people resist the grace of God. Not only that, but every day people make horrible choices against the will of God that limit the length or joy of their lives.

Our behavior matters. If I smoke two packs of cigarettes  a day, it will affect the length and joy of my life. To persist in such behavior isn’t God’s will, and our behavior matters to God. As Moses said to the Israelites, we have two choices before us — blessings and curses, life and death. “Choose life, that you might live.”

Misconception #2: Everything happens for a reason and all reasons are ordained by God (even the evil ones). I most recently heard this one at the funeral of a young adult who overdosed. How such a hollow statement could have provided comfort to a family dealing with such a tragedy is beyond me. Is even an overdose ordained by God? I can’t imagine the thought of having to endure such a tragedy believing that God had done this to my loved one … or at least blessed it.

Paul’s word to the Romans was that God can work all things together for good for those who love him and are called according to his purpose. There is a ton of solid theology in that one line; it assures me that God can make good out of even my worst mistakes. What it doesn’t tell me is that God causes my mistakes. He can work redemption into a circumstance without causing it.

The fact of God’s sovereignty does not have to mean that God has made toys to play with. People are not puppets. To the contrary, he has made free humans with heads, hearts and wills, “just a little lower than the angels.” I can have  tremendous trust in who God is, in his great love for us and in his power to redeem anything without having to believe that he causes even my worst mistakes and sins.

Misconception #3: Jesus died for the ones he came to save, but not for everyone.
This is how many people deal with the fact that many in the world have never heard and will never hear the name of Jesus. It is because Jesus didn’t die for them. The “L” in TULIP means God’s atonement is limited. A Calvinist would say, “It is not my salvation to get and it is not my salvation to lose. It is Christ’s salvation of me.”

An Arminian would agree. God’s salvation is his gift to us, and nothing we do can generate it. But everyone is offered the gift. Every person on this earth has both the right and the opportunity to have their chains broken, their guilt removed and their value restored. There is no one beyond the reach of his mercy. To think otherwise is to judge someone before Christ himself has had the opportunity to do so.

Salvation is a free gift for everyone. Not everyone will accept that gift, but everyone is offered it. Otherwise, what was the cross for?

This is the strength of His grace. It is that willingness of God to be there no matter what, so that we awaken to him, he will be there. Grace is that strong willingness of God to bear our stories of rejection and inadequacy, of dark nights and angry days, even our own stories of sin and shame. God’s grace is strong enough to bear the pain we’ve caused others as well as the pain of others we feel. God is there through all of it. That is what it means to be sovereign. God has been there the whole time, watching and in his strength, waiting.

And God knows what you are made of and God knows what you’ve been though. And that same God has never once given up on you, not even once.

The Institute for Ethics at Duke University conducted an online survey of about 1,500 people as part of a project designed to measure the morality quotient of Americans. They asked people to rate how likely they’d be to do certain morally questionable things like, for instance, kicking a dog in the head. As it turns out (happily), seven of eight respondents would refuse to do that and in fact, would turn down any amount of money up to $1 million to kick Fido in the noggin.

However, half of the participants said they could be motivated to throw a rotten tomato at a politician they dislike. For free.

Would you be among them?

There is no denying it: we have a maddening political climate. We also have anger issues. Anger is not a secular issue; we who follow Jesus are not immune. Just check your Facebook page. In fact, more and more, anger is becoming part of our caricature. Angela, the token Christian on The Office is an angry, tight-lipped, buttoned-up woman. In most cartoons and commentaries, we’re known as the ones who sling condemnation.

So really … are we that angry?

(You’ve heard the old joke– right? — about the shipwreck survivor they discovered on an uncharted island. The ship that spotted him sent a rescue team to shore and found the man alone among three huts. They asked what the three huts were for, since there was no one else around. The survivor explained, “Well, I live in one and go to church in another.” “What about the third hut, then?” asked a rescue team member. “Oh, that,” growled the man. “That’s where I used to go to church.” It is funny only because it is familiar.)

Face it. Christians have something of a reputation and it is only getting worse. I suspect we’re operating out of fear. We’ve pitted our values against a permissive culture and it has left us feeling powerless. In the comparison we’re accused of being angry, condemnation-tossing haters. And to some extent, we deserve the criticism. We who follow Jesus too easily pander to the reputation of being known for what we’re against more than what we’re for.

Wouldn’t it be exciting for Christians to be known more for the infectiousness of their faith than the accuracy of their tomato-tossing?

George Barna is a researcher who does ethnographic research on churches, and one study he did showed that only 4% of adults make their decisions based on the Bible. In his book, Think Like Jesus, he says, “the primary reason that people do not act like Jesus is because they do not think like Jesus … We’re often more concerned with survival amidst chaos than with experiencing truth and significance.”

Hear that again: We are often more concerned about survival amidst chaos than with experiencing truth and significance.

“Survival amidst chaos” hits close to home, doesn’t it? If there has ever been a season of chaos in our country, this would be it. But I have to say — and I say this with great love and respect — I’m concerned for how Christians are responding to this season, for how we are talking in public and what it says about our faith. We are not thinking like Jesus. We have become so focused on what is in front of us that we’ve forgotten what is beyond the horizon.

We’ve engaged emotionally with difficult issues but have failed to speak with integrity, offering emotional responses that are more defensive than intelligent. Our go-to response is more fear than faith.

But you say, “A person can’t sit idly by and let the world roll over them.” Or more personally, “You don’t know my circumstance — how hard I’ve had it and how much it hurts. I can’t lose this war, too.”

To that, Jesus would say, “It doesn’t matter. The ground of our forgiveness is not our circumstances. The ground of our grace is not emotion.” Jesus told a whole story to make this very point (Matthew 18:23-35) saying that grace is a mark of the Kingdom.

Here’s the thing: If it all depends on circumstance, we are right to be desperate. Circumstances can seem hopeless but circumstances do not control my capacity for joy. We who know the end of the story should be responding to life and news and “rumors of wars” with a faith that proclaims something greater than our immediate circumstances. In other words, I don’t have to wait for folks to act right so I can have peace; I can live there now, by faith.

What I am responsible for is the character of my responses to life, and what those responses reveal about the character of Christ in me.

Brothers and sisters, we may be in a confusing season right now but we know how the story ends. We know what is beyond the horizon.

Let’s live and speak as if Jesus is who he says he is.

What would you give your life for?

Your kids? Your spouse? Your family?

Would you give your life for people you don’t know? People forced into prostitution in Bangalore, or unborn babies?

Would you give your life for the Church? Paul tells us Jesus gave his life for just this thing. Jesus gave his life for the Church.

More precisely, Jesus gave his life for people, who are the flesh and blood of the Church. I can’t even begin to comprehend the motives of God. Why does he care about people who are imperfect, selfish, unkind, unthinking, unloving? How was it that Moses and God could find such frustration in fickle people, yet be fully on their side at the end of each day? That reveals a depth of patience and a quality of love I can’t fathom.

God has a vested interest in us and the cross is proof. Further, he has partnered with us through the Holy Spirit. He offers a brand of intimacy and belonging that nothing else can approach. God has literally given his life to us.

But I’m a pastor. Subtly and not so subtly, pastors are taught to detach from personal relationships for the sake of building the Body of Christ. We are taught the psychology of being in community without getting tangled up in it. Books upon books indoctrinate us in the art of boundary-making as a mark of good leadership. And maybe this is especially true of itinerating pastors.

Jesus, meanwhile, says things like, “Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). Jesus is teaching me something radically different here. Jesus is teaching me that it is not just okay but a mark of holiness to discover the place of friendship not beyond but in the midst of ministry. Not beyond but in the midst of community.

When Jesus says, “I no longer call you servants, I call you friends,” he is teaching something radical about community. Find your friends here, he says. And when Jesus says (John 15:16), “You didn’t choose me, but I chose you,” he is challenging us to do something radical. We rejected him, but he still chooses us.

Love is a choice.

Which means I am now free to love even in the face of rejection. We are free to give our hearts to others, to community, because Jesus has chosen to live out his character in us.

In recent conversations with a few single friends, I have discovered that there is a hunger out there for genuine friendships that don’t suffer from the fear of sexual expectation. It seems that our culture has us all so afraid of each other that we default to a defensive posture, keeping ourselves at a distance from each other, unwilling to develop healthy, vulnerable relationships.

This doesn’t have to be.

Jesus had friends … not just disciples. John 11:5 says, “Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.” This is the one personal friendship the Bible mentions for Jesus, and it includes women.

I would be lost without precious friends — male and female — who only add value to my life. Being a pastor, most of my colleagues are men (and since Steve is a teacher, most of his colleagues are women). We don’t shy away from friendship with the people God has placed in our lives. We know who we are and are able to act as responsible adults when we are with others, and our lives are enriched by this choice. Here are a few things that make our friendships work:

Transparency — Any healthy friendship requires a lack of anything resembling secrecy, especially when it is with a friend of another gender. There should be no shadow of dishonesty, nor of politics. Too often, pastors erect political boundaries that keep us from real conversations and real influence. We’ve chosen correctness over kindness. Who says we can’t be genuinely in relationship with the people in our communities? We can decide to do this, without abusing relationships, simply by being honest with people about who we are.

Boundaries — I control my own boundaries. I get to choose the nature of my relationships. I am not a victim of other people’s feelings nor of my own, and my reactions are a choice. All of us who follow Jesus should aspire to that level of maturity. “Grow up in every way,” Paul counseled. Surely he meant it for our relationships, too. This means I can decide how and when I can be present to others, and it means I can choose to love others without fear of their responses because I know who I am.

Accountability — Friends hold each other accountable for their actions. They respect and accept each other, yet they are not afraid to confront each other when the need arises. Friends depend on one another for support in times of crisis, whether emotional or material. Friendship is a relationship of trust, confidence, and intimacy. It is not southern kindness, but something deeper — a willingness to speak truth in love.

Henry Cloud and John Townsend (authors of the book Boundaries) have said, “Spiritual growth is not only coming back into a relationship with God and each other and about pursuing a pure life, but it is also about coming back to life — the life God created people to live.”

Learning to live vulnerably and maturely in relationship with others — learning to be a real friend — is a gift on the way to real life and it is the work of the Church, for which Jesus died.

Did you ever run across the old children’s book called “Mr. Happy”? His story goes like this: one day he leaves his very happy home and goes walking in the neighborhood. He finds a door and wonders to himself, “who lives here?” When he goes through the door he is led down a long staircase and into the room where Mr. Miserable lives. Mr. Happy leads Mr. Miserable out of the room, up the stairs and back to his home, where Mr. Miserable stays for some time. Over the time he is there, Mr. Happy begins to rub off on him and one day Mr. Miserable finds himself beginning to do something he has never done before. He smiles. The story ends with the lesson that if we’re ever miserable, we can fix it by smiling!

Isn’t that precious? And maybe a bit delusional?

Yes, there are some people who actually can “fix” themselves just by turning their frown upside down. I don’t know how that works. Either they have such optimism that they can will themselves happy, or they live in such denial that they can smile past anything. Privately, I am envious of those people. We need them, so the rest of us don’t pull the whole ship down.

But those people — the naturally giddy ones — are not most of us. Most of us are moody. We are stressed out and confused about our lives and the lives of people we live with. We deal with real depression, real anxiety, real mood disorders. Many of us chronically feel like we’re running just to keep up. So how do messages about joy work for real people like us, whose lives are a little more complicated than Mr. Happy? How do we do this thing called reality without it looking like a Hallmark card? How does joy mesh with stress and broken dreams and broken relationships and the death of people we love and the kind of anxiety and depression that goes deeper than a bad mood or a bad day?

Here’s my real question: how does what we read in the Bible about joy make sense if you’re on Prozac or worse yet, if you’re not, but should be? If Jesus said, “I came that you might have joy, and that you might have it to the full,” then how do I acquire that inheritance? Here’s what I believe: I believe biblical joy is not only attainable, but is the normal state of the Spirit-filled life. Christians are meant to grow in joy.  And as we’ve already said, maybe your temperament or approach to life or other circumstances makes this more of a challenge for you.

But as a follower of Jesus, filled with the Holy Spirit, it is your inheritance. And there are things we can do to clear the channel so we have the most opportunity to experience the fruit of the Spirit-filled life.

Let’s start with a definition. What is biblical joy?

1. Joy is a spiritually generated response to God’s goodness.

2. Joy is a deep-down assurance that the quality of my life is not rooted in my feelings or circumstances but in the love, cover and hope of a good and faithful God.

3. Spiritual joy comes from a deeper place than our everyday emotions, which are also gifts from God. The difference is that emotions don’t have roots, but spiritual fruit does.

4. Joy is a natural fruit of the Spirit-filled life.

There are barriers to joy, just like there are barriers to grace. We let things, like sin, self and circumstances to get in the way of the flow of joy. And one of the most painful blocks to joy is unforgiveness.

The first habit of joyful people is that they forgive easily. We know this, because forgiveness is the cornerstone of our faith. God’s seminal statement to humanity at the most critical moment in the world’s history was the statement he made at the cross. And that statement was simply (profoundly) this: I forgive you. Joy begins at the cross!

Ephesians 4:21-24 reads, “when you heard about Christ and were taught in him in accordance with the truth that is in Jesus. You were taught, with regard to your former way of life, to put off your old self, which is being corrupted by its deceitful desires; to be made new in the attitude of your minds; and to put on the new self, created to be like God in true righteousness and holiness.”

Malcolm Gladwell has written a book called “Blink,” about the thousand decisions we make every day in the smallest slices of time — choices we make in split-seconds during a conversation — that determine how we respond to life at the subconscious level. Gladwell interviewed one psychologist who has made a study of watching couples in conversation. This guy has become so adept at watching their non-verbal communication that he can tell with incredible accuracy how likely they are to divorce, after just a few minutes of watching them talk. His point is that how we react to other people in the briefest moments even non-verbally says a lot about what’s beneath the surface.

This psychologist has boiled hundreds of facial expressions down to four major categories. He calls them the Four Horsemen: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism and contempt. And he says the real killer among those four is contempt.

He says, “You’d think criticism would be the worst, because it maligns character. But contempt is worse, because it puts one person above another. It’s when we look down on another person that we do the most damage.” And it is so damaging, the psychologist says, that it affects our immune system.

Contempt is a killer. No wonder the enemy of our souls has made a career out of getting us to go there. He wants us to make pecking orders. To make ourselves better than others. The enemy has made quite a career out of doing nothing more than keeping your heart hard toward another human being. And it is brilliant, really. He can make it slice both ways, so we feel chronically inadequate while we’re tearing others down so they never feel good enough, either.

That’s the tactic of the enemy of our souls.

In his teaching on forgiveness, Chuck Swindoll asks some good questions:

• Do you free people, or do you hold them hostage?

• Do you relieve them of guilt and shame, or do you increase their load?

• Do you encourage others or discourage them?

• Do you find yourself participating in the world of construction or the world of destruction?

• Do you point out people’s faults and failures or their strengths and accomplishments?

Paul says that if we’re going to practice true, deep-down forgiveness, we have to find a new way of seeing our circumstances so that we cultivate a spirit of honor.

Go with me to Mark 10:17-22. This is how Jesus did it. He didn’t wait for a person’s behavior to straighten up. He learned to love people right where they were, before they got it all right. And this is what it looks like to walk in forgiveness, and this is the difference between walking in deep-down, New Testament forgiveness and simply “letting it go.” Walking in forgiveness requires that we keep our hearts open, that we engage the practice of love, not as a feeling but as a discipline.

How can I practice repentance and renewal in my life?

Name your spirit of offense. This is what it means to confess your sins. If you won’t name it before the God who already knows it, he is not likely to heal you of it. Sometimes, I suspect God waits for us to name our sin so we can hear ourselves say it … so we can acknowledge our part in our own pain. God is good about asking us to take responsibility – to grow up.

Pray daily for the person who has offended you until you sense your outlook changing. I learned this from Jerry Varnado, a friend in ministry. When Jerry’s wife left him on the day of his best friend’s funeral, he was mad. Probably should have been. But over time that anger settled in and became bitterness. Does that sound familiar? This is what Paul means in Ephesians when he says we can be angry, but we don’t have permission from Jesus to sin. Anger is a feeling. Bitterness is a sin. It has a root to it, a root that will choke out the roots of spiritual fruit. Bitterness separates us from God.

Finally, a friend told him to spend two weeks praying for his ex-wife. And not to pray that God would smite her or make her understand or change her in some way. But to pray God’s best over her. He said the first time he prayed that prayer, it sounded something like this: “God, I know you know I don’t really mean this, but I’m praying God’s best over my ex-wife. Amen.”

Every day, he prayed a prayer like that. At the end of the first week, he was able to leave off the part about not really meaning it. At the end of the second week, the anger was gone. Did it mean everything was great for them from then out? No. But things were better for Jerry.

Lewis Smedes in “The Art of Forgiving,” says, “the first and sometimes only person to get the benefits of forgiving is the person who does the forgiving.” I want to ask you to think honestly about this: Is there a bitter root in you? Is there someone who has offended you, recently or years ago, who you’ve not been able to release? If you are not ready to go make peace with someone and if you find yourself harboring anger, and if you don’t know what to do with that, then start with prayer.

Ask yourself: what one good quality in this person’s life can I begin with as I pray? Never mind whether they deserve it or not. Here’s the thing. When it comes to grace, “deserve” has nothing to do with it. Smedes says, “of course he does not deserve to be forgiven. Nobody does. (Even) being sorry for the wrong we did does not earn us a right to be forgiven. There is no such thing as a right to be forgiven. Forgiving flows always and only from what theologians call grace — unearned, undeserved favor.”

Joy flows from the same well as grace. And it begins with repentance and renewal. If I’m going to learn Christ and embrace the new life he offers, I have to let go of the old life, the lower existence. And a key piece in learning Christ is learning to walk in forgiveness. This is the difference between reacting and responding. To put it plainly, I have to learn to discipline my emotions, especially the emotion of anger, so it doesn’t create opportunity for sin in my life.

This new life that Paul talks about (that we learn from Christ) will call us to take every thought captive, including the angry ones. Part of learning how to respond in adult ways to painful things is learning to deal directly and honestly with others. I really think this is right at the heart of what Paul means when he says in this next verse …

In Ephesians 4:29, Paul wrote, “do not let any unwholesome talk come out of your mouths, but only what is helpful for building others up according to their needs, that it may benefit those who listen.” Paul isn’t suggesting here that we make ourselves into a doormat — allowing ourselves to be abused, over and over, by the same people. It just means that in our conversations with those who hurt us, we learn the language of grace.

I saw this in a post by Ann Barab, on the habits of joyful people. She says we create our own unhappiness with our JUNK:

• Judgments – criticism. One of the four horsemen that shows up in our facial expressions, even when we don’t realize it. Judgment is a slippery slope that leads too easily into contempt.

• Unforgiveness – carrying a spirit of entitlement; you can’t grow humility and unforgiveness in the same spirit.

• Negativity – Barab says it takes no skill to be negative.

• Know-it-all-ness – another way of expressing defensiveness and contempt.

How much JUNK are you carrying around? Barab says these are the biggest obstacles to joy. And the real courage comes in forgiving completely, from the heart, as God in Christ has forgiven us. Living an authentic Christian life depends on this point.

“Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32).That’s the bottom-line reason for any act of forgiveness we offer: We do it because we’ve been forgiven for all the rascally, stupid, short-sighted, downright-mean things we’ve done in our lives, and it may be that until we have received that forgiveness from God, we aren’t able to truly forgive anyone else. So hear this: Christ looked on our sin and forgave us for all of it. What we’ve received for ourselves, we use to relieve others, so they don’t have to bear shame and guilt, either.

We’ve talked about two practical ways to clear the channel for joy: Name your spirit of offense. Pray daily for those toward whom you have unforgiveness. How else can we practically support our quest for joy?

1. Seek help from others. Sometimes what we need most is another perspective. David Seamands says that when we are angry or depressed, our perceptions change. A little hill becomes a great mountain. But real friends can help you see its true height in perspective. And it helps, too, to remember that not everyone around us is against us. Its so easy to get the Elijah Syndrome going … “I’m the only one like me. There’s no one else who understands.” That’s one of the things we naturally do when we are angry, upset or depressed – we instinctively build walls to protect ourselves. When you have a wall of anger around you, then it is hard to walk up and love on you. Reach out. Do the thing you least want to do.

2. Sing! Make music. I used to call Steve “the singing bush,” because especially when he was dealing with depression, he sang incessantly. Drove me nuts. Until I started dealing with some obsessive thought patterns and realized I couldn’t will myself to stop thinking what I was thinking. One day, I heard myself singing and realized that when I sing, even if the rest of the world suffers, I feel better. Now I intentionally work to keep a song going in my head all the time. And you know what? Its such a simple thought, but it works. If you can’t stop being angry at someone, try singing the thought out of your head. That’s what David did. That’s where a lot of those psalms came from. He chose in the midst of his anguish to praise the Lord.

3. Remember and give thanks. This one is related to singing, but different. With this one, we are choosing to look at things differently. We are choosing, like Joseph, to see the big picture – to say, “maybe the world meant to hurt me, but God means nothing but good from this.” God can use anything, God can make good out of anything. I was talking to someone recently about a painful memory, and she said, “you know, in a weird way, I’m glad for it now.” I understand that. When we accept the power of Christ in our lives, we begin to get it that he can make good out of anything. Anything. We’ll talk more about this next week.

4. Lean heavily on the power of God’s Word. Because here’s what I’m learning about scripture and about Jesus and about all the things we teach and say: it works. God’s Word is exactly what it promises to be. It is good news for the poor and release for the captives. It really is a way for blind people to see and the very power of God for salvation. If God asks us to forgive our enemies and those persecute us, its because he wants nothing less for us than joy. Jesus says as much (John 15:11). And if God tells us that we can’t be in communion with him so long as we harbor anger and unforgiveness in our hearts, he tells us that because He knows it to be true. He knows what we’re made of and he knows what we’re made for. I came, Jesus said, that my joy might be in you, that your joy might be full.

It began with Jesus, who invited twelve guys to quit their day jobs and enroll in a three-year intensive, seminary-level program. By following Jesus, these guys learned Hebrew Bible, pastoral care, prayer and healing, theology, missions and evangelism, preaching and economics. At the end of three years, Jesus declared them ready (in fact, he called them his peers) and commissioned them with these words, found in Matthew 28:18:20:

All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.

Authority has been given to Jesus, the King of an in-breaking Kingdom, and his intention is to conquer the earth not by force but through the proclamation of his gospel to every people, nation and language. According to the Great Commission, his vision for reaching the world is to mobilize those who now follow Jesus, sharing his authority with all followers so we can go, make disciples, baptize people into this community and teach them how to live this Spirit-led life.

If you’re looking for one theme to unify the whole Bible, this is it: God is building a kingdom on earth, so he can redeem a broken world. And he is using people to accomplish his purposes. The Great Commission belongs to all of us.

Forty-three days after this pronouncement, this first class of disciples was given not a diploma or a title but the authority of the Holy Spirit. According to Acts 1:8, Jesus told them that, “you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Sure enough, a few days later when they were filled with the Holy Spirit they were immediately compelled to begin sharing the story with people from many tribes and languages. The first day they went out, three thousand people joined up and began to follow Jesus as the Chosen One who came to rescue us from slavery to sin and death.

From there, the disciples began to fan out into Jerusalem, Judea and beyond, sharing this truth about how God is at work in the world. Having conquered the biggest learning curve of this course on the Kingdom of God — that being the embrace of Jesus as Messiah — the disciples were now challenged with breaking down their own cultural and religious biases. Could they imagine a God who is interested in people who are not like them? After all, for two thousand years they’d considered themselves God’s chosen people. His favorites. Everyone else was, well … not chosen.

Then Peter had a vision. We know it is a big deal because the story is told three times in the book of Acts. First, the writer describes how Peter is alone on a rooftop when he has a vision. Something like a sheet comes down from the sky and in the sheet are all kinds of animals Jews would never have touched — animals considered ritually unclean. A voice from the sky instructs, “Peter, you can have anything on the menu. Anything I’ve made, I will bless.”

The immediate and literal meaning of this vision is that Peter is welcome to eat anything he wants to eat. The rules are not the relationship under this new covenant. But deeper, much deeper, is the revelation that all people matter to God. When Peter recounts the story to friends, he shares this stunning insight (Acts 10:34): “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts those from every nation who fear him and do what is right.

For people who assumed they were God’s favorites, this changes everything. Peter’s vision changed the value of people (like finding out your maintenance man is a millionaire). Now the pond is an ocean; God is drawing from the ends of the earth to fill his kingdom. His vision also changed the value of Jesus’ own teachings. When he said, “God so loved the world that he gave his only son,” he was actually saying that the grace of God covers all people, not just one race of them. And when Jesus called himself the way, the truth and the life, he actually meant that it was no longer lineage or law that qualifies us, but Jesus himself who connects us to the heart of God.

What a way to smash a world view!

Getting from Jerusalem to Samaria and then to the rest of the world was first about understanding God’s love for all people, and second about separating the laws and customs of the Jewish people from the gift of salvation. Here’s how that happened. Paul and Barnabas were with a group of believers in Antioch when they heard that some were still teaching circumcision as a rite of passage into the kingdom (see Acts 15:1-3). Having the wisdom to do so, these two leaders took the question back to the apostles. They wanted clarity on just what this gospel means, so they’d be representing not just their own opinions but the collective wisdom of those who followed Jesus faithfully.

Let’s consider Acts 15:6-11.

The apostles and elders met to consider this question [of whether a person has to abide by any rituals in order to be saved]. After much discussion, Peter got up and addressed them: ‘Brothers, you know that some time ago God made a choice among you that the Gentiles might hear from my lips the message of the gospel and believe. God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us. He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.

At that meeting, the key leaders in this Jesus movement discerned the will of God and decided that if any action other than faith is required to bring salvation into a life, then Jesus alone is not enough. And since Jesus himself never asked anything other than a willingness to follow him, then how could they? Paul had been set free from all that legalism and he wasn’t about to enslave anyone else in it. So he took this gospel of freedom to the Romans and the Corinthians and the Ephesians and the Philippians and even to the jailers who held him prisoner for preaching it, that we are saved by grace through faith. Salvation is a free gift of the one, true God, secured for us by the sacrifice of Jesus of Nazareth.

Which doesn’t sound dangerous but it is. By the middle of the first century, Christians were being killed for teaching salvation by grace through faith in Jesus. Stephen, the first martyr, was killed for nothing more than claiming this. He was the first of a faithful brand of follower that has been part of our journey ever since. In our time, more than 170,000 Christians are killed annually for the cause of Christ. In fact, more Christians were martyred in the 20th century than all the other centuries combined.

Our faith is characterized by a willingness to die. In fact, the church of Jesus Christ grows best when it is oppressed. The more Christians have been persecuted over the centuries, the more the movement has spread. Christianity is growing fastest today in countries like China, Cuba, and in African countries where war, disease and poverty are driving people to the only true source of hope. Even while Nero used Christians as garden torches, people from all over the known world were traveling to Rome, getting infected with the good news and taking it back to their own countries. Philip converted an Ethiopian, who went home and spread the good news. Thomas spoke the name of Jesus into the soil of India.

Can a person be a Christian without telling anyone? I don’t think so. It is in our DNA to spread the word.

Do you remember the dramatic rescue of 33 men who were trapped in a mine in Chile a few years ago? For 17 days, it was believed that all 33 were dead, until somehow they got word to the surface that they were all alive. Not just some, but all. For the next 52 days, that little group of men became an international fixation as the world watched their survival and rescue. They were coached in the art of survival, taught how to discipline their days so they could maintain sanity while they waited for those on the surface to figure out a rescue plan.

Eventually, a plan was devised and the rescues commenced. Do you remember how it was for us on the watching end? Every miner pulled up from beneath was celebrated. Every one of them. All 33. Many of them dropped to their knees upon reaching the surface to thank God for their life.

Mario was number nine. I can’t imagine Mario coming up out of that shaft feeling so good about his own rescue that he forgets to care about the 24 still down in the mine. I cannot imagine the people of Chile losing interest after the first few rescues, shrugging their shoulders and leaving the scene for the boredom of it. That’s not how great rescue stories work.

And in the same way, I cannot imagine a follower of Jesus coming up out of the darkness and shrugging his or her shoulders over those who are still down there, who will die down there if no one goes in after them. I cannot imagine a person with the spirit of Christ saying that the others don’t matter.

That is why we go to the ends of the earth. We go because it’s our commission but really, we go because they haven’t all been rescued yet, and because no follower of Jesus should feel complacent or comfortable as long as there are people still down there in the pit waiting to get out.

This part of the story isn’t really new, and wouldn’t have been for those first-century Jews who followed Jesus. The most famous passage of scripture for a Jewish person is Deuteronomy 6:4–9, which distills into precious few words the truth and what we are to do with it.

Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength … commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

It has always been God’s plan for the story to spread through the simple act of one person talking about God with another — at home with our children, in our communities, out on the road, even to the ends of the earth. The truth, we’re told, should be such an obvious part of our lives that it hangs between our eyes and emanates from our doors.

But if I begin to live like this, won’t I sound weird? Won’t I lose something of myself? No! To the contrary, it is our own stories God most wants to use. And in the ways we are most able to uniquely share. Oswald Chambers says the Christian life is characterized by spontaneous creativity. I think that applies especially in the art of telling your story. Helping someone know what you have found in Jesus isn’t about a set of principles or verses. It is an opportunity to tell your story in the context of the moment. Who were you before you found Jesus? What happened to make you change your mind about him? How has that changed you? Who are you now? What have you learned by following Jesus? Can you put into words the difference between the moment you came to believe in Jesus, and the life you’ve lived by following him?

The story after the Nativity is your story. This is the one God intends to use to build his Kingdom on earth. Nothing less, more or different than the story of how Jesus rescued you from the pit and gave you another chance at life.

“I told you this so that my joy might be in you, so that your joy might be full.” – John 15:11

I love the image of a smiling Jesus. It always inspires me to wonder about the things Jesus might have smiled at. Children, certainly. I have a sense that no child in a marketplace ever escaped his smile. People in the wake of a healing, with their exclamations of wonder and thanksgiving. I bet he smiled at some of the things his disciples said, much like we smile at them today. And I’m guessing he laughed large whenever someone came to a realization of God’s truth. The day Zacchaeus got it, surely Jesus laughed for the sheer joy of the moment.

Now, compare that image with a scene I want you to paint in your mind. Imagine you’re in it. You are a citizen of a closed country. All your life, you’ve been told that the president of that country is a god, and that your country is a paradise. You’re told that a lot, maybe to help you believe it. Because you eat corn gruel. Every meal is corn gruel, and “every meal” is maybe two meals a day. Maybe. Just getting those two meals on the table (if you have a table) takes a lot of work. Your overwhelming thought all the time is food, and how to get it. You are always hungry.

And this is paradise.

You get no news from the outside and very few people from the outside know about you. This isn’t the primitive culture of a forgotten tribe in Africa. Your country has been industrialized. There are electrical wires and tall buildings in cities. But there is no electricity running through those wires. And there are no cars. No lights, no cars, no entertainment. From the sky at night, your country looks like a black hole. People who are old enough talk about the days when most homes had electricity. Lights and even radios. But those days are long gone. For the most part, the purchase of a car is against the law.

Except for a few jobs in mills, there is nothing else to do but farm poor soil or scrounge for food. And this is paradise.

You’d leave, except that leaving is also against the law, and punishable by death. And besides, as far as you know, this is as good as it gets. Sure, life is hard and no one talks badly about the president (your god) or the country without being punished for it. But other countries are hopeless. They don’t have your god, and the people are evil and they live far worse than you do. At least, that’s what you’ve been told.

You have heard of people who left. They snuck out. But for the most part, that has never been a thought to cross your mind. For the most part. You wouldn’t dare tell anyone, not even your mother (because spies are everywhere), but sometimes you wonder if this really is paradise. Sometimes you wonder if the president really is a god. After all, there have been famines in your land and you’re not sure there are famines in paradise.

So yes, you’ve wondered about things. And yes, you’ve wondered about leaving. And the more you wonder about leaving, the less sure you become of staying. You decide to learn more, and you discover that there is a way out. With enough money, you can sneak out of paradise. So late one night, you pay a border guard and cross a river, and on the other side, you find people who do something you have almost never seen. They smile. They are happy to see you, and they have set up a place just for people like you. They give you clothes (when is the last time you got a new set of clothes?), and food that is not corn gruel. It is simple but good. They have a place for you to sleep and the next day, when you’re thinking you’ll go out and find some more food, they bring another meal to you. And then another meal. And then another. Maybe for the first time in your life, you feel like a human. For the first time in your life, you’re beginning to feel like…not an animal or a puppet.

The people who run these shelters for people like you are something. They believe in freedom, and in taking care of people. And they believe in a god, too…who they call Jesus. They tell you all about him. It turns out he is not the god of one country, they say, but the God of the whole world. Even of the people who live in your country, even though they don’t know about him. They tell you about this God and his love and that he wants to set everyone free. Even people who live in prisons. There is a freedom, they say, that happens inside when you believe in this God. And this freedom creates the love these people show, and the joy and the peace.

In your own country people steal from each other. And lying is not unusual, but who can really blame them? That’s how it is when folks are just trying to survive. But these people who follow Jesus talk a lot about truth and about giving up their own rights for the sake of this truth. That’s a really different thought for you. You know what it means to have no rights or privileges. You’ve lived a lifetime like that. But to give up your rights freely for the sake of something bigger than yourself or your survival? That’s a radical thought.

They tell you that this is what it means to follow their God. This Jesus. While it doesn’t make sense, the more you look at these people, the more you want it. They laugh. They hold their heads high (in your country, people who follow a foreign god are often forced to hold their heads down). They serve, and it’s a blessing. You’re learning to smile.

And then, you get caught. You are taken back across the river to your old country where they toss you into a filthy, crowded prison and a return to daily starvation. You are interrogated regularly (with force) for the purpose of getting you to renounce all you’ve been taught. But here in the midst of this suffering, you discover perhaps the most amazing thing of all: what they taught you across the border is even more true here than it was there. In this prison, you discover that this God of theirs doesn’t have borders. He really is God in any country. You know this to be true, because when you think about him while you’re sitting in this prison, you feel hope. You feel loved. You feel options.

This prison isn’t your truth; he is. This certainly isn’t joy, but he is. This isn’t freedom, but he is. Sitting in that prison, you discover what those people who took care of you possess. You discover a hunger for others to know this Jesus. Why should anyone be denied the right to his hope, this freedom that comes not from crossing borders, but from knowing the truth.

The story you’ve just imagined is being lived out right now, every day, among people living in North Korea. North Korea has the largest population in the world of what are called political prisoners, which is a broad category encompassing any offense against the state, including disrespect of the president. Citizens are imprisoned in their own country by a system ruled by a man who lives under the delusion that he is a god. They say North Koreans don’t smile much.

The story you’ve just imagined is also being lived out spiritually in many places, among people oppressed by a system of beliefs based on tyranny, force and legalism. Paul, who wrote most of the New Testament, lived most of his life under such a system. In fact, the very literal story we’ve just imagined could well have been his spiritual story. The Bible tells a story of a people who lost their connection with God. They were like a country that used to have electricity running through its wires. The Law that was supposed to build their character, teach them holiness and define boundaries in their relationship with God, became nothing more than one more oppression in an oppressive society. Rather than a goal of being perfect in love, they’d become sticklers for perfection. And any misstep was cause for punishment. That pursuit made them angry and bitter people. They were starving, spiritually. Imprisoned by a system of obedience that stole their smiles. Paul was raised in that culture.

Live like that long enough and either your heart grows hard or you start longing for life beyond the borders. Paul didn’t exactly long for that life, but when he encountered it on a road between cities he found it irresistible. Jesus himself walked Paul across the border into freedom, where Paul discovered those things — like love, joy and peace — that make life worth living. When they came for him and threw him into prison, it only intensified his passion for truth.

Paul’s letter to the Philippian church is written four years into his imprisonment in a dank, dark first-century jail. He would surely have gone without meals there, but it only made him hungry for souls. He may well have been chained to a prison guard, but it only made him obsessed with spiritual freedom. Not just for himself but for everyone. In a circumstance seemingly without hope, Paul writes an ode to joy. In each chapter, Paul explains his source of joy.

Chapter 1: My mood is rooted in something bigger than myself.

“Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.

Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ this will turn out for my deliverance. It is my eager expectation and hope that I will not be put to shame in any way, but that by my speaking with all boldness, Christ will be exalted now as always in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” – Philippians 1:15-21

By the time Paul writes this letter, he has been in prison for at least four years, yet the overwhelming emotion in his communication with the church in Philippi is joy. He rejoices in Christ, rejoices in a community that has supported him, rejoices in the good news. His response defines the nature of spiritual joy:

• Joy is a spiritually generated response to God’s goodness.
• Joy is a deep down assurance that the quality of life is not rooted in feelings or circumstances, but in the love, cover and hope of a good and faithful God.
• Joy is a natural fruit of the Spirit-filled life.

Paul proves by his own testimony that the quality of life is not rooted in circumstances but in the care and cover of our Heavenly Father.

Chapter 2: My relationships are centered in partnership, not competition.

“If then there is any encouragement in Christ, any consolation from love, any sharing in the Spirit, any compassion and sympathy, make my joy complete: be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.” – Philippians 2:1-4.

Christians have overused the word fellowship (and have massacred it grammatically by trying to turn it into a verb!), but it is a rich word for us. It means “mutual support” or “living in unity.” Given those definitions, fellowship describes the spirit of the relationship between Paul and the Philippians. This is what held them together across the miles. The Philippians look to Paul for spiritual leadership and Paul finds delight in their faithfulness. His mood doesn’t depend on their acting or thinking the “right” way, but he can still delight in their faithfulness.

Chapter 3: My journey is focused on progress, not perfection.

“Finally, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord. To write the same things to you is not troublesome to me, and for you it is a safeguard.  Not that I have already obtained this or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Beloved, I do not consider that I have made it my own; but this one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the heavenly call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind; and if you think differently about anything, this too God will reveal to you. Only let us hold fast to what we have attained.” – Philippians 3:1, 12-16.

Paul says, “forgetting what lies behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” As those pressing on toward the goal of holiness, we require the child within to step back so the adult can lead, because we understand that maturity is a source of joy.

Chapter 4: I practice joy by pursuing intimacy with God.

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:4-7

Intimacy is hard! It requires vulnerability, and vulnerability means letting my guard down and being fully present. That is hard work. More and more, I’m convinced that discipline and the pursuit of the Holy Spirit are keys. The disciplines of prayer, personal devotion, and searching the Word for my own life are remarkably important. Pursuing the Holy Spirit and seeking his gifts and presence in my life, I discover closeness to the Father that bears the fruit of devotion.

Paul’s journey from the country of legalism into freedom in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit bore the fruit of the Spirit — love when before he’d only known hatred, joy in place of duty, peace in place of striving, patience in place of anger, kindness in place of “breathing threats and murder” (Acts 9:1), goodness in place of spiritual pride, faithfulness in place of self-righteousness, gentleness in place of legalism and self-control in place of self-imprisonment. He teaches us that there is another country where we, too, can be free, and where we, too, can find joy.

Will you pray?

Lord, I want to live in that world where my relationship with you is defined by love, joy and peace in any circumstance. I want to give more of myself to you so I can discover more of your heart. I want freedom. I want to be filled with the Holy Spirit, like electricity running through a wire. I want to know you intimately, and I ask now that you help me let go of pride so I can confess any sins that stand between me and a growing relationship with you. I want to be able to say with David, “In Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever” (Psalm 16:11). Speak to these deep longings, Father, and hear my prayer, in Jesus’ name. Amen.

How very good and pleasant it is
when kindred live together in unity!
It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down upon the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down over the collar of his robes. It is like the dew of Hermon, which falls on the mountains of Zion. For there the Lord ordained his blessing, life forevermore. – Psalm 133

When I was five years old, my family changed churches. We were a family of eight, but my mother, sister and I were the only ones who went to church with any regularity. To be honest, I don’t know what was behind the decision to move. But for whatever reason, we went to the big church on the hill.

I remember the car ride on that first Sunday we went to the new church. My mother called to me in the back seat and said, “Carolyn, now this is a big, fancy church, and we have to be very quiet during the service. You cannot talk during church.” I didn’t remember talking during church before, but I can tell you, I was very quiet at the new, fancy church.

We must have liked it there because we stayed, and you know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Just like at the other church, we were still among the last to leave every Sunday because my mother would not go home until she had spoken to everyone. Maybe that’s why I liked communion Sundays so much. It gave me something to do while I waited for my mom. After church on communion Sundays, while my mother talked, I’d go up to the altar and play with all the little cups that were left there.

You know how there is always a little bit of grape juice left in the bottom of those little cups? Well, I could take the leavings from two or three little cups and just about fill up another one. And I could usually down three or four shots before my mother caught sight of me. “You can not play with the little cups!” she’d say, as she dragged me off by my arm.

So I find it ironic, all these years later, that I make my living talking during church and playing with those little cups. It is a good thing, too, because I didn’t have a lot of other options. I am not particularly musical, not athletic at all, not brilliant, artistic or technical. I know a little bit about a few things, but not a lot about anything.

But I do have one passion. I love the church. I love it! I love the Lord. He is the reason I live. But I am a pastor because I love the church. It fascinates me that Almighty God, in all his wisdom, chose this organism as his medium for sharing his revelation of Jesus Christ. And my passion is for seeing that organism, the Church, work in the way God intended when he passed the Body of Christ from the person of Jesus to the people of God. I don’t claim to know God’s whole vision for that kind of church, but I do believe he is looking for more than just somebody to talk on Sundays who occasionally plays with those little cups. In fact, I believe he is crying out for the people of God to be the body of Christ…the Church being the Church. But I’m not sure most of us have had good examples of that.

What Is “The Church”?

I’m guessing we’d all agree that it is more than just talking on Sundays and playing with little cups…but what is the church?

• Do you hear the word “church” as a positive or negative thing?
• What do you think the church is supposed to be doing?
• Is it a place or people?
• Is it an organization or an organism?
• Who is in charge of the church?

Deitrich Bonhoeffer writes, “Christianity means community in Jesus Christ and through Jesus Christ…we belong to each other only through and in Jesus Christ.” Jesus is head of the church. He is the founding pastor. He gave the vision after his resurrection, and then set it in motion at his ascension.

Paul is the one who helped us interpret the vision. That’s what a lot of the New Testament does. It is Paul, working out his understanding of the Church while he’s dealing with the first churches ever to exist. In his letters, he’s helping these brand new churches understand who they are. They are…in some mysterious but real way…the body of Christ on earth.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit;” and then he continues, “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” (I Corinthians 12:12-13, 26-27)

Let this sink in. Hear what Paul is really saying. He is not talking about organizational structure or a membership covenant. He isn’t talking about a civic organization or a well-run non-profit. He is talking about a cosmic reality: those who become part of the Body of Christ…become part of the Body of Christ!

This is what our Bible teaches us: The Church is the Body of Christ on earth. When we talking about sharing life, we’re really talking about sharing the life of Christ. Allowing Christ’s life to flow through us, living out the resurrected Body of Christ.

Where did Paul get this from? Go back to Acts chapter nine, where Saul, who was Paul before he got saved, was breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord. Picture this: he is on his way to Damascus where he plans to root out other followers of Jesus and kill them or throw them in jail. But then Jesus Christ himself shows up.

“Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.'”(Acts 9:3-5)

I seem to be coming back to this scene a lot lately. I’m beginning to see just how radical it is. Paul was a first-century terrorist. If there had been newspapers he would have been in the news. People knew about this guy. And this is who God chooses. A vision comes to him and tells him he is persecuting not people but Jesus. And then Paul is struck blind for three days so he can think about that.

In his book Give Them Christ, Steve Seamands says that when Paul walked out of that darkness, he walked out with a whole new appreciation for the spiritual connection between believers: “When you persecute the Church, Saul is told, you are directly – not indirectly – persecuting Christ himself. That’s how close the connection is between the risen Lord and his followers. So when we come to faith in Christ through the Holy Spirit, we actually become part of his resurrected body, it is his very life, his resurrected life, in which we share and participate. This is what makes the church essentially a living organism, not an organization. In an organism – plant, animal or human – all the cells share a common life. Likewise the body of Christ, all the parts, regardless how distinct and diverse they are, share a common life – the life of our risen Lord.”

Jesus holds us together. Jesus makes us who we are.

How Does it Work?

Think of it this way: I have five siblings. Four brothers and a sister. What makes us brothers and sisters is my parents, Stewart and Angel Capers. Without them, we wouldn’t be related. But because of them, we can’t not be related. Whether we get together once a year because we feel obligated to, or we text each other every day, we belong to each other, not because of how we act but because we share the same head of the family. We carry their DNA.

That’s the way Paul talks about the church. It is Christ, living on earth as community. Because Jesus was raised from the dead and gave his Spirit to us, we now carry his life into the world. Steve Seamands says,

“That’s why we must preach about this crucial connection between resurrection and church. When we fail to understand it, the church is reduced to a human religious institution and inevitably become more about us than it is about Christ. We, the members and parts of the body, end up taking control of its leadership and setting its goals. Human initiative and energy fuel its life. It becomes ‘our church,’ ‘the pastor’s church,’ ‘that family’s church’ or ‘my church’ more than Christ’s.”

What makes a church Christ’s church? Jesus.

So do you get it? That putting Jesus at the center of everything we do becomes really important? Otherwise, how will they know we’re related? Then Paul tells us that in Christ’s church, all people matter.

Unity in Diversity

We read in 1 Corinthians 12:14-20, 27,

“Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body.”

I am left-handed, and I’ve just returned from three weeks in India, where being left-handed can be a bit of a challenge. In many middle-eastern countries, the left hand is used for hygiene, so the custom is that you don’t use your left hand for anything else. Don’t eat with it. Don’t touch people with it. But I’m really left-handed, so that’s a challenge for me.

For a couple of days, we visited in a home for the poorest of the poor. We took nail polish with us. We were going to give the women a treat by painting their nails. I’m not a nail-painter in my own world. I’m really not a nail-painter in a right-handed world. This was way outside my comfort level. But I am a team player, so if nail painting is the task, then I’ll do my best.

The first day, I noticed that some of the other team members pretty quickly gathered crowds. Women were all around them, waiting to get their nails painted. But I had hardly anyone asking me to paint their nails. It took most of that day for me to get it that it was because I’m left-handed. I can’t paint nails with my right hand. That second day, the first person whose nails I painted wanted to know why I was using my left hand. She wasn’t speaking English, but I was really clear on what she was asking. At first, I was a little defensive. I’ll be honest. This person who had lice in her hair, who smelled of urine, who was in an indigent care home, and she found my left hand unsettling. When I told her I couldn’t use my right hand, she wanted someone else to do her nails. That little exchange got me thinking: how often do I decide someone is “less than” or “not as good as,” simply because they aren’t like me?

After that, I gave up painting nails. Instead, I began circulating through the women, praying for them. And now that I was inside my comfort zone, I began to see Jesus. I saw him and heard him. I would pray, “Lord, be present to this person today,” and I would hear, “I am present. You are there.” I would pray, “Lord, surround this person with your angels,” and I would hear, “I have. I sent you.”

I sang with some women and taught them songs. That was fun. (And you’re thinking, “Well, Carolyn, singing isn’t exactly your gift, either. But it is in India!) I danced with a woman who loved to dance. I sat with one woman for quite a while, and she took my hand and rubbed it while she talked. And I listened. I couldn’t understand her, but I could be present to her. After a while, another woman came over and sat with us. She was very old. She balled up part of her sari and leaned it against my leg like a pillow. Then she put her head there, and the other woman put her head in my lap. And the Lord said, “This is what intimacy looks like.” And I thanked God that I am left-handed, so I could have that moment.

There is a story just like this in Acts chapter six. This was a time when the church was experiencing some growing pains. A lot of people were coming to know Jesus and many of them were needy. The church began a food pantry. They wanted to meet all the needs, but it was sapping the energy of the apostles. (This is when they discovered that the need is not the call. The call is the call.)

They all got together and someone said, “If we spend all our time giving out food, there is nothing left for preaching the Word. What we need is a system, where those who are gifted for it can devote themselves to food distribution and others can focus on prayer and the ministry of the Word.” So they appointed Stephen and a team to the mercy ministries of the church, so that everyone was moving in their gifts.

That’s the Body of Christ. That’s the Church being the Church – not just talking on Sundays and playing with the little cups – but all of us together bearing the good news of Jesus Christ. Each of us using our gifts so that the mission can be accomplished. “Prayer and the ministry of the word,” they said, “are the center of what we do. Nothing should stand in the way of that mission. And the ministries of compassion belong to the congregation.”

Unity in diversity. Everyone matters. In this world, community is essential.

No Weak Links

“The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’ On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.” (I Corinthians 12:21-25)

My third grade teacher hated left-handed people. But my mom always made me feel special for being left-handed. When our family sat down to dinner every night — remember, there were eight of us at one table — my brothers would complain loudly about me eating with the wrong hand. Pretty quickly, my mother assigned me the place next to her. That was the best place at the table, because passing the food always started with my parents. My mom would make sure I got enough on my plate, and she took care of me.

So there I was, the lone left-hander – with the best seat in the house.

And there was an old woman with her sari balled up and leaned against my leg. Best seat in the house. No weak links in the Kingdom of God. Paul tells the Galatians in 5:13-14, “for you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”

The law was fulfilled in Jesus and now Jesus lives out the Law through us. Ray Stedman says,“that is what the church is. It is not just a group of religious people gathered together to enjoy certain mutually desired functions. It is a group of people who share the same life, who belong to the same Lord, who are filled with the same Spirit, who are given gifts by that same Spirit, and who are intended to function together to change the world by the life of God. That is the work of the church.”

Church, when we say that we share life, we are saying something profound, cosmic. We are proclaiming that we share the life of Christ. That the resurrected Christ flows through us. The resurrected Christ, who is the hope of the world! We believe and proclaim that the resurrected Christ lives in us and flows through us. That ought to make us excited!

We are the tabernacle of Jesus Christ! Christ in us, the hope of glory!