It is difficult these days to reflect on anything of great importance, with the most unusual presidential election in our nation’s history a few weeks away.

Following one of the Presidential debates, one of our staff worship leaders included with his Facebook post a picture of a partial page of a hymnbook. The title of the hymn was When All The World Was Cursed. My friend did it as a kind of spoof. I confess, it was more than a spoof for me because I have gone through days lately when I have wondered, is our nation cursed?

I immediately reached for my United Methodist Hymnal. Though there are a number of hymns there that we never sing in our congregation, I couldn’t imagine that I had missed one with a title like that. I was more than casually interested; I was chaffing with curiosity. What would be the content of such a hymn? What would it sound like? In what liturgical season might it be sung? Would the worship leader have to introduce it with some explanation?

I called my friend and asked, “Where is that hymn?” He brought me a copy of it, from a Lutheran hymnal, intrigued that I was so interested. He seemed pleased that I connected it with the debate and the state of our nation. When All the World Was Cursed. The first stanza explains the title and gives the theme of the hymn.

When all the world was cursed

By Moses’ condemnation,

Saint John the Baptist came

With words of consolation.

With true forerunner’s zeal

The Greater One he named,

And Him as yet unknown,

As Savior he proclaimed.

Johann G. Olearius, 1677

Tr. Paul E. Kretzmann, 1940

I don’t know what I was expecting in the words of the hymn, but I had not thought of John the Baptist. I do know that the title of the hymn was intriguing because of the frustration and confusion, the often near-despair I am feeling during what seems such darkness in the corporate life of our nation. Add to that the crisis in our United Methodist Church, and the darkness feels more ominous.

To not give room for hopelessness and despair, I’m focusing my reflection and praying in two primary directions: First, on the nature of the church in the current state of our nation.

The reality that most impacts the church here in America is the degree to which our nation has gone in severing the Christian faith from public life — the utter confusion about the meaning of church-state separation. Secular materialism has become the state religion and our public schools, particularly our colleges and universities, are the evangelistic centers for the propagation of this un-faith religious life. The Church is no longer the value setter, the moral and ethical arbiter to which leaders and shapers of culture turn for guidance and validation. In fact, the Church has lost her once-privileged position in Western society and is being pushed to the margins of society.

In this social reality, what is our challenge? Can we be imaginative enough, and Kingdom-oriented enough, to grasp the loss of preferential treatment as an advantage? Let’s use the setting to learn how to be “in” the world, but not “of” the world, to train us as “resident aliens.”

Instead of desperately trying to elbow our way up to the tables of power, let’s give our attention to becoming faithful adherents to God’s sovereignty, knowing that more often than not Kingdom ideals are in conflict with the world in which the Kingdom is set. Let’s believe, and make the case with our life and witness, that putting the right person in the Oval Office is not the answer. Let’s concentrate on being an alternative voice to the madness around us

by not consuming the world’s goods without regard for the world’s poor;

by protecting the unborn and also seeing that they are cared for after birth;

by doing justice and loving mercy;

by refusing to accept and accommodate the prevailing patterns of sexual promiscuity, serial marriage and divorce, or accept definitions of marriage other than the life long covenant of a man and a woman,

by not allowing children’s zip codes to determine the care they receive or, especially, the educational possibilities available to them.

Though we know the Kingdom of God cannot be established before the King comes, let’s spend our lives, all that we are, living as though the Kingdom had come; thus we will approximate in this present world what is going to be established here “as it is in heaven.”

As Richard Foster puts it, “Since, in Christ, we have been reborn into the new reality of the Kingdom of God, we can become ambassadors of peace in the midst of a violent world, models of civility and grace in the midst of a competitive society, conveyors of faith and hope in the midst of a cynical culture, and the embodiment of agape love to all peoples in the midst of an adversarial society.” (A pastoral Letter From Richard Foster, Renovare, November 1999 issue)

This kind of living and witnessing requires that we ground everything we do in the awareness that we live in an apostolic situation where Christian experience, Christian memory, and a Christian vocabulary are not a part of our culture. We must recognize that, for the most part, there is no connecting point in language or symbol between the Church and secular culture. We are not a long way from the setting of the primitive Church of the New Testament and a couple of centuries following. Ours is a neo-pagan culture, and “new barbarians” are a big part of the population of our Western world.

But not only to neo-pagan culture in the U.S. and the West, must our witness, evangelism and mission be shaped; they must also be shaped in the awareness that ours is a multiracial, multicultural, multireligious setting.

A few years ago it became clear to me that the world was changing when Jerry and I were driving with some friends through the wild, beautiful desert of New Mexico. We came to Abiquiu, the home of artist Georgia O’Keefe. On a rise just outside the city, there is a beautiful mosque and a large Muslim school. We stopped and had coffee in an art gallery restaurant,  owned and operated by Muslims.

The lesson? The competing religions of the world are not in faraway countries; they are in the cities of America. Being the church, we must take note of this new reality, not giving into fear and prejudice, but becoming more confident of who we are and the integrity and power of our witness.

I’m focusing my reflection and praying on the nature of the church in the current state of our nation.

I’m also claiming that the signs of the time, the mess our nation is in, and the crisis of our United Methodist Church is a “perfect storm” that calls for  revival. In history, awakening and revival have come most often in times of deep, recognized need. Also, God has often used unlikely, and certainly unholy forces to accomplish his will.

Isaiah witnesses to this (Isaiah 7:1-25), expressing it in a way quaint to our modern ears. “In that day the Lord will shave with a razor which is hired beyond the River – with the king of Assyria – the head and the hair of the feet, and it will sweep away the beard also.”

Another translation simply renders it, “In that day the Lord will shave with a borrowed razor.” What is being said in the text is that God is going to use the pagan king, Cyrus, to accomplish his will. It’s a memorable way of expressing the fact that God uses what he will and acts how he will to achieve his purpose. God is sovereign King of the universe – in control – and his eternal purpose is going to be accomplished, and he uses all sorts of persons and events and circumstances to accomplish his will. He shaves with a borrowed razor.

He also calls us to prayer as a condition for his renewing, reviving intervention. In my teaching about prayer I often ask the question, What if there are some things God either cannot or will not do until and unless people pray? My reflection to make a response to the question is that the Bible makes clear and histories confirm that God’s promises to act in history and in our personal lives are often connected with conditions that we are to meet. The classic example of that in the Old Testament is God’s word: “If my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and pray”… that’s the condition. If we meet that condition, God says, “Then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and heal their land.” The classic example in the New Testament is the promise of Jesus: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you”… that’s the condition. Then Jesus says, “you may ask what you will and I will grant it.”

In my devotional reading a while ago, I came across a passage from Isaiah that latched onto my mind and heart like a steel-trap: “I have posted watchmen on your walls, 0 Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call upon the Lord, give yourselves no rest, give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem.” (Isa. 62: 6-7) What a challenge to do-it-yourself people. Most of us are far more comfortable out in the trenches than we are in the prayer closet. It is far easier for most of us to work, to busy ourselves in church work, to think we can take no rest from our labor. But that’s not what Isaiah is saying. He is not calling us to never rest from our active work, our much doing, our busy involvements. His word is a call to take no rest from prayer…no rest from calling on the Lord.

I believe this is our first call as Christians: Pray, pray, pray; then when you have prayed, pray.

Are you tired and weary, sort of dull in your discipleship? Pray.

What about the joy of your salvation? Has that joy faded? Pray.

What about your spiritual power? You see power working in other persons but you feel powerless…you wonder what the problem is. Pray.

Do you long for a greater power of the Holy Spirit? Are you convinced you can’t go on without that power? Pray.

Do you believe that prayer is the great means for receiving a spiritual awakening? I press you. Are you praying for a quickening in your own life? How much time do you spend in an average week praying for the church, the nation? For awakening and revival?

Could it be that what is missing is that we don’t spend enough time on our knees? Lord help us!

When all the world was cursed! So we feel. But, think, reflect, have conversation, make the best decision you can and vote. But know: the healing of the nation, awakening and revival is not dependent upon whoever becomes our president. The Psalmist was direct in warning us: “Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, the watchmen stand guard in vain.”(Ps. 127:1)

There is an old admonition, which urges us to pray as though everything depended on Christ, and to work as though everything depended on us. Not a bad formula for effective discipleship, but I know few people who keep the balance. And I know few congregations that are confident enough to “wait on the Lord,” to free themselves from activity and action long enough to discern the direction in which the Lord may want to take them.

The truth is, friends, most of us believe it all depends on us. We are type-A people, even when it comes to faith, confident in ourselves, our skills, our resources. How tempting it is for us to approach spiritual matters the same way that we approach our jobs, our businesses, our families; like Avis, we just try harder: work more, spend ourselves, use our energy, and we can get the job done. But the truth is, in Kingdom terms, we are not getting the job done.

When all the world was cursed. The time is now. We must embrace the presence of Christ in a way we’ve not done before and allow the Holy Spirit, through prayer, to permeate every fiber of our being and be the guiding empowerment of all we seek to do. Change happens, renewal and revival come not because we have designed it, or wanted it, or worked for it, but because God in his infinite grace and unfettered mercy, in his own time and according to his design, brings new life to persons, to congregations, to denominations, to movements, and ministries. “Unless the Lord build the house, the workman labors in vain.” In Africa, 20,000 people pray to receive Christ every day. China continues to explode with new Christians, some suggest 32,000 daily. In Iran, more Muslims have come to know Christ since 1980 than in the previous 1,000 years. It can happen here.

Remember what the hymn is all about…John the Baptist proclaiming the promised coming of Jesus when all the world was cursed. Let’s pray for awakening and revival. The last stanza of the hymn is at the heart of our praying:

Oh, grant Thou Lord of Love,                                                     

That we receive, rejoicing,                                                           

The word proclaimed by John,                                                                   

Our true repentance voicing;

That gladly we may walk                                                                        

Upon our Savior’s way                                                                                        

Until we live with Him                                                                            

In His eternal day.

 

Most of us are familiar with John 15—it is particularly central to my life and to the life of the local church that I pastor, The Orchard UMC.  It is from Jesus’ command there, “to go and bear fruit” that we take our name, vision and mission.

Most of us are familiar with the flow: Jesus begins with an eight-verse reminder to abide in him, for apart from him we can do nothing.  Then there is a nine-verse reminder that we are loved and we should love one another as we have been loved. It is out of the overflow of these two relationships—with Jesus and with one another—that fruit is borne.  The fifteenth chapter finishes up with a ten-verse revelation that this message and we who are the messengers will not be well received by the world—Jesus says, it hated him and it will hate us—but he sends us anyway.

Lost on me for most of my life is the eighth verse.  It gets lost primarily because it follows the seven verses about abiding in Jesus and appears before the verses about love and so, thus wedged in, it gets read, but read over.

John 15:8 says, “By this my Father receives great glory, that you bear much fruit.”

My education in that verse came at a place called the Greater Soul Deliverance Apostolic Tabernacle and Revival Center.  During my Doctor of Ministry program I was assigned to do an ethnography of a congregation unlike any I had ever been a part of.  So my study partner and I opened the phone book and choose the Greater Soul Deliverance Apostolic Tabernacle and Revival Center.  I could tell many stories, but I will tell just this one; we went there for Wednesday night prayer meeting and when we entered there were people kneeling in front of the pews and using the seats as rests for their elbows and they were all praying out loud at the same time.  They were calling loudly on the name of Jesus to do a mighty work in whatever circumstance they were bringing to him.  Initially disconcerted a little bit, I finally walked down the aisle, found a pew and knelt down and began to pray.

This was about the time when I knew I was returning to Mississippi to plant a new congregation and in prayer I presented my “plan” for this new work to God.  I had in my mind and had set as my goal that we would reach 500 people in the first five years of this new church and I thought God would be impressed by such a lofty goal.  It was almost as if I sat down across the desk from God and slid my offer sheet across to him then leaned back and said, “what do you think about that?” Then, as audibly as I have ever heard the voice of God, he said, “Is that all?”  God continued, “Is that all it is going to be about?  What you can do?  How many you can count?  Or, could I do something so amazing that when people see it they give me glory instead of you?”  John 15:8 says, “by this my FATHER receives great glory, that you bear much fruit.”  God was saying that he wanted to do something so amazing that it was obvious that he was at work!

This is the story that God has been writing for the last 18 years at The Orchard, and I believe it is the story that God wants to write in every place and in every church.  I believe God wants to do something so amazing in our places that people say, “That must be God.”

The real danger whenever a group of leaders gather is that we strategize, theorize, philosophize and idealize—and those are all good and wonderful things, but only as we aim all of those efforts toward being faithful (not at being successful).  We cannot get caught in working for the redemption of the United Methodist Church when our Lord and Savior came not for the redemption of one denomination but for the redemption of humankind.  We cannot get caught working for the advancement of the church, when Jesus was only concerned about the advancement of the Kingdom.  Those things are not necessarily opposed to one another, but the first thing must come first and the second thing must come second.

One of the things that we say to each other around The Orchard is, “If we will do what is right for the Kingdom of Christ, it will always be what is right for the church.”  But we don’t want to get caught working that equation the other way because the result is very different.  Every time we get these things backwards it is a pursuit of our glory over God’s glory, and if we are not careful it becomes our work for God instead of God’s work that we join him in…which is the only soil for faithfulness.

Recently Wesleyan Accent posed a couple of questions to pastors and their spouses about how they pray for their children while in ministry, and how they choose to shape their kids’ experience of vocational ministry. Here are their responses.

What are some ways you prayed for your children while they were growing up as you served in ministry?

Rev. Carolyn Moore: My husband and I have prayed together every night for most of our daughter’s life. When she was young, she’d crawl into our bed with us before going off to her own, and we would pray over her. We always prayed for God’s hand over her life, and we prayed for her future spouse. As she got older, she always knew we were there, praying for her, night after night. Of course, she prayed with us over our church and we prayed with her over things she was involved with at church. She grew up knowing the language of prayer, and feeling comfortable with prayer.

Rev. Andy Stoddard: We as a family gather together in one of our children’s rooms, we read a passage, talk about it for minute, and then we pray and go to bed.  I’ve often wondered if we should do more. But for us as a family, this little routine works for us.  We try to be real people who love Jesus, not spiritually perfect saints.  My daughter and I on the way to school listen to Christian music on K-Love, but we are just as likely to listen to Taylor Swift or some other Top 40 song.

Rev. Adam Lipscomb: Lately we’ve been praying that they just understand how deeply God loves them.

Rev. Kelli Ward: We’ve discussed our prayers for our children and how we pray for our children to have a healthy understanding of the church. That they would have a healthy understanding of church as a family, complete with struggles and victories, grief and celebration.

Rev. John Gargis: I pray they land in an area of life that they enjoy and fit their spiritual gifts. I pray they are a light.

Dr. Otis T. McMillan: Below is a sample of the prayer we prayed for our children and with our children. Barbara and I had weekly Bible study in our home:

Father God, although you have entrusted these children to us as a gift, we know they belong to you. Like Hannah offered Samuel, we dedicate our children to you, Lord. We recognize that they are always in your care. Help us as parents, Lord, with our weaknesses and imperfections. Give us strength and godly wisdom to raise these children after your Holy Word. Please, supply supernaturally what we lack. Keep our children walking on the path that leads to eternal life. Help them to overcome the temptations of this world and the sin that would so easily entangle them.

Dear God, send your Holy Spirit daily to lead, guide, and counsel them. Always assist them to grow in wisdom and stature, in grace and knowledge, in kindness, compassion and love. May our children serve you faithfully, with their whole heart devoted to you all the days of their lives. May they discover the joy of your presence through daily relationship with your Son, Jesus. May they become part of the solution in this world but never a part of the problems. Help us never to hold on too tightly to these children, nor neglect our responsibilities before you as parents.

Lord, let our commitment to raise these children be for the glory of your name. Cause their lives forever to be a testimony of your faithfulness. In the name of Jesus, I pray.

Did you deliberately shape their exposure to ministry and church life?

Dr. David Smith: Angie and I did not separate ministry into a compartment. We simply did “Kingdom life together” with our entire family. They were never excluded from the hard stuff and always were able to celebrate the high points. It seems to be a better reflection of what life is like; fully integrated in the walk of faith.

Rev. Adam Lipscomb: There have been times, especially early in the church plant, when we had people specifically assigned to them for Sunday mornings, one on one. We were both busy on Sunday mornings doing all the pastor/connect stuff.

I’ve made sure that I intentionally disciple the boys outside of church. For me, when we meet one on one, I took them through the story of the Bible and we had a little rhyme to keep the major stories in place in their heads. Our oldest son loves the Action Bible. When they were younger, we read through the Jesus storybook Bible.

Rev. Carolyn Moore: Not really, though we didn’t make her show up for every single thing. And we certainly never required that she act in a certain way around church people. We wanted her to have a genuine experience of community. She never questioned that she would be in church on Sunday mornings and at youth group on Sunday evenings. And she was always very comfortable with the people who came to our home for meals and groups. She would say that Mosaic helped raise her, and that the authenticity of that community shaped her understanding of “good church.”

Rev. John Gargis: My focus is Celebrate Recovery. They have seen people make it…not make it…and even go on to glory.

Rev. Kelli Ward: We have been deliberate in shaping their exposure. But in more ways, we have endeavored to be consistent in our own integrity. For instance, we don’t talk negatively about the parishioners in front of the children, not because we reserve those conversations for times when they are not around, but rather because we prayerfully look to God to transform our hearts in negative situations.

Rev. David Drury: I have used some ministry experiences to expose my kids to things others don’t get the opportunity to do. I see them as helpful windows into my ministry, so they understand what I do, and also just to help them be better Christians. So I have taken them with me on hospital visits, to pray with people, to funerals, etc.

Rev. Andy Stoddard: For our family in ministry, we try as best as we can to be authentic.  My wife and I try our very best not to be spiritually two-faced.  We try to act the same, live the same, talk the same, be the same at home as we are in church.  I will not act imperfect in my “real” life and then act perfect in my “preacher” life.  I try to own my brokenness and imperfection as a preacher.  we just try to be real in our faith, authentically Christian.  And my hope is that will lead my children to love the church as much as I do.

*Rev. Carolyn Moore is the Founding Pastor of Mosaic UMC in Evans, Georgia.

*Rev. Andy Stoddard is the Lead Pastor at St. Matthew’s UMC in Madison, Mississippi.

*Rev. Adam Lipscomb pastors City Life Church, a Wesleyan congregation, with his wife Rev. Christy Lipscomb in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

*Rev. Kelli Ward is Connections Pastor at Forest Hills Wesleyan Church in Evansville, Indiana., where her husband Rev. Wayne Ward also ministers as Associate Pastor.

*Rev. John Gargis is Associate Pastor of Evangelism at Fountain City UMC in Knoxville, Tennessee.

*Dr. Otis T. McMillan is the Director of Evangelism in the A.M.E. Zion church.

*Dr. David Smith is Dean of Wesley Seminary in Marion, Indiana.

*Rev. David Drury is Chief of Staff for the General Superintendent of the Wesleyan Church.

At the church I attend, we are faithful to ask “The Questions”:

“How is it with your soul?”

“Where have you seen Jesus?”

“How can we pray for you?”

These questions, when asked and answered purposefully, work to create community. They acknowledge that we are more than schedules and talents. We are souls on a journey.  These questions give us opportunities to talk about what we are learning and experiencing as we walk with God.  Which leads me to my favorite question…

“Where is God working in your life right now?”

So, this morning, I’m going to pretend that you asked me that question and I’m going to answer it.

God has been working in my life over the last few months, teaching me the value of honest communication.  By honest, I don’t mean that I’ve been lying.  I mean that I have a tendency to hold back. In certain situations, I will withhold my feelings, or responses if I think expressing them will lead to a hard conversation.

I absolutely hate hard conversations. I will do just about anything to avoid an awkward, tense or confrontational conversation.  I’m guessing I’m not alone in this… right?  I am always annoyed when people ask “Who dislikes confrontation?”  Who doesn’t dislike confrontation? If someone really does like confrontation – like looks forward to it – then something else is wrong with them, right?

For most of the world, our feelings about hard conversations fall on the spectrum of “Take a Deep Breath and Do the Hard Thing” to “I’d Rather Put My Own Eye Out.” (Which is where I am by the way!)

So, I have been guilty quite often of avoiding hard conversations by ignoring things, talking myself out of feeling hurt, assuming things were my fault or outright denying that there’s a problem at all, refusing to apologize and failing to do the true work of reconciliation.

But God is gently showing me that these choices do not lead to healthy relationships. What does lead to healthy relationships are honest conversations that express my feelings and reactions.

As we weigh our choices it is helpful to think about the “IF” questions and challenge ourselves to think through to the natural consequences of our choices.  So, let’s think through this one together.

“IF I choose not to have honest conversations about how I am feeling with those close to me then __________________________________.”

Most likely the thing you filled in this blank with is serious. Broken relationships, depression, unhealed emotions and isolation are all really serious things.  This choice to be honest or avoid honesty because it’s hard will affect our relationships.  And here is where God is really doing his work in me right now – if I refuse to be honest with Him, we will never be able to develop the intimate relationship that both of us desire.

Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not stupid enough to lie to God.  I know he knows everything so that’s pointless. What I do instead is stand back at a safe distance and have polite conversations with Jesus.  I thank him for lots of things, pray for other people, and confess sins. I am careful to add disclaimers like, “If it’s your will” and “whatever brings you glory” and I try to ask for things in ways that reflect what my theology teaches about God’s will. And all of those things are good things. We should speak to God respectfully.   But for me, all of that politeness is really just layers of protection I’ve put around me to keep it from getting too real.  It’s an example of how I am willing to bring my head into my relationship with Jesus but not always my heart. My head feels safe but my heart feels vulnerable.

Talking honestly with God is a choice. It’s a hard choice but it is a choice we can all make. You do not have to be a super saint to choose to talk with God as honestly and openly as you know how. We can all start today. So, really this morning’s sermon is an invitation. An invitation to begin having the kind of conversations with God that build deep, intimate relationship.

Earlier this year I was doing a study of all of Jesus’ interactions with women in the gospels. I was thinking a lot about how Jesus saw me as a woman. So, I printed off a list of places where he spoke specifically to women and I started working through it.  And then I got to the encounter with Mary and Martha that we are going to talk about this morning. And I saw both of these women accept Jesus’ invitation to have a real, unfiltered, and even raw conversations with him.

Mary and Martha

Their story is found in John 11.  Mary and Martha are sisters and they have a brother named Lazarus.  This sibling group have become close friends of Jesus – the kind of friends that feel like family. Jesus would come to their home in Bethany to be refreshed with good food and rest.  In fact it was on one of those occasions that Mary and Martha got into a snit about who was working harder to fix a meal and Jesus stepped in to settle it. Only a close friend would step into the middle of a sister-fight!

I’m guessing it felt kind of exciting to be able to tell people they were close friends of Jesus’. He had huge crowds clamoring to get close to him and they got to have him for dinner at their house.

And then one day, Lazarus got sick… really sick.  But the sisters knew what to do. Jesus was their good friend and he had been healing people all over the place. So, they sent someone to find Jesus and give him this message.

John 11:3 – “Lord, the one you love is sick.”

The sisters are hoping for a certain response. They don’t come right out and say it but their expectation is that Jesus will stop what he is doing, come to Bethany and fix this crisis.  But that is not what happens.

When he heard this, Jesus said, “This sickness will not end in death. No, it is for God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.” Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.  So when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed where he was two more days, and then he said to his disciples, “Let us go back to Judea.” (John 11: 4-7)

So, even though Jesus loves Mary, Martha and Lazarus, he chooses to stay where he is for two more days. And while he is delaying, Lazarus dies.

We’ve all had this happen.  Moments when Jesus doesn’t act like we think he should. We know Jesus loves us and yet we find ourselves thinking, “That’s not how I treat people I love…”

Mary and Martha have experienced a tragedy – they have had to sit by and watch as their brother got sicker and sicker. And he wasn’t in a hospital. He was probably at home being cared for by them around the clock.  Then when they were tired to the bone from caring for him, they had to grieve his loss, and plan a funeral.

They weren’t just tired. They were confused too. Why would Jesus, the one they believed to be the Messiah, the one who had healed hundreds of people, why would he not make the slightest effort to save their brother?

I’m guessing they were a little embarrassed too. All their neighbors know that they are friends with Jesus. Are they all whispering about the fact that Jesus let Lazarus die?

All that to say, when Jesus arrives in Bethany the sisters are not planning a huge welcome home party for him.

They are ….. fill in the blank – mad, sad, frustrated, disappointed, exhausted, disillusioned, resentful.

Have you ever felt any of those things towards Jesus?

What happens next is fascinating to me because we see two common ways of approaching hard conversations in Mary and Martha’s responses to Jesus.  Martha goes first.

When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went out to meet him, but Mary stayed at home. “Lord,” Martha said to Jesus, “if you had been here, my brother would not have died. (John 11: 20-21)

I’m going to call Martha’s the honest approach.  She doesn’t stand back and say things like, “Well you must have needed another angel.”  Or “It must have been your will.”   She looks him right in the eye and tells him exactly what she is thinking. “You let me down. You did not do what I asked you to do. You could have stopped this from happening.” And the thing she doesn’t say but is clearly communicating is “I thought you loved us.”

I’m guessing that the disciples and other people around Jesus all sucked their breath in and waited for the wrath that was surely about to fall on Martha’s head. You can’t talk that way to God… can you?

Here’s what I have come to love about Jesus – He is about to fix this whole situation by raising Lazarus from the dead.  And that would have solved the need for all of the hard conversations he’s going to have that day. And it would have protected him from having to handle Mary and Martha’s sadness and anger and disappointment.  If it had been me, I would have said to Martha, “Stay right here. I’ll be right back.” And I would have raised Lazarus from the dead and commanded that the party in my honor begin.

Instead, Jesus takes time to process Martha’s experience with her.  He tells her that Lazarus will live again. But she just thinks he’s comforting her with the promise of future resurrection when Jesus will return someday. So he says again, “I am the resurrection and the life…”  And he asks her whether or not she believes that to be true.  He gives Martha the opportunity to confess her belief in him as the Messiah even in her disappointment with him.

Have you ever been there?  “I’m mad, sad, hurt but I believe you are God.” That is an okay place to be.

While all of this is going on Mary is still back at the house. She is feeling all of the same things Martha is but she is an avoider.  Again, you would think Jesus would say, “Whew, at least I only have to deal with one sister.”  But no. He tells Martha to let Mary know that he would like to speak with her.

After she had said this, she went back and called her sister Mary aside. “The Teacher is here,” she said, “and is asking for you.” (John 11: 28)

This is so special to me because I am Mary. I would have been hiding in the house. I would have been afraid of my own emotions and sure that Jesus didn’t want to be bothered with them. That they would have angered him. I would not have trusted him with my true self in that moment.

And again, Jesus could have skipped all of this pain and relational effort and just fixed the situation. But instead he seeks out Mary because he knows she needs to have a conversation with him.

And now she has a choice. Jesus has invited her to come and say how she’s feeling. She can stay in the house and hide or go to Jesus for release and comfort.  Each of these choices would have significant consequences for her relationship with him.

When Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.  Now Jesus had not yet entered the village, but was still at the place where Martha had met him. When the Jews who had been with Mary in the house, comforting her, noticed how quickly she got up and went out, they followed her, supposing she was going to the tomb to mourn there. When Mary reached the place where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and said, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.” (John 11:29-32)

Isn’t that fascinating that she says the exact same thing that her sister said. “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

What conversation do you need to have with Jesus?  “Lord if you had been here…this…wouldn’t have happened.”

I hold back on hard conversations because I don’t want people to be mad at me. I don’t want God to be mad at me. But look at Jesus’ response to these hard interactions with Mary and Martha.

When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come along with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in spirit and troubled. “Where have you laid him?” he asked.

“Come and see, Lord,” they replied. (John 11:33-34)

Their suffering moved him.  Our suffering moves God.  Psalm 103:13 says “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him…”  When our children are suffering we are moved, aren’t we?!  Even if the suffering is caused by their own bad choices or they are suffering because they don’t understand our decisions.

We don’t know why Jesus didn’t come immediately to heal Lazarus. We don’t know why the plan was to do this the hardest way possible. But John 11: 4 tells us that what was going to happen was for “God’s glory so that God’s Son may be glorified through it.”

Jesus seems to be okay with the fact that Mary and Martha don’t understand all of that. He doesn’t respond with, “You’ll understand someday but until then buck up and cooperate with the plan.” No, he invites them to express their confusion and pain.

Maybe someday they did understand a little better what happened with Lazarus. Maybe someday they were able to wrap their theology around their suffering in a way that made sense.  Their emotions did not stay as raw as they were that day.  But that’s because they didn’t skip the step of having the honest conversation with Jesus.  I want to skip right to being Jesus’ brave little soldier. I think that’s easier for him and nobler for me. Instead, he invites us to make the choice to be honest about where we are today.

Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead that day.  He had the men roll back the stone from the opening of the tomb and he called to Lazarus to come out.  And Jesus was glorified that day. Verse 45 says that “many Jews put their faith in Him” after witnessing Lazarus’ resurrection.  It also got him in trouble with the Pharisees. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. They couldn’t let Jesus go around raising people from the dead. It could cause even more people to believe he was the Messiah.

About a week before the crucifixion, Jesus comes to Lazarus’ house for one last dinner with his dear friends.  And while the men are eating, Mary comes into the dining room, pours expensive perfume on Jesus’ feet, lets down her hair and begins to tenderly wash them.

This interaction is the result of the choice she made to accept Jesus’ invitation to have an honest conversation. IF… we are willing to have honest conversations with Jesus, we will be able to be in intimate relationship with him. We will be able to worship him with our whole selves. We will be able to love and serve him wholeheartedly with nothing held back.

Response

What things are you experiencing right now because you have chosen to have “polite” conversation with Jesus?

• Inability to trust his intention towards you
• Resentfulness
• Inability to forgive or move past a hurt
• Hard-to-feel emotions
• Deflecting pain: “Others have it worse”

What conversation do you need to have with Jesus this morning?

Do you need to ask:

• Why weren’t you there?
• Why didn’t you stop that thing from happening?
• Why haven’t you healed me?

Or maybe you need to tell God:

• Something that you are afraid of
• “I don’t understand why you are doing this thing”

Having honest conversations with Jesus is not a magical formula. We will not get all the things we ask for. He will not answer every question we have. But the very act of being honest brings release and comfort and increased intimacy.

I want to end by showing you one more example of someone having an honest conversation with God. It’s found in Luke 22. Jesus has been betrayed by Judas and is waiting to be arrested and crucified. Listen to what he says to his Father.

“Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me; yet, not my will but yours be done.” Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength. (Luke 22:42-43)

This is Jesus having an honest conversation with God. One member of the Trinity having an honest conversation with another.  He’s says, “I don’t want to do this…”   Jesus knows that his crucifixion is The Plan. And yet he chooses to have an honest conversation with the Father about how he is feeling.  And does God respond with anger or even irritation that the plan is being questioned at the last moment? Does Jesus get a “sit up straight and get with the program” lecture? No! God sends an angel to strengthen him.

The world is not going to fall apart if we are honest with God about how we are feeling. Just the opposite is true: we will experience his presence, his comfort, and his peace.

Now is the time to choose.

What conversation do you need to have with Jesus this morning? What have you been holding back? He wants to hear it. Will you trust Him with it?

Enjoy this rich back-to-school reflection from our archives.

Our 0.3 mile journey to school is surprisingly eventful. There are more legs than you think. First, you have to decide to depart from the front door or the back. Both present their challenges. If you take the back, there are more toys, swingsets, and interesting sticks that will delay you. The front door requires a slightly more harrowing street crossing. Either way, at the light you always meet Ms. Dot. Dot has been taking kids across Main Street for decades. There, you make a bit of small talk, invariably and awkwardly cut off by the unpredictable light. The children have begun selecting rocks according to some mystifying criterion by this point, so you corral them, rocks and all, and scurry across the road before the big red hand settles into its home. From there it’s a straight shot, unless it’s a bulk trash day. That complicates things. Either way the “straight shot” requires several judgments as to whether your first grader is being dilatory or just seven; it can be quite difficult to distinguish, and I often fail.

That “straight shot” is where we pray. My wife and son have developed their own litany of prayers – remnants they picked up from Sunday school, Vacation Bible School, or around the house. When I walk him to school, and remember the proper procedure, I ask him to teach me their prayers. It changes frequently, alighting upon virtues and visions, my wife’s butterfly spirituality passing down to our son. As he teaches me their prayer, a common refrain rolls across his lips, “Lord, help me be bold and courageous.” We’ve been praying that since his first days of Kindergarten.

Next week, my wife and children will drop me off at United Theological Seminary. I estimate it will be the dozenth time I’ve entered a new school. This time, I will be serving as the new Assistant Professor of Church History.

“Lord, help me be bold and courageous.”

This fall I’m teaching Church History I and Systematic Theology. My colleagues and I have the responsibility to teach, shape, care for, support, and evaluate the future leaders of the church. It is not a responsibility to be taken lightly. And my students will likely be responsible for my children’s faith formation.

“Lord, help me be bold and courageous.”

But the call of God is curious; it’s harrowing, but sometimes it feels habitual. Our callings tumble along amidst paperwork, meetings, and emails. They look like packing sandwiches and getting up earlier than you might choose otherwise. Our first forgettings are the courage required by our vocations. People just look like people, paper like paper, meetings like meetings. We lose their purpose. We miss their opportunities. We forget the courage demanded.

Once a professor of theology at the University of Paris took the leading position of the Franciscan Order. He did so amidst the anti-mendicant, which meant anti-Franciscan, controversy. Two years into his term, Bonaventure journeyed to Mt. Alverna in Tuscany, where St. Francis, the founder of his Order, saw the six-winged seraph and received the stigmata. There Bonaventure received another sort of vision; he conceived the Itinerarium Mentis in Deum – The Journey of the Soul into God. The Itinerarium, as it is called, became formative for Christian theology and spirituality for generations. It carries Bonaventure’s vision of the centrality of Christ across the centuries. The journey of the Itinerarium ascends to the heights of contemplation of God. As it approaches the summit, the soul discovers Christ in his humanity, ready to take it across to pure encounter with God. But that final leg of the journey is by identification with Christ’s death, burial, and descent. The journey requires a specific courage – the courage revealed and empowered by Christ himself.

I suppose Christian courage has always looked somewhat peculiar. The examplars of our faith are the martyrs. Our heroes are great on their knees, not the battlefield. Our courage resides in the smile of a seasoned saint, in the prayers for patience of a struggling father, in the compassionate confidence of a young pastor. It’s courage to confess and courage to forgive. It’s courage to be disciplined, to be molded, to follow. It’s courage to kneel, pray, receive, and welcome.

As Bonaventure recognized, we need examples. We need those who follow the pattern of Christ, if we are going to follow it ourselves. We need the saints, like St. Francis, or St. Bonaventure, who embody Christian courage. As we face the new and the old in the days to come, let us, like Bonaventure, pause to ponder the example of Christ and the suffusion of Christ in the Saints. And join our family in prayer: “Lord, help us be bold and courageous!”

“Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.” I have uttered those words probably hundreds of thousands of times. But a question has been nagging my mind recently about them. This is it: what do we actually mean when we pray those words?

I don’t know of a better explanation of the implications of praying for God’s Kingdom to become a reality in the world around us than how Chris Wright describes it in his book The Mission of God:

The reign of YHWH, when it would finally come, would mean justice for the oppressed and the overthrow of the wicked. It would bring true peace to the nations and the abolition of war, the means of war and training for war. It would put an end to poverty, war and need, and provide everyone with economic viability (under the metaphor “under his own vine and fig tree”). It would mean satisfying and fulfilling life for human families, safety for children, and fulfilment for the elderly, without danger for enemies and all of this within a renewed creation free from harm and threat. It would mean the inversion of the moral values that dominate the current world order, for in the kingdom of God the upside-down priorities of the Beatitudes operate and the Magnificat is not just wishful thinking.  (p. 309)

So when we dare to pray those words as a believing community or as an individual believer we are asking for this God-intended future to invade our world here and now through us. We are asking God to use our individual lives and our communal life as the raw materials from which to create in our contemporary culture a multi-media demonstration of his alternative and inevitable future for humanity and creation, that is, his Kingdom. Praying those few simple words should mean that our contemporaries look at our lives and our communities as God’s people and they should see the values of God’s kingdom described by Chris Wright embodied and expressed in who we are and what we do. That makes these famous words not just a prayer of aspiration for God’s Kingdom but one of commitment to God’s mission in this world of seeing his Kingdom grow.

Michael Frost puts it like this in The Road to Missional:

If mission is alerting people to the reign of God in Christ, our mandate is to do whatever is required in the circumstances to both demonstrate and announce this Kingship. We feed the hungry because in the world to come there will be no such thing as starvation. We share Christ because in the world to come there will be no such thing as unbelief. Both are the fashioning of foretastes of that world to come, none more or less important than the other. (p.28)

I love that concept, that whenever we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” we are committing ourselves as Christ followers and churches to fashioning foretastes of the world to come in the here and now. Whenever we obey Jesus and those words pass our lips in prayer, amongst other things we are committing ourselves to being violence-rejecting, peace-promoting, justice-advocating poverty-alleviators, faith-creating evangelists and social action radicals who make war not on other human beings but on illness, hunger, and meaninglessness.

When I think about all of that and praying those words that Jesus taught I am intimidated and inspired in just about equal measure. One thing I know for sure: I better not pray those words if I don’t mean them.

Timely words of wisdom from Dr. Matt Hook:

https://vimeo.com/174152341