A Christmas Curveball

I wrote these words a year ago, but they seem as timely today as they did then. 

I never cease to be amazed at how God’s word, penned thousands of years ago, can speak directly into our current circumstances. Take the Christmas story for instance. It’s a story we’ve heard countless times before, especially Luke’s version that Linus recounted in Charlie Brown’s Christmas Special. It starts like this:

In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) And everyone went to their own town to register. So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. (James 2:1-5)

This is just the set up for the story. What follows are the parts we typically focus on: a baby born in a stable, angelic choirs and visits from startled shepherds and Eastern astrologers. But this morning, the opening lines of the Christmas story are what captured my attention. Because the Christmas story starts with a political edict that threw a wrench in Joseph and Mary’s plans.

Can you imagine what an inconvenience that edict from Caesar Augustus must have been? “Wait, you mean we have to travel 90 miles to Bethlehem at the tail end of Mary’s pregnancy all because of a census?!” I suspect that both Joseph and Mary had some not so holy words for the guy who made that decision.

And yet, despite how unexpected and inconvenient Caesar’s call for a census might have been for Joseph and Mary, it didn’t take God by surprise or thwart His plans. In fact, hundreds of years prior, God had prophesied that the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). So Caesar’s call for a census wasn’t an inconvenience to God. It was integral to His plans. He used the decision of an unbelieving ruler to fulfill His redemptive purposes.

Which brings me to this Christmas. Because, let’s be honest, there are some governmental edicts that threaten to upset our best laid Christmas plans. And this could stir up a lot of consternation for us.

“What do you mean I can’t gather with my extended family?”
“What do you mean we have to wear facemasks if we gather indoors?!”
“What right do our governing officials have to try and limit our celebrations?!”

May I simply remind you that God isn’t spun out by this Christmas curveball. He isn’t limited by the limitations that we’ve been forced to endure due to Covid. And as the Christmas story reminds us, He even works through the decisions of unbelieving governmental officials.

So don’t grow weary or lose heart this Christmas. God is at work despite the disruption to our lives. And even though it might be inconvenient to us, this curveball may be the very thing He uses to further His redemptive plan in our lives, just as He did in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago.

Sitting with Another's Pain

 Many of us have a hard time tolerating other people’s pain because it makes us uncomfortable. So rather than sitting with them as they struggle and allowing them the space to process, we try to fix it or reframe the narrative for them in an effort to alleviate their suffering (and ours).

One gift we can give to hurting people is to allow them to feel without giving into the urge to fix it. Hurting people often need our presence more than our solutions. And, ironically, more often than not if we allow them space and time and companionship while they process their pain, they will actually regain their footing far faster than if we try to force them to their feet to make ourselves feel better.

Appetite for Self-Destruction

My son is addicted to Takis. For those of you without a teenager, Takis are a rolled up tortilla chip with a toxic blend of spices that are guaranteed to cook your intestines. My boy will eat them until his tastebuds give out and then complain when his stomach hurts, getting irritable at us as if we’re the ones who made him eat himself sick. Ironically, even though he knows his favorite snack hurts him, he still craves them.

It’s laughable, but then I realize I’m not much different from my boy. No, I might not be addicted to nuclear tortilla chips, but it’s the things that I consume with my mind that can get toxic. When I get in the car my natural inclination is to turn on talk radio, or to spend the final moments at night doom-scrolling through social media, and then I wonder why I wake up feeling frustrated and irritable. Perhaps I should take my own advice and be more discerning about what I consume.

What do you crave that ends up hurting you?

GRACE SOUNDS LIKE FALLING STONES

The crowd was out for blood. Some religious leaders had caught a couple in the act of adultery and saw in their shame an opportunity to trap the pesky rabbi who’d been stirring up so much trouble for them.

Admittedly, the leaders weren’t all that concerned with caring for the couple – their guilt was obvious and the law left little room for grace. Nor were they truly after justice. If they had been they would have brought both guilty parties, but they didn’t need both for what they had in mind, so they let the man go and dragged the woman through the streets of Jerusalem. She was the perfect bait for their trap.

As they made their way towards the Temple, curious onlookers joined the procession like spectators in a 1st century version of a televised car-chase. They didn’t know what was going to happen, but they didn’t want to miss the spectacle.

When the mob reached Temple Mount and they located the rabbi known as Jesus, the religious leaders forced the guilty woman to stand before him as they aired her sins publicly.

“Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery and, as you know, the Law of Moses clearly states that we should stone her to death for her act. So what do you suggest we do?”

The trap was set. Now all they had to do was wait for Jesus to step into it. No matter what he said, they would benefit. If he agreed with their assessment and called for her death, he would be affirming their authority as the guardians of the Law. But if he argued for grace, as they suspected he would, he’d be openly contradicting the Law of Moses and, in so doing, he would expose himself as a false teacher.

What they didn’t expect was that Jesus would remain silent. Instead of talking his way into their trap, he knelt down and began to draw in the dirt. It was obviously a play for time, so they pressed him for an answer.

Finally, after several moments, Jesus stood up and looked them in the eye as he delivered a very unexpected judgement: “Let any of you who has never sinned throw the first stone.” And then he knelt back down and continued drawing in the dust as his words spread through the crowd.

After a few moments, the first stone hit the dirt, dropped from the hand of an elderly man as he turned and walked away. More stones quickly followed as Jesus’ words swept away their bloodlust and exposed their hypocrisy. After several minutes, only the woman remained standing before Jesus.

Looking up from the ground where he’d been writing, Jesus addressed her for the first time, “Where are your accusers? Has no one condemned you?”

She glanced around at the stones sitting in the dirt where the mob had been. “No one, sir,” she replied, the relief evident in her voice.

“Then I don’t condemn you either.
Now go and leave your life of sin.”

*****

It dawned on me a few years ago that there was actually someone in the crowd who could have thrown the first stone. Jesus. He was without sin. He could have picked up a rock and thrown it and then the feeding frenzy would have been on.

But he didn’t. He chose grace over punishment. And that right there is the breathtaking audacity of the gospel in a nutshell. The only one who is worthy to pass judgement on us chooses to give us grace instead. We don’t deserve it. We couldn’t do enough good things to make up for our mistakes. But He chooses to give us grace anyway. And that’s what makes his grace a gift, not a prize we have to earn.

So if you’ve been holding Jesus as arms-length because you’re ashamed of the way you’ve been living, or you think you have to get your act together to be worthy of his love, may I be the first to tell you that you’ve misunderstood the heart of God. We may be guilty, but He’s way more interested in caring for us than condemning us. He’s not some self-righteous God who finds a perverse joy in throwing our sins in our face. Rather, He’s the self-sacrificing God who took our punishment upon himself so that we can be restored back into relationship with Him.

So don’t run from Him. Run too Him. Just know that if you're holding onto stones of your own, He's going to ask you to drop them, too. You don’t need to carry that weight around anymore.

Tough Love

 

Can I make a confession?

I am way harder on my own kids than I am on other people’s kids. I see this most acutely when I coach. It doesn’t matter what sport it is, invariably I am more strict with my own sons that I am with the other boys. It’s so obvious to me (and to them) that there have been several times when I’ve mentally told myself that I probably shouldn't coach my boys again so that I won’t be an impediment to their love of sports.

It’s not just sports, either. When my sons are hanging with their friends and they all start misbehaving, invariably I call out my boys first and most forcefully. When one of my sons points out this imbalance, as they often do, I quickly justify my actions because “I’m not their parent, but I’m yours.” And there is some truth to that. However, underneath that excuse is a deeper, less altruistic motivation: I’m hard on my sons because they reflect upon me.

I am patient and grace-filled with other kids because their actions are their own, but my kids’ actions reflect upon me. More often than not, the energy behind my response has more to do with my own embarrassment than with training them up in the way they should go. Truth be told, I’m often a better, kinder role model to other people’s kids than I am to my own. And I don’t want to mistreat my sons or tear them down in the name of building them up.

So I’m going to keep parenting my boys, keep calling them on their bad behavior. But I’m also going to strive to remove my own embarrassment from the equation. I’m going to give myself grace for my kids being imperfect so that I can give them the grace they need to grow. After all, why would I expect perfection from them when I’m still a work in progress?

One More Reason Why We Can Trust the Bible

 

One More Reason Why We Can Trust the Bible

This weekend, we discussed a number of reasons why we can trust the Bible. After all, “the Bible tells me so,” doesn’t mean a whole lot if we can’t trust it. Sadly, due to technical issues, we were unable to use many of the images I’d prepared, and I had to omit an entire section from my notes. So below are the images from this weekend as well as a section on how the Bible was put together.

Pastor Eric

Text	Number of manuscripts	Years between original and earliest known manuscript
Plato’s Republic	7	1,200 years
Caesar’s Gallic Wars	10	1,000 years
Homer’s Iliad	643	500 years
The New Testament	5,600 in Greek (24,000 total)	Less than 100 years (Gospel of John - 30 yrs)

The picture above shows the 63,779 cross-references in the Bible. The white bars along the bottom represent each Bible chapter, Gen. 1 - Rev. 22. The line’s color shows the reference’s distance from the other. A cross-reference is a scripture that references another scripture. Had the Bible been written by one person or at one time this would still be amazing; however, the Bible was written by 40 authors over the span of 1,500 years on 3 different continents.

Question: How did the Church determine which books should be included in the Bible, and which ones omitted?

One argument that people use to undermine the trustworthiness of the Bible has to do with how the early church determined which books to include in the Bible. After all, there were other supposed gospels and writings that were floating around out there when the Catholic Church convened a council to determine the Books of the Bible. So how do we know that the 66 books that we have in the Bible are the right ones?

It’s a fair question. In fact, there were several councils to discuss this topic, including the Council of Rome (382AD) and the Council of Carthage (397AD) in which they affirmed the 66 books that make up the Bible. However, it is misleading to suggest that they arbitrarily chose the books to include. For one, the Old Testament had already been universally accepted as scripture long before Jesus was born. As for the New Testament books, the councils did not arbitrarily pick which books they felt were inspired. Rather, they merely affirmed the authority that these texts had already been given within the Christian community from the earliest days of their writing. The 27 books of the New Testament had been passed around, treated as scripture, used in the early church's worship services. And all of the texts were either written by the apostles or by someone who was closely connected to the apostles. The only book that even remotely deviates from that is the book of Hebrews, because we’re not sure who wrote Hebrews. And there was some discussion during the councils about this, but eventually they decided to include Hebrews as well, because it had been treated as scripture by the early church, so they affirmed the same.

But what about the so called Gnostic Gospels? Why didn’t the councils include them? Because they weren’t even written during the time of the early church. They were written in the 300’s and we have no idea who the authors were. It would be like someone showing up today and saying, I have a fifth gospel. Mary Magdalene wrote it and you should include it. We’d dismiss that person’s claim on the spot. Likewise, the councils had no problem saying, “There is no comparison here. These 27 texts were both penned by the earliest believers and they were treated as scripture by the early church, so we’re going to simply affirm their authority as scripture, not arbitrarily pick which ones we like and ignore the rest.”

So that's how the books of the Bible were decided upon. 

It’s not easy to stand in the middle. Our social discourse has become increasingly polarized over the last couple years, with society and social media perpetually seeking to pull us to the extremes. We’re told we either have to view the pandemic as an overblown hoax or order our life around it. Either trust the science implicitly or reject it wholesale. Either view the person sitting in the oval office as a savior or a traitor to America. 

Sadly, this polarization of society has come at a steep cost. Though we communicate using state of the art technology, our social discourse has regressed to trench warfare. We’ve dug into our hyper-polarized perspectives and then we take potshots at the other side via social media. And as a result, the middle ground has become a no man’s land where you will likely be shot at from both sides if you go there. 

But we need people to go there. We need people who don’t ascribe to either extreme to stand up and say, “Wait a minute. Let’s reason together. Neither extreme holds the solutions to the problems that plague us all, and so long as we stay dug into our trenches, we will never truly advance.” 

The people who are willing to risk their social standing to resist the polarization of our society and inhabit the middle ground are modern-day peace makers. They are the sort of people who are willing to listen to both sides and seek to identify the common ground. They are the ones who invite people to get out of their trenches and move towards one another so that we can work together toward viable solutions, rather than continuing to mock and villainize the other side. We desperately need more peace makers, because as long as we focus on what divides us and treat those who disagree with us as the enemy, we will never come together. And a nation divided cannot stand. 

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.” (Matthew 5:19) 

Trying to Make Sense of Evil

Yesterday, I sat with a woman who was reeling from the tragic death of a close friend who'd been killed by her husband who then took his own life, orphaning their 8-month-old child. As we sat there grieving the situation, I found myself wanting to say something to lessen the pain, something that could make sense of a senseless tragedy. But what could I say?

It's human nature to want to make sense of evil, to explain why something awful happens. And this urge is particularly strong for me as a pastor, as if I need to defend God. But I've come to realize that evil has no place in God’s good creation. It's like a piece from a puzzle that has been placed in the wrong box. Though our rational, thinking minds want to figure it out, want to find where it fits and why it’s there, the truth is it doesn’t belong. It is an interloper into this world and our job isn’t to understand it, but rather to resist it.

Wait, couldn’t God remove it?! Of course He could; He’s God and scripture tells us that eventually He will do just that. Yet, part of the mystery of evil is that He doesn’t do so now. Rather than shielding His image-bearers from the pain of this sin-scarred world, He invites us to live as ambassadors of hope to those who have grown hopeless. And that means we will suffer right alongside of them. In fact, He warns us that "here on earth you will have many trials and sorrows. But take heart, because I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). In other words, following Jesus won't protect us from pain, won't insulate us from evil. We will experience sorrow and grief. Our hearts will ache, our bodies will break, but we can find hope in the fact that because of the cross, the brokenness of this sin-warped world won't get the last word. Depression and anxiety won't get the last word. Social and relational conflict won't get the last word. Even senseless death won't get the last word. Because of the cross and the empty grave, God gets the last word, and that's the hope we can cling to in the face of senseless tragedy.

But finding hope in tragedy doesn't diminish the fact that life in this world is painful. When we, like the woman in my office, are faced with an unexplainable tragedy, there's no easy answer to make the pain go away. Perhaps our best response in those times is to simply grieve with those who grieve and to bring our sorrow and our questions to Jesus, the source of our hope. He's big enough to handle our deepest emotions and our toughest questions. Besides, He's proven over and over that he can bring beauty from the ashes and breathe new life into dead hearts.

 WHY OUR IDOLS FALL

We live in a culture that celebrates gifting, whether or not that talent comes with an equal measure of character to temper it. So we elevate people onto lofty pedestals, and then act surprised when our idols fall. Gifting is a cheap substitute for character. And the fame we give our idols is often more of a curse than a blessing. It’s like handing car keys to a child who has never learned to drive. Not only are we endangering their lives, but the lives of everyone else around them.

Take note that the wisdom literature of scripture, particularly the book of Proverbs, encourages us to grow in wisdom and character, rather than gifting or fame.

So why do we keep setting our most gifted up for failure? In part, it’s because our culture has historically celebrated results, regardless of the carnage left along the road to greatness. We tend to idolize people for their accomplishments without stopping to ask whether this person is the kind of role model we’d want our kids to emulate. And what we celebrate becomes the norm. The things we elevate and the stories we share will inevitably shape the values of the next generation.

So we are reaping what we’ve sown. We have celebrated gifting over character. We have turned fame into a worthy endeavor, and then act surprised when people willingly behave badly in order to garner more attention.

Perhaps we should stop elevating people on account of their talents and start celebrating character over accomplishment. Maybe we should stop looking to our movie stars and sports stars and reality stars to be our culture’s influencers, and instead look to the men and women of deep character to influence us, those who don’t trumpet their own accomplishments but who serve quietly in the background. Perhaps our true stars should be the sort of people who place goodness above greatness. 

Of course, we don’t hear their voices often, because they’re not the ones reaching for the mic or seeking the closest camera lens. But we would do well to consider their example and stop placing talented people on unstable pedestals. Because when they fall, we all lose.

Joy Comes in the Mourning

Yesterday, we laid my friend Josh to rest. Our family has known him for almost 2-decades and the news of his passing from a heart attack last month came as a complete shock. After all, he was in the prime of his life and left behind a wife and two young sons.

There were plenty of tears shed at his memorial service, but I was surprised that the sorrow of his untimely death was overshadowed by very different emotions: hope and joy. This is because just three months before his heart gave out, Josh had entrusted it to Jesus. After years of relying on his own strength to fight his battles, Josh had come to the end of himself and recognized how desperately he needed a savior. And these are the words he wrote in his journal on that day:

Today I decided to stop playing God.

It didn’t work.

I decided that here after in this drama of life,

God was going to be my director.

He is my principal. I am his agent.

He is my Father and I am his child.

10/03/2020

It might seem cruel of God to take someone so shortly after they’d placed their faith in Him. But I see God’s grace in the timing. Because Josh had been relying on his own strength for a long, long time, and God allowed him just enough time to get to the end of his rope and recognize that he really did need a savior. And Josh’s faith in Jesus didn’t just change his life for those three short months. It radically altered his eternal life. In comparison to that, the lives we lead now are a drop of water next to the ocean of eternity.

So we grieve Josh’s unexpected death, but we don’t grieve as those who have no hope. Josh’s trust in Jesus tempers our grief, because we know that this isn’t goodbye. At most this is a temporary separation. And I look forward to seeing my friend again.

That said, if you’re reading this and you are still trying to navigate life in this broken world by your own strength, then know that I am praying for you as well. And while the content of my prayer might seem odd, know that it’s motivated by love:

I pray that you would reach the end of your rope quickly. I pray that you would recognize, as Josh did, that you are not equipped to be self-sufficient. The truth is, you were never intended to do life on your own. Our heavenly Father made you to do life with Him, and you will remain restless until you allow yourself to rest in Him. You will remain unfulfilled until you find your fulfillment in Him. So I pray that you would stop running, stop striving, stop trying to hold your world together and entrust all that you hold most dearly into the hands of the One who formed you and who holds the world together. Because He loves you and He’s not far off. You can always find Him at the end of your rope.

 “I wish I hadn’t broken it.”

My son’s small voice was heavy with grief last night as he looked upon the shattered pieces of a Lego set he’d been constructing for several weeks. Earlier in the day, in a fit of anger, he’d thrown it to the ground, breaking it and scattering the formerly interlocking pieces everywhere. It had taken us quite a while to gather up the pieces and even now I need to walk with care so as not to step on a Lego landmine.

“I know, son. You worked so hard on it. But I can help you put it back together if you let me.”

After I tucked him in, I couldn’t help but liken the grief my boy felt over his Lego set to the sorrow many of us feel about the state of our nation. It, too, took a beating yesterday, fueled by anger and unmet expectations. While the details are still fuzzy and I will refrain from casting blame, yesterday’s events further exposed the deep rifts of animosity and mistrust that have formed in our society. We call ourselves the United States, but I can’t think of a time in my life when we’ve been more fractured. We all want America to prosper, but our disagreements about how to do that have fueled a pursuit of power at all costs. Add to that our unwillingness to listen to people who disagree with us, and our knee-jerk tendency to blame others rather than taking a good hard look in the mirror, and it’s no wonder why we are experiencing such deep division. It’s messy and painful and at times it seems hopeless.

But we have one thing going for us.
We don’t have to put the pieces back together by ourselves.

Like my son, we have a Father who is willing to enter into the messiness of our reality, a messiness that we had a part in creating, and He will help us heal our broken society. Now, I’m not naïve enough to believe that everyone in our country will all of a sudden yearn for Jesus to take the wheel. But for those of us who call Him Lord, if we will keep our eyes fixed on him and allow his values to shape our values, then we can begin piecing our fractured society back together again starting with our own little spheres of influence. If we, who call Jesus our Lord, will stop pointing the fingers at others and start asking ourselves, “how would Jesus have me respond?” then we can break the cycles that breed division and dysfunction in our society. Let the healing start with us.  

So let me be the first to say it: “God, we’ve made a mess and we need your help.”

“If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.” 2 Chronicles 7:14   

On a Wing and a Prayer

This morning, I went for a run in the Back Bay. I figured it's time to start working off the extra 20 I picked up in 2020. Along my route, I noticed some hawks floating on the breeze. Grateful for the excuse to catch my breath, I stopped and watched them for a few minutes.

I was struck by how effortlessly they glided, often going minutes without flapping their wings. Although they couldn’t see the breeze, they harnessed its power rather than expending their own. They didn’t even need to labor when they were flying into the wind. Instead, they used the headwind to rise up. 

As I watch them, I considered the headwinds that we all endured in 2020. I can't speak for you, but when the winds buffeted me, I tended to strain hard to overcome them, often leaving myself exhausted because of my efforts. If there is a lesson we can learn from the birds, it’s that the trials of life are not necessarily a curse. In fact, they can be the very things that help us rise higher and higher, if we will just rely upon the power of the one who raises us up, rather than upon our own strength. Perhaps that's what it means to live on a wing and a prayer.

“Do you not know? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He will not grow tired or weary, and his understanding no one can fathom. He gives strength to the weary and increases the power of the weak. Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men stumble and fall; but those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be faint.” ‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭40:28-31‬